Two Minutes Silence

by catsvrsdogscatswin

When Yang falls, its quiet. Calm. She did what she had to do. When Ruby and Blake fall, it's a jolt, a cold shock of horror that they didn't quite make it. When Weiss falls, it's almost with relief. Living or dead, she'll see them again. When Jaune falls, he thinks of his team, of one more letter knocked off of Team JNPR. When they wake up, they're at Beacon. Fix-it fic after V8.

16. Jack o' Lantern

While there's no Lord of the Rings expy as yet in RWBY canon, it seemed too on-the-nose to just restate the name, and there's no color association with the title that I could mess with. I thus made the executive decision that Ozpin would probably have used his millennia-long influence over the Remnant population to nudge writers and creators into making the BBE of fantasy mostly female, in much the same way as he made The Grimm Child as pretty much explicit anti-Salem propaganda. Hence, Lady Sauron (Saffron?) was born, ruler of the Ringwraiths and big scary Eye Of Fire Atop The Tower.

Also, I feel Whitley would heavily relate to Boromir as a character, since like Whitley he ties almost all of his identity into doing his job/performing his duty to please his father.

---

Neo fired off a text with a selfie of her face once her train landed in Vale, letting Little Red and her friends know that she'd arrived safely.

She then spent a productive hour or so digging up her insurance box and burning the contents, before making her leisurely way to the apartment block she and Roman stayed at. As Roman had pointed out, it'd be safer for them to have different apartments in case someone launched an attack, but at the same time, it'd also be a lot safer if they were within (metaphorical) shouting distance of each other for the very same reason. Hence, after her house had been destroyed, Neo had started renting an apartment in the same building he had.

Roman, of course, had the penthouse, which according to him was incentivization, not him being a poncy nitwit. To use his words, the fact that the rent was exorbitant only motivated him to be a better and bigger criminal, to rake in more money so that he could pay his bills and enjoy all the things that made life worth living.

Neo rolled her eyes a little, but fondly. Even if something bad did wipe out his finances, she knew that Roman had more than enough money to keep him afloat in the criminal underworld squirreled away in various places. She herself knew the numbers and passwords for at least five different bank accounts, and she was willing to bet that he had two or three that he hadn't even told her about.

She spun Hush nonchalantly in her hand as she sauntered down the pavement, her eyes automatically picking out marks and targets. The early morning sun was shining, birds were singing, and most importantly, Cinder and her two lackeys weren't here yet. Not so far as Neo knew, at least –they were "arriving" with the main body of Haven students in a few weeks, after all. Neo was supposed to be with them, and she bared her teeth in a bright, pearly smile as she thought of how things wouldn't be going according to Cinder's plans, this time around.

Roman knew better than to keep his door locked –their lifestyle necessitated hasty exits, and if anyone worth worrying about came to call, well, they wouldn't be bothered by a petty lock on a mere wooden door. He kept a security camera trained on the hallway outside his door to avoid surprises, and handled anything else with his usual mix of shrewdness and improvisation.

So there was nothing to stop Neo from walking right into the apartment, letting the door shut behind her. Roman was slouched on one of the stools by the kitchen counter, wearing his black shirt and pants, but without the usual scarf, hat, and jacket to accompany them, and nursing his morning tea with a slightly groggy expression. Neo dropped Hush by Melodic Cudgel in the umbrella pot and crossed the room.

"Woah!" Roman jolted a little as she fiercely hugged him around the middle, but then Neo felt the tension drain out of him as he half-turned to see that she was the one hugging him. "Uh, hey Neo."

Given as she was embracing him from behind, Roman couldn't exactly hug her back, but he did twist a bit more, managing to lay one arm over her comparatively smaller shoulders in a loose clasp.

"Y'know, you've been real friendly lately." he commented. "Something I should know?"

Neo just hugged him tighter.

You died, you big dum-dum, and I haven't been able to do this for years. Let me savor, damnit.

"Girl secret then, all right." Roman shrugged a little at her lack of answer, but didn't move his arm. He chafed her shoulders slightly. "I know we've been doing a lot of high-profile cases lately, but what say we raid a convenience store for some Dr. Piper? For old times sake?"

Neo punched his arm, but affectionately, as she pulled away.

"Yeah, maybe not the best idea when our mutually handsome mugs are plastered across every Scroll network in Vale." Roman agreed, stroking the nonexistent scruff on his chin. He must have shaved before breakfast. "We'll have to wait for all the excitement to die down before we can have a fun run."

Neo nodded, then stepped away from him, moving around the kitchen counter. She gave a happy exhale though, drinking in the once-familiar and now reclaimed rhythms of her old life as she rummaged in his pantry, looking for her favorite mix.

"You know, you have a perfectly good kitchen one floor down." Roman yawned into his mug. Neo threw him an amused look.

Stolen food always tastes better.

"Right, right, of course." He rolled his eyes extravagantly, but he was smiling. "What was I thinking? By all means, mooch."

Neo huffed and stood upright, propping both hands on her hips. Mooch? Neo did half the work and more in their partnership!

"Yeah, sorry." Roman grinned sheepishly. "By which I mean mooch off my food and my kitchen, not the rest of our partnership."

Neo huffed and returned to the important task of trying to grab breakfast from his ridiculously tall cabinets. Roman could complain about her mooching off him all he wanted, but actions spoke louder than words, and Neo's favorite brand of hot chocolate was always here, without her even having to ask about it, alongside pretty much all of her other favorite foods. Well, it wasn't one-sided: she kept a lot of Roman's tea and coffee blends in her own kitchen downstairs, and she knew his usual Dough-to-Go order down to the exact change.

"Ugh. How the hell did you sneak that stuff back into my pantry?" Roman grumbled as Neo walked past him with some oatmeal, liberally spiced with a garnish of cinnamon and sugar. "You're killing me here."

Oh, don't be such a baby. Neo dug her spoon into it and stirred with relish as she hopped up onto the stool beside him.

"I am not a baby. One meal with the late Hei Xiong will make you swear off the stuff forever." Roman said, raising one arm and twisting his hand several times. "It ruined my jacket and just about numbed my wrist."

Yeah, because he and his goons beat your ass when they saw your Spider tattoo.

"Hey, doesn't negate the fact."

Neo snorted, and they continued eating breakfast in companionable silence.

Eventually, Roman drained his cup in one swift gulp, and picked up her empty mug on his way to the sink, flipping them both onto the draining rack without comment.

"So, you finish looking into that thing you left for?" he asked as he wandered his way back to the living room, sprawling with his usual panache over the couch, and Neo nodded, scraping out the last of her oatmeal. She quickly scooted off the chair to set the bowl in the dishwasher, then turned to him and flashed her Semblance, words in a flowing pink script appearing in the air before her partner.

I found some people that might be able to help us get out from underneath Cinder's thumb.

If Roman had been eating or drinking anything, he would've spat it out, and as it was, he fumbled and nearly dropped the remote he was about to use for the television.

"Woah!"

He solidified his hold a second later, staring at the words before they sparkled and dissolved. Roman quickly set the remote down, twisting over the shoulder of the couch to look at her directly.

"Neo, I thought we were over this." he said, sounding annoyed –but Neo knew him better than that. There was worry, even fear, in his eyes. "We've both seen what Cinder is capable of, and we know someone else even bigger is backing her. I don't like taking orders any more than you do, but if we keep our heads down and look for openings, we should be able to survive, at least."

Neo clenched her fists as she stared at him across the countertop. Roman wasn't actually wrong, and she'd taken his advice to the letter the first time they had gone through this. It made sense. The world was wide enough that you could get lost in the cracks anywhere if you tried hard enough, and once this was all over, they could either rake in the benefits or slip away and live to fight another day.

They hadn't known how different this fight was.

They hadn't known that this was something that reached into every corner of life in every kingdom and every settlement, something that was a part of how the world was. Aura shielded you, Grimm were monsters, and Salem was at war with all of civilization. It was one of the fundamental facts of Remnant. Neo and Roman could run, but now she knew that there was nowhere for them to run to.

And fighting for Salem?

Neo knew the truth of that too, now. That was just sharpening the knives for their own execution, and when faced with the inevitability of that, or a risk, Neo was more than willing to take a risk. They could still run, could go bury themselves in Vacuo, but that meant stepping off the game board and letting others run the show, and there was nothing both Neo and Roman hated more than the idea of letting other people's decisions control their lives. No, they had to stand their ground, and between the two sides, they had to pick whichever one would give them the highest chance of survival.

I AM looking for openings. Neo replied, letting the Semblance-created words float in the air between them. One of the reasons that she trusted Roman so much was that even from the very first moment they'd met, he'd always been able to tell almost exactly what she was trying to say with just a glance –but this wasn't the time to rely on that. She needed to make sure that he got every word. This is one of the ones I've found.

Roman held her eyes for several seconds as the words faded, his gaze calculating, judging, measuring.

"Okay…" he finally said, slow and careful. "You really think this is worth it?"

Neo held his gaze and nodded.

