Chapter 25 - Faith, Hope and Charity
Faith, Hope, and Charity
It was night time, although Weiss couldn't see the stars or the moon. She was doubly-enclosed, as were Flash and Blake and Rainbow Dash. All four of them, the four huntsmen who had volunteered to go to the aid of the faunus of Low Town, were sat in Rainbow Dash's custom — and somewhat luridly painted — airship, which itself sat inside the hangar of the Atlesian cruiser Faith, which sailed through the night sky towards Long Isthmus Bay.
No longer was it just the four of them. Of course, it had hardly been just the four of them when they left the lab, joined by Midnight, the virtual intelligence in her suit of armour — or her android body; Weiss wasn't quite sure how to best envisage what Midnight was wearing, what she had become. In any case, it had not been just the four of them even then, and now that they were sat upon an Atlesian man-of-war, waiting to take off … this was not their little adventure any more.
And that was good. They had resources on their side, resources that Rainbow Dash had procured for them with a speed that was quite astonishing, especially for a first-year student. They had resources, and they had a reasonably sound plan, all things considered. Resources, a plan, and a good chance, they had all three, in her opinion.
And yet, Weiss could not help but regret it just a little bit. She could not help but regret that their private little errand of mercy had become so much bigger than them.
Perhaps it was just a degree of dislike for large organisations, after having grown up enmeshed in the very middle of one.
Doesn't bode well for when I take over the company. In any case, my feelings are irrelevant. What matters is saving Mrs. Seacole's granddaughter, and all the other captives.
The four of them may have been swallowed up by the machine of the Atlesian military, but they did at least have the honour of making the critical insertion themselves. They had earned that right, after being the ones to uncover this crime, the only ones to even bother trying to do so, and it would not be taken away from them. Fortunately, nobody had seemed inclined to do so.
Weiss, Blake, and Flash sat in the main compartment of the airship, while Rainbow Dash was in the cockpit with Midnight. As they waited, enclosed with an airship that was itself enclosed within a warship, Weiss couldn't help but eye the big gun stacked against the wall by the door of Rainbow Dash's personal airship. It was the combined machine gun and grenade launcher that the white android they had defeated down in Low Town had been carrying.
Rainbow's exact words as she had picked it up and carried it out the lab had been 'now it's my turn to have the big gun.'
"Is that strictly necessary?" Weiss asked.
Rainbow Dash twisted around in the pilot's seat to look back at her. "Is what necessary?"
Weiss gestured with a nod of her head towards the appropriated gun.
Rainbow grinned. "You know what they say: I'd rather have it and not use it than need it and not have it."
Weiss sighed. "I suppose so."
"And besides," Rainbow went on, "we don't have a big gun otherwise."
Weiss glanced at Blake, wondering if she would be more familiar with Rainbow's apparent affection for large calibre weapons.
Blake, however, frowned. "We've done without in the past."
"No, we didn't," Rainbow said. "Because I'm not just talking about literal big guns — although those can be cool — I'm also talking about…"
"The word you're looking for might be 'metaphor,'" Midnight suggested helpfully.
"Yes, that, the big gun is a metaphor," Rainbow agreed. "You must have noticed that every team has a big gun: maybe they're really strong; maybe they carry a really big gun; sometimes, they're really strong and they carry a big gun, but whichever it is, every team's got one. They're the one that drops the big hits, that takes out the tough guys, that makes the craters when you need them. Some teams … actually, a lot of teams, now that I think about it, even have two of them. My old team had Applejack and Maud. Sapphire has Sunset. Iron has Xiao-Long and Valkyrie. Weiss, your team has Cardin Winchester."
"I don't think Bluebell had anyone like that," Blake murmured. "And I don't think it does now, either."
"No," Rainbow agreed, her voice quiet. "That's … not good. They … yeah, that's not good. They got unlucky. But there's a spot open now, so maybe—"
"You're not suggesting they just replace Sky?" Blake asked.
"Teams are four people for a reason," Rainbow said. "And that team especially can't get by with just three; admittedly, I don't know that Dove Bronzewing guy, but I know Lyra and Bon Bon, and I can tell you, that team cannot get by with just three people."
Blake frowned. "I … I won't say you're wrong, but I will say that it sounds … heartless. Like … forgetting Sky. How would you like it if all of your friends just replaced you?"
"That's different," Rainbow replied sharply. "We're not talking about friends here, or not just friends; we're talking about risking lives out in the field. If I died, then … yeah, sure, I wouldn't want Pinkie or Fluttershy to forget about me — although I wouldn't want them to be upset forever either — but I wouldn't want Applejack or Ciel or you to keep an empty spot open for me forever. I'd want you to find someone else you could rely on to have your back.
"Now that may sound heartless, although I don't think it is, but getting yourself killed because you chose to permanently compromise your team roster, that's just stupid. And I'll tell Bon Bon that myself if I have to; that team needs a heavy hitter."
