Qrow's scroll vibrates in his pocket. Finding some shade, he answers it and asks "Whaddaya need, Ozpin?"

The voice on the other end of the line is almost pleading. "Please tell me you're finished with your mission in Vacuo and are back in Vale."

Shrugging, Qrow says "Nope. Still trying to find that pack of Anubites. You know how hard it is to track down Grimm in a desert."

"Sorry for bothering you then," Ozpin says abruptly. "Good luck with your hunt."

Qrow's voice turns concerned. "Oz, what happened?"

"Your niece's team and their sister team disobeyed orders and stowed away on a cargo ship. The sister team was investigating and fixing sabotage on outlying CCT relays, and found Merlot Industries markings and mutated Grimm. Instead of sending out a full Hunter team to continue the investigation, I sent team RWBY alongside team JNPR to find out more. They found a cargo ship being loaded, and decided the appropriate reaction was to stow away against my orders."

Chuckling, Qrow says "I have to admit, Oz, I'd do the same thing. You're training Huntsmen, not soldiers. They'll disobey orders if they think it a better option."

"I was going to ask you to assemble a relief team, or be the relief team yourself. They're currently off of the CCT network, and I have no clue where they went."

Qrow shakes his head. "All the huntsmen in Vale I'd trust with the job are out on their own jobs right now. As much as it pains me to say it, they're on their own."

"I'll find something," Ozpin promises before he hangs up.

"Operator, Ozpin is coming down the elevator. May I recommend SHOOTING HIM making ready?"

"Need to fake not knowing that he's coming, Ordis," the Operator says as she tightens a bolt down. "I'll maintain security."

The elevator door dings, and the Operator affects surprise by dropping the wrench as she spins and grabs for the Corinth, snapping out "Tyl Regor!" as soon as the shotgun is lined up with Ozpin's face - this whole display taking barely a tenth of a second.

Ozpin, as ever, is unfazed. "Tubemen," he replies calmly. "Can you take a mission for me?"

Sliding the shotgun back over her shoulder, the Operator says "Probably, since Ruby's off on her own mission I'm working on stuff that only needs one person to do."

Ozpin nods. "Good. I need you ready on a moment's notice to find and reinforce teams RWBY and JNPR."

The Operator crosses her arms. "You'd be exposing me to more potential leakers."

"Team JNPR is close friends with team RWBY. I suspect they already believe something odd happened on the mission where team RWBY found you. Regardless, they are trustworthy, and will not spill the secret if I and you impress upon them the severity of the situation."

Unimpressed, the Operator asks "Why don't you just ask any of the other huntsmen?"

"The only ones I would trust with this mission are unavailable at this time for one reason or another."

"Fine. What's the briefing, and start from the beginning."

"A few weeks ago, we started noticing some of our CCT relays going down - relays that are used both to connect outlying settlements to the CCT system and also keep track of our early warning systems. We dispatched team JNPR to bring it back online, and discovered signs of sabotage on all of them."

"Who would sabotage an early warning system?" the Operator asks, glad to finally get an answer to the question that had been brought up previously.

"The sabotage all bore symbols of Merlot Industries, a company that was believed to be destroyed in the fall of Mountain Glenn. I sent team JNPR there, with the intent of having them enter the old Merlot Industries building to see what could be found there. Unfortunately, this didn't work out as planned. The building collapsed, and team JNPR was trapped underground for a good period, where they also found mutated Grimm."

"Mutated how, exactly?"

Pulling out sketches, Ozpin throws them over to the Operator. "They were covered in green growths, and exploded when they died. Rather violently. This was the only type encountered in the Glenn warrens, although they encountered mutated Beowulves earlier today that were reportedly as tough as a Beowulf Alpha to take down."

"What is Merlot industries?"

"The personal company of one Doctor Merlot. He claimed to be a researcher, but was more of a mad scientist than anything else. He was doing research on the Grimm at Mountain Glenn. Some escaped into the city and precipitated the fall, and then he disappeared. He was presumed dead."

"Let me guess, he wasn't?"

"It appears not, unless someone else decided to use his logo."

"So what's the situation?"

"With the knowledge that there were mutated Grimm in play, I sent team RWBY along with team JNPR as backup. I figured that with eight students, even in an area known to be fairly hot with Grimm they'd be fine. They were. However, they found a ship, and against my orders stowed away on it. They dropped off the CCT network half an hour ago."

