(Slotted in properly around the end of his section of Chapter 34)
Qrow circled above the compound. It looked...relatively normal, save for some armored goons walking around, and huge crates and containers with the Chivalric Arms logo on them. Heck, without those things, he'd have probably flown right on by, as the facility was otherwise unremarkable. He did spot them though, his corvid eyes narrowing, as he flew to the edge of the fence, and landed on it.
It didn't take long to pick guards from employees. They weren't being subtle. They didn't have to be. These guys had taken over a whole floor of a major hotel, during the busiest season for that, and still managed to sneak armored units past every kind of check. Made sense that, given this was a facility they had outright control of, they wouldn't bother with hiding themselves away from prying eyes at all.
The crow that was Qrow soon spotted what he wanted, a camera...not three of them, hastily propped up. He could even see the security station they were wired into just inside the door. They'd done this place up fast and dirty. Suited him just fine, as he pointed a wing to the cameras, one at a time. Strange thing, Misfortune. In his human form, the Semblance had an overall effect. In crow form, he could 'aim' it to some degree, and so one by one, the three outside cameras failed.
When someone came to check them, Qrow wished he could smile, as he easily slipped into a vent just above the door, the grate over it proving to be no challenge at all. After all, it was supposed to keep out wild animals. He was wild, for certain, but not an animal. So he slipped into the vents, and with a single headbob of self congratulation, before he proceeded to hop his way along the tight passageway.
It took him half an hour to cover the entire facility. It was divided, not into levels, but simply by quickly set up walls. In that time he saw some questionable things, but it took him all the way to the end to find Ruby, her body laying on a table, looking like she was prepped and ready for surgery right then and there, with the doll standing guard, her builder in the corner, going over something in his chair.
He would have gritted his teeth, were he human, at the sight, but Qrow was no amature. He did black-ops missions for Ozpin, and you didn't survive against the kinds of things Salem had on offer being sloppy, so he did another round, coming up the other end of the building, and hearing the word, sterilize, thinking it had something to do with them getting ready for Ruby to be cut, he stopped and listened.
What he heard...it was haunting. These people...these fucking monsters, were planning to sterilize all the Faunus. Every one of them in the world. They talked about water vectors, and aerosolized solutions, and other words he knew the meaning of only by context. They were going to end an entire people, and they were talking about it like it was just another day at the office. Hell, that one guy made a joke about his dog back home getting neutered and wondering if they'd have to get cones for every one.
Qrow didn't kill. Not humans anyway. It wasn't a rule, per say, but killing meant eyes, meant you'd gotten sloppy. He hated it. But this? These people were going to die. This was going to spark another Faunus Rights Revolution, and these morons were joking about it. Like the Kingdoms could afford that sort of shit once a generation or so, when really, they were still recovering from the last one.
Worse, the Faunus before had been disorganized, simply tired of being treated like second class citizens. Now? Now they had a banner, and a command structure. This getting out would galvanize the White Fang, and those 'Terror Strikes' James was always bitching about, well, they'd all be wishing for those back, because they'd have mass death by the thousands, and the Kingdoms would be lucky to survive.
Qrow got to work soon after, hopping his way back towards the facility's entrance, and using Misfortune on the guard station built behind one of those partition wall things. Thin, but able to hold a bunch of monitors, and some screens showing 'status bars' for every active guard. Probably those wristband things that Atlas liked to use to make sure no one was sleeping on the job. It also made a good system to warn you when someone was picking off the staff.
He took it out, easily, the monitors going to static, much to the chagrin of the ones keeping watch, as they tried to trace the fault. The minute one was out of sight, Qrow slipped out of the vents, changed into his human form, and brought Harbinger out for the party. The noise it made, shifting into a scythe, got the remaining guard to turn around, but he didn't get out a single syllable before Qrow moved, and he was finished.
The sound of a body hitting the floor carried. After all, the floor was stone, and he was wearing metal on him. But it only went so far, with all the other noises in this place, and when the other guard peeked around the corner, not on alert at all, he was even easier to take down, Qrow nodding at the work he'd done, as he unplugged everything in the security station, just in case someone came in, and then got to work.
It was long, slow work. He needed to know, not for curiosity, but so he could report on everything going on here. Most of it was, honestly mundane. A few guys doing tests with some new armor. It looked useful, so he grabbed a few samples and some papers, stuffing them in his coat, before he gathered up the rest in a pile, turned crow, and used his power on it.
It was a sight to see, Misfortune. Around him, things broke all the time. Pipes burst, vehicles had failures. But when he got to use it like this, he saw it rot things, metal warping from some flaws that had never been there before, a few design documents crumpling up, as the paper dried out from some unexpected heat. Finally, the hard drive corrupting, as magnetic fields passed through them.
When that was done, he did the next. They were...far from benign. This one dealt with mind altering chemicals. The sort of thing people kept thinking were in the water. Well, water wasn't a good vector, it seemed. Too easy to find, so they were shoving it into food items, testing out what it could be put in without being neutralized by cooking methods. It was slow going, and it mostly involved making people ducidely happy, compliant.
These ones were tripping under the influence of their own project. They took no effort at all. One even spotted him dealing with the lady he'd been working with. As she slumped to the floor, he'd pointed and laughed, before opening up his arms. Was this his way of asking for it? Qrow gave it to him, regardless, and he got rid of their research too, as he moved onto the next, and then the next.
