Blake has taken to drifting through White Fang territory, finding what information she can. It's not a difficult task; she's always been good at hiding.

Each morning she tells herself to contact Sienna, that she'll never succeed in bringing the White Fang down through half measures. Each day she walks familiar routes through the heart of gang territory, almost invisible among the crowds. Each evening she drops off another letter at the police station, and each night she walks the rooftops searching for meetings. She's always been good at hiding.

She sees the heroes, once in a while, usually just Ruby on a rooftop a few blocks away, silhouetted and blocking out the stars. She sees others too, far less benevolent lords of the night. She catches a glimpse of the two people she and Yang fought on that fateful night, and she hides from their gaze. She's good at hiding.

Not good enough. Never quite good enough. There's always the one mistake she makes, the one mistake that is enough to be found.

Ilia Amitola lands on the roof opposite her, unmistakable despite the mask. Small and slight, coat a constantly shifting landscape of shadows as it blends into the night. Ilia was cautious enough to survive in the White Fang, and cautious enough to follow them. Blake will never be that cautious.

Neither of them speak for some time, both evaluating their options, the benefits and drawbacks of a fight here.

"There's good money in taking you in," Ilia says eventually. Her face is hard to read behind the mask, but her lips are pressed closely together, the way they are when she has more to say.

"This is about more than money, Ilia," Blake says. Use her name to make her more sympathetic. Not a new trick, and Ilia will likely see through it, but it's better than nothing. "I'm fighting for the side of good."

"You're fighting for the status quo," Ilia responds curtly. She doesn't use Blake's name, and Blake doesn't expect her to. "You're fighting to keep Faunus down, like it or not. I know how the heroes operate."

"You don't believe that," Blake says. "You know the White Fang have gone too far."

Ilia doesn't respond, but her lips press tighter together. Her knuckles are white on the handle of her whip. When she does eventually speak, her voice is little more than a whisper.

"Blake, I care about you, but the cause has to come first. You can still come back to us."

Blake can't go back. She's spent too long following blindly, trusting in one authority or another. She's spent too long trying to decide which side was right, when the truth was that none of them had all the answers. All she can do is follow her own moral code and fight for what she believes in, and she no longer has any faith in the White Fang.

Blake doesn't have to say anything. She doesn't have to justify herself to anyone.

Ilia nods, then drops off of the roof, disappearing as she falls.

Blake continues across the rooftops, already composing her message to Sienna Khan in her head. She's put it off long enough.

…

Ruby's out in Mistral too, because the robot hasn't been taken down. To be more precise, they can't find a weak point. Its joints are as well-armored as the rest of its limbs, which would ordinarily sacrifice too much maneuverability to make it worthwhile. Ruby will have to study exactly how it fits together later, she reminds herself. For now, she's the one who knows the most about the robots' construction, so Oscar and Qrow are doing their best to keep Vale intact.

Ruby doesn't like any of this. The robot has been inactive for two days, only moving to unleash a hail of bullets on innocent birds who get too close. Its creator must be trying to stay inconspicuous for the time being. Her team aren't helping matters. Nora is worryingly quiet, like she's been ever since Pyrrha – well. Ren hasn't said a word since she showed up, but keeps a close watch on the robot all the time. He doesn't even let Ruby take over so he can get some sleep. Jaune tries to talk and stay upbeat once in a while, but it doesn't really help.

The birds are weird too. There are too many of them, and they all seem to be crows. Or maybe ravens. Ruby can't tell the difference, but either way she's pretty sure they're bad luck. She doesn't really believe in superstitions, but they make her nervous anyway.

For now, their strategy is to stay out of the way. If the robot attacks another area, their priority will be evacuating civilians, rather than trying to directly attack it. And Ruby doesn't like that either, but it's their best, and really their only, option.

…

Weiss should never have wandered too far off the beaten path. Her first foray earned her wounds and scars, and her second may well earn her an execution for treason. Weiss doesn't care about that, and that scares her. All she wants is information.

She steps further into the dark room, shining her flashlight along the crates searching for labels. It's just a storeroom, she tells herself. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Weiss puts down the flashlight, then picks it up again, and ends up holding it in her teeth as she struggles to move the lid of a crate. The lid does shift a few inches, enough that Weiss can shine the light in and see a mess of circuit boards and microchips, some connected to each other by trailing wires and others simply tossed in.

Weiss tugs one microchip out. It's a Schnee Corporation product, a bit smaller than her thumbnail, the familiar green with copper patterns painted across it. Ruby would probably be able to identify its purpose just by looking at the chip, and then turn it into a surveillance device in a matter of hours. She pushes it into her pocket and keeps going.

The next few crates have similar contents, or simply tangles of wire. Most of the copper has patches that shine dully in the light, that flake and crumble when Weiss touches them. Overloaded circuits that burned their fragile wiring and got tossed into crates down here. Odd, but not incriminating or even all that rare.

Weiss begins tugging at the lid of another crate, but it refuses to move. It's nailed shut. Weiss curses herself and her decisions again, then begins to tease the nails out with a magnet and a claw hammer. She's not taking half measures in her investigation.

When the crate's lid eventually yields, it crashes to the floor, sending a booming sound echoing through the room. Weiss ducks into a crevice between crates, worrying that the guards were alerted by the sound, but when the room stays quiet and dark, she assumes the danger is past and peers into the crate.

Weiss initially thinks it's a corpse, and has to stifle her scream, before peering in again. It's something far too humanoid and far too inhuman, something with a human face and nothing but gears behind the eye sockets.

Weiss has spent far too long fighting robots to trust this one, even if it looks harmless. She extends a hand to touch the face, confirming that it's just silicone, although it does have an oddly lifelike texture.

There are robots, here, that look like humans. That can blend in to a crowd, never be discovered, and kill with immunity. Here, of all places, in an old storeroom in a Schnee Company factory.

Weiss bolts for the exit, not bothering to close the crates she's opened or cover her tracks.

What can she do? Atlas can't help; this may well be a military contract, and if not Jacques Schnee has enough power to stop any real investigation in its tracks. The heroes would never trouble themselves with a minor issue like this, not when Vale is in chaos.

Weiss has herself, and whatever she can scavenge or steal. That will have to be enough.