Oh my gosh! I was actually able to upload the next chapter one week from the previous one!? Hell must have frozen over!
I actually remember what I wanted to write in the author's note this time.
There is a new summary for this fic to more truthfully encapsulate the entirety of what this fic is going to be. Go give it a read if you haven't yet.
This fic has also achieved some amazing milestones since it's inception: over 200 follows, over 150 favorites, and almost 100 reviews! You guys are amazing. I don't know if I would have gotten this far without your support for this fic.
Finally, a bit of an update for the future of the fic: there will be a lot of AU elements coming up soon. This will be in order to connect the Halo universe and the RWBY universe. If you don't like alternate interpretations of either's cannon, than this isn't the story for you.
Announcements over. Onto the story.
Part I
The Lost Child
July 2, 2545 (Military Calendar) / Orbiting Pegasi Delta, 51 Pegasi system
There was one question on her mind as Ruby marched through a field of rocks and sand underneath an orange sky.
Why were there six of them?
herself and Zwei she could totally understand. They had gone on reconnaissance missions like this before, and they were good at them too. Roland and Jonah were a bit of a stretch, but they had done well as a team during the tournament, and so she could be convinced with a good enough explanation.
But, Why Kat and Owen?
The six of them crested a small ridge overlooking a large, flat plateau that would hopefully lead to where their objective was. They were tasked with finding, and gauging the strength of a supposed Covenant deuterium and tritium refinery, the products of such a refinery would then be used in plasma reactors, so long as their intel on the Covenant's ships were correct. This place was essentially a Covenant refueling plant. If the UNSC could take this place out, the Covenant would suffer a devastating blow to their war machine, crippling it for as long as it takes for them to reestablish deuterium and tritium supply lines.
Despite this being such an important asset to the Covenant, they should not be in any serious danger, so long as they don't get spotted. Early scans of the moon showed this plateau overlooking a large, unnatural, essentially blank spot in the terrain. Typical of Covenant cloaking technology. Because of the plateau, and the Covies' blind trust in their technology, they would not expect a recon team spying on them, much less an invading force.
The invasion was scheduled for tomorrow, but Commander Robert Hemming, who was in charge of the invasion, was one who made sure no last minute changes happened to his plan. It was their job to make sure there were none, or to relay information back should there be a need for it.
Overall, the mission had gone down smoothly. Owen seemed to keep to himself, Ruby didn't think he knew any of them, and Kat seemed to acknowledge anyone but her, and, to be honest, it was getting kind of old.
The Plateau itself, at least the part leading towards the cliff that would give them a great view of the refinery, was about a mile long. Giving them ample time to discuss absolutely nothing. Nobody spoke, not even Jonah and Roland between themselves.
Ruby didn't know how she could do it, but the sheer animosity Kat felt towards Ruby was creating an aura so strong it made the two shut up. She had tried for months and couldn't do the same.
Kat was in the lead, wearing the same SPI armor as the rest of them. With about another fifteen minutes before the important part of the mission, Ruby decided to bury some hatchets.
She jogged ahead, and kept pace with Kat. For the first time in hours, Kat spoke to her.
"What?"
"Is that all you have to say to an old friend?" Ruby asked.
"You were never my friend, only a leech."
"What could I have possibly leeched off of you?" Ugh, here came another argument.
"My time, my patience, my sanity, my test answers. Should I go on?" Kat finally turned her head to look at her. Baby steps.
"That last one only happened once, and the rest are completely subjective. Zwei and I get along just fine. Right, Zwei?" Ruby turned around and walked backwards as she addressed her friend.
"Don't bring me into this." Zwei had been right behind them, but as soon as he finished talking, he stopped dead in his tracks, and didn't start again until he was in the back of the pack.
"Ugh! You're no help."
"See? Everything you do annoys people. B312 just deals with it."
"Come on. What did I do to make you so angry with me, really? Annoying you every once in a while can't have made you this upset."
"You'd be surprised." Kat said. Ruby racked her brain for something to say, anything to try and cool her off would be helpful. But, in the end, she guessed there was only one way to get on her good side.
"Fine, I'll leave you alone." Just like Zwei had done, Ruby stopped, and waited until she was shoulder to shoulder with her partner.
"What do you think I should've said?" Ruby asked.
"I told you not to bring me into this." Zwei said.
"I know, but… I don't know what to do. One of these days Kat's anger with me is going to affect a mission and-"
"It will not affect a mission, I'm not that petty." Kat interrupted her.
"Sorry." Ruby guessed that was a bad thing to imply.
The remainder of their walk was done in silence. Once the edge of the cliff inched into view, they each activated their suit's active camo. Better to be safe than sorry.
All six Spartans spread out, keeping at least a hundred feet between them and the next, and crawled the last few meters to the edge of the cliff. Ruby was at the north end of the line, and whistled as large purple buildings rose up from the sand.
"Eyes on the target. That sure is one big refinery." Someone, most likely Owen, said over her suit comms.
"Confirmed. Covenant refinery insight, good job team. Keep sending data, we want a good picture." Ruby definitely didn't recognize that voice, probably one of Commander Hemming's lieutenants.
Ruby watched through her visor's zoom function the scores of aliens of varying heights scuttle across the desert floor. Some were carrying large boxes or containers, and some stood guard, their oblong heads scanning the ridgeline left and right. She was sure they wouldn't see them.
