Disclaimer: RWBY is owned by Rooster Teeth and Monty Oum, not me. This is merely a fanwork meant for entertainment purposes only. Cover image courtesy of Jan Chrt (jeni-cek on deviantART). All rights reserved.

"An assassin's guild? But…"

It was a hard pill to swallow. Jaune had grown up in more of a countryside setting, and as such, he'd never really known much organised crime...certainly nothing that formed as an official guild.

"How could the police possibly allow that?" Jaune asked confusedly.

"Half are idiots, rest are paid shills." Cardin answered curtly, drawing his mace, "Schnee Corp knows that more than anyone."

"Are you implying something?" Weiss inquired, the steel apparent in her voice.

"Your father's company isn't known for its compassion, I'll say that much."

"Pah! Perhaps it lacks compassion, but I can assure you that Schnee Corp is not run by idiots. Why try to assassinate the heiress you've already sunk so many resources into?"

"Some might have disagreed with that...maybe heard about your little project, too. I'll bet they want someone more pliable on the throne of Schnee Corp, and some toadie lower down decided to take a shortcut."

"You seem pretty sure that it's her father's company that's out to get her, Spade." Jaune observed, giving the enormous man a suspicious look, "Is there a particular reason, or are you just going off a hunch?"

"Call it past experiences." Cardin replied, his voice taking a final sort of tone.

Meanwhile, Weiss was performing a little examination on the assassin's body, frowning.

"You didn't kill him, did you?"

"I figured a bloody corpse would have made a bigger mess to clean up." Cardin answered amusedly, "Should I finish him?"

"Not right now, Spade." Weiss said, ignoring Jaune's horrified expression, "As it happens, questioning dead men tends not to get much done. Do you have some way to bind him?"

"No." Cardin replied bluntly, "Earth semblances aren't great with delicate stuff like that. I'd probably end up crushing his ribs."

"Perhaps not, then. Any ideas, Jaune?"

He shook his head vigorously.

"No way am I helping you torture a guy, even if he might have tried to kill you! That's just wrong on all sorts of levels!"

"It's interrogation, Jaune, not torture." Weiss replied briskly, rolling her eyes, "If he doesn't answer anything, I can promise you we're not going to start breaking any fingers."

"And what about afterwards? What are you going to do with him then?"

"The cops will take him." Cardin cut in, "They might not be good for much, but they'll at least keep him in custody for a week or so before his guildmates buy him out."

There was a short pause.

"Killing him's also an option."

"Spade!" Jaune exclaimed, horrified, "We can't just murder a man in cold blood!"

"It's definitely easier than murdering him in hot blood, blondie...takes a while for fire dust to get into the system, you know."

"None of that, thank you very much!" Weiss commanded imperiously, "And Jaune? Stop looking like you're about to throw up. We're not killing him, and we're definitely not doing any torture. Now, do you think you could use your semblance to contain him somehow?"

"Maybe?" Jaune responded dubiously, "I've not had a lot of practice using shields to keep things in, but I guess it could work. What if he breaks out, though?"

"So what?" Cardin shot back, "We're not giving him any weapons, blondie. If he somehow gets through your shield with his fists, I'll be here to smack him back down. Done it once already, after all."

"Right…" Jaune muttered hesitantly, "Then how are we going to wake him up? It's been a good fifteen minutes or so, but he still looks out cold."

"Leave that to me, Jaune." Weiss assured, "In fact, leave everything but the shield to me; no offense, but you're liable to just mess something up."

"And what's that supposed to mean?"

"Have you ever interrogated anyone, Jaune?"

"Have you?"

"Yes."

Jaune blinked.

"...oh. I, uh, guess that's okay, then." he mumbled pathetically, "I'll just be over here...preparing my shield. Being useless. Grumble grumble."

"Spade...you just stand off to one side; try and look a bit menacing, if you can. I'm not going to hurt this man we're questioning, but he doesn't need to know that."

"As you wish."

"And I'll...search the assassin, removing all weapons I come across. Joy."