"I'm still not sure what this has to do with you taking that weapon," Weiss said.
"Because Rosepetal's big gun is Ciel," Rainbow explained. "And Penny, I suppose, or she will be as she gains more experience. But the point is that neither of them are here right now, and you guys … no offence, but none of you really fill that spot if you know what I'm saying. So I'm hoping that thing there will help me make up the difference."
Weiss found that she couldn't be too deeply offended by Rainbow's answer; she felt slightly as though the other girl had impugned her strength, but at the same time, she couldn't deny that she wasn't capable of dealing out the blunt force blows that Dash seemed to be describing. Nobody in their group really was: Flash had a defensive semblance that made him tough in the right conditions but didn't help him offensively; Blake seemed to specialise, like Weiss herself, in a more precise form of attack. So if a stolen cannon made their pilot feel better, who was Weiss to complain?
"Attention all personnel," the voice echoed across the hangar of the Faith, as well as blasting through the speakers in the cockpit. "We are commencing the operation. Hangar doors will open in thirty seconds. Recon units, prepare for take-off."
"This is it," Rainbow said. "It won't be long now."
The plan to rescue the captives was a simple one, but it seemed to Weiss at least to be a plan that was likely to work. It assumed — what was probably a reasonable assumption — that whatever facility was being used to hold the faunus until they were shipped away was not without security, and that security probably consisted of more of those powerful androids adapted from the Merlot Industries designs. That being the case, the operation would unfold in three stages: first, reconnaissance flights to locate the target's precise position, based on the navigational data they had recovered; second, the airship from the Faith would drop AK-200s, supported by the Military Huntsman company and Number Two Paladin Section of the Tenth Battalion, to assault the facility and draw out the android security; third, Weiss and her allies would use the confusion of the battle to infiltrate the facility and rescue the captives. Once they had done that, more airships from the cruisers Hope and Charity, waiting just offshore, would pick them up, at which point the decision would be made whether to press the ground attack or extract the infantry and destroy the facility via bombing from the cruisers, depending on the tactical situation.
Through the cockpit window, Weiss saw the hangar on the airship open; out there, beyond the rows of waiting Skyrays, she could see the stars gleaming in the night sky.
A pair of Skygraspers, slenderer and more sleek than the bulkier Skyrays, took off into the night sky, blotting out the stars for a moment before they disappeared from view on their reconnaissance.
"Won't be long now," Rainbow said.
"Can someone explain one thing to me?" Blake asked. "What is the difference between Military Huntsmen and Specialists?"
Weiss glanced at her. "That sounds like an odd question to ask at this specific moment."
"I know that the troops going in are Military Huntsmen," Blake said. "I'm curious as to what that means."
"It means that they didn't go to Atlas, and so, they didn't get the chance to become Specialists," Rainbow explained. "Atlas graduates who choose to join the military get inducted into the Corps of Specialists, but there are about three or four combat school students for every place at Atlas in any given year. That doesn't always matter, because there are a lot of people like all my friends who don't want to go on to Atlas, or like Flash here who go to Beacon instead, but for those who don't make the cut for Atlas, you can join the regular military, where their training still puts them a cut above recruits from off the street. That's who Military Huntsmen are; each battalion has an elite company of them, and they get the special assignments."
Blake frowned slightly. "So your huntsmen are not actually huntsmen; your real huntsmen are called Specialists?"
Rainbow blinked. "Yeah."
"That sounds unnecessarily confusing," Blake declared.
Weiss' scroll went off.
She glanced down at it, unsure of whether or not she ought to answer or not, given the circumstances.
"The recon flight hasn't even reported in yet," Rainbow pointed out. "You've got time."
Weiss didn't acknowledge the other team leader's words, but she did check to see who it was. The fact that it was Winter calling made up her mind for her, and she answered.
Winter's face appeared in the screen of her scroll. "Good evening, Weiss," she said, her voice calm and even.
Weiss smiled slightly. "Good evening, Winter."
"I just thought I'd call to see how you were doing," Winter declared. She looked slightly to one side, as though she were trying to peer out of the screen. "That looks like an airship. Where are you?"
Weiss frowned. "You don't know?"
"Know that you went down to Low Town to investigate some disappearances and you're now aboard an Atlesian cruiser waiting to assault a possible prison camp?" Winter asked, deadpan. "Yes, I know." She smiled slightly. "But it would have been funnier if you'd tried to deny it."
"I'm not ashamed of what I'm doing," Weiss declared.
"I didn't say you should be, nor will I," Winter replied. "Does Father know where you are?"
"I didn't tell him, although I can't guarantee the silence of Klein or Whitley," Weiss said. "If he doesn't realise I'm not at the manor by now … maybe he won't. It's not as if we have family dinner."
