ON RWBY WINGS VII: PHOENIX

Part VII of the "On RWBY Wings Saga"

An Alternate Universe RWBY Fanfiction

By Sentinel 28II

WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE: It is April 2002. It has been six months since Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long were court-martialed for disobeying orders from the now-dead General James Ironwood. Though found innocent, the flight has been forced to go their separate ways, scattered across the world. As winter sets in for a fearful world, the nations hold their breath for who will move first: the forces of NATO, massively reinforced by the United States of Canada, or Salem, with her hordes of GRIMM.

However, what no one knows that the threat may not come from without, but within…for GRIMM are not the only weapons available to Salem…

Hill Air Force Base Range

West of Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of Canada

10 April 2002

Ruby Rose was having a good day.

Or, she considered, she should be having a good day. A glance at her Heads-Up Display told her she was exactly at 3002 feet above ground level—in other words, two feet above the hard deck for this mission. Three thousand feet below the hard deck was the real hard deck: the ground, the unyielding white salt flats of the Great Salt Lake Desert. She was flying her F-16 at a sedate 300 miles an hour. It was a beautiful spring day, without a cloud in the sky.

The problem was, Ruby thought, the people she was supposed to be training were ten thousand feet above her, mere specks against the cerulean blue. They were in an expanded box, with about a thousand feet of separation between each element of two aircraft, and two miles between each element. Undoubtedly, two of them had their radars on, as "eyeballs," with the trailing aircraft in each section with theirs off, as "shooters." All of that was exactly what they were supposed to be doing.

What they were not supposed to be doing was flying straight and level in a combat zone, or facing away from Ruby. She had sneaked in behind them, using the Goshute Valley to shield her F-16 from view. From behind and below, she was at the four students' blind spot. The two other F-16s and two F-18 Hornets were motoring along as if they were flying between bases in the safe areas of the Remnant, not in a USAF training range—or airspace only a hundred miles from the Nevada Dead Zone, where real GRIMM roamed.

"Well," Ruby sighed into her oxygen mask, "school's in session." She toggled the radio switch. "Rose Lead. Fight's on." She switched her radar on, jammed the throttle forward, lighting the F-16's afterburner, and pulled back on the stick. With only a ACMI pod on her left wingtip and an inert AIM-9 Sidewinder training round on the right, the F-16 leapt upwards. She closed with the second aircraft in the left-hand element in seconds, and locked on. "Rose Lead, Fox Two." She pulled the trigger. Had this been real combat, a Sidewinder or an AIM-120 AMRAAM would be on its way to the trailing aircraft, which would die in less than a moment. Since it was training, all that happened was the gun camera clicked on, recording the death of Stonecrusher Two.

"Stonecrusher Two, Range Control." The new voice belonged to an enlisted man in a radar van somewhere out on the ranges, monitoring the fight. "You're a mort." Stonecrusher Two was now simulated dead. In acknowledgement, the other F-16 dived away from the fight and went wings level, headed back towards Hill in the distance.

Ruby had a single second to decide what to do next. Stonecrusher Lead broke left, but to Ruby's right, Stonecrusher Three and Four were breaking right, staying together. In that moment, Ruby judged what her opponents would do next, and knew Stonecrusher Lead would be out of position for about half a minute. That was enough time. She turned to the right—a snap of the wrist with the responsive F-16's side-stick—and picked out her next victim.

Stonecrushers Three and Four continued their break, but the tendency was for the trailer to lag behind. Ruby stole a quick glance behind her—Stonecrusher Lead was turning hard to get in position, but there was still a few seconds. Ruby knew Stonecrusher Four had seen her, as the two Hornets were cheating the turn tighter, but Four was dividing his time between watching Ruby and watching his element lead, Stonecrusher Three. What are you doing? Ruby wanted to shout. Are you in ACM or an airshow? As the gunsight pipper in the HUD crept over the back of the F-18, suddenly Stonecrusher Four broke away from his element lead and climbed, afterburners lit. Ruby shook her head, followed him into the climb, and put her pipper right back where it was. "Rose Lead, Fox Two."

"Stonecrusher Four, Range Control. You're a mort."

