Okay, so this is basically a sort-of-prequel to Winter's War - just a heads up.

The black-haired woman walked down the corridors of the Schnee Dust Company HQ, her boots clattering on the parquet as her associates filed into the offices lined up on either side of the long hallway.

"So are we still on for that dinner date this Friday evening? Of course we can afford it Yang, I make more than you do in your club. Love you too, I have to work now, I'll se-… Yang, are you at the club now? With Stella and Aurora? Yang, a club is not a good environment for a six-year-old and a four-year-old! Oh? They're with Raven? That's not making me feel better!" She pinched the bridge of her nose in annoyance as her wife defended herself on the other end of the line.

"… Don't you 'kitty cat' me. I've got to work now – we will talk later." She ended the call as she walked up to the empty front desk. She waited for all of half a second before a blue-tinted hologram of a young female in a business dress materialized. The image adjusted its - purely cosmetical, of course – glasses and looked up at her client.

"Ah, Miss Belladonna! What can I do for the Head of Security today?" she said in that slightly hollow-sounding robotic voice. Blake smiled politely.

"Well Eirwen, I was hoping you could point me towards the nearest interface? I have some information I need to extract." She lifted her left hand, indicating the gauntlet with a touchscreen and a wire connector.

"Of course, anything I can do to help." The hologram's eyes dilated for a split-second before she turned back to Blake.

"That would be two corridors down on your right." She leaned in towards Blake – more to make herself seem more human than a true need to do so, Blake realised – as she whispered with an excited smile.

"… May I ask what sort of info you're looking for?" Blake smiled back coyly before turning on her heel towards her destination, hoisting a finger in the air.

"Need-to-know basis."

"Of course." Eirwen looked at the fast disappearing back of the Chief Security Officer before shutting her hologram off and going about her own business of cataloguing the latest album of the Achieve Men.

Purely an academical interest, of course.

Well, that could've gone a whole lot smoother. At least I gave her the lesser of two evils. On the other hand, I only said they were with Raven – I never specified where RAVEN was…

Yang Xiao Long looked up to the left from behind the bar desk of her club to see her mother sit with her grandkids. Raven had eschewed her usual crimson armour for a more fitting leather jacket over a sunset-coloured tank top and black jeans. From what Yang could tell, Raven had her grandkids enthralled by a story – most likely she's recounting her glory days at Beacon, Yang thought to herself with a smile.

"Bruno, could you hold down the fort for a bit? I'm gonna take five." She called to a lanky employee standing on the other side of the bar. She saw him nod, so she walked out on the dancefloor and turned left up the staircase to the west platform.

"So there we were, the finals match of the Vytal Festival Championship in Mistral. Tai had been eliminated first thing in the match embarrassingly enough, and Qrow had fallen not long after, but at least he had made sure to eliminate his opponent. We were two against three, me and Sum against a team from Vacuo… As I glance down at Sum, Oum bless her memory, she has this really excited look of pure, undiluted joy plastered on her face. She indicates she wants me to discreetly put up a portal out of the line of sight from our opponents, so I do as I'm told. She screams 'NOW!' as she dives into my portal and appears at the other end of the arena, immediately activating her chameleon semblance in the desert biotope I dropped her into, the heat waves further masking her presence. Of course, this odd strategy has the enemy team befuddled, so they start scanning the desert for her. One of them hasn't quite forgotten about me though, so I shove him through another portal right next to the edge of the arena, well within reach for Sum to use her chain-axes to trip him into a ring-out. Two on two now. I make my presence known to one of them, while simultaneously discreetly 'porting Sum closer to the three of us. So while I make myself look like I'm having trouble taking down my guy, and I'm totally not at all aware of the guy currently trying to sneak up behind me. So as I suddenly reveal my actual skill to the guy in front of me, I hear the rattling of chains and a gurgling noise behind me. I knock out my opponent and turn around to see Sum disengaging her semblance, cheerfully choking the other guy with her chains like it's the most fun she has had in ages. And that's how we became Vytal Festival Champions." As Raven finishes her story to the cheers of Stella and Aurora, Yang clears her throat.

"Mommy!" They jump up from their seats around their grandmother on the couch and run up to Yang to hug her.

"Hey there my little rays of sunshine! Can I get you anything? Drinks? Cookies? Ice Cream?"

"I want vanilla ice cream with chocolate crunchies and sauce."

"I wanna ice cream with chocolate, vanilly an' strawberry, please." Yang looked to Raven.

"And you? Do you want anything, mom?" Raven thought for a moment.

"I'll have the usual, thanks." Yang's eyes flashed crimson for a moment as she signed to her mom.

"*Raven, I will not have you drink any alcohol within sight of your grandkids!*"

"*Fine fine, I'll have a strawberry soda then.*"

Gently pushing open the door to one of the many server rooms in the SDC building, Blake wasted no time in locating an appropriate outlet for her spoofer cable. Extending it and plugging it in, she allowed herself a small chuckle over the irony that a White Fang spoofer gauntlet, once used in acts of espionage and sabotage against the SDC, is now helping it against the very same sort of attacks. She had made sure that most of her 'inner circle' was former White Fang, explicitly for just that reason – who else would be better suited to maintain security against terroristic threats than the very men and women who used to carry out the attacks? A voice from the door momentarily brought Blake back from memory lane.