"If he does realise, will you tell him the truth?"
"Do I have a choice?" Weiss asked. "If Klein or Whitley have said anything—"
"Check their stories before you go back, obviously, but even if Father didn't notice you leave, he'll probably notice you returning," Winter said. "Personally … if you get the chance, I'd say that you were out with friends. From what I understand, it's almost true."
"'Out with friends,'" Weiss repeated. "With Myrtenaster?"
"The streets can be dangerous at night," Winter said.
Weiss licked her lips. "Why should I lie about something I'm not ashamed to have done?"
"Because Father might not see it as cause for pride," Winter reminded her. "Best not antagonise him unnecessarily. That's how I see it anyway, but now that you're old enough to go gallivant about rescuing the helpless, I suppose you're old enough to make your own choices in this regard." She paused for a moment. "For what it's worth, whatever you tell Father, whatever he thinks, I'm proud of you, Weiss."
Weiss' eyes widened. "Really?"
"You didn't have to do this," Winter said. "You didn't have to leave the Mansion, you didn't have to agree to help. But you did it anyway, and it was the right thing to do. The huntress thing to do."
Weiss felt her cheeks heating up. "Thank you," she said quietly.
The smile disappeared from Winter's face. "So … you saw Laberna Seacole?"
"Yes," Weiss murmured.
"How was she?"
Weiss considered her response for a moment. "Not in the best way," she said. "She was more than just old; she was tired."
Winter nodded. "Once the Vytal Festival is complete, all our forces will be returning to Atlas. Once I get there, I'll go and see her myself."
"I'm sure she'd appreciate that." Said Weiss. "Whenever she was around, I always felt as though there was nothing more important to her than me, and making me happy."
"I know what you mean," Winter said. "At least that's how it was for me before you and Whitley came along. I was never quite the centre of attention after that."
"That's not quite—"
"No," Winter said. "You're saying that, after all that, she deserves some attention from us in turn."
"Isn't there anything we can do?" Weiss asked.
Winter paused. "Talk to Klein," she suggested. "He might have an idea."
They were interrupted by a male voice, the voice of a pilot ringing out over the comm system. "Faith, this is Grey One; we are approaching the designated coordinates; there's definitely something here."
"Grey One, define 'something,' over."
"A large building, patching you through to my onboard camera now. No lights on, not sure if there's anyone—" The communications from Grey One cut off abruptly.
"Grey One, this is Faith; please respond."
"Faith, this is Grey One; we are taking missile fire from the ground, attempting to evade."
"Grey One, this is Faith; do you have any indication of the strength of the enemy defences?"
"Negative, too busy evading to get a good—"
"Grey One? Grey One, please respond."
"This is Grey Two. Grey One is down; say again, Grey One is down. Requesting weapons free."
"Copy that, Grey Two; engage targets, but remember, there may be civilians in the vicinity."
"Understood, Faith; Grey Two out."
"This is Faith to all assault flights, location confirmed, and LZ is hot. Take off immediately and make sure to come out swinging."
"I think that I'd best leave you to it," Winter said. "Good hunting out there."
"Thank you," Weiss said as Winter hung up.
She folded up her scroll and put it away, her hands moving on instinct as her head and eyes turned to once more look out of the cockpit window of Rainbow's airship, looking out as Skyray after Skyray, the red and green lights blinking on their wingtips, took off, lifting vertically up off the flight deck before soaring outwards into the dark. Four more Skygraspers went with them, each one carrying a bulky Paladin hanging from the slender tail.
"Now it really won't be long," Rainbow said. "Our turn next."
"You want to get her out of there, don't you?" Blake asked.
It took Weiss a moment to realise what Blake was referring to. "Yes," she said. "Is that wrong? Or do you think I should want to get everyone out of there?"
"I want everyone to get out of there," Blake announced. "But if you get just one person, one family, out … that's a good enough start, as far as I'm concerned." She fell momentarily silent. "No matter what anyone says to you, no matter what happens to the Schnee name, no matter what you might be accused of … you came to the aid of a faunus from Low Town when no one else would, and that … that is something that you can be proud of, whether you take pride in it or not. I know that I don't have the right to thank you, but … I'm grateful. If more people were willing to do what you did, the world would be better."
Weiss glanced away, if only to conceal the extent to which she was proud, whether she ought to be or not. "Flash helped too," she pointed out.
Blake nodded. "Thank you both."
"Don't sell yourself short either," Flash said.
Rainbow coughed from the cockpit.
Flash looked around theatrically. "Did you guys hear something?"
Blake smiled slightly. "No. I didn't hear anything at all."
"That is surprising, since Rainbow—"
"They know, Midnight," Rainbow said.
"Who said that?"
"Did you say something just so that you could get in on the joke when I responded to you?"
"I can neither confirm nor deny."
