Disclaimer, I do not own RWBY

Escape

"I do not have time for his family drama, tell him to sort it out himself." Ironwood growled and tossed the pompous letter into the trash. Out of the corner of his eye, he swore he saw Elm and Marrow exchanging cash but that must have been his imagination.

"Sir, he's insisting." Clover said unhelpfully.

"And I missed the part where that is my problem. Ms Schnee is a huntress, that makes her a legal adult and she's free to do whatever she wants. If that's staying in her own room, so be it. I have Grimm knocking at our walls to deal with, I do not have time for this nonsense." Ironwood retorted.

"Oh, and if he continues to insist, kindly inform him that his request is already under consideration." He added as an afterthought.

"Um sir, Weiss Schnee isn't a huntress and therefore in the eyes of the law, she's still a minor. Jacques is using that angle to pressure the council to act, that he's concerned Weiss might pose a danger to herself and it's in her best interest to be removed from her room." Clover replied.

Ironwood fixed his adjutant with a hard glare. "Specialist Ebi, are you taking the piss right now?"

"No sir." Clover shook his head. "As you know, Ms Schnee was a student of Beacon. Due to ah… current events, Beacon is no longer operating, at least for the time being. Since she never graduated and is not an active student of an academy, that makes her a civilian. Sir."

A long pause passed between the two.

Ironwood closed his eyes and huffed once, then slammed his head against his desk hard enough to dent the steel.

"Fire in the hole!"

Ironwood didn't flinch when the breaching charge went off, merely grimacing when the smoke cleared. No dice, the door wasn't even scratched. Three days, three days he'd been stuck trying to break down some poor girl's bedroom door because her father was an asshat.

Every bit of the situation was completely absurd but here he was. At first, he'd ordered his men to just give a token effort, Jacques had seen through that and promptly went to the council to strongarm him into actually giving a damn.

A sigh escaped him, as general of Atlas with all that it came with, he really couldn't care any less about the Schnee family drama. But the damned loophole made all this his problem. The fix seemed simple enough, just break down the door, apologise afterwards and rush the huntress application process for Weiss so this would be a non-issue going forwards.

The devil as it always was, lay in the details, specifically, the break down the door part. Somehow, that simple wooden door had defied the best he had to throw at it. Physical force just didn't do anything to it. Not even explosives could dent the indestructible thing.

"Not even a scratch… remarkable. I wonder if she'll be able to replicate this effect on Mantle's walls." He rapped his knuckles against the door, solid as the day it was built.

"General!"

Ironwood sighed as an annoying voice intruded on his thoughts. "Mr Schnee, I strongly recommend staying back. It's not safe."

"What are you doing to my mansion!? I asked you to get Weiss out of her room, I didn't give you permission to destroy my house!" Jacques snapped irritably.

"I don't need your permission to do anything since this is a military operation undertaken at your request. I am trying to get your daughter out, but it seems she's reinforced the door and the walls around it." Ironwood gestured to the undamaged section.

"Well I insist you cease immediately!" Jacques roared.

"I can't do that. The council has decided that it would be detrimental to Ms Schnee's continued well-being if she is not attended to immediately. As such I am here to see that all efforts have been made to secure her… or are you suggesting that she isn't in any actual danger?" Ironwood raised an eyebrow.

Unfortunately for him, Jacques didn't take the bait, simply blustering futilely before storming off. What a shame, if he'd just admitted to exaggerating if not outright lying, then they could be done with this farce and he'd have a reason to arrest the useless idiot.

"Still, this is remarkable. You'd think she found herself a fortress to withdraw to. But this is just a simple brick wall, dust? Semblance maybe? I'll have to ask Winter once she's back from her mission, maybe she'll have a better idea on what this is."

"No sign of pursuit, I think we're in the clear." Ren looked up from the radar, his confirmation drawing out several sighs of relief from the others.

"I… I can't believe that worked. I'm… free?" Weiss muttered to herself, still in disbelief that everything had gone off without a hitch.

"Told ya it'd work. Easy peasy lemon squeezy!" Ruby cheered.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking." Nora grinned and adjusted her stol-borrowed cap. "We are now twenty minutes away from the Mistrali border, if you want to see white, white and nothing but white, look out the windows and say goodbye! Because Air Valkyrie is gonna be putting a lot of colour into your lives soon."

"I didn't know you could fly an airship." Weiss admitted.

"Haha! I am a woman of many talents!" Nora laughed and gunned the thrusters, causing the airship to lurch forwards.

