HHHEEEYYY YYYOOOUUU GGGUUUYYYSSS

It's me, the lovable writer you call Oni, back from the dead! Never died though... So can I really say I'm back from the dead? Screw it, back from the dead it is! Now, moving forward, let's see here... Oh right, I gotta write a new chapter about the RWBY and VDMR crews, don't I? Maybe I should stop rambling and just get on with it... Yeah, let's do that. NEW CHAPTER, GOOO

Chapter 23

Mountain Glenn

Meanwhile, Ironwood had something on his mind, and as such had left the confines of Beacon's walls to get some fresh air, as well as to get a quieter place to think. Enthralled by the view of Vale, from the gently lit buildings below to the airships above, he didn't notice when Glynda approached from behind him.

"Trouble sleeping?" she asked as she joined him overlooking the city.

"Arm was acting up," Ironwood said, gripping his shoulder with his other hand.

"Of course," Glynda deduced, "so logically, you got out of bed, dressed yourself completely and decided to gaze menacingly out into the distance. What's wrong?" she asked as she stood up from the railing.

"I've trusted him for years," Ironwood said, caving. "We both have. I just... I can't help but feel like he's keeping us in the dark."

"Don't be ridiculous! You know very well that we are not the ones in the dark," Glynda retorted, earning a nervous laugh from Ironwood.

"That makes it worse! I refuse to believe that a man that I've trusted for so long would act so... passively. Especially with Strife of all people! Leaving him be won't end well, I can feel it," he finished, Glynda laying a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

"You're a good person, James. You've always done what you think is best for the people, even against strong protest. It's admirable. But it's high time you stopped talking about trust and started showing it," she said, lowering her hand. "Ozpin has experience that the rest of us lack. And I think that's something worth remembering."

OOO

That very same night in Mountain Glenn, a lone Beowolf was roaming around the abandoned streets, a certain silver-eyed girl glared at it through the scope of a high-powered sniper scythe, though she sighed and lowered her weapon, gazing instead at the shattered moon above, but still listening intently for any signs of danger from the city streets below. Furthermore, she kept checking her scroll to verify the aura levels of Team VDMR, as she wanted to be ready in the off chance where they needed her.

Inside their actual camp, the rest of Team RWBY was sprawled out on their sleeping mats, weapons close by in case they were needed. Professor Oobleck himself lay sleeping in the room above, visible from below through a hole in the ceiling. Though WBY appeared to be asleep, Yang was the first to drop the facade, calling out to Blake.

"Blake, are you awake?" she asked, finally opening her eyes and putting her ruse to rest, unlike herself.

"Yeah," Blake responded, opening her eyes as well.

"Why do you think he asked us about being a Huntress?" Yang asked, turning to Blake. "Like, what was he trying to say?"

Blake thought for a moment. "Maybe he was just curious."

"You think?" Yang wondered, hoping her feline friend was right.

However, Blake very quickly dashed those hopes. "No," she replied, a slightly worried expression appearing on Yang's face for a moment.

"Weiss, are you awake?" Yang then said, causing Weiss to open her eyes and adopt a mildly annoyed expression.

"Of course I'm awake!" she shouted, her face of annoyance being replaced by one of thought." You two are talking. And I think he... When I said I wanted to honor my family's name, I meant it. But, it's not what you think. I'm not stupid. I'm fully aware of what my father has done with the Schnee Dust Company. Since he took control, our business has operated in a... moral gray area."

"That's putting it lightly," Blake said, rolling her eyes.

"Which is why I feel the need to make things right," Weiss retorted. "If I had taken a job in Atlas, it wouldn't have changed anything. My father was not the start of our name, and I refuse to let him be the end of it."

"All my life, I fought for what I thought was right. I had a partner named Adam. More of a mentor, actually. He always assured me that what we were doing would make the world a better place. But of course, his idea of a perfect future turned out to be not perfect for everyone. I joined the Academy because I knew that Huntsmen and Huntresses were regarded as the most noble warriors in the world. Always fighting for good. But I never really thought past that. When I leave the Academy, what will I - how can I undo so many years of hate?" Blake asked, half wondering, and half asking the others what they thought.