Roman clicked his tongue, then swung back around on the couch and raised his hand, beckoning to her without looking. Neo scampered around to sit on the other couch, crossing her legs as Roman fished under the coffee table for a notepad and pen. He laid them carefully on the table, then looked at her with an air of expectation.

They're Huntresses. Neo wrote with her Semblance, fibbing just a little. Cinder's killed people they care about, so they're out for her blood.

Roman nodded slowly. Revenge was an ironclad motive that they could both trust without reservation. Roman didn't trust any people aside from himself and Neo –and even then, old habits died hard enough that he probably had several contingencies known only to himself– but what Roman could trust was his ability to read and use others. People looking for revenge were easy to predict and easy to control.

They're willing to work with us, let us walk away after, as long as we bring them Cinder's head. Neo continued. Roman considered that for several moments.

"You think they can actually take her?"

I wouldn't have gotten on board with them if I didn't, would I?

"Hah!" Roman barked out a laugh. "True."

They've got history with her backer, too. Spent YEARS trying to take her down. Neo continued, feeling hopeful. Roman didn't seem like he was finding any holes in her arguments, which was encouraging both for roping him into this and for this whole endeavor actually having a chance for success. They think that if they can use us for insider information, they can take Cinder out and use that as a stepping stone to start crippling her boss.

"Mm-hmm…" Roman let the sound trail off as he stroked his chin thoughtfully. He tapped the pen against the notepad with his other hand. "I'm hearing a lot that they're willing to do for us, but not much they're asking us to do for them. Sounds a bit too good to be true, if you catch my drift."

They think they're going to have ONE chance at a perfect shot. Neo said. So for right now, they're moving cautious and slow. Having us willing and ready to act for them is good enough, for now, but they'll be wanting us to do enough for them later. Possibly help with the ambush on Cinder. Possibly help take care of her two brats. Possibly help with underworld activity. They're not sure yet.

Roman's eyebrow slowly raised.

"And they're willing to let us walk after, no questions asked?"

They know they need us if they want to pull this off without a hitch. Neo replied, holding his gaze without a trace of doubt. And after they're done with Cinder, they've got bigger fish to fry. Letting us walk away after was part of the deal I cut, and they didn't have any problems with the idea at all.

Roman considered that for several moments, silently, as Neo let the glittering words of her Semblance fade away. She knew better than to interrupt his reverie, and despite the notepad he'd taken out, Roman knew better than to scrawl out his ideas. If they were seriously considering double-crossing Cinder Fall and her lackeys, they couldn't afford to leave any evidence, and that meant no schemes on his idea board.

"So, you're the go-between, right?" Roman asked after a little while. Neo nodded her head. "Think I should meet 'em too? See what we're working with?"

Neo shook her head vehemently. She'd managed to convince him, barely, that they needed outside help, and that said help was worth working with. The second he saw Little Red or any one of her other equally-unprepossessing friends, Roman would bail on the idea faster than police protection at a Faunus protest. The pipsqueak might have all the skills and experience of a licensed Huntress, but she didn't look it at fifteen, and neither did any of her slightly-older friends.

"I'm not that bad." Roman said huffily, interpreting her headshake his own way. "You're just pretty much the first and only good help I've ever managed to find."

Neo put a hand to her cheek and mock-fanned herself, as if cooling a blush.

"I'd say don't let that go to your head, but it looks like it's too late." Roman told her, grinning. "Seriously though. You sure this is a horse we should be backing?"

Neo nodded firmly. There might be a bit of friction as far as morality and ethics went between her and all the others who'd come back, but they all still had the same basic goal in mind.

Survival.

Specifically, survival against Salem.

If Neo and Roman abandoned Salem, Ruby and her friends wouldn't have a spec of attention to spare on them, never mind spend towards trying to put them in a jail cell. They didn't have a problem letting Neo and Roman walk after this all finished, because compared to the enormity of a threat that Salem was, what did a few silly robberies matter?

And as for betrayals as this scheme was ongoing… Neo had their measure. For once, it was advantageous to be working with so-called heroes, because as ruthless as Little Red could be, her ruthlessness did not extend towards abandoning allies. You had to take the first move and stab her in the back before she dropped her ethics like loose change, and Neo had absolutely no intention of poking that Ursa. Not this time around.

Oh, sure, if someone's head had to go on the guillotine, it would probably still be Neo and Roman's heads before anyone else's. They were part of the group, but there was a hierarchy of personal ties there, and they were at the bottom. They were tools and allies, not close friends and teammates. If someone had to be sacrificed, they'd probably be the first. If a strategy might cause her and Roman's deaths, Little Red and her friends would probably only put up a token struggle before they accepted those casualties as a risk worth taking.

So no, Neo still didn't trust the Huntresses and their allies at all. But in the criminal underworld, you didn't need to trust someone to work with them –you just had to get their measure, find out what sort of person they were, and trust your own judgement from there. Neo and Roman worked with Junior on occasion because the man knew better than to cause trouble with them, not because they didn't believe for a second that he wouldn't sell them out if someone paid high enough.

Neo had gone to Lil' Miss in Mistral because she had Lien, and Lil' Miss had accepted that payment and not skinned her alive for her part in thwarting the Spiders' effort to expand into Vale because… well, probably as much in sympathy for Roman's death as the fact that Neo had cash in hand. He had worked for her, once upon a time, and learned a lot, and his tone when he spoke of her had the wary, occasionally mocking respect of a criminal student to a master.

Roman blew out a long, groaning sigh.

"Fine." he said, waving his hand briefly as he tossed the pen down on the table and dramatically flopped back against the couch. "I'm in. Let's start working out contingencies, I guess."

Neo grinned and moved to sit beside him on his couch, rubbing her hands together gleefully. Roman picked the pen back up again with a mostly-theatrical sigh and clicked it, pulling the sketchpad over to himself as he leaned back over the table.

"First things first, we should probably start trying to actually do our jobs a bit better, in the sense that the more useful we seem to Cinder, the more she'll get off our backs. It'll take a bit of a delicate touch, since if we suddenly stop complaining and fall in line instantly, she'll know something's up, but if we drop the sass bit by bit…"

Neo smiled happily as she leaned against his shoulder, looking at the schematics for Cinder's latest orders as he sketched them out.

It was good to scheme with Roman again.

---

Whitley seemed a bit nervous as they went down to Mantle. Despite the transport vehicle being perfectly clean –so clean, in fact, that they were the only ones in it– he seemed leery of the walls and floor, as though he expected them to be grungy. Penny ran a scan just to be sure, but everything was green. The transport vehicle was no more and no less dirty than the ones that ran through Atlas, since it was mostly transport for military or those who could afford the fee, and none of those people were miners, who would probably carry the most grime.

Hmm.

Penny felt her lips turning down in another uncharacteristic frown.

Why was the transit fee for the ships going from Atlas to Mantle so much more expensive than the Mantle-Mantle and the Atlas-Atlas fees? She had the money, of course, but if anyone in Mantle ever wanted to go up to Atlas for even a short visit, it'd be exponentially harder for them to make it, and they wouldn't have a lot of money to spend on leisure afterwards, restricting travel to business-matters-only and Atlesians like Penny and her father, who worked between both cities.

That didn't seem… moral.

"Have you ever been down to the city?" Penny asked politely, glancing towards Whitley as he sat gingerly on the bench. He huffed and looked away, folding his arms tighter across his chest.

"Of course not. There's nothing in Mantle worth seeing."

"But your family owns the SDC, don't they?" Penny asked, feeling puzzled. "The Dust mines and refineries are in Mantle, not to mention several shipping companies. Wouldn't it be important to be familiar with them?"

Whitley straightened a little as his eyes widened, obviously struck by her remark. It was the first sign of emotion she'd seen from him, and Penny mentally congratulated herself. Ilia was right: it was important to pay attention to other people's personalities and their expressed likes and dislikes, and then use Penny's own experience to find a similar match in her memory. Whitley was obviously a very prim and proper young man, like the new rookie recruits Penny saw all the time in the Atlas military. Therefore, if Penny treated him like them, she'd have a basis of familiarity, even if she'd never talked to someone like this before.

New recruits want to do good at their job and receive praise for the results. Penny mentally ticked back. They also want to demonstrate their competence and be accepted by their peers.

Did Whitley have peers? He wasn't in the military or in school, the only two social points of reference that Penny had. People almost always made their friends through school, even if they weren't attending Hunter academies, but if Whitley was receiving his education through tutors at home, he would have almost no points of reference to dealing with other people.

Perhaps he made all his friends at balls or the other grand occasions that rich people held.

That sounded lonely, not seeing your friends more than once or twice a year. Weiss had mentioned that her father monitored his children's communications, which seemed awfully helicopter-parent of him, so Whitley probably had limited access to the Scroll network, too.

"Perhaps… you could show me around those Dust refineries." Penny said, thinking aloud. Whitley turned his head slightly to blink at her –for once, without any hint of disdain. Penny brightened, warming to the idea. "My father says that the surest sign of understanding is being able to explain the idea to someone else. I do not know much about Dust."

"But… you're a Huntress cadet." Whitley said slowly, his brow furrowing.

