Cargo Hold, Bullhead
When you've spent your entire life following the guidance of those that are older and wiser than you, it is difficult to act solely for yourself.
This isn't an entirely fair description of why you've found yourself crammed in an even smaller airship with more people than last time, but you're not sure who it's being unfair to.
You are a guest in Ozpin's school, teaching someone who he's responsible for but who isn't one of his students for reasons you assume are primarily political and security based - a farmer among nobles would surely stand out.
He doesn't have the right to command you to do anything but he didn't try to do so. This was just a suggestion that you couldn't - no, that you wouldn't ignore.
Grimm have been acting strangely near Amber's home town. Several travellers have gone missing and farms have been attacked, but the only damage has been to livestock and crops.
Ozpin was sending a team of students and one of the teachers to investigate, which is apparently how huntsmen normally operate. He was obviously planning to ask you to accompany the team, to make sure your planar travel hadn't somehow caused this.
If this was involving any plane other than the Ethereal or if you'd come across with a Plane Shift spell you'd be certain he was wrong. But anyone on the Ethereal can peer into the Material without the aid of a spell and you seem to have arrived through a natural rift between the planes, even if it wasn't visible from the other side.
So you volunteered before Ozpin could ask. You won't let anyone suffer because you were sloppy with your spellcraft or negligent with whatever guided you here. Plus there's always a chance you'll find a clue to which deity sent you here by studying anything that remains from their work.
You'd assumed at first that the students you were accompanying would be academically ordinary, chosen more for loyalty or a tendency to not ask questions than for their skill. An assumption you rapidly rethought when your learned team CFVY were first year students and the top of their class.
Professor Port was the teacher accompanying the mission and the man in charge of introducing you to them, though you found it rather lacking. CFVY is obviously wondering why he needs an assistant, presumably having been on missions like this before.
They hadn't been told about you until you and Port showed up at the bullhead, nor did Port bother to tell you about them beforehand. For his part Port seems utterly unaware of the tension, happily talking about a previous mission to the area that involved some sort of bear.
None of CFVY wear armour and only the men carry visible weapons, though you know that weapons that collapse for storage are common - presumably the women carry them in their bag and case respectively?
Sitting directly opposite you is the leader, Coco, a human dressed in what you assume to be fancier clothes than what Amber wears, normally worn in the city rather than the wilderness. The fact that her hat doesn't properly cover her head and the heels on her boots reinforce your assumption. She's definitely a noble, capable in combat but not as potent as the rest of her team. Hopefully she's a capable leader to make up for that.
Judging from the bullets covering her bag's strap and the crosshair symbol on her belt you assume she wields some form of firearm, presumably one with a long range that requires precise aiming. She's been focused on you from the moment you joined the group, the dark glasses failing to hide her gaze.
Sitting on the same bench as you and politely avoiding your wings is Fox, the man you'd met several days earlier. His weapons are a pair of bulky bracelets with blades attached, presumably capable of rotating forwards to act as claws. Bella happily curled up in his lap the moment you'd taken your pack off, luxuriating in the attention she's receiving from him and the woman across from him.
Her name is Velvet, a rabbit faunus that caught you staring at first. You'd assumed faunus were part animal in a similar fashion to the mongrels, no the Neathers of Kenabres*, but to a lesser extent or the strange images that came from artists imagining the offspring of humans and amurren** or agathions***.
You're not sure why someone with two sets of ears looks so strange to you, but you can't deny that it looks off. Maybe it's just because the second set are rabbit ears? No, surely not.
Velvet is more timid than her teammates, avoiding your gaze and only opening up once Bella made herself known. If the bulky box she carries doesn't hold a weapon she must be an accomplished brawler, an impression you get from her subtle muscles and the fact that she wears ornamental pauldrons and bracelets - there's no other reason for her to pretend to protect herself.
The final member of CFVY is Yatsuhashi, a man who towers over you and carries a gigantic sword. Like Velvet he's protected his forearms and one of his shoulders, though you don't recognise the armour style. He still doesn't get any points for it since protecting your chest and belly is far more important than your arms but he tried you guess.
He's said even less than Velvet from his position to the right of Coco but he seems as confident as Coco. You'd think him a knight if he had any heraldry - one of the ones that dedicates themselves to combat for the sake of others rather than for glory. Presumably he hasn't done anything worthy of being knighted yet, a second or third son seeking to serve his people.
