A/N: So once again I'm back with another chapter for you guys. I've recently gotten one or two messages informing me that some of my readers aren't exactly happy with how OOC the characters are and while I am a big boy and can deal with negative reviews every once in a while, I do sorta feel like I should explain myself a bit too. But I don't want to waste your time or keep you from the real reason you're all here so I'll wait until the end of the chapter do so.
How hot is it that Weiss knows how to fly a jet?
They had just taken off forty minutes ago, after an hour and a half drive to a small airport outside Ottawa during which Ruby kept her nose buried in her laptop.
She had been spending almost all her time that wasn't spent packing up and getting ready to leave the Quebecois safe house trying to decrypt the encoded part of the message their most recent lead had provided. So far she was only succeeding in frustrating herself. So, with an aggravated groan, she slammed shut her computer, smacked herself with her notebook, and entertained herself by watching Weiss focus on the sky outside the cockpit, listening to, and occasionally conversing with, the incessant chatter between air traffic controllers and other pilots in the air.
Her miniature tantrum caught the platinum-haired woman's attention. She slid her massive headphones down her neck and glanced at Ruby briefly before addressing her.
"I take it our mystery sender is proving more enigmatic than you thought?"
Ruby smiled at the sophisticated manner with which Weiss spoke. She knew for a fact that when she was relaxed and at ease, the older woman would slip up and start talking like any other twenty year-old. Occasionally she would blush cutely as soon as she realised what she had done before stuttering and stammering as she tried to regain her Victorian attitude. Ruby would then laugh and wrap the other girl in a hug until she calmed down and was relaxed again.
A bump of turbulence jostled her back to the present.
"Yeah. Whoever this guy is: he's good. As far as I can tell, the encryption protects an image file and a sound file hidden deep in the message. But there's some serious protection there."
"Really?"
"Yup," Ruby nodded. "It's obvious that this message was sent knowing that it would probably be intercepted, which is concerning on its own."
"Why's that?" Weiss asked as she turned the controls, causing the plane to bank slightly.
"Well, I want to wait until we're with the others to really go over everything; but the fact that they encrypted this so heavily, while essentially leaving what we thought was vital info in tracking Torchwick for anyone with high school level computer skills to see means there's more to this than we thought."
Weiss hummed thoughtfully and after several minutes of comfortable silence, Ruby sighed and opened her laptop once more. She worked for the rest of the flight, occasionally glancing over and allowing herself to be distracted as she watched Weiss.
She was proud of how quickly she got past her blushing-schoolgirl-phase. This was more than likely attributed to Weiss needing her to step up as the older girl's previous life was ripped away from her, and, though she was unable/unwilling to put a label on what it was, she did know that she was feeling more than simple attraction. She had been attracted to people before, but this… thing… was fundamentally different.
Before, when she felt attracted to someone, it inspired her to manipulate that person into giving her whatever she wanted –especially if that person happened to be a mark. Usually it involved blackmailing businessmen and politicians with photos of them –and occasionally their wives –in various compromising positions. Sometimes she would do it to slip past security, but no matter her intentions, the game never changed.
Once she had identified her mark, it wouldn't take much effort to flirt, to tease, to slip them a deluding mixture of whiskey shots and Rohypnol, and then to get invited back to their place. Then once the deed was done and the mark was unconscious she would get to work and be gone by morning. Her victims would wake up from what they thought was a great night with a beautiful woman to find out they had been screwed over in more ways than one.
Unfortunately for them, none of those ways were very good, since she didn't put out. Not really. The drugs kept her from having to take… well, receive the full plunge. Instead she schmoozed and coddled heavily intoxicated or drugged members of both sexes.
It wasn't that her conquests left her completely unaffected; she just didn't want her first time to be for a job. To be just another step in getting what she wanted. She wanted to wait until-
The jostling of turbulence as Weiss brought the plane down for a landing startled Ruby from her thoughts. She sighed and closed her laptop before inspecting the woman sitting next to her. She didn't know what she was waiting for, but she knew it would be worth it.
*(OoO)*
Weiss was concerned. Red had been unusually quiet on the plane ride to New York, even after they had landed and the excitable brunette threw herself at Blake and Yang when they met them at the airport, she still had a faraway look in her eyes. Her concern grew when the look didn't diminish at all throughout the trip back to the warehouse.
In fact, it wasn't until after dinner when they were all seated together around an old coffee table, soft jazz coming from the Red's old record player reminding Weiss of her first time staying here, that Red finally looked focused again. This led Weiss to believe that whatever had been weighing on Red's mind had to do with Torchwick.
"Alright, so after way too many weeks of searching, we finally have a name to put with the guy who ripped us off in Florida, and an idea of where he's going."
"Well don't hold out on us, Sis," Yang said excitedly, smacking her palm against her knuckles. "Where is this slippery bastard? The sooner I can beat my money out of him, the better."
"We might want to start with a name." Blake added calmly.
"Right. Yeah."
Weiss smiled at the women's interaction and turned back to Red. The brunette opened up her computer and turned it so the others could see the frame of Torchwick from Miami.
"This," Red explained. "Is Roman Torchwick. Not a lot of anything exists, let alone can be found, on him. Originally, all we knew about him was that he had hired some of Junior's thugs for work 'down south.'"
"That's helpful." Yang interrupted sarcastically.
"Did you ask your contacts about him?" Blake asked.
"Yeah. It didn't reveal much," Red said, she paused and took a deep breath. Weiss could tell she was wary about continuing. "That is until I got an email suggesting we look into the White Fang."
