Through Victory My Chains Are Broken, CH12

 A bit later post to Patreon than I wanted, but there were substantial changes to the rough draft that would have reflected poorly on my writing. Special thatnks to Judgebatistat for beta reading.

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As of that morning, it had been a week since she had awoken in the body of her past self. A week which almost felt like months to her, with every revelation she had learned. She had come across many of those, one after the next. She had learned that her homeworld had been touched by the Dark Side, by none other than Lord Bane himself. She had learned that the person ultimately responsible for the deaths of her friends and family all those years ago was herself an apprentice of sorts, whose master styled herself as “Queen of the Grimm.” A master who seemingly had an intense and burning hatred of both Beacon’s Headmaster and perhaps the human race as a whole.

She lay in her bed, pondering. Did this Salem want humanity’s extinction? If that were the case, Silba wondered if anyone had ever told the woman that it would be a difficult thing to accomplish. There were trillions of humans on Coruscant alone, after all. A few had tried to make her kind extinct through the eons, and all had failed.

Silba quietly swung her legs over the edge of her bed and slid down, landing silently on the carpet below. She stilled the swinging movement of her bed, not for the first time wondering why her past self though it was a good idea to hang a four poster bed from the ceiling. Satisfied that her team was still quietly asleep, she stepped into their shared bathroom to look at herself in the mirror. 

The face that stared back at her… had once been an object of disgust. The Young Apprentice all those years ago had grown to despise her own face. Silba’s self-hatred had been something both learned and taught---the former from self-reflection, the latter by her Master. The girl that stared back at her in that mirror, with her innocent features and silver eyes, had failed everyone she had ever cared about. And Silba had hated her for it, with every fiber, every atom of her being. The only thing that had kept her from disfiguring herself to the point of unrecognizability had been the fact that that face, her face, had been such a potent source of hate in the first place.

Her Master had had the luxury of a mask to conceal his face, a helmet and a rebreather apparatus. It was a necessity, due to the injuries from which he derived his strength through pain and anger. He never suffered from the all-consuming hatred of his features like Silba had hers. She’d had no such luxury of a mask at first, save for a simple black wrapping for her lower face. At least, not until her Master had thought fit to grant her a boon in the form of a full face mask like his: a cracked and ruined mask slashed by a lightsaber, once belonging to a Sith Lord so ancient his name had been forgotten. A trophy from his collection, given as a reward. She wondered at the time if he knew she’d reforge it with her own burning hatred, to make a new face for herself.

A new face that the galaxy came to fear.

With a thought, the tap on the shower turned and she stepped beneath the scalding stream, letting the steaming water relax her. The pain while slight was welcome, forcing her to focus. She… hadn’t meditated lately. Not since several nights before, on that rooftop near the White Fang base. And that was far from the sort of meditation one practiced to anneal their anger. Put bluntly, she simply hadn’t had the time. Between school, her friends, her… extracurricular activities? She had been too preoccupied. So Silba knelt onto the tile of the shower and allowed the scalding water to flow around her… And she lost herself in the Force.

She saw her friends in the next room. Yang was stirring awake, as was Blake. Weiss was curled up in a ball beneath her covers, spooning her pillow, drooling and still fast asleep. Her sight spread outward, across the grounds of Beacon, taking in the goings-on. The faculty and staff, getting ready for the day. The cooks, preparing breakfast for the students still on the grounds. Her uncle, dozing fitfully in an armchair in one of the guest quarters. The Headmaster, high up in Beacon’s Tower, gazing out from his office’s window and watching the sunrise, a mug ever present in his hand. And in the school’s infirmary on the second floor…

Someone lay on a hospital bed, swathed in bandages and surrounded by machines. Silba spared a moment of focus on the person and their situation, satisfying her curiosity from the day prior. Their Force presence was even weaker now, a flickering candle growing dim as it ran out of wax to burn. Posted outside of the infirmary were a pair of Atlesian soldiers. Their weapons were held at the ready, and she wondered if they were guarding the person inside or posted there to protect everyone else. There were other soldiers as well, four asleep in a nearby room and two more standing in the small lobby downstairs, watching the entrance. Eight soldiers in two shifts, Silba concluded.

Disregarding the oddity in the infirmary for the time being, she pushed her sight out even farther, testing its limits, her limits. Vale proper, glimpses of people getting ready for the day. Miss Amitola the seamstress and shop owner, sorting through inventory. The woodlands around Beacon and Vale that teemed with life, birds and animals waking up, fish swimming in streams, in the ocean that flanked Vale on two sides. 

And then, there were the voids.

