Author's Notes
I did it, Rat's Nest.
No. Not, that's not right.
WE did it.
Links don't work out here in the wild west, so why don't you go ahead and google the following terms in the same search: Origin Story. RWBY. TV Tropes.
I can't tell you how happy I am to have finally made it. Thanks to Spacedragon1999 and wootzits for putting this together behind my back (over a month ago, as it happens). I always dreamt of the day I could have my TV Tropes page, and it's so great to finally be here.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
Chapter 43 – Ruby's Refinery
It felt like such a major realization should have changed her life, but it surprisingly had little effect on it. Ruby was a double agent, so learning that Salem had killed Summer Rose didn't make her want to stop working for the Grimm at all. Ruby's own plans to backstab Salem and ensure her entire Grimm empire fell apart were still in place, unchanged by her epiphany. But hey, at least she didn't need to worry about Salem knowing the truth anymore.
I ought to start practicing with my silver eyes. When the time comes for me to turn against Salem, I'm going to need every tool in my arsenal to destroy her and her forces. Having a weapon that somehow nullifies Grimm in my back pocket would come in handy.
On the immediate term, Ruby was still working with these White Fang kids, and her strategies for them were unchanged. The squadron of six were all spaced out in a wide hexagon around the base, with each of them observing the SDC construction from a distance. Ruby already knew exactly what kinds of forces the enemies had and where the best points to strike would be, but without a way to explain that to the White Fang, she had no other option but to pretend to learn it all again, this time with them watching.
"I think I count eight…n-no, ten hunters," said Richu through their radio. "No way to pos-ID."
"What makes you think they're hunters?" Ruby asked. "Did they use aura or semblances?"
"No, but their guns look a bit longer than the others. That means they're huntsman weapons, right?"
Ruby looked through her own long range binoculars, stolen from the Atlesian military and repurposed by its enemy. "Describe the guns to me."
"W-Well, they're longer and, uh, all gray." Every SDC gun was gray, so that didn't really help Ruby all that much. "I don't really know much about guns, ma'am."
Every lookout tower was manned by three guards – non-hunter, of course – packing some heavier artillery. If Ruby had to guess, Richu had seen them and mistaken it in her inexperience.
"Do they have an indent at the base of the stock?" she asked.
"What's a stock?"
Ruby had to bite back both dismay at such incompetence and anger from her weapon's nerd side at the ignorance the Faunus was displaying. "The back of the gun. The part that rests on or under the shoulder when fired to counter the rec…look, does it have a notch removed from the back or not?"
"On the top? Cuz, there isn't one on the bottom, Rose."
It could only be on the top. Ruby let out a sigh of relief as Richu confirmed her suspicions – it wasn't a secret stache of hunters at all.
"It's just their submachine guns. Some of the normal guards have them. Three at each tower, as it is."
"Oh yeah," Richu said. "There's three here, too."
"And three at mine," said Cassius. "I was thinking of calling it in before you'd explained it, but now that you've cleared it up for us, Rose…well, I guess it saves us all the time it would've taken to discount them as huntsmen."
The amount of time he'd just wasted on comms with that little speech was significantly more than if he'd just shut his trap, but Ruby declined to comment. You couldn't fix stupid.
I don't want to say that Roman was right about the Faunus, but he was certainly right about the White Fang. The only sane member of their entire group quit it as soon as she could.
"Did everyone get what they need?" Ruby asked to the entire group. She'd given them all a chance to get a good look at the opposition, knowing that if she got separated from the rest of them, it would be imperative that they know what they were doing. She would obviously carry the team when the fighting started…scratch that, when anything started, but improvisation might come in handy. And hey, maybe they would get some good practice on fieldwork out of this.
Hmmm…do I even want that? This is so far away from Salem that I doubt she'd care about Idiot Squadron having real-world experience, and the White Fang is my enemy, my real enemy. Maybe I shouldn't bother.
She shouldn't, but she would anyways. The terror that these five Faunus could wreak was minimal, and her mission with the four maidens was far more serious. If Ruby half-assed it or didn't do things as well as Salem knew she could, there was a chance it could expose her. After all, if Salem believed Ruby was a true anarchist and believer in the cause, she would expect Ruby to want the White Fang to be stronger.
