Author's Notes

There is an accompanying image for this chapter, sort of a visual aid, but because links are cringe on this site, it's only on AO3. Not trying to plug that channel over this one, but if you want to see the sight, you gotta visit the site.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!

Chapter 29 – Ruby's Eleven Part 2

Dramatis Personae – Heist Perps

1) Ruby – the mastermind

2) Watts – tech support

3) Tyrian – getaway driver

4) Hazel – the muscle

5) Emerald – master of disguise

6) Mercury – straight man

7) Neopolitan – also master of disguise

8) Lionheart – inside man

9) The Nuckelavee – getaway vehicle

10) The Hound – special operations

11) Grubbie – Grubbie

"Soldiers," said Winter Schnee. "Why aren't you evacuated?"

Hazel lowered his bruised fists and expertly hid them behind his back. Getting captured here would not be conducive to his long-term goals with Salem.

They hadn't been expecting specialists. Normal soldiers, he could fight off. This? This could be a problem.

"Ma'am," he said, praying to whatever god might listen that his face wasn't recognized. "I was unaware you would be…present."

"Her visit was announced three months in advance, soldier," said the other specialist at her right, who Hazel recognized as none other than Clover Ebi, commander of the Ace Ops. Hazel withheld a sigh as he counted out the four behind them as Ebi's squadron.

The Ace-Ops were here. Not a single one among them was missing from his view as they filed into the room to join Hazel, and all were armed. The completion of their mission seemed all but impossible now, but escape was going to be a challenge as well.

Still, Hazel held hope that he may yet talk his way out of this. "My apologies. I was only recently transferred here. That is why I was unaware."

"And why you failed to evacuate during the fire alarm?"

Hazel feigned embarrassment and hoped that it wasn't too obvious that he was a fraud. Acting was not his forte. "I…I forgot where the rally point was. I got lost, sir. M-My post is typically around this area, so I figured that when they did a headcount and noticed me missing, whoever was sent to look for me would come this way."

It wasn't a great lie, but people never tended to assume foul play unless there was an indicator of it. All Hazel needed to do was assuage their concerns until he could break away and lose them. He always kept a shard of Lightning Dust hidden in his underclothes for a speedy getaway, and now looked like the time he would need to break it out.

"And your companion?" asked Schnee.

Hazel tensed up. He'd forgotten about the child, Neopolitan.

"Why was she lying down?"

Hazel opened his mouth to answer, but Schnee cut him off by raising a hand. If he was to sell them on a false story, he needed to play the part of a military man, and military men followed orders without question.

"I'd like to hear it from her own mouth," Schnee said, and Hazel realized all was already lost. Schnee was looking at him not with curiosity but with doubt. She was already believing this to be foul play and had entered the stage of gathering evidence.

Truthfully, he knew from the moment the specialists stepped through the door that combat was an inevitability, as much as he might have pretended otherwise.

The squadron of hunters waited for an answer, but Neo said nothing. Hazel waited for her to concoct an excuse for a moment before recalling that she was mute. However, when he made to reveal this, a pointed glance from Clover Ebi shut him up.

Sighing, he reached his hand into his back pocket, gripping a shard of Dust. The sharp crystal cut his skin, obscured from view by his torso

Schnee drew her sword and pointed it at Neopolitan. "I will ask you one more time, soldier. What exactly is going on here?"

A bead of sweat dropped down Neopolitan's forehead as she bit her lips and took a step back. The saber found itself at the young maiden's neck, and she fell back another pace. Hazel clenched his fists and readied himself for war.

Then, the door behind them opened once again with a crisp hiss.

"I have arrived. Please withhold your applause."

In stepped Ruby Rose, dressed in the finest business attire dress suit money could buy and carrying a briefcase. Covering her silver eyes were a pair of sunglasses. Next to her on the left was the other girl she'd invited, Emerald Sustrai, garbed in an equally formal suit and sunglasses. To Rose's right was…

Hazel facepalmed.

To Rose's right was the hound, wearing nothing but a blue tie around its neck. It sauntered into the room on all fours silently alongside the two girls.

