A Plan Must Be Formed
"I should go!" Penny turned on her heels, let a leaflet slip from her fingers and rushed away from Weiss, leaving her confused and stumbling to get to her feet. Grabbing the papers from the air, Weiss jogged after her friend, familial troubles briefly and thankfully forgotten.
"Now hold on just a minute! You vanish for weeks on end and then come back acting like you don't even know me? What happened to you!" Weiss stormed up just beside Penny, but she didn't even throw a glance her way.
"I am sorry, there appears to be a misunderstanding." Penny tried and failed to stifle her quiet hiccup.
Upset not just at being forgotten but ignored, Weiss grabbed onto Penny's arm. Only then, did Penny stop.
"Penny, I was worried sick about you!" Weiss called, but her supposed friend just turned her head away from her entirely. At the least, she didn't pull her arm away. Agitation began to fade into confusion, then hurt: this wasn't a time where she could take a friend disregarding her so flagrantly. "Penny, Ruby told me you were at the docks with us, and that you just vanished when we all got back together. Did Torchwick and his gang find you that night? Did they do anything to you? Did they hurt you?" She all but begged for an answer.
Penny pulled her arm away, and Weiss threatened to crack. Without looking at her, Penny mumbled just under her breath: "It's not safe to talk here."
Weiss' eyes widened, and her lips parted for questions she knew she couldn't ask. Penny was in danger, too? She fought the trembling in her hand as she brought it back to herself. Weiss glanced down at the leaflet, wondering if the answers were there.
It was a brochure for Beacon.
"... I see. You're entirely correct, Miss. I was mistaken, after all. I apologize for harassing you in such an awful manner!"
Penny's brow rose at Weiss' complete one-eighty.
"Here, you dropped this. I hope you can forgive this inconvenience." Weiss handed the brochure back to Penny, and when she tentatively reached out to grab it, Weiss tapped her thumb insistently on the leaflet. She watched Penny's gaze carefully as it bounced between her own eyes and her hand. She was tapping one of the many pictures on the leaflet: one of Beacon's library, the largest in the world, it claimed. A building that would have many places for a quiet conversation. After a tense second of watching the cogs turning in Penny's mind as she held onto the brochure, her face suddenly lit up, she turned to Weiss and nodded.
She flashed Penny a slim smile. They had a meeting place.
Penny grinned right back at her, waved, and the two—albeit briefly—went their separate ways.
Had she misunderstood? Penny stood at the entrance to Beacon's library, nervous and with her eyes scanning her surroundings constantly. No sign of Weiss. But plenty of signs of someone she didn't want to meet: General Ironwood himself, surrounded by a squad of Atlesian soldiers, was making his way towards her. They didn't notice her yet, but they would no doubt realize that she was missing any moment now, and her excuse of 'just wandering around' was feeling thinner by the moment. She jolted as a hand dropped onto her shoulder from behind her. Too late! She was found out!
Weiss lightly squeezed her shoulder. "Are you sure everything's alright?" She asked her.
"Uh... absolutely! We should probably talk inside, though!" Penny abruptly decided and began dragging Weiss off into the library.
Though she had little chance of breaking free from her insanely strong grip, Weiss still struggled. "You're starting to worry me again, Penny: what is going on!"
"Uh, nothing at all!" Penny tried and and failed to hide a hiccup. "I was just feeling cold outside!" Along with the second.
Weiss finally wriggled her way out of Penny's grasp by the time she'd pulled them to an empty reading corner in the library. Windows allowed the afternoon sun to beam in, and gave a nice view to the plaza outside.
Weiss crossed her arms and stared Penny down. "Alright, enough is enough. We're friends, are we not?"
"Oh, of course we are!"
"And friends talk to each other about things, don't they?"
"Uh, well, I mean..." Caught by her own words, Penny hugged herself and shifted from side to side, floundering in trying to come up with a retort. Finally, she just blurted out: "I'm not supposed to be here, right now!"
Weiss simply stared at her in disbelief. "You're sneaking out?" she asked flatly.
