Chapter 5
It didn’t take as long as we thought for us to find the spider in our living room last night. The next morning, there was a report of an explosion outside the city late last night. Thus sparking this mornings bad news from Qrow.
Qrow: “Looks like you kids are already seeing the reports. Sorry, Ruby, but I’m gonna have to take a rain check on this weekend. This incident has some particular oddities around it, so the chief wants all hands on deck until the case is settled.”
Ruby: “Hey, don’t worry about it. The movies aren’t going anywhere. You just do your job and solve this thing.”
Yang: “Besides, somehow I think we’re gonna be pretty busy the next few days ourselves.”
Qrow: “Glad you girls are so quick to understand. That said, I’m not canceling, just postponing. I promise we’ll still get to go when this case is over.” He rushes through his breakfast and is out the door quickly. Not much else we can do until we meet with the others after school, or in my case a bit later due to my detention today. At least it’ll give Weiss time to properly check her equipment again. Meanwhile, in the SDC, Cinder is seen hunched over her desk and suddenly wakes up.
Cinder: “Huh, what!?” Looking around, she seems a little confused. “Ugh, what happened? How did I get back to my desk? I remember slipping over by my-” She looks over to see her serum supply practically destroyed and... the spiders all apparently dead! “AHH! What the hell happened!?” that when her door opened to welcome Glass and... Jacques Schnee himself.
Jacques: “Fall! We need to talk.”
Cinder: “AH! M-Mr. Schnee! What uh.. What brings you down to my office?”
Jacques: “Cut the act, Fall. You are on thin ice after I heard you apparently lost one of your experimental spiders. And now that I see the state of your lab, that ice just became thinner! You promised me a super solder serum and all I see after all these years is a big mess! And to make it even thinner is that you were the last one confirmed to be in here last night when some of our scientist's projects went missing!”
Cinder: “Wait, what?”
Jacques: “Don’t ‘what’ me, Fall! The inventors behind the glider board, the armored flight suit and the prototype grenades came in this morning to report their projects missing!”
Cinder: “Sir, please! I honestly don’t know what’s going on! I was here in my lab all night trying to figure out the spider problem and a possible in our reasoning with Summer’s project-”
Jacques: “I don’t care about what you think you were doing! Right now, your credibility is questionable at best, and I can’t have problematic liabilities like you around when the Atlas council is right up my ass about this apparent lack of progress on this project! You're suspended until this whole thing is blown over! And if it turns out you were the one behind all of this, you’re obviously fired!”
Cinder: “But sir-!”
Jacques: “No buts! Get out!” Cinder doesn’t really have much to argue with and so has little choice but to comply. Back to me, our day goes by the same as usual, going all my classes with... unique teachers like Dr. Bartholomew Oobleck, the history teacher that has so much coffee he basically has super speed, Peter Port, the overweight braggart of a gym coach, Ann Greene, the constantly exhausted math teacher, Harold Mulberry, the very proper metal shop teacher, and my personal favorite teacher: Thumbelina Peach, the science teacher who seems a little obsessed with the subject. And of course, Glynda Goodwitch who doubles as a social studies teacher on top of being the vice headmistress and working events like chaperoning field trips and running big tests like the SDC test yesterday. And Ms. Goodwitch is also overseeing my detention now that school is out. Though she’s primarily grading some of her assignments from today while I took this opportunity to study independently while Yang went on ahead to Weiss’ place with her and Blake.
Glynda: “Okay, Ms. Rose. Your time is up.”
Ruby: “Ah! Right. Thank you, Professor.”
Glynda: “Just please try not to end up like this again. I’m so used to having actual trouble makers like Ms. Xiao Long and Mr. Winchester in here, that I was honestly quite anxious having you instead.” Her face showing genuine concern. “Just please be careful from now on... I don’t think my heart can take it.”
Ruby: “I’ll try.” Though something tells me I’ll be getting into more trouble in events outside of school. I end up taking the same route as yesterday to reach Weiss’ place and once I’m there, I hand over the vial with the dead spider inside. Inside the lab is a large glass box with little robot arms inside and Weiss dumps the spider in the box and seals it shut.
Weiss: “Alright, PENNY. We've got the spider, so go ahead and rub whatever tests you need to do.”
