Chapter 10

"I think that goes here."

"What? No this part connects to here, see?"

The two pairs of RWBY had met up at a coffeehouse Blake knew about to compare notes. So far, they had concluded that the 'Icarus' plans Weiss and Ruby found didn't have anything to do with an athleticism supplement of any kind. Beyond that, their progress was limited.

"Wait, I think this one is upside down."

Extremely limited.

Yang had made the logical suggestion the different machine parts were all pieces of a whole, and that assembling them into that whole would tell them what it did. It was just that putting together the eight piece puzzle was proving difficult, considering none of them were engineers.

Ruby was leaning over the table to prod at the scroll's screen. "Okay, we know this tube connects with this tube here, so that means this thingamajig is on the right side here. Which puts this pod here in the middle."

"Hmm." Yang surveyed her sister's work, leaning in to see the tiny scroll screen. "Yeah. That makes sense. I think all this stuff is supposed to funnel into that pod, if we put it in the middle like that it all flows better."

"But what does it do?" Weiss asked for what felt like the tenth time. She still couldn't make head or tails of the machine, assembled or not.

"No idea." Yang sat back, folding her arms. "You put a person inside that pod, probably, and the pod is connected to all sorts of things. Including a power generator, so this isn't exactly a medical device."

"Mm." Was Blake's contribution. She had been staring out the window lost in thought almost since they had arrived. Weiss knew she wasn't exactly a mechanical genius, but Blake could at least pretend to be paying attention. She opened her mouth to say as much when Blake jumped in her seat and started staring out the window intently.

"What?" Weiss asked, perplexed. Ruby and Yang turned to look at the two of them.

"That guy." Blake said. "I know him. He was at the White Fang meeting me and Sun attended."

Weiss looked after the man, even from across the street she could see horns rising out of his orange hair. "How do you know? I thought everyone at those meetings wore masks."

Blake shook her head. "He was one of the newer recruits, so he didn't have one at first. He looks up to something." She had a point there; he kept glancing over his shoulder as if to check if he was being followed. Blake stood suddenly. "I'm going to follow him."

"Whoa, hold on." Weiss tried to appeal to reason. "Aren't we a little busy to be chasing around White Fang grunts at the bottom of the ladder?"

"Busy doing what?" Blake countered. "Poring over schematics for a machine that even if we knew exactly what it was still wouldn't help us actually find Dr. Daedalus?"

"She's got a point there." Yang admitted. Weiss just sighed. If Yang was on board then it was a safe bet that…

"Right! Let's go after him." Ruby said, unsurprisingly. "Maybe he can lead us to where the White Fang are hiding."

But we're not after the White Fang… Oh forget it. Just once, Weiss wished her teammates had a bit more of an attention span. So they were off trailing the newbie minion through the streets. Thankfully, he was pretty clearly inexperienced when it came to noticing when you're being followed. And with four of them spread out and trading off keeping an eye on him, it was child's play to tail him without being seen.

They headed out into the industrial district as the sun began to set and the young Faunus got positively paranoid, looking behind him it felt like every few feet. Which is why Weiss, who was currently watching him, was doing so from the front. She would stay ahead of him until he turned at which point Ruby or Yang, who were behind him, would send some pips to her scroll informing her of the change in direction. At which point someone else would pass in front of him and she would take their former spot at the rear. The 'square' tracking formation, a textbook trailing method for when someone is watching for pursuit, but isn't very good at it.

Eventually, the crowds thinned enough that Team RWBY had to switch to simply hiding from him instead of just being another face in the crowd. The Faunus finally reached his destination, an abandoned warehouse of some sort. The faded logo declared it property of Azoth Industries. He looked back over his shoulder one last time, missing the Huntresses concealed in the shadows of a nearby alleyway, and pounded on the door. It opened a crack and a masked face looked out.

"It's you. Were you followed?"

"Of course not, I made sure."

"Good. Get inside and get changed."

Their tail was ushered in and the door clanged shut. The team gathered for a brief conference.

"We need to get in there." Ruby said. Weiss nodded. "Quietly, or we won't find out what they're up to."

