Doxed Space Magic sends three Mages from an early oughts Cabal and one from their future to Remnant. Their arrival causes quite the stir as they take up causes dear to their hearts - or just try to go home.
RWBY belongs to Rooster Teeth. Mage: the Awakening belongs to White Wolf.
This, of course, is a fanfic. No commercial use implied or intended. You guys know the drill.
Prologue
Once upon a time, there was a Golden City on a hill. It was called Atlantis, and its inhabitants could reach the Supernal and use Magic.
Once upon a time, the Gods of Light and Darkness created Humanity as a way to mend fences between them, and gave them the gift of Magic.
But then, Man grew proud, and sought to Ascend into the Supernal Realms.
But then, a woman named Salem demanded that the Gods return her love, Ozma, to life, and when they didn't, she led Humanity in rebellion.
And so the world Fell, and the Supernal was sundered from the mortal, and the Lie was created.
And so the world Fell, the Gods exterminating Humanity and leaving Remnant.
And so in neither world does Magic work as it should. The Fallen World suffers from the Curse of Quiescence and from the Lie, the Abyss tainting the souls of each and every person, causing them to recoil violently from any overt display of magic. The Gods took Magic with them when they left, and so it is only left in the hands of a small group of people.
Many years later, the Mages of the Pentacle fight a desperate, secretive war against the Exarchs that rule the Fallen World and their servants, the Seers of the Throne. The Fallen World is full of dangers: vampires prowl the night; spirits and ghosts prey upon mankind; the True Fae kidnap people and force them to undergo horrific Durances. But it is also a place of wonder: a woman swears a vow to a Changeling, and the knife in her hand elongates and becomes silvery, strengthened so as long as she keeps her oaths; after defeating a corrupted spirit, Mages and Werewolves celebrate together; a man works on a rifle, and it can fire an infinite number of times.
Many years later, Humanity fights a desperate war against the Creatures of Grimm. Remnant is full of danger: the Grimm pounce on any concentrated ill-feeling; Salem and her group plot the world's downfall; and with the fall of Beacon's CCT tower, worldwide communications are down, leaving each Kingdom to fend for itself. But it is also a place of wonder: a woman activates her Semblance and pieces of pavement hover in the air, then fall back into place; a Huntsman channels his Aura into his fist, and one head of a twinned black-and-white snake, killing the Creature of Grimm; and a scythe can be a sniper rifle, a hammer — a grenade launcher, and a flamethrower-club can be stored as a thermos.
In both worlds, there are villains and heroes. Just like Salem's inner circle, the Seers of the Throne are evil. And just like the Huntsmen and Huntresses, the Mages of the Pentacle are, on aggregate, good. This is the story of some of them. Thanks
I owe thanks to quite a list of people, without which this fic would not be possible. To wit: @VagueZ for their beta services; @Theravis, @Pale Wolf and @IcePickLobotomy for kindly letting me borrow their characters - I promise to return them in a (mostly) recognisable shape; Jay, for art of the characters;
The rest of the Wizards Without Borders group - @Scia, @Treeksey, @EliudFS1, and JD - for being a general sounding board;
And Zingenmir, for general sanity.
Q&A: What is this?
The result of a plot bunny latching onto my ankle and not letting go. More to the point, it's a crossover. Expect butterflies. And snuggly ravens. It's also the first fic I'm publishing in any sort of capacity, so teething issues are to be expected.
How often will it update? Once a week until I run out of backlog, then as fast as I can write and get things beta'd, which considering my glacial thought process amounts to a chapter every two months or so.
What is the meaning of the goggles?!
They signify leadership. I think.
Concrit, do you do it?
Of course! Any sort of constructive criticism is welcome.
Does this exist elsewhere?
Yeah, it's also on AO3.
Jaune struck his palm with a fist. "No, seriously. It's trying to keep us from its face. If we kill the limbs, we have a shot at killing the whole thing," he said. Behind him, the Geist — a pile of boulders roughly shaped like a human, with a comically-small Grimm mask for a head and a flaming tree for an arm — thundered to its feet.
"Alright," said Ruby, "come on, team, let's do this!"
"Yeah!" Nora said with a smile.
After a moment's hesitation, Ren added, "Right."
Jaune began to give directions. "Ren, left." The green-wearing man nodded and jumped up to a tree.
"Ruby, right." The leader of Team RNJR vanished from sight.
"Nora… ready to try out the new upgrade?" Nora nodded and ran off.
"And I will…" Whatever Jaune had in mind to say, he didn't — the Geist's leg slammed down right behind him, knocking him off his feet. The flaming tree that served as the Geist's right arm smashed down, too, and Jaune squealed, running away as fast as he could.
Thankfully for him, a streak of rose petals signified the arrival of Ruby. She struck at the Geist's right side with Crescent Rose, then fell back before it could hit her. Then Ren came in from the left, firing at the Creature of Grimm, but only distracted it.
Nora, meanwhile, positioned herself behind it and started charging Magnhild.
Jaune ran past the Geist. "Oh, hey, over here!" he shouted. He certainly managed to get its attention; the flaming tree smashed into the ground behind him, sending him into a roll. Both Ruby and Ren attacked the Geist, keeping it occupied while Nora continued to gather energy.
"Ready!"
"Use everything you've got!" Jaune shouted.
Ruby nodded and grabbed Nora, activating her Semblance. The red-pink streak shot at the Geist, scattering the rocks (and tree) it used as limbs to the four winds. The rock that served as its "torso" fell on the ground, and the ephemeral creature shot up and out of it, beating a hasty retreat.
Ruby and Nora shared a look, the latter nodding, and Ruby took aim; one last shot from Crescent Rose put an end to the Geist.
It was at that exact moment that a hole in the air tore itself open with the sound of ripping cloth, revealing things a mortal mind should not — could not — comprehend. The un-colours that swirled inside it formed into illogical geometries that seared themselves into the eyes of Team RNJR.
Mercifully, it was only open long enough to spit out three things.
The first thing was small and black, and shot out at high speed at Ren. He could see that it was, in fact, a small raven that managed to bank in the air and avoid crashing into his head.
The second was a black sniper rifle, slightly longer than Crescent Rose in its rifle mode, which hit Ruby's face, stock first. Thankfully, her Aura absorbed any energy the flying rifle had behind it, and it fell gently on its side at her feet.
The third was a woman who rolled to a stop shortly behind the rifle. She was tiny — shorter than Ruby, in fact — and wearing clothes wholly unfit for travel: a long, heavy, colourful dress that covered her from her ankles to her throat, leaving no skin exposed. A similarly-colourful headscarf, heavy, oval brass earrings and — jarringly — heavy-duty hiking shoes completed her look.
Its payload transferred, the hole in the air closed with a sucking noise.
The woman glanced up at Ruby, said something unintelligible, and fainted.
It was at this moment Jaune returned to the clearing. "Another victory for Team JNRR!" he declared, then noticed the woman. "How'd she get here?"
"She fell through a hole in the sky!" Nora said. "Just after Ruby shot the Geist!"
"Uh, guys?" Ren asked. "Should we do something about the bird?"
"What bird?"
In lieu of an answer, he pointed at the woman. The raven from earlier had returned and was now standing near the woman's head, gently pecking at her face.
"Shoo! Go away!" Nora said, waving her hands. The raven gave her an unimpressed look, then returned to its pecking.
The woman stirred, clutching at her head.
"Whoa, careful there, miss," Ruby said, at her side in an instant. "You fell down pretty hard." She helped the woman sit up straight, then offered her a water bottle from her pack.
The woman took it, giving Ruby an impassive glance, then drank from it. "Thank you," she said. She glanced aside. "You can stop pecking me now, Snuggly. I'm up."
The raven immediately stopped pecking at her, instead hopping onto her arm, then shoulder, then finally finding a perch on top of the woman's headscarf.
"I assume this isn't Silver Rapids," the woman said, dryly, ignoring the raven.
"No—" Ruby started to say, but then she noticed the sniper rifle, forgotten in the kerfuffle. "Is that rifle yours? It's so cool! What does it turn into? What sorta Dust can it—"
"Ruby, please," Ren said, "She's just fallen from the sky. Give her some space."
"Oh, right." Ruby had the decency to look sheepish, at least. "I'm Ruby," she told the woman, "and these are Ren" — he nodded — "Nora" — she waved enthusiastically — "and Jaune." He also waved.
"Call me Jay," the woman said. "The raven is Snuggly." She sighed. "Yes, that rifle is mine. No, it doesn't turn into anything, and… what's Dust?" Seeing Ruby's surprised expression, she sighed again. "Looks like I'm not in Kansas any more. Or Michigan for that matter."
"Excuse me… where's this Kansas? Is it somewhere in Vacuo?" Jaune asked, just as confused as Ruby.
"Vacuo…?" Jay asked back. She climbed to her feet, staggering for a moment before finding her balance again. She closed her eyes for a moment before saying, "Is there anywhere nearby we can sit down and talk?"
"Well, we were on our way to a nearby village…" Nora offered.
Jay waited outside the village's inn while the team talked with the mayor — near his house — and the smith — at his smithy. At first she went inside, but the dollars she had in her pockets — not to mention the raven that stood on her headscarf and refused to budge — drew strange looks from the inkeeper, so she left the inn and waited for the kids outside.
"Was there a problem?" Ren asked her when they came by.
Jay closed her eyes for a moment. "The innkeeper didn't like my money," she answered, shrugging. "I'm far away from home, it seems."
"What, they don't use Lien where you're from?" Ruby asked, once again surprised.
Instead of an answer, Jay took her wallet out and showed them one of the notes. It was greenish, sported a silly-looking man in the middle, and proudly declared itself to be a "Federal Reserve Note — The United States of America — One Dollar". Once RNJR satisfied their curiosity, she returned the note to the wallet and it to her pocket.
"Anyway," she said, "can any of you tell me where I am?"
"You're in the village of—" Ruby started, but Jay interrupted her. "Not the village. What country is this?"
"There's no country," Nora said, "it's not part of any Kingdom. We're in Anima. You're joking, right? You know what Anima is?" she added, concerned, when Jay tilted her head.
"Have you heard of the United States of America?" Jay asked in return. Their confused expressions made her smile lopsidedly. "I'm not from here, at all. You haven't even heard about the country I live in."
"So, uh," Jaune asked, rubbing the back of his head, "what are you going to do?"
"I have to get back."
"But weren't you—"
"Spat out by a hole in the air? Yes. But…" Jay trailed off, staring into the distance.
"We'll help you," Ruby said. If the rest of the team's expressions — Ren, guarded; Jaune, surprised, and Nora suspicious — were any indication, they hadn't expected this decision.
"What about our mission?" Nora asked her. "We can't just wait here until Jay heals up. And the roads are dangerous."
"I'll be fine," Jay said. She patted her rifle, which was leaning on the wall beside her. "And this isn't for show."
Nora gave her a sceptical look. The woman didn't look like a Huntress, or even a police officer.
"I can demonstrate," Jay offered. "Though, preferably, not in the middle of the village," she added, hefting the rifle.
"Sure!" Ruby said before Nora had a chance to open her mouth. She didn't have ulterior motives, no siree she didn't.
Jay led Team RNJR a way into the forest that surrounded the village until they arrived at a clearing. It was surprisingly peaceful; nary a Grimm to be found and a nice breeze causing the long grass to sway gently.
She indicated a trio of flowers that grew out of the bark on the far side of the clearing, some eight hundred metres away. "Do you see those?"
"Three small red flowers?" Ruby asked.
"Yes, those." Jay prodded the flank of the bird that was still standing on her head. "Oy, Snuggly. Go away for a bit."
It took some convincing, but finally the raven took off.
Jay then lifted the rifle to her shoulder and, after closing her eyes for a moment, aimed, held her breath and fired. Once, twice, thrice: the flowers were no more. She flicked the gun's safety, lowered it and turned back to the others. "So?" she asked just as the raven returned to what seemed to be its customary perch on her head.
"That was some impressive marksmanship," Ren started, but whatever else he wanted to say was drowned out by Ruby's excited chattering.
"That was so cool! What ammo does this rifle fire? Can I take it apart and see how it works? Why do you hold your breath when you fire?"
Jay sighed and held the rifle away from Ruby. "We can talk shop about my rifle once we're underway. And, of course, before that, I need to get supplies somehow. Some things for Snuggly, too." She tilted her head, and the raven jumped down to her shoulder, where she petted it. "Though, unlike me, she can find her own food, right, Snuggly?"
The raven cawed in response.
"We'll help you if you end up coming with us," Jaune said. "It wouldn't be right to have you travel with us — it's dangerous — and not have what you need."
"That is your decision," Jay said, then closed her eyes for a moment. "If you'd like some time to discuss this with each other…?"
"You're alone here?" Jaune asked, slowly.
"Aside from Snuggly, yes. As is plain." Jay's expression was unreadable.
"And you can't buy anything, and you don't even know where you are," Ruby added. "Jaune, we can't just leave her here."
"What about our mission?" Ren asked. "I don't mean to be impolite, but our mission is dangerous, Jay. We can't have you risk your life like that."
"That's expected," she replied. "But you'll find that I'm no stranger to danger, I think. Then again, it's going to be a judgement call — whether to leave me here to fend for myself, or take me with you. In any case, once we reach the nearest large city we'll be able to go each their own way if it doesn't work out."
"We'll take you," Ruby said after a moment. "You sound like a decent person."
Nora seemed like she wanted to object, but a shake of Ren's head put a stop to anything of the sort; Jaune, meanwhile, looked relieved.
"Thank you," Jay said. "In this case, let's go back to the village; after that, the open road awaits." She smiled lopsidedly. "I think you won't regret your decision, Ruby. You'll find that I bring good luck when I'm around."
Jay hefted her new pack, made sure Snuggly was comfortably perched on top of her headscarf, and hurried after Team RNJR. They didn't tell her what exactly they were looking for, only that they were headed towards Mistral, the biggest city in the continent, which suited her plans just fine.
Ahead of her, the team was going over their supplies.
"Food?" asked Jaune.
"Check!" said Nora.
"Water?"
"Check!"
"How 'bout ammo?"
"Locked and loaded! Thank you, Schnee Dust Company!"
"Don't worry, Jaune," Jay put in from behind him. "I haven't gotten lost yet and I'm not planning on starting now. It'll be fine."
Jay was true to her word. Every time the team asked her for directions, she steered them unerringly towards their destination, even when said destination was completely nonsensical: One time, Ruby said that Jay would look nice with flowers in her hair and asked her where to find some pretty ones. Jay took the team to a clearing that was chock-full of blooming lilac bushes.
She also never guided them into Grimm, avoiding them with almost-supernatural precision.
After a while on the road with her, Ruby noticed that Jay closed her eyes for a moment each time before she told them where to go, but she was much more interested in pestering her about her rifle or the world she came from than about something that the young Huntress guessed was the older woman's Semblance.
Speaking of Jay's rifle, one day Ruby asked her what other modes it had, only to be met with the impassive stare the latter was beginning to understand covered anything and everything — from amusement, through annoyance, to downright anger.
"It's a semi-automatic rifle," Jay answered. "There's very little point in a fully-automatic designated marksman's rifle; fully automatic fire tends to be rather inaccurate."
"No, I don't mean that," Ruby said, frustrated, "I mean modes. Like how Crescent Rose can be a rifle or a scythe."
"Oh. It's just a rifle, Ruby. We don't have transforming weapons in my world."
"Whaaaaaat." This was, in Ruby's mind, a clear deficit of Jay's world. "Not even simple ones?"
"No. Where I come from, a rifle is a rifle, a knife is a knife, and scythes are antiquated farming tools."
Ruby was obviously distraught by the idea. How was one supposed to kill Grimm with just a rifle? Her thoughts on the matter were interrupted by something landing on her shoulder. She turned her head and saw that Jay's raven was standing on her shoulder. Or rather, it was rubbing its head against Ruby's cheek.
"She likes you," Jay informed her. "And, I think, she thinks you'll give her food. Or shinies."
"Shinies?"
"She might be smart for a raven but she's still a raven, and ravens like shiny things." Jay smiled lopsidedly. "Go ahead, pet her."
Ruby did so.
"Thank you," the raven said, startling her, but before she could do much else it snuggled closer.
"It talks?"
"It's more intelligent mimicry than actual speech," Jay said. "But, come. We're lagging behind."
"So, the next town is…" Ruby said as she tilted the map hither and thither, trying to read the town's name. "Huh? We're lost."
Behind her, Snuggly the raven cawed from its perch on Jay's head.
"We're not lost," Jaune said with a smile. "The next town is Shion. My family used to visit it all the time."
"Oh yeah," Ruby said, "don't you have, like, four sisters?"
"Uh, seven."
Ruby giggled, and although nobody happened to look back at her to see it, for a moment an amused expression crossed Jay's face.
"Y'know, that actually explains a lot," Nora said with a grin.
"Wait, what d'you mean—" Jaune started, but Ruby interrupted him.
"So… what did you guys do there?" she said.
"Oh, all sorts of stuff!" Jaune said, walking forward to point out locations on Ruby's map. "Over here's a great hiking trail" — he pointed at one spot — "and over here is where we went camping all the time." He pointed at another. "I got my own tent because I was special," he said, proudly, and pointed at himself. "Also so my sisters would stop braiding my hair," he added, sotto voce.
There was a quiet snort from Jay's direction.
"Didn't like the look?" Ruby asked.
"Yeah, they just kept doing pigtails, but personally I think I'm more of a 'warrior's wolf tail' kind of guy," Jaune said.
"That's just a ponytail."
"I stand by what I said."
Jay definitely snorted this time, and Jaune turned to look at her, a hurt look on his face, but before he could say anything, Nora spoke up.
"Uh, guys?" she said, having stopped walking.
"What?" both Jaune and Ruby asked, then they noticed the state of the town.
Shion was devastated. Its buildings were ransacked, their walls covered in soot and ash, and smoke from fires that still burned could be seen in the distance. There was a smattering of corpses spread around the town.
The team rushed forward, on the guard for any nasty surprises.
"There could be survivors," Ruby said.
"Over here," Ren said. He dropped his pack on the ground and jogged forward to where a man was leaning on the remains of a wall, clutching at a wound on his chest. Ren crouched and put a hand on his shoulder.
His armour showed him to be a Huntsman, and Ruby said as much.
"What happened? Who killed all of these people?" Jaune asked.
"Bandits," the Huntsman said, coughing. "The whole tribe. Then, with all the panic…" He coughed again.
"Grimm," Ren said, turning to look at his team-mates.
The Huntsman nodded.
Ren got up and went past the broken wall, while the rest of Team RNJR put their heads together; Jay walked past them and crouched near the Huntsman, examining his wound, then briefly closing her eyes.
"We can get him to the next village, find a doctor there," Ruby told Jaune and Nora.