"Insertion team," the comms officer of the Faith addressed them through the handset in the cockpit. "Assault units have begun to land and engage hostiles. You're good to go."
"Copy that, Faith," Rainbow replied. "Insertion team, taking off now." She took a deep breath. "'Up, through snow and cold and heart of winter.'"
Weiss felt the airship rise up off the deck beneath her, the stars outside seeming to move downwards a little as the airship ascended.
"Everyone hold on," Rainbow said. "I'm about to punch it."
Weiss, who had been standing all this time, hastily joined Flash and Blake in sitting down, and not before time as the Skyray leapt forward with astonishing speed, faster than Weiss had expected, faster than an airship like this had any right to go, streaking through the dark night sky, erupting out of the hangar of the Faith like a missile from its battery, surging through the air like a comet.
"How is this going so fast?"
"Didn't I tell you that my friends and I rebuilt this ourselves?" Rainbow asked from the cockpit. "We didn't just stick extra weapons on it; we souped up the engines, too." She let out a wordless whoop of glee as the airship bore them on, galloping through the sky.
At such speeds, it wasn't long before they began to approach Long Isthmus Bay and the location from which those androids had set out to capture and kidnap the faunus of Low Town.
And as they approached, and as Rainbow slowed down enough to permit it, Weiss and Blake and Flash all rose from their seats and crowded into the cockpit to see what they were approaching.
The first thing they saw were the flashes, the flashes of gunfire, the muzzle flashes illuminating the darkness, flaring briefly then disappearing like candles snuffed out. Weiss could see, in those brief moments of light, the Atlesian knights that looked so small and frail when placed against the Merlot androids that loomed over them, and that seemed, at least from up here, to be mowing them down with their guns and their glaives alike.
The Military Huntsmen also seemed small when compared with their opponents, but they at least were not being cut down, at least not so easily. In the points of light their gunfire created, Weiss could see them scurrying across the open tundra, seeking what cover they could, laying down fire upon their enemies. Every so often, there would be the explosion of a grenade or a rocket. The Paladins seemed slow, almost stationary by comparison: like towers of a castle, or rooks in an inverted game of chess where pawns moved faster. The Skyrays turned and wheeled in the air above the fighting, missiles erupting from out of their noses, the rotary cannons mounted on the sides spitting fire. But some of the airships had been brought down, their wrecks still burning, the fire providing more lasting illumination of the battle than the muzzle flashes could. And by those fires, Weiss could see the red androids advancing.
As in Low Town, their green eyes seemed especially bright in the darkness.
"How do you think they're doing?" asked Blake softly.
"They'll be fine," Rainbow assured them all. "These are Atlesian soldiers; no matter how big and tough these androids are, they're still just androids. Our guys can hold them off until we do what we need to do."
Flash pointed out the cockpit window. "I guess that's our target there," he said.
Weiss had to squint a little to work out what he meant; upon the shoreline, there was beached an ancient warship, a great dreadnought, its guns stripped out, its superstructure succumbing to the decay of years. It was half in the water, so perhaps it had been a blockship at one time, or some sort of gunnery target for the other vessels. Scattered around were ruins, the last remains of the old harbour, which the Atlesian troops were using as cover where they could.
And as she looked, as she tried to see what Flash had been pointing at, Weiss saw what he meant, and what Grey One had spotted before it came under fire: a large, square building, looking almost like a warehouse, a single building placed here, out on the coast where there was nothing else but history and ruin, with no lights on and no indication of life — except the fact that it was being defended by the horde of androids that had swarmed out to repel the Atlesian intruders.
There was a crane too, which looked as new as the building, although what it had been built to move, Weiss could not have said.
She wasn't entirely sure she wanted to find out.
As Rainbow guided her airship around the battle, not getting close enough — or low enough — to be detected, circling the fighting before starting to approach the novel installation from behind, she said, "Midnight, take the controls; it's almost time for me to get off. Once we're out, fall back but stay on station. Don't engage; don't draw attention to yourself."
"Nobody lets me have any fun," Midnight grumbled.
"Do you understand what you need to do?" Rainbow demanded.
"Yes, Rainbow Dash."
"Good," Rainbow said as she unbuckled herself from the pilot's seat.
"I hope that everyone remembers their landing strategies," Weiss said.
"Open the doors," Rainbow ordered as they all stepped out of the cockpit. One of the doors on the side of her airship slid open, exposing them to a blast of chill night air. The wind blew in, making Weiss' ponytail dance beside her head.
Rainbow grabbed the big gun, cradling it in her arms. Her wings emerged from the back of her somewhat bulky jetpack; they did not extend out all the way, but rather, hung down beside her, forming a sort of horseshoe shape, almost touching the floor.
They had overflown the structure and were already beginning to leave it — and the battle raging on the other side — behind.
"'Up, through snow and cold and heart of winter,'" Rainbow repeated quietly. She raised her voice to bellow, "Okay, let's go!"