The buildings themselves were some of the ugliest pieces of architecture she had ever seen. Long, sloping curves surrounded by way too much purple made the refinery look more like some sort of fungus growing up from the desert floor than any sort of actual factory. No matter how hard she tried, Ruby didn't think she would ever understand the Covenant. Not that she wanted to.
"How much of this do we need?" Jonah asked, he was stationed at the complete opposite end from where Ruby was. She couldn't even see him.
"Just a little bit longer. Command needs enough data to ensure the plan can continue smoothly." Kat said.
"What even is the plan?"
"How am I supposed to know? We're just scouting it out, that's all we need to worry about."
Ruby kept her eyes on the large facility. Her gaze travelled up, where large plasma cannons aimed their barrels - or what she assumed were barrels - towards the rolling sand dunes to the other side of the refinery. She whistled in her helmet. "I wouldn't wanna be the one to have to attack this place." Ruby said.
"I know, invading here would be suicide." Roland said.
"Quiet. It has to be done. Regardless of who does it, we shouldn't talk about their likelihood of dying. It's bad taste." Zwei said. Ruby agreed.
"Alright, I think that's good enough. Fall back before you get spotted, and make your way to the LZ. There'll be a Pelican waiting for you." The same Lieutenant said. Ruby crawled backwards, away from the cliff, until she was a good twenty yards away, and was sure there was no way anything could see her once she stood.
Ruby regrouped with the rest of her squad, and marched the thirty miles of rough, rocky terrain back to the LZ. She thought about trying again with Kat, but soon thought better than to try and kick the hornet's nest.
The Pelican ride back to the UNSC Wendigo, a Black Cat-class subprowler, designed specifically for small team infiltrations and exfiltrations, as well as reconnaissance missions, was rather tense. Kat continued to refuse to utter a word to Ruby, while the rest of the squad sat and hoped they wouldn't be roped into anything more uncomfortable than the silence they were already drowning in.
Ruby watched Kat disembark from the Pelican, and quickly move to her quarters. She didn't know what the angry girl was doing, they had to be debriefed, and the Commander didn't like doing that more than once, she could tell.
She let out a breath, shrugged, and opted to let her be. If she wanted to get in trouble, then she was more than welcome to.
To her left, Roland, Jonah, and Owen were staring out of one of the Prowler's view ports, watching the moon down below.
"What's going on?" Ruby approached the group, curious about what could gain the attention of three Spartans, two of which had the attention span of a goldfish.
"The invasion is beginning. They weren't kidding when they said this mission was last minute." Roland's eyes were still glued to the view port - she could tell because he had taken his helmet off.
"I thought the invasion wasn't until tomorrow?" Ruby double checked the date via her suit's visor, and was a little surprised to see it was the next day - July 3rd. She followed Roland's example, and took off her helmet a moment later.
What she saw through the view port impressed her to no end. A single slipspace rupture on the far side of the moon was the threshold for hundreds of tiny specks of silver. The subprowler was in low orbit, but space was still a big place, and Ruby had a hard time discerning what the spots were, even with her enhanced vision. She thought they were some kind of insertion pods, designed to be sent through a slipspace portal, making them incredibly expensive.
Before long the stream of drop pods diminished, until the last one exited, and the rupture closed behind them.
"Is that it?" Jonah asked. "And how are they going to get off the moon once the operation is done?"
"I have a feeling we'll pick them up," Owen said. "And that there are other subprowlers ready and waiting too."
"Do they expect to take that whole refinery with a handful of squads?" Ruby asked. As she watched the drop pods enter the atmosphere, and become encased in a bright fiery light, she couldn't help but agree with what Roland had said earlier.
This is a suicide mission.
Ruby's heart dropped as some of the drop pods' light grew in intensity, until nothing remained. They were exploding. They barely made it through the atmosphere.
By the time the last drop pod had exploded in a flash of red hot fire - a little strange, considering the atmosphere of the moon was rather thin, these pods should be rated for entry in much harsher climates than this - the Covenant anti-air batteries opened fire on the remaining pods.
Six had exploded, and three were shot down by the Covenant before even the first pod struck ground. The rest soon followed, and Ruby could see tiny pinpricks of light coming from the Covenant's plasma based small arms fire. She couldn't see it, but she knew the invading force was fighting back, and rather effectively as the Covenant's lines were quickly pushed back towards the refinery.
Eventually larger, faster, more deadly dots of light raced across the battlefield, leaving behind large, green blasts in their wake.
"Seraphs, that's not good." Jonah said.
The Seraphs managed very few strafing runs, all things considered. If she had to hazard a guess, when the Seraphs exploded, it had to be because some of the soldiers down there were wielding some model of Rocket Launcher, as evidenced by the thin yellow trail of the rocket's thrust. Several exploding Covenant fighters followed before the pilots seemed to grow wise, and end their attack runs.
By the time the Seraphs quit, they were too close to the refinery anyway. The Covenant lines were pushed all the way back to the refinery; instead of spread out defensive positions along a large area, all the bolts of plasma she could see were coming from the refinery itself.
"Man, I could use some binoculars right now." Roland said.
"You're not supposed to be watching the attack in the first place." A voice - Kat - said from behind them.
All three Spartans spun to meet her. Ruby, who had been in the back of the group before, was stood directly in front of Kat.
