Chapter 10
Cinder, Cinder, Cinder.
Raven would have thought the girl was something she'd been able to figure out by now, and yet, she wasn't. The girl was frustratingly closed off, the moments they'd shared, the ruffling of Cinder's hair, she'd been open, but not open in the way Raven wanted.
The idle schlick of a body dropping from the front of Omen's blade wasn't even enough to arouse more than a disinterested snort from the Branwen.
She'd been expecting a half-decent fight.
Not a bunch of idiotic teenagers jumped up on drugs, violent patriotism, and passionate devotion.
The first guards on the deck of the trailing vessel hadn't even been able to scream before Omen cleaved the first man in two and took the woman's head from her shoulders.
The crew hadn't improved beyond that.
Cinder commanded Raven's thoughts and drove her decisions. Her plan, insofar as you could call it that, had been something of a unique thing. The Branwen tribe were far-flung from the mere bandits they'd been when she and Qrow had been children. They were hardly a force for good but generally picked only on those judged to be strong enough to defend themselves.
The tribe prided itself on strength, not on being dependent, but on being strong enough to rip and tear the survival of the next day from the jaws of this one.
The raids they'd done had been judged to be for maximal effectiveness and minimal damage. But… that had changed.
Summer in her dreams had reminded her, had spoken of the woman… Andromeda. A dream of tan skin on legs that had gone so far up they'd seemed to almost never end, Raven had very nearly let the woman seduce her into returning to the tribe in her third year, her childhood friend a safe, trusted person. Only for her discovery upon returning to horrify and shock her into leaving forever.
A sepulcher of carnage and monstrosity had greeted Qrow and herself at the gates, the skulls of powerful grimm, covered in the bullets and blades that had felled them, had traditionally served as a warning against attack, and a warning against grimm.
They'd been replaced by the time Raven and Qrow had arrived, by human and faunus heads, mouths open in silent, deliberate screams.
With another flick of Omen's blade, the man charging around the corner, knives drawn and footsteps far too loud, released a startled gasp as his chest parted like water around the razor-sharp blade.
Raven rolled her eyes behind the mask, they were truly horrible at this 'repelling boarders' thing.
She'd been horrified to see the man who'd taken the camp, a barrel-chested loudmouth by the name of Garrote, sitting on a throne of human bone.
Qrow had tried to kill him on sight.
Only direct intervention from Summer had saved her brother's life, and the resulting response, namely that team STRQ had fled, haunted Raven to this day.
Andromeda had died before Raven had graduated, falling with a smile on her face from the very blade Raven wore when she tried to slide a knife between Summer's ribs in passing.
It hadn't been the first kill Raven had made, but it had been the hardest.
She'd not known until much later that she'd truly loved that woman, and it had taken Taiyang and Summer a year or so to fully steal her heart away.
Raven ducked back behind the walls as a fusillade of gunfire erupted from the decks leading into the bowels of the ship. Here there were no innocent teens or new recruits, the people she faced were battle-hardened and even had their aura unlocked.
It didn't matter.
The barricade fell as Raven moved beyond the speed of normal people to process, Omen turned into a flash of crimson, and heads rolled. Viscera, parted from throats and necks, sprayed over Raven, and the woman stared down evenly at the charnel house a simple amount of motion had turned the front of the boat's inner corridors into.
A dissatisfied look crossed her face; She'd have to go for a swim to clean the blood and chunks from her clothing. Her hackles raised- she hated saltwater.
Another shout, and the telltale clicking of mecha shift weapons. Huntresses?
Raven turned down the hall, emerging into a low-ceilinged meeting and eating room, the long tables had been leveled at the door, and a tall man with dreadlocks held a shotgun the size of her torso with one hand, stabilizing the weapon on the top of the table.
A woman stood to his side, a long, flensing whip lain with blades of crystal dust in the other hand. She was fair-skinned and had a smattering of freckles across her nose, the marks on her exposed neck and shoulders spoke of a lifetime of combat in vicious circumstances.
The third member was a flaxen-haired old woman, with a great scythe held in two hands. She twirled it once, and Raven winced as the grating screech of the blades on the metal deck met her ears.
She stopped, facing them, barely paying attention as they began to speak.
"I am Barker, you've come far, little human, but you'll fall just like the Atlesian stooges before you!"
Raven wondered if Garrote had survived the intervening years. She'd have to take his head to take back the tribe in order for her plan to work.
"Fae! Master of the Vacuoan floating swords! You've come a long way to die at my hands and enhance my legend further!"
Perhaps her bond with that woman… Spring, would persist long enough to open a portal back to the tribe? She'd not felt strong bonds from any of them, and her semblance had refused to open a portal for Roland or Cleo, perhaps Spring was still alive or around?
"Wheat, master of the war scythe! You will fall at my hands!"
Master of the war scythe? Raven stooped and looked at her opponents, then she threw her head back and laughed.
Her mask made even her laughter, throaty and full and purring, into a rasping, hissing cacophony hidden behind red eye lenses the color of blood.
She didn't dignify any of them with a response beyond their boastful declarations, and after thinking for a moment, these huntresses and hunter… they were buying time for the crew to do… something.
What was it?
The man pulled the trigger, and the thunderous retort of the shotgun announced its fury, spitting buckshot into the space Raven had been a scant fraction of a second ago. As he pulled the slide back with that single, trembling hand, Raven struck a palm laced with her own aura into the whip sword woman's throat.
As she fell, gurgling and choking, Raven casually disemboweled her with a flick of Omen's blade. Panic made even the most experienced hunters fail their tasks, and a crushed windpipe was one of the very few things you had to focus your aura on to fix before it became lethal.
The "Warscythe" master sent her blade whirling forwards in a circle of hissing steel, and Raven stepped forwards, through the whirling blades, her hand came up, and she seized the old woman's neck, lifting her up, before a fist smashed into her nose, then her throat.
Choking and coughing, Raven only barely made out the click of the shotgun's loading mechanism finishing as the man raised his thunderous cannon once more, she focused her aura to the front subconsciously.
The Branwens would need to rebrand, become legitimate, flee Mistral, and head to Vale, offering intelligence and perhaps even trading favors to that old bastard of a wizard…
The spray of viscera and a few pieces of low-velocity, tumbling metal fragments covered her mask in blood and viscera as Warscythe's torso exploded. Shotguns, excellent for boarding actions, were lethal to all in their path, and this woman had only been focused on Raven, she hadn't noted her comrade.
Raven tossed the glassy-eyed woman to one side and flicked Omen forwards, the blade cleanly severing tendons in the man's remaining hand, piercing with a red-hot glow through the aura and into the man beneath.
She twisted savagely, and Omen bisected his forearm and tore flesh free, flensing the tissues away as if she'd stuck his hand into a grinder.
He made out half a scream before Omen took his head, and Raven was left with silence aside from the drip, drip, drip of blood and gore flowing down the walls.
She'd have to reclassify these people. They were pirates, not Fang. The ship was armed and intelligent enough to send a spy over, and that spy had slowed her vessel down, instead of blowing it up.
Only pirates dealt in slaves, aside from the SDC.
Which meant one thing.
There could be slaves below decks. Or conquests from other ships.
Raven narrowed her eyes behind the mask, and strode forwards, thoughts, as always, returning to Cinder and the path she'd need to take.
Branwen would need to either change or die off.
That was all.
Raven passed through to the lower deck, and cut down the crew like so much wheat. The pirates in front of her were nothing in the face of her blade, and they died easily and evenly.
It wasn't until she reached the lowest deck that she found what she searched for.
Ilia
Ilia hated the way they looked at her, and she hated the way that she'd jumped at the chance to doom others to the fate she was going to share. She petulantly kicked at the heavy shackles binding her to the boat, kicked at the door, and tried to not let her trembling upper lip show that she was terrified.
She wanted to hide away, wanted to desperately flee from that stuffy school full of stuffy humans and their judgment. When the mine had blown, when she'd heard the news, when her skin had turned as blue as the sky… when her friends, the girls she'd thought were closer to her than sisters, looked at her with naked disgust. She'd run, run from the girls she'd called her friends, and hidden from everyone who thought she was just another human.
A spit of anger ran through her, followed by something resembling misery.
She'd fled to the docks in Mantle, and taken the first boat she'd seen, that woman had been so kind, and stupid, dumb, trusting Ilia had fallen for it. She'd fallen for the soup, fallen for the gambit, and fallen for the captain of the vessel bartering her freedom in exchange for sneaking aboard the other ship when they'd caught up to her.
She'd tried to get the waist binder off but failed, she'd tried to cut it off, but the steel was nearly fused to her skin. Then the captain had seen the marks and electrocuted her, and she'd not been able to stand as he kicked her into the cells.
She'd been stuck in the cell for a week, listening to the screams of her fellow prisoners, and the horrifying, desperate, wanton cries of a woman as something had forced its way into her cell.
Ilia tried not to think about such things so much, she tried to think about anything, but she'd fallen for a stupid trick and now she was going to spend her entire life doomed to be some Pirate slave… if worse things didn't occur first.
