A/N: Hey! Guess who's back with another chapter?! Now I know you're all eager to see the heist, and I really don't want to build it up just for it to be a let down, but there is an over-arching plot that will take the girls past this heist and on to bigger and crazier things, and I do need to lay some groundwork for that. That being said the heist should be coming soon, and I'm really sorry if I'm starting to lose your interest. It gets better I promise.
Once again thanks for all the follows/favourites and a really big thank you for your reviews. There's no better motivator than hearing your feed back.
Now:
In response to the guest who said they had a hard time imagining Weiss letting Ruby make all the plans, I do agree; and though I didn't show it, you'll soon see that their planning sessions are more discussion-based, but at this point I like to think Weiss is able to see past her pride enough to realise that Ruby is far more skilled when it comes to this sort of thing too. As for your other issue: You make a good point, and the mutual lack of trust-among other things-will still be addressed, but both women are making a conscious effort to trust the other more and open up to each other, but you'll just have to keep reading to find out.
Lastly, a virtual high-five goes to InsolentKnight for figuring out who Ruby based the most recent alias off of. You good Ser (see 'cause you're a knight XD) are currently my favourite, until someone else comments something that impresses me.
Whew! That was a long A/N but now that we're done:
On to the good stuff!
Ruby had woken up from the best sleep of her life to a comfortable weight on her chest. Opening her eyes, she was greeted to a head of silky, silver locks. She brought her hand up and absentmindedly ran her fingers through Weiss's hair while thoughts on what had transpired last night floated around her mind.
Weiss had changed a lot since that day in the crappy New York restaurant. Sure, she was still snarky at times, and had trouble showing her emotions, but it was clear that her walls had come down a long way. The patch of skin on her cheek where Weiss had kissed her still tingled as she thought about the former heiress.
Oh yeah, she's come a really long way.
Something had definitely changed between them, and she could see that Weiss had decided to stop denying herself. For the most part, Ruby was extremely happy and proud of her friend, but as Weiss mumbled something and shifted in her sleep, her lips landing on Ruby's collarbone, the brunette knew it was going to be even harder to resist temptation.
Either way, she was happy to be able to hold her friend in her arms like this and take care of her. She had already decided that she would let Weiss set the pace for…whatever was going on between the two of them. In the mean time she still had plans to work on. They needed info on the bowler hat guy, and they needed it fast. She was just thinking of her next move when she felt the bundle curled up on top of her start shift and groan tiredly.
"Morning sleepyhead." Ruby said softly.
Blurry sapphires looked up at her as Weiss smiled softly before burying her face in Ruby's neck. "G'morning." Weiss mumbled and Ruby had to fight the shiver she felt as Weiss's lips brushed against her jugular. They lay like that for several minutes before getting up and preparing for the day. After quick showers and breakfast consisting of bagels and fruit, both women were out the door and driving down the crowded streets of Ottawa.
"So what do we have to do today? Take advantage of some other witless civilian? Hand craft a set of keys to the Prime Minister's office?" Weiss asked as they crawled through streets clogged with people in the midst of their morning commute.
Ruby chuckled as she darted her eyes to the former heiress sitting next to her; plush leather jacket over a light blue blouse; warm, slightly baggy jeans; arms crossed with travel mug of coffee in hand, and a glare that ended up looking more like a pout made for a sight that could only be described as adorable. "How is it you get grumpier as you get less tired?"
"Oh! I know, we're going to literally steal candy from a baby!"
Ruby rolled her eyes, "If you must know, we're going to the police."
The car was silent as Ruby waited for her words to sink in.
"What?!" Weiss screeched. "Why would we go to the police?! Aren't they supposed to be the enemy, or something?"
Ruby laughed as she pulled the car into a garage and parked it. "Calm yourself, Princess, it's not like we're turning ourselves in. Besides, a few of my friends are cops."
"You, an internationally renowned criminal are friends with police officers?" The gobsmacked look on Weiss's face was priceless as Ruby exited the car and went around to open the door for her.
"Just the good ones."
"Doesn't working with you inherently make them dirty?"
"I said good, not clean. There's a difference between upholding the law, and doing the right thing to keep people safe."
*(OoO)*
Weiss was silent as they walked through garage, contemplating what Red had told her.
Well look at her. She's probably broken every law short of murder, but she's still good.
