Chapter 6 – ice Kream social

"Weiss Schnee. Cardin Winchester. Russel Thrush. Dove Bronzewing. The four of you collected the Alabaster Knight pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team SWRD, or Sword, led by Weiss Schnee."

Schnee, ever the control freak, beamed at the last bit like she'd just been told an orphan puppy shelter was closing down and needed help 'liquidating their assets.' Ilia withheld her sneer and politely clapped. It was too early to afford burning any bridges with potential sources of information, as unpleasant as they may be. K didn't bring down the White Fang by sneering every time they met someone distasteful.

"Team Sword! About-face!"

Oh, and it seems like she fancies herself some sort of brigadier general. Did she get rejected by Atlas Academy or something? Maybe coming here is some desperate attempt to deny reality and pretend she's still a soldier.

The boys of Team Sword saluted the headmaster, and Team Sword left the stage with their heads held high. Somehow, despite being noticeably shorter than the men under her command, Schnee seemed to tower over them. She certainly looked at the audience like they were beneath her.

Winter was the best specialist I ever met. Her sister has the same semblance, a similar sword, and all the potential to become a darker copy. I hope this isn't going to be a problem for us.

"Yang Xiao-Long. Sky Lark. Jaune Arc. Pyrrha Nikos." The four students walked onstage and faced the old man who'd called them up. "The four of you collected the Copper Rook pieces. From this day forward, you will work together as Team YLJP, or Yellowjacket, led by Yang Xiao-Long."

"Woohoo!" cried little Ruby next to Ilia. "That's my big sister! Go Yang!"

Yang waved to Ruby, but her celebration was cut short by her partner, Lark. "Yo, uh, teach…what about the Invincible Girl?"

"What about Miss Nikos?"

"Where's her letter? You know, in our team name?"

The woman in question rubbed the back of her neck in embarrassment. "Oh, it's fine. I'd hate to be a bother."

Ozpin shook his head. "There is a silent P at the end of your team name."

"A silent P?"

The headmaster nodded "Precisely. Much like in raspberry or pseudonym."

"But–"

"Mister Lark, your partner's initials are YX, and she is your team leader. Do you know just how many cool sounding color-based words begin with Y or X and contain a J for Jaune? Your whole team name is a mess of consonants, with the only acceptable acronym being YLJ and a silent P."

Ruby's stacked sister placed a hand on her partner. "I think with also need a silent L, buddy. You're making a scene." Based on the sour expression he shot back, Ilia doubted that there was any love lost between the duo.

Ilia couldn't help but notice Team Sword sniggering amongst themselves at the other team's ignominious public display of discord. Yeah, they're sooooooo going to be a problem.

She had to admit, the four of them seemed to be a perfect match for one another. While Ilia had initially pegged the boys in the bully squad as jerk that wouldn't respond well to someone else's authority (particularly a woman's), it seemed like their bully queen's celebrity status and singing career had smoothed that over, endearing her to them. It was to the point that the tall one, Cardin, actually seemed excited by the team placements. Or maybe he's just hoping he'll score. Could be either. Could be both.

The bespectacled professor cleared his throat, and the chameleon Faunus realized that her own quartet was the last remaining team that hadn't gone up yet.

"Let's get this over with," said Adam, stepping up to the stage before they'd even been called.

"Ruby Rose. Adam–"

She's the leader? It didn't take a special agent to notice the pattern that Ozpin had set from the order in which he named the teammates. Now THIS is going to be a prob–

"-mitola. The four of you collected the Silver Bishop piece. From this day forward, you will work together as Team RABI, or Rabies, led by Ruby Rose."

You have –

"–got to be–"

"–kidding me!"

The headmaster peacefully raised his hands. "Now, now. I realize that some of you make take issue with–"

Adam growled out his interruption. "This will not…"

A hand placed on his shoulder by Blake calmed the bull Faunus down. He glared daggers at Ozpin but stood down. "Fine."

"Thank you very much, Mister Taurus. Now, I'd like to take this time to congratulate this new crop of young talent for passing their initiation and taking the first step to becoming huntsmen and huntresses. Your courage, valor, and integrity shall soon become a part of the greater shield that shelters mankind from the darkness. I invite each and every one of you to…"

He droned on in some speech, and Ilia took a seat in the audience.

"He's openly racist," whispered Adam. "This damn human…be he a huntsman headmaster or not, he's no true hero."

"To think that his institution is compared to Atlas Academy," muttered Blake.

"To think that Ozpin himself is compared to…other, better headmasters," Adam quietly seethed.

"But is he, though?" asked Ruby. "A racist, I mean. He's accepted Faunus into his school."

