It had been a week since the existence of an unknown human enemy became known to XCOM. Fortunately, there had been no other reported attacks by them anywhere else in the world. While that fact served to calm Strike Six down somewhat, it did very little to calm Bradford or any other veteran members down at all. For all of them knew that an enemy that was absent was just an enemy hiding in the shadows.

Biding their time, waiting for a finishing blow when their target was weak.

It seemed that for once, however, XCOM was in luck. When Strike One had been sent out to destroy an alien battleship, they had recovered a strange crystalline shard from a stunned Outsider at its helm. With a bit of research and Dr. Shen's help, Dr. Vahlen had discovered that the shard responded to certain radio frequencies, and often resonated on a single wavelength at a rate too constant to be random. Eventually, both of them came to the conclusion that the crystal was some sort of communications device, responding to an external signal; which, given the low intensity of the responding signal from the crystal, pointed to a potential source somewhere on the planet's surface.

"...Now, if we could identify where the source of the signal was, we would likely find something important to the aliens," Dr. Shen concluded his report, looking at a very pleased Bradford.

"This is great news. If this crystal is some kind of alien communications endpoint, then the source must be a larger relay providing it with information," Bradford hummed, looking at the hologlobe. There were two strike teams already out at that moment; Strike One was currently raiding a crashed battleship in South Africa, while Strike Two was defusing a thermonuclear device in Moscow, "You haven't got any way of extrapolating the source of the signal, have you?"

"No, unfortunately. Strike One only retrieved a single crystal, and therefore we've only got a single detector," Shen admitted, scowling when he realised the problem that they had, "But I suppose we can attach this to the Big Sky's Skyranger, and have the return signal strengths logged as they travel from point to point. One long flight should be enough to pinpoint the original source of the signal with good precision,"

"Well, when that Skyranger comes back, I expect that you will attach the receiver, Dr. Shen. It's time that we take the fight to the aliens,"

Silence hung about the air after Bradford posed that question to them. They may be willing to fight the aliens, but their personnel were in no shape to do so. Strikes One and Two had been out and about several times already this month, and even Dr. Vahlen was recommending that the two strike forces be grounded for rest and recuperation after their current missions. The sheer amount of fatigue that they were accruing would have dropped lesser men and women dead, if it were not for the almost equally dangerous amounts of stimulants running in their systems.

"...How is Strike Three? Are they combat ready yet, Dr. Vahlen?"

"Partially. 3-2, 3-3, 3-4 have completed their genetic augmentation therapies, and are now resting in the barracks. 3-Actual has had an adverse reaction to some contaminated MELD, and he will likely require a second course of augmentation therapies to correct a malformed secondary heart," Vahlen listed off methodically, "But that leaves us with only a partial fireteam, not even a squad,"

"We could combine them with Strike Six for a mostly complete squad," Shen suggested, "Strike Six has been rested for some time now,"

Bradford hummed, drumming his fingers on the edge of the hologlobe projector. "We could do that. I believe that while I still have doubts about Corporal Rose's ability for tactical assessment and strategic planning, her second-in-command has proven most perceptive in almost all situations. Both of them have outperformed 3-Actual in their theoretical tactical scores thus far, which further suggests their readiness,"

"Their gear is still inferior to what Strike One has. I will have the Foundry engineers rush their requisitioned armour to the front of the production queue. If they are going to assault an alien communications outpost, they will need as much protection as they can get," Shen murmured, looking at the globe thoughtfully, "At least their weapons are fully maintained and upgraded to the highest standards. Corporal Rose has seen to that personally,"

"Well, that's settled then. Shen, how much time do your engineers need to finish the manufacture of their Titan Armour?"

"There's only one suit left to finish. I believe that if all our engineers were brought to the task, we should be able to finish manufacturing in two days. Getting Miss Rose and her team accustomed to wearing their new armour should take less than a day,"

"Good. Make it happen. Find out where in the world that signal is coming from, and we shut it down. Hopefully this will buy us some time when their communications are disrupted,"

Back in the Foundry, a number of engineers had gathered around the proving grounds on its far side. Excited chatter came from them, drowning out even the noises of all the heavy equipment in it. If one were to take a closer look, one would find the absurd scene of a crowd of fully grown men and women in lab coats gathered around a youthful girl with an overly-large sniper rifle, with a scythe attached as a monopod. The girl in question was carefully leveling her sniper-scythe to line up with the dummy target on the far side; a discarded Muton corpse with a mostly functional piece of its armour over its chest. There was even several layers of alien ship plating on the other side of the Muton.

