Author's note: things will get better, promise.
They'll get worse first.
"As promised," said Cinder, handing over a burner scroll to Watts.
Watts, who was sitting at a desk and had been rapidly typing, raised an eyebrow. "Which promise do you think you're fulfilling?"
"You wanted to know what equipment Schnee Dust Reborn had that you could exploit," said Cinder. "One of my, let's say, beneficiaries processed this cargo order. It's for delivery to a remote town on the Solitas coast, the only town that could make any use of this equipment: Skjulte Perle, the headquarters of SDR."
Watts busied himself reading the contents of the manifest to avoid having to compliment Cinder on her diligence. "Well," he said after a cursory look, "this looks easy enough. I should be able to choose from several of my existing viruses with only minor modifications."
"Take your time," said Cinder. "It's okay if this takes a few days." When Watts raised an eyebrow at her, she gave her best predatory smile. "It'll take them a few days to get the new equipment set up, after all, and we want your virus to be able to strike effectively. Besides, I have other plans in motion that will keep the pressure on. The Schnees will be kept hopping until your virus is ready to deliver the coup de grace. The final demise of SDR will be your doing. I'll be sure to let Her Grace know just that."
Watts' mistrust of Cinder was clearly at war with his burning need for recognition and acknowledgement. Suspicion took the upper hand for a moment. "And you're sure SDR doesn't have any sort of cyber security or cyber forensics capability?"
"You're not worried, are you?" said Cinder.
"Please," said Watts with a signature eyeroll, "I'm not worried about their defenses, but I do want to avoid giving myself away. I want to use these viruses on bigger and better targets later on, and that'll be harder if Atlas sees them in action now."
"You can rest easy. As small and new a company as SDR is, they don't have anything like that, let alone someone who could keep up with you," Cinder said flatteringly.
Pride won. "Yes, well," said Watts as he straightened his tie needlessly, "let me know in a few days when you're ready to deploy my works, and we'll talk about how to deliver them."
Cinder smiled. "I can hardly wait."
It was a quiet afternoon in the mining site office. Winter was behind the closed door of the inner office, where the others could hear her making the occasional call. Neptune was sitting in a corner, looking at his scroll, though at what no one could tell. Ruby and Yang had found a battered old chess set and were trying, without much success, to educate Blake on the basics of the game.
"And that's what's special about Knights," Ruby was saying. "They can jump over pieces. They're the only piece in chess that can do that."
"But cavalry is best at straight line maneuvers," protested Blake. "Riders on horseback have a lot of momentum, they need room to maneuver. They're not good at that sort of close-range acrobatics."
"Well," said Ruby crossly, "that's just how they made the game all those centuries ago. I mean, what's your big idea? What would you put in place of a Knight?"
"A ninja," said Blake instantly.
"Are you serious?"
"Totally. Ninjas are agile, but they have short range, so they can't go sweeping across the board. But they can flip over and around the other pieces, and they do their best work at knife fighting range."
Ruby blinked in surprise. "That's not a half-bad argument. But if ninjas are strongest up close, how do you account for ninjas having this big blind spot? How can they only get to certain places? I thought infiltrators and spies could get wherever they wanted."
"The ninja's blind spot isn't a literal blind spot," said Blake. "Ninjas aren't very political, and while this board looks kind of like a battlefield, you could easily say that it's a politics game. I mean, look how powerful the vizier is! He's the real power behind the throne, isn't he? Well, for as good as ninjas are at flipping out and killing people, they're not political animals, so there are things that they just don't see and dangers they just can't deal with."
"You're taking this ninja thing pretty seriously," said Ruby. "What are you, some authority on ninjas?"
"I'm an enthusiast," said Blake.
"Yeah," said Yang with a waggle of her eyebrows at Blake, "but if one side's ninja gets involved with the other side's ninja, we all know what happens next."
"What happens... Oh." Blake blushed scarlet.
"What are you talking about?" said Ruby.
"Just a book series Blake likes," said Yang. "I'll let you read it, too."
