"Mr. Cobe, my appointment is here." Ozpin told the Atlesian officer.
"Oh! Right!" Cobe answered as he stepped around the man who had just walked in, "I'll be right outside Professor." Once the door was shut Professor Ozpin spoke again.
"Well?" He prompted.
"She's on the level," Qrow said, "It took me a bit but I found the warehouse where he was at."
"And?" Ozpin asked.
"Dead as a doornail," Qrow answered, "the rest of the warehouse was cleared out a while ago, but I cleaned up the scene just like you asked."
"Good, good." Ozpin said, "what about my other question?"
"Are we related?" Qrow shrugged, "It's possible, the Branwen clan has been all over Anima, raiding, pillaging, and well, y'know. It's entirely possible that past generations and such have left behind little Branwen kiddo's that led to the girl who's apparently capable of taking on a very dangerous terrorist on her own."
"I see," Ozpin paused, "But she's not from the tribe itself?"
"No, at least not from what I see." Qrow answered, "I talk with my sister on occasion, but I don't think she's ever been out of contact for that long." Ozpin nodded, if she didn't have any connection with Raven then there was a possibility that she wouldn't be scared off like her. Still he'd have to approach this carefully.
"What now Oz?" Qrow asked.
"Now we see if she's ready to see the truth of the world." Ozpin answered, suddenly his computer chirped with a message. "Oh? This is interesting."
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Ruby blinked slowly as she held a hand over her good eye. A rare genuine smile spread over her face as she realised she could still see the ceiling above her. Dr. Polendina's cybernetic eye was already working very well for her.
"Friend Ruby! You are awake!" A familiar sounding voice said from the doorway to the room Ruby found herself in. Ruby turned her head to find herself looking into what could have been a mirror, except for the orange hair and green eyes.
"Penny?" Ruby asked.
"Salutations!" Penny answered, "Father made my new body to resemble you so that I could still help with your mission!" As she said this Penny changed her hair and eye color so that she could easily pass as Ruby's identical twin at the moment.
"O-oh." Was all Ruby could say.
"I'm going to check all the cybernetics father installed in you to make sure they are running correctly." Penny told her as she touched the side of Ruby's head, "Standby." Ruby saw green text scroll across her vision very quickly, "all systems appear to be working correctly. We can move on to more practical tests now." Ruby nodded and they spent the next hour testing all the settings on her new eye, as well as ensuring she could still use the weapon array without Penny in her head. Dr. Polendina had even invented a pigment camouflage system for Ruby to test. She was definitely looking forward to not having to deal with hair dye, and having to worry about only one eye contact anymore.
"Ah! Miss Rose It's good to see you up." Ruby turned her head to see Dr. Polendina come in on his walking chair. "I thought you'd be out for at least another few hours."
"How long was I out?" Ruby asked.
"Most of the night." Dr. Polendina answered. "I had something I wanted to talk to you about as well."
"Really? Just after I got up?" Ruby asked.
"If Penny's stories are any indication you don't stick around in a single place for long." Dr. Polendina chuckled, he wasn't wrong and Ruby had to give him that, his demeanor suddenly became very serious, "Penny mentioned you had an encounter with someone calling himself Watts?"
"That's right." Ruby said, "Do you know anything about him?"
"I do, unfortunately," Dr. Polendina said. "I used to work with him, we were both some of Atlas's top scientists. On his first days in the new position General Ironwood asked us all to put forward our own plans to bolster the defensive forces of Atlas." he motioned towards Penny who had changed back to her regular shade of orange hair and green eyes, "obviously he eventually went with my plan, but Arthur's" Dr. Polendina shuddered, "Arthur's was monstrous."
"How so?" Ruby asked.
"The Paladin was his creation, but it originally didn't have a pilot in the way it does now." Dr. Polendina said, "Arthur had taken several children, orphans, and vivisected them. He took their minds and a few select internal organs and installed them in the machines, allowing them to have an aura and think on their own, much like Penny but much more monstrous in their creation." Polendina sighed, "sadly none of the children lived very long after his experiments. We thought he had died when his airship crashed in the tundra, but it seems that was not the case."
"Clearly." Ruby said, barely holding back a growl, "How come the General let him get away with that?"
"He didn't. The airship was bringing him back to stand trial when it suffered catastrophic failure in its gravity dust systems." The doctor sighed, "The craft nosedived into the tundra from 32,000 feet, it seemed there were no survivors at the time."