The range controller had not even finished the last word before Ruby was going into a high-G barrel roll, the G-suit squeezing her middle, and found Stonecrusher Three, still doggedly in the right break. Then Ruby realized that Three was not making yet another rookie mistake: it was actually a smart move. A flicker of movement in the corner of Ruby's right eye betrayed the position of Stonecrusher Lead, cutting across the circle they had made in the sky. When Ruby dropped down behind Three, Lead would track for an easy guns kill.

"Nope," Ruby said aloud, and pulled back on the throttle, raising her nose to shed speed. Stonecrusher Lead was suddenly out of position, and she went under Ruby. Ruby resumed her pursuit of Three. The F-18 reversed their turn to try and support her leader, guessing that Ruby was after Lead, but this only slowed her down. Ruby switched to the gun and slewed the pipper the length of the Hornet. "Rose Lead, guns, guns, guns." Again, had this been real, the M61 Vulcan 20 millimeter gatling cannon nestled in the F-16's left wingroot would have sent high-explosive rounds that would have shredded the Hornet from stem to stern.

While yet another Stonecrusher got the bad news from Range Control, Ruby threw her F-16 into a hard left turn, searching for Stonecrusher Lead. She found her, Ruby's silver eyes easily picking out the gray F-16 against the white of the salt flats. She pushed the throttle forward, closing the distance rapidly. Stonecrusher Lead climbed, committing them to a vertical fight, but as Ruby started to climb, the other F-16 hammerheaded over and dived again for the ground. Ruby dropped the nose, feeling a brief moment of zero gravity—dust and a gum wrapper rose upwards to chest level—and put the pipper ahead of Stonecrusher Lead, waiting for the F-16 to climb away from the hard deck and into her gunsight. It didn't, and Ruby let out a breath into her oxygen mask as the other aircraft went below the hard deck. It was only for a second or two before it started climbing again, but it was enough. "Rose Lead, knock it off," she said into the radio. "Range Control, Stonecrusher Lead is a mort. Hard deck violation."

"Roger, Rose Lead. Stonecrusher Lead, knock it off." The other pilot acknowledged and leveled off. Ruby flew by the other F-16 for a moment, then made another hard turn and set course for Hill. The trainees would now be sentenced to the fighter pilot walk of shame: a slow instrument approach to the base.

Almost an hour later, Ruby waited in one of the classrooms of the US Air Force's Fighter Weapons School. The FWS had been established in the wake of both the Vietnam War and the first GRIMM offensives, when the USAF had realized that its air combat skills were sadly lacking. Originally the FWS was to be established at Nellis AFB outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, but when Las Vegas was left to its fate in the face of the GRIMM invasion, the School was finally established at Hill. Behind Ruby, painted on the wall next to the whiteboard, was the emblem of the 64th Aggressor Squadron, an emblem repeated on the patch on her left arm. It showed a red Beowulf GRIMM in an old-style ring gunsight.

She stood next to the podium, still in her flight suit, though her G-suit, survival vest, and helmet were back in the equipment room. Stonecrusher Flight had landed well behind her—to rub in their loss, Hill Tower had forced them to orbit over the Great Salt Lake until commercial traffic to Salt Lake City International Airport had cleared the airspace. It had given her time to shower and wait while the four trainees did the same.

Finally, they filed in. Ruby had gotten to know these four in the first few days they had been at the FWS: Lieutenant Commander Harper "Stoner" Stone of the British Fleet Air Arm, 1st Lieutenant Beverly "Crusher" Aileen of the USAF, Hauptmann Brooke "Boom" Sweeney of the Swiss Schweizer Luftwaffe, and Lieutenant Maxim "Tiny" Glorieux of the Force Aerienne Belge, the Belgian Air Force. Tiny was the only male in the group; true to the contrariness of fighter pilots, he was actually huge, just below the upper limit of height for a fighter pilot; Ruby assumed that Tiny put his F-16 on like a pair of pants rather than got into it. Crusher was the only Faunus, with a cat tail that moved restlessly behind her. Stoner normally flew a Sea Harrier, but was on an exchange program with the USAF; Crusher and Boom flew F-18s, with the former flying the CF-18A, built specifically for flying around the wide tundra of the Canadian Far North. In years before, these three women and one man would not be at Hill at all: they would be at Joint Base Beacon in Wisconsin for Vytal Flag. But Beacon no longer existed, and neither did Vytal Flag, so they were at FWS instead.

