Let's get our gangster on.

As always, if you want to use this idea, hit me up with a PM, and you're good to go.

Arc Family Business

(Inspired by Black Lagoon and Cyberpunk 2077)

Basic story premise: The Arc family is the biggest mafia family and criminal organisation in all of Vale, controlling and having connections to almost every gang and criminal group in the entire city, and worming their way into legitimate businesses as well, setting up dozens of shell companies across Vale, and even controlling parts of the police and hospital services, to the point where the family boasts an armed squadron of extremely deadly ex-military contractors known as Black Squad, and even employs a hospital service in support of the Huntsman industry that acts more like squadrons of armed combat medics than gentle doctors.

Simply put, the Arcs are the biggest crime family in all of Vale.

And Jaune is the next in line to the head of their criminal empire's throne.

Ozpin, interested in getting the Arc family and all of its assets onto his side in his war against Salem, dispatches Team RWBY to go undercover and infiltrate the Arc organisation under the moniker of a small gang called Triple-Six, of course, not giving the girls the full details of their mission, as is his style, and they are sent in not completely knowing the truth.

In fact, many of the people of authority, both good guys and bad, both Ozpin's side and Salem's, regularly withhold important information from the team, and sometimes outright lie to them, in order to get their way, as they go deeper and deeper into the criminal life, and slowly become more and more corrupted by it.

In particular, Ruby grows much much more closer to Jaune during the course of their infiltration of the Arc family, growing to become friends with him, and then best friends, and then slowly building into a possible romance between the 2.

However, this is about the same time as Cinder Fall, Roman Torchwick, and the White Fang come into play. Of course, Roman, not wanting to piss off the Arcs, does his best to avoid their businesses and territories and stay away from them. The Arcs, for their part, do notice Roman Torchwick and his unusual behaviour and break from his usual criminal patterns, but resolve to merely keep an eye on it and shelve it away for later, content to allow him to muck around as long as he doesn't disturb the delicate ecosystem that they've build in Vale.

However, Cinder, getting impatient as Roman's meandering, sends Adam and his White Fang to steal tons of dust from all over Vale, knocking down multiple Arc owned businesses along the way, and emboldening lesser gangs such as the Voodoo Girls, the Rhinos, and the Lion's Den to begin attacking Arc establishments all over Vale, thereby now threatening to destabilise the balance of power within the city.

This wouldn't do.

With the possibility of a gang war threatening to erupt all over Vale, the Arc family moves to clamp down on it, and Team RWBY, still under the moniker of Triple-Six, is sent in alongside the Arc's Black Squad and other characters to sort it all out, leaving them to do more and more terrible things in order to control the various gangs running about, and putting a stop to Cinder and her plans before they can come into fruition.

And that is where another element of the story comes into play: Whereas Ozpin and his circle and Salem and her circle continuously lie to Team RWBY and constantly embellish and omit the truth, it is the Arc family who shows the girls any sense of honesty and trust, constantly telling the truth to them, and acting more affable and evil, running their organisation more like a business than a criminal syndicate, filling away paperwork and sorting out taxes and the like.

And therein lies the truth of this fic: It's not just a Mafia AU, it a deconstruction of the Mafia AU.

Suffice to say, nobody involved in the crime life in this fic is happy about the lives that they lead. Roman and Neo would rather just go back to petty robbery and flamboyant thievery than hang around Cinder and her lot, Emerald and Mercury follow Cinder, but they're both miserable about it, most of the White Fang grunts are torn between trying to do stuff that'll actually make a difference and just sodding it and trying to kill every human that they see, most of the criminal gangs in Vale are like they are because they either had nowhere else to go and needed to survive or thought that it would be cool to be in a gang and got swept up in all of the mayhem.

Even the Arcs, despite holding all of the power, are miserable. None of them wanted to be criminals, but since they were born into this life, none of them have any choice in the matter because if they tried to step away from it, they'd be hunted down by their unwanted enemies and killed, with Jaune confessing to Ruby that all that he wants in life is to just have friends and act like a normal kid would without the fear of getting a bullet in the back of his skull. Even Eleusinia Arc, the head of the family, and the one who usually acts like a cross between Re:Zero's Echidna and literally every villain played by Giancarlo Esposito, ends up breaking down and revealing that she is suffering from severe depression, and would want nothing more than just to escape the criminal life in exchange for a peaceful one, but can't because the Arcs are the only thing keeping a gang war from tearing apart Vale, and keeping the delicate balance of the criminal underworld in check.