She'd been beaten until they'd seen her skin, she'd been brutalized and hooted at, called and mocked, and told that her only value was how much value she could bring from the conquests of the other people the ship attacked.
She hated that she knew they weren't lying.
She hated it more that she knew they weren't above killing children, among… worse fates.
She missed her mommy and daddy, and a part of her wondered if she'd ever see them again. Her daddy's tired eyes, lined with exhaustion from the mines, yet holding such a spark of life to them as she talked about her day, about her friends.
Her mother's soft, serene smile, even as she hunched, her spine damaged and injured, genuine happiness coursing through her as she braided Ilia's hair, or as she stroked the girl's back or massaged her tired muscles.
She wondered if she'd ever see them again.
She wondered if they were worried about her and if they'd survived the collapse…
The wet squelch, a startled gasp, and then a rasping noise cut through Ilia's fugue as she heard something faintly from above. Shouts? Screams?
Rapid fire gunshots startled her fully to wake, were they being boarded? What was happening?
Another wet thud, and something hit the floor from the grates above.
Ilia didn't want to look up, she didn't want to see what had fallen on her, the dripping coming steady and quick now.
She looked up.
She had to resist the urge to scream.
One of the nightguards, a child taken from the ports, not knowing how to swim, lay over onto the floor, sightless, half his face torn away from his skull, broken and torn flesh dripping gore from deep, scorched cuts in his skin. The grates above him torn open as if some beast had violently shredded the metal.
Ilia made it a few feet away before she fell to one side and a stream of vomit exited her mouth rapidly.
Every motion called back to those awful, sightless eyes. To the fate she was sure she'd be sharing soon!
She heard the hunters aboard speak, their voices mumbling and faint through the decking above her head.
She heard a mocking, harsh laugh.
She heard the thuds as bodies fell to the floor and the flow of blood began to rapidly increase.
Ilia curled into the corner of her cell, she tried not to listen, tried not to shake and shudder as more thudding noises hit the floor.
The rapid running motions of feet attracted her attention as she saw a trio of guards running for the armory at the front of the cells.
She froze in utter horror as one stumbled and tripped, falling to the floor with a spear of splintered deck plating, soaked in gore so thickly it had turned maroon protruding from his back.
The other two froze, their hands shaking at the doorway to the lockers that contained weapons.
Ilia's cell was farthest from the exit, closest to the armory, of course, that armory would be the first to go if holes had breached, and she, like any other captives, would drown long before the weight could be excised from their cells.
She heard the stepping, and the splashes as boots crossed the rivers of gore that slathered the floor of the cells. Only the small edges of the wrought iron pens, designed for holding animals on long, overseas journeys, kept the floors of the pens from being as soaked as the deck.
It didn't save her from the dripping overhead.
Ilia tried so hard to force her scales to match the background, not caring as she was shocked, not caring as those footsteps, the phantom, the killer, stepped closer.
She tried to camouflage herself even as the blade of a huntress came from the corner, she tried to force it to happen as a half dozen guards, reinforcing the other two leveled firearms and opened fire.
She clamped her hands over her ears and huddled, hoping that a stray dust round wouldn't kill her.
A boy, fair-skinned and blonde-haired, flinched and fell as a ricocheting dust round took his shoulder and upper chest and dyed them as red as the seas surely were.
The face of a grimm, long black fingers curving into a red blade, turned the corner, red markings around her crimson eyes.
Ilia found herself freezing, as that, that thing , crossed her path, stepping in front of the cells, bullets sparking off its armor and cracking against that horrifying blade.
She couldn't move, ice cold fear, she would die here, she would die here and they'd never find her body and her soul would never move with her family, and her mommy and daddy were burned when they died and spent eternity in agony.
The grimm moved faster than she could even process.
A guard fell with a splattering, desperate cough, the grimm holding his severed arm up like a trophy for a moment, testing its weight as she leveled it, and then…
She threw it.
Ilia felt the impact as a desperate scream was cut off by a thick, meaty thud and a wet squelching noise.
She felt the grimm drag its blade on the floor and felt the heat on her skin as sparks flew from the bone to the metal and wood decking around her.
She heard gunfire, scattered shots deflecting off the thing's armor, shattering on the faceplate and twisting, breaking, shattering into shards of metal.
She heard a choked, strangled gasp cut off as an awful crunching noise sounded, and then a thud as the body was tossed behind the grimm.
She tried desperately to focus her efforts on anything, on staying alive, on the blue-eyed blonde across from her bleeding out in front of her.
She failed.
The thing looked down at her from the door to her cell, the thing stared at her, its long, red blade covered in dark gore and… worse things.
The pieces of scalp had her hunching over to vomit again.
What had this thing struck with? Such force… to shatter the scalp and the skull beneath it!
Ilia wanted to go home…
Raven
Raven had found it disappointing that they were so terrible at combat. They'd been a moderately successful pirate ship, clearly based on the wealth the crew toted around.
She'd not realized the night guards were children until one of the crew had screamed and begged for her life.
She'd been perhaps… 9? Age was hard to tell with the mask on. Raven had nodded her head towards the lifeboats.
She had no time to waste on victims. Not while their captain still drew breath, not while the ship could still pose a risk to Cinder.
She pressed onwards, letting the fury and rage at herself turn her into the butcher she knew the pirates feared more than anything. Her sword held not like a weapon should but in a claw-handed grip suitable for chopping and hacking and little else.
She would become their nightmares. The Hatchet Man.
She would kill them where they stood, where they slept, and where they fucked.
She would kill them to the last.
Only then would she allow herself to feel the guilt and horror for killing children.
A dry, hoarse laugh parted her lips as she saw a half dozen men and women leveling automatic firearms at her from the end of the prison gallery.
Really, an armory next to your slave pens? To weigh them down so the ship could kill them if it ever sank?
Her eyes narrowed, lips curling back to show teeth.
How disgusting.
How human.
Raven darted forwards, her first target's chest caved in by aura-enhanced strength, the man dropping with a gurgle, clawing at his collapsed lungs. Until Raven brought Omen down in an overhand chop that was as horrifically brutal as it was monstrous.
His skull split like an overripe tomato. Grey matter and darkly cropped hair, attached to fragments of bone and skin, clung to the weapon as she raised it and pointed her arm forwards.
One of the crew turned to run, sheer terror overcoming his senses as Raven moved again.
She caught him and tore his arm clean from the shoulder, he dropped as a puppet with its strings cut, and Raven glorified the spray of vital blood with a flick of Omen, soaking the foremost layer of the guards.
They would die.
They would die screaming and in pain and terror, alone and unprotected from her rampage.
None would escape.
The next men and women fared no better than the first did, Raven's fist speared one through the chest, punched into the ribcage, and then, she closed her hands and violently pulled.
Ribs and bone shattered like glass, and viscera flew across the corridors, one of the survivors, one of the slaves, screamed. It didn't matter, the woman dropped, eyes glazed over and broken. Her soul tattered and fleeing her.
Gunshots spattered against her aura, the bullets flattening against her shields and dropping to the floor in scattered pings of metal filing.
Raven's face never shifted, even as Omen cleaved through weak, flickering aura, and cut untrained men and women down in spades.
It should have surprised her that it was so pathetic, it should have surprised her more than her sudden rush of instinct to throw herself to one side, easily sidestepping a crazed spear thrust from another pirate waiting in ambush.
Instead, it only curled a portion of Raven's lips as she bisected the aura-less idiot with barely a thought and returned to thinking of the Branwens.
She would have to be their ultimatum, force them to change their course, and truly guide their way forwards. Legitimacy wouldn't come easily; Too many of the tribe enjoyed the raiding, enjoyed the pillaging, and the crushing of others. She had been one of them.
Had been.
Even these pirates couldn't put up an actual fight. Even these pirates could barely scratch her. Her aura hadn't dipped out of the green, and as Omen flashed, taking another's hand off at the wrist before her fist splattered his skull against the wall, leaving just one pirate behind.
Then… it was over.
The last one dropped into a dead faint, and Raven calmly drew a pistol from the severed limb of one of the pirates, aimed it calmly at the slumped-over, unconscious woman, and pulled the trigger a half dozen times in quick succession.
One to the head, one to the throat, two to the lungs, one to the heart, and one to the stomach.
Then, calmly, she tossed the pistol to one side, the air settling as the violence of the fight ended. The thick stench of iron filled the slave pens, and Raven calmly studied the assemblage of body parts, broken bone, and torn flesh, calmly looking for… ah, there it was.
Her fingers, gloved, dipped into a pool of dark red viscera and pulled a keyring from within, and Raven, after a moment of consideration, began unlocking cells.
No one dared move until she'd finished and turned to leave the hallway. The charnel house she left behind dripped and settled as the ship stopped rocking.
Raven felt the engines shut off under her feet, the fear and anguish she'd inflicted upon the crew could easily have caused panic, which meant one thing.
Her lips narrowed into a tight line.
Grimm.
She turned to the charnel house and spoke quietly.
