"We'll be back before nightfall," Winter promised Weiss.
Weiss pursed her lips. "Could you be back sooner? Do you think?"
Winter's baseline frown intensified. "What for?"
"I… er…"
There was no way for Weiss to say it directly without it sounding silly, or petty, or childish. It wasn't those things. It wasn't!
So she told herself, anyway.
"What. For?" Winter repeated impatiently. "Is there something you need to review with me?"
"No."
"Is there something you need to go to town for this evening, and you need me to return to relieve you of mine duty?"
"No."
Winter's eyes narrowed. "Then what?"
There was nothing for it. Weiss had to confess—though in her embarrassment, she had to take a roundabout route. "How old is Aster Cristata?"
"Probably mid-forties," said Winter. "Why?"
"And how old is Mayor Leif?"
"Thirty if he's a day. Why—"
"How old," Weiss pressed, "is Cam?"
"Anywhere from twenty-five to fifty, it's honestly hard to tell, but—"
"And Ilia, how old is she?"
Winter started to answer, stopped as if realizing something, and frowned. "Probably between your age and mine."
Weiss nodded. "Last question. How old is Yang Xiao Long?"
It took a few moments, but realization finally dawned on Winter's face. "Your age."
"Now do you see? For almost my whole life, I've been surrounded by adults. You've been the closest person to my age in my life, and even you le—"
She realized mid-stream that accusing Winter of that would be borrowing trouble—antagonizing Winter to no benefit. Winter's expression became severe, like she knew where Weiss had been going.
Weiss rapidly backpedaled. "What I'm saying is, I haven't had peers… ever. There's been no one for me to relate to, not really. The closest I've had is you, these past months. It's not the same thing, you know? Even you're years older than me."
She mustered her courage and her longing—the deep, desperate longing she'd felt ever since that color bomb had exploded in her office, the tug of a yawning loneliness she hadn't been able to name until that moment. "Can you blame me for wanting to be around my peers, for once in my life?"
"…I see." Winter took a slow, loud breath, as if trying to signal deep consideration. "In that case, I think I should keep them out a little extra."
"What?!"
"They're an enormous distraction for you," said Winter. "That much is obvious."
"So you're doing me a favor, is that it?" said Weiss, her tone matching her feelings as her temper overflowed.
"You told me what you valued and what you wanted," Winter said. "You care about making progress with this company. I'm helping you stay focused on doing that."
"By doing my time-management for me?" Weiss demanded.
Winter looked uncomfortable, but from what, Weiss couldn't tell. "You say you want me to come back earlier, but you're keeping me from leaving."
It was a nasty trick to play, and it stung. Weiss' hands balled up in anger, desperate for a release she couldn't grant. Weiss didn't deserve this. Not from Winter.
"Go on," she said bitterly, "but this isn't over."
"If you say so," said Winter, and she left without more delay.
Leaving Weiss all alone once more.
Well, almost alone.
As Weiss, still in a roaring temper, reentered the mining site office, she saw Ilia sitting there, looking very busy.
Too busy. She wasn't staring at anything as much as she was avoiding Weiss' eyes.
Weiss felt a picture coming into focus in her head. "You knew Blake before either of you came here," she said.
That got Ilia's attention. Her head snapped up, vibrated in place, then jerkily nodded.
"And Blake was White Fang before she went to Beacon," said Weiss. "So the way you knew her... was you were also White Fang or White Fang-adjacent. Correct?"
Weiss could see the moment despair at being outed hit Ilia and sucked her under. She sank her face into her hands. "Yeah."
"That explains how you came here looking for a job before we even posted the opening," said Weiss. "The White Fang sent you... to kill us, I assume."
"Something like that."
Weiss crossed her arms. "And yet you, the hardened White Fang fanatic that stayed when Blake left, decided that instead of stabbing my sister, you'd rather jump in her bed."
Ilia's whole body turned the color of shame.
"You are the worst assassin ever."
"I know, I know..."
"And my sister is lamer than I ever imagined. She finally gets into a relationship and it's with her secretary? How cliche can you get?"
"I'm an administrative assistant," Ilia protested feebly.
"Now is not the time to try for dignity."
The Teryx screamed and turned to ash.
The battle had gone so quickly even Winter had almost missed its particulars. Ruby and Neptune had combined to ground the beast, Ruby with Ice Dust sniper rounds to immobilize one wing, Neptune with a shock blast to momentarily paralyze the other. The Teryx had crashed gracelessly right into the laps of Blake and Yang.