They dotted her sight, holes in the Force. No, not holes per se; the Force flowed through things, both alive and not. But the eddies and currents of the Force flowed around these voids, obstacles to their course. From the sizes and shapes of the voids in her Force sight, Silba knew exactly what they were: Grimm. She couldn’t see Grimm in the Force, not directly. Exactly like another threat she had faced, many years before. Even the notion of a connection between the Grimm and those… monsters, those locusts? Deep down, it managed to terrify some small part of her.

For the moment, Silba ignored the Grimm and continued to push. She was shaking now, small tremors through her body as her concentration was tested, as was the stamina of her younger body. Patch, over the ocean and to the west. Signal Academy, the small towns and villages that dotted the shores of the island. Her home in the woods, still there like she remembered it. Zwei was there, downstairs and gnawing on a beef bone even larger than he was. Her dad, just woken up, in the bathroom and brushing his teeth--

A sudden rapping at the bathroom door interrupted her. “Hey, Sis,” her sister called to her through the door, “You almost done in there?”

“Yeah, sure thing Yang,” Silba called back, still focusing on her home. “I’ll be out in a sec.” Zwei, their family pet. The closest Silba had ever found to a replacement had been hounds, and those creatures were frankly horrifying to look at. Even tookas were pleasant to stroke. With an ephemeral hand, Silba reached out, scratching behind Zwei’s ear-

Zwei abruptly jumped into the air, spinning around at the sudden and unexpected contact, barking at the air behind him. Silba suppressed a chuckle. “Sorry Zwei,” she spoke, her voice whispering to her old friend. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Zwei whined at the air around him in reply, whining and seemingly confused at Silba’s disembodied voice. “Don’t worry boy, I’ll come visit you and dad soon. Be good, okay?”

Silba left Zwei there, the dog no doubt puzzled about what had just happened. She took a moment to shift mental gears, and Ruby opened her eyes to focus on her immediate surroundings. The water had stopped falling onto her at some point. It had stopped because it was surrounding her in a thick protective sphere of liquid, held there by her subconscious Force defenses. She relaxed, gently allowing the bubble of water to fall down into the shower around her and down the drain. With a thought she turned the handle off, stepping out of the shower and grabbing her towel from the rack to dry off.

Feeling refreshed, Ruby felt lighter, ready to face the day. As always, she had a lot to do.

- - ----====| | |====---- - -

Weiss didn’t question her much when she asked for her father’s personal phone number. After all, she had offered her team leader the services of her father’s company. Her teammate and partner was skeptical, however, when Ruby had told her she could probably afford whatever price the man gave her.

“Do you know how many zeroes he’s going to charge you?” Weiss had warned her. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re my partner or not, he’ll charge you a fortune for a box of springs.”

Ruby, or rather Silba technically, had been familiar once upon a time with the sort of people like Weiss’ father: arrogant, self-assured, driven and above all else, greedy. There was a whole species of exactly those kinds of people, who had once started a galactic war because of their unchecked greed. At least the Hutt could learn how to be content, she mused.

“Don’t worry Weiss, I’m pretty sure I can convince him to give me a fair price.”

“A fairly steep price is more like it,” was what Weiss had responded with. But she’d given her the man’s number and wished her good luck nevertheless.

Ruby regarded the scroll in her hand, and anticipated the call she was about to make. Breathing in and out, she dialed the number Weiss had given her. It rang exactly once, before a voice answered.

“I don’t recognize this number,” the voice stated. “Who is this?”

Ruby closed her eyes, opened them. “My name is Ruby Rose,” Silba replied curtly. “I am Weiss’s partner and team leader. Is this her father, Mr. Jacques Schnee?”

A beat. “This is his personal secretary,” the voice answered. The unexpectedly male voice, considering his admitted role. “How did you get this number?”

“I asked my partner for it. I would like to speak to your boss.” Forthcoming and direct. Silba adjusted her profile of Jacques, to account for his… tastes. All people had their proclivities, after all. Even her Master and her Master’s Master had theirs. Even she did. Still did, she supposed. And a male secretary? Oh, that implied so much in those regards. Sure, one could argue it away as a matter of merit, but from her past experience, merit rarely had anything to do with the secretaries of people in the C-suites of corporations.

“This is unexpected,” Jacques’s secretary replied. “Mr Schnee is a very busy man and as a result he doesn’t have time for unscheduled calls.”

“I am sure he can spare a few minutes to talk with the young woman his daughter entrusts her life to.”

Another beat, as the man on the other side of the scroll considered her words in silence. “Please hold, I will inquire if he has a moment.”

To his credit, the man of the hour didn’t keep her waiting. Silba had expected a few minutes of silence at least, a small but habitual power play. He connected mere seconds later, and again Silba was pleasantly surprised.

