A World of Wild Wild Evolution (FalloutxRWBY)

[erttheking]

(Hi all! Thought I'd being this story over to Sufficient Velocity. I hope you enjoy it! I'll post it, along with one of my other words, over the coming days)

Chapter 1

Relocation

XXXXX

Something was wrong with the transmission from Big Mountain. Granted, it was hard to ever say that there was something right with it, but it was wrong in a different way. Its normal transmission had been replaced with a long, piercing note that sounded like there was something broken on the other end. For the first few days, James Walker had thought it might correct itself. Now, two weeks after it had started, he had to accept that something was most likely wrong at the secret research facility. James fiddled with the dial on his Pip-Boy, futility hoping that the problem was on his end, but to no avail.

"No change?" He looked up from his Pip-Boy to see Arcade Ganon looking at him with questioning eyes. He shook his head. Arcade sighed. "Well, I guess we're heading over there to see what the problem is. If half of what you told us about Big Mountain is true, we can't let any of it get loose into the Mojave."

"Some of it already has gotten into the Mojave," James replied. "Cazadores, Night Stalkers and Spore Carriers are all their handiwork. The last thing we need is giant robot scorpions getting into the mix."

Arcade grimaced. "All the more reason to not let them out. And here for a second I thought we were overdoing it bringing this much ordnance in." He looked down. With the exception of the helmet tucked under his arm, he was wearing a suit of Enclave Tesla armor, his father's, and holding an odd-looking rifle in his other hand, a YK42B pulse rifle. Despite the name, it wasn't anything like the pulse gun and had no EMP capabilities, it was just a damn powerful weapon that had once been a staple of the Enclave armory. Arcade wasn't sure if there were any others like it out there anymore.

"No kidding," James said, looking around. He hadn't just brought Arcade. Boone, Lily, Raul, Cass and Veronica were nearby, ED-E floating above them all. Arcade was easily the most heavily armored and armed out of all of them, with Veronica coming in at a close second. Despite her preferring to travel light and to get by with only a power fist, which she had replaced with a pair of displacer gloves, she was wearing T45-d power armor and clutching a laser rifle, all of it salvaged from the bastards that had massacred the Followers of the Apocalypse outpost. While she had been reluctant to take anything from the Brotherhood of Steel when she left, James had managed to convince her to deprive those murders of their equipment. After all, their little stunt had doubtless gotten them expelled from the Brotherhood and their equipment was merely listed as missing, not stolen.

Boone was wearing his 1st Recon survival armor and was scouting the distance with an anti-material rifle. James actually had mixed feelings on splurging the caps for that heavy weapon, because Boone rarely used it. Often the sniper switched back to his old hunting rifle and just let Veronica carry it so long as she was in power armor. To be fair, he often proved he didn't need it, and the few times he did he had it with him.

Cass hadn't bothered to change out of her caravanning outfit, simply tossing an old bulletproof vest over it, but she had taken a riot shotgun to replace her old one. As well as a 40mm grenade launcher and a few belts of specialized grenades, including plasma grenades, which seemed to bring her an endless source of joy. James could still remember the first time she had shot one into a pack of legionaries. She had been cackling for hours, so much so that it had even brought a smile to Boone's face. Either that or he had been smiling at the liquefied legionaries, it was hard to tell with him.

Raul was wearing his Vaquero outfit, a .44 magnum in each hand. James couldn't help but privately wonder if the reason Raul had moved up from one magnum from two was because his outfit had a pair of holsters and he wanted to make use of both of them. The two century old man certainly had mastered the art of dual wielding, but James couldn't help but wonder. In addition to that, he had a brush carbine slung over his back.

And finally, Lily. Lily was the only person who had not received any major equipment upgrades since James had met her. Mainly because it was kind of hard to improve on a nine foot tall blue giant that was tough as nails and had a giant sword. Lily didn't even need the sword half of the time. Half of the things that threatened them, she could kill with a nice, solid punch. James had suggested armor, the only thing he could think of, but she had turned him down every time. She didn't want anything that slowed her down or made too much noise.

That only left himself to check. He had two weapons slung over the back of his scavenged Desert Ranger armor. One a riot shotgun much like Cass', a Gun Runners original that had cost him a good deal. The other was a more odd weapon, one that he had found in Zion, along with his armor. A rifle that had been designed to take 12.7mm ammunition instead of 5.56mm. The result was a weapon that wasn't as powerful as Boone's anti-material rifle, was rather expensive to resupply and could fire half as many shots as a service rifle before it had to be reloaded, but was unbelievably helpful against more armored targets. The kind of weapon he'd be needing in Big Mountain in other words. Finally, his side arm, the 9mm SMG that had once belonged to the Pre-War criminal Vance. It lacked the stopping power of his other weapons, but spat bullets at such a high rate that it was handy for when he was being swarmed.

Grabbing his rifle, he unholstered it, checking the magazine and confirming that it was full. "Boone? See anyone?"

"No one," the ex-NCR soldier said, getting to his feet. They were all standing in the middle of the Mojave Drive In, around the crashed satellite that had taken James to Big Mountain the first time. There were now several hundred bullet holes in it, along with the scorch marks that indicated that explosives had been set off on it, cleaving it clean in half. "Your handiwork?"

"Really didn't want anyone to use it to get to Big Mountain," James said, privately thinking that, while that had been the case, it had also been a very therapeutic experience. A few charges would've done the trick, but spraying the satellite until it was a smoldering wreck had been just what the doctor ordered. Despite this, the signal had continued to broadcast from a source James couldn't find, but with the teleporter in the satellite disabled, it didn't matter. The signal normally just sounded like a bad drive in movie theatre ad, so no one would be able to figure out that it was connected to a Pre-War government research facility.

And yet, despite that, something was clearly wrong with Big Mountain. When the signal hadn't changed back to its normal, panic had flowed through James. Had someone, by some miracle, managed to stitch the satellite back together? A thought that had haunted his mind all throughout the gathering of his friends and the desperate sprint they had made for the Mojave Drive-In. But no, the satellite was still damaged beyond repair. This had quelled the overwhelming feeling of dread that James had felt, but left him with a feeling of uncomfortable certainty. If no one had gotten to Big Mountain via the satellite, what was going on?

"James? A few questions about Big Mountain, you never told us that much about it, and your explanation on the way here was a little hasty," Arcade said. James grimaced, he had been expecting this. He had done a fair bit of traveling in the three years since the Legion had been beaten out of the Mojave for a second time, and he had been thrust into quite the set of misadventures. He told his friends what had happened, but had skirted on a lot of the details. Partially because he didn't like to relive what had happened, partially because a lot of it was personal for him and others (Veronica had been the only one to hear the full details of what had happened in the Sierra Madre) but in the case of Big Mountain, it was a combination of the former and him not wanting to risk information of the place being leaked.

He trusted his friends with his life, but the more people that knew a secret, the bigger a chance of that secret being leaked. He hadn't just refused to mention anything about it, still giving them the broad strokes of what had happened, but he had also explained that there was a lot of nasty things there that would be better off buried. Most of them hadn't argued, although Veronica had confronted him after that and accused him of going down the same road of the Brotherhood of Steel, hoarding technology that could help people without a plan for that.

That had forced James to think a bit, explaining to Veronica that some of the nastier aspects of the Big Mountain could easily kill countless people if mishandled, to which she had replied by asking if all of it was like that. At her urging, James had gone back to Big Mountain every once in awhile to dig for information that could help the people of the Mojave, preferably non-combat related. The result had been some minor finds that he had relied upon Arcade to leak to the Followers of the Apocalypse, who would then spread things out ever further, to the rest of the Mojave and eventually out west to the NCR core regions. So far, he had leaked a few hundred seeds for crops that needed far less water to thrive and gave twice as many seeds, recipe for a chemical that acted as an effective substitute for Med-X, and simpler methods of Stimpack production. Arcade had gawked when the formula for said Stimpacks had included barrel cacti.

This had made Veronica much happier, and James himself was glad that she had talked him into it. In hindsight, the zeal and damn the consequences mindset of Father Elijah had possibly pushed him to be too extreme from the other end of the spectrum. That being said, there had always been a fear in the back of his mind that someone would still try and abuse the advanced technology of Big Mountain, so he kept the darker aspects of it secret.

"Shoot," James said, turning to face Arcade.

"Just to make sure we don't end up wandering into something that looks friendly and helpful before old Polyphemus lumbers in and bites our heads off, what should we expect and what should we look out for?" Arcade asked. Everyone else's attention was now firmly on James. Even Boone was watching him over his shoulder and ED-E was now facing directly downward.

"Ok," James said, running through his memories of the place. "If it moves, there's a 99% chance it'll try and kill you. The spore creatures from Vault 22? This is where they came from. I tried to burn them, but they may come back, they're resilient little things. Aside from that, there's also cyber-dogs, not unlike Rex but nowhere near as smart or friendly," ED-E gave a rather annoyed sounding beep, "more than a few robots, some crazed lunatics who had their brains cut up by the Think Tank, all of them will probably attack on site. No matter how many I kill, there always seems to be more of them, it'd take a few hundred people to properly clean that place out. As for the Think Tank, they're harmless and inert. For the moment. Klien is dead and the rest are staying idle, but I'd rather we stay away from them just to play it safe and keep it that way. You're not missing much, they're effectively a bunch of senile seniors that are only lucid half of the time."

"Kill everything we don't like, ignore the rest, find what looks like madhouse," Veronica said idly. "Don't go changing our daily routine too much there James, we might all get whiplash." James gave a small laugh.

"Now now dearie, don't go saying mean things about your elders," Lily said, reaching forward and giving James a gentle pat on the shoulder that nearly caused his knees to buckle. "I'm sure they're not what they used to be, but even then they're probably still very nice people." James privately thought that even kindly old Lily might be rethinking that statement if she had had to deal with the Think Tank exploding in horror at the sight of the ten, massive, thick "penises" she had. Oh god, what if CASS had had to deal with that? James wondered in horror.

"Yeah boss, you gotta be nice to us old people," Raul said, his voice more dry than his skin. "Real old people, not pretenders like you who think they're old just because their hair is starting to turn gray."

"So long as we have it clear that you're old and I'm not, I think we're in a good spot," James said, earning a grin from Raul. The gray hairs that had started popping up all over his head two years ago were getting hard to ignore, a good half of his head was gray now, with only the upper sections of the hair still managing to be brown, shrinking every time he had to cut his hair. Truth be told, at fifty-one he wasn't sure whether to consider himself old or not, there wasn't exactly a universal standard in the wasteland. Though Raul had a point, he certainly wasn't old so long as he stood next to him, Lily and the Think Tank. Not that they were metrics that were fair compared to a body that still aged, but still.

"So, Think Tank are non-combatants," Boone said simply. "Understood. Any others in the area?"

"Mobius, but he's practically identical to them, and provided he's not high off his long since rotted ass, we won't even see him. Aside from him, pretty much everything that moves is a hostile. Target rich environment if you would." Reaching into his rucksack, he pulled out a small gun like object. The teleporter gun that would take him to Big Mountain. "Any other questions? If not, grab onto me, this is the only way I can get back into there now."

"Wasn't bad enough that we had to deal with one megalomaniacal maniac keeping himself alive to fuck the world long after his time, we had to get six more," Cass said sourly. "Ten caps says they caused this entire mess in the first fucking place, probably without realizing it." It certainly wasn't beyond the realm of possibility, James had to admit. "But hey, cleaning up the messes left behind by dishits is practically part of our way of life now." Reaching forward, she put her hand on James's shoulder, the others following suit while ED-E nuzzled the top of James's head. After giving a quick check, he pulled the trigger.

The nice thing about teleportation was that it was quick and painless. One second, they were in the heat of a mid-afternoon day in the midst of June, the next, they were in a pleasantly air conditioned room. "Looks Pre-War all right," Veronica said, as the group broke away and examined the room they were in. They were on the balcony of the Sink, the forcefield in front of the railings giving them all an excellent view onto the rest of Big Mountain. Dozens of research facilities in various states of repair, some holding up wonderfully, others looking like they were in dire need of a tune up.

There was also one that James didn't recognize.

"The hell?" he said, to himself more than anyone else. Moving forward, he peered out as far as he could without touching the forcefield. He knew from experience that doing so would be a very unpleasant experience. The new building was dome shaped, the color of white that had long since been stained with dirt and grime, and the soil around it looked like it had been recently shifted. "That wasn't here last time."

"Looks like it was underground, look" Arcade said, pointing to the base of the dome and mounds of loose dirt that circled it. "That's the kind of mark something leaves when it comes out of the ground. That thing was hiding the whole time you were here." He glanced at James. "Now, I don't want to sound paranoid, but what is so important that they need to have a secret facility at a secret facility?"

"Somehow I don't think it's gonna be a hidden stash of medicine and candy," James said, a nasty feeling sprouting in his gut. The first time he had been to be Big Mountain, he hadn't walked away the same. Even now, while his heart was beating faster, it was much more controlled and evenly paced than it had even been before he had encountered Big Mountain. That had been awkward to explain, along with his now unbreakable spine and the fact that all of his upper skull was now metal. Although thankfully surrounding a fleshy brain. He grimaced. The new heart, spine, and metal skull were all extremely helpful, but he couldn't help but despise the way in which he had gotten them. If possible, he'd rather never go back to Big Mountain at all, but that wasn't an option.

"Ok, everyone, follow me, we gotta get in there." With a firm stride and his rifle at the ready, James led his companions into the Sink, hoping that they wouldn't ask too many questions about all the sapient appliances and that Muggy wasn't in the middle of an episode. Thankfully they were moving too fast to stop, and after a few minutes of nativating the inside of the Sink and the Think Tank, they had made their way outside without any issues.

"Hold it," Boone said, putting his arm in front of James as they neared the new building. Kneeling down in the loose soil, he examined it closely, his eyes narrowing. "There are footprints in here. A lot of them. A dozen people at the very minimum, probably more."

"Shit," James swore, "any idea who?" That was his worst fear realized, someone else finding Big Mountain. The question is, who had been the one to find it and how bad was the damage?

"Yeah," Boone said, digging into the soil and producing a small pouch with a drawstring. Opening it just a bit, he showed the inner contents to James. Gold and silver coins. The denarius and aureus of the Legion. "They don't like advanced technology," Boone said, tossing the money to James, who pocketed it. "What are they doing going after cutting edge Pre-War tech?"

"Caesar's a hypocrite," James replied instantly, being sure to use the incorrect pronunciation of the name. "He was more than willing to make a deal with the Van Graffs for energy weapons and he had an auto-doc in his tent the one time I was at the Fort. It just couldn't get the job he wanted done." He silently prayed that Caesar was dead now, that the tumor festering inside his skull had finally finished him off. The Legion had certainly been quiet ever since they were fully pushed out of Nevada, that could easily be taken as a sign that they were without a leader to drive them forward. From a certain perspective anyway.

"They're getting desperate then," Boone said simply. "If they're scrounging around Pre-War ruins, spitting in the face of Caesar's supposed precious values, it means they don't think they can hold out without an ace up their sleeve."

"Which also means that they've got reason to think that whatever's in there can help them beat an enemy they've lost to twice," Veronica said. "As much as I'd like to think that Caesar's just a misogynistic prick who's doing all this because he's bitter he can't get laid any other way, he's not dumb. He wouldn't commit this many bodies to such a dangerous place unless he knew it would be worth it."

"OK, right now the working plan is to hit them hard and torch anything that looks too dangerous. I don't care how hard it'll be, if Caesar wants it, we're all going to want it gone." That got him a good chorus of nods before the group continued their advance, stopping just outside the door to the dome. "Veronica, Arcade, you two first," James said, pressing the button next to the door, causing it to slide open. Both power armor clad figures advanced, James stopping to let them take the lead before following behind them.

Whatever the dome was, it was thankfully well lit. Passing through what looked like an atrium, they crossed a threshold and found themselves in what looked like a military checkpoint. Sandbags had been piled up to act as a choke point, although no one was manning it. "This is out of the ordinary," James said, "the rest of Big Mountain wasn't like this."

"To be fair, by the sounds of it, the rest of Big Mountain was a lot more bugfuck crazy," Cass said from just behind him. "Frankly I'm not complaining that this new add on is turning out to be the boring step-dad of the family. I'm more concerned about the guy or gal mom is fucking behind the dumpster to liven up her sex life."

Another threshold brought them into a cross between a lab and a mechanic's workshop. Dozens of different tables were laid out across the room, mechanical parts that James didn't recognize at all, some assembled, some disassembled, and whiteboards coated every corner of the room, all of them covered with complicated equations. "Veronica, can you make anything out of this?"

"Not a thing," Veronica admitted. "This is more advanced than anything the Brotherhood ever found. If they knew this place existed, they'd be calling in Knights and Paladins from as many chapters as possible to secure and strip this facility."

This room had three more doors leading off of it. One lead to a massive room that was stuffed to the brim with bunk beds and laundry baskets. The other led to a kitchen with a dozen different stoves and gardens that had long since been overrun with weeds. The third room on the other hand, was different. As the door opened, a dazzling light hit them all. Inside, was a metallic archway that thinned into fine metal points as two parts reached an apex, noticeable wires coming out of it at nearly every part. In the middle of the arch was a shimmering white portal that almost looked like a reflection on water except for the odd white tint and a strange landscape that James didn't recognize. Blast shields filled the room, a couple looking like they had been snapped off, but the rest suggesting that they had been there to keep something between the portal and those observing it from any direction.

There were also no less than two dozen legionaries in the room, many of them looking at the portal, but some of them had been watching the door. "PROFLIGATES!" one of them shouted. James's rifle snapped onto him, firing a shot that reduced his head to red mist, but the damage had been done. All around the room, the legionaries realized that they were no longer alone, and weapons, blades and guns both, were drawn.

James fired a quick shot at the next nearest legionary as he raised a SMG before throwing himself behind one of the barriers. Both Arcade and Veronica opened fire with their energy weapons, reducing a few of the legionaries to ash, and causing the lion's share of the enemy fire to focus on them. Taking advantage of this momentary tunnel vision, the rest of the group filed into the room, with the exception of Boone, who took up a position by the doorway aiming his hunting rifle into the room, his anti-material rifle placed to the side.

Within seconds, the room was a chaotic mess as both Arcade and Veronica took cover, even power armor could give out under enough strain and neither one of them wanted to push their luck, and the legionaries took cover themselves. Bullets, grenades, and the occasional spear filled the air as the fighting quickly devolved into person to person combat, with there being no overarching strategy, but the act or die split decision making of a dozen different firefights.

Peeking out of cover, James fired off a quick shot at a legionary that had been taking aim at Raul, enabling the Ghoul to take out a pair of legionaries by emptying his revolvers at them before he ducked down to reload. He had to duck down a second later as a burst of gunfire and a spear streaked overhead, the latter embedding itself in the floor behind him. "It's him! It's Barca! Focus on him! Cover me!"

Peering out of cover, James spotted a Centurion charging at him, a Super Sledge raised over his head, the thruster in the back ready to fire. James threw himself back just in time, the hammer came crashing down, the Centurion leaning over the cover, leaving a crater where James had been a second before. Sliding a few inches backwards on his back, James leveled his rifle as best he could and fired. The shot tore through the Centurion's leg, causing him to stumble, but he still pressed on, swinging at James again.

Fuck fuck FUCK! James internally screamed, kicking off a nearby blast shield to push himself away from the Centurion, the hammer just barely missing him as it hit the ground again. Desperately, he attempted to right his rifle, only for a strange shimmering to fill the air to the right of the Centurion. "Young man, that is very rude!" With the grind of metal on metal and the nauseating sound of something wet and squishy being torn, the Centurion's sides tore open, blood soaking a phantom sword that was otherwise invisible. "But Lily knows how to deal with brutes like you!" The barely visible sword pulled back and struck again, biting into the already open wound and cutting halfway into the man's gut. "My goodness, your mother must be ashamed."

"You saved my fucking ass Lily!" James shouted, scrambling back into cover, pressing his back against it as bullets came uncomfortably close. A few spurts of blood opened near Lily's blood-stained sword. Though she didn't seem bothered that she had been hit.

"James dearie!" Lily said, sounding appalled. "You're better than language like that!"

"Sorry!" he said, knowing full that he would only stop swearing when his life stopped involving people shooting at him. Blind firing a few shots in the direction of gunfire, he chanced another peak out on the far left side of his cover. He saw a legionary holding a very large looking sphere that couldn't be anything other than a bomb. Pushing a button, he gave it a heavy heave and threw it across the room.

The ball rolled to a halt in front of James, who braced for detonation. Instead, the top opened and a speaker jutted out. The battle froze, every last person in the room staring at the bomb. Then, a bombastic voice filled the room. "Greetings filthy communist scum! Whether we're at home in good old America or in your backwater third-world nation, you have the pleasure of dealing with the newest and greatest achievement of the stars and stripes. Your death by a state of the art time bomb! Our scientists-"

Realizing he had a chance, James lunged forward, grabbing the ball, and beaned it as hard as he could it back in the direction of the Legionaries. He got one right in the face with it, knocking him to the ground, howling in pain and clutching at his broken nose. Scrambling back into cover, just avoiding a few bullets, he hollered, "get down!" He had a bad feeling that whatever that thing was, it would be comparable to a mini-nuke in terms of destructive power. He ducked down his head and waited. There was a loud clang right next to him.

"Not that any of you would understand the merits of hard work when you just sit on your asses and collect government handouts like the parasites you are! I had to work my ass off since I was fifteen, my daddy wouldn't lend me so much as a nickle if I didn't mow the lawn first, and you assholes think you can just say ahhhh and-"

"Uh, General Chase? This is just a test run and we can't record for much longer."

"I'll make if brief then. In short, fuck off and god bless America! This message will now repeat in both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese."

"Oh come on!" James hissed, grabbing the bomb and throwing it over his cover. Five seconds later, it came rolling back around the corner, speaking Chinese that, even though James didn't know a word of it, was obviously clumsy and clunky. "Lily! Chuck it!" Grabbing the babbling thing, he tossed it across the room to the Nightkin.

"If you insist deary," she said, stretching her arms out before raising the bomb about her head and pitching it with a vicious ferocity. The bomb tore through the air, hitting another legionary in the gut, who silently crumbled to the ground and did not get up just as the bomb started to play the Star Spangled Banner over the horrible Chinese. Then, without warning, it exploded.

It was a plasma charge, a ball of green exploding outward and swallowing up five legionaries, and clipping the edge of the the portal. There was a deep sucking noise that filled the room, and the portal swelled, slowly growing to eclipse the archway. Without warning, James was hit by a powerful sucking sensation that pulled him off his feet. Half of his body hit the side of a blast shield, flipping him upside down as he desperately grasped for a grip. He managed to get an awkward hold on the side of the blast shield, the suction pulling his rifle out in front of him, it only stopping due to the strap he had attached to it that was still slung over his shoulder.

Most of the legionaries were sucked into the portal before they could react, being closer and having less reaction time, but a few were holding onto blast shields, even as the portal tried to pull them in. He gave a quick look to check on his fields. Lily, Arcade, and Veronica were all stumbling, but remained firmly on the as they grabbed holds on the blast shields. They were apparently heavy enough to stay on the ground. Raul had wrapped one arm around Arcade's leg and was firing carefully placed shots with his free hand. Veronica was crouching flat against one of the blast shields, just barely out of range of the suction, and was angling her grenade launcher over the top with some difficulty. ED-E had its back to the portal and was flying as hard as it could away, causing it to look it was stuck in midair.

Boone on the other hand, had flown completely out of the doorway and had nothing between him and the portal. Veronica darted outward and grabbed him by the back of his outfit, leaving him awkwardly billowing about in mid-air as the ex-scribe tried to keep her grip. "Hold me steady!" Boone shouted, raising his hunting rifle and chambering a round. Taking aim, he opened fire, and the head of the nearest legionary exploded, his lifeless body losing its grip and being sucked into the portal.

With difficulty, James grasped for his SMG, not sure if he could reach his other weapons, and pulled it loose. With one hand, he aimed at the three remaining legionaries, all of whom had drawn their pistols and were taking what shots he could. The first burst missed by a long shot, going well over the heads of all of his targets. The second hit the front of one of the blast shields. The third managed to hit a legionary right in the throat. Jamming down on the trigger, James continued to spray, adjusting to get the legionary next to the first. Three or four bullets hit his front armor, and while the 9mm bullets didn't penetrate, it did knock him loose from his grip, causing him to be sucked into the portal along with the corpse.

Taking aim at the last legionary, James pulled the trigger, only for the hammer to give a distinct "I'm hitting something but it ain't a bullet" click. The legionary, having spotted the source of the gunfire that had hit his allies, took aim with a 9mm pistol and fired. His aim was true. The bullet hit James right in the chest, knocking the air out of him and causing him to lose his grip.

No no no no NO FUCK FUCK FUCK! Even though his new heart could pump much more blood with each beat than his old one, it was now hammering in his chest as panic flooded him. He dropped the SMG, both hands stretching in every direction for something to grab onto, but there was nothing. He was tumbling over and had been flipped right side up again when something heavy hit him in the chest. Looking down, he saw ED-E pressed into his chest, trying to push him back away from the portal. But ED-E had barely been able to push away its own weight, and all it could do was slow James down a bit.

As the portal drew even closer, he spotted the last legionary, laughing in triumph. Twisting in mid-air, James kicked out and caught the legionary square in the face. "You're coming with me asshole!" he shouted as he, the legionary, and ED-E hit the portal. James was blinded by light, and the world around him disappeared.

XXXXX

There was a rumble like thunder and, the next thing James knew, he had hit a hard, asphalt road at the speed at which he had hit the portal. After the initial pain of the impact hit him and began to dull, thoughts began to filter through his head. I'm...not dead? Pushing himself to his feet, he looked down at his hands. He had half expected that portal to vaporize anything that had gone into it, if it was experimental even by Big Mountain standards, but he didn't seem to be harmed at all.

"Wait, ED-E!" he shouted, looking around him. To his relief, he saw the eye-bot a few feet away. And just behind him where half a dozen legionaries, all of them getting to their feet, with a few bullet riddled corpses on the ground. The portal had not been harmful at all. To anyone who had gone through it.

"Fuck," he hissed, scooping his SMG off the ground and turning to look for cover. There was an abandoned store not far from where he was standing, the front display window having been smashed. "Over here!" he shouted, gesturing to ED-E, who followed him at once. Running as fast as he could, he vaulted into the store, crouching down and sliding into cover just as bullets started to fly again.

"ED-E, any idea where that portal sent us? Are we in Nevada still or somewhere else?" The robot gave a confused beep as it slid into cover next to James. "Ok, here's the plan. You scout out the back of this place and see if there are any ways out, I'll keep them busy. If you find a way out, let me know and I'll leave them some presents while we make a run for it. Got it?" But ED-E didn't respond, and was staring into the corner of the room. A family of five was huddled in the corner, what looked like a mother, father, teenage daughter and young boy and girl children. And now the Legion was firing into the building they were hiding it.

"Oh no," James said, realizing just how badly he had screwed up. "Look, you gotta get out of here! I'll hold off the Legion! ED-E, new plan, find a back door and get them someplace safe, don't wait for me, I'll meet up with you-"

"We can't go out there!" the father shouted, "it's swarming with Grimm! Didn't you see!?" James focused on the father. He had to blink twice to make sure he wasn't seeing things. He had four ears, a pair of regular ears, and a pair of shaggy dog ears with bright golden fur further up his head. James was baffled. He had never seen a mutation like this before. Or was it the result of Big Mountain DNA splicing? It doesn't matter, figure it out later, he told himself.

"What the hell is a Grimm?" James asked, poking his head out of cover to see where the Legion soldiers had taken position. He almost dropped his jaw. Two of them were dead on the ground, one was sobbing as he crawled on the ground, an arm missing, while the other three were running. One of the runners stopped, grabbed the one armed legionary, hoisted him up into a fireman's carry, and took off again.

Wolves were in the street, the biggest wolves James had ever seen in his life. They were the size of Deathclaws, with pitch black fur as dark as night, bleached white bones jutting out at random points along their body, with blood red eyes shining out of the bare skull it had instead of a head. One of them was holding a severed arm in its mouth, while a pair were descending on the two fallen legionaries, tearing them to shreds with their claws. There was no speculation on what a Grimm was.

Feeling more than a little terrified, James crouched back down. The Grimm didn't seem to have noticed them, he had to approach this carefully. Picking up the SMG, he reloaded it with a fresh magazine, before ejecting the clip in his rifle and topping it off before sliding it back in. "Are you a Huntsman?"

He looked back at the family. The young girl was looking at him with a mixture of confusion and hope. He had no idea what a Huntsman was, but he could tell saying no would crush what hope the girl had. She couldn't be older than five. "I'm better," he said, putting on a smile before remembering that his helmet was still on. He wished he could take it off, but removing head protection in the middle of a combat zone was a bad idea, metal skull or not. "I'm a courier. I deliver things, and I'm about to deliver you all to safety."

That was the dumbest fucking thing you've ever said in your life, he couldn't help but think. It seemed to be a common consensus. Both parents had winced at the line, the teenager was staring at him as if she couldn't believe he had just said that, and ED-E made a beep that sounding suspiciously like a raspberry being blown. But both of the younger children looked enthralled. "Is he really mommy? Is Mr. Courier going to save us?" the young boy asked.

"Yes, but you need to do everything I say," James said, looking at both the mother and father. Unholstering his shotgun, he held it out to him, handle first. "Do any of you know how to use one of these?" Slowly, the parents and the elder daughter all shook their heads. Shit James thought. It'd be one thing if just one of them knew how to use a shotgun, but with kids in the picture? That's a recipe for friendly fire. "Ok, I need you to follow me. Stay close, stay quiet, and stop when I tell you to stop." He poked out of the window. "Which way is safest? I don't know the area."

"That way," the elder daughter said, pointing east if the slowly setting sun in the opposite direction was a good indicator. "The other way would take you to the docks."

Docks? I'm on the coast? Am I in Washington? Oregon? Because this place doesn't look NCR. Now that he thought about it, the building he was in and the ones around him looked extremely well maintained. Almost as if some of them had been constructed recently. Maybe that portal thing went crazy and I'm on the east coast, or another continent all together James thought. Now's a bad time. Eyeing up the streets, he saw that the wolves were begining to move off, though not in a pattern he could make out. In the distance, he could hear gunfire, and they seemed to be moving vaguely in that direction. He prayed that they were chasing after the last few legionaries.

Examining the streets more closely, he spotted alleyways that the wolves might not be able to fit into, and even if they did it would only be in single file. "Ok, run across the street and into the buildings, now! ED-E, go on ahead and let us know if you see anymore of those Grimm things. Stay high, don't let them get at you." Giving a confirmatory beep, ED-E sped off into the alley as James vaulted himself over the window frame, rifle in hand. "Come on!" he said, his voice low but sharp.

The family was quick, James suspected that it was half panic and half pent up stress from being forced to hide for so long, but they didn't lag that far behind as he led them across the street, the mother and father each carrying one of the younger children. James's eyes darted back and forth, checking for more of the mutant wolves, but none were in the area. At the moment. They reached the alley, sliding into it, with it only being wide enough for two people at a time, and James crept along to the end, peaking out.

Three of the wolves were there, having fanned out across the street, their noses pressed to the ground as they sniffed. They didn't seem to be in any hurry to leave the area. James looked down to his side. Five copperish canisters with glowing green prongs were there. He could afford to use one. "Cover their ears," he said to the parents, taking one of the canisters and flicking a pin on the side out. Two of the Grimm were converging on each other. As they did, the young boy gave a barely suppressed sob. The closest Grimm's head snapped up, staring in the direction of the alley they were on.

Shocked at how acute the hearing on these things were, he didn't waste any time, hurling the canister right between two of the Grimm. James wondered if they had ever seen a plasma grenade before, and if they would understand why the tiny bit of metal thrown between was worth paying attention to as it detonated. An orb of blinding green light flashed as the explosion engulfed two of the Grimm, the last one roaring and charging at the alley. Righting his rifle, James opened fire. Four caught the wolf in the stomach, causing it to stumble, getting uncomfortably close, before a shot to the head caused it to collapse flat onto the ground mid step, with James firing another headshot just to be safe.

Things are tough, that'll be a problem, James thought, checking the area for more Grimm. At least his plasma grenades were effective, there was nothing left of the first two he had killed. In fact, there was barely anything left of the third. The body was barely there anymore. James had looked away for what couldn't be more than ten seconds, and the little bit that was left was collapsing into a pale substance that looked like it was halfway between dust and mist, before it vanished all together. As he watched, James could've sworn that he heard the slightest tick from his Pip-Boy's Geiger counter, but a quick check revealed no radiation levels in the area.

"Ok, you're doing good, all of you, keep moving," James said, giving one last check before dashing out, heading to another gap between buildings. He was halfway across the street when he spotted movement on top of a building next to one of the ones that made up the alley. Figures in white armor. James blink. Local guards? They had the weapons for it. Weapons that were being aimed. Right at them. "MOVE!" James shouted, just as the bullets started to fly.

Stopping at the head of the alley, James took aim and emptied what was left of his magazine, trying to suppress the shooters. The daughter reached the alley first, turning around and pulling her mother in, with the father right behind them. The shots were coming dangerously close, many, James realized with horror, being aimed at the family and not at him. One bullet tore into one of the father's human ears, reducing it to a mangled mess that was only half attached to his head. The man stumbled and fell, still clutching his son tightly, who was now crying in confusion and fear.

Darting out of cover, James grabbed the man by the shoulder and ungracefully but quickly dragged him towards the safety of the alley. He felt someone brush by him and the next thing he knew, the daughter was helping them, having grabbed the other shoulder. It couldn't have taken more than three seconds to get the father back into the alley, but it felt like an eternity with bullets streaking by. James felt one skim the top of his helmet, leaving him feeling like he had just taken a hammer to the head, complete with ringing ears. When they were out of the crossfire, James pressed the father against the wall, producing a stimpack and a bundled of bandages.

"Hey, stay with me," James said, injecting the man's sides with the stimpack before wrapping the bandages tight around the ear. "What I just injected you with will speed up the clotting process, but you're gonna need to get medical attention fast. Understand? You gotta get to a doctor as fast as possible when you get out of here or that wound's gonna get worse." The man nodded groggily, he seemed to be half out of it, but still had his son in a vicelock grip.

After the wound was bandaged, he glanced at the mother and elder daughter. "Who were those people on the roofs?" he asked. A rage was building up inside him very quickly, only growing as the son's sobs began to grow.

"White Fang," the elder daughter said, looking at her father and sounding as if it was taking everything she had to stay calm. "But I don't get it! Dad's a Faunus, why would they try and hurt him!? He's one of them."

"I don't know dear, I don't know," the mother said, trying to comfort her elder daughter with a hand on the shoulder while bouncing her younger daughter in an attempt to keep her from crying. Judging by the way the young child was looking at her father, that was a losing battle. "I don't even know what they're doing here."

James thought fast as he reloaded his rifle, pocketing the empty magazine. Then, he spotted a chained side door in one of the alley sides. To the building that was right next to the one the gunmen were hiding on. His eyes narrowed, the rage pulsating through him. "ED-E, get these people to safety," he said, to a confirmation beep from the robot. "Ok. Listen. We're not gonna be able to get out the far side of the alley with them up there, they'll just hit us from the other side. I'm gonna take care of them. Don't wait for me." He pointed to ED-E. "Follow him, he's never steered me wrong before."

ED-E responded to this by playing a triumphant score of trumpets over his speakers, flying in front of the elder sister and mother before staying rigidly still in mid-air. ED-E's version of snapping to attention. Unholstering his shotgun, James blasted the chains off the door before reholstering it. "Can you stand?" he asked the father. He nodded gingerly as he slowly got to his feet, his eldest child moving to support him. "Don't wait for me, you can't afford to stay still while I deal with every last one. Stay right behind ED-E. ED-E? As soon as you hear me engaging them, move. Get them out of this hellhole. All of the family looked at him with something on their face, but James didn't stop to figure out what it was, and disappeared into the building.

From the inside, it looked to be some kind of corporate HQ for a small company. Desks, cubicles and lounges dotted, streaking past as James charged through until he found the stairwell. Even as the fight or flight adrenaline was pumping through his body, he couldn't help but take in what good shape the building was in. It didn't even look like a fifth of it had been scavenged yet. He mentally made a mark of what the building looked like, if he was far away from the Mojave, he would have to scavenge up supplies for the trip back once the family was safe.

The top of the stairwell loomed in front of him and he took the flight of steps three at a time before slamming into the door. As he had hoped, the door had taken him out onto the roof of the building, which was dotted with vents from air conditioners and heaters. And just across the way were seven people in white armor, their faces covered by masks of the same color, all of them armed and with their weapons trained on the streets below them. "I can't see them, they must be hiding in the alleyway," one said.

"We're wasting our time here, Adam said to fall back!" said another, his voice carrying across the roof to where James was. "The plan went all wrong, someone triggered it early, and Atlas is moving their heavy hitters in. We're all gonna end up in an interrogation room if we stick around, or worse, the morgue."

"They're right there! We just need a few more minutes and-" the first one said, but before she could say another word, there was a loud bang and a hole the size of a fist burst open in her skull. James bared his teeth in anger as he hid behind the door frame, aiming his rifle at a new target.

While the logical part of his brain was telling him to play it smart, the emotional part wasn't listening. "HEY! TRY FIGHTING SOMEONE WHO CAN ACTUALLY FIGHT BACK YOU FUCKING COWARDS!" He chastised himself for losing his temper like that, but he couldn't deny the anger that was boiling through his veins. Shooting at unarmed civilians? Civilians with kids at that? They were all dead. He didn't know who they were or why they were doing this, and to be frank, he couldn't care less. None of them were living past the hour. Six left he thought, taking aim and pumping two bullets into the chest of another one of the figures as they all scrambled for cover on their rooftop. She clutched her chest, still holding her weapon weakly, before she stumbled and slid off the side of the building, falling three stories to the ground below. Five.

He snapped into cover as a hailstorm of fire tore past both ends of his cover. Well, the good news about his outburst was that it had made sure that all attention was on him. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted ED-E darting into the streets, the family right behind him. "I'll catch up with you buddy," James whispered as he took stock of his situation. Now that he had actually gotten a chance to shoot at these people in white, and the family was out of harm's way, his anger was starting to die down. And he realized he was in a less than ideal situation.

He was outnumbered. True, he had slimmed the odds from one to seven to one to five, but those were still hardly odds to brag about. And with the way they had him pinned, a forward firefight would be a bad idea, it would play right into their strengths, and he didn't know what kind of firepower they had. He had to play this one smart.

The building on the other side of this one, the one that wasn't covered with people trying to kill him, was a rather big and wide one, with plenty of venting systems to hide behind. The vague outline of a plan began to form in his head. Taking a running start, James leapt the gap between buildings, hitting the roof hard and rolling to recover. Not having long until the five surviving gunmen realizes what he had done, James jumped through the maze of exposed vents before he got to the very far end. Unholstering his rifle, he placed it against the far side of the vent before undoing the straps for his helmet and placing it on top of the rifle's barrel. To someone looking from afar, the propped up helmet would look like someone taking cover. From afar.

As he took a few steps back to check his work, the gunfire stopped. "Did he jump!?" he heard a voice cry. He didn't have long, this plan was a long shot, and it would all be ruined if they saw him out in the open. Drawing his shotgun, he dashed to the side of the building, finding a nice bit of cover that only left a few feet between him and the edge, and slid it behind it, laying flat and out of sight. Shotgun in one hand, he took one of his four remaining plasma grenades and waited.

After a few minutes, he heard heavy grunts followed by footsteps as the gunmen made the same jump that he did. "He's gotta be here somewhere. Spread out, don't-"

"Look, Adam, Adam, told us to pull back! Atlas's airships are right over our heads! We're gonna get swarmed and massacred if we stay here much longer," a second, angry voice said. On pure instinct, James looked up. His heart caught in his throat. Giant, silver ships were hovering in the air above him, at least a dozen of them. They were sleek, they were shiny, they looked like they had just come off an assembly line, and they were disgorging a wave of much small craft that were around the size of Vertiberds.

James's mind reeled at the impact of this sight. He had thought it was impressive that a couple of VTOLs had been restored by the NCR, and these people had not only managed to get ten times as many up and running, but those giant ships they were launching out of. But nothing about any of these designs looked Pre-War. Were they all home brewed? Had these people advanced to the point where they had climbed back to Pre-War levels of infrastructure and technology? Was that even possible.

Dark thoughts found their way into James's mind as he pondered this, remembering something he had heard three years ago. "Give me 20 years and I'll reignite the high technology development sectors. 50 years and I'll have people in orbit." Mr. House had claimed that he could have done something like this, and he also claimed that he had been hampered by his predictions being slightly off. With House, it was damn hard to tell what was empty bravado and what was him simply stating what he was capable of. If House hadn't been giving empty boasts, and these people had had the foundation House had had and hadn't been stuck with the handicaps, maybe it was possible.

House's voice echoed in his mind. "A bit late for idle speculation, don't you think? The NCR you idly threw away so much out of the misplaced belief that every average simpleton has an opinion that needs to be considered by even the highest authority, do you think they'll be able to stand against these juggernauts? Their archaic human wave tactics yield moderately respectable results when they outnumber their opponents ten to one, but you've already seen that they struggle when the odds are not overwhelmingly stacked in their favor, even when they face a man who's merely a warlord with pretensions of grandeur. These people? They seem to be a fair bit more, don't they? If they want the Mojave, want California, want all of the west coast and beyond, there's not a thing the NCR, the Legion, or Vegas can do to stop them. I could've. There's even a sliver of chance you could have. A sliver. But you've already made your choice. But still, it could be an enlightening experience for you, to experience classic Pre-War subjugation. Most likely some form of imperialism, possibly neo-colonialism if they prefer a more hands off approach. The end results will be the same though. I hope your choice was worth it."

Reaching around his neck, James looked at something that was hanging there, tied to a string. The Platinum Chip. With a .44 magnum bullet lodged directly in the center of it. His grip tightened in anger. Even to this day, he wasn't sure he had made the right choice regarding the fate of Vegas. For a few minutes, he had held the future of Vegas in his hands. The opportunity had been right in front of him, when he had Benny cornered in his suite. The plan laid out in front of him, the Platinum Chip in the same room as him, and Benny disarmed.

But the idea had scared him. It still terrified him to this day. Taking all the power in Vegas, at the head of an army that neither the Legion or the NCR could oppose, being untouchable. Yes he could use that power for good, but after all the time he had spent opposing Caesar and those like him, the idea of taking the power had felt like a betrayal. A hope for an independent Vegas, yes, but one where one autocratic dictator was replaced with another. A hope for a more secure future at the cost of freedom in Vegas. He had at the same time wanted to scream how wrong it was, yet part of him couldn't help but consider the potential benefits, and that he could make it all worth it.

His hesitation had cost him the chance to make that choice. Benny had made a run for it. The fucking little piece of shit, James thought bitterly. Straight into Legion territory. James had chanced a trip to the heart of Caesar's territory, against the advice of all of his friends, only with Caesar's promise of protection assuring him it wasn't a one way trip. Well. He had gotten the Platinum Chip back. Kind of.

"He's over there!" James was snapped out of his thoughts as gunfire broke through. There were a few bursts, followed by a cry of triumph. "Ha! Got him right in the head!"

"Great, yeah, fantastic," an annoyed man's voice said. "Now let's go!" Slowly, James removed the pin from his grenade, peeking up over cover. All five of them, clustered together, their weapons trained on the spot he had left his rifle and helmet.

"One second, gotta double tap him, make sure he's dead," one of the women said, taking a step forward. "It'd suck if he shoots us in the back on the way out." A smart move, one James probably would've made himself. Mainly because he had a unique relationship with double taps. Though in this situation, the smart move wasn't the safe one. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the grenade into the thick of the White Fang. "Oh F-" the woman screamed as the grenade bounced once and then detonated.

Rising up, James took am with his shotgun, squinting through the blinding light of the grenade. Two of the White Fang were gone, puddles of green goop were oozing on the ground where they were three seconds ago. One still had an intact body, but was most certainly dead, her head was split open diagonally and her right arm and leg hand been blown off. Two were on the ground, badly wounded with severe burns and open gashes, but still alive. James pumped two shells into the nearer one, hitting him in the torso with the first and face with the second, before turning his attention on the last one.

"HUMAN! YOU'LL-" the woman screamed as she struggled to raise her SMG, but what exactly James would do or experience, he never found out, for three shotgun shells were quickly emptied into her. James let out a deep breath that he didn't know he had been holding as he got to his feet. The adrenaline was starting to wear off, and his body was starting to ache. His head from the bullet skim, his stomach from the trip through the portal, and his feet from the rooftop jump. It all felt so much sharper now that he wasn't actively fighting for his life.

Crossing back to where his rifle and helmet were, he picked them both up. A bullet was now lodged in the back of his helmet, a SMG round by the looks of it. Idly considering the explanations that would have to come from this, he pulled the bullet out, strapped the helmet back on, and slung his rifle over his back before he topped off his shotgun's magazine.

"One quick thing," he said, moving to where the dead White Fang members were. Bending down by the last one he had killed, he grabbed her SMG and held it up. It was clean, looked brand new, and felt good in his hands. Ejecting the magazine, he checked the ammunition within. He tilted his head. The bullets inside had bright silver casing and what looked like a red glowing section. They looked vaguely like 9mm bullets, but he wasn't sure, and he didn't feel comfortable stuffing these unknown elements into his SMG. He tucked it away into his rucksack, he would examine it later.

Drawing his rifle, he took a few steps forward before stopping dead in his tracks. Five more White Fang members were standing on the rooftop he had jumped from. Three were unremarkable, but one was an utter giant of a man, looking as if he was only an inch away from being seven feet tall with what was unmistakably a chainsaw sword resting over his shoulder, and the other was wearing what looked like a custom uniform. Solid black coat and pants, the coat partially unbuttoned to reveal a red undershirt, and exotic splashes of white and red on the left shoulder of the jacket, forming symbols James didn't recognize. The boy, and he couldn't be older than eighteen, had bright red hair, what were unmistakably a pair of bull horns, and a sword at his side.

James raised his rifle, but paused when he noticed none of them had opened fire yet, even though all of them had their weapons trained on him. All of them were looking to the boy with the bull horns, silently asking for directions. The boy was focused directly on James. At least, James was fairly certain he was, it was hard to tell, the boy was wearing the same mask as the rest of the White Fang. "How many freedom fighters did you just kill?" he asked, his voice low and angry.

"Freedom fighters? Zero," James replied. "If you're wondering how many murderous assholes I killed today, seven. There were a couple of others before that, but they weren't yours, so I doubt you care." James considered his options. He had a talker on his hand, the type that liked to speechify before he did anything. He could use that, but he had to pick just the right time. "Shot at a bunch of civilians, hope you don't mind that I wasn't going to sit around with my thumb up my ass with that going on."

"They shot at humans," the boy said simply. Something clicked in James's mind. The boy's horns, the father's dog ears, how the daughter had said the father was one of them, one of the White Fang calling him human. Oh goodie. It's one of THOSE situations, he thought bitterly. "After everything they've done to us, all they're still trying to do, you defend them. You-" but James decided that he wasn't going to entertain this boy. He had an opening and he wasn't letting it go to waste. Mid-sentence, he leveled his rifle directly at the boy's head and fired. He shifted, taking aim at the big one with the sword, when something happened that caused his jaw to physically drop.

With a blur of motion, the boy drew his sword, the blade a blood red that shined in the sun, and slashed in front of him. There was a clang of metal on metal and, there was no other way to interpret it, he had slashed the bullet in half. A moment of silence passed as the boy silently stood with his sword out and James gawked at him. What?

The boy took a step forward and a fresh sense of adrenaline surged through James. Focusing back on the boy he fired twice, one aimed at the head before shifting down for a gut shot. Another blur of motion followed and the boy's sword rose up to meet both bullets, deflecting them with deadly precision. WHAT!? James abandoned all restraint, firing his rifle until the chamber clicked empty. Every time a sword met his bullet, and while he could've sworn that the very last shot, one that had been aimed low at a leg out of desperation, didn't seem to be blocked, the boy only stumbled back. There was no damage visible at all.

You're out, no time to reload, switch weapons, he thought. His rifle was slung over his shoulder and his shotgun was halfway up when the boy jumped. One second, he was on the other building. The next, blinding pain tore through James's side. Blinking in shock, he looked down and saw the boy right in front of him, his sword up to the hilt in James's torso. His armor had done nothing to stop it. The boy was smirking. "Just a human," he said, before drawing his sword down in a single, fluid motion. The pain was so great that the edges of James's vision went black. The blade tore down through his stomach before the boy drew it out, following up his stab with a strong kick.

James flew back across the roof, slamming into one of the vents and getting the air knocked out of him. Gasping for a breath he couldn't take, blood dripping out of his mouth and flowing out of his torso, James fell to all fours, his weapons loosely hanging on him. He felt like he had just been kicked by a Super Mutant. "That's the funny thing. For all their bluster and power, humans aren't too hard to kill," the boy said, slowly stepping forward. "It's so easy to make them pay." Not seeing any other options, James grabbed another plasma grenade, primed it, and tossed it at the boy. Not stopping to see if the boy was taking cover or had sliced it in half, he forced himself through the agony and onto his feet, over the vent and towards the roof's edge.

The grenade detonated behind him and he half jumped, half was blown off the top of the roof into a freefall, his ears ringing in addition to all the other pain. His fall was brought to an abrupt end as he slammed back first into a car, denting the roof and adding more pain that was slowly coming to dominate his entire body. He's still up there, that grenade will slow him down at best. You need to MOVE!

With great difficulty, he forced himself off the car, onto the street below, and he ran. He ducked into random alleys, charging out of one and into another three more to the left before shifting directions, doing everything he could to throw the boy off his trail. His disbelief at the boy's feats and how utterly impossible they were clashed at his desperate struggle for survival. His guns slapping against his back, he reached into his rucksack as he ran and produced a stimpack, jamming it into his arm with some difficulty. But it was a band aid measure, he was still bleeding badly and the edge of his vision was still going dark. He had to find a safe place to stop and properly patch himself up.

He rounded the corner, thinking that he would have to duck into an inconspicuous building where he would hopefully go unnoticed, and found himself face to face with five Grimm. He skidded to a halt so fast that he almost fell over, drawing and leveling his shotgun at the Grimm. They were undaunted and began to advance on him, spreading out so that they could come at him from multiple angles. After the desperate run, James's legs felt very weak, to the point where he had to put a hand on a nearby wall to stay upright. With his right arm, he kept his shotgun raised, trying to figure out which Grimm would charge him first, and trying not to think about how bad his odds were.

Then, out of nowhere, a black rope shot towards one of the Grimm, wrapping itself around its neck. A young girl in black and white came into view from the far end of the alley, the far end of the rope in her hand, which she used to pull herself forward, using feats of strength and agility that should be impossible for any human, let alone one her size, to directly on top of the room. Whatever it was she had in her hands, she used it to fire a burst of rounds directly into the Grimm's neck, killing it.

Jumping off it with a graceful backwards flip, she fired her weapon as she fell, killing two more of the Grimm before she hit the ground, the last two charging at her. She did something with her weapon, and it was no longer some bizarre grappling hook and SMG combo, but a rather blocky sword, one that she didn't hesitate to use.

One swing took off the front leg of one Grimm, the follow up decapitating it. After that, she dashed forward towards the last Grimm, which raised its hand to slash at her. "LOOK OUT!" James shouted, realizing in horror that the wolf would hit her before she hit it. But it was too late. The clawed paw of the wolf came crashing down on the girl, smashing here into the ground where she...collapsed into shadow? Unless James's eyes were playing tricks on him, the girl had vanished, the Grimm looking at where she had been with the same confusion that James felt.

Then, she was back, behind the Grimm. A flurry of slashes ended the Grimm's life within seconds, tearing it apart as it began to collapse into a black smoke that quickly faded away. Checking to make sure there weren't any other Grimm in the area, the girl approached James. She was barely any older than the boy, though she wasn't dressed as a member of the White Fang. A black bow was perched neatly on top of her head, and she stared at him with bright gold eyes that looked at him with suspicion. Suspicion that quickly gave way to shock. "Are you all right?" she said, starting forward. She glanced back over her head. "Is this what you were trying to show me?" At the end of the alley, ED-E was flying towards them, a mess of beeps coming from him.

James tried to form a reply, but all that came out was a gurgle. It was so very hard to stay standing. Vaguely reaching up in the direction of his helmet, half baked ideas of taking it off so he could empty his mouth, his legs gave out. He collapsed to the ground, darkness enveloping him as the girl's voice and ED-E's cries grew fainter and fainter.

XXXXX

Author's Note: To an outside observer, Old World Blues is hilarious. But I imagine actually experiencing it would be hell on Earth. Trapped in a facility with a bunch of crazy brains in jars caught up in their private war, you can barely reason with any of them, their creations are all running amuck, you've been cut open and had body parts removed without your consent, when you think about it, it's a damn traumatizing experience.I don't remember a lot of Starship Troopers from when I read it back it high school (I was severely disappointed by the shortage of power armor on bug violence, which was why I picked it up) and while I was reading about it to see what I had forgotten, I found something interesting. A talking time bomb that announces that it's a time bomb? I'll be damned if that doesn't sound perfect for Fallout America. Though I imagine the Starship Troopers bomb was more to the point but hey, it's only a prototype here.

Also, in regards to James having a metal skull, if you get your brain back in Old World Blues, you get an increased damage threshold and can't get a crippled head, with the damage threshold increase being even bigger than if you keep the artificial brain. The only way in which keeping the artificial brain is better is that you can't get addicted to chems with it. The only logical conclusion I could draw from that, with the Big Brained perk having description that "some of the advanced technologies remain," is that the auto-doc that operated on the Courier replaced all of the Courier's upper skull with a highly durable metal, mainly the parts you would have to remove in order to extract the brain. Best explanation I could come up with for how a shotgun blast to the face can no longer cripple.

Also also, I decided to make James on the older side because A. it's something that doesn't happen anywhere near often enough and B. the very first time I played New Vegas, I played as an older man (which basically means I gave my character gray hair, because the age slider in that game is beyond useless.) I ended up taking a great deal of offense when Caleb McCaffery referred to my character as kid. It's a shame there's no mod to use Terrifying Presence to say "Who the fuck are you calling kid, boy?" Ideally following it up with a bitch slap.

Also also also, I realized something when this chapter was that James was using Randall Clark's rifle and armor to protect kids, and it's kind of stupid, but I was reading the Feels thread on Space Battles when I realized this and I kinda got choked up when thinking about it. I swear to god I didn't do that on purpose, it just kinda fell into place.

Also I know it's Wild Wasteland and not Wild Wild Wasteland, but I honestly thought it was Wild Wild Wasteland for a long time, I'm used to saying it, and I think it sounds snappier. So I 'm going with that.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, and Mackenzie Buckle for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 2

Wild World

XXXXX

Blake sat uncomfortably in the hospital waiting room, staring at the book in her lap, despite the fact that she hadn't turned the page in half an hour. So much had happened in the last 24 hours. The White Fang launching an attack on Vale, the Grimm breaching the city's limits, and a coordinated counter-attack by both Vale Huntsmen and Huntresses and Atlas's army. And yet, amongst all of that, this little anomaly was more confusing than anything else. A man in strange armor that had stopped to protect a family from White Fang and Grimm, and two dead men with crude, makeshift armor. All three didn't fit into any frame of reference that Vale or Atlas was aware of.

The only thing that they had to go on was that the man who was still alive had armor that marked him as a soldier. Staff Sergeant R.B. Vickers, blood type O positive. Except that wasn't right. Before the doctors had begun blood transfusions on him, they had tested his blood to be sure, and he was A positive, not O positive. He had still been given O type blood, the blood being a universal donor, but it still concerned Blake. If they had been forced to give him a field transfusion with no time to check his blood and he had not been marked as having blood that was a universal donor, he could have easily have been killed by an ABO Incompatibility Reaction. Why was he wearing armor that identified his blood type incorrectly?

Blake glanced around the waiting room. Despite what one might expect after the walls had been breached, not too many people had been injured. There were still quite a few, but there were more Atlas soldiers in the waiting room than civilians waiting to see how friends and loved ones were doing. Many were looking at the soldiers in confusion, but Blake knew why there were there. Sergeant Vickers was an unknown element, a soldier operating in Vale without permission or reason, as were the other two men. There were signs of battle that had taken place within the city limits of Vale, with weapons that didn't match any weapons that investigators could recognize. Something was wrong here, unknown elements were trading fire inside Vale, ones that had no signs of being from any of the four kingdoms, and Atlas wanted to know who they were and why they were here.

And yet. Sergeant Vickers didn't seem to be someone who wished harm on Vale or its allies. He had protected a defenseless family from Grimm and White Fang. But that still left the question of who exactly Sergeant Vickers was. The only clue they had was the acronym right next to his blood type, USMC, with no idea what meant.

"I'm guessing you've got more on your mind other than Slave to the Sword?" Blake looked up from her book. Yang was sitting right next to her, Weiss and Ruby sitting across from her. Yang looked like she was struggling to stay still for so long, there was a rather fidgety look to her. Still, there was a genuine look of concern on her face. "The guy's going to be ok, isn't he?"

"He should be," Blake said slowly. "But things can always go wrong when people are in his condition. Unexpected complications. If he has pre-existing conditions that the doctors don't know about, who knows what might go wrong?"

Yang smiled brightly. "Oh, that's a rookie mistake. We got good doctors here, some of them who use their Semblances directly for healing. And Atlas is looking over him, making sure nothing goes wrong. He'll be fine." Blake nodded silently. Logically, Yang was right, but something about this entire situation felt wrong and out of place. Like she was missing half of the pieces to the puzzle.

"Ugh," Weiss said from across the room. Both she and Ruby were looking at a scroll together, a news report playing on it.

"Word has come in from the isolated town, not an hour ago, that the White Fang appeared, opened fire in the town's marketplace, and then disappeared," came the familiar voice of Lisa Lavender. "First responders have confirmed that there are, at this moment, at least 14 dead and many more wounded. This attack coming mere hours after the White Fang's unsuccessful attack on Vale has led many to believe that this much smaller follow-up attack is a matter of revenge or spite for the White Fang."

"It isn't bad enough they tried to kill everyone in Vale, but now they lose and they just start murdering innocent people in unimportant towns?" Weiss hissed. "How petty is the White Fang?" Ruby gave a sad mumble of agreement, more focused on the scroll than what Weiss was saying. Blake's fingers twitched in anger. Hadn't enough people already died today?

"Ms. Belladonna?" Blake looked up. An Atlas military officer with graying hair and a white coat was standing in front of her. General Ironwood, a man who had been in the news quite a bit lately as the commander of the Atlas detachment in Vale. "You were the one that brought Sergeant Vickers here in the first place?" Blake nodded. "If you would, I'd like you to come with us. The doctors say that Sergeant Vickers is showing signs of waking up. Since you saved his life, we think it would make things much more smoothly if you were there when he comes to."

Blake nodded as she got to her feet. The rest of her team made to follow, Ruby and Weiss both looking up from Ruby's scroll as they did, but General Ironwood raised his hand. "Just Ms. Belladonna, please. This is a very delicate situation and I'd rather not have the man be overwhelmed."

The rest of Team RWBY slumped back into their chairs. Ruby looked like she had just been told off, Weiss looked like she had been insulted and was trying to keep up a polite face, while Yang simply looked annoyed. This wasn't lost on General Ironwood.

"My apologies," he said, giving a small nod of his head. "It was not my intention be disrespectful. Your team has done us all a great service. You were faced with a situation that would have put seasoned and battle-tested Huntresses to the test and you persevered. Thousands of lives were saved because of what you did; you should all be deeply proud of what you've done." The faces of Blake's team all softened. Ruby clasped her hands as her face turned red, Weiss's forced smile relaxed and became more natural, and Yang gave a very pleased with herself smirk. "But we've got a lot ahead of us, and right now this situation requires a careful approach. I assure you, your talents will be needed in the very near future. Too soon." With that, he gave Blake a questioning look.

She nodded and followed him as he led her deeper into the hospital. "There are some things I need to tell you before he wakes up. I cannot emphasize enough how much of an anomaly this man is. The working theory was that he was a survivalist who was living outside the kingdoms, but that theory fell apart almost at once." General Ironwood passed a pair of Atlas soldiers that had cordoned off the end of one of the corridors on the hospital's lower floors. There were only a few rooms beyond it, one of which had another pair of soldiers standing guard in front of it. Sergeant Vickers's room.

A table had been set up outside it, strewn with a wide variety of weapons, equipment, and things Blake couldn't even recognize. "He was armed to the teeth," Ironwood said, pointing to five guns and a knife that were lying on the table. All of them with wear and tear to them, with the exception of one. "A semi-automatic rifle, a shotgun, two SMGs, and a pistol." He picked up the short-nosed pistol, which was very elegant looking compared to the rest, though still somewhat battered. It had an odd looking grip, and a phrase on the side in a language that Blake didn't recognize.

"This was strapped to his back, underneath his coat," Ironwood said, putting the pistol down. "And we found a silencer that fits it." He was frowning with displeasure, and Blake understood why. A concealed pistol and a silencer? That was something that heavily implied black ops work or other similarly unsavory fields.

"And the ammunition he was carrying for all these weapons combined could supply a small platoon, a lot of it specialized. There are half a dozen different variants for the shotgun alone." He gave an annoyed sigh. "This selection of weaponry doesn't make any sense. I can create theories for the pistol and theories for the other weapons, but they contradict each other. If he was an assassin, the other weapons draw too much attention. And if he's not an assassin, why the pistol? And the rest makes no sense at all."

He gestured to a large, bulky gauntlet with a green screen surrounded by buttons and knobs. The words "Pip-Boy 3000" were printed on the bottom in fading yellow paint. He then pointed to a small pile of syringes and bottles, unfamiliar labels on them. One of them was marked "Buffout." "I've been going through my contacts in Atlas intelligence, and none of them even faintly recognized any of these. And even the guns confuse me. I've been a military man since I was your age, and I only recognize one model out of these five." He pointed to one of the two SMGs. Unlike the other guns, this one was shiny and looked brand new. "A model commonly used by the White Fang. And considering he was carrying so much ammunition and yet he had nothing for this outside of what's already in the magazine, I conclude he took this off of a member of the White Fang he killed. That matches up with your story about him helping a family under fire."

Blake had to hold back a grimace. She had left the White Fang behind a long time ago, the organization had become rotten to the core, but it still brought her no pleasure to hear that members of the organization had been killed. Many of them were scared and lashing out because they thought it was the only thing that could be done in a cruel and unfair world. Still. They had been trying to kill innocent bystanders. A family of five that had had to drag one of their own to safety because of them. They had put themselves in a situation where the man who had killed them was a hero.

"I had some men examine the area where Sergeant Vickers was found, and we located five dead operatives. And a puddle of green liquid with white fang equipment in it. In the middle of a blast zone." He looked at her. "Do you have any idea how much it takes to liquidize a person like that?" She shook her head. "More than we've been able to do with small arms or explosives. And Vickers has no Aura."

Blake paused. "I'm sorry general, you're talking about him like you think he's a threat. I understand being cautious when you don't understand something, but he saved people today."

"I appreciate that," Ironwood said, his voice level, "but this man is still potentially dangerous. None of these weapons are legal for civilians to own without special licenses, which he does not have. His rifle takes exceptionally heavy caliber bullets for its size, some of his shotgun shells are incendiary, and a silencer is simply illegal for civilians to own period. And there are certain indicators he's done things that he feels particularly guilty about." Vickers's helmet was lying on the table, and Ironwood pressed his finger against it. Specifically, what was scrawled on it. "MAMA FORGIVE ME."

"He's a wild card. We have to take precautions until we know more about him," Ironwood said. "I don't intend to treat him as a known hostile, but we have to take precautions." He looked at Blake. "Are you ready to go in? At the moment we're just trying to figure out who he is, where he came from and what he's doing here. Are you up to this?"

Blake nodded. "I've been wanting to know myself ever since I found him." There was a private reason why Blake was more than happy to see Sergeant Vickers, but she didn't say anything. Not yet. Not until she was sure.

"Don't overwhelm him, try to make it natural. Look at me and blink twice if you want me to take over." With that, Ironwood pushed the door open. Vickers was lying on a bed with an oxygen mask over his face and a few tubes feeding him VI fluids, a doctor examining him and two more soldiers were standing guard by the window. Vickers was stirring.

The doctor stood back from the bed, looking angry. "General, I'm glad you didn't end up handcuffing him to the bed, but I find it hard to work on my patient when there are armed soldiers in the room," she said heatedly as she slowly started to remove the VI tubes. "He's stable now, but I'll have to ask you not to do anything that could open his wounds," she added.

"Hopefully it'll only be a temporary measure," Ironwood said. "In the meantime, I do need you to step outside." She turned and strode to the door without comment, almost as if she had been expecting this, shooting Ironwood a filthy look on the way out. "I think I've been more than lenient personally," he said to Blake. " I did let his companion stay." He pointed up. The robot that had been with the family and had led Blake to Vickers was floating up near the ceiling, whirling softly as it looked down on Vickers. Blake couldn't help but notice that the soldiers seemed more concerned with it than Vickers. "Any problems?" he asked, "it hasn't attacked you has it?" The soldiers shook their heads. The robot glanced at Ironwood and let out a series of beeps. "--. --- / --. . - / .-. .- .--. . -.. / -... -.-- / .- / -... .-. .- .... -- .. -. / .- ... ... .... --- .-.. ." Blake had no idea what to make of it.

Slowly, Vickers's eyes fluttered open, the man groggily looking around. Then they snapped wide open. He sat bolt upright in his bed, the blankets being thrown aside, as he looked around, frantically tearing the oxygen mask off. Blake tensed and so did the soldiers, but as Vickers's eyes fell on Blake, he stopped. "You," he said slowly. "Where am I?" Vickers was a man who looked like he had more years behind him than ahead. Hair that had mostly gone gray, a fairly thick stubble of the same color, and the beginning of crow's feet around his eyes. He also looked like he had been through the wringer in life, because even though a good chunk of his torso was covered, Blake could see scars from bullet wounds and blades all over it. Even what looked like surgical scars near his heart and a very odd couple of scars on his temple.

"Vale Medical," Blake said with uncertainty. "Best hospital in the city. You were injured and needed medical care." Vickers glanced down. His torso would've been bare if it wasn't utterly covered in bandages where his torso had been split open. Relaxing, he slouched back in the bed, looking flustered.

"Sorry about that," he said, sounding abashed, "bad experiences with hospitals." He stared at nothing in particular for a second, his gaze going glassy before he shook his head. "You saved my ass out there," he said, giving Blake a small smile. "Never seen anyone move like that. Who are you?" As he spoke, the robot floated down and nuzzled Vickers, the man affectionately patting it as it did, before it flew back up to the ceiling.

"Blake Belladonna," Blake said, feeling a little bit of warmth in her chest.

Vickers's smile widened. "I'm James Walker." Blake blinked before looking at Ironwood in confusion, only to find him looking back. James noticed. "Uh. Something wrong with my name? It doesn't mean anything inappropriate around here does it?"

"No, we were under the impression you were Sergeant Vickers," Ironwood said. "It's what your armor said."

James's eyes widened in understanding. "Ah. That'd do it. Well, that armor wasn't originally mine. Thought it'd be obvious that I scavenged it, it belonged to a Marine. That makes it Pre-War by default. Well technically another guy scavenged it first and then I scavenged it when I found his camp long after he died."

"The Great War?" Ironwood asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion. Blake didn't blame him. James's armor was many things, but it didn't match anything related to the Great War. Why was James lying?

"Not really another war I can be talking about," James replied. "Sorry, didn't catch your name." James's eyes wandered, spotting the soldiers.

"General Ironwood," Ironwood said. "May I ask what you're doing in Vale?"

"Yeah, that," James said. "Ok, cards on the table, I don't know where I really am. I was poking around...a deserted facility and I stumbled into some weird portal thing and got sucked in. No idea how far I got sent. Any chance I could have a map?"

"Of course," Blake said before Ironwood could reply. Pulling out her scroll, Blake brought up a map of Remnant and moved forward. James's eyes widened in shock at the scroll.

"Crap! That's some high-tech stuff you got there," he said admiringly. "Makes my Pip-Boy look like a rusted up piece of junk." Smiling, he took the scroll and looked at the map. Almost at once, it slid off his face. He looked at it for a few seconds before shifting his gaze to Blake. "That's not funny."

Blake blinked in confusion. "It wasn't meant to be a joke."

"Ok," James said. "Can I please get a proper map then? I don't know what this is supposed to be, but it isn't anything tangible." James looked a little insulted, as if Blake had just handed him a child's coloring book when he had been asking for something important. "I-you know what, look. Where's my Pip-Boy? I got a proper map on that, it'll eliminate any confusion."

"A few questions before that," Ironwood said. "We picked up a couple of bodies near where you were found. Two men in odd armor and antiquated weaponry. Do you know anything about them." Almost at once, James's face was covered in disgust and hatred. The change was so abrupt that it almost made Blake take a step back.

"Oh I know them," James said darkly. "Soldiers from Caesar's Legion. They pronounce it Ki-Zar, but most people pronounce it See-Zer. Mainly because f-" his eyes darted towards Blake and he came to a sudden stop mid-sentence. "Because screw them," he finished. "Marauding band of slavers and wannabe conquerors. There's only a couple of things they've not stooped to. Torture, public executions, and a lot of other things I don't feel comfortable talking about." Again, he glanced at Blake. "Wait a minute," he said, a creeping realization working its way into his voice. "You said you found two bodies? As in, only two?"

"Two and an arm," Ironwood replied. His face had been steely ever since James had made the remark about the Great War, but here it slackened a bit. "Why, are there more?"

"Four more," James said, holding fingers up to emphasize the point. "I think their leadership is dead, but if you've got any guards in the area I'd put them on alert. They weren't too heavily armed, but they could still cause some harm if they're not stopped before they reach unguarded civilians. They were wearing the same armor as the ones you picked up." Ironwood nodded before pressing his fingers to his ear, speaking to someone on the other end. James turned to talk to Blake upon seeing Ironwood was busy at the moment. "I would've gone after them myself, but then those Grimm things showed up." He shuddered. "What are those things? How much radiation did they soak up to turn black like that?"

"Radiation?" Blake said, feeling very confused. "I...no one knows where Grimm come from. They've been around for as long as we can remember." She had no idea why James thought radiation had anything to do with Grimm. Sunlight beams and radio waves creating Grimm? Blake was starting to get worried. Not recognizing a map of Remnant and now a nonsensical theory like that? Had he suffered some form of head trauma recently?

Ironwood lowered his fingers. "Thank you for that. I'm glad that you are being honest and upfront with me. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable before I continue with my questions?"

"Little stuffy in here, any chance you can open a window?" James asked. Ironwood replied by shooting a look at one of the soldiers, who responded with a nod. The lone window in the room was closed with a shade pulled over it, something both soldiers moved to rectify. Within seconds, an unlocked window was open, letting a pleasantly cool breeze in. The sun had long since set, and now moonlight was flowing in from outside, the moon perfectly visible.

"Thanks," James said, looking outside with a look of relief before looking back at Ironwood. "Now you said you…" he started before slowly trailing off. He frowned in confusion before looking back at the window. Then his eyes widened. "WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THE MOON!?" Everyone in the room jumped back, even James, who leaped out of his bed, exposing a rather worn pair of pants that he was wearing, and wincing as he put pressure on his wounds. "I just-it fucking-broken-WHEN THE FUCK DID THAT HAPPEN!?" he shouted, gesturing at the shattered moon.

"Mr. Walker?" Ironwood said, sounding taken aback but still remaining calm. "The moon has always been like that." Behind his back, he made a subtle gesture to his soldiers, who signed back silently. Blake had no idea what he had specifically told them, but she had a bad feeling they would be much quicker to draw their weapons now.

"Bullshit!" James shouted. "I looked up at the damn thing last night! It was in one piece back then." He pressed his palm into his forehead in exasperation. "What the hell is going on!? Ever since I ended up here nothing has made any goddamn sense! Giant wolves that are bigger than I am, people growing dog ears, an underage little shit deflected nearly an entire magazine's worth of bullets with a sword, and now the moon is fucking broken!? What HAPPENED!?" He pointed at Blake. "And I'm sorry, I really don't want to sound ungrateful, you saved my life, but HOW!? How did you move like that!?"

Blake was beyond confused now. He didn't understand the moon, Fanus, Grimm, and Aura? Even the most backwater village situated in the middle of nowhere would know about all of them with the possible exception of Fanus if they were really isolated. "Mr. Walker, all of those are perfectly normal," she said, not sure how else to phrase it. "Any Huntress who didn't graduate on a fluke can match my speed, I'm still in training."

"Huntress?" James said, looking and sounding like instead of an answer he had been given another question. "I just-what the fucking-none of this makes any goddamn sense."

Blake paused for a second, not sure how to reply. Then a thought hit her. "Wait a minute," she said, bolting for the door and exiting the room. Darting to the table laden with James's possessions, she grabbed the gauntlet marked Pip-Boy and headed back to the room. Stopping in front of James, she handed it to him. "There's got to be some kind of misunderstanding here. Could you please show me where you came from?"

Blinking a few times before understanding what Blake was asking, James nodded and took the gauntlet, affixing it to his left arm. Pressing a few buttons and twisting a knob, James held out his wrist so Blake could see the screen. It was an incredibly poor quality map of some kind of world with six different land masses, although for some reason the upper right one was split in half and seven different continents were listed. James had not been exaggerating when he had said that her scroll made this look like a piece of junk. "There," he said, pressing his finger near the west coast of the north-west most continent. "Nevada, specifically the Mojave Wasteland."

Blake brought up her scroll again, the map of Remnant still on it. "You're here right now," she said, pointing at the city of Vale. The two of them stood there in silence, eyes darting back and forth between the maps. Blake felt frustrated. She had felt like if they had the map James felt was the right one out, and the actual map of Remnant, something might click. Instead, it made even less sense. "How did this happen?"

"Wait," James said, sounding as if he had just realized something terrible. "This planet. What's its name?"

"Remnant," Blake replied. Her mind was racing now, considering the implications of what he had just asked. The name of the planet? No. It couldn't be. Could it?

James looked like Blake had just announced his death sentence. Staggering back, he slumped back onto the bed, looking devastated. He dumbly looked around without seeing, at a lost for words. Then, his hands curled into a fist, and anger blossomed on his face. "KLEIN YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!" he shouted.

An awkward silence followed this. Blake was the one to break it. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?" James gave an awkward nod. "But how does that work? You know what the Great War was. Earlier, you mentioned it and said that there couldn't be another war that we were talking about."

"Question," James replied, looking rather morose as he spoke. "Did your Great War involve a mass exchange of nuclear weapons?" Blake blinked in confusion. Nuclear whatnow? James noticed her confusion. "Ok, that explains a lot," he said. "I was wondering how the heck you had such advanced technology. And it turns out the answer is that you didn't smash your infrastructure back to the stone age. Heh. Fancy that." He gave a forced smile.

"Wait, what's a nuclear weapon? What do you mean smashed your infrastructure?" Blake asked. Just out of the corner of her eye, she spotted General Ironwood tensing a little bit, but he didn't say anything.

James sucked in a long breath. "Oh boy. Well, quick little history lesson, stupidly abridged. Back where I'm from there used to be a lot of countries and all of them heavily relied on fossil fuels; a lot of wars broke out when they started drying up. Two major powers, America and China, had a massive war where tens of millions of people were killed on both sides. America had the high ground in that war by a couple of centimeters since China technically struck first, but they both crossed so many lines that they were both vile monsters by the end, America even turning around and conquering a former ally just to have easier supply lines. For over a decade the two tore each other to shreds. And then. Well."

He sighed, leaning back in his bed. "Imagine an explosion that's so powerful that it vaporizes all living matter at its center. Kills it so fast that it's utterly painless because you're dead before your brain even has time to register what's going on. But it's also so powerful that, even if you've got some good distance from the center, you'll probably be killed by third-degree burns and debris going who knows how fast. But that's just the immediate effects. This explosion also comes with a nasty little bonus, copious amounts of nuclear radiation. It kills you slowly and painfully, pretty much every cell begins to break down and die from it. If you're extremely, EXTREMELY lucky, you turn into a Ghoul and live, but otherwise, you die. Or worse, go feral."

He leaned back against the wall, looking at the ceiling. "Now imagine something like that happening hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times all over the planet, targeting every major population center, military base, and anything else that might be of some importance. It was mainly America and China doing it to each other, though from what I understand, pretty much everyone who had nuclear weapons was using them against everyone else who had them. That was the Great War." James snarled, and his voice became very bitter. "It lasted a grand total of two hours. That was over two-hundred years ago. We're still nowhere near close to recovering from it. Governments gone, infrastructure destroyed, environment devastated, and the selfish assholes left us to pick up the pieces."

He sighed again. "I guess we're clawing our way back to where we used to be, but it's painfully slow. The New California Republic only recently got printing presses going again, we have power, but we have to mooch off of Pre-War structures that either didn't get damaged during the war or we cobbled back together, and half of what we use is salvage." He tapped his Pip-Boy. "This was pulled out of a Vault, underground bunker meant to kept people alive through the war." A startlingly bitter and hateful expression crossed his face. "In theory anyway. Turned out that most of them were motherfucking Petri dishes for experimentation." Blake had only heard that much vileness in someone's voice a few times before, and she wondered what exactly James had seen to make him so mad.

That was one of around a hundred different thoughts that were bouncing around Blake's head right now. A war that devastating? One that had reduced an entire world to scavenging and making due with whatever they could repair? That had killed so many people? It didn't seem real. General Ironwood simply stared at James, his mouth slightly open. "How did you get here?" Blake said, unsure how to properly react to James's Great War, and instead deciding that she would ask a question she knew how to actually word.

"Like I said, portal of some kind. It...well, I don't want to go into too much detail, but let's just say some crazy old men and one crazy old lady had this little lab they ran, and I found a portal in there the Legion seemed interested in. Some friends and I had a fight with them, the thing got damaged, and I got sucked in with ED-E. In hindsight, this is the exact kind of asinine thing they would come up with." He paused. "You didn't find anyone else, did you? A man with a beret and sunglasses, a woman with a cowboy hat and bulletproof vest, anyone in stupidly big armor or decidedly not human looking?" Ironwood shook his head. "Not sure if that's good news or bad news," James grumbled. "Probably good, but hard to say."

Ironwood gave a look at the two soldiers. "You two are dismissed, report back to your usual posts." Both soldiers saluted Ironwood and left the room without a word, closing the door silently behind them.

James watched them go with suspicion. "Ok, elephant in the room, I got the feeling that they were there to shoot me the second you felt like I was dangerous the moment I saw them. What changed?"

"After your story, I have reached one of two conclusions," Ironwood said. "One is that you're telling the truth, in which case you're just a lone person lost in a world you barely understand, or that you're deluded in this view of another planet, in which case you deserve my sympathy more than my hostility." James gave a wry smile and raised his middle finger in Ironwood's direction. "Ironically, the more bizarre explanation is the one that has more evidence backing it up, considering how otherworldly some of your equipment is. Either way, I've mostly deemed you to not be a threat. Mostly. May I ask how you turned White Fang operatives to goop?"

"Plasma grenade," James replied. "Pre-War weapon. Damn powerful and useful. Kinda sucks that I only have two left now though," he said. "Come to think of it, I'm probably gonna have my work cut out for me getting resupplies for my weapons. Also, I'm throwing this out there on a faint hope, is there any chance you have any technology that's capable of teleporting someone from one planet, or world, or dimension, or whatever I came from to another." The long silence directed at him spoke volumes. "Had a feeling it was a long shot. So. Where do we go from here? Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm effectively homeless and broke here. Safe bet that all the money I have is worthless here."

"I believe I can help with that," a voice said as the door opened. Blake felt a shock go through her as Professor Ozpin stepped into the room, cane in one hand, a scroll in the other. "James?"

"Yes?" Both James and Ironwood said. There was an awkward pause as the two of them looked at each other. "One of those situations, huh?" James said wryly.

"General in that case," Ozpin said. "I got your message about our guest and I was listening at the door for the last part of the conversation and I think I have the gist of it. You no longer consider him a potential threat, correct? In that case, it's safe for me to talk to him and make him an offer."

Ironwood nodded. "Very well. I'll probably have a few more questions for him, he only gave me a partial picture, but I can have those later. I'll have my men bring his possessions in and if you're doing what I think you're doing, that should handle the matter of him having those weapons. Though do be careful Oz." Blake frowned. There was something odd about the way Ironwood and Ozpin were talking to each other. It was friendly but strained. As if something had happened between them. Before anything else could happen though, Ironwood left.

"I'm sorry, you have me at a disadvantage," James said, looking at Ozpin. "Professor was it?"

"Yes," Ozpin said pleasantly. "Head of Beacon Academy." James stared blankly. "It's a school where we train talented young students to be Huntsmen and Huntresses, men and women who fight Grimm and keep people safe. I hear you're in need of work and a place to stay. Tell me, what experience do you have?"

"That's a long one," James said. "Well, my go-to job was courier for a while. It let me travel a lot, so I liked that, but I've done odd jobs all over the place. Caravan guard, regular guard, I acted as an interrogator one time and tricked the guy into thinking I was one of his people who had snuck in, smoothed over diplomatic ties more than once, did some bounty hunter work," he shuddered, "met some nasty people in that line of work, thankfully nearly all of them are targets. You haven't known disgust until you've met people like Cook-Cook and a crazy lady with a knife she calls the emasculator. Aside from that, I've done plenty of what can be classified as merc work for the NCR, that's New California Republic by the way, and seen more combat than I can remember."

"How many people have you killed?" Ozpin asked bluntly. "If I may ask. You've done both mercenary work and bounty hunter work? Exactly how much?"

James looked very uncomfortable. "We talking direct combat here? As in, with my own two hands? Or are we talking anyone who directly died as a result of my actions, intentional or otherwise? Like, if I left a stove on by accident and someone lit a match in the room, we counting that?" James's entire body had gone tense and his fingers were curling a bit. Blake knew that look all too well. She had gone through it herself. The feeling of an uncomfortable subject that you really didn't want to talk about.

"Directly," Ozpin said, his warm smile faltering for just a second. "I assume you didn't go out of your way to kill any innocents?"

"Of course not!" James said, sounding offended, his tension slipping away as soon as it had come. "I can promise you that if I put a bullet in someone's head, they had it coming. As for how many, hold on, let me think. Let's see...there was Goodsprings, NCRCF, Primm, spent a lot of time fighting Fiends. The Legion, let's see... the ambush on the road to Novac, Forlorn Hope, Nelson, Cottonwood Cove, the raid on Bitter Springs, plus the assassination parties, and can't forget Hoover Dam. After that, there were the White Legs. Add in some desperate Jackals, Vipers, and Freeside thugs, that's at least a dozen or two. Those four Brotherhood assholes. The Ghost People, no who am I kidding, they stopped being human a long time ago. Oh, and the White Fang too. Ok. If I had to take a wild guess, people only, I'd say I've killed...around 250 people."

The number hung in the air, staggering with its implication. The number of people Blake personally knew didn't even reach half of that number, and he had personally wiped that many out. "And you're certain they were all deserving of death?"

"Well, let's see," James said dryly. "Wannabe anarchists with a TNT fetish, drugged up bandits that tortured and mutilated for fun, the aforementioned slaving conquerors, a tribe that wanted to join the slaving conquerors, run of the mill thugs that tried to jump me, a few bull-headed zealots that massacred aid workers for pitiful reasons, and as of recently, terrorists that fired without hesitation on civilians. I'm fairly certain. None of them had any interest in doing anything other than being total monsters."

"What kind of world do you come from?" Blake asked before she could stop herself. Remnant had its problems, there was no getting around it, but it sounded idyllic to wherever he had come from.

"If I'm being honest, I ask myself that question twice a week," James said. "I wish I could tell you. It's called Earth by the way. Not exactly the most creative name, and really "water" would've been more accurate, but I wasn't there when they named it." He turned his attention back to Ozpin. "You aren't planning on making me a teacher, are you?" he said hesitantly. "I don't think that's up my alley. You need, you know, actual qualifications for that."

"Oh certainly," Ozpin said. "No no no, far too quick to be offering you a teacher's job. Particularly in the middle of the semester. You need years of experience for that." A sly smile played around his face. "For a teacher's aid on the other hand, not so much." He nodded at Blake. "You've already met Ms. Belladonna, one of my first-year students at Beacon. I'm pleased and proud to say that I have a very talented body of students, one that has exceeded my expectations and held their own in unexpected situations where their lives were on the line. However, while I don't think you would be a good fit for a head teacher, I think you have potential as an aid. I hear you held your own out there, even though it sounds like you never fought a Grimm before."

"I killed three," James said sourly. "She killed seven. Frankly, when it comes to killing Grimm, she'd be the one to teach me. As much as can be taught about killing giant wolves, anyway."

"True, but there are smaller little details that you have that my students don't, things you've picked up from a long life. It would be beneficial to pass them on. In a support capacity that is," Ozpin said.

"I don't know," James said uncertainty. "This sounds like a permanent position, and I have to say that I was never the type of person to stick in one place for very long. Even when I stayed in one general area for an extended period of time I tended to move from town to town a lot." He gave an annoyed grunt. "Though to be fair, I'm out of options. I've got a big bag of caps and NCR bills that are worthless here, and I don't know where else to look for work. But I just don't know." Blake was sure she had misheard the word cap. "Oh wait, I got one thing that's worthwhile. Blake, did they pull out a bag of coins when they were going through my things?"

"I'm not sure, there was a lot," Blake said, starting for the door. "Should I check?"

"Please do," Ozpin said. "And please bring your team back with you. I get the feeling Mr. Walker might be able to make his decision more easily if he can see the type of bright young minds he'll be working with. In the meantime, I feel like I have a lot to explain to him." Blake shot Ozpin and appreciatory smile as she slid out of the room. Outside, two Atlas soldiers were gathering up some of James's possessions, specifically his clothes and armor, and moving towards the room. Blake stopped at the table, scanned the small mountain of items, and spotted a small drawstring bag.

Taking it, she opened it and poured out the coins into the palm of her hand. Most of them were silver, depicting a young man, but a couple of them were much larger and gold. The majority of the gold coins depicted an older man, but one depicted a woman with a cleft lip. "They use this as money?" Blake wondered out loud, pouring the coins back into the pouch. It felt like something out of a museum. She continued on her way to the lobby, not sure how she was going to break all of this to them.

When she was halfway there, she realized that in the confusion of learning where James was from, she hadn't gotten a chance to ask her question. Though, considering James had mentioned an "underage little shit," with a sword, she had her answer anyway. "Adam," she whispered, "what are you doing?" Grimacing, she pushed the thoughts out of her mind as she drew near her friends.

XXXXX

As Blake left the room, ED-E let out a string of Morse code. It took him awhile to get through it, making it impractical in the heat of battle, but James was still glad he had taught the little robot it. "I like them both. They're nice."

"You think everyone is nice," James replied as the door opened again and some soldiers in silver armor dropped off his clothes and armor before leaving. "Thank god," he said, taking off his Pip-Boy and getting up. "Hope you don't mind," James said, gingerly getting to his feet, careful not to strain his throbbing chest, and starting to work his clothes on.

"Not at all," Ozpin said. James wasn't sure what to make of Ozpin. He struck him as the eccentric old grandpa that always knew just a little bit more than he said. A stark contrast from Ironwood, who felt well-meaning but certainly had one hell of a stick up his ass. Waking up in a hospital under armed guard had been a highly unpleasant experience, but at least no one had taken any of his organs out when he had been unconscious. He hoped. "But tell me, you seem awfully surprised by Blake's abilities. Do the words Aura and Semblance mean anything to you?"

"I met a couple of junkies who told me I had a negative aura once," James said, sliding his shirt on and then moving to his chest plate, buckling all the appropriate straps into place. "I'm pretty sure they were on both Jet and Buffout at the same time though. Aside from that, no."

"Aura is what enabled her to move like that," Ozpin replied. "Aura is a manifestation of the soul." Instantly, thoughts of Joshua Graham flooded into James's head, and he had no idea how to reply. He had never been particularly religious, and he always felt awkward when caught in a conversation about those kinds of topics. He never knew what to say. But almost as if Ozpin could read his mind, he continued. "Not in the spiritual sense, but in the very real, physically observable sense." Now James was good and lost.

"What?" he said, stumbling halfway through putting his coat on. "I mean...what?"

"All living things have a soul, even plants, and Aura is a physical manifestation of it," Ozpin said, calmly and warmly. "It increases your strength, acts as a shield, permits you to move faster, and allows you to heal faster. Everyone can use Aura, but it requires a great deal of training, and the Aura of many is too weak to bother. It only makes them slightly stronger, for Aura reflects you as a person, and it takes a strong will to have a worthwhile Aura."

"You'll forgive me if I don't want to spend years trying to weaponize my soul only to figure out I was a dud," James said wryly, which earned a laugh from Ozpin.

"Of course not," he said warmly. "There's an easier way to do it. A skilled enough Huntsman or Huntress can use their Aura to activate someone else's. And considering that it would be in your best interest to have an active Aura if you're working at a school full of young people with powerful Auras, well. I'd be delighted to activate yours." Ozpin held out his hand.

James eyed it wearily. "I still haven't said yes to that job offer," he said, trying to equate the pros and cons for all of this and coming up with nothing for either. This was so beyond his frame of reference that he had no idea what the hell he was doing anymore. "I feel like you're trying to entrap me with benefits up front."

Another laugh from Ozpin. "It certainly looks that way, doesn't it? Well, consider this complimentary. Even if you don't work for me, I still think you'll be needing your Aura to get by in this world. I know you're a talented fighter, but Remnant can be very dangerous, and you're going to need every last advantage you can get your hands on." James continued to stare, and as he did, he remembered the redheaded boy who had so easily wiped the floor with him. There were people like that boy out there with the capability to kill him with a flick of their wrist if he stayed the way he was now. And it was with no strings attached. Well. Screw it.

Hesitantly, he reached out his hand, taking Ozpin's. "Thank you for trusting me," Ozpin said, before squeezing James's hand tightly. "For it is in passing that we achieve immortality. Through this, we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee." James felt dizzy. Ozpin seemed to be half fading in and out of existence in front of him. And then something inside of him blazed into life. The next thing that he knew, he felt stronger, fitter, and healthier than he had ever felt in his life, and a bright green aura was pulsing around his body.

Pulling his hand back out of reflex, James looked down at his hands, the green glow surrounding them slowly starting to fade away. "What the shit?" he whispered.

"That's your Aura," Ozpin said gently. "I'd say it's around average in strength and size. I've met Huntsman and Huntresses with far weaker Aura than this, but those who were far stronger as well. I suggest you take some time to practice with it. Your Aura can protect you from harm, but not passively. You have to actively maintain it in order to do so. Aside from that, the only thing left of notice is your Semblance. Most qualities of Aura are the same from person to person, varying only in terms of strength, but Semblance is different. It's an ability each person with a strong active Aura has, unique to that person with a handful of hereditary exceptions."

"Ok," James said, feeling mostly confused with a little bit of unexpected excitement being mixed in. As bizarre and somewhat alienating as this whole experience was, the little kid inside of him that had gleefully read whatever scavenged copies of Grognak the Barbarian he could find was practically jumping up and down with excitement at this prospect. "So what's mine?"

"Semblances can't be unlocked the way Auras can. Once your Aura is unlocked, it comes on its own time. Sometimes in the heat of a life or death situation, sometimes in the middle of typical physical exertion, sometimes it just happens. We can't find out yours until it activates." He adjusted his glasses, looking at the Pip-Boy James had taken off. He blinked. "Oh, my. That's odd. It's never happened like this before."

"What?" James said, pulling on the one right glove that he had before sliding his Pip-Boy onto his left arm. And then he saw it. On the screen of the Pip-Boy, Vault-Boy was dressed as a ringmaster, spinning a cane in one hand and holding a top hat in the other, kicking his legs as he did. Words blazed across the screen. "LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! WELCOME TO WILD WILD WASTELAND! ONE SPIN EVERY 24 HOURS, AND YOU'RE ALWAYS A WINNER! SO COME ON DOWN, DON'T BE A STRANGER, AND ALWAYS REMEMBER TO HAVE FUN!" The very center button on the Pip-Boy was now labeled "spin" by the screen, with the rest of the borders of the screen still the same, but with "Wild Wild Wasteland" now crammed into the corner. He looked up at Ozpin. "Is this safe to use?"

"It should be, but just to be safe," he said, taking a few steps forward to the point where he was only a few inches away from James. "My Aura should be more than enough to contain anything that is less than pleasant. Go ahead. See what you've unlocked within yourself." Here goes nothing James thought, pressing the spin button. At once, a virtual slot machine filled up the screen, Vault-Boy in the corner with betting slips in his hands as he chanted silently at the spinning wheels, cheap noises that he had heard constantly from New Vegas slot machines now flooding out of the Pip-Boy.

After a few seconds, all three of the green wheels came to a stop, each one stopping right after the last, and all of them the same. An image of Vault-Boy using a pistol to blast another person into tiny, bloody pieces. "WINNER!" flashed on the screen, and there was a bright flash and a small pop. A magazine appeared in James's free hand. Blinking, he held it up to eye level.

It was indistinguishable from the magazines he used for his rifle, complete with a 12.7mm round poking out of the top, but there was one exception. A sticky note posted to the side with a smiling face on it and two words. "Bloody Mess." Glancing back at the Pip-Boy, he saw Vault-Boy had thrown up his betting slips and started to do a happy dance before the slot machine vanished and was replaced by a counter that started from 24 hours and began to tick down. "THANK YOU FOR PLAYING! PLEASE COME AGAIN TOMORROW!" Hesitantly, he gave the Pip-Boy a poke. Hitting the spin button did nothing. Hitting the map button brought him back to the map as it normally did, but "Wild Wild Wasteland" was still there in the UI.

He looked at the Bloody Mess magazine again. "I don't think these are normal bullets."

"Most likely not," Ozpin said. "We'll see exactly what they are when we get the chance. I must say Mr. Walker, I've seen many a dazzling Semblance, many an overwhelming Semblance, and many a devastating Semblance. But I think yours takes the prize for being, by far, the strangest Semblance I've ever seen. Only one use every 24 hours? Unlike anything I've ever seen before."

"Seems like a handicap," James said, flicking through the other functions of his Pip-Boy to see if there had been any other changes. "And I'm guessing the slot machine means that whatever it does is random?" Ozpin gave a small shrug. "Not sure how to feel about this. Still, I do appreciate the gesture." He slid the Bloody Mess magazine into his coat. "So, all of this is basically magic," he continued. "Magic is real." That got a very odd reaction out of Ozpin. His smile got a little too wide at that point. "I mean, the closest thing we ever had to this back on Earth were Glowing Ones and a few psychic mutants. It's fucking magic."

"Not exactly," Ozpin said, his smile still just a little too wide. "Magic is still the stuff of fairy tales, this is very different." James had to fight back the urge to roll his eyes. He had seen a girl make a copy of herself out of shadows and he had just pulled a magazine out of thin air. Ozpin could split hairs all he wanted, but magic was magic. "Oh, two more things," Ozpin said, reaching into his pocket and producing the same type of device Blake had used, as well as a small stack of plastic cards. "10,000 Lien and a scroll. You'll be needing both. Lien is our form of money, you can see the number indicating their worth in the corner, and a scroll is a communications device. You can contact anyone else who has a scroll, no matter how far away. It can do a lot more than that, but I don't want to overload you."

"And this is if I take the job?" James asked, looking at the money and scroll. He had no idea how much Lien was worth compared to caps or NCR dollars, but the stack was a little thick, and he doubted he was a small amount. Maybe Ozpin had money to throw around, but James doubted that he would be giving this away idly.

"It's for you even if you don't take the job," Ozpin said. "And one last addition. If you take the job and decide you don't like it in the first month, you can leave with no strings attached and the month's salary." James weighed this. Ozpin really wanted to have him on board. And truth be told, it was sounding like a very good offer. There were just two things holding him back at this point.

"Look. No offense, this place sounds great, but I'd like to get back to my world, however I can," James said. "And I don't know why the Legion was looking at that portal thing and I don't know if any of them went through before I found them. If I'm gonna be spending time in here not going home, I should be looking around to make sure there aren't any legionaries lurking around." Then he remembered that Ozpin had not been in the room when he had explained that to Ironwood. "Legionaries are a bunch of conquerors from my world, slavers, rapists, killers, that kind of stuff. I don't know why they were looking at the portal that brought me here, but it can't be any good."

Ozpin fingered his staff as he looked at James. "Wanting to stop these men is admirable, and wanting to return home is understandable. However, I don't think you're in any condition to do either. Not only do you have no means with which to return home or any resources with which to search for one, you have no idea where these legionaries are. Remnant is massive, and they could be anywhere in it." Ozpin paused, looking as if he was deep in thinking something over. James had a funny feeling that the other man was mentally debating how much information he was willing to share.

"What's more, there's something I feel I haven't explained properly. Teachers at Huntsman Academies aren't simply teachers. We're defenders as well. Grimm breached into Beacon today, and we were on the front lines along with the rest, pushing them back. If this Legion is a threat, I will be looking into it along with James," James groaned internally at the sound of Ironwood's first name. That was going to be annoying. "And with my other contacts. We will find them if they're here. And when we go to deal with them, I'll be needing your experience with them. And I also promise to do everything in my power to help find a way home for you."

Well. Fuck. Best Job offer I ever got in decades. Best offer that wasn't pitched by a prick anyway. There really wasn't anything else to say. "Ok. Ok, you got me," James said. "So. I start tomorrow?"

Ozpin laughed. "I appreciate your enthusiasm, but school isn't in tomorrow, and even if it normally was, it would most certainly be canceled after what happened today. On top of that, your Aura will speed up your healing and a doctor who has a healing Semblance took a look at you, but you should still take a day to rest and recover before you start working. In the meantime, I'll arrange to get you a key to one of the spare rooms in the teacher's dorm. I imagine you don't want to stay here overnight."

"Not if I can help it," James said, picking up his helmet and affixing it so that it hung off to his side. "Thank you for this, by the way. I've had complete strangers pull my ass out of the fire before, but it never stops meaning the world to me."

"Oh, I'll be giving you some pointers tomorrow during the day, but there's one thing I think I should mention now. I'm going to have to ask you to not swear in front of the students." James felt himself turn a little pink in the face and nodded. Is it too late to go back on this? Thankfully, at that moment, the door opened, and Blake returned, three other girls right behind her. James blinked as they all filled in, caught off guard by their outfits and just how colorful they were. Red, white, blue, yellow, black, purple, all of it jumped out at him and was far more vibrant than anything he had ever seen in the wasteland. "Ah, girls, just in time to meet the newest member of Beacon's staff. This is James Walker, he'll be working with us as a teacher's aide. I trust you'll give him the same respect you gave me."

"Of course," a girl in white with a ponytail that was the exact same color said. Giving a graceful curtsey, she walked forward and held her hand out. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Walker."

"James is fine," he said, uncertainly taking her hand and shaking it. "Mr. Walker makes me feel old."

"You are old," ED-E beeped from the corner. James flipped ED-E off with his spare hand behind his back.

"Ohhhhhh," a girl in red and black with matching hair and a cape said, noticing ED-E. James started to wonder if it was in style to have your clothes match your hair color, it seemed to be a factor with all of these girls. "What's that? Does he talk?" Walking forward, she held her arms out, her mouth quivering with excitement. "Come on boy, I won't hurt you." Almost at once, ED-E floated down into her hands. "Aw, he's sweet," the girl said, hugging the robot.

"He kinda talks," James said, feeling warm at the sight in front of him. "It's in code though. He can't handle complex speech, so we had to make do with that."

"Hiya!" the last girl, a blonde with hair so absurdly long that it was only one foot away from dragging on the ground, moving forward and grabbing James's hand as soon as the one in white let go of it. The first handshake had been gentle and polite, this one was far more energetic and excited. "Blake told us a lot of crazy stuff about you! It'll be really cool to have you as a teacher."

Blake in the background gave a mildly amused look before pointing to the members of her team. "Ruby Rose, our leader," she pointed at the girl in red. This confused James. Most of the girls looked to be either eighteen or seventeen, but Ruby looked a couple of years younger. "Weiss Schnee," the girl in white, "and Yang Xiao Long. Oh, and Yang and Ruby are sisters." If he had not been told that, James would never have guessed it. The two hardly looked anything alike. They didn't even have the same last name. There was doubtless a story behind that.

"Ruby, is there any chance you could do me a favor?" Ozpin asked. "Our guest here barely knows anything about Remnant. Is there any chance you and your team could take him out into the city tomorrow to get him acquainted with it? Some extra credit could be arranged for it."

Ruby didn't seem to need the incentive, because she had already given a tiny little hop of joy. "Omigosh sure!" she squealed. "Oh boy, we're gonna have to get through so much! Yang, I'm gonna need your help coordinating this! We're gonna need a to-do list in the next hour, stat!" Yang gave her sister an enthusiastic salute before producing a scroll and beginning to type furiously into it, the screen quickly filling up with words. James was trying to wrap his head around technology being able to do that when Ruby turned her attention to Weiss and Blake. "Any suggestions you have, send them to Yang, she'll organize them all."

"She always ignores my ideas," Weiss grumbled, folding her arms in a huff.

"Weiss, none of us know how to ballroom dance," Yang said, not looking up from her scroll or her mile a minute thumbs. "We would've all embarrassed ourselves."

"That's why I wanted you all to take classes first!" Weiss protested. "It's fun and not that hard to learn!"

"Meh," Yang said, continuing her typing. "We're out there too have fun, it's not fun if you need that much prep time." James had a feeling this was going to go on for awhile.

"Well, Mr. Walker," Ruby said. "It's gonna be real fun learning from you! It's pretty impressive that you took out some Beowolves even though you never met them before."

"Wait, I thought they were called Grimm," James said, sounding confused.

"Oh, they are," Ruby said, her bright gaze flickering for a second. "But there's a lot of types of Grimm. Beowolves are one of the more common types, but one of the smaller ones too." Oh, James thought. "Like, you should see a Nevermore or a Death Stalker. They're as big as a truck!" OH!

At that moment, an Atlas soldier walked in with James's rucksack, wordlessly depositing it on the bed before leaving. As he did, James reached into it feeling around until he felt a glass bottle and pulled it out. It was almost empty, a mouthful or two of dark amber whiskey inside. Pulling the cork out, James idly lifted it up to his lips and downed what little was left, his throat burning as it did. "Could you repeat that please?" he said as he lowered the bottle.

"Uh, don't worry, you'll be fine," Ruby said, trying to sound reassuring but not quite managing it. "I mean, we did. And you're way more experienced than us." ED-E nudged her arms, and reluctantly she let him go. The eyebot hovered back over to James before circling his head. "I mean, they all go down if you shoot them enough."

"Well, I suppose I've thrown myself in the deep end and managed to not drown before," James said dryly. "Multiple times. Sometimes with a ball and chain. But hey, what's one more?" I'm going to get myself killed someday, he thought.

"Well, I just arranged a room for Mr. Walker," Ozpin said, pressing his thumb into his scroll. "I'll get him settled in and you four can pick him up in the morning.

"Ok!" Ruby said happily, all four girls waving as Ozpin headed towards the door and James began to follow him. "See you tomorrow Mr. Walker." James waved back at him, wondering exactly where this bizarre turn in his life would take him, and how many new scars he would have when he walked away from it. Assuming he walked away from it.

XXXXX

Author's Note: I didn't realize until I started writing this story that James and Ironwood have the same first name. Oops.

Also there was one stupidly bad RWBYxBloodborne fic I read once that actually introduced an interesting idea. It started with usual badfic tropes, like when the Bloodborne MC gets de-aged to a teenager (because for some reason it was taking after the anime thing where protagonists aren't allowed to look over thirty) and he got folded in Beacon as a student. But then he got made a teacher. In context it was fucking dumb, he quickly proved to be a god awful teacher, except I don't think I was supposed to think that, and he looked like a teenager, so the whole thing was laughable, and with is without getting into what a goddamn edgelord the kid was. But still, the idea of a crossover with the person inserted into RWBY is a teacher instead of another student for the umpteenth time stuck with me. I even toyed with the idea of a Bloodborne character teaching Beacon students about Bloodborne specific enemies just in case the Beast Plague ever spread in Remnant. And now I'm using the idea here, although I plan to toy around with it in ways I don't think you guys will expect. The point is, in my experience a lot of RWBY crossovers who put someone in the world of RWBY like to make the newcomer one of the kids. Personally, I'm more interested in depicting them as part of the older generation.

Also, I have to say thinking up James's character took a lot more work than I thought it would. I didn't want to just take the Courier and put in whatever character I felt like, I wanted to create a character that felt like a Good Karma, pro-NCR Courier, (albeit one that wonders if he should've gone Independent.) The Courier travels a lot, idly leaving to go on expeditions outside of the Mojave and has been confirmed to have been to Reno in the past, so it sounds like they're a drifter, and therefore so is James. Things like that. I'll be talking more about the decisions I made in his character as the story goes on because believe me, I put a lot of thought into this.

Also, the added on explanations for Aura are me trying to have it make sense that someone with strong Aura can activate someone else's Aura and Atlas hasn't done this with every single one of their soldiers for some reason.

Ok, I promised I would work on my other fics before continuing this one, but the words just kept coming and coming, and next thing I knew I had written another big chapter in under a week, so consider this a bonus before I get back to work on From the Ashes and Stupid Deaths.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, Ryan Van Schaack, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, and Josue Garcia for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 3

Times They Are a Changing

XXXXX

He had been told before he had turned in for the night that Team RWBY, a Team with a spelling that still baffled him because it was pronounced "Ruby" and not however you pronounce an r, w, and b together, would arrive for him at 8 AM sharp. Despite the fact that he had turned in at midnight and had been dead tired, he found himself wide awake at 6:17, aimlessly wandering around his new lodgings. It had been described to him as being like a one person apartment, with one room for sleeping, one for using the bathroom, and a third for everything else. He wasn't quite sure how to react to all of it and had spent the majority of the mourning poking around it.

The kitchen had been a minor treasure trove of wonders for him. A fully functional refrigerator, one stocked with a few complementary foods Ozpin had probably slipped in, a working stove, and heating and air conditioning.

He had been astounded to find a working shower in the bathroom, doubly so when he figured out, quite painfully, that it had hot water. Despite this, it had taken him a good ten minutes of deliberation to decide if he even wanted a shower. Bathing in the wasteland was a rare thing, and it was usually done with soaked rags or sponges. Spraying yourself nonstop while you washed yourself was just such a massive and selfish waste of clean water. But water seemed to be in abundant supply here, to the point where no one was in danger of going thirsty. The idea of there just being that much clean water didn't feel real, and he kept getting bombarded by paranoid thoughts that Remnant didn't have nearly as much clean water as they thought they did and they were wasting it.

Eventually, he had compromised. Instead of using the shower, he had taken a couple of towers and soaked them in the sink, using them and soap to slowly clean himself. Even then, the warm water felt amazing in the towels.

Currently, he was standing in the bathroom, toweling himself off from his bath and sliding his clothes back on. He took a look at himself in the mirror. His hair was getting a little long, both on his head and on his face. He was starting a job tomorrow, so a shave was probably in order. Drawing his combat knife, he approached the mirror and had angled his face to start on his right when he spotted something next to the mirror. A bottle labeled "R. Petrosinella's Shaving Cream" with an odd-looking tool next to it. Picking it up, he turned it over. He remembered his father had once said that his grandfather, James's great-grandfather had shaved with something like this, a weird stick with a couple of horizontal blades in the edges. And somehow the shaving cream helped.

Putting down the odd tool, James picked up the shaving cream and gave an experimental squirt onto his finger. An odd, white, fluffy substance came out. He stared at it, wondering what he was supposed to do. He thought hard back to what his father had said about this, but when the Brahmin had been fed and watered and the family had made camp for the night, his dad had been the type to ramble. The type of person who couldn't tell a simple story without going off on fifteen different tangents, and so James had developed a tendency to tune a lot of it out. He vaguely recalled something about putting it on the stubble you were shaving, so James did just that.

He stared at himself in the mirror for a few seconds with a speck of shaving cream on his face before realizing how utterly stupid he felt. "Fuck it," he said, putting the can down and going back for his knife. Five minutes later, his stubble had been carefully shaved off to the best of his ability with the knife and he had moved onto his hair. Seizing handfuls of it and then slicing through it, James slowly worked his way through his hair until it was at a length he liked.

Sheathing his knife, he took a look at himself. There was still some stubble left, although it was a very thin layer, and his hair was nice and short now. Though, with a pang of annoyance, he realized he had cut off well over half of the last vestiges of his brown hair, not leaving much left. "Fuck," he said, sticking one hand in his hair and moving it around, looking for hidden pockets of brown. He had no such success. "Well, guess I just gotta get used to the gray hair," he grumbled.

Around that point, there was a sharp knock on the door. He checked his Pip-Boy. 8:02. That would be them, assuming someone else hadn't decided to pay him a house call. He made for the door, before pausing to look uncertainly at the corner of the room. There was a weapons locker there, with all of his weapons inside with the exception of his knife and A Light Shining In Darkness, which was strapped to his back. Would carrying around that many weapons be seen as good taste in this world? He didn't know. He stared at the arsenal, taking it all in and wondering, feeling a little lost.

There was another knock on the door. "One second!" he called out. "Screw it," he muttered, approaching the locker and loading himself up with his weapons and munitions, storing the White Fang SMG in his rucksack before approaching the door and opening it.

"Heya!" Four teenage girls were waiting for him on the other side, the one with the absurdly long blonde hair in the front, waving at James. He did a quick mental recount of their names. Yang, Blake, Ruby, Weiss. Again, all of them were wearing outfits that heavily featured colors that matched their hair. James privately thought that he might be onto something with his theory that that was a kind of fashion statement. "Ready to go?" Yang asked. "We're-wait hold up, you carry around that many weapons?" she asked, pointing to James's guns.

He paused, giving the girls a good look over before answering. Blake had her...thing at her side, Weiss appeared to have a rapier, there was a red, blocky thing on Ruby's back, and Yang didn't have any weapons James could see. Apparently, people tended to travel light with weaponry here. Though considering Blake's weapon had somehow managed to double as a ranged and melee weapon, maybe most weapons were just more streamlined. "Yeah. Tended to spend a lot of time away from settlements, didn't know how long it would be or what I would run into, so I wanted to be prepared."

Yang nodded, looking thoughtful. "Ok, I can dig that. What are their names?"

There was a long pause. "I beg your pardon?" Names? What, was he supposed to name his weapons Bob, Jim, and Sarah or something?

"Their names?" Yang replied, sounding as if she didn't understand why James was confused. "I mean, any weapon you trust your life with has to have a name." With a flick of her wrist, Yang's bracelets unpacked, stretching outward to cover her knuckles to a flurry of mechanical clinking. "These bad boys are called Ember Celica."

Weiss drew her sword, and unless James was mistaken, it appeared to have a revolver's cylinder just below the pommel, with objects of bright color in each of the chambers. "Myrtenaster," she said proudly.

Blake unholstered her sword/SMG/grappling hook whatever it was. "Gambol Shroud." James was getting to the point where he was wondering if any of these names meant anything. They sounded impressive, but at this point, all that meant to him was that it was going to be a lot harder to remember them. A thought process that was broken as Ruby revealed her weapon.

Taking the blocky shape off of her back, she gave it a twirl. In a single, fluid, graceful moment, it unfolded into a giant scythe, one that was easily bigger than the girl holding it. It happened so quickly, and the scythe had proven to be so much bigger than it's compact form had implied it was, that James took a step back in shock. Ruby smiled, apparently pleased at the reaction. "Crescent Rose!" she said proudly.

"I see," James said, feeling overwhelmed. "Well, can't say I ever gave my guns names. 'My rifle' and 'my shotgun' were always enough for me. Though I sometimes call this gun 'Therapy' as a joke," he said, pointing at his SMG. The memory of him pumping bullets into the Big Mountain satellite flashed through his mind as he said that. "So I...well now that I think about it, I do have one gun with a name." Reaching around to his back, he drew his pistol from it's concealed position on its back and held it up. "A Light Shining In Darkness" he said. "Six shot magazine, 45. caliber auto pistol, I mainly use it as a holdout."

"That's more like it," Yang said, looking at A Light Shining In Darkness. "So why don't your other guns have names? I mean, if you can come up with names like that, you're pretty good at it. And your other guns deserve names more than a dinky little pistol like that."

James let out a laugh. "Dinky? It's a holdout pistol. A concealed weapon. It's supposed to be on the small side. I can't exactly walk around with a big bulge on my back and try and pass it off as a particularly bad cyst. As for why it's simple really. I wasn't the one who named it. This pistol was a gift from a man I met in my travels. Religious man, damn interesting to talk to, but he was kind of in a dark place when I met him. Let his anger and his pain get the better of him." He looked at the engraving on the side of the pistol. He couldn't read it, but Joshua had told him what it meant. "And the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not." He smiled. "But I think he found his way by the time we parted."

"What happened?" Blake asked. There was an odd expression on her face as she said that.

"It's a bit of a long story," James said, tucking his pistol away. "I doubt we have time for it."

"Oh, no no no no no," Yang said, a wide smile on her face. "You can't start with a lead like that and just leave us hanging. We want details, all of them."

James supposed he should've seen this coming. "Ok. But I haven't eaten since yesterday afternoon. How's that for a trade, I tell you the story, you tell me where I can get some good breakfast around here." He was pretty sure he had some smoked Gecko wrapped up in his rucksack, but it would be best to save that until he had nothing else left. Aside from that, part of him was rather curious to test out the local cuisines.

Yang snapped her fingers. "Weiss, this one's on you. Make it someplace fancy, but not too fancy."

Almost at once, the white-haired girl had had a strange device, James had to think for a second before remembering it was a scroll, in her hands and was typing into it. "Well H&G's Bakery is open early in the morning, and let me tell you they have pastries to die for, but if that's not your thing I know a couple of local cafes that do standard variety."

"Honestly I'm not picky, you decide," James said, hoping this wouldn't come back to bite him. "Breakfast is on me, I got the cash." He glanced at the bag of Nuka-Cola and Sunset Sarsaparilla caps that he had placed on the small table next to his bed. It was frustrating, back home that would've been a small fortune of money, but here it was practically worthless. Still, at least he had some money to replace it. Move on and adapt was the only way forward at the moment.

Weiss lowered her scroll, looking aghast. "We can't let you do that! We just met, and I know your money situation is a little uncertain at the moment." James half wanted to tell her to not rub it in but didn't want to be rude, so he stayed silent.

"Weiss, Weiss Weiss Weiss," Yang said, shaking her head and giving comically overdone tuts. "When a nice man or woman offers to buy you food, you don't turn them down. It's free food Weiss, I can count on my fingers the number of times you should turn down free food."

"You are uncultured," Weiss said in a huff.

"Guilty as charged," Yang said with a wide grin.

Weiss glared at Yang. James wondered if he should intervene, stopping students from bickering would probably be something he would be doing a lot on the new job, but Weiss spoke again before he could decide. "I was going to say that I should pay, seeing as my allowance more than covers a five-person meal, with plenty of wiggle room after that."

That moment was when James knew he had to put his foot down. "I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm around three times older than you, I'm going to be working with your teachers, and I've got a month's advance burning a hole in my pocket with no rent coming up. It wouldn't be right for me to expect you to foot the bill with your limited allowance." He felt like that was a well-reasoned way to put it, and Weiss didn't strike him as the type of person who would argue too much with an authority figure who was being diplomatic. What he hadn't expected was Yang to burst out laughing.

"Weiss's allowance. Limited. Oh, that's a good one," she choked out between laughs.

"Yang," Blake said, her voice stern. "He doesn't know." Almost at once, Yang stopped laughing.

"Oh yeah. Right. Sorry, forgot," she said, looking guilty. James looked back and forth between all of the girls, feeling thoroughly confused. It was a special type of confusion, the confusion where you were certain that you were the only one in the room that didn't know something, and he didn't even know where to start asking questions. Thankfully, Ruby came to his rescue.

"Weiss's family is kinda rich," she said bluntly. "Like, super rich. Like, there may not actually be anyone in Remnant that's richer than her family. Her dad runs the Schnee Dust Company" James stared at Ruby, then at Weiss. Weiss had a sour expression on her face for reasons James wasn't sure of, but she quickly suppressed it.

"I can assure you that there are richer families out there, I had to sit and listen about my father complain about them for hours on end," she said. "But, as Ruby puts it, my family is indeed super rich. And my allowance reflects that." She produced a card. Where from, James had no idea, Weiss's dress didn't seem to have any pockets or pouches. They had to be hidden somewhere. "As such, I do insist that you let me pay. In a certain sense, you're a guest here in Remnant, and I intend to be a good host."

James wanted to argue against Weiss's suggestion, but with the revelation that her dad was Heck Gunderson on steroids, he felt like he didn't have a good leg to stand on. So, accepting defeat, he nodded. Weiss smiled brightly. "Excellent. To H&G's Bakery, it is!" Turning around with a graceful flourish, she led the way out, James and the others following.

"ED-E!" James called. The eyebot had been resting on James's bed and burst to life as he followed James and Team RWBY out the front door. The light shone down on them as they left, and James put his hand up to shield his eyes. "Question. Does Aura keep you from getting sunburns?"

"Nope, doesn't protect you from something like that. So," Yang said, sliding up to James's side. "I believed you promised us a little backstory for A Light Shining In Darkness?"

James nodded. He had promised. "Did Blake tell all of you about the Legion?" He received a trio of nods. "Right. The Legion was founded by Caesar, but he had a right-hand man called Joshua Graham. For a long time, Joshua fought alongside Caesar as his legate, killing and conquering in his name, until the Legion met the NCR. Joshua led Caesar's army in a battle that was supposed to end the NCR presence in the region. Instead, they ended up walking into a trap and were decimated. Caesar blamed Joshua for the failure, and punished him."

"He tried to kill him didn't he?" Blake said at once.

James nodded. "Key word there is tried. Caesar had Joshua covered in pitch, set on fire, and tossed into the Grand Canyon. The funny thing about Joshua though? He just refuses to die. The NCR thought they had killed him a dozen different times, but he just kept cropping up, and Caesar did not succeed where they had failed. Disillusioned with Caesar, Joshua limped back to his old home, New Canaan. The experience changed him, and he began to atone for what he had done. But Caesar?" His voice grew low. "Caesar is beyond petty. He ordered an attack on New Canaan, used a tribe called the White Legs to do it. They slaughtered everyone they could find, combatant and noncombatant alike, and then salted the earth so nothing could grow there. A lot of the Canaanites escaped, but just as many were killed."

There was an uncomfortable silence from the four girls as they walked through Beacon campus. James had to admit, the place was impressive. Towering buildings in pristine condition and healthy green grass growing all around, but he wasn't focusing on it at the moment. His thoughts were drifting back to Zion. "Then what happened?" Ruby asked, sounding as if she wasn't sure if she wanted to hear the answer.

"Joshua took refuge with a pair of tribes the New Canaanites had been working with and helped them to defend themselves against the White Legs. That's around the point I came in. The White Legs hit a caravan I was traveling with, I was the only survivor." James still sometimes felt bad about the caravan members that had been so unceremoniously gunned down that day. Except for Ricky. Fuck Ricky. James had never heard so much concentrated stupid spew out of someone's mouth before he had met Ricky. And he had met Mr. Fantastic and a talking toaster. "I met up with Joshua and the tribes after that and helped them with the White Legs."

He thought back to Joshua, and how otherworldly the man could seem at times, and yet so very human at others. "He's a hard man to describe. Religious in a time where not a lot of people are and pretty philosophical. But the man was angry. So goddamn angry. A lot of the viciousness from his time in the Legion was still around, he was just channeling it in a more productive way." Unless James was imagining it, Blake looked extremely uncomfortable right now. Her eyes widened and her back stiffened. But when he tried to catch her eye, she looked away. He decided not to press the issue.

"We led a counter-attack on the White Legs and we won pretty by a good-sized margin. But then, Joshua started executing White Legs that had surrendered and was about to kill their leader." He let out a sigh. Salt-Upon-Wounds had been a bastard in every sense of the word. A man that wouldn't have been out of place as a Centurion in the Legion. "It's hard to make calls out in the wasteland. You have to make sure you survive while holding onto your morals, and it's a damn tough tightrope to walk. He led a tribe that slaughtered innocents, but I could see it in his eyes. He was a broken man. His warrior spirit was gone. Killing him wouldn't have accomplished anything. But when I talked Joshua down from doing it, I didn't do it for him. I did it for Joshua."

Words echoed in James's mind. I want to have my revenge. Against him. Against Caesar. I want to call it my own, to make my anger God's anger. To justify the things I've done. "If things had been different, I don't know. I would have never have let Salt-Upon-Wounds leave that valley if there was the slightest hint that he would've gone back to raiding and pillaging. But as it stands, the White Legs collapsed after their defeat, and from what I've been hearing Joshua Graham has become a more tempered person since then. He certainly seemed that way when we parted." He patted the pistol on his back. "With him giving me a gift on the way out."

"Wow," Ruby said, her eyes wide. "How many adventures like that have you been on?"

"More than I can count, but one story's enough for right now," James said. "I...where are we?" He stopped. They had long since left the campus, it was only a tiny block in the distance. He could see the vague outline of a city not far ahead. They were all on a dirt path connecting the two, but it had crossed through a wooded area, thick with trees and foliage. James had seen trees before, but they were all dead and withered. These trees were alive and covered with bright green leaves, the grass around them just as bright. James stared, open-mouthed at it all.

The girls didn't seem to find it particularly impressive. "Oh, just a bit of forest that's between Beacon and the city," Weiss said. "The walk is a little long, sorry about that, but apparently Beacon's founders thought that urban clutter wasn't something they wanted near their school. It does help give off a peaceful atmosphere at times, but it makes the commute a bit of a pain." The four girls moved on, heading in the direction of the city. James stayed where he was.

The forest had an odd smell. A fresh smell of things growing, dying, and growing again. And somehow it smelled a little wet too. He closed his eyes and listened. He heard a happy tweeting noise. Birds, far happier and kinder than the crows he was used to. At that moment, a strong wind blew up. It felt pleasantly cool on James's skin, and it rustled the leaves in the trees softly. His throat felt very tight.

He opened his eyes. A yellow butterfly fluttered in front of his face, hovered there for a few seconds, and then flew off. Somewhere out of sight, he heard grass rustling. No doubt a small animal scurrying about in it. He sniffed. "Mr. Walker? I mean, James?" Blake had doubled back and was now standing in front of him. "I," she paused, then took a step forward in concern. "Are you ok?"

James touched his face. He wasn't sure when he had started crying, but a steady stream of tears was now streaking down both sides of his face. Sniffing again, he rubbed away the tears with the inside of his arm. "I think," he said. "I'm sorry, it just kind of all hit me at once. W-we don't have anything like this where I'm from. Not anymore." He pulled his arm back, wiping away the last of his tears with his hand. "Sorry you had to see a stupid old man getting sentimental on you."

"Please, don't apologize," Blake said, looking deeply concerned. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Yeah," James said, giving a small smile. "Trust me. If I see more like this, I'll never want to leave this place." Blake nodded uncertainty. Blake led the way back to where the rest of Team RWBY had stopped to wait. All of them gave questioning looks, but Blake shook her head. They continued to walk, the city getting close. "Hey, I told you guys a story, any chance I can ask a question in return?"

"What about?" Weiss asked curiously.

"The White Fang, who are they exactly?" James said. "I mean, I think I get the general gist of it. Not very fond of humans. I'm guessing the animal parts make them different from humans and there's some tension there?" He looked around at all four of them. "Help me out here, I'm still mostly in the dark and I want to know which organization I just killed seven members of."

"Nothing you said was wrong," Blake said slowly. "Faunus, they're called Faunus, are looked down on by a lot of humans." James vaguely recalled the term Faunus coming up last night, though if Blake had told him what they were, it had gotten lost in the shock of learning the nature of his situation. "The White Fang used to be a peaceful organization that strove for equality between humans and Faunus. But there was a shift in leadership. Things became more violent. Some members of the White Fang even advocate for Faunus superiority."

"Wait, don't tell me," James said, bitterness seeping into his voice. "And any Faunus that willingly associates with humans, or god forbid is with one romantically, they're a race traitor?" The dog-eared man flashed in his memories.

For a second, James thought Blake was staring at him. Then he realized she was staring at anything in particular, and that her eyes had gone glassy. Before he could voice his concerns though, she refocused on him, and the moment had passed. "I wouldn't be surprised," she said bitterly. "I mean, you saw what I saw yesterday. So many of them just want to hurt and kill people to make themselves feel better. After what they did to Vale, it's clear that they're not very picky about who they target."

"Fantastic," James growled. "Just great. Yeah, this kind of crap happened back where I was from too. Humans, Ghouls, and Super Mutants don't exactly sing and skip under a rainbow. There was this one rumor I heard about what happened on the east coast. I hope it isn't true, but there was apparently a bloodbath over there. Ghouls got let into a safe haven and then massacred all the humans inside. Then someone massacred all of them." Of course, he had only heard one half of the problem. "And humans would have had to do something to push Faunus to this point?"

"Sadly," Blake said. "There are vile, hateful people all over Remnant. Vale's honestly pretty good about it, Faunus can walk around without fear or worry for the most part, but even then you still have thugs like Cardin. And there are no guarantees outside the city." She sighed. The bow on her head twitched. James stared at it for a second before it clicked. Ahhhhhhh. She's got personal investment in this one, he thought."So what's a Super Mutant? And a Ghoul?"

"Lot's of history with the Super Mutants as to where they came from that I'm not ready to go into," James said. "But imagine a person who's eight feet tall, has arms and legs like tree trunks, is bald, dark green, and exposed veins all over. That's a Super Mutant. Ghouls are normal sized, but without their epidermis and probably some of their dermis, and with a raspy voice. They both used to be human. Super Mutants were changed by some artificial chemical thing, and Ghouls were changed by exposure to radiation. Things can get pretty ugly between them and humans, and sometimes even between Super Mutants and Ghouls. A lot of Super Mutants way back when kind of had the whole superior race thing going on too. That's a side effect of you being immortal provided you don't starve or die a violent death. Same thing goes for the Ghouls. I know one that's well over two-hundred years old, the crusty old coot."

"I imagine things are worse when the things that make them different are so noticeable like that, they're impossible to hide," Blake said. As she spoke, she idly adjusted her bow. Ok, that settles it, she's a Faunus, he thought. "But you said you knew one?"

"Yup, name's Raul," James said. "Guy's so old he was around before the war started. Had a Super Mutant in my group of friends too, Lily. Super Mutants technically don't have a biological sex, but she was a woman before she turned and I'm not an asshole. I think you guys would like Raul, provided you ignore he's drier than the Mojave. Figuratively and literally."

"And, we are here!" Ruby announced happily. They had reached Vale. At first, it was scattered buildings, houses mainly, in areas where there was still plenty of trees and grass. Then the buildings got more densely packed, the grass was swallowed up by streets and sidewalks, and swarms of people filled the streets. James's eyes narrowed. This he knew. Aside from the fact that the buildings were better maintained and there were a lot more people, this reminded him a lot of Freeside. His eyes darted from alleyway to alleyway, keeping an eye out for anyone who might decide they were an easy mark. He rested his hand on the handle of his SMG, just in case he had to draw it in a hurry.

"What's up?" Ruby asked, apparently having noticed James's behavior. All of the girls were looking at him again.

"Just making sure no one decides to stick a knife between our ribs," he replied. "We've all got a lot of hardware here, it'd fetch a good price on an underground market." One would think that no one would dare to attack a group this heavily armed, but desperation could drive people to do just about anything. James himself had been attacked in Freeside by thugs with pipes even though he had been armed, armored, and with company.

"Uh. That doesn't happen here. At all," Weiss said uncertainty. "I mean, sure, walk down a dark alley at night and who knows what happens, but in Vale? In broad daylight? In public? That just isn't something you worry about in Vale."

"....Oh," James said, taking his hand off of his SMG. He felt stupid. The logical part of his brain told him that he had been going on decades of instinct and that no one had told him that crime wasn't a factor here. The rest of him couldn't help but realize that this was the second time this morning that Team RWBY had stopped to wonder if everything was all right with him. It was getting to the point where he was wondering if everything was all right with him. Even as they continued to walk, him receiving an occasional backward glance from the girls, he couldn't help but keep watching the alleys out of the corner of his eye. Not having to worry about being attacked? At all? It didn't feel real. Nothing about Remnant felt real.

Mercifully, his mind was taken off his distressing topic by Ruby. "Oh my gosh. Emerald? EMERALD!" She started waving enthusiastically. There was a small, one-story building not far ahead. A sign labeled "H&G's Bakery" was hanging over it, and a small group of people was right in front of it. They were all noticeably older than Team RWBY, at least in their mid-twenties and possibly older. A man in gray with matching hair, a woman with jet black hair and a brownish vest with black pants, and a woman with green hair, dark skin, and a bizarre top that didn't cover much. James had to take a double take at the last woman, unable to believe his eyes. Was that hair really green?

The woman turned as he was wondering it. Apparently, she was Emerald. Yang fell back in the group to where James was and leaned towards James and whispered to him. "Emerald," she pointed at the green haired woman, "Mercury," the man in gray, "Cinder," black haired woman. He gave a nod of appreciation.

"Hey Ruby, good to see you!" Emerald said as they approached. She had an overwhelmingly bubbly feel to her, one that brought smiles to all four members of team RWBY. Even James felt his lips curling upward as the woman beamed at them all. "Who's your friend? A father? Uncle?"

"Nah, nothing like that, just a guy who's starting work at Beacon," he said. "I'm...not from around here," he said. After all the embarrassing moments he had had this morning, he didn't feel like going into too much detail about his situation again. The broad strokes would be enough. "Kind of ended up here without having a lot of say in the matter, don't really have a way home at the moment, so I'm working at Beacon for the moment." He looked at the three of them. Emerald was looking at him with the same unfocused happiness she had been showing since she had noticed Team RWBY, while Cinder was silently eyeing him with interest. Mercury wasn't paying any attention to him, Team RWBY, or his companions.

In fact, at that moment, James noticed he was setting up a chess board on a table outside the cafe. Opposite him, a positively ancient old man, wrinkled and balding, was setting up his end of the pieces, albeit at a far slower rate. The man was covered from head toe in robes and was wearing black gloves, meaning his head was the only part of his body uncovered. Even then, a pair of sunglasses was resting over his eyes. Every time he put up a chess piece, he physically felt for it, grasping two or three times before he could find it. Every once in awhile, a woman behind him would step in to help.

She had fiery red hair that was in a very odd style. Some of it in elegant braids, while the rest of it hung wild and free. She wore an outfit that was a very dark red and seemed to be made out of some kind of leather, bared her arms, and had a pair of hand axes hanging from her back. But what was truly striking about her was that every exposed inch of skin was covered in tattoos. Bright blue tattoos that were a jumble of shapes that James couldn't follow, but had an organized chaos look to it. As James looked, she helped the old man put the final piece into place. "Ah, there we go," the man said in a soft voice. "Remind me, I'm black?"

"Yeah yeah," Mercury said, his voice positively oozing with apathy. Picking up one of his pawns, he moved it forward. "Pawn to f3."

"What's going on here?" Ruby asked with curiosity, stepping up to the chess match and watching it.

The old man chuckled. "I overheard an argument between these fine young ladies and gentleman. One of them said her companion was so bad at chess that he couldn't even beat a blind man."

"Well, hate to say it, it's true," Emerald interjected. "Mercury is pretty bad at chess. Stupidly so."

The old man chuckled again. "I recall more colorful language. But I was interested. I have a sense of humor, so I thought I'd put her claim to the test." Gently feeling the top of his chess pieces, he found one of his pawns and moved it forward two spaces. "Pawn to e5."

"Emerald likes to run her mouth, anything to make her eat her words is fine by me," Mercury said, still sounding like he couldn't care less about anything if he tried. With a bored look, he glanced at the board and moved a pawn two spaces forward. "Pawn to g4."

"A fair stance," the old man said, feeling for his pieces again and then taking his queen. "Queen to h4. It was a fun match. Sadly I think your friend might have been onto something. I mean no offense, but you literally could not have made a worse opening move than that."

"Hm?" Mercury said, looking down at the board. "What do you mean?" James did a quick look at the board, seeing if there was any move that Mercury could make. When he had moved his two pawns forward, he had left open a path to his king, and the old man had moved his queen there. It had a direct line of attack to the king, and Mercury could neither move his king nor get another piece in front to protect it.

"Checkmate," the old man said simply. "I hate to say it, but your friend was right. You can't even beat a blind man." Emerald's smile took on a very smug air. Mercury gave a disinterested sigh.

"Whatever," he said, getting to his feet.

"So, are you all students at Beacon too?" James said, doing his best not to laugh at Mercury's pitiful display in chess. Two moves. Checkmated in two moves. He barely played chess and he was certain that even he could have made it to five.

"Oh no, we go to Haven Academy," Emerald said. "We're in town for the Vytal Festival." James nodded, hoping that it would be convincing enough to hide the fact that he had no idea what a "vital festival" was. He was pretty sure you didn't need festivals to live. "Though we've been dropping into Beacon classes a lot, can't fall behind on our educations. So who knows, we might see you."

"Huntsmen and Huntresses in training then?" the old man said from where he sat. The redheaded woman behind him handed him a drink, James wasn't sure when she had gotten it because she hadn't had it before, tapping him gently on the shoulder. The old man took it, happily slurping on the straw sticking out of it. "Mmm, thank you Róta. Well, that's interesting. Shame I won't be in town for the festival, Róta and I need to head back to Mantle well before then."

"Oh, you're from Mantle?" Weiss asked, perking up as the man spoke. "I thought that you might be from Mistral."

The man smiled as he looked at Weiss. "Indeed young lady. I used to be from Mistral, but I immigrated to Atlas when I was a child." He lowered his drink. "Oh, where are my manners. I'm Tsung-Han. You can call me Han. I know manners would indicate you call me Tsung, but I was never bothered by that." He took another long sip. "My friend here is Róta Bloodaxe, I met her up in Mantle." Róta gave a small bow.

"Wait, seriously?" James said before he could stop himself. "Bloodaxe?"

Róta smiled silently at him. Thankfully it wasn't an "I'll rip your head off if you say one more word" smile, but a smile of actual amusement. "Her people, a small isolated tribe, had a leader in their history that used that name. Her family adopted it." Another long drink. "So, is anyone else up for a game? I can squeeze in one more before Róta and I need to catch our flight back home."

"Not me," Mercury said, getting up without a backward glance. "Cinder, you said we had to be somewhere?"

"I did," Cinder said. Still smiling, a smile that was rather disarming in ways James couldn't put into words, she held out her hand to him. "I look forward to seeing what you bring to Beacon Academy." Smiling, James took her hand and shook it. Giving a gesture for the rest of her team to follow, Cinder walked away, Mercury and Emerald right behind her. James watched them go, feeling a strange mixture of emotions inside of him. Emerald seemed nice, Mercury seemed like a bit of a jerk who never grew out of his broody teenage years, but Cinder made him feel uneasy.

"Well!" Weiss said, stepping forward and sitting down opposite Han. "I'll happily play you, sir!" She reset the board, a very brief process, before handing her card to Blake, who took it. "I think five cinnamon buns for all of us should be enough," she said as Han slowly moved his own pieces into place. Blake nodded and moved into the store as Weiss made her first move, calling it out for Han. Then Han made his move. A brisk pace quickly developed, with it becoming clear that Weiss wasn't the novice that Mercury was. A pile of captured black chess pieces started to pile up to her right, with Han's queen topping the pile.

But Han was matching her blow for blow, and for every one of his pieces Weiss managed to take, she was forced to give up one of hers in return. A good five turns passed with Weiss holding her queen back in order to keep it the fight, only for Han to finally take it after sacrificing one of his rooks as bait. Weiss's eyes were boring down onto the board in laser focus as she began to take longer and longer to plan out her moves, even though the board was starting to become very sparse.

Han seemed to be having the time of his life, chucking every time he lost a piece, and taking long sips of his drink as he did. "Don't remember the last time I played someone who gave me this much of a thrashing," he said cheerfully. "If you're this good now, I can only imagine how good you'll be twenty years from now." When Blake emerged from the bakery with five bulky pastries in hand, Weiss barely paid attention as one was handed to her along with her card. She took one bite before moving her last knight to take Han's last bishop.

He grinned. "I was hoping you'd do that. I needed a distraction." He moved one of his two remaining pawns forward. "May I have my queen back please?" Weiss's face turned pale as she silently took Han's pawn off the board, replacing it with his queen. "Well, your move."

Weiss took a deep breath, a large bite of her roll, and looked silently at the board. There were a grand total of six pieces left. Both kings, a pawn and a bishop for Weiss, a pawn and a queen for Han. James took his roll but didn't take his eyes off the board. There was a certain magic in watching a bout of skill that was way above your level, and Weiss and Han were mesmerizing to watch. That being said, things did seem to have finally peaked in Han's favor. But Weiss didn't seem ready to give up.

She moved her king back a space, out of range of his queen, right into the corner of the board. "I know what you're trying to do, lure my queen into a spot where your bishop can get her. Well, I'm not falling for that trap." Instead, he moved his own bishop to claim Weiss's remaining pawn. With a swift move, Weiss moved her bishop, taking his in return. "And with that, your last major piece falls." His queen took her bishop. "Make your move."

Weiss only had her king left, boxed onto the corner of the board. Despite this, she leaned back into her chair, folding her arms, looking proud of herself. "I can't." James looked more closely. Weiss's king was still in the corner. Han's queen was two above and one to the left of it. Every spot Weiss could move her king to was in the range of the queen, but the space it was already on wasn't. James blinked. He was pretty sure this meant that Han had won, but no one else seemed to be reacting that way. Han himself was reaching across the board, touching the pieces to remind himself where they were.

Then he let out a laugh. "Well well. You can't put your own king in check, can you? It's a draw then."

Weiss nodded, holding her hand out for Han to shake. "Good game." Han nodded in return. Weiss continued to hold her hand out, waiting for the shake to come, but it never did. Behind Han, Róta's eyes to Weiss, before jerking her head in the direction of Han's. Specifically, at his sunglasses. Weiss's face turned bright red as she slowly lowered her hand. Desperate for something else to do, she picked up her bun and took a large bite of it. Seeing her eat, James remembered that he had a bun of his own and started to eat it without looking.

He had chewed for half a second before an explosion of flavors hit his tongue. Deliciously sweet and wonderfully warm, the bun tasted better than anything he had ever eaten. "God. They don't have anything like this back in my world." He regretted saying that almost at once.

"World?" Han said, turning in James's direction, Róta doing the same. James fought back the urge to groan.

"It's hard to explain, and honestly I've been through too much in the past 24 hours to have the strength to go through it all. But let's just say...I used to be from another place and an incident made me end up here. Not sure if I'll be getting back anytime soon, if at all." He looked down at the bun in his hands. It was a rich dark brown, sticky to the touch, and covered in white cream. He had never had anything this expertly prepared to eat back in the Mojave. "It's been a tough time, I'm not going to lie."

"Sounds like you're going through a lot," Han said. "But I've been through hard times myself and I've a bit of advice for you. Always push forward. No matter how hard it feels, no matter how much you feel like you should just give up, always push forward."

"And besides, you've got people who will help you out!" Ruby said excitedly. "We can't just let you do all of this by yourself."

James grinned. "Well, got me there." He took another bite of the bun. It really was good.

"I'm sure you'll find a way back to your Earth in no time," Han said. "But I think now should be a time of relaxation. Let the worries come another day. You're working with these young ladies tomorrow? I think they should be sharing some of their experiences as Huntresses with their new instructor."

"Well, if we're gonna be telling him about how awesome team RWBY is, maybe we should tell him about the time we fought a giant robot on the highway?" Yang said, flashing that grin that she seemed to have honed to perfection. "Thing was as big as a house and we still took it down. Not a scratch on any of us. Or about the time we fought another one on top of a train that the White Fang was using."

"You're kidding me," James said, staring at her.

"Nope!" Yang said cheerfully.

"It's worth pointing out that the latter one happened the day we met you," Blake said. "So we all were having a pretty stressful day that day."

"In that case I think we better talk about something else," James said, searching his brain for light-hearted stories to share. There were half of the things Cass spewed out when she was getting tipsy. All things that would get him fired in a heartbeat. There was Fisto. No, that still fell into the realms of "I am tired of being employed." Ricky, no, fuck Ricky. Well, if no one else had anything, he supposed he could always talk about a man and his obsession with Dinky the Dinosaur. Thankfully he was spared from the nightmare that was trying to psychoanalyze Cliff Briscoe.

"Oh, we gotta tell him how we got bunk beds set up in our rooms," Yang said. "We barely got all of the books in place." James had a sinking feeling in his stomach as she said that. But he pushed it aside, deciding to give Yang a chance to explain herself. Then the blonde went into depth. It was worse than he had thought. Much worse. He could have given them credit for the books. But then they started talking about pulley systems and anchors, and a horrible accident waiting to happen entered his mind.

"Might I suggest you, uh, fix that?" he said. "I really don't want to start class only for Weiss to come tearing into the room, saying that something horrible happened to Ruby."

"But I'm the one who sleeps on the top bunk," Ruby said, "and besides, they've held out for months."

"I really hope me giving advice and being ignored isn't going to be a pattern," he said. "Is there anything else about your living conditions that I should be concerned about?" As he spoke, he checked the time on his Pip-Boy. 8:35. It was hard to imagine that not even half an hour had passed since they had set out.

"Um, Mr. Walker?" Ruby asked, glancing at the device. "I've been meaning to ask, what is that?" Blake, Weiss, and Yang all turned their attention to the Pip-Boy. The looks of curiosity and excitement in all of their eyes told James that this was something they had wanted to ask him for a long time.

"Pip-Boy," he said. "Kind of a multi-tool. Map, clock, monitors my vitals, useful stuff like that," he said. "Plays music too. Radio and tape." To emphasize his point, he hit the button on the side and opened the holo-tape slot on the back of the Pip-Boy. The mixtape he had was still in there. "That's one of the better tapes I managed to get my hands on. 128 kilobytes of memory, it wasn't cheap. I'm told some can hold 256, but I doubt I'll ever find someone who will be willing to part with one that good. But hey, I've got a few dozen songs at my beck and call now. Also, I think I got some tapes with a game or do in my rucksack somewhere."

Slapping the case slot shut, James hit the play button. I got spurs, that jingle jangle baby, jingle jangle. He relaxed a bit as the familiar tune played for a few seconds before it turned it off. "Pretty cool huh?" he asked, looking around. The reactions where not what he had been expecting. Weiss was smiling at him politely and looked like her face was about to snap in half from the effort, Blake was doing everything she could to avoid eye contact, Ruby was staring at him in disbelief, and Yang was fighting down a fit of giggles. "What?" he asked, confused.

"Um, oh geez, how to put this," Yang said, choking out the words through giggles. Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out what looked like a rectangular computer part and her scroll. "See this stick here? I used it to let Ruby upload some of my favorite songs the other day. It holds 128 gigabytes of memory. I even saw one that held 256 gigabytes, but that was a little too expensive for what I needed. I mean, seventy Lien? I'm not made of money." She pressed a few buttons on her scroll, causing a cheery, upbeat song that James didn't recognize to play. Come at me. And you'll see. I'm more than meets the eye. After a few lines, Yang turned it off. "So, uh, Ozpin gave you a scroll right? You might want to look at it and see exactly what it can do. No offense, but pretty much everything you just mentioned? A scroll can do it better, with the exception of monitoring vitals."

Without a word, James walked to the table where Han and Weiss were sitting, sat down, and looked up at the sky in disbelief. He lamented that it was far too early to go get a drink. Han chuckled again. "Getting old sucks, doesn't it? All the young people have such fancy gadgets that you barely understand. Just be thankful your body doesn't hurt all the time." He glanced over his shoulder in the general direction of Róta. "Speaking of which, the old aches are starting to come on." Róta nodded and produced a lighter and a cigarette for Han. Except on closer inspection, it wasn't a cigarette. It was a joint. "Helps with the old pains," he said as if he could tell James was flabbergasted, lighting it as he spoke. "Don't worry, nothing here will pollute the lungs of your students."

James went back to looking at the sky. "Hey," Yang said softly. "I can show you how to show how to set up your scroll?"

The young lady is helping the old fart with technology. Well, you should've seen this day coming to James, he thought to himself. "Sure," he said.

XXXXX

"So, thoughts on the new guy?" Mercury asked, his hands behind his head as he walked. "Seemed like a pretty basic old coot to me, but he was carrying a lot of weapons. What's Ozpin playing at?"

"Let's see what General Ironwood thinks about this," Cinder said, flicking through the scroll in her hands. Her backdoor into Ironwood's systems was still active, and still undetected. It brought her pride to see that, a feeling of power. She was right under Ozpin's nose and idly reading the secure files of one of his most trusted allies. Quite a few files had been added since yesterday, and while most of them were dedicated to the White Fang, there was one that was labeled "Walker." Opening it, she was greeted with a picture of Walker lying in a hospital bed, a large wound in his chest, and a wall of text of the general's notes.

She read them quickly, and a downright preposterous narrative was unfolded before her. "Well well," she said, sounding amused. "It appears Mr. Walker is a dimension hopper. He claims to be from another world where society has collapsed, and he fought against a conquering band of tribes." She scrolled through the rest of Ironwood's notes. "And Ozpin employed him at Beacon after hearing this. And both him and Ironwood seem to be entertaining that what he's saying is true." She noted a large red note at the bottom of the report. "Maintain observations where possible." She chuckled. "Though Ironwood doesn't fully trust him."

"Wait, so they pick up a bag of bones that's obvious cracked in the head and Ozpin gives him a job?" Mercury shrugged. "I was starting to feel like all of this was going too easily, and now it makes sense. Ozpin's lost it. Maybe he used to be someone worthwhile at some point, but at this point, he's just a senile old man who's taking in any lunatic who came his way. Honestly, Walker should be in an asylum."

"As much as I hate to side with the guy who literally couldn't beat a blind man in chess," Emerald said, "but I think Mercury's right. I mean, come on. Another world? My bet is he lost everyone he knew in the attack on Vale and he came up with all of that garbage as a coping mechanism. To distance himself from it all."

"I'm not so certain," Cinder said. "Ozpin and Ironwood are both arrogant, but they're not stupid. Something is rather odd about this Walker fellow. It really does just say like he did just pop up out of nowhere. Keep an eye on him. We might learn something interesting that way. But in the end, he's just another pawn on Ozpin's side of the board. A pawn in the game we're not playing anymore because we've moved onto bigger things. Just make sure he's not a bigger threat than either of them realize."

She exited out of the Walker file. He was an interesting anomaly, one that she did need to keep an eye on, but she had more important things to worry about. She flicked back to her messages, and to the one labeled Adam. No new messages. She frowned. "Adam still hasn't made contact with us," she said. "It's been nearly a whole day since the attack. He's late." A twinge of annoyance flared up in her gut. She had been very clear to Adam when she had swayed the White Fang to her side. She would provide them with supplies and weapons, but they answered to her now. And Adam seemed to need a reminder.

Mercury seemed to read her mind on that one. "Maybe he needs a few more dead henchmen? Then again, it might not make much of a difference to him, considering how many of his wannabe terrorists are now dead in a collapsed tunnel."

"I think Adam needs to personally learn the price of disobedience," Cinder said coldly, a dozen different ideas flipping through her head. "We thought we could teach the White Fang a lesson bottom up. I think it's time to try top down."

"I think I know why he's not responding," Emerald said. Cinder turned and say Emerald on her own scroll, holding it out to Cinder. "Look at this." Cinder took the scroll. It was a news article, one that had an image of a burning village. "White Fang attack village, killing dozens. Many bodies found beheaded and mutilated. Bite marks suggest dogs were set on unarmed villagers." Emerald lowered her scroll. "That's the second attack they've launched after the one on Vale didn't work. I think they're out for revenge."

That made sense. It was the kind of counterproductive and impulsive action a simple mind like Adam would take. "I think we need to pay Adam a visit the next time we get a chance. And maybe this time, we leave a new leader in charge of his little fiefdom."

Mercury perked up at this. "All right, this is more like it. When do we head out?" In so many ways, Mercury was similar to Adam, just with better impulse control. Still, both of them were easy to manipulate

"Not just yet, we have more important things to worry about. There are only three weeks until the Vytal Festival, and it'd draw too much attention for us to go missing now. Adam was only ever a bit player in our plans there, so we'll deal with him after that. In the meantime though, there is something regarding the White Fang I want the two of you to deal with. Tomorrow, I want you to search the city for any dens of White Fang activity, and snuff them out. Let's give him one last chance to remember his place. We may even be able to bring him to us and deal with him ahead of time."

"Can do," Mercury said, cracking his knuckles.

"Anything for you Cinder," Emerald said.

Cinder turned, making a point of doing it slowly, and looked at both of them. "You two are beyond important for what I have planned. Never forget that." Mercury rolled his eyes at this, but Emerald beamed at her, her eyes shining. It was like giving a scrap of food to a starving dog. Instant results for little effort. "In the meantime, focus on the Festival. Enjoy Walker's contributions to class tomorrow, but remember that he's just a sideshow. And that he'll burn with the rest of Ozpin's entourage." Walker would fall for siding with Ozpin, but only because Ozpin was a lost cause, a ship about to sink, dragging everyone on board down with him. In the end, they all only had themselves to blame.

XXXXX

Author's Note: You know, I consider New Vegas to be a lot more interesting than Fallout 3, but part of me wishes I was working with the Lone Wanderer this chapter. Why? Because when the White Fang came up, the Lone Wanderer would be able to bring up a personal experience they had gone through. Two words. Roy. Phillips. That fucking monster. Only "bad karma" kill I did with zero regret in that game. That would be a gold mine to explore with a RWBY and Fallout 3 crossover, because the comparisons between Roy and Adam would be enough for a stand-alone story.

Also I get the feeling that Weiss and Han would both be labeled as beginner level chess players for letting the match drag out to a point where there was barely anything left on the board (gut feeling here, not a chess expert) but that was a necessary evil so I could let the reader know what was going on without having an entire chess match play out. Doing that is ok when you have one person fall into a Fool's Mate, not so much when it's an actual serious match. Without a board in front of you guys, a chess match would be boring as sin to follow play by play.

Also, old man doesn't know how to smart phone.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, and Josue Garcia for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 4

Four Kings

XXXXX

The rest of the day passed pleasantly. Yang showed him the ins and outs of his new scroll before they bid goodbye to Han and Róta and headed on deeper into town. Hours trickled by as they showed him store after store, being kind enough to show him where he could buy food and furniture but also a couple of places where he could go to entertain himself. Quite a few people stopped to look at him, apparently even though Team RWBY looked positively like a rainbow next to him, he was considered more out of place.

All four of the girls were quite friendly and cheerily swapped contact information with him (apparently scrolls could do that) in case they ever needed to talk to him. Weiss treated them all to an excellent lunch at a restaurant that served up a steak that put anything the White Glove Society ever made to shame, and the manager didn't sound like he was trying to give himself oral because of how special he thought was either. A second improvement over the White Glove Society. He did give James an odd look but didn't seem to be too bothered by it once it had been clarified he worked for Beacon.

Eventually, though, the sun began to set. But as it did, James felt rather odd. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something felt wrong, even though the day had been nothing short of a treat. "See you tomorrow Mr. Walker-I mean James!" Ruby said as they finished their walk back from Vale to Beacon. "Let us know which class to expect you in." James nodded and waved as they parted, with them heading back to their dorm as they reached the teacher's dorm.

He looked up at his new home. Brand new looking, comfortable, and welcoming. He sighed as he pushed open the front door and made his way to his apartment. "Everything ok?" ED-E beeped behind him.

"Nothing sleep won't fix," James said, hoping that he was telling the truth. "Just feeling kind of worn out." He had no idea what was wrong with him. Towards the end of the day he had still enjoyed everything, but his enjoyment had had a dull edge to it. His stomach felt oddly hollow and it was only getting worse as time went by. He opened the door to his apartment walked in, removed his chest plate and guns and slumped down onto the bed. He didn't bother to get undressed any further or get under the covers. "Night ED-E," he said. A simple chirp came from ED-E as he settled down on a coffee table and went into sleep mode. James waited for sleep to come to him.

An hour later he was still waiting. He tossed, he turned, he adjusted his pillow, he ripped the blankets off his bed, but sleep wouldn't come. He turned over and looked at the ceiling. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his scroll and turned it on. Two messages were three. One from Ozpin and one from someone his scroll identified as "Professor Port." Port's message read as "Ah! You must be the new aide! Ozpin told me about you. I'll be working with you tomorrow in room B112. Class starts at 8:00 AM but I'd like to see you there at 7:00 AM. Looking forward to it!"

Ozpin's message was a bit more somber. "James, I had a talk with General Ironwood and he insists on interviewing you tomorrow." James had a very good feeling Ironwood had used the word interrogate instead of interview. "He'll be by when school gets out, and he has agreed to conduct the interview in my office with me present, so I'll have to ask you to come by when you're done with work. He also insisted you bring ED-E. Thank you for your patience."

Moving slowly, fumbling with the unfamiliar controls, replied to both. To Port, he sent a simple "I'll be there," and to Ozpin he typed "Ok, but if he tries to take ED-E apart we're gonna have a problem. I can take bits and pieces off to show him how he works, I practically put the guy back together when I found him, but if we're talking permanent disassemblement, tell Ironwood I won't be there." He lowered his scroll and looked at the ceiling again. "Fuck it." Getting up, he slapped his chest plate and coat back on. He looked at his guns, wondering if he really needed them after this morning. Deciding to play it safe, he took A Light Shining In Darkness and slapped it into his concealed holster. "Sleep tight buddy," he said, glancing at ED-E before heading out the door.

He walked back down the path to Vale, amazed at how many chirping bugs he heard, and eventually reached the city. James sighed as he walked down the streets of Vale, moving into one of the seedier parts of the city. Seedier by comparison anyway. Compared to places like Freeside, they seemed downright idyllic. Not 100% safe, he had seen more than one person eyeing him in a way that had made him feel reassuringly for his holdout pistol, which was still snugly strapped onto the small of his back, but he had gotten this far without hearing a gunshot. And yet, despite that, he felt a certain degree of powerlessness. For all the flaws with the Mojave Wasteland, you could tackle a good chunk of them head-on. In Vale, he couldn't just find the local peacekeeper, ask for work, deal with a major problem and move on to the next tiny settlement.

"Oh no, there's a large and reliable police force and people don't have to kill on a semi-regular basis in order to get by," he said sarcastically to himself. He smiled. He felt stupid. His discomfort was most likely a result of him being outside of where he normally operated an in an area where things called for a less hands-on approach from those who were civilians. And in some ways, Remnant was better for it. There weren't any bands of warmongering slavers knocking at the gates. And if Ozpin was telling the truth, he still had a role to play, so there was no reason to be like this.

He stopped, looking around. Music and bright lights were blaring out of a nearby building that wouldn't have looked out of place on the Strip, if not for the fact that it looked fairly new. He checked the time on his Pip-Boy. 9:00 PM. Class started at 8:00 AM the next day, and Port had said that he had wanted James to show up at 7:00 AM. He could afford to spend an hour out.

Fumbling through the pouches on his armor, he pulled out the cards that Ozpin had given him as his advance. It felt odd to view the thin, plastic cards as money, as opposed to paper bills, coins, or even the bottle cap. He vaguely recalled hearing about Pre-War society using some kind of cards for transactions, but when Arcade had brought them up, he had said that the cards themselves hadn't been worth anything. These cards were the legal tender of this world, not a medium for the real currency.

He flipped through them, recalling Ozpin telling him how much each one was worth, before taking a few of the smaller ones, tucking the rest away, and stepping inside the bar. Instantly, his eyes were assaulted by bright flashing lights coming at him from nearly all directions. Stopping for a few seconds to shield his eyes, he squinted through his fingers to look around. There were enough people in the club to pass for a busy night in a Strip casino, with the lights being at around the same level. White, bright lights were set up at nearly every angle, and a crowd dressed in bright, garish clothing milled between the bar and the dance floor that took up a good portion of the club.

His eyes adjusting to the light, James lowering his hand. It was hard to say whether or not this bar could be considered "respectable." It certainly looked clean and well maintained, rivaling the Ultra-Lux, and looking brand new. But the customers seemed to be a rather mixed bunch. Some looked like normal people who had just stumbled in, but most of them seemed to be the type that wouldn't be allowed in more respectable establishments. Shifty types, the kind that had been around the block a few times, had visible tattoos, scars, and just generally had a "don't screw with me" kind of look.

Reminding himself that he had A Light Shining In Darkness strapped to his back just in case things got hairy, James moved forward, stepping through the crowd, before sitting down at the bar. "What's your poison?" An utter giant of a bearded man in a dress shirt, black vest, and dress pants was standing behind the bar, cleaning out a glass with a rag.

"Whisky," James said. "I've got work in the morning, so I'd like something that will burn my throat but not give me a hangover."

"You'd be surprised how often I get that request. Or maybe you wouldn't." Ducking down, the man fiddled with something before rising up again with a glass full of ice and a bottle of amber-colored liquid. "Ten lien," he said, filling up the glass. "And I reserve the right to stop serving you if you look like you've had your fill." James placed a ten Lien card on the table, which the man took without comment. James pulled his drink towards him and had it halfway towards his mouth before he stopped. "What?" the man asked impatiently. "Too small?"

"No, it's fine," James said distractedly. Reaching into his drink, he plucked out one of the ice cubes and held it up in front of his face. "There's just some luxuries I'm not used to. Caught me off guard." The man rolled his eyes in annoyance and confusion, but James was barely paying attention. An ice cube. He was holding an honest to God, crystal clear and utterly clean ice cube in his hand. He had heard rumors that a few rich men and women back in the NCR core regions had gotten a couple of ice cube machines working, but he had only ever seen them personally in New Vegas. All the casinos served them in their drinks, but it was hardly cheap. Half the time, ice cubes in your drink cost more than the drink itself. And here, it had just been dumped in his drink, completely complimentary.

Putting the ice back in his drink, he gave a long gulp. He enjoyed the burning feeling as the whiskey slid down his throat, but he had to admit. It was easily ten times better when the whiskey was ice cold. Lowing his glass, he looked down into his drink, lost in thought. There was no doubt that the people of Remnant were used to ice being readily available. He couldn't help but wonder what else Remnant took for granted. That the Pre-War people of Earth had taken for granted before it had all been lost.

"Where's Junior? Where's that ugly sonfabitch?" A man had staggered up to the bar. If he wasn't drunk, he certainly was very close. He was staggering, had a noticeable slur to his words, and sounded very angry. James eyed him cautiously. In his experience, drunk men like this tended to look for a fight, and it rarely ended well. Looking around, he saw several men in black suits and red glasses eyeing the man too, slowly approaching him. Well, if security had things under control, James felt like he should probably stay out of it.

Reaching into his pockets, he produced a deck of playing cards. A game of solitaire while he enjoyed his drink seemed like a good way to pass the time. Sadly, he had barely begun to deal the cards when the scent of alcohol hit, and he found himself almost nose to nose with the drunk man. "Hey, the hell's Junior, asshole?"

"No idea," James answered honestly, weighing his options. It would be easy to quickdraw and get a shot off before the drunk did anything, but he hadn't done anything to threaten James's life yet. He would hold off on that until the man attempted to use a weapon, being an asshole wasn't a reason to kill a man. But if things escalated, he wanted to be prepared. "Look, if you don't mind, I'd like a little bit of space, I-" James was interrupted as the man clumsily shoved his drink off the counter, where it shattered on the floor. James let out a sigh of exasperation. "Really? We're stooping to that level?"