"All of you, take weapons and move. It is likely the grimm have been attracted to this location. If you are strong enough to survive you will need to be quick."
Her piece said, Raven turned and progressed down another deck.
The CIC of this vessel had been retrofitted to a dorm, and Raven sighed with exasperation. Of course, the useless pirates couldn't even have a proper second bridge. Raven let out a huff of irritation as she turned and progressed back the way she'd come, the bridge would have been secured by now. Defended by the heaviest weapons, and any remaining aura or hunter-trained members of the pirate crew.
She was sick and tired of pirates. Of anything, frankly, first, it had been Tyrian, then the alpha grimm, and at this point? At this point, Raven was four steps from just slaughtering anything and anyone who dared to get into her path.
She laughed, a bit… not exactly like she hadn't done that already.
Anyone who got in her way here, anyone who even tried to justify this flesh trade… they would die and she would be the harbinger of their destruction.
The upper decks were absent of the blood and viscera that coated the lower ones, and as Raven turned a corner, her face ignited in pain and she staggered back from the blast of a shotgun.
What was it with hunters and shotguns…
Oh, right. Boarding actions.
Raven turned a sliver of her head around the corridor, evaluating the positions of the enemy.
Three were behind a much more solid barricade, two with shotguns, and one struggling to load a dust-cooled machine gun.
A corner of her lip curled in disgust.
This would take too long. She had to get back to Cinder before dawn came, and that wouldn't be easy if she couldn't punch through this defensive array.
Raven looked around the corner again, and this time, snapped her head quickly back behind cover as the machine gun operator began firing into the wall.
The heavy, high-velocity bullets, designed to put down grimm with thicker than normal armor, slammed into and then through the thin outer plating of the ship's hull. Raven frowned for a moment, then stepped back and moved away from the corridor. There were other ways of entering the bridge, after all.
The cool night air hit her as she exited onto the deck, and the salt spray of the sea washed the last of the iron scent of blood from her nose. Raven calmly walked to the front of the vessel and then looked up at the bridge house.
Even from here, she could see crew and staff running every which way, most with weapons and firearms bared.
A feral smile curved her teeth.
After the discovery of sea nevermore and sea feeling grimm, and the further discovery that normal glass wasn't strong enough to hold up to the attacks such entities could launch, all ships were retrofitted with reinforced portholes, or, in some cases, those portholes were simply removed.
This vessel hadn't had those retrofits.
So when Raven fired Omen from her sheathe at the glass, she was expecting it to crack the glass, giving her incoming kick a flaw to punch through the glass.
Instead, Omen shattered the window with the force of a clap of thunder, and Raven suddenly had to adjust her trajectory to enter the bridge at speed.
The pirates had been secure in their knowledge that a machine gun could keep her at bay, and they'd been right, but that security gave rise to overconfidence.
Raven's boot met the skull of a bridge crew, and she felt the woman's nose shatter under her feet as the woman dropped bonelessly to the deck, Omen clattering into her grip as Raven stood and surveyed the bridge crew.
Half a dozen, none armed with anything more than standard swords and pistols.
With a smile curving like a predator, Raven noted the doors to the bridge were sealed, and that meant their help, the help that had weapons that could stop her…
Was indisposed.
She flashed forwards, the woman she'd landed on left groaning behind her as Omen and Raven darted at the captain, a potbellied woman wearing a grease-stained uniform.
Her hand impacted directly onto the woman's lower ribs, and Raven felt something crack as her aura-enhanced strike shattered and punched the ribs backwards.
The woman toppled with a scream, and Raven whirled, Omen rising just in time to deflect a strong strike from a young man, close-cropped black hair wound around a pair of spiraling, long horns.
He was physically powerful, more so with aura, and yet… Raven grinned beneath the mask.
He would not be able to stop her, his aura only enhanced him, he'd not had the training to raise a shield at the flick of a thought.
Omen swept low, and as he moved to counter, she stepped into his grip, the hand holding Omen releasing it into a spinning, thrown blade that sang of death.
With both her hands-free and Omen twirling behind her towards the crew, Raven caught the strike and broke the man's arm over her shoulders. Before the scream had even begun to taper off, Raven stepped in, and slammed a palm into the man's nose.
Bone snapped, and then pushed back into the head, and he dropped.
Three down.
No.
She took in the woman Omen had impaled through the stomach.
Four down.
Raven turned as the remaining two, hiding in the back of the consoles of the bridge, looked at her.
One of them, a woman, her face clenched tight with rage and anger, and her motions screaming rage at what Raven had done, tried to raise a pistol towards the air.
Her compatriot, a dusky-skinned Vacuoan woman with a prominent pair of fox ears, seized her arm and forced it lower.
"We surrender."
Raven actually startled as the voice spoke up, fists pounding on the doors that led to the bridge's interior. She moved back to the woman she'd landed on, initially, and noted that she was unconscious. Then, the impaled survivor, gasping over Omen.
Raven wrenched her blade free and, without a second thought, beheaded the woman.
Then, she turned back to the other two women, finding the angry one tightly holding the hand of the other. Their knuckles white, the faint, rust bands that encircled each ring finger identical.
A surge of emotion ran through Raven like she'd been impaled with Omen.
Summer had worn rings like those, silver, but they'd born the images of Tai and her own symbol upon each band. Raven had worn them too, as had Taiyang.
She leveled her blade at each of the women, indicating their comrades.
"I never want to see you again. If I must, assume it will be your final day. Ensure the prisoners and victims of the flesh trade your captain took-" She kicked the woman's unconscious body for emphasis- "reach destined and safe shores. If you do not do this, I will hunt you to the ends of the earth and rip you apart."
Both nodded, and one moved to drag the woman she'd landed on as she entered the bridge behind her.
The angry one was the first to unseal the doors, and Raven heard their conversation, taking it in, absorbing the information that she heard.
"Fight's over. We surrendered. Your contracts are fulfilled."
A hushed male voice, oddly high-pitched.
"Are- you're not serious right?"
The angry woman again.
"Yes. You work for us now, if you want to, or you can take it up with her."
Three people filed into the room, looking at Raven as she calmly used the captain's stained jacket to clean the blood from her blade.
A critical, appraising eye took in each of the people facing her. The first was a young woman, the one holding the machine gun, wings spread from her back, and Raven took in the collar upon her neck, a faint green light pulsing.
The other two, one was a quiet, unassuming young man, with a streak of crimson hair in his otherwise dark coif.
He held a remote on his belt.
The other, a second woman, this one another fox faunus, the bushy, long tail hanging matted and greasy.
Raven's gaze evenly took in the scars on that woman, and the dulled, deadened look in her eyes, and then she stepped forwards.
The young man couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes as she reached out and dragged him close.
"SDC Security. Yes?"
He flinched, but Raven tore the man's coat from him, revealing the long, spiraling tattoo on his arm.
Her disgust was palpable as her tone dropped to arctic.
"And you wonder why the White Fang takes no prisoners from your ranks."
She drew Omen from its sheath, faced him, and spoke quietly.
"You, and your actions, disgust me."
And with that, Raven's eyes ignited with violet flame, and she rose from the ground.
A quick surge of aura to her eyes and she turned to the women.
"Are you strong?"
The question catches the two faunus off guard, the one with the collar moving to speak, then holding her tongue. Her compatriot, speaking in a hollow, raspy voice, scarring on her throat, answers for her.
"Yes."
Raven smirks.
"Prove it."
The game, sadistic as it is, is played up entirely for the benefit of the man in front of her. She knows his kind, she knows the type of who he is.
The two women step forwards, hesitantly, and he speaks.
"Make a move, and your families will die. Harm me in any way, and you will die."
Raven laughs, his sureness, his confidence, so direct, so interesting, and yet, as she laughs and laughs and holds her stomach, the man turns back to face her.
"We know all about the girl you took from Atlas, you hurt any of us, she'll be hunted to the ends of the earth!"
Raven pauses. Eyes narrowed.
"What?"
The man cackled, the desperate laughter of the dead and dying.
"Do you really think that Jacques Schnee wouldn't notice when his dear friend, Madame, lost her life and her youngest child the day that Masque of Mistral, someone famed for her illegal huntress actions, showed up in Mantle!? Do you think he's an idiot!?"
His voice reached a crescendo that had the two faunus women backing away, terror writ on their faces.
"He still employs the death squads."
The man cackled further.
"THE WHITE FANG KILLED HIS WIFE AND NEARLY KILLED HIS CHILDREN! THEY'RE ANIMALS!"
Raven is moving before he can finish before he can continue speaking.
Her blade drives deep into his stomach, punching through his aura and erupting out the back in a fountain of crimson gore. Then, a flick of her fingers shorts the collars and wrist restraints on the faunus.
"You two. Survive. Lead your people in a better manner. Do not kill civilians."
The two faunus women, given a second chance, run for it as Raven turns to the captain of the ship. The woman is staring at her with something resembling grizzled, calm acceptance.
"You going to kill me?"
Raven nods.
"Well, at least you're honest about it. Can you light this?"
She held up a cigarette, bloodstained fingers dripping onto the floor from her shattered nose.
