Chapter 29-
"Mizu would you mind coming to our room as well please?" Neo asked kindly, to which Mizu readily accepted.
When they got there however, with a shared look passed between them Neo left the room leaving mother and daughter alone for the first time since Ruby woke up.
Mizu stood awkwardly next to Ruby, unsure what she could say or really do when she knew Ruby must hate her.
"I'm sorry." Ruby said quietly. "I'm sorry for how I treated you when I woke up, I learnt something while I was…in between. And well I could only think it was your fault. Neo explained to me what you two spoke about afterwards, and for that I'm sorry. It's all just so much to take in. Dying…it was something I always expected to happen but to die, than be told that someone had been trying to kill me since the womb was something I never expected, nor was it to come back." Ruby said, sounding surprisingly weak as she spoke.
"I take it you know what we found in Patch?" Ruby asked, not giving Mizu a chance to reply to that.
"I do. Neo told me, you found Summer's cloak and now wear it. I'm sure she wanted no one else but you to wear that." Mizu replied.
"Did…did she also tell you the other thing we found?" Ruby asked quietly, unsure how Mizu would take it.
"Yes…she did, are you sure it's hers?" Mizu asked, holding a small amount of hope that it wasn't.
"It's hers, there are no other wolf Faunus in existence anymore and I know her ears anywhere." Ruby replied.
"I see." Mizu said, holding back the tears.
"I believe she's still alive. I was sent there and told there would be a present, I think finding that was a sign to say she was still alive but I just don't know where." Ruby said.
"Maybe you're right. If you are, I'll stop at nothing in finding her." Mizu replied, determined.
"Neither will I." Ruby said, smiling at her.
"I wanted to say that I went back over my notes, and looked at your blood sample. Something's been changed somewhere; part of the DNA was changed with the disease added. I'd like a second sample to have a look now but somehow it's either been tampered with or something went wrong." Mizu explained as Neo and Winter entered the room.
"Tampered with would support what I've already been told. Who had access to this? Who even knew about it?" Ruby asked.
"Only I had access to it, and Summer knew about it alongside me." Mizu replied.
"We'll have to look into it more, but first we've got something important to discuss." Ruby said, gesturing for them all to sit down.
"We'd like to know when you, Winter, were planning on telling us you were an Atlas Specialist." Neo said bluntly once they were all sat down.
"What! How did you know that?" Winter exclaimed rather loudly, surprised at how they knew.
"We had Aria do some digging into you, discovered that you're listed under Atlas Military personnel but no job or position was listed. Admittedly it wasn't until we saw your fight earlier that we pieced it together. That fighting style and the reactions we've had all point towards it. Are we close?" Ruby asked, rather calmly.
Looking to her mother for help, Mizu just nodded her head for Winter to explain.
"I was an Atlas Specialist. I left just a little over a year ago because I didn't trust Ironwood, who seemed to have changed rather radically since I first knew him." Winter explained.
"We see, so you became one of the youngest specialists ever then?" Neo asked.
"Yes and No." Winter said, but as she looked over to Ruby she saw the woman no paying attention. "Um…" Winter said, confused while Ruby was staring off into the distance.
"This is amazing. Accelerated growth therapy. That explains why you became a specialist at an early age, it's because while you were technically a young age. Your body wasn't." Ruby said as she came back to present time.
"How did you find all that out?" Mizu asked, curious.
"I had Aria hack into the Schnee, or should I say my families? Files and records, it's buried in there but it's amazing. I suspected it was possible to accelerate the growth of a person but I didn't know it'd been done." Ruby said happily as she brought up her scroll to download the files onto.
"Aria can project the information directly onto her eyes and she can navigate like that, so please excuse her." Neo replied.
"Yes it's true Ruby, my father had my growth accelerated so in two years I was looking like an eighteen-year-old and started training in the military before becoming a specialist. Have been all my life except for the last year where I left, I realised my father only wanted me to become one was so he could have someone to scare and use as he so wished against other people." Winter explained.
"I see. So does this make you older than me? Or am I still the oldest?" Ruby asked playfully, getting away from the serious topic for a moment.
"Whatever he's done stopped my growth at eighteen, however when I actually turned eighteen years old it started again, so yes. You're still the oldest." Winter replied with a large smile.
"Oh good, means I can boss both you and Weiss around because I'm older." Ruby teased before going back to being serious. "But other than that fact now, there's a different reason we're meeting." Ruby said.
"We've been able to work out Cinder's plan, or at least a part of it. How soon would you be able to take over the Schnee Dust Cooperation?" Ruby asked.
