ON RWBY WINGS II: VYTAL FLAG

Part II of "On RWBY Wings"

An Alternate Universe RWBY Fanfiction

By Sentinel 28II

WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE: It is the year 2001. World War III has been over for almost 40 years, but in its wake was left a devastated world. Half of the world has been either turned into radioactive ruins, or abandoned to the mechanical GRIMM. No one knows who controls them. No one knows why they exist. All they do know is that GRIMM—an acronym for Ground-launched Remote Independent Multimission Munition—exist only to kill. Humans, and genetically engineered human-animal hybrids known as Faunus, now hold onto what is left.

The remainder of the world has struggled to rebuild, and mostly succeeded. The militaries once created to fight the Cold War now exist to defend the remaining habitable areas—the "Remnant"—from the marauding GRIMM, along with other humans taking advantage of the chaos. For much of the world, training for this duty culminates in an annual exercise in northern Wisconsin at Joint Base Beacon, called Vytal Flag.

This year, four young female fighter pilots in particular have distinguished themselves in aerial combat, against the GRIMM, the air pirates known as the Torchwick Gang, and the radical Faunus terrorists called the White Fang. Ruby Rose and Yang Xiao Long of the USAF, Blake Belladonna of the USMC, and Weiss Schnee of the Luftwaffe have formed Ruby Flight. Despite age-old rivalries and hidden secrets, Ruby Flight has become a true team, alongside the other flights at Beacon—namely Juniper Flight.

After fighting off the biggest GRIMM attack on the Mississippi River Barrier in over a decade, at the same time fending off a joint Torchwick-White Fang attack, Ruby Flight doesn't get much of a chance to relax: Vytal Flag, now billed as a public relations exercise, has resumed, and they will be in the thick of it. But there are still enemies out there—both without and within—and Ruby Flight's lives are about to change forever…

Above Lake Michigan

Wisconsin, United States of Canada

8 May 2001

"We screwed this up nicely," Captain Blake Belladonna growled under her oxygen mask, to no one in particular. Despite the fact that she was at the controls of a Grumman F-14 Tomcat, hers was unique in that it was a single-seat version. The Gambol Shroud was unique in many ways.

Right now, its uniqueness wasn't very apparent. Though the F-14 was in the twilight of its long career as a fleet defense interceptor, Blake was currently being outperformed by an aircraft that was basically a relic, a museum piece. Someone had forgotten to tell Lieutenant Reese Chloris of the Lebanese Republic Air Force that, because her Hawker Hunter was giving Blake fits. It didn't help that the rules of the exercise gave away the Tomcat's biggest advantage, its long reach—it was visual range only weapons, AIM-9 Sidewinder heatseeking missiles and internal guns. Old though it might be, the Hunter was equipped with both, and Chloris was getting everything out of the old aircraft. Making matters worse was that Blake had foolishly allowed herself to get pulled out of the mutual support of her wingmate.

Blake stole a glance behind the F-14's twin tails and cursed softly as the Hunter settled into the six o'clock high position. "Reese, Fox Two!" Chloris called out, but she was a tad fast. Blake rolled hard into a split-S, breaking the lock and dodging the missile—or would have, were an actual missile in the air. This combat was entirely simulated, a computer back at Joint Base Beacon cataloging the shots and feeding information to Range Control, who would determine if a shot hit, making the target a "mort," simulated dead. Chloris' shot was outside of parameters, which meant that, if the combat had been real, it would've been a clean miss.

Blake pulled out at six thousand feet above Lake Michigan, a thousand feet above the "hard deck," an arbitrary safety margin to keep enthusiastic fighter pilots from accidentally diving into the lake. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye, looked up and saw the Hunter diving on her from above. Chloris wasn't giving up: she had rolled the fighter downwards and was trying to catch Blake at the bottom of her split-S, where the Tomcat would be out of energy and out of airspace.