"I only use some small amounts of Gravity Dust in my swords." Penny said. She did not tell him that with her mechanical body, it had been deemed too dangerous for her to handle Dust in large quantities. "And I do not know anything about how it is dealt with in factories. Perhaps you could teach me!"

She did not mistake the way Whitley's chin imperceptibly lifted at her words, or how a small, excited gleam entered his eyes as his shoulders pulled back. That excitement quickly faltered and died, however, like he had remembered something that made his light go out, and it was Penny's turn to furrow her brow as Whitley drooped a little, looking away.

"You probably won't be very interested." he said, his tone becoming subtly cutting once more. Penny made note of how his shoulders hunched, though, making his posture defensive rather than as arrogant as he was trying to sound. "No one really is. Not even father likes to hear me rattle on about company minutiae –he'd rather hear about the profits than the mechanics."

"I very much like mechanics." Penny said, and scooted closer to him on the seat. "My father is a scientist, remember?"

Whitley gave her a long, almost wary look.

"And you're only here because Weiss told you to come fetch me." he said, his expression sour.

"I am here because Weiss is my friend." Penny said. "And she was worried about you being alone at home. She wanted to come see you over her break to make sure that you were okay, but since your father does not trust her, she sent me to infiltrate your estate instead."

She gave him a bright, fearless smile.

"And I like making friends!" Penny added. "I did not have any before I met Weiss and her team at Beacon, so I am always pleased to have more."

She held out her hand in invitation, beaming at him all the while. Whitley stared at her for a long, hard moment, before his blue eyes lowered to her outstretched hand. Slowly, carefully, he reached out and clasped it, glancing aside at the same moment as his pale cheeks flushed red.

"This means nothing." Whitley grumbled, even as he gingerly shook her hand up and down a little.

Penny giggled.

---

Even though he still seemed abnormally worried about dirt, Whitley came alive when he and Penny started visiting the Dust refineries and mines in Mantle. He didn't pay that much attention to the workers, but he lit up when he was talking about the machines or the types of Dust involved in this and that process, flitting about as much as he could and occasionally forgetting about the risks of dirtying his pale clothing as he leaned close to this or that contraption. Penny listened with interest, occasionally wedging herself into the conversation to try and ask an intelligent question, which Whitley tended to take like a horse with a bit between its teeth as he galloped on for another breathless minute, talking about this or that theory.

Penny was fascinated by how much he seemed to know, and as they rambled around Mantle, Whitley explained that it was the product of his upbringing. As the youngest child of three, all the pressure had initially been on Winter, and then Weiss after her –they had been the ones who had been most exhaustively sculpted into the model of heiress. Whitley, by contrast, had a little more room to decide the course of his studies. Not a lot, but enough so that as the youngest child, he had plenty of time to observe how his father interacted with his siblings and use that information to get what he wanted by behaving how he was expected to.

If Whitley was quiet, unobtrusive, and obedient, his father would mostly let him be, especially if Whitley showed acceptable progress in his areas of approved study. Whitley had thus used this information to his advantage by delving into Dust theory and his other interests, all of which ultimately led back to the SDC and how to run it.

"Weiss said in one of her latest messages that she wouldn't mind handing the company over to me." Whitley confided to Penny as they picked over bowls of borscht soup in a restaurant. Whitley's pale clothing and spiffy attitude would have had him standing out like a sore thumb if he hadn't picked up several streaks of oil and a light coating of mundane dust from their time in one of the factories –and even as it was, plenty of people were throwing him second looks.

"That does make sense." Penny said, stirring her bowl with a spoon and trying not to feel guilty for not eating it. "Weiss is quite a skilled Huntress for her age, while you are more interested in civilian activities. You both can accomplish a lot more if you play to your respective strengths."

"Right?" Whitley puffed out his chest a little. "She said that the only reason she clung so tenaciously to her title despite going to train as a Huntress was because she wanted to redeem our name –she felt she had to uphold our honor. But after we actually had some discussion, she realized she could trust me with it."

"Really?" Penny tilted her head, and Whitley's expression fell a little as he looked into the swirling red depths of his soup.

"Father… prioritizes profit over everything else." he said slowly, his shoulders hunching again in that defensive way that Penny didn't like one little bit. "Which is –it's fine! It's what a businessman is supposed to do, after all. But…"

He played with his spoon a little.

"Our grandfather, the one who made the SDC… he didn't operate like that. Weiss told me that she feels our father's attitude is not sustainable in the long term, that if we continue operating like this, sooner or later the company will fall to ruin. She doesn't want that to happen any more than I do."

"Hmm." Penny lifted her spoon and pretended to take a loud sip. "And is that what you think?"

"I- I don't know." Whitley admitted, his voice snapping a little. "It's true that because we essentially hold the monopoly on Dust, there's no way people can really replace us, so they have to take the company as it is whether they like our practices or not, but…"

"But?" she prompted, curious.

"Well, there's the White Fang and all that nonsense." Whitley said, tossing his hand out dismissively. "I can't tell you how much profit we've lost to them, and it occurs to me… what if we just… stopped?"

He looked down at his soup and stirred it again, thoughtfully.

"What if we weren't known for abusing Faunus? It'd be complicated and hard, sure, to rework the company system, but the net profit at the end of it would far outweigh the difficulty, right? Instead of fighting us every step of the way, people would want to work for us, and we'd stop having to pay for protection on convoys, or guard ourselves against Faunus assassination, or replace insured Dust that's been stolen by them."

"Sounds complicated." Penny said, and took another fake sip.

"Well, Weiss thinks I can do it." Whitley said, looking somewhat flattered as his back straightened again. "She says I'm clever and inventive, and I've got the drive to do it. I think I can, too. I already know a lot about how the company works, and I'm getting training on dealing with the HR problems."

"What about Faunus?" Penny asked, remembering Ilia's advice, and he frowned at her.

"I said I was getting training to deal with that sort of thing."

"From a Faunus though, right?" Penny asked, and he blinked. "…Right?"

"Well, I mean…" Whitley shifted slightly in his seat. "What do they know that a trained professional doesn't?"

"What it's like being a Faunus in Atlas, for one thing." Penny said, stating the obvious. Whitley winced a bit. "You saw that for yourself today, didn't you? You knew all about those machines that you showed me, because you'd been taught about them from books and licensed professionals, but you still learned something from getting your hands directly on them. Education is no substitute for experience, as my father says."

Whitley's eye twitched slightly.

"I think the law would have several things to say about me 'getting my hands directly on' a Faunus." he deadpanned, twitching his fingers in air quotes.

"No, not like that." Penny huffed, smacking her spoon back onto the table. "I mean, my father has a clinic here in Mantle, and he treats a lot of Faunus. Maybe you could visit us regularly and learn a few things."

Whitley stared at her for several seconds.

"You… wouldn't mind that?" he finally asked, his expression hesitant, before he coughed into one fist. "I mean, I wouldn't want to impose. I'm sure your father is quite busy."

"He likes it when people visit." Penny said cheerfully. "And besides, we'll have to go see him today anyways to clean your clothes off."

Whitley looked down at himself, apparently noticing the oil and dust streaked over his clothes for the first time, and squawked in dismay.

---

Penny's father was naturally overjoyed to see them both, and poleaxed Whitley by offering a change of clothes and some hot chocolate for after his shower. Penny was torn between amusement and worry, that seeing an ordinary, caring parent was so unnatural to Whitley, and exchanged many a speaking glance with her father as Whitley flustered his way through that encounter.

"That boy needs help." Pietro said with a sigh when Whitley had finally staggered his way off to the shower in the apartment above the clinic, expression shellshocked.

"I agree." Penny said, busy pouring the boiling water into the carafe. "Jacques Schnee does not seem like he is very good at completing his parental duties. Weiss doesn't like him at all."

"And she would know, wouldn't she." Her father stroked his beard thoughtfully, though he was smiling just a little. "Perhaps I am in need of an apprentice down here. So much to do, so little time…"

"I think Whitley would like that." Penny said. "He is very interested in how things work, and he has a very inquisitive mind."

"Well, let's not put the cart before the horse." Pietro leaned forward as his chair walked itself around the counter, heading for the couch in their living room. "His father has to agree to letting him come down here, for one thing, and you won't always be around to guarantee his security in Mantle."

"Perhaps General Ironwood might help." Penny suggested. "Whitley's sister works for him, so perhaps she might take some time out of her day to escort Whitley here."

"Perhaps." Pietro heaved himself carefully from chair to couch, relaxing into the cushions with a sigh. "Ah, there we go. You said that you were expecting your friend to come by sometime tomorrow?"

"She should be here bright and early." Penny said, bouncing a little on her heels as she waited for the hot chocolate to be ready. "And she does not need directions to the clinic. I asked."

"Speaking of Schnees and travel," Her father looked at the clock on the mantle and then at the window to the darkness outside. "I don't think the transport ships are willing to ferry civilians at this hour. Your friend just might have to stay the night."

