Years and years past
Solitas was inhospitable. If one chose to descend to the ground from the shining lights of Atlas and walk through Mantle's border wall into the vast, desolate tundra, the cold would kill long before the Grimm. There was nothing in this landscape that invited habitation, which perhaps explained why the city of Atlas always looked as if it was about to get up and leave the continent entirely.
It was a landscape that was perfect for hiding secrets. And it was a secret that James Ironwood was going to uncover, as he stood in a lone Manta flying low over the tundra towards a craggy mountain range. The ground below, an unblemished sheet of white glimmering in the late afternoon sun, offered no distraction from the task ahead. He was not looking forward to this. At all.
At the base of the mountain just ahead sat a small gray slab of a building, completely unimpressive in its appearance. It could've easily been mistaken for a supply depot for an SDC mine, a guard's barracks—anything, really. Anything except what it really was. The only clue to its peculiar aims was just how isolated it was. The nearest trace of civilization was miles away. The only way to approach this building was by air.
And this building was no supply depot. This was the personal laboratory of the late Arthur Watts, and it was the source of the headache that had been practically splitting Ironwood's skull for the last week.
The Manta's touchdown was quick and muted, and the only thing that greeted him as the doors slid open was a blast of frigid air. It was a knifepoint that would've pierced its way through thinner clothes, and when it found his coat to be an impassable barrier, it settled for wrapping around his cheeks and attacking the exposed skin with a thousand invisible needles.
A dense cloud of snow had been stirred up by the Manta's thrusters, and for a moment as Ironwood stepped outside, everything was white. Then, as the snow began to settle, the outline of a short figure clad heavily in winter gear and seated in a mechnochair became apparent just a few meters away. The man raised his snow goggles, revealing friendly eyes, and waved with a gloved hand.
"James. Pleasure to see you!" he said.
"Pietro." Ironwood moved forward and extended a hand in greeting. "I wish this visit was under better circumstances. How are you?"
"As well as one in my position could be," Pietro said, taking Ironwood's hand and shaking it with a sad smile. "This has not been a fun week. Shall we go inside? I don't believe either of us want to be out here a moment longer than we need to."
"Agreed," Ironwood said, pulling his coat tighter around him.
"I'll be very glad when this is all over," Pietro said as they approached the entrance. "I cannot wait to resume work on the PENNY Project, and I don't think I'll ever understand why Arthur did what he did."
A keypad with an intimidating number of keys greeted them at the entrance, but he simply jabbed at a button without even bothering to look. The door slid open immediately. "However, it's my job to pick up the pieces of what he left behind, and I will see that task through."
The first thing that Ironwood saw as he stepped into the former laboratory of Arthur Watts was a pile of very smashed-up electrical circuitry sitting in the entryway. Along with the burnt-out husk of an AK-130.
"Arthur left his security system armed," Pietro explained, seeing Ironwood's questioning look. "Very armed. We had a whale of a time dismantling it." His mechnochair shimmied, shaking off the snow that it'd accumulated outside. "In fact, we're still finding interesting little surprises in some nooks and crannies."
"I wouldn't expect anything less from him," Ironwood remarked, taking in the rest of the room. Arthur Watts had left behind quite a lot to be dismantled, as everyone in the Atlesian government was quickly discovering. His criminal activities had only just started coming to light when, rather than face justice, he had simply climbed into a Paladin and set out into the tundra in the middle of the night at the height of a vicious blizzard. The Paladin had only been found yesterday, mostly buried in the snow and no trace of Watts anywhere.
"Well," he said after reflection, his gaze lingering on a magnificent painting of a Beowolf that looked suspiciously like the one that'd been reported stolen from the Marigold Manor a few months back. "There's no getting around it. What exactly is the superweapon he's kept under wraps here?"
A week ago, just as the investigation into Watts's laboratory was beginning, Pietro had uncovered some sort of superweapon in Watts's lab called "Project Argentum," which wouldn't have been cause for alarm—projects received codenames all the time—except that nobody else in Atlas, not even Pietro, seemed to have ever heard of this project.