The four of them were laughing as they filed in. Boom was using her hands to talk, like most fighter pilots, and Ruby saw that she was describing how Ruby had shot her down—she had been Stonecrusher Three. "I lost sight of her completely!" Boom shook her head, grinning. "I thought she was going after you, Stoner!"

"Cor, I thought she was coming after me too!" Ruby noticed that Stoner had a Cockney accent, which reminded her of Ruth Lionheart. Ruth had been Ruby's friend at Vytal Flag the year before. She was also dead.

Ruby put a completely artificial smile on her face. She laughed as well, though it was forced. "Sit down, guys," she said. "Let's debrief real quick and then you can hit the O Club." Stonecrusher Flight sat down in the upholstered seats. Once they looked somewhat comfortable, Ruby's smile disappeared like a snowball in a North Carolina summer. "So, Stonecrusher Flight. Tell me—what's so fucking funny?" Their smiles faded as well. They looked at each other, then at Ruby. "No, really, tell me. What's so fucking funny?"

Tiny was over twice Ruby's size, but he looked suitably cowed. "We're sorry, Lieutenant. It was just a little funny, how you ambushed us—"

"And if I was GRIMM, all four of you would be dead," Ruby interrupted. She stared at Stoner. "For fuck's sake, Stoner, you've got combat time. You've got three GRIMM kills under your belt. What the hell were you doing out there? Flying straight and level in a combat zone? No situational awareness?" Stoner's cheeks burned in rage, but she said nothing, because Ruby was entirely correct. Though she outranked Ruby, in this case, rank did not matter.

"How did you get behind us?" Crusher asked. "We were looking—"

"Yes, you were. In the wrong place." Ruby pointed to the map on the wall. "I swung out over the Goshute Valley while you fiddle-dee-fucked around, like I was going to fly straight at you from Hill!"

"Isn't the Goshute Valley out of the range border?" Boom asked.

"You think the enemy gives a shit about borders?" Ruby snapped.

"Then it wasn't really fair," Boom argued, "GRIMM don't act like that! You didn't fly like a GRIMM!"

"That's not the point, Boom!" Ruby exclaimed. "The point of Fighter Weapons School isn't for Red Air—" she used the nickname for the Aggressors "—to fly like the GRIMM. We fly like we fight. If you can beat us, then the GRIMM are easy. Trust me…there's more than just GRIMM out there that like to kill fighter pilots like you. There's air pirates, there's opposing air forces, and there's mercenaries." And there's Cinder Fall, Ruby added to herself, who, if she could wipe out my flight in ten minutes, could obliterate you idiots in about ten seconds. "And some of those enemies are damn good." Stonecrusher Flight was silent. "I'm getting damn tired of watching people die, so you need to listen. There's nothing funny about this. You can joke around in the O Club in your party suits. Here, you learn how to survive, so they don't put your remains in a thimble and send it home to your mom. The next time you walk in here joking around like it's Friday at the bar, I swear I'll make you go up again and we'll do night intercepts until you can't stand."

She could tell they disliked her. Good, Ruby thought. She wasn't here to make friends. She was here to teach these trainees—all of whom were older than her 21 years—how to survive and win. They knew it as well, so Stonecrusher Flight listened as Ruby switched on the computer overhead screen, showing the computer-generated footage from the range, showing how the flight had been wiped out. During the debriefing, Ruby habitually referred to Stonecrusher Flight as "the F-16" or "the F-18" and herself as "the adversary." It depersonalized the fight. By the end, the four students knew what they had done wrong, and Ruby could tell that, while they might hate her for it, they could see what not to do next time. An hour later, when they were finished, Ruby dismissed them. The four pilots filed out, subdued but smarter. She hoped, anyway.

Ruby shut off the computer screen and was erasing the notes she had made on the whiteboard when she heard a polite knock at the door. She turned around, and saw it was an airman. "Lieutenant Rose? Sorry to disturb you, ma'am. There's a phone call for you over at Ops. They're holding it for you."