Raven didn't know why she did it, but she chose to hold a hand out, and gently lit the cigarette.
"Fuck… never thought I'd see a real maiden. I thought you were myths."
Raven smiled sadly at that, unstrapping her helmet and placing it under her arms.
"We were supposed to be."
The captain looks to Raven.
"Will I have a better chance next time?"
The next life… if there was one. Raven scowls, and the captain flinches, dragging on her cigarette to calm herself.
"In another life? Perhaps. Who can say there is a "next" for any of us?"
The captain nodded once. Choking as her cigarette fell to the deck, her ribs puncturing her lungs. Raven stepped away, and the woman coughed out once.
"I… I hope you have a better place… for whatever comes next."
Raven lets a bitter smile cross her face before the helmet comes back on, and she steps away from the dying pirate. Her whispered words faded into the quiet of the bridge, only clashed by the running feet on the deck as the slaves and captives abandoned the ship.
"All for her. All for Summer."
Raven turned to the exit, and she started down the stairs, noting the launches of the varying boats and life rafts from the ship. They were not far from the coast of Anima, and it was likely these people would make it, provided they got clear before the charnel house aroused the attention of a leviathan.
Raven had taken the liberty of adjusting the ship's course, leading it away and out into the deep ocean, and she was gladdened to see that all the boats had turned towards the coast of Anima.
Summer would have been proud, a small part of her whispered to Raven as her wings spread and the large corvid took off from the bloodstained decking of the ship.
Raven tried to keep the small embers of flame at that realization from bursting up within her chest. She tried very hard to keep the emotion of pride in an action, an emotion she'd not felt for weeks, from flaring to life.
She failed.
By the time Raven landed back on the deck of the ship she and Cinder had taken berths upon, it was only a few hours to sunrise. The woman stalked back to her quarters, entering via her portals to a very awake, and very upset Cinder.
"Raven!"
The girl was rushing her, again.
Cinder hadn't expected Raven to disappear like she had, and the note, much as Cinder was sure it had been meant to reassure her, only made her more worried. The last time that Raven had vanished, she'd almost been killed by the massive Megoliath grimm! So… when the portal had burst to life and allowed a Raven, covered in blood and holding Omen, to emerge, it immediately resulted in Cinder throwing herself into the arms of the other woman. Who startlingly caught her and let out a few short, harsh barking noises through her mask.
It took a moment for Cinder to realize Raven was laughing softly… her mask distorting the sound as she spoke in that same harsh tone.
"May I take off my mask, little kite?"
Cinder nods, even if she refuses to take her arms off of Raven's midsection. The woman releases Cinder and unstraps her mask, before looking down at her little kite.
"Before you worry, none of this is my blood."
She should have been shocked as Cinder nodded her head, but the desperation in her voice as Cinder makes eye contact with her twinged her heart.
"I know… you're too strong for pirates…"
She'd known? How curious…
"How did you know?"
Raven's tone is gentle but curious, did Cinder watch her leave? Or did she know priorly?
"That girl… the chameleon faunus, no crewmember like that would be on board… especially because Diana would have flirted with them."
Raven raised an eyebrow. Cinder blushed.
"That… and I saw the things she left on the boats' engines… I turned them off, used my semblance, the crew won't ever know!"
The happiness and exuberant nature of her childlike, high-pitched voice broke into Raven's concentration as the tall woman tugged Cinder closer.
"Well done. I did not wish to reveal our presence to the captain to be anything other than an ex-military member and her daughter."
Cinder shot her a look.
"What?"
Cinder rolled her eyes.
"Raven… umm… he already knows you're a huntress… the way you dress isn't… uh, it's not like ex-military."
Surely her clothing couldn't possibly have given that away, she didn't dress like Qrow, for Oum's sake, there was no reason that anyone should have noticed!
"I… what?"
"You… don't dress like civilians, your clothing is all silk or other expensive material, it's not fitting for a military person…"
Raven has to stop and think, and remembers that it was Tai and Summer who'd bought her the silk accouterments and other parts of her outfit…
It was comfortable and light, with aura acting as insulation from temperatures, she could easily wear it anywhere, and it made Anima perfectly temperate for herself.
A minor blush colored her cheeks, as Raven yawned to the world.
"I… am rather tired. Little kite, what say you sleep in, take the day from your training?"
The expression that lit up Cinder's face as mo- Raven told her to take the day off, was radiant, and the girl would have jumped for joy, had it not been the middle of the night, so instead, she raised an eyebrow and Raven nodded once.
"Yes, take the day to yourself, explore the ship, maybe actually speak with that woman… Diana, you said her name was?"
Cinder felt her cheeks light up like someone had set her on fire. This wasn't fair, Raven was cheating! It wasn't fair to bring up the fact that Diana made her stomach turn into flip-flopping knots by smiling or looking at her! But… everything was more or less right with the world, Raven was back, she had tomorrow off from her training, and she could continue to count on Raven to always come through.
She… knew a part of it had to be her promise to Summer, but… Cinder hoped, in some part of her mind, that Raven would do what she was doing because she wanted to have Cinder… it was a traitorous thought, and quickly crushed by the logical part of Cinder's brain that was deeply thankful that she was being trained and prepared to go to a huntress academy.
Raven turned in for the night soon after, rolling the blankets on her bunk over herself, as Cinder stared from under her own covers, reflecting on how far things had come since Madame… since Madame had died…
Why had Madame called Cinder her daughter? She'd never treated her like one, that was for certain. So… why did Cinder still think of that moment, when Madame had stepped in front of Tyrian, when she'd shot at him, when she'd defended Cinder for the first time in her life!?
Why… why had she done so many awful things to Cinder under the guise of punishment? Why did it hurt so much? Why did it hurt even now?
Cinder didn't know when she fell asleep, only that she was sitting in the lobby of the Glass Unicorn and Madame was sitting across from her. Holding a newspaper in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other.
"Why-"
"Why did I call you my daughter?"
Her voice is as imperious, as cold as ever. It's terrifying for Cinder, and she freezes in her tracks as Madame speaks and meets her gaze, her eyes pitch black pits with red pupils.
The eyes of grimm.
"Whyever would I tell you now? Do you think your dreams can save you from my influence? Do you think that I would give you closure now?"
Cinder flinches as every line is delivered with the subtlety of a fox in a chicken coop.
"No, I called you my daughter because I called you my daughter. There is no closure I can provide you. Because you aren't ready to hear it."
Cinder flinched awake, the sun on her face and Raven's quiet, daily motions moving through the cabin she shared with Cinder. She saw the woman divest the silks she slept in, and began strapping armor to her arms and chest as she donned the robe she always wore.
Omen was buckled on, drawn, and Cinder watched with abject fascination as Raven made sure every single dust blade shone and glowed in the morning light. Cinder's own weapon, comparably fragile, didn't dull, and while the girl checked over her arrows, she wouldn't have an excellent opportunity to use such weapons on board the pitching deck of a ship.
She could only hope that their journey would come to a close quickly.
"We will be docking to Argus by midday today. You'll need to pack your things."
Cinder's eyes widen, and she's moving as Raven finishes, shoving clothes and her arrow case into the large bag that she'd stolen from the nearly ruined village. Was it actually stealing? The owner was likely dead… Cinder supposed it didn't matter in the end, it had served her well enough, so she'd continue to use it until it stopped being useful.
By the time she'd been packed, Raven had returned with a pair of bowls of porridge and eggs for the both of them. The food was thick and filling, and the eggs were something she'd missed dearly, but they were within hours from Argus, and the crew no longer had to default to the rations that they would have to use in all other circumstances.
She'd wandered the ship, taking in the sights one last time, watching Diana finish her duties and return to her cabin to pack her bags, it startled Cinder to have realized just now, on the last day of the journey that she hadn't ever known that Diana was continuing onwards past this posting.
She supposed it only made sense, but the sheer shock of that was something she hadn't prepared for.
She would have to do better. She would have to look at everyone, especially those she was interested in, closer.
So… she spent the day stalking Diana, soaking in the knowledge of the woman that she could. She found out that Diana was a lesbian, she found out that she'd fled from Atlas after assaulting a superior officer at their huntsmen academy, she'd found out that it had been the Schnee fund for orphans that had guaranteed her entry to the combat school. She found out that Diana wrote letters to someone back in Atlas, she found out that woman was named Leona, and she found out that those two were dearly in love.
Diana's flirtatious nature was… simply who she was.
As the ship docked, Cinder tried to quash her disappointment, but Raven picked up on it as they walked into Argus.
As they'd reached the hotel, Raven had gently said.
"She wasn't the right one. You'll find such people eventually, little kite. I did, and so will you."
Cinder felt a pang of deep, profound sadness as she caught the bitter smile worn on Raven's face.
She'd loved someone like that, and… she'd lost them.
It was a thought that occupied Cinder's dreams until very late that night, as she lay awake in her bunk.
A/N: It appears I missed last nights post, apologies everyone, have a double post for my apology.
Raven... just doing Raven things.
Enjoy~! Leave comments, criticism, etc~!