But Ironwood, so embroiled in the public relations nightmare that was the search for Watts, hadn't been able to leave the search until the Paladin was finally found and the Council finally accepted that the tundra was far too enormous to ever give up Watts's frozen body. So, rather belatedly, he was here to see what on Remnant had gotten Pietro so simultaneously excited and concerned.
"Well—" Pietro paused. "Tell me, James, do you believe in any legends?"
Ironwood shot Pietro a sharp look. Once upon a time, someone else had asked him a very similar question.
"I would say perhaps as many as the average person," he said, choosing his words carefully. Normally, these words would never leave his mouth—to admit, as the headmaster of Atlas Academy and the commander of the Atlesian Military, to believing in even a shred of superstition would be disastrous. But he sensed an eagerness to Pietro's words betraying a genuine hope that Ironwood would say yes.
"Excellent," Pietro said. "There really is no good way to tell you what's going on here, so I'll just go ahead and show you—right this way." He turned toward a side passage and motioned for him to follow.
"Again, my apologies that I couldn't come sooner," Ironwood said as the legs of Pietro's chair whirred quietly ahead. "But the Council wouldn't have let me off the search unless there was a direct threat to the security of the kingdom."
"There's no need to apologize!" Pietro replied, turning a corner. "And, to tell the truth, I may have sent that message a bit prematurely. I've learned a great deal more while I waited, and things make much more sense now. There is no threat to the Kingdom's security—quite the opposite, in fact."
Ironwood was still considering Pietro's question. When Ozpin had asked him a question like that… the ensuing hours brought revelations of maidens and relics, Salem and secret schemes, plots unlike anything he'd ever involved himself in. Did Pietro know about any of this, or was it simply coincidence that his question had been so similar?
They came to a doorway guarded by two armed Atlas soldiers who saluted as they approached and pulled the door open for Pietro. And then a blast of cold air buffeted Ironwood's face. Pietro had brought them outside again.
They were in a smallish courtyard behind the building fenced in by high walls that somehow hadn't been visible from the air. He blinked against the sudden, blinding glare from the sun that was directly in his eyes, briefly unable to make out anything in the courtyard. "Why was Watts keeping such an important project outside?"
"He wasn't," Pietro said. "It's just that she wanted to go outside a little while ago, and, well, who were we to stop her?"
"She?" Ironwood repeated, a sudden wave of shock hitting him. "This is a person you're talking about?" And now he was thinking of the maidens—not Fria, still safe in Atlas—so then who could this be?
"When I found out, I was just as surprised as you," Pietro said sympathetically, pulling his snow goggles back on. "It's hard to believe—ah, there she is now!" He pointed towards the back corner of the courtyard, where the ground rose up in a small hill.
Ironwood followed the path of his arm and, as his eyes adjusted to the bright light, saw a brown-haired woman in a long white coat standing atop the hill. She was turned partly away from them, and she seemed fixated on something further down the hill.
She certainly looked young enough to be a maiden. A thousand questions rose in him all at once, and he steeled himself, moving forward. "I see. Shall we meet her?"
"Yes, let's—" Pietro followed the path of Ironwood's gaze. Abruptly, he laid a hand on his arm, pulling him back. "Oh, no, no—that's the lieutenant. She's been assigned to watch over—I'm sorry, I was talking about her. She's just gone behind the hill—no, look, here she comes now."
He pointed again, this time further down and to the right where a large snowdrift had piled up against the wall. Something red and oddly small was moving around in it. Ironwood squinted, trying to make it out. Then, as they started towards the snowdrift, the object resolved itself into something discernible—a small girl rolling around in the snow in a fluffy red parka and a black winter hat.
They were drawing near now, and Pietro cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, his voice gentle. "Ruby."