"Yeah." Yang jerked a thumb to the upper level of the warehouse. "We can sneak in through the roof and wait in the rafters for our chance."

"They'll have sentries up top." Blake warned. "But if we're quick they won't be a problem."

The White Fang did indeed have a trio of guards on the warehouse's roof, arrayed so that if one was attacked the other two would be able to sound the alarm. They didn't have a contingency for when all three were jumped at the same time, however. Yang slowly opened the hatch to below and the four of them crept down the ladder into the building.

The warehouse was a cavernous, dim, space. The interior was pretty poorly lit, but that worked to Team RWBY's advantage. The only lights were aimed at several areas where people were working, allowing the Huntresses to plainly see what they were doing while staying in the shadows. Weiss reminded herself that didn't mean they were hidden, Faunus having natural night vision, and she slid behind a support beam for cover.

Below, masked and uniformed White Fang members were hard at work. Their tail was nowhere to be seen, likely just another mask in the crowd. There were several work areas, each one with a team assembling some sort of machinery. Something nagged at her mind but she couldn't place it. Near the far wall, there were a series of partitions set up to separate that part of the floor. Thankfully, from their upper vantage point Weiss could easily see over them. Within the walled off space an older man was being guarded by a pair of armed White Fang, the bruises on his face and his bound hands making it unlikely he was there willingly. Judging by the chainsaw sword one carried, he was the bruiser she had fought on the train the day of the breach. Her fists clenched at the prospect of avenging that defeat. Her eyes wandered back to the machinery and all of a sudden Weiss' mind clicked.

"Those are the things from Project Icarus." Ruby whispered from somewhere behind her. "And that's not all, look."

Weiss followed the pointing finger to two men talking with one another. One was just another White Fang member, dressed in black with a long sword at his side. But the other…

"It's him. Lance."

"Yeah." Yang whispered back. "Guess it was a good idea to follow that guy, huh Blake? Blake?"

Weiss looked back. Blake wasn't with them. She glanced around trying to spot her and caught motion on the opposite wall. Blake slipped down off a balcony to the ground and began walking toward the White Fang.

"What is she doing?" Ruby hissed, preparing to go after Blake and being stopped by Yang holding up a hand. Blake was too far for them to reach her and bring her back without being seen. Sure enough, some of the White Fang had already noticed her and both voices and weapons were rising.

Blake spoke first. "Adam!"

The black dressed, red haired Faunus turned to face her, scowling. "Blake." He said coldly. "What are you doing here?"

"That's what I want to ask you." Blake said hotly. She thrust a finger at Lance. "What are you doing working for him? Don't you know what he's done?"

Lance folded his arms and smirked as Adam glanced back at him for a second. "I know far more than you do about him and his actions." He looked back to Blake, his mouth hard. "If you had not defected, you would too."

"Is this the part where you offer to let me know if I rejoin the White Fang?" Blake asked sardonically. Adam shook his head.

"You burned that bridge a long time ago. Now the only favor I'll give you is a quick death. Well, a quicker death than a traitor deserves anyway." The other members of the White Fang gathering around him hefted their weapons, obviously pleased by the idea.

Lance held up a hand. "Before that, this one is a member of a four man cell. I highly doubt she came here alone." His gaze seemed to search the darkness where the other three were hiding. Weiss was fairly certain he was human and couldn't see them, but even so… Yang met her eyes and nodded. Hoping she got the right message, Weiss gestured Ruby to get back into cover and ducked back behind the pillar she was hanging on to.

"She didn't!" Yang threw herself into space and landed right beside Blake. Weiss could no longer see them from her position, but she just knew Yang did that thing where she slams her gauntlets together. "The two of us are more than enough for punks like you."

"Please." Adam's voice was loaded with disdain. Lance spoke next. "If you want them, they're yours. I'll take care of getting everything packed up."

