It was rare for Cinder Fall to have a good day. That isn't to say she usually had bad days, in fact she would categorise the majority of her days as acceptable.

A truly good day for her often meant something that advances her plans or something unexpected, but beneficial happening.

For example, the arrival of Felix.

The mercenary had popped out of the blue, offering to help after Roman had failed a simple job.

She had thought little of him at first, just a mere mercenary looking for a quick paycheck. But that swiftly changed when none of her contacts could find so much as a rumour about him. They even had a voice analyser they had procured, that had pinned him as a first year beacon student, but a few days surveillance proved they were not the same person.

He was also a very clever mercenary, feeding her trickles of information and keeping the rest close to his chest.

the most interesting of these trickles was that he was from a parallel universe. a very intriguing piece of information that cinder was considering telling her master once she had more to go on but his word.

Cinder now had Felix working with Roman on his contribution to the plan, while she contacted a few experts about the idea of parallel universes.

Speaking of the devil...

From the shadows she watched as the mercenary entered the warehouse, Mercury and Emerald in tow. Torchwick then got up from the crates he had been lounging on and walked leisurely to greet them.

"Greetings officer!" Vale's most wanted called out. "What seems to be the problem?"

"Are these your kids?" Felix asked playing along.

"Used to be, lost 'em to the missus in the divorce." Torchwick said with a dramatic shaking of his head, causing Emerald to roll her eyes.

"Wow." The green haired girl congratulated, "You two are real comedians."

"We try." Roman told her, before turning to his partner. "Where were they?" He asked him.

"About to mess up our plans with Tukson." Felix informed his criminal partner. "I had to just shoot him and not use the poison like we planned."

"I'm sure that explains why you're only attacking now instead of a week ago." Mercury retorted to the duo, who shared a look.

Torchwick leaned forward. "Listen, you little punk. If it were up to me, then I would take you and your little street rat friend here and-"

"Do what, Roman?" Cinder cut him off and stepping out of the shadows, it wouldn't do well for her pawns to start fighting amongst themselves after all.

Roman laughed nervously, while Felix sighed. "I'd, uh... not kill them?" The criminal suggested as the lift lowered her to the ground.

Ignoring Emeralds cry of "Cinder!" She walked towards the duo in charge of this branch of her operation.

"I thought I made it clear that you two would eliminate the would-be runaway." Cinder said coldly.

"And we did." Felix held up a hand. "Shot him through the heart myself, but these two idiots nearly ruined everything."

"He was going to escape to Vacuo!" Emerald spoke out of turn. "Mercury and I decided to take it upon ourselves to kill the rat."

"I think he was some sort of cat, actually." Mercury cut in.

"What? Like a puma?" Emerald said with a laugh in her voice.

"Yeah, there ya go." The silver haired assassin said, but Felix then cut in.

"Really? I thought he was too ugly to be a cat, he was more like a warthog or something."

"Quiet." She ended the debate, before turning to her two personal pawns. "Did I not specifically instruct you two to keep your hands clean while in Vale?" She scolded

"I just thought-" Cinder cut off her green haired pawn.

"Don't think... obey."

"Yes ma'am." Emerald said in an appropriately apologetic tone. "It won't happen again."

Satisfied with the apology, Cinder turned to her hired help. "And you. Why wasn't this job done sooner?"

"Uh..? Hello!" Roman gestured broadly at the mountains of crates of dust around them. "Sorry if we've been busy stealing every speck of Dust in the Kingdom!"

"Yeah, you think this shit is easy?" Felix contributed. "We've went through every store, shipment and deposit of this stuff."

Mercury made a sceptical noise, causing Felix to chuckled and put his arm around him.

"Look around, kid. Me and Locus- I mean Roman, we've got this town running scared! Police running around like headless chickens, Dust prices through the roof, and we're sitting pretty on an old warehouse with enough Dust crystals, vials, and rounds to fund both armies of Chorus off years!"

"Speaking of which." Roman spoke up. "If you guys wouldn't mind filling me in on your grand master plan, it might actually make my next string of robberies go a little smoother! " He emphasised with a clenched fist.