It was defeated before it'd had a chance to defend itself.
"Keep 'em coming!" said Yang, showily crossing her arms and propping up a leg as if to stand on the Teryx's corpse—not that there was a corpse left to stand on.
"That was a young Teryx," Winter said severely. "Probably not more than two years old. I would hope a full team could bring it down."
Which was a true judgement, but the speed and ease with which Team RVBY had done the job was impressing Winter against her wishes. She still expected Weiss could beat any of them one-on-one, but as a team they worked well and punched above…
She frowned. Even thinking that idiom seemed to make Xiao Long glow more obnoxiously. Enough of that.
"Back to the van, we're moving on," said Winter. The students complied easily. They were ahead of schedule by almost a full day and gaining. Winter wasn't sure what she could find for these kids to do if they finished so early…
Her thoughts were interrupted when she saw Ruby pausing in the door of the van. "Blake?"
"Hold on," said Blake, holding up one hand.
"Do you hear something?" whispered Ruby, which struck Winter as an odd question. Anything Blake might be able to hear the others surely could too… right? Or was that Blake's semblance?
"I think..." Blake said, and she closed her eyes in concentration. Her head moved ever so slightly left and right, and Winter got the impression of someone tuning a receiver with a Blake-shaped knob.
Blake's eyes opened. "Airship," she said. "Flying low and slow."
Yang looked at Winter. "Were you expecting company?"
"No," said Winter, unnerved but trying not to show it. "Where is it?"
Blake listened for a moment longer, then raised her weapon and pointed west-northwest. "Coming from that direction."
Winter peered at the horizon, but saw nothing. Maybe she just didn't have the best vantage point. Well, she could fix that. It was a simple matter to draw several glyphs, bounce amongst them, and come to rest on one as high as the lookout post of a sailing ship. She looked again in the direction Blake had specified.
From here, she thought she could almost maybe make out an airship near the horizon... But it drew not nearly as much of her attention as what was following it. On the ground trailing behind and below the airship there was a rolling, rumbling mass of mostly black with flecks of white.
The airship had grimm in tow.
If an airship was in so much distress that it was drawing land grimm, it needed all the help it could get. Winter very quickly reviewed the terrain. No, there was no time to set a better course or pick a better battleground; they needed to engage immediately. If the airship maintained this course, it would eventually reach the mine, and there was no chance that Weiss would be able to take all of those grimm on her own. Winter and Team RVBY had to intercept them here and now.
None of that answered the question of how Blake had detected all of this so early and so distantly, but that could wait. Winter descended her glyphs as quickly as she'd risen. Touching down amongst Team RVBY, she pointed back at the van. "Load up. There's an airship in trouble, and we need to help it out."
They complied instantly. They knew their duty, Winter noted approvingly.
"I'll take the lead," said Winter as she swung into the driver's seat. "Provide backup and protect the truck. Target any grimm that keep chasing the airship instead of us."
"Neptune, that's you," said Ruby. "Blake and Yang, point defense. I'm on overwatch."
It was a reasonable set of orders, Winter thought to herself. That Ruby was able to keep giving them when the stakes were higher was a good sign. The stakes were higher, though, because this was going to be a much nastier fight. Winter wouldn't be able to carefully engineer the challenge the students would face. This horde was what it was.
Winter supposed she was fortunate to have them here as her backup. She would not have appreciated trying to fight all this alone and protect people in trouble.
She shifted into gear and stomped on the accelerator. The van jerked into motion—it wasn't designed for quick maneuvers like the ones Winter was demanding. She took everything it could give, sending it racing across the tundra, bouncing and jolting with every dip and depression. Yelps came from her passengers as they were shaken like a bag of popcorn. What she wouldn't give for a Gravity Dust model…
And, while she was wishing, she also wished for a million lien.
"Dreams are for paupers." As much as Winter loathed her father, that saying of his had stuck with her. Focusing on the here and now was necessary for survival. How long could an airship, flying that low and that slow, so clearly distressed, stay ahead of a pack of grimm nipping at its heels?
"It's carrying something," shouted Neptune—the only way he could be heard; he had opened the back seat window and stuck his head out. His goggles were down over his eyes and one hand was sliding around their rim, apparently making adjustments. Did they have a binocular function? Maybe they weren't purely decorative after all.
