As Ruby was slowly waking up she noticed that her sheets felt different, maybe someone had washed them wrong?, still there was something scratching at the door and no one else was getting up to go and see what it was, so in a groggy daze Ruby stumbled towards the door and was startled when it opened on its own, revealing a giant ….. Shiny cat?
It was as the cat strode past her that Ruby remembered the events of the last few days, the portal, the disturbing lack of people and grimm, the insect attacks, the creek monster, and finally the robot army that had picked her team up, taking them to a massive factory, one that's making enough weapons to supply a large army.
Ruby could tell this was the same tiger that had escorted them to their rooms, as it still had some of the blood Ruby had accidently smeared over it on the creature's ear. Still, that didn't explain why it was in their room now. It had been content to wait at the top of the stairs last night, but now it was sitting on the floor in front of her, just staring at her with unblinking eyes, which wasn't really different from non-metal cats.
Taking a quick look around the room now that she was more awake Ruby saw that Yang and Blake were still asleep, and while Weiss wasn’t in bed, Ruby could hear the shower running, making it fairly obvious where the other girl had gone.
Still, none of that answered the question of why the cat was in their room, not having much of a better idea Ruby walked up to the cat and started petting it, and while this caused the metal cat to purr, it didn’t really help her figure out what it wanted, seemingly getting tired of waiting for her to figure it out the cat walked away from her and moved towards Blakes bed, before pawing at the side, deciding that the cat probably just wanted them all awake for some reason, Ruby woke both Yang and Blake up.
It did take the other two trainee huntress’s a few seconds to get their bearings, but the metal cat in the center of the room, along with the unfamiliar room itself swiftly jogged their memories, after Ruby finished explaining that the cat wanted something and that Weiss was in the shower, not missing, Blake and Yang started to get dressed, which reminded Ruby that she didn’t actually have pajamas.
Quickly using her semblance to dash to her bed, Ruby looked at her only set of clothes, the entire thing was covered in dirt and blood, including her mothers old cloak, grimacing a bit in disgust, Ruby got dressed in the bloody attire, It was still better than before they got picked up, as everyone had taken turns scrubbing their clothes, but It still made her skin crawl to put the outfit on.
Ignoring Yang's snickering over her reaction, and giggling a bit herself as Yang glared at her own clothes, Ruby waked towards the bathroom door, knocking and asking Weiss if she was getting out soon, as the metal cat wanted them for something.
Right after she finished talking the shower kicked off, and a few seconds later Weiss opened the bathroom door, her clothes were almost clean, with only the odd stain maring the white fabric, and judging by her dry hair and pruning fingers Weiss had been using the shower to clean her clothes.
With the entire team dressed and awake the metal cat began walking towards the door, before stopping just before it and turning around to look at them, waiting for them to follow.
Ruby made the decision to follow the cat thing quickly, It wasn't like they had anything better to be doing and it probably had something interesting to show them, which is why she was vaguely disappointed when it just lead them to the kitchen, which had seemingly been cleaned overnight, there was food on the table though and she had only eaten once yesterday.
The food was as bad as she remembered, the fish was still okay but the rest of it had a bland flavor and a vaguely sandy texture, still the ruby stomached most of the meal and only had to nag Weiss a little before the other girl ate.
After everyone had finished eating Ruby decided it was time to make a plan, or several, they were currently in an unknown location, with unknown people, and that seemed like the kinda thing that called for some plans.
The first order of business was to figure out what they knew, it wasn't much but it was a start,
Wiess and Blake noted that the portal they had come through to get here had closed, they hadn’t seen any people or grimm, though this building meant there were people, or robots had built it, but considering there were bedrooms, it seemed likely that people had or were here, there was a significant and presumably automated army, there was a heavily defended building producing enough equipment to outfit that and several other armies, and that the building had murals of a man fighting the bugs, but only one man, which may or may not be accurate.
Ruby agreed with that, but she noticed a few things herself, the drone she had disassembled had what looked to be laser weaponry, and weaponry far more advanced than anything she had ever heard of before, the factory wasn't using any dust or even another propellant for its smaller caliber bullets, somehow, all the weapons on the outside wall showed heavy use while the weaponry on the inside showed little if any, there were hidden turrets everywhere inside, and it had looked like the building was surrounded with a minefield, some of which were detonated already.
