Clara Herder was an interesting woman.

It was shortly after four o'clock when Ruby stepped out of the elevator. The Security Wing made up an entire floor of the SDC Building. It was situated about halfway up the tower and was used as the central hub for anything and everything related to security in both the building itself and SDC Business within Atlas City borders. Ruby walked in, following just slightly behind and to the side of Weiss, and scanned the room. It was bustling with men and women in uniforms ranging from pseudo-police to pseudo-military all working at computers or monitoring cameras. Ruby had taken the time to read up on the specifics of the office (as the so-far mysterious Mrs. Herder had forwarded them to Ruby in a file labeled 'Confidential: Level 4 Security Personnel Only THAT MEANS YOU, VEGA'. Real official, that). Those computers, she guessed, connected to the several other security posts scattered around the building and controlled both cameras and automated security forces.

Ruby also noticed how everyone in the room seemed to stand just a little straighter as Weiss gilded past. That made Ruby grin. The two women continued through the room, eventually passing by a clear window of bulletproof glass. Just through it, Ruby could see four officers inside of the room standing at a firing line and practicing with a few of the SDC's standard issue sidearms. Idly, Ruby wondered if she'd ever get the chance to use the little pistol range, too. They continued past it, and passed an opaque frosted glass door with the words "Armory" stamped in bold black letters on it. That piqued Ruby's curiosity, but she pushed it out of her mind for now.

For now.

Finally, they were approaching their destination.

This door was different than the previous few they had passed. Instead of the opaque glass from before, this one was an industrial looking steel door. It looked as if it had been taken out of an airship and transplanted onto the wall, all black steel and visible hydraulics. A brass plaque on the plain office wall next to the door labeled it as the "Central Planning Room", but the white stencil-and-spray-paint title printed haphazardly on the door itself labeled the room the "War Room." Ruby couldn't help but snort a little laugh at that.

Weiss, seeing what Ruby had been so amused by, explained, "Commander Herder is an...interesting woman." She seemed a bit ruffled.

Curious, Ruby asked, "She do this?" while motioning at the spray-painted sign.

The businesswoman crossed her arms and hummed a disapproving note before explaining vaguely, "She did much more than paint the door," before stepping up to said door. This area, while not as high-tech as Weiss's door, was still a restricted area and, as such, had a hand scanner. When Weiss pressed her hand against the screen of it, the scanner flashed green and the door slid to the left into the wall with a hiss.

The room was unique. As they stepped in, Ruby immediately noticed the change in atmosphere. The rest of the security wing was just like any other bustling office in the building: a white-and-blue motif and workplace carpet. The War Room on the other hand was aesthetically similar to the door. The walls and the floor were all some iteration of dark grey steel with holographic computer terminals lining the walls giving off a orange glow which gave the room an oddly claustrophobic vibe. It all seemed strangely familiar to Ruby, but she couldn't exactly put her finger on why.

In the center of the room was a holographic projection table: a very wide, round, black steel table covered in an blue grid, which projected a small model of the Schnee Building five inches above its surface. Something about the table, though, seemed odd. Like it didn't belong. Maybe it was the slight change in color between the table and the floor it belonged to, or the slight difference in aesthetic between it and the surrounding room. It didn't have legs, but rather narrowed below the top and extended down onto the floor in a solid tube of metal only slightly thinner than the tabletop.

Ruby only lingered on the odd holo-table for a second before latching onto the only other person in the room. Leaning up against the table was a woman Ruby had never seen before. She had crimson red hair that brushed the her cheekbones on the side and gradually got longer towards the back of her head, just a bit unkempt. The very next thing Ruby noticed, she was only slightly ashamed to say, was that the woman was gorgeous, unexpectedly so. Freckles very lightly dotted her face and highlighted her full lips and small nose. Her eyes were green, fierce and alert when they snapped to track the two newcomers. Ruby may have mistaken her for a fashion model or something if not for the scars that outnumbered and out-sized her freckles. There was one that split the left corner of her lip, and another that cut her right eyebrow in half. A burn scar sat heavily on her right cheek and that ear was missing an earlobe. A long, crescent-shaped scar curved around her left eyebrow and appeared surgical in nature. Another, more startling scar cut a wicked curve the slid along her throat, rough and ragged. Whatever had caused that should have killed her. 'She's built like a tank,' Ruby thought.

