Hey sorry for the radio silence but I've been caught up between collage and work haven't had much time to write. For those who are reading both of my stories I will say that Rouge will have a constant stream of action in each chapter, in the end I think they will both have the same quantity of action just in Plane of Remenant it is mostly in the end. But it will be intense!
Chapter Two
Action Plan
"An organized and logical approach is the key to any successful investigation," Dr. Temperance Brennan
"Ruby I am so sorry," Weiss said for the hundredth time since they had boarded the airship back to Beacon.
"I told you Weiss its fine, you don't have to apologize for your father," Ruby replied somewhat distractedly as she leaned back in her seat staring at the airship's ceiling.
Weiss sat next to Ruby with her hands folded in her lap while trying to avoid her teammate's eyes. A task which proved easy since Ruby had been staring at the ceiling since she sat down.
"He wasn't directing what he said at you Ruby, he was directing it at me," Weiss explained.
"How could that have possibly been aimed at you Princess," Yang replied hostilely from where she sat with Blake on the other side of the central isle.
"Because he was trying to say that as good as Summer was she still died," at that a small noise escaped Ruby, "sorry, and there for I don't stand a chance of surviving. He never like the idea of me becoming a huntress. He wants to get his way and he doesn't care who he hurts in the process."
"Real asshole using Ruby's mother like that," Yang said as she tried to glare holes in the window behind Weiss.
"Tell me about it," Weiss muttered.
"Really I'm fine," Ruby's voice startled everyone.
"You've been really quiet since we left Ruby," Yang said concern coloring her voice.
"Yea I was surprised that's all, but mainly I've been thinking about what we found at the mine."
"You mentioned a few theories you had back there," Blake said embracing the change of subject.
Ruby suddenly leaned forward and lock eyes with her teammates, "Well first I figure the police are pursuing the obvious stuff and we all agree that they are getting nowhere, so I figure we should start off looking for the zebras."
"Huh?" Yang replied.
"Really miss horrible pun queen," Blake said incredulously, "hear hoof beats think horses not zebras?"
"What?"
"It means looking for the obvious and missing the rarer explanation," Ruby clarified, "now I decided rather than focusing on who we should focus on the how. The amount of destruction in these attacks is extreme and would require some unique mean to achieve."
"And if we figure that out we can massively narrow down the list of suspects by who had access to the means," Weiss jumped on Ruby's train of thought.
Ruby pointed at Weiss, "exactly. So I had three theories on how this could have been achieved. The first Weiss already shot down, that was it was done with a volatile agent already present. But the only such agent was Dust and there was nothing else we know of worth stealing, so we can set that aside."
"Alright," Yang said bobbing her head, "what about the second?"
"Number two," Ruby said as she held up two fingers, "our doer is one hell a powerful aura user with a butt load of Dust, which I don't think is very likely because while you could get a large quantity of Dust by stockpiling it I'm not convinced you wouldn't expend more Dust in this attack then you would gain from it."
"Actually I check up on that before we arrived," Weiss added, "and the Qurok Mine was going to make its weekly Dust shipment when the attack happened."
Yang narrowed her eyes, "what about the other mines?."
"Just a sec," Weiss said as she took out her scroll and a look of surprise came over her face, "all of the others were hit on the day they were sending out their shipments."
"Okay that's not a coincidence," Yang stated.
"Do the mine's ship on the same days?" Ruby asked.
"No, each mine operates on its own weekly cycle," Weiss replied.
"But it ships on the same day each week?" Blake asked.
"Yes."
"Then all our doer would have to do would be watch the mine to see when it ships," Blake concluded, "and correct me if I'm wrong but that extremely high amount of Dust would be far more then would be required for an attack like this."
"True," Weiss said nodding.
"Okay then the Dust user theory is stronger than I thought," Ruby said, "but my third theory and the one I personally favor is military kit."
"Military kit?" Yang asked.
"Yea, they've got hardware that could easily inflict the kind of damage we saw, like a mortar for example."
"Military is a hard target Ruby," Blake disagreed, "trust me they don't just leave that kind of hard ware just laying around of someone to steal."
"And you'd have to be pretty powerful to wield that much Dust," Ruby countered.
"Not if it was a group," Weiss played devil's advocate.
"True but you know the old saying, 'two can keep a secret as long as one of them is dead.' The larger the group the greater the likely hood that one of them says something to the wrong person or something else and get themselves caught, thereby getting the whole group caught," Ruby replied in one of her wiser moments.
"Your are right," Blake said, "but a small group of a half dozen or less can keep their mouths shut for a while if they are continuing to work."
"But they would all have to be exceptionally powerful aura users," Ruby countered again, "and is that more or less likely than one insanely powerful aura user. And are either of those more likely then someone managing to steal some military grade kit? Regardless we don't yet know enough do dismiss either theory, so I think we should pursue them both."
"We're almost to beacon so why don't we continue this discussion in our dorm," Yang pointed out.
"Good idea," Ruby decided.
Fifteen minutes after the airship dock Ruby, Weiss, Blake, and Yang were walking down the hallways to their dorm. As they neared the door to their dorm they ran into a very excited Jaune.
"Did you guys hear?" Jaune asked excitement filling his voice.
"About the attack? Yea of course we did," Ruby replied.
"Why are you excited about it?" Weiss asked in an accusing tone.
"Attack? What attack?" Jaune asked.
The members of team RWBY looked at each other, and Yang was the one who spoke, "The attack on the Qurok Mine."