Well, talking his way out was looking like a much less likely option, the guy didn't seem to be listening at all. He lurched forward, grabbing James by the shoulder. "Look, you find Junior and tell him I want to talk to him. He owes me a lot of money, so quit playing dumb!"

Taking the drunk's wrist, James gave a quick shove and broke his grip, causing him to stumble back a few steps. "I have no idea who Junior is. I really think you should talk to someone else, or better yet, just go home. You're gonna do something to get yourself hurt, those guys behind you look like they're losing their patience with you."

Indeed, the men in suits looked as if they would love nothing better than to pummel the drunk into a pulp. One of them reached forward and grabbed the drunk by the shoulder. "I think you've had enough, time to go." He glanced at James. "My apologies sir. Your next drink is on the house." James nodded in appreciation.

"Fhack off!" the man swore, taking a step forward and trying to take a swing at James. James slid off his stool, grabbing it and holding it up in front of him as a makeshift club, but that proved to not be needed. A tree trunk of an arm shot out from behind the bar and wrapped around the man's throat. The bartender from before pulled the troublemaker over the bar, glaring at him. "Yhou," the man gurgled. "Give me my money bhack."

"You lost your money, fair and square," the man, apparently bearing the very unfitting name of Junior, said. "And now you're breaking my stuff. So consider this a warning. If you ever come back here after this, I'll let the twins throw you out in ribbons." With that, Junior easily threw the man with one hand, who landed and skidded a good ten feet across the floor. Getting up, looking broken, he slowly limped out. Silently, James put down his stool.

"Well, I took you for someone who was dead to the world, but you looked like you were quick on the uptake back there," Junior said, pouring James a second glass of whiskey. "Still, I hope you remember not to start shit in my bar. I've got guards for that."

"The plan was to let them take care of things until he took a swing at me," James said, taking a heavy gulp. "Thanks for that, by the way."

"Well, so long as you don't start anything, you're welcome...here..." He paused, glancing down at James's cards. "You play?" James nodded slowly. "Ok, let me be more clear. Do you gamble?" It was James's turn to pause. Well, he had spent a good amount of time in Vegas, it was nearly impossible to do that without gambling a little. And he had gambled more than most just by sheer virtue of being older than most wastelanders. He nodded.

"Well, let me make you an offer," Junior said, clasping his hands together. "Every week, I have a little backroom poker game. 5,000 lien each, just below the legal limit in this city. Ante is 100. Now, I'm warning you up front. You bet real money on this, and if you lose it, it's gone. That idiot didn't seem to get it. So if you play the game, you suck it up and deal with it if you lose. But if you win, you get to walk away with a fat wallet. I only let people in the back when I like them, and I like you a little more than I thought I was going to. Not much, but enough. Interested? You got the guts for it?"

Do I have the guts? Well, he's trying to make me impulsive. Make me loose with my money to prove how I'm not a coward, I'm just stupid. James thought. He could just walk away, there wasn't anything to lose. But Junior here, despite apparently liking him, apparently thought he would be that easy to manipulate him. Him saying that he liked James was probably just a ploy to try and get James to be impulsive and prove himself. He imagined taking Junior down a peg and getting a nice wad of cash in one fell swoop. Grinning, he emptied his drink and held it out to Junior. "Top me off and I'm in."

Junior blinked, then gave a small smile. "Glad to see you've got guts," he said, filling up James's drink.

Oh shut up James thought, looking at his drink and giving it a small swirl.

"You two," he said, pouring to a pair of his men, "man the bar. With this guy, we've got enough players to start. Gramps, with me." Rolling his eyes, James gathered up his barely started game, slid the cards into his pocket, grabbed his drink and followed Junior. The patrons of the club seemed to part before the giant of a man as he crossed it, James following in his wake. Eventually, they reached the far end of the club, where Junior rapped on a plain looking door.

The door slid open a crack, and a young woman in a frilly, blood red dress peaked out. Upon seeing Junior, the door slid shut and the sounds of locks being undone leaked out before the door opened all the way. Junior and James entered, the woman in red closed the door behind them. "Five grand," the woman said, sounding bored out of her mind as she held out her hand. A hand, James noticed, that had long and vicious red claws strapped to it. Deciding to not think too closely about what Junior had meant when he had talked about letting the twins throw the drunk out in ribbons, James produced his wallet. Fishing his money out, James counted out five-thousand Lien and handed it over. The woman sorted through it, looking as if she'd rather be anywhere else, before sliding it into a pouch she was wearing and giving James a handful of chips. "White is fifty, red is a hundred, blue are two-hundred," she said.

James nodded before looking around the room. Three people were sitting at a table, a man and two women, one with antlers coming out of her head, all with chips in front of them. Another woman, identical to the one who had been watching the door with the exception that she wore white instead of red, was on the far side of the table, watching the prospective gamblers. A glass of wine was in one of her hands, the bottle in the other. Silently, James sat down in an empty seat, Junior taking a seat opposite him.

"Just so that there's no whining, I want to make sure you all know the rules," Junior said sourly, glaring at his guests. "Five card draw. You get dealt five cards, you can discard three when the time for that comes, no more. If someone bets, you have to match the bet or fold. The only exception is that if you don't have enough to match, in which case you have to go all in or fold. If you lose, you stay quiet or get out, no throwing tantrums. No wild cards. Aces high. Ante of a hundred, no upper limit. Standard hand values, not up for debate." He gestured behind himself with a thumb. On the far wall was a graph, with all the possible poker hands listed from strongest to weakest, with royal flush at the top and high card at the bottom. James gave it a good look over and saw it was identical to the rules he was used to. Odd, but he wasn't complaining.

"I deal first, then we go clockwise from where I'm sitting." That would make the order him, the deer Faunus, the man, James, and the human woman. "All right, let's get started. Ante up." Five red chips clattered into the center of the table as Junior dealt with a practiced efficiency, and the game was on. James checked his hand. Two nines, a jack, a four and a two. Not a terrible start. "One," Junior said, tossing a red chip onto the pile. Everyone followed suit, no one raising until the time to discard came. James threw out his two and four and lady luck smiled on him, earning him a second jack. The woman in white, circling the table, doubtless looking for cheaters, poured herself a fresh glass of wine.

Forcing himself to stay stoic, James waited as Junior passed, the deer Faunus tossed in an extra red chip, which the man followed.

"I'd like to raise," James said, collecting the chips for five hundred, throwing it in the pile. The woman after him eyed him suspiciously, scrutinizing him closely before folding. Junior did the same, as did the Faunus woman.

"Hey, I'm not stupid," the man said, smirking as he looked at James. "This guy's bluffing. I call." Tossing in four hundred, he matched James's bet. "All right tough guy, show them," he said, laying out his own cards. A pair of tens and a pair of eights. James took them in, adrenaline pumping as he took in the cards before euphoria flowed through him and he lay down his own cards. The smirk slid off the man's face as James wrapped his hands around the pot and pulled them towards himself. To his left, he heard the woman give a small sigh of relief. Apparently, she would have lost if she had stayed in. "Don't get too comfortable," the man snarled. "I'm taking all my money back after this." James made a note to watch out for the man, while still basking in the glow of the 1,500 Lien he had raked in, noting that the Faunus woman was starting to deal.

His hand wasn't so great, only a pair of twos. He met Junior's raise of two-hundred, as did everyone else and discarded the rest of his hand when his turn came, only to get nothing in return. Behind him, he could hear the twin in white taking a long draft of her drink. No one raised until it was Junior's turn. The giant of a man smirked and pushed a thousand Lien onto the pile. Well screw that noise James thought, watching as the deer Faunus folded and the other man cockily matched Junior's bet. Taking his time, giving the impression that he was judging the situation even though he had already made a decision, James studied his garbage cards for thirty seconds before folding. The woman after him folded as well, and Junior and the man laid out their cards.

"DAMN IT!" the man bellowed, slamming his fists on the table as his two pairs lost to Junior's three of a kind. Junior chuckled as he collected his chips. James did some quick mental math and realized that this put Junior well in the lead. Judging by the confident smile on him, Junior was feeling very comfortable in his lead.

The third round started, the man who had boasted so loudly before was shaking as he dealt the cards, nearly throwing a couple off the table. "Could you not?" the deer Faunus asked, sounding annoyed.

"Shut up!" the man snarled, slamming the deck down as he finished dealing. James was starting to realize why this man, in particular, had been invited to the game. After the ante, the man glared at all of them. "All right, enough screwing around." With a grunt, he shoved all of his remaining chips in, all 2,900 Lien. Everyone paused, looking at him. Some of his anger seemed to fade away, and a smug look crossed his face. "Your move assholes."

James glanced at his cards. He had a pair of aces, a strong hand for the first round, but hardly what would end up deciding the game. Particularly if the man already had a strong hand. But did he? James wasn't even sure if he had looked at his cards before he had bet. That, combined with the way the man had been playing so aggressively up until this point, led James to one conclusion. The man was bluffing.

After a few more seconds of mulling it over, James called the bet. The man's smile faltered, and James responded with a wide grin of his own. Behind him, he heard the girl in white pour herself another drink. All the other players folded without comment, though Junior took a lot longer than both of the women. James stared the man down, waiting for him to discard and draw. He didn't, he just stared at James, shaking a little. "Your move," James said softly. James couldn't help but feel like this would be cruel if the man had not utterly brought it on himself.

Hesitantly, as if his arm was seizing up with pain, the man discarded three cards, as did James. James's heart leaped as a third ace made its way to his hand. "All right, show em jackass!" the man said, sounding more scared than he most likely wanted to. The cards were laid down. Three kings, a queen, and a jack. James took them in, his heart hammering in his chest. That hand had come dangerously close to beating him. If he hadn't gotten his extra ace, or if his opponent had gotten another king or queen, he would've been screwed. He let out a heavy breath that he hadn't noticed he was holding.

"You little-" the man began, moving forward, but stopped as he spotted Junior and the twins all glaring at him.

"You can stay and watch if you're going to be a good little boy," Junior said, venom in his voice. "But if you're going to throw a tantrum, you'll leave my bar through a window at 150 KPH. Your choice." The man stammered before silently lowering his head in defeat, James cautiously scraping up the chips before taking the deck to deal.

"One out on round three," Junior said idly. "This is a faster than usual game." James nodded wordlessly as he dealt out the last of the cards before checking his hand. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. A two, a five, a nine, a jack and an ace. Not enough similar suits for a flush, nothing that he could comfortably into a straight. He mulled it over as the remaining four players anted up. He was on a bit of a hot streak, maybe he could bluff his way through this round based on that.

He gave a small twitch in the side of his mouth, imitating a badly suppressed smile, before putting five-hundred into the pot. Enough money for it to be noticeable, but not too much that it seemed suspicious. The human woman looked at him with a penetrating eye before matching his bet as he heard the woman behind him gulping at her drink. Junior paused, studying his cards, before flashing an evil grin at James and calling his bet. Spurred on by her fellow gamblers, the deer Faunus also called, leaving over 2,000 Lien in the pot.

There was an uncomfortable churning feeling in James's stomach. He had hoped that at least one of them would have dropped out, making things a little easier in the second round. The plan had been to double down on his bet in the final round, implying that he had strengthened his hand. Well, that plan was really the only string to his bow at this point, so he had no choice but to press on. Discarding everything but his jack and his ace, James checked his three new cards and saw a Jack. Well, he certainly had strengthened his hand, but it was still rather lackluster. He tried to weigh his options, willing himself to block out the sound of the woman behind him loudly slurping her drink.

Deciding that he had no choice but to go for it, he pushed a thousand Lien into the pot. The woman beside him folded without comment, but Junior, his eyes boring directly into James, silently slid forward a thousand chips, and then another thousand after that. The deer Faunus looked down at her cards, took a deep breath, and matched Junior's two-thousand bet. There was a bitter taste in James's mouth as he took one last look at his cards, sighed, and folded.

Both Junior and the deer Faunus laid down their cards. Junior had managed to get a full house, soundly beating out the three of a kind the deer Faunus had. She looked downtrodden as Junior swept away all the chips. James felt a little sorry for her, before reminding himself that she had agreed to the risks of this game and that it was unlikely she was betting money she couldn't live without. Ok, that didn't work James thought. Either Junior's good at reading people or he had that full house almost put together from the start. Shouldn't try to bluff him with garbage again, just in case it's the former.

The human woman gathered up all the cards and took her turn at dealing, while Junior made a point of smugly stacking his newly won chips. Trying not to look at that, James checked his hand. His heart skipped a bit. A pair of kings and a pair of queens, a pretty strong hand. Ok, gotta play this smart. They may think you're up to something if you start with a strong bet twice in a row. Play it low and come in for the kill at the end. James thought. The twin behind him must have finished her drink because James could hear her pouring a fresh one as everyone anted up.

The human woman raised by a mere hundred, something Junior and the deer Faunus followed suit on. Deciding to play it safe, James met the bet and didn't push it any farther. As everyone discarded their unwanted cards, James removed his odd card out but didn't receive an upgrade to his current hand. The human woman raised by another two-hundred and Junior, to James's immense shock, folded. To a raise that small? James wondered. How garbage is his hand?

This thought was swept from his mind as he watched the fanus woman meet the bet. Deciding that he was in a safe spot to push a little, he made a raise of five hundred. Both women exchanged uncertain looks. The human woman folded while the deer Faunus took a deep breath and called. Both she and James laid their cards out. He barely beat her. She had a pair of queens and a pair of jacks. Slowly, he collected the pot, his hands trembling as he did. Junior smirked at him as he did, leaving James to feel a pang of annoyance that he quickly forced down. He had to keep a clear head.

Junior took the deck and dealt, James being more hasty than usual in his bid to grab up the cards. The human man was out, the Deer Faunus was almost out of chips, and the human woman had been suffering a steady stream of minor losses that were starting to build up. At this rate, it was going to turn into a showdown between him and Junior, and Junior was turning out to be a pretty good poker player. Looking at his cards, his heart sank. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. An ace high card, but that was it. Everything else was a jumble of random numbers.

Slow. He had to take this slow. He weighed his option as he tossed in his hundred, the girl behind him took a deep gulp of her drink, so much that James was certain she had emptied it. Giving the cards a quick lookover, he tossed in three-hundred. The human woman followed suit. Junior put in a strong thousand The deer woman steeled herself and put in the very last of her chips. James felt like someone had just given him a death sentence. He looked at his hand. Junior hadn't bluffed yet this game, so the chances of him doing so were thin. And yet, he had to actually stick around to beat him when he had put money in the pot in order to beat Junior. He would have to take a risk here. Slowly, he pushed the money in. Looking hesitant, the human woman followed.

Feeling heavy, James discarded three of his cards. And then his heart shot up into his mouth as the twin behind him poured herself yet another drink. Two new aces, giving him a three of a kind. Lucky luck was a beautiful, lovely woman. Doing everything he could to keep his face clear, he organized his hand, looking at it with a neutral expression. He wouldn't bet at all, it would look strange if he went from calling to raising, and Junior had proven to scare easily. He checked. The human woman, looking excited, put in five-hundred. Not a massive bet, but not insignificant. Junior folded. James stared at the man. He had gone from betting a grand to folding to half of that. How? What had happened to make him lose faith in his hand like that?

There was no way that Junior could've possibly have seen the hand he had gotten, and the woman's raise wasn't that big. He was just sitting there, smirking at him while his probably underage bouncer was practically drinking herself to death behind him. James paused. He replayed that last thought in his head. Then he turned around. The twin in white still looked bored out of her mind, even though James had clearly heard her refilling her glass several times. Anyone drinking wine to that degree at her size should be on the ground, passed out by this point. He himself was feeling a faint buzz from drinking far less than she had. Yet she didn't even seem slightly inebriated. And she had been standing behind him the entire time.

Slowly, it hit him. Oh. That motherfucker. James thought, slowly turning to look at Junior. His bouncer had been standing behind him the entire match, making a fair bit of noise whenever he got a hand. He wasn't sure why the bouncer wasn't watching the others, maybe Junior knew they were all bad players or they were all secretly on his payroll, but she had had a crystal clear look at his cards the entire game. He tightened his grip on his cards, his nails digging into some of them.

Junior's smirk somehow got even bigger. "Oh don't go throwing a tantrum now, you know what I said about sore losers." Go fuck yourself. James thought bitterly. He glared at Junior as he threw the five-hundred in, the deer Faunus not doing so as she was already all in, and laid his cards down. The human woman cursed loudly and the Faunus looked down sadly, so James was fairly certain he had won. James didn't break eye-contact with Junior as he collected the pot.

He now had more chips than Junior, but it would all mean nothing if he couldn't take any of Junior's chips from him. Even if he played defensively, Junior would use his second set of eyes to wither him down. And he couldn't exactly accuse Junior of cheating. Even though James was sure of it "a girl stood behind me and used her booze to signal him" was pretty flimsy evidence, and Junior would probably just boot him out of the club. So. That only left him with one real option.

Collecting all the cards up, he was slow to form them into a deck. Gently feeling the edges of the cards. "Hurry up will you?" the man that had been knocked out said. James ignored him and began to shuffle. After more time that was necessary, he dealt the cards, sliding them across the table, face down. Both the woman and Junior picked up their cards. James, however, did not. He merely emptied his drink, popped one of the ice cubes in his mouth, before idly chewing it and tossing in his ante. Both Junior and the woman stared at him.

Swallowing the ice, James spoke. "Hey, big guy, how many chips you got?"

"10,400," Junior replied. "Why?"

"Because you don't go all in when your opponent has fewer chips than you," James said icily, counting out that many chips from his pile, before pushing them all into the center of the table. "I bet 10,400 chips. I'm getting bored with this game, so how about we decide it now?"

Junior gawked at him, and the woman instantly folded. "Are you high?"

"Oh come on, where's all that bluster that you had when we started? That talk about guts? Or was that all talk designed to hide that you have none?" James said, putting as much venom and disgust into his voice as he could. "Now will you get on with it already? I don't have time to waste listening to you pussyfooting around this."

Junior's eyes narrowed in hatred. James could see the twin in red looking concerned out of the corner of his eye and the one behind him was probably looking similar, but he kept his gaze on Junior. Then Junior pushed all of his chips towards the center of the table. "Fine. You wanna be a smart guy. Don't complain when it bites you in the ass." He discarded two cards and James dealt him his last two. "All right then," he said, looking at his hand, smiling widely, and laying down his hand. "Two kings, two twos. Thanks for all the money, idiot." Junior reached out for the pile of chips.

"Excuse me," James said, causing Junior to pause. "You haven't seen my cards yet." It took every last bit of self-control for James to keep up an appearance of detached indifference, particularly when it felt like his heart was trying to make an escape attempt. Reaching down to his cards, he flipped one. A seven. He flipped another, a two.

Junior snorted. "Look, I get the whole bravado thing you were trying to go for, but it clearly didn't work out. So can you hurry up and lose with a little bit of dignity?" James ignored him. He had started on the far right card and had moved left, towards the cards he had dealt first. He put his hand on the third card and felt the smooth texture, the cool touch, and the mark he had left in the edge when he had dug his fingernail into it. He flipped it. An ace. The card after that. Another ace. Junior's eyes widened. "No fucking way," he whispered. It was James's turn to smirk as he flipped the final card. Ace number three. Three of a kind beat two pairs.

A hushed silence fell over the room, all eyes locked on James's hat trick. "Well, chance is always at the heart of gambling," he said, reaching out with both hands and pulling all of the chips towards him. "Your turn to deal," he said to the human woman. He was keeping a cautious eye on Junior, who looked like he wanted very badly to murder James but was being held back by a half a dozen witnesses.

"Nuh-uh," the woman said, shoving all of her chips in James direction. "I don't even have two-thousand and you have all of that. I give up, you win." James blinked before taking the chips without question. As a response, Junior took out a stack of lien that was held together with a band and threw it at James. It smacked into James's shoulder and he fought back the urge to wince. Not wanting to push his luck by commenting on it, James undid the strap and did a quick count. 25k Lien, all there. He had tripled his money in one night. That would be pretty good in case the teaching thing didn't work out.

"Hey, how much for a bottle of the stuff I was drinking earlier?" he asked, deciding that since he had come into some extra money, he was going to treat himself.

"Two-hundred," Junior growled. All of the other gamblers were noticeably inching away from the giant man. Filtering two-hundred Lien out of his new stack of cash, he gingerly handed them to the twin in white behind him. She took it, looking shocked, though only mildly so, at the turn of events. "Melanie, get him a bottle to go and get him the fuck out of my bar." That would probably be the best case for everyone. James didn't want to stick around on the off chance that Junior noticed the fingernail marks. In fact, he should probably not go anywhere near this bar again just to play it safe.

Binding and pocketing his money, James got up and followed Melanie out of the back room and back into the throng outside. She moved through the crowd to the bar, had a word with the man manning it, then had a dark brown bottle handed to her. "Here you go," she said, pulling out her scroll with one hand and typing into it with one hand as she handed James the bottle with the other.

"Thanks," he said as he took the bottle. Melanie didn't look up from her scroll. Knowing when he wasn't wanted, James headed towards the exit, fighting back the urge to openly run. When he finally passed through the doors, he let out a breath he hadn't known he had been holding. He felt drained, like he had just run five miles with someone jamming a cattleprod into his back. Yet at the same time, he felt weirdly exhilarated. He had found an asshole who had tried to wrong him and he had smacked the prick right back in the face with a good bit of karmatic irony. The discomfort he had felt before heading into the club was gone, he felt alive.

Humming a tune under his breath, he began to head back to Beacon. Rule number one of gambling was that you quit while you were ahead, and that was the plan. Head straight back to his room, sleep like a baby after cracking some jokes at Junior's expense to ED-E, get up in the morning and start his new job. Probably find something nice and expensive to buy after work. Maybe see what Remnant had to offer in terms of guns. The adrenaline rush cooldown was starting to hit him, so sleeping would probably come within seconds of him closing his eyes.

He kept expecting the emotional high to leave him at any second, but it didn't. Even looking around at Vale at night, watching the occasional shifty eye stranger looking back at him, couldn't ruin his good mood. A small part of his brain wondered what would happen when this euphoria wore off and if he would slip back into his earlier discomfort, but it was a barely noticeable part. James smiled all the way back home.

XXXXX

Servius was running, scrambling over sharp and slippery rocks, sometimes on all fours. He knew he shouldn't look behind, that he had to keep moving, but he couldn't help himself. The monster was right behind him, her body twisted and bulky. Her head stretched out on a thin neck that was several feet long, extending ahead of her body. Her arms were just as long, but they were all as thick as a man, and all eight of them were carrying an ax as big as his head.

The creature didn't speak, but let out a wailing, shrieking roar. She wasn't hungry or defending her territory, she wanted him dead because she hated him. The blades dragged on the rocks behind him, sparks shooting off. Even though it took Servius everything he had to move through the rocks, the monster walked as smoothly as if she was on flat ground. As if she was crushing the rocks underfoot.

He could hear gunshots. There were those who were opposing the monster, but their efforts were in vain. Every swing of the ax claimed a life, full grown men hewn in half with no difficulty whatsoever on the end of the beast behind him. They were more of a nuisance to her than an actual threat. Then she had caught him.

He was pinned to the ground under her foot, a malformed thing with six toes, as her head tilted down to leer at him. A malformed mouth opened wide in a fanged grin. One of her axes opened his leg wide, and a swarm of maggots began to crawl out of it, all of them chewing at his flesh as they went. The beast did nothing more after that, content to keep him pinned as the swarm continued to pour out, moving to the other leg and then up his torso, eating him alive. Despite all of this, Servius felt no pain but was too distracted by the sight of his body being torn to shreds to notice. Yet some part of something felt that this was wrong. But he wasn't sure how.

"Servius? Servius?" Servius's eyes snapped open. He wasn't whatever he had thought he had been, he was sitting inside a cramped cave, with a small fire in the center. Two other men were sitting around the fire, a fourth manning the entrance to the cave with a rifle. Then it all came back to Servius. He was on the other side of the portal he had been ordered to gather with the only survivors of Barca's attack. Hatred boiled inside of him as he remembered the name Caesar had given the most hated enemy of the Legion.

"Food's ready," the elder of the two men said. Ancus was one of the oldest legionaries Servius knew at 42 years old. He wore the armor of a centurion though he had forgone the traditional helmet in favor of an NCR Ranger hat that had been given the traditional frill. To the unenlightened, it looked silly. To those who knew what a centurion was, it was a well-earned boast, and Ancus had earned his during the First Battle of Hoover Dam. A thick, hairy man with a bushy beard, Ancus was smoking a deer they had hunted over their meager fire. "It's gonna take some time until the rest is smoked, but we've got enough to eat," he said. He offered Servius a skewer with meat on it, one Servius gladly took.

"Rumford on guard duty then?" Servius asked while taking a bite.

In direct response, an angry shout came from the entrance of the cave. "I told you cockpussies to call me Lucius! If the baby who's still shitting his diapers gets a good name, then so do I! Call me Rumford one more time and I'll-"

"You'll do nothing," Ancus said, his voice firm. He didn't even bother looking away from the meat he was smoking. "You've not earned a proper legionary name yet. You didn't go through the training, nor have you proven yourself in combat. Until then, your profligate name will do." Now he looked up, the smallest of frowns on his face as he looked directly at Rumford. Rumford was kneeling by the entrance of the cave, wearing the armor of a recruit legionary, the same as Servius's, and a repeating rifle in hand. He was scrawny, though with a decent amount of muscle, was at least a decade younger than Ancus, and had a tanned, full face and a head of shaved brown hair. He was scowling at all of them as he turned back to watch the cave.

Servius felt a strong pang of hatred. "He shouldn't have been let into the Legion," he said.

"He's right," Tullus said from where he was sitting next to Ancus. "Former Fiends make for bad warriors. They're ill-disciplined and chase personal pleasure above else. It's what happens when you pollute your body like that."

"Fuck you cripple!" Rumford shouted. "I didn't touch shit when I was with them! I only hung out with them because they got it when I talked about the way the world worked, I didn't know they were a bunch of dirty fucking junkies! Drugs aren't something allowed in this body, just meat, water, and booze. That and pussy when I can get some, not that any of you faggots would know what that feels like." Servius really wanted to take a swing at Rumford whenever the idiot opened his mouth. Most of the time, just a simple blow to the back of the head, but sometimes he couldn't help but envision himself carving the man's throat open. It would be simple, a strong slice across, or a powerful blow. Then a few follow-up blows to be safe, before eventually finishing it off with decapitation. Servius tightened his hand around his machete before willing himself to let go. He had to control himself.

Tullus stood up, staring at Rumford. The things that had attacked them when they had arrived in this place had ripped off Tullus' left arm at the elbow. It was now a mass of bandages that had been applied after a heated blade had stopped the bleeding, but on top of that was a series of leather straps that were holding Tullus's machete in place. A brilliant idea he had had after he had regained consciousness. "If you're serious about becoming a legionary, you will show respect to your superiors," he said cooly, before tapping his blade against his armor.

Unlike Servius and Rumford, Tullus wore the armor of a veteran legionary. One of the honored veterans of the Red Okie Centuria, Tullus had fought in both Battles of Hoover Dam, unlike Ancus, who had only fought in the first. It felt wrong that Tullus had fought the NCR twice, the second time with their forces bolstered by Brotherhood and Enclave of all people, and walked away alive, only to lose his arm to a wolf. A longtime veteran of Caesar losing his arm to an animal. It was an injustice. "We let you into the Legion because we need every able-bodied man we can get right now. The reason Ancus and I are tolerating your insubordination right now is we're stranded with no way to contact the rest of the Legion. We wouldn't tolerate this behavior from a child training to be a legionary. You are actually receiving very special treatment. Keep that in mind."

"You know cripple, you're really starting to piss me off," Rumford said, getting to his feet and drawing his machete. "I could take all three of you, even if you had six arms to go around. And you know why? Because I'm a thinker. I don't need someone whispering every last command in my ear and telling me what to do. I can actually think on my own two feet." He gestured his blade at both Tullus and Servius. "You two would die in three seconds if that cocksucker ever ditched you." He gestured his blade at Ancus. "Because none neither if you dipshits ever learned how to think for yourselves. You know why the Legion lost at Hoover Dam both times? Legates and centurions. Who the fuck do they think they are controlling entire armies? They should advise at most, let soldiers take their own initiative. That's how you win wars."

Servius couldn't stop himself. "Are we sure he hasn't polluted his mind with chems?" he said, looking away from Rumford and at Tullus and Ancus. "None of that makes any sense. Even the profligates understand their armies need leaders."

"Oh my fucking-you stupid assholes!" Rumford swore. "Let me put it in words you pricks can understand. Soldiers on the ground understand everything about what's going on better than anyone else. Our initiative is the best way to win wars, and idiots giving commands to contradict that initiative never did anything to help! Lanius is a hindrance, not a help."

"So no leadership ever," Tullus, sound torn between anger at Rumford's attitude and sheer disbelief at his claims. "In other words, nothing ever gets done ever, because no one's setting out directions. You weren't at Hoover Dam, you don't know what it takes to get hundreds of warriors to one location without being ambushed. And if you think every last one can just figure it out and put it all together, you truly don't belong in the Legion."

"That's it cripple, the second you're done sucking off your boyfriends, you're losing the second arm!" Rumford said, lashing forward with his machete. "Bring it! Any time you-" Rumford began, but before he could get another word out, both Tullus and Ancus lunged at him. Tullus jumped up into the air and slashed down with his makeshift arm. He tore open a gash in Rumford's cheek, causing the older man to tumble back onto the ground, clutching his face and screaming, his weapons dropped. Caught off by the sudden action, Servius drew his 9mm and aimed it at Rumford, but it proved to be unneeded.

Ancus charged forward and threw himself directly on top of the man, pinning one of Rumford's hands with a boot, the second with his left hand, and wrapping his right around Rumford's throat. "Listen carefully, I will not repeat myself," he said in a dangerously low voice. "Threaten me or any other legionary again, I will kill you where you stand. In fact, both Servius and Tullus now have orders to do just that." He shot both of them a quick glance before turning his attention back to Rumford. "As I said before. Special treatment. Where the circumstances even slightly different, I would slit your throat for brandishing a weapon against your centurion." Servius wished he would, but stayed silent. "I will give you one last chance, as we are that desperate. Understand?" Rumford gave a pained nod. "Very well." Getting to his feet, Ancus took a pouch of healing powder from his side and tossed it onto Rumford's chest. "Put that on. Servius? I'll need to you take over watch duty. I need to pray to Mars and Minerva."

Servius nodded, holstering his pistol, drawing his rifle, and taking up a position at the mouth of the cave as Rumford slunk into the back to apply the powder, picking up his belongings as he went. He smirked. He had enjoyed that more than he should have. He hoped Tullus's wound would leave a scar, it would be an excellent story for the two to reminisce about later. He despised that he had to continue to work with Rumford, but Ancus was right. A centurion of his rank was supposed to command eighty men, but they weren't even a full contubernium at the moment. They would gain little from removing Rumford.

He knelt down, raising his rifle as he began his watch. At once, he noticed something was wrong. The stars to the northeast were being blotted out by something. "Smoke," he whispered. Then he raised his voice. "Centurion! Smoke!" There was a rustling behind him, and all three of the others were at the head of the cave with him, staring in the same direction as him. "We saw a small village on the way in, it must be coming from there. Judging by the density, at least a quarter of it must be on fire." He looked at Ancus. "Orders?"

"We scout and observe," Ancus said, drawing a 12.7mm SMG from his back, while Tullus drew a .44 magnum in his good hand. "Do not engage. If there is military movement in the area, we relocate. We can't risk being discovered. I'll take point. Grab everything we might need if we need to flee." Servius turned and grabbed one of the few packs of supplies that they had, slinging it over his back. The others did the same, leaving the cave bare except for their fire and their food. Ancus put what meat had been smoked into his pack, before kicking the fire out. "Move." He moved out of the cave, Tullus right behind him, Servius after him, Rumford taking up the rear.

It took them some time to reach the village. Ancus had them moving at a pace that felt unbearably slow to Servius, regularly stopping to check the area for enemies before moving forward. He could hear Rumford grumbling behind him, but ignored it, instead of tightening the grip on his repeating rifle. He had only seen a few engagements against NCR scouts, but a blooded legionary was a blooded legionary. He had killed the enemies of the Legion before, and he would kill again if they showed themselves to him.

After what felt like half an hour, they reached the edge of the village. As Servius had predicted, several buildings were fully engulfed in fire, with a few nearby starting to catch as well. Servius winced, even from this distance the heat was overwhelming. And then he saw what was in front of the burning buildings. A dozen wooden structures with people strapped to them, a few stirring, but most of them silent. Crucifixes.

Servius blinked in confusion. "Who? How?" he said. "You didn't do this when I was asleep, did you?" This had the sign of a Legion attack all over it, but they were the only legionaries nearby. But none of that made sense.

"Couldn't, this is beyond our numbers," Tullus said. Though it does look pretty typical for a Legion attack on a profligate town when we're trying to make an example of them. But that-" he trailed off. A twig had snapped to their right. All four of them, Rumford trailing behind a little, turned and aimed their weapons at the noise. There was a figure there, but nothing about it was right. It wore a pure white mask with horns, but the rest of it was pitch black, clearly there but looking like it was made out of solid night. It was also holding a long, thin sword.

Bright yellow electricity flared through the sword, which flopped down as if the steel had been replaced with rubber. With a flourish, the figure swung and the sword shot out like a whip. It struck Tullus in the shoulder, sending him tumbling back. Rage tore through Servius as he saw Tullus fall. Throwing his rifle over his shoulder, he drew his machete and charged. While part of him deeply wanted to tear into the flesh of the one who had harmed Tullus, his move had a tactical motivation as well. Whatever that weapon was, it had the same properties as whip, which meant it needed distance. At close enough range, he would render the weapon unusable.

He closed the distance and the figure seemed to realize what he was doing. It took a few steps back, flicking the odd weapon. It reformed into a sword, with its firm, pointed frame. Servius thought fast. A weapon of that design wouldn't be good for anything besides thrusting. He ducked low just as the figure did the only thing it could do with that sword, but Servius was well under its arm as it stabbed out. Elation flowed through him as the figure's arm grazed the top of his head. He was well under his foe's guard. Taking his blade in both hands, he jabbed towards his foe's gut, planning on making a killing blow.

The force of the blow forced the figure into a tree and earned a cry of pain, but the elation flowed out of Servius. His blade had stopped just short of his enemy's gut, an invisible force keeping it from going any further. "What?" he whispered. His foe didn't bother to respond. Instead, he was given a sharp blow to the face from the hand not holding a sword. Stars popped into Servius's vision and pain blossomed into his body as he stumbled back. The figure's sword went limp again and it lashed out. It wrapped around his throat and pulled him to the ground, which he hit hard. He struggled to stand up, grabbing at the whip, but before he could do anything, a booted foot crashed into his skull, forcing a silent gasp out of him.

"Back off humans," the figured rasped, in a voice that was much higher than he had mistaken. Even though the pain of the electrified cutting into his neck and the boot pressing against his head, he couldn't mistake it. A woman. "Drop your weapons, and he dies."

"Let me explain something," Tullus's voice said from somewhere Servius couldn't see. It was trembling with anger. "That's a soldier of the Legion right there. Hurt him, and you'll end up on one of those crosses. So I suggest you let him go and maybe we'll show you some mercy."

"Legion? How unexpected. And welcome." A soft voice crept to Servius's ears. It was an unknown voice that didn't belong to either to his comrades or his assailant. "Adam, have your friend release him, please. Legionaries? Stand down." Servius was about to scream, or at least try to, at the newcomer for attempting to order him when he heard something that stunned him. "In hoc signo taurus vinces." Latin. The language of Caesar and the Legion. He desperately struggled on the ground, trying to see the newcomer. "Adam, she is strangling one of my legionaries. Come now, there's no need for this."

A young sounding voice spoke up. "Illia, let the human go." With a grunt of annoyance, the woman loosened her whip and removed her boot. As air flowed back into his lungs, Servius had a brief coughing fit as he got to all fours and stumbled. After a few seconds, he managed to compose himself and scrambled back to the other three legionaries, eyeing the girl warily and keeping a firm grip on his machete. As he eyed her, the odd texture of her skin faded away. It wasn't pure dark anymore, it was a much more natural skin color. Light brown and dotted with dark freckles, particularly around her face. A very young looking face, Servius noted.

"You ok?" Tullus asked, whispering in his ear. "Anything major?" Servius shook his head. "Ok. She gets to live. For now." Fighting back a smile at Tullus's welcome concern, Servius turned to face the newcomers. At least a dozen men and women in white armor with black hoods were all around them, all of them armed. The one outlier was a boy in a black outfit with red hair, clutching a large sword. One of the men in armor was standing next to him, smiling at the legionaries.

"Ancus, I believe it is?" the man in armor asked. Ancus nodded hesitantly. "I am the head of the expeditionary force that Caesar sent beyond the portal. May I ask what the head of the guard that was left to ensure no profligates located it is doing on the wrong side?" His voice was level, but there was a dangerous undertone to it. Servius felt a pang of fear. Caesar didn't tolerate failure. Even his own right-hand man, whose name no one dare spoke, had not been exempt.

"We were attacked," Ancus reported. "It was Barca, him and his entourage. Most of our forces were slaughtered and a bomb damaged the portal. We were pulled in with two other legionaries, they were killed by wolves of unusual size. Barca and his followers killed the rest. However, I must report to you that Barca was pulled through with us, him and his pet robot. We attempted to engage him but we were forced to retreat, the wolves were converging on our location."

"I see," the man in white said. "It is unfortunate that our route back home has been compromised, possibly even destroyed, but there are ways around that. Our new allies have been helping us with that. Allow me to introduce them." He gestured to the boy. "Adam Taurus, a prominent figure in the White Fang, a revolutionary movement against an unjust system. When I heard of his cause, I was moved by his dedication and instantly pledged to assist him in his quest to free his people. I have provided him with scouts, tactical advisement, and some pointers of the Legion way of fighting." One of the people on the crosses behind Servius gave a weak moan of pain. "I could not ask for much from a man who asked so little, but he did agree to help me look for something. A set of coordinates I located in the Pre-War facility that housed the portal. I believe it will lead to great things for both of us. Considering that, while I find your failure distasteful, it is forgivable. New paths have opened for the Legion, and they present such new opportunities for us all. This world is ripe with them. For example. You." He pointed at Servius. "Give me your hand."

Slowly, secretly afraid that he was about to join Tullus in being one-handed, he gave the man his hand. The man took it, squeezing it tightly, and began to mutter under his breath. Servius wondered what the man was trying to do when a strange sensation passed over him. He struggled to stand up, everything was fading in front of him, and he thought he might pass out. Then he felt like a great fire had been lit in his chest. His senses came rushing back, feeler sharper and clearer than ever as he felt fitter and stronger than ever. A dark red aura faintly glowed around him before it faded into nothingness. The man smiled. "New powers have been granted to us, a gift from our new allies."

Slowly, he walked forward, taking the hands of Tullus, Ancus, and Rumford. He repeated the same process of muttering and holding hands. As he did, the man he was touching seemed to glow an odd color before it faded. "Excellent," the man said. "All of you were susceptible to being awakened." Servius felt very confused, but the man spoke up before he could. "A power that we all had but never realized. It's ours now. With this, you could slay a platoon of profligate soldiers with merely your hands."

Taking a step forward, Rumford gave his fist an experimental flex before punching a nearby tree. There was a loud snap as the tree splintered under his blow, breaking clean in half and falling over. Rumford let out a whoop of laughter. "All right! Now we're fucking talking! Those cockpussies aren't gonna know what hit them!"

"Patience," the man said, turning to Rumford. "We have much to do. Our beleaguered friends here recently left an alliance with those that treated them as expendable pawns." He sighed and shook his head. "A travesty. Fortunately, they are now free of that poisonous influence, but we must prepare for reprisals, from them and the White Fang's other cowardly enemies. Now then. Signifer?" Another man in white armor stepped forward, kneeling on the ground and placing a pack full of armor in front of them. "For now, you must not be seen in legionary armor. We wear the colors of our allies for the moment. Our camp is some distance from here, so change now. There's much to tell you about our plans, you will be needing new equipment, and you must begin training to master your new abilities. Oh. And you must truly meet all of those who have been declared Amicus, beyond those in the White Fang." Reaching into a pouch, the man produced a ledger and handed it to Servius. He looked at it.

A. Taurus: Amicus
S. Mann: Likely Amicus. Meeting arranged with leader.
H. Xiong: Potential Amicus. Unlikely. Initial meetings poor.
R. Torchwick: Potential Amicus. Unable to arrange meeting at this time.
Marie F. Amicus.
S. Khan. Indirect Amicus.

The man removed his mask, smiling. Servius's swallowed as a man with pale white hair looked back at him. "Give thanks to Caesar brothers, the dawn of a new era of glory for both the White Fang and the Legion is upon us," said Vulpes Inculta.

XXXXX

Author's Note: This chapter had a lot of behind the scenes math and I now kinda hate myself for writing it because I fucking hate math. Particularly when I realized I made an error early on and I had to go digging for it. Anyway, like the chess scene, these people would probably be classified as beginner level poker players on anything resembling a professional level, but I think it works better in this scene than the chess scene as James isn't a professional, just a guy who spent a lot of time hanging around Vegas, and Junior relies on cheating as a crutch and is mainly shaking down people he sees as easy targets. He wouldn't bother becoming a skilled poker player for rigged backroom matches because even a skilled poker player is still somewhat at the mercy of chance, and Junior would want the random element gone if his main deal is easy cash. Also, he's been shown to underestimate people and be impulsive, as seen in the Yellow trailer. He doesn't make the same mistake twice, (In Volume 2 he's wised up to the fact that Yang is not someone to screw with) but the first time he met her, even after she grabbed his nuts, he still let his impulses get the better of him. So I think James would be able to pull a fast one and sneak a victory from Junior. He would just never ever be invited to a game with Junior again and probably be banned from the club.

I considered having James rescue a Faunus kid from a bunch of muggers, but I got three paragraphs into writing that when I realized A. I already had him protecting Faunus and B. This chapter had already had a climax for James. Both made me feel like such a scene would've been overkill, so I took what I wrote and stuffed it in my scraps folder. We'll see if I ever go with it anywhere because it involves James splattering booze on himself and pretending to be drunk to get the muggers to lower their guard and I actually really like that idea.

As a side note, one of the ideas for this chapter was James cheating in a different way. It involved him provoking the man who got eliminated until the man lost his patience and punched James. James would then throw himself from the chair in an overly dramatic way, spilling his deck of Lucky 38 cards all over the floor. After that, he would slip the ace of spades up his sleeve and press it against one of the cards in his hand, hiding it. I decided fingernail marks on cards would both be easier to pull off and harder to notice.

Oh. And it turns out I screwed up the name of the pistol Joshua gives you. I thought it was A Light in Shining Darkness, turns out it's A Light Shining in Darkness. You know, a name that actually makes sense. And I had to go and make a joke about it. *Buries face in hands* When this chapter goes up, I'll be editing that mistake out.

Also, I scribbled this up because I was bored.

Junior: Are you high?

James:
[Speech: 80] Oh come on, where's all that bluster that you had when we started? That talk about guts? Or was that all talk designed to hide that you have none?
[Speech 67/80] *Makes chicken noises*
[Barter 80] Junior, you're not being a good host here. You want to give a good show if you want these people to come back for your next game.
[Barter 52/80] Uh, people will buy more drinks if you raise?
[Terrifying Presence] Are you going to bet or waste more of my fucking time?
[Rep: Vale] You know, I heard a lot about you Junior. It looks like I'm going to have to tell people how much you don't live up to the stories. I imagine they'll be disappointed
[ Int 2] High? No, me on ground.
[Wild Wasteland] Yes, what about it?

Before you ask, yes. Rumford is who you think he is. The sad thing is that this character is probably going end up being higher on the karma meter than his original namesake, if only because I don't have the space nor want to depict him carrying out and/or advocating for atrocities to the degree as the original. Though that's kind of like saying "he's not as bad as Hitler." And considering what the original Rumford got up to, that statement is hyperbole, but not by a particularly huge margin.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, and Josue Garcia for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 5

Tear It Up

XXXXX

James arrived early for work, an action that he admitted to ED-E was born out of paranoia of wanting to make a good impression, though he would admit it to no one else. At 6:30 AM, after getting dressed and chewing on some smoked Gecko, he had arrived at the classroom Professor Port had described to him. It was a grand lecture hall, at least to James, with carved wooden seats and desks that looked down at where the instructor would stand. He sat down in a chair for a good long while, ED-E floating above his head, and was just wondering if he should do anything to tidy up when a portly man with an impossibly thick mustache walked in the front door.

"Ah, Mr. Walker! Bright and early, I like that!" the man positively bounced towards James, looking as jovial as he sounded. "Excellent, Ozpin told me about your unique circumstances and the surrounding situation. A pleasure to be working you." Port held out his hand and James took it. James soon felt like Port was trying to rip his arm out of his socket as he gave it a very enthusiastic shake. "We're going to be working the students back into school life after the straining events the other day and help them prepare for the upcoming Vytal Festival. We'll be going over the basics for the first half of class, and then the second half will be a sparring session that we'll be moving to a different room for. You just make sure everyone is paying attention and behaving during the first half. Sparing is to be purely within teams, that way they focus more on helping each other improve instead of descending into rivalries. Make sure they behave second half too, but if any students get too tired to continue, or has to be excused for medical reasons, you and I may have to become replacement sparring partners."

"Ozpin did mention the part where I only just got my Aura right?" James said, feeling uneasy. "I've seen what some of the students around here can do, I'm not sure I can keep up. Hell, I've never even been in a fight where I got to utilize it."

Port clasped him on the shoulder, laughing heartily. "Mr. Walker, one of the core tenants of being a teacher is that it's a two-way relationship. We teach them, they teach us, often in ways we could never expect. This is a perfect opportunity to learn from these bright young minds in the best way possible, hands-on experience. Sparing against another with Aura and experience is the perfect way for you to accumulate experience as well. What's more, I was told that you have extensive experience involving non-Aura combat, something that may prove useful. For future reference, do you have experience with melee weapons and unarmed combat?"

"A decent amount, yes," James said. "I prefer to stick to knives if I'm hitting someone with something, but I've been in situations where I found myself using a sword or a pipe. And I've had quite a few people teach me moves for unarmed combat." Thank you, Veronica. Thank you, Ranger Andy. "Though, full disclosure, I'm very much a man who prefers to shoot things from a distance. It's what I'm best at and it's also where there are fewer ways for the other guy to kill me."

"True, but you might find that in Remnant, keeping distance from your enemy isn't as easy as it was where you're from." There was a very nasty feeling in James's stomach, but Port just laughed again. "Mr. Walker, relax! This is a hall of learning! You're just pulling double duty as an aid and a student. Don't worry about the sparing for now, and let's focus on the lesson beforehand." Reaching into a pocket, Port produced a bundle of notes that he handed to James. James rifled through them and saw that they were diagrams and explanations on Aura, Semblance, weapons, and something called Dust. And he was pretty sure the notes weren't on how his furniture needed dusting.

"Dust?" he asked, looking up. "With a capital D? The heck is Dust?"

Port stared at James for what felt like a solid minute. "Well, you really aren't from around here, aren't you? They don't have Dust back where you're from?" James shook his head, feeling stupid again. "Ah. Well then, Dust is a rather basic aspect of life here in Remnant. It's a crystal mined from the ground that is the source of all of our power, but it does more than that. There are countless variants of Dust, many of which are highly effective in weapons. So many useful abilities to use, fire, lightning, ice, earth, gravity, it's invaluable. If you find a weapon that doesn't have Dust bullets, you're in a very backwater part of Remnant."

"Wait, like this?" James asked, producing the White Fang SMG, ejecting the magazine, and handing it to Port. Port took it and held it up to the light, examining the bullets.

"Yes, looks like fire Dust, fairly common stuff," he said, turning it over. "Most Dust has specalization, but there's cheap dust that acts as a replacement for gunpowder. Fire Dust is fairly simple to use provided you don't set anything important on fire." He cocked his head. "This magazine isn't fully loaded. I don't mean to be rude, but walking around with a magazine that isn't topped off is a bit of a rookie mistake."

"I would normally agree, but in my defense, I have no spare munitions for this thing. I picked it up off of someone who didn't care for me the other day. One of the White Fang guys. They didn't need it anymore." Port stiffened. Unless James was mistaken, he looked uncomfortable. "Something wrong?" James wondered if he shouldn't idly mention the attack that had happened the other day.

"Oh. So that's where you got it," Port said uncertainly. James was confused. What was the matter here? He had taken a gun from the body of someone who had tried to kill him, he wasn't sure why it was a problem. "Well, this is a rather standard 9mm SMG, you see it on the front display of every gun store," he said before James could ask any questions. "We have plenty of spare ammunition here at the school, and a member of staff you have access to it. You could try experimenting with different types of Dust bullets, or stick with unspecialized ones if you want to keep it simple. I wouldn't recommend experimenting in the field." He handed the magazine back to James.

"Gotcha," he said, sliding it into the gun and putting the weapon away. "Question, would it be able to take one of these?" He reached into one of his many pouches and produced one of the 9mm bullets he used for Vance's old SMG. There was a flicker of hope in his heart. If his bullets and Dust bullets were interchangeable, he could keep all of his weapons supplied. These hopes were dashed when Port took one good look at the bullet and shook his head.

"Absolutely not," he said. "I'm not sure if the bullet inside is the same design as what we use, but the casing is completely different. No gun that isn't heavily customized would take that round, and if your other SMG takes those bullets, I wouldn't try to use any Dust rounds in it. It would jam at best, burn your hair off at worst. The backwater areas of Remnant I talked about? That would be the kind of ammunition they used. I'm sorry Mr. Walker." He glanced at the weapons James had slung over his back. "You could possibly find someone to make customized ammunition from scratch if you look in town, but it wouldn't be a cheap venture."

James digested this. Unless only the 9mm was unique and other forms of Dust ammunition would fit in his weapons, which was unlikely, his current weapons wouldn't be getting any fresh munitions aside from when and if he paid out the nose for a custom job. This wasn't the best situation. He had a large stockpile of ammunition, but he could easily be stuck in Remnant for months, maybe years. There was a good chance he would never get back home.

A cold thought hit him. Was there even a way for him to get back home? Ozpin had promised to look into it, but did anyone in this world have the technical knowledge of the Think Tank? Was he stuck here forever while the Legion was finally rid of him for good? He bit his tongue, telling himself to focus on the situation. He had come into a large sum of money, he would pay for the custom rounds, and he would look into getting new weapons if the ammo situation became dire. He already had one anyway. For the moment it would be smart to stick with what he knew, but he would have to be flexible if he had to scavenge new weapons. It wouldn't be the first time he did this. Sometimes he still missed All-American.

"I'll look into that," James said. "Well, better get started on reviewing these notes."

"Indeed!" Port said, bouncing back to his more cheerful self. "Class starts in half an hour. Make sure you take notes on who's behaving and who isn't!" On top of the notes, Port slapped a pad of paper and a pen. James was glad he was literate, it would be awkward if he wasn't and he had to explain that around half of the people in the Mojave shared that problem with him. "Oh, and feel free to take any notes on the lecture, I have a feeling you might learn something."

James nodded as he sat down, reading through the notes and trying to balance speed with thoroughness. It was all absurdly complicated, at least to James. ED-E hovered by his head, his soft buzzing comforting in James's ear, though privately he felt it was a little distracting. He had half-baked ideas of getting through all of the notes before he skimmed them and saw just how many there were. At that point, he resigned himself to going back to the beginning and looking at the basics of the basics. "Aura enhances abilities, provides protection, must be actively maintained, in tournaments a person is eliminated when their Aura shatters or falls below a designated strength level, varies depending on the tournament. Vytal Festival Tournament- oh that's how they spell it, designates elimination Aura level at 15%, sparring matches are at 50%. Ring-outs also constitute an elimination. Simple enough."

Underneath the last note was a list of actions that were considered illegal in tournaments. Nothing that caused permanent harm to an opponent, no retrieving outside help, no performance-enhancing drugs, nothing out of the ordinary. James put down the notes for a second just as the door opened. "Ah, come on in ladies and gentlemen! Time for another day of learning!" Port cried. A few dozen students filled into the classroom. After the cavalcade of colors he had seen the past couple of days, he was surprised to see the students wearing matching uniforms. Black jackets over white dress shirts, plaid skirts for the girls, black pants for the boys. They all filed into the seats that were raised above James and Port, many looking excited, though quite a few appearing tired or bored.

A very recognizable red-haired girl bounced in her seat as she spotted James, waving at him. Smiling, he waved back at Ruby. "Today will be a sparring day after the lecture," Port said. That got the attention of those who had been bored, nearly all of them perking up with surprise and eagerness. "But first, a recap of what we've covered so far." At that point, Port broke into a lecture about Aura and its applications in combat. Almost at once, attention began to slack. At first, James thought it was due to typical teenagers not paying attention in school, but then he listened to exactly what Port was saying.

Port made more than a few good points, but he had a tendency to ramble. He made the point that the strength of a person's aura multiplied their already existing strength and that the multiplication factor depending on the strength of aura, something James scribbled down and underlined twice, but then he spent the next five minutes talking about a boulder lifting competition he had been in. "So my arch nemesis and I were there, brows sweating in the afternoon heat when she upped the challenge to ten-ton boulders. Not one to be outdone, I accepted her challenge." This kept happening throughout the entire class.

"Then the bear came at me, but I got underneath its lunge and followed up with a good punch to the stomach," Port continued. "Remember that. Ursas aren't good at fighting those with low profiles." Another note for James. He had expected his page to quickly fill up with notes, but the going was slow. He took a quick look at the class to see if they were behaving, only to spot ED-E flying off towards them.

"ED-E? What the-" he began, but his question was answered before he could ask it. A blonde boy sitting next to a girl with a red ponytail that rivaled Yang's hair in length had fallen asleep. ED-E was heading straight for him. Part of him felt like he should stop this, yet this was supposed to be the kind of thing he should be taking care of. And while he would never admit it, he was interested to see how ED-E would handle this.

Coming to a halt just above the boy, ED-E slowly lowered himself down onto the boy's head. The face of the girl next to him scrunched up, the face of someone who was putting a great deal of effort into not laughing. Reaching out, she shook the boy lightly. With a start, the boy woke, almost banging his head on ED-E as he sat up. He vaguely heard ED-E beep at the boy before the eyebot flew back to James. "What did you say to him?" James asked dryly, keeping his eye on the boy as he did. The girl was barely choking back her laughs and slid a piece of paper towards him. Sharing notes most likely.

"Pay attention in class, dick for brains," ED-E beeped, following it up with a series of wheezing noises that sounded a lot like laughter.

"We have got to do something about that mouth of yours," James said. The girl was tracing her finger along the lines of the paper, mouthing instructions to the boy. It was good to see that the boy had a crutch to make up for lost time.

"Really? You're telling me that?" ED-E said. "Do I need to say more?"

James grinned. "I've been on my best behavior ever since my new boss gave me a talking to. And honestly, you abuse that most people can't understand what you say."

"This is true," ED-E said. "But you're going to go right back to saying shit, fuck, cock, ass, prick, and occasionally cunt the second the kids aren't around." This was perfectly true, though James decided not to admit it. The girl was smiling openly at the boy now, holding out a pen to him. He took it and began to write furiously. The girl reached out with her outstretched hand to touch the boy's back but stopped just before she reached it. Slowly, she pulled her hand back, looking a little ashamed. James blinked. What had that been about?

"And with that, we will now move onto the sparing section." James, surprised that apparently Port had spent half of class talking, got to his feet and followed Port out of the classroom, the students right behind him.

"Um, excuse me?" He craned his head backwards and saw the red-headed girl who had been sitting next to the sleeping boy. Up close, he could see that she was wearing a circlet with emeralds hanging from the side on a chain. "I'm Pyrrha Nikos. I just wanted to apologize for my leader. I've been helping him with his sword form and we were up late last night sparring. He wanted to make sure he was refining his skills after the Grimm attack and I pushed him a bit. Sorry." She looked genuinely guilty. "Mr…?"

"Walker," James said. "Hey, don't make a habit out of it and it's no big deal," he said. Honestly, he hadn't thought it was that big of a deal. The city the guy lived in had come under attack recently, it was understandable if he wasn't back at 100%, yes, but the girl was so utterly sincere in her apology that he didn't know how to react aside from accepting it. Also, he was rather caught off guard by the fact that this teenage girl was an inch taller than him. He couldn't help but wonder if she was done growing and what the Hell her parents were feeding her.

She smiled brightly. "Thank you, Mr. Walker," she said. "I promise it won't happen again."

"Hey, you said he was the leader, right?" he said, vaguely recalling being told by someone, somewhere that huntresses and huntsmen operated in groups of four. "Shouldn't this be his responsibility, not yours?"

"Oh, well," she said, looking a bit flustered. "In the field yes, though he still has a bit of trouble finding his place as leader elsewhere. It's a work in progress, after all, he is only a first-year student." That sounded fair enough. At least to James's ears. "Either way, it won't happen again. Though, and I do hate to do this, I'm not certain he'll be up to sparing. A lot of his muscles are already sore, and he shouldn't push himself. And he was usually my partner. So could you please talk to Professor Port about that?"

James grinned. It always felt good when you had a chance to properly earn your paycheck, provided it wasn't a paycheck from a boss trying to screw you. "Hey, no need to go to Port, he told me to step in if someone needed a spare training partner. I'm your man." A wide smile burst across her face, so much so that it caught James off guard.

"Thank you very much, Mr. Walker!" she said gratefully. "I'll let Jaune now he can rest and recover." Mentally cataloging Pyrrha's and Jaune's names, he turned to see that they had arrived at their destination. A wide, open arena with several doors leading off to the side. The students headed off to the side doors, disappearing for a few minutes before emerging. They were no longer wearing their uniforms, but differently colored and styled outfits, weapons at the ready. He spotted Team RWBY in the outfits that they normally wore. Pyrrha made her way out of the changing rooms and headed in James's direction.

James was taken aback. She was wearing a leather breastplate and a skirt with a bright red sash flowing off to the side. It suited her naturally, but James couldn't help but think that it looked uncannily like something a legionary would wear, albeit with adjustments for a female form. Part of him couldn't help but raise an eyebrow though. He looked down at her boots and saw that they ended in high heels. And that. He had never seen a legionary wearing high heels before, and he didn't see Legate Lanius trying them out anytime soon. He imagined Lanius in heels before he could stop himself and had to choke back a laugh.

"Did I say something?" she asked, looking concerned.

"No," he said. "Just so we're clear here, you're fighting in those?" He pointed to the heels. He chose his words very carefully, trying to walk a tightrope between being respectful, but also constructively critical. He couldn't help but feel concerned. He had been in more than enough shootouts, punch-ups, and stab-ups to know how brutally unfair it could all be, and how you needed every last advantage you could get to finish off your opponent before they snuffed your life out. The heels were a disadvantage, and Pyrrha seemed like the type of person who deserved better than to have everything that made her unique blotted out of existence because she had stumbled on rocky terrain.

"I'm certain I could talk to Professor Port about getting you some combat boots. They're not much to look at, but they feel comfy after a while and they're damn good at keeping your feet insulated." To get his point across, he lifted up his own boot-covered foot and tapped his heel on the ground. "Sturdy stuff." He hoped that he hadn't gone too far and possibly breached some kind of cultural standard he didn't know about, like maybe those heels were designed for training only, teaching students to keep balance. He was probably reaching with that one.

"Hm? Oh yes, I always fight in these," she said, turning to look down at her heels with a proud smile. "I appreciate the thought, but I really don't need a replacement set." James gave a smile that he hoped wasn't awkward. He didn't want to overstep his bounds, but he dearly wanted to tell her that she really should ditch the heels for her own safety. Despite this, the words died within him as Pyrrha turned. "Nora?"

"All right!" a girl with red hair, more orange-colored than Pyrrha's striking red, and wearing clear white and shocking pink. She was standing to the side of the two of them, her scroll in hand. A boy in a green outfit and black hair, with an odd pink tinge, was standing next to her, looking wearily resigned. On her other side was the blonde boy who had been asleep in class. If James had to make an educated guess, these three were the other members of Pyrrha's team. Pressing a button on the scroll, Nora caused a see-through, holographic blue wall to appear around both James and Pyrrha. Apparently, that was the arena that would qualify an elimination if they were thrown out of. "I'm tracking your Auras! Go nuts!"

"Ready Mr. Walker?" Pyrrha asked, drawing her weapons from her back. A shield and what looked like a short spear. The Legion comparisons piled up in James's head, although he couldn't recall them ever using shields. For a second, he wondered why Pyrrha was planning to engage him in pure melee combat before he remembered the thing Blake used as a weapon and how it had been a bastard child of a sword and an SMG. There was a chance Pyrrha's spear was the same.

James slid his helmet on over his head, fastened the straps, drew his rifle, and took aim. "Whenever you are." This felt wrong, aiming a loaded weapon at someone who had been perfectly friendly to him from second one. But he reminded himself about the boy in the White Fang and how he had reacted to having a magazine emptied at him. They were made of tougher stuff around here, and this match would stop well before Aura stopped being an effective protector. Speaking of Aura, he concentrated hard. He felt an odd feeling coating him. He hoped that would keep him from being gorged on a spear. Smiling, Pyrrha nodded. Then she threw her shield. Hard.

James barely had time to think before the metal disc tore across the arena and hit him straight in the gut. Even though his armor and Aura, the impact was enough to make him double over. Two contradictory sensations rang out through his body. That shield had hit him with so much force that part of his brain was screaming that he should either be on his back, have several ruptured organs, or both, and either way he should be in agonizing pain. Yet he was somehow still on his feet, and while he was in pain, it was more a generic soreness than the splitting agony that would come from his organs being torn in half. Thankfully, his Aura seemed to be working.

Forcing his head back up, he saw the shield bounce back to Pyrrha, who deftly caught it. Not wanting to give her a chance to repeat that move, he opened fire, abandoning all trigger discipline as he emptied his magazine. The first two shots caught her in the torso, but after that, she nimbly began to block the bullets with her shield. The remaining eight were all aimed at random parts of her body, James even shot at her shin at one point, but every time that bronze-colored shield intercepted them before they could find their mark.

At least that makes more sense than doing it with a fucking sword! James thought bitterly as he ejected the empty magazine and loaded a fresh one. The exact moment he cocked it, Pyrrha threw her shield again. Swearing under his breath, James threw himself to the side, just barely missing the shield as it spun off behind him, leaving the arena. Sliding across the ground, on one knee and one foot, he saw that Pyrrha was now charging at him, spear in hand.

She's got no shield, I got an opening! He thought to himself, once again opening fire. Pyrrha was no amateur, however, and was ducking and weaving as she moved, making herself a very hard target. James forced himself to calm down and to remember trigger discipline. He began taking careful, calculated shots, all of them aimed at Pyrrha's center mass whenever there was a nanosecond of hesitation, such as when her foot hit the ground or she had to pivot. But something was wrong.

The shots didn't seem to be connecting. It was hard to tell for sure, he wasn't an idiot who used tracer rounds for everything, but he was getting no reaction from her. Even the boy from two days ago had flinched when James had managed to get him in the leg, but he was getting nothing from Pyrrha. She wasn't even stumbling as she continued to close on him, the distance between the two shrinking at a rapid rate.

Knowing for a fact that melee combat with her would end in a disaster, he holstered his rifle and was halfway through drawing his SMG when he heard a loud clang behind him. Out of instinct, he turned to look just in time to see Pyrrha's shield speeding back at him. Directly at his head. Lights popped up in front of him as the shield found its mark, putting him firmly on his ass as his head rang, feeling like a Super Mutant had clapped its hands around it. He could feel a faint lump where he had been hit and was certain she had dented his helmet. As he hit the ground, his Pip-Boy smacked screen first into the ground, and the cheap noises of a slot machine began to emanate from it.

"What the-" he began, getting to his feet, but as he did, the unthinkable happened. He looked around the room. Everything was moving at an oddly slow pace. The girl in pink was in the middle of a jump, screaming loudly in support of Pyrrha, descending to the ground so slowly that it would take at least five minutes to land. He turned to look at Pyrrha, who was mere feet away from him at this point, her next step glacially descending. He lifted up the Pip-Boy to read it. On it was the same slot-machine as last time, except this time Vault-Boy was dressed as a superhero with a great big A plastered across his chest. "V.A.T.S. ONLINE!" flashed at the top of the screen.

Realizing that he could use this to his advantage, James aimed his SMG and took aim. It took much longer to bring the weapon to bear than he thought it would. Whatever was going on, he wasn't moving any faster than anyone else, he was just seeing it all faster. After what felt like an agonizingly long time, he had lined up the shot and fired a spray of shots. It was uncanny. Everything was moving so slowly that he could see the flames from the ignited gunpowder bloom out of the barrel of his gun before they faded away, the ejected shells tumbling to the ground, and the fired bullets traveling in a straight line towards Pyrrha's chest.

Right before the last second and they suddenly changed direction, missing her by a narrow margin. A fuzzy black aura surrounding the bullets as they all veered in every direction except the one he had wanted them to go in.

James blinked something that took him a couple of what felt like seconds, as he stared dumbly at this. Then it hit him. Her Semblance or whatever it is, it's gotta be doing this. She can...I don't know, affect trajectories or something? That's why nothing was hitting her earlier, she was deflecting it all! I can't hit her no matter how many times I shoot. Fuck. FUCK! His panic was compounded by the fact that, even though it seemed like Pyrrha was moving at a snail's pace, she was still closing in on him. If his body was now moving faster than hers, it wasn't by a large margin, so there was only so much he could do before she was on top of him, beating the tar out of him.

Her heel clattered down on the ground, and James had an idea. A desperate idea, one that may not even work, but he didn't have much to go on. Unless he was imagining things, everything was slowly starting to pick up speed. Whatever his Semblance was doing to him, it was wearing off, so he had to move fast. Continuing to fire his SMG, James reached released his left hand, reached onto his back, and drew A Light Shining In Darkness. Hoping that Aura made him strong enough to accurately shoot one-handed, he aimed and fired three shots.

To anyone watching, it would look like he had fired far too low and would be more likely to hit the ground than Pyrrha. If James had been watching someone else doing this, that would've been the conclusion he had drawn. He hoped that was what she was thinking, and that whatever she was doing to make his shots miss, she would be more concerned with the stream of 9mm bullets he was spitting at her. He hoped she didn't see the .45 rounds that were shooting towards her feet.

Two of them missed, tearing into the ground. The third was a glancing shot, bouncing off of her armored calf. The fourth and fifth rounds, however, hit right where he had been aiming. The heel of her right boot, which splintered as the bullets ripped through them. Pyrrha stumbled around the same time as James SMG clicked empty, slamming her spear into the ground to break her fall. Things were certainly speeding up again, at most, that was half of his normal speed.

James did a quick survey of the situation. His SMG was empty, his pistol had exactly one round left in it, and his rifle had half a magazine left. He considered going for his shotgun, before reminding himself that probably wouldn't work. Even in her current state, there was a chance Pyrrha would just deflect the pellets. So, that only really left him one option. It felt like a beyond stupid option, but he didn't have any other choices.

Dropping both of his guns, part of his brain screaming at him abandoning his weapons even though it was only a practice fight, he charged at her, drawing his knife. He couldn't help but appreciate the irony of how he had tried to avoid close-quarters combat with Pyrrha earlier, and how he was willingly charging headfirst into it. It felt wrong. She had a shield and a spear, he had a knife. But she was off-balance, and if he could capitalize on that, he would have a snowball's chance in hell of winning this fight.

Her eyes widened as she realized James's change in tactics. Her spear still stuck in the ground, she threw her shield a third time. With things still moving a little slowly, James had enough time to step to the side and swing at the shield with his knife. The impact made him feel like his arm had been dislocated, but it sent the shield clattering to the ground. It wouldn't be bouncing back at him again. Hopefully.

The effects of his Semblance fully wore off at that point, and everything came crashing back to normal speed. He felt momentarily dizzy, but powered on, slamming shoulder first into Pyrrha. He had expected her to go sprawling, particularly with the balance issue that a broken high heel would cause, but she maintained an iron grip on her planted spear with both hands. There was a grunt of discomfort from her, and he felt the spear shift in the small opening it had made, but she remained firmly upright. Or at least, as firmly upright as she could be on one knee.

Deciding to press his attack, James thrust forward with his knife, only for Pyrrha to parry the blow with her left arm, which had a leather bracer on it. James inwardly swore with frustration. Even with her in a disadvantageous position like this, he couldn't get more than one or two hits in. She was still holding her own. She's still a student!? HOW!? What more do they have left to teach her? Does she have to be able to do all this impossible shit while blindfolded? Ok, fuck this, plan B.

Sincerely hoping Pyrrha wouldn't hold this against him, both of James's hands shot out. His right in a stab that was once again deflected by Pyrrha's bracer. The left, however, was aiming nowhere near her body. Instead, James had grabbed for Pyrrha's long, flowing red hair, and felt his fist close around a handful of it. His frustration gave away to a small pang of guilt. Sorry, he thought as he pulled hard. The Huntress in training let out a cry of pain as her head was jerked forward, both of her hands reaching for her scalp as her roots were tugged on. With her attention elsewhere, James stabbed a third time.

This time, he found his mark, hitting her directly in the torso, following it up with two more quick stabs. His knife stopped just short of her, her Aura still fresh and strong, but he was making progress now. He made to pull on Pyrrha's hair again, but before he could get anyway, he heard something whistling behind him. A feeling of dread flooded him, and he had a pretty good idea he knew what it was. Releasing Pyrrha and throwing himself to the side, he barely avoided her shield as it flew back to its master, firmly landing in her hand.

HOW!? James inwardly raged, attempting to dart in and stab his opponent again, only to have his thrust easily blocked by her recovered shield. Feeling desperate, he grabbed the shield with his free hand, tilted his head back, and brought the front of his helmet slamming down on Pyrrah's face. This time, she finally went sprawling back. Not because the grip on her spear had failed, but because the force of the impact had uprooted it out of the floor.

Am I finally getting somewhere? he wondered as he charged again, Pyrrha struggling to get to her feet with one bad heel. Gritting her teeth, she planted her spear in the ground again, put most of her weight on her undamaged heel, and did something James never expected her to do. She jumped. Very high. So high that she shot up straight into the ceiling, somehow flipping in mid-air so that she hit it feet first, with her shield held out in front of her. Both hands gripping it firmly.

James stared up at her dumbly. No. She isn't. She fucking isn't. She was. Pushing off the ceiling with such force that James could see tiny chunks of masonry dislodged, she rocketed away, aiming straight for James. He never stood a chance. He had only taken two steps when she smashed into him, shield first, planting him into the ground so hard that he felt it crack beneath him. As aching pain spread throughout his entire body, the blue arena around them flashed red. "Aura below 50% match over," an electronic voice announced.

James lay there, most of his body in pain, staring up at the ceiling, with the weight of Pyrrha and her shield still on him. Well. That could've gone better. Like a thousand times better. "WOOOO! And Miss Nikos remains undefeated!" Nora bellowed from the sidelines. Don't rub it in, James thought sourly. The logic part of his brain told him that this wasn't that big of a deal. That all of these kids had been studying and practicing Aura combat long before he had even known it was a thing. It didn't little to change the fact that his pride had taken quite a pounding after being beaten so soundly by someone a third his age.

"Um, sorry," Pyrrha said, gingerly getting off of James as best she could with her broken heel. "I hope I didn't hurt you. That just came to me and I decided to act on it. Sorry." Smiling sheepishly, she held out her hand to James. He stared at it. She wasn't gloating, she wasn't rubbing her victory in, she seemed more concerned about his well-being than anything else.

Shame began to bubble down the back of his neck and into his gut. He was being a stupid, petty little asshole getting worked up over losing. The girl had won, fair and square. He had done everything he could to beat her and he had come up short. Smiling, he took her hand and let himself be pulled to his feet. "That was quite intense," Pyrrha said, reaching down and starting to undo her damaged boot. "I've never faced anyone who fought quite like you did." She pulled her socked foot out, before lifting up the boot and looking it over. "Well, this is beyond repair. What made you attack it?"

In response, James undid his helmet, removed it, and pointed to the dent her shield had made earlier. "I had my Aura up and you were still able to put a dent in this. That got me thinking. Aura protects its user, it doesn't necessarily protect what you're wearing. Not things that are more on the outer section of your frame. A direct assault on you was going nowhere fast. You were a steel wall, so I had to take out your foundation." He felt a pang of guilt as he looked at the ruined boot. "How much do I owe you for a replacement?"

Pyrrha idly waved the comment off. "I've got half a dozen replacement pairs in my dorm room. These kinds of things happen with general wear and tear. Don't worry about it. And thank you again for the very challenging match." James wondered how much of that was sincere and how much of it was Pyrrha being polite. The majority of the match had felt less like a duel between equals and more like Pyrrha breaking in her new punching bag.

"All righty, the final scores are in!" Nora announced happily, marching forward with her scroll facing outward for James to see. He looked at the scroll, hoping that he had done well. It read "James Walker Aura: 45% Pyrrha Nikos Aura: 83%." He stared blankly at it. He hadn't even done half of the damage needed for an elimination. His gaze shifted to Pyrrha. She was a juggernaut that could crush Legate Lanius with one hand. Ok, THAT is something I'd pay good money to see. The irony of her proving the Legion's gender politics are bullshit would be the icing on the cake.

"Jaune, is there any chance you could help me back to the dorm room?" Pyrrha asked. "It'd be a little awkward to go hopping around on one foot."

Jaune blinked in confusion. "Couldn't you just take the other boot off?" he asked.

"Oh," Pyrrha said, looking downcast. "Right, I suppose I could. Sorry, I didn't think about that." James blinked in confusion. He wasn't sure why she had such a negative reaction to Jaune making a perfectly valid point. He paused. He went back to that moment in class where she had almost touched him but backed off. He cross-examined that with this moment. If Jaune had helped Pyrrha back to her dorm, the two of them would be alone together. He couldn't think of any other reason why Pyrrha would actually need help back. And then it all came together.

Oh. Oh dear. James thought. He glanced at ED-E, who had been hovering around the heads of Pyrrah's team the entire time. He cocked his head slightly at the robot. "Pencil-dick is clueless, isn't he?" the robot asked. James wondered how long it would take ED-E to get him fired.

"What did he say?" the boy with black and pink hair asked.

"He suggested that I have a little bit of a one on one talk with Pyrrha before she leaves" James lied as he retrieved and reloaded his weapons, deciding on the spot that a talk with the redheaded girl would be for the best. "ED-E, keep an eye on things. Pyrrha?" He gestured to a corner of the room that was empty compared to the rest. Clearly confused, Pyrrha followed him. James checked over his shoulder as they went. A dozen different sparring sessions were going on at once. In one arena, Weiss was shooting from corner to corner, being propelled by flashing, circular runes, while Ruby sped alongside her, leaving a trail of rose petals behind her. In another, an utterly massive boy in gray armor was swinging his mace at a boy in bronze, sending him flying out of the arena. And right behind him, Nora and the boy with a tinge of pink hair were beginning a match. It was noisy and chaotic enough that there was no chance of being overheard.

"Ok," James said. "First of all, no matter what I say after this, you were outstanding back there. I've fought with some tough warriors and monsters over my fifty years, and I feel confident in saying you could wipe the floor with every last one of them. If you're like this now, in twenty years you could probably bring entire armies to their knees, and you should be proud of yourself." Pyrrha blushed heavily.

"That said, I have a few pieces of advice. I really, REALLY think you should ditch the high heels," he continued. "At least when you're in the field. It took me a lot of effort to pull off what I did, but someone else could still do it by accident. Also, and I hate to say this, you may want to cut your hair." At once, Pyrrha wrapped a protective hand around her flowing ponytail and pulled it close, looking horrified. "I know, I know, hair that long was probably a year's project. But if I can grab it, someone else will be able to better. Like I said, this is only advice, but you should probably take it into consideration."

"In terms of fighting, honestly, there's not a lot of room for improvement, you already seem to have it mastered," James said. "I'd recommend you get a ranged weapon, but I'm guessing you have one and that I just didn't get a chance to see it." Pyrrha nodded. With a flick of her wrist, her spear turned into a lever action rifle, before she turned it back. "Yeah, that'll do it. You fought amazingly, but I do think there's one area you can improve in. You fought well, but you fought well conventionally." At least I think what you did was conventional by the standards of this place. "If you get a chance to get the drop on your enemy in an unconventional manner, take it."

"Like sweeping their legs or throwing dust in their eyes?" Pyrrha asked, looking as if she wasn't fully comfortable with the idea.

"Sweep em, blind em, spit in their eyes, hit them from behind, and kick them in the groin," James said. "Particularly if they're trying to kill you. It just takes one good hit to end a fight for good, and you need to make sure you were the one who delivered it. Fighting dirty is only a thing in tournaments where there are rules. Everywhere else it's just fighting. Your opponent won't show you the courtesy of a fair fight if they want you dead. And if they do, they're trying to kill you still, so their disillusioned sense of fair play is insulting and something that should receive no respect from you. Particularly if they started the fight."

God, fighting fair. That's such a Legion idea. Oh, the NCR cheated, they used snipers and explosives! Why didn't they fight man to man with sharpened sticks like real men? Oh, wait, because they're not fucking idiots! Well, most of them aren't. Pyrrha's disgust faded as she looked thoughtful. "Could you suggest to Professor Port that time be given over in class to learn to fight more creatively?" she asked.

"Actually, that's a great idea," James said, fully meaning it. He didn't know anything about how to teach a student how to flip in mid-air and push themselves off a ceiling, but optimizing your chances of victory in a fight? He could do that. "Yeah, actually, I think I'll talk to him about it after class. Thanks a million!" Pyrrha looked pleased.

"Oh, one more thing." James took one more look around to make sure no one was eavesdropping before gesturing to Pyrrha to lean in. Blinking in confusion, she did so. "He's oblivious," he whispered. "He's not going to make the first move." Pyrrha's face turned as red as her hair as she pulled back.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said, so quickly that James was quite certain she knew exactly what he was talking about. "We're just friends. Really good friends."

"At the moment, yes, but it doesn't take a nuclear rocket scientist to see you want more," James said. "And, well, look. He's a teenage boy. As a former teenage boy, 50% of teenage boys are idiots. Totally incapable of spotting things that are staring him right in the face. I was his age once, I saw it all the time around me. Heck, one nice girl I knew growing up turned out to have a really big crush on me. By the time I realized it, she had moved on. He'll probably grow out of it, but unless you feel like waiting, I'd really make a move now while there's still an opening."

"I just," Pyrrha said, peeking over James's shoulder to see if her team was paying attention. "There's a bit of a difference there Mr. Walker. Asking out boys isn't quite the same as asking out girls."

"Oh trust me, I'm well aware," James said. "There's always a bit of worry that wounded pride might come up. Thankfully most guys aren't like that, but there's always the worry that they'll be the type that oozes insecure machismo. Trust me, I've worried about falling into that pitfall more than once."

"Exactly," Pyrrha said, sounding relieved that James understood her concerns.

"And do you think Jaune is one of those people?" he asked.

"I, well, not exactly," she said. "I mean there was one moment in our first semester when he said something quite...questionable about where he wanted to be and what he saw himself at the moment. Though he was in a very dark place then, and he's never done anything like it since."

"Then I think it won't be a problem," James said. "Honestly, just answer me this. If you ask him out and he turns you down, would he make it awkward?" Pyrrha shook her head. "I'm not gonna say anymore then. Just think about it, that's all I ask. Trust me, I think you'll be a lot happier no matter what happens."

"I'll do that," Pyrrha said, giving James a nervous smile. "I really do need to get my boot replaced though." And with that, she exited the room. Ok, talking to the kids and giving them a more personal guiding hand. A part of this teaching thing I think I can actually pull off, he thought proudly. Feeling better about himself, he returned to keep an eye on Nora and the pink haired boy.

"Um, Mr. Walker?" Jaune was waiting for him, sounding nervous. "I guess Pyrrha probably mentioned it already, but I'm sorry for falling asleep in class. It-" but James held up a hand.

"It's fine," he said, smiling in an attempt to signal to Jaune that he should relax. "These are pretty extraordinary circumstances. Don't make a habit out of it and we won't have a problem." A thought struck him. "Though next time I might ask you to do a little one on one sparring session with me to make up for lost time." He widened his grin, hoping he would come off as someone who wanted a friendly match but also as someone who wasn't going to stand for Jaune falling behind. James had to admit, he was grasping at straws a bit when it came to the whole teacher thing.

"Uh, ok," Jaune said, sounding a little worried. "Just a warning though, I'm not Pyrrha. I mean, she's at a professional level already." James could hear more than a little bit of insecurity in that statement.

"Well, sounds like all the more reason you could use a little guided instruction," James said cheerfully, putting on a bright facade as his mind scrambled to put together the various bits of information he was getting. There was a possibility Jaune was suffering from low self-esteem, possibly stemming from a lack of talent considering the way he was comparing himself negatively to Pyrrha. "Next class, come in rested up and we'll have a go at it. Maybe mix things up and do a little hand to hand practice. Heck, if you really want, come see me after class. I don't have much going on." He remembered the meeting he was supposed to have with Ironwood. "Starting tomorrow."

"Well, can't hurt," Jaune said. "Thanks for not biting my head off Mr. Walker." James still didn't like the way that sounded, but asking everyone to call him James probably wouldn't work.

"Take care of yourself Jaune. I mean it, eight hours of sleep a night," James said, giving Jaune a comforting pat on the shoulder. He could partially see what Pyrrha saw in him, and deeply hoped she wasn't waiting for something that would never bloom. After all, if Jaune didn't feel the same way about her, things were over before they started. Think about this later. "ED-E, we really should keep an eye on the other students," he said. "You go clockwise, I go counter-clockwise." The robot nodded, gave a confirmatory beep,

Saying that the rest of the class was uneventful would have been an egregious lie. The number of teenagers he saw jumping through the area, firing oversized and impractical looking weapons that they nevertheless wielded with ease and efficiency was mind-boggling. There weren't any signs of injuries, though with the way Aura seemed to work that didn't surprise James. Particularly with the 50% cut off limit. Class ticked by and eventually the fights began to slow down, the students becoming exhausted even as the rotated in and out of the arenas.

He eventually found himself near Team RWBY's arena and stopped to watch. Weiss and Yang were inside, both panting heavily as they stood on opposite sides, weapons at the ready. "Go, Yang! You go too, Weiss!" Ruby shouted from the side, Blake right next to her. Both of them were sweaty messes with their hair sticking up at odd angles. He checked his Pip-Boy. Thankfully class would be over in five minutes and they would have enough time before the next one to recover.

Yang lunged forward, only for one of the glowing white symbols James had seen earlier to appear under Weiss's feet, shooting her over Yang in an arc. Growling in frustration, Yang stopped mid-stride and began punching the air in Weiss's direction, sending massive glowing projectiles at her. Weiss barely avoided them as she landed gracefully on the ground, spinning the revolver chamber in her sword, and slamming it point first into the floor. A wave of ice began to erupt from the ground, surging forward in Yang's direction. The blonde grit her teeth clenched her fists and opted to punch through the incoming wall than avoid it. Something that she did with gusto, every last blow knocking massive portions of it off.

"They're really going at it, aren't they?" James remarked.

"It's the last match of class," Blake explained, looking amused. "Whoever wins this one is going to have uncontested bragging rights until the slate gets wiped clean next class. And neither of them really likes to listen to the other boast."

"Oh boy. Ruby, make sure that they play nice," James said before moving on. He was halfway between their arena and the next one when he felt something vibrate in one of his pouches. He nearly jumped, wondering what the heck was doing that, before remembering that it was what his scroll did sometimes. Pulling it out, he saw a message on the front labeled "news." "Third White Fang attack since the attack on Vale. Vale Council and General Ironwood to make announcement within the hour."

"Damn it," he said, pressing the message and trying to make it go away. Instead, he managed to open the article by mistake and was treated to a large picture. He nearly dropped the scroll. The picture was of a row of dead people. Dead people who had been crucified. "No. No," he whispered. "Those pricks. How did they do it?" Unless the White Fang had spontaneously decided to use crucifixion as a method of execution out of nowhere, only one group could be involved with this. The Legion.

Panic was flowing through him. He had to tell Ozpin this. Either the Legion was carrying out attacks under the guise of being the White Fang or, even worse, the two organizations had formed an alliance. It would be the Great Khans all over again, except there was no way in hell he would be able to talk the White Fang down. Even they didn't hate him for only having two ears, their initial encounter had ensured that diplomacy with them was all but impossible.

He forced himself to stay calm, or at the very least still and quiet. Making a scene in front of the students would be a disaster in the making, most of them probably knew nothing about the Legion. When class was over, he would make his move. "I'm telling you, they're all animals." James's ears perked up. He had stopped near an arena used by an all-male team, all of them wearing armor that had different colorings but looked positively mundane compared to the other outfits he had seen. They were crowded around a scroll, and James didn't need to guess what they were reading. He was about to move on when the tallest boy spoke again. "I mean, you never really see Faunus saying anything bad about the White Fang. They're just like the rest of them. Just animals. They probably help them out when the rest of us aren't looking."

An image of the father who had his ear shot off during the White Fang attack sprang to the forefront of James's mind. White hot anger flashed through James. Oh you stupid little bastard, he thought. Where'd you make that conclusion exactly? When your head was all snug and comfy up your own ass? He made himself take a deep breath. They were stupid kids, stupid kids that were responding to a difficult situation. He couldn't go after them for what was supposed to be a private conversation.

He was about to move on to get away from the verbal poison when the tallest boy spoke again. "Hey, Team CFVY is over there. Maybe we should ask their leader why her pet and her people even want to come to this school if they love the White Fang so much." James's head snapped back in the direction of the boy. He was leading the way to another arena where a team James didn't recognize was practicing. One of the students currently in the arena had a noticeable pair of bunny ears at the top of her head. And with that, a line had been crossed.

Crossing the room as fast as his legs would go without breaking into a run, he dropped into the middle of the path the boy and his team had been marching along. "Hey teach? Excuse me, gotta use the bathroom," the boy said, an air of practiced indifference to it.

"Your voice carries," James said, folding his arms and glaring at the boy. "I don't know what you have planned, but let me tell you something right now. Drop it. No one has the time or the patience for this particular brand of nonsense Mr…?"

"Cardin Winchester," the boy said. He vaguely recalled Blake saying something about a Cardin, none of it nice. "And hey, I just wanna ask her a few questions." He made to step around James, but James moved to the side, still blocking his way. Cardin sighed in frustration. "I don't know what you're talking about man, and I don't like being accused."

"Whether you like it or not doesn't have much to do with anything," James said coolly. Now that he was up close, he made the uncomfortable realization that Cardin was very big. At least half a head taller than James, even taller than Pyrrha. That, combined with the huge mace the guy was lugging over his shoulder, seemed to be giving him a good deal of confidence as he locked eyes with James. "I know you're going over there to start something. It's not gonna happen, ok? Party's over, back to your arena."

"Look teach," Cardin said, reaching out to put his hand on James's shoulder. James idly pushed it away before it got halfway close. His anger was slowly building up.

"Mr. Walker," he said, it taking a massive amount of effort to keep his anger out of his voice. "I believe some basic respect is in order?"

"Oh, so I have to be respectful to you, even though you weren't being respectful to me when you accused me of doing something I was never going to do." James's anger faltered for a second if only to be replaced by pure disbelief. Cardin had said all of that with a straight face. Either he was delusional, or he had next to no faith in James's intelligence. Either way, it was time to bring the boot down.

"You seem to be under the impression this is a debate," Jame said. "It isn't. And if this continues to be a problem, I'll be having a word about you being unfit to compete in the Vytal Festival. Can't have you making messes in the middle of that, can we now?" That got the reaction he was looking for. For the entire conversation, Cardin had been wearing an expression of either smarmy self-satisfaction or misplaced indignation. This time, however, he took a step back, looking shocked.

"You can't do that," Cardin said. There was an argument to be made that this was true, but Cardin didn't need to know what. "And if I can't do it, my team can't do it. It isn't fair. What gives you the right to march in here and start acting like you run the place?" Cardin was now mad, his grip tightening on his mace. He took a step forward, a step meant to intimidate. His head was tilted to look down at James, meaning James would have to crane his neck up to keep looking Cardin in the eyes. James did the only thing that was appropriate in that situation. He chuckled. "What's so funny?"

"You. Trying to scare me," James said. "Let me give you a piece of advice. I've fought a cannibalistic, pyromaniacal, rapist that was doing everything in his power to try and kill me. After that? It takes more than someone with a big stick and a bad attitude to get me quaking in my boots. And yet here you are, having a go at it anyway. Bit of advice. You want to intimidate me? Try. Harder. As for who I am, I was a guy hired by Professor Ozpin to do a job, a job I intend to see through so long as our relationship remains friendly, and as for it being fair? It's more fair than accusing someone of being an associate to terrorism based on purely physical traits. And I can't do it? Buddy. I'm friendly with Ozpin. You really think it's some Herculean task to point out your attitude problem isn't worth the PR nightmare it would bring? Because if it is, I suggest you drop that happy little fantasy. Because you're no Nemean Lion."

Cardin growled, shifting his mace. James felt a twinge of irritation. "Oh put that thing down already. We both know you aren't going to take a swing at me, so don't bother trying to keep me in suspense."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Cardin asked in a voice that was trying to be casual. Trying and failing with all the aggression in it.

"Spare me. It's a cheap trick and we both know nothing's gonna come of it. Because one, doing that here would guarantee that you would be expelled and two, if you were going to do it you would have done it already," James said scornfully. "You've got me outnumbered four to one at a range that favors your weapon as opposed to mine, but you're clearly just trying to go for some alpha male show of superiority or something similarly short-sighted and misguided. Whatever it is, I'm not impressed." It was all true. He had been in enough situations with people implying threats at him to tell the difference between someone who was just trying to scare him and someone who was on a power trip before they tried to kill him. And Cardin was no Nero.

"Now then, you're going to go back to your arena, keep sparing until the class is over, and I'm never going to catch hide or tail of you pulling anything like this with anyone ever again. If I do, you and I are going straight to Ozpin for a little chat, understood?" James's heart was pounding. Slower than it used to when he was in a stressful situation, but still pounding hard. Even though he was certain that Cardin wasn't going to take a swing at him, the argument was still causing his fight or flight instincts to kick in.

Giving an annoyed sigh, Cardin turned around. "Yeah, whatever teach."

"Mr. Walker," James said, though the second the words left his mouth he realized they were a waste of breath. Cardin simply gave an apathetic wave as he walked away, his team following right behind him. For the entire confrontation, his attention had been on Cardin. Only now did he properly take in the others. Two of them wore armor much like Cardin's except Cardin had some fancy gold trimmings and symbols on his whereas theirs looked rather plain. The last one, however, wouldn't look out of place in the Great Khans or Friends, with a torn leather jacket, single spiked shoulder pad, and a bright green mohawk. He blinked. That one didn't really seem to match up with the knight theme the others had going on. It was weird.

"And with that, we are done for the day!" Professor Port announced from the head of the class. "Please collect your things and have a wonderful day!" The students stopped fighting, many of them looking exhausted, and moved to collect their things. As they did, Port approached James. "I saw you talking with Mr. Winchester. Is there a problem?" The normal glee of his voice had faded. Port apparently knew when to take things seriously.

"Might be, the guy was looking to harass another student. A...Faunus I think they're called?" James said. But that had to wait. "I need to talk to Ozpin, in person." He held up his scroll and pointed at the crucifixions. "This attack? It isn't White Fang, or at the very least it isn't just White Fang. I know who's behind it, and he and General Ironwood need to know about it."

Professor Port's eyes widened. "Ozpin told me that he wanted you to help Professor Peach next class, but this is more important. I'll let her know where you are. Ozpin's office is at the top of the tower with the clock on the front, you can't miss it." James tore out of the classroom, ED-E right behind him almost knocking into a boy who had to be at least seven feet tall on the way out. Sprinting through the hall and through the first door that lead outside, he frantically looked around until he saw a tower that matched Port's description.

Running towards it, he burst through the front door and looked around the lobby. An elevator was at the far end. Stopping in front of it, he hit the up button and looked at the display on the side. The elevator was moving. Away from him. Someone had gotten on just before him. "Fuck!" he swore, looking around for a set of stairs and finding one off to the side, spiraling upward into the tower. Taking a deep breath, he began to charge up them, taking the steps two at a time.

With every bound forward, the images he had seen flashed in his head. Outside of Cottonwood Cove, Nelson, Nipton, The Fort, all places where the Legion had left their mark. And now it was happening here. There was no chance of them stopping there. If they had brought their favored method of execution to this world, then there would slowly start to work their ways down the checklist of every last vile act they loved to perform. "No," he hissed. "No more of their horseshit."

After what felt like ten minutes, he reached the top of the stairs. A fine, dark green door made out of wood was right in front of him, the elevator he had tried to use off to the side. He paused, putting his hands on his knees as he panted. Even with his artificial heart pumping oxygen through his body at a much more effective rate, there was only so much he could do before he got winded. After a little while, he caught his breath and his heartbeat began to slow. "You ok?" ED-E asked, hovering in front of James to look him in the eye. James nodded weakly. Swallowing to kill a little bit of the thirst that had built up in his throat, he pushed the door open.

The room inside was a wide-open office, bare except for a table, one desk, and with windows on all sides. The far one had the clock that was visible from outside the tower in it. Ironwood was standing in front of the desk, a woman that looked like Weiss Schnee if she had been aged ten years next to him, and Ozpin on the other side of the desk. "James?" Ozpin said. "Ironwood and I are in the middle of something important, so whatever it is will have to wait until-"

"It's the Legion!" James blurted out. "The attack that just happened? The people were crucified, that's what the Legion does when they want to make an example out of them. The crosses are designed so that the person puts all their weight on their chest when their limbs give out to exhaustion. They die slowly of suffocation. It's gotta be them. I mean, has the White Fang ever done anything like this before? Ever?"

Ozpin and Ironwood exchanged looks. "No," Ozpin said slowly. "They haven't. That's what we were discussing. Please, come in. Catch your breath." James approaching the desk, still breathing heavily as his heart slowly returned to its normal pace. "Water?" Ozpin asked. James shook his head as he grabbed his trusty Vault 13 canteen from his side, unscrewing the cap and taking a quick gulp of lukewarm water before closing it.

"I'm good," James said. "I don't want to pretend to know a lot about what the White Fang does, but if the Legion is in the equation, it changes the nature of things."

"I thought you said that there were only four of them," Ironwood said, a scrutinizing tone to his voice. The woman next to him silently stared at James, her expression unreadable. "I take it this means that your theory that more had come through before you found the portal was correct?"

"It has to be," James said. "There's no other way that it could've happened. Those four were rank and file for the most part, maybe one of them a Centurion. One Centurion with three people isn't enough to pull this off, and they're not the types that can form an alliance with the White Fang in two days."

"But why form an alliance with the White Fang at all?" Ozpin asked. "Is the Legion sympathetic to the plights of peoples like the Faunus?" James couldn't help himself, he let out a roar of laughter. The Legion, champions of the downtrodden. An idea that was so absurd that it couldn't be considered anything other than laughable.

"No. They're not," James said. "The Legion fishes for disposable allies that it can use for their advantage then discards them. I'll saw off my own leg if they see the White Fang as anything more than pawns that they can eliminate."

"Please forgive me for interrupting Mr. Walker," Ironwood said. "But the more you go on the more I realize that you are the only one who has a proper understanding of the Legion. I was going to ask you to meet me after class so that I could properly interrogate you about the Legion, but seeing as you are already here, may we do so now?" James felt a pang of annoyance before he reminded himself that this would be a good thing. The more Remnant knew about the Legion, the better.

"So long as Ozpin doesn't mind me taking the rest of the day off," James said, glancing with uncertainty at his new boss.

"I would hardly classify this as time off," Ozpin said. "James is going to keep you very busy." The white-haired man looked rather grim, but James had no time to ask why.

"Very well," Ironwood said, walking to the table in the office and pulling a seat out. "I have a sketch artist waiting two floors below. I'll have to ask you to provide details for him when we get to that point." Producing his scroll, he typed something out on it before putting it away. "Now then, please tell me everything you know about the Legion. And I do mean everything."

Ozpin had been right when he had said that Ironwood would be keeping him busy. He was asked about the formation of the Legion, everything that he knew about the assimilated tribes, about Joshua Graham's fall, the details about the conflict between the Legion and the NCR, guessed at how many warriors the Legion was capable of fielding and the overall population of the Legion, at one point he produced a map and showed Ironwood the position of the NCR and Legion borders. He had ensured Ironwood that the Legion had been fully pushed out of Nevada and that the NCR had turned the bombed-out city of Mesquite into a forward operating base, being supported by the recently established ranger stations Lima, Mike, and November, which stretched along the NCR/Legion border. He informed Ironwood that the NCR had made scouting ventures into Legion territory when possible, but they could only get so far.

He told Ironwood that the popular theory had been that the Legion was hurting from all the manpower they had lost trying to take Hoover Dam, and that with New Vegas now annexed by the NCR, providing a steady power base, source of income, and supply of manpower to the NCR, they weren't sure they could take the area. Though there was no telling if that was the case anymore. He mentioned that there had been reports of rebellions on the eastern edge of Legion territory, but all signs pointed to them having been put brutally down. It got to the point where he was even telling Ironwood about how the Legion fed themselves, whether they were farmers or hunters, and if they used beasts of burden.

These questions and countless others all whizzed through James's head, as he told Ironwood every last scrap of information he could come up with. At some point during all of this, a man in the same uniform as Ironwood and the woman entered the room, sitting down without a word. The debriefing halted for a second at that point. "We've covered most of the important information regarding the Legion," the woman said. "What's left is the matter of their leadership. Are you prepared for that, or do you need a break?"

"I'm fine Ms…" James trailed off, realizing he had never gotten the woman's name.

"Winter Schnee," she said briskly. That explained the resemblance to Weiss. Most likely a big sister. She was in her late 20s at the very max, so she was too young to be Weiss's mother.

"Could you describe them then, please? The upper echelons of the Legion?" Ironwood asked. James looked around the room. From Ironwood sitting across from him to the sketch artist sitting to the side, to Winter giving him an appraising look from behind Ironwood, to Ozpin watching from his desk. The Legion was operating in Remnant, killing their people. They had a right to know about the leaders of the Legion. No matter how vile.

"Caesar is the leader, second to no one, no checks or balances limiting his influence," James said. "He built the Legion from the ground up, starting with being made the leader of one tribe, then conquering their local rivals, and then moving out and absorbing anyone he could find. He's even older than I am and the one time I saw him he looked like he was in decent shape and he had a displacer glove on, a weapon that could blow someone across the room." He smiled. "Although, at one point I interrogated a Centurion that the NCR had captured and got him to spill some interesting beans. Caesar had apparently been displaying symptoms that are usually seen in those suffering from brain cancer and a rather advanced form at that. I took what I heard and ran it by a doctor, and he gave Caesar five years. That was three years ago. So if Caesar's still alive, he's in a state where his ability to command is heavily impaired."

His smile slid away. "Although that may backfire. See, Caesar is a spiteful man. He's intelligent, there's a lot of philosophy behind the Legion and his ideas for a state where everyone works for the greater whole, his Pax Romana, but at the end of the day, he will use all his power and influence to lash out at those who angered him. He's had entire tribes slaughtered because he wanted petty revenge on Joshua for costing him the First Battle of Hoover Dam. He's a hypocrite too. Chems and alcohol aren't permitted in the Legion, but I spotted more than a few cigarette butts in his tent."

"At the end of the day though, Caesar is a control freak and a manipulator and will abuse, trick and subjugate as many people as he can to make sure he stays top dog. Son of a bitch actually tried to get me to join him." He looked down at the Platinum Chip hanging around his neck. At the .44 magnum bullet embedded in it. "He didn't take it well when I turned him down. He seemed to be the type of person who didn't get why I didn't think that a faction that was trying to carry out the enslavement of the entire female gender was a good future for the Mojave."

Winter noticeably moved behind Ironwood. "May I ask what you mean by enslaving women?" James looked at her. She was proving to be very hard to read. Poised posture, level tone, all of it the refined and deliberately neutral behaviors that James had seen from professionals in the Mojave. James almost wanted to change the subject, it was never pleasant to talk when the Legion's attitude towards women came up, but there was no getting around it.

"Everything you think it means and more," he said. "The only women I'm aware of that get special treatment are the priestesses of Mars and the ones that pass through Legion territory as independent traders. If you live in the Legion itself and aren't a priestess, well, you live to serve the soldiers of the Legion. Cook for them, clean for them, care for them and...provide sons that will one day bolster the Legions ranks for them. That last one seems to be optional though. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but the one time I was in Caesar's tent, I got the impression that some legionaries don't seem to care if the girl is too young to bear children yet." James's hands slowly curled into fists on the table. "Way too fucking young."

"I see," Winter said. Her voice was now noticeably stoney. James didn't blame her. Ironwood and Ozpin on the other hand both looked openly disgusted. A proper reaction if there ever was one. "Caesar has a poor attitude towards women?"

"You know, the fucked up thing about this all is that I don't think it's because he thinks women are inferior," James said. "He actually seems to venerate one of the NCR's old presidents to some degree because she ran the NCR smoothly for half a century. It's just that he takes the stance of viewing people by what they provide to the Legion as what determines their value in life. He views things in a detached, long-term mindset when he's not committing genocide because he's throwing a tantrum. To him, women are better suited off the battlefield having babies because it gives him more young boys to indoctrinate into worshiping him. And to fight his battles for him. That's the way Caesar works. Your entire life is dedicated to making the Legion stronger, you have no other purpose besides that. Every single member of the Legion is this way, from the lowest slave to the highest soldier. No meaning in life other than serving their emperor."

He was quiet for a moment. "Like I said, hopefully he's dead by this point. That'll be the deathblow for the Legion. They'll be able to keep the system running for a few years, but without Caesar to keep them all in line, civil war is all but guaranteed. Because Caesar's second-in-command is not up to the task of keeping the daily administration of the Legion running the way Caesar intends. No great overarching state for him, just a band of warriors and pillagers. Legate Lanius."

He leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. "Lanius is a goddamn monster," he said bluntly. "I only met him once, like Caesar, and it was at the climax of the Second Battle of Hoover Dam. He, Christ, he just isn't fucking human." His mind drifted, and he was back at Hoover Dam. All-American was in his hand, firing shot after shot at the charging behemoth of a man, who looked as if he was nearly seven feet tall. Shots found their mark, denting armor, tearing through unarmored spots here and there, and a steady trickle of blood was leaking out of his torso, but Lanius wasn't stopping, he wasn't even slowing down. The swing from his massive sword missed, but even as James dodged to the side, one hand was forming a first. James wasn't fast enough to avoid this one. It had felt like his chest had burst open.

"He punched me once, with his off hand," James said, barely registering that he was still in Ozpin's office. "Six broken ribs and it sent me flying." He had been face down in the dirt, All-American had been crushed into a twisted parody of the carbine it had once been. He had drawn his SMG and started spraying, but half a magazine to the leg had only given Lanius a minor limp. Cannibal Johnson had saved his life that day. His minigun having run dry, he had engaged Lanius in hand to hand combat with the strength of his power armor, but even he had not been able to kill Lanius. "And he soaked up a few dozen different shots from me with armor that was steel plating at best. And look," his mind drifted back to Pyrrha and how the teenage girl had managed to surpass Lanius's strength and endurance easily, "that probably isn't impressive by your standards, but Lanius didn't have Aura. If some of the legends are true, he slaughtered his entire tribe single-handedly."

All eyes in the room were on him, drinking in his every word, but James hardly registered it. All the memories of Lanius were rushing back to him. "As cruel as Caesar is, he was doing most of what he did to build what he saw as a better future. Lanius just loves the thrill of battle. I told him to his face that he was doing nothing but leaving dust and blood wherever he went. His response was to tell me, and I quote, 'I wouldn't have it any other way.' The man is the instrument for Caesar's conquest and a good deal of his cruelty at that. He's the one Caesar sends when an officer has displeased him. He beats the offending officer to death, then has 10% of the unit slaughtered by the other 90%. Literal decimation."

"I thought you said Caesar was a long-term thinker," Winter said, her voice sour. "Where's the pragmatism in killing his own soldiers?"

"For Caesar, maintaining absolute authority is the long-term objective that takes priority above all, and that's one thing Lanius really gets about Caesar's plan. He and Caesar are equally fond of crucifixion, the same thing we saw on the news."

When the Legate had been grappling with Johnson, James had thrown himself onto Lanius's back, drawn his knife, and started to stab everywhere there wasn't armor. Within seconds the blade was stained a deep crimson, with Lanius trying to shake him off even as he traded blows with his power armor-clad foe. Eventually, James had been thrown off, painfully hitting a wall. Lanius was finally starting to slow down at this point, but he and Johnson were hurting. He wasn't sure whether it was the heat of the moment or some desperate attempt to get a last word in before what could be death, but he had started to yell at the Legate.

"You don't fucking get it, do you, Lanius?" He had been in pain, he would learn later that a rib had pierced his liver and he was bleeding internally, but at the moment the adrenaline rush had kept him from noticing it. "How many legionaries did you lose the first time you tried to take Hoover Dam? And how many have you lost in this new campaign? The pile of corpses must be getting pretty high, I know my friends and I must've thrown at least fifty on top of it. You lost Cottonwood Cove, you lost Nelson, you lost multiple raiding parties, multiple assassination parties, and multiple spies. With the time it takes to train a legionary, there's no way in hell you're replacing all the men you lost from within, it's why you looked to the Fiends, Khans, and Omertas for allies, you needed the fresh blood. But your allies all faltered or turned on you, while the NCR and their allies stand side by side against you. In fact, while you've been stagnating, waiting for another go at Hoover Dam, the NCR has been planting roots in the Mojave, growing stronger and larger!" That last claim had been stretching the truth to the breaking point, but he had been too swept up in the heat of the moment to bother inserting nuance into his proclamations.

"Even if you throw enough men at Hoover Dam to take it, I promise you that it will be a victory that will utterly break you. You're fighting against a dug-in force that's being supported by Brotherhood and Enclave forces and has the Boomers pounding you from a distance. Even if you win this fight, you'll have an emaciated husk of an army, nowhere near enough to take Vegas with the NCR and Kings guarding it and especially nowhere near enough to take the Mojave. Not when your allies of convenience have all vanished. Then the desert will slowly eat your army alive."

"The raider attacks you claim to be so good at stopping will crop up again, either in the west or the east, depending on where you position what's left of your forces. You won't be able to swallow up tribes the way you used to, not without leaving at least one flank open. You're trying to take too much, too fast, with too little. And even after you push the NCR out of Hoover Dam and by some miracle of miracles the Mojave as a whole, you being able to take their core regions after that is just impossible. Face it, Lanius. The second you came here, you signed the Legion's death warrant."

And so, having said everything he could think of, he had stood beside Johnson, knife in hand, ready to die trying to kill Lanius. He had not expected what had come next. "There is wisdom in your words, man of the bear. You are not soft and foolish like those who lead the Republic. Your body is strong and your mind is sharp, you've tested both against the steel of the Legion and you have not been found wanting." He reached up, wiping off the blood that was trickling out of his armor. "And even with a man who relies on technology as opposed to the strength of his own arms at your side, you have proven to be a worthy adversary. If the Legion was full of men like you, we would have taken Hoover Dam the first time with little difficulty."

"If you're trying to flatter me, go fuck yourself," James had snarled. Lanius had given a small grunt of approval.

"Very well then. I have enjoyed this battle in a way I rarely do nowadays. Only NCR Rangers are capable of challenging me the way you have, and I look forward to the day where we finish this. But I will not allow Caesar's vision to die here. Hoover Dam will not be the graveyard of the Legion, but it will fall all the same. Not today, but it will fall. Farewell. Man of the bear." He had left after that, leaving James utterly flabbergasted.

"Mr. Walker?" James started. He remembered that he was still sitting in Ozpin's office, Winter was still looking at him. "Are you all right?" She, Ironwood, and Ozpin all looked rather concerned. James couldn't help but feel embarrassed.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Sorry, got lost in my own thoughts," he said. The second statement was true. "Anyway, Lanius seems to have some aptitude for battlefield tactics, but I don't think he has a handle on strategy. Go to the next town, kill or enslave everyone there, move onto the next one, that's as complex as he can get on the strategic level. Under his leadership, the Legion will fall apart. But they'll do a lot of damage on the way down."

"In order words, Caesar is the brains, Lanius is the brawn," Ironwood said. "Along with the iron-clad fist." His voice wasn't sour, it was angry. It didn't take a brain surgeon to figure out why. He was learning just how bad the Legion was at the same time when the Legion was in Remnant's backyard.

"You know, I wish I had thought up that last one, that really sums it up nicely," James said. "Though Caesar doesn't have a monopoly in being thinkers in the Legion. If Lanius is the iron clad fist to the gut, Vulpes Inculta is the knife in the back. He's the only major member I've met more than once, and it's a minor miracle he didn't kill me the first time, he could've done it, and outside circumstances kept me from killing him the second time. He's the head of the Frumentarii, Caesar's black ops division that focuses on gathering intelligence, forming alliances, and launching terror attacks. And as much as I hate to say it, the Frumentarii are damn good at their jobs, Vulpes knows what he's doing. They almost got two factions in the Mojave to join the Legion against the NCR, they only didn't because one had the leadership who made the deal killed, and the other had to have half of the major figures within convince their leader it was a bad idea. That took a lot of prodding and it sure as shit wasn't easy, the Great Khans were raring to go at the NCR after an incident where NCR snipers fired on Great Khan civilians by mistake."

"Then there was the Fiends, a bunch of nutjobs hopped up on all the drugs you could imagine and a few you couldn't that were attacking the NCR mainly for shits and giggles. The Legion didn't directly ally with them, but they did feed them a lot of information on NCR patrols that made them quite a thorn in their side. NCR hired me to do some bounty hunter work for them with some of their snipers backing me up and we decapitated their leadership. They fell apart after that, but the Frumentarii was doing a lot of damage and came damn close to doing even more. They had a spy in the NCR that managed to get all the way up to the rank of captain, were working on a weapons deal that would've gotten them some serious firepower, got dozens of troopers killed through the Fiends, and set off a dirty bomb that took out Camp Searchlight." A horrible thought occurred to him. "I don't want to cause any paranoia, but if the Legion is active in Remnant, there's a good chance they sent the Frumentarii in. You may want to start screening your soldiers to make sure none of them are Legion."

Ironwood's face had gone from angry to positively gaunt. Producing his scroll, he typed a few quick messages into it before putting it down on the table. "You have painted us a very grim picture, I must admit," he said. "I'm thankful that you did this, it's easy to just sit on information when people need to know what's going on." James could've sworn Ironwood glanced at Ozpin when he said that last sentence. "But now we're better equipped to deal with it. Is that all for the Legion's leadership?"

"There's one more guy of note, but he's minor compared to the others. Lucius, head of the Praetorian Guard, Caesar's personal bodyguards. He seems to hold a lot of influence in the Legion, but from what I dug up he seems content to play his role as what's basically Caesar's chief of security. He seems to be the best unarmed combat expert in the Legion, but apart from that, I don't know much, other than he's junior to Lanius. Anyone below these guys are people I'm unaware of."

"This is all very vital information," Ironwood said, and around that time James realized that the sketch artist had been furiously scribbling down notes the entire time. "One more question. Do you have any idea what the Legion's long-term goal in Remnant is?"

James thought long and hard before he answered that. "No. I'm sorry, but I'm honestly lost on that front. Maybe they want Aura and Semblance to beat the NCR? But if that was the case, they would just get that and head back to Earth. They wouldn't stay and find allies and they wouldn't pick fights they can't win. I mean, Jesus Christ. The shit I've seen you people field could flatten the entire Legion in a month. Maybe Caesar is dead and Lanius is just launching an assault without thinking about it. Best explanation I can think of. Again, I'm sorry, but we're gonna have to get the answer to that one from one of them."

Ironwood nodded. "I understand. Now then, can I bother you to give descriptions for pictures of these four?" James nodded. "Excellent."

After that, the artist began asking for details on the leaders of the Legion, with details that ranged from general to absurdly specific, with him spending five minutes trying to describe Caesar's nose. James felt like he was stumbling through the whole thing, with vague descriptions, corrections, and constantly asking clarifications, but the artist seemed to treat all of this like a typical experience. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Ironwood had crossed the room to Ozpin's desk, Winter right behind him, and was now talking to the headmaster in whispered tones, both of them occasionally stopping to send a message on their scrolls.

Eventually, the artist rolled out four sheets of paper in front of James and asked if they matched the faces of the Legion. James looked them over and was thrown off by how striking the resemblances were. "Yeah, that's good," James said, feeling impressed. The artist stood to his feet, said something to Ironwood about reporting back to intelligence, and left the office. James wasn't sure how long this had all taken, but judging by the now setting sun out of the window, it had been the majority of the day. He suddenly realized how hungry and thirsty he was.

Ironwood and Ozpin were still talking. Not wanting to be rude, he patiently waited, flicking the radio on with the volume on low and began to flick through the radio stations. He felt a pang of sadness as Radio New Vegas's frequency got him an unfamiliar station, the same with Mojave Music Radio. He flicked through the stations one by one, being greeted with unfamiliar songs, songs he couldn't help but feel sounded rather crap, and the occasional commercial or news station. Giving up, he turned it off.

"Trouble with your radio?" James blinked. Winter had crossed back to him and was looking down with her neutral expression. "You seemed to be frustrated with it." Her voice was still calm and professional, though James could hear some of the earlier sourness from his description of the Legion.

"No, radio works just fine," he said. "It's just that all of this is utterly alien to me. Your music doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard before." A pang of annoyance struck him. "I mean really, what the crap is this?" Turning the radio back on, he flicked back to a station that had been particularly galling to him. Some sort of instrument that he couldn't recognize was belching out high pitched notes before the vocals kicked in. We're all born with a dream we want to make come true. The best will climb to the top like me. "That doesn't sound like any music I ever heard. No saxophone, no pianos, no guitars, nothing that's actually pleasant to listen to."

He turned the radio off, thankfully silencing the awful sound, but he was surprised to see a mildly amused smile spreading across Winter's face. "My sister does a bit of opera singing, I'm fairly certain I have the files on my scroll still. She can be slightly off tune from time to time, but overall her performance is exceptional. If our music is that much to your distaste, perhaps this will prove to be better."

"I may take you up on that," James said, smiling himself. It felt stupid to be complaining about music after spending so long talking about the Legion, but frankly he needed a little stupidity. He glanced back at Ozpin and Ironwood. They were still talking, and their discussion seemed to be getting a little heated, with voices starting to get raised. "Hey, I don't mean to pry, but is it just me or is there some tension between the two of them."

Winter hesitated before she answered, and even then she shot an uncertain glance at Ironwood as if wondering if she was allowed to answer that question. "There were disagreements between the two of them before you arrived. There was an infiltration of the CCT tower by an unknown individual and overall evidence of someone working in the shadows for ill intent. The White Fang's attack on Vale is believed to be connected, and a gang leader named Roman Torchwick was arrested during the attack for being a ringleader. General Ironwood suspects that he is merely a middleman though and that someone else is pulling the strings. Ozpin and Ironwood had differences in agreements for how to approach the situation, and recently General Ironwood convinced the Vale Council that it would be for the best if he was in charge of the security in Vale for the Vytal Festival. I admit the manner in which he accomplished this was far from savory. However, it was for the best, and I believe Ozpin will come to understand that in time."

James didn't reply right away, not sure how to feel about two people who were supposed to be friends engaging in politics over who got to manage security. Particularly when he didn't know enough about either of them to take a side. He instead turned the conversation onto something he felt he had enough information to reply to. "This Torchwick guy, you think he was taking orders from someone else? Isn't there a chance it was a Frumentarii? Getting a bunch of other people to carry out a suicide attack with high casualties inflicted is something that's right up their alley."

Winter looked thoughtful. "It is a possibility," she said, "we currently lack other leads, our attempts to interrogate Torchwick have proven unsuccessful. There's no conclusive proof that that is the case, but it is a possibility." She nodded her head in thanks. "I will make sure this is passed along to the general."

"Ah, my apologies James," Ozpin said, breaking away from his conversation with Ironwood for a second. "General Ironwood has all that he needs, you're free to go." Ironwood aggressively whispered in his ear. Ozpin frowned in distaste. "Although he would like me to inform you that it is highly likely this chain of attacks will result in class being canceled tomorrow and that he made be enlisting the help of Beacon's staff in order to prevent future ones." He looked directly at Ironwood. "He and I are still debating the details about that last part. I'll contact you in the morning about this. I have someone in the field gathering intelligence on these attacks and I would like to hear more from him before we make any decisions." With a feeling that things were about to get much more bitter, James got up.

"Hope I was a help," he said, before half walking and half running for the door, ED-E following behind him.

"Specialist Schnee, since we have now established the presence of a new hostile force in Remnant, one that would consider Mr. Walker a high-value target, please do him the favor of escorting him home." Ozpin and Ironwood stared intensely at each other, and James was glad for when Winter, who looked as surprised as he felt, crossed the room and exited the room with him. There was a slow silence as they made their way down the tower. James broke it.

"Does he do this often?" James asked. "The security detail I mean. I admit I'm still learning the ropes around here, so I don't know if this is normal or exceptional."

"The situation as a whole is rather exceptional," Winter responded crisply.

"For them maybe, not for us," ED-E beeped. "After you get Fisto, not a whole lot can qualify as exceptional anymore."

"Ok, ED-E, that's a good point, but I'm gonna have to remind you that we agreed we were never going to talk about that again," James replied, very glad that Winter didn't understand Morse Code.

"I think I'd rather not ask," Winter said, a smidgen of dryness in her voice. "Changing the subject, how is my sister doing in class?"

"Well, keep in mind that I've had a sample size of an entire day, and a spent a good chunk of that day trying to not get my skull caved in, but she seems to be absurdly talented and excelled in sparring today. Again, this is coming from someone who's still new to the school, and who is also still wrapping his head around the whole Aura thing."

"Well, good," Winter said. "She always did have talent, though sometimes it takes a bit of a push to get her there. If you're going to be part of Ozpin's staff, here's a bit of advice from someone who used to tutor Weiss in combat. Sometimes you have to be strict and stern, though not pointlessly cruel. Sometimes people Weiss's age lack the means to find their way on their own, and pointing them in the right direction isn't enough. If she ever gets stuck remember that."

"Right, good advice," James said. The policy was solid, though James privately thought that a gentle nudge was all people like Weiss needed, while the sternness should be saved for people like Cardin.

James sighed as he held the door open. "I get the funny feeling you and I are going to see each other again real soon. And under highly unpleasant circumstances."

She gave a stiff nod. "Possibly." She glanced at ED-E. "The general was interested in learning more about the inner mechanics of your machine here, it's a pity we didn't have time for that. Perhaps we can start tomorrow with that?" She frowned. "Upon further thought, most likely not. It's classified and I can't give too much away, but we will be conducting extensive operations tomorrow."

James would be more concerned if they weren't with the Legion in the area. He was about to bid Winter goodbye when an idea struck him. Part of him really didn't want to go through with it, part of him just wanted to close the door and scrounge up something to eat. But Ironwood and Winter were on the same team as him, and if they were fighting the Legion soon, they would need every edge they could get. "Look," he said slowly. "I'll make you a deal. I can show you how ED-E works. Even if you're not an engineer, you can take notes can't you?"

Winter raised an eyebrow, looking interested. "I have some experience with machinery, though you are correct in saying I am not an engineer. I could easily record your explanations, however."

"Ok. Listen, I'm starving, I've had some jerky to eat today and that's it. If you can get us some food, I'll show you as much as I can about ED-E without disassembling him. And if disassemblement is necessary, then I'm sorry, it's not gonna happen," James said. He folded his arms, preparing for an argument over the disassemblement clause of his argument, only to be surprised when Winter gave a curt nod. "Wha? Oh. Ok. Well, let's get the food arranged and then we can-"

"Understood," Winter said, producing a scroll. She typed a few commands into it before holding it up to her ear. "Yes, I'd like to order one extra cheese, please. To Beacon Academy please, teacher's dorms, room 5. Thank you very much." She lowered the scroll. "Our meal will be here in fifteen minutes." James blinked. It was that easy? Had Pre-War Earth had it that easy?

'I, well, come in then," he said, holding the door open. Winter nodded, said a quick thanks, and entered the room. Feeling nonplussed, James closed the door. "ED-E, could you do me a favor and stay still for a bit?"

"...You're just showing her what's under the hood right?" ED-E asked. The beeps came slower, more hesitant. James was pretty sure he understood why. What had almost happened to ED-E back on the East Coast.

"Right buddy. Nothing more than that." He gave ED-E a comforting rub on the side. "It gets to be too much and you want it to stop, just let me know." ED-E let out a soft beep and nuzzled into the hand before flying over to the counter, where he slowly landed. "Ok, Ms. Schnee, watch closely, because it can get a little complicated." She nodded, producing her scroll and holding it up as James slowly began to slide ED-E's outer plates off. "Ok, ED-E's power source is pretty spectacular and reliable, but it requires some explanation, so let's start with the basics of fusion."

XXXXX

Cinder Fall sifted through her scroll as night fell over Beacon. Something had happened, her backdoor into Atlas's database showed her that large quantities of new data were being added at an alarming rate. She narrowed her gaze, sifting through it.

"I think Adam's lost it," Mercury said from behind her. "You read what happened earlier today? Twenty-two people dead, most of them by slow suffocation, and three of them mauled to death. Except get this, one of them had bite marks on them that weren't from dogs. They were human. And the same person even had some letters carved into his forehead, an X and two Is." He gave an amused laugh. "Adam's doing a real great job at fighting the Faunus aren't animals stereotype. I guess all the mean people hurt his feelings and he took it too personally."

"Cinder? What's wrong?" Emerald asked, leaning over Cinder's shoulder to look at the scroll.

Cinder didn't reply right away, continuing to scroll through her way through the trove of information. Then four sketched faces came into view, with a note right beneath them. A smile spread across her face. "Nothing is wrong. In fact, we've finally figured out what's made Adam so bold. He's found new allies." She scrolled down, reading as she went. Caesar's Legion. Commonly allied with lesser tribes through trickery. Commonly betrayed and enslaved them. Cinder smirked at the thought Adam's followers being forced to kneel at the side of the old man that had been sketched. "It looks like they'll turn on him when they have no more use for him."

"So," Mercury said, flopping down on his bed and letting his head hang over the side, staring at Cinder upside down. "We just gonna let them kill Adam?" He gave a loud yawn. "Sounds pretty boring." Cinder half wondered if he was trying to provoke her. She would let him play his little game for now.

"No," Cinder said. "In fact, Ironwood is planning on taking the fight to this...Caesar's Legion. And he's planning on letting student teams volunteer to assist Atlas forces." She read a little further and gave a small laugh. "Despite protests from Ozpin."

"So we're gonna be playing soldier?" Mercury asked. "Marching up and down in uniform to make Ironwood feel like a big boy?"

"So that he feels like a big boy in the same way you feel like a big boy when you say something that you and only you think is clever, yes," Emerald said, her voice scathing. Cinder barely noticed as she continued to read. She had no idea who this Caesar was, outside of what was written in front of her. But then again she didn't need to know very much about him.

He was going to be dead soon.

XXXXX

Author's Note: Old man complains that young people have crap taste in music. Nah, I kid. A more accurate title would be old man complains about radical culture shock. Old man doesn't get why he can take shit off of dead people. Also, old man is the anti-racist for once.

James is 5'11, I decided that rather early on. Amusingly, Pyrrha is 6'0, so I thought I'd bring that up. Though I'm not going to be messing around with height too much, because for some reason RWBY averts Teens Are Short, but as a by-product made every most of the adults goddamn giants. Seriously, check out the RWBY height chart, most of the adults are over six feet. Ozpin, Glynda, Ironwood, and Oobleck all dwarf Pyrrha. That's a bit much, so I'm probably gonna skate over it, as fun as it might be to have everyone calling James shorty.

On the matter of James losing to Pyrrha, I thought it would be interesting to make him inwardly frustrated with losing. Even though it makes sense that he would lose, that wouldn't make the act of getting your rear handed to you any less bitter. I mean, imagine you're playing a video game you're normally pretty good at, and a five-year-old beats you. Now, even if that child is a prodigy that plays on a level most people can only dream of, the more primal part of your brain is still going to be upset. I wanted to depict James as a mature adult, but being a mature adult doesn't mean a lack of more petty and selfish impulses, it just means you've got them better under control. I feel like it makes him more three dimensional. More human.

Speaking of which, I was originally going to have him fight Cardin AND Pyrrha, with him (just barely) beating Cardin before he went on to get stomped by Pyrrha, for the dual purpose of knocking Cardin down a peg and showing where James is on the RWBY battle tier. Able to hold his own, but ultimately not up to taking the greats in a head-on fight. But if I did that, there would be way too much action in this chapter, and I think the solo fight with Pyrrha got where he stands across. So I decided to limit him knocking Cardin down a peg to him being a teacher.

I actually went through a really weird process when writing that scene. First I thought "Oh Velvet's a second-year student and Team RWBY is the first-year team, they won't be in the same class. Ok, I'll just make up a team for this scene, CBLT? Yeah, CBLT is good." But then it hit me "actually, wait a fucking moment, Velvet WAS in class with team RWBY in volume 1. Yeah, they gave her character a soft reboot in volume 2, but she was still there. Ok, fuck it, just use Velvet."

And while the idea of a student lying directly to a teacher's face when the lie is beyond obvious may sound absurd, I can promise you, as a sub, it happens quite often. Honestly, the way I wrote James and Cardin's confrontation had me taking a lot from my experiences as a substitute. Just altered a bit to accommodate there being superpowered people involved. Some of the kids I have problems with I can honestly see them implying they would hit me with a mace if they were in a situation where maces were commonplace. They would never say it out loud, oh no, but they would imply it.

And before anyone asks, James took both the Lady Killer and Confirmed Bachelor perks. If you catch my drift. Also also, I really, REALLY need to get more chapter perspectives from RWBY characters. It's been necessary to focus on James the last few chapters as we set things up, but it's a crossover, not a pure Fallout story. Expect more RWBY perspectives next time.

Also also also. This chapter's length kinda got away from me.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, and Josue Garcia for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 6

The Hanged Woman

XXXXX

James wasn't sure when exactly he had fallen asleep. He remembered wondering exactly what he was looking at when a delivery boy had knocked on his door with some kind of food in a box. A disc-shaped thing covered in cheese. At least that's what Winter called it, even though it looked like no cheese James had ever seen. Then he had tasted it and wondered how the hell anything could be that good. He also remembered showing Winter the ins and outs of EDI before sitting down on his bed to rest for a second. He didn't remember anything after that.

"It was probably then," he concluded. He felt a little stiff, most likely a side effect of sleeping in full armor, but still well rested. Stretching, he got to his feet. Daylight was creeping in through the window, it looked like the sun had just risen. Yawning, he got to his feet. The box of pizza was still lying open on the table, a single slice left in it. Picking it up, he looked at it before shrugging and taking a bite out of it. Even cold it still tasted pretty good.

"Awake?" ED-E asked, floating off of the counter and hovering around James's head. "You got lucky. She had just left when you passed out. Would've been a bit of a social faux pas if you had fallen asleep when we had company over." James nodded grimly, glad that he didn't have to provide an awkward apology. Though frankly, after a day of getting his ass handed to him by a teenager, spending hours upon hours being debriefed on the Legion and then giving a robotics lesson, he felt he had earned the right to be tired.

Scarfing down the rest of the pizza, he checked the time on his Pip-Boy. 6:30. Well if anything, he was up at a good time. Alternating to his scroll, he saw a couple of messages that had been sent to him around an hour ago. One from Ozpin, one from Ironwood. The one from Ironwood read "Mr. Walker. Winter spoke favorably of you and your willingness to cooperate. I'm glad to hear this. I understand you most likely had a rocky first impression of me, but I will need your help in a delicate matter. Winter will be by at 0700 with the details. I will not force you to help me, but I feel that it won't be in your nature to say no. No matter what Ozpin says."

Meanwhile, the message from Ozpin said, "James. I won't say too much over scrolls as they're not secure, but I encourage you to turn down Ironwood's offer. His heart is in the right place, but he has a bad tendency to rush in without thinking about the long-term consequences of his actions. His mindset is impulsive, equating swiftness with decisiveness, never considering the possibility of rashness. I have agents working in the field to help me come up with a more refined solution. I ask you to please not assist Ironwood in his endeavors, no matter how tempting they may seem. I assure you, he will do more harm than good if not kept in check."

Groaning, James approached his fridge, pulled out the bottle of whiskey he had taken from Juinor's bar, and took a heavy swing. That took the edge off of the stress and weariness that was starting to build up inside of him. "You ever get the feeling you're in the middle of a spat?" he asked, returning the bottle and closing the door. "I was hoping that one benefit from being in a mystical fantasy world would be a lack of politicking. No such luck it seems. Well, at least if it gets out of hand I've got a shotgun that'll let me take a quick way out." Shaking his head, partially at his own weak joke, he gave all of his weapons a quick look over, noted that the White Fang SMG still needed more ammo, and fastened them to his armor. He took one look at the White Fang SMG, turned it over in his hand, and then holstered it on his left side. Dual wielding SMGs was normally a rather idiotic move done by people who were trying to show off or didn't know what they were doing. Commonly both. Even the ambidextrous, which James was not, couldn't accurately aim an automatic weapon in both hands. But with the increased strength Aura gave him, he could probably pull it off.

"Actually, now that I think about it, I've never really stress tested this," he said. Well, he had tested the endurance aspect, that had gotten a rather brutal trial by fire when Pyrrha had fought him. Not the strength aspect, however. Curiosity getting the better of him, he knelt down in front of his bed, grabbed it, and attempted to lift it up. It felt like it weighed a fraction of what it probably did. He was easily able to get it up over his head, even when he shifted to one hand. "I'll be damned," he said, feeling shocked at the spike his strength had taken.

"So can just anyone get this Aura shit?" ED-E asked. "I mean, it probably doesn't work with robots because of the whole "soul" thing, but could you give it to everyone else? All our pals?"

The image of Lily somehow made even stronger floated through his mind. "Ozpin just said something about will being a factor," he said. "So maybe? I don't know if I could do it myself, there was some mumbo-jumbo incantation involved, and there's probably more to it than just saying the words." He shook his head. " I don't care what Ozpin says. When you say magic sounding words to create magic like powers, it's magic. It's not like psykers where there's a mutation in the brain or something. This just happens."

"To be fair, we don't know if psykers are real," ED-E said. "You and I only ever got second-hand accounts of that stuff."

"Lily seemed pretty sure that the Master was one," James argued. "And that kid at 188, there was something going on with him. He mentioned some stuff about me that would be pretty hard to guess if you didn't know me personally." Even as he said this out loud, even he couldn't help but feel it was a rather weak argument.

"Riiiiiiiight," ED-E said, James getting a small headache as the eyebot typed out I over and over again in Morse code. "By the way, I can see someone coming. They just popped up on my sensors. Probably Winter. Do me a favor and tell her that I'm not in the mood for dissection today." Deciding that he would very much not be telling Winter that, he crossed the room just as a sharp knocking came from the door. He slid it open.

"Ah, I see you're already prepared," Winter said from the other side, her eyes darting from gun to gun with clinical precision. "Good. Though I have to question the benefits of bringing so many firearms. Wouldn't it be more practical to only bring one or two? Even with Aura, overburdening yourself with too much is unwise, particularly with the large amounts of ammunition that you must be carrying."

James shrugged. "Never had a problem with it before. Besides, in my experience, you never know when you're gonna to get a moment to resupply. More often than not, it's off of the guy you just killed, and that's not a reliable source of ammo for the guns you have. So I'm the type of guy who likes to have all the ammunition I need to end a fight, and then some extra to be safe. I've been doing this for decades, I know how to make it work."

A small frown flashed on Winter's face and James could tell she disagreed with his decision. Thankfully though, she didn't pursue the subject. "On the topic of ammunition, I was told you might need these." She held up a bag of clean leather that James took. Peeking inside, he saw around a dozen magazines, all of which matched the one that was snugly loaded in his recently looted SMG. "Fire Dust rounds," Winter said, "I think you'll find them quite effective, more so than your other weapons. I have to admit, I never thought I'd see bullets that still used gunpowder outside of a museum."

"If you ever end up in my world, you can't go a mile without tripping over a bunch of them," James said, taking the bag and emptying it into his rucksack. "Thanks a million, I owe you big time for that one. By the way, the general said he wanted me to help with something?"

Winter nodded sourly. "Ozpin has an informant who is questionable with his professionalism but is nevertheless effective at intelligence gathering. He has been scouting out the area of the last White Fang attack and has found a trail that he has been following. At the moment he is still following the trail and while he can't confirm where the White Fang will strike next, we have narrowed it down to three nearby settlements. Atlas military forces have already started to move in and evacuate civilians from these areas."

"And we're gonna move in and hit the White Fang hard?" James asked. Winter nodded. "Ok, there is nothing in that plan that I'm not 110% on board with. The White Fang deserve it if the members of them I met represent the whole, and the Legion sure as shit deserves it. What do you need me to do?"

Winter produced her scroll from her pocket and held it up so that James could see it. "As I said, we don't know which of the three settlements the White Fang is going to attack. We need to strike a delicate balance. We need to position an ambush at each one without alerting the White Fang to our presence, lest they retreat and scatter. General Ironwood plans to station several military units at the various settlements with Huntsman and Huntress support. He also plans to permit students to volunteer."

"Wait, what?" James said. He remembered Ozpin's message and how he thought that Ironwood would do more harm than good. Well, he could certainly understand why Ozpin would think that this was a bad idea. "Ironwood suggested that?"

"Actually, it was Ozpin's idea," Winter said matter of factly. The narrative that had been forming in his head, the idea that Ironwood had been planning on sending Ozpin's students to the frontline without Ozpin's permission, spluttered and died. He had grabbed the wrong end of the stick, except it hadn't even been a stick, it had been the tail of a grumpy and hungry Deathclaw. He was very glad he had clarified the situation before he had opened his mouth and said something stupid. "In fact, Ozpin's idea was to send in just the students with the teachers to provide support."

"Wait, how does that make sense?" James asked. "If there's a terrorist organization out there and you know roughly where they're going to be, you want the army, don't you? I mean, just off of the top of my head, if I knew where a bunch of Fiends were going to hit and I could get a few squads of NCR soldiers to back me up, I would."

"I'm glad that you can see reason," Winter said, "because, for some reason, Ozpin doesn't on this matter. Not that I wish to speak ill of him, he is a very talented man with much to his name, but he seems to be very biased in this regard. He thinks a little too highly of his students and expects them to carry the weight of the world on their backs at times. I admit, they proved themselves during the attack on Vale, they are not incompetent, but they are very unrefined."

"God, if they're your idea of unrefined, that scares me a little," James said. "At some points, the war between the NCR and the Legion was getting so bad that the NCR was sending in sixteen-year-olds with two weeks of training to fight the Legion. It was a damn mess. Compared to them, Ozpin's students are damn masters of warfare."

"So, out of curiosity, do you support the idea of them being sent out to support Atlas's forces?" James blinked. Winter was staring at him intently, and he had a very bad feeling that she would remember it if he said something that she didn't agree with. He thought for a moment before deciding that, in this situation, the truth would be for the best.

"In limited amounts," he said. "I've seen what some of them can do, they're nothing short of amazing. But not all of them are like that. Even so, I think it's at the point that, even though they're young, you can't treat them like kids anymore. They fought off a terrorist attack and a horde of monsters. They've earned the respect that comes with that, and they've proven themselves capable of handling that kind of responsibility. The ones who were out there fighting nonetheless. Some of them," Cardin's smug face flashed before his mind's eye, "probably not."

"I see," Winter replied, her face maddeningly neutral. A pang of frustration shot through James. He wouldn't say he disliked Winter, she had her moments of charm, but she was extremely hard to read, and James felt utterly lost as to whether he was peaking her curiosity or pissing her off. It was nothing short of maddening. Sadly, it looked as if he would stay in the dark for some time. "I'll take that into consideration. Until then, General Ironwood is waiting for us. This way." She gestured and began to stride towards the center of campus. James made sure that ED-E was right behind him before he began to follow her.

"That's where we're heading," she said, pointing to a building right next to the one that James had taught in yesterday. As they moved towards it, a loud roaring noise filled the air. Several of the VTOLs that James had seen the day he had arrived in Remnant appeared in the distance. They didn't stay in the distance for very long though, they moved so quickly that they were at the assembly hall in a matter of seconds. The slowed above it, eventually coming to a stop and then slowly descending. James stared at them. It still boggled his mind to see aircraft used so idly and in such large numbers. He had never seen more than one in the air at the time, nor was he aware of any faction in the Mojave that was capable of even fielding more than one. Maybe the Enclave had at one point, but that had been before James's time. He had just been an eight-year-old kid when the NCR and Enclave had clashed.

The ramps to the VTOLs slid open and a compliment of Atlesian soldiers disembarked from each one, Ironwood at the lead. Oddly enough, a red-headed young girl in green and black clothes and with a bright pink ribbon in her hair was right behind him. He turned, spoke to one of the soldiers, and two of the soldiers broke off, leading the girl towards the assembly hall. "Atlas has Huntresses too then?" he asked, watching the girl go.

"In a manner of sorts," Winter replied. "They're not called that within our ranks, but functionally they're identical. We're of course going to make use of those with Aura. Both General Ironwood and I do, and we have a large compliment folded into the military. Technically all four kingdoms have standing armies, but Atlas is the only one who does this. The rest have Huntresses and Hunters acting as a separate organization. Cooperation is common between them, but the more centralized chain of command we have enables for far more synchronized actions.

"Every nation has troopers and Rangers, but in Atlas, they have the same boss, gotcha," James thought to himself. "So unless I'm mistaken, with Atlas's military and Vale's Huntresses and Huntsmen, the plan is to unload both barrels on the White Fang?" He hoped he had gotten the name of this country right, he had overheard it a couple of times but wasn't a hundred percent sure it was correct. If he had made a mistake, Winter didn't correct him.

"A bit of a crude way of putting it, but accurate," Winter said. "The aim of the battle we are planning is to deliver a decisive blow to the Vale branch of the White Fang." This country was called Vale then. James had to fight back the urge to let out a sigh of relief. "While the White Fang is responsible for illicit operations the world over, only the Vale branch is showing this kind of increased aggression and ferocity. It could be the prelude to similar strategies being adopted all over, it may not. We don't know and we can't afford to take chances. We're going to nip this in the bud now and show the White Fang that the started a fight they can't win."

"That may work on them, it won't work on the Legion," James said. "They're fanatical to a suicidal degree. If an officer ordered ten legionaries to storm a machine-gun nest of a hundred with nothing but sticks and stones, they would do it. You can't intimidate them, all you can do is beat them so hard they can't mount any more assaults."

"That is precisely the plan," Winter said crisply. "It's the plan for the local branch of the White Fang as well. The message being sent out, that Atlas and Vale cannot be beaten, is for other branches of the White Fang." Their conversation was cut short as Ironwood approached them. Winter broke into a well-practiced salute. "Sir."

"At ease," he said. "Mr. Walker, I'm pleased to see you here. We've got a lot ahead of us and I need all hands on deck. Please. Follow me. I'm about to explain the finer details of our plan, and I want you there. You'll be working with Specialist Schnee directly for this, acting in both a support and advisory role to her." James glanced at Winter and gave her a small nod. With a gesture, Ironwood led the way into the assembly hall. James and Winter followed.

XXXXX

Blake looked around the assembly hall. When she and the rest of her team had gotten messages asking them to come here, they had expected it to be backed. Instead, only around two dozen or so teams were here, a fraction of the teams that had been present at the Vytal Festival welcoming ceremonies. The teams in question seemed to be evenly divided among the four kingdoms. The only other Vale teams that she could recognize there were JNPR, CFVY and, to her deep displeasure, CRDL.

"Penny for your thoughts?" Someone leaned in from her side. Even if she didn't recognize the voice, her utter waterfall of hair that was now tickling her shoulder and side would have given away that it was Yang. "You look like you're on a different planet. Not trying to go find Mr. Walker's old home are you? I doubt he'd appreciate you rummaging through his stuff without asking first."

Blake smiled for a second. Yang's jokes were never of particularly high quality, but she always told them with an undeniable sincerity that made them endearing. In short bursts. "Just a lot on my mind. About certain things." There was enough of general buzz in the hall that she could probably say everything on her mind and not be overheard, but she played it safe. She pointed to her bow and gave her hidden ears a good twitch. "Recent events mainly."

"Ah," Yang said, her face sagging a bit. A lot had been loaded into those three words, but thankfully Yang seemed to understand it without any trouble. "I-look, they're gonna get stopped, ok? The four of us and Oobleck were able to throw a real wrench into their plan when they were operating under the radar. Now they're getting the attention of Vale and Atlas after what they pulled off with that failed attack of theirs. They're going to get what's coming to them."

"Yes but-" Blake started before she hesitated. It was hard to put all of this into words. She rarely had been in a situation where she could voice all of her concerns about the White Fang. She had run away from home after a spiteful argument, Adam had mastered the art of guilt tripping her into staying quiet so that she didn't put additional pressure on him, the rest of the White Fang wouldn't listen to her concerns, and she hadn't been open with her new friends on her past and status as a Faunus for very long. It didn't come naturally to her. She had to try. "They do need to be stopped," she said. "But. I don't know Yang. This is all so much. People I used to know are going to get caught up in the crossfire. Some of them are good people who just lost their way."

"They did some pretty nasty stuff, Blake," Yang replied. "I get that there's some personal feelings there, but they're out there hurting people."

"But that's the thing," Blake said, finally feeling like she had a thread to start pulling on. "Something doesn't feel right about this. The White Fang started crossing lines some time ago, but this? This is on a whole other level, something's changed about them. They attacked convoys, stole, and killed, but mass slaughter? Torture? People mauled to death by dogs? And those crosses." She took in a sharp breath. When she had first seen the pictures of yesterday's attack, she had thought that the ones who had been strapped to those wooden crosses had already been dead. Instead, the design of the cross had caused those on it to die a slow and painful death. "What are they doing? Could...could I have ended up like them?"

"Hey," Yang said, putting her arms around Blake and pulling her into a hug. "I can only imagine how tough this is for you. But anyone who's out there? Doing all these things? Something happened to them, something that you weren't a part of. They're looking at all of this and they're still going through with it. You saw everything that was going on and you didn't stay. You left. So don't go comparing yourself to them, ok?"

Blake nodded uncertainty. She felt like she could talk for hours about her concerns with the White Fang and Adam and it still wouldn't be enough. There was so much that was still left unsaid, either because she couldn't bring herself to say it, or she just didn't have the words. Like Adam. She had alluded to him a couple of times, made vague statements about him, but never by name. She had never told any of her team about that particular wound, or how very deep it went. And they deserved to know, they deserved to know exactly how close she and Adam had been, and how their relationship had turned so utterly toxic. Particularly when she had a good hunch that Adam was nearby. But every time she tried to bring it up, the words died in her mouth. Self-loathing washed over her. Even when she wasn't running away, she didn't have the courage to take a step forward.

"May I have your attention please?" Blake's head snapped in the direction of whoever had just spoken. General Ironwood was standing at the center of the assembly hall, quite a few soldiers in Atlas armor around him, along with James, ED-E floating over his shoulder, and a woman that Blake didn't know. She blinked. The woman in question was a spitting image of Weiss if she had been aged up a decade.

"Winter!?" Weiss was staring at the older woman with disbelief etched onto her face. "What's she doing here?"

"You know her?" Ruby asked, leaning up on the tips of her toes to get a better look at her. "Is she your mom?"

"My sister!" Weiss said indignantly. "She's a specialist in the Atlas army. She's been out of contact for some time now, I'm not sure what she's been up to. If she's here, and with the attacks that happened lately," she hesitated, looking worried. "I don't think that this is anything good."

Blake wondered what she had meant by that, but Ironwood was still speaking and she turned her attention back to him. "I have no doubt that you are well aware of the attacks that have been taking place the past few days, so I won't insult your intelligence by reminding you. However, I will tell you that these are unprecedented acts of cruelty that we have not seen in decades. The only recorded incidents that match the disregard for sapient life." Blake couldn't help but notice that he said sapient life instead of human life. She appreciated that.

"We have obtained evidence that more attacks like these have already been planned, and that they intend to strike soon. Frankly, they have had more free reign than they should have ever been allowed to. We intend to launch a counter-attack before any more settlements are the victims of this barbarism. However, in order to ensure a total and utter victory, we need your help." A collective gasp reverberated throughout the assembly hall, one that Blake contributed to against her will.

"Some may accuse me of putting unfair pressure on you. While I disagree with them, you have proven yourselves to be true Huntsmen and Huntresses in training already, I understand their concern. So please understand, this mission will be highly dangerous and volunteer only. I urge you, do not let your decisions be made by pride, and any ridicule to those who do not volunteer will not be tolerated. This is a decision that cannot be made idly. You will be heading into enemy territory, the presence of backup doesn't change this. Please. Before I go any further, take some time to talk with your teams. If you wish to participate, please stay. If you do not, you may leave at your convenience." Ironwood fell silent, though he did not move from where he stood. At once, mutterings sprouted up across the hall.

"Team RWBY? Huddle up," Ruby said. Blake hesitated, still digesting the announcement, but the other three members of her team had already bunched up together, and she followed suit. "Ok, this is a decision too big for me to make alone," the redheaded girl said. "We need a unanimous vote if we're going to do this. I'm all for it, but this is bigger than anything we've ever done before. Are we doing this?"

"You've got a heck yeah from me," Yang said, grinning toothily. "We already started this when we went into Mountain Glenn, we can't leave this half done. Besides, we're gonna have back up this time. Why would I turn down a fight with even better odds than the last one we got into?"

"You sure?" Ruby asked. "I mean, Mount Glenn was a little rough for you. That pink haired girl gave you a really tough time going by what you said."

Blake noticed a very odd expression on Yang's face, but it was gone in the blink of an eye, replaced by Yang's usual cheery attitude. "Ah, she got lucky. Got the drop on me. We just gotta make sure that she doesn't get the chance again. All four of us will be more than a match for her. Besides, she was Torchwick's little assistant, we gotta drag her in if she's out there. So I stand by my heck yeah."

"Well, apparently my sister is going to be out there," Weiss said. "Ruby? You wouldn't stay at school and do nothing if you knew Yang was going to go out and risk her life, and I the same goes for me and Winter. She's a Schnee, she's going to be considered a high-value target the second the White Fang realize who she is. Though the White Fang has been so utterly disgusting as of late that someone needs to do something to stop them. I'd be willing to do something about it even if I knew no one out there. They've just become utter savages as of late." A second after she had spoken, she glanced at Blake and a look of horror spread across her face. "I mean, they certainly had reasons to be upset, but this is hardly an appropriate response, or-" but Blake put her hand up.

"I'm not going to be offended on their behalf," she said calmly, more calmly then she felt. "Not anymore." Weiss nodded at her, still looking a little worried. "They've crossed a line. They need to be stopped. The White Fang was supposed to be about justice. This?" She thought of Adam, his snarling face visible even with his mask on. "It's spite. It's going to make things worse for everyone. Humans and Faunus, no one benefits. So yeah. Let's do this."

Ruby nodded. "Ok. Team RWBY is 100% on board with this. Heh. Our second big official mission as a team. Let's make it count." Team RWBY broke away. As they did, Blake spotted a couple of teams that were slowly leaving the hall, most of them looking rather ashamed as they did. Part of her wondered if she would have been among them if the circumstances had been slightly different Well, she didn't exactly have time to wonder that.

Blake didn't recognize anyone within the leaving teams. She blinked in surprise. Team CRDL wasn't among those who had turned down the offer to join Atlas on this expedition, something that deeply surprised her. For all of Team CRDL's bluster, they had never struck her as a particularly brave or daring bunch. Not daring in brave in ways that were actually meaningful at the least. Sure enough, they were still in the assembly hall, deep in conversation, not that far away.

She took a couple of steps closer, facing General Ironwood while watching Team CRDL out of the corner of her eyes, all four of her ears perked up. With the exception of Cardin himself, all of team CRDL looked rather nervous, while Cardin glared at all of them. "I think this is a bad idea man," Russel said, nervously fingering his one shoulder pad. "I mean, those freaks started putting bodies on display and eating people. They really are a bunch of animals. Maybe we should just let Atlas handle this."

"Hey. You see that?" he pointed across the room, to Team JNPR, which was huddled together in a quiet conversation. "The blonde pansy is staying. Are you telling me we should be running and let Atlas take care of it, that we can't handle it when he can? Kind of sounds like that's what you're saying. And I'm not giving his girlfriend another chance to show us up. We're going, and if you've got a problem with it, you can find yourself another team. Anyone got a problem with that?" Russel, Sky, and Dove all looked uncomfortable but didn't say anything. "That's what I thought."

Blake didn't know how or why Team CRDL was being considered for this, they seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. At that moment though, Ironwood had begun to speak again. "This is the final chance for all who wish to leave. Anyone?" He looked around, but no further teams left. "Very well then. What I am about to tell you is strictly confidential information. We have significant evidence that suggests that the White Fang is being reinforced by a newly surfaced faction. We are still analyzing much of the data given to us and cannot afford leaks, so it will be provided to you on a strictly need to know basis."

A display behind him blinked to life, showing a holographic display where four sketched mugshots were at the center. One of a balding man captioned Edward "Caesar" Swallow, one of a thin white-haired man captioned "Vulpes Inculta", one of an older, bearded man caption "Lucius", and a fourth of a regally designed helmet with an odd red topped captioned "Legate Lanius." "These are the four known leaders of this recently identified faction, known as Caesar's Legion. Our reports indicate that they are a primitive but highly experienced warband that has operated outside of the Four Kingdoms."

Blake couldn't help but notice that Ironwood wasn't bringing up James's claim about the Legion being from another world. At first, she was annoyed, but then she put herself in the shoes of one of the students who hadn't heard it from James personally. She probably would've thought that Ironwood was insane or just messing with her. And anyway, Ironwood had said that the information was strictly need to know. Knowledge of the Legion's true origins wasn't needed to fight them after all.

"There is evidence to suggest that the Legion is teaching the White Fang new tactics that have led to their deviation from their normal plans. They have therefore been identified as a threat on par with the White Fang, and are to be dealt with on sight. Apprehended if possible, eliminated if necessary. Please, react with all due haste if you sight any of these four men. But these are objectives of opportunity. We have another matter that presses directly on us."

The four pictures behind him disappeared to be replaced by a map of the coast of Vale. Not of the coastal cities, but of the smaller towns between said cities. Three were highlighted, a beachfront pier town, a fishing village, and one that was in a wooded area a few kilometers inland. All of them were rather close together. "We have tracked the White Fang to this general area, but we don't know their exact position. All civilians in these towns had been evacuated, hopefully with the enemy forces being none the wiser. We will move into these towns with the intention of ambushing the White Fang and Legion as they move to sack another settlement.

"Ambushes will set up in all three settlements. Atlas military forces will be present in all of them, and student teams will be acting as support depending on the settlement in question. Vale Teams will be present here, Mistral teams here, and Vacuo here." As he spoke, symbols of each of the mentioned kingdoms appeared on one of the villages. "Atlas students will be assisting a flanking force that will be moving in behind the enemy force, cutting off their retreat. We are grouping student teams with those from their respective academies in order to maximize synchronization. I understand you may have made some new and interesting allies this semester, but in such a dire situation we must rely on tried and true battle formations."

"I will be leading the flanking formation. One of my trusted subordinates will be leading each of the others. You will listen to them and follow their instructions to the letter. This is a military operation and the utmost care must be taken in order to ensure success." Pictures appeared in front of each Kingdom's symbol, each of them depicting a different Atlas officer. Winter was over the one of Vale. Blake didn't know how to feel about that. Weiss had never said anything ill about her sister, and her personal research pointed to her being disowned by her father. Hopefully, she didn't share her father's views on Faunus. Hopefully. "Please report to your assigned officers at once. They will give you more detailed instructions.

With that, General Ironwood stepped away from the stage. Instantly, the teams in the hall began to move towards their respective officers. Team RWBY found themselves heading towards Winter along with Teams JNPR, CRDL, and CFVY, and two teams unfamiliar to her. Weiss looked noticeably nervous. Soon, the four teams and a couple of others that Blake didn't recognize were gathered around Winter, who was standing with her arms folded behind her back with James and ED-E right behind her.

"We will be landing in the village that is most likely to be targeted by the White Fang, as it is the closest from their last known location," she said briskly. "You were picked for this because General Ironwood highly respects Professor Ozpin's opinion, and Ozpin's report on his students has been nothing short of glowing. I will be expecting you to live up to those expectations." Blake was certain she heard Weiss swallow. "We will be deploying in a loose net formation and encircling the village. The center of the net will move forward to engage the enemy when they are spotted, while the arms of the net will close in on them from the sides."

She produced her scroll and pressed a button, a hologram of a half circle appearing above it. "I have studied reports on your team and have assigned you positions that play to your strengths. Team JNPR and Team CRDL will be in the center of the formation, their skill sets best fit the role of luring an enemy in and keeping them occupied. All other teams will be part of the arms, as listed here. All portions of the formation will be supported by a full platoon. The platoon lieutenant will lead the right wing, and the sergeant the left." Blake focused on the hologram. Team RWBY would be on the right wing with one of the teams she didn't know. CYFY would be on the left.

She pointed to James over her shoulder. "Mr. Walker here will be serving me in an advisory role in the center position, but any orders he gives are to be followed as if I gave them. The platoon lieutenant and sergeant are to have their orders obeyed as well. We will land outside the village, ideally hours before the White Fang are due to arrive, and set up our ambush. The center formation will be intentionally poorly concealed to trick the White Fang into thinking that they have found the only trap. The wings will be more properly concealed in order to ensure the ambush goes well. Are there any questions?" No one said anything. "Good. We leave in fifteen minutes. Make any last preparations you need and meet me outside. We will be traveling by air."

She pointed to a nearby table, one that was laden with small earpieces. "These are short-range radios that can transmit up to fifty clicks away. Not a particularly great distance, but they'll be helpful for this mission. Everyone take one and do not change the frequency unless ordered." As she spoke, she took two and affixed one in her own ear, handing the other to James.

At once, Blake's hand went to Gambol Shroud, double-checking its standard and dust ammunition. She could see the other members of her team doing the rest with their weapons before going to take a radio. Weiss's hands were trembling a little bit, but she was keeping a firm grip on her sword despite this. Blake steeled herself for what was about to come. Adam had gone from being more than just lashing out at humans and hurting them. He had become outright sadistic, drawing out their suffering as long as possible. He had to be stopped.

XXXXX

Servius looked at the new weapon in his hand. It was almost comical, it looked more like a toy than anything else. It was white, had odd little lights along the top, and a barrel that looked more like a suction cup than a proper weapon part. But he had tested it and it had burned a hole in the side of the house that he had fired at. It was a very effective weapon, as much as he didn't want to admit it. Even after those results, everything about it felt wrong. Even its name, LAER, felt more like a parody of weaponry than an actual weapon.

He had never thought that he would actually wield an energy weapon in his life. Caesar's word had always declared them to be a product of the old world's greed, incompetence, and complacency. A crutch used by children who were incapable of defending themselves when their contraptions broke. If he ever had seen a legionary picking it up, Servius would have demanded that he discard that weapon or face death.

And yet Vulpes, one of the most powerful men of the Legion, had taken dozens of this LAERs with him into this new world. The rest of the survivors of the portal guard had also been given LAERs, with the exception of Tullus as he could no longer hold a rifle. It felt wrong to see a Centurion like Ancus disgrace himself by using such a cowardly weapon. To his credit, Ancus had grimaced with disgust when his LAER had been presented to him, but he had taken it because he had been ordered to. And even then, he had also been gifted with a Super Sledge, a far more honorable weapon that was worthy of a legionary of Ancus's status. Rumford, on the other hand, had taken his LAER with glee. The hatred Servius felt towards that profligate wearing the armor of a legionary boiled. Even though all of them were now dressed in the armor of the White Fang, Servius still fumed at the thought of Rumford feeling that he was worthy of pretending to be a legionary.

Vulpes had declared that the usage of the LAERs in this world was due to a direct order from Caesar himself. Servius had doubted it, though not openly. He would never directly contradict one of Caesar's most trusted officers. And yet, Caesar's Signifer had produced a written order that bore Caesar's mark, which banished any doubt from Servius's mind. Caesar had deemed that this world was so dangerous, and yet had so much to offer them, that he had decreed that energy weapons would be used for their expedition here. Servius was relieved when he learned that the order clarified that this was only a temporary matter and that all of the LAERs were to be destroyed when the Legion was done with this world. It was a comforting thought to know that these disgraceful weapons would not become a staple of the Legion's armory.

"Hah! Check this out!" Servius looked up. The White Fang and Legion had made camp a few miles away from their next target, resting for a little bit before beginning their assault. Rumford was swinging around a belt-fed machine-gun, the same type of machine-gun that the Legion used as fixed weapons for their settlements and outposts, with the letters and numbers M1919A4 carved into its side. The belt was connected to the machine-gun through a box of ammunition that was strapped to Rumford's back, just below his LAER. Normally, one Legionary would have to man the gun while another fed ammunition through it, but Rumford's newly awakened Aura removed the need for that. "Wonder what it'll look like when a band of cocksuckers get mowed down by this bad boy!"

Servius snarled in anger but forced himself to stay quiet. At least one of the weapons that Rumford was using had some dignity to it. Vulpes had brought quite a bit of hardware through the portal with him, having been expecting to operate in Remnant without resupply for months, and he had taken a great deal of Legion weapons and ammunition with him, in addition to what he had scavenged from Big Mountain.

"Indeed," Vulpes said, approaching Rumford. "And while your excitement is appreciated, I suggest that you remain calm. Lest you bring doom upon us. That would certainly damper your claims as a legionary, wouldn't it?"

As if Vulpes had ripped the excitement out of Rumford, the aspiring legionary stared at his superior. Then slowly began to sit down. "No. Sorry sir," he said meekly. Servius grinned at this sight, enjoying it greatly. Rumford getting less leeway was exactly what he needed. It was almost like Rumford had been replaced with a completely different person, he was utterly silent as he inspected his machine-gun.

"Vulpes," Adam said impatiently. Adam, Ancus, Vulpes, Caesar's Signifer and Adam's large second in command had been sitting in a circle in the very center of the joint camp and talking when Rumford had distracted them. "Don't you think it's time that we begin our attack? The humans are right over there, stewing in their fear. The fear the White Fang instilled in them. Every second they wait, the more chances they have to dig in or run. We should strike now and demonstrate our superiority."

"Adam," Vulpes said softly, approaching the red-headed boy. "You don't need to prove your superiority to these profligates. You've already done so thrice. You are strong and they are weak. They cannot deny nor ignore it. All their numbers and armies have done nothing from allowing to strike down dozens of their citizens and the pitiful resistance that we encountered. Your superiority is an ironclad fact now. It would be a waste of your time to attempt to convince the few ignorant children who have yet to realize this."

Adam's impatience faltered as he smirked, clearly pleased with himself. Servius frowned. From what he understood, the Legion had been more instrumental in instilling terror in profligates than Adam was. Their tactics of crucifixion had been the highlight of their last attack, something no member of the White Fang had thought up, or even taken part in. He didn't understand why Vulpes was heaping on all of this unearned praise. "Well spoken. Still, we shouldn't pass up such an easy target."

