The man whose name Roman forgot in the time since he met him stood in the front of the room holding a few simple papers in one hand, resting all of his weight on one foot, hand in the coat of his blazer. He was wearing a polished grey suit that would fit in perfectly with the yuppies dancing around in the business district. Roman guessed that this was to maintain anonymity or to be able to appear in a halfway-constructed apartment complex scheduled for demolition, but the possibility that he just liked to dress in a professional manner was still a valid possibility.
The man spoke after reviewing his notes. "So we can conclude the project to obtain the funds we needed to proceed as a failure. Just recently, we have made the decision that this is not due to Roman's inability to complete the mission but instead however due to third-party interference."
Setting his feet up on the table, Mercury asked, "Do we know who those guys are yet?"
"No," the Nameless Man replied, "We still have no idea who they were or how they obtained that information, which is why we're all here."
"You saying there's a mole?" Roman questioned.
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Our original goal for the mission, the documents in that safety deposit box, went missing before the cops had time to respond."
"So someone else wanted the money," Roman thought aloud.
"Not necessarily. We suspect that they may have had the intention of doing more than just showing up to take the money for themselves," the Man said.
"How do you figure?"
"You notified the members you selected for your team days before you intended to complete the mission, correct?" Cinder interrogated.
"Yes," Roman affirmed.
"Whoever had that information must have had days to act, but instead they chose to attack your group mid-operation."
"Are you implying…" Roman drew off into thought. "Their goal was also to kill me? Why?"
"Gee, I wonder why," Emerald chimed, examining her nails as she rotated back and forth in her chair.
"We've decided to establish a new base of operations private to only the people currently in this room."
Roman looked around. Cinder, Emerald, Mercury, and the man standing in the front. "What about Neo? There's absolutely no chance in hell she would have corrupted the mission, at least not in a way that would result in my death."
"For now, we're on our guard, though it is likely she will be in the information loop soon."
Roman sat back in his chair and sighed. The one person he really did trust in this operation is suspected of attempting to corrupt the operation. Great. "Where is it?"
"A storage building for a moving company. It's mainly just a place to park all of their trucks and trailers, but they also have storage units. On the outside, that's all it looks like. But they had two extra rooms that they had no purpose for, so they renovated them into studio apartments to be privately rented out to people coming into Vale cross-continentally for business meetings. There are no cameras, and the only security logs are what codes are punched into the panels to get into the building. You each have your own just to keep track of who comes and who goes. I'll send them all to you in an email. Don't lose them."
Ruby woke up with the same words on her lips as the ones she had woken up with in the past two weeks, "You don't know what it's really like." Ruby touched her lips lightly as she acknowledged the stirring feeling in her gut. Butterflies.
Even though she was wide awake, she rolled over in bed and pulled the sheets up to cover up the blush that spread from her face onto her chest, her ears, and her shoulders. Ruby curled up into bed and remembered the dream with almost vivid recall. Ever since that day in Torchwick's apartment, the dream had changed from a silhouette of a man to a very clear manifestation of Roman Torchwick. The memory of his hands of her body, recreated nightly in her recurring dream of the same man that made her blush all throughout the day, breathed in her mind like its own stubbornly living entity.
After another ten minutes had passed, Ruby got up and hopped out of bed to prepare for school. She was the first one to wake up all week because when she woke up, her face was a dead giveaway to what she was thinking about all night. Yang pointed it out, and all of her teammates dogpiled, thinking that it was the same guy from the dust shop she told Pyrrha and Nora about.
Ruby may have told Pyrrha to keep it a secret, but she can't exactly fault her—she was acting in her best interest. Ruby sighed and grabbed a change of clothes, heading to the showers.
Hey, y'all. I'm FINALLY done with school. Well, almost. Either way, I'm back, and I should have at least put up one more chapter that said I was gonna be gone for another two months...but oh well. I'm back now, and at least for the next two months, I'll be able to keep publishing. Until next time!