"So, you need me to find them?"

"Yes and no. I need you ready as soon as they come back online to get to them and give them any help they need. They are heading into an unknown situation against an unknown opponent, and while those two teams are the top rated of their year, they are still only students."

"I can do that. I'll change Warframes and have Ordis warm up the Archwing."

Ren's eyes open from his meditation. "I think the boat has stopped."

"How can you tell? There aren't exactly any windows in this shipping container that someone thought was a great idea to sneak into against Ozpin's orders," snipes Weiss.

"Oh yeah, let's just let the ship that is our only lead on where the mutated Grimm are coming from disappear. That's a great idea, Ice Queen," Yang sarcastically responds.

Pyrrha interrupts, attempting to defuse the situation. "I felt the engine turn off, too. We should get ready."

"Yeah!" Nora exclaims, her massive silver hammer already in hand, "There could be anything out there!"

Jaune gulps nervously. "Guys, wait. Maybe we should make a plan before we go out there?" he questions.

Blake nods, looking at her scroll. "We don't have service in here. Unless this shipping container is lead-lined, our first step needs to be getting back into contact with Beacon."

Ruby steps forwards, looking serious as she attempts to take control of the situation. "Blake's right. If we get back into contact with Beacon, they can figure out where we are. If we don't, then every moment we spend here is risky, since we can't be extracted or get backup. So, to that effect, we should try to be as sneaky as possible until we get into contact with Beacon. That means Blake and Ren are on point, everyone else be as sneaky as possible and follow their instructions."

Blake smiles and nods, while Ren slightly inclines his head.

"Pyrrha, will you do the honors?" Ruby asks, gesturing to the doors of the shipping container.

"Of course." Pyrrha walks forwards to the door, placing her hand upon it. A black energy envelops the door as Pyrrha concentrates for a few seconds before the sound of unoiled metal creaking echoes inside the container as Pyrrha uses her semblance to open the door.

Pyrrha steps back, and Blake slips out the barely opened door, followed closely by Ren, who holds up his hand, telling the others to wait for a moment. A few minutes later, the two designated scouts return. "The deck is clear," Blake says, looking almost surprised. "Any crew must've already disembarked."

Ruby nods. "Any idea where we are?"

Ren shrugs. "In a harbor. The dock is professionally made. It's cooler than it was back in Forever Fall, and it seems to be open ocean to the north. Maybe we went north?"

Weiss scowls. "The sun hasn't even started rising yet, of course it's colder than it was in midafternoon at Forever Fall."

Ruby pulls out her scroll to look at the saved map she has. She scowls before putting it away. "There's so many bays in the north side of Vale that that's unhelpful. We were in here for twelve hours, we could be anywhere from 300 to 550 kilometers from that dock at Forever Fall. There's six of them just on the north coast of Vale that it could be, not counting anything on this island here," Ruby says pointing to an island that's part of the Grimmlands.

"Why are you even considering that, Ruby? The Grimmlands are overflowing with Grimm! Nothing human could survive for long!" Weiss exclaims.

Blake steps in. "From what we were taught, this island, while technically part of the Grimmlands, doesn't have the same density of Grimm as the Grimmlands proper. If you're doing things with Grimm, this is probably one of the best places to be."

Ruby smiles at Blake. "Thanks, Blake. I don't like it, but it makes sense. Did you guys spot anything that would get us into contact with Beacon?"

Ren nods. "There's a radio tower to the southeast, on top of a quite large hill. It's probably large enough to reach Beacon, or at least reach a relay."

Ruby half turns to the rest of the group. "All right people, that's our goal. Let's get moving, but stay as quiet as possible."

"Operator, Professor Ozpin just contacted me. He says that the students just got into contact, and he's triangulated their location to an island in the Grimmlands."

"Dammit. Tell Ozpin to get extra Dust and ammo for the students. I can take a good amount along on the archwing."

"He was already doing so, and will be down soon."

"Itzal's ready for speed burn, I take it?"

"Yes, Operator."

"Details of the course?"

"You'll be heading roughly 400 kilometers due north, mostly over open water. It will take you roughly 35 minutes to get there at full burn; the sun will be rising by then."

