A/N So I had a review on the last chapter point out an error I made. In the chapter I describe as Emeralds semblance show's Ruby on the camera. This was an error I made by not reading my own notes very closely. Ironwood was only supposed to have an audio recorder. That is where the error is but everything else followed the original plan. Internal continuity is something that I find very important so I am apologizing for the error I made. I already changed it so if you feel the need you can go back to the last chapter and reread it but it's just minor changes. That said on to the story!
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Ruby looked at the two White Fang guards through the night vision scope she had outfitted on Crescent Rose last year. If there was one thing Ruby may have liked about working for Ironwood, it was the million Lien annual budget that was just for her missions. Despite her inability to use Crescent Rose very often she had used that hefty budget to substantially upgraded the deadly weapon, among other things. The motion of the guards doing their hourly radio check brought Ruby back to the situation at hand.
"Penny can you track their comms?" Ruby asked.
"I can detect when they are active," Penny replied, "To understand what they are saying it will take me a bit to crack their encryption." Ruby considered for a bit before refocusing her sights on the guard speaking into the handheld radio. She reached down and let the familiar cold feeling take over again. She didn't know who the guards were other than White Fang, and right now, she didn't care
"Do what you can on the go." Ruby answered, "I don't want to be here very long. Tell me when the transmissions end." Ruby waited and steadied her breathing, slowing her heartbeat. She pulled all the slack out of Crescent Rose's trigger.
"Transmission just ended." Penny chimed in. Ruby didn't respond but watched as the guard put the radio back into his pocket.
One second, two seconds, breathe in, hold, exhale, squeeze. There was barely a sound coming from the modified suppressing dust barrel. The wind dust in it counteracted the majority of the escaping gasses, leaving no flash and little noise to alert potential enemies of her presence or position. Ruby didn't watch through the scope to see if her shot hit it's mark. She knew it would. Instead she racked the bolt on her weapon and focused on the other guard. Breathe, hold, exhale, squeeze. Quickly and quietly Ruby got up and moved towards the entrance to the hidden mountain lair. It was kinda cliche now that Ruby thought about it.
The mile or so to the entrance went quickly, it usually did when one had a speed semblance. As she looked at the entrance she found that they had a keycard reader recessed into the rocks next to the door. She then turned towards the now headless guardsmen lying on the ground nearby. A quick search of their pockets produced two keycards and their radio.
"Penny does this help?" Ruby asked.
"Yes, analysing now." Penny answered. "Complete, patching it in now."
"Alright, finally is the backdoor team, what's your status?" the voice of an unknown white fang grunt filtered through Ruby's earpiece.
"Backdoor here, all clear over here, we could use something to warm up though." that was clearly the security on the second entrance Annette was covering.
"I get it alright the mountains are cold at night." The first voice said, "I've already sent some guys to bring you hot coffee just be patient. Everybody seems to be doing fine, stay awake and I'll check back in an hour."
After confirming her attack hadn't been discovered yet, Ruby moved to the door and activated the keycard reader. The door slid open to reveal two White Fang grunts in front of her. One had a sword on his hip and two steaming mugs in his hands, the other had a pistol holstered at his side. Instantly deciding on the bigger threat to her mission, Ruby sent a semblance enhanced kick onto the pistol carrying grunts kneecap. It bent backward at an awkward angle, and he went down. The other dropped the mugs as he reached for his sword. At the same time Ruby grabbed the first grunt's head and twisted. While he fell to the ground dead Ruby grabbed the other grunt's wrist and pushed it down, forcing the sword back into its sheath. She followed up with a semblance enhanced punch which crushed the grunt's windpipe. As he silently died Ruby began to make her way through the White Fang base.
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Annette growled as she struggled to force back a yawn.
"Why'd we have to do this tonight?" She mumbled to herself, "Sure, Summers can sleep on the flight, did she ever think that maybe her pilot needs some rest?" There had been almost no activity on the area she was told to watch. Not since two White Fang members delivered some coffee to the guards at the entrance anyways. Still she kept the engines running and the chainguns armed. Summers apparently expected this mission to get loud quickly and wanted Annette to 'keep them from escaping' which probably meant lighting them up with enough ordinance to kill a goliath. While Annette was watching the entrance a ping from her instruments pulled her attention. A quick glance at her instrument panel told her the ping was her radar informing her of an approaching aircraft. It was likely a resupply for the White Fang base, something Summers would need to know about. Just as Annette was about to radio Summers, she heard several more pings coming from her radar. One, then two, then six, then ten! Ten gunship sized aircraft were coming towards the base. That wasn't a resupply, that was an assault force. Annette double checked the signatures on the aircraft. They registered as Atlesian military.
