It was a short hike over to the boat that was to take the trio over to the refinery, leaving no room for conversation. The sounds of gunfire were heard echoing across the river, a sign of the seemingly never ending struggle for the city. Once they got to the boat, they motioned to the captain to drive them over to the refinery. Weiss had visited the refinery before it was shut down, back when she was still young. The refinery had suffered a terrible explosion that caused it to be shut down and sealed up tight. Fortunately, Weiss also remembered that there was a ladder that allowed for people to go into the refinery through the river.
Guiding the boat's captain to where the ladder was, she beckoned for Yang and Ruby to follow her up. Once they were up they made their way to the door, Ruby and Yang looking on for any guards while Weiss opened the door.
"Could you hurry up Weiss?" Yang said.
Weiss' brow furrowed and she looked up at Yang for a moment. "Could you not rush me Yang?" The two definitely had their fair share of differences, often leading to them arguing with each other. Despite this they still manage to look out for each other most of the time, but it doesn't always work out that way.
"Both of you stop. We can't be arguing right now," Ruby stated, doing her best to put a stop to the fighting as soon as possible. "Weiss, you take all the time you need, but remember that we're in a rush." Ruby tried to mediate between the two of them as often as she could, usually settling the conflicts between them, although a few managed to go beyond what she could do.
Weiss groaned and then got back to work in a huff. Under her breath so Ruby and Yang couldn't hear her, she mumbled to herself. "All the powers of dust at your fingertips and you're nothing but an over-sized battery and a torch." Ever since she had gotten the powers that she had, Weiss had definitely felt as though people took her for granted, Ruby and Yang unfortunately doing that the most. It kept making Weiss irritable and bitter, but she was too proud and stubborn to say anything about it to Ruby, who would be the one person who would listen. Once she opened the door using the codes that her father made her memorize, Weiss turned to Ruby and Yang. "Door's open," She said, guiding them inside.
Once they got into the refinery, Weiss shut the door behind them and sealed it shut. "Great work guys, we got ourselves stuck inside of a spooky old refinery without any way to see a damn thing," Yang remarked.
Ruby turned to Weiss. "Weiss, could you-" Ruby was interrupted before she could finish her statement.
"Yeah, yeah, I get it already," Weiss said to Ruby. With a snap of her fingers, a small fire appeared in her hand, lighting up the area immediately around them. "It's not like I'm good for anything else," Weiss mumbled to herself as she started to walk through the refinery. Ruby unfortunately heard that last statement, and turned to face Weiss, only to see a look of bitterness on the heiress' face. Ruby wanted to say something, but something inside of her told her that now wasn't the best time to do that. She needed Weiss to cool off and they had work to do anyway.
They walked across the catwalks above the machinery the fire in Weiss' hand being the only source of light inside the building. Looking down below, Ruby's curiosity was piqued at how things worked here. "Hey Weiss."
"What is it Ruby?" Weiss said, wondering why it was that Ruby felt the need to make conversation right now.
"I'm curious as to how the refinery works, exactly," Ruby said as she caught up to Weiss and walked next to her.
Weiss shook her head before speaking up. "When mined, the dust that is found naturally is unrefined and doesn't generate as much energy. A place like this would serve as a mechanism to cut up the crystals in a way that would allow some parts to remain useful crystals, while the areas with the imperfections and the flaws to be ground up into dust powder," Weiss said. "When it's ground up, all the impurities are removed from the crystals as it's being cut up into smaller and smaller pieces and what they take out is then disposed of since it's pretty much useless."
"Wow, that's actually pretty interesting. So refining it makes it more efficient then?" Ruby asked as she looked on at the machinery.
"Yes. Raw dust crystals, though larger, aren't as useful because of those impurities in them. It's why these refineries were built, despite the need to be carefully handled," Weiss stated, referring to the explosion that had closed down this refinery.
"Sounds boring, at least for us normal people," Yang said to herself.
The look on Yang's face when she gets mad is one thing, but the way Weiss looked at Yang at that moment made her look twice as menacing, especially with the way the light from the fire lit her face up. Weiss' jaw was clenched tightly, her head tilted in a way that shadowed her eyes darkly. "What did you just say, Yang?" Weiss said.