Red led them into an elevator and pressed the button for the fifth floor. They remained silent as they rode the elevator, the only sound coming from the soft clangs of worn pulleys lifting the car higher. With a soft ding the doors opened to reveal the entire floor of the garage was empty, construction equipment littered the floor and every view of the outside was obstructed by scaffolding and tarps. In the middle of the lot sat an old Camaro. It was red with a gold strip down the middle, but the faded paint along with the multitude of bumps and scratches made her think that it had probably seen quite a few things in its time and the conspicuous lack of rust along with the new tires told her the owner took great care of the vehicle despite not caring what the outside looked like.
Reclining against the hood of the car were two young men. The first was dressed immaculately, his suit was tailored perfectly and his shoes shined so that they gleamed. He was tall and thin, easily standing a foot taller than her and as her eyes lifted to her head, she felt her eyebrow lift in confusion. He smirked as he saw them approach, a roguish cocking of the mouth that told her he was perfectly aware of how good he looked and knew she was staring. What really caught her attention was his hair, it was short and choppy, his bangs falling across his forehead in messy waves of light blue. He nudged the young man next to him and they both turned to greet them.
"Yo, Irene, wasup." Said the second officer with a wave. He was shorter than his friend, with a stockier frame and shaggy golden-blond hair. He was decidedly more dishevelled than his blue-haired partner, with his shirt untucked, his top two buttons undone, and his tie with little bananas across it hanging loosely around his neck. He smiled as he opened his arms to hug Red, and Weiss could see the laughter in his eyes.
"I told you Sun, if you keep calling me Irene, I'll start calling you Watson." Red laughed as she separated from him.
"Oh, please, there's no way Neptune is Sherlock!" The blond joked.
"Between the two of us, which one is smarter and which one is likely to drive his car into the second floor of a warehouse to make an arrest?" The blue-haired man, Neptune, joked.
"It worked didn't it?"
"Besides Nept, you're more of a Mycroft anyway." Red said as she embraced the taller man.
"I can live with that," he chuckled as he wrapped his arms around the brunette. "But don't tell me you called us out here to banter."
"No, I didn't," Red said as she composed herself. "I need a favour."
"Well it must be important if you brought Weiss Schnee back from the dead to accompany you. And might I just say," he turned to Weiss and grabbed her hand, placing a chaste kiss on her knuckles, "for someone who supposedly died a month and a half ago, you look exceptionally radiant."
"O-oh, thank you." Weiss stuttered as she felt her face heat up. He reminded her of the heirs and young business men who had tried to court her at her father's events, but instead of making her think of a snake creeping through the grass in search of prey, Weiss couldn't help but imagine him as a peacock, content to strut around and flaunt its brilliant plumage.
"Neptune," Red said in a flat tone. "Leave her alone."
"You're no fun Red." Neptune said as he straightened himself and adjusted his tie.
"So what is it that you need, Red?" Sun asked, reclining back against the hood of his car.
"You're going to arrest the Malachite Twins."
"You're asking us to arrest two of the biggest, most dangerous drug traffickers in the city-without evidence, might I add-thereby, angering one of the biggest gangs in the Canadian Shield?"
"Yup, then they're gonna walk away scot-free."
"Red!" Sun exclaimed, "Not to mention what it'll do to our reputations, but if we arrest them, then the Ashes are gonna we're going after them and it'll be next to impossible to bring 'em down."
"Don't forget that their transports are next to impossible to track." Neptune added.
"What if I told you I can give you exact coordinates for where they'll be during their next load up?" Red asked as she pulled out her phone.
"And how would you know that?"
"I may have planted a tracker on one of their trucks."
"You know they do regular sweeps of their vehicles for any bugs." Sun said.
"Maybe but I doubt they'll ever find mine." Red tapped an app on her phone and opened up what looked like a map. "Yep, it's still securely inside the handle bars of the trucks. On Thursday, you'll get an anonymous tip with the exact location of the trucks and the drugs."
"Alright, but that doesn't help us if they walk away." Neptune added.
"It will when everything Junior says, including his phone calls with whoever's giving the orders, is recorded."
The two partners looked at each other, seemingly discussing something silently, before turning back her. "Alright," Sun said. "We'll do it."
"Awesome!" Red exclaimed, high-fiving them both. "Now, Sun, do you mind keeping Weiss company for a few minutes? I need to discuss some more… foreign affairs with Neptune."
Sun nodded as the other two walked to a faraway corner of the lot. "So," he said turning to Weiss, "How does the heiress of a multibillion dollar conglomerate end up faking her death and running around with one of the most notorious criminals no one's ever heard of?"