PENNY: “Yes, Ma’am. Give me about an hour and I should have the results by then.”
Weiss: “Okay. While we wait on PENNY, there’s something else I feel like we need to talk about.”
Yang: “And what’s that?”
Weiss: “That explosion last night. Reports show witnesses saying they saw a humanoid figure flying away from the blast on some kind of board laughing all the way in a very feminine voice.”
Yang: “Okay. So what?”
Weiss: “Then, earlier today, some of the scientists reported that some of their projects had gone missing. Particularly a glider board, an armored flight suit and prototype hand grenades.”
Blake: “Wait... Didn’t we see those projects during our field trip.”
Yang: “Yeah, I remember that. The suit was clearly made by a woman due to it’s figure.” Of course Yang would pay attention to those details.
Ruby: “So, are you thinking that whoever stole those was the one responsible for the explosion?”
Weiss: “Yes. And I think Father already has a potential suspect: Cinder Fall.”
Ruby: “What? Why?”
Weiss: “Because earlier this morning, Father suspended Dr. Fall because she was the last confirmed to still be working in the lab late last night and was only one found in the lab this morning when everyone else was coming in to work. Father is letting the police conduct an investigation in the building and par the circumstances but still haven’t found any evidence concrete enough to actually bring her in, hence why father has currently only suspended her until this whole thing is cleared up or until they do find the evidence they’re looking for against her. All they have at the moment is that some of the security footage of the lab has been cut at certain points of the night and the fact that Cinder’s lab is kind of trashed at the moment, due to an accident, according to Cinder herself.”
Blake: “Hm. Your right. Thats not quite enough to actually suspect her, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that she’s off the table yet. We'd best put a pin on that possibility.”
Yang: “You say that like we’re the ones actually investigating the case even though the actual police are already on the case, including our Uncle Qrow.”
Ruby: “Oh, come on, Yang. Live a little.”
Weiss: “I just can’t shake the feeling that the police won’t be able to solve this one on their own. As if we actually have to get involved to solve it ourselves.”
Ruby: “Yeah. It's just like the feeling I have that maybe I now have these powers for a reason.”
PENNY: “Speaking of which, Ms. Schnee. The results are in.”
Weiss: “Wow. An hour passed already?”
PENNY: “Not exactly. But better now than never, right?”
Weiss: “So, what do we got?”
PENNY: “After a number of careful tests on the spiders tissues, particularly on what was left of it’s venom, I was able to confirm it was indeed a carrier for a special serum. And obviously I compared this data to what we found in Ruby’s blood yesterday. And as expected: it was a match. The source of Ruby’s newfound abilities was the serum carried by this spider.”
Blake: “And there we have it.”
Ruby: “So it true...” Even so, I think it’s best to act on something that I’ve been thinking about since last night. “Weiss.”
Weiss: “Yes?”
Ruby: “I know what I said the other day. But now that it’s come to this, I feel like I need to know more now if I’m actually going to make it through this. So if you’re still up for it, I need you to look into my mom’s work. Can you do it?” Weiss now looks stunned about my sudden request. As if she never expected me to change my mind about this topic. But not long afterwards is when she finally responded.
Weiss: “Ah! Yes! Yes. I uh...*ahem* I can start right away after school tomorrow.”
Blake: “In that case, we’d better call it here. I have some other things to do.” And with that, we split up again and head home. Meanwhile, Cinder is up in her studio apartment scouring through her research but has found nothing.
Cinder: “ARGH! God damnit!” She ends up punching her floor to ceiling mirror and finds something completely unexpected in her secret room for storing old research: the glider board, a bunch of the hand grenades, including some unfinished ones on a work bench, and the flight suit, which had all of it’s white parts painted red with certain gold details, along with some pouches strapped to the waist, and on a little side table is a hooded cloak that goes down to Cinder’s biceps and a red domino mask. “What the hell is all of this!?” And then the voice from earlier that sounds like her becomes known again.
Cinder?: “Oh. So you found my little secret.”
Cinder: “AH! Who’s there!?”
Cinder?: “Why, your inner self, of course.”
Cinder: “My... inner self?”
CInder?: “Yes. Think of me as the side of yourself you showed when you committed your sins a long time ago. A side that has now form as her own being in your head after your little... accident last night.”