"What, the airship?" said Winter.
"Yeah. It's got, like, a box or cage or something hanging underneath from some wires. Almost dragging on the ground."
That just made things worse: it gave a route for grimm to get from the ground up to the airship, and if it hit the ground it'd drag the airship down with it… instant disaster. Winter couldn't make the van go faster, but she wished she could.
She adjusted her course, aiming to intercept the airship, interpose the Huntresses between it and the grimm chasing it, scrape the grimm clean from its track. The classic "cross the T" maneuver.
As they closed, she started to make out what was chasing: mostly Ursai Boreia, a large group of them loping along, but with Sabyrs flanking and slowly overtaking them. Nothing she couldn't handle, but it would have been tricky to do so while defending an airship. The students would help make up the difference.
"Everyone, be ready to debark," she called. "Thirty seconds."
"I think the airship noticed us," said Yang from the shotgun seat.
"What makes you say that?" Winter said tersely.
"The crew's messing with the cables—shit, look out!"
Just in time, Winter saw what Yang meant. The cables came free; the crate dropped; shedding that weight let the airship pop up in the air like a cork.
But the crate was now in Winter's way.
Tires squealed and the van tried its very best to roll over; it lifted off of one set of wheels for a moment before resettling. Winter had dodged the crate.
But not the grimm.
"Out!" she shouted, and leapt from the van herself, right into a charging Ursa Boreios. Unable to stop or corner at this speed, it snapped at her with its open maw. Eiszahn flashed through the gap between jaws; the Ursa's mandible came clean off.
Out of control, tumbling, it smashed into the van.
Winter didn't have time to worry about that; she dodged around a second Ursa, and a third, though with the third she was able to dig her saber into its side and fillet it as it passed. She charged further into their midst, flaring her Aura at full power, begging them to target her instead of anyone else. It seemed to work. The second wave of Ursai Boreia slowed slightly to engage her directly, while a Sabyr leapt over them to pounce at her from above.
She took its forelimbs while ducking under its jaws, feinted at one Ursa, spun around the battering claw of another to get at its neck, swung with all her might—
And from there everything became a blur, a wash of black and bone and point-blank weapons fire.
It felt like it went on for an hour; it was probably no more than forty-five seconds, a minute at most. But those few moments were amongst the most intense grimm slaying Winter had ever been party to.
As yet another kill dissolved, clearing her lines of sight, she scanned around quickly, looking for any more foes, but grimm were rarely that subtle. When their blood was up, they were compelled to attack, to keep coming, keep coming, until they slated their bloodlust or were slain.
No, the only sounds were weapons reloading and a hiss from the van.
Winter whirled. The students—she hadn't even been thinking about them—she hadn't been able to protect them—
One, two, three, four. They looked frazzled, but steady, and if their clothes were intact—which they were—their Auras probably were, too.
Winter did one more scan, looking for stragglers or an elder grimm moving to take advantage of the mess made by its inferiors, but there was nothing. Nothing but the students, the van which had an enormous dent in its rear left passenger door, and the crate. Victory. She dared to un-tense.
"I think we're all clear," said Ruby, who likewise had been scanning around with the scope of her rifle. "No more grimm in sight."
"What about the airship?" said Winter, turning her gaze to an empty sky.
"It buzzed off," said Blake with audible frustration. "Turned back the way it came while climbing away from us."
"Those ingrates didn't even say 'thanks'," Yang said, and her eyes caught Winter by surprise. Winter would have sworn they were lavender, but now they were a fiery red that matched her ferocious voice. "What the hell was so important they'd risk an airship dragging it out here, but so unimportant they'd dump it on us?!"
She stomped over to the crate. When no door or opening mechanism was immediately obvious to her, she flared her Aura so that her hair lit up like burning gold, dug her fingers into the side of the crate, and tore one side of it completely off.
And was greeted by screaming.
Her glow vanished like a candle dropped in water. She stumbled backwards. The screaming continued.
Winter dashed up to look inside. A vacant-looking Yang made way for her.
More screams greeted her.
The crate had been carrying one person, a middle-aged but weathered man with an unshaven face and battered clothing. He was screaming at the top of his lungs; seeing Winter didn't stop him. He was well past being able to articulate words. His noises came from unadulterated terror.