"I'm good."
"Me too."
"Clear. Over."
"I think we should stay a little longer, you guys. My gut is telling me that we're about to miss something big if we leave now. I can tell."
"Woah – is that your semblance? Over."
"I can't say for sure, but my bones are telling me pulling out is a mistake, and I've always listened to them before. Maybe it is my semblance; it's always felt like more than just hunches."
Ruby declined to point out that semblances came after unlocking aura, never before. Her own childhood had been cut drastically short (directly because of her own actions, but still), so there was no harm in letting these kids live out their own for a little bit longer.
"We strike at night, like a pack of wolves," said Cassius. Seriously, at some points, this guy made her guard jump right up, because he had to be secretly bad-ass or something. No one could say so many cringey lines in such a short time without it being a cover of some sort.
You know, I joke, but that's basically how I joined Salem's gang. Maybe I will keep an eye on these guys, just in case…
There wasn't much they could do to hurt her if they tried, what with her being a maiden and never dropping her aura, but it wouldn't hurt.
"Here's the plan," he said. "Bane loaded us up with some remote detonation charges that we can plant at the lookout towers when the shift changes. It'll be nighttime, meaning that we'll have the advantage over the humans in terms of vision. One of us makes a noise, I dunno, imitates a Grimm and flashes their mask or something, and we use that to draw out all the soldiers. Then – boom! The towers come down, right on top of the SDC bastards. The fires from the blast spreads out and burns any construction they've got to the ground, thus both killing every single one of the humans and simultaneously salting Remnant to stop any future attempts at making another mine."
The Faunus gathered around him nodded eagerly. One of them raised a fist in the air and held it there, and the others quickly mimicked her by doing the same. It might've been Richu – it was getting tough distinguishing them when they weren't speaking. The cadences of their voices were all quite unique, but the four soldiers were just so unexceptional that remembering them was nigh impossible.
"Good plan," Ruby said.
Cassius eagerly nodded, something like a vicious flavor of joy in his eyes.
"But can I add a few things?" she said.
The joy fled, but it wasn't replaced with hurt or arrogance or anything like that. He might've been upset that she didn't approve of everything, but at least he wasn't too proud to accept the help.
"I'd be honored," the man said, stepping aside.
Ruby didn't want to stand up (they were just sitting in a circle in a grove of trees far from the SDC site), but he'd sat down, and it would make things awkward if she didn't. Thus, Ruby rose.
"Fire will be good to take out the bulk of their structures, but some parts of the refinery and mine will be recoverable after that. It'd be better if you used the charges your man packed to take those out."
Cory raised a hand, and Ruby had a war flashback of her time in Signal. "But then what bring down the watchtowers if we do that?"
Ruby shrugged. "Nothing, I guess."
That did bring out some complaints, and from all five of the Faunus at once. The cacophony was too loud and uncoordinated to hear any one protest, but Ruby could gather the gist of it.
"…let the humans…with what they…"
"…half of the…is to…"
"…break their spirits so completely…"
"Guys," Ruby said calmly. She refused to shout when they were so close to the enemy. "Listen to me. It's not in our best interests or the Fang's best interests to fight."
Cassius, another complaint on the tip of his tongue, managed to rein it back and gestured for his squad to do the same.
"We'll hear you out, Recruit Rose, but the decision lies with me in the end. Please, convince me…if you can."
Ruby nodded. "First of all, bringing down the watchtowers isn't going to kill all of the guards instantly. It's not like we can control how they fall down, and it's not like all of the Schnee grunts are going to line up underneath them. If this comes to a fight, which your plan indubitably will, we're going to be outgunned and outma– outnumbered. They have more weapons and more experience using them. I'll be preoccupied with those huntresses we saw – remember them, the two of them? – so it'll be up to you to fight off all the normies. You think you can do that?"
Ruby looked at them and saw that they did. The prospect of doing it frightened them, but they were five freshmen who'd joined the White Fang fueled by piss and vinegar alone, and the concept of actually losing was impossible to them.
She'd been there once, back when she'd freed Pickerel. It seemed so easy; if you were good enough, skilled enough, witty enough, whatever you needed enough, you could triumph. The only problem was, the enemy was also good, skilled, witty, or whatever. They didn't just sit around waiting for you to have your character arc and outsmart them. They actively moved against you, in ways that you couldn't always predict.
