A/N: I'm sorry, it's been forever. I'm trying to put out chapters occasionally during final exams, and pretty soon I'll be able to write more. Hope this tides you over in the meantime. Happy pride!
Yang peers at the map again, scowling. She's plotted the latest rash of mysterious attacks and thefts, hoping to find some connection, but the pattern is just too random to find the epicenter. Whoever this is attacks White Fang areas and Atlas indiscriminately, making periodic forays farther afield into Mistral and even Vacuo. They're good, good enough to not leave a single witness, or even a frame from security footage.
Yang doesn't like being the one working a desk job. Ruby would be good at this, good at coming up with increasingly unlikely ideas until she found one that fit improbably well. Weiss would be more methodical, trying to find the simplest explanation for the facts, and Blake might agree with her, or pull some old rumor out of her back pocket and crack the case in minutes.
Yang can't do any of that. Yang isn't supposed to be here, waiting for her team to come back from missions. Blake and Weiss are supposed to be fighting beside her, or stopping by to look over her shoulder and tell her she's doing something wrong. But they left her.
Yang tries to stop the thoughts that keep swarming too fast, the half-remembered dreams full of knives and masks and the fear in Blake's eyes. She's stronger than this, too strong for any prison to hold her aside from her own mind.
The police have nothing on the attacks. The most evidence they have is a single hair currently in DNA testing, that will likely be worthless. Busy crime scenes accumulate DNA evidence from passersby quickly, and there's no reason to assume that this time they have the right link.
Yang goes back to trawling security footage manually, frame by frame, in hopes that she'll find something the digital scans missed. It's not a perfect solution, but it's far better than any alternatives.
The best alternative would be going back into the field, she reminds herself. Waiting until the criminal makes a little mistake, or attacks too close to where a hero is stationed, and bringing them in. They've solved many a cold case simply by being in the right place at the right time, detective work be damned.
Her metal arm glints coldly in the fluorescent lights, a constant reminder of what she's lost. She can't fight with it, can hardly hold objects. It will get better once she's used to it, once the nerves reconnect and she gets in more practice, but it will never measure up to a real arm. It might never be good enough.
Yang might never be good enough. She might never fight again. She might live a normal life, get a job and get married and forget about being a hero. That doesn't sound appealing any more. When she was younger, all she wanted was to be like everyone else, to be able to relax on the weekends and get a full night's sleep once in a while. She got used to her life, and now she can't stand the thought of anything else.
Maybe that's a problem, too, that she can't live without something to fight. Maybe it means she's a psychopath, maybe she'd become one of the villains if she didn't have any left to fight. Maybe she's never really been in this for the people who needed saving.
Yang gives up on the security camera footage and begins scanning through news reports. Even Atlas is feeling the impact of Vale's takeover, although they're still pretending that there's nothing wrong and the protests are isolated incidents. The other areas are shaky, but they'll survive. Atlas – it's hard to tell. Its government is getting more authoritarian, more controlling, and more desperate to keep its civilians in line. It won't stay in this state forever, but it's almost impossible to predict when the revolution will happen.
It will happen, there's no question. The Faunus know how much power they really hold since Vale's takeover, and they're starting to use it. The poor and dissatisfied will get behind any cause promising them better conditions, and there are plenty of human radicals who are content with extreme Faunus groups' actions as long as their own property isn't threatened.
Poor Weiss, stuck in Atlas when it falls apart. Yang wouldn't want to be her, not when the Schnee Company is notoriously problematic, with a list of lawsuits stretching back over a century, even before Faunus had whatever scant legal protection they enjoy now. They won't fare well without government protection.
They don't have many options. Vale is a lost cause, Atlas moribund, Mistral already unstable. The kingdoms are falling, one by one, and nothing the heroes do can stop that.
…
The robot is finally moving, slowly extending its limbs and testing its systems. They've sent out an alert already, and now all there's left to do is wait and see if it has some kind of weakness.
They're still not very good at waiting, Ruby admits. Sitting with her heart in her mouth, letting the robot prepare itself and set up its systems so they can run away from it, just isn't what they're supposed to be doing. It feels too much like giving up and waiting to die.
"Approach with caution," Ruby says into her earpiece. There are quiet noises of assent, then the occasional flicker of movement from the opposite hills. Good.
Ruby crawls down the slope, avoiding the thicker brush that creates too much sound while doing her best to stay behind it for cover. It's a difficult balance, and she isn't usually their stealth op, but the robot can't have systems sensitive enough to detect someone hundreds of feet away, not in hills filled with harmless wildlife.
The robot is scarred, she notices when she gets closer. There are deep scratches and gouges in the metal that have never been repaired, some with tools or weapons still extending from them. It's been around for a while, and it's still running well enough with its injuries. One the surface, that makes it bad, but each scar is slightly weaker than the surrounding steel, and that's good enough.
"Attack the damaged areas," she says into her earpiece, then slowly begins aiming her rifle at a promising gouge across one arm, taking care not to let the focusing lenses or casing flash and give away her position. It's one robot. They've fought worse enemies, and they've won with worse odds.
The robot shifts, treads churning the ground beneath it into dust as it turns. It's faster than Ruby expected, but not fast enough to make a difference.
Then there's a lightning-fast whip of the arms across the valley, a burst of panicked shouting in her earpiece, and Ren is upright, staring grimly at the robot.
"Stay down," Ruby snaps, but there's no response. Why would there be? If Ren is going to sacrifice his carefully-plotted stealth and strategy of attrition, he's not going to listen to her orders.
People are going to die here, today. People are going to keep dying because Ruby will never be good enough, and Ruby won't be able to stop them.