"He names us after an illness contracted by mongrels," countered Adam. "By curs. One that leads to madness."

"But I'm a human, and so is Ilia, and he named us after rabies."

Ilia watched Ozpin step off the stage as the blonde teacher who'd been running around the forest replaced him. "Ruby, we're the only team with more than one Faunus – the only team with any Faunus. It can't be a coincidence. He sees us as animals. As filthy dogs."

"But dogs are super cool. Like my pet pooch, Zwei! He's got his rabies shot. Oh, maybe that's it – we're not named after the disease, but after the cure?"

"Don't be daft, human. You may not be used to discrimination, but please refrain from denying that it exists."

"It's just…I've known Mr. Ozpin since I was little. He and my uncle Qrow work together a lot, and he was really good friends with my mom and dad. He oversaw my acceptance into Beacon. He's never seemed to hate anyone for who they are; in fact, he actually speaks out against bigotry quite a bit."

Blake bit her lip. "People aren't always who we think they are."

"Just…give him a chance." Ruby giggled. "Leader's orders."


Two hours after the ceremony, when 'Team Rabies' was setting up their dorm room, K figured out why Ozpin had only named them so offensively. In doing so, he had efficiently and discreetly redirected any protests against the far more serious matter of the nepotism he'd shown by decreeing a girl whose family he openly favored as team leader.


"Okay, dudettes and dudes. Or just dude, I guess. Now that we're all unpacked…"

Blake had put out her books on the highest shelf and sorted them alphabetically. Adam had claimed a drawer for his little panic attack kit. Ilia had nothing to her name.

Ruby Rose, on the other hand, had taken three shelves for herself to store a plethora of comics, weapon spec booklets, tiny bobbleheads of famous hunters, cartoony Grimm figurines, and framed photographs of her sister, father, uncle, mother, and pet dog. Adam's desk had been quickly coated in her messy notebooks and value brand school supplies, as Ruby's own workspace had been converted into a makeshift workbench. At least he hadn't had to suffer the same ignominy that Ilia was subject to. Bunk beds with the little monster…and Ilia had gotten the bottom bunk through a 'random' lottery organized by the team leader. Suuuuuure… random…

"I think it's time we got to know each other a bit better. So, I admit I'm kind of new to leading, and I'm not really sure why Headmaster Ozpin put me in charge…"

Blake was.

"…but I promise I'll do my best to be a worthy overlord and not get corrupted by my near absolute power."

"Promising words indeed," noted Adam.

"Thank you, underling. Now, we could get to know each other the old fashioned way, but I prefer to take the fast route." Ruby reached into her bag and pulled out a stack of notecards. "So I've made this fun little get-to-know-you game."

"Like an icebreaker?"

"Imma be real with you three – I don't know what's a slur against Atlesians or not. Now, I'm going to hand each of you a card with a category, and then we'll partner up. You read what's on the card, then you take turns giving each other hints about your favorite thing in that category and guessing what the category on the card is. For instance, if my card said 'favorite animal,' I would think of dogs and might say 'it has fur.' The first person to guess their partner's card gets one of Ruby's world famous homemade 'snack attack' cookies. The 'attack' is because I added some secret spiciness to the cookies."

I guess it's not a secret anymore.

Blake chose not to say a peep as Ruby distributed the papers. The one she received said 'sandwich.'

"I'll go with Blake first, so Adam and Ilia will pair up for now. We'll switch after a minute or two or five or whatever. Now, remember – the point is to get to know each other better, so go ahead and talk about things. If the conversation is flowing, don't stick to the cards. Go wild, you all."

Wild? Blake tried not to take offense. Adam raised his eyebrows, likely in equal part due to the peculiar game and the presumably unintentional slight against the all-Faunus regiment. Ruby pulled herself up to Blake's top bunk and sat across from her, cross-legged.

"Okay. I'll go first, since I'm the leader. My clue is that it's red."

"Favorite color?" guessed Blake.

"Nope. Now you go."

"Um…my clue is that it…contains fish? Won't you be able to guess it instantly, since you made the cards?"

"Oh, I had a friend make the cards. I guess that your card is your favorite body of water!"

"No. I guess–"

"Done," called out Ilia. "Adam's card was months, and his favorite is August."

"It's the furthest away from hay fever in the spring and flu season in the winter."

"Gee, that was fast," remarked Ruby. "One cookie for Ilia, then, after the match." She turned to Blake. "Mine was flavor."

"What kind of flavor is red?"

"Cherry, obviously. We didn't get much time to bind our souls to one another, so maybe we'll go for another set of cards after everyone does everyone." She raised her voice and addressed the room as a whole. "Okay, since Ilia won, she gets to choose either me or Blake."