"I'm not sure, I know I have some support among the board but with my husband there and the other board members it's hard to do it. We haven't got enough evidence to arrest him yet so we're not nearly ready." Mizu said.
"I'll have Aria help you attain files on them all to get them locked away, would you be able to point them all out?" Neo asked next.
"Of course, I know which ones support him and also advocate the Faunus slave labour, but we haven't got enough to arrest them though. They're extremely careful.
"As I said, don't worry about that. Would you be able to do it with them all out of the way?" Ruby asked again.
"Yes I could, but how are you going to get them out of the way? You're not going to kill them are you?" Mizu asked, shocked.
"No. The police trust me enough to point them at suspects, we'll be able to have the police arrest them all and hold them until we get the evidence needed." Ruby explained.
"But that's not all. He has the Atlas Military, namely Ironwood in his back pocket. We attack him and arrest them all then they will swoop in and claim him as their own prisoner. The council gave him authority over security in Vale so he could do that." Winter explained.
"Don't worry about Ironwood, we have a way to handle him. But also with Hunters and Huntresses supporting the police there isn't anything he nor the council can do." Neo told them.
"How's that though? The military has the power now." Winter asked.
"Maybe in Atlas, but in Vale all military forces. Foreign or domestic are second to the Hunter lodges. They have absolute authority and final word in the defence and any matter in terms of defending against any threat. So it would be illegal for them to do anything, and the council is held the same as this law goes back to the dawn of the Kingdoms." Ruby explained, having seen the other Kingdoms she made sure to understand the different laws.
"Anyway, we've got a plan so their attention is focused elsewhere." Neo said with a smile.
"So what's Cinder's plan then? You said you'd worked it out." Mizu asked.
"We've known what the virus was since she planted it, it'll disable all communications across Vale meaning that they'd be unable to call for help. We believe she plans to attack during this time and by the time communications get back up then the Kingdom would be in what looks like a civil war. However, as it'd be a civil war no other Kingdom would be allowed to help." Neo began to explain.
"We think it's coming soon because of the tournament. It'd be the perfect time to do something like this." Ruby said, however leaving out something else.
"There's more isn't there?" Winter asked, "You think you know how they're going to do it don't you?" Winter asked.
"Yes we do. We believe that they plan to drop the Amity Colosseum onto Vale. Using the mass causalities and confusion to attack Vale itself. So while everyone is running around helping those caught in the collapse, they'd sweep in and take over." Ruby informed them emotionlessly.
"How long have you known this?" Mizu asked immediately.
"About a month. We've been coming up with likely plans and we both agree this is the most likely one as we also believe she is getting help from someone else." Neo stated.
"Help from someone else?" Winter asked.
"The Paladin's aren't even on the market yet, only experimental prototypes in use by the Atlas military for purposes of testing." Ruby stated as if reading it straight from a file.
"This is why we want to take over the SDC sooner than planned, if we can gain wider support from the Faunus and show them it's getting better, more of them could doubt their cause. And if we show it was a Faunus' doing who supports Mizu and the Schnee women, then maybe we can get enough to doubt their cause to either turn or at least doubt long enough for us to capture them." Ruby informed them both.
"That could work, when do you want to do it?" Mizu asked, understanding their plans and ideas.
"Sooner rather than later, I can speak to the police and Ozpin today and have enough ready for the weekend, we also need to get our distraction into place." Ruby replied.
"What is this distraction going to be?" Winter asked, "You haven't told us yet."
Ruby and Neo both shared a look between each other while they silently spoke to each other over whether or not to tell them.
"We have asked Junior for help; our plan is to plant some bombs in the Colosseum in key locations that wouldn't hurt anyone but would also be enough that the tournament has to be put on hold. Junior and some of his men we spoke to have all agreed to do this for us. We've given them the spots and all they're waiting for is the order." Ruby stated.
Both women were shocked immediately but as they looked at the girl's calm demeanour it gave them some comfort but still had their doubts. "How do you know it'll work? They could mess up." Mizu asked.
"They won't, I've made it clear they can't mess up and they're all willing to be arrested for the cause. However, we've also promised them that no evidence would link them to it so they'd be quickly released. The plan is to also have Hunters and Huntresses help people evacuate but also be the ones who find the bombers gaining them further support and trust." Neo explained.
"You've got this all thought out, haven't you? Every question has an answer." Winter said with a smile.
"We have. We've done too much for this for it all to go wrong." Ruby stated.
"Alright, we're in. There's a full board meeting at the headquarters on the border to Vacuo, on the Vale side this weekend, starts on Saturday morning and with a few breaks but lasts all day." Mizu told them.