Her father was lying. Whitley was a high-profile target as far as civilians went, which meant that if authorized personnel like Pietro Polendina or his daughter made a case for it, the transport ships would be perfectly happy to ferry him back up to Atlas. But then again, he was a high-profile target that risked attention from the White Fang and other terrorists, and it was so very late at night…

"Oh dear." Penny said woodenly. "I do believe the streets are far too dangerous for Whitley right now. There is absolutely no choice except for us to host him tonight in a sleepover. How very horrible."

Penny hiccupped.

"No choice at all." she giggled sheepishly, and her father laughed.

Whitley came back while they were popping popcorn, wearing some pajamas Pietro kept for overnight patients as he toweled his dripping white hair.

"What… are you doing?" he asked, before automatically taking the mug of hot chocolate Penny handed to him.

"It's too late for the transport ships to run, so you'll have to stay the night with us." Penny informed him, and Whitley blinked, taken aback. Guilt and pleasure warred for dominance on his face, and he hastily coughed and looked away in what Penny was beginning to recognize as his favored social tic for avoidance and/or dissembling.

"W-well, I mean, if I absolutely have to… I'm not sure my father will be happy about it, though."

"It's okay." Penny told him, breathing in the scent of hot buttered popcorn with pleasure as she took the bowl out of the microwave. She might not be able to taste, but at least her father had given her scent receptors. "We don't mind getting in trouble."

"Indeed we don't." her father said, and patted the middle seat on the couch. "Come and join us."

"I don't know…" Whitley mumbled, only to be pushed in the back by Penny as she took his towel and nudged him over to the couch.

"Trust me!" she chimed, her eyes bright. "This'll be fun!"

Whitley sat, careful to avoid jarring his cup of hot chocolate, and began to sip it tentatively as Penny bustled around, setting up the deep bowl of popcorn and adjusting the lights.

"What are you two doing?" he asked, watching Penny's progress inquisitively. "Some kind of sound demonstration?"

"Demonstration?" Pietro laughed. "No, no. It's after-work hours, which means it's time to unwind."

"…right." Whitley said after a second, and sipped his hot chocolate some more. The idea seemed foreign to him, and Penny shook her head in sympathy. Imagine having so much work to do that you never had any time to relax with your family and friends! She couldn't imagine a worse fate, unless it was to not have any friends or family at all.

Whitley's tendency to bury his stilted awkwardness in hot chocolate meant that he burned through his mug within minutes, however, and he set it down on the coffee table and leaned back on the couch as Penny flitted about the room, still wearing that vaguely perplexed expression.

"So what are we doing?" he finally asked.

"We are watching a documentary!" Penny said eagerly, plopping down beside him on the couch and slapping the DVD case onto the table, so that all might see and admire.

"You –what?"

"A documentary." Her father explained, plucking some popcorn from the bowl and crunching on it. "For educational purposes."

"What- no. That is absolutely asinine. I'm not a child." Whitley muttered, folding his arms tightly across his chest as he sat wedged between Penny and her father on their old beat-up couch, for all the world like the pouting toddler he claimed he wasn't.

"Now, now." Her father patted Whitley's head absentmindedly. "I'm sure your father wouldn't be happy to know that you were out walking through the streets this late at night, so it's only good manners to invite you to stay the night."

"And it is only natural to thus invite you to join our nightly documentary-viewing in the process!" Penny added cheerfully from Whitley's other side. He gave her a disparaging look.

"I'm willing to go with you so far as not walking out alone, but this is not a documentary." he huffed with excessive patience, snapping his fingers towards the DVD case on the table in front of them.

"Well, it can be if you imagine hard enough." Pietro said amicably. "Penny, sweetie, why don't you get us going?"

"Right, dad!"

Penny bounced up and started turning on the screen. Since her dad had moved out of his chair and onto the couch, it'd take exponentially longer for him to get back into his machine and move over here, and Whitley didn't know their system like she did.

Speaking of, the wealthy young man seemed in despair, covering his face with both hands. Oh dear. Perhaps he didn't like the movie cover? Since he was a civilian, did the image of the fiery ring or the men with all their swords drawn scare him?

"This is literally The Lady of the Rings." Whitley groaned through his fingers. "It's not a documentary, it's a fantasy movie! Even I know that and father doesn't let us watch any television!"

He stiffened belatedly, looking up a little from his hands.

"I-I mean-"

"It's fine." Pietro waved the mistake gently aside as Penny beamed. "And a documentary can be anything as long as it's informative, Whitley."

"Wink." Penny added, beaming harder.

"You're not supposed to vocalize the wink." Whitley muttered, then heaved a heavy sigh, grabbing the popcorn bowl and jerking it into his lap. "Fine. Since I apparently don't have anything better to do, I suppose I should watch this… ugh, 'documentary' with you. What's it supposed to be informative about, anyways? Hobbits and elves?"

"Heroism, actually." Pietro said, stroking his chin with a twinkle in his eye. "I think you'll enjoy it."

---

"NO!" Whitley cried, his mouth gaping open as he clutched the pillow tighter to his chest. "No, he can't, he can't- dodge!"

Another black arrow slammed into Boromir's chest as Whitley gave an anguished gasp.

"No, not now, he can't- he had just come back to himself!" he gasped, his eyes glimmering wetly as Penny nodded, pretending to wipe a mechanically-impossible tear from her lens. "No no no no, stop it, stop, get away from him! Ugh! You fiends!"

"Uruk-hai." Pietro offered, popping a piece of popcorn in his mouth. He had wisely reclaimed the bowl as they got towards the end of the movie, seeing Whitley getting more and more invested as he clutched his pillow to his chest.

Whitley gave an enraged scoff.

"They're no better than Grimm!" he snarled. "How dare they- Boromir was protecting the hobbits, how could they- NO!"

Another protesting cry was torn out of him as he saw the hulking orcs seize Merry and Pippin, dragging them off into the forest.

"Oafs! Ingrates! You- foul creatures!" Whitley cried at the screen, squeezing the pillow even harder in his emotional rage. "Get up! He has to live through this, he has to! Boromir!"

Penny nodded sadly as the lead orc came to stand before the kneeling man with his bow drawn. She'd seen this movie –ahem, this documentary, before, so she knew what was coming. She still remembered how sad this felt, though. Boromir had been so heroic at the end.

"YES!" Whitley cheered as Aragon tackled the orc away from the kneeling man. "The horn of Gondor still works, you see! Take that, you villain!"

He watched, enraptured, as Aragon chopped down the last of their enemies, but then his face fell as the other man rushed to Boromir's side.

"No!" Whitley cried as Aragon soothed the dying man, as Boromir rebuffed him. "No, it isn't over! It won't! It can't! Frodo still has the Ring!"

Penny nodded, tucking her chin into the top of her own pillow. This was turning out to be quite the fascinating commentary: she had never had friends over on movie nights –er, to watch documentaries with her and her father. It was almost as fun as seeing the movie for the first time had been for herself, watching someone else discover all those familiar emotions and reactions for themselves. Perhaps she could watch documentaries together with Ilia and Team SSSNI when she got back to Beacon. Ooh, and Teams RWBY and JNPR too!

"NO!" Whitley almost shrieked as Boromir breathed his last words and fell still. "That isn't -it's not fair!"

"It's meant to be a realistic fantasy." Pietro told him kindly.

"Then where's his Aura? His Dust? His Semblance?!" Whitley spat, jabbing a finger at the screen. "Boromir was an incredible warrior –he shouldn't be killed by something like this!"

"There, there." Penny briefly unclamped one arm from her own pillow to pat Whitley's shoulder. This time, he didn't shy away from it, too busy staring with watering eyes at the screen as the three survivors discussed their plans.

Of course, with the splitting of the Fellowship, the movie was almost over, and Whitley's face fell as Frodo and Sam started trudging down the mountainside.

"Is that… is that it?" he asked as the credits began to play.

"Well, there's two more movies," Pietro said, rubbing his chin. "But they're both more than a few hours each, so-"

"No!" Whitley practically flung his pillow outwards as he uncurled himself from his fetal position, jumping up from the couch as he turned to face Penny and her father, his once-composed expression wild. "I refuse to let this be the end of it! I need to know how this whole thing ends! What about Merry and Pippin?! What about Gondor? I can't just leave it here!"

"Well…" Pietro looked uncertain.

"I can stay up and watch it with him, and you can go to work like normal in the morning." Penny offered brightly. "Besides, Whitley doesn't have anything to do tomorrow morning, so we can delay a little to let him sleep in."

"I can go long hours on little sleep." Whitley almost begged, his eyes alight as he gripped both sides of the popcorn bowl and leaned over it to stare intently, almost desperately at Pietro. "Father says it's an important skill for a businessman! I can definitely stay up and watch this and still perform my duties tomorrow!"

"Oh, all right." Pietro sighed with faux reluctance, and then reached up to ruffle Whitley's hair again. "But next time, let's plan this a little better, okay? Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. And besides, you're much too young to run a business. How old are you?"

"Thirteen." Whitley said briskly, moving to seize his pillow again and plop back down to his previous spot on the couch. "And that doesn't really matter."