By the time he was nearing the rear of the facility, the Faunus Sterilization Project, Harbinger was getting dirty, feeling heavy. It hadn't drunk this much in a long, long time. But he only needed it for a little more. The woman was ordering the two guys in her lab around. She was the head of the project, he figured, given how familiar she was with it. Weird, she looked younger than the others.
He dealt with them without a sound, and then quickly gathered everything in the place that had to do with this horror. He put into a pile, and then stacked some canisters of Dust around it. This time, Misfortune wouldn't be enough. Besides, he'd dealt with almost everything else. Best to finish with a bang, and so, as he got the three tanks full of this garbage settled, he pulled a bottle from his hip, took a pull, and then fired.
The explosion was everything he could have hoped for. The whole pile lit up, and the tanks, along with all the notes and harddrives, all of them were toasted. There would be no recovering, no evidence of what this had been. He was smiling at his handiwork, before going crow, and flying into the ceiling, waiting for the sound of boots to come by, a few, less than half a dozen, guards.
He took them out in one pass, as soon as they'd moved ahead of him, not one even realizing they were gone, until he'd finished. Then he'd tossed them into the firestorm, before finally, at long last, going after what he came for, his face screwing up, as he took another long pull from the flask, and then wiped his mouth on his sleeve, turning Harbinger into its sword form, so he could get up close and personal to whoever was with his niece.
It was the robot guy. James had bragged about him once. Saying he was one of the finest minds in history, and his discoveries would change the world, maybe even lead them into a new age against the Grimm. He was currently strapping Ruby down, to keep her from even twitching, as he prepared to remove her eyes. How they'd found out about that, Qrow had no idea, but he'd find out.
He made it slow this time. Start with the hands. Cut first one off, then the other. The way he screamed, if the alarms and the crackling of the fire hadn't been going on, he'd have gotten all sorts of attention. Instead, he was left to bleed out, as Qrow kicked his chair out from under him, and then searched it quickly, found a bomb inside. Holdout explosive type, designed to glass whatever room he was in.
Smirking, he tapped it, and watched the ignition trigger fizzle out. He then kicked the doctor in the head, hoping he knocked something loose. In all that time, his robot didn't move, the orange haired thing just staring at him blankly. She didn't make any sort of move, she just stood there, and even moved when he walked up to Ruby, unstrapping her from the table, and then hefting her over his shoulder.
He got two steps before he heard it. The sound of rushing water, the hiss of fires going out. He swore, wondering which one of Chivalric Arms' goons had a water Semblance, as he considered his way out, only for the robot to walk up to him. Told him 'friend Ruby will need more than you to protect her. I have been directed to keep her safe. Leave her with me, and I will take her from here, so you can work freely.'
She sounded...sincere, honestly, and looking down at the body of her builder, Qrow wondered if he should risk it, if there was any reason to stay...but he did have one. He had a debt to pay, and a reason to keep this going. Finally, with a swear, he gave her to the bot, and quickly jotted down an address, one of his safe houses in Vale. Told her to go there, and not to let anyone hurt his girl.
She agreed, and then ran, holding Ruby in her arms, and literally smashing through the roof. Not a bad way to make an exit, honestly, and it took the eyes away from him, as he switched to crow, and made a round. Only a few more guards, dealt with in easy fashion. Gods these guys sucked, you'd think they'd be covering doors and corners by now, but not one of them even noticed him.
The guy in charge did though. Fields, as it turned out, had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve. Aura unlocked, which was illegal without a license and being registered, several Semblances, a trick he apparently needed Null to keep up with, and enough weapons stashed in this building to bring down the entire place, as fires and explosions tore through the structure, and eventually collapsed it.
Qrow was a professional, however, and Fields, for all his boasting, was just a pencil pusher. He had power, to be fair, and he knew how to use them, but not how to make use of them. He'd switch powers, dumping ones Qrow dodged or proved ineffective, going to the next in his arsenal. Qrow let the battle drag on, of course, allowing cameras from not only the Vale News, but the Atlas Military to catch this sight, as Fields made use of all these powers, proving something was amiss in a way that could not be ignored.
Then, Qrow ended it. The moment he figured it was enough. He simply got close, and , quick motion. It was almost embarrassing really, thinking about all the Huntsmen and Huntresses he would have needed to capture and detain to gain those powers. And yet, he didn't know the first thing about fighting, or watching his blind spots, Qrow taking a moment to pick up a canister of Dust, dumping it on the body.
A minute later, it ignited, the library of stolen Semblances dying with him, and Qrow, smirking, vanishing from the limelight. That evening, outside his room, Jaune Arc would find a severed head, smiling up at him, along with a few folders of documents, detailing various things about his family, enough proof to sway anyone willing to listen, making him fall back into his seat, and then call up Roman.
A week later would find Ozpin, his hands tied, mostly by Glynda who had made it known that she was not going to allow this to continue, giving Amber Arc to her brother. The pair, vanishing into the night, along with the White Fang, who were already in talks with Atlas. Chivalric Arm's dealings, detailed in those reports, were reverberating through the whole kingdom, and bringing down just about every major institution.
All the while, Qrow, along with team RWBY, would find themselves fishing out behind a small cabin in Patch, along with the unexpected guest of a robot girl. Laughing, and enjoying themselves, Qrow would sometimes look up into the sky, and wonder just when it would all fall in, when Salem would attack...but for now, he would enjoy his little victories, as the world beyond his home moved on without him.