Raven would have thought the girl was something she'd been able to figure out by now, and yet, she wasn't. The girl was frustratingly closed off, the moments they'd shared, the ruffling of Cinder's hair, she'd been open, but not open in the way Raven wanted.
The idle schlick of a body dropping from the front of Omen's blade wasn't even enough to arouse more than a disinterested snort from the Branwen.
She'd been expecting a half-decent fight.
Not a bunch of idiotic teenagers jumped up on drugs, violent patriotism, and passionate devotion.
The first guards on the deck of the trailing vessel hadn't even been able to scream before Omen cleaved the first man in two and took the woman's head from her shoulders.
The crew hadn't improved beyond that.
Cinder commanded Raven's thoughts and drove her decisions. Her plan, insofar as you could call it that, had been something of a unique thing. The Branwen tribe were far-flung from the mere bandits they'd been when she and Qrow had been children. They were hardly a force for good but generally picked only on those judged to be strong enough to defend themselves.
The tribe prided itself on strength, not on being dependent, but on being strong enough to rip and tear the survival of the next day from the jaws of this one.
The raids they'd done had been judged to be for maximal effectiveness and minimal damage. But… that had changed.
Summer in her dreams had reminded her, had spoken of the woman… Andromeda. A dream of tan skin on legs that had gone so far up they'd seemed to almost never end, Raven had very nearly let the woman seduce her into returning to the tribe in her third year, her childhood friend a safe, trusted person. Only for her discovery upon returning to horrify and shock her into leaving forever.
A sepulcher of carnage and monstrosity had greeted Qrow and herself at the gates, the skulls of powerful grimm, covered in the bullets and blades that had felled them, had traditionally served as a warning against attack, and a warning against grimm.
They'd been replaced by the time Raven and Qrow had arrived, by human and faunus heads, mouths open in silent, deliberate screams.
With another flick of Omen's blade, the man charging around the corner, knives drawn and footsteps far too loud, released a startled gasp as his chest parted like water around the razor-sharp blade.
Raven rolled her eyes behind the mask, they were truly horrible at this 'repelling boarders' thing.
She'd been horrified to see the man who'd taken the camp, a barrel-chested loudmouth by the name of Garrote, sitting on a throne of human bone.
Qrow had tried to kill him on sight.
Only direct intervention from Summer had saved her brother's life, and the resulting response, namely that team STRQ had fled, haunted Raven to this day.
Andromeda had died before Raven had graduated, falling with a smile on her face from the very blade Raven wore when she tried to slide a knife between Summer's ribs in passing.
It hadn't been the first kill Raven had made, but it had been the hardest.
She'd not known until much later that she'd truly loved that woman, and it had taken Taiyang and Summer a year or so to fully steal her heart away.
Raven ducked back behind the walls as a fusillade of gunfire erupted from the decks leading into the bowels of the ship. Here there were no innocent teens or new recruits, the people she faced were battle-hardened and even had their aura unlocked.
It didn't matter.
The barricade fell as Raven moved beyond the speed of normal people to process, Omen turned into a flash of crimson, and heads rolled. Viscera, parted from throats and necks, sprayed over Raven, and the woman stared down evenly at the charnel house a simple amount of motion had turned the front of the boat's inner corridors into.
A dissatisfied look crossed her face; She'd have to go for a swim to clean the blood and chunks from her clothing. Her hackles raised- she hated saltwater.
Another shout, and the telltale clicking of mecha shift weapons. Huntresses?
Raven turned down the hall, emerging into a low-ceilinged meeting and eating room, the long tables had been leveled at the door, and a tall man with dreadlocks held a shotgun the size of her torso with one hand, stabilizing the weapon on the top of the table.
A woman stood to his side, a long, flensing whip lain with blades of crystal dust in the other hand. She was fair-skinned and had a smattering of freckles across her nose, the marks on her exposed neck and shoulders spoke of a lifetime of combat in vicious circumstances.
The third member was a flaxen-haired old woman, with a great scythe held in two hands. She twirled it once, and Raven winced as the grating screech of the blades on the metal deck met her ears.
She stopped, facing them, barely paying attention as they began to speak.
"I am Barker, you've come far, little human, but you'll fall just like the Atlesian stooges before you!"
Raven wondered if Garrote had survived the intervening years. She'd have to take his head to take back the tribe in order for her plan to work.
"Fae! Master of the Vacuoan floating swords! You've come a long way to die at my hands and enhance my legend further!"
Perhaps her bond with that woman… Spring, would persist long enough to open a portal back to the tribe? She'd not felt strong bonds from any of them, and her semblance had refused to open a portal for Roland or Cleo, perhaps Spring was still alive or around?
"Wheat, master of the war scythe! You will fall at my hands!"
Master of the war scythe? Raven stooped and looked at her opponents, then she threw her head back and laughed.
Her mask made even her laughter, throaty and full and purring, into a rasping, hissing cacophony hidden behind red eye lenses the color of blood.
She didn't dignify any of them with a response beyond their boastful declarations, and after thinking for a moment, these huntresses and hunter… they were buying time for the crew to do… something.
What was it?
The man pulled the trigger, and the thunderous retort of the shotgun announced its fury, spitting buckshot into the space Raven had been a scant fraction of a second ago. As he pulled the slide back with that single, trembling hand, Raven struck a palm laced with her own aura into the whip sword woman's throat.
As she fell, gurgling and choking, Raven casually disemboweled her with a flick of Omen's blade. Panic made even the most experienced hunters fail their tasks, and a crushed windpipe was one of the very few things you had to focus your aura on to fix before it became lethal.
The "Warscythe" master sent her blade whirling forwards in a circle of hissing steel, and Raven stepped forwards, through the whirling blades, her hand came up, and she seized the old woman's neck, lifting her up, before a fist smashed into her nose, then her throat.
Choking and coughing, Raven only barely made out the click of the shotgun's loading mechanism finishing as the man raised his thunderous cannon once more, she focused her aura to the front subconsciously.
The Branwens would need to rebrand, become legitimate, flee Mistral, and head to Vale, offering intelligence and perhaps even trading favors to that old bastard of a wizard…
The spray of viscera and a few pieces of low-velocity, tumbling metal fragments covered her mask in blood and viscera as Warscythe's torso exploded. Shotguns, excellent for boarding actions, were lethal to all in their path, and this woman had only been focused on Raven, she hadn't noted her comrade.
Raven tossed the glassy-eyed woman to one side and flicked Omen forwards, the blade cleanly severing tendons in the man's remaining hand, piercing with a red-hot glow through the aura and into the man beneath.
She twisted savagely, and Omen bisected his forearm and tore flesh free, flensing the tissues away as if she'd stuck his hand into a grinder.
He made out half a scream before Omen took his head, and Raven was left with silence aside from the drip, drip, drip of blood and gore flowing down the walls.
She'd have to reclassify these people. They were pirates, not Fang. The ship was armed and intelligent enough to send a spy over, and that spy had slowed her vessel down, instead of blowing it up.
Only pirates dealt in slaves, aside from the SDC.
Which meant one thing.
There could be slaves below decks. Or conquests from other ships.
Raven narrowed her eyes behind the mask, and strode forwards, thoughts, as always, returning to Cinder and the path she'd need to take.
Branwen would need to either change or die off.
That was all.
Raven passed through to the lower deck, and cut down the crew like so much wheat. The pirates in front of her were nothing in the face of her blade, and they died easily and evenly.
It wasn't until she reached the lowest deck that she found what she searched for.
Ilia
Ilia hated the way they looked at her, and she hated the way that she'd jumped at the chance to doom others to the fate she was going to share. She petulantly kicked at the heavy shackles binding her to the boat, kicked at the door, and tried to not let her trembling upper lip show that she was terrified.
She wanted to hide away, wanted to desperately flee from that stuffy school full of stuffy humans and their judgment. When the mine had blown, when she'd heard the news, when her skin had turned as blue as the sky… when her friends, the girls she'd thought were closer to her than sisters, looked at her with naked disgust. She'd run, run from the girls she'd called her friends, and hidden from everyone who thought she was just another human.
A spit of anger ran through her, followed by something resembling misery.
She'd fled to the docks in Mantle, and taken the first boat she'd seen, that woman had been so kind, and stupid, dumb, trusting Ilia had fallen for it. She'd fallen for the soup, fallen for the gambit, and fallen for the captain of the vessel bartering her freedom in exchange for sneaking aboard the other ship when they'd caught up to her.
She'd tried to get the waist binder off but failed, she'd tried to cut it off, but the steel was nearly fused to her skin. Then the captain had seen the marks and electrocuted her, and she'd not been able to stand as he kicked her into the cells.
She'd been stuck in the cell for a week, listening to the screams of her fellow prisoners, and the horrifying, desperate, wanton cries of a woman as something had forced its way into her cell.
Ilia tried not to think about such things so much, she tried to think about anything, but she'd fallen for a stupid trick and now she was going to spend her entire life doomed to be some Pirate slave… if worse things didn't occur first.
