Through Victory, CH 15

Proofread by JohnSmith13.

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“Dad!”

Ruby only had to feign excitement a little bit as she hugged her dad. Taiyang had come looking for her at the workshops as she was leaving, likely guided by Uncle Qrow. Her dad didn’t look worse for wear, despite the wringer that the Taskmaster projection had put him through the night before. But along with the excitement was a little wariness. It had been a very, very long time since she had last spoken to the man as a daughter would to their father, not to mention that she was so much older than he was. Behind her mask, Silba tried not to think too hard about all of the weirdness of her current situation, not to mention that he was apparently working for Ozpin. While she would like to think that he was simply checking in on family, her instincts, which had yet to lead her awry, suspected another purpose to his visit.

“Ruby!” Her dad hugged her back. “How’s school going for you?”

“Great!” she enthused, “I’ve made a lot of new friends, even have my own team!”

“So I’ve heard.” Ruby let him go reluctantly. “So, how’re you adjusting to being team leader?”

“I’m managing. Do you want to meet them?”

“I already have, actually,” her dad told her. “I just came from the dorms. So, Blake and Weiss?”

“Yeah, they’re our partners,” Ruby said. “They’re really nice once you get to know them.”

“I’m sure they are. So, how’s everything else?”

“Good.” Ruby thought about the past week. Obviously she couldn’t talk about what she had done as Silba, so she focused instead on what she had been doing as Ruby. School, studying, tinkering with her Crescent Rose. All things a perfectly normal Ruby would have done. “Classes are hard, but I can manage. And I’ve got Weiss to help me. I’ve been working on improving my baby, too,” Ruby patted Crescent Rose.

Her dad chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds like the Ruby I know.”

“Dad?”

He sighed. “I’m just glad you’re settling in here. You know, I got worried when you were admitted early.”

“Really?”

“Well, just a little,” he admitted. “Beacon Academy is a different beast entirely from Signal, as you’ve probably figured out by now.”

“It is,” Ruby giggled. The conversation had been similar to one she dimly remembered from her past life, a scant few weeks before everything went wrong. “Well dad, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m doing great.”

“I’m glad. I wouldn’t want to know what your mom would think if her daughter washed out of her old school.”

“Yeah.” Ruby thought about her mom, long dead. She would have to re-visit the memorial back on Patch some time. Something to put a pin in for the future.

“So, want to get something to eat?” her dad asked, patting her shoulder. “Maybe you can tell me stories about your teammates. And what’s this about an upgrade?”

“Upgrade? It’s a replacement for my blade,” Ruby answered, unsheathing Crescent Rose from its holster on her belt. “You remember that giant robot movie we saw a while back?”

Taiyang rubbed his chin in thought. “Oh yeah. ‘Get in the robot!’ What was its title again?”

“It had a funny one, something about lions,” Ruby tried to recall. “But anyway, remember that big knife the purple one used?”

“So you’re, what, turning your scythe into some sort of laser cutter thing?”

“Pfft, of course not,” she laughed it off. Although a small part of her turned that idea over in her head. Food for thought. “Even with Weiss’s help, I’d need a lot more power for that. Instead, I replaced the blade with a new one supported by an ultrasonic resonating oscillator.” Obfuscating the truth behind layers of bureaucratic technobabble was a trick Silba had learned all too well. Maybe with a scientific-sounding name like that, perhaps she could even look into getting a patent for it.

She glanced at her father, only to see him with glazed eyes, the same vacant expression he would adopt whenever she used to go off on a lecture about some weapon or another. That had been so long ago. “A what now?”

“A special motor makes the blade vibrate, dad.”

“Oh. Why didn’t you say that?”

“I did,” she chuckled. “That is a mouthful, though. And I don’t want to call it a ‘prog knife’, I just know some meanie will call it a ‘frog knife’.”

“And you’d get sued.”

“Nah, I can work out some sponsorship deal with the studio if that happens.” She noticed her father’s shocked look. “What?”

“Nothing.”

Ruby glared at him suspiciously. “You weren’t thinking something mean about me just now, were you?”