Sliding the carefully cared for Veldt onto her back and sliding two Vasto Primes onto her hip mounted maglocks, the Operator reaches for the final piece of weaponry - a massive hunk of gilded steel, a Redeemer Prime, which she slides onto the small of her back. Performing a quick bullet jump to ensure that the hardpoints are working, the Operator nods and heads to the airlock.

Stepping out, she sees the elevator open and yells "Tyl Regor!"

The answer of "Tubemen" is barely acknowledged as the Operator immediately starts addressing Ordis, requesting "Ordis, deploy the Itzal. I need to load up the storage compartments with the ammo and dust."

"Itzal deploying," Ordis says, as a pair of wings launches up and swoops down next to the Operator.

Ozpin steps forward, bag of ammunition and dust outstretched. "How fast can you get there?"

The Operator takes the bag, stowing it in the back mounted portion of the Itzal. "I can be over the area they called from in 35 minutes. What are the odds that they'll still be there?"

Ozpin shakes his head. "Slim. They were reportedly getting hit with a heavy Grimm swarm when contact was broken. I told them to continue to broadcast radio with their scrolls, so you should be able to find them once you get closer."

"Jaune! Nora! Yang! Pyrrha! There's a building back here, we're going to fall back into it!" Ruby yells to the group holding back the largest mass of Grimm as the students fall back. Dashing in front of Weiss with a flurry of rose petals and decapitating a beowulf, she yells "Freezerburn!"

Weiss, freed from the melee, jumps back and stabs the ground, channeling ice dust through her rapier and causing a massive pool of ice to form, before she leaps back as Yang backflips high, coming down and slamming the center with a fire-dust enhanced shot, creating a massive smokescreen. Teams RWBY and JNPR break contact into the fog cloud, falling back towards where Blake found a building that they can hopefully bottleneck the Grimm in.

Jaune's the last one in, Nora slamming the door behind him. Breathing hard, he gets out "Everyone OK?" in between gasps for breath as Ren leaves the foyer, heading deeper into the building.

Nobody speaks up from where they're sitting or lying on the floor. Everyone's winded and running low on aura. Even Pyrrha doesn't look like her usual poised self, taking notably deep breaths and rubbing her upper right arm in an effort to get feeling back into it.

"Ammo check," Ruby says after a few moments of silence and heavy breathing. "I've got two magazines of ammo left for Crescent Rose."

"I'm out of grenades," Nora supplies.

"I'm out of ice dust, and am running very low on other types," Weiss says after spinning the revolver cylinder on Myrtenaster and patting her pouches.

"Out of dust here too. Don't have much ammo left for Gambol either," says Blake.

"Two full braces of plain shells, one fire shell," Yang says.

"One and a half magazines for Milo," says Pyrrha. "But I don't run through as many as the rest of you, so I can husband that for a while."

"I'm nearly dry," says Ren as he comes from the back room. "More importantly, that's the only reasonable exit unless we want to blast out a wall," he says, pointing at the door which suddenly looks quite flimsy.

"There's no other exit?" Ruby asks to confirm.

"Do we have explosives?" Ren aks.

"No. We're out. Ruby, have you heard anything on the radio?" Jaune asks.

"Nope, but since we aren't connected to the tower we've only got a 5 kilometer range."

"We made contact with Ozpin at 6:30," Weiss says. "It's only 7:10 now. Even a fast mover transport won't be here for another 20 minutes, and that's if it was loaded up and ready to go right when we called Beacon."

"Are we even sure we're in the right place?" a worried Pyrhha asks. "We haven't seen any of the mutated Grimm yet."

An ursa roars just before the door rattles on its hinges. Everyone groans and begins standing up - the Grimm have figured out where they went.

Ruby asks the group "Do we hold here, or try to push out?"

Jaune inputs "I like holding here, the doorway is small enough that we can bottle them up."

Nora disagrees. "There's not enough room in here! I can barely swing Magnhild without worrying about hitting any of you!"

"There's no way out through the back. Like Weiss said, we have at least 20 minutes before we can expect any backup. We need to be able to keep moving," Ren says as the door rattles again, the ursa outside roaring in frustration.

"Jaune, Pyrrha, Yang?" Ruby asks, "Can you hold that doorway for 30 minutes with only minimal support from the rest of us?"

Yang shakes her head as the door shudders again. "If you asked me that half an hour ago, hell yes. Now I'm not sure I could do it for fifteen minutes, especially if I can't maneuver much."