"Yeah, Ren and I can take turns carrying him," Jaune said.
"I don't know if he'll make it," Nora said.
"He will. He has to."
"If we get going now, his chances will be better," Ruby added. "I can run ahead and look for help!" She pointed at the road.
While they were having their discussion, Jay shook her head, and Ren, having turned towards the rest of them again, could see the pained expression on her face.
"I'm sorry," she told the Huntsman and ran her hand over his face, closing his eyes.
"Guys," Ren said, looking at the now-dead Huntsman.
"Should we… bury him?" Nora asked.
"We should go," Ren said as he walked past them to pick his pack up, "it's not safe here."
"Ren…" Nora said and hurried after him.
Jaune put a hand to his forehead.
"It'll be okay," Ruby told him.
"I'm just tired of losing everything," he replied, making a fist.
Jay got up and stopped near them. "Naked I came out of my mother's womb," she told him, quietly, "and naked shall I return there. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away; blessed be His name. Let's go. Our duty is to the living."
But despite what she said, later on, when they were walking, Jay was muttering under her breath in a language none of them spoke. When Jaune asked her about it, she told him it was a Kaddish, a prayer for the dead.
Weiss walked through the familiar echoing halls of Schnee Manor, making her way to her father's study. Her eyes were lowered, and she was somewhat mopey. Compared to her life in Beacon, things in Atlas seemed so empty.
This meant, of course, that she only noticed that a hole in the air unceremoniously dumped a girl in her path when she actually stumbled over the girl.
While she was marvelling over the fact that the girl could've been a Schnee — she had white hair (which was short and messy), blue eyes (that were staring at nothing) and pale skin (that showed some ugly bruises), and was similar enough to Weiss in general appearance for the similarities to be disturbing — Klein, ever efficient, had appeared by her side.
"Shall I move her out of sight, Miss Schnee?" he asked.
"Y-yes. Get her to my room, Klein. And get the first aid kit. She looks terrible."
"Yes, Miss Schnee." The butler gently picked up the girl and carried her off.
Weiss, meanwhile, made her way to her father's study, hoping that her smug ass of a brother Whitley wouldn't encounter Klein and, subsequently, report on him — she doubted that her father would approve, after all.
Weiss made it to her father's study and hesitated before the door; she could hear him arguing with General Ironwood. Still, her father summoned her, so she must come. She quietly opened the door while the two men continued to argue.
The sound of the door closing made Jacques and Ironwood turn to look at her. She startled, hastily crossing her arms behind her back.
"Miss Schnee," Ironwood said with a bow. "My apologies, I should have been gone by now."
"It's okay," she replied, not letting her anxiety show.
"We'll continue this at another time," Ironwood told Jacques.
"Indeed," the latter said with a frown, "Klein will show you the way out."
Ironwood hmphed. "Don't worry. I know the way." He went to the door, Weiss hastening to step out of his way."Till next time, Jacques," he said, hand on the door handle.
Jacques nodded.
Ironwood turned to look at Weiss. "Please know, you'll always have a home at Atlas Academy, Miss Schnee," he told her with a soft smile. "We'll be back in session before you know it."
With that, he left the room.
"Did you forget your manners while you were away?" Jacques asked Weiss.
"No, Father," she answered with a sigh. "I'm sorry." She turned to face him.
He stopped on the way to his desk and half-turned to look at her. "Can you believe that there are still people in the world that blame Atlas for what happened to Beacon? To Vale?" he asked her, making a sweeping motion with his hand.
"Well, they weren't there," she said, stepping closer.
"It's a wonder Ironwood wasn't stripped of his rank," Jacques said as he sat down behind his desk. "I suppose the Council trusts him, for better or worse."
"I trust him," Weiss said, grabbing her arm and glancing aside.
Jacques sighed. "Thanks to him, Atlas is forbidden from exporting Dust to other kingdoms!" he said, annoyance clear on his face. "'A precautionary measure'," he said, mockingly, "until we're certain no-one is going to declare war. How anyone could find that to be sound logic is beyond me." He paused. "Which is why the Schnee Dust Company will be holding a charity concert in the coming weeks. We need to show the people of Remnant that we are on their side," he added in what passed for a positive tone for him (although it sounded fairly insincere). "That we are all victims of the fall of Beacon." He put his hands on his heart.
"That's… wonderful news," Weiss said, equally insincerely. Her smile didn't last for long.
"I know," her father said, "and I think it would make a lot of people happy if you performed at the event."
She gave him a surprised look. "Excuse me?"
"Many forget that you were there," he explained. "My own daughter — a Schnee — on the grounds defending another kingdom!" He tapped his desk. "We need to remind them. And we need to show them that the Schnee family is just as strong as ever."
Weiss hesitated. He obviously wasn't asking her. But, maybe she could use this. "Fine," she said after a moment's hesitation, "but I want you to help the girl."
"What girl?" he asked, instantly suspicious.
"The one that fell on me in the corridor."
"The one that what?"
"Fell on me. In the corridor," she said again. "I was making my way here and she just… fell. Out of a hole in the air."
"Out of the question." He tapped his desk. "How did she manage to get past the guards? We need to interrogate her, not help her."
Weiss couldn't hide the snark in her voice. "I just told you, Father. She fell through a hole in the air." A pause. "She was unconscious. Hurt. Please, Father."
"For all I know," Jacques said, slowly, "she's an infiltrator, sent by our enemies to steal our secrets or hurt one of us, and only her incompetence led to your fortuitous discovery of her in her current state."
Was her father always this paranoid? Weiss couldn't remember. But she was certain that mistreating that girl just because of her unorthodox method of arrival was wrong. "Please, Father," she said again. "Wouldn't she be more inclined to cooperate if we treat her well, rather than throw her in a cell?"
"We don't need her cooperation. We can just turn her over to the police."
Weiss resisted the urge to roll her eyes and drag a hand over her face. There was no way her father would take it well, and she really wanted to help the girl… out of curiosity, if nothing else: she looked like a Schnee.
"Please, Father. Aren't we supposed to show that we care?" A pause. "We can help her, and publicise that… the generous Schnee family, helping the poor girl that ended up on their doorstep."
Jacques gave his daughter a suspicious look; it was clear to him that her time in Beacon gave her some… interesting… ideas. He thought things over for a moment and came to the conclusion he could afford to 'play nice', as it were; after all, if the intruder was unconscious, she'd need to be woken up before she could be interrogated, anyway, and Weiss's point about PR wasn't wrong, even if it was painfully clear her priorities were elsewhere.
"Very well," he said, making a bridge from his fingers.
She bowed and left his study.
One night, Jay woke up because of entirely mundane concerns. Once she was done with that, she looked around. The fireflies native to the forest produced enough light to show that while Ruby's sleep was troubled, Nora was smiling in her sleep, Ren was fast asleep as well, but Jaune's sleeping bag was empty.
She could hear voices in the distance. After closing her eyes for a moment, she made her way towards them.
Jaune was standing in the middle of a clearing, armed. A small, mostly-transparent screen, set on a stump, was playing a video, showing a red-haired, green-eyed young woman, whose face evoked a strong feeling of deja vu in Jay.
"Alright, Jaune, just like we practiced," the recording said, "follow these instructions. Shield up."
Jaune raised the shield before his face. Following the instructions, he went through a short kata. By the time he was done, he was panting.
Jay stood in the shadow of a tree, watching him train.
"... I'll always be with you, Jaune," the recording finished, with the woman putting her hands on her heart, then it rewound to the beginning.
Jaune once again corrected his stance and, after closing his eyes for a moment and sighing, performed the kata again.
"She looks like Artemis," Jay said once he was done with the kata, making him startle and turn towards the source of the noise, sword and shield at the ready.
She was standing in the shadow of a tree, arms crossed, but her expression was wistful rather than her usual impassive one.
"What are you doing here, Jay?" he asked, lowering Crocea Mors and sighing.
"Keeping an eye on you," she answered. "Training is important, but so is sleep, and this forest isn't safe." She closed her eyes for a moment. "You loved her, didn't you."
"How did you know?" Jaune asked. Jay joined the group not too long ago and nobody mentioned Pyrrha, let alone her relationship with Jaune — it was too raw a subject.
Jay looked at him with her head tilted, like a curious bird. "I heard the recording. While she looks like Artemis, my own mentor, she talked the same way my husband sometimes talks."
"Pyrrha. Her name was Pyrrha."
"Did your training with her also end with you on the mat, more often than not?"
"Yes… how…"
"How did I know? I don't believe in coincidences, Jaune. And Pyrrha is remarkably similar to Artemis, my own mentor. And where one similarity is found others also usually dwell."
Jaune mulled this over. "What sort of person is she, Artemis?" he asked, at length.
"She's strict, but fair. A good teacher, a dutiful bodyguard and a good friend." Jay smiled. "Like Pyrrha, Artemis has hair the colour of flames… although her temper is anything but. She's the most dangerous boxer I know… and my husband owes her his life."
Jaune sheathed Crocea Mors and sat down. "I… Pyrrha died. I couldn't save her."
"I'm sorry," Jay said, softly. She didn't seem inclined to say anything else, and Jaune didn't particularly want to talk about the subject, so they sat together in silence for a while.
"Let's go back," she said after a while. "We need sleep, and the others might wake up and worry."
With a sigh, Jaune nodded. He got up, collected his Scroll from the stump he left it on, and followed Jay back to the camp.
It was the second night in a row that Ruby dreamt of Pyrrha. In the dream, she was calling for Jaune. Ruby twisted in her sleeping bag, her brow furrowing. The sound of soft sobs woke her up. The fireflies' soft glow helped her see that the rest of Team RNJR were fast asleep. So was Jay, for that matter, but she was crying in her sleep and muttering.
To Ruby's ears, it sounded like "Meir". She debated waking Jay up, but before long the crying stopped, so Ruby let herself fall asleep, making a mental note to ask Jay about this Meir tomorrow.
The next part of Team RNJR (and their plus one)'s journey took them into yet another part of the forests that covered most of Anima. This time around, they were walking in the shadow of a cliff. Birds were tweeting and the forest was, all things considered, relatively peaceful.
As per what became her custom, Jay walked a few steps behind the rest of the team, Snuggly perched on her headscarf, and her head on a swivel, looking for trouble.
"Come on guys," Ruby said, holding the map in front of her, "if we pick up the pace we can hit the next town before sunset."
"Assuming it's still there," Jaune replied. Nobody walked any faster.
"Of course it'll be there!" Ruby told him with a smile. "This one is supposed to be pretty big." She squinted at the map. "Hee… gan… bay… na?"
"Higanbana," Ren said, lifting a finger. "It's a well-protected village with a popular inn."
"Which means," Nora said, miming a roof with a hand, "no camping in the rain!"
"That would be nice," Jay grumbled, under her breath so only Snuggly heard her. The raven made a disapproving noise.
"See?" Ruby told Jaune. "Everything's gonna be fine!"
"You know," Jaune said, spreading his arms, "we've had a lot of ups and downs, but things could've been a lot worse. Really thought we'd see more Grimm."
"There's no such thing as luck," Jay said with finality.
"Killjoy," Nora grumbled. She really didn't like the older woman, who was always serious, had something against fairy tales, and whose face was usually as expressive as a rock.
On the cliff face behind them, a wolf-like Grimm crouched, preparing to leap; the leap, however, was not to be, for a sword cut through the Grimm's back, killing it.
The sword's owner, Ruby's uncle Qrow, placed his weapon on his shoulder. He heard a raven cawing beside him, but instead of looking at it looked again at Ruby's group. As far as he could tell from her posture, the woman that started following them a few villages back was staring right at him.
"Hmph," he grumbled to himself, "'luck'."
Thunder rumbled ominously, as though the weather wanted to lend extra weight to his words.
The rain started falling in earnest mere moments after Team RNJR entered the inn. Ruby haggled a little with the innkeeper, managing to get the group three, rather than two rooms.
Having left their packs in their rooms, before long they were sitting in the common room, eating a nice warm dinner.
"Hey, Jay," Ruby said between bites, "why do you always say these weird things before you eat?"
"And why don't you eat meat? It's so good!" Nora added.
Jay smiled, lopsidedly. "I'm vegetarian, Nora. I grew up not eating meat, and my husband also does not eat meat, so I never felt the need to try."
Nora gave her an incredulous look, but didn't add anything. The last time she pushed the woman — asking where she learned to navigate forests and avoid Grimm so well — all she got in return was a stony-faced glare that made her want to bury herself.
"As to your question, Ruby," Jay added, as though she didn't just blow Nora off, "think about it like this: when someone gives you a gift, you ought to say thank you, right? This is fairly similar. I thank Hashem — that would be God, in your language" — she made a face — "for creating the food I—" She stopped mid-sentence and stared out of the window.
In the tavern across the street, Qrow frowned. There was no doubting it; the woman was staring straight at him. "I hope I kept myself far enough away from Ruby," he muttered, hoping that that woman wasn't a manifestation of the ill-luck his Semblance brought to those close to him.
A glass clinked on his table, and he looked up at the waitress. "Oh, I didn't—"
"From the woman upstairs," she said, clutching her tray to her chest. "Red eyes. Said you wouldn't mind a bottom shelf." She glanced to the second floor, as did Qrow.
"Thanks," he said.
"But, I went ahead and gave you top." The waitress winked. "Lucky you."
Qrow gave her a smile, watching her go, but the smile was more like a rictus than anything else. He glanced out of the window again, but Team RNJR were already gone. "Yeah," he mumbled and, picking the glass up, headed upstairs. He knew he'd find Raven there.
Corsac and Fennec Albain had just left the Belladonna Family Home after the doors were slammed in their faces by Ghira. Not that it fazed them any.
"An interesting development," Fennec told his brother. "Wouldn't you say?"
"Interesting indeed," Corsac replied. Anything else he had in mind, though, was knocked out of him, together with his breath, when something heavy fell on him.
That something turned out to be a human young adult, white-haired and green-eyed, that looked like he'd been in a fistfight with a Manticore and lost; there were claw and scorch marks on his camo-pattern clothes. He was bruised all over and the look he gave the brothers Albain was that of a cornered animal.
"Help me," he croaked once he rolled off Corsac, who was, in turn, busy brushing off his robes.
Neither brother looked terribly impressed. Help? A human? They'd be better off leaving him here, on the stairs of the entrance to the Belladonnas' house, and have him be their problem instead.
"Help me," the human croaked again, more forcefully this time, and the brothers could swear new bruises formed on his face just as the words left his mouth. Any curiosity about this strange phenomenon, however, was replaced by an overwhelming urge to help him.
Against his better judgement, Corsac lifted the human onto his shoulder. "Shall we take him to our place, brother? We must interrogate him."
Fennec glanced around. Nobody seemed to have noticed anything yet. "Yes, brother. Let us go."
Since carrying a mostly-unconscious human on your shoulder tended to raise questions, especially in the majority-Faunus Menagerie, the brothers Albain stuck to back alleys and less-travelled streets. This made their way longer, but before long they arrived at their hideout, which from the outside looked like any other house on the somewhat-deserted part of Kuo Kuana it was located in.
Corsac stood guard while Fennec undid the various locks and alarm systems. He spent the time introspecting about this strange urge to help the human now lying on his shoulder. Try as he might, he could not understand why both he and, seemingly, his brother, wanted to help the human. Although he could not deny that the desire was real, it was equally clear that it was alien to him.
By the time Corsac finished processing this, the door was open, so he followed his brother in. They didn't have a lot of any sort of supplies in the hideout — they expected it to be exposed sooner or later — so their abilities to help with the human's worst injuries was nonexistent. They did the best to treat the cuts, cleaning them up, but that was as far as their small first aid kit went.
By the time that was done, the strange urge left their minds.
"We have to interrogate him," Fennec said, and Corsac nodded. Needless to say, they weren't reporting this until they could get to the bottom of the matter; not to mention the embarrassment…
So they tied him up quite securely and waited for him to come to, which he did in short order.
"Hey, thanks for helping— wait, why am I tied up?" he said, then coughed.
"We would like to ask you some questions," Fennec said. "Your cooperation is required."
Fennec got the stinkeye in reply, but no verbal objection, so he continued: "What is your name?"
"I'm Orel," was the reply.
"Who do you spy for?" Corsac asked, looming over the seated pair. "The Guard? Atlas?"
"I don't spy for anybody," Orel spat with surprising vehemence. "I don't know these 'Guard' or 'Atlas' but I'm not a chekist."
Corsac and Fennec exchanged glances. "You truly do not know Atlas?" the latter asked, purposefully softening his expression. "Do you know where you are…?"
"No?" was Orel's surly reply. "I fell out of a hole in the sky and now I'm being interrogated by a man with fox ears. I'm certainly not in Kansas anymore."
"Let me enlighten you, then," Fennec said in a tone he thought was respectful but most people would find slimy. "You are in Menagerie, the island you humans tried to confine us, the Faunus, to. I, Fennec Albain, and my brother Corsac, represent the White Fang here on Menagerie."
Orel squinted at him. "The White Fang…?"
"We fight for Faunus rights." Fennec smiled.
Doubt showed on Orel's face for a split second — for which Fennec was ready — but that made his next statement all the more confounding.
"I want to help," Orel declared.
Fennec blinked. "Excuse me," he said, trying to cover his surprise.
"I said," Orel repeated, impatiently, "that I want to help. You guys are fighting racism, right? We can't have an equal society while racism is still around." He strained against the rope used to tie him. "So whaddya waiting for? Let's go to your leader. I'll swear fealty, even, if that's what you want." He squinted at them again.
The brothers shared another look. "While your zeal is… admirable…" Corsac said, slowly, "what sort of help do you think you can provide?"
"Do you have something of your leader's? Ah, you do, don't you, you sly fox. Give it here and I'll show you." He grinned and winked at them.
With a sigh, Corsac went to one of the tables that lined the walls of the room and retrieved a small figurine, which he dropped in Orel's lap.
"Now if you'll get me my pen, it's in my breast pocket…?" Orel asked.
Fennec did so, his face impassive.
For a moment, nothing happened, then the three of them weren't in the hideout any more. Their sudden appearance in Sienna Khan's throne room caused the guards that stood to each side of the throne to aim their spearguns at them.
The brothers exchanged surprised glances with one another. However, they didn't have much time to consider the implications of what just happened, as the tiger Faunus sat up straight in her throne. "What is the meaning of this?" she demanded.
"High Leader Khan, let me explain," Corsac said smoothly, marshalling his expression while inwardly cursing Orel. He bowed. "Just as my brother and I were leaving the former High Leader's house, this human" — he indicated Orel with a nod of his head — "fell on us. Quite literally; he fell out of a hole in the sky."
Behind him, Fennec dragged Orel to his feet, then bowed to Sienna Khan. "He turned out to be full of surprises, High Leader," he said. "He seems to be wholly unaware of the goings-on in the world. Despite that, he is eager to pledge himself to our cause."