At the sound, the girl looked up. As soon as she saw him, her eyes widened, and she clambered to her feet and stumbled through the snow towards them. She was holding something in one hand—a little stuffed Ursa, Ironwood noted.
"Polly!" she squealed, latching onto a leg of Pietro's mechnochair and clutching it tightly.
"That's what she's started calling me," Pietro whispered to Ironwood with a happy smile. "We've made fast friends. James, meet Ruby," he said, raising his voice for the girl at the end. "Ruby, this is James. He's a friend of mine."
The girl looked up and gave Ironwood a brilliant smile. "Hello!"
"This is the project?" For a moment, Ironwood didn't know how to react. "This is what Watts was so anxious to keep from us all?" he asked finally, staring down at the girl with no small disbelief. She couldn't have come up to his knee at full height. "The superweapon is… a toddler?"
Suddenly, a ferocious scowl covered the girl's face. "Not a project!" she snapped, stamping her feet and baring her teeth at Ironwood. "My name is Ruby!" With that, she crossed her arms and turned her back to him, staring resolutely away with her head held high.
Ironwood drew back, feeling a sudden wave of embarrassment as he realized how demeaning that must've sounded to the girl.
"Yes, she's a person, James, and I've discovered quite quickly that she doesn't like to be called a project or an experiment or a weapon," Pietro said, reaching down and patting her shoulder. "She has quite the spirit. I think she would like an apology now."
"Er, yes, of course..." Ironwood bent down, reaching a hand out to Ruby. "Ruby, I—" he started to say, only to be cut off when Ruby whirled around, grabbed his outstretched hand, and chomped down on it with what had to be every ounce of force in her body.
Ironwood had been shot repeatedly by White Fang grunts, mauled by Grimm on multiple occasions in his career, and fallen off a motorcycle twice, but damned if a little girl biting him didn't somehow hurt more than all of those things combined. And the girl wasn't letting go.
"Pietro... please… help..." he said through gritted teeth. The girl seemed to listen to Pietro, and he didn't trust himself to try to pull Ruby off because his first instinct was to fling her into the jetstream.
"Ruby, please stop biting James," Pietro said gently.
Ruby obliged, removing Ironwood's hand from her mouth. She gave Ironwood the most smug look he'd ever seen before scampering behind Pietro's mechnochair and burying her face in a loose fold of his coat.
"I'm sorry, I should've warned you," Pietro said. "Ruby gets quite fierce when she perceives something as a threat. There's been several soldiers that found this out the same way you just did."
"Of course…" Ironwood nodded slowly, rubbing his aching hand. "She... has good instincts," he said, before kneeling down. He brought himself near Ruby's eye level, making sure to keep his appendages safely out of reach this time. "Ruby," he said cautiously, infusing his voice with a respect he usually saved for his best students. "I'm sorry."
Ruby didn't budge. "Why?" she said sulkily, her voice muffled by Pietro's coat.
"I'm sorry for calling you a project," Ironwood said, and he meant it.
Ruby peeked out from behind the mechnochair ever so slightly, half of one eye and a tuft of dark black-red hair coming into view. Suspicion radiated from every inch of her face that Ironwood could see. "Person!" she said firmly.
"You're a person," James repeated. "I'm sorry for saying that you weren't one."
And then, just like that, it was like Ironwood had never said anything in the first place. She jumped back into plain view, really looking at him for the first time, and a brilliant smile broke over her face. She gave him a cheery wave. "Hello! I'm Ruby! Nice to meet you!"
"It's a pleasure to meet you, too." Ironwood smiled back at her, trying to forget that she'd viciously attacked him not thirty seconds ago. He stood back up, staring at the angry red tooth marks on his hand. It was a miracle she hadn't broken his Aura.
"Are you all right, James?" Pietro asked.
"I believe so…" Ironwood shook his head. "I believe I've found what makes her a superweapon."
Pietro let out a bark of laughter which dissolved into a cough. He patted his chest, catching his breath again. "Well, I'm sure that you must have a million questions now."