Except Blake was a step ahead of her opponent. She firewalled the throttles, felt like someone shoved her back into her ejection seat, and pulled the stick into her lap. Gambol Shroud converted the energy of the dive into airspeed, and the F-14 rocketed upwards, ruining Chloris' gun pass. Straining against the pull of gravity, Blake looked behind her again, obeying the dictum drilled into naval aviators from the first day of school—lose sight, lose the fight—and saw Chloris climbing as well. Blake smiled beneath the mask. Despite being half the size and weight of the Tomcat, the Hunter could not climb with it; its single Avon engine was just not up to the task. Now she'll break off, and I'll drop in on her, Blake thought.

To her surprise, the Hunter kept doggedly climbing, and to Blake's horror, she saw the fighter start to flutter, then it twisted and fell out of the sky in a stall. It whirled once, and Blake's finger hovered over the radio button, to make the call that Chloris was out of control, which would bring the exercise to an immediate halt. To her relief, the Hunter's nose came down and the aircraft resumed controlled flight. "Reese, Blake, you all right?"

"Reese here. I'm fine." Her breathing sounded labored. "Lost control for a minute."

"Reese, Range Control. Charlie Mike?" The controller wanted to know if the Lebanese woman could continue.

"Charlie Mike. Come and get me, Blake!"

"Yang, Blake," Blake called out, as she rolled out at the top of her climb, still keeping an eye on Chloris, far below. "Where are you?"

Captain Yang Xiao Long did not answer, because she was also not trying to meet a grisly, simulated death at the hands of one Captain Arslan Altan of the Turkish Air Force. She had more of an excuse than Blake: Altan was at least flying a F-16.

Yang pulled hard into a left turn, cursing herself even as she heard Blake's call, because she'd lost visual on Altan in the turn, which meant he was probably about to kill her. "Arslan, Fox Two!" Yang instantly reversed her turn, dropping flares behind her. There was no confirmation from Range Control, so she'd successfully evaded the simulated shot. She leveled out, just long enough to see the F-16 coming back in behind the twin yellow-trimmed tails of her Ember Celica. She counted one full second, long enough for Altan to get his gunsight on her, then snap-rolled her F-15 to throw off his targeting solution, then threw the Eagle into a gut-wrenching left break. The G-meter on the instrument panel buried itself past 9 Gs—nine times the gravity of the planet—and Yang felt like her G-suit was squeezing her in half. Blackness appeared at the edges of her vision and she screamed with sheer exertion. Finally, she came out of the turn, and much to Yang's disgust, she looked out to see the F-16 level with her. Altan waved, her speedbrakes popped open, and the F-16 seemed to stop in midair as it began to slide behind her.

"Yang, extend out! I've got your bandit!"

Yang didn't question the call. She snapped upwards into a hard climb, putting herself into the sun to throw off Altan if the F-16 followed her into the climb; unlike the Hunter against the F-14, the F-16 could keep up with a F-15 in a climb, at least initially. Altan, taken by surprise, pulled her speedbrakes back in and began climbing, but Ember Celica was already out of range, far above her.

"Ruby, Fox Two on Arslan!"

Altan heard the call and broke hard, but slowing down to get behind Yang had left her out of energy. "Range Control to Arslan. You're a mort." Arslan spit a vile Turkish curse, but immediately went back to level flight and turned east, to clear the exercise area. She watched as another F-16, almost identical to hers, shot past above her, its outer wing panels painted bright red.

"You're clear, Yang!" 1st Lieutenant Ruby Rose called out happily. Getting a simulated kill was pretty awesome on its own, but the fact that she had "saved" her own sister was just icing on the coolness cake. She kicked the tail around and dropped the throttle back, slowing Crescent Rose. "I'm dragging him for you, Weiss!" She started throwing the F-16 around a bit, just enough to keep her opponent from getting a good solution, dropping flares as well.