"Hmm...if my calculations were right, this should work..." she hummed, sliding in a small canister of elerium into a port on the weapon's magazine well. She cheered when the magnetic containment chamber inside the weapon lit up with green plasma almost instantaneously, visible through the ultrahard ceramic glass on its side.

She pulled the trigger and the weapon began to hum loudly, shaking in her hand when the cyclonic agitator electromagnets over the containment chamber began to spin rapidly. For the briefest of moments, the containment chamber flashed an intense white; and a deafening, shrill shriek tore across the room when the rifle launched a scorching bolt of white-hot plasma downrange. The sheer recoil of the weapon caused the dug-in scythe to tear a two-foot long gash in the concrete floor; the girl, however, whooped in joy when the recoil nearly flung her backwards.

"Holy shit," one of the engineers mouthed, gazing at the destruction that the weapon left. The muton corpse was simply obliterated; there was nothing left of it except a fine cloud of glowing ash. The alien ship plating behind had been thoroughly melted to three layers deep, a six-inch wide molten hole carved through the plates. "Girl - sorry, Corporal Rose, was it? I heard that Dr. Shen was letting you work on a...sniper rifle, not a man-portable plasma anti-aircraft gun!"

"But it is a sniper rifle! My sweetheart always has been a sniper rifle!" she protested loudly, pouting as she stroked the weapon's barrel. A terrible idea, as she immediately pulled her fingers away and sucked on her singed fingertips, "Okay. Maaaaybe I've overdone it just a little bit on the firepower. That's really hot,"

"A little bit? A little bit?" another engineer shouted, "Do you realise just how difficult it is to penetrate the hull of an alien ship? You melted through three layers of thick, battleship-grade armour plate, with a single shot!"

"What's this ruckus all about?"

"Weiss!" Ruby squealed, dropping her weapon and frantically motioning for her girlfriend and partner to come to her, "Come on! It works! It really, really works!"

"What works?" the white-haired girl asked, before she was whisked away in a flurry of rose petals, "Hey - let me go, you dolt! I can walk! And have you seen Myrtenaster around? I thought I'd left it in my footlocker,"

"You walk too slowly. And Myrtenaster's with me," Ruby said, grinning as she dodged a playful slap from Weiss, "Anyway, I put some Elerium jelly into a Dust reaction chamber I made; just like you had in Myrtenaster. Scaled up, of course, and given a way to eject the energy forwards. Into the barrel instead of the blade of Crescent Rose! It works!"

The heiress stood stock still as she registered what Ruby had said. The Dust reaction chamber in Myrtenaster was intended to project the properties of Dust into the blade of the rapier. It had never been intended to work with any other fuel.

"Excuse me, could you repeat that?" she blurted out, unsure if her partner was insane or brilliant.

"Putting Elerium into a Dust reaction chamber works!"

The uncanny resemblance between Elerium crystals and Dust crystals. The amount of energy contained in each crystal. Its shape, its lustre, its glow in the dark nature. Even the sensitivity to shock and heat. She had noticed these before, of course, but not once did she think about grinding it down by hand to produce something that was usable.

"Ruby," she breathed, "You're a dolt. A careless dolt; a stupid, but brilliant dolt," Weiss breathed, pulling her into a hug and kissing her forehead, "You...I...how did I not even think about putting powdered Elerium into a Dust chamber? Never mind that, how did you stop it from exploding in your hands?"

"I...well, I might have..." Ruby chuckled, blushing madly, "Promise you won't get mad at me?"

A bit of dread welled up in her stomach. When Ruby asked for Weiss to not get mad at her, it was a sure sign that something was wrong. Terribly, terribly wrong. "I...will try? What's this all about?"

"I miiiight have...kind of...tried it on Myrtenaster first," the younger girl said slowly, slinking away from the white-haired girl when she noticed all colour draining out of her face, "And...I miiiight have...melted the blade..."

"You did WHAT?" Weiss shrieked. All of her previous adoration had vanished, replaced by abject horror. "Please. Please tell me that you're joking. You are joking, aren't you?"

"It's only a little bit melted," Ruby mumbled timidly, "I mean, I can always fix it! Honest,"

"Girl, if Ice Queen's talking about what I think she is, I don't think a little bit melted is the right thing to say," an engineer said, shaking his head, "I'll be honest; you're going to have to make a whole new blade for it, if it can even be salvaged,"

Without saying another word, Weiss shoved past Ruby and marched up to the sole workbench inside the proving grounds. There, lying on the table beside a vice, was the handle and action of Myrtenaster; its previously flawless silver finish discoloured by some intense discharge of heat.

