For what felt like a long time, but what was only a matter of a moment, Blake and Weiss had their eyes locked on one another, not doing much except for the former as she finished crawling out of the manhole. Once she was fully out, the former heiress just short of lept from her second floor balcony and charged towards the Faunus, leaping against her and pulling her into an embrace the raven-haired girl wasn't prepared for.
"Wha-Weiss?" Blake gasped as her comrade hugged her.
"Did they hurt you?" she was given in response.
"What? No! They just arrested me and threw me in there!" Blake answered, her eyes falling on the scarred eye of the heiress, currently covered with a wad of gauze and bandages. "The better question, are you?"
Weiss gaze faltered as she stared off into space. "I've been better...though I couldn't live with myself if one of my friends got hurt because of my family." she answered finally. "We should probably get out of the street. If someone saw you without your bow, they'll report us."
"Right..." Blake nodded, giving a quick look around as they ascended the staircase, pausing at the top as they came in view of their team leader as she stepped out to the soda machine outside their room. Forgetting the drink she just purchased, Ruby let out a loud gasp as she realized the heiress wasn't alone.
"Blake! You're okay!" the redhead cried as she bolted forward and wrapped the Faunus girl in a deceptively strong hug, as well as alerting her sister and team's chaperone inside as they peered out the door to see what was going on.
"Wha-Blakey? How'd you get free from the cops?" Yang asked.
"If you'd let me inside, I can tell you." Blake answered, peering over her shoulder. She couldn't help but feel she was being watched, a feeling Marron shared as well. Without even a second thought, the team entered the motel room, not taking into account the crow flying towards them or the cloaked individual watching them from afar across the street as she dialed a number on her Scroll.
"Yes, police? I'd like to report a Faunus blatantly walking about in public." Violet smirked as she filed the report in false disgust.
"And that's about it." Blake finished as she ended her story of breaking out of the internment camp in vivid detail. Needless to say, the conditions Blake described were less than ideal, and disgusted the group.
"Our uncle's in Atlas?" Ruby asked, deciding to wait for the raven-haired ninja to finish her retelling before asking any questions.
"From the sounds of it, he's chaperoning a Huntsman team from one of the academies. A better question is how he recognized me, and even knew I was in trouble." Blake answered, pondering those two things ever since she first met the man.
"That's probably what Ozzy meant when he said he had the situation involving your arrest under control." Marron assumed. "I don't know much about this Qrow, but what I do know is he's an academy teacher as well."
"Yeah, he teaches at Signal with our dad." Yang nodded. "Ozpin's been good friends with the headmaster there since we went there as kids."
"But how did he know where Blake would be and who she was?" Weiss asked.
"Eheh, I may have been sending back weekly progress reports home since we started at Beacon." Ruby admitted with a nervous laugh.
"What's the embarrassment for, Ruby? That kind of info got Blake back to us!" Yang smiled.
"Yeah, but I did kind of let it slip to him that she was a Faunus, back when we found out..." Ruby murmured.
Blake chuckled at her leader's admittance as she shook her head. "I don't care about that anymore, Ruby. Everyone of our friends knows it by now anyway." she smiled. "When you see him again, give him my thanks."
"Or you could just thank me now."
All five turned to see Qrow standing behind the glass sliding door leading out to their room's balcony, a few loose black feathers scattered around him. Ruby and Yang's faces lit up at the sight of him, the younger appearing in a flash at the door as she quickly opened it and wrapped her relative in a deceptively strong hug. "UNCLE QROW!" Ruby shrieked in delight. "It's soooo great to finally see you again!"
"Didja miss us, big guy?" Yang laughed as she joined the hug, the older man stifling a grunt of displeasure as he was wrapped in a bear hug by his two very strong nieces.
"Heh, nope." Qrow joked as he tussled Ruby's hair and somehow broke free of Yang's grasp.
"Oh, cut it out. You know you did!" Ruby laughed back, sticking her tongue out at him.
"All I missed was all the action you were involved with a few months back." Qrow replied. "I heard you kids did what dozens of generations of Huntsmen couldn't and killed an Alpha Grimm. I'm pretty proud of you two, kiddo." he said with a smile.
"Thanks, Uncle." Yang smiled. "Oh, by the way, meet the rest of the team! You already know Blake, and that's Weiss and Marron, our supervisor."
"Oh, Monty, I knew I remembered you." Marron groaned as she looked up at the alcoholic with an unamused expression.
"Did we meet somewhere before, Blondie?" Qrow asked out of genuine confusion.