"Uh…Blake, I guess."

Ruby, in her haste to switch and go to Adam, fell face-first off the top bunk, landing in a fluttering heap of index cards.

"I'm okay!"

Ilia easily made her way next to Blake, looking at Ruby with a noticeable degree of concern. When Ruby was out of earshot, Blake asked her, "What exactly is happening right now?"

"I'm not sure. We all know each other pretty well."

"Uh…" Blake looked down at the new card she'd grabbed just a moment ago when Ruby had made the stack airborne. Favorite…article of clothing? I guess mine is my vest, for lack of a better choice.

Ilia went first. "It has six people."

"Oh, come on. Your favorite band, the Achieve Men."

"Ding ding ding! Give the girl a cookie. Ruby, we're done."

"That was so quick! I know I said I wanted to do this the fast way, but I didn't mean whatever's going on here."

"I mean, it's easy when we've known each other as long as we have."

"Kno–" Ruby's face fell. "You guys all know each other?"

"Well, yeah," Adam said from across each other. Their cover was that they were a band of friends who'd decided to come to Beacon together, so nothing was untoward about the admission. "We've been together since we were kids."

"Oh. W–Why didn't you tell me?"

"Wasn't it obvious?"

"No," Ruby flat out admitted.

"Well, we are." Blake handed Ruby back the index card. "I think that you made this game thinking we needed to get acquainted, but as you can see, we're already all set."

"I…yeah." Ruby took back the cards, but she didn't seem happy about it.

Blake was unsure what to say. If Ruby's goal had been to improve the team's cohesion as a fighting unit, her goal was already accomplished for her. To any leader, that should be a cause for elation, not the depressed look on her face.

"I think I'm going to go…check out the bathrooms for a second," said Ruby. "Might take a shower, too. Don't you guys wait up for me or anything." The red teenager raced out the door as soon as the last word left her mouth.

"What's up with her?" asked Blake.

"No idea," said Adam. "But if we've got the room to ourselves, we might as well take full advantage of it."

"You guys really don't see what just…? Wow." Ilia lightly frowned. "Maybe I should be glad I got some normal years in at school before I came to K."

It didn't matter. Ruby wasn't their objective, and her showering habits were of no concern to Blake.


"K."

James' face appeared on the scroll. "Adam. Blake. Ilia. You all are looking well. I take it no one died during initiation?"

"H-How did you know?"

"Very amusing, Adam. Now, report."

Adam blinked twice and tried to clear his head. This was not an auspicious start to their check-in. He'd spent the past half hour encrypting the line, so they could talk as long as they wanted, assuming that Rose remained outside. So far, she hadn't returned, and the door was locked, so they'd hear her come in. "James, Specialist Amin was dead when we found him."

"I – you're serious?"

Blake and Ilia nodded.

"That is…Dust, that is incredibly bad. Explain to me. Everything. Spare no detail, no matter how minor."

"We located his corpse in an isolated gulley within the Emerald Forest. His clothing was destroyed, his body was battered, and his head had been cut off in a wound to clean to have been caused by Grimm. There was a second cut, angled, just below the neck at the top of his back."

Blake continued. "As of right now, we do not believe that we were made."

"Why?"

"The tracker had been intentionally removed. We suspect that this was done in a failed attempt to locate K. If they needed a means to find us, they do not know our identity at the moment."

"I see. Continue."

"There were no signs of a struggle, suggesting that the assailant was an experienced assassin. We…currently are unsure of their identity, or their motives."

"Do you have any suspects?"

"Ruby Rose, our current team leader," said Adam at once. "She was the closest to the crime scene, she was cleaning her scythe when she found her, a weapon partially consistent with the decapitation, and she admitted that she was searching for someone when we confronted her."

"Quite the staggering amount of evidence."

"Sir."

"Go ahead, Ilia."

"There are other suspects as well. Weiss Schnee was seen leading her team near the site of the attack."

"Winter's sibling?"

"Yes. While her weapon is a rapier, more useful for stabbing or piercing than severing, her Glyphs could have used to remove a head. Furthermore, her motive is obvious; she assaulted Adam and Blake the day before, claiming that Faunus are evil, though it could have been a ruse. The loss of her father's company clearly affected her."

"His fortune and family home were returned once all SDC-related classified materials were removed."

Ilia nodded. "I will admit, I am not without a personal bias against her family for what it did to mine. I also saw four students who became some bee team – Pyrrha Nikos among them. The Invincible Girl has come to Beacon, for whatever reason. Her short sword could take off a head, no problem, and she has the skill. Her partner, Jaune something, uses a broadsword that could decapitate a Faunus in one swing. The others…I didn't get a good enough look."