Cinder: “My accident...” To which she sees flashes of her slipping and crashing into the serum. “The soldier serum. The cuts on my arms allowed the serum to infect me and because it wasn’t properly tested, it had the unexpected side effect of creating a whole new split personality in my head. One that took complete control of my body when I passed out, and hence why I found myself at my desk instead of on the floor this morning.” And then she comes to a whole different realization. “Wait... SO IT WAS YOU! You're the one who stole this tech and caused that explosion last night! It’s your fault that I’m being blamed for all of this!”
Cinder?: “Aw, but don’t you see? The serum still gave you enhanced strength like it was supposed to. With this power, we can easily achieve anything we want, so long as nothing can stand in our way. That’s why I killed off your little spiders. To keep others from obtaining this power from them. And the facility I destroyed last was a supply warehouse responsible for supplying the SDC with key chemical components. If we can stop others from attaining the same kind of strength we have, then we can prove to Schnee and Glass that we’re not a force to be messed with. And since we’ve actually accomplished something with this project without even needing one of those spiders... doesn’t that more than prove us to be better than Summer ever was. This is your chance to seize your moment... just like you did when you killed Summer all those years ago!”
Cinder: “I... I guess you’ve got a point. I’ve already stooped pretty low when I decided to sabotage her boiler that day. It’s time the whole see’s just what Cinder Fall can do!”
Cinder?: “Hmhmhm. And of course we’ll still look good doing it. Which is why I propose we also make ourselves known to the world... as the Red Succubus.”
Cinder: “The Red Succubus... Not a bad ring to it, actually. Though that’ll primarily be what I call you to avoid confusion.”
Red S.: “Fair enough. But with that said, here’s what I propose. With us working together, we can continue to spread our chaos across Vale with this tech and our gifts to further gain Schnee’s attention, and once we fully have it, we make our move to confront him directly.”
Cinder: “Yes. And if anyone does try to get in our way...”
Red S.: “We kill them where they stand!” And they both just laugh as we cut back to me and Yang back at home, watching the news reported by a one Lisa Lavender.
Lisa: “As the police continue to investigate the recent explosion, they seem to believe some involvement with someone from the Schnee Dust Company. Further information regarding their potential suspect is still up in the air.”
Yang: “I’m starting to think that the company being involved is the reason for Weiss’ strange hunch.”
Ruby: “Maybe, but I’m not too sure about that.”
Yang: “Well, regardless, we now know where your powers come from. So now the big question comes: what do you plan to do with them?”
Ruby: “Hmm...” That is a good question. Qrow said with great power comes great responsibility. But what exactly can I do with these powers. Obviously, the best way to go about it is to find a way to use them to help people... but how...
Lisa: “With the alleged existence of this supposed flying woman, many believe that this case will potentially draw the attention of town vigilantes Black Cat or the Grim Reaper, both of which continuing to fight against Vale’s criminal population from the shadows.” The police and media may call these vigilantes criminals, but the general public, including us, actually see them as genuine heroes. Wait...
Ruby: “That’s it!”
Yang: “Whoa! What’s got you all excited?”
Ruby: “Okay, Yang. Before you say anything just, hear me out first, okay?”
Yang: “Okay...?”
Ruby: “What if I used my powers to become a... superhero...” There’s an awkward silence for about five seconds.
Yang: “Excuse me, what?”
Ruby: “I know, it probably sounds incredibly dangerous and maybe a bit childish, but I want to be able to use my powers to help people. And there are people like me risking their lives to help people with the gifts they have, then surely, I should be able to do the same. Right?” She continues to stay silent. *sigh*”I guess it does sound a little ridicu-”
Yang: “Ruby.” It’s pretty rare to hear Yang speak so seriously. “Under normal circumstances, I probably would tell you to forget such a crazy idea out of concern for your safety. But I already promised you that I would support whatever decision you made regardless of how dangerous or reckless it may be. And honestly, I’m actually starting to think you were right about your hunch. That you must have these powers for a reason. So if you really want to use your powers to protect this city, then I’ll do what I can to support you every step of the way.” I can’t believe Yang actually said that. Maybe I really did get through to her last night.
Ruby: “Heh. Thanks, Sis.”
Yang: “So with all of that said. If you're really gonna become a superhero... then where do we start?”