A shrill cry, for the twelfth time that night alone, roused a very obviously tired Jaune Arc.
"OH COME ON!" he cried out in frustration and exhaustion. He had finally just gotten back to sleep at four in the morning after Thorn's 3:30 emergency diaper change. He only drank one bottle of formula earlier that night. How could he have made such a mess? "No wonder Ruby called you the 'thorn in her side' when she was-"
"UNCLE JAUNEY! HELP!"
Jaune suddenly ceased his muttering at the sound of Emre's shout. Apparently, this wasn't just a normal rude awakening for the infant as he rushed across the hall, ignoring a tired Ren asking what was going on as he sat up at the sound of screaming children.
Running into the room, he forced the door open to see Emre trying to shoo off an owl that had flew in an open window, and was frantically trying to find its way back out, but kept knocking items off dressers and shelves from books to picture frames. Zwei was trying to assist the toddler by barking at the bird, but this owl didn't seem phased by a small child in bunny footsie pajamas and a Corgi trying to make it go away. "What is going on in here?" Jaune asked in surprise, this being a much more tame situation than what he thought after hearing his nephew call for him.
"Birdy fwy in and scawe Thown! Bad birdy! Go away!" Emre yelled at the owl, that just squaked and landed atop the bedpost of Blake and Yang's bunk.
"Okay, you need to leave, now!" Jaune said as he charged the bird, startling it as it swooped over his head, brushed Nora's nose as she followed her leader with its wing as it banked back out the window and back into the night. "I thought those things were supposed to be wise." he grumbled to himself.
"How'd an owl even get in here?" Nora yawned as she walked over and closed the window.
"How'd what get in where now?" Ren asked, poking his head into the dorm.
"Not important. Let's just get this cleaned up and put the kids back to sleep." Jaune ordered. "Speaking of which, Nora, do you mind?" he asked as he gestured to Thorn's bassinet, where the full blown quieting turned into whimpering with a few sobs in between.
"Sure thing." Nora shrugged, too tired to argue as she picked up Thorn and gently started trying to rock him back to sleep. It almost seemed out of character for the usually hyperactive redhead. "Shh...it's okay. Auntie Nora's here to keep the big bad bird away." she cooed in a singsong voice.
"Ren, can you go grab a broom and dustpan?" Jaune asked, looking around at the feathers on the floor, not to mention broken glass from the picture frame that fell over. Picking it up, he noticed what it was. This was a framed photo from a month ago, when they took Thorn home from the hospital. Ruby was sitting in a wheelchair as she was being discharged, Thorn in a bundle in her arms. Weiss was kneeling by her left side, Taiyang and Raven on her right, while Yang had an arm wrapped around Blake with her other hand on the back handles of her sister's chair. Each of them were smiling to various degrees from Yang's toothy grin to a slight smirk on Blake's face. Weiss on the other hand, was not...or at least not anymore. The shattered glass had punctured the picture and poked a hole straight through Weiss' face and neck, somewhat spreading to Ruby's side as well. Something about that tear in the photograph gave the knight an uneasy feeling as he stared at it.
"Jaune, is something wrong?" Pyrrha asked, peeking in for the first time and staying quiet as to not reawaken the now sleeping Thorn.
"It's probably nothing...but I need to speak with Professor Goodwitch first thing in the morning." Jaune replied.
A headache and darkness was what welcomed her as she awoke, hesitating to open her eyes just yet. Once she did open them, the harsh light of the lamps in this room's ceiling. She also found she had been laying on a cot that was much comfier compared to the lumpy mattress at the motel or her sleeping bag during their short stay in the ice caves with Team SSSN.
"Welcome back to the land of the living, Ice Queen."
She sat up at the sound of a familiar voice, not one that belonged to her team, Neptune's team, or either of their chaperones. She tilted her head upwards until the dark skinned face of the Beacon upperclassman, Turk Oys, met her gaze with a soft smile.
"Turk?" she croaked before clearing her throat. "What are you doing here?"
Turk's features fell to a face of embarrassment. "Oh, uh...I don't know if I'm allowed to tell you-"
"Turk, zey came vith Qrow. I think zey can know."
She craned her head around the teal-haired medic to see his towering albino of a team leader, Snow, leaning against the wall behind him by some empty cots and a medicine cabinet. "If you say so, Snow." Turk shrugged. "To be honest, we weren't expecting to see you waking up, Weiss." he went on to admit. "We just came to grab some painkillers for Ruby."
Weiss gasped as she shot up into a sitting position. She had completely forgotten about the others through the haze of waking up. "Ruby? What happened to her?" she asked.
"Relax. She's okay; just sprained her wrist saving you from the avalanche earlier. Nothing a couple aspirin and a few hours of natural healing with aura can't fix." Turk explained to put her at ease, which he could tell worked as he noticed the duelist let out a sigh of relief. "That hit on the head knocked you unconscious for a couple hours as of now. What's worrying me more is that cut below your eye. I put some antibiotic ointment on it, but there's no guarantee-"
"It'll scar. I know." Weiss sighed. Turk backed off; the elephant in the room didn't need anymore addressing. "I just want to see my team."
"Of course." Snow nodded as the younger girl got up from the bed and made her way to the exit. As she opened the door, she took in her surroundings, or better yet, lack there of. The hallway she entered was a droll grey color from the ceiling to the floor with no windows, and a multitude of security cameras that seemed to be focused on all angles of the hall outside the medical bay she was inside. What more she was confused by was the two Atlesian military policemen escorting a hulking, bald-headed man in an orange jumpsuit past them.