Taiyang tittered nervously. “Of course not.” He quickly changed the subject, pointing at Crescent Rose as he ignored Ruby’s pout. “Anyway, it’s a blade that vibrates. Why not call it a ‘vibroblade’?”

“Ooooh, that’s a great name!” And she didn’t even have to be the one to say it. “It’s still a work in progress, though. I still need to do a lot more testing and tinkering to see if it will work in practice. It also consumes a lot of power too.”

“OK, then. Just be careful, alright?”

“Of course I will. When have I not?”

Her father just gave her a deadpan stare.

Ruby fidgeted. “That was one time! It doesn’t count!”

Taiyang chuckled and patted her head. “Fine, fine. Well, this is pretty impressive. Leave it to Summer’s daughter to use giant robots to come up with a way to upgrade a giant scythe.”

Ruby sniffed. “We can’t all rely on punching people in the face. It’s so uncivilized, you know. So dad, what was that about food?”

“Oh, you know, lunch and the like.” The two of them walked on in silence for a brief spell. “Ruby?”

“Dad?”

Her father’s tone had shifted, becoming more serious. “Ruby, I know about what Oz told you.”

“What?”

“About… her.”

Oh. behind her mask, Silba’s mind raced. Her father knew? Exactly how involved is he with Ozpin? “Oh,” she replied neutrally. “Yeah, so, that.”

Her father stopped, and Ruby did as well. “Ruby, look,” her father started, “You’re all that I have left of your mother.”

“Dad...”

“And what Oz told me scares me.” He looked down at her, the worry evident in his face. She sensed fear, worry and sadness on his mind, all of it pertaining to her. “Ruby, just promise me that you’ll trust your headmaster. Please?”

“Okay, dad,” she said. “What… brought all of this on?”

The man sighed. “Just… What he told me about her scared me.”

“Dad, you can tell me.”

A hand came to rest on her shoulder, and Ruby leaned into it. “Ruby, this woman, this Salem? She’s interested in you for an awful reason.” Silba sensed other thoughts, thoughts pertaining to…

To…

To mom. For a brief moment, Silba glimpsed a fleeting memory of a woman standing by a cliff. A cliff she was all too familiar with.

My father is afraid he will lose me, she thought.

“Dad, I’ll be fine,” she reassured him. “Some creepy woman doesn’t scare me at all.”

“Yeah,” he said. He didn’t sound too confident, but there wasn’t much else that she could do in that regard.

“So, weren’t we going to go get lunch?” She changed the subject. “The cafeteria should be open by now.”

“Yeah kiddo,” he replied. “Let’s go get something to eat.”

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It was hours later and the day was starting to wind down. Classes at Beacon were scheduled to resume fully tomorrow morning, even if for a single day before the weekend. Ruby was at least glad for a return to some semblance of normalcy, if only for her fellow classmates. Silba wouldn’t be able to rest however, for a multitude of different reasons. She still had a great many tasks to take care of, both big and small yet all important in their own ways. Starting with Weiss, and a conversation that needed to happen.

She had chosen a spot a fair distance away from the main campus, a quiet glade a half hour’s walk from the amphitheater and main buildings, and situated near a cliffside facing Vale that was more or less out of sight from anywhere else at school. It was a nice and quiet place, with a couple of seating areas situated amongst orphaned stone columns. She sat contentedly at one end of a stone bench, leaving plenty of space for the other girl to sit down if she so wished. They would be far away from any prying eyes, but just in case, she used a variant she had created of the Force Cloak technique, a small field that would conceal their conversation from any eavesdroppers, be they electronic or otherwise. It was probably overkill, but it never hurt to take extra precautions.

“Hey, Ruby. You wanted to talk?” The other girl had found her easily enough, based on the directions Ruby had given her via Scroll.

“I did,” Ruby replied, gesturing for her partner to sit down. “There’s something that I wanted to talk to you about, as team leader.”

A moment’s hesitation, before Weiss took the proffered seat. “Oh, okay.”

“But first, I just wanted to say thanks for helping me out,” Ruby said. “It means a lot to me, more than you can imagine.”