Corsac smiled. "It is he that brought us here so suddenly."
Sienna Khan gave Orel a look-over, an appraising glint in her eyes. "And he wants to pledge himself to the White Fang? Bring him over."
Fennec bowed his head, then gave Orel a shove so he fell on his knees before the throne. "Just like Grandpa fought with Makhno to free all peoples from their bonds of servitude, I'll fight to free the Faunus from their oppressors," Orel said, "I swear."
The High Leader regarded him for a moment, then nodded to one of her guards. "Release him."
The guard nodded, using his speargun to cut through the rope binding Orel.
"Now then, tovarishchi," Orel told the brothers Albain as they escorted him out of the room, "tell me everything about your revolution."
Behind Orel's back, Corsac shared a glance with his brother. It was going to be a long day.
@mastigos - I definitely see where you're coming from, and I hope that this chapter (and the next ones) will do better with regards to the points you've raised.
IV. Against the Wind
Whose decision it was to move the young woman that fell on her last week to Weiss's room, Weiss didn't know, but it was so; having returned from singing practice one day, she found the woman sitting on a cot positioned near her own bed, head lowered. She was mumbling to herself.
"Excuse me?" Weiss said.
The girl jumped. Literally: jumped up and stumbled. "O-oh, sorry! I was told I was to sleep here until some other solution could be found." A pause. "Thank you. For standing up to your father for me." Seeing Weiss's expression, she hastened to add, "Your butler, Klein, told me."
Weiss sighed, throwing her recital notes (her teacher was very old-fashioned) on her bed, then sitting down on it.
"Oh! I haven't introduced myself," the girl said. "I'm Alex. Pleased to meet you." She offered her hand, which Weiss shook.
An awkward silence followed; Weiss was in no mood to interrogate Alex about herself and Alex wasn't particularly forthcoming, either.
"Are you alright?" Alex asked after a while.
"What's it for you?" Weiss asked. The question wasn't hostile, just weary; after all, she didn't know anything about Alex, just that she looked like a Schnee.
"We A— I care," Alex said, hoping that Weiss didn't notice the slip of tongue. "Besides, I owe you. I'd be an ingrate if I just ignored you."
Weiss sighed. It didn't feel right to burden Alex with her problems, and she certainly wasn't Ruby. There was also the tiny matter of trust.
"Look, I know you don't really trust me," Alex said, "I fell out of a hole in the air and you don't know me at all. But I'd like to help, if I could." She took a deep breath. "And I empathise, you know? My father is… like yours." Another deep breath. "Rich and probably at least seventy percent Evil."
"What?! How dare—"
"Klein told me. Please, Weiss, I want to help, I—" Alex spoke very quickly, stumbling over her words. She stopped, abruptly, when Weiss put a hand on her shoulder.
"Calm down," she said, half to Alex and half to herself. "I'm sorry I shouted at you. I'm just…" She trailed off and sighed.
Alex, who tensed at Weiss's touch, relaxed somewhat. "Look, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult—"
"Of course," Weiss said, resisting the urge to snort or roll her eyes. It wouldn't do to take out her frustration on Alex, who seemed to be genuinely well-meaning, even if she was rather impolite. "Look, I'm stuck here practicing singing while my friends are out there fighting Grimm!"
Fighting Grimm? Alex mouthed to herself. Why'd a pampered corporate heiress have friends among people that fought… Grimm, whatever that was? Aloud, she said, "Can't you just leave? You're an adult, after all."
"I can't. I promised Father I'll sing in the upcoming charity concert." So he'll agree to help you, she didn't add.
"Oh." Alex rubbed her chin. "Well, you should make good on your promise, but afterwards… when is the concert, anyway?"
"In two days," Weiss said, glumly. "And I'm expected to attend the party afterwards, too." A pause. "Come to think about it, Father will probably want to parade you around, too. 'Look at us, the benevolent Schnee Dust Company; we even help the poor vagrants that show up on our doorstep. Aren't we so good?'"
Alex cringed. "PR, huh? Yeah…" she said, sighing. Then her eyes widened. "Oh, no, that's why Klein said I needed to be measured for a dress—" She grabbed the hem of her shirt, knuckles white.
Weiss couldn't understand what was the big deal. It was just a dress, no? But it was obvious that the idea was quite distressing for Alex. "Hey, it'll be alright," she told Alex, "our tailor is a professional. There's nothing to worry about."
That didn't seem to calm Alex down. "But— but—"
"No buts. It'll be fine."
"Another day, another adventure!" Nora declared, stretching. Team RNJR (and Jay — Jaune wanted to rename the team to "JJNRR" but the idea was simultaneously shot down by Nora and Jay) were slowly walking through yet another part of the endless forests that covered the way to Mistral.
"What's on the agenda today?" Ruby asked, quite cheerful.
"Walking!" Jaune said, not even lifting his head from the map.
"With a side of…" Nora started.
"Walking," Ren finished.
Ruby sighed and looked down. "Haven is a lot farther away than I thought," she said.
Behind her, Jay's eyebrow twitched. She prodded Snuggly, startling the bird, and muttered, "Come on."
The raven cawed and took off, landing on Ruby's shoulder.
"Oh, hi Snuggly," she said and rubbed the raven's head; the bird chirped and rubbed against Ruby's cheek.
"Ruby," Ren said, walking faster so he'd be walking beside Ruby, "how long did you think this journey was going to take?"
"I don't know!" Ruby said. She really wanted to wave her arms, but refrained from doing so so as not to startle the bird currently making chirping noises from its perch on her shoulder. "I grew up in a small area; I've never been this far away from home."
"Right, but how long?" Jaune asked, his nose still buried in the map.
Behind them, Jay sighed. She adjusted the straps of her pack, but didn't say anything.
"Maybe like… two… weeks?" Ruby said, hesitant, an awkward smile on her face.
"What?!" Jaune was evidently surprised.
"Okay, fine, three or something!" This time, Ruby did wave her arms, which had Snuggly take off with a disapproving caw.
"It is the journey that matters," Jay mumbled to herself. "Or so would Mordred say, anyway."
"Look, whatever," Ruby said, clearly trying to dismiss the whole subject. She lifted her gaze and saw that the forest was replaced by white-painted walls. The path they were walking on entered a circular opening in the wall, and wood-and-plaster buildings could be seen through it and above the walls' top. "Hey, what's that?" she asked.
Nora ran ahead, jumping onto the wooden fence that snaked alongside the road in order to get a better view.
"That's strange," Jaune said, looking at the walls, then at his map. "I didn't think we'd be hitting another village for a few days."
Nora, meanwhile, was shading her eyes with her hands and leaning forward. "Are those buildings… damaged?" she asked, slowly.
"We should search for survivors!" Jaune declared, throwing the map aside and breaking into a run. The rest of the team followed suit; so did Jay, but only after she picked the map up.
Nora hopped up onto the wall, while Ren was the first to enter the town proper. While the buildings certainly looked dilapidated, it was clear that they weren't so much damaged as unfinished: some of them lacked walls altogether, consisting of nothing but wooden beams; others lacked roofs; and there were piles of wood strewn about, as though the workmen charged with constructing the buildings simply left them there.
Nora jumped from the wall onto an unfinished tower and scanned the area; Ruby looked under a wooden raft, Jaune looked between buildings on the opposite side of the street from Nora's tower, and Ren inspected the cobblestones. Behind them, Jay stood with her eyes closed.
"Anything?" Ruby asked, putting the raft down.
"Nothing over here," Nora said from her perch.
"No-one over here either," Jaune said.
"It almost seems like the town was abandoned," Ren said, getting up.
Nora ran ahead, and Ren and Jaune followed her, but Ruby lingered behind. Something in this town made her uncomfortable, and Jay's piercing glare certainly didn't help.
"Hey, I think I found something!" Nora shouted from up ahead, and both Ruby and Jay ran to join her, Jaune and Ren.
The something she found was a sign. It was overgrown by climbers, but she brushed the strands aside to reveal the writing on it.
"Oniyuri?" Nora asked. "Never heard of it," she added, putting her hands on her hips.
"Me neither," Jaune said.
Jay, meanwhile, kept glancing around. Unusually for her, she had her rifle unslung and ready, albeit pointed at the floor.
"I have," Ren declared, and everybody turned to look at him. "You might think of it as Anima's Mountain Glenn," he explained, "had it never been completed. Years ago, the richest members of Mistral were unhappy with how the kingdom was being run. Frustrated with the Council, they pooled their resources together to build their own city, with their own laws." He paused. "They hoped that, one day, it could maybe even become its own kingdom. Many thought it would be the future." He looked to one side, then took a few steps towards the nearest building. "I know my parents did," he added.
"What happened?" Ruby asked, hesitantly.
Wiping the dust away from the stone fence near him to reveal claw marks, Ren answered, "What always happens."
"The Grimm…" Jaune said.
"A Grimm," Ren said, balling his hands into fists. "A single one."
Nora was staring at Ren.
Ruby looked from her to Ren, not understanding. "One?" she asked.
Behind them, Jay briefly closed her eyes, then looked back to the forest, a split second before a murder of crows took wing and flew over the town.
"Come on," Jaune said, "let's just get through here. This place gives me the creeps."
The team seemed to agree; both Nora and Ren followed him onwards, deeper into the town. Ruby, however, hesitated again, glancing backwards with unease plain on her face.
"Let's go," Jay told her. "We shouldn't tarry."
Ruby noticed that the older woman's knuckles were white, and that she seemed tenser than usual. So was, for the matter, Snuggly; the raven kept taking off, flying around, and returning to Jay's headscarf.
Finally Jay walked forward, bumped into Ruby and, with a muttered apology, moved deeper into the town; after puzzling over that for a moment, Ruby followed.
Three spotlights were aimed straight at Weiss. She was standing on a stage decorated with the crest of the Kingdom of Atlas, singing, just like she promised her father. "I'm not your pet, not another thing you own," she sang, gesticulating with her hands. "I was not born guilty of your crimes, your riches and your influence can't hold me any more…" Inwardly, she wondered whether Jacques would notice the message the lyrics held. "I won't be possessed, burdened by a royal test, I will not surrender, this life is mine!"
The song done, she closed her eyes, clasped her hands in front of her, then bowed. Applause washed over her, and she looked up to her family's box. It was occupied by three people: Jacques Schnee, looking down at her, approving; Whitley Schnee, politely — or maybe sarcastically — clapping; and Alex Tyrsen, holding onto her chair's armrests like she was drowning.
Weiss let her gaze linger for another moment, then looked at the audience again. She sighed to herself and left the stage.
The party afterwards was just as stifling as Weiss thought it would be. It was full of rich people, businesspeople and their spouses or other plus ones standing together in small groups and talking about the inane subjects they usually talked about. Soft piano music was played, and servers walked around between the guests, holding trays of various sorts of refreshments. Off to one side, fenced off by a fancy red rope, stood a giant painting of Beacon Academy.
Whitley, Weiss and Alex all stood near Jacques as he talked a business associate's ear off. "That's exactly my point," he was saying, "we offer Faunus the exact same wages given to the rest of our mining staff. Their argument's completely invalid right out of the gate."
Alex learned enough about Atlas from Klein's kind explanations to know that the Faunus were basically an oppressed underclass, and she knew enough about ruthless corporate executives to guess that the "exact same wages given to the rest of the mining staff" were as low as the SDC could set them without looking bad.
"Well, I think the bigger issue here is our society as a whole," the business associate replied.
"What, you mean Atlas?" Jacques asked him.
Weiss glanced aside, already bored out of her mind. Alex offered her an encouraging smile.
"Atlas, Mantle, you can't deny the economic disparity between the two," the business associate said.
While Weiss's attention was drawn to the large drawing, Alex shivered as though someone walked over her grave.
"I mean, what exactly are you suggesting?" a businesswoman asked the associate.
Weiss stepped aside, wanting to leave, but Jacques caught her arm. "Where are you going?" he asked her.
"I'm… just a little thirsty," she said, hesitating.
"Sweetheart, we have people for that," he said, lifting an arm to snap his fingers at a server.
"What? No, I can get it," she said, grabbing a hold of his arm and pulling it down. "I'll be right back, I promise."
"Look, no-one asked them to move here," the businesswoman was saying in a tone one uses when one explains something evident to a small kid.
"But companies like the SDC promised jobs!" the business associate protested.
Jacques turned back to the conversation; Weiss promptly left his side.
"I'm sorry," Jacques told his interlocutors, "I tuned out for a second but sounds like I'm the good guy again?"
Their laughter, Alex decided as she followed Weiss, was just as fake as their smiles.
Weiss made her way to the large painting of Beacon Academy. A small plaque declared its name — "Show the World We Care" — and that "All proceeds go to the Kingdom of Vale". Nary a second passed before someone told her, "It's beautiful."
That someone was a young man with teal hair and yellow eyes, wearing a flower-patterned vest over a maroon shirt and black pants. Rings decorated his fingers, and he had an easy smile plastered on his face. "You two match," he added.
Weiss closed her eyes and sighed; behind her, she could hear Alex snorting.
"Yes, it's a lovely painting," Weiss said, dryly.
"So," the young man said, rubbing a shoe on the floor, "that was my attempt at breaking the ice… how am I doing so far?"
Behind Weiss, where he wasn't looking, Alex was shaking her head.
"You are leaving a lot to be desired," Weiss said with a sigh.
"Well, I've always appreciated honesty," he said. "Henry. Marigold," he added, offering Weiss his hand.
"Weiss Schnee," she said, put her hand on his.
"I know," he said, letting her hand go, "I saw your performance. Obviously." He cleared his throat. "You were wonderful! And I promise I'm not saying that just because you're pretty." After Weiss didn't react, he turned to look at the painting and added, "Honesty, remember?"
Weiss didn't deign to respond to that, either, looking at the painting with crossed arms.
At this point Alex joined her in staring at the painting, making Henry do a double-take.
"I didn't know you had a twin sister!" he said. It was an easy mistake to make; if not for the different dress — white, and sporting a frillier skirt and snowflake-shaped decorations — and her shorter hair, Alex could've been mistaken for the Schnee heiress herself.
"I don't. This is Alex Tyrsen," Weiss said. Inwardly, she groaned. Henry seemed to have more money and looks than brains.
"I'm charmed," said money-for-brains told Alex. "You're certainly as pretty as Weiss!"
Alex stammered something and looked down. "I'm not—"
Weiss shot Henry a frosty glare.
"Moving on, moving on!" Henry said, looking at the painting. He rattled the railing set around it. "Thinking about buying it?"
"No, I don't think so," Weiss said, cooly. She glanced aside, somewhat comforted by Alex's obvious relief.
"Yeah… kinda pricey for a painting," Henry said, slowly.
"It's to raise money," Weiss told him. Idiot, she didn't add, but her opinion of Henry's intelligence was clear from her tone.
"Oh really? For what?" he asked.
"For what?" Weiss repeated, dumbstruck. She didn't quite imagine someone could be this sheltered.
"I'll admit," Henry said easily, standing up straighter, "I only come to these things for the food and drinks." As if to punctuate his point, he took a flute of champagne from a passing server. "And the extraordinary company, of course," he added, bowing towards Weiss and Alex. He drank from his flute, then asked, "So what, is it another Mantle fundraiser or something?"
This had Weiss turn towards him, eyes narrowed. Alex balled her hands where he couldn't see.
"Get. Out." Weiss grimaced at Henry.
"What?" he asked, obviously thinking that he misheard.
"Get out, or I will have security escort you out." There. Hopefully that was clear enough for this idiot.
"But I haven't done any—"
"Leave!" Weiss raised her voice, making fists.
"Whatever," he replied and, tossing back the rest of the champagne, walked away. Behind him, two of the guests were having a shouting match about "increasing unrest" and "filthy workers that don't know their place".
"He's an ass," Alex told Weiss. "Good riddance."
"Yeah…" she said.
"But really," a young woman said, "does it come as any surprise, what happened to Vale?"
That certainly caught Weiss's attention, and, removing Alex's hand from her shoulder, she turned around to look at the tanned woman wearing a purple dress.
"It was a long time coming if you ask me," the young woman was saying, a bit too loudly.
"Honey," her husband — wearing a rather conservative suit and sporting an awkward smile on his face — said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
"What, you said the same thing last night," she told him. "If they're so arrogant to think they can get by without proper kingdom defense, then I say good riddance." She waved a hand.
Weiss was taking a deep breath so she could start screaming at the callous couple when a slightly-raised voice beat her to the punch.
"Hey." Alex swept ahead of her, dress fluttering in her wake as she bore down on the couple, fists clenched. "Shut the fuck up."
Huh. She'd been pretty quiet until now, too. Surprised, Weiss decided to sit back and see where this was going to go; after all, Alex seemed almost shy, until now, and anyway she could get her own screaming in later if it wasn't enough.
"E-excuse me?" the woman stared at the approaching mystery Schnee, too drunk and confused to really be angry.
"Sure," Alex said. "You're excused for laughing off the deaths of hundreds of people. That is definitely what Jane Jade was thinking when a pack of demon wolves ripped her body apart, one limb at a time. Sometimes less than a limb. 'Honestly, yeah, this was a long time coming.'" The girl paused and shrugged. "Okay, she was eleven. So maybe not."
The woman's husband gritted his teeth. "Have some respect for the dead!"
Jacques, meanwhile, grabbed a server and whispered urgently into his ear. The server nodded and scurried off.
Alex's eyes flickered to the husband, and he saw something in her gaze that made him take a step back. "You're going to have to introduce me to the code of etiquette that makes calling their deaths 'good riddance' okay, but is totally against describing those deaths. I'm not fluent in Fuckwit." She shook her head. "Not that it matters. One out of four of the major bastions of human civilization is gone. Hundreds are dead. And you pampered morons don't think it has anything to do with you. You aren't worried at all. Isn't this carelessness exactly what you brilliant people were just tearing a strip off Vale for?"
"That's... it's different," the man protested. He'd have said more, but at that point two burly men wearing uniforms emblazoned with SDC's emblem and the word security entered the room and made a beeline towards Alex.
"Excuse me, miss," one of them told her, "but we need you to come with us."
Alex's eyes flickered between the pair of security and Jacques. For a second, she considered going loud on them. Only a second, though; the room was absolutely packed (even if most of the people present were gits) and that presented an unacceptable risk.
Weiss, meanwhile, hesitated near the painting. On one hand, Alex was saying a lot of what she had in mind. On the other, making an even bigger scene would cause Jacques to retaliate even more…
Having assessed the situation, Alex said, "Alright." She followed security out of the room, giving both the callous pair and Jacques a death glare.
Weiss capitalised on the fact that her father was busy apologising to the pair Alex shouted at and explaining the commotion to the guests and left the room, following the pair of guards.