Ruby caught Weiss' eye and gestured to the far wall and the White Fang's prisoner. Weiss nodded and crept after her across the beams to the relative cover of the wall. With the sounds of combat erupting behind them they hurried along the wall to the back of the warehouse. Thankfully, every eye in the building was on the brawl or on loading the machinery onto carts and taking the pieces out a loading bay door into a truck. They passed unnoticed until they reached the edge of the scaffolding. Weiss spared a brief glance back to see how their teammates were doing.

Yang was currently pummeling every Faunus who got within striking distance with a dozen or more keeping back out of obvious fear. Blake was engaged in a duel with Adam, other White Fang watching but not interfering. For those, Weiss got the impression they were holding back more to watch the 'traitor' get her comeuppance at the hands of their leader. Of course, if Blake was the victor they would just jump her anyway. Weiss made a silent promise to provide Blake support as soon as she and Ruby freed the hostage.

Speaking of the hostage, their teammates had done them a service by luring most of the White Fang away. The only people left at this end were the captive and his two guards. Weiss pointed to the Faunus with deer horns as her target. They would have to do this quickly before the rest of the White Fang noticed them and Ruby's harder hitting scythe stood a better chance of dropping that hulking bruiser in one strike than her rapier did. Ruby nodded and held up three fingers.

Three seconds later they struck. Weiss used a glyph to boost her speed and slammed the point of Myrtenaster into her targets torso. He dropped unceremoniously with a flare of Aura. Ruby, already ahead of her, had slammed her opponent into the ground with a swing of Crescent Rose. He recovered quickly and before either of them could react had grabbed Ruby by the throat and slammed her into the ground. Weiss switched Myrtenaster to the red setting and sent him flying with a stab.

So it was all on her then. She'd have to be quick. She severed the old man's bonds with a flick of her sword.

"Are you okay?" When he nodded she walked, not ran, over to a locked door to project an air of calmness despite her own haste. The lock yield to a slash and she pushed the door open. "Start running and don't look back. We'll catch up with you after we wrap up here."

The old man went past her, not meeting her eyes. Probably unsurprising he was frightened and meek, being held captive by terrorist organizations does that to people. Weiss put him out of her mind as she went to check on Ruby, who was still on the ground.

"Ow." She groaned. "That really hurt."

"Shake it off. We're not done here." Chainsaw man was already back on his feet.

"Time to finish what I started. Your head's gonna look really pretty on my wall." His weapon roared to life. Weiss readied Myrtenaster while Ruby groggily shook her head and grabbed for her scythe. And then they both watched as a sword from behind him slashed him square in the neck.

The bruiser staggered from the force of the blow. Standing behind him holding the offending sword was a man dressed in black with vibrant crimson hair. With a snarl, Chainsaw rose again. That man had an incredible store of Aura, which was why she had battered him over and over in their first fight without any noticeable effect. Taking a sword to the throat only seemed to have made him angry. San watched him with the faintest smile on his face.

The chainsaw whipped forward. San parried, sparks kicking up as he deflected the whirling metal teeth. He darted in, running his blade along his enemy's torso as he passed. Aura flared as it repelled the metal. More than it should have. By using the entire length of his sword like that, San maximized the amount of Aura his attacks drained. Another pair of exchanges confirmed her theory; San deflecting an attack, landing his own near the base of his blade, and sliding it backwards until it cleared the body. By their third exchange he had drawn blood. The fourth left his opponent on the floor clutching at a profusely bleeding leg. A kick to his head finally knocked him unconscious.

San flicked most of the blood off his sword and Weiss couldn't help but notice his smile had widened. She shivered. He may be on their side, but he was still creepy. The implications of him having developed a fighting style around draining a target's Aura was not lost on her. Ruby slowly rose to her feet.

San looked back at them. Anything he was about to say was cut off by a shout.

"More humans!"

Weiss refrained from cursing only thanks to years of practice at maintaining decorum. A masked White Fang charged through the opening in the partition, sword drawn. San blocked the slash, rammed an elbow in his face, and kicked him into the wall. A chorus of angry shouts rose.

