A/N: I have decided to stop using the horizontal lines to represent scene shifts as they were driving me nuts.

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Eight Years ago.

Richter hungrily breathed in lungfuls of air as he fell onto his butt, his tiny chest rising and falling rapidly. He had a black eye and several other bruises. The left sleeve of his grey long-sleeve shirt were torn and the left kneecap of his pants was completely gone. In front of him were two other boys, lying prone and limp, low groans of pain escaping from their lips. They were two years older than him and a good head taller, they had tried to take his backpack from him, which was strewn about somewhere on the dirt clearing.

He felt someone lean against his back, it was the girl who had come to help him fight the older boys off. She looked to be about his age and was short like him. The girl had chin-length black hair that seemed to be tinted red. The most notable feature about her though, was her long red cloak. She was just as roughed up as he was and breathing just as heavily. It had been a hell of a fight, but working together, they had beaten the bullies up. It felt good, really good.

"Thanks for the help." Richter said once he caught his breath. "I might have been in trouble if you hadn't of showed up."

"You're welcome." She replied after a few breaths. "I've been wanting to get back at those jerks for a while anyway." They stayed like that, back-to-back in a sitting position, for a few more moments. Richter looked up into the sky, the sun glaring back down at him, looking like a golden pearl.

The girl suddenly whined, "Aw, I'm going to be in trouble again. My dad doesn't like it when I get into fights."

Richter spared a glance behind him. "My house is close by, you can clean up there before heading to your place." He suggested.

"Really? Thanks!"

He felt the weight removed from his back as the girl stood up. She walked in front of him and Richter finally got a good look at her eyes. Silver? That was an unusual eye color, not in a bad way though.

The girl extended her right hand, smiling brightly. "My name's Ruby! What's yours?"

Richter found her smile infectious as he mirrored it. "Richter." He replied, taking her hand.

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Present day.

Richter watched as his sword sped towards Ruby's left eye. The tip of the blade was mere centimeters from her eyeball when she leaned back suddenly. The sword instead broke through her aura shield and scraped a horizontal line on her forehead, right above the left eye. He couldn't help, but be impressed.

"Nice dodge." He complemented in a neutral tone.

Ruby looked at him as a trail of blood ran down the left side of her head with a face of conflicting emotions. He knew he should be feeling something too as it had been so long since he last seen her, but there was nothing. The young man sighed, he really would never be the same. He'd been altered too much.

"Richter, I don't know what's going on, but I can help you." She pleaded.

His face remained impassive. "I don't need help." He stated clearly, "I need…." He stopped mid-sentence, hearing the telltale signs of gunshots. They were getting closer, Ruby's team was on their way. Time for him to go. "Well, you'll find out soon enough." The short ex-huntsman walked backwards, melting into the treeline.

Richter made extra care not to make any noise as he sped through the forest. If he moved stealthily enough, Ruby and her team wouldn't be able to track him. Then he could rendezvous with the rest of the team at the hideout.

He winced slightly as his body tensed for a moment. The hunger was back, it clawed from within him, demanding to be satisfied. Fortunately, it wasn't too bad at the moment, he could suppress it, for now. But soon, he would have to sate the hunger, and it wasn't something that ordinary food could do.

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"I'm fine! It's just a scratch!" Ruby said impatiently as her older sister inspected the cut on her forehead. She wanted to chase after Richter, but her team was adamant that they make sure she was unharmed.

Weiss strolled around the clearing they were in, taking in the sight of the bent trees, broken limbs and craters. "What in the world happened here?"

Blake was inspecting the edge of the clearing, holding up a broken tree branch. "Looks like you had quite a battle."

Ruby caught her sister's eye, "Yang, I saw Richter."

Yang stared at her for a long moment, raising one eyebrow, "You sure you didn't hit your head?"

She glared at her older sibling, "I'm not joking! He was the one who attacked me!"

Yang put a hand on her shoulder, "He died a year ago, there's no way it could be him." Ruby shook her head, there was no mistaking Richter's face. She had known it for years.

"It was! I swear it!" The red-cloaked girl replied adamantly.

"Who is Richter?" Weiss interrupted.

Yang looked at the heiress, "An old friend of ours, he was killed a year ago, fighting grimm off so Ruby and the rest of their friends could escape."

"But he's not dead anymore!" Ruby insisted, looking from Blake to Weiss, silently pleading for support.

Blake placed a hand on her chin as she delved into her thoughts, "It could have been a disguise." She suggested.

"Yeah!" Weiss quickly agreed, "Or maybe someone that looked like him. There are plenty of people that look like each other."

"No it wasn't a disguise or someone else." Ruby responded, "It was Richter! I'm not sure how or why, but he's alive!" The cloaked girl suddenly slumped her shoulders and cast her gaze to the ground, "And apparently wants to kill me now."

Yang rose from her crouching position, looking into the forest. "If that really was Richter, then where has he been all this time?"