She'd been beaten until they'd seen her skin, she'd been brutalized and hooted at, called and mocked, and told that her only value was how much value she could bring from the conquests of the other people the ship attacked.
She hated that she knew they weren't lying.
She hated it more that she knew they weren't above killing children, among… worse fates.
She missed her mommy and daddy, and a part of her wondered if she'd ever see them again. Her daddy's tired eyes, lined with exhaustion from the mines, yet holding such a spark of life to them as she talked about her day, about her friends.
Her mother's soft, serene smile, even as she hunched, her spine damaged and injured, genuine happiness coursing through her as she braided Ilia's hair, or as she stroked the girl's back or massaged her tired muscles.
She wondered if she'd ever see them again.
She wondered if they were worried about her and if they'd survived the collapse…
The wet squelch, a startled gasp, and then a rasping noise cut through Ilia's fugue as she heard something faintly from above. Shouts? Screams?
Rapid fire gunshots startled her fully to wake, were they being boarded? What was happening?
Another wet thud, and something hit the floor from the grates above.
Ilia didn't want to look up, she didn't want to see what had fallen on her, the dripping coming steady and quick now.
She looked up.
She had to resist the urge to scream.
One of the nightguards, a child taken from the ports, not knowing how to swim, lay over onto the floor, sightless, half his face torn away from his skull, broken and torn flesh dripping gore from deep, scorched cuts in his skin. The grates above him torn open as if some beast had violently shredded the metal.
Ilia made it a few feet away before she fell to one side and a stream of vomit exited her mouth rapidly.
Every motion called back to those awful, sightless eyes. To the fate she was sure she'd be sharing soon!
She heard the hunters aboard speak, their voices mumbling and faint through the decking above her head.
She heard a mocking, harsh laugh.
She heard the thuds as bodies fell to the floor and the flow of blood began to rapidly increase.
Ilia curled into the corner of her cell, she tried not to listen, tried not to shake and shudder as more thudding noises hit the floor.
The rapid running motions of feet attracted her attention as she saw a trio of guards running for the armory at the front of the cells.
She froze in utter horror as one stumbled and tripped, falling to the floor with a spear of splintered deck plating, soaked in gore so thickly it had turned maroon protruding from his back.
The other two froze, their hands shaking at the doorway to the lockers that contained weapons.
Ilia's cell was farthest from the exit, closest to the armory, of course, that armory would be the first to go if holes had breached, and she, like any other captives, would drown long before the weight could be excised from their cells.
She heard the stepping, and the splashes as boots crossed the rivers of gore that slathered the floor of the cells. Only the small edges of the wrought iron pens, designed for holding animals on long, overseas journeys, kept the floors of the pens from being as soaked as the deck.
It didn't save her from the dripping overhead.
Ilia tried so hard to force her scales to match the background, not caring as she was shocked, not caring as those footsteps, the phantom, the killer, stepped closer.
She tried to camouflage herself even as the blade of a huntress came from the corner, she tried to force it to happen as a half dozen guards, reinforcing the other two leveled firearms and opened fire.
She clamped her hands over her ears and huddled, hoping that a stray dust round wouldn't kill her.
A boy, fair-skinned and blonde-haired, flinched and fell as a ricocheting dust round took his shoulder and upper chest and dyed them as red as the seas surely were.
The face of a grimm, long black fingers curving into a red blade, turned the corner, red markings around her crimson eyes.
Ilia found herself freezing, as that, that thing , crossed her path, stepping in front of the cells, bullets sparking off its armor and cracking against that horrifying blade.
She couldn't move, ice cold fear, she would die here, she would die here and they'd never find her body and her soul would never move with her family, and her mommy and daddy were burned when they died and spent eternity in agony.
The grimm moved faster than she could even process.
A guard fell with a splattering, desperate cough, the grimm holding his severed arm up like a trophy for a moment, testing its weight as she leveled it, and then…
She threw it.
Ilia felt the impact as a desperate scream was cut off by a thick, meaty thud and a wet squelching noise.
She felt the grimm drag its blade on the floor and felt the heat on her skin as sparks flew from the bone to the metal and wood decking around her.
She heard gunfire, scattered shots deflecting off the thing's armor, shattering on the faceplate and twisting, breaking, shattering into shards of metal.
She heard a choked, strangled gasp cut off as an awful crunching noise sounded, and then a thud as the body was tossed behind the grimm.
She tried desperately to focus her efforts on anything, on staying alive, on the blue-eyed blonde across from her bleeding out in front of her.
She failed.
The thing looked down at her from the door to her cell, the thing stared at her, its long, red blade covered in dark gore and… worse things.
The pieces of scalp had her hunching over to vomit again.
What had this thing struck with? Such force… to shatter the scalp and the skull beneath it!
Ilia wanted to go home…
Raven
Raven had found it disappointing that they were so terrible at combat. They'd been a moderately successful pirate ship, clearly based on the wealth the crew toted around.
She'd not realized the night guards were children until one of the crew had screamed and begged for her life.
She'd been perhaps… 9? Age was hard to tell with the mask on. Raven had nodded her head towards the lifeboats.
She had no time to waste on victims. Not while their captain still drew breath, not while the ship could still pose a risk to Cinder.
She pressed onwards, letting the fury and rage at herself turn her into the butcher she knew the pirates feared more than anything. Her sword held not like a weapon should but in a claw-handed grip suitable for chopping and hacking and little else.
She would become their nightmares. The Hatchet Man.
She would kill them where they stood, where they slept, and where they fucked.
She would kill them to the last.
Only then would she allow herself to feel the guilt and horror for killing children.
A dry, hoarse laugh parted her lips as she saw a half dozen men and women leveling automatic firearms at her from the end of the prison gallery.
Really, an armory next to your slave pens? To weigh them down so the ship could kill them if it ever sank?
Her eyes narrowed, lips curling back to show teeth.
How disgusting.
How human.
Raven darted forwards, her first target's chest caved in by aura-enhanced strength, the man dropping with a gurgle, clawing at his collapsed lungs. Until Raven brought Omen down in an overhand chop that was as horrifically brutal as it was monstrous.
His skull split like an overripe tomato. Grey matter and darkly cropped hair, attached to fragments of bone and skin, clung to the weapon as she raised it and pointed her arm forwards.
One of the crew turned to run, sheer terror overcoming his senses as Raven moved again.
She caught him and tore his arm clean from the shoulder, he dropped as a puppet with its strings cut, and Raven glorified the spray of vital blood with a flick of Omen, soaking the foremost layer of the guards.
They would die.
They would die screaming and in pain and terror, alone and unprotected from her rampage.
None would escape.
The next men and women fared no better than the first did, Raven's fist speared one through the chest, punched into the ribcage, and then, she closed her hands and violently pulled.
Ribs and bone shattered like glass, and viscera flew across the corridors, one of the survivors, one of the slaves, screamed. It didn't matter, the woman dropped, eyes glazed over and broken. Her soul tattered and fleeing her.
Gunshots spattered against her aura, the bullets flattening against her shields and dropping to the floor in scattered pings of metal filing.
Raven's face never shifted, even as Omen cleaved through weak, flickering aura, and cut untrained men and women down in spades.
It should have surprised her that it was so pathetic, it should have surprised her more than her sudden rush of instinct to throw herself to one side, easily sidestepping a crazed spear thrust from another pirate waiting in ambush.
Instead, it only curled a portion of Raven's lips as she bisected the aura-less idiot with barely a thought and returned to thinking of the Branwens.
She would have to be their ultimatum, force them to change their course, and truly guide their way forwards. Legitimacy wouldn't come easily; Too many of the tribe enjoyed the raiding, enjoyed the pillaging, and the crushing of others. She had been one of them.
Had been.
Even these pirates couldn't put up an actual fight. Even these pirates could barely scratch her. Her aura hadn't dipped out of the green, and as Omen flashed, taking another's hand off at the wrist before her fist splattered his skull against the wall, leaving just one pirate behind.
Then… it was over.
The last one dropped into a dead faint, and Raven calmly drew a pistol from the severed limb of one of the pirates, aimed it calmly at the slumped-over, unconscious woman, and pulled the trigger a half dozen times in quick succession.
One to the head, one to the throat, two to the lungs, one to the heart, and one to the stomach.
Then, calmly, she tossed the pistol to one side, the air settling as the violence of the fight ended. The thick stench of iron filled the slave pens, and Raven calmly studied the assemblage of body parts, broken bone, and torn flesh, calmly looking for… ah, there it was.
Her fingers, gloved, dipped into a pool of dark red viscera and pulled a keyring from within, and Raven, after a moment of consideration, began unlocking cells.
No one dared move until she'd finished and turned to leave the hallway. The charnel house she left behind dripped and settled as the ship stopped rocking.
Raven felt the engines shut off under her feet, the fear and anguish she'd inflicted upon the crew could easily have caused panic, which meant one thing.
Her lips narrowed into a tight line.
Grimm.
She turned to the charnel house and spoke quietly.
"All of you, take weapons and move. It is likely the grimm have been attracted to this location. If you are strong enough to survive you will need to be quick."
