Chapter Text
In the Vale County Police Department, Weiss was well-known. Not only as the daughter of the police chief, but also as one of the most talented and successful officers employed there. If there was a thief, she'd catch them. If there was a murderer, she'd have them in cuffs by the end of the week, usually sooner. She was everything a police officer should be--intelligent, fit, capable, and fast.
Some other officers resented her for it. Though, this made no difference to her, of course, since she regarded socialization amongst co-workers to be unprofessional. She spoke to her partner, her boss, anyone with vital information, and no one else. This alone had earned her the title "Ice Queen" from the force. But the fact stood that she was undeniably the best at what she did.
So when the white-haired girl was assigned to the case of The Rose Thief, she felt fairly confident. They may have been the best thief the city had ever known, but Weiss was confident that good would prevail. She believed in assisted karma--this degenerate would get what was coming to them and she would make sure of that. However, she also wasn’t prepared to deal with the consequences of underestimating her opponent. She pulled late nights studying the case documents, scouring the files for any vital details. It might have even been a little unhealthy, but soon she felt she could begin her search for the criminal.
The thief had a calling card, so to speak. They left roses all over the crime scene, though their motive for this was highly unclear to the detectives who had previously worked the case. The white-haired girl was fairly sure it was a taunt. The forensics department had to figure out where the roses came from, in the hopes that it would provide a clue, but the petals from each heist were from a different place entirely. Sometimes, the best they could come up with for location was "personal garden." They didn't know whose personal garden, only that it wasn't from a florist's or a public garden.
The lack of information regarding this frustrated Weiss, to be sure, but she wouldn't let it daunt her. She was confident in her abilities and she would take this delinquent down no matter what.
She didn’t have to wait long to match wits with this new opponent. Less than a week, in fact. The young officer was called from her home (the price of working an important case) to a wealthy estate. At first glance it would appear to be a standard robbery, but then there were the petals. The Rose Thief had left their card.
Weiss surveyed the scene carefully. Two officers were working with the owner of the house to determine exactly what had been stolen. Just from what she heard of their conversation, it was quite a lot.
Besides the stolen items, though, nothing seemed to be displaced. The only strange thing about the room was the scattering of rose petals. This was another attribute of The Rose Thief--they never left a mess. They never broke anything. They simply took and bolted. There was rarely even any sign of a break-in on the house. There was only missing objects and rose petals.
Those damned rose petals.
Although she scoured the room that night, Weiss found no new evidence. There were no fingerprints, no hairs, nothing that could be traced to a culprit. All she found that night was a brand new obsession with rose petals.
Ruby Rose was known for her speed. She was the fastest of them all, a trait which was particularly useful in her line of work. It was be fast or be caught and if she were caught she'd lose it all. So she was fast. Even faster than her older sister, but Yang had her own thing to keep her out of trouble.
The two trained together in their free time, which is to say, whenever neither was on a spree. They ran together, tested each other. They sparred too, but mostly they would run. They didn't run on a flat track, since that wasn't particularly useful to either of them. Instead, they raced through the streets, practicing evasive maneuvers. Ruby had sheer speed on her side, but somehow Yang still always managed to come out ahead. It was something which the younger of the two attributed to the wisdom of age, so she assumed she could catch up if she worked hard enough. Each defeat spurred her on.
The sisters also had a tendency to try to one-up each other with their accomplishments. Yang currently had the trump card of having put together the underground network they and many others lived in, but Ruby was building up quite a resume.
Ruby and Yang had dedicated their lives to this makeshift city. It was originally meant to house refugees from the law such as the sisters themselves, but had since grown to be a place where the impoverished and homeless could find, at the very least, a hot meal. The blonde ran things from the top, making sure everything was hidden and running smoothly, while little Red worked on the streets, making sure everyone had the necessities. She knew everyone in town and made rounds every morning and evening to check on them.
It was why she became The Rose Thief, in fact. She saw first hand every day how much these people suffered, and how little the upper classes cared about them. Eventually she decided she was going to start evening the score.
That was years ago and she had only gotten better at her craft. Every detective that had pursued her had been broken, literally or figuratively. Generally, the hospital trips were courtesy of Yang--she wasn't fond of people messing with her baby sister. But it worked, and why fix it when it works just fine?
So when Ruby heard there was a new detective assigned to her case, she was mildly worried that they would be one of those who would chase too hard and get hurt. She wasn't concerned with actually getting caught, even if this Schnee girl was supposed to be the best they had.
Whatever happened, she had a bad feeling that someone was going to get hurt.
Another heist passed flawlessly. Nothing broken, nothing changed. Everything stayed just in place
Except, of course, the stolen wealth.
But in Ruby’s opinion, it hadn’t belonged to the man in the first place. He was a crook and a sham, lying to people to get their money so that he could live the high life. It was infuriating. It was why she started doing this in the first place.
Her sister greeted her proudly upon her return. Of course she did--Ruby was fantastic at what she did, and where had she learned it?
“Great job, sis! Though I heard they called the cops pretty quickly…” She was only teasing, of course. They both knew Ruby was too good to get caught. The younger of the two let out a dramatic sigh.
“I guess he couldn’t just stop and smell the roses, huh?” The pair snickered and bumped fists, enjoying the high of a job well done. They walked together, making their way to a hidden place where they stashed their goods. Someone would pick them up in the morning and make sure they were sold. Then they’d settle into their own hideaway, where they would bundle up under half a dozen blankets to keep the cold away.
It wasn’t so hard being a thief.