This team didn't know that, and Ruby didn't have the time or the heart to break it to them. Thus, she opted for the easier way.
"Look, if you kill them, what've you got? A bunch of bodies and a destroyed campsite? There's no way for Jacques Schnee or whichever lackey of his does an investigation of the scene to tell that it wasn't just Grimm, or an explosive ignition in the mine itself. Even if you leave a calling card, they'll just assume it was an army of White Fang waging war with the SDC. But if you do it my way – sneak right under their noses in the dead of night like a phantom, never being seen until it's already too late and you've struck – these humans will piss themselves every time they go to sleep on another SDC construction sight. They'll be living reminders to spread your legends for years, no, decades to come. They'll bear witness to the truth that all it takes is a handful of determined Faunus, few enough to walk right into their camp without being seen by the lookout, to bring down their entire army of guardsmen. This great organization that we're all a part of lives by striking fear into the hearts of the humans who would see us oppressed."
Hopefully that was enough buzzwords and hot garbage to convince them. Ruby imagined that a mass grave of Schnee guards would spread just as good a tale as the same number of living survivors of the attack, but short of breaking out her maiden powers and unleashing them on unwitting nobodies, the former wasn't happening.
The five Faunus quickly conferred among one another, but Ruby had a good feeling about her odds of convincing them. These Faunus saw her as some kind of war hero from her involvement in the White Fang's Atlas campaign, and her advice would be seen as ancient wisdom. Still, it wasn't what she said as much as that she'd said it with pure confidence. Anything could sound plausible if you said it with enough gusto and self-assured swagger to give people a warm, reassuring feeling in their gut.
"Very well," Cassius said, breaking away from their momentary council. "We've talked it out, and we think that your plan is the best."
Ruby nodded concisely.
"And as much as I'd like to lead this mission," he went on, "I think it would be best if you took point. You came up with our strategy, and you're most familiar with it, so you'd naturally be the best to coordinate our forces. A good leader doesn't let pride get in the way."
Well, a good leader probably wouldn't refer to himself as a good leader, and he certainly wouldn't put it to a vote after saying that he made the final call, but who am I to tell a White Fang captain what the best way to lead is?
Under normal circumstances, a huntress like Ruby would've maximized the benefit of having six pairs of hands (and paws) by splitting them up over a broad area.
So, Ruby did.
It might've sounded stupid, not babysitting the kids and all, but a larger group would have been easier to spot. Plus, this was a relatively low risk task, assuming they were smart enough to follow orders. Fortunately, that seemed to be something they could handle.
Ruby had sat them down at sunset and brushed them up on some basic rules and guidelines. First and foremost, the advantage was theirs. The SDC didn't know they were here, so if anything was even remotely indicative of something going wrong – a guard out of place, a Grimm sighting, anything – they bailed. Tomorrow was just as fine a night for industrial sabotage as tonight, and it wasn't like they had to do this by any deadline. In fact, the more work that was done, the more resources that were wasted by the Schnee Dust Company.
The second rule was that combat should be avoided unless there was a threat to one of their lives. The baddies (goodies in reality, but baddies here) could afford to throw endless men at the White Fang, but if even one Faunus died, that brought them down by 20%. They didn't win by killing their enemy, they won by surviving.
Thirdly, Ruby had reminded them that while they would someday be heroes, the worst thing they could do was become a martyr. The White Fang, after all, depended heavily on this particular rookie squadron of five volunteers.
No one needs to die today. Some will, but none need to.
It…It was unlikely that all of the humans would make it out unscathed, but Ozpin and Goodwitch had said that Ruby would have to do horrible things to save the world. The important thing to remember was that Cassius would have led his squad to their deaths while trying to blow up as many Schnee workers as possible had she not been here. Even if she couldn't save everyone, she could minimize casualties.
And if she did something really stupid, like turn in the White Fang, she might save those few human workers, but she'd be trading away any chance of going on future missions and lowering the body count. It was saving ten people today vs saving hundreds over months, and perhaps millions overall if her mission was a success.
The radio crackled to life as the clocks struck 1am. Cassius' voice came through, vaguely fearful but steadied by forced calm. "All men – move out."
