Deep within the headmaster's office of Beacon Academy, mixed with the grinding of gears is the slow, weighted breathing of three teachers, two of which are headmasters, one of the two is a general. All these and yet the burden is one they might as well physically share.
How exactly do you explain the disappearance of a team of four girls to their families, friends, and the tournament officials without inciting tension and confusion abundant enough to hoard Grimm?
Ironwood's concern is the clearest by far with the deep crease his forehead is making as he furrows his eyebrows. He is, after all, the one who brought the machine responsible for this dilemma. And though it is not his direct action to send them into the unknown, he has been ignorant to leave the machine without guards to watch over it.
Glynda's stress is nothing to scoff at despite seemingly the least to blame for this. Her uptight demeanor and disciplinarian persona nearly breaks at the seams as she considers the students who will ponder near-endlessly while they fight other competitors. It is enough trouble to be the stricter voice between her and Ozpin, but she will do her best to not lose composure when facing them.
As for Ozpin, the headmaster who is as mysterious as he is collected, with a voice that resonates experience, he is undergoing one of the few times his stare has bored deep into the metaphorical abyss under his clasped hands. With such an unpredictable element involved, he will have to prove once more that he has it under control despite this lack of knowledge and foresight. It seems that he will have to bend the rules once more if it means bringing back team RWBY.
Still , he asks himself, is the 'ichor' really that recent and subtle that I myself would not have heard of it, much less learn about it? If this were to be true, then it is just as likely that she would not have discovered it as well.
"Three academies went out of their way to practice and partake in the tournament. We can't cancel the festival over a missing team."
"But we need to make sure the tournament will continue as is, get the machine running long enough to get them back, and discover who the infiltrator is, all while not letting everyone else worry."
"We can still change the roster for the tournament, but what about their friends? Ruby and Yang's father?"
"Well, we can't just straight up say that they messed with experimental technology and got themselves sent to who knows where."
"Then what are we going to say? Lying to their families isn't going to end well."
Ozpin turns his chair to the view looking out to the academy, with the Amity arena floating nearby, he stands up and walks toward the window as he brings up a scroll and looks through the roster.
"There is a way to buy us some time. Maybe even enough time so we can fix this leaving none the wiser, especially our infiltrator. We can give them a vague truth, something plausible, enough room to lead them to their own conclusions."
Ozpin finally finds team RWBY and changes their status to unavailable, he then swaps it out with an entirely different team. One from Shade Academy.
"Though maybe Taiyang deserves the full truth, he'll find it more suspicious if we do otherwise…" He mutters before asking, "Glynda, we still have available teams in this academy, yes?"
"Yes, some of the seniors that are sitting out on the tournament, why?" She replied, pushing up her glasses and focusing her gaze to his general direction as she pulled up her own scroll.
"Get one ready to embark on a mission in Vacuo…" He says before contacting the headmaster of Shade Academy. The other line picks up the call after a few rings.
"Theodore…" Ozpin starts, "do you still have that one team that was pulled out from the tournament for a mission in Vacuo?"
"I do. The same team with the leader you sent from your academy. They are to be dispatched soon. Why do you ask?"
"I'm asking for a quid pro quo… We'll need a replacement."
"Ruby!"
"Yang!"
"Well, yeah, you did pop into the Boiling Isles…"
"Ooh~ Luz Noceda, witch-in-training!"
"It's kinda amazing that you can do magic, Luz…"
Ruby wakes up to the sound of clanging metal, chatter, and barking. She groggily gets up and wipes her eyes as she yawns.
My bed feels differ-! Oh, right… Right! I ended up in the Demon Realm.
Slowly trying to steady herself on the hammock-bed, she descended the ladder and wore her boots.
Yang, Weiss, Blake…
She roams the upper floor, looking for the bathroom to wash up and get ready for the day.
"Who's a good boy~? Who's a good boy~?" Luz plays with Zwei as Eda writes down a list of items to buy during breakfast.
BARK! BARK!
"Good morning again, cutie pie~!" Luz greets King as he appears from the hallway.
"Good morning, Ruby!" Hooty's voice can be heard upstairs.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" A voice shouts from above, presumably Ruby's and from the bathroom.
"Oh… Whoops…" Luz comments.