She met Ruby's eyes for a second, before seemed to almost look into Ruby, scanning her from boot to crown. Not checking her out, but gauging her, like she would an adversary. Seemingly satisfied with what she saw, a smirk graced her lips that hinted at intelligence and just a bit of mischief. She wore one of the long-sleeved blue security uniform shirts with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and the top button undone. Out-of-uniform black cargo pants tucked into a pair of combat boots showed that she wasn't such a stickler for uniform, seemingly in spite of her lofty position as head of the Schnee Dust Company security.

The woman pushed up off of the holotable to her full height and walked forward to meet Ruby and Weiss halfway. The next thing Ruby noticed was that she was tall. She stood a good few inches above Ruby, and she guessed that the woman was at least six foot two inches tall. She extended her right hand, and Ruby met it with a handshake. Ruby noted, with just a touch of annoyance that definitely wasn't petty at all, that the woman had to lean forward just a bit to adequately shake her hand. She gave a hard shake, her smirk growing to a grin, and introduced herself, "Commander Clara Herder, head of security here at this fine establishment."

'So we're doing rank? Alright, I see how it is.' Ruby gave a small, polite smile, "Huntress Ruby Rose, personal bodyguard to Weiss Schnee." Her grip was steel. Literally. Her right arm all the way up to where Ruby lost sight of it in Herder's sleeve was a matte black combat-grade prosthetic.

Herder's grin once more turned sly as she released Ruby's hand and turned to their boss. "Oh, I like this one, ma'am," she commented, before turning around and began to walk back towards the holotable. She raised both her arms up towards the whole room as if making some grand announcement and declared, "Well, Huntress, welcome to the War Room! I'll show you around." Ruby noticed that her prosthetic arm had a long red stripe with a white border painted along it from shoulder to wrist, a design which Ruby found curious.

Ruby met Weiss's eyes and raised an eyebrow. Weiss simply shook her head and said purposefully loud enough for the soldier on the other side of the room to hear, "The Commander can be a rather eccentric woman, but, sadly," she waved her arm dismissively towards Herder, emphasising the 'sadly', "she can do her job better than anyone else on Remnant. No one is more suited to manage the company's security than her."

Across the room, Commander Herder shouted brashly, "You're damn right!"

"Yes, well," Weiss continued and Ruby detected just a hint of exasperation in her voice, "I have to begin preparations for the meeting this afternoon, so I will leave you two to your work. If you need anything, you can contact me with your scroll." She paused a moment before saying, "Notify me when the briefing is done with, or if the Commander sets something else on fire."

Ruby nodded respectfully, suppressing a chuckle for the sake of professionality, "Yes ma'am."

Weiss seemed to like that. She threw one more critical look at her head of security, though it had no real fire, before turning around and stepping out of the room. The door hissed closed behind her, hiding the long, off-center ponytail from Ruby's view. Ruby found herself staring at the door after her boss for a moment, the way Weiss seemed to wear power like a garment lingering in her mind. A moment too long, it seemed, as suddenly Commander Herder was by her side and saying, "She is a remarkable woman, isn't she?"

The hair on the back of Ruby's neck bristled and she more or less whipped her head back towards the much-more-red-headed-redhead. "What exactly do you mean by that?"

Clara Herder shrugged nonchalantly, her arms relaxed and crossed over her chest. She put her weight on her back leg and her body language was the absolute epitome of relaxedness. "Oh, nothing," she began, her tone of voice implying that it definitely wasn't nothing, "Just that she's a very beautiful lady with a very interesting personality if you can dig deep enough to find it."

Ruby forced herself to close her mouth, which had fallen open at Herder's unexpected appraisal of their boss. "Um, do you...?" She trailed off. She wasn't entirely sure what she had meant to ask, or why she had been asking it.