"We'll hit them early morning. What can we expect with guards?" Ruby said.
"Not very well trained, except for those that protect my husband who are highly trained and do a lot of dirty work for him. I can convince most of the guards to surrender but these ones won't." Mizu stated.
"Alright, we'll eliminate anyone in our way. We've got time to draw up better plans if you can give us the information on the facility itself as well. Also media. If we're going to capitalize on this as much as possible we need them to see." Ruby stated.
"RNN, I trust them and they're good at finding out things about the SDC. They're trusted by people, we can give them a heads up beforehand about something happening and they'll be there." Mizu replied.
"Alright, let's all meet here Friday night to plan everything out more clearly. Police will follow in behind us, we'll all be going in first. Are you ok with that?" Ruby asked.
Receiving nods from both women they all left to go about their respective paths while Ruby and Neo started to get everything into motion.
Speaking to Ozpin and explaining what was going on was the easy part, although Glynda didn't like the idea of the bombs, but with complete assurance that no one would be hurt eased her worries a little, not much but enough.
Speaking to a detective with the VPD was simple, as Ruby had contact with one in there. A high ranking detective called Burns. Getting him on board was the easiest as he'd been wanting to take the SDC down for years but had no evidence. But trusting Ruby or the Red Reapers word that they'd have all the evidence they would need was enough for him to get a rather large task force ready and with Naomi's unit providing transport for all the officers the logistics was easy.
Planning the raid with the layouts was harder as there were a number of different corridors leading to all different parts of the building so they realised they needed more people to clear it.
Getting both Qrow and Raven on board was simple once they told them the plan and with their support they had enough to take it down, although the offer from Ozpin for more Hunters/Huntresses was there.
Ruby took him up on the offer, getting teams JNPR and CFVY in on the plan and going in with the police officers just behind the main six of them so they could learn a little more about the goings on in the world and missions they might undertake. At least that was Ruby's line about it all.
Now the morning came, early in the morning at six in the morning they board their Bullheads. Ruby, dressed in her full Reaper outfit including the Red cloak and now with holes in the hood for her ears to show through proudly. Next to her was Neo, but instead of her normal outfit she had completely changed it all out.
A/N
So i seriously need to be kicked up the ass each week to actually update this and not be lazy and play BF1 all the time or just read or write something else. So sorry in advance.
We're finally getting towards the endgame of the story now and working towards that. There isn't too much more to go. Just over ten thousand words so i would say at a maximum five more chapters but at least three. Might make it five to end on a nice number but not sure as of yet.
After this I've got my finished pregnancy story called Not Alone but for the moment I'm working on something truly special, at least for me.
Currently I'm working on a Mass Effect story which crosses over with RWBY with some characters but the core story is still there and the events will change only slightly and some bits will be much more special.
I'm at around fifteen thousand words and not even gotten the Normandy yet but about to. This will take me a long time to write because i will go through all three games and side missions and stuff i deem to fit the story well. I can tell you now some of it though.
You have Commander Ruby Rose who has survived her homeworld being attacked by slavers where her family is killed, Yang, Tai and Raven. She is rescued by her Uncle Qrow who was a Lieutenant in the Alliance at the time and she stayed on Earth for two years, meeting Neopolitan Gelato who became her closest friend (maybe something more) they joined the Alliance together and soon joined the N7 programme. As they were getting qualified as N7 though they lost their entire squad to a Thresar Maw on Akuze.
A few years later while on shore leave after becoming N7's and doing a series of missions they took shore leave on Elysium instead of Thessia. It was rather fortunate that a large slavers fleet attacked the planet and Commander's Rose and Gelato were able to save a large number of civilians and protect them from the attackers though they suffered a large number of injuries during the fighting.
Afterwards, having recovered from her injuries first Commander Rose led an operation on Tofan against Batarian slavers in retribution for Elysium however they suffered ninety five percent causalities on the mission, it was not clear however how this had happened as Commander Rose had a reputation for keeping as many soldiers under her commander as possible.
Now we find our two Commander's being joint XO's aboard the new stealth frigate SSV Normandy under command of Ruby's uncle, Captain Qrow. But during a mission to retrieve a Prothean Beacon on Eden Prime, and while Commander Rose is on evaluation to join the Spectre's the mission takes a turn for the worse.
This is the basics of what the background of the main characters are and where the story sits however these events will be fleshed out in the story alongside more that will happen. I hope people will enjoy this story as it's been something I've wanted to write for years, a Mass Effect story but never found anything that worked for me until now.
Sorry for the rather long A/N but i'm excited about this and hope others are as well. Anyway, until next time. Thank you.