*Chapter 4*
Pulling Teeth
...
They were away. Their destination; the Cosmodrome in Russia; was a relatively short flight away; twenty minutes under minimum propulsion. Seeing as Weiss was chaperoning a recruit, she wanted to use the time to gather herself mentally, to prepare for what could possibly be ahead. However, the problem therein was that her partner simply wouldn't shut the hell up!
"This is a really nice ship," Ruby prattled on. "Dad had a jump ship too; an Arcadia class. It was a real junker, but it got us from place to place. He once jumped us to Mars and back. We didn't land though; he just wanted to prove the ship could do it because Yang was convinced that it would probably explode if he tried it and-" Ruby was finally silenced by an ice-cold stare from Weiss. "-Am I still talking?" Ruby laughed nervously as silence settled over the cabin; perforated only by the sound of passing wind slicing over the ship's aerodynamics.
Ruby drummed her fingers on the Psi Umbra that lay somewhat awkwardly across her lap. Ruby wasn't exactly a model of social interaction. Meeting other people always made her nervous. And Weiss definitely made her nervous. And when he got nervous, she talked, alot. Which is why she almost couldn't stop herself from asking her partner a rather personal question. "So...Weiss...what made you want to become a Guardian?"
The other girl was silent for just a moment, her white-haired head tilted in thought. "I suppose when it came down to it, I didn't really have a choice," she said. "I'm a Schnee, and there's a legacy that comes with that name. But I can't just sit back and let the name do the work for me, I have to live up to it; I have to earn it. What better way to do that than protecting our worlds against The Fallen?"
"So noble..." Ruby sighed. And then she continued to plug Weiss while she seemed to be in a talking mood. "So why is it that you want to be a Cryptarch?"
Ruby could feel a greater sense of enthusiasm from Weiss at that question. "Knowledge," Weiss began. "Is one of the most powerful tools any Guardian can hope to have in their arsenal. Without it, you can not hope to understand your enemy, let alone defeat them. But it's not just knowledge of your adversaries, you must have knowledge of yourself as well. Knowing what you are capable of and having confidence in those capabilities is the surest path to victory.
That's what makes being a Cryptarch so enjoyable. It's not always easy, but being able to pit your mind against technological encryptions and codes from every end of the universe is endlessly exciting!"
Ruby was glad to hear that her partner was passionate about something other than being a total snob. "So what kind of things have you been working on?"
"Engrams, mostly," Weiss responded, happy to keep this intelligent thread going. "Level whites and greens are a breeze, and blues are getting to be fairly simple as well. But level purple is proving to be quite a bit more challenging.
You see, when you're decoding an Engram, the first thing you have to do is isolate it's source code, and from there you can get a lock on it's context; that will tell you exactly who encoded the Engram and how long ago. Then you have to identify the matrices of the Engram's encoding patterns, and after that..." It was at that point that Weiss became aware of the empty silence coming from her receptive audience. She turned around to face Ruby. "Why do I have the terrible feeling that I'm wasting my breath?"
Ruby's brain was already soft boiled from Weiss's string of techno babble. "I um..."
Weiss whipped around in her seat in disgust. "Why is having an intelligent conversation with you like trying to pull rooster teeth?" Weiss called to her Ghost. "Windig?" The snowflake-speckled Ghost appeared at the call. "Play me something, please."
Windig searched her audio files to find something to her mistress's liking. Upon settling on her selection, she played the file via her tiny, but very powerful speakers.
A series of melodic and crystalline chines sounded throughout the cabin, followed by the crashing power chords of an electric guitar. Ruby's head instantly perked up and a huge grin broke across her face as a lovely and husky female voice joined the song; 'Illusion, division, transcendence of angel's aeon...'
Weiss caught on to Ruby's enthusiasm. "You know this one?" She said with a cocked eyebrow.
"How could I not?!" Ruby squeaked, "It's a song about The Traveler!" Ruby joined in the song's next few bars: "Ethereal, material, eternal but still so mortal!"
Weiss smiled to herself as she picked up the next lyric: "Emotion, devotion, grand mirror of souls horizons..."
The two girls had quite a good time singing along with the song. Weiss, not surprisingly, could actually hold a note. Ruby on the other hand...well...she had spirit, one would give her that.