"Nora, focus on flying. Jaune can't take much more of this." Ren advised, glancing to his friend in the back. Jaune was slumped in the seat, pallid and one of Nora's fancy tricks away from emptying his stomach. Again.

"I-I'm good. Ooogh… not so good now. Ugh, I hate this part of the plan." He groaned and clutched his stomach.

"I'm sure they make pills for motion sickness. Do we have any onboard?" Weiss asked in concern.

"Not anymore, he ran out on the way over." Ruby shook her head.

"O-oh." Weiss's face fell.

"Ah, it's not your fault! We just uh forgot to restock." Ruby hastily added.

"Y-yeah, what she said." Jaune threw in a shaky thumbs up.

"I'm just… haaah… thank you for coming to get me guys. I really appreciate it." Weiss bowed her head in gratitude. "I couldn't stand another minute in that place, it's suffocating there."

"Aww, that's what friends are for!" Ruby wrapped Weiss in a massive bear hug, making the former Schnee heiress squeak in surprise.

Weiss initial response was to try and break free before she overrode that impulse. RNJR did come flying halfway around the world to bust her out on little more than a single message from her, if Ruby wanted to be huggy after that, the least she could do was oblige.

"I still can't believe that plan worked." She said after a moment. "When you said you were coming, I thought you'd come through the door or the window. Not through the floor of all things."

"We could have gone in through the roof but nooo… we have to be all sneaky and go dig a tunnel instead." Nora complained. "Diggy hole, diggy hole, we were digging for hours! What a no fun rescue, no offense Weiss."

"None taken." Weiss replied.

"Uugh… we got the… got the idea from one of those prison break shows. You know, when people dig their way out?" Jaune piped up before quickly slumping over again when their airship hit a patch of turbulence.

"So you thought digging your way into the manor would work?" Weiss asked, not sure which she should be more impressed by, the audacity of the plan or the fact they pulled it off cleanly, several tons of disturbed dirt notwithstanding.

"Hey, if it's stupid but it works, then it's stupidly effective." Ruby shrugged. "What did you do to that door anyways? It's was all glowy and stuff."

"I used my semblance on it. I've been working on my glyphs and I found out I could stack them. There are few dozen slow glyphs on the door and walls now and time is almost frozen for them. External stimuli won't-haah… door is sealed and cannot be opened until my semblance runs out in two days." Weiss amended when she saw she lost Ruby midway.

"Oh… why didn't you say that in the first place?" Ruby nodded.

"But I did…" Weiss sighed.

"Say, what happens when it runs out and your dad finds out you're gone?" Nora asked.

"I don't know. I'm just glad I won't be there to find out." Weiss said.

"It's almost a week. I think it's time to demolish that entire wing." Ironwood rubbed his hands together gleefully. Five days had gone by and the door to Weiss's room continued to be impervious to damage. In that time, he'd enjoyed making Jacques Schnee's life a living hell, call him a petty bastard but being a nuisance to the insufferable git sure did put a smile on his face.

Between constantly barging in on the man to inform him of further breaching attempts at 3 am in the morning and dragging him away from SDC meetings to inspect their efforts, Jacques Schnee had been in a world of pain for the last five days.

Now though, was the time to put the icing on the cake. Since the door and walls were invulnerable, the only solution was to tear apart the rest of the house around the room. Surely the other walls and roof couldn't be unbreakable too.

And if they were and the mansion was destroyed for nothing? Oh well, Jacques would just have to pay for the reconstruction out of pocket. What. A. Shame.

As had become customary, Ironwood walked up to the door that had bested his efforts so far and knocked on it. "Ms Schnee, if you can hear me, please come out now."

No response as always. Ironwood shook his head and rapped on the door one last time. To his shock, the door and walls picked that exact moment to shatter into dust, Weiss's glyphs finally running out of power and all the accumulated damage hitting at once.

Ironwood stood there with his mouth agape. That was it? That couldn't be it? What kind of trick was…

"Heh… heheh… haheahaheahah!" Ironwood burst out laughing once the smoke cleared and the massive hole in the floor was revealed. "Well played Ms Schnee. Well played."

"Sir? What do we do now?" One of his men asked.

"Nothing. Our job was to get Ms Schnee out of her room. Do you see her here?" Ironwood replied.

"N-no. But she must have gone through that hole." His subordinate continued.

"Correct. Which means she is no longer in the room and therefore our job is done." With that said, Ironwood turned and marched out, whistling a jaunty tune.