"Really?"
"…when you're twenty-five."
"Rude."
"Dust prices are down," said Neptune, apropos of nothing.
"That makes me not care at all," said Yang.
"Well, it should," said Neptune, undeterred. "Prices are especially low for Plant, Wind, Water, and Stone."
"You're not doing a good job of getting me to care."
"Then you haven't been paying attention. Those are all the types of Dust that SDR mines. How do you think it'll look if we show up to help SDR, and then they go out of business? We'll have to answer a lot of uncomfortable questions from not one, but two headmasters. I don't want that!"
"We're here for enrichment," said Ruby, "not to keep a Dust company in business."
"Ruby," said Blake, "when's the last time Beacon sent a group of exchange students to another Academy, for their 'enrichment'?"
"I think Professor Ozpin said it had been six years," said Ruby.
"A program used that rarely isn't a program for the students," said Blake. "It's a way for headmasters to do headmaster-y stuff."
"Well, yeah, I figured that," said Ruby bashfully, "after the shenanigans Professor Ozpin pulled letting us chase the White Fang. But I don't know what that headmaster stuff is, this time, so I'm just trying to focus on what they told us to do. Learn what we can about the Dust industry and the grimm of Solitas, and help out where we can. I think we're doing that, don't you?"
"I guess," said Blake, but her voice sounded unconvinced, and her eyes took a skeptical look at the chess board.
Yang noticed instantly. "Hey, we talked about this, remember?" she said to Blake. "It's okay to take breaks from time to time, especially if it helps you come back stronger."
Blake sighed. "I remember."
There followed a moment's silence, which got Neptune's attention. He looked up from his scroll, took in the game, and then moved one of Blake's pieces. "Knight to C-3," he said.
"Ninja," corrected Blake.
"Oh, right. Ninja to C-3."
Ruby was stricken. "What the... What…" She flailed for a few more seconds, before crossing her arms in a huff. "Alright, I see how it is, Neptune. You just go around stabbing your BFF in the back."
"While associating with exotic foreign women and ninjas," Yang said unhelpfully.
Blake's mouth was open to protest when the door banged open.
"We have incoming," said Winter.
Teenagers RVBY might have been, in a strange place, and arguably off-duty—but there was no world in which Team RVBY would not answer a call to arms. Weapons flew to hands, or unfolded, or both. Winter headed out of the office. RVBY was right on her heels.
"You've got to be kidding me," said Yang.
An airship was approaching along the road, flying low and slow, with a crate slung underneath, and a horde of grimm chasing after it—grimm of almost every terrestrial species in Solitas.
They'd been incredibly lucky before, Ruby realized. They'd found the baiters way out in the tundra, before they'd had time to really attract some grimm and get a full stampede going. They weren't lucky this time.
"Get to the site entrance," Ruby shouted as she led the way. "That's the narrowest point—we have to choke them there!"
"You do that," said Winter, but she knelt, and a large glyph appeared in front of her. Her Manticore mount sprang from it. She leapt onto its back in practiced motions. It loped forward once, twice, and was airborne.
The airship might have seen her, or it pilots might have finally lost their nerve. Whichever it was, the cables holding the crate broke away, depositing it inside the entrance to the mining site, where the narrow road broke to the more open area of the worksite. The students headed there. Winter had a different target: the airship.
It was banking away sharply, in ways normal aerodynamics would have prohibited and that were only possible thanks to Gravity Dust. Winter set an intercept course. She had to chase them down. If she could get a hold of them, find out who they were, who they were working for…
A megoliath trumpeted.
Winter's eyes strayed from her quarry. Took in the scene with trained ease. The students were laying down a barrage that was stripping away the front of the column of grimm, but there were plenty more behind—and there, near to the back, having to go more slowly to be sure of its footing on the winding road, was a megoliath, even larger than the one the students had killed before.
It had taken all their focus and efforts to defeat a smaller megoliath; now this larger one on top of all the others…
Winter looked up to the airship she was chasing, tried to clock it. She could catch it… in a few minutes. Long enough that the battle below would be long-over.