"Good afternoon, Miss Lady," said Ruby, stretching out her hand towards Winter Schnee. The Specialist took it uncertainly and gave it a quick shake before breaking from her spell of shock and falling back a step.

"Who are you?"

"I'm glad you asked, because it saves me the time of having to explain. My name is Riley Bigwig, the bigwig chairwoman of Dusticus Dusts, the second and a half largest Dust department store in the eastern hemisphere. I'm seriously considering purchasing this entire facility using my fat stacks and would like a tour of all secret areas to see if it's going to be worth the investment."

She gestured to Emerald next to her. "This is Gemstone Bisexual, my CFO. She's my closest advisor and has been like a daughter to me ever since I randomly offered her a job out of the blue on a hunch that she had something special deep inside of her, which proved to be the greatest hunched I ever hunched."

Emerald nodded wordlessly, her eyes covered up by her sunglasses. No emotion was betrayed by her face.

Rose nodded at Salem's hound. "This is Ribeye Guineapig-Fitzpatrick, my comptroller. He's been an institution in Dusticus Dusts ever since my great grandmother founded it and gave it to me as a part of my inheritance. Please disregard any racist remarks he makes; he's from a different time."

Schnee held her hands behind her back. "This is a private military facility. It's not for sale."

"That was just a test," said Rose. "I'm actually just a rich bastard who wants to flaunt my mountains of cash and gamble inordinate mountains of lien at the shits table of your casino."

"Shits? Do you mean craps table?" asked Clover.

"Congrats on passing the second test," Rose said without missing a beat. "You've left a good impression on me. Perhaps there can be a prosperous business deal between Dusticus Dusts and the Atlesian military after all, or my name isn't Rita Bigwig."

Winter pursed her lips. "Wasn't it Riley?"

"Three for three. I like your moxie, specialist."

Clover Ebi blinked at the hound. "Is that a Grimm?"

"Wow," Ruby scoffed. "Just wow. It's really rude of you to ask my comptroller that right in front of him."

"I must apologize for Clover," said Schnee, nodding at that man. "He can sometimes think before he speaks. Specialist Ebi, I have urgent business to attend to. If you and the Ace-Ops could please escort the chairwoman and her party to the casino." She gestured at Hazel and Neo with a wave of her hand. "The cadets can assist you."

Clover nodded, and Hazel struggled to keep his jaw from grinding itself into dust as the former heiress walked out of the room and down the hall. He looked at Neo to see if she had any clue what was going on, but the diminutive woman's eyes were transfixed on the hound.

"This way, ma'am," Clover said.

He, his specialist team, Ruby and her 'entourage,' Hazel, and Neo all walked out the door and down the hallway the opposite way from where Winter had gone. All the meanwhile, Hazel's neural pathways rewrote themselves to compute just how stupid Ruby Rose was.

And yet…

She somehow got us out of a standoff that surely would have resulted in bloodshed. Perhaps Salem truly has seen something in her…

Ruby cleared her throat overdramatically. "Oh, and have a few flagons of fire ants waiting for me when we arrive at the casino."

"Of course, Miss Bigwig," said Clover.

They rounded a corner and found at least forty armored soldiers on the other end, their guns drawn. At the rear of them was Specialist Schnee, holding both her sabers in the air.

"Hands where we can see them!" shouted the frontmost soldier from beneath his helmet.

"How did you possibly think that would work?" Clover asked Ruby, taking out a pair of handcuffs from his belt. "You're fifteen, and that's a quadrupedal Grimm. We don't even have a casino."

Emerald cried out in pain as her shoulder hit the floor of the cramped cell that she and her four companions shared. The guard that had thrown her in the cell growled ruthlessly, kicking her down as she tried to get back up to her feet.

"And stay down."

The leader of the specialists tsked his lips at the display of mistreatment, offended by the brutality but not so offended that he chose to intervene. That was how things were for Emerald. People always expressed their deepest sympathy to the starving orphan who slept in the cold and dug through trash for scraps, but not one of them was willing to part with their hard-earned money when she begged. Oh, and don't get her started on just how quickly those bleeding hearts turned against her the second she swiped their wallets.