"It matters to us." Pietro muttered under his breath, and lifted the remote, pressing a button to eject the DVD as the screen went blank. "Penny, if you'd do the honors?"

"It would be my pleasure!" she saluted, before scampering around the edge of the table and picking up the precious disk.

---

It was both terrifying and disorienting to be at the gates of Atlas once again.

The skies seemed so empty, bereft of both a massive fleet and of the boiling red clouds that had accompanied Salem and all her Tempest Grimm. It was just –sky, just the same ragged clouds that streaked their way over the tundra's winter-pale sky, the same kind of horizon and the same kind of sunrise that Weiss had seen all her life up until she left for Beacon.

But though it'd been less than a year since she left Atlas to attend Beacon, Weiss's most recent memories of Atlas were of fire and fear and ruin, and her shoulders were one solid knot of tension as she landed in Mantle and began making her way to Pietro Polendina's clinic. Every loud noise was another Grimm alert as her hand flinched towards Myrtenaster, every whoosh of airships overhead was being caught by Ironwood and his forces as Weiss's body readied to defend herself against hordes of misinformed soldiers.

She paused beneath an awning to give herself a stern mental shake.

Get ahold of yourself, Weiss. Nothing's gone that wrong yet, and if you do your job properly, nothing ever will.

She took several deep breaths there, safe out of the main flow of the crowd, forcing her unwilling body to relax muscle by muscle. Were any more catastrophes raining down on her? No? Why, then, surely there was nothing for her to be so tense about. Surely her mind and body could take a few cues from the environment and relax.

Weiss sniffed in irritation at herself as she started forward again, knowing that paranoia still radiated an inch outside her control, waiting to pounce the moment she dropped her guard. She wondered if she would ever be able to visit her home kingdom without remembering those apocalyptic nights in vivid, painful detail. Perhaps… perhaps after they defeated Salem, and she managed to live through it, Weiss could take a nice long sabbatical here, harassing Jacques (if he still lived) and the other Atlesian elite. Perhaps she could make some more pleasant memories with Robyn and her Happy Huntresses.

Hmm. Now there was a thought. Since Weiss's job was to strengthen their allies in Atlas over break, it'd make sense to drop in on Robyn and the others, wouldn't it? Perhaps she could convince them to make ties with Pietro and Penny, and maybe, at a stretch, Whitley. Having his sympathy would work wonders for their Dust supply, and supplies were one thing that Robyn and her Huntresses desperately needed and couldn't get legally.

But first Weiss had to make contact with the Polendinas, and decide whether or not she'd let Whitley in on the loop. She was leaning towards not: knowing that he could become a decent human being didn't mean he was one yet, and he was too deep under Jacques's influence for Weiss to feel safe in trusting him with vital information. One slip, and their father would know, and Weiss already had ample evidence that he'd be foolish and greedy enough to sell them all out to Salem's minions.

The clinic looked more or less the same when she spotted it, perhaps a few shades cleaner. That made sense: Weiss was pretty sure standards had slipped after the Fall of Beacon and Atlas had closed its borders. Appearances had no longer been important –what was important was providing Pietro's services to a shocked and battered kingdom.

"Hello?" she asked, stepping in, and a part of her heart sank when Pietro looked up from his desk and there was no Maria. Of course not, Maria said that she came here every decade or so, and by that count, she still had three years before she showed up in Atlas. She was probably… somewhere in Mistral? Was that where she lived, or had it just been a transit stop on the way here?

Weiss missed her in any case.

"Ah, you must be Weiss Schnee." Pietro said warmly, adjusting his glasses a little as he straightened up with a smile.

"Pleased to meet you, sir." Weiss said with a slight curtsey, adjusting the strap of her travel bag so she wouldn't get unbalanced as she did. "Is Penny here?"

"She's upstairs with your brother." Pietro said, making Weiss's eyebrows rise a little. She'd asked Penny to help her spirit Whitley out of the estate for a little bit, but she definitely hadn't expected Penny to work that fast or that well.

"I'll head right on up, then." Weiss said, not letting the uncertainty slow her as she stepped towards the second door she saw behind the patient's chair. "The staircase is through here, right?"

"Yes indeed." Pietro chuckled as she pushed open the door. "Try to be quiet, though –I'm not sure if they're up yet."

With that slightly bewildering statement, Weiss shrugged and climbed, curiosity blooming in her as she discovered a part of the pharmacy she had not yet seen. She'd really only been here once, when they'd first come to Atlas –Yang and the others had returned when they'd gotten their hoverbikes to help with the evacuation effort, but even then, Weiss didn't think they'd strayed past the first floor. This was an entirely new experience for her, and as plebian as it may be, Weiss relished it. It had been so very long since she could have a new experience that she could enjoy without reservation or paranoia.

With these thoughts in mind, Weiss pushed open the door to the apartment at the top of the stairs, and then paused in the doorway, blinking. This was… an interesting scene.

The apartment itself wasn't all that unnatural, an open floor plan decorated in earthly tones and filled with bookshelves and medicine cabinets, but what arrested Weiss's attention most of all was the sight of her younger brother.

Her younger brother Whitley, who was sprawled over a beaten-up, almost shabby olive-green couch in the living room area, an equally worn pillow on his chest and an identical one stuffed under his head, his arms akimbo. Her younger brother Whitley, who was wearing pajamas that looked suspiciously like spare patient's clothing that Pietro had had lying around, a matching shirt and trousers of the kind of rough brown cotton that Whitley would ordinarily never touch, much less wear. Her younger brother Whitley, who had the faint shadows of dark circles under his eyes, and a half-open mouth with a shining smear on his cheek that looked suspiciously, under the circumstances, like popcorn butter.

Penny was next to him, pretending to sleep curled up on the coffee table with her folded hands tucked neatly under her head. Several used mugs of what looked like hot chocolate dotted the table around her, and Weiss saw a large, empty bowl with a few forlorn popcorn crumbs and kernels at the bottom on the ground beside the table.

Weiss had to take a moment to just… process the scene, and then a smile broke through as she gave a quiet cough.

Penny popped up instantly from her spot on the coffee table, eyes shining.

"Sal-u-tations!" she chimed, either forgetting or not knowing that she was supposed to sound sleepy. Penny then put a finger to her mouth, her voice lowering slightly. "We stayed up quite late last night watching our documentaries, so you should be quiet."

"I wouldn't dream of interrupting my brother's beauty sleep." Weiss drawled, but she kept her voice low, as requested. She stepped carefully into the room, lowering her bag to the ground and letting the door shut quietly behind her. "What'd you watch?"

"The Lady of the Rings trilogy, extended editions." Penny said proudly, swiveling to stand up from the coffee table without disturbing the mugs littered around her. "Whitley seemed to enjoy it quite a bit."

Weiss gave a fond, slightly bittersweet smile. For a brief moment, she wondered what it would have been like if her family was normal, if her mother had married someone with a heart instead of a cruel businessman, and scenes like this would have been commonplace in their household. The very idea of it felt odd, which only made it all the sadder.

"Well, our mission in Mistral was a success." she said, lowering her voice even more as Penny's eyes shone and she stepped closer. "I'll want to discuss it with you and your father once Whitley has left, though. There's a lot to go through, and it's Hunter business –not really stuff he should be involved with."

Penny nodded, and then beamed, tiptoeing her way over to the kitchenette counter and pulling off a brightly-colored piece of paper. Weiss eyed it with deep foreboding: she was on a team with Ruby Rose, hyperactive child extraordinaire, and she knew a candy-colored itinerary when she saw it. Weiss had often felt that Penny was Ruby dialed up to 11 and with the dial for her common sense broken off, and never had the resemblance seemed more uncanny as when Penny advanced towards her with a grin and that multi-highlighted piece of paper.

"I stayed up after we finished the documentaries, putting together our schedule today!" Penny stage-whispered, her excitement breaking through her efforts to be quiet. "We are going to have the best day ever!"

Weiss screwed a tight smile onto her face, prepared to endure a day full of horrendous social bonding in order to finally get Whitley out of the way for her real mission in Atlas.

She just hoped that this wouldn't end up in another food fight.

---

"I enjoyed spending the day with you, Whitley." Weiss said as they stood together at the landing pad for the transport up to Atlas.

"Yes." Whitley agreed, once again dressed in the usual pale Schnee colors. "It was… nice."

He looked like using that word made him feel slightly ill, which Weiss couldn't fault. Nice was not the Schnee way.

"Just remember, you have my full support if you decide to pursue an apprenticeship with Pietro Polendina." Weiss continued briskly, trying not to look as bedraggled as she felt. Forget Ruby on a sugar high –Penny on friendship setting was a terrifying whirlwind of activities and ruthless efficiency. "However temporary it may be."

Whitley nodded.

This interaction wasn't much, especially compared to normal people, but –Weiss could feel the difference to how they had been, back when she had first returned to Atlas after the Fall of Beacon. There was no undercurrent of one-upmanship between them, no venomous subtext beneath their sickeningly polite exchanges, no icy disgust that slid off of each other's imperfect façade of emotionlessness. It was stiff, it was businesslike, it was inexperienced, but… it was honest. They were both trying to behave like normal, friendly siblings would.