Too long.
Swearing violently, Winter broke away, angling her Manticore to intercept the megoliath.
It was barreling along towards the mine, homing on the agony of the bait and now on the engaged Auras of the trainees before it. It didn't seem to have much attention to pay for Winter. Well, she'd adjust its priorities.
This would require deft control of her summons and multiple glyphs at once, but Winter hadn't been a Specialist for nothing. In rapid sequence, she dropped from her Manticore in front of the megoliath, created a glyph in front of its front outside leg, and channeled some of her emergencies-only Dust reserve through the glyph.
The megoliath's foot hit a newly-created patch of ice and slid.
At the same time, and using another part of her brain, Winter had her Manticore flip around so it landed against the side of the mountain, then launched at full strength against the megoliath's side, trying to topple it.
The impact did more damage to the manticore than to the megoliath- but with the megoliath's footing compromised, it couldn't recover from the blow. The massive monstrosity toppled, pitching over to its side—the side where the cliff and a fatal drop awaited it.
Winter rushed forward in a blur, got to its exposed flank, and struck—struck with enough Aura-enhanced power to shatter stone.
The extra impetus was enough. The megoliath fell completely over onto its side, but there wasn't enough cliff there to support it. It kept on rolling and falling, tipping over until it slid from the road and down towards the valley.
It gave a hateful trumpet as it disappeared down the side of the mountain.
And that, Winter thought viciously, was the difference between students and professionals. A shame they'd missed it.
The students!
Her gaze flew back up the road. She could still see and hear different kinds of weapons firing off, but they seemed further back than she'd expected, as if they were being pushed…
Winter sprinted after the trailing grimm. She'd eat them up from behind, one after another, all of them facing forward and failing to give her the attention she deserved.
She could easily punish that mistake.
Grimm after grimm fell to her blades, most before they knew they were under attack. They were still charging forwards; she was fast enough to run them down.
Finally a few of the stampeding grimm noticed Winter, but even those that turned to face her weren't able to put up much of a fight before they were run through or chopped up. With the grimm running into Team RVBY in front and with Winter cutting through them in the back, even a group of this size couldn't last long. They'd lucked out: the megoliath was the only alpha-class creature in the bunch. With Winter having taken care of that first, and without airborne or other grimm to present an attack on multiple fronts, it was just a battle against standard land grimm, and they were all well accomplished at that kind of fight.
At last Winter broke through. There were no more grimm between her and Team RVBY—which meant there were no more grimm. Once more they did the safe thing and scanned all their environs to ensure that they'd gotten all of the attackers. Winter mentally upgraded her opinion of their teachers while she double checked with the monitoring equipment mounted in the watchtower.
All clear.
Just in time, too: the students were visibly gassed from the desperate fight. Without Winter, they might not have been able to hold out. If Winter hadn't turned and come back…
It was a bitter pill, having to stay at the mine to keep their defenses up, and not being able to stop the attacks. It made her feel helpless.
She wasn't the only one: Neptune's Aura flickered as he struggled to keep it up against the cold. Perhaps to distract himself, he pointed at the crate. "I almost don't want to see what's in there."
Winter halfway agreed with him. She thought she could hear sobbing coming from inside now that the ruckus of the grimm had faded.
If she could almost hear it, Blake definitely could. She walked to the crate all the same. "Come on, Yang," she said. "Let's get this open."
It was as they feared. Even without looking, Winter could tell that. Sobbing, for sure. Her temper rose. Her blood was still pumping from the battle, so most of her barriers of discipline and control were weakened or down. The truth of this attack, the reason behind it, was another egregious crime against humanity.
Her eyes flicked over Blake. It occurred to her that Ilia might not appreciate the term 'crime against humanity'. Didn't that imply that the same act against a Faunus was not a crime?
'Crime against civilization,' then.
The only way to restrain herself and keep her thoughts pointed in a useful direction was to focus on her task. She drew her scroll and dialed Weiss.