"Oh, thanks, Airman. I'll be right over." She quickly finished erasing and followed the airman out, shutting off the lights. They crossed from the 64th's operations building to base operations. Ruby wondered who would be calling her. Could it be Oscar? she wondered, and her heart began thumping. She had not seen Oscar in six months, since that last night at her father's place in Patch. Lieutenant (junior grade) Oscar Pine was out on an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere, so he could not call her from there, but the USS Ronald Reagan did make port calls. Oscar had yet to call her, but she had a stack of letters in her little apartment in the officers' barracks.

Once in operations, the airman directed her to a sergeant at a desk. He held up the phone for her, and Ruby took it, wetting dry lips. "L-L-Lieutenant Rose," she stammered.

Instead of Oscar's voice, it was female, and older, one Ruby hadn't heard in even longer than six months. "Ruby? It's Maria. Maria Calavera."

"Maria?" Ruby disguised the letdown in her voice. Still, Ruby thought, it might not compare to her former lover, but there was nothing wrong with speaking to the legendary Grimm Reaper, either. "Where are you? Still in Berlin?"

"Wiesbaden." The connection was not great; there was static and Ruby had to press the phone's earpiece closer to hear Maria clearly. "Took me forever to find you. I remembered you were at Hill, so I finally got hold of base ops there."

"That's okay," Ruby reassured the older woman. "How are you, Maria? How's things over there in Germany?" It felt good to talk to someone she actually knew.

"Ruby, I…I didn't call for old times sake, or just to say hi. I'm afraid…" There was a pause, and Ruby thought she heard Maria stifle a sob before getting control of herself. "I'm afraid I have bad news."

Ruby felt herself go pale, and she sat on the side of the sergeant's desk. Her mind ran through the people she knew in Europe. Pyrrha? Marrow? Ren? Nora? Nora Valkyrie had made a full recovery from her injuries and was back on flight status. Then Ruby felt faint. Oh dear God. Weiss.

"Ruby? Ruby, are you still there?"

"Y-Yes," Ruby said, barely able to speak. "What happened?"

"Pietro Polendina died last night, Ruby."

Ruby was silent. On one hand, there was a feeling of relief: it meant that Weiss Schnee, her best friend, was still alive, and so were the others she had grown to love. On the other, she remembered the kind old man, who had made her so welcome when they came to Germany, who had risked his life despite being in poor health, who had been responsible for creating Penny Polendina—both of them. Ruby felt a lump in her throat. "What happened? I thought…I thought he had been getting better."

"He was. He even got through them telling him Penny was dead. But…after Christmas…well, he got very sick, Ruby. You know he had COPD. He got pneumonia, and…he slipped into a coma a month ago."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Ruby asked.

"It was my fault," Maria admitted. "I didn't…you've had so much going on, Ruby. You didn't need one more damn thing in your life. We thought…well, I thought he was going to pull out of it, but he got worse." Maria sighed. "He went gently, Ruby. In his sleep."

Ruby bit her lip. She felt the tears coming, but she was an officer. She could not cry in front of enlisted people. That was not done. "O-Okay, Maria. Thanks. Thanks for letting me know."

"It's all right. He's with Penny now." Ruby felt like she had been punched in the stomach. Apparently Maria realized it too. "Shit, I shouldn't have said that. Fuck." Ruby couldn't help but smile a little at the old woman's profanity. "Look…Ruby, take some advice from someone who knows. Hang up the phone, go find someplace, and mourn. You need to. Don't bottle it up so it explodes later."

Ruby nodded, although Maria couldn't see her. "Pyrrha told you about that, huh?"

"She mentioned it. Pyrrha and I got drunk after she came back to Germany back in October. She needed to get some things off her chest, so I poured ouzo into her until she got weepy."

"She…she doesn't hold that against me, does she?" Ruby had exploded in uncharacteristic and utter rage at Banska Bystrica six months previously. She still regretted it. No one had deserved her ire then, and Ruby knew that much of that had actually been just sheer frustration at herself, with her flight and Pyrrha being convenient targets.

"Pyrrha? God, no. She's a saint, that one. But again, consider it friendly advice from your abuela." Maria and Ruby were no relation, but Ruby's grandparents were long dead; Maria had elected herself Ruby's new grandmother, apparently. "If nothing else, go out and get hammered. I'd tell you to get laid, but your man is on a carrier somewhere."

Ruby nodded again. "I will, Maria." She chuckled, surprised that she still could. "Mourn, I mean. Not get drunk or get laid."