"My father hired Red for a job that I was supposed to oversee. One thing led to another and she ended up saving my life and getting me out from under his thumb."
"Yeah, she tends to help people wherever she goes."
"How do you know her?"
"I was interning at Interpol when I met her. This gang in Greece was blackmailing me into being there mule. Helping them get everything from weapons and drugs to women out of the country. I was there when she got arrested for the first time, at the time she went by Irena Atlerez, and even though the ID said she had turned eighteen the month before, she couldn't have been older than fourteen, maybe fifteen."
"Why wasn't she put in juvenile detention?"
"After the disguise had been removed, the higher ups wanted to, but she only spoke Romanian and some broken Spanish to them while sticking to her story. Eventually she was tried as an adult and put in holding."
"So where do you come in?"
"I ran into her as she was breaking out."
"And you didn't arrest her?"
Sun smirked, laying back and staring at the ceiling. "I was just an intern at the time. I couldn't call anyone because then I'd have to explain what I was doing unlocking the evidence vault and stealing my bosses key card."
"So what happened then?" Weiss asked as she watched the taller brunette cross her arms and shift her weight, clearly not happy with whatever Neptune was telling her.
"We sat down and talked. She told me about her parents and how they adopted her and raised her so she was running cons and robbing candy stores by the age of six. I told her how I took the internship as part of my degree in law, and how this gang was threatening my family back home forcing me to do the opposite of what I wanted to do with my life. After a while she offered me a deal; she had friends who lived around Ottawa that owed her favours who would keep them safe, in exchange I had to do two things: the first involved plugging in a small thumb drive into my bosses computer, waiting forty-five seconds, and unplugging it."
"What was on the thumb drive?"
"It was a virus that erased her fingerprints and mugshots from the system. All that was left was the officer's description of her in disguise, the name on the ID, and the MO. It also created an opening for her to anonymously gain access and remove anything too incriminating. If you open her file now, all you'll find is a crazy long list of names, a list of felonies that is way too long and in depth for someone in her early twenties, and miles of red tape as agencies around the world fight for jurisdiction."
"Wow."
"That's what Neptune said when he first saw it. Only every one in maybe ten felonies can be fully seen by any one agency because their all so caught up in politics."
"What about the other thing she wanted you to do?" Weiss asked.
Sun laughed. "That's the really crazy one. She told me to wait until the end of the next day, talk to my boss privately, and tell him about my situation."
"But what about your family? Wouldn't they get hurt?"
"That's what I thought, but she just flashed me this grin that reminded me of a kid stealing from the cookie jar, and said not to worry about it. Throughout the next day, I was emailed forms saying that almost every house in my family's neighbourhood had been bought by people who ranged from members of the Hell's Angels and a bunch of other thugs, to Military Police and private security, to a home security expert and a bodyguard. After reading that, I went straight to my boss and he had most of the Greece branch of the Ashes arrested when they tried to rob the evidence vault."
Weiss was stunned. She knew Red had a good heart, but she didn't think she was willing to go such lengths to help someone she had just met. "What about the people now living around your family? Surely they can't all get along."
"Maybe not, but when they're around my family, they put aside their differences because they're doing it for her, and they know she would do the same for them. That's why Red's system works in keeping her hidden. She knows that if agencies in the same country can take weeks, sometimes months, to cooperate, it'll take even longer to bring international ones into the mix; and by then the trail's gone cold."
Weiss sat there, silently considering the girl who had become her best friend in the past few months. Here was a girl who made a living lying and stealing and was able to outsmart the world's justice systems by playing on the inherent distrust of each other, but was able to maintain a web of contacts from every walk of life who worked seamlessly with each other because while they may not trust each other, they did trust the fiery young lady who would do everything in her power to help them should they call upon her.
"You're pretty lucky, Weiss," Sun's voice snapped her back to the present as she turned to face the smirking officer.
"What do you mean?" She asked.
"The way Red looks at you… you can tell how much she cares about you. She actually considers you her friend, not just a contact."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah, girl's crazy about you, and really, you couldn't ask for a better person to be there for you than her. You just have to give her time."
"I don't follow."