Ironwood did, in fact, have many questions. But he had to ask perhaps the most sobering one first. "What did Watts…" He had seen many, many horrific things over his career, things that would make the strongest of men shrink away. But he couldn't stop the smallest of chills from running down his spine as he asked this. "How did he… Does she seem to be in good health?"
"Yes, thankfully," Pietro said immediately. "I've already given her an extensive medical examination. She's in perfect health. But… from what I've gathered from Arthur's files on her, he wanted to wait until later on to experiment on her. He didn't want to start too early and risk damaging her. That was the word he used." Pietro shuddered. "Thank the gods that we found her when we did."
"You found me!" Ruby said suddenly. Ironwood and Pietro both looked down, suddenly realizing that perhaps it wasn't the best idea to be talking about this around her. Ruby, for her part, gave them another giant smile when she noticed them staring at her.
"Thankfully, her mental state seems to be perfectly sound as well," Polendina said. "Of course, we'll have to give her a thorough psychological examination, but there doesn't seem to be anything unusual about her behavior. Somehow, she's a happy, healthy…" He trailed off. "...Toddler," he said finally. "I don't know her exact age. Neither did Arthur, according to his notes."
A tugging at Ironwood's knee caught his attention. He looked down and realized that Ruby was pulling on his pants leg, looking up at him expectantly. For a half-second, Ironwood thought the girl was going to tell him her age.
"Mister Ironwood?" she said, when she saw him looking.
"Yes?" he asked, wondering if she was going to bring out the teeth again. Somehow, he didn't doubt that she could bite his prosthetic arm and make it hurt.
"What's your job?" she asked.
"What?" Then, belatedly understanding her question, Ironwood answered. "Oh. I'm a general in the military."
"A sol-jer?"
"Yes."
"You protect people?"
Ironwood nodded slowly. "Yes, that is what my job is."
"I'm going to help you," she said, her tone utterly serious. She looked up into Ironwood's eyes, her gaze boring into him. "I will save the world."
The girl's tone was so utterly serious that Ironwood nearly agreed with her on reflex, but then something else stopped him short. The girl's irises were the color of pure silver.
Silver eyes. Ozpin had told him they were real, and now he was seeing them with his own eyes. Something he once would've dismissed as pure myth, he now took with utter seriousness. Silver-eyed warriors. Said to be the only thing the Grimm feared, and able to kill them with a single glance. And Arthur Watts had taken Ruby for a reason...
Another sensation upon his leg jerked him out of his thoughts, and he realized that Ruby, still waiting for a reply, had started poking him in the shin in the apparent hope that it would speed up his answer.
"Well, maybe you will save the world," he said finally. "You certainly have the resolve for it."
That answer seemed to please her, because she let out a giggle and spun away from him, falling over into the snow and flailing her arms around in what might've been an attempt at a snow angel.
"Ruby," Pietro said, catching her attention. "Have you been out here for long?"
Ruby shook her head emphatically, unwittingly turning her snow angel into something more like a snow abomination.
Pietro laughed. "Well, I think you should let Lieutenant Glass take you inside now. Wouldn't it be nice to warm up? You don't want to catch cold like me!"
Ruby squinted in thought, and then nodded and scrambled to her feet. "Okay!"
She turned to James. "Bye, Mister James! Sorry I bit you!" With that, she darted off towards the lieutenant that'd been waiting on the hill, leaving Ironwood and Pietro alone again.
Pietro was watching him carefully. It seemed that his shock at Ruby's eye color had not gone unnoticed. But before he even began to think about the ramifications of silver eyes, there was a more important question that he needed an answer for.
"How did Watts find her?" he asked. Then, remembering what he'd discovered about the man in recent weeks, he felt compelled to add onto it. "Was she… kidnapped?"
"She was," Pietro said darkly.