"Is it an easy target though?" Vulpes said. "Even slothful profligates will take note when settlements have been lost. When your enemy is incompetent, you must take care that you do not come to rely on their incompetence. The greatest fool can be wise on occasion, even if it is by accident. There is a chance that they are expecting an attack from us." He gave an exaggerating shrug. "They may not, it is difficult to predict the actions of the unwise. Lack of wisdom can often lead to unpredictability. But once we know of their actions, it becomes so simple that a child could do it." He grinned. "I do not speak with hyperbole. I have seen children cripple veteran profligates. Wait for my scouts to return, they will hand victory to you. After all, you could win a more difficult battle if your enemies lie in wait for you. But what have they done to earn your best?"

"Nothing," Adam replied, his grin growing wider. "Not a thing. Very well." Servius stared at Adam. He wasn't sure he liked Adam. Servius wasn't sure how old Adam was, but at the very oldest he was only two or three years older than him. No older than twenty-two. It didn't feel right that someone that young had taken command. It would be like him commanding Ancus or Tullus. The more experienced warrior should take charge, those with actual battlefield experience. Adam led his men from the front, so that made him better than the likes of the incompetent General Oliver or the frail and obsolete Chief Hanlon, but he was still just a child. His second in command was much older and had the look of someone who had seen much combat. If they had been legionaries, Adam would have been taking orders from his second in command, not the other way around. Adam was a child ordering men. It felt wrong.

"Adam!" Servius turned his head. The woman who had gotten the better of him, Illia, stormed into the middle of the circle. "Adam, we need to talk," she said in her husky voice. "Their pet. It's...FEEDING again." Servius's initial feelings to a subordinate interrupting a meeting, one that had a Centurion and Vulpes, had initially been anger. But after hearing her words, they fell away to be replaced by horror. Feeding? Again? Already? "We can't let that THING have free reign of camp. It needs to be kept on a tighter leash."

Adam frowned, whether it was at the news or being interrupted Servius didn't know, but Vulpes was the first to speak. "Tell me, what was eaten? One of the captives or one of the fallen?"

"It was one of the dead, but that doesn't change-" Illia began, whirling around to face Vulpes with anger on her face. But he interrupted her before she could get another word out.

"I understand how such a sight might make you uncomfortable, but I advise that your steel your stomach. Those are your enemies that are being consumed, their bodies being converted into energy for "our pet" as you so elegantly put it. This pet of ours is one of the greatest assets the Legion has ever known, and this pet fights for our united cause. What is more, what will the men and women who oppose you do when they see those who have been feasted on? Scream and run in terror, their cowardice laid bare for the world to see."

He leaned forward where he sat, smiling at Illia. Servius's blood ran cold. There was no warmth in that smile, only a command. Be silent. "You'll forgive me if I don't order this stopped simply to make you more comfortable. All the tragedies that could have befallen you in your quest for freedom and now you complain about an upset stomach? If one of the captives had been eaten, it would've been understandable. We need them alive. But the fallen? Come now. You have far greater concerns than this, doesn't she Adam?" He turned his attention to the redheaded boy.

"She does," Adam said coldly. He got to his feet. "Illia, I don't want you to ever embarrass me in front of our allies again."

"But-" she said, taking a step back. Her anger had been sapped away, replaced by confusion and a hint of fear. "Adam, that thing is-"

"Feeding on humans," Adam growled. "They treat us like animals, want us to just be animals. Whatever's happening down there? They deserve it. They deserve worse in fact. Come find me when it happens to one of our own and never interrupt me during a meeting again. I'm disappointed in your Illia. I'm here securing our freedom and you complain about humans being hurt? After everything they did to you?" Illia was hanging her head in shame now and said something that Servius couldn't hear. "That's what I thought. Now get out of here." Slowly, Illia slumped away.

Servius felt a pang of sympathy, but only a small one. Discipline was needed among warriors, he had been on the receiving end of it more than once. It was unpleasant, but he had grown because of it. Doing it in front of everyone had been cruel, but she had involved everyone else in her insubordination. It was a punishment that matched the crime. Still, Servius could fully understand why she did it. He had seen the bodies too. The teeth marks, the chunks of missing flesh, and the bodies opened up to reach the inner organs. It was only normal that she objected to it, particularly when she lacked a legionary's discipline.

"Heh, did you see that?" Servius's face twisted in disgust, making him glad that he was wearing a helmet. Rumford had edged over towards him, sniggering and pointing at Illia's back. "She thought she could barge in and make demands. Good to know the kid can put a woman in her place. Gotta say though, I'm not sure why they let women fight in the first place. You know they can't fight for shit."

A horrible feeling tore through Servius. Without warning, the monster was there again. Leering at him, her tongue rolling out of her jaw, each of her massive eight arms swinging an axe. He was on his back, she was over him, slicing his leg wide open. Maggots were crawling out. "Hey dipshit, I'm talking to you." Just as soon as the monster appeared, it was gone. He was back in the camp, cold sweat running down his back, a cold empty feeling in the core of his gut. "Oh, do you not want to talk about it because she made you her whimpering little bitch? Show some spine why don't you?"

"Shut the hell up," Servius hissed, glaring at Rumford. "You have no idea what you're talking about, do you? You spent all your time holed up in a Vault, a Vault! Hiding behind a wall! That girl over there? The one that can't fight for shit? She's got more balls than you do, and if I had to pick between fighting her and fighting you, I'd fight you. Because she actually knows what she's doing in a fight, as opposed to the pathetic junkie mess you are."

"You little fucking cockpussy," Rumford said, looking as if he wanted nothing more than to punch Servius. "If you didn't have daddy Ancus watching your back, your ass would be on the ground right now."

"Then ask him for permission to duel me," Servius said simply, biting down on the anger that had flared up in him. He was entering a very dangerous territory and he had to handle it carefully. But if he pulled it off well, it would be the perfect way to deal with Rumford. One way or another. "Legionaries who can't work together are permitted to duel each other with their Centurion's permission. Ask him and let's settle this once and for all. You and I, blade in hand. Only one walks away." And then his anger got the better of him. "I'd love nothing more than to slit your pathetic throat. It'd be easy. So go ahead and challenge me if you have any balls."

He rooted himself to the spot, staring Rumford directly in the eye. He couldn't back down now. He had effectively issued a challenge, he would be seen as weak and ineffective if Rumford accepted his challenge and he faltered. It had been a move made far too quickly, he should have thought it through more, he had been far too impulsive, but it was set in stone now. The idea of purging the Legion of a substandard legionary like Rumford would be something he would gladly take up.

Rumford snorted, but there had been a noticeable hesitation before it came. A pang of power echoed through Servius. He was scared, or at the very least worried. "What's the matter cockpussy? Too much of a little girl to settle things with guns?"

"A profligate to the core," Servius said with disgust. A duel with firearms, something that utterly missed the point of a duel. Two men clashing to see who was superior in a contest of strength and skill. Profligates just wanted to kill in their cowardly ways and put on the pretense of superiority. "Try and ask Ancus if you can use a gun in the duel. See what he does to you." If he was lucky, Rumford would get lashes for cowardice. If he was less lucky he would be killed. If Ancus truly wanted to make Rumford suffer, he could order him struck blind and made a slave. That last one was unlikely though, it wasn't in Ancus's nature. "But I could beat you if you had a gun and I had a blade anyway." Nothing would make Servius happier than to have Rumford on the ground, hacking away at his throat until his head rolled off to the side, his smug grin permanently wiped out.

"Maybe I will cockpussy, maybe I will," Rumford said, turning and walking away. His voice sounded confident, but Servius couldn't help but notice that he was walking in the opposite direction as Ancus. He wouldn't actually be asking Ancus for permission. He could put on all the bluster he wanted, he would know he hadn't risen when Servius had issued a challenge. Both of them would. Relaxing a feeling a rush of satisfaction, he felt the sudden urge to scream at Rumford, to capitalize on his victory and let the entire camp know what a coward Rumford was. Before he could act on this feeling though, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning, he felt himself face to face with Tullus.

"Can I have a word?" the veteran legionary asked. "By the weapon storage? I need to ask you something." Tullus sounded very concerned. Confused, Rumford forgotten, Servius nodded. The other legionary led him away from the center of camp, more towards the edge. They passed through a line of guards around their makeshift armor, the Legion portion of the guards gave them a chorus of "Ave" before making room for them to pass, the White Fang guards staring in confusion. They moved forward a bit further until they came onto a series of trucks the White Fang had used to bring them there. A gnawing noise was coming from the inside of one of them. Servius tried very hard to not think about what was going on inside that one. Tullus climbed up into the open back of one of the trucks, sitting on a crate of ammunition, while Servius followed. He sighed deeply. "I'm done."

Servius blinked. "What do you mean?"

"This arm," he said, holding up the machete that now acted as his left arm. "I can't be a legionary with this arm. And you know what the legion is like. It doesn't have time or room for the weak." He gave a sad smile. "I'm part of the weak now Serv. I'm a burden to the Legion."

"What?" Servius said, feeling like he had just been punched in the gut. "But you're fine, it wasn't your primary hand. What's the problem?"

Tullus sighed. He drew his revolver and flicked the chamber open, emptying the bullets onto his lap. Holding his revolver with his good hand, he inched his blade arm underneath the bullet and inched it towards the chamber. It fell off, bouncing across the floor of the truck and stopping just in front of Servius. Tullus looked at it with a gaunt face. "I could probably load it if I wedged it between my legs, but that's not something I can do in the middle of a firefight, can I?"

"There's a way around this," Servius said, his brain racing to try and figure out the aforementioned way around it. This couldn't be happening. Tullus couldn't meet his end like this. He deserved better than that.

"I want you to have this," Tullus said, swinging his revolver shut and handing it to Servius. "With that power of yours, you've more than earned a veteran legionary's weapon. I can't give you the rank itself, even now you'll have to work for years before you earn it, but you will become one of the Legion's honored" He chuckled softly. "Someday you'll be a Centurion, I can see it in you. I wish I could be there to see it."

"Give this to me when I am a veteran legionary," Servius said, refusing to take the revolver. "You survived Hoover Dam! Twice! You're stronger than this!"

"It's not strength," Tullus said sadly. "Not strength of will anyway. My body is broken. Barca broke it." Barca. Barca. Images of the greatest enemy the Legion had ever known filled his head. Rage boiled in him. Once again, he imagined himself fighting Barca, ripping the man's helmet off, burying his blade in his throat again and again. Desecrating his body, cutting the eyes from his skull before covering his body in pitch. He forced himself out of his thoughts. Tullus. He had to focus on Tullus.

"Wait. Please," Servius said, feeling desperate. He looked around the truck, trying to find a way out. Any sort of way out. His eyes moved over half a dozen machine-guns, a box of grenades, a rack of LAERs, and a crate packed to the brim with pistols. The pistols were mostly 9mms, with the occasional 12.7. Servius's mind went into overdrive. "Give me a second." Reaching into the box, he grabbed four pistols and pulled them out, laying them all down on the floor.

"You draw," he said, grabbing one and aiming it at the wall. "You empty the clip. You reload." He dropped the pistol before grabbing a second one. "Repeat. We've got augmented strength with our Auras, you can afford to carry more pistols. Even back in our world, we had more 9mms than we knew what to do with. And you've more than earned your right to a 12.7mm. Just ask Ancus for the right to use one, you know he'll say yes."

Tullus didn't say anything. Servius started to worry. He had been making up his idea as he went along, and even though it sounded halfway convincing out loud, Tullus might not be able to pull it off. If the loss of his arm had damaged his warrior's spirit, there was nothing he could do. The thought terrified him. It couldn't end like this.

Slowly, Tullus knelt down in front of the 9mms. With the speed and precision of a legionary that had fought and trained for years, he grasped one of the pistols and aimed it at the way. Dropping it without pause, he grabbed and aimed another, repeating the process until he had done the same with all four. A flicker of hope appeared on his face. "Serv?" he said, sounding as if he was scared that what he was seeing was too good to be true. "Could you get me some spare holsters?" Servius had already been on it before the question had been fully asked.

Working his way towards the back end of the truck, he ruffled through some bags that held spare armor, White Fang and Legion both, before finding a variety of holsters. Pulling out as many as he could carry, he ran back to the front, dropping them in front of Tullus. Tullus already had one holster at his right hip, but with Servius's help, he quickly had three more strapped to his body. One under his left armpit, one at his right calf, and one to the right of his back. All of them had a 9mm slung into them. In Servius's opinion, it was a good look for Tullus. Four pistols and a blade arm gave him the look of a man who planned to take an entire enemy platoon by himself.

Trembling, Tullus stepped outside and faced a tree. Taking a deep breath, he drew from his side and aimed. He did the same with his calf, then back, then his opposite side. It took him a few tries to get the hand of drawing from under his armpit, but to Servius's delight, he handled all of the others just fine. "I'll have to practice every time I get the chance," he said, holstering the pistol. "But...Mars above, Serv, I think this can work." Another draw and holster. Tullus began to shake with nervous joy. "I can do this Serv!"

Letting out a cry of joy, he embraced Servius, careful not to cut him with his bladed arm, raining kisses down on Servius's face. Servius laughed before gently pushing him off. Tullus had a bad habit of showing affection when someone could be watching. They would both be in deep trouble if they were found out. Still, it put Servius in a good mood. Slowly, his eyes went down to Tullus's bladed hand. His pleasant feelings started to slip away. "What were you going to do?" he asked. "A bullet in the mouth?"

"No, I would never die like a coward," Tullus said. Despite the firmness of the statement, Tullus looked abashed. Ashamed even. "I would have left the camp and walked until I found those Grimm. I would have died the way any legionary should. With blade in hand and surrounded by fallen enemies. They're the enemies of all men, therefore there are the enemies of the Legion. It would have been a good way to die."

"It would have done nothing for the Legion," Servius argued. "I understand dying for the Legion." This was true. Servius had spent many a night envisioning himself meeting his death in glory. A charge against the final walls of the NCR, wounded by one of their cowardly snipers, but fighting on and opening their gates with his final breath. A good way to die. Now the possibilities were so much more. "But you can't fight for selfish glory. Our glory is all Caesar's glory as well."

"The recruit is wiser than the veteran it seems," Tullus said. Slowly, and clumsily, he removed his helmet with his one good hand, pulled down the bandana that covered his face from the nose down, and removed his goggles. His headgear was the same that all non-officers of the Legion wore, Servius and Rumford both wore the same, and it was done to intimidate the enemies of the Legion. It was nearly impossible to tell individual legionaries apart while their faces were fully covered unless you knew them well from serving with them. Servius was proud that he could do this, but he still appreciated being able to see Tullus's face.

Tullus had a carefully trimmed goatee and a chiseled chin, as well as a slender, toned face. His dark brown hair was short and messy from being cramped up in his helmet, and his bright green eyes were focused on Servius. He sighed. "I'm not as strong as I thought I was, it seems." He looked at his bladed arm. "If this made me consider dying for nothing." There was an uncomfortable pause. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Servius said, putting a comforting hand on Tullus's shoulder. "Just don't think like that again. I know you, it'll take more than an arm to slow you down. With your new power, a revolver is a child's toy by comparison. It's irrelevant to you. Your body is the strongest weapon you have."

Tullus perked up at this. "Like the Praetorians," he said. Servius nodded. Exactly like the Praetorians. "I wonder if they'll still let me become one with this. Does it count as unarmed to them?" He looked thoughtful. Anyway. I still want you to have this." Again, he drew his revolver and handed it to Servius. He opened his mouth to protest, but Tullus was quicker. "No complaining. I can't use this in my current state. It's better off in your hands. I meant what I said earlier, you've earned this weapon." Slowly, Servius took the revolver. It felt odd in his hands like he had overstepped his station.

A loud sob emanated from the truck behind them. Both of them turned to look. The sobbing continued, accompanied by a much softer sound. The unmistakable sound of something being chewed. "Let's get away from here," Servius said. "It's disgusting."

"Disgusting? Yes. But needed," Tullus said, leading Servius back to the main camp, reapplying his headgear as he did. He needed Servius's help to tighten his bandanna again. "The profligates are a dangerous people Serv. They only think about themselves and squander limited resources. They need to be assimilated or eliminated, and we can't afford to hold back. You haven't been deployed to a recently taken settlement before this, it's understandable that you're uncomfortable. You will learn to tolerate it."

Servius nodded slowly, mulling it over. As he and Tullus continued to walk, he heard an odd noise in the distance. It sounded like a bird. Both Servius and Tullus stiffened. "The explorer is back!" Servius said. "We're moving out!" Both he and Tullus broke into a run. In front of them, Servius heard someone shout.

"Get the captives ready!"

XXXXX

It was taking everything James had to not vomit. Pre-War Earth had apparently had air travel as a common staple of their society, but for the life of him he couldn't figure out how this was supposed to be tolerable for the common person. The Bullhead, apparently that was the name of the VTOL, had plenty of straps to keep him (with ED-E tucked firmly into his lap), Winter, and Team CRDL secure, along with some headsets to keep the roaring sound of the engines from deafening them all. But the feeling of flying through the air at who knew how fast made James's insides feel scrambled.

He had ridden in the back of a handful of cars in his lifetime, there were engineers back in the NCR stubborn enough to get some old trucks and Highwaymen working in the core regions, but they had actually felt pleasant. After the brain got over the initial terror of going faster than mere legs could ever manage, there was a lot to enjoy. The scenery rolling by, the feeling of wind on your face, and the freedom it all gave. The Bullhead felt more like not being sure if you were in a freefall.

"Please let it almost be over, please let it almost be over, please let it almost be over," he chanted to himself over and over again. He slammed his eyes shut, forcing himself to take deep, calming breaths in a desperate attempt to keep the nausea that was building up in his stomach to a minimum.

Then, mercifully, he felt the craft begin to descend. He took a few slow breaths as it finally came to a stop, following Winter's lead as she began to undo the straps that were holding her to her seat. Eventually, all six of them were on their feet, their headsets having been left behind, and had exited out of the now open door. James stopped for a second to slip his helmet on, strapping it into place, letting ED-E float freely, then took a quick look around. Over half a dozen Hammerheads had landed nearby, disembarking the various student teams and Atlas soldiers, all of whom had their weapons at the ready.

He spotted Team RWBY as they formed up with the rest of the right arm and began to move out, Ruby giving him a quick wave that he returned. The left arm headed off not long after, mirroring the right as they both circled around the village. Winter drew her weapon, an odd, double ended sword, as she watched them head out. "Follow me," she said to everyone who was left, which was James, Team CRDL, Team JNPR, and a dozen Atlas soldiers. "Keep quiet and move fast." With that, she made a towards the village that was visible in the distance, although still a few miles away. James followed without hesitation, his rifle in hand, occasionally checking over his shoulder to make sure the others were keeping up.

It took a bit to cover the distance between the landing zone and the village. The downside to Hammerheads was that they were quite noisy, and the White Fang would be tipped off if too many of them landed right in the middle of the town that they were planning on attacking. So they had to make do with a bit of a hike. James mentally sized up the odds of the situation they were going into. Between Winter, the two teams, and himself, they had ten people who had active Auras, plus a dozen trained soldiers. If this was anything like sending ten NCR Rangers into a hostile situation, it would have been overkill in most situations. Except he had seen first hand that the White Fang had those who could use Aura and use it well. And the Legion would want as much to do with that as they could. And depending on how long they had been active in Remnant, they could have had more time to practice with Aura than he had.

"Hold," Winter said, softly but sternly, holding her hand up. The small mob behind her came to a stop, Team CRDL being noticeably slower to stop than the others. They were on the very edge of the town, to the point where they could see through the buildings to a clearing in the center. A center where half a dozen crosses had been erected. Six people with bags on their heads had been tied to the structures, all of them struggling against their bindings. James's heart shot into his mouth. If they were moving like that, they hadn't been tied for very long and they could still be removed safely. And the Legion knew that. "They're already here," Winter said. "But the town was evacuated." She paused. "Mr. Walker, advise."

"It's a trap," James said at once. "The Legion loves this trick. Crucify captives or POWs in sight of an enemy position. If they were in a more secure territory, they'd have a couple of legionaries stabbing them in non-vital areas with spears. The standard tactic when it came to dealing with this was a mercy killing with snipers. As distasteful as I find that, there were situations where a rescue mission just wasn't a possibility. The point of the tactic is to goad their enemies into charging in. As it stands, they're probably lying in wait somewhere, just waiting for us to make a move."

"I see," Winter said, narrowing her eyes. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but you would be considered a high-value target by them. If they were to see you, they would do everything in their power to eliminate you?" James had a very good idea where she was going with this and nodded. "Then, as much as I would rather not be asking this, would you be willing to be bait?" He nodded again, slowly. "Thank you. Do not overextend yourself, enter the town center, make as if you are moving towards the captives, then fall back to us. We have no idea how many there are in there, nor where they are."

"At the moment, no. But that's easily fixed." Winter blinked in confusion, but understand dawned on her face as he glanced at ED-E. He had given her a very detailed description of what the eyebot was capable of, including his most useful feature. "ED-E? How many and where?" The robot floated forward a little bit, staring in the direction of the town, humming softly. Then he began to beep.

"Four are in the house to the right at the end of this road. Two of them have heavy weapons. There's a dozen in the leftmost house on the far end of the square, only one heavy weapons person with them, and another dozen are at the head of the square, they look like the most heavily armed," the robot beeped diligently. James translated quickly while Winter spoke into her short-range radio piece informing the other teams of the new information.

"So, they have just as many people as we do," Jaune said nervously, glancing into the town. "We can take them right?" James couldn't help but notice that Jaune looked very uncomfortable. The boy was gripping his weapon much more tightly than was needed

"Launching an ambush where your position has been given away is just as bad as being ambushed yourself," Pyrrha said confidently. "I mean, there's no one else is there?" she asked.

"...No one alive," ED-E said. The robot's simplistic method of communication didn't leave much room for emotional expression, but James noticed that the pitch of the beeps was slightly lower. "I see one more body, just before the square. Hanging from a tree. It's not moving. No way it's alive." James grimaced. No doubt another message from the Legion. You better get in here fast, we're not afraid to kill them. Here's the proof. Grimly, James repeated what he had been told.

"I thought you said the town had been evacuated," the member of Team CRDL with the green hair, Russell, said. Panic wasn't so much seeping into his voice as it was overtaking it. "Where did all these people come from?" James frowned. Russell was starting to panic, but that had been a good question. One that Ren answered right away.

"It wasn't mentioned that much, everything else overshadowed it, but some bodies weren't recovered after the last attack," he said, his voice firm but focused. "Many thought they had just been eaten by Grimm, they were swarming over the attack site for hours afterward. It looks like they were taken prisoner instead."

"Oh. They're gonna pay," Nora said, her grip slowly tightening on her hammer. James felt rather disturbed at that. He had barely interacted with the redheaded girl, but his observations from a distance had painted her as more plucky and happy go lucky than anything else. But she had spoken with true hatred and anger in her voice. Still, anger was more useful than panic, the panic that was slightly present in Jaune and overwhelmingly present in Russell.

"Shouldn't we wait for back up?" Russell said, looking at everyone, his eyes wide with panic. "The situation's changed, hasn't it? We were supposed to dig in and wait for the Fang to come to us. Wouldn't it be smarter to wait until the other arms circle in and we can hit them all from both sides?" James mulled it over. Russell was clearly panicking, but his ideas weren't bad. It would be safer to hit the town from three directions as opposed to just one. Winter, though, had other ideas.

"If they didn't have hostages, we would do just that," Winter said. "However, when a hostage taker sees that they are surrounded on all sides, nine times out of ten they will attempt to execute the hostage. We need to move in now and save them while we can."

"You heard the lady, man. Quit whining," Cardin said dismissively. James focused on the leader of Team CRDL. He didn't sound as apathetically confident as he had the day before. He was more spooked than he was letting on. James had a bad feeling about that.

"Mr. Walker, you're on point. Fall back the moment you're fired upon. You're bait, but I want you walking out of this alive," Winter said, staring firmly at Cardin as she did.

James steeled his nerves and checked his magazine one last time. He reminded himself that he had the Bloody Mess magazine ready to go, if he had his back to a wall he would see what it did on an enemy and that Wild Wild Wasteland should be recharged by this point. "ED-E, come on," he said, dashing forward with rifle in hand and ED-E by his side.

James wasn't military, despite the NCR Rangers having displayed an open interest in having him among their ranks. Despite that, he had worked alongside them enough to have learned a few of their tactics. He took the path to the town square bit by bit, stopping at every intersection to hug a wall and check the corners. It would have been easy to just say that ED-E hadn't spotted anyone outside of the square and that he should just move forward quickly, but ED-E had only spotted people. It was always possible that there were traps that ED-E's sensors didn't detect. The Legion hated and didn't tolerate traps until the opposite was true. Usually when Vulpes's cronies were involved.

When he reached the halfway point, he saw the body that ED-E had been talking about. A woman in a blue sleeveless jumpsuit with an orange trim, mid to late 40s by the look of her, was swinging lifelessly from a tree that had been planted in someone's yard. Her bright, pink tongue was lolling out of the side of her mouth. Her face was splattered with blood. He looked up at her. "I'm sorry," he whispered, before pressing on. A few more intersections and he was on the brink of breaking into the square. He glanced back.

Winter had advanced her soldiers and the students forward but had stopped partway into the town, just ahead of the hanging body. "Any direct sightings?" Winter's voice crackled over the radio?

"Negative," James said. He glanced ahead. There was only one intersection left between him and the clearing at the center of the town. In the upper right corner of it was a two-story house that was a bright red. Four hostiles were clustered in that building, no doubt waiting for someone to head for the hostages so they could shoot them in the back. James took one of his two remaining plasma grenades and fingered the pin. If he could take one of the three groups out in a preemptive strike, it would shift the battle in their favor, as well as give both the White Fang and the Legion a reason to chase him. Both of them were proud and took it personally when he killed their kin, he had the scars to prove it. He grimaced. Part of him hoped the redheaded boy was here so that he could stop the little terrorist for good, while the rest of him hoped he never saw the little turd again. He had to focus.

"Grenade going out in ten," he whispered into his radio. "Get ready to go loud."

"Copy that," Winter said. "We're ready to move." James slid his thumb into the pin, ready to pull it out.

"Ma'am, hold. Private Turq is missing," an unfamiliar voice said over the radio. "Where is he? He was pulling rear guard duty, he was right behind us!" James paused, holding off on pulling the pin as he craned his neck to look over his shoulder. A missing soldier? What was going on?

And then a new voice spoke over the radio. A soft and gentle voice, almost musically so. "Grenades? You read my mind." And then a pair of explosions roared into life in the rear of Winter's formation. James spun, looking on in horror as two green spheres engulfed over half of the Atlas soldiers, sending a couple more flying through the air with missing limbs. James barely had time to make sense of the carnage before there was a unified roar from behind him and the sound of gunfire filled the air. Bullets pinged off his Aura as a dozen assailants wearing the armor of the White Fang filled the last intersection between James and the town square.

"Walker, take cover!" Winter shouted over the radio, but James was one step ahead of her. Flicking the pin out of the plasma grenade, James beaned the grenade at the mob before charging into the nearest building he could find. Smashing through the door, ED-E right behind him, he glanced around wildly for a window as the sound of gunfire outside intensified. Spotting one, he smashed the glass with the butt of his rifle before he began to fire wildly into the White Fang mob that was now moving down the street, emptying his magazine. He was certain he saw at least one fall over dead, but he didn't see anywhere near as many bodies as ten 12.7 mm rounds being fired into a tightly packed crowd should have produced. They had Aura.

Ducking back into the house as bullets began to tear through the window, he ejected his magazine before drawing a new one. It was the Bloody Mess one. He stared at it for a second before deciding he had nothing to lose and loaded it, then looking around the house he was in for a vantage point that wasn't being flooded with bullets. Just in time to see a window in the very back slid open and a blurry figure charge in.

It crossed the distance between them at a frightening pace, a shining knife in each hand, both of which were aiming for his throat. Not having enough time to aim, James threw himself to the side, sliding on the ground. The figure stumbled as it attempted to correct itself mid-dash, one knife being too far away while the other one still came down on him. Thinking fast, James put his rifle between himself and the incoming attack, the knife burying itself in the stock. Twisting his rifle, he yanked the embedded knife out of his attacker's hand before forcing himself to spin on the ground, sticking his leg out in a crude variation of the Ranger Takedown.

He managed to trip up his attacker, bringing them crashing to the ground, but they rolled away at once, a safe distance from any retaliatory strike. James did the same, wanting to keep some distance from the remaining knife. Both of them recovered, getting to their feet, with James aiming his rifle at the figure and finally getting a good look at her.

It was the woman who had been hanging from the tree.

James blinked in disbelief as he stared at her. She wasn't a Faunus, so she had to be Legion, particularly since she had used plasma grenades on the Atlas soldiers. In fact, now that he looked closer, her outfit looked like it had come from Earth instead of Remnant. It was like a sleeveless version of a Vault jumpsuit, complete with a bright orange number twelve on the back. Just above her right breast was wording in orange letters that read "Tibbets Prison."

A woman from Earth willingly fighting for the Legion. In this most secure of Legion expeditions. "What? WHAT!? THE FUCK!?" he internally screamed.

She had a pair of knives sheathed at her side, in addition to the one still in her hand. She tapped one of them with her free hand. There was a pop and an exact replica of the knife appeared in her hand from nowhere.

She grinned. There were tiny scars all over her face, knicks that looked like they had come from blades, a bit of her bottom lip was missing, and there was a black tattoo just over her eye of the Roman numeral XII. Now that she was closer, James realized that while her face was covered with blood, she didn't have any open wounds. And that the blood was all centered around her mouth. "Hey," she said in her soft voice. "So. The Hanged Man the Hermit finally meet. Name's Marie F.. I'm Caesar's new favorite. Nice to meet you. Caesar's been talking a lot about you. I wanted to see if you lived up to the hype." Somehow her grin got even bigger, and with another pop, she was now holding two knives in each hand. "Don't disappoint me." She tossed two of the knives at him as James opened fire. ED-E, having held his fire while James and Marie had been too close together, joined James in firing on the woman.


XXXXX

Author's Note: It just kind of hit me as I was writing this chapter, but if this was an RPG, there would probably be branching questlines based on whether you sided with Ozpin or Ironwood.

Also, I mentioned this before, but I had a certain framework in mind as I designed James's character. There's a fair bit of personal touches there but a lot of it was built on the foundation of "what would a pro-NCR, good karma Courier be like? What do these context clues say about him? How would the various quest lines have affected him?" And James Walker is my answer to that question.

However. I asked myself another question. There's always something about the Legion I've found fascinating. Even if you're a woman, you can side with them. Now the Doyalist (out of universe) reasoning behind that is obvious, Obsidian didn't want to cut off one of the quest line options because of a choice made in character customization. But what are the Watsonian (in-universe) reasons for why a female Courier would side with the Legion? What would a pro-Legion, bad-karma female Courier be like?

Marie F. is my answer to that question.

In broad strokes at least. This isn't a case of "there's actually two versions of the MC, one good and one evil," I've seen a couple of stories where there was a good Lone Wanderer and an evil Lone Wanderer. There's only one Courier, and that's James. But Marie F. IS a Fallout protagonist. The Prisoner. The main character of the Fallout game that almost was, Van Buren. With some additional inspiration sprinkled from a party member that was almost in Van Buren, the Hanged Man. A man that was stupidly strong and tough (to the point where he's found hanging from his neck by a tree and he's more bored than anything else) but would have caused you to be hated by almost everyone because he had committed so many vile acts.

So just to clarify, Marie F. was the result of a melting pot where the mindset of a pro-Legion and bad karma Courier were thrown in with the history of The Prisoner and traits of the Hanged Man, along with a lot of my own personal touches. I'm actually really excited to reveal her (I thought I was being too obvious with there being a woman's face on a Legion coin, what with a Pro-Legion Courier getting a coin minted after them, but hey! No one noticed!) and I hope you guys enjoy reading about all the vile vile shit she will be doing. Because she IS a bad-karma Fallout protagonist. With everything that entails.

Also, IRL, specialist is not a very high rank. It's one of the junior enlisted ranks and has a pay grade on par with that of a corporal, without the benefit of being considered an NCO. Winter though? She has her own personal airship that seems to be directly related to her duty as a specialist. Junior enlisted ranks don't get personalized aircraft. I get the feeling that in Atlas, specialist means something more along the lines of special forces. Considering that Winter reports to Ironwood directly, I'm all but certain that this is the case.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Josue Garcia, and Jonathan Eason for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 7

Passing Under the Yoke

XXXXX

Winter's ears were still ringing from the explosion and she could feel something wet trickling out of the right one. Sound coming from that side of her was noticeably muffled, but she didn't have time to think about that. Her eyes darted all over the newly christened battlefield, analyzing the situation. She had had a dozen soldiers a moment ago. Of those, four were now obviously dead, having been at the very center of the grenades, with three having been blown to chunks and with there being nothing left of the fourth except a pile of green goop. Of the eight who were still alive, three were badly wounded, all of them on the ground clutching feebly at their noticeable burns, massive portions of her armor having been blown off. Five of men were still up and unharmed, as were all of the students given to her, but she was presented with a very real problem.

Over two dozen members of the White Fang were pouring out of their hiding spots and opening fire at them. She had rushed to the head of the formation and had taken up a defensive position, deflecting as many of the incoming bullets as she could with her saber. Pyrrha, Jaune, and Cardin followed her, Cardin looking noticeably green in the face, and joined her in acting as a screen for the incoming rounds, Cardin spinning his mace to deflect what he could while Pyrrha and Jaune soaked up shots with their shields.

But Winter quickly realized that there were more than simple bullets flying their way, Beams of blue light, faster than bullets by a longshot and heavily resembling ED-E's laser, were erupting from the enemy's ranks as well. Moving too fast for even an Aura enhanced eye to track, it was impossible to block or deflect unless one could see the shooter taking aim and predict the course it would take. Which would normally be fairly possible, but was much harder to do when the shooter in question was part of a mob of two dozen.

And then something happened to make the situation even worse. There was a roaring of engines from behind them, and Winter looked over her shoulder to see a pair of trucks bursting out of the thicket of trees, heading straight for them. They hadn't seen it on their way in, so it must have been hiding some distance from the town, even further away than their original LZ. This had all been carefully planned, they were being surrounded.

Winter did the math. James had noted that there were exactly twenty-eight hostiles hiding in the town, not counting the woman who had been hanging from a tree. The flanking force that was now approaching them from behind no doubt had at least another two-dozen, which would bring the total of enemies to well over fifty. She, on the other hand, had five combat capable men, three wounded, eight students, herself, and James, and James had been lost in the chaos of the battle. Pyrrha was of much higher quality than the rest of the students, but the rest of them were still somewhat green compared, and they didn't know how many Aura users were among the ranks of the enemy.

The hostages were still a concern, but the White Fang didn't seem to be making any moves to harm them at the moment. James was missing, but he was mobile and capable of defending himself, he would be able to make his way back to them hopefully. She might be able to launch a rescue mission with a skilled fighter or two, but not at the moment, not when she had wounded soldiers and an outnumbered force out in the open. She had to fix that. To their left was a two story restaurant, a tacky and brightly colored chain building, that had a noticeable balcony on the upper level.

"All forces, off the streets!" she ordered into her earpiece and gesturing to the restaurant in question. "Take up defensive positions! Flanking formations, we are under attack. Move in now!"

"Negative!" a voice replied, almost drowned out by panic and gunfire. "We're under attack by Grimm, dozens of them! They came out of nowhere! The 2nd prong is having the same problem! They're too thick to push through!" Winter's mind reeled at the implication as the few surviving soldiers rushed the restaurant, carrying the wounded with them. They had known on some level that they were walking into a trap, but none of them had realized how deep of a trap it was. This had been a very carefully planned trap. And they were caught in the middle of it.

The last of the soldiers entered the restaurant through a side door, with most of the students right behind them. Out of the corner of her eye, Winter noticed something troubling. Ren and Nora were helping the soldiers with those who were wounded, Nora only stopping to draw her weapon and fire a grenade in the direction of the enemy, but they were the only ones. With the exception of its leader, Team CRDL wasn't so much moving towards the restaurant as they were almost tripping over each other in a blind panic. They were all in a very dire situation, and a level of discipline that low could be fatal.

"Go!" she said, gesturing towards their makeshift safe haven as she broke into a dash towards it. Thankfully, the three students who had helped her act as a screening force had their wits about them and followed, even if Cardin did take a second to realize that they had to move. Winter stopped just in front of the entrance and deflected a few more incoming shots as Jaune, Pyrrha, and Cardin stormed inside before finally slipping inside herself. "Report!" she barked, slamming the door shut behind her.

"Aqua and Maya both have severe shrapnel wounds and Ox has third degree burns on his leg," the squad's medic, Lapis, said. The three wounded had positioned behind the restaurant's front counter, and the medic had her kit open as she tended to her comrades as best she could. "I think I can save them, but I need time to stabilize them." The three soldiers on the ground were in bad shape, the two women weakly moaning while the man's breathing was sharp and shallow, all of them barely moving.

"Keep them alive," Winter said. "Ms. Valkyrie? No one touches the wounded and no one comes through that door. No one even gets close." The normally preppy girl in bright pink gave her a solemn nod and took up position between the wounded and the door, her hammer at the ready. Winter stepped away, taking a quick mental count of what assets she had left. Team CRDL was heavily focused on melee combat, while Team JNPR was more of a mix of melee and ranged. She could work with that to some degree. But what did she have left for soldiers? They were at the far end of the room, checking ammo as well as dolling out a few pieces of equipment they had grabbed from their fallen comrades. A marksman with a scoped rifle, a rifleman with a standard kit, a heavy weapons specialist lugging an LMG, and a rifleman that looked like he had grabbed a rocket launcher from the dead. It wasn't much, but she had to make it work.

"Very well, listen closely. We're heavily outnumbered and support isn't coming," she said, raising her voice while keeping it level, stepping forward. "I need everything coming from in front of us to be hosed down. Sapphire," she pointed to the heavy weapons expert, "hose down everything that comes up from the front. If you can't get them, pin them down so that Klien has a clear shot." She pointed to the marksman. "And Klien, get up top. Ren? Keep Klien safe." Ren and Klien nodded, dashing to the side of the restaurant and up the stairs to the top, while Sapphire lowered the bipod to her LMG and set up near the window.

"Cobalt, I want you to lay down anti-tank fire on those trucks behind us, turn them into bombs if you can and take out the passengers if you can't," Winter continued. "And Dodger, gun down everything he misses." Cobalt and Dodger nodded before sprinting off to the other end of the building, taking cover near the windows.

"As for all you, you and I are all much more durable than them, so we need to pick up the more dangerous tasks," she said, looking at the students that were still left. "Team CRDL, I need you four to all act as a buffer force. Ms. Valkyrie already has the side, but If anyone breached our defenses from any side, I need you to beat them back out. Do not pursue them, we are holding the line here, not attempting to rout them." That would be the best use of these students. Cardin had some nerve to him, but the rest would break if they were asked to do anything more serious than that. "Lay down support fire when possible, but do not stretch yourself out. Cardin, divide your team up, we can't have you all in one spot."

Cardin nodded at her before turning to the rest of his team and barking orders at them. Winter could now hear bullets and lasers pelting the sides of the building, as well as the sounds of her men returning fire. Cobalt fired a rocket in the direction of the trucks just as they swerved to part and release their cargo of fighters. Winter didn't have time to see the result, Pyrrha and Jaune were right in front of her. "And us, Ma'am?" Pyrrha asked.

"Ms. Nikos, I need you to perform a rescue operation," Winter said. "Mr. Walker is a high value target to the Legion, and there is a high possibility the White Fang now shares that with them. Find him, get him and ED-E and get them both back here. You saw where he took cover after the fighting broke out?"

"I did," Pyrrha said, nodding. "I'll be right back with him, do you want me to go for the hostages while I'm out there?"

"No, it'd put them at too much risk," Winter said. "They would be killed the second you made a move for them. Stick to finding Mr. Walker, we will rescue the hostages when the situation is more under control. And Mr. Arc? Accompany Ms. Nikos as support." Pyrrha was easily the most valued asset she had at her disposal, her skills at a level that would rival many of Winter's fellow specialists, and surpass even more. But even then, sending her alone against forces of uncertain strength would be unwise, best to let her leader accompany her. He was somewhat green, but her file on him indicated that he had particularly strong Aura, and he had held his own during the attack on Vale. It was far from ideal, but so was the entirety of his situation. In the very worst case scenario, his Aura was durable enough for him to last until Pyrrha could save him.

"I-yeah, we got this," Jaune said, barely repressing a stutter.

"Good, I need you to go now then," she said, pointing towards the side door. "I'll create a distraction." As she spoke, she drove her saber into the ground, where a glyph of the Schnee family sprouted to life. She didn't have time to create a particularly powerful summon, so she decided to compromise. Within seconds, a trio of Beowolves comprised of glowing white energy energy from the glyphs. They were smaller than a typical Beowolf, only the size of a man, but they were enough. "Go!" she ordered, thrusting her sword towards the front window as she did. The trio of Beowolves bounded forward, out of the window that Sapphire was firing out of and charging at the oncoming White Fang.

She heard the door's hinges squeak and knew they were gone. She had to make sure the White Fang were more concerned with her than them. That would be hard for most people to do, but not so much for her. Not with her family. She bounded forward, stopping right next to Sapphire as she continued to fire her LMG. Quite a few White Fang operatives were just barely visible, taking cover in alleyways. Sapphire was keeping a few of them suppressed, which her Beowolves took advantage of, charging them. They disappeared into the alleys, and at once screams of terror echoed from them.

A trio of White Fang operatives burst out of the alleyway, desperately firing SMGs back into it, the sounds of their weapons mixing with the sounds of tearing flesh and cries of agony. Sapphire turned her LMG onto the exposed to the exposed operatives, but Klien was faster. A pair of fist sized holes opened up in the back of the left most operative, before the same fate befell the middle. The lone survivor realised that both of her comrades were dead and made a snap decision to head back into the alley. She was halfway there when a dozen LMG rounds tore into her side and she fell to the ground.

"All right, good kills, good kills!" Sapphire said into her radio, turning her LMG on a duo of White Fang who had made a dash to a nearby shack that they had taken cover behind. They were quickly pinned, though Winter could just barely see one reaching for a grenade. Then Klien's rifle thundered again, and the operate fell over dead, a good chunk of her head missing. The other swore loudly and tried to run, but he couldn't outrun the grenade and was consumed by the explosion. "Keep it up, we got another dozen incoming!" Sure enough, even more White Fang were surging out of the alleys, weapons firing as they did.

Trusting Sapphire and Klien to keep this side under control with the support that they had, Winter darted over to the back of the building. Cobalt had fired another rocket from his salvaged launcher, sending a handful of White Fang up in smoke. Despite this, even more were pouring out of the back of the truck, all of them advancing on their makeshift bunker.. "How many did they bring!?" he shouted in frustration, loading a fresh rocket while Dodger fired burst after burst with laser like precision, downing two of the incoming horde.

Raising up her saber, Winter once again drove it into the ground. The summoning process repeated itself, this time with a single, full sized Beowolf emerging and lunging out at the incoming White Fang. As it did, she herself vaulted out of the window and spun a dial on the inside of her sword. A dust chamber rotated within her saber and her sword glowed a bright blue light as Ice Dust was injected into the mechanics in the inner blade. Stabbing down with it, a cliff of ice, comprised of dozens of stalagmites, erupted forward and swept through the White Fang's ranks.

The very nature of the attack meant that she lost direct sight with her target, but the screams of pain were a good indicator that she had hit her mark. The Beowolf she had summon pelted forward, turning sharply and circling around the wall of ice, and out of sight. "Don't let your guard down!" she shouted over her shoulder to Cobalt and Dodger. "They'll flank around the sides after the shock has worn off. Be ready to hit them the moment they come around the-" but she was cut off by an unexpected turn.

There was a flash of red through the center of her ice wall, and before she could so much as blink, it had been utterly shattered. On the other side was a young man wearing a very distinct outfit with a noticeable red rose on it, as well as holding a blood red katana. Winter's pulse quickened. Everyone in the Atlesian military knew who Adam Taurus was. Easily the most radical of all of Selenia Khan's lieutenants, even more radical than she was. And it seemed that the gulf between the two was only getting wider.

Without a word, Adam propelled himself forward with such force that the distance between the two of them was closed in a second. Winter barely got her guard up in time, causing their swords to meet in a clash that left her ears ringing. "A Schnee," Adam hissed, their faces mere inches away from each other. "The last Schnee I wanted to kill, but a Schnee all the same." Drawing his blade back, Adam thrust forward, Winter parrying the blow away as her mind raced.

Adam had been profiled as an emotionally immature man, one who was quick to anger and highly petty. But he was a highly deadly combatant, to the point where non-specialists had been given the order to retreat on sight if they were confronted by him. An order she would be giving to her men right now if there was any place left to retreat to. As it stood, standing and fighting was the only option available to them.

For a moment, their fight took on their form of quick, shallow slashes, to the point where it almost felt more like they were fencing than trying to kill each other. Winter, however, knew she had to get out of this situation. Adam's Semblance was a particularly powerful one, and prolonged combat where he was given a chance to parry too many attacks would end in disaster. She had to be clever about this.

With a flick of a switch, her saber separated into two thinner ones, one in each hand. With a flourish, a bright glyph appeared underneath Adam. Caught off guard, the White Fang lieutenant was blasted high up into the air, twisting and turning with no pattern. Winter forced a second glyph into being, this one right below her feet and rocketed up after Adam. Unlike him, her ascension was smooth and direct, her swords directly in front of her as she sped towards her target

She slammed into Adam before he could recover, and her sabers became blurs of silver as she tore into every inch of Adam she could reach. Legs, torso, arms, head, back, she struck everywhere she could reach with a flurry of short but powerful blows. She had to keep him disoriented as well as work through his Aura as fast as she could. Adam snarled as he was turned over by the force of the blows, tightening his grip on his katana just as they reached the apex of their upward trip and gravity began to take hold on them.

He slashed upward, but Winter had been expecting this. Kicking out, she caught Adam in the shoulder and used him as a platform to jump upward with. This had a twofold effect, propelling her even higher into the air, clearing the top of the highest buildings in the town, while Adam was sent rocketing down. Winter expected Adam, with his sense of balance disrupted by the sudden descend and the blows she had landed, to crash directly into the ground. But he impressed her.

Grabbing the sheath to his sword, he aimed it downward and pulled a trigger. A barrel on the end, not unlike a shotgun, blared multiple times, decreasing his downward momentum each time. Then, just before he hit the ground, he gripped his sword by the very edge of the hilt and positioned it downward into a cobblestone road. The blade screeched as it cut into the stone, stopping after it descended a few inches, leaving it planted firmly upright. Adam, with an impressive level of coordination, swung along the hilt of his blade and tilted his body so that it began to swing upward without touching the ground. Letting go, he shot up a few feet into the air before gracefully landing on the hilt of his sword, glaring up at Winter as he did.

As he was glaring up, another rocket whizzed by. The White Fang had started to work their way around the ruins of the ice wall, large chunks of it still partially blocking the road that lead to where her allies had bunkered down. This rocket landed in the middle of a pack of White Fang, who had poked their heads around the ice and fired a few shots in the direction of the restaurant. The resulting explosion enveloped them all, a severed leg noticeably flying out of the resulting cloud of smoke.

Seething with rage, Adam's attention snapped in the direction of the restaurant. In the windows, Cobalt tossed the rocket launcher to the side and had raised his rifle, firing in unison with Dodger. He was out of ammunition for the heavy weapon, and Adam had noticed. Leaping off of his sword, Adam grabbed it by the hilt and ripped it out of the ground before sheathing it again. Both Cobalt and Dodger responded to this by opening fire on Adam, to which he responded by snap drawing his sword, quickly becoming a red blur that swallowed up all of his incoming shots. "Hold fire!" Winter shouted into her ear piece as she began to descend downwards, but it was too late. Adam's sword was now glowing with its own light, a smirk heavy on his face. With a quick swipe, a beam of red energy was sent directly towards the restaurant, directly at Cobalt. There was a scream of agony that was swiftly snuffed out as the beam hit him. The upper part of his body simply ceased to exist as what was left fell over.

Gritting her teeth in anger, Winter created another Glyph just above her, flipping in the air so that her feet were pressed against it. She was pushed forward towards the ground, flipping yet again so that she landed firmly on her feet, with both of her sabers held out in front of her. Adam had charged forward again, aiming straight for Dodger, but Winter was now in her way. Once again, their blades clashed. "You'll come after," Adam snarled, fully drawing his sheath and aiming it over Winter's shoulder, at Dodger. There was a bang from behind Winter, and she could feel a trio of bullets streak past her hair and into Adam's face from. The young man grimaced, but his aim stayed steady, lining up a shot that would surely end Dodger's life.

Winter's foot shot out, kicking Adam's gun hand firmly in the wrist. It jerked to the side and fired harmlessly into the air, earning another snarl of anger from Adam. The boy recovered, this time turning the gun on Winter's face, only for her to slip away from their clash and dodge to the side. The weapon thundered behind her as she turned and drove her sword into Adam's side. He recoiled from the blow and Winter pressed forward to continue the assault, only to spot something out of the corner of her eye.

Instinct taking over, she aborted her assault and jumped back, and just in time. A whip like sword, crackling with electricity, arced out and struck the ground where she would have been if she had continued her attack. A Faunus girl in a short legged jumpsuit and a horned mask was perched on the top of a nearby building, winding up her arm up for another swing. Two Aura users against one. She was outnumbered. This changed the core fundamentals of the battle.

As she dodged to the side, not daring to parry a sword that was crackling with electricity like this, yet more White Fang emerged from behind the rubble of the ice wall, a few firing on Winter but the rest firing on the restaurant. Doger fired a quick burst that got one in the throat before she was forced down, a storm of bullets pouring in. "Team CRDL, Dodger is pinned down, I told you to provide support fire!" Winter barked into her ear piece, dividing her saber into two again and using one to deflect the SMG fire being directed at her while keeping the other in front of her. Adam charged at her again, and she was barely able to deflect his slash while focusing on parrying bullets and avoiding the sword whip.

"What the-Sky, Russell! I told you two to take care of it!" Cardin shouted angrily, an explosion echoing from his end of the of the radio line. "Get out there and start shooting!"

"I...but…" a panicking voice replied, only for a loud, annoyed groan from Nora to cut them off.

"Oh for the love of," she said, before a blur of pink appeared in the window. The White Fang turned to fire on the new target, but they only got a few rounds off before streaks of pink smoke arced through the air and impacted in the middle of their ranks. Winter's line of sight with the latest rush of White Fang was cut off as the grenades exploded, but the fire that had been streaming from ceased, and Doger was able to poke her head up and resume firing. Things were more under control now, but she still had two hardened fighters to deal with.

Blocking a stab from Adam, she flicked her wrist and created a staircase of glyphs that lead up to where the White Fang girl was positioned. She realized at once what Winter was planning and panicked, her swings doubling in intensity and frequency. Ducking under the hail of blows, Winter narrowed dodge a shotgun blast from Adam as she dashed forward towards the staircase, being propelled upward with each step, and up to the rooftop where her foe was. To her surprise, the girl's skin changed as she neared, going from a moderate tan to a deep, dark, purple and her hair becoming a sickly yellow. A chameleon Faunus.

Landing neatly on the roof, she moved forward as if she was going to lunge at the girl, but dodge to the side at the last second. The girl was on edge from Winter noticing her position, and Winter had a good feeling she would overextend herself trying to block an incoming attack. She was right. The girl put too much force into her next move, swinging her sword down with the intent to wrap it around Winter's blade, so instead it ended up slapping harmlessly against the ground.

Winter arced both of her swords in an X formation and landed a direct hit, sending the girl clear off the roof of the building where she slammed into the ground, kicking up dirt as the force of the blow forced her back another few meters before she finally stopped. But the girl was still in motion when a blow impacted on her Aura and forced her to double over. Adam had leveled his shotgun at her, and fired another blast. Her sabers became a blur, swallowing up all of the pellets and taking a few calculating steps back. Adam would be the type to pursue her at all costs, anything to kill a Schnee, even if his rank and file wouldn't. This would be ideal, with her more elevated position he would separate himself from the other members of the White Fang, cutting him off from fire support.

It was a sound idea, but it didn't work quite as well as she planned. Adam jumped up, jammed his blade into the wall of the building, and used the grip to give himself time to find a foothold in a window before jumping up again. Right behind him was the girl, whose whip sword stretched up, wrapped around a chimney on the rooftop and pulled herself up. Winter grimaced and held up her swords in a guard position, having no intention of making the first move. Taking both of them at the same time wouldn't be easy. The girl wasn't enough to take down a specialist single handedly, but she could easily tip the scales in Adam's favor, and Adam was already a highly dangerous element who could eliminate her with one move if she wasn't careful. She could win this, but only if she avoided making even the smallest of missteps.

"A Schnee," the girl said softly, looking at Winter. Slowly, the purple on her skin faded away, replaced by a shade that was somewhere between red and orange, her hair remaining yellow, but taking on a different shade. It was sharp instead of sickly now. "She's working with a Schnee. Two Schnees now." The girl bared her teeth in anger. "How could she do this to us?" Winter's mind immediately began to file through who and what the girl could possibly be talking about, when Adam spoke.

"She was never truly dedicated to our kind, she was a lovesick little girl who took a fancy for powerful men," Adam said dismissively. The girl's reaction to that was very odd. Her teeth grit in anger, but instead of looking at Winter, she looked at Adam. Her skin became a much sharper shade of red and orange, but a flush of green appeared around her face. Adam didn't notice, all of his attention focused on Winter. The specialist's mind tried to connect all of the various threads in front of her, but didn't have time. "Let's show her how much of a mistake she made when she threw in her lot with humans."

Adam charged. The girl jerked her attention back to Winter in confusion before she clenched her jaw and swung her whip sword at Winter, the splash of green disappearing from her face. Taking a deep breath, Winter flicked both of her wrists, one in each direction. A pair of glyphs appeared, one in front of each Faunus. The one in front of Adam took effect and he was forced back a few feet before he drove his sword into the roof, anchoring himself. The other one was about to do the same to the girl, when Winter arced her sword in the opposite direction.

The glyph turned as black as coal and its effect reversed, pulling instead of pushing. The girl was pulled off of her feet and towards Winter. In the middle of the air, she could see the girl's jaw tighten in fear as her sword arm swung again. Winter prepared herself to dodge, only to see the sword arc in the other direction, back in the direction of the chimney, which it wrapped itself around. Both hands grasping the sword firmly, the girl arced overhead and kicked out at Winter's head. The specialist was able to block the blow with her sword, but the force of it still forced her back a few steps, giving the girl and Adam both time to recover.

"Take care of the rest already!" Adam shouted, craning his neck and glancing down at the street. "We have a Schnee up here, we are not letting her escape! Go around the side!"

"We can't!" a terrified voice shouted up. "Didn't you see!? It already swallowed up two of us?" It? Winter wondered. Against her better judgement, she glanced to the side of the restaurant, behind Adam and the girl. He eyes widened. A sprawling, dark purple cloud was creeping through the streets to the left of the restaurant, thick and impossible to see through. A few White Fang were running from it in terror, but one wasn't fast enough. He choked and gasped, clawing at his neck as the clouds surrounded him, before collapsing to the ground, his struggles growing weak. Poison.

XXXXXX

Pride was at the heart of being a legionary. Pride in the legion, in the strength of your arm, in standing by your brothers, in bringing order to chaos. But the core part of any legionary's pride was how they fought. They faced their enemies head-on, using nothing more than simple weapons that reflected the strength and skill of their wielder. Tricks and deceit were for profligates, as were technologically advanced weapons that did all the fighting for them. And yet, as Servius bitterly reflected, legionaries had to swallow their pride at times.

Adam and his White Fang were leading the brunt of the assault on the profligates of Remnant. A few legionaries were among their pincer assault, but they were part of the rear guard. Vulpes had made this agreement with Adam, claiming that the strength and experience of Faunus would be better suited to the front line against the profligates, while the Legion would support them. He had also claimed that the White Fang deserved glory against those who had wronged them and that it wasn't the Legion's place.

That had stung, and Servius had heard more than one legionary muttering angrily about it when Vulpes and his Frumentarii were out of earshot. That is until they had learned what the real prize of this battle was: Barca's head. While the Legion engaged the militaries of this world, they were to sneak off to the side to assist the Hanged Woman in killing Barca, the worst hostis publicus in the Legion's history. Using energy weapons offended Servius as a warrior, as did sneaking through buildings while the Legions allies were fighting a proper battle one street away. But if it meant Barca would be killed, he would stomach it all a thousand times over without a word of complaint. He would be honored to bear such distasteful burdens if it would be balanced out with the privilege of being one of the warriors who brought down Barca.

It was the four of them, Tullus, Ancus, Rumford, and himself. All of them were wearing the armor and colors of the White Fang, another tactic that filled Servius with disgust that he forced himself to ignore, and were creeping through the side streets, Ancus in the lead. Silently, he gestured for them to move and they all followed in single file. "God, why'd they let that bitch take the lead?" Rumford hissed, in what he apparently assumed was a whisper. "I could've taken Walker by myself. No grenades, no pansy ass getting him away from the rest of the group, I just take the girl here and poke the prick full of brand new vaginas."

Servius very badly wanted to say that that, if that was the case, it would've been the first time Rumford had ever seen a vagina, but he held his tongue. Silence was paramount now, and engaging Rumford in his childish games would give away their position. Instead, he silently prayed to all of the gods who were listening that Rumford would die on this mission. His hatred for Barca would lessen by just a bit if he did the Legion the courtesy of purging their ranks of the former Fiend.

Rumford paused, no doubt waiting for Servius to make a reply. When he didn't, he muttered something that sounded suspiciously like "pussy" before falling quiet.

Ancus made a gesture at the front of the line, signaling them to all turn right at the upcoming intersection. They were getting close to the building that Barca and the Hanged Woman were battling inside of. With any luck, Barca was still alive and the four of them would be recorded as having been needed to kill them. The Hanged Woman was a recognized Amicus of the Legion, but the Legion deserved to have on of the worse foes killed by a proper legionary.

They reached the intersection in the road in front of them and turned right. And found themselves face to face with a boy and a girl, both wearing armor and clutching weapons. Huntresses and Huntsmen, the special forces of this world, most likely still in training. For a split second, four sets of eyes looked into two and vice versa, confused blinks indicating that no one had expected this encounter. Then Tullus had drawn one of his pistols, Ancus swung his hammer, the girl tensed and raised her shield, and an unexpected battle had begun.

"COME ON YOU LITTLE COCKPUSSIES!" Rumford roared, bringing his machine-gun to bear and opening fire as the others did the same. Servius's revolver was in hand, but he only had fired one shot when a blur of red and brown crashed into them. The girl, with her shield in front of her, had chosen to simply charge at full pace into them. It proved to be a surprisingly effective tactic, with her smashing into them one at a time, sending them sprawling onto the ground. First Ancus, who was caught in the side before he could fully swing his hammer, then Tullus, who got three shots off that were all deflected by the shield before he was sent flying after, followed by Servius. He didn't even have time to adjust his aim before what felt like a wall of bronze and muscle slammed into him, easily knocking him off his feet.

"Pussies! Let a real man show you how it's-" Rumford began, but was cut off as the girl reached him at last, his bullets bouncing harmlessly off of her shield. Instead of a forward ram, the Huntress tilted her arm back and smashed him in the side of the head. Rumford was sent sailing into the wall of a nearby house, the wood splintering as he fully penetrated it.

The Huntress was given no time to breathe, however. No sooner had Rumford broken through the wall, Ancus and Tullus were back on their feet, springing into action. The Huntresses was forced to take a step back in order to block an overhead swing from Ancus's super sledge, a loud clang echoing as metal met metal. Drawing his hammer back, Ancus swung again with frightening speed and force, aiming to split the girl's side wide open. Somehow though, the Huntresses was even faster than Ancus, and her shield blocked the second blow, the girl standing strong instead of crumbling as most would have.

While this was happening, Tullus charged her from behind, blade arm at the ready. The girl's shockingly green eyes darted to the side as a third blow from Ancus was blocked, and she adjusted her approach. As Ancus wound up his hammer for yet another strike, the girl darted forward, slamming the edge of her shield directly into his throat. Even with his Aura up, Ancus was reduced to staggering backward, gasping and clutching at his throat.

Dashing forward, she grabbed Ancus by his shoulder and flipped herself up over him. As she reached the arc of her flip, she flicked her spear and it transformed into a rifle. Upside down in the middle of her flip, she fired shot after shot at Tullus, pulling the trigger so fast that the echoes from the blasts were almost a single, uninterrupted sound. Tullus was brought to a screeching halt as a hail of bullets tore into him. He attempting to press on, but the force of the shots blew him flat on his back, sending him skidding a good foot. The girl pushed off of Ancus's shoulder, somersaulting in the air behind him, before kicking out with a heeled foot. She caught Ancus directly in the back of the head, knocking him off of his feet and onto the ground.

"FUCKING CUNT!" Rumford was standing in the hole he had made when he had been sent flying back, machine-gun in hand, fury etched on his face. "EAT LEAD, BITCH!" The weapon roared to life, Rumford gripping the weapon by the barrel as he fired on the Huntress in training. If Aura wasn't protecting his hand, it would've been burnt off.

The Huntress landed neatly from her flips and, oddly, held out her hand instead of blocking the shots with her shield. Servius thought she had lost her mind, until he noticed that the rounds Rumford was firing were stopping right in front of her, a fuzzy, black haze hanging around them. When a few dozen of the rounds had been collected in front of her, the girl lifted her arm up in a graceful arc. Every last bullet was sent speeding back to Rumford, peppering him and sending him straight back into the hole he had climbed out of.

Servius forced himself to his knees, taking aim with the revolver that Tullus had given him and took aim. But he hesitated. As much as every instinct he had screamed to pull the trigger over and over until his ammo ran dry, he waited. This woman's Semblance, as this world called special powers, had enabled her to deflect Rumford's bullets. She had needed to use her hand to do it though, and hopefully she wouldn't be able to do it if she was preoccupied. He waited. Ancus and Tullus both recovered, getting to their feet and charging at her in unison.

She moved to meet them before dropping into a slide, slipping through Ancus's legs as his hammer slammed into the ground. She ground to a stop on the far side, taking aim with her rifle at Ancus's back. Servius saw his opportunity, his finger tightening on the trigger. "No!" Servius's head jerked to the side. He had completely forgotten about the girl's companion, who was right on top of him, his sword thrusting forward.

At once, Servius turned on the spot and fired a shot, hitting the boy in the chest. There was a cry of pain and the boy's sword arm slackened, but he was still charging. He slammed right into Servius, sending both of them tumbling across the ground and causing Servius to lose track of where everyone else is. After coming to a stop, he sprang back to his feet, revolver at the ready. The boy was still on the ground, still positioning himself to get back up. Servius fired over and over again, shot after shot hitting the square of the boy's back, each one earning him a cry of pain. Servius didn't have time for this, he still had to deal with the much more dangerous girl and then move on to handle Barca. But, to his frustration, the boy was still struggling to get up with no signs of damage. His Aura had absorbed it all. He pulled the trigger to fire again, the chamber clicked empty.

Swearing loudly, he flicked the chamber back open and began sliding fresh rounds into them. He had just gotten the fifth bullet in when the boy was back on his feet, charging forward again. Snarling, Servius slammed the final round in, flicked the chamber shut, and holstered his gun. He was still getting a feel for how strong Aura was and how much punishment it could take and he couldn't afford to get caught with an empty gun again. He had thought that those six rounds would have been enough, but it was possible that this boy's Aura was particularly strong. This profligate wanted to fight him like a legionary. Fine. He would show him enough respect to give him an honorable death by a blade. But no more.

With a flourish, Servius drew his blade, just in time to parry the Huntsman in training's sword. He took a step or two back as the boy swung at him in a flurry of blows, each one Servius parried easily. For a moment, Servius was tense, waiting for the boy to stop trying to soften him up and to get serious. These moves were sloppy and predictable, he was acting like he had never held a sword before in his life. The boy had to be testing Servius's defenses.

But the blows kept coming, undisciplined, panicky, all of them parried, and a realization slowly started to creep over Servius. The boy's face was twisted in fear, even as he continued to press and swing. This was as good as the boy was capable of. Rage flared up in Servius. He was a year or two younger than Servius, at the very least, and this was the best he was capable of? It was pathetic. Twelve-year-old legionary trainees would have laughed at his form and shown him how to do it better. And this boy was one of the warriors being sent out to fight side along Barca? A world dotted with horrific monsters and this welp was on their first line of defense?

His knuckles turned white as they tightened around his machete. Profligates, this was how they acted. Unorganized and lazy, unable to do anything for themselves. They had to rely on others to do it all for them and were helpless when they were in real danger. And this boy, coming to face the Legion, he was no warrior, he was merely playing at it. It was an insult, one that Servius had no intention of suffering. He was here for Barca, this child had wasted his time for long enough.

The boy lunged forward with an overhead strike, only to hit Servius's blade on the way down. With his teeth grit, Servius slid his bade down the sword and onto the hilt, before viciously jerking it to the side. The boy's sword went flying to the side, out of the boy's hand. The boy gawked for a second at his empty hand. Servius didn't give him any time to recover descending on the boy with a merciless assault. A thrust to the throat, a slash to the side, an overhead strike to the head, all blows that would be fatal without Aura standing in the way, and all hits.

The boy was briefly overwhelmed, forced back as Servius rained blows down on him before he recovered and raised his shield, blocking the latest strike from him. Servius snarled and pulled back, only for the boy to wildly swing his shield. Caught off guard, the rim of the shield caught Servius directly in the face, twisting it to the side with so much force that it would have broken his jaw if Aura was not a factor.

Servius, seething with rage, attempted to recover, only for the shield to come back from and hit him from the opposite direction, causing a near mirror of what had just happened. Losing his temper, Servius threw himself at the boy, not even bothering to use his machete. Wrapping his arms around the student's waist, they were both sent sprawling to the ground, Servius on top, straddling the boy. He vaguely registered that his machete was still in his hand, but he didn't care.

He ignored his blade, it wasn't direct enough. Instead, Servius's fists began to rain down on the boy's face, punching every square inch of it that he could reach. It could barely be classified as a conscious choice on his part, the rage that was flowing through him had a mind of its own. He vaguely registered the boy yelping in pain, trying to shield his face with his hand, and the dull ache that was starting to throb in his own knuckles. It was drowned out by the impudence of his pathetic imitation of a warrior, however. This neophyte who had seen how the warriors of the Legion were superior to his ilk and who still had enough arrogant faith in himself to fight on. He would not let it stand, and he would wring the life out of his boy the second his infuriatingly durable Aura cracked.

Gasping for breath, the boy grasped to the side. He had dropped his shield and was now grasping for it. Servius was so blinded by rage that he only registered what was happening when the blonde had gotten a firm grip on it and had positioned it between himself and Servius. When Servius had been in the middle of throwing his latest punch. A pull pain flashed to life in his knuckles as his fist crashed into the shield, it not budging an inch to his force. He hissed as he pulled back, glancing at his throbbing hand and the blade that was still in it.

He was still nothing short of livid, but the pain brought him back to his senses. Stupid, he was being stupid. This foe was nothing more than a child, but it was a child with Aura. He had only known about Aura for days, and yet that had been more than enough to teach him about how dangerous it could make a person. He had to end this boy and end him now, regardless of how much wrath he deserved. Shifting his blade into a firmer grip, he stabbed down, only for the boy to block his thrust with his shield. Three more times Servius struck, and three more times he was blocked. His anger began to mount again. This boy just. Wouldn't. Die!

"SERVIUS!" Servius's head jerked to the side. He rarely heard Tullus shout like that, and when he did it was always in a situation where he needed Servius to act and act right now. The girl was charging right at him, her spear outstretched, anger etched across her face. He only had enough time to get himself off of the boy before the spear was buried in his gut. Doubling over in pain, Servius was helpless as the redheaded girl didn't stop, pushing him back until he was slammed into a nearby building, his mouth forced wide in a silent gasp.

Her other hand reached out, her shield was oddly absent, and wrapped around his face. Her face still twisted with hatred, she pulled back and slammed Servius's head into the wall. It shattered in a shower of wood and plaster, the rest of his body still on the far side. Her hand still gripped vice-like on him, despite him stabbing at her wrist on the far side, the girl pulled. Servius was forcibly pulled through the way, ripping through it as he went. Even through his Aura, pain erupted in his neck as it tore through a hundred different shards of sharp wood, and for a moment he was genuinely afraid that the girl would rip his head off.

When they reached the end of the wall, the girl pulled back, bringing him smashing through the wall and back onto her side. "What did he ever do to you?" she whispered, her voice seeping with hatred. Instead of answering, Servius stabbed at her face with his blade, hoping to catch her off guard. As a response, she lifted up her spear arm, extending two of her fingers. A black fuzz surrounded the blade of his machete, stopping it mid-thrust. No matter how hard Servius pushed or pulled, it felt like a powerful, invisible hand was locked around it keeping it in pace.

The girl continued to glare at him as she held his blade in place. What's wrong with her!? Servius thought incredulously. All of this? Over that weakling? It doesn't make any...wait. The girl's eyes had darted to the side, in the direction of the boy. He was coughing and gingerly getting to his feet. For a moment, her anger gave way to relief. Servius knew that look. Oh...oh no. He knew why she was so angry now.

With a grunt of exertion, the girl pivoted her foot and heaved her arm. The next thing Servius knew, he was airborne, flying through the air at an uncontrollable speed. "SERV!" He saw a blur out white on the edge of his vision as he neared the ground. The next thing he knew, he had stopped. A strong, familiar arm was wrapped around him. Tullus had caught him. There was a second of comfort by this familiarity, but it was washed away as he saw the girl in red bearing down on both of them.

Instinct taking over, he reached for his gun and drew it, only to find that he was holding a 9mm instead of his new .44. He had grabbed one of Tullus's pistols by mistake, but it didn't matter. A gun was a gun. Tullus's arm jerked over his shoulder with a 9mm of his own firmly in hand. Both of their pistols flamed to life, spitting bullets in the direction of the Huntress that was now heading directly at them, her spear still in hand. Her free hand sprung up in front of her, all of the bullets stopping shore and hovering in front of her as she continued to charge.

"Shoot high! I'll shoot low!" Tullus barked. Servius obeyed without hesitation, adjusting his aim to the girl's face and firing the last of the rounds in the magazine, five in total, while Tullus's arm shifted down to aim at her legs. For a second, Servius thought that this would have to get some results, only for her to lower her spear and spin it in her hand. Her free hand shot up with the already collected rounds, sucking up the new ones, while sparks flashed on her spear as they deflected the ones Tullus had fired.

"Damn it!" Tullus yelled as his pistol clicked empty, throwing it back into its holster and drawing a new one, Servius doing the same except drawing his .44, but she was upon them. There was no time to fire.

"Get back!" Ancus slipped in front of both of them, the rocket in his super sledge blaring brightly as it tore through the ground before rising up to meet the girl. She reacted expertly, and spear and hammer clashed, bringing both fighters to a screeching halt. Ancus's thick, muscular arms strained against the more thin and toned Huntress, neither of them giving any ground. Seeing an opening, Servius moved away from Tullus and took aim with his revolver. If he could just get a clean shot over Ancus's shoulder, he would be able to hit the Huntress right in the face. But she saw him.

With a pang, Servius realized that she still only had one hand on her spear, even though Ancus was swinging his hammer with both hands and the assistance of the rocket booster. The other was still maintaining the cloud of bullets that she had collected, which gave a sturdy flick. "DUCK!" A hand grabbed him from behind and forced him to the hard ground. Even then, he could few a few of the rounds graze his hair as they streaked overhead. "Mars above, this woman is possessed," Tullus panted. "She makes Barca look like an amateur."

"They're both just people," Servius hissed, working his way out of Tullus's protective grip and back to his feet, his fellow legionary rising up behind him. "You go from the right, I'll go from the left. We'll overwhelm her and-" but he was cut off by a bellowing that came from behind him.

"YOU! FUCKING! WHORE!" His head whipped back to where the voice had come from. Rumford was emerging from the hole in the wall he had been blasted through, his helmet having been knocked off. There was something off about him, there was an odd glow around him. A purple glow. "DON'T FUCK WITH ME!" As he roared, something unbelievable happened. Streams of dark purple smoke spewed out of both of his hands, striking the ground and spreading out where it hit. A horrible, putrid smell that reminded Servius of rotting corpses assaulted his nostrils as the gas spread, the grass around it withering up and dying as it did.

Rumford's anger died in a flash as he held up his hands, looking at them in shock as tiny streams of purple smoke leaked out of his palms. Shock that was quickly replaced with a wide, toothy grin. "Oh, you're gonna fucking get it now!" With a triumphant laugh, he extended his palm out, a thick jet of purple smoke erupting out of it, heading straight at the woman. And Ancus. "Rumford, don't!" Servius shouted, his heart almost jumping up into his throat. The girl's eyes widened as she saw the incoming stream of smoke and threw herself to the side. Ancus took a quick look behind him and threw himself to the side as well, the streak only barely missing him, and coming closer to him than it ever had to the Huntress.

In that one moment, Servius made up his mind. Rumford had almost harmed a Centurion with his recklessness. He had to die.

He and Tullus had to focus on getting to safety at the moment, however. Rumford's gas was still spewing without restraint, with him merely redirecting it towards the girl as she fell back. With a flick of her hand, her shield flew back to her from some unseen corner of the battlefield and into her hand, before she moved to the blonde Huntsman and grabbed him. As she dragged him to safety, the gas continued to spread, only dissipating very slowly, and overall increasing in volume as Rumford continued to spray without control. Soon, the entire street would be swallowed up by the foul smelling gas.

"Rumford, cease!" Ancus shouted as he fell in line with Servius and Tullus, both of whom had made a run for a nearby alleyway, away from where the gas was expanding.

"Oh fuck off grandpa, I almost got the bitch! Rumford said. "Hold on, I think I can make this bigger!" Slamming his hands together, the stream of smoke doubled in size, becoming so thick that Rumford was barely visible behind it, and the girl and her companion were completely lost from sight. "How do you like me now bitch!" Servius glanced around them. The alleyway that they were in would lead them away from Barca if they were to follow it, and the way towards him was being blocked by Rumford's smoke. He had a very bad feeling about breathing in that smoke, even with his Aura.

"It's going through alleyways on both ends!" Tullus said, poking his head out and looking at the now flooded streets. "He'll hit the main force with it!" Servius was barely listening, however. Kneeling at the mouth of the alleyway, he raised his revolver, took aim, and fired at the one part of Rumford he had an utterly unobstructed view of, his ankle. The man yelped and the stream of smoke died at its source, though all that he had already created continued to slowly spread out.

"You fucking little shit!" Rumford bellowed, turning to face Servius, "I-" he was cut off as a second bullet struck him square in the face, knocking him off his feet. Rising to his feet, Servius charged forward, his blade in one hand, revolver in the other. "THAT'S IT! YOU'RE DYING TODAY LITTLE BOY!" Rumford yelled, pulling on the chain of bullets that was still connected to the makeshift pack on his back. His machine-gun was dragged out of the hole in the wall and into Rumford's hands. At once, he began to fire, but he was still on his back. The shots were wild and inaccurate, not helped but the fact that Rumford was once again holding his machine-gun by the barrel as he fired.

Servius managed to avoid most of the incoming shots simply by avoiding the areas the barrel was pointing at, but even then a few shots managed to nick him. He was almost there when the deafening down of heavy wood snapping broke his concentration. Rumford glanced to the side, and so did he. One of the nearby buildings had caught fire, giant blooms of pure black smoke billowing up into the sky. A pair of figures burst out of the top of a nearby roof, exchanging blows as they flew through the air. Servius recognized both of them. One of them was Barca.

XXXXXX

James ducked just in time to avoid one of Marie F.'s knives, which tore into the wall behind him, so deep that a fresh ray of light shined in on the room. He hissed as he backpedaled, trying to get a bead on her. Using a longarm in quarters this close, particularly with a melee combatant as your enemy, was the exact opposite of an ideal situation. But stopping to switch weapons when she was doing her darndest to try and decapitate him was out of the question.

Moving through his entire vocabulary of swear words at a frightening pace, James fired at the charging woman, only for her to duck and lunge underneath the bullet. Her movements were so fluid that James wondered if her bones had ever properly hardened from cartilage. In addition to that, there was an erratic nature to the way she controlled her body, subtle jerks and movements to the side that made it nearly impossible to get a bead on her when she was this close. None of it felt human.

Darting in, both of her knives were a blue of silver as she slashed at his torso, only for her to slip away as he attempted to fire another shot. All James received for his efforts was a hole in the floor. ED-E wasn't having much better luck. Flying as high as the room would let him, he was circling around Marie F.'s head, his laser blasting as fast as it he could without overheating it. Unlike James, ED-E was actually getting some hits in, the occasional shot finding its marked on Marie F., but the majority of them were missing as she lurched about the room they were in, one step ahead of them.

Ok, plan B, James thought to himself. Firing a third shot, he watched as Marie F. ducked it again and then lunged for him as a follow up. Instead of attempting to fire again, he tossed his rifle up a few inches, caught it by the barrel, and swung. Marie F. was already in the middle of her lunge when she realized what he was doing, and by then it was too late. The butt of the rifle smacked her fight in the face, sending her skidding back across the floor. While this was happening, half a dozen shots from ED-E peppered the woman's chest, forcing her to dart back the second she had recovered.

"Looks like you're not all just NCR propaganda then!" Marie F. called as she took cover behind a bookcase, throwing both of her knives. One soared at ED-E and the other at James, both of them falling back to avoid the projectiles. Tapping at her side, there was a faint pop and Marie F. had another set in her hands. "Good! Makes this more interesting. Wait, hold on, gotta put on my tunes."

Like James, she had a Pip-Boy strapped to her wrist, though a much smaller one than his 3000 model, and it seemed to have a flip screen. At the base in yellow words was "Lil' Pip 3000." Marie F. slapped a button and a song began to blare out of it. Hey everybody, did the news get around about a guy named Butcher Pete? Oh, Pete just flew into this town And he's choppin' up all the women's meat! "Real fucking subtle!" James shouted, taking the momentary lapse to sling his rifle back over his shoulder, drawing both of his SMGs. He had theorized that he could afford to fire one in each hand. He hadn't tested it yet, but in quarters this close it hardly mattered either way, he would hit his target for one reason or another.

ED-E beeped loudly, and at once a song of his own began to play. "To the town of Agua Fria rode a stranger one fine day, Hardly spoke to-" the recording was briefly cut off by the sound of the holotape fast forwarding inside ED-E before it came to a stop and started to play again. It was over in a moment and the crowd all gathered 'round. There before them lay the body of the outlaw on the ground. Oh, he might have went on livin' but he made one fatal slip. When he tried to match the ranger with the big iron on his hip.

Marie F. let out a loud, genuine laugh. "Well I'll be damned, ghetto Sputnik has teeth!" Peeking her head out, she tossed both of her knives before creating another pair and bolting out of cover. James veered to the side to avoid the knives, and even then he felt one scrape against his helmet. As they streaked by, he aimed both SMGs at Marie F. and squeezed tight. The woman ducked and weaved, making every sporadic move that she could to make herself a harder target, with James doing his very best to lead her.

Thankfully, she couldn't avoid a pair of automatic weapons with the same ease that she had avoided a semi-automatic, and quite a few of the shots were noticeably hitting. It was hard to tell with his 9mm, he wasn't one of those assholes who used tracer rounds for everything after all, but Marie F. was noticeably wincing as she pushed forward. And the White Fang SMG removed all doubt. When a shot from it impacted, there was a bright burst of flame, and there were quite a few fiery explosions dotting Marie F.'s body right now. They were also darting the floor around her, where they took root and started to spread faster than any fire he had ever seen before. Shit he internally swore. He hoped that whoever owned this house had insurance.

Marie F. was upon him now, swinging up with both of her knives. However, instead of going for him, she went for Vance's SMG, which was split into three parts, leaving James gripping a useless stock and not much else. "You know, there's a dick joke in here somewhere," she said, pulling back both of her arms and flinging her knives yet again. James ducked, both of the weapons sailing overheard, and aimed his remaining SMG. As he did, Marie F. shot forward, inching around the barrel of the gun and brushing her finger against the side.

James heard a small pop and his stomach dropped. Not giving Marie F. time to act, he dropped his ruined weapon, planted his palm on the ground, and spun his leg in a rushed variant of the ranger takedown. Caught off guard, Marie F. was swept up by the move and knocked off her feet. "ED-E!" James shouted, but the eyebot was already pumping laser blasts into the woman as James forced himself back to his feet. Marie F. was already moving to get back up, a copy of the White Fang SMG in her hand.

Raising his booted foot up, James kicked the woman in the face as hard as he could, sending her half raised head slamming back into the floorboards. His leg still up, he brought it down on the wrist of the hand, hard. In normal circumstances that would've had a good chance at shattering the wrist he had done it to, but Aura was a factor this time, sadly depriving him of a satisfying snapping noise. No matter, he would make do without. SMG still in hand, he pressed the barrel right between Marie F.'s eyes and fired.

Her eyes widened as she saw the weapon, only for them to slam shut in pain as the bullets started to pour out. For a brief, wonderful moment, James thought he had her. Her Aura had already taken some punishment from him and ED-E, there was no way it would survive the whole magazine. Sadly, he never got a chance to see if that was true, because while her SMG arm was pinned, she still had one free hand. Reaching frantically down to her sheathed knife, she tapped it. With a pop, the SMG disappeared, but five knives appeared in the others, ones that she threw up at once.

By the time James realized what had happened, he had only gotten a dozen or so rounds out and the knives were halfway to his gut. When they hit, it felt like he had been punched by an enraged Super Mutant, and the blow sent him reeling back off of Marie F, his head spinning. "I'll be damned, you're pretty good!" Marie F. said, creating a few more copies of her knives and throwing them at ED-E. The tiny robot swerved about in the air, but one of the thrown weapons bounced off of him with a loud clang, sending up flying out the window. Anger flared through James as he saw the knife hit, leaving a deep gash on ED-E's outer chassis. "I'm on a tight time table though, so I'm gonna have to cut our good time short. So let's try again!"

She tapped her sheaths and again there was a pop, one that left a knife in each hand. She threw both of them before charging in after them.. Still reeling from her last blow, James staggered as he aimed his SMG and fired. One of the knives was blasted out of the middle of the air, a few rounds hitting Marie F., but the other glanced off of his helmet, disorienting him and knocking his aim off. James's entire body felt like it was getting heavy, and he could feel his Aura fluctuating around him. It wouldn't last much longer.

"Ha! Nice shot! I've tried to do the version where they deflect bullets myself. Never could get it to work. You ever try it? Nah, probably not, you strike me more as the gunslinger type, guess that's why Eddy wanted me and not you. You wouldn't believe how insecure they get about their microscopic pricks and project it onto their weapons. Guess that's a side effect of an army where there's no cunts or dick sucking permitted," Marie F. said, calling out warmly. James hated to admit it, but if the situation was different he would have been laughing his ass off at Caesar being called Eddy. But there was no time for that. She was on him.

Once again, she swiped at his SMG, and a copy appeared in her hand. James had a very bad feeling that, if he took a direct blast from that weapon, he would be as good as dead. Outshooting her was an iffy prospect at this point, running away wasn't possible, the only way out was forward. Throwing himself forward, he slammed into Marie F. locking his arms around her in as tight a bear hug as he could manage, pinning her gun arm to her side, though missing her other one. Letting out a hiss, Marie F's SMG started to fire wildly, the Fire Dust bullets riddling the ground and causing a new set of fires to flare up.

Tilting his head back, he brought his helmeted face crashing down on hers. "Oh you sneaky little bastard!" Marie F. called out, her head arching back and then recovering, a wide smile on her lips. James tilted his head back for another headbutt. "Think I'll pass. In fact, this place is getting a little smoky." She wasn't wrong, the fires that had been started were spreading across the entire house at a frightening pace. Thick black smoke was filing the building, so much that James could actually smell it through his helmet, and the warmth was reaching uncomfortable levels. He ignored her, bringing his head down on hers. "Let's go outside!" Then Marie F. did something that James had never considered and changed the entire flow of the fight.

She jumped. She took both of them right through the roof.

James's stomach turned upside down as they burst through the wood paneling, into the second floor, then through another layer to the outside. "Holy shit, that actually worked!" Marie F. let out a whooping laugh before she slammed her knee into James's gut. His mouth was forced open wide in a silent gasp and his arms went slack, Marie F.'s arms slipping free. Her grin spreading wide, she aimed her copy SMG at James. Without thinking, James didn't shoot his own SMG, he swung it. Marie F's face spun to the side, bits of spit spewed out of her mouth as she did.

"What the fuck!?" James wanted to let out a laugh at Marie F. getting indignant over being hit in the face once after everything she had pulled. Then he realized she wasn't actually looking at him, she was staring over his shoulder. Craning his neck as the pair of them flew through the air, he looked at the ground. Thick clouds of dark purple smoke were leaking through the town below them.

"What did you people do!?" James said, his attention shifting back to Marie F. throwing a left cross at her face.

"Oh god damn it Vulpes!" Marie F. replied, her head ducking the blow before driving an elbow into James. "If he did this behind my back I swear to Christ!" For a moment, the two of them traded punches, kicks, and bashes before they started to descend. "Wait, hold on!" Grabbed James by the shoulders, she steered the direction the two of them were on sharply to the right. Instead of landing in the middle of the smoke covered street, they landed on a house bordering the street. James first.

"Shit, what is this," Marie F. said, hopping off of James and glancing over the edge. "What-oh fucking Rumford," she snarled. "That-" scrambling to his feet, James aimed his SMG at Marie F.'s back, firing. Half a dozen rounds slammed into her back before she spun around, returning fire to her own. Frustration had been leaking into her voice earlier, but now she laughed with nothing short of pure joy. "You! You are just pushing me! I can't half ass it with you!" Flaming shots exploded on both of them, and James felt something break. There was a sound of breaking glass and a green aura around him flared and died. At the same time, an orange Aura flared around Marie F. and did the same. Both of them had broken their Aura.

For a second that seemed to last for an eternity, the two of them looked at each other before pulling the triggers on their weapons. Both clicked empty. Marie F. chuckled. "You have no right to be making me this excited. I'm going to remember this fight for years." And, to James's surprise, she gave a deep, warm smile. "Barca-no, I'm not playing Eddy's stupid little games...James. Thank you for this." She tapped her sides and with a pop there was another pair of knives in her hand. Holstering his SMG, James scrambled for his rifle from his kneeling position and took him.

He didn't even get a chance to touch the trigger when something inexplicable happened. He flew backward, held up by an invisible force, flying straight off the building in a straight line. Panicking, he twisted and turned, or at least tried to. His chestplate refused to move with him, staffing stiff and rigid as if it was bolted down to the ground. "Mr. Walker, please don't struggle! This is hard to do!" James saw her then. Pyrrha was on the ground, supporting Jaune with one arm and holding up the other. Her Semblance, she was the one doing this. It wasn't the ability to control trajectories, it was magnetism.

"Walker! Need a jailbait bitch to save your sorry ass!? I thought you were supposed to be tougher than that!" There was a man in White Fang armor on the ground, dashing through the gaps in the smoke. He was heaving a machine-gun, aiming it at him. His heart rate spiked. A machine-gun like that would spit a few dozen rounds at him in seconds, and his armor wouldn't be able to take that kind of punishment, and he wasn't moving nearly fast enough. There was only one way out that he could think of.

"Pyrrha! Drop me!" Thankfully Pyrrha didn't hesitate. At once, the force holding him up vanished and he tumbled towards the ground. The landing was hard but he was back up on his feet in seconds. He took cover in the nearest alleyway, and not a second too soon. Bullets from the machine-gun started to pepper the mouth of the alley. Sneaking a short peak out, he took stock of the man's location before leaning down, below the stream of fire.

Leaning out, he took aim and fired as fast as he could until the magazine clipped empty. He wasn't sure how many of the shots hit home, but the man holding the machine-gun staggered back before a purple aura appeared and shattered around him. "YOU FUCKING PRICK!" James slid back into the alleyway just as the stream of bullets adjusted to meet his height, a few coming far too close, nearly ripping into his ankle.

Ejecting his spent magazine, he rummaged for a replacement. When his fingers brushed over one, he felt a piece of paper attached to it. Blinking, he pulled it out. It was the magazine his Semblance had made, the one with the "Bloody Mess" note attached. Another burst of rounds streaked over his head, hitting the far wall. The man with the machine-gun was advancing, there was no time to wait. Slapping the Bloody Mess magazine into his rifle, he spun out of cover. The man was right there.

"GOTCHA BITCH!" for a second, James thought he was going to have his stomach torn apart by MG rounds, but the man wasn't aiming his weapon. He had taken a hand off and was holding it in front of James's face. A ploom of purple smoke spewed out of the hand, directly into James's face. An unbearable smell of long dead bodies assaulted James's nostrils, so bad that he almost wretched. "You see this Servius! After him you're next! As for you Walker, choke like the little cunt you are!"

James couldn't see anything except the purple smoke that was saturating him. He had no idea what was being blasted into his face, but he was certain that five seconds breathing it would be enough to kill him.

Thankfully, his attacker didn't seem to have noticed he was wearing a gas mask along with his helmet. The smell of the gas was unbearable, but not a speck of it was making it through the filters. Still, he was fully blinded, and it would only be so long before his assailant realized the gas wasn't working. Aiming his rifle in front of him, he fired.

There was a blood curdling shriek of pain and James felt something hot and wet splatter all over him. The gas died down and James's vision cleared. The man was lying on the ground, howling and spasming clutching at his arm. Or rather, what was left of it. There was only a stump left, it and the ground around him covered with blood and tiny chunks of bone and flesh. There was nothing bigger than the tip of a finger. He had done this. Whatever Bloody Mess was, he had done this.

"BARCA!" Out of nowhere, a fist slammed into the side of his helmet. The grip on his rifle slipped and it hung loosely in the air, only remaining with him thanks to his strap. Another man in White Fang armor was upon him, but holding a blade that was purely Legion. This was no Faunus, it was one of Caesar's men. His helmet was off, revealing a dark haired man. Though he only just qualified as a man. He couldn't be more than twenty, his face was still young and soft, even though it was twisted in rage. He thrust forward with his machete, aiming right for James's throat.

James's acted without thinking, putting a long practiced move into effect. His right hand jabbed the underside of the blade arm before it could get too close, while his left shot up in an uppercut, catching the young boy in the chin. Crying out in pain, he instinctively clutched at his chin with both hands. Not giving him a chance to recover, James took the initiative. A right cross, then a left, then another right, all of them battering the young man's face back and forth.

Seething with hatred, the legionary attempted to counter with a jab. James let the younger man throw it, taking a step back so that the blow came up short. After that, he darted forward, gripped the outstretched arms, pivoted, and heaved.

Swinging a full grown man in armor over his head would've been borderline impossible back on Earth, but here it was surprisingly easy. The man soared over him before he slammed into the ground, his mouth open wide in a pained gasp. James threw a quick kick at the man's temple before he turned. Two more men in White Fang armor were charging down the street, he didn't have time to stay and fight. He spotted the one armed legionary, clutching feebly at his fallen machine-gun, and a desperate idea occurred to him.

"Mr. Walker!" Pyrrha dashed through a narrow opening in the smoke, still supporting Jaune, stopping just short of him. She held up her hand, and just in time. A hail of gunfire echoed from the two other men, the bullets stopping just short, a black fuzz around them. "Are you all right?"

"Aura's down, we need to go!" he shouted. Grabbing the MG, he slid its strap over his shoulders before grabbing its former owner by his remaining arm. He had a feeling they weren't going to get any other chances to take prisoners in this fight, and integrating a legionary could prove to be invaluable. "Never jumped with Aura before, can you give me a boost?" Pyrrha gave a quick nod. "Then let's go!" Bending down, James jumped as hard as he could.

James felt like his stomach had been left behind as he rocketed through the air, easily clearing the tops of buildings. His jumped was crooked though, a combination of his lack of experience and the extra weight of his passenger and new weapon. Added to that, he didn't even know where he was going, only that he wanted very badly to get far away from an alley filled with poison and legionaries.

His eyes darting around, he saw a restaurant that had White Fang assaulting it from both sides. That had to be where the others had set up shop, but he wasn't quite lined up with it, even though he was moving in the right general direction. An unseen force seized him, and he felt his chestplate dragged again, moving him onto the right path. "Thank you!" he shouted as he started to descend, Pyrrha's correction having positioned him so that he would land neatly on top of nearby building.

The landing sent a nasty jolt through his legs, but he ignored it, crouching again as Pyrrha landed right next to him, evidently having followed his lead. She beat him to the next jump and soared towards the restaurant that was under siege, heading straight for the restaurant's roof. With numb legs and privately praying that he would never have to do this again, James jumped after her. The girl soared through the air, pressing her feet together as she began to fall, crashing right through the roof and into the building below. Feeling a little sick as he realized what was coming, James did the same. He clamped his boots together, aimed down at the building, and closed his eyes.

It felt like his entire body was rattling as he forced himself through the roof, his bones somehow not shattering even with his Aura down. He felt the man he was dragging bang against the edge of the hole he had made before he finally landed on the ground floor, again almost breaking his legs. There were a few panicked yells and weapons pointed at him and Pyrrha, but thankfully the shock wore off and everyone realized who they were before shots were fired. Doing a quick check, he saw Atlas soldiers, Nora, and Team CRDL, most of them doing what they could to fight off the incoming White Fang.

Spotting a medic crouching over a trio of wounded, James hasilty dragged his captive over and let him slump down next to the others. His struggles were becoming rather weak now. "He's got a Semblance that lets him shoot poison gas, can you keep him from doing that?" James asked hastily. A prisoner would be valuable right now, but this one wasn't worth everyone except him dying. The medic hastily nodded, drawing a syringe from her kit and jamming it into the legionary's arm.

"Sedative, will keep him from focusing enough to use it," she said, diving back into her kit and producing a handful of bandages.

"Thank you; don't let him die!" James said. James stopped for half a second to take a quick sitrep of the restaurant. There was a gunner on one side, with Cardin and one of his teammates nearby, and a rifleman with the other two teammates and Nora on the other. By the sound of it, there was also a marksman on the first sde. Cardin, for all his faults, was standing strong on his end, but none of his teammates seemed to be doing anything. Meaning the rifleman only had Nora for support.

As Pyrrha helped Jaune over to the medic and knelt him down gently, James dashed towards the rifleman, dropping down his scavenged MG and drawing his rifle. "Where's Winter?" he asked, taking up position beside the rifleman. He had just noticed that the elder Schnee sister wasn't here.

"She sortied, rooftops!" the rifleman reported, firing a few bursts at a White Fang operative who had poked her head out from behind a pile of ice chunks, at least one of them hitting home. James fired a shot at a another White Fang operative, nausea coursing through him as the entire body exploded in a ball of blood and gore, splattering all around. Scanning the rooftops, he spotted her in the middle of a vicious brawl with two others. It seemed like she was holding her own, but there was no point in taking a chance, not when she had them distracted.

He took a moment to decide which one was the bigger threat when it hit him. One of Winter's opponent was a young girl wearing an odd, short legged outfit that he didn't recognize, but the other he recognized all too well. A red headed young man with a long, red blade. The same blade that had nearly carved James in half. Making up his mind, he lined up his sights with the boy's back and fired.

Up until this point, a shot against someone with Aura would cause them to stagger, maybe more if enough rounds hit. But whatever Bloody Mess did, it sent the young man flying, head over heels. Somehow, he managed to recover before he cleared the edge of the roof by driving his sword into it, coming to a dragging halt. His eyes immediately locked onto James, his teeth gritting in hatred. "Hey shitstain! You half assed killing me! When you get to Hell, ask for Benny! You can trade notes!" Remembering what had happened the last time he had faced this wannabe freedom fighter, James couldn't help but feel a tinge of panic. He couldn't afford to fall into the same trap.

Testing the waters, he fired two more shots. The boy ducked the first one and swung his sword to deflect the second. Instead of smoothly slicing through the shot and passing on, however, something else happened. There was a loud clang and the boy stopped in his tracks, gritting his teeth as he was forced to take a step back. "What's the matter junior!? Oh by the way, I've killed eight of your murderers now!" He had five Bloody Mess rounds left. As horrifying as they were, he had to make them count.

"Ok, I REALLY like you." James's blood went cold. He looked up, his head stretching out the window he and the rifleman were taking cover behind. Marie F. was perched on top of the roof, grinning widely and waving at him. "Adam really is a manchild with insecurity issues up the ass, but all of his thralls are too stupid or chicken shit to say otherwise. Glad you've got some balls." His rifle snapping up, James fired at once. But Marie F. had already dropped down and the shot went wide. She landed outside the window, her hand darting forward and grabbing James by his neck guard.

With little effort, he was torn out of the window and sent sliding across the ground. "Bailing when things were just getting good? Dick move, man." Swinging around, he didn't even get a chance to properly aim his rifle before she was on top of him with a pair of knives. A shot echoed out from behind her, and she threw one of the knives behind her without looking, slashing down at James with her remaining one. Running on pure instinct, James raised his rifle to block it, the tip being buried in the stock.

"Sky! Russell! Help him!" The majority of his attention was on the woman with a crazed smile attempting to break through his guard, he saw movement on the corner of his vision. The Altas soldier had a knife stuck right in her wrist, her rifle now on the ground. Two members of Cardin's team had climbed out of the window, one with a pair of knives and another with a halberd.

"Three on one? Hey, what the hell! I'm up for it! Come on boys!" Marie F. cried out cheerfully, turning her head over her shoulder. But neither of the two moved. Both of them were shaking, fear visible on their faces. The smile vanished from Marie F.'s face, replaced by a look of pure disgust. "Oh. You fucking pussies." With her free hand, she grabbed James again and threw him at the one with the halberd. James almost had the wind knocked out of him as he slammed into the boy, knocking him over, losing his grip on his rifle and becoming entangled with him. As he tried to get back up, Marie F. reached the other one. She landed a punch in the solar plexus, causing him to double over before she followed up with a blow to the back of the head. "Pathetic," she hissed with pure disgust. "What are you even doing out here?" Reaching down, the pried the knives out of the student's hand, giving both of them experimental swings. "Don't worry, I'll use these better than you ever could."

Getting to his feet, James saw Marie F. approaching him. The knives she held were odd, and had rotating chambers at the bottom. Flicking a switch at the base of the hilt, they rotated, and bright red flames ignited all over the blade. "Heh, maybe we can burn down another building," she said. She lunged.

James darted to the side before she hit and she ended up burying one of her new knives up to the hilt in the side of the restaurant. "Oh, god damn it," she said, sounding more mildly annoyed than anything. She turned to swing her other knife. Not having any time to get a firm grip on his rifle, James darted forward, grabbed her left wrist before it could complete the swing, and slammed it against the restaurant wall. "That's better, back to fighting someone who isn't a whimpering little boy with a cunt. It's kind of like-" but that was all she got out. Grabbing her by the hair, James slammed her face right into the wall. Directly onto the flaming blade.

Marie F.'s cheerful comments were replaced with screams. Pained screams. Like a trapped animal she began thrashing against James's grip, but he kept both her hand and her head steady. This went on for about ten seconds before he felt a sharp pain in his leg. Marie F. had kicked from, a sloppy kick, but enough to knock him off balance. His grip slackened and she burst free, ripping her knife out of the wall and clambering onto the top of the restaurant.

"Ok. Ok, you win," she panted, looking back down. A horrific third degree burn was left on her face, a thick, clean line on the opposite side from her XII tattoo. It was red raw, and with visible tendons near the bottom. "God damn." And she smiled, that same out of touch smile that she had worn so many times since he had met her. "I haven't felt this alive since Highpool and B.O.M.B.-001. Thank you. I'll treasure these scars. Until next time." With that, a copy of one of her new knives appeared in her hand, which she through. A blinding pain tore through James as her knife buried itself in his shoulder, burning him from the inside before he could grab it and pull it out, the pa jumped again, heading in the direction of the shattered ice and a pair of trucks behind it.

James hadn't realized it, he had been so caught up in the fighting, but a warhorn was echoing through the town. And the White Fang were in retreat. Realizing with a jolt that Marie F. was about to make a run for it. A maniac like that on the loose, and on Caesar's side no less? No. He couldn't let that stand. Getting a firmer grip on his rifle, he lifted up his left arm and hit the Wild Wild Wasteland button on his Pip-Boy before taking aim. As the cheap slot machine sound-effects played, he waited for time to slow down. He would be able to easily hit Marie F. with an advantage like that.

It never did.

Taking a quick glance at his Pip-Boy, he saw Vault Boy taking comically over exaggerated steps on the tips of his toes. "SILENT RUNNING!" was spelt out in big, bold letters at the bottom of the screen. His stomach dropped. Taking his chances, he fired without any aid except his iron sights, but Marie F. had already flipped down from the top of the truck into the safety of the interior, and the few surviving operatives were following suit. Deciding to make the best of a bad situation, he emptied his magazine at the backs of the retreating terrorists. Two more of them exploded, leaving nothing but red smears on the ground and nearby trucks.

"No! White Fang, hold your ground!" The redheaded boy was still on top of a nearby building, apparently having resumed his fight with Winter instead of engaging James, with their blades currently clashing. Why, he had no idea, but he wasn't about to complain. "They're cornered! We can-"

"Adam, you agreed to retreat when the war horn sounded! There are Grimm in the area, we need to go now!" his companion cried out. Adam paused, giving a lingering look of hatred at Winter before breaking away and heading in the direction of the trucks, the girl right behind him. Over a dozen of the White Fang surged from the far side of the building, with half of them quickly being swallowed up by fire from inside the restaurant, along with a grenade hitting the side of their formation. Before too long though, all of the survivors were inside the trucks and they were speeding away, far out of sight.

"Winter, do we pursue!?" James called out, reloading his rifle and looking up at the specialist, who had jumped back down to ground level.

The officer looked into the restaurant, down at the two members of Cardin's team, who were still cowering on the ground, and at the trucks in the distance. "No," she said, her voice bitter. "We've too many wounded. And it's clear," she glared at the two students Huntsmen, who were slowly getting to their feet, "that our forces are not as reliable as I thought. We need to secure the hostages."

"Right, I'll head over there right away. Jaune and Pyrrha are ok, but Jaune looks like he got battered about a bit. I managed to take one of the people who jumped them prisoner, left him with your medic," James said, before moving around the restaurant, back towards the square. James felt relief as he saw all six people on crosses still moving, unharmed.

"Dodger, have Lapis patch your arm. Ms. Nikos, Ms. Valkyrie, with me. Russell, Sky. Stay. Here. Everyone else, stay on alert for stragglers and Grimm." James could hear Winter right behind him, along with two other sets of footsteps. They reached the crosses after a brief sprint, and James was once again relieved to see that there weren't any visible wounds. "Mr. Walker, cover them with me. You two," the pointed to Pyrrha and Nora. "Get them down." Both redheaded girls nodded as they moved to the crosses, undoing the knots.

"ED-E!" James said, looking around as he called. "ED-E!" He hadn't seen the eyebot ever since Marie F.'s attack had thrown him out of the house they were fighting in. A panicky feeling was slowly starting to creep over him. "I swear to Christ, if she hurt him...oh thank God." ED-E floated out of a gap between buildings, a noticeable gash still present on his hull, but he seemed to be functioning normally. James pulled the robot into a tight hug as he pulled closer, ED-E letting out a tired but happy beep.

"God what a mess," James said, looking around the town. Bodies of White Fang were everywhere, he could see the blast zone where Marie F. had ambushed the Atlesian soldiers, as well as still smell the house that was burning around the block.

"Why did they retreat?" Pyrrha asked, her breathing heavy as she released one of the hostages. "And why did they leave the hostages where they were?"

"Simple," Winter said. "They were failing to obtain their objectives. We were holding our own after we recovered from their initial attack, and they were sustaining heavy losses. With Mr. Walker recovered and and in a more secure position, their window of opportunity was closed. As for the hostages, well, I suspect that it was an insurance policy to keep us from pursuing. We can't leave them unattended when there are Grimm in the area, even if the arms are dealing with them. A handful could always slip through."

"This has Vulpes's signature all over it," James said sourly. "If he isn't in Remnant, I'll be very surprised. But there's a couple of things you need to know. Caesar seems to have a new pet, Marie F., I don't know if you saw her. Her Semblance lets her copy objects, though it seems like she can only maintain copies of one object at a time. She seems to be an unstable, sadistic, psychopath. Not from Remnant, I think, it seems like she's from Earth."

Winter looked at him, blinking. "You told me the Legion doesn't use women to fight."

"I did, I'm just as confused as you are," James replied. "But if I had to guess, I'd say it's one of two things. One is that the Legion is ok with using women as proxies. There was a tribe called the Great Khans that had a bone to pick with the NCR, and they had both genders as warriors. Caesar planned on using the Great Khans as meat shields against the NCR before assimilating what was left. Something similar seems to be going on with the White Fang. Marie F. seems like less of a part of the Legion and more like a contractor or an auxiliary force for them. As for two? Well...I think the Legion may be desperate. They've lost against the NCR twice and they expand their strength by expanding. They've hit a wall, and they're trying to find ways around it."

Winter nodded. "Logical deductions. Are you suggesting that they may consider Aura and Semblance to be their ways to overcome their current situations?"

"I wasn't, but that does make sense," James said. His stomach turned upside down at the thought of Marie F. tearing through a platoon of NCR troopers. She would be able to do it with ease. The more he thought about it, the more he realized how much of a catastrophe it would be if he and the others hadn't responded to the situation at Big Mountain. Dozens of superpowered Legionaries would be all it would take to push to the heart of NCR core regions.

"Oh yes, what a terrible sight that would be. Sad enough to see grown men playing dress up as Roman legionaries, next they'll be draping themselves in loincloths and calling themselves Hercules. An army of Commoduses." James grit his teeth. House's voice was the last thing he wanted to hear right now. "And the fact that there would be nothing you could do to stop them would be the truly sad thing. A pack of deluded young men worshiping a senile old man calling himself the new son of Mars, and they keep you up at night. Well I hope you're ready for more sleepless nights. They've crossed the Rubicon."

"Mr. Walker?" Winter sounded concerned.

"Sorry, was thinking things through," James lied. "Anyway, the second thing. The Legion seems to be incognito as the White Fang, there were a few back there that were using Earth weapons and using Legion terminology. Seems like they're trying to fly under the radar in that regard. Not in the fact that they're here, they've blown that little secret, but they don't want us to be able to tell legionary and White Fang apart."

A body wearing White Fang armor was nearby. Kneeling down, he pulled the helmet off. Underneath was a man with a pair of fox ears in front of his normal ears. James paused. A nasty feeling was forming at the pit of his stomach. "He...he didn't," James said. Moving around the town, he stopped by every body he could find, pulling off helmets. Dog ears, rabbit ears, some horns he couldn't recognize, one even had scales around her neck, but every helmet he pulled off was clearly Faunus. He let out a hiss of frustration. "Caesar let the White Fang do all of the dying," he said. "I think the team Pyrrha, Jaune and I faced in the alley were the only legionaries here." Anger throbbed through him, an old, familiar anger. Even off of Earth, Caesar was more than content to take the scared, desperate, and angry and offer them up like pawns.

"You did say he likes to use meatshields," Winter remarked. James nodded. "Speaking of which, you mentioned encountering a team. How many of them and what happened to them?"

"Ma'am, there were four of them," Pyrrha said at once, untying the last of the hostages. "I didn't see any of their Semblances in action aside from the one that James took captive."

"They headed out of town when the horn was blown, I saw them go," ED-E beeped. "They headed in a different direction from the main force, they must have a designated meet up spot." James then translated for Winter.

She nodded. "I see." She took a quick look at the hostages, who were now all free, though they looked terrified. "Get them back to the restaurant, we can protect them better there. I'll check in with the others." As Nora and Pyrrha nodded and led the others back, Nora giving one shaking old man a comforting pat on the back as they went. "I'm going to check in with the other formations. All the increased negativity in the area has the Grimm in a frenzy, they was doubtless part of their plan too. I-" she had reached up for her earpiece as she spoke, but was interrupted as she turned it on. A thick, whining screech echoed out of it, so loud that she pulled it out, wincing as she did. It was then that James realized her ear was bleeding.

"Oh shit, are you ok?" he asked, taking a step forward and instinctively reaching into his rucksack for a stimpack.

"I'm fine, I can still hear. It's just muffled," Winter said, looking at James before looking back at her ear piece. Then her attention went back to James, her eyes blinking rapidly. She stared. "That's...not your blood, correct?"

James looked down. His front was still drenched from when he had used the Bloody Mess magazine. "For the most part. Got stabbed in the shoulder. Hurts like a son of a bitch but I don't think it hit anything vital." There was an awkward silence between the two of them. "So what's up with your ear piece?"

"I don't think it's on my end, I think it's a signal," Winter said. Behind him, James heard ED-E's radio flicker to life, and the same piercing noise came out of his speakers. "That confirms it," she said, sounding frustrated. "Let's head back, we'll see if any of our equipment can break through this. We need to report in that we managed to score a tactical victory." A tactical victory. James supposed that was accurate. Looking around, the White Fang had clearly lost far more men than Atlas had. Three, maybe four times as much. And if this whole ploy had been to try and kill him, then the White Fang and Legion had failed in their objectives. This was indeed a victory.

It didn't feel like one though.

XXXXX

Author's Note:

I wasn't happy with how the previous chapter turned out after my readers pointed out quite a few flaws, and I thought I could do better. So here we are. I think one of the reasons the first chapter didn't come out so well is that I tried to turn each scene into a one on one fight, two on one in Winter's case, and as a result certain problems arose from that, mainly with things becoming imbalanced. So I decided to mix things up, make Winter's fight scene more of a battle scene between two forces with her commanding her side (because she's the ranking officer) turn Pyrrha's scene into a darker and more dangerous version of her fight against team CRDL (which I feel like I should've done from the start because it means Tullus and Ancus can actually be involved in the fight, they were criminally neglected in the first chapter) while saving the one on one fight for James and Marie F., which I feel like is where the last chapter had the least amount of issues. Which, to be frank, is probably because it was OC on OC violence, and it's hard to fuck up the power level of characters you yourself made. Though even then it was pointed out it could use some tweaking.

Also I cut out a couple of sections because I just felt like the last chapter was trying to do too much at once. The Grimm at the end and the euthanization for instance. I don't think those were badly written, but in a chapter where there were already three fights with named characters, I think it had a bit of an overload effect. I really liked the euthanization moment, I feel like it was a good character building moment for James, but I just couldn't fit it in. That's the essence of writing a second draft, you need to know what to leave on the cutting room floor.

Also, it's all fine and dandy naming half a dozen Atlas background characters after various shades of blue, but it throws a wrench in your plans when you can't use Carolina for obvious reasons.

Also. Just a reminder. I said with the last chapter that I would be ignoring anything that was revealed in Volume 6 if it clashed with the plans that I had...that being said. Sometimes you get information that makes you panic for a bit because it clashes with your plans. Then you think about it. Then you get even better plans. Let's just say episode 3 of volume 6 made me change my plans. And I think it's a change for the better.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Josue Garcia, Jonathan Eason, Ryan Van Schaack, and ChaosSpartan575 for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 8

Wild Card

XXXXX

Servius was burning up inside. He had met Barca, he had faced Barca, and he had failed miserably. He had barely been able to lay a hand on the man, and the rest of the fight had been Barca pummeling idly, no doubt something the man had seen as an idle amusement. Frustration boiled through him. It had been three days since their attempted assassination of Barca, and he still couldn't bear to think about it. "You're supposed to be better than this," he said to no one in particular. "You were trusted with a mission. How could you fail like this?"

"Serv?"

"He was there. He was right there! And you couldn't even scratch him! He was the sole reason you were sent there!"

"Serv?"

"It's pathetic. Utterly pathetic. How can-"

"SERV!" Servius's line of thought was broken. Tullus was standing up at the personal fire the two of them had set up in their corner of the joint White Fang/Legion camp. "Tea's ready." Sure enough, two steaming cups of tea were sitting on a blanket right next to the campfire. "Come on, it's not easy to pour that with one hand. Drink it before it gets cold, you look like you need it."

Servius felt appreciation for what Tullus was doing, but his bad mood remained dominant. "I'm not in the mood right now Tullus. I'll make myself some later."

"Serv," Tullus said slowly. "Sit down."

"I said I'll make some-"

"Sit," Tullus repeated, his voice stern. Glaring at the older legionary, he did as he was told, sitting cross-legged. "Drink," he said, sitting down and handing Servius one of the cups before picking up his own. He didn't lift it to his lips though, keeping a firm eye on Servius. Slowly, Servius tipped back his cup and drank the tea. He had to admit, the warmth the drink spread throughout his body was comforting and relaxing. After a pair of large gulps, he lowered the cup.

"Anyone can claim they are a warrior after victory," Tullus said. "It's easy. No one can deny it when they have a blade soaked with blood. But defeat is the true test of character. It's when the true challenge occurs, and you ask yourself. Will this setback break me? Or will I rise above it, stronger than ever? Twice I was part of the army that marched on Hoover Dam, and twice I broke against those walls, forced to flee in disgrace. I was able to rise again. You will too. And we will both grow from it."

"I know," Servius said, looking down at his tea. "But Caesar does not tolerate failure." It felt like his insides were being twisted. First, he failed to protect the portal from Barca, then he failed to kill the man. If Caesar thought he was worthless as a warrior, there would be no reason to keep him alive. He would have no value to the Legion.

"Caesar doesn't tolerate incompetent failure. He didn't execute every last soldier that failed him at Hoover Dam, only he whose name we do not speak. Decimation is ordered when a unit of men has truly displeased Caesar, and decimation was not ordered at either Battle of Hoover Dam. Warriors of the Legion are expected to follow orders and battle like true legionaries. You did both. As bitter a draft as this is to swallow, sometimes you will taste defeat, no matter how hard you fight. So long as you held nothing back, acted with skill, and were not insubordinate, there was nothing else that you could have done."

Tullus smiled. A warm, comforting smile. Servius was fairly certain he was the only one who had seen it. "You are only a recruit. You charged Barca head on. You landed a blow on him. Do you know how few legionaries, veterans like me at that, can make that claim? Barely any. Don't be angry at yourself that you do not fight like the Legate. You have already done far better than most legionaries your age. You are a calf that has already grown horns."

Servius paused, looking into his tea. "I never asked you something, and I should have. Did you see Barca? At Hoover Dam?" He had asked Tullus a hundred questions about Hoover Dam, and just as many about Barca, but never the two together. Part of him had always assumed that Tullus had not so much as seen Barca. Because he had come back from that battle alive. "Did you try and fail to kill him too?"

"He wasn't Barca back then, he was effectively an NCR mercenary," Tullus replied, scowling as he did. "Not a sworn hostis publicus yet, but a high-value target, on par with NCR colonels. But I did see him. When we came up from below and were ambushed by the Brotherhood of Steel, he was among their ranks. I think I shot once or twice in his direction, but my attention was more focused on the Paladins." He gave a gloomy smile. "If I had taken the time to aim properly, ignored the Paladins, we would never have had to deal with Barca in Remnant. Learn from your hardships Serv, don't let them define you."

Servius put down his tea, walked around the fire, and hugged Tullus, who eagerly returned the favor. The sound of snapping twigs caused them to break apart, both of them glancing in the direction of the sound. Servius's stomach turned. Marie F. was walking through the woods in their general direction. Thankfully, she didn't seem to have noticed them yet. She was looking down at her Pip-Boy, muttering furiously to herself. "Oh yeah, just head off and leave the job half finished, that's a real great idea there. Yeah, you thought you were happy with how it ended, but then you realized how goddamn inconclusive it was. Even if he was winning you should've stayed and seen it through to the end. You could've turned it around, you don't know!"

"Can we...help you?" Tullus asked slowly.

Marie F. turned to look in their direction. Her face was heavily covered in bandages where Barca had burned her. She let out a sigh of frustration. "Not unless you want to go traipsing all the way back to the village and get James back there for round two." Her hands tightened into fists. "God, it was going so perfectly. Back and forth, blow for blow, getting hits in because you had to work for it and not because of an overwhelming skill gap. And it got cut short. Horseshit."

"Didn't you spend some time with the captives?" Servius asked before he could stop himself. "You never struck me as the type of person who enjoys a challenge. So many of your targets have been soft."

Tullus shot him a warning look, but Marie F. looked more annoyed than offended. "I like a soft target in the same way I enjoy some junk food from time to time," she said. "You still need to treat yourself to proper food, and when you do you realize there's no comparison. I mean come on, you fought James. For about five seconds. Combine that with the whole insecure about your micro-dick thing and need to please daddy Caesar thing, you know, the reasons you fought him in the first place. Would it be nearly as satisfying if you had just fought some random nobody?"

"Excuse me?" Servius said, getting to his feet, his temper flaring up. "What are you implying?"

"See, imply means I'm dancing around the bush. I directly stated that the Legion as a whole has some overcompensation issues," Marie F. said dryly. "I mean, a bunch of teenage boys raping, killing, and dying because a dried up old prick told them that girls are icky. What other conclusions can you draw from that? In fact, let's cut through the horseshit and get to the meat of the matter. Did you even have a reason for going out there and fighting James? Was it because you wanted a challenge or was it because daddy Caesar told you to?" Something snapped inside of Servius. She didn't even use the correct pronunciation of Caesar's name.

Losing control of his temper, Servius through a punch. He prepared for her to block or dodge the attack, but to his surprise nothing stood between him in her face, his blow striking home on the bandages. Marie F. howled in pain as she clutched at her face, staggering back. "THE MED-X HASN'T KICKED IN YET, ASSHOLE!" He took up a fighting stance, ready for her counter-attack. It never came. Instead, she continued to clutch at the wound, hissing in pain. "Dick move man. Serious dick move." Reaching into a pouch, she produced another vial of Med-X and injected it into her arm. "God, I'm not gonna be able to remember my own name at this rate. Anyway, where were we?"

Despite everything, Servius felt perplexed. "You said that you would treasure that scar."

"Yeah, the scar, not how much it fucking hurt to get it! I don't go out thinking, 'oh geez, I hope I get burned today!' James gave me a good fight and a victory doesn't mean anything other than cheap, short term satisfaction if you don't have to work for it. The scar is proof that I had to work for it. That's all."

"You speak of earning victory, yet you lack the will to bear the burden of your wounds," Servius said scathingly. "You let chems bear them for you. Because you're too weak to bear the pain on your own."

Marie F. waved her hand dismissively. It infuriated Servius. Had he been speaking to another Legionary, they would have been furious with him, he would have been insulting them to their core. Marie F. could barely summon the urge to care. "Not everyone buys into that Legion machismo shit. Toughing it out doesn't actually prove anything other that you may be a closet masochist. Anyway, we're getting off topic. I asked you a question. Did you even have a reason for going out there and fighting James aside from that you were told to?"

Anger flared up inside Servius. But only a fraction of it was directed at the woman in front of him. The rest of it went back to Barca. He had been right there in front of Servius. Servius had had a chance to make him pay for everything he had done, and yet Barca had run. "Wait, hold the phone." Before he could blink, Marie F.'s face was an inch away from his own, her eyes boring into his. "You do. Holy shit, you do. You hate the guy. God damn." And then she did something that completely caught Servius off guard. She bowed her head. "I sincerely apologize for what I said," she said, sounding like she meant everything she said.

"W-what?" Servius asked, his anger dying as quickly as it had sprouted. Taking a step back, he glanced back at Tullus. The older legionary had risen to his feet but now looked as dumbstruck as he felt.

"I tried to gauge you and I was wrong. I apologize for that." She lifted her head up, a genuine smile on her face. "Just ask me one question. Do you want to defeat him, prove that you're better than him? Or do you want to kill him?" There was a long, tense silence between the two of them. Servius wasn't even sure if he wanted to answer the woman. She was a sworn ally of the Legion, she was an Amicus, but everything about her felt wrong. Her casual disrespect for the Legion and its ideals, actions that would have had any self-respecting legionary disembowel himself if he had been caught performing him, and a general aura of instability. But the question caused his thoughts to drift back to Barca. His fists tightened.

Marie F. chuckled. "I see. That's very interesting. I'll keep that in mind when we finally meet him again...oh. Excuse me, I think the Med-X is finally starting to hit. I've got to go crash somewhere. I picked up some fancy Mistral mineral water when we were in the town and I promised myself I would try it out before I black out." And with that, she turned and walked away, her mood noticeably improved.

"Wait a minute," Servius said, unwilling to let the conversation end on such a baffling note.

"Hm?" she said, stopping and turning on the spot. "What's up?" It was unreal how casual and relaxed she was looking right now. The corner of her bandages were starting to stain red, and while he could see her wince in pain, it was doing nothing to affect the relaxed mood she had adopted. "You wanna double team him next time? Eh...I don't know man. He and I were fairly even when we fought. You jumping in would make things unbalanced in our favor. And that'd be kinda boring. And trust me, whatever your beef with him is, you'd be setting yourself up for disappointment if you got him as part of a team kill. You'll feel much better if you take him out yourself, take my word for it Tell you what. If you're feeling up to it, I'll let you have the first crack at him."

"No, that's not it," he said, not wanting to admit how much he agreed with her on how Barca should be killed. If by some miracle he was the one to kill him, he wanted it to be just him. To let it be known that it was true Legion will that had overcome him. "Your attitude towards me. What changed?"

She grinned at him. "What can I say? I like it when people say they're going to get something done and then bust their ass trying to do it. Even if they fall short or don't say it out loud, there's something just so genuine about it." She moved to brush her hair out of her eyes, it apparently having been knocked loose when Servius had punched her. "There was a doctor I met once, Victor Presper. Old Vicky was like that, and boy did he move heaven and earth to get where he wanted to be. Gotta say. Life really gets interesting when two wills clash and we see who gives first."

She moved her hair back, only to stop halfway. She pulled the locke of bright blonde hair back and pulled out a single strand of hair. It wasn't gold in the bright sunlight, it was more silver. Marie F. looked at it for a moment before she gave a detecting sigh, practically deflating right before Servius. "God damn it," she muttered. Without another word, she turned and walked away, slouching as she went.

Servius watched her go for a while, utterly lost. "What just happened?" he asked. Tullus made a choked, grunting noise as a response.

"Why do you fight alongside her?" A Faunus, the one called Ilia, appeared near their campfire. Her skin had been green and brown before, blending into the foliage, but it reverted back to her normal colors as she spoke. Her mask was off, revealing her freckle dotted face. She was surprisingly young, even younger than Servius. "Why do you fight with a monster like that?"

Servius took in the girl before she answered. He didn't know how he felt about Ilia. Truth be told, he didn't know how he felt about the White Fang as a whole. They claimed to be freedom fighters, but their leader felt like little more than a spoiled brat at times. He was Rumford if Rumford actually had charisma. Still, they had allied themselves with the Legion, a wise choice if there ever was one. And he certainly understood Ilia's reservations about Marie F. "For the same reason you do," he said at last. "Because I am ordered to. I do not enjoy it. She disgusts me to my core if I am honest. But she is an ally in a time when we are starved for them."

"You're that desperate. I see," the girl said. Slowly, she approached their campfire, looking back and forth between the two of them. When neither of them tried to stop her, she sat down. "I can appreciate that. Even though we're fighting for the freedom of our people, the majority of Faunus refuse to back our cause in meaningful ways. Most of them sit on the sidelines, idly murmuring support, but nothing else. But some even want to grovel before the Humans who treated us like animals." Her skin turned fiery red, her freckles and hair turning yellow as she grit her teeth in anger. "Humans like you!"

Servius opened his mouth, but before he could express his outrage, Tullus cut him off. "The only Humans you have met up until this point in your life are profligates," he said calmly. "Stupid, ignorant children, concerned with short-sighted self-interest. The Legion has no patience for them. There are no divisions within the Legion. All work together for a common goal, a society that provides unity and stability for all of the lands under its banner. The Humans who have wronged you stand by the tribalism that the Legion has outgrown. This is why we have chosen to ally with you." He produced a third cup, placed it on the ground, and poured more tea into it. "Besides, word around camp is that we are not the first Humans your leader has allied with." He handed Ilia the fresh cup of tea.

Ilia stared at the cup before taking it but chose to put it down instead of drinking it. "We were forced at sword point into our last alliance," Ilia said scornfully. "That woman and her lackeys walked into our camp and killed our fighters to make a point. Adam turned her away before that. It wasn't an alliance, it was another form of servitude! They were using us as pawns in their own fight!"

"And yet, your relationship with us couldn't be any more different," Tullus said, picking up his own cup and taking a long sip. "We have not asked you to fight the NCR or Barca. We handled those problems ourselves. But we have been happily assisting you in your fight for freedom. Showing you Legion tactics and strategies of war. Tell me. Have the profligates you hate ever been more scared of you than they are now? When they know that you will burn towns and crucify your enemies?"

"...No. They haven't," Ilia said, sounding as if every word was pulling teeth.

"The Legion does not abandon its allies," Tullus said, finishing off his tea. "Your enemies are our enemies. Their ways are incompatible with the stability that the Legion seeks."

"Really?" Ilia asked bitterly. "That man who was with you up until the last fight, Rumford, he didn't strike me as the unity type. I remember a few choice remarks about what he said. In fact, I also remember him killing quite a few Faunus when his Semblance activated. How is that taking care of your allies!?"

"If I had things my way, Rumford's throat would've been slit by this point," Servius said, forcing himself into the conversation. "He nearly killed legionaries with that power of his in addition to Faunus. Tullus and I were under strict orders to kill him should he ever attempt anything like that, orders I fully intended to carry out before I was interrupted by Barca." He glared at Ilia. "If you are angry at us because of Rumford, I'll happily kill him should the chance ever arise. But just remember that, at best, we tolerated him. With any luck, Barca has killed him already. Not much of a loss." Servius wanted badly to shout at the girl to not compare him to Barca, but he could see Tullus giving him a very stern look out of the corner of his eyes. A look that said, "she's an Amicus, don't say anything stupid."

"There's another problem there, he's a security threat," Ilia said, sounded as if she was grasping for reasons to stay made. "What secure information is he aware of?"

"Barely anything," Tullus said. "He's aware of the continent that we'll be heading towards, and that's more of a Legion operation than a White Fang one, meaning the security leak is more on our end. Part of our arrangement with Adam was that we would supply him with weapons, soldiers, and advisors if he helped us track down some coordinates that are of interest to us. Aside from that, Rumford may be familiar with whom Vulpes was reaching out to form further alliances with. Half of whom were dead ends and the other half our enemies will be unable to reach. All in all, very limited information. Assuming Rumford is still alive." Tullus voice grew very dark. "And he knows what fate will await him if he compromises the Legion."

Ilia's anger was still noticeable, but when she spoke again, it no longer felt directed towards either Servius or Tullus. "What fate would that be?"

"It's fluid, Caesar has no tolerance for traitors," Tullus said. "He may share the same fate as his first Legate, the one who failed him. Covered in pitch and set on fire before being cast into a canyon." Servius could only pray. "Though there are other fates that he has reserved for those who have displeased him. Many of them would be difficult to perform here, seeing as we lack both dogs and horses. I imagine Vulpes would be put in charge of handling it."

"No tolerance for traitors...I see," Ilia said. "I can understand that. The White Fang doesn't have many traitors. But the ones it does have…" her voice trailed off for a second as her hands dug into the ground, tearing up dirt. "Adam has promised he'll make them pay." Servius wasn't sure if he was imagining it, but he could've sworn that he saw a momentary flash of regret on the girl's face. But it was gone as soon as it had appeared.

"Oh?" Tullus sounded curious now. "And what fate does Adam have planned for them? Public displays?"

Ilia noticeably recoiled, something that deeply confused Servius. What exactly had that earlier moment of regret been about? Did this girl want to punish traitors or not? "No. They don't deserve the time it would take," Ilia said. "They'll be killed in the comfort of their homes for everyone to see. They'll be laid bare as traitors and the Faunus will know where their loyalties lied. And who their real protectors are."

Tullus gave a firm nod. "I see. It sounds as if you have a firm understanding on how to deal with traitors. The Legion would do the same if a turncoat had fled to enemy territory that we could not take. It would not be our first course of action, but the White Fang lacks the territory and manpower of the Legion, so it is only natural." He held up his cup of tea in a respectful manner. "You do well with the resources you have at hand." Tullus then took a sip, before his face curled in disgust. "Egh. It shouldn't have gone cold that fast."

Ilia seemed taken aback by the compliments, but nodded. "Well. Except for one. Adam wants her taken alive. He has plans for her." Ilia sounded as if saying every last word was torture, and she looked at her knees as she spoke. Servius didn't know exactly what the leader of the White Fang had planned for this traitor, but the fact that it was a she gave him a good deal of ideas. He tried not to think about it. Sadly, he had a good feeling this woman would suffer a similar fate if the Legion took her instead of the Fang.

He tried to not think of the implications of that either. So many legionaries, particularly Rumford, would say that women were weak and terrible fighters. Yet, that clearly wasn't true. A girl, younger than even Servius, had taken him, Tullus, and Ancus all on single-handedly. Not just that, she had been an unstoppable juggernaut that they had not been able to even scratch. The boy she had fancied had clearly been an inferior fighter to her. Beyond that, Servius had already seen first hand how deadly a woman could be in combat. He forced himself not to think about the multi-armed monster. Yet so many legionaries thought them weak. Why?

He could understand keeping them off the battlefield, the Legion needed its next generation of warriors, but that was out of necessity more than innate inferiority. It had to be a misunderstanding. Caesar would never declare something like that, obviously, someone had misinterpreted his words and Caesar would clarify it as soon as possible. He, in his wisdom, had simply seen that the future of the Legion could not be spent in costly battles, a wise choice. As capable as these women may be, they would be better off bearing children. Anyone could fight, only women could bear children, it was simply an allocation of talents. In fact, with abilities like that, these women would bear extremely strong legionaries. It was like Tullus had said. It wasn't pleasant, but it was needed.

All of this made sense, and yet he thought of what would come if the Legion was successful here. What would happen to the women that weren't slain? To the girl that Ilia spoke of? To Ilia herself? He swallowed. He told himself that it was for the good of the species. It was needed. Profligates are stupid, selfish people that only think about themselves. They only had to do this because they couldn't manage resources and form a stable society. They just consumed and squabbled among each other. They were like children.

He didn't feel any better.

His train of thought was broken by Tullus taking another sip of his tea. "For the love of Minerva, Serv? Is your tea cold?" Blinking, Servius looked down at the cup in his hands and took a sip. It was still quite warm. He shook his head as he looked at Tullus. Then he spotted it.

"Your hand!" Tullus stared for a second before he lifted his cup over his head and looked at his hand. His jaw dropped. Tiny fragments of ice had covered his right hand and were slowly starting to appear on the cup. He dropped it in shock, where it cracked. But instead of spilling everywhere, the tea was now a partially frozen slush. All eyes in the area darted back and forth between the broken cup and Tullus's hands, silencing dominating the three of them.

"I don't feel it at all," Tullus said, turning his hand over as he looked at it. "I still feel warm."

"Semblances often don't hurt their user, it's only natural," Ilia said, looking at the hand with excitement in her eyes. For a moment, her freckles flashed a pleasant bright yellow before fading away. "Can you do it anywhere else?" Tullus responded by forming a fist and gritting his teeth in concentration. The ice hardening around his hand continued to spiderweb all over it, but it came to a stop at his wrist. The veteran legionary's face tensed until it turned red, but there was no further progress.

"No," he said, letting out a gasp as he let his hand slack, the thin bits of ice starting to melt away. "Maybe if I had my other hand still it would work there. But as it stands I-oh Mars!" He had begun to idly lift up his blade as he talked. Said blade was glowing bright red with its own heat. It was slowly fading away, but there was little doubt as to what had caused it. Servius smiled. He needed to unlock his own Semblance as soon as possible, he wasn't being left behind. But for the moment, he was simply happy for Tullus.

At that moment, a horn sounded throughout the camp. "We're moving," Tullus said, picking up a nearby bucket of water and dousing the fire before kicking dirt onto the smoldering remains. "Let's go." Servius and Tullus gathered up their needed supplies, folded them into packs, and heaved them onto their backs.

Ilia blinked. "You know you could store most of that in the trucks," she said.

"Legionaries carry their weapons and tools on their backs," Servius said proudly. Ilia was right in that it would be easy to simply let their vehicles carry their supplies. The legionaries, however, were under strict orders to not let the creature comforts of Remnant let them grow soft. Orders that Servius was happy to obey. The three of them moved back towards the center of camp, passing quite a few other campfires where legionaries were packing up their equipment.

As they neared the center, angry shouts reached their ears. Adam's voice. "Oh no," Ilia whispered.

"We can't leave now!" Adam roared. "We've drawn blood from the Humans, but we didn't beat them! If we retreat now it'll be as good as saying that they beat us! We need to stay in Vale and finish what we started." He was standing with his giant of a lieutenant behind him, facing Vulpes, Ancus, and Caesar's Signifer, the last of whom was standing a fair ways behind the other two.

"Your bravery is commendable Adam, as is your dedication," Vulpes said. "But the most important thing in regards to warfare is to deny your enemy what they want. Atlas and Vale desire a prolonged fight, to save face after we bloodied them and they were unable to exact vengeance for it. We will not be giving them a chance to redeem themselves. Our operation in Atlas will benefit us both, and while I cannot force you to come with us, I urge you to. It will give us the strength to truly crush them underneath our boots. The decisions between you are a minor victory and a total victory. The White Fang and you, in particular, deserve a total victory."

Adam paused. He looked oddly satisfied with himself for a moment, but the look was forced off of his face as he continued to speak. "The White Fang does deserve a total victory over the Humans. And it will be here, where we have started it. You're asking us to abandon everything we've set out to do. I'm starting to wonder if you aren't just running scared. First, you let us do all of the fighting, then you waste your time and men on a nobody. This Walker you're so scared of?" He gripped his sword. "Couldn't even touch me when I fought him. He's just another Human."

"Underestimate Barca at your own peril." It took Servius a moment to realize who had spoken. The Signifer, not looking at Adam, had taken a step forward and produced a paper scroll from a pouch. "He is the greatest threat the Legion has ever known. Like a wound, he will grow and fester if not put out, swallowing us all whole."

Vulpes nodded. "A Signifier is forbidden to speak unless he speaks the words of Caesar. Barca has already complicated our operations here. Half of our purpose in Atlas will be to undo the damage that he has done. Only then can we achieve our true goals and give our enemies the fate that they deserve. I promise you glory beyond your wildest imagination Adam, but I need your help."

Adam seemed to be losing his temper, however. "I have unfinished business here!" he roared, taking a step forward. Ancus positioned himself between Vulpes and the boy, hand on his hammer, which in turn caused Adam's lieutenant to grab his sword's hilt. "I'm not going to crawl sniveling into the shadows like some people!" Servius's felt a surging pang of hatred towards the boy right now. The hypocrite lived in the shadows and he was accusing the Legion of cowardice? He made to move forward, only for a firm hand on the shoulder to hold him back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tullus staring at him, shaking his head.

"He isn't talking about you," Ilia said. Her voice was a mixture of anger and sadness.

"I assure you, Adam, we are not hiding," Vulpes said. "In fact, what we will be asking of you will be some of the most difficult tasks the White Fang has ever faced. And it will grant us the tools to wreak havoc on whomever we please." Vulpes's lip curled. "For example. The Schnee Dust Company. If we succeed, an attack on them will not only be possible, it will be trivial. We shan't even need to travel far."

The words "Schnee Dust Company" were alien to Servius, but the second Vulpes said them, every nearby Faunus stiffened. Even Adam's lieutenant looked at his superior, unclear on how to act. Adam, for his part, seemed to be losing resolve in his arguing. "We had a Schnee back there!" he said, pointing and shouting, though not with nearly the same ferocity that he had had a minute ago. "She's still back there!"

"The exile of the family," Vulpes said. "You can't take revenge on a family by destroying their discarded waste. It means nothing to them. You must destroy what they consider valuable. Adam. Help me take everything they care about away from them. You and your people are the lynchpin to all of this." He held out his hand to Adam, smiling warmly. After a brief pause, Adam reluctantly reached out and took it. "Excellent. You will not regret this."

"The second we are done in Atlas, we come back here and finish what we started," Adam said forcefully.

"Oh, absolutely," Vulpes said. "I intend to see Barca nailed to a cross before the month is out. Whoever has wronged you, I will happily have them hanging next to him, And your iron will shall be what makes it a reality." Adam had been scowling up until this point. Now it was replaced with a small smirk. "We move out in twenty minutes!" Vulpes said, looking around the camp. "Ensure that we aren't followed!" With that, he held out his arm, indicating for Adam to lead the way. The boy did so, Vulpes following behind him with the Signifer. Ancus and the lieutenant stayed where they were for a moment, staring at each other.

"Don't forget who's running the show here," the giant Faunus growled, jerking his sword.

"Do not forget that we are your allies, not your servants," Ancus said firmly. "It would be quite unwise to mistake a legionary for a submissive. Particularly one much more battle tested than yourself." There was no venom in Ancus's voice, but the threat was very clear all the same. The lieutenant snorted as he walked away, Ancus doing the same.

As the leaders of the Legion and the White Fang scattered, Servius couldn't help but wonder why the sudden change in tactics had occurred. What was waiting for them in Atlas?

XXXXX

Blake tried to focus on Gambol Shroud in front of her, but it was a futile effort. It had been double checked and triple checked already. The chambers were all clean, the blade was sharpened, and the cable was free of frays. Anything that would keep her hands busy would be a welcome sight right now, but there was none to be found. She was in Beacon's workshop doing her daily weapon maintenance, though it was slowly starting to feel like a waste of time. Classes had been suspended for the immediate future, so she needed something to keep her hands busy.

Across from her, Yang finished shining Ember Celica, putting both gauntlets in front of her to admire the gleam. Stretching and yawning, she leaned back in her chair. "There's something you're not telling us, isn't there?"

Blake blinked. Yang had made the statement so idly that it took Blake a second to realize exactly what she was implying. "I-what?" she spluttered, her brain struggling to catch up with her mouth. "What are you-"

"Blake" Yang said, her voice stern. "We've been through this a couple of times already. The incident at the docks in our first semester comes to mind. And right now you're kind of reminding me of how you were acting when you were obsessed with Torchwick. When you were always trying to do something always, even if it got nothing done. And Blake? You made a promise about this."

"She's right. You did." Blake's blood ran cold. Turning around, she found herself face to face with both Ruby and Weiss, the former with her arms on her hips and the latter with her arms folded. "Something's been eating you up the last couple of days, and we're not letting it drop until we get an answer from you." The Schnee heiress's arms tightened even more as she stared directly at Blake with her piercing blue eyes. Ruby looked as if she was trying to do the same as Weiss, but wasn't pulling it off nearly as well. If anything, she looked more worried than strict.

That was what pushed Blake over the edge. It had been easier to not tell them before the White Fang had started attacking isolated towns. Bringing them unwanted attention from Adam would've been doing them an injustice. But now everyone was in danger, regardless of how close they were to her. Adam had someone, this Vulpes person, whispering in his ear, making him even worse than he already was. No, that's not right, Blake thought morbidly. Vulpes didn't make Adam a worse person. He just gave him better tools and made him more confident.

She looked around. No one else was in the room. "Ok. It's the boy who leads the local branch of the White Fang. The one with the red sword and mask that Weiss's sister said she fought in the debriefing. He -" she was cut off as the door slid open. James walked in, a large machine-gun hanging from a strap around him, while he carried two boxes with belts of ammunition hanging out in each hand. Letting out a grunt of exertion, he lifted all four boxes onto one of the countless tables before sliding the machine-gun off, along with a fifth box that was connected to it, ED-E floating into the room after him. Blake could feel her confidence shrink. This is a mistake. I can't do this.

She stood up. There would be time to explain everything to her team later, but she had to get out, she couldn't be here right now. She was on her feet, not even really remembering getting up, but there was a hand on her shoulder before she even had time to take a step. "Blake. What's wrong?" The attempted strictness in Ruby's voice had completely fallen away, replaced with pure worry. It took the edge off of Blake's panic, but only the edge. "I just-I can't," she said, glancing out of the corner of her eye at James. He had made to sit down to work on his gun but had stopped and was now looking in her direction.

"Is everything ok?" he asked, stepping away and moving towards them. "Do I need to give someone a call?"

"...Not him," Blake whispered, too softly. "Only you three." She couldn't. James was nice, but Blake barely knew him. She couldn't talk to him about Adam, it was too personal, too close to some of the most painful memories of her life. Yang, Weiss, and Ruby were one thing. He was too much of an unknown factor, he hadn't even been in her life for a whole week yet. "Please."

James looked rather confused, but apparently, he had put enough together. "Right, gotcha, personal stuff. I'll get out of your hair. Just do me a favor and keep an eye on my hardware, ok? I had to blow a few thousand lien to get custom built rounds that would fit that thing." He pointed at the machine-gun and the boxes of ammunition. "Three grand. God that hurt a lot, but I think I can use that thing." A flicker of concern crossed his face. "I'm sorry if I walked in at a bad time, I'll give you some space."

Blake let out a small sigh of relief as James turned and exited the room. She felt a small pang of guilt, but it was outmatched by the relief that was overwhelming her. Yang, however, looked as if she wasn't happy with the recent turn of events. "Blake," she said, her voice betraying some degree of disapproval. "You were about to tell us about the leader of the White Fang right?" Her anxiety spiking back up, Blake gave a shaky nod. "Wasn't that the same person that nearly disemboweled James the day he showed up? When he was saving civilians? Don't you think he deserves to know whatever it is you're about to tell-"

"No," Blake said, a little too quickly. "I'm not going to go out and tell everyone Adam has ever hurt. That's," she gave a painful pause, "a number I lost track of." She hadn't meant to word it like that, but Yang noticeably winced.

"If Blake doesn't feel comfortable doing that, I don't think that we should force her," Ruby said. "What she's doing can't be easy. Let's not make it harder." There was a firm squeeze on her shoulder, and she gave a small smile at both Ruby and Yang. It was at that moment that she realized she couldn't spot Weiss, only for the white-haired girl to emerge from a side door, a bottle of water in her hand.

"Drink slow sips," she said, undoing the cap and handing it to Blake. "It helped me when I was younger. And my father was-well," she paused. "Never mind, this isn't about me right now." Slowly taking the bottle, Blake did as she had been told. The cold liquid felt wonderful sliding down her throat; everything was starting to feel a little more secure.

Lowering the bottle, she looked at Yang. The long-haired blonde still looked as if she wasn't fully on board with the idea, but didn't say any more. Instead, she gave a smile, a smile that looked a little forced to Blake, but one that was appreciated nevertheless. "Ok. So, you were saying?"

"Right," Blake said, swallowing. "The boy in the mask and with red hair. His name is Adam Taurus. I used to work closely with him. Very closely." She wondered if she should elaborate on what she meant by that. Except it became clear to her very quickly that she didn't need to. Yang's eyes widened, Weiss's hands shot over her mouth, and even Ruby was gaping at her. She was very glad that James had left the room.

"Why?" Yang asked. "What did you see in him?" Out of instinct, Blake flinched. Then she realized it had been a question filled with scorn like she had expected. It was concern. She felt touched.

"He had this presence to him," Blake said, "he made you feel like he could do anything, would do anything. It made you want to follow him, to do everything that he said. You felt like you were part of something bigger, that he was something bigger than you. I was...young. And angry. I saw a cruel world around me and the White Fang just wasn't doing enough. The old leader wanted to maintain pacifism while Selina Khan and Adam wanted to hit back against the people who had hurt us. I called the old leader a coward and fell in line with Adam." Someday she would have to face her father again. To apologize, admit that he had been right and that she had caused so much damage by following Adam. But that was for another day. Right now she just wanted to avoid her friends hating her the way her father no doubt hated her.

"But then people started dying on the missions he was leading. Innocent people, ones that were just in the way," she said. "He had always had an excuse. It was an accident, it couldn't be helped, it was us or them, why are you still bothering me about this?" Without realizing she was doing it, she slowly began to wrap her arms around herself. "It started to tear the image of the leader I thought I knew. I tried to talk to him about it, but every time he managed to turn it all back on me, I was the one who was doing something wrong by questioning him." She remembered how she had gone into those talks feeling outraged and angry, yet every time she left feeling shaken and ashamed. As if she had been reduced to a child who had been chastised for throwing a tantrum.

"And one day, it just got to be too much," she said. "There was one mission where he said he just didn't care about innocent people died. That's when I knew that the White Fang had stopped being about ending Faunus oppression and started being about just hurting as many people as possible. At least for him. And no one would stand up to him. And I couldn't. So I ran." She dug her nails into her bare arms, a mixture of shame and disgust flowing through her. "I did nothing to stop him. The man who's still killing innocent people."

A stunned silence followed her confession. Truth be told, that was the best reaction that she could've expected, not that she knew what she had expected. This entire conversation had been one that she knew she would have to have one day, but she had always kept it out of mind. Beacon had been a fresh start for her, and ever since she had connected with her team, she had been happy for the first time in a while. She didn't know if she thought the truth would ruin it or if they would view her differently, she had never stopped to think it through. And now it was here.

There was a grinding noise. Yang had gotten up, walked around the table, and was now standing in front of Blake. "Yang, I'm sorry. I should've-" Blake started, but she was cut off as Yang wrapped her arms around her and pulled her into a tight hug. The taller girl locked her arms vicelike around Blake, one of her hands rubbing the back of her head. Before she could get a word out, Ruby made a noise that Blake could never hope to identify and threw herself at the pair of them, trying futilely to get her arms around the both of them. Weiss brought up the rear, starting forward but then stopping when she realized what a tangled mess her three teammates had created. She gazed up and down, moving from side to side, before eventually settling on grabbing Blake's hand and squeezing it tightly.

"Thank you for telling us," Yang said softly, letting go of Blake. "You can always talk to us about this kind of stuff. We'll help take care of Adam. We'll probably run into him again sometime in the future, and you'll have the three of us backing you up."

"I don't want to drag you into this," Blake said at once. "I don't want him to hurt any of you. I just wanted to let you know-"

"Blake," Weiss said sternly. "My last name is Schnee. He and everyone under his command would consider killing me to be the crowning achievement of the career as terrorists. I don't think your presence, or lack thereof, is going to have a big impact on that front." Blake felt a little stupid. She had been so caught up in her bad memories of Adam that she had forgotten something that obvious.

"And Team RWBY doesn't abandon anyone," Ruby said firmly. "We aren't going to just sit around and do nothing when it's Weiss, and the same goes for you." Breaking out of the hug, she gave Blake a stern poke in the shoulder. "And don't you forget that, missy!"

The hug fell apart at this point, mainly because Yang was laughing so hard. "Missy? Ruby, when I'm sixty and need you to babysit the grandkids, I think that's the point when you break out 'missy.' Saying it at your age just makes you sound like a grandma in a teenage girl's body." Ruby responded by sticking her tongue out. Yang laughed, Weiss rolled her eyes, and Blake let out a nervous chuckle. The feeling of unease that had spread over her hadn't gone away, but it felt lighter now. She had no idea what she would do if she had to actually confront Adam. But she knew that if she did it with her team it would be, at the very least, more manageable.

"Thank you. Thank you all," Blake said. The words didn't do the feelings inside her justice. An uncontrollable maelstrom of emotions was raging inside her and she was pretty sure she was just barely holding back the urge to cry. But the smile on her face was very real. "Can someone please go let James back in?" As a response, Ruby zoomed to the other end of the room in a blur of red and petals, stopping neatly in front of the door and pulling it wide open. She stuck her head out and said something Blake couldn't hear.

James walked back into the armory, moving a little too quickly for it to be natural. "Everything ok?" he asked, noting how Weiss and Yang were still clustered around Blake. "I know you don't want me to hear it, but I can still get someone you'd trust more. Ozpin maybe? Port?"

Blake smiled at him. "I think I'm ok," she said. "Thank you for caring." She didn't know James well enough to confide in him just yet, the numbers just weren't there. But she did like and respect the man, his heart was in the right place.

"Well, let me know if you change your mind," he said. "I got the scroll thing, you know. Hell, radio ED-E if you have to." The robot floated in after James, his radio flickering on as James spoke. At once, a whining, piercing note played off of him. "Oh for the love of f-ED-E! Kill it!" The noise stopped before half of Team RWBY had even had time to cover their ears. The noise had sounded like ED-E was malfunctioning and about to suffer a total system failure. "I swear, something's sending out a faulty radio signal around here. That's the fifth time in three days I've heard that damn thing," James said. "It's not a problem on ED-E's end, radio signals in general pick it up."

ED-E let out a long string of beeps. "- .-. ..- ... - / - . -..- / .. .-. -.. / .-.. . - / -.- - ..- / -.- -. - .- / .. ..-. / .. / .- .- ... / ... .- ...- .. -. -. / .- / ... .-. . .- -.- . .-. / ...- . .-. ... .. - -. / - ..-. / - ... . / ... ... .. - ... .-.-.-"

"Yeah, I know you would," James said. He let out an annoyed sound. "Well, at least this one isn't dragging me off to a drive-in that teleports me how many miles away."

All four of Blake's ears perked up. "What?" Her entire team looked as if she wanted to know the answer to that question too. Weiss had even gone so far as to cock her head.

"Oh boy, that's a story and a half," James said, moving back to where he had left his machine-gun. Opening one of the crates, he inspected the belt of ammunition inside before sliding it shut. "Ok. Gonna give you the really abridged version. A satellite crashed and I checked it out. I got teleported to an old Pre-War research facility and got caught up in a stupid, and I mean stupid, game of tug of war between six brains in jars. Seven if you count the fact my brain got removed at one point. And yelled at me. A couple of other parts of me got removed and replaced, but I got my brain back. Kind of need that jerk."

Blake's mouth opened, but no words came out. Her jaw just sagged there as she absorbed everything she had just heard. It wasn't just what James had said, it was how he had said it so nonchalantly. "You're making this up right?" Yang said in disbelief. "You're messing with us?"

"I don't think he is," Blake said, managing to find her voice. "When he was in the hospital, they found surgical scars all over his body. In places that match what he's saying."

"Yeah," James said. He sounded uncomfortable out of nowhere. "This place was where I found the portal that sent me here. They were working on cutting edge stuff." He paused. "Ok, I'm going to be blunt with you guys. I thought I was a lot more prepared to talk about that stuff than I actually was. Can we please change the subject?" Blake nodded at once. It was an easy decision to make. James had respected her privacy, she could respect his. Her team mirrored her reaction, Ruby going so far as to cross the room towards James in concern.

He waved her off as she got close. "I appreciate it but I'd rather focus on something more positive." A sly grin crossed his face. "Ruby? I take it you're the type of person who appreciates a meaty gun."

Ruby stopped flat in her tracks, a look of manic glee on her face, one that was quickly suppressed. Adopting a look of faux apathy, she folded her arms and examined her fingernails. "I have been known to enjoy the finer mechanics of firearms and the related ordinance."

"Ordnance," Weiss said with irritation. "I can assure you, Mr. Walker, she has no interest in legislation." Ruby went a little red in the face at this but chose to redirect attention onto James's weapon by staring at it.

"I was hoping to get a second set of eyes on this," he said. "I've never done anything like this before."

"Hm, looks all right," she said, lifting the cover up and inspecting the feedway. "I have to admit I've never seen a gun of this make before, but it does seem to be of good quality." She turned the gun. "I think. It's certainly on the old side and looks like it's had more than a few patch jobs. It should be all right though." She gave the rest of it a look over before pushing it to James. "There's a firing range down there, let's give it a spin!"

James smiled and moved to heave it up when there was a loud buzzing noise that Blake recognized as coming from a scroll. There was a sigh of annoyance as James reached into his pouch and pulled his scroll out. "How do you unlock this thing again-right, there. Ah." He stuffed it back in. "Crap, gotta run. Ozpin and Ironwood are trying to work out a plan going forward and something's going on up in Ozpin's office right now. Winter said that she'll be here in-" the door to the armory was roughly pushed open and the Atlas specialist strode in. "-five seconds. Everything ok?"

"Things are proceeding, though roughly," Winter said calmly. Weiss gave a firm, if nervous, wave at her older sister. The ghost of a smile flickered on Winter's face and she responded with a brief nod before turning her attention back to James. "The legionary you apprehended has proven to be surprisingly easy to interrogate. Half of the sessions with him involved him screamingly endlessly at the interrogator, with him apparently unaware that he was saying more than he should. The difficulty we're facing is that he doesn't seem to have much high-quality intelligence, most likely he was considered a low-level operative. We were hoping to have you look over our findings and fill in the blanks."

Producing a datapad from within her coat, she handed it to James. "Also, we have performed a medical examination on the captive. There is evidence of drug abuse in his body, he had an empty syringe on him, along with signs of both stimulant and anabolic steroids in his system. We suspect that may have contributed to the general poor impulse control he has shown."

"If I had to make a guess there, sounds like this guy was fond of Psycho. Maybe Buffout, but that's less likely," James said, starting to read the report that Winter had given him. He flicked down. "Yup, that's a Psycho syringe. Honestly, I should've guessed this with the way he was acting. Either the Legion dropped the ball on enforcing their no chems policy, or they were getting desperate with who they were taking in."

"Ms. Schnee?" Ruby asked, stepping forward. "Is there anything we can do to help? I mean, the Legion is hurting people and Huntresses are supposed to stop stuff like this from happening. But we've been cooped up at Beacon for the last three days. There's gotta be something we can do."

"I appreciate your sentiments Ms. Rose, but we are in a period of consolidation and preparation," Winter said, not unkindly. "There is not much that can be done by you at this rate. Focus on keeping your team combat ready." Ruby was very obviously not satisfied with that answer, something Blake shared, but the younger girl nodded. Winter looked like she was about to say something when the sound of breaking glass echoed from outside the armory. "What?" Winter said sharply, spinning around. Loud voices were echoing from the direction of the door, along with an occasional heavy thumping sound. "Ruby, keep your team here. Mr. Walker, with me."

Blake was unable to get a single word in edgewise before Winter had darted out, James tossing his datapad onto a nearby table and hauling after her. She gripped Gambol Shroud just in case.

XXXXX

James rounded the corner, his hand going for his rifle. He didn't think that anyone would've been stupid enough to try and make a move here in the center of Beacon. Remnant was still unfamiliar to him, but Beacon had so many Huntsmen and Huntresses in training that an army would be needed to crack it. Even without the military personnel added by Atlas. So who was dumb enough to pick a fight here?

"He's drunk!" Well, that explained a lot. His hand loosened on his rifle. If he was quick, he could eject his shotgun's magazine and load beanbags. A much more appropriate response to a drunk who stumbled onto school property. The shotgun was half drawn when he saw the man who had caused the disturbance. Ragged and ratty were the first words that came to mind. There was an almost refined apathetic look to the man's clothes, stained and marked, with noticeable holes in his partially unbuttoned gray shirt, black pants, and red cape. His black hair was a mess, and his face was lined with scruffy bristles.

An utterly enormous weapon was hanging from his back, but he was making no move to use it. He was idly smacking around a robot with the Atlas sigil on it, James had seen quite a few of them marching around, until one backhand severed its head from the rest of its body. "Sir! Put your hands over your head and get on your knees! This is your last warning!" A trio of Atlas soldiers approached the man from the far side of the hallway, their rifles raised.

"Hey, relax," the man said, idly waiving to the soldiers as he turned their back on them. "I'm not gonna hurt anyone, I just got someone I want to talk to. And she's right here." He gave an exaggerated wave. "Hey, there ice queen. Would've gotten here sooner if I could, but I've been busy. Thought you weren't getting here until the festival."

"I was needed here to deal with the situation," Winter said coldly, her hands clasped so tightly behind her back her fingers looked like they were about to snap. "I assume that you have a good reason to be destroying Atlas military property, Branwen?"

"Wait a minute, you know this guy?" James interjected, caught off guard by this revelation. He certainly didn't look like the type of person that Winter would associate with. The way her nose was wrinkling in disgust only added to his suspicions. "He doesn't look like he's military."

"Yeah, well, I needed a line of work where I could bring myself to get out of bed in the morning," the man said, smirking wildly as he looked at James. "Being a walking parade ornament with a bloated sense of entitlement isn't something that would fit that well with me." James bit back a sigh. His eyes remained on the man's weapon. He wasn't making any sudden moves towards it, and as such he was more annoying than a threat. Still, James made sure that the man's hands didn't leave his sight.

"Do you remember when I said that Ozpin had someone tailing the White Fang?" Winter remarked. "That was him. Qrow Branwen, spelled with a q." James privately thought that Qrow's parents had been a bit pretentious. "There's no denying he's an exceptionally skilled Huntsman, with the combat skills of a master and a particular talent for intelligence gathering while staying under the radar." Her eyes narrowed. "It's a shame such a refined skillset is attached to such a chronically inebriated lout."

"You know, it's a bit rich that you're basically calling me uncouth after the way you people treated Ozpin," Qrow said. While overall his tone was playful, there was a noticeable bit of venom in it. "Stabbing him in the back like that, then you go around and call me a lout? Low ice queen, but then again I'm starting to get the feeling that Atlas military types just do whatever they please and just expect everyone else to fall in line."

James's mind raced back to everything he had been told about Ozpin. Then it hit him. Ironwood being given more control over security. Security oversight that had been taken away from Ozpin. The noticeable tension between Ironwood and Ozpin. And Qrow and Winter worked for both of those men. Oh fuck me, it's one of those situations. Why can't people ever leave their drama at the door when the Legion is running amuck?

"Matters of national security run on pragmatism and efficiency, not honor and good sportsmanship," Winter replied coldly. "Ozpin was given a duty to protect the city of Vale and Beacon Academy. Under his watch, a White Fang train smashed one of the outer walls and let a swarm of Grimm into the city. It was nothing short of a miracle that the death count was as low as it was. General Ironwood felt that Ozpin could have done more to prevent this incident, and the Vale Council agreed."

"And Atlas is doing such a better job," Qrow replied sarcastically. "How many towns have been hit? And with the last one, you went in yourself, didn't stop them, and got half of your men killed. This last town was the only one where a few dozen civilians didn't die. And who was the one who told you where you should evacuate?" He pointed to himself. "Oh, that's right, me. Because Ozpin ordered me to. Kind of seems like Ozpin knows a little more about what's better for Vale than your boss. Might be because Ironwood is a one trick pony who doesn't know what to do when he can't order an army to stomp a problem into mulch."

"I'm sorry," Winter said, and her voice was no longer cold, it was now quivering with anger. "What did you say?" Her hands had balled into fists, and in a direct response Qrow's eyes widened, shining with delight. That was when James had decided things had gone on long enough.

"Ok!" he said loudly, positioning himself between Winter and Qrow. "I get it. I was at the last village that was attacked. I know what the Legion does and what the White Fang does seems to be more or less the same. We are all on the same side here. Time we spend trying to rip each other's throats out is time we're wasting. We're all pent up, but we need to save our frustrations for the pricks out there. Get mad at them, not each other."

"I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name," Qrow said, looking as if he had barely paid any attention to what James had just said. "Atlas must be getting really desperate if they're hiring mercenaries that cut off from society."

"As a matter of fact, he's one of Ozpin's," Winter said, still sounding furious. "James Walker. Teacher's aide. I wouldn't be so quick to criticize hiring choices if I were you. After all, I thought you were defending Ozpin here."

"Wait, wait, wait," Qrow said, holding his hands up. "This guy is Walker?" He pointed at James, earning a slow nod from the older man. "Oh, that works out then. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to him when I got here, give us a second ice queen." He looked at James. "Ozpin told me about you, but he left a couple of things out, so I wanted to clear them up. Ok? Ok. First question. Are you illiterate?"

