"What do you want, Ozpin?"

"It is lovely to talk to you too, Sienna."

"I don't make a habit of talking to people complicit in the abuse of the Faunus. Say your piece so we can end this call."

"Complicity? You wound me, and yet I have no defense. I could mention my voting record in the Council on Faunus matters, but I don't think you'd be much moved by that."

"You'd think correctly. Votes without results mean little to me."

"Agreed. There's only so much I can do, given the White Fang's activities. Any other Councilor can say, 'We don't negotiate with terrorists,' and I'm bereft of counterarguments. That's why I've been urging you to chart a course towards legitimacy. Help me give the White Fang a seat at the table."

"Oh, is that why you went to such lengths to destroy the Vale Branch?"

"Yes, it is. For the same reason that you delivered the finishing blow. The Vale Branch did not speak for the White Fang, let alone for the Faunus as a whole. Their methods were far too extreme, much more than you wanted, and their activities sabotaged you."

"So you're saying that the deaths of my brothers and sisters are things to be celebrated."

"I'm saying that you found it necessary to depose Adam Taurus. I find it as unpleasant but necessary as you did."

"I took no pleasure in that."

"Nor I. But I don't think there was any saving Adam. Then again, I wouldn't truly know, not the way you do."

"What do you mean?"

"When you confronted Adam, you had in your possession information I don't have: the identity of exactly who was giving him his orders."

"It's none of your business. It's an internal White Fang matter."

"I wish I agreed, but I'm concerned that the scope of this problem is far beyond the White Fang. This is something that affects us all, Faunus and human alike. If this mystery matron could make inroads this deep into the White Fang, what other Faunus has she ensnared?"

"You're trying to make me paranoid about my own people."

"Should I have to? Adam was serving a secret mistress, and much of the White Fang was ready to follow him. Or did you think I was unaware that the Albains have been arrested? I do keep in touch with Menagerie. Part of my official duties, you know."

"You keep dancing around the point. I'll ask you again: what do you want?"

"I would like, if you please, the information you have about Adam's secret mistress."

"Ha! I bet you do. It would serve your Kingdom politics well."

"It would also serve the Faunus, would it not? Whoever ensnared Adam surely did not have the interests of the Faunus at heart."

"As if you would know anything about the interests of the Faunus!"

"Only what I learned from you."

"Hmm. Did you know you're the second person to ask for that data package?"

"I did not know that. Do you plan to tell me who was the first to ask, or am I supposed to be able to guess that?"

"You said you had contacts in Menagerie. Are you now saying it's sheer coincidence that Ghira Belladonna asked for the same data you're asking for?"

"On the contrary, it's like I was trying to tell you: many parties are interested in the truth of Adam's fall, for the good of all Remnant. Not just the Kingdoms, not just the Faunus. This is the key to something larger."

"You say that now, but you've given me no reason to believe you. Not now, nor in the past."

"I'm open to suggestions, as I've told you before."

"And someday I might believe you when you say that. For now, if I'm going to give this information up, it'll be to someone who has demonstrated service to the Faunus cause. If you're being truthful, and this data does signify something larger, then perhaps the appropriate third party might forward it to you... But not a moment sooner than that."

"I accept your proposal."

"It wasn't a proposal. It was me telling you what the terms are."

"And I am agreeing to those gracious terms of my own volition. I hope this can be the basis of a productive relationship in the future."

"We are not having a moment, Ozpin!"

"Let's reassess that take in, say, six months. Have a good evening, Sienna."


Ilia timed it perfectly.

She was an intelligence agent at heart, although having not just access to, but control of Winter's schedule made it laughably easy. She arranged for Winter to have back-to-back-to-back meetings in Skjulte Perle: with Cam to cover the new equipment setup, with Cristata on the trafficking problem, and with Mayor Leif on floating the company's lease payments for a few weeks. Even if all those meetings went short, it still gave most of the morning for Ilia to covertly run her errand and return.

Which was how she ended up walking into the mining site office with only Team RVBY knowing she was there.

The team seemed to be performing group weapons maintenance: all their weapons but Ruby's were in some stage of disassembly, and Ruby was walking amongst the three of them with a critical eye. All those eyes turned to Ilia when she entered.

She suppressed the urge to disappear. "Blake," she said, "I need to talk to you."