"What? Fancy her?" Herder asked, looking at Ruby like she had grown a third ear. She gave a light, amused chuckle, "While I appreciate the sentiment, she's nearly fifteen years younger than me." That came a surprise to Ruby. Maybe it was the scars or prosthetics that masked her actual age, but Ruby didn't peg Herder as a day above thirty. Ruby opened her mouth, probably to say something unintentionally rude, but luckily Herder cut her off. "Plus," she said, "She's not really my type. I prefer married women."

Suddenly, Ruby was back in a classroom.

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A loud whack rang out across the room, silencing the students in an instant. After three years of attendance at Beacon Academy, every single student in the lecture hall knew exactly what sound Glynda Goodwitch's favourite riding crop made when it whipped across the polished wood of a desk. The room was a silent as a crypt as the blonde icon of fear itself managed to fill the it with her presence. She gazed over the rows and rows of students, green eyes passing critically over every single Huntsman-In-Training.

Even though she had been given this treatment many times before, Ruby couldn't help but shudder in her seat when Goodwitch's eyes came and lingered on her for just a second longer than on anyone else. Idly, Ruby's dominant left hand began to fiddle with her pencil on the desk, while her right began to tug at the hem of her uniform skirt nervously. After just a moment, a warm hand touched hers, and she glanced over to the right. Ruby's silver eyes met comforting gold ones, and she stopped her fiddling to instead grasp the offered hand.

Goodwitch, at the front of the wide auditorium, cleared her throat. Beacon had a way of pounding certain things into a person, making them less conscious motion and more instinct. Countless combat courses had taught every student what to do when you hear a blade swinging through the air or the telltale thrum of a red-dust based explosive about to detonate. Ruby knew personally that she would often find herself dodging or parrying without even realizing it. Blake had once explained to her that Beacon did that intentionally. As a school, they tried to make certain responses, both emotional and physical, instinct in their fighters. Emotional and psychological reflex triggered by specific stimuli. Blake had called it brainwashing. Ruby had called it conditioning.

Yang, ever so eloquent, had called it 'bullshit'.

This was one such reaction, as the sound of Goodwitch clearing her throat alone was enough to make every student's head snap forward and sit up straight in their chairs. With a single breath, Goodwitch had the whole auditorium's full and undivided attention. A glance to her right, past her teammate, proved that even Yang was practically at attention in her seat, back as rigid as a private before a general.

'That's kinda what she is,' Ruby thought, but instead of reflecting on the not-quite-military structure of Beacon's hierarchy (she had taken a course her Sophomore year on the makeup of different militaries and huntsman guilds around Remnant), Ruby refocused on the teacher at the front.

The whole auditorium was on edge. Today was the first day of a new course, only two weeks into the first semester of Ruby's Team's Junior Year. While it was pretty normal to be nervous on the first day of a new class, this specific one was unique. The auditorium was only about a quarter full, which was doubly odd because this was a required class, but that was not the cause of this unease.

See, a few days before the start of the year, once everyone had moved back into their dorms, a small number of teams had received a letter stating that one of their chosen electives had been cancelled and replaced by a required class filled with a carefully selected group of students. The class was called simply 'Functional World Studies', an oddly vague name for sure. Doubly odd was that the academy was very tight-lipped as to what the class was actually about, and it wasn't listed on any curriculum.

What 'Functional World Studies' was all about, no one knew. It was a kind of mystery among the students who were selected to participate, and a mystery at Beacon also meant a potential danger, as this was the place that threw teenagers off of cliffs just to see if they could survive. Theories popped up amongst the students as to what the course was actually about, ranging from 'just another course' to an inter-team tournament to the death. Nothing seemed to fit, though, so the mystery continued to sit heavy on the minds of the unlucky few who had received letters. Everyone in the auditorium was eager and terrified as class began.