Ruby didn't have an answer for her.

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The hunger was stronger now.

Richter stumbled in his stride, suddenly collapsing to his knees as he doubled over, holding his stomach with both arms. The short ex-huntsman mentally cursed, he thought he could stave it off for a little bit longer, but he had miscalculated. He needed to feed.

Still holding his stomach with his right arm, Richter braced himself against a tree with his left hand. The ex-huntsman's breathing came faster and faster as sweat beaded on his forehead. The sound of howling filled his ears as a pack of beowulves appeared from the treeline ahead of him. They snapped and snarled at Richter, steadily inching themselves closer to him. They could sense his weakened condition. He looked at the beowulf pack and grunted, it would have to do.

Richter pushed himself off of the tree, standing tall on his own two feet once more. He began walking towards the beowulves as he released the mental restraints he was putting on the hunger. Already the ex-huntsman could feel the corrupted veins surfacing on the skin of his face, could feel the blackness fill his eyes. The hunger was taking over, in a few more seconds it would be over.

The beowulves, sensing something amiss, actually stopped their advance, eyeing their would-be prey curiously. One was even starting to back up, but it was too late. Richter lunged forward.

The forest was soon filled with the death cries of the grimm.

VVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Ruby sat on the edge of her bed, dimly aware of her older sister describing to Blake the previous battle she had waged on their last mission. Apparently, boarbatusks weren't the only thing that attacked the SDC train. There was someone else there too and Yang had fought him briefly, before he had managed to escape with a briefcase of some sort. Ruby wondered if that had been Richter's partner.

"So this big guy was wielding this huge battle axe…." Yang continued, "…wielding it like it was a feather. He was going to blindside Weiss, so I knocked him away and said, 'Hey, I wanna AXE you a question!'"

Ruby winced at her sister's bad pun, she saw Blake face-palm out of the corner of her eye. The red-clad girl looked over at Weiss to see her talking non-stop into her scroll. The heiress had been talking on it for the better part of an hour, most likely explaining that whatever was so 'Special.' Was stolen.

"The grimm seemed very coordinated as well." Blake remarked. "It almost seemed like someone was controlling them."

"Weird." Ruby replied to her faunus teammate.

Yang looked over to where Weiss was pacing back and forth, still talking furiously into her scroll. "I haven't seen her this worried in a while."

Blake nodded in agreement. "I guess whatever was on board was very important."

"Yeah…" Ruby added, rubbing her forehead where Richter had cut her. She found her thoughts wandering to her childhood friend. He had looked so…empty, when they had fought. Ruby would have thought that he would have been extremely angry and bitter at her for mistaking him for dead, but there was no emotion. Except for when she had called him friend, it was tiny, but it was something.

"Still thinking about Richter?" Yang asked her.

Ruby turned to her older sister, "Yang, there is something seriously wrong with him."

"Well he did attack you."

"I don't mean just that. Something felt off about him." Ruby tried to clarify. "I mean, I didn't even know it was him until I ripped his mask off and before that his aura was…." She hesitated.

"Was what?" Blake asked.

"It's hard to explain, it was…rough and cold. It felt like I was being smothered by a blanket that had been left out in the winter." Ruby tried to explain, hugging herself. "It didn't used to feel like that."

"Your friend may have been brainwashed." Blake suggested.

Ruby pondered that idea, brainwashing, that made sense. "You think so?"

Blake leveled her stoic gaze on her, "You said he wasn't acting normal?"

"Not at all."

"Then it is a possibility."

Yang crossed her arms, leaning against the bedpost of her bunk beds, "If that's true, is there a way we could undo the brainwashing?"

"I don't know." Blake said, "But we could try." She finished, giving Ruby and Yang a small smile.

"The problem is we don't know what he and his friends are after. We don't know their next target." Yang informed them.

"I do." Weiss interrupted, no longer on her scroll. All eyes turned to her. "They stole a device called Sirensong."

Ruby gave her pale teammate a confused look, "Sirensong?"

"What is it?" Blake inquired.

Weiss let out a long sigh, "Normally I'm not supposed to divulge sensitive information of the Schnee Dust Company, but these are not normal times." The heiress turned to her faunus teammate, "Blake, remember how you said my dad's company was known for questionable business practices? This is one of them."

Weiss paused and Ruby saw how nervous she was. This wasn't easy for her pale teammate, airing out her family's dirty laundry. Ruby doubted anyone in the room would suddenly turn their back on her though. They had grown pretty close in their short time at Beacon.

Weiss began speaking again, "Sirensong is…a device that emits a high frequency aura wave over a large radius. It's purpose…" She hesitated, "…Was to attract grimm." Everyone gasped in shock, including Ruby. "My father funded the project to create it a few years ago."

Blake's eyes narrowed, "It attracts grimm?"

"Why on Remnant would you want to attract grimm?!" Yang questioned, becoming quite animated.