With a shapeless lump of metal where the blade once was.

A roar of righteous rage filled the Foundry. Right before a flash of red exited it with a trail of rose petals, followed by an enraged heiress all in white.

Later that evening, Ruby found Weiss already asleep in their dorm well before everyone else. The half-melted remains of Myrtenaster sat on her footlocker, on top of Wisteria. As Ruby touched the melted blade, she felt a pang of regret. This was a weapon that Weiss forged for herself well before arriving at Beacon Academy. She couldn't tell exactly how many battles it had been in, especially since the blade was now ruined; but if the number of assignments Team RWBY had already completed in Beacon was any indication, it was a very well-tested and trusted blade for the heiress that had survived many fierce battles.

And she had taken it without her permission, just to satisfy her curiosity about whether or not Crescent Rose could be upgraded. The weapon was as precious to Weiss as Crescent Rose was to herself, and she had so thoughtlessly abused it.

It was still not irreparably damaged. A new blade she could make; stronger and tougher than before, from alien alloy. She could give it a magnetic containment field, wrapping the edge in a coat of plasma. It wouldn't be the same, but it was a step in restoring her weapon to a usable state.

A soft sniffle from the top bunk caught the brunette's attention, reminding her that there were still other things to repair before the weapon. She climbed up to Weiss' bunk to peek at her, only for her eyes to peer straight into a pair of bloodshot ice-blue eyes.

"Weiss," she gasped, nearly falling off the ladder in shock.

"Ruby. What more do you want?" she murmured coldly, "Did you destroy Myrtenaster some more for your amusement?"

"No- I...I'm really sorry, Weiss. I really am," Ruby stammered. The heiress gave a skeptical grunt in response and rolled over, facing away from her.

"It will take more than words to prove that," grumbled Weiss, "Taking my weapon without permission...and then taking it apart, using it to test an unproven ammunition type. Then destroying it without telling me! Of all the nerve! Why did you even think of doing something like that? But of course, you probably don't even think before you act, do you?! Did you learn nothing from the number of times you've had a Dust explosion, back at Beacon Academy?"

Those words drove a knife into the younger girl's heart. A few days ago, they had all but declared their love for each other. Now they were at each other's throats, for no reason other than her own stupidity. It was her fault; she already accepted responsibility for destroying her partner's weapon. But if her partner could not forgive her any more, were they even partners any longer...?

Ruby looked sadly at the white-haired girl. She had turned to face the other side of the bed, so that her back was now to Ruby. "Can I...can I sit on your bed? I'd...I'd like to talk,"

"Fine, you may. Talk, then,"

The brunette climbed up, sliding under the covers of the bed to nestle herself behind the fuming older girl. "I know how much you liked Myrtenaster," Ruby whispered, "I don't know if it's anything like how I loved my sweetheart, but I don't think I've ever seen you without your weapon at Beacon. I admit I was wrong to take it without asking first, and I probably should have thought about what could happen if I put Elerium instead of Dust into the Dust cylinders of Myrtenaster,"

"...Then, why did you do it?" Weiss mumbled; still in an indifferent tone, though lacking the bite of her previous words.

"I overheard Dr. Shen. We're going to be deployed in a couple of days' time to raid a big alien outpost or something," Ruby said quietly, "I know we were running low on Dust, and I know how much you wanted to use Dust again. I thought that...that maybe we could use Elerium instead of Dust,"

"..."

"I know that you think that I like my guns too much. And that's probably true sometimes-"

"Most of the time,"

"-but this time, I wasn't doing this for myself. I was doing this for you,"

Ruby thought that she saw the heiress' shoulders stiffen, but dismissed it as being part of her hopeful imagination. Sighing, she shifted herself away from Weiss. "I just wanted to say sorry. I wanted to make you happy by allowing you to use Myrtenaster again. But I only ended up ruining it. I guess you...hate me now? Never mind, I'll be going..."

Before she could hop off the bunk, she found slender fingers holding on to her wrist. "Ruby, stay," Weiss whispered, "Come back,"

Raising an eyebrow, Ruby nodded and slid back under the covers. Bloodshot blue eyes met silver once again; Weiss had turned around again to face her. "I don't hate you, you careless dolt,"

"Then...?"