"Ma'am? We didn't fin' anythin' much ay use in th' offices, mostly rumoors an' accusations." Blake turned in the general direction of the door currently outside her field of view behind the server shelves.

"Okay. Keep me posted if you find anything more useful. I'll find that SP Number for us soon."

"Copy 'at. Guid huntin', ma'am."

"You too, Ciara." As she heard the door close, Blake went back to her search. She brought up the original number for a quick memory refresh, then kept scrolling through the hundreds upon hundreds of digits flowing past her vision on the screen. There! A match! Blake looked up the user of the SPN, and frowned.

"Weiss-" Blake mentally berated herself for falling into her old schooldays routine calling her boss by her first name.

"Correction – chairwoman Schnee – will not like these news."

Yang was finishing up the last touches on Stella's chocolate chip sprinkle ice cream, and was just about to carry up the two bowls of frozen goods to her daughters when the front door of her club swung open. Yang turned to her assistant and handed him the platter.

"Bruno, be a dear and deliver this to table 20? I've got visitors."

"Of course, boss." As Bruno walked up the stairs towards his three lady customers, Yang greeted the newcomer.

"Junior! Just like old times! Well, not exactly. You used to be back over here then." She playfully indicated the space behind the bar desk.

"How's the Malachite sisters?"

Hei 'Junior' Xiong grumbled at the woman's attempts to annoy him.

"Quit the pleasantries Blondie, I'm still pissed at you hustling me for the club." Yang smiled cheekily.

"Aww, don't be like that, Junior! Not my fault you let me chose 'weapons' for our 'showdown'!" Junior hammered down a fist on the desk.

"Well how could I know you had taken up billiard as a hobby project?!"

"Eh, you didn't ask. Now, I'm assuming you didn't come all the way down here just to be all pouty and miserable? Drink's on the house for you by the way." Yang innocently placed a strawberry sunrise with an umbrella in it in front of the older man. Junior just looked at it once, then pushed it aside.

"I'm gonna need to borrow some of my… your guys for a hunt. This little nuisance down in Vacuo. Calls himself 'the Monkey King of Thieves'." Yang got a funny feeling as Junior pulled out a small photo from a pocket and slid it towards her over the desk. It can't possibly be him, can it? Yang thought before picking up the small piece of paper. Dammit, it really is you. Who'd you piss off this time, Sun?

"Sorry man, I don't rent out my guys like you used to. I still do information though. You know, 'Information is Power' and all that."

"You mean 'Knowledge is Power'."

"Whatever. Anyways, I haven't heard from him since shortly after the Battle of Beacon. You're on your own, sorry." To Yang's surprise, Junior swept the Strawberry Sunrise in one go as he stood up to leave.

"Well coming here was a huge waste of both of our time. I'll be seeing you around, Blondie."

"Counting on it, Junior."

"I refuse to believe this, Miss Belladonna." Chairwoman Weiss Schnee of the SDC said as she sat behind the large oak desk of her office, glaring daggers at the wall behind the woman in front of her.

"The evidence is all there, ma'am." Blake said as she indicated the files splayed in front of her boss on the desk.

"It's a setup, then. He's been my friend since before I took over as CEO."

"And before that he was the childhood friend of your father, which, need I remind you, would not be above this level of racism. And even if it was a setup, it's very clumsily done. It's far too obvious."

"He's far too smart to make the mistake of using papers with his personal letterhead."

"… Unless he wants it to look like he was framed. Maybe he wants us to wonder like this."

"You're saying we're overthinking it all?"

"Divide and conquer."

Weiss looked down again at the portrait of a smiling man adorning the personnel file. She felt a pang of regret as her eyes flitted over the name NIGELLUS UMBRAGE near the top.

"I will investigate this on my own during the next meeting of the board. I was planning on bringing along Bianca, seems she'll be getting a lesson in sacrifice on top of it all."

AN: Keep an eye on those spoofer gauntlets, they might get important later.

"Eirwen" is welsh for "white snow", in case you were wondering. (20 lien says she's the CEO's favourite holographic front-desk personnel)

"Purely academical interest" – sure it is.

Aurora wants that Neopolitan ice cream. Four years old and already a shipper.

… Raven was seriously planning on drinking in front of the kids. Some granny she turned out to be.

"Ciara" means "black, little dark one, dark haired" – basically, Blake's 'inner circle' of ex-WF people all have names pertaining to the colour black and derivatives (shadows etc.)

They're only company security, not secret police. Honest.

EDIT: retroactively giving Ciara a Welsh-that-sounds-a-wee-bit-too-much-like-Scottish-for-my-liking dialect.

I do not own RWBY, that's RoosterTeeth and Monty Oum.