"What is it, Kat?" Ruby crossed her arms, ready for a fight.
"The Captain wants us on the bridge for debriefing, and he wants us there now."
"What's so important that we can't watch the good guys beat up some aliens?" Ruby could tell her dismissal of the severity of the situation irked Kat. Normally, she wouldn't have tried such a thing, but, at this point, she couldn't care less.
"We need to be ready to pick up the survivors, and with you all standing in the troop bay, that is going to be difficult."
"I don't think that will be a problem; there aren't going to be any survivors." Zwei, who was watching the battle from an adjacent view port, said.
"Holy shit."
Ruby's heart sank as she saw possibly the worst thing that could have happened: seven Covenant cruisers appeared over the refinery. A looming symbol of inevitable defeat. If the ship she was on wasn't a subprowler, they would have already been fired upon, and destroyed.
Like bees out of a hive, dozens of Covenant dropships swarmed out from hangar bays, and thousands of alien troops descended from large gravity lifts out the bottom of the cruisers. What was potentially a suicide mission before, was definitely a suicide mission now.
It seemed the soldiers on the moon realized that too. They split up, half continuing their attack on the refinery, while half turned back to attack the incoming reinforcements. If she were down there, she didn't know which one she would prefer.
Within minutes, the amount of plasma fire dwindled. Either the attacking force miraculously managed to fight off the horde of Sangheili, Unggoy, and Kig-yar soldiers, or, more likely, the attacking force was slaughtered. Hundreds of valiant souls, ended in less than ten minutes.
Suddenly, just as the Covenant stopped shooting, bright blue flashes erupted from inside the refinery. Someone had managed to make it inside, and were setting off some sort of explosives.
The first explosion set off a chain reaction. In the span of a few seconds, the explosions engulfed more and more of the facility, until it finally reached the main reactor at the center of the refinery.
A massive explosion rocked the moon. Sending rocks and debris up towards the Covenant cruisers resting above the facility, peppering it with holes. The explosion caught up a moment later. All seven cruisers were caught in a blue blaze of radioactive fire, and soon the cruisers met the same fate as the refinery.
And then, it all stopped. No explosions, no plasma fire, no flying Seraphs, nothing. Everything was still.
Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed several more subprowlers disengage their cloaking mechanisms. Seven more ships seemed to phase into existence, but only one made a move to descend to the planet. The rest stayed put.
Just then, out of another slipspace rupture, came the UNSC All Under Heaven. The carrier that must have been the ship to send the invading force through slipspace in the first place.
The remaining subprowlers made to move towards the All Under Heaven. But Ruby and the five other Spartan IIIs in the troop bay of the Wendigo stood still. Even after the moon was out of their view. Jaws dropped and eyes wide, they could only say one thing to their first look into what the war with the Covenant was really like.
"Oh… my… God."
Ruby's boots hit the familiar pavement of Camp Currahee. But, instead of a feeling of elation at being home, the all-encompassing dread at watching fellow humans die was the only thing in her heart. She walked slowly with the rest of the squad sent to Pegasi Delta towards the training grounds just outside the facility. They were all told Ambrose would be there, waiting for their return.
The tension between Kat and Ruby disappeared, and was replaced by an equally, if not more so, uncomfortable silence as they walked across the concrete path. Ruby kept her eyes towards the floor, her mind blank, because if she were to think of anything, she would only imagine the lives the people had before they died attacking that stupid refinery.
Lieutenant Commander Ambrose stood alone in the middle of the grassy field, facing away from them, watching the barracks as if he were expecting someone to walk through the doors leading into the building.
Kat, Jonah, Roland, Owen, Zwei, and Ruby stood in formation behind their training director. Waiting patiently for him to turn around and address them.
When he did, his face was without the subtle smile that he usually wore. She was a little confused, why was he so upset?
"Welcome home, Spartans." Ambrose said.
"Thank you, sir!" They all said automatically.
"At ease. I've got some good news, and I've got some bad news." Ambrose's eyes lingered on the grass in front of them for a long time. Only when he seemed to realize they were watching and waiting for him to speak did he look back at them again.
"Let's start with the good news. You all have graduated. You will be sent on various assignments around UNSC space where you will be needed the most. Once you are dismissed, make your way to your bunk, you will find your next missions there." Ambrose let out a long sigh.
"On to the bad news. The mission on Pegasi Delta was a success. The refinery was destroyed, and the Covenant's ship will have to find somewhere else to refuel. But… the mission had a ninety nine percent mortality rate. Only two made it out of there alive."
"Permission to speak, sir?" Kat said to her left.
"Permission granted."
"What does the mission have to do with us, sir?"
"It was Beta Company who conducted the mission."
Time seemed to stop. No way. It couldn't have been them. Ruby thought. For what felt like an hour, Ruby ran through the events of Pegasi Delta through her mind one last time and considered if it was possible that the people she grew up with were the ones she watched die.
There were about as many pods as there were Spartans in Beta Company. The six pods that mysteriously exploded as they entered the atmosphere happened to be the same amount as the Spartans that were sent to scout the refinery - them. The invasion force pushed through the Covenant's lines incredibly fast, faster than any normal group of soldiers could. The rockets that fired on the Seraphs never seemed to miss. The whole invasion only lasted about fifteen minutes.
Ruby didn't know of any marines or ODSTs who could pull off a feat like that. It was Beta Company.