There was a heavy silence. "I beg your pardon?" James said, forcing his voice to stay neutral.

"Are. You. Illiterate?" Qrow said, bitterness positively dripping from every word. "Because the funniest thing happened. Ozpin's been slipping me info when he can, and he told me that he gave you very specific instructions to not help Ironwood out. That Ironwood was charging in without thinking about it, again, and that he didn't want you enabling him when we needed a more nuanced approach. And yet, despite this, you were out there, doing what Ironwood said. So I'll ask you one last time and I'll use smaller words. Can you read?"

"James," ED-E beeped. "If he keeps talking to you like that I'm going to set his pubes on fire." The eyebot was slowly floating up to directly behind James's shoulder, his laser whirling rapidly.

"ED-E, no!" James said, frantically holding up an open palm. "Do not do anything to make things worse!" Reluctantly, the robot's laser became still.

"Huh, look at that," Qrow said, his foul mood giving way to genuine interest. "Hey, ice queen? What was his name, ED-E? How's it feel that ED-E here has more emotions than you and Ironwood do?" James could see Winter's teeth bared in anger and her hand drifting in the direction of her sword. Again, Qrow's eyes seemed to shine at this.

"Winter, I'm kind of getting the feeling that this guy wants a fight, for the love of Christ above, don't give the asshole what he wants," James said before turning his attention back to Qrow. "Look, I'm praying you're less of a prick when you're sober. Until then, let's get something straight. I don't care about whatever spat Ironwood and Ozpin are having and I'm not going to be the rope in a game of tug of war. Ozpin and Ironwood both asked me to do something. Ironwood's plan had me out there doing what I could to help, Ozpin asked me to sit on my hands and do nothing. It wasn't a hard decision to make. I'm not sure if Ozpin realized this before he hired me, but I'm not the type to sit on the sidelines."

"As you were right to," Winter said, her anger mixed in with a smidge of haughtiness.

He glanced at Winter. She was still in full Ozpin vs Ironwood mode and was under the impression he had taken her side. And he had. Kinda. It would be for the best if he cleared this up. "That being said, because I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea. I listened to Ironwood because, at that moment, I thought he was right. That's it. If I find myself in a situation like that again, I'm going with whoever I think has the best plan. Not Ozpin because he's paying me or Ironwood because he's a general. If either of you don't like it, I apologize for that, but I'm sticking to my guns on that front. I didn't do the undying loyalty thing for a guy who called me a war hero and put a medal on my chest, I'm not doing it for either of those two."

Neither Qrow or Winter looked like they had expected him to take this stance. Neither of them looked particularly happy either. "You just keep pissing people off wherever you go. You have a gift," ED-E beeped in his ear. He wasn't wrong. Though the one upside to this was that Winter and Qrow were both so irritated with him that they seemed to have temporarily have forgotten about each other. If that could be called an upside.

"James? Is everything ok out-UNCLE QROW!" A blur of red shot past James's side and latched itself onto Qrow's stomach. Ruby wrapped her arms tight around Qrow, snuggling up to him. "Why didn't you tell us you were coming!? We could've used the good news!" There was a loud bang behind James and Yang soared overhead, her gauntlets blaring, before she landed neatly next to Ruby, grinning wildly and fist bumping Qrow.

James started in disbelief at the turn of events, looking hopelessly at Winter for some sort of explanation. She looked how he felt. "Uncle?" he said dumbly.

"Five caps says he wasn't allowed to be around them too much when they were kids. He looks like the type that would show up to a five-year-old's birthday party drunk and with a hooker," ED-E said. "And the hooker was the one who actually brought a present."

"I was told that he had relatives attending Beacon," Winter said hesitantly, approaching James's side, "I wasn't aware that his nieces were on my sister's team." She frowned. "I will not accept him saying anything inappropriate to or around Weiss, I hope to make that very clear to Ozpin." James nodded dumbly.

Qrow had undergone a complete change in attitude with the appearance of Yang and Ruby, his face becoming much softer and letting out genuine laughs as he returned Yang's fist bump and tussled Ruby's hair. "Easy girls, easy. We'll catch up later; I'm here on business. I promise we'll catch up later. Let me just talk to your teacher here. I just-Ruby, hands off of Harbinger! You have your own scythe!"

While this was happening, an idea popped up into James's head. Qrow respected Ozpin deeply, maybe he could use that. Pulling his scroll out, he flicked it on and began to type into it. It took him a few tries to remember where you accessed the message thing that he had used a few times before, but eventually, he found Ozpin's contact and hammered out a quick message. "Your friend Qrow ran into me near the armory. He's drunk and pissed." His thumb hammered the send button. Ten seconds later, he had a reply. "I'll be right there." He showed the scroll to Winter.

"That's one way to handle it," she said. She still sounded as if she wasn't in a particularly good mood.

"Winter, James, is everything ok?" Weiss and Blake had exited the armory now, blinking in confusion at the situation in front of him. James could only imagine how bizarre it looked. Ruby and Yang were crowding around a poorly dressed drunk, he and Winter watching, a broken robot lying on the ground, and a trio of soldiers pointing rifles at Qrow, who had been utterly forgotten and were slowly starting to realize it.

"For the moment," Winter said, signing to the soldiers. They lowered their rifles dejectedly. "It seems a family reunion deescalated matters."

"Family reunion?" Blake asked. "Oh, that must be Uncle Qrow then." She stared. "He's not what I imagined. I thought he taught at Signal. Do teachers at Signal all act like him?" James was slowly starting to suspect the ease at which he had been hired had not been due to the degree that Ozpin was impressed with him, but rather that standards for educators around here were a bit on the low side.

Eventually, Qrow managed to calm down his nieces and gently push them away. His warm look faltered as his attention turned back to James and Winter. "Qrow." James let out a sigh of relief. Ozpin had just turned the corner behind Qrow, Ironwood right behind him. Ozpin looked exhausted, while Ironwood was nothing short of livid. A smirk crossed Qrow's face as he noticed the later.

"Like I said girls, we'll catch up later. I think I'm in trouble," he said to both of his nieces. An irrational pang of hatred hit James.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, he's got an incredibly punchable face, doesn't he?" ED-E asked. James nodded stiffly. The thought was tempting, he had to admit. He wanted very badly to scream "Ozpin! Keep your dog on a tighter leash". He swallowed the words. He would scream them at a picture of Qrow later. Cooler heads were needed and he needed to be the bigger man, no matter how much it sucked.

"Ms. Rose, I'll have to ask you to take your team back to your dorm for the moment," Ozpin said. "Your uncle and I have very sensitive matters to discuss." Ruby gave a hesitant nod as she waved goodbye to her uncle.

"I'll see you soon!" With that, she led her teammates away. Ruby and Yang both looked concerned for Qrow, Weiss for Winter, while Blake looked as if she was still trying to wrap her head around the whole situation.

"One of you grab my gun and my ammo please!" James yelled after them. Ruby flashed him a thumbs up before dashing into the armory with Yang.

The walk up to Ozpin's office was unbearably long and silent. It felt as if a bomb was dangling between the four of them and ED-E as they headed up, waiting to go off at any minute. When they finally entered Ozpin's office, where a blonde woman with glasses, a purple cape, and a white blouse was already inside, it finally exploded. "Are you out of your mind!?" Ironwood roared. "You do realize that if anyone else had destroyed an Atlesian combat android, it would've been an act of war? The only reason you aren't in shackles right now is the special attention given to you by Ozpin!"

"Seeing as how I'm not going to be arrested anytime soon, there's not a whole lot of point talking about it is there?" Qrow replied. Reaching down to his side, he unhooked a hip flask that he took a long swig from. The entire time, he didn't break eye contact with Ironwood. "But what would have a point is talking about how badly you screwed up. The little display of power you've got floating over our head with those ships was supposed to make everyone feel safe. Wonder how that's going down now that people know that you had the White Fang and these Legion people right in your hands and couldn't stop them from getting away."

He pointed at Ozpin, who had moved around his desk and taken a seat, his head in his hands. "He had a plan, Ironwood! The teachers and the students wouldn't have been funneled in nearly as easily, wouldn't have gotten pinned down by Grimm. We would have more than one prisoner if you didn't think the solution was just jamming as many people into the situation as possible. Is that why you were so quick to add the stray Ozpin picked up? Get the number just a little bit higher?"

"Qrow, did you get the part of the report that talked about Marie F.?" James interjected. "The deranged, cannibalistic maniac that seems to get off on wanton slaughter considering every cringe-worthy thing she says? She was part of that ambush. In fact, she was the lynchpin, and she was a pretty good fighter to boot. If I had stayed at home and done nothing there's a 90% chance, one of the students would've been stuck fighting her instead of me. Only other people there were the soldiers, who wouldn't have stood a chance, and Winter, who had her hands filled. How would that have been a more ideal outcome?"

"Oh yeah, one crazy lady," Qrow said dismissively. James's anger flared, it was easy for him to dismiss Caesar's newest pet, he hadn't been trapped in a burning house with her. "Held off by someone who's had their Aura for a week? Yang could've wiped the floor with her, she wouldn't even have had to try. But she couldn't. She was stuck fighting off hordes of Grimm, and that's something Ironwood doesn't seem to get. The students were babysitting the soldiers, and they had to stick around to make sure they didn't get slaughtered. This wasn't a show of strength, it was a bloated mess that tripped over itself. And now EVERYONE knows it!" He opened his arms, pointing outside of the window. Several Atlas warships were floating outside in a formation. "Bet that'll keep people calm and the Grimm away!"

"Qrow," Ozpin said wearily, lifting his head up. "This isn't productive. I've made my issues with General Ironwood's approach quite clear. What's done is done, we need to focus more on going forward. We have a prisoner, we've gotten a few names out of him about potential allies the Legion is attempting to gather. One of them may sound familiar to a certain uncle. Roman Torchwick." James had no idea who Roman Torchwick was supposed to be, but it got the attention of everyone else in the room. Even Qrow's anger faded away for the moment. "It seems Caesar is more ambitious than we assumed," Ozpin said. "He's attempting to secure all the pawns on the board."

"How does he plan on recruiting Torchwick?" Ironwood asked. "He's secured on my personal flagship, he's been there ever since the attack on Vale. Are we sure this Rumford can be trusted? We've established he's an addict, his judgment could be compromised."

"I wish that was the case, James," Ozpin said. "But quite a few of the names given form too much of a pattern to be a coincidence. Selina Khan, Hei Xiong, though that one apparently isn't working, a mister S. Mann, those were all names that came up in addition to Torchwick. The hidden foe we've been fighting against? The one that infiltrated the CCT? The Legion is trying to take away all of their allies and get some additional ones that they might have gone for eventually."

The implication hit James like a ton of bricks. The person that Winter had said that both Vale and Atlas were looking for, the one behind all the recent hostile activity, and Caesar was recruiting from their ranks. The implications were highly unpleasant. "That's Caesar's way of doing things," he said. "Find cheap, expendable allies and wring all the use he can out of them."

"I'm not certain he's limiting himself to cheap allies," Ozpin said. "S. Mann isn't a particularly important person, he's a petty bandit and thug. The truly important thing is who he works for." He looked directly at Qrow as he said this. Qrow blinked in confusion. Then his eyes widened, a private epiphany having clearly struck him.

"No!" he shouted. "Ozpin, you know that would never happen! They won't take orders from outsiders like that! We know they haven't fallen in with the White Fang before now, what would change?"

"I suspect Caesar is planning on building up a power base to make the offer in a way that they would be unable to refuse," Ozpin said darkly. "The Legion has a survival of the fittest mindset. It's ironically fitting." James blinked. The blonde woman in the back had a scowl on her face, as did Ironwood. Winter looked like she was crunching numbers in her head. Therefore, it was safe to conclude that he was the only one who officially had no idea what anyone was talking about.

"Uh, yeah hi," he said. "I'm a little lost here. Can someone please fill in some blanks? Torchwick? Who? And who does this Mann guy work for?"

Ozpin and Qrow exchanged a quick glance. "Well, hope you don't mind if I feel the overwhelming urge to tell you everything," Qrow said. "I'll let you know all the important stuff, but there are some personal bits that aren't any of your business. There's a tribe of bandits in Mistral, nasty people. He works for their leader. Looks like Caesar wants them on his side." He made a "tch" sound. "Might as well bang his head on a brick wall for all the good it'll do him. Their leader is a hell of a lot more than your average fighter, and with an independent streak a mile long. She'd rip half of the White Fang apart on her own and would never even think about joining."

"A Raider tribe. Fuck, that could be a problem," James said.

"I promise you, it won't be," Qrow said. "We should be a little more concerned about Torchwick. As for him, he's a career criminal who was working with the White Fang up until he was captured recently. Weird thing about that, he has no interest in Faunus equality and is a Human to the core. A Human fond of racial slurs. So someone was keeping the two working together and not killing each other."

James ground his teeth. "And we have no leads on them or Caesar."

Qrow snorted. "Well, you're half right. The White Fang's old master? We hit a dead there. The Legion and the White Fang though? I've tracked them as far as I could. Eventually, I had to back off before I got spotted or they suspected they were being tailed. They're leaving the country, or at least a lot of them are. Last I spotted they had been heading north for three days straight, right towards the coastline. No point in heading that way unless you plan on taking a boat. And there's only one place I can see them going. Atlas."

"Yes, we can confirm that Rumford said something similar," Ironwood said gravely. "That claim was too general to stand on its own when it came from him. Now though? We have to change our plan."

"You mean your plan, seeing as how you are going to be calling all the shots there," Qrow said dryly.

"I will most certainly be making all the calls in regards to Atlas as head of the Atlesian military," Ironwood retorted. "I will keep the majority of the forces I brought to Vale stay in Vale, however. We only know that one joint White Fang and Legion force is leaving the country, we don't know about the rest. Their leadership, however, appears to be with the departing force."

"James and I have been talking," Ozpin said. "And, as much as it pains me to say it, we've suggested that the Vytal Festival be delayed indefinitely until this crisis is solved. With enemies on two fronts, it's too much of a risk. The Council agreed with us and the announcement will be made momentarily. Classes will also be suspended until it is safe, with students heading home. Unless they wish to volunteer to help fight, something that we will permit. Most of the students who volunteered for the last move against the Legion met our expectations, I see no reason to turn them away. There will be two forces that we will form. One will stay here in Vale and attempt to root out local pockets, while another will move to Atlas to directly intercept the formation heading there. We need to secure both sides of the board. James? I'd like you to accompany the Atlas force. Your experience with the Legion will be needed, Vulpes will most likely be among those heading there."

James nodding, steeling his resolve. "Also, there's another reason I want you to go there." Reaching into a pocket, Ozpin produced a scroll. "I received a rather interesting message about someone from Atlas that would like to talk to you." He pressed the button.

The image of an elderly man in a robe with glasses appeared, a heavily tattooed woman standing behind him. "It's on? Ok. Hello Mr. Walker. I don't know if you remember me, my name is Tsung-Han, we met in Vale a few days ago. You mentioned that you were in a rather unique situation. I do some work with local charities here in Mantel, I'd like to give you all the help I can. I felt bad just leaving you with your problems unsolved, and I think I have some contacts that may be able to help you. So please, stop by when you get the chance. I left my contact information with your boss. Wave bye Róta!" The muscular woman did indeed wave.

"See you soon," she said. Her voice was surprisingly weak and raspy, and each word appeared to take her considerable effort.

"We need to take care of each other in times like this, let me do what I can," Han said, smiling widely before the recording ended.

"Somehow I don't think he'll have the tools I'll need to get home," James said, feeling skeptical. The gesture was warm and welcome, but local charities didn't have interdimensional portals. It wasn't the old man's fault, he didn't know the exact circumstances of James's situation. "I'll drop by if I'm in the area and tell him that I don't think there's much he can do."

"Mantle is actually one of the areas we suspect the Legion and White Fang are heading to," Ironwood said. "I was going to have some of our forces sent there, I can easily have you be part of that detachment."

"That will work," Ozpin said. His gaze jumped from James, to Qrow, to Ironwood, to Winter. He seemed relieved that tempers had at least gone from a boil to a simmer, and seemed determined to keep it that way. "Now, we need to work out the finer details on how we are going to deploy what I have. Ironwood and I are still working out a compromise, but-" he was cut off by a sharp rap on the door. All eyes in the room turned to face it. "Yes?"

The door creaked open. Pyrrha Nikos nervously peeked her head in. "Um, Professor Ozpin? You said you wanted to see me?"

"Oh. Oh that's right, we have to discuss that," Ozpin said. "I'm so sorry. James, Ms. Schnee, could you please step outside? I have an important appointment with Ms. Nikos that I utterly forgot about. The rest of us will need to be here for it. I'm sorry but this may take awhile."

"Wait, with Qrow?" ED-E beeped. "Shouldn't that be some kind of illegal?"

"What did he just say?" Qrow asked. He was wearing the expression of someone who suspected he was being insulted.

"He asked if you can give us a ballpark on the time," James lied.

"It'll be awhile. In fact, I don't feel right asking both of you to wait outside my office," Ozpin said. "Please. If you have any business you need to take care of, now would be a good time." James paused. Winter exchanged a glance with Ironwood, who gave her a stern nod. Reluctantly, she turned and left the office, James right behind her.

The pair of them moved down the stairs in silence, not speaking until they got to the bottom. "Ok, correct me if I'm wrong, but did we just get kicked out of a meeting but Qrow got to stay?" he said. He wasn't in a strong enough position to have stayed and made a fuss about getting the boot. That didn't change the fact that being thrown out like that stung something fierce. It came with a firm feeling of injustice. There was no way that Pyrrha had anything to say that was unfit for his ears and yet somehow fit for Qrow's. "The drunken dickhole gets to stay but we don't?"

"I share your frustration," Winter said, the two of them exiting the tower. "Even if I'm not sure I agree with your choice in vocabulary. You and I fought alongside Ms. Nikos, if anything I'd say we both understand her more than he does. He's never worked with her in those types of circumstances."

James nodded. As he did, his mind drifted back to that town. The burning building. The bodies. A town robbed of its safety and turned into a warzone. The smell had almost been enough to remind him of the-NO! NO! DO NOT THINK ABOUT THAT! James came to an abrupt halt, his heart hammering in his chest. His hand was over his mouth in a movement driven by pure reflex, bile piling up in his stomach. His heart was smashing against his ribs. Don't think about it. Do NOT think about it. It wasn't your fault, you had nothing to do with it. Do. Not. Think about it!

"Mr. Walker? James!" He took his hand away from his mouth. His hand trembling. Winter was at his side, looking horrified. "Are you well?"

"I-" he said, "I just-" he couldn't breathe. "I can't let something like that happen again." Winter's hand was at his side, unfastening his canteen.

"Here," she said, helping him to a nearby bench, putting the canteen in his hand and helping him raise it to his mouth. "Drink. Slowly." He did as he was told, taking tiny sips of the lukewarm water. Slowly, the seconds ticked by. His heart slowed, his breathing evened out, the horrible thoughts drifted away. He let out a deep gasp as he lowered the canteen, feeling as drained as if he had just run a decathlon. "Do you need anything?"

Part of James wanted badly to ask Winter if she could just help him home so he could have a glass of whiskey to calm his nerves, but something told him that would go badly. No point in making her think he was a drunkard like Qrow. "I think I'm good," he said, leaning back and looking up at the clear sky, keeping his breaths deep and few. "I think." He couldn't let something like it happen again. He wasn't sure his mind would be able to handle it.

ED-E gently floated down, rubbing his chassis against James's bare face. "We're here buddy. You're gonna be ok. Everything's going to be ok." James hoped he was right.

XXXXX

Cinder was angry. She had had a plan. A perfect plan. And it was all gone. Adam had ruined it. He doubtless hadn't even realized exactly what he had done, nor had his new puppetmaster. But everything was gone now. The scroll in her hand said it clearly. "Vytal Festival put on indefinite hold, security claims given reason." It took everything she had to not snap it in half.

She, Mercury, and Emerald were standing in a room of bodies, all of them Faunus. It had been the last White Fang holdout within the city of Vale itself. This had been a message to send to Adam, but the damage had been done. Her missing piece was out of her grasp now, when it had been so close. It was very unfortunate for the one who was still alive. Incidentally, he was the only one who was Human.

Backed into a corner, his eyes darted from left to right for an escape route. When he found none, his hand scrambled for the machete at his side. "GLORY TO CAESAR!" he bellowed, tilting his head up and pressing the blade against his throat. Cinder idly put her scroll away with one hand and gave an idle twitch of one of her fingers with the other. The Fall Maiden's power surged forth, and the blade of their cornered prey stopped existing, incinerated into dust. The man gawked at the naked hilt in his hand, not noticing Cinder drawing closer until she was right on top of him. Her hand closed around his neck, slamming him against the wall.

Both Mercury and Emerald were quiet behind her, both of them too afraid to look in her direction. Good. It should be that way. They had failed her by not stopping this earlier. Luckily for them, her anger had an even bigger target. But let them stew in their own fear for a while, it would be a good motivator. "Do not test my patience," she said, leaning forward, her face inches from the man she had pinned. "Where is Adam? Where is Caesar?"

XXXXX

Author's Note: A lot of people talk about what the essence of the Courier is, and there's no real consensus on it. I hope with this chapter I got what my personal take on him is. This chapter was mainly character development and setting up plot threads. Honestly not a lot to say here, this chapter mainly explains itself. I'll just say that the next major plot arc is where I have a LOT planned, the point where a lot of things end up bouncing off of each other. I'm excited and I hope you'll enjoy it!

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Josue Garcia, Jonathan Eason, Ryan Van Schaack, and ChaosSpartan575 for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 9

Homo Homini Lupus

XXXXX

James told himself to breathe. He was on Ironwood's flagship, good God in heaven he was on a battleship that was flying through the sky. The ocean was some thousands of feet below it, lapping lazily in the noontime sun. His breath came in short ragged bursts, and he had to force himself to slow down as he looked outside of a viewport. This had gone well beyond experiences that had once been commonplace in the Pre-War world, he was fairly certain he had passed that a long time ago and gone straight into the fantastic. Blimps, hot air balloons, and planes just didn't compare to a fully combat-ready warship that could fly. It didn't feel real, and yet it was right in front of him.

Feeling dizzy, he forced himself to take a step away. There was no point in giving himself vertigo. It was his third day on the ship in question, it having left for Atlas at the head of a formation of half a dozen airships of similar class, if slightly smaller. The general himself was leading this force back to his homeland, with Qrow, Team RWBY, JNPR, and quite a few other student teams in tow. And him.

"For all I'm worth," he grumbled to himself. There was just no getting around the fact that the teenagers on this ship, with the possible exception of Jaune, could fight circles around him with raw talent and Aura experience. Still, he had said yes when he had been asked. Even with that unpleasant thought in the back of his head, he reminded himself that he was far from useless. He had managed to hold his own against Marie F., and if even all he could contribute was keeping her away from the students, it would be enough.

Walking through the ship, staying just aware enough of his surroundings to ensure that he didn't walk into anyone or go anywhere he wasn't allowed, his mind wandered. Not to anything in particular, it was jumping all over the place in fact. He still had half a bottle of whiskey stowed away in the private quarters he had been given. His friends were likely still on Earth, no doubt wondering if there was a way to bring him back or if he was dead. This trip was going nowhere as fast as he wanted it to. "What's rattling around in your head?" ED-E asked, floating alongside him.

"A bunch of stuff amounting up to a whole lot of nothing," James said wearily. "You know, I don't think I like rides that take more than a few hours. I like walking. It makes me feel like I'm doing something. My caveman brain feels like I'm doing nothing right now, even though we're crossing an ocean in under a week, something that would take at least a month by boat. But it doesn't register that, it just thinks that I'm sitting on my ass doing nothing and I'm going stir crazy." It was true. It was a niggling little thought that tore at him, and it was why he was walking around aimlessly. To trick his brain into thinking he was doing something productive. "Two more days of this?"

"Two more, then the bitter cold of Atlas," a somewhat familiar voice said. James craned his neck. A young woman with dark skin and green hair was walking down the corridor towards him, waving as she came. "I'm surprised to see you here Mr. Walker," she said good-naturedly. "I thought you would've stayed at the school."

James took a moment to rack his brain for memories of this woman, and then it came to him. Emerald, the woman whose friend had lost in chess to Han. "I could say the same," he replied. "This whole mess has mainly involved Vale and Atlas, not so much your country." He didn't remember which country she and her team had come from, and as such deliberately didn't bring up any specific names. He only remembered that they weren't natives to Vale and Emerald lacked the prim and proper uniforms of Ironwood and Winter, indicating she wasn't part of the Atlas military.

Emerald paused for a moment, holding her arm. "It's a tough decision to make," she said somberly, her previously happy demeanor falling away. "Cinder's been really worked up over everything that's been happening lately. Mercury not so much, but you met him." She gave an annoyed sigh. "You can count the number of things he actually cares about on your fingers." James had only met Mercury a grand total of once, so he chose not to comment. Even if he didn't have a hard time imagining it. "Cinder though? I can't remember the last time I saw her this mad about something. She really wants to get even with the White Fang."

"What about you?" James asked. "You've been talking about how the rest of your team is handling this, but you haven't talked about yourself yet." In his experience, that could be a cause for worry. A person who cared more about what was going on with other people and neglected to take care of themselves.

"Well…," Emerald said idly, squeezing her arm. "Honestly, I've just been trying to not think about it too much. If I do I just make myself upset, and that's not really productive is it? Not when we're stuck here cooling our heels for the moment." James nodded. It wasn't exactly the way he would want to deal with it, but he could hardly blame her. Still, he had a feeling she wasn't telling him everything.

He had pushed his luck plenty of times in the past, doing it now wouldn't hurt. It would just take a few logical deductions and leaps. Emerald seemed to care much more about Cinder than Mercury, at least outwardly. That could be an opening. "You're trying to be strong for Cinder, aren't you?" he asked.

"I...suppose," Emerald said hesitantly, not making eye contact with him anymore. "She's really upset right now. Everything the White Fang and these Legion people have done has really affected her in a way that it just didn't for the rest of us." Cinder was a bit of an enigma for James. Partly because he had only spoken to her a grand total of one time, but also because she seemed rather reserved. He had a hard time imagining her getting particularly emotional. Then again, there was a good chance that she was a different person in private, more than a few people were cut from that cloth.

"Did anyone she knows get hurt by the recent attacks?" James asked. He was most certainly toeing the line of what could be considered his business, but his curiosity was getting the better of him. Thankfully, instead of outrage at intruding on personal matters, the response he received was instead a blink of confusion. In fact, Emerald looked downright baffled at his question, and it took her a few seconds to formulate a response.

"Oh, no no. Nothing like that," she said. "She's just very empathetic towards other people. You must know where she's coming from. You're not from around here and yet you're signing up to stop the White Fang and the Legion, aren't you?" James nodded. That was a fair point, even if it didn't really match up with his conceptions of Cinder. Then again, there were times when he thought he really should stop being a judgmental asshole. "Speaking of which, do you know much about these Legion people? They just kind of came out of nowhere, didn't they?"

James blinked. The nature of the Legion was a bit of a tricky question for him to answer, if only because he hadn't decided on how much he was willing to share about Earth and how he got here. There was simply so much delicate information there, and he couldn't shake the thoughts that had come to him on his first day in Remnant. Remnant could steamroll Earth utterly if it wanted to, and the more people that knew about it, the more potential attackers it could one day have. There was a very good chance that he was being paranoid here, but he wasn't taking any chances.

Besides, Ironwood and Ozpin had both chosen to keep the origin of the Legion under wraps, that was enough of an excuse for James to follow their lead. "Bits and pieces, but not much overall," he lied, taking great pains to keep his voice casual. "They mainly operated out in rougher territories, away from where Vale and Atlas would see them. You know, attacking tiny settlements with no support. I think they're getting too big for their britches and now they want more."

There were enough half-truths in there that James hoped that Emerald would buy it. Instead, he spotted something very odd. She smiled at him, but it had been a little too quick and ended up a little too wide. He had seen that type of smile a few times in the Mojave, but when he had gotten to New Vegas it had been all over the place, particularly among the Families. A fake smile. She knew he was lying. "Really? Not to be rude, but you kind of dress like you lived outside the kingdoms yourself. Are you sure that you don't know anything else about them? I mean, my team and I are going out there and risking our lives to fight them, anything we can know would be really appreciated."

Something felt wrong here. James didn't know exactly what was going on, but there was something fundamentally wrong about this conversation. Emerald was trying to weasel information out of him, and she was alarmingly good at it. If he hadn't noticed her smile earlier, there would've been a better than average chance that he would've let something slip, even if it was on the minor side. He had to play this carefully. Well-intentioned or otherwise, Emerald wanted to know things that he wasn't prepared to give up.

James shrugged. "Remnant's a big place, there's not a yearly meet and greet for everyone who lives outside the cities," he said. "I don't even think they came from the same region that I did."

"Oh, and what region is that? I never asked," Emerald said, her eyes wide with curiosity. Again, they were a little too wide. James swore inwardly. He had walked right into that one.

"I didn't really keep track, I moved around a lot," James replied, keeping his tone casual. It was another half-truth, he certainly had spent the majority of his adult life on the road. Hell, he had spent the majority of his pre-adult life on the road. "Everything kind of turns into a blur after awhile. Sorry, I was talking about how this situation was affecting you and we ended up talking about me." He gave a laugh. "That was rude of me. You're worried about your leader and I'm just talking about this unimportant stuff." A twinge of annoyance shot across Emerald's face, utterly unmistakable. She didn't like him moving the conversation back onto her. So he was going to do just that. "Have you talked to her lately? She seemed fine when I saw her the first time, I hope she isn't just putting on a brave face."

Emerald said nothing for what felt like a solid minute. Then something happened that threw James completely off of his guard. She started to cry. It was a very silent, dignified sort of crying, but tears were still flowing down her face and dripping onto the floor at an alarming rate. "I think she's having nightmares," she said with a strained voice. "Every night I hear her talking in her sleep, about the people that have died. I think it's tearing her apart and she doesn't want anyone to know." She sniffed loudly, it looked like her dignified crying was going to become undignified very fast. "It's why I came to you, Mr. Walker. I was hoping that if I could bring something back to her, it would make her feel better."

James felt a very strong urge to hug the woman, or at least do something to comfort her. Not wanting to push too many boundaries, he technically worked for an education system after all, he took a step forward and put a hand on her shoulder. "Look," he said with uncertainty. "I'll talk to General Ironwood and see if I can find anything out. This is a really confusing mess and I think he's still trying to sort through it all. If I can find anything important, I promise I'll come right back to you. In the meantime though? I think you need to go and talk to Cinder now. She needs people she can count on, people who can let her know that she doesn't need to suffer in silence."

Emerald sniffed again, her lower lip trembling. "You will? Oh, thank you, Mr. Walker, thank you so much. And you're right. I'll do that. I'll go see her right now. Thank you again!" And with that, she turned and ran down the corridor, turning the corner and leaving James's field of vision.

"Fuck," he swore. He hadn't taken time to stop and think about how the current situation would be affecting everyone else. The Legion was taking the White Fang's attacks to levels of cruelty previously unheard of, of course, there were going to be people who took it badly. "Didn't expect her to just break down crying like that," he said out loud.

"Wait, what?" ED-E said. "James, she wasn't crying. She sounded upset, but she didn't go quite that far."

James blinked as he looked at the eyebot. ED-E's sensors had been his eyes and ears more times than he cared to count, he wasn't certain how the little guy had missed something that had been right in front of him. "Uh, yeah she was, buddy. I saw her. The tears were kind of all over the place."

"Then why isn't the ground wet?" ED-E asked sharply.

James made an exasperated noise. This was probably his fault, he must have put one of ED-E's parts back in wrong when he was showing the robot to Winter. "It IS wet. Look, right here, this is where she was standing. Right-" but his voice trailed off. He had knelt down to point at the place where Emerald's tears at fallen, only to find perfectly dry ground. "The hell? It should be right here."

"I told you, she didn't cry," ED-E said, only know his beeps had taken on a more concerned tone. "Are you ok man? You've been through a lot in the past week. Even by your standards."

"I think so," James said, pressing a palm to his own forehead. He didn't feel feverish, but then again he had had robots digging around in his brain. There was always the chance that some damage had been done. But then again there were other explanations. Explanations with far less ideal outcomes. And ones that pointed to a problem he had been worried about for a long time. At that moment, James deeply wished he was back in his quarters with the bottle of whisky. He could use a quick pick me up.

His increasingly dark thought process was interrupted by a chime coming from his scroll. Taking it out, he looked at it. It was from Ironwood. "I need you by the interrogation chambers, I will explain more when you get there." Uncomfortable thoughts still lurking in the back of his head about how reliable his mind was, James moved on.

It took him a few minutes to find the chamber in question, he had to stop and ask soldiers for directions twice, but eventually, he found General Ironwood standing outside a thick metal door. "Please, come in," he said, holding the door wide open. James nodded and did as he was told, ED-E floating in right after him. Inside, Qrow had his feet up on a table, looking at a one-way mirror. On the other side was a dark, plain room illuminated by a single light, where an Atlas officer was sitting at a metal table, opposite the captured legionary, who was apparently going by the name Rumford. The captive had bandages covering his stump of an arm, while his regular one was chained to the table. He was screaming a non-stop stream of obscenities at the officer, who was maintaining a face of calm stoicism. Two guards stood on either side to the entrance to the room beyond the one-way mirror, their arms folded behind their backs and their faces stoic.

"We've hit a bit of a roadblock in obtaining information from our friend here," Ironwood said stonily. "He seems to have realized he was talking too much and inadvertently helping us. The theory is that the drug he was abusing has mostly circulated out of his system by this point and now he's more lucid than he was before. We have more sophisticated facilities back in Atlas that we could use to continue our interrogation, but time is of the essence here and I'd like to get as much as we can out of him before we arrive."

"And your goal is to use the guy you haven't even known a month," Qrow said wryly. "Seriously, who does that?"

"You'd be surprised," James grunted.

"Qrow, Ozpin isn't here right now," Ironwood said firmly. "You are a guest on my ship. If you don't want to spend the rest of the trip to Atlas confined to your quarters, I suggest you be a little more respectful." Qrow gave an exaggerated wave of dismissal towards Ironwood but thankfully stayed silent. If only because he was going for his hip flask. Satisfied, at least for the moment, Ironwood turned back to James. "Ozpin mentioned that you have experience with interrogation, but I have another reason for talking to you about this. You were the one who took his arm."

"I'm not sure how to respond to that," James said. It was hardly every day that he had been told he was being considered for a job due to his experience with dismemberment.

"Rumford is an emotional man, quick to lose his temper," Ironwood said. James could hardly argue against that with the man in question still swearing in the background. Particularly when even he was learning a few new ones from the experience. "We've been able to exploit that so far, every question we wanted to ask regarding the Legion, we were able to indirectly. The total number of legionaries in Remnant numbers at around a few dozen, Vulpes Inculta is the one in command with there being no evidence that anyone else of higher rank is present, and they possess no weapons heavier than those we have already seen."

Ironwood frowned. "Though, as I stated in the report Winter showed you, this is all coming from the perspective of a low-level operative, one that I feel that Vulpes would recognize as unstable. That being said, he started to realize what he was doing when we attempted to shift the topic to the White Fang. I'm very interested in any potential information that he gained about them from his time working alongside them. Both on what they are planning now, and possibly who they were working for before they made their new alliance. Even minor details could prove to be very important. Are you up to this?"

James nodded. "Though I'm not sure how much I'll be able to do. I tricked a legionary into giving up info once, but that's because the guy was actually intelligent and I was able to work around his expectations. This guy will probably tell me to suck his dick for an hour."

"I'm aware of his nature, I've been forced to listen to it over the past several days," Ironwood said, sounding very annoyed. Qrow gave a laugh around his hip flask. "The plan is to go with the fear and intimidation route. Your Semblance, it's random, correct? He doesn't know that. Go in, explain to him the nature of your Semblance and how it always creates a magazine like the one that you used to take his arm. Then use your Semblance. If it creates a magazine, threaten him with it. If it doesn't, produce a magazine and tell him it was the one changed. He won't be able to tell the difference."

"Ok, I have to admit, this sounds like it's going to be pretty funny," Qrow said, lowering his drink. "This guy's been talking about what he's going to do to everyone's mom, sister, and even grandma. Credit where credit is due Ironwood, pushing this guy's arm button? Well, he has it coming."

"My main concern isn't karma, but his tongue becoming loose through anger or fear. It's much more productive than crude pain," Ironwood said stonily. "Are you up for this Mr. Walker?"

"I'm not making any promises except that I'll try," James said. Grabbing his helmet from where it was hanging, he slid it over his head and buckled it into place. It would work to his advantage if Rumford couldn't see his face. "ED-E, stay out here." He received a confirmatory chirp in response. "When do I go in?" As a response, Ironwood his finger to his ear and whispered a command. At once, the officer inside the cell got up and walked out, leaving the interrogation room with a stiff nod to Ironwood. Ironwood gestured at the door. James entered without comment.

"Oh, ok! Who's the new cunt? I don't care who, you're all a bunch of limp dicked-WALKER!" Rumford roared, thrashing against the chain that kept him sitting. "Let me out of this and try and have another go at me, bitch! I don't need both hands to rip your fucking dick off!"

"Wow, Edward's standards really have fallen," James said, pulling out the empty chair and sitting down in it. "And they weren't that great to begin with. I mean, that kid who took a swing at me clearly didn't know what he was doing. But at least he actually did something that hurt me. He wasn't the genius who decided to spew poison gas into the face of someone wearing a gas mask." He tapped the mask in question as he spoke. Rumford's face twisted in anger as he spewed insults at James. James had to fight back a laugh, this was a little too much fun.

"Blow me, you fucking cocksucker!" Rumford screeched, trying to stand up and rip the table off the ground, only to be stopped when he was halfway up. A quick look down told James that the table was bolted to the floor. "Then take it right up your fucking cunt!"

"Yeah, I'm not interested in little boys," James said dryly. "Now, I'm gonna have to ask you to shut up for a minute." Drawing his rifle, he let it lie against his shoulder before lifting up his Pip-Boy. "Remember how I made your lonely nights even more lonely? Well, how that works is I flick a switch here and I get another magazine of Bloody Mess bullets. But I don't want more liquidized body parts on me, so how about we skip that part and you just tell what the White Fang was up to before you met them? You must've heard some talk around camp."

"Yeah, because I'm the type that hangs around with fucking mutants," Rumford snarled. "I get that you're the type who gives a shit about what freaks think. I heard about the kind of company you keep, got a senile old Frankenstein and a zombie that you probably keep sticking your dick in. Me though? I got standards, I don't give a shit what the horned little shit and his big beefy boyfriend want." James felt fairly certain that he was on the right track. With a whole new source of anger, Rumford's big mouth was betraying him again. This wasn't anything James didn't already know, he had a feeling that the red-haired boy was Adam, Winter had briefed him on the local White Fang leader that had nearly killed him, but he had to push it further.

"Well, let's see about that, shall we?" James said, pressing the Wild Wild Wasteland button. At once, the cheap slot machine sound effects began to play, and James relaxed into his chair while keeping his arm on the table. Rumford glared at him, but at the same time made poorly hidden glances at the Pip-Boy. Good, he wasn't as confident as he was pretending to be. After a moment, the slots rolling to a stop, and James leaned forward to look at the Pip-Boy. Then he blinked in confusion. The words "TERRIFYING PRESENCE!" flashed on the screen, as did an image of Vault-Boy hunched over, growling at nothing in particular. This was a new one.

He privately wondered what this was supposed to mean, but he had been given a script and he was sticking to it. His hand reached for one of his magazines when Rumford let out a screech of pure terror. "What are you doing? THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?" James looked up, blinking in confusion. Rumford was pressed back as far as he could in his chair, futility attempting to push it back, only for it to go nowhere. "Stay the fuck away from me!"

James thought fast. Rumford was in a state of pure panic. The Pip-Boy had said Terrifying Presence. He could use this. Slowly, he stood up, walking around the table to where Rumford was sitting. He intentionally took his time, keeping his eyes on Rumford every step of the way. As a response, Rumford began violently thrashing again, his eyes darting in the direction of the one-way mirror. "Let me the fuck out of here! Now! You fucking cocksuckers!"

"Rumford, I'm going to be blunt," James said calmly, stopping in front of the one-armed man. "I don't like you. You're the very worst the Legion has to offer and then some. We're only keeping you around because we actually have standards. But if you want to continue kicking and screaming like a child, well, frankly I think most people will look in the other direction. So please. Enough of this."

"You're supposed to be the goody fucking two-shoes!" Rumford shrieked, his eyes so wide with terror that they looked like they were in danger of popping out. "Caesar was supposed to have made up all that shit about you because he couldn't handle losing! You don't do this kind of shit!"

Privately, James wondered what his Semblance was doing in order to get this kind of response out of Rumford. In truth, it was very unnerving. What the hell was he doing to the man? He would have to look into this latter. Rumford was one thing, but he wasn't sure if he wanted to use this thing on anyone else if it was too much. Those were questions for later though. "You claim to know an awful lot about me. And you talk about Caesar in ways that no legionary would. How do you know that I'm a goody two shoes?"

"I-I used to be in the Fiends," Rumford said, his voice shrinking in fear. That explained too much. "They kicked me out just before you came through and massacred them. I had to join up with the Legion, no one else would take me. I heard about the things you did. You're stupid, you don't think things through, you throw yourself into the fire just to bring a corpse back to some dumb bitch! You're not like this!"

"Oh? But I am," James said, having no idea what "like this" meant but seeing an opening in exploiting Rumford's reaction. "I like being like this. I get to do it to people like you. Who deserves it. Cowards who talk tough and hurt people who they think can never fight back. I love seeing the look on their faces when they realize they picked a fight with the wrong man." He leaned forward, putting his hand on Rumford's shoulder, taking his time and placing each finger one at a time. His head was inches away from Rumford's. "So you need to work with me. What was the White Fang doing before you joined up with them and what are they going now? Who was their old boss"

"I don't fucking know, ok!? You already know they're going north, I don't know anything besides that!" Rumford said, his voice so high pitched it actually hurt to listen to. "The animals just kept bitching and moaning about the humans that had used them, they never said any names. All I overheard was that there were supposed to crash some kind of festival and pull out when all the robots started killing everyone because some lady told them to! That's all I know, I swear to fucking Christ! I didn't even hear her name!"

That sounded about right. It wasn't much, but then again they had never expected to get too much out of Rumford, and this had proven to be a decent sized nugget of information. The White Fang had been planning an attack on the Vytal Festival. Ironwood had been right to call it off. So at least they had gotten some good news out of all of this. "See? That's all you had to say," James said, letting go of Rumford and taking a step back. "If we think of any other questions, remember this moment. Unless you're in a hurry to repeat it." Rumford gave a frantic nod.

Satisfied, though still unnerved, James turned and exited the room. On the other side, Qrow and Ironwood were waiting for him. And they were waiting in a way that took James by surprise. Qrow had abandoned his relaxed position and drawn the giant sword that he had carried on his back, while Ironwood was reaching for an oversized pistol that was holstered at his side. Both of them looked nothing short of horrified. The guards on either side of the door were backing away, one gawking at him in terror while the other had drawn a rifle. "General, I came as fast as I could!" Winter entered the room at breakneck speed, her swords drawn. The same look of pure horror passed her face too as she looked at James. "What happened to him?"

ED-E was spinning around the room, back and forth between the three of them, viciously beeping at them to put their weapons away, but they ignored him. All eyes were transfixed on James. A horrible feeling was building up in him. What were they seeing?

XXXXX

Winter had not asked questions when General Ironwood had said that she was needed in the interrogation chambers. Now that she was actually there, she wouldn't even know what to ask if she wanted to. James was standing in front of the doorway to where the prisoner was. But something had changed. His helmet had morphed into an animated face. A horrific nightmare of a face. It had a jaw that nearly split it in half, massive, blood stained teeth the length of a finger, green eyes that glowed with their own fire, and a snake-like tongue that curled around the lower lip. An irrational fear shot through Winter as she looked at the face, so strong it took every last bit of her military discipline to maintain her composure.

"Mr. Walker?" she asked hesitantly, holding her swords in a guard stance. "Is that you?"

"What? Yeah, it's me, I-what the Hell is going on?" A massive cognitive dissonance hit Winter. Everything about James's body language conveyed confusion. He was looking back and forth between herself and General Ironwood, his hands relaxed and at his side aside from the occasional twinge. His voice was completely different, coming across as a mocking, fake baby voice, one that was taking sadistic pleasure in her ignorance. Another irrational pang of fear hit her. "Rumford was freaking the hell out in there, my Semblance put out something called Terrifying Presence. What's going on?"

"Uh, are you aware of the fact that your tongue is now about twice as long and your teeth are three times as big?" Qrow asked with uncertainty, looking unsure as to whether or not James posed a direct threat or not. Sadly, it was a sentiment that Winter shared.

"Tongue? Teeth? The hell are you talking about, you can't see them. Wait. Oh. Shit." Again, James's tone and actions didn't line up. He took a step back, pressing his hand to his forehead as if he had just experienced a massive revelation. His tone, on the other hand, was still cruel and mocking. "ED-E, do you see anything?" he asked, glancing at the robot. The eyebot idly floated up to James's face, studying it closely before shaking from left to right, a clear no. Despite this, Winter felt an overwhelming urge to grab the machine and pull it to safety. James was eyeing it hungrily, and his jaw was opening wide, easily enough to swallow ED-E whole.

Then, without warning, the demonic face vanished. One second it was there, and the next it had been replaced with James's normal gas mask and helmet. Winter let out a breath she hadn't realized that she had been holding in. "Can someone please tell me what the Hell is going on?" James said, sounding both angry and annoyed. Thankfully, his actions and tone lined up properly this time.

"Uh. Not gonna beat around the bush, you had this big monster face that made it look like you just got possessed," Qrow said bluntly. Winter nodded. Qrow's description was crude. But not inaccurate. "And everything you said just sounded and, well, felt wrong. It didn't feel normal, and whatever it was, James and I could feel it from the other side of the mirror. And when you got close to Rumford, that jaw of yours was opening in a pretty threatening way. And those teeth looked sharp."

Ironwood nodded, his face pale. "You were positioning yourself as if you wanted to bite his face off," he said breathlessly.

"Bite his face off? That jaw was opening wide enough to swallow his entire head," Qrow said, still looking at James wearily. "How come E-bot didn't see it?"

"A good question, but I don't know," Ironwood said. He looked warily at James. "Did you feel any physical changes in your body? Any shifts or growths in your muscles? Any abnormal effects at all?"

"No, not a thing," James said, taking off his helmet and letting it hang to his side. Mercifully, his face was normal, if in need of a shave. "Rumford just started screaming like he was locked in a room with a feral Deathclaw. I just played along with it. I felt perfectly normal, just weirded out." James looked around the room, a deeply uncomfortable expression on his face. "God, what the Christ is wrong with my Semblance? I've only been here a week but even I can figure out that this isn't goddamn normal. First it's random, now it's spitting out crap like this?"

"I get that you're shocked, but you're probably overreacting to this a bit," Qrow said, his face returning to its normal color and his relaxed demeanor returning. "That thing you just did is disturbing, no getting around it. But if you stop and think about it, it's kind of mundane. You get really scary for a couple of minutes, that's it. Not pleasant to be around, but there are Semblances out there a lot more disturbing than that. It's just hard to remember that until the shock wears off. So calm down, all right?"

Winter felt a pang of annoyance towards Qrow, albeit a mixed one. She couldn't fault his logic, but now that he had recovered from the effects of James's Semblance, Qrow had fallen back onto his casually disrespectful mannerisms. James shot the disheveled man an annoyed look but didn't say anything. Lifting up the primitive computer on his wrist, he pressed a few buttons. "That still doesn't change that everything about this thing makes no sense. Do you know anyone else who has a Semblance that can only be used once every 24 hours?"

"No, I'll give you that," Qrow said. "Just telling you to not let this go too much to your head. It's not that special. Really, it's more like four micro Semblances acting as one big one. It's got four results, right?"

"Five," James said. "I poked around with it the last few days and in the Wild Wild Wasteland section, there's a percentage in the upper right corner. It said 60% "unlocked" the other day. It says 80% unlocked now. Basic math dictates that means this thing can spit out five abilities overall. Bloody Mess, V.A.T.S., Silent Running, that Terrifying Presence thing, and one more I haven't seen yet."

"Five micro Semblances then," Qrow said. "Personally I'd rather have one Semblance that I can use whenever rather than five that I can use randomly once a day." James was now shooting daggers at Qrow, who responded with a sly smirk.

"So, General," James said with forced politeness, turning to face Ironwood. "Did you manage to get anything good out of that? It seemed a bit on the vague side aside from how the Fang was apparently planning to attack the Vytal Festival."

"He mentioned something about robots attacking civilians, but that's hardly worth listening to," Ironwood said. "The only presence with any mechanized forces around the festival would have been us. You may not have seen much of it Mr. Walker, but a heavy portion of Atlas's military force is robotic in nature. We've actually recently modernized our forces with the most up to date models." Qrow mimed gagging in the corner, much to Winter's irritation, but Ironwood didn't notice. "Our forces would never fire on anyone without a direct command from Atlas. Why would they?"

"Yeah, I mean-" James said. Then he stopped, Slowly reaching down, he picked up the odd necklace that he wore, a platinum poker chip with a bullet lodged in it. Bringing it up to the light, he looked at it. "Oh. Oh, fuck." His hand trembled. "General? Winter told me that you had a break in recently. Some kind of tower? Is there any way that that tower could've been used to tamper with your robots?"

Winter raised her eyebrow at James. The CCT? Was James actually taking this claim seriously? Ironwood looked as if he thought James's had lost his mind by humoring the idea. "The CCT could potentially be used to access the central network for our Knights and Paladins, yes. However, we would know if the network had been compromised. We did countless automated sweeps of the system after the infiltration of the tower, we found no abnormalities within it. The infiltrator did not yield any results from her actions, and there is a simple explanation as to why. Ruby Rose discovered her before she could complete whatever it was she was attempting and she was forced to flee."

"Are you sure?" James asked. There was a frantic look in his eyes as he took a step towards Ironwood. "Are you absolutely sure? There isn't any way that your system could've been exploited? No possibilities, no matter how absurd?"

Winter felt a pang of annoyance. James wasn't a computer expert, nor was he a member of the Atlas military. As a general rule of thumb, you didn't question someone on a matter that they were much more experienced in. It was disrespectful to the highest degree. "The only possible manner in which I could see that being possible is if the intrusion to our network disguised itself," Ironwood said briskly. "And in order for that to be possible, the program would have needed to be designed by someone with in-depth knowledge of Atlas cyber-security, file format, and coding skills that are nothing short of masterful in order to hide from our scans. If all of that is possible, a massive if, then any programs inserted would be invisible to our automated scans and would only be detectable via manual searches. With all due respect Mr. Walker, such a thing happening is nothing short of fantasy."

James faltered. For a moment, Winter thought he had come to his senses. Then his face notably stiffened. "In that case General, I highly advise you conduct a manual search of your system."

"Mr. Walker, enough," Winter said, unable to stay quiet any longer. This was getting ridiculous. "The man you just interrogated is a crude man of low intellect whose mind has been polluted by drugs, and even then he could only provide second-hand information. He is a useful source of information up to a point, but assuming that a significant portion of our military has been compromised based off of his testimony? I'm sorry, that isn't enough."

"I have to agree with Specialist Schnee," Ironwood said. Winter felt a small ping of pride, but she forced herself to stay focused. "I need more to go on if I was to authorize a manual sweep of our network, it would be a deeply time-consuming endeavor in a time of high crisis. Those technicians spending their time manually going through each file could be better spent elsewhere preparing for the White Fang's next move. What makes you so certain that this is worth taking seriously?"

James was slowly starting to resemble a man who was being backed into a corner. His eyes nervously darted back and forth between Ironwood and Winter. Then he let out a deep sigh. With the air of someone who was doing something he deeply did not want to do, he took his necklace of a poker chip off and held it up to the two of them. "Because I've seen someone try and pull off this exact stunt before."

This caught Winter completely off guard. Judging by how General Ironwood's eyes had widened in surprise, he felt the same. James waited for a moment and, when no one interrupted him, he continued. "There used to be an independent city-state back on Earth, New Vegas. The boss, Mr. House, kept control of it through a robot army of around a few hundred strong. Except it turned out he had hundreds more, maybe thousands, in underground vaults that he could get online and upgrade if he had the right software. The software in this chip. I was working with Mojave Express when he finally found it after it had been lost for centuries, and I was commissioned to deliver it."

A look of deepest loathing passed over James's face. "I got jumped, double tapped in the head, and left for dead in a shallow grave. By some miracle, I wasn't dead, and I tracked the guy who robbed me down. Guy's name was Benny, and it turned out he reprogrammed one of House's robots and was keeping it hidden in his basement, called it Yes-Man. He had a plan to plug Yes-Man into House's mainframe, which he could do if he could access to the main terminal, and use the chip to activate the robots in the bunker, seize control of them, and take over all of New Vegas and possibly the surrounding region."

He let out a choked noise that was halfway between a groan and a sigh. "I caught up with him before he could do anything, and the little shit went running with the chip to the bunker before he could get Yes-Man in the mainframe. Little problem though. At that time, the bunker was directly under where Caesar had made camp and he got caught. I went in on a parlay, Caesar wanted me to use the chip to access and destroy the army, and when I told him to go stuff it, he didn't take it well." His thumb flicked the bullet in the chip. "Turns out the guy was fucking with me. He had already had someone go down and destroy the army with the chip. Wouldn't be surprised if it had been Marie F.. He was just testing the waters to see how well I could follow orders and if I could be used. That didn't turn out so well."

He slid the necklace back on, looking uncertain. "Look, House was a smart guy. An arrogant ass, but the man knew his technology. And even then, Benny almost found a way to turn everything against him, and the only reason he didn't succeed is because he was a bumbling dumbass and House caught onto him. A smarter person could've easily taken everything away from him and established a power base in the region." A very odd look crossed James's face as he said the last sentence, but it was gone almost as soon as it had come. "And if someone as stupid as Benny can almost take control of a robot army from someone as smart as House, I think someone smarter could pull it off if they managed to find a back door. They just need to be in the right place with the right tools."

A heavy silence fell over the room. All eyes were on James, even Qrow was staring at him in stunned silence. Without breaking eye contact, Ironwood lifted his hand to his ear. "Yes, this is General Ironwood. There's been a recent development, I want you to perform a manual scrub of the direct control network for the Knights and Paladins. Check for any abnormalities, no matter how small, and let me know the second you locate anything. Do the same for all of the CCTs as well, particularly the Vale one. Yes, I know this is sudden, I'll arrange for any transfers that you need to get this done." He lowered his hand. "Mr. Walker, do not take this personally, but I deeply hope that this is just paranoia on your end. But I am not a person who takes risks."

James nodded stiffly. "I get that. But there was something else Rumford mentioned. Something about a woman who was giving the White Fang orders. Was that the leader of the White Fang? What was her name? Something Khan?"

"Selina Khan and I don't think so," Ironwood replied. "She's been oddly quiet as of late. What's more, the woman that Ruby saw in the CCT tower doesn't match any of the descriptions we have of Khan on record. I think this woman may be the player in the dark that we're trying to find. This isn't much of a lead, but it's better than what we had before."

"Right, and do we have anything else on her? Like anything at all?" James said. Something very odd happened here. Qrow gave a very loud cough, one of his usual childish ways to interrupt and annoy, but Ironwood didn't treat it as such. Instead, he gave Qrow a look that Winter couldn't read before looking back at James.

"We're looking into it, but at the moment we don't have much," Ironwood said. "I think that brings this interrogation and debriefing to a close. Thank you very much for your time Mr. Walker." James gave a hesitant nod, glancing at the two soldiers who were standing on either side of him. One was still looking at him hesitantly, and the other had only just holstered her rifle.

"Right," James said, sounding uncomfortable. "ED-E, what time is it?" The robot, instead of his more complex series of beeps, let out three bursts of beeps, numbering two, four, and five respectively. "2:45 huh? Well, we might as well get there ahead of time. Hope you don't mind Ironwood, I've been having a few practice sessions with Team RWBY and JNPR at three the past few days. Jaune and Ruby both need work in their hand to hand combat. Ozpin's recommendation."

"Yeah, I hate to admit it, but Pipsqueak is a little too attached to her scythe," Qrow said. "But a heads up there Walker. If I hear you're being too rough with my nieces-"

"I'm sure it involves your sword and my ass, save it for Rumford," James interrupted. "If you don't mind, I have to continue my streak of being actually productive today. So if there's nothing else, I need to go." With that, he strode out of the interrogation room, ED-E right behind him. An uncomfortable silence followed.

"General, is there anything else?" Winter asked. She received a firm shaking of the head as a response. "Very well then," she said, saluting Ironwood before leaving the room. It wasn't hard to catch up to James, who was walking briskly in the other direction. He came to a sudden halt as he heard her, his unhelmeted head turning to look at her. "Would it be acceptable if I were to join you? There are a few things I would like to go over with Weiss. Her Semblance needs some work." James paused for a moment before nodding. "Thank you," she said, giving a crisp nod before falling in line with him, heading for the ship's sparring arena.

"So now what?" James asked. "What happens if we're compromised?"

Winter gave him an analytical glance. James looked concerned, almost as if he didn't want to be right about the prediction that he had made. "Then the nature of our enemy changes," Winter said. "We go from someone who was manipulating terrorists in the dark to someone with uncomfortably strong connections. Everything will become far more difficult and dangerous. I have to say though, the odds of you being correct are rather on the low side." Her eyes drifted to James's wrist-mounted computer. "With all due respect, the computing technology from your world seems far more primitive than ours. Our security is doubtless far superior."

"Yeah? Well, no offense, Mr. House thought he had better tech than anyone in the wasteland and Benny still managed to get all the tools he needed to pry open a back door," James said, a tinge of anger to his voice. "And anyone from this world will have better access to equipment than a douchebag with a cheap suit and a gaudy pistol."

He glanced at Winter, his jaw tight. "If living in the wasteland taught me anything, it's that you're most vulnerable when you think you're invincible. House thought he was untouchable. He took a round to his frontal lobe. And just to clarify, House had been keeping himself alive for two-hundred years on life support, he was alive before the bombs dropped. He rebuilt Old Vegas into a thriving gambling town with his machines and a few tribes. And before the war, he was a master mechanist and set up defense systems that shot down most of the missiles that got launched at his area. House was really damn smart when his ego didn't get the better of him." He stopped, forcing himself to inhale before continuing, his voice calmer. "I'm just trying to say, don't fall into the same pit he did."

"Your concern is appreciated, but I'm simply stating the facts," Winter said briskly. "The odds of a security breach are not zero, but they are quite close. You managed to convince General Ironwood that there was enough of a threat to warrant an investigation. Isn't that enough?"

"I suppose," James said. He sounded very tired. They came to a stop outside of the ship's sparring arena. "Well, let's not keep them waiting."

XXXXXX

Blake looked up from her book. Their daily sessions with James had been more like going over the basics for the most part, mainly for Jaune and Ruby. It felt a little too simple at times, but some sort of training was good. Their session today had been going on for the past half hour, with James standing across from Jaune and Ruby in the middle of the sparring arena. The only change was that Weiss and her older sister were off to the side, swords drawn and glyphs flashing. Winter seemed to be demonstrating to Weiss, but Blake couldn't begin to guess what it was.

It had started with a bit of odd tension, James and Winter had seemed oddly tense about something they had refused to talk about. But since then, they had started working on opposite sides of the room, and whatever was bothering them seem to have been put on the back burner. "Ok, we're going to try something a friend taught me once, she taught me half of what I know about hand to hand combat," James said, sizing up both of his opponents. "It's going to focus on defense and countering. Ruby? Throw a punch at me, I'm going to demonstrate how this works." Ruby took a nervous step forward, her hand's held up in front of her before she made a hasty jab. Blake fought back the urge to wince. Ruby's blow was sloppy, heavily telegraphed, and thrown from a weak stance. It was almost a mercy that James batted the blow away, striking it from the side with a closed fist.

"That's called a Scribe Counter," James said as Ruby jerked a few steps to the side. "You plant one leg behind you and another in front, both solid and firm. Guard yourself with both hands like this," he held both of his fists up in front of him in a defensive position, hovering between his chest and face. "That way in case you can't pull off the counter you can still block. You wait for an opening and bat the blow to the side, causing them to stumble. You have to be very careful with this, you can't do it with a punch that's too fast to track or too heavy for you to overpower. But if you can pull it off, your opponent is off balance. Wide open for a counter attack." As Ruby started to recover, James threw an uppercut that stopped just short of her chin. The smaller girl gave a tiny "eep" as her Semblance took over, retreating to the far end of the arena in a blur of red and petals.

James blinked before giving a grin. "Hit them hard enough with that and you can put them on their rear," he said, Ruby sheepishly returning to the center of the room in another flash of crimson. "It takes a lot of practice though. I want you two to start now, take turns going back and forth with each other. Take it slow and avoid actual contact for now, we're just learning the form today. Show me the stance." He slid one leg behind him, inched the other in front, assuming the guard position again. Jaune and Ruby nervously exchanged glances before copying him.

"Ok, good," he said warmly. "Jaune? You're a little too tense, you've got to be able to move forward quickly for the counter-attack." Jaune's body slackened, but only a little. "Ok, that's better. You two practice for a bit, there's something else I wanted to cover with the others." With that, Jaune and Ruby gingerly began to practice while James turned and began to stride over to where Blake was sitting, along with the rest of Team RWBY and JNPR, minus Weiss.

"Ok, gonna be frank, with you lot I found myself a little bit stumped for what we could cover," he said, coming to a stop in front of the five of them. "All of you handle your weapons pretty well from what I've seen, your team setups are fairly well rounded, and you don't need refreshers on CQC. Then it hit me. None of you carry backup weapons." Blake blinked before looking around. She supposed it was true, while some of them technically had two weapons, they were always used in conjunction. The rest of them had just one weapon. Not that she saw the problem with that. With the exception of Jaune, all of their weapons struck a good balance between ranged and melee in an effectively streamlined manner.

"Is this a concern?" Ren asked politely.

"Call me paranoid, but I always feel like you should have a backup plan in a fight for your life," James said. "And I've been told you all have been in a couple of those already. Your primary plan worked then, good, but it might not always work. You might be in prolonged combat and run out of ammo, your blades might break, something might separate you from your weapon. Now in that situation, you may be able to fall back on unarmed combat or your Semblances, but you should have the deck as stacked in your favor as you can get. Come over here."

He gestured to a table that had been set up in the corner of the room. Curious expressions on everyone's faces, the five of them got up and followed James to the far end of the room. On the table were eight pistols, standard issue for the Atlas army, each one with three reload magazines and a holster. There was also eight large boxes of ammunition and several bandoliers of grenades on the back side of the table. "I want all of you to practice using these and start carrying them on you when you go on missions."

Blake picked up one of the pistols, experimentally getting a feel for it. It was a decent weight, doubtlessly somewhere around the 10mm range, maybe a little heavier. There was nothing wrong with the pistol, but Blake couldn't help but feel like it was a little below what was needed for a Huntress. She couldn't help but notice the way the others were reacting. Pyrrha had the type of smile on her face that was reserved for receiving a bad gift that you had to pretend you liked, Yang was blinking in disbelief as she held one of the sidearms in her hand, and Nora looked downright disappointed as she held hers.

James noticed. "Yeah, this is about the reaction I was expecting," he said wryly. "I'm not blind, I know what kind of weapons you're used to. This isn't supposed to be a replacement for your primary weapon. It's supposed to be more than the nothing you would have if you lost your primary. You'd be surprised just how many times that I saved my rear by having a weapon I could draw at the last second." To emphasize his point, his hand darted to his back, slipping underneath his long coat. With a single motion, he drew A Light Shining in Darkness, aiming it at nothing in particular. "You five may never actually need these pistols, and I'd be happy if that was the case. But you should have them on you at all times. You never know."

Reluctantly, Blake took one of the holsters and affixed it to her side. "What's that for?" Nora asked, pointing to one of the bandoliers, which held around a dozen Dust grenades. "We gonna practice grenade throwing?" She grinned widely, holding up her launcher. "I've got that covered."

"Didn't want to break too many norms in one go," he said good-naturedly. "No, that's for me. They just delivered it with everything else. I'm almost out of my stash of grenades so I asked the quartermaster if she could help me out on that front." Grabbing one of the bandoliers, he slid it over his right shoulder before buckling it into place. "Ah, much better. I was getting paranoid with just one grenade left."

As Blake looked over one of the bandoliers, she was surprised to see that many of the grenades weren't specialized. She spotted a Fire, Ice, and Lighting Dust grenade, but the majority of them were only loaded with Combustion Dust, the same type of Dust that was used in ordinary rounds. "James? Are you certain those are the types of grenades you want to use? I understand you're not very familiar with Dust, but it can be very effective when used properly."

"Yeah, the quartermaster brought that up too," James said, glancing at the bandolier. "And I appreciate all the fancy things these things can do, but, well, I'll be frank. The last time I played around with Dust, I burned a whole house down. If that's what a Fire Dust round can do, I'm a little scared as to what a Fire Dust grenade does." He fingered the one Fire Dust grenade that he actually had nervously. "Best for me to stick with good old fashioned fragmentation grenades. Pull the pin, count to three, throw it. Been able to do that since I was fifteen. Well, when the caravan could afford them. Which was rare."

"So, that one is yours, the rest are for us?" Pyrrha asked.

"What? Oh no. Didn't I say I didn't want to break too many traditions in one go? These are mine. All of them." He drew a hand over all of the bandoliers, giving a loving smile. "I've been thinking. A straight-up fight against someone with Aura is an area I don't really excel. So I'm falling back on basics here. I don't actually need these many grenades, but I do need the explosives within them." He flicked one with his finger. "I'm going to need that Dust for some homebrewed stuff I'm going to be working on. Landmines."

Blake had to struggle very hard to be polite. She appreciated James's enthusiasm, but she was starting to get a very strong impression that he had no idea what he was doing. Landmines were a stopgap at best. It would kill lesser Grimm, but Grimm hunted in such large packs that any minefield set up would be depleted in under a minute. Assuming the Grimm in question couldn't fly. And Aura combat was far too three-dimensional for landmines to be practical. "Are you certain that's a smart usage of resources?"

"Quite certain," James said, a smile on his face. "I've already got some plans in the work. But enough about me, let's do some practice shooting." He gestured to the right of the table, where the sparring arena had a shooting range. Eight targets had been set up at medium range from each other. "I doubt you'll have any real problem with the actual shooting, it's everything else that I want you to practice. Drawing, cocking, reloading, all that good stuff. I want you to practice it as much as you can so that if you have to draw your pistol in a hurry, you're good to go." He ran a hand along one of the boxes of ammunition. "We've got plenty of rounds to work with, so don't feel the need to the stingy. Just follow basic firearm safety and practice to your heart's content."

Slowly, as if half of them were still expecting James to reveal that this was all an elaborate joke, the other five of them fixed their holsters, took a pistol, and proceed to the firing range. "Hey Winter!" James called as Blake loaded her sidearm and cocked it. "Is there any chance that you and Weiss can continue what you're doing later? I got something I'd like for her to go over with the rest of her team." Blake couldn't help but notice that his voice sounded a bit strained. Craning her neck, Blake saw the elder Schnee nod in James's direction, say something to Weiss that even all four of her ears couldn't make out. The younger sister nodded and rushed across the room, where James promptly explained the situation and handed her one of the remaining pistols. Weiss, never having been one to question a teacher, accepted the pistol, loaded it, and took up a position next to Blake.

"What were you doing over there?" Blake asked, firing a round that landed in the second centermost ring. "I mean, you didn't miss much. James just went over basic hand to hand."

"I noticed," Weiss said, shooting a brief look at Ruby as she attempted to block a jab from Jaune and nearly fell over in the process. "Well, she certainly needs it. Remember what happened when she lost her scythe back in Mt. Glenn? Something like that can't happen again." Blake suppressed a shudder. James's questionable views on explosives and sidearms aside, he certainly was an overall net positive for that alone. "To answer your question, my family's Semblance has a unique technique that can be done with some difficulty. Glyphs being used to create replicas of foes I've defeated in the past." The side of Weiss's mouth drooped just a bit. "It's...it's a work in progress."

Blake honestly had to try hard to imagine Weiss struggling with something. Whenever she used her Semblance, she so often did it with natural grace and refinement that one could be forgiven for thinking she had already mastered it a long time ago. And yet Weiss was, in her own way, admitting she was having problems with a certain aspect of it. "I'm sure you'll have the hang of it in no time," Blake said, thinking fast to try and come up with something comforting. "I mean, it's not like you're going to slack off on it."

Weiss gave a small smile. "True. And honestly, while I wish the circumstances could've been more ideal, it's been very nice spending time with Winter. I never got much chance to talk to her ever since Father disowned her."

Blake paused. Weiss had never directly commented on her relationship with her family that much, but she had given out enough clues to piece things together. She had an older sister, but despite that, she was the one who was next in line to inherit the Schnee Dust Company. It was only a logical conclusion that something had happened to cut Winter out of the loop. "If you don't mind me asking, how did that happen?"

A shadow was briefly cast over Weiss's face. Instead of answering right away, she took aim and fired off a trio of shots, barely paying attention to where on the target they landed. Even then, she still didn't reply. Then a sigh. "You were open with me, I owe you the same. My father is deeply concerned with his legacy. He wanted children who did everything that they were told. Winter was too proactive for him. She follows orders when she thinks they're right, but she has a strong sense of pride." Weiss glanced at Blake. "You saw what she was like when she was dealing with Ruby and Yang's uncle. She sees her work for Atlas as a strong sense of good. She didn't see working for the SDC the same way. My father disowned her because he couldn't control her."

Blake fought back the urge to wince. She had run away from home to join a terrorist organization, and yet the occasional letter she had gotten from home had simply been her mother begging for her to come back. The idea of Weiss's father throwing out his eldest daughter for something so petty was jarring. Weiss shot Blake her best reassuring smile. It was noticeably forced, but Blake still appreciated the effort. "She's been over it for a long time. She's much happier in the military, she isn't just a decorative doll there. She's active." Weiss's smile faltered for a second and she swallowed. "I mean, I do miss her, but I don't blame her for wanting some distance from our father."

Blake couldn't help but notice the way in which Weiss had said that. She was speaking from experience. Taking a second to fire at her target, she scrambled for ways to lighten the conversation. "You said you wanted to get your grandfather's company back on track? To undo all of the abuse? If you do that, will you let your sister back into the company?"

"If she wants to," Weiss said. "I mean, it was my mother's company before my father married her. Specifically for the company." Weiss's lip curled in pure disgust. "That isn't me being angry at my father and making wild accusations. He admitted it directly to her face. After he had uncontested control of the SDC." Blake's mouth opened in shock and disgust. She had never had a high opinion of Jacques Schnee, ever since she was a child she had thought he was an inhuman monster. But she had always thought that his cruelty had been reserved for Faunus. Even she had never thought that he would be so callous towards his own family. Granted, at the time, she had assumed all of the Schnee family had been just as bad as Jacques. Now it seemed that he had a monopoly on viciousness in the family. "So I may offer her some control." Weiss's face drooped sadly. "If she isn't sick of it."

"I'm sure she'll appreciate the offer, either way," Blake said. Weiss nodded silently. For a brief moment, the two focused on the targets in front of them, firing shots that reliably hit without too much trouble.

"Hey...mind if I give a bit of advice?" Weiss and Blake both blinked in surprise. James was approaching them from the side, a concerned look on his face. "Sorry. I couldn't help but overhear. But what you talked about reminded me of someone I was just talking to your sister about. I wouldn't say I liked the guy, but maybe you could learn a few things from his example." Weiss and Blake exchanged looks before Weiss gave a polite nod.

"There was a guy I met back on Earth. He was born to a fairly rich family. Not mega-rich, but his family was very comfortable. They owned a fairly successful tool company. His parents died young in an accident and his half-brother decided to be a spiteful little piece of trash. All of the inheritance their parents left, he took it for himself. This man was left with nothing but the clothes on his back and his wits. But it turned out that was all that he needed."

An unreadable expression filled James's face as he continued to speak. "He started his own company. It exploded. And when I say that, I mean he became the number one technology company in the biggest and richest country on Earth. RobCo dominated tech development, spread itself out, and set root everywhere it could. Then its CEO, a billionaire several times over by this point, and not even thirty yet, set his eyes on an old tool company."

James gave a smile of grim amusement. "Little by little, he dismantled his father's old tool company, buying it out and assimilating the pieces into RobCo. His half-brother became a paranoid wreck. And near the end, the CEO of RobCo had taken back everything of his father's old company. The only thing he left his half-brother was a single factory. One that had a perfect view of the city that the CEO half owned at this point, and would eventually go on to rule. Robert House. A sociopathic narcissist in many ways, but a brutally efficient businessman."

Blake couldn't help but feel like this House sounded rather familiar to a certain father. Weiss doubtless thought the same, but she looked more confused than anything else. "I'm sorry, I don't understand what point you're trying to make." Blake nodded along with her. It was an interesting story, but from Blake's point of view, all it told her was that there were people just like Jacques Schnee on Earth too.

James smile somehow became even grimmer. "I heard you talking about your father. How he disowned Winter because he couldn't control her and how you want to get your family's company back on track because he seized control. Don't you see a bit of a conflict here? He's a control freak and you want to undo all of his changes. With that in mind, do you think he's going to just hand control of the company over to you? You don't think he'll disown you? He's already thrown his eldest out, and I don't think Winter had half of the plans for the company."

Ah, Blake couldn't help but think. Yes, when James put it that way, that was a rather large problem. Jacques was the President of SDC, and no doubt had favors owed to him by many of the shareholders. And that was all without getting into whatever political ties he had made. The more she thought about it, the more Blake realized exactly how badly the chips were stacked against Weiss. "So. You're saying it's hopeless?" Weiss said, a hint of anger in her voice. "That I should give up? Let my father drag the Schnee family name through the mud, regardless of how many people get hurt or ruined along the way?"

"I didn't say that," James said, a firm calmness to his voice. "But by the way you've been describing him, you're never going to get control of your family's company through inheritance. He's not going to give it to you because you ask for it. House didn't ask for his father's company back." He leaned forward an inch. His voice took on a gruff, daring tone. "He took it back. If you want control of that company? Take it. Rip it out of your father's hands. Because he's never going to let go otherwise."

Blake had not been expecting this. She understood that James was from a world that was, there was no other way to put it, much less stable than Remnant. So much so that it sounded as if the entire planet was the worst parts of Vacuo all the way through. But he had so far been mild-mannered, if foul-mouthed at times, and she had not expected him to recommend a course of action like this, hostile, blunt, and direct. Weiss was gapping at him with the same surprise that Blake felt.

"That's...far easier said than done," Weiss said uncertainty. "I told you my father wasn't the richest man in the world, but he's certainly in the top ten. With all due respect, this Mr. House sounds as if he brought out a medium-sized company. Not the largest Dust corporation in the world. Particularly not one with political clout."

James gave an appreciative nod. "I can respect that. They've got a straight flush and you barely even have two of a kind. It's not easy. But, frankly, the ambitions that you had were never particularly mundane. And you need to remember that you've got more tools to work with than most. Don't you have any access to your family's fortune? You seemed to be able to spend money without care when we first met"

"Only what my father willingly gives me," Weiss said sourly. "He holds the purse strings. The second he figured out I was moving against him, he could easily cut me off. He's loose with his money, but not stupid with it. When I was young, I learned the ins and outs of running a business from watching him and from highly paid tutors. He wouldn't accept anything less than the best of the best running the company that bore his name after all. But he never let me have free reign with money that could let me strike out on my own or form independence."

James looked at Weiss with an appraising look. Then, without any hesitation, he reached into his rucksack, pulled out a stack of Lien, took a third of it, and handed it to Weiss. "Is that enough to get you started?" Blake opened her mouth, but her voice had failed her. She could only stand there, gums flapping like a fish out of water, as Weiss reached out for the bills. Her hands were trembling as she slowly flicked through them, silently counting.

She looked up, swallowing. "Ten-thousand? James, I'm deeply touched, but I can't accept this." Weiss's cheeks were a faint shade of red as she handed the money back. "You've barely been here a week, you can't have that much money yourself. I can't let you-" but James waved her off.

"If it makes you feel any better, I won most of the cash I've got on me in a poker game. The asshole had one of his goons peeking at my cards." A downright devilish grin flashed across his face. "So I cheated. Cleaned him out. I really don't feel guilty about giving away that money, it was basically a bonus." He gave the Lien he was still holding a hearty slap. "Besides, I've still got ten grand of my winnings right here. I'm healthily in the black. So take it. Please. Even if it isn't enough to start you out on getting your grandfather's company back, it's at least an insurance policy. Something to fall back on so that your father doesn't have total control over you."

Blake was quite certain she saw Weiss's lip tremble as she slowly pocketed the money. "Thank you very much," she said softly. "Though I'm not certain I approve of you cheating, I will overlook it as you only did it in retaliation to your opponent cheating." She cocked her head. "You don't have to be worried about that. I scammed some nobody who calls himself Junior out of twenty grand. People called him Junior for crying out loud. I'm not losing sleep after that."

"You did what!?" There was a blur of gold and Yang, moving with a speed usually reserved for her sister, was in front of James, a massive smile on her face. "Ok. This I need to hear. Details. All of the details." Weiss gave a barely concealed groan before turning back to her target. Though she was faintly smiling.

Deciding that she would benefit from less noise when practicing shooting, Blake moved to the far end of the targets, to the vacant spot where Jaune would have been. As she did, she spotted Pyrrha staring at her team's leader, who was still sparring with RWBY. Pyrrha, much to Blake's shock, looked very upset. Her hand was clenched and pressed against her mouth, her jaw was tight, and her bright green eyes were unmistakably watery. "Pyrrha? Is everything ok?" As she spoke, Ren and Nora, who had been practicing right next to her, instantly turned to look in her direction with concern.

"Wha-oh, yes!" she said, attempting to put on a cheery voice and bright smile, both of which didn't quite reach her eyes. "Just got lost in my thoughts. Well, better get back to practicing!" Before any of them could get a word in edgewise, she spun on the spot and started taking practice shots. Blake gave Ren and Nora a questioning look, only for her to get a pair of shrugs in response. Nora gave Pyrrha a concerned look while Ren beckoned her over.

She crossed the gap between him and he leaned in to whisper in her ear. "She had a meeting with Professor Ozpin right before we left for Atlas. She won't tell us what it was about but something's been wrong ever since. We've been trying to cheer her up, but we've hit a wall. If you have any ideas, we're all ears." Blake didn't say anything. She simply stared at Pyrrha's back. What on earth had happened?

XXXXX

Fucking Walker. Rumford was pissed. He had been in this cell for five days, two days since he had met the NCR's cheerleader, and everything about the situation pissed him off. There was a sink, a toilet, a crappy cot, and a hole in the wall that food got shoved through. Nothing was distracting him from his missing arm or how Walker had embarrassed him and it was driving him up the wall. To make things worse, he hadn't been able to get some Psycho all since he had been caught. Not that he was a filthy junkie like the rest of the Fiends, but he still needed it to maintain his manly physique. Not that a limpdick like Walker would know what that felt like.

There was a loud rap on the door. "Prisoner, up against the wall."

"Fuck you, pussy," Rumford growled, but he got up nonetheless. All the guards who were working with him had started wearing gas-masks the second they had figured out what his Semblance was. It was a crime. He had such a kickass power and the whimpering little bitches out there all hid from him in a way that made it so that he couldn't fight back. Well, they were right to be afraid of him. He took comfort in that.

Deciding he'd rather avoid being manhandled again, he did as he was told and pressed his one hand against the far wall. The door slid open behind him and a gruff hand grabbed him by the wrist and forced his arm behind his back. A chain was looped around his waist and locked tight before a handcuff was fitted onto his arm. The other end was attached to the chain, the closest anyone could come to handcuffing him when he only had the one hand. "Yeah, get your feel in faggot," Rumford hissed.

"You'd think he'd come up with new material after a while," the soldier behind him said dryly. Grabbing an end of the chain around his waist, he pulled, forcing Rumford to clumsily stumble out of his cell. "Is the other prisoner ready to go?" Rumford blinked as he was pulled into the bright, gleaming white corridor of the holding cells. Next door, a woman in armor signed a thumbs up as she pulled another prisoner out. Dressed in a white coat with a black hat, he had red hair and, Rumford had to fight back a laugh, eyeliner.

"Hey lady, how's your gal pal?" said snidely.

"Oh, I do believe I am wounded," the man said. "Such wonderful hospitality and company Ironwood has provided me with, I'm going to miss it."

"Oh stuff it Torchwick," the soldier holding Rumford said. "I've got enough on my plate with this guy running his yap." He gave another tug on Rumford's chain. "Come on. We just landed, command wants them transferred within the hour." The other soldier nodded as her superior led the way. Rumford thought it was hilarious. The Legion had dickholes like Servius, but at least they understood it was better to leave women to cooking and babymaking. That one was a loose end, one he might be able to take advantage of when the time came to make an escape.

The four of them moved through the depths of the ship, stopping at an elevator that took them down several floors, walked down another long hallway, and eventually stopped in a cargo bay that had a wide opening on the far end. A hundred men could easily walk through it, shoulder to shoulder. Nearly as many were doing so. Trucks and forklifts were filing in and out of the cargo bay, taking crates, boxes, and cargo containers in and out as they went. One one side, Rumford spotted a group of eggheads inspecting a line of human-sized robots and two mega-sized ones. More morons. Fancy toys just meant that there were more ways they could break.

His handler led the way through the chaos, ducking and weaving through until they were at the far end. They exited and Rumford walked directly into a wall of cold. He instinctively attempted to wrap his arms around himself, only to end up jerking ineffectually at nothing. Swearing, he took a look around.

Ironwood's ship had landed on some sort of airstrip near the edge of a cliff, one overlooking massive snowy plains. Dozens of technicians were inspecting the airship from the outside. Rumford saw two using some sort of massive mechanical arm to remove large cylinders from the side before he was yanked forward and made to keep walking. A massive military base was nearby, on par with Pre-War American bases, with hundreds of soldiers manning sandbags, towers, and pillboxes. In fact, craning his neck, Rumford saw that the entire landing strip was heavily fortified, with countless guns, manned and automatic, mounted on a wall facing the cliff. Said wall completely covered all parts of the land strip that faced the cliff, and the soldier manning it were on high alert.

Dumbasses. It would just make it easier to stab them in the back.

"Ok, in." Rumford had been dragged white four-door car that was between the strip and the base, a man in a crisp uniform standing beside it. Throwing a few of his favorite swear words at the man, Rumford was forced in one door and the asshole in makeup the other.

"Oh my, a private car, we're certainly getting the deluxe treatment," Torchwick said as they were buckled in, both of them still cuffed. He shot an empty smile at Rumford. "So, cell right next to me and I never got your name."

"The guy who fucked your mother," Rumford grunted as the two soldiers piled up into the front seat. There was a thick metal grate separating the two sides of the car. As much as he wanted to make a run for it, he couldn't get through this to strangle the bitch.

"Father? Is that you?" Torchwick said in mock surprise. "Oh, mother has told me oh so much about you. Shall we go to the zoo and frolic?"

"I swear we need a soundproof barrier," the male soldier grumbled as his companion turned the key in the ignition. The car roared to life and they were off. It drove away from the base and a city began to loom into sight. "Welcome to Mantle," the male soldier said grumpily.

Mantle looked like a piece of shit. Most of the buildings looked old and worn, quite a few industrial looking buildings were starting to rust, and plenty of them looked abandoned. They didn't get too close to the larger buildings, the car was noticeably parallel towards the city, not heading towards it. "And when do we get to this historic location? I've never been," Torchwick said with faux politeness.

"Yeah, you're not going there," the male soldier said.

"Oh? And where are we going?" Torchwick asked. Rumford wanted badly to tell him to shut the fuck up, but the soldier spoke before he could.

"Oh, we got a place for people like you." Something about that put a kernel of doubt in Rumford's mind.

They drove for over half an hour, Mantle slowly fading in the distance as they transitioned from dirt road to dirt road, all of them with thin layers of snow on them. There was nothing to do except be thankful that the car was warm. Then, the male soldier spoke. "Hey, you took a wrong turn, we want to head east." There was no response from the driver. After a minute, she took a left. "That's the opposite of east," the other soldier said, sounding annoyed. "You're not new, are you? You should know that-" but he was abruptly cut off.

Rumford blinked. He had no idea when it had happened, but the driver was holding a staff. A staff whose ended was buried in the throat of the other soldier. He let out a weak gurgle, blood flowing out of the wound, as the woman swiftly withdrew the staff, revealing a bladed end. He slumped down in his seat, not moving. "Ah, the show is over already Neo?" Torchwick said. "Ah well." Rumford looked back in forth in confusion. Then his eyes widened. That son of a bitch was out of his cuffs, his hands idly behind his head as if he was a guest of honor. "So tell me, what's the deal with our unexpected guest?"

The car ground to a halt and Neo shifted it into park. She turned around and, as she did, she changed. She wasn't an Atlas soldier in full armor anymore, she was a five-foot tall girl in some frilly white and pink outfit. With hair that was half black and half pink, her eyes mismatched with the same colors. It was the stupidest thing Rumford had ever seen. "So your escape guy is a whore? Man, you're fucking dumb," he snarled at Rumford. Neo gave a toothy grin before holding up a scroll.

Torchwick leaned forward to read it. "Cinder wants him? Why? Does it have to do with the plan changing?" Neo lowered the scroll, typed something into it, and held it up again. "Oh. Oh." Torchwick looked at Rumford. His cocky swagger was gone, replaced with faint fear. "Well. It was nice knowing you."

"What the fuck is that supposed to-" Rumford said, but as he was talking, the car door behind him was swung open. A hand gripped him by the shoulder, and the next thing he knew he was flying through the air. Pain tore through his body as he smashed arm first into a tree before he slid to the ground, swearing every step of the way. He wiggled himself into a sitting position as best he could with his arm restrained, looking around wildly for whoever had the nerve.

They were in some wooded area in the middle of nowhere, nothing for miles but snow covered trees. Torchwick had gotten out of the car with Neo, whose staff had extended into the girliest umbrella Rumford had ever seen, frilly and pink. She idly passed a second staff to Torchwick, who leaned on it as he began to watch what was going on. Three people were standing in front of Rumford's side of the car. A kid with gray hair, some broad with green hair, and a lady with long black hair and in leather. The last of the three was glaring at him with nothing short of pure hatred and was advancing on him, a weird glowing thing going on with her eye.

"Lady, do you have any idea what kind of crew I run with!?" Rumford shouted in anger. He was not taking shit from a rescue mission for some nobody who probably moonlighted as a gigolo. "They'll fuck you up! You have any idea what they do to bitches like you?"

"Be. Quiet," the woman hissed. Her hand darted forward, closing around Rumford's neck before she lifted him off the ground and slammed him against the tree again. "Do you have any idea how much damage you've done? Do you?" Her voice was dangerously low. Rumford tried to say something, but all that came out was a choked spluttered. His heartbeats were starting to rock against his ribcage. Wait a minute. What was going on? This wasn't right. They weren't going to kill him, were they?

"Of course you don't," the woman said with disgust. Producing a scroll, she held it up to his face. In big, bold text was a message.

"Backdoor compromised. Had to initiate self-termination to keep it from being tracked. We need a new plan. I'm heading to your location now with backup. Watts."

The woman's grip tightened, and an unnatural heat started to radiate off of her hand. "Months of planning are gone now. All because of you. Of what you said to James Walker." Rumford was starting to panic now. He could barely breathe. His legs flung wildly in the air, trying to break free, but his arm was still chained. Who was this woman? What was this backdoor thing? What on Earth could he have said to mess things up to her?

Sneering in disgust, she tossed him to the ground. "And now, you're going to make it up for me. You work for me now."

Despite the fear that was starting to build up in him, Rumford felt outraged. Who did this bitch think she was? "Fuck you, lady. You have any idea what the Legion will do to me if I ditch them for you and your nobodies?" He glared at her. Or at least he tried to. He didn't even get a chance to make eye contact before a booted foot slammed into his face, sending him rolling across the ground.

"Hey, Cinder?" a voice said. "I get you using him as a punching bag, but him working with us? He's damaged goods. More likely he'd be a liability than anything else."

"Oh, but Dr. Watts is going to make him very useful for us," the woman called Cinder said. Rumford's eyes were swimming with stars and he was facedown in the dirt. He felt like a Super Mutant had just punched him in the face. He tried to roll onto his back, only for a hand to grip him and do it for him. Cinder's face was a few inches away from his, her glowing eye boring into him. "You've cost me dearly. I could crush the life out of you right now. I would enjoy every second of it. But you've left us short handed. So listen closely. Do as I say and there may be a use for you left in this world."

Slowly, she reached out, pressing one finger against his arm, in one of the places his Legion recruit armor was blocking. "Or otherwise, we'll have a problem." Without warning blinding pain tore through him. He roared and thrashed, but he was too well pinned. It felt like he was being impaled with a white-hot poker. Then, as soon as it had started, it had stopped. "Do we have an understanding Mr. Rumford?"

"Yes! God, fuck, yes!" he bellowed before he could stop himself. Anything to make the pain go away.

"Good. Because, when we've turned you into something worthwhile, you are going to accompany my associates here on a little mission," Cinder said. "You are going to kill James Walker. But before then, I want you to know who we are. And exactly how little your Legion matters. It will quash any pathetic attempts at betrayal you may be thinking about."

She leaned back, glaring at him with overwhelming contempt. "Tell me. Are you familiar with the name Salem?"

XXXXX

Author's Note: Thought I'd put a firm cap on Wild Wild Wasteland, don't want to be that guy who's giving his characters more powers out of nowhere up until the last chapter. I also wanted James to have a hand in stopping Cinder's robot hack, but not because he's a master computer expert, but because he once saw someone pull the exact same trick. That way it's less something that's being accomplished because my original character, donut steel, is a super smart hacker, and more it's something that Courier Number Six and ONLY Courier Number Six would know and react to. That's the point of crossovers, isn't it? To take worlds, smash them together, and see the unique ways in which they would react. And Courier Six, good, neutral, or evil, would know what Cinder is pulling because he saw Benny try this already. He has to make a logical jump, but it's based off of the evidence he's seen and his own prior experience with similar situations.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Josue Garcia, Jonathan Eason, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 10

Tili Tili Bom

XXXXX

Qrow idly took a sip from his flask as he strolled through Jimmy's flagship. While the contents were indeed alcoholic, it was a fairly moderate beer most of the time. Enough to give him a bit of a buzz, but he'd need to pound back three or four bottles of these to even get even close to drunk. He enjoyed his drink, but he wasn't stupid. Besides, this had a bit of an advantage to it. People who saw the man in ratty clothing with a hip flask stumbling with slurred words, they assumed he was hammered to oblivion and back. It made them cocky, and Qrow liked it that way. The Ice Queen had certainly thought that he was just a drunk idiot, and he had almost gotten her to make a fool of herself in front of her boss.

But then Walker had gotten involved. Walker had, at the very least, been smart enough to guess at what he had been doing. He could tell what Ozpin had seen in the guy, he had been around the block a few times. Walker had a way of carrying the small arsenal on his back that suggested that he had long since become accustomed to it. Qrow had spent enough time in the seedier parts of towns and with undesirables who lived off the map to know the difference between those who were comfortable holding guns and those who weren't. James held his weapons like he had been using them since he was Ruby's age. Heck, maybe he had.

It was a shame that he couldn't follow basic instructions, but hey, it wasn't the first time Qrow had worked with someone like this. He supposed he could forgive a little bit, Walker didn't realize exactly how tenuous their situation was. Ozpin had employed him, but he hadn't let Walker into his inner circle. That came later, it always did, Ozpin needed a few years to see if an ally could be trusted with the secrets of Salem and everything surrounding her. But that only went so far. They weren't on Walker's turf, it was time for him to realize that.

He came to a stop outside the room that had been assigned to James, rapping sharply on it. "It's open!" a voice called from inside. Pushing the door open, Qrow took in the sight before him. James had pulled a table to the center of his small living quarters and was hunched over the machine-gun that he had recovered from the Legion. He was in the final stages of slapping a bipod to the end of it. "There, that oughta do it," he said, giving the bipod a flick. It didn't so much as budge. "Rumford tried to hip-fire this thing, that'll get you diminishing returns if you're not in spitting distance. Even with Aura, using one of these is just the smarter way to go." He craned his neck to look at Qrow. At once, a frown crossed his face. "Yes?"

"Meeting," Qrow said bluntly. "Jimmy wants all hands on deck by the looks of things."

"Ah. Gotcha. One second, I just gotta make sure everything is in order." Placing his machine-gun flat on the table, he leaned over to the far side. "You know, there's a lot of cookbooks where you can make substitutions, but I'm not sure the Patriot's Cookbook is one of them. Oh well, you make do with what you got." Qrow looked over the table in front of James. It was covered with a dozen landmines of the oddest design that Qrow had ever seen. It looked like James had taken metal cases from all over the ship, strapped motion sensors onto them, and stuffed them full of Dust. The man was certainly inventive if nothing else.

Slowly, James picked them up one by one and looked them over, checking every last part before putting them down. "Ok. They look stable," he said, getting to his feet. Leaving the machine-gun on the table but still visibly bringing his other weapons, he turned to face Qrow. "Lead the way."

Qrow nodded, strolling out of James's room, only stopping for a second for him to lock the door before he began to lead them in the direction of Jimmy's briefing room. "The Fang and Legion should've landed by now, but we're not seeing hide nor tail of them," Qrow said, taking another swig from his flask. He could see James glaring at him out of the corner of his eye. Good. Let him think that he was drunker than he was. "Either they changed course, unlikely, or they managed to slip through Atlas defenses somehow. I know, crazy isn't it, Atlas dropping the ball yet again."

"Quick question, is there any chance you can get all of this out of your system before we get there?" James asked sharply. "This is a delicate situation and it's going to require more diplomacy than you're going to be bringing to the table at this point."

Qrow smirked. "What, you don't think I can be diplomatic?"

"Can? Yes. Will? Fuck no," James said sourly. "Qrow, you're a lot of things, and what you are first and foremost is an asshole. Now, I get it. Being an asshole has its place, but you don't have a damn off switch. I've been in diplomatic situations where tensions were running high before. I needed to be clever, I needed to be quick on my feet, I needed to balance saying what they wanted to hear and getting what I came there for. What I did not need to do was throw my filter out the window and say every last little thing that comes into my head the way you do."

He glared at Qrow. "So no. You won't be diplomatic. You'll do what you did last time. Act like a petulant fucking child. It'd be funny if it wasn't for the fact that the teenagers we have around seem to have their shit together much more than you do." Qrow idly waved James's insults off. He had heard so much worse from Ironwood, from Ozpin, from his sister, even from Tai on occasion. Walker was going to have to try a lot harder if he wanted to get a reaction out of him. "But then again, for someone who seems to respect Ozpin so much, you seem to deeply enjoy going out of your way to make life more difficult for him."

"Ozpin's an amazing man, but he's a little too tolerant and forgiving for his own good," Qrow said idly. "He needs people like me around him because he'll just smile and take it when a firm kick to the rear is in order." It was true. Ozpin bore the weight of the world on his shoulders. Qrow had a theory, one that he had shared with no one, that Ozpin was scared of alienating any potential allies in his mission to keep Salem at bay and all the Artifacts safe. Understandable, but Ozpin really did need to put his foot down and make it clear. He knew better than Ironwood, he knew better than just about everyone on Remnant. Dancing around the issue just made things more complicated and made idiots more likely to screw things up.

"Well, you're not wrong," James said. The implication of what he said was not lost on Qrow. He ignored it. The conversation between the two of them died out at that point. They slowly moved through the ship until they crossed the threshold into a briefing room. It was a basic affair, plain white, metallic chairs surrounding a large conference table. Ruby's team was already there, as was Team JNPR, Jimmy, and the Ice Queen, the latter of whom was making a concentrated effort to not look in his direction. He cracked a wide smile and gave an exaggerated wave in her direction. She didn't respond, but he was fairly certain he could see a vein pulsing in her temple. That would do.

Everyone was seated except Jimmy. James slid into one of the few seats while Qrow slouched against the wall. Jimmy looked around, no doubt checking that everyone was there before he cleared his throat. "First of all, I do believe an apology is in order." He looked at James. "Mr. Walker? We took your advice and I do believe a catastrophe has been averted. Our central database had been compromised, and we only just discovered it. We were wrong to doubt you, your intuition was invaluable. I apologize for dismissing your concerns."

James looked a little flustered. "Look, it was a long shot, you were right to be skeptical. Frankly, it's the type of situation where I would've been happy to be wrong."

"Well, sadly you weren't. Which means that whoever infiltrated the CCT had both the knowledge and the equipment to hack into the most secure databases of the Atlas military," Ironwood said. "And the program appeared to be designed to utterly assume control of our automated assets. I say appear because it deleted itself the moment it was discovered. A clever design, we have no means of tracing it now. I have intelligence looking into that, but for the moment we've done all we can do. As of now, our focus is on the Legion and White Fang."

He grimaced. "We received no notification of them landing on Atlas shores. While them holding their position in open waters is a possibility, it's unlikely due to aquatic Grimm activity. The negative emotions from being trapped on a small vessel for an extended time would attract them if they aren't trained to control their emotions, which I doubt. Meaning we can only assume they have slipped past our defenses, possibly by taking a longer trip up the coast to more sparsely populated areas. Either that or they managed to find a way to slip through our thicker lines of defense."

"It's doubtful that they managed to do that," Winter remarked. Neither the White Fang or the Legion has the capabilities to fool our defenses."

"Wouldn't be so sure, not after you just learned someone managed to hack into your systems," Qrow said dryly. The vein in Winter's head pulsed.

"That would've required technology beyond their capabilities. The White Fang is too low level and while the Legion only has access to Earth technology." Earth, right, apparently that's the name of the place Walker was from. A weird name, but then again their planet was called Remnant. Apparently, people were just terrible at naming planets. "Earth's technology is advanced in many ways, surpassing ours in some, but its computing technology is relatively primitive. Nearly a century behind ours." James looked a bit embarrassed at this point and shifted the arm that had the weird gauntlet-terminal on it. "Even then, the Legion's understanding of technology is general is limited, as they eschew it. No. They took a longer trip around. This means that they risked Grimm infested territory."

"Question," Weiss said, raising her hand. "Grimm infestations around the Atlas borders are particularly harsh where the military has not established safe zones. Is there any chance that the Grimm might finish both groups off before we can get anywhere near them?" There was a hopeful tone to her voice. Qrow suppressed the urge to sigh in irritation. The girl was worried about her homeland being invaded, he wasn't going to hold that against her. Walker wasn't 100% wrong when he had accused him of being an asshole, but he wasn't that much of one.

"The White Fang will be leading them, and the White Fang has been active long enough to know how to avoid attracting Grimm," Blake said. "They're a global organization, and they operate across all four Kingdoms. It won't be that easy." Qrow glanced at the young girl out of the corner of his eye. Blake Belladonna. Now she was an interesting one. Daughter of the founder of the original White Fang, a supporter of the more radicalized version of it, a defector working to stop it. He wondered if Ruby and Yang knew. Ozpin had been let in on the secret, and Qrow himself had picked it up through piecing together scraps of information here and there. Ozpin had made him swear to stay silent on the matter, Blake had confided in Ozpin secretly after all.

Of all the people in the room, there was a strong argument to make that Blake was the most well informed on the White Fang. No doubt she had partaken in a trip from one continent to another, no doubt in a dinky little boat that might avoid aquatic Grimm by sheer virtue of being too insignificant. Qrow's mind drifted to what she might have been smuggling between borders if she had partaken in these missions. Weapons, explosives, maybe skilled operatives on wetwork assignments. Probably best not to judge her too much for that. There wasn't much point in being a hypocrite.

"Our thoughts exactly, which means we're back to square one, locating them," Ironwood said. "Qrow is a tracker without peer." My oh my, had he just heard a compliment from Jimmy? An honest sounding one at that. His grin grew. If Jimmy noticed it, he kept it hidden. "But even he can't pick up a trail that's gone this cold." Qrow's smile faded. Sadly, he was right. Being able to turn into a crow had perks that most couldn't imagine, but crows weren't omnipotent. "We feel confident, however, that they have actions planned in Mantle or the Mantle area. If they were planning on targeting anywhere else, they approached Atlas from the wrong angle or would have to pass through inner layers of defense. Considering they're even thicker than our outer layers, and the White Fang has never managed to properly operate within the inner territories effectively, I doubt the Legion would be able to help them penetrate those defenses."

"So. Uh. What are we doing?" Jaune asked. Qrow's attention turned onto the leader of Team JNPR. He really didn't know what that kid was doing at Beacon, let alone on this mission. The other seven students he could understand. Pyrrha was a prodigy that even he would struggle to beat, the redhead and the quiet one were talented amateurs, and Ruby's team had seen enough fights that they couldn't be classified as green anymore. He wouldn't say they were seasoned just yet, but they had enough raw talent and training that they wouldn't be liabilities. Even the Ice Queen's little sister. But the blonde kid? Yang had been more of a fighter than him when she was twelve. Walker hadn't had his Aura active for a month yet, and even he could take this kid. Everything Qrow had heard and seen about him suggested that he was just getting his feet wet, lacked training, and was generally clueless. Training wasn't worth nearly as much as field experience, but it was still something, and this kid barely had any. What was he doing here?

"At the moment, we're attempting to track down their movements to prepare for them," Ironwood said. As he spoke, he pressed a button on the table. A holographic map of the western half of Atlas appeared above it, displaying more military checkpoints than Qrow could count. "We're raising our security levels to as high as we reasonably can without causing a panic." Qrow took a moment to tune out Ironwood and check the reactions of everyone else.

The Ice Queen's eyes were darting to and fro on the map, no doubt checking the gauntlet of military positions for weaknesses. Yang, Ruby, and Nora all had their eyes on the screen, but the glaze that was slowly starting to build up over their eyes, Ren, Jaune, Pyrrha, and Walker seemed to have given up on that and were focusing on Ironwood, while Weiss was following the map with a look of gradually growing horror on her face. Blake had a deeply concerned look as her golden eyes flitted up and down the map. Qrow had a feeling this wasn't the first time she had checked a map of Atlas checkpoints for weaknesses.

"But there's always a chance of a small group or lone operative sneaking through," Ironwood said. "And after a good deal of thought, I've decided that this is a time where we must be proactive, we can't afford to wait for them to come to us. If we can't find them, we'll have to go to someone who will know where they are." He paused for a minute, wearing the same expression you had when you had something very unpleasant stuck in your throat. "I...will be arranging an effort to reach out to the Atlas branch of the White Fang in an attempt to learn where the infiltrators are."

"Sorry, what?" Qrow said dryly. "Atlas is the birthplace of the White Fang, specifically the violent variant, and your plan is for the Atlas military to reach out and ask them to sell their own out? I've spent a lot of time on and beyond the fringe Jimmy, and that's not how things work. Packs don't sell their own out." He was fairly certain he could feel Winter's eyes boring into him, but at the moment he didn't care. Ironwood always had a bit of a bad case of having his head in the clouds, but this was pushing it. There was no way that he was this blind. You didn't need to grow up in a bandit clan to figure this out.

"White Fang activity has been taking a strange turn ever since the attacks in Vale," Ironwood replied, his voice calm but stern. "It's a large organization spread out all over Remnant, its various branches operate semi-independently. Each one has its own unique style and manner of operating. But in the past few days, they've all gone rather quiet. We've seen no signs of vast movement as if they're mobilizing. If anything, we suspect they've gone into hiding. As if they're afraid."

"So what you're saying is that you think the ones who attacked Vale are radicals," Qrow said. "Ok. Not a baseless concept. But you're still missing the bigger picture here. Even if the Atlas branch of the White Fang isn't comfortable supporting the radicals, there's a big jump between them sitting around and not helping and selling their old pals out. It's a nasty little one-two punch, they don't like you and they'd be afraid that the rest of the White Fang might turn on them, assuming you don't stab them in the back the second you're done with them." Ironwood opened his mouth but Qrow beat him to the punch. "I know that you wouldn't do that, but they don't. They don't trust anyone who isn't a Faunus, but they trust the Atlas military the least of all. And I hate to point out the nasty subject no one wants to talk about, we're bringing in the thing the White Fang hates most of all. The Schnee family."

That got everyone in the room looking at him. Walker looked more confused than anything else, Qrow had a good feeling that he wasn't up to date on the controversies of the SDC, Winter looked wearily resigned, while the students looked shocked at him. "Jaques Schnee is infamous for Faunus abuse with his company, and your plan involves bringing both his daughters to the table. That's a good way for things to suffer a premature death if I've ever heard of one." He paused, taking in everyone looking at him. Someone had to say it.

"If I may," Ironwood said, his voice a guarded neutral, "I am not blind to the controversies of the SDC. If anything, it is for exactly that reason that I want Winter and Weiss both involved. We are extending a peace offering to them. If we approach the situation just right, it will be seen as an act of sincerity, a display of how dedicated we are."

"There's a benefit to being a disowned Schnee as well," Winter remarked dryly. "We may end up having a few shared opinions."

"And that's all well and good, if it works," Qrow retorted. It really could be frustrating to have to repeat the obvious over and over again. But apparently, most people just didn't get it. "But this is all assuming it doesn't blow up in your face in the first five seconds. Bonding over how much you hate your daddy isn't going to help much if they start shooting the second they see you. It-"

"Any chance I can interject?" Walker said. Qrow turned his attention onto him, feeling a twinge of irritation.

"What?" he asked.

"General, I think your plan is a good baseline, but it could use a bit of tweaking," Walker said, looking more at Ironwood than at Qrow. "But you said that you wanted to have a peace offering. What did you plan on bringing to the table to make the White Fang more cooperative?"

Ironwood straightened his back out. "I have a fair few proposals for them. A general amnesty for all crimes committed as members of the White Fang, a personal promise for me to utilize my political pressure in order to achieve some of their long term political goals, witness protection for those who fear for their lives. Of course, the negotiations would have an opening for them to make demands of their own, which I would happily accept if they were reasonable."

Walker nodded. "None of those are bad ideas, but you're gonna want something that'll get you at the table in the first place. Generally speaking, if you want a group who doesn't like you to do you a favor, I find the best way to go about it is to do them a favor first," James said. "Ideally without them having to ask. It goes down better that way, convinces them that you're opening up talks in good faith."

"And what would you recommend this favor be?" Qrow asked, his tone more neutral than it normally was. This wasn't a bad idea if Walker could back it up.

James got to his feet. "Figuring that out is half the struggle, the other half is getting it done. I've got some experience in this field. Gangs, warrior tribes, crime families, isolationist technophiles, you wouldn't believe the number of people whose good side I've had to get on. Sometimes the tensions were bad enough that people were two seconds away from shooting each other. Give me 24 hours and directions to the parts of Mantle where there are more Faunus than humans. I'll put my ear to the ground and see if I can come up with something."

"You've proven yourself capable, very well," Ironwood said. "I will have a subordinate prepare directions for you. Though I'd rather this excursion of yours be auxiliary to mine, not replacing it. Specialist Schnee will be taking Team RWBY and Team JNPR for the talks, as well as Qrow." At this, Ironwood swiveled and focused on Qrow with laser precision. "Who, to be utterly clear, will be in a subordinate position to Specialist Schnee and will act as scouting and position himself for long-range support. The talking will be left to her."

Qrow allowed himself a sly grin. Really. It was a little too easy to get Ironwood and Winter all wound up. "I'm all for Winter taking charge, but I really think it would be in everyone's best interest until you wait for me to butter them up first," James said. "Trust me, I've done this a dozen times before. I go in as a third party, get them to like me, make it so that they owe me a couple of favors. Then I say 'hey, I know you don't like those pricks over the hill, but they want to talk to you and I promise they're not going to start shit.' If you're a nobody, or openly affiliated with the people they hate, they toss you out on your ass. If you're lucky. But if you build bridges first, it makes things go down so much easier."

"Agreed, but time is of the essence Mr. Walker," Ironwood said. "You wanted 24 hours? You can have that, but I can't afford to wait any longer. The White Fang radicals are on the move, and the trail gets colder with every passing hour. While you are searching for a favor to do for them, Winter, Qrow, the students, and I will be attempting to arrange such a meeting."

"While I'm out there I can probably try and find-" James began, but Qrow interrupted him.

"Yeah, you're gonna want to leave finding their base of operations to me," he said smarmily. James shot him a look of annoyance, but he could already tell by the look on Ironwood's face that Walker was in for a disappointment. Right then and there, Ironwood had a face Qrow loved to see. The "I'm about to agree with Qrow and I just died a little inside" face.

"Mr. Walker, I don't mean to disrespect you, but Qrow will be far more adept than you at location local White Fang leaders within a day. It would be for the best if it was left to his expertise," Ironwood said sourly.

James's jaw looked rather rigid as he nodded. He pushed himself to his feet. "Well, seeing as I'm on a strict schedule, I better get going now. Is there anything else I should know?" Ironwood shook his head. "Ok, I'll be in contact. Pardon me, need to change before I head out. Just be sure to leave those directions by the door." With that, James gave a brief wave before he left the room.

"Considering the planned envoy has been delayed by 24 hours, we will continue this briefing tomorrow," Ironwood said. "You are all free to go. We will meet again 6 hours before James's deadline to make preparations to head out. Qrow? I want a word. Miss Nikos? I need a moment of your time too." Out of the corner of his eye, Qrow saw Winter looking at Ironwood in confusion. Qrow, on the other hand, knew exactly what was coming.

The others filed out, Ruby and Yang stopping for a second to give him a fistbump each, something he happily returned. Eventually, the room was empty except for him, Jimmy, and Pyrrha.

"Walker. I don't like him," Qrow said bluntly

"Why, because he has the audacity to not agree with you?" Ironwood said coldly.

"No, because he thinks he knows better when he doesn't," Qrow said. "He's been around the block where he's from, but doesn't know a thing about Remnant beyond the bare basics, and he goes running off whenever he feels like it. The Maidens, Salem, the Relics, he doesn't know anything about any of them, and he's got surface-level information about the White Fang and Raven and he thinks he can make judgment calls about what the best course of action is. He's been here how long? Two weeks? The man didn't even understand the concept of a scroll when he got here. But he feels comfortable enough to get uppity when we've all been doing this longer than he has? Yeah, it's a bit more complicated than him not agreeing with me." He threw his hands up. "Still, maybe he'll be able to not screw things up this time. Maybe he won't idly chuck orders out of the window this time."

"Following instructions is suddenly something you care about?" Ironwood asked. "You yourself seem rather selective about when you decide which orders you listen to. Ozpin is your only consistency on that front."

"Um," Pyrrha said, awkwardly interjecting herself into the conversation. "Should I go?" Her hands were nervously clasped in front of her and she looked as if she didn't quite know what she was doing there. It felt wrong, Ozpin choosing her to inherit what was left of the Fall Maiden's power. It wasn't fair to her. It wasn't fair to Amber. But they were out of options.

"No," Ironwood said apologetically. "Please, forgive us. The four of us just need to have a little talk." Ironwood approached the exit, lifting a panel to reveal a keypad. He typed in a quick code and there was an audible click as the door clocked. He then entered another code, his hand dancing across the keypad with regular familiarity. There was a clink and the sound of shifting metal from the other side of the room.

"Ah. James. Qrow. It's good to see you again." Qrow grinned. A hidden blast door had opened at the far side of the room, wide enough for two people to move through at once. Normally it had been Jimmy's private panic room in case of an attack. At the moment, it was currently being used as a hidden compartment for smuggling goods. The goods they were smuggling being Ozpin and the life support pod containing Amber. Qrow looked at it sadly. She would've been a great Maiden.

Ozpin strolled out of the panic room, his cane in one hand and a noticeably empty coffee mug in the other, and sat down. He looked a bit ruffled, typical for someone who had spent a few days cooped up in a small room. But his resolve hadn't faltered. "We're in Atlas then? We're moving forward with cornering the Legion?"

"Yeah, the hobo with a gun fetish you picked up is on it," Qrow said. "The Ice Queen will stand to take over if he doesn't come back in one piece and she's due to do the talking at the main meeting. Honestly, things would go down more smoothly if you were heading it. You've brought entire nations together before." Pyrrha's eyes widened. Qrow supposed it would take time for her to adjust. She had been hit with everything there was to know at once. Originally, Ozpin had wanted to take things slow with her, but the Legion creating a two-front conflict had escalated things. "And I assume the second this talk is over I'll be heading out to flap around looking for the less crazy White Fang."

"That was the plan, yes," Ironwood said. "The plan also involves you not being in the room when the talks happen. You'll be outside whatever building it takes place in. Keeping an eye on the matter and ready to bail Winter, Walker, and the students out should things go amiss." Ironwood locked eyes with Qrow. "You are peerless in your tracking and Huntsman skills Qrow. You are also peerless in your lack of tact and diplomatic tendencies. This is a simple allocation of talents."

"Well half of what you said was actually worth the brain cells that died recording it," Qrow said dryly. "I'm not saying I would suck at talking. I just find it funny that you think the Ice Queen is any better, considering that she's got less of a stick up her rear and more an entire tree."

A flash of outrage flashed across Ironwood's face, really it was too easy to get him mad, but it vanished. "I trust her to be firm, professional, and to represent me without fault," Ironwood said. "And that is all that need be said. The matter is closed."

Qrow already had three snide remarks planned when Ozpin interrupted. "Qrow. We're not in Vale anymore. We're in Atlas. A country where General Ironwood has two council seats as headmaster and general. His decision is final here. And we have far more important topics to discuss." Qrow relented. For now.

"First of all," Ozpin said, giving Pyrrha a sympathetic glance. "Ms. Nikos? Are you all right?" Phyrra gave a stiff nod. "Have you thought about our last conversation? Your decision? I already told you, it's-"

"With all due respect, Professor Ozpin," Phyrra blurted out, her voice choked. "I don't want to talk about it right now. I-I need time to think." Qrow looked away. He wasn't unsympathetic to what the kid was going through. He had been in the same position once, except his powers hadn't belonged to another. "Just, please. Not now. I want to think more about what I can do to help." She inhaled deeply. "So. You said you think the White Fang was serving Salem?"

"Yes, emphasis on was," Ozpin said. "Qrow was tracking a small group that he would bet his life was working for her. They were the ones who bullied the White Fang into line. Considering the stakes, we have to consider Salem is moving to retaliate, along with her unknown forces. Considering the goal the Legion is no doubt pursuing with the White Fang."

Ironwood look at Ozpin in confusion. "What do you mean, Ozpin. The attacks by the Legion and the White Fang have nothing to do with Salem."

"James, haven't you realized it yet?" Ozpin asked sternly. "That the Legion views women as inferior and being unworthy of combat positions, but has one in their ranks as a prominent front-line member? That they've abandoned their position in Vale and headed straight for Atlas as soon as they couldn't kill the man they hated? That they've gained the support of those who once sided with the woman who attacked Amber? That they know everything the White Fang knows and maybe more? The same secrets their old master would've whispered to them? That this whole time they've yet to truly expose themselves to risk, letting the White Fang bear the brunt of the casualties?"

Ozpin gave a deep, weary sigh. "James. They're here for the Winter Maiden. Maybe even the Relic of Creation. And Salem will not stand either falling into someone else's hands. She'll be sending everyone she has in full force." He adjusted his glasses. "Very soon, Atlas is going to become a battleground."

XXXXX

Mantle was a run-down shit hole. There was no getting around it. Every time James turned a corner he saw something that made him suspect that the people who lived here only did so because they couldn't afford to move anywhere else. Uptown had been on par with the city of Vale. The streets had been pristine, the people well dressed, and active businesses had been happily catering to them all. James couldn't help but notice that many of the businesses and people living there had a rather upper class look to them. And when he had moved out of those areas, the quality of the city drove off a cliff.

The thing that truly stood out to him about this city was that it wouldn't have looked out of place on Earth. Half of the structures were crumbling or had partially collapsed, complete with condemned signs, the streets were cracked and marked with potholes, and the people were shabbily dressed and looked miserable. Nearly every corner seemed to have a factory or a mining facility that had been abandoned for years, rust coating all of them and garbage idly blowing through them. A month ago, this place wouldn't have looked too out of the ordinary to him, at least the infrastructure wasn't as bad as Freeside. But he had seen Vale and uptown Mantle. That had given him enough context to know that this city was well below the standards set by Remnant.

He flicked through his scroll as he walked down a cracked sidewalk, taking care not to bump into anyone. He was still struggling with the thing, he couldn't help but notice that the fifteen-year-old Ruby was twice as fast with it as him, but he was starting to figure out the functions. The search function was proving to be ungodly useful, it was like having a treasure trove of information in his hand, which was what he needed. According to this, Mantle had once been the capital of Atlas, to the point where the kingdom had originally shared a name for it. But when the capital changed to the city of Atlas, much of the industry had gone with it. And it turned out much more Faunus lived in Mantle than Atlas.

Slipping his scroll away, James continued to walk. He had changed out of his armor and into some pre-War business clothing that he had "liberated" from Benny's closet. Nothing too fancy, a typical business suit set up, colored white with a tie and a matching fedora. He would've been the spitting image of a respectable Pre-War businessman. Albeit one who very badly needed to take his suit to the dry-cleaners. Still, in Mantle, a stained suit fit right in, and right now he didn't want the attention his normal outfit would've drawn.

To further ensure that he was flying under the radar, he had left most of his weapons behind. He had only brought A Light Shining in Darkness, which was strapped in its usual hidden spot on his back. It felt a little nerve-wracking, to be deprived of so much firepower in a world where superpowered teenagers had proven they were capable of literally cutting him in half. But he was out here to build bridges. If he couldn't go a few hours out here without needing a few hundred rounds, he had failed in his mission.

Clenching his teeth in displeasure, this city was far colder than what he was used to, he glanced upward. ED-E was trailing behind him, maintaining cover using rooftops. He was supposed to be incognito, an eyebot hovering over his shoulder would make him stick out, but he was hardly going to leave his backup behind. ED-E saw him turn his head and made a noticeable nod in response, assuring James that everything was going according to plan so far. Smiling, James turned his attention back to the road.

He had been told that while Faunus lived all over Mantle, they were most dense in the south-eastern portion of the city. He had spent the last hour working his way in that direction, and slowly but surely he could notice the population ratio tilting in that direction. The farther he went, the more animal parts he saw. Men and women with an extra set of ears, a set of horns, some even having a set of gills or more dramatically noticeable parts, such as razor-sharp teeth or different colored skin. That was the first thing James noticed. The second was that the deeper into Mantle he went, the tenser it became.

Most of the Faunus he saw were rushing to their destinations, barely stopping to make eye contact with anyone. The few that did catch his eye promptly gasped in terror before crossing the street to get away from him. One woman practically dragged her children away from James, looking back at him like she expected him to break into a run after her. James didn't have much to base this on, but he had a theory that things hadn't been this bad a month ago.

The source of the tension, or at least one of the sources, wasn't exactly hard to spot. Every block had at least one building tagged with graffiti that spouted some sort of anti-Faunus rhetoric. It ranged from crude "no more fucking animals" to more pretentious "time to cleanse the barbarians." There was one more that he kept seeing repeat itself, however. A severed white wolf's head, blood gushing from its stump, had been spray-painted on at least half a dozen different buildings. Every time James saw it, the same phrase accompanied it. "The Hunters have found their quarry." James made a noise of disgust.

Feeling fairly certain that he was in Faunus territory now, he rounded a corner and found himself facing a bar. It was as good a place to start as any. Walking underneath the sign, "Little Master M's Bar" he pushed open the front door. It was a fairly big bar, but one that had seen better days. The furniture was worn and chipped, there were a couple of noticeable holes in the wall, and the lighting was just barely enough for him to see. Only a few people were inside clutching at drinks, not surprising considering it was only 2 PM. Casually, he strolled up to the bar.

The bartender, a woman with a thick set of whiskers under her nose, looked at him, fear dawning on her face. "Look, I don't want any trouble," she started, holding up her hands defensively. All of the patrons turned their heads in his direction. Most were fearful or apprehensive, though two in the corner caught James's eye. A man and a woman, both with dark skin and the man with black tail curled around his legs, glared at him. If the woman had a Faunus trait, he couldn't see it. He could see her reaching for something on her back, though.

"And I'm not looking to cause any, I just want to wet my whistle," James said, reaching the bar and taking a seat. "Whiskey. Double, please. It's been a long day." He might as well have one drink. He had exhausted the bottle he had gotten from Junior's bar. "I just got laid off," he lied. "Gonna have to break the bad news when I get home. Just wanna pretend that I didn't get fired until the end of the workday." Things would go better if they didn't see him as a human when they weren't, but just another schmuck down on his luck.

The bartender still looked uncertain, so James slipped his hand into his pocket and placed a hundred Lien note on the counter. "I don't think I'll be stopping with just the one," he said, giving a weary grin. "Surprise me with the brand." The bartender gingerly picked up the note, glancing twice at James as she did. Stowing the money out of sight, she bent down before standing back up with a double shot glass and a dusty bottle. "Cheers," James said as a drink was poured for him. No one was looking at him anymore, except for the duo in the corner. The rest had gone back to their drinks, while those two still had suspicion in their eyes. It was an improvement from naked hostility, but still.

Inwardly, James grinned. The entire day he had been keeping an eye out for someone who looked like they were a part of the White Fang. They were the first prime suspects he had found. Sitting in the corner of a primarily Faunus bar, glaring at a human for walking in, one of them ready to attack if he posed a threat? If they weren't members of the White Fang, at the very least they were likely to know a good deal about them. Still, this was something he would have to do carefully. Everything would be for naught if he pissed them off.

So he relaxed, sipped his drink, and enjoyed the atmosphere as best he could. He had certainly done his best to unwind at shittier bars, at least this one had heating. Slowly, time ticked by. James paced himself to only take the tiniest of sips from his drink, to the point where it took him the better part of an hour to finish it. As this happened, a steady stream of customers filtered in and out, but the bar was never at more than one-third capacity. He glanced at the bartender. "Slow day?"

She shrugged, eyeing him warily. "Things don't really pick up till the workday ends. You're early." He nodded before tapping the bar. Without a word, the bartender filled up his second glass. The bottle wasn't even back on the counter when the door slammed open and rowdy yelling filtered in. James had been around for long enough to know when a crowd like this entered a bar, they would always end up being a bunch of assholes.

Silently, he glanced over his shoulders. A crowd of seven or so was making its way through the front door. They were wearing all black uniforms that were vaguely military, but it all had a rather ramshackle look to it. It looked disorganized and bloated as if they were more concerned with aesthetics than practicality. Vests, fatigues pouches, ballistic goggles, balaclavas, gas masks (with no filters) helmets, knives strapped to their arms, one of them looking like a Karambit, and all sorts of other attachments were being sported by these group with no rhyme or reason to it. And all of them had visible guns in holsters. Nearly all of them had a mixture of pistols and rifles, some with two pistols, but one of them had eschewed a longarm in favor of a single pistol. That one caught James's eye the most. His uniform looked far more coordinated, he held himself with far more dignity than his whooping companions, and he had a set of dog tags dangling from his neck. That one was ex-military, without a doubt. The rest were mere amateurs playing soldier.

The group, mainly men with two women amongst them, piled onto a table and began loudly talking amongst themselves. They were all young, only the ex-military one looked like he was older than thirty. Judging by the way he sat at the head of the table and the respectful looks the others gave him, he was their leader. James turned back to the bar, weighing his options when he saw the bartender frozen with fear. "You ok?" he asked.

"Hey, whose dick do I have to suck to get service in this shithole!?" one of the newcomers shouted. James stifled a groan. They were those types. Under normal circumstances, he probably would've said something by now, but he had to play his cards carefully. He reached for his drink when he heard the screeching of a chair and heavy footfalls. "I know you're one of the ones with only two ears, but I think you need to listen a little more closely. We want some service, shitty as it may be."

The footfalls stopped directly to James's right. He glanced up. A kid that couldn't be older than twenty was standing right next to him, a cocky smile on his lips. Despite his uniform mimicking that of a soldier, he had left his arms bare, giving James a clear view of the tattoos on his bicep. A decapitated and bleeding wolf's head, along with several tattoos of skulls. That, combined with the fact that the arm in question was none too subtly resting on the grip to the kid's sidearm, painted a very ugly picture. James did a quick assessment of the situation. For whatever reason, this kid didn't have a longarm, only that sidearm.

"You eyeing my piece, old man?" The kid was looking directly at him now, his cocky smile growing even larger. "Well, take a good look at it. And remember what they say about people who lay with dogs." He lifted his hand off of the weapon, showing it off to James. "Hang out with the animals all you want, just don't act surprised when people mistake you for one."

A kernel of anger started to fester in James as he glanced down at the weapon. Then he did a double-check. It was the most absurd thing he had seen in a long time, a goliath of a revolver that looked as if it would be bigger than his entire head. James stared at the weapon in disbelief. Something that size looked like it had been designed for a Super Mutant or someone in power armor. If this idiot tried to shoot it, he would dislocate his arm. If he was lucky and didn't break it clean in half. "Yeah, awesome custom job I got done. Remember this and stop by a human bar next time, grandpa." He turned back to the bartender. "Now then, I think we deserve drinks on the house for the shitty reception. That's fair, isn't it?" His hand reached back down for his revolver.

James beat him to it. Maybe the White Fang would appreciate him putting his foot down here, maybe they would view it as disrespectful and patronizing. He would figure that out later. His hand closed around the grip and he tore it out of its holster. The boy's eyes widened as his insufferable smirk transformed into a snarl of anger. "You son of a-" he began, winding up for a punch. It was all he got out before James drove his free fist into his stomach. The boy doubled over in pain, clutching at his stomach, his mouth open in a dry gasp. Dropping the revolver on the counter, James surged forward, grabbed the kid by the hair, and slammed his head into the counter. He crumpled to the floor, screeching and holding his head in pain.

But he had gone and kicked the hornet's nest. Spinning on the spot, he dove for his holdout pistol and ripped it free. Bringing it to bear, he aimed at the table where the rest of the wannabe soldiers were sitting. Sure enough, they had all been rising to draw their weapons. Fortunately, most of them were not well-practiced, and James had managed to beat them to the punch even with their head start. Most of them had gone for their rifles instead of their pistols, and that had cost them precious seconds. It was only complicated by how they clearly lacked experience drawing and aiming quickly, many of them were fumbling as they attempted to rip their longarms out of their holsters. Even the ones who had been idly walking around with their rifles resting on their shoulders, around half of them, fumbled as they attempted to ready up. Their leader, however, had not been so slow, and a pistol of his own was leveled around the same time James's was.

The leader's eyes narrowed as he firmly gripped his pistol in a two-handed grip. He and James were the only ones holding their weapons properly, his lackeys were showing weak arm and legwork all around. The two had gone for their pistols were a particular eyesore. One was holding his lone pistol in a single hand, while the other had one in each hand. And James very much doubted that they had Aura.

James's finger hovered tensely over A Light Shining in Darkness's trigger. He had only been in combat twice with Aura, he was still getting a grip on how much damage it could take. These odds weren't impossible, but he couldn't afford to get cocky. If it came to a shootout, he had to end things fast. He didn't have his armor and there were too many civilians in the area.

It never came to that, however. The pair in the corner sprang to their feet, the woman producing a pair of knives with Dust cylinders, while the man drew and aimed an SMG at the pseudo soldiers. A few pseudo soldiers turned to face them instead, and they betrayed their lack of expertise. Even from his distance, he could see many of them were aiming their weapons in a way where they were more likely to hit each other than their targets. "Get. Out," the woman hissed. "And tell the rest of your kind that Hunters aren't welcome here. If your little gang makes one more foray like this, there will be retaliation." As she spoke, a forked tongue slid out of the woman's mouth for a split second, flicking aggressively. "I've seen the handiwork of what you people did. Don't test us. You're on thin ice with us as it is."

"We can take them, easily," the man said. "They aren't Huntsmen, just a bunch of punks with guns. You've seen what they've done, let's return the favor." A few jeers came from the Hunters in response to this, many of them looking as if they were spoiling for a fight.

"Everyone, hold your fire." The leader of the Hunters moved to the front of the throng, giving a small smile as he did. "We aren't Huntsmen or Huntresses, no. But be careful. We're only part of a greater whole. We go missing, others come looking to see what happened. They might even send the Blue Bull. You think you're up to handling him? I don't think that you are." Both of the Faunus tensed up as he spoke. This Blue Bull person had a reputation it seemed. "So. I suggest you stand down unless you want me to make a call."

"If Mr. Bull is anything like the kindergarten class you're chaperoning today, it'll be a miracle if he doesn't die tripping down a staircase before he even gets here," James said. He nudged the boy by his feet with his foot, rolling him over. "Besides, I think a message has been made quite clear that you should fuck off, post-haste." An idea was forming in his head. A perfect way to make a good first impression with the White Fang and deal with these idiots. Frankly, they came off like a pack of murderers just waiting for an excuse to shoot someone.

The leader's eyes swiveled back onto him. A good five seconds passed, the leader sizing him up before he spoke in a surprisingly calm voice. "I understand my friend there was quite rude to you, it's understandable you're frustrated with him." James wasn't quite sure how the man mixed up frustrated with fundamentally outraged against, but then again he looked like the type to kiss his own ass. "But let me get you some advice right now. You're siding with the wrong people. We're looking out for people like you, keeping you safe from animals that can't control their baser instincts."

"Does the word projection mean anything to you people?" James said dryly. Here it came, the same speech that the abusive assholes always had.

The leader pressed on, ignoring James's comment. "The White Fang's made it clear that they want a war with humans. We didn't start this fight, and we're not going to just lie down and watch while innocent people are slaughtered. They're gonna come for all of us one day. Hopefully, before that day you'll have come to your senses. There will be a place in the Hunters for you that day, and I hope you consider that. You'll only get knives in your back standing where you are now. You'll always be a human to them, an outsider. Not one of them, therefore the first to go."

"You done pontificating?" James said, feeling a little numb to the man's declarations. It was hardly the first time he had heard such rhetoric, and it all felt tired and hollow to him. While he was keeping his weapon trained on the leader, he saw the boy start to get to his feet. The fact that he was about to try and tackle James might've been a surprise if he didn't look James up and down before snarling loudly. As it stood, he made it a foot before he received a solid kick to the chest, sending him sprawling back to the ground. "Because you really should get dipshit out of here before he does something to get himself killed."

The boy glared at James, pushing himself up into a sitting position. "I bet you suck cock."

James shrugged. "Not really. Not a fan of the taste. There are other things you can do with cocks besides sucking them you know. You should know, you've been trying to slap everyone in the face with yours since you walked in here."

The boy opened his mouth, outrage twisting his face, but the leader cut him off. "Dorian? Shut up. You were an idiot just now. You're ate-up. Separated from the unit, left your weapon exposed, and then you went and lost it. I told you a thousand times that if we want to make an impression, we need to present a unified front. You compromised that front." His eyes narrowed as the anger left Dorian. The boy started to cower. "We're going to have a long talk when we get back." The leader holstered his weapon. "Back to base everyone. This one was a wash."

None of the younger Hunters seemed to very much agree with this plan of actions, but a quick glare from the leader was enough to cow them. They holstered their weapons, a few of them jeering at the two Faunus with drawn weapons, before slowly funneling out of the bar. James never took his eyes off of them, concerned that he could be on the receiving end of a hail of bullets if he turned his back. Thankfully, it never came to that. There was the sound of starting engines, and he saw several cars speed off outside. Sighing, he slid his pistol back into his holster.

"Any chance we could talk to you in private?" The cat Faunus and what James assumed was a snake Faunus had approached him, the man still keeping his SMG trained on the entrance. The woman had been the one to speak and was currently giving him an appraising look. Now that he was closer, he could see that the woman was even older than he was. At the very minimum, she was in her sixties.

He paused. Her tone was hard to read, and he wasn't sure if he was about to be thanked or threatened. Well, either way, he was going to have to take a risk. This was what he had come out here for. "Sure." The older woman nodded and gestured back to their corner table, very much isolated from the rest of the bar. The few patrons that weren't silently shaking at their tables notably averted their eyes as James followed the two Faunus back to where they had been sitting.

"First things first, introductions are in order," the woman said briskly. She pointed to herself. "Kanton Peetal." She pointed to her companion. "Baghanda Kaalee. And you are?"

"James Walker," James said. For half a moment he had considered lying and saying that his last name was Boone or Ganon. But he had been in Remnant for such a short time that there wasn't much point in a false name. "I don't mean to jump the gun, but I get the feeling you two are a bit cross with me. If so, I'm from out of town, from off the continent actually, so I apologize if I crossed some form of line."

Kanton frowned. "That's saying a bit much. We're grateful for what you did, but we're in a delicate situation right now. You're not from here? You've not heard of the Hunters then?"

"I take it they're not Huntsman or Huntresses," James replied. Though he had a feeling the close name was an intentional move.

"No. Local gang. Mantle has more gangs than you and I have wrinkles, Human and Faunus both," Kanton replied. "A year ago the Hunters were just another one, a bunch of stupid kids with no future prospects starting things. It was prostrating mostly, nothing serious. But ever since the White Fang attacks in Vale, things have been escalating." Kanton took a look around the room, gestured to Baghanda, who was still watching the door and turned back to James. As she continued, her voice was a barely audible whisper. "A bunch of Atlas military types found them, six or seven. Took them all under their wings. We haven't heard anything solid but at least two of them received dishonorable discharges. And they've been teaching the Hunters military tactics and discipline."

"Military tactics?" James asked, feeling incredulous. "Those jokers? If these soldiers are teaching, they're doing a terrible job. That kid at the bar was the type to stick his revolver down the front of his pants and accidentally shoot his dick off."

Despite clearly attempting to stay somber and serious, a small chuckle slipped out of Kanton. "True. I admit that is true. But that was just their latest batch of recruits. They've adopted quite a few military traditions, one of them being basic training. The ex-military ones round up a group of idiots who want to join and take them on the rounds through Mantle, looking for a scrap. Soft targets, something to get them a feel for what they'll be doing. After a few days of that, they head back to their headquarters for training."

"The attack on Vale wasn't that long ago, there's no way they've managed to get a couple dozen kids up to combat readiness with that little time," James said, mentally putting the pieces together. He had seen what only partial training created, a rather ineffective soldier. The NCR had shipped boys and girls like that into the Mojave by the hundreds.

"No, you're right," Kanton said, her lips narrowing in a frown. "But their older batches aren't common garden thugs anymore. Crack soldiers are still a step up, and in large enough numbers they're a threat. But that's nothing compared to their ace in the hole." Her entire face tightened, her tongue slithering out to flicker again. "That Blue Bull. Most of the ex-soldiers were rank and file. He was a specialist." James's stomach sank. Specialists were Huntsman and Huntresses in the Atlas military. The seven soldiers weren't anything he hadn't faced before, but a super-powered special forces operative? That was a whole other level.

"And they hold the Bull over you?" James asked, still trying to process the thought.

"With smiles on their faces," Baghanda growled. "We could take him and all of the Hunters if we weren't spread so thin. But every two-bit Human gang with a grudge is on the prowl for Faunus blood thanks to what happened in Vale. Someone dies at least daily, usually, it's worse. Drive-bys, arson, more people being jumped than I can count. But the Hunters? They're the worst." He glanced at Kanton. "Show him. I hope he's got a strong stomach."

Kanton nodded solemnly before reaching into a pocket and producing a scroll. Tapping it, she flipped it and then showed it to her. James had seen enough death in his time to brace himself for what he was sure was coming, but it still hit hard. Kanton slowly flicked through photos as he watched, each one of different people in the same situation. Dead, their backs against a bloodstained wall, their stomachs torn open, their innards spilled. There were no other wounds, the damage to their guts had been the fatal wound. A slow and painful way to go, no doubt done on purpose. As he looked, something began to stir inside James. He remembered the Hunters, the young kids, their leader, Dorian. He remembered how much delight Dorian had taken in tormenting the bartender, how frightened she had been. No doubt both of them had been thinking of what the Bull had done. His hands clenched.

"That's what the Bull Blue does," Kanton said softly. "Never anywhere near places that are under protection, but we can't be everywhere in Mantle at once. And the Faunus that are stuck living in human-dominated areas? There's not much we can do for them unless they're willing to leave everything behind to take shelter here; most of them can't. Oh, and sometimes we just find one or two people with bullet holes in their heads." She flicked and a few more pictures appeared. All of them depicted corpses that appeared to have been executed from behind at close range. James fought back the urge to spew out a string of angry cuss words.

"So we're stuck," Baghanda said bitterly. "Playing defense. It's taking everything we have just to keep places like this safe. We escalate it anywhere, even when it's not the Hunters, they'll send the Blue Bull into Faunus neighborhoods and let him run wild. We'd be able to put him down, but not until a few dozen Faunus were dead." He looked at James sternly. "We're telling you this because they won't care if it's a Human or a Faunus. A Hunter or another human gang member ends up dead, the Bull goes off his leash. We need you to not mess things up for us, they're hard enough as it is."

"And I assume local law enforcement isn't doing squat," he remarked. That got him a bitter laugh from Baghanda.

"The Human police putting their necks on the line for the Faunus ghettos. Good one," he said. "No, they don't bother investigating much of what happens here." He grit his teeth. "Unless it's a Human. Then they make time. Nothing for all those people the Bull gored, but pretty students get all the media attention. So just...if you want to help we're not in a position where we can say no, ok? You seem all right for a Human, but you need to listen." James wondered if that last statement could be anymore loaded.

Kanton noticed as well. "Not everyone who wants Faunus equality hates Humans," she said hurriedly, with the voice of one who was trying to ease a bruised ego. "We work directly with a couple of Humans running humanitarian aid, hundreds of homeless Faunus have a place to sleep because of them. But most Humans are apathetic to what we're going through." She gave a frustrated flick of her tongue. "Hate I understand. I know what it's like to hate people. To just not care though? It's maddening."

"I understand," James said. "I won't cause any problems for you." He got to his feet. His fists were squeezing so tightly that they were beginning to shake.

At once, Kanton raised her hands. "You don't need to leave, you've done enough to show that you're not an enemy. We just want you to be careful."

"I know," he said. "It's just that I'm a bit frustrated right now. Those pictures got me in a bad mood and I need to stretch my legs before I do something stupid." He gestured to the counter. "I think I overpaid for my drink. Feel free to buy whatever you want on my tab." With that, he walked off. His head pounding, wishing he had gone back to finish his whiskey first, James walked out of the bar.

He didn't get far before Kanton caught up with him. "I assume that you know what organization Baghanda and I belong to? We didn't exactly bother hiding it."

James stopped, turning to face her. "White Fang?" Kanton nodded. Rolling up her sleeve, she showed James a tattoo of a red wolf head with three claw marks behind it. It was wrinkled and worn, Kanton was apparently a veteran. "Look, I know you guys had nothing to do with the attacks in Vale, ok? I didn't come here to start shit. So long as you don't start killing civilians, I couldn't care less that you're in the White Fang." That wasn't entirely the truth, he was very glad that he had found a White Fang member, but now was not the time to explain what his mission was. He had only established very basic ties.

"I don't think you mean ill, but want you to remember something." As she did, something odd happened to her eyes. Her pupils were flooded with a veritable rainbow of colors for the briefest of seconds. James felt dizzy just looking at them, to the point where he staggered and had to brace himself against a nearby wall just to stay standing. "I have a little trick to make you forget everything incriminating. I'm sorry, but we just met. I can only trust you so much. If I need to use this on you, I will. Don't give me a reason."

James slowly forced himself back up. "Noted," he said groggily. He couldn't help but reflect that this was about as warm as he could expect.

"Very well. Mr. Walker? If you want my advice, get out of this city," she said. Her voice wasn't cruel. It was tired. "Nothing is waiting for you here but pain and misery. If the Hunters don't kill you for defying them, you'll get jumped by a Faunus gang that's trying to even the score. Wherever in Vale you came from, I promise you it's a better place than this." She grimaced. "I've got too many people to look after. You? Find something better."

James's anger subsided for a moment. A brief moment. "I'm going to go clear my head, I'll be back later tonight. I hope you'll still be there."

"Oh, I will. This is one of the most popular bars in Faunus neighborhoods. I need to keep it safe." She glowered. "Now that Adam has made everything so much more difficult for us." Giving a nod, James walked off. He crossed the street and turned the corner before ducking into an alley. He promptly leaned up against the wall and stared at nothing. The images he had looked at flashed in his head. They were all random and ill-planned out acts of spite that accomplished next to nothing. But they still had the same level of cruelty as he had come to expect from the Legion.

He silently stood there in the alley as time ticked by. Half an hour passed and he didn't move. Then he heard the familiar humming noise. Glancing up, he saw ED-E floating down to him from the rooftops. "They didn't see me."

James's body tensed. "Which way did they go?"

XXXXX

Raven's eyes narrowed. She was kneeling in her tent in her tribe's temporary fortifications, her table ladened with teacups and tiny morsels. Three men in simple traveling clothes were kneeling on the other side of it, one of them holding a briefcase. They had arrived earlier that day, being guided by one of her own. Her response to this had to be angry, for outsiders being let into the Branwen Tribe's territory without her permission. The only reason Mann hadn't been punished more harshly is that he had had enough common sense to have blindfolded them and the strangers had claimed they were bearing gifts.

She had given them an hour of her time and made it very clear that she was counting every second used up. They had presented themselves as members of Caesar's Legion, a new power in the region who wanted her help. But not only were they not from the area, they claimed to not even be from Remnant itself, but from another world called Earth. Frankly, it struck her like they were trying to pull a fast one on her. "I understand your apprehension," the middle one, a man named Gabban, said. "These are dangerous times. But rest assured that Caesar's Legion views you as nothing but a potential ally. Indeed, we have heard many things about you. You are one of the few in Remnant who shares Caesar's enlightened vision of the world. The strong thrive, the weak serve them." He smiled. "And there are few stronger than the tribe that harbors the Spring Maiden."

"And you know about the Spring Maiden...how exactly?" As she spoke, her hand slowly tightened around the hilt of her sword. Gabban noticed.

"A certain Professor Lionheart," Gabban said, a little more quickly than he normally spoke. "He is a coward, and not a particularly smart one." Raven made a small, annoyed noise. Gabban's assessment of Professor Lionheart matched her own. "It was rather simple really. Recently we have acquired allies in the White Fang, freeing them from the grip of a mysterious outsider called Cinder. They had been kept in the dark, but they were able to point us in the direction if Lionheart, who was originally to be their contact for an upcoming operation. All my leader Vulpes had to do was approach him and say that he had been sent by Cinder. He freely answered any and all questions that we had after that point. Even those he thought were obvious."

Gabban smirked, forgetting his fear. "It was pitiful. A teacher of warriors cowering in his office because of a few words. He let loose such precious secrets, his profligate oaths cast aside to save his own skin. And we learned such wondrous secrets from him." Gabban paused. Hesitation flitted across his face. "Wondrous and terrible. Maidens, Relics, Gods." He swallowed. "Salem."

"So, you know about Salem then," Raven said, her grip loosening by a tiny amount. Gabban nodded. "Then I can be forward. Your Legion has been boasting about how strong it is. Do you intend to fight her?"

Gabban looked taken aback. "Of course we aren't." That caught Raven by surprise. With all their boasting, she had expected them to be as foolhardy as Ozpin in thinking Salem could be defeated. "Mighty Caesar has his uses for this world, but they are limited in range," Gabban continued. "He will take the gifts and tools of Remnant and bring them back to Earth.

"And how exactly does he intend to get back home?" Raven asked. "This Earth of yours?"

"The portal is on the other side, and under our control," Gabban said. "Communication with it is very difficult but doable. Micro-portals can be opened that are capable of transmitting radio waves. The nature of this requires that the far side to be the one to initiate communications, and they are under strict orders to do so only at pre-designated times. Lest our communications are intercepted. But on the day of our mission into Atlas, the far team has strict orders to open the portal, enabling us to escape back to Earth."

He smiled widely. "And there, Raven? Aura has not been discovered on the far side. You have free reign to be an unrivaled goddess of conquest, second only to Caesar himself. With the Spring Maiden at your side, Caesar has stated that you are free to plunder and seize any land not already under his control. Do as you see fit with the populace, Caesar only asks that you consider selling some of the healthier ones to him. He is more than willing to pay a fair price for such an act. But the true gift Caesar offers you is not this. It is freedom. Freedom from the fear of Salem. For after Remnant has exhausted all of its value to Caesar, he will cut the connection. The two will be severed, and we on the right side will be forever spared the blight of Salem. Free to build a world where the strong thrive and the weak do not hinder their growth."

Raven, for the first time in nearly two decades, was at a loss for words. She had let Gabban in out of curiosity, feeling that it was unlikely that he would be able to offer her anything that she did not already have. He had managed to surprise her. A world without Salem. A tempting offer. She rebounded quickly. "This is assuming I even believe your claims about another world," she said, keeping her tone guarded and neutral. There was a good chance he was trying to play her for a sucker. "Another dimension? It sounds like a childish fantasy."

"But of course," Gabban said, giving a small bow. "It is why Caesar was so careful in picking his gifts." With that, the man holding the briefcase moved forward, setting said case on the table. With a flick, he unlocked and opened it. Inside were a pair of strange rifles, with brass bodies and several tubes haphazardly running from one end to the other. Instead of a magazine, odd yellow cells were pressed into their bottoms, and instead of a barrel, there was a needle extending out of a tube that was crackling with green energy.

Aside from the odd weapons, there was a stack of documents bound together with a leather strap. "A pair of plasma rifles, and documents from Earth. Old maps and geographical papers. Caesar was thoughtful when providing his gifts, he has laid out territories that would be ideal for you to conquer. Much of Washington and Oregon are ripe for you to take as you please. The only tribe in the area is a pitiful and weak tribe known as the Great Khans. You will find them to be easy pickings with a plentiful bounty." He smiled. "Word has it they have discovered horses up in northern Washington. Beasts of burden that you would no doubt serve you greatly."

Raven idly scooped up the papers, undid the strap, and began to rifle through them. If this was a scam, it had a lot of work put into it. There were several maps of a western coastal area, many labeling an area called "America" some doing the same but with newer marks regarding a "New California Republic." The paper was aged and wrinkled while the ink was faded in a way that suggested age. The marks regarding the republic, while newer than the rest, still had wear and tear that suggested they were a few years old. The dissonance tore at Raven. This all sounded like madness, yet she couldn't think of any other way that these maps could be forgeries unless this was a scheme ten years in the making. And she hadn't even been chief of the Branwen Tribe back then.

"Caesar is willing to offer this, safe passage to Earth for your tribe, and much more in exchange for your assistance in a handful of battles," Gabban said. "We have business here before we return to Earth, regarding Atlas. It will not be easy, but we have so much to gain. Of course, we can't share too many details at the moment, but once our alliance is secure, we will be able to." He held out his hand to Raven. "What say you?" Raven looked at this hand. The catch had finally come. The moment where the proposal that sounded too good to be true ended up being just that. Another Ozpin situation where she had been promised the world, yet was expected to act like an expendable grunt.

"Atlas. You want me to attack the most heavily fortified place in the world outside of Salem's inner sanctum. You want me to die doing so, don't you?" Gabban faltered, and for the tiniest of moments, Raven saw anger flash across his eyes. Outrage. It was all she had needed to see.

Gabban attempted to recover, to put up a friendly facade, but it was too late. Raven's crimson red blade arced out of its sheath and sliced through the air. Gabban was dead within a second; he fell to the ground sporting a gash that had been opened from pelvis to neck. Roaring in outrage, the man who had been to his left drew a pistol and opened fire. Raven idly deflected the bullet before dashing forward, impaling the man in the gut up to her sword's hilt. He gasped in pain, dropping his weapon and weakly grasping at the blade as he bled from the mouth. Drawing out in a single, graceful movement, Raven flicked her blade and separated his head from his shoulders. Flicking the blood off of her sword, she turned on the last man

"Wait wait wait, hold up, I didn't want to be with them! Look, I'm not Legion, I'm an NCR citizen!" As the last survivor babbled, he grabbed his sleeve and rolled it up. In his haste, he nearly tore it off, revealing a tattoo in the process. It was of five letters in simple black ink, NCRCF. "I was in a gang, Powder Gangers, trying to get away from the law after that madman Walk-oh fuck, right you wouldn't know him." The man backed into a corner as Raven took a simple step forward. Nowhere near enough to reach him, but enough to make her point clear. Talk faster.

"Right, right, please don't-there was a crazy person the Legion hates and he killed most of my gang. I was running east just to get away from him when the Legion picked me up. I thought they were gonna kill me, its what they usually did to Powder Gangers, but instead they stuffed me in a uniform and said I was a legionary now." The man went to his knees. "I don't like these people! I think they're a bunch of pricks! They only reason I didn't ditch them is they would nail me to a cross if I did anything to cross them! Look, I'll work for you! You've got more balls than Caesar ever did! I'm good with cooking up explosives, how bout it!?" He clasped his hands together. "What do you want from me!? I'm on my goddamn knees begging!"

Raven stayed her sword. "I don't trust a man who's eager to switch sides. But I want you to do something for me." She pointed to the two dead men. "Run back to Caesar. Tell him exactly what happened here. And tell him Raven Branwen isn't for hire. This is what mercy from me looks like. If any more of his men come this way, he'll see what it looks like when I'm cruel. Do this favor for me, and I'll consider it payment for letting you live. Deal?"

The man nodded. Slowly, he got to his feet. "I...I'll do it," the man said hesitantly. "But I don't think it's gonna go the way you think it is. Caesar? He's a spiteful old man. Less eye for an eye and more ten eyes for an eye. He's gonna be pissed and want revenge for this."

Raven shifted her sword so that the edge was resting against the man's throat. He looked like he was about to pass out from fear. "Then tell him he's welcome to try. Better men than him have done so and failed. Now. You have your message. Deliver it." The man gave her one last uncertain look before turning and bolting. He tore out of the entrance to the tent and through the Branwen tribe compound. A few of her tribesmen laughed as he made his way through them and to the gate, but did not touch him. She would've made it clear if she had wanted him dead. Instead, he safely made his way through the array of tents and to the wooden gate, which he crossed unmolested.

There was a laugh behind her. The entire time, Vernal had been watching from the rear of the tent in a relaxed position. Her decoy Spring-Maiden. "What are you going to do?" she asked, idly leaning against a pole behind her.

Raven walked to the mouth of her tent, sheathing her sword. "I'm going to follow him. Keep things in order while I'm gone." She passed through the flap without looking back. In the blink of an eye, her body changed. No longer was she an able-bodied warrior, but a sleek, feathered raven. Not missing a beat, she had been doing this since she was a teenager, she flapped her wings and took flight, following the running man at a distance. When she had first gained this ability from Ozpin, it had felt awkward and strange. Now it felt like a natural part of her, an essential part of her kit. Indeed, she had come to enjoy and even look forward to the wind in her feathers and the world spreading out beneath her.

Part of her wondered if Ozpin had picked this form as a joke, it had never been a particularly imaginative one. Then again, it wasn't as if that had been a new concept to her. She and Qrow had managed to exhaust just about every bird-related joke and pun there was before either of them had even managed to hit eighteen. There was a tiny pang of nostalgia in her stomach, but she strangled it before it could become more than that. Her brother had made his choice a long time ago. And now she was going to make hers.

She didn't trust this Legion for a second. However, the evidence was slowly building up that they had not been lying about another world. And their plan in regards to dealing with Salem was sound if it was true. She needed more information though. If Gabban had been lying to her, then she would bring Vernal through her portal and massacre them in retribution. If he had been telling the truth, however, she was going to ensure that she and her tribe were around for that portal. Reap the benefits of the Legion's actions and then escape to a place where they could finally be safe, complete with the tools to ensure sure it stayed that way.

A warm feeling spread through her. Safe. Truly safe. No more looking over her shoulder for the eternal threat. Free from Ozpin's baggage, finally. No more wondering if it was safe to tell someone about the gift he had given her because they may tell the wrong person and Salem would recognize magic for what it was. The gift she had taken would truly be a gift. It felt like a dream. But it was worth checking to see if it was real.

For so long, she had played a dangerous game. The power of the Spring-Maiden, of all the Maidens, was a double-edged blade. It made the wielder stronger than Aura ever could, but it made one a target. It was a delicate balance that one had to maintain, and she had struggled with it ever since the last Spring-Maiden had come running to her for safety. She had been unable to maintain the balance, she would've been an easy target whenever someone came looking for her power. It was in better hands now. And now she had a chance to ensure the Spring-Maiden's power was forever in her grasp. If this all worked out, the Branwen Tribe would have their future secured forever.

XXXXX

Dorian was still pissed. He had blown a grand on that custom pistol and the sergeant hadn't even given him a chance to recover it. Not that he was going to tell the sergeant that he was pissed enough as it was. That drove Dorian madder than anything else, how the fuck was this all his fault? The old man had been the one who had started shit, it wasn't like he had known what Dorian was going to do. This entire situation blew. Not only had his first day on patrol with the Hunters ended with him embarrassed like this, but they had also been driven straight back to base afterward, so he had never even gotten to teach the animals their place.

He was resting on a worn couch in the base's common area. An old, long-abandoned refinery on the outer edge of Mantle, as in so far out that you could see snowy forests from the roof, that the sergeant and his war buddies had managed to buy for pennies. Most of the Hunters lived her full time, with them pooling their resources to keep the place heated and powered. It was the first place Dorian had ever felt at home, and he had gone and been embarrassed the first day he had ventured out to prove himself.

It was a big, mostly one-room building though there were quite a few side rooms for the makeshift kitchen, bathrooms, bunks, and the guest room being occupied by their VIP. It had been bare when it had been bought, the machinery having been long since taken to Atlas, but had been gradually filled up with everything the Hunters could scrounge up. Second-hand furniture, pool tables, a few TVs with chairs around them, even a few mini-fridges with beers. Dorian couldn't appreciate it right now, though.

A whistle broke through the air. "Dorian! Pizza!" Dorian glowered at the speaker. Basil was walking towards him, a cheerful smile on his face and that stupid green scarf he always wore around his neck. "Come on, there was extra money in the community pot tonight, I was able to buy some of the fancy stuff. Ten of them in the kitchen, you gotta get some before it all goes. You know how it's like around here."

"Not now Basil," Dorian hissed. Why was this asshole always so insufferably cheery.

"Look, I heard what happened today," Basil said, idly plopping down next to Dorian. Dorian scooched as far away as he could. "You messed up. There's always one who screws up when we get taken out for Basic. You were the unlucky one." He shrugged. "It happens, one of us has to bite the bullet so that the rest could learn from it. No one ever comes into the Hunters a mega-badass, we all gotta learn."

"Oh shut up," Dorian said. Basil had no idea what he was talking about. Things had been going so well. If he had just had a little more time, one of the Faunus in that shithole of a bar would've drawn a gun and the Hunters would've been able to show them who was boss. But he had lost his chance. God, it pissed him off.

"Look, I get it, you're smarting," Basil said, getting to his feel. "Everyone's smarting when they're all ate-up. It'll get better, I promise. Come on, sitting around won't change anything, you'll get a chance to prove yourself tomorrow. Let's go get some pizza. I gotta take third shift guard duty soon and I want a full stomach.

"There's been a change of plans," said a familiar voice. At once, Dorian and Basil snapped to attention. The Sergeant was approaching them, his hands clasped behind his back, and a stern eye scanning both of them. "Basil? You're relieved of duty tonight. Dorian? You'll be taking over for him."

"But I got first shift guard duty," Dorian said. The second the words left his mouth, he knew he had made a mistake. Basil shot him a panicked look and he could see the eyebrows of the Sergeant furrowing in silent anger.

The Sergeant gave him a piercing glare. "Oh yes. Yes, you do. You have third and first shift guard duty. Consider it a lesson that I don't want you forgetting anytime soon. When you're ate-up, you're not pulling your weight. Consider this making up for that." He gave a gesture. "Go. Now." Dorian felt himself go red in the face. It was bad enough that everything had gone to shit in front of everyone else, now this?

Basil took a nervous step forward. "Sergeant, if you don't mind me interjecting, I'm not sure this is a sound course of action. Dorian has to act as a guard for the safety and security of the whole unit. Asking him to stay on duty for sixteen hours is asking him to undergo sleep deprivation. The odds of him making a mistake, missing a potential intruder, or discharging his weapon at an inopportune time is-"

"Basil? As a matter of fact, I do mind you interjecting," the sergeant said coldly. "When I want the opinion of a know-nothing little fairy like you, I'll know I'm no longer fit for this job. So shut the fuck up unless you want to join him." Basil recoiled like he had been struck. He shrunk back, not daring to make eye-contact with the sergeant. "That's what I thought. This is a place for men, not little sissies." His attention swerved back onto Dorian. He found himself flinching before he could help himself. The anger that had been starting to build up in him was snuffed out like a candle in a tidal wave. The Sergeant's mouth twitched in the ghost of a grin. "So take your punishment like a man and don't whine like a little girl. Double guard duty. Right now. Don't bother grabbing your coat. Dismissed."

Not daring to talk back, Dorian moved as fast as he could without running. He didn't need everyone else laughing at him, seeing him scurry away from the Sergeant. Moving through a pair of double doors outside into the brisk cold was almost a welcome. He almost smashed into a rack on the way out, one ladened with pamphlets the Hunters would distribute in Human neighborhoods. "Only a true, pure-blooded Altesian can be a brother in arms, an animal can never be a brother in arms" was emblazoned on all of them, but Dorian paid no attention as he threw himself into the cold.

The ladder up to the catwalk that circled the entire building and provided access to the roof was just to his side. Cursing under his breath, he grabbed onto it and hoisted himself up to the top. Two more Hunters were already up top, both of them with military winter jackets, scoped rifles and one smoking a cigarette. "Hm, Dorian? Where's Basil?" the smoker asked, taking a long drag on her butt.

"Tired. I swapped shifts with him, Sergeant's orders," Dorian grunted, unholstering the new pistol he had been issued. The Sergeant had not permitted him to go back into the bar for his old one. The two guards traded looks and began to snigger. "What!?" he growled, taking a step forward. "Got something to say?"

"Yeah. You messed up," the non-smoker said. "We know what a punishment detail is. So put your dick away, boy. You're not a Faunus, you've got a properly sized skull. You can form thoughts that aren't primal."

"Man shut the hell up," Dorian growled. He hadn't even been issued a proper rifle, the Sergeant wanted everyone to know.

"Aw, little man is upset," the smoker said teasingly. Tossing her cigarette to the side, she mimed grabbing her own cleavage. "Be a good boy tonight and maybe mommy will let you touch a girl for the first time in your life. Basil won't be too jealous, will he?" Both guards laughed. "Well, keep that in mind and take the far end." Fuming, he forced his way past the female guard, who idly pressed up against the side to let him by.

As he did, he glanced to his left. The catwalk was pressed up against the second floor of the refinery. Not that the refinery had much use for a second floor than permitting enough room for the machines and allowing the guards that would've been on the outside to look in. Indeed, the catwalks were perfectly leveled with the windows, to the point where the railing was a mere centimeter away from the glass. Most of the Hunters were inside, drinking, laughing, eating, and he was freezing his ass off and being mocked.

He'd show them. First thing in the morning he was going straight back to that bar and getting his gun back. On the way out he'd tag the building and then set it on fire. Get a bunch of Fire Dust in with the booze and set the whole place up in an inferno. That'd show everyone not to screw with the Hunters. And it'd show the Hunters to not screw with him. He ground his teeth as he looked in.