And she's right. The Arcs were once great heroes, and, in a way, that hadn't changed. Over the years, their family had been quelling gang violence and rampant corruption in Vale by simply eliminating those gangs and redirecting the flow of corruption to themselves, so that they might control it and better it, refocusing it all to support the kingdom of Vale. And it had been working. Crime was down to the single digit percentage, more efforts were being focused on protecting the people instead of extorting them, and any major criminals that rose up in Vale that threatened to disturb this system were met with the end of a bat and the barrel of a gun. The Arcs had effectively created a spiderweb of crime in order to stop crime, and now, thanks to Cinder's lot, it was all about to fall over, all because of the smallest show of weakness.

This deconstruction extends to the Huntsmen and Team RWBY as well. The Huntsmen, for their part, are shown to be nothing more than glorified mercenaries that lord themselves over the people and don't bother to help out with the internal problems that plagued Vale, even sometimes being hired by the Arcs to do their dirty work.

Team RWBY, however, really does go through the ringer during this story. All of their motivations are put under the microscope and picked apart by the Arcs, and with all of the violence and horrors that they see as they continue on with their infiltration, they are soon left as traumatised shells of what they once were, all of their hopes shattered and their dreams turned to ash as they are confronted by the reality of the world around them.

Ruby, however, get's hit with this the worst, though, as her entire motivation for being a Huntress and having no other thoughts or dreams outside of that are picked apart by the Arcs, and revealed to be nothing more than empty and shallow, and soon, her real personality is revealed to the world: She is lonely, and severely depressed, and also utterly out of sync with the world around her. However, it is the Arcs that allow her to finally feel a sense of purpose and belonging, and slowly but surely, she begins to sympathise more with the Arcs and Jaune rather than with her own team.

Towards the beginning, it is hinted that the Arcs know who they are, and near the end, it is revealed that they do know exactly who they are, and had just been playing along with Ozpin and his lot because they found it amusing. It is here where the final tipping point for Team RWBY comes to play, and Yang, Blake, and Weiss agree to escape from the Arcs and just leave, abandoning Ozpin and going their own separate ways.

Ruby does not, and sides with the Arcs, helping to capture the 3 girls and hold them prisoner, now making her defection official.

Soon, the Vytal Festival comes, and everybody makes their move. A gang war finally erupts in the streets of Vale, and in the carnage, the Arc family is killed, including Jaune. Their deaths were senseless, without warning, and without meaning. The only one left alive now is the baby, almost a toddler, called Adrian Cotta-Arc.

In a blinding rage, Ruby finally crosses over the deep end, and snaps. In a show of bloody carnage, she leads all of the forces loyal to the Arcs on a bloody rampage across Vale, killing off gang after gang after gang, until finally meeting Cinder and her lot, right after they've enacted their plan.

And even with the fall maiden powers, Cinder is no match for the sheer ruthlessness of Ruby and her forces, and she is killed, along with the rest of her forces.

In the end, the Arc organisation is victorious, and Ruby declares that until Adrien is fit to lead, she will act as his caretaker and surrogate mother, and would therefore be taking over the entire crime syndicate until then. Many others protest against this, but Ruby silences them by having all of her naysayers killed, and so, her rise to power is solidified.

A year later, and the Arc organisation is now the de-facto rulers of Vale. They own the police and military, they own the hospitals, they ran the SDC out of Vale and took over the dust mining and selling in Vale, and they even have control over some aspects of the media, all taken through the sheer amount of ruthlessness and effectiveness of their new leader, Ruby Rose, and her progeny Adrian Cotta-Arc.

In the streets of Vale, Yang is walking the streets, dodging patrols from Huntsmen, soldiers, and policemen loyal to the Arcs, when she comes across a group of men being beaten to death by Black Squad members, while a group of traumatised sex workers are taken away by the Arcs' combat medic teams.

In the corner, Ruby is seen looking over everything, encouraging her men to slowly kill the men who had tried to rape her organisation's sex workers.

In a flash, Yang goes to Ruby's side, and hits her with a flurry of panicked words and questions, before trying to grab hold of her and drag her away. Ruby, for her part, orders her to back off and leave her be, but Yang responds that she won't be going anywhere without her little sister.

And Ruby, for her part, responds by putting a gun to Yang's forehead, and shooting her dead, looking over her falling corpse with a blank expression, and then walking over it, leaving it to be picked apart by the vultures.

The end.

Yikes, this one got dark.

If you want to use it, then as always, PM me and leave a credit to me for the original idea in the A.N., and as always, see you whenever.

Titanmaster117 out!