The air seemed to grow chillier around them, and Ironwood wasn't attributing it to the sun going behind a cloud just then.
"Arthur kept detailed records of all of his illegal doings. It seems that he never dreamed that this place would be breached, and he was quite free with his secrets here. Including where the girl came from."
"So he must've left some record—then surely we can find her family?" Mentally, Ironwood added 'leaving Watts tied up and locked in a room with Ruby's parents' to the quickly-growing list of things he would've done to Watts if he'd had the guts to stay alive. "We need to return her to her family immediately."
"That's just the problem," Pietro said sadly. "She doesn't have a family."
"What?"
"She is most likely an orphan. By Arthur's word, he discovered her by chance in the aftermath of the South Wall disaster. And considering that he made no effort to hide it in his archives that he stole away a child for the purposes of experimentation, I… don't think he would leave out the information of which family she came from unless he genuinely didn't know."
Ironwood shook his head. He remembered the South Wall incident all too well. An unusually large nest of Centinels had somehow managed to tunnel far enough under Mantle to rupture a water main along the southern border, and the resulting flood had destabilized the soil enough to open a massive sinkhole that not only swallowed up several entire city blocks but also took a large portion of the South Wall along with it. The Grimm attack in the aftermath had taken days to quell.
"I've already gone through the records from that attack several times over, but…" Pietro sighed. "It's not much help. Are you aware, James, that if you actually count out the list of all the names of the deceased and missing citizens, the number is at least five or six times smaller than the estimated death toll? Which means—"
Ironwood grimaced. "Mantle's record-keeping is horrible. Tell me something I don't know."
"That was low-income housing that fell into the sinkhole. Mostly families. Countless men, women, and children who were invisible in the eyes of the state. There is no way to identify most of those who died that day. It seems that Ruby is all that's left from one of those hundreds of families, because…" Pietro sighed again. "I've gone through all the active missing child reports in Mantle and Atlas already. She doesn't even come close to matching any of the descriptions. There isn't a single silver-eyed child missing anywhere in the kingdom."
A peal of laughter carried across the courtyard, and they turned to see Ruby being herded back into the building by Lieutenant Glass.
"And she couldn't have come from another kingdom," Ironwood said, finishing Pietro's train of thought as they watched Ruby leave. "I've had my best specialists tracing every move Watts ever made, and he hasn't left the Kingdom in five years. I would bet all of Atlas on the truth of that."
"I don't even know Ruby's last name," Pietro said quietly. He took off his snow goggles and began rubbing his forehead as well as he could through his gloves. "Not that it would make much of a difference at this point, it seems."
Ironwood took the moment to check the sky again. The single cloud passing in front of the sun had turned into several now, and a gray line creeping across the horizon suggested foul weather ahead.
"You may be wondering why Arthur would just… steal a child. Unfortunately, I know exactly why."
"So do I," Ironwood said, turning back to Pietro.
"Eh?" Pietro said, pausing with his goggles half over his eyes. "What do you mean?"
"I saw her eyes."
"Ah. So then you know about the legend of the silver-eyed warriors!" He paused, apparently trying to gauge Ironwood's reaction. Ironwood signaled him to continue with an attentive nod.
"James, what I'm about to suggest might sound incredibly far-fetched. But Arthur had great reason to believe this, and despite what he has done, I will always say that he was an extremely intelligent man who never dealt in wishful fantasies."
"Go on," Ironwood said.
"As I've gone through Arthur's notes, it has become increasingly clear to me that he wholeheartedly believed the mythical power of silver-eyed warriors was, in fact, quite real. He actually says he found evidence that the power really does exist—although if he kept that evidence, I haven't found it yet."
"You sound like you're trying to convince me of something, Pietro," Ironwood said.
"I am. Many of the greatest scientific advancements of our time began as pure fantasy. I think… despite what Arthur did, it would behoove us to pick up the research that he started. We might be able to harness an unmatched power for the good of Remnant." Pietro looked off in the direction of the door that Ruby had disappeared through. "She is a girl without a past. It falls upon us to give her a future."