“You mean with my father?” She asked. “I’m still amazed he gave you something for free.” Weiss’s reaction after being told about and shown the little power cell was one of amazement. Even with proof, she had been scarcely able to comprehend what Ruby had shown and told her. Of course, Ruby had ample practice being persuasive, practice that she was now putting to good use once more.

“Well, I can be persuasive when I need to be.”

“I could see that. What did you even need that for anyway?”

“The power cell? Oh, just an upgrade to my baby,” she said with a wink.

Weiss huffed. Ruby thought it was cute. “That ridiculous contraption you call a weapon is going to get you killed one day, I hope you know that.”

“Nope, Crescent Rose is family.” Ruby let a beat pass in silence. “But gratitude aside, there’s something else that I want to talk to you about.”

“Such as?”

Ruby sighed. “Well, I have a… confession of sorts, Weiss.”

“A confession?”

“Yes.” Ruby stood from the bench, taking a step away from both it and her partner. “There’s something I’ve been hiding for a while, Weiss, something that I need to tell you. I will eventually have to tell our teammates as well, but as you are my partner, you should be the first to know.”

It was Weiss’s turn to sigh. “Ruby, I can understand if you’re into girls, and I just want to say that  I am totally okay with that.”

Ruby froze. Oh. That was what she thought this was about? “No, it’s not that,” she laughed. “It’s something else entirely.”

Weiss looked equally surprised and confused. “Right.”

“It pertains to something else.” No going back, she thought. Ruby closed her eyes and turned around.

And Silba opened them, her Sith yellow eyes peering down into Weiss’s pale blue.

“Weiss,” Silba greeted the other girl. “I am hoping my recent actions have not left a bad impression upon you.”

Weiss seemed confused. “Ruby?”

“Not exactly,” Silba explained, smiling warmly. “You may have heard of my alter ego, the one the tabloid sheets have taken to calling the ‘Red Blade’? Well, I prefer to go by Silba.”

Weiss’s reaction was delayed, but predictable.

“What?” The girl looked confused. “Ruby, if this is some sort of joke-”

“It is not a joke, Weiss,” Silba assured her.

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I find that a little hard to believe-”

Silba merely smiled and raised a finger. Black smoke rolled off of her frame to coalesce next to her and in front of Weiss, taking the form of the so-called Red Blade. Side by side, the similarities were hard to deny. Both of them had near identical heights and frames, and seeing it from this perspective, Silba wondered what further precautions she should take to obfuscate her identity.

Weiss looked from Silba to the specter, then back to Silba. “No, what… That can’t be right,” she stammered. “You’re not some sort of, of monster that kills people!”

“No, I am not,” Silba replied.

“This… This isn’t possible! Your Semblance is speed-based, not… not whatever that is!”

“You are not wrong.” Silba stepped past the specter to sit back down, keenly aware that Weiss had backed into the corner between the bench’s back and armrest. “I am not using my Semblance,” she said, looking at the other girl. “This is something else entirely.”

Weiss again looked between the two of them. “You’re being controlled!” She shouted, grasping for straws.

“Weiss-”

“Someone’s got some sort of mind control Semblance and they’ve using it to mess with your head! Or my head! Are you even real? Am I actually talking to Ruby? That’s what this is, isn’t it?” Weiss chuckled bitterly. “This is a White Fang trap! You degenerates managed to get someone with an illusion Semblance and got me here alone to kill me, right?!”

“Weiss,” Silba stepped forward and gently put a hand on Weiss’s shoulder. “I am the Red Blade.”

“No… no… ” She whispered, shaking her head. “That’s not true! That’s impossible!”

For a brief moment, Silba flashed back to a painful moment from her past at hearing those words. She gritted her teeth and pushed onward. “We both know it is true, Weiss.”

“They said her Semblance was telekinesis!” She tried to argue. “Yours is speed-based, not… not…” She trailed off. Weiss looked up at her, fear plainly written across her face.

“You deserve a proper explanation, I know,” Silba said. “And I can give you one Weiss. Just please, listen to what I have to say.”

Weiss said nothing, and Silba took that as her cue to continue. “The person that the news channels and papers have been talking about is me, yes. But contrary to what they’ve been saying about me, and contrary to their accusations against me, I have been trying to save Vale and Beacon, not destroy them.”