But then, something happened that threw him off guard. The inside of the refinery was very well lit, the Sergeant and his war buddies had brought in quite a few floodlights instead of bothering to get two-story ladders to put in ceiling lamps. They even had a few set up outside so that the guards could get a clear view of the surrounding area. All at once, the lights died. No flickering, no build-up. With the blink of an eye, everything was plunged into darkness.

"What the-oh you've got to be kidding me," the male guard said. Dorian squinted in his direction, but all he could see was a double of shadowy shapes in the dim moonlight. "I swear if one of those idiots didn't pay the electricity bill I'm going to-" he suddenly stopped. A noise creaked through the night. It wasn't a particularly loud sound, it was like a crowbar tapping an aluminum pipe. Before he could ask what was going on, one of the black figures had leaned to the side. It looked as if he was idly resting against the wall.

"Now is not the time!" the female guard snapped. Going to her side, she drew a flashlight and flicked the switch. A beam of bright light carved through the darkness. "Get your ass up and-" she started as she drew the bead onto him, only to stop mid-sentence. The other guard's entire body was slack, his rifle idly dangling from his shoulder strap, his eyes lifeless. There was a gaping hole in his head, from which blood was lazily dripping down.

The guard moved forward. Whether it was to draw her rifle or call for help, Dorian never found out. The strange, metallic noise sounded again and she crumpled onto the catwalk, her body lifeless. As she fell, her flashlight went spinning out of her hand before coming to rest pointing straight down the catwalk. That's when Dorian spotted someone he had missed in the dark. Someone in torn pants, a long coat, body armor, and a gas mask, with a massive gun hanging around his shoulder. And a silenced pistol aiming straight at him.

Dorian screamed, aiming his pistol, only for the metallic sound to echo and blinding pain to tear through his shoulder. His sudden movement had prevented what had intended to be a headshot, but it caused him to veer to the side in pain. Reaching out to brace himself, his stomach dropped when, instead of the railing, his palm smashed into the window. A window held up by a frame several decades old. It popped out of place, so neatly it would've been impressive if Dorian hadn't been counting on it for support. Instead, he found himself losing balance. Twisting, turning, he desperately tried to grab onto something but felt his body going over.

He fell. He could hear the sound of the frame shattering on the hard ground below but barely registered it. His heart was in his throat, he couldn't breathe. It couldn't end like this, he couldn't die falling to his death in the middle of the night. Then, just as soon as it had started, it ended. He slammed into the ground, a sharp pain in his legs joining the one in his shoulder. He howled in agony, rolling on the ground. The pain was so great he could barely think.

"For fuck's sake Dorian!" A flashlight shone on him as he tried to understand where he was and what was going on. "Can you not screw up for five seconds!?" Dorian tried to formulate a response, but his attention was diverted. There was a groaning sound of metal on metal, and the flashlight's beam left him. Quivering, Dorian fought through the pain long enough to look up. The light was being shone onto the window he had fallen through. The man who had shot him was there, an MG on a bi-pod being leveled at the lower floor. Screams echoed out as the Hunters saw him.

It was far too late. Before a response could be formulated, the MG roared to life. And bodies began to hit the floor.

XXXXX

Author's Note: There's something cathartic about writing a bi man taking on a violent hate group. Not a whole lot to say about this chapter. Thannk you for your paitence, I've been busy with summer school and a new job, but I've almost got my Master's so hopefully that means less school and more career building, which hopefully means more writing time. I had a lot of fun trying to come up with names in ways that fufilled RWBY's naming conventions, color and fairy tale, it's nice to set up some more concrete stakes, get Raven involved, and now to get the ball really rolling. Like I said, Atlas is where I intend the story to really pick up. Hopefully, you now have a taste of what I meant by that.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 11

Take Another Little Piece

XXXXX

Finding the place had been easy, as had been setting up his little presents around the perimeter. He had just needed to avoid the obvious cones of vision that the floodlights had presented. After that, he needed to get up top without being spotted, so he needed to time his movements just right with the changing of the guard shift. He dashed out from his hiding spot had killed the lights with a quick cut powerline when there had been an opening. Afterward, he had climbed up the ladder in the dark, the Hunters none the wiser.

It was when he was up on the roof that things had gone off the rails a bit. The guards had noticed James before he could eliminate them all, and one had taken a tumble through a window looking into the interior of the compound below. Heart hammering as he realized his error, he peered through and saw dozens of Hunters below, many of them starting to look up in his direction. James could see perfectly fine while the Hunters below couldn't, the benefits of night vision goggles, but many Hunters were producing flashlights. They would see him in a matter of seconds.

"Fuck it," he said. He already had his scavenged MG set up on the railing, this was just using it earlier than planned. His finger jammed down and the weapon roared to life, greedily devouring the chain of bullets that stretched out of the box mounted on James's back. Half a dozen Hunters had crowded around the fallen guard to see what the cause of the noise had been. They fell within seconds, one screaming in agony as she clutched at her leg, but the others were silent as their bodies crumpled to the floor. James twitched his arm and adjusted the aim and swept through a trio of Hunters that had been moving towards the others, managing to catch all three of them.

There was panicked screaming now. Confusion was seizing the Hunters down below, some were screeching as they ran in whatever direction their legs to carry them, while others were drawing weapons and firing wild shots in his direction. One way or another, the Hunters were aware they were under attack. Thankfully, most of the shots that came in his direction went wide due to the poor visibility the Hunters were operating on. At best, they had shaking flashlight beams and the muzzle flash of his MG to pinpoint his location. Only a handful of rounds hit him, ones that his Aura was able to easily take.

As the MG continued to thunder, spent casings pouring out the far side, James was able to claim a few more groups before the surviving Hunters realized the danger of clumping together. By this point, the majority of them had taken cover where they could, be it behind couches, metal shelf units, or kitchen counters. A pair tore for the far side of the building and wrenched the door open and bolted outside. They got a few feet out before they triggered one of the mines James had planted. The Dust explosion, combined with bottle caps acting as shrapnel, enveloped both of them. There was no coming back from that one, not with the minimal protection they were wearing.

Resistance against him was becoming more organized. Around the center of the room, he saw four people spread out but coordinating with each other, all of them clutching rifles. With a singular motion, they all rose up and opened fire on his position with full auto bursts. This volley of return fire wasn't 100% accurate, the shooters still couldn't fully see James's frame, quite a few shots ended up finding their mark. He recoiled, struggling to maintain his grip on the MG. His Aura was holding up, but he could feel the strain.

He swerved the MG onto the four, but they had all taken cover. The rounds either passed overhead or riddled the fronts of their makeshift barricades, doing little else. Glancing to the side, James saw, with a lurch of his stomach, that the MG was about to reach the end of its belt of ammunition. It wasn't unexpected, he had been firing non-stop since he had begun his attack, but that would mean he would have to make do without the MG for the rest of the fight. Sneaking a second box of ammo up here had been more than he had been willing to risk.

Deciding to make the change sooner rather than later, James tossed the MG to the side and went for his bandolier. "He's out!" a voice from below cried out. At the same time, James gripped a pair of grenades, flicking the pins out of each. "Suppressing fire, now!" One to each hand, James hurled the grenades in the direction of the four before hitting the deck. Every shot he took was damage to his Aura, in other words, a shot he couldn't afford to take.

There was a brief spurt of gunfire before a pair of explosions drowned them. Afterward, a cry of pain echoed out. "My legs! MY LEGS! WHERE ARE THEY!?" Getting to his feet, James dashed down the catwalk to a window down the far side, unholstering his rifle as he did. Screeching to a halt, he smashed the butt of his rifle into the window, shattering it. On the inside, cohesion was starting to fall apart. Only one of the four was still up and armed, two were immobile and the last was on the ground missing his legs and covered in gashes.

Recognizing that these were all most likely the ex-military leaders of the Hunters, James lined up a shot with this rifle and fired twice. Both shots blew fist-sized holes in the last of the four, his cover not protecting him from James's new position, and he collapsed like a puppet with cut strings. A single 12.7mm round was enough to reliably kill an un-augmented human when it hit center mass, while two was enough to ensure it was instantaneous. Better safe than sorry now that he didn't have the time to line up head-shots and he was dealing with numbers this big. The last thing he needed was an almost dead Hunter getting off one last shot when his back was turned.

His theory about his latest targets being the leaders was starting to pan out, either that or the situation was just generally collapsing. The Hunters were losing their heads. Some fired wildly in his direction, not even coming close to hitting him, a few were still shooting in the direction of his first window, and another attempted to make a run for it. She, like the first two, got a few feet out the exit before she was swallowed up by a detonating mine.

He took a quick sweep of the area. The dead Hunters now outnumbered the living ones, he had gotten the lion's share of them with his opening machine-gun assault, and the grenades had whittled down their more experienced fighters. The first minute of this fight had been a touch and go moment where it could've become a drawn-out slugfest if he had not gotten a crippling blow in early. Mercifully, it had not gone that way, and now he simply had to mop up the rest.

Slowly, taking his time, he picked them off one by one. There was so much sporadic fire from them that his rifle was masked by it. Two rounds in the one by the corner, two rounds in one that had been aiming in his direction, a headshot on one who hadn't been as well hidden as he thought. He fired three more rounds, the first going wide and the next two taking a runner in the leg and then the throat before his rifle clicked empty. There were only one or two moving targets down below. It was time to end this.

Reloading, he swapped out his rifle for his shotgun before jumping down into the building. A jump from this height would've normally rattled him quite badly, but when he landed he did so quite comfortably. Aura was a blessing in every way it seems. One of the survivors fired wildly in his direction, one round managed to catch him in the gut. Fighting back the urge to double over, James doubled tapped him with the shotgun. He promptly joined the ranks of the dead.

"No. No. It can't end like this. We were going to change things. Make things better." He recognized that voice. It was the voice of the ex-soldier who had lead the pack at the bar earlier today. A figure was rising from the pile of bodies James had created with his initial assault. Two bullet holes were bleeding profusely in his right arm. He was clutching futilely at them, attempting in vain to staunch the bleeding. "We're stuck here in the ghettos with those people, the people who stood by and watched when people were getting butchered in Vale. I-" James leveled his shotgun and fired twice. A dozen different wounds were torn open by the pellets as he tumbled over backward.

It was hard to make out in the monocolored green of his night-vision, but he looked as if he had the puffy face of someone holding back tears. Hatred surged through James. Everything the Hunters had done and this one was getting sad over it falling apart? Spiteful impulses getting the better of him, James emptied what was left of his magazine into the man's gut. Blood splattered the ground as the corpse's belly was torn wide open, earning a feeling of satisfaction in James. A second later, however, it was replaced by guilt. You aren't an animal James. Get your goddamn act together.

He looked around the refinery, reloading his shotgun as he did. There wasn't a single Hunter still on their feet. One here and there were still moving on the ground, moaning weakly, but their movements were growing weaker by the second. Every last member of this deplorable little group was either dead or dying. For a second, he thought that the battle was over. Then, a sharp tremble vibrated through the building. It was quickly followed by a second. James froze. These were the vibrations caused by someone very large moving very fast.

"THE FUCK!?" a door burst open. James's jaw dropped. An utter behemoth of a man, seven feet verging on eight, burst through, several glass bottles rolling through the doorframe around his feet. He had a thick, hairy build that could've been a Super Mutant's, complete with exposed veins in the neck and muscles as thick as a man's head. His face was just as hairy as the rest of his body, a thick beard covering everything from the nose down except his mouth, but with shorter hair up top. The man blinked, his eyes bloodshot, as he glared around the room. In one hand he clutched a massive woodsman's ax, and in the other a blue helmet in the shape of a bull, complete with horns. "I'M TRYING TO FUCKING SLEEP!" He wheeled around on the spot, glaring. The glare faltered when he saw the bodies. And reignited when he saw James, being close enough to him to see him even in the poor light. "You...you motherfucker."

James didn't hesitate, he fired three blasts from his shotgun. The man staggered back, stepping on and crushing one of the bottles in the process, but he seemed more annoyed than hurt. He had Aura. Between this and the helmet, it wasn't rocket science to figure out who the man was. James knew that he was facing the trump card of the Hunters. "You come into my house and kill my people?" the Blue Bull said. "How much did you get paid to kill yourself like this, little man?" His voice was noticeably slurred. Between that, the bottles, and the fact that he had slept through the majority of the attack, it was a safe bet to say that he had been blackout drunk and still hadn't fully sobered up.

"I hope it was a lot," the Blue Bull said, his voice a growl. "I snapped Grimm necks back in the day, one-handed at that." James wanted very badly to dismiss that as a drunken lie, but looking at the size of the man's muscles, he couldn't help but wonder if it was the truth. He was certainly big enough to grapple with those demonic wolves. "You're gonna find out what that feels like." With a sluggish but powerful movement, he slapped the bull helmet over his head and shifted the ax to a two-handed grip.

James resumed firing, but he only got two more off before the Blue Bull charged. He had expected a charge, there wasn't much else you could do with just an ax, but what caught him off guard was how fast the Blue Bull was. The lumbering behemoth of a man, still half-drunk, had no right to be darting forward as fast as he was. He was utterly graceless, his legwork so uncoordinated that he looked as if one bad move would result in him sprawling across the floor, but he was crossing the distance between the two of them with the speed of a freight train.

James's instincts switched from fight to flight and he threw himself out of the way, only daring to sneak a single shotgun blast in as he did. The one way in which fighting the Blue Bull was preferable to fighting Adam was that the Blue Bull either couldn't or didn't care about deflecting his shots. Though it was becoming an increasingly small comfort. His opponent missed him and instead swung his ax into a shelving unit. The unit collapsed as if it was made out of tissue paper, the overhead swing piercing through the top five shelves and causing the entire thing to twist and contort.

"Little late to be running!" the Blue Bull bellowed, ripping his ax out of the contorted hunk of metal with distressing ease. "You shouldn't have come here in the first place if you didn't have the guts! What's the matter, only willing to fight people when you have the drop on them?" A deep, almost primal, guttural noise escaped the Blue Bull's mouth. "Cowards like you piss me off so much." Part of James wanted to scream back at the blatant hypocrisy at that statement, but he couldn't manage it. His heart was slamming against his ribcage and adrenaline pumped through his veins. If he stopped to say something stupid, something he knew he wasn't always above, it could be the fatal misstep that led to him being gored.

"Cowards like you, cowards like the White Fang, you're the reason I joined the Hunters. So I could give you a taste of your own medicine!" Bellowing, the Bull Blue charged again. This time, James was more prepared for his surprising speed and was able to compensate for it. With a few well-placed side steps, he was able to proactively clear the Blue Bull's line of attack, emptying his shotgun's magazine as he went. Even then, with a distance he had considered comfortable, the Blue Bull realized his charge would overshoot James and swung his ax as he passed. The man's ridiculously long arms brought the ax far too close for comfort, only missing James by a couple of inches, and left him scrambling away.

He forced himself to breathe. The Blue Bull hadn't scored at hit yet, while he had managed to dump an entire magazine into the giant of a man.

"I don't like using this on anything but Grimm, even the White Fang doesn't deserve it," the Blue Bull said, fury pounding in his words. "But if that's how you want to do it? Fine!" With that, he flipped a switch near the base of his ax. A grip and a trigger emerged on the lower handle, but the true transformation happened up top. The head of the axe expanded, enough for it to still be used in melee, but revealing an internal casing of red Fire Dust. Fire Dust that was now openly burning. "This is what you get for murdering my family. BURN YOU SON OF A BITCH!" And with that, a massive tongue of fire roared from the ax.

Swearing internally, James put as much distance between himself and the raging inferno as possible. His range of movement was limited, the arc on that weapon was able to reach halfway across the building before it finally spluttered out. James wanted to kick himself right now. Ideally, his best move would be to get outside where he wasn't as boxed in by this weapon, but if he tried to do that he would trigger his landmines. He did not have the time to safely disarm them before moving on; he had trapped himself.

Holstering his shotgun in a hurry, he drew his rifle again and took aim, opening fire the second he had a halfway decent shot. The 12.7mm rounds got more of a reaction from the Blue Bull than the buckshot had, with direct hits causing him to wince and even cry out with the first one. "No more running!" The Blue Bull tore forward, wildly swinging his ax as he did. The result was terrifying. Thick whips of fire lashed through the air without any rhyme or reason to them, the Blue Bull now close enough that there was no area that the flames couldn't reach.

James did the only thing he could, wildly zigzagging through the various pieces of furniture that the Hunters had set up. Even then, more than once he was buffeted by the wild flames. He could feel the heat pressing up against him, as well as his Aura struggling to keep it back. If he didn't have any Aura, he would be dead right now, or at least immobile on the floor with third-degree burns. He had to do something and do it fast.

Sliding up against a couch, he emptied the last of the bullets in his magazine, aiming for Blue Bull's head this time. He scored three direct hits, causing a momentary relief in the fire as the last Hunter bellowed in pain, staggering back. Now or never, James thought, kneeling behind the couch. After a quick reload, he turned his attention onto his Pip-Boy. He slammed down hard on the Wild Wild Wasteland button, praying to whatever was watching for a Bloody Mess magazine.

Not stopping to look at the results, James poked his rifle over the top of the couch, aiming. He fired two shots off at the Blue Bull, who turned to aim his flamethrower when it happened. Everything started to slow down, to the point where he could make out the shapes of his bullets flying through the air. He had gotten V.A.T.S., not Bloody Mess. James felt a sinking feeling in his gut, but at the same time resolved to make the best out of what he had. And it was right in front of him. The opening on the Blue Bull's ax had a noticeable supply of Fire Dust right on the inside. It was a weakness he could exploit. Aiming, James fired again and again and again until his rifle clicked empty.

To his delight, the Bull Bule had chosen that time to keep his ax more level, aiming it straight at him instead of flailing it around. The fire was roaring out of the opening again, blocking James's line of sight with it as the bullets disappeared into the flames. Just when James was considering ducking back down getting out of the cone of fire, the flames were stifled, dying at the source. The Blue bull jerked back, clutching his ax. The cartridge of Fire Dust was vibrating wildly, glowing brightly as it did. "Shit!" the Blue Bull shouted, jamming his hand into the opening, ripping the Dust cartridge out, and tossing it high up into the air. It exploded as it reached the top of its arc. The heat was so intense that James winced even though he was a floor away.

Despite this, James had not been idle while the Blue Bull had dealt with his malfunctioning weapon. Letting his rifle fall, held in place by its strap, he grabbed two more Dust grenades. Things were already starting to return to normal speeds, so he had to act fast. Ripping the pins out with his thumbs, he tossed them just as the Blue Bull tossed his malfunctioning Dust cartridge into the air. The went off nearly simultaneously, one buffeting him from the front, and the other the left. Mixed in between the explosions, barely audible, was the sound of something shattering. A cobalt blue aura briefly flared around the massive man before dying as soon as it came. He was vulnerable.

"The people you killed, did you even know their names? Henry? Nine-year vet? The one that stood by me even when Atlas turned its back on me because the brass lost their spines? No, of course you wouldn't!" The Blue Bull was working himself up into an even greater rage. His ax was still in his hand, but he seemed to have forgotten about it. Letting out a bellow of pure rage, he charged at James, reaching the couch within seconds. Instead of swinging at him, he slammed into the couch and pushed hard. James, unable to react in time and with V.A.T.S. having fully worn off, found himself buffeted by the couch, pushed back and unable to break free.

"I'm done. I'm done with you," the Blue Bull growled. "No more hiding like a damn coward. You killed seven good men and women today, you're gonna keep them company in the ground." James scrambled, trying to get a firm footing on the ground while pushing back against the couch. He had one good foot when his back slammed into something hard, forcing his mouth wide open in a silent gasp. The Blue Bull had pushed him right into the wall, pinning him behind the couch, both of his hands keeping it in place. "Can't hide anymore!" the Blue Bull roared in triumph. Lowering his head, he thrust it forward.

James attempted to veer to the side, but the couch made it so that he could only wiggle. One of the horns missed, but the other found the edge of his stomach. James roared in pain. Even though his Aura was still up, even though his stomach was armored, the horn had somehow managed to pierce him. A second pain tore through his back and he realized that it had been full penetration. "How?" he gasped out, his mouth moving on its own while his brain was in full survival mode. That injury wasn't necessarily fatal but it was bad. The horn hadn't been small and he would be losing blood at a worrying pace when it was pulled out, assuming he didn't simply go into shock. More injuries like that would drop his chance of survival into horrifically lopsided odds, he couldn't afford to

"What, wondering why your Aura isn't protecting you?" the Blue Bull said, a sneer working its way into his voice. "I'm a specialist and you're a nobody, you think they let just any punk with Aura into the specialists? No, they want fighters who can go in and put down little shits like you." With that, he pulled back, tearing the horn out of James's stomach. Before he could thrust forward again, however, James drew his knife and thrust down into one of the Blue Bull's arms. Howling, he instinctively drew back to pull the knife out of his arm. In doing so, he released his grip on the couch.

Desperation flowing through him, James drove his knee into the couch, pushing it forward a few inches. Now having enough room, he grabbed the White Fang SMG with one hand and drew A Light Shining in Darkness with his other. The pistol still had its silencer on and only three rounds in the magazine, but he didn't care. Aiming both weapons at the Blue Bull, he unleashed everything he had. The Fire Dust ammo of the SMG and the trio of .45 rounds. With his Aura down, the Blue Bull was riddled with bullets everywhere from his pelvis to his throat. His face was protected by the helmet, the few SMG rounds that went that high bouncing off of it, but the rest of his body was riddled with dozens of bullet holes.

He staggered back, his ax falling out of his hand, as he weakly glared at James through his helmet. He opened his mouth, no doubt to let out one last scathing insult, only for a glob of blood to be spewed out instead of words. His strength fading, he tumbled over backward. James, wincing at the pain in his side, moved around the couch, slapping fresh magazines into his weapons. There was no way in hell the Blue Bull wasn't dead, not after taking a mag and a half of ammunition, people just didn't survive that. People don't survive being shot in the head twice either a voice in the back of his mind said.

Making his decision, he holstered his weapons before picking up the Blue Bull's ax. This was always the most unpleasant part, but it would give him peace of mind, plus act as proof of the deed. Slowly, he positioned the ax's blade directly over the Blue Bull's throat before raising it over his head. The Blue Bull was a thick man, even with enhanced strength it took a couple of swings. But on the third blow, he was able to liberate the head from the neck. It rolled a few inches, freely spewing blood as it went, before coming to a stop. Sighing, he rested the ax against the couch. "ED-E!? I'm done in here!"

He staggered forward, dragging the Blue Bull's ax behind him, the pain still pulsating from his wound. He inched his way towards the door the ex-specialist had emerged from, figuring that he would have the most salvageable equipment. Moving through the door, he found himself in a one-person bedroom. Apparently, the Blue Bull didn't have to share. The walls were covered with Atlas military posters from floor to ceiling, depicting everything from recruitment posters, positive depictions of Atlas's armed robots, to calls to buy military bonds. If James had to guess, this was what Atlas patriots looked like.

Aside from that, the room was a mess. A dresser was on the far side of the room, with clothes poorly folded and awkwardly sticking out of it, but that was just the appetizer. Every single surface past the threshold was littered with empty beer bottles. For some reason, the Blue Bull had both a mini-fridge and a cooler in his room, on top of several unopened boxes of beer. It was the definition of excess. But James's attention was drawn to his bedside table, which had several lockboxes and a first aid kit. Feeling a small sense of relief, promptly grabbed the kit and sat down on a part of the floor where glass bottles were scarce. Slowly, he undid his armor, removing his helmet and chest plate, and slid his coat and undershirt off, leaving the wound in his stomach exposed.

Opening the first aid kit and withdrawing his medical supplies, James injected himself with a stimpack before getting to work. He cleaned and disinfected the wound before moving onto the part of first aid he always hated the most, giving himself stitches. He had been doing it long enough to be quite accomplished at it, but it always sucked. For several agonizing minutes, he threaded his flesh and slowly closed the wound. At least this one was in an area that was easy to reach. After that was mercifully done, he applied gauze and bandages to the wound before producing a vial of Med-X and injecting himself with it. He then leaned back in the chair. Hopefully, before too long, the Med-X would kick in and reduce the pain to something far more tolerable.

Swiveling on the ground to reposition himself, James leaned against the Blue Bull's bedframe. For a second, he merely sat there, feeling the throbbing in his side gradually lessen, before he eventually slipped his clothes and armor back on. He did not get up though, partially due to simple exhaustion from the fight, but mainly due to a general weariness that was starting to weigh down on him. Idly reaching out, he dragged the cooler across the grounds towards him. Opening it, he took one of the beer's inside and popped the cap off.

He bitterly took a swig of the crappy, cheap beer. This would've been a cakewalk if the others had been here. Boone and Raul up top raining down sharpshooter fire, Veronica and Arcade soaking up everything thrown at them, Cass blasting anyone who came within spitting distance, and Lily being the knife in the back. Things had worked out in the end, but only just barely. The second another Aura user had shown up, everything had almost entirely fallen apart. Even after everything that he had been through, he had only won by the skin of his teeth against a drunk.

Sighing, he undid all of his weapons and laid them out on the ground in front of them, ensuring that they were topped off. As he reached A Light Shining in Darkness, he detached the silencer and slapped in a fresh magazine. Once it was loaded, he didn't put it down right away. He slowly turned it over in its hand, looking at it without a clear motive in mind. It felt heavy, more so than usual, and powerful. It had taken so many lives, many without the victims even realizing it. One-shot had been all that was needed. Just like that.

"Getting sentimental in our old age, are we?" Mr. House's voice said. "When you violated my hospitality, broke into my inner sanctum, and single-handedly destroyed two centuries worth of plans for the human race, where was this sentimentality? Or is this a case of nerve impulses reaching your trigger finger before they reach your brain? Consistently."

"Will you shut the fuck up?!" James said before he could stop himself. Rage pounding through him, he threw the bottle before it could stop himself. It shattered against the far wall, its contents trickling down as glass fragments tinkled onto the floor. "I really don't need your shit right now!" Shame and embarrassment flooded through him the second the words were out of his mouth. He had to get a grip, he couldn't slip right now, not when there was so much he had to juggle.

He leaned over, grasping his head in your hands. "You've survived so much worse than this, come on. Keep it together, you can do this," he whispered to himself. "You've got people counting on you. You've done this before. The kids, think about the kids. Think about what the Legion will do to them if you crap out. You have handled tough shit before!" The logic center of his brain knew he was right. He had survived the Sierra Madre, Zion, Big Mountain, and other equally hostile areas. The emotional part of him wasn't listening. Feeling his heart starting to beat faster and his breathing becoming more shallow, James attempting to regulate his breaths. It was a losing battle, however, and after a minute or two of struggling furiously against it, tears started to leak out of the corners of his eyes.

Just then, a low humming filled the room. ED-E floated in, sporting a few new scratches but otherwise looking unharmed. "Finished my perimeter sweep. Five of them tried to slip out windows, they didn't get far. Mines took one, I got the other four. No one else around here is moving." he reported. Gently, he floated down towards James. He gently rubbed his chassis against James's cheek. James smiled, wiping away his tears. It was a little easier to breathe now. "You ok? We probably should've asked Team RWBY or Team JNPR for help on this front."

"Somehow I don't think they're at that point in their lives. Killing someone in self-defense is one thing. A preemptive slaughter, and that's what this is, is different," James said. He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath to calm himself down before continuing. "There's a certain, well, cruelty to it. A cruelty that just about every wastelander that doesn't live in NCR core regions has, even if it's just a little bit. Those kids? They're skilled, they're brave, some of them are damn prodigies. But they're defenders, not killers. And I'm not in too much of a hurry to push them over the edge. Not when I'm around to do the dirty work."

Gingerly, he stood up. "I've not been here very long but I'm starting to get the basics down. Huntsmen and Huntresses are elite warriors who are supposed to keep the peace and slay the evil monsters. You can't have the peacekeepers running around at night killing a few dozen people in ambushes, can you? No. That's for people like me. I know what I'm doing." He looked through the doorway, into the main body of the refinery. Blood was still dripping from many of the corpses he had left. "And I'm damn good at it." There was a rather empty feeling inside him as he said this.

"But that's beside the point. Ironwood would never have sanctioned this. If we're being honest, I'm due to get my head chewed off by both him and Qrow. I'm used to Qrow, but Ironwood was just starting to trust me." He made an exhausted grunt. "Well, screw it. We needed brownie points with the White Fang, this'll get us brownie points. Also, fuck these people in general. I would've done this for half a bottle of water, frankly. I kept Ironwood's army from going all Yes-Man on him, I should still be in the black with them." He lowered his head slightly. "They are going to be pissed with me though, no two ways around it."

ED-E shifted slightly. "You seem rather accepting about that."

James let out a sigh. "No point in getting indignant about it, I suppose. I went off on my own and racked up a double-digit body count without checking with them. I knew what I was signing up for, I'm not going to be the asshole who complains when I put my hand on a hot stove. They're gonna be pissed at me, best I just suck up and accept it now. They're gonna yell at me, it's gonna blow, but we'll move past it." He shook his head. He was no stranger to pissing off people he was working with. An image of Qrow smiling smugly flashed in his mind and he felt a twinge of anger. He pushed it down. It was like he had said, he had done this to himself. He would have to accept the punishment.

"Well, since we're here, we might as well do the usual. Do a quick search, see if you can find any more medical supplies or ammo that fits my SMG. We're not going to find ammo that'll fit any Earth guns here. We just-" but before he could finish, ED-E interrupted him.

"I've got movement! It's hard to tell with so many bodies, but one of them just moved! He's in the bathroom across from us!" Without saying a word, James seized his shotgun and rose to his feet. Bursting through the doorway and spotting the ajar bathroom that ED-E had been talking about, he crossed the refinery at a run and kicked the door fully open, leveling his shotgun.

A kid wearing a green scarf, no older than twenty, was cowering on the floor. As James aimed, he let out a wet sob and raised his hands. "Please don't," he whimpered. His face was red and puffy, as well as stained with tears. Notably, he wasn't wearing the mismatched combat gear that James had come to associate with the rest of the Hunters. His trigger finger slackened, but only slightly. "P-please don't," the kid repeated. James's mind raced. This was an unexpected variable. Who was this person and why did he look so very out of place? Part of him wanted to take pity on him, but another part of him was well aware that sob stories followed up by an attack to the back was a popular survival tactic.

"I want to ask you something," James said, his voice neutral. "Did you know what these people did? Did you know how many people they were hurting?" The boy recoiled, looking horrified. "I'm not going to hurt you if you say yes," James said honestly. "But I do need you to be honest with me right now."

The boy's lip quivered. "I-I never did it myself, bu-but the Sergeant showed me what the Bull did with his horns." Every word he said was drenched in fear, no doubt expecting James to pull the trigger at any second. "But you need to listen to me. I didn't want to do this, I don't like hurting people, but they didn't leave us any choice." Tears welled up in his eyes. "You must've been paying attention to the news. Do you have any idea how many people they killed in Vale? They set dogs and a cannibal on unarmed civilians. And there's more White Fang in Atlas than in Vale. They were going to do it all to us, maul us, crucify us, gun us down in front of our homes, if we didn't get them first."

James kept his weapon trained on the boy for a few seconds, digesting what he had heard. Then he lowered it. The boy blinked in surprise. "Y-you're not going to kill me?" he asked, sounding shocked. James nodded. He wasn't an expert on reading people, but he had been around long enough to tell when a person was capable of violence or not. This boy, at the very most, could muster up the will to kill in self-defense.

"You're not a killer," James said simply. Frankly, he had a feeling he could walk back into the Blue Bull's room, go to sleep with his weapons on the floor, and the boy would merely use the opportunity to run for it. James doubted he would even go for help. "You're not like the rest of them, the ones who would go into bars and pull out guns to feel tough."

The boy winced, and James had a strong feeling he had witnessed such behavior before. "They were scared," he said defensively, despite his now strained voice. "I know they could be cruel. The Sergeant and his buddies always liked to remind us that they were the ones in charge and we were dumb kids that knew nothing. And so many of the others wanted to get into a good scrap, I know, they liked to talk tough." He sniffed. "But I could tell that most of them were scared. I was scared too. I didn't want what happened in Vale to happen here."

"You know," James said, wondering if now was a good time to lecture but pressing on anyway. "A lot of the White Fang was scared too. About what people did to them. I'd put hard money down that they saw joining up as their only way out."

"Does that make what they did ok!?" the boy shouted, his fear giving way for anger.

"No, it doesn't," James said. Reaching down, he undid his chest plate and lifted his shirt. The long, thick wound that Adam Taurus had given him had long since healed, but a faint, white outline had been left as a permanent reminder. "Which is why I'm doing everything I can to track them down and ensure they can never do it again. To make sure that they pay for what they did." He let his shirt fall. "Because I don't care if you're Faunus or Human. You target unarmed, innocent civilians?" He gestured around the delipidated refinery. "This is what you get. It doesn't matter how scared you were. I don't discriminate if you slaughter shamelessly."

"T-they started it," the boy said weakly. He had the look of someone who was running out of arguments and knew it but was stubbornly refusing to concede. There was a flare of anger within James. He had marked the boy before him as a kid, it was true, but he looked as if he was legally an adult. Why was he pulling the type of argument that most children grew out of when they hit their teenage years? There had been a terrorist attack on another continent, therefore the logical conclusion was to hang out with megalomaniacal militants who let their best pal impale people? But as soon as the pang of anger had started, it faded away, replaced with exhaustion.

Human-Faunus relations were something he was just beginning to understand. From what he could tell, not too long ago it had been legal to own Faunus as slaves. According to the brief research he had done before heading out, the Faunus had fought and won a war for liberation, but if his time learning Earth history with Arcade was anything to go by, these types of affairs were never won and done. The transition towards a more equal society was always a messy one, heavily influenced by there being a lot of ground to cover between slaves and equal citizens. James couldn't help but notice exactly how many Faunus were living in the shittiest parts of Mantle and doubted that many lived in the more upper-class sections.

But it wasn't as if Humans here were immune to poverty. It was unlikely many of the Hunters had moved to Mantle by choice, odds were that the Sergeant and his war buddies had recruited locally. No doubt, many of them had gone through crap quite similar to poor Faunus, and the White Fang, odds were even before the Legion had co-opted them, had given them something to fear. That being said, James didn't quite feel comfortable saying that both sides were the same. He had seen the way Faunus on the street had been terrified to be out in public after the attacks in Vale, the sheer amount of graffiti directed at them. Humans hadn't been terrified to be in public after the Hunters had attacked. Poor Humans and poor Faunus had a good deal in common, but there was no getting around the fact that one group had the scales tilted against them significantly more. Human society wasn't struggling to rebound from being considered property.

"I know," he said sympathetically, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder. "But this? It wasn't helping. If anything it was only going to make things worse. You weren't doing anything about the ones who were hurting people. You were just giving them more reasons to keep doing what they were doing and giving reasons for why other Faunus should join up with them." He gave a comforting squeeze. "These people weren't your friends. They were using you for their own petty grudges." He took the boy in. Nothing about him made him look like the type who would belong here. "Can I ask your name?"

The boy hiccuped. "B-Basil."

James nodded. "I'm James. I want to ask you something, please be honest with me. How did these people treat you?"

"I mean," Basil said, breaking off eye-contact with James. That alone spoke volumes, and James didn't like what he was hearing. "It's military, they were harsh because they wanted to toughen me up." He paused. "They go overboard sometimes, like when Dorian had to do his 16-hour guard shift, but-"

"That's abuse," James said bluntly. "That's sleep deprivation. What's more, it's stupid. Basil, I know you're going through a lot right now and I know it's because of me. I apologize for that. But these people sound like the types who mistake being cruel for being 'tough'. I've spent years hanging around military units, doing contract work, and I can tell the difference between a stern professional and an asshole who's getting their rocks off over having power over others. Think long and hard Basil, which did the Sergeant strike you as?"

Basil didn't say anything. Instead, he slowly slid back into the corner, looking up at the ceiling. Tears began to stream down his face again. "I-I think I messed up," he said, his voice choked.

"We all do," James said, as kindly as he could manage. "But the important thing is what you do to make up for it. How are you going to make what you did here right?"

"What? Are you saying that I owe the Faunus?" Basil asked, sounding confused and incredulous at the same time.

"It's not that simple," James said. "There's two prongs to making up for your screw-ups. Part of it is, yeah, you need to make amends with the people that you hurt if you want them to forgive you. But I'm going to tell you something from experience. If you knew that they would never forgive you, you would still do everything in your power to make things right. Because you wouldn't be able to get the forgiveness of the person who matters most if you didn't. Your own."

There was a long, pregnant silence. "You talk about it like you've been there personally," Basil said, sounding as if he was wondering if he was pushing his luck. "Did you ever do something?" James felt very cold. He had said too much. Basil noticed. "Sorry, shouldn't have asked," he said hastily. "I-look. I don't want to sound like I'm flip-floppy, I need time to think about all of this. It's a bit much and I don't know what I'm going to do." He paused. "Where the Hunters really as bad as the White Fang to you? They killed people, I know, but not as much."

"I don't care," James said simply. "And I wasn't going to give them a chance to even the score."

Basil let out a long sigh. "Damn it. I've been so stupid." He sniffed loudly, a few more tears leaking out. "You said you were going to stop the White Fang?" James nodded. "I want to help. If you can do all of this," he gave an uncomfortable gesture towards the bodies outside, "then I know you can take down the White Fang."

James blinked. This was a very odd situation. He had found allies in very odd places, there was no getting around that, but not usually after he had massacred most of their organization. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful, but you're taking what I did rather well," James said.

"I mean, I don't want to admit it but you're kind of right in that they were pretty lousy to me," Basil said. "I only really had one friend, Dorian, and even he didn't really seem to like me that much. I just, I don't know, thought I could bring out his better half."

The little shit at the bar? That would've been an achievement and a half. James could read between the lines though, and he had a very good feeling why Basil had been drawn to Dorian. James wasn't going to judge him too harshly, he had looked the other way when for his early crushes on boys that had caught his eye. Young and in love for the first time was a cocktail for dumb decision making, there was no frame of reference to inform decisions. "I saw Dorian earlier today. The kid would've pulled a gun on a bartender for slightly late service if I hadn't stopped him. Trust me, you're better off without him in your life." Basil swallowed. He had the look of someone whose entire life had turned upside down. James knew the feeling, it was how he had felt when he had been dug out of a shallow grave in Goodsprings. "You got a place to go back to?"

"Not really," Basil said. He looked as if he was lost deep in thought. Then he took a deep breath. "I meant what I said. I want to help stop the White Fang. I know I can't do much, but I do want to do what I can. Just...let me get my things. I don't want to stay any longer than I have to. I might see Dorian and...I can't handle that right now. I know he was an asshole, but I just can't." James nodded, holstering his shotgun. "Just one more question. You could've killed me. Why didn't you?"

"Couple of reasons," James said. "You were unarmed for starters. You had your arms up, I had essentially won the fight and you just didn't have the attitude or body language of a killer. The rest of them did." James did his best to sound reassuring and comforting. "I'd get called naive by a lot of people back where I'm from for this, but I think you're a good kid who just made a dumb mistake. You don't deserve to die for that."

Basil made a strangled noise. "The Hunters never would've done that." Most people who made comments like that tended to say it insultingly. Basil wasn't.

"And I have no desire to be anything like them," James said. James had never considered himself to be a saint. He had done a lot of vile shit in his life, to the point where if Joshua was right about his faith, there was probably a luxury suite reserved for him in Hell. That being said, there was a certain degree of standards he tried to hold himself to. "You know why? They think they're out here making the tough calls no one else can. They're not. Anyone can just decide that everyone they hate should just go die, it's being a slave to your most primal of impulses. It's being selfish masquerading as being wise. Holding yourself to being more than that? It's hard. It takes work. That's why these people won't bother because it's just easier to pretend acting on spite all the time is profound. So why would I ever base my actions on what they would do?"

Basil gave a weak smile. "I think...I think you're one of the good guys," Basil said. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me just yet," James said, not sure if he was being an idiot or not by agreeing to this. "You wanna help me? Ok. First, grab a couple of trash bags. I came here for a few things and I'll need help getting it out. I may be grabbing some supplies too. Second, there's a lot to this situation you don't know, it's a bit more complicated than you might think. I'll explain on the way." He was going to have to explain to Basil that the White Fang who had attacked Vale were radicals and that they were doing everything they could to get the less extreme ones to cooperate. This was going to be messy. "Oh, ED-E, take one last sweep before we go. Let me know if you see any more movement."

Basil nodded, giving a nervous look at the drone as he floated by. "He seems like a good kid James, but I wouldn't show my back to him. Just to play it safe." James nodded grimly.

"Ok. Want me to snag the Sergeant's car keys? That'll make all of this much faster. Or should we take your car?" Basil asked.

James blinked. "Car keys?"

XXXXX

Weiss's fingers were a blur. James had given her 10,000 Lien, which was a couple of months worth of allowance for her. A year ago she would've thought that this wasn't a particularly large sum of money, that she would be able to get more by sitting around and waiting for the 1st of the month. But James had put an idea in her head. She was going to take back the Schnee Dust Corporation from her father, but there was little chance he would let her. It had been easy to not think about that too hard when her Huntress duties had been keeping her busy. Nevermores and the White Fang had made it easy for her to file taking the family company back under something that she would do after she graduated.

She wasn't so certain anymore. Legacy met everything to her father, and his legacy would be tainted if she undid all of his policies when she took control of the company. James had been right. There was a good chance she would have to take her grandfather's company back by force. At the moment, she had no idea how she was going to do that, it was easily one of the most valued companies in the world. But, at the moment, she was building up revenue.

She leaned back in her chair, checking her scroll. "Net stock worth, 34,674 Lien," was at the very center of the screen. Ever since she had gotten James's gift, she had done the only logical thing she could think of. She invested all of it. Technically, she was too young to trade stocks at the age of seventeen, but it was hardly her first time doing so. Her father wanted a loyal heir to the Schnee Dust Corporation, but he wanted a competent one as well. He had put her through quite a few business exercises when she was growing up, such as giving her a hundred Lien and expecting her to be able to turn it into five-hundred. He had been strict and unforgiving, but she had learned. She had learned because not learning had been an unacceptable outcome that promised nothing but punishment. And now she was using what she had learned against him.

Getting back into the stock market had been easy, it was alarming how many safeguards she could bypass by saying "my last name is Schnee." Nothing that she was doing was illegal, she had contacted the right people who had filled out special forms that cited obscure loopholes in old laws, simply because of her name. They had needed no prompting beyond that, they merely expected good things to follow from being friendly with the Schnee family. She felt a little sick just thinking about it. Still, she was hardly in an advantageous position and had to take advantage of every little edge she could get.

Every last penny she had been given had been invested, some in risky startups, others in more reliable companies. She had bought stocks as low as possible every morning and sold stocks as high as she could every night before the market closed, aside from some long term investments she was gestating. It was a tricky, risky business, and not all of her gambles had paid off. Some stocks had tanked without any signs of recovery, putting her at a loss, but overall things had gone well. Still, 30,000 was pocket change compared to the type of money she'd need to buy even 0.1% of the SDC's stocks. But it was a start. At the very least, she wasn't reliant on her father's money for her day to day life anymore. There was an indescribable feeling of freedom that came with that, and it brought a smile to her face as she finished up one last transaction for the business day.

It just barely got through, a thousand Lien's worth of stocks in the budding fast-food chain Rosina's Cottage, bringing her up to 35,674 Lien. Putting her scroll down on the table in front of her, she stood up and stretched. She had accomplished a great deal in a short amount of time; a tiny prickle of pride was blooming in her. It was getting late, she had about an hour left in her before she should be getting to sleep. Yawning, she glanced around the room that had been granted to them.

It was a standard barracks room designed to house four on Ironwood's flagship, a pair of bunk-beds on each side of the room. Ironically, despite being a bare essentials military room, it felt fairly similar to their dorm room. Yes, it was smaller and more barren, there was not a color outside of silver, but oddly enough the set up was still the same besides that. Ruby taking the bed above hers on the right side of the room, Yang and Blake on the other. She eyed her bed from the table in-between the bunk beds, wondering if she should idly lounge there before drifting off to sleep when she heard a groan of frustration from Ruby's bed. Curiosity getting the better of her, she climbed up the ladder leading to the higher bed. "Everything all right?"

Ruby, lying flat on her back, gave a weak nod. She had half a dozen different print-outs scattered across her mattress, all of them with "Classified" printed in bright red ink on the front. Ruby looked up, nodding. "Just looking over everything they gave me," she said, sounding miserable. "I'm supposed to review it twice, so I'm starting my second go around. Possible scenarios that we might encounter and the plans for each one." She yawned loudly.

Weiss slid up and sat on Ruby's bed, letting her legs dangle off over the side. She picked up one of the files and flicked through it, skimming it lightly. It was a rather thick document with detailed schematics of areas where a battle might take place, complete with multiple formations and use of combined arms tactics for each possibility. This level of preparation was to be expected, they were working with Atlas specialists after all. Still, Ruby wouldn't get anywhere by working herself ragged.

Sliding the file shut, she glanced at Ruby. "Want to take a break for the night? See if Blake and Yang want to do anything?" Ruby's eyes lit up with delight at once. A second later this brightness faded as she looked with weary resignation at the paperwork that was scattered across her bed. "You can get back to it in the morning. How much would you even remember if you kept going like this?"

Ruby nodded, not taking her eyes off of the files. "I know. It just doesn't feel right." Weiss could sense that if she merely tried to reason with Ruby, this was going to take at least half an hour. So she took initiative. "Weiss I-" Ruby began but was silenced as Weiss put a finger over her lips.

"Movie or that fighting game you like so much?" she asked briskly.

Ruby blinked. "You hate Cross Fighter." Weiss almost grimaced, barely catching herself. Yes, she did hate that game. She was expected to remember a dozen different esoteric button combinations while using a controller that was quite picky over what constituted a 90-degree flick of a joystick and being pummeled into a pulp by Ruby or Yang. She was normally content to join Blake in watching the sisters play, that way there was an uncertainty in the outcome and entertainment to be gained from that. Now though, she wasn't certain if Yang was up for a game and she needed a concrete promise.

"That doesn't matter right now. Movie or Cross Fighter?" she repeated, willing herself to suffer through another half dozen announcements of "Player One wins!" Because of course, she was always Player Two. These were stressful times, she could take a bullet for the team. As much as she was dreading the idea of forcing herself to jump through the hoops that were that game's controls. She could do this, she had resigned herself to suffer through far less pleasant endeavors.

Ruby gave a shy smile. "Movie." Weiss could almost feel herself slacken in relief. A movie would be something that she could join Ruby in enjoying, as opposed to suffering through for her leader's benefit. "And thank you, Weiss." She felt herself go a little red in the face. "Yang, Blake!" Piling up her papers in the corner of her bed, Ruby leaned out of her bed, facing the far side of the room. "Movie?"

"Heck yeah!" Yang said, bounding out of her bed in excitement. With a swipe, she slid her scroll across the table and pressed the screen. A holographic projection of a double-sided screen, showing the same image on both sides, blinked on above it. "Ok, I got around a hundred to pick from on my scroll. Got any preferences?"

"Ideally something a little light-hearted," Blake said. She was lying on her bed, an open book in her hands. She had not turned any pages in a long time and was closing it in frustration. "We could use the change of pace."

"Sappy romantic-comedy coming right up," Yang said. She began to flick through the movies on her scroll when there was a knock at the door. "It's open!"

The door creaked and a teenage girl's head poked around the entrance. A freckled girl with ginger hair and green eyes. "PENNY!" Ruby squealed with joy, speeding off her bed in a blur of red and pedals, nearly knocking Weiss off in the process. Weiss barely caught herself on the handlebars of the upper bunk bed, hissing through her teeth as she barely caught herself from falling. Meanwhile, Ruby had reached Penny and had bowled into her. There was a fair bit of tumbling backward, but somehow the two girls managed to stay upright.

The ginger-haired girl grinned widely. "Salutations!" she said, cheerfully waving to everyone in the room. "I was told that my friends were on board! This was so delightful that I had to see them." Weiss smiled and waved. Penny's manner of speaking wasn't quite as awkward as it used to be, but there was still an element of inexperience there. She had made strives since they had first met. "Would it be ok if I were to join you?" Ruby's head spun around so fast that Weiss wasn't sure how she didn't crick it. A stupid, happy look on her face, she took turns looking at each of her teammates, silently begging for approval.

Yang gave a lazy smile and a wave, while Blake gave a cautious nod. "I mean, of course, she can, she doesn't need to ask," Weiss said, hoping she wasn't going too far, or that she wouldn't regret this later. Ruby squealed.

"Sit with me! Sit with me!" Recognizing the logistics behind this, Weiss dropped down and took a seat on her bed. Ruby, meanwhile, became a blur of red again. In the blink of an eye, she was back on top of her bunk, Penny right next to her. Weiss was surprised the girl was so chipper after being dragged along by Ruby. In her experience, being pulled along by Ruby's Semblance felt like your innards had been randomly rearranged.

"Oh my gosh, you didn't tell me you were coming along for this!" Ruby squealed. Weiss couldn't help but smile. Ruby's over-excitable energy could grate when you were exposed to it over a prolonged time. But this had an element of charm to it. From both ends. "Where have you been, how have you been!"

Penny gave a wide grin. "I have been quite busy, working with General Ironwood and my father, on things they promised me to not tell. And I would never tell anything my father told me not to." At that moment, Penny gave a small hiccup. "Oh, my apologies. I'm just a little excited."

Yang glanced up from her scroll. "Need a glass of water there?"

Penny shook her head. "Oh, it's something that's always happened to me, water won't help much. Thank you though!" The amount of positive energy the girl gave off was astonishing. Thinking about it, Weiss struggled to remember even a single time when Penny was sad, or even mildly upset. Even Ruby wasn't constantly this happy.

"Ok. Well ladies, sit back, relax, and enjoy a nice evening of-" Yang began, but was cut off as Weiss's scroll began to ring.

Feeling embarrassed, Weiss got to her feet. "I'll take this outside," she said, scurrying through the door as fast as she could. She had told everyone involved in her stock trading to not call her while the market was closed, what could be so important. Groaning in frustration, she answered the call. "Weiss Schnee."

"Is this thing working?" James's voice said.

Weiss blinked. "James? I thought you were-nevermind. Are you not back at the base or on the ship? What are you doing out so late?" Weiss's irritation faded away, replaced by confusion. She knew that James was on an important mission, but even then he would need to sleep. He hadn't been working through the night, had he? Oh. Oh goodness, he had.

"That is a long story and, I'm sorry, I don't have enough time to tell it now," James said. Weiss felt a little insulted, but James had continued before she could interrupt. "Ok, uh, Weiss? This thing came with the numbers of Beacon students, not Atlas military. Could you do me a favor and pass a message along to her sister? And please tell her not to be too mad at me."

Weiss felt dread grip her. "What did you do?" She had not been expecting this. James had seemed a bit mild-mannered and fairly out of touch, but this was the type of call that never had good news with it. He was supposed to be on the job, helping Atlas. Why was he calling her sister in the dead of night and asking her to not be mad?

There was a strained laugh from James's end. "I'm not sure how much I can say, but I think your sister's opinion of me is about to drop a few notches. I'm sorry, could you please tell me that there's a bar I need her to meet me at? She might scramble all of you too, just a heads up. We may be moving forward with the plan."

"I think it might be better if I give her the scroll, this is something she needs to hear personally," Weiss said.

James gave a dejected sigh. "Sadly you're probably right. Ok. Here's what I want you to tell her." Weiss listened. Her jaw slowly opened as everything was recounted to her.

XXXXX

Winter had been preparing for bed when Weiss had knocked on her door with a call from James. First, she had been pleased and impressed. James had, with twelve hours to spare, managed to find an opening with the White Fang. The man was proving to be highly productive and resourceful in a way that was nothing short of commendable. Then she had learned the exact details of what he had done. Now she was in a foul mood.

She had taken two private vans, outwardly mundane but secretly possessing bulletproof plating and glass, and headed straight into the Faunus populated portion of the city. General Ironwood had been informed and he had given the order, they would be having their meeting with the White Fang now. She was sitting quietly in the shotgun seat of the lead car. Team RWBY was in the back, quietly checking their weapons, just in case. Team JNPR was in the second van, not far behind them, but far enough to throw off suspicion. Qrow was nowhere to be seen, but Ironwood had assured her that he would be tailing the vans and watching the meeting from a distance.

Her fingers twitched as they rested on the hilt of her sabers. She had been developing a healthy layer of respect for James. He was no soldier, but he had been proving himself to be polite and reliable. What could have possibly have driven him to do something this reckless and this stupid? The questions bouncing around her head had no easy answer, and she could feel irritation slowly building up inside of her. They did not need mavericks at a time like this, Qrow was pushing their limit to the breaking point as it was. What were they going to do with this man?

The driver, a man wearing the disguise of a chauffeur but possessing a concealed pistol and body vest, silently turned the wheel. "Ma'am, we're almost there." She nodded wordlessly. It was well past midnight now, the streets of Mantle were clear of all forms of traffic. The only movement was the occasional person walking down the streets, who moved a little faster. Eventually, the vans came to a stop in front of the bar that James had specified. It was closed for the night, but a few lights were still on inside. A black sedan was parked out in front, one that was stuffed to the brim with garbage bags in the back seat. A large ax was lying across the passenger's seat. She thought this was odd, but it didn't appear to be rigged to blow, so it was only of middling importance.

Slowly, she stepped out of the van, Team RWBY and Team JNPR following suit. "Standard securement procedures?" the driver asked. Winter nodded. "Roger. Signal me when it's all clear."

"Miss Nikos? With me. Everyone else, maintain guard outside. Retreat inside if fired upon," Winter said sternly. "This is unlikely, but take all precautions." Pyrrha separated from the group, her shield and spear visible, but not drawn. Everyone else milled about the vans, keeping watch. They looked nervous but collected. It was the best Winter could hope for. "Miss Rose, Mister Arc, keep watch until I return." Both team leaders nodded. With them, plus Qrow keeping watch from somewhere Winter couldn't see, this meeting should be safe. Striving forward, Winter pushed the door to the bar open.

The inside was barren, most of the tables covered with upside-down chairs, except for one in the middle. James was sitting at the table, a trash bag at his feet, ED-E floating behind him. A flare of irritation flashed in her as she spotted James, but she ignored it. She would deal with him and his recklessness later.

A youth with a babyish face and a green scarf was standing behind him, fidgeting nervously, while a Panther Faunus in his mid-30s and an elderly woman sat across from James. All eyes were on her as she entered. The Faunus man got to his feet. "I didn't believe him when he said a Schnee would show up, but I'll be damned," he said through grit teeth. "You've got a lot of nerve showing up here."

He moved to step forward, but the woman grabbed him by the arm. "We were told that we would be having guests. We were also told that these guests would be here to talk in good faith. So we will be listening to them and not starting anything. Do you understand, Baghanda?" Baghanda shot a glare at Winter before sitting back down. "Good. You'll have to forgive him, Specialist. We haven't had the best relationship with Humans, and your father has been one of the worst."

"I understand and apologize for what he has done," Winter said, not for the first time in her life. "I'm sorry, I didn't get your name."

"Kanton," the woman said. "And I appreciate the apology, even if you are disowned. Please." She pushed out a chair that was positioned between herself and James. "Have a seat." Winter gave a nod of thanks, lowering herself into the seat. "Your friend here told us that you wanted to have a word with us. Well, here we are. We'd offer drinks, but the owner had to go home for the night. Three kids."

"I'm grateful, but I don't partake," Winter said. She refused to, after seeing what alcohol had done to her mother. Anger briefly sparked in her at the bitter memories. The sad mess that a once-proud Huntress had been reduced to. She had sworn long ago that she would never be that pathetic, an oath she intended to uphold.

"That simplifies matters then," Kanton said. "Now, to ensure we are on the same page. You want the location of Adam Taurus and his followers, correct?" Winter nodded. "Ok. See, you found us in a sticky situation. Our leaders are pissed at Adam right now, about as pissed as you can get. He has made things so much more dangerous for Faunus everywhere, seeing as he was kind enough to reinforce stereotypes that we're all just bloodthirsty animals. But." She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. "Handing over one of our own to the Atlas military doesn't set a very good precedent. See, Humans can call the police, the army, even Huntsmen and Huntresses when they're in trouble. For a lot of Faunus, the White Fang is all they have to keep them safe. Adam forgot that when he got a taste for blood, but we haven't."

"Are you-" the boy behind James angrily began, but James held up a hand. The boy took a step back, looking frustrated.

"I understand there being some degree of hesitation, but I ask you to consider this," Winter said. This was nothing more than simple stubbornness, it could be dealt with easily. "Adam is a threat to everyone, not just Humans. Friendly fire is not a concept he particularly cares about. We have reports of Faunus being hurt and even killed in the attacks he has partaken in. Many times, deliberately. Forgive me, but Adam seems to have lost sight of the Faunus against Humans goals of the White Fang. He has adopted White Fang against anyone who isn't White Fang. If he is not stopped, he will do to Atlas what he did to Vale. Dozens, potentially hundreds of innocent civilians dead. Including the Faunus citizens that you claim to be protecting. You do them no favors by protecting Adam."

"Are you lecturing us right now?" Baghanda said, his voice dripping in fury. "Is a Schnee, a Schnee of all people, telling us how to protect Faunus? Tell me something Ms. All Knowing, how do we protect the Faunus that die in your daddy's mines? Maybe you can give us pointers there, then we can move to everyone who got black lung while you were sucking on your silver spoon." Winter felt a twinge of irritation. This man hadn't come here for a discussion, he had come here for a fight. He was letting his emotions get the better of him.

"Baghanda, sit down and be quiet or wait in the back if you can't control yourself!" Kanton snapped.

Baghanda rounded on her. "So, you're just telling me to keep my mouth shut while Jacques Schnee's brat walks in and pretends she knows better than us?" Baghanda's entire body was tense, and Winter had a suspicion that he was so wound up that he was ready to attack anyone who pushed him just a little further.

"That is exactly what I'm telling you to do," Kanton replied, her voice dangerously low. "Because the lady over there hasn't said a single thing that was wrong yet. Adam is killing our kind, innocent bystanders. Now. Sit. Down. We came here to talk, and that's what we're going to do."

"Oh, so you want to do everything Ghira Belladonna style now?" Baghanda shouted. "We ditched that sorry bag of bones because we both decided that when you got kicked, you shouldn't roll over and ask for another. You change your mind on that? You wanna go crawling to the Humans, asking nicely for them to stop being so mean while licking their boots?" Winter had a feeling that she and James had been forgotten by this point.

"Baghanda," Kanton said, her voice now so low it was barely audible. She stood up, her face mere inches away from Baghanda. "My mother was a slave. She told me horror stories that I am still not ready to repeat about what her owners did to her. She risked everything to fight in the Faunus Rights Revolution, including two of her sisters and two of her brothers. All of them died. Aunts and Uncles I never knew. My family was torn apart fighting for Faunus rights. My mother gave an eye for it. Until the day she died, she would wake up screaming in the middle of the night, remembering the war."

She took a step forward. Baghanda, the fight going out of him, took a hasty step back. "So. If you ever accuse me of being a Human bootlicker again, you won't be leaving his bar under your own power. Do you understand?" There was no response. "I asked you a question." Baghanda gave a hasty nod. "Good. Now sit down and shut up." Winter felt unnerved as Baghanda, now thoroughly cowed, silently sat down. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that James looked similarly perturbed. "My apologies," Kanton said, sitting down as her anger gradually faded. "Tensions run high in the White Fang at times. We've all been through a lot."

"Wait, hold up," James said, putting his hand up. "Belladonna?" Winter blinked. Now that James mentioned it, it was an odd detail. None of her briefings on the White Fang had ever mentioned a Belladonna.

Kanton looked back and forth between the two of them incredulously, before the expression faded, replaced by a dejected one. "Not surprising, the White Fang didn't get much accomplished back then. Ghira was our old leader, and he was a pacifist to the core. Didn't want to fight Humans, even when they were shooting at him. He gave us the old spiel on how contempt only breeds contempt, but standing around with signs got us nothing except bruises, broken bones, and occasionally bodies. So when Sienna Khan stood up and said, 'enough is enough, when they hit us, we hit back' most of us were more than happy to go along with her."

She gave a bitter grunt. "Here's the part where the irony hits. Sienna held up a Faunus who was among the first to get violent when Humans attacked, saying he was who we should all strive to be. Adam. And now Adam is striking off on his own with these new friends of his. Alienated about 75% of the White Fang in the process, if they weren't in the Vale branch, they want nothing to do with him." She massaged her temples. "I think he got too much too fast, it all went to his head. He's a rank and rifle member of the pacifist White Fang, then in a year it's transformed into what it is now and he's one of Selina's top officers. The fact that he was screwing Girha's daughter probably inflated his ego a fair bit."

"What?" All heads turned to face James. The look on his face was a mixture of shock and disgust. "He did what?"

Kanton nodded grimly. "She was sixteen I think, just old enough for it to be legal by Menagerie law. Still, he was in his 20s, the age gap was big enough that it'd be a little weird even if he was the ideal boyfriend. And I think his actions speak a lot to how close he is to that."

"That little shitstain is in his 20s?" James said, his voice a low growl. "So on top of everything he's a goddamn ephebophile?"

Kanton was silent as she stared at James. Winter recognized that look, it was the face of someone who was doing everything they could to analyze another person. "You've met him, haven't you?" James nodded. Winter saw an opening.

"Yes, in Vale. He was there during the attack, protecting people. Human and Faunus," she said. "He wasn't hired to do so, we only took him on board for freelance work after. White Fang fired on civilians. James defended them. Adam nearly disemboweled him for it."

"He showed me the scar!" the boy behind James said, his voice louder than it needed to be. His face turned a little red as he realized what he had done. "Along the side of his stomach. Looked like he had been cut open."

Kanton buried her head in her hands, massaging it wearily. "You've already got the knife in my gut, no need to give it a hearty twist." She looked up. "I know I can't let Adam run loose. But I can't just give him to you. Even if I was okay with it, and I'm not, Sienna would have my head if I did it with her approval. So, do you have something to make it worth the White Fang's time?"

Winter nodded, doing her best to hide the maelstrom that was now brewing inside her head. She had been aware that Blake Belladonna was an ex-White Fang operative, though her father having been the leader of the old White Fang was news to her. She had not been aware of her relationship to Adam Taurus. The implications for that were nothing short of staggering. If she was here, actively working against him, there was a chance she might be a priority target. Judging by James's reaction, he had been in the dark on this too. "I am here under direct authorization of General Ironwood, who is willing to offer quite a bit."

Kanton nodded. "Well. In that case, I'm not the person you need to talk to." Reaching into her clothes, Kanton produced a scroll. Picking up the trash bag, which was dripping a suspiciously red fluid, she opened it from an angle where Winter couldn't see it what was inside, snapped a photo of the interior, closed it, and typed something into her scroll. Winter heard the telltale sound of a message being sent. "What you did with the Hunters, James? We're never going to forget that. You're always welcome around here because of what you did. But from this point on, all I can do is put in a good word for you. You're going to have to talk to Sienna." She glanced at the boy behind James. "I'm going to have to ask you to wait outside. This line is for as few ears as possible."

James glanced at the boy. "Basil, I've got this. Head outside, ask for Ruby, tell her you're a friend of mine. She'll be good to you. ED-E, go with him."

Basil nodded hesitantly. "Ok. Don't let them pull a fast one on you." With that, he left the bar, ED-E following him. Baghanda glared at his retreating back but remained silent. As soon as the door closed behind Basil, Kanton acted.

Placing her scroll flat on the table, she initiated a call. It only rang twice before it picked up, the scroll on speaker mode. "I got your message Kanton, is anyone else listening in?"

"No, we're good, Sienna," Kanton replied.

"I'll take it from here," Sienna said. There was a beep. The scroll, which had only displayed the number called, changed. A dark-skinned woman with cat ears and a red dot in the middle of her forehead appeared on the screen. Kanton shifted the scroll, propping it up so that it was facing James and Winter. Sienna took both of them in. "A Schnee wanting to talk to me, never thought I'd see the day. And an unknown element working for them. Strange times."

"Yes," Winter said briskly. "I'll be blunt. General Ironwood would like the location or possible location of Adam Taurus. In exchange, he is willing to provide general amnesty for all crimes committed as members of the White Fang, a personal promise from him to utilize his political pressure to achieve some of your long term political goals, and witness protection for those who fear for their lives. He also granted me wiggle room for demands you wished to make."

"Awfully generous of him," Sienna said, her voice dry. "I can only wonder if he has the power to do things for the Faunus, why he waited until he wanted something from us in return."

Winter's jaw tightened. General Ironwood was offering her so much and she was choosing to be flippant about it? She forced herself to keep talking. "You'd have to ask him yourself. Regardless, this is an offer you should take advantage of."

"Well, I can certainly think of one." She pointed at James. "I hear that this one was busy tonight, wiping out the Hunters. The effort is appreciated, but it'll be spitting in the wind if people think it was just another case of gangs going at each other. I want General Ironwood to have a conference tomorrow morning. That attack was a raid carried out by Atlas specialists. The Hunters were considered a threat to public safety and were removed from the equation." She eyed up Winter before a sly grinned bloomed on her face. "And you lead it. Atlas officially sending in a Schnee to kill anti-Faunus gangsters. That sends a message loud and clear, and it's from an official source. Can you do that?"

Winter felt her entire body tense up. James had committed nothing of a massacre without informing a single soul, and now Sienna Khan was asking her to legitimize it? To effectively reward what could've caused a public crisis? Not trusting her voice, Winter nodded her head. "All right, we're getting somewhere," Sienna said, relaxing ever so slightly. "He should also clarify that they're observing for potential hate-groups like that in the future, give anyone with a bone to pick a second thought."

"Anything else?" Winter asked. "Any individuals you would like to put forward to amnesty or witness protection?" It would be for the best if she took her thoughts off of what happened to the Hunters, to focus on something she could change.

"No," Sienna said. "I'm much happier with the statement. Oh, but Ironwood pushing politics? I'll take him putting pressure on the Schnee Dust Company and other businesses. Increased safety regulations and better pay for Faunus. I'm not holding my breath on that one, but I'll take Jacques Schnee sweating himself out."

Winter blinked. "May I ask why you are turning down the rest of Ironwood's offers?" It didn't make any sense. Sienna had effectively been given a way to escape the fear of punishment from Atlas forever.

"See, both of those say the same thing. That the White Fang gives up. That we're done. That we're not going to do anything else and trust the authorities to solve our equality problems." She gave Winter a stony gaze. "And I don't. Either Ironwood isn't as honest as he's claiming to be or we'll get shunted down his priority list. That's what'll happen because that's what always happens when politicians make promises about Faunus rights. I've been down this road too many times to make the same mistake again."

Unless Winter was mistaken, Winter was quite sure that Sienna had just called General Ironwood a liar. She could feel her temper beginning to boil. "It takes two to tango Sienna," James said before Winter could reply. "We can talk all about getting fucked in the past, but if you want any of this to happen, there's gonna need to be a little give to your take. You've got a rabid dog on the loose, one who's made friends with a bunch of slaving rapists." He leaned forward. "Did you know that? The people who he joined up with wouldn't blink to do everything Humans ever did to your kind, plus probably a whole lot worse. So unless you want to see Faunus hanging from crosses all over Atlas, we need leads. No leads, no press conference."

Sienna turned to focus on James. The two locked eyes, neither one blinking. "Playing hardball I see," Sienna said.

"I've been dealing with your problem child's new friends for three, almost four years now," James remarked bluntly. "I don't fuck around when it comes to them. You don't want to take amnesty and witness protection? By all means, give them up. That just means we have to offer up less, no skin off of our backs. Just remember you don't get to ask for much when you smack an offer out of someone's hands." He glanced at Winter, giving her a quick nod. She returned it in appreciation. He had given her enough time to collect herself.

"We need to find Adam and his allies soon, a week is as wide a window as we can afford," she said, forcing her voice to be neutral. "If what you offer can't let us do that, then we don't have much to discuss. I can promise you a press conference and a push for increased regulations on the Schnee Dust Corporation in return. Are there any other conditions for this?"

Sienna took a minute to reply. "Not that I can trust to be reliably enforced. Very well. We do have a good idea where Adam might be. Not his exact location, but he's been making stops along our safehouses if our missing supplies is anything to go by. When I see that conference in the morning, I'll leave where he most likely is with Kanton." Winter nodded, feeling relieved. "One last question. Are you going to kill him?"

"If he surrenders, we will be happy to take him in to stand trial," Winter replied curtly. They weren't butchers. Well. Most of them weren't.

"So yes," Sienna said. She sighed. "A pity. That boy had potential. I'd feel guilty about doing this if I didn't know he would've done the exact same to me." Winter wasn't sure she had heard that right. Sienna had noticed. "Yes, it turned out he had planned to kill me and usurp me as head of the White Fang. He planned on using my personal guard to help overthrow me." She smirked. "Shame his popularity with the White Fang has plummeted drastically, his co-conspirators that haven't followed him on his new endeavor sold him out. I was always more willing to push farther than Ghira, but it seems he was unable to find supporters out of Vale. He could've been something."

"That's the funny thing about appealing to radicals," James said coldly. "No matter how far you push, there's always someone who thinks you're not being extreme enough. And I'm gonna have to correct you. No. He never would have amounted to anything, unless you consider being a spiteful little shit 'being something.'" Winter was taken aback by James's tone, which had an unprecedented level of disdain in it.

He leaned forward. "There was a powerful group back where I came from called the Brotherhood of Steel. Easily one of the most powerful factions in the region, weapons and armor like no one else. Father Elijah was their leader of one of their chapters about eight years ago, about equal to the position Adam had in the overall organization. And he was fanatical and obsessive. So fanatical that he refused to have his forces abandon a valuable installation when they were surrounded by opposing forces just because he didn't know how to let go, its secrets were too tantalizing for him. And eventually, he just abandoned them. Half of them ended up dead and the survivors had to go into hiding. Then he turned up three years ago, kidnapping people and strapping bomb collars to their necks and forcing them to hunt for more secrets. Elijah and Adam are cut from the same cloth, except I doubt Adam has the technical know-how of Elijah. And, god willing, Adam will get what's coming to him, just like Elijah."

"I take it to mean that you killed Elijah?" Sienna said calmly.

"He didn't get off that easy," James replied in a tone that brokered no follow up. Winter's imagination was left to run wild. What exactly was he attempting to imply with that?

"I feel like you understand my ideology more than most," Sienna said. "I didn't start a fight with Humans, nor do I desire dominance over Humans. I've simply made it very clear that we are no longer helpless victims."

"I think we both know it goes a little further than that, otherwise you never would've tolerated someone like Adam in your ranks," James said. "But we're getting off-topic. Any other clauses you want to add on?"

Sienna nodded. "No. I must say, this hasn't been an unpleasant experience. The White Fang wouldn't be necessary if goals were this easy to meet." She shrugged. "Until then, the White Fang will be a necessary part of the lives of Faunus everywhere."

"We will be back for the location of those safe houses tomorrow," Winter said. "We are authorized to crack down on local White Fang operations if we do not receive it. At that point, you will be openly aiding and abetting a wanted terrorist."

"Oh don't fret. Unlike most, I keep my promises," Sienna said. With that, the call disconnected.

"That got a little tenser than I would've preferred," Kanton said. "But, Sienna's word is my word. You'll have what you came for. Hopefully, the people won't lose trust in us considering what we're getting in return. Feel free to come back here anytime. Preferably with a smaller entourage." James nodded, getting to his feet. Winter followed suit. "We'll be here tomorrow morning, and every day this week. See you then."

"Thank you for your cooperation. I promise you that it will reveal itself to be a wise decision," Winter said. She turned and moved to leave the bar, James right behind her. "May I ask who your companion was?" Winter asked. Much of what James had done during the talk had surprised her, making her realize that there was much about the man she did not know. Now that the talks were done, however, she remembered how very irritated she was with his reckless behavior.

"One of the gangsters at the place I hit," he replied. "Kid wasn't like the rest of him, and he wanted to help. God, he almost had a heart attack when I told him that we had to work with the White Fang, but he settled down when I explained the ones behind the Vale attacks were radicals." He paused in front of the door, looking at her. "You're mad at me, aren't you?" He wasn't blind to his situation then. A tiny part of her appreciated that he wasn't being snide or smarmy the way Qrow would be, but only a very tiny part of her.

"Yes. I am," she replied briskly, her reserved distaste flaring up into full-blown anger. "What you did was impulsive and stupid. Regardless of what your targets might have done, they were Atlas citizens. You had no warrant, you had no permission from higher up, what you did was effectively vigilantism and, depending on which judge you ask, a massacre!" She grabbed him by the shoulder. "Do you understand that if General Ironwood doesn't slip this under the rug, you could face anything from life in prison to the death penalty?" James nodded somberly. "Then what were you thinking?"

"If I'm going to be honest, this is how we solve things back where I'm from," James said. To give him credit, he didn't sound indignant or offended at her anger. Ironically, that made it harder for Winter to stay angry. Nevertheless, she held firmly onto her anger. "You don't always have time to run for help. If you see a pack of assholes and you got the hardware to take them out, you take them out. And that's exactly what I did." He looked very tired. "I'm not going to apologize for what I did. I will apologize for the trouble and stress I've caused you. I'm sorry. I took a calculated risk out there, and I apologize for any hardships it causes."

Winter was finding it very hard to be mad at this point. "Let me ask you something. Knowing what I just told you, would you do it all over again if you knew you would be put to death for it?"

James nodded. "I would."

Winter scrutinized him. He didn't seem to be lying. "And would you accept that punishment?"

Another nod. "I would. My life for stopping the Hunters and getting Adam's location? Yeah. That's a fair price to pay." A melancholic look crossed his face.

Winter scowled. At this moment, she almost wished he was being more like Qrow, at least then matters would be more simple. "Don't talk about your life like it's Lien, to be spent wisely. What you did was reckless for more than one reason. You're a priority target for the Legion, you know more than anyone else does about them in Remnant. They were willing to dedicate an entire battle simply to try and kill you. Would you be willing to give the Legion what they desire so easily? To leave the students to fight them without you?"

That got a reaction out of James. The look on his face was one of sheer shock and horror. After a moment, he found his tongue. "I didn't mean it like that," James said. "And the Legion has tried to kill me before, they've never been able to pull it off before." He sounded more defensive now. Winter pressed forward.

"They didn't have Aura before, they didn't have Marie F. before, and they didn't have the support of the White Fang before," Winter said. "Adam Taurus may be a 'spiteful little shit' as you so eloquently put it, but he is dangerous. I fought him back in Vale. Do you even know what his Semblance is? His sword absorbs energy and then unleashes it back on his opponents. He has been able to kill Huntsmen with full strength Aura using this. And by going out there alone, you put yourself at risk of attack. You said it yourself, the Legion has skilled spies. How do you know none of them are watching, waiting for an opening to strike?"

James looked at her. He looked lost, as if he had just woken up and had no idea where he was. Winter's anger died. The hand she had on his shoulder slackened. "Promise me something," she said. "Promise me you won't charge into another situation like this without telling me first." She had no idea what she was feeling anymore, only that she could feel a good deal of stress coming from somewhere, pressing down on her.

James made a strangled noise. "Ok. I promise."

The pressure that had been pressing down on Winter lifted. She believed him. He was looking directly at her, sincerity in his eyes. "Thank you," she said, withdrawing her hand. They would have a lot of work ahead of them, ensuring that Sienna's demands were met. And Ironwood would have to cover up what James had done if he wasn't willing to imprison him over it. But, for now, she felt a moment of relief.

XXXXX

Dorian was shaking. He had played dead the second the shooting had started. For what had felt like an eternity, he pretended that the fall had killed him. The attacker, somehow, hadn't noticed. He had been busier with the others and the Blue Bull. When it was all done, after his fight with the Bull, Dorian had been able to crawl into one of the bathrooms and patch himself up with the first-aid kit in there. He had heard the attacker searching for survivors, heard him find Basil. The little fucking traitor. That little cocksucker would've been dead, but right after the butcher who had nearly killed him, and should've killed Basil, had been right there. But he had been forced to stay still, playing dead.

The old prick had said something about movement, so hadn't dared to budge an inch. It had been hell, listening to the two move about the refinery, picking through it, robbing the dead they had murdered. After what felt like hours, mercifully, they had left. The Sergeant's car had roared to life and driven off with those two fuckers in it. Only then had Dorian felt comfortable getting up.

He shook as he walked out, the pain not helping matters. This had been it. This had been everything. Every last Hunter had been here when that psycho had started spraying his machine-gun at them. They were all hands on deck every night, to make sure none of the animals that infested this city got any bright ideas about taking the Hunters out while they were asleep. And one lone man had killed every last one of them, excluding himself and Basil. Even the Blue Bull was dead, their ace in the hole.

Dorian slumped into the couch he had been sitting in mere hours beforehand. Bodies were everywhere, blood dripping out of all of them, to the point where barely any of the floor was clear. Everything was still in pitch darkness, but there was enough light from the moon for him to just make it all out. What was he supposed to do now? Go back home? Hardly an option, the fuckwits he called parents had made it quite clear he wasn't welcome there. This place was his home. That asshole, the asshole he had met at the bar earlier today, had ruined it. His hands had tightened into fists. He recognized that voice, there was no mistaking it.

He was going to burn down that shithole of a bar, he should've done it from the start. He was going to get a bunch of fire Dust, sneak around at two in the morning, and burn it to the ground. Show the old fuck what happened when you messed with the Hunters. In fact, he was going to go and do it right now. The idea was slowly coming together in his head. He would arm up, to the bar, wait for an opening, then strike. Every last one of those fuckers would pay for what happened tonight.

Dorian got to his feet, heading straight for the Hunters's armory. Inside was a mostly bare, windowless, concrete room that had been packed to the brim with rifle racks and ammo cases. Quite a few of the rifles were missing, the prick and the bitch had taken a few of them when they had ransacked the place. He grabbed one, slapping a magazine in, before moving around to gather more. After tonight, he would go around making sure everyone knew that a Hunter had done this, then he would start over. The Hunters would rise again, stronger than before, and he would be at the helm.

But then, something happened that nearly made his heart stop. Two pairs of heavy footsteps from outside. Panicking, he grabbed the door to the armory and closed it quietly. The footsteps got louder; they were inside the refinery now. "What the hell happened here? Were the others supposed clear the area before we got here?" a deep, gruff voice said.

"No," said another. This one was strange. It had an odd distortion to it like the owner was talking into a voice changer. "This wasn't us. Shit. Looks like the White Fang had enough of the Hunters." More heavy footfalls echoed. "And it looks like they took the Blue Bull out of the equation. Damn it. We could've used that Semblance of his."

"He was medium priority, at best," the gruff voice said. "Boss is gonna be annoyed when he hears the news, but same time the next day it'll be like nothing ever happened. There are better people we can look at for quality Semblances anyway. His was raw combat ability anyway, strong but nothing special. Utility Semblances are the real hidden gems."

Dorian looked around him. There was no way out of the armory except the door, they hadn't wanted anyone to be able to sneak in through it. Maybe he could take the two of them? It was possible if he could get the drop on them. Still, it was smarter to play it safe.

"Still, take a look around, we may find hints for fresh leads," the odd voice said. "The Bull was an ex-specialist, maybe he kept up contact with old army buddies. That won't be of much help if they're still enlisted, messing with the Atlas military is out of the question, but if they're like him they could be future targets. After all, anyone that willingly puts up with him is another potential recruit for groups like the Hunters."

"On it," the gruff voice said. "I'll see if I can pull any documents. Check his scroll, he'd be the type to get lazy and not secure his contacts."

There was a thump that sounded like something heavy had just been shifted. "Well, we're not gonna know. A round went right through it. Damn it. We're out of luck unless Jane can salvage the hard drive, and that's a longshot. There was total penetration here. We'll have to check his room. There were more heavy footfalls. They stopped right outside the door he was hiding behind. His breath stopped. "Wait a minute. Why would there be a door closed if the place got...Wiglaf! We got a straggler!" the synthesized voice shouted. Dorian's blood went cold.

"This might be a hidden little present. Let's see if they have anything worthwhile." Without warning, a massive, armored hand tore through the wall, grasping him by the throat and tearing him back out. His world turned upside down before he saw the ground rushing up to meet him, his rifle soaring out of his hands. Stars burst to life in front of his eyes as he was slammed into the ground, his entire body screaming in pain. "Damn, one of the younger ones. Still, worth checking." Dorian shivered. The one with the gruff voice, Wiglaf, was right behind him, keeping him pinned with one arm, well out of Dorian's sight when he had his face against the ground.

There were more footfalls and he felt a second, smaller hand brush against his back. There was a noise of disgust from the synthesized voice. "Nothing. He has no Semblance."

Wiglaf sighed in disappointment. "That's a shame. I thought we might've gotten lucky here, but tonight's not our night. Egh. I say we cook something nice up when we get back, take our minds off of this. Even the boss would be up for something at a time like this."

"Might as well," the synthesized voice said, sounding more frustrated than agreeable. "But this could be a problem, we're hitting dead ends here. We need to find a better venue."

"You're right there," Wiglaf said. "It's only to be expected that you only find trash when digging through the ghettos. Anyone with a Semblance worth a damn would've joined the specialists and gotten out of here." His hand tightened around Dorian. "What do we do with Junior?"

There was a moment of hesitation. "As much as this feels wrong," the synthesized voice said, "the boss's orders have never changed. No witnesses. Just make it quick, he doesn't need to suffer."

"Wait, no, NO! YOU CAN'T FUCKING DO THIS!" Dorian screeched, thrashing wildly against Wiglaf's grip. How was this possible? First, the old prick that had attacked them earlier and now this? What had he done to deserve this?

"Not a statement with a good deal of evidence to support it," Wiglaf said. "Honestly, I think my partner is giving you more sympathy than you deserve. But I try to not let my personal opinions get in the way of work. I was superior to just about everyone in here and that stayed at the back of my mind, despite how much your rhetoric irritates me. I mean, really? Do you think you're superior to Faunus? Do you even know what actual superiority looks like?"

"Oh for the love of-again with this Wiglaf?" the other voice said. "We've talked about when and where is a good time to bring this up, now can you please not drag this out?"

"Right, my apologies," Wiglaf said, sounding sincere. "It's a topic I'm passionate about. I did say that I try to not let my personal opinions get in the way." Dorian had no idea what he was talking about and was about to begin another thrashing attempt when the hand pinning him tightened.

"It's not a big deal," the other voice said, still sounding irritated. "But we need to move fast. Legionary forces are on their way here and we need to be ready when they get here." There was a sigh and the anger faded from the strange voice. "I don't mean to snap Wiglaf, but I'm worried about you and the others. The boss has made it clear there's going to be a big upheaval soon, and I want us all to be ready for it."

"Oh, I agree," Wiglaf said. "And we will be. But until then." A massive hand, thick and calloused, closed around Dorian's head. He felt it twist. It was the last thing he ever felt.

XXXXX

Author's Note: Mailman kills Paul Buynon, more at 11. P.S. Does "it is also a gun" still apply for flamethrowers?

I've developed a policy when writing minor antagonists as of late. Make them despicable if I want, make them hateable if I want, but give them a consistent internal mindset. No matter how horrible they are, they themselves think that they're in the right.

While we're on that subject matter, I know there's some screwbally things on when exactly the White Fang turned more violent, which is important as it factors into when Adam and Blake were involved. Considering that, in the flashbacks, Illia and Blake have the exact same models as the current day selves, I think what happened is a simple case of the writers for the Adam short forgetting that Blake said that the White Fang turned violent five years ago. Honestly I find it to be an understandable mistake, it was an offhand line that was said half a decade ago, I've made bigger screw-ups in my writing. So while Adam is a fucked up human being, I don't think he's a pedophile on top of everything else. I DO, however, believe he is an ephebophile, as he was estimated to be in his 20s. Heck, speaking of screw-ups, I had James call him kid and boy because I was under the impression he was Blake's age. Ah well, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. I think it's fitting for James and how little he respects Adam to have it be that James just lowballed Adam's age. It leads to more interesting stuff than just going back and changing everything.

P.S. If I had to describe James with one sentence, it'd be this. He's as good as the wasteland let him be.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 12

When People Talk

XXXXX

Ruby let out a small yelp as James brought his new ax swinging down, the shaft of Crescent Rose just barely blocking it. James had never claimed to be a master with melee weapons, but he had used them enough that he considered himself reasonably skilled. Still, the Blue Bull's ax was a big step up from the knife he tended to use, and he needed time to get used to it. This weapon was too good to ditch, and the nature of this world and how combat worked in it meant that getting a better weapon for hand to hand combat was something he probably should've done earlier. Ruby had been happy to offer in the form of a sparring match. Since the nature of the match was to get him more acclimated to swinging the ax, not shooting it, they had agreed to not use the ranged functions of their weapons. That had been five minutes ago. They were now going at it in the training room on Ironwood's flagship.

He brought down the ax a second time, trying to power through Ruby's guard. Instead, she disappeared in a blur of red and rose petals. Swearing under his breath, he made to spin around, only for a dull pain to tear into his back. "Gotcha!" she said, clearly proud of herself. Staggering, James turned to see her beaming brightly behind him before she stuck her tongue out sped away in another blur.

"Keep it up sis, it's in the bag!" Yang cheerfully called from the side. The rest of Team RWBY was watching with bated breath. Weiss was furiously tapping into her scroll, but even she was frequently stopping to look up. If anything, she looked as if having to pick between the fight or her scroll was proving to be torture for her. Yang was fidgeting where she stood, looking as if she would love nothing more than to join the fight but was forcing herself to just cheer on her "baby sister." And Blake...Blake. James's mind wandered as he looked at the closeted Faunus, who was watching the fight with marked interest. She had been in the White Fang, in Adam's radicalized section, and she had been sexually active with the boy (James didn't care if he was actually in his 20s, he was still calling the punk a boy). What had driven her to join in the first place if her father had reportedly been a devote pacifist when he had led the Fang? What had driven her to leave? Blake blinked. She had noticed him staring.

"Wide open!" Another dull pain tore into his back. Ruby was not paying respect to James's wandering mind. In retrospect, this was a good thing. If her opponent wasn't paying attention James would want her to exploit that. He just wished he wasn't the one getting punished.

"Mr. Walker, you got this!" Basil shouted, standing off to the side and, ironically, looking even more worked up than James felt. ED-E was madly buzzing around his head, his attitude the same as the young man's. The ex-Hunter, to James's pleasant surprise, seemed to be getting along with the students just fine. No one had really come up with a plan with what to do with him, so he had been hanging around and helping James with odd jobs while James had been putting him through drills. The boy was in good shape and a decent shot, but had never seen a proper battle before. He was insistent on helping though, so James would have to come up with something to do with him. "She's shorter than you! Use that to your advantage!" Basil thought dirty. He had the right idea.

Ruby was grinning openly now, radiating confidence. She twirled on the spot, she was about to speed away again. James darted forward, grabbing for the long, red cape that Ruby wore and getting a handful of it. "Hey! No faaaaaaair!" Ruby shouted as James tugged down hard and slammed Ruby onto her back.

"Not breaking any rules!" James retorted. Maintaining his grip on the cape, he brought the ax down with his free hand. He got two free blows in on Ruby, who let out tiny "eeps" as she began to struggle against his grip. Eventually, she reached up to detach her cape, James only getting one last hit in before she managed to recover and speed away. "If you can do something like that to me, I want you to do it!" he called after her, taking up a defensive position as she came to a stop, shooting him a dirty look.

"Hm. Something like that," she said, more to herself than to him. She blinked. Then her dirty look was replaced with an evil smile. James felt like he had missed a step. Well, he had asked her to. "Let me try." Again, she became a blob of red and rose petals. Not even bothering to check where she was going, James turned a full 180 degrees and swung without looking. There was a clash of metal on metal and the ax head met shaft again. "Oh come on! I had a good idea! I was going to rip your helmet off halfway!"

"That would've been a great idea, but not everyone is just going to let you do it," James said. Pulling back, he made a quick feint. Ruby flinched, moving to block, only for James to instead crouch down and extend his leg. A quick Ranger Takedown would put Ruby on her back again. Ruby's eyes went wide as she realized her mistake. Instead of attempting to dodge, however, she spun Crescent Rose in her hands and slammed its head directly onto his ankle. James hissed as pins and needles shot through his leg, which was brought to a screeching halt.

With a hasty swing, he batted the scythe away and began scrambling backward on all fours. Ruby, emboldened, dashed forward, viciously swinging her weapon in glee. Now James was on the defensive, flipping the ax over and desperately blocking the incoming blows. Ruby's scythe was unlike any weapon he had ever gone up against, dwarfing even Lanius's sword in sheer size. It was unnerving how quickly the small girl was spinning it around, determinedly attempting to slice his head off. But as talented as Ruby was, she was inexperienced, and he was going to capitalize on that.

As the blade of Crescent Rose bit into the ax he took a risk. One hand darted to his side, drawing his knife and flicking it up into the air. Ruby's eyes widened as he caught it by the blade and threw it as hard as he could at her. She stepped back, twirling Crescent Rose and easily deflecting the knife, but she had left her legs open. Throwing himself forward, James gave a meaty, two-handed swing. There was a cry of pain from Ruby as the ax head smacked into one of her legs and she collapsed to the ground. The electronic arena around them flashed red. "Aura below 50%. Match over," an electronic voice announced. James let out a gasp of relief as he got to his feet. After the thorough pasting that Phyrra had given him, it was nothing short of euphoric to win a sparring match. He offered a hand to Ruby, who was staring up at him with a pout.

"I had really good ideas for how to beat you you know," she grumbled, grabbing his hand. "Not just the one with the helmet." James nodded as he pulled her to her feet.

"I don't doubt it. And the next time we spar, I want you to use every last one of them," he said. A bright and excited look shot across Ruby's face as she opened her mouth. "Ah-ah-ah," James said, wagging his finger. "If you tell me them all, I'll be able to adapt. I want you to try and come up with something on the spur of the moment to catch your opponent off guard. I didn't go into this fight thinking I would grab your cape." That was a lie. When brainstorming how to fight Ruby, that ball of red cloth had been one of the first weaknesses he had considered exploiting. But he was trying to make a point here, now wasn't the time for semantics. "You need to look for openings that only present themselves in the moment and capitalize on them. Decisions like that in the heat of the moment can be the deciding factor between victory and defeat. Like my trick with the knife there." That wasn't a lie, tossing his knife had very much been a spur of the moment idea.

"Oh!" Ruby said. Reaching to her side, she drew the pistol he had given her. "Like drawing this when they're not expecting it and getting off a few quick shots?"

A massive grin split James's face as he gave her a hearty clap on the shoulder. "Now you've got it!" He glanced at the others. Weiss was clapping politely, Blake was silent, and Yang was grumpily depositing fifty Lien into the hand of a very smug-looking Basil. "That goes for the rest of you too. If someone's trying to kill you, hit them whenever you can with whatever you can."

"Understood," Weiss said, nodding. "I take it you'll want to look at the results?" She crossed the room, holding her scroll up to James with the results of the match.

"Ruby Rose Aura: 49% James Walker Aura: 57%" A spike of pride shot up inside James. He had finally managed to win a sparring match against one of the students. The youngest one. The youngest and least experienced. Whom he had only narrowly defeated. A small frown formed on his lips. The more he thought about it, the more his ego felt like it had air leaking out of it. In retrospect, it wasn't a particularly impressive feat. A horrible, gnawing sensation crept into the pit of his stomach.

All this time in Remnant and he was still struggling to keep up with Aura users. His normal combat skill was well above average, but his Aura related skills were only above average by novice standards. He tried to remind himself that he had only had these abilities for weeks at most and that he should stop worrying. The gnawing subsided but didn't truly go away. He had to stop thinking about this. His room was filled with the materials he had scavenged from the Hunters base, mostly ammo, medical supplies, and fresh clothes, but he had snuck a few of the Blue Bull's beers in there. He would have one or two when he was done for the day, something to take the edge off of it all and help him relax.

"I'm hungry, anyone else want to grab a bite to eat?" Yang asked, avoiding eye contact with Basil.

James jumped on this distraction. "Sounds good to me." He hadn't gotten a chance to eat with Team RWBY since his first full day in Remnant, much of his lunch time had been dedicated to taking inventory of his loot from the Hunters. This included breaking down and converting ammo with ED-E's help, feeling the fresh relief of the cleanest socks he had ever gotten his hands on, a low standard sadly, and figuring out the ins and outs of Remnant medicine. Also, Basil had taken him driving a few times with the Sergeant's car, and James was getting better at driving. At the very least, Basil wasn't screaming anymore.

He wasn't sure how he felt about Remnant, but he knew he loved the food. The meat was fresh, the produce was massive and delicious, and the water was always clean. It still felt wasteful, the sheer volume of it that was piled up at times, like they would run out if they kept this up. There seemed to be no end to the foodstuffs and he had been assured that a famine would be needed to cause a serious food shortage. Despite this, he often found himself eating moderate amounts, the same amount he would in the Mojave. Where he came from, if you overate today, you starved tomorrow. He would put that out of his mind for this meal. This would be a simple, calming lunch with the students.
Ten minutes later, he was rudely corrected.

"Weiss, you need protein," James said sharply. He could understand skimping on meat back in the Mojave. Even with Heck Gunderson's aggressive expansion, meat was expensive, but there was no such reason here. He and Team RWBY were all sitting in the flagship's mess hall, and he could see plenty of fresh meat being served, even from their table. Weiss was poking at a plate that was all salad. It made sense, Weiss did have a very lithe figure compared to the rest of her team, but she needed some muscle for her line of work.
"I keep telling you Weiss, gotta get some meat on that dainty frame of yours," Yang said teasingly, smirking as she did.

"I am perfectly comfortable with my body, thank you very much," Weiss said icily, shooting daggers at Yang.

"Yang, you need greens," James said. "Come on, they don't grow them anywhere near this big where I come from. Don't eat any fruits and veggies all your life and you'll start losing your teeth." Yang was the exact opposite of Weiss. While Weiss looked as if she was a vegetarian, Yang seemed to think the main food groups were beef, pork, chicken, and fish. "You don't know how good you have it." God damn it, I'm talking like an old man. Fuck me, I AM an old man. Oh well, already too late to turn back. "You don't get vegetables this good in the desert. It's-RUBY! COOKIES ARE NOT LUNCH!"

Ruby, who seemed to have substituted a proper meal for five of the cookies that were given to liven up the meals of Atlas soldier, protectively pulled her plate towards her. James groaned. "Is there anything I can do to get you girls to eat more balanced meals?"
"How about some more stories," Yang said slyly, leaning back in her chair. James had a sneaking feeling that she was exploiting him here. Well, it couldn't hurt. "Tell us more about Earth, something interesting you saw there."

"Half of the interesting stuff I found in life was from poking around Pre-War ruins. If the courier thing didn't work out full time, I honestly considered becoming a prospector as my fallback job. You just see a lot of interesting stuff that way. Like the Nuka-Cola factory where they tried their hands at making rum." James let out a laugh. "Man did that give me stories to tell for a month and a half. I'm used to seeing bombed out buildings all over the wasteland, but they usually don't have signs out in front saying the place was blown to hell five years before the bombs fell."

He held his hands up. "I'm never going to forget it. On October 3rd, 2072, America's Second Great Molasses Flood occurred. No lives were claimed, but hundreds of millions of dollars in damage were caused. It was probably mainly Nuka-Cola property, considering that two centuries later it still smells of coconut. Really shit coconut too."

Yang laughed. "So I take it the rum wasn't very good?"

James let out a strangled laugh. "I mean, there's a certain quality to being able to eat through industrial-grade steel. I managed to make an acid grenade out of one bottle, and I swear this is true, I was able to use it to melt three Pre-War military robots. The stuff probably would've eaten through power armor like it was candy."

"Ok, now we're getting somewhere. What else? What's this power armor stuff? Is it like what Atlas has?" Yang asked, leaning forward over the table and looking interesting. Three other sets of eyes were now glued to him. Then it all came to a close.

"James?" Winter was right behind them. He glanced at her with uncertainty. Things had been a little odd between the two of them ever since his assault on the Hunter base a day ago. She wasn't quite mad with him, she didn't seem to be able to muster up the passion for that, but things still came off as somewhat strained. Team RWBY looked on in confusion. None of them had been given the full details on what had happened at the Hunter base, that was being saved until after Ironwood's press conference. He wondered if they would look at him differently after that. "General Ironwood would like to speak with you." She glanced at ED-E. "Only you. Please follow me."

James nodded before glancing back at Team RWBY. "Another time then. Please eat right while I'm gone. ED-E? Make sure they do so." There was a series of awkward nods and a beep from the eye-bot as James began to follow Winter. "So what's the word? Does Ironwood have a problem with the White Fang? Do we need to head back downtown?"

"No. Ironwood's press conference aired an hour ago today." Pulling out her scroll, Winter opened a video and passed it back to him. "The White Fang was willing to part with a list of their safehouses and the last one that Adam was spotted at earlier this morning."
James took the scroll as a video began to play, midway through the conference. Ironwood was standing in front of a podium with a dozen different microphones, the flag of Atlas right behind him. "Despite rumors, I can assure you that the events of yesterday night were carried out by Atlas Specialists. The Hunters were a gang that had proven itself to be a threat to the public, as demonstrated by their random, unprovoked attacks on Atlas civilians. Their base of operations was surrounded and they were ordered to surrender. Upon refusing to, they opened fire and our Specialists were forced to retaliate with lethal force. I'm disappointed to remark that several discharged members of the Atlas military were among the dead. We will be conducting investigations into the matter to ensure no future servicemen take part in such activities."

James paused the video, getting the point. "The White Fang were happy with this?"

"They especially appreciated all the times it deviated from the truth," Winter remarked sourly. James decided not to ask which parts had been lies. "The important matter is that they upheld their end of the bargain. We are arranging a counter-attack on the White Fang, we will be departing in twelve hours. General Ironwood wishes to speak with you on important matters before he announces it." James nodded, even though Winter could most likely not see it.

She led him into a windowless side room that was full of tables. To his surprise, it was laden with objects from Earth. LAERs and a few laser rifles dotted one table, complete with microfusion cells, while the others had more mundane objects. Legion knives, a few revolvers, some bags of Legion money, and a table that had a dozen or so bottle of Nuka-Cola on them. James glanced at the last table and moved on. Then he did a double-take. The majority of the bottles were of the basic Nuka-Cola flavor. One bottle, on the other hand, glowed with its own light. A bottle of Nuka-Cola Quantum.

James crossed the room, doing his best not to shove Winter out of the way, and picked up the bottle. It was sealed, fresh, and full. Yes. Oh hell the fuck yes.

Ironwood looked as if he had been about to speak, but hesitated when he saw James examining the bottle. "A favored refreshment of yours?"

"Oh god no, this shit is not safe to drink," James said. "But I've seen amazing shit done with this before. Ironwood, you gotta let me keep this stuff. If I can just get my hand on a couple of common chemicals, I can turn it into one hell of a bomb." He gestured to the last plasma grenade that I had. "You saw what one of these did to the White Fang, right? Let me work with the Quantum and I can cook something up that'll make it look like a firecracker."

Ironwood and Winter both shared a startled look. "I was going to offer you one of these energy weapons, I'm certain that you can get more out of them than with a bottle of soda." He cocked his head. "I'm not even certain how old it is."

"Oh, 200 years at the minimum, no one's been making Nuka-Cola since the war," James said. "And while the classic stuff is drinkable, if you like garbage like that, this is dangerous. Radioactive isotopes are in them. Good for grenades." James glanced at the LAERs and laser rifles. "As for your offer, I'm going to have to politely decline. I was never a fan of energy weapons. Harder to maintain than ballistic weapons, you can't craft ammo the same way you can with bullets, and overall there are just more things that can go wrong with them." He smiled, lifting up the bottle. "I'll just take this, help yourself to the energy weapons."

"Very well, it's yours," Ironwood said, sounding confused but not upset. "I planned on shipping the ones you didn't take to R&D for research. Atlas has been experimenting with energy weapons, and we have a few functional models in the field, but these are proving to be superior to any infantry models we have produced. Most of our successes has been heavy, mounted weapons, we have been struggling with long arms. We're having difficulty with the power source, but I have confidence that we will be able to either replicate it or find a way in which we can substitute it with Dust. Most likely the former. Winter has told me a good deal about the fusion capabilities that your robot possesses, and while I've no doubt it is quite reliable, replicating it is a bit beyond us at this time." James privately agreed.

"In case you were wondering, this room contains everything of note from Earth we have managed to recover from our battle with the Legion and the White Fang back in Vale. I was wondering if you could take a look around and tell me if there's anything of note here. We want to avoid any further surprises from the Legion." James nodded as he slid the Nuka-Cola Quantum bottle into his rucksack and started to pace the room. He made a point to keep an eye out for anything that could be from Big Mountain, that would be the real problem if the Legion managed to get enough of it.

Thankfully, the majority of the salvaged equipment was rather mundane. "This is healing powder," he said, picking up a drawstring bag. "Tribal medicine that the Legion uses because it totally doesn't count as medicine." He put it down. "Not really that effective. Stimpacks are better, and your medicine blows it out of the water. It's another way in which the Legion kneecaps itself." He moved onto the small device right next to it, something that looked like a smaller version of his Pip-Boy.

"Well crap, that's a Stealth-Boy," he said, picking it up. Strapping it to his arm, he flicked the switch on the side. Nothing happened. "Drained. Crap." He took it off. "When they're fully charged, they're capable of generating tactical cloaks. One of the frumentarii must've gotten caught in the crossfire, no one else in the Legion would ever use anything like this." That went back onto the table. He kept looking around. To his relief, everything else wouldn't look out of place in the average wasteland tribe. It seemed that the Legion had only been interested in a handful of technologically advanced tools. Caesar was more than willing to break his own rules when it suited him, but he seemed to be trying to limit it as much as possible. If James wanted to make a safe bet, Caesar didn't want his men getting too used to the comforts of Pre-War tech. "Fucking idiot," he said, more to himself than anyone else. "There's not much else, looks like the Legion only took so much with them."

Ironwood nodded. "That's a relief. We have a more or less exact location on Adam and his allies. I want you to be part of the strike team that finally takes him down."

James gave a gaunt grin. "Oh, I've got some catching up to do with that asshole. Count me in." James had known Adam was a detestable person the minute he had laid eyes on him, and every time he learned more about him James couldn't help but hate him more. "Him and Vulpes. When do we leave?"

"Not for some time. I want a midnight raid, catch them while they're sleeping," Ironwood said. "But there's a few things I wanted to talk with you about. First and foremost, your attack on the Hunters." James almost let out a resigned sigh. Well, he should've seen this coming. "While I will not be defending the moral character of the Hunters, what you did was not how we handle delicate matters in Atlas." His jaw stiffened. "I am not Ozpin. He may be content to let those he commands galivant around, doing as they please, destabilizing already volatile situations, but I do not. This is my country, James. You are here as a guest. Do anything like that again, I will ensure that you never move freely about Atlas again. If I am feeling generous. Do you understand?"
"I do," James said. Times like these, it was best to just take your lumps. If anything, this was easier than dealing with Winter's disappointment.

"Good," Ironwood said. "You've proven yourself a valuable asset, Mr. Walker. That, and the fact that you managed to produce results in a roundabout way, are the only reasons I haven't sent you straight back to Vale. Or to the inside of a cell. I recommend that you do not push your luck on the matter. Now then, while we're on the subject matter, the survivor, Basil. I do not feel comfortable letting an untested, unenlisted youth remain here while we are hunting dangerous terrorists."

"Look, I promised him he could help," James said defensively. After everything he had put Basil through, the least he could do was stand up for the kid. "There's gotta be a support role he can play."

"As a matter of fact, there is one," Ironwood said. "We will test the boy for Aura. If he gains one, I will provide him with an offer. Atlas Academy is currently in the middle of a semester, so he will have to wait until the start of a new school year to enroll. Atlas, however, sometimes finds promising recruits that it wants to prepare for the rigorous curriculum that we put our Huntsmen and Huntresses in training through. An around the year boot-camp of sorts, one that is designed to prepare them for the entrance exam. Basil, should he be able to activate Aura, will be given a chance to attend this camp and eventually apply to Atlas Academy. Should he graduate, this will all but guarantee him being admitted to the ranks of Atlas Huntsmen with the potential to become a Specialist after three years of service. Otherwise, I'm afraid he cannot be allowed to remain on military property. As he is, he is a liability." James mulled it over, privately noting that Specialists seemed to play the same role as Veteran Rangers. Basil was green, there was no getting around it. But if he trained properly, he could be a force to be reckoned with. At that point, Ironwood chose to sweeten the deal. "I would also be happy to write him a letter of recommendation to any of the other three schools if he wishes."

That pushed James over the edge. "Ok. I'll try and sell him on it." When he stopped and looked it all over, Ironwood was probably right on this being the best path for Basil. The kid wasn't ready to be thrown into the meat grinder yet. Basil had said he had wanted to help James. Well, becoming the best fighter he could be was helping him, even if it was mainly in the long run.

"Thank you. Secondly, may I please see your scroll?" He held out his hand. Confused, James fished it out and handed it to him. Ironwood took it, producing one of his own, and began typing on both of them. After a minute, he gave a smile of satisfaction before handing James's back to him. Filling up the screen was an ID with his face on it, a picture he couldn't remember being taken. In addition to his information, albeit with a birthdate that looked like it had been forged and Vale listed as his place of birth, there was a title on top of the ID. "James Walker. Huntsman License. Provisional."

"Provisional?" he said, looking at Ironwood, feeling confused. "And why do I need a license exactly?"

"This is a matter of convenience," Ironwood said. "If anyone had caught you during your raid on the Hunters, it would've been as a private citizen attacking without justification." That was debatable, but James kept his mouth shut. "We will avoid countless awkward inquiries with you having a license as a Huntsmen. As for why it's provisional, provisional licenses are issued in odd circumstances. Team RWBY posses student licenses, Qrow a standard license, and Winter a military license. We issue ones like yours when they can't neatly fit into any of the previous three categories. It means enough has been seen that you're considered skilled enough to become a Huntsman, but more time or training is needed before that can become official. It also means your license is only valid when you're operating with someone who possesses a standard or military license. Please do keep that in mind. This will give you legal protection when you are working with those with full licenses, but not for solo missions."

Ah. There it was. The ball and chain that was his punishment for what he had done with the Hunters. He was allowed to continue operating, but only under supervision. Out of the corner of his eye, Winter was looking at him very intently. All things considered, he was still getting off pretty easy, best to just take the restrictions and not complain about it. "You know, I got something like this back home," he said, reaching into his rucksack. After rummaging for a bit, he pulled out a handful of crumpled papers. "I wasn't born in the NCR, my family was nomadic for most of their lives, so I wasn't a citizen. I got honorary citizenship for 'service to the Republic' as they put it." He gave a bitter laugh. "Funny thing about that. Honorary citizens can vote, own land, and are granted most legal protections citizens get. But they can't run for office."

Ironwood raised an eyebrow. "Was there an NCR politician who was concerned about that?"

"Maybe?" James said. "It was hard to say. President Kimball was all too happy to pin a medal on my chest." He was fairly certain it had fallen under his bed a few months ago. If he ever got back to the Lucky 13 he should probably get around to checking that. "But I was never too interested in running. Not that he'd ever believe that. Check the newspaper that's slipped in there." Ironwood did so, pulling out a weathered and folded up bit of newsprint. As he did, James saw the familiar title. "Walker Backs Cole." Beneath the title was a picture of him and an elderly woman that had dark tribal tattoos all over her face. The pair of them were shaking hands and smiling at the camera. James had always hated how awkward it made the two of them look.

"Ah," Ironwood said, handing James back his papers. "I see. Going against the incumbent?"

"Kimball's an asshole who is too fond of nepotism," James said, filing the papers away. "But that's the nice thing about democracy, you can campaign against politicians you don't like. And Cole is campaigning on increased development in the NCR's newest regions and focused efforts on ensuring the people in those regions enjoy the same quality of life as citizens in the core regions. Some people don't like her because the funding for this would come from increased taxes on the rich, so it's proving to be a heated campaign." The election had been six months out when he had gone to investigate Big MT. And now he wasn't sure if he would ever be-he had to stop thinking like that. He would get back. He had to. "Though she's advised me to stick to saying why she's a good candidate as opposed to why he's a bad one. Somehow that's kept him from taking shots at me. Publicly. Privately he's made it very clear he hates my guts now." James wondered how long the list of people who hated him was. He had a talent.

"Understandable," Ironwood said. "Getting back on topic, I've talked with Ozpin and he agrees that a provisional license is the best approach. If you wish, you may speak to me about potentially becoming a full Huntsman. You do have the makings of a good one once you're more familiar with your Aura." A Huntsman. James didn't feel comfortable with that. In fact, he would go so far as to say it felt wrong. If he said yes to something like that, he was basically accepting that he was stuck here. He shook his head as he slipped his scroll away, more frantically than he had meant to. Ironwood looked disappointed but hid it quickly.

"I simply ask that you take some time to think about it. Thirdly, and this is something I need you to stay quiet about, Rumford has gone missing," Ironwood said. James felt himself grimacing in disgust before he could stop himself. The human-shaped pile of walking garbage was out and about? "I share your distaste. He was being moved from my flagship to a more permanent holding area, along with another prisoner I had. Roman Torchwick, a Vale crime boss."

"Wait, hold up," James said. "Torchwick? Wasn't that name on the list of potential Legion allies we found back in Vale?"

"My concerns exactly," Ironwood said. "We found the car that had been transporting them abandoned in the forest with one soldier murdered and a second one missing. We suspect that we may have had an infiltrator, the wound on the murdered soldier matched the description of a weapon used by one of Torchwick's known associates, a girl by the moniker of Neo." Ironwood picked up a couple of pictures that had been lying on a nearby table and handed them to James.

One was a mugshot of a rather handsome man with red hair wearing eyeliner, a red bowler hat, and a white suit. The other was a more distant picture of a short girl, no more than five feet tall, on a mostly deserted city street, standing in front of the first man. James had to do a double-take on her. She was idly holding a bright, frilly, pink umbrella against her shoulder, was wearing a Victorian-ish white and pink outfit, and her hair was half pink half brown. "The fuck?" he said, staring at the second picture.
"I've seen stranger outfits," Winter remarked dryly.

"Regardless," Ironwood said. "If only Torchwick had gone missing, I would've assumed this would've been the work of our unknown foe. They would have had no interest in Rumford, they may have even killed him. As such, I believe this was a rescue operation by Caesar's Legion to retrieve Rumford and recruit Torchwick." Ironwood frowned. "Though I'm not certain as to why they would go to such lengths for Rumford. He was hardly one of their more valued assets."

That was an understatement. "Recruit Torchwick? Maybe," James said. "I don't know if they wanted to rescue Rumford though. Not because they'd care if he killed some Faunus, they'd value him over them. They'd have a different issue with him. The Legion frowns on those who let themselves be taken prisoner. They view it as a sign of weakness. If they grabbed him, well, let's just say he's not in an enviable position right now. If he's still alive, he probably wishes he wasn't."

Ironwood nodded. "In that case, Rumford will most likely be a self-solving problem. We should be more concerned with the Legion acquiring a new ally in the form of Torchwick. His criminal empire has been dismantled, but he and his associates are proven to be dangerous in a fight. Don't underestimate them." James nodded as he handed the photos back to Ironwood.

"That's almost everything. There is just one more thing I've been wondering about. You mentioned it when we first met. Nuclear weapons." James tensed up. A talk about the very device that had turned Earth into a barren wasteland so many years ago. This wasn't going to go anywhere good. "Are you familiar with the design of the weapons? If not, which I would understand, could you at least describe the materials used in the construction of such weapons?"

James's response was quick, a little too quick. It gave away that he was uncomfortable with the topic. "Why do you need to know?" Winter's eyes narrowed in annoyance. Between this and how Qrow had been able to so easily push her buttons when he had first arrived, James had a feeling that disrespecting Ironwood was the easiest way to earn Winter's ire. Ironwood, however, tensed up as well. It was gone in a flash, but James had spotted it. Ironwood didn't want to tell him the reason for this question. The discomfort in James doubled.

"We have no desire to introduce such a weapon onto the world, if that is your concern," Ironwood said, giving James a comforting smile. Or at least a smile he thought was comforting, James couldn't help but feel it was a little too wide. "I remember all too well the description you gave of Earth's Great War. A horrible thing nothing like Remnant has ever seen before, with a senseless slaughter that we can only imagine. But you must understand something James." He gestured to the room around him to the energy weapons. "Your world's technology has been introduced into Remnant. We do not know how many of these weapons are now on the planet, or if the White Fang is maintaining a monopoly on them. For all we know, they have been trading Earth technology away in exchange for more basic supplies. We know that Adam Taurus is cut off from the rest of the White Fang and their Legion allies are stranded. Desperation could push them to be careless."

"And you think the Legion smuggled a nuke through the portal?" James asked, feeling skeptical.

"Most likely not, I admit," Ironwood said. "But every legionary knows of the existence of them. It is possible some may be aware of the more basic theories, concepts that may make their way towards Remnant scientists." There was an uncomfortable pause. "Potentially scientists not of Atlas."

Alarm bells were ringing in James's head. Everything about this screamed trouble. Even Winter, who had been looking at him in irritation, did a double-take at Ironwood. She looked surprised by this direction of the conversation. "I thought Atlas was at peace with the other kingdoms," he said.

"We are," Ironwood said, in a tone that just screamed that a "but" was coming. James wasn't disappointed. "But politics are never truly free of tension. I understand you are new to Remnant and thus have most likely not had time to familiarize yourself with this planet's politics in great detail. I can promise you, it is not as smooth as Ozpin and I would like the public to believe. Vacuo, for example, has vocally voiced frustration with Atlas corporations supposedly overextending themselves in their borders and have accused us of relying on trade agreements that were balanced in our favor." A hint of anger flashed across Winter's face. James wasn't a hundred percent certain he knew what that meant, but he had a good idea.

"I am not certain I agree with them, but the resentment is there. Mistral has also chafed at allowing historical Atlas military bases to exist within its borders, and there are Vale politicians who resent the presence of my fleet standing guard over Beacon Academy and the city of Vale." James was starting to have a sneaking suspicion that, of all the four Kingdoms, Atlas was easily the strongest in terms of military and economic might.

"Is there any possibility that the Legion could have acquired access to nuclear weapons?" Ironwood asked. "If non-Atlas scientists gain access to these LAERs, we would be able to match them. Nuclear weapons, on the other hand, would be different. It could change the balance of Remnant into a volatile situation. We could not afford to be caught flat-footed."

"None," James said firmly. "The NCR core territories would've been a radioactive crater if they had. Even if they wanted to avoid ruining more fertile regions, they still could've smuggled a nuke into the Boneyard to throw the NCR into chaos." That was a horrific thought to contemplate. Los Angeles weathering a second wave of atomic fire was something he wasn't sure he could take. "But Ironwood, you need to listen to me. You do not want nuclear weapons. They are an albatross around your neck. Pre-War Earth had an idea called MAD, mutually assured destruction. The idea was that if all nations had nukes, no one would be willing to fire them, because it would lead to a war where no one would win. It worked fine until things got too desperate and everyone was fighting over scraps. Then the war to end all wars happened and billions died in the blink of an eye. MAD doesn't fucking work."

James slammed his hands down onto one of the tables before he could stop himself. "Ironwood, you need to listen to me! Promise me, if the Legion does manage to sneak anything nuclear into Remnant, destroy it. This is something you can't play with; it will bite you in the ass. If Atlas develops nuclear weapons, everyone else is going to want the same capabilities. There isn't a nation on Earth or Remnant that wants to be stuck at that kind of disadvantage. This shit? It fucking killed my planet. Don't let our mistakes become your mistakes. Please!"

Ironwood didn't look convinced. "Are there any chances that they, or anyone else who is dangerous, has or could be capable of acquiring them in the past or the near future? In Remnant or Earth?" He was completely dodging James's pleas.
"No. Ironwood, you're not listening to me! You-" James began, feeling equal parts frustrated and terrified, but he wasn't in Ironwood's office anymore.

The wind was howling in his ear, tearing at any flesh that he hadn't been able to cover. There was a bitter, stale taste in his mouth, one that persisted even through his gas mask. He had to squint to see through the perpetual dust storm, so thick that he almost felt like he was swimming through it. It was nearly impossible to hear anything the roaring wind, even his own voice was like a muffled whisper to him. But James could still hear him. Every last word was crystal clear. "Missile silos exploded from beneath the ground, cracked the landscape. Sand, ash... the dead... the Divide skies became a graveyard."

They were all around them. The colors and armor of the NCR and Legion mixed together in an unholy mob, red raw skin glaring wherever they were absent. Primal screaming, barely human, filled his ears. They were upon them, clawing, biting, and pulling. He was being pulled into them, his armor buckling under the assault. He couldn't get away, he couldn't fight them off. There were too many. There were too many.

This was his fault.

"Mr. Walker? Mr. Walker!" He was back in Ironwood's flagship. Somehow, he had ended up on the ground, tears in his eyes and aching pain in his side. The general standing over him, shock and regret etched into his face.

A pair of hands gripped him from the side, firmly but gently lifting him up. "General Ironwood, permission to speak freely?" Winter asked. Ironwood blinked before nodding. "I think it would be in James's best interest if he was exempt from all further questioning regarding nuclear weapons." James blinked, gingerly wiping the tears out of his eyes with his off hand. Winter was the one who was holding him up, looking much paler than usual.

"I cannot promise this indefinitely, but I believe we can stop here," Ironwood said, looking ever so slightly guilty. "Please, Specialist, see him back to his room. He's earned a rest." Winter didn't say anything, she merely helped James out of the room. They had been moving down the hallway for at least a minute before she broke the silence that had formed between them.

"I...apologize," Winter said, sounding as if she was unfamiliar with the words. "It was not my intention to cause you this level of distress. I understand how people in fields like ours have sensitive topics that can be triggering. I promise to not bring up subjects like those around you."

"It's ok," James said weakly. He really needed to down one of the Blue Bull's beers now. "I think I'm good to walk." Winter shot him a questioning look as she loosened her grip on him but didn't fully let go. "It's just...Winter, you can't really appreciate what those things do until you see the damage first hand. The wounds they leave last for centuries. Please." He had to make her understand. If he couldn't reach Ironwood, maybe he could reach her. Whatever problems Remnant had with race inequality and giant demonic wolves, he couldn't let it share Earth's fate. "Don't let them become a reality here. It'll be a matter of if, not when, they get used."

Winter's face twisted into the expression of someone who was deeply divided as she fully let go of him. She looked back towards the room they had just exited. "I," she began before her voice died. "I will be sure that General Ironwood understands your concerns," she said, her voice strained. "After all, you are more knowledgeable than anyone else on the subject. General Ironwood only benefits from hearing the input of experts."

"Winter, no, that's not good enough," James said, panic spreading through him. Winter was trying to dodge the subject, to kick it upstairs to Ironwood and let him be the final arbitrator. James could tell, right now, that was a mistake. Ironwood wasn't a bad man, but he had seen the way the Atlas general had not been convinced. He didn't think Atlas could fall prey to the same events that had consumed America and China. "Ironwood respects you, you need to tell him that it's a mistake. He is getting in way over his head and playing with something he can't control. That no matter what happens, nuclear weapons can't be allowed to develop. Please. You have something beautiful here." He was afraid the tears would start flowing again. He held them back. "Don't ruin it like we did."
A sad look crossed Winter's face. "James. I can't promise anything. If General Ironwood wants to pursue the development of these weapons, it will more likely than not happen. He holds two seats on the Atlas Council, one as head of the Atlas military, one as head of Atlas Academy." She gripped her arm and looked away from him. "I'm sorry. But his decisions are final and for a good reason. Please, do not worry. Your concern is touching, but General Ironwood knows what he's doing." She still looked shaken. James felt deflated. Just like that? The two of them stood there for what felt like hours.

A voice broke the silence.

"Mr. Walker! You've been in Mantle for this long? I would've come sooner if I had known!" James turned, feeling numb. Han and Róta, of all people, were approaching from the end of the hallway. Róta was leading the way, while Han was right behind her, feeling his way forward with a red marked cane. "You got my message, didn't you? Or did it get lost? Oh, it doesn't matter, you're here now." He grinned brightly. "I've found a way home for you."

"Right," James said emotionlessly. This had gone on a little too long. He probably shouldn't have humored the old man in the first place. "Listen, I'm gonna be blunt with you. There is no way that you found a way for me to get back home. It's beyond anything Atlas can do, so I doubt you're different. I'm sorry."

Instead of taking the hint, Han let out a soft chuckle. "Oh, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised, Mr. Walker. Please, come along for a drive with Róta and I. We live a bit of a ways away, a little house we built about an hour away from Mantle." James was starting to feel frustrated now. He had enough on his plate right now, and Han's misguided good intentions were starting to rub him the wrong way.

"Let it go, ok?" James grunted. "The thought means a lot to me, but unless you can tell me what it is, and convince me it isn't a waste of my time, I'm busy." He was being rude, he knew it. But he had much more important things to deal with and Han didn't have any actual answers for him.

Róta's eyes narrowed and she took a step forward. Han's ears picked up at the sound of her steps. "Róta, Róta, patience. He's going through a good deal right now." The muscular woman stopped, shot James a glare, and folded her arms behind her back. "I'll make you a deal," Han said, reaching into his cloak. "I really don't want to spoil the surprise, so I'll put up some collateral. A hundred thousand lien." Holding up an utterly massive stack of lien, he smiled. "This is charity money, I'm supposed to be using it for a down payment on a low-income complex for Faunus to live in. If I give this to you, I'll have to pay for the loss out of my personal account." He winked, even through his sunglasses. "I hope this is a sign that I'm quite confident in my solution."

James groaned. "Fine. I could use a hundred grand." James wasn't sure he was going to actually take the whole sum of money, but he would probably take a thousand or two for his time. Something the old man could afford to cover. Maybe this was for the best, people tended to swallow their pride a bit when it cost them four figures. "You driving?"

"I think I should accompany you," Winter said suddenly. "Do you recall our conversation from yesterday?" The dread over their talk of nuclear weapons left him as he remembered Winter talking about him being targeted by the Legion. He felt a chill casually pass through him. He nodded. "Baring that in mind, I think it would be for the best if you didn't go alone. We must be back at base in twelve hours for official business, so let me clear this with Ironwood to ensure that we can finish this important business without interruption." She didn't quite look like she meant it when she called the business important, so at least she and James were on the same page.

A frown crossed over Han's face, but it was gone in an instant. "If you insist, I won't complain," Han said, getting a smile back on his face. "If we head out now, we can have you back home in no-time. You should grab anything of importance that you want"
James nodded, not really listening. "Should I talk to Basil before we head out?" he asked Winter as they started to move towards the exit. "Tell him about Ironwood's deal? I need to get ED-E anyway."

"I think that would be for the best, I'll go with you. I can see if he has any Aura potential," Winter said. "I'll be certain to tell him the benefits. Professor Zinna Carmine is one of the best combat instructors one could ever ask for."

"Ah, she's still teaching then? She must be older than I am," Han said. "I've never been to the school, mind you, but I've heard of her. I think she just turned a hundred last year, it was on the news." He let out a laugh. "But listen to me ramble. Our truck is just outside the base, they let me in when I asked for you by name, apparently, Professor Ozpin put in a word for me. Let's get you home Mr. Walker, I'll be outside when you're done."

"Uh-huh," James said, without listening. James was far more interested in what he was going to say to Basil. At least the ride might help him clear his head. Slowly, he made his way back to the mess hall.

XXXXX

Pyrrha's mind was racing as she tried to relax, but it was simply proving to be impossible. Her entire view of the world had been flipped on its head. The Maidens of the old fairy tale were real, powerful artifacts that were the creation of gods were being guarded at each of the academies, and a pair of twin brother gods were all verifiable facts and not myths, Ozpin was thousands of years old and reincarnated when he died, and she had been chosen to wield the power of the Fall Maiden.

How had this happened? One day she had just been a student, and now all of this had been thrust onto her. She tried to pace her breathing but it didn't help. Pressure was building up inside of her. She had to talk to someone, anyone. There was so much she couldn't say, but she had to have some kind of release. She moved throughout Ironwood's flagship, not truly paying attention to where she was going. Jaune, Nora, Ren, anyone would do really.

"Go on ahead, I just gotta get a few things. This'll probably be a waste of time but we should be prepared. I'll be in the mess hall when I'm done here." Pyrrha blinked. She was right outside James's room. He was standing there as Winter walked away. Idly, he reached into his room.

"Mr. Walker?" she asked before he could stop herself. "Can I have a word?"

James jolted up as if he had been shocked. Pyrrha could swear that she heard the sound of bottles clinking as he did. He turned to face her. His body slackened as he saw her. "Oh, Pyrrha, I didn't see you there. A word? Of course. Oh, and it's James. I think I worked a day as a teacher's aid, nothing more," the older man said.

Pyrrha nodded as she exhaled. She wished she would have preferred to talk to Jaune about this, but James would have to do. "James. I...have you ever...do you think...I'm sorry." She had to work up to this. To help lay the ground for how badly this was affecting her. "Do you believe in destiny?"

James blinked, giving her an uncertain look. "As in predetermination? Your life is all set out in front of you?"

Pyrrha shook her head. "No, not like that. Not predetermination. I view destiny as a goal you strive towards. Something that you dedicate most, if not all, of your life towards. Something that has become a core part of your identity." She had wanted to be a Huntress so badly, to work hard and save people with the fruits of those labors. And now it all felt so different. It felt wrong. "That's what I mean by destiny. Do you believe in it?"

James paused before giving a heavy sigh. "No. I don't." Pyrrha felt taken aback. She hadn't expected that as a reply. He noticed. "Let me explain," he said. "I grew up traveling around with my family's caravan. I loved it, we were always on the move and seeing something new. I've been all over the NCR core territories and beyond. Sandy Shades, Vault City, Maxson, The Hub, New Reno, Boneyard, and more. Being on the move made me feel alive. So when my parents got too old to keep doing the caravan and the rest of the family settled down with them, I got a job as a courier."

James gave a nostalgic smile. "It was everything I adored about the caravan with none of the hassles. No dealing with pack animals, I was less of a target for bandits, no haggling for prices. I just took the package to its destination and then got paid. Being a courier was the best job I ever had, even if I had to do odd jobs to make ends meet sometimes."

The smile slid from his face. "I haven't delivered a package in years. The last thing I ever got paid to deliver was this." He tugged at the damaged poker chip that was dangling around his throat. "And someone tried to kill me over it. Benny, that sniveling little fu-" James grimaced and shook his head. "I got jumped and double-tapped." He tapped his temple as he spoke. Pyrrha's eyes widened. Sure enough, a pair of faint scars marked James just below his hairline. "It took me months to recover from it fully, but the whole time I was burning up a nasty fever. I wanted to hunt Benny down and return the favor, so I tore off to New Vegas."

He threw his hands up in exasperation. "Then I actually catch up to him. And somehow I found myself tangled up in a web of politics, battlelines, and a hundred different people wanting me dead. And every day I kept throwing myself deeper and deeper into it. Because the baggage I picked up came with some influences, some degree of respect, and an acquired skill set for shooting my way out of bad situations." He rubbed his temples. "Three years ago, before I got jumped, I thought I would just keep delivering packages until I got too old to do it anymore. I'd just find a nice place to settle down and wait for my body to give out. Instead, I've been spending my life fighting warlords, Raiders, criminals, and radicals."

"But you know the really ironic thing about it all?" he said, giving her a sardonic look. "I don't think I know how to stop. If I were to just hang up my helmet there'd be nothing but sleepless nights ahead of me. I'd lay awake all night asking 'what could I have done?' every time I hear about something going wrong. It's why I've been here for weeks and yet I'm already fighting the White Fang in addition to the marauders I was chasing in the first place. I wouldn't know how to stop pissing people off if the solution slapped me in the face."

He gave a long, heavy sigh. "So, no. I don't believe in destiny, I don't believe in long goals you spend your life working towards. Life throws you curveballs you never saw coming and your entire world can get turned upside down in a day. You have to adjust for that and make the most out of wherever you end up. I don't mean to sound cruel or cynical, but lifelong ambitions? The things we want the most? We rarely end up getting them."

A small smile blossomed on his face. "But we often end up finding tiny little things along the way. Precious things. Things we might've missed. Sometimes I really wish I was still delivering mail, but then I stop and tell myself something. It's hard and dangerous work that I'm doing. But I'm making a difference. I can't let a romanticized, idealized alternate path let me forget all the things I've done and the amazing people I've managed to meet. I never would've met someone as talented as you if I had just kept delivering mail."
"So. You're saying you left your destiny behind?" Pyrrha asked hesitantly. She wasn't sure what to think, the conversation had gone into unfamiliar territory for her. James was talking with a level of cynicism that she hadn't ever really seen before.

James nodded. "It's in a shallow grave in the Goodsprings cemetery. Destiny? The way you look at it? It's a nice idea Phyrra. But it doesn't hold up. Not from where I'm standing." Pyrrha nodded dumbly. This wasn't at all how she had been expecting this conversation to go. She had wanted to ask him about the choice regarding the Fall Maiden and how it related to her being a Huntress. She hadn't expected a world view that sounded so worn and battered.

"But what if there was a way I could fulfill my destiny? Immediately?" James's head tilted a bit to the side. "But...but at the cost of who I am?" How could she explain it to him? He had no idea about the Maidens. What they were. How it felt.

James spoke slowly, sounding as if he was picking every word with extreme care. "Define what you mean by who you are."

It was so hard to put it all into words. "Everything I've been working towards all these years. My identity. The concept of who I am, to myself and others." How was she supposed to be able to tell him without the proper context? The truth of the matter was just within grasp but she couldn't tell him. It was tearing her up inside.

There was a long hesitation before James answered. "Pyrrha. Let me put it this way. I am not the man I was three years ago." James, at that moment, looked very old. Pyrrha knew he was hardly young, but his age truly showed as he spoke. "I wasn't a stranger to violence, you don't live to your late 40s unless you can fight off a raid when you have to, but it wasn't my trade. It is now. It's part of life. Your sense of self and identity are always changing."

"Look, Phyrra, you're seventeen, right?" She gave a shallow nod. "You're still growing, still finding out who you are and your place in the world. I'm fifty-one and I'm still learning more about both. You and I are both going through trying times right now. Neither of us is going to come out of it the same people we were before. That's the nature of life and our line of work. Life is messy like that. We get tangled up in events we were never prepared for, have to make calls we don't have enough time for." He reached down and grasped at the poker chip hanging from his neck and gripped it until his hand turned white.

He took a shuddering breath. "You have to make a tough call about something, don't you? You've got a choice where you can change everything but you don't know if it's morally the right call. I can see it in your eyes." Pyrrha didn't speak, she didn't even nod or shake her head. Her throat was tight and she could feel tears welling up inside of her. She didn't think she could bear it if she started crying. "It's ok. You don't need to say anything," James said, his voice understanding. "I just want you to know that I know what you're going through. I've been there before. It just feels so unfair. You need more time, you don't fully understand what'll happen if you take the plunge but you're afraid of the potential consequences of passing it up. But you don't have enough information to weigh one against the other."

Yes, yes that did accurately describe how Pyrrha felt when Ozpin had presented her with her choice. Godlike power at the expense of another and no way to tell what devastation could be wrought if she abstained. "All I can say is this. Don't be so hard on yourself. You've done more than I ever would've expected from someone twice your age. I read Winter's report on the battle back in Vale. You took on an Aura empowered Centurion by yourself, and he had backup. Where I'm from, Centurions are the best of the best warriors out there, and you floored him. The whole time you forced the Legion to taste bitter irony too, considering their backward views on women."

"People with half the fiber you have are forced to make decisions like this every day," he said, his voice shaking. Unless Phyrra was mistaken, he was trembling ever so slightly. "People far less qualified than you ever were. You're not even eighteen yet and you're out there fighting for others. The fact that you're worried this much says a lot about you, that you'll put more thought into it than a crusty, dried-up old man ever would. It's gonna be tough, I won't sugar coat it. But you have to make the decision you think is best, no one else can make it for you. Because it's the right thing to do? Because it's your destiny? Whatever the reason, it needs to be your reason. No one else's. I can only give you advice."

Pyrrha spoke, her voice a strangled rasp. "How do you know which choice is the right one?"

James looked sadly at her. "You can never really know for sure," he said. "Sometimes you wonder if you made the right call. All you can do is do what you think is best. Even if it hurts."

Something inside Pyrrha broke. She leaned her head back and took a deep gathering breath in and then out. In and out. In and out. She fought the tears inside her with every ounce of her being, willing them, begging them to not come out. But it was too late. One was already trailing down her face. A second shortly joined it, followed by a third. She lowered her head, looking at James. He was standing still, holding his arms wide open.

Everything became a blur to Pyrrha, a whirlwind of emotion and movement. The next thing she could clearly comprehend was her burying her face in James's shoulder, wrapping her arms around him as the dam burst. Her cries were not deep and hard, the way she had expected them to be, but shallow and strangled. Despite this, the tears were now flowing freely, streaming down her face and into James's shoulder. He held her gently, one arm around her waist and the other gently rubbing the back of her head. "It's gonna be ok," he said softly. "You're not alone. You've got your team, your friends, and everyone on this base. All of us are behind you every step of the way."

The hand around her waist vanished and Pyrrha heard the sound of tapping on a scroll. Before she could say anything, the tapping stopped and his hand returned. For a while they stood there, Pyrrha's bottled up emotions pouring out of here while James silently comforted her. Eventually, her sobs dried up, going from gasps to small hiccups. A strange sense of relief washed over her. Not enough to remove the tension that had been building up in her over the past week, but enough to make it more tolerable. It was similar to the brief burst of euphoria that she experienced after her daily workout, an odd feeling that took the edge off of her discomfort.

"Life is tough, but I promise you whatever it is you're going through? You're up to the task," James said, releasing her as Pyrrha took a step back. He frowned. "You can't tell me what it is?" She shook her head. She wished she could. She wished she could tell Jaune, Nora, and Ren. "Ok. If you can't, I won't push you. Just remember, that even if you can't tell people, they're there for you."

"H-how do I know that I'm the right person for the job?" Pyrrha hiccuped. "How do I know that I can make the right choice."

"It's never that cut and dry," James said. "They never tell you that when you're growing up. They tell you that it'll all make sense one day. Everyone who says that to you is a liar. If anything it gets more nonsensical and confusing. Learning how to be an adult isn't getting all the answers, it just means becoming slightly better at navigating through the mess." He rubbed the back of the head. "This is all probably things you don't want to hear. But I tell you the nitty-gritty because I want you to know that I mean it when I say that I know you're up to it. Is there still a chance you might slip? Of course there is, no matter how qualified you are you can still make a bad call. But I'm going to tell you right now, you're being far too hard on yourself. You're in a difficult place, but you're going to handle it far better than most ever could. I can promise you that."

Pyrrha forced herself to take a deep breath. James's advice wasn't something she knew how to categorize. Blunt honesty came close, but there was a little too much encouragement in there for it to just be that. Whatever it was, it had certainly lodged itself in her head. "Uh, James, you wanted to see me?" Pyrrha nearly jumped out of her skin. Jaune was right behind them, looking confused. "You texted me?" What? How had he done that?

There was a flash of silver as James slipped a scroll into his pocket. "Talk to him," he whispered. "Make the first move. You won't regret it. You've got this. All of it." He leaned back. "Oh damn it, Jaune. I wanted to give you more sparring lessons but time got away from me. I really do need to head out with Winter for something. I'll be back in a few hours. You two take care." A smile flashed across his face as he popped into his room and emerged a few seconds later, the door closing behind him. "Later!" he said, waving as he left. Pyrrha stared dumbly at her as she left.

"Uh, what was that all about?" Jaune asked. "Why would he-Pyrrha? Have you been crying?" Jaune's face was suddenly plastered with concern. She nodded, wiping away the last of her tears. The stress of everything hadn't gone away. Salem, Maidens, Relics, Brothers, they all still weighed so heavily on her. But, for whatever reason, it felt a little bit more manageable. "Is there anything you need me to do?"

James's words to her flowed through her mind. It had to be her reason. Things were never clear cut. The amazing people you could meet along the way. She looked at Jaune. His blonde hair, his wide, confused blue eyes, his white armor, the jeans that really didn't go with it. She smiled, in spite of it all. "Just being around me helps." Jaune nodded awkwardly. He hesitated a few seconds. Then he abruptly lurched forward, approaching Pyrrha and giving her a clumsy hug. Pyrrha smiled as she gently returned it, closing her eyes.
Making the first move? She would think about it. Some other time. For the moment, this was enough. More than enough.

XXXXX

Author's Note: So I wrote this story long before Volume 7 of RWBY and It turns out that Atlas was right over Mantle. As in right above it. Atlas wasn't one big city divided between the floating upper class and a grounded lower class like a science-fantasy Blade Runner. I mean it is science-fantasy Blade Runner, but between two different cities as opposed to Atlas being divided in half and Mantle being a rust belted city elsewhere. And I've been writing this story with that in mind. Ugh. Oh well.

Just for the record, in case I didn't just make it clear, we're officially leaving established canon with the airing of volume 7. I've had plans for months, the better part of a year, where I was going to do this story. If I tried to stop to adjust to keep up with volume 7 and later, it'd rip the narrative I've been working on in half. The canon Winter Maiden will not be Wild Wild Evolution Winter Maiden, the same goes for the Summer Maiden. I might slip in bits and pieces of volume 7 and onward if I really like them AND I think I can make them fit. But from this point on out you can more or less consider A World of Wild Wild Evolution to be an AU fic. (Granted there is one theory of who the Winter Maiden is that has caught my attention, and if it turns out to be canon I'll happily chuck out my current plan. But only if it's that theory.).

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 13

You Really Got Me

XXXXX

Yang stretched her arms over her head as she looked across the flagship's mess hall. James was talking to Basil, Winter right behind him, on the other side in a hushed conversation that she couldn't make out. He had walked back in a few minutes ago, beckoning Basil and ED-E over to the far side of the room. Now, Yang never considered herself to be particularly nosy, but curiosity was getting the better of her. Basil had been with an anti-Faunus gang until a few days ago when James had taken the guy under his wing. Upon first hearing this, Yang's initial, internal reaction had been one of disgust. Then she reminded herself that one of her best friends had been with a well known terrorist organization for at least a year. With a bit of perspective, she had decided to give Basil a chance and had found him to be fairly warm and likable. The fact that he admitted he had never actually hurt anyone made the situation a much easier pill to swallow.

Still, Basil's unique circumstances made her wonder exactly what he and James were talking about. Yang was tempted to slide a table or two over "accidentally" to try and overhear their conversation. But she held back the urge. When Blake had wanted to talk about Adam and her relationship with him, James had given them space; she owed him the same. That wasn't going to stop her from reading the conversation from a distance.

James looked like he was ready to go to war, more so than he usually did. He had that salvaged MG of his and two ammo crates on his back, in addition to his standard weapons. One was in a harness and feeding ammo into the gun, the other was fully sealed and strapped to his hip. Despite this, the conversation he was having seemed to be more personal and quiet. James looked concerned while Basil appeared to be uncertain. Then James stepped to the side and Winter moved forward, putting her hand on Basil's forehead. Yang stiffened. She recognized this. This was an attempted Aura awakening.

For a second, there was nothing. Then of bright green light shone off of Basil, hugging his body. Yang grinned widely. All right, someone else fighting alongside them. Winter stepped back as Basil looked down on his hands in shock. He threw himself at James, hugging him tightly, the older man doing everything he could to return the gesture while carrying his MG. Then, with a few more words, Winter spoke into a COM unit and the two turned away ED-E following. Basil, looking dazed, walked back over to where Team RWBY was sitting, all of whom were now looking at him. "What's up, man?" Yang asked cheerily.

"I-I just got into an Atlas Academy prep program," he said numbly, sliding into a chair. "A few months of training and then I take the entrance exam. Wow. I just-wow. Sarge always said I'd be lucky if I ever made chief latrine scrubber, and now I might become a Specialist one day." He gave a dazed smile. "Wow."

"Aw yeah!" Yang said, giving Basil a fist bump that made him recoil. "That's the way, little man. Up and onward, leave the regrets behind and make something better." Yang let out a hearty laugh. She now felt really bad for her initial thoughts about the kid, no matter how brief they had been. He had fallen in with a bad crowd and he needed to learn from that mistake, but he wasn't all bad. That being said, she had a sneaking feeling that she should give him some good advice, and maybe a bit of "encouragement" before he left.

"I'm-uh-pretty sure I'm the oldest one here," Basil said, awkwardly, looking around the table. "I'm-actually nevermind. It's not important."

"Too true," Yang said cheerily. "Now, just something you should understand." As she spoke, her voice dropped a bit. It was minor, but Basil noticed. "There's gonna be Faunus at Atlas Academy, maybe even your prep program. Now. I'm not going to accuse you of anything, I'm just going to make things clear. It'd probably be for the best if you didn't mention the crowd you used to run with, it'd probably be for the best if you didn't make any comments about them or their animal parts, and you may want to accept now that you're going to be working directly with them. Just my two cents." She idly cracked her knuckles, partially just to release some tension, but also ensuring that Basil was just on edge enough to prevent his attention from wandering. It was a little bit of tough love.

"Yang, you're bullying him," Weiss said, looking at her sharply.

Yang stretched her arms and leaned back in her chair. "I said I wasn't accusing him of anything and I wasn't."

"You're like your uncle sometimes," Weiss said, her nose wrinkling in disgust.

"Heh, I sure am," she said, smiling happily. Like Uncle Qrow? Heck yeah.

Weiss looked like she was about to say something when Blake tapped her on the shoulder, shaking her head as she did. Weiss looked as if she was struggling between two deeply ingrained desires as she looked back and forth between Yang and Blake before eventually capitulating. "Look. Basil. I understand that you've made mistakes. I've made mistakes too." She glanced out of the corner of her eyes at Blake. "Really, really big mistakes. I've said things I wish I could take back. I've-ugh."

She paused, looking frustrated with herself and running a hand through her hair. "I sound like a cheesy after-school special." She really did. Yang had been subjected to far too many of those horrible things to ever forget. It was an unfortunate side effect of growing up with a sister that was two years younger than her. If she never saw another episode of Blanchette the Huntress and her Woodland Friends for the rest of her life, it would be too soon. She would say that Ruby had eaten up that garbage when she was young but had implied past tense. Yang was fairly certain she had heard a familiar theme song when Ruby was watching her scroll on the other side of the dorm-room.

"I'm just going to say this Basil," Weiss said. "We've all done things we've regretted. It's easy to assume things without taking other perspectives into account. James considered your perspective, other people did it for me. We owe it to them to follow their example. A lot of times the world is hurting people in ways they didn't recognize." Weiss's voice got quiet. "I know what it's like to not be able to see the pain of others because you're dealing with your own. Sometimes you need to remind yourself to keep an eye open. Please promise me you'll do that." Weiss's voice sounded a little strangled.

Basil looked overwhelmed. "I-oh boy. I never thought I'd meet two Schnees, let alone get life advice from one." He bit his lip. He looked like he was struggling with his inner thoughts. "I'll try. That's all I can promise. I'll try as hard as I can. James and your sister put a good word in for me, so did General Ironwood. I don't want to let them down and I want to do some good."

Weiss nodded. "Fair enough." At that point, a pair of soldiers approached Basil from behind. Yang recognized them from the raid back in Vale, Dodger and Lapis He gave them a nervous smile. "Um. Well, I hope I see you around."

Yang smiled and waved, as did Weiss and Ruby. Blake's face, which had been stoic up until this point, permitted a small smile of her own. "Just remember," she said. "This is a fresh start."

"Yeah, it is," he said, trembling ever so slightly.

"Kick butt!" Ruby cried cheerfully. Nodding, Basil followed Dodger and Lapis away, out of the mess hall and towards a landing pad where Bullheads were kept on the base. Yang had a good feeling that, if they were going to see him again, it wasn't going to be for a while. "I think he'll be ok," Ruby said firmly.

"Aw, Weiss, you were all kind and supportive," Yang said teasingly, leaning towards the heiress. "Were you guiding him onto the right path? That's so sweet."

Not saying a word, Weiss idly poked her finger between Yang's eyes and pushed her back, Yang sniggering every step of the way. "It was sweet Weiss. Thank you. For everything you said." There was a beautifully soft smile on Blake's face.

Weiss turned the faintest tinge of red. "I was just being honest," she said, sounding flustered. "I find that when you speak from experience, people tend to listen to you better."

"Regardless. Thank you, both of you." Now her eyes were on Yang. "Everything you do means so much to me." Now it was Yang's turn to go a little red in the face.

"Ah, it's no big deal," she said, trying to play it off. This was a little embarrassing. Blake had certainly been on her mind but in general, she had been trying to make sure the kid knocked off his bad habits early on. She didn't know how much of his motivations for joining the Hunters were anti-Faunus or just anti-White Fang. Now Blake was acting like she had done something special and Yang didn't know how to react. Thankfully she was saved from this awkward conversation.

"Uncle Qrow!" Mentally thanking Ruby, Yang spun around in her seat to see Uncle Qrow approaching, looking worn out.

"Hey Pipsqueak, hey Firecracker," he said in his practiced lazy voice. "Don't mean to drag you away from your friends, but is there any chance we could have a minute?" Yang felt her spirits leap. Time with Uncle Qrow? No way she was passing that up. She and Ruby both shot Blake and Weiss questioning, pleading looks. Blake let out a small laugh and made a shoo gesture. It brightened up Yang's mood even more. Blake had looked either serious or stressed for the past couple of weeks, it was a nice change of pace to see her smile again.

Weiss tried, poorly, to hide her clear distaste at Qrow. "Oh, he is your uncle," she said in a voice that was equal parts irritated and sincere. "Just don't take too long, I've heard General Ironwood will have an announcement for us soon." She was deliberately not making eye contact with Qrow. Ah well, couldn't be helped. Uncle Qrow certainly wasn't an everyone person. "Actually, we'll give you some space." Getting to her feet, she marched off, half pulling Blake behind her. The Faunus girl looked surprised at first but didn't fight it.

"Little too much of her sister in that one," Qrow said as she watched Weiss go, taking a seat between Ruby and Yang

Ruby frowned. "She's nice once you get to know her," she said defensively.

"I'll take your word for it, I've got enough projects going on without getting started on another one," he said. Then he sighed. "Look. I want to be honest with the two of you. You're stepping into dangerous territory, volunteering for these missions in Atlas. Hell, volunteering for the missions back home in Vale. You're fighting dangerous people."

"We've proven we can handle ourselves," Ruby said proudly.

"You fought a crime boss and the White Fang twice," Qrow said sternly, frowning as he did. "I'm not saying anyone could do that, but you need to keep things in perspective. These Legion people may not be the best with Aura, but they're damn brutal. If there's one thing I respect about Walker, it's that he's taking them seriously. The things he went out there and did to get the coordinates for them."

"You know what happened then?" Yang asked. "He kept the details scarce when he called Weiss, he only gave the full explanation to Winter. Basil wouldn't tell us either. He would just laugh and change the subject."

Qrow gave a wry grin. "Well. Your new teaching assistant went out and massacred an entire anti-Faunus gang with a machine-gun and landmines. Did a pretty thorough job. It reminded me of, well." He paused. "Yang? Ruby? I want to ask you something. How much did Tai ever tell you about Raven?"

Yang blinked. James had massacred an entire gang? That was what he had used those landmines for? But her attention only stayed on their new teacher's aid for the briefest of moments. Raven? Mom? "N-no," Yang said, utterly caught off guard. Ruby's eyes went wide, looking back and forth between her and Qrow. Yang had never talked about her mother with Ruby much, only saying that she was looking for her. Ruby had been sympathetic to Yang's search, but Yang could tell she had never cared about it with the same depth Yang had. It made sense. Summer Rose was Ruby's mother, Raven had never been in Ruby's life. And Summer had been the best mother Yang could have asked for. But Raven, the woman who had given birth to her, the one who had disappeared when she was still a baby. Yang needed to know. She needed answers. "He always clammed up."

Qrow 's smile vanished. As his jaw shifted, Qrow looked as if he was ten years older. It was a little jarring. Yang had always known that Qrow wasn't exactly a spring chicken if anything he was ten years younger than James tops, but it was still disarming to see the normally confident and strong Qrow look so tired. "Tai and I never did tell you where Raven and I came from. Well, we can't put it off any longer. Raven and I came from a tribe in Mistral called the Branwen Tribe. Walker had a name for people like us, Raiders. Everyone else just called us bandits, because we were. Raven and I were sent as kids to train at Beacon Academy, not because they wanted to make the world a better place, but to learn Huntsman and Huntress techniques and then come back to the tribe."

Yang felt her jaw go slack. Her mom and Uncle Qrow were bandits? Ruby let out a confused squeak while Yang pressed her hand against her temple in shock. "You and mom killed people?"

Qrow held up his hands defensively. "No, the Branwen tribe are brutal killers in lots of ways, but they never stooped to the level of the Legion. They didn't make the kids fight, if only because they wanted us to live to adulthood when we would be better warriors. Raven and I were that plan in action." He put up three fingers. "Combat school and three years at Beacon Academy, and after that, we were supposed to drop everything and head back home. We teach the others everything we learned, then we became an unstoppable fighting force. Just one problem."

He gestured to everything around him. "Tai and Summer were warm to me in a way that the tribe never were, and Ozpin gave me a higher calling. So I could either stay at Beacon and help people or go back and kill them to empty their pockets." He shrugged. "Wasn't much of a choice, easy really. I thought it was an easy choice for your mom too." Something shimmered in Qrow's eye. "I mean it was, just wasn't in the way that I thought. I...Tai and Summer both deserved better than what she did." He looked guilty.

"Wait, hold up," Yang said, her mind feeling like it was sagging under everything. "You and Mom grew up with bandits and mom-" she paused, her thoughts moving too fast to properly organize. Qrow had to be playing a prank on them, a sick and elaborate prank. "Mom went back to them?"

"I wasn't sure for the longest time," Qrow admitted. "She dropped off the face of Remnant without giving any of us a word of goodbye. For a decade and a half, I didn't hear a word from her. Until just after the attack on Vale." Undoing his flask, Qrow took a long, heavy drink.

Yang's heart quickened. "I saw her," she said, her voice barely a whisper. "On the train when I was fighting Torchwick's lackey. I thought I might've been seeing things."

Qrow lowered his flask, a heavy look in his eyes. "She mentioned that. She wanted me to pass along a message for you. She would only save you like that once. Anything else and you would be on your own."

Yang was at a loss for words. Her own mother wouldn't lift a finger to help her. Ruby spoke up when Yang failed to. "How could she say that?" She sounded outraged.

"The Branwen Tribe is ruthless, no other way to say it," Qrow said bluntly. "They killed without hesitation, without blinking, and they did it for everything they needed to survive." He scowled. "And they were firm believers of survival of the fittest. Kind of like the Legion. They didn't have the kids fight, but we were still expected to pull our weight. Pickpocketing, steaming food, stuff like that. And if we got caught, we were on our own. They didn't tolerate weakness. Raven said that what she did was a kindness from mother to daughter. A deviation from the norm. And it wouldn't happen again. She also said that if you wanted to see her again, you would have to go to her."

Yang's back straightened. Had she heard that right? Go to her? As in, she could go to see her? "Did she say where?" she asked hesitantly. Ruby shot her a shocked look, but Yang ignored it. The mother that had never truly been in her life. Even if she was a bandit, she deserved to know everything she could about her.

Qrow looked more morose than Yang had ever seen him. "Yeah, she did. And a few weeks ago I would've told you how to get there. Now I don't think they're there anymore. They'll have moved on, and if they didn't, it's not safe. The Legion is looking at them as potential allies."

Yang felt like her brain was sagging. This was too much at once. Mom was a bandit? The people they were fighting wanted them on their side? The rapists and murderers? Qrow noticed. "She won't agree to it, none of them will. Even if they've got similar worldviews, the Branwen Tribe is only in it for themselves. They won't waste blood on a conflict they don't have a horse in. Besides, they don't have a lot of moral boundaries but they do have a few that are enforced fiercely. No rape for starters, I've found evidence that Raven's been enforcing that rule. Violently. People like that are incompatible with the Legion, and that's all if Raven's pride would let her take orders. And speaking as the man who shared a room with her for twelve years, it never will."

"So, what's going to happen with Mom and the rest of the tribe then?" Yang asked, feeling more confused than ever.

"I don't know," Qrow said honestly, shaking his head. "From what Walker said, Caesar doesn't take rejection well. If they get the time they may try and attack the Branwen Tribe. Raven would be able to carve through most of them herself, but the rest of the tribe? Unless she got a lot more Aura users in since I've been there, I don't think they'd stand a chance. Granted, this is all if the Legion attacks them, and they're on the wrong continent for that. So it's a question of whether or not the Legion lives to get off of this continent and if the Branwens let themselves get pinned down."

The dots started to connect in Yang's head. "Do we...do we want to stop that? Save them?"

Qrow shrugged. "If you want me to be honest, Raven's the only one in the tribe I've got any love for, and even that's looking pretty frayed nowadays. But I don't want her to die. I couldn't tell you what do I want with her, but I know I don't want my sister to die. It's up to you to decide what you want to do in regards to her. Meeting up with her is off the table though, at least until the Legion is dealt with. So I want you to think about that."

Yang nodded. She felt numb. "And James?"

Qrow sighed. "When I saw what Walker had done to that gang, it reminded me of Raven. That was exactly the way she would've handled the situation. No warning, no hesitation, no survivors." He frowned. "Minus one. And that's where things get weird. The place where Walker and Raven take different paths. I thought I was finally getting a bead on him, and then he goes and throws me off like that."

Qrow leaned back, looking amused. "From what Walker said, it seems like Earth has a lot of tribes like the Branwens, some even more brutal. I thought he might be from one of them. The way he's perfectly happy to loot his victims reminds me all too much about what the Branwens would do after they were done with a town. But sparing someone? Never. I've never seen someone with that combination of idealism and cynicism. Frankly, it feels contradictory."

"What are you trying to say?" Yang asked, feeling confused. "That we shouldn't trust him?"

"I just want you to know what kind of person he is, because I think I have a pretty good idea where he's coming from," Qrow remarked. "He came from a place where you couldn't run and call a Huntsman or a cop, where things were a lot less stable. I can tell from the way he handled this. But something's going on under the hood with him. And I kinda want to figure it out if we're gonna be stuck with him."

Yang looked down at the table, not sure what to think. Ruby ducked her head down, looking at her with concern in her eyes. "I know I just gave you a lot to think about, with Raven and Walker. But I did it because I know you can handle it. Both of you" He gestured to the mess hall around him. "You two made a big call coming out here to face the Legion and the White Fang after what you've seen them do. You're not kids, not anymore. And you're on the fast track to becoming fully-fledged Huntresses." Despite everything, that brought a smile to Yang's face. Ruby's too.

"Now, this doesn't mean I think you two should go getting cocky, you've still got a lot to learn. You never stop learning. Heck, I'm still picking up some new tricks here and there. But how here, in the field? It's where you're gonna learn the most." He reached forward and tussled both of them. Yang closed her eyes as she let the pleasant sensation wash over her. "I think you should talk to Walker when he gets back. Get everything from the horse's mouth. For all the problems I have with him, he won't string you along. And he respects you two. Which is good because we'd have a problem if he didn't. But if you're willing to sit down with him, you can learn a lot." Qrow grinned. "I'm not though. I'm gonna go spy on your teacher. Gonna stay five minutes behind them and see where they go."

With that, he got to his feet. Yang let out a hearty laugh. Then she realized her uncle wasn't joking. "Wait, what?" Yang asked.

"Don't wait up!" he said, merrily strolling away.

Yang looked after him, wondering if she should bother trying to stop him before deciding that would be a waste of time. She slumped into her chair. "Sis? You ok?" Ruby asked. She was using that quiet voice she used when she wasn't sure if things were about to blow up.

Yang rubbed her eyes. "I have no idea," she said honestly. "I've been looking for my mom for so long and it turns out she ran off to rob and kill people? I just, I don't know. I don't know what to think and I don't know what to do. I can't just drop it, I've been looking for too long, but what am I supposed to say if I finally meet her? Hey mom, what's the daily loot looking like? Did you manage to kill a traveling merchant?" The frustration was beginning to bubble up inside of her. Then her sister's hand looped around her.

Ruby smiled. A small, sweet smile that silently promised: "everything's gonna be ok." Like air leaking out of a punctured tire, Yang's anger slowly began to fade. "Let's not worry about that right now," Ruby said. "We'll figure out the right thing to do, I know we will. We'll figure this out." She squeezed Yang's hand. "But until we do. Wanna get your butt kicked by your little sister in some one on one?"

Yang's face cracked open in a devilish smile. Ruby's happy expression faltered. "Oh. I'm going to destroy you."

XXXXX

James idly watched the snow gently falling from the back seat of the car he was sitting in. Privately, he didn't feel comfortable looking anywhere other than out of the window. His stomach felt like someone was inverting it if he focused on anything inside the car; he wasn't quite sure how Pre-War America had managed to get by with these things. A small shiver passed through him. Even with the heating that Han's car provided, he was still a little cold. The cold something he couldn't help but despise, no doubt a side effect of spending so much time in the Mojave. He had only been in truly cold territory, aside from Atlas, once in the last five years. It had been a truly miserable experience. James closed his eyes.

He was back in Utah. The palms of his hands were in utter agony as he forced them to clench around a revolver at the man in front of him. "This world is hate, and I am its greatest pupil. Bring your courage, your righteousness... measure it against my resolve, and you will fail." Everything on James hurt. Bruises were forming all over him, and his hands were still in agony from where Marko had driven the bullets through them. Despite this, he still had the strength to let out a grunt of exasperation.

"Careful there Marko, you might cut yourself on all that edge," he spat out. "Seriously, I grew out of that phase when I was twelve, aren't you a little old to be spewing nihilism cliches and acting like they're deep wisdom? But you want to talk about resolve? This is the second time I've crawled out of a grave to kill the asshole who put me under in the first place."

Marko snorted. "You killed a two-bit performer who was playing at gangster. I get that your types love the bravado and the boasting, but that's the trump card you're pulling? All the stories about you and the one you offer up is this anti-climax? I'm starting to think I did more damage to you than I thought. That's why, even if by some miracle you win, I'll die with a smile on my face. You'll be nothing but a broken man after this, the scars I've left on you will be permanent. You won't be remembered as the man who killed Marko. You'll be remembered as the man Marko broke."

James had had enough. He had spent too much time shooting his mouth off as it was. He was killing this son of a bitch. "I was never very religious, but do me a favor. Wherever you end up, be sure to say hi to your failure of a brother." Marko's face, which up until that point had been utterly unflappable, twitched. His hand flashed, raising his revolver. James was pulling the trigger on his.

James blinked. He was back in Remnant. Slowly, he peeled off the glove on his right hand. The scar where the bullet had gone straight through his palm was still there. It had taken him some time to get the full use of his hands back, after a year he had bounced back to his pre-injury level. He had walked away, Marko had died. And he had burned a good portion of his political capital to ensure that Brookshire's career, and life, were ruined.

The more he thought about it, the more Marie F. reminded him of Marko. Both of them were irritating psychopaths who thought that they were far deeper than they were, they both mistook wanton cruelty for some philosophical statement, they were a pair of morons who didn't seem to recognize just how stupid they were, and neither of them knew how to shut the fuck up. But they both had a dangerous level of combat skill that meant that they couldn't easily be ignored.

If he had to put some kind of difference on them, Marko seemed to have a compulsive need to prove he was the smartest man in the room and everyone's convictions were pointless because of pseudo-intellectual mumbo jumbo, while Marie F. just didn't give a fuck and just wanted to get her rocks off. Just not in a sexual way. Well. James hoped it wasn't in a sexual way.