The storm clouds were slowly moving across the sky as Pietro spoke, casting a gray shadow over the courtyard and bringing a brisk wind with them. Ironwood pulled his collar closer to his neck and thought of what Ozpin had told him about Salem, and he made up his mind in an instant. "I agree."
Pietro brightened. "Wonderful, James! I was so worried that I'd have to spend the rest of the day trying to convince you—I'm not sure even I was convinced that quickly. What are the odds that the only other superstitious man in the Atlesian government would be you?"
"It's not superstition if it's true," Ironwood said, plans beginning to unfold in his mind. "Let's just say that I have my own reasons to believe in silver eyes."
They were silent for a moment as a gust of wind ruffled their clothes and lifted sheets of powdery snow off the ground, blowing it across the courtyard.
"I can't understand how Watts ever managed it out here. It's far too cold. Coffee?" Pietro said, producing a large green thermos and two cups from a compartment in his chair.
"Gladly." As Ironwood accepted a steaming cup, his scroll buzzed. Giving an apologetic glance to Pietro, he removed it from his pocket, only to fight back an exasperated grunt as he saw the new message. The Council wanted an update about Watts. Again.
"I'm sorry, but the Council is summoning me. I'll have to be leaving soon."
"Already?" Pietro gave him a mournful look. "There's so much left to discuss. I haven't even shown you what Arthur's done with Hard-Light Dust in here."
"Believe me, I'll be back as soon as I can."
Pietro raised his cup to Ironwood. "Well, surely you have a minute to join me in a toast?"
Ironwood tapped his cup against Pietro's, "To the PENNY Project," he said after a moment.
Pietro gave him a smile. "To Ruby," he said.
They drank, and Ironwood was glad for the warmth. The day was only getting colder.
"I can't even begin to imagine how I'll find a family for her," Pietro mused.
"Come again?" Ironwood lowered his cup and gave Pietro a questioning look. Suddenly, it was occurring to him that they might have very different ideas about how to best move forward with Ruby.
"Finding an adoptive family for her will be the first priority, of course," Pietro said, not noticing the change in Ironwood's demeanor as he spoke. "One where she can grow up safe and loved. And then, when she's old enough, we could begin researching the power. With her consent, of course." His voice took on a breathless edge. "Imagine what we might accomplish! Why, if silver eyes turn out to be Aura-linked, and if she would allow us, we might even try to bring them into the PENNY Project..."
"No," Ironwood said, frowning in thought. "I'm sorry to be blunt, but you're looking at this the wrong way. It would be far too dangerous to place Ruby with a defenseless family. Her safety is the paramount concern here."
"James, what are you suggesting?" Pietro said, a tinge of alarm creeping into his voice.
"Our best course is to take her into the protection of the Atlas Military and teach her how to defend herself, while beginning silver-eye research much earlier."
Pietro put down his thermos. "Ruby needs a normal childhood," he said. "Especially after what has already happened to her. She must have a choice in what she becomes!"
"She will have a choice. When she is old enough to understand what powers she possesses and decide her future, she can do whatever she wishes. If she so desires, she may walk away entirely, find a family, leave the kingdom, take up a normal, anonymous life, and never set foot in Atlas again. But for now…" Ironwood stared down into the blurry reflection of himself in his coffee, bracing himself as he spoke the next words. "She doesn't have a choice."
Pietro opened his mouth to reply, shock covering his features, but Ironwood held up a hand, staving off any further protest. He had known that those words would be controversial, but he could think of no clearer way to say it.
"Even if Ruby wants nothing to do with her power, she will always have a target on her back simply because of those eyes. Which is why we must train her to at least protect herself. Don't forget how we found her." Ironwood gestured at the walls of Watts's laboratory as a few snowflakes began to swirl through the air around them.