"Yes—well, mostly! My father asked me not to venture very far from his side, you see. I've never been to another kingdom before, and he was terribly specific about not coming to Beacon without him," Penny continued, too wrapped up to notice Weiss' brief grimace.
"Sounds controlling..." she murmured under her breath.
"Oh, no, no, you have to understand, my father loves me very much, he just worries a lot."
"Well, the last time you left, you did manage to find yourself in the middle of a White Fang raid," Weiss teased with a hint of a smile. That appeared to placate Penny's fears, and she smiled back as she took a seat near the window.
"He wasn't too happy about the incident. Unfortunately, while I would love to help, I have not seen any of those men or the girl with the umbrella since then."
"Then why couldn't you tell us what had happened?" Weiss had taken to watching the window, wondering who was Penny running from. The only one that she could see, though, was General Ironwood showing off the latest enhancements to their Atlesian Knights, his voice amplified over the speakers until it could be heard even beyond the window. Students and visiting civilians both were already beginning to gather around. She certainly didn't look rich, but perhaps she had bodyguards of her own looking for her, anyway? Perhaps if she was a politician's daughter...
Penny hesitated. "I was... asked not to talk to you, anymore. Or Ruby, or Yang... anybody, really."
"Your father," Weiss said, crinkling her nose in disdain and looking back at Penny, "certainly does worry, doesn't he?" She couldn't hide the hint of concern about just how controlling her father really sounded. All too similar to her own.
"Oh, no, it wasn't my father..." Penny trailed off and, with a sigh, glanced away. Weiss followed her gaze back out of the window. She was staring right at General Ironwood, showing off his new autonomous Knight-200s and his battlesuit, the Paladin, to the citizens of Vale. 'Juggernaut' was perhaps a more apt term. Ironwood claimed that the Atlesian Knight-200s were less frightening than their predecessors, but the Paladin certainly more than made up for them. Standing 12 feet tall and almost just as wide, it had no neck to speak of, instead having a giant, insectoid head mounted onto the torso. Its arms were two gigantic cannons, and its smooth, exoskeleton-esque structure was held up by two bulbous legs thicker than trees. It was a metal monster.
And according to Ironwood, her company had helped create it. She grimaced at the name.
"Weiss, I think we should leave..." Penny called with a hint of warning in her tone, her attention now drawn to something else entirely.
Unfortunately, the mention of her company was just enough of a nudge to push reality back to the forefront of Weiss' mind. Even Ironwood's promoting of the Paladin fell on deaf ears for Weiss now, and her eyes gazed past him and his creation entirely. She was abruptly pulled out of her thoughts when Penny jumped to her feet, just in time to see what Penny was worried about: two soldiers were pointing in their direction.
Penny took off just as they started jogging to the library.
"Wait, Penny, where are you—" Weiss gave up trying to get an answer with an aggravated huff and took off after Penny. To her surprise and chagrin both, however, even in the tight spaces between the bookshelves, Penny was far and away faster than her. Zipping past patrons and up flights of stairs, the gap between Penny and Weiss only shortened when the panicking girl would stop and try to think of somewhere to go. Finally, Weiss had her cornered on a walkway on the highest floor. Curtains swayed next to open windows letting in the late summer air.
"Enough is enough!" Weiss shouted. "Just who are you? Are you with General Ironwood? Why are there soldiers chasing you? What is happening!" She advanced on Penny, frustration and genuine worry warping her tone into a fierce storm.
Penny stumbled back, eyes darting from her to the floors below where confused students gladly pointed out to the nice Atlesian soldiers where she'd went. Her breathing grew quick, and Weiss' words fell on deaf ears as she continued to step backwards without looking. Unheard words became unheard warnings. By the time Weiss lunged for Penny, it was too late.
She'd tumbled right through the open window, and plummeted down four stories to the hard ground. Weiss gasped and rushed over to where she'd fallen from: did she even have the focus to activate her aura?