Her heart hit her stomach like an anvil, and her mouth hung as if it wanted to follow. Ruby forgot to breathe, and so let in a loud gasp soon after the realization hit. Those were my friends, the people I grew up with. They're all dead. Ruby was scared she might faint.
She hadn't the slightest inclination to look to her fellow Spartans to either side of her. If she did, she would have seen similar reactions.
She hated herself for her next train of thought. She had been warned about thinking like this, and where it led, but she couldn't help herself in the spur of the moment. That could have been me. Why wasn't it me?
"I want you all to know that your friends, your family, gave their lives heroically for the survival of humanity. Without their sacrifice, the Covenant would be that much closer to the homes, the families, who rely on the UNSC for their protection and safety. It is our duty, as Spartans, to serve humanity to the best of our ability." Ambrose paused for a minute, seemingly considering what to say next.
"In all honesty, it has been determined that your ability was too valuable to the UNSC to send you on operation: TORPEDO. Your future assignments have been decided from the culmination of the tests and demonstrations you all have completed in your time here at Camp Currahee, and will be suited to your affinities in combat, stealth, technology, and teamwork. I wish you all safety in the coming years. You are dismissed." Without another word, Ambrose pivoted on his feet, and walked away. Leaving six devastated and confused Spartan IIIs standing on a grassy field like the scarecrows of past Earth.
Ruby sat on her bed shoulder to shoulder with Zwei in the empty barracks room. They were the only two in a room with over a hundred beds. She felt like they were suffocating in the stillness.
Ruby held her assignment notification, and Zwei held his. Neither of them knew what they were going to get, but both of them knew they didn't want to be separated.
"Do we open them at the same time?" Ruby's eyes remained on the letter before her. It had been about fifteen minutes since the debriefing with Ambrose, and, for her sanity, she consciously knew that she was subconsciously keeping the feelings of sadness and grief away.
"Agreed. On three." A short countdown later, and the envelopes concealing the assignments were discarded on the floor. No one would be around to yell at them, so it didn't really matter so long as they picked them up later.
Ruby and Zwei both skimmed their letters. They were almost exactly identical, except for the names which were printed on them. Ruby had her own, while Zwei had the last name he was given by one of his foster parents.
"Yeah… Gregory does not suit you at all." Ruby chuckled, and bumped his shoulder with hers. Zwei smiled in return.
"Ruby-B419 will be assigned to codename: HEADHUNTER, and will transfer to - yadda yadda yadda, unimportant stuff… um… Boom! Right there!" Ruby pointed to her letter near the bottom. "Partner recommendations include: B312, B283, and B210."
"Roland and Jonah's numbers are on there too." Zwei said.
"Odds are those two are going to be paired with each other. It's almost destined for us to be together." Ruby said. Zwei coughed in his fist, and turned to face away from her. Ruby ignored it and smiled down at the assignment sheet in front of her.
"It says we leave in about a half hour." Zwei said after a few minutes of reading in comfortable silence.
"Okay, then." Ruby jumped from her spot on the bunk, eager to leave the oppressive atmosphere in the unnaturally empty barracks. "Let's go become Headhunters."
October 21, 2547 (Military Calendar) / orbit above Cygnus, Cygnus system
A large screen illuminated Ruby's visor as she listened to her mission handler, the lead ONI operative on the UNSC Bennington, Captain Maria Burgess, brief them on their upcoming mission in the outer colony below.
"Cygnus is a colony that is altogether loyal to the UNSC. However, we have received reports of a small group of dissidents planning on recruiting the surrounding populations for an insurrection." Like all other ONI agents, she wore a dark black suit. She was rather short, with dark brown hair to match, and spoke with an accent common to descendants from the United Kingdom on Earth.
"Your mission is to infiltrate their compound under the cover of night," she pointed towards the outskirts of a small residential town in the northern hemisphere of the planet. "And eliminate any and all hostiles. They have been confirmed as having ill intentions towards the UNSC. Make it look like an accident, and with a little silencing of the local authorities, no one will have to know their neighbors were violent terrorists." Ruby and Zwei nodded
"This is your first official mission as a Headhunter pair, so this op won't be too difficult. Survivability is high, and the number of targets is low." Behind her, the screen flashed to show ten faces of different ethnicities, most of them taken from group photos and parties. People having their mugshot taken typically didn't smile.
"These are your targets. Overall this should be a smooth operation with a quick insertion and an even faster exfil. You will be dropped here, ten miles south of their base of operations. You have until sunrise to end this rebellion before it begins. Am I understood?"
"Yes, Ma'am." Ruby remained at attention: back straight, and chin held high.
"Very good, make your way to the Pelican bay, you will be leaving shortly."
The flight down to the colony, and the subsequent walk to the rebel base was uneventful. They passed through a young forest silently, and didn't speak a word; they hadn't needed too.
Zwei had taken point, and raised his fist for her to stop once they could see the light of a lone house in the distance from the edge of the forest. "That's our target."
"Affirmative." Ruby flicked the safety off her MA5K. She would have liked her Sniper Rifle, but infiltrating and eliminating a small number of untrained combatants in an even smaller house would be overkill.
The building itself was no different from a typical suburban residence: At most two stories, maybe a garage, and a decent sized yard for little kids to play in. Ruby hoped those kids wouldn't be around now. She had been thinking about this mission all week, thinking about what it would be like to kill for the first time. Her training would carry her through the mission itself, but she had no idea what would happen afterwards.