"It's okay," Winter tried to say, trying to be heard, but when she raised a hand in his general direction, he flinched and threw his own hands up, as if trying to protect his face. The act drew down the sleeves of his too-small shirt.
Lining his arms were ragged feathers. Not many, far fewer than looked right; of those that remained, most looked broken or twisted. The sides of his arm were red and raw.
Realization hit Winter like a landslide—realization of what this person was, and what had happened to him.
"Back up," said a voice beside Winter. She glanced over and saw Blake, looking with unflinching but sympathetic eyes at the still-screaming Faunus before them. "I'll do it."
Winter complied without thinking, overwhelmed as she was with horror at what people would do to each other. Only after did she think to ask Blake why Blake would be better at this than Winter.
By that point, Blake was already undoing her ribbon. A pair of black cat ears came into view.
Oh.
That explained a lot.
Blake knelt and took her weapon clearly, slowly, and obviously from her back and laid it down. "No one wants to hurt you," she called. The screaming abated slightly as the man looked up, watched her with bloodshot, broken eyes. "No one wants to hurt you," she repeated, and used her hands to fluff up her cat ears, ensuring he saw them and understood what they were, what they meant.
Another undercover Faunus—first Ilia, now Blake. Winter had to wonder who else. She looked around at the rest of Team RVBY. None of them seemed in the least surprised by what Blake had just revealed, but none of them were copying her by showing off something previously hidden.
It told Winter a lot very quickly: they already knew Blake was a Faunus; she was the only one on the team. But if they already knew, why had Blake hidden that from Winter? From everyone outside her team?
Her heart sank as she realized.
Yes, why so ever would a Faunus hide that they were a Faunus from a Schnee?
Here in Skjulte Perle, people knew better, but in the rest of the world, the Schnees were the face of Faunus exploitation. People were afraid to exist in her presence.
Yet again, sickly shame swept through her, and burning anger at her parents followed. Damn them, now and forever.
"It's okay," she heard Blake saying. When her vision had cleared enough of emotion that she could see, she noticed how Blake had gotten almost all the way to the man. He'd stopped screaming; instead, he was weeping.
That was worse. So much worse.
Winter, unable to bear it, turned away. Yang had retreated to the van and was looking over the damage. Winter stalled for a moment when she saw Yang's eyes; they were lavender, like she'd thought in the first place. That was… odd. Heterochromatic eyes were uncommon but known; color-changing eyes much less so.
She shook her head and refocused. "How's the damage?"
"Well, the bad news is, one of the Sabyrs took out the brake lights," Yang said with forced brightness. "Looks like this thing's not street legal anymore. Sucks, huh?"
Winter gave her an unimpressed look.
Yang got the message. "Frame's bent," she said evenly, pointing to the lowest part of the first Ursa's impact point. "If it was just the door, no big deal, but it looks like we got rocker panel damage down here, and probably more I can't see from this angle. The whole thing's compromised."
"So we're walking home?" said Winter.
"I didn't say that." Yang squatted, peering at the wheel wells. "You can probably get it to drive straight, and that'll be enough for now. It just means the next time it takes a hit it's toast. Keep it slow, keep it steady, and keep it on level ground."
Winter gestured at the tundra around her.
Yang winced. "Yeah, I know. Just do your best."
"Yang!" called Blake from inside the crate.
"Coming," Yang said, and went inside.
"Help me lift him," Blake said. "We'll need to fireman's carry him to the van."
"Why—" Winter started to ask, but her breath hitched when she saw.
Blake had pulled the man's pants legs up so that she could see, and that revealed something truly gruesome. His legs were bent at unnatural angles. His shins were completely covered in splotches of dark purple, almost black in places. The way the bruises overlapped showed they came from many impacts, not just one or two. Many, many impacts, each enough on its own to bruise and maybe crack bone, layered one atop the other. Just looking at them hurt; Winter's knees buckled in reflected pain.
No wonder Blake had called for a fireman's carry. Any pressure put on any part of the legs would result in unbearable agony. They'd been totally, deliberately ruined, before the man had been stuffed in a crate dangling from a moving airship with no restraining devices… a setup guaranteed to stir the poor creature inside to new heights of anguish.
"Why would anyone do that?" whispered Ruby in revulsion.
But Winter understood only too well.
"Someone," Winter said, "is grimm-baiting us."
