The room was slightly dim, and there was a plate of cookies in front of us. Correction: there was a plate of cookies in front of us. Now it was just a plate. The cookies had been devoured by Ruby.

I didn't like the tense atmosphere in this room. Neither Ruby or I had spoken since being put in this room. We had been told to wait here before someone came to question us, but they still hadn't come yet.

The temptation to just walk out of the room to get away from the tense atmosphere was only halted by the fact that it might be some kind of criminal—or a lesser—offense to do so.

I heard the door creak, and I almost let out a sigh of relief.

The man who walked in was burly, with a trimmed beard and a decently long mustache. He was wearing detective clothes, and had a notebook in his hand.

Not Ozpin? Curious. Maybe he would come after the interrogation. There was a chance.

"Nice to meet you. My name is Morado, and I'll be asking you some questions."

"Hello. My name is Ruby," my sister introduced. Talking now?

"Rory," I said.

"Okay, now let's get right into this. What were you doing before the robbery? Rory?"

"We were at home. My mother asked me to get some groceries, and I brought my sister, Ruby, with me. While walking there, we saw a few faunus in masks"

"Okay." He wrote in his notebook. "I assume both of you are huntsmen and huntresses in training?"

Both Ruby and I answered 'yeah' at the same time.

"Okay…" He wrote in his notebook again. "Now, a few more questions—"

The questions persisted for a while. They were nothing too important, just asking about details about the battle and whatnot, but I was starting to get impatient. I assumed that something similar to Canon would happen here, and we would get admitted into Beacon, but the chances of that were looking low.

"Okay, thank you for answering all the questions. You may leave now."

"Okay," I said as I got off the chair. I walked out of the room, Ruby following behind me, while rubbing my forehead.

Nothing happened. It was expected to a certain extent, but that didn't make it any more disappointing. It was just a normal interrogation, unlike Canon. Maybe it had to do with the fact that Glynda Goodwitch was there at the scene during the Canon fight?

It was fine though, I had another plan, after all. Before this, I was pretty certain that I wouldn't be getting into Beacon anyway, so I made another plan.

Granted, it was a lot rougher around the edges than my original Beacon plan, but I couldn't do anything about that. Sadly, I didn't have fate on my side, helping things like the early Beacon admission happen.

Shit, I really should have put more detail into that plan. While it was there, I hadn't put too much thought into it, pushing it back further and further. And now, it was only a month till Beacon would start, and I still hadn't concretely decided what my first moves were going to be.

Okay, first thing to do when I get home, sit down and come up with a better plan. It was necessary. With how dangerous what I was planning to do actually was, going in without a proper plan would be suicide.

"Hey. How'd it do?" Uncle Qrow asked, breaking me out of my thoughts. He was outside the building, waiting for us.

"Nothing special," I answered. "Just questions and whatnot."

"Good. If you got in trouble or some, I wouldn't hear the end of it from your parents. Even though I wasn't even involved," he said the last bit in a whisper.

"Great. So I hope you'll keep quiet about it?"

"Nope, sorry. Your parents will find out anyway, and the best route for me to take in this situation is to tell them as soon as possible."

I sighed.

"By the way," Qrow began. "Ruby, you're unusually quiet today. Usually you would be running your mouth about how you beat up those guys or something. You okay?"

"W-What," Ruby stuttered. She widened her eyes and shook her head, regaining her composure. "N-No, I'm fine. I was just thinking about it."

"Right, there were hostages. I heard you got them out safe. Good job you two."

Ruby flinched a bit.

"Thanks Uncle Qrow. Anyway, shouldn't we get going now? It's pretty late."

"Right! And we gotta tell your parents too, of course."

I groaned along with Ruby. It was going to be a long conversation.

"All right. Do you at least have a car here or something?"

"Yeah. I pulled one up while you were getting questioned."

"Good."

Qrow started walking and I followed him, Ruby behind me. He opened the door to a black, polished car. Different from the last one, I realized.

"Nice car. You got a new one?" I asked.

"Yeah, a beauty, ain't she? Bought it a few days ago. The old one was getting rusty."

"Nice."

I got into the backseat, and Qrow got behind the wheel. The trip was silent, with the occasional Qrow talking. He was probably confused by how quiet it was, considering how Ruby would always try to stri1Re a conversation during situations like this, but he kept quiet. Maybe he was trying to be considerate?

Around two minutes later, we reached home. Neither Ruby or I moved, even after Qrow got out of the car.

"All right, come on now," Qrow said, urging us to get out of the car.

"Sorry, I'm just a bit tired. Let me stay a bit longer?" I suggested.

"Y-Yeah, me too," Ruby said.

"Oh my god, can you two just please come out. Get it over with, and it'll be done. Staying in here won't do much."

"I'm brainstorming. Thinking of things to say," I said. I wasn't actually doing that, but that seemed like a good idea—let's do that.

"Y-Yeah, me too," Ruby repeated.

"Okay, you have ten seconds to come out before I go in and tell her what happened. You can deal with her when she comes storming out here then."

"Ugh," I groaned. "Come on Uncle Qrow, aren't you supposed to be the cool uncle?"

"I strive to be. But I'm not stupid. Now come on."

"Fine." I rolled my eyes. Getting out of the car, I held the door open and looked at my sister. "Come on, Ruby."

She nodded and got out of the car.

Qrow opened the door and we followed inside. Inside was Mom, looking at us with narrowed eyes.

"I got a call. Something about a robbery, and a certain two huntsmen in training stopping it."