“Ruby Rose,” Jacques Schnee addressed her. His tone was testy, no nonsense and a little hostile, more habit than deliberate. “I have heard a great many things about you.”

“Likewise,” she said in reply, the Empress now front and center in all but name. “It is a pleasure to finally speak to the father of my partner.”

“Hmm, yes. And can I ask what it is you are so keen to talk to me about?”

“There is something I am looking for,” Silba explained. “Your daughter, my partner, told me you might be able to help.”

“Of course,” Jacques muttered. “You want a favor.”

“Hardly,” she answered. “I would like a product catalog.”

The man scoffed. “So a discount.”

“I am being completely serious.”

“I’m sure you can find a catalog in any store.”

“I’m not talking about consumer grade merchandise,” she explained. “I am interested in something more… niche, and military in nature.”

“Oh? You have my attention,” Jacques responded. “While I sincerely doubt you can purchase something that isn’t for sale, please, humor me.”

Silba chuckled. “I am looking for a power source. Something small, handheld. Preferably cylindrical in nature.”

The man on the other end contemplated her request. “I’m almost afraid to ask what you’d want with something like that.”

She allowed herself a small smile. “If you have read up about me, then you might know about my weapon of choice. I suppose you could also say that I’m looking to help my team to the best of my abilities, by upgrading my arsenal.”

“Your team,” the elder Schnee muttered. “Speaking of, I was… disappointed, when I heard that Weiss failed to secure a role of leadership. Even more so when I read that her superior was two years her junior.”

I see. She distantly recalled how Weiss had been frustrated by Ruby’s placement above her in terms of leadership. “Beacon’s headmaster had his reasons I’m sure, when he opted me to lead our team. Tell me Mr. Schnee, have you read about who my parents were?”

“I’ve read enough,” the man answered. “Your parents were the top of their class from Beacon. And you were admitted to the Academy two years ahead of your peers.”

Silba had to be careful with how she phrased her next words. “A prodigy among prodigies. And the child prodigy of two of the world’s best huntsmen. As was my sister, who herself left Signal Academy at the top of her class. Weiss is remarkably skilled in her own right, as are all my teammates.”

“Hrmph,” Jacques replied. “This Yang and Blake I’ve read about.”

For a moment, she wondered if the man knew of Blake’s Faunus heritage, as well as her past history. If he did, her past self never found out. But Silba wouldn’t have put it past such a man to find out everything he could about the people close to him and his family. “Yes. My sister, as well as her own partner. Both are skilled and talented huntresses. While I do not know Blake as well as I do Weiss or my own sister, I know that she seeks to leave her past behind to become a better person, someone others look up to. After all,” And the The Empress stepped in to speak, “You have to become a hero to become a Huntress. Anything less, and you become a failure. And none of my teammates are failures.”

They weren’t, Silba knew. The failure had been with herself.

“Hrm, your point?”

“That your daughter is in the best place she could possibly be here, both for herself and for her family name. The Schnee name is already synonymous with successful business. Adding to that the goodwill and prestige that comes with being a successful Huntress would be quite the entrepreneurial endeavor, wouldn't you say?”

Another, longer beat. “You are… surprisingly astute for a young woman.”

“I learned from an excellent mentor.” A fleeting memory, a first meeting with an old man, sitting upon a dais overlooking a vast, planetwide cityscape. “He taught me a surprising amount. Also, If I may speculate?”

“I’m listening, Miss Rose.”

“With respect to our school’s headmaster, I have my own theory as to why I was chosen over Weiss,” Silba began. “It was a matter of optics.”

“Optics?”

“Yes. I am sure you are aware that your family’s name is controversial these days. Perhaps it was the headmaster’s reasoning that with her placement, Weiss could focus entirely on becoming a skilled Huntress first, without the… unnecessary attention that her family name would bring her.”

There was silence for a moment. “While you do make a good point, I suspect that all of this digresses from the reason you called me.”

“It does, although it was quite enjoyable.”

Silba heard the man sigh. “I’ve often wondered what it is about Beacon Academy to attract so many… eccentrics. I’m almost afraid of what you’d do with something like what you’re looking for.”

She always knew that Crescent Rose left an impression on her opponents, not to mention any spectators witnessing her unique fighting style. “I suppose you could argue that I wish to plug a hole in my arsenal in the only way I know how.”

She heard a chuckle. “It figures.” The elder Schnee was silent for a while, and for a moment Silba assumed that the call had disconnected. She had been about to speak when the man precluded her. “How is she?” he asked.

“Your daughter? She is enjoying herself.”

“So she is.” A moment of silence, before the man resumed. “She has always been rebellious, in her own slight ways. I had insisted on her attending Atlas if she wished to play at being a Huntress, but she clearly had other plans.”