"Look," he explained as he raised himself off the car. "Red's the kind of person who will do anything for people she cares about. If she felt it would help keep you safe, she could probably topple entire governments with a few phone calls. She's one of the smartest people on the planet, and could probably build a nuke out of a pen and a couple of bolts; but she also has a really hard time trusting people. She was thrown out of an orphanage when she was three 'cause they had no room for her. Her parents didn't take her in until she was five. Before then I dunno what she did, but she somehow survived. Yang told me it took a year before she would even speak to anyone other than her dad, and another six months after that before she told any of them her name. Her mom was killed when she was nine, and after that, she asked them all to call her Red. Blake and this woman Pyrrha who lives in New York are the only ones not related to her who know her real name. I haven't actually met Pyrrha but Blake's an old friend of mine and she said she had been dating Yang for three and a half years before Red told her what her real name was."
Weiss fought tears as she wondered what must have happened to make someone care so much, but trust so little. She resolved again that she would stay with this enigmatic angel who had saved her from a life of fear and control as long as the brunette would have her. She would learn as much about her as she could, and prove that she was worthy of this saint-in-thief's-clothes' trust.
"See and that's the look that says you might be exactly what she needs." Sun said with a soft smile.
She smiled at him and quickly dried her eyes as Red and Neptune walked back toward them.
*(OoO)*
The small smile Weiss sent Ruby as she joined her and Sun at the Camaro helped lift the brunette's spirits slightly.
"Right," said Neptune. "You should have word by Friday if everything went according to plan."
"Alright, thanks Neptune. We'll see you guys around."
"See ya, Red. You should come by the house some time, Mia misses you."
"I'll try, Sun." Ruby said with a laugh as she reached for Weiss's hand to pull the heiress along. "Give your parents my love and tell Mia I'll be down to see her as soon as I can."
"Will do."
Ruby led Weiss back to the elevator in silence; it wasn't until they were already on their way down that she realised she was still holding the older girl's hand and dropped it.
"So," Weiss said while studying the smudges on the wall of the metal car. "They are an interesting pair."
"That, they are." Ruby replied with a chuckle. "But they're reliable."
"I would hope so. Especially because it doesn't look like whatever you and Neptune were talking about was good news."
"Why, Weiss, are you reading me?" Ruby asked lightheartedly, trying to change the subject.
"I'd like to think I've been running around with you long enough to tell when you aren't happy."
"Oh? So you think you can see through me?" Asked Ruby. She wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. Something about her platinum-haired friend made her take off her masks without even noticing, and end up wearing her heart on her sleeve.
"Maybe not yet," Weiss stated as they exited the elevator and made their way to the car. "But I've dealt with enough politicians and businessmen to know when someone's deflecting."
"Alright, guilty as charged." Ruby acquiesced as she got in the passenger side and Weiss started the car.
"Red," Weiss turned to her and grabbed her hand. "I want to help you. Please, tell me what's wrong?"
Ruby sighed as Yang's words rang through her head for the thousandth time.
Open up. Even if it's just a little.
"Start driving and I'll explain as we go." Weiss nodded and pulled out of the garage into the congested Ottawa streets. They were both silent for five minutes while Ruby pulled out her phone and tapped a few buttons. It wasn't until they were already halfway back to the apartment that she sighed before starting to explain.
"Do you remember the program you saw me using back in Miami?"
"Vaguely. It told you what was going on around the world, right?"
"Sort of. When I started getting into the information business, I realised pretty soon how important it was to be the first to know what and where things were going to happen." Ruby sighed. Yang and Pyrrha were the only ones who really knew about her program, and that's because they were there for its inception. Could she really risk telling someone else about something so important? She stuck her hand in her pocket and fingered the ring she'd been carrying around since that night in Florida and looked at the girl driving next to her. Something told her that everything that had happened lately was important in some way and whatever was waiting for her in the future, she was going to need Weiss more than ever.
Well, what's life without a little risk?
With a deep breath she continued her story.
"I didn't exactly have the easiest childhood. I was on my own on the streets by the age of three with nothing to my name but a blanket and an old, red, hoodie. I survived for a while, hopping trains and scamming gullible adults out of their money. Winter had me heading south where I ended up in New Orleans, picked up some French there and when the storms started getting really bad I made my way to the southwest where I learned some Spanish as well. By the time I was four and a half I was living under a bridge in San Francisco and had learned how badly secured most people's silverware was. It was there that I met Pyrrha. She was six or seven at the time and she found me trying to break into her house through the back door. I was so terrified she was going to call the cops, but instead she just looked me up and down and said if I could get past the electronic lock on her back door, she would let me take whatever I wanted. She said I had three tries before the lock called the police and I would be in big trouble." Ruby chuckled and shook her head as a wave of nostalgia passed through her.
