Chapter 16:

3 days before Ruby's infection

The White Fang needed to bring in more revenue besides stealing dust. Because of the lofty goals set by their leader Roman Torchwick, the group of vengeful Faunus needed more resources besides dust. Roman had given an all clear, saying all White Fang members were allowed to use any means necessary, in order to obtain resources from anywhere.

However since their leader hadn't told them where to look, the White Fang would have to figure that fact out on their own. After only a few discussions it was decided the group would explore a rumor concerning the Desert Vanitate, which lay up north in the known world called Remenant.

The rumor was of an ancient dragon's skeleton buried within the desert sands. The White Fang logistics leader was a male Faunus named Arum. He knew a skeleton of that size couldn't be hidden without some proof suggested in the sand dunes. He proposed the White Fang look for hills, not just any hills, he cautioned, hills that looked out of place.

The Desert Vanitate didn't receive a lot of wind, thereby causing it to be relatively flat. In ancient times, the wind was believed to have blown all the sand of Remenant up north to form the great desert. During that time a dragon must have died down south, either that or it died in the north. Either way the corpse ended up rotting, preserved under perhaps, what is to be known, millions of tons of sand.

However in recent years archaeologists and other scientist have reason to believe the bones of the great beast have risen close to the surface. The White Fang saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring in some extra revenue. If the group couldn't sell it at the highest bidder, they could always keep it. If the White Fang kept it they would most likely experiment with trying to bring it back to life. Naturally when that failed they would revert to the first option, selling it.

So this is how during the beginning days of the Darkness Plague, the White Fang could be found trekking into a secret location within the Desert Vanitate. The excavation site was perhaps as large as Beacon Academy itself, if not larger. The massive digging site was due to the size of the dragon shaped hills that were discovered.

Using equipment they built themselves, the White Fang had begun digging the site the day before. After removing the hills they started to dig into the actual desert. However they soon discovered they didn't need to dig very far. After only digging for part of the morning a great shifting interrupted the White Fang's excavation plans.

An immense something had risen up out of the sand, the object or objects were not discernible since they were still covered in a lot of sand. After securing the entire object on a large wooden platform, to keep the thing from sinking again, the White Fang began to uncover the gigantic object.

It soon became apparent that the thing that was being uncovered wasn't one object it was multiple objects. What looked like bones were discovered early in the uncovering process, however Arum wanted all of it to be uncovered before the White Fang excavation team made any assumptions.

After the uncovering process was complete, logistics and current excavations leader Arum stood atop a platform built for the express purpose of viewing the immense find. "Well we know it's a skeleton, the question is this; is it a dragon's skeleton?" Arum said to himself.

"Sir we should examine it further." Arum's female adviser, also a Faunus, replied.

"You are forgetting, or don't know of, a set of bone wings we have acquired." Arum said. "The reason I bring this up Miss. Perseus, is because we have reason to believe that the wings are dragon wings. If they belong to this here dragon skeleton, then we are in luck. A complete dragon skeleton is worth a hell of a lot more than one missing its wings."

"Please I insist you call me Alexia." Ms. Perseus responded. "We have here a lucky find."

"I agree, we do indeed have a lucky find. Shall we take this back, and inform the boss?" Arum asked.

"I defiantly think we should bring the skeleton back to where the wings are. Then we can complete the dragon skeleton as a whole. I don't think we should tell Roman however." Alexia said sighing.

"We shouldn't tell the boss? Why not?" Arum asked.

"Well he isn't exactly happy to see us. Before he took over the White Fang we felt like we had a good cause. Now all we Faunus feel is discriminated with privileges. I'm not going to say I'm not grateful for what Romans done to help us. I just wish he would be a little kinder in the process." Alexia responded.

"I'm sure we all feel that way. And yet I also feel we should tell Roman, just in case he discovers a way to reanimate things." Arum replied.

The two, who had worked side by side in the excavation of the Dragon's skeleton, ordered the bones to be moved. This part was a little tricky; the problem was how did someone move large bones over a great distance quickly? The answer came when Alexia suggested they bring the entire thing piece by piece back to the White Fang HQ. How they did this was figured out by Arum.

It was soon decided that modified carrier drones would transport the bone pieces. The massive single pilot vehicles could carry upwards of one full ton of weight. The bones proved to weigh a few tons, in some cases concerning the large pieces upward of four tons. This meant that a veritable army of White Fang carrier drones had to be employed. 500 hundred drones had to be employed, which was all the ones the White Fang had. The operation these vehicles consumed a lot of manpower, that's not including the ground crews which were roughly three times the number of drivers.

The total number of White Fang members working on the excavation project came to about roughly 2,000 Faunus. Such a large number of people were kept in secret. The White Fang, despite pushes by Roman Torchwick, didn't want to reveal their actually numbers. The actually numbers of the White Fang sat somewhere at 15,000.

The ruins of MaArr 1 week until Ruby's death

Roman Torchwick could feel his plan succeeding. He had just captured Ruby Rose, the infamous, and now imprisoned leader of Team RWBY. Over the past 4 days, Ruby had been in the leader of the White Fang's custody. He had her taken off the LHD*13 drug, which kept Ruby from feeling the pain caused by the Darkness Plague.

Roman had left Ruby writhing in pain inside of a jail cell. Guarding Ruby was the large Beowulf Roman had used to track the pesky team leader down with. Ruby lay inside her imprisonment racked with torment, too distracted by the pain to try and attempt an escape.

Roman had sent out a request for information from the White Fang HQ. He had gotten back, almost immediately, a report that a group of 2,000 Faunus was sent out on an excavation into the Desert Vanitate. They had found an entire skeleton of an ancient dragon. The bones were preserved, due to the fact of low wind in the north and it being buried under thousands of pounds of sand.

The entire excavation and assemblage of the dragon skeleton took one week and three days; the dragon skeleton currently resided at the White Fang HQ close to 700 miles outside of forever fall.

'This is perfect. I Roman Torchwick, will attempt to reanimate the dragon using the Grim Sphere.' The devious man thought to himself.

Elsewhere high atop a mountain, sat an evil entity. It was waiting for a perfect specimen to inhabit, and thus bring the terror of Grimm unto the world of Remenant.

…

Thanks again for reading my work. I hope you enjoyed Chapter 16. Fell free to leave a review. I plan on writing to Chapter 30, not sure if i'll continue after that. Guess we'll just have to wait, hope to see you there!