"What's this talky thing in your ear?" Bella suddenly asks, drawing the gaze of team CFVY and leaving you to slump backwards in your seat. Seriously, how hard is it to not talk?
"That's my Accessibility Dialogue Assistant." Fox answers, seemingly unsurprised by your familiar and confirming that she'd only ever been pretending to cooperate with you.
"You're blind and you need help to talk? You must've worked really hard to get someone to give you a blade." Bella says, sounding just as impressed as you.
"I don't need help to talk. It helps me through dialogue. It tells me where people are standing, if they have weapons. That sort of thing." Fox explains, pulling something tiny from his ear. When he holds it out you see it's made from a transparent material, a tiny bud attached to a larger but still small cylinder.
"How can something so small do that?" You ask. You think a similar effect could be achieved with an enchanted earring or two, but you weren't aware technology could be so small.
"It scans the environment with sonar pulses and tells me what it detects." Fox says.
"Like a bat." You realise, or a Detect Magic spell. The more you see of technology the more impressive it seems.
Fox nods and puts the earpiece back on as you and CFVY fall silent. A few moments pass before Coco lowers her glasses and looks directly into your eyes.
"Are you really just going to ignore your talking pet?" She asks incredulously.
"All prismatic ferrets can talk. It's not my fault you've never met one before." you say innocently, falling back on the only excuse you've been able to come up with.
Coco rewards your lie with an arched eyebrow, obviously not believing you. Her eyes flick over to Fox for a moment, before she frowns and looks back at you.
"I've never heard of a prismatic ferret before - is it normal to just let them run around wherever they wish?" She asks.
"What else am I supposed to do, cage her up? Bella can look after herself." You respond, not sure why Coco sounds so accusing.
"So you don't care about what happens to her or any damage she might do to the wildlife of Vale?" Coco continues in the same tone.
"If Bella picks a fight with a cat or possum or something and loses that's on her. And anyone foolish enough to hurt my f - my pet will have to deal with me." You say defiantly. "Besides, she's not going to damage anything. There's plenty of animals around Beacon and unlike humans ferrets don't kill plants that get in their way."
"So you don't care about the damage an introduced predator like a ferret could do to native animals that don't know how to defend themselves against an unknown threat?" Coco asks, sounding triumphant now.
"What?" You ask, bewildered by this question, You can feel the same confusion radiating from Bella as you stare at Coco.
"Responsible pet wonders keep predators like cats or ferrets indoors." Coco says condescendingly.
"Bella, what have you eaten in the last week?" You ask, looking at your familiar as she tilts her head and makes a show of thinking.
"What you fed me of course - jerky, bacon, chicken, beef, mutton and bones." She says, continuing when she sees you glare. "Along with whatever I stole from you and Amber and what Fox gave me. And the mice I found in the basement, but they're pests so I didn't harm any wildlife." She adds.
"And if she had to hunt to eat then who cares about any damage to wildlife? Animals eat each other, hells we eat animals. That's just how the world works." You say as you scowl at Coco.
"Actually I'm a vegan." Coco corrects you.
"Congratulations you've lived your entire life getting to choose what you eat, to the point where going without a luxury is an accomplishment." You say with false cheer. "Personally I'm going to avoid going back to bread and gruel for as long as I can, but you can do whatever you want."
You flinch as the ship shudders around you, some unseen disturbance rattling you around and briefly making you think somethings gone wrong. The more time you spend in an airship the less you enjoy the experience.
"I've never seen a bird faunus so nervous about flying." Yatsuhashi abruptly says before Coco can continue.
"I'm not flying, I'm just a passenger in a winged box." You say defensively. "I can't feel the wind change, can't see anything around me. If the ship starts falling all I can do is break the door open and choose which of you to carry to safety."
"You wouldn't need to carry any of us." Velvet interjects, sounding surprised. "We'd be fine no matter how great the fall."
"Including the pilot?" You ask, looking towards the front of the ship.
"Maybe not him." Velvet admits.
"Then if something goes wrong I'll grab him and go out the window. And you can all just feather fall to safety." You say, reassured by the existence of a plan, no matter how haphazard it is.