"Hmm, so either he's able to cause a catastrophic failure from within a cell, not out of the question," Ruby summarized, "or he had some outside help."
"What are you thinking?" Dr. Polendina asked.
"Watts said they were co-workers," Ruby began.
"His exact words were 'workplace associates'" Penny helpfully supplied.
"Right, I'm thinking that Cinder isn't the boss in this whole thing." Ruby finished
"Interesting," Dr. Polendina said, "you think that there's someone else pulling the strings?"
"Yeah but I don't know who." Ruby answered, "and the only way to figure it out is to pull on the string I do have until it all comes loose."
"Hmm," Dr. Polendina mused, "This seems to be something very large, we'll need support."
"We?" Ruby asked.
"I did propose a partnership didn't I." Dr. Polendina answered, "After patching you up and giving you cybernetic enhancements I am in the same boat as you if we are discovered." Dr. Polendina paused, "And we will need help, I will provide what support I can from here but I won't be able to help in the field."
"What are you suggesting?" Ruby asked.
"Those two young huntsmen are rather trustworthy," Dr. Polendina said, "I vetted them myself."
Ruby glared at him, "You planned this." she accused. To which Dr. Polendina smiled and pressed a call button on his chair.
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"Maybe..Maybe we're doing this wrong." Yang heard Weiss say from her corner of the room. They were currently back in their dorms at Beacon working on one of the last assignments they'd have before finals.
"What do you mean Weiss?" Blake said as she looked up from her book.
"Somebody has framed Ruby right?" Weiss said.
"Yeah, and if I find out who I'll…" Yang answered but was interrupted when Weiss continued.
"So knowing Ruby it stands to reason that she'd search for whoever did it right?" Weiss said.
"It's definitely a possibility." was Blake's response.
"All we've been doing up till now has been chasing Ruby's trail." Weiss said, "we're never going to catch up to her like that, what if we start going after her goal? With any luck we'll meet up with her on the way." Yang and Blake stared at the heiress for a moment.
"That's a surprisingly good idea." Blake said.
"Hey!" Weiss shouted indignantly.
"So how do we go about doing that?" Yang asked.
"Well normally I'd say we start at the framer's beginning…" Weiss said.
"But that would be General Ironwoods murder, and Atlas is still swarming all over that." Blake said.
"Exactly!" Weiss confirmed, "So we go to the next step."
"Which is?" Yang asked.
"Professor Lionheart." Weiss answered. The three huntresses in training shared a look before moving as one.
"What are we waiting for?!" Yang said as she grabbed their bags, still packed from their last trip.
"We can finish this assignment on the flight." Blake said as she grabbed up their notebooks.
"I'll clear it with Professor Ozpin." Weiss said, already in the process of dialing the headmaster.
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"So wait, you're hunting down the person behind the attack on Beacon?" Reuben asked..
"Amongst other things, yes." Ruby nodded. Reuben's hand involuntarily tightened around his weapon, Mars' Avenger.
"What about the others who attacked the school?" He asked.
"They're not my primary target, but I've been taking them out in the process of going after Cinder." Ruby answered.
"Wha-" Guhn began to say, but was quickly interrupted.
"We're in." Reuben said. Both Ruby and Guhn stared at him, wide eyed.
"Hey man, don't you think you may be jumping into this a bit quick?" Guhn said.
"We're talking about the people who attacked Beacon, who destroyed Mars, Who k-" Reuben choked up at the last part, "I've still got you but our team is split apart, and Umbra, he's gone forever." Reuben turned back to Ruby, "So you're going after them? Count me in, for my partner and every other student who died there."
"Well I'm not going to let him get involved in this alone, so you can count me in too, I guess" Guhn said.
"Okay so we're getting a team together." Ruby said, "I've got one more person on the way, she should be here soon though." There was a knock on the clinic's backdoor. "Speak of the devil" Ruby went and opened the door to reveal a faunus woman in her mid twenties, the coveralls and leather flight jacket gave Reuben an idea of what the woman did.
"Summers?" She said, "What's going on? You called me out here in the middle of the night. And your eye, did you get a prosthetic?"
"Yes I did, and I called you over here so I could get you caught up on what's going on." Ruby answered, "We're getting a little help with our hunt. Come on in. Everybody meet Annette"
Annette hesitantly came inside the small clinic and Ruby shut and locked the door behind her.
"Hi, I'm Reuben, and this is Guhn." Reuben spoke up and indicated to himself and his brother.
"Salutations miss Annette!" Penny said, "It is a pleasure to see you again!"