Apparently so, she thought, because by the time her eyes found Penny, she was pushing herself up from the cracked pavement and running off again. Weiss' shoulders slumped in shock. Penny did not look so much as fazed by the impact. Even with aura, that would have been bizarre: you still felt pain through it, after all. A sloppy fall like that would've been enough to daze even Yang. The heiress narrowed her eyes: it was time to get to the bottom of this. If she couldn't outrun Penny, she'd just have to outsmart her, instead!
The two Atlesian soldiers got up the stairs just in time to see the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company casually hop from the window.
Oooh, she knew she should've kept the pamphlet, Penny thought: it had a map on it! Penny jogged from street to street, pathway to pathway. She wasn't a fool: she knew that in the end, unless she wanted to go for an approximately 4.28 mile jog along an open road, Beacon had only one easy way in or out, and that was the docks. It didn't mean she couldn't at least try to lose her pursuers. Maybe they'd just think she was lost and was panicking? Yes! That was a great story, and she was sticking to it—eep!
Penny spun around an alleyway corner only to have her feet locked in place. She glanced down: a flickering, black glyph was turning on the ground beneath her. She looked up: Weiss stood right before her, arms crossed and an agitated look on her face. Penny tried to turn away, but the glyph only grew larger, trapping her. There was nowhere left to run. Penny shoved her arms behind her back.
"Answers," Weiss demanded.
"I-I'm fine, Weiss! Hic! I just don't want to talk about it! Hic!" Penny whimpered and wriggled against the glyph until, with a pained look, Weiss let her free.
"Can't you just let me help you? You helped me, didn't you?"
"No, no, no no, this is different, you... you wouldn't understand," she tried to insist, glancing routinely over her shoulder and keeping her arms behind her back.
"At least let me try, then!" With a weak smile, Weiss stepped closer and tried to put the same disarming cheer in her voice as her leader always did. "I'm all ears!"
Penny twitched in place, her lip quivering as her friends' words reminded her not just of their 'true' meeting, but of the fact that she'd, in the end, listened to Weiss' problems in her time of dire need, just as she wanted to do for her. Would it really be so bad for her to return the favor?
Penny brought her gaze to meet Weiss' own. "We're friends, right? Always?"
"Always."
Taking a deep breath, the girl shakily brought her arms out from behind her back. Her sleeves were scuffed and torn from her fall, but Weiss' eyes were not drawn to the tears in her clothes. No, her ice-blue gaze was locked onto the tears in her skin, revealing flexible sheets of metal and dimly glowing, mint-green light.
"Weiss," Penny tentatively began, "I'm... not a real girl."
"Any luck?" Yang leaned over Ruby's shoulder to watch her Scroll. Just great, another missed call to Weiss. She'd texted her, like, five times, too! Nothing!
Ruby groaned and snapped the device shut. "Nope, no dice! I wonder where she ran off to," she wondered aloud as she slipped it back into her pocket and slumped against the wall of their training room.
"Maybe back to one of her fancy hotels?" Yang offered.
"I don't think she'd go that far. You don't think she ran off again, do you?"
"Well, she certainly isn't back in our room," came a dry reply from Adam as he strode back in from their dorm. He did well hiding the worry beginning to grow within him. "I don't like this. Not one bit."
"You don't think she got to her, do you?" Yang inquired with a low voice and cracked her knuckles. She didn't care if they weren't supposed to interfere with her openly, if that woman went after her team, heads were gonna roll!
"Nah, Weiss'll be fine!" Optimistic as sever, Ruby tried to wave it off. "She's probably just... I don't know, pouting somewhere!"
"Doubtful," Adam disagreed. "I don't see Weiss doing that."
Yang snorted and playfully jabbed Adam's side before joking, "Have you met Weiss? She's totally pouting."
Adam only rolled his eyes and turned away to leave. "All the more reason to follow, then: we all know what happened last time she stormed off." And with that, he jogged off, barely even giving Ruby and Yang a chance to respond.
"I swear, she better have a good reason for spooking us like this!" the blonde grumbled.