"I'm sure you'd figure it out," Yang replied, trying to cheer her up. "You're not one to back down from a challenge, Blake."

"But I am!" she shouted in response. "I do it all the time! When you learned I was a Faunus, I didn't know what to do, so I ran! When I realized my oldest partner had become a monster, I ran! Even my Semblance! I was born with the ability to leave behind a shadow of myself; an empty copy that takes the hit while I run away!

"At least you two have something that drives you," Yang muttered solemnly, laying back down. "I've just kinda of always, gone with the flow, y'know? And that's fine, I mean, that's who I am. But how long can I really do that for? I wanna be a Huntress, not really because I want to be a hero, but because I want the adventure. I want a life where I won't know what tomorrow will bring. And that'll be a good thing. Being a Huntress just happens to line up with that. I'm not like Ruby, she's always wanted to be a Huntress. It's like she said, ever since she was a kid, she'd dreamt about being the heroes in the books. Helping people and saving the day, and never asking for anything else in return. Even when she couldn't fight, she knew that's what she wanted to do. That's why she trained so hard to get where she is today."

"Well, she's still just a kid," Weiss said.

"She's only two years younger," Blake specified. "We're all kids."

"Well, not anymore," Yang conceded. "I mean, look where we are! In the middle of a warzone and armed to the teeth!"

"It's the life we chose," said Blake.

"It's a job," Weiss clarified. "We all had this romanticized vision of being a Huntress in our heads! But at the end of the day, it's a job to protect the people! And whatever we want, will have to come second."

Little did the conversing members of Team RWBY know, Oobleck had heard everything they said, and a smile was upon his face as he tried to settle into a meaningful rest.

As time passed, Yang was eventually woken to take over the watch, allowing both Ruby and Zwei some time to rest. Though Ruby was more than ready to catch some Z's, Zwei had other plans. Namely, that plan was to perk up and stand, waking Ruby back up.

"Huh? Zwei, it's late. Go back to bed," she said groggily, though her canine companion decided instead to run off. "Zwei! Zwei! Ugh!"

Still half asleep, Ruby stood and gave chase to her now fleeing dog. "Zwei! Zwei, where are you? Zwei! Huh?"

Her chase was short-lived, as Zwei was nearby peeing on some ruins. Hiding a small snicker, she quickly went to chastising her beloved pet. "Zwei, this is a wasteland! You literally could have done that anywhere!"

Zwei only barked in response, though rather than simply collecting her dog and returning to their camp, Ruby was instead distracted by something else.

Voices.

After Zwei had barked, Ruby heard a few people talking, taking this as a cue to hide behind some nearby ruins.

"What was that?" said one of the voices Ruby had picked up, glancing around to see that who she had hurt ended up being a pair of White Fang soldiers.

"What was what?" asked the other guard, turning to his fellow soldier.

"I thought I heard a Beowolf or something," said the first guard, taking a precautionary look around.

"Hmph. Let's just finish our patrol and get back to base. This place gives me the creeps," said the second guard, shivering for a moment, be it either from the ambient cold or the creeps he had just mentioned.

With their 'conversation' done, the two guards continued their patrol, Ruby following closely after, Zwei trotting happily after her. They didn't have to trail them for long, as they soon went up to a building with two large steel doors. Ruby hid behind a nearby corner, holding Zwei out to continue watching them.

"Did they go in yet?" Ruby asked Zwei. :One bark means 'yes'."

As if on queue, the sounds of the doors closing rang out, earning a bark from Zwei, Ruby's face lighting up.

"Oh! This is it! This is it!" she cheered quietly, grabbing her scroll to call her teammates. However, the screen instead read 'Low Signal', lowering her spirits. "Aw man! Come on, we gotta get the others!"