"And women," said Richu.
"Yes, of course," he amended. "My mistake. All men and w–"
Ruby cut them both off. "Voices down. We're on. Absolute silence on the comms unless it's necessary."
Ruby had determined the best locations to target and divided up the work among the Faunus she'd thought best to take care of each spot. She herself was going to be getting into a hidden blind spot from the watchtowers where she could wait it out until the charges were set, and then she would light the fires. Hopefully, the camp would be woken up at that point, and when they all went to congregate around the burning buildings, none would be anywhere near the explosions.
Keeping her eyes glued to the guards on the watchtowers, Ruby waited for the set in the southwest quarter to fall asleep, just as they had last night. Those at other towers could in theory still see her, but most of them were going to assume that the southwest tower would watch its own immediate area.
The men nodded off, and Ruby silently cut through the moonlight until she was in the shadow of the tower itself. The White Fang had exchanged their typical ostentatious uniforms for jet-black jumpsuits, one of which Ruby herself was wearing. She wasn't a ninja by any means, but with the vigilance of those she was trying to evade, she may as well have been. Crescent was with her, in the event that something did go wrong and Ruby ended up needing to fight her way out.
The plan was for them to each achieve certain checkpoint accomplishments – deploy the first explosive, be moved to the second location, and so on – by specific times in the night, and then wait there until the next window of time opened up to complete the next task. Each task would take less than half the time given, so that if anyone ran into any delays, they still had the ability to proceed with the mission. It guaranteed no one would be left behind and feel the need to call in for extra time, thus risking alerting the guards. Ruby was giving these Faunus a wide margin for error.
All in all, the entire mission would take one and a half hours, but most of it would be spent idle. Still, some wasted time was paltry in comparison to the risk of capture.
Ruby had twelve minutes to get to her designated hiding spot, at which point she would wait there for three more checkpoints while the others did their work. After that, her goal was to 'get the firestarters ready' (she couldn't rightly tell the Faunus about her maiden powers and had to pretend to be using a Fire Dust kit). Then, when the fire was up, she would be out of the camp by the –
Ruby froze up just as she came up to the spot.
It's…it's…
The snowflake.
The Goliath-sized snowflake that had been freshly emblazoned on the side of the refinery in giant white strokes of paint hadn't been there before. Workers had likely painted it on during the day.
But it wasn't stationary. It was moving!
It's the same thing! It's her! Hers!
The Atlesian specialist was upon her in a flash, summoning snowy Grimm out of that snowflake and shooting shards of ice and raining down a barrage of sabers that Ruby couldn't deflect no matter how many times she desperately swung her scythe. She was a monster, larger than life, bigger by a wide margin than any of the large industrial processing structures that Ruby was trapped between.
That snowflake, it was a weapon. Despite the panic Ruby felt, she would never forget just how dangerous the snowflake was. The fateful fight was burned into her brain, when the specialist woman, Winter, had sicced all manner of fearsome powers onto Ruby, all originating from runic white disks that bore the same distinct symbol.
"NO!" Ruby screamed, as Winter loomed overhead like a giant. "NO!"
Blood was everywhere. All over the ground, seeping out of the buildings, coating Ruby's hands no matter how hard she tried to rub it off – everywhere.
The enormous specter of the woman Ruby had slain raised her saber, its length akin to that of a schoolbus, and the snowflake on the refinery came alive and began to spin. Ruby didn't know what ungodly magical attack or summoned ghostly Grimm was going to come out of it, but she could be sure that this was to be the killing blow.
"NOOOOOOO!"
Maiden fire exploded outwards from Ruby in all directions as she raised her hands in fear.
Coming Soon – Ruby's Revelry
And now, a tip from Ruby:
Ruby's Tip #861 – If you ever feel bad about yourself, just remember that there are people who draw rule 34 of me even though, in the original show, attention is repeatedly and explicitly drawn to my age, which is 15 years old.
Author's Notes
Since, in the past, my hallucination sequences have been unclear to some, I'll clarify here that the ending sequence is not actually happening. There is no giant Winter Schnee raising a supersized saber and trying to slash Ruby. She's just recognized a familiar symbol and is having a bit of a PTSD flashback.
Happy rats, and don't do crime!