Weiss leapt from the iridescent airship, conjuring a silvery-white glyph beneath her feet that supported her as solidly as the ground. It was just like initiation, really, nothing to it at all: a glyph here, a glyph there, leaping from platform to platform with Myrtenaster in her hand.
Truth to tell, Weiss had always rather enjoyed this, ever since she'd been a little girl. She had used to practice in front of her grandfather, leaping between glyphs about a foot off the ground, daring to go higher; daring, too, for anyone to tell her no or to order her to come back down.
She had loved it then; she could still remember the way that she had laughed for joy as she had — as she had seen it then — flew in the air like a fairy, looking down at the ground that looked so far away to a young girl.
As she descended, leaping downwards, conjuring ever more glyphs to convey her safely from the sky to the earth, she fancied that she could still hear the laughter and encouragement of grandfather, Winter, Klein, and Laberna ringing in her ears.
Not her father, of course. Never Father. But that hadn't seemed to matter then, and it didn't matter now. She could hear them willing her on as she made her descent, her glyphs shining in the night like beacons to guide her, until her feet touched the solid ground. Whether it was new concrete that had been laid by whoever had inherited the Merlot Industries assets and raised this building and this crane, or whether it was left over from the war and this place's past as a naval facility, it didn't really matter; it was hard and solid all the same.
One by one, her comrades on this mission joined her: Flash had infused his shield, Rho Aias, with gravity dust, allowing him to control the rate of his descent; Blake used her grapple to latch on to the side of the looming unlit crane, and from there, leapt from dark metal strut to bar with nimble agility until she reached the ground; Rainbow, of course, had flown down upon her wings, which now were spread out majestically on either side of her. She had been the first to make landfall, beating even Weiss and her glyphs.
Once they were all on the ground, they advanced cautiously towards the building; Weiss, with her only-human eyes, couldn't make out any details, but she could see the silhouette of it looming over her nevertheless, a dark mass that blocked out the stars behind it.
A mass which blocked out all but the largest flashes of the battle raging on the other side of the building. The sounds of gunfire and ordnance provided a backdrop to them as they advanced.
"It's marked," Blake said. "There's that M again."
"You know," Flash said. "We've talked about someone inheriting the assets of Merlot Industries, but … what if it's really just Merlot Industries?"
"The man survives getting devoured by grimm in Mountain Glenn, doesn't resurface for years, and then when he does, he's kidnapping faunus in Atlas?" Weiss asked. "What sense does that make?"
"It makes as much sense as someone splashing someone else's logo all over the place," Flash said.
Nobody had very much to say in response to that, so they continued forward in silence. Blake led the way, being as she was the one who could see the best in darkness, and she brought them to a door larger than a man, large enough for one of the Merlot androids to walk through.
It did not open for them, but remained resolutely shut for all that they were standing hard beside it.
Rainbow, who was wearing a pair of crimson goggles over her eyes, leaned forward a little, the barrel of her gun dropping towards the ground. "I don't see a lock anywhere," she observed.
"If this is a fully automated facility — which certainly seems to be the case — then it's not too surprising," Blake observed. "There's probably some sort of scanning mechanism that allows androids to trigger the door opening when they approach; there'd be no need to give any human or faunus the ability to get the door open."
"I can get it open," Weiss said. "Although it may dampen our element of surprise."
"Without a lock to pick, the only thing I can think of is to see if a grenade from this thing is enough to blast the door down, which I'm sure would kill our element of surprise worse than anything you could come up with," Rainbow said.
"Not to mention that the element of surprise won't mean very much if we're stuck on the wrong side of this door all night," Blake murmured.
"Which is to say: go for it," Rainbow said.
"Very well," Weiss murmured. "Everyone stand well back," she added, as she drew back her right arm so that Myrtenaster was level with the line of her shoulders, its tip extending just past her face, and the slender sword pointing towards the stubborn door.
With a flick of her thumb, Weiss rotated the cylinder of dust until the yellow of lightning dust glowed luminous in the visible chamber. With mere thought itself, she conjured her glyphs.
She might not have been able to deploy the summoning half of the Schnee semblance, but if she said so herself, she was very skilled at using her glyphs. She merely had to think them, and they leapt to her command, five spectral forms appearing behind her, bright white in the darkness, and all of them infused with lightning dust.
You know, if I wished, I could make the argument that I'm something of a big gun myself. Perhaps even bigger than Cardin. After all, he might be much bigger and much stronger than she was, but he couldn't do this, could he?
White laser beams, streaks of pure energy, leapt each from the centre of the glyphs as though they were each a great gun funnelling power out of their barrels. Each beam struck the door at once, blasting it into metal fragments that landed with a clatter upon the inside of the facility said door had guarded.
The four huntsmen waited for a moment, silently, weapons pointed at the open doorway.