From his position in a corner of the room, General Ironwood observed the situation with disgust. Couldn't they see that the girl had a point?
By the time Team RNJR and Jay could see Oniyuri's exit, clouds had gathered overhead, casting a deep shadow on the town and worsening their discomfort. Jay, in particular, seemed almost stressed, looking hither and thither with short, bird-like moves.
Ren, who was walking ahead of them, suddenly lifted a hand, motioning at them to stop. The wind blew past them as he closed his eyes and concentrated on his hearing. The team drew their weapons, looking from side to side.
A man wearing a brown long coat that didn't cover his muscular, scarred chest and a pair of white pants jumped over their heads from one of the pagoda-like buildings behind them. He threw his arms backwards as he landed, flicking out the twin blades attached to each, and before they had a chance to even notice his haircut — a ponytail shaped like a stinger — he rushed forward toward Ruby.
Ren interposed himself between them, but the man blocked the strike from StormFlower, deflected the spinning kick, dodged the bullets and forced Ren to bend over backwards in order to dodge a blade, all in the span of a few seconds, laughing madly the whole time.
He kicked over Ren's head, forcing the latter to crouch even lower, then tossed him aside into an empty fountain.
Running toward Ruby again, he struck at her, but she jumped backwards. He closed the distance and struck again; she blocked the strike with Crescent Rose's haft, and he chuckled at her. She attempted to strike back, but he blocked the spinning scythe and ran a blade over her chest, breaking her Aura and causing her to topple backwards.
Jaune rushed forward, but the man jumped, planting his legs on Jaune's shield and leaning forward; holding onto it with his hands, he leaned in very close to Jaune's face and gave him a big, disturbing grin.
Nora charged forward, and the man leaped off Jaune — causing him to lose his balance — and landed on Magnhild's head, before jumping off straight through the plaster wall of one of the tall buildings that surrounded the square they were in.
When the dust cleared, he was standing in the hole, legs planted on each beam so he won't fall over.
Ruby got up, noticing that, strangely enough, Jay still had her rifle aimed at the floor.
"We're not looking for a fight!" Jaune shouted.
"Who are you?" Ren asked.
The man cackled and launched himself forward, landing a three-point landing before the group.
"Who I am matters not to you," he told Ren. "Or you." He pointed at Nora. "Or…" He pointed at Jaune and hesitated. "You do interest me."
Jaune made a surprised noise.
"No, I only matter—"
"Not solely to her, no," Jay declared. "I know your type, and I will not let you put a finger on her." As if to punctuate her words, she shouldered her Dragunov and fired.
Whatever speech the man had in mind vanished into the realm of the maybes and not-to-bes and he moved, faster than the eye could see; the shot missed completely and the man appeared behind Jaune. Ren barely had time to shout a warning; the man dodged and StormFlower's bullets hit Jaune's shield. He spun on said shield using an arm blade and kicked at the charging Ruby, knocking her away and forcing her to use Crescent Rose to slow down.
Jaune swung him at the same time Jay fired again, but the man leaned backwards, dodging both the sword and the shot, then kicked Jaune twice, launching him into the air and onto a wall.
The man giggled and charged Jay, but multiple shots forced him to change direction and run toward Nora instead.
Ruby smiled. She loaded a Lightning Dust cartridge and fired at the man. The shot, however, whizzed past him and struck Nora, tossing her into a wall. The man scratched his head, then laughed, but his laughter was cut short by another rifle shot.
An empowered Nora, the telltale lightning of her Semblance coursing over her body, rushed forth and struck the man. The blow was so powerful an explosion occurred, covering the area with dust and particulate matter; when it settled, however, it was clear that the man wasn't a man, he was a Faunus — a scorpion Faunus, to be exact — and that his Faunus trait was a scorpion's stinger.
"Surprise!" the scorpioid said, then kicked Nora, twice, tossing her away like he did to Jaune not too long ago. Any conversation anybody had in mind, though, was prevented by a barrage of shots that forced the Faunus to stay on the move.
Of course, "on the move" just meant that he charged Ruby and, swiping Crescent Rose away with his tail, launched her away with a single punch. The rest of Team RNJR came at him together, but he took them on all at once effortlessly, tossing them aside like a dockworker tosses boxes to shore. Despite being shot at, he seemed to ignore Jay; he focused on Ruby, disarming her with a few swift moves of his stinger, then further breaking her Aura with kicks and punches, the last of which launched Ruby into the air.
The Faunus ran to her expected landing point, positioned himself correctly, then kicked her midriff. She rolled in the air and landed hard, completely winded. From where they were tossed, Jaune, Nora and Ren could only watch in horror as the Faunus giggled and brought his stinger forth.
Jay, meanwhile, looked back towards the way they came from. She saw the crow flying towards them and knew with the certainty of a prophet that he'd never make it in time.
The stinger hurtled towards Ruby and Jaune closed his eyes…
And then Jay said something in a language none of them could understand, pointing at the Faunus. A few things happened at once. All of them felt like their innards turned inside out, then quickly returned to normal; angry bruises appeared on Jay's arms and face; and a man wearing a tattered red cape stumbled into the square, which was suddenly covered in darkness like it was night.
The most impressive thing, however, was the effect on the Faunus. Parts of his hair became grey and brittle, while others vanished altogether; parts of one arm became like an old man's, while others became like a baby's; his belly got sucked inwards, his innards suddenly much smaller; his eyes became bloodshot; and the top third of his stinger became brittle and, after a moment, fell off.
He let out a blood-curdling scream and scampered away on all fours; the effects weren't permanent and he soon returned to looking like he did before (minus some of his stinger), but the damage was done, and, more importantly, his will to fight was shattered. So he ran away.
The man with the cape — Ruby's uncle Qrow — looked around and made a beeline, not towards his niece, but toward Jay.
Jay stared at the man that had been stalking the group at least since she joined it. He wasn't pointing his sword at her just yet, but he was clearly unfriendly, and he positively stank.
"Hey, Uncle Qrow," Ruby said, weakly, from where she was lying.
"Hey, kiddo," he said, glancing her way before turning back to Jay. "You've got some explaining to do," he told her again.
"Yeah, I think I do," Jay said with a frown. "But not to you. You did, after all, stalk Team RNJR for the whole time I've been travelling with them. Though…" She closed her eyes for a moment. "You bring misfortune, don't you? So you stay away… curious."
"How do you know?" Qrow demanded; if before he was suspicious, now his body language and tone were downright hostile.
Jay's answer was her usual impassive glare, and Qrow was having none of it; his sword segmented and expanded into its scythe form, to which Jay responded by half-raising her rifle.
"No, don't!" Ruby cried. She tried to get up, but failed, grabbing her midriff and grunting in pain. "Uncle Qrow, she helped us, she's a friend," she added, smiling. "Did you see the last thing she did? She pointed at that guy, said something, and poof, he became all freaky." She chuckled, weakly.
Jay closed her eyes for a moment, then she sighed. "Alright, I'll explain things. But first let's make sure everybody is alright." She glared at Qrow.
"Fine," he said, his tone and expression grumpy, and let his weapon fold back into its inactive form.
Jay gave him another impassive look, then turned and walked up to Ruby. She stared intensely at her for a moment. "You'll be fine," she declared, "you're not wounded. You need rest, that's all."
With that, she left Ruby to be helped to her feet by her uncle and went to the other members of Team RNJR. Her prognosis was similar; no wounds, but rest was required.
A sort of camp was swiftly established at the shadow of the town's walls. The group sat on logs around the campfire, with RNJR huddled together, Qrow to one side and Jay to the other.
For a long while, Jay stared impassively at Ruby, then she sighed. "Before I start explaining, there's something I need to know." She paused. "Tell me, what do you remember of what I did back then?" she asked the team.
"There was darkness all of a sudden," Ren said, promptly. "I think I saw thin threads, too; and there was too much cawing to be just Snuggly."
Said raven was sleeping in its "nest"; that is to say, Jay's headscarf.
"Yeah, and I'm pretty sure I saw raven feathers, too," Nora added.
Jay rubbed her chin, but said nothing.
"I saw… when you pointed at him, and said these words — parts of that guy seemed to age on fast-forward," Ruby said slowly. "And parts of him looked like… baby versions of him? It was weird."
"And you can all remember this?" Jay asked.
"Yeah. Why shouldn't we?" Jaune asked, confusion evident on his face.
Jay frowned. "Because of something called the Curse of Quiescence," she said, rubbing her chin. "Alright, I need to test something, then I can start to maybe explain."
"Alright…" Ruby said, hesitantly. "What do you need to do?"
"I need you to promise something to… Jaune, say, then fulfill this promise," Jay said. "It can and should be something trivial, like hugging him. But! Don't tell me what it is."
"Okay…" Ruby said. While she leaned to the side and whispered something in Jaune's ear, Qrow shot Jay a doubting look, but she had her eyes closed and didn't see him.
Then, out of nowhere, Ruby tickled Jaune. He jumped.
At the same time, Jay said, "you fulfilled your promise by… tickling Jaune?"
She looked down at her arms — Ren thought he saw her wince — but nothing happened. "Odd. Very odd," she said, more to herself than to anybody else.
"What's odd?" Ren asked.
"Remember the Curse of Quiescence?" Jay asked. "It's the name given to the fact that, among others, performing vulgar magic where Sleepers can see it triggers Paradox."
"What do you mean, magic?" Qrow asked, somehow managing to sound nonchalant and suspicious at the same time.
Jay rolled her eyes, pointed at ornate raven's feather quill at him, and all of a sudden Qrow had a pair of large, beautiful crow's wings in lieu of arms. "Magic," she said, dryly, then winced. She inspected her arms but saw nothing; she rubbed her chin, hmming to herself.
Qrow gave his arms an experimental flap, causing the campfire to flicker. "So…" he said, tone neutral, "am I stuck like this?"
"Of course not," Jay told him impatiently; she waved a hand at him and his arms returned back to normal. "Making this Lasting would've required a lot of time and energy." She snorted. "And as amusing as it would be to have uncle Qrow here be a bit more of a crow, it's, you know, immoral to do such things."
"Such things…?" Qrow asked, looking over his hands (they were back to normal, as far as he could tell).
"The fact that I can make your hair pink like Nora's skirt, or give you gills, or grow poisonous quills doesn't mean that I should," Jay explained, "and any willworker worth something will say that transforming someone permanently without their consent is an act of Hubris. I didn't stop being human just because I can see the Supernal."
"The Supernal? I assume you don't mean the sky," Ren said. If his expression was anything to judge by, he was taking the coming revelations rather calmly.
"No. Here, I'll explain," Jay said. She took a stick and drew a large circle on the ground; inside it, she drew three smaller ones grouped together (but not touching), then finally drew five lines between two of the smaller circles. She named the large circle The Abyss; the middle of the smaller circles The Supernal; the circle connected to it The Fallen World; the connections Watchtowers; and the last circle Remnant. "I'll spare you the legends, but the gist of things is that the Abyss is full of things that are not to be. Un-entities that wish to corrupt reality, whole worlds that seek to replace the proper one, and worse. The Supernal, on the other hand, is the Truth. It is what things are, and it is by accessing and manipulating the Supernal that I can do magic."
"Hey, that sounds unfair," Nora said. "How come you can do magic and I can't?"
"Good question. The answer is that, back in the old days, most of everybody had the potential to be a willworker — a Mage," Jay answered. "However, it is not the case anymore." She tapped the word Fallen with her stick. "I'll spare you the speculative legends; suffice to say that the world — my world — Fell, and people could not reach the Supernal on their own any more. This is the Curse of Quiescence I mentioned earlier: instead of resonating with the Supernal Truth, people's souls now resonate with the Abyss, with the Lie. This is why I was surprised that you remembered the spell I cast on our scorpion-tailed friend, and why I was surprised when I didn't have to tamp down outrageous amounts of Paradox when I gave Qrow wings."
"So…" Ren said, slowly, "this Paradox you mention aside, isn't the Curse good for you? You could use magic, and others would simply forget."
"Not exactly. Paradox is a big problem. Basically, it is the result of the Abyss polluting a spell. Remember that I said that people's souls resonate with the Abyss? The more Sleepers witness a spell, the worse the risk of Paradox is. Paradox can happen in other ways too — if you Reach too far and try to cast something that's past your abilities, for example — but casting around Sleepers is almost a surefire way to cause Paradox. Now, you might say I could suffer some bruises and be done with it, right? But the thing is that this is the least-bad result of Paradox, and it requires spending energy I'd rather spend on spellcasting."
"Can't you just… not spend it, then?" The question, surprisingly enough, came from Jaune; he'd stayed silent until now, and seemed almost afraid.
"I can, but the results aren't pretty. At best, the spell gets messed up — it can affect the wrong person, get inverted, or other such things; at worst, I taint myself with the Abyss, or summon an Abyssal entity." Jay shook her head. "Letting Paradox run wild is one of the things we Mages consider immoral; it endangers others because of our own Hubris, and that is unacceptable."
"That's nice and all," Nora said, frowning, "but you still haven't answered my question."
"I was getting there. See these?" Jay tapped the lines connecting The Fallen World to the Supernal. "There exist five Watchtowers, which allow certain people to Awaken and see the Supernal. Why certain people Awaken, we don't know — we just know that they do." She rubbed her chin. "I assume I'm correct in saying that there is no magic in your world — Qrow's transformation aside, that is? Ahh, yes, your expression says 'yes'. I would imagine, Nora, that there are no Watchtowers that connect Remnant to the Supernal, so you cannot Awaken."
"So how come Uncle Qrow has magic?" Ruby asked the question that was bothering her team.
"I'm not sure. Assuming he doesn't want to tell us himself" — Jay looked at him and he shook his head — "I can only speculate. I can't even examine his soul and look for hints there; I don't know Death."
"What do you mean, you don't know Death?" Jaune asked. "You can do magic."
"Supernal magic is traditionally divided into ten Arcana, each with its own sphere — Life and Spirit; Space and Mind; Matter and Death; Forces and Prime; and Time and Fate."
"These are paired for a reason, correct?" Ren asked.
"An astute observation. When you Awaken, you Awaken to a specific Watchtower, which in turn governs which Arcana you have a natural affinity to. You can learn other Arcana, but usually you won't be as good with them, and furthermore each Watchtower also dictates an Inferior Arcanum — one with which you have weak affinity and would have great difficulty learning." Jay sighed. "The soul falls under the Arcanum of Death, and I know not the simplest Death spell."
"So… back then…?" Ruby trailed off. "When that scorpion Faunus attacked us…?"
"That was a Time spell. Qrow's transformation, on the other hand, falls under the purview of Life."
"Wait a sec," Nora said. "You paired Time and Fate, and Life and Spirit. This doesn't add up."
"Each Path has a pair of Ruling Arcana — with which it is affiliated — and an Inferior Arcanum, as I mentioned earlier. The rest count as Common Arcana, which, while lacking inherent affinity, are not as hard to grasp as an Inferior one," Jay answered. "I'm an ornithologist, Nora. I've been chasing birds since I was three." With a soft smile, she raised a hand and stroked the head of the raven sleeping on top of hers. "Invictus would've no doubt benefited from another Acanthus with an affinity for Space, but—"
"Whoa, whoa, slow down," Jaune said, gesturing with his hands. "Invictus? Acanthus? What're those?"
Jay smiled again. She stood up. "Let me properly introduce myself, then: I am Orvanit, member of Invictus, the Adamant Sage of Silver Rapids. And I apologise for hiding my name and nature from you." She bowed, hand on her heart.
Jaune raised a finger and opened his mouth to speak, then closed it with a sigh. That was too much jargon and not enough explanation for him.
"So you're not… Jay?" Ruby asked in a small voice.
"In a way," Jay — no, Orvanit — said, sitting down again. "In my mother tongue, 'orvanit' means 'female jay'." She sighed, and the smile vanished from her face, replaced by her ever-present stony expression. "Names have power, Ruby Rose; anything with a strong connection does. And where there's sympathy, there's the ability to use it. That is why the Awakened use Shadow Names, pseudonyms designed to safeguard their true, Sympathetic names. That's why — even though Orvanit is my Shadow Name — I won't be telling you my real one. I'm sorry."
"You know," Qrow said, sounding rather nonchalant, "you explained some things. But you didn't tell me why you joined them." He indicated Ruby and the rest with his chin. "And you've said very little about where you came from."
Orvanit glared at him. "I could ask you the same thing, you know — why were you stalking th—" She stopped mid-word and squinted at him for a few seconds. "You don't want to spread your misfortune, so that's why you—"
Qrow's hand strayed to Harbinger, his weapon. "How do you know?" he demanded.
Orvanit sighed. "Take your hand off your weapon, please. Didn't you listen? I'm a Mage. Specifically, I'm an Acanthus; mine are Time and Fate to manipulate. How will I not see this?" She crossed her arms. "I can show you, if you want. How I see things."
Qrow gave her a doubting look, but took his canteen out instead. He drank, letting the alcohol burn its way down his throat, and said, "Sure, why not."
She nodded and reached out, tapping his forehead with her raven's feather quill. For a moment, everything became blurry and segmented by hexagon — a bee's eye view — then Qrow could see… himself and Team RNJR, from the perspective of Orvanit. Clearly, it wasn't what she was seeing right now — in the vision, he just put his hand on Harbinger —
But, more importantly, it was markedly different from how he usually saw the world in two important ways. The first was the fact that there were symbols he couldn't read — and hurt to look at for too long — around everything. They moved around things like leaves in the wind, and as he watched some of the symbols surrounding him flowed into the log he was sitting on. The second was the large amount of might've-beens, maybes and possibilities that, again, surrounded everything — he could spot, out of the multitude, a hazy image of him grasping his midriff, which was bandaged near himself, and a worried-looking Ruby near his niece — and, as the symbols snaked from him into the log, a hazy mirage of the same log but cracked in half appeared and joined the rest. Then the vision vanished, replaced by a splitting headache. He groaned and grasped his head.
"Sorry," Orvanit said, quietly. "Sleepers usually can't handle Mage Sight; information overload, I'm told." After a moment, she added, "I'd offer to heal you, but it's not the sort of pain Life magic could heal."
"Ugh, what was that?" Qrow asked. "This is worse than a hangover."
"It's how I see the world," Orvanit told him, dryly, "and how I figured out your misfortune-spreading effect. It's also—" She stopped herself, squinted at him, and sighed. "No, of course not, why would you tell the kids anything about that."
"About what?" Jaune wondered.
"None of your business," Qrow replied.
"Hey, I think—" Jaune started.
"Don't ask him to reveal secrets that aren't his to reveal, Jaune," Orvanit said, interrupting him. Her expression softened. "Since I've given a lecture, I might as well: any questions?"