"Oh my god," I gasped, feigning shock. "I heard about that too. Those guys sound badass, don't they?"

"Rory, Ruby. Explain."

"Well, how much do you want us to explain? You must have heard something from that call of yours."

"Rory." Mom looked like she would snap at any moment. "Explain everything."

"Fine," I sighed. "While we were walking to get the groceries, we saw a bunch of White Fang members rushing into a bank, weapons in hand. Naturally, being the good people that we are, we went to help. And we did. No hostages were hurt, and from what I've heard, all the criminals are imprisoned." There was a touch of pride in my voice.

"And you thought that was a good idea? Going in, just the two of you, against real criminals?"

"But mom—" Ruby started, but Mom didn't let her finish.

"But I'm not mad." She sighed, her expression softening. "I'm not mad. I was mad when I got the call, but it died down while I was waiting for you guys to come. Despite how dangerous it was, you guys did the right thing. And while you're still going to be grounded for some time, I'm proud of you."

Ruby smiled ear to ear at that; she probably thought we would get in trouble.

Not that I thought much different.

"Hey, what's going on?" I looked over to the direction the voice came from, and saw Yang leaning against the wall, looking at us."

"I'll tell you tomorrow. Hey, Mom, is that all you wanted to say? It's been a long day and I'm going to get some sleep."

"Hm? Oh, yeah, I'm done. Go ahead, sweetie."

"Thanks, Mom," I smiled before I started to walk towards my room.

On my way, I turned back to glance at Ruby. She looked like she was about to come and saw that she was about to move to follow me. She hesitated though, and stayed in the living room.

I opened the door to my room and turned on the lights. I walked to my closet and took off my clothes, changing into something more comfortable. Once I did, I plopped onto my bed, and placed my right hand over my eyes.

What a day, I thought idly. So much had happened today, but at the same time, nothing had. Well, we stopped a bunch of hostages from potentially getting hurt, but that in itself wasn't much. Anyone with a decent amount of training could do that. Nothing helpful had happened.

I'd hoped for something to come out of it, but nothing did. What was the saying? 'If you always assume the worst, you'll never be disappointed'? Yeah, I think that was it. Probably should have followed that.

I wasn't expecting much out of my future plans. I was trying to keep my expectations as low as possible so I wouldn't get disappointed when they didn't work out. It was particularly dangerous too, so there was a high chance I would fail. Or at least I would mess up somewhere, and things wouldn't go how I wanted.

At that thought, my mind drifted to Ruby. Ugh. I'd said I would talk to her today, but I had expected her to come to me. And when she hadn't? I felt relieved. I really didn't want to explain myself to her. Or more specifically, I didn't think I could get through to her. No matter how much logic I would use against her, I couldn't imagine her being okay with it.

I rubbed the bridge on my nose. This was starting to become a pain.

I reached to my left and grabbed my scroll. I typed in the search bar, 'known gangs in Vale'.

A good number or responses came up.

I scrolled through them, clicking on the links.

Hivelord, a relatively small-

Taken care of.

An unnamed gang in the southern-

In prison.

One of the largest gangs in Vale-

Again, taken care of.

I was probably not going to find anything just by searching things up. Especially about the ones that were still out there, active.

So how was I supposed to find information? Forums?

Testing my idea, I went onto some of the popular forums relating to crime in Vale. Nothing useful. They were mostly just discussing past crimes, and crimes in general. Nothing I needed.

I continued searching a bit, before I started to get frustrated. This was too slow, the screen too small.

I got off my bed and made way to the corner of my room, my computer. I turned it on, sat in my chair, and pulled out my keyboard. Once the computer turned on, I started to browse the forums again.

I kept browsing for a few more minutes, reading through the different forums, looking for something I could use. Eventually, I got to the deeper, darker parts of the web. It seemed like this would be the only place I would be able to find something.

Finally, after around thirty minutes of searching, I found this one forum about crime in vale, and complaints regarding it.

I scrolled through the conversation, trying to find something. It took a bit, but I finally found something that I could use.

- trngrass443: seriously, is anyone going to do anything about this? Those fucking shitheads won't fucking leave.

- arnoldthe0th: for real. those shitty 'authorities', always saying they have our wellbeing in mind. Bullshit.

- idontknowwhatimtalkingabout4343: ikr. fuck this, fuck the huntsman.

- lipstickicecream: trngrass443, out of loop. what are you guys talking about, exactly?

- trngrass443: lipstickicecream, you live in vale? Agricultural district?

- lipstickicecream: nah. commercial district.

- trngrass443: youprolly dont know then. Some fuckers came by a few weeks ago, claiming our town to be 'their territory' or some bullshit like that. Can't do anything about it though, since they have aura and all those fucking hax, while our town has nothing. No one can go against them.

- lipstickicecream: for real? you try sending a request?

- trngrass443: yeah, two weeks ago. But being a town in the backwater parts of the agricultural district, we're low priority. At best they'll send some half-baked huntsman to do the job. If they even do, that is.

I scrolled up, looking for any mentions of the town that they were in. It didn't take me long to find out that it was a town called Aramor.

I bookmarked the page, copy-pasted the entire conversation onto a separate document, and turned my computer off. I'd continue this tomorrow. I should go to bed.

Jumping onto my bed face down, I grabbed onto my pillow and hugged it against my face. It'd been a long day. I needed to rest my mind. I closed my eyes, and let the sleep take me.

AN: Shorter chapter this time. I tried to make it longer, but I didn't want more content than this in the chapter. Nothing much more to say. I hope you enjoyed the chapter.