"Uh, yeah, you...too." Annette said with no small amount of confusion.
"That's Penny, Annette." Ruby said.
"Your talking weapon?" Annette asked, though the question went ignored.
"Penny can you bring up my murder board?" Ruby asked.
"For your investigation?" Reuben perked up, he was interested in how exactly Ruby was planning on taking down these terrorists. He got an answer a moment later when a holographic web showing pictures and bios of all Cinders known associates, and quite a few unknown ones as well, many of which had red X's drawn through the pictures.
"In a way, yes" Ruby answered.
"When you said murder board…" Guhn began.
"I mean a list of terrorists that I have or am going to murder, yes." Ruby answered. Reuben's attention however was drawn towards the image of a red haired bull faunus. That face wearing a smirk, his teammate lying two halves, a flash of red and his sword shattering into pieces.
"You okay?" Guhn asked him quietly, pulling him out of the destructive memories.
"Yeah," Reuben answered him, "Ruby, you got this one already?"
"Yes, just recently actually." She said, "He's the one who gave me the injury the good doctor worked on."
"That's good…" Reuben said. He wasn't quite sure how to feel about the object of his revenge being taken away before he had a go at the guy, but he knew that even with that monster gone the people behind the attack wouldn't stop and he needed to make sure that another team wouldn't go through what his team went through.
His musings were interrupted when a scroll started ringing in their group. Everyone pulled out their scroll to see who was being called.
"Who's scroll is that?" Guhn said after everyone's scroll came up blank.
"Ruby, it's the other one." Penny said to the huntress. Ruby's eyes widened as she reached into her other pocket and pulled out a different scroll.
"Everyone be quiet, this was his." Ruby said as she pointed at the image of the red headed bull faunus. Once everyone was quiet she answered the call and put it on speaker.
"H-hello?" The change in Ruby's voice was jarring as an edge Reuben hadn't noticed was there disappeared and was replaced with the sound of a young terrified girl. The other end of the line was silent for a moment.
"Who is this?" a deep gravelly voice asked.
"Um I'm Jade, are you Ad," Ruby sounded like she was about to cry, "are you Adam's friend?"
"I take it he's not there." The voice said.
"N-no. Some huntress got him." Ruby said, a bit of bitter anger entering her voice. If Reuben didn't know who she was he'd have believed she actually cared about the terrorist.
"Just one?" The voice was curt.
"Yes, no, I don't know." Ruby said, "there was this huntress in red and just, so many blades. No one could get close. She killed everybody…"
"How many are left?" the masculine voice asked.
"I-I don't know," Ruby said, "Not many." there was a sigh on the other line.
"Don't worry, I'm on my way, I'll be there in three days." the voice took on a much softer tone, "I'll help, send where you would like to meet to the number on your screen. It's going to be okay."
"T-Thank you." Ruby said as the other line hung up. Instantly Ruby changed back into all business mode. "Penny?"
"Trace was unable to be completed friend Ruby!" Penny said, "The other end was heavily encrypted."
"Annette." Ruby said.
"I'll have the airship ready to go in less than an hour." Annette said, already halfway out the door.
"I'll have to stay here. But I'll get to work setting up a base of operations and getting some equipment for you all together." Dr. Polendina said.
"Ok, Penny I want you with me." Ruby said.
"Of course!" Penny said with a big smile.
"You two." Ruby turned to Guhn and Reuben, "have either of you done any covert work?"
"Um no." Guhn said.
"I hid my ears for elementary school." Reuben answered, still shell shocked by the huge change in Ruby's demeanor between the scroll call and how she acted now. Ruby sighed.
"You'll have to learn quickly then." Ruby said. Reuben realised that this was not the same girl he had admired in his second year, she was an enigma wrapped in a mystery. She walked out the door before turning back to them, "Well, you comin' or not?"
He was looking forward to this.
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A/N: Oh. My. Word. It is finally complete. This Chapter is finished. I am so happy that I finally got to the end of it. There was quite a bit that I wanted to set up in this chapter. The creation of Ruby's new agency, her team taking a new approach to finding her, a bit more foreshadowing. I wonder what interested Ozpin so much? I don't think I've said this in my authors notes before but I'd love to hear what you guys think, and any theory's you guys have. Work has taken off in a way I never expected and I've found myself putting in way to many twelve hour days, so I don't know how regular my update schedule will be in this season, but I am going to at least finish this story and Shadows Rage. Until next time!