Lieutenant Bolin Hori was also in a F-16: like his friend Arslan Altan, he was also a TAF pilot. He had been trying to keep the red-paneled F-16 in his sights for over five minutes, since the merge that started the fight, but every time the other Falcon was just able to slip out. It was embarrassing; the USAF F-16 was an A model, almost a generation older than his F-16C. Now, however, it looked like his opponent had finally gotten complacent, celebrating her victory when she should've been watching the sky around her. Hori took his own advice and did a quick scan through the bubbletop canopy, and saw a gray shape moving towards him. He put it out of his mind: it was undoubtedly the Eurofighter Typhoon that rounded out this Ruby Flight he'd heard so much of, but the Typhoon was well out of parameters for a missile shot, at over 90 degrees of deflection. Hori would dispatch the F-16, then turn into the Typhoon for a quick pass. "Any time, Nadir!" he called out. "There's a F-15 and a Typhoon that need to be killed!"

"I'm tracking on the Typhoon, Bolin. Keep dragging her."

Oberleutnant Weiss Schnee spared a quick look to her right, dropping the wing enough to see the delta-winged Mirage 2000 climbing out of the hard deck to get in behind her. She ignored it for now. "DUST, lock IRIS." She looked in the direction of the Turkish F-16. Her Typhoon's DUST—Defense Utility System Technology—instantly used her own eyeline to target the F-16 for the advanced IRIS missiles that hung under the wings of Myrtenaster. "Weiss, Fox Two."

Normally, Hori would have been right: the Typhoon was at the wrong angle for a heatseeking missile shot, even one as sensitive as the newest Sidewinders. The IRIS, combined with DUST, was a different story: it could fire off-boresight. Myrtenaster's nose didn't even need to be pointed at the opponent. "Range Control to Hori. You're a mort." More Turkish curses filled the air as another F-16 went level and turned east.

Weiss turned right even as Ruby did the same, trying to trap Nadir Shiko between them. Shiko, a lieutenant in the Egyptian Air Force, saw the trap developing, and climbed to break away from both of them. "Reese, you'd better get your arse over here!" he called out. "I'm engaged with a F-16 and a Typhoon! Both the Turks are morts!"

"On it," Chloris replied. "Let me finish off this sharmouta of a Tomcat first!" She smiled, because that was not an idle boast. Blake Belladonna had evidently lost sight of her Hunter—easy enough, because the Hunter was a small target—and was motoring around near the hard deck, looking for her. Chloris opened the throttle and closed for a gun pass, wishing it was real. Not because she hated Belladonna, but because watching the Hunter's four 30 millimeter cannon tear things up was fun. "Takka takka takka!" she called out, centering her sight on the F-14's broad back. She was supposed to make a guns call, but takka takka was traditional among fighter pilots, and Range Control would understand.

Except they weren't responding. She had kept the gunsight on the Tomcat for the required three seconds. "Range Control, is Blake a mort?"

"Negative, Reese," she heard Blake's voice say calmly. "But you are. Takka takka takka! Guns on the Hunter!"

The F-14 in front of her faded from sight. Chloris looked around frantically, but could not see the F-14. "No joy! No joy!" Then she saw the black-painted Tomcat slide up on her right wing, and knew she'd been had. Blake had watched her chase a hologram while she flew into the Hunter's blind spot for a humiliatingly easy gun kill.

"Reese is a mort," Range Control confirmed.

"Shit, fuck!" Shiko shouted; in this case, Arabic didn't have the wide variety of curses as English did. He kept his finger off the radio button and stayed in the climb as the three aircraft of Ruby Flight milled around below, waiting for him to come down. Wait a moment, he thought, three?

"Yang, Fox Two on the Mirage!"

"Holy shit!" Shiko snapped the stick to the right as the shape of a F-15 hurtling straight at him blotted out the sun. He quickly rolled back to reacquire the F-15, but his break had been a fraction too late. "Shiko is a mort," Range Control dutifully reported. "Ruby Flight wins."

"Damn," Shiko sighed. He leveled out and saw the yellow-nosed F-15 come up alongside. He shook his head and saluted. "Yang, Nadir. You are one crazy al-kaliba."

"Nadir, I'll take it as a compliment," Yang replied. She returned the salute, then rolled away to join her flight far below.

Ruby took her hands off the throttle and stick for a moment to beat on the sides of her canopy in triumph. They had won. She checked the clock on her instrument panel: the entire battle had taken just under six minutes. "Ruby to Range Control. Permission for echelon low pass?"

There was a short pause. "Ruby, permission granted. Relay from Jehovah: no victory rolls."