Winter broke the awkward silence and pulled James out of his thoughts. "Do you have any siblings, Mr. Walker?"

"Yup, I'm the second oldest of five," he said, still looking out the window. "Older sister, younger sister and a young pair of twins, a boy, and a girl. The twins are pains in the ass, because aren't they always. Haven't seen them in a while, courier work took me pretty far east for a few years. Then the war happened." He didn't want to think about his family right now. If he did, he'd start wondering if he would ever see them again. "You got any besides Weiss?"

"A younger brother," Winter remarked. "Unlike Weiss, he and I have not stayed in contact. He is fonder of our father than Weiss and I are. There's a bit of a wedge there." James had enough to go on from what Weiss had said about their father to form a basic picture. Winter was disowned, Weiss was chafing under her father's uncaring nature, but the little brother was closer? He sounded like he either lacked empathy or was daddy's little bootlicker. Possibly both.

James nodded. The awkward silence fell back into place between the two of them. The only other noise in the car was Han humming a song in the front seat, one that he had just started to sing the lyrics to. "The space-age robot, he's at your command. The space-age robot, his power lies in your hands." James gave him a confused look, taking his eyes off the window for the first time. Han didn't react for obvious reasons, not until Rota spotted James in the rearview mirror. She gave Han a gentle nudge. "Ah, my apologies. My mind wandered to a show I used to watch when I was a child," he said, grinning as he turned to look without seeing at the two of them.

For someone his age, Han's teeth were in remarkably good shape. James didn't see a single one that was missing, broken, or even yellowed. Maybe Remnant spent more time and resources on keeping teeth healthy than Earth did. James felt around the inside of his mouth with his tongue. He was missing two of his wisdom teeth, they had rotted around a decade ago. God, getting them out had been a truly miserable experience. If they had better treatment here, he had to get on it. Arcade had taken a look at his teeth a month ago and had said something about cavities forming.

"You said your sister did opera singing?" he said. It was a weak opening but it was all he could think of at the moment. Thankfully, Winter took him up on it.

"Yes, I did," she remarked. "I managed to link you a few tracks of what she's done. I could've sworn I sent it to your scroll." James blinked. Had she? "You need to check under your email for that one, it's the envelope button."

"Oh, thanks," James said. "I'll look into that when we stop." Again, the awkward silence fell over them.

"I think you'd have more to say to Qrow," ED-E beeped. James grunted.

"Róta tells me that you've got an odd little drone with you," Han said from the front seat. Shifting, he turned around and faced Winter and James. "Tell me, it's hard to tell with all that beeping, is he talking to you?"

"Yeah," James said, glancing out of the corner of his eye at Han. "He wasn't always like that, he was fairly automated at first. Things happened though. Got him a software upgrade." After what happened in Ironwood's office, he wasn't ready to think at all about what had happened to the other ED-E. The one who had sent his memories back to the ED-E in the Mojave, turning the emotionless eyebot into the foul-speakered smartass that James called friend.

"Oh, that's fascinating!" Han said. "You know, I handled robots when I was in the military, combat engineer. If we get the time we should-" but what Han wanted to do, James never found out. A faint whistling noise reached his ears. The next thing he knew, there was a vicious explosion and the car violently jerked to the side. He was thrown into the set in front of him, his seatbelt going taught, as they swerved. Róta seethed as she fought with the steering wheel, slamming down on the brakes. After a few horrifying seconds of James feeling like his insides were being randomized, it finally stopped.

Róta spun the wheel and floored the acceleration, only for the engine to make a weak, sputtering noise. She slammed the dashboard in frustration. "Out, everyone," she rasped. "Under attack!" Confusion pulsed through James, but it took a backseat as he heard what Róta said. Instinct took over. He spotted smoke coming from the right side of the vehicle, towards the front and the engine block. The car had swerved after being hit, but it hadn't turned. Whoever had hit them had done so from that side. Ripping his seatbelt off, he dove for the left door. Winter was one step ahead of him, she had thrown the door open and was now crouching down, peering over the edge of the car.

"How many?" he whispered, kneeling beside her and flipping the safety on his salvaged MG off before pulling his helmet and gasmask on.

"Five," Winter said softly, drawing her blades. "They're heading our way, not even bothering to keep to cover. They're cocky." James poked his head up, looking over the car. He had been expecting the pale armor of the White Fang, or the crimson and silver of the Legion. Instead, he saw five people and only one of them belonged to the Legion. Rumford, an elegant, silver cybernetic arm having replaced the one he lost, was grinning from ear to ear as he leered at them. And he was with the very last people James ever expected to see him with. Mercury Black, Emerald Sustrai, Cinder Fall, students that had been visiting Vale, and Roman Torchwick, the man who had disappeared from Ironwood's custody. For some reason, Cinder had traded her leather outfit for a red dress that stopped just above her knees. How she wasn't freezing to death was beyond him.

They came to stop in the middle of the clearing that the car had been stranded in. The drive had taken them quite a ways away from Mantle, the skyline of the city was now only barely visible in the distance. There was only the dirt road they had been driving on and a moderate level of snow-covered trees. It was a perfect ambush position. "The fuck are they doing?" he hissed, ducking back down. "Are they with the Legion? They've got Caesar's mad dog with them."

Before Winter could answer, Cinder's voice echoed in the crisp air. "James Walker. You've caused me so much hardship, so much suffering." Winter looked at him silently, her body tense. James had seen this more times than he could count, the posture of someone ready to fight for their life.

James blinked. He had to stall for time and weasel out some information. They were outnumbered and pinned down. "That doesn't narrow things down for me, I'm a busy man. Could you please be more specific?" He was only half being a pedantic asshole. There were around half a dozen possible things he had done on Remnant that she could be talking about. "Can't we talk about this? I thought we were getting along just fine when we first met." His heart was pounding, fight or flight instincts starting to kick in. Cinder Fall had seemed a bit intimidating, but he hadn't pegged her for an enemy. And yet she had just put a hole in the car he had been riding, declared she had a grudge against him and isolated him. What the hell was going on?

Her eyes narrowed. "Don't play coy with me, Walker." Her hands curled into fists and something odd happened with her eyes. A strange trail of pale orange energy was leaking out of each one. Something about this made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. Something was different about those streams of energy. It had an otherworldly tinge to it that he simply couldn't get a read on. "The plan you ruined after your little talk with Rumford. Months of preparation ruined, all because of you." Cinder looked as if she was attempting to maintain a refined and dignified appearance, elegant body language and a relaxed expression, but the anger blossoming on her face ruined it. "How?"

Ever since he had seen the five people facing him, James's mind had been a maelstrom of questions. Why were they doing this, what were they getting out of it, who were they taking orders from, and a thousand other questions. Cinder had just given him a piece of the puzzle that didn't solve everything but tied together much of the bigger picture. The unknown foe that had been causing mayhem before he had even gotten hear. Either Cinder was her or was taking orders from them. "Oh, that plan?" He held up the Platinum Chip, putting it well over the cover he was crouching behind. "A douchebag in a checkered suit came up with the exact same idea three years ago. Thought he could take over Vegas with it. What, did Rumford not tell you that? Caesar was the one who killed him. Nailed him to a piece of wood when I came looking. Caesar and I had a great big talk about it, I'm pretty sure half the camp heard it."

Instantly, Cinder rounded on Rumford, just as James had hoped she would. The anger on her face transforming into full-blown wrath. Up until this point, Rumford had been wearing a smug, self-confident smirk. It vanished into thin air. "Wait! Hold up!" he said, holding his hands up defensively. "I joined up with the Legion after the second war! They didn't tell me what happened before!"

James wasn't listening. He had ducked down behind the car, desperately looking around for ED-E. The eyebot slowly drifted out of the car door, keeping as low as he could. James knew he didn't have long before Cinder's attention was back on him, so he leaned forward and began to whisper. The window he had bought himself was small. "Get help. Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury were the ones working in the dark. They have Rumford and Torchwick. Stay low and hide in the trees. Don't let them see you."

There was the tiniest of hesitations. "You're not allowed to die," ED-E beeped as softly as he could. James gave the robot a brief hug before he began to float away, staying as low to the ground as he could before disappearing into the trees behind them. As he vanished, James realized that Winter had been watching him the entire him. She gave him a look of approval and nodded. Now, if the worst came to worst, at least ED-E would be able to get the names of their attackers back to Ironwood. He hoped. But he would have to ensure that attention stayed on him.

Once again, he peeked up over the car. Rumford was truly terrified of Cinder, backing away with the submissive body language of someone afraid they were about to be hit. "So what's the deal exactly? You working with the Legion? Because if you are I need to tell you right now that you're getting the raw end of that arrangement. The Legion doesn't care for people with lady bits." He had wondered if his big fat mouth would ever get him killed, it seemed that today might be the day. Winter, as if to prove the point, winced ever so slightly at his comment. Despite this, she wasn't idle. She drove her sword into the ground, one of her Glyphs lighting up around her. The look she shot him spoke a very simple message: keep stalling.

Cinder's attention was now firmly back on him, Rumford looking visibly relieved. "The Legion? Those petty bandits playing at conqueror?" An assessment James couldn't help but happily agree with, or at least he would have if the situation was better. "Do not insult me more than you already have Walker. What I orchestrated is far greater than anything your Caesar could ever dream of."

"And that would be what, exactly?" James asked. "Don't tell me it's just take control of the robots and declare yourself god-empress. That's just a Luddite-free and half baked version of what Caesar has going on." He sometimes wanted if he secretly wanted his death to be slow and painful.

He had hoped that Cinder would rise to the bait, that she would rant and scream at him and give ED-E a few more precious seconds to get away. Instead, she smiled. It was a horrible and cruel smile that promised nothing but suffering and pain. "Now, why would I share my secrets with a corpse?" And she held up her hand. Sensing that the time for talking had passed, James heaved up his machine-gun, planted it firmly on the car with the bipod keeping it steady, and opened fire. No trigger discipline, no conserving ammo, he simply clamped down on the trigger, the MG devouring the belt of ammunition.

He focused the roaring machine-gun and the half-dozen rounds per second purely on Cinder. For the life of him, he couldn't say why, but something primal inside of him was screaming that she was the most dangerous of the five in front of him. Even considering the dangerous nature of Rumford's Semblance, Ironwood's warnings about Torchwick, and the unknown capabilities of Emerald and Mercury, he had a horrible feeling that Cinder was the biggest threat he had met since arriving on Remnant. His brain had not reverberated this badly when he had fought Lanius.

It was a gut feeling that proved to be frighteningly true. Cinder idly raised her spare hand up in front of her, flames glowing around it. Every round that he fired was swallowed up by that hand, Cinder wasn't even buffeted. "Fucking magical horseshit," he hissed. Cinder's allies weren't even moving to help her, they were all content to watch with smiles on their faces. Unless he was mistaken, she had ordered them to do this. Fuck it, all or nothing.

Ceasing fire for the briefest of moments, James went for his last plasma grenade. And about six Dust grenades. Ripping the pins out of all of them, he threw them in a jumbled mess at Cinder, all of them landing within spitting distance of her. Her body tensed at the sight, but before she could react, he had begun to lay down a hail of suppressive fire, dozens of chewed up shell casings stumbling to the ground. Her hand went up again to block it, but her divided attention cost her.

An orb of green, a bloom of red, a shock of electric blue, and several regular explosions flared to life. They engulfed Cinder, blocking her from sight. James never stopped firing. Even as a tell-tale rattling behind him told him that he was going through the belt fast. She wasn't dead, the grenades wouldn't do it. They hadn't killed Adam or the Blue Bull, they wouldn't kill her. Aura had a breaking point though, it would help push her close. If he could just pump out enough damage, maybe it would be enough.

Far too soon, the MG swallowed up the last of the belt. "Winter!" he shouted as the smoke began to clear. Ripping open the cover of his weapon, he grabbed the end of the reserve belt of ammunition and jammed it into place. As he did, the Glyphs below Winter expanded, glowing with a new ferocity. One of the demonic wolves that populated Remnant emerged from it, except it was pure white. Letting out a roar, it charged forward, teeth bared and claws outstretched.

A lone arrow shot through the dust that had been kicked up, right through the eyes of the apparition. It crumbled like a house of cards, disassembling into tiny particles that drifted apart like snowflakes on the wind. Winter's face had adopted a familiar neutral and guarded expression, but just a shade of color drained out.

James slammed down the cover for the MG and cocked it as the dust finally cleared. It was as he had feared, Cinder was unharmed, she only looked a tad rattled. She now clutched a bow that glistened like glass, where she had gotten it, he had no idea, that was pulled taut and aimed at him. "Well this is certainly something," said the very last person James wanted to hear. "You've got a nice little feat of engineering there, but that was made to kill Germans obsessed with skull measurements and the economically illiterate. Not gods." James wasn't sure if he could handle House's voice being the last he heard.

"What a minute, that's my gun you fucking cunt!" Rumford wasn't much of an upgrade. The man started forward extending his new arm out. Now that he took the time to look at it, James was taken aback by just how impressive it was. Sleek and smooth, the joints bending and twisting with all the efficiency of a regular arm. What resources did Cinder have to give him cybernetics that rivaled the very best of what Pre-War Earth had to offer?

These thoughts were cut short as a plume of purple smoke erupted from the palm of his metal hand. His aim was true, but his target was invalid. James took it full in the face, his protected face. "Get. Back." Cinder growled. James couldn't see a thing through the smoke, but he very clearly heard a yelp of pain. At once, the smoke ceased. Rumford was lying on the ground, roaring in pain as an arrow stuck out of his stomach, glowing with inner heat. Cinder glared at him. "Stop anyone who interferes, but he is mine." That had gotten a reaction out of the others. Torchwick was taking slow steps back while Emerald was shooting nervous looks at Cinder. Only Mercury was still looking at James, a smug smile on his face, but even he looked as if he was watching Cinder out of the corner of his eye. "Watts put you back together before, he can do it again,"

She wasn't paying attention, but the lapse wasn't big enough for him to make a run for it. Whatever she was, she had Aura; Aura broke under strain. Hers was more durable but she wasn't invincible. "Oh, keep telling yourself that," House said.

"Will you shut the fuck up?" James growled. Winter looked startled. Oh. Oh fuck. She had heard. He had slipped. Later. Focus on that latter. Cinder would notice him again. He had to act, now. The MG roared to life.

Cinder staggered back as the bullets tore into her side. The glowing in her eyes intensified as she rounded on him, hatred etched into every corner of her face. "You think you stand a chance against me? ME!? Did Ozpin even tell you who I am?" Under different circumstances, this would've sent James's brain racing. Ozpin keeping something from him would've been something groundbreaking if he wasn't doing everything in his power to not die. As it stood, the dangerous woman with otherworldly powers that seemed to spike above the average for even Remnant took precedent.

He didn't say a word. For once, his giant fucking mouth was clamped shut. All of his attention was diverted to firing every single round his MG had. Cinder responded as she was continually buffeted. An arrow assembled itself in her hand, glass shards that appeared from nowhere coalescing together to do so. She knocked it and fired with the speed and grace of a master. James braced for pain piercing his body. Nothing came. The arrow streaked by, missing him by inches. Then there was the softest of thuds in the snow behind him. Mere seconds later, the machine-gun fell silent. His brain, already hopped up on adrenaline, took no time at all to put two and two together. She had severed the ammunition belt. Fuck. FUCK!

Shotgun, NOW! It was loaded with slugs, anything less wouldn't be up to snuff. He dropped the MG, not particularly caring what happened to it anymore, and went for the drum barreled weapon. His hand had just closed on the grip when a hand closed vice-like around his throat. Cinder's face was now an inch away from his, the scowl of fury replaced with a twisted smile, the kind that promised eventual death, not a speedy one. Her other hand was extended behind her, a column of fire pushing them both forward. He barely had time to register that they were both flying through the air before his back was slammed hard into what felt like a tree.

"James!" Winter was up, a glyph flashing to life in front of her. But before she could act on it, a dark green blade on the end of a chain arced forward, wrapping itself around her throat. It went taught and Winter was pulled back. She almost lost her balance, her face going red as air was cut off, but drove one of her swords into the ground to anchor herself. On the far end of the chain, Emerald raised a pair of pistols, once of which had the chain extending out of it, and opened fire. Winter twirled her free blade, bullets pinging off of them, but quite a few were getting through. She could only do so much while struggling to maintain balance and being choked at the same time. Instinctively, James tried to aim his shotgun at Emerald, his grip on the weapon still intact. He got it halfway up before Cinder grabbed it by the middle of the barrel.

"Don't worry about her, I'm content to just leave her dead out here," Cinder said. She sounded as if she was trying to do a poisoned honey voice, but it came off as all poison and no honey. "That's a mercy compared to what's awaiting you." She meant it. She had spent an unhealthy amount of time contemplating what twisted fantasies she wanted to take out on him. She would keep him alive for days if she could manage it. Heat was starting to build around his throat. It was uncomfortable at first, but it quickly rose into a sharp pain. Cinder's hands were glowing bright orange, both the one around his throat and the one gripping his shotgun.

He tried to force his shotgun up, but he only got it a few inches before Cinder's grip forced it to be still. Cinder's body was rather lithe, but the force holding him back was ironclad. While his right hand attempted to lift his weapon, his left was desperately tugging at the arm strangling him. He might as well have been spluttering pleas for his life, not that he was certain she would hear them. Wait. Hear? A desperate idea popped into his head. With newfound desperation, he heaved his gun upward. The smile on Cinder's face widened as he merely gained a few inches, the barrel facing well away from her. "Please. Stop embarrassing yourself. And take off that stupid mask."

One of her fingers flicked up. The straps on his gas mask and helmet snapped undone and both were sent flying. The sting of the bitter cold bit into his face as he gagged. Burns were starting to tear their way into his throat, the fire down there getting even stronger. Once again, he yanked at his shotgun, forcing it up another inch. It would miss if it fired. The trajectory he had just barely managed to establish brought it parallel to her head by half a foot. And right next to her ear. "In the end, you're just a pathetic, worthless, washed up, old-" Cinder began. James pulled the trigger.

An explosion thundered as the shotgun fired. Right in Cinder's ear. Whatever protective qualities Aura had, it didn't block sound. James's half-assed theory was proven valid as she recoiled, instinctively clapping her hand over her ear. In the process, she let James go. Gasping for breath, his neck still burning, he jabbed forward with the shotgun and fired another blast right next to the other ear. Both of her hands were now clamped over her ears, an animal instinct response to the overwhelming sound, her eyes shut. Tossing his gun up into the air, James caught it by the barrel and brought the stock swinging down. With a crack, he caught her in the crown of the head, forcing her face down into the ground.

As he flipped his shotgun back over, he shifted just enough to check on Winter. She had driven the point of her sword into the chain strangling her and given a hard twist. It was enough to uncurl the grip around her neck, enabling her to bound forward and break free, both swords in hand. But now Mercury was joining in with Emerald, doing some flashy moves with his meet to send shining white projectiles at Winter as Emerald continued to fire. She was outnumbered, but at least she was mobile. Sadly, James couldn't see what he could do to help so long as Cinder was still alive.

Plug her, point-blank! He leveled the barrel of the shotgun at the back of Cinder's head. Explosion after explosion flared from the weapon, slugs being fired a mere inch away from the woman's head. If this had happened to anyone else, their gray matter would've been reduced to shredded mush on the white snow. But whatever force was protecting Cinder was holding, not even flickering as shot after shot was fired. "Cinder! Hold on, I'll-" Emerald cried out, only to be cut off mid-sentence as she let out a cry of pain. Winter was still fighting, good.

All too soon, the shotgun clicked empty. James was slowly starting to panic. A belt and a half, a drum barrel, and half a dozen grenades, and Cinder was still moving. Your Semblance! Bloody Mess! You need Bloody Mess! He stepped back, shifting the shotgun to his left hand as he moved to press the button on his Pip-Boy.

Or rather, he tried to take a step back. A hand grasped firmly around his leg, bringing him to a sudden halt. "You're a miserable little nobody. I'm going to make sure you never forget that." Cinder got to one knee. She looked up with the deepest of hatred in her eye. Then she opened her palm. At once he was engulfed in fire. Even though Aura it was pure agony, heat pressing on him from every angle, blinding him, suffocating him.

He fumbled and felt his finger press the Wild Wasteland button, but he couldn't see two inches away from his face. The screen was beyond him and he could feel the fire eating away at his Aura. His heart pounding, he grasped for a fresh drum magazine. He didn't think, his hand closed around one he was normally violently opposed to using. The engraving was unmistakable to his fingers. "DB."

Whipping it out, he slapped it into the shotgun, cocked it, and opened fire. Pointing it downward, he fired at the only frame of reference he had, the hand clasped around his leg. He emptied half of the barrel and felt the grip slacken. There was his opening, his opening to get the fuck away. The fire thinned, the heat falling as an accompaniment, and he saw Cinder. She was on her feet now, her bow was gone. It had broken apart and reformed into a spear. A long, curved spear that glowed with its own heat in the form of intricate markings. James pivoted, turning to run. Cinder thrust the spear forward, driving the blunt end into his gut. Even through Aura and armor, the force of the blow forced him to double over, a dull pain spreading through his stomach. Before he could recover, a follow-up blow caught him in the chin with such force, he was knocked off his feet.

He landed in the snow with a dull thump. At once, he attempted to raise his shotgun, only for a high heel to slam down on his wrist, earning a yelp of pain as his arm was pinned. Cinder was directly above him. Her spear in hand. "You've been a blight on my work for too long. You're just a stray pawn that Ozpin picked up. You should've remembered that." She threw her spear. James had no time to dodge. It connected with the left side of his face.

James wasn't quite sure what happened after that. It was hard to describe, but it almost felt like his body had experienced an overload and was rebooting one function at a time. He couldn't feel, he couldn't hear, he could barely remember who he was and what he was doing. Then he heard something. Someone was screaming in utter agony. He struggled to understand for a moment. Then something occurred to him. The roaring was coming from an incredibly close source, and the voice sounded quite familiar. Two and two connected. It was his voice.

He was still in the snow in Atlas, and he was in the most pain he could ever remember being in, howling without restraint. The white-hot spear had torn through the side of his face and left the remains feeling as if they were on fire. His one free hand was clutching desperately at his left eye, what he hoped to accomplish by doing so he had no idea. "What?" Cinder asked. Something was wrong, he couldn't quite hear her right. The noise was muffled on his left end.

Fighting through the pain, he forced his mouth shut and his head up. Cinder was still standing over him, foot on his wrist. Instead of haughty or hateful, she looked confused. At least he thought she did, his vision was obstructed with one eye covered. His hand shaking, he uncovered his eye. The darkness didn't fade. No. Oh God please no.

"Ah, there it is," Cinder said, realization dawning on her face. "You're more like Ironwood than I realized. More tin than man. But you were always playing a role too big for you." He tried to get up, but his limbs felt like they were made of jelly, unable to even push him up an inch before they slipped and collapsed. Cinder smirked at the display. "I think I've made my point." There was a sound of glass breaking and her spear reformed in her hands. Again, James attempted to move at all, struggling for his shotgun. Something, anything that would get him out of here. Desperately, he glanced at his weapon. It was still pinned, nothing was moving there. Nothing except the display on his Pip-Boy. Fallout Boy was standing there with his arms out, eyes closed, and a smile on his face. A nuclear cloud was erupting behind him. Below him was a timer for thirty seconds and two words.

Nuclear Anomaly.

Twenty-nine seconds. Twenty-eight seconds. Slowly, the timer ticked down. A faint hope sprouted in James. It was a small chance, but it was all he had. He had to think fast. "Ozpin did tell me about you," he said, his voice a weak rasp. "He told me everything." Time wasn't on his side, the edge of his already limited vision was going dark. Somewhere he couldn't see, he heard the sounds of gunshots and Winter screaming something.

Cinder paused just as she was about to thrust down. Tauntingly, she held her spear a mere inch away from his eye. "Then tell me this. Where is Ozpin hiding the Fall Maiden? Where is the rest of what's mine?" James has no idea who or even what the Fall Maiden was, and if Cinder realized that he was dead.

"They keep moving her around," James said, his mouth moving faster than his brain. "She's never in one place for more than one night. But she's never too far. Ironwood has a high response team on standby, they hose down anyone who gets too close. Tonight they're gonna move off the continent though. Legion has them spooked."

Cinder snarled. "That Marie F. woman? She wants the Maiden's power for herself? She'll learn the same mistake you did. The mistake of crossing Salem." Something ticked in the back of James's brain. He had a name. He had to get out of here with that name. "So, where is she now?" James glanced at the timer again. Five. Four. "What are you looking-" Cinder began, but her voice died as her eyes went wide.

"Winter! Duck and cover!" James shouted, his voice so weak that the shout felt more like his normal speaking level. Two. One. Zero. Everything went white. Deafening explosions produced a ringing in the ears that James was familiar with, but that wasn't what he was experiencing. Whatever happened seemed to just swallow up noise. Then the whiteness faded. He saw the damage.

A crater, several times his length in diameter, had formed around him. Trees around him had been reduced to shriveled husks that had been flash burned in a nanosecond, the snow had been vaporized into a small pool of uncomfortably hot water that was sloshing around James, and his Geiger counter was crackling more loudly than he had ever heard. Above him, a mushroom cloud was forming, stretching up towards the sky. Cinder was lying well outside the blast radius, staggering to her feet. An auburn aura flicked around her before it died.

James felt something tighten inside of him. Her face was dotted with blisters. Her Aura had broken. Summoning whatever strength he had left, James raised his shotgun and fired. Once again, Cinder's hands flew up, fire licking them and swallowing up the pellets. Even the fire from the Dragon's Breath shells wasn't finding its way to her. Victory was so close, he just needed to get one good shot in. Come on! Think!

Before he could come up with a way to surpass Cinder's guard, however, there was a loud cracking sound. A wall of ice erupted between the two of them, separating them. James barely had time to blink before a blur of white appeared in the corner of his eye. The next thing he knew, someone had wrapped their arm around his waist and he had been lifted off the ground with staggering force.

Through his good eye, he saw her. Winter. She looked battered, bruises were starting to form on her face and her uniform was tattered and torn, but there were no serious injuries visible. The arm that wasn't holding onto him was holding her combined weapon out in front of her. A path of Glyphs stretched out in front of them, carrying both of them forward at a breakneck pace. "James, listen to my voice!" Winter said, her voice professional but with a strain of tension for it. "Focus on it as much as you can! Whatever happens, you need to stay awake!" Right, if he went into shock odds are he wouldn't be coming back from it. That wasn't something that bothered him though. Jubilation coursed through him. He hadn't been able to finish off Cinder, but it didn't matter. They had a way out.

His hope died a quick death. The sound of shattering ice echoed from behind them, Cinder had made quick work of Winter's barrier. Winter noticed, her eyes narrowing in concentration. Her weapon jerked back and force, the Glyphs in front of them adopting a zig-zag pattern as the pair of them continued to speed along. It was a good tactic, making herself a harder target. It didn't matter. A horrible whistling noise rang through the air, starting from far away before homing in on them. Without warning, it vanished. Three sounds followed in quick succession: the tingling of glass breaking, the wet tearing of flesh being ripped asunder, and a cry of pain.

Winter's arm sagged, the Glyphs vanished, and both of them tumbled into the ground. Mercifully it was a soft landing, but that was the only silver lining that they had. Forcing himself up, James saw a glass arrow sticking out of the back of Winter's right calf, crimson blood dripping out and staining both her white uniform and the snow below. James's heart stopped. She came out here to keep an eye on my stupid ass. Why? Why does she need to die with me?

He attempted to force himself into a kneeling position, but all of his limbs were shaking so badly from the effort that he collapsed face-first into the snow. "James, stop!" A pair of hands grabbed him, firmly but gently, by the shoulders. Winter, sitting with her legs splayed around her, pulled him up into a sitting position with his back to a nearby tree. Even sitting up felt strenuous now, and he no doubt would've ended up on his back if the tree wasn't handling the majority of his weight.

He looked down at the shotgun still in his hands. Cinder's fires had done more damage than he had realized. The barrel was warped beyond all recognition; there was no salvaging it. Dropping the ruined weapon, he drew A Light Shining in Darkness. There was no way he could handle firing his rifle or his SMG right now, but even if he could manage to shoot with his pistol he was in trouble. His back was to Cinder, the tree between him and her, and his hands were shaking so badly that he doubted his abilities to hit the broad side of a barn.

Time seemed to slow down. He looked at the pistol in his hands. Normally it felt cold, but compared to the frigid air around him, it felt pleasantly warm after resting against the small of his back. Cinder had made her intentions very clear, she wanted him to suffer. He was stuck here, in these godforsaken woods, far from anyone he had ever cared about, and ever since he had gotten here it had been clear just how little impact he had. Gods among men walked on Remnant, and he could barely scratch them. He had just nuked Cinder at point-blank range, yet she was still moving while he couldn't even sit up on his own and half of his face was missing.

He rubbed his thumb affectionately along the grip of A Light in Shining Darkness. The left side of his face throbbed. Would he be missed? Probably not. He had proven himself to be a pain in the ass with the Hunters. And Winter had gotten dragged out here to protect him from the people he had pissed off. What exactly had he accomplished on Remnant? On Earth, he had been somebody worth a damn, someone who had made things better. Here? He was nobody. His grip on the pistol tightened. Slowly, his mouth opened.

A hand grasped around his. Winter was looking directly at him. Her carefully maintained professionalism had shattered; she was looking at him with naked horror. For a brief second, clarify struck him. It was followed at once by a horrible, overwhelming wave of both dread and guilt. "I...I wasn't," he said feebly, not even sure what he was going to say he wasn't doing. An unbearable silence hung in the air between them, the pair of them at a lost for words.

It was broken as Cinder emerged from the dust that was forming the mushroom cloud, her glowing eyes roaring like a bonfire. Mercury, Emerald, and Torchwick weren't far behind her. Mercury looked smug, while Emerald and Torchwick looked a bit shaken. "I have had enough," Cinder said simply. Raising her hand, dirt rose from the ground and gathered around her head. Within seconds, twenty glass arrows, glowing with the same inner heat of the spear, formed over her head.

Winter scrambled behind the same tree James was leaning against as best she could with her injured leg. She flicked a switch on the inside of her saber. James gingerly peeked around the edge of their shared cover, which was barely big enough for the top of them, his pistol shaking in his hand.

"Wait!" All eyes turned. Han was moving as fast as he could with his cane through the snow, Róta at his side. Róta's body language was the opposite of Han's. She moved slowly, keeping pace with him, and glaring at Cinder and her followers with naked contempt. In one hand she held a double-bladed ax that appeared to be her hand axes combined together with a handle that had extended outward. Yellow electricity was sparking off of the head. In her other hand, she dragged Rumford carelessly on the ground. The ex-legionary's face was a mess of black and blue, blood dripping from it, and his leg was bent at the wrong angle. There were no points for guessing who had done that to him.

"This man has wronged you? I promise you I will ensure that he never bothers you again!" Han said, his voice far louder than it needed to be. "I'm taking him away, far away from here! Please, he's just a lost man who wants to go home. He doesn't know where he is or what he'd doing." James stared blankly at Han; the man was going to get himself killed. Cinder's attention had turned back onto him. There was a better than average chance that she was dying to send one of those arrows right into his throat. "I'll make it worth your time! A hundred-thousand Lien!" Han's hand drove into his cloak and withdrew the packet of money. Mercury let out a loud laugh, Torchwick looked as if he felt sorry for the man, while Emerald looked to Cinder for instructions. "A hundred-thousand Lien and you never see him again."

"Get. Out," Cinder said through gritted teeth. "I'm not here for you, nor do I care about your pitiful offerings." James raised his pistol an inch, wondering if he could get one last shot in. A .45 round was hardly the most damaging of rounds, and a body shot wouldn't be instantly fatal. But there was no way a headshot was possible at this point, and if he was being honest, he wasn't even sure if he could hit her at all. Han was blabbing away but he was only drawing the bare minimum of attention from Cinder. Róta looked as if she could hold her own in a fight, but even with Rumford down that still made it three versus four, with two of the three being badly hurt. Bad odds all around. But did he have a choice? Barring some sort of miracle, his best chance was a miracle bullet. He held his fire. There would only be one chance.

"Please, I assure you that this man is not worth your wrath, whatever he has done," Han said, sounding borderline hysterical as he continued to step forward. At once, Róta dropped Rumford and stepped in front of Han, her lip curling upward in a silent growl. "Róta, no! Let me talk to them!" Giving Han a reluctant glance, Róta stepped to the side, her eyes locking onto Mercury. "If it's not enough, I can get more. A direct wire if I need to, I don't care if I have to dip into my savings."

"If he isn't gone in the next ten seconds, kill him," Cinder said. James could swear that the arrows above her were glowing a little hotter. He tensed his finger as best he could. It felt placid and pathetic. Could he even pull the trigger like this?

"Really? I mean, I never claimed to be a good person, but I have it as a policy to only hurt old blind guys if they don't give me what I want," Torchwick said, looking uncomfortable with the situation. There was the briefest of glints in his eye as he looked at the money Han was still holding, but it was quickly suppressed as he looked nervously at Cinder. "Come on, he's a senile old coot. Hey, lady? You really should get him out of here." He pointed. "There's a town not too far that way. Tell the bartender there he owes me money and I'll be by later in the week to collect." Róta didn't move.

"Well, you heard her old-timer," Mercury said snidely, leisurely closing the last few steps between himself and Han, hands in his pockets. "Ten seconds to make yourself scarce. And I'm keeping track of every last one of them. Nine. Eight. Seven." Róta looked as if she wanted nothing more than to throw herself at Mercury and tear out his insides with her ax. She was trembling with anger and hatred, her weapon shaking in her hands. But she stayed put.

Han looked at Mercury. From what James could see, he looked surprisingly sad. "You never really did grow up, did you?" he asked. It wasn't an accusation if anything it sounded as if he was offering comfort. "You never grew beyond the mindset of the playground bully. Pushing over other kids in the sandbox to make yourself feel better. I've seen hundreds of men and women just like you. Children really. Proud. Impulsive. Quick to hit their problems away." He gave a dejected sigh. "They always die young when there was no reason they had to." His hand reached underneath his glasses, wiping something. "Please. Just walk away. You stand to gain nothing but momentary satisfaction here."

"Ok, time for grandpa to shut up," Mercury said, sounding as if he was attempting to hide his rage. Bounding forward, his leg swung up towards Han's face. Róta was too far away to intervene and Mercury had a clean shot. James braced himself for the old man to collapse onto the ground.

Instead, there was a clang of metal on metal. Mercury gawked in surprise. Han's hand was closed firmly around the foot, holding it in place. He gave another sigh as he reached up and took his glasses off. "I hate doing this. You could've just taken the money and walked away. But you never would. Your type doesn't see the value in what's freely given, only in what you can take." The glasses fell carelessly into the snow. Red, mechanical eyes stared back at Mercury. "You really like are all the other young, proud boys. Fast to swing. Slow to analyze."

A quick jab came up, driving itself into Mercury's cheek as Han let go of the gray-haired boy's leg. Mercury stumbled back, barely keeping his balance as his leg came back down, looking shocked. Han reached down and reluctantly pulled off his gloves. James's eyes widened. His hands weren't wrinkled flesh, but a worn, gunmetal gray, with an underslung cannon on both. Underslung cannons that had were connected to clear tubes with bright green energy running through. Plasma cannons. No. No fucking way. Remnant didn't have plasma weaponry. He forgot about Cinder and his desperate, last ditch plan to kill her. Han was the only thing holding his attention now.

"I don't want to do this," Han said, tucking his gloves away into a pocket. "We can all walk away from this. But those two are coming with us. And appeasement didn't work. That only leaves one option." Everything about Han's body language had changed. Before he had been hunched over, now he was standing up straight with no difficulty. If anything, he was standing up with the grace and ease of a man a third of his age. His hands curled into fists as he held them up in front of his face in a guard pose. To top it all off, he began to bounce on the balls of his feet. "A van's been shadowing us this entire drive. Two of my most trusted people are on it. Wiglaf and Anna Honeycrisp. Our fifth and final member, Jane, can be here in ten minutes. Don't make us kill you. I'm begging you."

XXXXX

Author's Note: A lot of fanfic authors get pleasure out of torturing characters they hate. I get a lot of pleasure out of torturing the ones I love. On that note, I've been working towards Han's true nature for a long time. I've got a lot planned for him as well as his merry band. It was interesting because a common criticism of reveals like a character's true allegiance means that we effectively didn't know who they were beforehand. I took this into account and something I'm trying to get across is that Han didn't hide his personality when he was under cover as a blind man, just his goals, allegiances, and how far he's willing to go for both. Hopefully you'll see what I mean in future chapters.

Also, for the record, I do listen to your feedback and I find that my best work comes from talking with fans and figuring out what they like and dislike about my stories, so feel free to tell me what you think works and what you think doesn't work. If anything I feel I learn more from you saying what you think can be improved and what you like to see more of. Even if I don't 100% agree it challenges me to double check my work to see if it's up to snuff, which I think is important.

I would like to thank my Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 14

Alea iacta est

XXXXX

Winter couldn't believe her eyes. Han was holding his body with the strength and energy of someone a quarter his age. But even that was nothing compared to the cannons slung under his arms. They both had a strange, tube design to them. It was a design very similar to that of the LAERs that Atlas had recovered from the Legion. The implications were staggering. James being an interdimensional traveler was a concept she barely accepted, the presence of such otherworldly technology was the only reason she believed half of his claims. And yet here was a man who was utilizing this very same technology? How?

Her eyes darted down. Questions would have to wait. She didn't have time to focus on Han. James was a mess. He was still leaning against the tree, pistol in hand, looking as if it was taking every last ounce of strength he had to stay conscious.

His wounds were utterly horrific to look at, filling even her seasoned stomach with bile. His left eye was gone, simply gone. The only evidence it had ever been there was the torn eye socket that was now a black hole, and the loose thread of optic nerves that dangled feebly out of the bottom. But that had only been the impact point of the spear, it had traveled up towards the edge of his face.

Everything left of his ruined eye had been burnt to a raw red, bordering on black. She had an unobstructed view into his jaw, his tendons, teeth and the surrounding jawline naked as a disturbing combination of spit and blood dribbled out of it. James appeared to have bitten his tongue without realizing it. The burn marks did not so much end as suddenly stop at his ear. Or rather, where his ear had used to be.

The tear was not a clean one, to the point where his ear had been ripped off, not cut. A tiny bit of his earlobe was still attached, flapping in the wind, a bright pink as opposed to red or black. The rest of the area, however, was a tangled mess of uneven flesh, blackened bits flaking off in the wind, a hole only vaguely visible.

Through it all, she saw the reason James still lived. She saw it in his upper jaw, in the stretch of ruined flesh along his temple, even near where his ear had once been. The spear had been thrown with such force and burned with such an intense head that there were patches where flesh had given way to bone. But James's skull was not a pale white, but a shimmering, almost dazzling, silver chrome. Winter could see a single, straight groove in it where the spear had tried and failed to pierce. It glowed a faint orange, holding residual heat from the spear, but it held fast.

Memories came flooding back to Winter. The implants James had, the heart, spine, and this. She had no idea where he had gotten them or how, but it didn't matter. They had saved his life, they had justified their existence a thousand times over.

"Winter?" His remaining eye lulled in her direction, swollen and red. Its lid was drooping, he was struggling to keep it open. Winter didn't say anything. Her hands went to the rucksack he always carried, tearing it open before she began to frantically search it. James's equipment had been searched when he had arrived, she knew he carried medical supplies. His blood had been clotting much faster than usual when he had been recovered from his encounter with Adam, he had injected himself with something. Fear bubbled up in her as she pulled out a cluster of needles, bottles, and syringes, though her hands remained steady.

If this had been Atlesian medicine, she would have recognized them and their purpose at a glance. Earth's labels and symbols, however, might as well have been in a foreign language. Not a single one was even vaguely identifiable. "Which one?" She whispered, holding the bundle in front of James.

He blinked as his eye slowly examined the medicine in her hand. "Stimpack," he said, pointing to a syringe with a gauge of some sort at the top. "In my arm." His voice was noticeably slurring. Ignoring that, she rolled up his sleeve and drove it into his vein. A soft moan of relief escaped him as she pressed down on the plunger. Almost at once, the dribble of blood coming from his mouth lessened. His eye focused, his breathing became more stable. Overall, his condition was still horrible, but Winter felt certain that, at the very least, he wouldn't die in front of her any minute now. "Thank you," he rasped.

She nodded, eyes darting upward. For the moment, the two of them seemed to have been forgotten. Róta had thrown herself into the midst of the ranks of their enemies, her tattoos glowing a bright blue. The woman was barely recognizable, her face was twisted into one of utter fury, and her mouth was wide open in a silent roar, only a faint cry audible. Her ax, crackling with Lightning Dust, was being swung with mad fury, Emerald desperately moving back to avoid being hit. There were many close calls, to the point where Emerald chose to duck and slide underneath the raging woman, firing bullets into the square of her back as she did.

Fairly certain she recognized a berserker Semblance when she saw it, Winter turned her attention to Han. The difference between the two of them was night and day. While he was liberally employing his underslung cannons, Winter witnessed him firing off a dozen blasts of green energy at Mercury as the gray-haired man advanced on him, Han seemed reluctant to engage in a frontal deadlock. He bounced to the side, his raised fist neatly deflecting a kick from Mercury before sliding into land a quick jab on Mercury's chest. He darted to the side the second the blow had landed, not straying far from Mercury, but staying just out of range of the flurry of kicks that were thrown at him in retaliation.

Roman was gawking at this sudden turn of events, his head turning from the two fights to the bruised and bleeding Rumford, and back again. Cinder's teeth were grinding in unrestrained fury, the blades above her head-turning. Attention was off of them. This was their chance to escape. Freeing up one of her hands, Winter grabbed the arrow still sticking out of her calf. Clamming her jaw shut with all the will she could muster, she pulled hard. There was little resistance as her flesh was torn open from the process, fresh blood spattering the snow below. Fighting back the urge to roar in pain as agony coursed through her leg, Winter took a second Stimpack from the supplies she had retrieved, jamming it into her arm.

A warm, pleasant feeling coursed through her from the source of injection. She found herself smiling before she could suppress the urge. It was a wonderful, comforting feeling. The kind of feeling that reminded her of curling up in a fluffy bed in front of a roaring fire. Then, almost as soon as it had come, it was gone. The harsh, cold reality of the bleeding wound came back to her, although not to the same degree. Not having time to wait, she experimentally put weight on it. It trembled as she stood up, pressed against the tree they were hiding behind, but she was able to rise to her full height without issue. How long she could stay standing, with her leg still aching and shaking, she had no idea. "We're going," she whispered, putting a hand on the tree for extra support as she slid the medical supplies back into the rucksack. "We'll stay low until we're out of visual range and then use my Semblance the rest of the way. Can you stand?"

James slid his pistol back into the concealed holster on his back. Winter had never realized just how truly ugly that weapon was. A crude design, with a grip that attempted and failed to be novel and charming, and a nonsensical engraving along the side of the barrel that served no practical purpose. If they weren't in such a dangerous situation, she would have ripped that accursed thing out of his grasp and snapped it in half. She had seen the look in his eyes, the way his mouth had opened. That weapon was nothing more than an anchor tied around his throat. James was a man with whom she had a healthy level of grievances, but he was on the same side as her and had proven himself dedicated enough to earn her respect. He deserved better than that wretched thing.

Gingerly, James attempted to stand, drawing Winter out of her inner thoughts. Nearly immediately, he stumbled and had to catch himself on a tree branch. "I'm sorry, I can't," he said, sounding exhausted with a trace of fear in his voice.

"It doesn't matter, give me your arm," Winter said. James hesitantly reached out towards her. Her hands closed around him, pulling his right arm over her shoulder and taking most of his weight onto her back. Normally, Aura would let her carry around a full-grown man in his combat kit without any issue. Now though? It wasn't beyond her, but she could already feel the beginnings of muscle strains, ones that would doubtlessly grow into agonizing burns eventually. It didn't matter. He couldn't move, she could, she would have to simply endure. "Stay as low as you can."

She doubled over as she began to move forward, doing her best to duck and weave through the trees, heading away from the bath in a diagonal manner, back towards Mantle. If the fight lasted long enough and they kept their frames low, just maybe they could break the line of sight. James clearly understood this and ducked his head down low, his breathing becoming guarded and regulated. As he did so, his mouth came within mere inches of Winter's face. A rancid stench hit her nostrils, provoking an involuntary wrinkling of her nose. Alcohol, his breath positively reeked of it. Despite everything, Winter shot James a look of surprise. She couldn't recall a single time she had ever seen the man drink or display a slight hint of intoxication. And yet he had a breath she knew all too well. It wasn't the breath of someone who enjoyed a drink every once in a while, the smell was far too strong and thick for that. It was the breath of a chronic, long-time alcoholic.

So. He's just like Mother then, a voice in the back of her mind said. A sad, pathetic waste. She shoved those thoughts to the back of her head. Whatever James was, he wasn't a waste. He had come nowhere near to the depths her mother had sunken to. Despite this, she felt anger and frustration in equal measure. Why was James poisoning his mind with such reckless abandon? They had both seen what a mess Qrow was all thanks to drinking, amplifying an already hard to work with person into a man who, by all rights, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near minors. James had shown the same frustration that she had. How could he have been such a hypocrite?

"Winter?" She had been staring at him without realizing it. James blinked. Now that he was so close to her, she noticed something that, now that she saw it, should've been obvious. His pupil was dilated, his head tensing as if he was fighting back the urge to check behind them, and his jaw was clenched tight. He was scared, terrified even. Winter wanted to slap herself in the face. They had been ambushed, James had had half of his face torn off, the woman leading the assault had used abilities whose nature and scale were beyond anything she had ever seen, and now they were struggling to merely limp away. Of course he was afraid. If anything, the fact that he was keeping himself this collected despite not being a soldier was nothing short of laudable. "Is it that bad? I-I can't see. Is there anything left at all?"

A tiny sliver of guilt passed through her. She could lecture him on the self-destructive nature of drinking when he had recovered. And he would recover. Atlas cybernetics were the best in the world, to the point where there was a months-long wait period for more high-quality implants, the demand was simply that high, even with the demanding prices. James would be the very next person to receive one for his eye. Winter didn't care if she had to get on her knees and beg Ironwood for such a favor, she would get it done. "It's nothing beyond fixing," she whispered back. It wasn't a lie, but it was a statement that was very particular with the truth.

Seconds ticked by as they continued forward, their pace agonizingly slow. Moving with dead weight, an injured leg, and with caution as to not make any noticeable noises or movements meant that progress was being made at a snail's pace. Still, the sounds of gunfire, blades on blades, and explosions were getting more and more distant. Winter chanced a backward glance. Cinder had joined the fight now, sending her glass blades arcing towards Han and Róta . An amber glow around Cinder indicated that her Aura had reformed, though most likely not at full strength. A startling fast display of recovery if there ever was one.

She didn't pay attention long enough to see what happened after that, the important thing was that Cinder's back was still to them. She might have felt conflicted about leaving the two of them behind if Han had not revealed that he was being deceitful about his true nature. As it stood, anyone who pretended to be an old blind man when he was secretly a fit, well-armed cyborg raised suspicion on Winter's part. Her report to Ironwood would contain all the details and he would be best suited to decide the best course of action there. She just had to get a little further. A little further.

"Oh, there you went!" Her head snapped back. Roman Torchwick had separated from the rest of the fight. He twirled his cane in his hand before aiming at them, a cap at the bottom opening up, revealing a barrel. His finger tightened around a trigger. "Nothing personal, but between getting on the bad side of Atlas and the bad side of these people, well, ask one-eye over there how it worked out for him. Honestly? You should be thanking me, I don't play with my food. For what it's worth, Ironwood was the best jailer I ever had." With that, he opened fire. Red, glowing projectiles soared forward, humming as they did.

Winter grasped her sword and made to stab down. She had enough Ice Dust left in her chamber to make one more ice wall, which would be enough to block this volley. After that, however, things would become more complicated. Of Cinder's lackies, Torchwick appeared to be the least threatening with the possible exception of Rumford. But he was still an Aura user who had proven himself capable of holding his own in a fight. If she was at full strength she would've been confident in her ability to eke out a victory, but it would be a touch and go fight now. Either way, it would have to be quick, lest Cinder's attention be drawn back onto them.

All of this raced through Winter's mind as the tip of her blade dove towards the ground. It never made contact. Before she could complete it, the roar of an engine filled the air. A civilian van, emerging out of the thicket of trees, swerved in front of her and James, taking the full blast of Torchwick's weapon. There was a groaning of metal, the side of the van that had been hit was visibly warped inward, and the vehicle itself was buffeted so badly that it nearly tipped over.

"What the-" Torchwhick said as the van screeched to a sudden halt in the snow. The driver's door, which was on the far side from Torchwick, burst open and a figure covered from head to toe in winter combat gear popped out. A balaclava and ballistic goggles covered their face and snow pattern camouflage stretched across every inch of their white combat fatigues. Not an inch of skin was visible, even the figure's hands were covered with gloves that matched the rest of the outfit.

The driver was holding a massive scoped rifle in both hands. Winter had never seen a design like it. Coils surrounded the entirety of the barrel, the body of the weapon was an odd, circular shape, and despite the presence of a magazine on the bottom, some sort of power cell was plugged into the side of the rifle. A power cell that heavily resembled the one used by the LAERs. Leaning over the top of the van, the figure fired. A heavy crack echoed across the landscape and Torchwick was blown off of his feet, his mouth wide in a silent gasp as he landed in the snow. Torchwick was still breathing, the shot hadn't broken his Aura, but he was noticeably shocked and winded. "Wiglaf!" the figure cried out. "Get them out of here!"

The voice of the driver was female, but something was odd about it. It sounded as if it was being put through a filter. The tone was oddly musical and had an echo to it. Winter was struggling to understand this, but it was all driven out of her mind when the back door to the van swung open. Her eyes widened.

An utter giant of a humanoid creature, twelve feet tall at the very minimum, leaped out of the van, landing with a loud crunch in the snow. Not merely tall, the newcomer had arms and legs that were wider than many of the trees around them, and a torso that made him the size of an Ursa. Most of the figure's body was covered in metal armor that was easily twice, if not thrice, as thick as the armor Atlas soldiers wore. It was a gunmetal gray, had a worn and used look to it, and made soft, mechanical whirring noises when it moved. Reports on the progress of industrial exoskeletons and Atlas combat suits floated to the front of Winter's mind. Nothing she had ever seen in Atlas matched the size and power this suit would doubtlessly have.

It wore no helmet, giving Winter an unobstructed view of its head, which was dark green and bald. It had all the essential parts of a human face, eyes, ears, a mouth, a nose, but it was much harder and stretched far wider than any face she had ever seen. There were so many muscles within the body that the figure's skin was stretched tight over it all, visible veins running down its neck. The creature, Wiglaf, carried a semi-automatic shotgun scaled up to his size in one hand and a metal tower shield that looked as if it could serve a plate of armor for an airship in the other. A lone symbol decorated his chest plate. The word "Unity" with a single, diagonal white line painted through it.

"Ah, Mr. Walker!" Wiglaf said in a deep, gruff voice. Despite that, the tone was warm and welcoming. He was smiling warmly at them, or, to be more accurate, he was trying to. His jaw was far too thick, making it come off as more of a grimace. "And a plus one. This wasn't how I hoped to meet you, but it's a pleasure nevertheless. Han has been so excited to meet you. But let's save that for when we're all out of the line of fire, shall we?"

James gasped, the noise shallow and barely audible. "A Super Mutant?" So, James knew what this thing was, the implications there were rather obvious, even if they weren't pleasant.

Wiglaf laughed, sounding genuinely amused. "A crude term for such a complex and inspired design, but yes."

"Wiglaf! She's getting a bead on you!" the woman in combat gear shouted, firing her odd rifle again. Wiglaf turned his back on Winter and planted his shield in the ground in front of him. A pair of spikes extended out of the bottom, burying themselves in the dirt and anchoring the shield. No sooner had he done so, than six of Cinder's flaming arrows impacted on it. Despite the sheer width of the shield, all of the arrows achieved some level of penetration. Most of them had possessed enough force that the arrowheads were now jutting out of the far end of the shield, while the one had fully made it through and was now embedded in Wiglaf's chest plate.

Wiglaf looked down in surprise. "Oh. Oh shit." Without any warning, gusts of wind picked up, blowing so fiercely that Winter was forced to brace herself to stay upright. Cinder, her eyes glowing with that otherworldly light, rose up, her hands out to the side. Thousand of glass fragments spun through the air around her, forming dozens of arrows as fire blazed at her fingertips.

"HAN! We need to go! She's a Maiden!" The alien word registered in Winter's mind, but she had no time to analyze it. The woman in white tilted her weapon up, firing three more times, the barrel giving a meaty roar with each shot. Again, Cinder's hand rose and intercepted the incoming shots, all of them burning up before they could impact. Whatever the woman was shooting was some kind of solid projectile, though no casings were being ejected, and it was faring no better than James's rifle.

Cinder thrust her hands forward. A geyser of fire erupted from her palm, licking the front of the van and surging towards the woman. Crying out in pain, the woman threw herself down from her perch on the driver's seat. "My suit!" she yelled as she crouched against the side of the van, ejecting her rifle's magazine and loading a fresh one.

"Well I do believe now's a good time for you two to get in the clear," Wiglaf said, his good-natured tone much more strained now. "Get in the van, Anna and I will cover you!" As he spoke, the giant let go of his shield and stuck one hand into the van. He ripped out a suit of armor that was similar to his own, but was meant for a normal-sized person, appeared more bulky and utilitarian in design, and had a helmet that possessed a pair of beady, sickly yellow eyes. To Winter's surprise, the white spear of Atlas was adorned on the chest plate of the suit, a single white diagonal line stretching through it. Heaving it the suit up, Wiglaf slammed it into the ground, leaving it standing straight up.

The woman, Anna, lept towards the suit, exposing herself to more fire. Abandoning her rifle, she grasped the back of the suit with one hand, turning a valve in the small of its back, and tore at her balaclava with the other. As the valve turned, the suit unfolded, hundreds of parts whirring and clicking as it opened up, allowing a person to step in. The other hand seized a handful of her face covering before pulling it and the ballistic goggles off in a single, clean swipe.

For the second time that day, Winter saw something utterly unfamiliar to her. The face of the woman was both glowing with pale green light and appeared to be in the middling stages of decomposition. A few faint strips of dark flesh around her cheek were all that was left of her epidermis, while her hair was merely a few wispy locks. Her features were sunken, as if she had been starved, and tendons on both sides of her jaw were bare. She didn't look as if she should be upright, Winter had seen healthier looking bodies in a morgue.

"She's a Ghoul." Winter's attention turned to James, silently asking for an explanation, praying that he had one. His eyes were on Anna as she clambered into her suit. It closed around her like a carapace, sealing her within. "They're mutants, both of them. Radiation and chemicals from Earth do this to people." They were from Earth then. That had been the conclusion she had been working towards, but these two had pushed her over the edge. These were familiar sights to James? Walking corpses and giants?

Anna shot an annoyed glance at them as she retrieved her rifle. "In! Now!" she snapped, grabbing her rifle and arching it up. Wiglaf had drawn Cinder's attention, charging out into the open with his shield up, firing his shotgun. Every shot sounded like a cannon going off. The first shot caught Cinder dead in the chest, forcing her back in the air before a geyser of flame burst forward to swallow up the rest of the shots. At the same time, her arrows flew forward, hugging the outside of the pillar of fire. She had adjusted her arrows, which curved through the air to attack him from the side, while her flames hit in the front. His shield stopped the fire, but all the arrows buried themselves in the sides of his armor. Judging by the winces and the lack of blood, Wiglaf had Aura, and it was taking damage.

Winter glanced back at James. "Could they be Legion?" They didn't match any of the Legion's previous profiles, but she struggled to think of who else they could be. Her knowledge of Earth was limited. And if they broke precedent with Marie F. why not here?

James shook his head. "Women, mutants, and old people, the Legion hates them all." His lone eye met hers. He could sense her apprehension. "Do we have a choice?" Winter could tell by his tone that he liked the idea of trusting these people just as much as her. Not at all in other words. How was another group from Earth on Remnant? How long had they been hiding here? Why had they lied to James? Had they been leading him into a trap?

"NOW!" Anna bellowed, firing her rifle in Cinder's direction. Winter marched forward, pulling James along with her. Unfortunately, James was right. They didn't have a choice. She half pulled, half dragged James towards the entrance of the van. Clambering up, she dug her hands under his armpits and pulled him in. It was far less graceful than she would've liked, and he noticeably hissed in pain as his back was dragged across the edge of the threshold. Not a word of complaint escaped his lips though. Finally, he was inside, out of the line of fire.

"Ok, they're in!" Anna shouted. She appeared at the mouth of the van, emptying the magazine of her rifle before she climbed in after them. A grunt from Cinder echoed after the shots were fired, they had done something. "Wiglaf! Get Róta and Han over here!"

Winter leaned James up against the wall of the van. "Stay here," she said, before drawing her swords. Supporting herself against the side of the van, she limped back towards the entrance, near Anna. Twirling both of her blades, she drove them into the floor of the van just shy of the entrance. She didn't have time to do anything fancy, so she rushed her summon. A trio of short Beowolves, ones that didn't even come up to her knees, appeared. Leaping out of the van, they charged in the direction of the battle. She didn't like these people, but their fate with them was uncertain, whereas their fate with Cinder was certain doom.

Peeking out of the van, she took in the battle. Han was still dancing circles around Mercury, who was seething in frustration. Ducking under a high kick, he landed a quick punch in the younger man's gut before leaping backward. "Ok, enough playing around!" Mercury shouted. He began to spin and kick, sometimes supporting himself with his hands, white bullets empowered by Wind Dust fired out from his boots. They started to form a cyclone around him, one that he doubtless intended to unleash on Han. However, just when they were starting to form a significant mass, twin beams of red light flashed directly into the cyclone. Each hit one of the bright, white rounds, melting them instantly. Again and again, the streams of energy flared, tearing into the gale of projectiles with pinpoint accuracy. Within seconds, it had been consumed, not a single round left. The shots, the lasers, had come from Han. Out from the back of his cloak, an additional pair of mechanical appendages were emerging. Long, thin, and with barrels mounted on the end, both of them aimed at Mercury.

"You son of a-" Mercury began, only for Han to lunge forward. A heavy, downward cross slammed into his face. Mercury stumbled back, planted his hands on the ground, and then pushed himself up into a backflip. As he did, his foot shot out, catching Han right in the throat at the same time that he fired the barrel in his boot at point-blank range. Han gagged as the force of the blow knocked him back a foot, clutching at his throat as he struggled to breathe. A satisfied smirk crossed Mercury's face. "There we go, looks like the old man has a glass jaw." In response, Han aimed his free arm and both of his back-mounted lasers at Mercury, but the younger man had flipped out of the way before he even fired.

In direct contrast to Mercury, Emerald was staying as far away from Róta as she could, her pistols blaring nonstop as the glowing woman chased after her, roaring as much as her wispy voice would permit. There was not a moment where she wasn't viciously swinging her ax, every blow having enough force to rip a head off, the blade dancing within mere inches of Emerald. Eventually, Emerald stepped to the side. Confusingly, Róta continued charging forward, now swinging at thin air, seemingly oblivious that Emerald had been left behind. Róta came to a halt and let out a roar of triumph before raising her ax above her head and burying it in the snow. "What, you, DESERVE!" she hissed, raising her ax again.

Emerald's eyes narrowed in concentration as she twirled the chains on her pistols before sending them flying. Arcing through the air, they deftly wrapped themselves around Róta 's throat. The muscular woman blinked in confusion, stopping her assault and looking in Emerald's direction. Her eyes swung wildly from side to side, not focusing on Emerald despite the green-haired woman being on the far end of the chains now wrapped around her neck.

Realization dawned on Winter that a Semblance of some kind had to be at work here. "No you don't," Anna hissed, aiming her massive rifle in Emerald's direction. Winter, however, had already beaten her to it. She had intended for her Beowolves to attack Cinder, but a simple thought had been all it took for them to change directions. Turning on a dime, they divided and came at Emerald from three different directions, their fangs bared. Realizing what was happening, Emerald tugged hard on her pistols, earning a gag from Róta as her face began to turn red, and fired both. Each shot struck true on one of Winter's summons, causing them to dissipate into snowflakes on the wind as they were hit, but a third one was still unharmed. It dove at Emerald, biting at her torso.

Emerald yelped before swiftly kicking the summon in the side of the head, causing it to vanish like its fellows, but the damage had been done. Róta's eyes focused on Emerald, as if she was properly seeing her for the first time. Baring her teeth, she grasped one of the chains wrapped around her and pulled hard. Emerald promptly lost her balance to Róta 's superior strength and was sent stumbling into melee range. Letting go of the chain, Róta gripped her ax in both hands and swung.

The electrified ax head tore directly into Emerald's side, ripping a cry of pain out of her before sending her flying into a nearby tree. She impacted with such force that the tree snapped in half as if it was a twig, Emerald staggering to her feet. Róta took a step forward, snarling in rage. "Time to go!" Róta paused, looking as if she had just broken out of a stupor. Wiglaf was beside her, firing his shotgun up into the air at Cinder. "Fenway special?" A grin split Róta's face. Her hand darted into the snow and grabbed something before she nodded.

"Anna, duck!" Wiglaf slid his shotgun onto his back before he grabbed Róta. His hand was so thick that he was able to close his hand around her torso. Realization hit Winter. Heaving her over his head, he threw Róta with a precision snap. The woman became a blur, speeding directly in Winter's direction. An armored hand closed around the back of Winter's head and she was forced down, Anna hitting the deck alongside her. There was a clang and the whining of metal being bent. Swiveling her eyes up, Winter saw Róta hanging from the entrance to the van, her ax buried into the now warped upper frame. A triumphant grin was on her face.

"You'll have to drive, I can't while I'm in my Hellfire," Anna said, taking up a kneeling position and firing. Róta nodded, bounding into the depths of the van, which did not separate the driver and rear section, and clambered into the front seat. The blue glow that had been covering her faded and her breathing became more labored. Winter recognized the tell-tale signs of an adrenaline crash.

Outside the van, much of the attention had turned onto Han, who was now firmly on the defensive. Emerald had pulled herself out of the splintered tree and was flinging her bladed chains at Han. He backed up, batting them out of the air, only for Mercury to close in on him from behind while he was distracted. A brutal ax kick came down from the gray-haired man, aiming to split Han's skull in half. Han realized what was happening just in time to cross his arms over his head, stopping the blow with an echoing clang of metal on metal. Mercury didn't lose his momentum, however. Grabbing Han's arms, he pulled himself up off of the ground, pulled his free leg back, and kicked out hard. He caught Han directly in the stomach, earning a grimace as he stumbled back. As well as another loud clang of metal on metal.

Winter did the mental logic. A blow like that should've knocked the breath out of someone, even with Aura up. That, combined with the clang, led her to an easy conclusion. Han was most likely more metal than flesh. Mercury seemed to have reached the same deduction. "Ok, the head it is," he said, starting forward again. He got halfway there before a bang echoed out from right next to Winter and he was blown off his feet. Anna made a small, satisfied noise.

Seeing an opening, Han took it. With the speed and form of a seasoned runner, he began to dash towards the van. Wiglaf fired a few more blasts from his shotgun before falling in behind him, his tower shield raised high. Mercury kicked high into the air, the barrels in his boots firing off Wind Dust infused rounds that arced and came at Wiglaf from the side. Seething, floating above them all, Cinder did the same with her arrows.

Holstering his shotgun, Wiglaf gripped his shield at the top and bottom. A thin, horizontal line appeared in the middle of the shield, shimmering in the pale light. With no resistance, the shield separated into two, the areas where the break had been made were semi-transparent and liquid. It looked as if the shield had melted, but there was no sign of dripping. Holding up both shield halves to either side, Wiglaf blocked the incoming shots. Only a few made it through, but once again, Cinder's arrows obtained either partial or full penetration.

"Move," Anna said sharply, and Winter pulled back into the van. Han leaped in, Wiglaf right behind him, having to double over to fit in. "Róta , go!" The engine of the van roared as it took off, speeding off the beaten path and into the treeline. Emerald and Mercury both made to follow, Mercury kicking out to propel himself forward with the recoil from his boots.

Neither got very far. A whistle was all the warning that they got before a bright green explosion tore apart the earth in front of them. They screeched to a halt, just avoiding it, and jumped back. A second explosion burst to life, consuming the area they had just been in. The shade and power of the explosion, which quickly vaporized nearby trees into blackened husks, was identical to the plasma grenades James used, only bigger. There was a loud wiring noise, and a large shape emerged from the trees and assumed a parallel position to the van, matching its speed. Wiglaf gave a pleased smile. "Jane's here."

Jane, it seemed, was a pitch-black combat robot that was only slightly smaller than an Altesian Paladin and around the same size as the back of the van. Every section of her was thick with armor, and in several, it appeared that additional armor had been fused on. Her arms ended in barrels, one that was a missile launcher and the other a laser similar to the ones on Han's back. An identical set of weapons were mounted on her shoulders, all four of them firing missiles and automatic laser fire back in the direction of Cinder and her followers. There were four legs that, instead of ending in feet, had tires that wouldn't have looked out of place on trucks. Her face was a simple grate that housed a single, glowing red eye. Like all of the others, she had a symbol on its chest with a white diagonal line through it. In Jane's case, it was an uppercase E surrounded by stars.

"Incoming," she said in a cold, mechanical voice. Cinder was right behind them. She was speeding through the air, her arms behind her, spouting flames that were propelling her forward. Even from this distance, Winter could see an almost demonic like look of rage on her face, etched into every corner of it. She howled in fury, a howl so feral that Winter found herself instinctively clenching her teeth as she raised her swords. What was this woman?

"Han!?" Anna said, firing the last of her weapon's magazine, Wiglaf supporting her with his shotgun, all of the shots blocked by Cinder. Winter slammed her sword into the floor of the van, preparing another summon. She had barely started when the elderly cyborg shouted out from behind her.

"Jane, Helios maneuver!" he said, bounding to the back of the van, a strange humming noise emanating from his chest. At once, all four of Jane's weapons tilted up and fired, lasers and missiles filling the air. With a flick of her fingers, Cinder sent a pair of arrows directly at the missiles. Her aim was true and the missiles detonated on impact, long before they were able to reach her. The rapid-fire lasers were less easy to block, however, and they raked her torso, causing her to tense up in pain and fury. More arrows rained down, all of them finding their mark, burying themselves in Jane's chassis, one splitting her shoulder-mounted laser in half. Sparks flew from the opened gaps, circuitry now exposed, even Jane's abnormally thick armor only doing so much.

"Just a few more seconds!" Han said, stepping in front of Anna, Wiglaf, and Winter, leaving nothing between him and Cinder. The humming noise coming from his chest was growing louder, steadily approaching a piercing tone. Reaching into his cloak, he turned something. One of Cinder's eyes snapped onto him as he acted, and an arrow flew in his direction. Han moved to dodge, but he had barely moved before it hit. There was a shattering noise and the screech of metal tearing. A red Aura flickered and died around him as his right hand dropped to the ground. Undeterred Han continued to pull at something under his cloak with his remaining hand before ripping it wide open. Winter could just barely make out a fully mechanical chest, one that had a covering panel open to reveal a flat surface that was identical to the barrels of the laser weapons Winter had seen. It was the source of the humming, which had now reached an almost unbearable level.

Han pulled at something in his chest. A bright, nearly blinding laser, at least a foot in diameter, fired out from Han's chest, instantaneously arching up and right onto Cinder. For a second, she was consumed by the concentrated light. Winter thought she might have been vaporized after being hit by a weapon this powerful. Instead, she tumbled down gracelessly onto the ground, landing in a smoldering pile. "Floor it!" Han cried out. Wiglaf reached forward and slammed the doors of the van shut as Han stepped back and leaned against the wall, turning to look inward.

Panting, his chest and the laser cannon glowing an orange that bordered on red, he closed the panel as best he could with one hand. As he did, Winter saw a flag painted on the panels. The majority of it consisted of red and white stripes, with a blue square in the upper left corner that played home to a circle of white stars. Winter wasn't surprised to see that it too had a white, diagonal line crossing through it.

"We made it," James said softly behind her. Winter moved back to where he was sitting. Now that they were in the clear, she would have to give him a more in-depth look over, make sure that his injuries were stable. As she reached him and checked his face, he looked directly at Winter. She was taken aback. There was not a time in her life when she could remember someone looking at her with that much gratitude. "Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you so much." A pleasantly warm feeling glowed in the pit of her stomach. He half leaned, half fell forward, hugging Winter. His grip was weak, he was more clinging to her jacket than he was hugging her, but he did so quite stubbornly. The warm feeling in her grew ever so slightly. She returned the hug.

After a moment, however, she pushed him back against the wall, taking care to be gentle. "You need to see a doctor," she said sternly. She looked at Han, who was now leaning against the side of the van, panting. "I assume we are indeed safe?"

Han nodded. "She might've lived through that, but she's not gonna be running after us after taking a direct hit, even with Maiden powers. Róta knows enough tricks to throw them off the trail now that we have a head start. We just need to play it safe and make sure we lost them. You gotta be careful when it comes to prints."

Winter nodded. "Very well. Thank you for your help. Once you're certain that we aren't being followed, we'll need a ride back to Mantle. Whatever you wanted to show James, it can wait until he's healed." A heavy silence fell over the back of the van. Anna, Wiglaf, and Han all looked at her. Anna was impossible to read through all her armor, but Wiglaf looked disappointed while Han had pure guilt plastered over her face. Dread crept into Winter. Slowly, she backed up, positioning herself between them and James, her swords out in front of her. "You want him dead, don't you?" she said, her voice venom. "You never had a way home for him."

"I didn't lie," Han said, every word overflowing with self-loathing. "James." He looked past Winter, at the man behind her. "You didn't think the United States government would build a portal to another dimension and not send anyone through, did you? And if you send someone through, they need something for a return trip." He sighed. "Two portals were made. I have the other one. I never thought I'd see someone from Earth that I didn't take to Remnant personally. I thought the other portal was destroyed in the Great War. And then you show up, a wastelander in Remnant. You were lost, confused, entirely out of your depth. I had every intention of getting you home, safe and sound." He closed his mechanical eyes, holding them shut before opening them again. "I didn't know you had unlocked your Aura. I wish you had told me that. It changes everything."

"The hell are you talking about?" James rasped from behind Winter. He attempted to get up, only for Winter to firmly push him back down with the edge of her hand. Privately, Winter shared his confusion. Hadn't the United States been a destroyed country from Earth? Han was claiming to be a survivor? And how did Aura change anything?

"It's a big picture matter," Wiglaf said. While he didn't appear to be happy with the situation, he clearly felt nowhere near as guilty as Han did. "Degrees of power and influence have always been a thing with the human race. One man in power armor can kill a hundred people who aren't. Aura is even better than power armor, and the two complement each other rather nicely. But theoretically, anyone can activate their Aura, it doesn't have a required industrial base." He shot an annoyed look at Han. "And while there is some disagreement on it, we as a group have decided it's in Earth's best interest not to have Aura introduced to it. I believe Han's exact reasoning was wanting to avoid creating monolithic blocs of power that would slaughter any faction smaller than them with transhuman super soldiers."

"Please, understand," Han said. "Earth has no context for such a thing and Remnant has had Aura for so long they consider it mundane. But this? The things you and I can do? It's transhumanism. The elevation of human beings beyond the limitations of their biology, creating chasm-sized gaps in power that can never be crossed with natural talent or training. If Aura gets into Earth, if people like Caesar's Legion get their hands on it, hundreds of thousands of people will die. A non-Aura user going up against an Aura user is like someone with a rock trying to destroy an M-60. And once everyone knows what it is, it'd be the nuclearization all over again. Everyone trying to keep up with their own beyond human warriors. Demi-gods waging war and destroying everyone stuck between them. And now that you have it, I can't let you just go back to Earth. You'd be Pandora's Box."

James was silent for a moment before he spoke again. "What, you think I'd be an idiot and run around giving Aura to the 80s and warlords? I don't even know how to activate Aura." Winter was focusing on staying between James and the others, but part of her brain was going into overdrive. Was Earth really that primitive? There was a concern of Aura users massacring those who weren't?

"That doesn't matter," Han said, shaking his head. "James, ideas are contagious. If someone so much as learns about the existence of a concept, it has the potential to enrapture them. I promise you, such a thing will happen if proof of Aura's existence gets out into the wasteland. Thousands of people will dedicate their lives to chasing it down and harnessing its power. It might take years, decades even. But it will happen." He looked as if he wanted to cry. "You can't go back to Earth. I'm sorry."

A heavy silence followed. "Very well then," Winter said. "Drop us off at Mantle then. Whether he has access to your portal or not is inconsequential. We never expected this to yield results, we're right back where we started." Her voice was cold and icy. James was oddly quiet behind her. She had a strong gut feeling that having a way home dangled in front of his face and then cruelly snatched away was nothing short of devastating to him.

"We can't," Han said bluntly. "You know who we are. Atlas would be combing the area looking for us and the portal we have. You've gotten a taste of Earth technology, haven't you? James, be honest with me. Do they know about nuclear weapons?" For the first time since she had taken her position, Winter glanced at James. A look of pure horror was on his face, visible even though his injuries.

Han sighed. "You told them, didn't you? Then I hope you can appreciate the magnitude of the situation. We're not just looking out for Earth, we're keeping Remnant safe too. Neither world needs the horrors of the other. And if workable models get introduced, they will never leave. Aura and nuclear weapons both, they're swords of Damocles in the wrong hands. The woman that did that to you could bring a Post-War nation to its knees by herself. And nuclear weapons in Remnant would cause the Cold War all over again."

"Mantle always likes to think it's first among equals," Anna said bitterly. "Sometimes to the neglect of the equals part. They'd be at the head of any nuclear disaster. James, ask your friend about the time Mantle tried to crush all freedom of expression in the world by force of arms."

"So what? You're going to kill us?" Winter said, her hands tightening around her swords. There was a rustle behind her, and the head of an ax extended past her leg, a lit pilot glowing gently. James has the strength to aim that weapon at least, one that didn't require precision. At that point, the van screeched to a halt. There was a shifting of gears from the front and Róta stormed into the back of the van, glaring with unrestrained contempt. For a moment, Winter thought Róta was glaring at her. Then she realized the muscular woman was looking at Han.

"What are you doing?" she asked in her raspy voice, each word looking as if it was causing her great pain. "We help them!"

"It's unpleasant, I admit it," Wiglaf said, looking at her with sympathy. "But we do things we disagree with in our little group. You know what I think about Aura, but I still go with the majority." Winter realized that all eyes were off of her and James and that the engine was still running. Was there something they could use there?

"We backstabbers now?" Róta snapped, wincing and clutching at her throat as she tried to speak.

"Róta, wait," Anna said, holding up her hands. She sounded panicked, a surprising change from a woman who had primarily been irritable up until this point. "Don't push your vocal cords. Let's get back home and I can get you pen and paper so we can talk about this when we're-"

"Vote," Róta said tensely, interrupting her. "I want vote!"

"Róta," Anna said with exasperation, but Han held up a hand.

"She has the right," he said. Moving to the back of the van, he opened the door. Jane was outside, her back to them. At once, she spun to look in. "We're having a vote." Turning back inside, Han cleared his voice. "All in favor of releasing our guests?" Róta's hand shot up, looking around expectantly as she did. No one else followed her example. "And those opposed?" Han raised his hand, as did Wiglaf, Anna, and even Jane stuck a laser barrel into the air. Han counted. "1-4. I'm sorry Róta, it's dismissed with prejudice."

Róta was seething with barely contained rage. "You promised him," she growled, wincing and clutching at her throat as she did. "You promised." Winter focused on the woman. Perhaps she was a weak link in this group that could be exploited.

"I know," Han said softly. "It's a horrible thing in a long line of horrible things I've done. But the alternatives are always worse. I'm sorry." His face hardened. He opened a panel on his handless arm and pulled. Explosive bolts detonated and the entire arm was blown off, leaving a clean, empty slot. As he did, a hatch opened on Jane's chest. Inside was an array of arms and legs, identical to Han's. Taking one, he slid it onto his slump. It whirred to life, Han flexing his new fingers as the hatch closed.

"Now then. James. Specialist Schnee. We have you five to two and neither of you are in a shape to fight. I have every intention of treating you with the dignity and respect a POW would expect. I will provide medical treatment for James. I must insist that you surrender your weapons, though." He held out a hand. "This is not negotiable."

All attention was on them again. Winter was trying to not think about how right Han was. The odds were stacked against them. "Your promises aren't worth very much now, are they?" She said, stalling for time. "What incentive do we have to trust you?"

"Self-preservation," the synthetic voice of Jane said. "If you will not give them up, we will take them. Resisting will only incur further injury. Don't be stupid." Winter glared at Jane. A second passed. Then another. Winter was mentally scrambling for an escape route, anything. There was nothing useful in the van. The rear exit was blocked by all of their captors, and she wasn't certain she could pull James out through the front. To complicate matters, there was nothing of use visible outside. Only snow, trees, and a bird sitting on the windshield.

Her line of thought was broken as James exhaled heavily behind her. The ax he had been holding clattered to the ground. Winter could feel the fight in her die. It had been hanging on by a thread, but the only ally she had in the area standing down had smothered it.

Róta recognized it too. Closing the back door to the van, she angrily made her way back to the driver's seat. She only stopped for a second to place something on the ground next to James. His helmet and gas mask. "Róta, listen," Anna said, moving to put her hand on Róta 's arm. She slapped it away, not looking back as she climbed into the front, shifted gears, and began to drive again.

"She'll come around," Wiglaf said, bracing himself as the van lurched into motion. Anna nodded wordlessly. "Now then. Weapons, please? And scrolls."

Still glaring at Han, Winter folded her swords into one and presented them to him, hilt first, fetching her scroll with her other hand. He took them and smiled. "There's much you don't know about us. I promise you we're not the villains we must come across as. We do good work. You'll be treated well when we get home, and hopefully, we can talk more in-depth about who we are and what we do." He pointed at his chest, specifically the white line. "We're the Scattered."

"Am I supposed to be intimidated?" Winter asked sourly. As she did, Anna moved forward and took James's ax. Gesturing to him, he shifted and reluctantly handed her his rifle, knife, scroll, and rucksack.

Han shrugged. "Not really. We decided we needed a name and it was the best one we managed to get on the whiteboard. We came from radically different walks of life. It fits."

Winter narrowed her eyes. "You're all from Earth then. How? Why?"

"80% of us are. Anna is Atlesian, born and raised," Han said. "And I promise, everything will be explained." Before he could continue, Anna talked over him.

"All weapons."

"Oh come on, it's a 9mm SMG," James said. "Your armor alone could soak it all up; his even more so." He gestured at Wiglaf. "It's a pea shooter compared to the rest. Cut me a little slack, let me keep one."

"All. Weapons," Anna growled. She held her hand out. Cussing under his breath, James upholstered his White Fang SMG and handed it to Anna. "Don't be a stubborn ass your entire life," she said as she took it.

"No promises," James said. Winter looked at him. At first, the outburst had confused her. But as Anna stepped back, asking for nothing else, she understood. It had been a clever ruse if it held up. "Three questions. First. My eye?" James said, pointing at the wound.

"An excellent question," Winter said. James looked like he was stabilizing. Whatever was in that Stimpack, it was doing good work. He wasn't bleeding anymore, but he still looked very weak. "If you mean to treat us well, do you have a doctor that can treat him?"

"We have an auto-doc back home," Han said. "State of the art." Winter has no idea what an auto-doc was, but James seemed to be satisfied with the answer.

"Second." There was the sound of a strap being undone as he pulled his wrist-mounted terminal off. "Can I check her for radiation?" Winter looked at him in confusion. Radiation? She had read the initial report from when James had first arrived, including his claim about a harmful type of radiation. According to him, it killed on the cellular level. While she hardly felt fine now, she wasn't suffering from total cell failure.

Han nodded. James handed his terminal to Winter. "It can check your health. I don't have radiation sickness, but the Geiger counter picked some up from the explosion. Please." Winter hesitated before taking it. It took her a few seconds to figure out how to put it on. Eventually, she cinched it into place. At once, the image of a cartoon character with Xs for eyes and his tongue hanging out of his mouth appeared. Beneath it was a message. "You have minor radiation sickness." Instinctively, Winter pressed her palm against her forehead. She felt fine, what was this all about?

James sucked in air through his teeth. "Shit. The bomb. Han, I need some of my Radaway."

"I'm familiar with treating radiation, I can apply it," he said. Anna held up the rucksack and Han reached in, pulling out what looked like an IV solution pack.

Winter interjected. "James will be fine, thank you." Han paused, looking as if he had just been slapped. Then he nodded. Without a word, he handed the pack to James.

"Winter, could you roll up your sleeve please?" He asked.

She studied the bag. It looked rather old. "Is this needed? Your computer says the sickness is minor."

"This stuff can cause all sorts of nasty things, cancer among them," James said. "And if you're really unlucky, you can go feral. End up like Anna over there, except without your faculties. It's best to nip this in the bud early on." Winter relented, kneeling down next to him and rolling up her sleeve. James knew better than her about this, best to let him take charge. Scoring forward, he undid the cord of the pack.

As he did, Han took a first aid kit off of the wall, producing an alcohol swab and bandages. He handed the swab to James, who took it without looking and began to rub Winter's arm. "I'll bandage your face after this." James grunted but nodded. "You said there was a third question?"

James slid the pack's needle into Winter's arm before answering. "What was going on back there? What's a Maiden? Who's Salem? Something was different about Cinder than typical Aura, What was it?" Winter nodded, eyeing the Scattered. Those were all very good questions, ones she wanted the answers to herself.

Han, Anna, and Wiglaf exchanged surprised looks. "I thought you were working for Ozpin. And I thought she was working for Ironwood. You don't know?" Han said.

"What?" Winter asked, barely paying attention to the fluids now flowing into her. A slight feeling of dread slid into her. She squashed it. If General Ironwood had kept classified information from her, he had his reasons.

"Oh dear," Han said. "Specialist? You may want to sit down. You deserve the truth at the very least." A dark look crossed his face. "There's another reason Remnant can't learn about Earth. Something is lurking in the dark corners of this planet, intelligent and malicious. "She wants us all dead, and she won't rest until it's done. Cinder is doubtless a pawn of hers, a taste of what's to come. The endless hordes of Grimm are all hers. She's Salem. And she's been terrorizing this planet since I arrived here in 2076."

XXXXX

Servius stood at attention, looking through the joint Legion and White Fang camp as they did. They had arrived in the frozen hellscape known as Atlas several days ago. Ever since they had been making a nonstop march through the frozen countryside. Unlike in Vale, they had been deliberately avoiding any towns and cities. Vulpes, and Caesar through his Signifer, had given them strict orders to do so. They were not to waste men and resources on minor battles when they had a larger objective. Said objective was known only to Vulpes, a wise move to prevent a security leak.

As they moved, other forces had trickled into line with them. Many Legion forces had been covertly placed in Atlas in preparations for Caesar's strategies, and the White Fang forces that were loyal to Adam had flocked to them. The latter, however, had come in smaller numbers than Adam had been expecting. The very last had made contact this morning, bringing the total number of their force to roughly five-hundred. Three-hundred Legion, two-hundred White Fang. This, according to Vulpes, was the grand total of the Legion forces on Remnant, as well as all loyal White Fang. They would not be seeing any reinforcements for some time. The words of the head of the Frumentarii still rang in his ears. "If you fail, there will be no others to bear your burdens. Die a meaningless death and you have cost Caesar dearly."

Three Centurions commanded the three centuria that the Legion forces had been divided into, slightly oversized centuria but Caesar had willed that it be so. Ancus had been given command of the one that he and Tullus had been folded into, while the White Fang operated on their own, much looser organization. So loose that Servius was reluctant to call organized at all. The only thing that was truly set in stone among them was that they had orders to assist the three centuria. Even then, they freely moved about, deciding which warriors they wished to fight alongside on mere whims. Privately, Servius found it maddening. For all the bravado of the White Fang, they would have been devastated on the open field had the Legion not come to assist them. He prayed Vulpes would instill Legionary discipline on them sooner rather than later.

"Forward!" Servius took a dutiful step forward. He had learned since arriving in Atlas that the Legion forces in Vale had been there mainly on scouting purposes and reaching out to the White Fang, while the bulk had been in Atlas. Likewise, the majority of the Legion's munitions, weapons, and other equipment had been there as well. Servius now found himself at the front of the line for his centuria, where Ancus had been personally distributing supplies.

"Ah, Servius," he said warmly, reaching into one of the many wooden and steel crates that lay opened around him. "Caesar is generous and arms his legionaries well." Ancus spoke the truth, he had been among the first to receive his new arms. In addition to his Super Sledge and 12.7mm SMG, he now had an LMG slung over his back, as well as a thick shield. It appeared to be some sort of transparent material that had had countless metal plates welded to it for extra protection. Servius could just make out some writing through all of the additions, "Denver PD." "He sent his finest blacksmiths to assist us. Look."

Ancus removed two things from the box, a shield much like his own, and a sword. Servius had come to respect and rely on his blade, but it was nothing compared to the masterful work of art that Ancus now held before him. It was a shortsword, it would stretch from his elbow to the tips of his fingers, and was double-edged. It was clean, sharp, shone brightly in the pale light, and ended in a firm, brass pommel. He took it in his right hand, barely registering taking the shield in the other. It felt wonderful, properly balanced, light, and solid. A sword worthy of Caesar's name.

Slowly, reluctantly, he turned his attention to the shield. It was much larger. If it were planted on the ground, he would only have to duck his head down to be fully obscured, and it reflected in the weight. The crudely applied additional plating made it look ugly compared to the much more elegant sword, but Servius could not deny how firm it felt. "Your gladius and your scutum. Treat them with the same care you would your very body. They are gifts from Caesar."

"Of course, thank you," Servius said, affixing his new weapons.

"Report to the training grounds, Caesar's other Aura capable warriors will join you shortly with instructions." Curiosity struck Servius. Was this training? A mission? "Forward!" Ancus was busy, Servius wouldn't bother him with questions right now.

He moved through the hodgepodge of Legion and White Fang tents to a clearing that had been set aside. Standard Legion camps had a field for legionaries to spar, but in this camp, it was reserved for Aura users. Every night he and Tullus had been training with the other Aura capable Legionaries, learning more about their newfound powers.

"There you are!" Tullus was already there, waving with his blade arm. His unmanaged one was extended outward, flakes of ice flying off of it. A tree in front of him was flash freezing at an alarming rate, leaves stiffening and falling off while wood splintered and cracked open. It was already cold, but as he neared Tullus the temperature in the air dropped at least ten degrees. Tullus lowered his hand, and the temperature returned to normal. "It seems I have ranged capabilities."

"Short ranged, but ranged." Ilia was there. She approached the tree, poking it with the tip of her sword. The wood splintered like glass underneath the pressure. "And effective." She sounded impressed.

"Hell yeah it is." Servius felt as if he had been jolted. Marie F. was sitting with her back propped against a tree, a large sandwich in her hand. There were large smudges on her face as if she had recently wiped off makeup with little care. She had gone exploring in disguise. Again. She waved at him. "Oh dude, you gotta check this out. Next town over has restaurants that are actually open all night, can you believe that?" She took a massive bite out of the sandwich she was holding, juices dribbling down her face. "And it tastes damn good! They had a fucking teenage boy with more pimples than brain cells handling this stuff, how the hell did he pull that off?"

"It's fast food," Ilia said dryly. "Anyone can do it. Some of us were stuck working there before we joined the White Fang."

Marie F. swallowed and laughed. "I love this planet!" Servius was about to say something when he saw what Marie F. had slung on her back. A long, metallic catapult with a bright yellow warhead loaded into it. A Fat Man. She noticed, grinning as she finished off her sandwich. "We're ramping things up, your bosses want these people dead." Servius nodded dumbly. He didn't even know the Legion had had access to such weaponry. Ilia and Tullus were also eyeing it. Tullus was concerned while Ilia was more confused. "It's do or die time. They've got major hard-ons for us now, and we're fucked in more ways than one if we don't pull this off."

Servius frowned. "If we fail here, the Legion will carry on back on Earth without us." He saw Ilia shift nervously out of the corner of his eye. It confused Servius. What was she worried about? Didn't she understand the strength and tenacity of the Legion by this point? The White Fang had chosen wisely when they had picked their allies. Victory for both of them was only a matter of time, even if others would have to pick up the torch.

Marie F. let out a groan of annoyance as she got to her feet. She looked at him with something between annoyance and pity. "Listen, I don't think you get why your boss is so desperate to throw so many of you in a world crawling with giant, fuck off monsters," Marie F. said. There was a tingle in Servius's spine. Something was wrong. Marie F.'s nonstop glee had vanished and she was looking at him with hard eyes. She never did this. "You guys got your asses handed to you both times you tried to take Hoover Dam, there's no hiding that," she said. "But Caesar doesn't want you to know what's going on at the eastern border of the Legion. The place he's been having me fight nonstop for the last two years to pull his ass out of the fire."

She reached into one of her jumpsuit's pockets. For a second, Servius thought she was about to pull a weapon on him, but instead, she withdrew her hand to reveal a piece of scrap metal. One with a bright, golden seal painted on it. The sword and cogs of the Brotherhood of Steel. "I tangled with the Brotherhood once or twice on my own, some of the toughest bastards I ever met. But I never met anything like the force that's fucking you from the east. They call themselves the Midwest Brotherhood of Steel. You got your typical assholes in power armor and robots, wouldn't be the Brotherhood without them, but it didn't stop there. Zombies, Frankensteins, and Deathclaws, they somehow managed to get Deathclaws working for them, Deathclaws that, I shit you not, actually talk, and a fuckton of tribals, some terrible fighters, some pretty good. Get this, they even have cars."

She slid the armor plate away. "They started hitting Legion outposts a year after Lanius tucked tail and ran back to Papa Caesar. They weren't even expecting you, they just wanted to pass through on the way to the West Coast, but now it's an eastern front war. I have no idea how the Brotherhood got a force so big on the other side of you people, but it's there and it's been slowly piling up bodies for the last two years. They're not invincible like the usual Brotherhood you know, most of them don't have power armor and they've lost a lot of people taking you on. But they're much better equipped than you guys are; they're starting to make headway."

"And Caesar is doing everything he can to keep as few people in the know as possible, saying that the forces going east are on tribal conquests," she said in a disgusted voice. "Little bitch. I guess he knows if the NCR caught a peep of the Legion's attention being divided that he'd get spit-roasted." She shrugged. "He started the fight frankly, he should have enough balls to finish it. It's one thing to take a break from it, you and I had to run from James but we both know we're gonna get back to it the second we get a chance. Caesar? He's running scared."

Servius blinked. Everything that Marie F. had just told him sounded like a farce. He could buy the Brotherhood having a cell on the far side of Legion territory, they had been active long before the Legion had ever been formed. He could even buy that the profligate tribes east of the Legion had formed a massive army to oppose them, if the NCR could do it, why not them? But the two combined, along with a coalition of Ghouls, Super Mutants, and talking Deathclaws? The last statement alone should've been proof that Marie F. was just spewing out nonsense. And yet the steely look in her eye told a different story.

"You think I'm crazy, or fucking with you, don't you?" A wry grin slid across her face. "Don't mistake me for a lunatic with a knife fetish. I'm forty-seven years old. You don't live to be that old in the wasteland unless you know what you're doing. And that army to the east is the strongest I've ever seen the Brotherhood of Steel. And get this. They're only killing you because they want to hook back up with the West Coast Brotherhood." She let out an odd laugh. "And apparently they want to kill them too. God, the Brotherhood just keeps trying to kill each other and they're still some of the toughest sons of bitches around. This is the Circle of Steel all over again."

"You don't make any sense," Servius said. He felt stunned, as if he had just taken a hard blow to the head. This wasn't right. "Why are you telling me this?"

Marie F. looked Servius up and down. Then she gave a small grin. "To teach you a lesson. Thump your chest, talk shit, pick fights, you do what you think you need to do. But you only get one. You mess up, you pick a fight you can't win and end up with a knife in your throat, that's it. Everything that makes you what you are? It's gone forever." To emphasize her point, she drew her finger across her throat. "And if you don't know what you're getting yourself into, you might end up handing the knife to them."

"And you need to understand that you aren't the unstoppable conquerors anymore," she continued. "You aren't carving your way across Remnant on a victory lap. You're scrambling for a way to avoid the executioner's ax. Caesar came here for a miracle solution to the NCR and Brotherhood. Now this place is so batshit crazy he might find it. But if he doesn't, you're gonna get massacred back home. Everything you ever built, ever cared about? They'll tear it down and rip it apart. Never forget that. Because this little trip is your only way out."

"But there's a silver lining." Her grin spread. "You never fight like you do when your back is up against the wall. Everything comes out, nothing gets held back. And if you win, you will never taste a sweeter victory." Her grin faltered. "Don't get drunk on that feeling. Use it. If you let it use you, you're right back to not knowing what you're doing." Stepping forward, she gave Servius a firm punch in the shoulder. "You got a fire in you. Nurture it, don't let it burn out. I'm curious to see where it goes. And if you want to learn some of the more fun things I can teach you?" She rapped one of her sheaths. With a pop, a copy appeared. She flipped it with practiced ease. "Just ask."

A heavy silence followed. Servius could tell that Marie F. was being genuine with her offer for lessons. But there was a tiny pinprick of irrational fear in the back of his mind. Legion drill instructors were cruel and relentless out of necessity. Nothing else would turn young boys into hardened warriors. This woman, however, set something off in him. A primal fear that if he accepted her offer, he might not walk away. A fear he had never felt towards his Legion instructors, even when they had beaten him for speaking out of turn. He swallowed. "Start tomorrow?"

Her new knife vanished. "I'll be looking forward to it."

Snow crunched underfoot and several more legionaries approached. Those with active Aura. Vulpes was at the head of them, his helmet off and silver hair blowing in the wind. Beside him were Adam and a man with graying hair and a beard that Servius recognized. Lucius, the head of Caesar's Praetorian guard. Lucius had been positioned on Atlas with the majority of the Legion's forces. He carried no weapons, not even a gauntlet that was a common sight on many Praetorians. Curiosity flared within Servius. Why was such an aged legionary confident enough to present himself unarmed?

A steady trickle of people filed into the clearing, Caesar's Signifier, the muscular Faunus with the chainsaw sword, and eventually Ancus joining them. In the end, two dozen of them filled the clearing, the split between Legion and Faunus being 50/50. Despite the superior numbers of the Legion in the camp, the White Fang had more Aura capable warriors. The thought of that stung Servius. The Legion was still new to this, and they would need to catch up fast. His thoughts turned to Marie F. If she wasn't lying, an army was pressing on the Legion from the east. Every Aura user possible would be needed. He would not fail Caesar or the Legion.

Vulpes cleared his throat. All legionaries present stood at attention, while the White Fang more idly turned their focus onto him. Anger burned in Servius, but he held his tongue. Vulpes Inculta was capable of enforcing discipline on his own. "We have entered a critical junction of our joint operation," Vulpes said. His voice was silky and soft, yet it was one that demanded respect. The backs of the White Fang present visibly stiffened. Except for Ilia. She had already been taught from the moment Vulpes had approached, wearing a stony face. Servius fought back a smile. Ilia had more potential than the rest. She would have made a good legionary.

"Barca has caused near irreparable damage to our ability to move men and materials," Vulpes continued. "Our path back to our home has been deprived of us. We will secure a new one. With that, the Profligates of Remnant, the ones that have wronged us and our newfound allies, will feel the full brunt of our might. White Fang, your plight is nearly at an end. But one last hurdle lies before us before we can move onto our final goal. An all-out assault on the city of Atlas itself."

That got the attention of every Faunus present. Many of them let out thunderous whoops that caught Servius off guard. The sudden change from idle attention to roars of approval was shocking. Ilia's mouth had opened in triumph before her hand smacked over it. She looked down, pulling her hand away. The brief spark of energy she had shown was gone, replaced with confusion. Servius felt puzzled. Was she all right?

"But even with our current combined might, we lack the force to deliver a decisive blow to the capital of Atlas," Vulpes said. A flicker of anger crossed Adam's face, but Vulpes pressed on. "I do not doubt your conviction or skills, but Atlas is merely the beginning. Victory is all too possible as we are now, but do content yourself with them. Atlas is the largest and cruelest of your foes, but it is not the only. If your lives were squandered in Atlas, who would carry the cause onto Mistral? To Vale? And even Vaccuo? Human profligates infest every corner of Remnant, Atlas is merely where they are thickest. Many glorious years lay ahead of all of us, filled with the vengeance you all rightfully deserve. And the Legion shall be beside you for every battle."

Adam's anger died, replaced by a satisfied smirk. More than one of the White Fang were now giving self-satisfied chuckles. Even Servius felt like a fire had been lit in the pit of his stomach. An enemy of an Amicus was an enemy of the Legion. Profligates, every last one of them. The corrupt, self-serving nature of their governments would all be torn down, replaced with the strength of the Legion. They would deserve it. Barca, Rumford, the pathetic blonde boy who had been playing at being a warrior. They were selfish, destructive, and stupid respectively.

As his mind drifted back to the teenager who had barely put up a fight against him, Servius remembered something else. The red-headed girl. The flame in his belly faltered. She had shown a warrior's heart and a spirit that rivaled most legionaries. For some reason, she had fancied the welp. Perhaps it was similar to how legionaries enjoyed slaves that had been broken in. Broken in the way the girl would be if she lived. A sick, horrible feeling swallowed up the fire in his stomach. What if she was captured? Was Aura genetic? Would they use her to sire new legionaries? Would he be expected to do so to maximize success? Bile coursed through him. He was certain he was going to be sick.

Vulpes continued. Servius's attention jerked back to him. He had missed a bit. "We will be forming an elite strike team to secure the additional forces we so badly need. Unfortunately, one of our agents has informed us that a Mistral based organization we reached out to for help has, violently, rejected our offer." He smiled. A wide, toothy smile. "In time, they will come to regret that decision. For in choosing not to help, they have sided with those who wish to oppress you. Perhaps I was too idealistic in counting on Raven Branwen for help. She would have made our task much easier, but we will make do without."

"With the exception of myself, your brilliant leader, Lucius, and Caesar's Signifier, all of you will assault an isolated, underground bunker a day's drive from Atlas. It is not affiliated with Atlas, but you would be wise to not underestimate it. We are not aware of its exact defenses, but expect heavy resistance." Vulpes reached into a pouch as he continued to speak, he reached into a pocket and produced a folded piece of paper, which he smoothed out. "Your target is this. It is not to be damaged. Any legionary that brings harm to it will face my displeasure. White Fang? Your leader, in his wisdom, will doubtless issue the same warning to you." He held up the paper, which had a complex diagram inscribed on it.

Servius recognized it at once. It was the same portal that he had been assigned to guard at Big Mountain. All the pieces clicked together, the reason they had been heading out to the middle of nowhere instead of pressing their attack. They were securing a route back to Earth, one that reinforcements could pass through. Truly, they were undoing the damage that Barca had inflicted. "Once this device is secured, our true assault will begin. Take this moment to contemplate, to imagine. Every desire you have ever had, every righteous punishment you have wanted to inflict on your enemies. For after our attack on Atlas, dozens, hundreds, of profligates will be our captives. To be better put to use once they are in their rightful place. Below us. In service to us. The only things they are truly good for."

The sense of triumph rose in Servius again. It spiked with such fierceness and ferocity that it shook him. The image of the red-haired girl was still in his mind and the bile reared again. Servius inhaled sharply as the two conflicting emotions battled inside him. What was going on? He glanced at Ilia, who now had her hand firmly planted over her mouth. She was trembling, horror in her eyes. Whatever was happening to him was happening to her too. Did they both lack the strength to finish this?

They were alone, all others had erupted into thunderous cheers. Adam managed to make his voice heard above all others. "The humans of Remnant will know their place, only the Legion will be spared! As will any Faunus who stands against the freedom we represent!" A cruel smile parted his lips. "Our new allies have taught us excellent ways of punishing them." Servius was certain that Ilia's eyes would pop out of her skull, they were bulging so bad. The poor girl looked like hot pokers were being shoved into her. Servius wanted to say something, but a deep fear rooted him to the spot. Interrupting a speech from Vulpes Inculta? No one knew what the punishment for that was, no one had been foolish enough to test it.

"And now, for the matter of who will lead this attack," Vulpes said. "Do you wish to meet the ones you will lead?" He turned his head back into the clearing. Heavy footfalls echoed, heavier than any man had the right to make. The sound of wood being bent and then snapping echoed through the clearing, followed by a tree with a shattered base tumbling over. The tips of its top branches scraped the outer edge of the clearing.

Then Servius saw him. His breath caught in his mouth, a horrific chill ran down his back. He couldn't breathe. An armored man walked forward, shining steel covering nearly every inch of his body though. In the few gaps where it did not, bulging pink muscles strained, attempting to escape their owner's armor. They were ridiculously thick, nearing Super Mutant levels, and the man had no right moving with the ease and comfort with which he did. His face was covered by an intrinsically carved helmet, shaped in the face of a bearded man, topped with a wide crista. A sword that matched the man's six feet adorned his back, freshly forged and with no flaws visible at all in its straight edge. A crimson red cape flapped behind the man.

"You seek freedom, and it will be yours," Legate Lanius said. "But in ways you never could have imagined. Now, march. If you are able to survive what comes, you will understand the truth of my words. As will all of Remnant who are able to prove themselves. Those who cannot? Little more than carrion. Do not fall behind or fail me."

XXXXX

General Ironwood strode through the corridors of the Mantle border base, a thousand different logistical factors balancing in his head. "Warning, arial alert in outer perimeter. All personnel stand by," a crisp voice announced over the loudspeaker. Ironwood barely paid attention to the warning. He had a meeting with the other headmasters in a minute, the ones who had been trusted with the secrets of Salem, the Relics, and the Maidens. Pyrrha Nikos would be allowed to participate, having recently been brought into the fold, but aside from her, no one else was permitted. Between that, and the upcoming raid on the Legion and the White Fang, a simple matter such as this wasn't something that warranted his full attention.

He produced his scroll, looking at the number of Knights and Paladins he had on standby for the raid. There were a dozen Paladins and hundreds, nearly a thousand, Knights on this base, enough that they could have crushed the invading force by themselves. If they could get the drop on them. Sadly, Atlas's automated forces had been designed with standing battles and defense against the Grimm in mind, not rapid insertion missions. The Knights lacked the speed to hit an off guard force hard, and transporting multiple Paladins would bog down the speed of the raid as well as alerting their targets with the roars of heavy-lift dropships.

He pressed a few choice keys. Soldiers and Huntsmen would have to do most of the heavy lifting here. He could manage to squeeze in fifty Knights and a single Paladin. The Knights would mainly be providing support fire, but they and the Paladin could assist in ensuring that the Legion and the White Fang did not escape. The devastating nature of a Paladin might even be enough to force a surrender. Though, considering the nature of the Legion, that was unlikely.

As he continued to walk, Ironwood vaguely registered the sound of heavy surface-to-air laser cannons being fired. Judging by the volume, it was an entire battery. The loudspeaker crackled to life again. "All contacts neutralized. Stand down and resume normal operations." Coming to a halt, Ironwood looked up from his scroll and out a window. The sun was starting to set over the mountains, the glare shining directly in his eyes. Squinting through it, he caught the sight of three Teryx Grimm falling through the sky, their bodies collapsing into powder. Turning away, he continued walking until he reached the end of the hallway.

Two soldiers stood guard on either side of a heavy-duty door. Both of them saluted him as he approached, a gesture he returned. "At ease. I have an important call to take, I'm not to be disturbed until it's done. If anyone needs me, it can wait unless the base is under attack." Both soldiers nodded as Ironwood punched a code into a keypad just below the door's knob. There was a click as the door unlocked and he stepped inside.

The room on the far side was his office, or rather the room he was currently using as his office. Ironwood moved around the Kingdom of Atlas enough that he rarely spent more than a month in one place, and as such he didn't have a truly permanent office. This room reflected that, lacking decorations and having only basic amenities, a desk, and a computer. Sitting down in the desk, he typed in his password and opened the secure line.

Four frames popped into view at once, most filled with the face of one of the other headmasters. Ozpin, Leo Lionheart, and Locasta Goodwitch all took up three of the four. The final one was occupied by Pyrrha Nikos. "I want to keep this brief," Ironwood said. "We have reason to believe that the Legion means to steal the Winter Maiden's power, possibly the Staff of Creation as well. Between that and the recent attacks on the Fall Maiden, all of the Maidens and Relics should be considered at risk."

He took in everyone's reactions. Ozpin was calm and collected, Leo was fidgeting as he wiped his brow, Locasta, an older, somehow even sterner version of her younger sister, adjusted her glasses as her face hardened. Pyrrha said nothing, merely taking and letting out a deep breath. "Uh, Ironwood, I take it this is the one who was chosen to be the next Fall Maiden?" Leo said. "Our fifth wheel?"

"Her name is Pyrrha, Leo," Ozpin said firmly. Leo rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment. "And yes. Ironwood and I discussed it in great detail and believe that it was the best option we had. I know she will make us all proud." He smiled. "Herself included." Pyrrha gave a weak smile in response.

"Time is of the essence, so I'll cut to the heart of the matter," Ironwood said briskly. "Salem is making her move. She doubtless means to capture the other half of the Fall Maiden's power and then move onto the other Maidens. I suspect that, with the Legion attempting to seize the Winter Maiden, she will attempt to use the confusion to take it for itself. Atlas will need any support that can be provided. The Winter Maiden is not combat-capable. She's in her early 90s and her body is beginning to give out, she's unfit for anything other than long-range support. Our doctors predict that, at the most, she has a year left. Like Oz, I've been searching for a replacement candidate, but things are accelerating faster than I expected." He looked back and forth between Locasta and Leo. "We need the Spring and Summer Maidens, as well as any help the Relics can provide."

"The Summer Maiden has the opposite problem," Locasta said. "Far too young. She's only recently begun to display basic mastery of her abilities. Letting the Sword of Destruction out of its vault while the key is so insecure would be nothing short of irresponsible." She adjusted her glasses again, her brow furrowing. "We may need to accept that the forces beating at our doors have picked the worst time for us and the best for them. Still, I'll be able to rally some Huntsmen to support you. Many of them have been begging me for a chance to go and fight, but I've been needing to keep the Summer Maiden closely guarded. I can spare a few, though."

"I'm, uh, not certain that Mistral will be of much help," Leo said, producing a handkerchief and dabbing at the sweat that was collecting on his forehead. "We've had issues with bandits taking care of the panic and Grimm attacks are at an all-time high. Our Huntsmen are overtaxed and stretched thin. You need to understand James, people are panicking, the White Fang never stooped to indiscriminate slaughter before this. Violence? Yes. Innocent people were hurt and killed? Yes. But they never just fired into crowds and crucified civilians. Everyone is terrified, and the Grimm are responding."

Ironwood took in the swearing man. Everyone was more accurate than it should be. "Am I to understand that Atlas will not be receiving any additional support?"

Leo turned away while Locasta's eyes narrowed. "I am sending what I can. The Huntsmen we can spare can be there in two days if we prioritize aircraft for them. But you if all people should understand the state of Vacuo's military. Half of our armed forces are volunteer militia. They won't leave their homes for anyone, least of all Atlas." Her eyes bore into his. "They haven't forgotten that Vacuo was an oasis before foreign interests took precedent."

"That is not-" Ironwood began, stung by Locasta's words, but Ozpin interrupted.

"Now is not the time for finger-pointing; we can't afford to divide ourselves. We have our grievances, but those need to wait for another day." His eyes focused on Ironwood. "It wouldn't be wise to concentrate too many pieces in one place, it would leave the other academies vulnerable. The majority of Vale's forces stayed behind to keep the scales balanced. If we are careful and utilize the element of surprise, what we have is more than enough. If we deal with the Legion and White Fang now, we can focus on Salem." He sipped from the coco he always had on him. "James Walker is another newcomer from this Earth that the Legion calls home. His methods are extreme and distressing, but his goals are admirable and he produces results. It's because of him we know where the Legion is. If he continues to prove reliable, and ideally if his more concerning impulses can be tempered, we should consider bringing him into this inner circle."

Leo looked startled at this suggestion while Locasta had an exasperated expression on her face. Ironwood wasn't sure how to feel. James was a talented individual, yes, but he didn't have proper respect for boundaries. He and the other headmasters were the ones who gave the orders, and while he had told James to make peace with the less radical White Fang, it should've gone without saying that he didn't have free reign to carry out vigilante justice. In that way, he was even more unstable than Qrow. He should have sent Winter out. Winter would have kept him informed and updated every step of the way.

"Ozpin, now is hardly the time to be bringing new blood in, not at such a critical hour," Leo said. Ironwood nodded. Maybe after this crisis they could talk about it. James was too much of a maverick to bring in right now. "And even then, you're serious about this other world matter? Come now Ozpin. We deal with the extraordinary, but even by our standards this is absurd."

"It certainly sounds that way, doesn't it?" Ozpin said, visibly amused. "I do have to admit, I'm not certain I would believe it if I didn't see the evidence myself. But Ironwood and Ms. Nikos can both vouch for me on this. We've seen otherworldly technology, currency with no precedent in Remnant, and even soft drinks made by companies that we can find no records of. We have even been exposed to technological theories that we had never even considered." All of it was true in ways that had been eye-opening for Ironwood. Already he had R&D doing preliminary research into the equipment they had taken from the Legion.

"It's a lot to take in Leo, I appreciate that," Ozpin continued. "But we've confirmed it. It seems we are not sole masters of the fantastic. And James Walker, with his unique connection to Earth, could prove invaluable."

"Perhaps," Locasta said, sounding doubtful. "Leo is right though. Now is not the time. We're not certain how reliable he is."

"You can trust him," Pyrrha said. All eyes were on her as she spoke. "He's on our side." She gave the faintest of tremors, but she stood her ground. It took courage to go against three of the four headmasters, particularly at her age. He admired that.

"It's not his intentions we're questioning," Ironwood said, as kindly as he could. "But this is a very delicate situation that requires a certain temperament. Mr. Walker is rather aggressive in his approach to problems." As far as Ironwood was concerned, describing a machine-gun massacre as aggressive was highly generous on his part. "While secrecy is key to our operation." Pyrrha nodded, noticeably taking a step back. She looked a little embarrassed. This was why Ironwood approved of Ozpin's choice for the next Fall Maiden. He simply had to point out the facts and she would self-correct. It was a type of maturity that was often hard to find.

He was about to continue when his scroll rang. "A moment," he said. Ironwood looked down at his scroll in annoyance. Then his blood went cold.

"Winter and Walker got kidnapped. The old guy, his bodyguard, and people in a van. Two weren't human or Faunus, one was a robot. Following them. Queen has pawns pretending to be Mistral students. Two groups, look unconnected. ED-E will be by with the rest of it. Going dark for a while." Out of the corner of his eye, Ironwood could see Ozpin looking down at something himself. No doubt, he was seeing the same message.

"Leo, Locasta, we'll have to continue this another time," Ironwood said. "Something has come up."

"It's quite urgent, our apologies," Ozpin added. The two didn't even get time to get a word in edgewise before they were disconnected. Ironwood would have to apologize later. "Did they retaliate for his hand in preventing your forces from being hacked?" Ozpin asked briskly.

"They must have," Ironwood said. "But the old man? I never took him to be a threat." He grit his teeth. How had he let something like that slip by when they had barely avoided a catastrophic security breach? Just because he had appeared fragile and harmless?

"What's going on?" Pyrrha asked, looking back and forth between the two of them in confusion. Ironwood barely listened as Ozpin relayed the message Qrow had sent, only faintly hearing Pyrrha's gasp of horror. Qrow was going off on his own to rescue James and Winter. Qrow acting on his own, once again. How was he supposed to work with people like this? But the damage was done, sending another message back at this critical moment could blow Qrow's cover. Then they would have three hostages to rescue instead of just two. He would need to talk with Ozpin about getting that man under control, but that would have to wait.

At once, he turned and opened the door to his office. Both guards saluted at once. "At ease," he spat out, sloppily returning the salute. "Walker's robot companion, is it on the base?" As a response, one of the soldiers relayed Ironwood's question into his helmet's radio. After a few seconds, he nodded.

"It just arrived. Reports say it's heading straight here. If you're busy, we can-" the soldier started, but Ironwood interrupted.

"No, that won't be necessary, let him in." Both soldiers looked at him in surprise but didn't question his orders. If only it was always so simple. He returned to the threshold to the office, turning to look back outward and waiting. After a minute, the whirring of the robot reached his ears. It turned the corner, speeding into the open, and heading straight to Ironwood, coming to a stop and letting out a slew of incomprehensible beeps. "Inside, we don't want to be overheard," Ironwood said, gesturing inward. ED-E paused for a moment before floating inside, Ironwood closing the door.

The robot spotted the terminal and headed towards it at once. It started to beep again before pausing. Then the sound of an old cassette tape being rewound came from him. There was a click and James Walker's voice came out of the robot. "Get help. Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury were the ones working in the dark. They have Rumford and Torchwick. Stay low and hide in the trees. Don't let them see you."

"Mercury?" Pyrrha said in disbelief. "Him and his team? They were in class with us. They were going to enter into the Vytal Festival."

"We need to handle this very carefully James," Ozpin said. "We have opportunities that won't last long." He turned his attention to ED-E. "Did you encounter Qrow on your way back?" ED-E nodded. "Did the ones who attacked you see you escape?" ED-E shook its body. "Then we have an opening. ED-E. Did Emerald or Cinder display odd powers? Flight, ability to control fire, glowing eyes? Beep once for Emerald, twice for Cinder, three times for neither." ED-E beeped twice. "Then Cinder was the one who attacked Amber," Ozpin said, "and she's the one who has the other half of the Fall Maiden's power."

ED-E let out a string of beeps again. Doubtless, it was saying one of two things. Either it was demanding action to save James, or it wanted to know what a Fall Maiden was. "Ozpin," Ironwood said warningly. "You're talking about sensitive matters."

"James Walker was attacked by Salem's operatives and because of his friend, we know who they are now," Ozpin said, his voice level. It was his diplomat's voice, the one he used when he wanted everyone to calm down and sit at the same table together. That voice was frustrating sometimes. "Both he and ED-E saw Maiden power in use, it's not a secret to them anymore. James Walker will want answers when we get him back, and we will get him back," he glanced at Pyrrha reassuringly, "so we owe him answers. But we have three situations to deal with. The kidnappings, Cinder, and the raid. We have limited openings for all of them." He looked at Ironwood. "I believe Qrow has the kidnappers firmly tailed. With luck, he might even be able to free them by himself." Ironwood doubted it, but it was true that Qrow was excellent and scouting and tailing.

"So long as he reports in when he learns it's too much for him to handle alone," Ironwood replied. If Winter couldn't break herself and Walker out, the situation was dire and the captors of one of his best officers were highly competent. "And the raid needs to continue as planned. Hundreds of innocents, maybe even thousands, could die if the Legion is not stopped tonight."

"Agreed," Ozpin said. "But you're sending your best men out there James. They need to be at their best for a force that large." He placed his mug down on a table that Ironwood couldn't see. "I know you won't like this, but for the moment? I believe you should let Cinder believe that her cover is secure. She should be dealt with last. Not only is she the one with the longest time table, she should believe herself safe."

"Absolutely not," Ironwood said bluntly. "I will not have someone with unchecked Maiden powers have free reign of my kingdom or a base under my command. It's a time bomb waiting to go off. Ms. Nikos? I'll need your help. I'm putting the base on high alert. Those three are to be detained on sight and terminated if need be. Ozpin? Is the Maiden transference device ready?"

"James, we can't rush this," Ozpin replied. "Salem specializes in hiding in the shadows. If we move too hastily they'll see and slip away, off the grid. We-"

"Ozpin?" Ironwood said, his voice stern. "You aren't in Vale. I am the general of the Atlas armed forces, you aren't. Your concerns have been voiced and noted. We will be going ahead with my approach. Now. Can we transfer Maiden essence?" Sometimes, Ironwood has to put his foot down. This was his home, not Ozpin's. Besides, for all of Ozpin's talents, he had never been a military leader. He was skilled at peacetime leadership and diplomacy, he had gotten Walker in his employ in a matter of hours after meeting him, but he did not direct battles. The one time he had been in a war, he hadn't needed armies. This was his field, this was where he held experience over Ozpin.

Ozpin stared at Ironwood before giving a stiff nod. "Good. Ms. Nikos? I need to see you in person. We have to move fast." ED-E choose that moment to start beeping. Whatever tape it had inside itself rewound and played James saying "Cinder" while the laser it had on its underbelly whirled about. "You want to help?" ED-E nodded violently. "Follow me then." With that, Ironwood turned and left the office. He could feel Oz's eyes on the back of his head.

XXXXX

Author's Note: The thing about writing crossover stories where fights are a big thing is trying to balance out the fights in a way that doesn't make it look like one side has too much up on the other, unless that's the point. You're not going to be able to please everyone, inevitably some readers have a side they want to win more and all the victories can't go to one side. That being said, please keep in mind that I'm doing everything I can to balance out RWBY and Fallout in a way that's interesting to read and also works with the story I want to tell. I know some people are annoyed James isn't kicking ass right away, and to those people I just want to say this. Courier 6 didn't come out of the Goodsprings Cemetery with a Gatling laser and a set of power armor, mowing down legions of Super Mutants as they did. It's a process. Please. Be patient. I think you'll like what I have planned for him. But I'm gonna make him work for it. I didn't raise no spoiled, entitled Gary Stu. You can tell, he's not special forces at the age of 16 with a harem made up of every single female character. (The latter being a concept I hate.)

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 15

Hurricane

XXXXX

"Your base is in an utterly disgraceful and pathetic state," Winter said, her voice icily condescending. "And your means of treatment is an archaic slaughter machine? Is this supposed to be a joke?" James bit his tongue. The Scattered's base had turned out to be an underground affair with a retractable surface. It was hard to tell, he and Winter had been blindfolded for the last leg of the journey, but he had heard a heavy door opening and felt the van being driven down on a ramp. That, combined with the fact that there were no windows in the winding corridors, led him to be pretty sure they were underground.

Róta had stormed off the second the van had been parked, leaving the other four Scattered to escort him and Winter. Their arms had not been bound, apparently, they didn't consider the two of them to be enough of a threat for that. Said base reminded James uncomfortably of Vaults, albeit with more of a military look and not with civilian habitation in mind. It was cramped, Jane and Wiglaf could barely make it through the opening and closing doors, everything was metal, and the lighting was dim compared to the outside light. It was in much better condition than any base James had ever scavenged, but it doubtless looked shabby by Atlas standards.

Nonetheless, they had been led directly to an infirmary, one that was filled with a dozen or so beds and a large auto-doc in the corner. Winter, upon seeing auto-doc, was less than impressed. "Buzz-saws are surgical equipment now?" she said, stepping inside and giving one of the many blades inside a careful spin. "Are you planning on disfiguring him even more?" Initially, he had wanted to say something about how auto-docs were safe. Initially. Then memories of a certain bald woman with scars on every inch of her face had crept to the forefront of his mind. And of his own brain floating in a jar. Paranoia slowly started to creep in.

"She doesn't need to be here," Anna said, more to Han than anyone else. "We just need to bandage that leg of hers and she's good to cool her heels in a holding cell. Give me the order and I'll get it done." There was a longing in her tone, she wanted nothing more than to drag Winter from this room.

"Yes, kindly ignore my concerns and get me out of the way so you can carve him up like a roast pig," Winter said, deliberately not looking at Anna. "Assuming you can even power this on." His mouth thin, Han stepped forward and pressed a single button on the side of the auto-doc. At once, it flickered to life, the countless mechanical arms inside it shifting and stretching, looking for a patient to operate on. "Congratulations, you have achieved basic functionality," she said scathingly. "You are not putting him in there."

"This is the same machine I used to install all of my cybernetics," Han said, gesturing to his all mechanical below the neck body. "I can assure you, it's quite safe." That was only partially comforting. James couldn't help but wonder how Han had ended up with so little of his original body.

Winter was about to continue when inspiration struck James. "How about this?" he said. "I go in, but Winter gets to keep her finger on the kill switch?" It was as good of a compromise as he could think of at the moment. And this auto-doc was most likely safe. Most likely. He needed some form of treatment and this was the most painless way, best to bite the bullet and get it over with.

"Do you have any idea what could happen to you if surgical equipment is suddenly turned off mid-operation?" Anna said sourly. "All it takes is one nick from a lack of computer control to cause permanent brain damage. This isn't something where we finger the manual override button. We are not horny teenagers searching for a bra's clip. It-" but Han held up a hand. She fell silent.

"Will that work?" he asked, looking at Winter. Reluctantly, she gave a nod. Han looked at James. He hesitated before nodding. It was either go in willingly or annoy them until Anna grabbed him and shoved him in. And while he doubted they didn't want to cut him up now, Anna might be pushed to that degree. With some help from Wiglaf, he was helped into the auto-doc while Han beckoned Winter over to the controls. "Very well, starting now." He pressed a button James couldn't see. James felt a prick in his neck.

The next thing he could remember, he was lying in a bed, staring dumbly up at the ceiling. His head was swimming, everything felt sore and he was struggling to keep his eyes open. He blinked. He still couldn't see out of his left side. Had it not worked? Or had they not even started yet? "Wha?" he said, his mouth not working properly. It looked like he was still in the infirmary, but it was hard to tell. His vision didn't seem to be focusing properly. Han appeared on the edge of his vision.

"Give it a minute," he said. "It's always hardest the first time." Everything went black. When he opened his eyes again, they worked a bit better, but there was still a sluggishness to them. With some difficulty, he forced himself into a sitting position on the bed he was lying on. He wasn't in the infirmary anymore. The bed he was lying on was part of a two-person bedroom that, keeping with the military theme, looked like an officer's quarters. Winter was sitting on a chair next to his bed. Her eyes looked noticeably red and tired, but she didn't let that reflect in the rest of her body language. Bandages were noticeably wrapped around her wounded calf.

He looked around. There wasn't much to the room. A chair and a desk, a stupidly large TV hanging off of the wall, a side room with a toilet and shower, and a burrow. Aside from that, the room was bare. The only exit was opposite the beds. And right now, Han, Anna, and Wiglaf were standing between them and that. His face ached with a dull but persistent pain, one that certainly felt like it had been sliced open and stitched back together. "Am I still in one piece?" he asked, turning to look at Winter. In response, she held up a mirror that had been laying across her lap. Something flickered across her face as she did. Unless James was mistaken, it looked like shame. She wasn't meeting his gaze.

Deciding to get it over with, James looked directly into his reflection. He sucked in air between his teeth. It was very noticeable. Large parts of his face were still bandaged, doubtless holding skin grafts in place. There was nothing left of his ear, it was entirely covered by the bandages. The damage had not been internal, so if he was lucky he wouldn't have to bandage the hole for the rest of his life. Still, Han had not been able to provide him with a replacement. His eye, on the other hand, was bare.

It was a gunmetal gray for the most part, but the pupil was a light green that faintly glowed. He closed his eyes. There was nothing. Apparently, it didn't glow inside his own eyelid, that was good. He opened his eyes. To Han's credit, his vision felt normal. Both eyes felt aligned, neither was sharper than the other. But his face felt odd. The eye didn't blend in the way his organic one did, he could feel something solid and heavy inside his skull. He pressed his finger against it, ignoring his eyelid instinctively trying to close. There was no sensation from the eye as his finger touched it, only cold metal.

He lowered his finger dejectedly. The skin around his eye was mostly bandaged, but some of it had already recovered. Doubtless, a combination of Aura and advanced medicine at work. Scars covered him to the left of his eye. Most of it was wild and unorganized burn scars, but he could see the start of a thin line that disappeared under the bandages. It was the one the spearhead had made.

He turned his attention to where his ear had once been. A horrible sinking feeling overtook him. Now that he thought about it, his hearing felt off in a way he couldn't place. He snapped his fingers next to his right ear. The sound came through, sharp and clear. Hesitantly, he did the same on his left side. He heard it, but it wasn't the same. It was muffled, less focused. So, Han hadn't been able to fix that. It looked as if he would have to learn to live with damaged hearing.

So. For the third time in his life, he was waking up from an experience that should've killed him. And for the second time, he was missing body parts. He felt tired. Very, very tired. "So. Now what?" he asked.

"Now? We talk," Han said. "I told you that we do good work and I meant it. Aura running rampant across Earth is something that is highly dangerous. But that doesn't mean we don't believe in using it to help Earth." He smiled. "We didn't just shove the portal into the basement and let it collect dust there. We use it to strike out into Earth. Sometimes we make a band of bandits disappear. Other times we get a power plant up and running so a town can experience a higher quality of life. That and everything in-between. If it's within our ability and we don't expose ourselves, we do it."

"How come I've never heard of any of this?" James asked, curiosity overcoming the dread that was gripping him. "I think I'd have heard about a cyborg, Ghoul, and Super Mutant running around playing hero. How did that even happen? What even are you people?"

"To answer your last question, I'm the last survivor of the United States attempted survey to Remnant. Since then, the Scattered has formed by pulling in people who can be trusted with an incredibly complicated situation wherever they can be found. As for why you've never heard of us, we've been staying in the dark as much as we can. Besides that? Earth's a big planet," Han said. "And the US west coast is one of the more stable regions right now. There's only five of us and there are fires to be put out everywhere. Most of our operations in the last year have been in Africa, specifically in what used to be South Africa and Nigeria. They're both regions that are showing progress in recovering. But we try to pop in all over to keep an eye on most places and help if we think there's a big problem. We just have to be careful and ensure it's not a problem too big. Caesar's Legion, for example, is something with thousands of warriors. Not something we can take down without exposing ourselves and potentially letting the secret of Aura out."

"You say that around Róta and she might rip your head off," Wiglaf said warningly.

"Regardless, it's a problem that seems to mainly be solving itself," Han said, not meeting Wiglaf's eye. "They're losing power and influence on all sides. They have a year or two before they collapse at the current rate."

"They found their way into Remnant," James said bluntly. "I ended up here in the first place because I was following them." The eyes of all three Scattered present snapped onto them. Anna looked shocked, Wiglaf interested, and Han was simply horrified. For all their talk about safeguarding from the shadows, it seemed there was a lot they didn't know. "Some of them already have Aura."

Han pressed a hand to his forehead. "You put out a fire and two more have already sprung up," he said, more to himself than anyone else. "We'll have to look into that. Do they have free access back to Earth? Or did things change when you came here?"

James looked hard at Han. The old man was an anomaly in James's mind. Initially, he had considered him well-meaning, if clueless and naive. All of that had been thrown out the window and James was trying to sort his way through a myriad of conflicting emotions. Han had given him a new eye, had saved him from Cinder, and if he was telling the truth, had helped a great many people. Han was also holding him and Winter prisoner had pulled the rug out from underneath him, and whatever other dirty laundry Han wasn't being upfront with him about. The man had already proven himself to be a liar.

But, at the end of the day, there was nothing to be gained from lying about the Legion. If Han was paranoid enough about Aura reaching Earth that he would lock up someone he had promised to help, maybe it would push him to tear the Legion apart. "Yeah. The portal on Earth got caught in a bomb blast. We found it with a dozen or so legionaries guarding it. Most of them died, four got sucked through with me. I doubt it still works, so no legionaries should be coming through. They're stranded here, same as I am."

Han noticeably relaxed. "Thank you, that's good news. The situation isn't as bad as it could be. Still, I should check the far end to ensure that the portal is non-functional. I thought the Earth portal had been destroyed in the Great War."

"Wait, you didn't check?" James asked.

Han held up his hands defensively. "The entire operation to scout out other dimensions was kept incredibly close to the chest. Big MT cooperated with DARPA and the armed forces on development, but they kept strict control over the portal. They brought it to us every time we used it and they never told us where they were storing it. But it sounds like you finally found it. Just give me the coordinates and I'll ensure the Legion can't use it anymore."

James was about to open his mouth when a horrible thought burst to the front of his mind. He glared at Han. "No. I don't think I will."

Han stared at James in confusion. "James, listen. If the Legion is aware of Remnant we need to keep that under control. They're some of the worst people who could be getting their hands on Aura. Ideally, the portal is destroyed, but we need to check, otherwise, they'll send in more reinforcements and make the situation worst. Surely you want them taken care of? What reason could you have-"

"My friends are there," James said through grit teeth. "People I've been traveling with for years. And after the treatment we've gotten here? Yeah. I'm not letting you anywhere fucking near them."

"It seems a rather open and shut matter," Winter said icily. "You would have to imprison or kill all of them, wouldn't you? I very much doubt that's the reunion James was waiting for."

A hint of shame passed over Han's face. Wiglaf, despite James's defiance, was smiling. He leaned back, resting against the wall behind him, his body slack. Anna, meanwhile, was shooting daggers at him. James knew that look. It was the look of someone who deeply wanted to inflict bodily harm on him. He hoped this was one of the times where there was someone or something holding her back.

Han rebounded quickly. "That's fair. You have good reason to not trust me, that's a problem I'll need to fix. I think I know a good way to do that. We'll be heading out tomorrow to use Anna's Semblance to repopulate a local ecosystem." He gave Anna a hearty pat on her shoulder. "Her Semblance is amazing. It gives us so much flexibility with the work we do. After you've had some time to recover, I think it would be a good idea for you to accompany us."

James didn't say anything, he merely nodded. At the very least, it would give him an opportunity to see the rest of their base and maybe even give him an idea of how the portal worked. If Han wasn't stupid, he'd take James thousands of miles away from the Mojave, but James decided not to ask about specific locations. That was asking for attention to be drawn. "If I can walk, that is," James said.

"I suppose it's the only fresh air we'll be getting," Winter said. "Assuming I'm invited and you haven't forgotten that I'm here as well."

"Of course," Han said, giving her a warm smile. "It's wondrous to see. Life being breathed back into a desolate land." He beamed with pride. It was disconcerting, coming from their jailor. At that moment, he didn't look like an ancient cyborg that was capable of firing anti-tank laser beams. He looked like an eager teacher who couldn't wait to share his knowledge. The effect was ruined by the pissed off Ghoul and the amused Super Mutant. Han might have good intentions, maybe he was even honest. Unfortunately, the kidnapping was still proving to be a deal-breaker. "When you see that, I hope it all makes sense. Between the danger of Aura falling into the wrong hands, and Remnant's secret war, you should be able to understand."

"Oh, that? Yes. You spun a very elaborate hoax back there," Winter said dismissively. "An ancient witch that rules the Grimm? A children's fairy tale being real and all-powerful magical artifacts? James's eye and ear were damaged, not his brain." Han let out a sigh. James's mind went back to what they had been told in the van. Frankly, it only sounded moderately more insane than was normal for Remnant. But more insane was still more insane. Cinder has gotten that otherworldly power from a chain of transference that continued after death? And she was answering to a centuries-old witch? He had to agree with Winter, it certainly sounded like a hoax. Maybe if she had been a psychic mutant of some kind, but a witch? No.

"The relics? I saw them in action," Anna said. Her voice had become very soft. This was an uncomfortable territory for her. "I'm younger than Han and Wiglaf, but I'm still old. This mutation of mine? I can't die of old age. When I served, we weren't Atlas, we were Mantle. And I had a first had a view of the King of Vale in action." A shudder ran through Anna and she stopped speaking for a moment. She starred without looking, not registering either James or Winter. Han put a hand on her shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. She started, looking down in confusion before realization dawned on her. "Sorry," she said, before returning her attention to Winter. "And the historians who say the Warrior King's feats were down to weather and the desert? They have no idea what they're talking about. I saw the Relics being used that day. His sword split battlefields in half, his staff brought a storm of swords down onto us, and his crown." She shook her head, pressing her hand into her forehead. "I don't know what that thing did, only that I couldn't even stand to look at it. My eyes felt like they were burning."

"Our operations take us into the darker corners of Remnant," Han said, his hand not leaving Anna's shoulder. "We see her thralls looking for fresh supporters. We've picked up enough bits and pieces from them. I'm telling you the truth. There's a secret war being waged against her to keep Remnant from falling into chaos. Ozpin seems to be leading it at the moment, I don't know who lead it before his time. The Maidens and Relics are major pieces in this war from what we can tell. And Cinder seems to have gotten her hands on one of the Maiden's powers."

Winter's eyes narrowed to the point where James wasn't sure if she could actually see anything. "And all of this means what exactly?" James said, still trying to digest it all. He vaguely recalled Remnant having a Great War of its own, but all he knew about it was that it had happened.

"That an already inhospitable planet is actively malevolent to human life," Han said. "The American government wanted to explore the possibilities presented by the portal to set up a nest egg alongside the Vaults. A fresh planet where the American people could repopulate if there was a nuclear exchange." He grimaced. "We ran into roadblocks the second we started encountering Grimm. We couldn't get approval to set up a civilian colony with this many demonic creatures running around. We thought it was bad then. Now that I know about Salem, I know it's even worse. I know that Earth is the planet that has more potential, not Remnant. It is also the planet that needs help more."

"Ok, back up," James said, holding his hand up. There was an uncomfortable feeling in the back of his head, like the early stages of a headache. Something had certainly been off about Cinder. Whatever she had been doing out there, it had felt different from Semblances. It had been rawer, and far more powerful. That didn't mean he was ready to accept the ancient evil part of the story yet, but he couldn't deny that something was off. "Let's assume this is all true, there's an evil lady out there controlling the Grimm. Remnant has always had Grimm, hasn't it? And they've managed to hold on in spite of that."

"Exactly, thank you," Winter said, as if a great point had just been proven. "Even if your claims are all true, which I doubt, this Salem has failed to pose a true threat. Remnant is thriving, more so than any other point in history. If a hostile force is out there, why didn't she strike during the Great War? Or the aftermath, when the Kingdoms had lost large portions of their fighting force?"

"She's a tricky one," Wiglaf said. "Likes to stay hidden and play the long game. Operate through proxies. Maybe she did strike during the Great War and you never knew. Ozpin's predecessor would've covered it up." He glanced at Han. "We were in Australia for most of the war, right? Just you and me until we picked up Anna?" Han nodded. Wiglaf chuckled. "Good times. We should stop back there. See how Lowanna's people are doing."

"Focus," Anna said sharply. Wiglaf nodded, a fond look on his face. "If they don't want to believe us, fine. They'll have to accept it sooner or later. Salem wants this one dead." She pointed at James. "They'll be coming for him. And he'll see just how vile it can get." Winter gave a derisive snort.

"Anna, manners," Han said sternly. The Ghoul woman fell silent, her eyes still twisted in anger. "You must hate me," Han said, looking at James.

"I'm feeling something strong," James said dryly, feeling incredulous at the bizarre question. "I'd just like to point out to you the last time someone tried to put me in a cage, I cracked his skull by banging it against the bars. The last time someone tried to put a collar around my neck, I locked him in an underground vault to starve to death. You don't look like an asshole. But Winter and I are walking out of here. I'd rather it'd be because you let us out, but I'll make due if it's not."

"Well, I've been thinking about it the entire drive back, and I might have a solution for that. I want you to join us."

James blinked. "Hell of a fucking sales pitch you've got here," he spat out. "Can't believe I'm missing the time I thought you were a clueless old fuck." Frustration was starting to pile up inside him. What even was this situation?

"The circumstances are unfair to you, I admit. I hope I get a chance to make it up to you." He wiped at his forehead. Unless James was mistaken, he looked quite stressed. "Until then, there are matters we need to take care of. I'll arrange for some food to be brought in." He turned. Then he hesitated. "I'm sorry." With that, he left. Anna and Wiglaf were right behind them. A massive steel door slammed shut behind them, locking shut.

"Think we can force that open?" he asked Winter at once.

She shook her head. "Aura has its limits, particularly to the unarmed. Besides, I saw the outside of that door. It's being reinforced with Gravity Dust. Nothing we can do can get us through that. And even if we could, we're outnumbered and outgunned. We're stuck here until circumstances change to better favor us. Our best bet? Bide our time and see if we can exploit that mission they want us to accompany them on.

James nodded, adjusting himself so that he was in a more comfortable position on the bed. He couldn't remember the last time that he felt this tired. Winter, however, turned to face him. Even though her eyes were red raw, her gaze was steady. "We need to talk," she said.

James slouched down into the bed. "Winter? I've been mutilated, kidnapped, strung along, and operated on in the last twelve hours. I'm sorry, but I'm exhausted. Whatever it is can wait until after we get a few hours of sleep." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "I said we for a reason, you look like crap. We need to get out of here and we're not going to be able to do that if we're both struggling to stay upright."

Winter looked furious at being brushed off, but she quickly collected herself. "Fine. On one condition." She held out her hand. "Give me your pistol."

James stiffened, his blood going cold. Oh no. No no no. Not this, not right now. This was the last thing he needed to hear. "I thought I held that role?" You have got to be fucking kidding me James thought. House was choosing now to pop in, on top of everything else? He had to keep it together, he had nearly lost it back in the woods. God, he just wanted to go to sleep.

He tilted his head. "You noticed then? You've got sharp eyes. Still, I'd rather keep it where it is, make sure that Han and his goons don't find it. I doubt you have a concealed holster on your back. They come in while we're asleep and the only weapon we have is gone if we don't keep it hidden." Internally, he prayed that this would be enough. Winter was a soldier to the core. If he could appeal to her sense of pragmatism and survival instinct, maybe he could get her to drop it.

"I saw what you almost did out there," she said. Eight simple words. All of them were vague, but they were enough to make James feel like he had been shot. His mechanical heart was now pounding in his chest. "If you don't want to talk, fine. But I'd rather hold onto it to make sure no harm comes to you until we clarify what's going on with you."

"What the everloving fuck is that supposed to mean?" Anger pulsed through him as he sat up, glaring at Winter. After all the shit he had been through today this was the last thing that he was in the mood for. He had seen and done things Winter couldn't even begin to imagine and now she wanted to treat him like an irresponsible child? Fuck that. "If you want to act all concerned, don't beat around the bush and be coy about it. Come out and say it, would you? Don't fucking infantilize me."

"Fine," Winter said, venom seeping into her voice as she stood up. "I want your pistol because I'm concerned you'll try to kill yourself. Happy?"

"Fucking ecstatic," James said, also standing up. "The one person I'm locked up with thinks I'll blow my own brains out the second she turns her back on me. Yeah, I'm just dandy. I'm that untrustworthy apparently."

"You are choosing to take this personally," Winter said. "But we both know it's the truth. I saw the look in your eye, the way your body moved. What's more, I smelled your breath too. Things are unstable right now, we just need to take precautions until things stabilize."

"Precautions? Precautions!?" James shouted. "Where was that when Ironwood was talking about developing nuclear weapons!? So what? I can't be trusted with a handgun but Ironwood can play with nukes and you think that's ok?"

"I never said that," Winter said, her eyes flaring as her voice raised an octave. Distantly, James remembered how badly she had reacted to Qrow attacking her on the Ironwood front. This was a sore spot for her. A tiny part of him pulsed with guilt. The rest of him didn't care. "I told you that General Ironwood would understand your concerns."

"That was a limp-wristed deflection and you know it!" James retorted. "I begged you, Winter. I begged you to talk him down! Billions of people have died because of weapons like those Winter, billions! Does Remnant even have a population of a billion? Do you even have a frame of reference for how many people died to these things? And you were just going to sit back and let Ironwood do whatever the hell he wanted because the man with giant airships needs an even bigger stick to swing for some godforsaken reason."

"So, you're siding with Han?" Winter said, crossing her arms so tightly it was a miracle she could still breathe. "The man who strung you along from the moment he laid eyes on you, the one who is refusing to let you go home because he thinks your planet can't handle something Remnant has been using for centuries. You're saying he was right? You think he's more trustworthy than the man who looked the other way when you committed a massacre?"

That was a low blow. That was way below the belt. "I was worried about this long before he got into the picture, but in this case? Yeah, the asshole has a good point. I was talking to both of you about what kind of a shit show you were setting yourself up for. And neither of you listened to me. You gave me a pretty little spiel on how my "expertise" would be taken into consideration, but you knew damn well that he wasn't going to budge based on what I said and you did nothing to help me!"

"I think you've forgotten your bounds Mr. Walker," Winter replied, her nails now digging into her arms. "You are, at best, a civilian contractor. You are not an authority on matters of Atlas security or technology. What's more, I am not your secretary. It is not your place to dictate what actions Atlas should or should not take, nor is it my job to advocate for you. If you failed to convince General Ironwood, perhaps you should recognize that was a failure on your part, not mine. Learn to take personal responsibility and act a little less like Qrow."

Oh, so she wanted to go there? She wanted to compare him to that asshole? He vaguely registered that this was a situation that was well and truly spiraling out of control. The rest of him was more focused on just how mad he was right now. "You're just like Pre-War America," he said in disgust. "You don't think anything can touch you. You never listen, you never question yourself, you're right and everyone else is wrong. Well, look where that got them. If we ever get out of this shithole I'll have plenty to show you! All the horrors that you're openly courting! Camp Searchlight, Vault 34, Hopeville, and-" he realized his mistake one second too late.

He was back there. On all sides, he was surrounded by cracked roads, the husks of buildings, and earth that had been split open. But it was nothing compared to the Marked Men. Their faces were red raw, their mouths open in primal roars, and weapons were in their hands. They carried everything from crude clubs and swords, to firearms, to advanced energy weapons. All of them were swarming him, biting, scratching, slashing, suffocating him in a flood of flesh and steel. Through it all, however, he could see him. A man with dreadlocks, a gas mask, and a flag on his back.

"Before you... this is the edge of the Divide. Ahead lies your work, the history you burned in the earth. What you brought to the people here."

His side ached. He was on the ground again. Tears stung his eyes. They were mostly from what he had seen, but part of them were from shame. This was the third time this had happened in front of Winter. She had been saying he was unreliable and untrustworthy. And he had just gone and proven her right.

"James!?" she was kneeling above him, looking concerned. "Is it your eye? Or is it another episode?" Another. God, that word stung.

"Episode," he grasped out. With her help, he pulled himself into a sitting position, his back against the base of the bed. Damn it. God damn it. When had he gotten so pathetic? Before his thoughts could delve any deeper, he heard a rustling noise. Winter had sat down next to him.

She cleared her throat. When she spoke, it was with a neutral tone, albeit one with noticeable traces of bitterness still in it. "I forgot that this is a sensitive subject matter for you. Perhaps it is best that we move onto-"

"I killed a town," James said bluntly. He had no idea why he said it. Maybe it was the shame of three episodes in front of Winter and he didn't want her ignoring the elephant in the room any longer. Maybe it was leftover irritation from her treating him like a delicate little thing that would break if left alone. It could've even been that he was tired of keeping it all to himself and he needed to tell someone, anyone, the truth. All of them could be true or none of them could be, it didn't matter at this point. All he knew was that Winter had gone deathly silent and was staring directly at him, hanging on every word. Well. He couldn't leave it half told.

He took a deep, shuddering breath. "There was a group back on Earth called the Enclave. They claimed to be the survivors of the United States government. Bunch of fascist, xenophobic, pricks. They got slaughtered when I was around eight. The NCR hit them from one end and an independent team blew up their main HQ from another. They had the most advanced tech around, bar none, so the NCR spent years digging through their bases looking for salvage. Decades even. And one day, they hire Mojave Express to deliver a package."

It had been an odd job. Hopevile was a place he had been to before, but never before had he been forced to sign so much paperwork. If he opened the tiny package he had been given, the NCR would be within their legal rights to prosecute him for violating state security. The minimum would've been twenty years in prison, while the NCR could push it all the way up to the death penalty. But the money had been good, so he had taken it without question. "I get picked for the job. Unmarked, paper-wrapped package to be delivered to the town of Hopevile within a strict deadline. I was not to look inside. I head on out, get there with a couple of days to spare. I stay for an hour to get a drink and a meal before I head out."

The meal had been a small one, a cup of water and some jerky. Neither had been particularly pleasant, the water had been dusty and the jerky rather rubbery. "A couple of days after I left, the package I delivered activated. Hopevile and its next-door neighbor Ashton were sitting right on top of a Pre-War stockpile of nukes. And the package had the launch codes for them."

He had heard the news seven days later. The first thing that he had thought was how lucky he had been to have gotten out before it had happened. It would be years before the dots were forcibly connected. The tears were back again. They were biting hard at the back of his eyes, making his breathing short. He soldiered on; he had to finish before he snapped. "They went off. Heat, nuclear radiation, and enough kinetic force to cause an earthquake and create a perpetual dust storm. But it didn't stop there." His voice cracked; his breathing was sharp and shallow now. It was all he could do to keep the tears from spilling out. "I know what you're thinking, everyone there died. But no, they didn't." Winter's breath caught.

"Remember what I said about Ghouls, people like Anna? Sometimes they go feral. Most of them did die. But hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in Hopevile and Ashton survived and mutated. The NCR and Legion had forces in the area who suffered the same fate. They're all barely sane and sapient, they kill anything that isn't one of them. Marked Men. Other mutants rule the area now, along with the Marked Men. Deathclaws, Tunnelers, it's a barren death trap." The tears finally began to leak out. "I did that to it."

There was a long silence before Winter spoke. "You do realize what happened can, in no way, be considered your fault? You didn't know what was in the package. If blame is to be assigned, it'd be to this Enclave or NCR." Her words were slow and careful.

"I've told myself that more times than I can count," James said, the tears flowing freely now. "But it doesn't change the fact that I carried that package. I had a direct part in what happened. If I hadn't listened and opened it I might've been able to stop it. I could've destroyed it or hid it. Christ, things would've even turned out better if I had gotten jumped and killed by-"

"Don't say that!" Winter snapped. "Don't you ever act like things would be better if you had been killed. If you had died, who would've stopped Atlas's cybersecurity from being hacked and starting a slaughter? Who would've warned us about the Legion? Who would've saved that family in Vale? Dead is dead, nothing good comes from it. You help no one." She was glaring intently at him. Inwardly, something gave out.

Not looking her in the eye, he slid A Light Shining in Darkness across the gap to her. A wordless concession of defeat. Her glare faltered as she looked down in surprise. "On one condition." Reaching around with his other hand, he undid the concealed holster across the small of his back. "Keep it hidden, we're screwed if they find it." He placed it on the ground.

"Understood," Winter said.

James felt like his heart skipped a beat. He was doing this then. "Please. Take care of it. It was a gift." His hand left the pistol. Winter's hand gently picked it and the strap up. His eyes glanced away to give her privacy as she slid the holster on. He heard the sound of clothing being shifted and leather being tightened, followed by the thump of her sitting down

"Thank you," she said. She was trying to reassume her crisp, neutral voice, but it was strained.

"I wasn't going to do it, I promise," he said. "But...I was thinking about it. I won't lie. It...it happens sometimes. My mind goes to dark places."

Winter nodded. "I understand." James couldn't quite put his finger on it, but the way she said that? He believed her. There was a refinement to her tone that gave James a gut feeling that she had been in a similar situation before. "Please, just remember something. You've proven yourself invaluable. In your weeks in Remnant, you have saved thousands of lives. You've given us intelligence on the Legion that could have taken months for us to gather on our own. What's more, if E-DE made it back, your quick thinking exposed dangerous infiltrators. Never forget that."

Guilt swarmed through James. He had been screaming at her a minute ago and she was comforting him. "Listen, the things I said-" but Winter held up a hand.

"We both said things," she said. "We are both tired, under heavy stress, and recovering from serious injuries." She reached around her back, flicked open a pocket in her coat, and produced a bar wrapped in silver. Biting the wrapper, she tore it off and revealed something brown, separated into a dozen squares. Winter snapped it in half, handing James six of the squares. "It's MRE. Not the best, but I think we both need something in our stomachs right now."

James nodded as he took his share of the bar. It didn't look that appetizing. That wasn't a big deal though, food was food. Sometimes you had to pinch your nose and close your eyes when you ate; it beat starving. And he was starting to feel hungry. Closing his eyes, he bit into the bar and braced for the rancid taste.

It never came. Instead, a wonderfully sweet feeling exploded across his taste buds. His eyes snapped open. This was good. Son of a bitch, this was really good. "You were just carrying something like this around?" he asked incredulously.

Winter blinked. "It's chocolate," she said, a little taken aback. "Do you not have chocolate back on Earth?"

"This is chocolate!?" James blurted out. "Holy shit, America had stuff like this? No wonder they were all so fucking fat!"

Winter let out a choked snort of laughter. James blinked in surprise. He had never heard Winter laugh before. Heck, getting her to smile was on the difficult end of things. "I'm sorry, what?" she asked. Her face had the scrunched up look of someone who was trying very hard not to laugh.

"Oh yeah. Apparently, America had a lot of fat People. Arcade said obesity was one of their main health problems before the war." He shook his head. "They had that much food? Feels impossible." The chocolate was still delightfully sweet on his tongue. "It was this good too? Wow." This didn't seem real. He turned over the bar in his hand. She was sharing this with him, and she did so idly. Was it really that common?

His line of thought was broken by a gentle rapping on the door. Both he and Winter stiffened. "Hello?" It was Rita's raspy voice. "Have food. If want." James looked at the chocolate in his hand. It was tasty, but there was only a couple of bites to it. And he was hungry.

"Come in," Winter said, her voice frosting over. There was the sound of unlocking and the door slid open. James had to do a double-take. Róta stepped over the threshold, carrying a simply gargantuan platter that was ladened with food. Two dozen sandwiches that were oddly circular with a meat patty in the center took up the center. Aside from that staple ingredient, no two were identical. In addition, the sandwiches were surrounded by a pile of golden wedges, a bowl stuffed with green plants, and a giant pitcher of water that was filled to the brim, coupled with glasses.

James gawked at the massive display of food. Róta noticed. Her face turned red as she stepped forward and lay the platter down in front of them. "Not know burger preference," she said abashedly. "Made all combinations." She pointed. Squinting, James saw each sandwich had a folded piece of paper in front of it. One read "cheddar, grilled onions, lettuce, BBQ sauce." Another had "toasted bun, ketchup, bacon." A third said "Sesame seeds, mayonnaise, white onions, and lettuce." They went on like this, with some resembling another, but with there being no true repeats.

"Should have asked," Róta said. "Let know if need more." More? It'd be a miracle if he and Winter could get through a quarter of this. "I make...wait." Frustration flashed on her face. Kneeling down, she produced a thick pad of paper that had been tucked under her arm. At the top, a pen was clipped on, one that she grabbed. Furiously, she began to write. After a minute, she flipped the pad and showed it to James and Winter. Confused, they both leaned in.

"I sound like an imbecile when I talk, I can't stand it. But every word hurts and it's agony if I don't keep it short. Writing lets me get across what I want to say without sounding like a Neanderthal. Is this ok?" It certainly wasn't the oddest way James had communicated with someone. He nodded. "Thank you," she wrote. "This wasn't supposed to happen. You were supposed to be home by now. Han frustrates me sometimes. He's extremely rigid in the direction he takes the Scattered. We vote on it, but the others tend to agree with him. I'll talk to him, I'll find a way to make this right. You deserve to go home."

Memories of the van ride came back to him. Róta has been the only Scattered to object to this whole situation. It counted for something. Though it was yet to be seen if it was much of something. Another thought came back. Róta knew about the Legion. He had to be careful here. "You're a tribal, aren't you?" It was a simple conclusion to draw. Anna was the only Scattered native to Remnant, Róta was covered in tattoos, favored bladed weapons, and she hated the Legion. Róta nodded. "What was your tribe?"

"The Einherjar," Róta scribbled. "We were based out of New Mexico. There were a thousand of us at our height." She stopped writing, her pen shaking in her hand. James didn't need to be a psychologist to read the writing on the wall. Reaching out, he took her hand in his. Instinctively, she darted for the ax on her back. She faltered when James gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

"I'm sorry," he said. He meant it. Regardless of what the Scattered had done to him, Róta had not deserved whatever fate the Legion had inflicted on her people. Something flicked in Róta's eyes, but it left as soon as it had come. "Are there any others?"

She shook her head. "Only me," She rasped.

James scowled. Her tone of voice was one that he knew. It carried a heavy finality, one used by a person who had accepted a horrible loss. Hatred for the Legion bubbled to life inside of him. "Caesar is either dead or dying. You should know that." She blinked in surprise. James tapped the side of his head. "Brain cancer. An advanced form of it at that."

Róta stared at him. Then, without warning, she let out a weak whoop of laughter. With no hesitation, she grabbed James and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug. Initially touched, James quickly realized just how hard the tattooed woman was squeezing him. Pain was starting to jolt through his ribs. "Too hard!" he said, gasping the words out. She let go at once, looking abashed.

"Please be careful. He did just come out of surgery," Winter said as James felt air rush back into his lungs. That had been a Lily grade hug.

Blushing, Róta returned to her notepad. "And Legate Lanius? Does he still live?" She was writing so frantically that her handwriting was barely legible.

"Sadly," James said. "Met him at Hoover Dam. Shot most of a magazine into him. Wasn't even limping when he walked away." Róta stared at him as if she was seeing him for the first time. Once again, James had an easy time connecting the dots. "You fought him, didn't you."

She let out a growl. It was a weak thing, but James could still hear the hatred in it. "He did this to me," she wrote, pointing at her throat with her free hand. "Tried to snap my neck. I only got away by throwing myself down a cliff face. I had been charged to lead a team of ten to assassinate him." Róta didn't write anything else after that. Judging by the sharp intake of breath from Winter, she had drawn the same conclusion as him. None of those ten had survived.

"How many legionaries have you killed?" Róta wrote after a pause.

"Sixty or seventy at the minimum," James said. It was hard to keep track, and the number was in constant flux.

She gently pressed her fist into his chest and slid the paper forward. "When your time comes, Valkyries will ferry you to Valhalla. A warm place where you will feast for all eternity and your name will be toasted. You have more than proven yourself." James nodded, not having any idea what she had just said. Slowly, she got to her feet. "I will get you out of here," she said, noticeably grimacing from the strain of speaking. "I'll...I'll find something. Please, eat." Giving both of them a guilty look, she turned and left, the door closing behind her.

"She seems nice," James said hesitantly. Internally, his brain was lining up everything he had just learned. The Scattered had spent some time near Legion territory then, so they would have some familiarity with it. More importantly, Róta was the closest thing Winter and he had to a friend in this place.

"Relatively," Winter said coolly. "By the low standards they've set." She glanced down at the large tray that had been set before them. "We should eat." James nodded. He was about to help himself to one of the sandwiches when a soft tapping noise came from the door. "Róta?" he said. There was no answer, simply more tapping. Getting up, James crossed the room and pressed an ear against the door. The tapping continued. Whatever was making it didn't sound very big, nor was it hitting the door very hard. "Is this a hazing thing?" James asked, feeling annoyed.

The moment he spoke, the tapping stopped. "It's some sort of psychological trick," Winter said softly. "Anna most likely. She seems the most spiteful of the five of them." That was an understatement. "James." She pointed at the tray. "Eat." She wasn't asking. Shooting one last glance at the door, James headed back, sitting down next to Winter. The pair of them ate in silence. The food was good, honestly some of the best that James had ever had, but his mind was drifting elsewhere. What had that been all about? What was Han doing right now? Had anyone noticed that they were missing? Was the talk about Maidens, Relics, and Salem true. Where was Cinder?

Gently, he ran his fingers over his new eye. Cinder. Cinder Fall. She had made the same mistake Benny had. The mistake that Marko and Adam had gone on to repeat. She had left the job half-finished.

Eventually, halfway through his third sandwich, his stomach announced that it was full. Putting it down, he leaned back against the bed. Weariness was beginning to take its toll, pushed on by his now full belly. He should probably get into the bed. And he would. In a minute. He was just going to take a minute to gather his strength. That was what he told himself anyway. Slowly, his eyes closed. Just a minute he thought. It was the last thought he had before sleep took him.

XXXXX

Qrow hopped along as fast as his bird feet would carry him. The Ice Queen and Walker were alive behind that door. Good. But he was going to have to be very careful in planning a way out for them. These people had been able to hold their own against a half Maiden and her flunkies. One or two, Qrow could take in a pinch. Three or more and the odds would be against him. And Walker had been a bad state, on top of only being a so-so fighter to begin with. If it came to a fight, he and the Ice Queen would have to do the heavy lifting.

His best bet would be to find an armory or wherever the pair's weapons were. After that, he would have to wait until this band of weirdos went to sleep. Even if some of them stayed up to keep watch, it would be better than all of them being alert. When he had his opening, he would break the two out, arm them, and get them out. It wasn't the best plan, but it was all he had to work with.

He continued hopping, staying as far behind the one called Róta as he could without losing her. There wasn't enough room for him to fly in here without drawing attention, so he had to take the slow but safe route. She was walking down a long corridor when she ran into the one that glowed. Qrow had only been able to start overhearing these people when they had gotten out of the van, and at her moment barely knew any of their names. So he had invented some. This one was Night Light.

She was out of her bulky armor and in white fatigues. Róta moved to pass her but the glowing woman took her by the arm. Leaning in, she whispered something that sounded like "I'm sorry," into Róta's ear before gently kissing her cheek. Róta's face softened, but only by a tiny amount. She gestured to Night Light and continued walking, the other woman following reluctantly. Qrow continued to tail them. It was going to be a hard rescue, but he was in his element. He had this.

XXXXX

Author's Note: Writing this was not fun. But if there's something I've learned about writing, it's that you need to follow the logical conclusions of the characters you create. You can think up scenarios to put them in and think up the characters, but once you introduce both of those factors, you have to follow the logical conclusions on how character X would react to situation Y. And...well, after seeing the way James acted, Winter would try to get his pistol away from him for his own safety, James would be a combination of ashamed of what nearly happened and not want to admit there was a problem and...things escalate from there, with already existing tensions coming out to play.

Also yes, I know it's not DARPA in the Fallout verse, but I refuse to type out the acronym DERPY. Also I was informed while writing that circular saws are surgical equipment. I chose to keep it in on the grounds that Winter was being a stubborn little shit.

On another note. This chapter is shorter than usual and I think I like it that way. Big chapters take longer to write and I think the size they've ballooned to stresses me out at times. I've been in a habit of writing three scene chapters for awhile now, something that's become more complicated as time goes on and my writing style and approach to narrative has become more complicated. I've been moving away from it being my default and I'm going to start doing it even more now.

To be transparent, I've been a bit worried that I might be suffering from burnout. I've been writing since 2009, eleven years by this point. Technically even longer, I just removed my oldest stories because they were truly awful. I've gone from a high school student to a college graduate with a full time job since then. I just don't have the same energy for writing that I used to when grades were my primary concern. I've actually had to close my because I just couldn't keep up with it. And the long chapters I think made it worse. Working for months on chapters that just keep getting longer and longer, with feedback that doesn't match because the scale, let's be frank, no one is going to point out the details in a 15k+ chapter, everything gets lost in the noise. So hopefully shorter chapters will result in less stress on my end by letting me update and interact with the audience more often. I

Also I should probably finish that story I've been writing since 2012 and haven't updated since 2019. It only has two chapters left...ugh. *Smacks self in face* Get it done Ert.

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 16

For What It's Worth

XXXXX

Ironwood's patience was growing thin. In addition to the students from Vale, he had highly skilled Huntsmen and Specialists on the base. Even the Ace Ops were on standby to catch their target. Amber had been overpowered by a trio, and Ironwood had dozens of trained soldiers at the ready for someone with half of her potential. Even James Walker's robot companion with its radar was standing on by to assist. So where was Cinder Fall?