Zwei continued forward, oblivious, but would no doubt be unsurprised by her worrisome thoughts. She wasn't nervous, not in the traditional sense, she couldn't quite place it.
It couldn't have been more than a hundred meters from the tree line, and with Zwei and Ruby's sneaking skills, as well as the invisibility of the SPI armor, they crossed it without being spotted.
Ruby recalled something Zwei said a long time ago about how real rebels wouldn't post guards outside of their bases to make them more obvious. She noted that was the exact thing happening here.
She and Zwei reached the house on a diagonal from it's back wall. They walked down the length of the house towards where they had been told was a good breaching point. Ruby crouched underneath a first floor window, and watched as several men of varying sizes sat on plushy couches and watched a sports game. She questioned if this was even the right place, but the MA5B's resting against the wall in the corner by an artificial plant gave her an answer. Cygnus had stricter gun laws than most places, so there was really no other explanation as to why they would need the firepower.
Zwei and Ruby lined up before a large, sliding glass door. There was no one they could see through it, so hopefully they could enter quietly and use their element of surprise at the last second.
Zwei reached over and opened the door, Ruby ignored the hushed squeaking noise from it's sliding mechanism. This wasn't the movies - if she had to guess what was in movies, as she hadn't seen any - real people don't listen around for opening doors on the other side of the building. The only thing that would clue them in on their whereabouts would be if they shattered the door.
The two entered the house, and Ruby closed the door behind them. It was best not to leave a trail for others to discover.
The room they entered was completely clear, Zwei slowly opened the door into the next room: a long hallway, and motioned for Ruby to head down towards one end of the hallway, while he took the other end. It wouldn't be too long apart as they each only had one room to clear before they would move onto the second floor.
Ruby approached the room quickly, her camo still active, and opened the door as quickly and quietly as she could. The same five people who were watching the sports game kept their attention on the screen, still unaware of her presence.
She hurriedly maneuvered to where she was behind all of them, aimed her carbine, and fired five bursts through her suppresser.
The first two lurched forward with holes in their heads without even knowing what was happening. The third watched his friends die, and was quick to follow. The fourth was able to turn around to where the bullets were coming from, only for the last thing he saw to be a muzzle flash.
"Hey-!" The fifth one managed to let out a short scream before he was silenced too. In terms of the mission, that would be an annoyance if anyone heard it. In terms of her own wellbeing, Ruby was completely on autopilot. She had no emotions in regards to the dead men bleeding all over the floor.
She exited the room and saw Zwei enter the hallway at the same time she did. "Five tangos down."
"Three tangos down, two must be upstairs." He said.
They moved towards the staircase in the front of the house, passing by an empty living room and kitchen area.
When the two of them reached the bottom of the stairs, someone else reached the top. A shorter man with a belly fit for a drinker.
"Tony? What's going on?" The man had a higher voice than most, with a balding head to boot. The only thing he didn't have was glasses.
Regardless of whether he could see them or not, even without active camo, Zwei rushed up the stairs, leaving the man confused as a fast moving blur charged him, and fired two rounds from his sidearm. A bullet hole in his chest, and his head, sprayed the wall behind him with droplets of blood. Zwei caught him before he could fall down the stairs and alert the last person with all the noise.
There was only one room on the second story. It's door was cracked open, giving them a good view of a brightly lit table covered with unorganized papers. One man, tall, skinny, with long hair, stood over it. Probably mulling over how to best kill civilians. Ruby dropped her emotional firewall, and felt a blaze in her she didn't think she ever felt before.
Her objective was to kill these terrorists before they could become a problem for the good people of Cygnus. But, someone had supplied them with arms and ammunition, and the best way to kill a snake was to shoot it in the head.
As Ruby approached the man, she gestured for Zwei to stay behind and look for any others. He seemed a little confused, but her prolonged eye contact - even through the visors - let him know exactly what she intended to do with this scum.
She slid through the door, carefully stepped over all the tripping hazards scattered around the floor, and faced the unsuspecting man from behind.
The man had a magnum strapped to his hip: Standard issue military hardware. He was ex-UNSC. Her little interrogation might have gotten that much harder.
She grabbed the man's pistol and face at the same time. She tossed the pistol out of the room, and wrestled him down to the floor in the same motion. He couldn't have been more than 180 pounds, and she had to have been around twice his weight in her armor.
Ruby landed on top of him, driving the air from his lungs. He gasped for breath as she straddled him, pinning him to the floor face down. One hand held his arm behind his back, ready to push upwards and cause immense pain if she needed too.
"Who gave you these weapons?" Ruby said, jostling the man, and rubbing his face in the carpet. She hadn't ever performed an interrogation before, but she had a feeling it involved a lot of fear tactics.
"I'm not talkin' to you, you military dog! Go to Hell!" The man's spittle splashed over the carpet as he yelled obscenities at the UNSC and all who served it. She ended his tirade by pushing his arm, and curse words of defiance became yelps of pain.
"What did you intend to do with these weapons?" Ruby asked.
"..." The man refused to speak. Ruby got tired of it really quickly, and, after a few more questions, decided she wasn't a very good interrogator, and decided to end it, and him.