"Why not?"

"I was chasing a higher priority suspect: Professor Glynda Goodwitch."

"Glynda? She would never…that's…I apologize. Go on."

Adam was curious as well. This was the first he was hearing of this professor woman from Ilia.

"I saw her running through the forest, despite the headmaster promising that no teacher would intervene should a student find himself or herself in danger. She completely ignored a non-student who'd entered the forest and continued almost as though she were searching for someone. I believe it was us she sought."

"I see. The non-student?"

Blake rolled her eyes. "A crocodile Faunus with a semblance to avoid damage. Used twin Gravity Dust swords. The only person we know for sure was not after us, because she defeated K with ease and spared us in favor of focusing on Ruby Rose."

"Where is she now?"

"She…escaped." It was shameful to admit, but James needed to know. Lying to him to avoid embarrassment could literally result in lost lives.

"I see. I will investigate the description you've given me and get back to you as soon as I can. In the meantime…" James paused. "Have you made any progress on locating the aura transfer device?"

"No. This was our first chance to contact you and update you on the initiation."

"That's fine. I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. A fourth, non-Atlesian teammate was never meant for this mission, and I'm not sure we should go forward."

"We can do it, sir. I promise you." Adam would sooner propose marriage to the little Rose girl than fail James, and on K's second full assignment, no less.

The general paused to consider their options, then turned away from the screen. "Very well. Continue your main objective. The technology in that machine could have catastrophic consequences if it were used by an enemy actor or, worse yet, reverse engineered and mass produced. As a secondary objective, investigate Specialist Amin's death and try to apprehend his killer, but only for the purpose of eliminating any threats that may seek to impede your primary purpose at Beacon. I'd rather have the machine back than the killer behind bars."

"It's that dangerous?"

"The device…we never should have built it. Only when we lost it did I realize the full ramifications. The Psionically Linked Aura Transfer Device, or P. L. Au. T. device, as it's more commonly known, can transfer aura, a person's very life force, into someone else. When that's possible, nothing is safe. Capture a spy and transfer their aura into your own agent, and suddenly that agent knows the spy's secrets. Unlock the aura of civilians, then place then in the machine and cram their aura and semblance into a soldier of your own. You could have an individual with multiple semblances and 200% aura, or 300%, or more. Want to torture someone beyond the biological limitations of human or Faunus physiology? Tear a portion soul from their body and watch a desecrated husk of your enemy live a mindless half-life. And for the life of me, I cannot recall a single beneficial application. Commissioning it was a mistake. The blood of any victims shall be on my hands."

Adam had suspected from the start that James was personally involved in this case, but to hear it from the man's own mouth was a different thing entirely. He'd never seen his mentor sounds so regretful. So…broken. We'll get this device back, sir. I swear.

"I'm only asking you to retrieve the machine so we can inspect it for any disassembly to confirm that it has not been studied or reproduced. Were that not an issue, I would give the order to destroy it."

James turned back around and faced them in his video feed. "If there is nothing else, I will allow you to begin your search. I shall have Marrow's false records deleted from Beacon's systems remotely. Please exercise caution when investigating his killer."

Ilia smirked. "We got this, general."

"Good. I'd hate to lose my most valuable team, not to mention the three people I trust more than anyone."

Although he was looking at all three Faunus, Adam couldn't help but feel that James was making eye contact with him in particular.

"Ironwood out."


Omake

Sky: I won't stand for it. Change our team name!

Ozpin: Very well. You've won the name Team YLPA, or Yellowpages. I hope you're fucking happy, you piece-of-shit bastard.

Sky: No, no please, have mercy! It's so cringe! Anything but that, I beg of you! I'll take the silent P, I'll take the silent P!


Author's Notes

RatCrimes here. So, I don't want to give away clues to the mystery or anything, but I want to set some ground rules so we can play the game fairly.

No, this is not going to be some shitty cop-out where it really was just Grimm, or some OC I pull from the depths of my ass, or Salem from a million miles away using magic, or he tripped on a sword and cut off his own head and Blake just didn't see the tracker on the floor next to him, or it wasn't actually Marrow, or he's just in hiding using his secret second semblance which is leaving behind a fake body.

Marrow Amin, the fourth member of K, was intentionally murdered by someone in the forest.

I won't give any clues beyond that. Feel free to air theories, ask questions, request I clarify whatever details you need, but I won't confirm or deny any concrete answers as to who it was.

The idea of multiple person's auras combining into super soldiers was inspired by the work 'Cardinal Sins' by Bardothren ( ao3 /works/17629328).