There was no response. No hail of bullets issued forth; no android strode through the open entrance to challenge them. There was nothing but darkness, and a silence broken only by the sounds of battle on the other side of the facility.
"I'll take point," Rainbow said softly, moving forwards to take the lead, brushing past Blake as she did so. Blake followed as they moved in, then Weiss, then Flash bringing up the rear.
There was a short corridor just within the door, a corridor with only one direction to move, and so … they moved that way, their brisk footfalls squeaking a little upon the floor beneath them. The corridor was sterile, unadorned, undecorated, the kind of place where only an android would feel welcome.
At the end of the corridor was another door; this one rose automatically as they approached, presenting an opening through which they dashed.
They stopped dead in their tracks when they saw what lay in the room they entered.
The room they were in was a vast, open-plan space; this place had looked almost like a warehouse from the outside, and from within, it resembled a warehouse crossed with a hospital, or a warehouse being used as a hospital in the wake of some great catastrophe that had left all the actual hospitals stretched to breaking point.
Beds filled the space, metallic beds with stiff black cushioned pads for people to lie on. On some — although not all — of those beds lay people, faunus, young faunus men and women taken from Low Town. One and all, they were hooked up to a variety of advanced medical devices, beeping and whirring and recording data, the import of which Weiss did not immediately grasp.
And they were all dead. Not a one of them moved, not a one of them stirred or spoke or groaned. Not one of their chests rose and fell with their breathing. Not a one. Not a single one.
Here was a place devoid of life.
None of them spoke. Not one of the four huntsmen who had set out upon this rescue said a word as they walked further and deeper into the mortuary. There were no words that they could say. Shock had stolen Weiss' words away, and she guessed it was much the same for the others also.
Blake had turned pale — even paler than normal, almost as pale as Weiss herself — and her knuckles turned whiter still as her grip upon her weapon tightened. Rainbow's teeth were bared in a snarl that made her look almost feral, some creature of muscle and violence sprung out of the darkness. Flash looked as though he might be sick.
Weiss felt rather ill herself.
Who would do such a thing? Who could? And even if they could, why would they do it?
How long has this been going on and Atlas did nothing?
What else goes on beneath our noses that we ignore?
"I don't…" Blake murmured, her voice soft with horror. "I don't understand. Why? Why any of this … why is any of this happening?"
"I don't know," Weiss replied, her voice equally soft. "But we—"
She was interrupted by movement on the other side of the cavernous chamber; there was no door, but there was an archway, divided by a set of plastic sheets like an abattoir. Those sheets of plastic curtains moved as a white droid walked in. This was not a combat android, or at least, it didn't look the part; it was only about the size of a man, with a claw on one hand and what looked like a drill where its other hand should have been and a pipe connecting the centre of its face to its chest. Weiss guessed it might be some sort of medical droid, although she had never seen its exact type before.
It did not react to their presence. It might not have even had time to see them before Blake, her golden eyes wide with anguish, shot it four times in the head; it barely had a head left as it crumpled to the ground.
"Did you have to do that?" the voice that slid into the chamber like a serpent was that of an older man, fruity and rich. "Attacking my combat androids is one thing, but those medical droids are rare."
Blake scowled. "Who are you?" she demanded. "Why are you doing this?"
"It is a pity, I know," the disembodied voice said. "Ideally, genetic sequencing would be done before the abduction; sadly, it isn't possible to perform the procedure in the field."
"'Genetic sequencing'?" Blake repeated. "You… you killed all of these people because of their genes?"
"Clever cat, you catch on quickly," the voice said. "The man to your right had a genetic predisposition towards obesity, the woman behind you to anxiety, the man nearest the door to dementia; diabetes, addiction, alcoholism, autism, the latent presence of all of these conditions can be read in the genetic code like a literature professor discerning the meaning of a poem, and such weaknesses have no place in the new world."
"So you kidnapped all of these people … and then you murdered them when their genes weren't perfect?" Weiss demanded.
"Did you know that faunus have a greater genetic diversity than any other species on Remnant?" the voice asked. "Far greater than that found in ordinary humans. And so many latent abilities: night vision, regeneration, flight, superior strength, these are gifts that an ordinary man could only acquire by winning the semblance lottery, and yet, the faunus are born with traits equal to the greatest of spiritual powers and abilities. Small wonder that humans fear and detest them as much as the creatures of grimm; just as pygmies detest great men, so do humans react with angry terror towards that which reminds them of their insignificance."
"So… what?" Rainbow demanded. "You're gonna try and put us all down because you're scared of us?"
The voice laughed. "'Put you down'? Oh my … oh, my dear little filly, you misunderstand completely! Do you suppose that I'm some kind of human supremacist? Do you imagine that I am acting to postpone some sort of great replacement? Do you believe me to be motivated by a sincere concern for the welfare of my people?"