"Wait, wait, wait wait wait!" The man seemed to realize she had lost her patience for him, but by that time, she didn't want to get her patience back. One short burst from her carbine and the man laid on the floor, motionless. Blood spread from his head, covering the nearby plans for different schools, libraries, churches and other abhorrent places to target civilians in the man's life giving ichor. She felt it somewhat fitting that the same man who devised these plans, was also, in a way, the one to destroy them.
When she returned downstairs, she found Zwei standing over the stove. Unlike almost every other modern house in human controlled space, this house had a gas burning stove, and Zwei had been letting it leak for the past few minutes.
"Good thinking." Ruby looked around the cupboards for matches, and tossed them to Zwei after she found them. They didn't need to make this look completely like an accident. If they got it close enough, then ONI would do the rest.
After a few short minutes to let the gas spread throughout the house, Ruby and Zwei stood outside the house at a safe distance of twenty meters, and Ruby fired one round from her pistol through the open window, hitting the box of matches, and watched as a large ball of flame engulfed the inside of the house. The wooden building was burning in seconds, and the two of them walked back to the LZ, content with the job well done. Even if her impromptu questioning of the lead terrorist proved no fruit, there was an entire intelligence agency dedicated to figuring things out. She would rely on them to find the next group of innies, and she would do everything in her power to stop them.
That night, as Ruby's head hit the hard pillow in her quarters aboard the UNSC Bennington, her mind lingered on the mission. On how quickly it went, and the people she killed.
Six. Six more souls would never see the light of day again. Six more souls would be missed by their families. Six more people were gone.
Why did war have to be this way? Why do people become so angry with each other that they decide the only way to resolve this anger is by killing one another? Why was she the one who had to carry out the killing?
She asked these questions, thought about the people she killed, and knew she would have to do it all again, but that was all it was: questions, thoughts, and knowledge. There was nothing more behind it.
She didn't feel anything.
They were killers, they would have killed more people, innocent people, had she not stepped in.
Their families probably knew about their rebellious tendencies, and probably wouldn't be surprised they had to be put down, even if they were told the truth about their demise.
She wouldn't be killing anyone who was innocent. Everyone she would kill probably didn't deserve to die, but they surely had to. If it wasn't for the benefit of ONI, for humanity, then she wouldn't kill them. That's all there was to it.
She had been told by everyone around her that she would eventually kill for as long as she could remember. It was almost a staple in her everyday life: you will kill. At first, she hadn't really understood what it meant. Then, as she got older, she felt like she could handle killing someone. A little while after that she realized what it meant to take a life, to finish someone's story, to squander someone's potential. Eventually, she came to terms with it. Death was just as big of a part of life as living was. It was just a matter of when, and Ruby, under orders from ONI, would be the one bringing about that when.
Had it not been for her Headhunter training, she might be feeling a little worse for wear. The past two years had been some of the most brutal training she had ever experienced. The worst part about it was how much different it was to what she was used to. SCPO Mendez focused on physical training, and combat skills. Building both endurance in the body and deadliness in their fighting. The Headhunter program dealt more in psychological durability over physical durability. She had been put through exercises that would test her mind, breaking it down only for it to be rebuilt into a killing machine.
She wasn't just a warrior, she was a soldier. She wasn't a hero dedicating her life to saving lives, she was a hyper-lethal weapon designed to end them, wielded by her higher ups in the Office of Naval Intelligence.
Her eyes flicked back and forth, watching the top bunk above her, wondering if Zwei was wondering the same thing. His light breathing probably meant he wasn't thinking at all, and was instead dreaming.
I should probably be doing the same. Ruby thought. Her mind soon returned to their faces. How some of them didn't know what was going on, how some of them were scared, and how some of them were defiant, even in the face of death. Idiots, cowards, and idiots. That's all she could think of them.
Her eyes closed, and she let out a breath. She emptied her mind as easily as she had before, and drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
November 30, 1366 KE (Remnant Calendar) / Remnant
Sskpsshhhhhh
"Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug! WOOH!" Yang screamed at the top of her lungs as her friend, Savannah, shotgunned another beer, crushed it against her forehead with the help of her aura, and slammed the empty can into a nearby dumpster. Scarlett joined in the festivities by smacking Savannah on the back a little harder than she needed to, a drink of her own in hand.
"After years and years of training, we've finally done it! Signal Academy is behind us!" Scarlett screamed with joy at the top of her lungs, her breath smelled of cheap beer and cheaper liquor. Yang, who could smell her own sloppily made strawberry sunrise with every exhale, couldn't help but join her.
It was the night of their graduation, and, after several hours of name calling, handshaking, and stage walking, the three best fighters in Signal made it to Vale for a night on the town.
Being only seventeen, Yang hadn't had too many experiences with alcohol. As such, the sun had only just set, and the trio were slurring their words like they were talking carnival mirrors.
"Iss abou' time we had some f~fun!" Yang said. She didn't know much about drinking, but she certainly saw Qrow drunk enough times to know how to handle herself. So much so that she was confident in her drunken self enough to walk backwards down the sidewalk, talking to her friends.
She went ten feet before she tripped and fell on her ass over an inch high bump in the pavement.
Her aura, miraculously, took the brunt of her pain, and her friends took the brunt of the laughter. Their joy echoed across the dark streets of Vale. They weren't the only ones either, they were surrounded by similarly inebriated party-goers, none of which batted an eye towards the drunken trio, besides the creeps that is.