"Sure," said Blake, putting down a pair of miniature screwdrivers.

"Not here," insisted Ilia, "it's something private. Something about the..."

Blake motioned for Ilia to go on. Ilia couldn't, not in front of humans. Instead, she made a motion towards her face as if putting on a mask-a White Fang mask.

"Oh," said Neptune, "is it about the White Fang?"

The hand in Ilia's pocket, which was holding on to the hilt of Lightning Lash for security's sake, tightened around her weapon. The members of Team RVBY, however, including Blake, all groaned. "And they say I have no subtlety," said Yang.

"Well, I'm right, aren't I?" said Neptune.

"Yes, you are," said Ilia with a grimace. "In which case you know why I need you all to step out so I can talk to Blake."

"The thing is," said Ruby, "anything you talk about with Blake will come back to us eventually, so you might as well say it to all of us and save us some time."

Ilia shot Blake a hot glare. "So you can't keep secrets anymore, is that it?"

Blake met Ilia's fury with a serenity Ilia hadn't seen from her in years. "No, it's that I made a promise not to try and take on the world alone. I made a promise to come to my team for things that are really important. That's what teams are for, you know?"

Images of Blake and Ilia together as a team-a future that had never been-a future she'd so desperately longed for but that was doomed from the start-flashed before Ilia's eyes. "I wish I knew," she said with just a little bitterness.

Blake didn't even look sheepish; she just sank further into her serenity. "It wasn't the easiest thing to find, but I'm glad I did. So, Ruby's right. If it's important enough for you to tell me, it's important enough for me to tell my team. We'll hold your confidence as a group."

Ilia's eyes went to Neptune. "He seems really bad at holding confidences."

"You think that because you don't know how many secrets I'm sitting on that I haven't told," said Neptune. "I can handle it."

"We all can," said Ruby, meeting Ilia's gaze with fearless silver eyes. "Lay it on us. Who knows? You may get more help than you're expecting."

Ilia put slim odds on that, but it appeared she was outvoted. She briefly entertained the notion of backing off to try and catch Blake alone later, but the clock was ticking, both for Winter's window of distraction and on the urgency of this matter.

No way out but through. With a silent prayer to Panzoa, Ilia committed. "The White Fang has gotten wind of a new batch of trafficked Faunus being delivered to Fall Dust. They're to be smuggled through Port Solitas by ship, past a customs official who's already bought and paid for, and then onto a passenger train headed for Mantle. From there, before the first ticket check, they'll be smuggled off the train into a bus that will take them across country to a Fall Dust mine."

"Trains," groaned Blake. "Why did it have to be trains?"

"Tell me about it."

"Lemme guess," said Yang. "Once the bus pulls away from the train, everyone on board gets their papers seized so they can't run away, their scrolls get confiscated so they can't call for help, the bus pulls up to a Fall Dust mine, and none of them are ever heard from again?"

"That is frighteningly accurate," said Ilia.

Yang's eyes turned red. "Well, I'm in favor of punching the crap out of all those schmucks."

"So why not bust them at Port Solitas?" asked Ruby. "There are police and Huntsmen and MPs all right there in the Port. It sounds like you could tip them off to bust the traffickers and snag a corrupt customs official in the bargain."

"We can't do that because..." Ilia hesitated, glanced at Blake, saw the expression on Blake's face, and recommitted. "…Because he's our corrupt customs official. The Fang needed someone at Port Solitas to gather information, especially on criminals looking to exploit us, and inserting one of our agents was the best way to get that info. As usual, the Faunus do much better by breaking the law than following it."

"That's an oof," said Yang. "Which probably means we can't bust them anywhere in Port Solitas or we give the game away. We're gonna have to hit them on the train or somewhere on the tundra."

Ilia found herself nodding before the absurdity of the gesture registered. "Wait, what do you mean 'we'?"

Before Ilia's eyes, three students started closing up three sets of weapons. Ruby spoke for the group. "You can't honestly think that we'd hear about people in trouble and not want to help, can you?"

"That's what you came here for, right?" said Neptune perceptively. "To recruit Blake to come with you. You planned to go rescue these Faunus."

"Yes," said Ilia with a rising sensation that she'd lost control of the situation, "I came to get Blake. I know and trust Blake, I know she cares about this mission, and I know I can work with her."

