Ruby's eyes slowly drifted open. The birds were singing and the sun was shining through her window. She looked around the room. There were posters of blueprints on the walls, several shelves were stacked with grimm figurines, and in the corner sat her Signal backpack.

"Ruby wake up!" Yang shouted from downstairs, "You're going to be late for School!" The sleepiness fled from Ruby's mind when her sister said that.

"Crap!" she jumped out of bed, already in her school uniform for some reason. "I'm gonna be late!" Ruby grabbed her cloak, her backpack, and her precious Crescent Rose and ran to the door. "Hi Yang, Bye Yang." Ruby grabbed the door handle and threw the door open. Instantly the world became dark, and instead of the front lawn Ruby had expected, she saw gravestones for as far as her eye could see.

"W-what is this?" Ruby asked.

"What you deserve." a gruff voice sounds behind her. Ruby turned around, gone was the house, gone was her family. More gravestones greeted her, standing in the center with a hole in his head was Ironwood. "You caused all of this." Ruby turned again to run away from the dead man, only to run into another.

"Hey kid." Stephens said, suddenly appearing in front of her. "You ready to join us now?" Ruby turned and ran again running down seemingly endless rows of gravestones. She glanced behind to find that both men were standing right behind her, not moving, but still right behind her nevertheless. Because she wasn't watching where she was going, Ruby tripped and fell. Looking up she saw the men had disappeared as had the gravestones. Instead a dark forest filled with red eyes greeted her. She didn't have a moment to think before one of the red-eyed shadows jumped on her.

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Ruby's shot up out of bed, wishing, not for the first time, that she could wake up as peacefully as she did in dreams. She looked around the sparsely decorated hotel room she found herself in, a second bed sat empty besides the one she was sleeping. On the other side of the room sat an empty desk. Unlike in her dream, the sun was not shining, instead rain pattered against her window. That was actually perfect for what Ruby had planned for the day. The rain would drive most people inside, and would allow her to inconspicuously deviate from the outfit she used yesterday. Ruby reached under her bed to find the duffel bag she had brought with her. Reaching inside she brought out a red baseball cap and a grey hooded jacket. Ruby quickly dressed and left, paying Beth a simple "good morning" before walking out the front door. Ruby quickly made her way through the rain soaked streets towards the local Hunters Association. Mistral's Hunters Association was located in an open air plaza with a few small bunkhouses for visiting huntsmen and huntresses around the outside. In the center of the plaza was the mission listings, the active missions were displayed on the center screen, if a hunter had accepted the mission their name was listed next to it, along with the mission status. As Ruby looked over each of the missions she found that many of the missions already had been accepted, however the huntsmen and huntresses listed next to them were listed as overdue or M.I.A. This caused Ruby to frown. A few huntsmen and huntresses being overdue or M.I.A. was understandable, the Grimm were dangerous and often could be underestimated, but all of them? This was either a case of extreme negligence and mismanagement, or something much worse was going on in Mistal. Ruby spent the rest of the day checking out some of the names on the board. Ruby found once again that all of them were missing, furthermore after another stop at the H.A. she found that the names on the board were the vast majority of the huntsmen and huntresses registered with the Mistral Hunters Association, with only a few taking out of kingdom missions. The more Ruby investigated the more suspicious she became. Something was very wrong here, and she was going to get some answers.

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"Ugh, this is not working." Yang said, as they left the house of another person on the list, "why won't they help us?" the three huntresses were about as bundled as a person could get, except Weiss, Weiss was fine. The three were currently walking down the streets of Atlas.

"Maybe they don't actually know Yang." Weiss said, "Winter gave us the name of some people who MAY know something, not that they would know something."

"Fine." Yang said, "who's next?"

"Retired Colonel Faught." Blake said looking at the list on her scroll. The three walked mostly in silence until they reached the house number they were looking for. Weiss went up and knocked on the door.

"Coming!" they heard a voice from inside say from inside the house. After a few moments an older gentleman opened the door and looked at them. "Can I help you?" the man asked.

"Are you Colonel Faught?" Blake asked.

"Well nobody's called me that for a long time, but yes." Faught replied, "how can I help you?"

"Do you know a Ruby Rose?" Weiss asked. The man tensed up a little after she asked this. His friendly demeanor was still in place, but it was more guarded.

"That depends, who's asking?" he asked.

"I'm her sister." Yang said. Faught paused, his guarded expression giving way to surprise.

"Are you now?" Faught asked, "Short girl, dark red hair, silver eyes, red cloak?"

"That's the one." Yang said, "we're half sisters."

"I see, well, I've got some questions of my own then." Faught said while opening the door further allowing the girls to get a good look at him, and his empty sleeve. "Come on in." inside the house was warmly furnished and looked well lived in. "please excuse the mess, I've not had many visitors recently." Faught said after cleaning some news papers off of one of his couches.

"It's no problem Colonel" Weiss said as she and the others sat down on the couch, "I'm sure you weren't expecting visitors today."

"Oh, please, it's Mister" Faught said as he sat down, "I am retired after all." there was a few moments before Faught spoke again, "so, Ruby Rose." he said simply.

"Yes." Weiss said, "we recieved information that suggested she had been in the redemption corps?" she asked with a hint of concern.

"Ah, yes, I can see how that might be concerning." Faught said. "Strange story that one, Ruby was probably the only person in the history of Atlas to volunteer for the Redemption Corps."

"She volunteered?" Weiss asked incredulously, "why would she do something like that?"

"More like how could she do that." Blake said.

"I don't know why, she never told us her story." Faught said, "actually that's why I invited you here, because I hoped you knew and I was curious."

"We might know." Yang spoke up. Blake and Weiss both looked at her questioningly before turning back to Faught.