"HEY! I saw you staring at my ass! Why don't you be a man and come get some! See if you can handle a huntress!" Savannah dropped into a sloppy fighting stance, that, if you asked her, scared off the pervert. But, in reality, it was her mentioning being a huntress that realized she might be a bit out of his league.
And incredibly dangerous.
They had seen it fit to wear their combat uniforms - as a symbolic gesture of being one step closer to becoming full-fledged huntresses - and a part of the uniform just so happened to be her weapons.
Yang watched fascinated as her shotgun gauntlets expanded and contracted up her wrist. All the while Scarlett held Savannah back as she waved her fist with one hand, and reached for a dust-enhanced katana in the other.
While Scarlett was busy preventing a murder, Yang reached into her backpack and searched for another can of beer. She let out a whine when she realized she grabbed the last one.
Before anyone could protest her drinking the last of their booze, Yang pressed her thumb into the bottom of the can, opened the top, and shotgunned the whole thing in less than ten seconds.
"W-well guyz. We-ur ou'-a-boozz." Yang stumbled with the beer can in her hand, and, remembering what Savannah had just done, tried to smash it against her head, and missed entirely.
"Yang, are you sure you're okay? You seem pretty out of it." Savannah, who had finally seen to scaring off the creep, turned to watch the disaster that was drunk-Yang.
"Oh ya'. I'm goo'." Scarlett and Savannah shared a look, and shook their heads at the same time.
"If I had to bet on Yang, of all people, being the lightweight, I would have lost all my lien." Scarlett reached out to catch Yang before she could fall into a dirty puddle, and put her arm over her shoulder, carrying her towards the nearest convenience store.
A small bell rang above her as Yang stumbled into the air conditioned store. She hugged herself, exaggerated a shiver, and audibly chittered her teeth to help prove to her friends that it was, in fact, cold.
"Is cold in here." She added for emphasis.
"It is not, you are the warmest person I know, quit complaining." Savannah walked to the other side of the store, opened one of the glass doors on the wall, and pulled out a thirty two ounce bottle of water.
"We're cutting you off, Yang." Scarlett practically yelled in her ear.
"Noooooooo. I'on' wanna!" Yang tried to squirm out from Scarlett's grasp. She let out a frustrated huff when she realized she couldn't. Scarlett was a ranged fighter - the six foot long rifle-halberd proved it - and Yang could totally beat the snot out of her under normal circumstances. These were not normal circumstances.
Savannah had the cashier ring up the water bottle with a beep, which Yang tried to replicate, but was so off key Scarlett covered her ears at the unpleasant sound. Savannah shoved the water bottle in Yang's hands, and twisted the cap off for her.
"Drink."
"Alright-uh." Yang greedily drank from the life giving substance, downing half the bottle in one go. Scarlett brought the bottle back down before she could finish it.
"You're going to have to pee after all that, and if we aren't around a bathroom when you do, then you're shit out of luck."
The bell above the door rang again as they left, and to their immediate left was a loud rustling from some garbage bags, as well as grunts of pain.
"Someone's in trouble!" Yang yelled at the top of her lungs, and, using her sheer strength, jerked herself out of her friends' grips, and sprinted towards the alleyway where the sound had come from.
She miscalculated the turn, and accidentally shoulder bashed the brick building that made one side of the alley.
"Stop, fiend!" Yang squinted past her spinning vision to watch a masked man hold another man at knife point. As soon as she realized the severity of the situation, she gasped, and dropped into her fighting stance, gauntlets extended.
Scarlett and Savannah turned the corner a moment later. They heard Yang's gasp, and her extending gauntlets, and so already had their weapons ready once they saw the man.
"You fucking humans. Ruining my night!" The man wore a somewhat familiar white mask. One that Yang recognized as the mask the militant White Fang wore whenever they were caught on camera attacking SDC cargo shipments on the news. The only difference was the quality of the mask. If Yang had to guess, she would have thought it was made out of paper, and taped to his forehead. The only thing that might have made him a legitimate White Fang member was the hairy bovine ears sprouting out from the top of his head.
"You're under arres-" Before Savannah could finish her sentence, the 'White Fang' member let out a ferocious growl, gurgling his saliva, and charged the three, swinging his knife in wide arcs as soon as he started running.
He stumbled as he ran, barely forming proper strides as he closed the distance towards Yang. She might have been drunk, but this person was clearly on things much stronger than alcohol.
Yang ducked under a crazy swing of the knife, sent two jabs into the man's stomach - without firing the gauntlets, you never know who might have aura or not - and finished him with an uppercut towards his chin.
The man fell backwards and landed on a large pile of black garbage bags that smelled of cat piss and rotting meat. It was worse for the Faunus as he brought his hand to his nose, almost stabbing himself in the brain, and jumped back towards her. She had seen the faint glow of a brown aura underneath her strikes; she had permission to let loose.
Before she could, however, Scarlett fired two shots into his abdomen, knocking him back into the garbage bags, and as soon as he got up again, Savannah sliced him from hip to shoulder, breaking his aura, and knocking him back into the garbage for a third time. The bags broke open, dousing him in black banana peels and broken egg shells.
The mugger's victim must have called the police during the fight, because Yang noticed the sounds of sirens and red and blue lights shining from outside the alley. This jerks' days of mugging people were over.