Ruby grinned. Ozpin was not going to let them put on too much of a show for the crowd. It was no secret that the commanding officer of Vytal Flag was less than pleased that it was a televised spectacle, and having a midair collision or crash because someone made a mistake would not help matters. "Ruby Flight, Ruby Lead," she called out. "Low pass in echelon! Let's see if we can blow a few hats off!"

She led them down to about a thousand feet. Weiss settled in on her left wing, her nose only ten feet from the inert Sidewinder on Crescent Rose's left wingtip rail. Only ten feet from Weiss' left wingtip was Yang's Ember Celica, and six feet from the F-15's wingtip was Gambol Shroud—Blake getting closer because Marines had to do it better than the Air Force.

Ruby Flight roared down the Wisconsin coast and flew over the breakwater of Sheboygan harbor. Below, the harbor was crowded with pleasure boats and the marina with onlookers, all there to get a glimpse of the air combat taking place over Lake Michigan. Ruby waited long enough for everyone to get a good look, then ordered "Break now, Rubies!" She pulled hard to the right; Weiss gave her a second, then did the same, followed by Yang and Blake. The effect would be quite the sight on the ground, each fighter splitting the air over the onlookers. Ruby laughed in sheer exhilaration, then slowed down and ordered her flight back into trail for the short trip to Beacon.

Squadron Dispersal Area A

Joint Base Beacon, Wisconsin, United States of Canada

8 May 2001

Chief Master Sergeant Arnold Vogelmord crossed his arms over his head, and the F-16 stopped about four feet from him. The earsplitting wail of the engine wound down, and the other ground crew placed wooden chocks under the wheels. He walked over to the side of the hardstand, grabbed the ladder, and set it in place as the canopy opened. Vogelmord climbed up to the cockpit as his pilot took off her red helmet and leaned back in the seat. He leaned in to help her unstrap. "Hey, good mission, Lieutenant," he remarked.

"Yep, not bad. Chalk up another victory for Ruby Flight!" They shared a grin. Vogelmord had been assigned to Beacon before Vytal Flag, and at first he had been surprised and a little taken aback at the arrival of Ruby Rose. She had not been scheduled for the exercise; Ozpin had approved her not even 24 hours before Vytal Flag had begun. What bothered the burly crew chief wasn't her sudden arrival, but the fact that Ruby was barely above the minimum height requirement to fly the F-16. Every time she took off her helmet, it was like someone had let their little girl fly the plane. It had taken a little getting used to, but now they were a team. Her name was inscripted in red on the canopy frame on the left side; on the right was his. He swung off the ladder and held it as she clambered down. She hesitated, then stepped up to the nose, running her fingers over the nine kill marks painted there. Though the USAF officially frowned on kill marks and supposedly only allowed subdued ones, if that, Crescent Rose's were as red as Ruby's helmet.

They briefly went over a postflight, with the crew chief asking if there were any problems with the aircraft. There weren't, so she signed the form that returned the aircraft formally to Vogelmord's charge—though he would jokingly insist that Ruby only borrowed Crescent Rose; it actually belonged to the crew chief, like a father who loaned out his sportscar to his teenage daughter. She put her helmet in its bag, and walked out of the hardstand to join the other members of Ruby Flight.

They walked towards her, and Ruby took a moment to admire her flightmates. Yang, as usual, was the most animated, her hands flying at each other as she barely held onto her helmet, loudly describing how she'd "killed" Nadir Shiko; Yang was proof that a fighter pilot can't talk if their hands are tied. Her blond hair was even more of a fright wig than usual, plastered to her forehead with sweat, far out of regulation—not that Yang ever cared.

Next to her, Blake listened patiently, helmet under one arm, a faint smile on her lips; her black hair had been let down to brush against her shoulder blades, a black bow tied in her hair. Ruby knew it hid feline ears, disguising the fact that Blake was a Faunus. Ruby wondered why she continued to wear it, since Blake's species was the worst-kept secret at Beacon, but Blake insisted on doing so.