The mining site office echoed with people's reactions to this pronouncement. Ruby gasped; Yang swore; Neptune looked somber. Ilia and Blake showed no recognition, to Weiss' relief. She'd have hated to be the only one to not appreciate that term.
"Sheesh, you must've really pissed someone off," said Yang with uncharacteristic seriousness.
Winter's face tightened. She didn't look at Weiss, but Weiss knew what her sister was thinking. She shrank down in her seat and died a little inside.
"What's grimm-baiting?" Blake asked.
"It's one of the worst things people can do to each other," Ruby said in a whisper.
Winter spoke in more professional tones, which didn't mute the horror of her words at all. "It's when you weaponize the grimm against your foes. You subject captives to terror or torture until they're at peak negativity. You then drag those captives across the wilderness to attract grimm, and lead those grimm to the settlements of your enemies."
"It's the original war crime," said Neptune. "Even in the Great War nobody did it, and the Vytal Treaty outlawed it for good measure."
"The White Fang's never even discussed anything like that," Blake said queasily. "Even the most extreme members wouldn't consider it."
"Well, yeah," said Yang. "You don't outlaw something because it's effective, you outlaw it because it's gross. First, there's the whole 'torture and terror' thing to start it. Second, if it works like you planned, whoever was lugging your victims around typically gets caught by the grimm, too. Third, the grimm don't show mercy when they bust open a town, which kicks off half a dozen other war crimes. And fourth… it's really self-defeating. The grimm wanna kill all of us. Who's stupid enough to feed them?"
"Someone who doesn't care," said Ruby—quietly, but with venom. "Someone who thinks they're powerful enough for it to not matter."
"But who could that possibly be?" said Weiss. "Even the richest Atlesians understand the threat of the grimm. They may not think they'll ever see a grimm themselves, but that's because they pay a lot of money to keep the grimm far away. That's why they're so willing to beef up Atlas' military whenever it asks for more money. They know the danger, too."
"And they have an interest in maintaining the status quo," agreed Winter. "They wouldn't do something as short-sighted as make the grimm stronger, it would only cost them more in the long run."
"Well, apparently someone didn't get the memo," said Yang.
Weiss blinked. There was a path ahead of her, a way to the solution if she just followed it. "What if… it's someone with no interest in maintaining the status quo?"
She felt people turning to look at her, but she was looking down, looking at the path. "Someone who came to power by overturning the status quo. Someone who has the resources of Atlas' blue bloods, but not their attitudes. A newcomer. An interloper. Someone who relies on herself for power, and so convinces herself she's safe."
She looked up and focused a steady gaze on Winter. "Someone who'd commit the most heinous crimes to get back at us because she hates us that much."
Winter's hands balled up tightly. "Cinder Fall," she said gravely.
"Who?" said Ruby.
"The CEO of Fall Dust," said Winter, returning Weiss' look. "My sister antagonized her. I think she's implying this is Cinder's revenge."
Yang winced. "That's a woof."
"Wait, Fall Dust?" said Blake curiously.
"You've heard of them, I trust?" said Winter drily.
"Well, yeah," Blake said defensively, "just… I'm remembering something from when we fought the White Fang. They were hitting Dust miners and retailers all over Vale with everything they had."
"Not just Vale," said Ilia before she could help herself. Eyes swiveled in her direction, which she did not take gracefully; her skin changed to the red of shame. When she spoke, she chose her words like she was tiptoeing through a minefield. "I… heard… that some of Vale's White Fang came to Solitas to do a Dust robbery here. It didn't work out for them."
"That was one of the anomalies we saw," Blake said, gaining steam. "Neptune, do you still have the records from our investigation?"
"Sure do," said Neptune. He brought up his scroll and projected a spreadsheet, an act which made Weiss' heart do a backflip despite the direness of the situation. Neptune was cute and knew his way around accounting systems? A boy after her own heart.
"Let's get the easy-to-read stuff up," he said, apparently to himself. Two pie charts appeared. Each chart was labeled with the names of Dust companies that Weiss recognized—Fall Dust, Beyond Energy, all the rest, even a few that were out of business now… with one omission Weiss saw immediately.
"Where's SDR?" she asked.
Neptune coughed politely, and raised a timid finger at the second-to-smallest slice.
It read, "Others".
Weiss deflated. "Oh. Right."