It wasn't even remotely fair. Her first sally into a life of crime had been simple; she'd stolen an apple from a supermarket at age nine. Back then, she'd been so hungry that thoughts of getting caught hadn't even occurred to her. She'd just walked right in and eaten it inside the store with no regard for the onlookers or employees. To anyone with a grain of common sense, it was clear she was no career criminal but a starving child.

They'd beaten her black and blue over it.

It wasn't even like the people who did it were suffering because of her crimes. It was a chain store, a particularly prosperous one in tons of locations. The employees' salaries were constant either way, and Emerald refused to believe that their inventories were so strict that a single apple slipping by would result in punishment from the management. The only reason Emerald had had to suffer the abuse was because they saw her as a thief and assumed thieves needed to be punished. Cinder had been the only one to ever see value in Emerald.

And here she was, back in a cell just like the ones she'd spent years of her childhood in. Well, the ones back home had dark metallic bars, not Hard Light Dust force fields, but it was more or less the same. One might've thought Emerald traumatized by the imprisonment, but truth be told, it felt like the comforts of home. She was thoroughly used to spending days on end with nothing to do but stare up at the ceiling. Her aura had actually self-unlocked in prison.

"Foolish girl," Hazel bellowed. Emerald could barely bring herself to look his way as he berated the one who'd gotten them in this mess.

"We're fine," Ruby said. "This is just a minor setback. We'll bust out of here."

"Do you have any idea what you've done?" he seethed. "In our line of work, being captured is akin to a death sentence. We're in Argus, Atlas' strongest military presence outside of the heart of their kingdom itself. You don't just 'bust out' from the custody of the most powerful military on Remnant."

The specialist outside who was now on his scroll laughed at that. "At least one of you has some sense."

Emerald wasn't afraid. Cinder would invariably rescue her, so she just needed to wait it out; it was just a matter of time. She normally would have been worried about letting her idol down, but this was on Ruby's Rose's head, so Cinder might actually be pleased by how things had turned out. Emerald didn't have anything against Ruby, but she expected nature to correct itself eventually and place Cinder back on top at some point. Again, just a matter of time.

"Hazel, you need to calm down," Ruby said.

"You're nothing but trouble," he said. "Ever since you joined us, your juvenile ways have risked everything I've worked for so long to achieve. I refused to let you ruin me."

Neo remained silent, but her silence was different than usual, Emerald noticed. Normally, she couldn't speak but always had something to say. This time, she actually seemed stunned into silence.

Guess she's not used to getting caught. Probably had her boss on the outside to break her out anytime things got rough – although I guess I'm no better, just waiting for Cinder as I am.

A few more Atlesians entered the brig, one of them being a dog Faunus with a special uniform that denoted him as a higher-ranking officer or something. Emerald watched as he quietly conferred with the other uniformed man, a copper-haired soldier with pronounced muscles and a small charm above his breast.

The two nodded, and the dog-man approached the cell. Through the force-field, he pointed at them with a steady finger.

"STAY!"

Emerald felt her body freeze up, and the others (at least, those of them within her line of sight when the attack came) did the same.

The force-field briefly dropped, and two of the guards held up their rifles. Emerald tensed, but they both aimed at the Grimm dog that Ruby had brought.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

The first shot broke the illusion, and Emerald suspected that the other three were fired before the two gunmen could interpret what the saw before them. Shards of glass fell apart around the beast, revealing it to be…

Mercury?

"Hold fire! It's not a Grimm!"

Mercury slumped to the floor, evidently out of the Faunus' semblance. He propped himself up using the robotic hand that he didn't think Emerald knew about and gave the Atlesians a mock salute with the others.

"At ease, boys."

The lead Atlesian inspected Mercury with a wary eye, then turned to look at Hazel. His eyes narrowed, and he made a two-fingered pointing gesture at him twice.