"Something's wrong." Annette mumbled while reaching for the radio again.
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Ruby was actually rather pleased with herself, she had managed to make it almost a quarter of the way through the base without setting off any alarms. Granted that was likely more due to the base being mostly asleep at this time than to her actual skill at silent takedowns.
"Summers you copy?" Annette's voice came through her headset. If Annette was breaking radio silence something was going on.
"Annette what's up?" Ruby said.
"We've got a lot of activity up here." Annette answered. At this Ruby's heart sank. Had there been a silent alarm she had missed?
"Ok well deal with them I don't want any of these guys escaping." Ruby answered.
"What? No." Annette's voice came back, "I mean there's a lot of airborne activity, something like ten Atlesian gunships coming towards us." Ruby paused as she heard Annette's explanation.
"Ironwood doesn't make mistakes like overlapping ops." Ruby said after a moment.
"My thoughts exactly." Annette replied, "Orders?"
"Stay out of sight." Ruby ordered, "Be ready to pick me up in a hurry."
"What do I do about the gunships?" Annette asked.
"Nothing until we confirm their allegiance." Ruby answered.
"Understood." As Annette signed off Ruby unfurled Crescent Rose. She had done well keeping her attack quiet so far, but she couldn't afford to take it slow now. She rocketed off in a flurry of rose petals and began to hunt down every important target she could find in the base.
When she reached the end of the base she exited to find some of the gunships Annette had warned her about already there. There were several Atlesian shock troopers tying up the White Fang who had tried to escape. She quickly holstered Crescent Rose before she was spotted. Not that it would matter if any of the White Fang had seen her earlier. One of the White Fang spotted her and let out what could only be described as a very girly shriek from what was clearly a man. Ruby would have laughed at the sight had it not been for the fact that every shock trooper in the area now had their weapons trained on her.
"Relax boys, Same side." Ruby said loud enough for them to hear her. When they didn't move Ruby continued. "I'm…"
"Colonel Scarlette Summers, Atlesian InOps." A voice said from the middle of the group. Ruby looked in the direction of the voice and saw a dark haired man in an MP uniform of all things. Though the overly large handguns on either hip were definitely not standard issue. "Surrender Colonel and you will be given a fair trial." Ruby didn't know where the information leak was but Ironwood was going to get an earful about it when she contacted him again. As for these guys it was likely someone trying to get power over Ironwood and figured she was his dirtiest little secret. She didn't have time for politics.
"Y'know I have this weird aversion to courtrooms, or public places in general really, plus I have a mission that is really time sensitive," While Ruby was talking she had Penny contact Annette, "so I will have to politely decline." Ruby finished. She could see the blacked out form of the stealth gunship rise behind the gunships gathered in front of her.
"That wasn't a request, Colonel." the MP in command responded.
"And I am not joking, Captain." Ruby replied while drawing two of Penny's swords, "I have no time for whatever politics this is about and I certainly don't answer to you." she then pointed one of the swords at the man. "So stand down."
The MP shook his head. "Take her!" he shouted to his men. Ruby watched as the two dozen or so Shock Troopers fired at her. Ruby activated her semblance and moved back, out of the way of the approaching bullets. She then braced herself to use her semblance at full power, much like she had in the cafeteria so long ago. It would be more difficult without being in an enclosed room but she had gotten much stronger and it was probably the quickest way out without killing everybody present. The Shock Troopers reacquired her as a target and fired again as she launched into her full semblance. While it didn't catch them into a vortex, the wind surrounding Ruby as she approached the sound barrier launched the troopers in her path away. Ruby came to a stop underneath Annette's gunship before using her semblance to lunch herself up into the bay.
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"Summers what's going on?" Annette called as she heard the sound of boots hitting the floor of the bay behind her.
"Don't know, might be something political, might not be." Summers said as she sat down in the seat behind Annette and strapped in. "either way these guys aren't friendly."
