"No shit Sherlock, now shut up and hide."
With that Qrow watched as Tex turned herself invisible, which was probably one of the more useful semblances he'd seen. Once Tex was invisible, he ran for cover behind a tree and turned himself into bird form and planted himself on a tree branch. Not moments later the Atlas troops entered the small enclosure.
"Ma'am we've found them."
With that announcement from one of the troops, Qrow cursed his luck as Winter Schnee herself entered the enclosure herself. Of course it would be her.
Qrow had a complicated history with the eldest of the Schnee children, as evidenced by the many times they'd fought over the years, but still he did enjoy those fights and he suspected that Winter did as well. But still Qrow didn't have time to go about explaining everything or solving any misunderstandings. It was probably best for him and Tex to try and sneak past Schnee and her troops.
Winter gave a sigh as she entered the enclosure and was greeted with the torn body's of the poor Atlas troops that Raven had ripped apart.
"Medical officer Harlan, try and establish a cause of death." The Atlas specialist ordered
"Yes ma'am."
"As for the rest of you... I want you all to set up a small perimeter, expect for charlie squad who are to fan out and search for anything out of the ordinary within a two mile radius. Understood?" Specialist Schnee ordered the troops.
"Yes sir!" A dozen voices called out as the tin soldiers carried out their orders.
Figuring that now was a good a time as any, Qrow left the branch and circled the site, looking in the swamp for a sign of the invisible Tex so that they could leave together.
After circling the area a few times, Qrow managed to spot Tex as she, for apparently no apparent reason, became visible once more behind a tree, with some worrying sparks coming off her body.
Flying carefully and with a good amount of grace, Qrow transformed back into a human behind Tex.
"Whats wrong?" He asked the freelancer who, now that he was closer to, he could see was pissed off for some reason.
"Two reasons." Tex replied in a low, quite voice. "First off my invisibility equipment is malfunctioning. Meaning I can only use it for about five minutes at a time."
"Wait a minute, you going invisible is just some equipment your using?" Qrow cut in, his mind jumping to the possibilities if Jimmy and the rest of the Atlas military had access to that kind of tech.
"Yep. What did you think it was? Anyhow the second reason is that we need to destroy that radio before these guys turn it back on. Otherwise my dear friend O'Malley here will jump out of me, and we'll lose him." Tex explained, which complicated their situation even more. A genocidal A.I let loose on Atlas signals would certainly be cause for alarm.
"Well shit... how long do you think we have?" Qrow asked.
"No idea." Tex replied. "What do I look like a fucking psychic? But if I had to guess it would probably be soon."
Qrow ran some ideas through his head, if he got close enough he could easily smash the radio, but the trick was doing it without being spotted. Several scenarios ran through his head, but they all ultimately boiled down to one thing. He needed a distraction. But it couldn't be Tex doing it because he had to keep her existence on the low down until he got her to Oz.
Looking around in the environment an idea struck Qrow like lightning, they were in a swamp, and typically in swamps there were crocodile Grimm, a type of Grimm that he knew Winter had experience dealing with.
"Tex, I have an idea. I'm going to create a distraction, and after I've done it, i'll give a Crow cry, when you hear that turn yourself invisible and rush to the radio, then we'll smash it together." Qrow explained his idea. "Sound good?"
"Yeah that sounds reasonable. And after, we can just book it out of here if their distracted enough." Tex agreed with the plan.
"Right then, lets do it."
There were times that Weiss regretted that she knew Ruby Rose. It was only natural that they would interact of course, after all they were both team leaders and team SALN did live directly across from team RPBY. So it was only natural that they would interact and become sort of friends. And sometimes this friendship paid off, such as when they worked together to plan for combat class, or made both teams go on activities together. But unfortunately there were times when this friendship worked against Weiss's favour.
Like now for example.
"Welcome everyone, friends, teachers, sister and Weiss!" Ruby started grandly from the stage.
"Hey!" Weiss protested from her seat.
Ignoring Weiss, Ruby continued. "We are gathered here today to witness the future of robotics! may I introduce, the amazing, the spectacular, the awesome...Lopez Rose the third!"
With that Blake (who had been roped into being both Ruby's assistant and wearing one of those ridiculous magician's assistant outfits), pulled back the drapes to reveal the completed version of Ruby's brown coloured robot project that had been in development for the past two years according to Yang when Weiss had inquired.
At the revelation the small crowd clapped, in this crowd lay Pyrrha and Yang, Weiss and her team, team CFVY, Sun, Neptune, Headmaster Ozpin, Professors Goodwitch and Port, Doctor Oobleck and General Ironwood, all sitting in the sunny beacon courtyard.