"Yeah, you were the drunkard that crashed mine and Winter's reunion at Beacon, called me fat, then picked a fight with Winter that involved the ballroom catching on fire." she explained, in vivid detail that surprised Weiss and Blake and made the two half-sisters sigh and shake their heads in disapproval.
"To be fair, you were kinda chubby back then." Qrow defended himself, to no avail.
"I was pregnant, asshole!"Marron growled, and causing Qrow to mentally dope-slap himself. She was about to continue the tirade before stopping herself and seething as she regained her composure. "Whatever. Nevermind; it's in the past. I should thank you for breaking Blake out of Little Menagerie."
"I was just following orders from Ozpin." he shrugged. "By the way, how's the Ice Queen been?"
"I don't want to talk about it." Weiss answered for her chaperone, turning away with a hurt and angry look on her face. Reading the situation, Qrow could only guess not only this was the sister of that icy bitch he accidentally upset almost two years ago, but the fact she didn't want to talk about Winter was probably related to the fact of why her eye was covered in gauze, Blake was arrested, and Ozpin had to call him in from his mission with that advanced class team.
"We'll talk about it later then." Blake sighed. "How's your eye, Weiss? Still bleeding?"
"My Aura should've stopped that by now." Weiss answered, placing a finger on the wad of gauze over her eye and checking if it was still tender.
"Let's check. We should probably change that bandage by now if it isn't stopped." Ruby suggested as she grabbed a roll of bandages from her utility pouch and plopped herself down in front of Weiss. She carefully helped her comrade remove the wad over her eye before pausing, almost audibly gulping as she took a good look at it and Weiss' injured eye readjusted to it regaining the ability to see.
"How bad is it?" Weiss asked, noticing her leader's stare.
"Well, it's just...your scar..." Ruby stuttered, looking at the new line it formed at the bottom of her original scar, now making it shaped like an upside-down cross. "It's a bit bigger now."
Weiss said nothing as she got up and looked in a mirror on top of their room's dresser. Sure enough, Ruby was right as she shakily ran a finger across the new mark overlapping her old wound. "Not again..." she growled as looked at the edited blemish on her alabaster skin. She didn't have much time to lament at this as she noticed a strobing flash of red and blue light coming from the window.
"I think we got bigger problems." Yang pointed out, looking out the same window. From outside, a group of squad cars from the Atlas City Police Department had pulled up outside, some of the officers climbing out and making a break for the motel.
"Blake Belladonna! We know you're in there! You're under arrest for escaping from the Little Menagerie habitat!" one officer announced from outside through a bullhorn.
"They realized you were gone pretty quick..." Marron commented, looking out the window.
"How'd they zero in so fast though?" Blake asked.
"It doesn't matter." Weiss spoke up, quickly retrieving Myrtenaster from where it was propped up against the wall. "We can't get out of here without getting arrested, so we need to move now."
"What about returning home?" Ruby asked.
"It'll have to wait, I guess." Marron shrugged. "Also, just because our cover's blown doesn't mean we have to abandon the mission. It just makes it more challenging."
"I like the way you think." Qrow grinned. "I know a place we can hide out, as long as we can get out of the city."
"So what's the plan to get there?" Yang asked, most of the group startled as instead of an answer, the pounding of a fist on the front door of the room followed.
"Open up!" a police officer called, waiting on the other side with two others to enter and arrest the ones inside. They waited a few moments for a response, not expecting what was to come next, or having any idea what was to come next. Nothing. No response, no sounds they could hear through the door; just complete silence.
"Do you think we have the wrong room?" the officer across from the first asked as he went to peak through the wrong side of the peephole, trying to look inside the room. He didn't get much of a view as the door was thrown off its hinges into the lawman's face, knocking the door on top of him as six blurs of color dashed out of the room and over the balcony behind them. The cops cursed and tried to fire off some rounds at the runaway Huntsman and Huntresses as they left, none of them hitting as they made it to the next rooftop, starting to free run through the low roofed structures throughout the district. It wasn't long before the wails of sirens started following them, some of the group looking back to see squad cars following them on the ground through streets of light evening traffic.
"Okay, now we've got them chasing us!" Ruby shouted, looking back at some of the pursuing cruisers behind them.
"What's the plan, Qrow?" Blake asked.
"We make a break for the gate to the tundra outside the city! I have a contact at the prison that can vouch for you all!" Qrow explained, leaping over a large gap between two buildings.