Finally, Goodwitch spoke. "Students," she began, tone anything but welcoming, "Welcome to Functional World Studies. I will not be teaching this class." A murmur spread out over the assembled teams, which was swiftly silenced by Goodwitch's riding crop, which slapped onto a desk and demanded silence without words. Once a hush fell again Goodwitch continued, "This class will be taught by Professor Ozpin himself. I trust you will behave yourselves." The students began to murmur again, louder and more worried this time.

"Holy Shit," Yang whispered, and Ruby agreed. Ozpin was the Headmaster. He didn't teach classes! Plus, Ruby had come to learn that anything involving the headmaster was bad business. She had managed to hone her threat detection skills over the past few years of training, and suddenly red flags were going off left and right. Under the table, Ruby squeezed the hand in hers. Blake, who sat between Yang and Ruby, squeezed back.

Ozpin himself strode into the room then, having heard his cue from Goodwitch, his cane tapping on the floor and his trademark mug ominously absent. He stood in front of the classroom and waited for the noise to die off. Once everyone was focused solely on the silver-haired man at the front of the room, Ozpin began to speak. His voice, unlike Goodwitch's, was soft, earnest, but still commanding. "Students," he began much like his second-in-command had earlier, "What I am about to tell you cannot leave this room."

Everyone present seemed to hold their breath and sit forward in their chairs, waiting eagerly for Ozpin to continue past that ominous phrase. "So far in your attendance here at Beacon, you young men and women have faced many challenges, many threats from many different forms of the creatures of Grimm. This course, which you will be required to take for the duration of your next two years at Beacon, will teach you how to handle a different kind of threat."

He began to pace back and forth, his cane tapping against the floor every other step and his unoccupied arm folded across his back, hand balled into a fist. "This group of Teams has been heavily screened and processed by our staff here. You all possess certain characteristics that show you are capable of completing this course and the tasks it will put before you." He stopped his pacing for a moment, glancing up at his assembled students. "This course and the trials you will face in it will require a minor change in arsenal for some of you. Special ammunition or weapon modifications may be required, and as such, these things are listed in the syllabus Glynda will now distribute."

Goodwitch dutifully waved her crop through the air, and sure enough, a stack of papers began to rise off of the desk at the front of the auditorium and flutter across the room, a single page of paper labeled 'Required Materials' landing in front of each and every student. Ruby glanced through it, eyebrows rising at the odd collection of items. 'What do I need a sidearm for? You can't kill a Grimm with a forty-five...' she wondered, only more alarm bells continuing to ring.

Ozpin continued talking as his students read through their lists, "You will find in your career as Huntsmen and Huntresses that oftentimes threats come from unexpected and unpleasant places. This course will teach you how to recognise, manage, and, when necessary, eliminate these types of threats. You will learn how to see evil things when they exist in places you may not expect or may not like."

"What the hell? Blake, look at this," Yang whispered, brows creasing, pointing at one of the items on the list underneath the 'Shotgun Wielder' section.

"Throughout this course," Ozpin continued, sounding almost sad, "I will teach you how to face an adversary that contains just as much, if not more, of a capacity for evil as any Creature of Grimm you've ever faced. This course and what it teaches is one of Beacon's most closely guarded secrets, and one of a Huntsman or Huntress's most vitally important duties. Are there any questions?" He looked up to the crowd of thoroughly confused and very worried students.

Something about what he had said made Ruby's skin crawl. 'Most important duties? If it's so important, why keep it a secret? And why are there so few of us here? And why would Ozpin need to teach it personally? And why does he seem like he's speaking at a funeral right now?' the questions kept piling up in Ruby's mind, but she couldn't bring herself to ask any of them, finding her mouth uncomfortably dry.

Eventually, it was Yang that raised her hand.

"Miss Xiao Long," Ozpin acknowledged.

"Hey, uh, Oz?" Yang began in the wonderfully professional manner she was known for, "Some of the things on this list don't make any sense," continued, oblivious to Ozpin's slowly darkening facade, "Like, this says I need to stock up on twelve-gauge buckshot, but buckshot won't kill any Grimm bigger than like a Beowolf. If we are gonna be learning how to fight some crazy new type of Grimm, why do I need buckshot if it won't even punch through an Ursa's hide?"