A beat, before Weiss spoke again. “You… You’re not really Ruby, are you?” She asked. “Who are you? Where’s my partner!?”

“‘What are you doing?’” The abrupt tone interrupted the rant Weiss was building up to. “That was the first thing you ever said to me, Weiss. You then started lecturing me about Dust while shaking a leaky bottle of it in my face. The results, as I recall, were quite explosive.” Silba chuckled. Despite herself, Weiss flushed at the reminder of their first meeting. “You still remember what coffee I liked, I hope? Five sugars and one cream.”

Weiss grimaced, a riot of emotions on her face.

“Weiss, there is no mind control, hallucinations or anything of the sort. I am not going to hurt you.”

“What…”

“I’m still me, Weiss. Although, I have become so much more.”

“What… No…” Weiss fell silent, tears forming in her eyes. In a sense, it was a kind of betrayal, and one that could not be avoided. Better to just get it over with, and console her afterward.

Silba’s smile faded. “Weiss, we can talk about me some more in a little bit, but first we have more important issues to discuss.”

“More imp- Like what?”

“The White Fang, for starters.”

“The White Fang,” Weiss echoed.

“Yes. And unfortunately, the White Fang is but the start of our problems.”

Weiss said nothing for a moment before dragging a hand down her face. “Of course they’d be involved,” she sighed.

“Indeed.”

“So…” Weiss said. “What do the White Fang and…” she gestured. “Whoever’s worse have to do with what you’ve been doing? No, before that, what have you been doing, exactly?”

“A good question,” Silba said. “I have been trying to save Vale, and Beacon Academy.” It was the truth. Revenge was merely the side dish, when it all boiled down to it. Well, more of a dessert.

“By attacking and killing people?”

“That is part of it, yes.”

Weiss shook her head. “Good people don’t do that, Ruby!”

No, they do not. “Weiss, you and I both know that the sad excuses of police that Vale considers law enforcement are and have been at best incompetent in regards to dealing with the White Fang, especially with regards to a group as zealously motivated as the lot that took up residence in this kingdom.”

Weiss frowned. “But why? Why attack them, and not tell someone? The Headmaster, or one of the teachers?”

“Because they were going to attack Vale, and then Beacon,” Silba explained. “The Dust robberies that have been happening recently? They intended to smuggle it all out of the city and onto a train in Mountain Glenn. In a few weeks they would then crash that train into Vale by way of a forgotten and disused transit tunnel.” Weiss said nothing, so Silba continued. “The Grimm drawn to all of that misery and suffering their attack would cause? They would use it as a diversion to attack Vale and Beacon, while both were responding to the disaster.”

Silba thought back to what they had then called the Breach, when the Fang had rammed that train into the heart of Vale. She and the rest of her team had been aboard it, had tried and failed to stop it. Here and now, that attack had been delayed, likely indefinitely, due to the required Dust having gone up in a fireball days prior, although the train was still out there, a loose thread that would need tying up. Something to keep in mind for the future.

“As for why I chose to act on my own? Well, old habits die hard, Weiss. And regardless, since then I have become aware of compelling reasons to be wary of our good headmaster and his close associates.” Also Weiss, it was personal for me. You would not understand, not yet.

“But why Ruby?” Weiss asked. “I mean really, what made you do that?”

Silba looked Weiss in the eye. “I can do you one better than telling you Weiss.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can show you.” Silba reached out to touch her partner on the forehead-

Fire, destruction all around them. The burning ruins of Beacon, that night that marked the beginning of Ruby’s change into Silba. The rat-tat-tat of distant gunfire, the screams of people dying and the squelches of Grimm slaughtering them and reveling in the bloodshed.

Like funeral pyres, burning buildings surrounded them as in the distance, the proud tower of Beacon tumbled to the ground in a cloud of debris. Someone, perhaps an older year at Beacon, the beret on her head looked familiar, was crying on the ground as a Beowolf loomed over her with its jaws open. Torn and dismembered limbs were scattered everywhere she looked. Blood splattered on walls, pooling on the ground.

She was alone, forced apart from her teammates by the seemingly never-ending swarm of black and hate and fear.

More bodies.