Jacques could not take that from them.

Weiss smiled a little and leaned forward, and sure enough, even though Whitley tensed under the embrace of her arms, he didn't stiffen nearly as much as she had when she had hugged him for the first time in Atlas, back when he'd called Klein to help with Nora. He didn't flinch back this time, either, like he had been expecting a more violent exchange. Whitley didn't try to hug her back, of course, but this was more than enough for Weiss. He was young, and the opinions of others were still enough to mold his personality. If Weiss got him into a good enough environment, nature (and nurture) would do the rest for her.

Since she couldn't kidnap Whitley or kill Jacques (and temptation, oh, temptation, especially when she realized she had Neopolitan on call), Weiss had to settle for the next best thing, which was trying to introduce as many positive influences to Whitley's life as she could. She was trying to become a better big sister. The three of them –Winter, Weiss, and Whitley– could all sustain a civil conversation with each other at once on video call now, albeit still highly stilted. They were all trying.

"I look forward to hearing from you." Weiss said honestly as they separated, and Whitley gave her the barest of genuine nods. Weiss waved to him as he mounted the airship and the engines began to roar, stepping away from the landing pad with the others as she kept waving. It was only common politeness, after all, and Weiss's eyes traced the path of the airship across the sky as something in her chest clenched up for the barest second, worried about flying when there were so many hostiles in the air-

There were no hostiles. The Atlas sky was clear and cold and blue, swirling with occasional wispy clouds, and Weiss took a deep breath through her nose as she turned to Penny. The other girl shared an uncharacteristically sober nod with her, and they both turned back the way they had come, moving down the streets of Mantle at precisely the approved pedestrian speed and mounting the steps to Pietro's pharmacy with all due haste. The best way to avoid drawing attention was to be ordinary, and with all the surveillance drones in Mantle, Weiss could not afford to do what she wanted, which was bolt for the relative security of Penny's home as fast as her legs would take her. Penny probably understood that too, child of the military that she was.

"Are there likely to be any more patients today?" Weiss asked as she unwound the novelty scarf that Penny had urged her to borrow, and Pietro looked up from his desk as Penny looked at her in surprise. "I have something rather important to discuss with you both, and I don't want to be disturbed."

"Uh, sure." Pietro said, looking a little nonplussed. "Anyone that comes in after now will probably have an emergency on hand, and they know to hit the call button that links to my apartment. Why don't we all go up there and get something hot into you two to balance out the cold day."

Weiss nodded to him, and Penny caught her elbow as they moved upstairs.

"We are involving my father in this?" she asked, her forehead pinched, and Weiss nodded.

"He deserves to be made aware, at least." she replied, just as softly. "And if he decides to help, his skills will be a valuable asset."

Penny thought on that for several moments.

"…General Ironwood is not compromised, is he?" she asked, clearly remembering their warnings against Lionheart. Weiss winced.

"That is… a complicated question." Weiss replied carefully, and shook her head. "I'll explain once we're all settled."

That didn't take long, since Weiss had learned some rather blasphemous ways of cooking from Yang and Ruby and thus microwaved the hot chocolate cups for herself and Pietro as he got himself settled in the living room with Penny. Weiss reminded herself that this was not a business meeting, but a meeting between friends, as she arranged a snack platter of cheeses, crackers, and deli meats and carried it with her into the living room, setting it down on the low table and pulling up a chair beside it.

As Weiss crossed her legs primly and took up her coffee mug, she noted that Penny sat beside her father in an unconscious bias, presenting an us-vs-you image to Weiss as she sat across from them at the low table. No matter –this conversation was not going to be aggressive.

"First things first, before I tell you anything, I want the both of you to swear to secrecy." Weiss began, and took a sip of her hot chocolate before setting it down on the table and folding her hands together. "What we're dealing with here is nothing less than a threat that can destroy Remnant, and we cannot afford information leaks."

"I promise." Penny said, her jaw firming at the reminder of what she was made for. Protector of Mantle indeed –Penny had the soul of a Huntress, and there was no hesitation in her eyes or voice as she swore herself to silence.

"That's… a big claim." Pietro said slowly, frowning at Weiss as he, too, set down his mug. "What makes you so sure?"

"I have proof." Weiss said, meeting his eyes without flinching. "Proof that I can't discuss unless you promise not to tell a soul about it."

Pietro sighed, and scratched under his cap, before straightening it and looking at her directly.

"Alright, then." he said, placing his hands on his knees. "I give my word, no one will learn about this from me."

Weiss nodded shortly, and looked down at the food on the table for a moment, gathering her thoughts.

"How much has General Ironwood told you about Salem?" she finally asked, going for the most direct route. "About the Maidens?"

Penny looked absolutely baffled, which Weiss had expected, since Ironwood had made a point of telling them that Penny and Winter's awareness of Salem and the Relics was a recent thing, back when they'd first arrived in Atlas. He'd only told those close to him after the Fall of Beacon, and while it wasn't Weiss's place to critique that at the moment, it did give her a place to begin.

"Nothing." Pietro said, which was slightly surprising, but only a little. He did look like he was taking her seriously, though, which was important.

"To compress a very long story, Salem is the ruler of the Grimm." Weiss said, taking up her mug. She had decided that using small steps to scaffold what the Polendinas already knew was the best route, until Weiss had built them the whole picture. Not much was known for sure about the Grimm, so the existence of a Grimm overlord was not implausible. Once they accepted that fact, Weiss could move onto the next tidbit of truth. "The headmasters are all aware of her, but they have kept her existence a secret to avoid panic."

"General Ironwood knows about a Grimm ruler?" Penny asked, her voice almost… small. Her next words confirmed why. "But he has not told anyone in the Atlas military!"

"Ironwood prefers to play things close to his chest." Weiss said, which was the most flattering way she could think to phrase it. "And I won't say that he doesn't have good reason to, since Salem is no mere Grimm herself. She is a person, an immortal woman with thoughts and schemes and, I'm sad to say, millennia of experience at turning people against one another. Generations of headmasters have been duly informed of her existence, and they have kept that secret not just because the idea of a person ruling the Grimm is threatening enough to cause panic, but because they don't want any more people defecting to her side."

"Any more." Pietro repeated, and he wove his hands together in his lap. "You're saying that Salem already has followers?"

"She is incredibly powerful, and there are always people that want power." Weiss answered directly. "For now, she can only use people on the fringes –those who she can manipulate, coerce, or awe. We know that she has eyes on the White Fang, fingers in the Vale criminal underworld, and has used dread of herself to make Headmaster Lionheart buckle under the pressure. She's responsible for breaking the serial killer Tyrian Callows out of his transport ship, thus acquiring his undying loyalty, and we have reason to believe that she has acquired Arthur Watts after his so-called disgrace of losing out to you."

"Because you heard the conspirators mention him while you were eavesdropping." Penny said, perking up a little as she connected one of the dots. Weiss nodded to her and picked up her hot chocolate, taking another sip.

"To catch you up, Mr. Polendina, my team and I uncovered a conspiracy involving this one day when we were out in Vale." she explained, gesturing with her mug slightly. "We heard enough to alarm us, and so we sought out what we believed to be the weakest link in their chain and pressed her for information, which in turn led us to Haven and a device beneath the school that we thought would assist us in uncovering the full story."

Weiss sighed, and slowly put her mug down.

"Or at least, that's what we told you."

"…Weiss?" Penny asked, blinking uncertainly.

"Keep in mind, everything I have told you up until this point –everything that doesn't involve how we all knew this– has been the absolute gospel truth." Weiss said firmly. "Salem is real, she is a threat to all of Remnant, and she does have exactly the followers I've named, along with several more I haven't. My team and I lied about how we discovered this information because at the time, we believed it was the most plausible way to get you on board. However, our time at Haven taught us differently, and so here I am."

Weiss took a deep breath and locked eyes with Penny, shifting her focus from general to specific.

"I know I have no right to expect you to believe me." Weiss told her, being as forthright as she could. "What I'm about to tell you is shocking –horrifying, even. Not to mention, it's completely implausible, which is why we were going to avoid telling you about it to begin with."

Penny blinked several times.

"How bad can it be?" she asked after a moment, and Weiss winced so hard that it became a cringe.

"Well…"

Now that Salem was firmly scaffolded, Weiss had the choice to discuss the future or the Relics, and after a moment's consideration, she chose the future, since it was what most directly affected both Penny and her father.

"Quite bad, actually." Weiss said, deciding to rip the worst bandage off first. "You'll die, as a matter of fact. Twice."

She did not miss the way Pietro's hand automatically moved to cover one of his daughter's.

"And yes," Weiss continued. "I'm aware that Penny is, physically, a robot. That's how she survived the first time she was ripped apart. The second time… well. That takes a bit of exposition."

The hot chocolate had cooled somewhat, so Weiss drained it all in one long gulp, as though she was taking a shot of whiskey for courage, and set the mug back down on the table for the final time.