Her piece said, Raven turned and progressed down another deck.
The CIC of this vessel had been retrofitted to a dorm, and Raven sighed with exasperation. Of course, the useless pirates couldn't even have a proper second bridge. Raven let out a huff of irritation as she turned and progressed back the way she'd come, the bridge would have been secured by now. Defended by the heaviest weapons, and any remaining aura or hunter-trained members of the pirate crew.
She was sick and tired of pirates. Of anything, frankly, first, it had been Tyrian, then the alpha grimm, and at this point? At this point, Raven was four steps from just slaughtering anything and anyone who dared to get into her path.
She laughed, a bit… not exactly like she hadn't done that already.
Anyone who got in her way here, anyone who even tried to justify this flesh trade… they would die and she would be the harbinger of their destruction.
The upper decks were absent of the blood and viscera that coated the lower ones, and as Raven turned a corner, her face ignited in pain and she staggered back from the blast of a shotgun.
What was it with hunters and shotguns…
Oh, right. Boarding actions.
Raven turned a sliver of her head around the corridor, evaluating the positions of the enemy.
Three were behind a much more solid barricade, two with shotguns, and one struggling to load a dust-cooled machine gun.
A corner of her lip curled in disgust.
This would take too long. She had to get back to Cinder before dawn came, and that wouldn't be easy if she couldn't punch through this defensive array.
Raven looked around the corner again, and this time, snapped her head quickly back behind cover as the machine gun operator began firing into the wall.
The heavy, high-velocity bullets, designed to put down grimm with thicker than normal armor, slammed into and then through the thin outer plating of the ship's hull. Raven frowned for a moment, then stepped back and moved away from the corridor. There were other ways of entering the bridge, after all.
The cool night air hit her as she exited onto the deck, and the salt spray of the sea washed the last of the iron scent of blood from her nose. Raven calmly walked to the front of the vessel and then looked up at the bridge house.
Even from here, she could see crew and staff running every which way, most with weapons and firearms bared.
A feral smile curved her teeth.
After the discovery of sea nevermore and sea feeling grimm, and the further discovery that normal glass wasn't strong enough to hold up to the attacks such entities could launch, all ships were retrofitted with reinforced portholes, or, in some cases, those portholes were simply removed.
This vessel hadn't had those retrofits.
So when Raven fired Omen from her sheathe at the glass, she was expecting it to crack the glass, giving her incoming kick a flaw to punch through the glass.
Instead, Omen shattered the window with the force of a clap of thunder, and Raven suddenly had to adjust her trajectory to enter the bridge at speed.
The pirates had been secure in their knowledge that a machine gun could keep her at bay, and they'd been right, but that security gave rise to overconfidence.
Raven's boot met the skull of a bridge crew, and she felt the woman's nose shatter under her feet as the woman dropped bonelessly to the deck, Omen clattering into her grip as Raven stood and surveyed the bridge crew.
Half a dozen, none armed with anything more than standard swords and pistols.
With a smile curving like a predator, Raven noted the doors to the bridge were sealed, and that meant their help, the help that had weapons that could stop her…
Was indisposed.
She flashed forwards, the woman she'd landed on left groaning behind her as Omen and Raven darted at the captain, a potbellied woman wearing a grease-stained uniform.
Her hand impacted directly onto the woman's lower ribs, and Raven felt something crack as her aura-enhanced strike shattered and punched the ribs backwards.
The woman toppled with a scream, and Raven whirled, Omen rising just in time to deflect a strong strike from a young man, close-cropped black hair wound around a pair of spiraling, long horns.
He was physically powerful, more so with aura, and yet… Raven grinned beneath the mask.
He would not be able to stop her, his aura only enhanced him, he'd not had the training to raise a shield at the flick of a thought.
Omen swept low, and as he moved to counter, she stepped into his grip, the hand holding Omen releasing it into a spinning, thrown blade that sang of death.
With both her hands-free and Omen twirling behind her towards the crew, Raven caught the strike and broke the man's arm over her shoulders. Before the scream had even begun to taper off, Raven stepped in, and slammed a palm into the man's nose.
Bone snapped, and then pushed back into the head, and he dropped.
Three down.
No.
She took in the woman Omen had impaled through the stomach.
Four down.
Raven turned as the remaining two, hiding in the back of the consoles of the bridge, looked at her.
One of them, a woman, her face clenched tight with rage and anger, and her motions screaming rage at what Raven had done, tried to raise a pistol towards the air.
Her compatriot, a dusky-skinned Vacuoan woman with a prominent pair of fox ears, seized her arm and forced it lower.
"We surrender."
Raven actually startled as the voice spoke up, fists pounding on the doors that led to the bridge's interior. She moved back to the woman she'd landed on, initially, and noted that she was unconscious. Then, the impaled survivor, gasping over Omen.
Raven wrenched her blade free and, without a second thought, beheaded the woman.
Then, she turned back to the other two women, finding the angry one tightly holding the hand of the other. Their knuckles white, the faint, rust bands that encircled each ring finger identical.
A surge of emotion ran through Raven like she'd been impaled with Omen.
Summer had worn rings like those, silver, but they'd born the images of Tai and her own symbol upon each band. Raven had worn them too, as had Taiyang.
She leveled her blade at each of the women, indicating their comrades.
"I never want to see you again. If I must, assume it will be your final day. Ensure the prisoners and victims of the flesh trade your captain took-" She kicked the woman's unconscious body for emphasis- "reach destined and safe shores. If you do not do this, I will hunt you to the ends of the earth and rip you apart."
Both nodded, and one moved to drag the woman she'd landed on as she entered the bridge behind her.
The angry one was the first to unseal the doors, and Raven heard their conversation, taking it in, absorbing the information that she heard.
"Fight's over. We surrendered. Your contracts are fulfilled."
A hushed male voice, oddly high-pitched.
"Are- you're not serious right?"
The angry woman again.
"Yes. You work for us now, if you want to, or you can take it up with her."
Three people filed into the room, looking at Raven as she calmly used the captain's stained jacket to clean the blood from her blade.
A critical, appraising eye took in each of the people facing her. The first was a young woman, the one holding the machine gun, wings spread from her back, and Raven took in the collar upon her neck, a faint green light pulsing.
The other two, one was a quiet, unassuming young man, with a streak of crimson hair in his otherwise dark coif.
He held a remote on his belt.
The other, a second woman, this one another fox faunus, the bushy, long tail hanging matted and greasy.
Raven's gaze evenly took in the scars on that woman, and the dulled, deadened look in her eyes, and then she stepped forwards.
The young man couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes as she reached out and dragged him close.
"SDC Security. Yes?"
He flinched, but Raven tore the man's coat from him, revealing the long, spiraling tattoo on his arm.
Her disgust was palpable as her tone dropped to arctic.
"And you wonder why the White Fang takes no prisoners from your ranks."
She drew Omen from its sheath, faced him, and spoke quietly.
"You, and your actions, disgust me."
And with that, Raven's eyes ignited with violet flame, and she rose from the ground.
A quick surge of aura to her eyes and she turned to the women.
"Are you strong?"
The question catches the two faunus off guard, the one with the collar moving to speak, then holding her tongue. Her compatriot, speaking in a hollow, raspy voice, scarring on her throat, answers for her.
"Yes."
Raven smirks.
"Prove it."
The game, sadistic as it is, is played up entirely for the benefit of the man in front of her. She knows his kind, she knows the type of who he is.
The two women step forwards, hesitantly, and he speaks.
"Make a move, and your families will die. Harm me in any way, and you will die."
Raven laughs, his sureness, his confidence, so direct, so interesting, and yet, as she laughs and laughs and holds her stomach, the man turns back to face her.
"We know all about the girl you took from Atlas, you hurt any of us, she'll be hunted to the ends of the earth!"
Raven pauses. Eyes narrowed.
"What?"
The man cackled, the desperate laughter of the dead and dying.
"Do you really think that Jacques Schnee wouldn't notice when his dear friend, Madame, lost her life and her youngest child the day that Masque of Mistral, someone famed for her illegal huntress actions, showed up in Mantle!? Do you think he's an idiot!?"
His voice reached a crescendo that had the two faunus women backing away, terror writ on their faces.
"He still employs the death squads."
The man cackled further.
"THE WHITE FANG KILLED HIS WIFE AND NEARLY KILLED HIS CHILDREN! THEY'RE ANIMALS!"
Raven is moving before he can finish before he can continue speaking.
Her blade drives deep into his stomach, punching through his aura and erupting out the back in a fountain of crimson gore. Then, a flick of her fingers shorts the collars and wrist restraints on the faunus.
"You two. Survive. Lead your people in a better manner. Do not kill civilians."
The two faunus women, given a second chance, run for it as Raven turns to the captain of the ship. The woman is staring at her with something resembling grizzled, calm acceptance.
"You going to kill me?"
Raven nods.
"Well, at least you're honest about it. Can you light this?"
She held up a cigarette, bloodstained fingers dripping onto the floor from her shattered nose.