She lost track of how long she had been swinging her weapon. Her Dust had run out long ago. Each dead Grimm helped, right? She passed another body, another corpse on the ground. Nothing she did seemed to help much. So many Grimm, just waiting to devour them all. How were they even supposed to win? Weren’t heroes supposed to win?

Even as she cut down an Ursa, she saw three more people, a mother and her children it looked like, disappear underneath a tide of Creeps.

She saw a jagged lock of red hair, along with some golden shards and torn pieces of brown fabric.

How long has it been? Her arms felt like they were about to fall out of their sockets. She could only hope her efforts were buying enough time for someone, anyone, to escape.

Finally, she saw a flash of white. There!

Weiss was there, lying on the ground, lifeless and cold. Her eyes vacant and her neck slit to the bone, a wide pool of her own blood beneath her, staining her dress crimson red. Above her stood a Faunus, his face obscured by a bone white mask. He held a sword, still dripping from its most recent kill. He looked back at Weiss’s corpse…

And smiled.

Weiss jerked away with a shriek, nearly falling off of the bench entirely. Her desperate breaths were quick and short as she looked around with manic, choppy motions. She frantically jerked her hands to her throat, fingers scrabbling over unblemished skin. Finally, she managed to focus again on Silba, who sat there watching her with a sad smile.

The technique that Silba had used on Weiss was dangerous, and that was putting it lightly. It allowed for efficient communication with minimal loss of information, but it conveyed everything as if the recipient was in the user’s shoes. Every thought, every stray emotion. Silba did not want to expose anyone to the horrors of that night, but it was the only way to make them understand what made her, well, her, and the extraordinary lengths she would go to to ensure such a disaster would never happen again. And out of everyone on her team, she felt that Weiss was the most likely to be able to recover from the experience.

“Wha- What was that!” Weiss shrieked, tears streaming down her face.

“My past,” Silba explained. “And your future, had I not done what needed to be done.”

“That… This isn’t making any sense!” she sobbed.

“Like I said, this is complicated.” Silba looked away. She allowed the other girl a few moments to regain her bearings and a modicum of composure. “And like I also said earlier, I am Ruby Rose. But I am also much more than the naive and sanguine girl you have come to know as your leader and teammate.”

Weiss sniffled and, fishing out a handkerchief, started wiping the tears from her face. “What… What was that Ruby?”

“It’s a long story, one that began a long time ago.”

Silba told her. She started from the beginning, or at least a beginning. She started with her past, with the brief moment of time between that rooftop a week ago and when Beacon would have fallen. How a group of White Fang had laid siege to Vale, and would later harness the Grimm to attack Beacon itself. She told how her team, Weiss included, and all of the others had perished. Even her Uncle Qrow and the faculty, all killed in the attack.

Weiss’s reaction was mixed, and Silba could sense a riot of emotions wafting off of her. Horror, worry, anger and confusion, just to name the notable emotions she sensed. A part of her deep down wanted to doubt what she was saying, but the rest of her was swayed by the conviction with which Silba spoke her words and the hellish scene she had experienced. It also helped that Weiss had just seen the method of her own murder, in all the grisly detail that Silba remembered it through Ruby’s eyes.

Silba glossed over how she came to arrive on that dusty world at the edge of the Unknown Regions. Even centuries later she still didn’t know exactly how she found herself there. Someone probably might know something about that on her world, somewhere. She also glossed over her Master, how he had molded her into his Apprentice. It was best if Weiss didn’t know about the tortures and trials she had been subjected to, the things Lord Vader had considered ‘training.’

But she did talk about him. Darth Vader, Lord of the Sith and the right hand of the Emperor of the Galactic Empire. She chose to keep it carefully vague, the full details of their relationship. She talked about the Seventh Sister, the first real friend she’d had since arriving amongst the wider galaxy. She talked about the Rebellion and the so-called Rebel Alliance, and her time defending the Empire from them. She told them about the end of the war, how her Master had killed the Emperor and ascended to the throne himself. Silba briefly talked about those years, how she acted as his right hand. Those had been fairly pleasant years all things considered, a brief couple of decades of quiet peace flanked on both sides by years and years of war. And then…

“Empress?”