Before it could go any further, Ruby stepped in and put her hand against Weiss' shoulder, hoping it would calm her down. Weiss turned her stare on Ruby, who looked scared that Weiss and Yang would get violent with each other. "Weiss, please, it's not worth it," Ruby pleaded, hoping it would help calm Weiss down.
Weiss just turned and walked away, though she was still fuming the entire time. Yang walked up to Ruby and placed a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry about the Ice Queen, she just likes to flaunt around like she owns the place," Yang said. Upon hearing that, Ruby turned around, giving Yang a disgusted look at what she just heard. "Don't tell me you're taking her side right now."
Ruby shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Do you realize just how hurtful those comment were? Weiss may be thick skinned, but she still has feelings, just like you and me." Ruby felt her blood start to boil. "You can't just go around saying things like that and act like it doesn't matter."
"The only thing I care about nowadays, Ruby, is seeing Blake again, and everything else can piss off." Yang walked past Ruby, following after Weiss and leaving her sister staring at the metal walkway beneath her feet. Eventually Ruby went to chase after them, heartbroken that her own sister didn't seem to care anymore.
After the sisters had caught up to Weiss, they came up to a door leading into the offices. It was, however, sealed with a specially locked door that needed the power running in order to open it. Weiss was looking for a way to go around it, but once Yang got there, she just tried to open the door straight. "It wont work that way, I already tried it," Weiss said as she kept knocking against the wall, looking for a hollow spot. "We would need to turn on the power in the entire refinery before that door would open."
Yang walked over to Weiss and stood by her while she kept working. "Well then why are you standing around over here? You can get the power in this place running so why aren't you doing that already?" By that point Ruby was showing up and seeing that there was more trouble brewing again.
"Because if I turn the power on, then the White Fang will know that someone is in there, and we'll have failed the mission," Weiss stated.
"And what makes you so sure about that?" Yang asked yet again, this time more forcefully.
Weiss gave up on trying to search for the right spot in the wall while Yang was chatting right next to her. Standing up, she looked up at the blonde, more calm than she was before. "This refinery has been shut down for years. If it suddenly turns on again, the White Fang will notice it."
Yang looked to argue the point, but Ruby stopped her. "Weiss has a good point, turning on the power would make our job almost impossible. So how do you suppose we get around it?" Ruby asked.
Weiss went back to searching for the hole in the wall. "I'm looking for a hollow spot in the walls where the ventilation shafts are. We break through the wall there since it has a weak point and just waltz on in." Weiss stated to Ruby. "If you start from the hallway around the corner here, it would make this go much quicker." Ruby nodded and went to go work, leaving Yang and Weiss alone again.
"God this is stupid," Yang mumbled to herself, though Weiss did hear it.
"Like it or not it's what we're doing, not like you care about anything," Weiss stated back to her.
"Well why should I care about this stupid war, or this stupid mission, or anything in this stupid world? It's all nothing compared what what I actually want," Yang said to Weiss.
Weiss stood up again, crossing her arms over her chest and staring at the blank wall in front of her. "It's all about what you want huh? Never considering how other people might feel about it." Weiss closed her eyes. "Are you really so cowardly that you want to die, just so that you can see Blake again?" She asked, striking a nerve in Yang.
Eyes red as blood, the brawler gave Weiss one warning. "Don't you dare bring her up like that," Yang declared her body mere inches from the heiress'.
Weiss turned her head to face Yang, her gaze showing that she wasn't going to back down. "Well then how about your sister? Can I bring her up instead? Do you want me to not talk about how much pain she is in when she see's you like this, or how broken you would make her if you actually did kill yourself? Do you not care about what happens to her?" Weiss' words struck hard against Yang, causing the blonde to back down and her eyes to return to their normal lilac color. "In your self pity and suicidal despair, you've forgotten that there are still people here who depend on you, who need you around to pick them back up if they fall down. Ever since you've been doing this, I've had to step in to fill the role that you decided to abandon for selfish and cowardly reasons."