Weiss was last, rolling her eyes good naturedly at Yang's insistence that she had missed Shiko's Mirage by a mere three feet, her white hair pulled up behind her in a tight bun, making her look like her older sister. Once they had changed and showered, Weiss would pull it into the more familiar side bun and long ponytail.

Ruby felt a little misty-eyed. Yang was her sister—technically, half-sister, the daughter of a different mother, but Ruby never cared about the distinction. Blake and Weiss were her best friends. They had known each other not quite a month now, but she knew them as well as Yang now, linked by long weeks of boring classroom learning, exciting aerial training, and even more exciting aerial combat they had been lucky to survive. Occasionally, Ruby still woke up sweating, still seeing the streets of Milwaukee coming up at her when Roman Torchwick had nearly killed her during the Battle of Lake Michigan. Yang, she knew, had her own demons; her sister still hadn't revealed why she had burst into tears a few nights before after the epic Battle of La Crosse, but Weiss had said Yang had nearly been killed by a mysterious blood-red F-22 Raptor. There was something in Blake's past that still haunted her, though the Faunus girl had lost the haunted look she had when she had first arrived. As for Weiss, they all knew that she was not on the best of terms with her family—the Schnees, the wealthiest family in the European Union.

They were Ruby Flight. They were hers to command, to protect, to love.

"Hey, guys!" she greeted them. Yang broke off her story, and—much to Ruby's chagrin—she drew her younger sister into a rib-bending hug. "Hiya, Rubes! Man, we kicked ass today."

"We got lucky," Blake remarked. "Yang, you and I screwed up. We never should've split up like that." She blew out her breath. "I nearly got smoked by a Hunter. My mother flew Hunters."

"Meh!" Yang insisted. "But you didn't. We won, they lost. That simple." Blake shrugged, conceding the point.

Ruby slung her helmet over her shoulder as they resumed walking down the flightline. "I don't know about you guys, but I skipped breakfast. I could eat the ass out of a rag doll."

"Oh yeah?" Yang snickered. "I could eat the ass out of a menstruating skunk!"

Weiss' face screwed up in utter disgust, and Blake turned a little green. "Thanks, Yang," she groaned. "I'm not hungry all of a sudden." A loud growl from her stomach showed that to be a lie, and Blake turned a little red as they all stared at her.

"Hey, you dirty blokes!" They all turned and Ruby was nearly knocked to the ground as she was tackle-hugged by Ruth Lionheart. She pried the Faunus off of her and waved to Emerald Sustrai, who was just behind them. "Hi, Ruth. Hi, Emerald."

"Hey, Em," Yang greeted the other pilot. "How did you do? I understand you were up against Cardinal Flight. Good to see the RAF got you another Jaguar, Ruth."

Emerald was not much taller than Ruby, her tanned skin betraying a lot of time spent in the sun of her native Spain; Ruth made no attempt to disguise her Faunus heritage, with ears that stuck out of her mane of brown hair and a lioness' tail that swished behind her happily as she put her arm around Emerald. She grinned toothily. "Tell 'em, Em," Ruth said. "Tell 'em how we squeeze played those Cardinal cunts." All of Ruby Flight blushed a little at the profanity, but for Ruth, it was fairly commonplace.

"We caught Cardin in a defensive break," Emerald explained. "He dived away from me and right into Ruth's gunsight." She smiled hungrily. "But that was after I popped Sky with a missile shot at the merge. Cinder took out Dove and Russel on her own." Emerald thumbed back towards Mercury Black, who was still postflighting his F-16. He did not bother to wave: after nearly sexually assaulting Weiss at the dance, Mercury had stayed away from Ruby Flight. His performance at La Crosse had lifted his restrictions on base, but that was all. "Merc didn't get anything, and he's so pissed at Cinder."

"Cindah is bloody frightening," Ruth said. "Gor, don't ever give her a F-22. She'd be fuckin' unstoppable."

"Where is she?" Weiss asked. "Since the party after La Crosse, we've barely seen her."

"Cinder's…Cinder," Emerald shrugged. "Not really a social person."

"She's a right stone-cold killer," Ruth told them. "I think she's browned off because her kills haven't been confirmed yet."

