Disclaimer
I don't own RWBY, or any company related to it.
Any of the names other than RWBY cast are fictional and resemblances to real people are purely accidental.
AN: Info for ease of writing and reading :P.
Gentle rose - a sabre sword.
Scarlet rose - rifle
Age - 14 years 2 months 2 weeks
My timeline of V1-3: imgur com /a/ZyoijxK
CHAPTER 23
After an hour of travel they landed nearby the complex, just outside of the radar range and disassembled the bullheads, regrouped and started making their way towards the positions.
A short hike later, Ruby and her spotter reached their position and lied down in the snow, while also preparing their equipment.
As she and her partner got ready, Ruby heard him saying "wind two degrees northwest direction, temperature minus five Celsius, humidity thirty five percent, range to complex, seven hundred meters, two visible targets in building A, azimuth one zero eight, floor two, range seven hundred twenty and azimuth one one two floor one. Range seven hundred thirty six".
Ruby calibrated her scope seven hundred meters, started targeting computer, giving her information about azimuth and range, loaded the magazine into the Scarlet Rose, pulled the cooking handle back and locking it, to add additional bullet into the gun chamber, as an additional shoot could mean a difference between life, or death of a comrade and aimed her rifle towards the building, slightly pulling her weapon to the left of the center of a guard and adding twenty meters, by raising her barrel a degree higher.
"I am ready for the target on the second floor".
"Hold for now. We wait for permission to engage from the rest".
Twenty minutes later and a small wind change correction made, a radio message came "Engage and kill all hostiles. Attack starting now".
"Engage" her spotter said.
Ruby then squeezed the trigger, feeling the part of the knockback of the rifle on herself, she watched through the scope of her target and as seconds passed, while ejecting the empty case, she saw part of him disappearing in a cloud of red and the target falling on the ground.
Rose then aimed at the next target, who got alarmed by the sound of gunshot and fired again, this time she did not wait, as her spotter reported another target running out of the building B.
Trailing her next target, Ruby waited for a clean shot, as it would take some time for the bullet to hit and soon the opportunity came, as her victim decided to take cover behind the stone pillar, facing the entering attackers, but leaving himself open to her.
Firing her Scarlet Rose, she waited for her spotter and watched as her last contact fell on the ground with a missing upper torso, leaving only a bloodstain nearby.
"Multiple armed contacts emerged in building B, hiding in windows on the second floor. Range eight hundred thirty from left to eight hundred forty on right, friendlies entering building A and taking cover near barracks on site C, under fire from building B".
Adding another quick fix to her scope, Ruby aimed and fired four bullets, one to each target, checking each time if their aura was able to block it, or not and as she ejected last case, Rose quickly ejected the magazine, placing it on her right and loaded another one from her left, cooked the round and resumed firing, while spotter quickly placed spare rounds inside magazine, while also keeping the watch.
Three magazines later all the targets were dead, or hiding as no one was shooting anymore, so Ruby unloaded the last magazine, with one round inside and took a fresh one, letting her spotter load the bullets.
Soon the radio message came "Sniper team, join us at the entrance to site C. Building A and B are cleaned off the hostiles. Bullheads are clean to land".
She and her partner got up and carefully packed themselves, while leaving only ejected brass cases partially sticking out of the snow. Shaking off the excess snow, Ruby grimaced from partially wet uniform, as the cold cloth met her warm body, but ignored it in favor of moving out of their position.
On the way, her partner looked at her and started talking "Good thing I prefer being the spotter for sharpshooters, since I hate when I have to do mortar spotting, especially if I need to get the Mills, temperature, humidity and wind into account for the round weight. I tell you it's a freaking shit job, because the time it takes to get the proper result is already too late, because people love pointing to the exact position of the moving target, not where it would be after the time it takes for a round to reach its designation. Let's also not forget that if you don't level your mortar correctly, or forgot to account for the misalignment, then you will miss completely".
After a while of leisure walking, as much as possible within the partially frozen snow, with a white fang mask on their faces and with a small talk ongoing between them, they have finally reached the mining site.
They waited in the middle of the compound, keeping a watch for any possible hostile reinforcement incoming, or the Grimm and possible runaways from the compound in their zone.
After some minutes, Ruby saw a movement, a man with a guard uniform was crawling away, trying to be unseen, while also leaving a slight trail of blood behind him.
Making a fast decision, Ruby used her semblance to move just behind him and walked up to his side, while also unsheathing gentle rose.
A man stopped crawling as soon as he heard the crunching sound of the snow behind him and looked at Ruby with fear and pleading.
Ruby, seeing a young adult in front of her looking at her, steeled her nerves in a moment as she remembered what she had survived in her past and slowly stabbed him in the back, letting the aura enhanced sabre pierce his heart, before lifting it up and wiping the blood off into the now dead guard shirt.
Into way back, Ruby sheathed her blade and slowly walked back towards her partner, while also keeping the watch
A long minutes after, ten bullheads finally came and landed inside the compound, which itself was a huge scale operation, which two of them landed near a dust storage area, where volunteers from former slaves started loading the dust and other things, under the guard of alpha team, while bravo was helping people into the crafts and charlie was securing the perimeter.
As soon as one bullhead was loaded fully with people, or dust, it took off and flew in the direction of the camp. Within an hour, everybody and everything was loaded up, including her and her partner and they flew close to the second part of the assault team for a radio contact.