Eda chuckles, "hehe~ Classic."
"Journal entry number two," Blake starts as she treads her boots through the snowy slope, "it has been roughly twelve hours since my first entry. I have survived the night unscathed and I have been exploring the rest of this mountain, which I may assume is the island's knee. No sign of any changes to the environment, so no activity, or at least human activity. I can only hope that I encounter people on my way to the abdomen…" Blake spots something on her far right, and immediately ducks down, "I have come across a four-legged creature, white fur and seemingly with no eyes. From what I can see, something injured it based on the scorch mark on its side."
A snarl can be heard, Blake's eyes widen and she slowly backs up, "I may have to assume it's a carnivore… I'll have to go…"
A minute later, Ruby joins with the rest of the group, "Does Hooty always do that?"
"Every now and then, it's tradition," Eda shrugs before handing Ruby the paper, "alright, new kid, you and Luz could start with the marketplace, word spreads fast there if your friends get any attention. But while you're asking around, here are the things we'll need. Luz can guide you through it."
"What about you?" Ruby asks Eda.
"King and I will go to the limbs that are farther away," she replies, a regular brown-feathered owl perches on her shoulder, "with Owlbert, we'll fly there and see if we can find any one of your teammates,"
"Got it. Wait… That's Owlbert?" Ruby points to the perched owl.
"Yep, same owl that took my book," Luz whispers.
"Ah, okay."
"Alright, King, come on. Everyone, we're heading out, best of luck!" Eda shouts as she busts out of the door and the owl on her shoulder transforms into an actual wooden staff.
"WHOA!" Ruby exclaims, "THAT. IS. SO. COOL!"
"Hehe, yep! Palismen are awesome! I hope I get mine someday!" Luz agrees.
"So that's a Palisman… Me too, Luz."
Hearing both of their stomachs growl at the same time, the two look at each other.
"We better eat first before going out," Ruby declares.
"Right," Luz chuckles.
"Okay, so… This place, the Conformatorium, is manned by the Warden, who is a demon and has connections to this… Emperor's Coven and Emperor Belos, got it. We're going to be imprisoned here, and we're not sure how long?" Yang asks, down on the floor and staring at the ceiling of her cell. Whenever the Warden is busy and doesn't pass by their cell, Yang takes the chance to ask her adjacent cells questions about the place she's in.
So far, she's caught up with the concept of magic, demons, boiling rains, and even the Emperor's Coven as well as Emperor Belos.
"The Warden usually doesn't say," the neighbor on her left answers. Her voice was meek and careful, barely scratching her throat from the sound of it.
"Yikes… That's lousy…"
"Tell me about it. Imagine getting jailed for having a collection of stray glass shards and metal bits."
"That's how you ended up here?"
"Yyyep. And from what happened last night, you're still here because of your round ears. You're a human, aren't you?"
"I guess… You aren't, right?"
"Most residents of the Boiling Isles are either demons or witches, we have pointy ears."
"Huh… Well that explains a lot," Yang sits upright, "he called me the 'Second' human, what about the first one, what was the person like?"
"Let's see… She's small…"
So… Weiss?
"And has cat ears…"
Blake?
"Actually, from what I saw, the cat ears are fake, she was wearing a hood that revealed her dark hair," a jailmate on the cell to Yang's right interjects. A dude sounding close to that one giant friend of Velvet, Yatsuhashi.
Uh… Ruby?
"Oh, okay, okay-! Oh! And she has tan skin," the left finishes.
Wait, so this person isn't someone I know?
"O…Kay… I see. What did she do to the Warden?"
"She and the Owl Lady helped free some innocent prisoners and then they fought the Warden, the human had explosives on her."
"Awesome~" Yang muses, "no wonder he's so agitated."
But that still doesn't excuse the racist statement he shoved on me, getting jailed for your ears-!
An image of Blake with her cat ears flashes in Yang's mind. Souring Yang's mood even further.
Yeah, yeah, I see how it is now…
Finally building some anger within herself for the blatant injustice against the prisoners here just because they have a unique thing to themselves, she stands up, grabs her jail bars, and rattles it, shouting at the top of her lungs, "HEY! WARDEN WRATH!"