“She wanted to be a Huntress, and she wanted to train among the best,” Silba explained. “Beacon Academy would let her do both.” Her memories of Atlas Academy were vague, but her opinion was that Mantle’s preeminent Huntsman academy was more or less basic training for their military in all but name. Although she seemed to recall at least one of their teams being every bit as ‘eccentric’ as Beacon’s own students. She couldn’t blame her partner for wanting the measure of freedom that Beacon provided. “I have no doubt she will be one of the best of her generation, with the right tutelage.”

“And with someone like you as her leader…” the man trailed off.

“She will go far,” she finished. Of that, Silba would be sure of.

“Yes,” the elder Schnee said. “The thing you are looking for, I think one of my research and development teams are working on something similar.”

“Oh? I for one would love to hear about it.”

“You can go see for yourself if you have time,” Jacques said. “There’s a research lab in Vale, not far from the Mantle embassy. The people there are working on a battery of sorts, or something along the lines. Exciting stuff apparently, or what the eggheads there claim. After this call, I’ll dispatch a message to the team there to expect you.”

Silba allowed herself a smile. “I think I might know where the place is, or at least the Embassy. “These batteries, Ruby asked, “Could you give me a price quote?”

She was only a little surprised to hear the man chuckle. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but consider this a freebie.”

Silba’s smile turned into a grin. “Ah, thank you.”

“And Miss Rose? Another thing I’m surprising myself by doing. A… request, of sorts.”

“To keep your daughter safe?” she answered for him.

“Not just that,” Mr. Shnee confirmed after a moment. “The thing I’ve wanted for Weiss is to be someone to carry on my legacy, the company name. Everything I’ve done for her has been for her to take up that mantle one day.”

“I see. All I can say Mr. Schnee is that you’ve done an excellent job.”

“Tell me, Miss Rose, what is it you will do for my daughter?”

It was a question she was expecting, one the Empress had a ready answer for. “The same thing that I have always done. Help her be ready to take on the world.”

“And I would be most grateful for that.”

If only he knew the truth. “Of course, Mr. Schnee.” And behind the mask of Ruby Rose, The Empress smiled.

- - ----====| | |====---- - -

After the call Silba left the dorms, walking toward Beacon’s Infirmary. It was time to answer a question of hers.

Silba was playing it cautiously, keeping herself wrapped in a Force Cloak. As far as her uncle and the rest of the faculty were concerned, she was still in the dorms doing… whatever she used to do when she had the time. She maintained the cloak, right up to the front doors of the low, two-floor building that handled general medical care for Beacon’s sizable student population. Through the transparent doors she saw two of the soldiers from Atlas that she had observed earlier. They were still standing guard, each flanking a side of an entrance to a hallway further beyond. At a small desk off to the side was a nurse, focused on paperwork. Besides the two men, there were only a handful of others: the other six guards, and the mystery person in a private room.

For a moment she considered how to gain entrance without being noticed in the process. The guards standing watch in the lobby would of course not notice Silba behind her Force Cloak, but they would notice the doors swinging open inexplicably, which would arouse immediate suspicion. Therefore, she didn’t want to take her chances with a pair of likely paranoid Atlas soldiers if she could help it. She began considering a way to distract the duo when providence graced her: one of the Academy’s doctors, coming back from an early lunch. The man walked right past her, opening the door to go inside, and Silba sprang on the opportunity to silently slip in after him.

Once inside, she found the stairs immediately, at the end of the hallway and to the left. She crept past the two guards and slipped up the stairs to the second floor, rounding the corner to see the other two soldiers. They stood in front of the door rather than on the opposite side facing it, telling Silba that they were keeping others out rather than in. The person within posed no threat to them, she observed. Silba heard the doctor coming up the stairs, and glanced back at the man coming up with a clipboard in hand. He passed by her, beelining toward the door the two men guarded. Silba smiled and followed. The two men nodded, and the doctor nodded back as he opened the door. A routine, a doctor checking on his patient. Nothing more, nothing less. And like before, Silba followed him in.

The hospital room was quiet except for the sound of whirring machines, beeping tones and the steady hiss of a respirator. The woman - as SIlba was now sure it was a woman - lay on the bed, swathed nearly head to toe in bandages and dressings, her face mostly obscured by an oxygen mask. Numerous drips and leads connected her to the surrounding machines, the devices likely the only things keeping her alive. With a glance, she took in the state of the poor wretch. Severe burns, internal injuries, fractures and lacerations. Her body had been punished to a seemingly impossible degree and then beyond. And the worst injury, to her abdomen, as if someone had stabbed her with-

Silba saw a tuft of light green hair, the dusky shade of a patch of skin which wasn’t covered by wrappings. So that’s who it was.