"If someone like Watts—who we considered one of the finest minds in the Kingdom—believed in the power of the silver eyes to the point that he would steal a child off the streets, then I don't doubt that there will be others like him. Others who will try to steal the power for themselves, who may be more desperate and less methodical than Watts, and who may resort to more violent methods. That is why she needs to be under our protection. I would genuinely fear for her safety otherwise."
Pietro no longer looked so vehement, which gave Ironwood hope. He wished he could show him the true danger at play, tell him about Salem, about how Ozpin had told him that Salem seemed to regard silver-eyed warriors with a special hatred, sending only her best underlings to tirelessly hunt them down. But that was impossible.
But thankfully, Pietro seemed to be at least considering Ironwood's side as he took a long, contemplative sip of his coffee—his expression, while still concerned, had lost most of its agitation. Finally, he spoke.
"You... make an undeniable point about her safety. I will concede that Ruby would need protection and proper training in self-defense. But—" Pietro crossed his arms, and new resolve hardened his features. "I worry about the other half of your suggestion. Why should we do any research without her consent?"
"And as long it falls to us to protect her, we may as well seek to understand her powers better," Ironwood said. "To understand how they work, how they may manifest, and… how to hide them from prying eyes. Until she's ready to make the choice for herself."
"Hm." Aside from the noncommittal noise, Pietro was silent as he rubbed his beard in contemplation.
"Consider that if her family was here, they would make the choice for her," Ironwood continued. "But since her family is not here and her safety has become our responsibility, we must make that choice."
"Ah, her family. And if we somehow found the family Ruby was stolen from?" Pietro said. "What would you do then?"
"Then I would return her to them immediately. I would try to have them understand the danger to Ruby just as I've done here with you. Then I would give them a choice. To accept the protection of the Kingdom for her, or not." He paused. "But if her family wished to have nothing more to do with us, I would not object. You have my word on that."
"Ah." Pietro slumped down in his mechnochair and let out a heavy sigh, only to double over as it unexpectedly turned into a fit of violent coughing.
"We should get inside," Ironwood, glancing up at the sky. "We've been out here far too long."
Pietro wheezed out an agreement and steered his mechnochair towards the door. Ironwood followed behind. When they were nearing the door, something occurred to him.
"Pietro," Ironwood said, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I want to make myself clear," he began as Pietro gave him a questioning look, "I do not see Ruby as Watts saw her." The expression on Pietro's face told him that he was hitting upon something quite vital to their disagreement. "She is not something to be molded into a weapon, and to think otherwise would be heartless. She was born with a gift that could save countless lives, and all I am suggesting is that it would be prudent of us to give her the tools to use her gift in case, when she is old enough, she decides to use that gift to protect others. But I promise that I will never force her to be something she doesn't want to be."
Pietro stared at Ironwood for a long second, his cough finally fading away, and then he broke out in a grateful smile. "Thank you, James. It puts me at ease to hear such a promise. I won't object to your plan if you make me one more."
It took a moment for Ironwood to realize that Pietro was letting him have his way. "Name it."
They were nearing the entrance now, and Pietro lifted his head to look Ironwood directly in the eye. "Don't let Ruby lose sight of her humanity."
Ironwood's answer was immediate and genuine. "I will not. You have my promise."
"Thank you, James," Pietro murmured. "You have no idea how much that means to me." He snapped off a salute to the guards as they opened the door for them. "Whatever she chooses to do someday, I have a feeling she'll turn out to be truly sensational."
Hello, everyone. This is a fic that I've been wanting to write since 2017, but after Volume 7, the return of Penny, and getting Penny's canon backstory, I've finally started it. I'm really excited to see what's ahead. I hope you enjoy this! I'd like to give a massive thank you to mylordshesacactus for not only being my beta reader on this, but also being a wonderful sounding board with brilliant ideas for the last three years as I muddled my way through various stages of planning this fic. You can follow me on tumblr at the username bionic-jedi for updates on this story and other RWBY posting.