It took a good few minutes, but by the time they were done, everything was set up fairly nicely. The would-be killer was currently laying prone in a little golden bubble which, with a little help from Weiss' glyphs, was ever so slightly hovering in the air. Meanwhile, hoping to improve the mood of the scene, Weiss had insisted on lowering the intensity of the room's dust-powered light sources, providing what she hoped was a far more antagonistic atmosphere to conduct her interrogation. Still, the light was just enough to spy Cardin's hulking form by the corner, along with the multitude of sharp implements Weiss had confiscated from the assassin. Jaune recognised quite a few of them as being quite similar to many of the weapons at the academy, but there was one in particular that seemed especially mysterious; a long, slim arrowhead, five miniature dust canisters embedded within.

"It's not important, Jaune" Weiss answered upon inquiry, "Just don't go touching it."

"Is it poisoned or something?"

"In a sense...now get back to the shield, please. I don't want it blinking out on me when I'm in the middle of a monologue, you know."

Speaking of Weiss, it seemed as if it was time to reveal exactly how she was planning to wake up their unconscious friend. Drawing Zinnia, Weiss twirled the sword almost like a baton, soon producing a large, bright orange glyph just below the bubble. It was a little difficult to tell exactly what was on the glyph from where he stood, but if Jaune had to guess, it almost looked like the magical symbol was a piece of clockwork, though the hands of this particular timepiece seemed to moving at an unusually fast rate. After a few seconds, the assassin began to groan, and as soon as he did, Weiss' odd glyph vanished into the night air.

"Eurgh...my head…" he murmured, just about managing to sit up in his little golden bubble, "Where…oh, I see. Hello, Miss Schnee."

The assassin's cheery countenance caught Weiss off-guard, as did his surprisingly young-sounding baritone voice in comparison to his mature appearance. Still, her own expression soon returned to the well-prepared ice-cold glare that had been knocked into her since childhood. The assassin gulped.

"Could you, uh...could you not do that, please? It's really quite unnerving."

"So is almost getting murdered." Weiss countered, still keeping her eyes fixed on the would-be killer, "But I suppose you wouldn't understand that, Elliot."

"Ah, so you know my name!" Elliot crowed happily, "That makes things a lot faster. I hate introductions."

"...you're not going to ask how I know your name?"

Elliot frowned.

"I hope you didn't pay a lot for it, Miss Schnee...I mean, it was on the inside of my clothes, after all. Oh, speaking of clothes, can I slip this thing off? It's super hot in here."

Weiss simply watched incredulously as Elliot nonchalantly removed his heavy black cloak, revealing a young man who reminded her a little too much of her fellow students. While his face seemed reasonably old, perhaps aided by his thick brown beard, the rest of him was quite thin and lanky, and if she were to make a guess, she would imagine that Elliot here was only a year or two older than she was. His black tank top and business-like trousers made for a somewhat unprofessional contrast, and while she hadn't been sure of it before, Weiss was now convinced that he was wearing a commemorative necklace from one of Vale's famous sports teams.

"You're acting rather casually considering your situation, Elliot." she observed, "You do realise I can have my associates do all manners of unpleasant things to you, yes?"

"Of course you can, Miss Schnee. Would you like to?"

"Not unless you refuse to talk."

"In that case, what would you like to talk about?" Elliot bounced back, "I'd prefer a conversation about the West Vale Ravens, to be honest, but I'm sure you have something else in mind."

"That will not be necessary." Weiss stated coldly, "All I'm concerned about is who employed you."

"The Black Arrows!" Elliot answered cheerfully.

"I mean who hired them."

"Ah, I see! Sorry, I kind of misunderstood you there. Hm, let me think…"

Elliot scratched his beard.

"Igneus of the Red Hunters, if I remember correctly."

"How do we know you aren't lying?" Weiss accused, "After all, you came up with that answer a little too quickly for my liking."

"Well, I'm going to die in approximately one minute and thirty seconds, so there's not much point in me telling you fibs, is there?"

Weiss blinked.