Cinder gave a wicked smile, it seems like he still had no idea about the plan. Good.

Taking her time, she walked up to her partners in crime. "Oh, Roman. Have a little faith." She placed her hand on his face for effect. "You'll know what you need when you need to know it." Like how she would take care of him and possibly Felix once everything was said and done.

"Besides, we're done with Dust." She had looked over the numbers herself, it would be more than enough to both placate her friends at the White Fang and blow a hole into Vale when the time was right. She started to walk away, it was time her master got a report.

"Whats next boss?" Felix called out.

"We're moving. Have the White Fang clear out this building. I'll send you details and coordinates tonight." She informed them.

"Great. Just as I was getting comfy." Felix said sarcastically at the same time his partner asked "Coordinates?"

"We're proceeding to phase two." Was all she said.

Today was a good day.

Things were quite at the campfire.

Qrow was currently drinking from his flask, while he watched his new 'friend' repair a bullet hole in her side.

The camp site they had found was not far from the town, so risk of Grimm attack was slightly lower than usual, but he'd still set up a watch system when the time came.

Setting his flask down, Qrow decided that now the prime opportunity to talk, mostly because his flask had finally run out of alcohol.

"So...i'm guessing that you've got some extensive prosthetics." He said casually, some people could be really touchy about the subject but he hoped he picked a reasonable conversation opener. In response she gave a small chuckle.

"Somethin' like that." She told him, causing curiosity to get the better of him.

"How extensive?"

"Oh, it covers uh, my entire body." Tex said as she fiddled with the bullet wound.

"Uh...what?" Qrow said intelligently.

"It's a bit of a long story." Tex told him. "And it's very out there, you'd probably think i'm crazy."

At this she moved her hands away from the bullet wound, which had finally stopped sparking.

Leaning his back against a tree, Qrow gave a chuckle of his own. "Try me. I've heard everything." The immortal queen of the Grimm, gods, resurrection, magical maidens, Qrow doubted that she had anything new to add to the list of weird things he knew about.

"Well, i'm from a parallel universe, and came here after being killed by an E.M.P." Tex informed him.

Well...that as a new one.

Qrow took a moment to consider exactly what she had just said.

"You...uh, mind running that by me again?" He asked.

"It's a bit of a story, but the short version is simple. I'm an A.I created for a military project in my world. I found out they were torturing another A.I and went rouge to save him. Then I found that same A.I again, went on some adventures with him, before I was captured by the Meta, and destroyed in an E.M.P." Tex explained her story. "But obviously, that is a very simple version of my story and doesn't give nearly enough detail, but that's the short of it."

"That's quite a story." But again, not the craziest he'd heard, Oz still held that record.

Speaking of Oz, if what she was saying is true then he'd want to be told about this in person. Qrow wouldn't be able to risk telling him over scroll.

"Right, here's the deal Tex." Qrow started. "I wanna here all of your story. then in return, I can get you to someone who can help, with your, uh situation."

Tex remained quite for a moment and then her body language change like at the bar and her head snapped to attention.

"Why should we trust you fool?" Omega spoke, causing Qrow to lean forward.

"Cause the worlds a dangerous place. And i'm all the back up you'd have to fight against it." He spoke confidently.

"We can manage." Omega said defiantly.

"Maybe, but how far would you get without a guide?" He retorted.

"Listen well-" Omega started threateningly, but was cut off by his better half. "Fuck off O'Malley!" Tex roared, punching a nearby tree sending it toppling over to make a point.

"Qrow, we'll take the deal." Tex informed him, which was good, but because of the overwhelming negativity caused by her A.I, they'd probably have to get moving before the Grimm moved in.

"Great, we can start now, cause we've gotta get movin'." He told the solider.

"Alright, but fair warning, It's about 20 hours long and I only enjoy telling it in five minute intervals."

Qrow laughed, "Alright. get to it." He said as he began to put out the campfire.

"Well the best place to start would be in a shitty canyon called Blood Gulch..."

At exactly 05:00 A.M Blake's alarm went off on her scroll, and her arm immediately shot out to silence it.