"The original plan was to use Sirensong to lure the grimm to the device, diverting them away from settlements outside the kingdoms." Weiss explained, "However, the lead scientist for Sirensong, Gena Celvic, received funds from…a questionable party, who took Sirensong and began using it to threaten villages."

Realization dawned on Ruby, "They held them ransom."

"Yes." Weiss confirmed.

"That's horrible…" Blake said.

Weiss continued, "The questionable party who bribed Dr. Celvic was Darion Shiver. Leader of a now defunct shady group called the Jade Dragons." She tapped her scroll a few times and showed the screen to her team. Ruby and the others saw a clean-shaven man in his thirties with short-blonde hair, blue eyes and a square jaw. "They had a whole network of villages paying them 'Protection' money until my sister broke up their operation. He's supposed to be in prison for fifty years."

"Supposed to be?" Yang repeated.

"He escaped two years ago, but went dark. Until now." Weiss said.

"You think he's planning on going back to his old ways?" Ruby suggested.

"It's the only thing I can think of. No one else would make such a concerted effort to steal the Sirensong." Weiss said, "Since Dr. Celvic, my father has had numerous scientists try replicate her effectiveness with the device, but none of them could get it to work nearly as well as she could. He's been shipping it all over the place trying to find someone who can do it." She explained.

Blake scowled, "Why doesn't he just destroy it?"

"To the public, he has." Weiss responded, "Behind closed doors though, he thinks there's still value in it. But having the Sirensong stolen may have forced his hand." The heiress began pacing back and forth, "If Darion Shiver starts using it again and everyone finds out. It would do our company irreparable harm. He'll have to agree to destroy it for real if we get it back."

"No." Ruby suddenly spoke, everyone turning to her in confusion. The red-cloaked girl smiled brightly at Weiss, "'When' we get it back." The ice queen's mouth was slightly open with surprise before she relented a small smile. She then fixed them with a severe look.

"Everything I've told you stays between us, got it?" Weiss demanded, receiving nods from Ruby and everyone else.

"Wait." Yang suddenly piped up. "They already have the Sirensong right? Won't this Darion guy use it right away?"

Weiss smiled smugly, "He can't. The Sirensong now can no longer be activated without a password which only Schnee family members know." She answered, "Right now all of us are in very safe locations."

Blake nodded in agreement, "I wouldn't want to try and kidnap someone in an academy full of huntsman."

Ruby quietly sat while her team continued to talk, mulling the boatload of information she just received in her head. They needed to retrieve the Sirensong, but they had no idea of it's whereabouts. The only way Darion Shiver could get the device to work is a password from a Schnee, which meant they would be the next targets. However, as Weiss said, each Schnee was in a pretty secure location. Kidnapping one of them would be very difficult.

The red-clad girl's eyes furrowed as she continued to think. In their current situation, they had no clue where Darion Shiver's hideout was to retrieve the Sirensong. At the same time, Darion's group were unable to make a move to retrieve a password, unless they wanted things to get very messy. It was a stalemate.

Unless.

Ruby's eyes widened as realization flooded her brain. Richter, he was there for the attack too, he was probably connected to this Darion Shiver in some way. If he was, then they might have a chance.

"Weiss." Ruby suddenly spoke, grinning, "I have a plan…"

Weiss took one look at Ruby's face and slapped a palm on her forehead. "Oh no…"

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Richter collapsed against a large boulder as the last beowulf dissolved away. The ex-huntsman's body was drenched with sweat and he was panting heavily. A sudden wave of nausea hit him hard and he fell to his hands and knees, dry-heaving. The hunger was sated for now, but it would be back, as strong as ever.

He returned to leaning against the boulder and was briefly reminded of when he had first met Ruby, how he leaned against her back after their victorious brawl with the bullies. Richter shook his head to try and drive the memory out. He hadn't had a flashback like that in over half a year, why was he getting them now?

The short ex-huntsman wiped his mouth with the back of his bandaged right hand as he shakily rose to his feet. He still had to meet up with his teammate, Novus Procter. However, he had to wait until his body stabilized from the feeding. Once it did, he should be able to move at twice the speed he did before.

Richter looked up at the shattered moon, gathering his thoughts. Once Darion had the Sirensong and the password to use it, their ultimate goal would be in reach. Supposedly, Darion was some former mob boss or something and Gena had confided in him that Darion didn't even want to take this job. He had grown comfortable living life under the radar. Something had forced his hand. If it was anyone, it would be Cinder. No one could manipulate people like she could, he knew from firsthand experience.

Finally feeling refreshed, Richter swung his left fist experimentally against the boulder he was leaning on. Large cracks instantly spidered across its surface. He flexed his left hand experimentally and then nodded in satisfaction, looks like he was good to go. With that, the ex-huntsman took off towards the rendezvous point. He had taken three steps when another image of Ruby and his other friends, Pearce and Trista popped into his head. Richter frowned in response.

This could be a problem.