Now that they had their facts straight, probably anyway, It was time to theorize, the defenses were used, the bugs had attacked them for no reason, the bugs probably attacked here to, no one had come to talk to them, and all the equipment was automated, this factory was probably run without people, meaning there was no one here to talk to them, didn’t explain why there wasn't an intercom or anyway for any hypothetical supervisors to talk to them, but it was better than there being no people at all.
The portal they went through could have taken them to another world, one where people were replaced by robots and Grimm were replaced with bugs, not enough evidence though, only a lack of the moon and grimm.
They were in a secret atlas facility, which did not explain why no one was here to talk to them.
This continued on for a while, with more plausible or outlandish theories being presented, before Ruby decided they were good on that, it was time to move onto the best phase, Planning.
The most important thing to do was exploring, they needed to figure out where they were and where they could find other people, once they did that they could figure out a way home, so the team would split into pairs to explore the factory, looking for computers, maps, phones, or anything with any useful information.
The first pair would be Ruby and Yang, while the second would be Weiss and Blake, And after putting on their gas masks the team left the kitchen and went back up the stairs, being followed by the metal tiger.
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The factory was the same as they left it, and Ruby saw that it was still producing more and more weaponry, she watched as a tank was assembled before her eyes, with armor plating being bolted on almost faster than her eyes could track, before it was pulled from the machine by a massive mechanical arm and placed onto a similarly massive conveyor belt, joining the other vehicles on their trip towards the outer wall, the next tanks framework was already being finished, with the more technical equipment being installed onto it, and following one of the conveyor belts feeding the massive machine she came to a smaller machine, this one making one of the tanks secondary weapons, and as she watched it come together she saw it was an upscaled version of the drones gun.
The tank had laser weaponry installed! Ruby wanted a laser gun! And if she looked around long enough she could probably find one! Quickly leaving Yang behind Ruby started dashing from assembler to assembler looking at what they were making, finding a range from high explosives and missiles, to mining equipment and railroad tracks, and many other things that weren't handheld laser guns before after around an hour of searching she came across were the drones were built, seeing dozens of different drone types, ranging from the tiger one, the laser one, and what looked like a tiny plane, all being produced in absurdly high numbers, still this is where the smaller variety of laser weaponry ended up, so if she just followed the conveyor belt she would find where the lasers were made and could grab one for herself.
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She was so excited that she didn't notice the temperature rapidly rising, and her aura kept her from sweating to much, nor did she notice how humid it was getting, with steam wafting up from the ground, it wasn't until her feet started burning that she started paying more attention to her surroundings, quickly noticing that there was steam obscuring her view and that it was really really hot, she was about to start retracing her steps when a big metal hand landed on her shoulder before she got picked up and thrown over a shoulder.
The steam was thick enough that she could only faintly see an outline of a human shape from her position slung over its shoulder, Still none of the drones up till now had had a human shape, Meaning that this might actually be a person.
Ruby, seemingly unaware of the fact she was 9 feet off the ground and slung over an unknown person's shoulder, started trying to talk to the presumed person, explaining that they were lost and looking for a way home, and also that those laser guns are really cool, can she have one. She did not get a response, but this did not discourage her, and as the steam got thinner and she saw more and more of the person she kept talking.
The armor the person was wearing was a steel color covered in a faint shimmering and coated in a thin layer of condensation, no skin could be seen, and she saw that there were 4 tentacles sprouting from the armors back, each one ending in a different tool, she also saw that it wasn't an arm holding her onto the shoulder, but rather one of the tentacles, this realization only caused Ruby to talk faster, but now it was about how cool the armor was and asking about how the tentacles were controlled.
It was only this point that she heard Yang calling out for her, and then Ruby remember how she had just kinda run off without more than a few words about finding a laser rifle, and as she sheepishly called out to Yang the tentacle holding her set her down and the person in the armor started walking off, Meaning that by the time Yang caught up to Ruby she only saw a brief glimpse of the other person before they vanished into a tangle of wires.
Yang however was more concerned with making sure her sister was okay than with chasing down some random person, and the interrogation Ruby got was intense, and the berating after was enough to chastise her for her reckless behavior.