"We've been baited again," she said without preamble.
Weiss swore softly. Winter didn't bother chastising her, because she was simply putting a word to what Winter was feeling. "I'll get Cristata," said Weiss. "We'll be there in half an hour."
"Okay," said Winter. It wasn't much, but what else could she say? There was nothing good happening here, no bright side to this. It was wanton, weaponized cruelty.
Winter wanted to do something useful while waiting for her sister to arrive, but her focus was shot. How could paperwork hold her attention when the worst kind of suffering was right there? She wasn't perfectly stoic. She hadn't achieved the level the General had reached. She couldn't just shut down this discontent, this frustration. People were inflicting harm to sic mankind's eternal enemy on her, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
And while those monsters had failed this time, what if they succeeded next time? What if the next bait drew the attention of some alphas, or a megoliath herd, or a flight of Teryxes? They'd been lucky so far that a single megoliath was the most dangerous thing the baiters had attracted, but there was nothing saying that their luck would hold even once more. If the baiters brought more or worse grimm in a more dangerous time of day…
So preoccupied was she with these worries that, when the van transporting her sister arrived, Winter didn't realize at first that Weiss was accompanied by more than just Cristata. When Weiss exited the van, her face was apologetic, and it took only a second for Winter to realize why.
Emerging from the van not a second after her was Investigator McCarthy and her MPs.
Winter went immediately to cut them off. "This is private property," she said.
McCarthy's smile made Winter's skin crawl. She held up her scroll and triggered it to project. "How fortunate I have a search warrant, then," said McCarthy, openly gloating. "Stand aside or I'll charge you with interference in an active investigation."
Winter couldn't help herself. Something about McCarthy's manner triggered ingrained, practiced instincts that she'd always thought of as good and helpful, but were now defeating her. She stood aside almost before she realized she was doing it.
McCarthy led her MPs in a bee line for the crate. The sobbing had at last stopped, but Winter realized that wouldn't last. It would start again as soon as the MPs reached the crate. She was repulsed by her own insight.
"Hey, what are you doing?" asked Ruby.
"Official investigation," said McCarthy, brusquely dismissive of someone clearly still a child. "Stand aside unless you want to become part of it."
Ruby held her ground. "Investigating what? Who keeps attacking us?"
McCarthy had been trying to look past Ruby, but she moved to insert herself in McCarthy's line of sight. Not bothering to conceal her irritation, McCarthy said to one of her MPs, "Tell this child what we can charge her with if she doesn't move."
"Obstruction of justice," said one of the MPs instantly and mechanically, "interference with an officer of the law in their appointed duties, aiding and abetting a suspected criminal, unlicensed open carriage of unregistered weaponry..."
"I am too licensed," said Ruby shrilly, reaching for her scroll.
One of the MPs, apparently misinterpreting Ruby's gesture, drew her sidearm. "Draw that weapon and all of the penalties associated with those laws get tripled," the MP told Ruby.
Ruby froze but didn't concede. "We are students at Beacon Academy."
"And if you don't move," said McCarthy, "the best thing that could happen is you getting on the next airship out of Atlas territory. That's if you're lucky."
Ruby's hackles were up, as if she didn't believe what McCarthy was telling her... but Winter did. "Stand aside," she said to Ruby.
Ruby's face twisted in betrayal. "What do you think they're here for?" Ruby asked Winter, accusation thick in her voice. Her eyes bored into Winter's.
Winter couldn't match that gaze. Shame welling up within her, Winter looked aside. "To conduct an investigation," she said, feeling nauseous. "And we can't legally stop them."
Winter didn't look to see Ruby's reaction, but she could imagine it. And she heard McCarthy's derisive hmph and an impact as she bumped her way past Ruby.
McCarthy led her MPs to the mouth of the crate. The distance and the crate itself muffled their voices to where Winter couldn't quite hear the words, but she could hear tones: McCarthy's scalpel-sharp, merciless demands; Blake's stubborn pleas; Yang's outraged bellows.