"Wha..." Weiss' thoughts were a jumbled mess. Knowing her team was being taught to battle and slay man before even their second year was bad. Finding out that her father was coming to Beacon, and that merely being grounded had turned into disinheritance hanging above her head like a sword held by a single hair was worse. But this? This made the rest of her problems seem absolutely minuscule in comparison.
After all, how many problems in her life went against literally everything she knew to be true? Against the very concept of aura and souls?
How many problems compared to your friend apparently being a robot?
Oh, right, she was one of the few people standing in the way of some kingdom-threatening conspiracy involving the entire underworld. Penny was trying to explain something to her, but Penny not even being real was the straw that broke the camel's back: the mere comparison to the rest of the day sent the weight of Weiss' problems crashing down onto her all at once and wow the ground was getting awfully close right about now—
Weiss fainted.
"W-Weiss? Weiss! Are you okay?" Penny dropped to her knees and shook Weiss, but to no avail: she was out like a light. "Oooh, I knew this would happen!" She hoped against hope that Weiss, of all people, would understand her. Maybe she was just really surprised?
The tussling of her optimism and fears was abruptly cut off by the rough shouts of men coming down the alleyway. She took a sharp breath and jumped to her feet. Penny looked around: she couldn't just leave Weiss lying there, especially with all of these mean guards after her! But if she was found with the heiress knocked out like this, it wouldn't just be her own father she'd need to worry about. Finally, her eyes fell upon the perfect solution: a trash bin!
"Sorry, Weiss..." Scooping Weiss up with no effort at all, she unceremoniously kicked the lid off, dumped Weiss in and slammed the lid back down. She barely even had time to sigh before the two guards rounded the corner, winded and more than a little upset. Putting on her best smile, Penny spun around and innocently waved to the two.
"Sal-u-tations, officers!"
The afternoon sun hung high in the sky over Beacon, and the remaining members of RWAY were in full panic. Weiss' disappearance had gone from a nuisance to a genuine worry more and more with every minute that passed. Adam shot across the rooftops without a care for anyone who saw, little more than a black and red blur racing above the streets. His Scroll rang only once before his hand snapped into his pocket and brought it to his ear.
"Ruby. Status?"
"I checked Beacon Docks and with the airship operators: no sign of Weiss, but she has to still be in Beacon somewhere! Sectors... three and four were cleared by Yang: no sign of her there, either!" Ruby had managed to set up basic sectors for the group to scan. At risk that this was an assault by Cinder and her crew, beyond a check to make sure she was alright, they decided not to bring Blake into this. Adam was in charge of watching over the CCT: it was a larger region, but his senses were far and away superior even without aura.
"I'll make another call and search for her Scroll in sector two. Converge on my location, we're running out of places to look." He hung up and came to a halt atop one of the many buildings under the CCT's grand shadow. Adam sat down and pulled the bowler hat from his head with a snarl. If Cinder left even a single scratch on Weiss, he would steal Blake away and turn this entire damned campus into a warzone. Adam knew more than any the difference between idle threats and actually acting upon them: they could dance around and posture all they wish, but only when a threat was made good did the others truly mean anything.
And if she crossed that line? If she made good on those threats...
Rage had him hurl his hat away, rationality coming all too late for him to snatch it back before it tumbled into the alley below. Growling, Adam flashed down and grabbed it before it even hit the ground. Think! Concentrate! Confusion and overreaction would be exactly what that woman would want. With a sigh, he withdrew his Scroll and called Weiss' own, again. If she were kidnapped in the alleyways, there would be a thin chance that her Scroll would have been left behind on the grounds—
Buzz
Or in the trashcan. A vicious smirk crossed Adam's face as he casually flicked the lid off... and was met with Weiss blearily waking up inside, looking certainly dirty but otherwise completely unharmed.
Emerald met ice-blue.
"... Dare I ask how you got in here?"