He paced back and forth in his office, his frustration rising. What was happening? All accounts pointed to Cinder returning to base to lick her wounds. She had been prepared for an infiltration mission in Vale and Beacon, she couldn't have possibly planned for operating in Atlas. The decision to move so many forces and students this far north had been a decision made in response to the Legion, a faction that was directly robbing Cinder, and by extension Salem, of allies. Whatever plan she had, it had not involved being in Atlas, she had nowhere to go out in the tundra except back here.

Unless Salem had somehow managed to get loyal agents inside of Atlas. His pacing came to a halt. No. That would be impossible. Atlas was easily the greatest of the four Kingdoms, both in its military and in its people, it couldn't be compromised like that. But then how had Rumford and Torchwick escaped and made their way to Cinder? Two soldiers had been escorting them to a secure facility, but only one body had been found. The other had been officially listed as MIA, but what if there was more to it than that? She had been a veteran of five years, one with no security risks. Had Salem gotten to her? Was she the only one?

His irritation getting the better of him, he stepped out, back into the main body of the base. He was supposed to be staying in his secure position, not exposing himself to potential assassination attempts if Cinder lashed out in desperation when she was cornered. But something was wrong. It had been hours since ED-E had reported back to base, either Cinder and her followers were hunting down Walker and Winter or they had fled entirely. Meaning they had sanctuary.

His scroll was in his hand, his thumb typing out a single word. "Update." He sent the message. There was a pause as he waited impatiently for a reply. After far too many seconds, he received one. "Nothing." Anger flared inside of him. He had had Cinder. Had her right in his hands. They would've had the Fall Maiden back under their full control as well as the head of the woman who had hacked Atlas. What had happened?

Ironwood started to make his way forward. Anger was getting the better of him, he knew that, but he had to do something. Answers, he needed answers. Fortunately, he didn't have to look very far. A junior officer rounded the corner, sprinting directly for him. ED-E was floating directly behind him, letting out an incomprehensible stream of beeps. Unfortunately, the panicked look on the officer's face told Ironwood that none of the news he was about to receive was good.

"Sir, the news! There's been an intelligence leak! They know Specialist Schnee is missing! Her father is giving an interview!" the officer shouted, screeching to a halt in front of him. Ironwood blinked as he looked at him. The man was holding up a scroll that had one of the major news networks playing. There had to be some sort of mistake, he had clearly misheard the man. Either that or the man, in his youth and inexperience, was jumping to absurd conclusions. But that happy illusion came crashing down as the officer handed over the scroll to him.

Jacques Schnee, patriarch of the Schnee family and CEO of the Schnee Dust Corporation, was standing in front of a podium with a dozen different microphones in front of him. "It has been brought to my attention that my beloved daughter, Winter Schnee, is currently missing in action. What is worse, she may have even been kidnapped. I am not certain. The Atlas military and General Ironwood, the institution she served, and the man she respected neglected to let her family know. An anonymous tip, doubtless sent to me by a brave whistleblower who was disgusted by such a cowardly cover-up, was how I learned of her fate."

He wiped at his eyes, which had gone from dry to wet suspiciously fast. "Many of you doubtless wonder why I am concerned for a daughter I disowned. Everything I did I only did because I loved her. She is a brave, bright young woman, who squandered her potential serving a man like James Ironwood. I only ever wanted her to come home where she would be safe. An incompetent man has let my eldest befall a horrible fate, and did he see fit to let me know?"

"And your wife, sir?" a reporter asked. "Her mother?"

"What?" Jacques said. For half a second, he looked caught off guard. He recovered quickly. "Oh. Oh yes. She's quite distraught. As she should be. I have worked with Ironwood on several occasions and I've been worried about a man like this commanding my daughter, let alone the safety of our kingdom. The Council has been giving him more influence and power than he deserves. I have quite a few choice words for him over the pain he's caused me."

"But Ironwood's negligence does not stop there," Jaques continued. Again, he wiped at his watering eyes. "I am told that Winter was out in the wilderness, Grimm territory, without backup, support, or any other form of structure. All she had was a single man by the name of James Walker, who seems to be an untested variable and woefully unprepared for the duties my daughter undertook."

He held his hands up in front of him. "But I do not blame Mr. Walker. My limited information on him paints him as a lost soul who has no known relatives. He is my age. Perhaps he saw a surrogate daughter in Winter. I can't claim to know, but I suspect he grew close to my daughter out of a primal desire for company. But General Ironwood should have known better. Two lives were in his hands. They are now in jeopardy. We may never see them again. General Ironwood? I now speak to you. How do you explain yourself? How do you intend to tell a father how you lost his daughter to hostile forces in the middle of Atlas?"

Ironwood turned the feed off. "Cinder told them," he said. "No one else could've known what happened there. Whether she did it directly or through a proxy, it doesn't matter." His cybernetic fist tightened around the scroll. The faintest sound of the screen straining under his fist reached his ears. With a snap, cracks spiderwebbed across it. "They knew we were waiting for them. They ran, and they left a PR debacle to draw my attention during their retreat. Jacques Schnee never passes up a chance to bring the spotlight onto himself, and now he's got a golden chance to play the mourning father card."

Ozpin had been right. Ozpin was always right, a mindset the headmaster of Vale was most likely becoming comfortable with. Bitterness slumped over Ironwood like a blanket. He did not want to talk to Ozpin right now. Even at his most diplomatic, Ozpin would find some manner of saying "you should have listened to me" regardless of how much the blow was softened. Besides, he had other things to deal with. He would have to do an internal sweep of the base to find and plug a leak, someone had told Cinder about the ambush he had planned. It was the only reason she would've bothered to orchestrate this. On top of that, the sun was starting to set outside. The raid on the Legion would have to be done tonight, otherwise, the trail would go cold. Ozpin would be able to rub it in another time.

Looking down at the cracked scroll, he felt a twinge of regret. He hoped that it hadn't been the officer's personal scroll. "Get this replaced by the quartermaster," he said as kindly as he could. "Tell no one about what I've shared with you. Ensure the base remains on standby. ED-E? Stay here." The officer nodded nervously before running off. The ball-shaped robot let out another string of beeps as it floated closer to him.

".. .----. -- / --. --- .. -. --. / - --- / .-. .. .--. / - .... --- ... . / .- ... ... .... --- .-.. . ... / .- .--. .- .-. - .-.-.- / - .... .- - / -... .. - -.-. .... / .- -. -.. / .... . .-. / .--. .- .-. .- -.. . / --- ..-. / ..-. .-. . .- -.- ... .-.-.-" ED-E beeped in that unintelligible code it used. When Winter and Walker were back in his custody, he was going to sit down with James and not let him leave until he had a cypher for it.

"We are going to get them back, Qrow is already on it." ED-E let out another barrage of beeps that Ironwood felt confident in assuming was disapproval. "I understand that Qrow is a rather volatile individual, but he can be trusted in serious matters such as these," he said. "Until then, I need your help with the Legion and Fang." The robot fell silent, floating a mere foot away from Ironwood. "I know you have impressive sensors that act as a sort of sonar. They were useful back in Vale. I'll need it when we conduct our raid. I do not want any of them escaping. Can you do that? One beep for no, two for yes."

Ironwood waited for a reply. ED-E was an odd little robot, not at all like Atlas's Knights or Paladins. It didn't seem to follow Walker out of any sense of professionalism, merely loyalty. He decided to press that front. "James dedicated so much of his life to hunting down the Legion, to make sure they couldn't hurt anyone else. That's what I'm trying to do. Please." Eventually, ED-E gave two soft, dejected beeps. Ironwood gently patted the robot on the top of its chassis. "Thank you. I want you accompanying me personally. I was going to have Winter lead this mission, but without her, I'll be doing it personally. I do not want a single one of them escaping, they've had free reign of Remnant for too long."

ED-E let out another pair of beeps, its entire body bobbing up and down viciously. Ironwood allowed himself a small smile. The raid would go according to plan, with everything else that had gone wrong today, he had to salvage this. ED-E floated down a bit, gently nudging the broken Scroll that he was holding, and looking up. Ironwood understood. "Let them talk. Jaques won't be able to preen to the cameras when this is all said and done." ED-E let out another beep, one of soft and wavering tone. Never before in his life had Ironwood heard a skeptical beep.

"Now then. I plan to utilize an envelopment tactic," Ironwood said, placing the broken scroll in a pocket and producing his own. Turning it on, he flicked through it until he found the diagram he had sketched of the battlefield. It was believed that the joint camp would be located in a clearing not far from the White Fang safehouse, which gave Ironwood plenty to work with. "You will be joining me and the main force, which will launch a devastating strike from the front. Our aircraft will begin the engagement by firing their complement of missiles at the center of the enemy formation before landing us, utilizing the disorientation to encircle them. We'll be utilizing Atlas Specialists, Huntsmen, and mechanized forces supported by regular infantry." He pointed to the map as he spoke. A blob of red dots represented the enemy camp, while a solid block of blue stood for the Atlas military.

"Neither Ceasar nor Adam Taurus have profiles that encourage retreat, so I expect them to stand their ground and fight," Ironwood said. Indeed, both the block and the blob had arrows directing both of them towards each other. "This is where the fighting will be thickest, so I want the heaviest concentration of forces here. Still, stragglers might break and run for it, Vulpes Inculta, in particular, is a flight risk, so I'll have more mobile flanking forces on the side and rear." He pointed to thin lines that formed a box with the block being the top. "These will be light and mobile forces. Team RWBY will secure the left flank, Atlas Huntsmen not assisting with the front will be taking the right, and Team JNPR will lock down the rear. All three will have Atlas infantry assisting them."

ED-E let out another doubtful beep. "Odds are, the flanking forces will remain on harassment and containment, not routing or annihilation. If large portions of the enemy forces attempt to retreat, they just need to keep them pinned for a minute until our main force can crush them from behind. What's more, our aircraft will remain in the area even after their payloads are spent, using their primary guns to provide support fire." There was a long pause as ED-E looked over the map before letting out two hesitant beeps. "Excellent. I was going to have James translate for you, but since that isn't an option I'll have to write up a code on the way there. It'll be a rough job, I'll mainly be stuck with asking you very specific questions, but I-" but a voice from behind him interrupted him.

"G-general Ironwood?" Ironwood's heart skipped a beat. He had been so caught up in planning that he had forgotten that everyone, truly everyone, had access to Jaqcues's interview. Steeling himself, he turned around. Weiss was standing a few yards away, clenching her hands together. "Is...is it true? What my father is saying?"

"He's filtering it through a venire of self-importance and drama," Ironwood said, his voice warm. "But the core of it is true. Winter has currently been taken captive, yes. But I promise you, Weiss, we already have agents arranging her rescue. She and Mr. Walker will be back within a matter of days." Weiss didn't look particularly convinced. Now that Ironwood looked closer, he could see that her hands were trembling and that her eyes were sparkling. She was oddly composed, despite all of that. She was clearly hurting but was keeping it all bottled up. Ironwood respected that. Still, the girl was only seventeen, she deserved a degree of comfort.

"The ones I have looking for her I would trust with my life," he said. It was true. As many issues as he had with Qrow, he was one of Ozpin's most trusted for a good reason. "Knowing him, he's already found her and is just waiting for an opening. And we have no reason to suspect that she's being mistreated. We suspect that her captors want her alive and healthy." This, on the other hand, was stretching the truth. Not that it was a flat out lie, if Han and his companions, whoever they were supposed to be, wanted James and Winter dead, they would be dead by now. That, combined with a lack of demands in exchange for their release, led Ironwood to suspect that Han wanted the duo alive and out of the way, not hurt. That was merely a hunch, however, and not one he planned on burdening Weiss with the fine details of.

"I see," Weiss said. She tried to smile, but it was a weak and feeble one. Despite the brave face she was putting on, Ironwood could see it in her eyes. Fear. A fear that she had seen her sister for the last time, that something horrible would happen to her and Walker, perhaps had already happened. That the coming weeks would be dominated by news feeds of the eldest Schnee child having died a horrible death, something Ironwood had no doubt that Jacques would milk for everything that it was worth. The man loved squeezing every ounce of power, control, and wealth that he could out of the world around him, and Winter's kidnapping was a perfect opportunity for him.

"My father...he sent me a message," she said, fingering a scroll visible through a dress pocket. "He wants me to come home, straight away. There was an entire speech on how you can't be trusted, that I need to wake up, and it's time for me to stop playing at being a Huntress." Producing her scroll, she held it up to Ironwood. He quickly scanned it, an automatic scowl crossing her face. Several choice phrases caught his eye. "Your disgrace of a sister has proven what comes from directionless tantrums" being the first, with "Stay there and you'll die a pointless death like her too," being the second. What truly captured his attention, however, was the last line. "I'm sending someone over right now. Stay where you are, they'll be there in half an hour to pick you up at the entrance. I've been very lenient with you, but it's time to grow up and leave this game of yours behind. You belong here, not galivanting off with Ironwood on flights of fancy. I'll be expecting you home by midnight."

Ironwood made a mental note that Jacques knew where Weiss was. If worst came to worst, Ironwood could accuse Jacques of having access to secure military intelligence in the courts. It would be difficult to make anything stick with minimal evidence and the SDC's army of lawyers, but it would be something. For the moment, he had more important things to worry about. "Would you like to go home?" he asked kindly. "I would understand if you would. I'm already asking you to go above and beyond what's expected by a Huntress in training. If you want to spend time with your family-"

"No!" Weiss snapped, catching Ironwood off-guard. Guilt flashed across her face. "I'm sorry," she said hastily, "but no. There are murderers in Atlas, my home. I'm not going to run." Her jaw tightened and one hand gripped the rapier she had at her side. "They've already killed too many people. Winter wouldn't be happy with me if she knew I left and went back home. But even then...home isn't a respite for me General Ironwood. It isn't a safe place." Ironwood's eyes narrowed as he nodded. Yes, he had heard plenty from Winter about what kind of household Schnee manor was. A selfish and controlling father, and a mother that drowned herself in her own miseries. Even now, Ironwood could feel prickles in his spine as he remembered those conversations. The normally calm and controlled Winter seethed with anger every time she described her parents. The only positive remarks she had for home was for Weiss and a servant named Klien.

"Then if you want to stay here, you will," Ironwood said. "We are doing important work here and your father doesn't understand that." Weiss gave a scoff at this. Evidently, she thought Ironwood was being generous. "I will have someone make it clear to your father that he is interfering in matters of Atlas security and that you are part of that." A small part of him knew that there would be consequences from this. Weiss was a minor, even if that would change in a few months. Her father had full legal custody and would love nothing more than to have another reason to pull national attention onto himself. What he was doing was a legal gray area, keeping a child from a father without proof of unfit parenting. Despite Ironwood having no doubt he was an unfit parent, he lacked solid evidence of abuse for courts. He didn't care though. Weiss wanted to stay, he needed her help, that was all there was to it. They would deal with Jacques later.

"Your sister would be proud. And I know I am." Weiss blushed and gave a small smile. "Now then. We're due to leave in half an hour. Let's show these murderers they picked a fight they can't win."

XXXXX

Cinder smiled as she looked away from her scroll. Jacques had passed the fifteen-minute mark in his speech on how awful Ironwood was, and he was still going strong. That should make life miserable for the good general. He had thought he was so smart, setting a trap for her. She had seen it coming from a mile away. A call to Watts had been all she had needed to create a PR disaster for Ironwood. He had taken care of it easily. Now Ironwood's attention would be diverted going forward, making her next step all the easier.

She and her followers were taking shelter in the forest until the moment was right to strike. Walker had told them that the Fall Maiden was in Atlas, due to be moved out of the country. She would never make it out. And the second Ironwood slipped up, let a tiny crack in his defenses open up, she would strike. He would keep her near, Ironwood wouldn't trust anyone else with her. It was close, so close. After that, Watts could arrange lodgings for them. With his contacts and financial reserves, it was only a matter of time. Then they could move onto the Winter Maiden.

Her attention turned to the others. Mercury was kicking a tree into splinters as part of a training exercise, Emerald was maintaining her weapons, and Rumford was gasping on the ground, his wounds bandaged and arm reattached. She scowled at the former legionary. He was proving to be a disappointment, even Torchwick was contributing more than him. Still, there was some comfort she took from his suffering.

Speaking of Torchwick, he was approaching from the edge of the clearing. A short woman in an Atlas officer's uniform was right beside him. "Oh darn, the jig is up!" he called out, exaggeratedly pointing to the woman. "We've been found out by the authorities!" The officer smirked as a pink glow overtook her. Within seconds a woman in white with pink trimmings was in her place. Her hair was half pink, half brown, a frilly pink umbrella rested on her shoulder, and her face bore mismatched eyes, mimicking her hair, and a self-satisfied smirk.

"You must understand, officer, I have children!" Torchwick said, swooning dramatically. "A daughter! She needed money! Do you have any idea how much she spends on her fancy umbrellas of death?" Neo put her hands on her hips, adopting a look of faux outrage. Cinder grimaced. They never stopped doing this.

"She needs to get back in to let us know when we have an opening. Are they onto her?" she asked bluntly. Anything to interrupt her antics. "Even Ironwood must be figuring out he has a mole. How much longer can she keep doing this?"

"Oh come now Cinder, you're not doubting us after Neo told you all about Ironwood's little ambush, are you?" Torchwick said, the duo turning their attention onto her. "And even if Ironwood learns which soldier she is, she just has to do what she did before. Umbrella to the throat, ditch the body for the Grimm to eat, and take their place. She did it for my driver and for whoever it was she was pretending to be when she came in." He clapped his hand on Neo's shoulder. "She has it." Neo puffed her chest out in pride.

"And if she slips?" Cinder asked. Why did she have to work with so many clowns? "Will she talk?"

Upon hearing this Neo cocked her hips, her hands on her side, giving Cinder a disapproving glance. "It would be a shock to everyone, herself included," Torchwick said, looking amused. "But Cinder, you need to understand something about Ironwood. His idea of interrogation is wagging his finger at you when you don't answer his question and then leaving. Being his prisoner is a cakewalk."

"Wait, that's all he did to you?" Rumford was weakly pushing himself into a sitting position. "They set Walker on me! He nearly bit my fucking face off!"

Roman blinked. "Nibbling at your face. Ok. So this Walker guy is a bit of a weirdo. Where did you say Ironwood found him again?"

"Not like that you prick!" Rumford snapped. "He did something! His face was all fucked up and his teeth were finger length! He could've fit my entire head in my jaw!"

Roman appeared unconvinced, but Neo tugged on his jacket. Producing her scroll, she spent a minute typing something out before showing it to Roman. He read it quickly, his brow rising in interest. "Looks like Neo overheard them talking. Walker has an odd Semblance. Five different abilities, but when he activates it he gets one at random. And he can only do it once a day. Oh, and she says our friend here is telling the truth. That he had a monster face." He leaned closer. "And it was terrifying. Seriously, where did Ironwood find this guy?"

Cinder said nothing. Her thoughts turned to Walker. That little parasite who had come out of nowhere and was refusing to accept that he was a pathetic ant, meddling in the affairs of his betters. That blast, the one that had shattered his Aura, had been the result of random chance. She seized up in anger. Walker was supposed to be dead, why wasn't he? Everything had been set up, but a shriveled up old man and his band of freaks had interfered.

Walker would burn. They would all burn. They would learn who she was and why she was to be feared.

"He's a pro-NCR cocksucker," Rumford growled. "Came through the portal Caesar found. Ironwood adopted a stray, that's all there is to him."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to ask," Mercury said, delivering one final kick that snapped through what was left of the tree. Creaking, it leaned to the side before crashing into the snow. "This whole thing about Rumford, Walker and Adam's new idiot friends being from another world. Do we believe any of it?" His tone of voice clearly indicated he didn't. "I mean, didn't Neo say this guy did drugs?"

"Psycho's just for the muscles you gray-haired bitch!" Rumford shouted. Muscles tensing, he tried to force himself into a sitting position.

"Careful," Mercury said tauntingly. "Mommy Cinder might have to spark you again if you have that much of a potty mouth." Rumford froze. Fearfully, he shot a glance at Cinder. She smirked at him. For all of Rumford's flaws, he understood how far beneath her he was.

"I mean," Emerald said, sliding her pistols back into her holsters. She didn't have the same carefree attitude as Mercury; her face was narrowed in concern. "Something weird is going on. That old man, Han? His body didn't look like Atlas technology. None of their equipment did. And one of them made Hazel look short. What was he?"

"A Super Mutant," Rumford said. His voice had changed completely, soft and submissive. Much better. "The big guy was a Super Mutant. They tried to take over a century ago. Freaks used to be human but got dumped in some Pre-War goop. They're tough fuckers. There was a town my old gang couldn't touch because they had one standing guard. He ripped one of us in half." Rumford made a wringing motion with his hands. "Tore the fucker open at the stomach in one go. They're big, ugly, stupid motherfuckers, but you don't want to fuck with them."

"I mean, this all sounds crazy, but I don't hear anyone coming up with a better explanation," Roman said, shrugging as he did.

"Sure, buy what the junkie said, it must be true because no one thought of anything else yet," Mercury said. A cocky grin was decorating his face.

"So you calling Cinder mommy ended up being more revealing than you meant it to be," Roman said mockingly. "Cranky? Need your juice and nap?"

Mercury was about to reply, but Cinder was not in the mood. "Enough!" she snapped. Everyone shut their mouths, giving her peaceful quiet. Getting up, she slowly walked towards Rumford. He stiffened as she approached, visibly swallowing. She deliberately took her time, letting him stew before stopping in front of him. "Are you telling me the truth?" He nodded frantically.

Cinder balanced everything in her head. Yes, it all seemed absurd. But ten years ago, an immortal master of the Grimm had seemed impossible too. Then she had met Salem and her eyes had been opened to a world of possibility. She never would have dreamed of the power that dwelt within her now. Even now, she could feel it. Ravenous, vicious, clawing at her insides to be complete. So perhaps Rumford was telling the truth. If he wasn't, it would be at his own peril.

"Roman. Get Neo back to her post. I want to know the second there's an opening." She didn't take her eyes off of Rumford.

"Actually, she's already got something for you. Ironwood's going to be leading an attack on our old friend that had more horns than sense. He heads out in an hour or two," Torchiwick said. He sounded a little nervous.

Cinder's gaze was still locked on Rumford, but a smile spread across her face. It seemed Adam was good for something after all, even if it was just as a distraction. Hours. All she had between her and being complete were hours. It was happening. It was finally happening. Beautiful. But she had to get everything in order before then. "Well. It seems we're going to be busy quite soon. I'd talk fast if I were you. Now, tell us everything."

He nodded so vigorously he was at risk of spraining his neck. "Name it, I'm a good man to have on your side!" He blubbered. "Nukes? Lasers? Ghouls? Those NCR fuckwits? I know everything!"

"Good," Cinder said. "First, nukes. What exactly is a-" she stopped mid-sentence, grimacing. An ache tore through her body. It felt like a sunburn, but on the inside of her body. She had been feeling it ever since her fight with Walker. It should've gone by now, he had barely even touched her when her Aura was down. Despite this, it hurt more than ever. What was more, a horrible pang of nausea gripped her, It came from nowhere and caused her entire body to convulse.

Before she could stop herself, she was on all fours, convulsions gripping her. Her mouth opened wide and the contents of her stomach poured out, staining the ground beneath her with sick. Rumford scrambled back as best he could. Cinder panted, not looking up. Whatever that nausea had been, it has passed. She didn't feel it in her stomach anymore, a headache was all that was left of it. Walker had only inflicted embarrassment on her. But anger flared within all the same.

"Start talking," she growled. "What are you waiting for?" They were all looking at her, enjoying her lack of dignity. She could feel it. Let them look. Within hours she would be the full Fall Maiden. After that, she would find out who Han was, where he was keeping Walker, and what she would do to both of them. Tingles shot through her at the thought. The list was already so long, and she was just getting started.

XXXXX

Blake forced herself to breathe in the belly of the Bullhead that she and her team were riding in. It was happening. They were on their way to where the Legion and Adam's White Fang were suspected to be camping for the night. Adam, for all his skill, would be hard-pressed to escape from this, and there was no outcome where he didn't take heavy losses.

She swallowed. So much of the White Fang has abandoned him, only his true believers still followed him. Why had it needed to come to this? They were scared people trying to fight injustice, how had it ended with them allying with slavers? How much of this was her fault? Had she escalated matters, the old head of the White Fang's daughter helping the bold new front? The one who had been tied at the hip to Adam, the face of escalating violence? What if this was all because of her? What if-

"Blake?" Yang was looking at her. At that moment, golden locks and lilac eyes pulled her out of her spiral. She blinked. Then she looked away. She wasn't ready to admit how guilty she felt, or how much she wished the upcoming fight could be avoided. It was too much.

"Blake?" A pause. Then Yang's voice changed. It became soft. Playful. "Blake? Cat got your tongue?" Blake blinked. Then she let out a long, loud groan. If anyone who wasn't a friend or family member had said that, she would've punched them. When Yang said it, it wasn't hurtful. It was painful though, painful in a way that only bad jokes could be.

"Really?" she said, looking at Yang with the best disapproving state she could manage. "Really?"

Yang was wearing a cheeky grin as if it was a badge of honor. "Paw-don me," she said. Oh please no. "I was just worried about how you were feline." Anything but this. "And we could use a meowment of relief." Why?

"I know where you sleep," Blake said, her voice stony.

"Is that because you use my bed for cat-naps?" Yang winked.

Lifting her hand up, Blake flicked Yang's forehead. She winced, but her grin grew even wider as she rubbed where she had been struck. In spite of herself, Blake could feel the ghost of a smile forming on her lips. She forced it down. Smiling here would mean Yang had won. "Careful Blake, we're flying. Distract the pilot and we might have a cat-astrophic accident."

Despite Blake willing her face to be cold and rigid, an unwilling, strangled snerk leaked out of her mouth. It turned into a dignity deprived wheeze as her hand shot out, flaccidly pushing at Yang. The blond girl tumbled back over, laughing every step of the way. "Shut up," Blake gasped out between her laughs. "I will shave you while you sleep."

Yang gave an overly dramatic gasp from where she was lying across the chairs, bundling together her waterfall of gold hair. "How could you! I thought Weiss would be the one to spite shave me."

"I haven't ruled it out!" Weiss called out. She and Ruby were sitting across from them. Weiss was scowling, her legs crossed and arms folded so tightly that Blake wasn't sure how they would ever separate.

Ruby let out a strangled, concerned noise. "Please don't. I like you alive," she said, her eyes shining in Weiss's direction.

"I wouldn't kill her Ruby," Yang said, winking at Weiss. The unspoken implication was lost on none of them. Weiss glared, Yang grinned, Blake attempted to stop laughing with mixed results. Ruby looked back and forth between them all before breaking the sort of deadlock.

"We should do something when this is all over."

"Oh!" Yang said, almost bouncing out of her seat, utterly bubbling with energy. "We should-"

"No," Blake said immediately. She knew what was coming. It was best to nib this one in the bud.

"But I didn't-" Yang started.

"No," Blake said.

Yang turned to her sister, eyes wide and pleading. "Ruby, come on!"

Ruby gave a smile that was far too wide; it failed to hide the obvious discomfort. "I agree with Blake," Weiss said firmly. "No clubs. They aren't my scene, they aren't her scene, and they most certainly aren't your sister's scene." Ruby nodded sheepishly.

"But-But I know a really good-" Yang started.

"No," Blake said. Yang slouched back in defeat. "Dinner would be nice though. Just the four of us." Doing a full 180, Yang sprang back up, wide-eyed and eager. "Excited dog" was the only proper way to describe it. It was contagious, and Blake's heart couldn't help but beat a little faster. No Adam, no Legion, just her three best friends, and good food. That sounded so nice right now. She wished she was there right now.

"Maybe we can invite some other people," Blake said. Her focus turned to Weiss. They had all seen the news. Weiss was putting on a brave face. Part of the pre-mission briefing had included Ironwood telling them that both Winter and James had been taken prisoner, but a rescue was already underway. Supposedly, they would be back within days. But Blake knew Weiss had to be hurting. "Your sister would be welcome."

Weiss nodded, swallowing as she did. "Thank you," she said. Her voice was strained. "So, what's the plan for when we land?" Blake felt thrown off balance. Weiss was blatantly deflecting the topic away from her sister. Part of her wanted to pursue the topic, but Ruby locked eyes with Blake and shook her head. Weiss's back was currently to Ruby, meaning she didn't see it. Confusion seized Blake. This didn't feel right, she had to say something, anything. But what would she even say? Had the White Fang been the ones who took Winter? That would be nothing short of a nightmare, the things she had heard Adam say about what he would do to a Schnee. Even during her days of a loyal member, those rants had disturbed her. Now they terrified her.

"We're not charging in, we're holding a line," Ruby said. Her eyes lingered on her sister for a second. Yang hummed in exaggerated ignorance. "So we need to spread out, we're a net catching strays. We only form up if they try and make a concentrated break out. Engage from range if you can, they'll be running from the main force so they'll be panicked. Call out any runners you see but can't get too. If we bunch up, one or two might escape. Weiss? If you see an opening for your ice walls to funnel them in, use it." Weiss nodded sternly, her face hardening.

Reluctantly, Blake began to understand what Ruby was doing. They only had so much time before they would be in the middle of a combat situation. Time wasn't something they had enough of. It sucked, but it was the reality they were stuck with. She wanted to pull Weiss close, hug her tight and tell her that it was going to be ok. Later. Later she would make it right with Weiss. She would have to.

"ETA sixty seconds to drop!" the pilot called from the front of the Bullhead.

Ruby nodded. "Equipment check." Gambol Shroud was in tip-top shape; Blake had already checked it twice during the flight over, but she gave it a quick look over all the same. This was it. Adam had to be stopped. Maybe there were other ways this could've ended years ago. Talking him down, reining him in, something, anything. The tip of her blade gleamed in the light. A peaceful conclusion had gone a long time ago. She felt sick.

XXXXX

James wasn't sure how he had gotten into the Lucky 38. There was an itch at the back of his mind that something about this didn't add up, but he couldn't put his finger on it. All he knew was that he was in House's personal suite, standing in front of one of the many full wall windows that lined it, pretentious muzak playing somewhere behind him.

Vegas was burning beneath him. Marked Men and legionaries marched through the streets, he could see them as clearly as if he was next to him. Cinder Fall was above them, smiling sadistically as she flew through the air, torching the city beneath her. Atlas soldiers were meeting them in a bloody deadlock, Securitrons providing support. Except some of the Atlas soldiers weren't fighting. A few were hanging out towards the back, spray painting the spear and shield of Atlas on the Securitrons.

"They're democratic too, aren't they? Moronic, when they call themselves a kingdom. But you know how people can be when it comes to insubstantial naming. I'm surprised Caesar didn't follow Commodus's lead, give himself twelve names, and declare himself the heir of Hercules. You also know how people can be when they think every drooling troglodyte's opinion mattered. This is child's play by comparison." House was there. His body wasn't aged, its lifespan artificially lengthened by centuries, shriveled to the point of barely being alive. He was fit, healthy, and dressed in a fine suit. He was sitting behind a desk that James didn't remember being there, idly looking into a snowglobe of Vegas. Fire burned inside the snow globe, creeping along the edges, leaving faint cracks in its wake. "This is a fine mess you've made. A genuine demi-god trying to kill you, as opposed to the pseudo one on the far side of the Colorado? How do you keep topping yourself?"

"You're the last person I want to talk to right now," James growled, going for his pistol. It wasn't there. He could've sworn it had been a mere minute ago.

"Oh come now, shooting me in the face didn't free you of me for your first attempt, why would it this time?" House said. "You have your clever moments, but so often you come off as a Neanderthal smashing rocks together. Have you ever considered stopping and planning ahead? Beyond your current hand?"

James didn't remember when they had started playing Blackjack, but two cards were in front of them and House was idly dealing his own cards from a fully stocked shoe. Instinctively, he looked at his hands. The cards were intelligible gibberish, black scribbles wiggling of their own power covering them. "Or do you plan on taking the idiot's route of doubling down until either the bank breaks or you do? Because it looks like you're finally starting to reach the latter." A severed ear lay on the table now, in the direct center point between them. Black ooze trickled out of it. "The House wins, it seems," he said. "Another hand?"

James said nothing, glaring at House. "Oh, do grow up." The snowglobe hit the table, cracks now spider webbing the entire thing. Disgust slowly inched onto House's face as he spoke. "The most insufferable gambler is the one who can't recognize when the table is against them. Who keeps playing until they haven't a cent to their name. With you, it's gone long beyond that point, even though you were doing so well earlier." He straightened his back out, returning James's glare. "There's a way back to Earth, the Legion will be looking for it. Vegas cannot withstand a siege from them now, it will break. And even if it doesn't, you've confined it to a much worse fate. Which one?" He gestured to the window. "Oh, take your pick. Neo-colonialism, inter-racial terrorism and, oh, what was her name again? The immortal witch?"

A clenched fist slammed into the table. "You know, as narcissistic as it would've been, I would've preferred if you had killed me because you had thought you would have run Vegas better than I," he continued. "Vegas would've had a leader then, one with an indestructible army and better than that jumped up con-man, Benny. America has produced worse leaders than you, simpletons so lacking in desirable traits that they focused on their melanin levels and skull shapes. Insufferable children playing doctor, all of them. They did nothing but waste the talents of men and women much more clever than them in the name of their inane ideologies and misplaced pride. You were better qualified than them from sheer lack of brain damage. Now? Vegas's forces are quartered with the survivors hobbled, politicians are more concerned about how much tax money they can leech out of it, and it will never be more than a point of contention between the NCR and the Legion. A fortified gambling town in a pointless war between children. So thank you, Walker, thank you for destroying humanity's chances at evolving beyond scavengers playing in the graveyard of the old world instead of cashing out while you were ahead and letting me handle it. So. Another hand?"

"You believe Han?" James said. Something was wrong. He was looking at House, but he could see outside the windows too. There was no more fire, but they hadn't been extinguished. Darkness was creeping through the streets below him, swallowing everything up. The light wasn't vanishing in the natural way of the sun setting, slowly fading away, it was dying. And when the light faded, the darkness pounced, and everything it touched ceased to exist. "You believe that nonsense?"

"I don't believe any of this nonsense," House said. He was no longer a handsome man in a suit. He was nearly naked, his flesh green and emaciated, his body frail. He was barely able to support himself by placing both hands on the table. "But that hasn't stopped this world of monsters, Olympians, and far greater. The horrors beyond the corners of your vision don't care if you believe in them or not. Now. Answer me. Another hand? Or will you finally wise up?"

James locked eyes with him. He had no idea what he was feeling right now. The darkness was closing in on him, clawing its way up the tower. Something was creeping up the back of his spine, whispering in his ear. The only thing he could hear was a few scattered screams of terror, even one that sounded suspiciously like Cinder's. "Deal," he said, without truly knowing why. House gave a loud sigh, looking at him with disappointment. Two cards slid across the table to him. He looked down.

A soft snore reached his ears. His eyes burst open. It took him a moment to realize where he was. Then it all came back. He was sitting on the floor in the Scattered's cell. Judging by the stiff feeling in his back, he had fallen asleep against the metal frame of the bed. He was about to push himself up when he felt a breeze on his shoulder.

Winter was still sitting next to him, sleeping soundly. It wasn't exactly a graceful image. Her arms were gracelessly splayed at her side at random angles, her temple was awkwardly pressed against the bedframe, and a bit of drool was leaking out of her mouth and onto her jacket. Odds were she'd wake up with a stiffness quite similar to what James was experiencing right now. A warm feeling blossomed in him, a delightfully warm feeling. She had stayed down here with him.

Smiling, he looked up at the ceiling. Then the haze of sleep and panic of the nightmare began to fade. He had told her. Oh god, he had told her everything. Well, almost everything. One or two key details had been left out, but they had been incredibly personal. Besides, they were less important than the truth about the Divide. He had only ever admitted his hand in the creation of the Divide to his traveling companions, and that had been a moment of living hell. Their reactions had been just like Winter's, saying that it wasn't his fault. But as with Winter, the words had felt hollow. What did it matter if he couldn't have known? He had still played a role in all those deaths. Ignorance hadn't spared the Marked Men from their fate, what good was it for his conscience?

Winter snored again. It broke him out of his thoughts. Seeing someone as strict and buttoned up as Winter snore felt odd. This felt like a side of her she would want to keep separate from her public life. Smiling, he stood up. Moving as silently as he could, he collected a few blankets from her bed. Their cell was a little on the cold side. Glancing at his Pip-Boy, he saw that it was two in the morning. There didn't seem to be much to do aside from trying to get enough sleep to handle whatever the morning and the Scattered had in store for them.

Crossing back to Winter, he gently covered her with the blankets. She gave a soft groan and shifted in her sleep. Maybe he imagined it, but James was certain he saw a faint smile on her face. Part of him wanted to climb into his bed and enjoy the rest of the night with a soft mattress to his back. But, on the other hand, Winter had stayed on the ground with him. Would it be fair if he didn't return the favor? It certainly didn't seem that way.

His mind made up, he grabbed some blankets for himself, took a pillow, and made himself comfortable next to her. But even as he rested his head and closed his eyes, his mind was racing. There was so much going on right now. Atlas had an interest in nuclear weapons, the Legion had superpowered soldiers, Cinder had abilities beyond even the limits of Remnant, the Scattered were operating in the shadows, and he only had half the answers to all of these problems. Even if he were to get out of here tomorrow, he wouldn't know where to start in tackling everyone.

But there was the one silver lining. He wasn't alone.

XXXXX

Camp had been made an hour ago, the strike team was long gone. Irritation had slipped back into Adam the moment it had left. So, all this time the Legion had wanted to secure a way to reinforce themselves, to bring in more warriors. So why was he not able to rally more of the White Fang? The Legion already had more men in camp than the White Fang, with hundreds more on the way. He had barely been able to muster two-hundred fighters.

Rage flowed through him. Selina Khan. The coward, the hypocrite. She had been the one who had pushed back against Ghira's limp wristed pacifism, who had lifted him up. But now she held back the majority of the White Fang, ordering them not to join his cause. Nearly all of his efforts to reach out had been met with silence. He was out here, doing far more than the sniveling little bitch had ever done, and suddenly it was too much for her. She wanted to back down, to prostrate before the humans because she didn't have the stomach for blood, real blood.

He had thought the Belladonnas had been the extent of the pathetic elements of the White Fang. Clearly, the problem ran much deeper. The White Fang was rotten to the core with the weak-willed, the decrepit, and traitors. It seemed that he had found the only members willing to truly fight for their better world. The organization, as a whole, had failed and betrayed him.

It would have to be burnt to the ground. There was no salvaging the organization as it stood, compromised, and impure. He would have to rebuild it from the ground up, filled with true believers. Men and women that were willing to fight and die for the cause, truly loyal to him and the Faunus people. No more Ghiras. No more Selinas. No more Blakes. Only a supreme army that would put the humans in their place, beneath the Faunus.

He moved forward. Vulpes had set up his tent towards the back of the camp. As he moved, the smell of faint food long since eaten and the smoke of waning fires crept onto him. It was late, very late, most of the camp was asleep. Only the occasional sentry or stumbling soldier looking for an isolated tree were up and about. His superior Faunus eye let him make out the shapes and positions of the tents with ease, even if he could only make out finer details where campfires shed light. Adam could see a fire roaring through the flaps of the largest tent, a sigh of activity when most were sleeping. He marched through it.

Vulpes was sitting in front of a raging bonfire, the smoke escaping through an open flap in the roof. The old man called Lucius sat across from Vulpes, while the Signifier sat at the head of the fire, silent. Half a dozen others, their hair styled into Mohawk, sat behind them, but Adam ignored them. "It is quite late Adam, we were about to turn in," Vulpes said, his voice silky smooth. "How might we be of service?"

"What is your plan for the rest of the White Fang?" Adam asked sharply. This had to be dealt with now, or the cause of Faunus liberation would die forever. It would be killed by the unworthy and the cowards. "The ones who abandoned me when I called for an attack on our oppressors? When do we march on them and make them pay for their treachery? We need to set every one of their strongholds ablaze! Every last one in Atlas and Mantle, our victory here will be tainted if it comes before they fall."

"Your former brothers?" Lucius said, his lips curling in a frown. "That is not something we will concern ourselves with. The Legion has set to secure stable routes to its home territory for reinforcements and supplies. We are only able to march thanks to planted supply caches that we spent months preparing. Even then, we have exhausted half of them already. We have neither the time nor the resources for you pursuing petty grudges."

"Petty? PETTY!?" Rage pulsed through Adam. He had only met Lucius a couple of days ago, and he could already tell he hated the senile old man. "They have turned their backs on me, on our cause! They're traitors! They need to burn!" Incompetence, he was surrounded by incompetence on all sides. The Faunus, the majority of the White Fang, Blake, and now even the upper echelons of the Legion, the people he had thought he could trust, were proving themselves to be small-minded people. They didn't see the bigger picture.

Lucius's eyes narrowed. "You are a friend of the Legion, the warriors of the Legion are not yours to call on for what you please," he said. "Do you see us demanding your soldiers fight the NCR for us? We both stand to gain from the attack on Atlas. All either of us would gain from a purge of your former allies is a depleted fighting force. Set aside your personal grudges, boy."

Adam seethed. He dared? This pathetic old man dared? He took a step forward, his hand subconsciously moving towards Wilt and Brush. Before he could act further, however, Vulpes stood up. "Now now, Lucius. There's no need for harsh reprimands where simple tact will suffice. Our friend's demands are quite reasonable." A smile flitted across Vulpes's pale face. "Cowardice and treason are met with sword and fire, as is fitting, in the Legion. Let us not blame our allies for having the wisdom to wish to do the same."

The anger in Adam vanished, replaced by a feeling of smug superiority. It seemed he wouldn't need to put Lucius in his place, Vulpes had already done him the honors. "To answer your question, nothing truly can be done about them until our vanguard forces have secured a reinforcement route and Atlas has been dealt with. As Lucius said, to do so would ravage our forces. I urge caution Adam, greatness has never belonged to those without sense. And I can foresee much greatness in your future. Tell me. What spectacular plans do you have for this planet?"

Adam had a flicker of a desire to protest, but a fire was lit in him upon Vulpes's question. His plans? Oh, the plans he had. "A grand army of the Faunus, for starters. I will find the truly loyal, the true patriots of the Faunus cause, and show them their true potential. A new world will await all of us, one that puts to shame any pathetic civilization the humans were ever able to build. Even your Legion will be in awe of it. The non-believers will be shown the error of their ways, and the traitors will share the fate of the Humans. Bound in chains, like your profligates! The Humans will know that we are superior to them!"

Vulpes smiled. Adam blinked. For a second, he could've sworn that it was amused and mocking, the smile one saved for children. But then he spoke. "Of course you are. Your might is impeccable, we are honored to bask in its light." Pride washed away all of Adam's doubts. "Please, do tell us more." Several of the other legionaries fidgeted noticeably. Lucius shot Vulpes a noticeable glare. Only the Signifier remained still, staring into the fire. Feeling secure and superior, Adam prepared to continue. He had spent countless years planning a better world, it was a pleasure to share it.

At that moment, however, something caught his attention. A faint whirring sound, coming from outside the tent, obviously far away. It sounded as if something was rushing through the air. And then, the world around him was consumed in chaos. Without warning, heat and forced tore into him, sending him flying outside of the tent and landing on the cold, hard ground. In the fraction of a second, before he hit the ground, he saw a ball of fire consuming the tent, setting ablaze what it did not tear to shreds. One of the legionaries soared through the air, both of his legs missing and his body limp, while another tumbled out of the side, roaring in agony as the inferno spread across his entire body.

Adam's ears rang as he climbed back to his feet. It wasn't just the leadership tent. Dozens of explosions, each of them the same size as the one that Adam had been caught in, were blooming to life across the joint camp. Howls of agony, shrieks of terror, and sickening sounds of bodies behind torn and twisted filled the air. The camp had been dark before, lit only by the pinpricks of campfires, but the detonations shed new light on it. Adam could see over half the camp as clearly as if it was in daylight, but his eyesight showed him the horrors in the dark as well. Dozens of figures coated the ground. Some of them were lifeless corpses with stomachs and sides torn open by shrapnel, intestines, and blood pooling on the ground around them. Others were alive but badly wounded, cradling at the stumps of limbs or clutching at grievous gashes. Countless others staggered about, clutching at their ears, blinking in confusion.

Then, over the anarchy the camp had descended into, Adam saw it. A flight of aircraft arching towards the front of the camp, how far from where he was standing he couldn't tell and coming to a halt. Their bay doors opened a good hundred feet above the ground, and figures poured out of them. Adam couldn't make them out in the dark, the aircraft were too far from the now blazing camp, but he could make out the flares of jetpacks slowing the falls of many of them. As well as the sheer volume of them. And the one that was so large that when it hit the ground, he could hear the impact even from this distance.

Gunfire began to echo from the figures in the dark, their outlines dimly illuminated by rows of flashing gun barrels. The huge figure lumbered forward, a white light shining on it before shooting forward in a lance. It hit the ground just in front of one of the tents that hadn't been damaged in the first barrage, consuming it in a ball of white light. When it faded, five dead men in White Fang armor scattered the ground. The figures held their position, peppering the front of the camp with gunfire, gunning down a dozen men in just as many seconds. Through the fire, Adam could make them out for the first time. Atlas.

Adam's mouth opened wide as a roar born deep within his gut escaped out of it. Wilt shone in the firelight as he drew it from Brush, his knees bending to charge forward. "Stop!" A hand clasped on his shoulder, pulling him back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Vulpes, his armor badly singed, his normally collected expression replaced with one of raw panic. "Do you intend to break their lines yourself?"

Adam thrust his arm backward. Brush's hilt slammed deep into Vulpes's gut, forcing the older man to double over and ripping a choked wheeze out of him. "Exactly," he growled. "Try to stop me and you'll share their fate." Again, he prepared to advance. Much heavier plumes of fire had joined the ones already shining up and down the Atlas firing line. From the looks of it, machine-gun emplacements had been set up where rocks and trees could act as cover. Those cowards would be the first to die.

"Do you have a way of reaching all of your men?" Adam paused. It wasn't Vulpes who had spoken. The Signifier was striding from the ruins of the burning tent, Lucius behind them. "Even in this chaos?"

"Why?" Adam snarled. He didn't have time for this. With every passing second, more Faunus were out there being slaughtered by Humans. Now this puppet wanted to lecture him. The bay doors of the aircraft swung shut and they rose up, spinning to face the camp. As they did, their noses burst to life as belly-mounted machine-guns opened fire, raking the front of the camp. At least six men died in the few seconds that Adam watched.

"Because if you can, do so now. Tell them to embrace what comes, otherwise, it will pass over them and be wasted. It's their only hope of survival." As he spoke, the Signifier gripped at his White Fang masked and pulled. The mask fell to the ground. An old, bald, wrinkled man stood before Adam. His face was hard, and his eyes were narrowed. Then he spoke.

"Profligates Delenda Est!"

The words were like nothing Adam had ever heard. They reverberated across the entire battlefield, a deafening weight to them. Everything in the cacophony of noise that had gripped the camp bowed before the weight of the old man's voice. For a single second, everything stopped. All those present, Atlas, White Fang, and Legion, staggered under the brunt of the shout. The Atlas soldiers recovered quickly, resuming fire. Among the ranks of the defenders, some of which were forming their own line, something else was happening. Flashes, bright multi-colored flashes, gripped them, enveloping them. Aura. It was Aura. Dozens of their fighters were showing Aura, far more than they had ever had in camp, even before Lanius had left with his team.

The Signifier had done this.

"Tell your men to accept what has come over them," he said. "Or the legionaries alone will receive my blessings. It is a requirement, non-negotiable." Adam stared at him in disbelief. Then went for the short-range radio he had at his side. "This is Adam, our allies have given us the tools to crush the Humans. Embrace what he is doing and victory will be ours! Now!" Lowering the radio, he looked out again. There was a moment where nothing happened, a lag created by his men processing his orders. Then, once again, a rainbow of colors flashed through the camp. Yes. Oh, yes.

The Signifier stepped forward and spoke again. His words echoed across the camp, not with the same level of power as before, but with a deafening clarity all the same. "Men of the Legion. It is as I promised. I have given you the power to defeat our enemies. The strength that flows through you, that has risen you up above any profligate. This is the true nature of the Pax Romana, of the Legion itself. Now go. Show these profligates, doomed to repeat the ways of the Old World, the true might of the Legion. Show them that they are obsolete. The die is cast."

Cries of defiance cropped up from the camp. One or two fighters fell from Atlas fire, their newly awakened Aura shattering and leaving them exposed, but the tide of death was stemmed. Fire was being returned now. A trio of White Fang, bare heads revealing their animal ears, charged forward firing as they went. Machine-gun fire tore into them as they ran, eating away at their defenses. Two of them collapsed under the strain, their Aura breaking and enemy rounds snuffing out their lives. The final one did not fall, he was able to reach the Atlas line. Pleasure and pride coursed through Adam in equal measure as the Faunus swung a knife at an Atlas soldier. Even through all the armor, the soldier's head went flying. The Faunus moved to swing again, only to jerk back and fall to the ground. A hole had sprouted in his head, blood oozing out of it.

"We will flank them and catch them in a pincer," the man said, turning to face Vulpes and Lucius. He pointed to a duo of legionaries with covered faces. One wore an elaborate set of armor with detailed muscles covering the chest plate, as well as a half helm with a red plume on it. The other had a heavy metal helmet that had a symbol of a sword parting cogs, decorated with white and red feathers. "Giaus Magnus, gather your centuria and head out through the rear of the camp, then come at them from behind. We will crush them."

The man in the half helm nodded. "Tiberius, with me," he said, glancing at the legionary next to him.

"Yes, brother," Tiberius replied. The two vanished, heading in the opposite direction as the Atlas forces. The two of them called out in that strange language the legionaries liked to speak, and at once dozens of warriors flocked to the pair of brothers. He stepped forward. These two would be the driving force behind the White Fang's victory tonight. Where else could he go but with them? His journey came to an abrupt halt when the Signifier stepped in front of him.

"While Gaius and Tiberius move out through the rear, they will doubtless face resistance," the old man said. "Atlas would not be foolish enough to give us an unguarded escape route. But they will think that breakout is our primary escape attempt. While the brothers fight there, we, the leadership of the White Fang and the Legion, will escape to the side. Any who breaks out of this cage first will then be able to assist the other, and the deathblow for your enemies will be even greater. Join me in what will doubtless be the most dangerous aspect of this entire battle. You, me, Lucius, Vulpes, and my guard. We will shatter the ranks of the profligates and litter the ground with their bodies."

The man's words were like honey to his ear. Any frustration he had felt were long gone. In fact, this was perfect. Atlas was right here, no doubt with high ranking officers that had been specifically dispatched to eliminate him. And they were retaliating with a flanking maneuver that mirrored the early Faunus rebellions. It was perfect. Too perfect.

Vulpes was next to the Signifier, grinning from ear to ear. "Caesar has spoken! Forward! We shall not shirk in the face of our cowardly enemy! They will taste defeat and know fear!"

Something clicked. So, that was the Caesar the Legion had boasted of. In the back of his mind, Adam felt a tiny gnawing. Why had the Legion not used this before? Why had they needed his help if they could do this at will? Why had they not told him about this before? Why had Caesar been in disguise? Wasn't he supposed to be a trusted ally of the Legion? How did that mesh with such a massive secret?

Only a small part of him was worried though. The rest of him was quivering with excitement. Lucius shouted and a dozen men with mohawks and strange gauntlets formed up on him. Adam had seen them before, Vulpes had described them as some sort of elite guard. Now he knew who for. "Forward!" Lucius led the charge, flanked by the guard on either side, with Vulpes and Caesar right behind them.

Adam looked one last time at the two sides trading fire. He had wanted a war, hadn't he? And what better way to prove the objective inferiority of humans than beating them in a battle they had started and picked the conditions for. It would be a shocking truth that would echo throughout the world. Tonight, he was igniting the revolution. The White Fang would be revitalized in a way never seen before. And he was at the front of it all. Grinning, he followed after his allies.

XXXXX

Author's Note: I will publicly flagellate myself for those cat puns. You have my deepest apologies. Also I get the feeling that this is the RWBY equivalent of "this would be deeply racist if it wasn't my best friend saying it." On another note, I wanted to have Tiberius be the more senior of him and Gaius , but then someone on my writing Discord reminded me of Gaius Magnus, the boss tier enemy you can only face if you nuke Dry Wells in Lonesome Road. So I thought to make that Gaius the Gaius that Caesar happened to have with him, and his big brother Tiberius is his junior. Having a conquered tribe on your resume does wonders for advancement in the Legion.

Thank you for being patient. Life has been kicking my ass as of late, and I really haven't been in much of a writing mood. A lot of it personal stuff that I won't bore you with the details of.

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 17

Baby, It's Cold Outside

XXXXX

Schnee Manor was beautiful, resplendent, and stocked to the brim with every last luxury a man could desire. It was paradise. Sadly, even paradise had its flaws.

Even from his office, Jacques Schnee could hear his wife wailing from the courtyard. Apparently, he should have told her before calling a press conference. Yes, the alcoholic who drank herself into self-pity fueled stupors, on his dime, needed to know what had happened to their failure of an eldest child. She had been livid at first, storming into his office, when he had made it quite clear he was not to be disturbed. He vaguely recalled being accused of driving Winter away or some other nonsense the delusional woman had spun up. He had been focused on more important things, penning letters to organizations to arrange charities that would boost the image of the company.

The Winter Schnee Charity Ball was already in the works, and he would offer up a seed investment of one million Lien to draw in other men and women of means. Stock values for SDC would skyrocket from all the publicity and good faith exposure, all of it bought at a pittance. Weiss singing for the event would be the perfect cap to the event, he would just need to follow it up with a speech. What were the proceeds going towards again? Something about families of fallen soldiers? Didn't that mean he was owed some of it?

So, with these important matters on his mind, he had been forced to be terse with his wife. Normally he would've preferred a more direct approach, but this time he had settled for a choice comment about Whitely. That had done it. All of her impotent rage had vanished as she remembered both her place and who held all the power. She had stood there, spluttering for a minute, before devolving into tears. It was what she always did. He had been free to return to his work while she ran off to cower and hide at the bottom of a bottle.

Morbid curiosity getting the better of him, the same part of the mind that made you pick at scabs, he glanced out the window. She was doubled over in her chair, hands buried in her hands, empty bottles strewn around her. A servant with short, brown hair was next to her, patting her on the back. Her tray of drinks had been carelessly placed on the ground. One of them had spilled. Jacques frowned. Two days ago, he had hired a new batch of servants and guards. The pay was below minimum wage, but many of them could not find work elsewhere, and he expected new employees to start the next day. It was a good incentive for those who needed money and needed it yesterday. Still, that did not mean he had no standards. If the woman was going to waste the wine he bought, she could find another career.

"How romantic Jacques. Concerned for your wife?" The Schnee patriarch's attention turned back to the other man in the room, who was idly swirling a glass of brandy. Arthur Watts. A lanky man with an elegantly groomed mustache, a finely tailored gray coat with a fine fur collar, and a crisp yellow dress shirt with a neatly done black tie just barely visible. It took a lot to startle Jacques, so it spoke volumes that Watts appearing, unannounced and very much not dead, in his study earlier today had left him speechless. One of Atlas's greatest minds, long thought lost, had appeared in his study as if he had simply walked in. But Watts had come bearing gifts and Jacques was never one to turn down an opportunity. And this opportunity in particular had been a gold mine of opportunity.

He didn't know how Watts had survived the Paladin Incident. He also didn't know how Watts knew that Winter had been kidnapped by unknown assailants or why Watts wanted him to know. He also didn't know if his daughter was still alive, something Watts admitted to as well, though that last one didn't bother him as much. None of it mattered though, Winter was gone and no one knew where she was, and so many possibilities were open to him now.

"In a way," Jacques said, turning back and sitting down across from Watts. It was true, he was quite concerned the woman would do something stupid to ruin everything for him. Vigilance would be needed in the coming days. "Now, what is it you want in return? I have my window of growth and national attention. It would take me hundreds of millions to grow something like this on my own. Why would you give it to me for free? How much do you want?" His gaze locked into Watts, examining him for the slightest twitch that would betray hidden intentions

"It's true that I'm no altruist, but money?" Watts snorted as he slouched into his chair, sipping the brandy. "That's your department. I have my own desires and goals, and I intend to keep them close to the chest. I'll share two things I want from you, but the rest is my business. First, I want Ironwood's name dragged through the mud. It seems I've already gotten my wish. You've done me the kindness of making him look like the incompetent buffoon that he is on the national level. Make it global if you can, but that'll just be extra. The second thing? I'm still dead. You never saw me. Keep the anonymous whistleblower angle."

Jacques relaxed. A satisfied smirk played across his face. Watts leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. At that moment, a cold sweat that Jacques had never felt in his life trickled down his back. Watts was a scientist who preferred fancy clothes and looked as if a stiff breeze would blow him over, what reason did he have to be scared?

"And Jacques? This is non-negotiable." Watts's voice didn't change in tone, but there was an underlying tone of hardness to it. Jacques couldn't place it, couldn't quite pin it down, but he could tell it was all too real. "I am dead. I've been dead for a long time. I'm certain you have some sort of oh so clever scheme cooked up to capitalize on this. Don't. You'll be courting disaster in ways you can barely imagine." Reaching out, he flexed his free hand. Bright blue rings shone brightly on each of his fingers, electronic LEDs glowing beneath the surface. Jacques's computer, resting on the ornate wooden desk behind him, chimed loudly. The unspoken implication echoed with a deafening force. "This little bit of dirt on Ironwood? Child's play compared to what me and mine can do now. You don't want to know what I can do when I put my back into it. So. Remember. I'm dead."

With that, he stood up, stretching. As he did, his coat shifted. Jacques briefly saw an overdesigned, ornate revolver, plated with shining gold and centered around a pair of bulging, oversized cylinders. Jacques was almost certain such a thing shouldn't work, but a creeping feeling told him Watts hadn't let him see it by accident. "You're a smart man Jacques. Not as smart as me of course, but I know you'll make the right decision. Thank you for the brandy. I'll show myself out." Still carrying the half-full glass, he left Jacques's office, a satisfied smile on his face.

Jacques slumped in his chair. He would have no evidence of Watts being in the manor. Whatever tricks the man had, he had managed to avoid appearing on any of his cameras on the way in, and would doubtless do the same on the way out. Irrational fear prickled at the back of his mind. What did Watts mean by him and his? He shook his head. It didn't matter. Whatever potential gains there were in exploiting Watts, they were minimal and not worth the risk. Best to focus on the true prize in front of him. Finishing off his drink, he stood up and left his study.

As he left, he idly glanced at two janitors in dark blue jumpsuits that were mopping the floor not far from his office. One wore a pair of worn, beaten sunglasses on the neck of his jumpsuit, had a bare head dotted by only the faintest of peach fuzz, and his clean-shaven face was dominated by hard, cold eyes. He didn't look like the rest of Jacques's employees, he was much more muscular than most of them, with his jumpsuit's sleeves rolled up to reveal toned arms. Thinking about it, the man had the posture of a professional. His mop was moving back and forth with absolute precision, not leaving a speck of floor untouched. Jacques smiled. At least he had some talent in this mansion. This one would last at least a year.

He walked past them. The second cleaner, the one the Schnee patriarch had not paid much heed to, shifted and began to speak to the shaved one. "Mala tempora currunt. We'll never find him at this rate. And you know what that means for us." The bald janitor grunted, not moving from his mopping.

"We'll take whatever punishment we have to," he said. "Failure has consequences. Just keep your eyes open. Besides. We're closer than we ever have been. Coming here was the ultimate stroke of luck. We're getting ten times what we thought we would. This isn't just a random lead anymore."

The other one nodded. "We're as good as dead if we let him slip through our fingers again. We can't have a repeat of Vale."

Jacques found himself unable to care. If anything had drawn his attention, it's that these two sounded like they were in a gang, looking for someone to kill. As long as they got themselves shot on their own time, it wasn't his problem. It would've been a security concern if there was a chance of weapons being smuggled in, but ever since the White Fang had started attacking SDC owned facilities, he had taken precautions. Anyone coming in through the servant's entrance, and servants coming through the main door were instantly escorted off the premises, were subjected to strict screenings by well paid, well-trained guards. It didn't matter though. All he cared was that they cleaned his floors and kept their dirty laundry off his property. He strode forward.

He had a financial empire to maintain and expand.

XXXXX

Pyrrha felt the words reverberate in her very body, rattling her bones. Everyone else felt it too, she could see them all visibly wince. She, her team, and a dozen Atlas infantry were in a Bullhead that was nearing their LZ at the back of the Legion/White Fang formation. They were sixty seconds out when that alien language had hit, and everyone was staring at each other in confusion. Pyrrha could see the same question in the eyes of her team and the soldiers, "What just happened?" For whatever reason though, it was not spoken out loud. Perhaps they were all afraid of hearing the answer.

"I've delivered my payload!" the pilot called from the cockpit. Her voice was level and professional, but a hint of stress weighed on it. Pyrrha didn't blame her. Something felt fundamentally wrong. There was a weight in the air that had been left in the aftermath of the wave caused by the voice. "I'm gonna drop you off then maintain coverage. Grunts, you know the drill on marking, don't let me run out of targets."

The soldiers stiffened and barked confirmations. Their sergeant ordered a final weapons check, which they instantly busied themselves with. Magazines, safeties, and overall qualities were all checked. Jaune, who was right next to Pyrrha, let out a nervous yelp. "Uh, same goes for us team! Ready up!" Pyrrha blinked in confusion but gave Miló and Akoúo̱ a quick inspection. Everything was in tip-top shape. Judging by their reactions, Nora's and Ren's weapons were in equally fine condition. And her puzzlement at Jaune was reflected in them, as both of them were giving him odd stares.

He was panicking. It wasn't an overt, all-consuming panic, but it could grow. Smiling as best she could, she put her hand into his and squeezed. Jumping, he looked at her, startled. "We're gonna be ok," she said, wanting to believe it. "We've taken them before. We'll do it again." Again, she squeezed his hand. Slowly, his body relaxed. Swallowing, he started to speak.

Jaune's words were drowned out.

Heat, force, and sound enveloped Pyrrha in an all-encompassing bubble that pressed down on her. Her mind screeched, trying to process all the stimuli and understand where they had come from. It took three crucial seconds to recover from the shock, and as she did a horrible truth dawned on her. She was no longer inside the Bullhead. The open sky and frosted forest were all that she could see as she fell. Craning her neck up, she saw the Bullhead, fire streaming from it like a ribbon, groaning as it struggled to stay airborne.

Her heart hammered in her chest as she fell, the ground coming up to meet her fast. Even if the impact wouldn't kill her, the depletion for her Aura would be a death sentence in the middle of a combat zone. Mercifully, years of training and instincts kicked in, and her spear and shield were in hand. With a flick, Miló assumed its rifle form, Pyrrha following up on that by firing a pair of shots with it. It wasn't enough to stop her rapid descent, but it took the edge off. More importantly, it slowed her just enough to give her a sharper look at the snow-encrusted forest below her.

Tilting her body to the side, she adjusted her fall just enough so that she would be directly perpendicular to a particularly tall tree. Transforming Miló back into its spear form, she drove it into the trunk of the towering plant. Cracking wood and falling snow filled her ears as she continued downward, but her speed was draining rapidly. Gritting her teeth, she took her spear in both hands and drove her heeled boots hard into her only anchor from a free fall. They pierced the tree, jolting her body as her legs were now joining Miló in preventing her fall, but that had did it. Nearly at once, she came to a full stop.

Exhaling, she glanced upward. She could still see the Bullhead, veering out of sight, starting to list downward. Pyrrha was no aviation expert, but she couldn't help but think that the VTOL didn't appear to be in an uncontrollable crash. If anything it looked surprisingly intact, but still too badly damaged to stay in the air. As she watched, the craft slid downward, below the treeline and out of sight. There was the sound of trees groaning and snapping, but no deafening explosion. Pulling her boots and then her spear out of the tree that had saved her, she let herself fall the remaining twenty feet to the ground where she landed gracefully. They had to have landed nearby, there was no time to waste.

"Well. Look at that. Meat." Pyrrha's blood ran cold. So much of her attention had been on landing and the Bullhead that she had completely neglected her surroundings. Slowly, she looked around herself. Dozens of figures in White Fang armor were on all sides of her, readying weapons. Yet, tiny signs here and there pointed to something being not quite right. All of them carried weapons Pyrrha didn't recognize. They weren't the boxy SMGs and rifles the White Fang used. All of their weapons were older looking, cruder. Repeating rifles, revolvers, and a few belt-fed weapons carried by some of the more muscle-bound members. One was holding a large, gray, smoking rocket launcher that had doubtless been what had hit the Bullhead. That, combined with the scarlet strips, white and red feathers, and painted marks on the armor here and there told a horrifying take. All of them were Legion. And judging by the myriad of colors that were cloaking them as they slowly advanced, all of them had active Aura.

Her breath was heavy as she took them all in, dread creeping into her. For days now she had tried to put off the horrible inevitability of her situation out of her head. Now, she couldn't put it off until tomorrow, couldn't distract herself by thinking of Jaune. Its evil nature was looking her right in the face, mocking her, taunting her. She had wanted to be a hero, to save lives and protect those who couldn't protect themselves. And this is what she had been forced to do to get there. Why? Why did things have to be this way?

"If you throw down your weapons and surrender, I promise you won't be harmed!" she shouted, doing her best to sound strong and imposing. Privately, she doubted it would work. From what they knew about legionaries, they didn't surrender. But even if they did, a single Huntress who was struggling to keep her voice from cracking wouldn't do the trick. Sure enough, her proposal was met with scattered laughter.

"Oh, you're cute, meat," one of the nearer ones called out. "You think you can hurt us? Now? We'll make you a counteroffer. Stop waving around those toys and we won't be too rough with you."

Pyrrha's stomach tightened. They had no idea what they were doing. Most of them had only known Remnant had existed for months, and the rest even less. Had it all come to this? Was there no other way out? As she thought, words echoed in her mind. James's words. "Sometimes you wonder if you made the right call. All you can do is do what you think is best. Even if it hurts."

This would hurt. It had been hurting ever since her entire world had been turned upside down. But no matter how hard she tried, she had been unable to find another way out. Her only option left was forward. Ruefully, she reflected that this was a decision that had already been made, she had simply wanted to forget. And now she couldn't.

Her wrist flicked, her shield became a blur of bronze and slammed into the face of the legionary that had taunted her. A yelp escaped his mouth as he crumpled to the ground like a puppet with cut strings, blood pouring from his mouth and nose. Deftly, she caught her shield, holding it defensively. His Aura hadn't been up, a rookie mistake. None of them had mastered the use of their Aura. She could use this.

"Kill the bitch! We can't keep Tiberius waiting!" a legionary wearing a feathered helmet shouted. "Die to a woman and I'll feed your corpse to the fucking dogs!" Some of them charged, drawing short swords and crude shields as they did. Most readied their firearms. Shifting her fingers, Pyrrha flicked them towards her. Black fuzz covered the weapons of the legionaries in front of her as they jerked forward. Half of them found themselves disarmed, their weapons falling to the ground, and leaving them defenseless. Even those who had kept their grips steady were knocked off balance, stumbling and reeling to right themselves as their weapons jerked forward in their hands.

Pyrrha didn't hesitate, the time for that had passed. She charged, spear and shield in hand, crashing right into their front lines. Stabbing out, she caught a legionary in the throat as he fumbled to retrieve his revolver, her superhuman strength piercing the man's throat with ease. Crimson blood poured out, splattering the ground and staining the gold edges of her spear. Nausea surged in her stomach. She had never taken another human being's life before, it had always been training or Grimm. But she couldn't stop now. If she stopped they would kill her, kill her friends, kill everyone she ever loved. So she didn't falter, she ripped her spear out, the man tumbling to the ground as she moved on, even as she wanted to be sick.

"Aura up! Keep it up! Or is every last one of you a cinaedus!?" the man with the feathers roared. He had managed to keep a grip on his weapon and was aiming at her. A pump-action shotgun, one he handled and aimed well. He had to be a veteran, and an officer too. And a shotgun would be tricky to deal with, even with her shield and Semblance. It was all too easy for a pellet or two to sneak around either. So she went on the offensive, flicking her short spear into its lever action mode, firing a trio of shots center mass on the leader.

His breath caught and he staggered back, but no blood burst from his chest. Maybe he hadn't had his Aura activated with the rest of the Legion forces, or maybe he had simply listened to orders on how to fight with it better. Either way, he hadn't made the same mistake as the warrior that was now dead on the ground. Visibly fighting back from doubling over, the officer leveled his shotgun and fired. Pyrrha, however, had not been idle in the precious seconds that he had been knocked off-balance. Throwing herself into a slide, she fired her rifle behind her and sped along hugging the ground, well below the blast from the shotgun.

Pumping his weapon, the legionary swore as he attempted to adjust his aim. But Pyrrha, her speed increased by her weapons kickback, was already at his feet. Adjusting her rifle so it was aiming at the ground, Pyrrha fired and brought herself rocketing back up to a standing position. And as she did, she brought the rim of her shield crashing into the officer's solar plexus. Pyrrha heard a dry wheeze and a faint crack as, even through Aura, the legionary doubled over. Breath had abandoned him, only shallow, fruitless gasps were escaping his mouth. They sounded wet. It was all horrifying to Pyrrha. How was the human body capable of such noises? She pushed it out of her mind. This man would do all sorts of unspeakable things to her if given the chance.

With him doubled over, he was easy prey for another blow from her shield. This one she landed on his stomach from below, and as she did, she heaved. She had no intention of knocking him onto his back, she had another destination in mind. Her muscles straining as she forced them into action, Pyrrha sent the man flying, a clean twenty feet into the air. Flipping it as soon as he cleared the ground, she aimed her rifle up and emptied the magazine into the man's torso. Halfway through, there was a sound of shattering glass and a bright yellow aura appeared, then faded. The last of the bullets found armor and flesh instead of a barrier, tearing through and earning Pyrrha spurts of blood in return.

Through the sounds of her gunfire and the screams of legionaries attempting to recover after Pyrrha had thrown them off, it was hard to hear much else. But she was certain that the officer above her let out a solemn, pitiful cry. It was impossible to say for sure, with his voice barely functional, but Pyrrha struggled to think what else it could be. Pity took hold of Pyrrha, almost enough to make her want to relent on her follow up approach to her magazine dump. It made little difference in the end.. Through her conflicting feelings, her body was acting. Miló, converted back to its spear form, was in her hand.

Her grip was tight, and the legionary was only fifteen feet above her at this point. She had made simpler shots than this when she was twelve. Nothing about this was easy, but there had always been a difference between easy and simple. She was sorely tempted to close her eyes and shield herself from what was about to transpire. But this wasn't the first life she would take tonight, and a dreadful, horrible feeling creeping down her spin told her it wouldn't be the last either. She forced herself to watch as Miló arced upward and impaled the legionary in the gut. He went very silent, only letting out a final, involuntary gasp as his body went limp.

Landing and sprawling onto the ground like a doll, the man came to a stop. Broken was the only fitting word for what she saw. She had broken this man, snuffed out every last thought, feeling, and memory that had made him unique. There would never be another man like him. Part of her argued that this was a positive; he had been a cruel, chauvinistic, invader. He and others liked him had already killed dozens of innocent people, would kill more, and entertained dark and horrific thoughts of abusing and raping women. Yet she could not bring herself to take any pleasure in or feel less disgust at his death.

She looked around. Half of the legionaries were still recovering their weapons, only just now righting themselves. The rest of them were staring at her in disbelief, no doubt they had never seen a trained Aura user openly hostile to them before. One of them, dumbfounded, said "She killed Varus." A small spark of hope rose up in her. Would killing their leader demoralize their will to fight?

"Please! Throw down your weapons!" she called out. "It doesn't have to-" a crack echoed out from behind her and something slammed into the back of her head. Dull pain spreading out from the impact point, Pyrrha was all too certain she had just been shot. If she had not kept her Aura up, her brains would've been splattered all over the grass.

The shot kicked off a domino effect. The legionaries with guns opened fire, those without charged forward. Their hesitation was gone, replaced by cries of "Retribution!" Pyrrha guarded herself with her shield, but she was being fired on from so many angles that what felt like a dozen shots found their mark. Hot tears stung at her eyes. Did they hate her this much? Or was it pride in their cause that drove them forward? There was always a chance they were caught in their primal fight or flight instincts? She didn't know, she wasn't sure she could know.

A tear leaked from her eye, doubtless the first of many. She had already made her choice, as they had made theirs. Now they would both have to live with the consequences.

XXXXX

Today was the worst day of Willow's life in this miserable, hellhole of a prison that she called home. On a good day, when properly numbed up, she could get through the day with something that resembled tolerance. But she had a limited pain tolerance, one that could easily be bent and broken if her husband was feeling particularly vindictive, or life simply went wrong. And it had gone very wrong today.

Winter was gone, maybe even dead. Her eldest, her baby girl, and no one knew where she was. Another wave of sobs overtook her, choking her, crushing her, constricting her until crying was all that she could do. "Ma'am? Ma'am, I promise you it'll be ok. People are looking for her right now, I'm sure of it!" Blinking through her tears, she tried to remember where she was. The paintings on the walls looked vaguely familiar. Oh right, they were the ones near her room.

The one blessing in her marriage was that, after three children, Jacques had lost all interest in her sexually. In truth, he might have only ever seen sex as a tool, financial and personal. So out of all of his demands of her, sharing a bedroom was not one of them. So at least she had eight hours to herself at night, a safe haven. Though even then, Jacques reserved the right to intrude when he pleased. More than once he had barged in when he was in the thick of a particularly bad rage and she had been left with her back to a wall. Even her only refugee was tainted by him.

"This way, ma'am?" Blinking slowly, still trying to remember, she glanced to her left. One of the servers was half carrying, half dragging her down the hallway. That didn't make sense. She only needed help back to her room when she had gotten particularly drunk, and that couldn't be the case. Tears were streaming down her face and an awful, consuming guilt was still tearing and clawing at her insides. She would be too numb to hurt if she couldn't walk. But all she could think of was Winter, the child she had failed. "Ma'am?"

Blinking through the tears, she looked around. The icy white marble halls, coated with coldly blue carpets, all looked the same if you didn't know the identifying details to pick out. Jacques had a mockery of a suit of armor by his study, about as respectful as spitting on her father's grave. The kitchens had an array of portraits of the Schnee family near them, none of them with Winter's image. But the hallway near her room had a picture of Weiss singing and Whitely playing the violin. At one point, there had been one of Winter playing the piano there, but her husband had been so furious when Winter had walked out on them that she hadn't felt safe leaving it up.

Weiss. Where was she right now? Everything about her children was bittersweet at best nowadays. She had been proud of Weiss when she had left, even if it had hurt to see another daughter leave. Weiss's last look back at her had not been the glare of hatred and disgust that she had seen in Winter's eyes, but there had been a sadness that had hurt nearly just as much. But now Weiss was out there, exposed to the same horrors that had stolen away Winter, and Jacques wanted to bring her home. It all left Willow torn between two evils. Weiss either stayed out there and risked sharing Winter's fate, or she came home and beyond all certainty joined Whitely's.

Whitely. She had failed to protect all of her children, but with Whitely, in ways, she had failed the most. Jacques's poison was inside him now. Winter had run without looking back and Weiss was yearning to break free, but she had truly lost her son to that bastard. He smiled at every comment Jacques said, nodded in agreement without question, and worshipped the ground he walked on. He would never want to leave his father's side the way his sisters had, but his obedience didn't bring him safety. It simply made him the least preferred target, something Jacques had recently made clear he would change if pushed. Another wave of sorrow and self-loathing built up inside her.

Whitely was a willing prisoner here, trapped with two awful parents.

"Ma'am, please, I can't do this alone." Willow weakly nodded her head, pointing with a limp finger at her door. Sighing in relief, the servant awkwardly opened the door with full hands, dragging her in. With little grace, she found herself deposited on her bed, where she flopped to her side. Part of her would've been content to just lie there, letting the tears continue until the all too short void of unconsciousness finally came for her. But she felt the bed sink to her side. She looked up and was surprised to see the servant sitting there, looking concerned. "You can go now," Willow croaked out.

"I...don't think that would be a good idea," the younger woman said, looking down at her with concern. "I'm so sorry about your daughter, ma'am. Do they have any idea where she might be? Her and the man she was traveling with?" Even though her brain was addled with far too much alcohol, Willow was certain she had heard a slight increase in pitch when the woman had asked about her daughter's companion. There were enough wits left about her for her to recognize that as odd. But try as she may, she found herself unable to take it any further.

"Nothing. Maybe. I don't know," Willow said, her voice pathetically frail. "No one told me anything." Clumsily, she pulled herself into a sitting position, her legs hanging off the side of her king-sized bed. It was an indulgent thing, covered in delightfully smooth silk sheets, a dozen puffy pillows dotting the far end, and a mattress that even now was trying to draw Willow in with succulent comfort. All of these amounted to little more than temporary distractions, however, and at the moment they were unable to provide even that. "I only learned when Jacques announced it. He didn't feel the need to tell me anything in person. Assuming he even knows, because he might not have cared to ask."

For the briefest of moments, anger spiked in her. Years of sweet empty promises and slowly escalating deceits flashed before her eyes. She hated the man in ways she hadn't thought possible. But, just as fast as it had come, the fury slipped away. "He still has Whitely," she said, more to herself than the other woman. "And he never fully let go of Weiss. Winter was the only one who truly got away from him." Her jaw tightened, a fresh wave of tears began to form in her eyes. Every second she thought about it was another angle that she was being pulled apart from. "Why? What did they do to deserve this?"

Losing herself to her emotions, she gripped her head with her hands, seizing handfuls of her snowy white hair. A fresh wave of tears poured down her face as soul-crushing guilt bore down on her. She had to do something, anything. Anything that would mean she wouldn't have to be alone with these terrible, soul-crushing thoughts. Drink might've done the job if it hadn't already failed her. That left her considering more drastic options.

Before she could get too far, however, something happened to derail her train of thought. Two arms wrapped themselves around her and she was pulled close to someone else. Her server was holding her tight, Willow's face perched on the younger woman's shoulder. The Schnee matriarch found herself at a loss for words. She had no idea who this woman's name was, yet she was hugging her like a dear friend or family. Her muscles were pulled tight, surprisingly powerful, and rough, calloused hands gently stroked Willow's back.

Warmth sparked inside Willow. It was a brief, tiny thing, one that flickered and died. Truth be told, part of her wondered if she had mistaken surprise for warmth. All she knew for certain was that it had been years since someone had hugged her and meant it. But that was nothing compared to what followed.

"I'll break his face if you want." Willow's mouth opened but she found herself unable to form words. Her mind had been cleared of everything except for shock and confusion. This woman had to know how dangerous talking like this was, Jacques could fire her with a snap of his fingers if he wanted. Everyone who worked at the manor had to know the kind of power he had over them. Did this woman just not understand?

"I'm not joking." The woman pulled back, looking at Willow with a steely hardness in her eyes. Willow recognized it all too well. It was hatred, hot burning hatred. "I can't stand the look on his smug face or the crocodile tears. Say the word and I'll make something crack." Something whirred back to life in Willow's mind, fighting through the disbelief and alcohol.

"Don't!" she screamed, causing the woman to jump. Panic was running through her now, raw and intense. "It won't work, it never works, he always ducks everything thrown at him!" She had tried, did no one realize she had spent years trying to get herself and her children away from him? Divorce papers had been buried, bruises explained away, or placed where no one would see them, all assets she could've possibly used had been placed in his name. Nothing worked, and every time she tried Jacques took out his frustrations on her and her children. There was no winning against him. "And my son...when he's angry my son is-" she couldn't finish the sentence, sobs had consumed her again.

"Oh, shit," the servant swore, pulling Willow into a hug again. "I'm so sorry, I didn't know." This time, Willow returned the hug, burying her face into the front of the server's jacket. It started all over again, her body convulsed with fresh sobs. Once again, she was drowning in the pressure of it all, trapped deep below the surface with no escape. Awkwardly, the woman started patting her on her back.

Minutes slowly ticked by as the two of them stayed there, Willow seized by her emotions, the woman softly holding her. Eventually, her body reached its biological limits. Deep sobs turned to shallow, dry coughs. All throughout it, the woman never let go of her. Willow didn't understand. None of the other servants were like this, they were all too scared of her husband. What was happening here? Why was she showing a sad wreck such care?

"Do you want me to stay with you?" The server asked softly. "I have a friend who can cover for me. And I don't think you should be alone right now." The unspoken words, "because you might do something to hurt yourself," were not lost on Willow. It was a stinging insinuation, only made worse by it being a legitimate concern. But what was she supposed to say? Yes? No?

"Why?" She croaked out the words. "Why do you care?"

The woman gently pushed her back so that they were face to face. There was a soft smile on her face. "Because you need help. Do I need anything more than that?" She paused, then her eyes lit up. "Do you know how your husband learned about your daughter's disappearance? Maybe you saw who told him? I know people who could try and look into it, maybe find her. Is there anything you have that they can work on? Anything at all?"

"I-what?" Willow said. Her mind was reeling. Who was this woman? Was she more than a down on her luck soul, forced to scrape a living at Schnee manor? "I-I didn't see anyone. This all just came out of nowhere."

The server frowned. "Ok. Plan B then. Where's his office? And do you have a key? It'd draw attention if I forced it." Willow simply stared in disbelief. This woman had to be sheltered and naive to think any of this was possible, let alone a good idea.

"You can't be serious," Willow whispered. "You don't know what he'll do to you." A raw panic was slowing working its way up from a small burn to a raging inferno inside her. But for once it wasn't for her or her children, but this stranger. "He'll ruin you."

The woman patted Willow on the shoulder, flashing a cocky grin. "Better men than him have tried and failed. Let me take the risk. I have an escape route if things get bad and it's a chance to help Winter. Do you have a key?"

Willow saw kindness in the woman's eyes, but also resolve. Between that and the calloused hands, she couldn't have led an easy life. Why? Why? "He leaves it unlocked," she said, her voice barely a whisper.

Now it was the servant's turn to look confused. "Wait, really? I thought he was supposed to be smart. So he's one of those 'geniuses' that's too good for common sense?" Willow gave a weak shrug. Jacques let his guard down in odd ways in the sanctity of the manor. "Oh well, his loss. I don't operate under the laws of ego." Swinging her legs off the bed, the woman stood up. Then she paused, staring at the far wall.

On it was a framed, silver-lined case, holding a shining white sword with a hilt wrapped in black leather and a guard made out of rotating Dust chambers. It was an estoc, one designed with use by a Huntress in mind. The case was elegant, its contents beautiful, and it was covered in a thick layer of dust. Above it, however, was the true focus of the servant's attention.

A photograph, blown up and fitted in a frame, hung above it. Willow's own face looked back down at her, a younger her that was smiling with unrestrained glee. The estoc was slung over her back, one hand was dabbing at happy tears that were running down her face, and the other held up a framed document. Her Huntress license shone in the picture, back when they had been massive, artfully written files. Digital licenses had been a decade away from that day.

Willow idly remembered that day. Her mother had taken that picture while her father had beamed with pride. They had ended up in a massive hug as she cried her eyes out. After so long, she had graduated, and with honors. She had been ready to go out and protect civilization. Then five years later, her parents had gotten sick. The company had been struggling, and she had been scrambling to keep it afloat. Jacques entered her life not long after. Back then he had seemed sweet, charming, worthy of love. He had helped her bear the burden that had been slowly crushing her. How naive she had been.

"That's you?" the servant asked.

"Was." That had been a pathetic, self-pitying statement to make. It was the sort of thing you said when you wanted everyone to look at you and feel sorry for you, even though you didn't deserve it. So when the woman's eyes flicked onto her, wide with shock and sympathy, Willow turned her head away in shame. Winter was missing, this woman wanted to find her, and she was crying over how bad she felt about herself.

Winter had been right. She was a waste.

"I think maybe I should stay here a little longer." The server walked back towards her, sitting down and trying to wrap Willow in a hug. Willow tried to push her away.

"I don't-Winter," she blubbered, not even sure what she was trying to say anymore. She was an event horizon of misery that sucked everyone around her into it, why was this woman giving her the time of day? But she did not relent, and her arms snaked their way tightly around her. Before she could object, Willow was pulled into a tight hug. "Why?" she rasped. "Winter needs your help."

"So do you," the woman whispered back. "I'll check his office as soon as I'm done here. But I can spare five minutes for you.." Something inside of Willow broke. The abuse, cruel words, and loveless marriage, she despised them all, but she had built up somewhat of a tolerance for them. Not enough to endure them, but enough so that she could numb herself to them just a little bit. But this? Kindness she had done nothing to earn? It twisted her, warped her, and bent her until something snapped.

Her crying started all over again, regaining any steam she had lost from tiring herself out. The only thing that she saw, aside from a brief flash of the other woman's lovely hazel eyes, was the black of the jacket she was now crying into.

XXXXX

Author's Note: I had a genuinely smart idea to start writing shorter chapters. My style had gotten a little bloated and while there's merits to long chapters, if I can make a chapter shorter and still get everything I wanted out of it, well, I should do just that. That way it's less of a risk of burning out on me and you guys can get them more quickly. In theory anyway, I still need to sit my ass down and write, which I've been struggling with as of late. Part of it is me working a lot of overtime lately (student loans don't pay themselves off), experiencing a lot of stress (2020 has been ONE HELL OF A FUCKING YEAR and it's still got one third left!) and, on a more positive note, I've reignited my passion for TTRPGs and I'm currently in three active games which eats up a lot of time. All of that just leaves me wanting to relax when I'm in front of a PC. Yeah there's a reason I closed my Patreon, I don't feel like my output is anywhere near high enough to be taking money for it anymore. Still, I hope to get that output back up and push myself harder that I've been doing in the past.

Also there's one thing that I always found frustrating about RWBY when converting into fanfiction. Have Team RWBY and JNPR killed people? Actual flesh and blood people? It's hard to say. When they fight the White Fang, it kind of plays it fast and loose where you don't really know if the Fang die or if they just get badly beat up. The death of innocence wham moment is saved for Volume 3, with the Fall of Beacon, and I feel it doesn't work that well if RWBY slaughtered half a train full of terrorists. So I'm going with that, unsatisfying as it may be, because I find balancing the student Huntsmen out with the cruelty and barbarism of the Legion to be compelling. Pyrrha keeping her cool and just killing them with no problem would just feel wrong.

I hope you enjoyed the chapter!

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 18

Quintili Vare Legiones Redde

XXXXX

Ironwood shuddered under the force of the alien words. He could see the entire Atlas formation wince, and it was hardly surprising. The language of Caesar's Legion, Walker had called it Latin, echoed across the battlefield. At once he knew this had been some sort of Semblance, nothing else could be responsible for this short of magic. And the Legion had neither a Relic nor a Maiden. Making this connection, Ironwood grimly realized that this was doubtless a trump card of Caesar's.

His worst fears were quickly realized. A rainbow of colors burst to life across the ranks of the Legion and White Fang. Aura bloomed on them, as bullets that would've been fatal a moment were swallowed up by the new barriers. Three White Fang fighters charged across the unclaimed land between the camp and the Atlas army's position. Two of them fell to concentrated fire, but one of them managed to clear it and swing his knife. One of the frontmost Atlas troopers was decapitated in a single swing. It was not a clean-cut; it was a brutal, jagged rip, and the soldier was only spared from suffering due to the sheer power behind the blow.

Roaring in triumph, the Faunus made to move forward. Eyes narrowing, Ironwood drew his sizable revolver, took aim, and fired. His arm was dead on, the oversized magnum bullet driving directly into the man's skull. A gush of blood splattered out, dotted with pale, white bone fragments, and the man crumpled. It seemed that these newly empowered weren't trained, but they were still much more dangerous than they had been a mere moment ago. This didn't change anything, however, other than the dedication he would need expect from his men.

"Hold your ground!" he barked, speaking into a shortwave radio piece in his ear, standard issue for all deployments. "They're still outmaneuvered and outgunned. This surprise of theirs is an act of desperation! Even with it, they need three of their own to kill a single Atlas soldier! We hold the skies, we have them surrounded, and every one of them that escapes is a threat to every last citizen of Atlas! Stand firm; we're going to stamp this threat out once and for all!"

Switching the frequency on the earpiece, he put himself on the channel used by the technician directing the Paladin and Knights. "Jim, it's Ironwood. Order all our mechanized forces to tighten up. Switch to anti-Aura protocols for all hostiles. Over." As he spoke, he aimed with his free hand. One hostile poked up out of cover, firing an automatic and managing to take the head off of a Knight. Turning, he lined up sights on a second target, a soldier who was firing from behind a tree. Not giving the attacker a chance to claim one of his soldiers, Ironwood emptied his revolver into him, pumping all five rounds into his center mass. Staggering back, a blue Aura shattering, the man was unable to recover before a Knight returned fire and caught him with a burst. The man went down, not moving.

"Copy that," a stern, professional voice replied. "Switching their directives. Feeds aren't showing anything good. Should we deploy more mechanized platoons? Over."

Sliding his empty revolver into its holster and drawing a fresh one. "Yes, everything you can spare! This is a slugfest now. Use my authorization code if anyone tries to stop you. Over and out." Letting his hand fall, he aimed with his fresh revolver. "ED-E, do you have a clear image?"

James's robot companion was at Ironwood's side, blasting madly away with its energy weapon. Not ceasing its fire, it beeped twice, signifying a yes. "What's their active size?" It gave four tightly packed short beeps, followed up by two long beeps with a noticeable space between them. The active enemy force was four-hundred men strong. So, Rumford's claim that the Legion only had a few dozen men had been drastically inaccurate. This also meant he was outnumbered, as he had only brought three-hundred men, counting the Knights. But he still had them encircled. In fact, he could use their new confidence against them.

"Major!" he shouted. The commanding officer of the company he had brought on his mission, who had been aiming her rifle from behind a rock line, at once turned her full attention onto him. "Contact the flanking forces. Order them to start pressing in and hitting the Legion from behind. Coordinate with the Bullheads and have them provide support fire. We can't afford to have them sit and wait for stragglers anymore."

"Right away sir!" the Major replied, relaying orders into her earpiece.

With that situation in capable hands, he needed to get a feeling for the overall battle. "ED-E, are there any forces that aren't pressing forward?" ED-E paused before letting out two beeps. That wasn't good. Ironwood's plan for catching runners hadn't accounted for this mass awakening. "Their left? Their right? Their rear?" ED-E beeped twice, once for rear, once for right. "Forces for the rear and right?" One short beep then two long beeps, followed by two short beeps and one long beep. A hundred to the rear and twenty to the right. "Major, you get that?" The officer nodded firmly. Ironwood felt a small spark of pride. Firm, efficient professionalism in a high-stress environment. This woman had earned a medal of some kind for this. Everyone here had. "Belay the advance for the respective flankers. Tell them they have incoming hostiles and to bunker up."

Ironwood wasn't even finished speaking before the woman started relaying his orders perfectly. As she did, Ironwood resumed fire. The Legion was making an advance, this one more cautious. A dozen or so men wielding riot shields, all of which had metal plating welded on, had used them to form a wall and were now marching towards Atlas lines. Half the formation had their shields in front, while the other half raised them up high, giving them additional cover from above. Only tiny cracks were visible to Ironwood, through which pistols and rifles quickly began to poke out of. Legionaries and White Fang without shields quickly joined up, aiming from the gaps in the mobile cover and firing.

It was crude, a tactic from ancient times, but with Aura and their reinforced equipment, it had its merits. Indeed, the shield wall was already drawing fire from his soldiers yet yielding little in the way of results. Swarms of bullets from nearly twenty soldiers slammed into the bulwark of steel and flesh, only for nothing to give. The march didn't even slow. Instead, the butts of rifles turned and returned fire. Atlas armor was durable and where soldiers were shot, many of them simply staggered or were blown off their feet to lay moaning on the ground. But here and there, weaknesses were found. Ten or so Knights near the front line were chewed up by, and several soldiers did not rise again after being shot. The rounds had found the few weaknesses in their armor, or the bullets fired had been of a heavy enough caliber to penetrate. He was taking casualties.

Firing his revolver with one hand, his hand went back to his earpiece, switching the frequency. He gave his orders to Jim. The Atlas Paladin, which had spent the entirety of the battle with bullets pinging off of it and looking no worse for wear outside of scratches, turned. Both of its main guns aimed directly at the shield wall. Twin white lances tore from the lumbering behemoth, tearing directly into the center of the array of shields. With a blast of blinding white light, the Legion formation was torn apart.

The shields themselves shattered under the force of the energy volley, and in several cases simply melted into slag. The legionaries that had been in the dead center of the explosion were writhing on the ground in pain, several of them clutching burnt stumps where legs had once been, a pair twitching weakly with bodies covered with burns, and one that simply wasn't moving. Meanwhile, the wings of the formation had fared slightly better, their Aura having protected them from the splash of the explosion. Many of them simply stumbled back, their shields shattered in half or visibly bent from the force. Ironwood could only spot a couple of them who were showing signs of broken Aura. Leveling his revolver, he promptly put a bullet in the chest of one, the man gracelessly blown off his feet, never to rise again.

Part of Ironwood was irritated that the Paladin had not ended the threat of the sortie with a single fell swoop. But it was a minor complication. The mobile barricade the Legion had constructed had been broken, with a wide gap in the middle and two uncoordinated groups of survivors. Both packs of hostels were noticeably disoriented, staggering, and blinking in confusion, not certain what had just happened to them. Ironwood opened his mouth to give the other to fire, but it proved to be an unneeded action. Dozens of Atlas soldiers and Knights had brought their weapons to bear and were riddling the survivors with everything they had.

In less than half a minute, most of them were dead or dying. Aura could take punishment, but not from multiple platoons concentrating their fire. Desperate, the few who had not died from either counter-assault charged, drawing their weapons. It was baffling to watch, even battle-tested and drilled soldiers would fall back to cover after taking so many losses. Most officers wouldn't force their men to fight after taking 25% losses, and even Ironwood himself would be hard-pressed to push on after 50%. So, this was the toxic culture of the Legion that Walker had warned him about, where men would rather charge to their deaths than face the dishonor of retreat. It was a shocking and terrifying display.

Morbidly, it made Ironwood's life much easier. The legionaries fired as they charged, catching one unfortunate Atlas soldier in the neck, but that was all they were able to do. Hailstorms of machine-gun and assault rifle fire swallowed them up, shattering their Aura and shredding their bodies. Whatever zealous dedication to Caesar they had driving them pushed them forward a few more steps, even as blood gushed from their myriad of wounds and they stumbled under the strain of failing muscles. They were about a hundred feet away from the front of the Atlas line before they finally collapsed, immobile.

Relief coursed through Ironwood. Every Atlas death was a tragedy, but the dead of the Legion were heavily outnumbering theirs, even with this secret Semblance empowering their troops. It was a simple principle that any first-year student of history would be able to spot, but Atlas had two major edges over the Legion, even in battles where the Legion had numbers on their side. Ironclad discipline, and a superior industrial base. Even now, Bullheads were circling overhead, strafing the enemy encampment with their main guns, and the Paladin was holding its position, firing its complement of missiles. They spiraled through the air and engulfed a makeshift barricade of stacked crates, earning a chorus of panicked screams.

One man popped up and aimed a tube at the Paladin, firing as he did. The telltale thump of a grenade launcher sounded, hitting the mecha dead on. But even as a ball of fire consumed the war machine, it didn't even slow down. Turning to face its attacker, another lance of white energy arced through the air, the warrior with the grenade launcher's body coming apart as the blast hit him dead on.

At the end of the day, his enemies were terrorists and the army of a petty warlord from a broken world. Neither were prepared for a frontal assault against a professionally trained and equipped army. The White Fang had managed to survive a year of active aggression by hiding in the shadows and acting as a guerilla force when they did engage professional forces. The Legion, however, had dragged them out of their preferred battlefield. Both were in the midst of learning a harsh lesson about the true might of Atlas.

XXXXX

Five minutes had passed since the words of raw power had echoed across the battlefield. Creeping dread had slipped into Blake when she had heard it but was even worse was the follow-up. Nothing. Even with explosions, gunfire, and screaming echoing across the tundra, Team RWBY and their Atlas support forces remained unmolested. They had landed with no complications, and after they had disembarked their Bullhead had taken off to join the main fight. Darkness falling all around them, the main fight a mile away, they were left alone with their thoughts.

Blake almost wished that they had been attacked the second they had landed. At least then they would be facing the threat, they would have a chance to fight back. But she knew the second the raging conflict spilled towards them, she would long for the quiet peace of nothingness. She glanced at her team. Ruby had the look of someone who was doing everything she could to suppress her nerves, Weiss had both eyes locked onto her sword as she held it in front of her, and Yang was, well, Yang. As opposed to the rest of them, Yang had a wide grin on her face. Bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, cracking her knuckles, she looked as if she couldn't wait for the fight to start.

Blake had no idea how she was doing it. Courage seemed to just naturally flow out of her, or maybe fear was just sliding off of her. Either way, her giant, toothy smile was contagious. Blake felt just a tiny bit braver looking at her. Catching Blake looking, Yang flashed her a wink, mouthing, "We got this." A smile of her own spread across Blake's face without conscious thought.

"I imagine you think this is going to be fun," Weiss said, looking warily at the bubbly blonde.

"Aw, Weiss," Yang said with a faux tone of offense. "What do you take me for?"

Blake could see Weiss fighting the urge to roll her eyes. "You don't want me to answer that question."

"I think I-" Yang began in a sing-song tone, only to be loudly shushed by Ruby. "But-" she began, only for Ruby to shush her louder, a finger pressed against her lips. Yang sulked while Weiss glanced at her with an ever so smug look. Relief spilled into Blake. Her team. Her friends. They were here with her. They were here to help make things better. They always were.

"Word just came in, we got twenty hostiles heading our way," the sergeant said. "Whatever that noise was, it turned on the Aura of everyone in that camp. Dig in, this is gonna be messy." Two squads worth of infantry spread out, fanning through the few thin trees and scant rock outcrops. There was very limited cover, Blake saw groups of two and three soldiers cramming themselves behind the same scant outcrop or thin tree. Impressively, they managed to do it while only leaving thin outlines of their armor exposed. Realistically, it was the best they could manage in a less than ideal situation.

"All right!" Ruby cried out, somehow still chipper. "You know the drill!" With well-honed speed and precision, Team RWBY fanned out ahead of the Atlas soldiers. Blake flung Gambol Shroud forward, hooking it onto a low hanging tree branch and pulling herself up onto it. Landing neatly with a soft thud, showering the ground below her with a dusting of snow, she pressed her back against the trunk. Gambol Shroud shifted into its gun form as she did. Pressing her back to the tree and peeking around, eyed the area.

The main battle echoed in the distance, a dull red hue glowing on the horizon. Dozens if not hundreds of people were dying there. In some ways, Blake was glad that she had been spared from a front-row seat of her former allies dying. At the same time, it felt like she had run away from another situation she couldn't handle. Guilt pricked at her, but she pushed it away. There wasn't any time for that. Tightening her grip on her weapon, she focused her attention.

Her Faunus eyes meant the darkness didn't cloud her vision as it did to her human friends. Naturally, she was ahead of the others acting as their eyes and ears. Slowly, time ticked by as she methodically swept her gaze back and forth over the tundra. Twenty men could hardly sneak past them with this little cover. And they would be moving fast unless they felt confident enough to take their time when there was a battle raging behind them. Blake doubted that. So where were they?

The answer came to her, as sudden as it was unwanted. Movement ahead of them, coming in from an angle. It was hard to get a precise count at this distance, but there were five men at the minimum. At once, she signed to both Ruby and the Atlas sergeant. They were approaching at one o'clock. No sooner had she received the sign from Ruby acting as confirmation that the message had been received, a bang echoed out in the direction of the approaching men. For a moment, Blake thought a simply mundane firearm had been used. Then, an all too familiar curved red sword shot past her, only a few meters between it and the tree she was taking cover in. Its color was hard to make out in the dark, even Faunus struggled there, but even dulled that glint was unmistakable. A thunk echoed from where the Atlas soldiers had taken cover, and a blur chased after the sword.

He was here. Oh no, he was here. Her breathing quickened and her heart hammered in her chest.

As terror gripped her angry roars and the thundering of feet filled her ears. Over a dozen men charged past her tree, most of them with bizarre mohawks and a mixture of old, rusty looking weapons and those shiny, white, tubelike guns that shot beams of energy. The majority of them had gauntlets of various kinds strapped to their hands, in addition to their weapons. "Praetorians! To arms!'' one of them shouted, earning a chorus of battle cries, and they began to fire as they ran. Tracer bullets, evidently equipped to mark targets in the dark, and beams of energy arched through the air, peppering Atlas defensive positions. In response, Atlas weapons roared to life, intermixed with a horrific cry of pain and the soul-crushing sound of flesh being torn apart. Adam had claimed another innocent life.

For a moment, Blake had been frozen with fear. Adam, all of his cruelty and all of the carnage he wrought, had rooted her to where she stood. Part of her, the true coward part of herself that she wished she could cut out like a tumor, screamed to run. To skulk away into the dark and survive like she always did. Another part of her, a much louder one, screamed at her. It screamed to think of her friends and what Adam would do to them. He would kill Ruby and Yang. He would kill every last Atlas soldier that had come here to help them. But worst of all would be what he would do to Weiss. Imagines, unbidden and unwanted, floated into her mind. She remembered everything she had seen Adam's followers descend to since they had allied with the Legion, and she remembered what Caesar's Legion did to women.

No. Not to her friend. Not to anyone else. Not another single person, whoever they were, to his forsaken spite.

Riding on more raw adrenaline than anything resembling bravery, Blake opened fire on the charging mob. Her spray of bullets earned a yelp from one of the warriors in the rear, who flailed about, looking with wild eyes in a desperate attempt to find his attacker. Eventually, undoubtedly seeing her illuminated by her weapon's muzzle flash, his gaze locked onto her. Breaking away from the pack, which seemed blissfully unaware of her existence, he threw himself at the base of the tree and began climbing up as best he could. As he did, he leveled a boxy gun at her face, squeezing the trigger.

Blake did two things in rapid succession. First, she gripped the far end of Gambol Shroud cable and tossed it, aiming at the man's neck. Second, she jumped down, ensuring that the branch she had been standing on stayed between her and him. Gambol Shroud, thrown with a sharp curve, looped around the man's throat and went taught. He gagged, involuntarily firing an automatic stream into the air as he was pulled forward, Blake acting as a counterweight.

She landed on the ground at the same time as he began to clear the branch. Knowing her window was brief, she pivoted on the spot and swung forward with the taught cable. The man screamed in terror as he arched over her head, Gambol Shroud still firmly locked around his throat. Straightening out, Blake was treated to a front-row seat as the man smashed head first into a person-sized rock. Aura shattered before her, accompanied by the sound of a loud crack, and the legionary collapsed to the ground, unmoving.

Coming about, Blake searched for a new target. The majority of the mob hadn't noticed her and was closing in on the Atlas position. She could hear the familiar sounds of her friends' weapons being fired, joining the symphony of Atlas and Legion weapons. All eyes were on the clashing of lines in the distance. But one of them had stopped, looking at her. The man wore White Fang armor but had a hood made out of a skinned dog covering his head and black goggles adorned his eyes. His face, even through everything obscuring it, heavily resembled the sketch Blake had seen of Vulpes Inculta. The Legion spymaster.

Blake started forward, but as she did, the man-made eye contact with her. The second those obscured eyes stared into hers, something horrible stirred inside Blake. Fear, fear flowed through her every thought, every aspect of her being, there was nothing inside her except fear. It all came crashing down on her at once, magnified a hundred times: her fear of Adam, her fear of losing her friends, her fear that this was all her fault. Every last instinct in her was screaming that she had to run, had to get as far away from here as possible, or she would suffer as she had never suffered before.

Somehow, despite all of this, she stood her ground. Her legs were trembling, Gambol Shroud shook in her hands, but she couldn't bring herself to run. Ruby, Weiss, and Yang were all here. If she abandoned them, they would share the same fate she was so terrified of. But what was she supposed to do? What was happening? Adam had always scared her, but never this badly, not to the point where she could barely function. Something was wrong.

As she stood there, quivering, Vulpes cocked his head and made a noise of mild interest. Whatever was in that gesture, it sparked a realization in Blake, putting two and two together. "Y-you're doing this!" she said, her voice shaking just as badly as the rest of her.

A self-satisfied smirk bloomed on Vulpes's face. "You realized much quicker than most. Even your beloved Adam still hasn't realized the truth. Most likely, he doesn't want to. I can increase the intensity of emotions, but I can't create them. Only nurture what's already there. He's become too addicted to having his ego satiated." He gave a dismissive scoff. "Worthless indulgence, the same all profligates engage in. Chemicals produced by the body are just as destructive in excess as any narcotic. They both have their roots in a weakness of the mind and a lack of will." Disgust flitted across his features, but they left as soon as they came. "Still. He has his uses."

"You're using the White Fang," Blake said, trying to make her voice into a growl but failing spectacularly. The sound of gunfire, blades clashing, and battle cries echoed in her ears. The rest of her team and the Atlas soldiers who were still holding their ground were fighting not far from here. "They're supposed to be a symbol of freedom, of equality!"

"Did I ever deny this?" Vulpes said, sounding annoyed. "What other use does it have? Your Adam is a mad dog, hungry for flesh wherever it can be found. Your Selina Khan is too cowardly to take the steps needed. And they both failed. They reflect your world." Vulpes's smile truly faded away, replaced by disgust. "It's sickening. Remnant is blessed in a way Earth never could be. You wield power that a year ago we could have only dreamed of, and you take it for granted. You only use it to fight overgrown animals, squandering your gifts. So many of you refuse to act with these abilities, and those that do are petty, self-serving, and weak-willed. You let worthless, spineless men in suits dictate your world instead of the worthy. A world of champions and you are all lesser to Jacques Schnee and his ilk. An entire nation turned from an oasis to a desert because of businessmen. Pathetic."

Vulpes shook his head. "I thought the Legion had truly met its match when we first found Remnant. A world of the superhuman. For a moment, I was truly afraid. I feared our strength would collapse to those who had evolved beyond the limitations of the human body. Then I learned your true nature. Complacent. Squabbling. Undermined from within by tiny forces. Content to let machines fight for you while the people grow bloated and soft. A group of less than a dozen has your nations quaking in fear." His teeth grit in barely suppressed rage.

"Tell me. Did Barca-did Walker ever tell you about the fate of the old world? How they gorged themselves to death on excess and destroyed themselves? Because they had a power they were not fit to wield and were more concerned with simplistic gains? They were small-minded men, who did not have the vision that Caesar does. And Remnant shares the flaws of the old world. You have no idea what powers you have stored away that your leaders refuse to use. Because they fear greatness and are content to stew in both petty squabbles and hedonism. They will meet the same fate as the old world."

Reaching up, Vulpes pulled his goggles down, letting them hang around his neck. Hatred like Blake had only ever seen from Adam burned like a raging inferno in his eyes. "Your world will burn. You will do it to yourselves. Perhaps you will stave it off for a hundred years, but your selfishness will be your destruction. And I welcome it. Not even Caesar can save this wretched thing, only after cleansing fire will there be any hope for it. Perhaps then the Legion's strength and Caesar's wisdom can salvage what's left."

"Wisdom?" Blake found herself talking despite the trembling. "What wisdom? You're not wise! All you want to do is destroy and control everything that isn't yours! And strength? James told us all about you. We know you went to war twice and lost both times. You've been bested over and over again by a man that spits on your twisted values! And ever since you came here, you've been running! Running! If you're so strong, why are you hiding? Are Caesar's mighty armies afraid?" As she spoke, she vaguely recalled James saying something about how Caesar was pronounced. Vulpes had been pronouncing it as ki-zar, which James had said was the correct, respectful way to say it. James, however, always said it as see-sar, and out of habit, Blake had used James's pronunciation. Vulpes's eyes widened in anger. Blake didn't care.

"The only strength you have is cruelty! Hurting people who can't fight back! It's a coward's strength!" The fear had never left her, but she found herself taking a step forward in spite of it. Vulpes's Semblance still had a firm grip on her, she was more scared than she ever remembered being scared in her life. But she didn't have a choice. "When was the last time you ever fought someone stronger than you? Willingly?"

"Well. Certainly not now," Vulpes said. "I'm honestly insulted. I set your dog on a trio of towns, crucify your profligate citizens, marshal hundreds of men in a crossing of the sea, and this is all they send? Children? Atlas is the mightiest nation on Remnant, and they need students from Vale to assist them? How utterly infantile." For a moment, he continued to glare. Then a cruel smirk played across his face. "Though I can at least understand you. Your old friends have told me so much about you. Blake Belladonna."

Her name. He knew her name. Something primal in her stirred at that moment. Logically, it wasn't too surprising. Ghira Belladonna had been the old head of the White Fang, every member knew it, and most of them had followed Selina Khan instead of him. The radicals who followed Adam would hate her father more than anyone else, and in turn, hate her for abandoning them. Of course, they would've told their new allies. But to hear this invader, this cruel and vicious man from another dimension refer to her so casually cloaked her mind in a deep, dark fear. Everything about it felt wrong, an invasion of privacy. What else did he know about her? How much did the man who slowly and painfully executed innocent civilians know about her personal life?

"A coward who comes from a family of cowards. A father who was a pacifist?" When Vulpes said the word pacifist, his eyes narrowed in contempt. "Is there a man more blind to the ways of the world? Lacking in the will to truly act? Content to merely sit down and whine like a mutt, hoping that will be enough. You clearly inherited his lack of stomach." The worst part about all of this was that it wasn't anything that Blake hadn't thought at one point. She had thought that her father was a bootlicker when he refused to take more hardline action in the name of Faunus equality. And she couldn't remember the last time where she hadn't thought of herself as a coward. It cut deep, and the fear squeezed her tight, threatening to crush her.

"But the truly sad thing is that you have no idea what you left behind," Vulpes continued. "And I don't just mean your dog, howling and desperate to rut. But others as well." His smirk widened. Cruelty reflected in it, it was the look of a man who was savoring the moment before he hurt someone. "Did you tell Illia that you were going to leave?" That hit harder than anything he had done up until this point. Illia? Illia was with Adam? Had things spiraled so deeply out of control that she had been radicalized along with the rest of Adam's splinter faction?

Guilt carved into her like a knife, shredding at her insides to the point where it verged on physical pain. She wanted to fall to her knees, to bury her face in her hands. She wanted to scream and cry. Something, anything, to get this horrible maelstrom inside of her out. Part of her screamed that this wasn't her, that it was Vulpes. The rest of her, however, knew that the core of her guilt and fear had been something that had been inside her for a year. Vulpes was simply bringing it all out at once.

Her train of thought was broken by a blood-curdling screech. Instinct taking hold, her head snapped in the direction of it. The two forces had met and the battle had devolved into an incomprehensible collection of blurred motion, muzzle flares, and flashes of Aura. Already, several bodies littered the ground; Blake couldn't make out which side they belonged to at this distance. What she could make out, however, was a legionary in White Fang armor holding up an Atlas soldier by the throat. Blake blinked, horror beginning to replace the guilt consuming her. For a horrible moment, she thought her eyes had been playing tricks on her. But no, the appalling sight in front of her was all too real.

The man's body was shriveling up, starting from where he was being choked and spreading outward. Skin was turning black and peeling away in flakes by the handful, armor was rusting and crumbling like dust, even the man's teeth were starting to fall out, yellow and riddled with holes. Everywhere the decay spiderwebbed out, the man's body went limp, reduced from a healthy young man to a barely mobile husk. He was rotting in a matter of seconds before her very eyes, transitioning from man to corpse even as he screamed in horror.

There was a bang and the flash of a burning star soaring through the air. It tore into the legionary's side, forcing him to drop his victim as he slid to the side, teeth grit. Yang was on him, her fists a blur of gold peppered with sparks as her gauntlets fired a barrage. The Atlas soldier hit the ground and continued to roar, the rotted parts of his body still breaking apart as if it had never been meant to be one piece. And now Yang was fighting that man.

"Lucius's gifts are quite spectacular, aren't they? Perhaps you'll be able to experience them first hand." Vulpes had already crossed half of the gap between them, a chainsaw knife in his hand. Reeling back, she brought Gambol Shroud up to block it just in time, sparks flying as blade met blade. With his free hand, Vulpes leveled a pistol at her face. It was a small-caliber pistol, but the weapon itself was intricately decorated. Detailed, elaborate engravings coated the barrel, the trigger shone with what looked like gold, and a shining pearl grip glinted in the dim light. A mural of a woman with her hands pressed together was just barely visible on said grip, her hands pressed together and a bright light painted around her.

Pain blossomed in Blake's face as a bullet slammed into it, Aura being the only thing separating her from eternal oblivion. Staggering back, her vision swam. Blinking through it, she could just barely make out Vulpes charging at her again. Eyes wide with glee, he swung down. His blade found its mark, ripping into Blake's throat. Or rather, ripping into the throat of the duplicate she had left behind. She stepped to the side as her copy melted into shadow, earning a blink of surprise from Vulpes. Adam had to have told him about her Semblance, apparently he had simply thought she would be too worked up to use it properly.

It was a small comfort though. Even with this small victory over Vulpes, everything about him, about his people, felt awful. They had already killed so many for whatever petty, selfish reasons they had. And right now, she was stuck facing the one who had masterminded it all. In that moment, forcing herself forward against him, Blake Belladonna felt very small.

XXXXX

Author's Note: Part one of the plan, have shorter chapters. Part two of the plan, have some sections be more compact. Part three of the plan, use both to update more often. Well I got one and two done but I'm struggling something fierce with part three. I could get a job at Valve. Thank you for being patient, I've just had a lot of trouble sitting down and getting myself to write lately. I'll try and update faster, but between my work and the general political climate, plus obligations with friends, I've just not been in many creative moods lately. I promise I'll try to fix that, but all I can do is try. Again, thank you for your patience. I was tempted to make this chapter longer, but forcing myself to write a longer chapter when I'm already feeling drained and you guys have been waiting over a month would've been courting disaster.

I hope you enjoy what I've got and I hope you enjoyed finally getting to see how exactly Vulpes has been keeping Adam under his arm. I know at least one commenter asked if Vulpes had a mind control Semblance. My mind did go there in the initial planning section, but I decided one thing I liked for coming up with Semblances is that they should compliment the user's pre-existing skill set, not replace it. So I gave Vulpes a Semblance that heavily plays into his manipulation abilities. Same with Lucius and a Semblance that requires touch to work.

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 19

It Felt Like a Kiss

XXXXX

"Oh come on, rub some dirt on it, and get up." Servius groaned in pain as he struggled to his feet. It was easier to say what parts of his body didn't ache at this point. Marie F. looked at him, her eyes glazed with irritation. "If you keep charging in with your dick out every time, Walker is going to do a lot worse than lay your ass out. Mix things up a bit, for fuck's sake." Gritting his teeth in both frustration and anger, Servius slowly began to circle Marie F. Sighing, the woman imitated his moves.

They had made camp for the night and Servius, his pride stinging more than he cared to admit, had taken Marie F. up on her training offer. He had quickly come to regret this decision, as Marie F.'s idea of training seemed to be her pummeling him to a pulp and telling him he was doing it all wrong. Perhaps eventually she would tell him what he should be doing outside of vague ideas, but he wasn't holding his breath. She had let him keep his new gladius while she was had the knives she had captured from the Vale student. They were more small swords than knives, but she had them gripped as daggers. Even as she shot them disappointed looks.

"God. These things suck," she said, more to herself than. "No balance. Idiot kid probably put them together himself." Giving one of them a noncommittal swing, she grimaced. "How are you supposed to use these things?" As she gave them another swing, Servius lunged forward, thrusting his sword. Anger pulsed through him. He would show her and Barca both. He wasn't a recruit anymore, he was a full-fledged Legionary. Anything other than facing your opponent head-on was a cowardly tactic used by profligates. He wouldn't lower himself to the level of Marie. F or Barca.

Idly, her eyes rose to meet him. With a short swing, she parried the thrust, forcing his blade down into the dirt. Taking a single step forward, she drove the pommel of the other knife into the side of his temple. Stars burst to life in front of Servius's eyes as he staggered back, his head swimming. Trying desperately to recover, he squinted in an attempt to see Marie F. She was right in front of him, her fist sailing towards his face. It caught him right in the nose, pain blossoming as he was sent flying face-first into the snow ground. As he laid there, robbed of his strength, hatred, and embarrassment both burned in his stomach. How many more humiliations would he have to suffer?

"Ok, better," she said. "You've graduated to waiting until I look away before charging in. Now can you please do something a little goddamn different? This is shit is why the NCR kicked your ass at Hoover Dam twice. Dipshits like you died by the hundreds because they all charged in without thinking. You in a hurry to run off and join them?" Servius seethed as he forced himself back to his feet. She had the nerve to insult those who had been cheated out of their victory by cowardice? To insult the Legion when they were the only reason she still drew breath? The NCR would've hung her for all of her crimes, and the Legion only tolerated her out of necessity. Thoughts flitted through his head. Marie F. on the ground, her face bloodied and bruised, begging for mercy as he raised his sword above his head. In the same position he had imagined Rumford and Barca in many times as he had drifted off to sleep.

As beautiful as these thoughts were, they were brought to an abrupt halt as a booted foot slammed into his face, knocking him back into the snow. "You aren't even listening, are you?" Marie F. said harshly. "You came here to learn, junior. I don't know what you expect me to teach you when you can't even learn lesson one of stop being a fucking moron. This is basic shit. I knew I was going to have to start with baby's first lesson, but apparently, I'm teaching at a school for the mentally challenged on top of that. But that's ok. We're gonna keep going until this gets through your thick, fucking skull."

Something took over Servius. Remnant had been one moment of failure after another for him. He had nearly lost Tullus, been forced to endure Rumford, failed to kill both Rumford and Barca, and now this. It was all too much. Without conscious thought, his free hand closed, gathering up a ball of snow. "Well come on, we're gonna keep going until-" Marie F. began but was interrupted. Hatred more than any decisive plan drove Servius as he threw the now compact snow.

Completely caught off guard, Marie F. barely had time to blink before it found its mark in the dead center of her face. Stumbling back, she instinctively clutched at her eyes, dropping her weapons in the process. Glee shot through Servius. Finally, he had managed to get a solid hit in, and on top of it, he had rendered her vulnerable. Forgetting about his surge, he surged to his feet and threw himself at the woman. Slamming into her shoulder first, he sent both of them toppling into the ground. Servius's body ached from the beatings that Marie F. had given him, his skin burned from the cold and the snow, and now even his shoulder felt a little numb. But Marie F. was now below him, her eyes frantically blinking in a desperate attempt to see. He had the advantage.

The first blow was a right hook that caught her underneath the chin, jamming her jaw shut and forcing out a strangled, muffled cry of pain. That grunt of pain was nothing short of euphoria to Servius. Finally, she had shut up, she was the one feeling pain instead of him. Proligates were worthless in frontal fights, it was why they hid behind their cowardly tactics. Ambushes, explosives, burning villages, slaughtering the priestess of Mars, and sending and maiming children. They all deserved this.

Rage mixed with glee as he rained down blow after blow. A part of him had wanted to do this ever since he had met the woman, and gods above it felt good. All the arrogance, all the boasting, and here she was, at the mercy of a legionary. This was justice.

And then it all came to a crashing halt. There was a flash of silver and his right cheek split open in agonizing pain. Once again, he was on his back, howling in pain as he desperately clutched at his cheek. A wide gash adorned it now, blood gushing out and leaking between his fingers, slopping onto his uniform. Before he could even formulate a response, she was on top of him.

There was a mad glint in her eyes as they leered into his, complimented by a deranged grin. Her knife, not one of the ones she had looted, was against his throat, cutting into it. A small trickle of blood was already dribbling down onto his chest. It stung, but compared to the agony in his cheek, it was nothing.

For a single, horrible second, Servius thought that Marie F. was going to kill him. But when she spoke, her words were packed to bursting with delight. "Well! We're finally getting somewhere!" Pulling her knife away, she gave Servius a pat on the head that he couldn't help but find mocking. "Congratulations junior. You've reached the dizzying heights of 'not dropped as a child.' Mommy would be so proud of you." If the situation had been even slightly different, that comment would've driven him into a bloodthirsty rage where he wouldn't rest until he had inflicted serious harm. But with Marie F. still on top of him, knife in hand, and an unbearable pain still burning on his face, his anger was tempered with legitimate fear for his life.

"Throwing something in your enemy's eyes is a good trick, but it only works once and isn't worth dick if they have their eyes covered. So it's worthless on Atlas soldiers, half of the NCR soldiers, and Walker." Her tone was praising, but the type of praising one saved for a child peeing while standing up for the first time. His face burned with humiliation. "But that wasn't a trick we were here to learn, so get up and let's go again."

Servius stared in disbelief, not sure how to react, unsure if reacting at all was wise. Marie F. could still easily slit his throat and leave him to choke on his blood in the snow. Before he could decide, a hand slid into Marie F.'s bright blonde hair, a fist closing tightly. Her eyes had barely enough time to swivel up before she was pulled back. Ancus spun on the spot, a look of quiet fury on his face, tossing her with a grunt of effort. Hissing in pain, Marie F. stumbled a few feet away and only just barely managing to maintain her balance. As she recovered, she made direct eye contact with Ancus.

She was still smiling, but it was a strained smile, one that betrayed a hastily boiling anger. "Hey. Mind telling me what the fuck you think you're doing? Shouldn't you be busy running off to lick at Caesar's taint?"

"I will not permit you to damage a healthy legionary," Ancus said, his arms folded in front of him. His gaze was firm and disgusted. "Your training has ended for the day. Be careful. Your status as an Amicus is not without limits. Particularly when you have been unable to produce particularly useful results during our time in Remnant. Caesar does not look kindly on failures. Only those who prove themselves worthy of his favor."

Marie F.'s smile was well and truly gone now. It was replaced by a livid glare of pure hatred. "Worthy of his favor? Oh, you stupid little boy. When you were playing dress up and dying by the hundreds at Hoover Dam, I was keeping that dumb fuck Presper from nuking you all back to the stone age a second time! A little thing you benefited from while I was making sure my home didn't become even more of a radioactive hell hole. But now you want to whine like a brat who wants mama's tit at fucking forty?!"

As a response, Ancus took a step forward. "It seems my words are not enough. Discipline is in order." Then, without warning, his arms shot forward wrapping around her waist, pinning her arms to the side, and pulling her in close. Hissing in unrestrained fury, Marie F. thrashed and twisted in his grip, spewing inhuman noises that were barely recognizable as words.

As Servius looked on, something about the situation felt odd. Regardless of how strong Ancus was, Marie F.'s movements produced no effect at all, not even tiny winces or corrections from him adjusting himself to keep his grip. Indeed, he seemed as immobile as a statue, much to Marie F.'s ire. "The fuck is this!?" she spat.

"Discipline," Ancus remarked simply. And then he began to squeeze. At once, Marie F.'s noises of rage were replaced by howls of pain as Ancus's thick, muscular arms tightened around her. Grunting and shifting his back, he hoisted her a few inches off of the snowy ground as his bear hug continued to tighten. Marie F.'s flails doubled in intensity, but they were no longer fueled by outrage. They were now driven by desperation. Her hands wildly spasmed, frantically reaching and grasping with their inch of reach, trying to find a route to salvation that was nowhere to be found.

Out of options, her mouth opened wide, and her head dove down towards her grappler's neck, her teeth bared. Servius opened his mouth to scream out a warning, but Ancus didn't need it. Jutting his head upward, the top of his skull collided with the base of her chin, smacking her mouth shut and forcing out another muffled cry of agony.

"FINE, I GET IT! I FUCKING GET IT ALL RIGHT!?" she screamed as a cracking noise began to echo. His lips curling in revolution, Ancus relented, throwing her back. Somehow, she managed to land on her feet, her freed hands clutching at her ribcage, glaring at him. "Fuck you," she said. You wanna baby the little bitch? Fine. Don't come crying to me when Walker slits his throat open." Straightening herself out, letting out tiny grunts of pain, she turned and walked away.

Servius stared at her as she left. The oversized knives laid where they had fallen. "A true warrior never neglects their weapons!" he said, not sure what point he was trying to make, only that he had to make her failings known.

"The garbage? Fuck em!" she called back, not looking at him. "You can have them if you want!" Her flippant dismissal of her weapons cut the hamstrings of his anger. Baffled, Servius looked at them in confusion before standing up. No, he did not want them. He had dishonored himself enough by using an accursed energy weapon, and he had only suffered that on Caesar's direct orders. His new sword, Legion steel and fire-forged by hand, was far preferable to those ugly, green swords. But even then, she had chosen the weapons when she had taken them. Even if she didn't want to use them, they were evidence of how she had triumphed over her enemies. Why just leave them.

Sighing, Ancus turned to face him. Reaching down, he grabbed Servius under the armpits and pulled him to his feet. "Why are you training with her?" he asked, his voice tired as he dusted the snow off of Servius's arms. "You know two Hoover Dam veterans and you pick her?"

Heat flooded into Servius's face and he instantly felt defensive. "She fought Barca," he said, wanting his voice to sound firmer and more confident than it was. "She knows things a legionary can never teach me."

"But is it worth it?" Ancus asked, tracing his finger over the gash in Servius's cheek. He flinched at the small but still sharp pain. "You know what kind of woman she is Servius. She's just as likely to bite your nose off as she is to teach you something. Did you see how she tried to bite my throat out?" He shook his head. "She's an animal wearing human skin. A simple, savage thing that will kill you the moment that you stop entertaining her. And what have you learned from her, other than how to be beaten like a dog?" Gently, he wiped the blood from Servius's cheek.

Servius wanted to retort, but no defense came to mind. Ancus softly clenched his shoulder, his grip understanding. "Let's go find Tullus and bandage that wound."

Servius grimaced. "Tullus will be furious," he said. Gods, he did not want to make Tullus upset right now. Not when they had so much they needed to be dealing with.

"As he has every right to be, perhaps he can slap some sense into you," Ancus said. "Now come along." Half-baked protests formed in Servius's mind, but Ancus had already begun to walk off, gesturing for Servius to follow. Feeling irritated and embarrassed, Servius followed. Eventually, they came across a fire at the edge of their camp where Tullus was sitting at a fire, Ilia by his side.

Tullus was pointing his blade arm at a small pile of kindling underneath a pot of boiling water, a jet of flame spraying from it and fueling the burning bundle of sticks. He stopped just long enough to take the pot off and carefully pour out the scalding liquid into four cups before looking up and at Servius. At once, he was on his feet, striding towards him as anger spread across his face. "This is Marie F.'s handiwork, isn't it?" he said. It wasn't a question, it was a statement of fact. Already, his good hand had darted down forwards his side, seizing a bag of healing powder. "If that woman wasn't under Caesar's protection I would've left her body to be eaten by wolves long ago. But it's ok, I can take care of this."

"Tull, it's a scratch," Servius said, his stomach clenching in embarrassment. He was a warrior of the Legion, a full legionary now, not just a recruit anymore. The wound where he had been slashed across the cheek barely hurt anymore. And he hated Marie F. just as much as the rest of them, he wasn't going to pretend otherwise, but he was more than capable of handling her. It took more than that to break one of Caesar's men. And what kind of a warrior would he be if he couldn't handle a tiny scratch? "I'll be fine in the morning. I just need to rub some water on it and-"

"Serv," Tullus said. There wasn't any anger or frustration in his voice, only a hint of exasperation. And something more, something Servius was all too familiar with. "I have seen mighty warriors that put you, I, and even Ancus all to shame. At their height, I saw them wrestle bulls and win, forcing them to the ground with their bare hands. I trained alongside them at the Red Okie Centuria. Do you know what claimed their lives at Hoover Dam? It wasn't blades or bullets, or even explosives. It was disease. On the long march back home, dozens of our warriors fell when minor wounds became infected. Slow, painful deaths, every last one of them. There is no honor in facing such a fate, just like there is no shame in avoiding it. So please. Sit." It wasn't an order. It was a request. Slowly, Servius sat down.

Tullus couldn't move as fast as he could when he had both hands, and it showed. The process of applying the stinging healing powder and bandaging it was an arduous one. He had to alternate between adjusting Servius's head and rubbing the powder with the same hand. But that was nothing compared to the bandages, during which Tullus was reduced to awkwardly tightening the knots with his teeth. Every step broke Servius's heart; his eyes glancing at the blade Tullus had instead of a hand. He would never be the same after what the Grimm, what Barca, had done. Even with his warrior's spirit shining through and pushing forward, Tullus was a broken man now. It made Servius want to weep, but he held the urge back. Tullus was staying strong. So would he. For him.

Finally, the bandage went taught. Sighting in relief, Servius leaned back. A tiny smile playing on Tullus's face, he handed Servius his cup of tea, before gingerly doing the same for Ilia and Ancus. As he gently sipped his tea, and by the gods, Tullus knew how to make the best tea, Servius idly glanced at Ilia.

He wasn't sure how to describe Illia. Friend was a strong word to use, but at the same time, he couldn't bring himself to say she wasn't his friend. It almost felt like they were in some sort of odd, in-between state. It was getting to the point where she was becoming an almost welcome part of his life, but she wasn't yet an irreplaceable part of it the way Ancus was, and certainly not the way Tullus was. It was confusing. But he was glad she was here right now.

The relationship between them was a quasi-friendship of sorts at this point, she had spent more time with the three of them than other members of the White Fang. Then again, when their leader was more fond of being an entitled, biovating child than backing up his actions, he couldn't blame her. It wasn't that different to how he preferred dealing with her than he did Rumford. Where their relationship would go from here, though, he wasn't sure. A passerby or two from the Legion had idly suggested that she was interested in Servius. The only thing that earned from him was a roll of the eyes.

He had a feeling that Ilia wasn't interested in men. It was hard to put into words, but there were subtle hints here and there. Seeing as how he wasn't interested in women, it made things between them much more simple than they could've otherwise been. He wasn't like Tullus, who appreciated both. His stomach curled as a horrible thought occurred to him. He and Tullus would both be expected to give the Legion sons at some point, a prospect that made him feel deeply uncomfortable. Tullus would be fine, he might even find the experience pleasant. But would he even be able to perform? What if his inability outed the two of them? Despite his recent promotion and the gifts he and Tullus had been given in the form of Aura, men were forbidden from laying with other men. They would be put to death, skilled warriors or not.

"Tull?" he found himself saying before he could stop it. "Have you ever considered what kind of woman you'd like when this is all over?" He had to be careful about this. A Centurion was right in front of him. He looked at Tullus, trying to plead for consolement without making things obvious.

Tullus looked back at him. A soft, sad smile of understanding parted his lips. "Here and there. My mind has been on other things though," he said. For a legionary, Tullus had a soft face that was on full display due to his brown hair barely reaching his forehead. Servius loved that face. It was the face of someone who understood, who cared, but could harden it when needed. "The key is to find quiet ones, the ones who can keep your secrets."

Servius nodded, understanding the hidden meaning. Maybe he could convince the slave he'd be forced to take as a wife to lie, to say that he had tried to father children but that she was infertile. Except that ran the risk of the Legion disposing of her as useless, or taking her for public use if she couldn't father children. His stomach turned sour at the thought, he thought he was going to be sick.

"I understand your discomfort, Servius." Servius jumped. It had been Ancus who had spoken. For a moment, fear tore through him and he thought that everything might come crashing down around him. But his voice was not that of an angry superior, but of a rather tired old man. Ancus stared unblinkingly into the fire as the other three watched them. "I've seen you, Servius," he said. "The way you hesitate. The way that you recoil. The barbarism of the Legion disgusts you, doesn't it?"

The centurion continued. "You can't fight it Servius. The Legion is bigger than you, bigger than you can comprehend. It's a giant that strides among the tribes and city-states, crushing them underfoot without mercy. Even if it were to die, its corpse would smother all those it corrals beneath it. Oppose it and you will be swallowed whole, ripped to shreds by it. You can't fight the cruelty, you can't escape it. Endure it, lest it becomes even worse."

Tullus blinked, looking at the centurion in disbelief. "Ancus. You need to be careful," he said in a low hiss. "Centurion or not, the Legate could have you crucified for talking like that. And that'd be a mercy compared to what Vulpes or the rest of the Frumentarii would do." His eyes darted back to the rest of the camp. "We don't know if he has a legionary as his eyes and ears with us. What's wrong with you? How can you live to be forty in Caesar's service and be so careless?"

Servius felt as if his world had been turned upside down. A legionary, even a veteran one such as Tullus, would be flogged for speaking to a Centurion in such a way. But that was barely noticeable compared to what Ancus had just said, a proclamation that was precariously close to treason.

Ancus was unmoved by Tullus's warnings. "You and Servius are both too young to remember a time before the Legion. I am not. I was twenty when my tribe met the Legion. Eighty-six of us went out to fight them. We laughed on the way, boasted. Just last year we had decisively beaten a band of nomads who had attacked us, we were confident the same would happen here. I had killed the nomad chieftain with an ax and wore his helmet of bone to intimidate the Legion, a stupid grin on my face. Thirty of us fell within ten minutes. They surrounded us. Within fifteen minutes, we had surrendered. The Centurion leading the attack led us back to the Legion camp in chains and collars, our petty trophies from minor wars taken."

Ancus's arms tightened. "Those of us who were still alive were brought before Caesar. He told us that we were the 41st tribe to fall before his might and that we all had a choice. Kneel before him and serve as his warriors, or he would sack our homes and kill whoever he didn't sell into slavery. I was...young. And so stupid. I tried to lung at him, to snap his neck with my bare hands. I didn't even get close before I was pinned by his guard. They almost executed me, something I was ready for. But Caesar ordered them to stop."

A deep, shuddering breath passed through Ancus's lips. "He said that I was not to be a hero, that the tribe must learn to bend or all would suffer. And he ordered ten of my fellow warriors be put to death in my place. One was beheaded on the spot. Another was crucified and died after an hour of suffering. The third was fed alive to dogs." Ancus's body tensed as his eyes narrowed, looking at the fire without seeing. "The fourth was tied between two bulls and...every single death was more cruel and sadistic than the last. And twenty-four hours later, when it was all done, Caesar took my bindings off and asked me if another ten had to die. I did what I should've done the previous day and bowed before him. Within an hour, I led him back to the front gate of our village, and we became a part of the Legion."

"The Legion is cruel, Servius. Cruel and powerful in equal might. The only way to protect yourself and the ones that you love is as a loyal servant to it, the cruelty falls onto others then. Anything else and you simply join them in suffering. It's horrific Servius. But it's the only option we-"

"Ancus," Tullus said softly. "Be. Quiet." Slowly, Ancus turned to look at Tullus. "If your faith in the Legion is faltering in old age, if you're feeling sentimental towards your old Profligate ways, fine. We all reach our breaking point sooner or later. But do not drag Servius down with you during this mid-life crisis of yours. His life as a legionary is just beginning and I can already see the bottomless wells of potential within him. Do not squander everything he can be with these treasonous talks."

"Tullus, I-" Ancus began, but Tullus interrupted him.

"And you, of all people, should know what Servius has been through," he said, venom in his voice now. "I was too young to serve back then and that pains me every day. Too young to stop the savagery of the profligates that ruined Servius's life. The Legate did the Legion and the world a favor by crushing them, slaughtering them, and ensuring they would never be able to practice their savage ways again. You were there, you fought alongside the Legate in putting those savages down. And now you want to talk of the cruelty of the Legion? To look back fondly times where you sat in a mud hut doing nothing instead of serving Caesar in order to bring order to a world of barbarism and madness. I thought senility didn't start until you were sixty. You disgrace."

The scorn in Tullus's last sentence was so overwhelming that Servius nearly flinched from it. Tullus wanted it to hurt, wanted Ancus to either recoil in shame or roar in fury. Ancus, however, did neither. His gaze was pitiful, looking at Tullus with sympathy. No more words came from him, however. "What happened back then?" Servius had almost forgotten about Ilia in the argument. Understandably, she was looking very confused, looking back and forth between the three legionaries.

"Tell her Ancus," Tullus said angrily. "Tell her what happened when Servius was a child. Tell her what real cruelty looks like. Tell her-"

"Tull," Servius said, finding his voice. "You're speaking to a centurion." He meant for the words to be strong and demanding, but to his embarrassment, they sounded more like a plea.

The anger vanished from Tullus's face, surprise taking its place. Half-formed words escaped his lips, whether they were justifications or excuses Servius couldn't tell, before he turned his attention back to Ancus. "I apologize for my rudeness, it is not for my place to question a centurion's wisdom," he said, the tone of his words making the sincerity of this claim dubious.

An uneasy feeling took over Servius, this rift was alien to him. It violated the fundamental rules of the Legion: obey your superior and do not speak ill of Caesar. The former had been beaten into Servius, at times literally, during his legionary training, while the latter had been unthinkable. Tullus was still stewing in his anger, even as he attempted to hide it, while Ancus looked morosely at the fire. He had to get away from this, even if only for a minute. Mumbling an excuse about relieving himself, he got up and walked back into the woods. As he went, a look of uncertain regret shot across Tullus's face. Servius gave him a weak smile in return. They would work this out, they always did. But he had to be alone right now. Tullus had doubtless not meant to do so, but Servius could feel bad memories licking at the corner of his mind.

He walked for a time, not paying attention to where he was going, simply crunching through the snow. Cold biting into him, part of him wanted to head back to the warmth of the fire already, but that could wait. Eventually, he found a tree thicker than he was, a rarity out here with mainly thin and spindly trees, and he pressed his back against it and slid down into a sitting position, bent his knees, and pressed his head into them. He just had to be alone for a little bit and then he'd be ok. Just a little bit. Just a little bit.

"Servius?" His head jolted up. Ilia had followed him, her brownish skin taking on a slight tinge of yellow. She looked concerned. "Are you ok?"

"I...don't know," Servius answered honestly. Part of him felt touched that Ilia had gone after him, but at the same time, he wasn't sure how to react. Of everyone back at their camp, Ilia knew the least about what he had been through, though not through any fault of her own.

Hesitantly, she sat down across from him, crossing her legs. "If you want to talk about it, I know what it's like to suffer at the hands of the cruel." She hesitated for a second. Servius could see an awkward uncertainty on her face, the same one he felt in his gut. "Humans hurt me, took people I cared about from me. And they just...laughed about it." The yellow was gone from her skin now, replaced with a bright crimson. "People I thought were friends heard that Faunus had died, and they just laughed. Stupid, selfish, people. What was your word for them? Profligates?" Servius nodded. "It's a good word. I wish I knew it when I was younger."

Ilia was being forward with him, but she was also being vague. He could tell that she was holding the finer details back, and really, he couldn't blame her. They didn't know each other that well, not yet. Still, she had given him something. He should do the same.

"Savages, where I come from, are brutal, merciless. The Legion was at war with a tribe to the east when I was a child, and we were winning. Not without cost, but we were pushing them back. We even killed their war chieftain." He had been excited about that because the feast had meant he would get to eat twice as much as usual, as well as enjoy freshly roasted Brahmin steaks that had normally been reserved for legionaries. He hadn't understood.

"They couldn't beat us, and they knew it. It's why their next war chieftain was a coward. She didn't attack our outposts or bases, no. She attacked our villages. Under her leadership, the savages burnt homes and whatever food they couldn't steal, salted the fields, and savaged the women and children of the Legion." Servius could feel his blood boil as the memories came back. The thick smog as the fields burned, the screams of terror as those without arms tried futilely to escape the roaring barbarians, the panic as he tried to find his mother.

"They killed them?" Ilia asked, horrified.

"No. Death wasn't cruel enough for them. They corralled everyone who wasn't a fighter and maimed whoever could walk. Then they drove the wounded deeper into Legion territory, trying to choke us to death without fighting us." His calf had been split wide open, it had hurt too badly to walk. Blood has seeped into the dark red of his mother's robes of Mars, frantically carrying her son forward even as her left arm dangled uselessly at her side. The gash in her bicep had long turned green, an abhorrent smell assaulting his nose. "Far too many died from infections, starvation, and disease because of them. But then Caesar set Lanius on them."

Ilia flinched as she heard the name. Lanius had that effect on people. "He crushed them, pushed them all the way back to their stronghold." Servius's jaws clenched. "They were more than happy to put our homes to the sword, but when they faced the same peril, they took the coward's way out. They detonated explosives inside their compound, picking mass suicide over facing those they had wronged." Anger had consumed him when he had first heard the news, anger that had never truly left him. All the pain they had inflicted and they had escaped the Legion's retribution.

His old nightmare flashed before him again. The multi-armed monster, axes cutting down legionaries as if it was swatting flies, pinning him to the ground. But they were all dead now, the Legion had prevailed in the end. Still seething, he looked back at Ilia. "The ones that laughed, what happened to them."

For a moment, Ilia didn't say anything. Then, a tiny grin of satisfaction flitted into her face. "I broke their teeth," she said, the spark of pride unmistakable.

"Good," Servius said. "We'll do that and more to them all." Ilia gave a firm nod, looking more confident. It was easier this way, to take his mind off of Ancus's warnings and Tullus's disrespect. The profligates were still out there, the ones who had hurt Ilia and himself. Barca had taken Tullus's arm, an injustice he would pay back a hundred times over, Rumford's insolence and treachery were long overdue for reprisal, and those who had oppressed their new allies. They would all fall to the blades of both the Legion and White Fang.

XXXXX

James woke to the unmistakable sound of someone vomiting. Blinking in confusion, his back stiff from his questionable decision to sleep with his back against the bed frame, he stood up. Winter was in the bathroom of their shared cell, on her knees, her head perched directly over the bowl. Her face was slightly puffy and she looked miserable, sparing James a glance before she convulsed and snapped back to the toilet, retching again.

Confusion fluttered through James until he remembered the aftermath of the fight with Cinder. Winter had been given a dose of Radaway. Shit. Between Cinder and the Scattered, the side effects of Radaway had completely flown his mind. "Sorry," he said softly, approaching her "I should've warned you." In response, James was treated to another volley of gagging noises from Winter and the contents of her stomach hitting the water. "If it means anything, this is the worst of it. And, you may not believe me right now, but the symptoms you would've gotten without treatment would've been worse."

"Cancer you said?" she rasped out, her breath shallow. "I don't understand. I was in the blast zone for a second. A literal second. How did I end up like this?" Slowly, she moved to stand up, pushing herself off the basin. James offered a hand. She took it, shooting him a grateful look.

"Gamma radiation works fast," he said, pulling her to her feet. She wobbled for a moment but managed to regain her balance quickly. "It's penetrative too. You need inches of lead to stop it completely. Alpha and Beta radiation are easier to stop, but Gamma is the real killer that you see in nuclear reactors and warheads. And cancer is just one of the things that can happen. It destroys your immune system, makes you more prone to seizures, breaks down your bone marrow, and this is assuming it doesn't just kill you." He decided to stop there. No point in telling her that if she had gotten a more extreme dose without treatment, she could've died of dehydration brought on by Gastrointestinal death while her body shriveled up until she was skin and bone.

"I see," Winter said. Bending down, she turned on the bathroom sink and quickly splashed some water onto her face. There was a noticeable bit of bile around her lips that she hastily washed off. Gingerly, not bothering to dry her face, she made her way back to her bed, looking as if it was taking her more effort than she would like to admit. James kept close behind, just in case she needed someone to grab her as she fell. The high-heeled boots she was wearing looked as if they should've been giving her trouble, but James was about ready to give up recommending that people wear more sensible footwear on Remnant. They still beat out the conquerors who mixed football gear into their armor.

Eventually, Winter reached her bed and sat down with a noise of relief. "So, that explosion you produced was a nuclear one?"

"A scaled-down one," James said, sitting down on his bed, directly across from her. "Full-sized ones are city destroyers, and whatever they don't destroy, they coat in radiation." A small part of his mind told him that he was edging around very dangerous territory. If he wasn't careful, he could give himself another episode. But Winter deserved to know the exact details of what would've destroyed her body if they hadn't nipped it in the bud. Swallowing, he continued. "When we get out of here, you might want to make it clear to Ironwood that his people should give that area a wide berth."

Winter nodded. "Understood. How many days until the radiation dissipates?"

That was a good question. James wished he had a good answer. "Couldn't tell you. Some of the smallest grade nukes only trigger Gieger counters for a few minutes. Oh, Geiger counters detect radiation, my Pip-Boy has one built-in. But the big ones still radiate areas centuries after they've gone off. Same principle as nuclear waste, I've seen barrels from Pre-War that still aren't safe to get near. My Gieger counter was going haywire back there, and considering how quickly you got sick, it's probably a decently strong concentration. I'd give it a few years at a minimum."

Winter blinked, her eyes widening in shock. "Centuries?" she said, dumbfounded.

"Centuries," James said morosely. At that moment, something occurred to him. Before now, nuclear weapons had only existed to Winter in the form of his words and whatever her imagination conjured up. But now she had survived a brush with nuclear fallout. She had gotten off with a light dose, thank Christ in heaven, but it still had given her a fresh perspective. "There's still areas out there without clean water or arable land. The Mojave area got lucky, a lot of the missiles heading towards it got shot down, and it was a low-priority target to begin with. Even then, Hoover Dam is a priority asset for any power that wants to rule the area, both for the power and the clean water."

"I...see," Winter said, looking down with wide eyes. It was so much harder to ignore a horrible reality once you had seen it for yourself, even if it was only a taste. Her hands clasped tightly as she stared at them without seeing. "I need time to think about this. This is a good deal you're telling me." James nodded. That was fair. If he pushed too hard she would push back, it was human nature. It would be for the best if she realized nothing good came from nuclear weapons on her own terms. "We're lucky that you weren't poisoned, though I'm not surprised you weren't. Semblances tend to not harm their user. It's why Cinder was able to wield fire without burning herself. Though you're only immune to the effects you directly create. Please remember that."

Ah. That explained how he had been at the center of a miniature nuclear explosion and had gotten away without a scratch. Well. Without a scratch from the explosion. "This means I need to be careful now, though," he said, holding up his wrist and looking at his Pip-Boy. A horrible thought crept its way to the front of his mind. "There's a one in five chance whenever I use my Semblance, I'll turn the room I'm in into a crater. Even if friendlies don't get caught in the blast, I could give them radiation poisoning a lot more severe than what you got. I might even end up turning someone into a Feral Ghoul by mistake. Just like Anna, but with barely more mental capacity than an animal."

As the realization began to hit him, a horrific dread began to work its way through his body, spreading like poison. Oh, God. He was dangerous. His body was a potential nuclear hazard every time he pushed the Wild Wasteland button. Using it out in the middle of nowhere when the only person within range was Cinder was one thing, but that wouldn't always be the case. What if he had accidentally nuked Pyrrha during their training exercise? What if he had turned the hospital back in Vale into a crater? How could he ever try and access one of his other powers when that risk was dangling over his head?

He looked down on the Pip-Boy in horror. It could be someone on Team RWBY next time, or Winter herself. Or, God forbid, it could go off in the middle of a city. "I can't use it again," he said, not sure if he was talking to Winter or thinking out loud. "If I can't control when it comes out, it'd be too reckless." Well, there he was. One of the few tools he had to give him an edge against the monsters of Remnant, gone. His already limited arsenal should he be stuck in a fight against Adam or Cinder again was somehow even more threadbare. Useless. He was useless.

He wasn't aware that Winter had gotten up until he heard the groaning of bedsprings. By the time he looked up, she was right in front of him, her expression unreadable. "Can you please stand up?" she said. Her voice almost sounded like the cool, neutral tone that she had used when they had first met. Except something wasn't quite right about it. Confused, James did as he was asked. "I should've done this last night," she said. "I'm sorry I didn't." And then she did something that caught James utterly off guard.

She hugged him.

James took a moment to recover from the shock of it. As he did, something else became clear. Winter didn't seem to know what she was doing. The positions of her arms were awkward, she seemed hesitant as to how tightly she should hold him, and out of the corner of his eye he could've sworn she shot him an uncertain look. It didn't matter. Despite everything, there was a sincerity and an earnestness to it. As well as the comfort that only came from the warmth and presence of another person.

Silently, a warm feeling sparking inside him, he returned the hug, wrapping his arms around her the way he would anyone. Firmly grasping her shoulders, he held her firmly but gently. Winter fidgeted in surprise but relaxed after a moment. She eased into it, her grip on him becoming more natural and comfortable. "Thanks," James said.

"Aura, and by extension Semblances, are an extension of the soul, of who you are. You are many things. You are not a person who leaves the possibility of devastation to simple chance. Your Semblance can be controlled. You just haven't discovered how yet. We will figure out how." She broke away from him with that. The way she spoke about the matter as if it was a truism, left James blinked in surprise.

"What makes you so sure?' James asked, in a way that made him regret it the second he opened his mouth. He sounded like a petulant child. Winter wasn't questioning his knowledge on something he had expertise on, why wasn't he showing her the same courtesy? However, instead of objecting, Winter gave a self-confident smile. Pressing her hands together, she closed her eyes. The Glyphs that she and Weiss were capable of making formed around them, collapsing and spinning like tops. After a few seconds, a tiny bird Grimm appeared in the palm of her hands, snow white and shimmering with a pale glow. Flapping its wings, it flew out of her hands and did a few laps around both of their heads before disappearing. James had seen Winter do this before, but only out of the corner of his eyes while they were on opposite ends of a battlefield. Up close it was oddly beautiful to see the normally demonic and skeletal beasts of Grimm in this light.

"I can summon echoes of creatures that I've fought," she said, more than a little proudly. "It took me a long time to master properly. My sister has the same Semblance as me, and she can't do it yet either. And she's one of the hardest workers I know." Pride flickered across her face. "She'll master it. She just needs time and someone to push her to her full potential. And just like her, you can master your Semblance with the exact same things."

James found himself giving Winter a small grin before he could stop himself. The dread that had come close to consuming him before was starting to slip away. "Let me guess. You're going to be the one pushing me?

"Oh, you're going to be getting the Atlesian drill sergeant treatment," Winter said. "If I deem it necessary, that is. You're at the age where ideally you'd be able to drive yourself forward, but it never hurts to have someone prodding you in the back." Winter opened her mouth to continue, only to gag ever so slightly. Staggering back, even as James instinctively reached a hand out, she slid onto her bed as she caught her breath, inhaling slowly. "I think today isn't a good point to start though," she said.

"I'm not at my best either, so fair," James said, doing the same with his bed. An awkward silence followed that. It was only natural, their conversation had ended with an abrupt anti-climax and now they were left with nothing to fill the silence. At least, that's how James felt. While he mentally fished for a conversation, he couldn't help but notice that Winter looked as if she had something on her mind.

"I don't want to push you, but there's one more thing I want to ask," Winter said. Her voice was lowered, James could tell the subject wasn't going to be a pleasant one. "You did something very odd when Cinder was attacking us. You snapped at...nothing." She trailed off for a moment. For the first time since James had met her, Winter looked uncomfortable and hesitant. "If it's not too private, could you please tell me what happened?"

Ah. Of course. James slowly closed his eyes as the question sunk into him. He had heard House back then and the stress of everything that caused him to lose control. Winter's reaction had been noticeable, even back then. And she hadn't forgotten. The urge to deny it, or at the very least ask Winter to please not ask overtook him. That would probably be all he needed, she seemed to feel she was delving deep into his personal business this time, and she was. This matter had long been a complicated issue for him.

But, forcing himself to breathe, he weighed everything. He had already told Winter about The Divide and the Marked Men. He had trusted Winter with A Light in Shining Darkness after she was concerned he might kill himself, concerns he had admitted were not completely baseless. And, now that he was sitting and meditating on it, what was the last secret after all of that? It was a deeply personal issue, but so was everything else he had trusted with her.

He let out a breath. Winter had saved his life and still cared about him even after he had gone off the reservation to massacre the Hunters. He could trust her with the truth.

"Arcade had a term for it. Schizoaffective Disorder. Depressive Type." Winter adopted a neutral expression, a nearly perfect one at that. Only her eyes gave her away, being a little too wide to be someone who was calm and emotionless. "I've been hearing voices since I was twenty. It's...it's a lot. It was worse back then, I had no idea what the hell was happening. And it didn't stop at hearing them, at times I thought someone was right behind me. I could feel their breath on the back of my neck. I didn't know how to deal with it. My early twenties are a blur. I did a lot of things I shouldn't have to get away from it." There were so few things he remembered from those years. He wasn't even sure he wanted to remember. At his worst, he wouldn't have looked out of place in a Freeside drug den. "I'm, well, I don't want to say ok, but I'm better now. I can handle the voices most of the time. I just need a drink every once in a while to handle it all." That was really all it was, everyone had drinks here and there to deal with their crap. He wasn't Qrow.

"Please don't tell anyone," he said. A bit of pleading made its way into the request, he couldn't help it. This was a demon he had been struggling with for over half his life. He knew how people started acting when you admitted you heard voices.

"That is personal information on a medical condition, of course I won't," Winter said, her voice sounding as if the idea was reprehensible. "I'll need to tell General Ironwood if you plan to continue working in the field with us, but no one else. The last thing we need is Qrow mocking you over this." So, her thoughts had gone to the same place as his. She paused, looking him over. Slowly, a vague feeling of melancholy seeped into her expression. "Why didn't you tell me earlier? I wouldn't have thought less of you."

"It's, well, hard to admit that you hear voices in your head," James said sourly. "Lots of people think that means you're one bad day away from turning into a serial killer. If not, they act like you've got the intelligence of a three-year-old. It's just a lot of crap I'm so sick of dealing with that I tend to keep things close to the chest." He had gotten enough judgemental glances and fearful looks in his younger days, no need to go back to that. "I'm not saying you would've, I'm just saying it's made me, well, want to keep it to myself."

Winter nodded. "Do you take any medications that we should be aware of? I'm certain we could get Atlas to cover your prescription until you can get back home."

"Uh. No." James said. He had felt uncomfortable with this conversation before, but the look of surprise and concern Winter was giving him now pushed it to a whole new level. "Winter, even two-hundred years after the war, Earth is a mess. We only got printing presses up and running a couple of decades ago. What little medicine production we have is to keep people from dying from the shit that kills on a daily basis. No one bothered hoarding Aripiprazole after the war, and no one is bothering to make it now." Winter now looked nothing short of horrified. A feeling was slowly slithering into him that he had made things worse.

"James?" Winter said. "Would you like for me to arrange some appointments after this? When we get out of here? I think proper medication would help in ways you can only imagine." There was a pregnant pause. Almost at once, the urge to reject the notion seized James, to an illogical degree. The voices were never fun, but he had handled it for thirty years now. He had never sunken to the depths he had when this had all started. Jumping to conclusions, his instincts screamed that Winter was talking down to him. Grinding this maelstrom of borderline panic to a halt, he forced himself to take a step back.

The conflict must've shown on his face because Winter continued. "I can't promise that this will magically make everything better. I understand that you have a lifetime of challenges ahead of you. All I'm saying is that the burden doesn't have to be as heavy as it is now. You're not alone James. You've never been." There was something in the way she said that a degree of gentleness he had never heard from Winter before, that broke through the impulse-based fog of feelings surrounded him. With that light shining through, his natural response of resistance felt like the wounded pride of a stubborn old man. Well, it had hardly been the first time such a thing had happened to him.

He let out a breath he had been holding for far longer than he had meant to. "I'll try. That's all I can promise Winter, I'll try."

Winter straightened up, looking as if she had just dropped ten pounds worth of stress. "Of course. Thank you." With that, she let the subject drop. For her blunt and to-the-point nature, it seemed Winter knew when to let a point lie. James appreciated it. The conversation had left a bit of nervous energy in his gut. Maybe medicine would be able to help, but who knew if side effects would end up making everything a living hell. What if he had to go back to Earth and ended up going through withdrawal? Slowly, he forced himself to breathe. These were the sorts of things you talked about with a doctor. Mercifully, he was able to bring himself back down to a state resembling normal before too long.

The silence that followed between them wasn't exactly awkward, but it did betray that neither of them knew how to follow up on that. Winter's gaze wandered around the room, taking in the rather bare furnishings of the metal room. "Our captors have not left us with much. And I don't think I could manage to exercise or sleep right now."

"What do you normally do for downtime?" James asked. When in doubt he could always offer to play a game of cards, but it was best to see what she liked first.

"I have a couple of hobbies: reading, exercising, sparring, and grand strategy games." Winter's tone had comfortably settled back into its crisp, neutral disposition. "There is one physical game occasionally playback at base regarding two mechanized armies fighting each other, it relies heavily on positioning, tactics, and a bit of luck. You might enjoy it, but sadly I doubt our captors would lend us a thousand Lien in models, maps, and rulebooks."

Privately wondering who the hell spent that much money on entertainment, James pondered Winter's list. He didn't want to stereotype, but if Winter hadn't mentioned the games, she would've ticked all the boxes of a stereotypical bore. Not that he wanted to insult Winter, but she did, on occasion, give off the impression she wouldn't be a whole lot of fun to hang out with. In a lot of ways, she felt like all business, all the time. But his petty, judgmental thoughts could stay to himself right now. Still, unless they wanted to be bored out of their minds, he needed more. "Anything else?"

Winter gave an idle shrug. "Nothing that I've done recently. When I was younger I danced and played the piano, and there was some joy to that. But I ended up dropping them when I was a teenager. They reeked of my father wanting a perfect little princess." Her eyes narrowed. "Everything I enjoyed, even a little, he either denied or tainted."

James was quiet for a moment. An idea had popped up into his head. It was risky, but it might just work. "It doesn't need to be that way." God, he hoped this worked.

"What do you mean by that?" Winter asked, looking at him with an analytical eye. The feelings of pure dread he had felt earlier were now replaced with simple anxiety, James fished around in his rucksack until he found his holotapes. Rifling through them, he picked out the one he had been looking for. Popping open his Pip-Boy, he slid it in and pressed play. A soft, gentle melody began to play, a guitar accompanied by soothing humming until the lyrics started.

"Till then."

It was a good song, nice and relaxing, what they needed right now. And hopefully, it would let him keep his nerve long enough to go through with this idea, even as it felt dumber by the moment. Pushing himself to his feet, he offered his hand to Winter. "Would you like to dance?"

Of all the things that had broken Winter's careful, neutral temperament, he hadn't expected this to be one of them. She stared at his hand in disbelief before looking up. "I haven't done it in ten years," she said abruptly. It wasn't a no, that was something.

"I don't think I ever did it, not well at least," James said. Maybe when he had been a teenager, but aside from that, he had nothing. "We're not putting on a performance, it's just to unwind. And only if you want to." Winter looked back down in her hands. Then, hesitantly, she took it. The blue fabric of her gloves intertwined with the brown leather of James's as she stood up. As they closed the distance, James realized that, like Pyrrha, Winter was an inch or so taller than him, though her high heels complicated things. Then, haltingly, awkwardly, they began to dance.

A minute passed before it occurred to James just how bad the two of them were at this. They were haphazardly swaying back and forth in a way that betrayed a lack of direction. He could've sworn he had once heard something about "leading" in dancing. But he had no idea what it was supposed to be or how to do it. Winter was just as lost as he was, her eyes constantly darting down to her heels in a way that confused James. Or at least it did until a sharp pain drove into his foot. Winter winced in embarrassment. "Sorry." Fighting back a hiss of pain, he forced a smile onto his face. He did the same thing the next two times she accidentally stepped on his feet.

Part of him wanted to throw in the towel after a few minutes of that. They hadn't done anything more complex than the swaying and it didn't seem that would change. But something happened. As they swayed, they found a rhythm. Their feet slid back and forth in unison, Winter's heels no longer coming down on James's boots. A soft smile of comfort slid across Winter's face as her gaze left her feet. James struggled to remember the last time he had seen Winter smile. She looked so much more at peace, so much happier, than she normally did.