Pyrrha nods, saying "I have the endurance to do it, but it would get very touch and go by the end of it. I'd much rather push out."

Jaune looks horrified. "No. But I don't know that I can push out, either."

"Right then, we're pushing out. Nora, Yang, you go first at the Ursa bashing down the door. Push it away to let us out - you don't need to kill it. Jaune, Pyrrha, you're out next. Weiss, save your dust attacks for high-priority targets only. Ren, Blake, we need to harry the Grimm and prevent them from focusing only on the main group. Everyone got it?" Ruby asks.

There's general sounds of affirmation, but nobody sounds excited - after all, they entered this building to attempt to cut down on the number of Grimm they'd be facing at once, and now all they've gotten out of it is a four minute break.

Everyone readies up as they wait for the next impact on the door, waiting several long seconds before it explodes inward and the plan is invalidated.

An Ursa Major barrels headfirst through the door. Yang and Nora try to follow the plan, leaping forward and attempting to push it back out, but fail to stop it, let alone reverse its direction, and Nora is sent flying by the backhanded swing of the Ursa's paw. Reaching the back of the room, it bashes it's shoulder into the wall as most of the students turn towards the largest threat. Ren, meanwhile, turns to go make sure that Nora is OK.

The fight against the Ursa Major is brutal and short, over in less than ten seconds. Blake leaps in front of it, dropping a shadow clone to distract it as Pyrrha and Jaune close in from the sides. Yang leaps through after the Ursa swipes through the shadow, punching it straight in the face as Pyrrha and Jaune get to work on the neck of the Ursa. It goes down quickly, but the damage has already been done. In the time it took the teams to defeat the Ursa Major, more than a dozen minor Grimm of various types have already entered the foyer, and more are pouring through with each passing second.

Ruby leaps forward, intercepting a pair of beowulves that were making a beeline for Ren and Nora. Quickly dealing with them and being relieved by Pyrrha and Blake, Ruby turns to assess the situation, asking Ren "How is she?"

Distractedly, Ren says "She's conscious, but her aura was broken from hitting the wall, and she's concussed. She's not in any shape to move herself right now - she's not even verbally responsive."

"Get her to a back corner, we'll hold here for as long as we can," Ruby says, laying a comforting hand on Ren's shoulder. Turning and raising her voice - and Crescent Rose - she yells "Nora's down, we need to protect her until her aura's back up!"

There's no sounds of acknowledgement, although Jaune and Pyrrha do slip closer together to better cover the downed Nora. Spotting Weiss having trouble with an Alpha Beowulf, Ruby readies herself to dash over to help before a flash of black comes from seemingly nowhere, taking off a forelimb and allowing Weiss to press an attack. Ruby instead dashes to the other side, shoring up the flank where Yang is being pushed back badly.

The next two minutes are a mess of pitch black, bone white, and baleful orange eyes as the inexorable tide of Grimm slowly pushes the students back. The battle line is mostly holding, and Ren intercepts any Grimm that manage to slip through before they can reach Nora.

But with a bang and a flash of green, that changes. "EXPLODER!" Jaune yells as he stumbles backwards from the explosion, Pyrrha's thrown shield intercepting the claw of a beowulf aimed at him as he regains his footing.

Ruby bashes a beowulf in the head with the backside of Crescent Rose, stunning it and jumping up onto its head for a better look at the entrance. Her heart sinks as she flips back off - the tide of black and white now has a good amount of green. "THERE'S MORE EXPLODERS COMING IN!" she yells.

"Nora can't even stand. We won't be able to move her fast enough." Ren's voice is still calm somehow, despite the desperate situation.

Dodging underneath an Ursa paw, Yang yells "We might not have time, Ren!"

Before anyone else can say anything, a new voice comes in from Ruby's hip, the volume cutting over the combat. "Teams RWBY and JNPR, get clear of the center of the room. Backup inbound in five seconds."

The teams are surprised, falling back more from that than any actual plan even as they continue fighting.

And then there's a massive BOOM as part of the roof explodes inwards and something tan and golden falls through, making a three point landing on top of an unlucky beowulf. There's a moment of stillness as the students and Grimm try to figure out what just happened before the thing stands up, simultaneously drawing a pair of revolvers off of its hips, and fires off twelve shots into twelve different Grimm, before rolling to the side while reloading to dodge the explosion of a mutated creep.