"That still doesn't answer how she was able to." Blake said, "She was fifteen, that's hardly close to the minimum age to enlist in any branch of the military, in any nation."

"When I first met her she wasn't Ruby Rose, she had a fake ID that was enough to fool our enlistment and drafting system and it told us she was eighteen." Faught replied.

"What was her name back then?" Blake asked. Faught seemed to pause a bit before answering,

"Scarlette Summers."

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Capt. Ranger stepped into the airdock terminal and took a breath of fresh air. The transport he and his men had come on didn't look military but was just about as comfortable as one. His team spread out behind him, each going to different shops and doing their best to look like tourists, returning locals, and businessmen. They were good at it too, he had picked from the best InOps had to offer. He also had dressed to look like a respectable bussinessman on a company trip. He began to walk over to the main concourse to have a cab called for himself. When he got there he began to walk over to the receptionist.

"Excuse me?" a young femenin voice asked next to him interrupted his walk. He turned to find a young girl with blonde hair and dark sunglasses standing before him. The sunglasses would have looked odd indoors were it not for the cane in the girls hand. "My boyfriend wandered off, can you tell me where flight 1530 is going to be at?" a quick look at the concourse showed that flight 1530 was going to be at gate 3 in one hour.

"Gate three miss." Ranger told her.

"Thank you." the girl said, "I've been waiting for him for twenty minutes. I'm just gonna go where the seats are."

"Alright have a nice day miss." Ranger said as the girl started to walk away, tapping her cane along the ground as she walked. He then went to the counter and called a taxi. When it arrived he went to go to Haven to see if he could get local assistance from the schools headmaster. The place seemed fairly deserted as he walked through the empty hallways. When he arrived at the headmasters office he knocked twice and waited. And waited. He knocked again with no response.

"Professor Lionheart?" Ranger asked. "I'm Capt. Ranger from Atlas, may I speak with you?" he tried the door handle as he spoke. The handle turned easily and the door opened. Inside the room was trashed, books lay everywhere some apparently cut in half and others with burn marks on them. The walls had fire damage and ice was still frozen on some of them. At the back of the room the windows had been broken outwards indicating something was thrown outside. Ranger rushed through the door and to the window. Outside in the courtyard was a still expanding pool of blood around the recognizable lion faunus.

"Professor!" Ranger said leaping down into the courtyard. Scattered around the courtyard were possibly hundreds of type 36 Atlesian standard bullet casings. They were joined by a several dozen AA-12 Valean Anti-aircraft ammunition, a round that Col. Summers requisitioned quite often. It was odd, because that particular round was no longer in service, Vale's already outdated Bullheads had switched over to the newer and smaller AA-16 rounds. Not many weapons people carried or even ones mounted on airships still used a round that size. Ranger quickly made his way over to the fallen headmaster, the man was riddled with bruises that looked like ones a person got when their Aura barely blocked a bullet. There were also several gunshot wounds that had gotten through the man's Aura. however the apparent cause of death, was that the man's head was sitting about an inch away from his neck at this point. Ranger quickly pulled out his scroll and snapped several pictures of the man, the courtyard and the office before bugging out, an agent of a foreign nation couldn't be found at the murder scene of a head of state without there being immediate suspicion that could cause a war. Ranger then called the rest of his team.

"Summers has been to work already here." He told them.

"Understood boss," One of his men answered, "do we have any other leads as to her location?"

"No, I…" Ranger paused, and thought about the events of that day. Summers was a master of disguise even with her missing eye. The only way she could disguise that however was specific hairstyles, or sunglasses. "Shoot. The girl at the airdock."

"What?" another of his men asked.

"She's not here," Ranger said, while checking his watch, "get back to the airdock look for the passengers of flight 1530, we're looking for a short blind girl with long blonde hair, red jacket, blue jeans red and white walking cane. The flight should be boarding any minute now." Ranger flagged down a cab and told them to rush him to the airdock. Upon arrival he rushed to gate three hoping that his men had at least been able to catch a glimps of the illusive spy.

"Hey boss they were mostly boarded when we got here." one of his men said.

"Where's the flight headed?" Ranger asked.

"Vacuo." the other said.

"Then we'll head there first and catch her when she gets off on the other side." Ranger said.

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A/N: well here we go yet another chapter down. I don't know why but this particular fic seems to be the easiest for me to write right now. I'm going to have to put some effort in making sure I'm updating the other ones as well. I hope you enjoy the chapter, and don't worry I will be writing the epic showdown between Ruby and Lionheart (It's really up to you if you think it's epic or not, it happens regardless).

I also want to take a moment (and a bit of the platform here) to talk about something. In my civilian life I work as a soldier, I have worked as a bodyguard for political figures, and I have been thinking about persuing a career in local law enforcement, all this to say that I am very justice minded please keep this and an open mind in consideration of what I'm about to say. I know it is somewhat controversial right now. Innocent UNTIL PROVEN guilty. The way that the nation of america works with regards to crime and justice is this. Not innocent until accused. Right now the RWBY fandom is exploding with controversy over Vic, the (now former) voice actor for Qrow. Someone accused Vic of sexual misconduct, and Rooster Teeth fired him, along with several other organizations. I don't want this to turn into an argument here, but I will remind my readers of the law and the spirit of our nation. When ANYONE is accused of ANY crime the ACCUSERS must prove that the accused commited said crime. If such proof cannot be given then the accused is in fact innocent. It doesn't matter what crime it is, if it's shoplifting or murder, pirating video's or sexual misconduct, where there is no proof there is no crime. It's because of this that I would say I believe it is wrong what Rooster Teeth and other comapanies have done to this man, as they fired him for something that he is right now innocent of.

Anyways if you disagree with me that's fine, I'm just talking about the law. I hope you enjoy the story regardless of your feelings on the matter.