RWBY Through Worlds (End)

BC25: Break (Renora and Co.)-3

[Opener is "Swan Song", by Dua Lipa.]

It took Cinder longer than she liked to signal Ren and Sun to step outside.

Finally they did. 

"What?" Sun asked. "We were just about to ask her the real questions like 'who works here on those days?' Like real detectives."

"The only thing real about you is your idiocy." Cinder had lost her patience with Sun long ago. "And she won't tell you anything worth hearing."

"Why are you so sure?" Ren said.

Cinder clenched a fist. "Because I'm certain she's in on it. The entire thing is more complicated than I thought. I figured it was one person, maybe two, but my guess is it's more than that. They've gone to too much trouble to hide it. I'm sure Eurus is not the only town either that they're stealing from."

"Whoa, what if we just uncovered a whole scam?" Sun said.

"I think it'd be more of a sting," Ren said.

Oh! he was just as bad as the monkey boy!

"Or is it--" Sun began.

"Who cares?" Cinder almost exploded at them. "The point is, she won't help you. Probably tell you wrong so you'll waste your time."

"But how do you know she's in on it?" Ren said.

It took all of Cinder's wavering self control to not hit him and to instead explain, very condescendingly, what she'd figured out.

At least they were convinced.

"I'd never have thought of that. That's so sneaky," Sun said.

"You certainly seem to know how these things work," Ren said. "I'd think you were involved if you hadn't called it to our attention to begin with."

That was such a stupid thing to say that Cinder didn't even bother to dignify it with a response.

"But if she won't help, how do we get the right information?" Sun asked.

"Simple," Cinder said. "We know at least one of the pilots flying this stuff out--Teach, I think it was--and since everyone insists Zapato is innocent. It might be. He's much too well known around here for it to be so easy for him to do this on the sly. But if the other is around, he may be well aware of what's going on, and if he isn't, you can at least rule out the pilots as part of the set up."

"Oh, yeah, yeah," Sun said. "We'll find him and ask him what's going on."

"I can find out who he is," Ren said. "I'd just have to check the schedule for flyers. I don't need clearance to do that."

"You're kind of good at this," Sun told Cinder, without a shade of irony it seemed. "You should be a detective."

"Ugh," was her response.

* * *

Ren found out that Teach, whose full name was Edwin Teach, was in fact assigned to fly that day, so they were sure he'd been around.

Between flights, pilots usually visited their families if they had any around, and, failing that, they'd be in the mess hall or in town perhaps.

But as luck would have it, the flight was supposed to leave soon, so Ren was sure Teach would be around the base somewhere.

It only took a call to the front desk to find out. They didn't even bother to ask why.

"They sure trust you," Cinder said. Her tone implied that was a mistake.