“Cold. I… I feel it.”

“Emerald? What’s wrong?”

“I feel it. I- I don’t know. Something, someone…”

Silba stepped backwards, away from the girl in the bed where she lay so close to death. She recalled the words, noted by the Apprentice but forgotten in the heat of the moment. That word, cold. She’d heard it before, many times, Force sensitives reacting to the presence of a Sith Lord in the only way, with the only word they could use to describe such potent, all-consuming anger: cold. And Silba understood how Cinder’s little minion, the one she called Emerald, still somehow lived.

She wanted to chuckle - no, she wanted to laugh. Laugh and laugh. How… poetically ironic of the girl, to somehow blindly stumble into power at the hands of her would-be killer the same way Silba herself had all those years ago. She really, truly wanted to finish her off…

But, Silba realized, she wanted to ask her something first.

The doctor checking the girl’s vitals was finishing up his task, jotting numbers onto the papers on the clipboard in his hand. Whatever course of action she would have to take from this answered question would have to wait, as the good doctor was turning to leave the room, satisfied with his rounds.

“Worse and worse,” the doctor muttered. “Experimental treatments my ass, one-of-a-kind serum my ass…” The man reversed his course, leaving the room and then the Infirmary while she followed him just a step or two behind. The doctor left the infirmary, walking off toward Beacon’s central tower, but Silba didn’t follow. After all, she had a meeting to keep, items to obtain. Her footsteps carrying her toward the shuttle now in the process of landing, to ferry students and others from the Academy to Vale proper. 

She had much to do still, so many questions still unanswered. For now, she’d let the wretch lay.

- - ----====| | |====---- - -

Leaving Beacon had initially presented a challenge.

As far as her Uncle Qrow and the headmaster knew, Ruby Rose was a talented but relatively inexperienced Huntress-in-training. A Huntress they thought was being sized up for nefarious purposes by some kind of would be Grimm… Master? Queen? Empress? And thus, had to be protected and guarded. Unbeknownst to them of course was the fact it was all false, an unforeseen consequence of her own actions and words. Silba planned to have words with this Salem, if only to find out how she viewed herself in terms of power. The words would be followed by said woman’s violent death of course, but still.

So, because of an apparent target on her back that actually didn’t exist, Ruby Rose was functionally confined to the grounds of Beacon Academy for the time being. Emphasis on ‘functionally,’ though. While she was sure that her uncle or teammates would be glad to accompany her, their presence would beget questions regarding her motives. Questions that Silba did not want asked. Her situation presented an obstacle, yes, and a challenge to be overcome to get to her prize.

The solution in the end was remarkably simple: She would leave behind a specter of herself, one that was more interactive than typical that could act as the perfect alibi for the time being. While her teammates had busied themselves with weapon maintenance, Ruby had ostensibly busied herself with studying, retreating to a corner of the Academy’s vast library to read. It helped that the task was a simple one, less demanding on the specter’s capacities and ultimately on Silba herself. To the casual observer, she would be nothing more than a quiet, studious girl, lost in the pages of a book. At the worst case, she could assume direct control, if complex conversation or interaction was needed. Leaving the campus was even easier: a simple Force Cloak, and slip onto the noon shuttle to Vale, unseen and unobserved by the few passengers. Simple.

Silba thought back to the conversation with Weiss’s father. The call had been surprisingly productive, all things considered. She had convinced Jacques Schnee to give her what she wanted, and the man seemed to trust her enough with his daughter’s well being, despite his apparent misgivings about her choice of academy. And to think, she didn’t even need to rely on any sorts of Force persuasion, not even a mind trick. A few honeyed and elegant words, an appeal to his ego, and the man had given her his blessing in full.

With the man’s blessing, she walked toward what appeared at a glance to be an unremarkable three-floor brownstone, one of countless examples that lined the streets of Vale. The quaint building didn’t fit the part of a satellite laboratory of the SDC, but as the not-so-abandoned warehouse from several nights prior could attest to, such looks were deceiving. 

And oh were they deceiving. As she had approached the address, she had Scryed the building through the Force. And it was almost deja vu, with multiple floors of sterile white hallways and labs just as the mysterious Mr. Watts’s hideout had been. Even the security booth was in the same location as the secret lab’s, by the entrance and to the left as one entered. The office on the right side was open to the hallway and staffed by a receptionist who was typing away at the workstation before her. It made Silba wonder if Watts had used the same blueprints for this lab when he had his own lab built.