With a yawn the cat faunus began the slow task of getting out of bed, which was hard considering how comfy it was this morning. But still she got up anyway.

She'd fallen asleep inside her regular clothes and not her pyjamas last night, so a change in clothes was probably in order.

Heading to her drawer, she fished out an identical set of clothes to here regular attire, quickly put them on.

Now dressed, Blake went to the door. The reason she was up so early today, was that she was busy researching the White Fang. Ever sense the docks her former allegiances where at the forefront of her mind.

Why did they need so much dust?

Why where they working with a human?

She needed answers.

So carefully she made her way to the library, only stopping quickly at the cafeteria briefly for coffee and a quick breakfast.

When she arrived at the library, it was just opening. The Liberian was quite literally unlocking the doors.

"Oh, good morning Blake!" The librarian greeted. "Isn't this a bit early?" He asked with concern.

"No." Was all she said in response. The librarian gave a shrug and opened the library doors. Blake enter the great beacon library and selected a table seat that was out of the way. Setting down her food, the cat faunus searched for and found some specific books.

Those books were; Dust, Schnees And The White Fang: A Story Of Spite by Antony Beevor, A History Of Human and Faunus Relations: Fifth Edition by Bartholomew Oobleck and Semblance: What Is It? by Pietro Polendina.

Her choice of books were deliberate, Beevor's book dealt with dust in relation to the white fang and would hopefully shed light on their motives. Ooblecks book was famous for being incredibly unbiased and a fantastic read. But the last book was part of Blake's attempt to research the other lingering thread left by the docks.

Her team leader Ruby Rose.

When she'd first met her future team leader, due to a comment she had made, Blake had considered that Ruby might have been an Atlas military operative, but Blake had dropped the theory after a few weeks as she couldn't find much more evidence than that original comment.

But now she was investigating ruby for a different reason. she had a second semblance.

It had made an appearance at the docks where Ruby used it instinctively to save her own life. To the red leaders credit, she seemed just as surprised as the rest of them that she had a secondary semblance. So Blake decided to research this topic as well, just because the rest of her team seemed willing to not talk about it didn't mean Blake was.

Books in hand, she returned to the table and opened the first one.

It was time to get to work.

"Sector is clear." He radioed in.

"Good, move to the next private." The female voice of Atlas command replied.

"Rodger that, private Hudson out." He turned off his radio, his battalion had been bought into vale with the rest of general ironwoods forces, the general himself gave the command for them to investigate the run down areas on the outskirts of the city. He and his squad were currently investigating an old dust storage warehouse.

"Hey Vasquez! time to move out." Hudson waited but received no reply from his friend. "Come on, cut the crap! Where are you?" He called out.

A few moments later her voice called out from a corridor on his right.

"Over here! I've got something!"

Not wasting time with speaking he barrelled into the corridor her voice had come from, his gun in hand.

But he found nothing. "What the hell?" He whispered to himself, when the wall at the end of the corridor suddenly was lit up but a spotlight, revealing something.

Steadily he approached the wall and saw that it bore a symbol, it was probably an huntsman's emblem but not any he'd ever seen before.

It was blood red and seemed to be dripping down the wall, but other than that it was surprisingly elegant. Hudson touched the symbol, but as he did he realised that it was made out of blood.

He turned to flee when someone caught him in a choke hold from behind. Hudson tried to struggle, but whoever it was was too strong.

And moments later, he fell to the floor neck in an unnatural position.

His last thoughts being of the attacker he couldn't see.

Notes:

And that's the end of that chapter.

This first bit is a look into the mind of cinder, getting her thoughts on the situation.

There isn't much to say about Qrow and Tex here, only that their subplot will be going to strange and awesome places.

I had a lot of fun with Blake here, as par for the course her unhealthy volume 2 white fang obsession is kicking in.

the names of the soldiers in the final part of the chapter are a reference to Aliens. although the identity of their killer remains unknown, so feel free to speculate.

as always all reviews, comments and constructive criticisms are welcome.

and as always, thank you everyone for readying and i'll catch ya'll on the flip flop.