Blake gave a sheepish smile. "I said I've learned to involve my team, didn't I?"

"Yeah," said Yang as she slid innocent-seeming bracelets on to her wrists in a fashion that implied great menace. "We're a package deal!"

"Us joining you was never the question," said Ruby, as she helped Neptune with a final bit of reassembly before returning her gaze to Ilia. "The only question is how we're going to get to Port Solitas in time."

"Say 'please'."

Every head in the room whipped around to look at the door to the interior office. The door opened and Weiss stepped through to join them.

"Uh..." said Ilia with her usual earth-shattering wit.

"Luckily for all of you," said Weiss, "I happen to know the number of an airship pilot who doesn't ask too many questions. I also happen to have enough money in my trust fund to pay for an emergency short-term charter."

"You'd do that?" asked Ilia.

"Didn't we just have this whole conversation about doing the right thing?" asked Weiss dryly. "And now I have a chance to help people and hurt Fall Dust all at once? Sign me up. I may even be able to write this off as a business expense." She smiled. "Tell me when and where you need it, and I'll arrange for the airship."

"We'll plan the rescue operation," said Ruby, nodding meaningfully at Neptune, who returned the gesture.

"And didn't Winter say that Atlas has an anti-trafficking agency?" said Yang. "I'll see if I can contact them and arrange for a pickup."

Ilia was wholly unprepared for this level of aggressive help. She looked at Blake. "Are they for real?"

"You get used to it," Blake said, but fondly.

Ilia doubted she ever would, but she decided to accept Blake's word for now. "Okay, I've got another fifteen minutes before I have to head back to town. Here's how these ops go..."


It was easy for Ilia to get the time off that she wanted.

"I need a day off," she said to Winter.

Winter, apparently unable to find any words, could only blink.

"I haven't had a day off since I started working for you," Ilia said. "Something urgent has come up that I need to go take care of." When Winter still didn't seem to respond, Ilia added tentatively, "It's about..." and shook her weapon in the pocket where it rested.

Winter's frown relaxed. "I see now," said Winter. Ilia wondered if she did. "Request granted. I'll catch you up when you return."

"Thank you," said Ilia, and she departed.

It occurred to Ilia that Winter didn't know what Ilia was asking permission to go do. As awful as it felt to think this, Ilia preferred it this way. After all Winter's talk about doing things the right way, Ilia had a sneaking suspicion that Winter would not give her approval for an SDR employee to get up to something like this.

Well, Ilia was more than just an SDR employee. She was White Fang. Helping the Faunus was Ilia's whole reason for living. She wouldn't implicate SDR, but she wouldn't hesitate, either.

Team RVBY had come to a similar conclusion, and went about clearing their departure in a similar way.

"It's been weeeeeks since we've been anywhere other than the town or the mine," Ruby said to Winter in the full pouting voice of a bored teenager, which might not have been an act. "We wanna go out into the tundra a bit, poke around, see what we can stir up."

Winter raised an eyebrow. "Are you suggesting you haven't been getting enough action?"

"It's kind of that," Ruby said, "and kinda that we're getting stir crazy. We wanted to see more of Solitas than this."

"The rest of Solitas isn't much to look at. Especially not around here."

"I think that," said Ruby, suddenly looking very put upon, "and you think that, but sis- Yang- always wants to see new places herself so she can decide if they're boring. And Neptune has this whole geology thing..."

Winter wavered.

"We promise to have a way to get back to you quickly if we get in over our heads," said Ruby.

Winter sighed, but Ruby saw her victory in that sigh. "How long are you planning to be out?"

"A day, maybe two. Worst case scenario, we've got camping equipment to stay overnight out there. We'll be fine."

"You are Huntress trainees," Winter said reluctantly. "They do still teach wilderness survival at Beacon, right?"

"Yep," said Ruby brightly, "and Blake has the third highest scores in our year, after Ren and Nora."

It occurred to Ruby too late that Winter wouldn't know who Ren and Nora were, but her argument seemed to hold water regardless. "Very well," said Winter. "I will see you in one to two days."

"Awesome!" said Ruby. At Winter's withering expression, Ruby awkwardly tried to compose herself, and tried, "Uh, by your… leaving? I'll be leaving."