"I kind of assumed you were an evil—"
"Nothing could be further from the truth," the voice cut Rainbow off, leaving Weiss unsure if the man on the other end of the line was denying his racism or his evil. "The truth is, I admire your species greatly; you are truly superior. All I wish to do is harness the genetic advantages that your race is heir to and … combine them … with another superior species which as yet lacks those same advantages."
Weiss frowned. 'Superior species'? What superior species? The first thing suggested by the words was some kind of chimera faunus, blessed with many traits all at once, but that was impossible, wasn't it? And even if, by some miracle of perverted science, you could harness the traits of many living faunus and combine them all in a single person, then so what? It wasn't going to do much to advance the cause of faunus rights for them to look even more like animals — and strange and bizarre animals at that — than they did already. Not to mention the fact one faunus, no matter how many 'advantages' they possessed, wasn't going to turn the tide in favour of the White Fang if they were behind this.
Blake bared her teeth. "Whatever it is you're doing … it ends, now! We're here to stop you."
The voice sighed. "There are times when I wish that someone was able to understand my work, but I see that you're just like all huntsmen: small-minded, self-righteous moralists. I admit, it was clever of you to stage a distraction, but unfortunately for you, a distraction isn't much use once it's been seen through."
Weiss gritted her teeth. "We need to go." She gestured towards the plastic curtains from which the late medical droid had so recently emerged. "Come on, this way."
Flash ran forward, and Rainbow started to follow, only to stop when he saw Blake hesitate. "Blake, come on, let's go."
"We can't just leave them like this," Blake murmured.
Weiss took a step towards her. "I know it's hard, but don't we have to think about those we can still save before those who … those we were too late to rescue?"
"She's right," Rainbow said. "We can't save the dead, Blake; maybe we can avenge them, maybe not, maybe they won't even care, but we can still save the living. That's the best thing we can do right now. That's what we're here for."
"Hey!" Flash yelled, from the other side of the curtains through which he had disappeared. "In here!"
They ran — all three of them, Blake included — and they burst through the plastic barrier one by one to see a second wide, cavernous, warehouse space even larger than the medical ward of death that they had just left behind. Large cranes hung from the ceiling, looking as though they were designed to run on rails back and forth from one side of the chamber to the other. On the left hand side of the room, light-blue shipping containers sat on the backs of self-driving trucks, which Weiss guessed were to carry them to the dock where that large crane would load them onto a ship or airship.
And on the other side of the room were the cages, each one large enough to have held an ursa major if pressed to such a use. The pillars that formed the corners of the cages were blood red, with transparent walls woven through with wire mesh filling the space between them. The cages, unlike the containers, were marked by an M, one even more stylised than those found upon the robots themselves.
And in the cages … in the cages, Weiss could see the faunus they had come here to find, dressed in ragged clothes, eyes wide and fearful. Some pounded on the walls of their cages; others sat at the back, hunched, hugging themselves, their eyes hollow and haunted by despair.
"Prim?" Weiss asked as she stepped forward, hoping that her voice could carry through the transparent walls. "Primrose? Is there a Primrose Seacole here?"
Let her not be dead, Weiss thought. After all her grandmother did for me, all that she did for the Schnee family, I cannot return empty-handed.
I gave my word. I gave her the word of a Schnee, and after everything, after my father, she still trusted that that word meant something.
Such faith should be rewarded, not dashed to nothing.
"Primrose Seacole?" Weiss demanded.
"Y-yes," a young girl raised her hand tremulously. How old she was, Weiss could hardly tell, she had to be older than her sister Lavender, but she seemed … she seemed so very young, perhaps because of how vulnerable she seemed. "I'm Primrose Seacole. Who are you?"
"I'm Weiss Schnee, and I'm here to rescue you," Weiss declared. "Your grandmother and sister sent me."
"Ah, so you have a personal motive," the voice said. "I should have known a Schnee would never act based on anything so base as altruism."
Weiss scowled. "Considering that one of us has imprisoned these people, and the other is here to save them, I don't think you have any right to look down upon my family, Doctor Merlot."
"Ah, so you know who I am," Doctor Merlot replied. "I would congratulate you for working it out, but to be honest, I've hardly been particularly subtle about it, have I?"
"Do you mind telling us how you're not dead?" Rainbow demanded.
"I was spared so that I could serve a higher purpose."
"'A higher purpose'?" Blake yelled. "You call this a higher purpose?"
"I would try and explain," Doctor Merlot went on, "but I doubt that a quartet of feeble intellects like yours, shackled by petty, conventional morality, would be capable of understanding."
Weiss rolled her eyes. "How do we open these cages?"
"I think I have an idea," Flash said. He retreated backwards to a fusebox on the wall near the archway they had just come through. With a single swing of Caliburn, he opened it up, exposing the wires within to the world.