"There was another mine attack?" Jaune asked and the four girls nodded their heads to the affirmative, "well that's not what I was talking about. I was talking about the Beowulfs."
"What Beowulfs?" Ruby asked.
Jaune gave her an incredulous look, "The necrotic Beowulfs they found last month."
"I think I vaguely remember something about that," Blake said as the other girls exchanged confused looks.
"Alright," Jaune said running a hand through his hair, "about a month ago a hunt team went into the Forever Falls and they found a pack of dead Beowulfs. They were all necrotic and looked like they had died weeks ago but all the other signs indicated they had died a couple days ago at most. But that wasn't even the weirdest part, their limbs had come off and were in locations that made it look like they had been running while their tissue necrotized."
"Alright," Ruby replied looking mildly queasy.
'Well, the autopsy reports are in," Jaune said grinning, "and the coroner couldn't make heads or tails of them."
"You actually read a coroner's report," Weiss asked in surprise.
"Well not the actual report," Jaune confessed, "more like what people were saying about it."
"I knew it," Weiss cuttingly replied.
"Anyhow I don't remember the details, you guys can look those up," Jaune continued, "but the only conclusion the coroner could come to is the Beowulfs necrotized as they were running and that they went form completely healthy to completely necrotic in under a minute."
"That's not possible," Weiss criticized.
"I know isn't it cool," Jaune replied, "I mean I wonder what really happened!"
"Jaune!" a female voice called, "Jaune! Come on! We're going to miss the airship!"
"Oh that's Pyrrha," Jaune said as he rushed off, "we're going to dinner and dancing."
"Gonna get lucky tonight Jaune!" Yang yelled after him. In response Jaune flipped her off over his shoulder.
"Did Jaune just flip you off?" Blake asked Yang.
"Yes his did, his ego as actually grown to a healthy size since he started dating Pyrrha," Yang replied as the girls resumed walking to their dorm.
Yang stopped a few seconds later and looked over her should again. Ruby stopped and asked, "Something wrong Yang?"
"A month ago," Yang said as she turned to look at her teammates, "Those Beowulfs were found right about when these attacks started. You don't think…"
"Yang that is absolutely ridiculous," Weiss said immediately, "what could dead Beowulfs possibly have to do with the attacks on the mines."
"Yea Yang there are probable a dozen other weird things that happened about that time," Blake added.
"Your right," Yang said dismissing the weird thought, "I have the stupidest ideas sometimes."
"That was almost as crazy as Nora saying the Penny's a droid," Ruby said.
"Droid," Yang laughed as the girls went to their dorm.
In the dorm the members of team RWBY each sat on their respective beds. Weiss and Blake both sat attentively waiting for the strategy meeting to begin. Yang lay on her side while Ruby was swinging her legs off the edge of her bed, and with every swing Weiss couldn't help but imagine the precariously suspended bed collapsing.
"All right," Ruby began, "we have two theories about the method our doer, which I have noticed we have all stated calling the responsible party, used to attack the mines. To reiterate theory one is that the doer, or doers, is and insanely powerful aura user with accesses to a very large quantity of Dust. And the second is that our doer somehow got his or her hands on military grade hardware, such as a mortar or a rocket launcher."
"Or a tank," Blake muttered under her breath which Weiss took as a statement about what she thought of the likelihood of anyone getting their hands on any of the aforementioned equipment.
"Using Dust like that isn't exactly intuitive so if the first is the case then the doer would have to have had combat training," Weiss theorized, "and if their aura was that powerful then they would have come to the attention of a school that trains Huntsmen and Huntresses, like Beacon. And they have to keep records of students who applied and students that were targeted. If we looked at those records then we could possibly put a name to our doer."
"I'll bet they also have psych profiles on file as well," Blake added, "which will help to further narrow down our list."
"But aren't those file like encrypted or something," Yang asked.
"Not exactly encrypted but they are behind sealed firewalls," Blake stated matter-of-factly, "but I can hack into them."
Weiss cold hear a touch of shame in Blake's voice, though she was certain no one else heard it. It didn't take long to figure out why, her hacking was undoubtedly a skill Blake picked up when she worked for the White Fang. Despite Weiss's many assurances that she didn't care about Blake's past she really didn't like to bring up things related to her past, especially around Weiss.
Weiss opened her mouth to say something, she wasn't sure what, but before she could Ruby continued talking. "Well since the two of you are so keen on the idea then you can go through the Hunt schools' databases for our doers. Assuming you can keep your hands off each other, that is."
Blake merely raised an eyebrow and Weiss chose to ignore the last comment entirely instead asking, "What will you and Yang be doing?"
"Yang and I will be looking into the second theory."
"How? Are you going to ask the military if they've lost some hardware?" Blake asked with mild sarcasm in her voice.
"Nope," Ruby said, "we are mainly going to be doing pretty much the same thing you two will, looking through databases."
At this Yang let out a long groan and muttered, "Wouldn't have agreed to this if I knew there'd be homework."
"If our doer is indeed using military hardware they however they got it may have ended up in the new," Ruby continued ignoring her sister, "but honestly I am not expecting anything from that lead. So after we strike out with the research Yang and I will go into Vale and see if there's any chatter about stolen military kit or the attacks on the street."
At the last part Yang perked up.
"Everyone got the game plan?" Ruby asked and the rest of the team nodded, "Then let's get to it!"
Thanks for reading please leave your comments, thoughts, and criticisms! I enjoy the first two and the last one is helpful. I will be alternating between my two stories so the next to upload will be Rouge chapter three, hopefully I will have it up before the end of the month.