Yet there was only one way that it could all end. Blake and Yang emerged from the crate and stormed angrily to Winter, Blake barely holding back tears, Yang with her hair starting to glow. "How could you?!" Yang demanded of Winter.
Winter couldn't answer. She was struck with an equally strong counter-notion: How could she not?
What were they supposed to do, fight the MPs? And get them all arrested, multiplying the harm to no end? What good would that do?
She had to comply.
She couldn't think of anything else to do.
She was as helpless as if she'd been born without arms. As helpless as when she'd had to amputate that poor miner's hand—doing the unbearable to try and forestall the unthinkable.
The sobbing started anew, interspersed with wails. McCarthy emerged looking vindicated. After her was another MP, with a twenty-something Faunus woman slung over his shoulder. Even from this angle, Winter could see the woman's shins were bruised black.
The MP had her in a fireman's carry, but had still handcuffed her to his wrist.
"Is this how you take delivery of your new workers?" said McCarthy. Winter had never heard exultation sound so gross.
Winter wanted to say something, anything: that this wasn't what it looked like, that someone was attacking them, that this was obviously a setup, how could this be one of their workers when they were damaged so badly... Responding to the questions of an authority was an imperative.
At the same time, another part of her was screaming in denial, warning her that anything said to an investigator was just another weapon handed to an enemy.
Blake saved her. Stepping between Winter and McCarthy, and with her ears pinned back in unconcealed temper, Blake said, "We have nothing to say to you in the absence of a lawyer."
"Be careful what you wish for," said McCarthy in a mockery of a sing song voice. The other MPs moved past her into the van. As they loaded up, McCarthy said to a seething Weiss, "We are commandeering this for the purposes of transporting a prisoner. It will be returned to you when the government of Atlas no longer has need of it."
As the van turned head back on the road towards town, Winter felt that she'd never been more desolate.
It was the quietest Weiss had ever seen Team RVBY.
She'd come to expect, in fact to crave, their boisterous but very fun mealtimes, no matter how uncouth they might be. Tonight, in contrast, when she needed their barbarism most, they picked at their food in melancholic silence.
Winter and Ilia were little better. They'd joined the rest in sharing their meal in the mining site office, but they contributed no noise but chewing and the occasional clatter of a fork.
It was a somber, crushing mood that lay over them, a combination of hopelessness and defeat. They'd fought off the grimm and rescued the bait, but no one would consider it a victory. An obviously trafficked Faunus had been picked up on SDR property. There was nothing any of them could say that seemed likely to shake McCarthy from reaching the conclusion she so openly wanted to reach.
"So."
The word was like a gunshot; half the room flinched away from it.
Yang didn't seem to mind the reaction she got. "Are we gonna talk about it, or just stew?"
Weiss couldn't even bring herself to say, "What is there to say?"
"I talked with Cristata," said Ilia quietly, as if afraid to disturb the silence. "He says he bets McCarthy will use this as an excuse to do citizenship checks on everyone. Anyone who isn't totally in order…"
She didn't finish, but she didn't need to. They'd talked about it before. Deportation, if they were lucky.
Winter heaved a breath. "Is there any way to divert the deportees to Menagerie?"
"Yes, Menagerie," said Ilia with almost a snarl, "the dumping ground for mankind's Faunus problems."
Winter stiffened. "I figured it would give them a better chance than sending them back to whatever communities trafficked them in the first place. Was I wrong?"
Ilia looked a little chastened. "No, not really, but Menagerie isn't a solution."
"Kuo Kuana is overpopulated already," Blake said. "It can't take in refugees forever, not as things are."
"It wouldn't be a solution," Winter said. "It would be a mitigation, should the worst come to pass."
Weiss had never seen Winter looking so forlorn. It was like she'd already accepted that the worst would come to pass.
To her surprise, it was Ruby who stood, looking furious. "I won't accept 'bad guys win' as how this ends," she said fiercely. "Do we need to go to Fall Dust and pull some sort of op ourselves?"