The ring running around Flash's shield, displaying what kind of dust he had equipped at any given moment, began to glow yellow. With a grunt of effort, Flash thrust Rho Aias into the fusebox, and then, once the rim of the shield was touching the exposed wires, activated it.
Lightning rippled across the entire length and breadth of Flash's shield, and after a moment, that flickering of lightning as it discharged was the only thing that Weiss could see as the light shorted out, and the entire warehouse was plunged into darkness.
"The doors are open!" Blake yelled. "Rainbow Dash, give me a hand."
It's a good thing somebody can see in the dark, Weiss thought, as she cast a simple glyph beneath her feet. It glowed pale white, enough for her to see the space immediately around her.
But she didn't need to be able to see in order to hear the clanking sounds out there in the darkness … and she could see the eyes, green and red, illuminating the dark as the androids began to advance upon them.
"Everybody stand clear!" Rainbow yelled as she started firing, the muzzle flashes flickering on her face like a strobe light as the bullets leapt from the enormous barrel of her gun to tear through the Merlot androids.
Weiss could hear the rounds ripping through the armour plate, the metal that had withstood Rainbow's weapons down in Low Town failing to withstand one of their own guns turned against them.
Blake was firing too, possibly the only one amongst them who could see what to shoot at; the flashes of slower-paced shots of Gambol Shroud flickered off her tense, taut face.
Weiss thought she remembered seeing a ladder against the back wall, a ladder leading up to the roof. She couldn't see it now, but she cast a line of glyphs, glowing faintly in the darkness, in the rough direction she thought it was. No, not there, the line of glyphs led only to a patch of wall; she let them fade away and then cast others, angling a little more to the right. There! There it was, the ladder. The ladder that was their way out.
"Everyone, up the ladder, now!" Weiss shouted, attempting the tone of command that came so easily to Winter, the tone that was her birthright as a Schnee. "Flash, lead the way."
Flash did as she bid him. The light of the glyphs glinted like moonlight upon his gilded armour as he crossed the warehouse floor and scrambled up the ladder with surprising speed, considering the armour he was wearing. He must have found a hatch at the top of the ladder, because suddenly, moonlight fell into the lightless warehouse, casting a spotlight upon the floor around the ladder.
Flash disappeared out of the hatch, but less than a moment later, Weiss could see his hands once again as he gestured for the others to follow. By the light of her glyphs, Weiss could see the faunus, released from their cages, climbing the ladder as quickly as they could. Flash reached out to help them.
A grenade fired from Rainbow's launcher briefly illuminated an android being blown to smithereens. Another grenade set part of the building on fire.
"Get out!" Rainbow yelled. An android fired a grenade back at her, but Rainbow reached out and batted it back with the flat of her hand as though she were playing dodgeball. "Weiss, go first; Blake and I will follow." She turned to fire another burst from her cannon.
Weiss might have protested if it weren't for the fact that Rainbow was making perfect sense at this point. It was more rational for the people who could see to stay.
But on the other hand, even if she couldn't see too well, that didn't mean she had to be useless.
She rotated the dust cylinder in Myrtenaster to blue ice dust and rammed the blade point-first down into the floor.
An ice barrier erupted from the floor to the ceiling, bisecting the room neatly in half, with the Merlot androids trapped on one side and the huntresses upon the other.
Weiss could already hear the androids hacking away at the ice, trying to break through. No doubt they would do it soon, but at least it meant that they could escape in a slightly less panicked scramble than would otherwise have been the case.
The three of them made it up onto the roof to see the captives from Low Town huddled together upon the edge, pressed together for safety, some of them clinging to one another as they looked from the hatch to their rescuers to the ground; it might not be a great height to a huntress-in-training, but for someone without aura, it probably looked high enough.
Rainbow Dash, the last one up, slammed the hatch shut behind her before tapping the earpiece she was wearing. "Hope, this is Infiltration Team, we have the captives and need an immediate pick-up."
"Copy that, Infiltration, Hope and Charity have wings out and inbound. We've got you covered."
Already, Weiss could see their lights, closer and brighter than the stars, as the cruisers and their accompanying airships closed upon their position.
The wind rose upon the roof as the air began to hum with the sound of their engines; at this moment, it sounded as sweet as music.
The hatch out of which they had climbed shattered as a red android began to rise out of it, only to have its head blown clean off by the fire of a Skygrasper's rotary autocannon as the plane began to hover overhead.
More airships were dropping knights, either on the rooftop with them or down below to cover the retreat of the Military Huntsmen, while other airships, empty Skyrays with their doors open, descended to take the faunus onboard.
"Did … did Grandma really send you?" Primrose asked, looking into Weiss's eyes with hope afresh.
"Yes," Weiss said, her side-mounted ponytail whipping around her. "Yes, she really did. She sent me, I came, and now I'm going to take you home."
