Ruby and the others currently sat at a big round table in a restaurant, quietly talking amongst themselves. The only ones not engaged whatsoever in the talk was Weiss and ruby (but mostly ruby) whom ignored it as she pushed her food around thinking about the picture she had found and the strange woman in her dreams. The biggest problem was the fact that they failed their mission and had disobeyed the council of remnant, ozpin himself was pissed that they had stayed out in the field rather than report it and let the professionals handle Cole. While Ruby denied it and everyone just followed along -although reluctantly- they all had a reason or two to go with her, but she didn't want them around.
Weiss wanted to know why Cole had any reason hated her family, yang was still pissed that Cole fought them all, regardless that he was under the impression that they were at fault for something, Blake went with because of a sense of honor with her friends, so she felt she didn't have a choice, jaune and his team wanted retribution after the beating half of them went through and jaune wanted Cole to beg for mercy and to pay for throwing him around like a rag doll, although Cole at one point had been a friend of theirs, almost a family member at a possible time if Cole hadn't felt betrayed. a small part of her felt they'd deserved the beating.
"-look at the bigger picture! I want to believe that Cole is 'innocent' but he nearly hospitalized you all and brutalized a number of students, two teachers, and he's avoided you all this long without being caught, from what his file said he has been known to have had aggressive tendencies especially with people he didn't care for-" Qrow said before drinking from his flask.
Jaune interrupted angrily "how has this guy gotten so good with the life he lived" nora -for the first time- smacked him in the head and replied "rethink your question dumbass" obviously upset with his obliviousness and deep-seeded idiocy; how he was still this dumb in three years surprised her all the more.
Hoping for an answer, everyone looked at Ruby for a reaction to what she'd do, and usually, she would fight back, but she gave nothing to show what she was thinking let alone paying much attention to what they were saying. "I know you want me to return to beacon with you all….but I can't" she looked up at everyone then stopped on Qrow and added "I have to get to Cole and help him; mistakes are forgivable and I intend to do what I can to help him."
Weiss strode towards her to grab her hood, "ruby wai-"
"You can tell ozpin I'm not coming back" she looked them over and saw shocked and confused faces, "see ya later guys" she said before she stood up and disappeared through a window in a flurry of rose petals with everyone yelling "Ruby don't!" Qrow went after her in his bird form but soon realized she was already long gone watching her form disappear into the city Qrow sighed and mumbled out, "damn it, I had one job!" flying above the trees he caught a glimpse of her pedals and gave chase again. He had a bad feeling that she had just fallen hard for a man who almost reminded him of his younger self pre-beacon, and Ruby was just like her mother. "Why can't history take a break and stop repeating itself!?" he thought, circling back angrily.
Just before everybody was about to go after her,
everyone's phone went off and flashed 'emergency'. But no one made a move to answer it.
"Soooo, anybody going to get that or what?" yang asked, after a few more moments they heard an exasperated voice. "Oh for fuck' sake" jaune said as he opened his phone.
"Team RWBY and team JNPR, your mission has been called off by me and the council, I'm labeling this as a direct order to return to beacon, or you'll be expelled and put under house arrest for the rest of the year-"
"headmaster please don't call us in yet, Ruby is out there somewhere, and we need to-" yang said anxiously interrupting him only for Goodwitch to come in.
"We knew she'd do that ms.Xiao long, that's why we sent Qrow in the first place; to get you all back here and to deter you all from leaving. If she's not with you, then she's now a missing huntress-in-training….unless she left voluntarily then she'll be labeled as a deserter and a criminal" taking a breath he sighed pinching the bridge of her nose "look, every headmaster was told by the council of remnant to bring all of our students in the field back to their respective schools, we all need to give the professional hunters space to hunt down Cole and the others that helped him escape, we don't have a say in this any more than you, so come back to beacon and report what you have…and we mean all of it."
Their phones went black bringing an end to the call and just as it did a bullhead set down outside, both teams got in the large craft with heavy hearts.
They all sat down to rest their bodies and when Cardin noticed what was going on he nudged jaune and sat down next to him with a soft grin at the blonde, "sorry jaune, about your mission I mean, we were picked up too so don't get all mopey on us" he looked up and saw jaune staring at the 'no signal' blinking under Ruby's caller ID, "it's okay jaune, they'll bring her home safe"
"It's not that I'm worried about Cardin" he replied pocketing his scroll.
"Then what is it about, that foster guy they're after?" he asked, making jaune raise his head.
"What? no just that- look it's really complicated right now, people are going missing, Grimm are increasing in droves, and now ruby's gone. We have nothing to show for all our time out there, except a dead end." jaune put his hands over his eyes, groaning in frustration.