They sang the final chorus at the top of their combined voices:
"Mother of golden sunshine
mountains and oceans!
free all the splendor of your conscience
and reveal your mystic spirit to your sun!
Mother of Allllllllllllllllllllllllllll!"
Ruby collapsed contently back in her chair. "I can't wait wait 'till that album comes out!" She said. "Instead of just teasing us with that single..."
Weiss was about to comment, but Windig cut her short. "We are approaching The Cosmodrome now; less than half a mile off."
Right. Back to business. "Windig, find us a suitable landing zone that won't alert The Fallen to our presence," were Weiss's orders. She then turned to Ruby, "You are ready for this, aren't you?"
Ruby cocked her pulse rifle in response, "Let me at 'em!"
The Javelin jump ship had began it's descent as the landscape below became visible. The ship flew a small circle around a particularly flat stretch of land before coming to a rest about ten feet above the ground, it's thrusters kicking up clouds of sand. Weiss's Ghost initiated the transmat, and both girls were deposited onto the ground below. The Javelin returned to orbit to await it's next call, and Ruby and Weiss were left in the relative silence of their surroundings.
Weiss took note of the number of pristine aircraft that surrounded them; mostly cargo planes, a few personal jets, and even a few choppers. It was then that she realized where they were, "The Mothyards," she said. She looked into the distance where a service building began route to their destination. "We're not too far off..." Weiss faced her Ghost as she said, "Windig, my weapon please." Windig obliged and transferred Weiss's stored weapons into her hands. First was her special weapon, the Nox Cantor II fusion rifle, Arc affinity. Next was her primary weapon, the Marshal-A1 auto rifle. She however, had yet to acquire a heavy weapon.
'How nice it must be...' Ruby thought, to have a Ghost carry your weaponry for you. As Ruby had no Ghost of her own yet, she had to physically haul her lone Psi Umbra everywhere she went. But that suddenly reminded Ruby of a very important question she had been meaning to ask her partner. "I don't think I've asked your class or semblance yet have I?"
Weiss made a few more adjustments to her Marshal-A1 before answering. "Warlock; Voidwalker."
Now that they were armed, it was time to mobilize. "My sparrow please, Windig." Weiss's personal transport appeared before her. Ruby almost rolled her eyes at the color scheme. It was a very light, metallic ice-blue with white details like frost. Ruby couldn't quite put a finger on the model, and deduced that it must have been a custom job, which figured. When you had more glimmer that you knew what to do with, building a custom sparrow was probably not hard to do. Weiss mounted up and kicked the engine to life. "Let's go," she said impatiently to Ruby.
Ruby wondered just how the two of the were going to fit on this thing. A jump ship was one thing, but a sparrow was definitely only built for one person. Seeing nothing else for it, Ruby straddled the small section of the seat that was still available behind Weiss, this was made much more difficult with the auto rifle strapped to her back. To make matters worse, Seeing a Weiss had to steer the sparrow with her feet, Ruby had nowhere to rest her own, so they just dangled rather lamely over the body of the vehicle.
"Ready?" Weiss asked.
"Uhh..."
"Good," Weiss said. She keyed the engine and they off across the Mothyards...
Very slowly, across the Mothyards.
Ruby was ready to be thrown from the sparrow under a sudden burst of speed, but Weiss seemed to be taking her sweet time. "C'mon Weiss, give it some gas!" She said. "I've ridden on Robins that were faster than this thing."
A Robin was a smaller model of Sparrow intended for children. Pretty much the same thing, just without the boost function.
"I was only taking your well-being into account," Weiss quipped. "But since you asked..." Weiss ignited the boost and the speed Ruby initially braced herself for made itself apparent. She gripped the tail of the seat just behind her as the wind burned her eyes. Weiss decided to torture poor Ruby a bit by kicking her right foot out, causing the Sparrow to sharply turn left right through a row of aligned cargo planes. She weaved expertly through the parked aircraft at top speed, slaloming under wings and through narrow isles. Ruby would have begged her to stop, but her teeth were clenched shut, making speech impossible.
After navigating through planes and choppers, Weiss steered the Sparrow up a wide hill; her right foot held out, banking left the whole way. And finally, they reached a security station at the very top. Weiss killed the engine and looked over her shoulder to Ruby. "How was that?" She asked her.