"Yeah," Ruby said excitedly, "you're a teacher? Why didn't you tell us? What do you teach? Is it shooting? What do Academies in your world look like?"
"Slow down, Ruby," Orvanit said with a lopsided smile. "Yes, I'm a teacher. I haven't told you because, well, I haven't told you almost anything." She chuckled. "I teach ornithology."
"Orni… you teach people to be ornery?"
"No, Ruby, I teach people about birds." Orvanit rubbed her chin, staring off to the distance for a moment. She muttered something about languages under her breath. "I specialise in ravens."
"What, not pigeons?" Jaune asked, then wilted under Orvanit's glare. "Sorry…"
The latter sighed. "If there are any other questions…?"
"Yeah," Nora said, leaning a little on Ren, "why don't you like fair—"
"Don't say their name!" Orvanit said, forcefully. "Look, Nora, the fact that my world doesn't have Grimm doesn't mean it's free of dangers! And some of these things, it's dangerous to even talk about them!" She made a curious gesture, pointing backwards with her thumb at nobody in particular. "Even Mordred's girlfriend didn't deserve what happened to her, damn it — so do not mention their name!"
"So…" Jaune said slowly, warily, not wanting Orvanit to pick him as a rant target, "that raises a lot more questions. Like 'who's Mordred' and 'what happened to his girlfriend' and 'wait, your world doesn't have Grimm?!'. But if I had to choose, I'd ask the last one."
"Yes, Jaune. Grimm, as far as I can tell, are something Remnant has" — in disturbing abundance, she didn't add — "and my world doesn't. No, it has other dangers. Fellow men aside, there are evil Mages, all manner of things that go bump in the night, and worse things besides: what the victims of Those Assholes suffer is horrible." Orvanit shook her head. "What happened to his girlfriend — it's not my secret to share." She sighed and tapped her left wrist. "As to who is Mordred, he's one of my Cabal-mates and, technically, an underling of mine." A pause, in which she smiled her lopsided smile again. "I sometimes wish he was here. He is more combat-capable than I." Another pause. "Any other questions?"
"You mentioned that you are an 'Adamant Sage', and now that Mordred is an underling of yours," Ren said. Compared to Jaune's wariness, Ruby's excitement and Nora's suspiciousness, his tone was even, as though he was sitting in a classroom. "You don't look military or police. Where is Mordred your underling?"
"Mage society has its own organisations. You do not need to know the details, but I lead the local branch of the Adamantine Arrow."
"You cannot tell us anything?" Despite the even tone and calm expression, Ren sounded doubtful.
Orvanit sighed again. She closed her eyes for a moment, nodded to herself and opened them. "I shall tell you the creed; I don't think any harm will come from that. Succinctly put: challenge is magical." She smiled her lopsided smile again. "The Adamant Way has five Phalanxes or precepts: Existence is War; Adaptability is Strength; Service is Mastery; the Supernal is the Self; and Enlightenment is Honour." Out of nowhere, she yawned, hastily covering her mouth. "We should all get some rest," she said. "Class dismissed."
So they dispersed a bit, each going to get their own things ready for the night.
Some time later Ruby approached Orvanit. "Hey, Orvanit," she said.
"Oh, hello Ruby." Orvanit was stroking Snuggly's head, muttering softly to the bird, but when Ruby approached her she turned around.
"I wanted to say thanks."
"What for?" Orvanit's face was as impassive as ever.
"You saved me back there."
The older woman smiled lopsidedly. "Service is Mastery," she intoned. "And even more importantly — 'him who saves one soul, it is as if he saved a whole world', our Sages have said. Think nothing of it."
Ruby blinked. It was much easier to understand Jay — Orvanit — when she wasn't talking about ethics. "Also," she powered on, "I wanted to ask a question."
The stroking stopped. Orvanit's expression, however, didn't change. "Where have you heard that name?" she asked, quietly.
"You were mumbling," Ruby said quietly. "When you slept. It sounded like a nightmare."
"Oh." Orvanit shook her head. "Meir's my husband. I miss him," she said, simply. "And I'm worried for him."
"Is he—"
"In danger? Yes. Comes with being a Mage." Orvanit sighed. "And he's… well, not new-new, but new."
"Can't you do anything to help?"
"From over here? Across the Abyss?" Orvanit shook her head. "This is why I have to get back. People back home need me."
"Then I'll help you." Ruby's expression was resolute. "It's only fair."
Surprisingly, Orvanit smiled — a regular, somewhat nostalgic smile, not her usual lopsided one. "That's nice of you, Ruby," she said softly, "but right now the best thing you can do for me? Get me to Mistral. I've a feeling I'll know the next step once I get there."
Weiss stopped following the security guards when they had Alex enter Jacques' study and stayed outside. She doubted that her father wanted her to be present. Instead, she headed back to her room. Once there, she sat down on her bed, put her head in her hands and sighed. She wondered what would've happened if Alex wouldn't have stepped up to scream at that woman. Weiss herself only really stayed back because Alex was already shouting. How would her father have reacted if she had embarrassed him so?
At the end, though, it didn't matter, did it? What was done was done and now Alex was probably… what, exactly? It's not like Alex was a family member, or an SDC employee. But Jacques would no doubt want to punish Alex for causing a scene.
Weiss's hands shot up to her mouth when she realised what it meant; Jacques would probably throw Alex out. A knock on the door stopped her rumination. "Enter," she said weakly, and a somewhat dishevelled-looking Alex entered, gave Weiss a glance, and proceeded to collapse on her own bed. Weiss looked at her, wordlessly.
"Well, that was stupid," Alex said, but she didn't sound too convinced that what she did was, in fact, stupid. "If this is the sort of nonsense you have to suffer through, I get why you want to leave, you know?"
"What did Father say…?"
"Oh, that he'll 'reexamine my presence in this house', and some hints about the courts." Alex snorted. "Just as thin-skinned as his counterparts back home. Of course, since I don't know anybody here, that'll be somewhat of a problem for me… but maybe you can take advantage of that."
"What do you mean, take advantage? He's throwing you out to the streets!" Weiss balled her hands and got up.
"You said you wanted to leave, but he's not letting you, right?"
Weiss stopped in place, halfway through to the door of her room. She turned around to face Alex. "What about that?"
"Remember what money-for-brains said before I went ahead and caused a scene?"
Weiss blinked. Money-for-brains…? Oh, Alex must mean Henry. Now what did he say? "'I didn't know you had a twin'— you're not serious."
"Dead serious." Alex got up. "Look at me. All I need is a wig and a fake scar. The rest, well. I'll manage." She smiled.
"That's crazy." Weiss believed it, too. She only met Alex last week. There's no way she could fool Jacques. Or Whitley. Or Klein. Or… anybody, really.
"From the way Jacques talked, we have a couple days before he throws me out. Probably so SDC's PR department can prepare their spin. We can make this work, Weiss. You could be free of this." Alex waved her hand around, indicating the room. "You could go help your friends."
Weiss gave her a sceptical look. As tempting it was to leave her Father and annoyance of a little brother behind and go do something that actually mattered, Alex's plan was simply too crazy, and Alex herself didn't show that she could be trusted, certainly not to the degree required for her plan to work.
Alex opened her mouth to say more, but closed it. She looked rather surprised, all of a sudden; raising her arm and pointing at something behind Weiss.
Weiss whirled, hand on Myrtenaster's hilt.
Before her stood — well, not her grandfather, but a somewhat transparent holo of him, anyway. "What— how—" she sputtered.
"Weiss?" the holo asked. "Little Weiss? You've grown…"
"Explain this," Weiss demanded from Alex.
Alex looked from side to side. "It looks like a ghost," she said slowly. "A relative…?"
Weiss rolled her eyes. "That looks like my grandfather, Nicholas Schnee. My dead grandfather." She turned back to the holo and stuck her hand through it, expecting to feel nothing but air. Instead, the moment she actually touched it — it was like putting her hand in a bucket of nearly-frozen water. She snatched her hand back with a yelp.
"I couldn't move on," the ghost of Nicholas explained. "Not with how my son-in-law manages the Company. Profits have soared, yes, but at what cost? Every night I hear the wailing of the workers that died in work accidents and couldn't move on, of the people that froze to death after being evicted from their Schnee Dust Company-owned apartments, of—"
"You're…" Weiss said while the ghost droned on, listing the crimes of Weiss's father. "You're not a holo…"
"No, I'm not," Nicholas agreed, quite amicably. "I couldn't move on. I stayed, following my son-in-law, and seeing the effect he had on the Company, and on the Kingdom. I cannot rest until my business here is done."
"If you're haunting Father," Weiss said, still not quite willing to believe she was talking with the ghost of her grandfather, "what are you doing here? I'm not Father."
"I was called, and I came."
"Why?"
"I, too, was complicit. After Jacques married Willow, I let him do as he would, content in the knowledge that the Company was in safe hands. Weiss…" Nicholas kneeled in front of her so his head was level with hers and put a hand on her shoulder. Unlike last time, this time there was no chill, just an ethereal touch. "You have an opportunity. The young lady there" — he nodded at Alex — "is giving it to you. Use it. Don't be complacent."
Weiss looked from the ghost to Alex. He certainly sounded like her grandfather, and he talked in a way that stirred what few memories of him she had. She wavered. While Alex's plan was crazy, if that was truly her grandfather… and besides, it wouldn't be the first crazy plan that actually worked.
"It's going to work," Alex said, with fervour. She balled her hands and there was a glint in her eyes. "We can make it work, Weiss. Trust me."
Weiss looked, again, from Alex to the ghost and back to Alex. She wanted to believe the other girl. She really did. But if it failed— So what if it failed, she cut her internal debate short. She was a Huntress, in practice if not officially, and she would make it work. Every minute she was wasting her time here was a minute her friends were endangering themselves without her to support them. She hesitated one last moment, then said, "Alright. I hope I won't regret this, Alex."
"You won't, I promise." Alex's face was set with determination. "Listen, what we need to do is…"
As they started planning, Nicholas's ghost gave his granddaughter one last wistful look, then vanished back into the Twilight.
"How much further, pal?" Yang asked the shady man sitting in the back seat of her bike. The fact that he supposedly knew where to find her mother didn't make him any less of an annoyance.
"This should just about do it," the shady man replied, and Yang's annoyance increased a hundredfold. 'This' was a small clearing in the middle of the forest. There wasn't anybody in sight.
Nonetheless, Yang stopped the bike.
The shady man dismounted. "You wait here. I'll go up ahead and make sure—" he said as he walked towards the bushes, but he never got to finish his sentence.
Normalcy decided to go on a vacation in a region of space straight above the shady man, the air twisting itself into forms that weren't meant to be in un-colours that seared the eyes. Luckily for Yang, she wasn't looking at the hole in the air; unluckily for Shay D. Mann, he did. He screamed immediately and crumpled like a marionette that had its strings cut.
Thankfully, the hole in the air spat out two things before eating itself out of existence with a sucking sound.
The first thing was a man slightly taller than Yang. If she had to guess, she'd have thought he was Sun's human, shirt-wearing brother; his hair was messier, but his face, hair colour and build were rather similar. He was holding an iron sword in one hand and a hunting knife with an oddly reflective blade in the other; he rolled to his feet and immediately cursed.
The second thing would've looked like an octopus, if octopi had a changing number of tentacles, no eyes to speak of, bird beaks sprouting off random spots and were coloured like an art teacher's nightmare. The thing floated about a metre above ground, tentacles flickering. It screeched. Shay, unluckily enough, was straight under it, and promptly fainted. Yang and not-Sun were farther away, so they only instantly developed a throbbing headache.
"Shit, shit, a Gulmoth? Shit…" Evidently, the man wasn't happy. He glanced at Yang. "What are you waiting for? Run!"
"Like hell," she said, flicking her arms backwards to extend Ember Celica into its active mode. "I'm not running from… whatever that is!" It certainly was not like any Grimm she'd encountered in the past, or even heard of. Its colours were wrong, for one, and she'd never even heard of beaked octopus-like Grimm.
The man ughed. "Orvanit is going to kill me," he grumbled as he readied his sword. He glanced at the knife in his other hand, then charged the Gulmoth. His sword cut an arc through the air and lopped one of the Gulmoth's tentacles off.
The thing screeched again, but didn't seem to be terribly bothered, otherwise; it still floated in a way that could be described as "serene" if not for its eye-searing un-nature. Still, the attack had one effect: the Gulmoth spun to face the man, spitting something — it hurt even to look at the something — at him. It was sheer dumb luck that saved him: he stumbled in just the right second and the nasty spray sailed over his head. The bush behind him wasn't so lucky; wherever the spray landed, the bush contorted into unnatural shapes.
It was then that Yang attacked. She shot the ground, propelling herself forward, delivering a mighty punch to the thing's "head".
That turned out to be a mistake. The moment she touched the Gulmoth, searing pain shot up her arm and a discordant cacophony of nonsense assaulted her senses. Suddenly she was hearing grue and smelling the screams of creatures that weren't supposed to exist. By the time the bad trip subsided, she found out that both the man and the thing were a ways off. Curiously, the man wasn't attacking the thing head-on; rather, he was poking and prodding it with both his sword and knife, then avoiding the thing's eye-searing goo sprays and tentacle slaps by mere centimetres — here by stumbling, there by moving at just the right moment, and one time even by happening to wave his sword in such a way that deflected the relevant tentacle.
"I'm not done with you!" Yang half-said, half-shouted. Frankly, she was pissed off. Not only did she have to deal with that idiotic shady man, now that monster was messing with her head. She once again fired at the ground to give herself a decent amount of forward momentum, then launched herself towards the thing again; this time around, however, instead of punching it she simply peppered it with shots. This, of course, made the thing focus on her instead of the man; thankfully, she had a much easier time dodging its tentacles and goo sprays.
The man, however, seemed unhappy. Well, even less happy than before. He glanced at his knife's blade — still reflective, despite having been used to poke at the thing numerous times by now — and sighed. "Lure it that way!" He shouted, pointing towards a seemingly-random direction.
"What? Why?" Yang shouted back, then side-stepped another goo spray.
"You can't just kill it!" The man sounded exasperated. He glanced at the knife again. "You have to use its bane to banish it completely!"
"Its what?"
"Just lure it that way!"
"Okay, whatever you say," Yang grumbled. She started dodging more towards the direction the man mentioned. He joined her, and together they managed to prod and cajole the thing into moving towards the direction the man mentioned. It turned out that the place he was looking for was another clearing, and that confused Yang, because it seemed completely unremarkable.
Either way, it did seem to be the right place, for he rushed forward and marked a circle on the ground — roughly four paces across — with his sword. "Make it stay in the circle!" he shouted.
The circle seemed like any other spot of ground to Yang, but she did as the man told — especially considering that it looked like the shots from Ember Celica weren't having any sort of permanent effect and, as she found out earlier, punching the thing was inadvisable.
The wrinkle in the plan, of course, was that the thing seemed to actively avoid the patch of ground the man marked; it preferred to let him cut off tentacles, or let Yang blast its "face", rather than cross the line in the ground, and when a stray tentacle-end passed it, the thing snatched it back like it was burned.
This futile back-and-forth continued for a couple of minutes — an eternity, practically — until the man pulled back. "Cover me for a moment," he said. Not waiting for an answer — he seemed certain that Yang would do so, and indeed she did — he spent the next minute or so staring at the blade of his knife.
Finally he lifted his gaze. "Alright. I'm going to make it lose its balance," he calmly told Yang. He turned towards her, which had him dodge a flailing tentacle. "That'll be your chance."
"How are you going to do that?! It flies!" Yang half-shouted in reply, blasting the thing so it'll stay away from her face.
"Trust my luck," the man answered. He didn't wait for more objections; instead, he rushed forward and started stabbing the thing again. But, if his attacks beforehand were obviously meant to either damage or provoke the thing, these were different; it was obvious that he was only striking certain spots, although their significance eluded Yang.
Finally, the dull sword hit a beak and the thing shrieked, then jumped up in the air. Seeing her chance, Yang threw her arms back, then fired both of Ember Cellica's shotguns at the thing. It flew backwards — straight into the marked area.
If its scream before was headache-inducing, this one was a hundred times worse; both Yang and the man she fought together with grabbed their heads, but it was too much and she passed out.
When she came to, she was lying face-down on the ground. Getting up and spitting soil out of her mouth, she looked around. The man was stirring, so she approached him. "Need a hand?"
"Thanks." He took her hand and clambered to his feet, then gingerly massaged his head. "Ow. Wish Orvanit was here. Or Lucifer. Or Cerridwen. Or Hohenheim."
Yang wanted to ask who these people were, but there were more important questions. "What was that?" she asked, pointing at the circle, where nothing remained. "For that matter, who are you?"
"I'm Mordred," he said. "That… was a thing," he added, lamely.
"'Thing' is understatement," she said, crossing her arms. "That wasn't a Grimm, was it? Its colours were wrong."
He looked from her to the circle, then back again. "So…" he said, slowly, "you haven't forgotten the fight?"
"No, of course not," Yang said, impatiently. "Why would I? It happened a few moments ago and the headache I got from that thing's screams is very much real."
"Huh." Mordred sheathed his sword — there wasn't anything on it to clean — then glanced at his knife again. His eyebrow shot up. "Huh."
"Huh what?" Yang demanded. Considering that she helped Mordred beat… whatever that was, she deserved some answers, as far as she was concerned.
"Sorry," he said. "I'll explain what I can, alright? But let's go back to your motorcycle. You don't want to leave that guy alone with it; he'll probably steal it."
"Crap," Yang said. She started heading back towards where she stopped Bumblebee.
"The short version," Mordred said as he matched his step to hers, "is that thing was a Gulmoth, a sort of an Abyssal spirit."
"A what now?"
"A Gulmoth. Look, it's like…" He waved an arm. "See this? It's a Lie. Not real."
"What d'you mean, not real?"
"Not real as in, false. Fake. A Lie. You can't see it for the Lie it is because you're Asleep; because your soul's got a bit of Abyss in it."
"That sounds like nonsense."
"It is what it is. The story goes that back in the day everybody could see the Truth, but ever since the world Fell the connection to the Supernal, the source of the Truth, isn't there any more. Into that crack seeped the Abyss, the not-thing. It's basically unreality, which is why that thing was a headache to just look at."
They arrived at the other clearing just in time to see the shady man trying to hotwire Bumblebee. She didn't waste time shouting at him; instead, she broke into a run and simply punched him off her bike. He made a nice parabola in the air, then crashed into a nearby tree with a thump. She followed him, picking him up by his shirt once she was close enough.
"Okay, look," she told him, her expression clearly showing her lack of patience, "I just fought a monster that was trying to scramble my head, and returned to see you trying to steal my bike. So here's how it's gonna work. You're gonna show me where my mother is, then you'll get lost. Am I clear?"
"Y-yes," he said.
"Good." She dropped him. "Get up."