“Yes,” Silba smiled.

“Of an empire that spanned the whole galaxy?”

“Indeed.”

“That galaxy up there?” Weiss raised an arm, pointing a finger at the sky. The sun was starting to set, and a few stars were beginning to appear. Still occluded though was the ribbon of dust and stars that marked the galactic disc.

Silba nodded.

The silence was long and pregnant, only broken by Weiss’s flat “What.”

“Things… escalated,” she responded wryly.

The other girl just rubbed her forehead. “Ruby, just… You’re fifteen. You’re younger than me.”

“Physically here and now? Yes, I am still a teenager in the biological sense.” Silba drew a breath. “But I have lived literal centuries elsewhere, and have the knowledge and experience to reflect it.”

Weiss grimaced. “How long?”

“Have I been alive?”

She nodded.

“When I was crowned Empress of the Galactic Empire, I was nearly forty,” Silba answered. “I didn’t retire until well into my three hundreds.” There was a brief silence, as Weiss’s mind tripped over the sheer impossibility of those numbers. “You know, you are handling this much better than I anticipated.”

Weiss said nothing for a moment, before letting out another sigh. “It’s the shock, I think,” she said, turning to look at her. “Once it wears off, I’m probably going to start panicking. But… how though? If what you said is true, this all feels so…”

“A week ago, Weiss.”

“A week ago? You’re… going to have to be a little more specific.”

“A week ago, I came out of the bathroom one morning and hugged my sister,” Silba recalled. “For a moment, I absolutely refused to let her go. As I recall, ‘Coffee and chocolate chip cookies’ was your advice to Yang.”

Weiss’s eyes lost focus. “Oh, that. I remember you were acting a little strange.”

Silba smiled. “That night was when I changed, at least from your point of view. That night, I woke up here and now in the body of my past self. And that was the first time in over three centuries that I saw my sister alive. That I saw all of you alive.”

“You… just woke up in your past self,” Weiss deadpanned. “That sounds like the plot of a really cheesy novel.”

“And apparently, every so often, life imitates art.”

Weiss fell silent, for a long moment. Silba was about to speak again, but Weiss interrupted her.

“Alright.”

“Just ‘alright’?”

Weiss shrugged. “I find all of this stupidly hard to believe,” Weiss explained. “And I’m not entirely unconvinced that I’m being taken for a ride. And, what you told me sounds so… outlandish. Just…” she shook her head. “But that, whatever it was that you showed me, it felt so real.”

“It was, for me.”

“I… I really died, didn’t I?” Weiss looked scared. “Not even Beacon could keep me safe in the end from these terrorists.”

“Or anyone else, for that matter.”

Weiss nodded. “But Ruby, that still doesn’t explain, well, that.” She gestured to Silba’s double, still watching them impassively.

“Well like I said, I am not using my Semblance to create that,” Silba explained. “I am using the Force.”

“The… what?”

Silba craned her neck back, looking up at the sky. The moon had not risen quite yet, but she still thought back to when she opened her eyes on that rooftop. It was good to be here again. “You wonder how I can do what I can. Well…” Ruby raised an arm, and the bench they sat on began to float once more into the air. Weiss squeaked in surprise at the sudden motion, and was once more clinging to the armrest. After a moment, she carefully set the bench back down where it belonged.

“The Force,” Silba explained. “Briefly, it’s the metaphysical energy field that flows through all things in the universe, and binds everything together. And I suppose that my mastery over it is the reason I am as capable with it as I am. With the Force, telekinesis, doppelgangers, and feats we both could scarcely comprehend are possible.”

“Huh. Is it like Aura?”

“They have similarities,” Silba replied. “But not quite. Aura and the Force paint with similar broad strokes, but they are completely different on the fundamental level.” It was more or less the truth. For a very long time, Silba had a sample size of exactly one when it came to learning how aura, Semblances and the Force interacted. As a result, her understanding was understandably quite limited in that regard from a scientific point of view. Learning more as to how they compared, contrasted and interacted would take a lot of research, but all that was for another day.

“That’s neat, I guess. What else can you do with it?”

