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The hangar was cold in the morning air, with a thin dew beginning to settle. The Atlesians sat around the central pillar, their hands locked with the aura draining cuffs they had, oh so recently, intended to use on their targets. A plan that had, to put it bluntly, gone so far south it could no longer see land. To be honest, Winter didn't think that the cuffs were really for her. Or for her men. She suspected that there was exactly one person the teenagers had wanted to keep sedated, and that was the man next to her. The idiot. Her brother. Her father had given him one instruction.
'Now, Nathaniel, Winter, the girl in red. She is one of the most important people on Remnant. The things she has done defy our knowledge of what is possible. What she could do in the future could drive our family up to never before seen heights. However, as should be obvious, she is dangerous. Whatever happens, make certain you always can see what she is doing. Don't get distracted. Don't try to play games. Just do as I bid you, and bring her back to us, alive and with her pressure points intact.'
ONE instruction. And what had her idiot brother done. Immediately. He had gone, ignored her father, played his games, and lost. Hard. And he had dragged the rest of them down with him. And the worst part was, she had known he was going to do something like that. Being engineered from the ground up to be perfect would make you overconfident, but, then again, she supposed, he really wasn't that old. He had come into the world, pre-loaded and with everything provided; of course he wouldn't think of the consequences of his actions. And now it had cost him. And her. And her men had suffered for nothing- they had failed in their mission. One of the best units in the Atlesian Military, and they had lost two thirds of their numbers and had failed in their mission.
And, as if summoned, their former target walked in through the hangar door, flanked by the white giant (Winter's SISTER!) and the blonde monster. Having seen the red hooded girl's true form, Winter doubted the mask was just for show.
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Ruby remembered. That was what she did. Yang broke things, Weiss fought things, Blake targeted things, Ruby remembered things. They fought, she thought. That was how it had always been. She remembered even now. Back while Yang could speak, and would break into a pun with every sentence. While Weiss was still fully herself, her great, black feather pinions spread wide, her clawed feet grasping at bars and beams in suprise as they leaped out at her, causing her to leap away in panic. Before Blake had ever arrived. It had just been the five of them. Weiss, Yang, Ruby, Neopolitan and Cinder. Cinder had always been there. She had been the first subject. The dust had bonded to her so well, it alone had convinced the higher ups that it was an area worthy of research.
Ruby couldn't remember when the other three had arrived. She recalled playing with them when she was still a child. They had always been together. Weiss was always aloof, always trying to impres a family that had abandoned her. A family that thought nothing of her being turned into a human guinea pig. A family she had had to research, during their extremely limited CCT access, to discover existed at all. A family of wealth, power and opulence, that had abandoned their child to a house of horrors.
Yang, always trying to lighten the mood, having fun and being... herself really. Her golden locks shone through their rooms, and she would organise the games and make sure they were all ready for whatever the day would bring. A hopeless task, but to her eternal credit, Yang had never fallen into the abyss. She had never succumbed to hopelessness. It was only after the dust that she approached the void, sitting morosely in her bed for day after day, refusing to move to eat, or to sleep, until only the threat of the collars could get her up. Ruby could remeber how Yang had been on the night of their breakout. The carnage she and Neo had wrought on the upper floors.
Neo had been a saviour. She had been there for Yang when she was needed. When Ruby couldn't be. Despite everything that they knew it would cause, Neo had been there for her sister from the day Yang's voice had been forever silenced. The researchers had marked this, and soon were using them together, during the sparring bouts and practice contests they had held, after Blake had arrived to even the numbers.
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Blake crouched on high, staring down at the circle of white clad brutes, chained together around the post below. Her rifle lay across her chest, its' stock pressed into her shoulder. The weight was comforting. The sights were focusing. It made it all so much easier. One target. One problem. One by one, the real enemies died. No having to worry about consequences. No concern over morality. The world had been far easier before she had joined up in this little gang of heroic wannabes. Just her mission, her target, and her extraction. Blake knew that the other members of her 'team' had been at the facility longer than she had. But they didn't know. They were human. How could they know?
The real enemies were the ones beneath her. The white clad thugs. The murderers. They were unleashing their own, unrestrained genocide, and no-one cared. At least, no-one with authority cared. Schnee may not have been all human, but she was still a Schnee. Nurture can only change nature so far. The human stain would never learn naturally. They would have to be taught. However necessary. All three of the Schnee heirs were within simple rifle range. Three bullets, and it would all be over.
Or not. Even Blake was not so much of a fool as to believe that attempting to take the white haired knight on with metal weapons was a good idea. Or that taking her on at all, when she was at full aura, could ever work. The advantages of a mechanical bodysuit. It replaced so many of the functions of aura, disguising its true purpose behind layers of design perfection. Ruby had really outdone herself with that armour. Yet another way their glorious leader's hubris shone through. In her arrogance, she thought that her machines could improve people. Yet she couldn't see the lie.
People couldn't be improved. People couldn't change. Only the world could be changed. And that could only happen if the right people were in the right places.
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Weiss could still feel it. The phantom pain from all of her limbs. Those that had been replaced. Those that had not. It was like being trapped in clingfilm. That is how she had described it originally. Able to feel, but as if everything was blurred. As if it was all brushed on in broad strokes. At the time, she had been relieved. Anything had been better than the implantation. She had screamed and screamed and screamed as the automated needles implanted the dust streams into her chi lines. She had screamed as the savage, tearing cold had rushed through her system. She had screamed as the saws hacked away at her atrophied, frostbitten limbs. As she had been confined to a grounded existence forevermore. As she was placed into the insulation tank. The gel had burned, it's softness fire against her skin. For days, and weeks and months, until she just stopped screaming. Nothing was going to help her. Nothing was going to bring her relief. There was no way out for her.
But then, Ruby had come. She had always been so... distant. She had never been in the sparring arena, and had never attended their team lessons or talks or training. She had always been elsewhere, 'on a special course' or 'working to make the world a better place'. Then, she had just been embittered, as Ruby returned to their dorm, as they all lay exhausted and drained from their day's exertions, and, although obviously not tired, had never answered their questions in anything but a sullen grunt. Yang had tried to lighten the mood, and sometimes it worked, and the Ruby they had know ages past would return. But only until someone asked what she had been up to. Then the sullen Ruby of today would return.
Now she knew. She had seen what Ruby had been doing. She knew that Ruby blamed herself for what happened to her. For what happened to Yang. She blamed herself for most of everything that happened to all of them during their internment.
And now she knew how Ruby was planning to take vengeance for everything that had gone wrong.
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Winter was grabbed roughly by the large blonde woman, and yanked to her feet. She half winced, half smirked as she saw the knight twist Nathaniel's arm to get him to stand up, causing her youger brother to growl in pain. The rest of the soldiers, seeing their leaders being drawn to their feet by the two women that had, mere hours earlier, carved through the bulk of their squad with as much effort as peeling an orange, rose along with them.
'Congratulations, Schnee's older and younger. You are going home. Daddy dearest has come to get you.'