RWBY A Day in the Life of Crime
Chapter 18: A Not so Pyrrhic Victory?
In a darkly lit room sat two people, staring down each other from across the steel gray table. One was a blonde haired boy with baby blue eyes, a struggling cop known as Jaune. The other was a girl with pink and brown hair, a hardened criminal known as Neo.
After two months of scouting and tracking and staking out, Pyrrha and Jaune had managed to catch the short girl in an illegal activity and now she was sitting in the interrogation room of the police station where Jaune and Pyrrha were going to interrogate her for answers on the gang's functioning as well as finally incriminate her for all her wrong doings.
All the hours of arduous work was finally going to pay off. Not that Jaune minded the tough work as long as he got to work with Pyrrha. The girl was a true inspiration and she had helped him improve by giant leaps and bounds in his combat skills. While he still had a lot to be left desired, especially when it came to being quiet and sneaky, he was getting better.
Maybe even good enough to earn the title of being Pyrrha's partner in crime busting fun.
Right now the girl had stepped out in order to get some coffee for the him and her, as the both of them had not slept for three days straight in order to follow their lead. And their lead had lead directly to seeing Neo captured right in front of them. Right now the girl was sitting calmly at the table, as if this wasn't anything out of the ordinary for her. And maybe it wasn't. Given her long record of villainy, she had done a bunch of gang bangs, dust operations, not to mention some serious torturing and interrogating of anyone who bothered the gang. She was just a bit intimidating and it wasn't in a way most people were. While people who were tough and scary were so because of their leering and big presence in public spaces, she accomplished what they did but with silence, and with a lack of presence. She looked so sweet it was disarming. And her silence was oppressive, making a person who was in her vicinity feel so unnerved by it that they often started babbling pitifully in order to prevent the consuming quiet from getting to them. This was often how she managed to get answers from people. Not necessarily through pain, although she could, but simply by siting their unassumingly and staring at the other person.
This tactic was working very well on Jaune right now, the poor boy already sweating bullets as he squirmed in his seat. "I'm not scared of you," he mumbled to her. "You don't scare me. None at all. It's you who should be scared of me. Yea, cuz I'm the cop here and you're going to go to jail."
Neo arched a brow.
Jaune paled but continued stammering on, trying to scare the other but failing at it. "We have loads of evidence against you. We know exactly what you've been up to. We've been trailing you for months. Pyrrha's smart that way. She's the brains of the operation. And I'm the brawn. Well, actually she's the brawn too. I'm just...the buddy, yea, the buddy. I'm the one who gives her support. Because the two of us are working together to take down you and your fellow gang members."
Neo arched her other brow, both up high on her face now.
Jaune slouched down in his chair in fright. "I don't care. I'm not...not scared of you. Like I said." He looked like he was going to pass out from fright.
This time Neo smiled and Jaune let out a bloodcurdling scream.
As Pyrrha approached the interrogation room with the two cups of coffee in her hands she could make out the sound of muffled sobbing. Furrowing her brows in confusion, she shouldered the door open and saw that Jaune was face down on the table, pounding it with his fist. "And that's all our plans for what we're going to do in our attempts to stop the Grimm gang. Please don't hurt me any more. I don't know anymore."
Neo was sitting in the chair, arms crossed over her chest as she listened to him basically spill everything that he and Pyrrha had planned to do against the gang.
"Jaune, what's going on here?" the redhead asked, closing the door behind her and setting the cups down on the table, trying not to get angry or to panic based on an assumption she made without hearing the full story. There was always a story when it came to Jaune. Always a reason why he messed up.
"She...she wouldn't stop it. She was just so scary," he picked up his head, tears streaming down his face.
Pyrrha gave a long sigh. She supposed she should have known better than to leave Jaune with one of the city's most notorious interrogators, alone. "Jaune, did you just get interrogated by the person you were supposed to be interrogating?"
He nodded his head tearfully yes.
She gave another long sigh, one full of bone wrenching exhaustion.
It looked like it would all be up to her again.
Interrogating Neo was hard, and so Pyrrha had to leave her locked up in a jail cell while she came up with an alternative way to get her to spill. She had kept Jaune out of the sessions as the mere sight of the girl's raised brow was enough to send the boy into hysterics and made him blubber about something or another that he felt guilty about.
