NOTE (Feb. 11, 2018): Well. I think I started something. Crap. More family than humour. Probably more adventure, too. I dunno.

"I told you: trust them. They'll prove themselves..."

And look where that's gotten me, Raul. No offense, buddy, but that was some shit advice. The Courier set the NCR emergency radio back into one of his many pouches, letting the light from his Pip-Boy illuminate the chunks of dislodged bedrock and granite that sealed them inside this potential coffin. No reception. Too much interference. Ain't that fuckin' dandy, eh? Goddamn it, kids.

"Hey, Six?"

"What?" he groaned.

"I'm...I'm really, really sorry."

Six turned to glare at Ruby's apologetic mug reflecting off the green light. Despite himself, he could not stay mad at her—or any of the other brats—forever now, could he? "It's okay, Hyper."

Her eyes glistened like fragile glass. "No, Six. I'm really, really sorry about all this."

It's fine, Hyper. You didn't do anything wrong. Aside from caving us in this abandoned Old World mineshaft a good thirty meters underground, of course. "Sorry about what? Shit like this happens. Lady Luck just gave us the finger again. Right up the ass, too. Then she'll fuck you sideways and doggy-style 'til you come out your nose."

"I...what?"

The Courier wanted to slap himself. Of course. Choice words for a sheltered fifteen-year-old. Way to be a role model with a vocabulary, Six. "Never mind." My radio won't work but maybe... "Check your scroll. That thing keeps tabs on your buddies, right?"

"Uh, about that..."

Six felt his eyes narrow behind his visor. "Hyper."

Ruby shuffled her boots against the dirt until she showed him her scroll. Or what was left of it. The rest had been hopelessly crushed by the debris.

Well, shit. No use in dallying any further. He stood up and began running his hand against some of the chunks of rock that separated them from the rest of the other brats. "Get up. I could feel a draft somewhere. If we can find it, we might be able to get out of here."

"Okay," came the soft, demure reply.

It took them awhile but a section of the rubble folded under enough pressure from his rifle's stock, collapsing into a disused rail cart rusted into place. The tracks led deeper into the mine and, oddly enough, the source of this constant breeze. Six semi-cradled his gun such that his arm was raised at an angle to for his Pip-Boy light to properly illuminate their path.

"Stay close to me, Hyper."

Ruby silently followed him. The Courier may have been on-guard for all possible threats but he was perceptive enough to tell that the little tyke behind him was shouldering all the blame for this potentially deadly mishap.

I don't entirely blame you, kid. Don't blame yourself too much, either.

They had been walking in the darkened silence for a good twenty minutes until they came across a cavern where the tracks split. Six heaved down on a lever on the wall and the entire room hummed; the fluorescent lamps hanging off the overhead wires all lit up. That meant that either whatever power source here was somehow still functional after all these years or the generators had been recently restored to working capacity. But he knew that no automated machine independent of HELIOS One or Hoover Dam could still generate this much electrical output after being in disuse for over two hundred years. Either there's a dormant nuclear core somewhere in here or someone's been here recently.

The rotting wooden furniture and the oxidized shelves were a welcoming sign of respite with the cold benches sturdy enough to support the combined weight of his supplies on top of his gear on top of his own heavy ass. And he was right: someone took the time and effort to clean off the dirt and grime on the table. A closer look revealed old cobwebs that had been freshly disturbed. The splotches of crude oil were still damp while an assortment of spent casings lay scattered about. Someone's definitely been here. Whatever they were shooting at though better be dead or...

"Hey, Six?"

Contrary to what he thought, he was actually relieved to her voice. "Yeah, Hyper?"

"You think everyone else is okay?"

Six raised his brow at her but she couldn't see that. "Pretty sure they're faring better. We got the worst of it, anyway."

"You think so?"

I like to think so. "Mmhmm."

Ruby was choking on her words now. "But...but I caused the cave-in. I...hit the support beams and...it got the mutants but...we—"

"Hyper, don't blame yourself for bad luck."