"Yes, you can be assured that I'm still angry with you for breaking Myrtenaster. You broke a weapon that served me well for quite a few years now. But that was not why I was so furious before," she said, running a finger down Ruby's cheek, "It was the way you stole Myrtenaster to do a silly experiment with very little thought about safety. Have you even asked for some papers about Elerium from Dr. Vahlen? About how much energy even a small amount of Elerium has? About how shock- and heat-sensitive it is, even compared to Burn Dust? Have you learned nothing about Dust safety since we first met?"

"I...uh, didn't really think about that," she admitted, scratching her head. She did stuff an entire cartridge filled with powdered Elerium into Myrtenaster, and then pulled the trigger as Weiss normally did - with predictably disastrous results. It was only after she asked for a plasma rifle's schematics from Dr. Shen that she had managed to get any results.

"Did your promise to myself mean so little to you?"

That unexpected question caused her mouth to dry up. "What?" Ruby croaked out stupidly.

"You said that we would live through this war. Together, both of us. Not just myself, not just yourself. Us," Weiss seethed, sitting up and glaring at Ruby, "What would happen if Myrtenaster wasn't made strong enough to handle the energy discharge from that much Elerium? If the Elerium canister blew up in its cartridge holder? Do you even know how much energy is in that powder? Did you even realise that if that much Elerium detonated, it would probably take out half of Dr. Shen's armoury? Add to the fact that our Aura doesn't really work properly here, and I don't think you would have survived a spontaneous detonation!"

Weiss huffed as she caught her breath, still glaring at Ruby. Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes and tried to calm down. Her breathing returned to normal and she opened her eyes again, taking one of Ruby's hands in her own. "Look, Ruby. I'm mad at you for stealing Myrtenaster and breaking it. However, as precious as that weapon is, it's still a weapon. Given time, I know that you can repair the damage you have caused to it. Did you even think about how it would affect the rest of us if you blew yourself up?"

"No...I guess...I didn't,"

"Yang would have been devastated. You're one of the few family members she has left, and the only one that is with her at the moment. Blake views you as one of the few people she can trust," sighed Weiss, pulling Ruby towards her, "And myself? I would drag you back from the grave, screaming and kicking, if you did that, Ruby Rose. You are not leaving me behind. Now for you, as punishment, are going to stay with me for tonight. Tomorrow, you'll fix what damage you caused. Is that clear?"

Ruby blinked. That was punishment? Well, as far as punishment goes, it seemed rather mild.

Or so she thought. Until Weiss pulled her into a rib-crushing embrace, snuggling tightly against Ruby's back, with Weiss nuzzling into the nape of her neck. Try as she could, she could not break free of Weiss' iron grip.

"Weiss. I- can't- breathe," Ruby gasped. The only response she got from her white-haired partner was an annoyed mumble, and even more pressure on her ribs.

"Remember, don't do anything you would ever regret,"

"Strike Six, Strike Three, report to the hangar in ten minutes for briefing,"

"Have you learned your lesson, partner?" Weiss said in a dangerously sweet voice to Ruby, who nodded very stiffly. "Good. I will hold you to that. No dangerous antics or escapades this mission. We will perform this mission methodically, safely and without taking risks. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Weiss," Ruby responded, shaking her head slowly. The white-haired girl in question smiled and unsheathed her newly reforged rapier, admiring the newly-forged alien alloy blade. The Dust projectors had been all but melted into a lump of slag by the runaway Elerium reaction a couple of days ago, but the weapon still functioned well enough in close-quarters combat. Particularly as the blade had been sharpened to a monomolecular edge.

An acceptable result, for a day's work. But there was a mission in front of them, and she needed to focus. They all needed to focus. She gave Ruby's hand one last squeeze before heading out of Strike Six's dormitory, hoping that the mission would be less traumatic than the last.

A/N

Having too much fun writing silly scenes in another fanfic xD This one got neglected for a while. Sorry folks!

A point has been raised by Playwars about Ruby knowing about bandits - that was S4, post-Fall of Beacon. This story follows the canon arcs of RWBY up to before the Vytal Festival, as far as the progression of characters is concerned, with Ruby's age bumped up slightly. I hope this clears up any confusion about what things characters may/may not be aware of at this point in time.

Allard-Liao: Yeah, sometimes Future Combat sucks in the short run because equipment does take a while to procure. It becomes a tradeoff for how many days of research are you slashing off through instant autopsies and interrogations - and therefore how many labs and powerplants would you need to fully compensate for all the halved research durations due to research credits from those - vs the cost of all the upgrades from the OTS. All the bonuses are actually pretty good, though it's arguable that the instant autopsy one is great for the early game boost for quick plasma research.