The students rally, pushing forwards for the first time since they made the call to Ozpin, as the thing that dropped in continues making Grimm slurry out of everything that crosses in front of the barrels of its guns.

An Ursa comes charging in during a salvo of fire, and the thing doesn't even flinch. It throws one revolver high in the air as it grabs a mass of gilded steel off of its lower back, pointing it directly at the face of the bearlike creature before another earthshattering BOOM issues from it, sending the now disintegrating Grimm backflipping out the door. Replacing the weapon on the small of her back, the thing adroitly catches the falling pistol, dropping a nearby beowulf with a headshot before reloading.

The interior mostly clear, the thing leaps forward with a spin, exiting the building. The students inside hear the sound of gunfire from outside – a fast salvo of twelve shots, and then an endless drumroll that's slow at first, but quickly speeds up as the students finish off the last of the Grimm inside. Pushing out, they see the thing performing impossibly fast gun katas, leaving ghosts of itself where it was moments ago as a seemingly endless stream of bullets mows down the Grimm like so much wheat before the scythe.

It's no surprise when the remaining Grimm break and run - the Grimm may be mindlessly aggressive, but even they understand when a fight is lost. The thing calmly stops doing the gun kata - the guns themselves flipping back onto the tops of her arms - and pulls a gilded rifle off of its back, sniping away at the retreating Grimm, seemingly every shot hitting a target.

This finally gives team RWBY, Jaune, and Pyrrha a chance to look closer at the thing that rescued them. It's mostly the color of undyed leather, but bits and pieces of metal all over are golden, as are the spurs on its ankles, and green lights appear on parts as well. The rifle in its hands is gorgeous - a brassed barrel, with rosewood stock and furniture, inlaid with golden patterns. Glancing down, Pyrrha's face goes as red as her hair as she realizes that the thing in front of her is most definitely female, given the shape of the butt that is not covered at all by the chaps the thing seems to have growing out of her hips.

Team RWBY realizes that this must be another, as yet unseen, Warframe of the Operator as she turns to them, reloading the rifle. "Where are the other two?" the Operator asks from behind the bandanna-like thing covering her face.

"Uh, they're inside?" Jaune responds, questioningly.

"Are they injured?"

Ruby steps in, explaining "One of them took a nasty blow to the head after her aura was broken. The other one's her partner."

"All right," the Operator says, cowboy hatted head nodding, "I'll see what I can do. First, though, Ordis, please swoop the Itzal down so I can get the resupply going."

The students look at each other questioningly before hearing engines swooping in from above and a pair of wings flies in, stopping in front of the Operator. "Unlocking storage compartments. Please access for resupply," a cheerful voice says as some parts on the wings open up, revealing a massive stash of ammunition and Dust.

As the students gratefully restock their consumables, the Operator heads inside.

'That one exploder that I let hit me as I was spooling up the Peacemakers actually did a fair amount of damage,' the Operator thinks as she walks through the splintered doorway. 'I need to kill them at range if at all possible. A single one isn't that threatening, but a group of them could severely damage the Warframe. It's probably a good thing I didn't take Atlas - close combat with those things is asking for problems. At least with volatile runners they don't explode if you kill them with melee weapons.'

Entering the foyer, she sees the green coated male crouched over a much shorter white-dressed female. Realizing that the green coated one hasn't seen her enter, she politely stops walking silently to alert him that she's approaching.

He glances back at her first non-silent step, suspicious - 'no, not suspicious, the injured girl is his partner, he's being protective' - of the thing approaching them. Crouching down next to him, the Operator asks "What happened to her?"

"Introductions first. Who are you?"

'Cancel that, definitely suspicious of me,' the Operator thinks with amusement. "I'm the backup Ozpin sent. I'm an alien from outer space. Call me the Operator."

The male looks even less amused than previously. "You're an alien."

"Yep! She's an alien!" Yang calls from the doorway. "She also brought us some ammo, so come get it!"

"I'm not leaving Nora alone," the male says.

"I won't hurt her. I need to know what injuries she's got in order to treat them," the Operator calmly tries to explain.

"You drop in literally through the roof, claim to be an alien who was sent by Ozpin to be our backup, and now you want me to just let you do things to my partner. I don't trust you."

Ruby steps inside, walking over. "Ren, she's a friend. Let her help."

The Operator nods. "I want to get her back on her feet quickly, if for no other reason than we still have a mission that needs completion and splitting the group is a bad idea."