"It wasn't bad luck, Six!" she snapped. "You warned us about close quarters! You warned us to be careful with our weapons. You told me not to use Crescent Rose. You warned us and we didn't listen!"

The Courier could only stare. Ah shit, is she crying?

"I'm sorry. Really, really, really sorry, Six. Yang is probably hurt and so is Weiss and Blake. And Jaune and Pyrrha might be trapped with no air and, and, and, and Nora could be...and Ren...and, and, and, and—"

He never considered Ruby to be the type to hyperventilate but for good measure he gripped her arms and forced her to sit down on the bench just in case. "Hyper. Screw-ups like this happen whether you like it or not. How you adapt to it and survive is what matters. And have some faith in your buddies, damn it."

"But—"

He wiped away a wet mix of tears, sweat, and gunk off her cheek. "Ruby."

She stared at him as though he had grown a third head.

"Listen to me, kid. Blaming yourself isn't going to help. Your team needs you to dig through this mountain to find them while they do the same. Trust your teammates. Trust your friends. Have faith in their capability to survive on their own. They may give you hell but in the end, when you think everyone's left you, they're going to be the only people in this godforsaken world who'd run up out of the blue and take the hit for you when the shit hits the fan." Take it from me.

He let her go and turned towards the two branching tunnels. It was like the flip of a coin. Heads, you get death. Tails, you get death. The difference was how long it took before death came. Wind's coming strong from the right, possible exit route. Then again, the others could be still trapped in the left. Or they're both dead ends.

"Six, we should go this way."

He looked back to Hyper; having wiped her face, the girl peered into the dark of one of the tunnels with budding confidence and determination that reminded him of his own. And he felt proud. A bit.

"Six, you hear that?"

"Shhh."

Movement. Muffled voices. To their right, behind these rocks.

"Syrup! Syrup, wait!"

"Nora, be careful!"

"Hey, I can feel something over here!"

"Syrup? You smell something, boy?"

The three girls and their pet infant deathclaw crashed through the layer of cracked granite in a thick cloud of dirt. Syrup the infant deathclaw leaped vigorously around the legs of the Courier staring at the three disheveled girls struggling to get off each other. He lifted his arm to give them some light.

"Weiss! Blake! Nora! You're all okay!" And almost immediately, Hyper launched a rapid string of apologies. "I'm so sorry, sorry, sorry! It was my fault, I'm so, so sorry!"

"Ruby, it's okay. We're all fine." Cat-girl glanced to her right. "Right, Weiss?"

Snowball huffed. But the Courier could see through her front. Prissy girl was actually relieved and forgiving. "I'm just glad we're not separated anymore."

Pancake, ridiculously chipper as ever, flailed her arms around. "I thought we were goners! But Syrup led the way, didn't you, you good boy! Oh. Hey, Six!"

Six didn't wave back, instead keeping his rifle trailed towards the dark while he shuffled the mangy little monster away with his boot. "Good. You kids are still alive." I was starting to get worried.

"Oh, your concern is well appreciated," hissed Weiss.

"You can feel that, right?" Blake interjected, her fingers catching the end of the black ribbon waving over her shoulder.

Ruby nodded. "Yeah, we were following these tracks. This draft should be coming from down there."

"What about the others?" Snowball asked.

Pancake was all over Hyper. "Did you find Ren or Jaune or Pyrrha—"

Ruby deflated. "I don't know. I was hoping you ran into them."

"Her scroll broke," Six deadpanned. "Check your scrolls. You should have tabs on your friends, right?"

All three girls held up their sophisticated electronic devices. "No signal."

Are you kidding me? Really? If it were not for his helmet visor, they would have seen the disbelief scratched all over his face. So much for your 'advanced' Remnant technology.

"Don't worry, we'll mine through this mountain 'til we get them!" Nora declared, hefting her explosive supersledge-cannon against the ceiling, scraping a good chunk off a rickety support beam. Six grabbed the shaft and forced it back down to the ground.