"Understood." Annette said as she pulled the gunship away. As she was doing so spotlights from the other gunships settled on hers. Annette pushed forward on the speed and shot out into the sky. The other gunship followed close behind, and within a few seconds began shooting at her. Annette growled as she heard some rounds ping off of her gunships hull.
"Those little..Hold On!" Annette shouted as she rotated one of her VTOL thrusters to spin her gunship. As soon as she faced the pursuing gunships she raced forward while bringing her own chaingun to bear. The bright silver-white aircraft made excellent targets at this time of night and one soon found its wing buckling under the fire of Annette's gunship.
"That's what you get for puttin' holes in my ship!" Annette shouted out. The other gunships turned around and soon an alarm was beeping in the cockpit of Annette's gunship.
"What's that?" Summers asked.
"Missile lock, these guys are serious." Annette said while reaching for a switch marked 'Flares'. The sound of flares firing signalled the end of the alarm beeping.
"Annette we need to either lose these guys or take them out." Summers spoke up.
'I know that Summers.' Annette grit her teeth. She was pushing her gunship to it's limit which meant that the gunships and pilots chasing them were no slouches. At least the two that were still able to keep up, the rest had fallen behind. Searching for some way to shake the gunships chasing them Annette noticed the area ahead of them was filled with ravines and sharp depressions in the earth.
"Hang on to something Summers," Annette shouted out, "I'm going N.O.E. it might get a little close!" Without another word said Annette quite suddenly pointed the nose of her gunship straight towards the ground, and accelerated. She had to tilt the aircraft to even make it fit into the ravine at first but it quickly widened enough that it would even give Annette a bit of room to move side to side. One of the two other gunships followed them into the ravine. It almost immediately opened up it's chaingun on Annette's gunship. However before the bullets could connect the ravine turned sharply to the right. Annette was able to make the turn because she saw it coming, the other gunship did not.
"Where's the other one at?" Summers asked.
"Probably somewhere above us." Annette answered while pulling back on the throttle. Soon enough the image of a white gunship with a searchlight sweeping back and forth came into view of the canopy above them. "What do you want to do Summers? We could probably just slip away without them spotting us." Annette turned to look at Summers face. Summers was looking at the airship with that blank thoughtful look she had when weighing lives. Then as if a switch was flipped, Annette was Summers single silver eye take on all the coldness of the metal it was named for. It was a look that honestly scared Annette even to this day.
"No." Summers said cooly, "if we leave them they have the chance of finding us as we slip away, and… these guys ticked me off."
"Understood" Annette said as prepared to end the other gunships flight.
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"Summers" Annette's voice roused Ruby from her temporary slumber, "We're getting back into CCT range."
"Good." Ruby said as she got up and walked back into the cockpit of the gunship, "Get Ironwood on the line, I want to give him an earful for letting whatever politics he's dealing with interfere with my mission." Annette nodded and began working on the communications console in the cockpit. Almost immediately however the console beeped with a message.
"Oh, I guess he decided to contact us first." Annette said
"Odd," Ruby said, "what is it?"
"Let's find out" Annette said as she opened the message.
"Summers," Ironwood's face came into view on the comm screen, "if you are receiving this then I am dead. Go ahead laugh, do your happy dance or whatever. My final request I hope you honor is this, finish your mission. I have set up a substantial untraceable fund to help, instructions to access it are in this message. And I have left little to no trace of you or Annette in the Atlesian database. I can't trust your mission to whoever is my successor, if you need higher support go to Ozpin or another headmaster. This is for the sake of the world please handle it, I am certain this is something only you can do. Good luck."
After that particular bombshell was dropped the two just stared at the screen for a few moments.
"Annette, Change our course, we're not heading back to Atlas." Ruby slowly said, before turning around and walking into the troop bay.
"Yes, ma'am" Annette replied, without her usual snarkiness.
What happens now? She thought.
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A/N: So yup another author's note in the same chapter. I have been writing this chapter in every free moment I've had since I put the last one out. And it's finally finished! WooHoo! Just for reference in case people don't know N.O.E. stands for Nape Of Earth, it's a military term for essentially when an aircraft flies really close to the ground. I'm still in school and military stuff is going to be getting crazy soon so I won't be able to do regular updates until after July. I'm not out of the game though hope this chapter proves that to y'guys.