"No," said Winter, as cold as Ruby was hot. "We've antagonized Fall Dust enough. They have a bigger gun and more ammo. Deepening our confrontation with them won't help."
"Do you think they'll stop trying to drive you out of business if you ignore them?" said Yang.
"I think that when we already have the Military Police all over us, the last thing we need is to go around breaking the law."
"Uh, hello, Fall Dust is committing literal war crimes against you," Yang shot back.
"We can't prove that," Winter said.
"Come on, don't be stupid!"
Weiss had never imagined someone calling Winter stupid to her face. Winter hadn't, either, but she recovered in a moment. "I agree that Fall Dust is most likely behind the baiting, but we can't take our feelings to a court. We're not like Fall Dust, we don't get to try anything and everything. We can't afford to take a shot like that unless we know it'll work."
"Then what can we do?" said Blake in frustration.
"We can call Atlas' anti-trafficking group," said Winter, looking at Ilia. "They might have advice for us here, and they can at least help our workers if they get here soon enough. And we," she said with a meaningful look at Weiss, "will do all we can to try and keep our heads above water while this plays out."
"Like what?"
"Maybe we find some other way to keep up our reexports without the Prudence," said Winter. "We check up on Cam's progress. We work with Leif to see if we can delay our lease payments on the facilities—we'll see what that goodwill we bought is really worth."
"All of that makes sense," Weiss said, "but it feels so… inadequate. It's fine to squeeze ourselves a little harder to see what efficiencies we can get at the edges. It just feels wrong that we can't do more than that."
Blake cracked an ironic smile. "Not used to being the underdog up against a faceless, implacable, unbeatable enemy, are we?"
"There should be some way to win, is all," Weiss said, crossing her arms.
Winter contemplated her empty bowl for a moment. "Not every foe can be beaten," she said eventually. "Not every battle can be won. That's something you learn when you study military history. The better, more righteous, more virtuous forces don't always win. That's reality. But they're remembered, sometimes, even in defeat—why, there are defeated armies we admire far more than their vanquishers. If we give our all, expend every effort, tap every resource, and still lose because the enemy is stronger? There's no shame there.
"The only shame is in quitting."
"Is shame really what we care about?" Neptune asked quietly.
It startled Winter, whose eyes went to Weiss. "I thought it was," she murmured. "I thought the goal was to redeem our reputations. To make sure everyone knows the reason the SDC failed wasn't because we couldn't save it, but because we weren't allowed to save it."
"I don't think your reputation will matter much to a Faunus deportee," Ilia said.
"Well," said Winter, trying to look at Ilia but unable to look her in the eyes, "it would matter to you, wouldn't it?"
Ilia's gaze dropped. She said nothing.
"And my integrity matters to me," said Winter. "We don't traffic Faunus when all our competition does because it's the wrong thing to do. Sure, there are business advantages, but we accepted business disadvantages if it meant retaining our honor. That's how we've operated all along, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Weiss. "Though I had to point that out to you…"
"And when you did, I listened," Winter said. "Because it matters. Doing things the right way…"
She sucked in a breath and held it, like she needed to prepare to make this last push.
"If we can't succeed doing that, that's Atlas' fault. Not ours."
Weiss was in agony. Everything that Winter had said was true, and Weiss even agreed with much of it. But it was so hard to accept. So hard for her to come to terms with. Shouldn't virtue pay? Shouldn't it be possible to succeed by doing the right thing?
Silence came upon the gathering once more. After a time, Winter stood, smoothed her outfit of wrinkles no one else could see, and made her way out of the room. Ilia waited a seemly amount of time, then followed.
Once the door had shut behind Ilia, Ruby gave a quick glance at Weiss, then said with carefully controlled volume, "Blake, any word on the data package from your dad?"
"Not yet," said Blake, "but I'll give him a call. We really need that."
"What data package?" asked Weiss.
"Nothing," said Ruby transparently.
Weiss crossed her arms. "I've been completely open with you. I've shared everything I know. Why won't you do the same?"