Raven didn't know why she did it, but she chose to hold a hand out, and gently lit the cigarette.
"Fuck… never thought I'd see a real maiden. I thought you were myths."
Raven smiled sadly at that, unstrapping her helmet and placing it under her arms.
"We were supposed to be."
The captain looks to Raven.
"Will I have a better chance next time?"
The next life… if there was one. Raven scowls, and the captain flinches, dragging on her cigarette to calm herself.
"In another life? Perhaps. Who can say there is a "next" for any of us?"
The captain nodded once. Choking as her cigarette fell to the deck, her ribs puncturing her lungs. Raven stepped away, and the woman coughed out once.
"I… I hope you have a better place… for whatever comes next."
Raven lets a bitter smile cross her face before the helmet comes back on, and she steps away from the dying pirate. Her whispered words faded into the quiet of the bridge, only clashed by the running feet on the deck as the slaves and captives abandoned the ship.
"All for her. All for Summer."
Raven turned to the exit, and she started down the stairs, noting the launches of the varying boats and life rafts from the ship. They were not far from the coast of Anima, and it was likely these people would make it, provided they got clear before the charnel house aroused the attention of a leviathan.
Raven had taken the liberty of adjusting the ship's course, leading it away and out into the deep ocean, and she was gladdened to see that all the boats had turned towards the coast of Anima.
Summer would have been proud, a small part of her whispered to Raven as her wings spread and the large corvid took off from the bloodstained decking of the ship.
Raven tried to keep the small embers of flame at that realization from bursting up within her chest. She tried very hard to keep the emotion of pride in an action, an emotion she'd not felt for weeks, from flaring to life.
She failed.
By the time Raven landed back on the deck of the ship she and Cinder had taken berths upon, it was only a few hours to sunrise. The woman stalked back to her quarters, entering via her portals to a very awake, and very upset Cinder.
"Raven!"
The girl was rushing her, again.
Cinder hadn't expected Raven to disappear like she had, and the note, much as Cinder was sure it had been meant to reassure her, only made her more worried. The last time that Raven had vanished, she'd almost been killed by the massive Megoliath grimm! So… when the portal had burst to life and allowed a Raven, covered in blood and holding Omen, to emerge, it immediately resulted in Cinder throwing herself into the arms of the other woman. Who startlingly caught her and let out a few short, harsh barking noises through her mask.
It took a moment for Cinder to realize Raven was laughing softly… her mask distorting the sound as she spoke in that same harsh tone.
"May I take off my mask, little kite?"
Cinder nods, even if she refuses to take her arms off of Raven's midsection. The woman releases Cinder and unstraps her mask, before looking down at her little kite.
"Before you worry, none of this is my blood."
She should have been shocked as Cinder nodded her head, but the desperation in her voice as Cinder makes eye contact with her twinged her heart.
"I know… you're too strong for pirates…"
She'd known? How curious…
"How did you know?"
Raven's tone is gentle but curious, did Cinder watch her leave? Or did she know priorly?
"That girl… the chameleon faunus, no crewmember like that would be on board… especially because Diana would have flirted with them."
Raven raised an eyebrow. Cinder blushed.
"That… and I saw the things she left on the boats' engines… I turned them off, used my semblance, the crew won't ever know!"
The happiness and exuberant nature of her childlike, high-pitched voice broke into Raven's concentration as the tall woman tugged Cinder closer.
"Well done. I did not wish to reveal our presence to the captain to be anything other than an ex-military member and her daughter."
Cinder shot her a look.
"What?"
Cinder rolled her eyes.
"Raven… umm… he already knows you're a huntress… the way you dress isn't… uh, it's not like ex-military."
Surely her clothing couldn't possibly have given that away, she didn't dress like Qrow, for Oum's sake, there was no reason that anyone should have noticed!
"I… what?"
"You… don't dress like civilians, your clothing is all silk or other expensive material, it's not fitting for a military person…"
Raven has to stop and think, and remembers that it was Tai and Summer who'd bought her the silk accouterments and other parts of her outfit…
It was comfortable and light, with aura acting as insulation from temperatures, she could easily wear it anywhere, and it made Anima perfectly temperate for herself.
A minor blush colored her cheeks, as Raven yawned to the world.
"I… am rather tired. Little kite, what say you sleep in, take the day from your training?"
The expression that lit up Cinder's face as mo- Raven told her to take the day off, was radiant, and the girl would have jumped for joy, had it not been the middle of the night, so instead, she raised an eyebrow and Raven nodded once.
"Yes, take the day to yourself, explore the ship, maybe actually speak with that woman… Diana, you said her name was?"
Cinder felt her cheeks light up like someone had set her on fire. This wasn't fair, Raven was cheating! It wasn't fair to bring up the fact that Diana made her stomach turn into flip-flopping knots by smiling or looking at her! But… everything was more or less right with the world, Raven was back, she had tomorrow off from her training, and she could continue to count on Raven to always come through.
She… knew a part of it had to be her promise to Summer, but… Cinder hoped, in some part of her mind, that Raven would do what she was doing because she wanted to have Cinder… it was a traitorous thought, and quickly crushed by the logical part of Cinder's brain that was deeply thankful that she was being trained and prepared to go to a huntress academy.
Raven turned in for the night soon after, rolling the blankets on her bunk over herself, as Cinder stared from under her own covers, reflecting on how far things had come since Madame… since Madame had died…
Why had Madame called Cinder her daughter? She'd never treated her like one, that was for certain. So… why did Cinder still think of that moment, when Madame had stepped in front of Tyrian, when she'd shot at him, when she'd defended Cinder for the first time in her life!?
Why… why had she done so many awful things to Cinder under the guise of punishment? Why did it hurt so much? Why did it hurt even now?
Cinder didn't know when she fell asleep, only that she was sitting in the lobby of the Glass Unicorn and Madame was sitting across from her. Holding a newspaper in one hand and a mug of coffee in the other.
"Why-"
"Why did I call you my daughter?"
Her voice is as imperious, as cold as ever. It's terrifying for Cinder, and she freezes in her tracks as Madame speaks and meets her gaze, her eyes pitch black pits with red pupils.
The eyes of grimm.
"Whyever would I tell you now? Do you think your dreams can save you from my influence? Do you think that I would give you closure now?"
Cinder flinches as every line is delivered with the subtlety of a fox in a chicken coop.
"No, I called you my daughter because I called you my daughter. There is no closure I can provide you. Because you aren't ready to hear it."
Cinder flinched awake, the sun on her face and Raven's quiet, daily motions moving through the cabin she shared with Cinder. She saw the woman divest the silks she slept in, and began strapping armor to her arms and chest as she donned the robe she always wore.
Omen was buckled on, drawn, and Cinder watched with abject fascination as Raven made sure every single dust blade shone and glowed in the morning light. Cinder's own weapon, comparably fragile, didn't dull, and while the girl checked over her arrows, she wouldn't have an excellent opportunity to use such weapons on board the pitching deck of a ship.
She could only hope that their journey would come to a close quickly.
"We will be docking to Argus by midday today. You'll need to pack your things."
Cinder's eyes widen, and she's moving as Raven finishes, shoving clothes and her arrow case into the large bag that she'd stolen from the nearly ruined village. Was it actually stealing? The owner was likely dead… Cinder supposed it didn't matter in the end, it had served her well enough, so she'd continue to use it until it stopped being useful.
By the time she'd been packed, Raven had returned with a pair of bowls of porridge and eggs for the both of them. The food was thick and filling, and the eggs were something she'd missed dearly, but they were within hours from Argus, and the crew no longer had to default to the rations that they would have to use in all other circumstances.
She'd wandered the ship, taking in the sights one last time, watching Diana finish her duties and return to her cabin to pack her bags, it startled Cinder to have realized just now, on the last day of the journey that she hadn't ever known that Diana was continuing onwards past this posting.
She supposed it only made sense, but the sheer shock of that was something she hadn't prepared for.
She would have to do better. She would have to look at everyone, especially those she was interested in, closer.
So… she spent the day stalking Diana, soaking in the knowledge of the woman that she could. She found out that Diana was a lesbian, she found out that she'd fled from Atlas after assaulting a superior officer at their huntsmen academy, she'd found out that it had been the Schnee fund for orphans that had guaranteed her entry to the combat school. She found out that Diana wrote letters to someone back in Atlas, she found out that woman was named Leona, and she found out that those two were dearly in love.
Diana's flirtatious nature was… simply who she was.
As the ship docked, Cinder tried to quash her disappointment, but Raven picked up on it as they walked into Argus.
As they'd reached the hotel, Raven had gently said.
"She wasn't the right one. You'll find such people eventually, little kite. I did, and so will you."
Cinder felt a pang of deep, profound sadness as she caught the bitter smile worn on Raven's face.
She'd loved someone like that, and… she'd lost them.
It was a thought that occupied Cinder's dreams until very late that night, as she lay awake in her bunk.
A/N: It appears I missed last nights post, apologies everyone, have a double post for my apology.
Raven... just doing Raven things.
Enjoy~! Leave comments, criticism, etc~!