Right now Pyrrha was in the station. It was past working hours and she was at her desk, scribbling away on a pad of paper and trying to come up with some ideas as to how to crack Neo open. She had sent Jaune home early, a bit irked at him for spilling all their plans to Neo. It was certain that if Neo escaped, she could tell the Grimm gang about their plans and it would all be ruined. Thus Pyrrha was even more motivated in order to get Neo incarcerated.
The clock on the wall ticked as the hands got closer and closer to 12 am. Pyrrha ran a hand over her tired eyes and pulled out the cigarette from between her teeth to tap the ash off the end before she let out a plume of smoke from her lips. Maybe she could go for a cup of coffee? Her eyes were blurring on the paper and her head was nodding off.
She got up and made her way to the kitchen which was in the back of the station. She flicked on lights on her way over, the place dimly lit. In the kitchen, a tacky sea green tiled place with a low roof and dirty plates in the sink, she grabbed the coffee pot and poured herself a cup. Taking a sip she grimaced as she realized it was cold. She should warm it up but she didn't feel like doing it. "Those damn lazy cops can't even be bothered to keep the coffee warm."
"I can heat it up for you." Pyrrha turned on her heel on those words and nearly dropped her cup.
Standing silently in the doorway was a woman with long black hair over one side of her shoulders, a red dress snug on her curvy figure. How she had gotten in without Pyrrha's notice or without alerting the security systems was concerning. Did she have the key to the station or something?
"Shit," Pyrrha cursed as she fumbled for her side only to realize her weapon wasn't there. She had unholstered it from her belt.
"Relax, I'm not here to hurt you miss Nikos. I'm merely here to pick up something of mine that has been taken away." The woman's voice was smooth and her expression smug. Pyrrha knew who this woman was. She had been the former leader of the Grimm: Cinder Fall.
Was the woman really here for a nonmalignant reason? Pyrrha wasn't certain but she wouldn't strike until it was absolutely necessary. She knew how powerful Cinder was. Pyrrha could be burned to a crisp before she even blinked. She kept the knife on the counter within her range of vision. With her semblance she could use it to distract Cinder and then jump out the window at her back. It wasn't a large window, but she could make it. The fall was merely two stories, something she could take with all her training.
But she shouldn't have worried. Cinder had no intentions of harming Pyrrha, although she did come to deliver a warning. "I also have come to inform you of something of utmost importance. You see, this police station," at this Cinder swiped a finger down the counter, looked at the dust that she had lifted off and rubbed her fingers together to get the dirt off before continuing, "Is completely under the Grimm's control. The police look the other way to our activities and we in exchange let them keep their lives and even give them a little bonus to their paychecks so that they can go and hunt down other criminals for us, help us wipe away the competition. We've never had violations in our deal until you came along. We don't appreciate these efforts to hunt us down miss Nikos. Thus I am giving you this warning kindly, because I know you are new and naive to the way the world works, having lived in your ivory tower for far too long. Stay away from us, don't try to capture us, don't try to stop us, and most importantly, don't try to jail us."
Cinder and Pyrrha remained in a heated eye lock for a while. Pyrrha was angry. How dare this woman stride in here and think she could tell Pyrrha what to do. The redheads grip on her mug tightened and she was about to open her mouth to say something when Cinder raised a hand to stop her.
"I know what you are about to say and frankly I don't want to hear it. Think over what I have said over night rather than come to a rash decision right now. The Grimm gang's offer is generous. Stay away from us and you get to keep your life. If not, then this is your first and last warning." With that the woman turned on her heel and left, the sound of her shoes click clacking on the floor.
In Pyrrha's anger the knife on the counter went flying into the wood of the doorway as her semblance spiraled out of control. She took deep calming breaths and when she managed to stem her anger, she pulled the knife out of the doorway on her way out and when she got to her desk, she saw a white note on it. It was Neo's. On it, it said, "Better luck next time."
Growling in renewed anger Pyrrha crumpled up the note and tossed it into a wastebasket.