Rather than let Coco draw you into another argument you reflect on the spells you prepared for this mission. You're glad you decrypted part of Fethrymil's notes to discover the Magic Missile spell, complete with notes on how you can best use it with your spellstrike. As a spell that relies on pure magical force it's exactly what you'll need if it turns out ghosts crossed over to Keshi.
You'd also figured out the Magic Weapon spell from those notes but hadn't prepared it. Sure it'd let one of CFVY hit incorporeal foes better (or any foe really) but you don't enough about how they fight to make the call on who to use it on. It'd be especially awkward on Fox since you've have to chose one of his identical weapons to enhance.
For your other spells you'd prepared Shockwave and True Strike so you can handle any grimm that show up. Yes you're more focused on crowds than individuals, but from what you understand large groups of individually weak grimm is what should be expected. Detect Magic is something you always prepare, but you'll be relying on it to find exactly where you crossed over from the Ethereal. Even with it you'll have a hard time since you didn't exactly mark the path, though you believe it'll be easy to remember the location of the fight.
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Town Square, Keshi
Eventually you arrive in Keshi and disembark from the airship. You let the others go first, trying to hide how eager you are to be outside and utterly failing.
"The attacked farms were all to the north of town, so Velvet and Yatsu will head out there to investigate." Coco is saying as you stretch and look around. Judging by the position of the sun it's early afternoon, meaning the smaller bullhead was slower than the one you, Qrow and Amber took. Or Amber was a lot further away than you thought when you met her. "Fox and I'll head into town and see if anyone there saw anything unusual."
You nod as you take in the town - wide cobbled streets and larger buildings at the centre with tall walls defining the edges. The houses are more spread out than you'd expected, but that might be part of the defences? The central buildings look like they'd be good for fighting from and the wide streets could be a killing field if you had enough bows, but it's terrible for if the defenders are outnumbered.
From what Amber said her mother and aunt live in a house on the very edge of town, as close to their orchard outside the walls as they can be. Most of the houses on the edge are owned by farmers, most people only living outside the walls if they must. You're pretty sure Ozpin would've mentioned if Amber's farm was one of the ones attacked, but it is on the north side of town.
You also see a few townsfolk looking at the six of you and the bullhead parked in a wide open square - presumably a market that isn't open today. You and Velvet aren't getting the friendliest looks but the people don't look particularly worried either.
"What do you want to do, Professor?" Coco asks as you look at Port. He's twirling his moustache as he thinks and looks at you. Oh, he's saying he'll follow your lead.
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What shall you do in Keshi?
[ ] Accompany Coco and Fox as they investigate the town. The townsfolk are the best people to tell you what's going on.
[ ] Accompany Velvet and Yatsuhashi to the farms outside the town. That's where the problem is.
[ ] Go south and find where you met Amber. If the problem isn't something native to Remnant, that's where you'll find your answers.
What will you have Bella do?
[ ] Stay with you
[ ] Stay with the Bullhead
[ ] Accompany someone
-[ ] Coco and Fox
-[ ] Velvet and Yatsuhashi
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*The mongrelfolk of Kenabres were the descendents of those who fought in the First Crusade and didn't know how to avoid being tainted by their foes. They were forced into the caverns below Kenabres when the alternative was death at the hands of their allies, remaining there and building their own society as the 'Neathers' or 'Underground Crusaders' awaiting a call to action when they would emerge from below as unknown reinforcements in Kenabres' moment of need.
To the shock of all that call came when Kenabres fell at the start of the Fifth Crusade and the mongrels Lann and Wenduag joined the woman that became the Knight-Commander of the Crusade and proved vital to the Fifth Crusade's success many times over.
**Amurren, also known as catfolk, are a bipedal catlike people that originated in the continent of Garund but have since spread across much of Golarion. Many of their kind fought in the Mendevian Crusades, often as members of the Riftwardens, Pathfinder Society or among the soldiers of Andorran.
***Agathions are the celestials native to Nirvana, born from the souls of enlightened mortals. All agathions possess animal-like aspects, some appear more anthropomorphic, while others spend most of their time in forms nearly indistinguishable from true animals.
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Shorter than I expected, but you rolled one of the less obvious issues. Let me know if you have any questions.