He did, massaging his neck. When he tried to return to the bike, however, he found that Yang was blocking his way.
"Na-uh," she said, "you're not going to get close to my bike again. You're walking."
The shady man considered his options. He was obviously outmatched by this girl, but there was this new man to consider. "Hey, mister—"
"Don't bother," Mordred told him, his arms crossed. "I saw you trying to steal the bike."
The shady man deflated. "Uggh. Alright. After me, then," he said, tone dejected, and started ambling away. Yang took Bumblebee and followed him on foot, as did Mordred.
"Don't you have places to be?" she asked him.
"In the middle of a forest I don't know? A bandit camp gives me some chance of getting back to where I need to be." Mordred shrugged.
"How'd—"
"How'd I know? I do magic."
"Yeah, right." That sounded just as preposterous as his story about the Abyss.
"Yeah. Usually Sleepers — non-Mages — who witness Magic, or, worse, an Abyssal manifestation like that Gulmoth simply… forget the whole thing. The Lie smothers any recollection, and they think it was an accident, or a trick, or some other mundane thing. It's obviously not the case with you, though."
"That sounds convenient."
"The results of obvious magic cast in front of Sleepers aren't pretty."
"That's a lot of things to take on your word," Yang said, shaking her head.
He grimaced. "There's not much I can do, though, hm. I guess getting portalled away will help."
"Beg pardon?" The more Mordred spoke, the less sense he made to Yang.
He gave her an easy smile. "I'm not sure, either. But we'll see soon enough, I think."
He wasn't wrong; before long, the shady man brought them to the wooden palisade that served as the wall of the Branwen Tribe's camp.
"So you're Adam." Orel and the leader of the Vale branch of the White Fang were standing in one of the outside-facing rooms of Sienna Khan's base of operations. It had a nice view of Mistral proper, but Adam didn't care for it and Orel was more interested in his interlocutor.
"Yes. You're the brothers Albain's pet human, aren't you?" Adam, obviously, wasn't interested in polite chit-chat.
"No, no, you misunderstand, tovarich Taurus," Orel said. "I'm here to help the White Fang's revolution."
Despite Orel's apparent fervor, Adam didn't seem overly impressed. "A human, wanting for humans to be dethroned and made to serve the Faunus. Excuse me if I'm skeptical."
"No, of course not, that would be wrong," Orel replied. "What I want is for the Faunus to get what they deserve; equality and freedom from oppression. Surely that's what you want too, tovarich Taurus?" He smiled, winningly, at Adam.
"Pah." Although, for a moment, Adam felt that Orel's idea was worth considering, but his face hurt, that reminded him of how the Humans treated him, and any consideration went out of the window. "The Humans talk about equality, but they still oppress us, just like they did for centuries. No, they ought to pay. I don't know what you did to Corsac and Fennec, but—"
"I heard enough." Orel said, and Adam found himself unable to talk, a foreign idea of shutting up dominating his mind. "You're clearly some sort of supremacist." Orel spat the last word. "And I can't have you jeopardise the revolution. No," he added as Adam's hand moved to the hilt of his weapon, "I'm not done," he said, and Adam found himself unable to move. "You're going to come with me, and afterwards you're going to get lost."
Adam could do nothing but watch himself nodding in agreement. There was a moment of confusion, then the pair of them wasn't in the base any more; rather, they were in a forest somewhere — the trees looked to Adam like the ones common near Mistral, so they couldn't be too far away from the city itself.
"Now," Orel said, "get lost."
With that, Adam broke into a run. Where he was running he didn't know, just that he had to run and run until he couldn't run any more.
"Good riddance," Orel mumbled once Adam wasn't visible any more. He turned on the spot and returned to the room he just left. He waited there for a few moments, then left the room. Outside he ran into one of the low-ranked members of the White Fang. "Hello there, tovarich Fawn," he said. "Anything I can help you with?"
Fawn's deer ears twitched. "I was looking for Adam."
"Oh, tovarich Taurus? You just missed him." Orel shrugged. "He said something about 'an important mission' as he left."
"Alright." Fawn shrugged. He wasn't going to go looking; he was a soldier, not a delivery boy. If Adam wanted the rumours bad enough he could come and ask Fawn himself instead of telling him to meet him and then vanishing.
The White Fang goon left, mumbling under his breath, and Orel wiped the sweat from his brow. That was a close call. He re-entered the room and stared out of the window, rubbing his pen and thinking.
Having left Oniyuri behind them, Team RNJR's road to Mistral was fairly quiet, all things considered. There were Grimm in the forest, yes, but between them, Qrow, and Orvanit, even the largest and oldest ones didn't pose much of a threat to the group. Qrow remained suspicious towards Orvanit, and she returned the favour, but they didn't come to blows. For the most part they managed to ignore each other.
The only event of note was a particular morning where the group arrived at a fork in the road. According to the sign, the left-hand side led to Kuroyuri while the other path — which, the group could see, snaked through the mountains — went ahead to Mistral proper.
As she was wont to do, Orvanit closed her eyes for a moment. Unlike most times, however, she stayed stock-still for more than a short moment. "There is something very, very dangerous over there," she said at length, giving Qrow a stony look. "We should wait here while Snuggly scouts ahead."
"Snuggly can get there faster than any of us, yeah," Nora said, a doubtful expression on her face, "but she can't really talk, so how would we know what she found?"
Orvanit didn't roll her eyes. She had better self-control than that. But she certainly wanted to. "Magic," she answered, dryly.
"Yeah, right." Nora didn't sound too convinced. "You've been telling us next to nothing about how this 'magic' even works." She crossed her arms.
Orvanit sighed. She stepped up to Nora and poked her shoulder with a finger. The latter opened her mouth to complain, but her vision blurred and broke into multiple hexagonal segments. It then resolved into something that, after a moment, she understood was Orvanit's point-of-view from the back of the group, complete with unreadable symbols, maybes and would've-beens. The vision lasted for just a bit over a minute, and when it vanished, a splitting headache replaced it.
"Convinced now?" Orvanit asked, a hint of annoyance seeping into her voice.
"Yeah…" Nora said, grimacing. The headache was bad.
"Alright then," Orvanit said, businesslike again. "I'll have Snuggly scout ahead, and we'll get some rest in the meantime." She called to the raven, and it landed on her outstretched arm. She started muttering to the bird, running her other hand over its wings while she did so, then, after a few moments, Snuggly took off.
"Gonna tell us what that was about?" Qrow asked her then took a gulp from his flask.
Orvanit gave him an impassive look. "I told her where to look," she said, dryly, then sat down, leaning on the signpost, and sighed. "And helped her, a little."
Two hours passed before the raven returned. It landed on Orvanit's arm again, and she held the bird close to her chest, gently rubbing its head and stared at nothing. At first nobody found it to be out of ordinary — Qrow excepted, but he certainly didn't want to deal with her, preferring her vacant-eyed silence to her glares. After twenty minutes or so, Ruby began to worry. She put Crescent Rose aside and reached out to poke Orvanit's shoulder.
She certainly didn't expect Orvanit's hand to shoot up and grab her arm. "I'm fine, Ruby," the older woman said, her expression still mostly vacant. "This is how the spell works, nothing more; I have to see what Snuggly saw in real time."
"So there's still around half an hour before you reach anything interesting?"
"Sounds about right, if we surmise from the time it took Snuggly to make the round trip."
"Alright." Ruby nodded and smiled at the older woman. "I'll go back to maintenance then."
"Best of luck," Orvanit said.
It did, indeed, take Orvanit thirty extra minutes before she closed her eyes and sighed. She left them closed for a while, muttering under her breath, then opened them and got up. "Okay. Listen up, people."
Once the group was gathered around her, she put her hands on the small of her back. "Unsurprisingly, the danger up ahead is a Grimm," she explained. "It's very large, which means it's old and thus probably not stupid."
"What sort of Grimm?" Jaune asked.
"I wouldn't know the name, but it looks like someone took a horse and a person, combined them and painted them over in Grimm colours, boney masks included." A pause. "Now normally I'd suggest avoiding it altogether. Our job — well, your mission, and my objective — is not to eliminate every Grimm found between your starting point and Mistral, although Qrow here is working toward that nicely anyway."
The Huntsman smirked at her unimpressed look.
"Like I said — normally I'd suggest bypassing it altogether, yes? But things are making me think we'd better take care of it now than let it fester," Orvanit said, and while she kept her face impassive as usual, Ren noticed that she was looking at him as she said that. "So this is how it'll go: I'm going to paralyze it for an hour or so — make it an easy target. It might disable me — I don't know whether it will invoke Paradox or not. In any case, once my spell will take hold, unload on it. Everything you have. Since we probably have Mordred's luck, I'm going to be pessimistic and say it's stupidly tough. So don't hold back, yeah?" She paused again, rubbing her chin. "Oh and Ren?"
"Yes…?" he said slowly.
"No heroics, alright? Your safety — everybody's safety — is more important than this Grimm. We'll kill it, don't worry. But don't take unnecessary risks in order to do so."
"Why do you think I'll take unnecessary risks against this Grimm?" Ren sounded genuinely confused.
"You'll see for yourself once we fight it." Orvanit's tone brooked no argument. She looked around. "Any questions?"
"Yeah, I got one," Qrow said. "What if your 'spell' fails?"
"It won't," Orvanit said dryly, "but you are correct that a backup plan is required." She sighed. "Unfortunately, the amount of times I can attempt this spell is somewhat limited. If it fails, I'll attempt to impede it in other ways, but I don't think they will be as effective as what I have in mind, unfortunately. This will make the fight significantly harder, but" — she closed her eyes for a moment then smiled — "even then, we will succeed. Some of us might need some patching up afterwards, but we will succeed."
Qrow gave her a long, searching look. "Yeah, I'll take that," he said at length. "I don't know who you are or where you came from, but you don't look like the sort of person that will lie about this sort of thing."
"Thanks for the vote of confidence," she replied dryly. She picked her pack up and made sure Snuggly was sitting comfortably on her headscarf. "Alright then. Let's go. We have… I'd say four to five hours' walk, considering the poor terrain up ahead."
Ruby groaned.
"Come on, Ruby," Jaune said, not unkindly, "we can do this. We've got Grimm to beat."
She smiled back at him. "Yeah!"
So they picked up their things and took off.
The trek was, indeed, rather hard, for the road itself had fallen into disrepair; if the cracked paving and boulders that blocked the way from time to time were any indication, they were the first travellers to use the road in quite some time. The farther the group progressed the more common large hoof-prints became around them; both Ren and Nora noticed them, the latter grabbing the former's hand and not letting go.
After around four hours Orvanit, who's been walking last, called for a halt. "See the bend ahead?" she said, pointing to where the road turned to the right, following the mountainside. "The Grimm's cave is after it, something like ten minutes' walk away." She paused, catching her breath. "Let's rest for a moment, then sneak forward, alright?"
Team RNJR nodded as one. While they weren't as winded as Orvanit; the trek was hard, and they welcomed the opportunity to rest for a moment and have a sip of water.
While they were resting, Orvanit approached Ren and Nora. The latter made a face at her, but before she had any chance to say something, the older woman spoke up.
"Good luck, Ren," she said with a lopsided smile. She put her hand on his shoulder for a brief moment. "Goes to the south, and round to the north — around and round goes the wind, and around it returns," she added, the words having a musicality of their own.
Both Ren and Nora opened their mouths to ask what she meant, but she turned her back on them and went back to her pack.
"What was that about?" Nora asked Ren.
"No idea," he said, "but it sounds like something that's important to her." He looked at Orvanit, a pensive expression on his face. She was arguing with Qrow; it was something about 'tamping down that bad luck aura'. Neither seemed very happy — at least Qrow was visibly annoyed, and Ren managed to notice the signs of displeasure on Orvanit's otherwise impassive face — but the argument ended with Orvanit clapping Qrow on the shoulder, which seemed friendly enough, considering the fact that she usually avoided touching others altogether.
The group gathered up again. "Alright," Orvanit said, "let's get closer."
They did so, slowly — both because of the broken-up road and the need for stealth — with their weapons at the ready. They arrived at the cave's mouth; it was large and gaping, and wind was blowing from it. With nary a word Orvanit dropped to a crouch, the rest of the group doing the same.
The inside of the cave was moderately dark. The floor was flat, but globs of black goo covered parts of it, and weapons in various states of disrepair were strewn about. By contrast, the walls were uneven, even jagged in places. The cave seemed empty. So Orvanit sneaked closer, and all of a sudden two pairs of red, glowing eyes appeared in the depths of the cave.
The willworker dropped prone immediately and pointed her raven's feather quill at the eyes. The silver that was worked into the quill glinted in the sunlight for a moment, then darkness covered the cave — but it dissipated immediately. Orvanit cursed under her breath, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and pointed the quill again. The darkness returned, accompanied this time with caws. For a moment nothing else happened, then she doubled up in pain. "Go!" she croaked at the others, then rolled to a sitting position, wincing as she did so.
They didn't need more prompting; Team RNJR and Qrow broke into a run, going deeper into the cave.
As she passed the older woman, Ruby shot Orvanit a concerned look. The willworker smiled in return but immediately grimaced.
The Grimm in the back of the cave was fairly nightmarish, even for a Grimm: its lower half was a horse, black as night, whose ribs, tail-bones and most of its skull were visible; its upper half looked like a gaunt human, if humans had overly-long, two-fingered clawed hands, exposed chest and ribs, and bony masks out of which a pair of horns grew. It reared back to roar, and the nature of Orvanit's spell became apparent: it was moving so slowly it was hard, at first, to realise that it moved at all.
What followed was a quarter hour of butchery, in which RNJR and Qrow unloaded their weapons at the Grimm, slashed at it with their weapons, and generally inflicted as much damage as they could.
At some point, Orvanit dragged herself to her feet and joined them, but instead of firing her Dragunov at the Grimm, she pointed her quill at it. Nothing seemed to happen, but then Jaune slashed at one of the Grimm's horse-part's legs and his sword cut right through, causing it to topple forward very, very slowly. Ruby saw that and grinned. She ran around the cave a few times, gathering speed, then launched herself at the Grimm, Crescent Rose trailing behind her; the scythe passed through the Grimm completely, cutting it in twain.
"I think," Orvanit began, then she coughed. "I think," she said again, louder this time, "that Ren ought to deliver the final blow."
The team stopped for a moment, regarding her quizzically. Ren, however, nodded and sheathed StormFlower. He drew his father's dagger from his boot and, after a moment, jumped up. He somersaulted over the Grimm's humanoid head, landing on its horse back. Grabbing one of its horns, he forced its head backwards. "This is for my family," he said, quietly. If the Grimm had a response, it was delayed by the spell slowing it down.
So Ren slit the Grimm's throat.
That was the final blow; the Grimm dissipated entirely. Nora pumped her arm, Ruby whooped, and Jaune smiled. Both Ren and Qrow, however, had serious expressions on their faces, and they both walked up to Orvanit.
Speaking of Orvanit, the willworker was moving with great care, and she winced every once in a while anyway.
"How did you know," Ren asked her, "about this Grimm?"
"Fate— Fate weaves as it may," she answered curtly. She noticed his disappointment, so she added, "I'm an Acanthus. If we don't cheat, we're doing something wrong." She smiled her lopsided smile and winced again. "When I figured out that there's something dangerous here, I started cheating, and that's one of the things I saw. It…" She paused and coughed, making a face. "It killed your parents. I'm sorry… heaven bring you consolation, Lie Ren."
The conversation petered out pretty quickly after that. The group left the cave, since even after the Grimm was dealt with, its various grisly trophies remained, and it stank besides. They found a spot alongside the road the road to Mistral, not too far away from the cave, to rest and reflect on the not-exactly battle.
While Orvanit pushed away Ruby and her questions in order to continue her argument with Qrow, Nora caught her staring at Ren from time to time, and she could've sworn the willworker had a guilty expression on her normally-stony face.
"Why the long face?" she asked Ren. "We've beaten… it. It won't terrorise anybody else, ever again."
"Yes, we have," Ren agreed, still staring at nothing. "So why do I still feel hollow about it?"
I hate writer's block. Especially when it comes in the form of non-cooperative characters.
Anyway! Special thanks to @Theravis for his help with the anarchist speech. Can you tell I'm not an anarchist?
Oh, and no discussion makes the author sad. Especially because I can't tell if anybody spotted the shoutouts.
VII. A Salute to Peace
Orel surveyed the hall with some satisfaction. In it were present most if not all of the members of the White Fang's Mistral branch. He, meanwhile, was standing at the speaker's podium.
(Yes, they had a podium. Apparently someone liked giving rousing speeches.)
Although he had had to… persuade… Sienna Khan to gather her underlings in such a way, it was all for a good purpose, no? After all, the revolution had to be protected from subversive elements like Adam Taurus. The Faunus' fight for equality was just, and as far as Orel was concerned, had no place in it for racists like the bull Faunus.
He patted his breast pocket, where his pen — his Dedicated Tool — was securely stored. He was going to succeed. He had to. Looking up, he saw that the last stragglers had entered the hall. It was time to begin.
"Friends, Comrades in arms, my name is Orel," he began, and, at the back of his mind, marvelled at the sound engineering of the place, "Many of you may not know me. Many of you may be confused to see a human before you, as a member of the White Fang. But I promise you, all will be explained, and all of us will be the better for it. For long years, you have fought against oppression. First with signs, and then when that failed to get attention, with violence. This is nothing to be dismayed at, but a thing to be proud of, to be a group who is willing to fight for its principles. But it is not enough for us to fight against something, but we must fight for something. Every one of us looks forward to the day we can stand proud in the sunlight, with jobs for all, food for all, education for all, homes for all, as true brothers and sisters.
Some of the crowd, Orel noticed, seemed bored. Others, however, were listening. Which was good, but not good enough. He had to persuade them. He had to. Before continuing, he patted his pen again.
"My comrades, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on Remnant," he implored the audience.
Some of them cheered, weakly. This was more to their liking.
"I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. This is my principle and my firmest belief, that all men and women, Faunus or Human, are alike and equal."
More cheers.
"In this world we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most amazing technology, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child—and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all of us who live. I believe that those who work in society ought to own and control their own industries!"
The crowd was getting into it, and so was Orel; he was speaking faster, conviction shining in each and every word he said.
"But I know there are some of us who hate all humans. Such is understandable, but it is the weapon of the wage-slavers like—"
"My brothers!" Wait, that wasn't him. It came from the entrance.
While Orel squinted, trying to see who interrupted him — while the White Fang did not skimp on sound engineering, the lighting left some things to be desired — the intruder continued.
"My brothers!" he said again. "Don't listen to this Human! He is just like the rest of them — he's here to keep you servile!"
Oh dear. Adam Taurus was clearly supposed to get lost. Orel swallowed. He must've not put enough power into the—
"Why, he even attempted to assassinate me! Your sworn brother!"