Weiss was unsure exactly how Ruby had gotten the general to waste his Wednesday afternoon on this ceremony for unveiling Ruby's robot, but based on her sister letters, she suspected he had come just because it was a robot.
"Thank you, thank you." Ruby bowed as the crowd politely clapped. "Now before I active him and release him into the world, I will be taking some questions, so... does anyone have any questions?"
A few hands went up including Weiss's.
"Yes, you there." ruby pointed at Neptune.
"Why is he named Lopez Rose?" The blue haired boy asked.
"An excellent question!" Ruby enthused. "His surname is Rose, because well that's my last name, and his first name is Lopez because...I read it somewhere and thought is sounded cool?" Ruby finished like it was a question, before moving onto the next person.
"Whats your question Blake?"
"Can I get out of this ridiculous costume now?"
"After everything's all done, next!"
"Hey kid, does this robot have any special features or skills? Like making coffee for example?" Coco asked.
Ruby considered this for a moment. "Nope! But it does have a learning A.I, so if you taught him, he could probably teach him to make coffee. Next question!"
"I have a question." General Ironwood raised his hand. "Is it true that you developed and created this robot design by yourself, in just two years?"
Ruby blushed as red as her name. "Yep! I created him using a variety of sources for information and using my own intuition. Okay, one last question. oh, professor Ozpin"
Weiss put her hand down, slightly annoyed that she wasn't picked to ask the dolt a question.
"If I may ask, what exactly drove you to create Lopez here?" Ozpin asked curiously.
"Well, at first I was just kinda bored with stuff, and I thought hey, why not try to make something? But i was no good at art except for sketches and my uncle Qrow said I couldn't add any more stuff to Crescent Rose, so then I thought hey, why not make a robot? Then he could clean the house and fight off Grimm while me and Yang were out at school and dad was out hunting." Ignoring that it should have been 'Yang and I' instead off 'me and Yang', Weiss quite liked the answer, Ruby made the best out of her boredom by making something that would be useful down the line.
Weiss could respect that. And apparently so could Ozpin who gave a small nod once Ruby had finished.
"Anyway, now i shall active Lopez Rose."
With that declaration Ruby flicked a very inappropriately placed switch and stepped back, as the robot activated. Everyone leaned forward in anticipation to hear exactly what it was the robot was going to say.
"Hola, me llamo López Rose. Soy un robot diseñado para servir a la mastero Ruby, ¿cómo puedo ser de ayuda?"
[Hello, my name is Lopez Rose. I am a robot designed to serve master ruby, how may i be of assistance?]
Weiss suddenly became very confused, was the robot malfunctioning? Whispers from the crowd showed that she wasn't alone in her confusion, and she could have sworn that she heard some groaning as well.
"Excuse me, Ruby what exactly is your robot saying?" Weiss spoke up, causing the whispers to die down as everyone looked at Ruby.
"¿Ninguno de ustedes me puede entender? qué curioso, mis bancos de datos actualmente me dicen que estoy hablando español, pero no se puede encontrar mucho más hasta que me conecte a un servidor principal."
[Can none of you understand me? How curious, my data banks currently tell me that I am speaking Spanish, but not much else can be found out until I am connected to a main server.]
While her robot rambled nonsense, Ruby gulped before speaking up.
"Well, I always did have trouble with the speech unit." Ruby claimed, causing Yang to cough something that sounded like, "Set the house on fire, set the house on fire."
"Looks like instead of speaking normally, it seems that the speech unit has created it's own language." Ruby rationally explained, which to Weiss's ears made sense.
"Eso es muy poco probable, es más probable que tenga más de una configuración de idioma y simplemente estoy atascado en la configuración de español. Tendré que investigar esto una vez que esté conectado a una base de datos."
[That is highly unlikely, it is more probable that I have more than one language settings and am simply stuck on the Spanish setting. I shall have to investigate this once I am connected to a database.]
"But apart from that, he seems to have everything in working order." Ruby said awkwardly to the crowd.
With that, there was small fragmented clapping as Ruby dubbed the mockery of an event over.
As the crowd dispersed, Weiss went over to congratulate Ruby on creating the robot, out of politeness more than anything.
"Congratulations on building your robot." Weiss said simply. "Thanks!" Ruby replied. "Now if you excuse me, I promised Yang that after we could test him to see what Lopez is capable of."
With that Ruby skipped over to her waiting sister, the robot following them loyally from behind.
The few minutes of waiting for Qrow's distraction where some of the tenser moments of her life.