“The Force is a field that permeates all of reality. The better question would be, what can’t I do with it? But for a more tangible demonstration…” Silba smiled, and flexed her power. The body double’s appearance shifted, becoming a perfect mirror image of Ruby Rose. “I can talk through it,” Silba spoke as Ruby through her double. “It takes a fair amount of focus though, so I can’t exactly be in two places at once.”

Weiss looked up at the double, then back to Silba next to her. Tentatively, she reached out to touch the specter, only for the spectral Ruby to reach up and take her hand. “Well?”

“It looks, feels so… so life-like.”

“It pretty much is,” the specter giggled. It leaned down, caressing Weiss by her cheek with its free hand. “My specters and doubles are, how can you say it? They are quite malleable.”

Weiss’s face flushed to a lovely shade of red. The specter stood up with a giggle. “Flustered?”

“There it is, a second round of shock,” Weiss said. “I… All this is a lot to take in Ruby.”

“Take your time,” Silba spoke as herself.

“I am, but there’s one thing I still want to know. Why not ask the Headmaster, at least for advice or something?” She asked. “He’s one of the best Huntsmen in the world. Surely he would be able to-”

“No, Weiss,” Silba snapped. “I cannot approach him. The fall of Vale happened once under his watch, and it would have happened again. And as I mentioned before, I have learned alarming information about him.”

“What do you mean, Ruby?”

“I suspect that the Headmaster is not all as he might seem to be, and his motives may not be as benign as simply ‘preparing the next generation of Huntsmen and Huntresses’.” Weiss frowned, and Silba moved to continue. “It would be difficult for me to explain alone, but there is somebody else that I would like you to meet. I think she would be better suited to talking about the good headmaster than I.”

“Who?”

“Someone who trusted him, and who was cast aside when she no longer proved useful to him. She is someone I have taken under my wing.”

Weiss said nothing. She looked away, lost in thought. Silba did not need to probe her thoughts to know she was having some doubts about this. She did not blame Weiss either, since the girl and many others idolized Ozpin. Few got the chance to ever look behind the curtain like Silba herself had, to see the truth concealed behind it.

“Weiss,” Silba began to ask, “Would you accompany me somewhere tonight, perchance?”

“To where?”

“It is not far,” Silba explained. “It is actually quite close by. At midnight, I am to meet somebody where we had our Initiation into Beacon.”

“Okay, but who?”

“She calls herself Salem. She styles herself as a sort of chessmaster I think, and she fancies herself Ozpin’s rival and opponent.” Silba explained. “And she was, and still is, I suspect, the ultimate architect of the attack on Vale… and perhaps much of my own grief.” It was becoming clearer and clearer that this Salem was incredibly dangerous in her own right. She indirectly masterminded the destruction of her home in her past life. She had been thwarted for the moment, but people like her did not give up at the first setback. In time Silba would deal with her, but for tonight, she would listen to what the woman had to say.

Weiss raised an eyebrow. “Ruby, you do realize that you want me to meet the person who likely orchestrated all of that, the one whom the White Fang, who still want to kill me by the way, answer to. Are you out of your mind?”

“I have a plan. You’ll be perfectly safe.”

“How?!”

“The Force, of course.”

“But of course.” Weiss sighed. “Do I have a choice?”

“You do,” she answered back. “If you want to go to the teachers and faculty right now with what I have told you, I will not stop you. I promise you that, Weiss.”

“But why? Why would you let me do that?”

“Because I failed everyone once,” Silba explained to her. “You, my sister and Blake. Trying to stop you would mean hurting you, and thus failing all of you again.” That too was the truth. Silba simply did not want to resort to the sorts of manipulation that many lesser Sith would resort to. She did not count herself among those, and never would. She would either sway her friends to her side of their own free will, or she would not at all.

“Okay.” She stood up, dusting off her skirt. “But you sound like my grandmother, you know that?”

“Oh? She sounds like quite the lady. Well, if that is how you see me, are you eating enough, dearie?”

“That’s not funny!”

“And I believe you have something to tell me, dearie. Is there someone you’d like to introduce? Am I still going to have great-grandbabies to spoil?”

“Ruby, you dolt!”

Silba ran away laughing, a furiously blushing Weiss flailing her fists in pursuit.

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