That was bad. The plan was to unify the White Fang, not split it, but it looked like the latter was going to happen — some of the people that listened to Adam pushed those who listened to Orel, probably in order to let Adam get closer to him.
"I would never! My — our — enemy is the ruling classes! People like Jacques Schnee!"
The rank-and-file — both those that were clearly in Adam's corner, and those that were in Orel's — quietened down, and one could hear a pin drop in the room.
Adam snorted. "The so-called ruling classes are all Human! Just like him!" he said, flicking his hand at Orel. "Remember, my brothers, all the things the Humans did to you! Just because you are Faunus!"
"Your comrades, the Human workers, they suffer under SDC's yoke as much as you do! Hating them just means that the Schnees win! They see that, and laugh, because you're doing their work for them — again!"
Someone put a heavy hand on Adam's shoulder. He looked to the side and saw it was Ash. Adam glanced up to the Elephant Faunus's face and saw grim determination. Ash was surprisingly gentle, especially considering that he was one of Adam's staunchest supporters, but it was this gentleness — and the despair at the Humans' lack of basic decency — that drove him into Adam's group in the first place. The latter smiled. "We'll win," he mouthed.
"Nonsense," Adam said to the crowd, quite loudly. "The Humans hate you. They hate you all."
Adam's supporters once again started pushing Orel's away, and his heart swelled when he saw them push back — then clenched with fear when Adam drew his sword and cut down one of the comrades that stood between him and Orel.
For a moment, the room went silent. Then it exploded with noise and action as people tried to push away from Adam.
Orel, meanwhile, took his pen out and clicked its button three times — and it unfolded, quite nicely, into an assault rifle, complete with a scope and a laser sight.
It seemed that Adam's action had the desired consequence (for him, anyway) — people were giving him a wide berth. But then an especially-burly comrade — he was obviously fond of hitting the gym, with a physique like that — punched someone else in the face. "Traitor," he growled.
That — and the extra push Orel gave his speech, earlier — energised people; nobody likes seeing their buddies knocked out cold, and most of the members of the White Fang were done with being pushed around. Two rough lines formed, with some especially adventurous (or hardened) members of each side tussling with each other. Fortunately for everybody involved, aside from Adam and Orel, nobody drew a weapon yet.
This occurrence, however, meant that Adam was making his way through the comrades that actually listened to Orel, and while there wasn't any loyalty to him to be found, there was definitely anger at the death of the cut-down man.
So while Adam was busy pressing against people who were, nominally, his own underlings until not too long ago, Orel had time to prepare, and prepare he did. At the end, however, Adam cut down yet another White Fang member, flicking the blood off Wilt and sheathing the chokutō with the same motion, and the others pushed away, leaving the way to Orel clear.
"I thought I told you to get lost, you fascist!" Orel was, understandably, angry, and punctuated his words with a burst from his rifle, which Adam sliced through while unsheathing his sword.
"Your weak Semblance doesn't work on me, Human," Adam snarled, and rushed Orel. Although he was rather clumsy, Orel kept dodging Adam's slashes; it was although Adam — perhaps because he was used to much more acrobatic enemies — was aiming for just the wrong places, missing his foe by mere centimetres. This continued for a few seconds, then Orel used his rifle to block one slash and retaliated, clubbing Adam on the head with his rifle's stock.
Unfortunately for Orel, the strike barely even registered, thanks to Adam's Aura. What's more, Adam didn't wait for him to recover and went back to slashing at him right away.
Unfortunately for Adam, he cornered Orel, not letting the human even dodge; and so, all of a sudden, the world twisted around him, as though someone decided that everything should fold neatly along an imaginary line passing through Adam's stomach. He grunted — in surprise, because whatever it was, it completely bypassed his Aura, and in pain, because his body was momentarily folded in ways bodies most certainly shouldn't be folded.
The feeling was momentary (even if the damage was very much real), so Adam recovered fairly quickly — quickly enough to deflect another burst from the assault rifle. Surprisingly, his opponent was also bruised, for some reason. Not that Adam cared why — it was an opportunity to be capitalised on, and that was that; he charged forward, energy concentrated in his sword—
And had to dodge, unexpectedly, to the side, as a large maul came crashing behind him. He half-turned to survey the situation and found out that while he fixated on Orel, the situation in the room went decidedly in the other group's favour; most of the peons he swayed with his short speech were beaten up or beating a hasty retreat, and the ones swayed by Orel seem to have gathered enough courage to attack him again.
The bull Faunus deflected more bullets and dodged a maul strike while considering the situation. Mid-thought, he felt a pressing need to drop your arms, surrende— No. Not this again. He pushed the foreign thoughts out of his mind. He won't let a Human abuse him like that again. Still, it was evident he lost this particular scuffle, and while there was no doubt he could overpower Orel — the Human might have a freaky Semblance, but he was clearly no fighter — he couldn't do so while also being attacked by his traitorous erstwhile subordinates.
So Adam turned, and, instead of using the gathered energy to strike Orel as he had planned, he instead cut the maul-wielding peon down. This had the desired effect of making the crowd flinch; combined with judicious acrobatics and the fact that Orel seemed loath to fire in the crowd (weakling, Adam thought), this meant that he could make his escape.
And escape he did. Without looking back to see a line of stragglers following him. But, he swore to himself, he'll be back, and he'll purify the White Fang from that Human's stench.
Back in the hall, Orel surveyed the damage. Luckily, aside from the people Adam cut down, there were no fatalities; and most of the wounds were not bad.
"Tovarichi!" he shouted. "Let us tend to the wounded!" Without waiting for the others, he tore the nearest first-aid kit from its slot in the wall and rushed to the closest of the injured. This shook the rest out of the shock, and most of them joined him. A few, however, seeing that the situation is handled, went to report to Sienna Khan. Clearly, there is a problem in the ranks, and the High Leader ought to take care of it.
Weiss was still somewhat doubtful of Alex's zany scheme when the two of them closeted themselves in the former's room to put it into motion. The first half hour, oddly enough, involved nothing more than Alex asking Weiss some questions — how did she carry herself, were there any little details only her family would know, and so on. The questions' direction seemed rather random to Weiss, and she was even more surprised when Alex lifted a hand, a look of concentration on her face, then said, "Sorry?! Do you have any idea of the damage you could have caused?"
"Wow," Weiss couldn't help but say. That sounded exactly like her. Alex even had the exact same expression Weiss had on her face, way back when she met Ruby for the first time. There was no way Alex was present there at the time.
Any additional thoughts, however, were disturbed by Alex smacking her own forehead. "A wig. Where are we going to get a wig?" she asked.
Weiss hmed, then snapped her fingers. "Klein."
"Beg pardon?"
"Klein. He'll help."
"Oh." Alex nodded. "He does seem nice enough."
So Weiss opened the door and, unsurprisingly, Klein was standing outside it. The butler definitely seemed to be prescient sometimes. "Did you need my help, Miss Schnee?"
"Yes, Klein. Come in."
He did, and Weiss closed the door after him. "Listen, Klein, we…"
"We're going to switch places," Alex said, cutting Weiss off. "But I need a wig."
"Oho," Klein said, and for a moment Alex wondered if it was a good idea to trust him with the plan. His eyes changed colour, becoming bright red. "finally popping his balloon, eh?" The butler asked Weiss.
"Klein!" Although she should have been used to this by now, Weiss looked mildly scandalised. "But, yes. This is an opportunity I — we — intend to capitalise on." She had no doubt that Alex didn't propose her plan solely out of the goodness of her heart.
"I think—" Klein said, then sneezed, his eyes becoming brown again. "I think I can find one, although…" He gave Alex a measuring look.
"Any wig will do, I can fix up the rest," Alex said, somewhat impatiently.
"As you say, Miss Tyrsen," Klein said with a half-smile. He left the room to fetch the wig.
"What do you mean, you can fix up the rest?"
"I'm very good with my hands," Alex said with confidence she didn't entirely feel. After all, it was more than just craftsmanship that she was planning to use.
Weiss almost raised an eyebrow. Almost. Since she decided to go along with this plan, she should trust Alex to know what she was doing, right?
When Klein returned with the wig, Alex took it to one side. She took a pair of scissors to it and soon enough, Alex presented the modified wig to Weiss and Klein. It looked identical to Weiss's side-braid.
"That's quite impressive, Miss Tyrsen," Klein said.
"I have quick hands," Alex replied, glancing downwards. She quickly looked upwards, though. "Weiss… you're going to have to cut your hair."
Weiss looked at Alex's head. While Alex's hair was certainly — surprisingly enough, even now — the same colour as Weiss's, it wasn't nearly the same length, with some unruly locks barely reaching her shoulders. Weiss's eyebrow twitched, and she seriously considered calling the plan off there and then. That moment, however, was fleeting — if she had to cut her hair in order to go help her friends, she'd cut it, damn it. "Give me these," she snapped at Alex, and before either Klein or Alex could react, snatched the scissors from the latter and, in one swift motion, cut off her long, beautiful braid. It fell to the floor and made a small mess. Weiss found out that she was breathing hard, as though she just ran a marathon. A hand landed on her shoulder, and she raised her gaze, meeting Alex's eyes.
"Weiss Schnee," Alex said, looking even more serious than usual, "you're a brave person. Be proud."
If there was some seriousness to be had, Klein ruined it by sneezing. "Sorry, Miss Tyrsen," he said, but the moment had passed.
"Alright," Weiss said, "Klein — I'm going to need a way to get to Mistral."
"Well, Miss Schnee," the butler said with a grin that definitely reached his now-red eyes, "I happen to know a cargo hauler…"
Now that Qrow was travelling with them, Team RNJR encountered Grimm almost daily. Things weren't as bad as they could've been, though; Qrow was a very good Hunter, and Orvanit proved to be rather efficient in killing Grimm, too.
She didn't cast any overt magic, however; she didn't paralyze any Grimm, nor did she cast the spell she cast on the scorpion Faunus again. Indeed, if not for the fact that she was periodically closing her eyes for a moment and sometimes pointing at things with her raven's feather quill, it would've seemed that she wasn't casting anything at all. The effects of her spells, too, were subtle and unclear; but Team RNJR found themselves having good fortune more often; strikes against them that would've dealt a lot of damage became glancing blows, their own attacks became deadlier, and conversely the Grimm they were fighting seemed to be suffering under the slings and arrows of fate.
It was while they were resting after one such fight that Ruby approached Orvanit. "Hey…?"
"Yes, Ruby?" Orvanit asked, pausing in cleaning her rifle. Snuggly, having served in the role of airborne advanced warning during the battle, was resting on the former's headscarf.
"I was wondering, would you mind sparring with me?" Ruby managed to blurt the question out despite Orvanit's stony gaze. She knew that the woman was friendly, but she always looked so cold.
Orvanit shrugged. "Sure, I guess." She didn't sound too enthused, but a smile did tug at the edges of her mouth. She prodded the sleepy raven. "Oi, Snuggly. Keep an eye on the rifle, aright?"
The raven in question clicked its beak, then flapped its wings and jumped off Orvanit's head, hopping down to her shoulder, then to the ground. Once Orvanit put her Dragunov on her sleeping bag, Snuggly hopped onto it, and croaked at Ruby, who took it as invitation to pet the raven.
While Ruby was busy petting Snuggly, Orvanit took off her overcoat and started doing warmups.
Ruby looked up. "What, now?"
"No time like the present," was the curt reply.
"Awesome!" Ruby sprang to her feet. "Lemme just get my Scroll — hey, Jaune, can you lend Orvanit your Scroll? We're gonna spar!"
Jaune stopped in the middle of running an oiled cloth on Crocea Mors's blade. Fishing in his back pocket, he offered his Scroll to Orvanit, who accepted it with a nod of her head.
Ruby was busy tapping on hers, so it took her a moment to notice that Orvanit was looking at the one in her hand in what probably was confusion. Putting hers aside for a moment, she peeked over Orvanit's shoulder. "See that button? Yeah, that one, middle of the screen — just press it for a few seconds, it'll sync up with your Aura — 'error: undetected'? What's that?" Ruby tilted her head. "Hey, Jaune, your Scroll's broken."
"What? Ugh," he said, getting up. He took the Scroll from Orvanit and pressed the relevant button. Almost immediately, a picture of him, together with a bar representing his Aura gauge, showed up. "See? Just fine," he said, handing it back to Orvanit. He returned to his sword, grumbling to himself.
Orvanit pressed the same button, and again the 'undetected' error sprang up. She rubbed her chin. "Ruby," she asked, "what is this 'Aura'?"
"It's, uh…" Ruby rubbed the back of her neck.
"It's a manifestation of one's soul," Ren explained. He was meditating, eyes closed. "It protects us and fuels our Semblances."
"A manifestation of one's soul, huh," Orvanit repeated after him. She glanced at Ruby. "So when the scorpion man attacked you, back then—"
"That was my Aura breaking. Heh heh." Ruby looked embarrassed.
"It is not something that exists in my world," Orvanit said with certainty. "A personal force shield…? There are ways to do that with magic, but none that I know, and they are not fuelled by one's soul." She smiled. "Don't worry, Ruby, I'm not calling the spar off," she added when she saw Ruby's disappointed expression. "You use your Aura, and I — I can heal myself. So. Ready?"
"Are you sure?" Ruby asked. She wanted to spar with Orvanit for a long time now, but she didn't want to hurt her.
"Definitely. If you win, I'll tell you about Mordred's spar with Sergei."
"Alright!" Ruby smiled. She brought her arms up in front of her face, just like her sister taught her so long ago.
Orvanit came at her quickly enough, throwing some guarded punches but not committing to any of them; Ruby easily blocked all of them, then went on the offensive. Her flurry of punches — mostly deflected by Orvanit — was broken by a surprise kick from the latter. It swept Ruby's feet from under her, but she recovered easily enough, jumping back to her feet and putting the movement's momentum behind a punch aimed at Orvanit's jaw.
Surprisingly, the willworker took the punch on her chin, but moved with it so its force was lessened. When Ruby followed up with a roundhouse kick, Orvanit spun with it and pulled on her leg, unbalancing the Huntress and creating some space between them. She closed her eyes for the shortest of moments, then she smiled. "Come at me, Ruby," she said, once again lowering herself into a ready stance.
When Ruby did, she found out that no matter how fast she moved, Orvanit was faster; her attacks were blocked halfway through, or dodged a second or two in advance. She gritted her teeth and used her Semblance to back away, then run around her opponent a few times — stopping behind her, she fully expected Orvanit to still be looking at her last position. Surprisingly, the willworker was already turning around, a closed fist waiting for Ruby; the punch hit her belly, leaving her gasping for breath.
"H-hey," she said, weakly, "that's not—"
"Fair?" Orvanit asked. "No, it's not fair. I cheated." She grinned, looking rather raven-like.
"Aw."
"Well, I wouldn't have been able to beat your speed, otherwise." Orvanit walked up to Ruby, offering her a hand. The latter took it, and all of the pain and tiredness she felt vanished like they never existed.
"Whoa."
"I apologise, Ruby," Orvanit said, patting Ruby's shoulder. "I forgot myself."
"No, no, this is awesome," was the reply. "I'm jealous that you're somehow faster than me, but it's also cool! How do you even do that?"
Orvanit smiled her lopsided smile. "Think about it, Ruby. I'm sure you can figure it out."
Ruby scrunched up her face. "Hmm."
While Ruby was thinking, Orvanit glanced at Qrow. The Huntsman was giving her a mistrustful look. They certainly started off on the wrong foot, and neither of them really did anything to mend fences with each other.
"You're not actually faster!" Ruby said, interrupting Orvanit's reverie.
"Very good," the willworker said, smiling. "Just like I slowed that Grimm down, I can speed myself up. But you'd have seen that; I'd have actually moved faster. No, I did something else entirely."
"You're not gonna tell us what?" Qrow asked.
"I don't think so, no," Orvanit answered. "Though, believe me, I have a good reason to hold some things back." She turned back to Ruby. "Come, let's do stretches."
"But—"
"No buts. You don't want to strain your muscles."
"But Orvaniiiiit—"
"She's right, kiddo. Do your stretches," Qrow interjected, which made Orvanit shoot him a look.
No, not dead.
Just... fuck 2020, yeah? Fun year, that was.
It should be noted that I retconed Alex's last name. It mostly matters to things behind the scenes, but it'll prevent reader confusion in the future.
VIII. You Ain't Going Nowhere
The guards at the only entrance in the wooden palisade that surrounded the Branwen Tribe's camp were less than impressed by Yang's motley little group; Mordred wasn't the most impressive of specimens to begin with (what with looking like a college student, striking face aside) and Shay D. Mann bore the marks of his ordeal particularly badly.
"Hey, guys," Shay said, weakly.
"Who're these?" the woman of the pair of guards asked Shay, motioning at Yang and Mordred.
"She's the Boss's daughter," was the answer. "And she's really interested in meeting the Boss, so…"
"Yes, and I'm the queen of Vale," the guard said. She put her ramshackle-looking rifle on her shoulder and turned to Yang. "I don't know who you are, but now that you've brought our missing friend here, get lost."
This had Shay looking nervously between Yang and the guard; he certainly didn't want to be on the receiving end of Yang's punches again. "Uhh…" he said, inwardly cursing his luck, "you might want to—"
"Shut up, Shay, you can't mug a girl properly," the other guard said.
In the back of the group, Mordred groaned, put a hand on his sword's pommel and took a step back. This proved to be a good idea as Yang decided to make an example out of the guard; she walked up to him, flicked his gun away when he tried to aim it at her, and punched him in the gut. The breath left him in an oof.
"Look, pal," Yang said, annoyance clear in her voice, "you can either let me see Mother, or I can let myself in despite you."
"Fine, fine," the other guard said, giving Yang a worried look. "You can go in and get gutted by the Boss." She turned around. "Open the gate!"
The gate was opened in short order, allowing Yang, Mordred and Shay in. The latter peeled off almost immediately, quickly disappearing between the tents.
Their arrival caused quite the commotion, with many of the bandits putting down whatever they were doing to glare at Yang and Mordred as they made their way to the central clearing of the camp. These included a woman whose distinguishing features were icy-blue eyes, an elaborate tattoo of a raven over roses on one arm and a pant leg pulled up to reveal a garter, and a pair of bandits who put down their cards to watch.
Yang didn't particularly care, and a glance at Mordred showed that he was similarly unmoved, his expression almost bored. They arrived at their destination and stopped before the large, black-walled red-roofed tent that — going by its relative ostentation, compared to the rest — belonged to the bandits' leader. The leader turned out to be a woman whose black-and-red clothes, gun-sword carried at the hip and ornate Grimm mask gave her an appearance of a Japanese woman who had gone wild.
"Mom," Yang said, causing Mordred to glance at her.