"Damn it, Pancake! We've already had one cave-in," he growled.

"Oops, sorry!" she chirped.

The Courier was about to proceed further down the tracks when he felt something warm and damp against his pant leg. It took a lot of mental and emotional restraint in the wake of the brats snickering—yes, he heard them snicker—to not kick the horned little bastard into the wall.

Pancake would not stop laughing though. "Syrup! Ha-ha! Bad Syrup!"

Six growled trying to shoo the prickly devil away, having now learned that its piss smelled just as bad as he would have expected. That and he found out that the filters on his gas mask needed to be replaced again.

The rusted hinges held the wooden door shut. The Courier gave a solid kick, reducing it to splinters and provoking a familiar shriek from the other side. It was a familiar shriek and when he shown his light inside...

"Oh my..."

"It's not what it looks like!"

Well, shit. "Goddamn it, kids."

Six was sure he would have to address some rather physically sensitive issues with the brats sometime in the future. Stumbling into something that Snowball declared as 'absolutely scandalous' and 'unspeakably unbelievable' and then seeing how Hyper and the rest reacted made him reconsider their level of maturity. Seriously, if this was how those Remnant people behaved towards something like this, then the place must be God's Heaven compared to this radioactive Hell he called Earth.

"You guys saw nothing!" screamed Jaune, his sweaty cheeks redder than the stuttering redhead beside him.

"Sure, we didn't," Blake said with a little smirk.

Great. Your goddamn hormones decided to kick in now of all times. This drama between teenagers was eating away at his patience and he was well into his years to bother with this crap. Least you kept your clothes on and haven't gone any further than a smooch.

Ignoring the banter, the Courier made his way upstairs to a platform accommodating a hill of decrepit machinery with hoses and heavy-duty cables wiring it into the earth. No doubt, the terminals here were connected to the mainframe powering this whole underground mine. And while a lot of industrial equipment were fitted with varying console designs, they all had the same buttons that mostly had the same functions. It was not that hard to find the proper switches and after a few flips, the gears that had been running this place years ago came humming back to life, filling this whole section with fluorescent light.

"Oh!" Jaune yelped. "Huh. I knew there was a switch around here somewhere."

"Of course, you did. You just turned on the wrong—"

"Shut it, Blake!"

Six continued to work his way around this decrepit piece of Old World hardware that he knew should control the massive hydraulic blast doors in front of them. Then again, why were there massive hydraulic blast doors here anyway? In an abandoned gold mine in the middle of the desert? Unless the gold dried up and this is all a front for something what with all these damn wires, pipes, catwalks, and grinding steelworks... Christ, it's like the Divide. Is this...is this another pre-war bunker?

"I called it, I called it! Pyrrha, was he your first?"

"Nora! That's i-inappropriate!"

And it just had to be Sparta making the first move. Real smooth, Knight-boy. The Courier shook his head. He was too old for that. The console was far more attractive; the controls should be understandable at this point with the terminal now coming to life...

"You...a-and... You and..."

"Um, you okay, Weiss?"

"Pyrrha, I...I, well, you...actually—"

"Everyone, you all saw nothing. Nothing!"

"Keep telling yourself that, Jaune."

Six heard scratching and he looked down to see Syrup—goddamn that little monster—fervently clawing against the hydraulic doors. He let his right hand drop close to his right upper hip holster while his left continued to type away at the keyboard.

"Syrup? You smell something, boy?"

"Should we be worried?"

The sound of Remnant weapons clicking and shifting outwards echoed back in reply.

"Just in case, guys," Ruby intoned.

Weiss hummed back. "Something's behind those doors."

"Six—"

"Keep your wits about you, kids!" the Courier yelled down below, while chancing glances at the hydraulic doors. This should do it. "Conserve ammo and be mindful of your combat radii this time."

They all heard the klaxons hooting over the lamps flashing red. Six then heaved on the lever beside the console. The doors hummed and vibrated until they noisily lifted off the ground. A pair of human legs were waiting for them on the other side.