Winter's eyes fluttered shut. "Just go."

"Yes ma'am!"

Nothing Ruby had said to Winter was technically a lie. Everything she'd said was true, up to and including Neptune's appreciation for geology. It just wasn't the whole truth. That was enough to make Ruby feel awful.

"I feel awful," said Ruby back in town.

"Understandable," said Weiss. "So I'll ask you this. If you asked Winter Schnee, ex-Specialist of the Atlesian Military, for her permission to go on an unsanctioned vigilante raid based on White Fang intel, how many times out of a hundred do you think she says yes?"

"...Thirty? Twenty? Twenty-five?"

"Once, maybe," said Weiss, "if you can catch her while she's sick and delirious with fever. And Winter doesn't get sick. So, if we're all in agreement that we should do this, we'll need to work around her, whether that makes us uncomfortable or not."

"Well," said Ruby, "what did you say to her?"

"I didn't say anything," said Weiss with a haughty hair throw. "Being her equal as a co-CEO, I don't need her permission for things like this."

"Is that written somewhere in your business rules?" said Blake skeptically.

Weiss' eyebrow twitched. "Not explicitly, per se," said Weiss, "but basically."

"Yeah," said Yang, "as the resident expert on big sistering, I can tell you that wouldn't fly for me."

"Well, no one asked you," Weiss snapped. "Do you want to go on this mission or not?"

There were mumbles of agreement, and that line of discussion was reluctantly dropped.


As Team RVBY, fortified with hangers-on, departed Skjulte Perle, another airship flew high overhead. For a fleeting period, about ten seconds, it emitted a signal in CCT frequency bands so strong that it briefly tricked the scrolls and other smart devices in town into thinking it was the CCT system. It used that window to send to each one of those devices an innocuous message with a malicious hanger-on.

It then vanished like a mirage. The CCT system proper would never know the difference. The message's sending address would be untraceable because no part of the system ever saw it.

Not every device connected as desired; not every device was capable of receiving that kind of message; some devices rejected the message as invalid. In the end, three hundred or so devices received the message.

Most people, maybe two hundred and fifty, deleted it sight unseen.

Fifteen people blocked it as spam or virus bait—correctly, as it turned out.

Thirty people ignored it and let it fall down the ranks of their messages.

Four people moved it to another folder to look at "eventually", along with dozens of other unopened messages the users swore they'd get to "sooner or later".

One person opened the message.

Nothing bad obviously happened, so the user deleted the message after opening it and thought nothing more of it.

Too late. The virus was already inside.

It checked the type of device that it was on and registered that it was a standard scroll. Instead of engaging its primary function, the virus went into "spread" mode. It attached itself to every message the user sent. Every time another device connected to the infected scroll to share data, the virus jumped the connection.

Step by step it spread, crawling device by device across Skjulte Perle, looking always to see if it had found its target. At no point did anti-virus software stop it, because this was a new virus that no defense recognized, being passed by legitimate means. Nor did it give itself away. The petty consumer electronics of the common citizen were beneath its notice, except as vectors to spread further, and so those common citizens were oblivious to it as well.

With every passing message, the virus sank its claws ever deeper into Skjulte Perle.


Tanner Freeman's life just kept going from bad to worse. It had started off poorly enough: born a Faunus in one of the struggling, barely-hanging-on oasis towns that dotted the landscape outside of Vacuo, and that were in permanent danger of being swallowed up by grimm, monsters, enemy tribes, or the land itself. After years of saving, his family scrabbled together enough money to send him to Vacuo City to find better work in the hopes that he might one day send money back.

Those hopes were dashed in under thirty seconds. He'd barely set foot in Vacuo City before his first mugging had claimed the little cash he'd had left. The subsequent muggings were worse because his frustrated attackers, annoyed at not finding any money on his person, took out their aggravations on his body. With every day, it looked less and less like he'd ever send any money home and more and more like he'd end up just another anonymous body in the vast paupers' graves just outside the city walls.

Was it any wonder, then, that when he saw an offer of employment with no strings attached except for a required move to Atlas, he jumped at the chance? However bad Atlas might be, it couldn't be worse than Vacuo.

He'd learned nothing.