It was around then when there was a loud explosion and the factory shook, knocking a few of the more precarious things off of conveyor belts
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Weiss and Blake were exploring in the opposite direction, and had been wandering through row after row of machines making a random assortment of things for over half an hour before they came across something new, a large metal radar dish thing with a screen on the outside.
When Weiss approached the screen the image on it changed from a random string of code to what looked like a map of the outside of the factory, It didn't take long for Blake and Weiss to figure out how to work the screen, and they quickly noticed that when they zoomed in it would show a live feed of what was happening at a location, even if said location couldn't have a camera, like a random clearing in the middle of a forest, with an old campfire in the middle of it, whoever ran this place had been able to see them the entire time.
Blake had a sinking suspicion and zoomed the screen in on the factory itself, and it didn't take her long to find Wiess and herself staring at a screen, and after a few minutes of searching found the rooms they had spent the night in, and she could see that their beds had apparently been made in the short time they were gone. Whoever built this place hadn’t needed to hide cameras to spy on them at all, they could just see everything with whatever surveillance system they had. And while the thing didn’t seem to have audio she wouldn’t assume that they couldn't hear her.
This was definitely important information, and very concerning information at that, the thought that someone had been watching them this whole time was a sobering one, still they didn't have long to dwell on this before the screen flashed an alarm and shifted on its own to one of the factories outer walls, showing an utterly massive horde of bug charging toward the wall.
The horde was being shelled by what looked like artillery fire and it was taking massive chunks out of the horde but a sizable chunk looked like it would get to the wall, when the horde hit the minefield and the screens feed was blocked by a cloud of debris, Blake could still make out faint explosions from within the cloud, each one getting closer and closer to the wall, and whoever was coordinating the defense noticed the same thing, as all the open gates slammed shut and thousands of drones poured from the wall, it looked like someone had kicked a metal anthill, and blake soon noticed why the drones were flying around the wall, as a large group of bugs flew out of the cloud towards the wall, it was like a flock of insect nevermores.
The swarm of flying bugs were heavily thinned by what looked like anti-air fire and the drones began to fly out to meet the few bugs that got past the barrage, quickly cutting them down.
As this was happening the ground in front of the mindfield began to bulge up, and a torrent of bugs began to appear from underground, only a few hundred made it out before the turrets on the wall filled the holes with fire, swiftly stopping the flood, still the group of bugs from the minefield and the new group of reinforcements swarmed towards the wall before a single missile was launched at the large group of bugs, and the screen went white.
A fraction of a second later Blake and Weiss felt the explosion rock the factory, the lights don't flicker, nor did dust fall from the ceiling, but they both felt as the floor shook and a few pieces of equipment swayed around
After the shaking stopped they both turned to look at the screen, instead of a large horde of bugs there was just a massive crater and a few charred husks, they both turned from the screen and started heading back towards their rooms, they had done enough exploring for the day.
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Walking down the stairwell to their rooms Ruby noticed that the 2 of the other doors were gone, and opening the door to the only remaining spare room she saw it had been retrofitted into a larger bathroom, this one seemingly having more showers and a washing machine and dryer, along with what looked like a bunch of black body gloves of various sizes hanging on racks near the dryer, Ruby noticed that the washing machine was already running before she closed the door and walked towards the door to their room, Yang was already at the door and waiting for her, and after she mentioned the changed room they both walked into their room.
Blake and Weiss were sitting on chairs that hadn’t been in there when they left, and Blake was wearing one of the body gloves under her coat, presumably the rest of her clothes were in the washing machine, Weiss was still in her normal outfit though.
The discussion between the two stopped as Yang and Ruby walked in, and Ruby wasted no time before starting to explain her day, it was when she got to the person in armor that Weiss started asking her own questions, and she was frustrated with the lack of answer Ruby could give.
When Ruby got to the explosion that shook the building Blake interrupted her to say it had been a missile the factory had launched to blow up a big group of bugs, which prompted a longer explanation about how they knew that, and about the map they had discovered, which could apparently see anything within the factory, including within their rooms.
It was Yang who suggested using the map to look for the person in armor, to try and find them, rather than just being creeped out about being watched. If it could show anywhere in the factory it would be quicker to use that rather than look everywhere themselves.
It was just after Yang finished her suggestion that there was some scratching at the door, and when Weiss opened the door, 2 metal cats walked in, before staring at them turning around and walking in the direction of the kitchen, it was apparently lunch time.