The soldiers shot two shots at Hazel, shattering the illusions around him and revealing that his fake uniform was nothing more than one of Neo's illusions.

"It's just one of their semblances," said the man. "They don't actually have Grimm working for them, thank the gods. Close up that shield."

The Hard-Light generators went back on, and once Emerald was sealed back in, the dog Faunus dropped his fingers with a gasp. Evidently, his semblance took a lot out of him when used on multiple people. Emerald could sympathize.

"It's just Neo's semblance, Overactive Imagination," Ruby said, placing her hands on said girl's shoulders and shaking her slightly. "She can make illusions that –"

"Yeah, we get it," said one of the other special uniformed Atlesians. "We're not stupid."

Ruby shrugged. "Well, you kinda are since you didn't even break our auras before putting us in here. Emerald, be a dear and use your semblance to teleport us out of here, m'kay?"

Emerald blinked once.

What does – oh.

Emerald bit down on her teeth and made an illusion of a portal opening. She didn't think she could hit the entire room's worth of guards at once, but if she got the commanding officer and maybe one or two others…

"They're escaping!" screamed the leader. "Stop them!"

"STAY!" cried to dog Faunus, but his aim was off a biiiiiiit to the left. Pity.

"They're getting away! After them!"

The rank-and-file soldiers didn't know what their commander meant, as they couldn't see the vision of the prisoners escaping out of a portal, but they probably assumed he knew something that they didn't and followed orders. Such a shame that no one in Atlas had the brains to think for themselves. They might not have lowered the force field and charged in if they could.

Ruby smiled as Hazel knocked down the final specialist. For all that her plan might have been criticized by the big guy, everything was going according to it so far.

Neo had been equally useful, surgically striking at anyone who was calling for help before their message could get out.

Ruby smiled again. This was actually working. Salem was gonna be so impressed.

They saw Neo's illusion semblance and assumed we wouldn't have a second one that did something similar. After all, why pack a redundant semblance?

She held out her hands to the behemoth man, who grasped them and pulled them apart, breaking the handcuffs that restrained her. Ruby stretched out her arms and legs, pleased with herself.

"I don't understand…"

Hazel looked at Mercury's unconscious body. He was alive, but without the ability to defend himself or even dodge in the chaotic firefight that had just gone down, he'd gone down first.

"It's simple," Ruby explained. "For one thing, I knew something was gonna go wrong. One of you people were bound to screw it up somewhere along the way, so I made that a part of the plan. Failing and getting captured was Step 3 of Ruby's Eleven."

"The hound…why disguise the boy as it?"

"All part of the plan." Ruby snapped her fingers, getting the attention of the room back to her. "Folks!"

Neo and Emerald looked up at her.

Her plan was something she'd given a lot of thought to, so issuing commands about it came naturally to Ruby. "Emerald, I want you to evac Mercury back to safety. Feel free to use your semblance to avoid detection."

The green-haired teen nodded, picked up her defeated partner, and broke away from their group.

"Neo, dress Hazel up as a Beringel," Ruby ordered. "Take him, seek out the biggest group of soldiers you can find, and fight them for as long as you can. Make sure they see your illusion breaks in front of them. When you can no longer fight, flee."

"Ah, I…see," Hazel said slowly, cracking his neck.

"We need the Grimm to do this, but we don't want our enemy to know that this was Salem's handiwork, or that she exists. But if they know our modus operandi is to disguise ourselves as Grimm using Neo's semblance –"

"Then they'll assume the Grimm we do use are just humans in disguise. Clever." Hazel frowned. "But what about stealing the catal–"

"Don't worry your pretty little head, Hazy." Ruby smirked. "Leave the rest to me."

Coming Soon – Ruby's Eleven Part 3

And now, a tip from Ruby:

Ruby's Tip #841 – Keep forgetting your wallet when you leave home? Leave it at the store so it's there when you arrive.

Author's Notes

Who even am I? Who even are you? What's real? What's fake? There is no God of Darkness, it's all just a chemical reaction in our brains!

Happy rats, and don't do crime!