She quickly ran off, Zwei following closely behind. However, the very ground beneath them began to crumble and give way, succumbing to the apparent catacombs below. She knew that she wouldn't be able to both escape and save Zwei, so she did the sensible thing and caught him by the tail, tossing him back to solid ground while she tried to pull herself up. Despite her petite frame, however, the ledge she was clinging to gave way, surrendering her to the void below. The fall wasn't as far as she would have feared though, and when she landed she came out of it relatively unharmed, aside from the fact that sitting would be pretty uncomfortable for a while. Getting up and rubbing her bruised behind, she looked around to see that she had landed on the roof of a building that was completely underground, and around it were even more buildings. Before she could go to look over the edge the door to the same roof she was on burst open, the reason for this being two more White Fang soldiers, guns trained on the Huntress-in-Training.

"Freeze!" commanded the larger of the two guards, cocking his gun.

"Where did she come from?" asked the other, looking around, somehow missing the hole in the top of the cave.

The two began taking precautionary steps forward, as they didn't know what Ruby was capable of. Ruby in turn took a few steps back, but not very many, as the roof didn't go on forever.

The larger guard spoke again. "You're a long way from home, little girl," he said, staring down the scope of his gun.

Ruby wasn't too keen on being threatened like this, and reached back for Crescent Rose. To her surprise and horror, her signature weapon wasn't on her person, figuring it must have fallen when the ground collapsed beneath her. Thinking fast, she grabbed her scroll and issued an S.O.S. to her emergency contact, hoping that it'd be able to send it when she made her next move, chucking it out of the hole in the ceiling as hard as she could. Luckily for her, as it clattered to the streets above, the screen read 'S.O.S. Issued', featuring a picture of the gold-haired Huntsman that was her boyfriend.

Shortly after her little stunt, one of the guards quickly approached and grabbed her by the wrist, seemingly in an attempt to stop her, but evidently he was too late. Ruby didn't like this either, and yank her arm out of his hand.

"Hey! Hands off!" she demanded, punching him a few times, but it was clear that her own strength wasn't that impressive without her scythe, the guard ignoring her blows and returning them with one of his own, hitting her in the face and knocking her over. She landed back on her butt too, and this clearly wasn't favorable considering her prior fall.

"The boss is gonna want to see this one..." said the same guard who punched Ruby before kicking her in the face and knocking her out.

OOO

At VDMR's camp, things were pretty standard. Link had taken up watch after Noctus had woken him to trade off, and he was perched up in a tree such to get a better look at the camp below. Additionally, he occasionally glanced through the infrared scope on Farore to be sure no Grimm had decided to silently approach them. Sweeping the area once more, he was relieved to see that the closest one was well over a mile away. Truth be told, they had killed almost everything in Quadrant 6 the day before, and them remaining there was more of a formality, hence why Noctus wanted to hunt before dawn; the few remaining stragglers would be resting still, making it easier to hunt them down. However, they had yet to find the supposed nest that was in the quadrant, and Link was beginning to doubt that it was even there.

"If I'm lucky, Ruby will find it over in Q5, and I can head over there and take care of it. Then we can assist them with their mission. If only I were so lucky..."

With one final sweep to ensure no Grimm had approached, he pulled out his scroll such to play some games, having downloaded a few before leaving for his mission. With his time away from his uncle, he finally had time for himself, using the moments when he couldn't train to just relax. Besides, his equipment was all tuned up, so there wasn't anything he needed to do. Starting his game, a small 1v1 fighter, he set his CPU opponent to the max level, which by this point wasn't a challenge to him. However, before he could finish mopping the floor with his virtual adversary, a message appeared at the top of his screen.

"Ugh, right in the middle of my... match..."

Before even finishing his thought, he was out of the tree and smothering the flame that illuminated their camp, his serene disposition gone.

"Everyone, get up. Now." he commanded, loading a clip into Farore.

"Mmm... What's going on...?" muttered Lana from her tree, refusing to even open her eyes.

"I've received an S.O.S. signal. We need to go. Now. Sebastian," he said, waking his partner, "wake the others. I need to take care of this. Follow my location. And do it fast."

And with that, he was gone, dust settling where he was standing no less than a moment ago.

"Oh my," Sebastian said, going around and waking the others, with slightly more resistance from Volga. "It appears that something might be wrong. We need to gear up and move out. He said to follow his location."

"Ugh, great, more work," Volga said, though Noctus rolled his eyes.