"What are you doing?!" "Are you crazy?!" "He's gonna torture you!" Yang can hear multiple voices trying to shush her.
"Not if I knock the lights out of him first," Yang answers before resuming her shouting, "WHERE ARE YOU?! I AIN'T AFRAID OF YOU AND YOUR MOUTH-FACE, SHOW YOURSELF!"
An instant later, one of the wooden doors slammed open quickly, with such a force it nearly dislodged itself.
Ground shaking footsteps pace hastily towards Yang's cell and, no longer than ten seconds later, Warden pulls up in front of Yang. His mask is there, but she can immediately feel the rage behind it, one step away from unbridled.
"What do you want, human? You seem to have a death wish," Wrath looks down on Yang.
"Oh, I so had it with you… You think you can actually hurt me?" Yang bluffs, she lands an unarmed left strike on the prison bars, rumbling the entire metal.
She clenches her fist much more tightly and tries to keep her face from showing the obvious discomfort in punching metal without her gauntlets.
Come on, just take the bait already.
The Warden chuckles haughtily, the tone in his voice lowering to condescension, "you think you can actually hurt me ?" The Warden states back, stepping closer and transforming one of his hands into a hammer, slamming it much harder on the bars, the metal groaning as it bends around his hammer-fist.
Yang takes the opportunity to hide her right arm behind her back and activate her bracelet, letting it transform into the full forearm gauntlet of Ember Celica.
The Warden grips the handle bars as he bends to Yang's eye level, "maybe I should-!"
NOW!
Yang right-jabs directly to the bars in front of his face.
BANG!
The full explosive force of her punch and Ember Celica sends the entire gate careening to the Warden, "Agh!"
"Gaaaaah!" Ultimately taking him by surprise and pushing him all the way to the circular gap behind him, crashing to the ground floor.
Yang walks out of her cell and looks to the ground floor to see the Warden fall flat with the gate keeping him busy, several guards approach the Warden.
Guess, that's my cue.
Yang rushes towards the cell with the girl and tries to open it with one hand on the lever.
Won't budge.
She switched to both hands and grunted a little before managing to lift the lever up, freeing the cell of her female neighbor. As soon as she sees her though, she notices the bright red hair with black streaks in some strands framing the cyan eyes and pointy ears that she mentioned.
Huh… So that's how pointy ears look.
"Come on," Yang ushers her companion to help her lift the lever of her second neighbor. Without taking the time to exchange names and pleasantries, Yang immediately asks, "where does the Warden keep the things he confiscates?"
"He keeps the contraband on the uppermost door, there's a magic barrier that prevents anyone else from entering, but I don't know about humans."
"Guess there's only one way to find out… Thanks, you two! Free whoever you feel like, I'm going ahead!" Yang bids before launching herself into the air on the way to the upper floor with both of her gauntlets and speeding away into the contraband room.
Once there, she finally sees the barrier the redhead witch mentioned and slowly approaches it, it does feel dangerous with its brightness. Nonetheless, Yang tries putting her right foot in it and the barrier responds by stopping her momentarily before letting her foot pass with no problem.
"Huh… Guess it's fine with me," Yang says, fully entering the barrier with her arms up, only to see her aura glimmer slightly and a wave of unnatural warmth wash over her, causing her to paradoxically shudder and shiver.
"Whoa, that was a… Funky experience, but I guess I'm fine. Now, where's my stuff?" Yang glances at the mountainous pile of random stuff, some are even regular human stuff that she recognizes, until her eyes reach the top of the pile and she sees her yellow wallet beside her scroll and bullet loops, "jackpot!"
Warden Wrath groans in pain and frustration, lifting the dislodged jail gate and tossing it aside like it's a frisbee. Several guards approach him in concern.
"Warden, what's going on? Is there a prison riot?" One of them asks.
"Call the Emperor's Coven and tell them to bring in reinforcements, we have a high-level threat here," Wrath commands, not bothering to answer their questions.
"Yes, Warden sir!" They immediately disperse and rush towards the main gate of the conformatorium.
"That was unexpected… But I'll be able to hold her off until then," Wrath says to himself, before looking up to see a diving Yang.
"HHRRRRAAAAAAH!" She shouts, a winded-up fist aimed at him again.
BANG!