Turning around and walking a few steps away, facing the other end of the hallway, Weiss continued. "I've held Ruby, countless nights, watching her cry into my shoulder, all because you turned into this. I've stepped up to give her the love and support that she needs, that she deserves, while you go gallivanting off drinking yourself to death every night." Turning back to face Yang, Weiss drove the final nail in the coffin. "Ruby deserves a better sister than you." Weiss walked off to check on Ruby, leaving Yang to soak in what she had said.
Once Ruby noticed Weiss approach, she turned to see how she was doing. "Any luck on your end?" When Weiss simply shook her head no, Ruby didn't press any further. Giving a few more taps along the walls, she eventually heard what they were looking for. "Hey Weiss, I think I found it," Ruby declared. Weiss pushed Ruby out of the way so that she could get a listen in and see if Ruby did find what they were looking for. Once she heard what Ruby heard, she immediately started to heat up the wall directly in front of them with dust energy. "I'll go get Yang." Ruby said, turning back down the hallway to bring her sister over. With a wave of her hand, Ruby called Yang over to Weiss and herself.
Weiss spoke up again. "When I heat this up enough, I need you to punch through the metal and break it open." Eventually she heated it enough to the point where a really strong hit would break the metal. "Go ahead Yang," Weiss said.
Yang felt glad that she was able to let off some steam after her earlier argument with Weiss. The girl really stepped into some grounds that she shouldn't have. Yang stepped up, and with a wind up, and a mighty roar, she swung her fist right into the wall, blowing it wide open. Stepping through immediately afterwards, she noted the dusty shape that the old office was in. "Now what?" Yang said unhappily.
"Follow me," Weiss said, leading herself and Ruby through the hole in the wall and across the room. She walked over to a door and opened it up, gesturing for Ruby and Yang to follow her. She led them through the few remaining corridors until they came upon the door to the exit. "This'll take us up to the roof. From there we can jump over to the roof of the warehouse and head in through there," Weiss put in the code to open the door. After a few moments the door opened up and the trio walked outside onto the roof of the refinery.
Ruby walked over to the ledge, looking at the gap between the roof they were on and the roof of the warehouse. "Weiss, I know we're great and all that, but I don't think we can make that jump without making any noise," Ruby mentioned to Weiss as she walked with Yang over to Ruby.
Weiss let out a sigh. She had already thought of an idea, but wasn't thrilled about it. "I'll just throw up some glyphs so that you two can go get across." Weiss stated as she summoned a pathway of glyphs that Ruby and Yang could use as a bridge to get across. "Just be quick about it." Ruby and Yang said to make their way across the chasm and once they were across, Weiss followed suit, removing the glyphs that she had passed over while she ran. Once they were atop the warehouse, they quietly made their way to a part of the roof that looked to be made of glass.
Looking down, they saw what they were looking for. Crates of dust and food, all being guarded by members of the White Fang. "Looks like we found it, but that's a lot of supplies. I don't know if we can get it all," Yang mentioned.
As Ruby started to think of a plan, Weiss spotted something down on the floor. "Guys, Torchwick is here." That grabbed the sisters' attention, making them focus on what Weiss was looking at. "And it looks like he has that Neo girl with him, too."
"Great, just what we needed right now," Yang complained.
Hearing a noise coming from another part of the roof, Ruby looked up and saw that some White Fang guards were going up to the roof on patrol. Springing to life, Ruby launched herself towards the two, activating her gauntlets and spinning around like a top. Once she reached them, she stuck the blade into the chest of the first guard, and used the momentum she had gained to spin around him, kicking the second with a blast from her shotgun greaves. Looking up at Ruby, Weiss huffed loudly. "I'd be shocked if they didn't hear that," She said to Ruby.
"We can hope that they didn't," Ruby said, an awkward grin across her face. As if on cue, the White Fang started to stir underneath them. One look from Weiss, and Ruby's head dropped down. "I had to try." She ran over to Weiss and Yang, pulling out her scroll in the process. "I'm sending a message to Jaune letting him know that we'll grab as much as we can, but things will be tense," She said, typing out a message. "We'll jump down and take them by surprise. The quicker we take them out, the more we can get for the journey back," Ruby said as she opened up the window that they were standing over.