"We didn't really have too much to do here anymore anyway. A little extra excitement won't hurt. I don't have him registered, so I'll follow you guys."

The rest of VDMR nodded and checked their scrolls, seeing Link moving fast towards Q5, Noctus seeing and swearing in his head.

Oh shit, he thought, I know what's going on. Have they seriously been found out already?

"Something on your mind, Mr. Hale?" Lana asked, Noctus shrugging.

"Just wondering if the nest we gotta get rid of is in Q5... Let's hurry and follow him, someone over there might have seen how many and sent that S.O.S.," said Noctus. Little did VDMR know, but he was lying. None of them picked up on it though. He was really good at fibbing.

Meanwhile, Link was busy dead sprinting towards Q5, though more specifically, heading towards the source of the S.O.S. beacon he had received.

"I doubt it's Grimm," Link said to himself as he leaped over a large ravine cutting through the woods. "If it was, I have no doubt she'd be able to take care of it. There's something else going on. Especially if she sent me an S.O.S. I need to hurry, Ruby needs me."

He continued running, never so much as slowing for a moment. An S.O.S. was one thing, but an S.O.S. from Ruby?

"Whatever the reason, I'll protect her. I need to protect her."

OOO

Eventually, it came time for Yang to pass on watch to another, returning back to the camp to do just that.

"Hey Weiss, it's your..." she said trailing off. However, before she could dump the job on Weiss, she saw that Ruby's bedroll was vacant, as was the spot next to it that would have had Zwei napping there. "Ruby? Hey, where's Ruby?"

"What?" was Oobleck's response, his over-consumption of coffee allowing him to instantly rouse himself from his slumber. Shortly after he said this though, Zwei returned to the camp, barking at the top of his little lungs.

"Zwei?" Yang wondered allowed, Blake waking and looking around.

"What's going on?" she asked, Oobleck dropping in from the ceiling.

"Grab your weapons! Your leader may be in trouble," he commanded, the others waking and doing as he said. Things seemed to have taken a turn for the worse...

OOO

When Ruby finally came to, she was being dragged by the two White Fang members that had caught her through the lower part of the underground city she had fallen into. Looking around while she had the chance, she saw many things she really didn't like; namely, scores of White Fang soldiers, some armed with the same Paladin 290s that her team had worked so hard to destroy one of. Nearby, one was walking through carrying a large machine, though turned a little fast, causing the Paladin to loose its grip and dropping the machine, earning a chastising from another soldier nearby.

"Hey, be careful! What are you trying to do, blow us to the moon?"

"Sorry, sir!" replied the Paladin pilot.

Before she could continue gathering intel on her surroundings, her captors stopped moving, the shorter of the two calling to the shipping container before them.

"Hey boss! Found something you might want to see!"

From inside the railcar could be heard a discontented sigh, followed by a response. "Is it good or bad, Perry? Because let me tell ya, I have had a day," said the inhabitant, who sounded awfully familiar to Ruby.

"Uh, it's a little girl? said the now-named Perry.

"That..." said the voice, who leaned out to see this 'little girl' and revealed himself to be none other than Roman Torchwick, "would be bad."

OOO

Following Zwei, the group was led to the hole that Ruby had succumbed to earlier. Yang was the first to spot anything else out of the ordinary, heading over to Ruby's scythe and scroll.

"Ruby's scythe! And her scroll!" she said in worry as she picked up the two. Her scroll was one thing, but she would never go anywhere without Crescent Rose...

"Oh no," was all Blake could muster for the moment, still a tad tired.

"Do you think she fell?" Weiss asked, Oobleck looking up.

"Fell?" he asked, Weiss rolling her eyes.

"Down there," Weiss said, snapping her fingers and point at the gaping hole in the street. Oobleck then turned to what was the true cause of their leader's disappearance.

"Oh my. Of course! Of course, OF COURSE, OF COURSE!" he half-screamed.

"What is it?" Blake asked, worried. She was definitely fully awake now.

"How could I be so stupid?!" continued Oobleck, still not giving a definitive answer as to what he had discovered.

"Dr. Oobleck, what's wrong?" Yang asked, trying to get him to focus. She half-succeeded.

"Mountain Glenn!" he rambled. "Yes, an expansion of Vale that was inevitably destroyed by creatures of Grimm! Previously home to thousands of people! Working people commuting to the city, the main city! Developed a subway system to the inner city! Grimm attacks increased! Population in danger, now desperately searching for shelter! City evacuates into the metro tunnels and what do they find? The southeast quadrant of Vale is known for wild forests and deep caves!"

"Doc, what are you saying?" Yang asked once again, trying to steer him towards the important information.

"My dear, we're not just looking for an underground crime network, we're looking for an UNDERGROUND crime network!" Oobleck revealed.

Blake blinked a few times as she thought. "They've been working in caves?

"No, no, Mountain Glenn was Vale's first serious attempt at expansion," Oobleck explained, pacing back and forth. "It worked for a short period of time, thanks to an aggressive perimeter defense, and unique transportation; the city developed an elaborate subway system to carry citizens safely from the new territory into the main Kingdom! Sadly, without the many natural barriers Vale had to protect its borders, Mountain Glenn was doomed from the start! As the end drew near, the citizens of the territory made one last attempt at survival: They took up shelter beneath the city! In massive caves that they had cleared out for the subway. And they had cut themselves off from the surface!"

"An underground village?" Yang asked, finally realizing what he was getting at. Her eyes widened as she looked to the hole before them, worried about what may have befallen her beloved sister.

"In a matter of speaking, yes. A safe haven. Until..." he said, ceasing to pace, instead approaching the hole. "...an explosion opened the mouth of another cavern, filled with subterranean Grimm. After that, the Kingdom officially sealed off the tunnels, creating the world's largest tomb. If Ruby is down there," he said, activating his weapon, which oddly enough turned out to be his thermas, "we must find her..."

"Hold on a second," Yang said as she looked at her sister's scroll, "she sent out an S.O.S.!"

She tried to fumble with it for a moment, but was unable to find out any more. It had been too long since it had been issued for her to see who it was sent to.

"Check your scrolls! She might have sent a message with it! I can't see who it was sent to... Oh geez sis, please be okay..." she trailed off, hearing a repeated 'thumping' in the distance.

"Wait, what's that?" she asked, looking around.

"I don't know," said Blake, "but it's closing in fast."

"We'd better deal with this before we go after Ruby," Weiss said, drawing her sword. "If she really is in trouble, we won't be of much good dealing with attacks from both the front and back."

Everyone else nodded and readied their weapons, turning towards the sound that was nearly upon them. They didn't have to wait much longer either, as in the distance they could see what appeared to be... one person?

"Is that...?" Oobleck wondered before his hypothesis was confirmed.

Barreling towards them was none other than Link Valion, and he looked mad.

"What's going on?!" he shouted skidding to a halt before them. "What happened to Ruby?!"

"That's what we're wondering too," Yang said, tossing Link Ruby's scroll. "I'll assume you were the one she sent the S.O.S. to?"

"Yes," he said as he caught the scroll. "I take it Zwei led you here?"

"Yes," said Weiss as Blake slowly scooted away from Zwei.

"The rest of VDMR is on their way, but we have no time to waste. We need to get down there and get her back to safety," he said as he looked at the hole behind Team RWBY. "And give me her scythe, too. I'll likely find her first, and it'd be better to arm her sooner rather than later."

"Gotcha," said Yang as she tossed Link Crescent Rose, Link catching it and hooking it to his belt.

"Well, now that we have that settled," Oobleck said, drawing everyone's attention to him. He even shouldered his weapon such to get the point across further.

"Shall we?"

So yeah. Not dead. Just busy.

Not really too much to say at this end of this chapter, not gonna lie. I'm just trying to get this one out fast so you guys have something to read after this little... ho boy, two and a half year hiatus? Yeah that's too long. I'll try to keep updates to a more consistent schedule, but they still won't likely be too frequent. A heck of a lot more frequent than they have been though, I can tell you that much.

Anyway, ye, that's all I got.

Oh, and thank my buddy for reminding me about this one. I've been so caught up in other projects that I hadn't ben finding time to do this.

Anywho, OniHelix out!