A/N: Alright, I know it's short, but I really like the ending, and since it's my second update in twenty-four hours I think I'm a little bit entitled. Anyway the usual thanks to followers and favourites and hugs to everyone who leaves such amazing reviews.

Enjoy!

It had been another three weeks since their visit to the night club, and other than moving back to their cabin in the woods, not a lot of progress was being made.

Don't worry. These things take time.

Red had told her when Weiss asked about where they were on locating Torchwick. Granted, she did often see the other woman surrounded by files with her eyes glued to her computer screen.

Any blip on the international radar of that douche-bag-extraordinaire, and I'll see it.

But if the growing look of frustration on her friend's face was anything to go by; Weiss was willing to bet they were yet to have any such luck.

Something about it had Red on edge, though she would never explicitly say anything, and the more Weiss waited and watched, the more she was reminded of their last encounter with Roman Torchwick; a meeting that ended with Red diving in front of a bullet for her. Suffice to say, the idea of suggesting calling it all off crossed her mind more than once.

*(OoO)*

Ruby could tell Weiss was starting to grow impatient.

Honestly, she was too.

It was bad enough that she was working with severely limited resources, but, whoever this Roman Torchwick guy was, he was a ghost.

He could be anywhere, doing anything, and with the thought of that in her head; Ruby's circle of loyal informants suddenly seemed much smaller as almost everything she said or did had the potential to find its way back to him. No one had been able to outwit her methods before, and compounded with the fact that someone had apparently devised a way to evade, circumnavigate, and manipulate her predictive programming:

It meant she was faltering.

The second part of that statement especially frightened her. She was ahead of the technological industry by a good fifteen years, easy; it would take an entire team of hackers straight out of MIT to learn, copy, and perfect her techniques. So how?

Weiss answered that question, and Ruby wasn't sure if it was more or less than terrifying than someone figuring out her code.

Apparently, someone had developed some sort of drug that induced temporary, short-term memory loss, and whoever this someone was, they had connections to Augustus Schnee, who had been using it for years on his daughter while he abused her.

Ruby stifled a growl as she remembered the rage she felt when she discovered what Augustus Schnee had been doing to his own daughter. She didn't know how long her friend's torture had been going on, but judging by the brief glimpses she got of the older woman's skin beneath her clothes, she had a pretty good idea of the extent.

What really frustrated her, though, was how all these things fit together. It was like each puzzle she solved only rewarded her with another piece, and, try as she might, she just couldn't see the bigger picture.

Why would one of the richest, most powerful men in the world hire a group of criminals to steal a hundred million dollars –an amount that barely even amounted to pocket change for someone like him? Why would he insist on having his own daughter be part of the team? If he and Torchwick were connected somehow, why hire a second a second criminal to steal the money from the first? Torchwick had said something about completing a secondary job before pointing his gun at them; if he was working for Weiss' father, why hire him to kill the man's only daughter? Speaking of Weiss, what were the files she had been instructed to steal on?

And finally, as if she didn't already have enough questions, why did Torchwick have a ring that, according to Pyrrha, belonged to her mother?

Ruby sighed in frustration, there were too many questions, too many unknowns, and too much at stake for her to enjoy them properly.

She needed a starting point.

She was just about to close her laptop and call it a day, when the computer beeped loudly with another notification. She sighed once more as she read the encrypted message, but she found her mood quickly turning around with each word.

Well, what do you know?

She thought. She turned her gaze to the sender's address, eager to find out which of her contacts had come through for her, and frowned. In the box where the sender's address should be, it was blank. Below it in the subject box she found a string of numbers and letters she didn't recognise. It was clearly an encrypted message, and would be another thing to add to her growing pile of unanswered questions, but as she read over the message once more, she couldn't bring herself to care. This was it.

Looks like I found my starting point.

*(OoO)*

Weiss found her later that afternoon sitting on a lawn chair at the edge of the small lake behind the cabin, eyes closed, a beer in one hand and a fishing rod in the other as she reclined in the tepid, late-March sun.

"You fish?" Weiss asked as she approached the lawn chair.

"I do a lot of things. I once had to fish for a job because I needed to exude an air of seasoned outdoorsmanship."

"No, but you fish?"

"I like to relax sometimes as a reward for making a breakthrough." Red explained as she took a hardy sip of her beer.

"You found Torchwick?"

"In a manner of speaking."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Red cracked open her eyes and took in the look of confusion on the former heiress' face.

"It means," she said as she reeled in her line, stood up, and leaned it against her chair before turning to Weiss, her eyes burning with silver fire. "That this entire time, I've been asking you to trust me, letting you know things I've never said out loud, all while you've been keeping vital information from me."