"Keep in mind, as I said –what I'm about to tell you is almost literally unbelievable." she told them gravely, refolding her legs and steepling her hands atop her uppermost knee. "But I did swear you to secrecy."

And she plunged in. Weiss told the Polendinas about the Vytal Festival, about how Penny's savage death in front of all the world had been a linchpin in Cinder's plans, about how Cinder was a pawn of Salem that had torn down Beacon, making Weiss lose many of her friends, before her father took her back to Atlas. She told them of how the Maidens and Relics were intertwined, how the Maiden power was passed, and why it was so crucial to keep the Relics away from Salem. She told them how Team RNJR had gotten to Haven, and about the messy battle that had taken place there as everyone fought for the Lamp of Knowledge.

She told them how RWBY and JNR had rejoined each other and come to Atlas, and their joy in seeing Penny alive again. She told them of how they had worked with the Ace Ops, how Ironwood had slowly backslid into madness, how his catastrophically selfish decisions had meshed with their desperation and created the apocalypse that was Atlas. She told them, at last, of the Relic of Creation, and how Weiss and the others had fallen from the paths there and found themselves here.

"And of course, we know that things won't go exactly as they did the first time around." Weiss said in closing, giving a little nod to a shellshocked Penny. "The way Blake met you and Sun in Vale proves that. Nonetheless, we were familiar enough with how our enemies fought and thought that we believed the highest priority for us was to figure out how we had gotten here, and thus, with a little… informational editing, we brought Team JNPR and Neo with us to Haven in order to ask Jinn just what was going on."

"What if I had come with?" Penny finally managed, giving a hard swallow before she locked eyes almost defiantly with Weiss. "You gave us all the option to come with. What if we had actually taken you up on it?"

Weiss gave a small shrug.

"Then you would have heard and seen everything I just told you firsthand." she said, unruffled. "And nothing about this moment would change, except perhaps the fact that you and I would both be telling your father about this. Given Watts's grudge against Pietro and how much damage he did last time, it is imperative that we warn you both against him, now that we actually have some advance warning to do something with."

"This is all… an awful lot to take in." Pietro said, mopping his brow with one hand. His other was still resting atop Penny's, but now it was clasping her hand tightly, with no sign of letting go. Penny wasn't resisting, and Weiss didn't at all blame him for clinging to his daughter, not after he'd just heard how she was butchered not once, but twice. "Especially all at once."

"Yes, well, try having it thrown at you in escalating severity over the course of a few years." Weiss grumbled, picking up a square of cheese stacked atop a cracker and crunching into it in a slightly barbaric fashion. Yang and Ruby really were rubbing off on her. "Not so much overwhelming, but very much the inescapable dread."

"So you're… nineteen?" Penny guessed, and Weiss made an uncertain noise through her cheesy cracker.

"Not technically, I don't think. I don't know." she admitted, after swallowing properly. "I don't feel like the same person I was at Beacon… but I certainly don't feel like I'm any older, mentally speaking."

"I do not think you've physically changed."

"Oh, definitely not." Weiss agreed, tugging at the bottom of her facial scar with one absentminded finger. "Still, that's not really relevant, is it?"

"I'm not sure what would be relevant." Pietro muttered, before replacing his cap with a deep breath. "Right, well… you weren't lying about all this being pretty unbelievable."

"But…?" Weiss hedged carefully.

"But logic is logic, and logic doesn't lie." Pietro said with resigned finality. "Your story not only matches military information that you should have no way of knowing, it remains internally consistent, provided I accept everything that I didn't already know as true. The city of Atlas is not held up by Gravity Dust, as everyone believes –but General Ironwood only allows those in the highest ranks to deal with the files and systems that would make that clear. When I asked, I was told that the city was mostly held up by an alternative system, one regrettably impossible to replicate, which is serviced by a separate ghost branch, and any further questions or probing would be treated as a matter of threatening national security. It's not as though that doesn't raise a few questions, but the explanation was plausible enough given my work experience."

He stroked his beard.

"But if I accepted, say, the idea that the city is in fact held up by this Relic of Creation –that makes a lot of things finally fall into place and start making a great deal more sense. Why it's not replicable, why the general is so uptight about keeping even the awareness of that alleged system a secret, and why I've never seen any significant movement of people and supplies that would service it."

Weiss straightened a little as Pietro finally let go of Penny, steepling his fingers and leaning back in his seat as he gave her a thoughtful look over his fingertips.

"And there is no way for you to have learned this, Weiss." Pietro continued gravely. "Ironwood deeply restricts the information that Gravity Dust is not the sole power of the city –not even the Specialists know, which means that your sister does not know, either. The only people aware of this secret are scientists and researchers like myself, who deal directly with Atlas systems and tend to notice math errors in what we're working on, and the alleged specialists who work on this unknown system. You, Miss Schnee, were kept in what I will… respectfully refer to as a rigidly controlled environment, from the moment you were born. To the best of my knowledge, you never even left the Schnee manor without an escort before you came to Beacon."

"That is regrettably correct." Weiss said, sighing a little before reaching for a slice of meat from the platter.

"Which means that you certainly had no outside points of contact that would've allowed you to spy on, steal, or otherwise acquire this information." Pietro continued. "Which means that it is overwhelmingly likely that what you are telling us about the Relic of Creation is the truth."

He took a deep, shaky breath, and reached down to squeeze Penny's fingers again as she set her other hand atop his, looking worried.

"Which then, unfortunately, leads to the fact that everything else you said is probably true, too." Pietro said, before coughing and thumping his chest a little. He cleared his throat before he went on. "If you're telling the truth about a Relic representing one of the keystones of humanity's genesis, then logically, there would be three more, dealing with the other three respective foundational elements of Knowledge, Choice, and Destruction. If they hold that kind of enormous power, then it would make sense for them to be locked away. If I were to find a place to lock them away, then the safest place would be beneath a fortress of warriors, like the Hunter academies. If we were faced by a threat like this Salem… then it would make sense to hide these Relics away in the first place."

"So… you believe me?" Weiss said, nervously wiping her fingers on a napkin. She hadn't really expected to be believed so immediately, but then, Pietro Polendina was a scientist, used to reasoning things out rather than taking them for granted. It was natural to expect a little skepticism from someone like that, right?

"If you eliminate the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, is the truth." Pietro said with a resigned, reluctant shrug and a heavy sigh. "To my knowledge, it is absolutely impossible for you to know about the project involving Penny. It's impossible for you to know about Tyrian Callows's criminal file, which to my casual memory does have some rather suspicious redactions involving his escape from custody, not to mention the fact that his transport ship was swarmed by Grimm in an area that had been declared almost entirely Grimm-free less than a day beforehand. It's certainly impossible for you to know half of what you told us unless all of what you told us was the truth."

Weiss nodded slowly –cautiously. She was too used to implied agreement being used as the setup for a fall.

"And to be perfectly frank…" Pietro raised his free hand into the air in a slight gesture of disbelief. "What would you gain by making up a lie like this? You're warning us against Arthur Watts –who is dead by anyone else's reckoning– and a Queen of the Grimm, who we'd hardly cooperate with if she existed. Really… if we accepted your word as true, all we'd do is start preparing for the future, and that's not exactly going to be of benefit to anyone but ourselves. You have no reason to lie, and by logical analysis, there's nothing to indicate that anything in your story is a lie. Regrettably, then, since we have eliminated the impossible, we are left with one option, however improbable it is."

"You're telling the truth." Penny said softly, her shoulders hunched. Weiss gave her a sad nod.

"What I'd like to know now is," Pietro said, leaning forward a little. "What's your plan now?"

"First things first, we need to even the playing field." Weiss said briskly, pulling her shoulders back and trying to seem as professional and competent as she could after she'd made a glutton of herself on the snack platter. "Now that we've accessed the full picture with Jinn's help, and have all the cards in our hands, we need all our allies to be aware of what's coming. That means not only you two, but Professor Ozpin at Beacon, and Team SSSNI too, and anyone else that joins our ranks. Only once everyone's on the same page can we begin to make some proper plans going forward, though of course that doesn't stop the two of you from taking whatever personal steps you feel necessary."

"I can strengthen the strings that connect my swords to me." Penny said, looking a little worried as she touched her own shoulder. "But I cannot disconnect the microchip that allows me to communicate with them without leaving myself conventionally defenseless."

"Leave that to me, sweetheart." Pietro put an arm around his daughter's shoulders protectively. "Now that I know who we're dealing with, I can engineer a few nasty little backdoor surprises for anyone that tries to hack into your network."

"Didn't you have those already?" Weiss asked, half-appalled, and Pietro gave a shrug. It was Penny who answered, though.

"I am programmed against general interference, and have my own military-level encrypted VPN for when I connect to the Scroll network." she said, looking up at Weiss. "But that is for when I interface with systems that aren't me or my swords. It… um, I think the least technical term is that it prevents people from hacking into my system from the outside when I am plugged into something."