It took a while to get RWAY off of her back and an awful lot longer from teasing her relentlessly for managing to wind up in a trashcan with supposedly no memory of the events beforehand—not that they'd ever believe the truth—but Weiss eventually settled back into normalcy. In truth, she had no plans to tell her team much of anything that happened, friends or not. While Ruby might not mind much at the news her father was showing up, Yang would undoubtedly start thinking of embarrassing ways to get back at him if she figured out how sour the family life truly was.
And Adam... look, she trusted him! It wasn't like she expected him to go on a murderous rampage or assassinate her father, but was it really so wrong to not dangle the White Fang's dream in front of one of its former leaders?
Her mind decided not to even grace that with an answer, especially considering he was sitting right across from her with the team almost two weeks after that little incident—two weeks without so much as a glimpse of Penny, Weiss sadly reminded herself—to discuss how to stop Cinder in their dorm. At least, that was supposed to be what their meeting was about. Instead...
"Holy smokes! The dance is in, like, two weeks!" Ruby suddenly shouted in the middle of their scheming and, just like that, all hope of returning the conversation to its original topic died.
"Two?! I still need to get a date!" Yang exclaimed in shock as she sprung up from her bed.
"We need dresses!"
"You need to focus," Adam sharply cut in. "Let us not forget that Cinder will not wait for some silly dance to pass before making her move. If anything, that is when we will be the most vulnerable."
"Aw come on, Adam, we gotta live a little!" Yang whined.
"We'll be living a lot less if Cinder gets her way."
Weiss sighed before raising her hand to get their attention. "I agree with Ruby and Yang: if we do not take the time to relax, we will simply run ourselves ragged, and then where will we be?"
Adam narrowed his eyes. "Is this about me agreeing on bunk beds?"
"W-what? No! This is a completely valid agreement, not contradicting for contradiction's sake! Honestly, do I really look like the kind of person who would stoop to such petty means of striking back?"
The room was silent.
"... We've been studying these Dust robbery chains for the past two weeks!" Yang complained over Weiss' scoff at just being ignored.
"This may be true," Adam started.
"And we've all been at the top of the sparring charts for the past month even without all of this additional training," Weiss helpfully added.
"Yes, however—"
"Not to mention all that vigilante stuff you've been dragging me on," Ruby grumbled.
"Now hold on, that was entirely of your own accord—"
"Vigilante stuff? What vigilante stuff?" Weiss questioned.
"If I could just get a word in—"
"What? I'm pretty sure we told you, Weiss: the whole 'Ace of Spades, Queen of Hearts' thing?" Yang chimed.
"Girls—"
"Hey, this dynamic duo is 'Blackjack'!" Ruby beamed with pride, even if it was wearing her out, recently.
"Would you all just—"
"How am I the last person to know about this?! I thought we were best friends!" Weiss turned her attention to Adam. "And I thought you were my partner!" Being addressed directly by Weiss as if he was not clearly trying to speak was the last straw.
"Be SILENT!" Adam shouted, and finally got his wish. He ran a hand through his hair and let out a deep sigh, enjoying that brief, wondrous silence before continuing. "You win. Go to the dance. Have fun." He got up to his feet. "I will handle the work if need be: you're all right, you need some rest." Grumbling under his breath and ignoring the protests against his departure, he grabbed Wilt and walked out of the room just to get some fresh air.
"What's the point of going if we all don't go?" Ruby mumbled under her breath, deflated.
A frown tugged at Weiss' lips: she completely agreed with Ruby, but she couldn't let them know that.
Yang, however, rubbed her chin, eyes boring into the door Adam let slam shut behind him. With a smirk, she proudly declared, "He's totally coming. I'm making sure of that!"
"Oh yes, I'm certain that the one thing that will get Adam to the dance is trying to beat him up. Again. Why don't you let me handle this: a little rationality and civility should do him good, for once!" Weiss crossed her arms and started walking off to the door, herself. Yang huffed and glanced around the room for any ideas to salvage her plan... until they fell on Ruby, still wearing her crimson cloak. She grinned wide: she had the perfect plan.
"Why don't we make this a group effort..."