Having finally unglued her jaw, Ruby was able to croak, "I can't feel my teeth..."
They both un-mounted the vehicle as a member of the security personnel still on duty here in the face of the Fallen threat, made his way towards them. Weiss held her Ghost out to the man at his eye level as he approached; this being the equivalent of a police officer flashing their badge.
"Guardians," he said. "About time ya showed up." Ruby noticed that the middle-aged officer looked fairly beaten; drawn from lack of sleep. Ruby, as was her custom, made note of the weapon on his back.
"We are on initiation from the Tower, and this is my recruit," Weiss said, conducting herself as mature and composed. "We've been tasked with eliminating any Fallen in the vicinity."
"Well then, to your work, Guardians. Light be with ya." The man boarded a nearby elevator and was soon lost from sight.
Ruby immediately spoke up. "Why don't the military fight The Fallen with us?" She questioned. "Did you see the Khvostov 7G-02 that guy had? He could lacerate a Vandal from forty yards out with that thing!"
"It doesn't work like that," Weiss said seriously. "The Fallen are enemies of The Traveler, which means that we don't know where they come from. Normal humans with such a small amount of The Traveler's light within them cannot hope to harm The Fallen at all. That's why we exist; Guardians who can wield The Traveler's light as a weapon; a directed force against it's enemies. Without us, humanity could never hope to fight them off." Ruby was silent as she absorbed Weiss's speech. "We need to get moving." And Weiss led the way into the security facility.
Inside, they found themselves surrounded by computers and monitors hooked up to all sorts of electric doodads. Ruby wasn't exactly versed in computers, save for the scroll her uncle Qrow had bought her. Weiss however, was in her element. She approached the nearest terminal and glanced it over. Ruby took note of the studious frown that had come over her face suddenly. "What?"
"These terminals...they're brand new," was Weiss's answer.
"So..."
"So," Weiss retorted smartly, "That mean they were brought in not very long ago, maybe twenty-four hours, max."
"Meaning what?" Ruby said, quickly losing the thread.
"Meaning that whatever they were planning to do here has only recently been disrupted. Which means that the Fallen presence here is very small."
"But how can that be? If The Fallen-" But Weiss had already taken off deeper into the building. Ruby called after her, "What's the hurry?"
"I will not let my mission be delayed because you're too slow," Weiss said while still walking. "I swear that if I get a bad report because-"
VROOOON!
Ruby tore through local space time to instantly appear in front of Weiss, causing her to stop in her tracks. "What the!?" Weiss was equal parts surprised and agitated at Ruby's sudden reappearance.
"I'm not slow, see?" Ruby said. "You don't have to worry about me!"
"Rank one Blade Dancer's should not be able to blink," Weiss said crossly.
"I can do a whole lot of things I shouldn't be able to do," Ruby said. "You're about to see a whole different side of me today, Weiss! And after it's all over, you're gonna be like, 'Wow! That Ruby girl is really, really, coool. And I wanna be your friend.'" VROOOON! Ruby blinked up the corridor ahead and out of Weiss's range of sight.
Weiss shook her head. "You may be fast, but you still excel at wasting time!" She called after her.
Weiss became all too suddenly aware that she was alone in this room , the silence had quickly turned into an eerie oppression. There was a doorway just to her left, leading down a service corridor. And from this doorway, did Weiss hear a disturbance. "Ruby..." she called tentatively. There was no response except for the sound of whatever it was coming through that doorway. "Ruby..." At this point, Weiss was sure that it was not Ruby making those sounds, they couldn't have been human...and just as Weiss had the thought, did her assailant spring from the shadows. A Fallen Vandal, each of it's four hands armed with razor sharp cutlasses.
Weiss was able to work out one last call before the Vandal struck, "Ruby!"
*End of Chapter 4*
...
A/N:
I'll try to keep this one brief. Just a quick thank you for the faves, the follows, and the reviews. I like the way this is coming together and I most certainly hope you guys (and girls ;) ) are enjoying it too. Now if you'll excuse me, I desperately need to find a Pokemon trade partner to evolve my Milotic and Dusknoir.
B.D. Skunkworks