Chapter 23 - Mine
Ruby continues running to her location, now in the middle of an overpass. She stops at the sound of an explosion a few miles away. The silver eyed girl looks in the distance to see a pillar of spoke in the far distance. Mine catches up to her as she tries to catch her breath.
"Ruby, you have to wait for me to catch up. I cannot run as fast as you. What are you looking at?" Mine questions as she gets her answer right way when she also notices the pillar of smoke in the distance blowing in the wind.
"Mine. Where is that on the map? That was a big explosion in their area." Ruby says in a serious tone. Mine looks at the map on her scroll and sees it is in the area Leone and Yang went to. Ruby looks over and realizes the same thing. Her eyes begin to water as Mine puts her hand on Ruby's shoulder sincerely. "Do not worry about them right now, I am sure they are fine. Yang has Leone with her. We have to compete our part of the plan." She says before looking back at the map.
"You are right. We need to do our job now. It should be only a mile away." Ruby says as she quickly wipes away her tears and looks at the scroll. As both are looking down, they are encompasses by a large shadow. Mine and Ruby look up at the sky to see an airship, descending after being heavily damaged. It starts to explode and break apart in midair. A large metal chunk falls in front the two girls only about a hundred meters away. Ruby and Mine are unable to understand why the crash had happened. Ruby then gets a call on her own scroll from Ozpin.
She answers, "Professor Ozpin, an airship just crashed in front of us but we do not know what caused it."
"Ruby! There was one of the enemies from the other world on that airship. General Ironwood told her about what is happening. She freaked out and went on a rampage as soon as he mentioned Night Raid was the group we were helping. General Ironwood barley got out alive in one of the Paladins." As he says this, the chunk of metal moved around to the revel that it was a Paladin machine. The robot then looks at the two in the middle of the road.
"We see General Ironwood in front of us on the overpass." Ruby says, followed by a pause over the phone. "Ruby…..he said that landed on a roof top and is moving to help the hunter and huntresses with the Grimm." The Paladin then aimed its mini-guns at Ruby and Mine and starts firing. The two girls avoid the gunfire as they jump off the overpass to land on the ground below. Both use their weapons to shoot the ground soften their landing. They look up and see the paladin jump off the freeway to the ground.
"NIGHT RAID WILL DIE BY THE HANDS OF JUSTICE!" The bombastic voice comes from the Paladin. Mine is shocked at how familiar the voice sounds. She takes the phone from Ruby and talks in it to Ozpin in a furious tone.
"You had one of the enemies in captivated and you did not tell us!" Mine says as she looks back at the paladin, unsure if her theory was right.
"We did not know if she was adamantly against the Night Raid group until Ironwood mentioned the name." Ozpin says as Mine freezes up at the word 'she' in referring to the enemy.
"What was her name?" Mine says as the Paladin rushes to the two girls. Ruby fires a few shots from Crescent Rose that do not slow the machine at all. Mine listens to what Ozpin says as Ruby tries to back up. The pink haired girl raises Pumpkin and aims at Paladin. Her eyes fill with hatred as she unleashes a volley of destructive blast that destroys the machine. The parts of the paladin turn into dismembered pieces of metal. Only a large metal torso of the machine remains on the ground only a few feet in front of her. Ruby walks up to Mine trying to calm her down. She still has a deadpan stare on the pile of metal in front of her.
"Mine, what did Ozpin say?" Ruby says in fear as a metal hatch opens over from the destroyed paladin. A young woman with metal prostatic arm then drops out the wreckage followed by a small dog. She looks at Mine with a sinister smile and the dog next to her transforms to a monsters size. Ruby takes a step back in horror of the two. Mine stairs down were enemies as she address her Ruby's question.
"That is the woman that killed my partner, Sheele," Mine says as she tighten the grip of her weapon, "Seryu Ubiquitous."