"See? I told you it would open by itself," remarked Blondie.

"Yang?"

"Huh, guess they found us," added Shaolin.

"Ren! You're okay! I was really, really, really worried! Look! Syrup was really worried too!"

Lucky. Now the whole gang is back together. The Courier could see gray metal walls up ahead and the familiar colors painted across them. United States Army. So much for an unassuming goldmine. Hsu was right. Something's up in here. He could feel something watching them from the dark. And he was sure whatever it was had been keeping a good eye on Blondie and Shaolin. It was no ordinary automated security system. It was something more sentient, more intelligent...more malevolent.

Yet, mechanical.

His fingers continued to rest against the ivory grip of his magnum revolver while he leaned over the platform to see the reunited teams RWBY and JNPR getting excited over them crashing in on Sparta kissing Knight-boy.

"Real smooth, Jaune."

"Yang, don't even—"

"So, Pyrrha. You finally took action."

"Ah, what are you talking about, Ren? Ah, ha-ha, what do you mean I took action?"

"A~awww, the two lovebirds are shy."

"Yang!"

Six looked back at the dark then at the bickering brats. For good measure, he worked through the terminal and dug as deep as he could into whatever security system was in place here. He could hear the gears grinding in a dozen places behind the walls. He could also hear light footfalls against the grated floor of the platform he was on.

"What is it, Cat-girl?"

She stopped. "You feel it, too?"

The Courier exhaled. At least she can tell. "About time you noticed."

"It's not...human." Blake's hands were already on the hilt and grip of her weapons.

"Security system is still active. I can't disable it from here." The mainframe has got to be further in. The data he managed to salvage from this particular computer was as confusing as it was alarming. Shit. This ain't RobCo. I don't recognize this name. 'U.S. Army prototypes?' What the hell is this? Damn manifest doesn't make any sense...but the recent entries... Someone has definitely been in here, putting this shit together and keeping them running.

Cat-girl shuffled closer to peek at what he was seeing on the screen. "What is all this?"

"I got a feeling we won't be going up against some RobCo scrap metal."

"What do you mean?"

Six shut down the terminal and unslung his rifle. "I mean keep an eye out. We're not alone down here." What have I gotten these kids into?

ORIGINALLY DRAFTED: February 9, 2018

LAST EDITED: June 20, 2022

INITIALLY UPLOADED: February 11, 2018

NOTE (Feb. 11, 2018): So...trouble. So much for slice of life chapters. This one has gotten rather...deep during the course of writing. Couldn't help it. The ideas just flowed.

Selected review responses (Feb. 11, 2018):

Review dude: That's interesting, actually. The way I see it though is that Pyrrha is very heavily Greek (hoplite; spear; phalanx) than Roman (legionary; sword; maniple) but knowing how Edward Sallow is himself an intellectual and modelled his empire after the Ancient Romans, he would know full well that the Ancient Romans adopted much from the Ancient Greeks. So he'd see Pyrrha as a tool for exerting influence, enforcing authority, and perhaps even as a tool of propaganda to psychologically affect other tribes and enemy powerhouses like the NCR (which probably would not sit well with Pyrrha given her history as an unwilling poster girl). He probably dictates the legion's history and most likely controls their education. Still, thanks for giving me the image of Pyrrha disarming an entire cohort of legionaries with her Semblance. I might work on that some time. :)

Blinded in a bolthole: Interesting perspectives you've brought up. Come to think of it, Qrow would kick the Courier's ass in a straight up fight with his Aura and Semblance. Take them away and they *might* have a stalemate. Or I could "tweak" the Courier... (I might straight-up OP him if I'm just mentally tired.) For Glynda, yeah, she might lose it a bit. Cinder, though... You're right. She might just chip a nail. In the meantime, I developed a scenario where Glynda and Cinder are stuck together somewhere in the Mojave. ;)

Anyway, thanks again for giving this an eye. Hopefully, I can continue to entertain...before my mind frizzles out again.