It hurt more than Weiss had expected it to. This feeling of exclusion, of otherness, of being outside what these students had, was surprisingly unbearable. They were the only people her age she could talk to for hundreds of klicks, but even to them she was an outsider.
That hurt.
"We don't want you to get your hopes up for nothing," said Blake. "We don't know if the package will have everything you need, or if it'll even be useful. And it's... sensitive. We'll let you know if we get something meaningful."
Weiss turned her eyes on Neptune, knowing him to be the weak link. "Is that so?" she said as she locked his eyes with her own.
But Ruby stepped between her partner and Weiss. "It's the truth," said Ruby, radiating sincerity.
If that was the truth, it was a truth as stark and hostile and unforgiving as the truth about honest businesses in Atlas. Weiss' heart clenched painfully. "Alright," she said. "Alright. Keep your secrets then. I'll just be out here doing my best to be honest."
She left without waiting for a reply.
The cold blasted her as soon as she was out. Solitas was into its deep winter now. The growing season was over. There was a metaphor there.
Even setting metaphors aside, it was a matter of concern. A significant chunk of SDR's revenue came from the sale of Plant Dust. With the Rock of Atlas' artificial microclimate, agriculture continued there year-round, and there were places in Sanus and Anima where the growing season never ended. But most of the world's agriculture was shut down for the winter, so demand for Plant Dust was at its nadir. So was their revenue.
For the first time, Weiss rued the Dust mix she'd discovered. Why couldn't it have been Lightning? Lightning was needed all the time, year-round, in ever growing amounts. It was physically impossible to go broke selling Lightning Dust unless you were giving it away.
Her thoughts drifted to the SDC. Or it should have been impossible, she thought bitterly. How badly had her mother-
No. She couldn't complete the thought. Even now, it was still too tender.
She wandered aimlessly through the upper mine. Carts of ore, and even more carts of effluent, were waiting to go to their respective destinations. Shacks of spares and idle equipment stood ready, but unmoving. There was a stillness here that seemed all wrong for an industrial zone.
It was so quiet that she heard the footsteps coming up behind her, but she pointedly ignored them until that became impossible.
"Weiss! Weiiiiss!"
For as desperate as Weiss had been to connect with her peers, the prospect of a conversation with one of them seemed dreadful. It was a puzzle, feeling the need for attachment and hating getting attached.
Especially to people who wouldn't be staying. People for whom any attachments would be fleeting. The exchange students… well, the temporary part of it was right there in the title. Why would she dare get attached to people who wouldn't, couldn't, stay? That was just begging for pain.
"There you are," said Ruby, as she fell into step with Weiss at her side. "What are you doing up here?"
"Mining site inspection," lied Weiss.
"That's cool," said Ruby, and Weiss nearly believed she really thought that. "Mind if I tag along for a minute?"
"No," said Weiss, her mouth betraying her brain.
"Cool," said Ruby. She must have suspected something, though, because she didn't ask any questions about what Weiss was inspecting or looking for. Instead, she just remained available, staying at Weiss' side. Even as Weiss doubled back and looped around and fumbled through the site, Ruby matched her stride, not doing anything to suggest impatience or dissatisfaction.
Weiss cracked. "What do you want?"
"You seemed like you could use a friend," said Ruby.
Weiss craned her head to look at the younger girl, inspecting her the same way she'd had to inspect Huber and Cristata and all the other difficult people that made her business so treacherous. Ruby's face was not like theirs. Ruby wore her heart not only on her sleeve, but also on her belt buckle, her lapel, and all over her face.
Maybe it really was that simple.
It was too much to look at, like staring at the sun. Weiss faced forwards once more. "I've never actually had a friend," she admitted. "The closest thing was my sister."
"Yeah," said Ruby sympathetically. "Big sisters can be..."
"What?"
"Rough?" Ruby said with little surety. "A lot?"
"Complicated," said Weiss.
"There we go," said Ruby with relief. "Complicated. Your thing with your sister isn't like my thing with Yang, not exactly. But I get it."
"Do you?"