"Amazing job. I am proud of you. No one died from our side and all civilians were secured with a side benefit of acquiring supplies for our case, however two of our people got lightly wounded and one severely. They are all stable and will live, but Dud will be required to be moved into the main base after fast refitting for a proper medical operation. He will be accompanied by Black Rose, who is also returning back to base. Unfortunately she was only lended to us for this mission from the main base, but I am pretty sure it won't be a last mission for us seeing her performance and skills. Just need to get a proper reason for the high leader to share her" Adam announced and joked over the radio, not realizing how close to the truth he was.
As soon as the bullheads landed on the camp landing zone, Ruby left the craft with her bag to switch planes, but stopped seeing Blake waiting near the landing zone and decided to approach her.
"Welcome back Ruby, wanna go and take part in the feast?" Blake said with a smile on her face.
"Hey Blake, sorry but I have to go back to the castle now" Ruby smiled sadly looking at her conversation partner.
"That's… bad… I hoped we can talk little more, but let's hope we meet each other again in future"
"I can give you my scroll number if you want"
"Give me a moment, let me take my scroll out…" Blake said and reached into one of her pockets, but her hand stopped as soon as it went inside "Fuck… I left it inside the tent…"
Seeing this, Ruby reached into her bag and took out a notebook with a pen, wrote her number and ripped the page off to give it to Blake, who accepted it and placed it inside one of her pockets.
Looking around, Ruby saw that the ground crew finished refueling the bullhead and we're disconnecting the fuel nozzle, so she hugged surprised Blake and said "Looks like I need to go now. Bye and call sometimes".
"Bye Ruby" said Blake and hugged her back, before letting her go and Ruby leaving with a use of her semblance in order to not be late.
Inside she sat on the bench with her bag and weapons lying near and looked upon a bandaged wounded man lying on the opposite side in deep sleep.
As the bullhead took off, she relaxed and started silently singing a song she once heard, but remembered.
We are just soldiers in this game
We are just pawns in this war
We fight for old and wise
We fight for old and greedy
We are just young and naive
We are just young and foolish
We ignore the true enemy
For our leaders
Sometimes we fight for right
Sometimes we fight for money
Sometimes we fight for patriotics
Sometimes we fight because we have no choice
We are just soldiers in this game
We are just pawns in this war
We fight for old and wise
We fight for old and greedy
Our leaders often claims
To be patriots
But what is a patriot
They don't know
Patriot cares about the country
They say
Patriot fight to protect his family
We say
We are just soldiers in this game
We are just pawns in this war
We fight for old and wise
We fight for old and greedy
But in truth
We are only
The people
Who fight and die
For others
After finishing the song, Ruby took a short nap, as the mission adrenaline ran out after the stress and hypervigilance period ended.
After a sleep without any dream, Ruby felt somebody shaking her and opened her eyes towards the medics who boarded the bullhead in order to transport the wounded.
"You ok?" The man who shakes her asked.
"Yes, just took a nap. Didn't feel the landing" Ruby answered, while screeching the back of her head with a left hand. After a while, she stood up, collected her things and left the bullhead after the medical personnel evacuated the wounded man.
As soon as she left, Ruby squeezed her eyes, as the sun shone directly into her eyes and slowly made her way inside the proper castle, as the walls surrounded her.
After a while, the bullhead took off and slowly made its way towards the nonemergency landing sites, which were set up just outside of the castle walls in a makeshift extension that was still being built, but with more modern materials this time.
Inside the castle, Ruby slowly made her way towards the hall and greeted the guards with a nod in front of the doors, who nodded back and just opened doors, as the high leader was free now.
"Black Rose reporting back from a successful mission" Ruby said as she kneeled on one knee in front of the small stairs leading to the throne, where Sienna Khan sat.
"Report what happened"
"After arriving at the camp, I met with mister Taurus, who welcomed me into the camp and informed me about the plan for the day. After that we spoke alone, as this was the second time we have met, but our opinions differ a lot. Later that day we had sparring matches, where I challenged him and won the fight, alongside the respect of the camp. After that we had a briefing for the mission and day of rest in order to prepare ourselves. We moved out next night and I was given a capable spotter. The compound and slaves were secured with one heavily wounded and two lightly wounded on our side with all hostiles dead. Additionally, Taurus ordered to secure and transport the captured dust alongside other cargo from storages. After loading and exfil Dud was transported here for medical attention after a short stop for refueling and unpacking at the camp". Ruby calmly made her report to Khan, who frowned at the end.
"What do you think of Taurus? I want your honest opinion"
"I… I believe that he might be a danger. He is a charismatic leader, who people follow, a strong person and a survivor, he appears to care about his people, but also at the same time I failed to notice him being somewhere near Dud when the bullhead was about to take off, might be my fault, yet I know for sure he is a supremacist who believe that us Faunus, are above humans and would kill any human that stand in his way and hunt down family members of those that would try to stop him. With his views I am afraid that if he were to get too much power, then he might act against those, who he will deem as traitors, just because they don't share his supremacist views".
Khan rested her head on her hand in deep thought and said after a while "Thank you Ruby, I never had received such a negative warning about him, as everyone praises him. I have a lot to think about. For now dismissed and tomorrow you are continuing your lessons".
Ruby stood up and bowed her head, while saying "Thank you high leader".
After that, she made her way back to her room.
Note:
Saber and sabre are the same thing, but saber is US English and sabre is GB English.
Sabre word on android in Google docs wants to be autocorrected into saber all the time… I am keeping sabre, because it is a GB English word coming from French and word saber is a 20th century invention of US army manuals (somebody might have accidentally misspelled it and it became a 'proper' word later).
Also a saber might be easily mistaken for a lightsaber in imagination.
Also 'song' was created by me, the author of this… Any similarities are purely coincidental.