The instant his ship left Vacuo's port city, angry men with guns started making the rounds amongst the passengers. One by one, all their identifying documents were taken, and the angry men issued them new papers with false names, birthdays, and citizenship. It was a temporary thing, the gunmen said, just enough to get everyone through Atlas' customs checkpoint. The words would have been more reassuring if their fingers were further from their triggers.

In a sign Tanner was finally starting to get the hang of things, he hadn't believed them. His question about when exactly they'd get their own papers back was met with a pistol whip that left him groggy for much of the transit.

Tanner had felt the smallest glimmer of hope when he saw that the customs official was another Faunus, but that official was talking to, even joking around with, the gunmen, and the glimmer died a quiet, unremarkable death. Just like Tanner would, he was sure.

It was no surprise to Tanner when the gunmen started demanding their papers once more as they were on board the train. This time, they offered no substitute papers. Tanner understood. He was being erased.

Understanding was not the same as acceptance, and neither understanding nor acceptance prepared him for what came next. As the train broke into open tundra, a bus came rolling up within spitting distance. The gunmen opened the rear door of the car, even though there were no cars behind them; theirs was the last car in the train. So what were they doing?

It became clear when someone from the bus fired a grapple over to the train, and the gunman secured the line and pulled it taut. A powered trolley crawled up the short line from the bus to the train. When it arrived, one of the gunmen turned into the cabin and shouted to the unfortunate souls within.

"You're riding this over to the bus," he shouted, to slight panic amongst the passengers. "Hold on tight. If you let go, with us going at these speeds, you'll break half the bones in your body, until the grimm show up to break the other half."

There was a frisson of fear amongst the passengers. No one moved.

Growing impatient, one of the gunmen grabbed the closest available passenger and forced him bodily up to the trolley. At that point, the passenger complied and grabbed hold of the trolley. It swung him down and into the bus. Barely visible hands secured the passenger and finished pulling him into the bus, where he vanished out of sight. As they did, the trolley returned, ready for the next.

"See?" said one of the gunmen nastily. "That wasn't so bad. Much better than being grimm bait."

One by one, the passengers were shuffled over from train to bus until only a few were left. Tanner could see that he would be either last or second to last. As their cargo departed, however, the gunmen got chattier and chattier.

"Is this going slower than usual?" said one of them.

"Yeah, sure looks like it."

"And they showed up late, too."

"I bet it was old Bernard in charge on that end. He's always dragging his ass. I wouldn't be surprised if he's so hungover he's still drunk."

"If he takes too long, we'll hit the tunnel, and then we'll be stuck until Junction."

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, we're almost done. Just this loser and one more and then it'll be our turn."

At those words, rough hands grabbed hold of Tanner and dragged him towards the trolley and open air. "Hold on tight and keep your eyes on the bus," said a businesslike voice. "It'll be over before you know it."

It was fortunate that the passage was only a couple of seconds, and that Tanner was being gathered into arms on the bus side before he had time to process everything. He was sure that if he'd had a moment to think about it, he would have been terrified out of his skull. So wrapped up was he with his feelings and disorientation that it took long seconds for him to realize how weird things had just gotten.

The mood on the bus was totally different, and so were the gunmen there. For one thing, they were much younger, by almost a decade. For another, their weapons were much fancier than the budget options the traffickers had carried. For a third thing, none of them seemed like they were trying to intimidate or cow their passengers.

"How many more?" a black-haired girl said to Tanner, to his confusion. Wouldn't the people running this operation know its details?

"One more," said Tanner, "plus the gunmen."

The black-haired beauty nodded, said, "Take a seat," then shouted towards the front of the bus, "One more!"

"Gotcha," said the driver, visible only as a mane of yellow hair.

"Stick to the plan," said a small, pixie-like girl, to Tanner 's complete bafflement. "Once the last victim's across, we cut the line and pull away. Let the cops in Junction deal with the rest."

Now Tanner knew something screwy was afoot. Before he could really ponder what it was, one more passenger touched down on board the bus. "Are you the last passenger?" asked the pixie.

"Uh… uh-huh," said the bewildered passenger.

The pixie looked at the black-haired girl. "You heard him."

A dark blade whipped through the air. The cable detached from the bus, whipping away into the air outside. "Pulling away," announced the driver. Tanner dimly heard shouts and outrage from the train, and knew that this was not part of the original plan.

