“But why?” Neptune asked. “Why would the Crown be worried about students like us?”

“We were getting close to discovering them,” Fox said. “Sounds like the reinitiation and the curfew Rumpole suggested to the headmaster were supposed to stop us, or at least slow us down.”

“Weaken us,” Yatsuhashi added. “Professor, does this look familiar?”

He held up his Scroll and showed her a picture—the selfie that Velvet and Sun had taken at the Mirage. Then he zoomed in on something in the background. A golden sai.

“I did that,” Rumpole said, the memory coming back. “I captured that sai myself. I was fighting a Huntress named—”

“Carmine Esclados, the woman we stopped in the desert.”

“Yes. She’s also a former student.” Rumpole’s eyes narrowed. “We fought in a cage match at a club called the Mirage. She was stronger than she was before. Everyone there was.”

- RWBY: Before the Dawn, Chapter 11