Ozpin's head drooped just a bit, and he leaned a little bit more heavily on his cane as he said gravely, "This course will teach you how to see and combat evil amongst a creature much more elusive than any Grimm. By the end of your time at Beacon and your time in this course, you will know evil when it is present, even when it is not contained inside of a Creature of Grimm."

"Well, sir," Yang interjected, annoyed at the deflection of her question, "That doesn't really tell me why I need buckshot. So, why do I need it to fight whatever Grimm this is?"

What Ozpin said next would haunt Ruby for the rest of her life.

Suddenly, Ozpin appeared much older as he sighed deeply, before saying, "Because, Miss Xiao Long, I will not be teaching you how to kill Grimm. I will be teaching you how to kill men."

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Ruby made a noise somewhere between a cough and a gag. A righteous kind of anger rose up in her, more by reflex than choice. "And what the hell do you mean by that?" she growled. Two years learning underneath Ozpin had taught her to see evil in people, and this was no different. She was trained to see immorality in people and combat it. It was hammered into her bones just as firmly as any survival reflex. Muscle Memory.

Briefly, Ruby noted that attacking her coworker over something like this would probably get her fired, but it was instinctual how her hand twitched towards her pistol. She was taught not to let evil slip past her, and as much as she did want this job to work out, she still had her duty as a huntress.

In the end, Ruby decided that her duty as a huntress and as a person to combat evil overcame her newfound duty as an employee of the SDC. She was more than prepared to act on those instincts that had been pounded into her by her training at Beacon to fight what she knew was wrong. To Ruby, what the Commander was insinuating made her one of the worst kind of monsters, and Ruby knew violence would follow if what the woman next said wasn't satisfactory.

That cocky smile of Herder's turned mischievous again, completely oblivious to the danger next to her, before she raised up her left hand from where it had been hidden under her crossed arm and faced the outside of her hand at the ex-huntress. The orange light that permeated the room glinted off of a thin silver wedding band that wrapped around Herder's left ring finger, and she said, "Well, one married woman in particular, anyways."

The fury slid from Ruby's shoulders only to be replaced by confusion, then realization. 'She's married,' Ruby thought, 'She's talking about her wife.' Heat spread across her cheeks, feeling no small amount of embarrassment for almost jumping the gun. 'There's no evil here,' she told herself until her instinct to attack faded into a dull roar. Once it was gone, her heart slowed down and her body returned to normal. There was a pause, and then she said dumbly, "Oh."

At that, the Commander actually laughed, and Ruby could feel the blood boiling in her cheeks. Once Herder finally stopped, she wiped at her eyes and said, "Wow, yeah, that was great. Good to know your moral compass works, though." She gave one more laugh before shaking her head and turning around. She waved her prosthetic forward and said, "Alright, Huntress, jokes aside, we should probably get this briefing underway."

She didn't appreciate the joke, but Ruby couldn't really find it in her to be too angry. 'It was just a joke,' she told herself.

Wordlessly, Ruby followed.

Clara Herder was an interesting woman.

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"What?" Weiss hissed into her scroll, pressing it tightly up against her ear as if that would make the person on the other side's statement make any more sense.

"I said, Miss Schnee," a the heavily accented voice of Friedrich K Wilhelm replied, "That the meeting this afternoon will be canceled." He stated this as a fact, one that, as he was currently the second most powerful person in the Schnee Conglomerate as the top shareholder under Weiss, was true.

Weiss could feel her shoulders slump, a show of emotion she would only allow in the solitude of her own office, and she said, "Mister Wilhelm, this meeting has been a week in the making, and vitally important to the future of the SDC's operations in Menagerie. We can't simply-"

She was interrupted by the man on the other end of the line, "We can and we will postpone the meeting. I am held up in Mistral for the night and will not arrive on time."

Weiss gazed out of the window of her office over the afternoon light shining down on Atlas and said, "We could-" before Weiss Schnee was cut off once more.