She was going to bring down the Grimm, and along the way wipe Cinder's smug grin off of her face.
Omake: Ruby Tries Interrogation
"Please Neo? Please oh please? Just this once!" Ruby begged, hands clasped in front of her chest, full face pout going on. She had cornered Neo in the hallway, the dual haired girl looking uncomfortable in the position she was in. "It looks like fun and I wanna try it. Please let me?!"
Neo gave a sigh as she looked away from Ruby. Her pout was dangerous. It had the power to mind control people. Neo didn't want to become a victim of it. But even with her eyes directed away, she could still the full force of the pout, the energy of it hitting her face like a sunbeam. She held up a sign with the words, "No Ruby. I'm the interrogator not you"
"I know you are, but just this once! It looks like so much fun and I've always wanted to try it, to see if I'd be any good at doing things like that." Ruby was not giving up.
Neo held up yet another sign with rejection spelt on it but Ruby didn't even bother to read this one. She hugged Neo. Neo felt her body stiffen up and her sign dropped from her hands as they fell to her sides useless. This was it. Ruby's killer hug. Neo hadn't expected it to be brought out this early. If she had suspected, then she could have crossed her arms to bar the hug from occurring. But now it had happened. And Neo was trapped in Ruby's overpowering embrace of warmth that would instantly win anyone over. Succumbing to the power but not by choice, Neo held out a sign with "Fine. But just once," with once underlined twice with heavy black ink.
"Oh thank you so much!" Ruby cheered, letting the smaller girl go and rushing off to the interrogation room. Neo sighed and let her head droop a little. Now she knew how it had been so easy for Ruby to take over the gang from Cinder.
With slight trepidation she waited ten minutes before she approached the room Ruby was in with her victim. She carefully pressed an ear up to the metal door and heard zooming noises in there, followed by loud screeching. What was going on?
She opened the door only to find Ruby on her knees with the man she was supposed to be interrogating, toy cars spread out on the floor next to them. Neo smacked herself hard in the face. What was Ruby doing?
"Oh hey Neo!" Ruby called when she saw the smaller girl. "Wanna join?"
"What's going on here?" Cinder's voice sounded somewhere behind Neo and the smaller girl turned her head to see Cinder nearing, a dissatisfied look on her face. "Weren't you meant to interrogate him Neo? What is Ruby doing here with him?"
Neo hastily pulled out a sign that said "I'm sorry!" but Ruby also rose to her defense. "It was all my fault. I wanted to try interrogation and she let me so don't be mad at her!"
Cinder let out an angry sigh. "Ruby, don't do things you aren't authorized to do. Their forbidden from you for a reason. And really, cars?"
"I was gonna try to bribe him with them, to cow him into relaxing around me so he could open up to me. Make him think I was his friend!"
"Hey!" the man said with tears shining in his hurt filled eyes. "I thought you really wanted to be friends with me! How could you lie to me?" He then took to sobbing.
"Uh!" Ruby was panicked. She hadn't meant to make Neo get in trouble, or for Cinder to get mad or for this man to get sad.
Just when she reached a hand to comfort him, Cinder snapped out, "Ruby, let Neo get back to her work. Come with me." She crooked her finger.
"Aww, shucks," Ruby hung her head, her kicked puppy look on her face. Neo avoided looking at it and went into the interrogation room where she would be safe from it. She hated leaving Cinder outside unprotected from such a look...but Neo didn't want to get caught in the cross-hairs.
"I'm sorry, Cinder. I wasn't thinking about how my methods could ruin the information gathering," Ruby said softly and Cinder began to soften up when she saw how sad Ruby looked.
"Yes, well, uh, it's alright. Here, why don't I show you how to properly do an interrogation?" An idea crossed Cinder's mind. One very naughty idea. "It'll help cheer you up."
"That's great!" Ruby's enthusiasm returned to her. She was happy Cinder wasn't mad at her.
"I can play the role of the interrogator and you can be the victim. How does that sound?" Cinder suggested as she lead Ruby towards one of the gray rooms.
"That sounds great!"
A/N: So I guess this little omake leads us to the beginning of chapter one. LOL. Had no idea this is where it would go when I first thought of it.