"Okay, Ruby." Another pause. "I'm doing all right, for a half-blind old woman. The Schnee Company has hired me as a consultant, God help them. It's been pretty quiet here."

"I'm glad you're okay, Maria," Ruby said. Please don't die. No more friends, God. Please, not Maria. Or Weiss. Or Pyrrha. Or anyone.

"Oh, don't worry about me, girl. Heaven won't take me and hell is afraid I'll take over." Maria sighed. "Anyhow…good night, Ruby."

"Good night, Maria." Ruby heard the line click off, and handed the phone back to the sergeant. She thanked him, then left the ops building.

Outside, it was still light out. She could hear the hum of the five o'clock traffic on Interstate 15 as people drove home from their nine to five jobs in Salt Lake City to Ogden. She could hear the whine of jet engines spooling up as the night combat air patrol got ready. Just across the base loomed the high mountains of the Wasatch Range, still coated in snow, even with spring here. Everything seemed peaceful, but the Nevada Dead Zone was not that far away, comparatively.

And then, seized by some impulse Ruby could not explain, she began to run. Not her usual jog when she got up in the morning, but a full on, lung-pounding run. Ruby had lettered in track at Patch High School, and she ran. People stared at her as she sprinted past them. She ran out onto the flightline, towards the covered hardstands where the 64th Aggressor Squadron's eight F-16s were parked. Each one wore a different color scheme, not the two shades of gray colors that the USAF normally used on its Vipers. Most wore variations of desert schemes; one wore a sinister all-black scheme, like the GRIMM themselves. Ruby's wore a gray so light it was almost white, oversprayed with mint green; it was one reason why she had been so hard to see over the salt flats. On the tail was the HL tailcode and data block common to all USAF F-16s, and above that, the flaming rose symbol that was her personal symbol. As her Huntress status had been revoked with her court-martial, she technically did not rate it, but no one demanded she paint it out. The reason why was on the intake. There, 33 small red stars dotted the intake in three neat rows, with the name Crescent Rose III in red just behind the kill marks. That was unofficial too, but the kill marks and name stayed. Whatever some might think of Ruby Rose, no one argued that she hadn't earned the right.

Finally, Ruby stopped at her aircraft. It was closed up for the night; Master Sergeant Arnold Vogelgemord had gone home already. Good, Ruby thought, because she didn't want her faithful crew chief, a man who had followed her from Beacon to Poland to Hill, to see her like this. There was no one around. She knelt, leaned against the cool intake of Crescent Rose III, and began to bawl. Her tears ran down her face to land on the intake, and she hit the F-16 with her fist, sending a hollow noise through the intake. The fighter took the punishment, and Ruby was glad of it, glad of something that hadn't broken. She cried and would have screamed in utter pain, but that would be conduct unbecoming of an officer. Officers were supposed to mourn in a quiet, dignified matter; tears soaking her cheeks and the yellow and black checkered scarf she wore, and mucus running from her nose—that was fine, as long as it was muffled.

Ruby cried for Penny Polendina, both of them—the one whose burned and carbonized remains had been recovered from the wreck of her B-1 on the shores of Lake Michigan, and the one whose remains had never been found, at the bottom of the crater made by the Winter Maiden orbital attack satellite. She cried for Pietro, who was finally reunited with his wife and the two daughters he had cloned, but raised as real human beings, not sentient weapons systems. She cried for Jaune and Ozpin and Clover and Vine and Ruth and all the others, dead from Beacon to Poland. She cried for Summer Rose, whose bones were either scattered somewhere in Siberia, or in a dungeon somewhere underneath Salem's lair at Mount Yamantau. And Ruby cried for Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, and Yang Xiao Long, her sister and women who might as well be sisters, who should be here with her, not scattered around the world because she, Ruby Rose, had disobeyed an order.

Finally, there were no tears left. Ruby knelt next to her aircraft, now patting the intake, as if to apologize to the third F-16 to bear the name Crescent Rose for her abuse of it. She remembered as a child, toddling up to her mother's F-16, hugging the landing gear, and declaring that this was her plane. Well, a F-16 was her plane now, but it had come at a horrible price.