"Right." San idly spun his sword. The analytical part of Weiss' mind noted offhandedly that it was identical to the one that had been slashed in half by Mortis. He did seem the sort to keep a replacement handy. He charged through the opening and there was the sound of clashing metal. Weiss followed in time to see three White Fang lying in a pool of blood while a ring of them warily surrounded him.

"No!" It was Lance, crying out somewhere in the back. "Withdraw! You can't beat him!"

They didn't listen. Almost as one they lunged forward. She wasn't sure, but Weiss thought she heard San chuckle as he awaited them.

"Weiss!" Ruby caught her attention and pointed to a black clad spearman. "Cold Flagpole!" Repressing a sigh at Ruby's unimaginative name for their combat maneuver, Weiss fell in behind her leader as they rushed Lance. Ruby launched a flurry of slashes that Lance deftly deflected. Weiss used a series of glyphs to zip around behind him. Lance shifted his stance to cover her approach, clearly expecting her to flank him.

Weiss permitted herself half a smile as she stabbed Myrtenaster into the floor. A thin wave of ice shot forward. Lance saw the danger and made to leap, but he was too slow. He had barely cleared the ground when the ice reached him and shot upward, encasing him from the neck down in a frozen cocoon.

"Got him!" Caught up in the moment, Weiss reciprocated Ruby's high five. Lance watched them with a curiously rueful expression.

"Adam! Bring it all down!"

"What?" Figures they would have some measure prepared in case of discovery. 'Bring it down' was an unsettling choice of words. Adam for his part neatly disengaged from Blake and with his cronies raced towards their truck. A hand darted into his pocket and squeezed something within. Blake jumped as if scalded and ran to one of the metal drums scattered around the warehouse. She wrenched the lid off and blood drained from her face.

"It's a bomb!"

With a sinking feeling, Weiss realized just how many of those drums there were.

"Everyone out! Now!" San cried.

"Yang!" The blonde responded to her sister's call, sprinting over to them. A shot from Ember Celica blasted through the ice locking Lance to the ground and Yang hefted the whole frigid prison over her shoulder. Weiss threw down a glyph to speed the three of them to the door where Blake and San were waiting. The team ran like the hounds of hell were chasing them, San bringing up the rear.

The explosion nearly bowled them over.

Aside from some twisted wreckage and half melted steel support beams, the warehouse was simply gone. Weiss' breath hitched as she realized both they and the White Fang had left easily a dozen or more injured people lying on the floor as they fled. Suddenly her mouth was very, very dry.

"Hmm. I am surprised he used that many explosives. I only told him set half as many." Lance commented lightly, clearly uncaring at the deaths.

"Adam always believed in overkill." Blake muttered darkly. She turned angrily from the sight to San. "And what are you doing here?"

"Unless you would like to spend several hours explaining your connection to that," San gestured to the rubble. "I suggest we continue this discussion elsewhere."

The members of Team RWBY glanced between each other.

On a secluded rooftop, San was making a call.

"Yes sir… The majority of them escaped but we have a potential source of information… I don't believe so. Understood, I'll take care of it."

"Who was that?" Blake asked, not quite hostilely. She hadn't tried to kill him yet, but it seemed she still wasn't a big fan of him. Considering his parentage, Ruby understood that, she really did, but still felt it was a little unfair. Sure, he was vicious in a fight and he had a fighting style designed to injure rather than subdue… She wasn't making a very good case. Either way, he was one of the good guys, right?

"Ozpin. He'll handle the clean-up and other messy details from tonight's battle." San said. He slipped his scroll away and turned to face them. "Lance and members of the White Fang were hiding out in an abandoned warehouse, working on technologies I couldn't identify. When cornered he and their leader blew it all up rather than let us have it."

Ruby's brow furrowed. They knew all that, they were there. What was he going on about?

"Man, how many abandoned warehouses are there in this city?" Ruby jumped. Argos was now standing behind them. Flanking him were his other two teammates.

"Two fewer than when we arrived." Dom commented drily.

"You're late."

"Sorry bossman." Argos replied to San's barb glibly. "We can't exactly travel halfway across the city a few minutes after you call us, you know."

"You were going to explain why you were there." Blake said to San, not about to let the topic drop.