Ruby seemed to chew on her thoughts like a bovine chews its cud. "My mom was a Huntress," she said at last.
"Oh?" said Weiss, picking up instantly on the past tense in Ruby's words.
"Yeah," said Ruby, and she fingered a badge or emblem in the shape of a rose on her belt. Weiss had thought it to be Ruby's personal heraldry, but then again, Weiss' own heraldry was the Schnee snowflake, something inherited. Maybe this was the same. "She was," continued Ruby. "Always trying to save the world. Then, one day, she left on a mission and never came back."
"I'm sorry," said Weiss, more out of a lack of suitable alternatives than anything else. It amazed her that Ruby could talk about her mother more easily than Weiss could imagine talking about Willow.
Ruby shrugged. "It still hurts some, just not as much these days. I think I understand her more, and it's why I think your sister has kind of a point."
"You do?"
"I want to become a Huntress so I can be like mom," said Ruby. "I want to be someone who makes things better. I want to help people and build a better tomorrow, like the heroes in the stories. That doesn't mean I'm blind. I know that it might not work, that I might not win. I know how dangerous it is. I know how it might end. I know better than most people, I think.
"But if I don't try, who will?"
Weiss' voice caught in her throat.
"Some people, sure," said Ruby, scratching the back of her head. "Like Yang, or Neptune, or Blake. What I mean is, it takes a lot of work to make the world a better place. And isn't that what we're supposed to be doing? Making things better for each other and those who will come after us? I think so, anyway. Mom thought so, too.
"So I'll keep trying," said Ruby turning to look at life head on. "And I hope you do, too."
With those words and that face and those eyes looking at her, what could Weiss possibly say? Other than...
"I will," said Weiss, marveling at her own words.
Ruby smiled and gave a decisive nod. "And we'll help you out as best we can."
"As best you can?" said Weiss with a raised eyebrow. She looked lower. "You don't happen to have a spare centrifuge in there anywhere, do you?"
"Darn it," said Ruby with a grin, "I knew I was forgetting something, I must have left it in my other hood. Yang'll never let me forget if she hears about it."
"It can be our little secret," said Weiss with good humor. But the word and its attached memories made her face fall. "Speaking of secrets..."
"Yeah?"
"Why are you hiding things from me?" said Weiss. "Why are you trying to do things behind our backs?"
"Well..." said Ruby, clearly buying time as she assessed Weiss all over again, "it's because you and your sister... Or at least your sister..."
"What about us?"
"Do you know the difference between a Lawful Good and a Chaotic Good?"
"I know the meanings of all the words you just said, but the way you used them sounds like gibberish."
Ruby shook her head with the look of pity. "Someone lived a really sheltered life, huh?"
Just when Weiss thought she was emotionally tapped out, these trainees found ways to get a rise out of her. "Hey!"
"My team does the right thing," said Ruby. "We always make sure the right things happen, but we don't exactly always follow the rules. We break them sometimes. A lot of the time, actually."
"Is that so?" said Weiss, feeling increasingly faint.
"It's so," said Ruby. "So... So."
"You lost me."
"Your sister thinks that doing the right thing is the same as always playing by the rules," said Ruby. "And that's not how my team works. That's not how Professor Ozpin's been training us, anyway. We were worried that we would cause a big fight if we tried to help her in our usual way, and we honestly didn't know about you one way or the other."
"Well," said Weiss conspiratorially, "I'm not quite like my sister. I think I can tolerate a little rule bending in the name of justice. Especially if the people who are setting the rules are making them do the wrong thing," she added, thinking of McCarthy.
Ruby smiled. "You know, Weiss, I think we're going to get along just fine."
Weiss dreaded getting attached. Catching feelings for people who wouldn't, couldn't stay was just asking for pain.
And yet…
"I hope we do," said Weiss without thinking. Only after did she realize she might have said too much.
The delight spreading across Ruby's face was another clue. "Oh, so you do like us!"
"Don't infer anything I don't want you to," said Weiss desperately.
"Too late!"
Next time: Trial