"So, run from the cops to one of the most heavily guarded parts of the city?" Weiss asked, calling out the Huntsman on the ludicrousness of this plan. He was suggesting they climb over a guarded gate that always is swarmed with military police to watch vehicles and civilians exiting and entering the city from the frozen wasteland outside of it as they traveled to outposts set up for military operated prisons or mining operations by the Schnee Dust Company.
"You have better ideas?" Yang called before a loud whirring sound started drowning out her words. They looked back to find a police airship chasing them at a low altitude, a blinding spotlight attached to its nose shining down on the six of them.
"This is your last warning!" A speaker on the aircraft announced to them as it barred down towards them. "Stop now and surrender!"
"Surrender for what?" Yang growled back. "We didn't do shit!" Her shout fell on deaf ears as two police snipers leaned out from the troop bay and taking aim at them.
"Scatter!" Marron ordered as the snipers started taking fire from the snipers. Luckily, the bullets nor the weapons were strong enough to pierce the Aura shielding each of them possessed, not that they were getting hit by any. Ruby and Blake both had the speed and flexibility to dodge the shots as they jumped between roofs, while the rest simply dodged the shots or used their weapons to block any shots that came close to hitting them. "Qrow, we better get there soon, so help me Monty.."
"Relax, Blondie. It's right up ahead." Qrow called back as he gestured with his massive sword towards the city's border walls that dwarfed the ones in Vale by twice their size. In the center of two monolithic watch towers sat an equally large steel gate that had looked to be decades old, the side facing out towards the cold of the northern frozen wasteland covered in frost heaves and claw marks from attempted entrances from Grimm of all kinds.
"We've got to climb that?" Ruby asked.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Qrow chuckled at his niece. "We're going right out the front door." He said this, of course, as a dozen or so police vehicles blocked the way, their occupants climbing out and taking defensive positions in front of the gate.
"Still going out the front gate?" Weiss asked skeptically.
"I know I am!" Yang yelled as she boosted forward, readying a haymaker that when it impacted the ground right in front of the blockade, sent the cruisers and policemen flying into the wall and gave the group the opening they needed to escape on the road leading away from the city.
"Don't let them get away!" one of the policemen yelled before he started after them. Before he could follow, a blur of black and white dove in between them nearly landed on top of the officer.
"Griffon!" another yelled as the chimeric Grimm shrieked at them before two Atlesian knights acting as sentries stepped forward to hold it off as the gates shut behind them. Looking back, the young Huntresses watched as the lone, naive Grimm was gunned down by the military drones and the massive gates shut, sealing the outside world off from one of the last bastions of society.
"No turning back now, right?" Ruby asked, looking back.
"Not until we can get you all acquitted." Qrow answered.
"How far is it from here to the prison?" Blake asked.
"If I remember correctly, back during the Goliath Stampede a few years back, it took us about two hours to get from the gate the prison to bail out the guards by truck." Marron remembered.
"It'll take four times that on foot." Blake thought. "Maybe even longer if we stop to rest or run into any Grimm."
"Not if we take a shortcut through that mountain pass ahead." Weiss suggested. "This road takes a curve around this pass to the prison and mines to avoid avalanches and reduce Grimm encounters. The other end of it ends at the cliffside the prison base is built into."
"Good thinking, Weiss." Ruby smiled. "Let's get a move on." With nods of confirmation, the group took a left off the road and into the ice fields leading towards the mountain pass, unknowing of the pair of sapphire eyes staring them down from atop one of the watchtowers. Violet watched from afar, unnoticed by any soldiers patrolling the border wall as she stood on the roof, before the vibrating of the Scroll in her pocket got her attention.
"Chains, good timing." she smirked as she answered the phone.
"The men are ready as you requested." the brute responded from the other end of the line. "Where do you want us to go?"
"Have them on standby." she replied. "I'll message you with my location once they lead me straight to the Alpha Grimm cell."
For a thousand years, I have waited in slumber for the day where- You know what? Forget that schtick. You've been waiting long enough for a new chapter.
Man, I have missed writing for this story. The last weeks of school and trying to ensure my passing of these courses have taken its toll, but from here on out, it's plenty of free time up until RTX. I haven't been able to finish writing the story, but I've got the whole rest of the story, plus its sequel, planned out in my free time. I want this one finished up as soon as I possibly can because I'm really excited for the third part of this trilogy. Point is, I'm back, and hopefully, more frequently posting than ever. I hope you enjoyed this return to the story, leave a comment if you did, and I'll see you lads and lasses around.