Ren is silent, trying to stare where the eyes should be on a human. The Operator holds the stare for a moment, before having an idea. Standing up and breaking the stare, she takes a few steps back before stepping out of the Warframe. Ren's eyes widen in shock as he's suddenly staring at someone who looks to be a bit younger than him.

Plucking a box off of her hip and holding it to her mouth, she speaks into it, saying "Please, let me help. We need her back on her feet," looking Ren in the eye. "There's still a mission to complete."

After a few moments of silence, Ren slowly nods. "What are you going to do?" he asks.

"That depends. What's the situation?"

"She's conscious, but barely responsive. Heavily concussed." The Operator winces at that. "I did some probing around her ribcage and major bones and didn't find anything outright broken, but that doesn't mean it's not cracked."

"Badly concussed isn't good. Even where I'm from, the best I can do is get her back up on her feet for either 24 hours or until the next time she goes to sleep. The problem is, that's a one-time per month shot, and it could make the recovery worse."

Ren shakes his head, even as Nora groans on the ground. "What do you mean by worse?"

"It differs from person to person. Some people take twice as long to recover. Some, the symptoms as they recover are much worse. Some aren't affected adversely at all. It was designed as a way to get soldiers up on their feet again and give them a chance to get off the field and away from danger, not as a civilian treatment. On the other hand, it's never been used on someone with Aura. Aura might be able to treat the damage that's being suppressed while the temporary fix works. As a matter of fact, that's probably why her aura hasn't come back up yet - it's trying to fix the damage that caused the concussion."

Ren looks down for a few moments, completely silent. It stretches on until he looks up once more and says "Do it."

"Alright. One moment," the Operator says, stepping back and disapparating into a cloud of bright green energy that rejoins her Warframe and walking out the door, returning a second later with a small pen. "It'll take about fifteen seconds to kick in. I'd suggest pulling that hammer away now and stepping back, she's liable to think the fight is still going on and might be violent." Yang picks up the hammer, stepping back a few steps as the Operator crouches down and presses the pen to the neck of Nora, before pulling the pen away and swiftly making her own distance.

There's a long wait, seemingly longer than the stated fifteen seconds as Nora gradually stops moaning before bolting upright and leaping fowards, making a swinging motion with a hammer that isn't there before she stumbles to a stop, realizing the total lack of Grimm. "Um, guys? Where's all the Grimm?" she asks, confused. Looking around, she asks "And who's that?"

"I'm your backup. Just call me the Operator or Tenno, everyone else does," the Operator says.

Ren steps in. "How are you feeling Nora?"

"Well, my aura isn't back up yet, but it's getting there, but my back's pretty sore. I guess that Ursa hit me pretty hard, huh?"

"You had a major concussion," the Operator says. "I gave you some medicine to delay the symptoms, but it puts us on a ticking timer. In 24 hours or the next time you go to sleep, the symptoms will probably return."

"Oh," Nora says, deflating. "Well, thank you?" she says, questioningly.

"There's more grenades for you in the floating thing outside," the Operator says.

Nora perks right back up. "Ooh, more explosions! Just what I always wanted! Yang, gimme Magnhild!"

With a smile on her face at seeing Nora back to her normal energetic self, Yang hands it over, handle first.

Looking over at Jaune and Pyrrha, who just entered the room, the Operator says "We'll take a fifteen minute break here to let you recharge your auras and catch your breath. Ask any questions that you have now. Once we're back on the move, we need to keep our heads on swivels."

A door explodes inwards as teams RWBY, JNPR, and the Operator enter what appears to simply be a well-constructed shed that conceals a long stairway downward.

"How did you know this was here?" Pyrrha asks.

"Sensor suite on the archwing picked up this tunnel entrance on flyover. Couldn't penetrate deep enough to do any mapping, though," the Operator explains. "Weiss, do you still have that datamass?"

"Yes. I'm surprised that we haven't seen any Grimm, though," Weiss says, confused.

"Grimm have animal intelligence at the very least. They were soundly whooped and sent running, it'll take them a while to gin up their courage to try again," the Operator says, descending the stairway as a flashlight mounted on her chest flicks on, lighting the way ahead. The Veldt never once leaves high ready, aimed at the bottom of the stairwell some fifty feet away.