To an outside eye, they doubtless looked like clueless amateurs. But James found himself struggling to care. A gentle warmth was spreading through his body as he let his worries slip away. At that moment, Caesar, Marie F. Adam, Cinder, and all the rest weren't his concern.

He was with a friend.

XXXXX

Author's Note: God. Four months? My update times just get worse and worse. If I'm being honest with you guys, my mental health has been a bit of a concern lately, and I'm worried that I'm pulling myself in too many directions with this and other projects I've got going on in my personal life. I wish I could promise you that I'd start writing faster, but I can't. I can only promise that I'll do the best I can. I also apologize if you were hoping for some action this chapter, but I had character development I wanted to get out of the way. I promise the next update after this will bring us back to the nighttime raid.

I have to admit, criticisms of Marie F. gave me pause to think, with concerns that she would be just a one-note psychopath. I wanted to avoid that (the one-note part, not the psychopath part, I'm not sure you can have an evil karma Fallout protagonist that isn't a little psychopathic) and I'm trying to use her relationship with Servius to do that. She does care for the guy in her own, fucked up kind of way, even though there's no other word to describe how she treats him other than abusive. I also realized that characters like this are at their most annoying when they never face consequences or suffer inconveniences and they strut around like they own the place, so I decided it was time for an Ancus bear hug.

On that note, of the Four Kings I feel like I had gotten all of them fleshed out, even Rumford to a degree, except for Ancus. I felt like he was falling into the category of character of being a vague authority figure that doesn't do much. So when writing this chapter, I forced myself to sit down and ask who I wanted Ancus to be. And god damn did I love the answer I got. There's this running theory of how many legionaries are fervent true believers and how many scream that they love big brother because they're terrified of the thought police. I decided to explore that. That way each of the Four Kings have a way of looking at the Legion that's unique to them.

Also, this is the chapter where I realized exactly how much shit I've piled onto James in terms of his mental issues. PTSD, alcoholism, suicidal tendencies, and now this. I've been planning on revealing that he's had Schizoaffective Disorder for a long time, I just haven't had a good place for him to bring it up until now. James is my first serious foray into writing a character with a serious mental illness that isn't PTSD or depression. If you asked me which of these ideas came first, I wouldn't be able to tell you because I don't remember. In the planning process for James, some of which happened while I was writing (I didn't have every beat of his story planned out when chapter one was put up) a lot of different pieces shuffled around until they all clicked together.

I did a lot of research, directly and indirectly, into James's issues. The vast majority of those who attempt suicide have case of substance abuse. Those who have Schizoaffective Disorder also have a tendency to develop alcholism and are at an increased risk of suicide. The point I'm trying to get at is I'm not throwing a bunch of stuff at James in a naked attempt to make him more arbitrarily tragic, I don't believe that a character is better just because they have more things to be sad about. I developed a very specific vision for James, hell this entire story is an incredibly specific and niche vision, and I wanted to do my best to make it as well realized and fleshed out as possible.

I'm not arrogant enough to claim I'm going to be writing an outstanding depiction of mental illness, I'm only promising that I'm going to be doing my very best and that I'll be as respectful and well informed on the subject as I possibly can. I hope that it's to your liking, but if you see areas where I can improve, please let me know right away.

P.S. No I'm not going to make it so that he got this from when he was shot in the head. I'm no Shakespeare but I'm not a hack either. Besides, in men, Schizoaffective Disorder develops at an earlier age.

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 20

Ubi Solitudinem Faciunt Pacem Appellant

XXXXX

The teeth of the chainsaw knife bit into Gambol Shroud, sparks flying as they tried to eat through the blade. Blake danced backward, her blade a black blur as she kept Vulpes's blade at bay while also deflecting shots from his pistol. Unnatural fear still gnawed at her, threatening to swallow her up whole, even as she tried to focus on Vulpes. Her heartbeat was frantic, breath short, hands quivering, as it took everything she had just to keep it from consuming her.

Smug superiority twisted Vulpes's face, his lips curled in a sneer as he pressed his assault. "I thought Atlas was supposed to be the mightiest of Remnant's Kingdoms, but they need children to safeguard their soldiers? Quivering, frightened children? Tell me Ms. Belladonna, who is more craven? You, wishing to flee to save your miserable little life, or the supposed defenders of Atlas, who cower behind you?"

Giving her no time to respond, he lunged forward, thrusting his knife directly at her mouth, the blades revving with hunger. Again, Gambol Shroud met the blow, but as Blake strained against the force of the blow, something brushed against her stomach. It was hard and metal. The crack of a gunshot tore into her ears as pain blossomed through her stomach, her Aura saving her from a fatal blow. Gasping, Blake reeled back, off-balance. A wide grin split Vulpes's face as he took aim, giving her a clear, unobstructed view down the gun's barrel. Again, the pistol rang out.

This time, however, Vulpes's face faltered in confusion. The clone that Blake had left behind faded away, the bullet passing harmlessly through its head. The real Blake was now at Vulpes's side. His head jerked in her direction, realizing what was happening just a second too late. Blake darted forward, catching him in the side with her sword.

Vulpes wasn't wrong. She was scared out of her mind, more scared than she could ever remember being. Maddeningly, she couldn't tell apart her natural fear of Adam and the artificial terror Vulpes had instilled in her anymore. The two had congealed together into an impenetrable mass that towered over her, impossible to make sense of. Running away felt like the most natural thing in the world right now. She wanted so badly to just turn and run, to get away from these horrible people. But she couldn't. Her friends were here, fighting the very same cold-hearted monsters that she was. Adam's cruelty terrified her, but the idea of it being unleashed on Ruby or Yang was unbearable to imagine. Worst of all, however, was what they would do to Weiss. Every last sadistic, vile impulse that Adam was capable of inflicting on the Schnee she now called friend? No matter how horrible the dread consumed her was, those thoughts crushed them underfoot. It was a choice between two horrible outcomes, except it wasn't. Letting her friends suffer in her place had never been an option. So, with no true choice, moving forward was all that was left.

Vulpes took a trio of hits before he managed to block the fourth incoming blow. His smirk was gone now. "So, Remnant is not completely devoid of those with mettle. But you are still a child, nothing more. A fledgling fighting tested warriors. You lack a fighter's drive, their push. You are trying to defeat me, while I am going to kill you." At that point, his knee drove into her solar plexus, forcing a breathless gasp from Blake. His blade came up next, a vicious, wild swing colliding with the side of her head, sending her crashing to the ground.

Blinking stars swimming in front of her eyes, she felt a booted foot crash down onto her chest, the pearly white pistol aimed at her again. Even though Aura, the air was forced out of her lungs. Panic was blossoming into life alongside her fear now. She couldn't breathe, he was going to kill her and all of her friends, and had to get out of here!

Flicking Gambol Shroud into its grapple form, she tossed it backward, the blade embedding itself in a tree. Grabbing the tether with both hands, she pulled hard. Sliding out from underneath Vulpes, he stumbled, his shooting hand jerking and a shot burying kicking up snow to her left. Forcing herself up into a sitting position, she jerked the tether in just the right way. Coming loose, the anchor came whipping back in her direction. Her desperate idea now in play, she rose to her feet, shifting her upper back, and swung. Swinging down like a hammer, the bladed end of Gambol Shroud came down on Vulpes. Taking him in the back, what happened surprised Blake. Gray Aura fluttered around him, before shattering like breaking glass. Vulpes roared as he stumbled forward, clutching back at Blake's weapon, which was now lodged firmly in his hip.

Blake stared. His Aura had broken already? Slowly, thoughts crept to the forefront of her mind. Aura and Semblance were reflections of the soul. Vulpes Inculta was the Legion's spymaster. He was not a front-line fighter. Almost at once, her fear began to melt away. It didn't vanish altogether, the dread of Adam still hung firmly over her, but the desperate mania was gone now.

Vulpes's goggles slipped down to around his throat as he glared at her with smoldering hatred in his eyes. All at once, the fear came crashing back down on her, Vulpes's Semblance taking effect again. Except it didn't take this time. The pounding terror telling her to run as fast as she could from Vulpes, even as he was hunched over with her sword in his back created a clash of cognitive dissonance. The fear was real, but somehow its bite was dull.

Again, she tugged on the tether. Vulpes's face convulsed in agony as the blade buried in his back dug deeper into him, the force thrusting him towards Blake. Dropping his blade, he reached back in a frantic attempt to rip Blake's weapons out, even as his other hand took aim. Blake jerked her cord to the side. Vulpes was sent sprawling to the ground, his pistol flying out of his hand, the lone shot he got off not even coming close to Blake.

Seeing an opening to end this, Blake dashed forward. Vulpes's face whipped up, the hatred on it now a blazing inferno, but before he could get so much as a single word out, a high-heeled boot slammed into his face, knocking him prone on his side again. With a quick pull, she ripped Gambol Shroud out of his body, blood spewing out the second she did, and transformed the weapon into its SMG mode with a flick. "Don't move," she said, her voice still shaking as she took aim at his head. "You've lost."

Her thoughts were a jumble. Heartbeats threatened to burst her ribcage, the beginnings of an adrenaline-induced headache were pricking at the edges of her head, and Gambol Shroud ever so slightly trembled in her hands. Yet she couldn't help but feel a tiny sense of pride in herself. Vulpes was one of the main leaders of the Legion, she had stood her ground against him, and she had managed to win. She hadn't run away.

There was no time to bask in her achievement, though. Vulpes was a valuable well of information that she had to make sure stayed both secure and alive. A crisis had been averted by Atlas interrogating a front-line soldier from the Legion, Vulpes himself doubtless knew of even more plots that could end with hundreds, if not thousands, dead. So she thought fast.

Ejecting the magazine from Gambol Shroud, along with the one round in the chamber, she fit in a magazine of Ice Dust and fired four quick shots. Within seconds, each of Vulpes's limbs was encased in ice, anchored to the ground. The lone exception was his left hand, which had still been at his back, which was now frozen to his armor. Seething, glaring at Blake as if hoping he could kill her that way, Vulpes thrashed in his frigid prison. "Don't," Blake said, the words coming out as a plea. "You'll make your wound worse, you might go into shock."

"So. You're still a coward. Insisting on stepping into battles but having no stomach to shed blood," said a voice from directly behind her. Blake froze. This time, the fear that came rushing up to meet her felt utterly organic. To make matters worse, it was a familiar fear, a borderline existential dread that shook her to her core. Slowly, wishing there was something, anything, that she could do instead, she turned around. He was right there, as she knew he would be: Adam Taurus.

A paradoxical combination of feelings hit her. He looked so familiar, as if an image had stepped out of her memories. Tall, imposing, clad in black with the ornately drawn red white patterns on his left shoulder, and a white mask covering his upper face. Wilt was in his hand, glinting faintly red in the moonlight, sharpened to perfection. The long, crimson blade was also coated with blood, a lighter shade than the steel beneath it, which was dripping onto the snow below it. It was where the clash took place, where her memories of Adam, at times shamefully idyllic, met the cruel reality of who he really was. He had already taken a life today, maybe multiple lives. How many people had he killed since he had fallen under the Legion's influence? How many had he made suffer? Too many.

"Adam, listen to me," she said, her hands now trembling with renewed vigor as she switched Gambol Shroud back to its sword form. "The Legion is using you! Vulpes's Semblance manipulates emotions! They don't care about the Faunus, they just want expendable shock troops!" She had no idea what she was doing. Time and time again, Adam had proven himself resilient to reason, to pleas for empathy, and even to calls for caution. But surely even he would be outraged over being used. Under all the hatred and ugliness had to still be a love for the Faunus people and an unwillingness to let the White Fang be squandered on someone else's war.

Her hope died a quick death. "Using us?" He had spoken with scorn before, but now amusement had leaked in to join it. "We've never been stronger! We're marching as an army to Atlas itself, the capital of Faunus oppression! The Legion has fought, bled, and died alongside the White Fang, the true White Fang!" Just as soon as it had come, the scrap of mirth in his voice was gone. "Not like Sienna Khan or your coward of a father. It's a little sad to see how few Faunus are truly dedicated to the cause. But in our darkest hour, the Legion has proven themselves true allies. Look!"

He pointed back to the main camp. Even from this distance, Blake could see Atlas gunships still staffing it and the Paladin that had now pushed into the center of the camp. "Hundreds of brave men and women given Aura, in an instance! Caesar blessed them all with the power to stand against their oppression the way your father never could!" A sadistic smile slid across his face. "Common Faunus can now be given the power to kill Atlas soldiers with their bare hands! An unstoppable force can be created overnight! Our moment is finally here! And you? You made your bed with, humans, with Schnees." He said the name with the bile of a cuss word. "I knew you were spineless Blake, but even I thought you had enough dignity to associate with those who oppress us above all others. But once you hide who you truly are," the tip of Wilt gestured to her headband, "you forget who would have a collar around your neck if they could."

All of it felt so wrong. Everything was being twisted into their worst possible outcomes. Weiss wasn't who she had been, Winter was the disowned child, and no one she had worked with opposed equality. But even with the logical side of her mind stating all of this, guilt was pumping through her regardless. As he always had, Adam was making her doubt herself, making her feel like a failure and a waste, invalidating who she was and everything she had accomplished. Every time, this is what he did. She hated it, hated feeling weak and powerless, and hated that he had that much power over her.

"You're wrong!" she said, not sure what she was trying to prove or how she would do so. "I-" but he was already upon her. His first blow would've removed her head from her shoulders if she hadn't brought Gambol Shroud up in time. Shuddering as their weapons met, Blake struggled to stay on her feet. Heartbeats thundered against her rib cage as she struggled to breathe, her breaths now quick and shallow. It was so hard just to stay on her feet. What was she supposed to do? Even now, Adam's Semblance was building up energy from their swords clashing, the Semblance she had seen tear apart heavy Atlas mechs like they were nothing. How was she supposed to stand up against that?

Adam pressed in without mercy and hesitation, Wilt becoming a blur of crimson. Not a single blow was aimed below her waist or to any peripheral areas, he was only interested in blows that would bring instantaneous death. In a way, it made his moves predictable, but keeping up with the sheer speed and force was taxing. Every strike left her arms jarring as if her shoulders had nearly been dislocated, her grip tested, and throughout it all, Adam's blade was slowly beginning to glow with its own light. If she didn't do anything, she was going to die.

She let Adam have ground, the edge of his curved sword biting into her neck. Or at least the neck of the decoy she had charged with Ice Dust. Adam's satisfied smirk turned to a frown of confusion as he hit an ice sculpture instead of her. Then, with a deafening crack, it exploded, showering him with shards of sharp ice as Blake charged in from where she had vanished to, his side. Adam was a master at parrying, but even he couldn't handle a swarm of icicles and her at the same time. Three quick swipes from her found the mark, as did more ice shards than she could count, even Adam swatted a dozen out of the air. Grimacing in pain, his masked face focused on her, but she was already gone. Grappling a distant tree, she pulled herself away, Wilt burying itself in the dirt where she had been standing.

"You're fighting with slavers and rapists!" she called out as she landed, putting distance between her and Adam, spraying at him as she went. The path she was taking would take her towards the thick of the fight, if she could link back up with the others, she could turn this around. Taking a risk, her eyes left Adam as she frantically looked for her team. It was hard to spot them in the chaos. Atlas and Legion forces were still clashing, over a dozen bodies coating the ground now. Many of them were Legion, the shattered remnants of Aura dimly flickering over their bullet-riddled bodies. But for every one of them, an Atlas soldier lay dead or dying: bleeding from shotgun induced gashes, half vaporized by the Legion's energy weapons, and the one that had been reduced to a rotten corpse. And throughout it all, shots rang out and weapons clashed against armor.

A flash of yellow broke through the mess and caught Blake's eyes. Yang was in the thick of it all, trading blows with the man with the rotting Semblance: Lucius, the head of Caesar's Praetorian Guard. He was an older man, around James's age with a graying beard and head of hair, and yet he moved with the speed and power of someone much younger. Barrages of punches were connecting with his stomach and head, Yang showing no mercy, zipping around to pummel him from all angles, but he wasn't buckling. Somehow, he was standing his ground, returning each punch taken with one of his own. More than once, Blake saw a planned assault by Yang shut down by his gauntleted fist crashing into her face, a built-in shotgun blasting her back. Even now, from this distance, Blake could see a glow starting to form in Yang's glowing locks.

"Yang! Bumblebee!" There was a quick jerk of the head and a grin from the blonde brawler. Lucius charged forward, gauntlet arcing over his head before he brought it down on her. Yang, in a single fluid movement, slid forward, ducked underneath it, and gave Lucius both fists right to the gut. Gasping for breath, the Praetorian was blasted off his feet, Yang letting out a laugh as she did. Spinning on the spot, she blasted her gauntlets behind her, sending her flying towards Blake. Despite everything, a kernel of warmth flickered to life at Blake's core.

It was briefly lived. Horrifically, the all too familiar sound of Brush, Adam's shotgun sheath, reached her ears. Not long after, a whistle followed. She didn't even have time to look back before the hilt of Wilt struck her in the back of her head. Agony spread outward as she was sent sprawling into the ground. Adrenaline pumping through her, she instinctively rolled onto her back, and just in time. Adam was already on her, flawlessly catching the now spinning Wilt before driving it point first down at her throat. Raising her own sword in the nick of time, her arms screamed in pain, her muscles feeling like they were tearing as their blades clashed, Adam slowly forcing them closer to her neck.

"Still running!? Were you ever brave at all, or did you just trick yourself into thinking you're something you weren't when you were with me?" Spit flecked onto her face as he screamed at her, involuntary shame building up inside of her, even now. How could he still do this to her, even after all this time? Why did he still have so much power over her?

"BLAKE!" A ball of golden fire slammed into Adam, shoulder-checking him so hard that he was forced to his feet and off of Blake. She had not seen or heard Yang angry very often, usually, she was more happy-go-lucky than that. But even when she did, it paled in comparison to the rage that was consuming her right now. Never, in all her time at Beacon, had she ever seen Yang like this. Her teeth were bared, veins were popping in her neck, and her eyes burned like stars with a smoldering hatred. Her fists were a blur as she laid into Adam, lacking any strategy or foresight as blow after blow rained down on him, all aimed directly at his face. One or two got in at first, enough to leave a noticeable crack in his mast, but he adapted quickly. Crimson began to meet yellow with every strike, Yang's jaw clenching even tighter as Adam adapted to her barrage. Wilt wasn't just glowing now, it was starting to shine with built-up energy. Terror gripped Blake in an icy grip. Yang was feeding Adam's Semblance and didn't know.

A warning formed on her lips, but before she could even formulate how to adequately inform Yang about the danger she was in, something thundered past her. Lucius, completely ignoring Blake, was charging at Yang as fast as he could. "Behind you!" Forcing herself to her feet, she switched Gambol Shroud to its grapple and tossed it. She had half considered targeting Lucius, but no, she had first-hand experience on how deadly Adam could be. Gambol shroud looped around the White Fang leader's ankle before she pulled it taught. She had acted just in time. Adam had slid his sword back into its sheath and drew it in the blink of an eye. For a second, Adam was a mass of black with glowing red outlines, Wilt a burning, scarlet sun in the dark. Too many times Blake had seen this snuff out lives as if they were dim candles.

Mercifully, Yang was not one of them. Blake had heaved on Gambol Shroud's cable with just enough force that as Adam swung, he missed. Fumbling to the side, a blade of blood-red energy surged forth with staggering force, tearing past Yang before she could so much as flinch, and hitting a legionary in the distance instead. The man's Aura shattered instantaneously, Adam's Semblance biting through it with ease before carving into the man's torso. He didn't even have time to scream before he hit the ground, his upper half doing so a second after his lower half. The strike had cleaved him in half, the cut crude and uneven, but undeniably complete. The anger faded from Yang's face as horror filled it instead, amplified as a few stray golden locks fluttered downward. Blake's heart was now beating so fast she didn't know how it hadn't given out, the thought of Adam not merely skimming Yang's hair but slicing her in half-consuming and terrifying her.

Acting quickly, Yang's brought her foot up into a quick kick at the side of his head, forcing him back a few steps before she followed it up with an utter barrage of punches. Instead of directly punching Adam though, she sent a storm of shells rocketing towards him, blanketing the ground around his legs. Teeth bared, Adam was forced back, lest he be caught in the thick of the blasts, only able to deflect one or two with his sword. Yang now had space, room to breathe. Or at least, she did from the front.

She turned around just in time to see Lucius bearing down on her. As he closed the last leg of the gap, he pushed off his right foot, arcing upward into the air, punching downward with a battle cry that broke through the cacophony of noise around them. Pulling Gambol Shroud back, Blake shifted it back to its gun form and opened fire, but the stream of bullets into his back didn't seem to slow Lucius down. Spreading her legs wide, Yang tightened her right fist and punched upward. Her hand connected with Lucius's jaw before he could lay a finger on her. Jubilation shot through Blake.

But then, even as the legionary's momentum died and he began to tilt back, his other hand darted out, grasping firmly around Yang's forearm. And as he righted himself, he looked at Yang with triumph in his eyes. For a moment, Yang looked down at her arm, red eyes narrowed in confusion as if she could see something Blake could not. Then, she started to scream.

It was one of the most heart-wrenching things that Blake had ever heard in her life. Yang Xiao Long, the strongest, most dependable person Blake had ever met, was screaming in pure agony. Rot and decay were spreading through her arm, spiderwebbing from Lucius's hand. Skin welted and flaked off as it turned a sickly green, powerful muscles atrophied until they resembled rotten fruit, and as it reached the fingers, nailed yellowed, cracked, and fell away like scabs. And throughout it all, fear and agony seized every part of Yang that wasn't dead.

Her left arm became a blur, driving over and over again into Lucius's face in a desperate attempt to escape. Focused on maintaining his grip, Lucius was caught off guard and took a trio of hits to his left cheek, a dribble of blood leaking out of his lips. The fourth blow, to Blake's horror, didn't connect. Lucius caught it, not by the forearm as he had with the last one, but this time wrapping firmly around the left arm's Ember Celica. At once, gold began to turn to brown around his fingertips as the gauntlet began to rust.

Blake barely registered all of this. The second Yang had begun to scream, she had switched Gambol Shroud back to its grapple form and thrown it. Yang had seconds at most and she had no idea how much Aura Lucius had in reserve, trying to break his Aura was too much of a risk. Circling Yang's abdomen, the grapple hitched itself and Blake yanked her back. Two things happening in unison. The cord in her hands gave way, meaning she had succeeded in freeing Yang from the death grip of Lucius. At the same time, there was a soft, wet snap, not unlike someone cracking old, rotten wood in half.

Time seemed to slow down for Blake. Like a bundle of feathers, Yang almost seemed to drift towards her. She felt so light; it was a disorienting feeling. Someone as strong as Yang should've felt heavier. Completely lacking in grace, she tumbled into Blake's arms. Her long, flowing hair was smooth and soft, her skin was warm and comforting, and her heart hammered strong in her chest. And yet none of it could distract Blake from Yang's arm. An ugly, black stump that stopped above where her elbow had once been was all that was left of it. Stringy lines of torn muscle and sinew dangled from the edges, flapping impotently. Two yellowed bits of bone jutted out awkwardly, their ends uneven and jagged. The stench was horrific; it was a scent of death that assaulted her nostrils and never drove her to gag.

This couldn't be right. Nothing about this made sense. Yang was right here, warm and breathing and with everything that made her special. She had managed to avoid Adam's deathblow. How could such a triumph be turned on its head so cruelly? How could someone so full of life be mutilated so easily and so suddenly? Why? Why Yang?

Yang's pupils were so dilated that they were barely visible. Her mouth opening and silent rasps spilling out, her gaze darted back and forth between the remains of her arm and Blake. Although Yang had been warm to the touch a moment ago, it was fading like a candle about to sputter out. Cold was creeping in alarmingly quickly, Yang becoming clammy to the touch as her breaths became short and shallow. Oh no. Oh no. She was starting to go into shock.

They had to get out of here. Vulpes, Lucius, and Adam didn't matter anymore. If Yang didn't get to safety, she would die. Blake had been willing to suffer through so much, endure so much, but the thought of a single member of her team dying was more than she could bear. Pulling Yang's remaining arm over her shoulders and taking on the majority of the woman's weight, she frantically looked around for an escape route or help, trying to remember what you were supposed to do to tend to a shock victim at the same time. "Ruby! Weiss! Help! PLEASE!" Where were they? Gods above, she couldn't see them.

Shifting Gambol Shroud into its ranged mode, she turned back, half-baked thoughts about keeping Lucius at bay flitting through her mind. Instead, Adam was right there, mere feet away from them. Her blood ran cold. In the heat of the moment, she had utterly forgotten about him. Raising Gambol Shroud, she opened fire. It was a futile gesture, she had barely gotten a single burst out before he was on her. Wilt tore down in a flash of red. He ignored Yang completely, it was meant for her.

Pain split through her as Adam found his mark. Purple light flashed and then died around her as she felt her Aura break. The force of the blow crashed onto her like a tidal wave and her knees buckled. Her back slammed into the ground, Yang crumpling next to her as panic flooded her. She had to get up, Yang needed help, she couldn't let it end like this. But before she could so much as blink, Adam was above her, Wilt in both hands, pointed aimed downward. He drove the sword down, straight at Blake's stomach. Instincts screamed out at Blake to use her Semblance to escape, but with her Aura broken, it wasn't an option.

It found its mark.

Sharpened steel ripped into Blake, Adam's force driving the sword with enough might that she felt it exit through her back. Her eyes locked onto it, barely able to understand it. Even though she could feel the agony of being impaled and see the blood now pouring out of the wound, it felt distant and otherworldly. It was like someone else was feeling the pain in her stead. Instead, her thoughts turned to Yang. Had she failed them both? Would Ruby never see her sister again because Blake hadn't been brave or capable enough?

Above her, Adam was grinning with triumph, as if he had accomplished everything he had set out to do. From behind him, Lucius approached them, stopping beside them. He looked down on Blake, his eyes narrowed in disapproval. "That was selfish of you. She fought well and hard, all you did was make her suffer. And if she lives, you've forced her to the miserable torment of being a cripple.

Yang's decomposing forearm was still in Lucius's hand, the half of Ember Celica that had been fastened to it now sliding down the emaciated limb. Taking it just before it fell off, he held it up, turning it over in the dim light. Tiny bits of green and black flesh flaked off. Dropping Yang's arm as if it were garbage, he fitted Ember Celica onto his right wrist, fastening it into place. Experimentally, he shoved his fist out. With a bang, it fired, a shot shining as it tore into a nearby tree, blasting a fist-sized hole into it. "Well designed," Lucius said, taking up a fighting stance, Ember Celica on his right hand, his worn gray gauntlet on his left.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Adam said, glee in his voice. With a tug, he pulled Wilt out of Blake. For whatever reason, that snapped Blake out of the semi-dream-like state she had been in. The full force of her wound hit her all at once and her mouth opened wide in a scream, her hands grasping limply where she had been stabbed. Adam's lips curled in a smirk. "We could've been something great together, Blake. But I'm more than happy to do it without you." Wilt came down again.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a blinding flash of white light enveloped Blake. A giant greatsword as long as Blake's body, as well as spectral and ethereal, had appeared between the two of them. Adam gaped as his katana bounced off of it. The sword was grasped by an armored hand, made of the same pale, semi-transparent material as the sword. It was jutting out of a glowing, spinning snowflake that was floating above Yang and Blake. Blake recognized one of Weiss's glyphs. But it didn't stop there. A second hand formed at the glyph, gripping the edge and forcing it open wider. A figure resembling a knight in full plate armor climbed out of the widened opening, still firmly holding its sword up as it planted both feet on the ground. Rising up to its full height, it reached a staggering fifteen feet at minimum. Then, without missing a beat, it stepped forward, bringing its gargantuan sword up in a viciously powerful underhand swing.

Adam shifted, bracing the flat end of his sword against his palm and catching the blow with the center of his blade. Even then, the raw momentum of the knight's swing was so great that as it struck, Adam was forced back, his heels crunching through several feet of snow as he struggled to stay upright. There was no relenting or mercy from the knight, which pressed forward and attacked without mercy. Blake stared, unsure of what was happening until a blur of red appeared on the edge of her vision.

Blake wasn't sure what happened next. A horrible, disorienting feeling overtook her, nausea pulsing through her as she experienced an uncomfortable feeling that could best be described as being turned inside out seized her. The next second, she was lying flat on her back, the cold prickle of snow biting into her. A thin arm was wrapped around her waist and someone was sobbing next to her. She knew that voice. "Ruby?"

Looking up, she saw her team's leader looking back down at her. Tears were streaming down her face as deep, wet sobs seized her, occasionally interrupted by a hiccup, her face a bright red. The moment she realized Blake was looking at her, she forced a smile on her face. Whatever she had meant to do with it, it backfired. By itself, her lips curled up into a wide, bright expression, one that clashed horrifically with her seizing body, swelling face, and the look of utter hopelessness in her eyes. "You're gonna be ok," Ruby whispered, sounding as if she was trying to convince herself just as much as Blake. "You're both gonna be ok."

"Shit! Lapis! The kids are down!" It was getting hard to see now, everything was starting to get fuzzy, but she could make out a rock outcrop and five Atlas soldiers taking cover behind it. Three were opening fire at someone she couldn't see, any one of them was pointing at her. "Get them over here!" At once, Ruby tightened her grip and pulled both Blake and Yang behind the rocks, mere inches away from the soldiers. One of them dropped her rifle and opened a kit at her side.

"The blonde one is going into shock, don't move her more than you have to, and keep her legs up high. Dodger, if she starts bleeding from the mouth, turn her onto her side. I need to stop the bleeding on this gut wound, it looks like it went right through her kidney." Blake felt a needle prick her arm, but only barely. "Ms. Rose, I need covering fire while I work." But the medic had barely begun speaking before Ruby had swung Crescent Rose down like an ax, burying its blade in the snow. With a borderline frantic zeal, Ruby began to open fire with her weapon's rifle.

Slowly, Blake turned her head back towards Adam. The knight was still continuing its assault, and right behind it was a short girl with white hair. Weiss. Weiss, throwing an occasional thrust at Adam as she darted between the legs of the massive figure, turned her attention towards Lucius. The head Praetorian was heading in her direction, both gauntlets at the ready. Her body tensing up, Weiss thrust forward with her rapier, driving it straight into the ground. As Lucius neared her, knees bending in preparation for another assault, a spiked lance of ice erupted out where Weiss had thrust. It found its mark in Lucius's chest, forcing him back.

Before anything else could happen, there was a flash of white. One of Weiss's glyphs appeared in the middle of the ice spike, angeled upward. With a loud snap, it was broken in half, and the outer end of the spike was pushing upward, towards the sky, taking Lucius with it. In unison, a trio of glyphs appeared behind Lucius and the makeshift projectile propelling him forward. He passed through all three, his speed increasing each time until he was little more than a speck in the distance that slowly began to come back down.

"Weiss!" Ruby called out. "They're safe!" With a jerk of her head, Blake saw the smallest of nods from Weiss before a trail of glyphs appeared in front of her, leading back in their direction, that she immediately stepped onto. Like a practiced ice-skater, she glided across the smooth, glass surface of the glyphs, back to her friends and safety, away from Adam. But not fast enough. Behind her, barely visible behind the glow of Weiss's summon, Adam's figure had turned black as he swung his sword. His wave of Crimson energy tore through the knight, bisecting it at the torso, and continued onward directly towards Weiss.

Weiss noticed. Terror seizing her body, she spun on the trail of glyphs as she neared the end of her journey. With no time to dodge as the beam closed, she took her sword in both hands and made to block it. She was only partially able to get Myrtenaster up in time. The blade hit her head on, clashing against her sword's guard. For a fraction of a second, she struggled against it, the energy robbed of some of its stopping power by the knight. Then, Weiss screamed. She was blown off the path of light, her Aura shattering and the glyphs snuffed out. She landed no more than ten feet away from them all, panting and quivering.

Slowly, Weiss raised her right hand, looking at her fingers. All four of them. Her pinky only had a few centimeters left about the lowest knuckle. The rest of it was lying on the ground right in front of her. There was no bleeding, Adam's Semblance cauterize the wound. But it was a small comfort. Now two of her friends had been mutilated. Because of him.

Everything was fuzzy now, but Blake still felt like she had been stabbed through the heart. Between Yang and Ruby, she had thought nothing could've possibly made this situation more hellish. And yet Weiss was struggling to get to her feet, clutching where her finger had once been as she moved to pick up her sword. She was trying so hard to put on a brave face, but Blake could already see tears forming in her eyes as her hands trembled. Weiss. When they had first met, Blake had thought the heiress was a spoiled, selfish brat. Such a thought was incomprehensible now. Why her too?

"Two of them, incoming!" The Atlas soldiers and Ruby adjusted their aim as two more legionaries with shotgun gauntlets charged. However, before a single shot could be fired, something inexplicable happened. They both collapsed mid-charge as if they had tripped. And as they hit the ground, deep coughing fits seized them, along with groans of agony and deep, involuntary convulsions. The heads of the soldiers exchanged quick looks, caught off guard by this sudden development.

"What...what the-" one of the legionaries rasped out before his head jerked forward and his mouth opened wide. A glob of blood splattered the ground, the putrid smell hitting Blake's nostrils before he retched again and vomited up even more a second time. The whole time, his retches were interspersed with hacking so vicious that tiny flecks of blood joined the mass already on the ground and convulsions that were so strong that the man couldn't even push himself up. "I can't-I can't-" the man tried to speak, only for another round of vomiting blood to seize him.

The other legionary didn't even manage to speak, merely convulsing on the ground as he experienced the exact same symptoms. Facedown in the snow, nothing was separating him from the rapidly expanding pool of his own blood. Before too long, both of their movements grew weaker and weaker, to the point where they were barely visible. Then, they stopped, neither moving. They were both dead.

"Oh, gods." One of the soldiers pointed. Whatever had just happened, it was spreading throughout the enemy forces. No less than five men were now on the ground, the exact same symptoms gripping them, and many more were beginning to cough. Adam was not among the affected, instead looking over the battlefield in confusion. Then, growling, he turned and began to run. As she looked, Blake could just barely make out a small group that had already begun to run in the same direction, away from the main battle. Seconds later, Adam was gone. Lucius was out of sight and she couldn't spot anymore Legion VIPs anywhere. Vulpes was still on the ground, struggling madly against his restraints, but one of the Atlas soldiers had moved to secure him. A few were still fighting, able to fight through their symptoms and only minor trails of blood leaking from their mouths, but it was clear the fight was over. The surviving Atlas soldiers were beginning to outflank them.

"It's...why they didn't do this before," one of the soldiers said, looking down at the two bodies. "It kills people."

Ruby, however, spared it little attention. Abandoning Crescent Rose, she dove into the snow, desperately digging through it with her bare hands. With a cry, she pulled something out. A finger. Weiss's severed finger. Spinning on the spot, she held it out to the medic. "Can it be reattached?" she asked, fear dominating her voice and tears still flowing down her face.

The medic spared a brief glance. "Maybe, I don't know. We're far out from the base. Leave it with me, I'll see what I can do after I stabilize these two, go help the others clean up the stragglers." Ruby looked as if she wanted to do nothing more than refuse, to stay with her team. She looked at all three of them: her sister who was now convulsing worse than ever, Weiss clutching her hand and losing the battle to keep herself from crying, and finally Blake struggling to keep her eyes open.

Without a word, she grabbed Crescent Rose and sped off with the aid of her Semblance, towards the handful of remaining firefights. "Bleeding's been staunched, we need to stabilize this one now. Dodger, I need your help with this. Do exactly as I say." Blake looked down. The medic had already bandaged her wound. It was so hard to focus. But she had so much to say to all of them, to Ruby, Weiss, Yang. She had to say she was sorry, to apologize for getting them into this mess. Her mind a jumble of desires and half-formed thoughts, she stretched her arm, reaching out for Yang. It was the last thought she had before darkness took her.

XXXXX

Author's Note: Vulpes going down fairly early on isn't me trying to assassinate the character, I genuinely think this is how it would work out. He's a spymaster, he operates on terror, sneak attacks, and proxies. He doesn't do as well when someone is able and willing to face him head on. Like when he turns his back on you in Vegas and the last this that goes through his head is a 10mm, or if you meet him in Nipton with the Gun Runners pack. Hence his Semblance reflects that. It's excellent for manipulating people and making them too afraid to fight him. But if someone with decent skill does stand up to him, he's gonna struggle.

Had a bit of low writing energy, but the finale pushed me through to finish writing this. It's...bleak, yeah. Anyone who's been following my work for awhile knows how I roll, happy endings have to be learned in my book. James got his turn to go through the meat grinder, it's Team RWBY's turn. Though I didn't want to just kick them and go "you lose," so I gave them little victories here and there, like Weiss managing her summon a little early and them managing to defeat and capture Vulpes. But it's a hard moment for Team RWBY, because they essentially got thrown in the deep end and had to deal with multiple Aura users as well as awoken legionaries, while they were still first years not experienced by the later seasons. I honestly wanted to depict them doing the best they could in a situation I intentionally made unfair, the same way James did the best he could despite getting ganked by Cinder.

The next chapter focused on them, I'll have them getting some much needed rest, I promise. Also, please let me know what you like or do not like about the story, it's how I grow as a writer and make the story the best that I can. What's more, if you want to join me and a bunch of my writing friends on Discord, please let me know. Than you so much for sticking with me. Your views and reviews mean more than I can put into words.

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[Vensers Prodigy]

Considering how Vulpes has yet to survive any character I play reaching nipton, I really don't think it could be classified as character assassination. Without Aura he's no more resistant to a 9mm to the head than the rookies, wearing ceremonial armor, and lacking heavy weaponry. He really shouldn't leave the command tent, but gets away with it by being sneaky enough to avoid rangers. Someone he didn't know about that hates his guts stumbling across him and attacking is all but guaranteed to off him. Aura gives an edge, but without years of aura training he's still hilariously outgunned by a aura combat specialist. A team of students having issues but winning is quite plausible, especially with how they got split up.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 21: Teutoburg Forest

XXXXX

Anticipation was no stranger to Cinder, but it gripped her with a ferocious strength today. She had thought the day she had taken what was rightfully hers from the Fall Maiden had been a day of excitement and jubilation, and it certainly had been. She still felt delightful tingles when she thought back to that day, but it paled to the expectations in front of her now. So much had been done with just half of the Fall Maiden's power, the White Fang had been brought to heel, the CCT had been compromised, and James Walker had been reminded of his place. And soon she would be complete.

Oh, there had been setbacks. Walker and the Schnee woman should be dead, but now that she had been given time to calm down, she could savor the fruits of her victory properly. Walker was done, he would never fully recover from the injuries she had inflicted on him, and the few days he had left would be spent quaking in fear of her, as he should. He and the Legion had ruined her plans for Beacon, but the Fall Maiden was within her grasp once again, and with Adam and Caesar drawing Ironwood's attention, she had an opening for the Winter Maiden and the Staff of Creation. This was who she was. She took setbacks and turned them into opportunities. She always had.

Right now, she was strolling through Ironwood's base at a leisurely pace, Emerald beside her, Neo in front of them, still disguised as an Atlas soldier. Emerald was using her illusions to render herself and Cinder invisible. She could only manage to fool two people at most, and even then she was pushing herself. It didn't matter though, with Neo that was more than enough. She was taking them on a rather roundabout path, one that felt like it was taking the better part of half an hour, but kept them from encountering more than two guards at a time. It was taking so much time, but it would be worth it in the end.

Finally, they reached their destination, coming to a halt directly outside of Ironwood's office. Two armed guards stood at attention, their eyes snapping onto her at once. "State your business, Private," one said gruffly. "General Ironwood isn't here right now. If you have a message, leave it with me. Otherwise-" Cinder didn't have time for this. Forming a pair of swords, she flung them idly at the necks of both guards. Their deaths were quick, neither was still alive by the time they hit the ground. Her aim had been perfect and her act near-silent, both swords were lodged perfectly in their throats.

Emerald grunted next to her, expanding the illusion to cover the two fresh corpses. Next was the door, doubtlessly locked. Not that it mattered. Grasping the metal, industrial-grade knob in her hand, and watched with satisfaction as it began to glow with heat. A little pressure from her was all it took. Within seconds, a fist-sized hole had appeared in it, liquid steel sloping onto the ground. Casually, she reached through and opened the door from the inside.

Stepping inside with her accomplices, she looked around. Part of her had expected the Fall Maiden to be right there, tucked away into the corner of his office. Ironwood was so very simple and predictable like that, yet she was disappointed. But she was close, so close, she could feel it. "Where is she?" she growled, looking at Neo. The short woman was unimpressed, eyes narrowing as she gave an unconcerned shrug. "He would never let her go far. There's something in here, start searching!"
No sooner had she given the order than a soft knocking filled the room. Emerald had her ear pressed against the wall and was gently rapping her knuckle on it. Methodically, she dragged her ear to the side, continuing to tap as she went. "What are you doing?" Cinder asked impatiently.

"I think I know what he did," Emerald said absentmindedly, more focused on her search. "Before you took me in I found a couple of setups like this. Rich, crazy, oh sorry, 'eccentric' old folks who couldn't just settle for a safe or a padlock. They thought they were being fancy and clever, even though there's a clear difference between a solid wall," she stopped, tapping one area three times and smiling, "and a door with empty space on the other side. Like right here." Spreading out, she began to run her hands over the wall. "There's probably a hidden keypad around here somewhere, assuming it doesn't get activated from the computer. Which defines Ironwood more, paranoia or arrogance? That might help us narrow it down."

Cinder had no time for elaborate lockpicking. Stepping forward with fists clenched, her gaze focused on the piece of wall Emerald was investigating. The former thief was wise enough to realize what was about to happen and to get out of her way. Pressing the palm of her hands against the wall, Cinder didn't settle for merely melting a portion of the wall, not now that they were out of sight. No. She unleashed the full reserves of the Fall Maiden's power, streams of amber energy flying from her eyes. This time, the wall didn't melt. Instead, she blasted forward with fire and energy. It took mere seconds for the hidden door to be blown off of its hinges, impacting the far end of the hidden chamber she had unearthed, leaving a dent. They would hear her. Let them. Nothing they could do would stop her now.

The room was small, a panic room designed for a lone person. There was little in it aside from basic survival supplies, lights, and exactly what she had been looking for. Sitting in the corner was a giant metal tube with a see-through core. A tan-skinned woman was resting inside, her eyes closed. A soft sigh escaped Cinder's mouth, catharsis washing over her. Her long, tiring journey was finally over.

"You should know that you suffered because of his Ozpin and his constant need to meddle," she said. The woman in the tube wasn't conscious, but it didn't matter. Cinder wasn't saying anything she would live to remember. "Meddling when he gave you a power you were never worthy of, when he ripped you away from your death just so you could endure pointless suffering, and when he drafted you into a war you were always doomed to lose." She held her hand out. Glass fragments flowed together into her bow, solid and glowing with inner heat. It always felt so warm when she used it, so comforting.

"This was always how this was going to end." An arrow formed in her other hand. She knocked it. As she let it loose, euphoria washed over her. Her aim was true. It was finally all over.

XXXXX

Jaune wasn't sure how he had been able to keep the contents of his stomach down during the crash. After their bullhead had been hit and the gaping wound had sucked Pyrrha out, their descent had been rapid and unstable. The best the pilot had managed to do was bring them down in a controlled crash that ensured they didn't land upside down or explode on impact. It was still rocky, Jaune spent most of it being thrown against his straps with such ferocity that he wasn't sure how they didn't snap. Finally, it came to a stop, Jaune slumping back into his seat, feeling like his organs had all been rearranged. "Out, everyone out!" one of the Atlas soldiers said. "They'll be coming to finish the job, form a defensive-" but he never got a chance to finish. A hailstorm of bullets tore into him, his armor crumbling as if made of paper as he tumbled to the ground, unmoving. Jaune looked on in horror as dozens of different wounds bled on the unmoving man, his jaw slack, helmet askew, and half-lidded eyes looking up without seeing.

Frantically undoing his straps, Jaune scrambled up against the wall of the bullhead. The side door had been ripped off, exposing the inside of the aircraft to the gunfire that was now taking it. Nora and Ren had gotten out of their seats before him and hastily stacked up behind him. The other Atlas soldiers were ducking for cover even as the bullets continued to swarm in. They claimed another life, a rifleman who had nearly cleared the cone of fire before half a dozen rounds took her in the leg. Collapsing, she barely had time to scream before her chest was peppered, rendering her limp.

Risking a peek out at the tundra, Jaune saw two figures in the distance, one of whom was in full plate armor and holding a massive, six-barreled minigun in a sawgrip. He was the one currently opening fire on the downed bullhead, the muzzle flash from his weapon a solid beam of light. Even with no more visible targets, he did not relent. Switching focus, he began to pump rounds into the side of the bullhead, where the Atlas soldiers were taking cover. And over the roar of it all, he spoke.
"Profligates! Know that it was Gaius Magnus of Dry Wells, conqueror of the 87th tribe, that ended you!" Pausing, he reached down to his neck and pulled a pair of tinted goggles up over his eyes. "Tiberius! The Thunderclap!" The second man, clad in lighter armor but with a full helmet made of gray metal that hid his eyes behind a thin, black visor. Tiberius raised his hand. A blinding ball of light appeared in the flat of his palm, one Jaune barely had a second to look at through squinted eyes before it flickered. What followed made the original orb feel like a dying candle. The orb began to radiate with the force of a star, swallowing up everything until there was nothing in Jaune's world but all-consuming white light.

His eyes were on fire from the intensity and his body reacted out of instinct. Slamming his eyes shut, he clamped his hand over his eyes and looked away, his eyes still burning. Even then, the burning white intensity of the light still hung in the usually empty void he saw when his eyes were closed. All around him, he could hear his team and the soldiers crying out in pain and confusion. They had all been blinded like him. For a few seconds, he tried to force his eyes open, only for his eyelids to fight him and automatically slam shut to protect the sensitive organs. Eventually, he managed to force them open enough to half see what was going on around him, the other half of his vision still clouded by white.

Before he could act, however, a deafening boom echoed outside of the bullhead, coming from the direction of Gaius and Tiberius. A wave of force, with strength on par with a punch from Cardin, slammed into his back. He smacked into the ground, face first, as the minigun roared to life again. As he clambered back to his feet, he saw the Atlas soldiers had been knocked off their feet too. One had been forced out of cover and right into Gaius's kill zone. Within seconds, the sheer force of the fire had reduced his head to a barely identifiable blob of red mush.
Nausea gripped Jaune. He didn't know how things had gone so bad, so fast. They had been in the ground for twenty seconds and they had been separated from Pyrrha and lost three Atlas soldiers. He couldn't register what the surviving soldiers were doing, but the cries coming from their half of the bullhead sounded as if some of them were wounded. They had to do something. Pyrrha wouldn't even have been injured from a fall like that; she needed their help. And they couldn't do anything pinned down like this.

Hastily, he peeked around the edge of his flimsy cover. Gaius had not ceased firing for a second, even as the barrels of his gun began to glow red hot. Tiberius, on the other hand, was standing by Gaius's side, holding a boxy gun at the ready. "Ok. Nora? I need you to lay down some grenades, get them to shoot at us, or stop shooting altogether. Ren? You and I are going out there. We're gonna split up and hit them from the sides. You go left and I'll go right. We'll catch them in a pincer. Keep your eyes down and don't look at the one with the light if you can. Ok?"

He spared a quick look at the two of them. There was a hint of unease about them, Nora, in particular, was glancing nervously at Ren. There was no way to tell if they felt uncomfortable about his plan, the situation, or simply that they were worried about Pyrrha. It felt so wrong doing this without Pyrrha, like one of his arms was tied behind his back. An arm that he could talk to and would know what to do. How had he gotten himself into this situation?

He was broken out of his borderline spiral by the two of them nodding. Well, he wasn't prepared for this situation at all. But Ruby had said it best: he was a leader, he couldn't afford to be a failure. "Break!" Sword out, shield up he took a deep breath before he rounded the damaged entranceway and charged. Instead of making a direct beeline for Gaius, he took a diagonal, parallel line towards the legionary. His goal wasn't to reach the guy just yet, he had to get lined up with him from the side.

"Kid? KID! What are you doing, get back here!" one of the Atlas soldiers shouted, but he ignored it. If he lost his nerve now, he wasn't sure he'd be able to get it back.

He was only a few feet out when the minigun whirled to face him. Firmly gripping his shield, Jaune was almost knocked off of his feet as the steam of lead crashed into it. Muscles tense, feeling like he was trying to push back a tidal wave, he pressed on. As he ran, it quickly became apparent that the spread on the minigun was wider than his shield. He was keeping his head down and protected, but his shield couldn't cover his whole body at once. Already he could feel stray rounds biting into his Aura at the fringes of his body, eating away at his durability. Between that and how sword his shield arm was rapidly becoming numb, he knew he had to act fast.

Around that point, pink explosions began to dot the snowy tundra, surrounding both legionaries. Buffeted, they struggled to regain their footing before another one struck, this one hitting Giaus in the chest. Blown off his feet, he lifted his head up in simmering anger as his gaze settled on the dropship. "Aw, what's the matter, big boy? Not afraid of losing to a girl, are you?" Nora called out as she continued to fire. The nervousness Nora had displayed back in the bullhead was gone, she was angry. Jaune had never understood how she was able to do it, to get mad when most people got scared. He had always admired and even, at times, envied her for that.

Finally, he managed to reach his endpoint. Gaius and Tiberius formed a straight line in front of him, Ren having just stopped on the other side. Gaius, still on the ground, let go of his minigun and spread his hands wide. "Thunderclap! At the woman!" No sooner had he spoken than Tiberius raised his hand. Panic shooting through Jaune, he slammed his eyes shut and looked away, hiding his head behind his shield. Even with all this, he could feel the rays of light forcing their way through his eyelids, causing his eyes to water. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as painful as the first time, and as it faded, he was able to open his eyes and see with only minor adjustment. From Nora, however, he could hear screaming. At least he could before the deafening boom from before cracked across the landscape again.

Squinting, his eyes still a little sensitive, he saw that Gaius's hands were stretched out and pressed together as if he had just clapped them. There was an audible groan and the wreck of the bullhead shifted as if caught in the gale of a tempest. Nora disappeared from sight; Jaune wanted to swallow from nerves. Forcing himself forward, Jaune let out a desperate battle cry as he bore down on Gaius, bringing his sword down on the older man's head. For a brief second, he hoped beyond hope that this would be enough, that a quick blow to the legionary while he was on the ground would nip the fight in the bud.

His hopes were dashed as Gaius, with a well-trained flourish, drew a short, curved blade from his side and brought it up to block the slash. His heart sinking, Jaune barely dodged a quick swipe the Gaius made as he rose back to his feet. A grin appeared on his smoothly-shaven face. "Atlas sends their fledglings to fight me? Did all the men die in the crash? Or are you that desperate for glory? You should've bloodied yourself on a recruit, boy. Only fools try to mark their first kill on a Centurion of Caesar." With that, he gave another vicious swing.

Within seconds, Jaune was on the backswing, frantically trying to keep himself from being cut to ribbons. Gaius was a big man, well over six feet tall and with a well-built body, but despite that, he was deceptively light on his feet. He darted from side to side, his curved sword slashing and cutting at Jaune's sides. Sometimes Jaune was quick enough to get either his shield or sword between himself and the latest step in the assault. Whenever this occurred, however, Gaius barely seemed to notice. He simply moved onto the next strike, each one of which was just as powerful as the last.

Jaune's heart was starting to beat frantically in his chest. The Legion was only supposed to have had Aura for a couple of months, they weren't supposed to be masters with it yet. Except he himself had only had his Aura for about that long himself, and not a lot of training before he had gotten it. The gap between the two of them wasn't as big as he would've liked. If anything, the gap favored Gaius.

A slash from the side came rising up to meet him, Jaune heaving his shield in response. The two clashed and Jaune thought he earned half a second of respite. He did not. Gaius's grip on his sword was light and the angle was at a curve. With ease, he slid it across the surface of the shield as if skipping a rock on a lake. Before he could comprehend what had happened, Gaius had reached the top of the shield. The blade left it and, swiftly and precisely, slashed at Jaune's throat.

Agony erupting when he had been struck, only not dead thanks to Aura, Jaune grew desperate. Defense wasn't working, Gaius would be content to just take him apart bit by bit, something he was proving to be more than capable of doing. So, with as much strength as he could muster, he swung his longsword down in an overhead swing. Surely, he could at least get a single hit in; he was certain of it. Gaius proved him wrong. With a single half step back, he parried the strike easily, batting it away as if he had swatted a fly. Disbelief and terror seeped into Jaune, so much so that he didn't see Gaius's free hand until it crashed into his face. With a particularly powerful left hook, Jaune was knocked off his feet, face smarting and head swimming.

"You have spirit and courage boy, I'll give you that. But you were sent out well before your time." Jaune struggled to get to his feet, but Gaius was already on top of him, his blade flipped into a reverse grip. "Know that your death helps pave a path for civilization's future." With that, he plunged down.

Just as he was about to find his mark at Jaune's throat, a pink explosion caught him in the side, staggering him. Whipping around, he regained his balance just in time for another grenade to catch him in the gut. Nora was out of the bullhead now, her face twisted in anger, firing as she ran. Mercifully, the Atlas soldiers that were still alive and unharmed had been given enough breathing room to fall back in formation and had spread out in and outside the downed VOTL, a couple having climbed out to put the aircraft between them and the legionaries. Like Nora had covered him and Ren, the soldiers were now covering Nora, laying down a solid wall of suppressive fire.

"Persistent," Gaius said under his breath, swinging his sword and managing to deflect a few of the rounds out of the air, but the majority of them were worming his way in. "Tiberius!" But he received no response outside of a roar and a stream of gunfire. Ren had reached Tiberius and was moving in to engage him in close quarters, firing his SMGs. The other legionary was strafing around Ren, keeping him as far away as possible, firing his own gun as he did. He was thoroughly occupied.

"Very well," Gaius said. "If that's how it must be." Spreading his arms wide, he inhaled deeply before bringing his hands together in a clap. For the third time that day, a deafening boom cracked across the landscape. Snow billowed up in a ripple that surged towards the bullhead, catching Nora in the process. Her teeth grit, she braced herself, crossing her arms in front of her, just in time. The blast forced her back a foot or two, but she was able to remain standing. However, the soldiers were not so fortunate, all of them caught and swept up in the power of Gaius's Semblance. Some of them did not raise where they had fallen, instead howling and clutching at their ears.
Nora spared a single glance back, worry crossing her face for a fraction of a second before she continued her forward advance. But Gaius had not been idle. In the short time that Nora had been immobile, Gaius had grabbed his fallen minigun, completely ignoring Jaune in the process. Bringing it to bear, barrels already spooling up, he opened fire. Roaring to life, the massive tool of destruction spat hundreds of bullets at Nora, the legionary's aim impeccable as he did so.

"Brother, where is the centuria!? There should've arrived by now! They waste precious time!" Out of the corner of his eye, Jaune saw Ren and Tiberius closing in on each other. Tiberius's SMG had exhausted its ammo and he dropped it to unsheath a shortsword just as Ren reached him. Ren was able to fire off a few bursts at point-blank range before Tiberius lunged at him and he was forced to use the blades of his weapon. After that, the two of them devolved into a melee brawl, green clashing against steel. Unlike his brother, Tiberius was not cool and collected as he fought. His moves were wild and erratic, clearly putting everything he had into each blow. And as he fought, he let out bloodcurdling screams, peppered with curses and threats.

Meanwhile, struggling through the barrage of rounds that were threatening to drown her, Nora did something drastic. Switching her weapon to its hammer mode, she jumped up and planted her feet on the hammer before firing a blast out of the head, propelling her forward. Jaune heard a deep intake of disbelief from Gaius, but he didn't hesitate, bringing his gun up higher to compensate. Shot after shot streaked through the sky as Nora zoomed closer, heading directly for Gaius. Body tense, the older man ceased firing and drew his machete again, slashing as Nora came close.

His blade never made contact with anything. Instead of swinging at Gaius, Nora fired again. One of her grenades detonated in the head of her warhammer, the exhaust forced out directly into Gaius's face. As he clutched at this face, Nora soared onward, well past him. Recovering quickly, he aimed his minigun again, only to hesitate where he saw Nora's destination. "Tiberius! Tiberius, behind you!" His movements going from calm and collected to frantic, Gaius began firing again. Or rather, he tried to.

Having gotten to his feet, Jaune threw himself at the man, realizing what Nora was trying to do and attempting to buy her some time. Hacking into the legionary's side, the first blow he had managed to land, he followed up by slamming his shield into the man's face. The stumble Gaius suffered was enough to cause his shots to go wild and leave Nora uninterrupted.

Heeding his brother's warning, Tiberius glanced behind him and saw a new attacker speeding towards him. Holding his hand up, the beginning of his ball of light began to form. Before it could fully form, though, Ren pounced. Hooking one of his SMG's blades around Tiberius's arm, he pulled it down before the ball could form. Flickering, the ball vanished as if a switch had turned it off. Capitalizing on his opportunity, Ren slashed down with his other gun and caught Tiberius in the face before bringing both weapons up again and jamming them into the side of the neck from other sides, sliding underneath the strange helmet he wore.

With a tinkling noise of something breaking, Tiberius's bright yellow Aura broke. Roaring in anger, Tiberius thrust his sword and caught him in the chest. Roaring in jubilation, Tiberius began to tear into Ren, his sword a flurry as he landed strike after strike. Working himself up into a frenzy, Tiberius lost all sense of cohesion, howling like an animal as he did everything in his power to kill Ren. The Huntsman in training, caught completely guard by this sudden onslaught, was given no time to recover. It looked as if it was taking everything he had just to stay on his feet; any defense he attempted was shattered by the ferocity of his assailant.

But, in the depths of his rage, Tiberius had forgotten about Nora. "Get away from him!" she roared as she swung. The blow struck home, right into the man's temple. Even from this distance, Jaune could hear a wet snap and see the man's head twist farther than any head had the right to. He slumped wordlessly to the ground.

A powerful elbow from Gaius landed right in Jaune's jaw, forcing him back as Gaius turned and stared where his brother had fallen. For the briefest of moments, he was unmoving, his gaze fixed on his brother's body. Barely audible, a soft whisper escaped his mouth. "No…" Then a roar, a deep, primal roar, erupted from his man's throat. With unprecedented viciousness, he swung his gun up and unleashed a hellstorm on both Ren and Nora, both of whom were caught up in it.

Not sure how much damage they would be able to take before their Aura broke, Jaune acted without thinking. Moving to thrust, he was halfway towards Gaius when the man spun on the spot in response. Instead of using his sword, he instead heaved the entirety of his mini-gun and swung it like a club. The air was forced out of Jaune as the underslung drum barrel jammed into his stomach, forcing his mouth open wide in an involuntary gasp. Rightening the six-barreled gun, he resumed firing, pounding bullets right into Jaune's face. As he fired, he roared.

"This accursed world has done nothing but waste Legion blood! Blood that is becoming more and more scarce by the day! And now my brother dies? To a child who can barely hold his sword, still suckling at his mother's teat!? You miserable little whelp. You doom a nation with your ignorance, the only nation that has the strength to survive. Only the strong who follow Caesar's will can make sense of the chaos, of the madness. In defying him, you welcome anarchy and barbarism. And I will not permit it! I will not let the Legion die and welcome the madness back!"

After what must've been at least a hundred rounds, Jaune was able to get his shield back up. Everything hurt and he knew that his Aura couldn't have much left. "Ren! Nora!" Nora had been able to take down Tiberius by themselves when managing to catch him in a pincer. Surely the three of them together could do the same to Gaius. At least, that's what he hoped. Using the same precision he had done for the entire fight, Gaius switched targets, firing on the duo that had begun to advance on him. He caught Nora in his stream of fire, and to Jaune's horror, he saw pink Aura flickering around her, about to break.

Moving quickly, Ren shoved Nora to the side, taking the brunt of the fire while returning the favor with both of his SMGs. Gaius barely so much as flinched before returning fire, Ren yelping in pain under the force of the minigun and now his Aura flickering. A desperate idea occurred to Jaune. He couldn't touch Gaius no matter how hard he tried, but maybe there was something else he could do. Staffing to the side, Jaune gave a short, quick swipe, shield up for the retaliation he knew was coming. This time, he didn't aim for Gaius. He aimed for the drum barrel of his gun.

He hit it just right, carving through it and severing it from the minigun entirely, hundreds of tiny bullets spilling out and peppering the snow. His arm jerked as he tore through the metal, but it was only a speed bump. He had done it. As good as Gaius was with his sword, he was much less of a threat without his minigun. A small speck of pride ignited in his chest. Seething in rage and caught off guard by Jaune's unorthodox attack, Gaius turned his attention back go him. Except for this time, when he jammed down on the trigger, the barrels of his minigun spun without letting out a single shot.

"You are not worth my time," Gaius said through grit teeth. Heaving the minigun up over his head, he threw it at Jaune. Jaune barely had time to block it with his shield, but even then the massive hulk of metal hit with so much power that it was ripped out of his hand. "You lack the mettle to survive true hardship, to stand before the horrors of the world. Your entire decrepit world does. The power of gods in your blood and you hide behind walls. If you did not face a mere fraction of the Legion, your kingdoms would burn by now." He lunged forward.

Half a dozen different, desperate ideas flitted through Jaune's head. Going for his shield, trying to parry with his sword, maybe trying Mr. Walker's unarmed technique, each and everyone flashed before him. He never had a chance to act on any of them. Gaius was halfway towards him when a streak of crimson flashed by his head. Before he could comprehend what it was, it bore into Gaius's shoulder. Whatever it was, it robbed Gaius of all forward momentum and sent him flying back as it embedded itself in his armor. Furious, his movements now almost primal, he made to get back up. Only, before he could, another crimson blur sped past Jaune, this one much larger.

"I will not-" but whatever Gaius would not do, Jaune never found out. A figure was on top of him, a bronze shield in both hands raised over their head. They brought it down. A horrible crunching noise filled the air and Gaius's Aura shattered, dark blue appearing and then vanishing, as his voice was replaced by wet gurgling. The figure raised the shield and brought it down one more time. Another crunch echoed out. The gurgling stopped.

Jaune stared in confusion and horror. The figure kneeling over Gaius was panting and heaving, clearly exhausted. After a moment, the panting subsided, the person's breath returning to normal. And then they began to cry. It was a slow start, a long, strangled sob that sounded as if it was being fought every step of the way. But soon after, a dam burst and the figure slumped off of the body of Gaius and onto the ground, weeping uncontrollably as tears stained the snow.

Confused, Jaune slowly took a step forward. The person was covered from head to toe in bright crimson blood, both their armor and skin stained with the stuff, much of it having started to dry. It was hard to identify anything about them under it all. Even the long flowing red hair was caked with dark red crust now. A hair he recognized. A shield he recognized. And a voice he knew. It couldn't be. "Pyrrha?"

Pyrrha's head snapped in his direction. Her eyes were red, lined, and tears were streaming down them. "Jaune." She got to her feet, slowly. "I...I made my choice. I had to see it through." She swallowed. "Even if it hurt."

"Pyrrha, what are you talking about? How did you-" as he spoke, Jaune looked in the direction Pyrrha had come from. His voice died. There was a patch of trees not far from there, no more than half a mile, and the edge of the forest was strewn with corpses. Some were riddled with bullet marks, others were bleeding from open stab wounds, one or two had misshapen heads, but every last one of them was dead. "Did...you do that?" he whispered.

Pyrrha sucked in through her teeth. "Yes. There were a hundred of them. They would've attacked the main formation if I hadn't done anything. They would've...would've killed so many people." And then she broke. A fresh wave of sobs consuming her, she threw herself at Jaune, wrapping her arms around him like a vice. "I t-tried to get them to stop. I tried. But they wouldn't stop f-fighting. Even when there were only f-five left, they just screamed that they'd die before facing dishonor. W-why? H-how can someone be like that?" After that, everything that she said descended into wailing that Jaune couldn't hope to make out. He had only seen Pyrrha cry one time before this, and on that one occasion, she hadn't been anywhere near this emotionally devastated. Where the Legion really that relentless?

Over her shoulder, he spotted Ren and Nora coming to a stop just short of them, both of them bewildered. Awkwardly, he gestured to the bullhead, hoping they would understand him telling them to go help the soldiers. Mercifully, they did, running off with concerned looks back. Ren's worry was careful, barely visible, while Nora's was blatant and naked. With that out of the way, he returned the hug as best he could. Pyrrha's sobs doubled as he did so, burying her face into Jaune's shoulder. He wanted to say something, but his words failed him. What was there to say? What words could possibly make this better? All he could do was hold her as gently as he could.

He barely registered the green streams of energy flowing out of her eyes.

XXXXX

"Where is it!?" Outrage flooded Cinder. Her arrow had landed directly in the heart of the old Fall Maiden, a certainly fatal wound. Nothing had happened. The same rush and sense of elation she had felt when she had gotten the first half of the Fall Maiden's power, the woman giving a final exhale, or the vaguest hint that anything had happened, there was nothing. How? She had done everything right. She had squeezed Walker for the information, he had told her that Ironwood kept the Fall Maiden close, that they were going to be moving her off of the continent, so why was the Fall Maiden already dead?

She rounded on Emerald and Neo, glaring in anger at both of them. Neo idly folded her arms and gave her an unamused expression, as if daring Cinder to try something with her. Emerald, on the other hand, took a step forward. "Cinder, it's gonna be ok. We were able to take out a full Fall Maiden, just you, Mercury, and me. They put the power in someone else? It's not a big deal. We just need to do what we did the first time all over again. I've seen what you can do with what you have now, they won't stand a chance against you. I believe in you." She made to put her hand on Cinder's shoulder in what she naively believed would be a comforting gesture.

Cinder slapped the hand away. Emerald flinched back, acting as if the slap had been to her face. What a child. "Your belief? What good is your belief, exactly? Are you going to believe that we will stumble across her as soon as we walk out that door? That we'll conveniently overhear a conversation regarding where she is? Spare me your empty platitudes. Show me results or don't waste my time." Emerald lowered her head, meekly stepping back. Irritation coursed through Cinder. She didn't have time to deal with this, why was it so difficult for people to just do what they were told?

"Get us out of here," she said, striding towards the door. "Push the bodies inside, no need for them to realize we what we did until we're gone. We're making contact with Watts as soon as we get out of here." Guards would investigate the noise she had made, but she would be gone by the time they pieced together what happened. As she passed through the doorframe, her temper flared. Setback after setback plagued her. First, her plan to commandeer Ironwood's army had been thwarted, then her well overdue revenge on James Walker had been interrupted, and now Ozpin had been one step ahead of her? She flexed her fingers, flames spouting from them. Very well. If they all wanted to be coy and pretend that they were clever, then it was time for something drastic. She would make them pay. She would remind them that they were all nothing.

XXXXX

Author's Note: Finally managing to get my ass in gear and write on a decent timetable. I don't know if I'll be able to crank out the next chapter in just a week, but I'll be doing my damndest to try. And say hello. Say hello to Pyrrha Nikos, the Fall Maiden. I've been waiting to drop that bombshell for a long time, and it feels oh so good to finally be able to do it.

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 22

Carry That Weight

XXXXX

Ironwood looked over the battlefield. It was over. The battle has never been in the favor of the Legion or the White Fang, even with their Aura awakened. When the Ace Ops had torn into the side of their lines their already bad situation had become perilous. Then those who had awoken their Aura had begun dropping dead. The outcome was sealed at that point, this turn of fate enabling him to march into the joint camp and capture whoever hadn't fled or died. A few legionaries had refused to be taken captive, either fighting to the last or slitting their throats, even as they had coughed up blood. Many had been too weak to do either, leaving Ironwood with quite a few prisoners.

He was on the edge of the recently captured camp, staring out at the sea of dead. His own fallen had already been removed from the battlefield, the medics saving who they could. Even then, the sight of the dead was a morbid sight, but one he refused to look away from. He had given the orders that had led to every single death tonight, and many of the dead White Fang were Atlas citizens. It was a grim price to pay, but it was a price he would pay over and over again to keep his kingdom safe. They had all made their choice, and so had the Legion.

Off to his side, a junior officer was reading a post-battle report. Despite not looking at the man, Ironwood's attention was firmly on everything he was saying. "We've fifty-two dead and around twenty wounded, with most of our knights either destroyed or damaged," the soldier reported, saluting. "So far, the dead and captured enemy number at approximately 350. We believe a few dozen enemies have escaped, both through the small break out group and through piecemeal runners." Ironwood mulled the numbers over in his head. He had been hoping for casualties to be borderline non-existent with how thoroughly he had stacked the advantages in his favor. Still, the casualties were within a hair's breadth of being 1:7 in Atlas's favor, and it was with the Legion revealing and utilizing Caesar's Semblance. Even his most fervent critic would be unable to paint this as anything other than an overwhelming victory. And the knights had been destroyed? Well, that was all right. Caesar's forces were broken, scattered, and at an eighth of their original strength from their original four-hundred. The strength of Atlas had proven itself, Caesar's days were numbered. Knights were a trivial price to pay for that.

"Specifically how many prisoners do we have?" He asked.

"Twenty-seven, eighteen of them White Fang and nine Legion," the soldier said. "When we breached the camp, the White Fang were far more willing to surrender. Most of our prisoners had to be stabilized when the negative effects of the mass awakening Semblance kicked in. As it stands, even with our intervention, there was an incredibly high fatality rate, with at least a hundred dead due to negative side effects of the awakening. But there's a concerning factor. Those who have been stabilized and are recovering? They have maintained their Aura. The awakening appears to be permanent, although we cannot say for certain with just field studies."

"And the leadership of the Legion and White Fang?" Ironwood asked, still looking out onto the piles of dead.

The man scrolled down on his pad. "Caesar, Lucius, Vulpes Inculta, and Adam Taurus were all confirmed to be part of the break out group. Caesar was also confirmed, from interrogation, to be the wielder of the mass awakening Semblance. Lucius and Vulpes are confirmed to have decay and emotional alteration Semblances as well. Of the four of them, three were confirmed to have escaped. We did, however, successfully capture Vulpes. We are arranging to transport him back to HQ as we speak." That was vital. Even if Caesar and Adam had eluded his grasp, he had Caesar's spymaster now. And if his intelligence was good, Vulpes was Caesar's primary means of recruiting local allies. On top of the loss that would be to Caesar, the knowledge that Vulpes had would be far superior to the fragmented intelligence he had gotten from Rumford.

"However, neither Legate Lanius nor Marie F. were spotted during the battle," the officer said. "We have been unable to determine where they are. All we've gotten from our prisoners so far is that a detachment was sent out on a mission. To where or why, we have no idea." Well, he already knew what his first questions for Vulpes were going to be. "And...it looks as if Team RWBY came out worse for wear."

Ironwood finally broke away from the battlefield, his gaze swiveling onto the officer. "What!?"

The man stuttered before continuing. "Of the four of them, three are listed as WIA. Weiss Schnee lost a finger, Yang Xiao Long an arm, and Blake Belladonna is suffering from internal bleeding and a ruptured kidney. They were all med evaced with the critically wounded five minutes ago. Ruby Rose was not harmed, but she was emotionally distressed. She was permitted to accompany them. Their detachment was the one who dealt with the breakout group and the leadership of both enemy factions. They appear to be responsible for the capture of Vulpes."

"I see," Ironwood said. He hadn't made a mistake putting them on the flank, the fact that they had captured Vulpes was proof of that. But them having been so badly hurt was a call for concern. The Legion and Adam were that dangerous, then. He would need to talk to the team. They had all been asked to do a good deal, Weiss in particular, and they needed to know that their efforts had borne fruit. He had so much more to do. But he needed to know one more thing first. "And Pyrrha Nikos? Was there anything of particular note with her performance?"

"Let me see," the officer said, flicking through the report. Then he stopped. "This can't be right. Her team and the squad she was with claimed that she took out the entire one-hundred person detachment, the one that was trying to flank us. They were all Legion and had all awoken to Aura. It says here that miss Nykos is a prodigy, but even the Ace Ops would struggle to take on those odds." The man looked up from his pad nervously. "I'm sorry sir, there must've been a miscommunication. We're still trying to piece everything together. I'll get you a revised copy of the report as soon as-" but Ironwood cut him off.

"That won't be necessary, forward the rest of the report to my scroll, I'll read it on my own time."

"But-" the soldier hesitated. "Aye sir."

Ironwood nodded. As he did, his scroll began to ring. "Dismissed. I need to take this." The soldier hastily saluted him before running off. Pulling out his scroll, he saw Ozpin was the one calling him. Sighing, he took it. "Your candidate for the Fall Maiden has surpassed all of our expectations," he said. "Judging from what's happened out here, she's already on her way to surpassing Amber."

"I'm glad to hear it," Ozpin said. He sounded exhausted. "Because Salem's forces broke into where we were hiding Amber's body. Two men were killed in the process. They know that what's left of the Fall Maiden is with Ms. Nikos now."

"They what?" Ironwood said slowly. Anger was starting to seep through him. "Oz. Are you telling me that they waited until I was gone before they came back?" The intelligence leak he knew he had had transformed from a simple known fact to something that was openly mocking him.

"It seems that way. I was asleep in the private room you had given me when it happened." There was a pause as Ironwood heard the sound of Ozpin sipping something. It sounded like he was trying to relieve stress. "James, this is what Salem does. She's never favored brute force, it's always subterfuge. Whether Cinder managed to get a soldier of yours to turn or one of her own managed to slip into your ranks, I don't know. I've seen her do both before. You have to play the same game as her to counter it. Fight shadow with shadow, secrecy with secrecy. It's why Qrow has been my best ally in this fight ever since he joined me. We can't just stay in wait with an army, they'll see it coming. When you brought your army to Beacon, they adapted and nearly used it against us. And if the radical White Fang hadn't switched their allegiance to the Legion and leaked their plans before we could take Rumford prisoner, we wouldn't have known. I've been doing this for as long as I can remember, I know how she thinks. We need a more subtle approach to her."

Ironwood felt a spike of irritation. It was telling that Oz had spent a little too much time getting comfortable in his role as a teacher. He treated everyone else as if he were lecturing them and they just needed to sit down and listen. If Ozpin had just trusted him and worked with him, they could've easily have subverted Salem's cyber attack on their own. But now wasn't the time for fighting. He and Ozpin needed to work together here. "The lion's share of the Legion and White Fang have been decimated. They won't be able to head back to Mantle now with the limited supplies they now have, and if they head further inland they'll smash into Atlas's defenses. And I doubt they mean to retreat, it means certain defeat. They'll head straight for Atlas to try and take the Winter Maiden and the Staff. It's their only hope."

"I agree," Ozpin said. "I advise you to pull your most skilled and elite back to Atlas and have them guard both the Maiden and the Relic. Cinder and her followers have already proven they can outwit your soldiers. Relocating your entire army to Atlas will just signal that it's where they need to attack. We need a tightly knit group protecting both Maidens. Let them think everything is going according to their plan. If we're lucky, we may even be able to recover the full Fall Maiden."

"Are we certain that Salem won't try to capitalize on the situation to capture the Relic of Choice?" Ironwood said. "You need to consider something Ozpin, Vale isn't nearly as well defended as Atlas, and they may know you're longer there. They may take advantage of your divided attention. Do we know for certain if they even need the full Maiden? Is half a Maiden enough to open a Vault's door?" It felt more than a little frustrating for Ozpin to lecture him on how to defend his city, when Ozpin himself had left Vale relatively unguarded outside of the soldiers Ironwood had left there.

Ozpin hesitated before he answered. "I must admit, I don't know. This is the first time one of the Maidens has ever been divided. But rest assured that the Relic of Choice is safe, I have left special safeguards in place. Besides, Vale and Beacon are both safe in Glynda's capable hands." With most of the Relics and Maidens it was simple. The academy for each kingdom was built on a Vault that contained a Relic, one that only its corresponding Maiden could open, with said Maiden guarding the Vault. He had seen the Vaults for Haven and Shade academies, and was charged with the defense of Atlas Academy, along with its Vault. But he didn't know where the Beacon Vault was; no one aside from Oz seemed to. The man had only ever eluded to it with "special precautions" that left Ironwood rather frustrated. What if Ozpin alone wasn't enough? After all, wasn't his Maiden the one that had been compromised? "And while we're on the subject you should consider a replacement for the current Winter Maiden. She'll have to be the core of our elite team."

"I've been considering candidates already, I have a pile of resumes waiting in my office," Ironwood said. He did not like the idea of bringing anything less than his full forces to Atlas, regardless of how strong the current garrison was. It was the capital of his kingdom, how could he settle for anything less than everything? But before he could object, Ozpin continued.

"...This was the first time Pyrrha ever used her new abilities in combat. How is she holding up?" Before his tone had been calm and level before now, but here it faltered. He sounded melancholic and tired.

"I'm not certain. I've had fires to put out everywhere," Ironwood answered honestly. "I'll check in on her when I get a moment." He now felt as tired and worn as Ozpin. "There should be time after I assess Team RWBY's injuries personally."

"...Injuries?" With that word, Ironwood's blood went cold. He rarely heard Ozpin with a voice this frigid. "James? What happened to my students?"

XXXXX

Blake's eyes were heavy. Her body was sore, so much so that it hurt to move. For a long time, she laid wherever she was, unable to summon up the effort or concentration to do much of anything except the occasional twitch m. She was certain she could hear voices from far away, but had no idea who they were or what they were saying. Where was she? How had she gotten here? It was so hard to remember. For what seemed like an eternity, she drifted, not sure if she was conscious or not. Vaguely, she felt fatigue pulling at her. Sometimes she felt things shift underneath her, as if she had fallen asleep and woken up in a different position.

Then, after who knew how long, her eyes slid open on their own. She was blinded for a moment, her eyelids frantically blinking as they attempted to adjust to the light. Then, finally, they adjusted.

She was lying in a bed in what looked like an infirmary. A dozen other beds filled the room, a couple empty but most of them hidden by curtains that had been pulled to give their occupants privacy. Sunlight was shining weakly through a nearby window as dawn broke, out of which she could see towering silver buildings stretching towards the sky. An IV was set up next to her bed and hooked into her arm, and she could feel the thin, soft fabric of a hospital gown pressing into her. An ache pulsed through her, originating from her torso. Shifting, she peeled back her covers and lifted her light blue gown up. She wished she hadn't.

The place where she had been stabbed by Adam was bandaged, but even then she could make out the telltale signs of surgical stitches. She had been hurt that badly. Feeling sick, she let the covers and gown fall back over her. She felt weak and the site of surgery ached horrifically, but even through that she felt her heart hammer in panic. Adam had done this to her. Adam had hurt Weiss, and Yang. Trembling, she looked down at her hands. She had done that to Yang. Yang had gotten distracted trying to help her, and when she had tried to rescue Yang, she had snapped her arm clean off.

She had to get out of here, she couldn't be around them not after this. She had been stupid to think that she could just leave a terrorist organization and pretend she was a normal teenage girl. People like her didn't get to run off and just be friends with people who had their lives together. She had tried, and she had ended up dragging them all down with her. The farther she was away from them all, the better. Scrambling as fast as she could, which was far slower that she would've liked, she grabbed the IV chord and prepared to pull.

"What are you doing!?" Blake's entire body seized up as her head jerked in the direction of the person who had just shouted. Weiss was sitting in a chair right next to her bed. Judging by the wrinkles in her dress, the line of drool trickling down her face, and how she was rubbing her eyes, she had fallen asleep. She was waking up awfully fast, though. "Are you stupid? They put that in you for a reason!" she said, slapping Blake's hand away from the IV. "What were you thinking?"

Blake froze. The plan had been to get out before anyone else on the team could stop her. Just looking at one of them would make leaving that much harder. And now, she hasn't even gotten up and Weiss had already caught her red handed. "Blake, I asked you a question!" All Blake could do was stare, at a lost for words, her heart hammering and breath short. Weiss was angry, but there was also a glimmer in her eye that Blake knew. She was scared. "Well?"

Out of instinct, Blake glanced around for an escape route. Weiss was between her and the door, could she handle the window when she hadn't fully recovered from surgery? "Blake what are you-" Weiss began, but she trailed off. Comprehension was dawning on her face. "You were going to run." It wasn't a question, it was a statement. It was like a knife through Blake's heart. She tried to say something, anything, in her defense. She couldn't. It was the truth and they both knew it.

A horrifically long minute of silence passed between the two of them. Then, eventually, Weiss held up her right hand. Her right pinkie was covered in bandages. To Blake's relief, there wasn't no abrupt stop. The whole finger was there. "I was very, very lucky," she said softly. "The doctors were able to reattach it. They say it may take months before it feels like normal again, before I can move it the way I used to. And I was the lucky one. Yang? She's the one who got it the worst out there." Weiss sniffed. "They said her arm had a rate of decay equal to something that had been dead for weeks, there was nothing they could do. Ruby cried herself to sleep more then once. Only when she thinks I'm not looking though."

Wait, more than once? "How long was I out? Where are we?" She wasn't sure if she wanted to hear the answer.

"They took us to Upper Atlas to treat us. As for how long, two and a half days," Weiss said. "They had to keep you sedated while they operated. Your kidney has ruptured, they had to remove it. It's been a long couple of days. Yang was barely conscious for most of it, Ruby's barely keeping it together. And…" she hesitated before pulling out her scroll. "And I have to deal with this being all over the news." She showed the scroll to Blake. A news app was open. "Winter Schnee Memorial Charity Ball Tonight: Grieving Father Pledges Million Lien Donation." Slowly, Blake's eyes trailed down. All of the top news stories were dedicated to the same topic, regardless of publication.

"Blake? I don't know if I'm ever going to see my sister again. I don't know where she is, what's being done to her, or if she's even alive." Weiss sniffled. "My own father and half of Atlas seems to think she isn't. Please. I don't think I could handle losing anyone else right now. I need you. We all need you."

"I...I can't," Blake said. She sounded pathetic, her voice weak and raspy. She tried not to think about how the chances of a missing person being found after 48 hours dropped radically. "Weiss, I hurt people. I make things worse by being around them. I need to get out of here. The longer I stay the more-"

"You promised!" Blake was taken aback. Weiss had screamed before, but this was different. Her voice was high and on the verge of breaking. She had leaned so far forward in her chair that she was at risk of falling out of it. She stared unblinkingly at Blake, tears starting to glisten in her eyes. "You promised that you would come to us the next time something like this happened, you would come to us. And you were about to run away. You can't do this to us Blake. We need you right now." She swallowed. "We...we all need each other. You need us too, I can see it in your eyes. I know what someone looks like when they're hurting but they don't know how to admit it." She looked down sadly. "I saw it in Winter's eyes a lot when we were growing up."

Blake didn't know what to say. What could she say? She wanted to say that Weiss was wrong, that it was more complicated than that, but she couldn't make the words. Then, before she could stomach up any words, Weiss hugged her. If she had been speechless before, this had effectively rendered her mute. Of her three teammates, Weiss was easily the one least prone to displays of affection of any kind. Her wrinkled, worn dress pressing into her was a feeling she was feeling for the first time. Something broke inside of her.

It felt like a dam inside her was giving out, not a large dramatic break, but slow erosions. Tears began to slowly trickle down her face, small pockets that felt as if they took forever to reach her chin. Sniffles punctuated her breathing, along with shallow sniffs as her throat tightened. "It's hard. I know it is," Weiss said softly. "I can't pretend to know what it feels like to have someone like Adam Taurus in your life. But I know what it feels like to be alone."

Gently pulling back, she softly dabbed away at Blake's tears. She paid no heed to the ones that were starting to drip down her face. "When Winter left home, I was alone. My mother drowned herself in her sorrows, my little brother hates me, and my father saw me as a tool. The only person who cared about me was a servant named Klien who watched out for me, and he had to be careful about it. My father wouldn't take kindly to staff getting too friendly with his heir. So most of the time I had no one."

She swallowed. "It's a nightmare, Blake," she said. "Every little worry and fear turn inward, they eat you from the inside out. You have nowhere to go, no escape from it, and it twists you. Twists you into something you hate." There was a long, pregnant pause. "Twists you into something you end up being ashamed of." Now it was her turn to give a deep sniff as she wiped at her own tears. She did so far harder than the gentle hand she had used with Blake, as if she was ashamed and wanted to hide it. "You can't do that to yourself," she said, her voice now strangled. "I won't let you."

Finally, Blake found her voice. "I'm the one who took Yang's arm," she said, her voice raspy. "I tried to get her out of there and I ripped it off. I hurt her, Weiss. She trusted me and I hurt her." Some of the grim resolve that Weiss had been building up over the course of the conversation slackened here. "How can I look her in the eye again after that? How can you look me in the eye after Adam took your finger?" She looked down at the bandaged hand again. "He hurt you trying to get to me."

"I already told you, I'm a Schnee," Weiss said. "I could've never met you and every single White Fang member in that camp still would've wanted to kill me. I'm everything they hate, everything wrong with the society they want to tear down. And as for Yang. That's...I...well." For the first time, Weiss faltered. Blake could see it, she was frantically searching for a way to absolve her of responsibility. But every word she half formed died on her lips, doubtless knowing that Blake would find the comfort hollow. Even if Lucius had been the one who had caused so much damage to Yang's arm, she had been the one who had snapped it off. She had inflicted the physical trauma that had most likely induced shock in Yang. Her partner. And Blake had hurt her. Even if it was unintentional, even if she had been trying to save Yang in the process, it didn't matter.

Just as she was about to turn away, Weiss found her voice. "She'll forgive you."

Blake blinked. It hadn't been the response she had been expecting. "How? How can you know for sure?"

"Because sometimes we hurt the people we care about without meaning to," Weiss said. As she spoke, she folded her hands and looked down on them. "My mother loves me, I know it. And I still love her. But she hurts me. When she locks herself away, drinks to the point where she takes a second to recognize me, and just isn't there? She hurts me. She doesn't mean to, I'm not even sure if she realizes what she's doing half the time. But it still hurts. Winter hasn't talked to her in years, and I can't blame her for it. But she's still my mother. I still love her, even if she makes it very hard." More tears gently slid down Weiss's face. "Even if I can't be around her right now."

Blake wasn't certain where Weiss was going with this, but the heiress had done a good job of seizing her attention. "My mother has been like this for years, Blake. Years of general neglect and self indulgence. Even after all of that, I just want her to get better, to go back to the person she was. My sister thinks she's a lost cause, that she'll drink herself to death and that'll be it. Our mother hurt Winter too, and I can't even bring myself to say Winter's wrong for cutting ties. But I can't help but hold out hope."

Sniffling, she looked up. "You've stuck by Yang through a lot, even though we're only getting started as Huntresses. Torchwick, the White Fang, and now the Legion. We're not just classmates anymore. We're more than that. She'll forgive you. And even if there's a chance she might not, you need to find out. Because if you're worried about what she'll think of you, what do you think she'll think if you're not here when she wakes up? You owe her that much."

Blake swallowed. "I'm scared," she said. A small part of her knew she wasn't saying anything Weiss didn't already know, but she had no choice. Weiss had to understand. "I've been scared ever since Adam came back into my life. I can't stand it. I feel so weak and pathetic."

"You're not," Weiss said, hugging her again. "You're one of the bravest people I know. Not everyone can do the things you've done Blake. Trying to make things right after joining the White Fang. And you don't have to do it alone. I'm here with you." Reaching down, she took Blake's hand in her unbandaged hand. For a good long while, they stood there, both of them silent. Eventually, their tears began to dry. Blake forced herself to take deep breaths, fighting down the ever present fear gnawing away inside of her. Weiss was right. Being there when Yang woke up was the bare minimum she needed to do.

"Where is she?" Blake asked. Instead of answering, Weiss gently got up and pulled back the curtain to the bed next to hers. Blake's breath caught in her throat. Right there, sprawled out and in a deep sleep, was Yang. Like Blake, she had been changed into a hospital gown. Unlike Blake, her company wasn't sitting in a chair next to the bed. Ruby was curled up in the bed, tucked into a small corner between the edge and Yang's legs, her arms wrapped around Yang's remaining arm. The sheets just below her face were soaked.

Weiss sighed as she saw this. "The nurses are going to kick her out if they see this," she muttered. Blake said nothing, merely looking at the reason why Yang was there in the first place. Her stump had been bandaged, though it seemed to stop a bit higher up than the last time she had seen it. With a pang of regret, Blake couldn't help but wonder if the doctors had been forced to remove more decayed flesh. She swallowed, fighting back the nausea, and turned her attention to Yang's face.

The blonde brawler looked uncomfortable in her sleep. Her mouth was lolling open, her head was awkwardly tilted to the side, and a subtle contraction of the muscles seemed to dominate her expression. Her hair had always been an untamed mess, but usually in a wild and flowing way. Now it was slowly accumulating knots and mats. It didn't feel right. Nothing about this felt right. How would Yang react when she woke up? Would she be able to still be a Huntress? Would she blame Blake if she couldn't?

"They need to rest right now," Weiss said, pulling the curtain shut. Turning, she returned to her seat. "I'll stay here with you until they wake up." Once again, she took Blake's hands in her own.

"Thank you," Blake whispered back. She didn't know what she was going to do when Yang woke up. But she had to do something. Shame from her almost escape was already burning her stomach. But Weiss made it more manageable. She had, after all, made a promise.

"Do...do you want to go to the ball for your sister?" she asked hesitantly. "Check in on your mother?"

Weiss looked away. "I can't. Not right now. Going there is admitting that she's dead. And I can't stand to see my father make a media circus out of her disappearance. As for my mother, you need me more. She'll be all right." Blake felt a rush of affection and sympathy for the girl sitting across from her. Without thinking, she reached forward and pulled Weiss into a hug.

"Huh?" she said, arms frantically wiggling in shock. "What are you-oh. Oh ok, this is-we can do this." Her return of the hug wasn't as confident as the first time she had hugged Blake. Despite everything, Blake chuckled. "Oh stop it," Weiss snapped, but her voice lacked venom. Blake simply leaned into the hug. She felt warm for the first time in awhile.

XXXXX

Author's Note: A reminder, I wrote Mantle into the story before it was made clear Mantle was directly under Atlas. When they said they moved the capital, I thought "ah, they moved the capital in the way its Tokyo and not Kyoto, so they're probably a few hundred miles apart." I thought the city under Atlas was Lower Atlas in a Bladerunner, dystopian kind of way. Then Volume 7 happened and it turned out when they said they moved the capital, they mean they literally dug it up and made it float. So oh well, James spent too much time in my version of Mantle for me to just go back and make changes, so this is now an AU where Mantle is detached from Atlas itself and the city under Atlas is Lower Atlas.

Side tangent, I think I put Blake leaving at the end of Volume 3 up there with Zuko siding with Azula at the end of Book 2 of AtLA. It made character sense and worked into a character arc, but god I didn't have fun with it. Volume 3's ending in general is best described as an emotional gut shot, but I'm that weird guy. I can have bad guys hurt the heroes all day I'm generally fine. When a hero hurts another hero, that's generally when it gets me. But that's the fun thing about FanFiction. We can explore what ifs. What if Weiss wasn't taken by her father and could talk Blake down from leaving? How could that change Yang's recovery? Because while losing the arm hurt her, I think the thing that really put her into a spiral of despair was that she felt abandoned. Considering Yang lost not one but two mothers, one who just left her, I don't think it's a huge jump to say she has abandonment issues. So, let's see how this changes things.

I was considering another scene, but after I wrote the scene between Blake and Weiss, I decided otherwise. A scene like that needs space to breathe. The next chapter can have that scene. In the mean time, I managed to write a chapter in a week! Heck yeah! I don't know how long I can keep this up, so let's enjoy it while it lasts.

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 23

Bloody Mary Bloody Mary

XXXXX

Winter glared at Anna, who happily returned it with one of her own. It was the beginning of their third day as captives of the Scattered, and while the experience hadn't been torture, it had been tedious and a violation of their rights. Overall their imprisonment had involved little outside of James and her being left to their devices inside their cell, except for when they were fed. The accommodations were high quality, their beds comfortable, their food and water hot, and fresh clothes had been provided while their dirty ones had been washed, but it was still unlawful imprisonment. If they had been alone, it would've been torture via solitary confinement. All in all, her goodwill to the Scattered was nonexistent, except for a minor kernel of sympathy for Róta. A very minor kernel.

She and James were being escorted through the halls of the Scattered's base, all five of them surrounding them. Anna was to their left, Wiglaf the right, Jane behind them, and Róta and Han in front of them. They were being taken on an "expedition" to Earth, to be shown the "good work" the Scattered did. They weren't holding their breath.

"Question." Winter broke away from her glaring contest with Anna to glance at James. He was looking up at Wiglaf, who had now returned his gaze with polite curiosity. "Unity. Is that the same Unity that fought for the Master?" Winter's attention moved up to the word painted on Wiglaf's chest. Unity, with a simple white line through it.

Wiglaf grinned widely. "I most certainly was. We were going to make the world a better place. One order of superior beings, no more disease, no more dying of old age, with a brilliant mind at the front of it all." Leaning down, he gave James a playful fist bump in his side. Winter idly wondered if Wiglaf was maintaining his Aura at this moment. If he wasn't, James's pistol would make quick work of his unarmored head. She squashed the thought. "I saw you holding out against someone with a Maiden power. Imagine what you could do after a dip in FEV. You'd be part of something superior, stronger. I mean, you already are now that you have Aura, but these matters are multiplicative. Look at me." He slapped his armor. "FEV, Aura, and power armor all on the same being. Someone like me only falls short of the Maidens themselves when it comes to one on one affairs."

"Wiglaf, can you please not give us the supremacy speech today?" Anna said, sounding as if she was fighting back a groan.

"You know it's true," Wiglaf said playfully. "Look at us. Cyborg, Ghoul, Super Mutant, and machine. Róta is the only one of us that's a normal human, and even she has Aura. And we all fought off a Maiden. We're living proof of what can be achieved when you push beyond normal human limitations." So, one of their captors thought she and James were inferior to him. Lovely.

"Wiglaf, are you still certain you wish to use the term Super Mutant?" Jane asked from behind. "Not only is mutant an inaccurate term for a condition that was intentionally engineered, the word itself has...pejorative connotations. I recommend another term. Meta-Human is more accurate and holds less baggage." Winter glanced back at the hulking war machine. It was disorienting to hear such a massive robot that had been cold at best hesitate. Her eyes drifted to the E circled by stars on Jane's chassis, the same white line crossing it out.

Wiglaf, however, laughed. "You mean well Jane. But running and hiding because uneducated wastelanders like to scream "mutie"? I refuse. Let them scream their ignorance. Meta-human may be accurate, but it's a sterile, sanitized, and safe name. It lacks teeth. Super Mutant is a raw, impactful term, but more importantly, it's our name. It's who we are." Wiglaf was beaming with pride now. James had given Winter a brief rundown on what a Super Mutant was: a Human that had been exposed to a Forced Evolutionary Virus and turned into a behemoth like the one before her. They were as strong as they looked, immune to disease and the radiation that was common on Earth, and biologically immortal. They were also sterile, completely lacking in genitalia and any potential replacement for reproduction. According to James, they had tried to force a takeover of Earth, only to be stopped by someone called Albert Cole. Even a century later, they were still a semi-common sight.

The thought made Winter feel uncomfortable. More radical Faunus and Humans liked to claim they were superior to the other, often backed up by quackery. Faunus had night vision and occasionally useful traits, but both species were on relatively equal footing. With these Super Mutants, however, the superiority was much more objective. The sterility was the only thing truly holding them back. It didn't make Wiglaf's proclamations of superiority any less self-serving, but he and other Super Mutants who thought like him had natural abilities with which to better enforce their toxic beliefs.

"The debates can wait," Han said, shooting Wiglaf a look. Wiglaf nodded good-naturedly. They continued forward until they stepped through a doorway at the end of a hallway. The room they entered was mainly featureless, aside from some ancient-looking computers, terminals, and a large, silver archway. Said archway wouldn't normally draw much attention from Winter, but that changed when a sharp gasp came from James. His eyes locked onto the archway, his hand reaching up without obvious conscious thought. The connection was easy to make; this was the same kind of portal that had brought him here.

"They sent a couple hundred of us through in 2076," Han said, running his hand down the side. "Things started ok. We set up, dug out this base, got going on basic research. Grimm stalled colonization efforts, we were ordered to hold position while a solution got worked out. Then the bombs dropped." He sighed before moving to a control panel on the side of the portal, typing commands into it. "We tried to go back, but we couldn't find a single place that was safer than here. A dozen guys died jumping into radiation hot spots or panicking mobs. We had to stay put through the fallout. Morale hit rock bottom, at least three people killed themselves. And that brought the Grimm down on us something fierce. Only a few of us survived the swarm that hit us, me and five others. Of the five, one died of her wounds. One ran off in the direction of Mantle; I don't know what happened to him. I doubt he made it. The other three decided to take their chances on Earth and jumped back. They headed for South Africa, signs pointed to it not being hit as bad. I stayed."

Punching in one last set of commands, Han looked up. A white, shimmering portal appeared between the archway. Vaguely, Winter could see a blurry landscape on the other side. "I wandered for a long time after the initial chaos of the bombs died, jumping to Earth before making my way back home. Eventually, I found the others and we started our work." Smiling at them, he walked through the portal. It rippled like the surface of a pool before stabilizing, Han nowhere to be seen.

"Jane, you have the fort, we'll keep an eye on the boss," Anna said. The robot nodded, wheeling back. Ròta gestured to Winter and James. James stepped forward and through the portal. Reluctantly, Winter followed.

To her surprise, stepping through the portal didn't feel like anything. All that happened was that a bright, white light temporarily blinded her. After a few seconds, it faded. She wasn't in the Scattered base anymore. She was outside, standing in the middle of a barren landscape, dead and burnt remiss of trees surrounding her. They looked as if they had been this way a long time, the few that weren't scorched were petrified. It was a gloomy, miserable place. The outlines of a city were vaguely visible in the distance, with half of the skyscrapers crumbled.

Wherever they were, it was rather hot. She could already feel a blanket of heat starting to press down on her. "Where are we?" she asked, tugging at her collar, feeling sweat starting to form on her neck already.

"The Nigerian Lowland Forests," Han said. "Or what's left of them. They were struggling before the war. And while Africa was mainly spared from the bombs, war still gripped the continent after the rest of the world collapsed, countries scrambling for resources after the interconnected world fell apart. Much of the forests were burnt down in the resulting conflicts." He pointed at the outline of the city in the distance. "Ibadan is around five miles in that direction. I've been there before, tens of thousands of people live in the ruins of the city. It looks like it was sacked sometime after the war. By whom and why I couldn't tell you. They're doing all right for themselves, but they're struggling with famine from their last harvest going bad. They aren't starving, but their stores are running low. So we've been giving them nudges. Anna? Remind me where we are."

"We did cassava two weeks ago, jollof rice one week ago, and we're due for yams this week. We were talking about plantains next week," Anna listed off with practiced precision. "May I?" Han nodded. Stepping forward, Anna knelt and planted her hand on the ground. The effect was instantaneous. Before Winter could blink, the soil shifted all around them. The stalks of yam plants shot up in every direction that she could see. Within a minute, the clearing that they were in was covered with them, most of them either mature or on the verge of it. Grabbing one, Han uprooted a yam and examined it. "Perfect," he said, dropping it back on the ground.

Winter had to admit, she was impressed. It looked as if Anna had managed to fertilize and grow crops in hundreds, potentially thousands of acres of land. Glancing down, she nudged at the soil with her foot. Before it had been dark and hard, now it was a healthy brown, soft and loose, looking far more fertile. It was a very impactful Semblance. Though, it was a taxing one. Anna had slumped to the ground, panting heavily, as a bright red Aura flashed to life around her before breaking. Róta was already helping her to her feet, offering her a bottle of water. The tattooed woman had been even quieter than usual, and her body language was rather stiff as she helped Anna up.

"Well that's peculiar," Han said. Walking to the middle of the newly grown yams, Han stopped in front of a cluster of around a dozen trees. Winter didn't recall seeing these trees before. They rather stuck out, not just in that they were healthy and strong, they simply appeared to be a different type of tree than the ones in the forest. Bright red fruit adorned the upper branches. Han looked amused. "Anna? Apples aren't a Nigerian fruit. Back in the day, it was an exotic import. I'm not sure nowadays many Nigerians know what an apple is."

"Sorry," Anna said sheepishly, lowering her bottle of water. "Still trying to get this thing under control, it's a recent acquisition after all.

"Well, hopefully, it'll be a welcome luxury," Han said. "This looks like it should do the job. Enough to keep them going for now, and with fresh fertile land they can grow fresh crops in the next wet season."

"Anna, can I ask you a question?" James asked. Practically every head, Winter's included, snapped onto James. The Atlesian woman blinked, looking surprised and nearly choking on her water.

"I-me?" she said, pointing to herself. James nodded. "I suppose?"

"That armor of yours is Enclave, right?" James asked. He pointed at the thick suit.

"Yes, it is. I'm surprised you know what Enclave design looks like, they haven't been active on the West Coast for nearly half a century. We salvaged this from the East Coast. They ran over there to try and start over, only to meet a Brotherhood of Steel detachment. The resulting war finished them off for good. We got in there and grabbed what salvage we could when no one was looking." She tilted her head. "Then again you look like you might be old enough to remember them. No offense."

"Vaguely, I was a kid when their oil rig went down. But I've been wondering. Is that Hellfire armor? A duraframe design?" Winter was privately growing very frustrated at listening to a conversation where she only understood half of what was being said. The Enclave she understood, but he had only mentioned a Brotherhood of Steel once or twice. As she silently tried to piece everything together. "Ah. Gotcha. Thanks for telling me, I was just curious." Despite the fairly convincing good-natured tone, his voice didn't make his eyes. There was a sour tinge to them.

"Well, I think that's been a rather good demonstration," Han said, looking back and forth between James and Anna. He looked just a tad uncertain at what had just happened. Slowly, the formation reversed and James and Winter were escorted back to the portal.

As they went, Winter shot James a look that she hoped would convey a general feeling of "what was that all about?" Thankfully, he noticed and leaned in. "I heard about the Hellfire armor being developed and about the resources they were diverting for it," he whispered. "Specifically, I heard about how they were going to scrap their duraframe eyebot project."

"But what does that-'' she began. And then understanding struck her like a lighting bolt. "ED-E is Enclave?"

"Yup. He got sent over from the other side of the continent, his creator was trying to save him. Someone must've shot at him on the way because I found him in a junk shop with a couple of holes in him. Had to stitch him back together."

"Ah," Winter said. James's firm defiance against ED-E being disassembled, while never something she had found that peculiar or needing elaboration, now had some context. It was...admirable. Before too long, they were back on the other side, Jane still standing at attention.

"That's only a small part of what we do, James, Winter," Han said, turning to look at him. Winter folded her arms and glared. This again. "We repair power plants, we take out Raider bands, we purify water supplies. And you can both be part of that with us."

"And our families?" Winter said. "Are we allowed to go back to see them? Or does being part of this paramilitary group exclude having meaningful contact with anyone outside it? I ask because I struggle to see this as something where we can just moonlight, particularly when it would be considered going AWOL for some of us. If I didn't know any better, I'd think that this was a desperate, clumsy idea thought up by someone who acted without thinking and has put himself in a situation he doesn't know how to deal with. That's most likely why we were stuck in a cell without any plans for what would be done with us outside of asking us to join forces with the people who kidnapped us! What did you think we would say and do?"

Her temper had reached a boiling point. Everything about this was insulting. She didn't care how many hungry people they fed or whatever other good deeds they had done. The five of them had kidnapped her and James and were now blackmailing the two of them. Effectively their two choices were to join up with their captors or be kept prisoner forever. Of course, she doubted that Han wanted to keep them forever, but in the hole he had dug for himself, it was either that or kill them if they refused to join up.

"And while I'm speaking my mind, a thought has occurred to me." She had been given plenty of time to think, and while she had been doing that, something rather peculiar had occurred to her. "This one's Semblance copies the Semblances of others, correct? Wiglaf can convert metal into a liquid and manipulate it, Róta goes berserk, and as a machine, Jane doesn't have a Semblance. So Han, unless you have a green thumb-related Semblance, which I doubt because you would've helped her if you did, she got it from somewhere else. You never told us where that was. May I ask?"

A cold, heavy silence fell over the room. Han wasn't looking at her. James's eyes were wide and his mouth opened wide as Winter's words hit him. Anna broke the silence. "Han. She's right for the wrong reasons. This isn't working. It's not your fault, but this plan was always a little hair-brained."

"Sadly, I think I'm inclined to agree," Wiglaf said, frowning in disappointment.

Winter paid them no heed, focusing her glare on Han. The cyborg sighed. "I need to think. Jane, Wiglaf, can you take them back to their room? Anna, drop off your armor at the armory, I'll recharge it when I get a moment. Hand rubbed his temples, looking exhausted. Winter found herself unable to spare an iota of sympathy for him. If he had just driven them back to Mantle after going back on his promise to James, then maybe she would've been able to find it in herself to forgive him. But not after everything he had done to her and James.

She only took her glare off of Han when Wiglaf and Jane both escorted the two of them away. "He saved us, you know," Jane said in her mechanical voice. "Han. Every last one of us. He pulled me out of the ruins of Camp Navarro and patched me back together. He found Wiglaf after the survivors he had been leading were massacred by the Enclave's pet mutant and it nearly killed him. He found Anna nearly dead on a battlefield after the Great War, and Róta-,"

"I don't. Care," Winter said bluntly. "Spare me the sob stories."

"...We'll talk tomorrow," Jane said coldly. They were at the shared cell. Without much of a word, even Wiglaf had gone rather quiet, they opened the door. The second she and James stepped inside, it closed behind them. Winter was certain she could hear angry muttering on the other side.

"Well, fuck, you just gave them both barrels," James said, sounding overwhelmed as he turned to face her.

"I told them the truth, and in the process, I suspect I ripped away a couple of the comforting lies that they were telling themselves," Winter said. She was still fuming. She was sick of it. Sick of the self-congratulatory pats on the back they gave themselves, sick of the impotent hand wringing, and sick of their self-righteousness speeches on how they were doing good. James and she had been doing plenty of good working with Ironwood and Ozpin, but a quintet of outlaws were supposed to be a trade-up? No, she wasn't having any of that nonsense.

"Maybe," James said, looking around the room. "You're right though. Everything you said was right. And frankly, I think we've both spent enough time here."

"Have you come up with a plan yet?" Winter asked. The past couple of days had been long and tedious. When they weren't sleeping, exercising, or eating, the pair of them had been granted far too much time to themselves. Dancing and small talk could only eat so much of it up, so much of it had been granted to brainstorming potential escape attempts. None of their ideas had borne much fruit, simply because of how little they had to work with.

"I think I may tell them I'm interested in joining," Shock flooding her, Winter opened her mouth to protest. "Not sincerely, of course," he added hastily. "But I think I'll be able to sell them on it. If I can get enough trust from them, I can use it against them."

"That may be rather hard to do after what I just did back there," Winter said. A slight trace of guilt fluttered into her. If she had known James was considering the duplicitous approach, she would've kept quiet.

"Actually I think we can use that," James said. "When I say I want to join them, I want you to clock me."

There was a pause. "I beg your pardon?" Winter said. She must've misheard him.

"Punch me in the face, really hard," James said. "If I end up hitting the ground, kick me in the stomach a few times to drive the point home. From their perspective, I just left you out to dry. They don't want you to ever see Weiss again unless it's under their terms, so it'd be natural you'd be pissed at me. They strike me as the type of people who have seen more than their share of violence, so you can't hold back. After that-," but Winter interrupted him.

"I'm not hitting you," Winter said firmly. "That's an absurd proposition. You've done nothing to deserve it and I'm not going to willingly hurt you. If you want me to yell that you're a traitor, I can manage that."

"Winter, it's ok," James said. Winter had expected him to be annoyed and impatient, the way most people were when she planted her feet to the ground. To her surprise, his voice was calm, comforting even. "I've taken punches in the past, and most of them from people who want me dead. I'll know you don't mean it. And if it gets us out of here, I'm more than happy to take it."

"You shouldn't have to," Winter said stubbornly. Bad memories were starting to float to the forefront of her mind. A stinging pain on her cheek, hot angry tears leaking out of her eyes, a dismissive comment from her father, "you'll thank me when you finally grow up." She had spent her entire adult life getting away from that nightmare, and now James was just asking for the type of abuse she had spent so long trying to escape? No. She refused. "I will go along with your plan. But I can't bring myself to hurt you. And I'm not sorry for that." She braced herself for the usual retorts. Everyone always got angry with her when she stood her ground: her father, Whitely, Qrow, she was used to it by now.

They never came. Instead, James put a comforting hand on her shoulder, smiling as he did. "Ok. If you're that uncomfortable with it, we'll find another way. Sorry, I didn't mean to push you like that."

It took Winter a second to find her voice. This wasn't how these things normally worked. She couldn't remember the last time she had been apologized to when she refused to cooperate. It was disorienting, but not unwelcome. "You're a rather odd man, James. You make small talk with your captors, you pseudo adopt a young adult from a hate group, and now this. Though I do admit, it's a charming change of pace at times. I give you credit, not many men are comfortable dancing with a woman taller than them."

James looked at Winter, unblinking. "Sorry, could you run that last bit by me one more time?"

Confused, Winter repeated herself. "Not many dance with a woman who's taller than him."

James stared. Then a soft smile broke across his face. "Uh, Winter? You're not taller than me. We're around the same height, maybe I'm a smidgen taller."

Oh, so he wanted to play that game? "We were nose to nose, and my nose was a full inch above yours. Look." Striding forward, she stopped in front of James. Sure enough, she was an inch taller than him, not a wide margin, but his eyes noticeably moved upward to meet hers. "See?" She couldn't help herself, a cocky smile slid across her face.

"Winter, you're wearing goddamn high heels!" James said in exasperation, pointing down to her heeled boots. "That doesn't count!"

"And? You're wearing boots," Winter said, folding her arms and attempting, unsuccessfully, to suppress her grin. "They add height too."

"I'm not wearing freaking cowboy boots, just combat boots, they don't add an inch the way yours do, shorty," James said. There was a smug grin on his face now too. And like that, the gauntlet had been thrown.

"I do believe you're challenging me, Mr. Walker," Winter said confidently, "You'd be wise to not start a fight you can't win."

"Is that right?" He took a step forward, their noses practically touching now. There was a challenge in his eyes. "Well, buck up Schnee. Kick those heels off and tell me what the view is like down there."

She was going to destroy him. "Take the boots off first. Unless you're scared." He took the bait like a sucker. Rising to the challenge, he dropped to one knee and began to undo his laces. Frantically, a plan had formed in her head, but she didn't have much time. Reaching down, she hastily undid the straps to her heels, sliding them off. Taking great care, she tossed them in a way that directly crossed his line of sight. Hastily, she then put her plan into work, straightening her back out.

After a minute of work, James only had a double layer of worn socks covering his feet. Standing up straight, James came up just short, an inch below Winter. Her grin widened. "Like I said, don't start fights you can't win."

"Uh-huh," James said, unimpressed. "Winter?"

"Yes?" she said, putting on an air of faux innocence.

"Everyone looks taller than they actually are when they're ON THEIR FUCKING TIPPIE TOES!" Winter couldn't help it, a laugh that was more of a wheeze leaked out of her like she was a deflating balloon. Like James had said, she was balancing herself on the balls of her feet, effectively mimicking the advantage of her high heels.

Playfully, James shoved her in the shoulder, sending the off-balance Winter sprawling onto her bed. Every step of the way, Winter's dry, shallow laughter continued to tumble out of her. This was so stupid. This could easily be the stupidest thing she had done in her entire adult life. But she couldn't stop laughing.

Chuckling himself, James sat down next to her, looking down at where she lay. For a moment, the two of them still sat there, laughing. "I think we both needed that," he said. "So. We're gonna go with you yelling at me that I'm a traitor?"

Half-choking, Winter forced out a nod, pulling herself into a sitting position as the two of them slid their footwear back on. "But that's still a baseline idea, we need to iron out the fine details," she said, finally forcing her laughter down. "When it's done though, we'll have something I think will work."

"Or I could just open the door and let you both out, doesn't that sound better than you both doing your best drama club impression?" a voice from behind the door said. It didn't belong to any of the Scattered.

Both Winter and James jumped out of the bed in a panic, any comfort from their shared idiocy long gone. "Winter, gun," James hissed, holding his hand out. She was already one step ahead of him. Ripping the pistol from the concealed holster, she pressed it into his hand. As he aimed, she held out her hands to her side, glyphs appearing in the palms of her hand. It it wasn't the Scattered, Cinder and her lackeys must've tracked them down. Except, now that she thought about it, hadn't she heard that voice before? No. It couldn't be.

The door slid open, revealing the unshaven, ragged man on the other side, a massive sword leaning in his shoulder. "Qrow!?" At once, James lowered his pistol, gawking at the other man. "How did you-where did you come from? Did the Scattered see you?"

"Uh, you're welcome," Qrow said, walking into the room with a cocky swagger. "Took me a couple of days to get a feel for the layout of this place without being spotted. Bad news, we're underground. Good news, I know where they're keeping your gear. We'll stop by there, arm up, then head for the entrance. I'm sure they won't mind if we borrow their van." Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a pair of keys, dangling them idly. Winter hastily put out her glyphs. Her personal disdain for Qrow didn't matter here, she wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"Well, let's go! Gotta act before they realize what's going on." And with that, he turned, moving down the hallway. Winter and James barely had time to glance at each other before they were forced to chase after him. Winter's heart was in her throat, and whether it was due to excitement or nerves, she couldn't tell. They had an opening, but if they were caught, it might push the Scattered over the edge into taking more radical solutions for dealing with them.

The base was huge and winding, far too big for the five people who called it home. Eventually, thankfully, they came to a heavy metal door. A primitive-looking computer, very similar to James's Pip-Boy, hummed next to it, giving off a dull green light. "They were smart enough to have their password be a random jumble of letters instead of their cat's name. But I saw them punch it in enough times to learn it." With that, his fingers danced across the keyboard before hitting enter. With a light-hearted chime, the door slid open. On the other side was a room packed to the bursting point with weapons. Every wall and table was stacked with guns, blades, boxes of ammunition, and armor. Some of them she recognized as being of Remnant make, but most of them were of the old, worn models she had come to associate with Earth. Quite a few of the weapons were the same strange design as the handful of energy weapons she had seen from Earth. On the far side of the room, she spotted Anna's armor hooked up to some kind of rig, along with half a dozen other sets of similar armor in identical situations.

Her eyes were drawn to a table in the corner, ignoring the display that had to be the result of decades of hoarding. Her sword was lying on top of James's weapons, both perched carefully on the table. Rushing over, she grabbed it and affixed it to her side. Relief washed through her. She had felt naked, borderline incomplete, without her sword. Gripping the hilt, she squeezed it. This was where it belonged, not lying around like an expendable rifle.

"Ice Queen," Qrow said, right behind her. And just like that, he was already wasting the goodwill he had built up. "How's Walker holding up? This is the first time I saw him up close. I didn't realize Cinder had messed up that badly. He ok?"

Just as soon as it had come, the tension she had felt towards Qrow vanished. Well, it had mostly vanished. Ice Queen was still a name she felt a healthy level of disdain towards. "He's better now, he was struggling at first," she said honestly. "The Scattered have good medical resources if nothing else. Though they don't seem to have the means to make a prosthetic ear. That's the first thing I'm arranging when I get back."

Qrow let out a laugh that wasn't as mocking as it normally was from him. "Aw, you care." Winter tried to ignore him. She tried. "Well, I'm just glad the both of you are ok. Walker!" Qrow raised his voice. "Grab your guns and let's go already." He turned. "Uh. Winter. What's he doing?" Confused, she turned to look where Qrow was.

James was ducked behind Anna's armor, frantically fiddling with the back. Before Winter could ask, it shifted and opened up wide from the back, not unlike a crab being torn open. Grinning giddily, James climbed inside. As he did, the suit closed around him, sealing him inside. "I think we'll be needing this more than them don't you?" he said, stepping forward. As he did, he reached out and grabbed the heavy, scoped rifle that Anna usually used. "And a gauss rifle? Thank you very much, Ms. Honeycrisp."

"You know how to use that?" Winter said as James approached them. He was moving in the armor with ease, or at least with no more difficulty than Anna had. "Or is it just that easy?"

"I had a friend train me," James said, reaching the table and clipping all of his weapons onto the Hellfire armor. "And as much as I hate the people who made this armor, I'm not about to turn down an edge. Power armor eats up small arms fire like it's nothing. I don't need to let my Aura take it then, the armor can do all the work. And this thing?" He heaved the rifle, "It puts holes in tanks."

Winter nodded, still looking at James as he moved over to another rack, grabbing two bandoliers of those odd, green grenades he had initially shown up with. The armor was, to be blunt, ugly. It was a worn, industrial gray with tinges of black, the eye slots were yellow and beady, and the mouthpiece resembled a piglike snout. But when James's voice came out of it, even filtered through a speaker, it wasn't so bad. "I'll show you how to use it when we get back. Don't take one now, you might not even be able to move it without training." Winter smiled and nodded as he clipped the bandoliers on..

"Huh," Qrow said, sounding mildly impressed. "Ok, we can use that. But we need to get out of here now." Winter and James both nodded at him and made to leave. But before they could exit the armory, something inexplicable happened. A thin, red disc appeared in front of the doorway, much like the portal the Scattered had used, but blood red. As Qrow saw it, he froze. "No," he hissed. "Not now, Raven."

Before any of them could act further, a woman stepped out. She was clad in a dark red and black waist-length kimono held up by a broad sash, with spiked pieces of armor on her wrists. As it stretched downward, it gave way to a short, pleated black skirt and equally black leggings, a pair of shorts vaguely visible between the two. A sword sheath as long as Qrow's blade, but far thinner, rested at her side. A lone hilt stuck out of it, but Winter could see a dozen differently colored Dust blades in a rotating chamber.

That all paled compared to the woman herself. She was the spitting image of a much older Yang Xiao Long. The only difference was red eyes instead of iliac, a couple of inches, and a billowing waterfall of jet black hair instead of bright blonde. Her mind instantly connected the dots. This woman was Miss Xiao Long's mother, and by extension, Qrow's sister. She frowned. Something about this woman was oddly familiar, and ironically it had nothing to do with her resemblance to her daughter. Winter had seen something about her before.

"Qrow, we need to talk," Raven said bluntly. As she did, she blinked and looked around. "Where are we?" Her eyes fell onto Winter. "Is that a Schnee? What have you been up to, little brother?"

"A rescue op," Qrow said bluntly. "And you wouldn't believe what I've been up to if I told you."

"Oh?" A cocky smirk slid onto Raven's face. "How about people from another dimension? A Caesar's Legion? Recruiting allies with, oh what were they called again, Frumentarii? I haven't been skipping idly through fields while you toil in Ozpin's shadow, Qrow."

"So, they did reach out to you," Qrow said, his voice lowering. "Raven. Please tell me you didn't agree to join them. These people, do you even know what they've done?"

"I've been tailing one halfway across Mistral as he runs back to his master after I killed most of his envoys, I suspect I know more than you do at this point. And I found an opportunity I didn't think any of us would ever be able to accomplish. A way to get away from Salem for good. They were stupid enough to try and manipulate me into a fight I couldn't win for it. I think I'll just take it from them, instead."

Winter felt like she had been struck by thunder. This woman had nothing to do with the Scattered, how did she know who Salem was? The mistress of the Grimm who lurked behind civilization was supposed to be a lie they had cooked up. At least, that's what she had told herself.

As this horrific thought occurred to her, she idly realized that she and James had been forgotten. "We can't just run away, Raven. There's no place on Remnant she can't reach if she's not held at bay," Qrow said, his jaw starting to clench. "I thought you of all people would've realized that by now."

"Oh I have, little brother," Raven said. "But this Earth sounds different. No Grimm, no Aura, it's fertile ground for starting over." Her face softened. "Qrow. Come back to your family. This is a chance we won't ever get again. We can do whatever we want on Earth. We can make them fear this mask more than anyone on Remnant. Reaching behind her back, Raven flashed a mask at Qrow. A thick, angular Grimm mask, bent in the shape of a bird's skull, with four thin, horizontal eye slits and red lines of war paint.

For the second time, Winter felt like she had been electrocuted. She knew that mask, you couldn't go to a single settlement in Mistral without seeing it on a wanted poster. "You're the leader of the Branwen Tribe!" The most infamous, brutal, and merciless bandit group on the continent of Anima. Of course, Caesar had tried to recruit him. With this revelation, she pushed the talk of Salem to the back of her mind. That could come later, the bandit Queen in front of her was a bigger priority.

Raven gave a mock smile. "Look at that. Take the silver spoon out of their mouths and even a Schnee can form common sense. It only took her a minute to realize what your last name meant, Qrow."

"Everyone just hold on a second," James said, his voice level, though not without some effort. "Let's not do anything too crazy while we're behind enemy lines."

"You did say this was a rescue operation," Raven said, looking around. "This doesn't look White Fang though, does it? Who'd you go and get angry this time, Qrow?"

"Tell you what," Qrow said bitterly. "Open up a portal to Yang and get us all out of here and I'll tell you." So Raven had a teleportation Semblance that was connected to people somehow. "Do a good deed."

"Oh, but we're already right here," Raven said in a faux polite tone. "Why? In a hurry to get me away from here? Is there something you don't want me to see here?"

"Yeah, the twelve-foot giant that would crush your skull if he caught you," Qrow retorted.

"He's not kidding," James said. "Super Mutant in power armor. He'd probably be able to rip you in half without even trying."

Raven's attention focused on James for the first time. "I don't believe I got your name."

"Don't tell her," Qrow said at once. "You don't want my sister knowing your name unless you can help it. Look, Raven, we're in the middle of something delicate right now. If you're not gonna help us, get out. I thought I made it very clear that I don't just give up."

"Because you're willing to get yourself killed so long as you can pretend you're being useful!" Raven snapped, her flimsy facade of manners crumbling and making way for naked contempt. "It's not my fault you mistook a martyr complex for being brave, Qrow!" Winter stayed silent, her hand close to the hilt of her sword. James wasn't aiming his new gauss rifle at Raven yet, but his grip suggested he was ready to do so at any moment.

"You're wasting your time, the Legion was blowing smoke up your ass," James said. "The portal they have between here and Earth? It's gone, destroyed. My friends and I smashed it on the far in, I got sucked through. The Legion is stuck here with no way back home. They conned you. It's what they do. They make promises they have no intention of keeping and weasel everything they can out of you. Look, don't buy their bullshit. The second that you get away from them, the better. Don't let them prey on you."

When Raven had looked at James earlier, it had been with idle curiosity. Now he had her full attention. Winter forced herself not to look at James, to not blink in surprise, or to do anything that might give away what James was doing. Technically, not a single thing he had said was a lie. Technically. Slowly, her lip curled. "You're lying, and you're not particularly good at it," she said. But her voice quivered. There was a seed of doubt. "I know how to read people, the envoys he sent me believe every word they said."

"Caesar feeds bullshit to everyone in his ranks, the Legion worships him, borderline literally," James replied. Somehow, he was keeping his voice calm. Reaching up, he undid his armor's helmet with a hiss and tucked it under his arm. "To him, it's better to just avoid all the complications of low morale by covering up his cavalcade of fuck ups. That's assuming they're alive anymore, seeing as how Atlas launched a massive raid on their camp."

Raven's face was visibly sagging, only made worse when Qrow spoke up. "He's telling the truth, Raven. This is everything he told Ozpin."

Raven snarled, her hand drifting to her sword. "If I find out you were lying to me-,"

"You'll do nothing," Winter said firmly, her hand now firmly on her own sword's hilt. She didn't like the idea of fighting Raven Branwen when they had so much to deal with already. But if she was going to start something, the odds were against her.

"It's three on one, Raven," Qrow said bluntly, echoing Winter's thoughts. "I don't want to fight you, but I spent the last three days busting my rear saving these two idiots. I can't have you go cutting them up. Just walk away, Raven. Please." Hearing Qrow sounding upset and regretful caught Winter off guard. What had happened between these two?

For a second, Raven slackened, her hand going slack. But, at that moment, an explosion rocked the base. All four of them stumbled and regained their balance as an intercom burst to life and Han's voice echoed over it. "Everyone, get up top! We're under attack! Twenty plus hostiles incoming! Prioritize protecting the holding cells and the portal at all costs!" Dread shot through Winter.

Raven's posture changed at once, her eyes narrowing in hatred as she looked at her brother. "So. He's already taking lessons from Ozpin then. And to think, I almost believed him. He's a fast learner, I'll give him that. Qrow, if you're too stubborn to come along with me, be smart enough to stay out of my way." With that, she turned.

What happened next, Winter wasn't quite sure. One second, Raven was there. The next, something has happened, and in her place was a small black bird that flapped its wings as it sped off down the corridor. Winter was baffled by the display. What had just happened? That couldn't have been a Semblance, Semblances didn't just rewrite body structure like that. Besides, Raven already had a Semblance with her teleportation? So what had that been?

"Crap. It was a good idea, but sometimes things just go wrong," Qrow said. "We'll worry about her later. Raven is good, but she can't take these Scattered on by herself, not if they can hold their own against Cinder. Let's focus on getting out of here. That's gonna be hard enough as it is with someone else coming in through the front door." Making a gesture, he sprinted down the hallway, after Raven. James and Winter followed, James's new armor making heavy thuds with each step.

"Is it Cinder?" Winter said as they ran, remembering the seething hatred the woman had shown. "Did she track us down?"

"No," James said. His face was deathly pale. "I know who would go looking for this place."

XXXXX

Servius looked on in awe. The Legate, his muscles so overwhelming that his armor struggled to hold them, pressed his palm on the blast door to the Pre-War base. At once, there was a screech of metal tearing as it went flying backward, its bolts and hinges weakly hanging where they had been broken apart, where it hit the far wall of the inside. Even there, it bit into the wall, pressing into it and slowly indenting it, the steel of the wall buckling under the force. Lowering his hand and walking in, the ruined blast door finally relented, falling to the floor with a clang. In the distance, Servius could hear a voice calling over the intercom, saying that there were intruders.

"The enemy lies before us. Go," Lanius said, heaving his greatsword and pointing it forward. The elite strike team he commanded charged forward. Tullus was to his left and Ilia to his right. Ancus was in front of him, hammer slung over his shoulder. In the distance, Marie F. was already charging into the base, her knives at the ready and a demonic grin on her face. A massive, burly White Fang man with a chainsaw sword was right behind her, his weapon revving. The rest were legionaries and White Fang he didn't recognize. It didn't matter. They had an enemy to defeat.

Drawing his sword and bounding forward into the dark depths before him, he let out a roar from his gut.

XXXXX

Author's Note: A lot of people said that the Scattered weren't very sympathetic despite me saying they weren't pure evil and had redeeming qualities. They said that despite those traits, they were still self-righteous pricks. To those critics, I only have one thing to say. You have a point. And honestly, I want to thank you. I struggled with the Scattered for a while, not in how to write them, no, but in how to think about them. Whether or not they were anti-heroes or anti-villains. Well, with a nice firm kick in the rear from my critics, I have my head on straight now. They're well-intentioned and well-meaning villains. But they are still villains. They strung James along and then kidnapped him and Winter. They're not as bad as the other villains, but that's damning with faint praise. Still, let me know how you feel about them. I want to know if you think they still need adjustments.

Aside from that, it's fun to get back to writing James and Winter after they've been benched for so long, as well as letting Qrow have some fun. Heck, it's nice to let James and Winter have a soft, stupid moment to themselves. The best type of friend is the one where you lose 30 IQ points when you hang around with them.

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.

 

[erttheking]

Chapter 24

The Juniper Tree

XXXXX

Running in power armor was disorienting; it didn't take nearly as much effort as you thought it should. The suit itself did much of the work, the key to control with it was knowing when you had to relax and not try to overcompensate for perceived floatiness. So when James was speeding through the Scattered's base, keeping up with Qrow and Winter, he had to force himself to not go into the all-out, panic-driven sprint that he wanted to. Otherwise, he'd end up smashing headfirst into a wall.

"Ok, the front door is still our only way out," Qrow said. "These Scattered idiots will have their hands full with Raven and the Legion if that's who's attacking. This is way more than the three of us can handle. Winter, you use your Semblance to speed Walker through an opening if we get bogged down. I've got my own way through. We are not fighting, we're running."

"Wait, hold on," James said as they all turned a corner. "What about the portal? What if Raven or the Legion get their hands on it? What's her deal anyway?"

"She's the leader of one of the most infamous bandit clans on Remnant, as well as a deadly swordswoman," Winter responded from his side. "This is the first time I've ever seen her face. I didn't know she had family outside the clan." She gave Qrow an odd look.

"Yeah, family reunions are awkward when they happen every five years or so," Qrow said "And you don't need to worry about Raven. This is all too much for her. She's not getting loose on your Earth if that's what you're worried about."

"What about the Legion?" James said. "If they're here looking for a portal to Earth, it means they want to replace the one that I destroyed. They want a way to run back home or bring more reinforcements in, I don't know which, but I know that both are bad news."

"So what? You want us to grab it and drag it out with us?" Qrow asked, glaring at James with annoyance. "We've got three different factions stuck underground with us, and taking on any one of them has a high risk of one of us being killed or critically hurt. And no offense, you're the one who's at the highest risk of that. Look, I get it, that thing is the only way home right now, but we can't capture it right now."

"I know," James said bluntly. "I want to destroy it."

Qrow and Winter both came to a grinding halt, looking at him in shock. He followed their lead. There was a heavyweight in his stomach. "Whoa, hold on," Qrow said, holding up a hand. "I said we can't capture it right now. I know where the Scattered base is. We can hook up with Ironwood and arrange an attack with you two safe. Let's not panic and do something stupid that you'll regret later. Unless portal number three is handily hiding somewhere around here, that's your only way home. Don't be in a hurry to run off and burn it when we can be back for it in less than a day."

"I can't," James said. Ever since the whole situation had gone to shit, the horrible implications had been festering in the back of his mind. Han, for all the wrongs he had done, had rooted an idea in James that just wouldn't go away. Aura would be truly devastating for Earth in the wrong hands. He wasn't about to start thinking he was a danger to Earth, but someone like Raven could massacre a platoon by herself. And she was the lesser issue. From what he had seen, all legionaries with Aura were on Remnant, he had stranded them here. It had been a pure fluke, but he had kept them from taking their newfound abilities back and wreaking havoc. And now they had a chance to make Earth their playground, to undo the losses they had suffered in both wars with the NCR. It wasn't worth it. "If the Legion beat the Scattered, we won't have a day."

Qrow gave him an appraising look. "You can't take this back, are you sure you want to do this?" James nodded, praying that Qrow would just agree with him before he lost his nerve. Qrow sighed. "All right man. It's your ticket we're burning. But we're making this quick. We drop into the room where they're keeping it, drop some of your bombs, then run. No negotiating." Another explosion rocked the base.

"The fighting will be concentrated near the entrance, the Scattered aren't expecting infiltrators from the rear," Winter said. "Let's make this quick." Winter gave James a very odd look before the three of them picked up the pace again.

While they didn't know the majority of the base's layout, heading to the portal room was a simple matter of retracing their steps from a mere half hour ago. They ducked and weaved through the passageways, James going over the steps in his head. For much of it, they were uninterrupted. And then it all came crashing down.

A door just ahead of them screeched as it was ripped open, tearing into the far wall and digging into it. Gunfire echoed from down the passageway, behind it. "They're breaking through! Someone stop them!" Han's voice echoed behind them, but it was swallowed up by the roar of battle. Three figures stepped through the doorway. James recognized all of them. The first was a man whose name he didn't know, a towering man with a chainsaw sword and a White Fang mask. He was one of Adam's men. One was Marie F., a massive shit-eating grin on her face, her knives in hand, and, to James's dread, a Fatman slung over her back.

The third was the very last person James wanted to see. Clad from head to toe in steel armor, a Galea decorating a full helm smelted in the image of a bearded man, a crimson cape flowing down his back, and a massive, six-foot-long greatsword in his hand, Legate Lanius stood before him. But something was wrong. Before, Lanius's armor had perfectly covered every inch of his body. Now though? Bulging muscles of inhuman proportions threatened to burst the armor apart, exposed veins covering every corner of flesh. Slowly, Lanius turned to face James. He stepped forward, shifting his sword as he did, but stopped as his gaze fell upon James's Pip-Boy. "Ah. Man of the Bear. We meet again."

"Oh fuck yes," Marie F. said, clasping her hands together and wiggling as if she was about to start dancing. "This day just keeps getting better and better."

"What the fuck happened to you?" James said, ignoring Marie F. looking the man up and down as he aimed with his gauss rifle, Qrow, and Winter both taking up fighting stances beside him. He had seen chronic Psycho and Buffout abuses that hadn't even come close to the muscle mass Lanius had achieved. He was more Super Mutant than human at this point. What in the utter hell was going on?

"I trained," Lanius said simply. "Strength-building exercises. I merely utilized my Semblance and did them at ten times Earth's normal gravity." Oh. Oh fuck. Oh FUCK. "This world is fascinating, is it not? It has awoken power inside us that we were never aware of. I thought that the crucible of nuclear fire and the clashing of tribes shattered our limitations. But I now see I had a child's understanding of strength, an error I have rectified. Have you seen this world, Man of the Bear? It is wonderful, a paradise. A swarm of never-ending monsters that gives birth to mighty warriors. Even the women of this world that awoke to their potential are titans that the Legion of yesterday could not hope to scratch. Even now, many of our number are neophytes, ones that your companion could doubtless slay a score of before she fell." He gestured to Winter, who tensed up. "But I welcome the tribulations. They will reshape the Legion in ways we could only dream of before. Tell me, man of the Bear. Have you awakened to your true full potential?"

Yeah, Lanius didn't need to know a thing about his Semblance. "You haven't learned a thing Lanius, and here I thought you wised up a bit at Hoover dam. You could barely afford to stretch yourself all the way to Hoover Dam, now you're sending men into other dimensions? Exactly how much more blood can the Legion afford to spill after all you've been through?"

"Now, more than ever, the truth that I told you is paramount. My work here will set not only your people free but the Legion as well in ways that we could only dream of before. The Legion, Caesar's dream for the future, is sick and dying. To remain safe and complacent is to give it the death of an old, frail man. It is as unworthy as it is inevitable. No. Our future lies here in this Remnant, desperation driving us forward along with our conviction. And in there we will find true strength and victory."

"You talk too much," the Faunus with the massive sword said. "Do whatever you want with him. The Schnee is mine. The last time I met one she slipped through my grasp. I'm not letting that happen again." The man's knees bent, ready to charge. Winter pivoted to face him, ready to parry, as James shifted to aim the hulk of a man. But before anyone could take a step, Lanius lowered his sword, positioning it between the Faunus and everyone else.

"I have not finished speaking," Lanius said, not looking at the White Fang operative. "You may attack when you have my blessing and not a moment sooner." His voice was calm, but there was a firm finality to it that made it clear that nothing he had just said was up for debate

Lanius earned a snarl for a response as he shoved the blade away. "You're not Adam, I don't take orders from you." The man took a step forward. In response, Lanius lightly tapped the man on the shoulder. He froze, looking at Lanius. "You wouldn't."

"I was never a man of science, but I must admit I've developed a curiosity for certain matters ever since I've gained these powers. There's a question I've still been unable to find an answer to. At what point does gravity reduce bones to powder?" Lanius leaned forward. "Defy me again and I will discover the truth of the matter. Do not forget your place." Slowly, the White Fang man stepped back.

Around this point, Marie F.'s insufferable smile faltered for a moment as she glanced up at Lanius. For the smallest of moments, fear flickered across her face. So even she was scared of Lanius, even if it was just a little bit. Apparently, some degree of survival instinct was buried in that twisted and selfish mind of hers.

"So, you want to just run back to Earth then? Use your fancy new toys to massacre NCR troopers like you're shooting fish in a barrel?" James said. If Lanius didn't want to fight just yet, and with preemptive strikes on Aura users having proven to not be the decisive blows they could be on normal people, maybe he could get something out of this. "I'm surprised. You've got a world of titans and you're going to go back for Hoover Dam and Vegas? Do you just think small all the time or is it just that you know you're outmatched here?" Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Winter flinch.

"Your vision is limited, it does not rise to the heights that Caesar's does. He has lost all interest in the paltry gains of the West. Our work here is far from done, the true prize has yet to be claimed. But for now, that will wait. We were denied a proper conclusion. Come man of the Bear." He held out his sword in front of him. "Show me what-," but he didn't get a chance to finish. Sending that the time for talking was over, James shifted his gauss rifle. There was a crack as he opened fire, the slug boring right into Lanius's face. Lanius, in turn, was forced to take a step back. That was all. There was no grunt of pain, no sign of him being off-balance, it hardly looked like he had suffered anything more than a light push. Well. Crap.

Everything exploded after that. Qrow darted forward, driving the point of his sword right into Lanius's chest with a clang. At the same time, Winter flicked her wrist, and pitch-black glyphs appeared behind him, the ones that pulled instead of pushing. This whole time, James fired twice more, both shots hitting home in Lanius's face. Between the combined efforts of the three of them, they were able to force Lanius off of his feet. Tilting backward, he fell into the black glyphs. With no anchor, he was pulled back into the room behind him, the room where gunshots were still echoing. James didn't have time to see what happened to him. The very second he cleared the doorway, Winter, slammed her sword into the ground. Her ice wall sprouted to life, rocketing forward and plugging up Lanius's way back into the room.

But Lanius's allies had not been idle. The giant man charged forward, heaving his massive blade and bringing it crashing down on Winter, who barely parried it with her second sword. James pivoted, aiming for the man's head. "Oh, she's got her dance partner." He hated that voice so much. Marie F., grinning at him from the far side of the room, tapped the Fatman on her back. With a pop, another one appeared in her hand, fully loaded. James's stomach dropped. She was insane, at this close range in quarters this tight the backblast ran the chance of hitting her too. That didn't seem to deter her, as she gleefully pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. In fact, instead of the catapult firing, the warhead slid out and onto the ground, landing with a dull thump. Marie F. stared down in disbelief and outrage. Angrily, she dropped the Fatman and reached for the one on her back again. She wasn't even halfway there before Qrow was on her, swinging his greatsword as if he intended to cleave her in half. Teeth clenched tight, she threw herself forward and just barely slid underneath the sword. As she did, she tapped her knife sheaths, materializing one in each hand. Coming to a stop, she spun and slashed at Qrow, only for both points of her daggers to be blocked by the flat of Qrow's sword. Holding his sword steady with both hands, he flashed a smile at Marie F.. It was trying to be mocking, but it didn't have the desired effect. There was a tenseness to it. Qrow was nervous, much like James was.

Still, Marie F. was now occupied. Trusting Qrow to handle her, James whipped his rifle back at the White Fang fighter. He was pressing into Winter, trying to take her head off with wild swing after wild swing. She was dancing backward to avoid his blows, mixing dodging with parrying, but he was giving her next to no breathing room. Winter had just enough space to dodge but not do anything else. His arms moving without thinking, James lined up a shot with the man's gut and fired twice.

The results couldn't have been farther from when he had shot Lanius. The force of the slugs blew the giant man right into the wall, leaving a sizable dent. Finally having a moment of respite, Winter slid up next to James, one of her swords in each hand. But the man was already recovering, glaring at both of them through his mask as he revved his sword. Having exhausted his five-shot magazine, James didn't trust himself to reload in time. Instead, he let the rifle fall and hang from its strap as he grabbed the Blue Bull's ax. He was able to draw it just in time. The Faunus man charged at him, bringing his sword crashing down in a vicious overhead strike. James managed to block it with the shaft of the ax, but only barely. And even then, he could feel his bones rattling, despite the power armor.

The situation was far from ideal. He had gotten himself into melee, a field that wasn't his area of expertise, against a very large, very angry man. His mind was racing for a solution. Maybe as strong as this man was, James could overpower him with the Hellfire armor. He had never seen Aura and power armor attempt to match each other pound for pound in the strength department, but right now it was the best he could do.

However, as he clashed with the White Fang operative, he saw a blur of white and blue. Winter had slipped around him, right into the larger man's blind spot. With a twirl and a swipe, she carved both swords into his back. Howling in pain, he abandoned his assault on James and swung behind him. But Winter had already leaped back, well out of his reach, her back now against the wall.

Seething in anger, he made to follow up his assault, only to be blindsided by an ax blow to the back of the head. James was treated to a nice, meaty thunk as he landed it. Now roaring in rage, the massive man turned his attention back to James with a wild, vicious upwards swing. It caught the head of the ax with such force that, before James could even blink, the weapon was ripped out of his hands with such force it nearly dislocated his fingers. With a cry of triumph, the Faunus made to bring his sword down in a decapitation strike. James, with no way out and with no particularly clever ideas, took the only solution he had. He charged.

Throwing himself forward, he slammed into the man, shoulder first, forcing the full weight of both his body and the armor into it. A shallow gasp escaped the man as James continued to press on, not stopping until the pair of them smashed into the wall, Winter hastily getting out of their way. James felt an unpleasant jolt as the two of them came to an abrupt halt, but that was nothing compared to the hoarse cry of pain that escaped his opponent. "You son of a-," the Faunus swore, his voice shallow and hoarse as he tried to get a firm grip on his sword. He sounded like the air had been knocked out of him.

But Winter gave him no respite. The second James slammed him into the way, she was on him, her swords flashes of silver as she peppered his chest with thrusts. "Get off!" the man bellowed, letting out another wild swing. This time he was able to find his mark, catching Winter in the side and forcing her back, Winter's face twisted in pain.

Winter dealt with, his attention went right back to James, bringing his sword crashing down. James drove a knee into the man's gut, trying to stagger him, but even as he grit his teeth in pain, the blow did not stop. Sparks flew as the chainsaw's teeth bit into the shoulder of the Hellfire armor. As James had hoped, it was holding, leaving his Aura undamaged, but he didn't know how long that would last, and his teeth were already rattling in his skull. He had to move fast.

Hands darting up, he drove a fist into the man's throat. Even with his armored fist and the other man's Aura, he could feel the fragile cartilage bending under the force of the blow. The man gagged, spit dribbling out from under his mask, and while he did not cease his assault, his grip noticeably weakened. With his other arm, he jabbed into the hilt of the chainsaw sword, elbow first. It was enough to jerk the blade off of him, knocking the man off balance.

James was weighing the risk and rewards of pressing the attack versus falling back when something happened. The Faunus fell to the ground like a ton of bricks, even though his form hadn't degraded that much. Then he saw it, the man's sword arm pinned to the ground, a spinning black glyph right below it. But even then, the teeth were still active. James had an idea.

"James get your weapon, I don't know if I can hold him long!" Winter called out, but James was already sprinting forward. The White Fang operative was pulling at his arm, having scrambled up into a kneeling position, and he was slowly sliding off of the glyph. Darting forward, he wrapped his hands around the man's head and kneed him in the face. There was a loud crack as the porcelain mask shattered under the force of the blow and a wet splutter followed. After that, he followed up with his true intention. Shifting his grip to the back of the man's head, he forced it down, face first. He directed it right towards the still spinning chainsword.

"NO!" the man shouted, panic raw in his voice as he realized what James was doing. Frantically, his sword arm jerked, trying to either move or deactivate the weapon, but his trigger finger seemed to be pinned. He was able to brace himself when his face was mere inches away from the revving teeth, their roar deafening at this close range. For a second, James struggled, trying to force him down the last half foot before the man could get loose.

For a single, second horrible, uncertainty seized James. What if he screwed up and this big bastard reversed the situation? And then he saw her. Winter was above them both, her swords pointed downward. There was a silver flash as they bore into the prone man's back. He howled and his concentration slipped for one crucial second. With no resistance, his face smashed into the live chainsaw sword.

James closed his eyes instinctively, but that didn't stop the sound. There was a single second of horrible, agonized screaming before it was snuffed out. In its place was a nightmarish symphony of flesh being torn, bones being chipped, and blood splattering onto the ground. After a few seconds, ones that felt like an eternity, the body went limp. He let go after that, pushing it to the side. Mercifully, the noise stopped. He was no stranger to violence and he liked to think he had a strong stomach. But you had to be a sadist to be comfortable using a weapon like this.

But there was no time to dwell. Grabbing the gauss rifle, he slapped a fresh magazine in before aiming. Marie F. was still fighting Qrow, but it wasn't going in her favor. She was throwing a nonstop flurry of stabs with her knives. Maybe one in every ten was landing. Qrow's body moved with the precision and ease of a lifetime of experience of using Aura. Somehow, his massive sword was keeping up with her assault, so much so that he was easily landing twice the number of hits as her, each one far harder than hers.

Seething in frustration, Marie F. swiped upward at Qrow's throat. He neatly stepped to the side before leaning his entire body into a brutal, two-handed swing. Catching Marie F. in the side, he sent her flying across the room and towards the doorway that the three of them had originally entered through. As a parting gift, Qrow pulled a triggered on the hilt of his blade. With a clang, his sword split in half, the front sliding down to reveal a pair of gun barrels hidden inside the center that fired three times. Each shot was expertly aimed, tearing into Marie F. even as she swung wildly with her knives as she landed and skidded backward. It didn't help at all, the shots, apparently buckshot or some Remnant equivalent, peppering her torso. James adjusted his aim to compensate for Marie F.'s involuntary reposition.

Fuming, Marie F. snarled like a feral beast, noticing James aiming. "Didn't take you for a little bitch, Walker! You wanna play it like that?" Her knives clattered to the floor as she again tapped the Fatman on her back, a copy appearing in her hands with a pop. James tensed as he pulled the trigger on the gauss rifle, ready to throw himself to the ground to avoid the blast if he had to. But instead of firing directly at him, the mini-nuke arced downward and towards the gap between them. Qrow, who had been moving in to follow up on his assault, pivoted at the last second.

Whatever flaw had seized her Fatman the first time did, there was not a repeat here. The second the mini-nuke touched the ground, a blinding white light filled the room and a wall of heat slammed into him. Qrow was hit by the edge of the blast, sent skidding back, jaw clenched as he did. For a moment, James squinted, rifle at the ready, waiting to put a slug in Marie F. the second she appeared. But when the flash finally subsided and the cloud dissipated, she was gone. She had fled deeper into the base, but thankfully not in the direction they needed to go. She would have to wait for another day.

"Qrow, you ok?" he asked, shooting the younger man a glance. Even an indirect blast from a mini-nuke was devastating back on Earth, it spoke to the capabilities of Aura that Qrow looked more disoriented than hurt.

"Stings like hell, but I'll live," he grumbled, dusting himself off.

"Winter, are you-," James began, Winter wasn't listening to him. Her hand slid upward, to the shoulder that the chainsaw bit into, gently running her fingers into the groove that had been carved there. She let out a sigh of relief when her fingers couldn't reach down any further.

"Good. It looks like you were right to trust that armor," she said, withdrawing her hands. James permitted himself a small smile. As devastating as Remnant could be, as overwhelming as these otherworldly displays of power could be, there was a comfort to be had in Pre-War armor holding its own.

"Son of a…," Qrow idly said, staring at dissipating remains of the mushroom cloud. "You have weapons like that where you're from?"

"Apparently," Winter said, eyeing the cloud with distrust. "Qrow, don't get near it. I had a run-in with something like it, it's highly hazardous to your health." Mini-nukes didn't give off too much radiation, but avoiding being exposed to radiation at all was generally a good life policy. Even small doses could build up the damage they caused over time.

"They're not a cap a dozen, but yeah," James said, glancing at Qrow. "Pre-War America and China were both working on some nasty stuff. I-," but he was cut off. The deafening sound of ice being shattered with something heavy filled the room. All three of them stopped dead, eyes moving towards the blockage Winter had created. Another echo of breaking ice thrummed through the room, and cracks spiderwebbed through the far end of the barricade.

"Move," Qrow hissed. Neither Winter nor James needed to be told twice. The three of them bolted down a nearby hallway, back on course for the portal room. As James ducked and weaved to keep up with his two faster companions, he could feel the dread coming off of him. Marie F. had been sadistic and had a powerful weapon, but was like James in that she lacked experience with Aura. The White Fang fighter had been strong, but not overwhelmingly so.

Lanius was different. He had always been a freak of nature, his body far beyond what any unaugmented person had any right to. James had seen the man grapple with men in power armor and swallow up magazines of ammunition. And now he had become that thing back there. Even Cinder, with whatever that abnormal power she possessed was, looked as if a gauss slug had hurt her. At least she had been concerned enough that she had resorted to blocking them. But Lanius? James had shot him in the face, three times no less, with an anti-tank weapon, one specifically designed to counter the juggernaut that was power armor. And Lanius had lost his balance. Even that small victory had required help from Qrow and Winter. The implications were horrific and James was forcing himself to not think about them. He was right behind them, and if the fears now festering in the depths of his soul were even half right, what could they possibly hope to do against him?

His heart thumped against his chest as they followed the winding path Han had led them on earlier that day. Every step of the way, James could swear he heard something behind them. Either the grinding of metal being torn apart or heavy footfalls that bent the ground beneath them. They were so faint he couldn't tell if they were real or if his mind was playing tricks on him. Either way, now was not a time to find out. Finally, after what seemed like an hour of flitting through the base, they came to a halt right outside the room. Winter darted forward and flicked the switch, the door sliding open.

Róta was standing right on the other side, ax at the ready. She was halfway through a swing, a silent battle cry on her lips, when she came to a sudden halt, staring at the three of them. Taking a defensive step back, she kept her weapon at the ready, not making any aggressive moves but not standing down either. "How?" she said in her raspy voice, clearly confused. Her eyes darted onto Qrow. "Who you?"

"The guy who spent the last couple of days inside your base without you noticing," Qrow said dryly, his sword at the ready.

"You're not at the front with the others?" Winter said in surprise, also on guard.

Róta's eyes were now darting back and forth between the three of them, doubtlessly realizing how badly outnumbered she was. Her gaze eventually came to rest on James. "Last line," she said, pointing her thumb at herself. "Base big. Multiple paths in. Not use military design." She paused. "Anna's armor." Now her thumb was pointed at James. "Anna's rifle. You hurt her?" A twitch of anger flashed across her face.

"No," James said. As he did, he holstered the gauss rifle. Róta was someone he could bring himself to hate, not after she had gone out of her way to stick up for Winter and him. "I just grabbed it from the armory. I didn't even see her there. She's probably holding the front gate." He took a step forward, reaching up and taking off his helmet.

"James, what are you doing!?" Winter hissed. He felt a pang of guilt over making Winter worry again.

"I'm just gonna talk to her, I know what I'm doing," he said, giving her the best reassuring smile he could manage. She didn't look entirely convinced, but at least didn't object further. However, she did not stay her sword, and James had a very good feeling that if Róta made even the lightest aggressive movement, Winter would be on her. Not wanting it to come to that, he turned back to the tribal woman. "Róta. Someone else got into your base. Someone called Raven Branwen."

Upon hearing the name, Róta noticeably stiffened. "How?" she said, her voice dripping in dread.

"She's my sister, her Semblance lets her create portals to people she has an emotional connection with. It came down to a case of bad timing." It was hard to be certain, but James was certain an element of regret was in his voice.

"Shit," Róta swore, glancing beyond the three of them and outside. "Where?"

"We don't know," James said honestly. "Róta? If you spent this long working with Han, you must believe everything he does, am I right?" The woman nodded, looking at him with a puzzled expression mixed in with her nervous energy. Ok good, he could work with this. "Can you and the others fight off a two-pronged assault like that? Do you even know how many men the Legion are beating down your door with?"

Róta said nothing, she merely looked at him as if she didn't like what she was hearing. "Róta. You know what the Legion is like. You know what they do to people. If they get that portal, they'll bring Aura back to Earth and they'll be the only ones to have it. The NCR won't be able to stop them, the Legion will kill and enslave hundreds of thousands of people. None of us want that. We can't let that happen. Róta...Lanius is here. He's a minute behind us at most. We don't have time. We can't let him get back to Earth."

Róta was in agony. Her gaze shifted from the portal behind her, to the ax in her hands, to James's face. Then, finally, she looked outside. The heavy thumps were echoing through the hallway. And they were getting louder. Then, she sighed. "Destroy portal always end plan. Han wanted us do it when no more good to do. But no time left. Go." With that, she stepped past James, heading towards the door.

"Wait, where are you going?" James called after her. She was heading right in the direction of Lanius.

"Get vengeance," she said, her voice managing a snarl despite how weak it was. "Live long James Walker. Live long Winter Schnee. Will see you in Valhalla." The uncertainty had left her. All that was left was a red hot fury that was slowly growing. Her eyes were alight with hatred, her knuckles were turning white as they gripped her weapon, and her teeth were clenched. Then, she raised her ax, let out a hoarse roar, and charged.

"Róta!" James called out after her. His heart was in his throat. What in God's name was she playing at? Was she trying to get herself killed?

"Damn it," Qrow said, looking down the hallway after her. "Well, nothing we can do about it. Look, do what you need to do, and let's get out of here. "

"She made her choice, James," Winter said, sounding sympathetic but also as if she agreed with Qrow. "She's buying us time too, let's not waste it."

James felt a little sick. Lanius would kill Róta, he would make it hurt. If she was lucky, that was all he would do. If she was unlucky, she would be taken alive, a concept he wasn't even sure he wanted to consider. Unclipping one of his grenades, he looked at the portal as his mind raced, trying to figure out what to do. If he just destroyed the portal and left, Róta's fate was sealed. But if he went to try and help her, he risked getting Winter and Qrow trapped in this slugfest. There had to be something he could do. There had to be something.

XXXXX

Iila's heart was in her throat. The battle in the front of the underground base was a bloodbath. A giant green man, a man that was more metal than flesh, a glowing green corpse, and a massive robot were blunting their advance to the best of their ability. There were three ways deeper into the base, two of them were locked down.

The giant's shield had been morphed into a giant hammer that was cleaving through anyone who got too close to him. The handful who had managed to get through were caught in the green blasts of energy that the corpse gave off. Three of the Legion and White Fang's fighters were dead on the ground, two of them with no visible wounds. They had dropped dead Ilia didn't know how neither of them weren't affected by the blasts that were claiming lives, but neither of them were slowing down. They held one of the deeper paths in

On the other path, a massive machine only slightly smaller than an Atlas Paladin was standing guard, firing an absolute hailstorm of laser fire and missiles to keep them at bay. It was being conservative with its missiles, but firing its lasers without restraint. Occasionally one of the lasers would go dry and it would lift the barrel up to its back. The cyborg was clinging onto the robot's back, firing lasers of his own and smacking the spent lasers that were raised up to him. Whatever he did, the weapons would burst to life as they began to rake the assaulting forces.

The third entrance was unguarded, access into it was mainly denied by suppressing fire from the robot and its passenger. Only Lanius had managed to force his way through with Marie F. and Adam's second in command. A few minutes after, he had been forced back out with the way being blocked by a pillar of ice not long after.

For a time, Ilia thought the assault was stalling out. These four, whoever they were, were able to hold the line against a much larger force. That was until Lanius tore into the pillar of ice and smashed it apart. With his fists. "Inside," he ordered calmly, grabbing and throwing a large chunk of the ice at the robot. It rocketed towards it far faster than anyone should reasonably be able to throw, even with Aura, shattering on its chest and leaving a massive dent. For a moment, the machine stuttered, shots going wide. The man on its back tried to pick up the slack, but it wasn't enough. Darting from cover as fast as she could, Ilia slipped through the entrance as fast as she could. Servius, Tullus, Ancus, and a legionary she didn't know were right behind her, Lanius leading them all. Behind them, she heard the laser fire resume.

Now she was excited. She had broken into enemy instillations, before. She had helped Adam strike at the SDC's very core, and she had learned something there. Once you had breached their front line, you had already won on some level. Their territory had been compromised and you had achieved at least part of your objective. They could rally and drive you out, but that was them salvaging a bad situation. Still, she couldn't get complacent. They had hurt these people, whoever they were, but they hadn't obtained their main goal yet.

The legionary she didn't know darted ahead, overtaking even Lanius as he sped forward. He was laughing with an almost primal delight, his sword out in a triumphant gesture as he pivoted to round a corner. There was the swish of something heavy being swung and the man was thrown back, sprawling onto the ground. Before he could react, a muscular, red-haired woman was on top of him, an ax crackling with Lightning Dust in her hands. She brought it down, letting out a noise that was more like a dull wheeze than anything else, tearing into the legionary's chest. His armor buckled, his Aura shattered, and his intestines spilled out onto his sides. The man had enough time to scream before a second swing took off his head.

They all came to a stop as Lanius held his hand out. Ilia was taken aback at how quickly the man had been killed and was confused as to why Lanius was holding them back. Not that she was about to disobey him. She had seen the way Servius, Tullus, and Ancus had reacted to the Legate.

The woman spoke as she turned to face him, her voice slow and heavy, sounding as each every word was causing her great pain. "I am Róta Bloodaxe, last of the Einherjar. If I die today, I die wet with the blood of Legion and their pawns." She spared Ilia a single, disdainful, look. "I will finish what we started all those years ago. We will not be one of the conquered." With that, she took up a fighting stance, as if daring them all to attack. Her eyes were locked onto Lanius.

"I recall you. Barely," Lanius said, taking a step forward. He barely seemed to remember Ilia and the others. "Your tribe was a challenge, refreshingly so. But your end was cowardly, as were your tactics. You knew you could not defeat us, so instead of facing a noble end, you drew Legion blood with trickery and deception. And when forced into a proper fight, your tribe's final act was a craven one. I imagine you will disappoint." The woman, Róta, adopted a stony expression as she glared at him.

Slowly, Ilia connected the dots. Tullus had mentioned a tribe that attacked the Legion and then blown themselves up when cornered. She took a glance at Servius, checking to see if he recognized what was being said. What she saw caught her completely off guard. Pure, unrestrained fury was etched into every corner of Servius's face. He was staring directly at Róta, a burning hatred she had never seen before in his eyes. It made him look more like a feral animal than a man.

"YOU!" he roared, his voice tearing as he did. Without warning, he tore across the gap between himself and Róta, his sword out. The woman blinked in surprise but adjusted quickly, a downward swing that would've parted her skull in two biting into the shaft of her ax instead. As the weapons clashed, Róta's face shifted into a snarl of hatred that matched Servius's.

"Serv!" Tullus bolted after his fellow legionary, Ancus following and Ilia uncurling her sword. Slowly, the tattoos that covered the woman began to glow a bright blue.

XXXXX

Author's Note: The way the Gauss Rifle works in New Vegas bugs me. It's a solid projectile weapon that mainly consumes energy weapon ammo. Now I get the reasoning behind it, it is a weapon that uses a power source, but you're still not shooting energy, you're shooting slugs. So I changed the mechanics a bit. It has a five-round magazine with a power supply that needs to be changed every ten shots. I thought it'd be fitting that such a weapon be a little high maintenance.

On a side note, I updated so often lately because I had a huge burst of energy, but sadly that energy is starting to wear off. I think semi-frequent updates have been good for me and the story, but I don't know if I can reliably pump out a thousand words a day. So I'd like to ask you guys something. How often would you like to see the story updated? Would you prefer shorter chapters with shorter waits? Or meatier chapters where I'm slower to update? I think I'm at the point where I'm already cutting down on chapter length because that was committing to burnout on my end (and maybe this is me reading into it too much but I feel like it was scaring readers off) but I can make them bite-sized if you guys want to see me update weekly, I think I can handle three-thousand words a week. This won't change what I have planned, just the framing. And I hold ultimate decision as there may be days where I go insane and pump out five-thousand words or a month where I barely break a thousand, but I'd like some input on what I should aim for.

I would like to thank my legacy Patrons, SuperFeatherYoshi, xXNanamiXx, RaptorusMaximus, Davis Swinney, Mackenzie Buckle, Ryan Van Schaack, ChaosSpartan575, and LordofNaught for their amazing support.