San eyed her with his usual emotionless expression. "I was out stretching my legs when I spotted some Huntresses in training acting like they were tailing someone. I figured it would be worth my time to find out why." He glanced at the ice block sitting several yards away. "And it was."

Argos followed his gaze. "Clone."

San sighed. Ruby groaned. "You mean this isn't the real guy?"

"Nope." The Lance-clone answered for him. Despite his positon, the bastard had a smug smirk on his not-really-real face. Yang had more or less dropped him when they arrived so he was currently watching them while lying on his side.

"Nice to know that was a big waste of effort." Yang muttered, rolling a shoulder. Even with her incredible strength, carrying something that heavy as far as they traveled was tiring for her.

"Not entirely." Argos walked over to Lance-clone and knelt next to him. "We can still ask some questions. We won't be able to force him to answer but maybe he'll want to."

"And what questions do you have that you think I'll want to answer?" The clone asked, clearly enjoying himself. "Where I really am? What our plan is?"

"Why did you kill Arthur?"

The smile vanished. "I didn't. We didn't." He sounded a mix of almost desperate to convince them and outraged that he had to. "Why would we?"

"The three of you had always hated him." Argos said. "Ever since Gwen died and he, the replacement, was made squad captain."

"No! Okay yes, I admit it; we didn't like him at first. But that was years ago, we got past that. And even back then we didn't want him dead."

Argos' calm demeanor was a sharp contrast to the clone's agitation. "How else would he have died?"

"He was killed by Grimm during a mission." Argos scoffed and the clone glared. "He was!"

"Yeah, sure. Arthur, one of the best ranked graduates of your year, died on a routine search and destroy mission. How are you going to claim that happened?"

"I-" There was a pause, a sudden wave of uncertainty. "I don't know. I wasn't there to see it. He and Mordred had gone to take one pack while Morgan and I took the other. By the time we got over to support them, it was too late."

"Right." Argos said, disbelief clear on his face. Before the clone could retort, he asked another question. "How much do you trust Mordred?"

"With my life." The answer was immediate and definite. Argos stared at him for a few long seconds before straightening up. "If you say so. Anything else you want to get off your chest?"

"Argos," Ruby was surprised at the earnest expression on the clone's face. "we are doing what's right, I promise you. In the end, you'll see."

Argos didn't respond except to whip his spear around, and the clone dispersed into mist. He wandered back over to the group, putting on a smile that looked just a bit forced. "Man, that guy gets riled up easily."

Dom looked thoughtful. "He said they were doing the right thing, and I don't think he was lying."

"He probably wasn't." San said, folding his arms. "He's just wrong."

"Still, that's kinda hard to believe." Argos commented, shifting his spear back to its customary spot on one of his shoulders. "What with him freeing mass murderers and teaming up with terrorist groups."

"And not caring about the deaths of dozens of people." Ruby put in. That didn't really seem like the 'right thing'. Ruby knew there wasn't anything they could have done, they had barely gotten out themselves, but the thought that they had saved a disposable clone over any of the real people in that warehouse was a tough pill to swallow.

Argos raised an eyebrow at San. "There were a number of injured White Fang left behind went the warehouse went up." He nodded at his leader's explanation.

"Well… They were terrorists, right? I think that makes it morally gray, really." Argos said.

He earned a sharp look from Blake for that. "Many of them were just stupid, shortsighted kids angry at the ways things are. That doesn't mean they deserved to die."

"Losing focus." San reproached. "Let's get back to figuring out what Lance wanted from them."

"Those machines they were building." Yang said. "That's gotta be it."

San nodded. "Probably. But what were they for?"

"Project Icarus." Four heads turned towards Ruby. She flushed a little at the sudden attention and continued. "It was something Dr. Daedalus was working on for Azoth Industries. The stuff they were making were parts to the machine he built."

"Dom?" Argos looked over his shoulder at his teammate, who shrugged. "I didn't see anything about a 'Project Icarus' in his files."