"The fact that you tracked him all the way to Mistral is amazing, especially when we all thought he disappeared in the village of scion." Cardin said clapping jaune on the shoulder, "you're the only ones who got this far, but we should leave this to real hunters and huntresses." they all froze when yang screamed out in anger and punched the wall considerably denting it, she looked right at jaune and stormed over to him shoving Pyrrha and cocoa aside.
"That's a load of bullshit, and you know it" she stood over him and grabbed his chest piece slamming him against the wall "you're the leader jaune, you were responsible for tracking Cole, for keeping my sister in line. SO, WHAT HAPPENED OUT THERE!?"
He was panicking, now more than ever jaune was-on the inside- terrified but tried desperately to shove it down "y-yang, what the hell is your deal all of a sudden!?"
Hearing his answer she slammed him against the wall again and growled, looking him dead in the eye and tightened her grip on him "that's not good enough arc, Ruby disappeared because you didn't listen to me; Cole tried to kill Ruby once I won't let him do it again!"
Gathering his courage he steeled his heart and bore his own ire to hers "listen for a damn minute, I didn't know she'd just leave us, this is not my fault, and she's your leader and sister so don't put this on me"
He struggled to get out of her grip as she pulled her fist back and punched him in the corner of his mouth, and she would've done it again if not for Pyrrha , Ren, Blake, and nora to hold her at gun point.
"don't. Even. Think about it." Pyrrha said coldly as the put the barrel of her rifle to her head. "Let him go, yang." Nora ordered angrily yang glared at her but froze "please calm down, it's not worth it yang" Blake begged not wanting her friends to fight anymore. Yang sneered at them and let him go walking past Cardin shoving him aside toward the far window to the back of the bullhead glaring at the world passing by below.
"it's not her fault Blake, she's just worried for her safety" Weiss said reading an article on her phone.
"I'd be acting the same if one of my sisters went missing-OW!" jaune said, straightening up but got hit in the head by a soda can from said angry blonde.
'This is going to be a long ride' coco thought before going back to reading her magazine.
"Yang, you do realize that Cole didn't hurt Ruby, it wasn't remotely even his fault" Velvet said angrily confronting her in the corner of the ship.
"the nevermore gave her that scar, but Cole was the one that stopped her heart with his semblance!"
This arguing continued for a few more moments until yatsuhashi stepped in and pulled the two apart, scolding them for their behavior and lack of professionalism.
He'd intended to leave quiet, but fate was a sadist and possibly enjoyed his squirming and writhing in its ever tightening grip.
Moving as stealthily as he could with his armor, he mused happily that he had gotten what he wanted from haven academy and hoped he could publish this stuff anonymously, with personal things kept to himself, of course.
He stepped out the doors and was immediately ambushed by the mistralian military at the edge of the city with Ilia in aura dampening cuffs bruised and bloody.
It was obvious she'd fought and lost….so badly lost. His power cloaked over his body as he raised his arm to shoot a few of them but stopped when he heard ironwood walk through the soldiers smiling arrogantly "oh, so you came here after all….you should really stop and think this one through, you wouldn't want your friend to suffer for your actions would you?"
To punctuate this, a soldier grabbed her hair and pulled up and put a knife to her throat.
"We both know she doesn't care about me, so just leave her out of this you tin headed cuck-" cut off from his tangent by a weird net made of some kind of black rubber.
"Come on! This shit is just ridiculous" he said annoyed with himself "I got everything I needed to prove my innocence, let me assholes" Cole said trying and failing to escape the tangling net.
"How else are we supposed to have caught you" one soldier muttered went on for less than a minute before ironwood got close to him and dusted himself off smirking arrogantly. "You can toss that lightning around all day long kid, but it's a waste of time" Cole deadpanned and pointed a finger at one of his soldiers and tried firing at them, but as soon as he sparked the net absorbed the electricity and forced it down and into the ground.
"That net acts as a dampener and is made from military grade metals and strong rubber braids, and it's strong enough to hold a bridge's weight…its elasticity is unparalleled to any other." He boasted having two men drag him and Ilia into a van taking them away. "Im innocent you incompetent robo cunt I have the information right here" Cole said before the men picked him up and threw him into the back of the truck taking the thumb drive walking into his personal car while a guard angrily said "shut your mouth, or I'll freeze it closed demon"
"I'M HUMAN YOU JACKASS" Cole said defiantly, but quickly switched gears and scoffed "not like it matters, you people only care about is flexing your superiority over the rest of remnant." a smile crossed his face and he said "hey! I've got an idea, why don't you get your knee pads on, grab a stiff drink and gobble Ironwood's-" before he could've finished, the soldier grabbed frost dust and punched him in the cheek, activating the dust over his mouth.