"That meeting will not be held without me, Miss Schnee," he spat, voice hard and unyielding.

Weiss bit the inside of her cheek. She wanted to retaliate, every single nerve of her body screamed at her to punish him for interrupting her, for having the audacity to tell her what to do with her own company. One hand balled into a fist at her side, and the other squeezed the scroll in her hand, the glass and metal not budging. After a moment, she just said, "Alright, the meeting will be held tomorrow," and left it at that. She bit her cheek again, and she could taste copper.

"Hm, indeed," and the line went dead.

The scroll clattered against the marble-white desk where it was tossed, and the once proud woman slumped into her seat, feeling defeated. This behavior on Wilhelm's part was nothing new, and Weiss once more found herself wanting. He always pushed his own agenda over hers and constantly undermined her authority as head of the company, and she could do nothing about it. He hadn't even given her the dignity of hanging up the line. She stared out over the Atlesian skyline once more as frigid winds battered silently against the impassive window. Her eyes lingered on the construction site that Ruby had pointed out earlier. Idly she wondered if a sniper's bullet would really be a bad way to go.

'Worthless.'

Tearing her eyes away, she could feel the cold seeping through her chest again. Her hands which were shaking in her lap. She closed her eyes and focused on the power that lied deep and dormant inside of her. She drew up her aura and forced it into her hands, focusing. Slowly, in the air above her palms, a single small blue Schnee Crest began to form in thin air. It flickered for a moment or two, never quite solidifying and becoming solid. She grit her teeth against the sweat beading at her forehead and the chasm opening in her chest. The damn thing was no wider than a tea plate and frail as a sheet of ice, but her heart pounded at the effort it took to maintain.

She just needed to be strong. She knew it, she knew that if she was just strong she could stand up to Wilhelm and take the reigns of her company. She could impose her will on the world, as was her birthright. All she had to do was 'Be strong, damnit!'

Then maybe, maybe she would stop feeling so damn worthless.

But her hand were shook, and the glyph flickered. She couldn't do it. She knew that every morning when she woke up and looked in the mirror. She couldn't be strong. She opened her eyes and focused on the flickering glyph and the shuddering fingers that somehow were both hers and not at all. Her lips parted and she began to whisper a mantra, "I am a Schnee. I am a Schnee. I am a Schnee." She said this as if there was power in the words. They were true after all.

The Schnees commanded respect. No one crossed a Schnee, no one insulted a Schnee, and no one interrupted a Schnee. And she was a Schnee.

But there was no surge of power, so strength born of indignation at having her authority undermined. There was no power in the words that Weiss could draw from, and the glyph flickered once more and then crumpled, leaving the trembling hands that were briefly hidden beneath it exposed to the light in all their weakness. The glyph died, in the end, as it always did when Weiss tried to draw one forth, and so to did Weiss's resolve.

There was nothing she could do about this, so she pivoted her chair around back to face her desk, and began to work, hoping desperately the feeling of pen scratching on paper would still the shaking of her hands.

There was no power in her work, either, and her hands shook.

'Worthless.'

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A/N

I think that's a good place to stop for now. I intended for this chapter to go on for longer, but it's been forever since the last update and this is as far as I've gotten since then. I want to thank you all for being so endlessly patient on my slow ass. Life's been hectic, blah blah blah, you guys know the drill. I have places I need this story to go, and it's slow going.

Come hell or high water, if it takes me nine fucking years to write this story, it'll be done damnit.

I wish this was longer for y'all, but it's all I've got. I'll try and get the next update out quicker, but no promises.

Additionally, I plan to make some changes to the previous chapters. Read back through them and correct some dumb mistakes and fix some writing style errors. I doubt I'll change anything story-wise, but if I do, I'll be sure to inform you all with another A/N.

Don't forget to review! That's the only form of payment I get from this, so keep it flowing for me. I set up a Tumblr, also, and won't be posting updates to iFunny for much longer. If you want to see how my writing is going or see the mounds of art I repost, you can follow me at rwby-order dot Tumblr dot com!

-Order