"Maybe that's what was in file 228." Ruby blinked in surprise. That might have been more words than she had ever heard from Will so far. It was almost spooky; he was so quiet and unobtrusive you found yourself forgetting he was there. Then she realized what he had said. "Yeah, there was a 228 written on the blueprints in the corner."

"Can I see?" Dom held out a hand and was given Weiss' scroll. He flipped through it quickly while they watched.

"What is Project Icarus anyway?" Argos asked offhandedly. Ruby shook her head. "We don't know; we couldn't figure out the plans."

Dom hmmed as he continued to read. Finally he looked up. "Whatever this is, it's pretty complicated. It looks like you put a person in here and shove Dust into their veins, but then I have no idea what the rest of this is for."

Something occurred to Ruby and she kicked the ground in frustration. "We should have asked that guy, they might have mentioned it around him or something."

"Guy?" Dom asked. Ruby nodded. "The White Fang were holding some guy prisoner in their base. It just occurred to me, he might have overheard something. But he's long gone now and I don't even know where we'd begin to look for him."

Argos suddenly looked suspicious. "This guy, did he have black hair that's about halfway to going gray? And a little beard that's not quite long enough to be a goatee?"

"…Yeah." Ruby had a sinking feeling. "How'd you know?"

Argos slapped a hand over his face and groaned. Dom gave a deep sigh. Even Will looked a little pained. Blake looked at her sympathetically. "Ruby, that was a description of Dr. Daedalus."

Weiss stamped a foot, face red. "Oh are you kidding me! The mastermind was right there and we let him just walk away?"

"You hadn't looked at a picture of the guy we were hunting?" Blake asked incredulously. Weiss didn't address that and just pointed a finger back at her. "And why didn't you see that it was him, if you knew what he looked like?"

"I was-" Blake looked down, guilty. "I was distracted."

Ruby realized Blake had kinda admitted to being in the White Fang right in front of someone with an unpleasant history with the White Fang. San was looking sourly at Blake but then he always seemed to look like that. Ruby couldn't tell if he was going to make something out of it or not.

"Wait, that's not right." Yang rested a hand on her hip. "What Weiss said, I mean. He can't be the mastermind behind all this if the White Fang had him tied up, right?"

"Good point." Dom said. "I'm beginning to suspect Daedalus is less of an active factor here than we thought."

"The only way to know for sure is to find him." San rubbed his chin. "Any ideas?"

"He got his hands on military grade explosives back in the day." Argos weighed in. "He must have some connections in the underworld for that. Maybe he's going to hide out with them?"

"Um." An idea had just formed in Ruby's head.

"I doubt that." Dom replied. "He had access to plenty of Dust and the knowhow to cobble together some bombs. Add in no prior offenses and I don't think he's all that familiar with the criminal underworld."

"Uh, hey?"

"Dom is right." San said. "He never did strike me as the sort willing to break the law."

"Guys, listen-"

"We know he's the sort to break the law. He blew up a building!" Argos countered.

"Uh, hello?"

"That doesn't mean he has underworld contacts and you know it."

"Guys."

Even though he had only spoken quietly, the bickering trio instantly shut up and looked over at Will. He gave them an exasperated look before pointedly turning to Ruby. Suddenly put on the spot, she stammered a little.

"Er, well, I was thinking maybe he would go back to his house? Like when you startle a rabbit and they run to their den…" She trailed off awkwardly.

Argos snorted. "No offense Red, but that's stupid. He'd have to be dumber than a sack of bricks to go back to his house; it's the first place anyone would look."

Yang and Weiss rounded on him angrily, but San spoke before either of them could. "Do you have a better idea?" When Argos opened his mouth San amended "That has an actual address we can go to right now?" Argos mouth shut.

"Dom?" San asked.

"One sec… Got it." Dom said after a few seconds tapping something on his scroll.

"Good. Lead the way."

An: Hey everyone, what's up? The plot's beginning to thicken now, the big reveals are starting to turn up. Why does Lance think he's doing the right thing? What do the Icarus machines do? What's the White Fang's angle in all this? Find out next time on Dragon Ball Z! Or, ah, Hunting Monsters, you know.