"You're right kid, you're just a beast caught in a net" he said, tired of hearing Cole speak and turned to another soldier who was smoking a cigarette.
"Couldn't you have done that earlier?" the driver asked/complained.
While this was going down, Ruby had heard the commotion and went in to investigate. Pure luck was the only reason she'd found the guy they'd been looking for, so instead of rushing in, she felt it best to keep to the shadows and jumped out when their backs were turned.
"Don't worry, Cole, I'm coming for you" she said quietly.
Before knocking them both out, ruby made sure to keep them from hitting their heads too hard to the ground, seeing as she was already becoming a criminal to save a friend…odd how things come full circle.
Scoping out the area, she found stuffed the smaller one in a trunk, while the other was tied up and stuffed in an empty dust crystal trunk.
When she saw that she was at the wrong truck she cussed up a storm and followed the others through the forest and halfway in she ditched the truck and followed on foot.
She looked back and ran toward the truck to follow the one Cole hopefully had Cole in it, and hoped even harder she'd pull this off. "Dad's going to kill me" she huffed in her sprint.
When Qrow caught up with her, he watched her speed off after Cole and just before he continued to pursue her off to his left a woman with black smoke rising from her body standing next to a fading wendigo and mouthed "see you later" and sank into the shadows.
"Great, more rogue mercs wanting Cole for a bounty-" he thought before calling his bullhead in "it's Ross, I need to talk to- ozpin? Yeah… I'm on it…yeah, I got it! Yes, twenty minutes… I said I'll be there when I get there!" he sighed in annoyance and looked in Ruby's direction before running off into the forest towards his extraction point.
at first Qrow seemed to want to go after Ruby, but he needed to trust her for once, so he opened his phone and sent her a text that read: 'try to be careful kid'
She looked up and smiled watching a dusty black bird flutter its wings back to where she left and ran off to help Cole, atheist she would have if not for the girl she ran right into knocking them both down a hill into a ravine.
"Oh, I'm sorry miss, I didn't see you….there?"
"It's okay, I was just out…uh, jogging. Yeah, I was jogging to a river in the jungle district." The girl said, trying to hurriedly away.
Ruby immediately saw the lie, but decided to play dumb for the girl's self-esteem, so before she could bolt off Ruby grabbed her wrist and asked "can you show me the path you usually take, there's something I need to get"
"s-sure thing, it's just past this stretch of vines and trees, just watch your step" she said pushing small branches aside and screaming in dread internally.
Taking a look at the red clad girl she didn't look all that much of a problem, but with the way saunas and the rest of Mistral -hell, the entirety of remnant- was nowadays you couldn't tell an assassin apart from a civilian.
"How much further do you want me to-" she froze in place at what she saw the moment her attention was drawn ahead of her, stretching miles upon miles was a large base that -from her time with the white fang- she learned was transformed into a military base housing all four kingdom military forces and in the middle of it all was a large building the size of haven and beacon put together.
"S-sorry red, we m-must've taken a wrong t-turn" Ilia stuttered as she backed into a tree and fell to the ground shaking.
"It's not your fault" Ruby said walking towards the first group of soldiers she saw and jogged behind them hoping to sneak into the base, but unfortunately Ilia was too far into her shock to register Ruby's disappearing act and quickly took off running into the jungle only to run into a guard.
Without a word, the guard shot her in the chest with a tranq dart and with a sigh of discontent picked her up bridle style, "y'know, we both may deeply hate taking people prisoner, but this is still a job" she heard her partner say behind her.
"Yeah but it's not getting easier when she could've simply stumbled upon the place by accident" she replied, walking toward the entrance with nothing short of a bad mood radiating off her.
"Miss I'm sorry, but you can't enter with someone else's badge!" a guard said angrily at a small recruit with red tipped hair.
"it's okay Jaime, she's with me; losing your badge is humiliating y'know?"
"Yeah whatever, just keep her in check corporal, or I swear to gods-"
"just scan our badges and shut up, you keep doing this I'll have you washing the showers with your toothbrush" she said holding hers and her partner's out to the guard.
The girl blushed at her in embarrassment as her eyes met hers and followed quietly behind them.
The guard holding Ilia smiled at the rookie and said to her partner "take her to my room; food's in my footlocker and under my bed in a box, just don't touch the chips, gummies, and muffins-" she turned around and saw his eyes light up and added "no, not even the beer"
To which made him deflate and said, "got it" before ushering the redhead away with him.