Continuing, the Operator says "Keep an eye out for any terminals. If I can get a map of this place, we can cut down the amount of time we're here." Exiting the bottom of the stairwell, the Operator performs a quick sweep of the room - 'it's massive. Why is it so tall? And why are the doors so big?' - with the muzzle of the Veldt.

"Well, we-" the voice over the intercom is cut off by the bang of the Veldt as the speaker explodes.

"So much for stealth," Blake observes.

"Itchy trigger finger," the Operator says by way of explanation. "We need to keep moving. This place must have security." The Operator moves through the door directly opposite of the entrance, rifle twitching to cover the two unsecured doorways in the new room.

"That was certainly… Impolite," a voice says from the speaker mounted in the corner. The Operator's aim snaps to it, but she restrains herself from shooting this one as well. "Uninvited guests, destroying property that they're trespassing on? That's just… uncivilized. I must say, I was quite impressed by your survival of the Grimm horde, but now I think I'll just have security deal with you. After all, I can't have any interruptions here."

Loud clanking comes from both doorways. The Operator turns her head to look at the student teams, who are readying themselves for the battle and says "If I yell 'cover' and begin slowly progressing through gun katas, you need to keep things off of me. In the opening seconds of Peacemaker, I am very vulnerable. The ability is very powerful, but it does have its weaknesses."

Nervously, Jaune asks "Why don't you just open off with it when we're better able to cover you, then?"

"My energy reserves are not endless, and sending that Grimm horde running ate through a lot of them," the Operator admits, thinking to herself 'They've recovered, but there's no need to tell the students that.' Continuing out loud, she says "It sounds like more of them are coming from the front; I'll take that. You take whatever comes out of the right door."

Seeing movement in the shadowed hallway, the Operator starts taking shots with the Veldt. To her consternation, some of the shots that hit seem to be deflecting off at varying angles, despite aiming at roughly the same spot with each shot. One or two disappear into something and don't deflect, but there's no accompanying scream of pain as the bullet tears into flesh that she would expect if the target's aura had shattered.

As the Veldt trips on empty, she finally understands why the rooms and doorways are so big as the things come into the light. They're massive - 4 meter tall monstrosities of thickly armored robotics, each carrying an equally long bladed staff. Seeing the marks in the paint, she realizes that she was only hitting the thighs of the massive robot, with only one shot seemingly having gone into a hip joint - and that one isn't even slowed down by it.

And there are four of these walking tanks striding down the hall at a dead run, close enough that activating the Peacemaker would probably result in severe damage to the Mesa before it spools up.

'This could be… interesting.'

"Big robot!" yells Jaune, finally clearly seeing the thing coming down the hallway.

"Yup! Two of them!" Yang confirms.

"Jaune, you and JNPR take one, RWBY will take the other." Ruby says calmly. "You want first or second?"

"Uh -" Jaune dithers for a moment.

"The second one," Pyrrha supplies.

"Yeah, the second one," Jaune confirms.

At that moment, the first robot bursts into the room, taking a swing at Yang with the bladed staff. Yang calmly deflects it off of her gauntlets, before shooting Celica at the robot's face to keep its attention on her as she falls back into the room, deflecting more strikes before hearing a call of "Ladybug!" from her sister.

A flash of red petals and a streak of black come in from two different sides behind the robot - the streak of black going for the ankles and the red petals going for the head. Blake uses Gambol - no longer tied to her forearm - to tie up the legs, as Ruby uses Crescent Rose to wrap around the neck of the robot, pulling the trigger on a gravity-dust enhanced shot as soon as she feels contact.

The tripwire and the impulse of Ruby's maneuver sends the metal giant falling to the ground facefirst, even though Crescent Rose doesn't manage to tear off the head.

Yang solves that, leaping forwards with a yell as her sister rolls clear of the falling robot, Semblance flaring from the earlier deflected strikes as she punches, shattering the armored head of the robot and causing it to power down due to the massive feedback.

"Weiss, Yang, give it a few shots, make sure it stays down," Ruby instructs, looking over at the other team to see an almost disturbing sight as Nora swings her hammer and hits a knee of a robot square on, bending it backwards. Seeing that the other team has their robot well under control, she turns to look at the Operator.