"And who's fault is that?" Emerald said. "Aren't you still going over gun camera film? I made ace too, you know."

Ruth sagged. "Yes," she grumped. "Glynda the Good Witch is still roaring at me after what I did in the bar the other night."

Blake laughed. "Before or after you kissed me?"

"Bah, you liked me smacking you, you ginger beer." Blake had spent enough time around Cockneys to know that Ruth was calling her queer, but didn't take offense. "Just because I proposed marriage to Scarlet David? Gad. Why not? He'd be a fine one for a Faunus gel like me."

"He's also gay," Weiss said.

"Not after he's had me, he wouldn't be." Ruth gave an exaggerated sigh. "Ah, well. Guess I'd better get back to the grindstone before Cindah sends a rocket up my arse." She slapped Emerald on the back, stuck her tongue out at Ruby Flight, and jogged down the flight line.

"Who are you selecting for the 2V2?" Emerald asked. The latter half of Vytal Flag had been divided into rounds—flight on flight, then section on section, ending with the classic dogfight of one-on-one—1V1 in fighter pilot parlance. There was no trophy waiting at the end of the exercise, but everyone at Beacon wondered if public demand would result in Ozpin giving one anyway, despite himself. All the flights at the base would go through the rounds.

"Well," Ruby said with weighty self-importance, "I have decided, as the leader of this flight—"

"Bullshit," Yang snorted. "We put it to a vote."

Ruby did not even bat an eye. "As the leader of this flight, I put it to a vote." She put an arm around Yang and Weiss. "In a move that was totally not nepotism, I chose my big sis and my wingman…er, winggirl. Or whatever."

"Disappointed, Blake?" Emerald asked, smiling.

"Not at all. I get to sleep in." She thumbed at Weiss and Yang. "I'll let these two get up at O dark 30 to defend the honor of Ruby Flight." Weiss curtseyed, which looked ridiculous in a flight suit, while Yang smacked her fists together and flexed like a professional wrestler.

Emerald bowed like a bullfighter. "Well, if Mercury and I end up going against you, then we're not holding back. Cinder chose us to represent Creamer Flight."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," Yang replied, but they all noted the good-naturedness had gone out of her voice. Yang still held a grudge against Mercury: at the dance, he had called Ruby a whore, besides assaulting Weiss. Yang had threatened to kill him for it. Both were angry, and Mercury drunk, but it took a lot for Yang Xiao Long to forget or forgive an insult.

"We're going to grab some grub, Em," Ruby said, to change the subject. "Want to come with?"

Emerald shook her head. "I might catch up. I better go see what's going on with Merc and Cinder." She waved at them as she turned around. "Adios." She glanced over her shoulder to make sure Ruby Flight had resumed walking down the flightline, then made her way to Mercury. "Hey," he greeted her. He signed his form, and they began walking towards Cinder Fall's F-15.

"Hi," she returned.

"You okay?"

"Tired of this…acting like this." Emerald closed her eyes and sighed. What Ruby Flight did not know—what no one on the base outside of herself, Mercury, and Cinder knew—was that they were not what they appeared to be. They had infiltrated Beacon, they were there to sabotage Vytal Flag, and there was a good chance that they would be called on to kill the very people that Emerald had been chatting so amiably with. Cinder's aloofness was not feigned; it was pure contempt. Mercury didn't care much, either. That left Emerald with pangs of conscience that she knew she shouldn't have. Ruth Lionheart was completely innocent, and was just there to throw any investigators off the track that Creamer Flight was not what it seemed to be. Emerald knew that Ruth was also considered expendable by Cinder and Mercury, and that bothered her. Despite herself, she had gotten fond of the vivacious Faunus.

"Orders are orders," Mercury said, sounding supremely disinterested. "You find out who's going to be in the 2V2?"

"Not quite what we thought."

"Oh?" he asked. "Not the catgirl and the bimbo?"

"Weiss and Yang," Emerald corrected him.

"Suits me. Never liked that Schnee bitch." Mercury extended his stride, and Emerald was glad he did. He wouldn't see the play of emotions on her face.