The atmosphere became charged and the warehouse was filled with a delicate silence as everyone took in what Red was saying.
"I don't understand, who are the White Fang?" Weiss asked carefully.
"They're a group of… extremists operating out of South America." Yang answered as she wrapped her arms around a somber-looking Blake.
"You and I both know extremist is an understatement, Yang." The dark-haired woman said.
Red sighed and turned to face Weiss, "The White Fang are a group of activists-turned-terrorists who have acted in the name of everything from environmental conservation to human and civil rights."
"They used to stand for something. They used to be a peaceful movement willing to provide support for anyone who wanted to do the right thing, now…" Blake trailed off as she lifted her head to look at Red. Hardened amber met caring silver. "Are you sure?"
"Blake, you know I wouldn't ask this of you if there was any other way."
"What about this email?" Yang asked, "Where'd it come from?"
"I'm not sure, whoever sent it went to a lot of trouble to stay anonymous."
"Then how can we trust it? I'm not gonna let Blake anywhere near him," The blonde's every word dripped with venom as she pulled Blake in closer to herself, "if there's even the smallest chance this is a trap." Weiss watched the protective Yang defended her girlfriend and couldn't help thinking about when she watched Red threaten Junior in his club.
They might not have been related by blood, but it was blatantly obvious the two women were sisters. Many of their aspects were different from each other, but there had been times where they were so similar in how they acted that it was obvious they were family. It only helped remind Weiss that the brunette sitting next to her cared about her and her feelings weren't going unreciprocated.
"Of course, I can't promise that it isn't," Red explained. "But I think whoever sent me that info wanted us to know it was a trap too."
"How do you figure?" Blake asked.
"Well, firstly: the info they sent me was way too easy to access, which would normally be a big red flag –especially considering the level of security I maintain with my contacts –but along with the info was something else that encrypted so heavily it took everything I had just to break the first level of protection."
"But, how do we know it wasn't meant for whoever was going to intercept the message?" Weiss asked.
Yang snorted and Blake smacked her arm lightly.
"Ye of little faith," Raid said, chuckling.
"What?" Weiss asked indignantly, a slight flush rising in her cheeks as she looked between the others. "It is a legitimate concern, and something we should consider."
"Weiss," Blake addressed her. "You've been with Red for a while now; you've seen her skills. If it took everything she had, that means it was either meant for her or for someone equipped with an advanced team consisting of the very best and brightest from around the world."
Weiss turned to see Red blushing at her friend's praise. She reached out, grabbed the younger girl's hand and squeezed. Red smiled bashfully at her and they stayed there staring into each other's eyes until Yang cleared her throat loudly, drawing their attention back to the other two.
"Anyway, I managed to get past the first few layers of encryption and found these:" Red clicked around a bit and pulled up a picture of what seemed like random dots on the screen while a series of beeps played sporadically in the background. "From what I can tell, there's a virus that even I've never seen before written into the very core of both the image and wave-form files. Anything short of a multi-billion dollar government supercomputer will be fried or violently ejected from the network if it so much as tries to open any decryption software with these. That's including my systems. This makes me think that whoever made it is determined to have the rest be decoded by hand."
"You ever think we end up interacting with a few too many overly-cryptic, paranoid super geniuses in our line of work?" Yang asked.
"At least they keep it interesting." Red answered.
"Yeah, because, as an international career criminal, you haven't really lived until you've stumbled upon at least one nefarious plot hidden behind thousands of annoying riddles and puzzles." The flaxen beauty deadpanned.
Weiss rolled her eyes at the sisters' bantering and focused on the series of beeps that kept playing. "Well, the sounds are Morse." She said after a minute.
"And I'm pretty sure those are basic Braille letters." Blake added.
"So, let me get this straight, our only lead is a mysterious email telling us that, even though it's almost definitely a trap, we have to go down south." Yang finished.
"Yup." Red said.
"And we know this because they sent you info that was basically asking to be intercepted?"
"That's correct." Weiss replied.
"And we're gonna trust them because they also added another secret message that they've basically forced you to solve Da Vinci Code style?"
"That's right, meaning we don't really have any choice," Blake answered. She paused and sighed heavily before continuing,
"We need to talk to Adam."
A/N: Now, I'm well aware that my Ruby and Weiss don't always act the way they do in the show, especially this far in the story, and while I could probably try a bit harder to do them justice, it's also at least partially intentional.
Seeing as this is an AU, the events that helped to shape each character into who they are differ significantly from the show's. Also the character's in my story are three years older than those in the show, and while I try to maintain most of their base personality traits, these girls are all adults now and thus wouldn't act the same way they would when they were teenagers (ie Ruby wouldn't be as childish all the time.) A lot of my characters have also been through things that without even counting their backstories would force them to do a lot of growing up in a short time.
For example: while I would love to have Ruby/Red be an adorable goofball all the time, the things she's been through and the life she's led have forced her to keep that side of herself closed off for the most part.
I am sorry if you're disappointed with the way I've decided to do things, but I'm not going to overhaul something I've put so much time and effort into just so I can appease a couple of disgruntled readers. Especially when I've generally been receiving overwhelmingly positive comments so far.
Anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest. And who knows maybe we'll start seeing behind some more of our girls' masks as we continue.
Now, I've wasted enough of your time. So, with a big thanks to all my readers/ followers and another for my awesome commenters,
I hope you enjoyed this latest chapter, and I'll see you soon for the next one!