A fourth robot has just entered the room, and as she watches, the Redeemer lashes out and claims the hand of the first robot even as the Operator leaps over the swipe of a second, before somehow changing direction in midair and rolling away from another swipe, landing with Redeemer aimed perfectly at the torso of a third robot. Another earthshattering BOOM issues, and the robot's chest is shattered and it falls backwards into the fourth robot, allowing the Operator to focus on the unimpaired second.

She rolls under a strike and leaps high, pulling a revolver off her hip with her off-hand, wrapping her main arm around the neck of the robot in a pseudo-chokehold, using its mass to protect her from the first. Pushing her off hand under the armored collar of the robot as it struggles to grab onto her, she empties the revolver inside of the armored torso, causing a secondary explosion to blow off the chestplate and the robot to begin collapsing.

The Operator backflips off, stowing the now empty revolver while in the air, and slashes the Redeemer at one hip joint of the fourth robot. Unfortunately, it gets stuck most of the way through the joint. Ruby readies herself to jump forward and offer assistance, but another BOOM issues from the Redeemer, tearing the leg off before she rolls underneath the falling robot, coming up next to the handless first.

The robot takes a wild swing at her, but without the second hand the long staff is hard to control and the strike is easily jumped over. The operator uses this opportunity to hook the blade of the Redeemer over the armored codpiece before coring the handless robot with another BOOM.

Replacing the Redeemer on her back, the Operator turns to the last robot, still struggling on the floor, and dodges the stab of its staff. Drawing the loaded revolver, she stuffs the barrel down the chestplate before emptying the cylinder inside, doing enough damage that the robot shuts down entirely.

This entire display had taken maybe seven seconds.

The Operator turns to the students as she reloads the revolvers, saying "Stop gawping and start moving. This hallway. We have a new side objective. I want to capture the plans for those robots."

Teams RWBY and JNPR look at each other for a few seconds before Blake finally asks the obvious question. "Why?"

"These robots are his security system. He's apparently been holed up in the Grimmlands for a while, and these have managed to hold off all the Grimm," the Operator says, reloading the Veldt. "Could Atlesian Knights do that?"

The teams look at Weiss, who responds "Not without significant losses. But Knights are made to be expendable."

Moving down the hallway at a jog, Veldt at high ready, the Operator calls over her shoulder "Everything in combat is expendable, especially the soldiers. Don't forget the datamass."

The teams run after the Operator, who does slow down somewhat to allow them to catch up. As they approach the light at the end of the hallway, the Operator stops, saying "I'll breach and draw any fire, you break in after five seconds have passed." Without waiting for any acknowledgement, she leaps forward in a massive bound, diving headfirst into the room and rolling, quickly spinning around inside and performing a threat assessment. "Room clear, move in. Bring up the datamass, we have a terminal."

As the teams enter, they see the Operator already impatiently looking over the terminal. Without looking back, she holds her hand out and gestures for the datamass. Weiss steps forward and hands it over, and the Operator reaches under the console and slides it in.

There's a few moments of silence before the Operator says "Five minutes to finish the hack. The map was easily accessed, I'll upload that to your scrolls now. We're moving out after that."

The Operator maintains her watch as the students all pull out their scrolls. "What's that big room there?" asks Nora.

"There's no labels on the map at all. How do we know where to go?" asks Jaune.

"Better an unlabeled map than no map," the Operator says.

Privately, the Operator asks Ordis "You got everything?"

"There is some encrypted data that appears to be research logs, given the timing and dating."

"Break the encryption and give me the high-level."

"Breaking. One moment. IT'S ALL VID all of the logs are video logs, Operator. It will take me some time to collate the data."

"Estimate?"

"Two hours."

"We don't have enough time to wait for that. What about the robots and the cameras?"

"The security system is on another network that is airgapped, and there are no transmissions being sent to the robots that I can disrupt. As best I can tell, these robots have no over the air receivers. THAT MEANS I CAN'T HACK THEM - I can't hack them without physical access."

"Any blueprints?"

"Partials. He tried to delete it at some point in the past, but didn't overwrite the data. I've been able to reconstruct 95% of the original blueprint, and the remaining 5% should be easy enough to figure out from there."

"Good. Feed me any more data you find, and give me waypoints to any points of interest. Prioritize locating any escape routes, the control center, and laboratories, in that order."

"There is one bullhead hangar, and there's an experimentation center in the big room. I haven't located the control center yet."

"Waypoint the bullhead hangar. We'll go there as soon as the five minutes is up."