The pixie stepped to the still-open door of the bus and looked like she was about to step outside. Tanner had the wild urge to go and pull her back, but there was no chance. Moving briskly and with not one iota of fear, the pixie stepped out of the bus and into open space.

A deafening gunshot and an almighty jolt took her out of Tanner's line of sight... and then there was a thump on the roof of the bus.

With every new absurdity that happened, Tanner's grip on reality loosened a little more.

The sound of gunfire erased all remaining thoughts Tanner might have had. All around him, people were ducking their heads, cowering out of sight beneath the tinted windows if they could, taking whatever poor cover the bus offered them. Yet Tanner felt an inexplicable calm about him. All the cowering made sense, he knew, if the gunmen were shooting at their escaped passengers. But not a bullet hit glass. Not a one broke through the sides of the bus to hit a passenger. It was like the gunmen weren't shooting at the bus at all.

The sounds of gunfire grew more distant as the bus's angle continued to change and the distance between bus and train opened. After a few more seconds, with the train completely behind them, the sounds faded into nothing.

At which point the pixie swung from the roof of the bus back into the interior and conscientiously shut the door behind her.

A boy nearby shook his head. "Don't you get tired swinging Crescent Rose fast enough to deflect gunfire?"

The pixie smiled widely; the effect was blinding to Tanner. "You should see my Uncle Qrow in action," she said. "He's got a scythe too, and he can use it to deflect automatic gunfire. 700 rounds a minute or more."

"My arms hurt just thinking about it."

The black-haired girl interjected. "Uh, Ruby? We should probably explain what just happened."

"Oh! Right." The pixie girl stood up on one of the seats and looked towards the interior of the bus. Every passenger looked back at her.

For a moment she seemed to lose her nerve. She whipped around to face away for several seconds; her shoulders were heaving with heavy breaths. But when she turned around again to face them fully, there was steel in her voice and fire in her silver eyes.

"My name is Ruby Rose. I'm a Huntress, and I'm here to rescue you."


The plan had, in the end, been quite simple. Trying to intercept the bus with the trafficked Faunus on board would have been dangerous to the Faunus. Attacking the train wouldn't have been much better, and, since Team RVBY didn't know when the rendezvous would happen, might have resulted in the bus joining the fight at a bad time.

So, instead, Team RVBY had planned to hit the bus before it took on its passengers. That would reduce to zero the chances of collateral damage and let them take the place of the bus for a smooth rescue, one that the traffickers on the train would even help them accomplish.

'Simple' had not meant 'easy'. They hadn't known where the bus would be staging itself to prepare for its rendezvous, and so had had to follow the train at high altitude at a distance in their chartered airship. They'd had to use their higher vantage point to spot the bus before it came into sight of the train and make their intercept at top speed. Then they'd had to make a combat drop from the airship down to the bus so as not to endanger the airship, which they needed to escape and whose combat zone surcharges they couldn't afford.

That said, they were all except Ilia Huntress trainees, and all of them, even Ilia, had landing strategies.

The fight hadn't lasted ten seconds. When it was over, Team RVBY (and Ilia) took the place of the traffickers on the bus and made its rendezvous as planned. And now? Now they had a bus full of trafficked Faunus and a handful of knocked-out traffickers, and they were going to deliver all of them directly to Atlas' anti-trafficking agency.

Ruby beamed at her team as the bus bounced along. "I think I'd give that eight out of ten," she said. "Maybe even nine."

"I'd give us the full ten," said Yang.

"Don't count your Griffins before they spawn," said Ilia. "We still have to deliver all this to the anti-trafficking agency, hope they'll believe us about where they all came from, and then get back before we're missed."

"That last part has me the most worried," said Weiss. "What if something happens while we're out?"

"I thought you said you didn't need permission," said Yang.

"I don't, but I'd still want to be there if anything bad happens."

"Come on," said Neptune. "What could possibly happen?"


With all the patience of the ocean knocking down a sandcastle, the virus spread through Skjulte Perle. It moved from scroll to scroll, while always looking for ways to get into other devices. At last, one strain of the virus took an ID check on its host system and identified its primary target.

Heretofore unused code snapped into action. Now, its purpose would be fulfilled.

All around it, the world flew to pieces.


Next time: Goodbye, Miss Schnee