"Huh, didn't know it was Jailbait Visitors Day." he dryly joked as he walked within earshot of her.
"Shut it until we get to the warden's office." one of the guards ordered. Weiss shared in his distaste for the inmate's joke. The man reminded her too much of Timber.
"What even is this place?" Weiss asked the two upperclassmen as they walked the way the prisoner escort came from.
"Platinum Maximum Security Prison." Snow explained. "Qrow and the others brought you here after escaping the avalanche. Zere's an emergency door inside the tunnel you made a break for."
"Although, it's kinda out of commission after the avalanche." Turk shrugged.
"But...why did he bring us here? And what did you mean back in the infirmary, Snow?"
The albino was about to answer before the sound of running footsteps from around a corner. Weiss turned just in time for Ruby to catch her off guard in a hug that nearly took them both to the ground. "Weiss!" she exclaimed. "We're so glad you're okay!"
"Ruby, easy on your hand, remember?" Yang reminded, bringing up the rear as her half sister stood back up, Turk giving her the painkillers he had promised. "How ya feelin', Ice Queen?"
"I've been better." Weiss shrugged, ignoring the nickname she had always hated. "What are we doing here?"
"Uncle Qrow said he had a contact here that could help us clear our names in Atlas." Ruby answered after swallowing the pills. "He was about to take us in to meet them."
"Yeah, come on. The others have been waiting for us down the hall." Yang said, gesturing for the others to follow her back down the way she and Ruby came from. As they followed, Weiss noted from the signs painted on the dully-colored walls that they were headed further away from the administration offices, and more towards the cell blocks.
"Yang, where are we headed?" she finally asked, just before they rounded a corner where the rest were waiting for them. Blake, Qrow, Marron, and Team SSSN stood beside a door marked "Restricted Access" alongside Rocco and Mei to balance out the rest of Team STRM.
"Alright, the gang's all here." Rocco smirked as they all regrouped.
"How're you feeling, Weiss?" Blake asked, the raven-haired Faunus stepping forward.
"Confused, at the moment." Weiss answered, looking at Qrow. "Where's your contact? What are we doing here?"
"Yeah. I feel like we're just getting a tour of a prison." Sun agreed.
"If you'll give me a second, I'll explain everything." Qrow announced as he turned to a keypad on the door. "Let's see..." he muttered before punching in the code. "Two, four, three, seven...seven! Right!" he cheered lightly, congratulating himself on remembering it, at least this time. He stepped back as the door opened automatically, revealing the natural walls of the cliff caverns this prison was built into, as well as the shiver-inducing chill of the arctic winds blowing through the caves through natural vents. Qrow led them down the hall, only wide enough for two people to stand side by side as they went through.
"What all you guys and girls are gonna see is completely classified, you hear me?" Qrow called back to the others.'
"Yeah, but...what are we gonna see?" Neptune asked. His query was answered as they entered the main cavern. The giant cave was the size of a stadium, permafrost creeping up the towering walls to the ceiling lined with naturally grown ice Dust crystals. The main feature wasn't the dozens of Atlesian soldiers moving around crates and computer equipment between marked areas and stations on platforms, or the chasm on one half of the room that the group could only guess led to the center of the planet, but the massive, energy-shielded cage keeping the contents safely locked inside. The group of second years were shocked and awed at the beast inside, or was it an anomaly?
The cage held something that Team RWBY thought they would only see once in their lives. The shadowy outline of an Ursa, tall as a skyscraper, but hunched over inside the confined space it was kept in, could be seen through the shield walls. It reminded the group of the day they retook Vale from Cinder, fighting the Alpha Grimm that was materializing out of its tomb underneath the city, and one of the most challenging battles they had ever fought in their short careers as Huntsmen and Huntresses. "I-Is that?" Ruby stammered, looking up at it.
"An Alpha Grimm." Qrow finished for his niece. "Yes it is." He paused to turn to the group. "Since the attack in Vale almost caused a breach that let one of these beasts fall into the wrong hands, we've been upping security at the known locations of the remaining two vaults."
"Two?" Yang asked. "I thought one was in each kingdom. Wouldn't there be three?"
"Mistral's was empty when we found it." Qrow said, looking down. "Whether it was killed or taken somewhere we can't find, we're still unsure, but the point being, this guy and his sibling in Vacuo are under much tighter security now. We've even begun reaching out to Huntsmen academies for advanced students to help with security rounds, clearing out any Grimm that get too close for comfort, pretty much freelance security work."
"And that, is where we came in." Mei spoke up.
"Wait, why not us?" Blake asked.
"Yeah! We were the ones that beat one of those things." Ruby added. "We should be able to join...whatever this is."
"What even is this, Qrow?" Marron asked.
"We were going to wait until you were all back at 100%, or more specifically, until your son was born, Ruby." Qrow answered. "STRM here, along with some more Beacon teams like CFVY and SABR, have already filled some time here." He paused to take a few steps back, gesturing to one of the elevated stations. "This is the Chess Initiative."
"The Chess Iniative?" Ruby asked.
"Yes, and congratulations." a voice from the station Qrow stood in front of called. Stepping into view, Weiss couldn't believe her eyes as an older woman easily six feet in stature, marched over to the railing. Tired, silver eyes with shoulder length, stark white hair matched asmile with platinum-glossed lips. She wore the uniform of an Atlas military officer, a long white coat that reached down past her knees, and a chromatic broach with a sapphire centerpiece worn around her neck. Weiss almost teared up at the sight of her. "It's an honor to be working alongside my daughter again."
"M-Mother..." Weiss gasped.