There was the pop of a speaker, and the distant tinny sound of something warming up. Ruby wiped her nose with one sleeve and her eyes with the other, then turned around towards the center of the base, where the flagpole would be. The speakers began the familiar bars of the Star Spangled Banner, and Ruby stood at attention and saluted. She held the position until the last note faded away. The bit of military tradition made her oddly feel better.

Ruby left the area and returned to her dorm. When she walked in, she was surprised to see the day room—which was a kind of rest area and recreation room—was crowded with pilots. The 64th shared their dorm with one of the squadrons of the resident 388th Fighter Wing. She walked in and found a familiar face: Captain Russell Thrush, one of the "Beacon Bunch," formerly of Cardinal Flight. He was the only one from that group at Hill, assigned to the 388th. "Russell, what's going on?"

He saw her over his shoulder, and moved aside so she could see the big-screen TV in one corner. It showed a reporter standing in the middle of a desert. Behind her there was something on fire—a lot of somethings on fire. Smoke filled the sky, and she saw fire trucks and ambulances going by the reporter. Ruby glanced down to the headline at the bottom: HEAVY GRIMM ATTACK ON PHOENIX. "Holy shit," Ruby breathed.

"Yeah," Russell nodded. "Happened just like ten, fifteen minutes ago." The reporter ducked and all of them heard jet noises. "Sixteens," at least three pilots said, recognizing the familiar noise of the F-16's engines.

"Sounds like they're still fighting it off," Ruby observed.

"No shit," another pilot said. He glanced back, saw it was Ruby, rolled his eyes, and returned his attention to the TV. Ruby was used to this. Raven Branwen had been right: when she had come to Hill the last October, half the pilots had given her a lot of respect, even admired her, as the legendary Ruby Rose, the 21-year old wonder with 33 kills and more medals than the 388th's wing commander; being court-martialed, especially with a relatively minor charge, and demoted only added to her luster because she was thought of as a rebel who shook up the ossified brass hats. The other half despised her as the infamous Ruby Rose, the 21-year old kid who had no business flying fighters, who should either be still at home learning to fly Cessnas or, better yet, in Leavenworth Military Prison for wrecking Ironwood's plan to defend Poland. She was either welcomed or shunned, and Ruby could not care less who did either. Her friends were not at Hill, and she was not interested in making more.

"Ladies, gents." All turned around and snapped to attention as Colonel Gregory Boyajian walked into the room. The commander of the 388th Fighter Wing was wearing his flight suit—a wing commander he might be, but he still flew. Ruby did have more medals, but maybe just one or two more. "I hate to interrupt the news break, but we're going on alert. What happened in Phoenix could happen here."

"Anything on scope, sir?" a pilot asked.

"Nothing yet, and the AWACS is keeping an eye on the frontier. Still, there was one up in Arizona, too—for all the good it did. The GRIMM still got through." That got a lot of the pilots talking. GRIMM weren't supposed to be able to evade the E-3 Sentry's radar. "So we're standing to. We go to Zulu alert and double the CAP." Ruby knew what that meant: half the wing sitting in their aircraft for hours, the other half in their ready rooms. The combat air patrol's job would be to delay the GRIMM long enough for Hill to surge the 388th's F-16s. "Let's get to work, people." Russell switched off the TV and the pilots began leaving the room. Boyajian put out his hand to stop Ruby. "Not you, Lieutenant Rose."

"Thank God," she heard someone murmur.

"You'll need God if she's not up, asshole," someone else snarled.

Boyajian waited until he and Ruby were alone. He thumbed towards the departing pilots. "Ignore that. Colonel Wright at the 64th has told me you're a good stick. Solid evals since you've been here."

"Yes, sir. Colonel Wright's a good guy." Wright had welcomed Ruby to the 64th Aggressors, telling her that he had specifically requested her, even after the court-martial.

"You don't get out too much," Boyajian observed.

"No, sir."

"No friends on base?"

"No, sir." Vogelgemord was her friend, but he was an enlisted man; there was a barrier forever there.

Boyajian nodded. "And how long have you been on operations, Lieutenant?"

"Um…" Ruby laughed softly. "Pretty much constantly since last April, sir." Abruptly Ruby remembered the date: a year to the day had been when she had shot down Roman Torchwick's henchmen and been accepted by Ozpin to Vytal Flag. My God, she thought in amazement. "I think there was about a month in Japan last summer. Then about a month last October, before I came here."