"We're...not going to kill you, Elliot."

"Did I say that? I mean, I guess you could, but that'd be kinda redundant, I think."

"What do you mean?"

"Simple! You asked me who I worked for, I told you The Black Arrows, so now I'm kinda going to die."

Weiss glanced over to Jaune.

"I can assure you that they aren't getting through this shield, Elliot."

"That's okay, Miss Schnee." Elliot said, leaning back with a dreamy expression on his face.

"I mean, it's kind of hard to get in when you're already in, ri-"

Elliot had stopped talking. Perhaps if you had met him earlier on in his life, you would have found this hard to believe; after all, he was well-known around the poorer districts as quite the chatter-box.

Of course, even chatty men tend to find it hard to talk when they can't breathe anymore.

"Why would that...but...my shield…?!"

The golden globe that had imprisoned Elliot quickly evaporated as Jaune rushed over to a sink in the corner, letting Elliot's corpse drop to the floor. Weiss, having experienced such first-hand death before, merely shook her head sadly, and after Jaune had finished emptying his stomach, she laid a hand on the poor boy's shoulder.

"It wasn't your fault, Jaune." she reassured soothingly, "There was nothing you could do..."

"He...he was just a kid." Jaune whimpered, burying his head in his hands, "That could have been me! And...and he was just so serene about it too! Why…?"

Perhaps it was the situation that did it. After all, when someone dies so suddenly and so cleanly right in front of you, it would be enough to make most people act erratically. That was how Weiss justified it, at least, as she gave Jaune a surprisingly tender hug, holding him close as tears began to run down his face. After a minute or so, it seemed as if Jaune had cried himself out, now simply seeming a little hollow as Weiss released him from her embrace.

"...thank you." Jaune said weakly.

"Don't mention it, Jaune. No, seriously, do not mention this to anyone."

Jaune managed a sad little grin.

"Those rumours again, huh?"

"Like you wouldn't believe."

As Jaune began to focus on his surroundings once more, he became aware that Elliot's corpse was now slung across Cardin's shoulder and, for some reason, he was holding the arrowhead from earlier in an iron grip.

"What are you going to do with his...body, Spade?" Jaune asked, resisting the urge to retch again.

"Taking it to the police." Cardin said simply, "This thing will prove he's a Black Arrow."

"Are you sure they'll believe you?"

"They don't have to. One look at the arrowhead and they'll get an autopsy on this guy, and that'll prove it for sure."

Before Jaune could ask anything else, Cardin had already left, opening the same window he (and, by extension, Elliot) had used to enter and bolting out into the night.

"...Weiss?"

"Hm?"

"What did he mean by an autopsy?"

Weiss bit her lip.

"To be honest, I'm not entirely sure. They say that Black Arrows are never alive long enough to answer their questions, but I always assumed that was because they were assassinated by their own brethren...apparently it's a little more complex than that."

Carefully stepping around the area Elliot's corpse had once occupied, Weiss went over to the window, taking a breath of night air before closing it with a solid thud. Afterwards, she turned to Jaune, giving him a sympathetic look.

"I'd recommend you go back to Beacon and get some rest. It's been a long night, and I can't have my vice president running around without enough sleep."

"Yes ma'am." Jaune said weakly, but by the time he'd reached the door, his former smile had faded back to a frown.

"...if I can even get to sleep."

With that, Weiss was left on her own in the upper room and, out of habit, she went over to her computer, idly half-tapping the keys as thoughts zipped around her head.

You certainly picked your entrance, Igneus...or should I say...

...cousin?

Hi all! Sorry I didn't post this commentary until late, but my health isn't exactly in the best of states at the moment, so I'm kind of all over the place for a bit . . This is also the reason why chapter five is (or was, if you're from the future) late, and to make up for it, a bonus chapter will be posted on Sunday.

As a side note, has anyone noticed what the theme for the chapter titles is this time around? If you have, post it in the reviews or something! If not, post in the reviews anyway! I love to hear back from you guys, especially when I'm not feeling so great myself.

'Till next time!