The police apprehended him, and put him in the back of their cruiser. Yang tried her best to look as sober as possible, and feared she might look too sober.
"Are you okay?" A younger, hotter cop asked her with raised eyebrows.
"Um, uh huh, yeah, I'm just fine." Yang kept her back straight and eyes focused on him, if anyone asked, she would say she was just rattled from the fight. She just hoped no one she knew asked. They would spot the lie before it ever left her mouth.
"Okay, well, the perp confessed to being on a lot of high potency drugs, how much he took, where he got them, and who he got them from." The cop seemed kind of impressed at how many beans the druggie spilled in such a short amount of time.
Yang was too. "He said all that in less than five minutes?"
"He's on drugs, Ma'am. He probably doesn't even remember what cops do right now." The cop said.
"What are you going to do with him?" Yang asked.
"Well, thanks to you and your friends, nobody got hurt here, nobody got killed, which means he's on charges of being in public while under the influence and aggravated robbery. We'll take him back to the station, try and verify his story, and put him in jail until he sobers up. We'll get him some help afterwards."
"What is his story?" Yang was overly curious, probably because of the alcohol. She was trying too hard not to slur her words, and so let the question slip.
"Oh, nothing too crazy. He claims to have gotten the drugs from The Club, but that place is only known for information brokering, I don't know what he was thinking there. Then, in a drug fueled rage, he made that mask of his and stormed out of his apartment to mug someone. I'll take a wild guess and say he was mostly targeting humans. Which could be categorized as a hate crime." The cop pointed towards the stepped on mask when he mentioned it, but otherwise rested his hands on his bullet proof vest. Aura was good, but it wasn't reliable for everyone. There was a reason why everyone didn't become a huntsman.
Yang listened to him up until the mention of The Club. "Information broker?"
"Yeah, just some underworld kook who likes to be around criminals, but doesn't actually wanna do any crime. If you've got a question to ask, someone to contact, or some person to find, Junior is the man to ask. Well, I've got to go now, my partner is calling me, you have a good night." The uniformed officer waved to her, and Yang waved back before she lost sight of the cop behind tinted windows.
Bingo. Yang had a suspicion about this information broker, and now, with a destination and a name, as well as the confirmation about finding missing persons, she had a clear idea of what to do next.
She waved goodbye to her friends for the night after proving she was sober enough to go on her own - a fight, a cute cop, and a powerful aura could sober a girl up pretty quick. Speed walking down the streets of Vale, she arrived at the small storage garage she kept in the city for things that her father wouldn't like. Booze, boys, and Bumblebee.
The door slid up, revealing a few mini refrigerators full of questionable substances for someone of her age, an expensive velvet couch that she bought second hand, and a shiny yellow coat of paint on one of the best performance bikes on the market. Yang smiled, popped on her helmet for safety, and zoomed away on her bike.
This information broker had, well, information. Yang had a question, a very important question. She figured she'd pay Junior a visit.
For the last couple of chapters, I've been getting a bit of writer's block, and I believe it's because I've lingered too long on Ruby's training. So, to combat this, the story will move on past the remainder of her training, and the effects of it will be shown through her actions during missions and stuff.
At this point in the story, there will be very little happening between Ruby's time as a Headhunter, and the fall of Reach. So the story will have a couple of time skips to get to the fun stuff sooner rather than later. However, there is still a lot of setup to be done on Yang's side of things, as such their timelines will have to be shifted a little bit. Up until this point, Ruby and Yang have been, in a way, connected via their time lines, but I've decided to break that connection and fast forward to the time of Beacon, and Ruby will eventually catch up via those time skips I mentioned.
CykaBlyatintensifies: Thank you for the review! I'm glad your excited. I'm getting excited for the story too!
LazyMan5503: What are you!? Why don't you say anything else? Are you a broken record? Say something, please!
ThatOneGuy050: I hoped I've fixed your issue with my story in this chapter, though I'm sure it hasn't been fixed as well as you'd like it to :). I agree with the time skips, and they will be happening. And the only question of yours I will answer is that, yes, Ruby will act like a Spartan, instead of cannon Ruby. Maybe you've seen a bit of that in this chapter.
SuspectNutria: Nice ;)
CheesusChrist15: On GOD, I hate it when that happens when I'm playing. Even though I do it myself sometimes.
Samuel Warshaw: I would write this entire story just for you if you kept up that enthusiasm for my writing. Thank you very much! In regards to your thoughts; you've seen Ruby's changing behavior in this chapter, and the aspects that will follow her to Remnant are will be revealed when they are posted as a chapter. I don't want to ruin the surprise. I actually don't have a Pat reon, I've never seen myself as someone who would make money off of their writing, at least not this early into my career. I think I'd like to get more comfortable and practiced before I start making money off of it, if you know what I'm saying.
NK02: Ruby would probably think the same at this point in the story, but, the plot must happen!
Cooldude: You caught me there, I did mean "descent" instead of "decent". I meant it as a figure of speech. People don't say they ascended from a bubbly, happy, innocent child to a jaded war veteran. That's typically seen as downward movement in terms of personality and behavior.
Aidis: I'm glad you like it so much! Thank you for the review!
michelmmm: Here is more my good friend, I hoped you enjoyed.
Guest: Honestly, that might just happen, lol.
SHDW: That is a question that will be answered in time.
Thanks for reading, until next time.