Chapter Three

Same Day

14,000 feet over the Mantle plateau

I used to be scared of heights.

Even standing on the balcony of our home's foyer had been enough to terrify me. It was immature, maybe even cowardly, but then that was to be expected from a girl who was, at the time, no more than eleven. It hadn't lasted long, at any rate. After all, it wouldn't do for an heiress to have that kind of weakness.

My father had set up a protective cushion on the lower floor, then ordered one of his men to throw me off the balcony. Repeatedly. Eventually, the fall became routine, and my fear vanished just like everything else my father had deemed unfit after Winter had escaped.

I found myself unconsciously tapping into that routine now. It wasn't an uncommon occurrence, as much as I hated it. I often found myself with no other means of seeing the world, so I defaulted back to what he had tried to teach me.

Therefore, presented with the situation of needing to jump out of a moving airship several miles above the ground, I fell back to the mindset I had been in after the tenth time off the balcony. Acceptance. Complacency.

I despised that feeling.

"Alright team Ruby, let's roll!" Ruby's voice snapped me back to reality as she dove headfirst out the window of our cabin, a long trail of rose petals following her. Her whoop of excitement was stolen from her in an instant as she entered the wind. Yang followed her within seconds, and after an exchanged look and shrug with Blake, I followed as well. I had grown to expect this kind of behavior, even if I would never admit to enjoying it. No one could call me complacent now.

The wind was even worse than I'd expected. Within seconds, the airship was out of sight, and I was falling several dozen feet per second. We'd been flying between cloud layers, and within twenty seconds I had to form a defensive glyph between myself and the ground, not to protect me from the landing but instead to protect me from the rush of cold moisture that would have frozen me solid when we reached the ground.

As I cursed the wasted power, I fell through the bottom of the cloud, appearing in the midst of a snowstorm and seeing the ground over a mile beneath me. I spread my arms wide to slow my descent and give me time. Little spots of red and yellow beneath me gave away Ruby and Yang's positions beneath me, and a glance upward showed me Blake passing through the gap I had created, diving headfirst with her arms to her sides to catch up with the rest of us.

She could get away with that, she wasn't wearing a skirt. Heiress or not, I was still a Schnee. I needed to maintain some level of decency.

Blake shot past me within seconds, and after a few seconds of searching, I saw Oscar and team JNPR coming through the cloud layer after her after jumping from the opposite side of the ship. I didn't see Qrow at first glance, but he'd show up eventually. After waiting for the other group to fall past me, I tucked my arms and dove after them.

As I watched, Ruby's red spot seemed to blossom outward as she used her Semblance to take the impact. Yang began to glow red-hot as she focusing the heat her own semblance beneath her, heating and expanding the air to slow her fall - she had been entirely too pleased to discover that facet of the power. Steam rose up from the snowy ground when she impacted. The others followed suit with their own landing strategies, each making it to the ground safely.

Seconds later, as I fell past the first mountain peak, I leveled out to slow my descent. I thrust a hand out in front of me, spawning a friction glyph at an angle that I could slide down while arresting my momentum. I dropped off it, my velocity slowed enough to be safe, and dropped the last fifty feet or so to the ground.

The wind howled across the open plateau, whipping my hair into my face from the moment I landed. It wasn't quite as cold as it could have been, but that wasn't saying much.

"Fashionably late, princess?" Yang shouted, rubbing her hands together while keeping her Semblance active for warmth.

I rolled my eyes, struggling to tie my hair back. "I was only a few seconds behind you! Besides which, there's no such thing!"

The others were ignoring our exchange, either because they were used to it or because they just couldn't hear us. Nora was in the middle of yelling to Ozpin, with Ren talking into her ear. "How long until the Atlas soldiers get here?"

"Give me a moment to inform Ironwood of our presence. It should be no longer than a few minutes!" He turned, taking out his scroll, and stepped away as he held it up to his face and started shouting into it.

I turned, hunting for some sort of cover from this wind, and caught Ruby starting to dig into the snow with her weapon. It was dense enough that we could walk atop it, but it was still many feet thick. When she saw me watching, she paused, turned her back to the makeshift wall she'd created, and waved the group over. Even from here, I could see that she was breathing heavy.

Yang and Jaune both ran to help her when they saw what she was doing, and she dropped to the ground in exhaustion.

I sat down next to her as the hole got deeper and wide enough to fit the rest of us. When Ozpin, or rather Oscar got back, there wasn't much chatter. Perhaps the group realized that it would only spark an argument, and none of us wanted to deal with a Grimm attack in this weather.

The wind wall blocked out some of the noise, so we heard the telltale humming of Atlas' transports before we saw the searchlights. Even in a five-foot deep hole, our group was colorful enough for them to spot us easily and they landed barely ten feet away.

Just as the entire group began picking themselves up for transport, someone new entered the pit. He stood tall, his hair and beard far messier than I would have expected but still cutting one of the most imposing figures I had ever encountered, even as he ignored me entirely.

I wasn't entirely sure of whether to be thankful that he was ignoring my position here, or insulted that I was being ignored.

General James Ironwood, arguably the most powerful man in the world, dropped into our dirty hole in the snow while giving Ozpin the most frustrated look I had ever seen on someone that didn't have to deal with team RWBY on a regular basis.

"Ozpin. Next time, how about you tell me you're coming before you nearly freeze to death in a blizzard?"

Dagnabit Ozpin.

As I've been writing this, I'm realizing that the pacing is...not great, to say the least. I've got at least the next three chapters, but I'm not sure if I can keep this up beyond that. I might need to re-work some things. Each chapter I've written has been getting successively worse, in my eyes, and it's getting to the point that I'm not sure I'd want to read the story myself, which I can already tell is a problem.

Either way though, I've got this one out, and the next should be coming on December 29th or 30th, with another chapter of Scatterer in the middle. Thanks for reading, I hope you're enjoying it more than I am, and I'll see you next time!