"Yang," the woman said, removing her mask and showing that she was smiling. "You've finally decided to visit… and you even brought along your boyfriend."
Yang sputtered, but Mordred seemed more amused than anything else.
"I—" Yang gripped her shaking hand with her robotic one. "You know I looked for you!" she said, anger clear in her voice.
"And now you've found me. You've the strength, and you used it to get what you wanted. Well done, Yang."
Yang made a face. "I'm not here for praise. I know Ruby's here in Mistral somewhere, with Qrow, and I want you to take me to her."
"And why would I do that?" Raven asked, amusement and annoyance fighting for control of her face.
"'cause we're family."
"That's disappointing, Yang. Why have you looked for me, if you could've put your will into looking for your sister?"
"Because you'll save me time," was the answer. "Ruby was headed to Mistral, but I can't be sure she made it there, and I don't have time to comb all of Anima for her… and Dad told me how your Semblance works."
Mordred, who seemed content to wait and watch until now, put a hand on the pommel of his sword.
"Tai…" Raven muttered to herself. "You know, it takes real strength to march in here and demand such a favor of me," she said out loud. "It's very noble to want to help out your sister. But if she's with Qrow, then she's already a lost cause."
"What do you mean?" Yang asked, suddenly a bit less confident.
"You don't want to get mixed with Ozpin, Yang," Raven said patiently. "He's not who he says he is—" She paused and squinted at Mordred, who had moved and was now whispering in the ear of one of the bandits. "And Qrow's a fool to trust him," Raven finished.
"Look, Mom, I just fought a headache-inducing Gulmoth or whatever it's called, I don't really care for a lecture."
"Your choices are your own, Yang, but you should think whether you're not already where you belong — here with me — rather than going off to get entangled in things too big for you."
"Save your breath. I'm here to get to my sister."
"Alright, then. We're done." Raven turned around to go back into her tent. "Take her away."
At once, the bandits watching the exchange pushed forward, although the one that had been talking with Mordred earlier seemed to be hanging back. Apropos Mordred, his sword was still sheathed, but his hunting knife was drawn, its mirrored blade reflecting his face. With a sigh, he positioned himself to cover Yang's back, although his sword was still sheathed.
"Didn't you hear me?!" Yang was getting seriously pissed off. Not only did she have to journey across continents, fight off creeps and fight that thing to find her mother, now said mother was being extremely frustrating. "Send me to Qrow, damn it!"
"You watch your mouth!" one of the bandits shouted back at Yang. He stood closer to her, and was waving around a poorly-constructed rifle-and-knife combo.
"Make me," Yang replied, cocking Ember Celica.
The bandit attempted to swing at her, to his detriment — she punched him so hard that he flew, head over heels, and sailed past what seemed to be a tent. When he grabbed at it to slow down his flight, however, it tore off, revealing itself to be a covering for a tacky-looking, large metal cage, with horns adorning its topmost corners.
"Weiss?!" Yang said, surprised.
"Damascus?!" Mordred asked at the same time.
"Yang!" Weiss — for it was indeed the Schnee heiress, albeit with a much shorter haircut compared to what Yang remembered — looked very surprised for a brief moment, then obviously decided that the time for subtlety had passed; she mumbled something to herself then looked to the small, glowing-white armour that was standing beside her. It stabbed its sword into the ground and started growing, and growing, and growing, bursting out of the cage's top and causing its sides to fall to the ground with a metallic clang.
The armour's size meant that nobody tried to stop Weiss when she stepped up to join Yang and Mordred; the punched bandit, meanwhile — forgotten in the momentary excitement — returned to the crowd that was gathered around the trio.
"I have questions," Mordred said quietly. Still, he did not draw his sword.
"Who are you?" Weiss asked him.
"What's that?" Yang asked Weiss with some urgency.
"Nevermind that, what are you doing here?"
"This" — Yang pointed — "is my mom, and she can get us to Ruby."
"Your mom kidnapped me?"
"You kidnapped her?!" Yang asked her mother.
"Shit…" Despite his curses, Mordred looked more resigned than anything else.
The bandits started waving their weapons. Some of them shouted invective at the trio; others demanded that Yang be punished in creative ways for disrespecting Raven — one suggestion involved cacti, and some others were more conventional with their implements, suggesting whipping, or being fed to Grimm.
His resigned expression unchanged, Mordred finally drew his sword.
Weiss, for her part, sent the suit of armour towards the mob, only to call it to a halt right before it could enter the path of a sudden bolt of lightning.
"Enough!" Raven shouted. "If you people can't keep it together, this place will be crawling with Grimm. You," she told one of the female bandits — who stood near the tent, holding Myrtenaster — "give her her weapon back."
The bandit frowned, but threw the rapier, handle-first, towards Weiss, who caught it.
"You three," Raven told the trio, "yes, you too, boyfriend, if you want to follow Yang — in my tent, now." It wasn't a request.
"Why?" Yang demanded.
Raven sighed. "Because," she said, then hesitated before continuing, "if you're adamant on following your sister, you need to know the truth."
Minutes later the four of them were sitting in Raven's tent, the bandit who had had Myrtenaster serving them tea.
"Listen closely," Raven was saying. "You too, boyfriend."
"He's not—"
"Her boyfriend. I happened upon Yang in the forest. I'm Mordred, by the way."
"Alright then, Mordred." Raven seemed to put him out of her mind, addressing her daughter. "You, your sister, your friends — you're basically the poster children for the Huntsman Academies. There to make the world a better place."
"That's what Huntsmen and Huntresses are for," Yang said with fervour.
"Some of them," Raven allowed, "but many are there for money and fame… and your uncle and I, we went to Beacon to learn to kill Huntsmen. Surprised, aren't you?"
Indeed, Yang opened her mouth to protest, but Raven spoke over her.
"Didn't Taiyang dearest and Uncle Qrow tell you? No?" Yang shook her head, and Raven snorted. "Aside from the Grimm, Huntsmen were the only thing capable of disrupting the Tribe's raids. Qrow and I were the right age, and the entrance exams were a joke compared to what we'd already done." She stood up. "We were good, Qrow and I, really good, so we caught Headmaster Ozpin's eye. We — Team STRQ, that is, although I thought, at the time, that it was my brother and I he was interested in."
"Caught his eye?" Yang asked. Neither she nor Weiss had touched their tea. Mordred, on the other hand, had sipped some of his, and was muttering under his breath.
"Constant attention, extra training, more leeway with the rules… sound familiar?"
Yang and Weiss exchanged glances.
"What's your point?" Yang sounded confrontational.
"How much do you know about Professor Ozpin? About his past?"
"He's one the youngest to ever be named Headmaster," Weiss said, slowly. "A prodigy."
"It's so because he's made sure that it'll be so. It's all his plan: the Academies, the cadres of loyalists he has in them — he designed them."
"That doesn't make any sense…! How— no, why would anybody do that?"
In contrast to the confrontational Yang and the surprised Weiss, Mordred's expression hardened. It was obvious that he didn't find the idea as preposterous as Yang did.
"Because," Raven said quietly, "old man Oz has a great and terrible secret. One that could spread fear across the world. One that he eventually entrusted to our team, and once I knew, there was no going back. I needed to know more, but with every new discovery I made, the more horrifying the world became."
As Raven said that, Mordred put down his cup and stared intently at her.
"Have something to share, Mordred?" Raven asked him.
"Not yet," he said, the tone of his voice calm despite his expression.
"Okay then, spill. What's the secret?" asked Yang, crossing her arms.
"The Creatures of Grimm... have a master named Salem. She can't be stopped, she can't be reasoned with, and she will not rest until humanity crumbles at her feet."
Yang and Weiss sat there in stunned silence.
Mordred, on the other hand, groaned. "Shit."
"Mordred seems to take this more seriously than you," Raven noted dryly. "Not to mention that he's actually touched his tea."
Yang got up. "Why should we believe… any of this?" she said, making a cutting gesture with a hand. However, she sounded less confident than she would normally have been, obviously remembering the… what did Mordred call it? Gulmoth?
"Don't take me on my word," Raven said, calmly. "Question everything." She stared at Yang. "Lest you end up like Qrow, or your fool of a father."
Yang, obviously, had enough. Her eyes turned red, and she slammed her fist on the low table the tea cups were sitting on. The table broke in two and the cups flew up, to then shatter on the ground.
"Don't you dare talk about my family like that!" she growled.
Mordred scooted his stool backwards to give himself more space, but otherwise didn't do much; he was the only person left with a cup, since he was holding his.
"You need to calm down." It was the girl who had been serving them tea; she aimed a combination gun-and-wind-and-fire-wheel at Yang.
"Yang, please," Weiss said, grabbing Yang's arm.
"Listen to your friend, Yang," Raven added. "Your teammates never let you down before."
That was, of course, the wrong — or right, depending on your perspective — thing to say.
"You don't know the first thing about my teammates!" Yang shouted, taking a step towards Raven. "About me! You were never there! You LEFT US!!" she shrieked, her eyes returning to their usual lilac colour. "Why…" Her shoulders slumped and she put her head in her hands.
"I know more than you realize," Raven said coolly. "Not just about you, and not just what I've been told, but things I've seen with my own eyes. I know the Grimm have a leader, I know people who can come back from the dead, I know that magic is real, and I can prove it."
Mordred glanced from Yang to Raven, while Yang looked from between her fingers, first at him, then at her mother.
"You're not a willworker." It wasn't a question.
"No, I'm not a… whatever that is," Raven answered Mordred, quite dismissively, then turned back to her daughter. "Your father told you about my Semblance, but he never did tell you what Ozpin did to Qrow and I, didn't he? No?" Without another word, she left the tent through the back entrance. Mordred put down his cup and followed immediately.
Yang and Weiss shared a confused look.
The bandit sheathed her weapon. "See for yourself," she advised them before she left.
After a moment, the pair left through the back entrance, but found only Mordred, who was staring at a raven.
"Yang, are you okay?" Weiss asked.
"I'll be okay once we'll get to Ruby," Yang replied, looking around for her mother.
"It's okay to… not be."
"You… don't believe her, do you?" Yang asked, changing the subject. She sounded unsure, and she paused her search in order to give Mordred a suspicious look.
"I… if you'd have asked me two weeks ago, I'd have said that it sounds like nonsense. Now? I'm not so sure," Weiss said, hesitantly. "I've met someone…"
"Wait. Red eyes? I've seen this bird before," Yang said all of a sudden.
"Maybe it's your mother's?" Weiss suggested.
"It's magical," Mordred informed the pair.
"What would you know?" Yang asked him, annoyed.
"I'm a Mage. I see these things," he replied.
At that moment, there was a twist of space, and the raven turned into, well, Raven.
"How did you do that?" Yang asked her mother.
"Well, I could explain to you," Raven said, drawing her sword, "or you could ask your uncle." She slashed the air, opening a spinning portal. "You have a choice," she added as she sheathed her sword. "You can stay here, with me, have your questions answered, have a fresh start… or you can go." She gestures at the portal. "Go back to Ozpin's hopeless war against Salem, go back to the people that you trusted despite them hiding many things from you."
"All I care about is making sure my sister is safe," Yang answered, a defiant expression on her face.
"So be it." Despite what she said, Raven looked disappointed. "Know, then, that if you side with your uncle, I won't be so kind the next time we meet."
That said, she left, not seeing Weiss rolling her eyes at her.
As Yang brought her bike over to the portal, Mordred asked her, "Where can I find Professor Ozpin?"
It was Weiss who answered. "He's dead."
"Oh. I'm sorry." Mordred shook his head, and looked at the portal they had returned to. "Onwards, then."
The White Fang guard's speargun didn't quite dig into Orel's back, but only just. Similarly, he wasn't quite pushed forward, but only just. "The High Leader wishes to speak with you now," the guard had told him, in a voice that brooked no argument. Why was abundantly clear; so he had the walk to get his ducks in a row and find a way to explain things to Sienna Khan, a way that wouldn't jeopardise the revolution in this world. The workers of this world, too, had nothing to lose but their chains, and he intended to get rid of these posthaste.
Thankfully, the corridors in their base in Mistral were somewhat meandering — a good defensive feature, he noted absentmindedly — so he had some time to think up a plan.
When he and his escort arrived at the throne room, the guards prodded him until he took the knee before the dais the High Leader's throne stood on, then returned to their positions. Sienna Khan was pacing said dais, her tiger ears lying flat against her hair. "You," she told Orel, "explain."
"Yes, High Leader." He managed to keep his voice stable. Somehow. "As you know, I have sought to raise our brothers and sisters' morale, so I made a speech… halfway through, though, Adam Taurus barged into the hall. He wasn't there to engage in debate, however. When it became clear his words didn't mean anything…" Orel paused and swallowed. The red sword flashed again in his memories.
"Go on." If the staccato tapping was anything to go by, the High Leader had sat down and was drumming her fingers on the throne's armrest.
"He drew his sword and cut one of the comrades down. Thankfully, nobody died in the end… Once Adam did so, all hell broke loose, brother fighting brother. Adam didn't care about that, however, and made a beeline for me, spewing nonsense about how I want to keep the Faunus servile." Orel couldn't help but huff at the absurdity of the notion. "Thankfully, sense prevailed, and once the situation turned against him he had to beat a hasty retreat." He sighed. "Once the fighting died down, I went to help the wounded — thankfully, nobody died — and that's when your guards summoned me."
"You were the last person to see Adam before he vanished." That wasn't a question.
"Yes, High Leader." There was little point in lying: someone else had filled her in, no doubt.
"Some say that you seek to… get him out of your way. That you aim to replace me, too."
Orel paled. Well, more so than usual. Even if he had no plans of replacing the High Leader, he obviously knew what Adam was like — a vile Faunus supremacist that dragged the whole movement down — and did, of course, wish to safeguard the Revolution against its enemies. But—
"Answer me, Orel."
Right. No time for dawdling. "That is, of course, nonsensical, High Leader. I'm here to advance the Revolution's cause. To see that the Faunus get the equal rights they deserve. I've said that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free — and I mean it." As he said that, he put his soul into it — and his magic, too. He had to convince the High Leader. He dared raise his gaze and saw that Sienna Khan was sitting on her throne, arms crossed.
"You haven't answered the question."
"I'm getting there, High Leader." Just a little bit more time. "I'll be frank — Adam Taurus seeks to undo everything this organisation stands for. Even though he hates Humans with a passion, he does the ruling classes' work for them — he keeps the working class divided and weak. I haven't done anything to him, but I'm sorry I didn't — if I'd have acted sooner, he might not have cut down the brothers and sisters that stood in his way."
The tiger Faunus gave him an even look, and for a while said nothing, leaving Orel with sweaty palms. He could run away, yes, and quite easily at that, but what was the point? He wanted to help. He really did. Why couldn't they see?
"Very well. I'll give you a chance to show your worth, Orel. Show that you can act as well as you speak, and all will be forgiven."
"At once, High Leader." Orel didn't let himself sigh, but he was relieved nonetheless.
"If any of the brothers wish to join you, they may, but you may not order anybody to do so. Am I clear?"
"Quite so, High Leader."
"Good. Now get out."
Orel didn't wait for her to say that again; he got up, turned tail and walked out of the chamber, suppressing his urge to run.
Jacques closed the viewscreen and leaned back in his chair, satisfied. As much as he detested their simpering ways, he paid his PR team well for a reason, and this was an example: the media (and rumour) campaign they had crafted in order to negate the hit to SDC's — and more importantly, his — reputation was masterful, and would no doubt make everybody forget the whole unhappy incident with the girl his daughter convinced him to pick up from the street.
Now, the girl was back in the street — where she belonged — and even his daughter, it seemed, was sufficiently cowed, and didn't trouble him any more. In fact, she had become a model daughter, doing the things required from her with what looked like quiet dignity. Had she finally seen sense? Jacques was doubtful, but at least for now he was glad he didn't have to deal with her antics, or her demands to be allowed to go look for her friends, any more.
There was a knock on the door.
"Yes?" Jacques asked. The servants in the house, and SDC's workers, knew full well that they shouldn't disturb him without a good reason.
A man wearing the suit of a mid-level SDC executive entered the room. He was breathing heavily, and his clothes were a little unkempt. No doubt he ran up the stairs. His hastiness was further exemplified by him not entirely closing the door before coming to stand before Jacques' desk.
"Mr Schnee," he said with a lilt that showed him to be a foreigner, "we have a problem."
"What do you mean by 'problem', Mr Hagel?" Hagel, who was responsible for the security of SDC's operations in Mantle, was normally as cool as his name suggested. It was rare for him to be winded like this.
"Terrorism, Mr Schnee."
"Terrorism?"
"Yes, Mr Schnee. And not the regular criminal activity, either. It's a recent development, but I believe that a new sect of the Faunus extremist terrorist organisation 'White Fang' has started operating in Mantle."
"Why are you bothering me with this, Mr Hagel? Crush them and be done with it."
"It is not so simple, Mr Schnee. The usual tactics don't work against these particular terrorists. By the time our forces arrive on the scene, the terrorists are already long-gone, with just their calling card remaining." He took out his company-issued Scroll and, after pressing it a few times, flipped it around to show its screen to Jacques. On it was a symbol graffitied on a wall — to the White Fang's usual slashed-through Grimm head was added a hissing black cat's head. "What's worse, this sect isn't just dealing with the usual sabotage. Look." Click, click, and the picture changed; now the Scroll's screen showed a collage of pamphlets.
Jacques looked, not understanding. "Pamphlets? Why should I care?"
"Mr Schnee, they're trying to radicalise the workers. Not just the Faunus ones — the Human ones, too." Hagel shook his head. "I don't think anybody will buy this drivel, Mr Schnee, but I haven't kept this job for so long by underestimating SDC's enemies. It's unfortunate, but I'm going to have to request additional resources."
"Additional resources? Now of all times, Mr Hagel?" Jacques knew that Hagel knew just as well as him that the damnable Dust embargo General Ironwood had imposed was cutting into SDC's bottom line.
"Yes, Mr Schnee. I'm aware of the difficulties, but if I am to catch these terrorists, I must have enough men and materiel. There's no going around it."
Jacques drummed his fingers on his seat's armrest. While he was loath to give Hagel the considerable resources he'd no doubt request, he also knew that the man wasn't stupid, and was one of SDC's longest-serving employees.
"Very well. Send your requisition form to my secretary and I'll have the resources allocated to you."
"Thank you, Mr Schnee." Hagel inclined his head, then turned on his heel and left. Both of them knew that Hagel could not afford to fail — his position in the company, and his ability to find employment in Atlas or Mantle, depended on his success.
Having seen the SDC suit leave Jacques' room, Alex peeled herself off the wall and stole away before Jacques could notice the half-closed door. The conversation she had eavesdropped on gave her quite a lot of food for thought.