"Did you crack it?" Weiss asked, pulling the car into a random parking spot.
"No. I had seen the other big kids try to crack it, and more often than not, they would mess up."
"So what did you do?" They had entered the elevator and were making their way up to the unmarked apartment they were currently calling home.
"Well by then, I had a basic understanding that all electronics needed wires to work-I didn't know what the wires did, but I did know they were important-so I took a rock and broke the lock before ripping out the wires. Luckily, it was a cheaper model, so there was no failsafe. When I pushed open the door, Pyrrha smiled and told me a promise is a promise, before handing me a stepladder so I could take whatever I wanted. She told me about how her parents were always fighting and she wished she could run away, and I told her about how I wished I could just sleep in a bed. That was the start of our friendship; every night I would sneak into her house and bring her goodies from the streets, and in return, she let me read her books and sleep in her bed. It didn't take long to discover I was surprisingly good with her computer for a five year old. Anyway, fast forward a year and she's moved to Jersey with me living on the streets in New York. I had found and read every book I could find, especially the ones on computers, and absorbed as much knowledge as I could find. That's when Yang's family adopted me. They fed my hunger for information and by the age of ten I had already hacked the pentagon twice."
"Twice?"
"The first time was on a dare." Ruby explained as she sat down on the couch and pulled out her laptop. "Now, all this boring exposition was to prove that when I say I'm really good with computers, I mean really good."
"So now that you're done bragging, are you going to get to the point?" Said Weiss good-naturedly.
"What you call bragging, I call establishing credibility. Now," Ruby smirked as she booted the laptop. "I knew I needed to know things before anyone else, but there was only one way to be sure I was first, and that was to know beforehand."
"Let me get this straight. You wrote a computer programme… that predicts the future?"
"Well when you put it that way, you might as well say I created SkyNet." Ruby smirked at the confusion on Weiss's face before continuing. "No, I didn't write a future seeing programme. I created an interface that checks everything from Twitter and Facebook, to emails between government officials, and gathers information on current events. Then using that information, it checks it against similar occurrences in the past, and how they played out, to make a basic prediction of what will happen. That way I know what to look out for, and can start gathering worthwhile intel before anyone else even gets a whiff of what's happening. It's like an early warning system."
She opened the program and showed it to Weiss. She let the other woman scan the ever-changing wall of information before turning it back to herself.
"Wait," Weiss said, pointing at the screen. "I remember seeing these highlighted ones before. Only last time there weren't nearly as many."
"And now you've found what's got my knickers in a knot." Ruby sighed, allowing herself a slight smile at the chuckle she heard next to her. "If you remember, I had said that my programme was giving me predictions but no basis for them. At the time I thought it was some sort of bug, but after today I'm not so sure."
"Why not?"
"Because Neptune was saying how he heard stories from some of his buddies in other agencies about crimes being committed with zero evidence whatsoever."
"So someone is really good at covering their tracks?"
"It's more than that. Any criminal can cover their tracks: prints can be removed; cameras jammed or erased; forgeries placed to cover the theft. But this is something more. Somehow, even though most of these crimes have happened in heavily populated locations, there's never a single witness."
"Well doesn't that just mean that whoever is pulling off these crimes is like you? Slipping by unnoticed?"
"Not exactly. When I rob a place, I rely on witnesses. I waltz in and take whatever I want from under their noses. This group is taking a cat burglar's approach; and they aren't unnoticed either. Every time something like this happens, it always takes one to two weeks for witnesses to step forward, and by then the trail's gone cold."
"Intimidation?"
"That's what Neptune thought. I mean, suddenly remembering information pertaining to a crime seems like a pretty flimsy excuse. But apparently, every time a witness steps forward, they find needle marks somewhere on their body, and blood work shows that they were injected with something at the time of the crime, but by then it's already been metabolised too much to isolate."
"So someone is committing crimes and using something to make the witnesses forget it ever happened."
"Not just crimes, they found some people, such as doctors or stock brokers among others, are exhibiting the same symptoms. They all come in saying they have a blank in their memory, but when it comes back, it's all fuzzy, like they're watching through a TV with bad reception. They remember what happened-"
"-but not being there. They don't remember the experience." Weiss finished, and when Ruby turned to look at her, she noticed tears in her glacial blue eyes.
"Yeah," she said slowly. "How did you know?"
"Because," Weiss took a deep breath before turning to stare at the wall. "It's been happening to me my whole life."