The facility was decently staffed, and she counted a dozen people total. The receptionist at her desk. A portly security guard, eating a simple lunch in front of a bank of display monitors. Most of the rest of the staff seemed to be congregated in what she observed to be a rec room, many watching a holoreel on the sizable screen. Even eggheads need break time every now and again, she thought. One was not amongst them, instead sitting and eating by themself in an out of the way office on the third floor.

Silba stepped up to the entrance. And as far as she could tell, the sole visible feature distinguishing the structure from those on either side was the fact that the facade-facing windows were mirrored, rather than transparent like in the others. She also knew from Scrying that they were thicker than her forearm and in all likelihood bulletproof. Considering the spate of White Fang attacks in Vale that she had personally brought to an end, they were no doubt blast-proof as well.

She walked forward, up to a mirror thoughtfully set in a wall adjacent to the entrance. The mirror was a ruse, as her Scrying had shown her. Behind it was a surreptitiously-placed surveillance camera, no doubt connected to the building’s security network. She regarded her reflection, adjusted her skirt and outfit, and checked her hair and face. Ruby Rose looked as best as she could be, and without further hesitation she pressed the button for the intercom next to the door.

The response was immediate. “Name and business,” a curt but polite female spoke.

“Ruby Rose,” she answered. “I was told someone would be expecting me.”

A moment of silence, presumably as the woman checked appointments or whatnot. “I see. Very well.” A barely audible click and the door unlocked, and Silba wasted no time opening the door and entering the lab. The inside was every bit as cold and sterile as she expected it to be. As she stood there, she began to realize she was getting tired of sterile bland hallways. It hadn’t helped that she’d spent so much of her earlier life walking through them, on everything from cruisers to Star Destroyers to even a certain colossal battlestation.

To her right, the receptionist continued to type, her gaze focused solely on her workstation. “Third floor, third door on the right,” she said to her. “Doctor Frieze is expecting you.”

“Of course,” she replied.

“Also before you go up, check your weapons and ammunition with the guard across the hall,” the woman added. “SDC company policy, as I’m sure you would understand.”

“Yes, I will do that.” She turned to the portly guard who’d approached behind her, the man wordlessly taking a moment from his lunch to retrieve Crescent Rose from her, plus her belt and the spare magazines and cartridges the pouches contained. Seeing her gear stowed in a container in the security office and apparently satisfied she was unarmed, the stern receptionist just nodded and returned her focus to the screen in front of her.

Silba continued on, past the reception area and towards a stairwell clearly marked at the end of the hallway. She walked past the rec room, the sounds of jovial conversation floating out from within. Thankfully, nobody paid her any attention. Silba made note of the cameras, strategically lining the hallway. Each one was trained on a doorway, no doubt keeping track of who went and came through each one. She climbed the stairs, her mind wandering. If she could get something equivalent to the power cell of a lightsaber, she could in theory fabricate a Remnant-based approximation. At the moment, she possessed twelve examples of the hardest-to-get component, while the workshops beneath Beacon held most of the rest. Now, she just needed to get one last ingredient. Or twelve, she mused.

She stepped onto the third floor landing, looking around her toward the front of the building. Either side was flanked by a mixture of compact labs and offices, all of which were unoccupied. Just as the receptionist said, the third door on the right. And it was where the lone person seemed to be that she had Scryed out earlier. As Silba walked up to it, she read the name on the door. Dr. Octavia Frieze, Researcher, Vale Branch, SDC. She stopped in front of it and rapped her knuckles thrice on the door frame, and she heard the sound of rustling from within. “Oh, coming!” came a female voice. A moment later and the door was flung open, and the eponymous doctor introduced herself. “Hello! You must be-”

“Ruby, Ruby Rose,” Silba was quick to answer her. “And you must be Dr. Frieze?”

“Yes, yes,” the young woman said, gesturing to the office to let her in. “Doctor Octavia Frieze. You can just call me Octavia. I kinda don’t like the doctor part of my name, it makes me feel old.”

“Well, since you are willing to be on a first name basis, I can do the same. Just call me Ruby, Doctor.” Silba took in the sight of the woman. She was tall, thin but not quite gawky. A narrow face framed by dark wavy hair. A pair of square glasses rested on her face, which was beaming down at the shorter Silba. What struck her was how young she seemed to be, since she could scarcely doubt that the woman was much older than her teammates.

She followed the young woman in, taking in the office. Unlike the rest of the lab, the office was organized chaos. Papers, books, technical manuals and journals littered every horizontal surface. Silba spotted a few empty food containers scattered about. As for the woman herself, she had to assume that the woman was much too young to normally receive a doctorate. Which implied Octavia had the kind of intense, multidisciplinary, borderline savant mind that warranted heavy reward from the meritocratic institutions that governed Atlas. One that, due to a lack of personal connections at the time of being noticed, resulted in her being posted to an out-of-the-way facility, a dead-end posting by most definitions. 