"The first pie," said Blake, "sorts the Dust companies by market share. Obviously, Fall Dust is the biggest by quite a bit. But that's what makes the second so interesting. Fall Dust was hit way less often for its size. Look—the slices for the other companies are way bigger in the second than the first. They were getting attacked far more often for their size than Fall Dust."
"Meaning…" Winter said. Weiss was sure Winter knew where this was going, but was unwilling to help them get there.
"Meaning Fall Dust was getting off easy," said Blake. "We were getting the picture that the Vale Branch was getting orders from someone, but we didn't know who, or why, or what they were after."
Ilia scoffed. "You really think Fall Dust, the world's new number-one Faunus abuser and trafficker, was in cahoots with the White Fang?"
"No," said Blake, meeting her gaze. "I think Fall Dust was in cahoots with the Vale Branch. Maybe just Adam himself."
"Then Fall Dust grimm-baiting out here isn't just some petty revenge," said Ruby breathlessly. "It's knocking off a competitor!"
"That's enough."
Winter stepped forward and ran a hand through the projected graphs; they vanished, leaving her in the center of the discussion. "We're getting carried away," she said. "We have evidence of nothing, just a few facts we're trying to force to connect. Do we know whose airship that was? Do we know who was flying it? Do we know where they were going?"
"Well, they were on a course for the mining site," Ruby said, but they all heard how unenthusiastic that answer was.
Winter waited for a reply, waited for someone else to try and answer her questions—and, with her patience, drew attention to the reality that no one could. "What you're saying is plausible," she said when the silence became unbearable, "but there's a chasm between 'a theory that fits the facts' and 'evidence'. Until we have the latter, there's not much we can do."
Once more she paused to let the effects of her words sink in. When she judged they'd stewed enough, she went on. "Weiss, how's our guest doing?"
"I handed him over to Mayor Leif first thing," Weiss said gravely. "They took him to the doctor—not that this place was ever big enough for a full-time doctor, but the closest thing they have. Understandably, there was no rush to question him. Maybe in the next few days we can start with that, but for now, we're just trying to… quietly… take care of him."
Ruby scratched her head. "Uh… Weiss? I don't think it works like that."
"What 'doesn't work like that'?" said Weiss snippily.
"Well, I grew up in Patch, which is a small place like this," said Ruby. "When Professor Meriwether broke her leg, I knew about it the next day. When Beryl started crushing on Yang, I heard about it in a few hours."
"Wait, Beryl was crushing on me? Since when?"
"Since about five minutes after she met you. The point is," Ruby went on before that digression took over, "you can't hide big, dramatic things in a small town. Whatever plans you're making for how to manage this, you should just assume everyone already knows by now."
"And is already pumping out the same extra negativity we are," Neptune said.
Weiss took a measured breath. "Annoying as that information is, I'm glad you told us. We'll have to plan around it."
Winter nodded. "After we catch up on things. Weiss, Ilia, we need to have a talk with Leif, especially since this might happen again."
"Let's get Cristata on the line, too," said Weiss.
"Why?"
"If anyone can get that poor man to talk, it's Cristata," said Weiss. "I'll bet you my last dividend our grimm bait was trafficked."
"Your last dividend was fifteen lien."
"The point stands. And if he was trafficked, no one knows how to deal with that better than Cristata."
Winter nodded. "I'll contact Leif, you get in touch with Cristata."
"What about us?" said Ruby.
"You're on your own time for now," said Winter, going to the door. "We'll continue our sweep tomorrow, but we're enough ahead that you can take the rest of the day off."
"We want to help," Ruby insisted.
Winter shook her head emphatically. "You're helping enough by being here at the mine in case more grimm come. Just stay here, don't get involved, and stay out of trouble."
Ruby's mouth was open to argue, but Yang stepped in front of her. "Sure thing, Ms. Schnee!" she said entirely too enthusiastically, swinging her arm in almost a parody of gusto.
Winter looked at Yang suspiciously for long seconds. Yang never flinched. Eventually, Winter had no choice but to nod, say "Very well," and depart.
Weiss followed her sister out of the office, but slowly, and she lingered by the door after shutting it. She was able to hear Yang speaking with her characteristic lack of volume control.
"Counterpoint: let's not stay here, get involved, and find some trouble."
"All in favor of digging up what we can on Fall Dust," said Ruby's more conspiratorial voice, "say 'Aye'."
"Aye," came four voices.
Weiss smiled and stepped away.
Next time: Uninvited and Unwelcome