"The assumption was that since Penny operates on an isolated system unless she is plugged into something, hacking attempts would come from the outside and through that connection." Pietro continued, squeezing his arm around her shoulders a little. "I have been working on a remote option –with Penny's consent, obviously– but it'll be a bit before that's something we can actually work with."

"Well, now you're warned." Weiss said with a philosophical shrug.

"Indeed we are, and believe you me, we are not taking this lightly." Pietro said, his beard bristling with purpose. "Coding against general hackers is one thing, but it's another thing entirely when you know the handiwork of the man who's trying to cut into your network, especially when he used to be your coworker. If Watts tries to do anything with my daughter, we'll be ready for him."

"It might also be worth your while to express concern to Ironwood and up general IT security at the festival." Weiss said, and Pietro gave her a long, somewhat thoughtful look.

"You… don't really trust the general anymore." he said after a moment, a little sadly. "Do you? That's why you want to warn him about this indirectly, rather than telling him outright as you did with me and Penny."

"Would you still trust him?" Weiss asked, her expression sour. "I can't just forget what he did. Penny, Atlas –I won't forget what he did. He abandoned his people and still had the audacity to act like he was the one in the right."

"General Ironwood in the here and now is not the same man." Pietro pointed out gravely, and Weiss's mouth twisted.

"I know that." she said. "But he's also the same man who will bring an army to the Vytal Festival during a team of peace, because he's concerned about Ozpin's security levels. The seeds of disaster are there, Mr. Polendina, and whether they grow or not, I am not stepping into that garden."

Pietro sighed, but didn't argue. He probably knew better than to try. Weiss would never and could never forget the fact that General Ironwood had betrayed them all, even if at one point there had been a good man underneath. That only made the fall hurt more. Weiss was willing to trust him inasmuch as she was willing to work alongside Ironwood to defeat Salem, but if Weiss ever had her way, he would never have a chance at hurting her or her friends again.

And that was that.

Weiss tried not to set her chin mulishly as Pietro held her gaze, but she knew her shoulders, at least, were stiffening anyways.

"In any case," she continued, her voice clipped. "We believe that we've mostly flown under Cinder and Salem's radar thus far. When we accessed the Vault of Knowledge, we did so without going through the school, so we shouldn't have tripped any wires there either. That being said, Ruby and the others will be spending a few weeks in the wilderness as they work their way back to Beacon, so aside from needing to warn you two of what's to come, we thought it'd be wise to split our forces in case something happens to them. Hence, me being in Atlas and Neopolitan returning to Vale."

Pietro nodded slowly.

"So… that's it." Weiss shrugged, a little uncomfortably. "I'm open to ideas and plans going forward, keeping in mind the fact that I have to go back to Beacon at the end of break."

"I think we need time to process." Penny said, speaking up for the first time in a while. Weiss understood that, actually –while her father was still employing logic to try and reason this out, Penny was in shock. After all, she had just been told that she died twice, and that almost all her friends had actually known her from before she ever met them. Most ordinary people would need a minute or two to just… absorb that information, never mind start doing anything productive with or even process it.

"Oh, absolutely." Weiss said, nodding to her. "I'd like to say that you should take all the time you need, but… well… the festival's coming. If we have any plans related to it, we need to make them within the next few weeks, since it would be best even with Mr. Polendina's help to use electronic messaging as little as possible. In-person is just about the only way we can safely discuss things, and even then, it's probably best to have a password or certain visual cues to make sure we aren't being tricked by someone with an illusionary Semblance."

"We can discuss all that tomorrow at the earliest." Pietro said, looking like he'd gotten far too much to chew on in one sitting. Weiss wondered how well he'd be able to sleep the night. "Are you planning to stay with us, or is there a safehouse somewhere that you prepared?"

"Here, please, if it's not too much trouble." Weiss said, scuffling one shoe lightly against the other. As the Schnee heiress and a member of high society, any overt nervous tics had been trained out of her by the time she was eight –fiddling with an earring was obvious enough to earn her a slap with her tutor's ruler, playing with her fingers likewise, but rubbing her shoes together, provided the movement was subtle enough, was an acceptable way to vent tension. During business meetings, most people couldn't see beneath the table, and when she was standing and conversing with others, the feet were the last area of focus. As long as the movement was subtle enough it didn't visibly make her leg shift, she was okay.

The dull, leaden weight of Weiss's revelations hung over the trio like a stormcloud as she and the Polendinas just sat there in the living room for several awkward moments. What could she say, now that she'd said everything they needed to know? How in the gods' names could one make light conversation in the wake of this… cataclysm of knowledge?

That awareness choked them all, striking them dumb and motionless in their chairs, unable to look at each other, unable to speak up and veer the conversation in any new direction. What could any of them possibly say?

How could Penny leap from the revelation that Weiss had known her for years to starting to plan new strategies? How could Pietro just shrug aside the knowledge that his daughter would be ripped apart in a few months and ease the tension with a few words of his uniquely warm and gentle wisdom? How could Weiss shunt herself from what had been to what was now, when her mind's eye was still shuddering and reeling over the replay of all she had seen and done in Atlas, her fingers white-knuckled in her lap?

Eventually, with mumbled excuses, Weiss managed to peel herself away from the couch, stagger out of the living room on tottering heels, as Penny groped for the used dishes. Weiss felt like an animal crawling to hide as she plunged into the unlit hallway to find a guest bedroom, like she needed to find a safe and dark and quiet place to shudder out her feelings. Suddenly, she couldn't bear people, and she didn't doubt that the only reason Pietro and Penny hadn't chosen their own directions was because Pietro needed his chair to move.

Sure enough, by the time Weiss had groped her way towards a small camp bed and curled up under the sheets, she heard the mechanical clomping of his chair down the hall, towards where she presumed his own bedroom was. She could also hear water running in the sink, arguing that Penny was still in the kitchen, and closed her eyes, pulling the fabric up around her ears.

It's okay. You've done it.

Pietro and Penny were warned, and Weiss believed –she had to believe– that the warning would not be in vain. The Polendinas would be prepared for what was ahead, prepared as Weiss herself had never been. Some of the constant, crushing tension had flaked off of her, too, at how they had accepted her words, how they hadn't pushed them aside as the ravings of an attention-seeker and ignored the very real danger everyone was in. It wasn't just Weiss, Team RWBY, and Jaune anymore, and not just them and the rest of Team JNPR. It was them, plus an experienced Atlesian technician and scientist, plus Penny herself. They had that many people on their side already, and the number was sure only to grow.

That carried with it its own trepidation, though, because there was every chance that not all of their allies would swallow this story wholesale. Of course not. It was ludicrous, fantastic, unbelievable, but they could not afford skepticism. If Weiss and the others took their friends into this secret, their friends needed to believe in them, because anything else would be a security risk of the highest magnitude. If they repeated what they heard elsewhere, everything Weiss and her friends had been working towards could be shattered.

What, exactly, were Weiss and her friends supposed to do about that?

Snitches get stitches came the intrusive thought, accompanied –mendaciously enough– by the stern face of her father behind his desk, as he slashed his pen through a paper report and ruthlessly cut loose unprofitable partners without a hint of remorse.

Weiss shook her head tightly. She wasn't that kind of person. If everyone else at Beacon didn't believe them when they told them about it, they'd –they'd have to find a way to drag them along, somehow, no matter the cost. Because RWBY-JNPR were telling the absolute, unvarnished truth, eventually enough proofs would come to light that they'd no longer need to start dragging their friends, and their friends would start working with them willingly. Really, it didn't matter whether they believed Weiss and the others or not, just as long as they were willing to be led.

She understood a little more, now, of why Ozpin had kept secrets at Beacon. He could trust Ruby, for example, without reservations –because Ruby always had been and always would be a shining beacon of purity and determination. The idea that she would ever work with Salem was laughable, and that was before you factored her silver eyes into account. But Ozpin still hadn't given her any hint of the war with Salem… because it wasn't just Ruby's morals he had to account for.

She was fifteen years old, for the gods' sakes, and fiercely devoted to her team. Even if he swore her to strictest secrecy, Ruby would tell her friends, and from there it would spread like the gossip it was. What teenager could keep world-ending secrets to themselves? How could Ruby, a staunch believer in heroism and self-sacrifice, not go running headlong into the fray, utterly certain of her own invulnerability right up until the moment someone with actual experience took her by the throat?

So yes, Ozpin trusted Ruby, and that was exactly why he hadn't told her anything about Salem and the gods until Ruby and the others had proved themselves capable of handling it. The truth, as Weiss had recently learned, could be a dangerous thing in the wrong hands, but it could be even more dangerous in the right hands if used improperly, at the wrong time. Gods above and below, she couldn't imagine how much of a mess she and the others would have caused if they had learned about Salem at the same time they had thought that tangling with Roman Torchwick in a mecha suit under a crowded overpass was a good idea.

And now they were in that very same situation, choosing who to tell and not to tell, and Weiss could entirely understand why the headmaster had hesitated before spilling even the little he had at their house in Haven. Even when done successfully, it was absolutely nerve-wracking.

Still, she'd done it, and now… now all she had to do was wait for the consequences.

Weiss hated waiting for consequences.