Letting out a giggle, she pushed the button on the door to open it and walked in looking like she'd carried Ilia in dead.
"Accidental or purposeful?" the guard at the desk asked sarcastically.
"Oh ha ha, very funny, she was tranq-ed near the perimeter when she tried fleeing. Probably smart to do so- well until I shot her of course"
"Well honestly she could just be a civie that found this place while jogging" he said typing away in his computer.
"It's a shame too; imprisoned because of an accidental discovery" she said following him to a cell (technically it's a small luxurious room with a queen-sized bed, a TV, movies, video games, and a console to play both) and opened the door to have her lie Ilia down on the bed and locked the door.
"So who's paying her a visit when she wakes this time?" she asked, taking her ID card from the front desk.
"Probably the protocol a.i, just hopefully this one's not a problem like the others were"
"oh please, why don't you go through this shit and not react like the other guy did"
"hey shut up, he was tossing electricity around when he woke up; special containment cells exist for a reason, plus he's not a very calm individual"
She looked at him and scoffed with slight amusement, walking out towards her room where hopefully her partner and the girl were watching TV quietly or something.
Ruby and the guard currently sat on a small couch talking when her phone went off, "sorry, I gotta take this" she said, going into the bathroom as fast as her legs could move.
Ruby smirked at her and waved her off as she watched her leave the room, but just as fast she got up and went into the cooler opposite of her and grabbed a bottle of water, chugging the whole thing down and let out a small burp and tossed the bottle in the recycling bin.
"Excuse me; thank goodness they had water, my mouth was really dry"
"nice to see you two are getting along" a voice said from behind her and in doing so, she instinctively used her semblance to move away from the voice with a scream but ended up smashing in the wall, denting the drywall.
"Oh, gods, why'd you do that!?"
The guard smirked with a shrug, "because I'm the one that
brought you in; you definitely are pretty green in terms of training."
Sitting on a chair near the couch she patted the spot near her and pulled out a six-pack from the cooler "you aren't going to join me, or are you a stickler for alcohol?" They both gave her a look and nodded to each other
"Uhmm, I'd rather not" Ruby replied grabbing her cape nervously "m-my uncle was…an alcoholic, so I made a promise to not drink until I was at least in a relationship"
"Ah, I see, you don't trust someone you barely know, I gotcha. Well, I need to talk with you anyway so come sit…." She looked up and noticed her hesitance and added, "you can have my strawberry and chocolate chip cupcakes".
Ruby looked up and immediately ran toward the couch and jumped on the couch, "so what did you want to talk about?" she asked taking the imprisoned muffins and scarfed one down with a delicately quiet moan.
"I know why you're here, lieutenant…uh" she paused to read her name plate that read "brown?"
Looking down at her chest, Ruby went pale at the plate. Her mind went blank as she tried coming up with a story, but nothing came up.
"Sorry corporal, I was in the bathroom on a call. The guards that captured the lightning kid apparently broke his bindings and may have wanted someone to cackle at while he watched eight guards get their asses kicked"
Looking at Ruby then over to her partner, she sighed pinching the bridge of her nose and said "alyx?"
"Yeah augus?" alyx asked, turning her phone off.
"take a look at lieutenant brown and tell me what you see" she said grabbing a beer.
Alyx looked straight at Ruby and saw her anxiously gripping her cloak with immense stress written on her face brimming with tears. 'they're hurting him aren't they' she thought as her state got worse the longer she sat there.
"oh augus, c'mon you cant seriously think-" she stopped what she was saying due to a empty can hitting her in the head "sorry ma'am, wont happen again"
"it's not what you two think, im not disturbed by the electric guy or anything…its- uhmm its just that-" she stood up and began to take her uniform off and took out contacts from her eyes revealing her real eye color and let out a big breath and said "I know the guy personally and i…"
she froze mid sentence when alyx and augus sat her down sitting close to her "it's okay, we kinda figured it out already" alyx said putting her cloak over her shoulders.
"yeah, it was super obvious from the start why your here" augus said with a comforting pat on her back. "I think that prisoner is really cute too; gods his eyes are so gorgeous,
and that body Mmmmm he's like a block of beef and steel!"
I'm happy to be writing again and rekindle that flame to write again but I'm still doing this in two week intervals and to thank yall for being patient I made this one longer to give more to the story and I'm greatful no one seems angry I took a bit of time off.
Love yall for reading and I encourage you to leave your opinions on my reddit at:
H6pp1n355_in_misery.
If you have anything I could do better or just wanna talk hmu