Those... Atlas was it? Yeah, Atlas idiots could activate the radio at any minute and O'Malley would escape into the Atlas network, and from what Qrow had said when talking about Atlas, Tex didn't doubt that there was some shiny new project that O'Malley could jump into, that Tex would invariably have to stop before a bunch of people died.
Still things could be worse. O'Malley couldn't jump into the soldiers that came with the white haired chick because their helmet radios simply were not yet advanced enough to handle him. Plus odds are they didn't have slots for an A.I to jump into, so she didn't have to worry about that angle.
A few more minutes passed when she heard the soldiers cry out "Specialist Schnee, we've got multiple Grimm contacts!"
The sounds of soldiers rushing was heard and then she heard a bird cry out.
"Caw caw!"
Figuring that one bird signal was the same as another, Tex activated her damaged invisibility enhancement. It had been damaged badly ever since her initial arrival and as she didn't have access to the proper tools, the best that Tex could do was jury rig it to run for five minutes at a time.
With her carefully practised skill, Tex glided from her tree to the small enclosure containing the radio with ease, going as quietly as a ghost.
But unfortunately it seemed like luck was against her at the moment, as there was still two soldiers left in the area that didn't rush off the fight the Grimm, the medic and a regular soldier. Both at opposite ends of the enclosure.
Just her fucking luck.
But on the bright side she could see Qrow in the trees above the medic, so if she moved fast enough, she could take out the soldier before her cloaking failed, while he could deal with the medic.
It was no where near a perfect plan, but it was all she had.
Like a graceful puma, Tex quickly but quietly snuck up behind the soldier and while still invisible started chocking him out. Panicking at seeing his friend struggling with an invisible ghost, the medic moved to yell out, but Qrow dropped down and quickly put the medic into a chock hold.
Ultimately the struggling was in vain as both Atlas troops were quickly knocked out on the floor.
Becoming visible again, Tex went over to the radio when a shot cried out and struck the radio, and in a very unfortunate turn of events, the shot hit just the right place and turned the radio on.
"freeze." a commanding voice called out.
Tex turned and found the white haired chick that lead the troops had a gun pointed at her and Qrow, and so did the rest of her soldiers.
So much for Qrow's distraction, they must have dealt with those Grimm lightning fast to have gotten back already.
Furthermore, a quick search of her head told Tex that Omega was already gone.
Son of a bitch.
Omega was virtually cackling as he made his escape.
Finally after the last few weeks of being trapped inside dear Agent Texas, he was no free to wreck havoc and delicious evil onto this new world, who would crumble before his superiority.
Jumping from channel to channel, O'Malley went across the world in a manner of minutes until he found an interrupting signal buried among the rest of the Atlas communications.
Hopping into it, he discovered a central hub that he could manifest inside of.
Now inside it, he was delighted to discover that it was a robot body with ample room for him to live comfortably in, no more relying on others for assistance!
Now it was an exercise of finding the host A.I's mind palace and either converting them to his side, or even better, sending them to oblivion!
Once he had found the mind palace, O'Malley loaded in an avatar that looked just like Doc, who was his favourite most tolerable host to date.
"Hello? Anybody home?" He called out to the body's native A.I, undoubtedly something very basic like F.I.L.S.S.
"Salutations friend!" An annoyingly chipper voice called out from behind him, causing the A.I to jump.
"Great Satan's bunion!"
It seemed that the host A.I had decided to take the form of a little teenage girl with bright orange hair.
O'Malley suddenly had a very bad feeling about this, as he felt the robotic body's access to the radio cut off.
"My name is Penny Polendina, what is your name?"
Notes:
And that's the end of that chapter.
I had a lot of fun with the Tex and Qrow sections here, and as an interesting fact in the original draft they were going to run into Ace-ops, but I ultimately couldn't get the character of them right and had to keep checking the wiki every five minutes, so I ended up scrapping them and replacing them with Winter instead.
Also, introducing the one thing that any Red Vs Blue needs: A Spanish speaking robot that no one understands. I have plans involving Lopez Rose the third, although I did consider bringing in the real Lopez or Dos point 0, I ultimately decided against it due to my plans for chapter 11. Also, sorry to anyone who speaks Spanish for what is probably a butchery of the language using google translate.
And finally, poor O'Malley escaped Tex only to end up with Penny, someone who is as optimistic as Doc but actually capable of resisting him. Poor guy.
As always thanks you everyone for reading the story, and extra thanks to the commentators/reviewers, you guys are great.
The next chapter will be out at some time next week, so stay tuned for that, and till then I'll catch ya'll on the flip flop.