Without a doubt, Octavia was dedicated to her work, too dedicated to play the games of politics that often intertwined themselves with the realm of academia. A notion came to Ruby, one regarding someone she had questions about. But it would have to wait, at least until the right time.

“You know, I was caught off guard when the head of research here told me someone was coming by to look at my work,” Octavia told her. “I was expecting someone from the Embassy or from one of the research colleges here in Vale, but a student from Beacon surprised me.”

“I’m usually not what people expect,” Silba answered with a laugh.

“Aha, right. Well please, sit down.” The woman scooped the piles of papers off of the chair in front of her desk, gesturing to Silba to take a seat there before walking around her desk and plopping down in her own chair. The chair was stiff and a little uncomfortable, but she’d sat in worse. “So, I assume you’re here about the power cells?”

Silba nodded. “I was told you were working on something to that degree, yes.”

“Well, they’re just now in the prototype stages,” Octavia said, typing on a small workstation before her. “They don’t even have a proper designation or associated nomenclature yet - funny thing that, things only get those when they get technical manuals written for them. Haven’t even written the outline for one of those.” She pressed a key, and a holographic display lit up on her desk. “For now, I’m just calling it the Hyper-Dense Dust Cell, but the SDC marketing department will probably come up with something better.”

A projection of said Dust Cell came into being, a wireframe representation floating in the space above the desk. At first glance it seemed underwhelming, but things of this nature often were. Function before form, after all. “So what does it do?” Silba asked.

The woman across the desk chuckled. “What doesn’t it do? Just one of these contains enough energy to power, well, just about anything, really. Powered suits, robots, heavy machinery. It contains an order of magnitude more energy in a volume a tenth of the size of a power source of similar output.”

“It sounds impressive.” It really was. And it was exactly what she was looking for.

“It very much is,” Octavia continued. “The trick of getting it so small was vaporizing and recrystallizing Red and Lightning Dust into a much more compact crystalline form, then layering alternating micron-thick sheets of each one atop another. Even better, it can recharge to full density, potentially a limitless number of times. Normally, batteries of this level of density are one-and-done affairs, so every aspect of the HDDC is revolutionary in some regard.”

“Ah, so what is the catch then, Doctor?”

“Well, at the moment we need the highest grades of Dust possible for it to even remotely have a chance of working,” she explained, reclining in her chair. “It has to do with how stable the Dust crystals are at the thinness we need them to be. Add to that the reagents we need for the process, and the yields we’re getting… Right now the cost is… a lot. Hopefully, I plan to refine the design to some extent, at least so that lower grades of Dust won't just dissolve during the production process. I had an idea of using microscopic nodules instead of layers, but I’ll need the funding for that.”

“It is genuinely fascinating work Doctor,” Silba told the young woman. “I think I understand the broad strokes of it, thankfully. You deserve to be running this place, not relegated to a broom closet.”

“Oh, well, I suppose I’d get a nice, cushy office if and when I get tenure somewhere. But never mind about me, I’m curious as to why you know about this project, let alone are interested in it.”

“Jacques Schnee,” Ruby told her, “He told me about it, after I told him about being interested in something exactly like this.”

“You- you have the CEO’s private number?”

“I do.”

“H- how?”

Ruby grinned. “His youngest daughter is my teammate at Beacon.”

“Ah! Oh,” Octavia paused. “Huh, I… didn’t know that. I would have expected her to attend Atlas.”

“Her father did too, but we have fallen off topic.” She steered the conversation back on track. “So, Mr. Schnee told me I could have one of them for my own use if I liked what I saw. A ‘freebie’, as he appropriately put it.”

“Oh, I see. I kinda thought as much,” Octavia said, tapping another button and powering off the projector. “I can show you them, downstairs in my lab on the second floor. Care to follow me there?”

“Certainly, Doctor.”

They stood up, and Octavia led the way. The lab Silba was led down the stairs to was fairly spacious, albeit comparatively cluttered with an assortment of tools and equipment. She recognized some of the fabrication machines from pictures in the kind of magazines Silba in her past life had once liked to read. Lathes, mills fabricators and the like. Octavia opened up one of the cabinets along the back wall, and from within she pulled out a large steel case. With a grunt she hefted it off of the shelf, before turning and setting it down on the nearest counter.

“Here we go,” Octavia spoke, sounding a little winded as she opened the case’s lid. “You’re going to like these.”

There were thirty-one tubes inside, slotted by their end into a rack built into the case. Said case had space for a total of fifty, making it a little more than half-full. “I was expecting fewer,” Silba said.