"Yes, but that was during a court-martial. Doesn't count much as a rest." Boyajian shook his head. "Battle of Beacon, Nishinoshima, Algiers, Poland Campaign, then walking out through Moravia and Slovakia after Salem sent up the big one and Ironwood bought the farm. Two Hearts, Lieutenant, is that right?"

Ruby nodded. "Yes, sir; two Hearts." She knew he referred to her two Purple Hearts: one for getting her skull fractured when she rammed Cinder Fall at Beacon, and the other for surviving—barely—being tortured by Neo Politan. At least that bitch is dead, Ruby thought darkly. Ruby felt remorse for a lot of things; hearing the gunshot that ended Neo's life was not one of them.

Boyajian returned her nod. "That's what I thought." He reached into a pocket of his flight suit, pulled out a folded set of orders, and handed it to her. She unfolded it. It was for a month's leave. "I think you need this, Lieutenant."

"Sir…I don't. Not really."

"Yes, you do. You've been on continual operations for almost a year, with barely any rest. You get here and you sit in your room except for going out to eat and hanging out at the base museum. You're damn hard on the students—justifiably, yes. I know you're just trying to keep them alive, and that's commendable, but it's not helping your reputation as a stuck-up, hardass bitch."

"I'm not, sir," Ruby protested.

"I know you're not. But what you are is exhausted. Take a month where you're not getting ready to fly halfway across the planet, or getting ready to be court-martialed. Go hit the beach somewhere. Go home. Isn't your sister with the 4th down at Signal?"

Ruby smiled. Yang was back flying the F-15 Eagle with the 4th Fighter Wing. They talked about once a week on the phone. If Ruby was morose, keeping to herself, Yang seemed to be living it up. Ruby did not blame her sister, but envied her. "Yes, sir."

"Well, I'll give Major Oum a call and see if they can cut Captain Xiao Long loose for a few days."

"I appreciate that, sir, but my place is—" Ruby began.

"Lieutenant," Boyajian sighed. "This is an order. A direct one. I know you had problems with those in the past, but…" He put a smile on it to let her know he was only ribbing her, but it didn't make Ruby feel any better.

"Yes, sir." Ruby came to attention.

"Good. You're off ops as of right now." Boyajian winked. "I think we can hold off the ravening GRIMM hordes from Temple Square even without the great and powerful Ruby Rose." He slapped her on the shoulder. "I'll make sure no one wrecks your '16 while you're gone. Get some rest, Lieutenant, and bring me back a souvenir." He left her and went out the door.

Ruby stood alone in the room for a long time, the orders crumpled in her hand and the noise of jet engines shaking the windows. It had not been a good day after all.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: Welcome back!

I'd actually started planning ORW VII a few weeks ago-just throwing together some ideas, some of which were based on the Arrowfell video game-but then came the announcement that Rooster Teeth was going out of business, throwing the future of RWBY into doubt. Some of my reviewers asked if I was continuing On RWBY Wings after that announcement. The answer is yes, and you're holding the result in your hands. I always intended to continue and finish ORW no matter what RT or canon RWBY did, and that's still true. If RWBY gets picked up by some other studio and the story gets finished someday after I've written the ending to ORW, I might rewrite it, but that could be a long time from now.

So anyhow, ORW VII is titled "Phoenix," and not for the attack on that city that happens in this chapter. We're getting the band back together in this story arc, as well as set up the conditions for ORW VIII, which will probably be the end. (Mainly because I'm running out of ideas.) The story will start off with chapters focusing on Ruby (this one), then Weiss over in Europe with Ace Flight, then Blake on the Reagan, then Yang at Signal. (RWBY. See what I did there?) Then we'll get into the overall story. And you'll get a beach episode in this one...text-based, but better than nothing. I'm hoping to post at least once a week, maybe more. (If you're interested in big stompy mecha, I'll still be writing my Battletech story at the same time, which is ramping up to one hell of a fistfight in the next chapter.)

Anyway, even if canon RWBY will be disappearing for awhile, this story won't be, and I hope you'll stick around. Throw me some reviews, keep your hands in the car at all times, and enjoy the ride.