A White Rose Dipped in Blood

Chapter 24

Yang glared at Weiss and Blake. "What the hell have you been hiding from us,huh? I thought we were a team?"

Ruby put her hand on Yang's shoulder. "Calm down, sis. We are a team, which means instead of jumping to conclusions and getting ticked off, how about we hear them out?"

"Oh, shut up! You are only saying that so you don't screw up your relationship with your little girlfriend!" Yang snapped. "How do you not feel betrayed, knowing she is keeping secrets from you? Still feel like it was a good idea to risk everything for her?"

Ruby's face was completely void of any emotion, but after hearing this she smirked ever so slightly. It was a sarcastic smirk that on her face was more frightening than if she looked absolutely furious. It was a cold, dangerous smile that seemed to chill the atmosphere around her. Even Yang was chilled. "Well perhaps, sister, that isn't one hundred percent wrong, but lets take a look at the situation. Are you really in any position to challenge your team leader? You have no authority to scold me, especially not in this setting. If you have an issue, you can bring it up later. Preferably in private but definately not when we are in a dangerous situation. If anyone is risking anything it would be the one who seems to be trying her best to tear us all apart. But since you did ask so nicely, Ill go ahead and answer your silly little question. Yes I am a little hurt but I trust her. I love her. which I understand means nothing to you but to us means everything. She is worth everything so before you even think of trying to continue to guilt me into leaving her we are going to have some serious problems." In the awkward and very tense moment of silence afterward, something strange happened. Ruby almost seemed to grow in size and her eyes seemed to glow. Yang was suddenly struck with a crippling terror and shrank back in fear. Then, in the blink of an eye, everything was back to normal. Ruby looked back at Weiss and Blake, the same chilly glint in her eyes. "Now please. I would love to hear what you have to say."

Yang gulped, so unused to this side of Ruby. She had never seen her like this and it was terrifying. It was almost like Ruby was a completely different person. So this is why she was made the leader. no one would dare defy her like that. Weiss thought.

Blake began, "It was really my fault. I was sneaking around the administrator's offices. I had heard some... rumors... about what was going on out in the world and I was worried. Especially about my family. Weiss had seen me and was trying to get me to come back when we saw Ozpin coming down the hallway, and he looked ... umm..."

"He looked like he was scared as all hell." Weiss interjected. "We hid, not wanting him to see us creeping around where we aren't supposed to be. But we didn't know what could scare Professor Ozpin look that freaked out." 

"I begged Weiss to let me stay. I was sure he would know something about the attacks i had heard about near my family. I thought maybe if we would listen in just a bit longer I would learn what I needed to. "

"Oh whatever, you were not begging. I wanted to know what was so dangerous in the first place. I knew it had to be something really bad if he was that freaked," Weiss scoffed.

"Ok, whatever you say." Blake said rolling her eyes. "Just trying to make you look good."

"I don't need your help with that. besides it just makes you look like an idiot."

"Hey, I was just trying to make sure you don't get in that much trouble. No need for you to be a bit-"

"AHEM." At the sound of Ruby clearing her throat, both girls went for bickering to complete silence and whipped their heads around to face her.

"Sorry," they said almost completely in sync.

"Continue. And please, get to the point," Ruby said apathetically.

Weiss spoke up. "Apparently a massive hoard of Grimm had been spotted a couple months back. It was out in the middle of nowhere, but they had never seen them massing like this before. We are talking thousands of them in what seemed like an almost organized fashion. There was way too many many for any less than an army of hunters to take on. Ozpin had sent a scout team out to monitor it and its movements, and also to make sure to start picking off stragglers where they could. Start dropping the numbers while he tried to muster up the kind of force he would need to take them out completely. They sent back weekly reports, and what they sent back were not good. They didn't really move from that location, but the numbers were growing. then apparently Ozpin hadn't received anything for a while and had started to worry. He sent a new team out to the last known location of the first recon mission and told them to investigate what had happened to the other team. If they found them and the team was ok, just unable to report in, they were to switch spots and relieve the old team. If they were injured it was to be turned into a rescue mission."

"What that second team found was a massive slaughter zone. Apparently the army of Grimm had finally started moving straight towards a town. By the looks of it the recon team had tried to call in a request for back up to stop it but that request had never gotten back to beacon. The team still tried to take on the Grimm in a desperate attempt to save that town, but... There were far too many Grimm for that to actually work. The team and the town were both slaughtered. I mean every man woman and child dead, houses torn to shreds, bodies laying in the streets. Just like the one we saw. The worst part was that the army of Grimm were gone. Even after yet anther team was sent to look for any evidence of what may have happened they couldn't find anything." Blake stopped speaking and sat there, silent. Tears flowed from her eyes as images of death and carnage bombarded her mind.

"After Ozpin finished describing it i fell to my knees and gasped. He heard it. Next thing we knew, the doors open and we are part of the investigation instead of being punished," Weiss continued.

"Oh trust me. He didn't punish us because having to be a part of this was punishment enough. We couldn't tell anyone. The slaughters didn't stop either. One after another i a straight line heading towards Beacon, but no one could tell how they were moving. We just found the remains of long dead ghost towns. Until Weiss came up with a theory, that is." Blake looked towards Weiss.

Weiss sighed, crossing her arms. "As a kid I remember going through my dad's charts and stuff. He had a really old map of the underground stations. I figured the had to be moving underground because there was no way no one would see them otherwise but the town being hit didn't have stations  on the maps that we were looking at. So I decided to talk to my dad about seeing an older map. I figured maybe they were using an old tunnel that was not in use anymore, which is why we couldn't find it. It was not an easy thing to convince him but he sent me a copy and sure enough there was an abandoned tunnel that had supposedly caved in years ago. It went right through each of the attacked towns."

Yang, who was sitting with her back to the wall and her front facing the others, said, "Why wasn't anything done? This is seriously dangerous, precautions should have been taken. Those towns should have been evacuated, and Beacon... Beacon sure as hell is't ready for this why didn't they do anything about it?"

"Because the last attack was about a month and a half ago, not to mention miles upon miles from here. We expected them to continue the pattern of hitting every town it crossed, and we had the next several towns in line evacuated.  Ozpin even stationed teams of very well trained elite Hunters and Huntresses to keep watch. but the Grimm seemed to disappear. The attacks stopped and and the recon teams sent into the tunnels found nothing fresh. Its like they just wanted to scare us and having done so left," Weiss replied.

"Regardless, we need to warn Ozpin immediately. If they just skipped all those towns and came straight here we are in trouble because next target is probably Beacon academy itself!" said Blake as the ship slowed to a halt. However, as the doors of the ship opened, the girls saw that warning the professor would be unnecessary.