“Oh, these are actually the second batch,” Octavia explained. “We’ve been given the resources to prototype a hundred of these. The first half I sent out a few days ago, for the Atlas Military to incorporate into one of the projects they’re working on.…” She paused for a moment, as she realized she might have told Silba something she shouldn’t have. “Ah, umm, please forget that I told you any of that.”

“Doctor, the boss of the boss of your boss let me know about these,” Silba reassured her. “You can get away with telling me anything about these power cells if it is relevant.”

Octavia blinked and nodded. “Ah yes, I suppose you're right.”

“I am pretty sure I am. Also, it is quite clear to me that you enjoy your job.”

The other woman chuckled. “Well, thanks. Although I do, I really do. Speaking of baking, we have to heat the cells in an oven to get the internals to properly bond. A custom and reinforced oven, due to the destructive nature of the materials involved. There’s one in the oven right now, actually.” She gestured to the far wall, where a large and bulky machine occupied a corner of the lab. “Thankfully we haven’t had any mishaps, not since those first couple we made. The janitor’s still finding soot in places apparently.”

“I see, good to know. May I ask who else is using these cells, Doctor?” Silba asked, channeling the Force into her words right as the woman looked at her.

Octavia’s eyes promptly glazed over. “I shouldn’t disclose specifics, though I can say that this next batch is probably going to be split between the Ace Ops team and a few of Atlas’s Specialist teams to be incorporated into their equipment. Benefits of being in the military, I suppose, you get first pick.”

“A benefit of being friends with a Schnee too,” Silba smiled.

“True,” she replied, almost robotically.

For a moment, Silba regarded the power cells in the case. She reached in and carefully withdrew one. It was the most recent addition to the case, and it felt lighter than what she expected it to feel. And best of all, it was perfectly sized for a lightsaber. She didn’t doubt that it could act as a sufficient replacement for a diatium power cell and if she had to do a little more work? Well, she’d been meaning to practice her Sith Alchemy. “Doctor, I know that your work deals with a lot of experimental technology, so it would be understandable that mistakes occur. Suppose, say, a dozen of the most recent power cells proved to be defective in some way. What would happen?”

“Just a setback, I suppose,” the woman answered, eyes still glazed. “Mistakes sometimes happen. People keep using the oven to reheat their food, because they’re too cheap to order takeout. And then organic matter contaminates our experiments, setting us back and wasting time and resources.”

Silba blinked at the odd example, likely something that had actually, recently happened. “Yes, such incompetence is a problem. Unfortunately, doctor, the last dozen or so power cells are defective. As a result, you had to dispose of them.”

A beat, as the woman’s eyes flickered. “Yeah, a shame about that.” Silba kind of liked the woman, and a part of her disliked making a mess of her recent memories. But this was necessary, and for what it was worth, Silba was being gentle. She began to remove the cells one by one, sliding them into pouches along her belt. “There is another question I have for you Doctor,” Silba asked her. “Have you ever heard the name Watts, by any chance?”

“I’ve heard of a Watts, yes.”

“Oh?”

Octavia’s glazed eyes flickered, remembering details. “There was an esteemed scientist, by the name of Arthur Watts,” Octavia spoke. “But he died in an accident, some years ago.”

“Was his insignia a stylized letter W?”

“I… I think so, yes.”

Silba grimaced. A dead man, complicating things. How typical. “How did he die?”

“An explosion I think, his body was never found.”

Of course it wasn’t, Silba thought. After placing the last of the power cells she had claimed in her pouches, Silba ordered, “Octavia, forget this part of the conversation regarding Watts. And ensure that you log down eighteen completed cells, as of this moment.”

“Of course Ruby, I will do that,” she monotoned.

Satisfied, Silba relaxed her hold over the young woman’s mind. “Anyways, it is a shame about setbacks. Trust me, as a Huntress that maintains her own equipment I know what it feels like to have a project that fails to work out.”

Immediately the Doctor refocused, vibrancy returning to her speech and voice. “Yeah, I guess. I hope my boss doesn’t yell at me. The last time he did he threatened to dock my pay, even though I’m salaried.”

“It was not your fault. Blame your colleagues if necessary. After all, they are misusing company property. Anyways,” Silba asked innocently, “Is there anything I should know about this fancy battery you are giving me? Documentation, I mean?”

“Oh, of course!” Dr. Frieze had returned back to her normal self, “I’ve got some notes I’ve jotted down about the specs. I’ll access my workspace and print out a copy of them, would that be fine?”

“Yes, very much Octavia,” Silba answered. She couldn’t thank the doctor enough for her help today.

After all, Dr. Octavia Frieze had helped her in more ways than she could possibly imagine.

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