Looking down below them, Yang jumped in first. She was always the one who would go in first and put herself at the highest risk. On her way down, the sounds of Ember Celica activating echoed through the warehouse, and once she made it all the way down to the bottom, she dropped her fist into the ground and created a shock wave that knocked the guards off of their feet. Ruby and Weiss dropped down after her and landed next to Yang, weapons already drawn. Not even a second later, the three of them took off, splitting up so that they could defeat them quicker.
Yang used her gauntlets to propel herself into a crowd of enemies. Most of them were equipped with melee weapons, so fighting them would be simple. She locked herself into battle, a serious demeanor taking over, and she would occasionally let out a grunt with one of her strikes. In the confusion of the battle, she had let one of the guards get behind her, and he went to strike her down. She turned around to see a glyph pop up in between them and block the strike, and then just as quickly disappearing to allow Yang to retaliate.
Once Yang finished the strike, she quickly looked over to Weiss, well aware that she had put up the barrier for her. Weiss was handling herself fine. With the addition of her control over dust, Weiss had become a threat to anyone in her path. She spun around with her rapier Myrtenaster, causing most of the guards to raise their weapons to block the strike. Once she finished spinning, she picked one out of the crowd and pushed her right hand towards him, a small column of fire appearing from her hand. She turned back around and pierced the chest of one White Fang, and she quickly turned back around, spraying fire towards the other guards.
At the same time, Ruby herself was faring well. She had learned a lot from Yang and her new martial arts skills really came in hand. Using her speed, she quickly lept from foe to foe, either using her bladed gauntlets or her shotgun greaves to take them down. Her new weapons worked really well with her semblance and she used the two in combination to create deadly strikes. It was almost as if she was even more of a threat than before.
When the three of them were working together, it was almost impossible for them to go down. It was almost as if they were communicating on a telepathic level and soon, the battle was over quickly.
Torchwick and Neo took off once they heard Yang drop into the warehouse. Weiss assumed he was going to be getting backup and that limited how much time they had. "Start grabbing. Priority goes to food and dust supplies. Anything else that we can grab, do so after we have what we need," Ruby said as she started to search the containers. Soon she heard the doors to the warehouse open and she turned to see who it was.
Standing there was a group of hunters sent to help them with the supplies. "Sir, what do you need us to grab?" The first said.
"Just start with these crates over here. If we have time we can grab the stuff over on this side, but I don't think that's likely. If you have semblances that can move these things more efficiently then use them," Ruby said as she got back to work. Ruby helped the hunters who had arrived move some of the crates, and Yang was able to move them on her own. Weiss formed glyphs underneath some of them and floated them over to the entrance. They worked quickly to get the crates onto the boats and even then Ruby was worried that they wouldn't get enough. Weiss used her glyphs to float most of the crates down to the boats and let them on gently, but after a crate was nearly lost to sea, she knew that it was time for her to stop.
With the crates loaded on, Ruby looked outside the warehouse and noticed that more guards were coming. "Time to bail, guys," Ruby said as she sprinted towards the boats. Weiss and Yang jumped into the boats when they heard the doors to the place open up. As the White Fang guards began to pour into the building, they took aim at Ruby and began to open fire just as she was about to leap onto the boat.
Avoiding most of the fire and letting her aura shield her from the ones that did hit her, Ruby dropped down onto the boat and told the drivers to leave. She then took a seat in the boat next to Weiss and Yang and watched as the warehouse shrank out of sight. "Well that was close." Yang said, slouching in her seat.
"Yeah, you ain't kidding," Ruby responded.
Weiss just sat there silently. There was a lot for her to say to Yang at the moment, but she figured now wasn't the time. Being exhausted because of the ordeal didn't help her case either and so she just waited for the ride to be over.
AN: So yeah, this took way too long for me to write. I would like to apologize first off for not getting this done sooner, and hopefully anything that comes after this will be out within a reasonable time frame.
I finally got myself an editor to run through my stuff and make sure it's up to par, so give a huge thanks to him because he is working really hard with this for me even though he doesn't have to. Hopefully all of his efforts pay off (which I really hope they do) and that these are great reads.
Anyway, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter.