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SAPR: Interlude 2 - Vale

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Chapter 42 - My Fair Emerald
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    • My Fair Emerald​


    Cinder prowled up and down in the library of Portchester Manor.

    It was something that she had taken to doing a lot of: prowling. She had become a champion prowler these past nights. If you wanted a great prowler, then look no further than Cinder Fall.

    It was not something she was proud of.

    She was aware that it was bad form, bad leadership; she shouldn't be showing her impatience in front of Emerald or Lightning, certainly not in front of Sonata Dusk. She ought to have been still and calm, and affected to have no problems at all and thereby convince them that everything was going according to plan.

    Still and calm were becoming harder for her. She feared that, in time, those concepts would become as foreign to her as sleep. There was a hunger in her that would not let her rest. It desired action, movement, purpose. It was not content to sit still, to wait, to watch. And it was becoming harder to control.

    And so Cinder prowled the library, pacing up and down, roaming the bookshelves, growling and scowling and making it incredibly clear to any and all observers that things were not going as she wished.

    They were not going at all. Cinder could not be still and patient, but it seemed that Tempest Shadow, Doctor Watts' superior agent, could be. She was so still and so patient that she had not yet found her way to Portchester Manor to chaperone Sonata into Vale. The siren was stuck in this house because there was no one to hold her leash and get her past the Red Line.

    Cinder could not sit still, no longer could she stand idly by, and yet, all her plans were now sitting idly by on her behalf, on hold, put on pause, in limbo while she was forced to wait for this Tempest Shadow to deign to show herself.

    It was intolerable. It was unbearable.

    It was unavoidable, and it was driving her into a fury.

    Who was Tempest Shadow to behave thus? To tarry thus? To treat Cinder thus? Did she not suspect Cinder's place? Did she not suspect the importance Salem attached to the successful completion of this mission? Had Doctor Watts not made it clear to her of what great import her new duties were and how much hung upon them?

    Of course he had: that was almost certainly why he had advised Tempest Shadow to dawdle about getting to work. If he did not want Cinder to fail, then he certainly wanted her … well, he wanted her to be this angry, to feel the mounting impatience that grew greater every day she looked out of the window and saw no sign of Tempest Shadow.

    He had put Tempest up to this that he might rile her by proxy, and done so moreover smug in the knowledge that she could not touch him or his protege.

    Because, after all, she was out of other options. No matter how much Tempest might infuriate Cinder by her tardiness there was nothing that Cinder could do because she needed Tempest.

    And so she was left to prowl, to pace, to growl inwardly and scowl outwardly and fret and wait with ever mounting impatience and how long would he try her patience so?

    One word from her to Salem would be the end of the matter. Cinder knew that she had only to tell Salem that Doctor Watts was obstructing the mission, and Tempest Shadow would be at her door first thing the next morning, and Doctor Watts would carry a reminder not to put his pleasures before Salem's purpose ever again.

    But if Cinder did that, she would have lost the battle of wills that was going on between them. She would have lost because she had proved unable to handle things herself but had to cry to mommy about it.

    And so she waited, much though it chafed at her to do so.

    It did not help matters that she was otherwise bored stiff.

    If she had possessed something, anything else to focus on, then things would have been different. She would have been able to focus on that and leave Sonata for the moment.

    But she did not. All her plans now hinged upon Sonata, and without her, they were all left standing at the start line, waiting for the race to begin.

    It was getting to the point where Cinder was considering picking a fight with Ironwood's Atlesian specialists just to give herself something to do.

    Plus, it would allow her to avenge her earlier defeat at their hands.

    Plus, it would give her someone on whom to visit the rage she could not take out on Tempest Shadow.

    Plus, it might be fun.

    There were many advantages to it for a bored mind and a restless spirit.

    It was a terrible idea, in many respects, and yet, Cinder had found that her mind, starved of stimulation, had planned out already how she would do it: she would remove herself from this house and choose a place of battle of her own choosing where Sonata would not be put at risk; then she would call Pyrrha and tip her off as to Cinder's new location, with an implication that she was looking for a rematch with Mistral's champion. Pyrrha, being a good girl, would alert the proper authorities to this — and even if she was tempted to accept Cinder's challenge herself, Cinder was fairly confident that Sunset and Jaune would talk her out of it — and General Ironwood's men would descend upon her from out of the skies.

    And quite possibly best her, just as they had before.

    The fact that Cinder was aware that it was a bad idea and yet was so bored she could not stop it growing in her mind was indicative of her situation.

    She needed to find something to occupy herself, something with less attendant risk than battle against those who had already beaten her once — she would be revenged, have no doubt, but only once her plans were moving forward in other directions.

    She needed something to do.

    There was a knock at the open library door.

    Cinder whirled around to face the doorway and saw Emerald standing there, head bowed.

    "Well?" Cinder demanded.

    "No sign of anyone," Emerald murmured, still not looking up.

    Cinder fought back the urge to scream and throw things. She kept her voice soft and as sharp as one of her obsidian blades. "I see. Very well." She turned away from Emerald. "You may go."

    "Of course," Emerald murmured. "I'm sorry, Cinder."

    "Wait!" Cinder called, her voice to forestall Emerald's going because she had it now. She knew what she could do, into what she could pour her energies, with what she could occupy herself and so distract herself that, when Tempest Shadow eventually arrived, she would not find Cinder even slightly vexed.

    And it would be … a nice thing. A kindly thing. The kind of thing that, if it were not lordly, was nonetheless kinder than the conduct of some lords.

    "Cinder?" Emerald asked.

    "Close the door," Cinder commanded her.

    "Why?"

    "Because this will be for us, not for Lightning Dust or Sonata," Cinder declared. "If they need us, they will have to knock. Shut the door."

    This time Emerald obeyed Cinder's command; Cinder heard the door swing shut and close with a click of the latch.

    Cinder turned around and gestured to a patch of floor in front of her. "Come here."

    Emerald approached, confusion in her red eyes. "Is ... did I do something wrong because whatever it was I—"

    "Stop," Cinder said, silencing Emerald with a word. "I did not bid you shut the door to muffle the sounds of your pain. You have done nothing wrong. You have done nought but seek to serve me well and do my bidding as I instructed you. And yet I in my turn have used you poorly."

    Cinder paused for a moment. "The fact is, as you possess the manners of a peasant, I have found it easy to use you so and to dismiss you so. I have forgotten that, as I am your mistress, as I am responsible for you, it is my duty not to dismiss you but to uplift your manners to the standards of your betters."

    Emerald frowned. "I … can I level with you for a second?"

    "If you wish."

    "I kind of feel as though I've been insulted, but I don't understand enough of what you just said to say for sure."

    Cinder let out a bark of laughter. "My speech will seem less strange to you when we are done," she said. "But put plainly: Emerald Sustrai, I intend to make you a lady."

    Emerald blinked. "Can you … can you do that?"

    "I should hope so; I taught myself once upon a time," Cinder replied. "Like you, I was denied the opportunities offered to the likes of Pyrrha Nikos. Unlike you, I could read—"

    "I can read," Emerald pointed out mildly.

    "But did you have access to books growing up?" Cinder asked. "Were you culturally acclimated to understand which were the Great Books, the ones truly worth reading, the ones that would teach you everything you needed to know of how to live?"

    "No," Emerald answered softly. "Why are you doing this?"

    Cinder had no desire to confess her boredom, and so she answered with a question of her own: "Emerald, what do you think will happen when all this is over?"

    "I don't understand," Emerald replied.

    "When the battle is done," Cinder clarified. "When my task is complete for which I recruited you, what will you do?"

    "I … I thought … I hoped … I want to stay with you, Cinder," Emerald said softly, her lower lip trembling.

    "And why would you wish that?" Cinder asked. "I have done nought to earn your love or loyalty."

    "Nothing but seek me out and ask my help," Emerald confirmed. "You … I've always been alone. I took what I needed to survive because no one ever gave me anything. You are the first person in the whole world to tell me that you needed me, so please, please, Cinder, let me stay by your side; even when this mission is completed, there will be other—"

    "'Other battles'?" Cinder asked, cutting her off.

    She felt … she felt as though Emerald had stolen Midnight and stabbed her through the gut with it. Truly, was there anything more pitiable and unfortunate than misplaced devotion? Cinder might have been forced to labour at her stepmother's command, but she had never been under the illusion that she was valued for her labour.

    "Yes," she went on, "there will be other battles; there will be wars to come; after the Emerald Tower shall fall … the others, in what order my mistress shall decree."

    It irked her somewhat that she was not privy enough to Salem's plans to name the next target, but that was something to brood on later.

    "But to what end shall you stay with me?" Cinder asked. "What shall befall you if you stay by my side? Battles and wars and ranged against us such diverse several powers, any one of which, alone, might cause a gallant heart to tremble: Ironwood, Theodore, the noble lady Terri-Belle and all the blades of Mistral yet beside, hot-foot for vengeance for their princess slain. Four kingdoms and the power of Atlas stand opposed to us, and what are we to challenge them? Cunning and craft, hot tempers, knees that will not bend to do submission, are these such things to conquer realms and shatter armies? Perhaps," she allowed, turning away from Emerald for a moment. "Or perhaps not. But make no mistake, Emerald, I am the underdog, and if you fight with me too long … either you shall die, or I shall, and what then?"

    She walked to the window, where sunlight streamed into the library, illuminating the dusty, leather-bound volumes where they sat upon the shelves, making the faded gold lettering gleam a little.

    Cinder leaned upon the windowsill. "If you should die … well, then you will be dead, to speak plain, and dead is … dust. I will have no need of you in a grave, and nor will any other. And if I die—"

    "You won't die," Emerald declared. "You're too—"

    "Did you not hear me list the powers that are opposed to us?" Cinder demanded, rounding on her. "Do you not recall the champions most skilled and valiant which Ozpin may put on the field against us: vaunted Pyrrha Nikos, beloved Pyrrha Nikos, all the more vexing for being as she is my equal Pyrrha Nikos; and Sunset, who has great power and little honour to restrain it? My death is like as not, and yet … and yet, I fear it not, for ere I die, I'll do such things as will be the dread of kingdoms. Though I perish, they will speak for years and generations yet to come of what I did, and who I killed and ate up what I killed, and frighten little children prompt to bed with chiding them that Cinder Fall shall come to punish them their disobedience.

    "But what of you, Emerald? What will you do when I am fallen, since you chose to stay by my side? I will give you means to live so that, when we part, me to my further wars, you may part to more than the thief you were when I found you."

    "Live," Emerald murmured. "Live … where?"

    Cinder turned to look at her. "I don't know, where you like," she said tartly. "Mistral, Vale—"

    "There's still going to be a Vale?"

    "I'm not planning to kill everyone!" Cinder declared. "What would be the point of that? Who would be left to tell my story, to remember me with fear and curses, to recall that once I lived and strove and battled against all the world?" She chuckled. "There will be a Vale, and you may live in it, or anywhere else you choose. Save, please, I beg of you, do not choose Vacuo, or all my work will be for nought.

    "I will teach you how to move amongst the highest in the land, to speak as they do, move as they do, to blend in amongst them as though you are born to it."

    "I still won't have the money that they do," Emerald murmured.

    Cinder smiled. "Let me worry about that," she said. "So what say you? Would you like to be my equal?"

    Emerald's eyes widened. "Yes!" she yelped, her voice rising. "I'd like that a lot. But…"

    Cinder cocked her head to one side like a curious beast. "'But'?"

    "Why me?" Emerald asked. "Why only me, and not Lightning Dust?"

    "Lightning Dust is a brute beast, fit only to bear burdens and obey commands. She could not comprehend what I am about to teach, even if she had the willingness to do so. Man is born to follow and to adore, and Lightning Dust is a prime example of that, but you … you, I think, have the potential to be an object of worship, not a worshipper. You have it in you to be graceful; you have the wit to assume culture and a cultivated air. You are worth my time. Or do you so desire Lightning's company?"

    "Not at all," Emerald said at once.

    "Good," Cinder said. "Good." Her eyes fell upon the armband that Emerald wore upon her left arm, three rings of cold grey iron clasped about her dusky skin. "I gave that to you, didn't I?"

    "Yeah," Emerald said, a smile appearing on her lips. "Yeah, you did."

    Cinder nodded. "I'm going to ask you to give it back to me."

    "What?" Emerald gasped. "But why?"

    "Because I was too glib in the bestowing of it," Cinder answered, "cheapening its worth to you and to myself, giving too little thought to its meaning."

    "'Meaning'?" Emerald repeated.

    Cinder raised one eyebrow. "Does that not prove the point?" she asked. "I did not even trouble to explain to you what it was that I bestowed. Truly, I have been a poor mistress to you, and for that, I … you have my regret."

    That was a more elegant way of saying it, and her opinion on the subject had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she could not bear to say sorry.

    "You could explain now," Emerald suggested.

    That was fair enough, so Cinder said, "Amongst Mistralians of a certain rank or deference to tradition, an honour band is bestowed upon a young warrior once they have completed their training or otherwise proven themselves worthy to be regarded as a warrior and a peer."

    "Bestowed by who?" Emerald asked. She paused for a moment. "I see that … you aren't wearing one."

    "No," Cinder replied, in a voice that was almost but not quite a growl. "To answer your question, it can be variously bestowed: a parent, a master, a commander. I never had anyone to bestow one upon me."

    "Couldn't you just start wearing one?"

    "That is not the point," Cinder declared. "The worth of the thing is not in the possession but in … but in who granted it, and the esteem they demonstrated by the bestowing. The honour in the name is that of the bestower as much or more as they who wear it. It marks a bond, connecting they who gave and they who received. To simply start wearing a band around my arm would be meaningless. But, once we are done. I will give you a more worthy band, and you will choose some words to have engraved within it, and in this way. I shall mark you as my equal."

    Emerald's eyes widened. "'Your' … I could never be your equal."

    "Not in power, perhaps, but in courtesy and grace and nimbleness of tongue. I see no reason why not," Cinder said. "If your tongue can be but as nimble as your fingers you will sing prettily yet."

    "I … if you say so," Emerald said. "So … where do we start?"

    XxXxX​

    Lightning Dust frowned. "She said that? She said that about me?"

    Sonata nodded. "I'm afraid so. I heard it myself. She hadn't even closed the door to say it."

    Lightning was silent for a few moments. She rested her fists, knuckles down, upon the table. "'A brute beast'?"

    Sonata nodded again. "Uh huh. I'm really sorry to have to tell you, but my sisters always used to say it was better to get hard truths than comforting lies. And believe me, they told me a lot of hard truths."

    Lightning didn't reply. She didn't reply to anything for a few seconds. "Pretentious bitch," she growled.

    "I'm really sorry!"

    "Not you!" Lightning snapped, making Sonata cringe at her volume.

    "Oh, you mean Cinder," Sonata said. "You know, just between you and me, I don't think she's very nice."

    "I knew she didn't like me," Lightning said. "I didn't think she liked anyone, except maybe Sunset Shimmer—"

    "Who?"

    "One of our enemies."

    Sonata tilted her head ninety degrees. "Why is one of our enemies the only person she likes?"

    "Hell if I know," Lightning replied. "All I know is, whatever they've got going on between them makes them both weak."

    "Does that worry you?" Sonata asked.

    Lightning frowned. "A little bit," she said, her voice gruff. "She might be content to die gloriously, but that's not what I signed up for."

    "Well, now you've got me a little worried."

    "You're the one who told me what Cinder had been saying," Lightning pointed out.

    "I was hoping you'd offer me some reassurance!"

    Lightning let out a scoffing, snorting sound. "Sorry."

    Sonata bowed her head. "I don't want to die," she whimpered.

    Lightning felt a strong desire to stick her arm around Sonata's shoulders. She didn't, because she wasn't into all that mushy stuff, but she did say, "You're not going to die. You're going to be fine. Just stick with me; I'll see you right."

    Sonata looked up at her. "Really?"

    "I didn't get involved with this so I could die gloriously and become some little brat's nightmare," Lightning declared. "I'm here for power, the only thing that matters. The power that lets you do without being done to. Let Cinder and Emerald have their little lah-de-dah lessons, and we'll take care of ourselves."

    Sonata leaned forwards. "How?"

    "Like I told you, Cinder's weak," Lightning said. "Now, she might think that I'm a moron, but I've worked out what's going on. I've worked out why you've been stuck here all this time."

    "You know, I was kind of wondering about that," Sonata admitted. "I thought maybe Cinder was trying to build hype for my big debut."

    Lightning shook her head. "That's not it," she said. "You see, Cinder works for someone, I don't know who, but that someone has other people working for them besides Cinder, and that other person has people working for them like we work for Cinder, and Cinder is waiting for one of those people to come and help her out. You know what that means?"

    "Everyone is working too hard, and we need a team outing?" Sonata suggested.

    "No, no, that's not it," Lightning said.

    "Aww," Sonata moaned. "We could have gone bowling."

    "We'd be better off going to an escape room and locking Cinder inside," Lightning muttered. "But my point is that we don't have to be stuck working for Cinder; we've got options."

    "Oh!" Sonata cooed appreciatively. "You mean we could get ourselves a new manager!"

    "Exactly," Lightning said. "And all we have to do is wait for their guy to finally show up."

    XxXxX​

    And so, as more days passed, Cinder threw herself into the education of Emerald Sustrai.

    She found that she was quite distracted from the ongoing absence of Tempest Shadow because, much to her surprise, she found that she was enjoying herself.

    She had not expected to do so. She had not expected anything but something to while away the tedium while Doctor Watts continued to frustrate her. But no, as it turned out, there was something … Cinder did not entirely know how to describe it. She did not have the word upon the tip of her tongue, although no doubt, she would find one if she searched for long enough.

    Emerald was much like herself in some respects; that was not something that Cinder had appreciated before now. They were not alike in temperament, in any way, and that dissimilarity had disguised to Cinder's eyes the ways in which they were the same. Emerald had not been to a noble or even to a bourgeois family; she had not had so far to fall as Cinder had. And yet, she, too, had been reduced to nothing, cast out, forced to survive on her wits and on her strength. She had not Cinder's vaulting ambition, nor her wrath, but, well, if everyone could be Cinder Fall, then to be Cinder Fall would be nothing extraordinary, and that would never do.

    The fact was that they were as alike as they were different, and for Cinder to have the opportunity to do for Emerald what no one had volunteered to do for her, to teach Emerald what she had had to learn for herself … it touched her humour.

    The world did not desire such as they, but they could learn to play its games regardless.

    And then there was the sense of rightness that accompanied. Ever since … ever since she had fled from Beacon, ever since Sunset had seen her truth and past, Cinder had felt … there was an itching in her back, something … she could not explain it. There was a beowolf inside her, she knew that; she felt it growl and prowl and thirst for blood. But she also felt of late as though there was something else inside of her as well. A lord inside? A better angel of her nature? Something else that had no name or defied easy categorisation? Regardless, it pushed her to do better. It didn't push her to turn away from her plans for glory — for which she was very grateful — but it did push her to be nicer to Emerald, to reward her service, to care for her servant. There was an extent to which it pushed her to use Lightning Dust better also, but it seemed that whatever was inside of her was something of a snob.

    This was the only way she could think to repay the debt of Emerald's loyalty. She had no lands to give, no wealth to offer, and what power lay in their grasp could not be shared. But she could give Emerald the means to be more than a thief, to perform as though she belonged in the glittering world with the likes of Phoebe and Pyrrha.

    That was all it was: performance. A wonderful performance at times, a stunning performance with elaborate costumes and grand sets, but a performance nonetheless. Speak in just such a way, walk in such a way, comprehend our cultural signifiers at the surface level, bandy quotations about, be able to recite our values, even if you don't live up to them.

    And Cinder considered herself to be a very good performer.

    And there was one final reason, the most unexpected of reasons why Cinder found herself taking pleasure in the instruction of Emerald: it was … pleasing to watch her progress. It was like watching a flower bloom before the sun. It was watching someone come into themselves and knowing that you had played some part in it.

    It was something she could point to and say 'I did that.' Nothing else that she had done lately had yielded up that same sense of concrete accomplishment.

    It was pleasant. It did not yield the same exultant satisfaction as, say, the death of an enemy, the glee like fire or scorching heat, but nevertheless, it was pleasing in a soft and gentle way, like a cool breeze on a summer's day.

    Or the memory of such, from when she could still feel the breeze.

    They began with stance and posture. Emerald moved like a thief, with a furtive, slinking gait and a slight hunch to her stance, as though she were preparing to duck at any moment. Cinder had her stand up straight, keep her chin up, to look down on people instead of bowing her head. Elocution followed, not words — they would come through reading, through exposure to them, but how to pronounce, how to enunciate, how to avoid clipping the edges of her words, how to affect the proper accent. How to say that the rain in Vacuo fell mainly … nowhere, since it was a desert, but Emerald could say that it fell mainly on the plain in such an accent that people would take her word for it.

    Emerald concentrated, and it was a testament to her native wit that she picked up swiftly what Cinder sought to teach her, but Cinder could tell that she was at the same time a little bemused by it. When they got onto table manners, Emerald dared to give voice to her concerns.

    "Cinder," she murmured, "I appreciate what you're doing—"

    "And I appreciate that you are choosing your words with care," Cinder replied, smiling. She was sat at a little table she had moved into the library from the parlour, with a porcelain tea set — empty — spread out before her. Cinder had gone rooting around in the Manor to find it, discovering a great deal of smashed crockery before she did. "However," she went on, "it's quite unnecessary."

    "Really?" Emerald asked.

    Cinder's eyebrow rose. "Speak your mind," she commanded.

    Emerald swallowed. "It's just that … some of this stuff … seems kind of pointless."

    Cinder's hand clenched into a fist beneath the table. She took a deep breath, seeking to control her irritation; she had invited Emerald to speak freely, after all, and a display of anger would be a poor way to begin the lesson. Besides, it wasn't her fault: the fashion of the world trended that way and encouraged such thoughts and opinions.

    And it wasn't as though she didn't have a point.

    Cinder picked up one of the china cups, extending her pinkie finger outwards. The gold around the rim was gone, and so was most of the pattern around the sides. Cinder probably hadn't helped matters when she washed them; she detested washing dishes and had not taken the proper care she might have done.

    She gathered her thoughts. "You are … not wrong," she conceded. "However, I have … three reasons why I do thus, three reasons why this is, in my opinion, worthwhile.

    "You may say that class, in these times, is less important than money. Depending on which kingdom you choose to live in, you may be close to right. But money, unless one possesses a nigh-unlimited supply of it like Jacques Schnee, will not put one above suspicion. Suspicion, apart from anything else, as to where you got the money, particularly if you appear by manners and bearing to be unworthy of it, to have acquired it through illicit means. People will ask questions, people will investigate … but I have seen first-hand the way that the right accent, the right manners, can put one above all suspicion of wrongdoing. Convince them to accept you as a gentlewoman, Emerald, and the police will bow to you, defer to you, call you 'my lady,' and apologise for any inconvenience done to you. And behind closed doors, you may be as wicked as you please."

    And the Kommeni had certainly known how to be wicked; the only lesson they had ever taught to Cinder.

    "That ties into the second reason," she went on, "which is that, although it is true that these things have no real material value or benefit to them, nevertheless, they are important signifiers. Tell me, Emerald, why does Beacon Academy have leadership classes? Sit down; you look so awkward standing there like that."

    Emerald sat, a slight frown crinkling her forehead. "Because Ozpin thinks that leadership can be taught?"

    "Because Ozpin knows that leadership is performative," Cinder explained. "Though there is such a thing as innate leadership, most of those who choose to present themselves as such are not born leaders but, rather, those who have mastered the signifiers that we associate with leadership: the appearance of courage, the appearance of confidence. It is all put on.

    "And so it is here. We are told that the world is moving in a more egalitarian direction, that we are all becoming more equal; leaving aside to what extent that is desirable, the fact is that it is not so. We are judged yet for how we seem, you know that well enough, no?"

    Emerald nodded. "Well enough."

    "And how we seem gives us the right to judge," Cinder said. "You will be amazed at how many people will consent to be looked down upon by one who fits their image of a social superior."

    "I never did," Emerald pointed out.

    Cinder smiled. "You are not most people," she replied. "And hence, you are worthy to join the elite. Again, mere possession of wealth will only carry you so far; certainly, it will not shield you against the sneers and snobbery which trail a parvenu. To be immune from sneers, you must act like they who sneer, and thus, you will also gain the right to sneer at others."

    Emerald was silent for a moment. "And the third reason?"

    "Hmm?"

    "You said there were three reasons," Emerald reminded her.

    "Ah, yes, of course," Cinder murmured. "Three reasons." She put down the teacup. "Humour me," she said.

    "Cinder?"

    Cinder said nothing for a moment. "There are times," she said, "when I hate these things."

    "Manners?"

    "The things that they are taken to signify," Cinder said. "Worth, chiefly; importance, acceptability. Do you recall I temporarily took leave of you to go to Mistral?"

    Emerald nodded. "You met Sunset for the first time," she muttered.

    "Indeed," Cinder agreed, a faint smile crossing her face at the memory. "I wore a gown of black, with white feathers in my hair; I almost looked like a grimm." She paused. "I wished that I could set a grimm amongst all those proud and indolent lords and turn their pretensions to blood and horror." Her whole body shuddered with that same desire, the beowolf inside awake now, prowling, growling within her. She bought her will to bear upon it, forcing it back to sleep, or at least back into its cage.

    "I don't understand," Emerald said, "then why—?"

    "Because I also remember my parents having afternoon tea on the veranda, with the view out to sea spread out before them," Cinder murmured.

    Emerald blinked. "You … you've never talked about your family."

    "Nor will I," Cinder said, "except to say that genteel manners … can be gentle. They may be of no practical import, they may cover up a host of misdeeds and abuses, they may be a paper facade that would prove worthless when the barbarity of the outside world intrudes, but at the same time … the fact that we can be something more than barbarians, that we consider one another to be worth more than coarseness and ill grace might be said to be something worth celebrating.

    "Take," Cinder continued, "take Pyrrha, for instance." Little as she desired to take Pyrrha anywhere but an early grave, she was a good illustration of Cinder's point. "Take Jaune. Which do you think Pyrrha would prefer: that he touch her gently and speak her sweetly and kiss her softly and all things gallant and courteous besides, and at every step, inquire as to her comfort, or that he snarl and snap and rail at her and strike her and seize her body as by entitlement and use her to his pleasure and not hers?"

    "The first one, obviously."

    "Indeed, the second would leave her weeping," Cinder said. "For that which we use roughly, we esteem cheaply and show how little value we do place upon it. But that which we hold dear and precious, we treat with care and gentleness."

    Emerald stared at her for a moment with a wide-eyed look of wondrous amazement on her face, though what cause she had to look amazed, Cinder could hardly say.

    "I'm ready for the lesson now," she said.

    Manners, then. How to sit, how to hold a cup, which knife and fork when many knives and forks were present, which wine to order with which meal — don't order red wine with fish; it will give you away immediately. A lot of this, it was true, was covered in Atlesian etiquette classes, but Cinder was not certain that Emerald had been paying much attention in those classes; there was no harm in giving her … a refresher, at the very least.

    Cinder herself … she had rather enjoyed those, and had been getting very good marks before she had been forced to flee from Beacon; as she had confessed to Emerald, it had reminded her of home, of her mother before she died, of the fellow officers of the Argus station who had called upon her and father at their home, who had dined with them. When she had been a very young girl, who ought to have gone to bed by the time the dinner parties got into swing, Cinder had been used to sit halfway up the stairs, arms wrapped around the bannisters, listening to the conversation in the dining room. She had not understood half, or more than half, of what was being said, but it had been pleasant to sit there nonetheless, to listen to the hubbub flowing around her and try to comprehend what words she could.

    She could still remember their names: Major Croft, Captain Wentworth, Lieutenant Benwick, Lieutenant Harville. She remembered the way that they had brought her presents, doted on her. They had seemed so decent then, so noble.

    She remembered the way that they had all disappeared after her mother died, all those decent, courteous, honourable officers. Not all at once; there had been visits at first, but these had been perfunctory things, etiquette and courtesy masking a fundamental disinterest: 'are you in health', that sort of thing. And then they had stopped coming altogether. They had abandoned Cinder to the mercy of the Kommeni.

    That was the problem with manners, of course; it didn't mean you actually gave a damn. It just enabled you to hide the fact that you didn't care with nice words and proper behaviour.

    It was all … a bit of a lie, really. But lies could make the world a better place, from time to time, and lies would allow Emerald to prosper in her future, and so, Cinder shook off her … mixed feelings and continued the lesson.

    And after that … after that, it was literature, to which Cinder had, she would confess, been looking forward.

    It was fortunate that they were having these lessons in the library, and it was fortunate that the library of Portchester was well stocked with the classics, because it meant that Cinder could, when the time was right, simply pluck The Mistraliad from the shelf and hold it lightly in one hand.

    "There are books that are called Great Books," Cinder said, "and we shall cover a few of those in summary—"

    "Why are they called 'Great Books'?" Emerald asked.

    "Because some professor at a university decided that they were," Cinder answered. "Although, lest that should sound too cynical, I should add that those which are considered great are, in my opinion, rather good."

    While Phoebe had gone to Atlas to train in arms, Philonoe, her other stepsister, had wished to attend the University of Mistral and study Greats, otherwise known as literae humaniores, a mixture of ancient literature, languages, and history. Cinder had burned her alive before she got the chance, but before that, she had borrowed a great many of Philonoe's books and read them by torchlight while the rest of the family was asleep. She had quite enjoyed some of them.

    None, though, meant so very much to her as the book that she held in her hand. "This book, Emerald, this book is, in my opinion and in the opinion of other learned fellows, ancient and modern, the greatest of the great. When you read a text, and the author refers to simply 'the poet' — as the poet sang, as the poet teaches us, in the words of the poet, that sort of thing — they are always referring to Demodocus, who set down The Mistraliad, the song of arms and the man, many generations ago."

    "I've never read it," Emerald murmured.

    "I didn't expect that you had," Cinder replied. "But you have the chance now, seeing as we are not otherwise overburdened with work, and I … I really do recommend it to you, for every conceivable reason. This book is … this book is the foundation of Mistralian culture, it is the wellspring of all the values of that kingdom, even if they are values which are only pretended to. If you wish to pass for a lady, then you must at least be able to perform a familiarity with this book; everyone has read it, it will seem bizarre if you have not, so you must acquire at least a passing familiarity with the principal characters, the notable scenes, a few of the more quotable lines of dialogue. More than that, it…" She paused for a moment. "This book, this tale, could be completely unknown," Cinder declared. "It could have been forgotten, lost save for a single copy which had fallen into my hands, it could be the case that you could read it and no one would understand what you were talking about, and still, I would urge you to read it regardless, because … because it is tremendous. There is a reason it has not been forgotten, there is a reason that a kingdom and a culture have been built upon it, and that reason is that it speaks powerfully to what it means to be … to be human."

    Again, Cinder paused, wondering if she had forfeited her claim upon this tale of humanity in her pursuit of … no, since she was in pursuit of all those things that animated the heroes of the tale, how could she lose her claim upon the tale by the means by which she pursued them?

    "There is a tale," Cinder went on, "that during the Great War, as General Colton and his Valish army were sailing from Sanus to Mistral, the general called upon an island lying between the two continents to consult with the famous philosopher Stessichus, and that all the wisdom Stessichus gave him was contained within the pages of The Mistraliad, for the wisdom of the poet is timeless."

    "Did General Colton pay attention?" Emerald asked.

    "No, he mocked Stessichus for not having any new thoughts in his head." Cinder said. "And so he was defeated in his campaign by Ares Claudandus; serves him right, the uncultured swine."

    Again, she took pause, weighing the book in her hand. "Emerald," she murmured. "You and I … you and I are … we are not so different as I once believed. Both … alone, forced to fend for ourselves, forced to teach ourselves how to survive in the midst of a world that did not want us. The difference between us is that … is that I had this book, I had the great Pyrrha to inspire me, the cunning Diomedes to mentor me, the noble Juturna to steel my heart. They made me what I am, in my faults, but in my glories too."

    Emerald hesitated for a moment. "Is that … is that the story with the giant badger?"

    "It was actually a giant rabbit, but no," Cinder said. "Eventually, yes, as the legends go, Diomedes did construct a giant rabbit in which the warriors hid, so that when the Mistralians opened the gates to receive it, their enemies poured out and sacked the city, but that comes later; in fact, it comes in the Solitasis, now mostly lost to us save for fragments and summary. Everyone confuses The Mistraliad with all the other legends around the war — the kidnapping of the princess, the rabbit, and so on and so forth — but it is not. It is a much tighter work, more focussed, and yet, in its focus, universal."

    "Then what is it about?" asked Emerald.

    "The wrath of Pyrrha," Cinder said. "Yes, she was named after the hero; in fact, she is her descendant, and yes, I find that fact incredibly infuriating. Not least for the way that all of Mistral hangs upon her star, her Evenstar and praises her as though she were her namesake reborn, and yet, they are nothing alike. Pyrrha, the great Pyrrha, the Pyrrha that lives within these pages, that taught me and moulded me and spoke to me, she is … she is wild, chaotic, driven by an overriding, one might say overreaching, passion. Does that sound at all like that red-haired milksop back at Beacon?"

    "Not really," Emerald murmured.

    "No," Cinder said. "No, it does not. And yet, she is the Evenstar, she is the pride and glory of Mistral reborn, she is … she is everything, and everything wrong with what Mistral has become, the decay of … people know this story, but they do not understand it, or rather, they do not wish to understand it; everything has become softened, has had its hard edges smoothed away; everything has become acceptable for the consumption of children and tourists. And so, the pride of Mistral, the model of our virtue, is this soft, mild, shy, beauty of a girl who looks good on cereal boxes and would never say or do anything untoward while I…"

    "Cinder?"

    "I am the true Evenstar of Mistral," Cinder declared. "All that is embodied in these heroes, I embody also: all their pride, all their vanity, all their overreach, it lives in me as it never could in Pyrrha Nikos, for all that she be descended from a line of heroes, princes, and emperors."

    Emerald was silent for a moment. She squirmed in her seat as though she had piles. "Is … is that a good thing, though?"

    Cinder blinked. "I … what do you mean?"

    "I mean … it doesn't sound all that great," Emerald said, speaking very quietly, as though she hoped that Cinder wouldn't actually hear her. "None of those things … they're not actually good things. I mean, they don't sound good."

    Cinder frowned. "Do they not?"

    "Pride, vanity, overreach," Emerald repeated. "Not really."

    "No?" Cinder asked. "Without pride, how will we retain ourselves? Without ambition, for what will we be remembered? We live in a society that is eager to grind us down, you know this as well as I do; we are … we are nothing. What is Cinder Fall, what is Emerald Sustrai, what are we worth, to the rich and the powerful? What are we for, but to be used for their purposes and then discarded? We are nothing to them; we are nothing to the world. None will regard us unless we regard ourselves; we must hold our heads up high, we must believe that we are worth more than they believe, for no one else will believe it on our behalf. We must reach for more than they think us capable of. And you know this, Emerald; you may not like the words, but you know this, or why did I find you robbing high-end jewellery stores?"

    "You could get good money for some of those things."

    "At a high risk," Cinder pointed out.

    "Yeah," Emerald conceded. "But the risk is worth it."

    "Tell me that you did not think that you should be wearing some of the fine things you stole," Cinder demanded, folding her arms — though she still held onto the book. "Tell me that did not enter into your consideration at all."

    Emerald hesitated. She squirmed in place. She looked away. "I did sometimes think … why not me? Why them? And when I would trick the jeweller, use my semblance to make him see a lady or a bride to be and her fiancée, I would think … why not me?"

    Cinder nodded approvingly. "It shall be you," she declared. "One day. I give you my word. That is why I chose you, Emerald, not for your semblance or your skill; I could find a hundred thieves with sticky fingers, I could find semblances of as much use as yours or greater, but I chose you because I saw your pride and your ambition; then, you may have wished to deny it even to yourself. It shall be yours. All that you desire."

    "But not yours?" Emerald asked. "Why are you doing this, Cinder?"

    "This … what?"

    "All of this," Emerald declared. "This war, this fight, these plans … you said it yourself: you're the underdog, you're up against so much, it … it almost sounded like you didn't expect to win. It sounded … you sounded as if you were going to your death."

    Cinder was silent for a moment. "In The Mistraliad," she said, "when Pyrrha forsakes the battle, her dear friend — and more than friend, it is widely believed — Camilla leads out their forces in her stead, and in the fighting, she is killed by Juturna, the princess and champion of Mistral. Pyrrha flies into a rage, a rage made deeper by guilt; she hates Juturna, but more than that, she hates herself for having not been there when Camilla needed her the most, for being the cause of Camilla's death. And so, Pyrrha makes a bargain with her mother, a goddess: the gods will grant Pyrrha vengeance, she will strike down Juturna … but her own death will follow hard upon. That is what the gods offer Pyrrha, and she accepts, without a second thought.

    "Earlier that morning, as the Mistralian troops assemble at the gate, Juturna's husband begs her not to lead the army out personally. He begs her to command from the walls, to take pity on him, to think of what would become of their family in her absence. Juturna, though she is not unmindful, refuses, for all that — or perhaps because — the day will come when Mistral must fall, the slaughter of Polyperchon and his people. She must go, you see, as Pyrrha must, as Sarpedon and Glauce must, they must go."

    "But why must you?" Emerald demanded. "Why do you have to fight, although you've just described the odds against you? Atlas, Mistral, Sunset and Pyrrha and General Ironwood and all his men, you're going to send me away because the battles to come will be too dangerous, but you plan to let those same battles consume you until there's nothing left? What are you even fighting for?"

    "What am I fighting for?" Cinder repeated. "I…"

    She trailed off. It was not a question so easily answered. She could not say, as Juturna had, that she fought for her home, her father, her people, her city. It was Pyrrha's answer then. In some ways, she too had made a bargain with a god, although Salem perhaps did not understand the nature of the bargain that they had struck. Salem … Salem planned to win this war, with Cinder as her instrument. Cinder herself … Cinder would win this battle for Vale, and strike down Pyrrha Nikos, and then…

    She would do all that she could, fight as hard as she could, strive with all her might and all the power that she could attain, but she was under no illusions. She might try to bring down the world, but she would not succeed. Nor, to be perfectly honest, would she wish to do so. For a hero, after all, the end of the story was as important as anything else, and 'and then she won everything and went home content' was not much of a heroic ending.

    And that was without mentioning the fact that she had no home to go back to.

    Everything but my pride was taken from me, and nothing was given in return but a rage that only bloody vengeance can begin to sate. And so, I will fight for those things because I have nothing else to fight for.

    Certainly, I have nothing else to live for.

    "What is there but the fight?" Cinder asked. She raised her hand and let flames spark at her fingertips. "I have a fire in me, Emerald; I must let it burn brightly, though it burn me out and consume me until only ashes remain. What have I else?"

    "That's not true," Emerald declared. "You could—"

    There was a knock on the door.

    "What?" Cinder demanded.

    "My name is Tempest Shadow," came a voice from the other side of the door. "I believe you've been expecting me."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 43 - Powder Keg
  • Threadmarks
    • Powder Keg​


    Cinder kept her face composed. She did not want to show her emotions in front of Emerald, especially not now that they were approaching a greater degree of equality, and so, she kept her expression calm, emotionless, inscrutable.

    Inside, she could feel the fire stirring to life anew. Inside, she could feel the beowolf start to growl.

    She clasped her hands together behind her back, so that nobody could see them clench into fists.

    "Come in," she said, keeping her tone even and neutral.

    The door into the library opened, and the girl who had identified herself from without as Tempest Shadow walked in.

    Cinder recognised her, vaguely; she was an Atlas student, part of Team … Tsunami, yes, Team Tsunami, the one with the loudmouth for a leader. Cinder could remember them, but that did not translate to memories of Tempest Shadow, although from that, Cinder took the fact that she, unlike her notional leader, was not a loudmouth.

    What she was was tall, as tall as Pyrrha — and thus, annoyingly, taller than Cinder herself — and seeming taller still by the Mohawk in which she wore her rose-coloured hair, which rose like the crest of a helmet and added almost an extra foot to her not inconsiderable height. A black bodysuit, skintight but with everything that might have been revealed covered up by additional armour-like pads of semi-solid looking plastic, embraced her entire body from the neck down, although she was wearing a pair of black boots with dark purple toecaps upon her feet also.

    Her eyes were opal and marred upon the right side of her face by a scar that descended down from her temple, crossing the eye and continuing down her cheek.

    She had a weapon slung across her back, although being slung across her back as it was, what the weapon might be exactly, Cinder could not yet tell.

    So, this was Doctor Watts' better agent. Cinder could already see why he might have wanted to keep her to himself. Between Tempest and Sweetie Drops, there was no doubt in Cinder's mind that Tempest was the favourite.

    That much was clear to her from the way that Tempest stood, mirroring Cinder's stance with her hands clasped behind her back, her face as expressionless and as impossible to read as Cinder was endeavouring to make her own.

    She was not afraid of Cinder, or if she was, then she was determined not to show it. She didn't want to let Watts down by showing fear in the presence of his rival.

    It was intolerable. To waltz in here, after so long, after so much delay, and then to offer not a single word of apology or excuse, not to explain, not to do anything, just to stand there as though nothing was wrong.

    Cinder might have been willing to accept an apology, if delivered with the right amount of fawning, but this? She was supposed to bear this?

    Cinder took a deep breath. "Emerald, would you mind leaving the room?" she asked, showing more courtesy than she had in the past reserved for Emerald, now that they were closer in social status; besides, it would send all the wrong messages if she taught Emerald how to speak and act and carry herself in such a way as to win the respect of others and then went on showing her no respect herself. "I fear I am about to do something unladylike."

    Emerald got up from her seat. "I … of course, Cinder." She started to make her way towards the door.

    "Back straight," Cinder whispered, because she could see from her stance that Emerald was tempted to assume the slinking gait that came so naturally to her.

    She could understand why; this was a situation that seemed to invite slinking and smallness and moving in such a way as not to be noticed, but once you started down that road … no. You held your head up high no matter the circumstances, and damned all who tried to bring you down. That was the only way. That was what it meant to still have your pride.

    Emerald glanced at her, and a brief smile flitted across her lips, and she walked towards the door with her back straight and her chin up and damn Tempest Shadow.

    "Oh, Emerald," Cinder called to her, when she had almost reached the door. "Would you kindly fetch Sonata Dusk, bring her here, and wait with her outside until our business is concluded? Tempest will be out to take charge of her soon enough."

    Emerald hesitated for a moment, and then she curtsied, even though she was hardly dressed for the gesture, crossing her left leg behind her right and spreading her arms out slightly on either side of her. "Of course, Cinder," she said, "as you wish."

    The corner of Cinder's lip curled upwards in the slightest smile. Good girl.

    Emerald turned, ignoring Tempest Shadow completely — as she should; one should never pay any visible attention to the help until one had need of their services, which was not, of course, to say that one shouldn't keep a discrete eye on what they were up to, just that you should never, ever make it obvious that was what you were doing — as she walked out through the doorway.

    She shut the door behind her, leaving Cinder and Tempest alone in the library.

    Tempest glanced at the closed door. "Was I interrupting something?" She smirked. "I can come back later, if that's more convenient."

    Oh, you think you're terribly witty, don't you? Cinder thought. She glanced down at The Mistraliad in her hand. Diomedes had known how to deal with wags and wits.

    "Sit still and wait for orders from your betters, you who are worthless, counting for nothing in battle or debate."

    She carefully put the book back on the shelf, since it seemed that the literature lesson had been postponed for just a little while.

    "So," she said softly, "you are Tempest Shadow."

    "Yes," Tempest replied.

    "Nice of you to finally show yourself," Cinder remarked.

    Tempest snorted. "I was busy."

    Cinder wondered if Tempest had any idea just how badly she wanted to roast the other girl alive. Nevertheless, she forced herself to face Watts' agent and chuckle.

    She had no idea whether it was at all convincing or whether it sounded as false as it felt, but nevertheless, she chuckled. She chuckled as she strode across the library, bearing down on Tempest Shadow.

    She advanced upon her, until practically no distance at all remained.

    Tempest Shadow looked down on her.

    She looked down on Cinder Fall.

    It was the final insult, slight upon slight piled upon Cinder's head, and now, she looked down upon her.

    It was not to be borne.

    Cinder's face contorted into a snarl of rage as she swept Tempest's legs out from under her with a swift kick. Tempest Shadow was broad of shoulder, and with firm legs besides, but Cinder had caught her by surprise, and her legs went flying out from under her as she fell sideways with a startled gasp, hitting the wooden library floor with a thump.

    Cinder kicked her while she was down, driving her slipper-clad foot into Tempest's gut, before kneeling on the floor and grabbing Watts' prized pet by the throat.

    "Just who," she snarled, "do you think you are?"

    Anger flared in Tempest's opal eyes, warming them somewhat as, with one hand, she reached up and grabbed Cinder's forearm, trying to wrench her away from Tempest's throat.

    Cinder offered a grin that was something of a grimace. "Nice to see some honest emotion out of you," she said, as with her own free hand, she grabbed Tempest's hand and, with her semblance, began to apply a little bit of heat to it.

    Tempest didn't react; she kept on trying to pull Cinder's hand away from her neck. She didn't appear to notice that her arm was getting steadily warmer and warmer.

    Strange, unless…

    Cinder cocked her head to one side. "Did you lose the arm in the service of Atlas, or of Doctor Watts?"

    Tempest's eyes widened. "H— what are you doing?"

    "This," Cinder said, and began to apply her semblance to her other hand instead, to the one that was holding Tempest by the neck.

    Tempest winced and began to squirm and writhe in Cinder's grasp, trying to shake free of the heat that was becoming increasingly unbearable.

    "I don't know whether Arthur put you up to this, or whether it was your clever idea," Cinder snarled, "but let me make one thing very clear to you: you are not Arthur Watts, and you are not my equal. I have not affection for your master, nor he for me: he thinks me too erratic, too arrogant, too … unpredictable." She chuckled. "He might even be right. And so he snipes at me and makes mock of me, and since we are equals, I must bear his insults and put all thoughts of vengeance or retribution from my mind. You, on the other hand, are not my equal. You may be Doctor Watts' favoured servant, but you are a servant nevertheless. You are a servant, and right now, you are serving me. Do not play games with me again, do I make myself clear?"

    Tempest nodded. There was anger in her eyes, hate even; Cinder cared not. Let Tempest hate her all she liked, it was of no import.

    Cinder released her, rising to her feet and ostentatiously turning her back upon the other girl. "I have been chosen to carry this operation forward," she declared. "Without me, this enterprise, so crucial to our cause, cannot succeed. Remember that."

    Tempest rose to her feet, clutching at her neck with one hand, not the one that Cinder was fairly sure was artificial. "It seems," she said, "as though you can't succeed without me either."

    "You believed that, and yet you dallied?" Cinder asked, without confirming whether or not it was true. "Some might question your dedication."

    Tempest was silent for a moment. "What is it you would have me do?"

    "Outside that door there is a Siren," Cinder said. "She is … an otherworldly creature, although she may not seem so by her manners or behaviour. You will escort her into Vale, and there, she will sing."

    She had no idea if Watts had briefed Tempest Shadow on all of this already or not, but there was no harm in going over it all again; it eliminated the possibility that Watts had given Tempest the wrong instructions to trip up Cinder and make her look foolish.

    "'Sing'?" Tempest asked.

    Cinder turned to face her. "Her voice has magic in it; she can control people, spread negative emotions."

    "Ah," Tempest murmured. "That explains it."

    Cinder didn't ask her to clarify what she thought had just been explained. "I need her to spread negative emotions throughout Vale; this will require more than one trip, I know, so you will find yourself busy. You will escort her into Vale, let her give her performances, and then bring her back here. In addition to that, I will give you the names of men in Vale I wish you to contact on my behalf."

    "What kind of men?" asked Tempest.

    Cinder debated not telling Tempest, leaving her ignorant, informing her that she had no need to know that particular detail; however, if matters proved to be more complicated than simply going to certain addresses — if, for example, contact was lost between them for whatever reason — then it might be as well that Tempest had sufficient information to operate independently. After all, Cinder had to admit that one of the reasons that Sweetie Drops had been so useless to her was that Cinder had attempted to micromanage her from a distance, doling out very little information and only bare instructions that Sweetie, without context, had failed to properly execute.

    It might be better to give Tempest Shadow a little more to go on.

    "Grimm cultists," Cinder said. "Black Shepherds, in the main, sect leaders; I need them to come here so that I may give them their instructions."

    Her plan — which she was not about to reveal to Tempest in its entirety — was two-pronged. First, she would use Sonata's power to spread strife and discord amongst the defenders of Vale; since she could not cripple the Atlesian power with a computer virus, she would spread a virus through the hearts of men. Vale already resented Atlas for saving them from the Breach; it would only require a little sweet siren song to enflame that resentment into something more dangerous.

    The second part of her plan involved using the deluded worshippers of the grimm and of their mistress to carry out acts of sabotage against the defences of Vale when the moment of decision came. She would plunge all of Vale into a state of chaos.

    And as the confusion reigned, she would take the crown for Salem and the magic for herself, and then … and then, she would seize the CCT and let the world know that it was she, Cinder Fall, who had brought these great powers to their knees.

    Then she would kill Pyrrha while the cameras were rolling.

    Admittedly, she hadn't quite thought through the logistics of getting Pyrrha alone for their last fight yet — it would be something of a challenge to separate her from her teammates, let alone anyone else — but she would think of something before the moment came.

    Maybe she'll come running to stop me when she finds out that I'm at the tower.

    No, Sunset would never let her do that by herself, even if she was so foolish.

    Never mind; the answer will come to me.

    In any case, that was only the last part of a plan that was otherwise fully developed. She had sewn the seeds with the Breach, giving the Atlesians a moment of glory which the Valish would seethe and stew at; now, Sonata would plough the ground for her.

    And then it would be a simple matter of waiting for the appropriate harvest time.

    "I see," Tempest said softly. "On the other side of that door?"

    "Or will be, soon enough," Cinder replied.

    Tempest snorted. "I've never met an otherworldly magical creature before. You won't mind if I get started right away?"

    Oh, now you want to get started. "By all means," Cinder said, gesturing towards the door.

    Tempest walked to the door and opened it.

    "Hey there! I hear that somebody is my brand new escort!" Sonata cried. "Hey, can we get something to eat when we're in the big city, because I am staaaarving!"

    Tempest looked at Cinder in disbelief.

    "As I said," Cinder reminded her, "'despite her appearance and behaviour.'"

    XxXxX​

    "Oh my gosh this is so amazing!" Sonata yelled through her mouthful of food. "What did you say this was called again?"

    "It's called a taco," Tempest said slowly. "And they're not really that great."

    "'Not that great,' have you tried these?" Sonata asked. She had the rest of her taco clutched in one hand, wrapped in silver foil. "You wanna try it?" She waved the half-eaten taco in Tempest's face.

    Tempest leaned away. "Thanks … I'll pass."

    "Suit yourself," Sonata said. "More for me, I guess." She swallowed and immediately took another bite. As she chewed, she seemed for the first time to notice the looks that she was getting from the populace as she and Tempest walked down the Vale street. "Why is everybody looking at us?"

    "Not us: you," Tempest said. "They're looking at you because you're dressed like the heartwarming orphan in a musical theatre production. Speaking of which…"

    "Shopping first, then singing," Sonata said cheerfully. "Like you just said, I need to change out of this outfit."

    "Sure," Tempest said. "Just remember that this is my money you're spending before you go too crazy."

    Sonata nodded as she swallowed her next bite of taco. "So, how long have you been working with Cinder?"

    "I don't work for Cinder," Tempest said firmly, rounding on Sonata, who came to a hurried halt, almost — but not quite — dropping her taco in the process. "I work for Doctor Watts. I … he has temporarily placed me at Cinder's disposal, but I do not work for her."

    "Oh, yeah, sure, that's a big difference," Sonata agreed, nodding eagerly. She took another bite out of her taco and tried to speak with her mouth full, to incomprehensible results.

    Tempest's eyebrows rose. "You want to try repeating that?"

    Sonata swallowed. "Sorry. I was just saying, I think you're pretty lucky; not everyone who works for Cinder seems to like it very much."

    "Really?" Tempest murmured. That was interesting to know, if true, but she wasn't sure that she would trust Sonata to tell her that the sky was blue at this point, the way that she was acting. "Emerald didn't seem to have an issue with her; in fact, they seemed quite close, the way that they were carrying on together."

    "Yeah, they're tight," Sonata agreed. "But Lightning Dust … she's not a happy camper, if you know what I mean. I don't think she's feeling very appreciated."

    "Is that a fact?" Tempest said softly. When she returned with Sonata to the manor, she would have to find an excuse to talk with Lightning Dust, find out if there was any truth to what Sonata was saying.

    "It is!" Sonata insisted. "Cinder was talking about her behind her back to Emerald; it was really mean."

    "Seriously?" Tempest demanded. "Talking about her behind her— how old are they?"

    She sighed. No wonder Doctor Watts had nothing but contempt for Cinder. Still, anything that she could use would do; if she could strip Cinder of all her subordinates, it would make supplanting her so much easier.

    Perhaps Sonata wasn't as foolish as she looked.

    "Don't answer that," Tempest added, before Sonata could respond. "Anyway, we should—"

    "Tempest?"

    Tempest rolled her eyes. "Oh God, it would be her, wouldn't it?"

    "Tempest?" The voice that assailed the ears of Tempest Shadow was aristocratic, refined, and thoroughly detestable to… Tempest supposed that there was someone to whom that voice was not thoroughly detestable, but for the life of her, she couldn't imagine who that somebody might be.

    The voice belonged to Phoebe Kommenos, leader of Team PSTL, and she was making her way down the street towards Tempest and Sonata. She was dressed in a provocative red summer dress that, much as it pained Tempest to admit, flattered her figure exactly as much as she seemed to think it did, with her bright golden hair hanging in artful, almost regal-seeming ringlets all around her head. Golden bangles gleamed in the sunlight upon both her arms, and her eyes were concealed behind a pair of designer sunglasses. Her teammate Mal Sapphire, a goat faunus with a pair of horns growing out of her forehead, followed in the footsteps, her arms heavily laden down with shopping bags that Tempest already knew belonged to Phoebe, not Mal.

    A gaggle of other Atlas students, all girls, followed in Phoebe's wake. Tempest could only assume that they got something out of her company, because she couldn't imagine that anyone would choose to willingly associate with Phoebe Kommenos unless there was some advantage in it.

    Or perhaps, given by the way that their hair was all exquisitely arranged, their faces made up, and their clothes all of the very finest quality, they were all just as awful as Phoebe herself. Birds of a feather and all that.

    For herself, it had been many years since Tempest had seen the point of friends. In this world, you could only rely on yourself, ultimately; when the crunch came, everyone else would abandon you, even those you thought loved you the most.

    Phoebe might learn that lesson herself, in time.

    Tempest kind of hoped she would.

    "Tempest," Phoebe declared again, condescension rolling off the name. "So it is you." She smirked. "I thought I recognised your grim countenance and dour dress."

    "And I recognised you," Tempest said, "using your teammate as a pack mule."

    Phoebe laughed. "Well, you know how it is, one needs to keep one's hands free just in case, and really, what else are the little beasts good for, after all?"

    Her human companions giggled appreciatively, as though she had just said something terribly witty. Phoebe herself smiled as though she had reason to be pleased with herself as her gaze slid from Tempest to Sonata.

    "And who is this?" Phoebe asked. "I don't think I've seen you before, and I think I would have remembered somebody dressed so unfashionably. Tempest, are you volunteering with the homeless now?" She laughed again and, once again, was joined by her fawning hangers-on. "But that gem looks like it might be worth something." She leaned forwards to affix Sonata with a glare. "Now where did someone like you get something like that? Did you steal it?" She reached out one lithe-fingered hand to it, as though she had half a mind to steal it herself. "It obviously doesn't belong to a little—"

    Sonata's hand intercepted Phoebe's before it had gotten half-way, closing around her wrist with a strength that made Phoebe Kommenos cry out in pain. Tempest tensed, Phoebe's cronies gasped in shock, Mal made a squeaking sound of alarm.

    This could be very bad, Tempest thought. She didn't want to fight all of these students — her fellow students, supposedly — but of course she couldn't allow Sonata to come to any harm. Cinder or no, Doctor Watts had impressed on her how crucial the siren was to the best plan that they had right now.

    Tempest would just have to defend her and hope to wriggle free of any consequence.

    And if not, then she would have to take the consequences for the sake of the mission.

    For the sake of the mission and Doctor Watts.

    Tempest steeled herself for the outbreak of violence … and then Sonata began to sing.

    It was hard for Tempest to focus on the individual words; it felt … it felt as though there was a kind of fog coming down on her mind, inhibiting her concentration, clouding her thoughts. She couldn't hear the words; although she knew that there were words, it was as though … it was as though they weren't really meant for her somehow. She felt anger rousing inside of her, but it was like she wasn't meant to feel that angry, and so … so, she didn't. She felt angry, but nothing compared to the fury that she could see boiling on the face of Phoebe Kommenos.

    "P-Pyrrha," Phoebe growled through gritted teeth. "Going … get her…"

    Sonata crooned softly, and as she sang, she released Phoebe's hand and began to circle around her, stroking the Atlesian team leader on her shoulders and her neck, leaning in to practically whisper in her ear.

    Around Tempest, she could see other people in the street starting to argue with one another, muttering angrily and one or two even shouting at one another. She could see Phoebe's acolytes turn on each other, accusations thrown this way and that, petty things but seemingly no less heartfelt for all that.

    The gem around Sonata's neck seemed brighter than it had done a moment ago.

    Sonata ceased her song and stood behind Phoebe with a bright smile on her face.

    Phoebe growled at the empty air, Tempest and Sonata seemingly forgotten. "Come on, girls!" she said, turning away. "Mal! Don't just stand there like a moron; get moving!" She stalked off down the street, and her companions followed in her wake, still muttering amongst one another, shooting dirty glares at one another as they trailed after Phoebe.

    In whatever state they left, they left.

    Tempest was left alone with Sonata.

    "So," Tempest said. "That's your power, huh?"

    "Yep!" Sonata chirruped. "You don't mind, do you? She wasn't a friend of yours, was she?"

    "Hardly," Tempest muttered. "What was it you did, precisely?"

    Sonata shrugged. "She was a pretty angry person; I just made it boil up a little bit. What's that about, anyway? Why is she so angry?"

    Tempest smirked. "You ever heard of the Invincible Girl, Pyrrha Nikos?"

    "I think Cinder might have mentioned her once or twice."

    "Phoebe would like to think of herself as Pyrrha's rival," Tempest said. "One of them anyway; even Phoebe knows that Arslan is the real rival. That … would not be ideal, from her perspective, but a champion can never have too many rivals, can they?" She smiled thinly, a smile which failed to reach her eyes. "No, the real trouble is that it's such a one-sided rivalry, and even Phoebe knows it. It's not that she's never beaten Pyrrha — nobody has ever beaten Pyrrha, after all; that's the point — it's the fact that she's never even come close. The public don't like her; her fellow competitors don't respect her. It eats at her, and she blames Pyrrha for it."

    "You know a lot about her, don't you?" Sonata asked.

    "I'm curious about people," Tempest said. "I like to understand them, how they think, what motivates them." She paused for a moment. "When things happen that you don't expect, when you get blindsided by a surprise … that's when you get hurt. When you understand everything and everyone around you, when you can predict what they'll do, that's when you can plot the path to victory." Her gaze lingered upon her Siren companion. What is it that motivates you?

    Sonata took a step back. "Do I have something on my face?"

    I'm more concerned with whether or not you've got anything in your head. "No," Tempest said. "So … is that what you do? You bring people's anger up to the surface?"

    Sonata shrugged once more. "It's one of the things I do."

    "Why?"

    Sonata blinked. "Why what?"

    "Why do you do it?" Tempest asked.

    "Why does a shark swim?" Sonata asked. "Why does it eat all of the other little fishies?" She stuffed the remainder of her taco into her mouth. "Now can we go shopping? I really want to change out of this mess and get some cool clothes like everybody else is wearing."

    So, you do this because … you're born this way? That wasn't particularly helpful, even if Tempest believed it. It was hard to predict a creature driven by its base instincts when you only had a feeble, rudimentary grasp on what those instincts might be.

    In any case, Tempest didn't believe her, not completely. It might be that some of this was in her nature, but Sonata would have to be stupider than she was — and while she wasn't as stupid as she wanted Tempest to think she was, Tempest did not think her very bright; that comment about sharks had been an accidental slip of the mask. She could have asked why the fish swam, but she had had to say shark and reveal how she really saw herself: a predator — to have no will or desire of her own.

    She wanted something. She wanted, it seemed, to cause a rift between Cinder and those around her, like Tempest and Lightning Dust. That was fine by Tempest, but she couldn't yet work out why Sonata wanted it.

    Perhaps she wanted nothing more than to escape in the confusion when the knives came out.

    Or perhaps there was more to it than that, but Tempest wasn't going to find it out by staring at her or standing here pondering. In order to understand people, you sometimes had no choice but to observe them in action.

    And besides, she had a job to do.

    A job that entailed taking Sonata clothes shopping.

    It was not fair to say that Doctor Watts wasn't paying Tempest for her services; it was not widely known, but there were those — like Trixie and Starlight, from whom it was hard to have secrets — who knew that Tempest received a modest income courtesy of an anonymous benefactor who was watching her career with great interest. But the key word in that was 'modest,' so Tempest took Sonata to one of Vale's more budget clothing stores; paid, albeit reluctantly, for the things that Sonata chose; and then waited outside the changing room for the siren to emerge.

    "Ta-da!" Sonata cried when she actually did emerge, throwing her arms up and outwards, forming a Y shape with her body as she struck a pose, one foot in front of the other, her back contorting as she thrust her bosom outwards.

    The siren was dressed in a short-sleeved violet jacket that matched her eyes and left her forearms bare; beneath that, a short skirt of bright neon pink covered her thigh, while high violet boots with bright pink socks underneath went up almost to her knees. A pair of pink bracelets studded with metal spikes clung to her wrists, while her hair was bound up in a high ponytail which still fell down to her waist before curving back upwards.

    "Do I look great or what?"

    "You look … fine," Tempest said evenly. It wasn't as if she was a great judge of fashion in any event. "Are you ready now?"

    "Ready to sing? You betcha!" Sonata said. She hesitated. "Uh, what am I supposed to be singing about again?"

    Tempest rolled her eyes. She suspected that Sonata had genuinely forgotten. "You're supposed to be causing ill-feeling amongst the Valish towards Atlas."

    "Oh, yeah, right; I remember now," Sonata said. "Piece of cake. I could do that all on my own, which is a good thing, considering I am alone, right?" She chuckled. "So, where do you want me to start; shall I start right here?"

    "Not right here, no," Tempest said. "Wait until I give you the word."

    The store to which Tempest had brought her was in a pedestrianised street, where cars were off limits and the whole road was reserved for foot traffic, so as to reduce noise pollution and provide a more convivial — and safer — experience for shoppers. People thronged the street; the initial shock of the Breach that had driven the people of Vale to huddle in their homes and shun the out of doors had subsided now, people had realised that they were not in imminent danger of being devoured by beowolves, and the late summer weather had brought them out to pack the street, passing in and out of the shops, heading up the street towards the movie theatre and the shopping centre or down it towards the metro station. The weather was still just warm enough to make ice cream a tempting treat, and there was more than one cart selling it, alongside lollies and lemonade and various other peddled foods and drinks for the end of summer. The air hummed with conversation and with the thumping of hundreds of footsteps on the pedestrianised road.

    And in the sky directly above them, an Atlesian cruiser hung, casting a shadow over the road, a visible and inescapable symbol of Vale's failure and its shame.

    With Sonata now dressed in a casual style, nobody paid her much mind as she followed Tempest's lead; Tempest's own get-up attracted no notice at all, since it was hardly unusual to see a young huntress on the streets.

    Nobody questioned them as they made their way towards the metro station, where hordes of people filed in and out, rising up out of the underground or else descending down into its depths.

    Nobody marked them. This was a common spot for buskers and singers, a place where you were guaranteed an audience, willing or otherwise.

    The lack of sound pollution, courtesy of the no-traffic policy, was certainly a big help too.

    "Here," Tempest said, "but don't start just yet."

    Doctor Watts had warned her about this, and after hearing a little of Sonata's voice, Tempest could understand why he had warned her. Out of a pouch at her hip, she fished out a pair of noise-cancelling headphones — Trixie's noise-cancelling headphones, to be precise, which was why they were purple with silver stars on them; Tempest should be okay, provided Trixie didn't find out that she'd borrowed them.

    They were wireless, fortunately for her purposes, and Tempest had already connected them to her scroll, so it was just a matter of turning on her selected music, a death metal track that sounded like a demented cheetah screaming into a microphone at three hundred decibels while angry gorillas backed him up on guitar and drums, and giving Sonata a thumbs up.

    Sonata gave a grin that was almost savage in anticipation. Tempest couldn't hear a single thing going on around her; a goliath could have snuck up behind her, and she wouldn't have noticed until it picked her up in its truck, but she could see Sonata make a throat-clearing motion.

    And then, Tempest guessed, she began to sing.

    Tempest could hear none of it. She was glad that she could hear none of it, the memory of the way that Sonata's singing with Phoebe had affected her was bad enough, and that, she thought, had turned out to be rather mild in the end. This was going to be Sonata singing her heart out, and that was not something…

    No, that wasn't true. Tempest did want to hear it. But she understood that just because she wanted to hear it didn't mean that she should; she had a mission to complete for Doctor Watts; she couldn't risk it, couldn't risk failing him, just to indulge herself.

    When you allowed yourself to be surprised, when the unexpected happened, that was when you got hurt. And magic was something that would definitely surprise Tempest Shadow.

    That was why she was curious about it.

    Still, Tempest kept the headphones on, and as she kept the headphones on, she could not hear the song, not one word, not one single note.

    But she could observe the effect that it was having on others though. People stopped what they were doing; whether they were coming into a store, leaving a shop, coming into or out of the metro station, buying a snack or a drink, they stopped all of it. They stopped, people barging into the people in front of them, the whole street staggering to a sort of ragged halt, everyone turning towards Sonata.

    Tempest herself, though she couldn't hear, she could feel … something. It wasn't much, but it pricked at her, urging her to take off the headphones. She resisted, of course, but it pricked at her nonetheless, like needles being jabbed into her forehead.

    Tempest frowned and concentrated on watching the people around her. They were not just stopped now; they certainly were not frozen, no; now, they were becoming angry. She could see them, the people who had been walked into rounding upon those who had walked into, voices moving quickly in what Tempest could only imagine to be angry words. Hands were clenched into fists.

    And then someone pointed upwards towards the Atlesian cruiser in the skies, a sharp, angry jab with a finger. Faces turned upwards, faces set in scowls of snarls. Someone shook their fist to heavenward; another raised it and held it there, as if in defiance. More quick mouth movements, and Tempest could only imagine what curses were being hurled in the direction of the warship.

    The gem around Sonata's neck was glowing brightly now, much brighter than before; it looked more beautiful than any ruby ever had, as sharp as diamond and as red as blood. Sonata smiled coquettishly at Tempest as she stepped away, moving into the crowd, leaving Tempest as she darted into the press, the crush of people preventing Tempest from following. For a moment, Tempest's eyes widened, darting back and forth, fearful that Sonata had attempted to escape already, but no; no, there she was. Tempest could see her now, weaving her way amongst the crowd. She was moving … Tempest couldn't hear her, but she could see her swaying, moving, moving her arms; it was … it was not quite like anything she had seen before; it wasn't dancing … except it clearly was … except it was like no dance that Tempest knew; it was … it was like some kind of aquatic creature, flowing in the water, tensionless … alluring.

    Beautiful.

    Tempest watched Sonata sway and flow amongst the ground, cupping one man's face as though she might kiss him, tilting a woman's chin up as though she might kiss her, touching those that she could reach before gesturing lithely upwards towards the Atlesian man-o'-war. She could not watch anything else. She was transfixed by her.

    Her hands itched to tear off the headphones so that she could hear as well as see.

    She might have done it too, her resistance crumbling, but then … then it was over. It seemed to be anyway; the crowd … the crowd did not settle, or at least if they settled, it was into quarrelling, a whole mass of people standing in the street growling at one another, snarling at one another, muttering angrily at one another, pointing in the faces of those around them. But Sonata seemed to have stopped singing; the brightness of the gem around her neck was faded a little as she slunk back to where Tempest was standing.

    She beamed and held both thumbs up.

    Tempest took off her headphones, reflexively folding them back up to put away. "That was … that was incredible," she murmured, surveying all that Sonata had done, all of these people turned to wrath so swiftly.

    "Aww, that's nice of you to say, but that's nothing really," Sonata said, clasping her hands behind her. "And anyway, you didn't even hear my song!"

    "No," Tempest said softly. "But I…" She hesitated. What had she been about to say, that she would? That she wanted to?

    She did want to. And why not? Because Doctor Watts did not wish it so? He didn't own her. Why should he forbid what she wanted?

    Because she owed everything to him; where was this coming from?

    How could she be affected when she hadn't heard a thing?

    "Maybe … maybe I will," Tempest muttered.

    "Really!" Sonata cried. "I would love that!" She grabbed Tempest's arm and glomped onto it, clinging on like a barnacle to ship. "You and I are going to be besties, I can feel it!" She smiled. "So, where are we going to go next?"

    Tempest looked around at Sonata's handiwork, all the anger and the discontent, the glares shot upwards at the power of Atlas hanging over them. It was not much, compared to the size of Vale, a mere pebble tossed down a mountainside.

    But it was a pebble that would start an avalanche.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 44 - Leaf
  • Threadmarks
    • Leaf​


    "You're going down, Ruby!" Sunset shouted, with glee in her voice.

    "You're going … further down!" Ruby yelled to be heard over the noise of the revving engines. "So far down you can't even see the floor!"

    The two of them sat upon their borrowed motorcycles on the start line of the dirt course at the Blue Warthogs Motorcycle Club and Rally Course, which — although it stood in the middle of the city of Vale, behind the safety of the Red Line — nevertheless occupied a patch of greenery through which had been carved a dirt racing track which now lay before them. As a club, the Blue Warthogs competed in the city's competitive rally circuit — not to any great success, but not to any immense shame either — but they also had days where they opened their track up to all comers, and this, it turns out, was such a day.

    Sunset had been a little surprised when Ruby had suggested dirtbike racing as something they could do, but now, as she revved her bike and waited for the race to start, she was more than willing to admit that it had been a good idea.

    Sunset had driven them both down there upon Sunset's own bike, but Sunset doubted that her much-maligned machine would be judged eligible to compete, and so, she and Ruby had rented out a pair of dirt bikes from the club for the occasion. Sunset's bike was an appropriate red and gold colour, painted as though it had been made for her, matching her hair which spilled out from beneath her helmet, with wings that were flamelike in shape and colour sticking out behind the seat.

    Sunset … kind of wished that she could keep it, to be honest.

    Keep the wings, anyway.

    Ruby had been a little less fortunate in her bike, but she had still managed to find one that was a fitting blood red colour, the colour of the cloak that she had not been allowed to wear while racing. There were no roses anywhere to be found upon the motorcycle, but Sunset supposed you couldn't have everything.

    And besides, Ruby made up for it with the roses painted in black upon her red cycling helmet, joined by a pattern of thorns around the visor, which was up to reveal a little of Ruby's pale face and silver eyes. In place of her cape and her usual outfit, Ruby was wearing a black padded jacket with red pads upon the shoulders and elbows, while her trousers, also black, had red stripes running down the sides; only her boots remained the same as usual.

    Sunset herself hadn't changed; she'd just done her jacket up and put an orange helmet on over her head, letting her flaming her spill out of it down her back. She had also exchanged her bridal gloves for a pair of padded gloves, through which she gripped the handlebars of her rented motorcycle while she waited for the race to start.

    She and Ruby were not alone on the course; there were about a dozen racers in all, some of them club members and others, like Sunset and Ruby, come down for the day, all lined up on the starting line, all waiting.

    Sunset wasn't bothered about any of the rest of them. This race was between her and Ruby.

    The dirtbikes revved, their engines growling so that they sounded as impatient for the off as Sunset felt.

    A wire fence surrounded the track, and a few people had gathered at the fence to cheer on the racers.

    "Come on, Leaf!" someone shouted. Sunset guessed that Leaf was also somewhere on the starting line.

    It wasn't hard to work out.

    "Get ready!"

    Sunset brought down the visor on her helmet; Ruby did the same, as did all those other competitors who had had theirs visors up until now.

    A middle-aged man, his hair turning grey, stood just off the edge of the dirt track with a large red flag held in his hand. He raised the flag above his head so that it caught the wind, then brought it downwards in sharp motion.

    Sunset let her bike off the leash, the vehicle leaping forwards as the race began. Her tires kicked up dirt on either side of her as the vehicle surged off the starting line, down into the depression, carved into the earth, which marked the first stage of the track.

    She had been the first off, but not for long; Ruby had nearly matched her reflexes, and to her side, Sunset saw Ruby on her red dirtbike briefly pull ahead of her.

    Not today, Ruby.

    Yes, this was supposed to be fun, but it wouldn't be fun if they didn't take it seriously, so Sunset let the throttle out, accelerating to carry her past Ruby and back into first place.

    Only to be confronted by a tight bend which was, no doubt, the reason why everyone behind was hanging back a little bit.

    The rules of the race were very clear: fall, and you were done; leave the track, and you were done; get off your bike, and you were done.

    Sunset swerved on the bend, wrenching at the handlebars to turn the motorcycle, her rear wheel spinning around, dirt fountaining up off the track to spray the grass verge and the wire fence and anyone unlucky enough to be standing beyond. The dirtbike slid as it rose up the dirt ledge towards the very edge of the race course. It wobbled; it swayed; Sunset felt herself falling sideways, the ground getting closer as she fought for balance in those fleeting moments.

    And then the bike began to roar forwards once again, Sunset righting herself and the bike as she descended off the ledge and back down onto the main body of the dirt track.

    A long straight lay before her, and Sunset had no need to decelerate.

    The sound of an engine behind her caught her attention, a growling engine, a roaring engine, an engine catching up with her. Sunset didn't dare risk losing her balance by looking back, but as the engine sound got closer and closer, Sunset risked a glance sideways. It wasn't Ruby; this was someone else: a green motorcycle, the rider wearing a jacket of red gold like autumn leaves and a wood brown helmet. They were level with Sunset and very close. Their knees were almost touching as they drove hard down the straight, both of their bikes showering the other with dirt kicked up by the wheels.

    The rider on the green bike swerved towards Sunset, forcing Sunset to swerve to the left to avoid a collision.

    What the—?

    The rider in red-gold swerved again, again forcing Sunset more to the left.

    Are you trying to run me off the track? There was nothing in the rules against that, but it wasn't very sporting if you asked Sunset.

    She was tempted to let the other rider, whoever they were, run into her and see what happened; they would both crash, and both be out of the race, but with her aura, Sunset was almost certain that she'd be in a better state when the dust settled than whoever this clown was.

    But ultimately, that was the reason why she had to keep swerving, because she'd be in a better state after any accident.

    The track split in two up ahead, a path to the left and a path to the right, with a barrier of piled up tires marking the point at which the two separated.

    Sunset was aiming straight for the tires; if she kept on going straight, then she would hit them and be out of the race; the rider on the green bike was keeping pace with her. If they kept going straight, then they'd hit the tires too, but there was no one on their right stopping from swerving in that direction.

    Sunset understood: she didn't want to run Sunset off the course; she wanted to keep Sunset from going to the right and force her to the left. The course to the right rose a little; it was hard to say for sure from here, but Sunset suspected that to the right, there was a jump, while to the left there was a depression. By going right but making Sunset go left, the rider in red-gold would pull ahead.

    Or I could just wait until you break right and do the same.

    But the other rider didn't break right. They kept on going straight ahead, aiming straight for the tires, cutting Sunset off. Sunset accelerated, but so did they, keeping pace with Sunset, keeping her blocked off.

    The game was chicken. One of them would have to break one way or the other, or they would both hit the wall of tires and be disqualified.

    They both went straight.

    The tires got closer.

    They both went straight.

    The tires got closer and closer and closer…

    Sunset let out a wordless growl of frustration as she broke left, turning away from the tires and her red-gold opponent both alike. The rider on the green bike broke to the right.

    Sunset descended into a depression, just as she'd thought, the course descending into an even steeper cut down into the ground which rose up on either side of her. Above, she could see the rider on the green motorcycle flying through the air as they made the jump, with Ruby following close behind.

    It's a pity you couldn't wear your cape; it would look awesome flying out behind you right now.

    But I should probably focus on myself.

    There were logs down in the bottom of the depression, half-buried in the earth, because missing the jump wasn't punishment enough for any fool who went left, but Sunset accelerated anyway, taking the bike as fast as it would go, ignoring the pain on her rear as it bounced up and down upon the motorcycle seat.

    Like a bat out of Tartarus — or at least, like a motorcycle on a rock album cover — Sunset came roaring out of the ditch, and if she didn't get to a make a jump, she still cleared the deck by a few feet before landing on the ground again to start pursuing Ruby and the rider in red-gold.

    They were both ahead of her now; Ruby was in second place, with the green motorcycle in pole position, swerving left and right to keep Ruby cut off and maintain her lead. Ruby dropped back, trying to get more space to overtake where the other rider couldn't so easily cut her off.

    A mistake, with Sunset closing in on both of them.

    Ruby dropped back, and Sunset caught up just as they came up on another bend, turning to pass beneath the tangled branches of some trees on either side of the track. Sunset braked a little, to avoid the problem that she'd had the last turn, but by this point, she was pretty much level with Ruby, only narrowly in third place, and she could afford to slow down just a little.

    Especially since she had the inside of the turn.

    A little throttle, and she was in second place, taking one hand off the bars to wave to Ruby as she passed her on the inside.

    Ruby was behind, the red-gold rider in front. They put on speed in the straight, and Sunset did likewise. She did not catch up, but nor did any extra distance open up between them.

    The rider on the green motorcycle pulled directly in front of Sunset; Sunset drifted to the left and so did they; Sunset drifted to the right and so did they.

    There was another ramp up ahead. Inside her helmet, unseen, Sunset grinned.

    The red gold rider made the jump, soaring up into the air, at which point, Sunset swerved inwards, towards the inside edge of the track, and took the jump herself.

    She felt her hair stream out behind her, and no doubt, her tail would have done so too if Sunset hadn't stuffed it into her pants — she didn't want to worry about it getting caught in the wheel — as she took flight, wishing that she hadn't had the visor down so that he could have felt the wind on her face.

    Of course, she would have felt the dirt on her face the rest of the time, but still.

    There was another turn just past the jump, or rather, just past the point at which most riders going a decent speed would land from the jump, and the rider in red-gold was already turning in the air, twisting round so that they would land ready to make the turn.

    But they miscalculated and landed badly, the wheels slipping out from underneath the motorcycle as the rider hit the ground, skidding across the earth like a stone over water, coming to rest right in Sunset's path.

    There was no doubt about it in Sunset's mind: if she landed, she was going to hit that other rider, whoever they were. There was no way she could avoid it.

    She teleported, carrying her motorcycle with her in a flash of green light, reappearing with a crack on the other side of the fence, turning sideways to skid across the grass, tearing it up, churning the soil beneath as she slewed to a stop.

    Sunset teleported again, reappearing on the track, standing over the fallen ridden and their motorcycle, kneeling down to grab them both.

    A third teleportation brought all three of them beyond the track, safe from harm, as Ruby made the jump, turning with expert skill and roaring off down the track.

    Sunset whooped. "Go on, Ruby!" she yelled, rushing to the fence, following the fire and the edge of the track, trying to keep Ruby in sight as she raced ahead of the rest of the pack, handling her motorcycle like a pro, mastering every twist and turn before crossing the finish line well ahead of anyone else.

    As Ruby came to a halt, Sunset rushed up to her.

    "Congratulations, Ruby!" she cried. "You were amazing out there."

    Ruby was beaming brightly as she pulled off her helmet. "Thanks," she said. "You were good too; what happened out there? I saw you teleport, but—"

    "The rider ahead went down; I would have hit them if I hadn't done something," Sunset explained. "I got myself out, and then I got them out."

    Ruby winced. "It's great that no one got hurt," she said, "but it's pretty unlucky, though."

    "It is what it is," Sunset said. "Congratulations!"

    "Yeah, congrats," came a voice, a girl's voice, but on the deeper side.

    Sunset turned around to see the rider in the red-gold jacket, now with her helmet off to reveal a faunus girl with squirrel ears — hitherto hidden beneath her helmet — sticking up from out of her brown hair, which was worn in a pixie cut and dyed luminescent blue at the tips. She had a couple of piercings in her nose and more in her ears, both human and squirrel.

    "You were both really good out there," she said. "And I'm not just saying that because you didn't hit me. You do this a lot?"

    "Not really," Ruby replied.

    "Maybe you should start," she said. She thrust out one hand. "I'm Leaf, by the way, Leaf Kelly."

    "I'm Ruby Rose."

    "Sunset Shimmer."

    Leaf shook both their hands in turn. "Nice to meet you. Like I said, congratulations on the win."

    "Thank you," Ruby said.

    "You weren't bad yourself," Sunset said.

    "Not bad? I'm good," Leaf declared. "I'm more than good; I can be great sometimes; I just got unlucky." She paused. "You said you don't do this very often, but I can't believe that this is your first time on motorcycles."

    "My sister taught me," Ruby explained.

    "I taught myself," Sunset said. "I haven't had the opportunity to ride much recently, but I've got my own bike out in the yard."

    Leaf smiled. "Then why didn't you ride that in the race?"

    "I wasn't sure it would be allowed; it's not exactly the same kind of model as these dirtbikes."

    "Some kind of road model?" Leaf asked.

    "It's … something of a hybrid," Sunset replied.

    "She built it herself," Ruby interjected.

    "And I'm not ashamed of that!" Sunset declared. "It wasn't as though I had a lot of choice in my circumstances."

    "That sounds pretty cool," Leaf said. "So you're a mechanic, as well as a rider?"

    "Of necessity, to an extent," Sunset explained. She pointed to Ruby. "This one is the real gearhead."

    Ruby nodded. "I used to help my sister take care of her bike," she said, "and, well … it's nice to get your hands dirty sometimes. Nuts, bolts, wrenches … they're easy to understand. Easier than people."

    "I hear that," Leaf agreed. "Bikes are definitely easier than people." She looked away from them, towards a woman on whose face the cares of the world seemed to sit almost as heavily as they did on Lady Nikos, although more in the hollowed out face and sunken cheeks than in her hair; that was yet untouched by grey. She was watching Leaf, albeit she seemed to be trying to pretend that she wasn't watching. She looked back at Sunset and Ruby, folding her arms across her chest. "So, can I see this hybrid of yours?"

    Ruby gave a little smile, and the slightest giggle passed her lips.

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. "And what are you sniggering at, Ruby Rose? Of course you can see my bike; I drove it here; like I said, it's just outside."

    Sunset led the way, with Leaf and Ruby following behind her, passing through the club room — a dark space, with wooden walls and a bar set up against the back room — outside to where the cars and bikes that people had used to get here were all parked. Sunset's bike was parked near the front, in all of its mismatched glory.

    "Here she is," Sunset proclaimed, gesturing to her bike with one hand.

    Leaf blinked. "Wow," she said.

    "I know, right," Ruby agreed.

    "That is—"

    "A beauty, isn't she?"

    Leaf laughed. "That is the ugliest piece of engineering I have ever seen."

    Sunset's mouth opened, but no words emerged. "That," she began. "That is…" She huffed. "Everyone's a critic. She may not look the prettiest, but she gets the job done."

    "I mean, credit where credit's due, you put this together yourself, and it looks like you got everything to fit together in such a way that it works," Leaf said as she walked closer to Sunset's bike, circling it to get a look at it in the round. "Which, you know, impressive. Especially considering that there are, like, parts from twenty different models and manufacturers in here. Why didn't you use more consistent parts?"

    "My circumstances didn't exactly allow for a lot of choice," Sunset muttered.

    Leaf looked up into Sunset's eyes. "This is junkyard salvage, isn't it?"

    Sunset didn't say anything.

    "Sorry, I didn't…" Leaf trailed off. "I know what it's like to not be able to have everything that you want. At least, I used to, my stepdad…" She hesitated. "Anyway, that was a cool move you pulled, getting yourself off the track and then me; I've never seen anything quite like it. What was that?"

    Sunset glanced at Ruby. "That … was my semblance."

    Leaf's green eyes widened. "Your…" She looked from Sunset to Ruby and then back again. "Are you huntresses?"

    "Sort of," Ruby replied. "We're students up at Beacon Academy."

    Leaf gasped. She clasped her hands together above her chest. "Oh, wow!" she cried. "Oh … oh, wow! This is … wow. This is incredible! This is … sorry, I'm babbling aren't I? I don't really know what I'm supposed to say, should I go?" She came to a sort-of attention, and gave a sort-of salute, and her voice dropped a little in an impression of a manly, martial voice as she said, "Thank you for all your service."

    Ruby grinned. "You'd only need to say that if we were all Atlesian. Or Atlas students."

    "Really, I should start practicing then," Leaf replied. "But what do I say to you two?"

    "You've already been doing it," Ruby assured her. "You don't need to stand on ceremony with us."

    "Really?" Leaf asked. "But you're huntresses!"

    "We're students," Sunset reminded her.

    "Even so, that's…" Leaf paused. "What are two huntresses, or students, whatever, doing at the Blue Warthogs?"

    "Having fun?" Ruby asked. "We wanted to do something cool, and Sunset has a bike, and Yang — that's my sister — taught me how to ride, so … why not?"

    "If you say so," Leaf said softly. She pulled a pack of cigarettes, only slightly squashed, out of her pocket. She offered it to Sunset. "You want one?"

    Sunset shook her head. "No, thank you."

    "Ruby?"

    "She won't have one either," Sunset said, before Ruby could.

    Leaf smirked. "Are you her mom or something?"

    "I probably shouldn't," Ruby said. "I'm only fifteen."

    "'Fifteen'? I was smoking twenty of these a day when I was fourteen," Leaf muttered. "I started when I was twelve. Go on, try one; you might like it."

    "No," Sunset said firmly.

    Leaf seemed like a decent person, a good sport — and a good sportswoman, who knew how to handle a bike — but smoking, in Sunset's opinion, was a habit for plebs and losers. It was, to Sunset's mind, what you turned to when you'd given up; you couldn't accomplish anything meaningful, you couldn't matter, you couldn't be anybody worthwhile so you stuck something in your mouth and set fire to it and let the drugs make you feel like you were winning — until you came back down to the reality that you weren't.

    Sunset had been tempted, back at Canterlot, sometimes. It would have been easier.

    It would have been an admission of failure.

    She had no intention of letting Ruby go down that road; especially since she had no need — absolutely no need — to do so.

    "Okay, okay," Leaf conceded. She pulled a single cigarette out of her packet, and stuck it in her mouth, holding it there with her teeth while she pulled a lighter out of her other pocket and lit the cigarette up. Smoke rose lazily from the burning tip of the cigarette before Leaf gripped it with her fingers, blowing a wave of smoke out of her mouth.

    Sunset kind of wished that she was a pegasus, so that she could have conjured a gentle breeze to blow the smoke away from her and Ruby.

    "I suppose you have to be good girls up at Beacon, huh?" Leaf asked.

    "Not necessarily good girls," Sunset murmured. "But we do have to keep our bodies in good condition."

    Leaf gave a sort of nodding, head tilting gesture. To Ruby, she said, "So, you're only fifteen?"

    Ruby nodded. "That's right."

    Leaf frowned. "I thought Beacon only started at seventeen."

    "It does," Ruby replied. "I … got let in early."

    "Really?" Leaf asked. "How did you manage that?"

    "I … stopped a couple of bad guys from robbing a dust store," Ruby said, sounding almost as if she were admitting to doing something wrong. "Me and Sunset did, that's how we met. Professor Ozpin — he's the—"

    "Headmaster up at Beacon, yeah, I know; I don't live under a rock," Leaf said.

    "He showed up afterwards and offered me a shot at his school," Ruby explained.

    "Cool," Leaf said, smiling. "So, are you both fifteen?"

    "I'm eighteen; I was already on my way to Beacon when I met Ruby and got involved in this robbery she mentioned," Sunset told her.

    "Right," Leaf said. "So are you two on the same team together, or are you just friends?"

    "We're teammates," Sunset explained. "Team Sapphire."

    Leaf's eyes narrowed. "S something-something R?"

    "S-A-P-R," Sunset replied.

    "I'll remember that, and I'll cheer for you when the Vytal Festival starts," Leaf said softly.

    "Thanks," Ruby said.

    Sunset snorted. "You say you haven't been living under a rock, but you haven't heard of Team Sapphire already?"

    Leaf's eyebrows rose. "Ought I have heard of you?"

    Ruby glanced at Sunset, clasping her hands together in front. "Well, we … we have done some stuff."

    "We helped foil a massive dust robbery at the docks a few months ago?" Sunset suggested. "We helped catch Roman Torchwick?"

    "And we fought at the Breach," Ruby added. "Well, I didn't, but Sunset, Jaune, and Pyrrha did — they're our other teammates."

    Leaf stared at them, her gaze flickering between the two of them. "Okay, I don't really pay much attention to the news, although I might have to start." She took a drag on her cigarette. "I thought students at Beacon were supposed to learn how to be huntresses, not to … be actual huntresses."

    "I can see why you might think that," Sunset said.

    "We didn't always have permission for all the stuff we did," Ruby admitted.

    "We did for most of the big stuff," Sunset insisted. "And for the stuff that didn't, most of the time, that was trouble finding us, not the other way around. We've gotten to skip ahead a little on account of our skills, which are in more than just motorcycle riding."

    Leaf nodded. She took another drag on her cigarette, blowing the smoke between Ruby and Sunset, before she said, "Was it hard to get into Beacon? I suppose I'm asking Sunset more than Ruby, considering that … foiling a robbery might not have been hard, but finding one probably was."

    Ruby chuckled. "I did get … lucky, I guess. You might not think so at the time, but if I hadn't gotten caught in that robbery, then I never would have gotten into Beacon, so … yeah, I got lucky."

    Leaf sighed. "I wanted to go to Beacon," she admitted. "I wanted to go to combat school, but my mom wouldn't let me."

    "Of course I wouldn't!" cried the woman that Sunset had seen earlier, the one with the hollow cheeks and the face that looked like it had been worn down by the world. Her hair was black and free from greys, worn in a bowl cut around her face; she was dressed in a grey jumper that was a little too big at the sleeves and black pants splattered with paint of various colours.

    She stormed out of the club to join the three kids, followed slightly after by a man, bald and dark-skinned, and two children of his complexion, a girl about Leaf's age and a younger boy, at least a year younger than Ruby, maybe more.

    The worn-out looking woman snatched the cigarette from Leaf's mouth and threw it to the ground, stamping on it with one booted foot.

    "I've told you not to smoke; it's disgusting," she snapped. "And of course I didn't let you go to combat school, or to Beacon; it's dangerous! You could die! People die; someone died, didn't they, a boy, at the Breach?"

    "Yes," Sunset murmured, looking down at her booted feet as she felt an icy fist grip her stomach. "Sky Lark. His name was Sky Lark."

    "Yes, it is dangerous," Ruby agreed. "But … but it's a worthy cause; it's the worthiest cause—"

    "I don't care how worthy it is, and I don't need you to encourage this!" Leaf's mother snarled, rounding on Ruby, pointing her finger in Ruby's face. "I didn't ask you what you thought; I don't even know who you are!"

    "Now, hang on a second, ma'am," Sunset said, stepping between Ruby and Leaf's mother, putting her arm out to shield Ruby from the woman's anger. "Ruby didn't really say anything—"

    "I don't need anyone encouraging these stupid ideas!"

    "They're not encouraging anything," Leaf said. "We were just talking."

    "Just talking," Leaf's mother said. "Just talking about Beacon, about things that we have already decided—"

    "We didn't decide anything; you decided—"

    "I am your mother—"

    "And I'm a person; I'm eighteen years old; when do I get to start having my own life?"

    "When you can be trusted to do something sensible with it," Leaf's mother cried. She glared at Sunset and Ruby. "I think you should go."

    Sunset looked around theatrically. "We haven't done anything!"

    "Ash," the man said, putting his hands on her shoulders. "Ash, calm down. It's okay. It's going to be okay. It's not their fault. They were just talking, right?"

    Sunset folded her arms. "We weren't trying to inveigle Leaf into Beacon, if that's what you mean," she said, a touch of sourness in her voice. "It's not for us to say who gets in, or who tries to."

    "It's Leaf's—" Ruby began, before Sunset shushed her. Leaf's mother — Ash — was clearly not in the mood to hear about Leaf's choices right now.

    The man looked at Leaf, "Leaf, maybe you should—"

    "You're not my dad," Leaf snapped.

    "Leaf!" Ash cried.

    Leaf sighed and turned away, stomping off, her boots thumping into the pavement.

    An awkward silence descended.

    "I think we should go," Sunset murmured, placing a hand on Ruby's shoulder and starting to steer her towards Sunset's bike.

    "I … yeah," Ruby said softly. "Yeah we probably should."

    Sunset didn't particularly feel like remaining in the circumstances, nor was she certain that they would be welcome. However, when they returned to the bike, she didn't start it off, but began to walk it out of the carpark and down the side of the street, pushing it down the road while she walked beside it.

    "Um, Sunset?" Ruby asked. "You know that bike has a motor, right?"

    Sunset chuckled. "Yes, Ruby, I know that the motorbike has a motor."

    "Then why?" Ruby began.

    "Because I don't want to go straight back to Beacon yet; it's too early," Sunset said. "But I haven't figured out where I want to go just yet, so I'm walking the bike to give me extra time to think it over."

    "Okay," Ruby said, walking on the other side of Sunset's bike. "Well, we could … we could go get something to eat?"

    Sunset looked at her. "Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Where?"

    "Hmm," Ruby murmured. "How about—?"

    "Hey!" Leaf cried, running after them down the road. "Hey!" she shouted again, catching up quickly, for all that it left her out of breath and doubled over, hands on her knees. She gulped in air, her chest rising and falling. "Hey," she said, for a third time. "You're leaving so soon. I was hoping to get another match in."

    "I wasn't sure that we'd be welcomed," Sunset said.

    "My mum doesn't own the club, and neither does my stepdad," Leaf insisted. "Come on, you have to let me earn my pride back."

    Sunset looked at Ruby. "What do you think?"

    "It is kind of soon to be leaving," Ruby said. "And I didn't really want to."

    "And you're sure—"

    "It's not a problem," Leaf said. "I swear."

    So they went back and actually raced two more times, enough for both Sunset and Leaf to take a win, at which point, they decided that it was probably best to leave it there with the honours even between them.

    "Thanks for coming back," Leaf said. "I'm glad I got the chance to beat you both once, even if I had to lose to you twice combined." She paused. "And I'm sorry about my mum. She can be…"

    "Difficult?" Sunset suggested.

    "Awful," Leaf said.

    "That's harsh," Sunset said.

    Leaf boggled at her a little. "You were there in the car park, right? You heard how she acted?"

    "She's concerned about you," Sunset said mildly.

    "And so that gives her the right to decide what I can and can't do, to control me?" Leaf demanded.

    Yes, was the blunt answer, but Sunset guessed it would also be the unwelcome one, so she simply said, "It's not my place to say."

    "You were right," Ruby said. "It's your life; it should be up to you what you do with it."

    "Thank you, Ruby," Leaf said. "There, you see? Ruby gets it. How did your mum feel about you going to Beacon at just fifteen."

    Ruby glanced away. "My mom … my mom is…"

    "Oh," Leaf murmured. "Oh, gods, I'm sorry," she reached out and put a hand on Ruby's shoulder. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to—"

    "It's fine," Ruby said. "You didn't know; you didn't mean anything by it. I know that you wouldn't mean anything by it; I mean, your dad—"

    "My dad isn't dead," Leaf said. "He might as well be, but he isn't. Mum just left him for 'Daniel.' Anyway, I'm sorry, but thank you, for being on my side, for getting it. Does someone try and tell you what to do? Your sister?"

    "No," Ruby said, "Sunset does."

    Sunset let out a spluttering sound. "That is … why would you—?"

    Leaf folded her arms. "Ah, okay, that explains everything."

    "What does that mean?"

    "The way that you act, the way that you make excuses for mum," Leaf said.

    "I do not … the fact of the matter is that, sometimes, other people know best," Sunset insisted. "And it's childish to pretend otherwise."

    "We should still be allowed to make our own choices, even if they are mistakes," Leaf insisted. "Maybe I would have died if I'd gone to Beacon, but like Ruby said, at least I'd be dying for something. I wouldn't be stuck here with nothing but riding a bike as the highlight of my life."

    Ruby took one of Leaf's hands in her own. "So what are you going to do about it?"

    "Ruby," Sunset murmured, worried they were coming dangerously close to what Ash had wrongly accused them earlier, encouraging Leaf's rebellion.

    "Can you keep a secret?" Leaf asked. She looked at Sunset. "Can you?"

    I should hope so; I'm keeping enough already. "Yes," Sunset murmured

    "You can trust us," Ruby added.

    Leaf nodded, yet still took a moment before she spoke again. "I'm leaving," she said. "I'm going to Atlas. I've… Well, Daniel isn't going to miss that lien anyway; he won't even notice it's missing. Anyway, I've got my airship ticket, I've got a place lined up to doss for a couple of days—"

    "And then what?" Sunset demanded. "What happens when your stolen money runs out?"

    "I'll have found a job by then," Leaf said, with what seemed to Sunset to be rather undue blitheness.

    Sunset folded her arms. "Take it from me: being down and out in Atlas with no funds and nowhere to go is no fun at all. Do you at least have a friend in Atlas?"

    "I told you, I'm going to get a job," Leaf insisted. "There's always work in Atlas; everyone knows that."

    Maybe Everyone doesn't know as much as they think they do. "That," Sunset said, "is rather optimistic of you."

    Leaf shrugged. "That's my choice," she said. "It's my choice to do this, and it's my choice to hope for the best, even if they both turn out to be mistakes."

    XxXxX​

    "We need to tell her mother," Sunset declared.

    Sunset and Ruby were in A & P, sitting downstairs, near the back of the lower room; they were the only people in there, and since they were downstairs, there wasn't even the new girl behind the counter able to hear what they were talking about.

    Ruby sighed. "We can't tell her mom, Sunset."

    "Why not?" Sunset demanded.

    "Because we promised we wouldn't!"

    Sunset folded her arms. "So, if Leaf had confessed to us that she was going to buy some dust and blow up a shopping mall, should we keep quiet about that, too, just because we promised?"

    "Come on, Sunset, that's a ridiculous comparison!" Ruby cried.

    "Why?" Sunset asked. "What's the difference?"

    "Because in only one of those examples would Leaf be killing someone!"

    "It'll kill her mother when she disappears without a word," Sunset muttered.

    "Not literally," Ruby pointed out.

    "Okay, no, but why does physical harm excuse breaking a confidence but emotional harm doesn't?"

    "Because physically hurting people is … it's physical, it hurts people," Ruby insisted. "Can you really not see a difference?"

    "I don't see why we have an obligation to sit here and watch someone make a terrible mistake just because we pinkie swore," Sunset said firmly. "Especially since we didn't even pinkie swear; we just promised. I mean … do you really not see anything wrong with this? At all?"

    Ruby dug her spoon into her chocolate cookie sundae, pulling it out covered in ice cream and fragments of chocolate cookie. She stuck spoon and sundae both into her mouth and masticated the ice cream for a few seconds before swallowing. "It's like Leaf said, people have the right to make their own choices, even if they make mistakes."

    See if you say that when you find out about some of the choices I've made lately. "You sound like Princess Celestia," Sunset muttered, rubbing the gap between her eyebrows with her fingers. "Which, unfortunately, means you might have a point."

    "'Unfortunately'?" Ruby asked.

    Sunset chuckled. "She and I … discussed this, more than once. I used to think … I suppose since we're now having this discussion, I still do think, at least in part, that … the world would be better off if someone set stricter limits upon the decisions that people could and couldn't make, if the metaphorical parent stepped in more and closed in the walls of the playpen a little bit. I never saw the point in letting the children scrape their knees. I didn't see why someone so wise, who had seen so much, experienced so much, couldn't just … sort it out, you know?"

    Ruby was silent for a moment. "And what did Princess Celestia say to that?"

    "That it would make her a tyrant," Sunset admitted. "That freedom was more important than perfection or the mitigation of all harms. I … didn't get it."

    "Sounds like you still don't," Ruby pointed out.

    "I … as huntresses, aren't we supposed to save people?"

    "Not from themselves," Ruby replied.

    "What about from the consequences of their actions?" Sunset asked.

    "Not from those either," Ruby said.

    "Even if those consequences … what if she joins the White Fang because she ended up having such a bad time in Atlas?" Sunset suggested.

    "That's a little bit ludicrous, don't you think?"

    "Where do you think the White Fang comes from?" Sunset replied.

    "What if she joins the White Fang because it's the only way she can get away from her mother?" Ruby countered.

    "That's not—"

    "It's just as likely!"

    "Her mother is not the problem," Sunset insisted.

    "Leaf thinks her mom is the problem."

    "That's because she's a spoiled little madam with no idea of what she's doing who doesn't appreciate everything that her mother does for her and is about to jump into a situation she can't possibly comprehend!" Sunset snapped.

    Ruby was silent for a moment. "Who are we talking about now?"

    Sunset sighed. "Yeah, okay. I admit, but … it isn't the mother's fault; it's often the daughter's."

    "'Often,'" Ruby said. "Not always."

    Sunset picked up her spoon and played with her strawberry sundae without actually eating any of it. She picked up a strawberry slice on her spoon and then let it drop back down into the sundae again.

    She closed her eyes. "When … when you woke up," she said. "I … I promised that I would … listen to you more. That I would take what you had to say, your views, seriously. And so … as much as I disagree, if you think that we should let Leaf go through with this, then … then that is what we'll do because … because I respect you and because freedom is the right of all … sentient morons."

    Ruby snorted. "Sunset!"

    "Sorry, sorry," Sunset murmured. She finally dug some of her sundae out upon her spoon and popped it into her mouth. It was cold upon her teeth. She swallowed. "So we're going to keep silent?"

    Ruby was quiet for a moment. "If … if this is what Leaf wants … even if it will hurt her mother, and even if it's kind of a stupid plan—"

    "It doesn't even rise to the level of a plan," Sunset said. "It's barely an aim."

    "Then I think that we have to respect that, no matter how bad of an idea it is, because … because choices matter."

    Yes, they certainly do, don't they? "Fine," Sunset said. "Best of luck to Leaf, then." She paused for a moment. Maybe I'll give Rainbow Dash a call, check in with her that Leaf doesn't end up homeless on the streets of Mantle.

    "So … how did your meeting with Professor Ozpin go?"

    "That's a change in subject."

    "I think we've reached the end of the previous subject, don't you?"

    Ruby chuckled. "It … it was fine," she said. "It was really good."

    Sunset smiled. "I'm glad," she said. "You don't have to tell me—"

    "Mom came from outside the kingdoms," Ruby announced.

    Sunset laughed. "But you can if you want to."

    Ruby nodded eagerly. Sunset ate her sundae while Ruby kept talking, keeping her eyes fixed on Ruby as she scooped up spoonfuls of ice cream and strawberries and, upon instinct, moved them into her mouth.

    "Mom came from the west of Sanus," Ruby continued, "from out beyond the mountains, you know, the place the Great War was fought over? Apparently, there were people living there before Mistral or Vale tried to colonise it—"

    "Which time?" Sunset asked, after swallowing.

    "What do you mean?"

    "I mean, Vale tried to colonise beyond the mountains at least three times that I can think of," Sunset explained. "One of them is in The Song of Olivia; that's why they went beyond the mountains, and they were on their way back when the rearguard was attacked. Also an example of choices," Sunset added. "Olivia chose to do the proud thing and not call for help, and that choice got everyone else killed in spite of what they might or might not have chosen."

    "I never said she was perfect," Ruby said defensively. "But … what are you saying?"

    "I'm not sure," Sunset admitted. "I suppose I was just asking for clarification."

    "Does it matter?"

    "Not really, sorry," Sunset said. "I can't help it; it's my nerd-brain at work. Again, I apologise; you were saying?"

    "Yeah, right, so there were people living there … certainly before the Great War and when the two kingdoms tried to colonise beyond the mountains; maybe they'd always been there, I don't know, but the point is that there were people there before, and there are people living there now still, and my mom was one of them."

    "Do they still have contact with Vale?"

    "Not much," Ruby said. "Professor Ozpin said that only a few traders go beyond the mountains to deal with them, and it doesn't sound like they have much worth trading for, mostly … old stuff, or stuff that seems old, even if it isn't. Honestly, from what Professor Ozpin said, without him, there might not be any missions over the mountains."

    Sunset frowned. "What does Professor Ozpin have to do with it?"

    "He gets people to go so that they can spread the word about Beacon and get awesome fighters like my mom to come to school."

    "That … okay, yeah, that makes sense," Sunset agreed. "Although, I'm not entirely sure why he bothers; was he hoping to find someone with silver eyes?"

    "No, just strong people," Ruby said. "Warriors, raised in a hard land."

    "If that's what he wants, why doesn't he look for some Vacuans? They'll go on about how a hard land has made them strong," Sunset muttered. "If that's true, then why is Pyrrha, raised in civilisation and privilege as she was, tougher than any of them? Physically, anyway."

    "That's a good point," Ruby conceded. "But my mom was really strong. It's a pity that her diary didn't talk more about exactly where she came from. It doesn't say anything really about where she came from; I had to find out from Professor Ozpin."

    "He couldn't tell you more?"

    "Mom couldn't tell him more," Ruby replied. "I mean … she couldn't tell him where she came from because she couldn't find it on a map, and it seems like she didn't want to talk about her family much. I think she fell out with her dad about coming to Beacon. I suppose you think she should—"

    "I do not necessarily think that she should have stayed at home and done as her father said; I don't know enough of the details to say for sure who was right," Sunset said. "I just think that more people might want to consider that possibly their mom isn't the problem, they are. You could try talking to your father; maybe she told him some things."

    "That she didn't tell Professor Ozpin?"

    "She might have told her lover things that she didn't want to tell her teacher."

    "Maybe," Ruby murmured. "Doesn't mean … I'm not sure how I could talk about this to Dad. Does he know that I know? Does he know that Professor Ozpin is going to tell me this stuff, or was?"

    "When did you last speak to him?" Sunset asked.

    "A while ago," Ruby admitted. "I … I don't know how. I don't know how to … he knew so much, all this time, about Mom, and about my eyes, about Salem; he knew everything, and he didn't tell me or Yang anything! How could he do something like that?"

    It might have been inappropriate in the moment, but the corner of Sunset's lip twitched upwards in a smile. "You know what I'm going to say, don't you?"

    "You're going to tell me that he had his reasons, aren't you?"

    "I'm sure that he thinks so," Sunset said.

    "He doesn't get to control what I do and don't know and make my choices for me just because he's my father or because he thinks that he knows best, no matter why he's doing it," Ruby insisted. "Because when he chooses to do that, he's cramping my style."

    Sunset smiled. "Good point," she murmured. "So you haven't spoken to him because you're worried that you'll get mad at him?"

    "Partly that," Ruby said. "And partly because I … I'm worried about what he'll say when I ask him about it."

    "And you'll stay worried right until you actually have the conversation, at which point … you may find out that it wasn't as bad as you thought that it could be."

    "Maybe," Ruby murmured. "I mean, yeah, you're probably right. I'm sure you're right. I should talk to him. I will … sometime. Soon, but not right now."

    "No," Sunset agreed. "Not right now. Did you get anything else from Professor Ozpin?"

    Ruby hesitated for a moment. "He told me … he told me that my mom killed someone, on her first night in Vale."

    Sunset frowned, crinkling her brow; her tail stopped twitching. She put her ice cream back on the table, slipping her hands between her knees and closing said knees upon her hands. She licked her lips. "I'm sure that she had a good reason for it."

    "The person she killed was trying to mug her."

    "That sounds like a very good reason," Sunset said.

    "I know," Ruby murmured. "But…"

    "You know that 'heroes don't kill' is just…" Sunset began. "Jaune killed someone, and it doesn't make him a bad person for it, and I know that you'd never suggest otherwise."

    "I know, and I wouldn't say anything like that to Jaune, but…" Ruby trailed off for a moment. "Mom was … at least I thought she was…"

    Sunset leaned forwards. "What, precisely, is it that you thought she was that she has been proved not to be by defending herself on her first night in a strange place, a new city?"

    Ruby took a moment to answer. "She wore a white cloak."

    Sunset cocked her head to one side. "Your mother?"

    "Yeah," Ruby said. "Like mine, but … well, but it was white, instead of red. In my dreams, in my … I don't know if they're memories or not, but in my mind … whenever I see her, she's wearing that white cloak. And it's spotless."

    "I do not know that this proves it was not," Sunset said softly.

    "Even with blood on it?"

    "Not put there by her own choice," Sunset reminded her. She reached out and put her hands on Ruby's shoulders. "Should she have bared her throat for the knife rather than get her hands dirty? Is that the action of the morally pure? None of what you've told me makes Summer Rose any the less brave or kind or noble. In fact … I would say it makes moreso."

    "More?" Ruby asked. "How?"

    Sunset snorted. "If I'd been mugged my first night in Canterlot, you wouldn't see me risking my tail to protect anyone."

    Ruby smiled. "Yeah, you would."

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. "Really? What makes you so sure?"

    "You need the recognition," Ruby pronounced.

    "Nothing about my virtues then?" Sunset demanded. "You think you know me so well, don't you?" She chuckled. "My point is, even after the first thing that happened to Summer Rose when she got to Vale was that someone tried to part her from her worldly possessions, even after that fine welcome to the big city, she was still determined to become a huntress and protect the world, even after that taste of the world's sourness. That … that is something to be admired, to my mind, more than to be censured. Although I am curious as to how, having arrived in Vale from the middle of nowhere, she made it into Beacon."

    "Professor Ozpin was called down to the police station to talk to her, just like he did me," Ruby announced. "And just like me, he offered her a spot."

    Sunset nodded. "So you could say that, without that mugger that she killed, you wouldn't be here?"

    Ruby shrugged. Again, she paused for a little bit. "I asked Professor Ozpin," she said, speaking quietly. "I asked him what the difference between me and my mom was, that he made Mom the team leader and … and not me."

    Now it was Sunset's turn to take pause for a while; there was an obvious question to ask in response to this, but she was not sure if she wanted to ask it.

    So instead she asked, "I didn't realise you were jealous."

    "I'm not!" Ruby insisted. "I'm really not. Not really. I don't wish that I was the team leader, and I don't think that I should be the team leader, but I do sometimes … I mean, I do wonder what Mom had that I don't, that Professor Ozpin picked her and … and not me."

    "Before you pine away too much over what might have been," Sunset drawled, "have you considered what a nightmare it would have been for you, having me as one of your teammates?" She grinned. "Have you considered how absolutely obnoxious I would have been to you if you had been my team leader?"

    "You wouldn't—"

    "Oh, I would," Sunset assured her. "Entitled, arrogant, I would have loathed getting passed over, especially for someone younger than me. I would have been filled with resentment; I would have made your life an absolute misery." She paused. "You know, saying all that, it's a miracle that Professor Ozpin thought I was leadership material, isn't it?"

    "I think Professor Ozpin wanted to give me a break," Ruby replied. "He told me that Mom wore herself out trying to catch up on everything she hadn't learned in Combat School, and leadership classes, and training her silver eyes. That's why he never offered to train my silver eyes; he thought that I was busy enough, and he didn't want to work me too hard. But … but more than that … he told me that he regretted making my Mom the team leader. I think that's why he chose you over me, because looking back—"

    "He wishes he'd made Raven the team leader instead," Sunset muttered.

    "How did you—?"

    "Professor Ozpin has made the comparison to me directly," Sunset explained. "I can't say that I was flattered by it, all things considered."

    "He means it like … like a protector," Ruby said.

    "I know what he meant," Sunset said. "But all the same, we're still talking about someone who bailed on her team, on her family."

    "Nobody thinks that you're going to do that, Sunset," Ruby assured her. "I mean…"

    "What?"

    Ruby glanced away. "Well … when you went on that mission to Arcadia Lake, when you weren't answering Pyrrha's messages … Yang did get a little…"

    "I can't say I blame her, in the circumstances," Sunset said. Especially since I did run away, in a sense. "All the same … it's not the most flattering comparison, or at least, I don't find it so."

    "Professor Ozpin gave it a lot more context, when he was talking to me," Ruby insisted. "All the times when Raven was the one to step up, to protect Mom and everyone else: during Initiation, at Ozpin's stand, when they struck at Salem."

    "'Struck at—'!" Sunset cried. She closed her eyes, a sigh passing between her lips. "Of course they did. That's what Professor Ozpin was talking about in the tower when he inducted me and Pyrrha, and that … that's what Salem was talking about, wasn't it?"

    "I think so," Ruby murmured. "Professor Ozpin thought that maybe Mom could turn Salem to stone with her silver eyes, not kill her, but trap her forever; he thought that maybe that was why Salem had hunted them—"

    "'Hunted them'?" Sunset repeated. "Hunted silver eyes?"

    Ruby nodded. "That's why we're so rare."

    Sunset rolled her own eyes, though they be only green instead of silver. "He kept that quiet, didn't he? And so did you, for that matter."

    "Is it important?"

    "Is it important that our enemy has been actively hunting down the rare trait which you are known to possess? Yes, it kind of is!" Sunset squawked. "What if she sends someone after you?"

    "Who?"

    "I don't know; Cinder's still around somewhere, isn't she?!" Sunset yelled. "We could … I don't… honestly, the pair of you!"

    "It's not a big deal," Ruby said.

    "I disagree," Sunset said. "Profoundly."

    Ruby folded her arms. "What would you have done if you'd known this before?"

    "I would have had you wear coloured contact lenses."

    "Sunset!"

    "What? It would have stopped people realising the truth."

    "I don't want to hide my eyes!" Ruby cried. "My mom gave them to me."

    "Even though it turns out they paint a target on your back."

    "I want to be a huntress; my life was never going to be free from danger," Ruby reminded her.

    "Sure, but there's a difference between that and … never mind," Sunset huffed. "It's a bit late now anyway; Salem already knows; just … take care, okay. Keep your guard up." She paused. "So … it didn't work, then? Turning Salem to stone?"

    "No," Ruby conceded. "Mom tried, but … it didn't work. Raven got them out again."

    "I see," Sunset murmured. "That … is a pity. A pity that it didn't work, I mean, not that Raven got them out, obviously."

    And she managed to do it without risking anyone else's life in the process.

    I've got a way to go to measure up, clearly.

    "So how does it feel," she asked, "to know more than you did before?"

    "No … no matter what I found out," Ruby said, "finding out the truth is always better than not knowing."

    Sunset had to resist the urge to clutch her heart as Ruby stabbed her through it.

    If only, if only that were true.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 45 - Hate WIthout Measure
  • Threadmarks
    • Hate Without Measure​


    The engine of Sunset's motorcycle purred pleasantly as Sunset — with Ruby sat behind her, arms wrapped around Sunset's waist — drove up the road back into Beacon.

    The sky was dark above, and the moon was out; they'd gone to see the new I-Spy picture at the movies, and it had only just finished.

    Said cinematic experience was the subject of discussion as Sunset parked her bike outside the team garage.

    "I have to say," she said as she took off her helmet and shook her long hair free, "that I'm not surprised that movie theatres are dying on the basis of that standard of service. They hadn't even cleaned the place up after the last showing; there was spilt popcorn on the floor from whoever had been in there last."

    "It wasn't that bad," Ruby replied as she leapt down from Sunset's bike.

    "I should be able to watch a movie without also having to watch where I'm putting my feet," Sunset insisted.

    Not for the first time since leaving the theatre, she checked the soles of her boots. There had been some very sticky patches on the floor.

    "Okay, fine, it could have been better, but what did you think of the film?" Ruby asked.

    Sunset thought for a moment. "That was a weird title sequence, wasn't it? It was a cool song, but some of the places those octopus tentacles showed up … it made me wonder what sort of movie this was."

    Ruby sniggered. "Yeah, the music for those movies is always cool, but the title sequences … yeah. Dad used to fast forward past them when we watched them when we watched them at home. He said we were too young."

    "I think you might still be too young," Sunset muttered. "Still, it was good fun. I was surprised Ruby Roundhouse wasn't in it more; you said she was huge."

    "She is huge," Ruby insisted. "Maybe that's why they couldn't get her for more than one action sequence. Still, I liked it. It's good to have the old style back; the last couple of these movies were too serious, they forgot to have any fun."

    "Are they usually like that, then?" Sunset asked. "Secret conspiracies and supervillains with tentacles all over Remnant? And Vale as somehow a great power?"

    "It is a Valish movie," Ruby reminded her. "And Vale is one of the four kingdoms; it's not like we're little."

    "The climax of that film involved the Valish fleet sailing to attack Atlas as part of the villain's machinations." Sunset pointed out.

    "Okay, that probably wouldn't happen," Ruby conceded.

    "Although First Councillor Emerald probably wishes it could," Sunset muttered.

    "You think so?" asked Ruby. "You really think he wants to start a war?"

    "No," Sunset conceded. "I don't think he wants to start a war, although I don't think that he always thinks about … I'm not sure that his decision making always takes account of what is … the most effective decision he could take for the best interests of his people."

    Ruby frowned. "What makes you say that?"

    Sunset realised with a chilling sensation in her stomach that she had given away rather more than she should have, given that her meetings with the First Councillor were something that Ruby did not and could not know about. "I … it's, uh … it's an impression that I've formed from observing him and his decisions."

    "Really? I think you're being kind of hard on the guy," Ruby said. "I don't agree with everything he does, and I probably wouldn't vote for him, but I think he's trying his best."

    "You might be right," Sunset conceded. After all, Councillor Emerald had inherited a slew of problems, more than a few of which were of Sunset's making. "All the same, he does want to rearm Vale."

    "Mmhmm," Ruby murmured. "That's the thing … like I said, he's trying his best, but that's the reason he wouldn't get my vote."

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. "You think that Atlas should have a monopoly on military force?"

    "I don't think Atlas should have any military force either," Ruby declared. "I know that Rainbow Dash … General Ironwood is someone else who seems like he's trying his best, and Professor Ozpin must trust him to tell him about…" — Ruby looked around furtively — "Salem, but even so … when the Great War ended and the Last King founded the huntsman academies, no kingdom was meant to have any soldiers."

    "Vale has soldiers," Sunset pointed out. "Not many, and possibly not even very good, but it still has them."

    "Well, then, it should get rid of those too," Ruby insisted, thereby demonstrating that, whatever the merits or the defects of her argument, she was, at the very least, consistent. "The whole reason why huntsmen and huntresses get to choose their own assignments is so that we can't be used by the kingdoms as tools of their power."

    "I get the theory behind it," Subset allowed. "But … even leaving aside the question of whether it's really better that ordinary huntsmen and huntresses should be the ones deciding where they go and when instead of someone who can—"

    "See the big picture?" Ruby suggested.

    Sunset nodded. "How did you—?"

    "Rainbow Dash said that when we talked about this," Ruby informed her.

    "And you weren't convinced then, either?" Sunset guessed. "It's not an invalid argument."

    Ruby grinned. "You think that because you're a tyrant."

    "I … do not regard that as a criticism," Sunset declared haughtily. Her tone softened. "I don't want to play the 'you weren't there' card because it wasn't your fault, but … you weren't at the Breach; we would have been screwed without General Ironwood's fleet."

    Ruby was silent for a moment. "Vale has faced grimm hordes before and survived without Atlesian help or a super strong military," she replied. "Ozpin's Stand, where Team Stark made their bones, that was won by huntsmen; the Breach couldn't have been worse than that."

    "I couldn't say; I wasn't at Ozpin's Stand," Sunset murmured.

    "I'm sure that Councillor Emerald is making what he thinks is the smart choice to keep Vale safe," Ruby allowed. "But what if … what if all the kingdoms built up their militaries, and then Salem manipulated them into going to war with one another? Maybe even a new Great War?"

    Sunset frowned slightly. "Like the bad guy in the movie?"

    "Just because it's in a movie doesn't mean it's unrealistic," Ruby pointed out. A little laugh, a slightly hollow-sounding laugh, escaped her lips. "It's funny — only sort of not at the same time — that the real world is crazier than anything seen in the movies, and we're some of the only people who know it."

    Sunset let out a bark of laughter. "Hah. Yeah, that … that is … while I grant you that the immortal witch is not something that many people here would think of — although my people would hardly bat an eyelid at it — I think that the … agents at Salem's disposal are fewer in number than is the case for the average screen supervillain."

    "You think so?"

    "I don't know so," Sunset admitted, "but I think that if Salem had an immense room with a huge table inside, and there was still only room for her top operatives to sit there, then Professor Ozpin would have a hard time dealing with her with just … well, assuming the Professor wasn't lying to me, it was just your uncle until recently, and even now, it's just us and Rosepetal and sort of Blake. It's a small group, but since Professor Ozpin seems to get away with it, then it stands to reason that Salem's forces must be pretty few in number too. It might just be Cinder and those that she managed to recruit for herself. I imagine it must be difficult to gather followers when you're a monster trying to destroy the world, and nobody even knows you exist."

    "Makes sense," Ruby allowed. "Although that means that…"

    Sunset blinked. "What?"

    "That means that most of the bad stuff that goes on in the world, most of the evil, is nothing to do with Salem at all."

    "True, but is that a bad thing?" Sunset asked. "Isn't it better than the alternative that every bad thing is Salem's doing?" Her voice slipped into an imitation of the villain from the movie they had just come from. "'It was me. It was always me. I was the author of all your pain.'" Sunset remembered that Salem really was the author of all of Ruby's pain — at least unless she found out about some of the things Sunset had done — and winced. "Ruby, I—"

    "It's okay," Ruby assured her. "I get it."

    "Thanks," Sunset said, nodding. "As for your point, about the military … you've got a point."

    It was probably the best point that could be made against the rearming of the kingdoms; it was possibly the point that the Last King had had in mind when he decided that disarmament and huntsmen were the way to go. Had the Last King known about Salem? There seemed to be a connection between the circle of opposition to her and the academies; could it have been so all along? Had the Last King been one of their predecessors?

    Would Professor Ozpin tell her if she asked him?

    In any case, Salem's power to subvert the defences of the world was probably the best argument against having such defences. Whether it was a good enough argument … she did not know.

    "But since hardly anyone knows about Salem," Sunset went on, "it's not surprising that they make decisions that she might take advantage of. Consequence of secrecy."

    "Right," Ruby murmured. "Do you think it would be better if it wasn't a secret?"

    "No," Sunset replied immediately. "Do you?"

    "Not definitely, but maybe," Ruby said. "Why do you sound so sure?"

    "Because I like the idea of being privy to special knowledge."

    Ruby folded her arms. "I'm being serious."

    "So am I," Sunset admitted. "But, to be … not more serious, but less selfish … Still no."

    Ruby frowned, and kept her arms crossed as she said, "And less selfishly, why not?"

    "Because you don't know how people would react," Sunset said. "What if they took it badly, what if they freaked out?"

    "What if they didn't?" Ruby replied. "What if everyone rose to the occasion?"

    "The reward isn't worth the risk," Sunset said. "At least, not in my eyes. And besides, even if they took the news brilliantly well, people would still demand punishment for the likes of Professor Ozpin who has lied to them for so long."

    "It would be pretty hard to forgive," Ruby acknowledged. "Lying for so long, about something so serious."

    "Mmm," Sunset murmured wordlessly, her voice strained and a little strangled-sounding. "Do you, uh, do you want to go back to the dorm room?"

    "Yeah, sure."

    "Okay, I'll just put this away," Sunset said. She got out her scroll and used it to open up the garage door, which ground upwards with a rumbling of its motor and a rattling of the metal.

    Sunset pushed her motorcycle inside and rested it beside the wall.

    Afterwards, as the garage door rumbled shut behind them, Sunset and Ruby walked back towards the dorm room.

    Beacon was quiet at the moment, at this time of night, at this time of year, with so many other students out of school and those that were in not being out and about on school grounds after dark. Sunset and Ruby did not come across, nor catch sight of, any other students — or any teachers either, for that matter — until they reached the statue of the huntsman and huntress that dominated the centre of the great courtyard.

    Arslan Altan was waiting there, reading or watching something on her scroll.

    "Arslan?" Sunset said. "I'm sure there must be more comfortable places to do that."

    Arslan looked up, and shortly thereafter got up, putting her scroll away as she did so.

    "Hey, you two," Arslan said. "Do you know where Pyrrha is?"

    "She's not here right now," Ruby said. "Did you need her for something?"

    "When you say 'she's not here,'" Arslan said, "what does that mean, exactly?"

    "She's gone with Jaune to the little village he calls home to visit his family," Sunset explained.

    Arslan's eyebrows rose. "She's got the 'meet the parents' trip already?" She grinned. "Doing well, isn't she? Not taking things slowly, either."

    "What's the point in taking things slowly if you already know the destination, I suppose," Sunset replied.

    "I guess," Arslan said. "She really is certain, then?"

    "Was there any doubt?" asked Sunset.

    "I guess not, but … I think there are a few in Mistral still holding out hope that this is all just a passing fancy. Still, best of luck to P-Money, I suppose. She's better off there than here."

    "Why?" asked Ruby. "Why were you looking for her?"

    "Because Phoebe's looking for her; she's on the warpath," Arslan explained. "I don't know what happened today, but she came back from Vale in a lather about something, and she's been storming up and down looking for Pyrrha, demanding to know where she is. She treated me as though I was hiding her somewhere. Speaking of which, you might want to hide yourselves, or she'll come after you on the grounds that you must know where Pyrrha is."

    Sunset put her hands on her hips. "And nothing at all, nothing at all, to indicate why she wanted to know?"

    "No, just a lot of angry muttering that meant I wouldn't have told her where Pyrrha was even if I had known."

    "I wouldn't want to disturb Pyrrha and Jaune," Sunset agreed, "but Phoebe's basically harmless, at least to Pyrrha."

    It was certainly true that Phoebe had a vicious streak, and that her cruelty towards Cinder was a good part of the reason why Cinder Fall existed, but Cinder had been a child at the time. The same Phoebe had failed to best Pyrrha even once, and the same Phoebe had not dared to try and face Sunset, not even in a contest for Soteria, her family heirloom, but rather sent a hireling to do battle in her place.

    Even if she found out where Pyrrha was, what was she going to do about it?

    "She's harmless in the arena," Arslan replied. "But…"

    "But what?" asked Ruby.

    Arslan shrugged. "Contestants in the tournament circuit are vetted, so clearly, they couldn't prove anything wrong, anything that made her an improper person, but … there are all kinds of rumours."

    "I've heard one or two myself," Sunset agreed.

    "Then you know I wouldn't want to run into her in a back alley with no aura," Arslan said. "She's got more ways to fight than in arenas or tournaments, and right now, she seems to be intent on picking a fight, so watch yourselves and tell Jaune and Pyrrha the same when they get back."

    "Will do, thanks," Sunset said. She paused for a moment. "How long were you waiting out here to tell us that?"

    "I … wasn't waiting out here for you!" Arslan insisted, not very convincingly. "I don't care that much, I was just... just be on your guard, okay? Until she calms down, at least. Anyway, I'll see you around." She turned away and began to walk towards the dorms housing the Haven students."

    "Thank you!" Ruby called, waving to her with one hand. "We appreciate it!" She looked up at Sunset. "What do you think that's about?"

    "Phoebe doesn't like Pyrrha," Sunset pointed out. "She isn't all that fond of me either."

    "Yeah, but Arslan seems to think that this is something different," Ruby pointed out.

    "Maybe it is," Sunset said. "But we'd have to run into her to find out for sure, and I wouldn't seek out her company at the best of times."

    She hesitated. She was not afraid of Phoebe Kommenos, despite knowing the other girl's capacity for cruelty. Phoebe was vicious, or had been; there was no kind way of saying it. There was a reason why Cinder had been frozen by Phoebe's mere presence. But at the same time, Sunset was not a child. She's not helpless before Phoebe as Cinder has been in her youth; none of them were, not even Jaune.

    And so, despite knowing full well what Phoebe was capable of, Sunset did not fear her. There were others, and other things, more horrifying for her to fear instead.

    Yet at the same time, there was no point inviting conflict.

    "Let's just do as Arslan suggested, try and stay out of Phoebe's way," Sunset said. "That's advisable in any circumstances." She chuckled at her own wit. "Come on, let's get back to the dorm room."

    XxXxX​

    Within her own dorm room, in the dorms allocated to the visiting Atlas students, Phoebe Kommenos sat on her bed and brooded.

    Her mood was black. It had been so ever since her encounter with Tempest Shadow and … and who? And what? Something had happened today but she … she struggled to recall just what had happened.

    She was not the only one. Mal, the idiot, could not remember anything, but that was to be expected: she was only a faunus, after all, and racially condemned to stupidity. Faunus possessed a certain brute strength, but they were temperamentally unsuited for education, as was proven even by those like Rainbow Dash who were held up as paragons of their kind. Mal was, however, useful for fetching, for carrying, for helping her dress, for attending on her in all the ways that she required, and for that, Phoebe could almost forgive the ridiculousness of her being allowed to study at a prestigious academy like Atlas.

    In any case, it was completely unsurprising that she remembered nothing, for she was dull-witted and unobservant; it was more concerning that none of Phoebe's friends could remember either.

    Nor, most worryingly of all, could Phoebe herself.

    Tempest had been there; Tempest Shadow, another of those damn faunus who infested Atlas like rats; Tempest had been there, and then … and then…

    And then there had been music. Such music, music as she had never heard before, music which spoke not to her ears but to her very soul.

    Music that spoke in passions and in dark desires. Music that knew her. Music that whispered of such things, that prodded at the old wounds, that stirred up the eternal enmities.

    Music that had roused from darkness the black mood that sat upon her presently.

    She was sad and angry in equal measure, and as the sadness and the anger were without cause, so too they were without measure, unlimited.

    She hated them. By Seraphis and Tithys and Amphitrite and Erechthonious the keeper of the underworld, she hated them.

    She hated Pyrrha. It was all Pyrrha's fault, all Pyrrha's doing; ever had the Nikos heiress conspired to thwart her, to shame and to humiliate her. It was Pyrrha who had made Phoebe a laughingstock in Mistral, left her bereft of fans, marginalised her on the circuit.

    "Would it could be proven that some malicious spirit had crept into my house and to Hippolyta's and switched the slumbering infants in their cradles and called my daughter Pyrrha Nikos and hers Phoebe Kommenos."

    So had Phoebe's mother said once, ignoring for a moment the fact that Phoebe was three years older than Pyrrha. It had been an unkind cut to say the least.

    The unkindest cut of all and all the fault of Pyrrha Nikos.

    Pyrrha Nikos. Precious Pyrrha Nikos. Princess Pyrrha Nikos. Gallant, skilled, and mighty Pyrrha Nikos. Fair Pyrrha Nikos, and all the more fair for being — reputed as she was — fairer than the word in wondrous virtues.

    Turnus loves her fair, oh, happy fair! Oh, hated fair, oh, much despised and loathed fair!

    Oh, most ungrateful fair who steals the gaze of he whom I so greatly hope shall look on me and yet cares not, bestowing her gaze instead upon some Valish wretch, scorning and dishonouring the worthiest man in all of Mistral.

    Oh, how Phoebe longed to pluck out those green eyes and scar that pretty face beyond all recognition.

    She would do the same to that faunus, given half the chance.

    Sunset Shimmer she hated too. It was not to be borne that a faunus — a faunus! — bore Soteria, the sword of her ancestors which properly belonged to her and which she had, to her undying shame, failed to recover. Now, Sunset Shimmer wore it on her back as though by right, flaunting her good fortune, waving it in Phoebe's face, mocking her with it.

    Or else so heedless of Phoebe Kommenos that she cared not either way. That might be worse.

    She had cared enough when she had humiliated Phoebe in the duelling ring, defeating her catspaw and her attempt to recover Soteria.

    She hated Sunset Shimmer. She hated her for her slights, for her insults, and most of all, she hated her for being a faunus. A faunus who was reputed clever, who walked so confidently, whose looks drew such envious attention, who was talked of with such admiration for her deeds. No faunus had the right to possess such gifts, to transcend ugliness and stupidity and worthlessness.

    Yet, she and Pyrrha both were spoken of in the highest tones, how they had thwarted the White Fang, how they had apprehended a notorious criminal, how they had saved Vale.

    It was more than Phoebe could take.

    The anger was without limit. It was as boundless as the oceans.

    It was without recourse.

    Phoebe got up off her bed and began to prowl up and down her dorm room. Her teammates Thorn and Lycus, recognising her mood, had absented themselves from the room. Mal waited, cowed, silent until spoken too.

    Phoebe paid her little mind. For her mind was fixed upon the objects of her hatred as plots for vengeance whirled about her head.

    And yet how? How were her dark desires to be accomplished? She had not — it wounded her to admit it — the skill to strike them down, nor the opportunity to do so unobserved. The same went for hurting them through the weaker members of their team: Phoebe would never get close enough.

    It was true that, earlier in the day, when the memory of the music was fresher in her mind, Phoebe had sought out Pyrrha, meaning to face her directly. In that moment, she had felt as though a torch had been ignited in her breast, a fire of fury burning within her, a fire that cried put for battle and bloodshed. She had searched everywhere to challenge Pyrrha, but Pyrrha had not been here.

    Pyrrha had slunk away, and now … now the fire had cooled, leaving the embers of her wrath, no less angry than before … but a deal more patient.

    If Phoebe had her mouth, she would bite; if she had her liberty, she would do her liking. But she had neither mouth nor liberty, for though she was in General Ironwood's grace, she remained there only so long as she did not trespass openly against the strictures he laid down and the authority by which he enforced them.

    But, though it was not yet clear to her how, she would be revenged. She had tried once before, and for her trouble had been roughly handled and threatened by Lightning Dust. But now, Lightning Dust was gone, with the rest of Team Clementine. They had turned out to be anarchists of some sort.

    A slow, ugly smile spread across the face of Phoebe Kommenos. Team Clementine were fled. What if they yet had confederates here at Beacon? Cinder Fall and Sunset Shimmer had been thick as thieves, after all.

    Would that not be a fine thing: Pyrrha Nikos, the Princess Without a Crown, last heir of the line of Nikos, an enemy of mankind? Would that not set all Mistral weeping?

    They had left themselves open to it by Sunset's connection with Cinder. Phoebe would spread rumours, false reports. Pyrrha was the one who was really behind it, her and her mother; they had recruited Sunset Shimmer to their enterprise and bestowed Soteria upon her as a mocking sign of their trust. Then, they had contacted Cinder Fall while in Mistral and pledged to advance their interests together.

    It is not the painful or the bloody vengeance I desire, but they have all the glory that should be mine. If I may injure them in any way, I bless myself in every way.

    And when Pyrrha's reputation lay in tatters, when she stood revealed for the villain she was, then Mistral would turn to a new hero, someone of good family and impeccable reputation, someone to whom no scandal had attached themselves, someone beautiful and eligible and worthy in all respects.

    And everything that Pyrrha had would then be hers.

    Phoebe got out her scroll and soon found the number of the editor of The Daily Remnant, one of Mistral's middlebrow journals.

    One which, by a staggering coincidence, she happened to own; she had inherited a controlling stake in it from her late mother.

    She didn't generally interfere on editorial policy, as much as she wanted to at times; for the sake of keeping her investment profitable, she had to resist the urge to turn the paper into her own personal promotion circular. But now…

    Now seemed like the right time for a new approach.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 46 - Sunset on Alba Longa
  • Threadmarks
    • Sunset on Alba Longa​

    As the rackety old train pulled into Alba Longa, Sunset stood before the carriage door and pushed down upon the window.

    It got stuck, without having descended far enough down that she could stick her head out and see the lock on the other side.

    Nevertheless, there was enough room for Sunset to stick her arm through, and so, Sunset did just that, fumbling for the catch that would open the door.

    She found it. It, too, was stuck. A scowl settled upon Sunset's face as she waggled the handle fruitlessly, turning it this way and that, trying to get it to move more than a fraction of an inch.

    It stubbornly refused to do so.

    Sunset huffed, grabbed the case resting on the floor, and teleported out of the railway carriage in a move that would have been the height of showing off if she hadn't been physically trapped otherwise.
    It was a good thing no one else seemed to want to get off here.

    Although it wasn't necessarily the best advertisement for the town.

    Sunset had Sol Invictus slung across one shoulder and a rucksack on the other, with Soteria — worn across her back — sitting between the two. The case in her right hand was light and barely weighed upon her arm.

    Sunset had not packed for this visit anything like as extensively as Pyrrha, for the simple reason that she had far less need to make a good impression on Jaune's family, and for the equally simple reason that, unlike Pyrrha, Sunset could be a jeans and t-shirt kind of girl as easily as she could be a frock or gown girl.

    Thus, Sunset was not sartorially overburdened; the heaviest items she had brought with her were all the research materials she had in her rucksack, not only plenty of note paper but also Runciman's majestic History of Vale and Bagehot's Peerage, both borrowed from Beacon Library. If she found anything here, it would be useful to have some means of cross referencing it with a respected academic source.

    Of course, there was also the need to give thought to the likely possibility that she would find nothing of note. Lady Nikos was expecting Sunset to find something that would be a balm for her embarrassment at Pyrrha's choice of boyfriend, and if there was nothing to find…

    That was another reason why Sunset had brought the books with her: if she had to make something up, it would be as well to look vaguely consistent with the real thing.

    "Sunset!"

    The sound of Pyrrha's voice drew Sunset's attention to just beyond the dead railway station. Pyrrha and Jaune were waiting for her, standing side by side. Another woman — presumably one of Jaune's sisters judging by the physical similarity and the fact that she did not look old enough to be his mother — stood behind them, a little way off.

    Sunset waved with her free hand as she made her way across the grass towards them.

    Pyrrha was dressed in a gown of green, with a skirt that reached all the way down to the ground, even if it did not spread out very far on either side of her hips. The skirt was a very light, pale shade of red, but the long peplum that descended as low as her knees was a deeper, richer shade. The bodice continued seamlessly from the peplum, embracing her figure until it reached the collar that wrapped around her shoulders but left her arms bare and which was of the sane pale shade as the skirt, save for the rich red camellia that sat in the very centre of the collar. A black choker, from which hung a trio of emerald pendants, was tightly clasped about her throat. Her hair was worn in its usual ponytail, and her circlet gleamed upon her brow.

    "You look nice," Sunset said as she approached. "You look … the same," she added to Jaune, who was wearing his hoodie and jeans.

    Jaune laughed self-deprecatingly. "Nice to see you, too," he said. "How was the trip?"

    "The carriage door stuck," Sunset declared, "but I suppose the view was nice enough if you like that sort of thing."

    "Did you and Ruby have a good time without us?" asked Pyrrha.

    "Yeah, mainly," Sunset replied. "Although Phoebe is more upset than usual, apparently; something to be aware of when you get back."

    Pyrrha frowned. "What happened?"

    "I don't know; Ruby and I have been keeping out of her way," Sunset admitted. "Arslan warned us to steer clear, so we did. But anyway, more to the point, how have things been with you two? Have the future in-laws been suitably impressed?"

    Pyrrha blushed near as red as her dress, while Jaune chuckled slightly nervously. "It was … a bit of a rough start," he said, "but now, I think that pretty much everyone has accepted that I'm going back to Beacon and that Pyrrha and I are together.

    Sunset's eyes narrowed. "Was that ever in any doubt?"

    "From me? No," Jaune said. "From parts of my family … kinda."

    "I see," Sunset muttered. "But you're not going to get any more trouble, are you? Or are you? You did say 'pretty much everyone.'"

    "I meant 'everyone,'" Jaune said quickly.

    "Then why didn't you say 'everyone'?" demanded Sunset. "Never mind, if you say it's taken care of, then … I shall soon find out if you're lying, I suppose." She grinned. "But, on the basis that you're not lying: congratulations!"

    "Thank you," Pyrrha murmured. She beamed brightly, her while face illuminated by her smile as she said, "They invited me to be in the family photograph!"

    "Nice!" Sunset declared. "I never got that; Flash's mother would have rather died than let me anywhere near a family photo. You're well in there." She paused. "You know, usually I would say that Jaune was the lucky one — because, well, because you are the lucky one, no offence — but I have to admit, Pyrrha, you … you're pretty lucky too. You're lucky that your boyfriend's mother doesn't think you're awful, for a start." She smiled.

    Pyrrha chuckled as she put one hand upon Jaune's arm. "That is far, far from the extent of my good fortune," she declared, "but I am glad of it, although it seemed like it might be a close call at first."

    "I am going to need to hear all the details," Sunset said. "But before that, is there anywhere I can put my stuff?"

    "You've got a room over the tavern," Jaune said. "Unfortunately, there isn't room for you to stay at my family's place."

    "Fair enough," Sunset said. "Is someone going to lead the way?"

    "I'll take you there," the other woman, the one who had been waiting patiently hitherto, stepped forward. She was a little shorter than Jaune — or Pyrrha, for that matter — but her arms were visibly toned as they emerged from beneath the short sleeves of her blue uniform shirt, and she wore a copper badge upon her belt. She thrust out her hand. "Sky Arc, Jaune's sister and the Sheriff of Alba Longa."

    Sunset took her hand. "Sunset Shimmer, Jaune's team leader."

    Sky nodded. "I'll show you to the Moon — that's the tavern," she explained. "You'll be stuck with my company for a little while; Jaune's taking Pyrrha out on the lake, aren't you Jaune?"

    Jaune shifted nervously back and forth on the balls of his feet. "Well, it is beautiful this time of year."

    "Very nice, very … traditional," Sunset said. "I certainly won't keep you from that. Lead the way, Sheriff."

    "'Sky' will be fine," Sky said, as she turned away. "It's this way."

    "I'll see you later, then?" Sunset said to Jaune and Pyrrha.

    "Sky will show you the house too," Jaune assured her. "We'll probably be there."

    "Okay," Sunset said. "Have fun, and don't ruin that dress falling into the water." She smiled at them, before hastening after Sky Arc.

    She swiftly drew level with Jaune's sister, then slowed her pace so that she stayed level instead of pulling out in front in this place that was new to her.

    Besides, she had a sense that Sky wished to speak to her.

    "So," Sky said, thereby validating Sunset's suspicion, "you're Jaune's boss?"

    "I'm his team leader," Sunset said. "Which means, yes, in battle, I am his boss. It also means that I'm responsible for what happens to him."

    "And outside of battle?"

    "I'm … still responsible, in many respects," Sunset replied.

    Sky fell silent for a moment. "Pyrrha … tells me that Jaune has … killed someone."

    Sunset swallowed. "Yeah," she acknowledged. "Yeah, Pyrrha … isn't lying about that."

    "Could you have done something so that he didn't?"

    Sunset was silent for a moment. "I won't claim to be a flawless leader," she said. "I've made mistakes. But when I think about that particular battle, I made the best dispositions I could. and I made the best plan I could. There's nothing I would do differently. Sometimes, in battle, things just happen. It wasn't my intent to inflict that on Jaune, but it does not haunt me as a failure."

    "And you?" Sky asked. "Have you ever…?"

    Sunset glanced at her. "Killed someone? Rather a personal question, don't you think?"

    Sky shrugged. "I'm asking it anyway."

    "Obviously," Sunset muttered. She breathed deeply, in and out. "Yes," she half-growled the word.

    Sky nodded. "I … I didn't want Jaune to go back to that school."

    "That's not your decision to make," Sunset said.

    "That isn't what changed my mind."

    "Then what did?" asked Sunset.

    "One of those grimm," Sky said softly. "First one we've seen around here in years. Generations. Jaune and Pyrrha … I get it now." She paused. "Except there's still one thing that I don't get. Well, two things, actually."
    "And what are those?" Sunset asked.

    "If you're supposed to be training to fight monsters, then why are you killing people?"

    "Sometimes, the people are the monsters," Sunset replied.

    "Okay," Sky allowed. "I'll … fine, let's go with that. But more importantly, aren't you supposed to go to school to learn how to do stuff later? Jaune said he fought in some big battle; shouldn't that be what the people who've already graduated do?"

    "You might think that," Sunset murmured dryly.

    "I'm being serious," Sky insisted.

    "Then in all seriousness," Sunset replied, "you can't learn how to fight monsters without actually fighting some monsters, and that means exposing ourselves to unpredictable circumstances; we … we did not intend to take such burdens on ourselves. It just … happened."

    Sky was silent a moment. "That's it?"

    "If I had a better answer, I would give it to you," Sunset replied.

    "Hmm," Sky muttered. "I guess even the best explanation wouldn't make me worry any the less. So I'll just have to accept it, won't I?"

    Sunset didn't say anything. There wasn't anything that she could say that was likely to help. Jaune being launched upon this course, perilous though it was, there were no words would make it less perilous. Nor would putting meaning to the peril make it hurt the less.

    Sky shook her head. "Anyway, I hear that you're the one who's going to prove that we're all nobles?"

    Sunset laughed. "If I can."

    "And if you can't?"

    "Then I'll make something up."

    "Really?" Sky asked incredulously.

    Sunset shrugged. "What Lady Nikos wants, above all else, is something that will let her save face in the salons of Mistral. Obviously, some truth would be preferable, but if the truth is not amenable, then lies will serve."

    "'Save face,'" Sky repeated. "Because our family isn't good enough for the princess of Mistral."

    Sunset cleared her throat. "If I've offended you—"

    "It would annoy me if Pyrrha said it," Sky declared. "But I guess if Pyrrha thought that—"

    "She wouldn't be dating Jaune in the first place," Sunset finished for her. "The views of the mother are not those of the daughter. Do not hold Pyrrha to account for Lady Nikos' attitudes or opinions."

    "Don't worry; I've spent enough time around Pyrrha to take the measure of her," Sky assured her. "She dresses like a princess, but she's not full of herself at all. But what about you?"

    Sunset snorted. "I can be full of myself, from time to time."

    "I meant," Sky explained, "why are you doing this? Do you think Jaune isn't good enough for Pyrrha?"

    "What I think is irrelevant," Sunset said. "I'm not dating Jaune, and I'm not Pyrrha's mother either. But Lady Nikos has been good to me, and if I can repay that with this service, then I will. There is no more to it than that."

    Sky's lips twisted for a moment. "Okay. But all the same, what do you think of them?"

    "I think he's very lucky," Sunset said. "But … though it is less obvious, so is she. Pyrrha … has found a man to navigate her contradictions."

    "What do you mean?"

    "Pyrrha wishes to be treated as of herself, not of her reputation," Sunset said. "Loved not for her strength of arms, nor for her noble lineage, but for her spirit. And yet, at the same time, I think she would find it hard to be treated … too ordinarily, to be used for some boy's good time and then thrown away, to be hurt or taken for granted. To be … got into trouble, as they say. Her gentle spirit would not bear it. Jaune … it seems this place has bred a gentleman."

    "It's bred a nice boy," Sky said. She frowned. "You know, I'm glad Jaune's dating Pyrrha and not you."

    "I'm glad of your gladness at the way things are, but I cannot but suspect an insult to my character."

    "The fact that you think being treated like an ordinary girl means being treated badly," Sky said. "For all your leather jacket, you're more stuck up than Pyrrha in her dresses, aren't you?"

    Sunset smiled. "Guilty as charged."

    Sky huffed. "Anyway. As well as being the Sheriff, I'm also the family expert on the town and its history, so once you're settled in, I'll show you where everything is."

    "I'm more interested in the family history than in the town," Sunset said.

    "That might not be so easy," Sky replied, "but I'll help you out if I can."

    Sunset hadn't been sure what to expect from Jaune's home, but if she had conscious expectations, then she had probably — once she understood that Jaune came from a small town — been expecting something a little like Princess Twilight's Ponyville — which was to say, the Ponyville of Princess Twilight's stories, whatever relationship that might or might not have to the place itself — a small community which nevertheless managed to bustle despite its size, somewhere friendly — perhaps overly so — somewhere … a bit like Jaune himself, really.

    What she got were hard stares which verged on hostile and eyes which followed her through the village as though they feared what she might do if left unobserved.

    "People here aren't too fond of outsiders," Sky explained.

    "And you?"

    "It's been … an enlightening couple of days," Sky replied.

    Sky showed Sunset the Arc family home, then brought her to the Moon Over Water, the village tavern. From the outside, it looked modest, a two-storey wooden building with a shallow lying slanted roof, looking as much like someone's cabin as a communal space. Inside, it was dark, illuminated by dim red lights which cast the bar and its occupants in harsh, sinister lighting; guitar-heavy country music was playing on the jukebox, and a couple of burly, moustachioed men in denim were playing pool in one corner of the room as Sky led Sunset inside.

    Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared at her.

    "Hey, Oakie," Sky called. "This here is Sunset Shimmer; she's here for the room I talked to you about."

    The man behind the bar had long grey hair and a grey moustache drooping down on either side of his mouth to end up beneath his chin. He said, "Right," and reached beneath the bar to pull out a set of keys on a plastic fob. "Here you go."

    He threw the keys at Sunset, who caught them in one hand.

    "Thanks," she said. She glanced at Sky. "This place isn't fond of outsiders but you have rooms to let?"

    "We do get some visitors," Sky pointed out. "We're still a part of the Kingdom of Vale, after all, and we aren't subsistence farmers either. The tax assessor, the purchaser come to buy our grain and fruit, the travelling merchant … we don't always welcome their presence, but we recognise they need somewhere to stay."

    "You the huntress that's gonna keep us all safe?" asked one of the two men playing pool.

    "No, this is a friend of Jaune's," Sky said. "There'll be a qualified huntsman along soon enough, but she's not it."

    "Shame," the other pool player said. "I wouldn't mind having a huntress around if she was as fine-looking as you."

    It was all that Sunset could do not to roll her eyes.

    A man at the bar, older than her by more than a few years, muscularly built, with short red hair, glanced her way and looked for a second, before turning away, having said nothing.

    "Your room number is on the fob," Sky told her. "And they're upstairs."

    There were only four rooms upstairs to choose from, so Sunset could have found the right room by just trying the key in every lock until she found the one it opened — she wasn't even sure that there were any other guests to worry about disturbing — but the number 4 was written on the plastic fob, directing Sunset to the room at the back of the upstairs corridor, nearest the bathroom.

    Sunset only had to open the door to see that the rooms did not have en suite facilities. In fact, they barely had anything at all, just a bed surrounded by four wooden walls, a window that Sunset wasn't sure that she trusted to open in this place, and wooden chest at the foot of the bed. That was pretty much it, really.

    Still, could be worse.

    There might not be a lock on the door.

    "It isn't much," Sky admitted. "We don't get—"

    "A lot of outsiders, yes," Sunset murmured. "So you've told me." She put down her case on the floor and her rucksack and weapons on the bed.

    Sky shut the door behind her. "So," she said, "do you want to get straight to work or do you want to … settle in for a little bit?"

    Sunset looked around the sparse and barren room. "'Settle in'?"

    "Yeah, good point," Sky said. "Okay, I'll show you to the town archives, but before that…" She smiled. "Are there any embarrassing stories about Jaune that you would care to share?"

    Sunset chuckled. "No."

    "No, there are no stories, or no, you won't share them?" Sky asked.

    "No, I'm not going to embarrass Jaune behind his back," Sunset said.

    Sky made a disappointed noise. "We already know about him chasing Weiss Schnee."

    "He told you about that?"

    "As part of the story of how he and Pyrrha got together," Sky explained.

    "Well, if Jaune wants to air his youthful missteps that's fine," Sunset replied, "but as the team leader, I have to show loyalty to my teammates."

    "So … no embarrassing stories?"

    "No…" Sunset hesitated. "I will tell you one thing, because it's more funny than embarrassing, and because at this point, it will allow me to say something that I need to say."

    Sky cocked her head slightly to one side. "Go on."

    "Before he came here," Sunset said, "I should add that I heard this from Ruby, our other teammate, but before he and Pyrrha left for here, Jaune was apparently afraid that Pyrrha might leave him for some big strapping local man." Sunset was silent for a moment. "Which I thought was pretty ridiculous, even before I saw the standard of your local men."

    Sky folded her arms. "Our local boys aren't that bad!"

    "Are you involved with any of them?" Sunset replied.

    "No," Sky admitted. "But I … that kind of thing … anyway, let's get you started. All the archives are stored under the Town Hall; I'll show you around, and then … I'm going to have to leave you to get on with it; I do have a job to do here."

    "Yeah, that will be fine," Sunset assured her. "As I said before, I'm mostly interested in the family."

    "And like I told you, that may not be so easy to find," Sky replied. "I'm not sure that there is anything on the family before Bohemund Arc."

    "Who?"

    "Our great-great-grandfather," Sky said. "He founded this town."

    "And fought in the Great War, yes?"

    "That's the one," Sky agreed. "I'll show you his statue before we head to the Town Hall."

    Sky led her back out of the tavern and brought her through the village to the statue of her ancestor, Bohemund Arc; the plinth bore no name or inscription, doubtless because this was a small town and everyone already knew who he was.

    He certainly cut an impressive figure, mounted upon his warhorse, with Crocea Mors held aloft; standing below, looking up at him, it was easy to see what Jaune had been attempting to become.
    But not everyone could be the second coming of their famous ancestors. The world just didn't work like that.

    Still, he certainly looked like a good place to start — Sunset had no better ideas — so she allowed Sky to lead her into the dark depths beneath the Town Hall, the most impressive building in Alba Longa by some distance, and there, amongst the shelves and shelves of archives, the records of old ordinances and resolutions debated, passed or defeated, the deeds of the mayors and the results of the elections, Sunset unpacked her notes and her books and started her research with Bohemund Arc.

    He was as impressive a fellow as his statue — and the fact that he had been given a statue at all — indicated. He had founded Alba Longa when he was only a young man; according to the records of the Mayoralty, he was only thirty-two when, in response to a humble petition, the King of Vale had granted Alba Longa a town charter, recognising the new settlement as a community with the freedom to administer its own affairs under His Majesty and under the laws of Vale. At that point, Bohemund had been acclaimed as mayor, no other candidates presenting themselves. The town charter had not been granted for a couple of years after the first houses had been built beside the lake, so Bohemund must have started the founding before he was even thirty.

    An impressive man, indeed.

    After a single term as mayor, he had resigned his office, declaring that said office ought to be bigger than any one man. That was a knock against him as far as Sunset was concerned; she knew that some Remnant historians were inclined to praise the virtue of yielding up power, just as they praised the Last King for abdicating his throne, but Sunset didn't see the point in giving up a position you were good at just because you could. Someone had to rule, after all, and it might as well be someone who had been ruling well thus far as some newcomer who would have to find their feet.

    Nevertheless, Bohemund Arc had made that well-intentioned mistake, retiring to his farm and his family, but when the Great War had begun, he had come out of retirement to take up his sword, raising a company of volunteers and placing them at the King's service. By that time, he had been closer to seventy than sixty, yet by all accounts — accounts, admittedly, written by his friends and family; Sunset's main source for all of this was a collection of letters home by the various soldiers who had marched with him — he had led his men with valour in the field and treated them with consideration in the camp. He had perished during General Colton's abortive Mistral campaign, besieging a fortress held by the faunus. Wounded, he had refused water, insisting it be given to another wounded soldier whose need, so he claimed, was greater than his own.

    He had died not long after.

    A remarkable man, to be sure, but Lady Nikos was not interested in whether Jaune's ancestors were brave, although perhaps … perhaps she ought to have been. Perhaps Mistral ought to give a little more consideration to brave ancestors, rather than simply noble ones.

    But then, if you were going to take that attitude, then why bother with ancestry at all?

    That was a question that Sunset did not wish to get into, so she put it out of her mind and went back to the story of Bohemund Arc to see if she could find out anything about him from before he had established Alba Longa. It was not a fertile search, as Sky had warned her that it would not be; nobody from the founding days of Alba Longa seemed to want to discuss what they had been or where they had come from before the town was founded. It was as if they were ashamed of themselves, or more charitably, they simply wished to make a fresh start here, unburdened by what had come before.
    Judging by his speech upon accepting the Mayoral office, it was clear that Bohemund Arc had certainly seen it that way.

    Every man has a past, he had said, addressing the people of the newly chartered town. Only the newborn babe is free from the shackles of what has gone before, and even a child can bear the burden of their parents' legacies. But, rarely, we are given the chance to throw off those chains and to start anew, defined not by what we have been and done before but by what we choose to do and be from now.
    Whatever I was, whatever my family were, matters not anymore. Whatever you were, whatever you have been, matters not anymore. For we have received the Royal Charter, bearing the seal of His Majesty the King, and by this seal, whatever went before is rendered null and void.

    We are the people of Alba Longa now, and the future is in our hands.

    It did occur to Sunset that if this settlement was founded by people running from their pasts, it might explain why they had a dislike of visitors and outsiders which had become ingrained in their descendants.
    It also occurred to her that if that were the case, then neither she nor Jaune nor Lady Nikos might like the answers if she were to continue to pry into the secrets of the Arc family and its heritage.

    Well, if that is the case … I can keep a secret, Celestia knows. If I find out anything disgraceful, I shall keep it to myself and make up something more inspiring for Lady Nikos.

    I think a man like Bohemund Arc deserves an inspiring ancestry in any case.

    Nevertheless, his insistence on leaving the past beyond Alba Longa aside didn't leave her very much to go on. Nor did it help that, judging by a comment made by his son, Robert Arc, in a letter home to his mother during the war — in which he had fought first alongside his father, and then been elected to lead the company after his father's death — Bohemund Arc had been illiterate. It was a surprising fact to Sunset, but there was no denying what was written in Robert's letter.

    Father is unable to write you himself, but he wishes me to convey his deepest love and most sincere affection and to tell you that he wishes for nothing more than that this bloody war should come to an end, that he might return home to you and live out the remainder of your days in peace.

    It didn't have to mean that he was incapable of writing, of course — he might have hurt his hand — but there was not a single letter home written by Bohemund in the entire collection, and to Sunset's mind, the fact that Robert didn't feel the need to explain why his father was unable to write was suggestive.

    She spent hours searching, going without lunch because she was getting caught up in the search, hunting down every scrap of paper, every letter, every anything that might give her a clue about Bohemund Arc's origins, his parentage, who he had been before he founded Alba Longa.

    There was nothing. The slate had started clean here in this town, just as he had wished.

    What kind of past would drive someone to erase it? Sunset could think of answers, just not any good ones.

    Since she was unable to look further back, Sunset found herself looking forwards, closer to her own time, for all the good that it would do. Bohemund's son, Robert, had taken up his father's sword and fought in the Great War until the final victory, being present at the Battle of the Four Sovereigns; he had even been one of the Last King's honour guard, who had accompanied His Majesty to accept the submission of Mistral, Mantle, and Vacuo. And then, like his father before him, he had returned to Alba Longa and taken up a quiet life, farming his land, helping his neighbours, a presence in the life of the town but one with no official role.

    His son — one of his sons — Carrot Arc, had attended the then-nascent Beacon Academy, and Carrot was the most prolific writer of the three generations of Arcs that Sunset had yet come across, because Carrot had kept a diary.

    There was little to hope that Carrot's journal would begin with a recounting of his family history, but nevertheless, Sunset took it out of its file box and, using telekinesis rather than her fingers to move the pages for fear of damaging it, began to flick through it.

    ...my partner is a man named Crown D'Eath; he often seems sad, and when he is not sad, he is rather solemn, but he is incredibly brave. In fact I'm not sure that he has any fear at all.

    …I saw Delphi sitting alone again today; I think it's pretty harsh for even her own teammates, her own partner, to want nothing to do with her like this, just because she's from Mistral. She didn't start the war, or fight in it. I went and sat with her.

    I don't understand how anyone can treat someone so beautiful with such unkindness.

    Sunset snorted. Arcs get struck down easily, it seems.

    …Crown got into a fight today with Goshawk Winchester. I wasn't sure what it was about, but Crown is my partner, so when the punches started flying, I joined in to help him, of course. It turns out — as Crown told me when we were doing our detention together — that Winchester had insulted his family. Crown told me that the D'Eath's are an old Valish noble line, of long standing and much honour, but that they have fallen on hard times recently and are much reduced in state, so families like the Winchesters look down on them now.

    I wonder if that's why he fights so ferociously, so fiercely: he feels as though he has nothing to lose, since his family has already lost everything.

    Nevertheless, I must confess I think it must be rather grand to know where you come from and to come from such a prestigious lineage. I felt rather embarrassed telling him that I don't know anything about my family past my grandfather, although I also felt ashamed of my embarrassment, since both father and grandfather were heroes in the war.

    If even you don't know where your family came from, what hope is there for me? Sunset wondered.

    I'm not ashamed of my family. The examples of service from my father and grandfather are why I decided to come here to Beacon and train so that I can follow in their footsteps. I just wish that I knew more about where we came from. I can still look to the future while being curious about my past.

    Crown wasn't contemptuous at all; in fact, he seemed fascinated. He said that Crocea Mors is much older than Grandfather's day and asked if he could borrow it to do some study.

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. It seems that I'm not the first one to walk this road.

    Crown has been spending a lot of time in the library; he's there almost all the time he's not in class. I wish that he'd tell me why. I asked Delphi about it, and she told me that people have reasons for everything they do, but that sometimes, they prefer to keep those reasons private. I think she was talking about herself as much as about Crown.

    Sunset frowned, flicking rapidly through pages in which there was nothing more about Crown's researches, just ordinary details of school life — although from what she could gather from skimming through, ordinary school life which was becoming a little more tense as Carrot began to court this Delphi, the Mistralian student.

    Crown and I had a row today. He was trying to get me to drop Delphi, and I wouldn't hear of it. He kept on pushing me about it, and finally, I couldn't take it anymore. I let him have it, telling him that I wasn't going to turn my back on the girl I love — yes, I said it, I love her! — just because she's Mistralian and people don't approve. Crown told me that it wasn't about her being from Mistral. It wasn't about the war, anyway.

    He told me what he'd been researching in the library.

    Sunset sat up straight.

    I won't put down what he told me.

    "Oh, come on!" Sunset yelled, and then looked around guiltily, grateful that there was no one else down in the archives to have overheard that.

    It's not possible, what he said, and even if it were true, what he wants, what he talked about, it's madness. It's ridiculous. It's wrong. I hate to be that kind of person, but I had to be honest: we wouldn't be able to be friends if he kept on talking that way. Crown went very quiet, but he agreed not to bring it up.

    Thanks a lot, Carrot, Sunset thought.

    It occurred to her that there was some possibility that Crown D'Eath was still alive. Yes, being a huntsman was a dangerous profession, but they were only talking about Jaune's grandfather's generation … admittedly, Sunset didn't know anyone with living grandparents, but there had to be some around somewhere; it wasn't that long ago. He'd only be … about as old as Professor Ozpin, surely?

    And if he did come from an old noble family, well, then he would be in Bagehot's Peerage; not the use to which Sunset had intended to put it, but it was a good thing that she'd brought it with her nonetheless.
    Sunset put down Carrot Arc's diary and took up the book, a record of all the Valish noble families, their genealogies, coats of arms, notable members, deeds, and so and so forth. New editions were published regularly, taking account of births, marriages.

    Sunset wondered idly if there was a Mistralian equivalent, or if all the old families knew one another's history so well that there was no need for such.

    She would be amazed if there wasn't something like it.

    And she thought that it would be rather nice, when the new edition came out, and it came time to draw a line from Pyrrha Penthesilea Penelope Alcestis Ariadne Hippolyta Nikos to Jaune Arc, with a little 'm.' above said line, if there was at least some indications as to where the lines flowing down to Jaune Arc had come from.

    The families in Bagehot's were arranged not in alphabetical order, but in order of their seniority in the peerage, but thankfully, there was an index in alphabetical order in the back, which Sunset was able to use to find the D'Eath family roughly in the middle of the book, possibly shading ever so slightly towards the back half.

    She opened to the correct page of the heavy, hardback tome and was confronted by a picture of the D'Eath coat of arms, a silver helm with the visor down upon a scarlet field, and the motto, 'First in the Vanguard'.
    Sunset scanned the family tree, turning over the pages until she came to the most recent entry.

    Crown D'Eath was dead, and died without heir, what was more; he had never married and had no children, making it overwhelmingly likely that whatever he had learned, or thought he had learned, had died with him.

    A now disgraced family

    Sunset blinked. 'Disgraced'? Why disgraced? It sounded as though they had declined in wealth, in power, but disgraced? Not a word she had expected to see written here.
    She found herself skipping over a lot of the information about the history of the line, jumping to the final paragraph.

    The family became disgraced and extinct with the death without issue or heir of Crown D'Eath, the fourteenth lord, following a series of acts of terror including the assassination of a Councillor, the murder of a huntress, and sundry other crimes vile and disreputable.

    Sunset stared almost blankly at the paragraph for a few moments. There was … there was not really very much that you could say to that. It was not what she had expected to read.

    She couldn't shake the feeling that it was connected to the Arc family. There was no proof of that, but she was convinced of it nonetheless.

    For that reason, she temporarily packed up her stuff, putting books and pens and papers and everything else back in her rucksack and slinging it over her shoulder as she ascended out of the underworld of the archives and back up into the corridors of the town hall, where the floors were flint and the walls were wood-panelled, decorated with hunting trophies and oil paintings. Sunset soon emerged from there, too, blinking into the sunlight, and set off through the town towards the Sheriff's office.

    Sky Arc might have a job to do, but there was no reason why Sunset couldn't call upon her at her workplace for a short chat.

    She reached the shores of the lake, the sunlight falling upon the waves and making the water seem almost silver, sparkling under the light. Out on the lake, Sunset could see, a little way off so that they seemed small in her eyes, Jaune and Pyrrha in a rowing boat. Pyrrha was rowing, leaning forwards and then backwards in a practiced motion as she drove the oars through the water, while Jaune sat at the other end of the boat with a guitar in his hands, playing something that Sunset was too far off to catch more than the faint strains of.

    As Sunset watched, Pyrrha stopped rowing, letting her devote her full attention to Jaune and his music.

    "They make a cute pair, don't they?"

    Sunset started a little, looking around behind her to see Miranda Wells approaching, dressed in a loose-fitting floral-pattern dress and a big, floppy summer hat that fell down over her face, casting a shadow over it and over the hair that fell down across her shoulders.

    Miranda smiled. "Should it be that easy to sneak up on a huntress?"

    "Some huntresses, you wouldn't be able to sneak up on," Sunset said, "but I'm one of the ones who needs to see their enemy coming." She paused. "But the answer to your question is yes, they do make a very cute pair." She glanced at the easel that Miranda was carrying in one hand, as well as the satchel slung across her other shoulder. "Are you going to be doing a spot of painting?"

    "Yes," Miranda said. "I'm not that good, but I've always enjoyed it, and I'm certainly not bad either." She paused. "I'm going to paint the lake, not Jaune and Pyrrha … although, if they stay out there, I might put them in the picture as well. After all—"

    "They make a cute pair," Sunset said, a smile playing across her lips.

    "Exactly," Miranda agreed. "And you can't go wrong putting a lady in a dress and her handsome beau in the centre of a painting."

    "Some modern artists might disagree," Sunset muttered.

    Miranda snorted. "Okay, yes, you've got a point. But my style has always tended towards the traditional."

    Sunset nodded. She was silent for a moment, and for more than a moment as Miranda started to set up her easel by the shore of the lake.

    Sunset folded her arms. "How … how have you been?"

    Miranda stopped what she was doing. She remained frozen, bent down in the act of fiddling with her easel. "I … there are good days and bad days. There are days when I feel fine, and there are other days when … I don't. But I think … I think that there are more good days than bad days, lately. I think. There are more good days, and more good nights when I don't dream of … that thing."

    Sunset nodded but said nothing. There was very little she could say.

    Very little that she had the right to say.

    "I think," Miranda went on, "I think that Pearl … she wouldn't want me to fall apart, you know? She wouldn't want me to run back home and hide in my room and never come out. She wouldn't want me to … this sounds stupid; I mean, she's dead, it doesn't matter what she would have wanted. But it's like … it's like I can hear voice in my ear, telling me 'get up, girl, get off your ass!'" She closed her eyes, even as she straightened up. "She gave her life to save mine," she declared. "She sacrificed herself so that I could get away, that … I need to honour that."

    Sunset chewed on her lower lip. "So … what are you going to do?"

    Miranda laughed. "I haven't quite worked that part out just yet, but … it'll come. I'm sure it will."

    "I … I'm sure it will too," Sunset murmured.

    Miranda glanced at her. "So, what about you, what brings you out here? Keeping an eye on your team?"

    Sunset laughed, grateful for the change of subject. "I don't think they need it here, no; I'm looking into Jaune's family history."

    "'Jaune's family history'?" Miranda repeated. "Why … just why?"

    "Because I promised Pyrrha's mother that I would."

    Miranda frowned. "No, sorry, still not getting it."

    "It doesn't really matter; it's just something that I agreed to do."

    "Well, good luck finding out anything earlier than the founding of the town," Miranda told her. "The folks who founded this place really wanted a fresh start."

    "Yeah, I've noticed," Sunset replied. "What's that about, anyway?"

    "If I could tell you that," Miranda said, "they wouldn't have done a very good job, would they?"

    "No," Sunset murmured. "No, I suppose they wouldn't." She paused for a moment. "I … need to go and talk to Sheriff Arc."

    "Oh, okay, yeah, that's fine," Miranda said. "And I have stuff to do here so … good luck with your search, even if I don't understand what you're looking for, or why."

    Sunset turned away, feeling honestly glad to get away as she left Miranda by the lakeshore, alone, with the silver waters lapping at the bank before her, the breeze plucking at her dress.

    Sunset herself made her way to the Sheriff's office, a modern-looking brick building, painted blue on the ground floor and then white on the first floor and the roof. A pair of double doors, mostly glass, barred the way inside, but they opened at Sunset's touch as she walked into a large, open room with a tiled floor. The back of the room was segregated off with cell bars and doors, all of them empty at present, each with an unoccupied bed, a toilet, and a washbasin; various filing cabinets and cupboards lined the walls, while doors led off the sides of the room marked 'Gun Locker' and 'Evidence Locker' respectively.

    Sky was sitting behind one of the desks, the one facing the door, and she looked up as Sunset came in.

    "Everything okay?" she asked.

    "Yeah," Sunset said. "I was just hoping I could have a word." She glanced at the occupant of the other desk, a young man with blond hair sticking up — all of it, and far too much to be called a Mohawk — on top of his head so that it added another foot to his height. "In private."

    Sky got up. "Come into the evidence locker; Sprout, holler for me if you need me."

    "Yes, ma'am," the young man, Sprout, said without looking up from his paperwork, or the doughnut he was eating while he pored over said paperwork.

    Sky gestured in the right direction, as though the door wasn't clearly labelled Evidence Locker; Sunset followed her inside, finding a room that was very largely empty, with only a few boxes with labels written in ink upon them and a lot of barren shelves gathering dust.

    "You don't have a lot of crime in this village, I take it?" Sunset asked, as she shut the door behind her.

    "Personally, I think that's a good thing," Sky said. She turned to Sunset, leaning against one of the empty shelves, folding her arms. "We're nice people in this town; we treat our neighbours well." She paused, before saying, "So, what can I do for you?"

    Sunset put her out her arm to rest it against a shelf near the door. "I was wondering if the name Crown D'Eath meant anything to you."

    "It's pronounced 'Deeth,' not 'Death'," Sky replied. "And … yes, I know the name … that's a bad story, that is. You found Grandpa's journal, I take it?"

    "You've read it?"

    "Of course I have," Sky said. "And I've done more than that; he was my grandfather, after all; he only passed away a few winters ago."

    "So you talked to him?"

    "Of course."

    "So you know the story?"

    "Does it matter?" Sky asked, frowning. "I thought you were interested in our ancestry?"

    "I am," Sunset said. "But if you've read your grandfather's journal, then you'll know that Crown D'Eath was interested in it too, and I'm pretty sure he found something out. Something that your grandfather didn't want to hear, or didn't want to get out, wanted Crown to keep to himself. I wondered if you knew what that something was."

    Sky smirked. "If I knew something that Grandpa didn't want to be known, what makes you think I'd tell you?"

    Sunset snorted. "That's a fair point."

    "But as it happens, I don't know," Sky admitted. "Grandpa Carrot didn't tell me. He … it was painful for him. You … do you know what Crown D'Eath did, after Beacon?"

    Sunset nodded. "He killed at least two people, and then was killed himself."

    "By Grandpa Carrot," Sky said.

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. "I didn't know that."

    Sky nodded. "Grandpa went to Beacon, same as Dad and … same as Jaune now, but he didn't become a huntsman. He became a cop, a watchman as they were called in those days — it was still called the City Watch back then; they didn't become the VPD until … a little bit later, after he quit, I think. Anyway, he was a cop; it's what inspired me to join the Sheriff's Department here in Alba Longa. He was a cop and … and he had to kill his friend. His friend who was killing other people and who had to be stopped. Grandpa … he said that he didn't regret it, but … it stayed with him. Killing a man, killing that man. It's why I'm worried about Jaune."

    "Jaune's okay," Sunset assured her. "Professor Goodwitch — combat instructor, informal deputy headmistress — is also a trained therapist. He's seen her. In a professional sense."

    "I'm glad," Sky said. "I'm also horrified that my baby brother needed to see a shrink, but … I'm glad. He didn't try and give you any crap about that, did he?"

    "No," Sunset said. "Did you think he might?"

    Sky shrugged. "Men around here can be … protective of their … manhood. And Jaune, because he was made to feel like he never had much manhood — and I will own that we didn't exactly help with that; in fact, we made it worse in some ways — he could be prickly about stuff like that. He didn't make a fuss, say that men don't need to talk about their problems, anything like that?"

    "No," Sunset said. "That kind of stuffing … he arrived with some of that, but he managed to get rid of it early on. Being around so many girls has cured him of it."

    "It didn't when he lived with us," Sky said.

    "Pyrrha is a lot nicer to him than you were, I think," Sunset said. "No offence."

    Sky glared at her for a moment, before she admitted. "You're probably right." She looked away and coughed once. "Anyway," she said, "Grandpa didn't stay in the big city long after that. He came back here, back home, became the Sheriff, married, had Dad, raised his son. That's the way it happens with Arc men; they leave, and then they always find their way back home. Except Jaune won't be coming back, will he?"

    "Possibly, probably not," Sunset conceded. "That's something you'd have to ask him, although given Pyrrha's … everything, it does seem most likely that they'll live in Mistral. But does it matter? Does it really matter if he moves to Mistral with Pyrrha? With seven sisters, the new generation of Arcs is secure without him, surely."

    "You might think," Sky said, without elaboration. Sunset didn't press her; it was hardly her place to do so.

    Instead, she asked, "You say that Carrot married. Did he marry Delphi, the huntress he talks about?"

    Sky was silent for a second. "No," she said. "No, he… Delphi was the huntress murdered by Crown D'Eath."

    Sunset's eyes widened. She didn't say anything, because there wasn't anything polite to say to that. To have your partner murder your lover … it might have made killing him a little easier, but that probably wasn't much consolation. No wonder Carrot Arc hadn't wanted to stay in Vale.

    "And you don't know why he did it?" Sunset asked. "What drove him to kill?"

    Sky shook his head. "Grandpa never said."

    He didn't want Carrot dating her — or courting her, perhaps, in the old-fashioned vernacular — in the first place; they argued about it, and that's when everything that Crown knew or thought he knew came out.
    And then he killed her. Because of … what?

    What secret about someone's ancestry is worth killing for?

    XxXxX​

    Red leaned forwards. "You seen that new girl in town?"

    Despite the fact that it was only two in the afternoon, Ruben took a swig from his beer bottle, before putting it down upon the table at the Moon Over Water. "What new girl?" he demanded. His lip curled into a sneer. "You mean Pyrrha Nikos, Jaune's new girlfriend."

    "No, the other one, just got in today," Red said. "She's got a room upstairs. Name's Sunset Shimmer. Fine lookin' girl. Friend of Jauney's."

    Ruben snorted. "A 'friend of Jauney's,'" he sneered. "This whole town is gonna fill up with friends of Jauney's, more outsiders." He chuckled. "He's introduced his girlfriend to his folks; maybe now it's the turn of his bit on the side."

    He felt a hand stroking his stubbled cheek. Jolene's hand, turning his face towards her.

    "Aww, are you jealous, sugar?" Jolene asked, a touch of mockery in her voice. She half-smiled, half-smirked at him as got up out of her seat and sat down on his lap, still stroking his face as she did so. "Am I not good enough for you no more? You want some Mistral tenderness, is that it?"

    "I ain't jealous!" Ruben snapped. He wasn't. He really wasn't. He was … he was the man in this family. He always had been. His father had worked like a dog for the Arc family, keeping their farm running while they lived all high and mighty, the famous Arcs of Alba Longa.

    And he had done just the same. He worked, he did all the work, he was the one who got things done, he was the man in this family, not Jaune. Jaune had always been a snivelling little girl, playing with his sisters, reading, crying, dreaming. Ruben didn't have dreams, Ruben didn't run off to some school way out in Vale, Ruben didn't turn his back on his family. Ruben stuck around, stuck it out, put up with the fact that his wife was only half a woman and couldn't have kids, put up with the fact that his sisters-in-law looked down on him.

    He put up with it, unlike Jaune, and what thanks did he get? What appreciation? None at all! Not one little bit! While Jaune, that little girl, that runaway, he showed up back home one day, and everyone loved him, everyone fawned over him, everyone thought he'd grown so much.

    Yeah, he thought he was such a man now, Jaune Arc. And he had … he had a girlfriend now? A girlfriend like that? A beauty beyond compare, and rich, and famous too?

    What did she see in him?

    He wanted her, Pyrrha Nikos. More than for herself, he wanted to take her to show Jaune who the real man in this family still was.

    Ruben had worked hard and put up with a lot on the understanding that he would inherit the estate when Old Man Arc passed away. Then he would finally be free to kick out all of his wife's sisters to see how they liked being poor. And after that … he glanced at Jolene. She would be willing to become his wife, once he'd got Rouge out of the way, but by that point, he might want someone a little younger. Someone like Miranda Wells, now that she was back in town; she might not like it, but her parents would see the advantage to it.

    Except that they might not if Old Man Arc decided that actually Jaune could be left the estate, now that he'd become a man at Beacon.

    Red leaned forwards. Red Beauregard was one of his best friends, perhaps the best, a solidly built guy with short red hair, dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans.

    "I heard something," he said, "listening at their door."

    "Why were you listening at their door?" Jolene asked.

    "So I could hear anything worth hearing," Red said, as though it were obvious, "and I heard that before Jaune brought his girlfriend out here, he was worried she was going to get stolen away by a real man."
    Ruben snorted. "I wish. Seems she's only got eyes for him, though, God knows why."

    "That doesn't need to matter though, does it?" Red said.

    Ruben's eyes narrowed. "You got somethin' in mind?"

    "It won't solve all your problems, but it might make him cry a little bit," Red said. He paused. "You know, Jolene, you look kind of like Pyrrha."

    "I do not look kind of like Pyrrha!" Jolene declared. "She looks kind of like me! I was here first!"

    Red shrugged. "Either way," he said. "You got flaming locks of auburn hair, ivory skin, and eyes like emerald green."

    "And my smile is like a breath of spring and my voice is soft like summer rain," Jolene said, primping her hair with one hand. "My beauty is beyond compare, I know."

    It used to be, Ruben thought. She was still pretty enough — and prettier than his wife, that was for sure — but she was starting to get old now; she was past thirty already, and it was taking its toll on her.

    "What's your point, anyway?" Jolene asked.

    "The point is that we tell Jaune that Pyrrha is cheating on him," Red said.

    "But she ain't," Jolene pointed out.

    "Yeah, but he'll believe it 'cause he was already scared of it," Red insisted. "Then, you show him some pictures that we're going to take of me, making out with Jolene, dressed like Pyrrha—"

    "Is this whole plan just to give you an excuse to kiss me?" Jolene demanded.

    Red's eyes twinkled as he smiled. "Would you blame me if it was?"

    "Not at all," Jolene said.

    "But it'll work," Red insisted. "He might even cry. He'll definitely call her out, maybe in front of the whole family. He might not want to go back to Beacon after all; he'll just hang around home reminding everybody how useless he is."

    "It'll be worth it just to make him sad," Ruben declared. "Are you okay with this Jolene?"

    Jolene sighed. "Sure. Why not? Anything for you, sugar."

    "Well, okay then," Ruben said. "Let's break up the happy couple."

    XxXxX​

    Author's Note: If you've read Terry Pratchett's Men at Arms, you can probably see where this is going.

    If you haven't read it yet, you should.

    No updates on Wednesday or Friday as I won't be around to post them, the next chapter will be up on Monday 19th September.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 47 - Feeling Feelings
  • Threadmarks
    • Feeling Feelings​


    "So," Pyrrha asked, "have you found out anything interesting so far?"

    Sunset smiled at her. "I'm surprised you're interested, to be honest. I thought you didn't care."

    Pyrrha chuckled. "I don't need Jaune to be a lord or … the lost heir to the throne of Vale in order to love him," she said, wrapping her hands around Jaune's arm as she spoke. "But if you've found out anything — anything at all — interesting about Jaune's background … how could I not be interested to know?"

    Sunset, Jaune, and Pyrrha were sitting on the porch of the Arc family home, shielded from the sun by the overhanging veranda. Jaune and Pyrrha sat together upon a porch swing, held up by chains attached to the roof above, swaying gently back and forth as they both looked at Sunset. Sunset, for her part, had to be content with a rocking chair, which she was struggling to control; she didn't want to rock back and forth, but she couldn't get the thing to stay completely still. She was going to have to stand up at this rate.

    Sunset nodded, rocking forwards a little as she did so. "Well, I'm sorry to disappoint, but I haven't found anything yet, and honestly, I don't have much hope of finding anything here." She glanced at Jaune. "Something that I suspect you knew before I came down here."

    "I told you—"

    "You told me you didn't know anything," Sunset preemptively corrected him. "You didn't tell me that there was nothing to find, that there was deliberately nothing to find."

    "'Deliberately'?" Pyrrha repeated. "What do you mean?"

    Jaune shrugged. "There … there is nothing before my great-great-grandfather and the founding of the town. Everything before that is…"

    "Non-existent," Sunset said. "And, it seems, purposefully so."

    Pyrrha frowned. "I … I don't understand. You're suggesting that—"

    "Nobody set out to lie or keep anything secret," Jaune said.

    Well, I don't know about that, Sunset said, thinking about Crown D'Eath and Carrot Arc.

    "But," Jaune went on, "people, my ancestors, the folks who founded this town … it seems like they wanted a fresh start. They didn't want whatever they had been before to follow them here. They only wanted the futures that they would make for themselves. So … they didn't talk about their pasts. At all. My great-great-grandfather might as well have sprung up out of the ground fully-formed. About the only thing that he had that tied him to his past was Crocea Mors … and I broke it."

    He looked down into his lap, as though the shards of the sword could be found there.

    "I'm not sure a man who denied his past and talked about the future belonging to him would care about the breaking of an old antique," Sunset murmured. "He'd probably tell you to get on with forging it anew and make something that you could carry into the future that belonged to you."

    Jaune looked up at her. "You think so?"

    "I didn't know the man," Sunset admitted, "but it seems like him. And I didn't know your grandfather either, but … Sky told me his story. How he couldn't save his Mistralian love. I think, I hope, that if he were here, he'd tell you to be glad you had a broken sword and a living girlfriend, instead of the other way around."

    He did not look at her, but Jaune's right hand reached up and touched Pyrrha's hand where she held his arm.

    "You're right," Jaune said. "That is what he'd say. I hope that's what he'd say. I didn't actually know my grandpa very well; he was … I looked up to him, he was the kind of hero that I wanted to become, but at the same time … he scared me a little bit. I was afraid to try and get too close to him because … because I didn't think I measured up." He paused. "I…"

    "Don't say it," Pyrrha told him.

    Jaune looked at her. "Huh?"

    "At some point this year, you've saved all three of our lives," Pyrrha said. "Ruby and Sunset by healing their injuries, mine by giving me breathing room against Cinder when I needed it. Without you … if that isn't something to be proud of, to set against the noble deeds of your ancestors, then I know not what is." She paused. "But, I must say, I am surprised by what you've told me about your lack of family history. I suppose it doesn't matter. I know it doesn't matter. But at the same time, I must admit that I am baffled by the decision of your great-great-grandfather. I can't imagine not drawing strength from the example of those who came before you; not only that, but denying those who come after the opportunity to do the same. It's … vandalism."

    "My family isn't yours, Pyrrha," Jaune reminded her. "It might not be that there was much of anything to remember."

    It might be darker than that, Sunset thought, but did not give voice to the thought. It hardly seemed the time or the place to suggest such a thing, in the midst of Jaune's own home, when Jaune and Pyrrha had had a good time here so far. No, not the time or the place at all.

    "I suppose so," Pyrrha murmured, "but this goes beyond forgetting, as might happen, and into wilful neglect, and that … it is a mystery to me that someone would wish to go to such lengths to erase their family history." She glanced at Sunset. "What will you do now? What will you tell my mother?"

    "I will apologise to Lady Nikos and ask for more time," Sunset told her.

    "Time for what?" Pyrrha asked. "If there is nothing here—"

    "It does not follow that there is nothing anywhere," Sunset reminded her, "and I know for a fact that there is something elsewhere, because someone else has walked this path before me, in Jaune's grandfather's time."

    "Really?" Jaune asked. "What did they find?"

    "If I knew that," Sunset said, allowing just a touch of tartness to enter her tone, "I wouldn't need to retrace their steps; it would just be there. I know that they found something, and that it excited them, but I don't know what it was."

    "It seems odd that their reaction survives, but not the discovery that prompted it," Pyrrha pointed out.

    That was very true, but to avoid saying that Jaune's grandfather had fought to have the discovery covered up, Sunset simply said, "These things happen sometimes. Anyway," she said, leaning forwards — and then rocking backwards so far her feet left the ground. "Oh, for Celestia's—" Sunset leapt up and pushed the rocking chair backwards so that it didn't get in her way. She moved around to stand directly in front of Jaune and Pyrrha, her gloved hands resting upon the wooden railing of the porch. She cleared her throat. "Anyway—" she began.

    "Sunset, look out!" Jaune cried.

    "What—?" Sunset looked around, wondering what had prompted his sudden cry, only to see a goat that had snuck up on her and was about to start chewing on her sleeve. "Ah!" Sunset cried, raising her arms above her head and sidling away from the animal. "No! Go away!"

    The goat made a noise that sounded a lot like a staccato laugh and followed her, trying to stick its head through the bars of the porch rail to get at the edge of her jacket.

    "Get you gone!" Sunset snapped. She pointed her fingers at it. "Go away right now, or I shall turn you into a newt, so help me! Go!"

    A bolt of magic leapt from her fingertips to strike the ground just beside the goat, which turned and ran from the miniature explosion and the crater in the soil.

    Sunset tugged upon her jacket with both hands. "I don't know how you've survived this place, Pyrrha."

    Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as she chuckled. "I've been very lucky, I suppose, that nothing like that has happened to me."

    "Lucky you indeed," Sunset muttered. "But then, I was never much of a countryside girl." She resumed her prior place leaning on the porch, half sitting upon it, facing Jaune and Pyrrha. "So," she said, "as I was saying: how has it been?"

    The two of them looked at one another, but neither said anything.

    Sunset rolled her eyes. "Don't everyone jump in at once."

    Pyrrha laughed. "I'm not sure what you want us to say, Sunset."

    "There must be something you can tell me!" Sunset cried. "What's happened, how are they treating you, what's it like—?"

    "You can find that out for yourself when you meet everyone for dinner tonight," Jaune said.

    "Am I invited?"

    "Yeah, you didn't think we were just going to let you eat alone at the Moon, did you?"

    "I hardly knew, you only invited me just now," Sunset replied. "How's the food?" she asked Pyrrha.

    "Exquisite," Pyrrha assured her. "Jaune gets his cooking skill from his mother, clearly."

    "Ooh," Sunset murmured, a smile upon her face. "Got that to look forward to, then. I suppose none of them will be too surprised that I came up empty in my search."

    "None of them mentioned it when they found out you were coming," Pyrrha said.

    "Perhaps they didn't think it was worth mentioning," Sunset replied. "Anyone that I should … be wary of?"

    "Why would you ask that?" asked Jaune.

    "Because you said 'nearly everyone' before you corrected yourself," Sunset reminded him, "and I want to know what that's about."

    Jaune shifted uncomfortably upon the porch swing.

    "Jaune's brother-in-law, Ruben, has not always … been as courteous as one might like," Pyrrha murmured. "He … it doesn't matter."

    "Doesn't it?" Sunset inquired. "What's he said? What's he done, for that matter?"

    Now it was Pyrrha's turn to fall silent, to refuse to speak; she looked at Jaune, but she did not answer Sunset's question.

    At least, not at first; it became clear watching her — watching her watching Jaune — that she was waiting for him to say something. When he did not, Pyrrha prompted him, "Jaune… did Ruben bully you when you were younger?"

    Jaune took a few seconds to mumble, "Yeah. Yeah, I guess so, a little bit."

    "And now?" Sunset asked.

    "He delights in attempting to put Jaune down and seems pained by any acknowledgement of Jaune's accomplishment or skill," Pyrrha said. "The saving grace being that so many in this house seem to find him impossible to bear. I must confess, I do wonder why Rouge ever married him. There seems … little affection between the two of them."

    Jaune sighed. "Ruben … Ruben's dad works for my Dad. He runs the farm for Dad; he works our land. So our families have always been close. Ruben was always around. He was older than me, he was bigger and stronger than me … he was more of a man than I was. Dad … needed someone to take over the estate from him, and it was clear that I wasn't going to cut it … Ruben … made sense."

    "So he married the eldest daughter to seal the deal?" Sunset asked. "That sounds about as old-fashioned as anything that might go on in Mistral."

    "Such a match as my mother might have wished and intended," Pyrrha said softly, "but I had the freedom to say no. Had Rouge—"

    "I don't know what Rouge thought," Jaune admitted. "I was too young to know. Maybe she did love him once. I don't know. I'm not sure that we should be talking about it — about her — like this."

    "Yes, of course, this is most improper," Pyrrha said. "Forgive me."

    He smiled at her. "It's okay. I just… let's just leave it there. Ruben can be a bit of a jerk sometimes, but he's harmless, and he has been good to this family, mostly. Just … he might say something at dinner, but … try not to flip out on him, okay?"

    Sunset's eyes narrowed. "What's he likely to say that I should 'flip out'?"

    "I don't know," Jaune admitted. "But you can sometimes … fly off the handle about things."

    "I do not fly off the handle; I get righteously angry at things that it is righteous to be angry about," Sunset insisted. "If he feels my anger, it will be because he gave me cause."

    "I'd still rather he didn't," Jaune said. "Considering that this is my home, and my family."

    "I'm not going to promise to just sit there and take everything," Sunset declared.

    "You would if Lady Nikos asked you to," Jaune pointed out.

    Sunset folded her arms. "Lady Nikos," she said, "would understand that there are some insults that I should not be asked to put up with." She paused. "But, as this is your home, and your family, and as we do wish Pyrrha to make a good impression … I will endeavour to show a greater than usual restraint … up to a point."

    "Thanks," Jaune said. "I mean that. Whatever else he is, he's still my brother-in-law, after all."

    "Thank you, Sunset," Pyrrha agreed.

    "You're welcome," Sunset said. "How long are you two planning on staying here, by the way?"

    "How about you?" Jaune asked.

    "I don't see much point in hanging around," Sunset told him. "As I said, there's nothing to learn here, intentionally so. Although, having said that, I will say that there's a lot to be proud of in the ancestors that you do know about. They were impressive people, wherever your great-great-grandfather came from."

    "Maybe you can tell me more about them," Pyrrha suggested to Jaune.

    "Uh, yeah, maybe," Jaune agreed. "I wasn't sure you'd be interested."

    "And what in Remnant would make you think that I wouldn't be interested in your family history?" Pyrrha asked.

    "That's a good point," Jaune conceded. "But, to get back to it, I think we'll probably go back with you. My Dad's party is over; that's why we came back, we can't hang around here forever. I'll tell Mom and Dad that we're leaving tomorrow."

    Sunset nodded. "Okay, then," she said. "That's good to hear. When we get back, you should look at getting your sword reforged. Any ideas?"

    Jaune shook his head. "Not really?"

    "Never mind, I'm sure that Ruby will have a few," Sunset said. She blinked. "Seriously, there's nothing you can tell me? What have you been doing here for the last few days?"

    "There really isn't much to tell," Jaune insisted. "I worked things out with my folks and my sisters, Pyrrha … everybody got on board with Pyrrha and I being together in the end—"

    "Almost everybody," Sunset corrected him.

    Jaune laughed lightly. "Yeah, okay, almost everybody," he admitted. "I found out that one of my sisters is having a baby…"

    "I met Jaune's nephew," Pyrrha added. "He's very cute."

    "Is he now?" Sunset murmured.

    She'd never really had time for children. Princess Celestia had tried to get her to do some foalsitting like Cadance, but aside from the fact that Sunset wasn't really interested in doing anything that precious Princess Cadance had done first — she was her own mare; she followed in nopony's footsteps — there was also the fact that she just hadn't really liked fillies and colts. They were demanding, they were noisy, they didn't do as they were told, and if you made them, then everypony acted as though you were the problem. She'd tried it once, for Princess Celestia's sake, and … while she hadn't done a bad job on purpose, she hadn't been sorry to not be asked back.

    It didn't seem as though Pyrrha had had that problem.

    "Yes, he is," Pyrrha said. She paused for a moment. "So, you're not planning to do any more work this afternoon?"

    "Is there any more work for me to do?" Sunset replied. "I'd do it, if I thought that I'd find anything, but it seems as though this town was intentionally constructed as a dead end for this investigation."

    "Then, will you excuse us for a little while, Jaune?" Pyrrha asked.

    Jaune looked surprised. "Yeah, sure, but why?"

    "It seems that this might be a good opportunity to start training Sunset's semblance," Pyrrha explained. "Where nothing is going to come up and get in the way."

    "Well … that's true enough, I suppose, but here?" Sunset asked. "Are you sure that you wouldn't rather that I excused the two of you?"

    "It's fine," Jaune assured her. "I've had Pyrrha almost all to myself since we got here."

    Pyrrha smiled and leaned forwards to kiss him on the cheek. "We won't be long," she assured him as she got to her feet, smoothing her skirt out with both hands.

    "Are you expecting me to pick this up quickly?" Sunset asked.

    "No, but there's no point in overdoing things on the first lesson," Pyrrha replied. "Since you won't master everything right away, why try to force yourself?"

    "I suppose," Sunset muttered. She preferred to force herself, to drive herself hard, but it takes two to teach a lesson, and if Pyrrha wanted to take a more relaxed, Celestia-like approach to instruction, then Sunset was in little position to contradict her on the point.

    Especially since Pyrrha was doing her a favour here, and even moreso, given where they were now.

    "We'll use Kendal's room; I don't think that she's in there," Pyrrha said, as she turned to lead the way inside the house. Her feet were hidden beneath her full-length skirt, but Sunset could hear her heels tapping upon the wooden boards regardless.

    Sunset followed her inside the house, trailing behind her down a wooden corridor and into a dining room, where the table was bare and not set for any meal. Upon one of the walls was an array of photographs, all of them framed in varnished wood, and Sunset found herself drawn to the wall, to the picture of multitudinous Arcs who grew up before her eyes from little girls to grown women. Her eyes lingered for a moment upon a picture of Team SAPR and Blake, standing together in front of the Emerald Tower of Beacon, arms linked together across one another's shoulders, leaning in and smiling.

    You could tell that this had been taken before Mountain Glenn because they were all smiling.

    But Jaune and Pyrrha, at least, could still smile so brightly now, she thought; could Blake? Could Ruby? Was it only her who could not?

    I can smile.

    But can I smile like that? I know not.

    Pyrrha turned at the foot of the stairs to see Sunset lingering, looking at the pictures. She, herself, drifted back to Sunset's side.

    "That one was taken at Mister Arc's birthday party," she said, pointing to a picture set about two thirds of the way up the wall.

    Sunset's eyes followed Pyrrha's outstretched hand and pointed finger. She was pointing to a picture of a large group, mostly women, all gathered around a middle-aged pair that she took to be Jaune's parents. Both had gone a little plump with age, a little soft around the middle, but in neither case egregiously so. His suit and her dress still fit them very well.

    A gaggle of women — Jaune's sisters, clearly — stood grouped around the parental couple, some of them leaning in to get in frame, some of them half-doubled over to make sure that everyone could be seen. Jaune, by contrast, was standing near the back, and so was Pyrrha, who was wearing the most delighted smile upon her face that it popped out of the picture and the frame to illuminate the room.

    Sunset found herself smiling too. "You look like you were having a good time."

    "I hadn't expected to be asked," Pyrrha admitted. "To join the picture, I mean. Chester and Ruben are married to River and Rouge but I'm just—"

    "The love of his life?" Sunset suggested.

    "His girlfriend," Pyrrha replied. "Jaune could dump me tomorrow—"

    "But he won't, because you're the love of his life," Sunset reminded her, "and I'm guessing they invited you to join their picture because they recognise that too. That, and it seems that you made a good impression." She grinned. "You really did well here, didn't you?"

    "I…" Pyrrha hesitated, a blush rising to her cheeks. "I think that to a certain extent, I … disapproved of Jaune's parents more than they disapproved of me."

    "Why?" Sunset asked. "Are they crude and boorish?"

    "No," Pyrrha said quickly. "Not that, for the fact that they allowed Jaune to come to Beacon so completely unprepared, without his aura unlocked."

    "Oh, right, that," Sunset said. "From what I understand, that word 'allowed' is doing some significant heavy lifting, I must say."

    "You know what I mean," Pyrrha said. "If Jaune had been trained—"

    "If Jaune had been trained, you wouldn't have had to save his life," Sunset pointed out. "If Jaune had been trained … think about how he acted when he came to Beacon; if Jaune had been trained, he would have been Cardin Winchester without quite so much muscle. Arrogant, full of himself, jealous of anyone who threatened his sense of superiority." She paused. "So, me, basically, without my stunning good looks." She patted her long, fiery hair with one hand.

    Pyrrha laughed. "Even so, grateful as I am, much as I love him … if, by giving him up, I could give him all the strength he needed to achieve his dreams, then I would do it."

    "Always assuming, of course, that you have not become his new dream," Sunset pointed out.

    Sunset wouldn't have thought it was possible, but Pyrrha became even redder in the face. "I… I am so very lucky. I don't know how I did it."

    "Arc men fall hard and fast, it seems," Sunset replied.

    "You're talking about his ancestors?"

    "I read a little about Jaune's grandfather. He fell for a beautiful Mistralian student as well."

    "Really?" Pyrrha asked. "What happened? Did they live … happily ever after?"

    "Uh … no," Sunset admitted, rather wishing now that she hadn't brought the subject up. "She … she died, in the line of duty."

    What an odd phrase that, 'in the line of duty.' It is used as though it should ameliorate sorrow. They died, but in the line of duty, so that makes it alright. That makes it better than an ordinary death. That makes it bearable, tolerable, not so worth being sad over.

    I wonder if that's ever worked? I wonder if it has ever truly ameliorated. 'In the line of duty, you say? Well, why didn't you say so before; I shall stop crying at once.' And yes, I know that's an exaggeration, but even so. Has it ever really made anyone feel better, to know that their loved one died in the line of duty?

    Ruby, possibly.

    Even so, a strange phrase.

    "Sunset?" Pyrrha asked.

    "Mmm?" Sunset replied. "Sorry, did I space out there?"

    "For a second, yes," Pyrrha said. "Is everything alright?"

    "Yes," Sunset said quickly. "Yes, everything's fine, I …" She looked at the picture again. "Is Jaune wearing a gold suit?"

    "Yes," Pyrrha said, a smile playing across her lips. Not a smile of mockery at Jaune's embarrassment, a genuine smile, bright and lustrous. "Doesn't he look handsome in it?"

    "I can hardly tell, the way that his height has forced him to the back of the shot," Sunset murmured. "And anyway, it's gold."

    "And what of that?" Pyrrha asked. "Why shouldn't he wear a gold suit?"

    "Because…" Sunset trailed off.

    It was true that, in Equestria, nopony would dream of wearing such a thing — bright colours were the province of mares; stallions were expected to be far more drab and conservative in their attire — but this was not Equestria. Yet, at the same time, she had observed that much the same standards applied here in Remnant, at least in the kingdoms that she had … well, in Vale and Atlas at least; in Mistral … it varied, although even there, Valish and Atlesian styles and the accompanying lack of colour were making headway. But, faced with Pyrrha's question, there was no actual reason why it should be so. No reason why Jaune should not wear a gold suit, if he wished.

    "I…" Sunset shrugged. "I don't know, really; I suppose that I was just surprised. I didn't even know he had anything like that."

    "He doesn't," Pyrrha explained. "The suit belonged to Jaune's father." She leaned forwards to whisper conspiratorially in Sunset's ear. "It was his wedding suit."

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. "Really? You are doing well, aren't you? Was that deliberate?"

    Pyrrha let out a sort of awkward, halting laugh. "I … I haven't had the heart to ask. That probably had nothing to do with it, but … a girl can dream, can't she?"

    "You certainly can," Sunset told her. "Although you scarcely need to. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if you told me that Jaune had proposed since I saw you both last."

    "Not quite," Pyrrha said, with a little laugh. "Although we did find time to talk … about our future. Where we'll live and what we'll do and … children."

    "'Children'?" Sunset repeated. "You … you are truly fortunate, to have found a man who is willing to … to entertain such things so early. Who is not content, desirous even, merely to mess around, however you might wish for more."

    "I know," Pyrrha said. "Believe me, I know."

    "One thing that I do regret," Sunset said, glancing up at the photograph once again, "is that I can hardly see any of your dress with the way that you're in the back with Jaune, hidden behind his sisters."

    "It's up in my room," Pyrrha pointed out. "I can show you, if you like."

    "That would be nice, before you start trying to help me manage my semblance," Sunset said.

    "It's up this way," Pyrrha said, and once again, she turned from the pictures on the wall and left Sunset to follow her to and then up the stairs to the first floor of the house. A long corridor awaited them there, lined with doors, but Pyrrha did not lead Sunset very far along the corridor before stopping in front of a door proclaiming that this was Kendal's room and that intruders should keep out.

    Nevertheless, Pyrrha pushed open the door, revealing that there was, all things considered, very little need for privacy beyond the general desire for the same, considering how sparse the room was — although that might have simply been because it was so small. The bed on one side and the camp bed on the other took up most of the available space, and when you added in the desk facing the window … it was less of a room and more of a corridor between three points.

    "Is this where you've been staying?" Sunset asked.

    "Yes," Pyrrha said. "Kendal has been very obliging."

    "I am amazed that you were able to get dressed into some of your gowns in here," Sunset declared. "Where was the room?"

    "I made do," Pyrrha said.

    "Couldn't they have found you anywhere with a little more space to stay?"

    "I think they thought that I would get on with Kendal," Pyrrha replied, "and I have. She's in the Survey Corps, so she was a little more welcoming than some of Jaune's sisters, at first."

    "That is … a dangerous road to travel," Sunset said. "Not least because there are no roads where she walks." She paused. "In some ways, you might say that it is a more dangerous road than Jaune's."

    "Or any of ours," Pyrrha pointed out. "But yes, I take your meaning. We, at least, have weapons and training … and one another. And our semblances, once we have mastered them."

    Sunset laughed. "I'm not stalling, I assure you," she insisted. "Although I will stall for just a mite longer and point out that you promised to show me your dress from the party."

    "So I did," Pyrrha conceded. She turned towards the bed, upon which sat her case containing her clothes. She looked down, taking out the green dress that she had worn to come down here from Beacon. Sunset saw her frown down at the case. "That's odd."

    "What?" Sunset asked. "Is something wrong?"

    "Not wrong, precisely, but … my red dress and bolero, I can't see it," Pyrrha murmured.

    "You do have a lot of dresses in there," Sunset pointed out.

    "I know, but it was near the top; I'm sure it was," Pyrrha said, beginning to lift up the clothing in her case to peer underneath it. "And I can't see it anywhere."

    "If someone has stolen some of your clothes, that seems a little more than nothing," Sunset observed.

    "I … I'm sure it will turn up somewhere," Pyrrha said. "Perhaps I … misplaced it somewhere. In any case, it's only a dress. Not worth making a fuss about. Anyway," — she pulled a stunning gown of gold out of her case, holding it up in front of herself — "this is what I wore to the dance."

    Sunset's eyes widened. "That … that is stunning," she said as she took in all the flowers and pearls stitched into the bodice and the skirt. The way that they were sewn into the chest, in particular, they looked like they were bursting out of her.

    Flowers springing from the grave.

    Sunset blinked. Where had that thought come from? Too much thought of Delphi, the lost love of Carrot Arc, most like. An uncomfortable thought, a thought to be rid of.

    "Sunset?" Pyrrha asked.

    "I'm fine," Sunset assured her. "I am … mine eyes are dazzled by the sight of your gown."

    Pyrrha smiled. "It is lovely, isn't it? And it complemented Jaune's suit so well, what a fortunate coincidence."

    "Fate smiled on you," Sunset said. "Save that you do not believe in fate."

    "No," Pyrrha murmured. "No, I do not." She put the dress back, neatly, in such a way that it would not crease. "My destiny is in my choosing."

    She sat down upon the bed, moving her case a little to make room for her. She clasped her hands together, resting her elbows upon her knees, and sighed.

    "What is the matter?" Sunset asked.

    "Nothing," she said. "Nothing is the matter."

    "Then why do you seem sad?" asked Sunset, squatting down upon the floor in front of Pyrrha. "Or rather, why does it suddenly seem as though all joy has left you?"

    "My joy is still within my heart, I assure you," Pyrrha said, "but the talk of fate and thence to destiny reminds me that…"

    Sunset gave her a chance to say on, but she did not avail herself of it. "Reminds you what?" she prompted. "Reminds you of what, perhaps?"

    "Reminds me that I am less certain in myself than once I was," Pyrrha confessed. "I … do you remember the day of our duel, when we talked on the rooftop?"

    Sunset nodded, and a smile pricked at the corners of her mouth. "We are none of us so young and certain as we were then."

    "No, indeed," Pyrrha murmured. "But do you remember what I said to you, that day, about my … my destiny?"

    Sunset snorted. "You meant to save the world."

    "To protect it, yes," Pyrrha said. "It seems very arrogant to hear it repeated back at me thus, as proud as ever my mother was — more. It's … it's rather funny, really, that I have complained at the way that I am put upon a pedestal, but arguably, I have put myself upon the greatest pedestal of all: Pyrrha Nikos, defender of the world."

    "An ambition worthy of your royal race," Sunset said.

    "And what is my royal race worth, in this contest in which we are engaged?" Pyrrha asked of her. "I thought to protect the world as a huntress, but what is a huntress worth in this contest in which we are engaged? I have not your magic, nor Ruby's eyes."

    "You have your spear—"

    "And what is a spear against Salem?"

    "What are any of our several powers against Salem? She is invulnerable, and just as invulnerable against my magic as against your weapons," Sunset replied. "Professor Ozpin spoke with Ruby, on the day you left Vale for this place."

    Pyrrha nodded. "I know."

    "He told her—"

    "Are you sure that you should be breaking this confidence to me?"

    "Ruby will tell you all when you meet her next," Sunset assured her.

    "Nevertheless, is it not Ruby's tale to tell?"

    "I wish only to say one brief thing," Sunset said, upon the verge of snapping but not quite doing so. She took pause. "Professor Ozpin despatched Team Stark against Salem directly. He thought, he hoped, that the silver eyes of Summer Rose, though they could not destroy Salem, might turn into stone and trap her harmlessly for all eternity. Suffice to say, it did not work."

    Pyrrha was silent a moment. "Ought this to bring me comfort?" she asked.

    Sunset laughed, and Pyrrha laughed too, and for a moment, the sound of their laughter chased all thoughts of Salem and war and the great struggle in which they were engaged from this room, from Alba Longa, from the world in which they dwelt.

    But then the laughter died, and all dark thoughts crowded in once more, despite the brightness of the day beyond, casting their shadows on the walls, shadows that reached for the two huntresses in the narrow room, laying their dark hands upon Pyrrha's fair skin, running their fingers through Sunset's fiery hair.

    "No," Sunset said. "No, it was not, merely to make you see … you have no need to be ashamed of what you are. You are no more inadequate to this task than any of us, than any of Professor Ozpin's servants have ever been. You are yet a champion amongst us." She paused. "Is it fear, then, that makes you sad?"

    "No," Pyrrha replied. "Although it does not help. No, if I could be certain of my destiny, then perhaps … no, I think I would yet … it is not the fear of whether I can fulfil my destiny, rather … I am uncertain if I now desire it."

    Sunset looked into Pyrrha's vivid green eyes. "You … wish for something else?"

    "I know not," Pyrrha said. "Not for certain. Perhaps, I fear that it may be, I know it is, and I delight it is, I know not. I am … my heart is … I am adrift. Adrift, without so much as a light to guide me back to shore."

    "May I not be your light?" Sunset asked. "What is this doubt?"

    Pyrrha smiled, thought it was a sad smile, touched by frost. She sighed. "What else," she asked, "but Jaune? But love?"

    "What else is love but the death of duty?" Sunset whispered.

    "Perhaps the death of destiny," Pyrrha suggested. "I did not expect, I never … coming to Beacon, I hoped for friendship, but this, but love? Wherefore should I have hoped for love, and yet, now love holds me prisoner; it chains me."

    "All prisoners should rejoice to be so chained," Sunset pointed out.

    "Indeed," Pyrrha conceded. "Indeed, and yet … what if my love overbears my sense of duty? What if that prospect does not trouble me?"

    "If it troubled you not, then we would not be having this conversation," Sunset pointed out. "What would you have, if your heart could have its way?"

    "I do not know!" Pyrrha cried. "If I knew that, then we would also not be having this conversation, no?"

    Sunset let out a little bark of laughter. "Touché. Yet nevertheless … is it not the case that you want all and do not believe that you can possess it? Love and heroism—"

    "And victory?" Pyrrha asked. "That, at least, we cannot have."

    "No," admitted Sunset. "But then, that was always the most arrogant part of your ambitions." She smiled, to show there was no malice in it. "Have you spoken to Jaune about this?"

    "No."

    "Have you considered that you should?"

    "I cannot."

    "Why not?"

    "Because he is not so burdened," Pyrrha declared. "If I told him that … if I confessed to him that … if he knew that a part of me would like nothing more than to surrender this struggle for a life with him … I don't want him to think that I'm emotionally blackmailing him, playing upon his feelings to get that which I desire."

    Sunset stood up. "Is that what you desire? To leave?"

    "Not very heroic, I know," Pyrrha murmured. "Not worthy of the spirit of The Mistraliad. Ten thousand fates of death surround us which no man may escape or avoid, and yet … and yet, being away from this war, they will not come upon us near so swiftly. But, to your question … have we not established that I know not what I desire?"

    "True," Sunset answered. "That, at least, I will concede closes off other routes, but beyond that … you can be hero and lover both, can you not? Are you not already? Have Jaune and destiny. Your namesake had Camilla, after all; I do not see why you cannot have Jaune."

    Pyrrha looked at her. "All my foolish fears so simply resolved?"

    "Not so simple if you decide that you want out," Sunset replied. "But, for the rest, I see no reason why you cannot have it all. If any deserved to have all, after all, it is you. And any other choice … you will have to speak to Jaune about it. If you do not wish to speak to Jaune … keep as you are. Put fear and sadness and fate and destiny and all such weighty matters to one side.

    "We may not be able to defeat Salem, but we have scotched her plans, thwarted her, and though it was not without cost … it will be some time before her shadow can fall on Vale again. Rainbow said so, and I think … I have come to think that she is right, or why else should we have time to visit with Jaune's family, to amuse ourselves with the Vytal Festival? We have passed through our trial; let us speak, let us think, only good things today, and for many days hereafter."

    Pyrrha was silent for a moment. "Only good things," she said.

    "Even so," Sunset said. "Good things … and wise things, touching upon semblance."

    "Indeed," Pyrrha said, her voice lightening. "Indeed, I have not forgotten. Sit down."

    Sunset crouched down once more before her.

    "A seat on the other bed might serve you better," Pyrrha pointed out.

    "On someone else's bed?" Sunset asked. "No, I'll be fine here."

    "Then you will also need to take off your gloves."

    Sunset frowned ever so slightly. "Are you going to have me … would you have me use my semblance on you?"

    "Is there a better way to train than use?" Pyrrha asked. "If you touch me, then you will feel—"

    "Feel as you do and see your memories," Sunset said.

    "Then what I want," Pyrrha said, "is for you to try and find a specific memory. The memory … of the day that we arrived in Mistral. A memory that is also your memory will hopefully be easier to find."

    "Provided I don't get mine and yours mixed up," Sunset replied. "You … you trust me with this? To feel what you feel, to see what you have seen?"

    "Do you not already feel what I feel?" Pyrrha asked. "Do I not unburden myself to you as to none other, not even Jaune?"

    Sunset's mouth opened and then closed again. "I … nevertheless, I am touched by your trust, and all for my sake too."

    She shrugged off her jacket, and her hands glowed with the green light of her magic as she telekinetically unbuckled her vambraces and lowered them down gently to the floor.

    Then she pulled off her gloves and looked down at her bare hands.

    Sunset looked at Pyrrha. "Are you sure that you want this?"

    "What have I to be afraid of?" Pyrrha asked. "What secrets have I from you?"

    I don't know, but I have some from you, Sunset thought. I suppose I should be glad this process only works one way.

    She took a deep breath, and then another. She looked at Pyrrha's outstretched hands, held out to her as if in offered benediction.

    She did not take them. She looked at them, but shrank from touching them.

    Come on, it was always going to come to this sooner or later. This was what asking her to help you was going to involve.

    Sunset reached out and placed her hands in Pyrrha's palms. She felt a jolt of energy shoot through her, her vision was consumed by a bright light, and then—

    She was in Kendal's room again?

    Yes. Yes, it was, this narrow room where too many beds took up too much space, with Pyrrha sitting on the camp bed—

    And Sunset squatting on the floor opposite her.

    Ah, okay. The memory closest to Pyrrha's thoughts was all of seconds ago. Makes sense.

    But I need to get somewhere else. Our arrival in Mistral … how did I do this with Cinder? I … I wanted to know. I wanted to know so badly what had driven her to lie to me, to betray me.

    "Then why do you seem sad?" asked the memory of Sunset. "Or rather, why does it suddenly seem as though all joy has left you?"

    But how can I feel curious about something that I remember myself? How do I feel curious about Pyrrha when I know her so well?

    "My joy is still within my heart, I assure you," Pyrrha said. "But the talk of fate and thence to destiny reminds me that…"

    Sunset turned away, not needing to hear this again so soon, but she was unable to stop her ears against the words spoken by her memory-self. "Reminds you what? Reminds you     of what, perhaps?"

    "Reminds me that I am less certain in myself than once I was," Pyrrha confessed. "I … do you remember the day of our duel, when we talked on the rooftop?"

    The world changed. Kendal's room dissolved, and in its place … there was the rooftop, at Beacon, a world away from Alba Longa, the narrow room replaced by the black roof with its view looking out across the expanse of Vale. Pyrrha had exchanged her dress for her cuirass of bronze and leather, for the greaves and cuisses that covered her legs. The wind flicked at her hair, and at Sunset's too, as they sat together, with the sunlight bright upon them.

    "Do you believe in destiny?"

    This was a happy memory for Sunset, but from what she could feel from Pyrrha … she felt sadness. She could not think why this memory of this day should make her sad, but she could only imagine that all that had come after, the things that they had talked about in Kendal's room, they had covered over whatever she had felt — and Sunset, for her part, had felt quite content, more content than she had felt since coming to Beacon — like treacle poured over a dessert or winter snow stealing across the land.

    Sunset felt that sadness now, not weeping sadness, not sadness to make her cry, so perhaps not sadness at all, rather say, melancholy.

    "My destiny, the destiny I choose, the destiny I came here searching for … is to protect the world."

    And then the Beacon rooftop, too, receded, disappearing, replaced by Lady Nikos' study, at her home in Mistral.

    Mistral. Mistral, I'm halfway already to where I want to be. I just need to think. How to get to that memory? How to get out of this one?

    "You think I am too hard on you?" Lady Nikos asked. She looked much as she had done when Sunset met her, proof that she had spoken true when she declared that it was giving birth to Pyrrha, and not the ravages of years, that had turned her old before her time. The study was the same in some respects, but all the tributes to Pyrrha and her deeds that had in Sunset's time made up one wall were gone, replaced by a painting in a gilt frame, a pastoral scene that clearly held little value for Lady Nikos, given that she would exile it from her presence in later years.

    Pyrrha stood in front of her, on the other side of the desk. She was … five years old; Pyrrha's memory supplied the years, tall for her age, and gangly in the arms, without the muscle that would later round them out. Her ponytail was shorter too, barely reaching to the nape of her neck. This was after her first triumph, in a citywide junior league — this was the tournament, Sunset guessed, in which she had beaten Phoebe Kommenos, who had come home and abused Cinder in consequence.

    And so do the wheels turn, all fates entwined.

    Pyrrha did not meet her mother's gaze. "I … I…"

    "Don't stutter!" Lady Nikos snapped. "Speak!"

    Sunset honoured Lady Nikos. She liked Lady Nikos. Yet at this moment, she was filled with nothing but anger towards Lady Nikos, an anger that she not expected to feel in the soul of gentle Pyrrha, but there it was: anger towards the woman who had controlled her, fashioned her like clay or soft wax, made her into an instrument of Lady Nikos' own ambitions with no thought for Pyrrha's own desires, who had lied to her to come between Pyrrha and her happiness, her heart's desire.

    Why did I want her to make amends with such a hateful woman? Sunset wondered.

    Lady Nikos stared at her for a moment. "I am hard on you," she conceded, "because you are a child, and if I am not hard on you, then you will not be hard on yourself. You will waste your days and your talents." She got up, casting a shadow that reached across the desk to fall on Pyrrha. "You are my daughter," she said, "a daughter of the House of Nikos, scion of a line of heroes, and you yourself … if Chiron is not a liar, and if mine eyes do not deceive me, then you have it in you to be the greatest warrior that Mistral has seen in many generations. I will not see that potential squandered; I will not."

    Somewhere else again; Pyrrha's mind was like a flea, it jumped from scene to scene with scant regard for visitors, barely allowing Sunset to get her bearings in one place before she found herself being whisked off to another. Now, she stood in a field, upon the edge of a forest, looking down upon a wide valley with a river running through it, and on the other side of the valley, there, upon the mountain, lay Mistral.

    "Why did they want to poison me?" Pyrrha asked.

    Sunset turned around. Pyrrha was a little older now, ten years old, and she had gotten taller, just as her hair had gotten longer. She was dressed in what looked like it could be the progenitor of her current garb of war: long black gloves upon her arms, a red sash — shorter than that which she currently wore — tied around her waist; her greaves were smaller, and there were no cuisses, and she wore no vambraces either. Her top was a little less revealing than it would become; in place of cuirass, she wore a red tunic, with a bronze pectoral across her chest.

    Her circlet and armband were nowhere in evidence.

    Pyrrha was sitting beneath a tree. Two people sat on either side of her, an equine faunus with hooves emerging from out of his trousers and a plump woman with dark tangled hair. Chiron and Chariclo, Pyrrha's memories gave Sunset their names, her tutor and his wife, her erstwhile nurse. Though Pyrrha scarce required a nurse at that age, still, she and Chariclo were close, if only because she was Chiron's wife.

    Pyrrha's memories, too, supplied the context that Sunset lacked; Jason and Meleager, two other of Chiron's students, had attempted to put something in Pyrrha's food that would sicken her, but Chariclo had uncovered the plot before it would come to fruition.

    There was no anger in Pyrrha at this memory, and not just because it was so long ago and they had been children at the time; rather, this memory brought instead a renewal of that melancholy that Sunset had felt before.

    She had hoped to make friends with them, her fellow students. She had hoped that they would share a common bond and be further bound in common purpose.

    Instead, they hated her, and Pyrrha could not help but feel it was her fault.

    Sunset wanted to go over to her and give her a hug.

    Strangely, she did     not want to find Jason and Meleager and give them a thrashing. Clearly, Pyrrha's emotions were affecting her mood.

    "They are boys," Chariclo said, "and boys are cruel."

    "They are jealous, Pyrrha," Chiron said. "Loathe as I am to contradict my dearest, they would have done this thing had their names been … Alcimede and Deianeira."

    Chariclo snorted.

    "They are jealous … because I am more skilled than they are?" Pyrrha asked.

    "It is unfortunately so," Chiron informed her.

    "But why?" Pyrrha demanded. "It doesn't make me any better than them just because I'm … more skilled than they are."

    "It will," Chariclo said. "In time, you will understand."

    "Pyrrha, you have won tournaments in the past, but these have been small affairs, meant for children to play in, signifying, I must confess, very little. You have been noted, by some, for your skill and for your victories, but even amongst those who claim to follow the tournaments, there is not such recognition for the youth circuit. But soon, your mother has told me that she wishes to enter you into the adult tournaments at the earliest possible age. For most students, for Meleager and for Jason, I would counsel against it, but you … you will be ready, I think. In truth, you are nearly ready now, not just to compete, but even to triumph. No one so young has won the Mistral tournament in … oh, many a year, back into days of myth and legend, but you … you have it in you. Your skill gives you that chance and will unlock great glory for you, glory that Jason and Meleager, skilled though they are, cannot imagine. And thus, they are consumed with envy. It is not pleasant, but it is the way of the world."

    "Need it be?" Pyrrha asked. "Is glory all there is, and nothing more?"

    Chiron was silent for a moment. "What else could there be, or should there be?"

    "To do … to do something with my skill more than win trophies for my mother's cabinet," Pyrrha said. "To win battles not for my glory but for all mankind." She got up and took a step away from the tree, her eyes fixed on Sunset — not actually at Sunset, obviously, but at the city of Mistral that stood behind her. "To protect the world. Have I skill enough for that, Chiron?" She looked back at him, over her shoulder.

    Pyrrha did not believe she did, not anymore. Sunset could feel it, just as she could feel the anger at her mother, the melancholy.

    But how was she to take control of it? How was she to move according to her own desires and not the hopping of Pyrrha's thoughts?

    She was back in Kendal's room now, with Pyrrha and her memory self, continuing their discussion from earlier. No, now she was in Mistral again, back in the House of Nikos, and Pyrrha was kissing Jaune … and Sunset was seized with a powerful desire to do the same.

    Was he not handsome? Was he not brave and kind? Was there not so much in him to love, to adore, to cherish—?

    Not for me, there isn't! Stop it! Keep your feelings to yourself, Pyrrha!

    Feelings … feelings, yes, perhaps. It was true that Pyrrha's thoughts were being driven by association, or so it seemed, one memory giving way to another as they were triggered — Pyrrha asked Sunset about the rooftop, and then they were on the roof; Sunset asked about Pyrrha's destiny, and then she remembered something about that, and so on. But Sunset's thoughts were not having the same effect; she was thinking hard and to no avail; Pyrrha's thoughts remained in control.

    But what if it wasn't about simply thinking, but feeling too? After all, her power was not just telepathy, but empathy; she didn't just see Pyrrha's memories, she didn't really read Pyrrha's thoughts at all, rather she felt her emotions.

    If she could harmonise her feelings with Pyrrha's, if she could feel what Pyrrha had been feeling in that moment, then perhaps she could guide herself in that direction.

    So what had Pyrrha been feeling?

    Sunset remembered what it had been like to arrive in Mistral from her own perspective; she remembered Pyrrha leaving Jaune behind to watch the great city come into view from the airship.

    "It's beautiful, isn't it?"

    That was what Pyrrha had said. Pride, then, excitement, joy. Sunset closed her eyes and covered up her ears and paid no mind to Pyrrha's memory; rather, she focussed upon her own memories, her own feelings, and the connection between the two. Pride, excitement, joy. Attending Princess Celestia's school. She had felt so proud to walk those hallowed halls on the first day, so proud to step through the open door, to sit down in class, to hear the words of wise and wizened unicorns. She had been … nothing, until then. Princess Celestia's ward, yes, but a charity case, a little filly on whom the princess had taken pity, with no family, no purpose, and no use. But once she started attending the School for Gifted Unicorns, that was when … that was when Sunset Shimmer had started to become somepony, to show that Princess Celestia's kindness had not been wasted on a nothing, to show Equestria what she could do.

    To show Princess Celestia that she could do it.

    Sunset opened her eyes and found that she stood upon a Mistralian airship, flying towards Mistral, with the memories of Team SAPR around her.

    Sunset gasped. "I … I did it," she said. "I did it!"

    "I did it!" Sunset cried, raising her hands in the air back in the real world.

    "You … you did?" Pyrrha asked. "You found the memory?"

    "Yes," Sunset said. "The four of us, flying to Mistral."

    "Extraordinary," Pyrrha murmured. "On your first time, you … that's very good, Sunset; congratulations. How do you feel?"

    Sunset grinned. "I kind of want to kiss Jaune right now."

    "I'd rather you didn't," Pyrrha said dryly.

    "I also feel rather upset with your mother."

    "That might be a more welcome change, if it were permanent," Pyrrha said. "For my part … it's the strangest thing, but I feel a squirming sense of guilt."

    Sunset swallowed. Her stomach froze up. It works both ways? It works both ways! That's … this is the worst semblance ever!

    How am I going to explain this?

    Pyrrha frowned. "Sunset … why do I … why do you feel so guilty?"

    Sunset's mouth was dry. She dared not swallow again for fear of betraying her nerves, and even if she had done so, it wouldn't have helped. "I … I let you down over … over the Arcadia Lake business; it was … I shouldn't have done it."

    "We forgave you for that."

    "That does not make it so easy to forgive myself," Sunset replied.

    Pyrrha was silent for a moment. "No," she conceded. "No, I suppose not." She glanced away, looking ashamed to have brought it up.

    Mentally, Sunset let out the sigh of relief that she could not release physically.

    "How did you do it?" asked Pyrrha, sounding anxious to change the subject. "Reach the memory, I mean?"

    "I thought about what I thought you had been feeling at that moment, and then I felt the same things myself," Sunset said.

    "So easy?"

    "It was an idea," Sunset said. "One worth trying, it turns out."

    "Hmm," Pyrrha murmured. "Yes, I see."

    "Is something wrong?" Sunset asked.

    "Not wrong, exactly," Pyrrha replied. "But with that approach … what will you do with someone you don't know, whose feelings you cannot tell?"

    Sunset's mouth opened silently. "That's a good point," she admitted, "but what's the alternative?"

    "I confess, I am not sure either. It may be that there is no controlling your semblance under such circumstances," Pyrrha admitted. "But, to make sure that it was not a fluke, would you like to give it another try?"
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 48 - In This Manner Accused
  • Threadmarks
    • In This Manner Accused​


    It might have looked as though Jaune was sitting on the porch swing doing nothing, staring blankly out into space, but he was actually deep in thought.

    Specifically, he was thinking about what to do about Crocea Mors.

    He had to get it repaired or refashioned in some way; he needed a weapon for the Vytal Festival — he needed a weapon for the next three years at Beacon — and if he got any new weapon, any weapon other than a sword — and a sword that could be used in conjunction with a shield, at that — then all of Pyrrha's instruction would be wasted, and he'd be starting from the beginning again.

    He could always just have the sword reforged, exactly as it had been before, but that seemed … well, Dad had advised him not to do that, pretty much, and Jaune could see why. He had an opportunity now to do things a little differently, to come up with a weapon that, yes, fit the style that he'd been trained in, but which was also his, not just a hand-me-down from his family but something which played to his own strengths and allowed him to forge his own style along with the weapon itself.

    It was the exact nature of what those strengths were and what that style might be that Jaune was trying to figure out.

    Yes, Ruby would probably have some ideas when they met up again, but since this was his weapon, Jaune thought it would be no bad thing if he were to at least try and have a few ideas of his own before that.

    So, while he was alone, he took the opportunity to think about it.

    The fact that he was starting with the shards of Crocea Mors meant that anything excessively complicated was probably out. It was cool to imagine having something like Pyrrha's Miló, where the sword also turned into a rifle or a shotgun or something like that, but he was almost completely certain that would require a lot more metal than was found in just an ordinary, untransforming sword. If that was what he wanted, he might as well start from scratch.

    Starting from scratch was certainly an option; there was nobody to say that he couldn't just throw the shards of Crocea Mors … okay, there were probably people who would have something to say about that, but he could leave the shards of the broken sword at home and pick up a new weapon at Beacon. Dad might even give him the money for it if he explained why.

    But that … that didn't sit right with Jaune; even if it was an option, then it wasn't an option that he wanted to take. Crocea Mors might not have been the perfect weapon, or even the perfect weapon for him, but it was still his family's sword, his great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather's sword. As Sunset had just been complaining about, he didn't have a lot of family history, but he did have this sword and the things that it had seen and been a part of.

    It felt right to honour that, even while making it his own.

    Besides, if he wanted a gun, then he could always just buy a gun.

    Or … or maybe he could have a gun as part of his new Crocea Mors; after all, Dove had a gun built into his short sword, and it didn't just transform. He just pointed the blade at his opponent and pulled the trigger. Jaune wasn't sure how big of a gun it was — probably not a very big one, judging by the size of the sword and the fact that none of the gun parts were visible — but then, he didn't actually think Miló was a particularly large-calibre rifle either. In fact, of the three members of his team who used guns, only Ruby's Crescent Rose was what you might call a big gun. So maybe he could have something like a pistol built into the hilt, and it wouldn't have a huge amount of stopping power, but it would give him options before the enemy got too close.

    Alternatively, because just having options was only as good as the options themselves, could he use dust somehow? That wasn't something that he would even need to change anything about the sword for — Soteria was just an ordinary sword, like Crocea Mors, but Sunset managed to infuse the blade with dust and light it on fire just fine all the same — but were there changes he could make that could give him more versatility than Sunset possessed? Sunset was limited by the fact that Soteria was, like Crocea Mors, a venerable old sword — and by the fact that Sunset and Lady Nikos would both have kittens at the thought of altering it in any way — but Jaune was being given a chance to alter his old sword, so why not … alter it? Maybe something like Weiss' Myrtenaster would be a little much — and heavy at the back — but Russel's daggers had some pretty small and discrete dust compartments in them.

    Jaune wasn't sure how much dust he could fit in them — probably not a huge amount — but, again, he would have options.

    He would still be a swordsman first and foremost, but if the need arose, then he would be able to be a little more than a swordsman if he had to be.

    While he was on the subject, although it wasn't broken, there was no actual reason why he shouldn't be able to upgrade the shield, too.

    "What are you doing, Jaune?"

    Jaune looked up into the face of Kendal, who had come to stand over him; he had been so lost in thought that he hadn't even noticed her casting a shadow over him.

    "Just … thinking," Jaune said.

    "Thinking, huh?" Kendal said, a touch of amusement entering her voice. She walked in front of him and sat down on the empty seat next to him. "What about?"

    "What I could do with my sword," Jaune told her. "Dad said that I shouldn't just reforge it the way it was; I should take the opportunity to make a weapon that works for me. I'm thinking about what that might look like."

    "Ah," Kendal said. "Well … I can't help you with that. I'm not sure that anyone around here can, although … where is Pyrrha, anyway?"

    "She's with Sunset, upstairs in your room," Jaune said.

    "Doing what?"

    "Pyrrha's helping Sunset with her semblance," Jaune said, deciding that it would be safe to tell the truth; ordinarily, he would have been wary of doing so, considering that Sunset's semblance was supposed to be the magic that she already used expertly, but there was little need or reason for any of his family to see that.

    Kendal nodded. "Do either of them have any ideas about what kind of weapon you could come up with?"

    "I'd like to at least try and have a few of my own," Jaune replied. "My friends will help, and whatever I come up with, they'll help me make it too, but since it's my weapon now, I feel like I should have the ideas, rather than relying on Pyrrha or Sunset to tell me what kind of weapon I ought to have."

    "That makes sense," Kendal conceded. She paused for a moment. "So, what's your team leader dug up? Are we secret big shots? Are we going to come into colossal wealth and fame?"

    Jaune laughed. "Hardly," he said. "Sunset hasn't been able to find out anything past the founding of the town by great-great-grandfather."

    "That's pretty much what Sky said to Pyrrha about it," Kendal agreed. "It's like great-great-grandfather sprang out of the earth, ready to found Alba Longa, and before that … before that, he might not even have been called Arc. He might have changed his name to hide where he came from and who he was."

    "If that's the case, I'd rather not know," Jaune muttered.

    "Really?" Kendal asked.

    Jaune nodded. "What if the reason he did that was because … I don't know, he was a crook or something?"

    "Why would a crook found a town?"

    "Why would anyone change their name and hide their past?" Jaune replied.

    Kendal shrugged. "Even if there was something shady about him, something that he'd done wrong in his younger days, then so what? It doesn't change who you are."

    "Pyrrha's mom might not see it that way," Jaune reminded her. "The whole reason Sunset came out here was to find something that would make me … more acceptable to her. I'd rather she didn't find something that worked the other way."

    "From what I understand," Kendal said, "Pyrrha's already told her mom to get stuffed once when it came to you."

    "Yeah, but…" Jaune hesitated. "That doesn't mean that I want her to … the fact that she chose me over her own mother is so … but I don't want her to have to make that choice. She's the only family Pyrrha has."

    "She has you now," Kendal pointed out. She paused for a moment, looking away and putting her hand to her face, as though she was about to start chewing on her nails.

    "Kendal?" Jaune asked. "Are you okay?"

    Kendal snorted. "No," she said. "I haven't been … but I'll live."

    "Kendal—"

    "You don't need to worry about me, Jaune," Kendal said. "You've got enough to think about, getting through Beacon … and Pyrrha." She frowned. "Listen, Jaune … you like her, right? I mean, you love her?"

    Jaune nodded. "With … with all my heart," he said. "With everything that's in me."

    "Then don't let her go," Kendal urged, reaching out to put her hand on Jaune's shoulder. "Don't let her slip away from you, because … because if you do, you'll regret it, for years, maybe forever. If you really care about her, then for god's sake, stick with her."

    Jaune stared into his sister's eyes. "Kendal…" Who are we talking about now? He didn't know anything about Kendal having lost someone, or even having a break-up; his knowledge of her romantic life was absolutely nil. Had she … what had she suffered in silence?

    "You don't need to worry about me, Jaune," I guess that means she doesn't want to talk about it.

    "Trust me," he said softly. "If anything comes between us, it won't be my choice."

    Kendal drew in a deep breath. "Yeah, Pyrrha told me that she…"

    "Left me behind?" Jaune supplied. "You were … talking about me?"

    "You're her boyfriend and my little brother, what else were we going to talk about?" Kendal asked. "It's not like we have a whole lot in common."

    "And she told you—"

    "How she got into a fight without you, because she felt like she had something to prove," Kendal explained. "Though from what Terra says about her, it doesn't seem as if Pyrrha has anything to prove to anyone."

    "You'd think," Jaune replied, wondering how he could explain without giving away any of the secrets to which he was privy. "It's true that … Pyrrha's reputation is a hundred percent deserved. She's strong and fast; when you see her fight, she … she's incredible. But lately, with the things that we've learned … Pyrrha's been starting to wonder if that's enough."

    Kendal snorted. "If it's not enough, then what hope is there for any of us?"

    Jaune didn't reply to that directly. He took a few seconds to gather up his thoughts before he said, "I think … it's not a problem that I've ever had to deal with, but … I think that when you're that good, that young, like Pyrrha was — like Pyrrha is — then the problem is that you start to think that you can do anything, that there are no limits to what you can accomplish. And I'm not saying that Pyrrha's arrogant — she's one of the most humble people I know — but when you're that good, you don't need to be arrogant; you can be justly proud of your skill and your accomplishments, and that's valid because you really are just that good, and especially, when you grow up like Pyrrha did and have practically an entire city blowing smoke for you, then it's a miracle that Pyrrha isn't full of herself. But … now that she's found out that … now that it turns out that there are things that she can't accomplish, as much as she wants to … I'm not sure that she knows how to deal with it."

    "Well, with your expertise in reaching your limits, I'm sure you'll be able to help her with that."

    "Kendal!"

    "I'm allowed to tease you a little bit, come on," Kendal insisted. "And that's why she fought this other girl?"

    "And because she was dangerous, and she was worried about me," Jaune said. "That … that was harder for me to forgive." He closed his eyes for a moment. "I get why she feels the way she does, about … about her place in all of this. I don't agree with her — if she's not good enough, then what does that say about me? — but I get it. And I get why she wanted to win that fight, what she wanted to prove to herself. It's not something that I'd need to do, but after spending a little time in her home city, I get that too. But the fact that she left me to stand and watch, pretty much told me to stay back, because she didn't trust me to stand by her side even after we'd already talked about that, about how that wasn't what I wanted, even after she promised … that was harder for me to get over."

    "But you did get over it," Kendal said.

    "Well, yeah," Jaune said. "I mean, I still love her, after all. And after we talked, I think … I think she understood better why it hurt and why … she won't do it again."

    Kendal smiled at him. "So," she said, "when are you going back to Beacon?"

    "Tomorrow," Jaune said. "Sunset can't learn anything else here, and Pyrrha and I … there's no point in hanging around."

    "You've got your sword to remake, after all," Kendal said. "You told Mom and Dad?"

    "Not yet," Jaune said. "I'll tell them at dinner tonight."

    Kendal nodded. "By a coincidence, I'll be leaving tomorrow as well; I got a call from HQ about a job."

    "They want you to head out and do some surveying?"

    "Well, yeah, that is my job."

    "Where?" Jaune asked. "Did they say?"

    "Southeast."

    "'Southeast'?" Jaune repeated. "That's—"

    "There's more to the southeast than just Mountain Glenn," Kendal reminded him. "Vale's a big country, after all."

    "Yeah, but … I mean, it worked out so well the last time," Jaune muttered.

    Kendal sighed. "I get what you're saying, but the thinking is that so many of the grimm that inhabited that area were killed off recently that we should take the chance to set up new settlements in the region while we can, before the grimm come back."

    "But they will come back," Jaune said.

    "If we took that attitude, we'd never build any new villages," Kendal replied.

    "I guess, but … that area is crawling with grimm," Jaune said. "Maybe not right now, but it always has been; I mean, Mountain Glenn—"

    "Nobody's talking about a new Mountain Glenn," Kendal assured him. "I mean, I've seen some plans that are overambitious, for a whole line of fortified settlements stretching from the mountains down to Alexandria to act as a breaker for when the grimm do return, but I don't think that's likely to happen. It would cost too much, and there aren't that many people who would want to move to those kinds of places; no, what we're talking about is a few surveyors like me heading down that way and seeing if there is anywhere that we could put a couple of villages or small towns: modest places, defensible places, places that we can hold onto when the grimm come back."

    "Be careful," Jaune said. "Just because a lot of grimm were killed doesn't mean—"

    "I may not have gone to Beacon, but I know what I'm doing," Kendal declared. "I know how dangerous it can be out there."

    "Right," Jaune murmured. "Are you going to hire a huntsman?"

    Kendal grinned. "It's a pity that you're still in school; I could hire you and Pyrrha to protect me. But … I don't know; I'll see what particular area I've been assigned to scout when I get to HQ, see whether the budget will stretch for me to afford one. Anyone you'd recommend?"

    "All the huntsmen and huntresses I know are either students or professors," Jaune said. "And anyway, it doesn't work like that."

    "No," Kendal acknowledged. "No, it doesn't. The huntsmen get a choice; we don't." She hesitated. "Although I've got to say, that seems kind of weird; like, I'm the client, why do I not get to pick my own huntsman?"

    "Because huntsmen are supposed to be independent," Jaune replied. "Nobody gets to tell us what to do."

    "Don't your teachers tell you what to do?"

    "Not as often as you'd think."

    "Huh," Kendal said. "Maybe I'll get the train back with you. Or would you rather I didn't embarrass you in front of Pyrrha and Sunset?"

    "No," Jaune said. "I mean, sharing a ride, that sounds great."

    Kendal smiled with her mouth closed. Her eyes flickered away from Jaune.

    Jaune looked around in time to see Ruben approaching, his steps thumping upon the wooden boards of the porch as he leapt up onto it and made his way towards them.

    "Jaune, hey," he said, in a voice shorn of his usual false cheer, the enthusiastic mockery of Jaune that usually dripped from every word.

    In fact, Ruben did not look cheerful at all. He was rubbing his stubbled chin with one hand, and he didn't look directly at Jaune, but rather past him, down at the wood of the porch, as though he were finding it uncomfortable to be around Jaune.

    "Ruben," Jaune said. "Is … is everything okay?"

    "No, Jaune, no, I'm afraid it isn't," Ruben said. "No, everything is … everything is not okay." He scowled and rubbed his chin and cheeks some more. "Is, uh, is Pyrrha around?"

    "She's upstairs," Jaune said. "Why?"

    "Because…" Ruben hesitated. "Jaune, I have thought long and hard over whether or not to tell you this, because god knows you seem pretty happy with that girl, and I don't want to hurt you, believe me, but … I believe that you deserve the truth. And the truth is … the truth is that she's cheating on you, Jaune."

    "What?" The exclamation flew from Kendal's mouth, not Jaune's. "Are you…? Wow, Ruben, just … wow. Even by your standards, that is a terrible, terrible joke."

    "I'm not jokin'," Ruben insisted, holding up both his hands. "I'm just—"

    "What?" Jaune demanded. "If you're not joking, then what are you doing?"

    "Don't shoot the messenger, Jauney," Ruben cried. "I'm just tellin' you what I saw. And what I saw, was Pyrrha and Red makin' out. And they were gettin' pretty into it too."

    "Ugh," Kendal muttered in disgust. "Seriously? Jaune, you can't honestly believe this crap."

    "'Crap'? 'Crap,' is it?" Ruben repeated. "You think I'm lyin'?"

    "I think that I've got a pretty good idea of how Pyrrha feels about Jaune," Kendal insisted.

    "Well, maybe she lied to you, just like she lied to Jaune," Ruben suggested.

    "No," Jaune said, shaking his head. Kendal was right, Ruben was lying; this was all a big and very unfunny practical joke, this was all a way of trying to get him to panic or to cry or something like that; Pyrrha was … Pyrrha would never behave that way; she was too kind, too gentle, too … too in love with him. He remembered the night of the dance; he remembered Dad's birthday party from just a little while ago, how perfectly she fit in his arms, the way that she leaned against him, the way that she kissed him, how determined she was to impress his family. "No, Pyrrha wouldn't do that, she wouldn't—"

    "Wouldn't what?" Ruben asked, getting down on his knees so that he and Jaune were closer to a height. "Wouldn't see you for what you are?"

    "Ruben—"

    "Wouldn't recognise a real man instead of a no-mark boy who ain't good for nothin'?"

    "Ruben!"

    Jaune looked away from Ruben, his hands coming to rest upon his knees. He found himself staring down at his hands. Soft hands, not the hands of a farmer or a warrior. He wasn't good enough to fight alongside Pyrrha, he wasn't really good enough to satisfy her either, he certainly didn't deserve her.

    But Sunset says that love has nothing to do with deserving. And Pyrrha … Pyrrha loves me; I mean why would she pretend like she did if she doesn't, why would she even go out with me in the first place?

    "I'm sorry, Jauney, but you didn't really think that a fine girl like her was gonna stick by you, did you? I mean, look at you."

    "Ruben, shut your god-damned mouth!" Kendal yelled. She reached out and grabbed Jaune's hand. "Jaune, don't listen to him. I don't know what he's playing — well, I can kind of guess, but that doesn't mean you need to listen to him. Remember what you were just telling me, about you and Pyrrha; please don't tell me that you're going to throw that away just because Ruben says so."

    "I have worked for this family my whole life!" Ruben cried. "And I—"

    "And you are the last man alive who should be accusing anyone of cheating," Kendal growled.

    Ruben swallowed, his neck bulging for a moment as it flushed a bright and vivid red. "I am trying," he declared, "to do the right thing by Jaune."

    "Maybe you're right," Jaune said. "Maybe … maybe it was stupid to think that I could … could make Pyrrha happy. Maybe she has found someone better than me. But even if that were true, Pyrrha would tell me first; she wouldn't sneak around behind my back."

    "I have proof!" Ruben yelled. "I have pictures!"

    "'Pictures'?" Kendal repeated. "What do you mean, how can you have pictures?"

    Jaune's eyes widened. "What … that's not possible!"

    "What's going on out here? Why is everyone yelling?" Rouge demanded as she strode out of the front door and onto the porch, with Saphron and Terra following closely behind her. "Ruben?"

    "I am doing something which I knew would not be popular," Ruben said, "but it has to be done, for Jaune's own good."

    "Jaune's … own good?" Rouge murmured. "What do you mean?"

    "I have pictures," Ruben said again, "of Pyrrha cheating on Jaune with Red Beauregard."

    "That's impossible!" Terra cried. "A … a princess of the old blood would never behave in such a way."

    "I don't know about no princesses, but I know what I saw, and I know what my scroll shows."

    "Then let me see," Jaune said.

    Silence fell amongst the gathered Arcs.

    "Jaune," Kendal said. "You don't have to—"

    "Let me see," Jaune repeated, "so that I can say that you're wrong."

    "I wish that you could, Jauney," Ruben said. "Believe me, I wish that you could."

    And yet, despite his words, it almost seemed that Ruben smiled.

    XxXxX​

    "There seems to be a lot of shouting going on downstairs, doesn't there?" Pyrrha murmured.

    "Yeah, I suppose there is," Sunset agreed. "That's uncommon, I take it."

    "Indeed," Pyrrha replied. "There are disagreements, of course, but rarely such volatile ones. The last such concerned … well, Jaune returning to Beacon, and even that, even being in the room, it didn't feel so … loud. Perhaps we should go down and—"

    "Best not, if it's a family argument," Sunset said. "Do you really want to get in the middle of something like that? No matter what side you take — and if you go down there, you'll almost be forced to take sides — you'll upset some of Jaune's family. Best to stay here, and wait for it all to blow over."

    "That … is very wise, I'm sure," Pyrrha replied.

    While it might involve abandoning Jaune — although she couldn't imagine why Jaune would get involved in an argument like this — it was the sensible course to not offend any of his relatives, not after she had so recently become accepted by them. Best to say here, until it was all settled one way or another.

    It really wasn't any of her business.

    But to the sounds of raised voices coming from downstairs was added the sound of footsteps coming rapidly up the stairs, and then along the corridor.

    Terra appeared in the doorway, a little out of breath. "You need to get down there right now," she insisted.

    "Why?" Pyrrha asked. "What's going on?"

    "Ruben has pictures he claims are of you kissing another man; everyone's arguing over whether or not to believe it. You need to come down before they make a decision."

    "'Kissing another—'" Pyrrha gasped, one hand flying to her heart. "But … but I would never—"

    "Don't tell me, tell them," Terra insisted, gesturing downstairs. "Quickly."

    "Of course," Pyrrha murmured, leaping to her feet almost upon instinct, picking up the folds of her skirt with one hand to lift them out of the path of her feet. Behind her, Sunset was pulling on her gloves.

    Pyrrha walked to the doorway. "Thank you, Terra."

    "Anything for the Champion," Terra said. "Now quickly!"

    Pyrrha moved, but as she passed by Terra, as she walked the short distance down the corridor, as she descended the stairs, it was almost as though she did so in a fugue state, in a fog of disbelief and confusion.

    She hadn't kissed any other men, not in her life and certainly not in this town. Jaune was her first and only kiss, as he was her first and only love.

    How, then, could Ruben have pictures of that which had not happened? What was he showing them downstairs, and did Jaune believe it?

    That was the thing that she feared most. If the rest of Jaune's family, if mother and father and sisters all turned against her, if they all became more hostile than they had been when they first arrived, then she could live with that. If they banished her from their home, then she would … she would be content if only Jaune left his home beside her. But if Jaune did not believe her, if he was convinced by these photographs of Ruben's, if he thought her capable of such faithlessness and cruelty, then … then she did not know what she would do.

    She did not know if her heart would bear it.

    Said heart was beating rapidly in her chest as she came down the stairs.

    All the Arcs were gathered in the dining room, save only Aoko. All the rest were present: Gold and Honeysuckle, Rouge, Ruben, Saphron — Terra was behind Pyrrha, with Sunset — Kendal, Sky, River, Chester, Violet. And Jaune, Jaune, standing by the dining table, with his face pale, not looking at anyone.

    "I don't know what you've done or how you've done it," Sky was saying, "but I know that you've done something."

    "You've changed your tune, haven't you?" River asked.

    "So have you," Kendal muttered.

    "Look, I'm not happy about this," River declared. "I like Pyrrha, or at least I liked Pyrrha, and I'm sorry that things have turned out this way, but you can't deny what we all see with our own eyes."

    "It does look like her," Chester agreed.

    "Photos can be faked," Kendal said. "My boss in Vale has a picture of himself that looks like a selfie taken with an ursa major, but I hardly need to tell you he wasn't actually posing for a picture with a grimm standing right behind him."

    "I didn't like Pyrrha when she first showed up," Sky said, "but she has never been anything less than honest, even when I didn't like what she had to say."

    "Thank you, Sky," Pyrrha said. "I appreciate that."

    The dining room fell silent. Every Arc turned to look at her.

    Every Arc but one.

    Pyrrha tried to gauge their judgement by their expressions. River looked upset, while Chester looked more concerned about his wife than he did about the truth of the accusations — which was fair enough, she supposed; Jaune's parents looked wary, uncertain; Saphron's gaze was hard, for all that Terra had shown that she was unambiguously on Pyrrha's side; Violet was scowling at her; Rouge looked uncertain, a frown creasing her forehead. Sky and Kendal, standing on either side of Jaune, smiled at her.

    Jaune did not look at her.

    "Jaune," Pyrrha said, her voice so soft that it was barely more than a whisper. "Jaune, I…" Please look at me. Please say something. Please, give me a sign that you have faith in me.

    "Don't talk to him!" Violet cried. "After—"

    "Violet!" Sky growled.

    Jaune looked up at her. "I … I've always thought that you could do better than me," he said, and Pyrrha's heart quailed to hear those words pass his lips.

    "No, Jaune, I—" she began.

    "But I've always known," he went on, "that if the day came when you figured that out for yourself, I would be the first person you would tell."

    A sigh of ragged relief escaped from Pyrrha's lips, setting her whole body momentarily a-trembling. "That day will never come," she insisted, "for I am yours, as you, I hope, are mine. But I swear to you, by all that I am and all that I have and all that others are pleased to make me in their good opinions, I did not do this. I would not, I could not."

    "I know," Jaune replied. "I know."

    Pyrrha … Pyrrha didn't care what happened now. They could all hate her, they could all believe Ruben, they could all think whatever they liked of or about her because Jaune believed her, and that was all that mattered.

    She walked towards him, without hesitation; she would allow none of the rest of the family to stay her progress, and they all made way for her until she was standing by Jaune's side — even Sky had gotten out of the way so that there was a place for her beside him.

    She felt Jaune's hand close around hers, and despite the circumstance, she smiled.

    "Well done, Jaune," Sunset said. "It's good to know that there are still some guys out there getting it right." She took a breath and scowled around the room. "Now, which one of you is Ruben?"

    Ruben straightened his back. "I am, and who might you be?"

    "Uh, everyone," Jaune said. "This is—"

    "I'm Sunset Shimmer, and I can speak for myself," Sunset said, cutting him off. Her ears were drooped down so that they disappeared into her hair — a sure sign that Sunset was not in the best of moods — and her tail was rigid behind her. "I'm Sunset Shimmer," she repeated, her green-eyed gaze fixed on Ruben. "Leader of Team Sapphire." She paused for a moment. "Apparently, there is something that passes for proof?"

    "I have it," Ruben said, raising his hand with his scroll in it. "Right—"

    Sunset raised her hand in turn, enveloped by the green glow of her magic as, with her telekinesis, she yanked the scroll out of Ruben's hand and pulled it across the room into her own grasp.

    "Hey!" Ruben cried.

    "Silence, trash," Sunset snapped as she looked down at the scroll that she had acquired.

    Her eyebrows rose. She jabbed her finger at the screen, swiping first one way and then the other. She stared down at the screen, at the pictures that Pyrrha hadn't seen, at the pictures that had convinced some of the Arcs, if not all of them, before she derisively threw the scroll away.

    "Fakes," she pronounced. "You can't even see her face!"

    Jaune added, "And did you notice that she's not—"

    "Wearing Pyrrha's circlet, either, yes," Sunset agreed. "That's more visible from behind than it is from the front, but there's no sign of it on those pictures."

    "I saw—"

    "I said silence, you lowborn dog!" Sunset roared. Her voice dropped, becoming sharp as Soteria's edge. "Silence, you cur, that dares to slander Pyrrha's name, that name which cannot be blotted with any just reproach, yet you, with the stench of…" She sniffed the air. "Is that perfume I smell on you?"

    "What?" Sky asked.

    "Yes," Sunset said. "I can smell it with my equine faunus nose, you smell of perfume."

    "Rouge doesn't wear perfume," Kendal said.

    "We aren't talkin' about me," Ruben yelped.

    "Maybe we should; it is more proof than you have offered," Sunset said. "Or I could just box your ears for temerity. I might do that anyway."

    "But she's wearing Pyrrha's fancy clothes," River pointed out.

    "Clothes can be worn by people other than their owner," Sunset said.

    "Which dress is being worn in the picture?" Pyrrha asked.

    "The red one," Jaune said. "With the cape thing with the sleeves—"

    "The bolero," Sunset supplied.

    "But that's the dress that's missing!" Pyrrha cried.

    "What?" Gold Arc said. "'Missing'?"

    "Yes, sir," Pyrrha said. "If you go and check my luggage, you will not find my red dress there, and as you can plainly see, I am not wearing it." She paused. "I understand that some of you believed what you saw, but I hope that none of you will think so ill of me that you believe I would discard the dress to hide the evidence of my misdeed."

    River blinked. "So … someone stole your dress, and wore it, to pretend to be you and kiss Red Beauregard? Why would anyone do that?"

    "Why indeed, Ruben?" Kendal asked, folding her arms.

    "You think that … that I set this up?" Ruben demanded.

    "You know, it's kind of hard to have a nap upstairs when you're all being so loud down here," Aoko said, as she ambled down the stairs. She blinked owlishly as she looked around the room. "Did I miss something?"

    "Either Pyrrha cheated on Jaune, or Ruben tried to fake it so it looked as though Pyrrha cheated on Jaune."

    "It's the second one," Jaune said.

    Pyrrha squeezed his hand gratefully.

    Aoko was silent for a moment. "Wow, jackass move … whichever of you it was."

    "Hey, Aoko," Sky said, "you're good with computers and stuff, right?"

    "I'm a software engineer. So … kinda," Aoko said.

    "So, you can pick up Ruben's scroll — it's over there on the floor — and tell us if those pictures are fake or not, right?" Sky asked.

    Aoko was silent for a moment, but she did begin to shuffle across the room. "Where?"

    "Here," Sunset said, and her hand glowed with magic once again as, for the second time, she picked up the scroll and levitated up into Aoko's hands.

    "Thank you … whoever you are," Aoko said. She looked at the pictures — Pyrrha was glad she couldn't see them; she had no desire to do so — for a moment. Like Sunset before her, she tapped at the screens, although not swiping; rather, her fingers played across the device as though she were typing something.

    "I haven't conducted a full analysis, but I don't think these are fakes," Aoko said, "because they were only taken forty minutes ago, and I don't think that's enough time for an amateur to create a convincing fake."

    "You can tell when the photo was taken?" Sky asked. "Wow, you really are good."

    "Not really, I just looked at the date and time stamp of the file in 'properties,'" Aoko said. "As Sheriff, shouldn't you know how to do that?"

    "The important thing," Jaune said, "is that Pyrrha was on the porch then, with me and Sunset, so she couldn't have been with Red then! Thanks, Aoko, you're the best!"

    "Am I really the only one who knew how to do that?"

    "Pyrrha," River murmured. "I … I'm so sorry, it just, it really looked like you, and they were wearing your clothes—"

    "I understand," Pyrrha said. She wasn't incredibly happy about it; she would have rather been believed, but on the assumption that it was a convincing fake — she wasn't about to ask — then she could understand why these people who didn't know her very well might have been taken in by it. "You were only looking out for Jaune, I'm sure."

    "And doing a poor job of it, again," Rouge said. "It appears we owe you another apology, Pyrrha; I beg your forgiveness." She glared at her husband. "And as for you, Ruben, how could you?"

    "Honey—"

    "Don't 'honey' me!" Rouge yelled. "How could you treat Jaune that way? I … I know that I have not always been a good wife to you. I know that … that my condition has made it impossible for me to be a good wife to you, to perform the foremost duty of a wife, to render to you that which a wife should render to her husband, and so I have ignored … I have ignored the other women. I have ignored Jolene Parton—"

    "Jolene Parton!" Sky cried. "That's who it was in the photo, isn't it? She's got red hair just like Pyrrha!" She paused. "And she wears perfume too; have you been sleeping with Jolene Parton?"

    "Yes, he has," Rouge said quietly. "For some time now."

    "You … you knew?" Ruben gasped.

    "You deserved to find what happiness you could, even if you were stuck with me for a wife," Rouge said. "And so, I … looked away and slept in another room. But this … to do this to Jaune? To try and break his heart, to lie about Pyrrha, to try and break her heart … why? How could you be so cruel to someone who has done you no wrong?"

    "Do you really need to know?" Sunset asked. "Can't I just hit him already?"

    "You'll have to get in line," Sky growled.

    "Sky, Miss Shimmer, wait," Rouge urged. "I would like to hear what Ruben has to say for himself.

    Ruben took a step back towards the corridor that led out towards the front door. All the eyes that had been turned on Pyrrha were now affixed on him, and this time, not even Sky or Kendal were not hostile.

    "You … you have no idea," Ruben said. "You treat me like garbage—"

    "Because you are, seems like," Sunset said.

    "You all treated Jaune just the same way that I did, but when I did it, you decided that I was too hard on him, I was the bad guy, you looked down on me so that you didn't have to look at yourselves!" Ruben yelled. "And you kept on looking down on me, even though I stuck around, I worked for all of you! And then Jaune runs away, steals from his family, but then he comes back, and it's all smiles and isn't it great and what an amazing girlfriend you have, Jaune. He comes in swaggering, acting like a man now. Yes, I wanted to break them up, I wanted to make him cry. Why should Jaune have a beauty like that, when I'm stuck married to half a woman—"

    "Okay, now someone hit him," Gold said.

    "Gladly," Sunset growled.

    "Sunset," Pyrrha said, in a voice that was at once gentle and yet firm enough to fill the room. "Wait a moment, if you please."

    She let go of Jaune's hand and stepped forwards, her heels tapping on the wooden floorboards of the Arcs' dining room, her red skirt swishing around her, rustling a little as she advanced on Ruben.

    She stared into his eyes. Her own eyes were as hard as the emeralds they were so often said to resemble.

    "Mister Meade-Arc," she said, "although it may be only Mister Meade soon enough … in my culture, you have given me cause to challenge you to a duel to the death."

    Ruben's eyes widened. "The … to the death?"

    "Quite," Pyrrha said. "You should think yourself fortunate that we are not in Mistral. Instead, I will answer your offences in the Valish way."

    She hit him, her fist snapping out and upwards to strike his nose with a sickening crunch. Ruben's head snapped backwards as a cry of pain escaped from between his lips. He reeled backwards, but Pyrrha caught him by the arm before he had gone more than a step. She twisted his arm, spinning him around and pinioning him with it.

    "I sympathise with your feeling trapped and unhappy," she said as Ruben groaned in her iron grasp. "It is … not a pleasant situation in which to find oneself. But that does not give you the right to vent your frustrations upon Jaune nor meddle with ill-intent in mine and Jaune's relationship! How … how dare you?"

    "I think this is the angriest I've ever seen you," Sunset observed.

    "That I am patient does not make me endlessly so," Pyrrha declared. "I am not an ass, to bear without complaint ever more slights and insults, one upon the other, and never cast them off. Call me a liar, call me an adulteress, call me such things that I will not repeat, try and snatch from me the…" — she took a deep breath — "the best thing that has ever been mine."

    She shoved Ruben away, towards the wall, and stood there, in the dining room, with all the Arc family looking on. Her chest rose and fell.

    I hope I didn't go too far. "I … I am sorry, sir," she said. "I am not … I know not what came over me."

    "I don't know why you stopped," Sky muttered.

    "I will keep friends with you, Pyrrha," Sunset said. There was a flash of green light as she teleported the distance between herself and Ruben, appearing behind him and grabbing him by the arm that Pyrrha had only just released. "But you, you wretch, you knave, you insolent dog," Sunset growled. "You … you fool." She shook her head. "What are we going to do with you?"

    Ruben looked around desperately. "Rouge," he said. "Rouge, I—"

    "Divorce proceedings will begin shortly," Rouge said softly. "What you have done to me is unimportant, but it will serve as a fitting pretext. In the meantime … go. You're not welcome in this house anymore."

    "But where am I supposed to go?"

    "To Jolene Parton, if she'll have you!" Rouge cried. "Anywhere you like!"

    "Everywhere," Sunset said.

    "Wh-what?" Ruben asked.

    "You're going to go everywhere, across this whole village," Sunset said. She released Ruben from her grasp. "You're going to go to everyone, to every door, and you're going to tell them what you did, and you're going to tell them that your wife has thrown you out, and you're going to show everyone what a pathetic worm you are. And I'm going to follow you and make sure you do it."

    Ruben said nothing. He half turned around to stare at Sunset, eyes wide with disbelief.

    Sunset raised her hand. The green light of her magic crackled between her fingertips. "Quick march," she said.

    Ruben did more than march. He scrambled for the door, his footsteps thudding as he ran towards the door. Sunset followed him out, her pace a little slower but infinitely more steady.

    Within the house, silence reigned.

    Without a word, Jaune walked to Pyrrha's side and once more took her hand.

    "Rouge, sweetie," Gold murmured, "you … you knew that he was cheating on you? And you didn't … you didn't say anything?"

    "He … he wasn't wrong," Rouge said. "We didn't treat him well."

    "We treated him like he deserved," Sky said.

    "Did we?" Rouge asked. "We did treat Jaune badly, but we then judged Ruben for doing the same. It isn't only Pyrrha that we owe an apology too. Jaune—"

    "It doesn't matter," Jaune said quickly. "I mean … if I hadn't … if I hadn't been the person that I am, if I'd been someone else, not the person that you all made me, I wouldn't have met Pyrrha or found my team, so … so it all ended up okay for me, in the end. But you … that doesn't excuse what he did."

    "But the fact that I cannot—"

    "Rouge, dear, don't say that," Honeysuckle said, stepping forward to wrap her arms around her daughter. "That isn't your fault."

    "Maybe not, Mom, but it's a fact anyway."

    "You should have told me," Gold said. "You shouldn't have had to … I liked him."

    "It's okay, Dad; we've all made some bad judgements lately," Sky said, looking at Pyrrha.

    Rouge glanced at her. "Nobody would blame you if you gave up on us."

    Pyrrha shook her head. "Everything you have done," she said, "you've done because you love Jaune.

    "I understand that perfectly, because after all, I love him too."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 49 - Put a Ring On It
  • Threadmarks

    • Put a Ring On It​



    "I've got to say, I'm a little surprised," Kendal said as she fastened Pyrrha's dress — this particular dress didn't have a zipper running up the back; rather, a few buttons which not only exposed some of her back to view but also couldn't be manipulated with Polarity — behind her.

    Pyrrha stood facing the window, although the curtains were drawn. She turned her head so that she was looking at Kendal over her shoulder. "'Surprised'? Surprised by what?"

    Kendal snorted. "That you still think we're worth getting dressed up for."

    "Do you include yourself in that?" Pyrrha asked. "You were on my side, and Sky. And Terra, for that matter."

    Kendal chuckled. "'A princess of the old blood would never behave in such a way.'"

    "Excuse me?"

    "What Terra said, in your defence," Kendal explained. "When Ruben said he'd caught you cheating on Jaune, Terra said … well, she said that. 'A princess of the old blood would never behave in such a way.' Is that true?"

    Pyrrha was silent for a moment. "I think a true princess of the old blood would have mounted Ruben's head upon a pike," she murmured.

    Kendal was silent for a moment. "Really?"

    "Mistral's history is … frequently rather violent," Pyrrha said quietly. "Are you going to be alright?"

    "What do you mean?"

    "I mean with Ruben," Pyrrha said. "He's still technically Rouge's husband, and … is he going to cause trouble for you?"

    "He might try," Kendal replied, "but I doubt he'll get anywhere, not now that everyone knows what he did — thanks to your Sunset for making sure of that; that was clever of her. Makes me want to make sure I stay on her good side, but very clever all the same."

    "Sunset … understands the power of social opinion," Pyrrha said. From having been on the wrong side of it. "And she's very protective."

    "Of you?"

    "Of all of us," Pyrrha said. "I am, I have been, less in need of protection than Ruby or Jaune, or even Blake, but … my mother charged her with my protection, and so, yes, she does take that seriously."

    "Right," Kendal said. "You're all done, by the way."

    "Oh, thank you," Pyrrha said; she turned around, her red skirt flowing around her like water, rustling lightly as it moved. "How do I look?"

    Kendal smirked. "Better than mortal Arcs deserve."

    "Stop, please," Pyrrha pleaded gently.

    For tonight, for her last night here in Alba Longa, she wore a gown of red, styled somewhat loosely after an old-fashioned chiton or peplos from Mistral's history, which meant that though the skirt reached all the way down to the floor and covered her feet, it did not expand very far outwards around her. There was gold scrollwork just above the hem; at her hips, dipping slightly between them, there was a golden belt. Gold decorated the bodice also, a golden line passing around her body just beneath her breasts, passing upwards in an inverted V to reach the top of her sweetheart neckline, said neckline being adorned with little beads of gold that sparkled when they caught the light. The sleeves were short, and Pyrrha had left all the clasps that would have fastened them up undone so that they were scarcely sleeves at all, but rather flaps of fabric falling off her shoulders and down by her sides towards her waist, leaving her pale arms bare to the world. Her armband was upon her arm above the elbow, while upon her wrists, she wore a pair of golden bracers, and her gorget was clasped tightly around her neck. Her circlet gleamed upon her brow, where it was not hidden behind her bangs, just as it always did.

    Just as it had not in the faked pictures that Ruben had sought to use to mar her reputation.

    Forgetting her circlet, indeed. There were little girls attending Fighting Fan Expo for the first time who remembered to include a circlet as part of their Pyrrha costumes, even if it was only a bit of gold foil wrapped around their foreheads — some of those costumes were very adorable.

    "When you dress like that," Kendal said, "it makes your protestations of modesty ring just a little bit false. You can't dress to impress and then insist that you never meant to make an impression."

    A little laugh escaped from Pyrrha's lips. "No, I … I suppose not." She glanced at her case. "It was very good of Sky to go and get my dress from … that woman, what was her name?"

    "Jolene Parton."

    "Do you know her?"

    "Everyone knows her," Kendal muttered. "Ruben's a fool if he thinks she'll take him in, let alone marry him once Rouge finalises the divorce."

    "She doesn't love him, then?"

    "She was in love with everything he'd come into once he inherited Dad's estate," Kendal replied. "The house, the land, we're not as well off as you, but there's a bit tucked away."

    "And it would all have gone to Ruben?" Pyrrha asked. "Not to any of you, or Jaune?"

    "If you had brothers or sisters, would your inheritance get divided up, or would you get the whole thing?"

    "I would," Pyrrha conceded. "Assuming, in that scenario, that I was still the eldest. Custom would dictate that I take care of my younger siblings, at least, unless, or until they found other ways of supporting themselves: successful careers, good marriages, that sort of thing. However … nobody could actually compel me to do so."

    Kendal smiled. "And so we come back to my question: is it true that a princess of the old blood would never behave in such a way?"

    "I wish that it were so," Pyrrha murmured. "But all I can say for certain is that I would not behave in such a fashion, not because I am a princess, or because I am of the old blood of Mistral, but because I am … because I am myself, and being myself, I hope I am … a better person than that."

    Kendal smiled, but it was a sad smile, like a sun partly obscured by clouds. "Be happy," she said. "You will, won't you, the two of you?"

    Pyrrha reached out, and took her hands. "In our lives … I cannot say what the future holds for us, what challenges, what obstacles." Unfortunately, I can say more … almost more than I would like upon that particular subject. "But so long as I am with him and he is with me, as long as we are together, then … then he will be my light, and I will always take joy in his presence, as I hope that he will in mine."

    Someone knocked on the bedroom door. "Pyrrha?" Jaune said. "Are you ready?"

    Kendal's eyebrows rose. "Well? Are you?"

    Pyrrha glanced down at her nails. She had painted them red tonight, matching her dress. "I believe I am, yes," she said, smiling as she picked up a shawl of golden silk and draped it around her body, falling towards the floor as it rested on her elbows.

    Kendal made way for her, although in the cramped conditions of her room, that meant getting up onto the camp bed so that Pyrrha could walk down the central aisle of the room and open the door.

    Jaune stood on the other side, dressed in his black suit.

    "Hey!" His eyes widened and his mouth opened at the sight of her. "You look amazing. As always."

    "Thank you," Pyrrha whispered, a bright smile lighting up her face. "And you changed."

    "Well, you make an effort every night. I figured that I could do worse than to do the same," Jaune said. "And Mom had washed my suit for me, so there wasn't anything to stop me from wearing it."

    "You look very handsome," Pyrrha said. "Although, if I may say, you looked better in gold."

    "Really? That's … something I'll keep in mind," Jaune said. He looked as though he were about to hold out his arm to her, but did not. Instead, he reached out his hands towards her, taking hers in his fingers. "Are you okay?"

    "I'm fine," Pyrrha said quickly.

    "Pyrrha," Jaune said. "You can be honest. I won't … you don't have to pretend with me, remember? If it had gotten to you … I wouldn't blame you. If you didn't want to go downstairs, I wouldn't blame you either. Seriously, are you okay?"

    Pyrrha was silent for a moment. She kept her eyes fixed on him, her green eyes staring into his blue ones. "Did you ever think that it might be true?"

    "No," Jaune said. "I know that if you fall for someone else, you'll tell me first."

    "Jaune," Pyrrha sighed. "But you thought that I could have fallen for someone else?"

    Jaune shrugged. "It would be kind of arrogant to think you never would, wouldn't it?"

    "Not when I have told you that I will not," Pyrrha said. "Do you doubt the constancy of my heart?"

    "I don't doubt you in anything," Jaune insisted. "I doubt myself."

    "You should not," Pyrrha said, taking one hand away from his to touch his face, first to brush some of the soft hair from out of his forehead and then to stroke his cheek. "You are a better man than those who made you feel small."

    Jaune reached up and took her hand in his once more. His palm was warm against her skin, and his fingers were gentle.

    "Are you okay?" he asked again.

    "If you had doubted me, I would not be," Pyrrha admitted. "But, since you did not, I am content."

    "And my family?"

    "Have acted always out of love for you, as I said."

    "That doesn't make it right."

    "With less proof, I would bear more grief," Pyrrha admitted. "But this other woman was dressed like me, and though she wasn't wearing my circlet, I suppose they haven't known me long enough to realise that I am so rarely seen without it. I told you, I did not want to make you choose between us; I will not, now that they are contrite, and with their reasons and actions being understandable."

    Jaune leaned forwards and kissed her. "You're amazing," he said.

    If only that were true, Pyrrha thought. "And you are the only man whom I desire." If I say it often enough, perhaps you will believe it.

    Jaune nodded, a smile playing across his face as he took a step back, and this time, he did offer her his arm. "If you want to go down, if you're determined … shall we go?"

    Pyrrha placed her hand upon his elbow. "I think we shall," she said.

    They walked together down the stairs, her hand upon his arm, the other resting lightly upon the bannister, as Kendal trailed behind them, following upon their heels.

    The three of them were amongst the last to arrive; even Aoko was seated at the table when they got there; aside from Jaune, Pyrrha, and Kendal, the only other people missing were Adrian, who was probably upstairs in his room, Sky, and Sunset.

    River did not meet Pyrrha's eyes. She looked everywhere in the room but at Pyrrha and Jaune. Chester put his hands upon her shoulders and whispered something into her ear. Violet looked sullen, pouting and crossing her arms. Rouge … Rouge bore an expression that Pyrrha knew well: of studied, practiced lack of emotion. The kind of face you wore when you didn't want anyone to know what you were feeling, and so you acted as though you felt practically nothing at all.

    Pyrrha's heart went out to her; she wanted to say something, but … but she couldn't think of anything to say. She could hardly imagine — she couldn't imagine — what Jaune's eldest sister was going through: to have been betrayed, repeatedly, by the person who was supposed to love you most, to cherish you most, to be your rock and support and helpmate for all your life. To have been betrayed by them and to know about it and to … to put up with it, to almost convince yourself that you deserved it?

    No, Pyrrha could not imagine what Rouge was going through, what she had gone through all these years.

    And, having no idea, she had no idea what she could say on the subject, although it seemed as though Rouge needed someone to say something to her.

    All Pyrrha could do was hope that she found the happiness that had eluded her so far.

    "Jaune," Gold said. "Pyrrha. You look very nice."

    "Thank you, sir," Pyrrha said softly.

    "Pyrrha," Violet muttered, before saying something else so quietly that Pyrrha couldn't hear it.

    "Excuse me?" Pyrrha asked.

    Violet sighed. "I'm sorry I didn't believe you earlier," she said, every word sounding like it was being dragged out of her.

    "Apology accepted, Violet. I'm sure it looked convincing to someone who didn't know me."

    "Ruben could be a bit of a jackass," Chester said, "but we all thought he had the best interests of the family at heart. He … always seemed to know what he was doing."

    "He knew what he was doing alright," Kendal muttered.

    "I blame myself," said Gold.

    "Dad," Rouge began, "it isn't—"

    "Yes," Gold said, "it is. I'm the one who thought that he would be a good husband for you, I'm the one who gave him my blessing, I … I'm sorry, sweetie. I made a terrible choice, and you've paid for it."

    "Perhaps there's a lesson here," Kendal said. "About how we should all stop interfering in one another's love lives."

    Gold looked at her. "Is this the part where you tell us that you have a boyfriend I don't know about?"

    "N-no, Dad, I … I just—"

    "I think what Kendal is saying," Saphron said, "is that not everyone was very welcoming to Terra at first, just like not everyone was very welcoming to Pyrrha, and yet … it turns out that we knew what was best for ourselves."

    "I feel the need to point out that my marriage is going pretty well too," River pointed out.

    "Nevertheless," Rouge said. "Saphron, and Kendal, have a point. Perhaps we could do with being a little less judgemental and controlling." She closed her eyes for a moment, then looked at Jaune. "Treat her right, Jaune," she said. "Don't hurt her or take her for granted."

    "That," Gold said, "might be the only advice you ever need for a happy partnership."

    Pyrrha heard the front door open, and footsteps in the hall, before Sky led Sunset into the dining room. Sky had exchanged her sheriff's uniform for a white blouse and black skirt. Sunset was wearing a one-piece summer dress of purple, shading into pink as it descended towards the hem of her skirt, which was short and stopped above her knees. Upon her chest was stamped her flaming sun symbol, while the off-the-shoulder neckline exposed a pair of spaghetti straps across her shoulders. Around her neck, Sunset was wearing a dark purple choker, while her gloves upon her hands and arms added an incongruous touch to her outfit.

    As, in point of fact, did her boots.

    "Good evening, everyone," Sunset said. "Pyrrha, Jaune."

    "Good evening, Sunset," Pyrrha said.

    "Hey, Sunset," said Jaune.

    "Well, now that everyone's here, I'll start getting everything out onto the table," Honeysuckle said as she turned towards the kitchen.

    "I'll help, Mom," Rouge said.

    "No, dear, you sit down," Honeysuckle insisted. "Sky can give me a hand, can't you?"

    Sky smiled. "Sure thing, Mom." She followed her mother into the kitchen, the doors swinging back and forth after her as she passed in.

    Gold sat down at the head of the table. "Go ahead, sit down, everyone," he said, gesturing to the empty spaces with both hands. "Jaune, why don't you sit up at the top next to your mother, and Pyrrha you can sit up there next to Rouge?"

    Jaune's eyebrows rose. "Are you sure?"

    "I wouldn't have said it if I wasn't," Gold said, "come on!"

    It had been somewhat clear from her first night here in Alba Longa with the Arcs that the place at the table was correlated to status in the family, if only on a temporary basis, with father and mother at the top, with the eldest daughter sitting likewise near the head. Pyrrha could not help but recall that, on that first night, she and Jaune had found themselves sitting near the bottom of the table.

    Although she did not think Aoko had sat at the very foot of the table because she was in bad odour with the family; rather, given that she took that seat again tonight, it seemed that she just liked it there.

    It was not an exact correlation; nevertheless, it seemed from Jaune's reaction to mean something, and what it meant was good.

    That was … also good. Despite what had happened, despite the attitudes of certain members of the family, Pyrrha's objectives were unchanged: she wanted their acceptance, so that when — if, but she very much hoped when — Jaune made her truly a part of his family, they would not stand in her way.

    And that, she thought, she had accomplished. At the party, when they had invited her to join them, that had shown their true feelings towards her; what came after, what seeming proof of malice had made them think … and now, she thought that they were embarrassed by the way that some of them had behaved, but she did not think they bore her any malice.

    The fact that she and Jaune had been invited to sit up at the top of the table was proof of that.

    Jaune pulled out a chair for her, and Pyrrha smiled at him as she sat down, pulling her shawl up onto her shoulders so that it didn't fall onto the floor.

    Kendal took the seat next to Jaune, while by unspoken consensus, the seat next to Pyrrha — the one on her left, the one on her right being taken by Rouge — seemed to be left empty for Sky, just as the seat on Gold's right was left for Honeysuckle. Sunset took the chair next to Sky, giving her a temporarily empty space from which to look up at Pyrrha, while Violet sat next to her, Terra opposite, and Saphron next to Terra; River and Chester took the farthest most seats down at the foot of the table with Aoko.

    Honeysuckle and Sky brought out the meal, which tonight was a joint of lamb, cooked in a red wine sauce with mushrooms, parsnips, carrots, and onions, and served alongside new potatoes, mashed potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, broccoli, and cauliflower. As before, everyone helped themselves to the vegetables, but Honeysuckle sliced the lamb as plates were passed down to her, stopping when everyone said that they were satisfied.

    "No, thank you, ma'am," Sunset said, raising one hand when it was her turn to pass her plate up. "I don't eat meat."

    "Oh, right," Jaune winced, "Yeah, I probably should have said something."

    "Yes," Sunset said, "yes, you probably should."

    "Sorry."

    "You don't eat meat?" Gold repeated. "Not at all?"

    "No, sir," Sunset said. "I'm afraid I'm not secure enough in my superiority over animals."

    "Are you going to be alright?" Honeysuckle asked. "Or do you need me to—?"

    "I will be fine, ma'am; there is plenty else," Sunset assured her. "I wouldn't want you to let your own meal grow cold on my account."

    Sky dished up the sauce, ladling it and its attendant vegetables out onto the meat and onto the potatoes. Once done, once every plate — even Sunset's — was laden down with food, then Sky and Honeysuckle sat down.

    "I'd like to say grace, if that's okay with everybody?" Sky said.

    "Go ahead, sweetie," Gold replied.

    Sky held out her hands to Pyrrha and Sunset. Pyrrha smiled a little, her lips closed as she placed her hand inside Sky's palm.

    Sunset looked a little confused, but did the same, and after a moment, she held out her hand for River sat beside her.

    Sky was silent.

    "We give thanks," she said. "We give thanks…" She looked around the table. "We give thanks for the fact that we are still here. We give thanks for the fact that, although some of us may wander far from home, we are still and will always be a family, bound together, no matter what life throws at us, how difficult or unexpected, no matter how much we drive one another crazy sometimes. We give thanks for the fact that this family keeps on growing, with Terra, with Adrian, with the little one growing inside of River … and with Pyrrha Nikos, Jaune's girlfriend. We give thanks for the fact that she still wants to be Jaune's girlfriend after all we've put her through."

    Kendal snorted. Pyrrha couldn't suppress a chuckle. Sunset's eyebrows rose.

    "We give thanks for the fact that although we may make mistakes, we have the chance to learn from them and to do better. Because, like our great-great-grandfather said, the future is in our hands.

    "For what we are about to receive, may we be truly grateful."

    Everyone began to eat, and for a moment, there was no sound but the clicking of cutlery upon plates.

    "May I say, ma'am, that that is a rather nice ring on your finger," Sunset said.

    Honeysuckle glanced down at said finger, and upon the emerald ring that glistened there. "Oh? Oh, yes, it is lovely, isn't it? Gold gave it to me when he asked me to marry him."

    Sunset smiled. "Even at this distance, I can tell you have good taste, sir."

    Gold chuckled. "I'd love to take credit for that, but that ring belonged to my mother; she gave it to me when she realised that I was serious about Honeysuckle, so that I could pass it on."

    "Ah, an antique," Sunset said. "I don't suppose that your father got it from his mother to give to yours, by any chance?"

    Gold was silent for a moment. "Yeah, yeah my father did say something about that."

    "A family heirloom," Sunset murmured. "Ma'am, this may sound impertinent, but I don't suppose I could look at the ring briefly?"

    "Why?" asked Kendal.

    "It goes back at least three generations; it may be older still," Sunset explained.

    "It's just a ring," said Saphron.

    "Perhaps," Sunset allowed. "But there may be something in it. With your permission, ma'am."

    "I don't see what you expect to learn from a ring, like Kendal said, but if you're interested," Honeysuckle said, taking the emerald ring off her finger and passing it to Jaune, who passed it down to Kendal, who passed it across the table to Sky, and seemed to do so in such a way that Pyrrha could get a good look at the ring, which was more detailed than it had looked from the moderate distance at which she had seen it glimmering upon Honeysuckle's finger. It was, in any event, a beautiful ring, with a large emerald — large for a ring, at least — set in a band of gold, but the gold that held the stone in place was thicker than one might have expected and styled in such a way that it resembled the golden crescents that Jaune bore upon his shield: two arcs of gold — or Arcs of gold — holding the emerald in place. And, now that Pyrrha could look at it more closely, she could see that what she had taken to be a band of gold was in fact a pair of serpents coiling around one another, their mouths meeting around the stone.

    Sky passed the ring to Sunset, who turned it over in her hands, examining every part of it, even the insides.

    "Fine work," she murmured. "May I take some pictures?"

    "Be my guest," Honeysuckle said.

    "Thank you, ma'am," Sunset said as she got out her scroll — she was keeping it strapped to her arm, hidden beneath the collar of her dress — and took several pictures of the exterior and the interior of the ring. "Thank you, again," she said as she handed the ring back to Sky.

    The ring made its way back to Honeysuckle Arc, and the meal continued for a little longer.

    "Mom, Dad, everyone," Jaune said, before he stuck a forkful of lamb in his mouth, rendering the rest of what he had to say quite unintelligible.

    "Don't talk with your mouth full, dear," Honeysuckle reproached him gently.

    Jaune swallowed. "Sorry, Mom. What I was trying to say was that me and Pyrrha and Sunset will be leaving tomorrow, to go back to Beacon."

    There was a moment of silence at the table.

    "Had to happen sometime, I guess," Sky said.

    "So soon?" Honeysuckle asked. "You've only just arrived. Your friend has literally only just arrived."

    "If there had been more to find, I would have stayed longer, ma'am, though I cannot speak for Jaune and Pyrrha," Sunset said. "But, for myself … my being here any longer would be futile; there is nothing to be learned earlier than the history of this place itself, and that does not concern me."

    "Because founding a town isn't enough?" River asked.

    "A town a little more than one hundred years ago?" Sunset asked. "No, not when set against the heritage that Pyrrha can boast of." She snorted. "Not that Pyrrha boasts, of course."

    "So … are you like Pyrrha's mom's spy?" asked Violet.

    Sunset leaned back in her chair a little. "No," she said. "I am not a spy. If I were, I would hardly be sitting down to dinner with you all — by the way, ma'am, these sweet potatoes are very well cooked — would I?" She paused. "But I am her sworn woman, I suppose. She gave me a blade which once belonged to a retainer of her family, and what is more, I have taken a monthly stipend against my combat expenses. I am bound to her, by ties of duty and honour."

    "Or why else would you come up here to research our family history so that she can decide if Jaune is worthy to date Pyrrha," Kendal said. "It's not exactly any of your concern, is it?"

    "The happiness of my teammates is absolutely my concern," Sunset replied.

    "'Teammates'?" Rouge repeated. "Not friends."

    "They are my friends too, do not mistake me," Sunset corrected. "But as a mere friend. I would have no … duty of care."

    "'Duty of care'?" Sky repeated.

    Sunset smiled. "If I thought that these two were bad for one another, I would be as zealous in trying to separate them as I think that you have been, at various times."

    Silence fell in response to that remark.

    "Perhaps the fact that you have been so zealous rendered that in somewhat poor taste," Sunset muttered.

    "A little bit, yeah," Jaune said.

    "Don't say it like that!" Sunset cried. "Have I ever been anything less than a hundred percent supportive of the two of you?"

    Do the times that you have implied or outright stated that I could do better count? Pyrrha wondered. However, she did not mention them, in part because she didn't want to knock Jaune's confidence, and in part because — as far as she knew, but she trusted Sunset so far in this; she did not believe that she would say such things to Jaune — she had only said them privately to Pyrrha, and even then without the intent to persuade her to change her conduct in any way. In that sense, she had been nothing but benign.

    "No," Jaune admitted. "No, you've been a big help, actually."

    "I only wish that I could have taught you enough to impress Lady Nikos, the way that Pyrrha has impressed your relatives," Sunset murmured.

    "'Lady Nikos'?" Sky said. "Is that … is that what you call Pyrrha's mom?"

    Sunset glanced at her. "I could hardly call her 'Pyrrha's mom,' could I?" She placed some broccoli into her mouth.

    "Doesn't she have a name?" asked Chester.

    "Her name is Lady Nikos," Sunset replied.

    "My mother's name is Hippolyta," Pyrrha said softly.

    "Which I have not been invited to use," Sunset pointed out. "Better to be too respectful than not enough."

    "Is that a thing?" Saphron whispered to Terra. "Do you just call people 'Lady This' or 'Lord That'?"

    "In Mistral proper, yes," Terra informed her. "The chances of finding a lord or lady in Argus are very slim, and even if you did, there's sufficient Atlesian influence upon the city that you could probably get away with not observing that particular courtesy, but the short answer … yes."

    "Your culture can be very strange sometimes."

    "My culture is perfectly normal," Terra declared. "Your culture is crass and boorish and wears its hat in the parlour. And besides, you chose to live in Argus; I didn't move to Vale."

    "A decision I haven't regretted for a moment," Saphron said, kissing Terra on the cheek. "Wait, does that mean we should have been calling Pyrrha 'Lady Pyrrha'?"

    "No," Pyrrha said firmly. "There is absolutely no need for that."

    "So…" Violet began, and then trailed off for a second, before saying, "are you going to tell her that we thought Pyrrha was cheating on Jaune?"

    "Violet, is there really any need to ask that here?" Rouge demanded.

    "I want to know if we've made any trouble for Jaune," Violet explained.

    "I will say nothing of it," Sunset declared. "What is there to say, after all? An odious toad attempted to slander Pyrrha's reputation, but Pyrrha's reputation proved to be beyond slander. Such petty pibble pabble is nothing that need reach the ears of Lady Nikos."

    "Thank you, Sunset," Pyrrha said quietly.

    "Much obliged, Miss Shimmer," Rouge added.

    Sunset shrugged. "As I said: one hundred percent supportive."

    "So do you have to leave?" Honeysuckle asked, returning to the initial point. "Surely you and Pyrrha—"

    "I guess that Jaune and Pyrrha have to join the rest of their team in preparing for the Vytal Festival," Gold said. "Assuming that you plan to compete."

    "Oh, we're going to compete," Sunset declared. "Apart from all other considerations — such as the fact that I relish this opportunity — if Pyrrha did not fight, then the howls of outrage from Mistral would be heard in Argus, no?"

    "They would be howling in Argus," Terra corrected her. "You'd be able to hear it over here."

    "What is the Vytal Festival?" asked River.

    "You don't know— wait, Jaune didn't even know about aura, of course you don't know what the Vytal Festival is," Sunset muttered.

    "The Vytal Festival is held every two years in one of the four kingdoms," Gold explained. "They take turns hosting it, and this year, it's the turn of Vale, and Beacon Academy. It's a celebration of the end of the Great War, and peace between all four kingdoms. There are parades, parties, but the big centrepiece is a tournament of students from the four academies: Beacon, Atlas, Haven, and Shade. Teams from all the schools — teams like the one that Jaune is on with Pyrrha and Miss Shimmer here — fight one another in mock battles in a giant floating arena up in the sky, and the huntsman or huntress who defeats all challengers is crowned the winner."

    "I don't understand why the number of huntsmen gets smaller," Aoko said from the bottom of the table.

    "Because people are losing their fights, I guess," River answered.

    "That's not what your sister means," Gold said. "You see, in the first round, all four members of each team fight, but in the second round, the teams that win the first match select just two people to go forward and fight two people from another team who won their match, and then of the pair who win, only a single member goes on to the final round, where they fight other winners in single combat."

    "That will be Pyrrha," Sunset said.

    Pyrrha said nothing and ate her dinner.

    "Did you fight in the tournament, Dad?" asked Jaune.

    "My team won the first round match, but they didn't pick me to go into the two on two," Gold explained. "More fool them, they got knocked out."

    "I'm sorry to hear that," Pyrrha murmured.

    "We were always an outside chance," Gold said. "And when there can only be one winner, well, then there have to be a lot of losers, right? But, I had a great time at the festival, and getting to fight in that arena in front of all those people — what a rush!"

    Pyrrha smiled. "It is quite exhilarating," she agreed. "The roar of the crowd in your ears, the sound of their applause, their cheering. It can be intimidating, to have so many eyes upon you, so many hopes resting on your shoulders, but … quite exciting, at the same time."

    Gold nodded. "You know, if you two are going to compete," he said, "we might…"

    "Dad?" Kendal prompted, as he fell silent.

    "I was just thinking, we might actually have to get a TV so that we can watch it," Gold said.

    "Jaune's going to be on TV?!" Violet cried.

    "The Vytal Festival is one of the biggest events in all of Remnant," Gold said. "It's televised everywhere, live. And it … you know, it wouldn't feel right for Jaune to be fighting in front of millions of people and not be watching him ourselves."

    "Yes, we have to support Jaune and Pyrrha," Rouge declared. "That's a great idea, Dad."

    "You're all going to be watching?" Jaune said. "I don't know whether to be thrilled or terrified."

    "It will be fine, Jaune," Pyrrha assured him. "Believe me when I say that the terrors of the arena are nothing compared to some of the things that we've been through recently."

    Jaune looked up at her. "No, no, I guess they're not, are they?"

    "How are you two feeling?" Terra asked. "Confident?"

    "Yeah!" Sunset cried. "We're going to blow our way to the one on one round, and once we get there … Pyrrha will do what she does best."

    What I do best indeed. Perhaps the only thing that I can do.

    "I … will do my utmost not to disappoint anybody," Pyrrha said. "I will honour the expectations that everyone has of me and bear the dignity of Team Sapphire proudly."

    "Count on us," Sunset said. "Because we're going to go all the way."

    "I hope so, because we'll all be watching," Gold said. "A toast, everyone: to Jaune and Pyrrha, success … and happiness."

    Pyrrha felt a blush rise to her cheeks as everyone raised their glasses.

    "To Jaune and Pyrrha!"

    XxXxX​

    "Jaune?" Mom called from the other side of the bedroom door. "Can I come in?"

    "Uh, just a second, Mom," Jaune replied. He'd been in the middle of getting ready for bed, with his jacket and shirt off but with his trousers still on. He grabbed his hoodie off the bed and pulled it over his head. Then he opened the door. "Hey. Is everything okay?"

    "Yes, dear, everything's fine," Mom said, a bright smile upon her face. "Everything's wonderful. Of course I'm sad that you're leaving so soon, but … I suppose you had to go away again sometime."

    Jaune nodded and smiled himself. "Yeah, Mom, I did. Just like I told you I would."

    "I'm not here to argue about that, Jaune, believe me," Mom assured her. "You've made your choice … in every way. Can I come in? I feel awkward standing out here, and besides…" — she glanced down the hall — "someone might see me."

    Jaune frowned, not knowing why it would matter if someone saw Mom in her own house talking to him. "Um, okay, come on in."

    He stepped back, letting her enter.

    Mom walked inside his room, closing the door behind her. She looked around, a sigh escaping from her lips. "I remember when I used to come in here to see if you'd cleaned this place like I told you to or not," she said. "I remember when you used to try and hide the comic books you'd been reading from me."

    "And you always found them anyway," Jaune said, a little laughter in his voice.

    "Mothers always know, or they should," Mom said. She half turned away from him, clasping her hands together. "I know that I haven't always been the best mother, and I'm sorry for that—"

    "Mom, you don't have to—"

    "Yes, Jaune, I do," Mom replied, looking at him even though she didn't actually turn to face him. "You weren't happy here. You were so unhappy that you ran away from home, and that … that is at least partly my fault. I thought more about what I wanted than about what you wanted, when all I really ought to have wanted was that you'd be happy. I only hope that … that even if I am responsible for you being unhappy, I'm also partly responsible for the fact that you've been able to do so well out there in the world."

    "You are, Mom, definitely," Jaune said. "My teammates definitely appreciate that you taught me to cook."

    Mom chuckled. "Well, that's wonderful to hear." She paused for a moment. "I was always a little worried that you'd end up alone. I suppose that should have been a sign to me that you needed to leave this place, get out of here, find people who understood you better. And you did, and I … I'm so happy for you Jaune."

    "Mom," Jaune murmured. "Why are you telling me this now?"

    "Because I think the time has come," Mom said, "for me to do what every Arc mother does, when the time is right." She plucked the ring from off her finger and held it out to him. "This is for you to give to Pyrrha."

    Jaune's eyes widened. "Mom, you … are you serious?"

    "I've spoken to your father, and he agrees," Mom said. "Since we don't know when or if you'll be back here, we don't want to miss this chance."

    Jaune stared at the ring that was being proffered to him. His mother's ring, the ring that Dad had given her when he asked her to marry him, the ring that grandma had gotten from grandpa, and that great-grandma had probably gotten from great-grandpa too, and who knew how far back it went?

    "What … what about Rouge or River?"

    "That's not how this works, Jaune," Mom said, shaking her head. "It's for Arc men to give to the loves of their lives."

    The love of my life. Pyrrha was certainly that, but … but this ring. An engagement ring, the family engagement ring. It looked so big. It looked so heavy. It looked like such a big, heavy thing to take and then to carry around.

    Pyrrha was his future. He knew that, and they had talked about what that would look like, and what that would look like included marrying her, but…

    "I don't know if I can," he murmured.

    "You love her, don't you?" Mom asked.

    "Of course I do, but … I don't know if I'm ready," Jaune admitted, his voice hoarse.

    "Oh, Jaune," Mom said. "You don't have to ask her to marry you tomorrow, or next week, or even next year. In your heart, you'll know when the time is right, and when you do … you'll be prepared. Take it, Jaune. When else are we going to be able to give it to you?"

    She had a point there; he might not be back here … well, the point was that he didn't know when he'd be back, which was also Mom's point, that was why she was giving him the ring now, so that he was, as she said, prepared.

    He wasn't ready right now. It didn't feel right, when they were still in school, when he still hadn't really proven himself at all — at least not to his own satisfaction — when he still hadn't really gained the acceptance of Pyrrha's mother. It was one thing for Pyrrha to date him in spite of what her mother thought, but if they were going to live in Pyrrha's house as man and wife, it would be good if she could at least tolerate him.

    He wasn't ready.

    But, one day … Jaune found that he could imagine the scene: that place in Mistral that Pyrrha had brought them to, the high place with that great view of the whole city and the waterfall crashing down the side of the mountain. He'd wait until the sun was going down and bathing the world in a warm golden glow, and then … and then he'd get down on one knee and pull out the ring. He'd pull out that ring.

    Gently, he reached out and took the ring from his mother's hand.

    "You're right," he said. "I don't know when exactly I'll give this to Pyrrha, but I will one day. Thanks, Mom."

    XxXxX​

    Author's Note: Art by Miku
     
    Last edited:
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    • Chapter 50 - Rising Temperature
  • Threadmarks
    • Rising Temperature​


    Nora slurped loudly from the large slushy she gripped in both hands as she walked down the street.

    "Is it me, or did the guy who sold this seem kind of rude?" she asked

    "Probably just having a bad day," Ruby said.

    "I guess," Nora murmured, before putting her lips around the straw again and slurping even more of her orange and mango drink, making the level in the plastic cup drop dramatically.

    Yang tucked her hands behind the back of her head. "So, what do you guys want to do first?"

    Nora stopped slurping and raised her hand in the air. "Ooh, we should totally check out the new axe-throwing place that just opened up. You throw axes."

    Yang grinned. "That does sound pretty cool. What do you think, Ruby?"

    Ruby nodded. "Sure, why not?"

    "Ren?" Yang asked.

    Ren shrugged. "If you're all happy, then I am happy."

    "That's not exactly a full-throated endorsement," Nora pointed out. "Is there something that you'd rather do instead?"

    "Why make it a question of 'instead'?" Yang asked before Ren could respond. "We've got all day, after all; it's not like we need to get back to Beacon for anything. If there's anything that Ren wants to do, then we can do that too. Something caught your eye, Ren?"

    Ren was silent for a moment.

    "It's not one or the other, really," Yang insisted. "You can say what you want to do and not feel bad about it."

    "Then I wouldn't mind visiting the Escape Room on Mortimer Row," Ren said. "It's supposed to be very challenging."

    "Aww, I'm no good at those things," Nora moaned.

    "And I don't have the best record at things like axe throwing," Ren pointed out.

    "Settle down, children; like I said, it isn't one or the other," Yang declared. "How about you, Ruby?"

    "Huh?"

    "What do you want to do today?" Yang asked.

    "Hmm," Ruby murmured, cupping her chin with one hand as she thought. "Well…" She paused, catching sight of a series of posters plastered to the sides of the building she was passing by. She turned away from Yang and the others to get a better look at it.

    The poster had a red background on which was depicted an android, bulkier than an Atlesian combat droid, wearing a sparkling red jacket, while its chest had been painted to look like a white shirt and a red bow tie. The robot was also wearing a top hat, while its face had been painted to resemble clown makeup, with a bright red smile stretching in an exaggerated U across its face and a red nose that looked like it was flashing.

    Behind the android that was at once ringmaster and clown were pictures of a robot elephant rearing up and a robot lion baring its teeth.

    "'Starhead Industries presents,'" Ruby said. "'Remnant's first ever robot circus. See robots like you've never seen them before.' Hey, that sounds like it might be fun."

    "A circus?" Yang said, a little sceptically.

    "A robot circus," Ruby corrected her, turning back to the rest of the group. "Even if it isn't great, it'll be cool to see how they got all of the different robots to work. I wonder if they'll have robot clowns, because programming humour must be really hard."

    "Maybe they'll just have scary clowns," Yang muttered. "But if that's what you want, then sure, we'll fit that in."

    The four of them were in Vale, where the day was bright, and — despite the fact that summer was drawing to an end and fall was rapidly approaching — the day was pretty warm. The city bustled around them, pretty much back to its former busyness after the shock of the Breach had temporarily driven people off the streets and into the shelter of their homes. It seemed like Councillor Emerald's insistence that everything was going to be okay had done the trick, or maybe it was the arrival of General Ironwood's reinforcements, or maybe it was just the fact that nothing bad had happened since the Breach that had made people feel safe again.

    Either way, it seemed like everyone was out and about today, on the streets, in their cars, coming in and out of the subway stations; street vendors took advantage of the last days of the hot weather to hawk ice creams out of vans or little stalls, along with lemonade, or slushies like the one that Nora was drinking so rapidly despite its size.

    With Sunset, Pyrrha, and Jaune all away, Ruby had joined the members of Team YRBN who weren't called Blake for a day out, and the four of them ambled idly down the street, without much purpose or direction — until now, anyway.

    "You don't like circuses, Yang?" Nora asked.

    "I've got nothing against them," Yang replied. "I just think … they're a bit for kids, you know?"

    "Not necessarily," Nora said. "We used to get all adults showing up sometimes, didn't we, Ren?"

    "On occasion, yes," Ren agreed.

    "'We'?" Ruby asked.

    Nora gasped. "Did I never tell you that Ren and I used to work in a circus? Does that mean that I never told you about Ethel either?"

    "Who's Ethel?" asked Yang.

    "First things first," Nora replied, skipping ahead of the others for a few steps, the strings of the bow at the back of her waist streaming out behind her, then whirling around her body as she turned back to face the rest of them. She started walking backwards, arms spread out on either side of her. "So, this all happened … a couple of years ago, right, Ren?"

    "That's about right, yes."

    "Ren was determined to get to Beacon Academy," Nora said. "He had his heart set on it, didn't you, Ren?"

    "Beacon's reputation is unparalleled," Ren murmured. "I believed that we would receive a far higher standard of education here."

    "But to get there, we had to make enough money to afford to get to Vale," Nora declared. "So, we got jobs at the circus! Ren never got any further than the monkey cage," she added, laughter in her voice. "But I loved it there: the bright colours, the sounds, the animals, the costumes. It was awesome!" She twirled on her toe, humming a tune as she did so.

    Yang chuckled. "What did you do in the circus?"

    "We did everything," Ren said.

    "Pretty much, yeah," Nora agreed. "We used to clean out the animal cages, we helped to set up the big top, Ren cooked."

    "You weren't performers, then?" Ruby asked, a little disappointedly.

    "Oh no, we got to be in the show too," Nora declared. "Why, they said that Ren was the best natural whiteface clown they'd ever seen."

    "Mmm," Ren murmured.

    Ruby frowned. "Which is the whiteface clown?"

    "The one who gets hit in the face with the custard pie," Ren informed her dryly.

    Yang blinked. "Were you an actual circus clown?"

    "I took some lessons, under duress," Ren said. "I never performed."

    "But I threw knives!" Nora said. "I was awesome at it."

    "I was the target you practiced on; we never performed that either," said Ren.

    "And we helped with the cannon trick."

    "We brought down the big top by using too much dust in the cannon," Ren admitted.

    "Pssh, anyone could have made that mistake," Nora said. "Besides, it was totally worth it." She sighed. "It was a magical time, but sadly, it wasn't to last forever. After seven weeks of continuous rain and no business, that circus had to fold up; the owner was flat broke. So, to pay everyone in place of the money they were owed, he decided to divide up the show, so that everyone would get something valuable in place of money. He put all the items in a hat, and what each one of us drew, we got." Nora paused. "I got the flea circus. I wonder whatever happened to those fleas."

    "I prefer not to think about it," Ren muttered as he started scratching at his chest.

    "And Ren," Nora went on, "drew Ethel, the human chimp. She read, wrote, played the piano, and milked a cow. And wore a pretty cute tutu as well."

    Yang glanced at Ren, who said nothing.

    "I liked her," Nora continued. "I liked her a whole lot. I feel like we got each other, you know? But, Ren had a point that we couldn't exactly take her with us on our journey, and that if we sold her to a zoo or something, we'd have enough money to make it to Vale. Ren planned to put Ethel in a crate he was making himself, but the lion chased us off before he could finish it."

    Yang and Ruby both looked at Ren, who still said nothing.

    "The night was dark," Nora said. "They usually are, after all."

    "Except in summer," Ruby pointed out.

    "Right," Nora conceded. "Anyway, there we were, me, Ren, and Ethel, wandering the streets of Mistral together with a lion on the loose. We could have really used a place to stay, so Ren said to me 'let's get a room.' And I said, 'Alright, let's get a room with twin beds.' 'Why twin beds?' asked Ren. 'One for me,' I said. And then Ren said, 'But I can't sleep with the monkey!' And I said, 'Oh, she won't mind.' And then I turned to Ethel and asked, 'You don't mind sleeping with Ren, do you?'"

    Yang was staring at Ren by this point, waiting for some correction that didn't come. "Did … did that actually happen?"

    Ren sighed. "Yes."

    "You really worked in a circus?"

    "Correct."

    "And you really got a human chimp in place of payment?"

    "Unfortunately, yes."

    There was a moment of silence.

    "Huh," Yang said.

    "Did you manage to sell her?" asked Ruby.

    "She grabbed a gun and shot her way out!" Nora said.

    "We got the gun away from her fairly quickly," Ren corrected.

    "How did she manage to get a gun in the first place?" demanded Yang.

    "The owner of the boarding house burst in on us with it because he thought Ren was having an affair with his wife!"

    Ren sighed. "Unfortunately, that is also true."

    Yang blinked rapidly. "Do I want to know how?"

    "In a staggeringly unfortunate coincidence, his wife's name was also Ethel," Ren explained.

    "Oh," Ruby and Yang said at the same time.

    "Yeah, that would explain it," Ruby added. "That was unlucky."

    "You two," Yang said, putting her hands on her hips, "have had a weird, wild life."

    "You don't know the half of it," Nora said, winking.

    Yang shook her head. "Okay," she said. "So we've got axe throwing, escape room, and the robot circus where hopefully we don't get stuck with a flea circus or a robot human chimp. I wonder what that would look like? Anyway, we've got—"

    "What about you?" asked Ruby.

    Yang looked at her. "What about me?"

    "What do you want to do?"

    Yang grinned. "I want to make sure that my sister and my friends have the best day, that's what I want to do."

    "Come on, Ruby's right," Nora said, as she fell back into line with the rest of them. "If we're all getting to do something we want, it's only fair that you get to do something you want to do as well."

    "Well, if you're going to twist my arm about it," Yang said, "we'll go dancing. Probably best to save that for the end of the day, though; anywhere that's open earlier will be dead before nightfall. Which means we still have axe throwing, escape room, and the robot circus. Hmm." Now it was her turn to touch her chin with her fingers, tapping them beneath her lower lip. "Why don't we hit the escape room first, then the circus, then we can throw axes after dinner and find a cool club for a while before crashing back to school? Does that sound like a plan?"

    "Fine by me," said Ren.

    "Sounds great!" Nora cried.

    "Sounds like it's going to be great," Ruby added.

    "That's settled then," Yang said. "Lead on to this escape place, Ren. Although, fair warning, you're probably going to have to do most of the problem-solving yourself."

    "Is that so?" Ren murmured. "We'll see."

    They walked a little further on down the street. As they walked, their footsteps thumping dully against the paving slabs, Ruby began to hear police sirens sounding not too far away.

    "Do you guys hear that?" Ruby asked. "Do you think someone might be in trouble?"

    "If they are, it'll be because they deserve it," Yang replied.

    "You know what I mean," Ruby said as their steps carried them before the mouth of an alleyway adjoining their street. "We should check it out; maybe we can help."

    "Sure," Yang agreed, "if we can work out where it's—"

    Sun burst out of the mouth of the alleyway, almost colliding with Yang, who stepped nimbly aside to let him, stumbling to a stop, trip over his own feet and fall flat on his face.

    "Sun?" Ruby asked.

    Neptune followed Sun out of the alley. "Hey, guys," he said, waving his hand. "What's shaking?"

    "Do you know anything about those police sirens?" Ruby asked.

    Sun groaned wordlessly as he picked himself up off the ground.

    Neptune laughed nervously. "They, uh, you see, it's a funny story—"

    "No, it isn't," Sun growled.

    "No, you're right, it isn't," Neptune admitted. "They're after us."

    "They're after you?" Ruby gasped.

    "We didn't do it, I swear!" Neptune protested.

    "Didn't do what?" Yang demanded.

    "We didn't do anything!" Sun cried. "We just … never mind, we gotta go, come on man!"

    He took off, with Neptune following after him, darting across the road, weaving between the traffic and dashing into another alley on the other side of the street.

    Ruby and the members of Team YRBN watched them go.

    "Huh," Yang said. "I wonder what happened there?"

    "Do you think they really didn't do it?" Nora asked.

    "You don't think they're guilty of anything, do you?" Ruby asked.

    "We don't know either of them like you do," Ren pointed out.

    "I don't know them very well," Ruby murmured, "but I'm sure they wouldn't do anything to get the police called on them."

    "The police do frequently get called to arrest people for … specious reasons," Ren allowed.

    "Well, if we want to find out what's really going on, there's one way to find out," Yang said. "Hey, boys, wait up a second!"

    She started to run across the road, waving to the traffic which slowed or halted to let her pass.

    "Thank you!"

    Nora looked at Ren. "I guess the escape room is going to have to wait a little bit," she said.

    Ren sighed, but when Nora began to follow Yang, he followed her without any hesitation.

    Ruby went too, of course, and the four of them caught up with Sun and Neptune not too far away, having followed them through a tangle of back-alleys and narrow streets between the buildings, even as the sounds of the police sirens faded into the distance behind them.

    The boys paused, halfway up a fire escape leading onto the roof of a building — Ruby couldn't tell what it was, since they were behind it — with a water tower up on that roof. On said roof, the sun was shining, but Sun and Neptune paused only halfway up the metal ladder, Sun half draped across the safety rail while Neptune sat down upon the slightly rusting metal step.

    Sun glanced at them. "You didn't have to follow us," he pointed out.

    Yang grinned. "We were curious," she said. "It would have been bugging me all day to know why the cops were after you. Especially for something you didn't do."

    "We didn't do it," Neptune insisted.

    "Then why were they after you?" Ruby asked.

    "You were probably in the wrong place, weren't you?" Nora guessed. "Somebody didn't like the look of you in a nice neighbourhood."

    Neptune looked at her. "What makes you say that?"

    Nora folded her arms. "You think it's only faunus that happens to?"

    "It wasn't that," Sun murmured. "Or … maybe it was that, kind of, but…" He sighed.

    Yang stepped forward, stepping around — half over, really — Neptune to climb the steps, which rattled beneath her booted tread, until she was standing beside Sun, just lower than him upon the fire escape.

    She reached out and put a fingerless-gloved hand upon his shoulder. "Hey," she murmured. "I know that you don't have to talk about it, but … it might help if you did?"

    Sun glanced at her, and then glanced away.

    Yang nodded. "Well, it seems like you lost them, so maybe—"

    "He told me to go back where I came from," Sun murmured.

    Ruby blinked. "Who?"

    "We don't know," Neptune said. "Some guy. We were minding our own business, and suddenly—"

    "Suddenly, this guy shoves a thousand lien into my hand and tells me to go back to where I came from," Sun said softly. "And I told him thanks, but you know it's only ten lien for the airship back to Beacon, right?"

    Yang chuckled. "What did he say to that?"

    "He yelled that I was a thief and I'd stolen his money," Sun said.

    "We tried to give it back to him, but he just kept yelling," Neptune added. "And then someone called the cops. You know the rest."

    "That's awful!" Ruby said. "I can't believe people would do something like that."

    "Can't you?" Ren asked. "I can."

    Sun looked at them. "Did you … but you're not—"

    "No," Ren agreed. "We're not. But we've been outsiders before. The fact that we weren't faunus didn't help us very much."

    Sun scowled and tapped the railing with both hands. "It's never happened to me before," he said.

    "Being offered money, or chased by the cops?" Ruby asked.

    "It's not his first time being chased by the cops," Yang said.

    Sun laughed. "They were sailors, not cops, remember?"

    Yang nodded. "Yeah, that's right; they were sailors off the boat."

    "It's not either of those, anyway," Sun went on. "I mean, it is my first time being offered money, but … it's also my first time … dealing with … that, you know."

    "Really?" Ruby gasped, then covered her mouth as she realised how that sounded. "I just … I just meant, in Mistral—"

    "He wasn't actually in Mistral for very long, remember?" Neptune said. "He hopped on a boat to come here."

    "So, in Vacuo, it isn't that bad?" Yang asked.

    "In Vacuo, the strong survive," Sun declared. "If you're strong enough to live, then you're allowed to live, if not … it doesn't matter whether you're a human or a faunus."

    "Kind of rough on the people who aren't strong enough to survive," Nora murmured.

    "They get treated the same all over; it's just in Vacuo, nobody pretends to care," Sun said, his tongue sharpening. His brow furrowed. "Sorry, I … I just…"

    "It got to you," Yang murmured.

    "People have treated me differently because I'm a faunus before," Sun admitted. "But never … that. That's a whole new—"

    "Brazen level of jackassery?" Yang suggested.

    Sun looked at her and managed to smile. "Yeah," he said, "something like that."

    "I thought Vale was supposed to be tolerant," Nora said.

    "It is!" insisted Ruby.

    "Apparently, not for everyone," Nora pointed out, gesturing towards Sun.

    "That was just…" Ruby trailed off for a moment. "I mean, it was awful, but it was just one guy—"

    "And the cops that they called on us," Neptune pointed out.

    "They didn't know what was really going on," Ruby replied. "They just got a call about a thief."

    "That's true, I suppose," Neptune admitted. "Didn't make it nicer having to run away from them."

    "No," Ruby murmured. "No, I guess not." Her voice rose. "But my point is … my point is that stuff like that, well, it just doesn't happen here, not in Vale."

    "It did," Neptune said bluntly.

    "But Ruby's right, what you just said is kind of, well, it's a little much, isn't it?" Nora pointed out. "The people who tried to run me and Ren out of places never gave us any money to get rid of us. You wouldn't believe it in Mistral or Atlas, let alone in Vale."

    "I get what you mean," Sun assured them. "Lots of folks here in Vale have been nice and friendly, just like its reputation." He grinned. "Perhaps we just ran into the one guy in Vale who really hates faunus? The one guy stupid enough to believe that we all moved here from Menagerie?"

    "Yeah," Yang agreed, a mixture of lightness and uncertainty in her voice. "Yeah, I'm sure that's it." She paused for a moment. "So … are you okay?"

    "Uh huh," Sun said, as he turned to face her. "I'm fine. I'm always fine."

    "Really?" Yang asked. "'Cause you know, it's okay to admit when you're not."

    "Why?" Sun asked her in turn. "Why do you care?"

    Yang smiled. "'Cause sunshine is in my name," she said, with a brightness in her voice that verged on excessive. "And … because Blake isn't here right now, so if you want to lean on someone … you can lean on me, if you want to."

    Sun chuckled. "Blake … isn't the kind of person you lean on."

    "No," Yang agreed. "No, I guess not."

    "But thanks anyway," Sun told her. "I'll keep it in mind … but right now, I really am fine."

    "I'm fine too, if anyone cares," Neptune added. "Unless being not fine is going to get me a hug from a hot girl, in which case, I am so totally not fine. I am so far from fine that I could walk five hundred miles, and fine would still be way over … I'm rambling, aren't I?"

    "A little bit, yeah," Nora said.

    "First of all, you're not the one who just became a victim of racism," Yang said. "And second of all, aren't you dating that Atlesian girl, what's her name—?"

    "Twilight Sparkle," Ruby said.

    "It's just a hug," Neptune said.

    "It's not happening," replied Nora.

    "So, anyway," Yang said, "what are you guys up to? Or were you up to? What are you up to?"

    "Not much," Sun said. "We were just going to see what happened."

    "We sure saw what happened," Neptune added.

    Yang glanced at Ruby and her teammates. "Well, if you want," she said, "you can always come along with us."

    "Where?" Neptune asked.

    "An escape room, a robot circus, axe throwing, and a hot dance club," Yang declared.

    "That sounds like a full day," Neptune declared.

    "It's not completely full if there's anything you want to do as well," Yang replied. "Book your slots before they fill up."

    "What's a robot circus?" asked Sun.

    "It's like a regular circus, but with robots," answered Yang.

    "Okay," Sun said, "next question, what's a circus?"

    Silence greeted this question.

    "You don't know what a circus is?" Ruby asked.

    "We never had them in Vacuo," Sun told her.

    "Okay, you have to come with us!" Ruby cried. "This is going to be great. You'll get to experience all the fun of a regular circus and a whole bunch of cool robots!"

    Sun looked at Neptune. "What do you think, man?"

    "Yeah, sure," Neptune replied, getting to his feet. "I mean, why not, right? It's not like we had anything cooler lined up."

    "Next stop: the robot circus!" Nora declared, pointing her hand into the air.

    "Ahem," Ren said.

    "Next stop: the escape room," Yang corrected. "Don't worry, Ren, I hadn't forgotten."

    "What's an escape room?"

    "Did you have any entertainment in Vacuo at all?" Yang demanded.

    "It's a room you get locked into, and then you have to escape," Neptune explained.

    "Huh? That's easy; I'll just break down the door," Sun said.

    "That's not the point," Ren said calmly. "The point is to escape through solving puzzles and displaying mental agility."

    "Mental agility, huh?" Sun repeated. "Is that why we've never been to one of these things before?"

    "No, we've never been to one of these because if we did, Scarlet would try and leave you locked in," Neptune explained.

    Neptune, Yang, and Sun trooped down the stairs of the fire escape, making the metal shake and rattle as they came to join the others. As she led them all out of the side alley, Yang got out her scroll, bringing up a map of all their destinations — all save the club, because she hadn't chosen it yet — that they were going to visit throughout the day.

    "Seriously, guys," she said to Sun and Neptune, "if there's anything that you want to do, just let me know, and we'll find some way to fit it in. Anything at all. Almost anything."

    "We'll give it some thought," Neptune assured her.

    "You know," Nora said, "Ren and I used to work in a circus."

    "Really?" Neptune asked.

    "I still have no idea what that is," said Sun.

    "That'll make the story even better," Nora assured him. "Now, this all happened a couple of years ago—"

    She repeated the story as they walked down the street, and this time, Nora and Ren's time in the circus seemed to gain a lot of embellishment that hadn't been there when she had told the story to Yang and Ruby; while the stuff about the chimp, once Ren had finally come into possession of it, was pretty much unchanged — and still true, apparently — in this second telling, Nora had become the circus strongman and the person who used to catch the cannonball during the cannon trick.

    "I've no doubt that you could have been a strongman," Ren said. "Or a strongwoman. But you weren't."

    "I would have been awesome, though," Nora insisted. "You know I would have rocked that leotard."

    Ren said nothing, but a faint blush rose to his cheeks.

    As they walked down the street, they passed a boarded up property, the shop or whatever that had been there having shut up and closed down and nobody else having shown up to take over the lease. Wooden chipboard had been nailed over the windows and the doors, and upon one of those wooden boards, someone had spray painted the words 'Atlas Is the Enemy!' in bright red letters.

    Ruby couldn't help but stop and stare at it.

    Yang, noticing that Ruby had stopped, stopped too. "Ruby, what's— huh?"

    Everyone stopped, coming to a shuffling, ragged halt to look at the spray painted message.

    "'Atlas is the enemy'?" Sun repeated. "What does that even mean?"

    "It means that-"

    "I know what it means, man," Sun said to Neptune before he could finish explaining. "My point is, why would anyone say something so stupid."

    "Why would anyone give you a thousand lien to go back where you came from?" Neptune asked.

    Sun blinked. "You think people in Vale are just feeling mean and dumb today?"

    Neptune shrugged. "It's as good an explanation as any, right?"

    "To add to the one person in Vale who hates the faunus, we now add the one who hates Atlas," Ren murmured.

    Unfortunately, as they walked down the streets of Vale towards the escape room, it became clear to all of them that it was not just one guy.

    Because it wasn't just one piece of graffiti that was attacking Atlas. It wasn't, like, everywhere everywhere, like you could go a couple of blocks without seeing any sign of it, but once you knew that it was there and you knew to look for it, you could see it. It wasn't always so obvious as on the front of an abandoned store on a busy street; sometimes, it was kind of hidden away in side streets, but never so hidden that you couldn't see them from the main road. Some of it was just crude messages attacking Atlas and declaring that they were the enemy, that they were invaders, that they had to be stopped; some of it was pretty sophisticated, like this one picture they saw that would have been a really piece of street art if it had shown anything other than Atlesian warships hovering menacingly overhead — and the difference between the real Atlesian cruisers in the skies above them and the ones in the picture was that in the picture, you could see all their missiles, and they were all pointing downwards.

    "But…" Ruby said. "Why? Would people draw this? Why would people think like this? Sunset said that Vale would have been lost without General Ironwood and his forces, is she right?"

    "No one can know what would have happened," Ren said. "But, if Sunset is right, that may be the problem."

    Ruby looked at him. "What do you mean, if they saved Vale—?"

    "People dislike being saved," Ren explained.

    Except that didn't explain much of anything. "Do they?" asked Ruby in a small and trembling voice.

    "Does that surprise you?" Ren asked. "That Vale needed Atlas to rescue them shows that, as Sun and the Vacuans might say, Vale was not strong enough to survive."

    Sun's muscular chest rose and fell as he sighed. "I gotta say, he's right about that," he admitted. "I mean, if it had been a Vacuan fleet in the sky, they would have cut and run as soon as the Breach happened."

    "They would have just left?" Yang demanded. "Why, because Vale should be strong enough to survive on its own?"

    "No, because Vacuans don't stand and fight," Sun explained. "All of that hold your ground, round the flag, last man stuff? We don't buy into any of that. We stick around somewhere as long as we can, and then, when it gets too hot, we move on."

    "Nice to know we can depend on you if we get into trouble," Nora muttered.

    "Hey, I was there at the Breach too, remember; just because it's what people back home would do doesn't mean that it's what I would do," Sun replied hotly, his voice raising. "I'm just saying … I forget what I was saying."

    "The point is that people dislike being saved," Ren said. "They dislike owing others their lives, and that dislike can turn into resentment."

    "I'll take your word for that," Yang said, scratching the back of her head with one hand. "Even so, this seems a little bit extreme, don't you think?"

    "Apparently not for some people," Neptune pointed out.

    They continued to see more examples of anti-Atlas sentiment as they went on their way, until eventually, they reached the escape room, where hostility to Atlas and racism towards faunus were temporarily forgotten as they worked together to escape from a doomed starship minutes before the escape pods jettisoned automatically. As Yang had predicted, Ren did the most work of anyone on the team to comprehend the various puzzles that hid the keys and codes they needed to progress, but Yang got some of the wordplay almost instantly, and Ruby turned out to know more about the arrangements of the stars and constellations than anyone else in the room with them.

    Sun and Neptune were not, it had to be said, much help.

    "Sorry for being such deadweight in there, guys," Sun apologised as they trooped out of the building and back out onto the street.

    "Don't worry about it; we escaped, so it's all good," Yang assured them.

    "I didn't do much either, but not everyone can be great at everything," Nora added. "Some people are really smart, like Ren. And some people hit really hard, like me."

    "That's not all that you do, Nora," Ren remarked plaintively.

    "That's right," Nora agreed. "I eat a lot too."

    "Nora," Ren said reproachfully.

    "What?"

    "You shouldn't—"

    Ren was interrupted by the sound of Nora's stomach growling.

    "You see?" Nora asked, beaming.

    "Nora," Ren began again.

    "What?" Nora asked once more.

    "Don't put yourself down like that," Ren said. "It isn't necessary."

    "But some food is definitely necessary right now."

    "We can get something to eat at the circus," Ruby suggested.

    "The food at the circus is way overpriced and not all that nice," Yang said. "We'd be better off picking up something to eat on the way there."

    "I'm pretty sure I saw a hotdog stand on the way over here," Nora said. "A couple of streets back."

    They retraced their steps, heading a couple of streets back past the stores all open for business. While the anti-Atlas graffiti was an unwelcome presence on the streets of Vale, in the shop windows, there was some reminder that things weren't all bad in the city: every shop seemed to be getting its Vytal Festival promotions started, even though the festival wasn't actually due to start for a little while longer.

    The electronics store was advertising new TVs for twenty-five percent off and the possibility of a payment plan, reminding everyone who passed by that the only way to watch the tournament was on an SDC Illuminatus Seven with a holographic display thirty-six inches wide and surround sound speakers; maybe they'd could forgotten that you could just go watch the matches in the Amity Arena? Still, they were running a cool commercial for the tournament on the televisions in the shop window; even if it was just clips from the last tournament, they were still pretty awesome clips.

    "In a couple of years," Yang said, "we'll be the ones on the commercial."

    "Some of us will," Ruby replied. "It's kind of funny, don't you think? The ones who fight in this tournament will be remembered for it, even though it doesn't really matter at all; they, or we, will be remembered for that and not for any of the stuff we did that actually mattered."

    "Maybe that's why there's a tournament in the first place," Yang suggested. "So that we get the immortality that we deserve, even if we don't get it for what we deserve it for."

    "If we make the cut," Neptune said.

    Yang laughed. "Nervous?"

    "With only eight teams per school selected to represent their academy in the tournament, the odds are against any team individually," Ren pointed out.

    "Yeah, but come on, we all know that we're going to get picked," Yang declared. "Ruby, you're not worried about the selection, are you?"

    "Sunset says we're bound to get picked, if only because of Pyrrha," Ruby said.

    Neptune snorted. "Sunset's not wrong about that; if Pyrrha didn't get to fight in the Vytal Festival … the whole of Mistral would kick off. But … don't you guys have to win the preliminary rounds to make sure you get chosen?"

    "'Preliminary rounds'?" Nora said. "There are preliminary rounds?"

    "Not here at Beacon, unless you count Last Shot," Yang said. "Here, Professor Ozpin picks the eight teams."

    "Really?" Neptune said. "He just gets to choose, just like that, no arguments?"

    "Why not?" asked Yang. "He is the headmaster, after all."

    "Doesn't Professor Lionheart choose who represents Haven?" inquired Ruby.

    "We choose who represents Haven," Sun declared, jabbing at his own chest with his thumb.

    "There's a preliminary tournament," Neptune explained. "The top eight teams get the eight slots in the real thing."

    "So does that mean you already know who's going forward?" asked Nora.

    "No, we haven't had the prelims yet," Sun said. "I think they want to hold them pretty close to the announcement so that it doesn't leak out."

    They passed a betting shop; Ruby found it a little depressing how full it was, one of the busiest shops they had passed in the whole city. It wasn't much changed from any other day, still full of stinky people with unwashed faces and dirty coats sitting down in front of the betting machines, playing game after game, but in the windows, they also had — over a big poster of second-year student Coco Adel, winking over the top of her sunglasses — the odds for the winner of the Vytal Festival.

    "Have they just put up every team?" Nora asked, as they stared at the row after row of team names, far more than sixty-four of them.

    "So it would appear," Ren murmured.

    "What else were they going to do, the tournament roster hasn't been announced yet?" Neptune reminded them.

    "They could have waited until it was announced," Yang pointed out.

    Even the bookstore was getting in on the act, with an unauthorised biography of Arslan Altan, entitled Maneater: The Untold Story of a Lioness; the picture on the cover showed her scowling outwards at the reader in a surly manner, her hands knotted into fists, as though she was about to punch somebody.

    By retracing their steps back from the escape room, they eventually found their way to the hotdog stand that Nora had spotted earlier. As they drew near, they found that they had been beaten to it by Blake's friends, Starlight and Trixie, who were standing in front of it together with the boy on their team, the one with the cape and the goatee whose name Ruby couldn't remember.

    As Ruby and the others drew near, the voices of the Atlesian huntsmen carried towards them.

    "No?" Trixie said loudly. "What do you mean 'no'?"

    "What do you think I mean?" the guy on the other side of the hotdog stand demanded. He was a tall man, with dark stubble on his chin even as his hair was concealed beneath his white cap. "I ain't serving the likes of you, now beat it."

    "Maybe we should go somewhere—" the boy began.

    "The likes of us?" Trixie demanded, her voice rising to a loud squawk. "Do you have any idea who you're talking to?"

    "I know that you're Atlesians," the hotdog vendor said. "I don't want your kind around here, I don't need your kind around here, none of us need your kind around here. Get outta here! Go back to Atlas and freeze to death!"

    "What do you have against Atlas?" Starlight asked. "We're only—"

    "Only here to take over," the hotdog vendor said. "Only here to do what you couldn't do in the war."

    "We're here for your freedom," Starlight declared.

    "You're here to make us all your slaves; well, it won't happen!" cried the hotdog vendor. "We beat you once, we'll do it again, and in the meantime, I'm not taking any of your filthy money. Now clear off, or I'm calling the cops."

    "You ungrateful—"

    "Trixie, cool it," the boy begged, tugging at her shoulder. "Let's just go; we'll find somewhere else, okay?"

    "Fighting Atlas?" Nora murmured, as they watched. "Like … like in the Great War?"

    "It's ridiculous," Ren said.

    "It's insane," Neptune declared.

    "Something is definitely going on in this city," Yang said, as she put one hand upon her hip. "Like … so many people having a really bad day, like something in the water." She shook her head. "Something is going on here."

    "I guess so," Ruby replied. "But … what?"

    XxXxX​

    Sonata finished singing, a smile spreading across her face as she took in the anger and the hostility spreading all around her, everyone arguing, everyone quarrelling, everyone glaring up at the Atlesian warships hovering above them.

    What will you do, General, when those you came to protect decide that you are the enemy?

    Tempest smiled too. Everything was proceeding according to Doctor Watts' plan.

    "Another wonderful performance, as always," she said, taking off her headphones and surveying the results of Sonata's voice. Hostility was spreading across Vale like water spreading across the floodplain once the river burst its banks, all the resentment and the envy that the people of this kingdom had hidden away in their secret hearts amplified and made strong enough to burst forth into the open. Hostility towards Atlas, dislike for the faunus, the cracks were starting to spread across the city. And it only got worse with every song.

    And with every song, the gem around Sonata's neck seemed to glow a little brighter, and the next song ensnared more people under its spell.

    "Aww, you're sweet, but I know you're just saying that," Sonata said. "You couldn't even hear a word I was singing!"

    Tempest hesitated. It was true that she couldn't hear Sonata's siren song, but … but she wanted to. She wanted to tear off her headphones, she wanted to never put them on, she wanted to hear what it was that affected the minds and hearts and souls of everyone who heard it.

    But she was possessed of an iron will, and though that will was starting to rust a little with desire to hear the siren's voice, she would not yield. Doctor Watts' instructions had been explicit, and she would not break faith with him who had been so good to her.

    "A pleasure that will have to wait for some time," she said, "perhaps forever. In the meantime, although you have done good work here, I think that it is time to move on to phase two of this operation."

    "Ooh, phase two, that sounds exciting!" Sonata declared. "What is it?"

    "How would you like to give a concert for the troops?" asked Tempest.

    XxXxX​

    "Well, that was fun," Yang said as the four of them walked down the corridor towards their respective dorm rooms. Sun and Neptune had peeled off to their own room on a different part of the campus; it was just the four of them again.

    "Those Starhead robots are pretty cool," Ruby declared.

    "Much cooler than the Atlesian androids," Nora added.

    "But the Atlesian androids are supposed to fight, not be entertaining," Yang pointed out.

    "But that doesn't make them cool," Nora said.

    Yang chuckled. "No," she admitted. "No, I guess not." She paused for a second. "Has everyone had a good day?"

    "It was great," Nora said. "We should do it again sometime."

    "Ruby?" Yang asked, looking at her sister.

    Ruby did not respond. She was staring down the corridor with a frown wrinkling her brow.

    "Ruby?" Yang repeated.

    "There's a light on in the dorm room," Ruby pointed out.

    Yang looked. The corridor was dark and quiet, but the darkness meant that, yes, you could see the light on in the SAPR dorm room, spilling out from the crack in the doorway.

    "Did you leave the light on?" Ren asked.

    Ruby shook her head. "No. No, I didn't."

    There was a moment's pause.

    "Maybe Sunset, Jaune, and Pyrrha got home early?" Nora suggested.

    "Yeah, maybe," Yang said quietly. "I guess the only thing to do is check it out."

    "Is that wise?" asked Ren.

    Yang glanced at him. She understood what he was asking, why he was asking it, but at the same time, she scoffed, as much for her own sake as for his. "Come on, Ren? It's probably … okay, I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, it'll be perfectly harmless because … because this is Beacon. It's not like we're going to open the door and find a grimm on the other side."

    Nora gave a very deep chuckle and stroked her chin as she spoke in deep-voiced imitation of Professor Port. "Oho, Miss Xiao Long! Why, don't you know that when I was a lad, I left a beowolf in the dorm room of a rival team as a jolly jape! How we laughed!"

    Yang snorted. "Come on," she said, "let's see who it is."

    They walked to the door, Ruby and Yang in front, Nora and Ren just a little bit behind. Ruby got out her scroll and opened up the door. Yang took a step in front of Ruby so that she entered first, but Ruby followed swiftly on behind, so that they as good as walked in together.

    Walked in to see—

    "Raven?" Yang gasped.

    Raven Branwen was sitting on Pyrrha's bed, her legs crossed, her boots crinkling the blanket, reading Ruby's copy of The Song of Olivia with one hand, eating a cheese sandwich with the other.

    She looked up from her book.

    "Ah, there you are," she said. "I was starting to get bored."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 51 - Raven Returns
  • Threadmarks
    • Raven Returns​


    Four heroes stood in the gloomy throne room. Outside, it was perpetual night, casting the rocky chamber in a mire of darkness banished only by the candles burning in the sconces on the walls.

    The chamber was bare, empty, as though it had been stripped clean in advance of their coming.

    But that would have required someone to know that they were coming, and that was not a prospect that Raven wished to entertain.

    Yet now that she had called it into being with a thought, she found she could not banish it.

    Team STRQ stood at one end of the long room, and if they had weapons, then their weapons were ready: Omen and Harbinger were drawn in the hands of Raven and Qrow, Summer gripped Vargcrist tightly in both hands, Tai had his fists drawn back to strike. Because, at the other end of the room, standing before a simple wooden chair, was their enemy:     the enemy, Salem herself. She was uglier than Raven had expected; for an adversary who could not be killed, she looked an awful lot like a corpse already.

    She looked more like something Raven would expect to see floating on the surface of a lake a few days after her drowning than someone — or something — who threatened the existence of the world itself, and the lives of Raven's friends what was more.

    She looked … she looked neither worried nor surprised to see them.

    "So," Salem said, her tone casual, almost idle. "Ozpin has finally decided to strike at me. And he has chosen the four of you to do it." She smiled, a rather ugly smile. "You must be quite the talents."

    "We made it this far, didn't we?" Qrow said.

    Salem laughed, a bitter sound that grated upon Raven's ears. "And yet you never stopped to ask yourselves if it wasn't perhaps a little too easy to reach this place, the very heart of my sanctum? A handful of beowolves, a single beringel outside the door? Did you think that was all the strength at my command? And here I thought Ozpin looked for brains as well as brawn in his servants."

    Raven scowled. It     had been easy getting in here, but no one had wanted to say that it had felt too easy because they had all wanted it to be that easy; they had all wanted this to be done quickly and simply so that they could get out of this place as quickly as possible.

    She found to her frustration that her hands were trembling. She gritted her teeth and growled, "What are you saying?"

    Salem's smile had been ugly before, but it became uglier still the more pronounced her smugness became. "I'm saying that if you had been devoured on your way up here, we wouldn't be able to have this little chat, would we?"

    She snapped her fingers once, and immediately, a great howl of grimm arose from beyond the chamber: the beowolves and the ursai roared, the beringels howled as they beat their chest, the nevermores shrieked, and the manticores bellowed.

    It wasn't just a small number of grimm out there; it was a horde, a great host that had lain in weight for them, and Team STRQ had walked right into the trap.

    Raven cursed mentally, damning Oz for putting them up to this, for putting the idea into Summer's head. He had encouraged them to stick their heads in a beowolf's mouth, and now, the jaws were closing.

    Of the four of them, only Summer did not look afraid. Summer never seemed afraid. Her face could be kind, or it could be courageous, or it could even be angry sometimes, but Raven had never seen her afraid.

    Summer took a step forward ahead of the others. "You may have an army of grimm outside, but they're out there, and we're in here … with you."

    Salem looked no more fazed by that realisation than Summer seemed afraid of Salem's grimm beyond. "You are very brave to come here. You are all so very brave. How does Ozpin acquire the loyalty of such as you? Not with the truth, surely. What has he told you about me? What has he told you about himself?"

    "Enough," Summer said.

    "Enough that you are willing to be his sacrifices?" Salem said. "Enough that you came here to fail and fall at his behest? And while with child too, Raven. You must be a true believer or very callous to risk the life inside you thus."

    Raven gasped. How had she known that? How could Salem possibly know that? Raven had only found out a few days ago, she'd only told Tai yesterday — she had been planning to keep it a secret until after the mission because she knew that Tai and Qrow would make a fuss about her staying behind, which they had, but Summer had worked out that Raven was pregnant from the signs and insisted that telling the father was the right thing to do, and it was hard to say no to Summer Rose when she was lecturing you on right and wrong.

    "I know many things," Salem replied. "For I was blessed with the power of knowledge ere magic faded from the world." She smirked. "I know you, Raven of the Branwen tribe; I see into your very heart. Deep down, you know exactly how this story ends."

    "No," Raven whispered, shaking her head.

    "In this world, only the strong survive, and your comrades are too weak to stand the storm."

    "Raven, don't listen to her," Summer said. "Together we can—"

    "Die one and all and merrily together? Yes, you can," Salem said. "Or at least you could. But even now, there is still time. Time to turn away. Time to walk away. Time to leave these fools to their fate."

    Raven's breathing came in short, sharp bursts. It was true: in this world, only the strong survived, and only those who were willing to do whatever it took in defiance of all law and morality would prosper; that was the way of the world that Raven and Qrow had learnt upon the knee of their father, the chieftain of their tribe. In this world, only the strong survived, and the ruthless thrived, and Raven had marked Summer and Taiyang as weak from the moment she met them.

    But then, as the days and months at Beacon had drawn on, Raven had begun to wonder if their father had been mistaken, if there were not other kinds of strength than a willingness to do anything to anyone to get ahead, strength like Summer had, a strength that came from loyalty and kindness and a heart full of courage.

    A strength that came from standing together with those who believed you could be better than you were before.

    Two roads. Two worlds and she between them both, walking between the candle and the dark, wielding shadow on behalf of light. That was her life, that was her role upon this team: Summer was their leader, but Raven was their protector. Raven, ruthless Raven, keen-eyed and clear-sighted Raven, strong Raven, Raven unburdened by Summer's naivete or Tai's civilised scruples could do what had to be done for the good of the team. Raven could be their strength where they were weak, just as they could be hers.

    So she had lived, through Beacon and beyond, but now…

    But now…

    Raven felt, had felt for some time now, as if she were stood at a fork in the road where she would have to choose which path to take: the path of the Branwen tribe, the path of strength, the path where the strong survived and the weak left to perish; or she could take the path of Summer's friendship and Tai's love, of four hearts that beat as one, of comrades working together to overcome their weaknesses. Two paths she could not walk together, two worlds she could not straddle forever, and now Salem told her—

    "Raven, snap out of it!"

    Summer's words cut through the fog of Raven's self-doubt like a searchlight. Her voice was like a bugle rallying men to arms, drowning out the noises of the grimm without.

    "That's enough," Summer declared. "You may think you know us, but you don't. You may say that you let us get this far, but I say we came this far together, because we're a team, a team that's already done incredible things, things that people said couldn't be done, but we did it anyway because we worked together. You may think that you know us, but you have no idea how strong our bond is. It's the ties that bind us that have got us this far, and it's those ties that will defeat you!" Summer began to roar as the brilliant silver light began to shine forth from her eyes, first in shining silver wings and then, as Summer's cry became louder still, loaded with that mixture of anger and pain that made witnessing her power both an awe-inspiring and a horrifying experience, the shining light engulfed the entire room, blinding Raven and her teammates.

    It was the light that no evil could withstand. The light at the heart of Oz's plan. Although they might not be able to kill Salem, it was hoped that Summer's eyes could still trap her in stone for a few hundred years at least.

    XxXxX​

    Yang stared. Raven was sitting in Ruby's room. Raven was reading Ruby's book. Raven was … Raven was right there.

    She had no idea what colour her eyes were right now. She had no idea how she felt right now.

    This was not the first time that Raven had appeared to them like this, but somehow … somehow, the fact that she was not just on the school grounds but in Ruby's room, it … it felt different. Worse, maybe, but maybe … maybe not.

    After all, this was…

    Yang didn't know how she felt. She wanted this, and yet at the same time, something drove her to take a step forward, protectively shielding Ruby with her body.

    Raven's eyebrows rose. "There's no need for that," she said in a tone of gentle reproach. She got up off the bed, putting the book down upon the red blanket. "Do you really think so ill of me that you believe that I would hurt Ruby? Summer's girl? Your sister?"

    "I don't know you," Yang said. "Remember?"

    A look that was almost guilty — perhaps it was guilty; Yang didn't know Raven well enough to read her face — fell over Raven.

    "No," she murmured. "I suppose you don't. I acknowledge that that is my fault, but nevertheless … have I given you cause in our interactions to make you think that I would do Ruby harm?"

    "No," Ruby said, stepping around Yang. "No, you haven't. But … what are you doing here?"

    "Waiting for you," Raven said. "Since I didn't know how long Sunset would be out of town with the dolt and the little princess, I thought that I should take this chance for us to talk. Eventually, I got so bored of waiting that I decided to make myself a little supper." She put the sandwich down upon the little desk that ran along the wall of the dorm room. "The cheese had a note on it saying it belonged to someone called 'Bon Bon'; I've never been very good at paying attention to notes like that."

    "Yang," Nora said. "Who is this, do you know her?"

    For the first time, Raven appeared to notice Ren and Nora's presence behind Yang and Ruby. She cast her red eyes over them dismissively. "Close the door on your way out."

    "Excuse me?" replied Ren sharply.

    Raven turned to face them. "This is a private conversation between myself, my … between myself and Summer's children. Your presence is neither required nor wanted."

    Nora growled. "Well, what if we don't want to leave them alone with you?"

    Raven was a tall woman. Taller than Yang, taller than Pyrrha, she towered over Nora. She began to step lightly across the room, one hand straying idly towards the hilt of her sword.

    "It's okay," Yang said quickly. "Nora, Ren … give us a minute, okay?"

    "What?" Nora exclaimed. "But Yang—"

    "The answer to your question is that I do know her," Yang said quickly, if also quietly. "She is … she's my mother. We're going to be okay alone, I promise."

    "I … I don't like this," Nora said.

    I'm not sure that I like it either, but it's for the best, Yang thought. As much as she was unsure how she felt about Raven's dramatic appearance, she wasn't afraid of physical harm from her.

    On the other hand, she couldn't say what Raven might do to Ren or Nora if they forced the issue.

    "If you're sure about this," Ren murmured.

    "Ren!" Nora cried.

    "It's Yang's mother," Ren reminded her. "If Yang and Ruby are comfortable with this, then … then we should do as she says."

    Ren ushered Nora out of the room. On Ren's own face, there was a frown, somewhere between hostility and confusion; it was still on his face as he cast one last look at Yang before he closed the door.

    He closed the door and left them alone with Raven.

    "There was no need to be like that," Yang said.

    "What I have to say is for you, not them," Raven said, turning away from Yang and Ruby. She walked back towards Pyrrha's bed and, with one hand, reached out to brush her fingertips against the cover of The Song of Olivia. "Whose book is this?"

    "It's mine," Ruby said, her voice trembling a little.

    Raven looked at her. "Yours? How did Tai come by an antique like this?"

    "It was given to me," Ruby replied. "By a friend."

    "A generous friend," Raven murmured. "You know that this is very valuable? Copies of this vintage are rare indeed; they can sell for—"

    "It's not for sale," Ruby said firmly.

    The corner of Raven's lip turned upwards. "I assumed that it must belong to your Mistralian princess friend—"

    "Her name is Pyrrha," Ruby declared.

    Raven gave a nod, or perhaps a bow of her head; it was hard to tell. "Pyrrha, then. Either way, her family has the history and the money that I could believe they had something like this."

    "And if it had been Pyrrha's?" asked Yang.

    "Then I would have taken it and sold it for a fine price," Raven said bluntly. "But, as it is yours, Ruby…" — she pushed it across the duvet — "it's safe. What do you think of it?"

    "It's … it's a lovely story," Ruby said. "I think it's beautiful."

    "Even the part where Olivia gets herself and her followers killed out of pride?" Raven asked.

    "The hero doesn't have to be perfect for the story to be a good one," Ruby pointed out.

    "No," Raven conceded. "No, I suppose she doesn't. One might even argue that if the hero were perfect, it would be a rather boring story."

    "Please tell me you didn't come here to talk about stories," Yang growled.

    "No, I came here because I'm very disappointed in the both of you," Raven declared. "I'm here because despite my warnings and my instructions, you have been lazy and complacent and, in your case, Ruby, deceitful. And so I am forced to come here and tell Yang the truth—"

    "I know the truth," Yang said.

    "No, you don't," Raven said emphatically. "You have no idea—"

    "Salem," Yang said. "Immortal, unkillable, mistress of the grimm. Relics. Gods. Am I missing anything?"

    Raven was silent as her eyebrows rose. Her smile was slight, but at the same time unmistakable.

    "How…?" Ruby murmured. "How do you know that?"

    "Not because you told me," Yang said, unable to prevent just a touch of bitterness from entering her voice.

    Ruby cringed, clasping her hands together. "I … I was going to," she offered, weakly. "Professor Ozpin … he made me promise not to tell."

    "Typical Oz," Raven growled. "I'm disappointed in you, Ruby. Summer would be disappointed in you, lying and keeping secrets from your sister like this."

    "Don't talk to Ruby like that and don't talk about what Mom would have thought about all this!" Yang snapped. "I can be mad at Ruby; you don't get to be mad, and you don't get to take the moral high ground when you left!"

    She could feel the flames of wrath begin to burn, her hair igniting; she could imagine it turning pale, even as her eyes turned red.

    Raven raised one hand. "You … are right, of course. I have no right to chide or lecture. I apologise, and henceforth will keep my … judgement to myself. I did not come here to fight, after all."

    "How … Yang, how did you find out, about Salem and everything else?" asked Ruby.

    Yang closed her eyes. "Sunset told me," she said. "In the hospital, after you woke up and we had that fight."

    "Sunset," Ruby murmured. "She … she didn't tell me that. Neither did you."

    "What would have been the point?" Yang asked.

    "We … we could have talked about it," Ruby offered.

    Yang couldn't resist a snort. "If you'd wanted to talk about it, you could have told me yourself," she pointed out.

    "Professor Ozpin—"

    "You don't have to do everything that Professor Ozpin tells you!" Yang snapped.

    Ruby flinched. "I mean, I … I kinda do. That's what it means to work for someone."

    Yang stared at Ruby. She glared at Ruby. Then a little laugh, a little sighing laugh in which exasperation mingled with amusement, escaped her lips. "Okay, you've got me there, Rubes."

    "I'm sorry," Ruby murmured. "I should have insisted to Professor Ozpin that you could be trusted, that you weren't like Raven—"

    "Excuse me?" Raven asked.

    Ruby let out a little squeak of alarm. "I mean, um—"

    "Ozpin didn't want me to know any of this because he's afraid I'll do what you did and run away," Yang said.

    "Is that all you think I am?" Raven asked. "A deserter? Someone who ran away?"

    "Isn't that what you are?" replied Yang.

    Raven sat down on Pyrrha's bed and gestured to Jaune's bed opposite. "Sit down," she demanded.

    Yang and Ruby exchanged glances. They hesitated for a moment, before Ruby took a tentative step forwards. Of course, once she had done that, then Yang had very little choice left but to follow, and they both ended up sitting down upon Jaune's bed, opposite and facing Raven.

    Raven was silent for a moment, looking at the two girls but saying nothing, her red eyes switching from Yang to Ruby and then back again.

    "I told you not to trust Ozpin," she said. "I told you, both of you. I warned you, I told you to keep reading—"

    "We did," Ruby said.

    "Not enough!" Raven said sharply. "And here you are, eating out of the palm of Ozpin's hand."

    "I'm defending humanity," Ruby declared.

    Raven almost smiled. "You sound like your mother when you say things like that."

    "I take that a compliment."

    "You should," Raven replied. "It was intended as such, for the most part, although … you should also ask yourself where your mother is now. Following Ozpin led her to an early grave; it pains me to see you walking the exact same road."

    "Well it wouldn't pain Mom!" Ruby cried. "Because Mom understood that—"

    "Summer understood nothing!" Raven snapped. "Nothing at all; she was … naïve and foolish and…" She made a sort of choking sound. "And brave. She was so very brave. Too brave, by far. A surfeit of courage and a lack of sense is a deadly combination."

    "Is that what you think you did?" Yang asked. "The sensible thing?"

    "This isn't about me," Raven replied.

    "Isn't it?" replied Yang. "I think that this is all about you."

    Raven did not answer. Instead, she kept her eyes fixed on Ruby. "Why?" she asked.

    Ruby blinked. "Why … what?"

    "Why fight?" Raven asked. "Why give yourself over to Ozpin's service, why risk your life knowing what you're up against, knowing that final victory is impossible?"

    "To protect the world," Ruby said, "to protect all the people who live in it."

    "'The people,'" Raven repeated. "The people," she said, loading the word with contempt. "And who are these people, whose lives are worth the sacrifice of Summer Rose, of Summer's child? What are the people worth, that Summer should die and you should walk so bravely to your death for their sake and their protection?"

    "They're…" Ruby hesitated for a moment. "They're … people."

    "Racist people," Raven said. "Venal people. Cruel people. People who would not, themselves, lift a finger to help anyone else, let alone risk their lives for them. People who mistreat those weaker than them — and almost all people mistreat those weaker than themselves; it is the way of the world. For this is a cruel world. A world where only the strong survive unless they have the protection of those who are stronger than them. A world where … a world that consumes the good, the excellent, like Summer, and leaves behind the callous, the cowardly, the indolent; there are dead dogs lying by the side of the road that are worth more than 'people.' A thousand people, a thousand thousand people were not worth Summer's life!" Raven closed her eyes and bowed her head, and her whole body shuddered. "And they are not worth yours."

    Ruby was silent for a moment. Yang looked at her and was surprised to see not the expected condemnation in Ruby's eyes, not indignation at how Raven could say such a thing. Instead … instead, in the water that gathered before Ruby's eyes of silver as though she might cry, Yang saw pity.

    "I disagree," Ruby said, her voice soft and a little hoarse. "And I'm sorry that you feel the way that you do. I can't imagine what made you feel that way."

    "No," Raven murmured. "You cannot." She looked up. "I have seen more of the world than you," she declared. "Even when I was younger, when Summer and I and Tai and Qrow were young, I had seen more of the world than she had—"

    "Mom had seen plenty," Ruby replied. "She grew up outside the kingdoms, she almost got mugged on her first day in Vale—"

    "Wait," Yang said, "she did?"

    "Yeah, I'll tell you about it later—"

    "How do you know that?" Yang demanded. "Why don't I know that? It's bad enough that you didn't tell me about Salem, but now you're keeping secrets about Mom, too?"

    "Did Ozpin tell you that story?" Raven asked.

    Ruby nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, he did."

    "When?" Yang asked, forcefully.

    "On the day that Jaune and Pyrrha left for Jaune's home," Ruby admitted.

    "You talked about Mom, and … and you didn't—"

    "We talked a lot about Salem," Ruby explained. "And I didn't … know that you knew about that."

    "How much did he tell you?" asked Raven.

    "He told me about where Mom came from," Ruby said. "How she got to Vale. How you guys all formed Team Stark."

    "Yes," Raven murmured. "Team Stark." She glanced over her shoulder towards Ruby's bed and the wall beyond. "I had ample chance to look around, and I see that you found the marks we made on the wall."

    "Yeah," Ruby said. "We made our own. I hope that's okay."

    Raven raised one eyebrow. "You hope that's okay?" She blinked. "You seem to have mistaken me for someone involved with this school."

    "Well, I didn't want you to think that we were trying to steal your thunder," Ruby murmured.

    Raven stared at her.

    "Okay, that sounded stupid, didn't it?" Ruby asked.

    Raven gave a slight nod of her head.

    Ruby groaned slightly.

    "If it helps, I thought that it was…" Raven trailed off. "I shouldn't really use this word for the sake of my reputation, but it was … rather sweet. Unless you meant to signal your intent to surpass us, in which case … I would have wished you luck, had the circumstances been better."

    "Professor Ozpin told me that he wished he'd made you the leader of the team," Ruby informed her.

    "Oz said what?" Raven demanded.

    "He said—"

    "I heard you the first time," Raven said sharply. She fell silent for a few seconds, actually for more than a few seconds, Ruby counted in her head up to about ten before Raven spoke again. "That old … damn him."

    "You don't sound too happy about it," Yang observed.

    "It is an insult to Summer," Raven declared. "Who was a fine leader by the way, and don't let Ozpin or anyone else tell you otherwise. She was … I could not have led the team, I did not have that skill, that way of winning hearts that Summer had, I could not have led by inspiration as she did. Summer was … Summer was our only leader. The only one who could have been our leader." She paused again, before she asked. "Did he say why?"

    "Because Mom was … because you were more cautious than Mom was," Ruby said. "Because you wanted to keep everyone safe."

    "Oh, now he pretends to care for the safety of those who serve him, who die for him," Raven said. "And yet he would still throw you into the same flames which consumed Summer? Hypocritical old bastard."

    "I think," Ruby ventured, "that it's because he has to throw us into the fire that he wishes that he'd chosen someone … someone more like you to be the leader of the team that … that went into the fire. That … that's why he made Sunset our team leader, instead of me."

    "He said that?" Yang asked.

    "I asked him," Ruby explained. "I asked him why he hadn't made me a team leader, when he'd made Mom one."

    "Does it bother you?" asked Raven. "Do you covet the honour? Do you resent Sunset for possessing it? I'd offer to give you a second bite at the apple, but if Sunset is cautious and will keep you alive, then perhaps it is better that she, too, stay alive."

    "I don't want you to kill her!" Ruby exclaimed. "Why … why would you even say something like that? What kind of person offers to … to murder someone so that I could step into their shoes?"

    "You're the only one who said anything about murder," Raven pointed out.

    "I…" Ruby abruptly realised that Raven had been right. "Well … well what did you mean, then?"

    "What else did Ozpin tell you?" asked Raven, changing the subject.

    Yang noticed that Raven had not answered Ruby's question, but didn't care to point it out. She, too, wanted to know what else had passed between Ruby and the headmaster."

    "He told me about Ozpin's Stand," Ruby said. "And he told me about how he asked the four of you to come and serve him, the same way that he asked us. And he told me … he told me that the four of you tried to turn Salem to stone."

    "What?" Yang gasped. "You … but I thought Salem couldn't be killed."

    "That was why the plan wasn't to kill her," Raven explained. "But to petrify her, using Summer's silver eyes to … the exact 'what' of what was meant to happen to Salem was up in the air, whether she would be transformed into stone or simply encased in stone, either way, she'd be alive but trapped, paralysed, unable to move, speak, act, do anything. Summer's eyes, your eyes, Ruby, have that power, you see, not just to destroy grimm—"

    "But to turn them into stone," Ruby said. "But … but it didn't work on Salem, did it?"

    "No," Raven said, with a sigh. "No, it didn't."

    XxXxX​

    The silver light faded, and darkness thinly dispersed by candle light returned to dominate the chamber. Summer was on her hands and knees, gasping, panting for breath. That almost never happened to her anymore, Raven thought as she knelt down beside her; normally, Summer could use the eyes without exhausting herself; she must have really hit Salem with everything she had.

    The laughter from the other end of the room told her that it hadn't been enough.

    "Is that all there is?" Salem asked in a tongue thick with mockery. "Was that your plan? Is there nothing else?"

    No one replied. Qrow and Tai were staring at Salem in horror, while Raven's eyes flickered between the two ends of the room. One side stood the demon, strong and tall and unaffected by the power that Raven had seen turn grimm to stone or worse by hordes and multitudes. On the other side knelt Summer, sweet Summer, smiling Summer, kind Summer, kneeling, beaten and crushed before the power of their enemy.

    This was a world where only the strong survived.

    "That's not possible," Tai whispered.

    Summer's eyes were closed, and in between gasping breaths, she winced in pain. "I'm sorry," she whimpered, though so softly that Raven couldn't be certain that anyone heard but her.

    "Such a gift you have, Summer," Salem said. "I marvel at it anew each time I witness it." She snapped her fingers once again. "Save the silver eyed warrior. Kill the others."

    The howling and the roaring and the shrieking of the grimm without rose to new heights of volume and intensity; Raven could hear footsteps pounding down the corridor outside as the beringels bellowed in their bloodlust.

    Raven grabbed Summer's arm and draped it over her shoulder. "I'm guessing you're not up to another flash?"

    Summer could barely keep hold of her weapon. It hung useless in her trembling. "I'm afraid not. Sorry."

    "It's okay," Raven said. "It's all going to be okay. I've got you." Oz had got them into this, Summer had led them into this, but she, Raven, would get them out again. That was what she did: she kept them alive. And she already had a plan. "Qrow, get back to the Bullhead."

    "What?" Qrow said. "I can't just—"

    "Get back to the Bullhead," Raven snapped, impatient with his denseness. Wasn't it obvious what she intended? "We'll follow."

    Realisation dawned upon his face. About time. "Right. I'll be as fast as I can."

    "You'd better," Raven muttered. "Tai, make a hole." Salem seemed content to leave it to her grimm to prevent their escape. She watched them from the back of the room as though she were grading their efforts. Like Ozpin — a surge of anger shot through Raven at the thought of him — she used others as her weapons without sullying her own hands with combat. They could only hope that it would stay that way.

    The doors behind them burst open to reveal a half-dozen beringels, and more a little further behind. But Qrow was already moving, shooting the first one twice in the face with Harbinger before he leapt. A beringel grabbed for him, massive fingers closing around where his midriff would have been, but the red-eyed crow that he had become merely slipped through the monster's grip and flew away. Tai took advantage of the distraction of the grimm to throw it over his shoulder and punch it so hard that its head disintegrated.

    Arms, a host of arms as long as serpents, devoid of visible bodies, emerged from out of the floor to reach with two-fingered hands for Raven and Summer. Raven slashed at them with her sword as she inched towards the door, following the path that Taiyang was clearing through the beringels.

    Raven could only hope that Qrow's bad luck didn't make things even worse for them, for surely, they had had enough bad luck today already.

    XxXxX​

    "My semblance allows me to create portals," Raven said. "I, and others, can use them to move between locations—"

    "Is that how you keep showing up here?" Yang asked.

    "It is," Raven said. "I can open a portal to anyone I care about, and so, I can find you."

    Yang wasn't sure if she ought to be touched by that or not.

    She was kind of touched by it. Kind of.

    "That's … nice," she murmured. "It would have been nicer if you'd stuck around, but still … that's nice."

    "If I had stuck around, then Ruby wouldn't be here, would she?" Raven pointed out.

    Yang didn't reply. Ruby said, "So you used a portal to get out?"

    "I sent Qrow on ahead to get to our airship, then used a portal to get Summer, Tai, and myself back there too," Raven explained. "Then we managed to make it to Ironwood's warship waiting for us offshore." She paused for a moment. "Summer hit Salem with her very best shot, and Salem … Salem didn't even flinch. Summer gave it everything she had, everything. And it didn't matter. It didn't do a thing."

    "So?" Ruby asked.

    "So?" Raven repeated. "So … so what? Haven't you been listening?"

    "Yes," Ruby said. "I have. And I know that … well, I don't know, but I guess that it was hard for you, disappointing—"

    "'Disappointing' is putting it mildly," Raven said. "I thought … I thought this would work. We all thought that it would work: Summer, Oz, but I blame myself the most because I—"

    "Was the protector," Ruby murmured. "You're the one who should have seen it coming."

    "I'm the one who should have seen Oz's plan for the nonsense it was," Raven said. "Instead … instead, I let myself get swept up in the grandeur of it all, let myself get carried away by Summer's enthusiasm … no, not Summer's enthusiasm; I can't blame her for this, not when … I let myself get swept up in the idea that we could end the war, that I wouldn't have to watch it consume the people that I cared about, that we could live … happily ever after."

    "I'm sorry," Ruby said. "I really am sorry."

    Raven blinked. "From you," she said, "from Summer's girl, I can … I can almost believe that."

    "But just because it didn't work doesn't mean you had to leave," Ruby insisted. "You could have stayed, you could have fought, you could have—"

    "Watched Summer die?" Raven asked. "Watched Tai die?" She shook her head. "There are many kinds of courage, Ruby Rose, and courage on the battlefield is only one of them. Summer … Summer had every kind of courage, but I … I have less than she did."

    XxXxX​

    "Raven, please!"

    "Don't try and stop me, Summer; I've made up my mind."

    "I'm not trying to stop you," Summer cried. "I'm asking you, please, reconsider." She paused. "Don't do this."

    Raven turned back, looking at her through the trees. It was winter now, and the trees themselves were leafless, barren, their branches like arms, their twigs like twisted fingers reaching out. A light covering of snow lay on the ground, and it crunched beneath Raven's feet as she walked a couple of steps back towards Summer.

    "What should I do else?" Raven asked.

    "What you've always done," Summer replied, her voice soft and yet carrying through the night. "Fight with us."

    "It's not that simple."

    "At the end of the day, everything we do as huntresses boils down to that one simple fact."

    "Nothing about this fight is simple!" Raven yelled. "It never was, and it certainly hasn't been since we got back from … from facing her."

    Summer was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry," she whispered.

    Raven stared at her for a moment. "This … you've got nothing to apologise for."

    "Yes, I do."

    "No, you don't; Ozpin—"

    "Ozpin asked if I thought I could do it, and I told him that I could," Summer insisted. "I should have … I should never have gotten your hopes up, any of you, including Professor Ozpin." She paused. "There never was much hope. Just a fool's hope. I shouldn't have made you think otherwise."

    "That's not on you."

    "You're hard on Professor Ozpin."

    "Professor Ozpin is the reason we're in this situation."

    "Salem would still be out there, whether we knew it or not," Summer reminded her. "Isn't it better that we know?"

    "What's the point when we can't do anything with what we know?" Raven shot back. "If knowledge brings nothing but fear and dread, then I would sooner live in ignorance with the rest of the befuddled multitude. But that's not possible anymore, is it?"

    "No," Summer said, shaking her head. "No, that … that's all gone now. All that's left to decide is what we're going to do with what we know."

    Raven closed her eyes. "I am not a coward," she said, not sounding entirely convincing upon that point.

    "I know," Summer said. "I've never said otherwise."

    "I am … I would give my life for you, for Tai, even for Qrow, for all that he drives me insane sometimes," Raven said. She wiped at her eyes with the fingers of one hand. "But you … when you ask me to stay and fight, you're asking me to watch you die. And that … I don't have that kind of courage. I can't protect you from this if you insist on putting yourselves in harm's way, and if I can't protect you … I'm sorry, Summer, I can't do this. I can't watch you do this. I love you too much. I'm sorry."

    Summer was silent for a moment. "I'm sorry too," she whispered. "Where … where will you go?"

    "Back to the tribe," Raven said. "It's not much … in fact, it's pretty awful, I must admit, but … but it's the only place I have." She turned away, but glanced back at Summer nevertheless. "Take care of Tai and Yang."

    "You … you're not taking—"

    "The Branwen tribe is no place for a baby," Raven said. "Better that she should stay here, with her father who loves her and…"

    Summer hesitated. "And…"

    "I have stolen," Raven said. "I have killed men, I have stood by and watched others kill men, but the act that haunts my conscience … will probably be this, once I have gone and done it, but right now, the act that haunts my conscience most is that I came between you and Tai. I knew you liked him. I thought it was absurd the way that you didn't do anything about it; you just stood there and looked at his back with those big eyes of yours, but I … I should have left well enough alone, I shouldn't have—"

    "Shouldn't have said yes when he asked you out?" Summer asked. "Shouldn't have fallen in love with him? Tai … Tai didn't belong to me, and … and the fact that he saw you instead of me is … is not your fault."

    "You won't have me to compete with anymore," Raven said.

    "I don't want you to go!" Summer cried. "I want you to stay, with Tai, with Yang, with me."

    "To what end?" Raven demanded.

    "To our happiness," Summer said. "While we have it."

    Raven turned her back on her. "I'm sorry, Summer," she said, "but that's not enough to hold me. Not… not when set against the pain of when that happiness eventually ends. Goodbye."

    XxXxX​

    "Death is the end of this road," Raven declared. "Death or flight, like myself, or your father."

    "Dad hasn't run away," Yang said.

    "Yes," Raven said, "he has. I don't begrudge him that — in fact, I think he made the right decision to stay and take care of you both — but he isn't better than me for flying to a cottage instead of … it doesn't make him better than me." She paused for a moment. "There will come a time, a time that may come much sooner than you imagine, when it will hit your friends like a truck: just what you've gotten yourself into, just how hopeless it is, how pointless it is—"

    "It isn't pointless!" Ruby declared.

    "Can you guarantee that they'll see it the same way?" Raven asked. "Sunset, Pyrrha … the other one?"

    "Jaune."

    "Jaune, yes, thank you," Raven said. "Can you really say for certain that they will all agree with you, that their wills won't falter, that they won't look at one another and think that they would rather live their lives than give them in this endless futile war?"

    "No," Ruby said firmly. "I mean yes, I mean … I mean they won't…" Ruby trailed off.

    If she wasn't certain, if she couldn't defy Raven's predictions absolutely, then … then Yang couldn't blame her for that. Sunset had denied that she would do what Raven had, she had promised that she wasn't going to run, but then she'd disappeared for a bit. And yes, she'd come back a few days later with an explanation about a solo mission and Equestrian magic and apparently two Atlesian students had been with her to prove that it wasn't a gigantic pile of BS that she'd just made up to explain running away and then growing a conscience, but still … Yang was grateful to Sunset for telling her the truth when Ruby wouldn't, but that didn't mean she trusted her.

    And as for Jaune and Pyrrha … they were so sweet, it was rotting Yang's teeth, but if they were to decide that they would rather spend their lives together than give them in this war, then Yang didn't think she'd be able to blame them.

    She didn't think Ruby would be able to blame them either.

    "I don't know what my friends will do," Ruby said. "And I can't control them. I can only decide what I can do. And I've decided that I'm going to fight this fight as best I can for as long as I can, like Mom."

    "Even to your end?" Raven asked.

    "If that's what it takes," Ruby whispered.

    Raven sighed. "Ozpin is not worthy of the courage of those who serve him," she declared.

    "Professor Ozpin is defending humanity," Ruby said. "What could be more worthy than that?"

    "He could inform his warriors of everything, instead of dispensing knowledge according to his own designs," Raven said. "Yang, you asked me if you had left anything out, and you had, the Four Maidens—"

    The dorm room door opened violently, slamming into the wall with a thunderous crack.

    Professor Goodwitch strode through the open doorway, her cape swaying side to side behind her, her riding crop gripped tightly in her hand.

    Her green eyes blazed as she glared at Raven.

    Her voice, when she spoke, was clipped and sharp. "Miss Rose, Miss Xiao Long," she said. "Get behind me, immediately."

    Yang looked at her. Behind her, in the doorway, she could see Ren and Nora peering in.

    She guessed that they had called Professor Goodwitch after Raven kicked them out.

    Thanks for caring, guys, even if I'm not sure how grateful I am right now.

    "Professor—" Ruby began.

    "Now!" Professor Goodwitch snapped.

    Yang and Ruby scrambled over the bed, putting it between themselves and Raven, before making their way behind Professor Goodwitch; while they might not agree that Raven was dangerous to them, they didn't want to get on Professor Goodwitch's bad side when she was in a mood like this.

    Raven got to her feet, walking away from Yang and Ruby. "Glynda," she said softly.

    "In this place, Miss Branwen, you call me Professor," Professor Goodwitch said.

    Raven smirked. "People don't talk to me like that very often these days, Professor," she said. "It's … a little refreshing. Should we be expecting Oz to join us?"

    "Professor Ozpin feels sorry for you," Professor Goodwitch said. "He feels guilty—"

    "And so he should," Raven replied.

    "I, on the other hand, do not," Professor Goodwitch said. "And I am quite capable of evicting you from the grounds."

    "I'm not the arrogant first-year student who thought that she could take you on, Professor," Raven said.

    "Try me, Miss Branwen, and I will show you how much you still have to learn," Professor Goodwitch said.

    Raven chuckled. "Then it's lucky for me that I didn't come here to fight, isn't it, Professor?" She walked to the window and opened it. She glanced back at Yang. "Ruby's choice doesn't have to be yours, Yang," she said. "You don't have to get involved, especially when you're not wanted. You can still do what's best for yourself."

    "And what about my family?" Yang demanded.

    "What kind of family keeps the truth about your mother from you?" Raven asked.

    Ruby opened her mouth to reply, but before she could, Raven had leapt out of the window.

    Nora gasped.

    "She'll be alright," Professor Goodwitch said. "Unfortunately. She will also be gone from here by now." She turned around. "Miss Valkyrie, Mister Ren, will you give me a moment with Miss Xiao Long and Miss Rose?"

    "But—" Nora began.

    "I am grateful to you for informing me of the presence of that reprobate," Professor Goodwitch said, "but there are some things that must be discussed privately."

    Nora groaned and muttered something about 'again,' but they did close the door.

    Professor Goodwitch clasped her riding crop behind her back. Her voice was softer as she said, "Miss Xiao Long … I can't imagine what that must have been like for you. I'm sorry that I have to ask this, but—"

    "It's alright, Professor," Yang said. "She didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know."

    Professor Goodwitch stared at her, eyes narrowing.

    Yang stared right back. "That's right, Professor," she said. "I know."

    Professor Goodwitch's chest rose and fell. "I see," she murmured. "I think that you had better come to my office, Miss Xiao Long."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 52 - Left Behind
  • Threadmarks
    • Left Behind
    ​
    Yang could not quite keep the frown off her brow as she followed Professor Goodwitch into her office.

    This was … she kind of wanted this. She had, she realized, wanted this, wanted something like this, ever since Sunset had pulled her into that storage closet in the hospital and told her the truth. She had wanted someone — Professor Ozpin, Professor Goodwitch, anyone — to confirm what Sunset had said, to not only confirm that Sunset had told her the truth but also to confirm why they hadn't told Yang.

    Why they had told Ruby all of this, but not her?

    Why Ruby hadn't told her. Why Ruby had apparently been forbidden to tell her.

    And yet, at the same time, the fact that she was now getting what she wanted brought her no joy. In fact, she was more than a little upset about the whole thing; she was upset that it had taken Raven showing up to bring things to this point; she was upset that if Nora and Ren hadn't called Professor Goodwitch about Raven, then Professor Goodwitch would have had no reason to give her this meeting, then she would never have known that Yang knew any of this.

    She was upset that the only reason Professor Goodwitch was talking to her about this was because she didn't want Yang blabbering about things that she didn't really want Yang to know in the first place.

    She was upset that the only two people who seemed to think that she deserved to know any of this stuff were her no-good abandoning mother and Sunset Shimmer, who was on her way to being a no-good abandoner herself, in Yang's judgement.

    She was upset that she was getting what she wanted in a way quite unlike she would have wanted to come by it.

    Yang expected Professor Goodwitch to sit down behind her desk, but she did not; instead, as Yang shut the office door behind her, Professor Goodwitch walked briskly towards the royal blue armchair that sat just past the corner of the office, facing the burgundy sofa that sat against the wall beneath a set of framed accreditations and qualifications from various institutes and professional organisations.

    Professor Goodwitch's heels clicked against the tiles of the floor as she walked to the chair and sat down upon it. With one hand, she gestured to the sofa. "Please, sit down, Miss Xiao Long."

    Yang's steps were slow, but she did as Professor Goodwitch had asked, making her way towards the sofa and sitting down in the middle of it, not too close to Professor Goodwitch but not too far away either, just the right distance from her.

    She rested her hands on either side of her, feeling the slightly uneven texture of the sofa beneath her fingertips.

    Professor Goodwitch gestured with her riding crop, and the bowl of sweets that sat on her desk levitated up and zipped across the office towards her, coming to a stop floating just in front of Yang.

    "Would you care for something, Miss Xiao Long?" Professor Goodwitch asked.

    Yang wasn't sure that she would, but at this point, it would have felt rude to refuse, and so she reached out towards the glass bowl and took out a lemon and lime flavour chew. As Professor Goodwitch telekinetically placed the bowl back on her desk, Yang unwrapped the sweet — it was green and soft and squishy to the touch — and popped it into her mouth. It had a tangy flavour. As she chewed, Yang looked for somewhere to put the paper wrapper.

    Professor Goodwitch gave a very discrete flick of her riding crop, and a waste paper bin of black wire scraped across the floor a little closer towards them.

    Yang curled up the paper and threw it into the bin with unerring accuracy.

    Professor Goodwitch said, "Miss Xiao Long, I am sure that you must have questions, but I am afraid that I must begin with a question of my own. Who told you about Salem?"

    Yang swallowed the sweet. "I'm not a snitch, Professor."

    "Professor Ozpin will want to know how you came by this knowledge," Professor Goodwitch said.

    "Tough," Yang replied. "I'm not going to get someone into trouble."

    Professor Goodwitch was silent for a moment. "I think I can hazard a guess as to where you might have heard all of this, but … why don't we just say that Raven told you and leave it at that?"

    Yang hesitated for a moment. "Thank you, Professor."

    "Despite how it may seem, Miss Xiao Long, I would like to respect your wishes," Professor Goodwitch said softly.

    Yang scowled. "You're right; it doesn't seem that way."

    Professor Goodwitch frowned, although by the way that her mouth turned down, it seemed like she wasn't frowning out of anger so much as … sadness? Was she sad? Yang couldn't really imagine what she had to be sad about.

    "I'm sorry, Yang," she said, her voice unexpectedly soft and gentle. "You deserve — in my opinion, at least — better than this. I can't imagine how hard all of this must be for you."

    "I'll bet you can't," Yang muttered.

    Professor Goodwitch said, "If you're angry, then please feel free to let me know it. This is … a safe space."

    Yang blinked. "Are we … are we having therapy?"

    "No," Professor Goodwitch said. "But I think that some of the conditions of counselling are applicable in this case. Feel free to yell at me, if you wish."

    "Oh, thank you, Professor, that's really nice of you, to admit that I have things to be angry about," Yang said, her voice rising. "I'm angry that Ruby, who is only fifteen, who is just a first-year student, has spent the whole year getting involved in stuff that grown huntsmen ought to be doing; no, in fact, it's even worse than that: she's doing things that most grown huntsmen never even come close to doing! That most grown huntsmen never even know about! I'm angry because I came into this office, and I talked to you about this at the start of last semester; I told you that I didn't get why Ruby and her team were doing a job like that instead of any professional huntsmen, and you acted as though you were on my side, and then you turned around and you recruited her to fight some immortal witch who can't be killed, and yes, I know that's a tauta— … a tortuo— … I know that those things both mean the same!

    "I'm angry that you trusted Ruby, and Jaune, and … okay, Pyrrha I can get; if I was in your shoes, I'd want Pyrrha on the team too, but Jaune and Sunset? You thought Sunset was trustworthy, you thought that Sunset could be told about this, and that was fine, but me? No, you made it clear to Ruby that I wasn't supposed to know any of this. And more than that, Professor Ozpin has started telling Ruby all about Mom, but I don't deserve to know any of that either!

    "She was my mother too!" Yang cried, leaning forwards, tears springing to her eyes. "Just because she didn't give birth to me like she did Ruby … she's the one who I remember tucking me in at night, and when I scraped my knees, she's the one who kissed it better. She was my mother too, and I'm not even … even that is being kept from me, by Professor Ozpin, by Ruby. By Ruby, who complains about the way that her teammates treat her while treating me in the exact same way, and I'm angry at myself because I'm aware of the hypocrisy of me actually knowing this stuff and not telling Ren or Nora about it."

    She closed her eyes, wiping away her tears with one hand. "And I'm angry because … because it seems like Raven was right. You did recruit Ruby just like you recruited Mom and Dad and Raven and Uncle Qrow, and … and Mom died, and now, Ruby is walking down that exact same path, and … will she even live long enough to have a kid of her own to abandon?"

    Professor Goodwitch waited for a moment, seemingly to confirm that Yang was done. "And Miss Belladonna?"

    Yang blinked. "What about her?"

    "She also knows the truth; she also kept it from you."

    "I'm not angry at her, if that's what you mean," Yang said. "If we were real partners, then sure, I'd be angry at her too, but … what we have is a … it's convenient. It's convenient for her, it's convenient for me and my team, but next year, she'll be gone to Atlas, and … she doesn't owe me anything. Besides, it's only because she's halfway through the door to Atlas already that she knows anything about this, right?"

    Professor Goodwitch did not reply.

    "Come on, Professor," Yang said. "I already know so much; what have you got to lose by telling me the rest?"

    "More than a little," Professor Goodwitch replied. "But you are … not incorrect. It was not Professor Ozpin's choice to inform Miss Belladonna — although Professor Ozpin's plans do sometimes rely on his ability to predict the actions of others, so I wouldn't wholly discount the possibility — and if she had not been associated with Team Rosepetal, then it is possible that she would have remained in the dark about this." She paused for a moment. "I must ask that you continue to keep Miss Valkyrie and Mister Ren ignorant of these facts that you have learned."

    "Why?" Yang asked. "Why keep it a secret?"

    "You saw how people reacted in the immediate aftermath of the Breach," Professor Goodwitch said. "Just the reminder that we live in a dangerous world was enough to shock the inhabitants of this kingdom. Imagine what knowledge such as you possess would do. And to what end? As you seem to be aware, Salem cannot be killed, so what would people do with the knowledge that she exists? Brood upon it, panic at it, despair at it? The best thing that they could do is put it from their minds, and that being the case, it is better that it never enters their minds to begin with."

    "When you put it like that, Professor, it makes me wonder why she doesn't publicise herself," Yang murmured.

    Professor Goodwith was silent for a moment. "That is not a bad point," she conceded. "But neither I, nor Professor Ozpin, is inclined to look that particular gift horse in the mouth." Again, she paused. "This … this may sound self-serving, and you are free to dismiss it if you wish, but … I think Professor Ozpin was wrong to keep this from you. If it had been my choice, I would have brought Team Iron into the fold, rather than Team Sapphire."

    Yang's eyebrows. "You … really?"

    Professor Goodwitch ventured a small smile. "Is that so surprising, Miss Xiao Long?"

    Yang was silent for a second. "Um … kinda?"

    Professor Goodwitch rose to her feet, walking across the room towards the window. It was dark outside, but the stars offered little pinpricks of light in the blackness beyond. "Partly, I must admit, it is nothing more than personal preference. We all, I think, choose those to whom we feel … those we feel are more like ourselves. So, General Ironwood would choose — has chosen — those who are skilled applicants of force … and not much more," she added, with clear disdain that Yang didn't know the Atlesians well enough to judge whether it was earned or not.

    "I'm not sure Blake's like that," she ventured. "In fact, I'm pretty sure she isn't."

    "How would you know, Miss Xiao Long?" Professor Goodwitch asked.

    That was a good point, to which Yang had no response.

    "And Professor Ozpin?" she asked, changing the subject. "And you?"

    Professor Goodwitch was silent for a moment. "Do you know what Raven Branwen is?" she asked. "Did she tell you?"

    Yang wasn't sure what the professor's question had to do with hers, but she answered it nevertheless. "No, she didn't. It didn't come up."

    "I can imagine it didn't," Professor Goodwitch growled. "Raven is a bandit."

    Yang's eyebrows rose. "A … a bandit."

    It was … not what she had been expecting. She had known that Raven had ditched her, ditched Dad, run away and abandoned her family, but to what, to where … she had had no idea. She hadn't really thought about it. The what, she meant. She'd thought about the where a whole lot, but the what … whenever she had imagined finding her mother again, whenever she had thought about their reunion … what her mother was, what Raven was beyond Yang's mother, that … that was kind of hazy. It wasn't something she had been concerned with.

    She couldn't help but be concerned now. "You … you're not talking about a romantic bandit, are you? Not someone who took up arms against a wicked official or whatever?"

    "No, Miss Xiao Long, I am talking about the kind of bandit that steals, that murders anyone who comes between her and that which she wishes to steal, who despoils villages, and whose depredations call down the grimm on any poor souls who happen to survive her attack, that is the kind of bandit Raven Branwen is." Professor Goodwitch sighed. "That is why I cannot forgive her, as Professor Ozpin might. I could, perhaps, forgive the cowardice; I could forgive her for running away, for forsaking the battle; if that were all that she had done, it might be said that Professor Ozpin chose poorly … he did choose poorly, in my opinion, just as in my opinion he has done so again, but I could possibly forgive Raven for not living up to the expectations placed upon her. But for what she did afterwards, for what she turned to after her flight … that, I cannot forgive. That deserves nothing but my contempt."

    Yang swallowed. It was not what she had expected … and it was not what she had wanted to hear. Her mother … a bandit. Her mother, a murderer; her mother, a thief. Her mother, the most wretched scum on Remnant.

    And that was the woman I wanted to find so badly. No wonder Dad and Uncle Qrow didn't tell me anything about her, or where she might be.
    I guess they were trying to protect me, after all.

    Not that that makes it any better. Ruby might have been trying to protect me too, but it doesn't make     that any better either.

    She could not meet Professor Goodwitch's eyes. She looked down at her knees, and upon her hands which rested upon them.

    "Why?" she asked. "Of all the things that she could do, why that?"

    Professor Goodwitch did not reply.

    "Professor?" Yang asked, looking up at her.

    "I fear I may have said too much already," Professor Goodwitch said softly. "Your father and uncle might not—"

    "Come on, Professor!" Yang cried. "Whether or not you've said too much, you've said it now; you can't take it back. You may as well tell me the rest."

    Professor Goodwitch nodded. "Very well. Raven returned to banditry; she had been born into it; the Branwen Tribe are a particularly notorious group of outlaws. She, and your uncle, were sent to Beacon to … to hone the skills that they would then bring back to their tribe, for that tribe's benefit."

    Yang's eyes widened. "Did … did you know that at the time, or—?"

    "They admitted as much, eventually," Professor Goodwitch said.

    "Uncle Qrow, too?" Yang whispered.

    "You should not judge your uncle for this," Professor Goodwitch told her. "No one can help who they are born or where they are born into; unlike Raven, he did not return to the tribe or to their way or life. Unlike Raven, he rose to Professor Ozpin's expectations of him, regardless of whether you think it was right to put such expectations upon him in the first place."

    "You didn't think they should?" Yang guessed.

    "I knew there was something that the Branwen twins were hiding; I just didn't know what it was," Professor Goodwitch said. "And I must admit that I never really liked Raven. At that time, I wasn't particularly fond of Qrow, either."

    "And now?"

    "Now … now, I must concede that your uncle has earned our trust and a place in our circle," Professor Goodwitch said.

    "And my mom?" asked Yang. "Summer, I mean, and Dad?"

    Professor Goodwitch glanced away, towards the window and the night beyond. "The whole of Team Stark was … very young," she said. "Too young, I thought. But then, I was very young myself at the time, young and unsure of my place, still less of my right to criticize Professor Ozpin or speak out against him. I had only taken up the post of combat instructor the year before, and I had only graduated a couple of years before that."

    "Did you know?" Yang asked. "About Salem and all the rest, before you got the job?"

    "No," Professor Goodwitch replied. "That was something that came up with Professor Ozpin shortly before my first term began. 'Ah, Glynda, how are you settling in? Splendid. Just wanted to go over a few details, check that you were ready to go, don't hesitate to ask if you need help with lesson plans, and by the way, the grimm are led by an immortal queen who cannot be killed, and part of your job is to train the students to do battle with her sinister agents. Best of luck.'"

    Yang snorted. That snort turned into a brief fit of the giggles, which forced her to cover her mouth with one hand. "Sorry, Professor," she said.

    But Professor Goodwitch was smiling as well. "It wasn't quite that perfunctory," she admitted. "But it was not far off."

    Yang smiled. "So … none of the rest of your team, no one—"

    "No," Professor Goodwitch said. "No one but myself."

    "That must have been hard," Yang murmured.

    "There were certainly people that I wanted to tell," Professor Goodwitch admitted. "But what good would it have done? What would it have helped to have told my old partner, any friends? The people … the people I most wanted to tell were the students. I wanted to tell them what they were really up against. I know that some students find my combat class a little … puzzling. They don't understand why so much time is devoted to teaching you how to fight other human or faunus opponents when the primary purpose of a huntsman is to fight grimm."

    Yang shrugged. "Bandits—"

    "Who frequently have no aura, or very little of it, and no training such as you receive here," Professor Goodwitch said. "If that were all, my class truly would be a waste of time."

    "The Vytal Festival?" Yang offered.

    "Yes," Professor Goodwitch said, without much enthusiasm. "Yes, that is the common answer. A lot of students do see my class as training and preparation for the tournament, and those who have less interest in the tournament can sometimes see my class as a lark in response. I wanted to tell them all, to shake them by the collar, to shout at them 'This is not a game! This could be life and death!'"

    "Then why didn't you?" Yang asked.

    Professor Goodwitch took a deep breath. "Professor Ozpin revealed a little more to me of the history of this struggle, how the knowledge of Salem has … broken people. Broken them as it broke Raven, or worse."

    Yang frowned. "What's worse than banditry?"

    "Betrayal," Professor Goodwitch replied. "Some, driven by fear of Salem, have joined her in the hopes of fair advantage or simple survival. The more people are aware of the truth, the greater the chance that some of them will be…"

    "Broken by it," Yang finished for her. "Which is why Professor Ozpin didn't want me to know. To be honest…"

    "Yes, Miss Xiao Long?"

    "I'm a little surprised he let me into Beacon," Yang admitted. "What with what my—"

    "You are not Raven Branwen, Yang," Professor Goodwitch said, her voice softening. She returned to her chair. "You were not born guilty of her crimes."

    "But I am her daughter," Yang murmured. "And that's why Professor Ozpin doesn't trust me."

    "Then Professor Ozpin is mistaken," Professor Goodwitch said firmly. "You are nothing like Raven. You have far too much of your mother in you."
    Yang looked at her. "I…" She blinked rapidly. "Thank you, Professor," she murmured. She shuffled across the sofa, closer to Professor Goodwitch.
    "For what?" Professor Goodwitch said. "For truth? Summer Rose was brave, yes, but also kind and thoughtful, considerate of others' weaknesses as well as their strengths. I am sure, I know, that she would be very proud of the person you've become."

    Yang smiled, she could not resist the smile that spread across her face. "You … you never actually answered my question, Professor."

    "Which question?" Professor Goodwitch asked.

    "What you and Professor Ozpin look for and why it's different," Yang reminded her.

    "Ah, yes," Professor Goodwitch said. "You mean, why Professor Ozpin chose Team Sapphire in whom to place his trust, while I would have chosen you?"

    Yang nodded.

    Professor Goodwitch paused for a moment. "Professor Ozpin … Professor Ozpin is of two minds in what he wants; on the one hand, he favours those with an outsized desire to do good, a self-conscious sense of heroism about them; one might almost call it a belief that one is the hero of one's own story. And yet, he also favours those who require … some work. Those like Raven."

    "Or Sunset," Yang said.

    "I'm not going to comment on present students; that would be very unprofessional," Professor Goodwitch said.

    "Fair enough," Yang said, "but what about you, Professor? What would you choose, if the choice was yours?"

    She could understand how Team Sapphire fit Professor Goodwitch's description of Professor Ozpin's aims; now, she couldn't help but be curious as to how she saw Yang and her own team.

    "I must admit," Professor Goodwitch said, "that I wasn't certain about your team at first. I wasn't sure about Miss Valkyrie and Mister Ren, how they would get along, but the three of you — leaving Miss Belladonna aside, given her status — have shown me the makings of professional huntsmen and huntresses. You have completed the missions assigned to you with a minimum of fuss, you have answered the call when you have heard it … that is what I would look for, if it were up to me: those who could get the job done, quickly, cleanly, professionally. Is that the praise you were hoping for, Miss Xiao Long?"

    "It's maybe not what I expected," Yang said. "But I'll take it."

    As she said that, she realized that while it may not have been what she expected, she could understand what Professor Goodwitch was saying. You might not look at Nora — or Yang herself — and immediately think the word 'professional,' but they never let their manners get in the way of the work.

    "But I still can't tell them," she said. "Can I?"

    "No," Professor Goodwitch said. "I'm afraid not. Professor Ozpin is our leader, for good or ill. But, since you know already, having been informed by … Raven, do you have any questions?"

    Yang let out a sort of laugh. "I suppose we could start with 'it's all true, isn't it?' Salem, immortal, unkillable, controls the grimm."

    "Sadly, yes," Professor Goodwitch replied. "All true."

    "How does that work?" Yang asked. "Controlling the grimm?"

    "I hardly know; the opportunity to study it has been limited," Professor Goodwitch said. "But direct control is … rare, it seems. The grimm are not a hivemind, and most of the time appear to be driven by the base instincts that you learn about in Professor Port's Grimm Studies."

    "Glad to know that's not a complete waste of time," Yang muttered. "I … I don't know, Professor; this is so big that it's hard to know where to … why students? You've told me why, out of all the students at this school, Professor Ozpin chose Team Sapphire, but … why students? He waited until you graduated, why not do that?"

    "Sometimes it isn't always possible," Professor Goodwitch said. "Events move at their own pace, or at a pace dictated by Salem. When Miss Fall's treachery was discovered … it became necessary to move swiftly."

    "There was no one else?" asked Yang. "No real huntsmen at all you could have sent to Mountain Glenn?"

    "Only your uncle Qrow," Professor Goodwitch said. "And he has been out of contact for a while."

    "So, less of a secret conspiracy, and more of a…" Yang trailed off. "'Out of contact'?"

    "That's not unusual, unfortunately."

    "Yeah, for us," Yang said. "Since Uncle Qrow quit teaching, he can go weeks, months without dropping by or calling or … anything like that. But I figured that since he works for you on something this important that you'd know how to find out where he was. You … you don't?"

    "If Qrow chooses to go dark, it must be because he considers it important to do so," Professor Goodwitch said. "Any attempt we could make to reach him could compromise his position."

    "Yeah, but he could also be dead somewhere, and you'd never know," Yang declared. "Just like Mom."

    "Unfortunately, yes, that is also true."

    Yang frowned. It's Uncle Qrow; he'll be fine.

    I hope he'll be fine.

    He'd better be fine.

    "So … aside from Uncle Qrow, you've got no one else, so you had to recruit Team Sapphire?"

    "Yes," Professor Goodwitch said, not sounding very proud of the fact.

    "How did you manage when Uncle Qrow was teaching at Signal?"

    "There were others, at that time," Professor Goodwitch said softly.

    Yang didn't ask what had happened to them. She could guess the answers already. "I gotta say, Professor, you're not filling me up with good feelings about all this."

    "I wish that I had more comfort to offer you," Professor Goodwitch said. "But I think you would rather have the truth than comforting lies, wouldn't you?"

    Yang snorted. "Yeah," she said, "yeah, I would." She paused for a moment. "Professor … what are the Four Maidens?"

    Professor Goodwitch's eyebrows rose. "Not something I would have expected you to know about."

    Not something that Sunset chose not to tell me then, something she doesn't know either. "I really did hear that from Raven," Yang explained. "You burst in before she could spill the details."

    "I'm afraid that I won't be providing the explanation that she did not," Professor Goodwitch said.

    "But you do know the answer," Yang said.

    "Yes," Professor Goodwitch allowed. "But there are secrets that … lives would be put in danger by spreading certain information too freely."

    "The lives of the Four Maidens?" Yang asked.

    Professor Goodwitch's eyes narrowed slightly.

    Yang raised her hands. "Okay, okay, I get it."

    She wasn't entirely happy about the fact, but she could appreciate that people's lives — the lives of the Four Maidens, the lives of people connected with them maybe — were more important than her desire to know. She wanted answers, but not if those answers were going to get people killed.

    You had to be … professional, about these things.

    "Why … just because I'm not supposed to know about Salem, why does that mean that I can't learn about Mom?"

    "Well," Professor Goodwitch said, "Professor Ozpin isn't the only person who could tell you about your mother."

    "Really?" Yang asked, her voice rising. "Like … now?"

    Professor Goodwitch checked the time on her watch. "If you wish."

    A part of Yang knew that she ought to get Ruby; another part of her felt that turnaround was eminently fair play in this particular situation.

    "I'd like that a lot, Professor," she said. "Thank you."

    Professor Goodwitch smiled. "Well then," she said. "My first memory of your mother is of the very first combat class that she participated in. Raven had humiliated herself at the beginning of the lesson, so I intended to take pity on the rest of Team Stark, but your mother stood up and volunteered for the first fight."

    "Did you pit the students against one another to see what level they were at, the way you did for us?" Yang asked.

    "Precisely," Professor Goodwitch said. "Now, for Summer's opponent, I chose a huntress named Celestia…"
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 53 - Sisterly Squabbles
  • Threadmarks
    • Sisterly Squabble

    ​

    "Yang—"

    "Go away, Ruby, I'm not in the mood," Yang said, her tone a surly one.

    She was sitting on the roof of the dorm room, looking out across the campus, and from there, farther off, across Vale itself. Close by, the Emerald Tower loomed, its green lights shining brightly like a … well, like a Beacon. The lights of Vale glimmered down below, like diamonds, or stars that had fallen to the ground. She couldn't make them out very clearly, though, not like she could the lights of the tower.

    She could make out the lights of the Atlesian cruisers as well, she had to admit, blinking red and green as they glided in their stately fashion through the air, patrolling over Vale — and over Beacon too — like big black whales attended on by scores of little fish.

    But again and again, as she sat on the roof, Yang's eyes were drawn to the big green lights of the Emerald Tower. She wondered if Professor Ozpin was still up there, in his office at the top of the tower. Working away, not necessarily in running the school, but in devising ways to stop or hinder Salem, to keep Vale and humanity safe.

    To throw Team SAPR into battle again.

    Yang sat on the roof with her knees up and her arms wrapped around her legs, and she paid no attention whatsoever to the person standing in the doorway behind her.

    "Yang," Ruby repeated. "Come on, can't we at least talk about this?"

    "Oh, now you want to talk about this?" Yang demanded. "Well maybe I don't, not anymore." Not right now, anyway. She would talk to Ruby, eventually; she would forgive Ruby, because of course she would — she was her little sister, and she loved her — but … but she was allowed to be upset about this for just a little bit!

    It wasn't like they were little kids anymore and Yang couldn't get upset with Ruby because she was all that Ruby had. If Ruby was old enough to attend Beacon, then she was old enough to deal with the fact that her big sister didn't want to talk right now, wasn't ready to forgive her just yet.

    "I wanted to tell you!" Ruby cried. "But Professor Ozpin made me promise not to say anything—"

    Despite herself, Yang looked around over her shoulder at Ruby. "First of all, that didn't stop Sunset from telling me, and second of all, that's not the point! You don't even get why I'm upset, do you?"

    Ruby walked towards her, until she was no longer standing behind Yang but beside her, looking down upon her seated sister. She played with her hands, lacing her fingers together and then unlacing them, clasping and unclasping them. "It … it's because I didn't tell you, isn't it?"

    "About Salem and all the rest?" Yang asked. "No. No, that's not it. If that were all it was, if that were the only thing that you hadn't said, then … I wouldn't be happy about it; I wouldn't be happy that I had to hear it from Sunset Shimmer, but I wouldn't be mad about it either. I mean I wasn't mad. I've known for a while, and you never knew because … because it wasn't a big deal. I got it. You were told a secret, and you were asked not to share it … not even with me."

    "Yang—"

    "That's on Professor Ozpin, not you," Yang said quickly, before Ruby could say anything. "He's the one who didn't trust me, not you." She paused for a moment. "I'm mad about … everything else."

    "About Mom," Ruby murmured.

    "Yes, about Mom," Yang said. "It's bad enough that you went to talk to Professor Ozpin to get special details about her that we didn't know without me—"

    "Professor Ozpin didn't know that—"

    "I know that he didn't want me to know about Salem, but what does that have to do with Mom?" Yang demanded. "He could have told you that stuff about Mom getting almost mugged on her first night in Vale without mentioning Salem at all; I bet there's loads of stuff he could have told us both that didn't require me to know his secrets, and he could have talked around the secrets if he'd wanted to. And if he didn't think of that, you should have." She paused for a moment. "Do you think that she was just your mom?"

    "What?" Ruby cried. "No! Why would you even ask me something like that?"

    "Because of the way that you didn't think that I might want to hear about Mom, too?" Yang suggested sharply. "Because of the way that you didn't tell me anything that the professor told you, you didn't even tell me that you'd met with him? And do you know what the worst part is? I have listened to you complaining about exactly this from your team! How Sunset treats you like a kid, how Pyrrha doesn't trust you, how neither of them treat you like an equal, how the two of them get together and make decisions about you, for you, without telling you; I've listened to you talk about how much it sucks, and I agree, it does suck, but then, when you get the chance, you turn around and do the exact same thing to me! That's the part that really gets to me: you know how annoying this is, how much it hurts, but you did it anyway!"

    Ruby was silent for a moment. She wasn't looking at Yang any more; if she couldn't meet Yang's eyes, then … then good. She shouldn't be able to meet Yang's eyes after what she'd done.

    And yet, at the same time, Yang couldn't help but wonder if she'd been too harsh with Ruby here. After all, it wasn't … well, it was absolutely one hundred percent Ruby's fault, but at the same time … Professor Ozpin had put her in a difficult position.

    But being put in a difficult position didn't mean that Ruby hadn't had a choice in the matter. She had. She could have fought for Yang; she could have remembered how it felt to be left in the dark and to have decisions made over your head.

    She could have cared about her sister.

    "I'm sorry," Ruby murmured.

    "Sorry that you got caught?"

    "No," Ruby insisted. "I'm sorry, I … I didn't think—"

    "Didn't think what, that I'd want to know?" Yang demanded.

    "I … I don't know. I'm just sorry," Ruby said, in a voice that was soft and quiet.

    Yang was silent for a moment, and then for a moment more. She looked away from Ruby, her gaze once more rising to the green lights of the tower.

    You sure know how to make our lives complicated, Professor.

    "I'm sure you are," Yang murmured. "But I … I need some time to myself. I'm not ready to … goodnight, Ruby."

    "You don't … you don't want to hear about Mom?" Ruby asked.

    "Not right now," Yang said, a slight sigh in her voice. At some point — probably at the same point when she really and truly accepted Ruby's apology — she would tell Ruby about what Professor Goodwitch had had to share about Summer Rose, and in turn, Ruby could tell her what she had found out from Professor Ozpin.

    But they weren't there yet. Yang wasn't there yet. She needed some time to … to be angry about this, because she had a right to be!

    She was allowed to want some time for herself.

    Nevertheless, the look on Ruby's face, the way she bowed her head, the way her lower lip trembled, all of the things that Yang could see out of the corner of her eye, nearly broke her, and it took an immense exercise of will to keep from saying anything, from calling out as Ruby turned away and walked away, disappearing through the doorway and into the dorm rooms.

    Yang sighed and buried her head in her hands.

    Yes, Mom, I know she's upset; I could see that for myself.

    Yeah, I know I'm being just as bad as she is, but there's a difference, okay? The difference is that I'm going to tell her everything; I just don't feel like it right now.

    Yes, that's a difference; she wouldn't have told me anything if Raven hadn't shown up.

    No, I don't know when I'll tell her, but I will; I promise.

    I wish I could have been your daughter.

    But that was not to be. There was no changing who you were born to, no escaping it. Her mother, as much as she might wish it otherwise, as much as she might deny the fact, was not Summer Rose.

    Her mother was Raven Branwen, the bandit.

    Her mother was a killer, her mother was a thief, her mother took what she wanted and hurt — killed — anyone who got in her way. Her mother had come to Beacon to learn not how to defend people but how to get better at the whole 'kill anyone who gets in our way' part.

    Her mother was a stain on the world, and Yang was her daughter.

    Hers, not Summer Rose's. Ruby was Summer Rose's daughter; that was why she got to find out about her from Professor Ozpin, that was why she was allowed into the headmaster's confidence, the keeper of his secrets, his warrior in this secret war. While she, the bandit's daughter, was cast out, condemned to wait in the wings, to stand outside the circle of trust.

    On the outside, looking in.

    Looking in and wishing she were someone other than she was.

    This is probably what I deserve, huh, Mom? It's what I get for wanting to know? I guess I should have been happy to have had a mother like you and not gone chasing after someone else I only knew from a picture?

    I should have been happy to have had you, if only for a little bit.

    "Hey, you okay?"

    Yang looked up, blinking; Sun Wukong stood over her, smiling, but in a friendly way, not a 'how can you be so happy when I'm miserable, I hate the sight of you' jealousy-inducing kind of way.

    "Sun?" Yang murmured. "What are you doing here?"

    "Oh, you know."

    "No," Yang said. "No, I don't know."

    Sun's grin became a tough raffish. "Well, that's the thing, neither do I."

    Yang snorted. "So, you just ended up on the roof by … accident?"

    "I just got these legs, you know?" Sun replied. "They've gotta keep moving, or else they seize up, and they might not work again."

    "Really?" Yang asked. "You'd better not stand around here too long, in that case."

    "You trying to get rid of me?" Sun asked. "Because, you know, if you want me to go, then I'll go, but if not…" He sat down beside her. "My legs can stay still for just a little bit." He folded his arms. "So, are you okay?"

    "Yeah," Yang said. "Yeah, I'm fine."

    "Of course," Sun agreed. "Because people who are fine always sit alone on dark rooftops at night with their heads in their hands."

    Yang looked at him. "Do people who are fine wander around said dark rooftops instead?"

    "Almost certainly not," Sun conceded. "But then, I never claimed to be fine, did I?"

    Yang chuckled. "No. No, you didn't." She paused. "You don't have to stick around if you've got somewhere to be."

    "Yeah," Sun said. "I think I do."

    Yang's eyebrows rose. "Why?"

    "Because I don't think you're really fine," Sun said, in a conspiratorial whisper, as though this were some startling information that he had uncovered. "So I can't leave until you are. That's the Code of the Wukongs."

    "'The Code of the Wukongs,'" Yang repeated.

    "The Code of the Wukongs," Sun agreed. "Never let a girl cry, never let a buddy down."

    Yang's lilac eyes narrowed. "How exactly does ditching your team and stowing away on a ship to Beacon count as not letting a buddy down?"

    "Well, I knew that Scarlet really wanted to be team leader, so I got myself out of the way so that he could have a go."

    "Is that right?" Yang muttered dryly. "How about the time you stowed away on that airship with Blake and the Atlesians, ditching your team again?"

    Sun laughed nervously, a flush of colour rising to his dusky cheeks. "Well … love … doesn't always make us the best versions of ourselves."

    Yang was silent for a moment. "Have you heard from Blake lately?"

    "No," Sun said. "You?"

    Yang shook her head. "Really? You've not heard anything?"

    "Nuh-uh," Sun replied. "Means that she must be having a great time, I guess; such a great time that she doesn't have time to call."

    "Or write or do anything," Yang replied. "You ought to call her out on it when she gets back."

    "Why?"

    "Because … because she's taking you for granted," Yang declared. "You're not a dog; she just can't leave you here and go waltz off to another kingdom and expect you to be waiting here when she gets back."

    "But I will be waiting here when she gets back."

    "That doesn't mean that she can expect it," Yang insisted. "She owes you a scroll call, at least."

    Sun shook his head. "Blake doesn't owe me anything," he said. "Any time that I get to spend with her, I'm so lucky. Winning the lottery the first time you buy a ticket lucky. Blake … she's like no one else in the world. When I'm with her … when I'm with her, I don't want to move. When I'm with her, my feet don't itch. Vacuans aren't meant to put down roots, but when I'm with her … because she's the one." He paused for a second. "But she…"

    Yang waited for him to finish. "But she what?"

    Sun smiled. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Especially since I think you're stalling."

    "I'm not stalling," Yang said.

    "Yeah, you are," Sun informed her. "Come on, why are you up here all alone in the middle of the night?"

    Yang hesitated for a moment. It would be good to tell someone.

    Which is why it's such a pity that I can't tell anyone.

    That's why Ruby thought she couldn't tell me anything about Mom.

    So … talk around it?

    Yeah. That … that might be nice.

    Yang sighed, her chest rising and falling. "Can you keep a secret?"

    Sun nodded, the smile fading from his face and leaving only an earnest expression behind.

    "That's good to know," Yang said. She grinned. "Unfortunately for you, so can I." She paused for a moment. "What would you do if you knew a secret that you couldn't tell?"

    "I'd tell Neptune."

    "Did you maybe miss the part where I said you 'couldn't tell'?"

    "No, I heard that, that's why I wouldn't tell Scarlet or Sage or anyone else," Sun said. "But I'd have to tell Neptune."

    "What if you couldn't?" Yang asked. "What if you really, absolutely couldn't, because…"

    "Because what?" Sun pressed.

    "Honestly … I don't know," Yang replied. "Well, no, that's not quite true, I do know; I just … I don't know how to tell you without—"

    "Telling me the secret that you know?" Sun suggested.

    "Something like that, yeah," Yang muttered. "What would you do if you found out that the world wasn't quite what you thought it was? What if the things that you thought you knew, the things that you took for granted … they were slightly skewed, they didn't look the way they'd seemed before."

    Sun was quiet for a moment. "Then … I guess I'd deal with it."

    "Just like that?"

    Sun shrugged. "What else am I going to do? If that's the way things are, then I can't change them back to the way I thought they were, right?"

    Yang chuckled. "Well, I … I guess not," she admitted. "Doesn't always mean it's that easy though. I had a fight with Ruby."

    "Because of this secret that you can't tell."

    "Because Ruby knew first, and she didn't tell me," Yang said. "I guess she doesn't like me as much as you like Neptune."

    "Well, when I said that I would tell Neptune," Sun said, "what I meant was that I would think about telling Neptune, whereas I would never think about telling Sage or Scarlet, not that I would always, without fail, tell Neptune. I mean, there are things that I wouldn't tell Neptune, and there are things that Neptune wouldn't tell me; I'd just think about telling him, just like I'm sure that Ruby thought about telling you—"

    "Has anyone ever told you that you babble a little bit when you're under pressure?" asked Yang.

    Sun blinked. "No."

    "You babble when you're under pressure," Yang told him. "You don't need to make excuses for Ruby. I … I get why she didn't tell me."

    "But you had a fight with her anyway?"

    Yang was silent for a moment, collecting her thoughts. "Ruby and I … we're only half-sisters. Same dad, different moms."

    Sun nodded. "I guess that explains the names. So … did your mom die—"

    "Ruby's mom died," Yang said. "My mom walked out on her family when I was just a baby. I didn't even realise that Ruby's mom wasn't also my mom until … until she was gone." She hesitated. "Can you keep a secret?"

    "I didn't think you were going to give me the chance to prove it," Sun said.

    "This is one of those things that I think I can tell you," Yang said. "But I'd rather that you only thought about telling Neptune. I don't want to get anyone into trouble."

    "Hey, 'never let a girl cry, never let a buddy down,' remember?" Sun reminded her. "The Code of the Wukongs."

    "How many Wukongs actually follow this code?" Yang asked.

    "Oh, all the Wukongs do," Sun assured her. "That's easy, because I'm the only one there is."

    "Really?" Yang asked. "You … you don't … your family, were they-?"

    "No," Sun told her. "Or at least, maybe they were, but I don't remember it. Vacuans don't do families."

    "Everyone does families."

    "Not Vacuans," Sun insisted. "They only slow you down."

    "If you got rid of everything that slowed you down, then you'd have nothing worth living for," Yang replied. "Besides, if families slow you down, then what do girls who drive you so crazy that you have to stow away aboard Atlesian airships do?"

    Sun chuckled and scratched the back of his head with one head. "Well … listen, I never said that I was the perfect Vacuan; I just know that we don't believe in settling down in any one place, we don't believe in getting too attached to places or people, and … and I don't remember my parents. I don't remember any family, really. I've got a cousin who works as a mechanic, I think, but we don't talk much. Or at all. Other than that … I've got no strings to hold me down. Except Neptune, I guess, and Blake."

    "Part of me thinks that you're lucky," Yang said. "The other part of me wants to give you a hug and tell you how sorry I am. Having no family … I can't imagine what that's like." She took a moment before she went on. "Sunset stole mom's diary — Ruby's mom's diary — from the Beacon archives. She stole it, and she gave it to Ruby. And Ruby read it with me, because…"

    "Because she was your mom, too," Sun said softly.

    "Something like that, even though she wasn't," Yang replied. "Only now … I found out that Ruby had gone to see Professor Ozpin and gotten first-hand stories about her mother, about what she was like, what she went through here at Beacon. And she didn't even tell me! She didn't tell me the stories; she didn't even tell me she was having the meeting. Because I wasn't supposed to know the big secret. Because I can't be trusted. Because my mom…"

    Sun waited for a few seconds. "Because your mom what?"

    Yang glanced at him. "If Vacuans don't do families, then what do they think about defining people by their parents?"

    Sun snorted. "That's just dumb. Neptune's family are all champion swimmers, but Neptune…"

    "Neptune what?"

    Sun laughed nervously. "Let's just say that that's a secret he'd want me to think before I shared it with anyone else, and that judging people by what their parents did or were like is moronic, okay?"

    Yang hesitated. It was easy to say something like that; it might not be so easy to maintain that frame of mind once you actually had the necessary context. Still, it would be good to tell someone. "My mom is a bandit."

    Sun's expression didn't alter. "You're not talking about the good kind, are you?"

    "No," Yang said softly. "I'm talking about the very, very bad kind." She closed her eyes for a moment. "I love my Dad," she said, "with his bad jokes and his experimental recipes. But when I was a kid … there were times when I wished my name was Rose, not Xiao Long, because that would mean that I was Summer Rose's daughter, just like Ruby. I still wish my name was Rose."

    Sun was silent for a moment, staring at her without saying anything. "What was she like?"

    "Who?"

    "Summer Rose," Sun clarified. "What was she like?"

    "I don't know," Yang said. "I'm not allowed to know."

    "What do you remember?" Sun asked.

    "I remember … I remember that she used to always have this smell, like—"

    "Roses?" Sun guessed.

    "Sunflowers," Yang corrected him. "Like the sunflowers that grow around our house." Maybe that was why Dad had started planting them; she didn't remember them being there until after Mom had gone. "When we would play hide and seek, I could always tell when she was getting warm because I could smell her coming. It would come in with her, like perfume, but … nicer. I remember this one time, I … I couldn't go to sleep. I don't remember why not; I just remember that I couldn't get to sleep, and she wasn't around. Maybe I couldn't get to sleep because she wasn't around, I don't remember, but the point is … Dad couldn't get me to sleep, and eventually, he gave up trying and let me stay up with him to wait for Mom, for Summer. And she comes in, about midnight, with this wound on her arm, and the first thing that she said, before anything else, she looked at me and said, 'Isn't it past your bedtime, young lady?'" Yang grinned. "Still, she let me stay up … or I don't suppose she had much choice, since I wanted her to put me to bed, and she couldn't do that with a bleeding arm, so she had to let me stay up until Dad had tended to her injury. Eventually, as she was tucking me in, I asked why she had to go away like that, and she kissed me on the forehead and she said, 'For all the other little girls who might not have a mommy to tuck them in if I don't.'"

    She paused. "When I, when we were little, Ruby and me, I used to make up stories about her. I used to tell Ruby these stories about Summer Rose, the great hero with a shining sword, the fearless monster slayer. They weren't true. I don't remember anything about what she did as a huntress; if she ever talked to me about it, I've forgotten. But I knew what she did, I remember that much; I knew what she did, and I thought it was the coolest thing ever, even if I did sometimes want to wait up for her for when she got back from her missions."

    Until one night when she didn't come back. Yang didn't think about that; it wasn't the kind of thing that she wanted to remember. "I remember," she went on, "how she used to experiment with her cookies. It was like … it was like they were new to her, and she was pushing the boundaries of how far she could take them." She paused. "I mean, apparently, she did grow up outside the kingdoms and didn't arrive in Vale until she started at Beacon, so that might actually be exactly what it was. Anyway, she could make the basic cookie flavours: chocolate, double chocolate, triple chocolate … chocolate and orange, I guess. And she could put the usual extras in like cinnamon or cardamon or … other things ending in 'mon.' But she would also come up with these weird ones like … pineapple cookies, bright green — and I'm talking really bright, like neon — lime cookies, cookies stuffed with ice cream in the middle, peaches and cream cookies. Some of them were really great, and I wish that I knew where she'd left the recipes for them because I've tried a hundred times since she left to replicate them myself, and they never work out the way I remember hers tasting. Some of them … didn't quite work out so well, but … we always used to eat them right up because … because they were made with love."

    Sun smiled softly. "I admit that I'm not the best judge, but … that all sounds pretty much like a Mom to me."

    "Sounds like a family, anyway," Nora said.

    Yang looked around, to see Nora and Ren standing in the doorway. Ren was lounging against the doorframe, while Nora stood just in front of him with her arms folded.

    "How long have you two been here?" Yang asked.

    "A little while," Nora admitted. "We came to look for you, but we didn't want to interrupt."

    "Ruby seems … a little upset about something," Ren added.

    Yang winced. "Yeah, I … I'm a little upset with her too, honestly. Ruby … Ruby was keeping things from me."

    "Things to do with your Mom?" Nora asked.

    Yang shook her head. "To do with her Mom."

    "Who just so happened to do everything for you that a mother is supposed to do," Sun pointed out. "Come on, Yang, if she wasn't your mom, then who was she?"

    Yang smiled sadly. "I wish I could believe that."

    "Then believe it!" Sun cried. "That's what's cool about belief; nobody can say you're wrong. If they try, you just say 'that's what I choose to believe.'"

    "But my mom isn't…" Yang paused for a moment. "She didn't give birth to me. My mother isn't the one who baked me cookies or tucked me in at night; my mother is the one who abandoned me—"

    "So did mine," Nora said quietly.

    Yang turned to her once more. "R-really?" she asked. "You never … I guess I always thought that—"

    "Well, she might as well have," Nora declared as she walked forwards, Ren trailing a step or two behind her. "When the grimm attacked, she left me behind and never looked back. Kinda amazing that I survived really, but then, I guess I am kinda amazing in so many ways." She grinned, although she couldn't keep the smile on her face for very long. "The point is … if being left behind by my own mother taught me anything, if my life has taught me anything, it's that family isn't the person who happens to give birth to you." She reached out one hand, and Ren silently slipped his fingers into her palm. "It's the people who love you." With her free hand, Nora reached out and gently touched Yang's shoulder.

    "But her blood is in me," Yang murmured. "Not the blood of a hero, but a—"

    "A bandit?" Nora asked. "Yeah, we heard that too. But so what? You think that means you're going to turn to a life of crime because of whose blood flows in your veins? Do you think I'm automatically going to ditch the people I care about because my mother ditched me?"

    "Bandits are amongst the most despicable people in all of Remnant," Ren said sternly. "I have no words strong enough to condemn them and the way that they ruin and destroy lives and put even those victims they do not kill at risk from the creatures of grimm." He looked into Yang's eyes. "But that is not the kind of person you are, and no amount of revelations about your birth family can change that."

    Yang looked from Sun, back to Ren and Nora. "Thanks, guys," she said softly.

    The four of them sat in silence for a little while as the moon shone down upon them.

    Yang turned her eyes once more towards the gleaming green lights of the Emerald Tower, but then her gaze rose further up, towards the heavens, towards the stars that stood guard all around the moon.

    "They're pretty nice tonight, aren't they?" Yang asked. "The stars, I mean."

    "Yeah," Nora agreed, "yeah, they are."

    And so they sat, and so they watched, and so they said little or nothing at all, as the moon and stars kept them company.

    XxXxX​

    Ruby trudged across the dorm room. It was empty, of course, and it would be empty until Sunset, Jaune, and Pyrrha got back.

    The dorm room was empty, and Yang didn't want to talk to her.

    As she sunk down onto her bed, Ruby was aware that possibly she could have handled this better. But that didn't mean it was her fault! If she'd insisted on Yang being there, then Professor Ozpin might have changed his mind — after all, he'd promised that they would talk about Mom, not that the three of them would — and then none of them would have learned anything!

    But maybe I should have told her before I told Sunset.

    I would have … probably.

    What am I supposed to do to fix this?

    In the utter absence of anyone to talk to in the dorm room, Ruby got out her scroll and called someone who might know about fighting with her older sibling.

    She waited a few moments as the call went through, before the face of Juturna Rutulus appeared on the other end of the device. Her hair was a lot messier than it usually was — she had full on bedhead, bits of hair sticking out all over the place, drooping everywhere — and she wasn't wearing any makeup either.

    And she was wearing pyjamas: purple pyjamas that didn't quite fit her any more and had a cartoon tiger on the front.

    Oh, yeah, right; time difference.

    "Ruby," Juturna said, with a leonine yawn. "What time is it where you are? It's first thing in the morning here."

    "It's … the middle of the night," Ruby said. "Sorry, I can't sleep right now."

    "Eh, it's not like you woke me up or anything," Juturna said, although the fact that she then yawned again suggested that she hadn't had a completely restful night.

    "You okay?" Ruby asked.

    Juturna laughed. "You're the one who rang me, and you're asking if I'm okay?"

    "You seem tired," Ruby pointed out.

    "I'm not tired, I just…" Juturna paused for some more yawning. "Okay, yes, I am a little bit tired, but only because we went to the premiere of Jewel of Menagerie last night, and we didn't get home until late."

    "Was it any good?"

    "It was pretty good fun, yeah," Juturna said. "Boulder movies are always pretty good fun." She sighed. "I tried to chat up one of the cute younger actors, but they're all scared of my brother."

    Ruby chuckled. "Would he have a problem with it?"

    Juturna sat down on her bed. "If they had enough money, it might be enough to help him get over the fact that they're still just actors, but nobody wants to be the one to try it and find out." She paused. "Anyway, you're the one who called me, which means that you're the one having issues, so: 'sup?"

    "Well, it's actually kind of about … that, sort of," Ruby said. "Do you ever fight with your brother?"

    Juturna blinked. "What kind of a question is that?"

    "Come on, just answer," Ruby said. "Please."

    "Okay, the answer is no."

    "No?" Ruby repeated. "Really?"

    "Yeah," Juturna said. "We don't fight."

    "Not ever?"

    "Okay, maybe not 'never,'" Juturna said. "But not often. Turnus doesn't get mad at me because … well, we don't get mad at each other because we don't do anything for the other to get mad about."

    "What about the way that you can't find a boyfriend because everyone is scared of him?" Ruby asked.

    Juturna laughed. "Ruby, just because some actors are more chicken in real life than the characters they play … I could get a boyfriend, if I wanted one. Yeah, Turnus would have to approve of the guy — and so would Camilla as well, for different reasons — but only because … look, I'm Turnus' little sister, and he cares about me, and until he has any kids — which might not happen if he can't get over himself and accept that Pyrrha's gone — then I'm his heir. He wants to make sure that the family money and land and the company isn't going to some jackass who isn't going to know what to do with it, and he wants to make sure that I find someone who's going to treat me right, and if he does have kids — and I really hope he will, because I really want to be someone's cool aunt — then I won't inherit anything so he wants to make sure that I'll be taken care of. It's a lot to think about, and … well, I'd rather he thought about it than he didn't care, you get me?"

    That seemed like an awful lot to think about, to Ruby; she wondered if poor people who could just date whoever they liked were better off without having to consider such a list of … considerations.

    Then again, Pyrrha seems to manage okay.

    "Ruby," Juturna said, "what's this about?"

    Ruby sighed. "I'm having a fight with Yang. I guess I was hoping for some advice."

    "Hmm," Juturna said. "Are you mad, or is she mad?"

    "Yang's mad," Ruby supplied.

    Juturna nodded. "Well, on the rare occasion when Turnus does get mad at me, I find the best thing to do is beg forgiveness."

    "Why?"

    "Because he never makes me beg very long," Juturna explained. "Neither of them do, so once I apologise, they forgive me, we hug it out, and then everything's back to normal."

    That sounded a little disingenuous. "Do you mean it?" Ruby asked. "Your apology, I mean."

    "Yeah!" Juturna insisted. "I may be lazy and aimless and kind of stupid, but I would never intentionally get my family or Rutulian Security into any trouble, and the only reason why Turnus would ever get mad at me is if I caused or risked some kind of trouble, so I apologise and say I didn't mean it, which I didn't."

    "What if it isn't your fault?"

    "It's always my fault," Juturna said. "Like I said, Turnus wouldn't get mad at me if it wasn't." Her eyebrows rose. "So, what did you do?"

    "How do you know I did anything?" Ruby demanded.

    Juturna smiled knowingly. "Okay, what is your sister mad at you about?"

    Ruby hesitated for a moment.

    "Come on!" Juturna urged. "Spill it!"

    Ruby took a deep breath and let out an equally deep sigh. "I found out some stuff about our mom, stuff about her past, stuff that we didn't know. And I kept it to myself, and I didn't tell her about it."

    Juturna was silent for a moment. "Yeah, Ruby, I won't lie to you, that sounds terrible, and you should totally apologise."

    "You think so?"

    "Yeah, that's pretty bad," Juturna said. "You knew she wanted to know, right?"

    "I … yeah, yeah I did," Ruby murmured.

    "Yeah," Juturna said, drawing out the word. "Your sister's got a right to be mad at you."

    In general, moral disapproval bites more fiercely when coming from the morally upstanding, but there is a certain edge that occasionally comes from being judged by the … okay, Juturna wasn't a bad person, but, like, Ruby was pretty sure that she was, as a general rule, a kinder and more considerate person than Juturna was. That made the fact that Juturna now possessed the moral high ground and was using it to look down on Ruby a particularly uncomfortable experience.

    "Any tips for how I should say sorry?" Ruby asked. "I've already tried just saying sorry. It didn't take."

    Juturna winced. "Give it some time, maybe. I don't know. Like I said, Turnus is very quick to forgive me; they both are. I guess I'm really lucky that way."

    "Yeah," Ruby said, a slight smile upon her face. "Yeah, you really are."

    "Sorry I can't be of much help," Juturna said. "Oh! But hey, while you're there, there's something that I wanted to tell you: Turnus is coming to Vale in a few days, and he wants to meet you."

    "What?" Ruby asked. "Your brother's coming here? Why? It's not something to do with Pyrrha, is it?"

    "No, it's nothing like that; it's work," Juturna said. "Have you heard of the Heart of Mistral?"

    "Sounds a bit like one of Pyrrha's nicknames," Ruby said.

    Juturna laughed. "Yeah, I guess it does, doesn't it?" she replied. "But no, it's a ruby; it's a really big, supposedly really beautiful ruby that they mined out from the mountain in the really old days. It belonged to the Emperor until he gave it away to his daughter on her wedding day. One of her descendants was wearing it when he was killed during the war, and one of you Valish took it off his body, and it's been in your museums ever since. Only now, Vale has agreed to give it back — I think they're getting a discount on the cost of those battleships you're buying off us — and Lord Kiro has hired Rutulian Security to protect him while he goes and gets it. So, Turnus is going to be in Vale, and he wants to meet you."

    "Why?"

    "Because we're friends," Juturna said. "And Turnus likes to get to know my friends."

    "And scare them?"

    Juturna grinned. "Come on, Ruby, you're a badass huntress; I'm sure you can handle it. Shall I tell him that you're looking forward to it? Come on, what's the harm in letting him take you to dinner?"

    "Well … Pyrrha—"

    "He is not going to say anything about Pyrrha or try to get you to do anything or … anything like that," Juturna promised. "Turnus isn't perfect, but on the whole, he's a really great guy, and he wouldn't do something like that. I promise."

    "Okay," Ruby said. "In that case, sure. I'd love to meet him. I really would. I mean, you obviously think a lot of him. Yeah, tell him that I'm looking forward to it."

    Although I'm not sure Jaune and Pyrrha will be when they find out about it.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 54 - Back at Beacon
  • Threadmarks
    • Back at Beacon

    ​

    "I wish your home got more visitors," Sunset grumbled as the train rattled along on its way back to Vale.

    Jaune frowned. "Why?"

    "Because if it did, someone might invest in some upgrades to this rail line," Sunset said sharply.

    Kendal Arc chuckled. "One of my first assignments, I got a train to Alexandria, then I had to set off on foot from there to survey my target area. Anyway, the point is that when I got on that train … I was amazed. I couldn't believe it. Electric doors, computerized seat reservations … I think, for me, that was what I understand going to Atlas is like for normal people."

    Sunset smirked a little as her eyebrows rose. "So, Jaune, you actually had a pretty restrained reaction to the wonders of the modern world, then?"

    "I was impressed by the trains!" Kendal declared. "That doesn't make some kind of hayseed."

    Sunset, Jaune, Pyrrha, and Kendal were all sat together around a table in one of the train compartments that was bearing them back to Vale and — in the case of Sunset, Jaune, and Pyrrha at least — Beacon. The train rattled along, quite literally, jolting a little as it went, occasionally feeling as though it bumped over something.

    The sooner they arrived and they could get off this deathtrap, the happier Sunset would be.

    "Kendal," Pyrrha said, "may I ask you something?"

    Kendal shrugged. "Shoot."

    "Why did you choose to become a surveyor?"

    "Why do you want to know?"

    "I suppose I'm just curious," Pyrrha said. "I know why Jaune wanted to become a huntsman, but … as I say, it's simple curiosity; you don't have to tell me."

    "It's not like it's a big secret," Kendal declared. "I just … wanted to help, really. I was always good at tracking, at map reading, I can move through the woods better than pretty much anyone in town; I like the outdoors, I like walking, and I thought, well, there must be a way that I can do all of that and do some good at the same time. Me, Jaune, even Sky … we've all found some way to help that plays to our strengths."

    "Indeed," Pyrrha replied. She smiled. "I hope that, once we've graduated, we can work together in some way."

    "I'd like that," Kendal agreed. She grinned. "Just promise that you won't get distracted by having a lovey-dovey moment and let me get eaten by a beowolf."

    Pyrrha's cheeks reddened. "We would, of course, be thoroughly professional at all times," she said.

    "I'm sure, I'm sure," Kendal assured her. "So, what's on the agenda for you three when you get back?"

    "Jaune needs to get down and think about his new weapon," Sunset declared. While I need to find out what Crown D'Eath found. She had some ideas on that score already: Carrot Arc's journal said that Crown had been spending a lot of time in the library, so if Sunset could find out what books he'd been looking at, then she, reading the same things that he had read, could hopefully reach the same conclusions, for good or ill.

    Hopefully for good; it would give her something to pass on to Lady Nikos. If not…

    Back to plan 'Make Something Up' I suppose.

    At that moment, a scroll went off.

    Sunset put her hand to her jacket pocket. Her scroll was still and silent. "Not mine," she said.

    "No, it's mine," Pyrrha said. She was back in her combat outfit for the journey back to Beacon, and she took the scroll from out of one of the pouches upon her belt. "It's Mother."

    What does she want? Sunset thought, recognizing the thought and the accompanying feelings of weariness, wariness, and annoyance as ultimately belonging to Pyrrha, not to herself.

    I wonder if Pyrrha can teach me how to eliminate these ghastly side-effects, Sunset thought. It would be a fine thing if she were to let Pyrrha's hostility show and her benefactor should think her ungrateful or impertinent in any way.

    She was not Pyrrha, after all; she was not afforded such leeway. She would have to keep her opinions — Pyrrha's opinions — to herself.

    Pyrrha answered the scroll. "Good afternoon, Mother."

    "Good morning, Pyrrha," Lady Nikos said in answer. "You appear to be moving."

    "I'm on a train home from Alba Longa, Mother," Pyrrha said. "With Jaune and Sunset and Kendal Arc, one of Jaune's sisters."

    "Good afternoon, my lady," Sunset called out.

    Jaune leaned a little closer to Pyrrha so that his face would be visible in the scroll. "Hello, ma— my lady."

    "Miss Shimmer, Mister Arc," Lady Nikos said. "And good day to you, unseen Miss Arc. I confess I do not know this Alba Longa of which you speak."

    "I don't suppose you would have heard of it, my lady; it's a very small town," Jaune explained. "It's where I grew up."

    "Ah, that explains a great deal," Lady Nikos said. "Miss Shimmer, have you learned anything of note?"

    Pyrrha turned her scroll around, so that Sunset could see the face of Lady Nikos looking out at her, and Lady Nikos could see her in turn.

    "I am … on the trail, my lady," Sunset replied. "I require more time."

    "'More time'?" Lady Nikos asked. "You have had time already."

    "I have had time, my lady; what I have not had previously is time to devote to this," Sunset explained. "If my lady will indulge me … I confess I have nothing concrete as yet to offer you, but I feel that I am closing in on something."

    "Is that so?" Lady Nikos asked. "And on what, if I may ask, do you base this optimism?"

    "I have a name, my lady," Sunset said. "Crown D'Eath, a man who, like myself, delved into the history of the Arc family, and although I know not what he found, I do know that what he found caused him great excitement." And great alarm in the then Arc, but let's not mention that. "If I can discover what he did, I have every confidence that it will be to my lady's liking."

    Lady Nikos was silent for a moment. "Very well; I suppose I have little to lose and much to gain. In any event, it is no longer the most urgent matter on my mind."

    "I imagine there must be many matters of weight and importance upon my lady's mind at any one time," Sunset observed.

    "But this is particularly urgent, else I would not have called," Lady Nikos said. "Pyrrha, I take it that — immured as you have been in a small town — you are not yet aware of the news."

    Pyrrha reversed her scroll again, so that once more, she was looking at her mother, whose face had disappeared from Sunset's sight.

    "News?" Pyrrha asked. "No, Mother, I have heard nothing."

    "The Daily Remnant libels you," Lady Nikos declared. "I have already instructed a lawyer to sue that odious rag into the ground, but I fear that the proceedings will take some time, and in that time, their lies will spread like wildfire."

    Sunset and Jaune both got out their scrolls at the same time. Sunset opened up her device and began to tap tap on the touch screen, typing the words 'Daily Remnant' into the search engine. It wasn't a name she was familiar with, and judging by Lady Nikos' description of it as a rag, it didn't seem to be a particularly notable publication.

    "I don't understand," Pyrrha said. "All manner of untruths get printed about me all the time; you've never gone to law over it before."

    "You will see the difference when, if I am hearing right, Miss Shimmer and Mister Arc discover what it is that has been said about you now.

    Sunset's search had brought back a whole host of results. She typed 'Daily Remnant Pyrrha Nikos' into the search engine to narrow it down.

    "What?" Jaune cried. "Are they serious?"

    "If they are not serious, then more fool them; I will see them bankrupted regardless," Lady Nikos growled.

    Sunset's eyes widened.

    This … this is…

    This is my fault.

    "What is it?" Kendal asked, leaning over to look at Sunset's scroll.

    "Jaune?" Pyrrha asked, prompting Jaune to press his scroll against hers so that she could read what was being said and see her mother at the same time.

    The headline read Pyrrha Nikos: The Champion of Evil? The subheading continued in that vein, posturing Could Mistral's favourite daughter be in league with the enemies of humanity?

    Below there was a picture of Pyrrha, with her back to the camera, her red sash turning into a trail of blood snaking behind her towards the readership.

    "What are they talking about?" Kendal murmured.

    Sunset skimmed over the article itself. She closed her eyes. "Cinder," she murmured.

    "Miss Shimmer?" Lady Nikos asked.

    Sunset remained with her eyes closed, her elbows resting upon the table, her head bowed slightly. After a moment, she lowered her own scroll and gestured with her fingers for Pyrrha to flip hers so that she could talk to Lady Nikos again.

    Pyrrha did so. The face of Lady Nikos seemed especially hard now, the lines deeper, her features sharper.

    Whether that was the lingering effects of contact with Pyrrha upon her or Sunset's own guilt, she did not know.

    "My lady," she said, "I am sorry to have besmirched your daughter's reputation so."

    Lady Nikos' eyebrows rose. "Is there any truth to this, Miss Shimmer?"

    Sunset licked her lips. "When Cinder Fall was here — at Beacon, disguised as a student — we were friends, my lady, although she and Pyrrha were not."

    "Far from it," Pyrrha murmured.

    "And after?" Lady Nikos asked.

    Sunset glanced at Pyrrha, whose mouth had seemed to shrink as it set into disapproval.

    "Cinder … my lady, what I could tell is information I fear that cannot be revealed to you."

    "I beg your pardon, Miss Shimmer?"

    "There are things that are known only to the members of Teams Sapphire and Rosepetal, Professor Ozpin and General Ironwood," Sunset said. "I trust Team Rosepetal, as I would hope that you trust all the members of Team Sapphire, and as for Professor Ozpin and General Ironwood … I would hope they would have more dignity than to go selling stories to the gutter press. What I will say, my lady, is that … is that Pyrrha considers Cinder Fall to be naught but our enemy, and I…"

    I hold her responsible for my misdeeds.

    "And I do likewise," Sunset said.

    Lady Nikos nodded. "Then it seems that there is little more to discuss upon the matter, and nothing to apologise for on your part, Miss Shimmer. I cannot say that I like the fact that there are details of which I must remain ignorant, but … I suppose it is an inevitable consequence of your service. In any case, I did not call in order to blame you, Miss Shimmer, but to put Pyrrha on her guard. Although it would do no harm if you were to remain on your guard also."

    "Is there anything that we can do, Mother?" Pyrrha asked, turning her scroll around once more.

    "I fear not," Lady Nikos said. "It may be that the threat of legal action will induce a retraction. If not, then it will move to the courts, but that may, as I have said, take time, and even when you win — I have, of course, had to threaten suit under your name, but rest assured, I will ensure that your education is not disrupted with court appearances — there is the unfortunate fact that people will remember what was written."

    "But no one will believe it," Jaune said. "I mean it … it's ridiculous!"

    "Indeed, Mister Arc, and I have hope that the great mass of the people of Mistral will see this nonsense for what it is," Lady Nikos replied. "However—"

    "There are some who, if they do not believe it, will affect to do so merely so that they may delight in seeing me brought low," Pyrrha murmured.

    "It will take more than this to bring you low," Sunset said.

    "Well, yes, I suppose it will," Pyrrha said, her voice almost as soft as it had been before. "But my point is … some will either believe it or pretend to do so." She frowned. "Mother, if I have damaged the reputation of our house—"

    "The reputation of our house has survived bad emperors who dealt with every obstacle with a mixture of violence and treachery; I daresay it can survive muck-raking journalism," Lady Nikos said. "It was … your reputation with which I was more concerned. I am sorry that this has befallen you."

    "Thank you, Mother," Pyrrha said. "For the warning and for your sympathies."

    "Good day then," Lady Nikos said. "Good day to all of you, and good fortune."

    Pyrrha folded her scroll up.

    "She didn't ask how your visit went," Kendal pointed out.

    "No, she didn't," Pyrrha murmured. "I wouldn't have expected her to, under any circumstances."

    "Right, because she doesn't approve," Kendal said. She hesitated for a moment, mouth open, no words emerging. "Cinder Fall … is she the one you fought?"

    Pyrrha looked at her. "What makes you ask that?"

    "Something about your face," Kendal replied. "Your expression when you talked about her."

    Pyrrha sighed, her chest rising and falling. "Yes. Yes, she is the one."

    Kendal winced. "This must be especially galling then."

    "Somewhat," Pyrrha said mildly.

    "So … what are you going to do?"

    "I … I am not sure, not yet," Pyrrha said. "I require a little time to think upon a solution."

    "Could you not even try and find out where they came from?" Kendal asked. "I mean, somebody wrote this story; I find it hard to imagine anyone just deciding to sit down and write out a pack of lies — and then someone else decided to publish it — for no reason."

    "People knew that Cinder and I were close; we didn't hide it," Sunset said. "Although whether any of them would have connections to the Mistralian press is less certain. In any case, we have other things to do rather than trying to find the source of this story. Jaune needs to design a weapon, I need to … well, for either Pyrrha or myself, hunting after tattletales isn't likely to prove anything."

    Any sort of revenge would hardly scream innocence, after all.

    Although, speaking of revenge … Bon Bon might see this as turnaround being fair play after the way that Sunset had treated her and Cardin.

    Cardin she did not suspect, but Bon Bon … she had cause to hate Sunset, and to at least some extent, she did hate Sunset, at least enough to knock one of her teeth out.

    Yet, if Sunset found out that she had done it … then what? What could Sunset do about it? What would Sunset do about it?

    I … I would do nothing. I would not make any further trouble for Pyrrha or her reputation.

    And Bon Bon … Bon Bon has a right to her wrath, for all that she has aimed at the wrong target.

    "I don't envy you," Kendal said. "Are you going to be okay, Jaune?"

    "Yeah, I'll be fine," Jaune assured her. "By the sounds of it, it isn't me that they're going after." He put his scroll away, and thereafter put his hands around Pyrrha's shoulders. "Are you going to be okay?"

    "I have little choice," Pyrrha said, turning her face towards him. "And I trust, I hope, that most people will see this for what it is: nothing but a pack of lies."

    They arrived back in Vale not long after, having survived the journey on this rickety old train to pull in at Gateway Station. The train shuddered and groaned and sounded as if it was about to have a heart attack, keel over, and die on the verge of the finish line, but it managed to make it all the way in, and when it came to a stop, it did at least seem as though it had stopped voluntarily and not because the engine had given out.

    "It doesn't look as though we have a reception committee," Sunset said as she looked out of the window.

    "Well, we didn't even tell Ruby that we were coming back," Pyrrha pointed out. "How would anyone know that we were on this train?"

    "That's a good point," Sunset allowed. "And for that reason, I think we should hold off on calling Ruby until we're at the airship back to Beacon." She reached her arm out of the window and tried to open the door.

    It was stuck again.

    Sunset huffed. "I hate that you live on this railway line," she told Jaune.

    "Here, let me," Pyrrha said, raising her hand towards the door.

    There was a click, and the handle turned in Sunset's hand, and the door swung open.

    "Neat trick," Kendal said. "I don't understand it, but it's a neat trick all the same."

    "It's my semblance," Pyrrha explained. "Although I'd be grateful if you didn't spread the word around; I like to keep it a secret."

    "Well, if it's a secret, then it's safe with me," Kendal said with a smile on her face.

    They all dismounted from the train, now that the door was open, carrying their bags and cases down with them. They moved the platform exit, clearing a space for the impatient people waiting on the platform to pile onto the rickety old train, although if they actually got anywhere, it would be a miracle in Sunset's opinion.

    They exited the platform onto the main station concourse, standing under a great glass skylight some fifty feet or more above their heads, letting in the sunlight to shine brightly and a little warmly down upon them. Before them stood a great crowd of people, their eyes fixed upon the electronic board denoting the departures of the various trains — what platform they had been assigned, was it ready to board. It was like watching birds, a great flock of birds whose heads turned almost as one, looking first to the left and then to the right, moving along to scan each train upon the board in turn. Every so often, a platform would be announced, and a part of the flock would break off and move in a great flood, as if driven by a single mind, towards the platform.

    Shops — newsagents, fast food outlets, cake shops, bookshops — surrounded them; some were more like stalls, with queues of people snaking backwards from the counter; others were more conventional, and Sunset could see men and women darting in and out the doors.

    Kendal put down her hold-all bag. "Headquarters is the other way from the Skydock, so I think this is goodbye." She held out her hand to Sunset. "It was nice to meet you, Sunset Shimmer, if only briefly."

    Sunset took her hand, shaking it quickly. "Nice to meet you too."

    Kendal nodded. "And it was … it was definitely nice to meet you, Pyrrha."

    For a moment, it looked as though she was going to hold out her hand to Pyrrha, but in the end, she lunged for her instead, wrapping her arms around Pyrrha's neck for all that she had to stand on her tiptoes in order to manage.

    After a moment, Kendal held out one arm, gesturing with her hand. "Come here, Jaune."

    Jaune grinned as he stepped forward, allowing Kendal to wrap her arm around him and pull him inwards. Jaune put one arm around Kendal in turn, and Pyrrha did likewise, their two hands meeting upon Kendal's back.

    "You take care," Kendal said. "You take care of … of one another, okay? Don't lose each other."

    "We will," Jaune promised.

    "Always," Pyrrha added.

    Kendal was smiling as she released them, but the fact that she looked as though her eyes were about to start watering could not but lend that smile a sad and melancholy aspect.

    "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, you will. You'd better."

    "And you take care too, out there," Jaune added.

    Kendal picked up her bag. "I'll be fine, Jaune," she said. "I get to run away from danger." She turned away and set off on her own journey, in her own direction. When she had taken about a half dozen steps, she turned back with a wave, calling out to them, "And good luck in the Vytal Festival!"

    XxXxX​

    Ruby was waiting for them at the docking pad as the Skybus landed at Beacon. So, too, was Arslan. Ruby was smiling, but Arslan's expression was grim, and Pyrrha thought she could guess why.

    Ruby waved to them as they stepped out of the Skybus. "Hey guys!" she cried. "Did you have a good trip?"

    "It was very lovely, thank you for asking," Pyrrha said as she walked towards the two of them.

    "Apart from the way that Jaune's brother-in-law tried to make it look like Pyrrha was cheating on Jaune," Sunset said.

    "What?!" Ruby exclaimed.

    "Sunset," Pyrrha said reproachfully, "I wasn't going to mention that."

    "Why not? It was hilarious," Sunset said. "We don't get to see that savage side of you often enough."

    Arslan's eyebrows rose. "'Savage side'?"

    "I thought she was going to break the guy's arm at one point," Sunset said eagerly.

    "Sunset, please," Pyrrha murmured. "I'd rather that you didn't recount it at all, and if you must, can you do it without sounding quite so gleeful upon the subject?"

    "You're the one who did it," Sunset pointed out.

    "I know," Pyrrha admitted. "And I was very angry at the time; that does not mean that I wish it to become part of my…" — she searched for a less vain-sounding word than 'image,' but could not find one — "my reputation."

    "Even if you had broken his arm, it's more restrained than some in Mistral would have been in the circumstances," Arslan observed. "I mean, I'd have knocked a few of his teeth out at the very least."

    "I wouldn't be so sure," Pyrrha replied. "Duelling is one thing, but duels are fought between, if not equals, then at least between those who know what they are doing. A duel between a skilled combatant and someone off the street, their aura unactivated, no training, that would be counted as murder — and rightly so." She paused for a moment. "I was … angry. Jaune is…" Jaune is the best thing that has ever been mine. Jaune makes me feel like the luckiest girl in the world. Jaune is the … Jaune is the only unalloyed good in my life. "But it would have been mere bullying to have hurt a civilian, given what I am, and I do not wish to sink so low."

    "Please tell me you did something," Arslan said. "That sort of thing can't be allowed."

    "His wife is divorcing him, his in-laws all know that he's a liar and a cheat in every sense, and so does the rest of the town after I frogmarched him round it and made him confess to everybody," Sunset said.

    Arslan nodded. "Yeah, that sounds like punishment enough, I must say."

    Ruby frowned. "But why would Jaune's brother-in-law want to do that to you in the first place?"

    "Because Ruben is … a jackass," Jaune said, a sigh in his voice. "And he always has been; it just took this for people to stop making excuses for him."

    "If everyone else wouldn't mind," Pyrrha said, "I'd rather not dwell on this particular aspect of our trip, especially when the rest of it was … very pleasant in parts."

    "I wish that we could talk about pleasant things only," Arslan muttered, "but the Daily—"

    "I'm aware," Pyrrha said. "My mother called when we were on the train. But thank you for coming down to let me know."

    "Arslan showed me what they were saying," Ruby said. "Who'd come up with something like that?"

    "I told you, it's Phoebe," Arslan said.

    "Phoebe?" Pyrrha repeated. "But why?"

    "Because she's out to get you, that's why," Arslan replied. "And she was in a particularly foul mood right before this bilge got published, as I told Ruby and Sunset at the time. She knows that she can't beat you in the ring, so she's going to try and destroy your reputation."

    "I'm well aware that she dislikes me, but still," Pyrrha murmured. "That's a serious accusation to make without proof."

    "I have proof," Arslan declared. "The Daily Remnant always soft-soaps Phoebe; if you look at their coverage of the start of the Tournament season, you'll always find that they rate Phoebe higher than any other publication does. Seriously, have you not noticed that? Do you not read the pre-season coverage?"

    "No," said Pyrrha.

    Arslan rolled her eyes. "It must be nice to know you're always going to win, no matter who you might be up against."

    "That isn't—"

    "I know, I know," Arslan said. "But still: I'm right about this."

    "That is hardly proof," Pyrrha pointed out. "In any case, it hardly matters."

    "Why not, of course it matters!" Arslan retorted. "Don't tell me that you're going to take this lying down?"

    "My mother is suing the Daily Remnant," Pyrrha informed her, "but apart from that … I'm not yet sure if there is anything that can be done."

    "There must be something," Arslan said. "This kind of thing shouldn't be allowed."

    "Well, perhaps it will come to me." Pyrrha frowned slightly. "How … how is … how are the other Haven students … do they believe it?"

    "I haven't spoken to all of them," Arslan said. "Bolin, unfortunately, believes it, but Reese and Nadir don't; I've heard Cicero speaking up for you, so that's good; Cephalus believes it, but I'm not surprised there; he'd believe anything that made a woman look bad, and in any case, Meleager got into a fight with him about it, so that makes it even."

    "Really?" Pyrrha asked. "Meleager?" Meleager had once tried to poison her when they were children; she was surprised that he would take her side in this.

    Arslan nodded. "Saw it with my own eyes. Your Professor Goodwitch had to arrive to break it up. She had some rather harsh words for the rest of us on nobody having tried to break it up ourselves, but she is from Vale, I suppose; she doesn't understand our Mistralian ways."

    "There was a fight in the cafeteria this morning," Ruby agreed. "Though I don't know that you all should have let it go on like you did."

    "It was a battle of honour."

    "You all formed a ring and started chanting their names."

    "I don't see how that in any way contradicts what I just said," Arslan replied. "And of course, Sun and Neptune believe you, but I'm not so sure about their teammates. Overall, I'd say most people — the ones with sense — see this for what it is. That and … well, it was bad enough that there was an ally of the White Fang wearing our colours for the best part of a year, stains the whole reputation of Haven. If Mistral's brightest star was also a traitor … nobody really wants that for Mistral." She grinned. "Nobody who's put their hopes on you wants to feel like they've been taken for a sucker, P-money."

    "That isn't particularly reassuring," Pyrrha murmured.

    "It's better than the alternative, right?" Arslan asked. "Anyway, you know what's up, so I'll let you guys catch up. See you around!" She turned her back on them but waved behind her as she sloped off in the direction of the school.

    "Thank you!" Pyrrha called after her.

    "Okay, I want to hear everything about what happened, all of the good stuff!" Ruby insisted. "But, also, I have some things to tell you as well … although they should probably wait until we get back to the dorm room."

    "Then let us go there, as swiftly as we may," Pyrrha said.

    They did, in fact, return to the dorm rooms quickly; nobody tried to hinder them upon their way there, although a few students did stare at them as they walked down the path that led to the courtyard, and thence across the courtyards into the dorm itself. The corridor that led to their dorm room was quiet; nobody had graffitied their door, thankfully, and nobody from Team YRBN came out to welcome them back — or do anything else for that matter.

    And yet, as they approached, Ruby cast a glance towards the door, as if she was expecting, or hoping for, someone to emerge.

    Nevertheless, nobody did, and Team SAPR returned to their own room, Sunset — the last one in — closing the door behind them.

    Pyrrha put her cases down at the foot of her bed, but for the moment made no move to begin unpacking them.

    "So, Ruby," she said, "what have we missed while we've been away?"

    "Oh, no," Ruby said, sitting down on her own bed with her legs crossed. "You first; like I said, I want to hear everything."

    Pyrrha laughed lightly. "There isn't really that much to tell, honestly. It was … it was very wonderful."

    "Not all the time," Jaune admitted.

    "Jaune," Pyrrha murmured.

    "It's true," Jaune said; he walked around her bed, avoiding her cases on the way, and sat down there, facing Ruby. "Not all of the things that I was worried about came true — my Dad was pretty sanguine about the whole 'breaking Crocea Mors' situation, and of course, like you said, Pyrrha wasn't interested in any of the village guys—"

    "It will never cease to amaze me that you thought she might be," Sunset said.

    "That was pretty dumb," Ruby agreed.

    "I know!" Jaune yelped. "You don't all have to remind me!"

    "And yet, when the moment came, you did not doubt me," Pyrrha said, sitting down and placing a hand around his shoulders, her fingers resting gently upon his neck. "That counts for far, far more than all your fears before your going, however irrational those fears might be."

    "So what happened?" Ruby asked. "I mean, you said some of the things that you were afraid of happened."

    "Not all of my family liked Pyrrha, at first," Jaune admitted. "Less because of Pyrrha than because of … what she represented, I guess. They didn't want me to come back to Beacon. They wanted me to stay home and send Pyrrha away."

    "But you didn't."

    "No, of course not," Jaune said. "I couldn't leave Pyrrha, and I couldn't not come back. Luckily, it didn't take long for most people to come around … to Pyrrha, and to me becoming a huntsman."

    Ruby nodded. "How did you convince them?"

    Jaune glanced at Pyrrha, who said, "We were able to be of some assistance during a grimm attack."

    Ruby gasped. "Was everyone okay?"

    "Thankfully, yeah," Jaune said. "One of my sisters was hurt, but I was able to heal her, and the grimm was killed before it could do too much damage. But it helped my family to see that what I'm doing is worthwhile."

    "But what if more grimm show up?" asked Ruby.

    "Sky — one of my sisters, the Sheriff of Alba Longa — is hiring a huntsman to protect the village and recommend any security measures," Jaune said.

    "Oh, okay," Ruby said. "That's good. That's probably the best thing, short of getting a huntsman to stay permanently."

    "I'm not sure that Sky could afford that," Jaune said.

    "But if your village is a nice place, maybe they'll want to stay and settle down," Ruby suggested. "Dad says that's how half the villages in Remnant end up being protected: they can't afford huntsmen to stick around, but the huntsmen fall in love with these quiet places — and sometimes, they just fall in love — and end up making their homes there."

    "Until they have to go on other jobs," Sunset said. "It's all very well to fall in love with a place and make it your home, but that attitude doesn't pay the bills."

    "I guess not," Ruby agreed. "So is that when you won them over? What about after that?"

    "Unfortunately, we never won over Jaune's brother-in-law, Ruben," Pyrrha murmured. "But, yes, other than that, most of the family became much more welcoming — where they hadn't been already; Kendal welcomed me with open arms from the very beginning — and that is when I found out that Jaune is an uncle."

    Ruby's eyes widened. "Really? You're Uncle Jaune."

    "Yep, I've got a nephew named Adrian," Jaune said, getting out his scroll. "I think I've got some pictures here that Saphron sent me."

    "He's a very adorable young man," Pyrrha said. She smiled. "We got to babysit him."

    "Aww!" Ruby cooed. "I bet that was awesome."

    "Oh, it was lovely," Pyrrha said.

    Jaune flicked through the photos on his scroll. "Here he is: Adrian Cotta-Arc, and his other mommy, Terra Cotta."

    He held out his scroll, containing a picture of Adrian, held in Terra's arms, smiling for the camera.

    Ruby's eyes got even bigger as she looked at the picture. "Oooh! You're right; he is adorable! Look at those chubby cheeks! Look at that smile!"

    "Hey, Sunset," Jaune said, "don't you want to look?"

    Sunset put her hands on her hips and pointedly looked away. "No."

    Jaune's face fell a little. "Why not?"

    "Because I have no interest in children," Sunset said, still not looking at Jaune or at the picture. "The infants of your species cannot measure up to the cuteness of my own people at that age." She glanced at the picture of Adrian. "Although … okay, that's a pretty cute kid."

    "I don't think I want any children of my own," Ruby said, "but I hope that Yang has at least one, because I'd love to be Aunt Ruby to someone: baker of cookies and slayer of monsters!"

    Pyrrha's brow furrowed ever so slightly. "You're very young to decide that you don't want children of your own."

    Ruby shrugged. "It's just not something … I don't see it. Dad's life, Mom's life, a house and a family … that's not for me."

    "Is that because you don't want it?" Sunset asked. "Or because you don't expect to have it?"

    Ruby hesitated for a moment. "Maybe … maybe I just don't want to leave an orphan behind, without a mom."

    "That's fair enough," Jaune said. "My Dad quit because of that, but … but you're not really the quitting type, are you?"

    Ruby chuckled. "No. At least I hope not."

    "It's your choice, of course," Sunset said. "But, considering that you're the only person we know about with silver eyes, and considering that it seems to be passed on through bloodline … some might argue that you have a responsibility to Remnant to continue that line."

    "Is that what you're arguing?" Pyrrha asked, her voice sharpening ever so slightly.

    Sunset licked her lips. "I … bloodlines are important, especially when there are magic powers attached," she said. "But, as I say, it's Ruby's choice. It's just something that you should be aware of when you make that choice."

    "I guess," Ruby murmured. "That's just … that's where I am right now: I like kids, but I wouldn't like to raise one myself. Anyway, what else happened with you two?"

    "We danced at Jaune's father's birthday party," Pyrrha said, leaning upon Jaune, "and they even asked me to be in the family photograph."

    Ruby clasped her hands together above her heart. "Oh, I bet you were thrilled about that!"

    "I was, believe me," Pyrrha agreed. "It was … as I say, it was wonderful."

    "It was good," Jaune agreed. "I got to clear the air with my Dad, with Mom, I got to leave again on good terms with my sisters … and Ruben's out of Rouge's life, so we even got to leave the rest of the family better off than they were before. So, all in all, it was a pretty good trip."

    Ruby nodded. "And what about you, Sunset, did you find out anything about Jaune's family? Is he a lord? Is he a prince?"

    "I'm not sure yet, but I think he's something," Sunset said. "I'm not the first person to look into this, and though I don't know what they found yet, I know that they found something. So I'm going to try and retrace their steps … after you tell us what's been going on with you while we were all away."

    Ruby's face fell. "Right. Yeah." She took a deep breath, then swallowed. Then she breathed in again, as deeply as before. "Raven paid a visit last night."

    There was a moment of silence from Pyrrha and the others.

    Sunset said, "When you say 'paid a visit'…?"

    "She was here," Ruby said. "In this room. I'd been out with Team Iron — except for Blake, and by the way, everyone in Vale seemed really cranky about something. People were attacking faunus and the Atlesians, and it was really, really weird. Anyway, we got back, and … there she was, Raven, in this room, waiting for us."

    "What did she want?" asked Pyrrha.

    "To talk," Ruby said. "She was … disappointed that I was working for Professor Ozpin, disappointed that I hadn't told Yang about Salem — Sunset, how could you have told Yang about Salem?"

    "You told Yang?" Pyrrha asked.

    "Yes," Sunset said. "Although I'm not sure how Raven found that out."

    "She didn't; Yang just told us then," Ruby explained. "But still … why?"

    "Because she was upset with you and didn't get why you were acting the way you were," Sunset said. "I thought I was doing you a favour."

    "But we weren't supposed to tell," Ruby said. "Professor Ozpin—"

    "I didn't trust Professor Ozpin at that time, so his commandments lay not heavily upon my shoulders," Sunset replied. "Now … in the same position now, I might think more carefully before I told Yang aught, but it's a bit late for such considerations now; I've told her. I've told her, and I don't know any spells to wipe her memory. Not that I would, by the way."

    "Now Yang's mad at me," Ruby murmured. "Not just, or even not mostly, because of the Salem stuff, but … I didn't tell her about anything Professor Ozpin had told me about Mom either."

    "Ruby," Pyrrha murmured reproachfully.

    "I know, I know," Ruby muttered.

    "You told me, but you didn't tell Yang?"

    "I know!" Ruby yelled. "You don't have to rub it in." She sighed. "What am I going to do?"

    "I will talk to Yang, if you wish," Pyrrha suggested. "I will try and persuade her that you meant no harm and that you do not deserve to be punished for your mistake."

    Ruby looked up at Pyrrha. "Would you? Really?"

    "I will try," Pyrrha said. She wasn't certain that she was the best person to undertake this task, but Sunset had already spoken to Yang about this, and that decision had brought about this present state of affairs. Perhaps Pyrrha could offer a different perspective.

    "Thank you," Ruby said softly.

    "Thank me after I have accomplished something," Pyrrha said.

    "What else did Raven say?" asked Jaune.

    "She warned us not to trust Professor Ozpin," Ruby said. "And something about the Four Maidens, something that he wasn't telling us … but then Professor Goodwitch came in before she could explain what she meant. Raven … left. And then Professor Goodwitch took Yang away to talk to her on her own, and she didn't explain anything either."

    "Not surprising, considering that it's something Professor Ozpin does not wish us to know," Sunset murmured. She folded her arms. "Four Maidens. It must be connected to Auburn and Merida, to the women that I read about in the books Twilight gave me. Not prophets, not saints, but … Maidens, apparently. Not the best name ever, but okay."

    Pyrrha glanced at Jaune. "Do you think … do you think it could also be connected to the Story of the Seasons?"

    "The … that's a fairy tale, isn't it?" Sunset asked.

    "Yes," Pyrrha said. "It's in the book for Doctor Oobleck's class."

    "That's how I know the name, but I don't recall the details," Sunset replied. "It wasn't one of my favourites."

    "Pyrrha tells it very well," Jaune pointed out.

    Pyrrha chuckled softly. "Thank you, Jaune, but I'm not sure that Sunset wants to be put to sleep the way that Adrian did. But the shorter version is that, once upon a time, a reclusive old man, dwelling alone in a little cottage, was visited by four travelling sisters. The first shared his desire for solitude and urged him to use his time to meditate; the second tended to his garden and brought forth fruits and flowers form it which she gifted to the old man; the third warmed his heart and convinced him to step outside and experience the world beyond his cottage; and the fourth begs him to be thankful for all that he has and all that he has been given. In gratitude, the old man granted the sisters incredible power, and they promised to use that power to help the people of Remnant until the end of days. Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall: the four seasons."

    "Or the Four Maidens," Ruby pointed out.

    "Exactly," Pyrrha said. "I think Jaune was about to suggest as much back at his family home, but it didn't seem the time for such a discussion." She looked at him. "I think the time has come now."

    "I mean, it makes sense," Jaune said. "Professor Ozpin told us that there were only two gods, and they both left ages ago, so the idea of these gods of Vale or Mistral choosing women and bestowing power on them doesn't make much sense, except that there are so many stories and so widespread — and Twilight says that she saw one — that it seems like they can't just be myths that someone made up."

    "Because why would so many people make up the same thing," Sunset said.

    "Exactly," said Jaune. "But what if the fairy tale is the real story of how these four, Four Maidens, started? What if an old man gave them their powers, and then those same powers have stuck around all this time, passing from person to person by … I don't know how."

    "No, I can't work that part out either," Sunset agreed. "It seems as if you can get the powers by killing the previous … previous Maiden, which is all kinds of messed up and a terrible way to organise things, but other than that … it seems to be random. Which is also ridiculous."

    "What would be a better way to organise it?" Ruby asked.

    "Through accomplishment, obviously!" Sunset declared. "We Equestrians know a thing or two about magically empowering talented individuals, and let me tell you that Alicornhood doesn't grow on trees, and you certainly can't get it by murdering another alicorn. You have to accomplish something, you have to achieve something, you have to at least start making Equestria an even better place than you found it, and then you get the power to keep doing that but better. Now, the old man made a good start in that regard, by giving his power to four women who didn't really need it—"

    "If they didn't really need it, then what was the point in giving them the power in the first place?" Ruby asked.

    "That," Sunset said. "That … is not a terrible question—"

    "As a reward for their virtue, as the tale describes," Pyrrha said. "They proved themselves to the old man; they showed that they were worthy and willing to help the people of Remnant."

    "But did they need magic to do that?" asked Ruby. "I mean, they didn't need it to help the old man in the first place; they helped him by being kind and generous and thoughtful. How were magic powers supposed to make them more of any of those things?"

    "To protect them?" Jaune suggested. "It's always been a scary world; maybe the old man was afraid that four women travelling alone, or even together, would be at risk from the grimm. Maybe the magic was supposed to protect them so that they could keep helping others? Or maybe it was less for them and more to mark those who came after?"

    "So it was always about passing the magic on?" Sunset said. "But then we come back to the fact that it's an awful method of transferring power that encourages the very worst people whom you would least want to have that sort of power. Where is the test to prove worthiness? Princess Twilight of my home didn't simply wake up with wings one day; she had to … to make friends and learn lessons and finish the incomplete masterwork left to us by Starswirl the Bearded, the greatest wizard in our history. This power of these Maidens … it can fall to anyone."

    "When put so, it does sound … less than ideal," Pyrrha conceded. "But perhaps it was unavoidable. Who is to say that anyone made a conscious choice in deciding how these powers, the powers of the Maidens, were passed on?"

    "Perhaps, but even so," Sunset said. "And for that matter, where did this old man get the power to bestow upon the Maidens from in the first place?"

    "Does that matter?" Pyrrha asked.

    Sunset paused for a second. "Probably not," she admitted. "But I'd like to know regardless."

    "In any case," Pyrrha said, "it seems clear now what happened: the old man, whoever he was, bestowed his power upon the Four Maidens, just as the fairy tale declared."

    "And for a while, this system worked as it was intended to do," Sunset continued. "As the power was passed from Maiden to Maiden, someone, another Old Man, possibly Professor Ozpin's predecessor as head of this circle, found them and trained them and then sent them out into the world when they were ready."

    "To continue the mission of the original four sisters," Pyrrha said.

    "Yes," Sunset agreed. "Until the Dark Mother—"

    "Salem," Ruby said.

    "We can probably assume that, yes," Pyrrha murmured.

    "She puts the idea into someone's head to kill one of the Maidens and take her power, which she did," Sunset said.

    "And then took over Mistral, defeating my ancestor in battle and forcing her husband to send their child into hiding," Pyrrha added.

    "And before too long, all of the Maidens have been hunted down and killed by those who desire their power and proceed to abuse it relentlessly," Sunset said. "Until at last, someone else, who is probably again Professor Ozpin's predecessor, gathers a group much like ourselves, hunts down the bad Maidens, kills all of them, at which point, apparently, the powers vanish."

    "But they didn't," Jaune said. "They're still here, to this day. Just hidden."

    Sunset nodded. "From what happened with Auburn and Merida, we can guess that Professor Ozpin's predecessors, down to Professor Ozpin himself, are keeping an eye on the Maidens but keeping them secret, lest they be attacked as they were before." She paused. "I disagree with this, by the way."

    "Disagree with what?" Pyrrha asked.

    "With hiding the Maidens," Sunset said. "They should be out there, spreading … harmony or whatever, just as they were meant to do, just as they were empowered to do."

    "But you know why that isn't possible," Pyrrha said. "Wicked people would hunt them down for their power. Salem would do so if she could, no doubt. Don't you think that Cinder or those like her would leap at the chance to become so powerful?"

    "I think Cinder would find no joy in a victory won through overwhelming power rather than skill and cunning," Sunset said. "It would prove nothing in her eyes, and she craves to prove her superiority over you more than anything else."

    I fear she may have done so already. "That is a very … generous assessment of her nature, Sunset, but I wasn't simply referring to myself, but rather more generally, and even if you are correct, then what of others, what if Salem has other servants besides Cinder? The risk—"

    "Is extant, I admit, but can be managed in other respects," Sunset said. "Guards, for instance."

    "What do you have against this approach?" asked Pyrrha.

    "It is robbery," Sunset declared. "It steals from all the people of Remnant who deserve to see magic, to see power, and … and to marvel at it, to bask in its glory, to stand in its light, be themselves illuminated, to have the shadows banished from them. As I said, my people are no strangers to the idea of granting magical power as a form of inspiration. These women should serve as paragons of their kind, models of the cardinal virtues of the human race, inspiring others to follow in their footsteps—"

    "None of that needs magic," Ruby said. "You don't need magical powers to be inspiring; you don't need to be able to wield enormous power to be such a good person that you inspire others to be better. None of that takes power; it just takes … it takes goodness. Power doesn't inspire people—"

    "Does it not?" Sunset asked. "Does it not make them braver, more sure of themselves—?"

    "There are other ways," Ruby insisted. "The ways that the original four sisters had of inspiring the old man without any magical power! Anyone can do that, right now, today, in Vale or Atlas or Mistral. Blake is doing that right now; she's inspired Rainbow Dash to be so much better than she was before, and I think she'll inspire others just the same in the days and years to come. But if Blake is killed—"

    "The only thing that is lost is her example," Pyrrha murmured.

    "You say that like it is nothing," Sunset said.

    "Then I spoke poorly, for I did not mean it so," Pyrrha replied. "Blake's spirit is … incomparable, and her loss would be felt grievously amongst those who loved her, and even amongst those who only knew her. But it would not alter the balance of power the way that the power of the Maidens falling into the hands of Salem would."

    "Hmm," Sunset mused. "I still think it's worth the risk."

    "It doesn't really matter what we think, does it?" Jaune asked. "The question is, what do we do now?"

    "We should speak to Professor Ozpin and ask him these things directly," Pyrrha said. "He can tell us if our conclusions are correct or no."

    "Perhaps he could, but will he?" replied Jaune. "I mean, he didn't tell us this stuff in the first place; he doesn't want us to know … what if he fobs us off, lies, refuses to talk about it?"

    "Then we must accept that and accept that there are reasons to keep us ignorant," Pyrrha said. "But it is always possible that, faced with the knowledge we have already, he will decide to tell us what he did not before, and we will learn what is truth and what is speculation."

    "I … I guess it's worth a shot," Jaune agreed.

    "I'd like to know, if we can," Ruby said.

    "Sunset?" Pyrrha asked, twisting her body to look at their leader.

    Sunset folded her arms, and for a moment was silent. She glanced away from the rest of them, and her tail began to swish backwards and forwards. "I think," she said. "I think that … yes. Yes, we will go to Professor Ozpin, and we won't take no for an answer."

    "That isn't entirely what I had in—"

    "Professor Ozpin once told me that he liked Raven because she pushed back on him," Sunset informed them all. "So, if he will not tell us, that is what we will do: we shall push back, and I shall remind him that he encouraged me to do so. And that will serve him right."

    Ruby snorted. Pyrrha … did not, although she had to admit that she could see the amusing side of it. Still, she very much hoped that it would not become necessary. Encouraged or not, the idea of pushing back at Professor Ozpin could not help but seem a little impertinent.

    "Shall we go now?" she asked.

    Sunset shook her head. "This evening, perhaps. It can wait, and we have other things to do. You need to—"

    "Oh, wait a second," Ruby said, raising her hand. "There's one more thing that I need to tell you." She cleared her throat. "I called Juturna last night, to get some advice about Yang, and she told me that her brother is … coming to Vale in the next few days."

    "Turnus is coming to Vale?" Pyrrha asked. She blinked rapidly. "That is … why?"

    "He's providing security for some guy who's coming to collect something called the Heart of Mistral," Ruby said.

    "Sounds important," Jaune said.

    "It is a gem, nothing more," Pyrrha said, "although it is a large, valuable, and finely cut and decorated one. It was lost to Mistral in the Great War, and its return has been a bone of contention with Vale ever since."

    "From what Juturna said, it sounds as though Vale is so desperate for Mistralian help that they're willing to give it back," Ruby said.

    "Well done, Mistralian negotiators," Pyrrha said softly. "But all the same, why does Turnus have to come here?"

    "Juturna said that he wasn't going to do anything about … about you, you know," Ruby said. "Although … he does want to have dinner with me. Apparently, he wants to get to know me, since I'm Juturna's friend. If you don't want me to go—"

    "No, I would never ask you to stay away on my account," Pyrrha said quickly. "To do so would offend Turnus' pride, and I would never advise you to do that. Besides, he is a wealthy and powerful man and will be a useful connection to you once you graduate."

    Ruby blinked. "Why would I need one of those?"

    "It is never a bad thing to possess such," Pyrrha said, "and as you cannot say what road you will wish to walk, or be forced to walk, after graduation, I would advise you not to turn down any chance of this nature. Go and have fun." She paused. "I only wish that I could be sure that he would not find time for any other such activities while he is here in the city."

    "I can understand that he isn't happy about the whole … you two," Sunset said. "But what's the worst that he can do about it?"

    "I … I don't know," Pyrrha admitted. This was Vale, not Mistral, after all; duelling was illegal here, and had been since before the Great War; Turnus could not simply contrive an excuse to fight Jaune, kill him, and then walk away unscathed and untouchable.

    That did not mean that he was powerless and unable to do anything. And she was not willing to place all her trust in Juturna's word.

    "I do not know," she repeated. "And yet, I have my fears regardless."

    "Might it reduce your fears if Jaune were armed?" Sunset asked. "Jaune, stay here and start brainstorming a new weapon. Ruby, help him out; I expect some preliminary sketches by dinnertime. Pyrrha, go and speak to Yang on Ruby's behalf. And I will go to the library and see what I can find out about the Arcs, and then we will all meet back up and after dinner decide if we wish to or can see Professor Ozpin. Does that sound like a plan? Good, go to it then." She turned and strode towards the door.

    "Good luck," Pyrrha murmured, giving Jaune a kiss on the cheek before she, too, rose and headed towards the door.

    She left, and lacking any better idea of where to begin, she crossed the hallway and knocked gently upon the door of Team YRBN's room.

    Nora opened the door very swiftly. "Hey, Pyrrha, welcome back," she said.

    "Thank you," Pyrrha said.

    "Did you have a good time?"

    "Yes, it was very nice; Jaune's family were … most welcoming," Pyrrha said, which was mostly true, as true as she wanted to be with Nora, who no doubt had no real desire to hear all about the ups and downs of the visit.

    Nora nodded. "I'm glad," she said. "You two make a really cute couple, you know. It's nice to know that there are some guys out there getting it right."

    Pyrrha blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

    "So," Nora said quickly, "what can I do for you?"

    "I was wondering if Yang was in," Pyrrha said.

    "No," Nora said. "Yang's not here; it's just me and Ren." She paused for a moment. "Is this about Ruby?"

    Pyrrha sighed. "What do you know?"

    "I know that what Ruby did was pretty low if you ask me," Nora declared. "She was Yang's mother too, you know."

    "I'm sure that it must have seemed very harsh to Yang," Pyrrha said. "But Ruby is contrite—"

    "Not enough to apologise herself," Nora pointed out.

    "That's not fair, Nora; I volunteered to speak to Yang," Pyrrha pointed out. "I hope that, without being involved, I can … speak more clearly. Do you know where Yang is?"

    "You might find her out by the cliffs," Ren said, appearing to stand behind Nora. "She said that she was going for a walk around the grounds; I think that's where she'll likely end up."

    "Ren," Nora murmured.

    "Were you going to not tell her?" Ren asked. "Isn't it better that Yang and Ruby make up as quickly as possible? You know that this is upsetting Yang as much as Ruby."

    "I also know that Ruby is the one who needs to apologise," Nora pointed out.

    "That's for Yang to decide," Ren said, gently but firmly.

    "The cliffs, then?" Pyrrha said. "Thank you." She turned to go.

    "Pyrrha," Ren called out to her before she could go too far down the corridor. "We … believe in you."

    Pyrrha half turned back towards them, the toes of her boots spinning upon the carpet. "You mean … this article that's been written about me?"

    Ren nodded. "Your reputation … it meant little to us when we came to Beacon. We have not … our lifestyle hasn't given us a great familiarity with Mistralian culture. But you have shown your quality this past year. No one who is what they say you are could have done what you have done."

    Pyrrha smiled. "Thank you," she said. "That … means more to me than any expression of blind faith ever could. Once more, I thank you."

    The smile remained on her face as she walked down the corridor and began to descend the stairs leading out of the dorm room; let Phoebe, or whoever it might be, print what they liked about her: those who judged her by her deeds would … well, they would judge her by her deeds.

    She walked briskly down the last flight of steps; the hallway leading out of the dorm room and into the central courtyard was before her now, but the door was blocked by Phoebe Kommenos — her hair now in its natural blonde colour, with no trace of the black dye that she had been wearing at the beginning of the semester — leaning against the wall with her arms folded, glancing in Pyrrha's direction.

    There was no way to reach the door without passing her, so Pyrrha kept her gaze fixed upon said door and paid Phoebe not the least bit of attention as she walked towards it.

    "So," Phoebe said, "the traitor has returned."

    Pyrrha did not wish to dignify that with a response. She said nothing and continued walking.

    Phoebe stepped away from the wall to physically bar Pyrrha's way.

    Pyrrha came to a stop, scant inches from Phoebe. "May you please let me pass?" she asked. "I have urgent business I must attend to."

    "'Urgent business,'" Phoebe repeated, in a mocking tone. "I think I can guess what that might be."

    "It is nothing like you imagine," Pyrrha declared. "Nor is it anything that you can guess but will not dare to say."

    Phoebe's blue eyes bulged. "Do you … are implying that I am afraid of you?"

    "If you are not afraid, then speak your mind and give me cause," Pyrrha said. "Else let me pass."

    Phoebe scowled, but she did not say what it was that she thought Pyrrha was going to do. Instead, she said, "I understand that you've been at the home of that peasant of yours."

    "Jaune is not a peasant," Pyrrha replied sharply.

    "Is he not?" Phoebe asked. "Is he not rustic? Does he not originate in the countryside? Is he not lowly born?"

    That remains to be determined. "He did grow up in the countryside, yes."

    "Then it is no insult to say that he is a peasant, is it?" Phoebe asked.

    "The Arc family are landowners within their community," Pyrrha pointed out. "Small, by the standards of your family, or mine own, but Jaune's father is a landed gentleman nevertheless."

    "Then I apologise for insulting Squire Arc's dignity so," Phoebe growled. She smirked and let out a titter of light laughter. "It was only my intent to call a spade a spade, or a trashcan a trashcan." She laughed again. "But still, even if there is some little plot of land within the family … he is only a Valish gentleman, you will concede."

    "I will agree, I concede nothing," Pyrrha said. "What is your point, Phoebe?"

    "Why?" Phoebe demanded. "The best man in Mistral waits for you, and yet, you lower yourself into the Valish earth with this … this small landowner's son."

    "My judgement of men is not yours," Pyrrha declared. "My view on what makes a good man is not the same as yours. If Turnus Rutulus is so worthy in your eyes, then pursue him for yourself."

    Phoebe scowled. "You think that you are so much better than the rest of us, don't you? You think that just because you were born skilled and are reputed virtuous, because you have the love of the common rabble, you may go about with your nose in the air and your head in the clouds looking down upon the rest of us, casting aspersions upon our ways, our honour, our way of life. You spit on our traditions."

    Phoebe spat on her, a glob of spittle landing upon Pyrrha's cheek.

    Pyrrha took a step back, wiping at her face with one hand. "I knew you didn't like me," she observed. "I thought it was just because I beat you."

    "The fact that such gifts as yours, the greatest gifts to be bestowed in Mistral in many a year, were given to one who hates Mistral—"

    "I do not hate Mistral!" Pyrrha cried. "A piece of my heart will belong to our city always."

    "The city will soon see you for what you truly are," Phoebe declared. "And I cannot wait to see your statue fall." She turned away, and strode out of the door, letting it slam shut behind her.

    Pyrrha had no wish to follow her too closely out; she wanted to find Yang, true, but she didn't want to come out too closely behind Phoebe and be drawn into yet more confrontation with her.

    My nose in the air and my head in the clouds, is that really how she sees me?

    Is that how I am seen by all, or others?

    She did not confess. But then, I hardly said anything that would have led her to confess or to acknowledge what she had done.

    What would I do if I had proof, challenge her?

    I would have cause to do so.

    But as of now, I have none; she was careful not to give me cause for such a thing.

    She hates me. But what could I have done, other than letting her win?

    I am not willing to do that. It may be a vanity, but I am proud of my record of victories.

    It may be all I have.

    Perhaps if I had married Turnus, she would not think me so down upon Mistralian tradition.

    But I am not willing to do that either. I would not forsake Jaune for … for anything.

    Let her think that I care not for Mistral and Mistralian ways; I'll be happy with Jaune, and that counts for more.

    Though I do hope that others in Mistral will take to him more warmly than Phoebe Kommenos.

    Judging that enough time had gone by and that Phoebe would not be so close at this point, Pyrrha followed her out of the door, emerging out of the dormitory and into the sunlight that fell upon the grounds. Her eyes passed briefly over the statue of the huntsman and huntress, where a figure sat enrobed in purple and dark green.

    Pyrrha turned away, her red sash trailing a little behind her as she moved to walk around the building and towards the cliffs.

    "Pyrrha!" a voice called to her, female but mellow, almost mature-sounding. "Pyrrha Nikos!"

    Pyrrha turned back to see the figure who had been seated on the statue approaching her. She wore a light purple dress, narrow and ankle-length, allowing her feet to be visible in the forest green shoes whose straps wound their way up the pale skin of her feet and legs. Over her dress, she wore a dark green cloak, complete with a hood by the looks of things, although she was not wearing the hood at present, revealing a pale, sharp-featured face and long hair of a pale bluish purple spilling down behind her head. She was wearing a second cape over the top of that one, a short cape of a deep, regal purple, clasped at the neck with a golden broach.

    Her high-heeled shoes tapped against the flagstones of the courtyard as she approached.

    "Pyrrha Nikos," she said again.

    "You have the advantage of me," Pyrrha replied.

    "Medea," she said. "Medea Helios, from Colchis in Mistral."

    "Ah, yes, Colchis," Pyrrha said. "They have a very grand arena there; I fought in a small tournament—"

    "In honour of the wedding of my sister, Chalciope," Medea informed her. "It would have been polite to have let the groom take the honours."

    Pyrrha laughed nervously. "I hope that no true warrior would wish for the false triumph of having victory gifted to him."

    Medea chuckled. "I don't know about that, but I do know that at the end of the tournament, you may have got the laurel, but Phrixus still got to marry my sister, and if that wasn't enough for him, then he wouldn't be worth consideration."

    Pyrrha nodded. "You are a Haven student?"

    "Team Jasmine," Medea replied. "I am not the leader, but I sometimes feel as though I do the work of such. Where Jason and the rest would be without my plans, I shudder to think."

    "Medea," Pyrrha said, "I do not wish to be rude, but I do have some business to attend to—"

    "Oh, please, I won't keep you long," Medea assured her. "I just wanted to say that, no matter what may be said about you in some quarters, you have my support. You've got that of my team too, but mine is more important, obviously."

    "That is very kind of you," Pyrrha said. "But I'm a little surprised to hear that I have the support of Jason and Meleager."

    "Yes, they told me about what happened when you were younger; fortunately, they've mellowed since then. And they don't believe that a student of Chiron could betray Mistral or humanity."

    "And you?" Pyrrha asked.

    "You have the favour of the gods; your victories proclaim it," Medea said. "And as a priestess, I can say with confidence that they would not grant their favour to one who was not worthy of it."

    The gods of Mistral are not real and never were, Pyrrha thought. But what she said, because that fact was almost too depressing to think about, much less to voice to a servant of the gods, was, "Which god are you a priestess to?"

    "Thessaly," Medea said. "The Nightwitch, the Boundary Warden, the Moon's Mistress, the Keeper of the Crossroads and the Entrance Ways. Incidentally, the lore of herbs and poisonous plants are a particular hobby of mine and sacred to Thessaly, so if you'd like me to poison anyone who speaks ill of you—"

    "That is a very … generous offer," Pyrrha said. "But no, thank you, that won't be necessary. I hope that most people will see these lies for what they are in any case."

    "As you wish," Medea said. "But my offer stands, should you reconsider."

    "I will bear that in mind," Pyrrha murmured. "But now, I really must be going."

    "Good fortune, and the moon smile down upon you, Pyrrha Nikos," Medea declared with a bow of her head.

    Pyrrha smiled, a rather fixed smile, the sort of smile that did not reach her eyes she used for the press.

    She found herself walking more briskly than normal as she headed away from school towards the cliffs.

    One person hates me, and the other who supports me wants to poison people on my behalf.

    There are times I would rather have been born a shepherdess than the heiress to the House of Nikos.

    Although I'm sure that if any real shepherdesses were to hear my thought, then they would sneer and scoff and say that I have no idea how hard they work.

    They would even be right to think so.

    Even so…

    Pyrrha counted herself fortunate — a stroke of good fortune she quite frankly deserved — that she did indeed find Yang upon the cliffs, sitting down in such a way that looked temporary, her legs laid out in such a way as she could easily leap up again the moment the mood took her, one hand resting upon the grass and the other upon her knee.

    She was looking out across the cliffs to the Emerald Forest beyond as the gentle breeze licked at her long golden hair.

    "Yang," Pyrrha said, as she approached. "Ren told me I might find you here."

    Yang shrugged. "Well, here I am."

    Pyrrha nodded. "I was hoping that I could speak to you."

    "Let me guess," Yang said, with a sigh in her voice. "It's about Ruby, right?"

    "It is," Pyrrha agreed.

    Yang looked away. "I'm not sure that I'm in the mood for that right now," she said.

    "No?"

    "No," Yang said.

    Pyrrha took another few steps closer towards her. She could feel the breeze lapping at her face, tugging at her crimson sash and her long ponytail.

    "I," she said, following Yang's gaze out over the forest, "have just been accused in print, or at least in publication, of being an ally of the White Fang, an accomplice of Cinder Fall, and an enemy of humanity. Someone has just admitted they hate me, and the person who told me they support me wants to poison people on my behalf if they do not also support me. So tell me, Yang, how has your day been so far?"

    Yang looked up at her, her lilac eyes wide. "Oh my God, you're not even kidding, are you?"

    "Unfortunately not," Pyrrha murmured.

    Yang continued to stare up at her. "Well, if your intent was to show that my day isn't so bad … it kinda worked." She patted the ground beside her. "Sit down."

    "Thank you," Pyrrha said softly and sat down, her legs spread out to her right.

    For a moment, they sat in silence, both looking out over the forest. There were no flying grimm in the air today, and they could see no grimm down below either, concealed as they were by the great expanse of the green trees. All they could see were the ships of the Atlesian fleet patrolling overhead, the vigil of the north keeping watch over them all.

    "I gotta admit," Yang said. "There have been times when I've thought it must be pretty cool to be you."

    "You wouldn't be the first to think so," Pyrrha whispered.

    "But you don't, do you?"

    "There are times…" Pyrrha said. "There are times when I … when I dislike my life intensely."

    Yang snorted. "You dislike it intensely? If you want to say 'hate' you can, you know."

    "I'm not sure that I could go that far," Pyrrha said. "After all, I cannot deny that I have grown up extraordinarily privileged, wanting for nothing; to say I hate it might seem … too spoiled."

    Yang shook her head. "You don't need to be so mild all the time, you know. You're allowed to let it out. You just did a moment ago when you asked me how my day was. You should act that way more often."

    "No, I don't think that I could," Pyrrha replied. "That isn't me at all."

    "Then who asked me how my day was?" Yang asked.

    "Someone who suddenly felt extremely tired," Pyrrha said. "I'm sorry."

    "And don't apologise either," Yang instructed her. "How was your trip?"

    Pyrrha allowed herself to smile. "We … we talked about our future together," she said.

    "You and Jaune?"

    Pyrrha nodded. "Where we would live … how many children we'd have."

    "Wow!" Yang said. "You two are down bad, aren't you?"

    Pyrrha chuckled, her cheeks heating up. "You say that as though it's something to be ashamed of."

    "At our age, it kind of is," Yang replied. "Should you really be tying yourself down like that so young? Isn't he your first crush?"

    "He is," Pyrrha acknowledged. "But … I already know that I will never find another like him."

    "How?" Yang asked. "How can you possibly know that?"

    "I don't know it, I feel it," Pyrrha replied. "In my heart. In my soul. How else should I feel love?"

    Yang did not reply for a moment. She said, "Well, if you're sure, then what is there to do but wish you happiness?" She paused. "You know my … my mother and my dad got together at Beacon."

    Pyrrha hesitated. "You mean … Raven?"

    Yang nodded. "And then she left." She paused. "You know, Jaune looks an awful lot like our Dad: blond hair, blue eyes—"

    "That does not make me Raven," Pyrrha pointed out.

    "No, no, it doesn't, and I wasn't suggesting that you were going to … I guess I'm just saying, at our age, these things don't always work out."

    "I appreciate your concern," Pyrrha whispered. "Yang … Ruby is bound by strictest secrecy, as we all are—"

    "About Salem, yes," Yang agreed. "But about Mom?"

    "As Summer Rose was Professor Ozpin's agent against Salem, her story is bound up with those secrets," Pyrrha said.

    "Not everything about her is; it doesn't have to be," Yang replied. "Ruby could have told me … she could have told me where Mom came from, how she got to Vale, what happened to her when she got there. She could have told me stuff if she'd wanted to, but she didn't."

    "It has not been so long," Pyrrha pointed out. "It could be that Ruby was waiting for the right time."

    "Why wasn't the right time right after?" Yang demanded.

    "I … cannot say," Pyrrha admitted. "But you know Ruby bears you no malice; she would never intentionally harm you thus."

    "I know," Yang muttered. "But that doesn't mean it doesn't hurt. A lot of things hurt right now."

    "Such as?"

    "Such as the fact that Professor Ozpin didn't want me to know the truth because he's worried I'll turn out like my mother," Yang said. "Like the fact that my mother is a pretty awful person to turn out like, more than I ever expected."

    "How so?" Pyrrha asked.

    Yang glanced at her, then glanced away, then glanced at Pyrrha again. "She's a bandit," she said. "And not the good kind, either."

    "Is there a good kind of bandit?"

    "I don't know, people keep asking me if she, I don't know—"

    "Robs from the rich and gives to the poor?" Pyrrha suggested. "I think that only happens in stories."

    "Probably," Yang agreed. "My mother kills the poor and steals from their bodies."

    "And my ancestors kept faunus as slaves," Pyrrha pointed out. "We are not those who came before us. We may draw strength and inspiration from their virtues, if they had any, but we are not fated to do as they did, not condemned to walk the paths they walked, not certain to win their triumphs nor condemned to their disasters. Our destinies, our final goals, they are in our keeping and ours alone. Where is it that you see yourself, Yang Xiao Long, at the end of your journey?"

    "At the end of my journey? What am I, you?" Yang asked. "Do you think I have all that stuff planned out?"

    "I think if you didn't know where you wanted to be, you would not be here," Pyrrha replied gently.

    Yang shrugged. "I mean … I wanted to travel, I guess. I wanted a life of adventure, a life where I didn't know what tomorrow would bring, what it would throw at me. A succession of new places to see, new people to meet … and new challenges to test myself against."

    "'Wanted,'" Pyrrha murmured. "Not want?"

    Yang sighed. "Salem—"

    "Is not your responsibility," Pyrrha pointed out. "Professor Ozpin has not asked for your help; you are under no obligation to give it."

    Yang let out a slightly bitter laugh. "I guess you have a point there," she said. "It doesn't seem like much of a goal though, does it?"

    "The goal is yours," Pyrrha replied. "It is not for others to pronounce upon your destiny, its worthiness or otherwise. It is yours, and only you can say whether it is worthy of you or no." She paused. "Although I think Ruby would like a niece or nephew."

    "Really?" Yang asked amusedly. "I'll bear that in mind." She paused. "Hey, Pyrrha?"

    "Yes?"

    "Ruby gets that what she did was wrong, right?" Yang asked. "Because I'm not going to apologise; I shouldn't have to. But … but I can accept her apology, I think."

    "That is all that Ruby wants, I'm sure," Pyrrha said.

    Yang nodded. "Hey, Pyrrha?"

    "Yes?"

    "Don't sweat too much about what gets written about you, or the people who hate you, or the people who want to poison for you … actually, do worry about that a little bit; you don't want to get charged as an accessory," Yang grinned. "The point is … none of them, none of them, really matter. You know who's got your back. You know who really knows you. Who really loves you. They're the ones that matter."

    "I know," Pyrrha agreed. "And I feel intensely fortunate every time I remind myself of it."

    XxXxX​

    As the dorm room door closed behind Pyrrha, Ruby got up from her bed and walked over to the long desk that ran along the far side of the room. She grabbed a pad of paper and a pen.

    "So, Jaune," she said, "what do you want your new sword to look like? Do you even want a sword at all? You know, if we melted all the pieces of the blade down, I think we'd probably have enough metal for an axe—"

    "'An axe'?" Jaune repeated. "Wouldn't that be a little different to use compared to a sword?"

    Ruby thought about it for a moment. "Probably a little bit, yeah."

    "I think I should stick with a sword," Jaune replied. "I don't want Pyrrha to have to start teaching me how to use a new weapon from scratch all over again."

    "That makes sense," Ruby said, as she walked back towards him. "My Mom used an axe," she said.

    "Really?" Jaune asked. "Did Professor Ozpin tell you that?"

    "Yeah," Ruby replied. Her voice became lower and quieter as she added, "It's one of the things that I didn't tell Yang."

    "She'll come around," Jaune assured her. "She won't stay mad at you forever, she can't." He changed the subject, not back to his own weapon — he was … not exactly putting it off, but buying himself a few more minutes' breathing room to come up with more ideas — but to that of Summer Rose. "So, what was your Mom's axe called?"

    "Vargcrist," Ruby announced. "It means 'Wolf Cleaver.'"

    "Woah, sounds cool," Jaune said. "In either language. From the fact that Professor Ozpin told you that, I'm guessing that your Dad doesn't have it?"

    Ruby shook her head. "Professor Ozpin said it disappeared with my Mom, on her last mission."

    "'Disappeared,'" Jaune murmured. "You mean—?"

    "They never found … they never found her, no," Ruby murmured.

    "Then maybe—"

    "No," Ruby replied. "No, she's not."

    "What makes you so sure?" Jaune asked.

    "Because she wouldn't just leave us," Ruby declared. "She wouldn't go away and disappear without saying anything like … like Raven. If Mom could come home, then she would have. She's gone. No one knows how or where exactly, but … but she's gone."

    Jaune nodded, wishing that he hadn't mentioned it. It had seemed kind of obvious when Ruby talked about disappearance, but now … yeah, it would have been pretty rough for Summer Rose to have treated her children like that; if she could have done it, she would have been a very different sort of Mom than the one that Ruby seemed to remember — or idolise.

    "What else did Professor Ozpin tell you?" he asked.

    "Well, this is something that I need to tell Pyrrha as well, but Team Stark tried to take out Salem once."

    Jaune's eyebrows rose as his blue eyes widened. "Really? But Salem can't be killed!"

    "But Professor Ozpin hoped that they could be turned to stone using Mom's silver eyes," Ruby explained. "Only it … didn't work. According to Raven, Mom's eyes didn't do anything to her at all."

    "Nothing?" Jaune repeated. "So … is she invulnerable as well as unkillable? She can't even be hurt?"

    "I don't know," Ruby admitted. "Professor Ozpin didn't say … Professor Ozpin probably doesn't know. He wasn't there himself; he only knows what Mom and the others told him when they got back, and I don't think they knew exactly. Does it … does it really matter? Immortal, invulnerable, after what happened with Team Stark, it's not like we're ever going to face her ourselves."

    "I guess not," Jaune said softly. "We'll just take on the likes of Cinder and the grimm."

    "Uh huh," Ruby agreed. "But you aren't going to take on anybody without a sword."

    Jaune chuckled. "Right, that."

    Ruby hopped back onto her bed, resting the pad of paper on her knee. "So, what do you want? And don't say you just want your sword back the way it was, because that would be really boring, even if it is traditional."

    "That's not what I want, don't worry," Jaune told her. "My Dad said that I should remake it in a way that's mine, a weapon for me, not for my great-great-grandfather or my great-grandfather or any other Arc who used Crocea Mors before me." He paused, scratching his chin with one finger. "The problem is … I don't really know what that means right now. A weapon that's for me, I mean. After all, I only started learning to fight this year; I'm still getting a hang of the basics." He smiled. "I guess what I'm saying is, it's a pity that Cinder couldn't wait until closer to graduation to break my sword when I have more idea of where my strengths are."

    Ruby grinned. "Well, we know you've got a lot of aura, why don't we start there? That's a strength."

    "Yeah, it is," Jaune agreed. "But what does it have to do with a weapon?"

    "You could use your weapon to do powerful aura attacks," Ruby suggested.

    "If I wanted to do that, wouldn't it make as much sense to just punch people, like Rainbow Dash does?"

    "I guess so, but if you focussed your aura through your weapon, I'm pretty sure that you'd be more efficient and directed about it," Ruby replied. "Plus, you'd have the additional power coming from the weapon itself."

    Jaune's brow furrowed. "Do you have something in mind?"

    "I did have a thought," Ruby said, sketching rapidly upon the paper. "That if we reforged it the way it was, we could then rework the scabbard so that, besides converting to a shield, it could actually form an expanded sword, a two-hander — we'd have to expand the hilt so that you could hold it two-handed — which would allow you more powerful attacks even before we factor in the use of aura."

    "But then I wouldn't have a shield," Jaune pointed out.

    "Do you really need one?" Ruby asked. "Or armour, for that matter. With aura, you can focus your energies into the attack—"

    "Maybe you'd have a point if I was just starting out on the rooftop," Jaune said. "But it's the same as changing a sword for an axe: I've already spent a whole year learning how to use a shield; I don't want to make that all just wasted effort."

    "Hmm," Ruby murmured, which didn't sound particularly convinced, but she didn't contest the point; rather, she scrubbed out whatever she'd been drawing on the pad. "So, do you have any ideas?"

    Jaune leaned forwards a little. "A couple. Do you think I'd be better off with a gun or with dust?"

    Ruby frowned. "I don't think there's enough metal — in fact, I know for sure that there isn't enough metal — to give your sword transforming abilities. Even if you went for something simple like Penny's Floating Array, where all the swords do is fold up to create the laser cannons, I'm not sure you could retain the low width necessary to fit the scabbard."

    "I'm not talking about transforming into a gun," Jaune said. "I'm talking about a gun just built into the sword, like Dove has, or else just a sword that also uses dust, like Weiss or Russel."

    Ruby nodded. "That could work. Have you thought about using dust in your shield too?"

    "In the shield?"

    "I mean, you want to keep it, right?" Ruby asked. "Just because it isn't broken doesn't mean you can't upgrade it at the same time as you're reforging your sword."

    Jaune thought about that for a moment. Flash used dust in his shield; he'd seen it in combat class: he used lightning to shock opponents through their weapons. It didn't always work — for one thing, it relied upon his opponent touching his shield long enough for him to set off the lightning, and for another thing, it really, really backfired when he went up against Nora — but it was an effective tool in the Altesian's arsenal.

    Jaune wasn't sure that it was really him, however. Admittedly, he wasn't certain yet what was him, but still … it didn't feel like him. The shield was a weapon, true, but that kind of weapon?

    It occurred to him that if he didn't know what kind of a fighter he was yet, he could at least think about what kind of a fighter he wanted to be: someone who could hold his own at Pyrrha's side and cover her flank if necessary.

    "What about hardlight dust?" he asked. "I could expand my shield, maybe, get better coverage out of it, maybe big enough that the rest of you could shelter behind it if you had to."

    "That's a cool idea," Ruby said. "But hardlight dust is really hard to come by. I thought about using hardlight dust rounds in Crescent Rose once — I thought I might get better penetration than regular rounds — and Uncle Qrow told me that Atlas makes it really hard to export to the other kingdoms; even the SDC has a hard time selling any of it. Apparently, unless you know someone from Atlas who can get it to you discreetly, you have to buy it directly from the SDC and pay through the nose for it."

    "That sucks," Jaune said. "Why do they do that?"

    "It's the rarest kind of dust, and really useful for science, I think," Ruby replied. "They don't want to run out."

    "Makes sense, I guess," Jaune murmured. He considered asking one of Team RSPT to help him get his hands on some hardlight dust, but he didn't really know any of them that well — he wasn't as close to them as Sunset, or even Ruby — and besides, they wouldn't be around next year. "Is gravity dust hard to come by?"

    "Kind of, not as much as hardlight," Ruby replied. "Why?"

    "I was thinking about how you and me and Pyrrha have moves where you springboard off my shield," Jaune said. "And I thought, what if I had gravity dust in my shield? I could maybe launch you further."

    Ruby grinned. "Yeah, yeah, you sure could," she said, amusement in her voice. "You'd have to be careful not to overdo it, though."

    It took Jaune a moment to work out what she meant. "Oh God!" he exclaimed. The vision of Pyrrha disappearing out of sight into the air was at once both horrifying and hilarious. "Yeah, let… let's not do that," he said. "In fact, why don't we leave the shield for now? So, what do you think: gun or dust?"

    "Dust," Ruby said.

    "That was a quick answer from someone who uses a gun," Jaune pointed out.

    "Learning how to shoot well is a skill," Ruby said. "Learning how to shoot well with something that doesn't have a gun grip, or a stock, or any kind of sights, is much, much harder. It's amazing Dove doesn't miss with at least nine out of ten of his shots. Use dust, and if you use the right kind of dust, the accuracy — or lack of it — won't be such a big deal. Plus — again, with the right kind of dust — you'll get a lot more power from it than you will with the kind of gun you could build into your sword."

    "Okay, dust it is then," Jaune agreed. "Leaving aside what kind of dust for a second, because I've got some thoughts on that—"

    "What thoughts?"

    "Ice," Jaune said. "Fire. The usual ones, seeing as how it seems all the unusual ones are hard to get and difficult to use."

    "You won't have to worry about the dust store not having what you need," Ruby agreed. "But you were saying?"

    "I was just going to ask what that might look like," Jaune said.

    Ruby smiled as she began to draw. "I think it could look something like this."

    XxXxX​

    "Mister Tukson?" Sunset called as she walked into the library. "Mister Tukson, are you still here?"

    It occurred to her that he might have gone back to his bookshop already; after all, with Adam dead and the White Fang a shadow of what it once was, there wasn't exactly the need for him to stick around at Beacon any more.

    Certainly, the library seemed to be empty at the moment. There was no one in the stacks, there was no one at the terminals or at the tables, there was no one … anywhere that Sunset could see. Even the lights failed to turn on as she walked in, although that was because it was daylight, and there was plenty of, well, day light streaming in through the great windows.

    Sunset adjusted her grip on her bag, with the books that she had borrowed to take to Alba Longa. Without someone around, it was going to be difficult to access the records she needed; it wasn't as though just any student could look at who had borrowed what books going back years into the past.

    Fortunately, a voice replied, "Hang on a second, I'll be right with you." A moment later, Tukson emerged from out of the back, carrying a ledger in one hand. "Miss Shimmer? Something I can help you with? Or did you just come to return those books you borrowed earlier?"

    "I have them right here," Sunset said, opening up her bag with one hand as she walked towards him, "but no, that's not why I'm here."

    Tukson put his ledger down on the desk in front of him, separating himself from Sunset. "Okay then," he said, "what can I do for you?"

    "There are records of borrowings, right?" Sunset asked, as she approached the desk. "There are records of who borrowed what book, or rather records of what books were borrowed by which student?"

    "Sure," Tukson agreed. "Otherwise, how would the school know who to fine for not returning books on time? Why?"

    "I'm hoping that I can look at those records and see which books were borrowed by a certain student," Sunset said. "This would be a while back, about two generations ago."

    Tukson's eyebrows rose. "'Two generations'? What would you be interested in borrowings from the library way back then for?"

    "Because I know that they were looking for something, and I know that they … they certainly thought that they found something, and if I look in the same places that they did, then maybe I can find it too," Sunset explained.

    "That's kind of light on detail," Tukson remarked.

    "I'm light on evidence at the moment," Sunset said. "But I'd better be on the right track because it's the only track I've got to follow right now."

    Tukson reached up to scratch the gap between his eyebrows. "You know, those records from that far back won't be computerised," he said. "Do you have a year you want to look at?"

    Sunset did not, in fact, have a year that she wanted to look at, but one thing that had been computerised were the enrolment records going all the way back to the foundation of Beacon, so it was pretty easy to find the years that Carrot Arc and Crown D'Eath had attended Beacon — Team CCDN, pronounced 'Carcharodon' apparently — which at least narrowed it down a little bit.

    Which was to say that it narrowed it down enough for Tukson to drop a stack of dusty old ledgers he had pulled from the back room down in front of her and tell her to knock herself out.

    Evidently, he wasn't going to help, for which Sunset couldn't exactly blame him. It was an odd thing to be doing, to an outside observer.

    It would probably seem a little odd to someone who knew what she was about, to be honest.

    But Lady Nikos had dealt fairly with her, and while he might not explicitly want to know about his ancestry, Sunset couldn't believe that Jaune would be unhappy to learn where his family came from.

    And besides … she was pretty curious herself, at this point. While he might not have been the very best of men, Crown D'Eath had found something about his partner that he considered important, that he had believed in. Something that Carrot Arc had believed in too and been determined to keep secret.

    Sunset didn't want to just walk away from that with the mystery unresolved. She wanted to get to the bottom of it. She wanted to find the answers, if only for her own personal satisfaction.

    And so she trawled the old ledgers of borrowed books — she really hoped that Crown D'Eath had checked them out; if he had simply read them in the library, then she'd be up the creek — looking for the name of Crown D'Eath.

    At last, she found it — having checked out a bestiary of grimm, presumably for his Grimm Studies class.

    Sunset kept looking. There were a lot of records and a lot of books; names passed before her in long rows, all the students who had come before. As she read their names, as she read the titles of the books that they had checked out — books about grimm, books about myths and fairytales, books about history, books about plants — Sunset wondered how many of them had known the truth, as she and her teammates knew the truth. Which of them had been recruited by Professor Ozpin to help him in his fight against Salem and which of them had passed through Beacon ignorant of the true nature of the struggle consuming and convulsing Remnant.

    She noted the name of Auburn at one point, a reminder to go and speak to Professor Ozpin about Maidens at some point.

    Most of the books checked out by Crown D'Eath were quite ordinary, the same sort of books that numerous students checked out to help with their schoolwork. However, after a not inconsiderable period of looking, Sunset did come across one entry that struck her as a little unusual: A Compendium of Notable Weapons and their Deeds.

    Now, it was possible that this was for a history assignment of some kind, but — while admittedly Doctor Oobleck wouldn't have been teaching the course then, and Sunset didn't know how whoever had held the chair then had approached the subject — it didn't seem to fit with the way that history was taught at Beacon, albeit if this had been Haven Academy, she might have believed that it was for classwork.

    But as this was Beacon, Sunset did not believe it. And besides, she recalled that it was Crocea Mors that had first started Crown D'Eath off upon his own search for the truth.

    So Sunset sought out the book and counted herself fortunate that it was still in the library; judging by the amount of dust on it as she pulled it off the shelf — it made her sneeze a couple of times — it didn't get read very often; it would have been just her luck if it had been got rid of.

    She took it back to her table, opened it up from the back and scanned the index to find the entry for Crocea Mors.

    Sunset had already know that Crocea Mors was the name of a famous sword: the sword of Jaune of Gaunt, fourth son of King Edward Farstrider — the king whom Olivia, of the eponymous song, had been in love with; in fact, according to legend, it was Olivia who had placed the sword in Jaune's hand and knighted him.

    Sunset had already known that. What she had not been expecting was to turn to the page and see a drawing that looked exactly like Jaune's sword. Or at least, that looked exactly as Jaune's sword had looked before it had been broken. The length, the shape, the hilt — the hilt was the most telling thing, to Sunset's mind; swords might come in similar shapes and sizes depending on the type of sword they were, but you would expect hilts to have a little more variety about them. But this … she might have been looking at Jaune's sword.

    She was looking at Jaune's sword: the sword of Jaune of Gaunt and the lately broken sword of Jaune Arc.

    The illustration was accompanied by a potted biography which ended by concluding that the sword had been lost during the Anarchy that followed the death of King Aethelred.

    Someone — and Sunset had a good idea who — had scrawled underneath the words In the family all this time.

    So … Crown D'Eath discovers that Carrot's sword has the same name as this famous blade, and he must have seen illustrations of the famous Crocea Mors before, and rushes off to confirm that they are — to his satisfaction, at least — the same weapon.

    And this makes him try and break up Carrot and his Mistralian girlfriend and then go on a killing spree.

    No, it makes him kill the girl and a Councillor.

    And just like that, all the pieces fell together in Sunset's mind.

    Crown D'Eath, moody, bitter, obsessed with the past and with the lost glories of his noble family, Crown D'Eath who lamented the downfall of the monarchy, Crown D'Eath had killed one councillor and probably intended to kill others and create a power vacuum.

    And he had murdered Delphi because she was not worthy to be consort to the rightful King of Vale.

    XxXxX​

    Pyrrha remained upon the cliffs.

    Yang had gone. With good fortune, she had gone to reconcile with Ruby, or at the very least, she had gone to wait for Ruby's apology in a better frame of mind and heart than she had been in before.

    In any case, she had gone, but Pyrrha remained.

    She remained upon the cliffs, with her long red ponytail dancing behind her as the breeze blew in from the Emerald Forest, kissing her face and her bare shoulders.

    She remained upon the cliffs and looked out, across the forest, across the world, and pondered upon her situation.

    What could she do? What could she do about Phoebe and her allegations, about her feelings of … inadequacy, about all of this?

    What could she do?

    Phoebe — assuming it was Phoebe, and while she had not quite admitted as much, she could not be said to have gone out of her way to deny it either — had alleged these things about her. Kendal, Arslan, they had both asked Pyrrha what she intended to do about it, but … what could she do? Phoebe had admitted nothing, and even if she had admitted it, to challenge her … it could easily be thought to be the act of a guilty person.

    A denial would be pro forma, expected.

    What could she do then, save hope that those — like Ren and Nora — would judge her by her deeds and not the words of…?

    Judge me by my deeds.

    Pyrrha's brow furrowed. Could it … could it be so simple? Had the answer been staring her in the face this entire time?

    Have I been such a fool?

    No, not a fool — although Sunset will call me a fool, no doubt, when she hears what I have in mind — say rather that I have been too little of a Mistralian to see the answer right before my eyes.

    I have been … I have been too concerned to be ordinary, and yet, I am not ordinary. I am Pyrrha Nikos, and I have a claim upon the old ways if any have such.

    And yet, for all that she could explain it, nevertheless, the answer seemed now to her so simple that she did feel a little obtuse for having missed it previously.

    Or perhaps I was not desperate enough to take it previously.

    Phoebe alleged that Pyrrha and Cinder were in cahoots, in league together, allies; Cinder haunted Pyrrha's mind, the memory of their battle under Mountain Glenn had shaken her; many things had shaken Pyrrha; she was no longer certain that her skill at arms was sufficient to avail her in this great struggle.

    What, then, to do? Why, bind them together and slice through the whole knot of them at once. Prove Phoebe wrong, prove to herself that she had a place in all this, exorcise Cinder from her spirit … and from life itself.

    Jaune … she had already broken her promise to Jaune once.

    But, if she spoke to him about it before she did it, he was sure that he would understand.

    She had hope that he would understand.

    At the same time, she was rather glad she hadn't thought of this in Kendal's presence, for she had a feeling that Jaune's sister would not have understood.

    If I am Pyrrha Nikos, I will triumph.

    Pyrrha looked down. The cliff fell away beneath her, down and down to the forest below.

    She was poised to leap from it, for what rewards awaited her on the other side.

    Pyrrha turned away from the cliffs, turning her back upon the physical leap in favour of the spiritual, and got her scroll out of one of the pouches on her belt.

    She called her mother. It took her but a few moments to answer.

    "Pyrrha," Mother said, "I did not expect to hear from you again so soon."

    "No, Mother, but I have had a thought," Pyrrha said. "I would like you to cease your legal action against the Daily Remnant; a victory in the courts will convince no one."

    Mother's eyes narrowed. "This insult must be answered."

    "And it will be, in the old way," Pyrrha said. "I will answer these allegations, and much else, in a way that proves their falsehood beyond doubt.

    "I mean to publicly challenge Cinder to single combat."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 55 - Why We Keep Secrets
  • Threadmarks
    • Why We Keep Secrets

    ​

    Mother was silent for a moment, looking up at Pyrrha from out of the screen of her scroll. "I see," she murmured.

    "But you do not approve," Pyrrha said, in a tone that was equally soft.

    "I question the practicality," Mother replied. "We are, after all, discussing some variety of brigand. What makes you think she will accept this challenge? Or is to make the challenge the entire purpose, with no expectation that it will be answered? Because if that be the case, I fear you may only make yourself look foolish."

    "Cinder will accept," Pyrrha insisted. "She is a Mistralian, and steeped in the old ways, and…"

    Mother's brow furrowed. "'And'?" she repeated.

    "And she bears me animus," Pyrrha explained. "She … hates me, I believe. She will not refuse a chance to kill me."

    "I see," Mother whispered. "Is she skilled, this Cinder Fall?"

    "She is ferocious," Pyrrha allowed. "I would not call her skilled."

    Mother hesitated for a moment, and Pyrrha could feel through the scroll the question that was not said, the question that her mother wished to ask but could not ask: Can you win?

    But, in the end, her mother did not ask; either she feared to seem as though she doubted her daughter, or else her pride in Pyrrha was too great to acknowledge the possibility that Pyrrha might not win…

    Or else that was not the question that had lingered upon the tip of her tongue, and Pyrrha had only thought that it might be.

    "You are my only child," Mother said. "My heir, the last of our line-"

    "And I will be your only child when this is done," Pyrrha declared. "I will be the last of our line still until I have a child by Jaune, as I mean to. Mother, I do not take this step to throw away my life. There is peril in it, true, but there is peril in many things in the life of a huntress. I take this step… because I would be shamed, before the great-hearted Mistralians, if I did nothing."

    "Shame," Mother murmured. "I see. You believe that by this gesture, you will effectively silence all those who dare to speak of collusion between the two of you?"

    "I am under no illusions," Pyrrha said. "There will always be malcontents who dislike me, who envy me, who wish to see me … cut down to size. But for the rest, for those who judge with their eyes and with their minds … I do not see how it can be denied that these are falsehoods."

    "Some may argue that you have staged a battle to exonerate yourself."

    "When one of us stands and the other falls, no one will call that staged," Pyrrha said, quietly but firmly all the same.

    Mother gave a slight nod of her head. "I am … surprised," she said. "I would not have expected such … I would not have expected this."

    "Am I become more the daughter that you wished in your eyes?" Pyrrha asked and could not keep a touch of bitterness entering her voice.

    "Is that what you think?" Mother replied. "That I wished that you were otherwise?"

    "Is it not so?" Pyrrha said.

    Mother did not reply, either to say yes or no, which to Pyrrha's mind was an answer, even if it were not the answer that she wished to receive.

    "Very well," Mother said. "I will cease the legal action — although I may hold off on doing so until I have extracted a retraction from them. You are right that it will have no discernible impact upon opinion, but it would stick in my craw to simply leave the matter uncontested. If that meets with your approval."

    Pyrrha's eyebrows rose beneath her circlet. "I was not aware that your actions required my approval, Mother."

    "You have made clear that you intend to handle this yourself," Mother said. "I wouldn't want to get in your way."

    Pyrrha was shocked into silence by that. Mother had never spoken to her like that before, never shown that much trust in her before.

    That, as far as she was concerned, was proof that she had always wanted Pyrrha to behave like this, or at least more like this, whatever Mother might say to the contrary.

    "The threat … may remain," she allowed. She agreed with Mother; she didn't like the idea of the article standing as it was, however unlikely any kind of retraction was to change any minds.

    "Very well," Mother said. "In that case, I will leave the matter in your hands, Pyrrha." She was silent for a moment. "Good fortune attend you, and Victory shower you with her blessings. And take, also, a mother's blessing on your arms."

    Pyrrha bowed her head. "Thank you, Mother."

    "Always be the best, the bravest," Mother said, citing the unimpeachable authority of The Mistraliad, "and hold your head up high above all others."

    I will discover … perhaps not if I am the best, Pyrrha thought, but I will at least be able to hold my head up once again.

    "Words I will always endeavour to live up to," Pyrrha said. "Goodbye, Mother."

    She hung up and lowered her scroll down to her side, letting her arms hang loosely on either side of her. She raised her head up to the sky and let a sigh escape her.

    Now came the harder task: telling Sunset and Jaune about what she planned to do.

    XxXxX​

    Sunset looked down at the page, with Crown D'Eath's handwritten scribble underneath the closing paragraph.

    He had certainly believed it. He had come here, he had compared the picture of a sword to the actual sword wielded by his friend, and he had believed that they were one and the same.

    More than that, he had believed that it was proof that Carrot Arc was the rightful King of Vale.

    Well, perhaps that was making the man seem more deranged than was warranted — although given what he'd done with this information… — if Sunset were to look at what other books he'd checked out of the library, and she meant to do just that, she would probably find that he had at least attempted to trace the descent of Jaune of Gaunt in some way that would connect him to the Arc family. Although how he had done that, considering the desire of Bohemund Arc — had Arc even been his name before he walked out of the woods and founded Alba Longa? Had his parents even named him Bohemund? — to shut the book on his past, Sunset couldn't say.

    She was not entirely sure that she wanted to know.

    It was funny; she had suggested this idea as a joke. The two swords had the same name, so wouldn't it be funny if it turned out that they were, in fact, the same sword? Wouldn't it be funny if Jaune were the heir to the throne of Vale, the way that Pyrrha was the heir to Mistral?

    Wouldn't it be funny?

    It was funny, of course, to the extent that it was actually funny, because it was ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that despite her words at the spa, Sunset would never have dared suggest the idea to Lady Nikos. It was absurd to think that Jaune Arc — plain, ordinary Jaune Arc — could be a secret king in hiding. Pyrrha at least had the manners of a princess, the grace and bearing, the courtesy, but Jaune … he was just so normal, so ordinary, it defied belief that he could be more than what he seemed, more than what he was.

    Not that there was anything wrong with being ordinary, but one hoped — or certainly, Sunset hoped — that those who were touched by royal blood, those whose brows were graced by a crown, or at least were fitted by their birth and heritage to be so, might be something a little more.

    Wouldn't it be funny?

    No, as it turned out, no, it wouldn't.

    Not least because someone had believed in this so strongly that they'd gone out and committed two murders in consequence and had to be put down like a dog by their best friend, which kind of sucked a lot of the humour out of the situation.

    It left Sunset feeling a little queasy, to tell the truth.

    One might say, of course, and rightly so, that that was just the action of one man, one bitter, lonely man who had — by the testimony of his own friend and partner — not been in the best state of mind to begin with. Everyone knew about Pyrrha's heritage and nobody had yet gone on a killing spree to try and put her on the throne.

    And if one were to say that, Sunset would have to concede that it was fair enough.

    Yet even so…

    She supposed that she ought to have expected that it would be something like this. It would, after all, have to be something pretty big to drive one man to kill, to drive another to be desperate to keep it a secret. A shady past might make one ashamed, the revelation that your ancestor had been a brigand, a cutthroat, or a pirate might make you desperate to bury the past, but if someone did happen to find out those things, they would hardly drive them to try and break you up with the girl you loved, to kill that girl when persuasion didn't work, and then turn those weapons upon an elected Councillor.

    Although that did raise the question of why Carrot Arc had been so adamant about wanting Crown to keep it quiet. Why? Why had it bothered him so?

    Just as importantly, had his grandfather known when he decided to leave his past behind?

    Sunset doubted that she would ever know the answer to that — so perhaps it wasn't that important — but if she had to make a guess on the first question … that was also difficult. Perhaps he simply didn't want the fuss? Perhaps he wanted a normal life, a life where he was free to go about his business, to do as he wished without people expecting something of him, wanting something of him, requiring something of him? To be free to court Delphi without people insisting that she wasn't good enough for him.

    Perhaps he really didn't want the throne and hadn't wanted any excuse for anyone to offer it to him. Perhaps he believed in democracy and wanted to give it a chance to flourish without a king in waiting hanging around like a bad smell.

    Perhaps he had been worried about what people might do to keep him off the throne, even if he had not foreseen what Crown would do to get him onto it.

    Perhaps … Sunset was a monarchist — she believed in monarchy — but at the same time, she could not help but recall the times when she had stood at Princess Celestia's side during the Grand Galloping Gala and noticed, as no one who was not as close to the princess as she had been would notice, the tiredness on her face, the weariness in her eyes as she greeted an endless parade of little ponies come to kiss her hoof.

    Indeed, for all that there could have been and could be no better ruler for Equestria than Princess Celestia, nevertheless, Sunset had sometimes thought that her old teacher did not actually enjoy the exercise of government very much. Perhaps Carrot Arc had had a vision of his future and recoiled from it.

    Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps; all unknowables, the secrets of the souls of men long dead and dust.

    Sunset could not say what they had intended, these men who had lived generations earlier.

    Nor, more to the point, could she say entirely what she intended now.

    Of course, this was not proof. It was a drawing of a sword, a drawing made when the sword itself had been lost — although the accuracy of the drawing suggested it was based on earlier illustrations drawn from the life — and, thanks to Cinder, Crocea Mors would probably not resemble itself quite so much when it had been reforged.

    And even if one were satisfied that they were, in fact, the same sword, well, it was a sword, after all. Sunset bore Soteria, but that did not make her a Nikos or a Kommenos. Blades could pass from one hand to the other; who was to say how the Arcs had come by it? It would take more than that to prove that Jaune Arc was the descendant of Jaune of Gaunt, and even if he were, the Gaunt claim to the Valish throne — resting as it did upon the marriage of Gaunt's son, Hal, to his cousin Philippa, a granddaughter of Edward Farstrider via his second son, Lionel, thus making Hal and Philippa's son a descendant of King Edward from both his second and fourth sons — had been contested even when it had been pressed, and there was no legal or historical consensus on whether or not descent through the female line 'counted' in succession terms.

    But, with the throne vacant, the last king having died childless after already renouncing his power, and with all of the possible claimants being what one might call tenuous in their claims, one could do worse than a descendant of Edward Farstrider, the first king of a united Vale.

    But still, not proof. Sunset found herself hoping that Crown D'Eath had found something more than this, if only because a drawing of a sword was a poor reason to take two lives.

    She checked the ledgers, sweeping over the pages looking for further instances of Crown D'Eath's name.

    As she had suspected, he had looked at genealogies, no doubt tracing the descent of the line of Gaunt and seeing if he could make it meet up in the middle with the line of Arc … somehow.

    Presumably, he had done that to his own satisfaction, and done so to sufficient extent that Carrot Arc's reaction had been to tell him to keep it to himself instead of laughing it off or pointing out mistakes.

    Nevertheless, Sunset wasn't sure that she wanted to know exactly how he had done that.

    Just as she wasn't sure what she was going to do next.

    Jaune Arc, the heir to the throne of Vale.

    Possibly, at least. Maybe more than possibly, if she were to look into it as Crown had, if she were to retrace his steps up to the point there started to be blood in the footprints.

    And then what? Tell Lady Nikos? That, after all, was the entire point of the exercise. Not to put Jaune on the throne, not to satisfy Sunset's curiosity, not to tell Jaune himself anything about his past, but to prove to Lady Nikos that here was a man whose birth made him worthy of her daughter.

    Tell Lady Nikos that a sword, and a drawing of a sword, and possibly some genealogical research made Jaune a claimant to the Valish throne. And then … what? Sunset was not above the idea of a little deception of Lady Nikos for the sake of Jaune and Pyrrha — she owed Lady Nikos much, and liked her more than Pyrrha did, but she owed more loyalty to Pyrrha and Jaune than she did to her noble patron, and in any case, she thought that a lie that would help Lady Nikos save face in the salons and drawing rooms of Mistral, a lie that would help her retreat from her hostility to Jaune with some shreds of dignity intact, was precisely what Lady Nikos had been looking for — but she would not have told this particular lie, for all that she joked about it. She would not have told that lie because it was too obvious a lie, the sort of lie that would be instantly disbelieved by all, the sort of lie that would compound Lady Nikos' humiliations in society instead of relieving them.

    The sort of lie that would not help matters.

    Truth though it might be, Sunset couldn't see how this would help matters either. Yes, if Jaune had a claim on the Valish throne, that would make him a fitting consort to the Princess Without a Crown, but the problem was that … well, it sounded like a lie. It sounded like a barefaced lie, the kind that provoked instant scepticism.

    Which meant it sort of defeated the object of the exercise.

    What was Sunset supposed to do? Tell Lady Nikos, who could tell it to all her friends — or at least her acquaintances amongst Mistral's noble families — and then have Jaune's life and the lives of his family turned upside down as people turned over his family history to confirm it?

    A fine team leader she would be to subject him to that.

    It occurred to Sunset that, if more people did head up to Alba Longa and start poking around Jaune's family history, then there was a chance that Ruben's faked photos and the whole business of Pyrrha apparently kissing another man might come out.

    After all, recent events were proving that there was some audience for people who wanted a reason or an excuse to think ill of Pyrrha.

    The more Sunset thought about it, the more Sunset found that there were plenty of reasons to keep quiet about all of this and, really, very few reasons not to.

    Saying anything, even if she were to wait until she had as much evidence as Crown D'Eath had had … what good would it do Jaune, or Pyrrha, or even Lady Nikos?

    It might help Jaune to be known as somebody when he and Pyrrha inevitably went to live in Mistral, but again, to be known as someone who had tried to pretend to be somebody might be even worse than being thought a nobody.

    And that was even without getting into the issue of just to what extent, if at all, Lady Nikos deserved to have her pride salved in such a way after how she'd behaved.

    Sunset blinked. That was definitely a Pyrrha thought, one left over from Sunset's use of her semblance upon her.

    Even so, what was not a Pyrrha thought was the possibility that, Pyrrha having made her choice, Lady Nikos should just accept it with as much grace as she could muster. Sometimes, after all, you simply had to bow before the inevitable, and the love that Pyrrha had for Jaune, the love that they shared, was as inevitable as the tide.

    And that was before you circled right back around to the fact that someone had killed over this. Someone had killed, and someone had died.

    At some point, the footsteps she was following had blood in them.

    Sunset was Lady Nikos' … her client, you might say, after the old meaning. Lady Nikos was her patron and her benefactor. But Jaune and Pyrrha were Sunset's teammates and her friends; she was their leader, and she was bound to them by ties of loyalty, honour, one might even say duty.

    One might say that she had already taken her loyalty to Jaune and Pyrrha too far, but that being the case, taking it to the extent of keeping this little secret didn't seem like such a big deal.

    In fact, it seemed downright harmless. Especially when one considered the alternative.

    Pyrrha had not fallen in love with a prince. Well, quite possibly she had, and even moreso when you added in the possible metaphorical meanings of the word, but leave that alone for now, and just … she hadn't fallen in love with a prince, okay? She had fallen in love with a nice boy, who she thought maybe could be a prince with her help.

    That was all she wanted, and it wasn't as if Jaune was consumed with a burning desire to know all the secrets of his past either.

    If neither of them wanted to know, then … what profit in bringing it up?

    And when you considered that the generations of Arc men who came before had intentionally — in Carrot's case, at least, Bohemund's motives being opaque — wanted to keep this a secret, well then … who was Sunset Shimmer to argue?

    It wasn't as though she was committed to the principle of absolute truth, after all. She had no issue with secrets; she only disagreed with whether some secrets ought to be kept.

    That being the case…

    Sunset shut the book. Let it lie and let Lady Nikos suffer her disappointment. No doubt, like a true aristocrat, she would bear it stoically.

    Else Sunset would have to bear her disappointment.

    She put the book back on the shelf, put the ledgers back where Tukson could find them, and stepped outside to get out her scroll.

    Sunset was about to call Lady Nikos, when she started to wonder if it might seem a little premature. After all, it had only been this morning that she had told Lady Nikos that she still had leads to pursue.

    So she would let it lie for a little while, and then tell Lady Nikos that she had come up empty.

    That way she wouldn't be seen — or presumed — to have intentionally slacked off.

    She kept her scroll out, though, because there was someone else, another keeper of secrets, to whom she wanted to send a message.

    Sunset opened up her device and messaged Professor Ozpin, asking if the team might not have a moment of his time that evening.

    XxXxX​

    "Hello again," Pyrrha said, as she stepped through the doorway and back into the dorm room.

    "Hey, Pyrrha," Ruby said from where she and Jaune sat at the desk that ran along the wall; their heads had been bowed, huddled together upon their work, but now, Ruby looked up at her. "How did it go with Yang?"

    Pyrrha blinked. "She hasn't been to see you?"

    Ruby's face fell. "No. No, she hasn't."

    "In which case, she's probably waiting for you to apologise," Pyrrha said. "And … in all honesty, Ruby, it's hard to argue that you shouldn't, but I'm sure that she will be in a receptive mood to hear your apology."

    "But I still have to say I'm sorry," Ruby muttered.

    "You did keep some things from her which she had a right to know," Pyrrha pointed out.

    "Only because Professor Ozpin—"

    "I know," Pyrrha assured her. "I know, and I do not deny that you were put in a difficult position. But from Yang's perspective … I think that to come to you would be tantamount to an admission that she was wrong in her upset and her reactions, and that … that is not a step that she is prepared to take."

    "Come on, Ruby," Jaune added. "Is it really that hard to tell her your sorry?"

    "Just because it's easy doesn't mean that I like doing it," Ruby grumbled. "But … I guess it isn't. And you think if I do that then it'll all be over."

    "I am sure it will," Pyrrha assured her. "Yang … your sister loves you very much."

    Ruby nodded. "Okay then," she said. "I'll go and talk to her."

    This apparently did not mean that she would go and talk to Yang right this instant, because she made no move to get up from her chair next to Jaune.

    Pyrrha took a few more steps into the dorm room. "How are you two getting on?"

    "Pretty well, I think," Jaune said, turning his chair around on the carpet so that he was facing her. "I'm going to keep my sword basically the way it is, so that all of the training that we've been doing so far isn't wasted, but I'm also going to incorporate dust to give myself more options."

    "I see," Pyrrha said. "That makes sense."

    She only used dust in the most ordinary way, as a propellant; she'd found that she had no more use for it than that, and in any case, it would have been very hard to incorporate additional uses into her fighting style; she couldn't imagine any way in which she could have used dust based on the way she fought now. But Jaune, still at the beginning of his journey as he was in so many ways, was still free to make that choice and make that move if he so wished, and since he was not so well trained as she was, the addition of dust's power — and its versatility — might be a boon for him.

    "Are you going to augment the sword and the shield or just the sword?"

    "Just the sword," Jaune explained. "I thought about upgrading the shield too, but it didn't really work out when we were throwing ideas around. But with Ruby's help, I think that I'll be able to use the sword to project fire dust, or ice, or the most common types of dust that I could get hold of easily and at the right price."

    "You don't have to worry about the money," Pyrrha told him. "I could—"

    "I don't want to mooch off you," Jaune said.

    "We're in a relationship; it's hardly … mooching," Pyrrha said, the word sounding a little strange on her tongue.

    "But the more expensive kinds of dust are also the harder to come by," Jaune pointed out. "I don't want to rely on something that I can't get hold of."

    That was a very good point, a very wise point. "Yes, you're right, of course," Pyrrha said. In any case, she didn't want to push him on this particular subject, not when there might have to be some pushing of a different sort in just a moment.

    She looked around the dorm room. There was no sign of Sunset, there was obviously no sign of Sunset, and yet in any case, Pyrrha asked, "Sunset isn't back yet?"

    "No, not yet," Jaune said. "Did you want her?"

    "Yes," Pyrrha admitted, "but it might be easier to begin without her." She took a deep breath, her chest rising and falling as much as her tight cuirass would allow. "After I spoke to Yang, I gave some thought to my situation with the allegations made by … by Phoebe."

    "You agree that it was her?" Jaune asked.

    "I ran into her on the way to speak to Yang," Pyrrha said.

    "Did she admit it?" asked Ruby.

    "Not in as many words," Pyrrha replied. "In any case, even if the allegations were made by someone else, it really doesn't matter, because I have decided what I am … what I can do about them."

    "Really?" Ruby asked. "What is it?"

    Pyrrha kept her eyes fixed on Jaune, even as her right hand began to play with the vambrace upon her left arm. "I … I intend … I mean to challenge Cinder, publicly, to single combat. This will, I hope, prove that we are not on the same side. How can we be, if I am willing to duel her to the death?"

    She was quite glad that Sunset wasn't in the room at the moment — for all that it meant that she would have to do this over again — because she was reasonably certain that Sunset's reaction would have been very loud. Instead, in the dorm room at this moment, there was silence.

    Although, as the silence went on, Pyrrha found that she wasn't sure if that was actually that much better.

    "Jaune?" she murmured.

    Jaune did not meet her eyes. He did, however, get to his feet. One hand rested upon the wooden surface of the desk.

    "'Publicly'?" he repeated. "What does that mean?"

    "It means," Pyrrha replied, "that I'm going to make a video containing my challenge — as well as a denial of all the allegations — and ask for Arslan's help getting it on the news. She has a few media connections that I'm hoping she will let me make use of."

    "In Vale?" asked Jaune.

    "No, in Mistral," Pyrrha said. "It's important — to me, at least — that people in my home know what I have done and how I have responded to this."

    "That won't help it reach Cinder, though, will it?" Jaune pointed out.

    The fact that he was concerned that her message might not reach its intended recipient gave Pyrrha hope that he was not completely and adamantly opposed to the idea.

    "I was just going to send it to the news programs here in Vale and hope that they found it interesting enough to play it," she admitted. After all, as far as she was aware, Arslan didn't have any connections here in Vale, so there wasn't much else that she could do.

    "They probably will," Jaune said quietly, "just because it's such a strange thing to happen. I mean, it's not very often these days that you get someone wanting to air their challenge to a duel on TV."

    His words might have been amusing, but there was no trace of amusement in his voice. Overall, Pyrrha was left confused about what he thought.

    "I … I know that I made you a promise," Pyrrha said, "and I know that if I were to have simply done this thing, then I would have been breaking that promise, but … two people cannot fight in single combat, any more than two people can fight in the one on one round of the Vytal Festival—"

    "Nobody dies in the Vytal Festival. It's not the same thing."

    The words, spoken in a harsh tone, did not come from Jaune. They came from Ruby.

    Ruby, who was glaring at Pyrrha with her silver eyes, her silver eyes which shone brightly.

    "Ruby—"

    "I don't believe this," Ruby cut Pyrrha off, her voice rising. "After the way that you've treated me? After the way that you've talked to me?"

    "Ruby—"

    "All those times when I was willing to give my life, it was for something!" Ruby cried, leaping up off her seat. "It was for the greater good, it was for Vale, it was for innocent civilian lives; what are you prepared to die for, your pride? Your reputation?"

    Pyrrha found herself forced to look away. There was, in truth, much force in Ruby's words; not enough force to sway her from her course, but enough to make her feel somewhat ashamed of herself and her past conduct.

    "I have to do this," she said softly.

    "Why?" Ruby demanded. "Why does it matter so much what other people think about you that you'd risk your life fighting Cinder, alone, when you don't have to?"

    "Cinder is our enemy," Pyrrha pointed out. "If I have the opportunity to kill her—"

    "Yes, we'd be better off if she were gone, and so would Remnant," Ruby agreed, "but you're not talking about hunting her down as a team, or even finding out where she is so that we can tell Professor Ozpin or General Ironwood and they can take care of her; you're talking about fighting her all by yourself. It's Mistr—" She cut herself off this time, covering her mouth with one hand.

    Despite herself, Pyrrha found a slight smile playing upon the corners of her lips. "Don't hold back on my account," she said.

    Ruby blinked. "It's Mistralian nonsense," she said.

    "Yes, yes, I suppose it is," Pyrrha said. "Or at least, I suppose that many of our traditions must seem like nonsense to those who are not raised in them."

    "It's a waste," Ruby insisted. "What you're talking about is just wasteful. It's one thing to die for something — that's something that we should all be ready to do as huntsmen — but to die for nothing? To die because you're too stubborn not to, because you're too proud … that's a waste of … of your life and of all the good that you could do."

    "Did not Olivia die for her pride?" Pyrrha asked.

    "Yes, but I never said that she was right about that; you just assumed I agreed with her and then gave me a hard time about it!" Ruby snapped.

    "For which I owe you an apology, clearly," Pyrrha murmured, "but this isn't just about my pride, Ruby, or my reputation. If that were all that were at stake, then I would agree with you that it did not justify what I am proposing."

    Ruby frowned. "Then what is it about?"

    "Me," Pyrrha said. "My place in all of this and the feeling that I am … I don't belong here," she admitted.

    Ruby's frown only deepened. "What are you talking about?"

    "I don't have your silver eyes, with which you can vanquish whole grimm armies in a moment!" Pyrrha cried. "I don't have Sunset's magic, which seems to constantly grow stronger and more versatile. I do not even have a semblance which lets me act as an invaluable support to my teammates. I am … I am a warrior. A skilled warrior, perhaps, but what of that? It is clear why Professor Ozpin chose Sunset, why he chose you, but I … Professor Ozpin could find a dozen in the halls of this school who can do the things that I can do."

    "You don't need magic to play your part," Ruby declared.

    "With respect, Ruby, that is easy to say when you have magic," Pyrrha replied.

    "The first Maidens didn't need magic to save the old wizard," Ruby pointed out.

    "And then they were rewarded with great magical power so that they might save the world," Pyrrha responded. "But if there is one thing that I can do… if I can vanquish Salem's champion, then at least I will prove to myself I have a part to play. You speak of waste? The waste will be if I refuse an opportunity to lay these doubts to rest and instead let them fester until they consume me. Then I will be no good to you or anyone else."

    Ruby was silent for a moment. "You … you really feel useless?"

    "Or something close to it," Pyrrha said quietly.

    "For how long?"

    "It started after we found out the truth about Salem," Pyrrha replied. "It got worse after Mountain Glenn."

    "I see," Ruby murmured. "I think you're wrong, but I see. But all the same—"

    "I don't like this," Jaune said, cutting Ruby off, although whether that was his intent or it had simply taken him that long to find something to say, Pyrrha could not tell.

    "Jaune?" Pyrrha murmured.

    "I don't like this," Jaune repeated. He looked at her, his brow furrowed, his jaw set. "But … but you've always believed in me, so now … when you need someone to believe in you, how can I not be that person? If you think that you can beat Cinder one on one, then go for it. No one has the right to stand in your way."

    It was the best response from him that she could have hoped for, and although Pyrrha had not been holding her breath, nevertheless, she felt a breath escaping her, a sigh of relief falling from her lips.

    "Thank you," she whispered.

    The door into the dorm room opened with a click, and the person who might feel as though she had a right to stand in Pyrrha's way walked in, head bowed, looking down at the scroll she was holding in one hand.

    "Sunset," Pyrrha said.

    Sunset glanced up at her, one hand reaching for the door. "Hey, Pyrrha," she muttered. "How, um, how did it go with Yang?"

    "Well enough, I think," Pyrrha answered. "I believe that if Ruby—"

    "Pyrrha's going to challenge Cinder to a duel!" Ruby cried.

    "Ruby," Pyrrha murmured reproachfully, glancing at Ruby over her shoulder.

    "I might not be able to talk you out of this, but Sunset can," Ruby declared.

    Sunset herself slammed the door shut with an audible crack. "I must be getting wax in my ears," she said in a voice that was as sharp as Soteria, "because I could have sworn that I just heard Ruby say you were going to challenge Cinder to a duel. But that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it?"

    "It … might seem so, if you were not a Mistralian," Pyrrha admitted, "but nevertheless, that is what I intend."

    Sunset stared at her for a moment. Without breaking eye contact, she flung her scroll onto her bed, its contents seeming forgotten.

    "You … you are going to challenge Cinder to fight you in a duel?" she repeated. "To the death, I presume."

    "I am not sure she would accept any other form of duel," Pyrrha said. "And we are enemies, after all."

    "I'm aware of that, that's why…" Sunset trailed off. "Why?"

    "To prove to the world that she and I are not colluding together," Pyrrha said, "and to prove to myself that I can beat her."

    "To prove … this is how you deal with your misgivings?"

    "Can you think of a better way?" asked Pyrrha. "You cannot speak away my doubts, but victory … victory will exorcise them all. If I can best her, I need not doubt my worth. If Cinder is worthy to serve Salem and I am her superior in arms, then … how can my right be doubted?"

    "None doubt it now but you," Sunset pointed out.

    "None need be more free of doubt in this than I," Pyrrha replied.

    Sunset frowned. "How are you even—?"

    "I will issue my challenge publicly, on the news," Pyrrha said. "An unorthodox way of delivering it, to be sure, but I feel it will reach Cinder, and once it reaches her, she will respond."

    "Yes, yes, she certainly will," Sunset murmured. "This … this is madness. You must realise that, please, tell me that you realise that; I mean … what do you think this is, The Mistraliad?"

    "You have yourself—"

    "This isn't like fighting Bolin in the arena over who gets to keep a sword, or the two of us settling our differences while Professor Goodwitch plays referee; we're talking about life or death here!" Sunset yelled. "Your life … your … your death, maybe."

    "I intend to return alive and victorious," Pyrrha murmured.

    "But you can't guarantee that you will."

    "Nothing is certain in battle, no," Pyrrha admitted.

    Sunset walked towards her, swiftly closing the distance between them until she could reach out and placed her gloved hands on Pyrrha's bare shoulders.

    The silk was soft on Pyrrha's skin.

    Sunset's eyes were wide as she looked into Pyrrha's face. "She hates you," she whispered. "I have felt her hatred for you."

    "And that hatred is why I shall win," Pyrrha declared. "Cinder is … strong, yes, swift, undoubtedly, but she has had no training, that is certain. She fights … clumsily, brutally, without skill, and only the fact that she is so strong and so swift allows her to get away with it. But I have been trained by Chiron himself; I am the Champion of Mistral." For a few more days yet; this year's tournament would be starting very soon, and she would lose the right to that proud boast forever. "In the open field, with no tricks that she can play, I will prevail."

    'Virtue 'gainst Fury shall advance the fight,

    And in the combat then shall put to flight,

    For the ancient valous is not dead,

    Nor in Mistralian hearts extinguished.'

    I hope it will be so, at least.

    Sunset turned away from her, her tail swishing and flicking behind her. "I must confess, that is more thought than I thought you had put into this," she conceded.

    "I don't know whether to take that as a compliment or an insult," Pyrrha said.

    Sunset ignored that, cupping her chin with one hand. "I … I don't want to lose you," she said, half turning her head to glance at Pyrrha over her shoulder. "But … but, as someone once reminded me not too long ago, people have the right to make their own stupid choices, don't they, Ruby?"

    Ruby made a wordless grumbling sound.

    "Mmm, yeah," Sunset said. She turned back to face Pyrrha once again. "But," she said, "it may be that I — that we — do not have the right to stop you. But you have pledged yourself into Professor Ozpin's service; you are at his disposal. He at least should be informed of this, don't you think?"

    Because if you can't stop me, then he can? Pyrrha thought. Nevertheless, whatever her particular motives might be for this, Sunset was not wrong. She did owe Professor Ozpin her service, which meant that she owed him an explanation before she took this step.

    "Very well," she said. "I will speak to Professor Ozpin."

    "You can do it tonight," Sunset said, waving one hand, wreathed in green light, as she summoned her scroll off the bed and into her hand. "By a stroke of luck, he has agreed to meet with us."

    "To discuss the Maidens?" Pyrrha asked.

    "He doesn't know that yet, but yes," Sunset agreed. "Except now you'll have something else to discuss with him also."

    XxXxX​

    "I don't know whether you'll be glad to know this, although you might be," Sunset said as the elevator ascended upwards, "but I've stopped looking into your family, Jaune."

    The lift continued to rise, carrying the four members of Team SAPR up towards Professor Ozpin's office. The headmaster had agreed to see them with … well, perhaps it wasn't remarkable alacrity, but he had certainly shown a surprising willingness, considering that Sunset hadn't even told him what it was that they wanted to see him about.

    He might not feel so willing to talk once they actually got up there and he found out what it was that they wanted to talk about.

    Either of the things they wanted to talk about.

    But for now, the lift rose up, carrying the four of them within it.

    Sunset and Pyrrha stood at the front, with Ruby and Jaune behind; Sunset looked over her shoulder at Jaune, to see how he was taking the news.

    He didn't look particularly upset about it, although he did look a little confused. "But, I thought you said—"

    "It didn't pan out," Sunset told him. "I thought that there would be something, a trail to follow, but … there wasn't." She smirked. "It turns out that you are depressingly ordinary."

    "'Ordinary'?" Pyrrha repeated, reaching behind her to take Jaune's hand. "No, hardly that."

    "Would you prefer 'unremarkable'?" Sunset asked.

    Pyrrha looked at her, eyebrows rising into the recesses of her bangs.

    "Just kidding," Sunset assured. "Nevertheless, the point is … there was nothing to find. You don't have a notable ancestry that I can uncover."

    "Except for the fact that your father and grandfather were both huntsmen," Ruby pointed out. "And your great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather both fought to defend the Kingdom of Vale. That's not nothing. In fact, I'd say that's pretty cool. Cooler than having rich ancestors or snob ancestors or anything like that. No offence, Pyrrha."

    Pyrrha chuckled. "None taken, Ruby; I think that many of my ancestors would agree with you; that is why we of the Nikos family have always striven to earn our great privilege and high status through service in war." She paused for a moment. "But Ruby speaks the truth, even before you also consider that your great-grandfather founded a town, brought a whole community together."

    "Did he?" Ruby asked. "You didn't tell me that."

    Jaune shrugged. "It didn't come up."

    "The point is that you already have plenty of family history to be proud of," Ruby insisted. "And if Pyrrha's mom can't see that, then—"

    "My mother may feel as she likes," Pyrrha declared. "As may I. To be honest, I hope you don't mind me saying that I'm rather glad that things have turned out this way."

    "'Glad'?" Jaune asked.

    Pyrrha paused for a moment. "This … this may sound a little petty of me," she confessed, "but I would have, not hated it, but I would certainly have been a little vexed if you had turned out to have a claim upon some ancient lordship or the like, if your family heritage had been such that my mother could have approved of. It would have felt a little as though she had won."

    Despite the fact that, by that logic, there was a sense in which Lady Nikos had won — not that she would ever be aware of it — Sunset couldn't help but snort. "Would that have been such a bad thing?"

    "Yes," Pyrrha said softly. "Yes, I rather think it would. Mother … my mother needs to accept my choice. My choice over my life and to whom I give my heart. Having you fortuitously discover for her that my choice aligned with her desires all along would…"

    "Defeat the object?" Sunset suggested.

    "Jaune is not an object," Pyrrha replied.

    "No," Sunset agreed. "No, he isn't."

    Nevertheless, she felt as though she understood Pyrrha's meaning, even if the latter couldn't quite put it into words.

    She returned her attention to Jaune, "So, how do you feel about this? I'm sorry I couldn't give you a title or a claim on a pile of treasure or something."

    Jaune chuckled. "I—"

    "Please don't say something like 'I already have the greatest treasure I could ask for' or something," Sunset begged.

    "I mean, it's true," Jaune said.

    "I know it's true; doesn't mean that we have to hear it," Sunset replied, although she couldn't help but smile at the colour that appeared on Pyrrha's cheeks. "Seriously, though, how do you feel about it?"

    Jaune shrugged. "I don't really see that it makes much difference. I'm still me. I guess I would have still been me no matter what you found, but since you didn't find anything … I'm still me, Jaune Arc. And I don't have a problem with that."

    Well, you'll never achieve greatness with an attitude like that, Sunset thought, but it seems to be working out okay for you so far.

    And greatness is overrated anyway. Why seek it when you can be happy instead?

    "So," she said, "how do we want to approach this?"

    "We ask Professor Ozpin about Maidens," Ruby said.

    "I mean, yes, that is what we're here to do," Sunset conceded. "But how?"

    Ruby paused for a moment. "We ask him about Maidens," she said again.

    "Ruby is right," Pyrrha added. "There is no reason not to be direct about this. What other approach could we adopt?"

    That was a good point. Still, Sunset said, "Do we want to tell him about Raven?"

    "Why wouldn't we?" Ruby asked.

    "I suppose that's a 'yes' then," Sunset said. "I just wondered if you wanted to keep it to yourself."

    "He must know already," Jaune pointed out. "It's not like Professor Goodwitch wouldn't have told him."

    "She doesn't know what Raven said to Ruby and Yang, exactly, but fair enough," Sunset murmured. She took a deep breath. "Okay, straight up it is, in every sense."

    "Although," Jaune went on, "what are we actually going to do once we know the truth?"

    Sunset glanced at him. "What do you mean?"

    "I mean, say that Professor Ozpin tells us that we're right, that the Four Maidens are the four girls from the fairy tale and everything else, that Auburn and Merida from Ruby's Mom's journal were Maidens … so what? What does it mean for us, what are we supposed to do once we know that?"

    "It's a bit late to bring that up now, I must say," Sunset replied, "but in answer to your question, we're not supposed to do anything. We're supposed to know."

    "To know for what reason?" Jaune asked. "To what end?"

    "To the end of understanding," Pyrrha said, in a voice as gentle as an autumn breeze. "Understanding where the Maidens fit into all else that we already know of, where they fit into this struggle that we are a part of, understanding—"

    "Why they're kept secret," Sunset said.

    "Why they are not used," Pyrrha replied. "I can understand the secrecy from the rest of Remnant, in the same way that all else is kept secret, but … if Professor Ozpin has four Maidens at his command, why does he need us?"

    Sunset frowned. Pyrrha … I really wish that I could have found a way to give you your confidence back that didn't involve giving Cinder that rematch.

    And yet, now that the issue had been raised, Sunset found herself honestly unsure whether she wanted Professor Ozpin to deny Pyrrha's desire or not. Yes, Pyrrha could die, but Pyrrha believed that she could win, and if she did, then a great shadow would be lifted from her spirit.

    And Cinder would be dead.

    You can hardly say it isn't a fate she deserves.

    Is that really the point?

    If it is not, then … okay, I admit, I don't really want to see Cinder, but a choice between her and Pyrrha is no choice at all.

    I will choose Pyrrha, every time.

    Even if Pyrrha chooses to venture beyond my aid.

    "Because the Maidens could die," Ruby said.

    "Thanks, Ruby, for making it sound as though we're expendable," Sunset said as Ruby's words recalled her to the present moment.

    "I didn't," Ruby replied. "That's not what I … I shouldn't have said that; it was a terrible choice of words. What I meant was … the worst thing that could happen to us is that we die. The worst thing that could happen to one of the Maidens is that they die and someone like Cinder ends up with their powers. You get how that's worse, right?"

    "Indeed so," Pyrrha said, bowing her head slightly.

    Sunset did not answer; rather, in her silence, she glanced back at Jaune, who also said nothing.

    She hoped that he was thinking the same thing she was: worse than Pyrrha being dead, or Ruby?

    Judging by the frown on his face, she guessed that he was, if not actively thinking that way, then at the very least considering the possibility.

    Fortunately, Ruby took her silence to be implied agreement, or at least to be the absence of active disagreement, and so she didn't press Sunset — or Jaune, for that matter — upon the point.

    But when Sunset thought about their dead bodies, about their lifeless eyes staring, imploring … it didn't seem obviously better to her than some magical powers going to someone foul.

    That wouldn't be good, obviously, but would it be so much worse as to be worth their lives?

    If Sunset could have convinced herself of that, they'd all be dead already.

    She was spared from having to think of that any further by the opening of the elevator doors, admitting them into Professor Ozpin's office. It was dark outside, night having fallen, but the office itself was bathed in a soft green glow which matched Professor Ozpin's attire as he sat behind his desk.

    There were no chairs, nor in this instance was there a pot of cocoa — or anything else — to be seen; there was only Professor Ozpin, sat behind his desk, looking at something on the screen in front of him.

    As the four students entered, Professor Ozpin looked up at them; the light was not so bright that his expression could easily be discerned.

    The four students spread into a line facing the headmaster: first Sunset, then Ruby, then Pyrrha, then Jaune at the far end.

    "Professor," Sunset said. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with us."

    "Not at all, and good evening to you," Professor Ozpin said, his tone light and genial. "Miss Nikos, I'm not sure that I should be meeting with you without a bodyguard present."

    Pyrrha gasped. "Professor, I assure you that whatever is—"

    "Forgive me, Miss Nikos, that was an attempt at humour, and clearly a poor one at that," Professor Ozpin said apologetically. "I should have considered … rest assured, I know where your loyalties lie."

    Pyrrha glanced away, clutching at her right wrist with her left hand. "I … that is good to hear, Professor."

    Professor Ozpin got up. "Does it trouble you?" he asked.

    "To be so spoken of, Professor?" Pyrrha asked. "Should it not trouble me? Or do you counsel me that my reputation should be a thing of no concern to me, irrelevant?"

    "It may seem like a mere bromide, Miss Nikos, but I do believe that a clear conscience can be a salve against the hostility of the world," Professor Ozpin said softly. "I myself have found it so, at times."

    Pyrrha looked at him. "Surely … your reputation is beyond reproach, Professor."

    "As you are discovering, Miss Nikos, even a reputation that is beyond reproach can be sullied by gossip and rumour," Professor Ozpin replied, his voice low, as low as the lights in his office were dim.

    Professor Ozpin walked around his desk, approaching the four students, approaching Pyrrha specifically.

    Sunset had not quite appreciated how unnaturally tall Professor Ozpin was — he did spend an awful lot of time sitting down — until she saw him closing the distance with Pyrrha and beginning to loom over her.

    He reached out and placed a hand upon Pyrrha's bare shoulder.

    "And yet, always, I have found that rumour and gossip melt away in the face of truth revealed in the eyes of the people. When the moment comes to show your quality, as I am sure you will, then all of these lies will be as morning dew, and no one will dare admit to having once believed them."

    Pyrrha was silent for a moment. "I … I would have words with you, upon this matter, Professor, but … not now. After our other business is concluded, if you will."

    "Of course, Miss Nikos, you may say whatever you wish, in whatever order you wish," Professor Ozpin said. He turned away and walked back to his desk, resuming his seat behind it, facing them.

    "So," he said, resting his hands upon the desk, clasped together, "what can I do for you this evening?"

    Sunset glanced at Ruby, wondering if she wanted to take the lead — it was, after all, Raven's visit to her that had started them off on this — but before she could, if she had even wanted to, Pyrrha took a step forward.

    "If you will forgive us, Professor," she said, "we were hoping to talk to you…" — she swallowed — "about Maidens."

    Professor Ozpin did not say anything for a moment. A sigh passed between his lips. "Yes, I thought that this might happen after Glynda told me about Raven's latest visit. I understand that she gave you the name, but explained nothing."

    "That's right," Ruby murmured.

    "But we've managed to work out a fair amount for ourselves," Sunset added.

    Professor Ozpin looked at her. "Is that so, Miss Shimmer? By all means, then, tell me what you know, or at least believe you know."

    "The Story of the Seasons," Pyrrha began, "the fairy tale; it is more than just a story, isn't it, Professor? It is the … the origin of the Maidens. How four women had great power bestowed upon them."

    "But the power did not die with them," Sunset said. "Rather it was … passed on, somehow, so that there were always four Maidens at any given moment, and someone, whom we guess to be your predecessor, would find them and teach them and send them out into the world to do good works."

    "Just as the old man in the fairytale had charged the original sisters to share their gifts with the world," Pyrrha murmured.

    "But it didn't last," Sunset continued. "The Dark Mother — Salem, almost certainly — convinced the first Red Queen to kill one of the Maidens and take the power for herself."

    "She used it to strike down my ancestor, the Empress of Mistral, and ruled the city for a while as a tyrant," Pyrrha said. "Until she died."

    "But by that point, the Maidens were being hunted down and killed for their powers all over Remnant," Sunset said. "Until someone hunted down and killed the … the Red Queens. That was the work of this circle again, wasn't it, Professor? Our predecessors, and yours, killed the Maidens, and I'm guessing they possibly became the new Maidens themselves in consequence. Either way, at that point, this group decided to start hiding them away."

    "So that they could be kept safe, and Salem's agents couldn't get to them," Jaune added.

    "Auburn and Merida, whom my mother and father met," Ruby said. "They were Maidens, weren't they?"

    "And the woman who saved Twilight Sparkle and her family when they were attacked by grimm upon the road," Sunset said. "Although … if the Maidens are allowed to interfere in such a way, I'm not sure why there aren't more such stories."

    "With no insult intended to Miss Sparkle, that is not the kind of behaviour that I would have condoned," Professor Ozpin admitted. "However, the Winter Maiden has always been possessed of a certain rebellious spirit."

    "The girl who sat outside the cottage, meditating and contemplating?" Pyrrha asked. "Rebellious?"

    "An excellent point, Miss Nikos; that is a very poor choice of words," Professor Ozpin allowed. "Say rather … after a certain point, the Winter Maiden acquired a greater sense of pride than dwells in the others; in consequence, they have often chafed more against the authority of the leaders of this circle than the others have."

    "I see," Sunset said softly, even though she didn't really. "So … how did we do, Professor?"

    Professor Ozpin was silent for a moment. "Eight out of ten," he said.

    "Are you going to tell us what we got wrong, Professor?" Jaune asked.

    "Perhaps," Professor Ozpin said, reminding Sunset a little bit of why she hadn't liked him very much at first. "It may be easiest to begin at the end. Miss Rose, you were correct in all but one minor detail: Auburn and Merida were not both Maidens when I sent your parents and Team Stark on that mission. Auburn was, as you have correctly surmised, the Fall Maiden, but Merida did not become so until Auburn's death, not long after the mission."

    "Merida was … her successor?" Sunset asked. "You knew that already?"

    "There are ways of ensuring it," Professor Ozpin said, although he did not elaborate upon what those ways might be. "I wanted Auburn to be escorted to meet with Merida, and it seemed like a good opportunity to have someone whom I trusted evaluate Team Stark and their fitness to become a part of this struggle. I even considered if perhaps either Summer Rose or Raven Branwen might become a worthy Maiden themselves one day."

    "The Fall Maiden," Pyrrha said. "And the Winter Maiden. So those were the names of the four sisters: Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall?"

    Professor Ozpin rose from his chair and clasped his hands behind his back as he turned away from the students and walked towards the window. An Atlesian cruiser glided past, but from what Sunset could see of his reflection, Professor Ozpin seemed irritated by the stately motion of the airship, perhaps because it blocked his view out over Vale.

    "Is that one of your favourite fairytales, Miss Nikos?" he asked.

    "It is," Pyrrha murmured. "It is kind and gentle, and it reminds us that it is never too late to reach out to someone … or to be reached out to."

    In his reflection in the glass, it almost seemed as if Professor Ozpin smiled. "Indeed, Miss Nikos, and what a valuable lesson that is."

    "Where did the magic come from, Professor?" Sunset asked.

    "Does it matter, Miss Shimmer?" Professor Ozpin asked calmly. "Not from where you might think, or where you might fear, if that is your concern. The magic of the Maidens is nought to do with your world. Suffice to say that … that once upon a time, there was a wizard, an old man of great power but rather less wisdom … and still less resolve. He had lived long and suffered much; he had … suffered losses which hurt him, so that he preferred isolation to the possibility of pain's return."

    "Until he met the four sisters," Pyrrha said.

    Professor Ozpin chuckled. "Indeed. Four sisters who just so happened to agree to rendezvous outside his cottage. Four sisters travelling Remnant, helping those in need however they could. Four sisters who taught him … so much that he had forgotten."

    "This story is passed down through your ranks, isn't it, Professor?" Sunset asked. "Do you have his own account?"

    Professor Ozpin glanced over his shoulder at her. "In a manner of speaking, Miss Shimmer, that is correct." He paused for a moment. "The four sisters not only reinvigorated the wizard's passion for life, but also by their actions, by their journey, his passion for doing good in the world. And yet, he saw in them, in their virtues, in their success, something that was superior to anything he now recognized in himself. And so—"

    "And so he gave up his power, bestowing it upon the sisters instead," Pyrrha said. "Because he recognized that they were worthy of it. I'm sorry, Professor; I—"

    "Quite alright, Miss Nikos," Professor Ozpin assured her. "And quite correct. Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, the four sisters, and the four Maidens who from that day down to this have borne their names."

    "Why, Professor?" Ruby asked. "I mean, the four sisters in the fairy tale, they didn't need their magic to help the old man, the wizard. It didn't take magic to reach out to him, or to get him out of his house, or to show him to be thankful for the things that he had. What were they supposed to do as Maidens that they couldn't do as just four ordinary girls?"

    "Lead, Miss Rose," Professor Ozpin said. "Having bestowed his magic upon the four sisters, and despite having extracted from them all a promise that they would return and visit him again, the wizard left his cottage behind and returned to the world that he had turned his back upon. He founded this circle, took up the leadership of it, and gathered a few trusted, brave, like-minded individuals to stand with him and help him defend Remnant against the malice of Salem. But we work in shadows, and in secrecy, as you know. That was not the role he meant for the Maidens.

    "You are correct, Miss Rose, that the original sisters had not needed magic in order to be kind or generous, in order to teach the aged wizard how to laugh once more. Or at least, they had not needed the magic that he bestowed upon them. But, though, as they were, they could help others whom they met upon their journeys, they could not command devotion, inspire loyalty, teach whole peoples by the spread of their word.

    "An army is a symbol of strength, but also of conflict, for it is only conflict that creates the necessity of armies. A warrior can be a symbol of protection, but they are also symbols of violence, no matter who or what that violence is directed against; the very fact that they bear lethal weapons makes it so. But a Maiden, imbued with magic of many uses, able to fight but not existing for fighting … a Maiden could be a symbol of hope. It was the wizard's intention that while he and his allies worked in the shadows, the four Maidens would be the light."

    "But it didn't work out that way," Jaune said. "Because … because of Salem."

    "Indeed," Professor Ozpin said, in a voice that sounded more sad than angry. "Because of Salem. As you have guessed, Miss Shimmer, when the sources speak of the Dark Mother, they do, indeed, refer to Salem. It was she who first put into the head of a murderous bandit that she might acquire the powers of a Maiden by waylaying and murdering one of the Maidens, stealing and abusing the magic until what was meant to be a symbol of hope and inspiration became instead a symbol of terror and dominion." Professor Ozpin's voice shook. "Can you imagine, had the wizard lived long enough, how he would have felt, how he would have wept inside, to see his dream, his beautiful gift, perverted so by wicked, bloodstained hands?"

    No, I cannot, but Princess Celestia might, Sunset thought, as she looked away. For if any has lived long enough to see such times, it is she.

    Pyrrha clasped her hands together above her heart. "It must have been heartbreaking," she whispered.

    Professor Ozpin did not answer her. Rather, he said, "And so, as the power of the Maidens fell into the hands of evil, so, too, it fell to my predecessor to act. The Maidens had never been part of this circle's struggle against Salem, but in addition to all other duties, it had been the responsibility of the head of this group to seek out new Maidens, to train them, and to instruct them in the duties that had been bestowed upon them. Now, as those unworthy to receive such a gift abused it, it was his responsibility to … to protect the world. Gathering his allies, he set out, and one by one, the unworthy Maidens were brought low, the powers passing into hands more worthy and trustworthy both alike."

    "And then he hid them away," Sunset said.

    Professor Ozpin turned to face her, to face all of them. "Do I detect a note of disapproval in your voice, Miss Shimmer?"

    "Is disapproval such a strange response, Professor?" Sunset asked. "You said it yourself; the Maidens were intended to be the light, but you — or your predecessors, but you have continued their policy — have taken light out of the world. By your own words, you would rather the Winter Maiden had not stirred to rescued Twilight Sparkle and her family—"

    "One girl's life, however intelligent, however kind, however well-beloved she may be," Professor Ozpin said, "or even the lives of a single family … they can never be worth more than exposing the secrets of the Maidens once again to the world, to Salem."

    I think that Rainbow Dash, for one, would disagree with you, Sunset thought. In the specific, if not the general.

    "I do not believe it is worth the cost, Professor," Sunset said.

    "Does the past not clearly illustrate why the Maidens must be kept secret, Miss Shimmer?" Professor Ozpin asked. "If Salem's agents—"

    "Then guard them, Professor," Sunset declared, taking a step forward. "Set a constant escort upon them as they got about their work, such as would attend upon the kings of old, but this … to hide them?"

    "They are not confined in cloistered spaces, Sunset," Pyrrha pointed out. "Auburn was free to go to seek out Merida, and the Winter Maiden was free to intervene to aid Twilight, as much as Professor Ozpin might disapprove."

    "I am not suggesting that they have been imprisoned," Sunset clarified, "but even if they have their liberty … what good is their magic if all they do with it is hold onto it for fear of someone worse getting their hands on it?"

    "That's not the worst thing that they could do with it," Jaune said.

    "Yes," Sunset snapped, "yes, it is. Magic that is not used is magic that may as well not exist at all, and worse than that, because they have to keep themselves safe and hidden, they're not even allowed to use the non-magical gifts that they might possess. It's like the four sisters not only hiding the magic that had been given to them, but also not even being able to help anyone the way that they helped the old man, because even letting them out of the house is too risky."

    "What would you have me do, Miss Shimmer?" asked Professor Ozpin. "What would you have the Maidens do?"

    "All that they were empowered to do," Sunset said. "Lead, inspire, encourage, illuminate; even my own people, who are, I daresay, spiritually superior to men in every way—"

    "You dare say," Jaune said dryly.

    Sunset put one hand on her hip. "My people were not tearing our world to pieces in an existential war just four generations ago, so, yes, we are superior, excuse you." She returned her attention to Professor Ozpin. "But even we, even my people, of whom I am, I must concede, a poor example of the qualities of which I boast, even we require … exemplars. Paragons. Those who are raised, literally elevated into the skies, to whom all the rest who walk upon the ground may look up and see that here is the essence of virtue, here is an example to heed and to follow." She paused for a moment. "When the wizard bestowed the powers upon the first Maidens, did he know that they would endure following their deaths?"

    Professor Ozpin was silent for a moment. "I am not entirely sure, Miss Shimmer; that particular detail is not recorded," he said. "Why do you ask?"

    "Because, leaving aside the egregious flaw that one may kill a Maiden to obtain a Maiden's powers," Sunset said, "it strikes me the system of transfer, the system of ascension, is more fundamentally flawed still by the fact that powers can be bestowed before she on whom they are bestowed has done aught to earn them. To become an alicorn, as close as we have to what a Maiden was meant to be, one must first walk the path, one must demonstrate an understanding — a great and unparalleled understanding — of that which you will become princess of, one must do as those first four sisters did and earn the power and status that will accrue to you through virtue and accomplishment. The wizard blessed those sisters because they had earned a blessing and proved to him that they were worthy to wield his power … and yet, none of their successors are subject to such a test; it is just given to them. Even leaving aside Salem's malice and her interference, it is a miracle that no Maiden proved unworthy of her office even before the murders started."

    Again, Professor Ozpin took pause before replying, "I will not deny that your point has some validity, Miss Shimmer," he said. "And yet, I think you will agree that it is a little too late to do anything about it now."

    Sunset sighed. "I suppose so, Professor."

    "As for your other point," Professor Ozpin went on, "I see the force in what you say, I believe that you believe it, but … I must admit that I am not convinced. My predecessors have kept the Maidens secret these many years and in secrecy … in secrecy, they have been kept safe. I will not risk … I will not take the risks that would accrue from changing that."

    He sat back down at his chair, behind his desk. "I do not begrudge having come by this information; you have thought about the information set before you, and you have drawn your conclusions from it; you have, in many ways, shown yourselves to be model students." He chuckled softly. "Nevertheless, I hope that you understand that I do not propose to reveal the identities or the locations of the Maidens to you at this time, and I hope that I can count on your discretion in keeping these details to yourselves."

    "Does that include Team Rosepetal, Professor?" Sunset asked.

    Professor Ozpin hesitated for a moment. "You may tell your Atlesian friends what you have learned, what we have discussed here tonight. And Miss Belladonna also."

    Well, I was kind of including her as part of Team RSPT, but thank you anyway.

    "We will not tell a soul else, Professor," Pyrrha vowed.

    "Thank you, Miss Nikos," Professor Ozpin replied. "This information … even without the danger posed by Salem, if people knew that there existed in the world such great power … they would seek to use it, to take it for themselves, as the Red Queens did of old."

    "You don't trust people to do the right thing?" Ruby asked, sounding a little disappointed.

    "If all of the people could be trusted to do the right thing, to turn away from temptation, to renounce wrath, vengeance, or the desire for power, then Salem would have no followers, Miss Rose," Professor Ozpin. "I believe in people, but it is naïve to forget that there are always a few in whom that faith is misplaced." He paused. "Nevertheless, thank you for keeping my confidence. The time may come when you are ready to know more, but for now, I would bid you goodnight, save that Miss Nikos has something else she wishes to discuss with me."

    "Yes, Professor, thank you," Pyrrha murmured, taking a step forwards ahead of the others. "It is about … the issue that you brought up earlier, the allegations made against me. I … I should like to answer them by challenging Cinder Fall to meet me in battle and thus prove to the world that she and I have no connection to one another but an adversarial one.

    "I mean," she said, speaking quickly as though she were afraid that if she stopped and allowed Professor Ozpin to speak, he might not let her finish, "to issue my challenge via the news in Vale, to ensure that it reaches Cinder, and in Mistral, to ensure that it reaches all those who might otherwise think ill of me. I believe that Cinder will accept, and I hope that she will reach out to Sunset as she did before our mission to Mountain Glenn, to arrange the location and time of our meeting."

    Professor Ozpin said nothing for a moment. What little light there was in the office glinted off his spectacles, momentarily concealing his eyes from view.

    "I see," he murmured. "That is … an interesting notion, Miss Nikos. May I ask, is this entirely for the purpose of protecting your reputation in Mistral?"

    "No, Professor, I am not so vain as that," Pyrrha replied. "But I am … I am…"

    "You are troubled," Professor Ozpin said.

    Pyrrha bowed her head. "Yes, Professor. I feel … I feel as though I have little to contribute compared to my teammates."

    "Because you do not have magic, as they do?" Professor Ozpin asked.

    Pyrrha looked up. "Precisely, Professor."

    "Miss Nikos, before Summer Rose arrived in Vale, these eyes of mine had never gazed upon a Silver-Eyed Warrior," Professor Ozpin told her. "I knew of them, the knowledge had been passed down to me, but I assumed — as did my predecessors — that they were extinct, that Salem had hunted them down and killed them all. Of Equestrian servants, I have had none until Miss Shimmer; most visitors from her world have been more pain than blessing to Remnant, I must say. And yet, for these many years past, we of this little circle have held the line against Salem with nought but the same kind of skill and courage you possess."

    Pyrrha was silent for a moment. "That may be so, Professor," she conceded, "but nevertheless … perhaps it is vanity. Perhaps it is the fact that I have not covered myself in glory fit to match my elevated view of myself, but nevertheless … I do not feel … I must do this, not only — not even mostly — for the sake of my reputation here or in Mistral, but for the sake of my confidence. I wish to prove myself to myself, is that so ill?"

    "No, Miss Nikos, there is nothing ill in it," Professor Ozpin admitted. "In some ways, I suppose it is the most natural thing in the world, for all that the trappings of Mistralian honour make it seem strange and unusual." He paused for a moment. "So … you will allow Miss Fall to choose the time and place of the contest?"

    "That is the way, Professor," Pyrrha explained. "I make the challenge, so she may set the terms."

    "Have you considered that she may take this opportunity to lure you into a trap, Miss Nikos?"

    "I'm not sure that I'm worth the effort, Professor, but in any case … no, I don't think so," Pyrrha replied. "For whatever it may be worth, we are both Mistralians."

    "Some might call that a slender reed to cling to," Professor Ozpin observed.

    "Professor," Pyrrha said, "I am at your service, and so if you tell me that you do not wish me to take this course, I will, of course, obey."

    "And in obedience, your sense of self will wither," Professor Ozpin said. "No, Miss Nikos, I am not in the habit of acting as a general or a lord. I am the head of this organisation, but you are not mine to dispose of as I will. Certainly, I am not in the habit of … denying choice. I hope that you would not propose this course if you had no hope of victory, Miss Nikos."

    "No, Professor," Pyrrha replied. "I mean yes, Professor, I mean … I believe I can defeat her."

    Professor Ozpin nodded slightly. He looked away from Pyrrha, away from all of them. "I sincerely hope that you are right, Miss Nikos," he said in a voice that was so soft that Sunset had to strain to hear him. Soft and … wistful? It hardly seemed appropriate, but that was what Sunset heard in his voice.

    "There is," he went on, "the complication that duelling is illegal here in Vale, and has been for some time."

    "Duelling is illegal," Pyrrha allowed. "But fighting against an enemy is not."

    "Some might say that the distinction becomes rather muddled when one is issuing public challenges on public television," Professor Ozpin said, a touch of amusement creeping into his voice, "but if there are any consequences, I daresay that we'll manage to muddle through somehow."

    He got up from his chair. "In times like these, I believe the customary phrase is 'come back with your shield or on it.' Obviously, Miss Nikos, that you should come back victorious is greatly to be preferred, but … shield or no, I'm sure that everyone here would prefer that you just come back alive."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 56 - Reforged
  • Threadmarks
    • Reforged

    ​

    The armoury of Beacon Academy was located on the far edge of the campus, where the noise of the machining and the machinery could not disturb the air, or more importantly, the students. It was past the farm, with its clucking chickens and the goat whom Sunset kept an eye on as they passed, and getting there involved following a path which was sometimes gravel and sometimes just plain dirt, before the team arrived at last at their destination.

    The armoury was a tallish building, but shaped in a way that made it seem kind of squat all the same; the walls leaned inwards a little, so that the armoury narrowed towards the top like some kind of chimney stack. It was black, unlike the grey stone of most of the other buildings at Beacon, and the windows were only translucent, so that you couldn't see much on the other side of them except colours: hot colours, bright reds and oranges, as if an inferno were blazing away inside.

    "Are you sure that you're okay to do this, Pyrrha?" Jaune asked as they approached. "I mean, I know that you—"

    "My honour is not so important as your sword," Pyrrha assured him. "I'm sure that Cinder will not begrudge me this slight tardiness."

    The doors were metal and locked, but Ruby — who was in the lead — held up her scroll to swipe it over a scanner mounted into the black wall, and both the metal doors swung open inwards, like the entrance to a creepy old temple opening up to lure in unwary treasure hunters.

    Walking inside, all four members of Team SAPR found themselves upon a metal walkway suspended over a sharp drop downwards to a basement level where hot furnaces belched fire, smoke rising as the flames licked upwards from their dark, charred pits.

    The metal walkway upon which they stood, and upon which their feet rattled as they moved, ran all around the wall of the armoury, save along the eastern wall where there was instead a ramp sloping downwards into the pit. The four of them walked down it. Over his shoulder, Jaune wore a satchel bag containing the shards of Crocea Mors; the pieces of the blade clattered together every so often, moreso it seemed as they began to walk downwards; just so long as they didn't slice open the bag and come spilling out to drop to the floor below, that would be fine. He didn't have any other parts for his new sword that Ruby had designed for him — he had contributed ideas, but it was Ruby who had turned those ideas into something that could be physically manufactured — since Ruby said that they were going to make them themselves, here in the armoury.

    Jaune couldn't help but think that that would translate to Ruby making the parts here in the armoury and hoped that they weren't — that he wasn't — putting too much work upon her shoulders.

    As they descended, the heat of the fires began to strike at Jaune's face, slapping him repeatedly as the flames flickered. He could feel the heat of the air when he breathed and found that already he could hardly imagine what it would be like to stay here for hours, days, longer perhaps. Now he understood why Pyrrha had insisted on bringing some bottles of water with them.

    He couldn't help but wonder how long this was going to take.

    As they reached the bottom of the pit, Jaune saw that there was someone down there already: a young man, if a few years older than him — but certainly not much older than a new graduate or a fourth-year student — a pretty man, in a way that might have made him jealous if he hadn't had so much faith in Pyrrha; a man with long brown hair tied back in a queue and a pencil moustache dignifying his upper lip. He was tall — about Jaune's height — and slender, dressed in a shirt that had been white before it became stained with suit and ash and much else besides, a neckerchief equally stained tied around his neck, and dark trousers. He was holding a sword in one hand, a slender rapier with a gilded hilt and guard. The blade glimmered in the light of the furnaces.

    "Wow! That looks really awesome, Mister Turner!" Ruby called as she leapt off the ramp and led the way rapidly across the spacious chamber towards the man and his sword. "Is that a new one?"

    The man — Mister Turner — turned to face her, still gripping the blade firmly in one hand. "Ruby," he greeted her cheerfully. "Nice to see you again; and yes, this is new. Folded steel, gold leaf laid into the handle, the tang is nearly—"

    "The full width of the blade," Ruby finished.

    Mister Turner smiled. "You have a good eye."

    Ruby smiled. "Thanks. Is it for you?"

    Mister Turner laughed. "No. This is an order for General Blackthorn, placed by the First Councillor to celebrate the good general's promotion."

    "Ah," Ruby murmured. "That's a pity."

    Mister Turner blinked. "'A pity'?"

    "A general isn't going to get much use out of it, is he?" Ruby asked. "It's just going to sit on his hip, looking pretty."

    "Perhaps," Mister Turner conceded. "But if he should ever have need of a sword, he will have the best." He glanced past Ruby towards the other members of the team. "And these must be your teammates."

    "Yep," Ruby agreed. "This is Sunset Shimmer, Jaune Arc, and Pyrrha Nikos. Everyone, this is Will Turner, the assistant armourer."

    "You know him?" Sunset said.

    "Yeah, I've come here sometimes to work on Crescent Rose," Ruby explained.

    "And you make swords for people outside of the school?" Jaune asked. "You must be pretty good."

    Mister Turner shrugged. "If people appreciate my work, then who am I to say that they are wrong? So, Jaune, I understand it's your sword that you're all here to reforge?"

    Jaune nodded. "That's right."

    "Well, I'm sure you'll be in good hands with Ruby," Mister Turner said. "But if you need anything, I'll be around. For the most part; I do need to deliver this to Councillor Emerald."

    "What about your boss?" Sunset asked. "The actual armourer."

    "He's on vacation at the moment," Mister Turner explained. "Ruby, will you be all right here on your own for a little bit?"

    "Oh, yeah, sure," Ruby assured him. "We'll be fine."

    Mister Turner smiled, nodded, and placed the sword in a blue case, closing the lid and tucking the box beneath his arm before he began to walk towards the slope that led out towards the rest of Beacon and the world beyond.

    "You know," Ruby said, "I've never actually seen the armourer, just Mister Turner."

    "Perhaps he's very busy," Pyrrha suggested.

    "Probably," Ruby agreed. "Anyway, since we're here, we should probably get started."

    "Great," Jaune agreed. He paused for a moment. "Where do we start?"

    They started, it turned out, in the machining room, which lay beyond a couple of doors leading out of the great chamber containing the furnaces. Here, there were all kinds of machining tools for the manufacture and adjustment of parts, although exactly what parts each machine made, Jaune really couldn't tell. All he knew was that the room was full of tools, and they made parts here.

    I'm really going to need Ruby's help with this, aren't I?

    "We start," Ruby informed them all, "by remaking the hilt; once we've done that, once the dust mechanism and everything else works, then we can reforge the sword and be sure that it's going to fit into the adjusted hilt — and your scabbard, of course."

    "Right," said Jaune. "And … where do we start with that, exactly?"

    It turned out that, although Jaune was completely new at this, and although he had no idea what these machining tools did, he was able to avoid relying too much on Ruby by insisting that she could only tell him, or show him, what it was that he needed to do. For the final piece, for the piece that would actually form part of the rebuilt and reforged Crocea Mors, he insisted upon doing it himself: he would make the part, he would bore the diameter, he would dismantle this or assemble that. It didn't make the process quick by any means; in fact, it made it a lot more drawn out than it would have been if he'd just let Ruby do it, but as much as he flailed about at times, as much as he broke things — only the would-be parts of his new sword, thankfully, and not the machining tools — and as much as he probably would have taken his arm off at least once if it weren't for his aura, Jaune was glad that he insisted otherwise, insisted upon having a hand — both hands, most often — in the production.

    After all, this was his sword, his weapon. Dad had told him to make Crocea Mors his own, and what better way to do that than by actually making it? Ruby had made Crescent Rose with her own two hands, and while Sunset hadn't made the parts, she had put them all together herself. Pyrrha … he hadn't actually asked Pyrrha about it, but he'd be astonished if she hadn't been involved somehow.

    After all, they said that all the best weapons had a piece of the wielder's soul inside of it. That hadn't been true of him and Crocea Mors, and while it certainly wasn't the only reason why he wasn't up to their level … maybe it was a part of it.

    In any case, it was an issue that he had a chance to correct, and he wasn't going to miss it.

    Which isn't to say that he didn't accept any help from the others. While he wouldn't let Ruby do the work for him, he would have been lost without instructions. When something was especially fiddly, where he needed a particularly steady hand, Pyrrha was willing to help steady anything metal with her semblance to ensure that he could slot things together properly without breaking anything or messing it up in any way. And as work on the hilt progressed, Sunset helped turn some of the dull metal into something a little cooler-looking.

    Nevertheless, Jaune was doing most of the work himself, and while he wouldn't have had it any other way, it was still hard work, and it wasn't made any easier by the heat coming in from the furnaces next door. And so, taking a quick break, he left the armoury, climbing up the ramp and onto the high walkway, exiting onto the grounds of Beacon where the air was crisp and cool and fresh.

    He sat down just beyond the armoury doors, resting his elbows upon his knees, his hands drooping towards the ground.

    "Thirsty?" Pyrrha asked, holding out a bottle of water as she sat down beside him.

    "Thanks," Jaune said, taking the bottle from her hands and unscrewing the white plastic cap. He squeezed the bottle a little between his fingers as he drank from it, pouring the liquid down his parched throat. The water wasn't cool by any means — it had been down in the armoury for too long — but he wasn't in very much position to care.

    Jaune lowered the bottle and wiped the sweat from his brow with his other hand. "How's it going?"

    "How do you think it's going?" Pyrrha asked. "It's your weapon."

    "Yeah, but I don't exactly know what I'm doing," Jaune pointed out.

    "You say that as though I do," Pyrrha said. "I'm sure that Ruby would let you know if things weren't going well."

    "Yeah, I'm sure she would," Jaune agreed. He paused for a moment, and drank some more water from the bottle. "You didn't make Miló yourself, then?"

    Pyrrha shook her head. "All my weapons," she explained, "were forged by Hephaestus, one of the greatest smiths in Mistral, although as I grew older, I was able to get more involved in the creation myself."

    "When you say all of your weapons—"

    "I didn't always use Miló and Akoúo̱," Pyrrha said. "My training began when I was very young, and so did my tournament career. My weapons have … I would say they have grown up with me, but the truth is that, as I grew up, I left them behind."

    "But they were always the same kind of weapons, I guess," Jaune said. "Otherwise, you would have had to start your training all over again."

    "Indeed," Pyrrha replied. "My first weapon was a spear called Steropes and a shield called Brontes; both very simple, no mode shifting, no unnecessary complications. When I had gained some affinity with the spear, I was given a sword, Arges, and thereafter my first gun."

    "What was that called?" asked Jaune.

    Pyrrha paused for a moment. "My mother made the mistake of letting me name the gun, young though I was."

    Jaune grinned. "Come on, you've got to tell me now."

    Pyrrha glanced downwards. "'Pyrrha's Gun,'" she said.

    Jaune snorted. "There could have been worse choices."

    "Perhaps," Pyrrha agreed. "But Mother didn't let me choose the names again until I was old enough to appreciate the gravity of it and the solemnity with which it should be approached." She looked at him. "Will you keep the name Crocea Mors?"

    "I… yeah," Jaune said. "I mean, why wouldn't I?"

    "Sometimes, when a weapon is shattered and then reforged, it is also renamed," Pyrrha said. "Especially if it is coming into the possession of a new owner who wishes to put their own stamp on it."

    Jaune thought about that for a moment … but while it was possible to think about changing the name, actually thinking about a name which he might change it to was a little more difficult. Besides, while he hadn't considered the idea before, now that it had been brought to his attention, it wasn't really grabbing him.

    "I think I'll keep it," he said. "After all, it's enough that I'm completely changing the sword from what it was when my ancestors used it; I don't want to lose all connection to what it was and to who came before me."

    Pyrrha smiled. "Very well then," she said. "Crocea Mors it shall remain. And you shall do it further honour, I have no doubt, until the time comes…"

    Until the time comes to pass it to one of our kids? Jaune wondered, guessing that was what she meant but had not quite said. It was a lovely thought, but at the same time … Jaune wondered if it wasn't too much. He already had the family ring, to give to Pyrrha when he felt like he was ready to ask — and when he felt like she'd say yes, too — to also keep the family sword, permanently … was it a bit much?

    "I … don't know," Jaune admitted. "I'm wondering if maybe, when the time comes for me to retire, I should send the sword back home, for River's kid or one of my other nephews to use."

    "Or perhaps it is time to retire the idea of an ancestral family weapon?" Pyrrha suggested. "I do not bear the weapon of my huntsman father or my esteemed tournament champion mother. Rather, I use my own weapons, made for me, as this new Crocea Mors will be made for you. While a simple sword and shield can be learned by anyone, these modifications—"

    "Might not suit anyone else's style or technique," Jaune finished. "That … that's a good point. I don't know, not like we need to make a decision on it right now, anyway, right?"

    Pyrrha smiled. "No, indeed."

    Jaune drank some more of his water; the bottle was about halfway drained by this point. "Thanks for this," he said again as he climbed to his feet. "I think I'm ready to get back to work now."

    And so he descended back into the armoury, back into the heat of the forges, back into the machining room, and there, with the help of his friends, he laboured until the hilt was complete.

    It was heavier now than it had been before — it could hardly have been otherwise, given what was being built into it — which was unfortunately going to mess with the balance a little bit but which was, at the same time, unavoidable if any changes were going to be made to the sword whatsoever. Ruby said that there were ways of reforging the blade that would counteract that, but judging by the look on Pyrrha's face, Jaune thought that she might have doubts about the idea of making the blade part of the sword heavier than it already was.

    It was wider now, heavier, yes, but also more ornate, the crossguard rising at the tips, pointing in the same direction as the blade would, and in the centre forming a golden arrow pointing down the blade — or at least, it would once there was a blade again. The gold — or gilded metal; Sunset had cast a spell on it to make it look gold, but Jaune wasn't sure that it actually was gold; probably not — was ornately decorated with swirling patterns, and set on each side with a pair of sapphires set together so that they almost looked like eyes, and each pair paired with two emeralds sitting on the extreme wings of the guard.

    Again, Jaune didn't think that they were real gems, but Sunset had certainly made them seem that way.

    The grip remained much as it had, long enough to grip the sword easily in one hand, wrapped around with strips of blue leather criss-crossing up towards the pommel, but the pommel itself was set with what appeared to be a very large sapphire, the size of a duck's egg, gleaming brightly on the end of the sword.

    This was definitely not a sapphire; rather, it was the container for a canister of dust, although it did help disguise what kind of dust he was using on any given day. Rather than add in a revolver function, such as Weiss or Russel used, Ruby had suggested a simpler system whereby there was only one dust canister in the sword at any one time, but with the capacity to easily switch it out if needed. And so, once a dust canister — he didn't actually have any dust yet; buying some was next on his to-do list once the sword was finished — was inserted into the gem, the dust would travel down the two pipes that ran through the hilt to be expelled through the holes which sat on either side of the crossguard. Once activated, by a trigger built into the hilt at the point where his thumb generally rested when he was using the sword — Ruby had had him draw the broken sword from its scabbard at least twenty times to be sure of getting the position right — fire or ice or whatever else he liked would erupt down the blade.

    Once the blade was reforged.

    For now, Jaune was the proud owner of a new hilt, a hilt which he brandished aloft. "What do you guys think?"

    "It needs a sword," Sunset said.

    "Sunset!" Ruby scolded her.

    "How does it feel, Jaune?" Pyrrha asked. "You are the one who has to wield it, not us."

    "It feels…" Jaune paused, swiping the bladeless hilt through the air experimentally. "It's … different, to how it was before, but so am I. It's better." And so am I.

    Pyrrha nodded, and a smile graced the corners of her lips.

    "So," Jaune went on. "Now for the sword."

    So Jaune passed out of the machining room and into the forge, where the air was even hotter as the flames of the furnaces rose up, and amongst the flames, chest bare, he laboured to reforge his broken blade, melting the broken shards down in the hot fires and casting them anew into the mould.

    The renewed blade was joined to the newly fashioned hilt, and just like that, Crocea Mors was born anew.

    And Jaune Arc was armed once more.

    XxXxX​

    "So," Jaune said, "where shall we go to get dust? Where do you go to get dust?"

    The four of them now stood in Vale; none of them were armed, save only for Jaune, who wore his new sword proudly at his hip — and why shouldn't he? It was, after all, brand new. Brand new, remade, reforged; he had a right to show it off a little bit.

    Sunset would have done the same in his position.

    "I shouldn't say this, but I always buy from the SDC," Sunset said. "Well, I buy from DustWorld, the SDC retail subsidiary."

    "Why don't we try From Dust Till Dawn?" Ruby suggested. "You know it reopened after the robbery around the start of last semester."

    "No, let's not go there," Sunset said.

    "'Robbery'?" Pyrrha repeated. "Is this where the two of you—?"

    "Yes, it's where we met, but we're not going back," Sunset said. "The owner is a racist."

    "Really?" Ruby asked.

    "Yes!" Sunset insisted. "He kept me waiting forever, refusing to serve me because I'm a faunus. If he had done his job and not been such a bigot about things, I wouldn't have even been in that store when Torchwick arrived."

    "Then it's a good thing for him that he didn't, huh?" Ruby replied.

    Sunset pouted. "Perhaps," she conceded. "But that doesn't make him any more of a pleasant person or any more of a person that I want to spend a lot of time around."

    "I'd like to see how he's doing," Ruby said. "Just to make sure that he's okay and that he got back on his feet. Wouldn't you like to know that it all worked out okay?"

    Not really; it wouldn't bother Sunset if the man had gone out of business permanently; it would have served him right. However, with as much grace as she could muster, she relented. "Very well, let's go to From Dust Till Dawn, but if he doesn't have what Jaune's looking for, then we go to DustWorld."

    So they headed through the streets of Vale in search of the dust shop that had brought Sunset and Ruby together and brought Ruby into Beacon two years early. It was getting a little close to dusk as they moved through the city, the sun beginning to sink in the horizon, yielding the sky to darkness, to the stars, and to the lights of General Ironwood's warships.

    "Now that Jaune has a new weapon," Ruby said as they walked along, "we should ask Professor Ozpin to give us a mission so that he can try it out."

    "Trying out his weapon is what training is for," Pyrrha pointed out, "but a nice, relatively quiet mission so that you can see how your new functionalities work in the field wouldn't be the worst idea."

    "Once your fight with Cinder is done," Jaune said softly.

    The air seemed to grow a little colder at his reminder of what lay in store for Pyrrha, the reminder of the fact that a possible future lay ahead in which Team SAPR was without the P, and Jaune carried his new sword in memory of his lost love, laid low in defence of her honour.

    It won't be like that; have some faith; she's your best friend.

    And Cinder's wrath is terrifying.

    "Yes," Pyrrha murmured. "Once that has been dealt with."

    Pyrrha wouldn't be doing this if she didn't think she could win.

    Would she?

    Wouldn't she? You heard her, you've heard her more than once; she's looking for something to hold onto.

    Well, then maybe you should be supportive and help her find it, since clearly, it wasn't going to get any better on its own.

    I'm not going to tell her that it's a bad idea, but I won't cheerlead this; I can't.

    My heart is too heavy to muster light-hearted enthusiasm.

    That was left to Jaune, who smiled and slipped one hand into hers and said, "Yeah, once you've finished Cinder once and for all, we should ask about a nice, quiet, ordinary mission."

    Pyrrha glanced his way. "I'd like that."

    They continued to walk down the streets, streets which were not perhaps covered in graffiti but which were nevertheless daubed with paint decrying Atlas.

    "I see what you mean, Ruby," Sunset said softly.

    "Is it like this everywhere?" Jaune asked. "I mean … how? How has the whole of Vale just turned against Atlas like this?"

    "It doesn't have to be the whole city," Sunset pointed out. "Just a few people who care enough to spread the word across the whole city."

    "Okay, but even so, why?" asked Jaune. "I mean, at the Breach, without General Ironwood's forces…"

    "The city would have been lost," Pyrrha whispered. "Perhaps that is the problem. Valish pride cannot bear to have stood in need of rescue."

    "That still doesn't make much sense," Ruby pointed out.

    "People don't always make sense, so maybe Pyrrha's right," Sunset replied. "It doesn't make it any less stupid, but she might be right."

    "Faunus! Why don't you go home, eh? Go back where you came from?"

    Sunset jumped a little at the sudden shout from across the road, her tail twitching and her ears pressing down against her head, disappearing into her mass of fiery hair.

    She turned on her toes, one hand clenching into a fist as her mouth opened to give whoever had yelled at her like that a piece of her mind, before she realised that the shout was not actually directed at her.

    No, the shout that had come from across the street was actually directed at two faunus across the street, two bird faunus with wings of apple-green white emerging from out of their backs.

    Two faunus whom Sunset had seen before, although it took her a moment to place their names: Silverstream and Terramar, Skystar's cousins.

    They were walking down the street, going the opposite direction to that in which Team SAPR was headed; Silverstream was wearing a Weiss Schnee top with spaghetti straps, which had the advantage of accommodating her wings; Terramar was wearing a t-shirt with a sports brand on it, which also had been cut out at the back to let his wings fly free.

    Sunset couldn't help but feel they might have done better to cover them up in this instance.

    They were being followed down the street by a man, a bald man in a faded blue denim jacket and jeans, with steel-toed boots upon his feet. He moved with an awkward, almost shambling gait, but he was taller than Silverstream — and much taller than Terramar — and so, despite the fact that they were trying to walk quickly, they were not able to open up the distance between them.

    Worse still, their route down the street was going to take them past a bar, a cheap-looking place where cheap-looking people were gathering outside with pints of ale in their hands. Some of them, their attention drawn by the shouting, were already looking up the road towards Silverstream, Terramar, and their pursuer.

    Silverstream kept glancing behind her, as if she was hoping that he had given up; she kept one hand on Terramar's shoulder and another on his back, though whether she was trying to push him along or shield him, Sunset could not have said.

    "How many kids did your mother have, eh?" the man demanded. "How much money has she stolen from us?"

    Sunset gritted her teeth, but Pyrrha beat her to stepping forward, her armour glinting in the dying sunlight as she strode across the road — looking both ways as she did so — towards Silverstream and Terramar. Sunset followed, both hands clenching into fists, although when she walked across the street, she did not aim for the two faunus, but rather, for the man who followed them.

    Pyrrha reached the two first, smiling reassuringly as she stepped in front of them.

    "Hello," she said. "You might not remember me but we've met before. My name is—"

    "Pyrrha Nikos," Silverstream murmured, her voice trembling. "You're … kind of hard to forget."

    "So are you, Silverstream Aris," Pyrrha replied, the smile not leaving her face. "Please, don't worry; everything's going to be alright now."

    Sunset stalked onto the pavement on their side of the road, placing herself foursquare in the path of the man in the denim jacket and jeans.

    "That's enough," she growled. "Leave them alone."

    The man came to a rollocking stop, leaning backwards a little and staggering back a couple of steps, looking as though he might topple over and crack his head on the pavement. He did not, unfortunately; rather, he sneered at Sunset, his lips curling back to reveal a mouthful of rotten, yellow teeth.

    "Oh, another one," he said. "How many brothers or sisters have you got, by how many dads? How often was your mother—?"

    Sunset hit him, her fist snapping out to sock him on the jaw, making him stagger backwards, clutching his face with one hand.

    "My mother was a lady," Sunset growled, taking a step forward, her tail absolutely rigid with anger; it was true that her dam may well have been exactly what this oaf had been about to accuse her of, but she wasn't Sunset's mother. "So keep her name out of your mouth, or you'll be eating soup for the rest of your life."

    The man stared at her in disbelief. "You … you can't talk to me like that! This is my kingdom! Mine!"

    "And this is my fist," Sunset said.

    The man's face twisted with anger. "Why … why do you get to talk to me like that? Why do you get to look like that? I … I'm human! I should be ruling this kingdom, you uppity—"

    Sunset hit him again, this time on the nose; there was an audible crunch as his head snapped backwards.

    "Boohoo, your life is awful, and you're unhappy," Sunset said. Guess what, I'm pretty unhappy myself a lot of the time. "It doesn't give you the right to be a jackass to kids. Now beat it."

    The man looked as though he might say something else — until Sunset raised her fist at him again, at which point, he got the message and scurried off, though not without some angry backward glances in her direction.

    Sunset turned her back on him, walking towards Silverstream, Terramar, and Pyrrha, who had been joined by Jaune and Ruby.

    Pyrrha had her gloved hands upon the shoulders of both Silverstream and Terramar, smiling benignly down at both of them.

    "How do you feel?" she asked.

    Terramar glanced down at the ground. "Not great," he said quietly. "My stomach feels kind of … almost like I might throw up; not exactly, but kind of, you know."

    Silverstream shivered. "Me too. I feel a little better now that he's gone." She half turned to look at Sunset. "Thank you, for getting rid of him."

    "It's the least I could do," Sunset said.

    "What happened?" Ruby asked.

    "We were on our way home from the video store when he just started following us," Silverstream said. "I thought that maybe he'd stop after a little bit, go away, leave us alone, but he didn't. He just kept on following us. I didn't know what he was going to do if he caught up with us."

    "That's not something you have to worry about anymore," Sunset said.

    "But we're sorry that you had to go through that," Ruby added. "Vale … I don't know what's going on; Vale's better than this."

    "I've never had that happen to me before," Silverstream agreed. "This, the graffiti … it's like nothing that I've ever known; it's like Grampa's stories about what it was like after the war, when he got chased out of his house and people wrote 'Silver Bullet won here' on the door. I thought that was all in the past, not that I'd ever…" Silverstream trailed off. "Anyway, thank you for helping; we should get going."

    "We'll walk you home," Pyrrha said, with only a glance towards Sunset in the way of asking for permission.

    "Are you sure?" Silverstream asked. "We don't want to put you to any trouble."

    "It would be our honour," Pyrrha assured them.

    "And our duty as huntsmen," Ruby said.

    Silverstream glanced at Terramar and managed to muster up the slightest smile. "Thanks," she said. "Thank you all."

    The four of them fell in around the two, Pyrrha leading, Sunset bringing up the rear, with Jaune and Ruby on either side of them. They steered away from the bar, veering towards the other side of the street again, but though a few people stared at them, nobody else dared to challenge them.

    "Vale shouldn't be like this," Ruby lamented. "Especially not now. We're supposed to be all coming together for the Vytal Festival."

    "Apparently not," muttered Terramar.

    Jaune's brow furrowed. "So," he said, "did you two pick up anything cool at the video store?"

    Silverstream glanced at him as one hand went to the bag that she wore on one harm, banging lightly against her hip. "I hope so," she said. "We're going to try out those cartoons about the zoo animals that get washed up on Menagerie."

    "I've not heard of them," Sunset said. "What are they called?"

    "…Menagerie."

    "Right, that sounds obvious, now that you say it," Sunset replied. "Well, I hope you enjoy them."

    "You guys having a movie night?" asked Ruby.

    "Something like that, yeah," Silverstream said. "We're kind of—"

    "Babysitting," Terramar said.

    "That makes it sound like a chore," Silverstream chided him. "Which it isn't. Bramble's really sweet."

    "'Bramble'?" Sunset repeated. "The First Councillor's son?"

    Silverstream nodded. "We've known Councillor Emerald for years — he and Aunt Novo were always really close — so we sometimes take care of Bramble when the First Councillor needs a sitter. He's going to … I think it's a Vytal Festival thing, cause Skystar's going to be there too."

    "It's the parade planning," Terramar supplied.

    "Right, right, the parade," Silverstream. "Are you guys looking forward to that? Are you looking forward to the festival?"

    "'To the festival'? Yeah, sure, why not," Jaune said. "To the parade … we don't actually know if we'll be a part of it yet; none of the schools have announced their Vytal choices."

    "That sounds as though it's cutting it pretty fine," Silverstream declared. "When are you going to find out?"

    "We are not entirely sure," Pyrrha admitted.

    "But we'll be selected, for certain," Sunset said.

    "You shouldn't get overconfident, Sunset," Pyrrha murmured, glancing back at her over her shoulder.

    Sunset snorted. "You just say that because you want to seem humble in front of Silverstream and Terramar."

    "I'm surprised they don't announce it earlier so you can start training for the tournament," Terramar opined.

    "We ought to be training anyway, tournament or not, to keep our skills sharp," Ruby said.

    "Okay," Terramar allowed, "but don't you need to practice for the parade too?"

    "It sounds like they haven't sorted all the details out yet, so it would be kind of hard to practice," Ruby pointed out.

    "You make a good point there," Terramar conceded.

    "In my experience, there isn't usually a lot of rehearsal for these things," Pyrrha said, turning her head to look back at the rest of them over her shoulder. "Once you try and rehearse, then a crowd turns out, and before you know it, the rehearsal has become the parade itself." She paused for a moment. "For my part, I am glad of it; I think that if these things are overmanaged, if they are repeated until they become rote … the sacred nature of the thing is lost."

    "'Sacred'?" Terramar asked. "It's just a parade. It's all for show, right?"

    "Not so," Pyrrha insisted, although not too strongly — she was only talking to a child after all. "Those students chosen to participate in the Vytal Tournament will not simply be marching through the streets of Vale but, by marching behind the Vytal flame, they will be dedicating themselves to the peace and harmony embodied by that flame and by the festival and the tournament."

    "The tournament where you fight each other?" Silverstream asked, a tad sceptically.

    Pyrrha smiled. "Better that we fight for the entertainment of the crowds within the arena than that we fight to the death outside of it, no? It is said that when the first annual tournament was instituted in Mistral, the Emperor of the day did so in order that his greatest warriors might have a place — an arena, if you will — to demonstrate their skills and their superiority without killing one another in duels. In a sense, the Vytal Festival descends from that same tradition."

    "I'm guessing your views on the parade descend from the same place, too," Jaune suggested.

    "Perhaps," Pyrrha conceded. "I have driven my chariot four times through the streets of Mistral to celebrate my victories, and on no occasion was it ever rehearsed at all; such a thing … it would have been blasphemous to Victory, almost."

    By the time they arrived at the home of Silverstream and Terramar — a nice brownstone in a suburban district of Vale, the kind of place where every house came with an expansive garden out the back and a balcony over the front porch — the sun had sunk lower still in the sky, casting the city of Vale in an angry red glow.

    It matched the mood of the city at the moment.

    Silverstream fished her keys out of her purse and opened the door.

    "We're home!" she called out, as Terramar stepped inside. In the doorway, Silverstream turned to the four students. "Do you guys want to come in for a second?"

    "We wouldn't want to impose—" Pyrrha began.

    "Come on, it's the least we can do to thank you guys," Silverstream insisted. "You can grab a coffee or a slice of pizza or something."

    "It's a generous offer, but we'll be fine," Sunset said. "Tell Bramble I said hello."

    "Okay, I'll tell him," Silverstream said. "Thanks again, all of you."

    "You're welcome!" Ruby called, before Silverstream closed the door on them.

    The four of them stood outside the now closed door, a momentary silence settling upon them.

    "I'm glad we were able to help," Jaune said.

    "Indeed," agreed Pyrrha.

    Sunset folded her arms. "You know what? You know what really sticks in my craw about this? I bet Blake isn't having to put up with this crap in Atlas."

    "You think so?" Jaune asked.

    "I think if she was, she'd have come back here already," Sunset declared. "I came here … I came here because Vale was supposed to be better about this sort of thing."

    "It is!" Ruby insisted. "It was. I don't know. It's like … it's like something just happened, something just changed. I don't get it. I don't get what's going on here."

    XxXxX​

    The barracks of Vale's Grenadier Guards regiment had three mess halls: one for officers, one for sergeants, and one for other ranks. The Other Ranks' Mess was a spacious room, a chamber that could comfortably fit more than the current seven hundred-strong strength of the unit. It looked like one part canteen — there were the serving stations at the back, where food could sit under heat lamps while a long queue of common soldiers waited with their wooden trays to get served — and one part club, complete with a bar at the north side of the room and wood-panelled walls covered in paintings and photographs commemorating the regiment's 'illustrious history.' The colours, emblazoned with battle honours — none of which, as far as Tempest could see, were more recent than the Great War — sat in the southwest corner.

    Ordinarily, the mess hall would have been filled with tables, but tonight, some of the collapsible tables had been folded away while others had been joined together in the centre of the room, loosely covered by an array of tablecloths to form an ad-hoc stage.

    And upon the stage, before the men and women of the Grenadier Guards — officers and NCOs included — seated all around, pranced Sonata Dusk.

    Tempest couldn't hear the song that she had sung — although she wanted to, oh how she wanted to; the temptation to tear off her headphones was becoming ever stronger — but she could see the soldiers, sat all around the hastily prepared stage, clapping their hands together furiously; she could see them rising from their seats; she could hear their mouths moving and guessed that it wasn't insults that they were hurling her way.

    At least, if the great beaming smile on Sonata's face was anything to go by.

    Tempest judged the session was over now. It seemed to be; Sonata wasn't singing any more. At least it didn't look as though she was.

    She risked taking off her headphones. Part of her wouldn't have minded being wrong about the song being over.

    But she wasn't wrong. She was absolutely right. The song was over. Sonata was silent, smiling, waving her hands in the air as she was deluged with applause from all sides, cheering raining down upon her from the Valish soldiers gathered all around.

    They were not fighting each other, as the civilians to whom Sonata sang were. They hadn't turned on each other; they were not consumed by quarrels. That was not part of the plan. The Valish soldiers, in their uniforms of forest green, the Valish soldiers who were thought so little of, who were so often discounted, who had been forced to stand idly by while the Atlesians saved their city, they were not divided against one another.

    Rather, Sonata's song had united them against an external enemy.

    "Thank you!" Sonata cried. "Thank you so much; you've been a wonderful audience! Thank you, Foot Guards, woo!" The cheering was redoubled, as if they were overjoyed that she had remembered their name. Sonata giggled bashfully. "How about three cheers for Atlas, huh?"

    "Boo!" Not a single soul cheered, but everyone in the mess — nearly a thousand men and women, all told, including officers and the like — booed and jeered as loudly as they could, or worse still, cursed the name of Atlas.

    "Well, that works too," Sonata said lightly. "Stay sharp out there, 'cause your time is gonna come! Are you going to be ready?"

    "YEAH!" the soldiers chorused.

    Sonata raised her fist in the air. "Are you gonna take your city back?"

    "YEAH!"

    "Are you gonna kick some Atlas ass?"

    "YEAH!"

    "Yeah!" Sonata cheered. "Show 'em what you've got, Vale!" she leaped down lightly off the stage, landed delicately upon the toe of one boot. "This is going to be sooooo awesome!"
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 57 - Pyrrha's Challenge
  • Threadmarks
    • Pyrrha's Challenge

    ​

    "Are you sure you want to do this, P-money?" Arslan asked.

    Pyrrha's brow furrowed a little beneath her gleaming circlet. "Do you think this is a bad idea as well?

    The two of them stood, otherwise alone, near the cliffs on the edge of the school grounds. The wind that blew in from the Emerald Forest made Pyrrha's crimson sash dance around her legs and pushed her ponytail to the side; it even ruffled Arslan's untidy mane of pale hair somewhat.

    "I didn't say that," Arslan said quickly. She paused for a moment. "Although—"

    Pyrrha smiled. "Although you're about to."

    "No, no," Arslan insisted. "I … I said that I would help you with this, and I will, but … let me ask you something: what makes you think she'll go for this? Cinder, I mean. You're going to go on air, make a song and dance, and then what?"

    "And then she will answer," Pyrrha said.

    "Why?" Arslan asked. "Why would she? How can you know that she will?"

    "You think she won't?" asked Pyrrha, although the very fact that Arslan was asking the question made her scepticism plain.

    In her place, I might be sceptical as well.

    Arslan scratched the back of her head with one hand. "I've got to tell you, P, I have grown up with … well, without wishing to overegg the pudding too much, I grew up with some scum in our neighbourhood. They ran our neighbourhood. And some of them were smart, and some of them could be civil, and some of them could even show some manners sometimes, but none of them would go for this … unless it was a trap. Which I suppose means that I have two questions: what if she laughs at you, and what if she sets a trap?"

    "I could ask you if it matters if she does answer," Pyrrha replied. "It does matter to me; I would much rather that she answered, and I think she will, but if she does not … I have nevertheless made my position clear. By challenging Cinder, I show that there is no affection between us, no compact, and I am willing to risk my life in order to prove it."

    "Or you want people to think you are, while all the while sure that you won't actually have to put your money where your mouth is," Arslan suggested.

    "I would hope that our people would not think so ill of me," Pyrrha said.

    "If they didn't think ill of you, they wouldn't suspect you in the first place," Arslan said. "I don't know how it is in the high towers of the old blood, but down amongst the lower slopes, the famous Mistralian honour is a little … threadbare. Especially amongst crooks and gangsters."

    "Cinder is…" Pyrrha paused for a moment, considering her response. Her thoughts turned to the last time she and Cinder had crossed blades, in the darkness beneath Mountain Glenn. "'Long have I desired to match my skill against you.'"

    "Hmm?" Arslan asked, frowning.

    "That's what she said to me, the last time we fought," Pyrrha explained.

    Arslan's eyebrows rose. "You've fought before?"

    Pyrrha nodded.

    Arslan hesitated. "Do I want to ask…?"

    "I survived, and so did she," Pyrrha said softly. "She had … somewhat the best of it, although she is the one who drew the battle to a close by fleeing. But before that, she said to me those words 'long have I desired to match my skill against you.' I was alone, except for Jaune; Sunset and Ruby were engaged elsewhere, as were our Atlesian friends. Cinder was alone. And she seemed glad of the fact."

    "Don't let your vanity blind you, Pride of Mistral. For I am Cinder Fall, chosen of the dark, and I will make you my factor and pluck all the renown and honours off your brow and take them for my own."

    "Cinder desires the glory of my overthrow," Pyrrha said. "That's how I know she will accept, and that is how I know that she will not steal a victory by setting a trap for me. That wouldn't give her what she wants."

    "She wants it enough to risk her own life?" Arslan asked.

    "It lacks the frisson of excitement that comes from lives on the line, from knowing that nobody is going to step in when your aura gets into the red. From knowing that your aura is all that stands between you and oblivion."

    "Undoubtedly," Pyrrha replied. The one issue in all of this — which she could not mention to Arslan, of course — was Salem, but then, Salem had taken pains to present herself to them as a better lord than Professor Ozpin, a ring giver, a good mistress; surely, then, she would not begrudge her champion this chance to prove herself and to achieve her heart's desire. After all, what would Cinder's death really cost her, if she fell by Pyrrha's hands? She had failed already, her stroke defeated, her plans consumed. What was the difference, for Salem, between losing a champion that she could replace at her leisure or waiting for that champion to possibly devise another plan? And if Cinder won, then … at the risk of vanity, some negative emotion might be spread by it. What reason, therefore, had Salem to refuse?

    "She told me she would pluck the honours from my brow," Pyrrha went on. "It is not merely my death she wants; that, she could accomplish by blowing me up or shooting me from a great distance. What she wants, she can only get from what I offer her: a battle between us, with lives at the hazard."

    Arslan was quiet for a moment. "And you believe her? She wasn't just grandstanding?"

    "No," Pyrrha said. "I have reason to think she was sincere."

    "Hmm," Arslan murmured. "Then … okay, I can see why you think that this will get her to come and play, I suppose. It sounds mad looking at it from the outside, but I get it." Her lip twitched. "You were quick to think I was going to condemn this whole idea; is Jaune giving you a hard time about this?"

    "No," Pyrrha said at once. "Jaune is … not happy about it, but at the same time, he believes in me. Almost his exact words." For which I am very grateful; if even Jaune didn't believe that I could win this fight, I … I don't know what I'd do.

    It was for that reason that Sunset's concern irked her somewhat. She understood that it came from love, but at the same time, she rather wished that her best friend would have some faith in her to triumph.

    Of course — and this was the reason why Pyrrha was not worse than irked by Sunset's attitude — Cinder was dangerous, and there was a chance that Pyrrha might lose this battle, and if she lost, she could not expect to survive. She did not expect to lose; she would not have taken this course, for these stakes, if she had not thought that she would — she could — prevail; but, as she had conceded in the dorm room, nothing was certain in battle, and she would further concede that Cinder Fall was not an opponent to be taken lightly.

    As I know all too well.

    So, even while she might like Sunset to be cheering her on, she could understand her wariness in this.

    If our places were reversed, I would probably be wary too.

    Arslan nodded. "That's good to hear. So it's Sunset and Ruby then?"

    Pyrrha sighed. "Sunset … Sunset is … overprotective. I think the fact that my mother charged her to protect me has not helped in that regard, although in fairness to my mother, I think Sunset would be overprotective in any event."

    Arslan snorted. "If you need protection, then what hope is there for any of us?"

    "Mmm."

    "Pyrrha?"

    "I was just thinking," Pyrrha murmured. "I cannot entirely begrudge Sunset her concern since, if our places were reversed, I would be concerned about her too. Arslan, can I ask you a question?"

    Arslan shrugged. "Shoot."

    "Am I being terribly selfish?" Pyrrha asked. "Risking my life, risking the hurt to Jaune, to Sunset, for…"

    Arslan waited a moment. "Well, that's the point, isn't it?" she asked. "What are you doing it for?"

    "For … for myself," Pyrrha replied. "To prove that I can."

    "I thought you were doing this to prove Phoebe wrong."

    "Well, that too," Pyrrha said softly, "but that alone might not suffice to move me, if…" She trailed off. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be asking you about such things."

    "No, it's no problem," Arslan assured her. She paused for a second. "I told my parents recently that I wasn't going back to the arena after this, that I'd changed my mind, and I was going to give being a huntress a proper go. Mom didn't take it very well. I thought…" She ran one hand through her mess of hair. "I thought it was the money that she was upset about, the loss of the income, the lifestyle, so I told her that I'd been careful with the money — which I have — and it was all diversified, and there was more than enough."

    "What did she say to that?" asked Pyrrha.

    "She bit my head off," Arslan answered. "Said that it wasn't about the money; it was about me, fighting monsters instead of fighting in a tournament with rules." There was another pause. "Are you expecting a hard fight?"

    Pyrrha nodded. "I don't take Cinder lightly. As I said, the last time we fought … she had me on the back foot, at times, but that was done by using the terrain against me and taking me by surprise with what she was capable of. I'm aware now of what she can do, and the ground will not be so to her advantage. Yet, nevertheless, I do not take her lightly."

    "Okay," Arslan said. "Okay, let's … let's say that Cinder Fall has what it takes. Let's say she's better than me and can do what I haven't managed yet." She pulled a face, sticking her tongue out and squinting her eyes; she looked as though she might be sick on the grass. "If you die, then Jaune will be heartbroken, and your friends, and your mother—"

    "Thank you," Pyrrha muttered.

    "I can't stand here and tell you that it's worth it," Arslan said, "but I certainly, sure as anything, can't tell you that it isn't worth it. Only you can answer that, P-money; only you can say whether or not you're risking it all for something worthwhile. So come on, answer your own question: is it worth it to you?"

    Pyrrha was silent a moment. She bowed her head, some of her ponytail falling upon her shoulder, and yet, when she spoke a chuckle escaped her lips. "It's funny," she said. "I came to Beacon hoping that I could be Pyrrha Nikos. Not the Invincible Girl, not the Evenstar of Mistral, not the Princess Without a Crown, just Pyrrha Nikos. And yet … and yet, now I find that, without these things … without the Invincible Girl, I hardly feel like Pyrrha Nikos at all. Like a costume that I have worn for so long that I don't know how to live without it." She looked up. "I have to do this for the sake of myself, for the sake of the person I want to be. Yes, it is worth it."

    "Then do it," Arslan said, "and don't get put off by the fact that people are worried about you." She grinned. "Besides, you've got nothing to worry about; you're going to kick her ass for sure."

    One corner of Pyrrha's lip turned upwards. "Thank you for the vote of confidence."

    "Well, it would be a fine thing if the Champion of Mistral—"

    "I'm not going to be the Champion for very much longer," Pyrrha pointed out.

    "You'll be a Champion of Hearts, P-money," Arslan declared. "And it would be a fine thing if you lost to some scumbag who might as well have sprung out of the ground for all that anyone can work out where she came from." Arslan hesitated. "Can I ask you a question?"

    "Of course," Pyrrha replied. "I think you've earned it, by agreeing to help me."

    "Do you know what she is, Cinder Fall?" Arslan asked. "I mean … she's bad news, but … what does she want? What kind of human works with the White Fang? What does an enemy of mankind even mean? What's she up to?"

    Pyrrha was silent for a few moments, considering her response. Considering how she might answer around all the things that she could not tell Arslan about. "Cinder … Cinder is very angry," she said, "and out of her wrath, she'll sow destruction, if she is allowed."

    "For what cause?"

    "I don't know," Pyrrha lied, and felt guilty about the lie; it pricked her like a dagger's point. But it could not be avoided. "Perhaps she has no cause except her anger."

    Arslan whistled. "Well … okay, then." She clasped her hands together behind her head. "Either way, whoever she is, she is … our shame. We brought a rabid dog into someone else's house, which is even worse than bringing it into your house, because you're responsible for everyone that it bites. But if anyone can erase our shame, it's Mistral's pride and joy. So do it for Mistral, okay? But, you know, no pressure." She winked.

    Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as she chuckled. "I'm not sure there is any pressure you could place upon me that I do not already feel, but … I will do my best to oblige my home, even as I prove to it my fidelity."

    "So what's your strategy?" Arslan asked.

    "Calm," Pyrrha answered. "Cinder fights with her anger; if I can keep my head, I should prevail."

    Arslan nodded. "Simple, but smart," she pronounced. She got out her scroll. "Okay, now you stand with your back to the cliffs, and that way, I can back away from you to get the right shot without falling off the cliff in the process." She unfolded the device and held it up in front of her face, although Pyrrha could still see her eyes over the top of it.

    "That background is a bit boring," Arslan said. "I think I'll replace it with one that makes it look like we shot this in front of the school. In front of that statue in the middle of the fountain, that'll be cool."

    "You can do that?" Pyrrha asked.

    Arslan lowered her scroll for a moment. "Yeah, I know tons about editing videos," she said. "When I started out, I couldn't afford a publicist or anything like that, so I made my own publicity. I learned how to video edit, and then I made my own fun videos about my training sessions and my upcoming fights."

    "Is that where the video of you running up the steps of the art gallery came from?"

    Arslan grinned. "Yeah, that was my biggest hit. Anyway: Beacon background?"

    Pyrrha considered it for a moment. "Very well."

    "Awesome," Arslan said. "Now, just to make sure I get the right view." She took a couple of steps backwards as she raised her scroll again. "Okay. Game face and … go!"

    Pyrrha breathed in. She was wearing Miló and Akoúo̱ across her back, and Miló at least would be visible over her shoulder; it seemed appropriate for what she was about to do. She set her face, an even expression, not too stern, but serious all the same. Unafraid.

    "Hello," she said, in a voice which she endeavoured to keep calm. "My name is Pyrrha Nikos. In recent days, I have been subject to allegations regarding my complicity with a certain criminal named Cinder Fall. Cinder Fall was, amongst other things, partly responsible for the Breach, the recent attack on the kingdom of Vale. I say to all of you, I swear to all of you, that I had nothing to do with that attack, that I have no relations with Cinder Fall, and that I see her only as my enemy.

    "But I don't expect anyone to take my word for it. After all, everything that I have said is exactly what someone in my position would say, whether it was true or not. And so I mean to prove to my accusers, to all my fans whose support means so much to me, and to everyone who has an opinion on the matter, that Cinder Fall is only my enemy.

    "To Cinder herself, I have this message: I, Pyrrha Nikos, challenge you to meet me in single combat. Where you dare and when you dare, there we shall meet in a battle to the death. One shall stand; one shall fall." She worried that that might sound a little overdramatic, but surely if there was any place for over-drama, it was when challenging someone to a duel to the death. "If you do not accept, then all of Remnant will know that you are a coward."

    XxXxX​

    "So, as we've just seen there, a … rather dramatic response by Pyrrha Nikos to the recent allegations made against her. Joining us in the studio to discuss this is historian and Professor of History at Beacon Academy, Doctor Bartholomew Oobleck; welcome."

    "Thank you, Lisa, it's a pleasure to be here." The words galloped out of Doctor Oobleck's mouth like horses at the beginning of a race.

    Ozpin, watching today's episode of The Lavender Report on the holographic screen projected above his desk, leaned back in his chair ever so slightly. He found it mildly interesting that they had chosen to have a historian guest to discuss this, although he felt as though he understood why.

    Just as he understood why they had sought out Doctor Oobleck specifically.

    Lisa Lavender herself sat with her legs together, but bent to one side, so that her feet were resting sideways upon the light blue carpet of the studio. "So, Doctor, what do you make of this response by Pyrrha Nikos?"

    "Well, it's certainly a very Mistralian response," Oobleck said. "Classically so, in fact. You only need to look back into Mistralian history to see that the answering of insult with a sword is woven into the fabric of Mistralian elite society. And of course, one cannot ignore the fact that in Mistral, it is still perfectly legal to challenge opponents to — and indeed to fight them in — duels."

    "So you're saying, as Miss Nikos' teacher, that this is a normal response from her?"

    And there it is, thought Ozpin.

    Oobleck laughed. "Aha, Lisa, I think you're trying to put words into my mouth. But no. Miss Nikos is an excellent student who has had no disciplinary problems and does not engage in violence outside of combat class or approved training missions. No. But of course, allegations of this sort are not normal either. These are extraordinary accusations that have been made against Miss Nikos, and it is not surprising that they warrant an extraordinary response. What is interesting is the fact that this challenge is directed at Miss Fall."

    "What do you mean by that? Who would you expect it to be directed towards?"

    "Why, to the accuser of course," Oobleck responded. "Slander of this nature—"

    "You believe that the accusations are false?"

    "Of course I do; Miss Nikos is a student at—"

    "But wasn't Miss Fall posing as a student?" Lisa asked.

    "Miss Nikos has participated in several actions which have defended or otherwise benefited Vale," Oobleck declared. "Including assisting in the capture of Roman Torchwick, helping to foil a White Fang dust robbery, and helping to defend the Breach and prevent a massive grimm incursion into the heart of this very city! Does that sound like the behaviour of a traitor to you? The very idea is preposterous, and as I was saying, such slander would certainly be grounds for a duel to the death in Mistralian culture even today. However, rather than challenging her accuser, Miss Nikos has challenged Miss Fall, although she is as much the subject of these allegations as Miss Nikos is."

    "Why do you think that is?" Lisa asked. "Is it because the identity of the source of these allegations is unknown?"

    "No, I think it is because Miss Nikos does not want to merely silence these scurrilous allegations but to answer them," Oobleck replied. "As she said herself, she wishes to prove which side she's on."

    "But isn't this all a bit of a publicity stunt, in the end; I mean how likely is Cinder Fall to answer this challenge?"

    "I'm afraid I couldn't possibly say with any certainty; I only knew Miss Fall very briefly when she was masquerading as a Haven Academy student, and in any case, I couldn't take her behaviour while masquerading as a guide to her real self; however, I will say that I doubt Miss Nikos would have made this very public gesture without some expectation that it would be answered. Otherwise, as you say, it would risk looking like a publicity stunt."

    "But of course, there is also a risk that if Cinder Fall does not answer this challenge, then she risks looking, as Miss Nikos said herself, like a coward, isn't that right?" Lisa asked.

    Not that that would bother some of Salem's servants, Ozpin thought. Some, most of them probably, would have laughed off a challenge such as that which Miss Nikos had thrown down. They would have called it childish, naïve. It was childish and naïve in some ways: come face me, alone, bereft of all advantages, in a clean battle in which only our respective skills matter. Who would answer such a challenge as that, with so much to lose and nothing to gain?

    Nothing but the maintenance of reputation, which would be lost if the challenge were to be refused.

    That was the answer, of course: only someone who cared excessively about their reputation would accept a challenge such as this one. Miss Nikos seemed to think that Miss Fall was such a one, and it was true that Salem had made use of servants with such a temperament in the past.

    Something which she may come to regret.

    A flashing green indicator in the corner of the holographic screen alerted Ozpin to an incoming call. Turning off The Lavender Report, Ozpin was able to see that the call was coming from the First Councillor.

    Oh, joy.

    Ozpin took a deep breath and put on a benign and genial smile before he answered, "Good afternoon, Councillor."

    "A duel?" Councillor Emerald asked him. "A duel to the death?"

    "Ah, I see you've been watching the news," Ozpin replied.

    "Of course I watch the news; it's how I find out what the people are thinking," Councillor Emerald replied. "What is going on up there, Ozpin?"

    "To be blunt, Councillor, I could ask you what's going on in Vale," Ozpin replied. "Anti-faunus sentiment on the rise, anti-Atlas sentiment—"

    "I'm aware," Councillor Emerald said.

    "We cannot have the Vytal Festival ruined by factional division—"

    "I am aware!" Councillor Emerald snapped. "You think that I don't know what's going on? Novo's children were followed halfway home by some human drunk harassing them." He paused for a moment. "They said that Miss Shimmer and Miss Nikos and their team stepped in to defend and comfort them, and then escorted them the rest of the way. That was … very good of them. I would be grateful if you could pass on the thanks and appreciation of myself and Novo."

    "I will," Ozpin promised.

    "Why would someone who was willing to condemn the whole of Vale to death stop and help two people being harassed on the street?" asked Councillor Emerald.

    Ozpin paused for a moment. "I think … when one thinks of a city, a kingdom, it is easy to conceptualise it as something abstract, a piece on a board, a name on a map. Take it off the board, wipe it off the map, what matter that? Two people seen on the street are … two people. They cannot be anything else." Another pause. "And I think Miss Shimmer feels for those she has met more than she ever could for those she has not."

    Councillor Emerald snorted. "A human enough flaw, I suppose, even if she does carry it to excess. I'm increasing police numbers in the tourist areas of Vale, in order to ensure that the Vytal Festival is not disturbed. If that's not enough, I'll call in the army."

    "And what of those faunus who are not so fortunate as to live in the tourist areas of Vale?" Ozpin asked.

    "I'm a faunus myself, Ozpin, as you can plainly see," Councillor Emerald said sharply, "and I resent the implication that I'm leaving them behind. The fact is that many faunus distrust the police, and for good reason, an increased police presence … could make things worse. So far, there has been no evidence of humans going into faunus parts of Vale looking for trouble. If that changes…" He sighed. "I don't understand what's happening to this city, Ozpin; I can't get my arms around it."

    "Neither can I," Ozpin admitted. "This present agitation seems to be, if not quite sui generis, then it has certainly escalated at an unnatural pace."

    "With luck, it will die down just as swiftly, once Ironwood and his army take their leave of us," Councillor Emerald said. He shook his head. "To return to the business at hand … a duel, Ozpin, really? Was this your idea?"

    "No, Councillor, Miss Nikos came up with this plan all by herself," Ozpin replied. "I did, however, give her my approval."

    "Did you?" Councillor Emerald muttered. "Of course you did. You are aware, I hope, that duelling is illegal in Vale. It has been for over two hundred years."

    "And yet, the last recorded duel was fought only a hundred and fifty years ago," Ozpin pointed out.

    "That doesn't mean that Pyrrha Nikos can break the law just because she feels slighted."

    "Fighting the enemies of man is not illegal," Ozpin said. "In fact, it is precisely what a huntress ought to do."

    "What are you saying?"

    "I am saying that perhaps we should allow the Mistralians to use whatever terminology they like," Ozpin said, "while we focus on the salient point: when the dust settles, the person responsible for the Breach might not be a problem anymore."

    "So … this is a trap?"

    "No, Miss Nikos is in perfect earnest," Ozpin said, "but her earnestness may yet serve … a greater purpose."

    Councillor Emerald's eyes narrowed. "Are you trying to sound sinister?"

    "No, Councillor."

    "Then you should have chosen a different way to word that," Councillor Emerald said. "In any event … you make a very good point, regarding the legality of it. And of course, issuing a challenge to a duel isn't illegal, only fighting one is. So we will let this play out and see if it doesn't come to some good. Keep me informed, won't you?"

    Ozpin nodded. "Of course, Councillor. Good day."

    He hung up on the First Councillor just as the elevator door opened and General Ironwood walked in.

    "Oz."

    "Good afternoon, James," Ozpin said. He allowed himself a smile. "Allow me to guess why you might be here."

    "A duel, Oz?" Ironwood asked. "Seriously?"

    "It is the Mistralian way."

    "It's Mistralian nostalgic nonsense," Ironwood said, "and you know it."

    Ozpin's smile widened ever so slightly. He clasped his hands together, resting his elbows upon his lap. "You know, I cannot help but recall a young Atlesian officer I once knew who fought a duel against Leo—"

    Ironwood cleared his throat. "Yes, well… just because I was once young and stupid, Oz, is no reason why you should let other people be stupid just because they're young." He clasped his hands behind his back, glancing away from Ozpin. "In any case, neither Leo nor I was ever at risk of dying; we fought until his aura broke, nothing more." He paused for a moment, before adding in a far more sullen tone, "And besides, it's not like I got anything out of it anyway."

    Ozpin's tone was more sympathetic than it had been, as he said, "Duelling may or may not be, as you put it, nostalgic nonsense, but duelling over a woman … that is old-fashioned, even for me."

    "You make it sound as though the winner was going to own her," Ironwood muttered. "It wasn't like that."

    "Nevertheless I think that is rather how Luna saw the matter," Ozpin said, "judging by the way that she—"

    "Threw a glass of water in my face, declared 'I am not a prize to be won,' and stormed off?" Ironwood said.

    "Yes," Ozpin murmured. "Exactly. Has she forgiven you yet?"

    "I don't know; I mostly talk to Celestia," Ironwood admitted. "I think she overreacted. It wasn't even my fault; Leo was the one who challenged me. What was I supposed to do?"

    "You could have laughed at him," Ozpin suggested. "I think Luna might have preferred it if you had."

    "Then shouldn't Miss Nikos be laughing at these allegations?" Ironwood suggested. "I say it again, Oz, nobody was in danger of their life when I fought Leo. This … she could die, Oz."

    The smile slid off Ozpin's face. His voice, when he spoke in response, was soft and quiet. "I'm aware."

    "There aren't so many people like her around that we can afford to just throw them away."

    "I'm aware."

    "And it wouldn't be the first time that we've lost someone because they were too bold and too sure of themselves and they walked into something—"

    "I'm aware," Ozpin said, his voice rising to quiet James.

    Ironwood was silent for a moment. "Of course you are, I didn't mean to imply … I meant no disrespect."

    He turned away from Ozpin and walked to the windows that ran around three sides of the office, looking out across Beacon and Vale beyond, with the General's own warships visible in the sky.

    Ozpin could see his back, and his hands clasped behind his back, as he stood before the glass looking out.

    "Children," Ironwood said softly. "Children make mistakes. They overestimate their strength, they misjudge the importance of things; it's our job … it's our job to teach them better, but if we can't, if … failing that, it's our job to stop them making these mistakes in the first place."

    "You think this is a mistake?" Ozpin asked.

    Ironwood turned around to look at him. "You don't?"

    "Not necessarily," Ozpin replied.

    "If she dies," Ironwood said. "I thought you had plans for her?"

    "But if she wins," Ozpin said, "then it may be some time before the shadow grows again."

    "You think so?" Ironwood asked. "Don't you think you're forgetting about Autumn?"

    "She will not risk her in the front lines, having gone to such lengths to attain her," Ozpin said. "To send her into the midst of our fortress, where she could so easily be lost? Madness. She will keep her safe, as we have done, and ensure that at the very least the power may be passed on to someone of her own choosing. That, at least, is what I would do."

    "Well then," Ironwood said, "if killing Cinder will accomplish all that you hope, then all the more reason to let me put my team on stand by-"

    "No, James," Ozpin said firmly. "We will let Miss Nikos handle this her own way."

    "Why?" Ironwood demanded. "With so much at stake, why take the risk?"

    "Because Miss Nikos needs this," Ozpin informed him. "She needs this, and so, she will have it. I think … I think it is the very least that we can do for her."

    XxXxX​

    "'Coward'?" Cinder repeated. "She calls me 'coward'? How very boldly Mistral's princess gives commands: I must answer her challenge or be known as a coward." It had been bad enough - quite, quite bad enough - when some oik had presumed to suggest that she and Pyrrha might be in league together. The absurdity of it! As if she would ever associate with that overhyped, overrated, pampered milksop. As if she would ever bend her back to take commands from Princess Popular, so beloved. Had they no thought to Cinder's pride? Did they think so little of her that she could be nothing but a henchman for the golden girl, the people's darling Pyrrha Nikos?

    She had been tempted to write to the editor and complain about falling standards in journalism.

    Yes, that had been quite bad enough, but this? To be thought a subordinate to someone she hated was one thing, but to be accused of cowardice was something else altogether.

    Cinder turned around, turning from the window of the Portchester Manor library to face the others gathered behind her. "Now, I ask you, was there any need for that?"

    "It was kind of rude," Sonata agreed. "What if you didn't feel like fighting? What if you had a stomach ache? It would really suck if you couldn't go out and fight her for perfectly good reasons and everyone thought that you were just scared, right?"

    "It wasn't rude; it was transparent," Tempest declared. She folded her arms. "A transparent attempt to goad you into answering this ridiculous challenge."

    "'Ridiculous'?" Cinder said, rolling the word around on her tongue before spitting it back out again. "'Ridiculous.' 'This ridiculous challenge.' Is that what you think?"

    Tempest Shadow blinked. "Well … yes. Obviously. What kind of—?"

    "Cinder will answer," Emerald said, speaking quickly, before Tempest could say anything that might give Cinder cause to do something Tempest would regret. "Cinder will not back down from this challenge, will you, Cinder?"

    Cinder smiled at her. "No, Emerald, I will not. Would you care to explain to the Atlesian philistine over there," she gestured towards Tempest, "why I will not?"

    Emerald managed the difficult feat of smiling and looking a little nervous at the same time. She clasped her hands together in front of her and shuffled awkwardly upon her feet, scraping her shoes upon the wooden floor.

    "Take your time," Cinder murmured. "You know the answer."

    Emerald glanced at her and nodded in a short, sharp gesture. "Because," she said, "even if Pyrrha hadn't said it, the unspoken subtext would be there: if you do not answer, if you do not meet me in combat, then you are coward, afraid of me. No warrior would subject themselves to such humiliation in the eyes of their enemies. Secondly, because as Doctor Oobleck kind of explained on the news, what Pyrrha has done has a long history in Mistral. It's tradition; it goes way back." She looked at Cinder again. "It goes back to The Mistraliad, right? When, um … uh … Paris?"

    "Pandarus," Cinder corrected her gently.

    "Right, Pandarus for the Mistralians and Melanippe for the Danaeans agreed to meet to duel for the fate of the princess and the city," Emerald said, her voice gaining more confidence as she went. "And when Pandarus fled, he was known as a coward by everyone on both sides."

    "So what?" Lightning Dust demanded.

    "So … Pyrrha is appealing to ancient rules and customs," Emerald explained, "and they bind Cinder to answer."

    "Unless those ancient rules and customs are going to strike her dead if she doesn't do anything, then I don't see that they 'bind' her or anyone else," Lightning replied. "Ignore them. Flip them off. Who cares if your enemies think that you're a coward?"

    "I care," Cinder said, in a voice that was yet soft, but had nevertheless acquired some sharpness to it.

    Lightning shuffled a little. "I mean … they already think we're evil."

    "Yet they may think me valiant in my villainy," Cinder said. "I will not have Pyrrha Nikos think that I was afraid to face her. I will not have her think that I cower in some hiding place, cringing into the shadows, silent as she calls out my name, as though we played hide and seek and I sought to evade her gaze. I will not have it said that I was afeared of any foe arrayed against us; I am Cinder Fall!"

    She took a step forward, towards them all, her doubting subordinates, and as she strode, she jabbed at her own chest with one finger. "I am Cinder Fall, and I will eat the heart of Pyrrha Nikos in the marketplace! Why should I not answer this challenge?" She chuckled. "The fool has cooked herself for dinner. She challenges me. She will face me in single combat, when I dare and where I dare."

    She let out a gasping laugh as she spread her arms out wide. "This is what I wanted. This was always my intent. A battle between us to the death, one shall stand and one shall fall, and when Pyrrha falls, as she will, at my hand, then … what then? How will they weep in Mistral, how will they gnash their teeth, how will they wail for their fallen Evenstar, their Princess Without a Crown? How they will…"

    "Cinder?" Emerald murmured.

    "They will look for her coming from the White Tower," Cinder whispered, "but she will not return, by land or by air."

    She laughed softly, gently. "It … it occurs to me that when I strike Pyrrha down, I … I do her service. She might not see it so, Jaune will not see it so, and Sunset neither, but … when she falls, in valiant struggle against a contemptible foe … will not her reputation gleam golden evermore? Will they not raise a great and towering monument to her memory? Will she not live on in the hearts of all men?"

    And will I not live on beside her, our fates intertwined, her story inseparable from the name of her killer? As her reputation gleams effulgent, mine will be as black as polished obsidian. I shall be Mistral's dark demon forevermore, the monster who brought down the Evenstar.

    I would rather be remembered as a monster than be forgotten.

    I would not be forgotten for all the treasure in the world.

    She would not … she would not be her parents, dead and dust and gone from memory before the season turned. She would … be immortal, though she purchased it with blood and condemnation and every hand in Remnant turned against her.

    "Very romantic," Tempest drawled. "What if you lose?"

    Cinder raised one eyebrow. "You don't believe in me, Tempest Shadow?"

    "It's a fair question," Tempest said. "What if you lose, what if Pyrrha kills you?"

    "I have no intention of losing to Pyrrha Nikos," Cinder said, because of course, if she lost to Pyrrha, then she would be … nothing. Dust beneath Pyrrha's chariot wheels, just one of a great host of foes fallen or defeated. She had to kill Pyrrha in order to attain the infamy that she desired. "My life is not Pyrrha's to take; I will win."

    "You cannot be certain of that," Tempest said.

    Cinder' eyes narrowed as she advanced upon her. "You are beginning to move beyond a simple lack of faith and into insolence."

    "'Insolence'?" Tempest repeated. "Is it insolent to say that we need you alive? If you die, then our Mistress—"

    "My Mistress," Cinder said sharply. "Not yours. You are a servant to a servant. Right now, I am your mistress. Do not forget your place, or shall I remind you of it?"

    "No," Tempest said, bowing her head. "That … will not be necessary. Nevertheless, I … as your servant, I wish to express my … concerns—"

    "Your concern is touching, of course," Cinder said, "but the consequences of my defeat are none of your concern, not least because there is nothing to be concerned about. I will not fail. I will not lose. I will not suffer to fall at Pyrrha's hands."

    But if I did … if I do…

    If I do, then I will be forgotten.

    And as much to the point, I will be dead, and all of Salem's plans will be much of a muchness to me.

    I am not here to serve Salem only. I am not her puppet, to do her will obediently — no, not even obediently, thoughtlessly.

    I am not ungrateful, for all that she has done and given me; I am not unmindful that she has made me strong. And for her gifts, I'll render up to her a golden crown as she desires while I yet live.

    If I live.

    For I am not her factor, I am not put on Remnant to do nought but as she commands, I am Cinder Fall, and I must do as I will.

    I may be servant to a mistress, but I am no one's slave.

    So, if I fall — a very unlikely event — let Salem howl.

    After all, I'll be dead.

    "You three may leave now," she said, gesturing at Tempest, Lightning, and Sonata. "That will be all. Emerald, remain, if you will; there are further matters where I will require your assistance."

    "I—" Tempest began.

    "That will be all," Cinder said in a voice as sharp as a blade.

    Tempest scowled for a moment, but turned away and joined Lightning and Sonata in making her way out of the library.

    "Close the door, Emerald," Cinder said as they left. "Please."

    Emerald gave a brief smile, walked briskly and with a light tread — but with much improved posture all the same — to close the door.

    She lingered there, one hand upon the door handle.

    "Cinder…" she murmured. "May … may I speak freely?"

    Cinder tilted her head ever so slightly sideways. "You would dissuade me from accepting this challenge also?"

    "I didn't want to say anything in front of the others," Emerald said. "I … I know it's not my place, and I didn't want you to think that I was siding with Tempest over you, but … I don't see the point of this."

    "You articulated the point very well, I thought," Cinder said.

    "I know; I mean, I understand," Emerald said. "I understand why you feel as though you have to do this, but … but I don't agree. Rules and conventions, honour, what … what does it matter? Who does it help? Isn't it all just the way that people like Pyrrha get their way over people like us? And besides…"

    Cinder waited for her for a moment. No words came. "You may speak," Cinder urged. "I will not be angry."

    "You won't?"

    "Not with you," Cinder assured her. "We are … something close to equals now; you are a quick study. I would not be wrath with you as I would be with Tempest or Lightning."

    "Okay," Emerald said softly. "Then … then I think you're wrong. I think that this is pointless; I think that … the world that you want to live in, the world that you want to believe in, it doesn't exist. You can kill Pyrrha, as I'm sure you will, but what then?"

    "She will be remembered, and I—"

    "No," Emerald said, "she won't. She won't gleam golden in memory, she won't be put on a pedestal, she'll be a rotting corpse in the ground somewhere, and those who loved her best will have forgotten about her before the year turns. Jaune, Sunset, they'll move… forward; Jaune will find someone else to love, and Mistral? Mistral will find another performing seal to fawn over. They won't remember her, and they certainly won't remember you. If they find it worth their while to kill you, then … they will not remember you after."

    Cinder was silent for a moment, staring at Emerald. "You speak … did it require boldness on your part to speak thus?"

    Emerald swallowed and nodded silently.

    You speak the fear that is in my heart. After all, that had been the fate of her mother, bold-hearted pilot though she was; that had been the fate of her father, a good and honest gentleman. That too had been the fate of her stepmother and stepsisters; where was Phoebe's mourning to be seen?

    And yet … and yet, she hoped for more for herself. She hoped for more for Pyrrha Nikos, and that moreness would secure more for herself.

    "What would you have me do instead?" she asked.

    "Live?" Emerald suggested. "Live for yourself, and for the moment; not for your hopes of lasting memory."

    Cinder chuckled. "Pyrrha's choice. A long unmemorable existence, or a brief life and immortal memory."

    "Maybe she chose wrong," Emerald suggested.

    I cannot live, for I have nothing to live for. "Seek not to alter me, Emerald," Cinder said. "I am … I am too far gone." And I have been altered too much already. "Seek not to alter me. I did not ask you to stay so that you would persuade me from my course, but because I need your help."

    "My help?" Emerald asked. "With what?"

    "Convention dictates that the two combatants, who are assumed by convention to have a quarrel between them, should have no contact before the duel itself; all communication is by trusted intermediaries. Out of all them, you are the only one I trust, and so I ask that you serve as my intermediary in this and arrange a suitable place where we will not be observed or disturbed by General Ironwood's men or any Valish authorities."

    "I … of course," Emerald murmured. "I can't say that I'm honoured, even though I kind of feel as though I should say that, but I will do it." She paused. "Pyrrha's trusted intermediary—"

    "I suggest you start," Cinder said, "by calling Sunset."

    XxXxX​

    "Ridiculous," Tempest muttered. "Absolutely ridiculous."

    "Yeah, you were acting kind of strange in there," Sonata said.

    Tempest stopped — as did Lightning Dust, for that matter — and stared at her. "Me?"

    Sonata stopped too. "Oh, I'm sorry, were you talking about someone else?"

    "Cinder!" Tempest snapped. "She can't do this."

    "Why not?" Sonata asked. "I thought we wanted her out of the—"

    "Not so loud!" Tempest hissed, covering her mouth with one hand.

    Sonata's eyes widened. When Tempest withdrew her hand, she spoke in a noticeably quieter voice. "Oh, right, sorry. But still, I thought—"

    "Unfortunately," Lightning muttered, "much as I wouldn't mind seeing the back of her either, we can't do it without her."

    Sonata frowned. "No?"

    "No," Tempest agreed. "Cinder … the only path to our Mistress' designs lies through her. Without her, our Mistress' goals cannot be achieved, and all of this is pointless."

    "And she won't let my sisters go," Sonata whispered.

    "She must be informed of this disobedience," Tempest said.

    "Ooh, I've got a better idea," Sonata said. "What about if she wasn't—"

    "Weren't you listening?" Lightning demanded. "If Cinder dies, then—"

    "Yet," Sonata finished. "What if we didn't tell anyone … yet?"

    There was silence amongst the three of them for a moment.

    "'Yet,'" Tempest murmured.

    "'Yet,'" Lightning repeated approvingly.

    "'Yet,'" Tempest said again.

    The more she said it, the more she liked the sound of it.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 58 - Challenge Accepted
  • Threadmarks
    • Challenge Accepted

    ​

    This was going better than Phoebe had expected.

    It was going better than she had dared to hope.

    It was true that Pyrrha had blunted a lot of the force of Phoebe's accusations and won great plaudits by her dramatic response; Mistralians loved a good piece of theatre, her people were depressingly prone to hero worship, and what was more quintessentially heroic than proving your innocence in single combat, than in pointing your sword at some foe and challenging them to a duel to the death? All of that was true, and under different circumstances, it might have made Phoebe bitter, but in the present circumstances…

    Well, it wasn't just that Pyrrha had blunted Phoebe's attack line, was it? Yes, she had, although Phoebe yet had hope that she had not done so as completely as she might have liked; the initial buzz was strong for Pyrrha, but that wasn't to say that there would not remain some lingering doubts about the truth … but let that lie for now.

    The reason why Pyrrha had not, could not, dampen Phoebe's mood — the reason, in fact, why she felt particularly buoyant at the moment — was because of how Pyrrha had chosen to respond.

    It was precisely because Pyrrha had pointed a sword at her enemy and challenged her to a duel to the death that Phoebe felt almost like singing.

    It was too good! It was delicious! A duel to the death! To the death!

    To risk her life, to hazard it in single combat, what a fool she was. What a fearless, foolish idiot was Pyrrha Nikos. If she died … Phoebe so very much hoped that she died. Phoebe would have prayed that Pyrrha would die if she had believed in any gods with sufficient faith or fervour to pray to them.

    If Pyrrha died, then a great shadow would be excised from Phoebe's life. She would be … she would be free. No more dogged by Pyrrha, no more overshadowed by Pyrrha, no more bested by Pyrrha.

    No more outshone by Pyrrha in all respects.

    And to think that all it had taken were some rumours, and Pyrrha was going to her death voluntarily.

    Well, perhaps. Phoebe hoped so anyway. Admittedly, it could not be taken for granted. As Phoebe knew too well, Pyrrha had a very annoying habit of winning battles. It might be that she would triumph over this Cinder Fall and return trailing even more clouds of glory.

    That would be … frustrating, to say the least.

    If that happened, then Phoebe … Phoebe would deal with it. She would cast doubt upon the outcome of a trial by combat, she would suggest that Cinder Fall was not actually dead, she would continue to spread malicious rumour through the world. What was Pyrrha going to do about that? The problem with such a dramatic gesture was that you could only do it once.

    Much like dying.

    If all that Phoebe could do for now was sling mud at Pyrrha's reputation, then she would do so and wait for the moment when she could ram a spear through Pyrrha's back.

    But until then … she hoped, oh how she hoped.

    In the meantime, while she hoped, she was on her way to call on Pyrrha herself.

    One of the things that Phoebe found rather foolish about her own culture was the insistence on personalizing everything: take this single combat, for instance; you had to challenge your enemy directly. You couldn't hide your own presence in the shadows, you couldn't work through catspaws, everything was supposed to be out in the open for the world to see.

    Phoebe did not work out in the open, and so, even if Pyrrha had suspicions about her involvement in these accusations against her, she couldn't prove it, and without proof, she could not act. And with Pyrrha unable to act, unable to prove anything, Phoebe was quite able to go to her and reconcile.

    It was … the proper form, in occasions such as this. With Pyrrha about to risk her life in a sacred combat, it was the perfect time, the proper time, the expected time for Phoebe to go to her and clasp her hands and beg her to put aside their enmity.

    It didn't matter one bit that Phoebe had no intention of putting aside her enmity for even one second; the point was that … well, there were two points, the first of which being that Pyrrha, bound by convention as she was, would be unable to refuse and, fool that she was, might even believe it; the other point being that it would make Phoebe look good.

    This situation had taken on the attributes of a story; Pyrrha had turned it into one when she challenged Cinder Fall so publicly and in such a ringing tone. She had elevated this out of the world of trashy publications and into something … something closer to myth.

    Well, Phoebe could treat this like a storybook as well if she wanted to, and this was the storybook response to a situation like this one: to put aside petty differences in the face of Pyrrha's hopefully impending death and win great plaudits for her magnanimity.

    And so, trailed by her entourage — what was the point of doing something like this if you weren't going to have witnesses? — Phoebe swept through the corridors towards the Team SAPR dorm room.

    "Is there really that much point to this?" asked Fleur. "What if Pyrrha doesn't accept?"

    Phoebe laughed lightly. "Oh, really, Fleur, forgive me, but that's such an Atlesian thing to say. Of course Pyrrha will accept. She really has no choice at all. The customs will compel it, if nothing else. Besides, I'm sure that a sweet girl like Pyrrha could never hold a grudge."

    They were approaching the SAPR dorm room now, with that ridiculous picture on the front from that terrible plebeian restaurant — Phoebe had been there once and never again; it was disgustingly common — on the door.

    Phoebe did her best to ignore it, presenting a benign smile upon her fair face as, with perfect poise, she knocked briskly upon the dorm room door.

    There was a moment's pause before the door was answered by that odious faunus, Sunset Shimmer; she might act a little less high and mighty once Pyrrha died and all the favour and the money that she presently enjoyed from Lady Nikos evaporated like so much snow under sunlight.

    You think that you're so wonderful, don't you? You are nothing but a sponge that soaks up Lady Nikos' favours. One day, Lady Nikos will put you in her hands and squeeze you and squeeze you, and then, sponge, you will be dry again and just as small and light and utterly inconsequential as you were before.

    But for now, Sunset stood in the doorway, physically barring it and looking at Phoebe with a scowl upon her face. "What do you want?"

    Phoebe bit back a retort to the insolence that she was being offered. "I'm here to speak to Pyrrha."

    "Go away," Sunset said, moving to shut the door.

    Phoebe put one hand upon the door to prevent it from being slammed in her face. "I … understand that you may not have the best opinion of me," she said in her 'model student' voice that had fooled so many teachers at Atlas Academy. "I even understand why you might not like me very much; some of my words have been … rather cruel. But that's why it's so important that I speak to Pyrrha now, before it's too late!"

    "Phoebe?" Pyrrha asked, appearing in view behind Sunset, visible over her shoulder. Her tone was guarded as she said, "Is there something I can do for you?"

    Phoebe let out a sort of gasping sigh, putting one hand upon her heart. "Pyrrha!" she cried. She took a moment to appear to collect herself, her bosom heaving. "No, Pyrrha, there is nothing that you can do for me … except forgive me. I have been a fool, and worse than foolish, I have been very cruel to you and to your friends. I have taken our bouts in the arena far too seriously and allowed myself to become bitter over bouts that you won fair and square in the arena. I have wronged you with my words, wronged you terribly, but now … now, I see the light. What you have done … what are you prepared to risk … there can be no connection between you and that vile criminal Cinder Fall."

    Sunset's face twitched. "Very prettily said," she growled. "But if you think that—"

    "Sunset," Pyrrha murmured. "It's alright. Please, step aside."

    "Pyrrha?"

    "Please," Pyrrha repeated.

    Sunset hesitated for a moment before the little beast obeyed Pyrrha's command and stepped back, clearing the way for Pyrrha to take her place, standing in the doorway facing Phoebe.

    Phoebe smiled at her and reached out, taking Pyrrha's gloved hands in her own. "You are, as you have always been, the better warrior," she said, "but now, I see you are the better woman too. I am sorry, I am so very sorry that I ever doubted you. Now, before it may be too late, I would be reconciled with you. Forgive me, Pyrrha, I beg of you, and let me kiss you as a dear friend and comrade."

    Pyrrha was silent for a moment, the expression on that milksop face harder to read than Phoebe would have liked. But at last, she said, "Of course. In truth, there is very little to forgive; rivalry is as much a part of the tournament circuit as combat itself, after all. But, in as much as you require forgiveness, I forgive you and welcome the opportunity to know you better as a friend."

    She turned her cheek ever so slightly. Phoebe leaned forward and placed a kiss first upon her left cheek, and then — when Pyrrha turned her head the other way — upon her right.

    Someone took a picture; Phoebe could see the flash illuminating Pyrrha's face. It was a pity they were only going to get a shot of her back, but it was unavoidable in the circumstances.

    Phoebe released Pyrrha's hands and took a step backwards. "You carry the hopes of Mistral on your shoulders," she said. "And I am certain that you will bring honour to us all."

    XxXxX​

    Sunset's hand glowed with the emerald light of her magic as she telekinetically shut the door.

    "Do you believe that?" she asked.

    Pyrrha half turned towards her. "Do you ask if I believe that it just happened or that I believe Phoebe's sincerity?"

    "Either," Sunset replied. "But I hope the answer to the second one is 'no.'"

    "Indeed," Pyrrha murmured. "I might, possibly, have believed her, although even then, I would have found it hard to swallow, if it were not for … the things that you have told me you observed in Cinder's memories."

    "Exactly," Sunset muttered. "You know, it occurs to me that that woman is the reason for all our problems."

    "I think Salem might be a little surprised to hear that," Pyrrha said mildly.

    Sunset rolled her eyes. "You know what I mean. If she hadn't treated Cinder the way she did, then there would be no Cinder, not for you to fight, not to have caused the Breach … not for us to fear at all. All our troubles would be … if not over, then at least diminished."

    She paused for a moment. "You know, considering that we only found out about Salem because Cinder had made it urgent that someone be recruited, if Phoebe could have only managed to be a decent loving stepsister, then we'd probably be enjoying a perfectly ordinary school year by now, preparing for the Vytal Festival in bliss."

    "In bliss?" Pyrrha asked. "Or blissful ignorance?"

    "How happy has knowledge made you?" Sunset asked.

    "A fair point," Pyrrha acknowledged softly.

    "If Phoebe didn't mean any of that — and I agree, she probably didn't — then why bother?" Jaune asked. "What was the point of it?"

    "The appearance of the thing, I think," Pyrrha explained. "No doubt, she thinks it will enhance her reputation to be seen to be reconciling with me before I fight for my life. There is precedent for such things, old enemies putting aside their differences before one of them goes to battle. Palamon and Arcite were reconciled to one another before Arcite's fatal duel with Pyramus, and after Arcite's death, Palamon took Arcite's sister into his house and under his protection, providing for her until her marriage." She paused for a moment. "If I should—"

    "Don't," Jaune said before she could finish. "Don't say that. You're going to win."

    Pyrrha glanced at him and smiled. "Of course," she said.

    "Is that really why she did it?" asked Ruby. "I mean … it still seems … is anyone really going to care?"

    "Inasmuch as they already care — about me, about Phoebe, about any of us who fight or have fought in the arena — then yes, I think they probably will," Pyrrha replied. "The somewhat depressing thing is that this will probably work to enhance her reputation just as she hopes that it will."

    "So she gets to slander you to the point you have to go and fight this duel, then she gets to cry crocodile tears about how sorry she is — not for the slandering you, but for everything else — and apologise for social clout?" Sunset said. "That seems—"

    "Wrong?" Jaune suggested.

    "At the very least," Sunset agreed.

    "In the scheme of things, it hardly matters," Pyrrha said. "A little popularity might even sweeten Phoebe's nature."

    "It wasn't sweetening that her nature needed," Sunset muttered. "But I accept that there are more important things." She frowned, a somewhat unpleasant thought striking. "Hang on, you said that this was a customary thing, right?"

    Pyrrha nodded. "It has its roots in myth and tradition, yes."

    "So does that mean that we can expect a host of people and all their flunkies beating a path to our door so that they can be seen to publicly reconcile with you for all the ill thoughts they had and apologise if they ever doubted you or so much as looked at you funny?"

    Pyrrha blinked and seemed to pale a little. "I … cannot guarantee that we will not have more visitors, that is correct."

    "Right," Sunset's voice was half a sigh and half a mutter. "Well, you will forgive me if I don't have the stomach to tolerate a parade of insincere sycophancy—"

    "You're not the one who has to endure it all directed your way," Pyrrha pointed out mildly.

    "Yes, yes, that is true," Sunset acknowledged. "And I feel sorry for you, believe me, but all the same … that doesn't mean that I want to stand here and watch while you endure it."

    Pyrrha chuckled. "Understandable, in the circumstances."

    "Where are you gonna go?" asked Ruby.

    "I … I'm not sure yet," Sunset admitted. "Somewhere a little quieter than this might turn out to be."

    "Sunset," Pyrrha said, "I don't know how Cinder will respond to my challenge, but she may either call you or, more likely, have someone else — Emerald or Lightning Dust — call you. In that case … I trust you to make the arrangements on my behalf. The place, the time, who will be present, all of that sort of thing. I leave the details in your hands."

    "You … you don't want me to check with you first?"

    Pyrrha shook her hand. "I trust you to act in my best interests."

    If I was acting in your best interests, I would call this … no, no, I might not. After all, it isn't as though you were free from troubles before you decided to do this.

    I have to admit, if you win this fight, it will be just the thing to give you your confidence back.

    And you will win. You     will win. You have to win; I won't accept anything else.

    "I am … honoured," Sunset murmured. She bowed from the waist at a forty-five degree angle. "And in this office, I will serve you well, I swear it." She paused. "I suppose, given the circumstances, it might be best if I went somewhere quiet and out of the way where no one can overhear if Cinder decides to call."

    "That would probably be for the best, yes," Pyrrha agreed.

    Sunset nodded. "Right then, I shall take myself off to some secluded spot … and wait for the call which…" …the call which I hope and dread. "I'll wait for the call."

    With one hand, she checked that her scroll was in her jacket pocket as she walked towards the door, Pyrrha making way for her as she did so.

    Sunset opened the door and stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind her.

    As she heard the click as the dorm room door locked behind her, she could not restrain a sigh from passing her lips.

    "You're worried about her, aren't you?"

    It was only then that Sunset noticed Yang, standing just beyond her own dorm room door, her back to the wall facing SAPR's room, her arms folded.

    "You waiting to speak to Ruby?" Sunset asked.

    "Actually, I was kind of hoping you might come out here," Yang replied. "If only so I can ask what that herd was moving down the corridor just now."

    Sunset cringed. "I'm afraid I wouldn't count on a peaceful day from now on. There might be more of that to follow."

    "Why?"

    Sunset let out another sigh — they would bloat her at this rate — and said, "Since Pyrrha is going to be risking her life soon, probably, everyone is coming to performatively apologise, kiss, and make up for any bad blood between them, so that … so that if she … so that if she…" So that if she dies, then they can say that they reconciled before she passed, and everyone will say how generous it was of them, and noble.

    She couldn't say it. The words stuck in her mouth fit to make her choke upon them. It was as if … it was ridiculous, but she felt as though if she spoke the words too often, then she would conjure it into existence, that if she mentioned that Pyrrha might … she didn't even want to think about it.

    Sunset's chest rose and fell, her breathing coming in gasping breaths. She hated them. At this moment, she hated them, not only Phoebe but all of these Mistralians and their culture that they would treat Pyrrha like this, that they would compel her with their mores to…

    Sunset found that there were tears welling up in her eyes.

    She felt, rather than saw, Yang's hand upon her shoulder, drawing her forward, pulling her into an embrace.

    "Easy now," Yang murmured, stroking Sunset's fiery hair with her other hand. "Easy now. It's okay. Pyrrha's okay; she's on the other side of the door."

    Sunset screwed her eyes tight shut. "I know that I should be supportive and believe in her—"

    "You don't have explain to me," Yang said. "I get it. You can believe in someone, you can support them every step of the way, you can think — you can know — that they're totally awesome, but … but that doesn't make them invulnerable or immortal."

    "Yeah," Sunset whispered. "Yeah, you're right; I am worried about her."

    "I can get that too," Yang said softly, ever so softly. "I gotta say, it's a heck of a long way to go because someone wrote something mean about you."

    "It isn't that," Sunset replied. "It … it's not just that, anyway."

    "Then what?" Yang asked.

    "I don't know if I ought to say," Sunset said. "I don't want to spread Pyrrha's secrets all over the school."

    "I could get upset and point out that I'm not exactly 'all over the school,'" Yang remarked. "But … I get what you mean. You don't have to tell me. If you say that there's another reason, that there's a good reason for Pyrrha to do what she's doing, then I believe you." Yang stepped back, releasing Sunset from the embrace but keeping both hands upon Sunset's shoulders. "Just so long as Pyrrha knows that you believe in her too. It's okay to be worried, just so long as she knows that it isn't because you don't think she can win."

    Sunset sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of one hand. "That … that's good advice," she said. "I will … definitely take that when I get back, although right now, I need to…"

    "Need to what?"

    "I … I need to get a call from Cinder to set up the duel," Sunset said.

    Yang was silent for a moment. "I know that you're big on tradition and stuff, but at some point, even you have to admit that this is kind of absurd, don't you think?"

    "It seems that way," Sunset admitted. "But … my objective assessment is so clouded by the circumstances as to make objectivity impossible, but … it's worked out for them for hundreds, thousands of years, even across battle lines. Honestly … if it wasn't Pyrrha … I'd maybe, probably, think it was kind of cool, you know? Two people meeting to settle a dispute themselves, instead of having a war over it, just two people fighting instead of armies, sparing cities and people the trouble and the worry. Taking on the burden of their causes wholly on themselves."

    "Well, when you put it like that, it does sound heroic," Yang acknowledged. "Kind of … kind of what huntsmen are meant to do, come to think of it: taking on the burden, doing all the fighting so that there don't have to be armies. Only trouble is that this fight isn't going to solve anything, is it? Everything is going to be just the way it was, except…"

    "Yeah," Sunset said. "Except … but like you said, I need to believe in Pyrrha. I do believe in Pyrrha." It's just unfortunate that I know Cinder too. "If anyone can do this, she can."

    "Tell her, not me," Yang told her. "But still, the idea of you getting a call from Cinder is ridiculous."

    Sunset let out a nervous laugh. "Yeah … ridiculous. Totally ridiculous." She took a deep breath. "Thank you."

    "It's what I do," Yang told her, with a slight smile and an equally slight shrug of her shoulders. "I was going to make some coffee; do you want something?"

    "No, thanks," Sunset said. "I have—"

    "Places to be, right, got it," Yang said. "Good … well, you don't need luck, do you?"

    "Not for this part, I hope," Sunset said as she left Yang behind and started down the corridor in the direction of the stairs.

    Thankfully, she managed to make it to the stairs, down the stairs, and out of the dorm room without running into any more Mistralians coming to offer their insincere apologies coming the other way.

    She didn't believe that any of them would be sincere. If they were sincere about wanting to make amends, then they would have done it before now, instead of waiting until…

    She still didn't want to think it. The point was that she didn't believe in any of these apologies or desires for reconciliation. It was all just … it was all theatre.

    Which Sunset might not have been opposed to, admittedly, except that in the circumstances…

    Sunset put them from her mind. There were a lot of things that she liked about Mistral, not least the look of the place; it was just that this… the current situation had got her nerves jangled that was all.

    Nevertheless, when she got back, she would have to take Yang's advice and let Pyrrha know that she did believe in her.

    Which she did. Pyrrha was the real deal, after all, and if she'd been going up against anyone but Cinder Fall, then Sunset wouldn't have worried; she might not have liked the fact that it was single combat in any event, but she wouldn't have been actively worried the way she was now.

    That was Cinder's doing.

    It didn't help that her feelings about Cinder dying were…

    I should hate her. I told her that I hated her, and I…

    She is responsible for all of this. She is the reason why … except she isn't, is she?

    She gave me a choice, but I was the one who took it. I hate her because I hate myself.

    Except I don't actually hate her.

    I feel…

    I admire her, a little, fighting against four kingdoms and all the power of Atlas, making a challenge to the entire system of the world, defying … everything. I wouldn't have that kind of courage, or that kind of resolve. I wouldn't be able to fight such a fight; I would quail before the strength of opposition.

    I ran away in the face of far less trouble.

    So yes, though I might not be able to say it openly, I admire her courage, whatever the ends to which she puts her courage.

    But most of all … most of all, I feel sorry for her. Not just because she was so cruelly mistreated, although there is that — although there is also the fact that she would not wish to be pitied for it — but more than that. I feel sorry for her because she has nothing in her life but wrath and revenge, and they will burn her to ashes ere they consume the world.

    Sunset walked across the courtyard, heading out across the open grounds of Beacon in the direction of the farm; not a place where she often spent time, but at the same time … it was not a place where a great many students spent a lot of time, and so she had reasonable hopes of privacy there, with only the chickens to overhear.

    The chickens appeared to be in fine fettle when Sunset arrived; someone had spread a load of feed upon the ground in their enclosure, and they were clucking as they gobbled it down eagerly.

    Sunset remembered Pyrrha's story from before, about the sacred chickens and how there was not allowed to be a fight unless they ate, conveying the favour of the gods upon the battle. She wondered if the Beacon chickens were sacred enough that it might be considered a good omen that they were eating, and though she couldn't be sure, she found herself rather hoping that it was true.

    It occurred to Sunset that the reason not a lot of students came down here was that if you weren't a big fan of farm animals, then there wasn't much to do out here, and there wasn't much for her to do out here while she waited for a call.

    I should have taken my journal out here and written to Princess Celestia or Twilight.

    Sunset heard and felt her scroll buzz in her pocket, the suddenness of it making her jump. She fumbled a little, taking longer in her haste to get her scroll than she would have done if she hadn't been in such a rush. Nevertheless, she managed to get her scroll out of her pocket and open it up.

    Someone was calling her voice only.

    Sunset answered it. "Cinder?"

    "No, it's Emerald," came the reply out of the scroll. "We do this through intermediaries, apparently."

    "Right, of course we do," Sunset replied. "Hello, Emerald."

    There was a pause on the other end of the line. "Really?"

    "Well, we are talking to arrange a matter of honour," Sunset pointed out. "It feels like we're not really being true to the spirit of the thing if we don't at least try and be civil to one another in the process."

    "Right," Emerald muttered, sounding very unconvinced. "Well, yeah, so…" There was the sound of a page turning.

    "Are you reading?" Sunset asked.

    "I'm not reading; I've just got a book open on my lap," Emerald said. "I don't know all of this stuff off the top of my head; I'm having to check the rules."

    "I'm a little surprised that you care."

    "Cinder will care," Emerald said. "She'll want this done properly."

    "Of course," Sunset said. "We wouldn't want this done improperly, would we?"

    "Was that sarcasm?"

    "A little," Sunset admitted. "But I'm taking this very seriously, I assure you."

    "But do you…?" Emerald hesitated. "Do you think that…? Can I trust you?"

    "You probably shouldn't be able to, considering that we're enemies," Sunset pointed out.

    "If we're enemies, then why am I calling you, and why did you say that we should try and be civil to one another?" Emerald asked.

    "That … is a good point," Sunset admitted. "We were enemies, we will be enemies when you end this call, but right now, we are—"

    "In the same boat?" Emerald suggested. "Do you think this is a good idea?"

    "Of course I do," Sunset said; she couldn't say anything else to Emerald Sustrai.

    "Liar," Emerald said.

    "You can't possibly know that—"

    "I know that I don't think this is a good idea," Emerald said, "and I know that … I don't like you, but I think that we're alike in that … we care. You care about Pyrrha, don't you? You don't want her to die?"

    "Of course I don't, and of course I care," Sunset said sharply. "But Pyrrha's going to win, obviously."

    "Bollocks," Emerald replied. "Pyrrha has nothing on Cinder, nothing at all."

    Sunset gasped. "First of all: you're delusional. Secondly, if you think that, why are you so worried?"

    There was silence from Emerald on the other end of the line. "I … nothing is certain, is it?"

    Sunset was silent for a moment. "No," she said. "No, it is not."

    "Is Pyrrha really doing this because of what some stupid magazine said about her?"

    "Yes," Sunset replied, because, again, she wasn't going to admit anything more than that to Emerald. "Why is Cinder accepting?"

    "Because she wants to kill Pyrrha," Emerald replied.

    Sunset closed her eyes for a moment. Yeah. Yeah, that's about what I thought.

    "I've tried to talk her out of it," Emerald went on, "but she didn't listen. Have you tried to talk Pyrrha out of it?"

    "No."

    "Why not?" Emerald demanded. "Are you so confident?"

    "I don't need to explain myself to you," Sunset said. But she went on to explain herself anyway, saying, "Pyrrha has the right to make her own choices; I can't tell her what to do."

    "That doesn't mean you can't tell her you think she's making a bad choice."

    "I've been told that my way of telling people that I think they're making a bad choice can be … overly strident," Sunset admitted. "As a result … I'm experimenting with letting people do as they wish."

    "How's that working out?"

    "It's not doing my nerves much good so far," Sunset admitted.

    Emerald snorted. "You know, it's kind of funny, I guess," she said, "but we … Cinder and Pyrrha, they're both warriors. They both risk their lives … all the time, but it's only now that I'm actually worried about her. Is that stupid, or is there something special about single combat?"

    "Ten thousand fates of death surround them," Sunset murmured.

    "That's from The Mistraliad, isn't it?" Emerald asked.

    "It's a paraphrase," Sunset said.

    "Right," Emerald said, in a tone that concealed whether or not she knew what that meant. "I've started reading it, but I'm not that far in."

    "I won't spoil anything for you."

    Emerald chuckled. "Cinder tells me that it's really good, and that I ought to read it for my … anyway; I also hoped that it would help me understand Cinder a little better."

    "How are you finding it?"

    "Hard to understand at times," Emerald admitted. "And also … I could never tell Cinder this, but they're all… kind of awful."

    "That's harsh," Sunset replied. "Many of the heroes possess at least some admirable qualities. They're rounded characters, with flaws and virtues in equal measure."

    "The Pyrrha in the story decides to throw a massive sulk and sit out the fighting because somebody took her slave away," Emerald pointed out.

    "Her pride was … in fairness, the poem has an ambivalent attitude towards Pyrrha and her actions; it doesn't exactly praise every little thing she does," Sunset said. "I think … the answer to your questions is that yes, there is something … if not special about single combat, then at the very least different about it, because single combat … the difference is they're all alone, and we can't help them."

    "Yeah," Emerald agreed. "Yeah, it sounds obvious, now that you put it like that."

    "Can I ask you something?"

    "Depends," Emerald said. "Ask, and I might answer."

    "Why are you doing this?" asked Sunset. "Do you know who you're working for?"

    "I work for Cinder."

    "No, I mean—"

    "Yes, I know who Cinder works for," Emerald said. "Yes, I know about the grimm — how could I not? — so if you're going to try and play some stupid headgames where you convince me to change sides or betray Cinder, then cut it out; it's not going to work."

    "I would never encourage you to betray Cinder," Sunset assured her. "That would be … it would be like stabbing her in the back. I just want to know why. I can understand why Cinder is doing this; I wish that it weren't so, but I understand. But you … you don't seem the type to want to take your anger out on the world. Apart from anything else, you don't seem very angry about anything."

    Emerald was silent for a moment. And then a moment more. "I … I'm a thief. I was a thief. I didn't have anything but what I could steal, which wasn't always much. I was … nothing, until Cinder found me. She promised me that I'd … lately, she's been teaching me how to act like a lady."

    Sunset's eyebrows rose, for all that Emerald couldn't see it, the call being voice only. "Really?"

    "Uh huh," Emerald said. "Can't you tell by my elocution?"

    "You still need to work on your vocabulary choices."

    "Everyone's a critic," Emerald huffed. "The point is … I'm loyal to Cinder. Whatever road she's on, though it's bad for her, though it's bad for the people around her, I'm loyal to Cinder. I'm not going to turn on her, I'm not going to walk away from her, I'm not going to betray her to help you or even to save my own skin. Yes, it could have been rough on Vale if the Breach had actually broken through, but you know what, so what? Vale never gave a damn about me, Vale never treated me like I was anything more than gutter trash, Vale … Cinder is the first person to treat me like I might actually be worth something; lately, she's even been treating me like an equal. I'm not going to betray that, I'm going to be loyal to that, and even if it costs me my life, at least I'll die alongside someone who cares. Here I stand, even if it's where I fall."

    "And now you sound like a lady," Sunset said. "Congratulations." She paused for a moment. "You are a better person than those who scorned you in the street."

    "I don't need you to tell me that," Emerald replied. "But … thanks anyway."

    "You know," Sunset said. "We should probably actually get to work and sort out this duel, shouldn't we? It almost feels as though we've been putting it off."

    "'It almost feels'?"

    Now it was Sunset's turn to snort. "Since Pyrrha challenged, your side gets to choose time and place. Within reason."

    "Yeah," Emerald said. "I mean," Sunset could hear the effort speak in a more refined manner in her voice, "Yes, indeed. I see that it is so. Our two … combatants shall meet in the Emerald Forest."

    "'The Emerald Forest'?" Sunset repeated.

    "Somewhere Cinder can't be easily seen or found," Emerald said. "I don't want General Ironwood's troops swooping down on her."

    "You don't trust Pyrrha's honour?" Sunset asked.

    "Even if I did, I still wouldn't trust General Ironwood," Emerald replied. "What reason does he have not to take out Cinder if he gets the chance? Why should he feel bound by Pyrrha's honour?"

    "That is … a fair point," Sunset conceded. There was no reason for General Ironwood to respect the sanctity of the duel; he wasn't a Mistralian, and they were at war, to all intents and purposes. It was not impossible that he might seek to turn this situation to his advantage. Just as Emerald might be trying to turn this situation to her advantage, or Cinder's. "But the Emerald Forest? It's full of grimm."

    "That's not something you'll have to worry about with Cinder around," Emerald replied. "You don't trust us?"

    "You did lead us into a trap at Mountain Glenn the last time we talked like this."

    "That was Cinder, not me, and if you couldn't work out ahead of time that it was some kind of trap, then that's on you, not us," Emerald said. She hesitated. "Listen, for what it's worth, Cinder really is taking this seriously. Nobody thinks that she should be doing this, but she is. She wants this. And she wants to do it … right. An ambush … that wouldn't satisfy her."

    Sunset did not reply immediately. What Emerald said … it made sense. It tracked with what Sunset knew of Cinder. She hated Pyrrha, yes, but she wanted to triumph over her personally, not bury her beneath the grimm.

    And the challenged party did have the right to choose the place; Sunset could object if she thought that Emerald was abusing that right, but she did not have a power of veto over the location.

    "Where in the forest? It's a big place," Sunset pointed out.

    There was a pause. "I'm sending you some coordinates; it's a clearing. Pyrrha will be able to reach it from the cliffs."

    There was a ping on Sunset's scroll notifying her that she'd got a text.

    "For the same reason it's happening in the forest," Emerald went on, "the duel will take place at midnight."

    "Tonight?"

    "There's not much point waiting around, is there?" Emerald asked.

    "No," Sunset murmured. "No, I suppose there isn't."

    "Each combatant will have two marshals to observe the duel and ensure that the rules are followed," Emerald said.

    "Three marshals," Sunset responded.

    "Two," Emerald insisted. "We don't have three marshals."

    That was a point that was impossible to argue, and so Sunset said, "Very well, two marshals."

    "And you won't be either of them," Emerald added.

    "What?" Sunset replied. "You can't specify that."

    "I just did."

    "Why?"

    "Because you've already broken a truce once when you tried to kill Adam," Emerald pointed out. "I don't trust you."

    "And I thought we were becoming friends," Sunset said, and she wasn't even being entirely sarcastic about it.

    "Maybe in another life," Emerald said. "But in this life? I don't trust you to be there and not intervene to save Pyrrha when the fighting turns against her. Like Maenad, you wouldn't be able to help yourself."

    "You've gotten that far in The Mistraliad then," Sunset observed; the goddess Maenad rescued Pandarus from his death at the hands of Melanippe, whisking him away from the battlefield to his palace in Mistral.

    "Do you deny it?"

    "No," Sunset muttered. "No, I cannot say for certain that I would be able to help myself. Very well, two marshals, and I will not be there." I will fret and wait and look for her coming from the cliffs and envy Jaune and Ruby.

    "In the Emerald Forest," Emerald said, "at midnight."

    "In the Emerald Forest," Sunset agreed, "at midnight."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 59 - Waiting is the Hardest Part
  • Threadmarks
    • Waiting is the Hardest Part

    ​

    Pyrrha looked up as the dorm room door opened and Sunset walked in.

    "Emerald called," Sunset said.

    "I see," Pyrrha murmured. "And?"

    "Midnight, in the Emerald Forest," Sunset said. "I've got the coordinates for the exact location here; apparently, you can reach it from the cliffs, and I can believe that."

    Pyrrha was silent for a moment.

    So, it will be so soon.

    Better sooner than later, I suppose.

    But still … quite soon, all things considered.

    "I see," Pyrrha said, her voice very quiet, barely more than a whisper. "Thank you, Sunset."

    "The Emerald Forest?" Jaune said. "Are you sure about this? What if it turns out to be an ambush?"

    "As I said to Professor Ozpin," Pyrrha murmured, "I … trust Cinder in this, if in nothing else."

    "Because she is a Mistralian," Jaune said sceptically.

    "Because she wants to beat Pyrrha in a way that … counts, for want of a better word," Sunset said. "Believe me, the thought did occur to me, but … in the circumstances, I don't see that there's much choice but to trust Cinder's … honour."

    "There's always the choice to not go through with it," Ruby pointed out.

    "No," Pyrrha said. "No, that is no longer a choice for me. Having challenged Cinder, having threatened her with the shame of cowardice if she did not answer my challenge, if I were to shrink from her now, then I would look like the coward. And I would not be thought of so." She smiled thinly. "After all, that's part of what this whole exercise has been about, hasn't it? My reputation."

    My reputation and my confidence. I would lose both if I were to cower before Cinder now.

    "You'll have two marshals to observe the integrity of the duel, and so will Cinder," Sunset went on. "Unfortunately, I can't be one of them. Emerald was very specific."

    Pyrrha frowned slightly. "Why?"

    "Apparently, after what happened in Mountain Glenn with Adam, she doesn't trust me," Sunset said. "I can't say that I really blame her, in the circumstances, although … I do wish that I could come with you."

    I… Pyrrha was somewhat surprised to find that she was at least partly glad that Sunset would not be present in the forest. She liked Sunset a great deal, Sunset was her best friend, but at the same time, Pyrrha found that she shared Emerald's scepticism that Sunset would be able to prevent herself from interfering in the duel if the outcome was not going the way she wanted it.

    That was not a slight against Sunset, whose concern for her friends' wellbeing was greatly to be valued in almost all circumstances, but in this particular circumstances, it would not be welcome.

    This was something that Pyrrha had to do, herself.

    Always be the best and hold your head up high above all others.

    If she did not do this, then Pyrrha would not be able to hold her head up at all, never mind above all others.

    She had to do this, and if that meant that Sunset had to be kept far away, unable to interfere, well, then perhaps in this one instance, that was a good thing.

    She rose to her feet, standing up off the bed, and looked to Jaune. "Jaune, will you be one of my two marshals?"

    Jaune nodded. "Of course."

    "Thank you," Pyrrha said. She paused for a moment. "I will ask Arslan to be the other."

    "You will?" Sunset said. "I thought that…" She trailed off, seeming unable to say what she wanted to say.

    Pyrrha breathed in, and then out. She looked at Ruby. "I don't know whether you'll take this as a slight or a compliment," she said, "but I find that I feel the same way about you that Emerald seems to about Sunset: that I can't trust you not to interfere in the duel."

    "You mean you think I'd try and save you if I thought you were going to die?" Ruby asked.

    "That, or attack before the duel had even begun because our enemies were before us," Pyrrha replied.

    Ruby tilted her head a little, first one way, and then the other. "That … I think that's actually a compliment," she said. "Though I think it might be kind of an insult to Jaune and Arslan."

    "This is what Pyrrha wants," Jaune said, although his voice sounded a little strained as he said it. "And I trust her to get it done, if anyone can."

    "And Arslan is a Mistralian," Pyrrha added, "one who has imbibed our peculiar traditions and attitudes. If she is willing to do me this service I have no doubt that she will be able to hold herself back, no matter the outcome." She paused for a moment. "Speaking of which, I think that I should probably go and speak to her and make sure that she is willing to do me this service, shouldn't I?"

    "Do you want me to come with?" Jaune offered.

    "No, thank you," Pyrrha said. "I'll be fine on my own. I … I may not come straight back here afterwards; I … you can reach me on my scroll, if you need me."

    Sunset's eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.

    Jaune said, "Okay. We … I'll be right here."

    "I know," she said, smiling. She considered kissing him before she left, but decided against it; it might have seemed … forced. It didn't seem like the right time, at any rate. But she smiled at him as she walked towards the door and stepped out into the corridor.

    Her long ponytail swayed a little behind her as she turned down the corridor, her footsteps almost inaudible upon the carpet, her red sash trailing after her as she walked towards the stairs.

    As she passed the kitchenette, she heard Nora's voice cry out, "Hey! Pyrrha!"

    Pyrrha turned her head to see Nora emerging out of the kitchenette, holding a sandwich — salami, or possibly chorizo — in one hand.

    "Good afternoon, Nora," she said politely. "Late lunch?"

    "Nah, just fixing myself a snack," Nora explained. "Where are you off to?"

    "I'm on my way to see Arslan Altan," Pyrrha explained. "I … I want to ask her to be one of the two marshals at my duel with Cinder."

    Nora put one hand on her hip. "So, you're really going to go through with it then, huh?"

    "Having issued a declaration on television in two kingdoms, I can hardly not, can I?" Pyrrha responded. "Not while saving any degree of face."

    Nora looked up at her. Before she said anything, she took a bite out of her sandwich. She began to talk with her mouth full, rendering any words an indistinguishable and indecipherable mass of mumbling.

    "I beg your pardon?"

    Nora swallowed. "Sorry. I said you're gonna kick ass, right? Gonna show that nobody better mess with you."

    Pyrrha's lips curled upwards. "That's certainly the plan."

    "Oh, you have a plan!" Nora cried. "Well, you're going to win for sure, then. People with plans almost always come out on top; that's why I don't do so well in combat class."

    Pyrrha chuckled. "Aren't you one of the best students in combat class?"

    "And if I had a plan before every fight, then I'd be showing you who the real invincible girl was around here!" Nora said enthusiastically.

    Pyrrha's eyebrows rose. "Oh, really?"

    "You know it," Nora said. "One hit from Magnhild, and you'd be done!"

    "Then it's a good job for me that you've never managed to hit me with Magnhild, isn't it?" Pyrrha replied.

    "It is for you, yeah," Nora declared. "Hey, Pyrrha, is this what it means to be Mistralian?"

    Pyrrha blinked. "I'm not sure that I understand the question."

    "Ren and I … we're not really proper Mistralians in a lot of ways," Nora explained. "Sure, we grew up in Anima, but … well, we didn't exactly have a normal childhood, either of us, and … well, we moved around a lot, from village to village, we never spent a lot of time in one place, we didn't … we don't really belong to anywhere. And sometimes … sometimes, I've wondered what it would be like if we'd grown up normally, in Mistral, or just anywhere. Would we have been like you?"

    "Only if you'd grown up in a very specific stratum of society, or had a need to ape the trappings of that stratum's values, as Arslan does," Pyrrha said. "The assumptions of how to behave, who the proper role models are, what I should be aiming for, they're very specific, not just to my city, but also to my class."

    "Then how do you know that Cinder is going to accept your challenge?"

    "She already has," Pyrrha told her. "We meet at midnight."

    "'Midnight'?" Nora repeated. "I don't know whether that's spooky or someone trying to be spooky."

    Pyrrha laughed lightly. "I think it might be a little of both."

    Nora chuckled at her own little joke. "So … if all of this is not just about being Mistralian but about being part of the upper crust, does that mean Cinder comes from some rich old family?"

    "I…" Pyrrha hesitated for a moment. "I don't really know for sure, but I do know that she feels some … kinship to the old ways, an attachment to them. As I said, there are some who are forced to take on the trappings of noble customs — almost anyone who aspires to a successful career in the arena, for example — and there are some who are genuinely drawn to them. Cinder … may be one of those. There is no Fall family that I know of, but her name is almost certainly an assumed one."

    "Hmm," Nora murmured. "I guess it's no stranger than someone wanting to … what does she want? Working with the White Fang, trying to loose a whole bunch of grimm into the city, trying to … to do what? Was she trying to wipe out Vale?"

    "I couldn't speak to her intent," Pyrrha said. "Or her ambitions."

    "But you know she's bad news, and she's gotta be stopped," Nora said.

    "Indeed," Pyrrha agreed. "And I will stop her, if fortune is kind."

    "'Fortune'? Pfft," Nora declared scornfully. "You got this, girl."

    Pyrrha smiled. "Thank you, Nora."

    "But," Nora added, "if none of your teammates can say it so straight up to you … definitely don't let it get to you, but also … don't let it make you think they don't back you up to the hilt. I mean, I'm just some loud girl who sits opposite you at lunch most days; those three … they're the ones who love you."

    "I know," Pyrrha said softly. "But—"

    "But the thing is," Nora went on. "The thing is that when we love someone, it can be … well, it can be hard to say how we really feel, for one thing, but at the same time … when we love someone, it … it makes us afraid for them. And that maybe kind of sounds like I don't actually care about you one way or the other, which isn't true; it's just that what I'm trying to say is … when you love someone, when you know that if you lost them, if they weren't around anymore, it would leave a hole in your life and in your heart, then … then it's easy to get into a place where the hole that they'd leave behind is all that you're thinking about, and not how awesome you know they are. So … just, maybe keep it in my mind before you get upset." She shrugged. "Or don't. I mean, I'm just a loud girl with a lot of funny stories, after all."

    Pyrrha shook her head. "You are much wiser than that, and I will keep your words in mind."

    Nora smiled. "If it helps. Now go get 'er. Or go get Arslan, I guess. But in case I don't see you again before you go: go get 'er!"

    Pyrrha bowed her head. "I intend to."

    She left Nora there, eating her sandwich with whatever kind of cold sausage made up the filling, as she herself descended the stairs and stepped out of the Beacon dorm room. The air had cooled a little; it was quite crisp as she walked across the courtyard, pausing in front of the fountain and the statue of the huntsman and huntress standing on the rock, with the snarling beowolf down below.

    Pyrrha paid no attention to the grimm, all of her attention focussed instead upon the huntsman, his sword raised aloft.

    She did not know his name, she did not even know if he was a real person — in Mistral, he certainly would have been, but in Vale, it was possible that he was nothing more than an allegorical representation of a huntsman, an ideal rather than an individual — but as she looked up at him, his sword raised towards heaven, she felt a kinship with him.

    Like her, he had stepped forward to vanquish evil.

    She was reminded of the end of the Great War, of the Battle of the Four Sovereigns. There, and in the battles that had gone before, many heroes had performed prodigious feats of valour, but on that last battlefield, none had surpassed the Last King of Vale himself. He had been a very god of war; great heroes like Achates Kommenos had fallen before his blade, and more than that … it was hard to credit, but reports of those who had survived the battle swore that they had seen him cleave whole companies with his sword, shatter units, shatter the ground itself. Whatever the truth of that — and with magic in the world, who was she to deny that it could possibly be true? — it was beyond doubt that he, personally, had ended the Great War with his valour and the deeds that he had done.

    Fate grant that I may win a similar victory.

    Obviously, she would not end a war single-handedly, at least on this battlefield, nor could she put an end to the greater threat of Salem, but if she could win this battle, if she could lay Cinder low before her arms, then how much would be ended? How much safer would Vale be, would they be?

    Cinder had been beaten, it was true, she had been scotched, her plans had been thwarted, but so long as she lived, then she would plot again and scheme again and attack again and put everything at risk again.

    But Pyrrha could stop her. She had the opportunity to stop her.

    She would stop her. She would smite Cinder's breast with Miló and send her crashing down to the ground, her soul fleeing in anger down to the shades.

    And she would deliver the world from Cinder's menace.

    She would protect it, as she had always wished to do. As she had chosen to do long ago.

    Pyrrha turned away from the fountain, walking across the courtyard to the dormitory where the Haven students were staying until the end of the Vytal Festival. Two huntresses lingered outside the door as though they stood on guard. One of them was Medea, who had offered to poison people on her behalf not too long ago.

    The other was a girl whom Pyrrha did not recognise, a bear faunus with ursine claws in place of her fingernails, with freckles on her face and chestnut hair cut short above her shoulders. She wore a long white tunic that extended down past her thighs, but no visible skirt, shorts, or trousers of any kind; a pair of rough brown sandals enclosed her feet, while brown fingerless gloves covered most of her hands. She sat upon a low stone wall, one foot resting upon her other knee, a bow sat upon her leg.

    "Pyrrha Nikos," Medea hailed her as she approached. "I see that you've chosen to take a more … public approach to your problems than my poison."

    "Um," Pyrrha murmured, with a glance towards Medea's bow-armed companion.

    The bear faunus grunted. "I know all about what she is, don't worry: a tricksy little spider … but a very useful person to have around in a pinch."

    Medea chuckled. "I don't have your boyfriend's wonderful semblance which I hear can heal any injury, but my skill with herbs and potions has not gone unappreciated by my gallant teammates. So much so that they tolerate my perspective on the world, don't you, Atalanta?"

    "Atalanta Calydon," Atalanta said, holding out one hand to Pyrrha. "It is an honour to meet you."

    "Likewise," Pyrrha said, taking her hand.

    Atalanta snorted. "No, it isn't; I've done nothing yet worthy of honour, and you did not even know my name."

    "No," Pyrrha admitted. "But now I do, and I will look for your deeds, and one day, I will be honoured to meet you again."

    Atalanta nodded her head. "You are as courteous as you are brave; do you truly mean to face your enemy in single combat?"

    "I do," Pyrrha said. "I have issued my challenge; I have no intention of backing down from it."

    "Personally, I would rather shoot someone from behind a tree than face them in a duel," Atalanta said.

    "But how to get your foe to a place where you can shoot them?" Pyrrha asked.

    Atalanta was silent for a moment. "You make an excellent point," she conceded. "Your way is more perilous, but it does at least draw out the enemy to where they can be fought." She paused for a moment. "Are you a praying girl, Pyrrha Nikos?"

    "Um, no," Pyrrha replied softly. "No, I'm not. I have made offerings in the Temple of Victory, but … no, I am not a praying person."

    "Few enough are," Atalanta acknowledged. "So I shall pray on your behalf to Sirius, the Hound of the Hunt, that you shall catch your quarry and return with the spoils."

    "And I to Thessaly," Medea added.

    "I thank you both," Pyrrha said, "but now, if you'll excuse me, I need to speak to Arslan."

    "Tyche Agathe, as they say," Medea said as she gestured towards the door.

    Pyrrha glanced at her and nodded. "Indeed."

    She used her scroll to gain entry into the building, but as the door swung open, she paused in the doorway. "I … don't suppose that either of you know where Team Auburn's dorm room is?"

    Medea chuckled. "Come with me," she said. "I'll show you."

    "I'm much obliged to you," Pyrrha said, stepping inside the dormitory so that Medea could come in.

    Medea took the lead from that point, and Pyrrha followed her up two flights of stairs.

    "I have to say," Medea said, as they walked, "I'm a little disappointed in how changeable some of our young gallants have proven themselves to be over this. Of course, I should have known, the hearts of men are such changeable things after all, as the goddess teaches, but … those who called you traitor and foe to Mistral in the morning now sing your praises as a hero and upholder of the old ways."

    "I cannot say that I am sorry that their minds have changed," Pyrrha replied.

    "Oh, no, you must not mistake me; I'm not sorry for that either," Medea said. "It's just that, well, if you're going to have bad opinions, at least have the courage to hold to them for a little while. Changeable, as I said. Was it very tiresome for you receiving all those well wishers?" She didn't give Pyrrha a chance to answer before she added, "You'll notice that Jason and Meleager weren't among them."

    "Yes," Pyrrha said. "Yes, I did notice that."

    "I told them that an apology now would seem insincere," Medea explained. "Although you may get one later … and it will be meant," she added.

    "If it is meant," Pyrrha said, "then I will look forward to it."

    Medea led her down a corridor, looking very similar to the corridors in the dormitory where Pyrrha and her team lived, coming to a stop behind a certain door, functionally indistinguishable from all the rest.

    "Here we are," Medea said. "I'll leave you to what business you have with our Golden Lion. The moon watch over you, Pyrrha Nikos."

    "I will endeavour to give her something worth watching," Pyrrha replied.

    Medea smiled. "I'm sure you will."

    She walked back the way that she had come, gathering the folds of her robe around her, humming softly as she went.

    Pyrrha looked at the door and knocked gently upon it.

    There was a moment of silence when nothing happened, before one of Arslan's teammates, the one with fluorescent green hair, opened the door.

    "Oh, hey," she said. "You want to speak to Arslan?"

    "If that's possible," Pyrrha said. "Is she here?"

    The other girl nodded. "Hey, Arslan! Pyrrha Nikos out here."

    "Coming," came Arslan's reply. The other girl stepped back to allow Arslan to come to the doorway. "Hey, Pyrrha. What's up?"

    "Cinder has accepted my challenge," Pyrrha said. "We will meet in the Emerald Forest at midnight."

    Arslan's eyebrows rose. "Someone's trying a little too hard. Do you want me to put the word out so that everyone knows that the duel is going ahead?"

    "Actually, I was hoping that you'd agree to be one of my two marshals tonight," Pyrrha informed her.

    Arslan's eyebrows climbed yet higher into the recesses of her wild and unkept mane of hair. "Me?" she said. "You want me to go down there with you?"

    "If it's not too much trouble," Pyrrha said. "Although, as I say that, I realise that I am asking a great deal."

    "It's not that so much," Arslan said. "I just thought you'd want your own teammates to be there."

    "Jaune will be there," Pyrrha informed her. "But Sunset is not acceptable to the other side; they don't trust her not to intervene in the duel."

    "And Ruby?"

    "I'm not sure I trust Ruby not to intervene in the duel either," Pyrrha admitted.

    "I see," Arslan murmured. "Sure, I'll go with you. I can even film the fight."

    "Is that allowed?" Pyrrha asked.

    "I'm sure there's no rule against it," Arslan said. "And besides, you want to be able to prove that you actually fought the fight, don't you?"

    "I'm not sure that I want to release a video of myself killing someone," Pyrrha murmured.

    "You challenged someone to a duel to the death," Arslan pointed out. "The death is … kind of important."

    "Perhaps, but … it sounds rather ghoulish to put it out there for people to see," Pyrrha replied. "Some of my fans are children."

    "Also a very good point," Arslan acknowledged. "You don't have to decide right now, but I'm okay to film it, and then you can decide what or if you want to upload later, yeah?"

    "Very well," Pyrrha said. "You can film. I doubt that Cinder will object."

    Arslan put one hand upon the doorframe and leaned against it. "So, how are you feeling?"

    Pyrrha hesitated. "The anticipation before a big fight is … I'd rather get it over with. The hours will pass so slowly. I want it done. I want her done. I want … I want this shadow that hovers about my shoulders gone."

    "How does she fight?" Arslan asked. "What does she fight with?"

    "Glass," Pyrrha said. "Glass which she moulds; it must be her semblance. I have seen her use a bow and a pair of scimitars, both forged from the same glass; it changes to her will. Of the two, I fear the bow more; she can manipulate the direction of her arrows, control their flight, even make them explode."

    Arslan winced. "What are you going to do about that?"

    "Close the distance as soon as possible," Pyrrha said. "And keep it closed, never giving her an opportunity to open it up again. She cannot hurt me with arrows she cannot shoot."

    Arslan nodded. "Sounds like you have it all straight in your head," she said. "You've got nothing to worry about; you'll be fine."

    XxXxX​

    Cinder had her back to the door, standing facing the windows, looking out across the decaying grounds of Portchester Manor. Once, she supposed, it had been a beautiful, a grand sight, a sight to impress upon visitors the wealth of the family, that they could afford a splendid garden and the gardeners to maintain it.

    Now, it was nothing but weeds and overgrown grass; everything else had died or succumbed to decay.

    Death would claim all things in the end, save only Salem herself. For the rest of them, those who were blessed and cursed with a mortal life, death would come for them now or later, so why fear it? Why fly before it? Why not, as the ancient Pyrrha had, choose to burn brightly, for however brief a moment?

    Because, perhaps, there are those that we would leave behind who would grieve at our passing.

    Perhaps you should have remembered that, Mother.

    Fortunately, that is not true of me. I have nothing and no one to hold me back. There is nothing to impede my choice.

    I am the true heir to the old ways; I am the true evenstar of a kingdom which, like this decaying garden, is crumbling before the advance of time.

    I am full of wrath, I am bent upon revenge, I am the enemy of a great kingdom who will bring down its walls. In what way is Pyrrha Nikos a better Pyrrha than I am, save her name? I am the inheritor of that old heroic spirit, and I will make my claim undeniable.

    "Look at me," Cinder murmured. "I am the daughter of a pilot, a gentleman was my father, yet death and inexorable destiny are waiting for me."

    Let me only conquer Pyrrha before I die.

    Cinder wished … Cinder wished that the gods were real; then she could have prayed to them, as the heroes of old had done, prayed to win undying glory in the field, prayed to make her name infamous before she died.

    But the gods were not real. They had never been real. The only real gods had forsaken the world of men long ere the men of Mistral had constructed gods to pray to. Cinder could not help but find that fact a little … disappointing. The gods played such a great part in the story of The Mistraliad and in the other myths that to find out that they did not exist, that that part of the story was … well, you had to wonder what that part of the story was, didn't you? Exaggeration? Magic? Fiction?

    Of course, the rest of the stories were true. Cinder believed that with all her heart. Certain Atlesian scholars, uncultured philistines that they were, had begun to suggest all sorts of wild and contemptible theories about the composition of The Mistraliad, from dates to authorship. All of these, Cinder dismissed with magisterial disdain; The Mistraliad had been composed by the blind bard Demodocus, and he had recorded events that had actually happened no more than two generations removed from his own time and which had come down to him from the lips of those that were there. It recorded things that had really happened — apart from the gods obviously — just as all the great legends did.

    Demodocus had recorded the truth about real people, and their real deeds had echoed down the centuries to inspire Cinder when she had been at her lowest ebb.

    Those Atlesian scholars, puffed up with their own cleverness, would never understand what it was about these Mistralian tales that resonated in the hearts of men, because they were too busy trying to rip them to shreds. They could not see the forest for the … no, it was worse than that; they could not see the great house for all the bricks they were so cheerfully ripping out of the walls to study them more closely.

    And yet, the great house would remain standing long after they and their theories had been forgotten.

    If Cinder lived long enough to carry Salem's war to Atlas, she might pay those scholars a visit and remind them of that fact.

    And then kill them, for trying to spoil everyone's fun.

    If she lived.

    "Cinder?"

    Cinder looked over her shoulder. Emerald stood in the doorway; she no longer cowered as she would have done; her back was straight and her chin was up. Cinder was proud of her for that; she was not doing so well with her elocution, which had a regrettable tendency to slide back towards the plebeian in sound and language, but she had mastered posture admirably well, and the rest would come, with time and practice.

    She would make a rare lady, Cinder was sure. One like Cinder's own mother even, able to hold her own in at least the society of officers and gentlemen, even if she could not quite pass muster amongst the grand old families of Mistral. The likes of Nikos and Rutulus and Ming would probably smell her out as not belonging, but if Emerald set her sights a little lower, then Cinder had no doubt that she would fool them all.

    And if she kept on practicing, then there was no reason she should need to lower her sights.

    She really was doing very well.

    "Emerald," she said calmly. "Did you speak to Sunset?"

    Emerald nodded. "I just finished with her."

    "Good," Cinder said. She paused for a moment. "How did she sound?"

    Emerald hesitated. "We … share a common feeling that this is … ill advised."

    Cinder chuckled. "Were you so careful with your words when you and Sunset were talking about Pyrrha and I behind our backs?"

    "Yes, of course."

    Cinder raised one eyebrow. "You're an excellent liar, Emerald."

    "Thank you, Cinder."

    Cinder smirked. "She is worried for Pyrrha, then?"

    "She wouldn't admit it in so many words," Emerald said. "But yes, I think so." She paused for a moment. "I'm worried about you, too."

    Cinder looked away, turning her face and her gaze back out upon the gardens. "Sunset should be concerned for Pyrrha."

    "But I should not be worried about you?" Emerald asked.

    "I…" Cinder hesitated for a moment. "Destiny is all," she said. "What terms did you agree with Sunset?"

    "The duel will take place at midnight," Emerald said. "In a clearing in the Emerald Forest; that way, we won't be spotted by Atlesian forces, or Valish for that matter, although that's less of a concern. It's the same reason that I chose midnight; the darkness will give us cover."

    Cinder nodded. "That is sensible, and I am not opposed to it. It will lend our battle a certain rarefied air." She smiled. "We will meet upon the witching hour of night, with unquiet spirits as our witnesses, and the moonlight shall shine upon our clashing blades." And by the end, Pyrrha will have become just such an unquiet spirit, or I will.

    "Oh, that I had a lamb," she said.

    "A lamb?"

    "Or a pig," Cinder added. "Either would do."

    "For what?" Emerald asked. "Why would you want either of them? Are you hungry?"

    Always, but for something other than the flesh of an animal, Cinder thought. Her hunger was of a different sort, a sort that could not be sated, a sort that was eternal and restless and consuming. It gnawed at her, as if, in the absence of sustenance, it had begun to devour her own insides. Cinder tried to ignore it, since she could not sate it, but it was hard when it gnawed so hard and roared so loudly.

    "I would cut their throats and make a sacrifice of them, as was done in the days of old," Cinder explained. "And I would let their blood pool in a cup, and with that blood, I'd paint my face all in red, I'd smear myself with it, I'd wash my hair in it and let the blood drops mat within my raven locks." She turned to face Emerald. "I would make myself a frightful apparition and appear before Pyrrha looking like something deathly monstrous."

    "You'd ruin your dress," Emerald pointed out.

    Cinder let out a bark of laughter. "Yes, yes, I suppose I would, and it isn't as though we can send out for dry cleaning. Perhaps it is a good thing there are no farm animals close at hand after all. Who will be there, aside from Pyrrha herself?"

    "Two marshals," Emerald said. "I don't know who they'll be, except that Sunset won't be one of them. I insisted on that. After what happened with Adam, I don't trust her."

    "No," Cinder agreed. "Sunset is … not without honour, but that honour would never stand up to the possibility of Pyrrha's death. To prevent that, she would break all oaths and violate all codes of conduct. So, it will be Jaune then, and … Ruby, perhaps, or someone else. A Mistralian. It matters not; by custom, they cannot interfere unless I or my marshals violate the customs of the duel, which I will not. Two marshals, then; once we are done here, tell Lightning Dust to start getting ready; I will have Tempest babysit Sonata until we return. Thank you, Emerald; you have done well."

    Emerald smiled slightly. "My pleasure, Cinder."

    Cinder was silent for a moment. "In Mistral," she said, "about half a mile south of the city wall, shielded from view of the road by some trees, there is a hill called CaoCao's hill. It is there, according to the old tales, that two lovers, Pylades and Deianeira, arranged to meet. You see, their fathers were great rivals and had forbidden the two to meet, but they had spoken through a chink in the wall that separated the gardens of their houses. In love, they arranged to meet at this hill and thence to fly far away where they might, without the peril of Mistralian law, be wed.

    "Deianeira arrived first, but there, waiting in the darkness for her love, she was set upon by a beowolf. She fled, escaping from the grimm, but dropping her shawl in the process. The beowolf mauled upon the garment a little and then … wandered off, in search of other prey, leaving Deianeira's ruined shawl behind for Pylades to find when he arrived upon the hill. Believing his love to be dead at the paws of the grimm, he took his own life in grief, and then, returning to the scene to find Pylades dead, Deianeira did likewise."

    "What a sad story," Emerald murmured. "Tragic, really."

    "Is it?" Cinder asked.

    "Isn't it?"

    "Tragedy implies something … internal," Cinder said. "A flaw in the hero which drives him to his end. What happened to Pylades and Deianeira was sad, to be sure, but also the result of nothing more than bad luck; their own natures played no part in it. Unless it is their parents' tragedy; had they not been so bitter towards one another, so uncompromising … they could have allowed their children happiness, had they wished. Instead, they drove them to their deaths out of stubbornness and pride. In any case, if you go to that hill, you will find a cherry tree growing there now, and if you dig at the roots of the tree, you will find a sackful of treasure that I buried there some years previously."

    Emerald blinked. "Treasure? You mean … like, pirate treasure?"

    Cinder laughed. "No, Emerald, my life has not been quite that long to fit exploits of piracy into it, although the treasure that a pirate takes starts out as quite ordinary treasure before the pirate gets his hands upon it so … yes, I suppose you may be right, it is like pirate treasure. But this treasure … it belonged to my father."

    Emerald's eyes widened somewhat. "Your father?"

    Cinder nodded. "Inside the bag, you will find some of my mother's jewellery, a small number of Atlesian medals for service and gallantry, a bejewelled ornamental egg, an elegant snuff box, an engraved silver cigarette case … all of it mine by rights, liberated from those who had sought to deny it to me."

    That was … not entirely true. Most of the contents of the buried sack belonged to Ashley Little-Glassman by right, from her father and her mother — her mother's jewellery, the egg that her father had gotten her mother for their anniversary, the snuff box and cigarette case that she had gotten him — but there were a few items in there that had belonged to the Kommenos family, like the gold and silver goblets that one of their ancestors had won in the conquest of Kaledonia. Those Cinder had taken in payment for her years of unpaid labour. But to say that would be to say more to Emerald than Cinder was willing to admit.

    "Your family," Emerald murmured. "Why did you bury it?"

    "I had no home," Cinder said. "And I could hardly carry a sack full of valuables with me on the road, could I? In any case, I … I had no immediate need of it."

    "You could have sold it," Emerald pointed out.

    "Perhaps," Cinder allowed. "Although I would have been forced to accept far below what the items were worth, in the circumstances, in order to find a buyer in the lower slopes. I was … not in much position to bargain at the time. And at the time…" At the time, I didn't want to sell them. I didn't want to cut this last tie with Ashley's life, with the life that I had known when I was happy.

    "I didn't feel as though I needed the lien, at the time," Cinder went on. "I had other plans."

    Emerald paused for a moment. "Why are you telling me this?"

    "Because I'm giving it to you," Cinder said. "The treasure beneath the cherry tree; you may retrieve it and do with it as you will. It's all yours."

    "But it's yours," Emerald replied. "Your family—"

    "Mine to give to whom I choose," Cinder said, cutting her off. "You asked me once how you could be a lady without money, and I told you that I would address that later; well, here we are: I am addressing it. I am giving you wealth, at least enough to get started. When you open the sack, you will find that some of the things within are quite valuable. Make sure that you aren't cheated, and you should have a store of working capital at your disposal."

    "And you'll be dead," Emerald said. "That's the point, isn't it? You mean to die, so you're leaving me everything."

    "Would you rather I left it to Lightning Dust?" Cinder asked.

    "I'd rather you didn't leave it to anyone at all," Emerald declared. She walked forwards, her heels tapping upon the wooden floor of the library, until she and Cinder were less than an arm's length apart. "Go to Mistral yourself, go to the hill with the cherry tree, dig up your own treasure, and—"

    "And then what?"

    "Whatever you want!" Emerald cried. "When you have money, you can do anything. Money is … it's freedom."

    Cinder smiled thinly. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it is. Freedom to do as you will and to harm others if you wish." She turned away and turned her back on Emerald. "But I … I do not desire freedom."

    "Do you seriously mean to tell me that in this whole wide world, there is nothing at all that you would consider living for?" Emerald asked.

    "This wide world is so cruel," Cinder replied. "This wide world is so hostile. This wide world is so full of the most wretched, hideous, corrupt, contemptible, hateful people that you can imagine. So no, Emerald, there is nothing in this world that would persuade me to live in this world alongside those I hate, because that would mean letting them live too, and accepting all the cruelty and the pain. Rather, I will kill those I hate, as many as I can, all of them if I am allowed, and take a torch to this world and burn away the rotten flesh of its monstrosities. Though it cost me everything, I will do it."

    After all, it has cost me so much already, I can hardly turn back now.

    "Provided you don't die tonight," Emerald muttered.

    Cinder snorted. "Yes, Emerald, provided that I do not die tonight."

    "If…" Emerald murmured. "If you used—"

    "No," Cinder said firmly. "I will not do that."

    "But you'd win for sure!" Emerald protested.

    "That is precisely why I will not; it would defeat the object, it would prove nothing," Cinder declared. "I am the truer warrior than Pyrrha is, the fire burns brighter in my breast, the beowolf howls louder in my soul, I am the hungrier to triumph by far than that complacent girl. I do not need to steal a victory, and if I did … it would undermine any claim to superiority I might possess. I will conquer with my own strength … or fall, if destiny would have it so."

    My destiny is grander than to fall at Pyrrha's hands.

    At least, I hope that it is so.

    XxXxX​

    Pyrrha's steps had taken her beyond the armoury, leaving the sounds of the forge behind as she approached the river that ran towards Vale. The water flowed past her, babbling as it went, a swift-flowing torrent rushing towards the sea. It was clean here, and it seemed almost golden in the afternoon sunlight; Pyrrha wondered if it would be so clean when it finally reached the ocean.

    It reminded her of home a little; in Mistral, a spring sat near the top of the mountain and flowed down it, waterfall by waterfall, cascading down the steps carved into the rock, rushing down the slope, watering the high and middle and the low all at once; no matter how much might divide the people of Mistral, they all drank from the same water.

    Pyrrha approached this river, here at Beacon, watching it flow past her, indifferent to her and to all her deeds. She might live, or she might die, and the water would keep on flowing just the same.

    It was a thought both comforting and terrifying in equal measure.

    The water flowed past her, just as it did back home.

    Home where Pyrrha's thoughts turned now.

    The Colosseum, the Temple of Victory, the White Tower, the Palace and the Fountain Courtyard; the Cthoneum, dug out of the heart of the mountain, where games were held each year at the turning of winter to spring to honour the gods of the underworld; the plazas, the statues, the steps emerging out of the slopes of the mountain to provide additional flat land to build upon. The columns and the colonnades, the gleaming marble, the polished bronze, the beauty. The way the banners on the walls rippled in the wind.

    The way the crowd cheered as she emerged from darkness into light.

    The way the paint felt on her face as they made her up for her triumphal chariot ride.

    Her home. Her past. Her past … and her future too. Pyrrha closed her eyes and listened to the water running by in ignorance of her and vowed to herself that she would not perish at Cinder's hands; she would not accept that as her destiny. That was not her final goal, to die at the hands of a mean, black-hearted villain. That was not the end of the road that she was walking.

    She would win, and she would go home, and she would see all those old places again, and more than once, and she would live amongst them with the respect of the people and of her peers.

    This … this was the moment. This was what she had been preparing for her whole life, though she knew it not, this moment when she would confront an enemy bent on doing grievous harm to the world: not an immortal demon, not a host of monsters, but a woman, like her. A woman swift and strong, just like her, but a woman she could defeat.

    A woman she could kill.

    Pyrrha wondered what that would be like. To take a life. Jaune had done it, Sunset had done it, but she … this would be her first.

    And she did not know what it would be like, to see blood stain Miló, to see it spill upon the ground and know that she had been the cause.

    Better Cinder's blood than innocent blood, Pyrrha thought. She did not know how she would react, but … she would bear it, to say the least.

    It might not be in fashion to rejoice at the death of an enemy as the heroes of old had done, but that did not mean that Pyrrha had to weep for them either.

    Cinder had chosen this path. She could not complain about where it led.

    This is how I will protect the world.

    Pyrrha's eyes snapped open as her scroll went off. She frowned a little beneath her circlet as she fished the device out of her pouch, wondering who would be calling her. Perhaps it was one of her friends; better them than the press wanting a comment.

    Somewhat to her surprise, it was Blake.

    Pyrrha opened up her scroll and answered it. "Blake?"

    Blake's face looked up at her from out of the screen. "Hey, Pyrrha; I hope I didn't catch you at a bad time."

    "No, it's fine," Pyrrha said quickly. "Although I am a little surprised to hear from you."

    "Well, I was surprised to find out that you'd challenge Cinder to a fight to the death," Blake replied. "So I guess … no, I'm still the more surprised."

    "You know about that?" Pyrrha said. "I wouldn't have expected it to be news in Atlas."

    "It isn't," Blake said. "But I keep an eye on the Valish news; I have push notifications set up; I want to know in case anything happens while I'm gone."

    "I see," Pyrrha said evenly. "Are you going to try and talk me out of it?"

    Blake smirked. "Now why would I want to do a thing like that?"

    "Some people seem to feel as though I'm making a mistake," Pyrrha explained.

    "Rainbow Dash would probably think so, if she were here," Blake admitted. "But she isn't, I am, and I … I envy you a little."

    "'Envy'?"

    "I trust that you wouldn't be doing this if you didn't think you could win," Blake said. "Has she taken the bait?"

    "Bait implies there is a trap somewhere," Pyrrha observed. "There is not. There is only me, with Miló in one hand and Akoúo̱ in the other, ready to partake in one of the most ancient and, in some ways, most sacred of rituals."

    "Very well," Blake allowed. "Has she agreed to duel with you?"

    "She has," Pyrrha said. "We meet at midnight in the Emerald Forest."

    "Midnight," Blake murmured. "Appropriate. The death of one day and the rising of another."

    "When you put it like that," Pyrrha murmured.

    "It's much like the rationale for meeting at dawn, no?" Blake asked.

    "I suppose so, but I think that Cinder wishes the cover of darkness as much as the symbolism."

    "The pragmatic and the poetic can coexist," Blake pointed out. "The point is … I envy that you have an enemy you can defeat. You can face your foe in single combat, defeat her, kill her even. And then she will be dead and done, and the world will be a better place for it. I wish that I could be so fortunate."

    "Racism is not so easily overcome as Cinder Fall," Pyrrha said softly.

    "No," Blake said. "No, it isn't." She paused for a moment. "Which is why I think you're very lucky. You get the chance to make a difference with a stroke of your sword."

    "With good fortune."

    "Tyche Agathe," Blake translated. "Those are the words on your honour band, aren't they?"

    "They are, yes."

    "Then fortune will favour you," Blake declared.

    "Because I am in the right?" Pyrrha asked.

    "Why not?" Blake responded. "Right will win out in the end. I believe that. I have to believe that. Right will win so long as we have the courage to fight for it. Pyrrha, will you do something for me?"

    "What?"

    "Call me tomorrow," Blake said, "and tell me how you conquered."

    Pyrrha smiled. "I will," she said. "I promise."

    Blake nodded on the other side of the scream. "Then I will leave you to your preparations. Good fortune and fate smile upon you."

    She hung up.

    "Pyrrha?"

    Pyrrha turned from the waist, twisting her body around to look behind her. Ruby stood there, hands clasped together in front of her.

    "Ruby," Pyrrha said, putting her scroll away. "How did you—?"

    "I've been looking for you," Ruby replied. "I… I don't want to disturb you, but … can we talk? Just for a little bit, I promise."

    "Of course," Pyrrha said, "we can talk for as long as you like."

    A smile appeared briefly upon Ruby's face, and then faded as she walked towards Pyrrha. She came to stand by Pyrrha's side, not looking right at her, but rather looking at the river that flowed past them, heading onwards towards Vale and the ocean beyond.

    For a moment, there was silence, broken only by the water's rippling sound as it went by.

    Ruby gripped her left elbow with her right hand, her silver gaze falling downwards towards the ground.

    "You know," she said, "if I could … I'd give you my eyes."

    Pyrrha looked down at her. "Ruby—"

    "It's fine," Ruby said, "I get it. The power that I have is kind of incredible, and it would be even more if I knew how to use it better. But if I could … I'd give it to you, if that would make you happy." She looked up at Pyrrha, a slightly mischievous smile playing across her face. "I'm not sure Jaune would like silver eyes as much as he likes your green eyes, though."

    Pyrrha covered her mouth with one hand as she chuckled. "Ruby … I don't want to steal your power away from you."

    "But you wouldn't be, if I gave it to you," Ruby pointed out.

    "No," Pyrrha murmured. "No, I suppose you wouldn't be. But you can't."

    "No," Ruby admitted. "I guess I can't, but … but I would, if it would make you happy."

    "You would give up your power just to make me happy?"

    "Well, that and because I know that you'd make good use of it," Ruby added. She paused for a moment, looking away from Pyrrha. "I … I never wanted to be a hero."

    Unlike me, Pyrrha thought, although Ruby's tone, soft and slightly melancholy, made it hard to tell if she was being rebuked or not. Her response was cautious, "No?"

    "No," Ruby said. "I was never … growing up, I knew about Mom, Yang used to tell me stories, but … nobody used to tell me that I had to be like her, nobody told me that I wasn't living up to her example, nobody told me that I needed to uphold the Rose name."

    "So you think it is my upbringing that has bred this desire in me?" Pyrrha asked.

    "Hasn't it?" Ruby replied.

    Pyrrha was quiet for a moment. "You may be right, at least in large part," she admitted, "but I could have upheld the dignity of the Nikos name by remaining in Mistral and racking up an endless succession of tournament victories. I chose this path for myself." A sigh escaped her. "Although I suppose that 'this path' need not have included my more grandiose ambitions. You think I'm being vain, don't you?"

    "No," Ruby said. "I don't … I've been looking for you because I don't want you to think that … I wasn't trying to insult you; I just… I get frustrated sometimes, because—"

    "Because we have given you cause for frustration," Pyrrha murmured.

    Ruby snorted. "Yeah. Yeah, pretty much."

    "I am sorry for that; it was…" Pyrrha trailed off, unable to say quite what it was. "It came from care, perhaps even the same care that now drives you to think I am the one making a mistake."

    Ruby took a moment to reply. "If … if you wanted to stand your ground against a horde of grimm to help one hundred people, ten people, even just one person get away, even though it would cost you your life … I would never say a word against it; Sunset might, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't think less of you, and I wouldn't hear a word said against you, either. But this…"

    "It is true that nobody's life is directly threatened at present," Pyrrha acknowledged.

    "We're here to help people," Ruby said. "Not to cover ourselves in glory. When there are lives at stake then we should be prepared to give everything, even our lives, but now … nothing's at stake here but—"

    "But my life, and that of Cinder Fall," Pyrrha said. "But tell me, Ruby, and tell me true and honestly … how may I help people better than by striking down Salem's champion and, with her, killing all her plots and schemes? What better service to the people can I offer? True, I will not save a life directly, no one will thank me for their salvation, but what of that? Is help not help regardless?"

    "But if that's what this is about, then let's go together!" Ruby cried, balling her hands into fists and raising them up to just beneath her chin. "Let me and Sunset go into the Emerald Forest with you, we'll lie in wait and ambush Cinder, we'll take her down together."

    "Lure her into a trap?" Pyrrha asked. "Deceive her? Break my word?"

    "She'd do it to us," Ruby said.

    "I'm not entirely sure that's true," Pyrrha murmured, "and even if it was, don't we have an obligation to be better than her?"

    "We are better than her," Ruby insisted. "We're fighting for … for life against death, like Professor Ozpin said; what could be more obviously right than that?"

    "And so the justice of our cause justifies anything that we might do in its name?"

    "Yes!" Ruby declared. "When our enemies are trying to destroy the world and cause massive death and destruction, there is nothing we could do that would make us worse than them: lie, betray … kill, if we have to; with lives and kingdoms at stake, how can we do any less?"

    "You … may be right," Pyrrha murmured. "In fact, I dare say that you are right, but … when I issued my challenge, I implicitly gave my word that I would act in accordance with the traditional customs around such things; I cannot break it."

    "Can't, or won't?"

    "Will not, if you will," Pyrrha conceded. "I will not steal a victory, but earn it."

    Ruby was silent for a moment. "Well," she said. "If you're gonna win, then I guess it doesn't matter that much how you do it. You are gonna win, right?"

    "That is certainly my intent," Pyrrha said.

    Ruby wrapped her arms around Pyrrha's waist, pressing herself against the taller girl. "Come back, okay?" she asked. "Come back with your shield."

    "With my shield," Pyrrha said. "Or on it."

    "No," Ruby said. "Not on it. With your shield; I won't accept anything else."

    Pyrrha smiled and returned the embrace, placing both her arms around Ruby. "Very well then," she said. "With my shield, I will return."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 60 - Her Name Means Victory
  • Threadmarks
    • Her Name Means Victory

    ​

    Night had fallen. The moon was up in all its shattered and fragmented glory, and that fragmented silver light shone down to glimmer upon Pyrrha's armour.

    Pyrrha stood upon the cliffs now, her hands clasped together in front of her, waiting.

    Waiting for Arslan, in the most practical, pragmatic and immediate sense, but also waiting for the moment to depart.

    Waiting for the battle that was to come.

    Jaune was with her — naturally, since he would be coming with her — and so too were Sunset and Ruby, here at the cliffs to see her off.

    There was no one else, for which — the absence of Arslan aside — Pyrrha was very thankful.

    "She's late," Sunset remarked.

    "Arslan will be here," Pyrrha said quietly.

    "What if she's decided not to show up?" Sunset asked.

    Pyrrha shook her head. "That isn't her style; if she had changed her mind, she would have told me so before now."

    "I admit, she seemed like a good sort in the forest," Sunset murmured. She paused for a moment, glancing away from Pyrrha, reaching up to scratch the back of her head with one hand. Her tail was limp, hanging loosely down between her legs, almost touching the grass beneath her feet.

    "Listen, Pyrrha," she said. "I … I feel like I owe you an apology."

    "Really?" Pyrrha replied. "For my part, I cannot think why."

    "No?" Sunset asked. "Come on, it can't have … I mean … I wouldn't want you to think that I don't have faith in you. I'm afraid … I wouldn't want it to seem like the reason I didn't like this was because I thought you'd lose, because that's not it." She looked at Pyrrha now. "You're the best fighter I know, and my best friend, and I absolutely believe in you, and I've always believed in you ever since you managed to beat me while I was going all out, so … if it comes down to it that only one of you is going to walk away from this in one piece, it's going to be you, but … it's just that … it's just that you're my best friend and—"

    "Sunset," Pyrrha said softly, yet firmly enough to cut her off before she could continue. "I understand."

    Sunset's ears, which had begun to wilt like flowers deprived of water for too long, pricked up a little. "You do?"

    Pyrrha nodded. "I admit that … it was a little vexing to me, especially since it seemed to confirm … everything. It's true that I would have preferred a more full-throated expression of confidence, but … Nora had a word with me, earlier today; she explained that concern need not necessarily imply a lack of faith and that … that I should be charitable to those who loved me and not assume the worst of them."

    "Nora said that?" Sunset asked.

    Pyrrha nodded.

    Sunset snorted, and a little giggle escaped her.

    "Is something funny?" Pyrrha asked.

    "Not really," Sunset admitted. "But it was Yang who told me that I needed to actually tell you that I believe in you, or you'd take my concern for lack of faith."

    Pyrrha let out a little laugh of her own. "I see. The ladies of Team Iron are as wise students of human nature as they are students here at Beacon."

    "Mmm," Sunset murmured. "If they were keeping Blake, they would be … formidable indeed." She paused for a moment. "So you understand, then? It was never … I know you can do this. I know your quality, your capability, but—"

    "But you are aware of Cinder's also, and aware too that, in battle, there is always an element of chance," Pyrrha said. "I understand, and I thank you for your concern, but—"

    "But now is not the time for doubt," Sunset said. She walked towards her, her tail beginning to shake back and forth behind her as she went. "Now is the time to say," she smirked a little, "that I am so very confident in your success that I'm going to go to bed as soon as you leap off this cliff and fall asleep with nary a care in the world."

    Pyrrha chuckled. "If you wish, I will not begrudge you your rest."

    Sunset reached out and took Pyrrha's hands in her own. "You are our champion, just as I told you. You will always be our champion, and you will cut through any single foe who dares to stand against you. You will win."

    Pyrrha was silent a moment. "Is this … hard, for you?"

    "Hard?"

    "That I and Cinder—"

    "No," Sunset said firmly. "If it comes to a choice between you two … there is no choice. You are the one whose life matters to me, you are the one whose victory I desire, you are the one I would see with victory's laurel upon your brow."

    Pyrrha was not certain that Sunset could be so certain as she sounded, but she appreciated the attempt at resolve nonetheless. It was what she needed to hear.

    What she needed to believe.

    "It is … strange," Pyrrha murmured, "to think that this may — this will — be over soon."

    "'Over'?" Ruby asked.

    "Cinder dead," Pyrrha explained. "Cinder dead and her threat dead with her, banished from Vale."

    "But Salem will still be out there," Ruby pointed out. "There'll be other battles, other missions."

    "But not right now," Jaune said, and as he spoke, he wrapped an arm around Pyrrha's waist. "Not for a while, maybe, while she … finds some other Cinder who hates the world enough to try and destroy it, while she makes her plans, figures out what to do next."

    "Indeed, Mister Arc," Professor Ozpin said, emerging out of the darkness. "Always, the shadow lengthens and grows again, but that does not mean that the effort to cut it down to size is not worth making or that the interludes of peace are not worth enjoying."

    Sunset let Pyrrha's hands fall from her grasp. "Professor?"

    "I hope you forgive the interruption," Professor Ozpin said, a genial smile upon his face. He had one hand clasped behind him and the other resting upon the handle of his cane, which rested on the ground beside his foot. "I thought that I might come and see you off, Miss Nikos."

    "Thank you, Professor," Pyrrha said. "I didn't wish you to put you to any trouble."

    "No trouble at all, Miss Nikos; I often work late, in any event," Professor Ozpin replied. "And this strikes me as the very least that I can do, in the circumstances. You are very brave to take this path."

    "This is my skill, Professor," Pyrrha replied. "My glory, if I have such a thing to glory in. If I did not take this path, I would be not only unworthy of your service, but also unworthy of much else besides that … has turned out to be dear to me. I … I did not love my reputation until I began to contemplate what I might be without it."

    "You would yet be a brave girl, Miss Nikos," Professor Ozpin assured her. "But, if you think your reputation, and your sense of self, is worth fighting for, then I will neither begrudge you nor call you mistaken. Every student at this school comes here for their own reasons, driven by their own motives, and those motives are all equally useful."

    "'Useful'?" Jaune asked.

    "In driving the students to excel," Professor Ozpin explained, "and to perform acts of gallantry and devotion."

    "So, when Pyrrha wins," Ruby said, "you think that there'll be … a break?"

    Professor Ozpin nodded slowly. "It is the way, or at least, so it is recorded in the accounts that have come down to me from my predecessors. Salem will make some fresh attempt upon our defences, that attempt will be beaten back, and then there is a lull while Salem … regroups, replaces her losses, and as Mister Arc perceptively pointed out, decides where and when to strike again. Miss Nikos' victory will not release you from this battle — unless you wish to take your leave of it; you are not bound to it in perpetuity — but it will afford you breathing room, I hope, for a few years at least."

    "A few years," Pyrrha murmured.

    "The few years at school that we should have had without all of this stuff getting in the way," Jaune said.

    "Quite so, Mister Arc."

    "We could compete in the Vytal Festival without having to feel as though it was unimportant," Sunset said. "Or that we were somehow slacking off by taking part in it."

    "And spend the next three years with only classes and grades to worry about," Jaune added.

    "And graduate," Pyrrha said. "And only then, only once we had become true huntsmen and huntresses, would we even need to consider the possibility that Salem's shadow might darken the world once again."

    "Perhaps not even then," Jaune added.

    "Indeed," Professor Ozpin said. "Sometimes, whole generations can pass between one effort of Salem's and the next. When one is immortal, I suppose one has the luxury of patience."

    "'Generations'?" Ruby asked. "So … so when Pyrrha wins, this might … it might be the last you need of us?"

    "I wouldn't go quite that far, Miss Rose; after all, Salem made no great offensive in your parents' time, but I still had need of their services; the shadow weakens, but it never disappears completely, and I am never completely without need of trusted agents whom I can rely on."

    "And you will be able to rely on us, Professor," Pyrrha assured him, "but, all the same…" All the same, it sounded as though it would all so much more low-key; low-key and perhaps even low stakes. Well, comparatively, at least. It sounded as though they would have the peace to enjoy the remainder of their time at school together, and then to plan their futures with only minimal involvement from Professor Ozpin and his need of them. They might stay together as a team, and Pyrrha rather hoped they would, or else Ruby and Sunset would go their own way, and Pyrrha and Jaune would go to Mistral as they had discussed while babysitting Adrian, but either way, their choices would not be dictated for them by Salem's threat.

    It was … a liberating notion. Three years of fun and friends and laughter, three years with Jaune, three years with no shadow hanging over them, and then … who knew?

    A golden world lay before them, and all she had to do was triumph tonight.

    "Pyrrha!"

    Pyrrha turned to see Arslan approaching at a jog, waving at her with one hand.

    Pyrrha raised her own hand in greeting. "I told you she'd be here," she said mildly.

    Sunset didn't reply, but then, she didn't really need to.

    Arslan drew near, stopping just a few feet away from Pyrrha and the others. "Hey," she said. She paused as she noticed Professor Ozpin. "Professor. I wasn't expecting to see you here."

    "One of my students is about to descend and fight a battle against an enemy of mankind," Professor Ozpin observed. "Where else should I be but here to bid her farewell and good fortune?"

    "Um," Arslan murmured. "To be honest, Professor, I'm a little surprised you're not trying to stop this. This isn't Mistral, after all."

    "True," Professor Ozpin agreed. "But as the Vytal Festival draws ever closer, let me remind you that this is a time for the sharing of ideas, the experiencing of new customs, the mingling of cultures in an atmosphere of enthusiasm and curiosity. If I were to take a chauvinist line and insist that Vale knows best, well … that would be rather contrary to the spirit of the times, would it not?"

    "I … suppose so."

    Professor Ozpin chuckled. "My apologies, Miss Altan; when one has been a teacher for as long as I have, one can rarely resist the opportunity for a lesson. Of course, what I should really do is thank you for accompanying Miss Nikos tonight."

    Arslan bowed from the waist. "A girl from the lower slope can have as much honour as a princess, if she wishes it." As she straightened up, she said to Pyrrha, "Sorry I'm a little late; everyone wanted to come and see you off, and it took me a little bit to persuade them not to."

    "I see," Pyrrha said. "I appreciate that you did."

    "I thought you might," Arslan replied. "I wouldn't have minded a crowd of well wishers, but that was never your style."

    "Not since I began to doubt that they truly wished me well," Pyrrha said.

    "That's a little unfair," Arslan said. "Everyone's rooting for you."

    "Nevertheless," Pyrrha said, "the presence of my friends is all that I require."

    She looked at them, Sunset and Ruby. "Sunset, Ruby, I—"

    "With your shield," Ruby said.

    Pyrrha smiled and nodded firmly. "With my shield."

    Sunset was silent for a moment. "The hero must go," she said, "but the true hero must also return," — she smiled — "trailing clouds of glory."

    "I do not know about whole clouds of glory," Pyrrha said, "but I shall wear laurel on my brow ere I return." Or I will not return. "I … you…"

    "No goodbyes," Sunset said. "Just … go, and then come back again."

    "No goodbyes," Pyrrha agreed. She turned then to her marshals. "Jaune, Arslan, are you ready?"

    "Yep," said Arslan.

    "I'm ready," agreed Jaune.

    "Very well then," Pyrrha said, and the moonlight glinted on her circlet, making it shine upon her brow as she faced the cliffs and the long drop into the forest.

    Pyrrha breathed deeply in and out, her chest rising and falling.

    "Let us go, and either fall yielding glory to another or else win great glory for ourselves."

    Pyrrha ran, dashing swiftly towards the cliffs before throwing herself off the edge in a great leap, arms spread out on either side of her as she fell downwards, speeding like an arrow loosed from the string, down and down into the darkness, down towards the forest.

    The air buffeted her face, pressing at her cheeks as though it was trying to mould them like clay. Her crimson sash and vibrant red ponytail both alike streamed out behind her like banners in a cavalry charge. The trees rushed up towards her.

    Pyrrha brought Akoúo̱ out from off her back and held in front of her face, using it to crash through the stout branches that lay in her path, slowing her descent with each obstacle she hit and shattered, battering her way down to the forest floor on which she landed, gracefully, upon her feet.

    She slung her shield upon her back once more and ran both hands through her long ponytail, scraping out any twigs or branches that might have gotten lodged there.

    She didn't want to appear before Cinder looking as though she'd been dragged through a hedge — even if she'd actually been dragged through a tree.

    Jaune took a similar approach to herself, using his shield to break his fall and break his way through anything that stood between him and the ground, but he managed it with a little less grace, flopping down onto the forest floor on his face and belly.

    "Jaune, are you alright?" Pyrrha asked as she rushed to his side.

    "Yeah," Jaune murmured as he let Pyrrha help him to his feet. "I've got a lot of aura, remember?" He grinned. "And besides, I didn't need you to pin me to a tree this time, so that's an improvement in my book."

    "What's this about a tree?" Arslan called down from above. She had buried her knife in the great trunk of one of the mighty trees and was now hanging from it by a rope tied around the hilt. As Pyrrha looked up, Arslan scurried back upwards, climbing up the rope while keeping her feet on the tree trunk, and freed her knife before jumping down to join the others.

    "I'd be happy to tell you the story of our Initiation," Pyrrha said. "But perhaps not right now."

    "No," Arslan murmured. "No, not right now."

    "How's everyone's aura?" Jaune asked. "Does anyone need a boost?"

    "Don't worry about me, but you should top up Pyrrha, since she's the one who has to fight tonight," Arslan said.

    "I didn't lose very much," Pyrrha said.

    "You should be at your maximum anyway," Jaune told her, placing his hand upon her shoulder as it began to glow with the rippling golden light of his semblance.

    It poured over her, spreading across her bare shoulders, over her face, down her cuirass towards her legs and down her legs to the ground; it was a gentle, comforting sensation, like a shower that was not too hot, but just the right temperature to soothe and refresh as it washed off the sweat of a hard day's exertions.

    It ended almost too soon for Pyrrha's liking, but then, she hadn't lost very much aura, after all.

    They set out through the Emerald Forest, picking their way through the darkness — Pyrrha had brought a little torch with her, and Jaune a larger one; Arslan used the torch on her scroll — towards the coordinates that they had been given. At times, Pyrrha felt a sensation in her aura as though she was being watched, as though there was something out there in the dark, but no grimm troubled them; they were not assailed upon the way by beowolf or ursa, their approach to the location of the duel was completely uneventful. Not even a distant roar or howl disturbed them.

    Until they reached the clearing specified, where the moonlight fell upon the glade through the gap in the trees, casting the space in pale, silvery light.

    And there, in the clearing, illuminated by the moonlight, stood Cinder Fall.

    "So," she said. "You have come."

    XxXxX​

    Sunset stood upon the edge of the cliff, looking out across the forest as the moonlight bathed the trees.

    She could not see Pyrrha down there, or Jaune; she couldn't see anything but the trees, the trees which concealed all else which walked upon the world below.

    Yet she stood there nonetheless and watched.

    "Do you think…?" Ruby began, but then trailed off.

    Sunset looked at her. "Do I think what?"

    Ruby hesitated for a moment. "No, it doesn't matter."

    "You've started now," Sunset pointed out. "You may as well finish."

    Still Ruby hesitated for a moment, before she said, "Do you think we should go after them?"

    Sunset kept her eyes on Ruby. "Go after them and…"

    "And ambush Cinder," Ruby finished. "We know where they are, where Cinder's going to be; we could take her out."

    Sunset was silent for a moment. It was … tempting, honestly. As much as her feelings about Cinder's death could be described as ambivalent, she had meant what she said to Pyrrha: when it came down to a choice between them, there really was no choice. She would not give up Pyrrha for Cinder. And so … yes, it was tempting: go down there, reach the clearing by a different route, interrupt the duel.

    Dishonour herself, and what was far more, dishonour Pyrrha in the process.

    "Have you spoken to Pyrrha about this idea?" she asked.

    "Yeah," Ruby admitted. "Pyrrha didn't like it."

    "I can't say I'm surprised," Sunset replied. "What happened to letting people make their own choices, even if you don't agree with them?"

    "This is … different," Ruby said. "You asked me whether I'd respect Leaf's choice if she was choosing to get a load of dust together and blow something up."

    "You said I was being ridiculous," Sunset pointed out, "and Pyrrha isn't threatening to blow anyone up either, so I'm not entirely sure what you're implying."

    "Of course Pyrrha isn't doing that," Ruby said, sounding a little frustrated that Sunset hadn't gotten her point, "but … Cinder might, if Pyrrha loses."

    "Pyrrha isn't going to lose," Sunset said.

    "Pyrrha's not around to hear anymore," Ruby said. "You don't have to pretend. It's not an insult to Pyrrha to say that bad things can happen, even to the best."

    "Yes," Sunset murmured. "They do. But … as tempting as it is, no. We're not going to do that."

    "Why not?"

    "Because Pyrrha is our friend, and we're going to have some faith in her," Sunset insisted. "If we do as you suggest, yes, we might get Cinder, we might get everything that Professor Ozpin just promised us, but what is that going to say to Pyrrha? That we didn't think she could do it? That we didn't think she was up to the task? No, she has … told herself that often enough; we aren't going to tell her that as well. This is what she wants; this is what she needs. And so, we are going to stay here, and we are going to wait for her return."

    "Miss Shimmer is correct, Miss Rose," Professor Ozpin said. "And so, by the sounds of it — although I admit I may be missing something from the context of your conversation — were your initial instincts. Choice … is the greatest gift that the gods have bestowed upon mankind."

    "Even the choice to do evil, Professor?" Ruby asked.

    "The gift of choice was given that mankind might choose between good and evil, Miss Rose," Professor Ozpin informed. "The path of creation, or the path of destruction. Of course, we also have the choice to fight against evil, stop it from harming others, and that is precisely the choice that Miss Nikos has made. Though it may not be the optimal choice to achieve your desired ends, it is her choice and should be respected for all that."

    "Yes, Professor," Ruby murmured.

    "That being said," Professor Ozpin went on, "I am not sure how much purpose there is in remaining here, upon this cold cliff, with nothing to see and nothing to do. If you would both care to come with me to my office—"

    "No, thank you, Professor," Sunset said, a touch of sharpness in her tongue. "With your permission, I would remain here. I will look for their coming from this cliff until they return."

    Professor Ozpin was silent for a moment. "I'm sure that it feels like an act of devotion on your part, Miss Shimmer, to wait, but … Miss Nikos will not know you waited, and it will afford her no advantage on the battlefield. Nothing will come from your discomfiting yourself but … your discomfort." He paused for a moment. "I waited thus, the first times I sent agents out to do battle on my behalf, to go where I could not, to do what I could not; I bid them farewell, and then I remained where I had been as they departed, and I waited. Until I realised that it made no difference to the success or … failure of the mission; it helped them not, and it wasn't helping me either. So now—"

    "You go to bed, Professor?" Sunset asked.

    Professor Ozpin smiled thinly. "No, Miss Shimmer. I still wait. I do not think that I could do otherwise, even if I wished to. But now, I wait in my office, where it is a little warmer. I worry, yes, I fret, I wait, I watch … but I do it all in just a little more comfort."

    Sunset considered his words. She regretted the sharpening of her tone earlier; she had not considered what ought to have been obvious, that Professor Ozpin had done this sort of thing many times before; it was not callousness that moved him to speak but a different sort of care.

    Nevertheless, she was not sure that she could agree with him; maybe it would not help Pyrrha; in fact, it certainly wouldn't help Pyrrha to stand here, on the cliff, watching and seeing nothing.

    But it might help herself.

    "I apologise for my tone, Professor," Sunset murmured as she drew Soteria across her back and planted its point upon the grass of the cliff. "But I fear I cannot take your counsel. You may be right, but … without my own experience to teach me the wisdom of it, I fear that all I would feel is guilt."

    "I understand, Miss Shimmer," Professor Ozpin said. "Perhaps it is one of those things that must be learnt practically. Matters of the heart are always the hardest things to learn from our elders. Very well then, Miss Shimmer, you shall remain here." He planted his cane upon the ground. "And I shall wait with you."

    XxXxX​

    "So," Cinder said. "You have come."

    Her bow was in her hands, the moonlight glinting off the polished black glass. Beyond the clearing, Pyrrha could just make out the figures of Emerald Sustrai and Lightning Dust, seeming almost to lurk in the darkness. They were Cinder's marshals, she guessed.

    Of course they are; who else is available to her?

    Pyrrha strode into the clearing. "Did you expect that I would not come?"

    "No, I thought you'd be here," Cinder said. She smirked. "But that doesn't mean I can't be glad you did." She glanced past Pyrrha. "Jaune," she said. "And … Arslan Altan, the Golden Lion of Mistral; I confess that I'm surprised to see you here."

    Arslan grunted wordlessly.

    "They are your marshals, then?" Cinder asked.

    "They are," Pyrrha replied. "As I presume yours stand behind you."

    "They do," Cinder said. She paused for a moment. "I cannot say I know who spread those lies about you, Pyrrha, but I must say I'm glad they did, seeing as it has brought us to this moment." Her voice dropped, becoming barely more than a whisper. "I have dreamed of this moment."

    "I did not come here to bandy words with you," Pyrrha declared, drawing Miló across her back. Her weapon shifted smoothly into rifle mode in her hands, clicking and snapping as it transformed, every part of the weapon shifting into place. She gripped it tightly but kept the barrel down, pointing towards the ground. "But to speak with my sword and listen with my shield."

    Cinder chuckled. "If that is how you feel … but are you sure that you don't want to give Jaune one last kiss?"

    "What need have I to kiss Jaune now?" Pyrrha asked. "I will give him many kisses once this duel is over, in the days and years we have to come."

    Cinder raised one eyebrow, but the smirk remained upon her face; in fact, Pyrrha even thought it grew a little, although whether that was because she was amused by Pyrrha's response or she thought Pyrrha arrogant, Pyrrha could not have said for certain.

    She began to walk, sidling across the clearing, moving in a circle that would have brought her onto Pyrrha's side if Pyrrha had not begun to move as well. The two of them circled one another, like two proud bulls who have come across one another in the field. Neither one willing to give place to the other, they snort and strut upon the ground and paw the earth with their hooves and wait for the moment to lock horns.

    No, she may be a bull, but I must be the lion that leaps down on the proud bull from the high rock and slashes it to pieces with my claws.

    Cinder moved with a feline grace herself, crossing her legs as she sidestepped; the moonlight upon her glass slippers made them sparkle, as though they were made of diamond, not of glass.

    Cinder's gaze flickered to Arlsan. "What are you doing?"

    Arslan had her scroll out, held up before her face. "I'm recording this, for proof that it happened."

    "Really?" Cinder purred, and she reached up with her free hand to primp her curled black hair.

    "You've no objection?" Pyrrha said. It was not against the rules, but it was hardly done, and if Cinder objected to it, then it would be bad form to go ahead and do it anyway.

    "Object? Oh no," Cinder said. "Film away. To be honest, that was the one thing that would have been missing from this experience. I want the world to watch you die, Pyrrha Nikos; I want everyone to see you fall, at my hands, and know that I defeated you in clean combat because I am Mistral's evenstar! I embody the spirit of our heroes' past in ways you couldn't even dream of."

    "Perhaps," Pyrrha conceded. "Perhaps, in all your wrath, in your anger, in your desire to deal out death and destruction for nothing more than your own prestige, you do stand in direct line to the great heroes of old in ways that I do not, nor ever could. Very well then. I will yield that glory to you, for if I can be instead the morning star of a new Mistral, kinder and gentler and less self-absorbed, then that would please me better in any case."

    "'Self absorbed'?" Cinder demanded.

    Pyrrha's only response was to raise her eyebrows.

    Cinder snorted. "You speak very prettily with your tongue for one who came to speak with spear and sword."

    "As do you," Pyrrha murmured.

    Cinder gave the slightest, almost imperceptible bow of her head. "Well then," she said. "Here we are."

    "Yes," Pyrrha agreed. "Here we are."

    They were silent for a moment, their eyes fixed upon one another.

    Pyrrha could hear her heart thumping in her chest.

    "I will make a bargain with you," Cinder said. "Let us vow that whoever triumphs shall see that the loser receives an honourable burial."

    "I shall grant that to you, and gladly," Pyrrha replied. "But for myself, I ask that if you send my soul down to the shades, you allow my body to be taken by my friends, that they may bear it homeward, to be laid to rest in my mother's house alongside my ancestors."

    "Of course," Cinder said. "I bear you malice, but I am not a barbarian to pursue my wrath beyond the grave." She nocked an arrow to her bow. "Shall we begin?"

    Pyrrha put her finger to the trigger of her rifle. "We shall."

    Cinder raised her bow. Pyrrha raised her rifle, firing her first shot before she had fully raised the rifle to her shoulder — it didn't matter if her aim was poor; what mattered was that she get the first shot off before Cinder could loose an arrow. Her round thudded into the ground at Cinder's feet, but Cinder shuffled her foot to avoid it and did not loose.

    Pyrrha charged towards her, and as she charged, Miló now at her shoulder, she fired again, and a third time. She missed both times, as Cinder ducked and sidestepped away, but she did not loose an arrow.

    And then there was no time as Pyrrha was on her.

    Miló switched from rifle to sword in Pyrrha's right hand as, with her left, she pulled Akoúo̱ from off her back onto the vambrace on her left arm. As she closed the distance with her foe, Pyrrha drew back her left arm and — as Miló completed its transformation — lashed out with Akoúo̱ like a discus in a sideways slashing stroke in a wide arc.

    The blow struck Cinder's bow clean in the middle, and as Cinder recoiled before it, the bow shattered into fragments of glass — fragments which reformed in the air into a pair of obsidian scimitars which flew, unerringly, into Cinder's hands.

    Cinder's smile was savage as she leapt to the attack. Pyrrha strode forward to meet her, her expression set, determined.

    Cinder slashed wildly with her right hand; Pyrrha took the blow on Akoúo̱, turning the stroke aside. She countered with a slash of her own aimed at Cinder's neck, but Cinder parried with the sword in her left hand. Pyrrha drew back her sword, slashed again, Cinder parried again; a third time, Pyrrha's sword swept down and beat on Cinder's guard like a wave beating upon the sea wall, and a third time, the wall of Cinder's guard took the blow without flinching.

    A fourth time, Pyrrha drew back her blade, but this time, she tossed Miló lightly into the air, having first triggered its transformation from sword to spear, and while it spun, Pyrrha reversed her grip and thrust Miló down overarm like a thunderbolt to slam into Cinder's collarbone.

    Cinder spun around but recovered swiftly, turning the movement forced upon her into a graceful pirouette, flowing like water to face Pyrrha once again, both swords held above her head in a high guard.

    Pyrrha charged for her. Cinder did not try to form her bow but rushed to meet Pyrrha. Pyrrha thrust underarm with her spear, aiming for Cinder's belly. Cinder met the thrust with both her hands, striking Miló just below the head and turning it aside, before she reversed her right hand blade and slashed upwards with in a blow that would have sliced from Pyrrha's navel up to her shoulder.

    Again, Pyrrha took the blow upon Akoúo̱ and turned it aside. Cinder was open, but she leapt before Pyrrha could attempt to take advantage, jumping high up into the air, somersaulting over her head.

    Pyrrha threw Akoúo̱ at her, the shield spinning like a disc as it cut through the air, but Cinder twisted in mid-air as nimbly as a salmon as she began to descend behind Pyrrha.

    Pyrrha gripped Miló — still in spear mode — in both hands as she turned, thrusting it out as Cinder landed.

    Cinder caught Miló between her glass scimitars, wedging it just below the point.

    Pyrrha extended the spear, the point shooting out with a bang to strike Cinder the second time.

    Cinder's face twisted into a snarl of anger.

    Good. Be angry; you'll make more mistakes that way.

    Miló spun in Pyrrha's hand, and she plucked Akoúo̱ out of the air as it fell and slung it back across her back. She returned her free hand back to her spear, whirling it in her grasp as she slashed at Cinder with point and shaft in equal measure. Cinder fell back before her, but she parried every blow that Pyrrha sought to make; while she might not have been expertly tutored, her natural speed made up for it in most respects.

    Yet she fell back, nevertheless.

    She fell back, and her guard faltered, leaving an opening for Pyrrha.

    An egregious opening; that is a trap.

    Pyrrha did not take the bait, not striking for the opening but rather, halting her assault, retreating a pace with her guard up.

    Cinder counterattacked, slashing with both her swords in parallel. Pyrrha parried with the shaft of Miló, but now it was Cinder's turn to go on the offensive, slashing wildly, hurling stroke after stroke at Pyrrha. She was like a hurricane; the air seemed to howl with the swift onrushing passage of her arms; she was so fast and so strong that Pyrrha's arms jarred from taking blow after blow, Miló shuddering from the force.

    But if Cinder was the hurricane, then Pyrrha was the mountain; Pyrrha was Mistral itself, unmoving, her defence holding firm against all the assaults that Cinder could make upon it. Cinder was swift, too, terribly so, but she was also deeply obvious; at no point could Pyrrha fail to spot where her attack was coming from and, in seeing, block it.

    Pyrrha retreated in the face of Cinder's onslaught, just enough to open sufficient breathing room to fling Akoúo̱, sending her shield flying around Cinder in a wide arc. Cinder seemed to ignore it, continuing to hurl herself on Pyrrha in a furious flurry of slashing strokes.

    Akoúo̱ began to fly back towards her, and a black outline formed around Pyrrha's left arm as she guided the shield to strike Cinder in the small of the back.

    Cinder leapt before the shield could strike. Pyrrha reached out to grab her shield before it could strike her.

    Cinder landed atop of Akoúo̱, balancing on one foot upon the shield as, with the other foot, she kicked Pyrrha in the face.

    Pyrrha's head was thrown backwards, her jaw aching as her aura flared in pain. She leapt backwards, backflipping once, then twice, grabbing Akoúo̱ as she landed, flipping her long ponytail out of her face as she looked up into Cinder's face.

    Cinder who had already formed her twin scimitars back into a bow and had an arrow nocked and pointed at her.

    Pyrrha charged at her, Akoúo̱ held before her.

    Cinder loosed the glass arrow. It soared through the air for Pyrrha.

    Pyrrha struck it mid-flight with the edge of Akoúo̱, shattering into tiny shards of glass, shards over which she trampled as she continued to rush towards Cinder.

    Cinder smirked.

    Pyrrha triggered Miló's switch from spear mode into sword, and as it changed, she flung it into the air, spinning like a baton, while she gripped Akoúo̱ with both hands. As she charged, she spun on her toes, her red sash whirling around her as she turned to meet the glass arrow, reformed, that was racing towards her back. She took the arrow on her shield, knocking it aside, before she turned again, her sash wrapping itself around her waist, and with both hands, she slashed at Cinder.

    Cinder's bow crumbled in her hands as with both hands she grabbed Akoúo̱ and held it fast — though if she didn't suffer some loss to her aura in the process, Pyrrha would be astonished. Remembering Cinder's ability to manipulate the glass even when it was not fashioned into weapons, Pyrrha leapt away, grasping Miló by the hilt as it fell — gently guided by a touch of Polarity — into her hands.

    Cinder threw Akoúo̱ back at her, but Pyrrha caught it on her arm, fitting it neatly there.

    She faced Cinder, knees bent, body crouched low, shield held before her, and sword raised.

    The black glass reformed in Cinder's hands, fashioning not the bow but the twin scimitars.

    You might have done better to have tried the bow again.

    Cinder charged at her, arms pounding. Pyrrha ran to meet her, moonlight glinting off her gilded armour.

    Cinder slashed with the sword in her right hand, but her stroke was short, far too short for the length of her blade; she had not closed the distance sufficiently. Pyrrha's mind was already on her next steps; she would switch Miló from sword to spear and take advantage of the—

    The blade in Cinder's left and dissolved into shards of glass, which flowed like water through the air to join with the sword in her right, forming a two-handed sword long enough to reach across the distance and slash Pyrrha across the belly just above the midriff.

    Pyrrha retreated back a step.

    Cinder's smile was bright as a knife. "You're not the only one who can play that trick, Pyrrha."

    Pyrrha did not reply and kept her face expressionless. I cannot match her anger; therefore, I cannot let her make me angry. The moment I match my fury against hers, I am lost.

    I must be virtue, and I must be calm.

    But it was a mistake to assume she only had two weapons.

    Cinder looked a little disappointed by the lack of a response, a pout forming momentarily upon lips painted as black as the night in which they fought. She attacked, her greatsword swinging for Pyrrha's head in a wide arc, a powerful stroke — with the way she had drawn her sword right back, she would take Pyrrha's head off if she struck without her aura — but obvious, verging upon clumsy. As Cinder swung, Pyrrha ducked beneath the incoming blow, spinning upon her toes with the grace of a ballerina as she pirouetted behind Cinder, slashing at her back with Miló in swift precise strokes once, twice, staggering Cinder before she reversed her grip and thrust her blade into the small of Cinder's back.

    Cinder was already stepping forward away from the blow, but Pyrrha's thrust struck home nevertheless, if not as powerfully as she might have wished. Cinder turned, whirling on Pyrrha with another slashing stroke. Pyrrha parried, and then she parried the next blow too. Cinder slashed at her again, and this time, Pyrrha turned the blow aside with Akoúo̱.

    Half of Cinder's sword dissolved, the fragments of glass flying like a swarm of flies all around Pyrrha's shield to attack her, biting and tearing at her aura like a shoal of piranhas sensing blood in the water.

    Pyrrha ignored the damage to her aura — and the pricks of pain that she could feel through it — blocking a stroke by Cinder that sought to take advantage of her distraction. She leapt back, somersaulting in mid air, as her legs carried her out of the glassy swarm, and then no sooner had she landed than she leapt again, leaping up before either the glass or Cinder could pursue her.

    She let Akoúo̱ go but used polarity to hold it in mid-air, providing a platform for her to stand on.

    Miló flowed from sword to rifle in her hands as Pyrrha snapped off her last two shots at Cinder, who parried them both with the greatsword that reformed in her hands.

    Akoúo̱ tilted, pointing downwards towards Cinder like a mirror trying to focus moonlight down upon her. Pyrrha kept her feet anchored to the shield with polarity so that she did not fall.

    Rather, she jumped, Miló flowing from rifle to spear in her hands as she hurled herself bodily, like a bolt from heaven, down on Cinder.

    Cinder swung at her with her greatsword as Pyrrha approached, but Pyrrha parried the blow aside with Miló before she struck Cinder, shoulder slamming into Cinder's midriff, arms wrapping around Cinder's waist, and bore her to the ground with a crash.

    Pyrrha kept her arms round Cinder as she rolled, so that she was on the ground and Cinder was above her, then rose to her feet.

    Cinder flailed in Pyrrha's embrace, grabbing Pyrrha by the bare shoulders. Pyrrha could feel her shoulders heating up, but she focussed past it as she hoisted Cinder in the air, grunting somewhat at the effort, then arched her back backwards as far as spine and cuirass would allow to slam Cinder face first into the earth.

    Pyrrha dumped her there, to land upon her face and belly, before she knelt on Cinder's back and wrapped her right arm round Cinder's neck and started to choke.

    Cinder thrashed like a fish torn from the river, grabbing Pyrrha's forearm with her hand. Pyrrha could feel the heat upon her arm, feel it getting hotter and hotter, as though she had laid her arm upon a stove and someone had turned it on, but she did not relent. She would not allow herself to relent. She could bear this pain; her aura could bear this heat; no matter how much it hurt, her grip would not weaken.

    She would outlast Cinder; she had to outlast Cinder.

    The heat increased, hotter and hotter; every instinct screamed at Pyrrha to pull her arm away, but she hung on, even as the glow from Cinder's palm became so bright as to make her want to look away, even as she began to wince from the pain she hung on.

    Cinder growled and snarled wordlessly, like an animal caught in a trap from which it is desperate to escape. She slammed her free hand into the ground, digging her fingers into the soil.

    The earth around her hand began to glow, the yellow-gold light rippling out around it.

    Pyrrha's eyes widened. Surely she wouldn't—

    The earth exploded, hurling both Pyrrha and Cinder up into the air along with countless clods of earth which erupted upwards all around them. Pyrrha spun around, hurled head over heels by the blast, unable to focus as the world whirled all around her, moon and trees and red hair dancing into her vision and then out again.

    She blinked rapidly, fighting to clear her head. Steady her mind, steady herself. She flung her arms out on either side of her, arms wreathed in sable blacker than the night around, and summoned Akoúo̱ to her. The shield flew to her, obedient to her command, rising up beneath her feet to provide a footing for her to stand while she held the shield suspended in the air with Polarity.

    Her fall arrested, she looked for Cinder; she did not have to look very hard as Cinder rose to meet her, standing upon a platform of her own, a little disc of glass which bore her up until she, too, floated in the air, only slightly below Pyrrha.

    She looked ragged, unkempt, her hair a mess, her face and red dress stained; Pyrrha guessed that she herself didn't look much better.

    Just as she doubted that either of them had a vast amount of aura left.

    Which gives us both reason to want this ended quickly.

    Pyrrha summoned Miló to her hand, switching it fluidly into sword mode; Cinder conjured a single scimitar out of glass.

    Cinder's teeth were bared in a bestial snarl.

    This pass will decide, I can feel it.

    "I will not lose to you, Pyrrha Nikos!" Cinder roared. "Death at your hands is not my destiny!"

    "And I do not choose to fall at yours," Pyrrha whispered. "I choose not to lose, because…"

    "I believe in you."

    Jaune.

    "No goodbyes."

    Sunset.

    "Come back with your shield, okay?"

    Ruby.

    "I envy you."

    Blake.

    "Win one for Mistral."

    Arslan. Everyone.

    "Because I have people waiting for me," Pyrrha declared. "And so my destiny goes on, for them."

    They leapt at one another, swords drawn back, free hands outstretched. Cinder roared with anger; Pyrrha was as silent as the grave. Cinder rose, and Pyrrha fell.

    For a moment, they seemed to hang, suspended in the air though they had left both glass and shield behind, reaching for one another, poised to strike.

    Pyrrha grabbed at Cinder's outstretched wrist, pulling it, twisting it, wrenching Cinder off her precarious airborne balance. Cinder's stroke went wide; Pyrrha's struck home across Cinder's shoulder as they began to fall.

    Down they fell, locked together, spinning in the air as their blades clashed, both of them slashing and hacking at one another, the red-gold and the glass blade clashing with one another, crashing together like thunderclaps.

    And as they fell, the gazes of Pyrrha Nikos and Cinder Fall did not leave one another's eyes; their swords clashed upon instinct while their eyes locked as though each sought to burn away the other with the power of their gaze.

    Pyrrha let go of Cinder, curling up to roll in the air and with both feet lashed out, kicking Cinder down towards the ground.

    She summoned Akoúo̱ after, sending it slamming into Cinder's midriff to drive her into the earth so hard, the ground itself shattered.

    So did Cinder's aura, an amber glow rippling over her body as she lay in the crater she had made within the earth. Only the slightest movement showed that she yet lived.

    Pyrrha landed a few feet away, summoning Akoúo̱ onto her left arm.

    I have not much more Polarity in me, Pyrrha thought. She was starting to feel a little tired already, her arms heavier than they had been.

    No matter. Cinder's aura was broken. She had won.

    I won. I won! She could … she could believe it, but at the same time … she had feared that she would not be equal to this challenge. She had feared to have her fears proven right. She had feared that she would end at Cinder's feet, at Cinder's mercy, looking up at her enemy as Cinder taunted one who had presumed to a greatness she did not possess.

    She had feared to be nothing more than a showgirl, fit perhaps to entertain a crowd, but for serious work, Professor Ozpin's work? Useless, unworthy, unequal to the challenges that lay before them.

    But she had won. She had beaten Cinder Fall. Salem's champion lay before her. Yes, she could not defeat Salem, but she could best her greatest servants, and that was as much as anyone could do.

    That … would suffice.

    I have worth. I have a place in all of this.

    And yet, once I put an end to Cinder, there will be little 'this' for me to have a place in.

    And that, itself, will be all to the good.

    She began to bear down on Cinder but was immediately pulled up short by the roar of a grimm.

    An ursa major advanced out of the woods on her left, crushing the trees beneath its massive feet, shoving them aside to make way for its great, bulky, armoured form; a moment later, another emerged from the right, both of them massive, elder grimm, their backs studded with massive spikes of bone as long as lances jutting out of their black, oily flesh. They growled, their paws — with claws as long as Miló's sword form emerging out of them — swaying slightly as they lumbered forwards.

    Pyrrha stepped back, bringing her shield up, preparing to rush the one on the right before the two of them could—

    "No!" Cinder yelled. "Emerald, enough!"

    "But…" Emerald murmured. "But you'll—"

    "If that is my fate," Cinder whispered. "Enough."

    The ursai disappeared, vanishing from sight as though … no, because they had never been.

    Cinder groaned as she rose, slowly and unsteadily to her feet. "Forgive her," she said. "Our Mistral ways seem hard and strange to outsiders."

    "Indeed," Pyrrha said softly.

    Cinder groaned again and winced as she picked up her glass scimitar off the ground. She straightened up, gripping the blade with both hands as the moonlight glimmered upon it.

    She looked at Pyrrha, only one eye visible, the other concealed beneath her bedraggled-looking hair.

    With a great shout, Cinder charged, her bright blade swinging.

    Pyrrha parried easily with Miló, the two blades clashing once again, and as they clashed, Cinder's glass sword shattered into fragments. Fragments which did not reform, which did not assail Pyrrha, fragments which simply fell to earth and lay there, unmoving, harmless.

    Cinder staggered backwards, looking at the broken stump of a sword in her hand. She lowered her hands to her side for a moment, then raised her arms a little out again on either side of her.

    "Glory to you, Pyrrha Nikos," she murmured, a weariness in her voice.

    Pyrrha said nothing as she switched Miló from sword to spear, resting the tip of the spear upon her shield as she drew back to smite Cinder on the chest.

    The beowolf howled as it emerged out of the darkness of the trees, red eyes burning like coals as it leapt at Pyrrha. She half thought that this was another of Emerald's illusions, but nevertheless, Pyrrha turned on instinct, driving her spear into the beowolf's chest.

    Its real chest, into which she buried Miló for a few seconds before the grimm disappeared to smoke and ash. Another beowolf charged into the clearing from behind her, but Pyrrha reversed Miló to skewer that grimm in its turn.

    "What the—?" Arslan shouted, but her shout was cut off as she was distracted by the beowolf that stuck its head out of the thicket to snarl into her face. Arslan hit it so hard that the bony face of the beowolf exploded into ashes, but more of them came, beowolves and ursai pouring into the clearing.

    Jaune drew his nearly reforged sword and held his shield before him.

    Pyrrha glared at Cinder. Was this your plan all along?

    But Cinder's eyes were wide, shaking her head a little from side to side. Her lips moved, but amidst the howling and the growling of the grimm, Pyrrha could not hear the words which fell from them.

    Pyrrha charged at her. Grimm or no, plan or no, cheat or no, ambush or no, Cinder's aura was still broken; Pyrrha could still end this. She cast her spear, hurling Miló through the air towards Cinder who stood still, frozen in place, making no move to evade the spear.

    A beowolf leapt through the air, taking Pyrrha's spear squarely in its chest, dying as the force of Miló hurled it backwards, turning to ashes which passed over Cinder. More grimm filled the space between them, a black tide separating Pyrrha from her enemy as the alpha beowolf, twelve feet tall and covered with plates of bleach, bone armour, protruded with sharp white spikes, loped up to Cinder and bent down to snatch her up in its jaws. Cinder twitched in pain, but other than that, she yet was still as the alpha turned and began to carry her away.

    "No!" Pyrrha yelled, rage and frustration mingling in her voice as she fought her way through the grimm with Akoúo̱, using the sharp edges of her shield like a discus, cutting through heads and limbs, striking down beowolves as she sought to pursue the alpha, even as the great beowolf exited the clearing.

    Emerald seemed as surprised as Cinder had looked, just as frozen, but Lightning Dust grabbed her by the arm and pulled her away after the alpha beowolf.

    Pyrrha recovered Miló and, with it, carved a swift and deadly swathe through every grimm that crossed her path. An ursa major barred her path, but Pyrrha hurled herself upon it, switching Miló from spear to sword in her hand. It lashed out at her with one monstrous paw, but Pyrrha turned the blow aside with Akoúo̱, then sliced off that paw with a single swift stroke. Miló switched form sword to spear again as the ursa howled in pain, and Pyrrha twirled it in her grasp, slashing at the ursa's chest, striking at every gap or chink in its armour. Bellowing in frustration, the ursa dropped down onto all fours, lunging at her with its great jaws, but Pyrrha darted nimbly aside and — switching to sword once again — cut off its head.

    She did not stay to watch it die but plunged into the forest, uncaring that she could not see the alpha beowolf, uncaring that he did not know exactly where it had gone, running through the darkness and the trees in hope that she could catch up to them and then…

    And then…

    And then, with the little aura she had left, confront Emerald and Lightning Dust, with their intact aura, as well as who knew how many grimm?

    And then plunge into an ambush in the darkness.

    I will suffer worse than Cinder's fate, if I let this make me heedless.

    Pyrrha came to a stop, eyes searching the darkness for any sign that she had left it too late to remember sense and walked into an ambush already.

    She saw none, and no sign of her quarry either.

    "Pyrrha?" Jaune called out, from somewhere behind her. "Pyrrha?"

    "I'm here!" Pyrrha shouted back. "I'm here, Jaune, ahead of you."

    It did not take long for Jaune and Arslan to catch up with her, preceded by the light of their torches shining into her face.

    Jaune's expression was grave. "Cinder?"

    "Gone," Pyrrha said. "I lost her. I … judged it best not to risk pursuing her in the dark, with Emerald and Lightning still fresh."

    "Emerald and Lightning?" Arslan repeated. "Emerald and Lightning are the … Pyrrha, what in all the rivers of the underworld was that?"

    "I … don't know," Pyrrha lied, though it pained her to do so. "There is … much about the grimm that remains a mystery to us."

    "Including carrying people off alive?" Arslan demanded. "Has that ever happened before?"

    "We're as confused as you are," Jaune assured her.

    Arslan huffed. "Do you think they'll eat her?"

    "We can only hope," Pyrrha muttered, although in truth, she felt she could be better than reasonably certain that they would not, more was the pity.

    Jaune reached out to put a hand on Pyrrha's shoulder. "You were amazing back there," he said. "How do you feel?"

    Pyrrha raised her head ever so slightly to look up at him, a smile spreading across her lips. "I won," she declared, quietly, but with pride nonetheless. "I defeated her, alone, in clean combat beneath the auspices of victory. I won, and her escape cannot take that away from me."

    And the next time our paths cross she will not escape.

    XxXxX​

    Author's Note: Art by Sae
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 61 - Victor and Vanquished
  • Threadmarks
    • Victor and Vanquished

    ​

    Professor Ozpin took the Bullhead down himself, guiding the airship over the forest towards the clearing where Pyrrha had fought the duel.

    The clearing where Pyrrha was waiting for them now.

    Sunset felt as though the ice that had gripped her stomach had been melted away by a sudden heat, the gnawing emptiness filled by a sumptuous feast. A smile played upon her face as she gripped the railing running along the airship ceiling.

    "You were really worried about her, weren't you?" Ruby asked.

    "I'm always nervous any time I have to let any of you out of my sight," Sunset replied.

    Ruby frowned. "I'm not sure that's a good thing."

    "I never said it was," Sunset said. "But it's who I am, for better or worse. Seems like once I care about someone, then I care; I can't turn it off because it's not convenient. I … I love not wisely, but too well." She paused for a moment. "Besides, weren't you nervous, a little bit?"

    "A little bit," Ruby admitted. "I … I'm glad she's okay. And since she's okay, that must mean she won, right?"

    "You would think," Sunset agreed. "Cinder wouldn't let her leave alive, not Pyrrha, that … she hates Pyrrha too much for that, if she had her at her mercy … that's why I was nervous about this. Plus, there's the fact that Pyrrha hasn't gone anywhere; she's at the location of the duel. She is the mistress of the field. Which suggests…"

    Which suggests that she won, and we'll find Cinder dead once we get there.

    That was … a pity. Yes, yes, it was a pity, that was what it was, that was what Sunset could think about it without feeling disloyal to Pyrrha in any way — not that she really did; she had always been rooting for Pyrrha to win.

    Cinder … Cinder had chosen this path, the path of the warrior, the path of vengeance and wrath; she had chosen this, and having chosen, she had no right to complain about the outcome of it. Nor did Sunset think that she would have complained, given some of the conversations they'd had in the past.

    "Cinder, the wrath that rules you is a poison, you must see that."

    "Then let me choke on it. Perhaps I am not healthy in my soul, perhaps I am not in a state of perfect 'wellness,' perhaps I am damaged, perhaps I am broken. Well then, let me be ill, let me be cracked, let me be a shattered mirror to hold up to this world, but I will not cease my raging until I have given back to this world its fill and more of bloodshed."

    "At what cost? At what cost to yourself?"

    "At any cost! I will not move. Not one step."

    No, Cinder would not complain. She would not like to lose, would not wish to die by Pyrrha's hands — although it would probably offend her less than to die by the hands of one less skilled in arms — but she would not beg for her life, nor moan at the injustice of her fate. Apart from anything else, she would understand how damaging that would be for her reputation.

    But nevertheless, it was a pity. It was a pity that a sweet girl like Ashley had been transformed into Cinder Fall in the first place, corrupted by the cruelty of the world — and of the Kommenos family in particular — ground down, crushed in the spirit, broken. It was a pity that somebody like Cinder Fall had been created; it was a pity that someone who was witty and intelligent and ambitious could not have put those qualities to better use.

    It was a pity that she had not been given the opportunity to do so.

    It was a pity that her destiny had not been other than a death in the darkness in the woods.

    And yet … yet, Pyrrha lived.

    And Sunset would not trade that for anything.

    "So … does that mean it's all over?" Ruby asked. "Does that mean that it's all done now?"

    "Not all," Sunset said. "Salem yet lives, forever."

    "I know," Ruby said. "But you know what I mean."

    Sunset nodded. "I … it could be. We'll have to see what Pyrrha says when we actually get to her."

    "Right," Ruby agreed. "I wonder why she only sent us a text asking if they could get picked up instead of calling?"

    "Maybe she felt the news she has to share would best be delivered in person?" Sunset suggested.

    "I guess," Ruby replied. After a moment, she added, "Of course, even with Cinder dead, there's still Emerald and Lightning Dust to worry about."

    "Limbs of Cinder," Sunset declared, dismissing them both with magisterial disdain. "Can the arm do mischief once the trunk is no more? Can a leg walk without a head to guide it? No, without Cinder, her followers are irrelevant … even the White Fang will be less dangerous without Cinder to supply ambitions for them."

    She hesitated. "Besides … I don't think that Emerald would be interested in serving Salem in Cinder's absence; she wouldn't look to move on up to take Cinder's place at the top table; she … I don't know what she'd do, exactly, but it would probably be something of little danger to the world."

    "What makes you say that?" asked Ruby.

    "Because she told me, in as many words, when we spoke to arrange the duel," Sunset explained. "I hadn't really had anything to do with her until that point, but when we spoke, she seemed so … normal. I couldn't help but ask her why she was doing this."

    "And what was the answer?"

    "Loyalty to Cinder," Sunset answered.

    "Hmm," Ruby murmured. "What could Cinder have done to earn the kind of loyalty that would cause Emerald to help her try and do such terrible things?"

    "You'd need to ask her that," Sunset said.

    "People should be loyal to ideals, not other people," Ruby declared. "Wrong doesn't become any less wrong because it's Cinder or General Ironwood telling you to do it."

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. "General Ironwood?"

    "I know that Rainbow trusts him, and I think that Blake must be at least starting to trust him, else she wouldn't want to go to Atlas," Ruby said, "but in the end, the only reason Rainbow Dash can give for why she trusts General Ironwood is … because she trusts General Ironwood."

    "Do you not trust General Ironwood?" Sunset asked.

    "That's not the point," Ruby replied. "The point is that I wouldn't do whatever he said just because he told me to."

    "Professor Ozpin trusts General Ironwood," Sunset pointed out, glancing over her shoulder into the cockpit. If Professor Ozpin was taking any notice whatsoever of their conversation, you couldn't tell by the way he was acting wholly focussed on the controls.

    "Professor Ozpin wouldn't do whatever he said either," Ruby responded.

    "That is a fair point," Sunset allowed. "But … it's all very well to say that you should be loyal to ideals over people, and I even understand why you're saying it, but … that's just because you haven't met anyone that you consider personally worthy of your loyalty. When you do … some people just strike you, you know. They shoot you through the heart; it's like love; no, it is love. Their wisdom, their nobility, their bearing and dignity, it … you would do … anything for them. Follow where they lead, do as they ask, and I don't accept that as a flaw."

    She paused a moment. "The happiest days of my youth were spent loyally following Princess Celestia, and as much as it brought me here and to all this, it remains my deepest regret that I rebelled against her."

    Perhaps it ought not to have been her greatest regret any more, but … her second greatest regret had nevertheless purchased the lives of Ruby, Pyrrha, Jaune, Blake, and Rainbow Dash, while her greatest regret had brought nothing but unhappiness to Princess Celestia.

    "Because you didn't have the right ideals, the right principles," Ruby argued.

    "So I should have followed in the hoofprints of someone who did," Sunset said. "All the dignity of our race is embodied in Princess Celestia; who was I to ever question her wisdom?"

    "Someone with a mind of your own, and a heart of your own too," Ruby said.

    "I'm setting her down now," Professor Ozpin called out from the cockpit. "We're almost there."

    Indeed, Sunset could feel the airship going downwards as he spoke, all sense of forward motion ceasing, replaced by the jolt of a descent beginning.

    The door on the right hand side of the Bullhead began to open before the airship had completed its descent, and in the moonlight, Sunset could see the trees growing closer beneath them, could see the clearing.

    And she could see Pyrrha, Jaune, and Arslan waiting for them below.

    Pyrrha was in front, with Jaune and Arslan standing slightly behind and upon either side of her; the reflection of the moonlight was bright upon her golden circlet, and the displaced air from the Bullhead's engines blew through her hair and made her ponytail stream out and dance behind her.

    As the descending airship brought them closer and closer, Sunset could see that upon Pyrrha's face was a smile of quiet confidence.

    Sunset teleported out of the airship before it had finished landing, appearing in front of Pyrrha with a crack and a flash of green light as she threw her arms around Pyrrha's neck and enveloped her in a hug.

    She didn't say anything. She didn't think there were any words necessary.

    Judging by Pyrrha's silence as she placed her own arms around Sunset's back, she felt much the same way.

    Sunset heard the Bullhead's engines shut off, their whine ceasing, allowing silence to settle for a moment before it was disturbed by the hooting of an owl in the trees some distance away.

    Sunset heard footsteps rapidly approaching without seeing whose footsteps they were, and then she felt someone a little smaller than herself bump into her and Pyrrha, as well as another arm upon her back.

    Sunset smiled, even as she released Pyrrha with one arm and gestured with her now-free hand. "Bring it in, Jaune; come on."

    She still didn't see anything, her face buried in Pyrrha's shoulder, but she felt Jaune's arm around her and felt his presence — larger than Ruby's — pressed against her left side.

    "And hold it right there a second while I get the picture," Arslan said. "There, got it. Some of your older fans might find this a bit sappy, but it'll be the perfect way to finish things off for the kids."

    "What's she talking about?" Ruby asked.

    "Arslan filmed the fight," Pyrrha explained, her voice soft. "I haven't decided whether I'd like it to be released or not."

    "You're thinking about it?" asked Ruby.

    "Some things have to be seen to be believed," Arslan said.

    Nobody replied to that. Nobody did anything. They just stayed that way, their embraces interlocking, their bodies pressed against one another, for just a few moments longer.

    "Miss Nikos," Professor Ozpin said, "I am very glad to see you alive and well."

    It was a tacit signal to stop hugging, and one which they obeyed, releasing one another and wordlessly forming a line facing the headmaster. Sunset and Jaune clasped their hands behind their backs, while Pyrrha's hands hung down by her sides.

    Pyrrha took a step forwards ahead of the others. "Thank you, Professor. I have the honour to report that I was victorious." She sounded honoured; there was no hesitation in her voice, no trembling, her voice rang out clearly through the night. "Although I confess that Cinder Fall escaped me."

    Sunset looked around. There was no body to be seen, something which she hadn't noticed before, focussed as she had been on Pyrrha; there was a crater in the earth, where it looked as if someone had been slammed into the ground with great force, but there was no body, nor any blood.

    Professor Ozpin was silent a moment, and then he sighed. Sunset didn't like the fact that he sighed; it made her ears droop a little bit; he might have preferred it if Cinder had died, but he didn't have to be so obvious about it in front of Pyrrha.

    "I see," he murmured. "May I ask how that happened, Miss Nikos?"

    "I broke Cinder's aura," Pyrrha explained, "but before I could land the killing blow, the battle was interrupted by grimm. They came between me and Cinder, and one of them carried her away while I was embattled by others."

    "It was the strangest thing I've ever seen," Arslan added. "I've never even heard of anything like it, not ever. Grimm carrying someone off like that? On the plus side, they've probably eaten her by now."

    If only you knew, Sunset thought. Actually, probably best that you don't.

    Still, that explained that. The only question was whether Cinder had arranged that, as a last minute means of saving herself if the battle should go against her, or whether Salem had done it in order to preserve her champion. The latter raised the question of why Salem would bother with a champion who couldn't win on her own merits — maybe she just didn't want to go back to the drawing board for another generation or so but preferred to work with what she had right now — but nevertheless, it was the answer that Sunset preferred.

    She didn't want to believe that Cinder had planned all along to void the duel if she didn't like the outcome. It might sound strange, but … it was one thing to be on the wrong side of a war, it was one thing to wage war, to fight against — even to kill — those who were on the other side of that war, but to make a solemn bargain like this and then renege on it was … rather more disappointing, in some ways.

    I'd like to think you had more self-respect than that.

    I do think you have more self-respect than that, and too much pride to make contingency plans for your defeat, besides.

    "The ways of the grimm remain fundamentally … esoteric to our eyes, Miss Altan," Professor Ozpin said. "It may be as you say … but it may also be that, for whatever reason, Miss Fall yet lives. Disappointing as that fact may be."

    "Professor," Sunset said sharply, as her ears dropped down into the midst of her hair, "this childish sullenness does a discredit to your years. Eat your sprouts and be grateful there is any supper at all."

    "Sunset," Pyrrha murmured.

    "He has no right to act like you failed," Sunset muttered.

    Professor Ozpin raised his head and let out a bark of laughter up towards the moon. "Yes. Yes, Miss Shimmer, you are quite correct, and chide me well. I admit … yes, you are correct. You have done well, Miss Nikos. You have met your enemy, alone and unaided, and you have vanquished them. That they escaped the final blow is, as you have explained, not your fault." He paused for a moment. "How do you feel?"

    Pyrrha was silent for a moment. "I would be lying if I said I didn't wish that there was a body here with us, Professor, yet, nevertheless, I feel like a victor. I withstood her, I bested her, and I see no reason to believe that I could not do so again if need arose — which it may, given the circumstances."

    Her words slowed down a little, not so much in hesitation but with a sense that she was choosing her words carefully, most likely for Arslan's benefit, to avoid saying anything that she shouldn't have.

    "If that is the calibre of opposition that the world may provide me, then it is challenging, to be sure, but far from insurmountable. Whatever fresh battles lie before us, I will go forth to meet them renewed, certain of my value as a member of Team Sapphire."

    The only one who ever doubted that was you, Sunset thought. But it's nice to hear you're over it regardless.

    "I am delighted to hear it, Miss Nikos," Professor Ozpin said. "You have done good work tonight, and I have no doubt that you will do even greater service to the world in the days to come."

    XxXxX​

    On the positive side, it only hurts when I breathe.

    Cinder stalked back towards Portchester Manor in silence. In part, that was because it hurt too much to speak. Her bones ached, so badly she was certain that she must have broken a few of them; she'd be astonished if Pyrrha's last attack hadn't cracked at least a couple of ribs, and she'd had to shove her own shoulder back into place. Every breath felt as though she was being stabbed in the lungs, and every step produced throbbing protestations of her knees. Her arms drooped down on either side of her, and her legs were so heavy, it was as though she was dragging pallets loaded with cinder blocks in her wake.

    None of which would have mattered so much if she had been returning victorious. After all, she had been prepared for a hard fight; she did not … yes, very well, she had underestimated Pyrrha Nikos, her skill, her finesse, but she had not underestimated her so much that she had expected an easy victory, without pain or cost or consequence. She had expected a hard fight, one which would try her and leave her spent, but if she had won, if she had been returning now with Pyrrha's blood upon her sword, then it would not have mattered.

    Exultation would have served as a substitute for energy. The thrill of triumph would have served as an anaesthetic against the pain.

    But she was not returning victorious. She was returning defeated, having lost the obsidian glass of Midnight; she would have to go back and get it some other time, provided that Pyrrha had left it for her and not taken it away as a trophy of her victory.

    No, she would not do that. In part because she probably doesn't realise that it's special glass, but also because it simply wouldn't occur to her to do so. She doesn't need a trophy to remember her victory; the fact that she won will be enough.

    But for now, Cinder was disarmed and defeated, and the shame of that defeat was compounding the pain of her physical injuries tenfold.

    Pyrrha had beaten her. The Champion of Mistral, the Evenstar of Mistral, the pride and glory of Mistral reborn, Pyrrha had this night proven herself beyond doubt to be all those things, and Cinder … Cinder was nothing. A loser. Dust beneath Pyrrha's chariot wheels.

    Cinder had dreamt of this moment, but her dream had abandoned her. Destiny had betrayed her. Pyrrha, it seemed, was favoured of fortune, not her.

    Cinder's great ambition, the culmination of her hopes, and she had been unable to realise it. Her reach, it seemed, had exceeded her grasp.

    That in itself was not unbecoming; a hero should outreach themselves and pay the price, but it galled Cinder nevertheless that her outreach should come against Pyrrha, when she had always desired that Pyrrha in particular should fall before her, inspiring the avenger who would arise from the dead bones of the Princess Without a Crown and harry Cinder to her own end.

    Instead…

    How? Why? Is she simply born better than I am because she is gently born of royal blood and scion to an ancient line while I am but a gentleman's daughter?

    Is it because she was trained by the great Chiron himself while I was self-tutored in the darkness of the night?

    She didn't know what the answer was. She wasn't sure it mattered. What mattered was that she had lost.

    I did much better against her under Mountain Glenn.

    Of course, under Mountain Glenn, she had used the environment to her advantage, used their very surroundings as a weapon against Pyrrha. So perhaps she could beat her, when the ground favoured her — but not in the open, where there was no terrain to take advantage.

    Cinder found that somewhat cold comfort. After all, defeating Pyrrha because she had chosen a situation that favoured her, while it might be sound strategy, wouldn't prove very much in the eyes of the world.

    Any more than overpowering Pyrrha with a force to which she had no response would. Certainly, it demonstrated no innate superiority, which was what Cinder wanted.

    Unfortunately, it seemed that she did not possess it.

    I will have to train harder for the next round. The third time will pay for all; it must.

    Everyone moved in silence. Since the grimm had released them, and they had begun their trek back to the old house that served as their base, no one had said a word. Not Cinder, not Emerald, and certainly not Lightning Dust.

    Speaking of Lightning Dust, she was keeping her distance. While Emerald stayed close, her eyes flickering Cinder's way as if she was expecting Cinder to be unable to walk by herself at any moment and need support — there was no chance of that; Cinder would rather die than accept help from anyone, even from Emerald; what remained of her somewhat tattered pride would not allow it — Lightning held off, walking at some remove from the other two as though she were the cool girl trying to avoid association with the wrong crowd at school.

    Or because she was afraid that Cinder would rip her spine out and strangle her with it if she got too close.

    Certainly, Cinder would have liked to have done that; she had no doubt, no doubts at all, about who had orchestrated her unwanted rescue — or at least who had been involved in this. Emerald, she discounted; the girl was too loyal to her, she would never do such a thing, but Lightning? Well, Lightning was too stupid to have arranged it by herself, but she had been involved.

    Her and Tempest Shadow.

    Unfortunately, Cinder's aura was coming back but slowly, she wasn't strong enough to kill Lightning Dust at the moment, even if she'd wanted to.

    Even more unfortunately, even once her strength returned, Cinder found herself facing the possibility that she would not be able to do as she wished.

    Because, of course, Lightning and Tempest could not have arranged all of this by themselves; they could not have commanded the grimm to swoop in at that precise moment and carry her off, throwing themselves between Cinder and Pyrrha, selling their lives to buy her time to escape. No, there was only one person who could have orchestrated that.

    They had gone to Salem. They had told her about the duel, and she had sent her grimm to ensure that Cinder did not die.

    What made matters worse, to Cinder's mind, was her feeling that Salem would have allowed the duel to go ahead if Cinder had been winning. She could hardly have objected to Pyrrha's death after all, which meant that she was aware that it was Cinder who had stood upon the verge of death.

    And she had intervened to save her life because … Cinder could guess the 'because,' and it did not flatter her.

    It was not out of affection that Salem had saved her.

    Yet she had been saved, and very soon, she would have to explain herself.

    And so, as she approached the house, Cinder straightened her back and did her best to banish all signs of pain and weariness from her. She could not hide the mess that combat had made of her hair, nor could she banish all the stains of dirt from off her dress — her poor dress; it had been so ill-used tonight — but she could at least act as though none of this was weighing upon her.

    For all the good that the pretence might do.

    And so, head held higher than it deserved to be, she strode through the doors and into the dissipated hallway of Portchester Manor.

    "Hey guys!" Sonata called out cheerily, welcoming them with a smile which, in the circumstances, seemed revoltingly, offensively bright. "I made fruit punch for when you got back! Help yourselves!"

    Tempest Shadow emerged from out of the side room that was Sonata's haunt. There was a smirk upon her face which taunted Cinder. She folded her arms. "So, how did it go?"

    The beowolf inside of Cinder was roaring louder than it had been even during that long walk back when she had wanted to rip out Lightning's throat with her teeth. Cinder's hands balled up into fists as she fought to keep her voice calm. "Where is my mistress?"

    "Our mistress is waiting for you in the library," Tempest said.

    In the library. In my place. That was deliberate, Cinder was sure; it was not a secret where she had been spending the most time. Salem did not wish to give her a sanctum to retire to when she was done.

    "I see," Cinder murmured. "Then I suppose I had best not keep her waiting."

    "No," Tempest said. "Best not."

    One day, I will peel the skin off your face, Cinder thought. See how you smirk at me then.

    For now, though, she made her way towards the library, ignoring Tempest as she ignored Sonata and her ludicrous offer of the fruit punch — let Tempest indulge herself if she wished; she and Lightning had got what they wanted out of tonight.

    Let Emerald, if she wanted anything; she had earned it, despite the otherwise miserable results of the night.

    Unfortunately, Tempest followed her, falling in behind her as she walked. Cinder said nothing; if she questioned it, it would have the potential to make her look weaker than she already seemed, and at present, she lacked the strength to physically force the issue.

    She would have to allow Salem to dismiss Tempest on her behalf.

    But for now, she walked just behind Cinder, just enough to avoid too great impertinence, as they reached the library, where the door was open.

    There was a Seer within, a floating glass ball, like the kind that phoney fortune tellers used to see the future at fairs and carnivals, only this ball appeared to be filled with black ink, a deep darkness that could not be penetrated by the eye. It floated about seven feet off the ground, and this particular crystal ball not only possessed white bony armoured plates at certain points upon it, but was ringed at the base by two rows of razor sharp fangs, moving slightly in and out as the Seer breathed. Tentacles, a dozen of them, hung down from the base towards the floor, each of them tipped with a sharp white point.

    As Cinder walked into the library, the inky blackness within the Seer was lit up, a golden light seeming to bloom within.

    And then, into view, emerged the deathly pale visage of Salem.

    Cinder bowed, lowering her eyes to the wooden floor. "My mistress," she murmured.

    "The conquering hero returns," Salem sneered. "Tell me, Cinder, what was the purpose of tonight's … misadventure?"

    "Mistress, I think that this matter would be best discussed … privately," Cinder said.

    "Really? I think that Tempest should remain," Salem replied. "And so she shall. Tempest, close the door."

    "As you wish, my lady," Tempest said.

    Cinder heard the sound of the door shutting.

    "Now, Cinder," Salem said, "as you were saying?"

    Cinder hesitated for a moment.

    One of the seer's tentacles, pink and flesh, reached out to her, the bony tip reaching up her chin and tilting it upwards until she was looking into Salem's face.

    "As you were saying," Salem said.

    Cinder could not tear her eyes away. "Pyrrha Nikos challenged me to a duel," she said, swallowing, for her throat had become very dry.

    "And you were compelled to accept because…"

    "Because she would have thought me a coward if I had not," Cinder declared. "As would the world which had heard her challenge me." She paused and allowed a touch of resentment to enter her voice. "They will think me a coward now."

    Pain shot through her; it started in the small of her back, a stabbing pain as if someone had suddenly stuck a knife in her — which they had, but it hadn't hurt this much until now — and then spreading outwards, down and up her spine, making her spasm, her arms and legs failing her. Cinder groaned and gasped in pain as she fell onto her side with a thud.

    "Do you think I care about your reputation?" Salem demanded, her voice cold. "Do you think I care about the opinion in which you are held by our enemies, still less by the common wretches of Vale or Mistral?" She paused a moment. "So … Pyrrha called, and you answered, is that the short of it?"

    Cinder grunted as she pushed herself up off the floor and back up onto her knees. "Yes, Mistress."

    "She called, and you answered," Salem said.

    "Yes, Mistress."

    "You did not think to set a trap for her and her friends?" Salem asked. "To lure Ozpin's latest pawns to their deaths under cover of this archaic ritual?"

    "No, Mistress."

    "Why not?" Salem demanded.

    Cinder hesitated.

    The Seer's tentacle began to coil around Cinder's throat.

    "Why not?" Salem asked again, in a tone which suggested she did not wish to ask a third time.

    "It would have been … dishonourable," Cinder said.

    Salem laughed coldly. "What is honour to someone like you?" she demanded. "What is honour, after what you have done?"

    Cinder frowned. "I have done immoral things in plenty, Mistress, but I have done nothing dishonourable." According to certain definitions of honour, in any case.

    The famous Pyrrha would have agreed with me, I'm sure.     And if she would not, then cunning Penelope certainly would have.

    "A distinction likely to be lost upon Ozpin and his servants, whose opinion you are so anxious to maintain," Salem suggested snidely. "Tell me, Cinder, having agreed to this ridiculous duel, how was it that you were defeated? Your power—"

    "I will not use it against Pyrrha," Cinder said. "Not when she has no answer to it."

    "Let me guess," Salem said. "That would be dishonourable as well."

    "It would prove nothing," Cinder replied. "I wish to prove my superiority in arms."

    "A superiority it seems you do not possess, on the basis of tonight's display," Salem reminded her. "You fought to the death?"

    "That was my intent, Mistress."

    "You risked not only your own life, but also that which you carry in you, the power you will not use. If you had fallen, that power would have been lost."

    "To fall was not my intent."

    "And yet you did not take great pains not to fall," Salem said. "You risked everything, you risked the culmination of my plans, and for what?"

    "Pyrrha—"

    "Pyrrha Nikos is nothing!" Salem snapped.

    The pain returned to Cinder, spreading from her back once again, even more painful this time, not only dropping her to the floor as her legs gave way beneath her, but making her spasm, legs kicking, arms jerking, body twitching as a thousand thousand needles stabbed outwards from inside her skin, as if a wasp's nest had been laid inside of her and now all the wasps were fighting frantically to get out, to burst their way free, though it tore Cinder's body to pieces in the process. The seer's tentacle tightened its grip around her throat, squeezing it tighter than her choker did, tighter than Pyrrha had done during the battle, tighter than…

    "Oh, oh, stop, please, stop!"

    "Here comes a monster to gobble you up."

    As bad as the pain were, the memories that filled her mind, memories that she didn't want to remember, memories of that house, memories of Phoebe, memories of pain and loss and hurt.

    Tears welled up in Cinder's eyes. Whimpering sounds of pain escaped her.

    "Do you think I care if Pyrrha Nikos lives or dies?" Salem demanded. "She is nothing to me. Pyrrha Nikos, Jaune Arc, Blake Belladonna, Rainbow Dash … insects crawling upon the face of Remnant. Not even silver-eyed Ruby has the power to harm me; why should I fear those who do not even possess the slightest glimpse of magic? To kill her, to kill one single enemy, you risked … everything? You risked what I gave to you?"

    Cinder did not reply. The pain had faded somewhat, but not completely. She lay upon the ground, not twitching, but still wracked with pain. She lay on the floor looking up, while Salem looked down upon her. She seemed so very high and far away.

    "It's important not to lose sight of what drives us," Salem said. "Glory. Renown. Revenge. But the moment you put your desires above my own, they will be lost to you. And so will everything else. You are the living key, Cinder; that gives you value to me, even if your performance thus far has been … less than satisfactory. I require you alive for my plans to move forward; therefore, you do not have my permission to die. Not at this time. And yet, these night's events have shown that, as much as it pains me to admit this, I cannot rely on you. So from now on, you will work with Tempest Shadow, who brought me the news of your … actions, and together you will bring down Beacon Academy and retrieve the relic that Ozpin has hidden within. And when you have brought me a golden crown, then — and only then — will you have my permission to die.

    "In whatever manner you see fit."

    XxXxX​

    "So," Arslan said as she leapt down from out of the Bullhead and onto the landing bay, "what do you guys have planned right now?"

    Sunset looked at her. "What do you mean 'what do we have planned?' It's past one in the morning."

    Arslan shrugged. "I thought you might want to celebrate Pyrrha's victory."

    "Speaking for myself, I might be in the mood to celebrate at some point," Pyrrha allowed, "but at the moment, all I want is to snatch a few hours sleep, or more than a few; I may allow myself the indulgence of a late morning." She stifled a yawn, covering her mouth with one hand. "Victory is always welcome, but against a skilled opponent it can be rather tiring."

    "Lightweights," Arslan said with good-natured scorn.

    "You may do as you please, of course, Miss Atlan," Professor Ozpin said as he dismounted from the airship, "but on behalf of the faculty, I must ask that you don't disturb the other students who are trying to sleep."

    "Of course, Professor," Arslan said softly.

    "Miss Nikos, everyone, I bid you a pleasant goodnight," Professor Ozpin said. "We may speak of what transpired in the forest some more, but for now, I will leave you to a well-deserved rest."

    "Thank you, Professor," Pyrrha said, bowing her head. "Goodnight."

    Professor Ozpin nodded to her, and there was a smile upon his face that Pyrrha might not have expected, considering his earlier disappointment at her failure to finish the fight and kill Cinder.

    She could understand his disappointment. It did not dampen her spirits overly, it did not make her feel like a failure, it did not take away the fact that she had won the fight and that she felt like the victor, but nevertheless, it was somewhat disappointing. It meant the struggle would go on, the fact that Pyrrha now felt much more comfortable in that struggle.

    And so she had understood his disappointment and felt that Sunset had been overstepping to rebuke the headmaster for it, and yet, it seemed that that rebuke had taken hold, for now, he smiled at her.

    Pyrrha had to admit, she preferred the idea that he was pleased with what she had accomplished.

    In any event, he turned away and walked away briskly, his cane tapping lightly upon the path that led away from the docking pads and back to Beacon. They would have to go that way themselves, but they all hung back a moment, letting the headmaster get a head start on them.

    None of them wished to burden him with their continual company, nor — with all due respect — did any of them particularly wish his.

    "P-money," Arslan said, "before your head hits the pillow, can I have a word with you? In private?"

    "Yes, of course," Pyrrha murmured. "Excuse me, everyone; I'll catch up."

    "We'll wait in the courtyard," Jaune said.

    "I'm sure I'll catch up before then, but thank you," Pyrrha said.

    They left her, following in Professor Ozpin's footsteps down the path from docking pad to school, leaving Pyrrha alone with Arslan and the silent, still, unmoving Bullhead on the dock.

    "What is it?" Pyrrha asked. "If it's about the video, I haven't—"

    "No, I don't expect you to decide that now; sleep on it and then let me know," Arslan said quickly. "No, this is about … well, it's about a couple of things, actually, starting with 'did I just see your semblance in that fight?'"

    Pyrrha was silent a moment. The correct answer, of course, was yes, she had used Polarity more than once in the course of that battle; in a fight to the death, and a fight to the death against an opponent like Cinder what was more, there was little point and less sense in holding back, especially since Cinder's glass weapons meant that Pyrrha's usual subtle use of her semblance was impossible, and only unsubtle uses would avail her aught.

    Yet she did not say that immediately because, well, because she had always kept it a secret. People didn't know what her semblance was, especially not potential competitors; it was a secret. A secret weapon, one might say.

    But Arslan wasn't just a potential competitor, was she? Not now. When someone was willing to come and support you in a fight to the death, a little honesty was probably the least they were owed in return.

    "Yes," she said softly. "Yes, you did. My semblance is Polarity."

    "Magnetism."

    "Possibly," Pyrrha said. "Although I can move metals, like aluminium, that are not magnetic."

    Arslan nodded. "So … I've seen you throwing your shield around like a disc and then it comes back; I thought that it was just really well-designed, but you were bringing it back with your semblance?"

    "Not always; my shield is designed in such a way as to act like a discus and return," Pyrrha replied, "but some of the manoeuvres I've performed with it have required a touch of my semblance, yes."

    Arslan's eyebrows rose. "So … you've had this for a while now, and you've just been keeping it to yourself? Nobody knows about it?"

    "Some people are aware," Pyrrha murmured.

    "Anyone who's gone up against you in the tournament circuit?"

    "No," Pyrrha allowed. "None of them, until now."

    "Why not?" Arslan asked. "Why not just … throw Phoebe out the ring with your semblance when the fight starts?"

    "And prove what by it?" Pyrrha asked. "That I have been fortunate in my semblance? Defeating my opponents by skill demonstrates, well, skill. I didn't train for years just to abuse my semblance all the way to easy victories; not to mention, if I took that approach, what would I do against an opponent like you?"

    "When you put it like that, I wish you did rely on your semblance; I might be in with a chance," Arslan muttered. "But you do use it?"

    "Discreetly," Pyrrha said. "Occasionally. To guide my shield or … turn aside someone's weapon."

    "Suddenly, I'm very glad I use my fists," Arslan said, with a touch of wry amusement entering her voice.

    "It isn't often," Pyrrha insisted. "Usually, I can parry or turn the stroke aside with my shield."

    "After tonight, I can believe that," Arslan said. "Your semblance doesn't work on glass, does it?"

    "No," Pyrrha said. "Hence, amongst other reasons, the more obvious use of my semblance. That, and the fact that I might not have won without it. In the arena, I can afford to hold my semblance back, not because I'm so much better than everyone else, but because, ultimately, there is nothing at stake beyond glories that ultimately matter very little. But down there, if I had held back, she would have killed me."

    "But your semblance was on the special effects; the swordplay was all you," Arslan said.

    "Yes," Pyrrha agreed. "Yes, I suppose you could put it that way." She paused for a moment. "Are you … going to tell everyone about it?"

    "Your semblance?" Arslan asked. She snorted. "Why would I do that? If nobody else knows except me, then they're still at a disadvantage, right? Bigger chance of you and me meeting up in the Vytal Festival." She chuckled. "Besides, it's your secret, right?"

    "Yes," Pyrrha said. "Yes, it is."

    "Then it's safe with me," Arslan said.

    "Thank you," Pyrrha said quietly. "You are…" She trailed off.

    "I am what?"

    "Would you be offended if I called you my friend?" Pyrrha asked.

    "Just so long as you remember that while we might be friends outside the ring, we're rivals inside of it," Arslan declared. "I don't want you taking it easy on me."

    Pyrrha smiled. "I wouldn't dream of it."

    "Still, I have to admit, I'm a little jealous," Arslan said. "No matter how you use it, that's a pretty cool semblance you have. My semblance is rubbish."

    "You've found your semblance?" Pyrrha asked. "But you never—"

    Arslan's eyebrows rose.

    "Point taken," Pyrrha murmured.

    Arslan grinned. "Unlike you, I'm not hiding it for advantage," she said. "I'm hiding it because … well, because it's kind of embarrassing. But you did tell me your semblance eventually, and you didn't try and lie about it or anything like that, so … my semblance is called Lioness, which is really a lot cooler than it deserves; I…"

    She hesitated, glancing away from Pyrrha. "I can … breathe on people, and it makes them brave. Or confident, maybe, it … I unlocked it when I was a kid; my mom was going for a job interview, and she was a nervous wreck about it, and I said … I can't remember what I said, some kiddy thing, and I gave her a kiss, and … I must have really wanted to make her feel better because she did. She stopped shaking, marched out, aced the interview, and got the job."

    "When you put it like that, your semblance sounds rather wonderful," Pyrrha murmured. "Although how do you know that it's breathing and not kissing?"

    "Experimentation at home," Arslan replied. "And, sure, that's a nice enough story, but come on? I breathe on people? Who does that?"

    "And you give them courage to face adversity," Pyrrha countered. "Not only is that a gift to treasure in itself, but think of what it says about your soul that that is the reflection of it."

    "You don't buy into all that 'our semblances reflect our personalities' do you? That's just superstition," Arslan said. "Did you vet Jaune to make sure that he had the right semblance to be compatible with yours?"

    "Obviously, some people take the idea too far—"

    "And if semblances say something about us, then what does the ability to move metal say about you?" Arslan challenged.

    "I've sometimes thought that my ability to move metal might be symbolic of my skill in combat," Pyrrha suggested. "After all, what is battle but a clash of metal against metal, and what is skill in combat but moving metal?"

    Arslan's eyes narrowed. "That … well, I don't believe it, and I don't believe my semblance says anything about me, and I wish that I had one I could get more use out of."

    "And I think you should not be so quick to dismiss Lioness," Pyrrha replied. "You are still young; there may come a time — perhaps in your huntress career after Haven — when the ability to instil courage in those around you will be worth more than any other skill you could possibly have in that moment."

    "Maybe," Arslan grunted, sounding profoundly unconvinced. "Anyway, that wasn't the only thing I wanted to talk to you about."

    "Oh?"

    "What's going on, Pyrrha?"

    Pyrrha blinked. "Could you be a little more specific?"

    Arslan folded her arms. "I'm not an idiot. I know that you know more than you're letting on. I know that any reasonable person would assume that Cinder is dead, but you and your friends and Professor Ozpin are all acting like it's better than even odds that she's still alive somehow. I know that you didn't do this just to get Phoebe off your back, I know that you and your team went on a mission to that Mountain Glenn place even though everything I've heard says that is not a place to send students, and while we're on the subject, what was that big speech to Professor Ozpin? Since when did you start doubting yourself?"

    "Since I came back from Mountain Glenn, at the very least," Pyrrha murmured.

    She cursed herself internally. She should never have involved Arslan in this, and having involved her, she should have been more careful with her words. She should have realised the implications of what she was saying. Had she taken Arslan for stupid? No, she didn't think she had; she just … she thought she had been a better liar than she had been.

    "You … you are right," she said. "There is more going on than you know. But I'm afraid … I cannot enlighten your ignorance."

    "Why not?"

    "Because it is not my secret to reveal," Pyrrha replied. "It has been revealed to me, and to my teammates, but I am not at liberty to share that information any further."

    "On pain of—"

    "Not on pain of anything," Pyrrha said, "but it would break the trust of they who shared this with me."

    "Professor Ozpin."

    "I can't say," Pyrrha lied.

    Arslan rolled her eyes. "Suit yourself."

    "It's nothing personal," Pyrrha assured her quickly. "It's just…"

    "You can't share a secret that isn't yours," Arslan said. "I suppose I can understand that." She scratched the back of her head. "But this … that's what this was about, isn't it? This secret."

    "It … is connected," Pyrrha allowed.

    "And you know something that tells you Cinder is alive?"

    "Most likely," Pyrrha agreed. "Although I can't tell you why or how, for obvious reasons."

    Arslan was silent for a moment. "Is it dangerous, this secret you're keeping?"

    "Yes," Pyrrha said at once. "That's why I fought her, to prove to myself that I could face that danger and vanquish it."

    "Well, you did that, at least," Arslan said quietly. She sighed. "Okay, if you can't tell me, that's fine; we're not so close I need to know all your secrets, especially if they're not even yours in the first place, but … be careful, okay? Take care of yourself. And that's not me talking as your rival in the ring, or even as your friend outside the arena, but me speaking as a Mistralian, reminding you that the whole city would take it hard if anything happened to you. So … take care of yourself? Okay, don't go in so deep you drown."

    "I will not," Pyrrha promised. "For tonight, I have reminded myself that I know how to swim."

    XxXxX​

    Sunset's scroll went just as she — along with Jaune and Ruby — was passing between two of the great columns that formed a circle around the courtyard.

    "Who'd be calling at this time of night?" Jaune asked.

    "Time of the morning, technically, but I don't know," Sunset muttered as she fished the scroll out of her pocket so she could find out. She opened her scroll to see the number — not a name — being displayed. A frown besmirched her features. "I have to take this. When Pyrrha gets back, go on ahead without me, and I'll see you all at the dorm room; this shouldn't take long, but I'll try not to disturb you if you've already gone to bed."

    "Who is it?" Ruby asked. "Why do you have to answer them?"

    "Because it's Cinder," Sunset said. "Or Emerald, maybe, I suppose; it's Cinder's number, anyway."

    "So … why do you have to answer them?" Ruby repeated.

    Sunset snorted. "Don't you want to find out whose idea it was to get the grimm to come and carry Cinder off before Pyrrha could finish her off?" she asked. "Or am I the only one who wants to give Cinder the chance to explain herself?"

    "Probably, yeah," Jaune said. "Does it really matter whose idea it was? It doesn't change what happened."

    "No," Sunset agreed. "But if Cinder went to the clearing intending to chicken out if the battle went against her, then … she would be a lot more cowardly than I thought she was."

    "I guess … it didn't seem as though…" Jaune murmured.

    "What?" Sunset asked. "Did something happen?"

    Jaune shrugged. "I don't know if it means anything, but before the grimm appeared, Cinder seemed … almost okay with it, or maybe not okay, but … she was just standing there, waiting for Pyrrha to deal the final blow. Or at least, that's what it looked like before the grimm showed up."

    The scroll was still buzzing insistently in Sunset's hand.

    "I suppose I'll find out, won't I?" Sunset asked. "Remember, don't hang around for me," she reminded them as she turned away, walking around the circle of towering columns, putting some distance between herself and the others before she answered her scroll.

    "Hello, Sunset," Cinder said with a sigh in her voice.

    "Hey," Sunset said, before an audible yawn escaped her.

    "Aww, are you tired?"

    "Aww, do you want me to hang up on you?"

    "Forgive me," Cinder said. "That was … I am … forgive me. Were you up waiting for Pyrrha?"

    "Of course," Sunset replied. "Did you expect me to go to bed?"

    "I would have been very disappointed in you if you had," Cinder said. "You wouldn't at all be the Sunset Shimmer that I know if the prospect of a friend's death didn't render you incapable of sleep. And since you were up all night, I suppose it is very natural to be tired."

    "You sound a little tired yourself," Sunset pointed out.

    "I am … weary," Cinder said. "Pyrrha … hits hard."

    "Mmm," Sunset murmured wordlessly.

    There was a moment of silence from Cinder. "How is she?"

    "'How is she'?" Sunset demanded. "You were just trying to kill each other, and now you want to know how she's doing?"

    "If I am going to be defeated in a fight, then I want the person who defeated me to understand what a triumph that is and properly revel in it," Cinder declared. "I would hate to think that my downfall was not being properly appreciated because it had been undercut by the manner in which the contest ended."

    "Pyrrha doesn't revel," Sunset informed her, "but she certainly appreciates what she did tonight."

    "Good," Cinder murmured. "That is … good."

    "Not the outcome you were hoping for, was it?"

    "No," Cinder admitted. "But, at the same time…"

    "What?" Sunset asked.

    "If I had killed her," Cinder said, "you wouldn't be taking my call, would you?"

    "No," Sunset murmured. "No, I wouldn't."

    Cinder sighed again. "I should have been a gladiator," she declared. "I could have indulged my fantasies in a world utterly without consequence; it would have suited my temperament."

    "I'm not sure you understand your own temperament if you believe that," Sunset said.

    Cinder laughed softly. "Yes. Yes, I suppose you have a point, my … my desire for revenge would hardly have been sated in such an environment, but all the same … did Pyrrha take you to the Cthoneum when you were in Mistral?"

    "No," Sunset said, "I've never heard of the place."

    "Oh, you missed out," Cinder insisted. "You must make her take you next time you are in the city. And yet, at the same time, I am not surprised she didn't show you; it is a dark place in many ways. It's underground, dug into the mountain itself, beneath the slopes of the city."

    "That would account for it being dark."

    Cinder snorted. "Yes, obviously, but … it's an arena. An underground arena, fashioned not only for entertainment of the masses but also for the amusement of Erechthonius, God of the Underworld, to whom the arena is dedicated and to whom there is a temple adjoining the fighting pit itself. While the noble warriors, the scions of the great houses, the Pyrrhas of their day fought in the Colosseum under the light of the sun, slaves kept and trained for the purpose fought in the Chtoneum."

    "They fought to the death, didn't they?" Sunset asked.

    "Not always," Cinder replied. "A well-trained gladiator was too expensive to be put to death upon a whim, but yes, it was not so rare below as it was above. Even now, when the deaths have ceased, the two combatants enter through the gates of sawn horn; the victor leaves through a gate of ivory."

    "They both enter through gates of false dreams," Sunset said, as this stirred a memory of a story she had come across while reading about Mistralian myth and legend. "Through which the loser must depart again; the victor may leave through a gate of true dreams, such as Pirithous used to return to the living world when he rescued Theseus from the underworld."

    "Precisely," Cinder agreed. "To step into the Chtoneum is to die; to live, to be born again, one must conquer." She paused a moment. "But at the same time, those warriors of old … they would step into the domain of death and fight, they might even kill one another if the need arose, but when the need did not arise, when there was no battle, they were … friends. None of it mattered, you see; it was all just… a game, a fantasy. Strutting about with swords playing hero."

    "This isn't a game," Sunset said.

    "No, it is not; more's the pity," Cinder replied. "I hate Atlas, I hate Mistral, I hate Phoebe, I hate … there is so much about this world that I would see lit on fire and burned to ashes, but at the same time … at the same time, I wish that none of this would matter and that you and I and Pyrrha—"

    "'Pyrrha'?"

    "Her nearly killing me has revised my opinion of her upwards somewhat," Cinder said. "Would you tell her that I didn't intend for this to happen? I did not set out to void the duel and dishonour myself, I did not intentionally void the duel, I … I was prepared to let her take my life. I'm not a coward."

    Sunset was silent a moment. "So what happened?"

    "Salem is not prepared to see me die just yet," Cinder said. "As I told you, a well-trained gladiator is too expensive to be lost upon a whim."

    Sunset hesitated. "Slavery in the days of old would have ill-suited you," she said. "You could not have borne it."

    "You would think that, wouldn't you?" Cinder replied. "Will you tell Pyrrha that, for me, Sunset? I don't want her to think that I was afraid. I don't want her to think that I met her with craven or dishonest intentions. I went to that clearing intending to see that duel through to the finish, for better or worse."

    Sunset breathed in and out. "I … I will tell her. Though I do not guarantee that she'll care."

    Cinder laughed. "She doesn't have to care, so long as she knows. I do not demand that she think well of me, only that she not think ill based on misapprehensions. Tell her … tell her that she is … tell her, of all the warriors loved by the gods, she is the worthiest of their affections. She is Pyrrha Nikos of far fame, and of far fame, she is well-merited."

    "Because she defeated you?"

    "Naturally," Cinder said. "I could not be defeated by someone who was not of rare, exalted skill and ability, after all."

    "I'm shaking my head right now, just so you know."

    "No, you're not."

    Now, Sunset shook her head. "I will tell her that, too."

    "Thank you," Cinder said. "I owe you an apology, Sunset. It wasn't my intent to cause you heartache; I … I wanted to show you that you and I were … but I think, the very fact that this has caused you heartache shows that we aren't the same, are we?"

    "No," Sunset murmured. "Not in this, at least."

    "If to love is a fault, then gods help the wicked," Cinder declared. "And for my part, I would rather my mother been so foul that she had stayed home to care for me rather than giving up her life for the greater good and that grand old Atlesian flag, but … if I had known that it would hurt you so, I would have pressed the detonator myself."

    "And what of those who died?" Sunset asked. "This is not a game, Cinder, though part of you might wish it were."

    Cinder was silent a moment. "My apology lies before you; do with it as you will."

    "Cinder," Sunset said, "this can all end, now, at any time; the future … is in your choosing."

    Cinder did not reply to that, saying rather, "Give my regards to Pyrrha, Sunset, and tell her that I will train diligently before our next meeting. Goodbye."

    "Cinder, wait—" Sunset said, but too late; Cinder had already hung up on her.

    Sunset closed her eyes, letting her hands — her right hand still holding her scroll — fall to her sides.

    It will go on then. It will go on to … whatever end.

    To whatever end Cinder desires, or Salem?

    Are you really content to be a slave to her?

    A part of me, a large part, wishes that this could all be just a game as well.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 62 - Lost Daughter
  • Threadmarks
    • Lost Daughter
    ​

    And so she is gone, this new friend you made?

    Yes. She went to Atlas, to seek a new life there.

    Without telling her mother? Without leaving any word as to where she has gone?

    As she sat in the dorm room, momentarily alone, Sunset could feel the disapproval of Princess Celestia roiling off the page to surround her like a miasma.

    She licked her lips. Ruby said she had a right to leave, whatever the consequences; her life, and her decisions, were her own and in her keeping. But you think I have done ill, don't you, Princess?

    In the question of Leaf's going, Ruby is correct, of course; nopony — forgive me, no one

    It's alright, Princess; you can say nopony if you want to; there's nobody around to read this but me.

    Very well, then. As I was saying, nopony should be held against their will; nopony should be forced to live a life that they do not desire.

    Not even by destiny itself?

    Destiny, as I am sure I must have tried to tell you more than once, is revelatory, not binding. It cannot impose its will without consent.

    Can it not?

    No, or else why should cutie marks only appear at the moment of acceptance, not at the moment of practical discovery?

    Sunset frowned at that, for all that she knew her princess couldn't see it. 'The moment of acceptance'? She understood what Princess Celestia was trying to say, but at the same time … she wasn't sure if she entirely believed it. She wasn't aware that she had ever had a moment of conscious acceptance of her cutie mark; in fact, truth be told, she wasn't entirely sure what her cutie mark was. In her younger days, she had thought that it proclaimed her destiny to surpass Princess Celestia and succeed her as the ruler of Equestria, but that, of course, was both utterly ridiculous and far away now. Far, far away. Not going to happen, even if she wished it so.

    Which I do not, for I would be a poor ruler, no doubt.

    But then, I think anypony who might assume the crown and throne, even Twilight, would be, would seem, at least, a poor successor compared with Princess Celestia.

    Just thinking about it, shorn of her youthful arrogance and ambition, the idea seemed … almost perverse. Princess Celestia was the ruler of Equestria — yes, Princess Luna had returned, but even so. Even so … Princess Celestia was the one who had been there. She had ruled Equestria when Sunset had been born; she could have been said to have been ruling Equestria when Sunset's parents had been born if she had possessed any idea of who her parents were.

    For a thousand years, Princess Celestia had held the rule of state; the throne, the crown, the majesty. For a thousand years, she had watched over all her little ponies, governed them, guarded them when necessary, guided them where it was required … served them, with all her heart and to the best of her ability.

    Yes, I would have been a poor ruler. I can serve, but … but a few. Those I do not know, I cannot sacrifice for, as has been proven.

    I could never have taken Princess Celestia's place.

    I am not sure that anyone ever could.

    How could anyone hope to fill the horseshoes — or the delicate golden slippers — that Princess Celestia would leave behind if … if she wearied of the throne, if the worst should befall, for whatever reason, who could possibly take her place? She was … eternal. Permanent as the sun over which she was empowered. Equestria had changed, and changed dramatically over the course of her rule, but the princess herself had stayed the same, a fixed point, the rock on which Equestria was built.

    Sunset ran one hand through her fiery hair. What maudlin, melancholy thoughts. Princess Celestia isn't going anywhere. Why did I even start thinking about this?

    Oh, right, my cutie mark, the meaning of which eludes me.

    And yet, I have it regardless, without any moment of realization or acceptance.

    Sunset wondered if perhaps that was why she had always drifted towards a more set, deterministic interpretation of destiny than the more goal-oriented interpretations of Princess Celestia or Pyrrha.

    Or perhaps I just wanted a comfort blanket to wrap around myself in bad times. Perhaps I just wanted to be able to reassure myself that, however bleak things might look at that moment, I had a great and glorious destiny, so it would all turn out okay in the end.

    That sounds rather pathetic, I must admit, and yet, I'm not wholly convinced that it is.

    What about Twilight Sparkle? She didn't choose to be a princess, and yet, that was her destiny nevertheless. If anyone chose it, it sounds as though you did.

    I certainly encouraged her in that direction.

    Sunset could practically hear the amusement in Celestia's voice contained within those words, that soft chuckle that tickled lightly at the ears.

    And yet, it was her destiny, nevertheless.

    And not mine, though I was the one who sought for it so eagerly.

    Do you assume, little sunbeam, that the only way to seek for something is consciously? Do you think it is impossible to seek unknowingly? If that is so, then why do so many little ponies acquire their cutie marks in things that they never would have considered? Destiny is in our choosing, but the choice may be made without our active knowledge.

    Then how is it a choice? Forgive me, but I find it hard to see any difference between that and the notion of an immutable fate.

    An immutable fate need not — and indeed probably would not — be satisfying. A destiny that is unconsciously sought after usually is, in my experience.

    Sunset smiled. I will defer to your wisdom in this then, Princess Celestia.

    As you deferred to Ruby's wisdom in the matter of Leaf?

    Indeed. I promised to start listening to her more.

    And, as I have said, as I tried to teach you when you dwelt in Canterlot with me, she was correct, as far as it goes. People must be free to make their own decisions with their lives or else     There was a pause. I am ashamed to say that I find myself reaching for tautology.

    People must be free to make their own decisions, or else, they are not free?

    Precisely. Without freedom, there is no choice, and choice is a gift most precious.

    Even if it's a bad choice?

    Perhaps especially if it is a bad choice, for without bad choices, then there can be no good choices of any meaning.

    And yet still you disapprove?

    What would you have done, if it were not for Ruby's advice?

    I would probably have told Leaf's mother what she was planning ahead of time. And she would have stopped her from going, probably.

    It is well that you did not do that, but you said nothing to her mother afterwards?

    No. No, I did not.

    Then if I disapprove of anything, it is that. To leave that poor mare to suffer in ignorance, not knowing where her daughter is, whether she is safe, whether she is even still alive.     Again, there was a pause on the other side of the book. It must be a terrible time for her.

    That was why I wanted to tell her about Leaf's plans!

    But you did not tell her where her daughter had gone after the fact?

    What good will it do then?

    She will know that, even though her daughter is far away from her, she is still safe, still alive; she may even learn that she is happy and thriving where she is, surrounded by good friends.

    Sunset hesitated for a moment, tapping the back of her pen upon the desk. What if she decides to drag Leaf home from Atlas? If the paramount thing is to respect Leaf's choices, then surely her choice not to tell her mother and slip away unnoticed, without a word, should also be respected?

    Celestia took a moment or two to reply to that. You make a fair point, I must admit. Was her mother cruel to her, do you think?

    I only met for a moment. I'm hardly qualified to judge, but I would say not. Oppressive to a degree that Leaf found burdensome, but not cruel, at least, I think so. If she were, I think Leaf would have had a harder time getting away.

    I do not like the idea of letting her suffer.

    I wasn't too thrilled about it myself.

    You surprise me a little, Sunset, I thought your sympathies would have been with the runaway.

    Perhaps I've learned that the thing you're running away from is rarely as bad as it seems.

    And yet the thing you run towards can be more wonderful than you could possibly imagine, can it not?

    Sunset let out a sort of little bark of laughter. Yes. Yes, Princess, I suppose it can, a point to you; you have struck me on the hip. As for Leaf's mother, Sunset paused. She beat a tattoo upon the wood beneath her with her fingertips. Sunset: I don't know what to do. I don't know how she reacted to Leaf going away. Perhaps she is glad to be rid of her?

    I doubt that very much. She is a mother, after all.

    Indeed, I wrote that more in hope than in expectation; it would relieve me of needing to feel at all guilty about this. I almost wish Leaf had kept her mouth shut to us about all of this. I say almost because I am glad that I was able to drop Rainbow a line and get her to look after Leaf. I'm glad to know she'll have a friend there, someone she can rely on. It's not a place for the lonely.

    Very few places are.

    Indeed, you are unfortunately correct.

    'Unfortunately'? No, for the fact that we cannot survive alone drives us to make friends, to bond with others, to work together to achieve more than we could otherwise, and there is nothing whatsoever unfortunate about that.

    Even when it is forced on us by circumstance?

    Some people need a push.

    Sunset chuckled. Or to unknowingly push themselves, in my case.

    You sought, and yet, you knew not.

    Very well, Princess, if you say. In other news, Pyrrha has regained her confidence, although perhaps not in a manner best pleasing to me.

    Did the delightful time she had with Jaune and his family help?

    A delightful time was had by her, but no, that is not the cause of her renewed self-belief. She sought out Cinder for a duel, single combat to the death.

    To the death?

    My reaction exactly, Princess. It was a reminder to me that, for all that there is much to love to admire about Mistral, its ways are not our ways, and Mistral is not Equestria.

    Indeed, I must say that it seems to me a somewhat barbaric practice.

    Barbarians would have fewer rules and customs, I think; only civilised men could take something like fighting to the death and crust it over with so much formality and ritual.

    But Pyrrha lives? She won the battle?

    Yes, Pyrrha lives, thank goodness, and she was victorious, although Cinder also lives, Salem intervened in the battle to save Cinder's life when the fighting went against her. Professor Ozpin was disappointed to hear that, but fortunately, it has not darkened Pyrrha's skies, which are bright and shining as a result of her triumph. She has cast off the doubts that this business of Salem and all the obstacles before us bred in her and stands proud before all challenges once more.

    While I may not approve of the circumstances which led to it, I am glad that Pyrrha has her confidence back, and I cannot even say that I am surprised at the manner in which she did so. Her actions may be foreign to a pony perspective in specific, but in general, success is a great tonic to doubt. Twilight Sparkle felt the same way, not too long ago.

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. Really? She felt inadequate?

    Pointless, purposeless, uncertain of her destiny and of the role she had to play.

    What happened?

    Tirek returned, and it was necessary for Luna, Cadance, and I to give up our magic to Twilight to keep it safe from him, and then for Twilight to defeat him and save Equestria once again.

    Ah, yes, that. Twilight had already told Sunset all about Tirek. She had told Sunset all about what she had not been willing to give up in order to defeat Tirek: the lives of her friends. And yet, that is what reassured her about her position, in the end? Sunset might have to ask her about that again, provided it didn't stir up any overly painful memories.

    I won't say that I wasn't worried about her going to fight Cinder, but now that the fight is done and everything is happily resolved, I can also say I'm glad Pyrrha won't be spending the next few years tormented by self-doubt. Sunset hesitated. Princess, on the subject of Tirek, may I ask you one more thing before I release you?

    Sunset, you may ask me as much as you like, but if there is only one more thing, then by all means, ask it.

    You hid your magic — and that of the other alicorns — with Twilight Sparkle for safekeeping, to keep the power away from Tirek. If his threat had not been so short-lived, would you have considered doing that permanently?

    You speak of the Maidens, these four embodiments of magic in the world of Remnant?

    Precisely; they have long lain hidden, and I believe that is a mistake, but I would know your thoughts upon the matter.

    As you point out, it is not as though I can say that I would never take the step that Professor Ozpin's predecessors have done and which he has continued. When faced with a great enemy who wishes to steal away the most powerful magic that you possess, hiding that magic is a logical response.

    For a little while, perhaps, but forever? To not only give the powers to Twilight to keep safe but to then have Twilight go into hiding for the rest of her life and for many lives after? Surely, there must be limits, especially when there is no prospect of an equivalent to Tirek's defeat that will lift the threat.

    If the threat is ever present then why must it not be ever guarded against?

    That makes sense, to a point, but must there not come a point where we must accept that this threat must be, to an extent at least, lived with? At what point is more harm done by the cure than by the disease? To have you, and your sister, and Princess Cadance deprived of your magic for a little while is one thing, but to have no alicorns in Equestria forever? To be so afraid of future Tireks that you deprive Equestria of hope and inspiration forever?

    I could not do that even if I wanted to. Someone would always ascend to become a new princess, and a new alicorn, even if I set myself to preventing it. No matter how dark the night, the light of friendship will always shine within it; no matter how barren the soil, the green shoots of a new hope will always spring up out of the ground to signal the rebirth of all that is good. Even if all the princesses of today were to vanish from Equestria and the harmony of Equestria itself were to be broken, I believe with all my heart that somepony would come to restore harmony and magic into the world and, in so doing, find their wings just as Twilight did, and Cadance, and others I have known who went before them. And so you see that the incessant hiding and concealment adopted by Professor Ozpin simply could not be done. And yet, I have no doubt that he is doing his best in such difficult circumstances.

    He is following wisdom I do not believe was ever wise.

    Then persuade him of better wisdom, if you have it; demonstrate to him that there is another way, a better way. If you are convinced, and if you are correct, then I have no doubt that he will listen to reason.

    Is that my rhetoric homework?

    If it pleases you to think of it so.

    Then I'd better get to work, hadn't I? I'm sorry to bother you, Princess Celestia; it's just good to unburden myself a little from time to time.

    There is no apology necessary, Sunbeam, none at all. I am always delighted to hear from you, about everything. I wish you luck, in all of your endeavours.

    Thank you, Princess. Say hello to Twilight for me. Goodbye.

    She shut the book and put down her pen. Sunset rested her feet against the wall and used them to push off, rocking her chair back onto its hind legs as she tucked her hands behind her head and stared up at the ceiling.

    What to do, what to do?

    What to do about so many different things. Or what not to do, as the case might be.

    I thought things would get easier after we'd scotched Cinder's plans.

    Sunset was distracted from her thoughts by the buzzing of her scroll. She tucked her legs in, letting her chair fall forwards to land heavily upon all four legs once more, and fished the device out of her jacket pocket to answer it.

    "Ah, Miss Shimmer," Professor Ozpin said. "I wonder if you might come up to my office for a little word."

    "Of course, Professor," Sunset said softly, as she got to her feet. "Do you need me to get the team together or—?"

    "Is Miss Rose with you?" Professor Ozpin asked.

    "No, Professor."

    "Then your presence on its own will suffice, I'm sure," Professor Ozpin told her. "Please come immediately."

    Sunset frowned. "Is something up, Professor?"

    "You'll see when you arrive, Miss Shimmer," Professor Ozpin said. "I promise that all will be revealed."

    Okay then. "Very well, Professor, I'll be right up."

    "I will await your arrival, Miss Shimmer," Professor Ozpin said and then hung up on her.

    He asked for Ruby but not for Jaune or Pyrrha. Perhaps he would have wanted to see Ruby if she'd been around, but didn't want me to spend time looking for her?

    Why? Why only Ruby? Why me on my own but with Ruby and only Ruby as an optional extra?

    I suppose I'll find out when I get there.

    Sunset left the dorm room, walking briskly down the corridors and stairs to exit the dorms and jog across the open grounds towards the Emerald Tower. Even moving at speed as she was, she was left with time and space to continue to think, or rather, to dwell upon the thoughts that had been there already.

    Compared to the question of Leaf's mother, the issue of the Maidens seemed almost straightforward. Yes, it was true that Sunset didn't know who they were, and she didn't know exactly how their powers transferred outside of murderous interactions, but those particular swamps of ignorance didn't seem to matter, because her concerns existed purely at the theoretical level. She didn't need to know these women to argue for them to be let out for the good of the world; she didn't need to understand the mechanism of power transfer to argue for their role as much-needed inspirations for the common run of men.

    She had no need of the facts that she did not possess in order to marshal her arguments in favour of her preferred state of affairs.

    Now she just needed to come up with some arguments that didn't come out of her gut.

    It was preferable to consider that than to think about the matters over which she had less control.

    It was preferable, too, to think about that than to pay too much attention to the way that some of the Haven students — and it was Haven students; some of them were even wearing those black uniforms — were looking at her as she jogged across the courtyard towards the tower.

    Sunset was not so naive as to think that everyone would have been convinced by Pyrrha's actions of the falseness of the allegations against her — not least because Arslan's footage of the duel had not yet been released, and even once it was, it would not convince everybody.

    Pyrrha had won back much good opinion by her actions, but there would always be some pathetic malcontents for whom jealousy and resentment proved stronger than admiration — it was the curse of the talented, and of the famously talented even moreso. Especially in a place like Mistral, where to rise high was to be considered to be cutting others down.

    And there was nothing that Sunset could do to change their minds; after all, their minds had been swayed by nothing but insinuations, and you couldn't reason people out of positions they hadn't reasoned themselves into.

    Still, they were only a few, a pathetic few, whose ill opinion Pyrrha could dismiss with magisterial disdain, secure in the good graces to which she had returned in the hearts of the general.

    At least, Sunset hoped that there were just a few of them anyway.

    Pyrrha's battle, Pyrrha's victory, would have been worth it for the return of Pyrrha's confidence alone, but it would be nice if it had also convinced the overwhelming majority of the swaying and the doubtful, too.

    In any case, on the matter of the Maidens, hopefully, Professor Ozpin had reasoned himself into this present course instead of simply absorbing the received wisdom of his predecessors.

    Sunset reached the tower — there were two Atlesian guards upon it, and judging by the lack of armour over their uniforms, Sunset guessed that they were Military Huntsman, rather than ordinary soldiers; in any case, they didn't challenge Sunset or impede her progress through the doors — and walked inside. The tower was relatively full, the elevators were in use, and the lobby was halfway to packed with students coming in and out.

    Sunset took comfort from the fact that they were giving her more sympathetic looks than dirty ones.

    At least Sunset thought they were. It was hard to tell, since they weren't saying anything.

    "Sunset?"

    The voice that intruded onto her thoughts was familiar and yet not. Familiar in the sense that Sunset had heard it before, but not very often. It belonged, as Sunset realized when she turned in the direction of the voice, to belong to … that rabbit faunus whom Cardin had been bullying in the first semester, when Jaune had gotten caught up in his web. What was her name? Sunset couldn't recall it.

    Someone else was standing behind her, a tall girl — as tall as Pyrrha, perhaps even a fraction taller, a feat moreover which she was achieving without heels, although those were some very chunky boots she had on which might be adding an inch or two to her height, and in any case, her arms weren't as muscular as Pyrrha's — dressed in an incredibly unflattering drab brown sweater, her eyes concealed beneath a pair of sunglasses and some of her brown hair hidden beneath a black beret.

    Sunset didn't remember her name either, but she did recognize as the leader of the team. Team CFVY, who were known as the best team in the second year — at least at Beacon.

    Not as good as us, though. I mean, Professor Ozpin didn't pick them to join his secret army, did they?

    Perhaps they got lucky.

    Anyway, CFVY. C-F-V- V! V her name begins with a V, V for—

    "Velvet, right?" Sunset said, holding out one hand.

    "Right, Velvet Scarlatina," the other girl said, taking Sunset's hand in her own. "This is my team leader, Coco Adel."

    "Yo," Coco said, tipping her sunglasses briefly so that Sunset could catch a glimpse of a pair of dark eyes before the sunglasses concealed them once again.

    "Hey," Sunset said, her tone polite but neutral; she didn't know either of these people, and she didn't know what they wanted, after all.

    About the only things that she knew about Team CFVY were that they enjoyed a reputation and that they were supposed to have organized the Beacon Dance, but hadn't returned from a mission in time, forcing Sunset and Yang to step into the breach.

    Oh, and Velvet had been the target of Cardin's bullying, a fact which sat uncertainly next to the aforementioned reputation, but then, there were weak links in many teams; look at how much of a liability Jaune had been when he started out.

    Coco grinned. "I hear that we missed quite a party while we were away, huh?"

    "You did," Sunset said softly. "Although I'm not sure which party you're referring to."

    Coco paused for a moment, before she chuckled. "Oh, yeah, right, we missed two parties, didn't we? I hear the dance was okay — a little cool, but a little stuffy too — until one of the Haven teams turned out to be White Fang agents or whatever."

    It seemed forever and an age ago that Sunset and Yang had argued over the arrangements for the dance, yet nevertheless, Sunset could not help but feel that the elements Coco would consider a little stuffy were the bits that she had insisted upon.

    At the moment, she couldn't be greatly disposed to care. The opinion of someone she didn't know, especially someone who dressed like that, was of very little interest to her.

    She really didn't care what Coco Adel thought. Not at all.

    My inclusions to the dance were elegant; it's not my fault if some people lack refinement.

    It would have been a hit in Canterlot.

    "Anyway, I'm sorry we missed the real action," Coco went on. "Our mission went on way longer than expected. Such a drag."

    "Coco!" Velvet managed to cry while at the same time doing it softly, putting all the disapproving emphasis upon the name while at the same time failing to raise her voice.

    "What?" Coco asked. "We were stuck—"

    "Helping people—"

    "Out in the sticks," Coco went on, ignoring Velvet's words, "while the real grimm threat was right here in Vale. Teams like Sapphire here made their bones and are getting talked about as heroes while no one cares what we were doing at … Cairn Cross."

    "Stony Cairn," Velvet murmured.

    "Whatever," Coco said. "The point is, it sounds like you did some good work out there, Sunset."

    Sunset shuffled uncomfortably. "I … we … did what we could."

    "A grimm attack beaten off with only six casualties, I'd say what you could do was pretty good," Velvet told her. "We—"

    "Unless, of course, you set the whole thing up," Coco suggested, her grin turning into a smirk. "You know, maybe you and Pyrrha stitched it up with your pal Cinder so you could stop a grimm horde and look like heroes."

    Sunset's hands clenched into fists. Her ears flattened on top of her head. "Now you listen to me, you bargain basement—"

    "Relax, kid; I'm just messing with you!" Coco declared, raising one hand pacifically. "Nobody could believe that nonsense, especially after what Pyrrha did after." She paused for a moment. "'Bargain basement'?"

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. She doesn't really think that sweater looks good on her? She can't possibly.

    Coco pursed her lips together for a moment. "Anyway," she said, "we might have been delayed for a little while, but we're back now, so you can relax and take it easy, okay, hero? No more saving the day, and tell Pyrrha no more need for possibly illegal duels either. We've got this from here on out."

    She patted Sunset on the shoulder and then walked past her, swaying her hips a little in a strut as she headed towards the door.

    Velvet laughed nervously. "I'm sorry," she murmured. "Coco can be … an acquired taste."

    "Bun Bun?" Coco called.

    "Coming," Velvet called back, before a weary sigh escaped her lips and her brown eyes rolled momentarily upwards. She focused once more upon Sunset. "I just wanted to say … well, first of all I just wanted to say congratulations upon your success. You must be very proud. You've earned your place in the history books already."

    "Have we? I … I suppose we have," Sunset murmured. "Well, thank you. Have you only just returned?"

    "We've been back a little bit, but this is my first time running into you," Velvet said. "Our mission did take a lot longer than we expected; there were just so many grimm. Now I think we know why." She paused for a moment. "Anyway, the other thing I wanted to say is … I believe in you, and I think that most others do too, especially after what Pyrrha did."

    "Bun Bun!"

    "In a second!" Velvet shouted back.

    "I've got to go myself," Sunset said. "Professor Ozpin is waiting for me."

    "Oh, sounds like he's taken a special interest in you," Velvet said. "I can see why. See you around."

    "Yeah," Sunset agreed. "You too."

    She watched as Velvet sort of skipped away, perhaps not really skipping, but her rapid movements gave that impression as she rejoined the waiting Coco, and then they both headed out of the door and the tower together.

    Sunset's ears pricked up once more atop her head.

    Heroes, huh? I wish we felt like it.

    It was not the first time something of that sort had been said to her — it had been First Councillor Aris' reason for not stringing her up, after all — but … it still surprised her to hear it.

    This was my dream once.

    But now…

    Sunset turned away, and turned away from the thought what was more, as she walked across the lobby, excusing herself as she squeezed between or dodged around people, to reach one of the elevators that led up to Professor Ozpin's office.

    In a different world, she might have considered telling Pyrrha that they were seen as heroes for the Breach in order to snap her out of her funk; fortunately, that wasn't necessary any longer.

    That was not one of the things she needed to worry about.

    Instead, she needed to think of some reasons to reveal the Maidens to the world.

    And she needed to decide whether to come clean with Leaf's mother about where her daughter had gone.

    Sunset pondered these things as the elevator ground slowly upwards, groaning and juddering its way to the very top of the tower until, at last, it came to a halt, and the doors opened.

    Sunset stepped out into Professor Ozpin's office to find Leaf's mother waiting there along with the headmaster.

    Sunset stopped, barely avoiding getting her tail caught in the lift door as it closed behind her.

    What's she doing here?

    What do you think?

    "Ah, Miss Shimmer, thank you for coming," Professor Ozpin said. He was behind his desk, but standing, his chair pushed slightly backwards towards the great windows. He gestured towards Leaf's mother. "This is Mrs. Kelly, and she—"

    "Where is she?!" Mrs Kelly demanded, striding towards Sunset. "Where's Leaf? What have you done with her?"

    "'Done'?" Sunset repeated. "I haven't—"

    "Don't lie to me; I remember you!" Mrs. Kelly cried. "I remember that you were there; you're the one on the news, the one in that battle. You were there, you were talking to her, you and that other girl, Ruby; you were talking to Leaf, you put ideas in her head." She grabbed Sunset by the collar of her jacket and began to shake her back and forth. "Where is she?" Mrs Kelly demanded. "Where's Leaf, where's my daughter, what have you done?!"

    Sunset's head flapped back and forth; in fact, her whole body flopped like a stuffed doll as Mrs. Kelly shook her like … well, like a doll, and one that was not being carefully played with.

    It wasn't as though Sunset couldn't do anything about it. On the contrary, she could have done something about it very easily. But that was … that was kind of the point. Mrs. Kelly was not a huntress, she didn't have her aura activated, she wasn't trained, she wasn't the sort of person against whom you could fight back. It was like Pyrrha with Ruben: at a certain point, you were just bullying someone who couldn't fight back.

    And so, Sunset took it, allowing Mrs. Kelly to shake her and to shriek into her face, and her only recourse was to look at Professor Ozpin for a little assistance.

    "Mrs. Kelly," Professor Ozpin said. "Please calm down—"

    "'Calm down'?" Mrs Kelly repeated. "'Calm down'?!" Her grip on Sunset relaxed as she turned — rounded, more like — on the headmaster. "Do you have children, Professor?"

    Professor Ozpin was utterly silent and utterly still. His gaze lowered, not looking at Mrs Kelly, and in that moment, he seemed to age a hundred years at least, his face seeming more drawn, the lines upon it more pronounced.

    "No," he whispered. "No, I do not."

    "Then don't tell me to calm down," Mrs. Kelly snarled as she stalked towards him. "This is my daughter—"

    "I'm well aware, ma'am," Professor Ozpin said, quietly but firmly all the same. He looked up, and at Sunset. "Mrs. Kelly's daughter … I believe that you and Miss Rose met her at some sort of motorcycling event, Miss Shimmer."

    Sunset nodded. "Yes. That's right, Professor. Leaf Kelly."

    Professor Ozpin gave a very slight nod of the head. "Miss Kelly is now missing, and Mrs. Kelly … we were hoping that you might be able to shed some light upon the situation."

    "Where is she?!" Mrs Kelly demanded. "What have you done—?"

    "I haven't done anything!" Sunset cried. "What do you think I am, a kidnapper?"

    "Then where is she?"

    "I…" Sunset hesitated for a moment. What will she do if I tell her? Fly to Atlas and drag Leaf home?

    At what point is Leaf's choice, and her right to make her own choices, sufficiently safe from interference that I don't have to worry about it any more?

    At what point does Leaf's freedom to choose start impeding on other people's freedoms?

    At what point is it safe to tell her mother? Do I have the right to tell her mother?

    "I don't…" Sunset trailed off.

    Mrs Kelly's eyes widened. "You … you know something, don't you?"

    Sunset clasped her hands together behind her back and said nothing.

    "Tell me," Mrs. Kelly said. She walked towards Sunset, closing the distance with her once again, getting up in Sunset's face to yell, "Tell me!"

    She slapped Sunset across the face, a blow which stung for all that it barely chipped her aura.

    "I can't," Sunset murmured. "I … I promised that I would not. I … I'm sorry."

    Mrs. Kelly stared at her a moment, and like Professor Ozpin just a moment ago, her face, too, seemed to age in moments. It was already an old face; it reminded Sunset of Lady Nikos, another woman grown old before her time, but now, the already hollow cheeks seemed to grow yet more hollow still, the bags beneath her eyes appeared to deepen. Her eyes dimmed.

    "You promised," she whispered. "You promised, you … you promised Leaf?"

    "I—"

    Sunset was cut off by the sob that fell from Mrs. Kelly's mouth. She half turned away from Sunset as her eyes filled with tears, she put her wrinkled hands to her face, and she began to pace up and down in her worn out jeans and her green cagoule.

    "She … she ran away, didn't she?" Mrs Kelly said. "She ran away … from me."

    "Mrs. Kelly—" Professor Ozpin began.

    "I knew that she wasn't happy," Mrs Kelly admitted. "I knew that … I mean, we fought all the time; there was… there was always something new to fight about, but … but I thought that … my daughter. My little girl. My Leaf. I thought she remembered, I thought she'd remember, that I was still the same person who used to take her out for ice cream so that she didn't have to see her dad passed out on the bathroom floor, who used to let her come into my bed so that the monsters wouldn't get her. I thought … I thought she'd remember that, remember that no matter how much we fought that I … that we…"

    Sunset's eyes were fixed upon Mrs. Kelly. But in her mind's eye, it was not the Valish woman in the jeans and cagoule she saw; rather, it was a Mistralian lady, scion of a proud and ancient line, begging Sunset to help her mend the rift between her and her daughter, charging Sunset to fight alongside her in the wars to come, fretting in silence and behind a mask of calm over whether her brave, beautiful, talented daughter, last of her line, would ever return.

    It was a princess with a coat of shimmering samite and a mane of many colours that flowed even in the absence of a wind, a princess whose embrace was as warm as a fire and as soft and fluffy as a cloud. Sunset could see her now, as though she stood before her eyes: sitting before a fire, sipping on hot cocoa, smiling as she listened to her faithful student recount all that she had learned that day, telling a story in a voice that was as lovely to listen to as the gently falling waterfall that bordered Canterlot, pacing up and down in a lonely tower beneath the stars, wondering at the fate of her little sunbeam and whether she yet lived.

    Sunset's head didn't know what the right answer was in this circumstance, but as she watched Leaf's mother pacing up and down, tears in her eyes, distraction in her aspect, Sunset's heart knew for sure.

    I'm sorry, Leaf; I can't do this again. And if the freedom to choose is such a sacred thing, why shouldn't I be free to choose for good or ill?

    "She's in Atlas," she said.

    Professor Ozpin's eyebrows rose.

    Mrs. Kelly turned to face her. "'Atlas'? Leaf … Leaf is in Atlas?"

    Sunset nodded.

    Mrs. Kelly stared. "How? Why?"

    "Opportunity," Sunset murmured. "Freedom. The chance to … to pursue her own destiny. She took money from your husband to pay for her flight."

    "And what's she going to do there, in Atlas?" Mrs. Kelly demanded. "How will she live, where will she live?"

    "She told me that she had a place lined up, at least for a little while," Sunset replied. "I don't know how … well-planned everything was." She thought it would be unhelpful to mention that Leaf's plans seemed barely worthy of the name. "But I asked an Atlesian friend of mine, Rainbow Dash, to meet her at the Skydock and make sure that she was okay." Sunset paused for a moment. "Leaf made me promise not to tell you before she left, and … and it is her choice to go, her life to live, but … I am sorry that I didn't come and tell you after she was gone." She bowed her head. "Forgive me, ma'am." I should have known better and shown more kindness.

    For a moment, there was silence.

    "I don't forgive you," Mrs. Kelly said, her voice sharp for all that it was quiet. "I don't think I'll ever forgive you."

    Sunset looked up. "No, ma'am, I didn't expect you would." Luckily, it isn't your forgiveness I require; in this, I think I can forgive myself.

    "I—" Mrs. Kelly was cut off from anything else she might have said by the buzzing of her scroll. She scowled in irritation. "What is it—?" Those words, too, were cut off, and the scowl faded from her face as she saw who it was that was calling. "It's Leaf!" she cried. "Leaf's calling!"

    A smile broke out upon her face, which, though it did not return to the full bloom of youth, did at least appear to get back to something close to the mere haggard look that had dogged it just a few minutes earlier.

    Professor Ozpin cleared his throat lightly. "Miss Shimmer, perhaps you and I should…" He gestured with his head towards the elevator door.

    It was generous of the professor to vacate his own office so that Leaf and her mother could talk, but Sunset supposed it was a long way down in the elevator, and the signal might not be very good.

    That, and for all that she might disagree with him at times, it was becoming harder to deny that Professor Ozpin was a very generous man.

    "Of course, Professor," Sunset murmured, and she turned back towards the lift she had ascended up in.

    She heard, rather than saw, a hologram activated on Professor Ozpin's desk. She glanced back to see Professor Goodwitch's face hovering above it.

    "Glynda," Professor Ozpin said, "forgive me, but if you need to talk, perhaps we could—"

    "Turn on the news, Professor, now," Professor Goodwitch said. "There's a breaking news story that we should be all aware of. It concerns the Schnee Dust Company."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 63 - Dinner with Lord Rutulus
  • Threadmarks
    • Dinner with Lord Rutulus

    ​

    "The value of shares in the SDC rose slightly as the Atlesian authorities announced that they were not filing charges against Jacques Schnee following the recent revelations regarding abuse and forced labour at certain Schnee Dust Company facilities. Several executives were arrested yesterday in conjunction with the abuse, but Jacques Schnee is said to be cooperating fully with the investigation. The arrested executives have been identified as Calliope Ferny—"

    Turnus switched off his scroll, letting it sit blank and idle in his hand as he sat on the edge of his bed.

    He was in his stateroom aboard the airship Imperial Splendour, which had just passed over the mountains and was making its final approach towards Vale. But, since they had not yet arrived in Vale, there was very little at present to distract him from this news about the SDC.

    "Calliope Ferny," he murmured. "Captain Ferny?" How could you?

    "You know her?" asked Lord Kiro from where he lounged by the wall of Turnus' stateroom.

    Turnus looked up at him. Elagabalus Kiro was a man of around Turnus' age — they had been at school together, before Turnus went away to Atlas — but a little smaller and a lot less broad in the shoulders. His face was thin, a little pinched, and he wore his black hair in a curious fashion, combed and fixed upwards in an array from ear to ear like the crest of a helmet. Turnus had never asked why he chose to arrange his hair like that — even if it did make him look bald on the front of his head — since, after all, the Great War had been fought and won to, amongst other things, retain the right to slightly ludicrous hairstyles. He was dressed in a bright yellow coat, with crimson faces on the cuff and collar, fiery orange breeches, and high black leather boots that went up almost as high as his knees. A golden badge, fashioned in the shape of a blazing sun with a ruby set in the centre of it, was pinned upon his right breast, the symbol of the House of Kiro.

    "She was my commander," Turnus said, "when I worked for SDC security. She was … more than a leader; she was … a mentor almost. She introduced me to her sister; she was … I thought that she was the model of what an Atlesian ought to be."

    Elagabalus snorted. "It sounds as though perhaps she was."

    Turnus didn't respond to that; rather, he said, "I … I knew her. I thought I knew her."

    Elagabalus smirked. "If you were so close, should I be worried about Camilla?"

    The temperature in the room dropped by several degrees as Turnus rose to his feet, stalking across the room; he didn't need his semblance to loom over Elagabalus; the natural difference in their heights was enough to do that all on its own.

    "Would you like to repeat that?" Turnus said. "I'm afraid I didn't hear you the first time."

    Elagabalus squirmed in place, his whole body shimmying first one way and then the other as he dry washed his hands. "I … no. No, I said nothing, nothing at all." He let out a little nervous laugh.

    "Hmm," Turnus murmured as he turned away. As shocked as he was by these revelations, he wasn't about to let someone — even an old school friend — get away with implying that he mistreated Camilla.

    He would rather cut off his own hand than turn it against her.

    Nevertheless, as he walked back towards the bed, he could not help but feel as though he had let her down, if only by association.

    "I can hardly believe it," he said.

    "Perhaps it isn't true," Elagabalus suggested.

    "They wouldn't have made these arrests unless they were certain," Turnus declared, sitting back down on the bed once more. "Accusations like these would not get made lightly. And if it were not true, then Mister Schnee would be defending his people, not cooperating fully with the investigation."

    "Are you sure about that?" Elagabalus asked. "If it gets the law off his own back, then what reason does he have not to cooperate, true or not?"

    Turnus frowned. "Are you suggesting that Mister Schnee wouldn't have any loyalty to his employees?"

    Elagabalus laughed. "One breath, you talk about how we need to be more Atlesian, how we need to cut our ties with pointless traditions, how we need to shrug off that which holds us back, and then with another breath, you talk about loyalty."

    "Because loyalty is not a pointless tradition," Turnus replied.

    "Isn't it?" Elagabalus asked.

    "Without loyalty, how can there be trust?" Turnus asked.

    "'Trust'?" Elagabalus repeated. He shrugged. "Well, at any rate, they will be pleased in the Guildhall to learn of this. It will give them ammunition in their struggle."

    "Yes, I suppose it will," Turnus murmured. "Your family has interests in mines, doesn't it?"

    "As it happens, yes, it does," Elagabalus answered. "I'd be surprised if you didn't as well."

    "No, I sold those," Turnus said. "I bought shares in the Schnee Dust Company with the proceeds." That seemed like a very good idea at the time, perhaps less so now.

    Elagabalus let out a sort of snorting chuckle that he made some effort to restrain. "Bad luck. Still, you have other sources of revenue."

    "Oh, I'm well aware that there are others who are worse off than I am," Turnus said. "Those poor souls in Atlas, for a start."

    "Your old boss, or the people she was enslaving?"

    "Her victims," Turnus said quietly. "I had … no idea. None at all. I never even imagined."

    "You don't need to justify yourself to me," Elagabalus said. "After all, in the old days, our ancestors would have done as much, or worse."

    "No doubt," Turnus admitted, "but these aren't the old days anymore."

    "More's the pity," Elagabalus muttered.

    "'Pity'?" Turnus asked. "Pity that the faunus are no longer our slaves?"

    Elagablus held up one hand pacifically. "Pity that we are no longer a power to be feared and respected," he said. "Pity that we must haggle like fishwives in the market for what is rightfully ours, that we must give up to the thief what the thief deems valuable in order to secure the return of what is our own. My own. Your family once stood on the left hand of the Imperial Throne, my family has Imperial blood through marriage in generations gone by, yet look at us now! You are a glorified bodyguard, and I am a courier!"

    "The past is past, at the risk of verging upon cliché," Turnus declared. "Mistral must look to the future if it is to rise again."

    "As Atlas has?"

    "Not in all respects, clearly," Turnus muttered. "But yes, broadly, as Atlas has."

    "And yet we must be loyal to one another."

    "You say that as if there is some contradiction you have cleverly spotted that exposes the fallacy of my argument," Turnus said.

    "Who were you loyal to, when you were in Atlas?" Elagabalus asked.

    Turnus' jaw clenched. "I was loyal to my family, as I always have been," he said. "And now, if you will excuse me, I have some business to take care of. Ufens!"

    The door into the stateroom opened, and Ufens shuffled in. "Yes, my lord?"

    "Escort Lord Kiro back to his stateroom, or wherever else aboard ship he wishes to go," Turnus said. "Just make you keep an eye on him. You and Murranus."

    Ufens bowed his head. "As you say, my lord. After you, lord."

    "Yes, well," Elagabalus said. "I … I think I might see if the bar is open, get a little aperitif."

    He clasped the lapels of his jacket, straightening them as if they needed straightening, before he strode out of Turnus' room. Ufens followed, and the door soon closed behind them.

    Turnus looked down at his scroll; he was still holding it in his hands; he hadn't let it go since he had turned off the news.

    Calliope Ferny; was I blind, or were you very good at hiding the truth?

    He couldn't bring himself to consider that the allegations against her were not true; he had seen the pictures of the victims, what had been done to them; besides, although he had evaded Atlesian justice, he had sufficient respect for the Atlesian authorities to believe that they would not accuse someone without proof.

    That was how he had evaded what they called justice, after all.

    No, Calliope had done this, much as he wished that it were not so. She had held faunus captive against their will, burned their flesh, branded them like cattle.

    "She's so scared of everything," Turnus whined. "Every time I go near her, she acts like she's going to faint or start crying."

    "She's been through a lot, son," Father replied, from where he sat enthroned in his armchair. "Give her time."

    Turnus paused for a moment. "What … what happened to her?"

    Father paused for a moment, before a weary sigh escaped from him. "You're too young to understand," he said, "or at least, I hope you're still too young to understand. And even if you weren't, I … I don't really want to think about it too much."

    Turnus closed his eyes. I feel as though I've let you down too.

    He opened his eyes again and made his first call, to his broker, a man named Chrysus. Chrysus was a round-faced little man, balding slightly on top of his head, with a pair of spectacles as round as his head perched upon his nose and several gold teeth in his mouth, that glinted when he smiled.

    "My lord!" he cried. "To what do I owe the pleasure? Would you like to review your portfolio? You usually make an appointment, and it is a little earlier in the quarter than usual, but—"

    "No, I don't need to review everything at this time," Turnus told him. "I want you to sell all my stock in the Schnee Dust Company."

    Chrysus' eyebrows rose. "You're a little late to be joining the panic, my lord; the share price has stopped tumbling, but it remains significantly below the level it was trading at before the Atlesian authorities started putting the boot in. I advise you to wait and see if the price rises; I can try and obtain an option for you to sell against any renewed depreciation—"

    "Just sell the stock, will you, there's a good fellow," Turnus instructed him. "I'm aware that I'll … will I lose money compared to the price I bought them at?"

    "I'm afraid so, my lord, yes," Chrysus said. "If you will recall, I did advise you that buying in a bull market was unlikely to yield great returns and was not without risk."

    "Yes, well, this isn't about the money," Turnus said. "This is about the principle of the thing. I cannot … I wish to sever my business ties with the SDC, in light of current events."

    Even though Mister Schnee was innocent, and a great many other employees too, nevertheless, the company as a whole had been profiting off the back of Calliope Ferny's activities. And that meant that he had been profiting too. It made him feel dirty, even at this remove.

    He found himself glad that he was making a loss.

    "Of course, my lord," Chrysus said, bowing his head slightly. "What should I do with the proceeds of the sale?"

    "Donate one fifth of it to Traffic Stop," Turnus instructed him. The name made the organization sound like it was involved in road safety, but it was actually a charity set up to help fight people trafficking in Mistral. His father had been a patron, and in his memory — and for Camilla — Turnus made a donation every year. "Invest the rest in … in Mistralian mining companies, good guild members, use your own judgement on precisely which enterprise or enterprises."

    "Back where you started, my lord," Chrysus murmured. "Minus some lien."

    "Yes, yes, I know," Turnus murmured. "It is what it is; just get it done for me, will you?"

    "At once, my lord."

    "Good," Turnus said. "That's all then, thank you."

    "Until next time, my lord."

    Turnus hung up on him. It doesn't change anything, but it makes me feel better at least.

    His next call was to Camilla.

    It was nearly two in the afternoon here in the skies over Sanus, approaching Vale, so it would be evening in Mistral, but not so late that Camilla wouldn't be awake still. Indeed, she answered the scroll swiftly, the image on his screen displaying just a hint of turquoise wrapped around her pale neck.

    "Good evening," he said. "I hope I'm not disturbing you?"

    She smiled. "Never, my lord. How goes it? Have you arrived in Vale?"

    "Not yet," he replied. "But soon enough. And it goes well enough." He paused for a moment. "Have you heard the news?"

    "About the Schnee Dust Company?" Camilla asked.

    Turnus nodded.

    "I have," Camilla answered. "It is everywhere, throughout the city. The masters of the Mining Guild and the Union of Mineworkers have called a meeting in the Guildhall to discuss their response. It is rumoured they will call on the Council and the Steward to expel the Schnee Dust Company."

    "That would be bold of them, to take such a step," Turnus said. "And I doubt that the Council would wish to offend Atlas by doing something like that."

    Mistral's ancient guilds and livery companies had long attempted to resist the incursion of the SDC into Mistral by presenting a united front against it: the caravaneers would not move SDC goods or equipment, the merchants would neither sell to them nor buy their dust, no unionised miner would work for them, and anyone breaking ranks could expect to be expelled and blacklisted. The only thing they couldn't do was stop the SDC from hiring Mistralian huntsmen to protect its interests in Anima. The SDC had responded by doing everything in-house: it moved its own materiel, it shipped everything it needed from Atlas, including labour — and now you had to wonder about the kind of labour that was being shipped in from the north.

    Having the company thrown out of the kingdom would be a blessing to the Guildhall, no doubt, but Atlas might not take it well, and Turnus did not believe the Council would seek that kind of confrontation, especially with the world in its current state.

    "You may be right, my lord," Camilla said. "Those poor people."

    "Yes," Turnus said quietly. "I … I didn't know. I swear to you, I had no idea."

    Camilla's brow furrowed ever so slightly. "Did you think I would believe you capable of such a thing?"

    "I … wasn't … I worked there."

    "I am sure that a great many people worked for the Schnee Dust Company, and even in its security, without being aware of this," Camilla replied. "That you were amongst them, I did not doubt."

    "No?"

    "If you were the kind of man who could go along with such conduct, you would have revealed it," Camilla told him. She smiled, slightly and softly. "You do not conceal your feelings well."

    Turnus let out a sort of scoffing gasp. "I suppose I have little choice but to take that as a compliment." He paused. "I didn't know. I was right there, and I never saw it."

    "That is not your fault."

    "My father would have seen it," Turnus said.

    "Lord Rutulus was a good and great man," Camilla said. "But a great many good men seem to have been deceived by what was happening in Atlas. Perhaps Lord Rutulus would have been one of them, perhaps not, but either way, you deserve no especial reproach for being amongst them. I … must confess I am surprised that those two faunus, Blake Belladonna and Rainbow Dash, were allowed to bring this to light. I would have thought…"

    "That it would all be covered up?" Turnus guessed.

    "Perhaps, or perhaps I am simply … Atlas has exceeded my expectations, it seems."

    "You had low expectations of Atlas?"

    "My experience with Atlesians has been that they are a rather coarse and brutish people, my lord," Camilla reminded him.

    "Of course," Turnus murmured. "They were … yes, well…" He hesitated for a second. "Am I missing anything?"

    "Lady Ming wished to hire security for her daughter's birthday party, my lord," Camilla said.

    "They'd booked a venue, rather than having it in the house, I suppose," Turnus said.

    "Yes, the Fluct-light," Camilla replied. "I assigned Caeculus and Halaesus."

    "Fair choices," Turnus replied. Security for a birthday party meant door work, keeping uninvited guests out of the club, the sort of easy, profitable work that his men enjoyed — for the most part, anyway. "Anything else?"

    "Coloratura has been in touch; she is in the planning stages of a new tour," Camilla said, "but very little has been decided yet, and we agreed that discussion of the security arrangements could wait until your return."

    "No difficult engagements, then?"

    "No," Camilla said, "the world is quiet for now, at least for Rutulian Security; however, there is one more thing I think you should be aware of: I have heard from Messapus and Venulus that Lady Terri-Belle has approached them both, hoping to lure them away from your service into the Imperial Guard."

    "Is that so?" Turnus growled. "How did they respond?"

    "They told me they had declined, my lord," Camilla said. "Apparently, they prefer a regular wage and a degree of comfort; however, it is something I thought you should be aware of."

    "Indeed," Turnus muttered. Of all the cheek, to steal my men out from under me when my back is turned. "And how is Juturna?"

    Camilla smiled. "As well as always. She has been invited to Yan Ming's birthday party and requires a new dress."

    "Of course," Turnus said, smiling himself. "Well, if there's nothing else, I won't disturb you anymore."

    "Enjoy Vale, my lord."

    "I am looking forward to meeting Miss Rose," Turnus said, "but apart from that, I shall be glad to be home again."

    "Nevertheless, I hope you find some joy in it," Camilla said. "Goodbye, my lord."

    "Goodbye," Turnus said. He hung up again.

    Two down, one to go.

    Although, as he sat there, he actually debated whether or not he should call Calla. He didn't believe that she was involved … but he hadn't suspected Calliope either.

    But they had not arrested Calla.

    And it must be hard for her, to find out what her sister had done.

    And so he called her. It took her some time to answer, the scroll vibrating in his hand as he waited, seconds passing, rising to over a minute, creeping towards a minute and a half.

    He was about to end the call himself when she answered. Her hair was dishevelled, and her eyes were red, as though she had been crying.

    "Turnus," she murmured. "I … what are you—?"

    "I wanted to see how you were doing," Turnus told her. "I … heard the news."

    "Of course you did," Calla whispered. She glanced away from the screen of her scroll for a second. "I … I didn't know. I had no idea. I swear to … on my parents' memories, I didn't know."

    "I believe you," Turnus said, quietly but firmly at the same time.

    "I don't know how Calli could do something like this," Calla said. "I mean … the way we grew up, in Mantle, I just … how could she … how could she?"

    "I don't know," Turnus said. "What about you? Are you in any trouble?"

    "I haven't spoken to the police since they shut down head office," Calla said. "But I have reporters outside my house, and protesters, and … it feels like all anyone cares about is that I'm her sister. I'm … my sister is a monster, but since she's in jail waiting for her arraignment, people are looking at me instead."

    "Do you think you'd be better away from Atlas?" Turnus suggested.

    "What do you mean?"

    "I mean that you'd still be welcome in Mistral," Turnus said. "Come and stay, for as long as you like, as my guest. I can protect you and your family, if you need it."

    Calla sniffed, wiping her eyes with one hand. "That … that's sweet of you," she said. "Especially since … what about … Camilla? That was her name, wasn't it? Didn't you tell me that—?"

    "Yes," Turnus said. "She was. But you aren't guilty of your sister's crimes, and Camilla is mature enough to understand that."

    "Well, like I said, that's very sweet of you," Calla said, "but my job is here, my life is here; I … I don't want to uproot my family and my whole life and run away to Mistral just because I'm having a bad day. I'm sure that this will blow over. I hope that it'll blow over."

    "My offer stands, if it does not," Turnus said, "but I hope that things improve for you."

    "Thanks," Calla said. "I really, really hope so too."

    XxXxX​

    "A spokesman for the Atlesian military announced that they had liberated four more illegal facilities. Those who were being held there are presently receiving medical treatment, and the Atlesian Council has voted to provide assistance with rehabilitation and repatriation if required."

    "Those poor people," Ruby murmured, as everyone sat at or around their table in the canteen watched or listened to the news coming out of Pyrrha's scroll.

    "At least Leaf's okay," Sunset pointed out.

    "Yeah, and that's great," Ruby said, "but what about everyone else?"

    "Then … yeah, it's rough," Sunset agreed.

    "I can hardly believe it," Pyrrha said quietly. "Obviously, discrimination against the faunus is not something one can be unaware of, but … this?"

    "It seems as though it's all getting worse everywhere, doesn't it?" Ruby asked. "I mean, what's happening in Vale, and now this?"

    "This has been going on for a long time," Sunset pointed out. "A very long time. Whatever's happening in Vale right now, it's nothing to do with this, and it isn't part of some pattern of racism breaking out suddenly across Remnant, unless what's breaking out suddenly is people noticing the racism."

    "That's not fair, Sunset," Ruby said. "Vale isn't usually like this; something has changed."

    "She's right," Yang agreed. "Ruby and I didn't grow up in the city, but we've visited it often enough, and I never saw anything like what you told us happened to those kids you know. Someone following them down the street, hurling insults at them? That's not normal; something has happened around here."

    "Something has gotten more overt," Sunset replied, "but feelings don't just come out of nowhere; they were always there, just waiting for an opportunity to come out."

    "But what opportunity?" Ruby asked. "Why now?"

    "The White Fang attacks?" Jaune suggested. "After the Breach, maybe people who hate the faunus feel like it's okay to admit it, since…"

    "Since what?" asked Sun.

    Jaune shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Nothing, I—"

    "No, go on, you about to say something."

    "Dude," Neptune said.

    "Jaune didn't mean anything by it," Pyrrha said.

    "Then why doesn't he finish his sentence?" demanded Sun.

    "That's enough," Sunset declared, her voice as firm as a brick dropping onto the table in front of Sun. "You can be upset about this if you want to, nobody here is going to tell you that you can't be, but Jaune had nothing to do with this, and he doesn't deserve to have it taken out on him."

    Sun stared at her, looking straight into Sunset's eyes. "Doesn't this make you angry?" he asked.

    "To be honest, at the moment I'm more surprised that you, of all people, are morally outraged about all this," Sunset replied.

    "Me?" Sun gasped. "What do you mean, me of all people?"

    "You never seemed to care about any of this stuff before now," Sunset pointed out. "And by the rules of Vacuan society, didn't all of these people have it coming for being too weak to stop it being done to them?"

    "That isn't how Vacuo works," Sun insisted. "And as for … yeah, it's true, I wasn't … in Vacuo, we don't have that kind of discrimination, so I didn't think about it too much, but … it's different hearing about this, seeing the pictures." He shook his head. "It makes you think. It's making me think, anyway."

    "How about you think about how this isn't Jaune's fault before you start getting snippy with him in future?" Sunset muttered. "Especially since he might be right. Perhaps the White Fang attacks … and the Breach, perhaps it did give people in Vale a license to be as bigoted as they'd always wanted to be, because … because they could claim that they were delivering righteous retribution or something."

    "Righteous retribution hardly seemed to be in the mind of that contemptible ruffian we ran into," Pyrrha pointed out. "He didn't mention the Breach at all."

    "No," Sunset admitted. "No, he didn't. But that doesn't change the fact that he could have felt emboldened by it. I mean, if Ruby and Yang are right, and this isn't normal Valish behaviour—"

    "It isn't," Yang insisted.

    "Then something had to happen to cause the change, right?" Sunset asked.

    "Vale's still doing better than Atlas, by the sounds of it," Nora said.

    "I'm not sure that what is happening in Atlas was motivated by racism," Ren declared. "The arrested head of security was a faunus, after all, and people … people with no families, and no one to miss them, are taken advantage of the world over, whether they're faunus or human."

    Nora slipped her hands into the crook of Ren's arm, clasping both hands around his slender bicep and drawing herself closer to him.

    "So we should just ignore the fact that the victims were all faunus and act like that had nothing to do with it?" demanded Sun.

    "What's gotten into you?" Yang asked.

    "What do you think?" Sun cried, getting to his feet. "I never thought that … I always thought that the White Fang were the problem, that they were the ones causing trouble, that they were the ones who went around hurting people to get what they wanted while being holier than thou about it to anyone who disagreed with them."

    "They are," Yang told him.

    "Are they?" Sun asked. "Or are they just…" He paused for a moment. "I don't see how Blake can want to live in Atlas, after this."

    "Blake and Rainbow Dash brought this to light," Sunset pointed out.

    The news had made a point of that, along with emphasising Calliope Ferny's faunus nature: a crime committed by a faunus, that was exposed by the action of a pair of faunus. No doubt, there was a propagandising purpose in that — this is faunus doing things to other faunus, and more faunus stopped them! Please don't call us racist! Please keep buying dust from the SDC! — but that didn't change the fact that it was true, and Sunset had no doubt that it was true, because neither Blake nor Rainbow would allow their names to be attached to something they hadn't actually done. Rainbow would never steal glory from anyone else, and Blake wouldn't countenance her identity being used to deflect from actual pressing issues.

    If the news said that the two of them had dragged this darkness into the light, then they had done it.

    "And good for them," Sun said. "I still don't get why that's not enough to get them to run from that place. How can they want anything to do with a kingdom that treats the faunus like that?"

    "Because Blake thinks it can be changed for the better," Sunset said, "and so does Rainbow, to the extent that she also thinks it needs changing."

    "Even if they're right, why do they have to be the ones to do it?" Sun demanded. "Shouldn't humans be the ones working to make things better?"

    Sunset shrugged. "I suppose they feel like if you don't get in the game, you can't complain about the way it's played. They might not be right, but…"

    "I'm starting to wonder if maybe Blake was right when she was in the White Fang," Sun muttered.

    "Dude!" Neptune exclaimed. "Come on, that … that's too far."

    "Is it?" Sun asked. "I … maybe it is. I don't know, I … don't know." He walked away, heading towards the exit, his tail dragging along the ground behind him.

    He didn't look back.

    "Are you going to go after him?" Yang asked.

    It took Sunset a moment to realise that she was talking to her. "Me? Why me?"

    "You're both faunus," Yang pointed out.

    Not exactly. "That doesn't mean that I have anything useful, insightful, or otherwise valuable to say to him." She glanced at Neptune. "You know, he's actually quite sheltered, isn't he?"

    "I'm not sure that I'd call being from Vacuo sheltered," Neptune replied. "But … I guess I know what you mean."

    "I mean that he might not be so upset with this if he'd grown up with the kind of background ambient racism of Atlas or Mistral," Sunset said. "Or Vale, depending upon interpretation."

    "That's true," Neptune agreed. "I'm not a faunus, so I can't say whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, but … this stuff's been a shock to him. He doesn't mean what he said about the White Fang; he just needs time."

    Or maybe he's actually right, Sunset thought. She didn't say it, because she didn't want the argument with everyone, but … she was not a faunus by birth, and so the justice of the faunus cause in and of itself did not speak to her except in as much as racism affected people she cared about, but as an abstract … obviously, it would be for the best if everyone could coexist peacefully as the different races of ponies did in Equestria, working together for a better world where nobody suffered from discrimination at the hands or hoofs of anyone else. Apart from anything else, it was, on the evidence of Equestria, the best way to advance a society. However, failing that, a situation where one group was allowed to mistreat another, and that was deplorable in the abstract, but the moment those being mistreated did anything about it that was monstrous was … pretty lopsided. And not just for the faunus either; Sunset was pretty sure that was the root of why Cinder was the way she was: yes, all those rather bloodthirsty Mistralian heroes hadn't helped, but at the root of it was a world in which killing your abuser was held to be worse than the abuse itself.

    Blake and Rainbow Dash thought that if you worked hard enough, then you could make something like an Equestria on Remnant, and good for them for thinking it. Sunset had nothing but respect for what they were committing themselves to. But, at the same time, if Sun's reaction to this news was to think that it was a bit much that faunus could be put in what were, essentially, slave camps, be branded with the letters SDC as Adam had been, but weren't allowed do anything to fight back, then Sunset wouldn't blame him for it.

    Yang sighed. "So many problems." She grinned at Pyrrha. "It's a pity that we can't all seek out our troubles and beat them up, right, Pyrrha?"

    Pyrrha chuckled. "As Blake told me herself, I was fortunate that there was someone on whom I could focus and vent my displeasure."

    "How's it going, by the way?" asked Yang. "With … all that stuff."

    "I decided to let Arslan release the video of the battle, with a few edits," Pyrrha replied. "Some people are now insisting it was all staged, but Arslan tells me that views are high and comments are mostly positive. Although it hasn't stopped a petition to have my honours stripped from the Temple of Victory and my name struck from the rolls of tournament victors."

    "Can they do that?" Jaune asked.

    "If the Temple decides that I have disgraced myself to the extent that I no longer deserve to have my name upon the sacred rolls or my honours displayed in the sacred place, then they can," Pyrrha replied. "It has been done before, in cases of extreme dishonour."

    "And yet, you don't seem particularly upset by it," Sunset pointed out, because Pyrrha's voice and tone were really quite calm about the whole thing.

    "I have done what I can do," Pyrrha replied, still sounding very calm considering. "I have shown people the truth; if they do not want to see or are determined to believe ill of me in spite of the evidence, then there is nothing I can do to change their minds." She smiled softly. "I know what I am now, or perhaps I should say I know what I am once again, or … I know what I am, and let that be enough. If they wish to take my laurels down, then let them; I need them not."

    Sunset snorted. "You're a better person than I am; I'd be spitting feathers."

    "Well, I still have some hope that common sense, and my fans who are apparently organising against it, will prevail," Pyrrha admitted. "But if not, then I can live with it."

    That fight really did help, didn't it?

    You see, Twilight? I told you fighting was the way to solve problems.

    "What do you think's going to happen to the SDC?" asked Ruby, bringing the conversation back on topic.

    "They'll wriggle free somehow," Sunset said.

    "Kind of cynical, don't you think?" Yang replied.

    "Sadly, it is true that those with money and power often escape the consequences that befall those without," Pyrrha murmured.

    "Yeah," Neptune agreed. "It's true in Mistral, and probably true in Atlas too."

    "But people won't just forget about this, right?" Yang said. "I mean, it's too huge."

    "We'll see," Sunset said. "But, even if people do forget…"

    "What?" Ruby asked.

    "Well … Sun might not be the only one thinking that the White Fang have more of a point that they'd considered before," Sunset said.

    XxXxX​

    Lord Kiro was staying at a hotel in Vale, with the entirety of his party, but the Mistralian embassy had sent a car to collect him and Turnus — and Lausus and Tarpeia as escorts — and convey them to the consulate. There, into an interior room with no windows and only one door in or out.

    "Lausus, Tarpeia, guard the door," Turnus instructed them.

    "Yes, my lord," Lausus replied.

    Turnus said nothing further to him as he and Kiro followed the ambassador into the room. It was an office space, by the looks of it, albeit the office space of someone important enough to have a door which locked and several filing cabinets which also locked. Judging by the picture sitting on the desk of a young girl and a woman to whom Turnus and Elagabalus had been introduced to as the ambassador's wife when they arrived, he guessed that it must be the ambassador's own office.

    Else there was a lot about his wife which he didn't know.

    A painting of Mistral, viewed from one of the nearby hills, by the great artist Hesiod, sat in a solid frame of varnished wood upon the back of the wall; so too did a somewhat faded poster for The White Wolf, a great tournament champion — her record of three consecutive victories had only been eclipsed last year by Pyrrha Nikos — from somewhat over a generation ago who had recently passed away. A Mistralian flag sat in the corner of the room, while the desk was cluttered with little models of dragons that seemed to be drawn from every myth that ever featured one.

    Sitting alongside the family photo, nestled amongst the dragons as though they kept guard over it, was a box, a wooden casket about as high as a hand but twice as wide, carved with images of soldiers, traditionally armed with shields and spears, marching around it.

    "Of course, you can't take this with you just yet," Lord Wong said in his guttural, slightly accented voice, as he approached the desk. The Mistralian Ambassador to Vale was a middle-aged man, well built without being portly, with a round, slightly pock-marked face and very short dark hair that was only compensated for by the decidedly modest moustache and goatee upon his upper lip and chin respectively. He wore a dark suit in the Valish style and walked with the aid of an ebony cane, with a gold head fashioned in the shape of an eagle. It tapped upon the grey floor tiles as he walked towards the box. "First Councillor Emerald will formally hand it over to Mistral at the reception tomorrow evening, but we can keep it here in the embassy until then, and I thought that you might appreciate a look at it."

    "I would," Elagabalus whispered, almost reverently. "Very much so."

    Lord Wong smiled. "I've been lobbying for this ever since I was appointed ambassador almost ten years ago now. There have been times when I thought this day would never come." He reached out and opened the wooden cask. "Behold: the Heart of Mistral."

    "'Sharper than diamonds, redder than blood,'" Turnus whispered, quoting an old saying that had been said of the Heart in days long ago, before it was lost to the Valish.

    The Heart of Mistral was very large, too large for him to have placed it in his palm and enclosed it from sight within his fingers; he might have touched his thumb with his middle finger, but the blood red gem would have been visible regardless. It was not quite heart-shaped — those who first dug it from the ground and then cut it had not been so romantic, but nevertheless, there was enough about the roughly hexagonal shape to suggest it, in conjunction with knowledge of where it had been found and, of course, the beautiful colour. In particular, it had a very sharp point at the bottom — so sharp, it could almost have been used as a weapon — compared with a much softer upper side. Light seemed to glint off it from all directions, giving it a sparkle from wherever it was looked at.

    It had been worn in various different ways throughout history: the Nikos princess to whom it had been given on her marriage to Lord Kiro's ancestor had worn it set in a pearl necklace; a later Lady Kiro had preferred a diamond necklace, another still had worn it as a brooch, and at times, Lords of the Kiro family had worn it as part of Sun badges like the one upon Elagabalus' chest. The last Lord Kiro to possess it, he who had perished at the Battle of Four Sovereigns, had worn it on the turban that he wore into battle. Now it was on its own, devoid of setting or additional ornament, only the ruby, the ruby which, he had to say, was quite dazzling enough.

    "Incredible," Elagabalus said. "Accounts, pictures … they fail to do it justice." He paused for a moment. "Lord Wong, would you leave Lord Rutulus and myself alone for a moment?"

    Lord Wong hesitated. "I—"

    "I trust that our honour places us above suspicion of seeking to abscond with the Heart," Elagabalus said, his voice prickling a little.

    Lord Wong smiled thinly. "Of course, lords. I understand that this reunion with your family legacy must be … emotional. I will leave you in peace for a moment." Again, his cane tapped upon the floor as he walked to the door, leaving the wooden box open and the Heart of Mistral exposed to view.

    No sooner had the door closed behind him than Elagabalus strode over to the desk, the tails of his coat flapping behind him, and lifted the ruby out of its box and held it up directly to the lights that hung from the ceiling.

    It sparkled so brightly that Turnus had to turn away, his eyes were dazzled by it.

    "Beautiful," Elagabalus said, "absolutely beautiful, no? 'Sharper than diamonds, redder than blood.'"

    "Not blood, I think," Turnus said. "More…"

    "More what?" asked Elagabalus.

    More the red of Camilla's eyes, was what Turnus had been thinking; he found it strangely easy to imagine the ruby against her fair skin, worn on a white gold chain around her neck. But that was very strange to think, and would have been stranger still to say, and so he said, "Red like eyes, I think, red eyes, rather than blood."

    "'Red eyes'?" Elagabalus repeated. "What are you talking about? It doesn't matter. At any rate … stunning." He held onto the jewel, but he did lower it down from the light, enabling Turnus to look at him again. "Does it seem right to you that this treasure, this heirloom of my house, should pass from a museum in Vale to a museum in Mistral, and I am accorded nothing but the honour of bearing it homeward?"

    "It should be yours," Turnus agreed. "What claim does Mistral have to it if you have none, after all? But the Steward and the Council have decreed it otherwise."

    Elagabalus snorted. "The Steward, the Council; I am descended from the Imperial line through marriage, as people will remember when I return home with this, the bridal gift given to Lavinia. Why should I obey the commands of a mere Steward or a Council of elected mediocrities?"

    "You…" Turnus glanced towards the door. "You wish to claim the throne?"

    "Why not?" Elagabalus asked, placing the Heart of Mistral back in the wooden casket. "I have the right, I have the blood."

    "Perhaps, if the line of Nikos was extinct," Turnus pointed out. "It is not; there is a direct descendant living yet."

    "That's a rather absurd term, don't you think? 'A direct descendant'; how is her descent any more direct than mine?"

    "She has the name," Turnus said.

    "She does not want the throne," Elagabalus pointed out.

    "True," Turnus allowed. "But that does not mean … our present system is poor, true, and I will allow that you have a claim, if not the best at present. I will even say that you might be a reasonable enough Emperor—"

    "I thank you for that lukewarm compliment."

    "Any sovereign would be better than the circus of self-serving greed to which we are presently subjected," Turnus muttered, "but just because you want to be Emperor does not mean anyone else wants you on the throne. The people seem depressingly wedded to our current system of rule. You would be arrested at once, and lucky to escape with your life, let alone your wealth, lands, titles."

    "Not with your support," Elagabalus said.

    Turnus was silent for a moment, his eyes widening, his mouth hanging slightly open. "You … is that what this is about? You want my swords, my men, to put you on the throne?"

    "They are supposed to be skilled," Elagabalus pointed out.

    "My men have the hearts of tigers, every one," Turnus declared, "but they would each need to fight with the strength of gods to … do you have any idea what you are asking of me?"

    "I'm asking you to help me make Mistral a better place," said Elagabalus.

    "You're asking me to stick my head into a lion's mouth," Turnus snapped. "I have less than a hundred men, all told; so few might triumph over the Imperial Guard, but they could not hold all the kingdom, or even the palace, once the slopes of Mistral rose up to tear you down."

    "You are afraid," Elagabalus said, his lip curling in distaste.

    "I have responsibilities," Turnus replied firmly. "What would become of Juturna, when my head was on a pike alongside yours as a warning to traitors?"

    He was not blind to the possibility that he might die in the course of his work; his will named Camilla as Juturna's guardian and the trustee of his estate until his sister married — as well as leaving her Rutulian Security in her own right as sole owner. But if Camilla were to die alongside him in some foredoomed and farcical coup attempt, what then? There was no one else he trusted to take care of his sister.

    "And so you will do nothing?"

    "If doing nothing keeps my people alive, yes," Turnus said.

    "Though Mistral declines ever further?" Elagabalus asked.

    Turnus was silent for a moment. "Did you know that Tarpeia, outside the door, is a champion axe thrower?"

    "No," Elagabalus murmured. "I can't say that I did."

    "It's not a very well-known sport, but very competitive, with spectators who make up for their small numbers with immense enthusiasm," Turnus explained. "The trophies she has won are rather small, but then, it's the honour, and the glory of victory, that counts, is it not?"

    "What is your point?"

    "The point is that these are my men," Turnus said. "My retainers, my family; their lives matter to me. I will not throw their lives away, not even for Mistral. If you would do this thing, then raise men of your own, that you may be callous with their lives, for you will not be careless with mine."

    Elagabalus was silent for a moment. Then he smiled. "Of course. Of course. As you say, you have your responsibilities, and those responsibilities are not to me, or even to Mistral. I apologise if I have given you any offence. Will you dine with me tonight, let me treat you, as a show of my contrition?"

    "Kind of you, but no," Turnus said. "I'm having dinner with a friend of Juturna's tonight, my first time meeting her."

    "A friend of Juturna's, here?" Elagabalus asked. "Who?"

    "A Beacon student," Turnus explained. "Her name is Ruby Rose."

    XxXxX​

    "Uh, hello?" Ruby said as she answered her scroll, surprise making her voice go higher up in pitch than normal.

    The man whose face appeared in the screen of her scroll had long black hair with streaks of red in it, like the embers burning amongst hot coals. His eyes were blue, and his features were sharp, without any softness in them.

    "Are you … Turnus Rutulus?" Ruby asked, because he looked similar to the picture that Juturna had sent her.

    "I have the honour," he said, smiling, which provided a little of the softness that wasn't otherwise there on his face. "And do I have the pleasure of addressing Miss Ruby Rose?"

    "Yeah," Ruby said. "That's me. It … it's nice to meet you."

    "Likewise, Miss Rose," Turnus said. "As it happens, I'm in Vale at the moment; did Juturna tell you I was coming?"

    "Yes," Ruby said. "Yes, she did." Although with everything that's been going on with Pyrrha, I kind of forgot a little.

    "Excellent," Turnus said. "I did wonder if she might forget. In any case, it won't come as a shock to you if I ask for the pleasure of your company at dinner tonight?"

    Ruby had forgotten about that too, but it probably wasn't a good idea to say so, especially as it came rushing back to her. "Oh, y-yeah, of course. I … I'd like that."

    "Wonderful," Turnus said. "If I pick you up at seven, will that be agreeable to you?"

    "Pick me up?"

    "Yes, I was going to hire an airship and fly up there, unless that will be a problem?"

    "I don't think so," Ruby said, because as far as she knew, there wasn't a rule against private airships landing on the docking pads; they didn't get a lot of use in the evenings anyway, so Turnus shouldn't have any trouble finding a spot. "And seven, yeah, that'll be okay."

    She wondered if he was going to ask where she wanted to go to eat, but he didn't; he just said, "That's settled then. I look forward to meeting you in person, Miss Rose."

    "Me too," Ruby said. "Um … bye."

    "Farewell until this evening," Turnus said, and then hung up on her.

    Ruby snapped her scroll shut and looked around the dorm room. "I'd completely forgotten all about this," she admitted.

    "That's … understandable," Pyrrha murmured. "I did draw rather a lot of attention to myself. Speaking of which, this reminds me that I've been invited to a reception at the Mistralian embassy tomorrow night, to celebrate the return of the Heart of Mistral; Jaune, would you mind coming with me as my plus one?"

    Jaune hesitated for a moment. "Is that guy going to be there?"

    "Very probably yes," Pyrrha admitted. "I know this is terribly short notice, but it just got driven out of my mind. If you don't want to—"

    "No, I'll go with you; of course, I will," Jaune said. "I wouldn't make you show up alone."

    Pyrrha smiled. "Well, if you hadn't wanted to, then I would have asked Sunset," she said. "But I'm glad you're willing to go."

    "Thanks very much," Sunset muttered, although she was smiling. "As for you, Ruby, as much as you might have forgotten, it doesn't seem to matter too much, he's got everything in hand by the looks of things."

    "But I haven't had a chance to think about anything!" Ruby cried. "What should I wear? What should I say? When Juturna told me that her brother wanted to meet me, it didn't feel like a big deal because I was having a fight with Yang and because it wasn't happening right this instant, but now it is happening tonight, and I don't do well with this kind of thing."

    "What kind of thing? New people?" Sunset asked. "You're the most outgoing person I know."

    "Really?"

    "Yes!" Sunset cried. "You hit it off with Penny, you hit it off with Juturna, you hit it off with Leaf, you make new friends like that." She snapped her fingers. "You've got nothing to worry about."

    "Except that Turnus isn't here to make friends, is he?" Jaune said.

    "Well, maybe not, but so what? He'll make one anyway," Sunset declared. "What are you worried about?"

    Ruby clasped her hands together in her lap where sat on her bed. "It sounds … pretty formal, don't you think?"

    "Turnus will probably choose a high class establishment to dine," Pyrrha agreed. "Or at the very least, since I don't believe he's very familiar with Vale, it will be somewhere expensive."

    "Somewhere the portions are really tiny?" Ruby asked.

    "Quite possibly," Pyrrha admitted. "If you're worried about what to wear … I would wear something formal that suits the setting and shows … a degree of respect for the location and for Turnus himself. But at the same time, this isn't a date, and Turnus is nine years older than you—"

    "He is?" Ruby asked. "But Juturna's only about my age."

    "Some families end up with big age differences," Jaune said. "My oldest sister Rouge is fourteen years older than I am."

    "I guess so," Ruby admitted. "Sorry, Pyrrha, what were you saying?"

    "I was just going to say that since this isn't a date, and Turnus is much older than you, you don't want to wear anything too attractive," Pyrrha said.

    Ruby frowned a little as she considered all of that. "I … Pyrrha, that doesn't really help."

    "I'm sorry," Pyrrha said. "Why don't we take a look at what you've got and see if we can find anything suitable?"

    That sounded reasonable enough, as ideas went, and so all four of them went to the big walk-in closet that sat behind the wall on the left-hand side of the dorm room, with a door directly opposite the bathroom door on the right. Inside the closet, once the light was on, they could see the plastic dividers that separated the parts of the closet belonging to Sunset, Jaune — he had the smallest section — Pyrrha — she had the largest – and Ruby. The closet was large enough that they could all get inside — or at least, Ruby, Pyrrha, and Sunset could, with Jaune hanging back a little bit — and rummage through Ruby's section of the closet, making scraping noises as they moved wire hangers back and forth across the metal rail that ran beneath the ceiling.

    "How about this one?" Ruby asked, as she pulled down a red dress with a knee length skirt, an illusion neckline and a black sash tied around the waist.

    "That looks very cute," Pyrrha said, "but I'm not sure—"

    "I'm not sure that Ruby is going to have anything in here that doesn't look at least cute," Sunset pointed out. "I mean, if it was ugly, then why would she have it?"

    "I never said to wear something ugly," Pyrrha replied.

    "No, you didn't," Sunset admitted. "But … don't you think it's possible that you might be projecting just a little bit here? I can see why you wouldn't want to wear anything attractive around this guy, but he's not likely to try and hit on Ruby, is he?" She paused. "Is he?"

    "I don't believe so, no," Pyrrha said. "Turnus has his faults, but I've heard nothing to make me think that that is one of them. Nevertheless, it wouldn't hurt to look at a few more choices." She began to look through the items on the rack. "What about … hmm, you really don't have anything that isn't pretty cute, do you, Ruby?"

    "Thanks, I think," Ruby said.

    "I think this is fine," Sunset said, holding the red dress with the black sash that Ruby had gotten down from the railing.

    "Hmm," Pyrrha murmured. "What about … this one?"

    She pulled down another dress down off the rack. This dress, too, was red, with a skirt that also extended just past the knees to the upper calves, although this skirt was pleated, a fact that served to help disguise the fact that it was barely A-line. It was a one-piece, the bodice the same red as the skirt, extending up to the black collar which, although off the shoulder, was too high up to reveal anything. It had black bows upon the shoulders themselves, with little tails of fabric dropping down to where they would have tickled Ruby's arms if she were wearing the dress.

    Sunset's eyebrows rose. "You say that this is too cute, and you pick that?"

    "Well, you were the one who pointed out that Ruby didn't have anything to wear that wasn't cute," Pyrrha pointed out.

    "Yes, yes I did, but still," Sunset said. "I suppose it's really Ruby's choice, isn't it? Which do you prefer?"

    "Uh," Ruby hesitated, looking back and forth between the dress in Sunset's hand and that in Pyrrha's. "I, uh … that one," she said, pointing at the one that Pyrrha was holding. "Is that okay?"

    "I think so," Pyrrha said.

    "And like I said, it's your choice."

    Ruby sighed. "I'm going to have to wear high heels again, aren't I?"

    "Yes," Sunset said. "Yes, you will."

    Ruby groaned. "Okay, so, that's what I'm wearing. What should I talk to him about?"

    "Let him talk about himself," Sunset suggested as she put the other dress back and wandered out of the closet. "Self-important people love the chance to go on about themselves; just smile, nod, and occasionally make sympathetic noises, and you'll be fine."

    "Sunset," Pyrrha murmured reproachfully as she and Ruby followed her out of the closet and back into the dorm room. "Turnus will probably want to talk about Juturna."

    "Of course, right," Ruby said. Yeah, that was obvious; that was the whole reason he wanted to meet her in the first place.

    Sunset grinned. "Why are you so worried about this?"

    "I'm not worried."

    Sunset's eyebrows rose.

    "I'm … concerned," Ruby admitted. "But only because … Pyrrha said this was a big deal. What if … what if I can persuade him to—?"

    "I wouldn't advise you to try and do anything like that," Pyrrha said.

    "You don't know what I was going to say!"

    "No, but I can guess," Pyrrha said. "It's very sweet of you to think about it, but my relations with Turnus are … mine. You shouldn't put yourself in the middle of them. Avoid the subject, if you can."

    "Okay," Ruby murmured. "What about weapons, does he like weapons?"

    "He likes Atlas, if that isn't too simplistic a way of putting it," Pyrrha said. "He may have an appreciation for technology; honestly, I don't know him very well."

    "You'll be fine," Sunset assured her. "And even if it isn't fine, then what does it really matter anyway? This isn't someone you have to see again ever. Just show up, eat the fancy food, and don't worry about it."

    "Is that what you used to do when it came to things like this?"

    "No," Sunset admitted. "When I used to get invited to formal dinners — usually by people who were interested in my connections to Princess Celestia — I used to be terrified that I would embarrass the princess by behaving in a gauche way that would reflect badly on her and the way that she'd taught me. But you don't have a Princess Celestia, and there isn't anyone who Turnus Rutulus could think badly of if you don't meet his expectations. Seriously, I'm telling you, there is nothing whatsoever to worry about."

    Ruby appreciated that Sunset was trying, but nevertheless, she didn't entirely believe her. Nevertheless, as the hour approached, she put on the red dress with its pleated skirt and put on her black high heels once more — she still didn't like the way they felt, or how it felt to move in them — and clasped a simple black choker around her neck.

    Sunset went with her down to the docking pad. Pyrrha and Jaune stayed behind in the dorm room for obvious reasons, but Sunset was there beside her as she stood in front of the docking pads as seven o'clock drew nearer, watching the sky that had gone dark already as the Atlesian airships big and small patrolled the skies over Vale.

    Ruby was wearing her cloak, partly because she felt comfortable doing so and partly because it was starting to get a little chilly out. She wrapped the cloak around herself a little bit as she waited.

    A Bullhead rose up into view, its snub nose pointed towards them before it moved the last short distance horizontally to put it directly over the central docking pad, where it set down. The engines stopped, and the great doors on the right-hand side of the airship swung open.

    Turnus Rutulus leapt down from out of the airship. He was wearing a tiger stripe suit, black and orange stripes alternating with one another right down his jacket and pants, all the way to his shoes, while beneath the jacket, he wore a white dress shirt with a red bow tie. Around his waist, he wore a black and white sash like a zebra — or a white tiger, Ruby realised abruptly, and felt glad that she had before she said anything about zebras.

    His picture made him look tall and well-built, broad-shouldered and muscular; that was behind the point Ruby had made to Jaune, that he didn't need to worry about his lack of the same because if Pyrrha had been interested in that, well … there was this guy.

    His picture did him justice, just about. He really was a big guy, in every sense.

    Except that, as he walked towards her, looming over her, he seemed to get smaller somehow, to not loom so much. He had looked taller and broader than Jaune; suddenly, he looked only about the same size, perhaps a little smaller, and more slender even.

    "Miss Rose, I presume?" Turnus said.

    "That's me," Ruby said. "But you can call me Ruby."

    "Very well," he said, "then you may call me Turnus."

    Ruby wondered if she would have been expected to call him Lord Rutulus or my lord otherwise, like Sunset calling Pyrrha's mother 'Lady Nikos,' but it seemed that she didn't need to do that anyway, so that was a bullet dodged.

    To be on the safe side, however, she attempted a curtsy — 'attempted' being the operative word; she nearly fell over. "It— it's nice to meet you," she said.

    Turnus smiled. "Likewise," he said. He looked at Sunset. "And you must be Sunset Shimmer, leader of Team Sapphire and bearer of Soteria."

    Sunset bowed to him, although it seemed to Ruby that she didn't bow so deeply as she had to Lady Nikos when they were staying in Mistral. "It gladdens me to know that my reputation precedes me, lord."

    "Camilla had praise for your entire team in action against the Karkadann," Turnus said, his blue eyes flickering between Ruby and Sunset. "And then this business with the Breach here in Vale. Your names are known, to say the least." He paused for a moment. "Shall we go, Ruby?"

    "Uh, yeah, sure," Ruby said. "See you, Sunset."

    "I'll wait up," Sunset said. "We all will." She smiled. "Have fun."

    "I will," Ruby said. Hopefully, anyway. She followed Turnus beneath the Bullhead's wing, and then leapt up after him into the airship itself.

    "Would you like to join me in the cockpit?" Turnus asked as he headed that way. "It will save me having to shout behind me."

    "Wait, you flew this yourself?" Ruby said as she noticed the absence of a pilot. "You can fly?"

    "Yes," Turnus said, sitting down in the pilot's seat. "I learned when I worked for the Schnee Dust Company."

    "You worked for the SDC?" Ruby asked.

    "Yes," Turnus murmured. "Yes, I did."

    Ruby hesitated for a moment. "It's rough, what happened to those people, isn't it? In Atlas?"

    Turnus took a deep breath. "Mmm," he murmured. "It is, as you say, rather unfortunate."

    He didn't say anything more about the subject, but began to flip the controls, turning the engines on once more, closing the doors to enclose the airship, and causing the Bullhead to lift up into the air before turning in place to face outwards towards Vale.

    Turnus proved to be a decent pilot, guiding the airship nimbly through the skies, descending almost straight away as he flew from Beacon, so that he was beneath the level of the Atlesian warships, before straightening up for a while to fly above the rooftops of the city.

    He glanced at her. "I'm told," he said, "that when you met Juturna, she wanted to sneak out of the Lord Steward's party with you and go to a club where they sold drugs."

    "Uh…" Ruby hesitated. "I mean … yeah, I guess."

    "Would you have gone with her?" Turnus asked.

    "What?"

    "If Camilla hadn't intervened," Turnus said. "Would you have gone with her?"

    "No," Ruby said. "No, I wouldn't have."

    "Why not?"

    "Because I don't do that kind of stuff."

    "You don't do drugs?"

    "No. I mean, no, I don't, but, what I meant was that … if I'd just snuck out of that party without telling anyone, then Sunset would have been really worried about where I was, and so would Pyrrha, and it would have been really rude to Pyrrha and her mom, I mean to Lady Nikos too. I don't do that kind of thing."

    Turnus smiled slightly. "I'm glad to hear it," he said.

    Ruby's eyes narrowed. "Was that a test?"

    "No, my questions were honest," Turnus said. "Unless you mean that, if you had admitted to me that you would have gone with Juturna absent anyone preventing you, it would have demonstrated that you are not the kind of person I want my sister to be in contact with."

    "Is there anyone you do want Juturna to be in contact with?" Ruby asked, the words leaving her mouth before she could stop them.

    Turnus glanced at her. "That is a bold question."

    "Last time I talked to her, Juturna told me about a movie premiere you'd been to," Ruby began.

    "She complained about the actor, didn't she?" Turnus asked.

    "No," Ruby said. "She told me about it, but she didn't complain. She actually told me you two never fight. All the same…"

    "Are you wondering whether you should mount a defence of personal freedom?" Turnus asked.

    "…maybe," Ruby admitted. "It isn't a good feeling when other people decide that they know better than you, and so they're going to make all of the decisions for you."

    Turnus didn't reply; he didn't say anything as he guided the Bullhead down towards the Skydock, setting the airship down alongside a dozen others of the same type. Only once the airship was still and silent did he turn in his seat so that he was facing Ruby.

    "I appreciate that you are not from Mistral," he said. "I appreciate that, in Vale, a different attitude may, and probably does, prevail. But Juturna and I are from Mistral, not from Vale. There are considerations of … Juturna is the heir to a grand old name. In Mistral, only the names of Nikos and Thrax are older or more honourable; there is wealth and land … and she is my heir until, unless, I have a child. It would be remiss of me not to consider that there may be those who see my sister as their meal ticket, unworthy men who pursue her not out of affection but for their own advantage."

    "And you don't trust Juturna to realise?" Ruby asked.

    "No," Turnus said. "No, I do not."

    "Maybe she would," Ruby suggested, "if you gave her the chance to see the difference, instead of trying to protect her from everyone."

    Turnus was silent a moment. "She is my sister," she said. "All other considerations aside, what kind of brother would I be if I stood aside and let her get hurt on the grounds that it might teach her a lesson? How would I answer for that?"

    Answer to who? Ruby thought; she could guess the answer. "It must be hard for you," she said, "losing both your parents."

    Turnus' eyes widened. "How … what makes you—?"

    "I lost my mom when I was little," Ruby said. "My big sister, Yang, she had to step up in a big way. I get it."

    Turnus' brow furrowed. "Your father?"

    "He was hurting too," Ruby said softly.

    Turnus was silent for a second. "You have my condolences."

    "And you've got mine, too," Ruby said. "For what it's worth."

    Turnus smiled at her. "It is worth enough," he said. He unbuckled himself from the pilot's chair. "Now, shall we claim our reservation?"

    Ruby guessed that he was drawing a line under that topic of conversation and didn't want to talk about the way he treated Juturna or about his parents anymore. She felt like maybe he ought to talk about those things, but at the same time … as much as she thought that she was right when she did it, she was aware that, to some people, she could seem a little … when she thought she was right, she would say so, but that didn't mean that people always wanted to hear it. Like that time with Arslan.

    So she held her tongue upon that subject and said, "Yeah, let's go."

    There was a taxi waiting for them outside the skydock, which took them to a place called The Northern Bites, a place advertising Atlesian cuisine, with a stark glass and metal front and what looked like some kind of holoprojector just outside.

    It looked like, but it was hard to tell exactly because somebody had smashed it up, attacking it with a bat or something until the metal column was dented and the actual emitter was cracked, fault lines running across it.

    Someone, presumably the same person or at least part of the same group, had spray-painted an A in bright red letters on one of the windows, and underneath had scrawled the words 'Atlas scum go home.'

    An employee, dressed in a black shirt and trousers with a white apron, was trying to scrub it off with a sponge and a bucket of soapy water.

    Turnus stared at it as he climbed out of the taxi. "What in Remnant…??"

    "Yeah," Ruby murmured. "It … something's going on in Vale. I don't understand it, and I don't know where it's come from, but … it's like people have started hating Atlas, and hating the faunus too. You see stuff like this all over the place. It's … I don't get it. I don't know where it's come from."

    "Hmm," Turnus murmured, a frown creasing his features. "Will you excuse me for just one moment?"

    "Uh, sure," Ruby agreed.

    "Thank you," Turnus said, turning away and fishing his scroll out of his breast pocket. He opened it up and called someone. "Tarpeia?"

    "Yes, my lord?"

    "I want you and Tulla to take extra care; apparently, there's a lot of anti-faunus feeling in the air at the moment."

    "No offence, my lord, but how is that different from any other day?" the woman on the other end of the line — Tarpeia, presumably — asked.

    "I'm being serious, Tarpeia," Turnus declared. "I'm told it's spiking to an unusual degree. I know you can handle yourself, but … the two of you watch each other's backs."

    There was a moment of silence before Tarpeia said, "Will do, my lord."

    "I'm glad to hear it," Turnus said. "That's all; I'll see you back at the hotel tonight."

    "Very good, my lord."

    Turnus hung up, and put the scroll back in his tiger-stripe jacket as he turned back to Ruby. "Sorry about that."

    "It's fine," Ruby said. "Tarpeia's a faunus?"

    "Yes, she and Tulla both, of the people that I brought with me," Turnus said. "They know their way around a fight, of course, but in this kingdom … I wouldn't want to see them in legal difficulties any more than in physical ones." He smiled. "Although it seems that in this kingdom, one may still challenge one's enemies to single combat without consequence, so perhaps I needn't be worried at all."

    Ruby didn't smile back. "That was … I don't like that Pyrrha did that."

    Turnus paused a moment before he said, "Shall we go inside? If they aren't open because of all this, then I do apologise, we'll find somewhere else."

    "But we might as well see, right?" Ruby asked.

    They approached the restaurant, and as they did so, Turnus called out to the man washing the window, "Hello there! Are you open?"

    The man looked at them, doing a double take at Turnus' rather colourful suit. "Yes!" he called back, enthusiastically. "Have you got a table booked? Or even if you haven't, really, yes, just go right inside; someone will take care of you."

    They duly went in, the doors sliding open for them automatically to admit them into a room of glass tables and metal chairs, pristine white floors, all of it lit by lights that changed colours slowly and subtly, shifting from greens to blues to magenta, violet and indigo; the colours of the rainbow — or the aurora.

    The place was not quite empty, there were a couple of well-dressed faunus sitting in one corner, there was a table for four over on the left, but it was very quiet for a restaurant that was open, especially since it wasn't that early in the evening.

    Near the door was a standing desk, with a computer terminal upon it and a woman — dressed in black, just like the man outside — standing behind it. She smiled as they approached, but her voice sounded a little more ragged than friendly as she said, "Yes, hello, welcome, how can I help you? Table for two?"

    "Yes, I have a reservation in the name Rutulus," Turnus said.

    "Then you'd be the first reservation who actually showed up tonight," the woman muttered. "But, uh, welcome to Northern Bites." She grabbed a pair of menus, enclosed in black leather booklets, from the side of her desk. "As you can see, we have plenty of choices, would you like to sit by the—?" She gestured towards the window, but stopped. "No, not there. How about here?" she suggested, beginning to walk already towards a round table in the middle of the restaurant."

    Turnus glanced at Ruby.

    "Yeah, that'd be great, thanks," Ruby said softly.

    "Great," the woman said. "My name is Stephanie, I'll be looking after you today, but I'll just leave you to look at the menus for a few minutes before I come take your order, okay?"

    "Thank you," Ruby said, as she sat down. "Do you think people aren't showing up because this is an Atlesian restaurant?"

    "Perhaps," Turnus said, "although it seems a fine way to repay Atlas' generosity."

    "You mean for the Breach?"

    "Yes," Turnus said. "Although I don't mean to diminish your efforts, of course."

    "I, uh…" Ruby stopped short of saying that she'd already been unconscious. "A lot of people did what they could."

    "I'm sure," Turnus said as he opened up the menu. "Seal meat. Haven't had that in a while."

    "Really?" Ruby asked. "That's…" She opened her own menu. "Yeah, that's really on the menu, huh." Seal goujons were an option for the starter, while main meals on offer included seal steak and a seal brisket burger; caribou and whale were also on the menu, alongside the more usual beef and fish. "Do Atlesian really eat this stuff? None of my Atlas friends talk about it."

    "Do you talk about food with them very often?"

    "We eat it," Ruby said. "But, no, I guess we don't. Still…"

    "Caribou is very similar to certain cuts of beef, while being much lower fat," Turnus told her. "It's very good for you; sadly, it's impossible to come by in Mistral, but venison is fairly common, if expensive."

    "I … think I'll stick with fish," Ruby said, although even the fish choices were a little fancier than she had been used to — there was no cod and chips on the menu, that was for sure. Nevertheless, when Stephanie returned, Ruby ordered the relatively safe-sounding celery, potato, and salt cod salad, on the grounds that she could understand what all the words meant, and a smoked salmon after. Turnus, who apparently knew what this stuff tasted like, ordered seal skewers and a caribou liver.

    "So," Turnus said, when they had ordered. "You're not fond of duelling?"

    Ruby was silent a moment. "I'd rather not talk about it, if that's okay."

    "Of course."

    "In fact, I don't want to talk about Pyrrha at all," Ruby added. "I don't want to tell you something that you can use to—"

    "Ruby," Turnus said, "Miss Rose. Whatever my … whatever assurances Lady Nikos gave me, whatever the situation, it was not and would never be my intention to use you in such a way. I wanted to meet you because you're Juturna's friend, nothing more. And also, I admit, because you must be quite skilled to have been admitted to Beacon so young."

    "Well," Ruby said. "I try my best. Are you a huntsman?"

    "No," Turnus said. "I spent the best part of two years at Atlas Academy, but … it wasn't for me."

    "Why not?" asked Ruby.

    Turnus paused for a second. "My team died," he said. "They perished on a training mission in my second year. I was the only survivor."

    Ruby gasped. "Oh, god!" she cried. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—"

    "It's fine," Turnus assured her. "Are you close to your teammates, if you don't mind me asking?"

    Ruby nodded. "They annoy me sometimes, but they're still my best friends."

    "Mine just annoyed me," Turnus said, with what seemed to Ruby to be an inappropriately light tone considering the subject. "To pretend to be unduly upset at their passing, to allow you to express your condolences as though I were gravely wounded in the spirit … would be rather dishonest, don't you think?"

    Ruby thought that perhaps he ought to have been … well, okay, he didn't need to be traumatised by it or anything, but three people he'd lived with for two years had died around him; he ought to have been a little bit upset about it. But then, it had been a few years ago. Maybe time had healed the wound.

    Maybe it wasn't her place to judge either way. "But you decided to found a security company anyway?"

    "I did."

    "Do you mind if I ask why?"

    "Would you mind if I asked why you want to become a huntress, if indeed you do?" asked Turnus.

    "I don't mind," Ruby said. "I want to help people."

    Turnus waited. "That's … all?"

    Ruby shrugged. "Does there need to be anything more?"

    "Evidently not," Turnus replied. He took a moment. "Violence … is the birthright of my class. Throughout our history, my family, families like mine, have fought; we are warrior aristocrats."

    "Shepherds of the people?" Ruby suggested.

    "That is an old term, but one with meaning, yes," Turnus agreed. "I have no need to spin or sow; I live off the labour of others as my ancestors have done. But that gives me leisure to study the blade and the spear; since I do not have to work, I can learn how to fight proficiently. It is an old bargain, and though I sometimes think that in Mistral, we think a little too much upon old things, nevertheless, this particular bargain seems to me a good one."

    "Would you have become a huntsman, if you'd graduated?" asked Ruby.

    "I don't know," Turnus said. "If you are asking me if I wish that I had become a huntsman, the answer is no, I am happy where I am; I would trade away my men or my company for … what, exactly? I must say that being a huntsman seems to me a rather lonely existence."

    "Not all huntsmen work alone," Ruby said. "Some teams stick together after they graduate."

    "But some do work alone," Turnus replied. "Many, in fact."

    "I guess," Ruby murmured.

    "I could not do it," Turnus said. "Certainly not now, after I have experienced working with everyone. No matter how hard the battle, I am never without someone by my side."

    "That sounds good," Ruby admitted, "but how did you come up with the idea?"

    "Partly, it was my time working for SDC security," Turnus said. "I saw what could be accomplished by a private group, not huntsmen — or at least not all huntsmen — but well-equipped and trained regardless, and more than capable of seeing off attacks by the White Fang or most grimm. And, of course, when I came home to Mistral … the police were so corrupt. There are still corrupt elements present. It felt as though a new force could accomplish something."

    "And did you?" asked Ruby.

    "I … it isn't all battles," Turnus admitted. "Compared to the life of a huntsman, a lot of private security work is private clients. I have two men playing bouncer at a young noblewoman's birthday party for instance, and then there's security at FightFan Expo each year—"

    "What's FightFan Expo?"

    "It's a showcase of the tournament fighters," Turnus said. "They meet their adoring public; with photo-ops, autographs, question and answer sessions, it all serves to build hype for the coming tournament season. It's incredibly popular. Security involves making sure that no one dressed as their favourite fighter has brought a real weapon in with them, and no one takes the occasionally revealing cosplay of those who dress up as tournament fighters as an invitation to anything. Plus theft, disruption, antisocial behaviour, the usual sorts of things. Plus, there is also protection for touring artists and my present business escorting the man who will take a prized gemstone home to Mistral. But on the other hand, recently, some of my people caught a stalker who was harassing a singer, we protected a village from bandits and gave them such a bloody nose that I've heard nothing more from them since, and before that, we were part of a raid that rescued several children who would … otherwise have suffered an unthinkable fate." He paused again. "We do good work," he said. "We do enough good work, I think, to balance out, or more than balance out, the frivolity. And yet, good work is only possible because I employ good people. Skilled people, brave people. People like you, perhaps."

    "Me?"

    "I don't know what your plans are after graduation," Turnus said. "And I certainly wouldn't ask you to drop out of Beacon, but once you graduate, there will be a place for you at Rutulian Security, if you want it. A fair wage, job security, you wouldn't be at the mercy of the job board in lean times. And there's a dental plan."

    Ruby chuckled. "That's … that's nice of you to offer. Really, it is, but—"

    "But the answer is no?"

    "I don't mind being at the mercy of the job board," Ruby said, leaving out any work that she might be doing for Professor Ozpin. "I'd rather take my chances with that than provide security for birthday parties or at FightFan Expo. It's just … it's not what I go to school for."

    "I see," Turnus murmured. "Disappointing, but understandable at the same time. Still, if at any point in the next three years you change your mind, let me know. I think Juturna would like having you around, and I wouldn't mind her having a friend like you around either."

    "Okay," Ruby promised. "I'll let you know if I change my mind."

    But she knew she never would.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 64 - The Heart of Mistral, Part One
  • Threadmarks
    • The Heart of Mistral, Part One

    ​

    The lights were on in the dorm room, and when Ruby opened the door, she found everyone else up, waiting for her.

    Sunset was sitting on her bed, one leg outstretched, the other cocked upwards, bent like a mountain rising to a peek at the knee. She was looking at her scroll, but she looked up as Ruby came in.

    "How did it go?" she asked.

    "Pretty good, I think," Ruby replied. "He offered me a job."

    "With Rutulian Security?" Pyrrha asked, taking a step towards her.

    "Uh huh," Ruby answered. "Of course, I said no. That's not what I want to do. It wouldn't be what I wanted to do even without all the stuff with Salem and everything else that we know. I'm sure he believes in what he's doing, but it's not what I believe in."

    "How forcefully did you put your opinion across?" asked Pyrrha mildly.

    Ruby chuckled. "I thanked him, but I told him that I wasn't interested. He told me that the door was open if I changed my mind. Which I won't, but I guess it was nice of him to offer. Oh, but he also asked if I'd like to come down and shadow his people tomorrow night when they work security at the Mistralian Embassy for that thing Pyrrha and Jaune are going to, and I said I'd do it."

    "Why?" Jaune said. "I mean, you already told him that you weren't interested."

    Ruby shrugged. "No, but unlike some of the stuff they do, this sounds kind of important."

    "Protecting a jewel?" Sunset asked. "I mean, it probably is important, but it doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd think was important."

    Ruby put one hand upon her hip. "What does that mean?"

    "It means there aren't any lives at stake," Sunset said flatly.

    "But there are," Ruby replied. "The First Councillor is going to be there, and the Mistralian ambassador, and a whole bunch of VIPs, and Jaune and Pyrrha."

    "That's true," Pyrrha said, "but on the other hand, I can't imagine there'll be much risk involved to any of us. At least, I certainly hope not."

    "Maybe don't tempt fate," Sunset muttered, although the smile on her face as she said it suggested she wasn't being serious about that.

    Pyrrha gave a smile that was kind of a grimace at the same time. "Point taken," she allowed. "But my point is, who would want to attack or disrupt an event like this?"

    "Jewel thieves?" Jaune suggested.

    "Perhaps, but jewel thieves probably wouldn't attempt a robbery in the middle of a party," said Pyrrha.

    "You obviously haven't seen enough movies," Sunset said, the smile still on her face, "but you should be fine as long as you keep your eyes peeled for a charming, refined, and handsome con artist, an alluring femme fatale, and an awkward computer expert in glasses."

    "I'll bear that in mind," Pyrrha said dryly.

    "Ruby," Jaune said, "you never said why you wanted to do this?"

    "Well, it isn't like I've got anything better to do tomorrow night, right?" Ruby asked. "And I kind of like the idea of being on guard while you two are having fun. And just because I don't want to take a job with them doesn't mean it might not be cool to see how they operate. I might even learn something, in case I get hired for a job like this when I become a huntress."

    "You'll be bored," Sunset said. "Hopefully, at least."

    "That might also be good practice for when I graduate," Ruby said.

    Sunset snorted. "Maybe. Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn't it? So, you're all going to be leaving me on my own tomorrow night, are you?"

    "You could come with me and work security?" Ruby suggested.

    "Or I could see if I could get another ticket—"

    "No, it's fine," Sunset assured them all. "I was only kidding. I'm not going to intrude where I'm not wanted. I'll find something to occupy myself while Pyrrha and Jaune are … ordinarily, at this point, I would playfully and fondly mock how sickeningly sweet you are, but in this case, with Lord Rutulus around, I'm not sure it's going to be as much fun as all that. And Ruby will be getting bored in the company of … who are these people anyway?"

    "Some are huntsmen or huntresses who wanted what you might call a regular job, compared to the vagaries of depending on the job board for their livelihood," Pyrrha explained. "Some are ex-police, others are simply people who had a talent for fighting but for whatever reason didn't fit in or make it into Haven Academy. The kind of people who might have joined the army in Atlas or Vale, but Mistral doesn't have an army, and so people like that tend to concentrate into private security companies or mercenary groups."

    "I'm not sure whether that's good or bad," Sunset said.

    "It depends on what they do, I guess," said Jaune.

    "Turnus seems okay, actually," Ruby said. "I mean, we didn't talk about Pyrrha at all, and I won't defend … that, although he does seem to think that your mother promised—"

    "Yes, I'm well aware of what he believes my mother promised," Pyrrha interrupted her, in a voice that was almost but not quite a growl.

    "But other than that … he's not perfect, he babies his sister too much and tries too hard to control her rather than trusting her to do her own thing and make her own choices, but even that I can kind of get, what with his parents and all. But apart from that … he seemed okay to me. Honestly … while it wouldn't suit me, taking orders from someone, doing what someone else thinks is right, I couldn't do that any more than I could become an Atlesian specialist, but for the kind of person who doesn't mind taking orders, who doesn't mind letting other people do your thinking for you, I can get why people want to work for him." Ruby paused for a moment. "Sometimes…"

    The others waited a moment to let her finish.

    "Sometimes … what?" asked Jaune.

    Ruby folded her arms. "Well, you know how we captured Torchwick and stopped the train robbery."

    "Mhm," Sunset said.

    "Well, it wasn't just us; it was Team Rosepetal too, and Blake," Ruby said. "And if they hadn't been there, if we had been the four of us on our own, then maybe we wouldn't have had so much luck."

    "We would have done okay," Sunset said a little defensively.

    "And then we were with them in Mountain Glenn, right?" Ruby said. "That … didn't go so well, but … the point is that we were lucky to have them with us, both times, and I was reminded about that because of something that Turnus said about huntsmen working on their own and how he couldn't imagine doing that, even if he'd graduated from Atlas."

    "Not all huntsmen or huntresses work alone," Pyrrha pointed out.

    "I know, I told him that," Ruby said, "but the most that you tend to get are just huntsmen working with the teams that they went to the academies with, and that's fine, and I get why that happens, but … maybe there should be a time and a place for huntsmen to work in larger numbers, more often than they do. We spend four years learning to work as a team, and yet, so many huntsmen go solo afterwards, why?"

    "Numbers?" Sunset suggested. "Teams of four wouldn't be able to cover enough ground to do everything that needs to be done?"

    "Or is it simply that most missions that a huntsman is called upon to undertake can be undertaken by a single huntsman?" suggested Pyrrha.

    "But can they, though?" Ruby responded. "Can one huntsman defend a whole village from an entire tribe of bandits?"

    "It depends on how well-trained the bandits are, I guess," Jaune said.

    "What's your point, Ruby?" asked Sunset. "That huntsmen should work together more often?"

    "Kinda, yeah," Ruby said. "My point is that if you have a situation where one huntsman, or maybe even a team of four — if you can get one — isn't going to cut it, you have to look to the Atlesian military or to private companies, organisations that are dependent on the decisions of one man, be it General Ironwood or Lord Rutulus or someone else; the fact is that it's someone making decisions for everyone else, and everyone else just blindly going along with it, which isn't what a huntsman is supposed to do—"

    "Okay," Sunset said, getting off her bed and getting to her feet, "but you see the inherent tension here, don't you? You say that huntsmen should be open to working together, because there is strength in numbers, and sometimes, that kind of strength is necessary, but on the other hand, you say that huntsmen need to be answerable to no one but themselves and their own consciences, but how is that supposed to work in a group? Someone needs to be in charge."

    "Why?" Ruby asked. "Why can't the group make decisions collectively?"

    "How?" Sunset responded. "By a show of hands? What if everyone doesn't agree, either the ones that don't agree sit out the operation, in which case, you don't have numbers any more, or they subordinate their feelings to the decision of the majority, which isn't much different from obeying orders, except it's less effective. And in battle, someone has to be in command, or you lose all coordination and the advantage of strength with it. I just … I can see your point about numbers, I can see your point about us working with the Rosepetals and with Blake, and it worked, and it does seem odd that we train in teams only to go our separate ways, and maybe more organisations that could bring huntsmen together as necessary would be a good thing, but they would need to led in order for them to be effective."

    "Maybe," Ruby conceded. "But that leader could be elected, because there's a difference between the majority deciding and everyone agreeing to go along with it even if it's not what they would have done and one person just deciding for themselves without reference to anybody."

    "Yes, the one person is likely to make better decisions," Sunset muttered.

    "Sunset," Pyrrha said reproachfully.

    "I'm sorry," Sunset said, "but I will never agree with Ruby on this; leadership should be the province of the best, the one."

    "What if the best isn't the one?" Ruby asked.

    "If the best were not the one, they would not be the one," Sunset answered. "But, rather than get into that because we'll never convince one another, Ruby, what are you going to do about it?"

    Ruby blinked. "What do you mean?"

    "I mean, if you really think that this is a new model of huntsman … huntsman-ing, hunting, what's the verb for what we do?"

    "I think it's just hunting," Ruby said.

    "But that describes taking a gun and shooting rabbits in the woods," Jaune pointed out.

    "And we take guns and shoot beowolves in the woods; it's not that different," said Ruby. "Although why would you want to shoot cute little bunnies? That's awful."

    "Yeah, that's why I never did it."

    "Whatever it is," Sunset said. "if you think this is a good idea that deserves consideration, what are you going to do about it more than standing here talking about it to us?"

    Ruby thought about it for a moment. "Uh … what could I do?"

    "Why don't you write a paper on it and submit it to…?" Sunset trailed off. "Is there a magazine for huntsmen? I feel like I should know this, but I don't."

    "Blades of Honour sometimes runs articles on huntsmen and huntresses, although the publication is mostly focused upon the tournament circuit," Pyrrha said. "I'm not sure they'd be interested in a logistical consideration, though."

    "Why don't you submit it to Professor Ozpin, see if he knows anywhere to publish it?" Jaune suggested. "Even if he doesn't, if he likes your ideas, maybe he'll put his weight behind them."

    "You think?" Ruby asked. "What if he's too busy to read it?"

    "I think he'll make the time to read it, if it's from you," Pyrrha remarked.

    "Really?" Ruby said. "Okay then, I'll do it!" She paused. "Did I just give myself homework?"

    "Yes, yes, you did," Sunset declared. "It's the reward of virtue."

    Ruby groaned.

    "Do you think this would help us at all?" mused Jaune. "I mean, there are so few of us who know about Salem, who Professor Ozpin can trust—"

    "But that is because there are so few whom Professor Ozpin dares to trust," Pyrrha pointed out. "Larger forces of huntsmen would be irrelevant, even counterproductive, if Professor Ozpin could trust them with the knowledge of what was really going on."

    "Not necessarily," Sunset said. "If something like Ruby is suggesting became commonplace, then there's no reason you couldn't have a high echelon of leaders who knew the truth and a force of followers, footsoldiers, however you want to call them, who don't know about Salem but only know that the cause is a righteous one and that they are doing good, fighting off the grimm."

    "That would hardly square with elected leaders and strategy by common consent," Pyrrha pointed out.

    "No," Sunset acknowledged. "But you already knew those were the bits I didn't agree with anyway."

    XxXxX​

    Junior's was not exactly in the heart of Vale. The club to which Bon Bon and Tempest had been summoned was located in an old industrial district, the kind of place that put Bon Bon in mind of Mantle, or perhaps what Mantle would become in a few years time: derelict and empty, abandoned old factories and closed down mills, with graffiti on the walls and boarded-up windows.

    It was a strange place to put a nightclub, although Bon Bon was surprised to see people drifting in and out of the arched building, the shining and shimmering dresses of the girls, the glittering straps of their stiletto heels, looking out of place in this dark and dismal part of the city.

    They also made Bon Bon herself look and feel pretty underdressed, wearing a white hoodie with the hood up so as to cover her face, with nondescript blue jeans and white trainers.

    Tempest was wearing a dark grey suit with a white shirt, no tie. It … suited her, to be honest.

    "Why do you think Doctor Watts wants to meet here, of all places?" Bon Bon asked as they approached the club.

    "To be anonymous, I think," Tempest murmured. "No one respectable is likely to show up here. We can talk away from prying eyes."

    "This club isn't exactly empty of eyes," Bon Bon replied.

    "True," Tempest conceded. "But quiet doesn't always mean security, and a crowd doesn't always mean you'll be noticed."

    "Mmm," Bon Bon muttered. "It was a surprise to hear from him. Or was it?"

    Tempest stopped, looking back at Bon Bon over her shoulder. "Meaning?"

    Bon Bon shrugged. "Have you heard from him lately?"

    "Not before I got this summons, the same as you," Tempest said.

    "We're not exactly the same," Bon Bon said. "Are we?"

    Tempest's green eyes narrowed, even as an amused smirk sprung up on her lips. "Are you … jealous?"

    Bon Bon thrust her hands into her hoodie pockets. "No."

    The smirk remained on Tempest's face. "You should be pleased," she said. "My elevation means you're not working for Cinder anymore. You're working for me."

    "Is there a difference?"

    "You wound me," Tempest said, putting on a hurt expression. She turned around and sauntered back towards Bon Bon. "What is it that you want, Sweetie? What is it that you desire, above all things?"

    Fame, glory, recognition, respect, power? No. None of those, not anymore. Sky's death had burned them out of her. "I want to protect Lyra and Dove," she said. "I want to keep them safe; I want them to be safe."

    "And they will be," Tempest assured her. "I'm not like Cinder; I won't tell you to throw your friends into the fire for the sake of some little charade. I understand the desire to protect those closest to you, no matter the cost." She placed a hand on Bon Bon's shoulder. "Vale is going to bleed as a result of this, that is inevitable. Our victory cannot come without a degree of base violence. But when the shots of war break out, I guarantee to you that Lyra and Dove will be far away from it all; it will not touch them."

    Unless they choose to put themselves in the middle of it. They might, being brave people, good people. Bon Bon … she would just have to ensure that they did not, by whatever means.

    "You guarantee it?" she asked.

    "I will give you the word," Tempest said. "And you can make the arrangements for them, as seems best to you."

    Bon Bon nodded. "Thank you," she whispered.

    "As I said," Tempest replied. "I know what it's like. You would rather … you would rather die than see them come to harm. Whether they deserve the care you show them or not."

    Bon Bon knew that Lyra and Dove did deserve it, absolutely so — it was she who didn't deserve them — but nevertheless, she nodded. "And now?"

    "We'll find out inside, won't we?" Tempest said, turning away and resuming her walk towards the club.

    Bon Bon followed her, over the cobbles of the road outside and through the metallic doors into the club. A flight of stairs led down into the dancefloor, where revellers shook and swayed and raised their arms, illuminated by the spotlights of brilliant white.

    Rose petals floated down from the ceiling, while wordless music thumped out across the club. Trees grew in glass cases at the corners of the dance floor, while more trees were projected by holograms, pale shadows that seemed almost ghostlike.

    Tempest led the way, and Bon Bon followed, descending the stairs as the lights on the dance floor changed from white to a dark, bloody red. They skirted the edge of the dancers, moving around the trees in their cases, walking to the back of the building, where tables sat in secluded booths half out of sight.

    In one such booth sat Doctor Arthur Watts.

    His smile appeared from underneath his moustache. "Girls," he said. "How delightful it is to see you again."

    "Likewise, Doctor," Tempest said, with more warmth in her voice than Bon Bon had ever heard from her before. She ducked into the booth, sitting close to Doctor Watts, even as she reached out to take his hands. "It was a wonderful surprise to hear from you."

    Doctor Watts chuckled. "Don't take my silence for indifference, Tempest, take it for praise; I had such confidence in your efforts that you didn't need to direct you or to check up on you. And look at how my faith has been rewarded: Cinder's equal now, joint leader of the operation here in Vale." He turned his attention to Bon Bon. "Sweetie Drops. You look well."

    Bon Bon threw back her hood. "Doctor."

    "I feel a little chillier all of a sudden," Doctor Watts muttered. "What is the matter, child?"

    Bon Bon did not sit down. She remained standing, looking down on Doctor Watts where he sat in the booth. "You gave me to Cinder," she said frostily, her voice crackling.

    "I put you to work," Doctor Watts said. "I thought that was what you wanted."

    "I wanted to work for you," Bon Bon snarled, "not for that mad dog!"

    "Sweetie—" Tempest began.

    "Shut up!" Bon Bon snapped. "This doesn't concern you."

    Tempest started to rise, but Doctor Watts held up one hand.

    "Sweetie is due her candour," he murmured. "Sit down, Tempest."

    She sat down.

    Doctor Watts' eyes were fixed on Bon Bon. "You feel that I have misused you?"

    "I think you have used me badly," Bon Bon replied.

    Doctor Watts was silent for a moment. "You are probably right," he admitted, "and I am sorry for it. All I can say in my defence is that I, too, have those whom I must obey. I was ordered to assign one of my operatives to assist Cinder, and I did. And while I was well aware of Cinder's deficiencies, I had no idea she would turn out to be quite so … ill-suited to her task and position. All I can say is that I'm sorry. It won't happen again. And you don't need to worry about Cinder anymore. You don't need to obey her, you don't need to listen to her, and if she tries to make an issue of that, then I will deal with it. You must believe me, it was never my intent to do you wrong."

    Bon Bon hesitated. What he had done, the way that he had treated her, had seemed callous. It had been callous. But … but this was Doctor Watts. This was someone she had known for years, someone who had put her back together in every sense. Someone who understood her pain, even as he helped to heal it. Someone without whom, she would be nothing.

    "Apology accepted, Doctor," she murmured as she sat down in the booth.

    The smile returned to Doctor Watts' face. "Excellent," he said. "Now, you're probably both wondering why I'm here."

    "The question had crossed our minds," Tempest said.

    "I have no doubt that operations here in Vale will conclude successfully, now that you have taken command," Doctor Watts said. "Which means that I am looking ahead to the next phase: Mistral. I am preparing the ground, as it were. An opportunity has arisen for me to make a connection that will be very useful once the theatre of operations changes, but to secure that connection, I need your help. Now, here is what I need you to do…"

    XxXxX​

    "Are you okay, Jaune?" Ruby asked as the cab carried them through the streets towards the Mistralian embassy. It was a spacious taxi, with enough room in the back for Pyrrha's dress to sprawl out a little bit without getting crushed or creased, and with enough room as well for two rows of seats, facing one another. Ruby sat with her back to the driver's compartment, facing the rear window and Jaune and Pyrrha, who faced forwards.

    Opposite Ruby, Jaune's legs were bouncing up and down a little bit, twitching as if he'd been shocked or something.

    He smiled. "Is it that obvious?"

    "Kind of, yeah," Ruby admitted.

    Pyrrha placed a green-gloved hand on top of his. "I'm sorry, Jaune," she said. "There's still time to have the cab turn around."

    "What? No," Jaune said. "I'm not that nervous, not enough to ditch you."

    "I was thinking that possibly we could both not go," Pyrrha replied. "I don't want to make you unhappy."

    "Wouldn't that embarrass you to not show up?"

    "So?" Pyrrha asked.

    "So, I'm not that nervous," Jaune insisted. "I mean, I've faced way worse than this, right?"

    "Who are you trying to convince?" Ruby asked.

    Jaune let out a little laugh. "Okay, that's … okay," he admitted. "But the point is that I can handle this. It would be kind of stupid if I could risk my life in battle but not go to a party, right?"

    "Well…" Pyrrha murmured. "That … rather depends on what you're nervous about." She looked away from Jaune, and from Ruby as well, looking out of the window as the cab carried them through Vale.

    Night had already fallen; the darkness closed in earlier and earlier as autumn stole over Vale, and while it didn't seem so long ago that it had been light at nine thirty, now, it was dark by seven. By the time Ruby's birthday rolled around, it would be getting dark by four thirty, and winter would be even worse than that.

    Dark by seven wasn't so bad, Ruby supposed, and it meant that all the stores and such were lit up, which was cool to see. Vale hadn't officially switched on the lights for the Vytal Festival yet, but once it did, whole streets would be illuminated with special lights to celebrate the festival and everything it meant.

    Ruby had been seven years old the last time Vale had hosted the Vytal Festival; Uncle Qrow had gotten four tickets to watch the final match — 'cause I've got connections, kiddo' had been his explanation for how he'd done it; Ruby now felt she had a better idea as to what he'd meant by that; probably Professor Ozpin had done him a favour — and he and Dad had taken her and Yang into Vale for the day before the big fight. Ruby had been allowed to stay up later than she normally would have too, so that she could see the celebrations afterwards.

    It had been … it had been one of the most amazing things that she had ever seen: the lights strung up across all the streets with the symbols of the academies, doves of peace sitting alongside swords and axes. There were big screens set up all over the place so that people who couldn't get seated in the arena could still watch the fights, with special meet-up points where the fans could gather.

    And everyone seemed so happy. That was what Ruby remembered most about that, more than the lights or the bright colours, certainly more than the fight itself, was how happy everyone was. Everyone on the streets, everyone in the colosseum, they were all smiling, laughing, singing chants that were so complicated, it was amazing everyone could learn the words and keep the tune.

    That, for Ruby, was what made the Vytal Festival worth it. It wasn't about the fighting, that was … that was kind of silly, when you got down to it; it wasn't what anyone should be attending Beacon or Atlas or anywhere else for, and it wasn't what anyone should be focussing on as their ultimate goal at the academies. But the happiness, the joy that it spread throughout the kingdom and maybe throughout the whole of Remnant, the way that everyone could come together and celebrate — celebrate victory, celebrate peace, celebrate whatever they wanted — that made it worthwhile.

    Only recently, Ruby's main worry had been that she wouldn't find it all as much fun as she had when she'd been a kid, that she'd find that she'd grown out of it, and it didn't enthuse her the way it had done.

    Now, she was worried that nobody would be made happy by this year's Vytal Festival, that the grim mood that had gripped the streets of Vale and the hostility towards Atlas and the faunus that had sprung up out of nowhere meant that there would be no joy, no celebration, just a lot of moody and bad-tempered people watching a lot of pointless fights.

    Ruby watched Pyrrha, staring out of the cab window, and doubted that Pyrrha was thinking the same thing as she was, not least because Ruby doubted that Pyrrha considered the fights themselves to be pointless or silly.

    Ruby wondered what Pyrrha was thinking, then, as she stared out of the window. "Pyrrha … are you nervous too?"

    Pyrrha glanced at her. "I thought I was being more subtle than that."

    "More subtle than Jaune, maybe," Ruby replied, "but not that subtle."

    The corner of Pyrrha's lips twitched upwards for a moment, and then dropped again. "This," she began, "this will be my first public appearance since those allegations appeared, and while I think — while Arslan assures me — that I have convinced a lot of my doubters … I feel as though I'm bound to be asked about it."

    "I thought … I thought you were okay with that," Ruby murmured. "You said you were okay if they decided to take your spot in the temple away."

    "I am," Pyrrha replied. "I can bear it, at least. I have done what I can do, I have … proven myself to myself, and I hope that proves me to others also. But that doesn't mean I relish the prospect of being asked about the whole thing."

    Ruby supposed that she could understand that. Her eyes narrowed a little. "So … why are you both going to this thing again?"

    Pyrrha covered her mouth with one gloved hand as she laughed. "While I don't really want to talk about Cinder, I'm not going to let myself be driven out of life by these ridiculous unfounded rumours. As Jaune said, having put my life on the line, it would be a little absurd to be afraid now."

    Ruby nodded. "That makes sense," she said. "And Jaune, for what it's worth, I don't think you've got anything to worry about. It is Turnus that you're worried about, isn't it?"

    "There's an extent to which it's everybody else," Jaune said. "But, yeah, it's mostly that guy."

    "Like I said last night, I don't think you've got much to worry about," Ruby said. "He seems like a pretty decent guy. I don't think he'll give you any trouble."

    Jaune took a deep breath. "You're probably right," he admitted. "I mean, it's all going to be public, right? So … yeah. Yeah, you're probably right. Maybe I am worrying over nothing."

    "Mmhmm," Ruby said, nodding. "I like your suit, by the way," she added.

    "Really?" Jaune asked. "Thanks."

    He was wearing a bright blue suit that matched his eyes, with a pale yellow … sash — Ruby knew that wasn't the right word for it, there was a word for when that kind of thing was worn with a suit, and it sounded like cucumber, but Ruby couldn't remember what the actual word was, so sash it was — a pale yellow sash around his waist and a bow tie to match. The way they went together made even the white of his shirt feel fresher.

    The taxi slowed to a stop.

    "Here we are," said the cab driver, an elderly cat faunus with tufts of white hair growing out of his feline ears. "Thirty-nine lien, please."

    "Here you go," Pyrrha said, unbuckling her seatbelt and leaning forward to pass some lien cards through the little gap in the plastic screen separating the driver from the passengers. "Keep the change."

    "Thank you, ma'am."

    Ruby opened the door and was the first one out, her red cape falling behind her. She turned to watch Pyrrha and Jaune get out and also observed — as she had when they had gotten the taxi at the skydock — that the cab had two Valish flags on it, fluttering on either side of the bonnet like it was some kind of official vehicle. Ruby thought, uncomfortably, that this was supposed to protect the faunus cab driver from the kind of sentiments that were on the rise in Vale these days.

    She wondered if it worked and inwardly lamented that it was necessary.

    Pyrrha was the next one out, seeming to almost unfold out of the cab, her dress falling out around her, spreading across the pavement; Jaune followed, shutting the door behind him.

    The cab drove off, and Ruby turned away to face their destination.

    The Mistralian embassy sat in a very nice, old part of Vale; both the Mistralian and Atlesian embassies were in houses that had once belonged to aristocratic families, but which had both been sold after the war by their owners; Ruby couldn't help but find that kind of ironic.

    Anyway, it meant that this was a very nice, very high class neighbourhood, filled with old-fashioned houses, three or four floors high, built out of red brick and brownstone, all set back from the street by big gardens and wrought iron fences. It was the kind of place where the people who lived here probably lived very comfortably, even if a lot of the houses had been converted into flats by now because nobody wanted or could afford to live in such a huge house by themselves these days.

    The grounds of the embassy itself were larger than most, with a lot of open space on either side of the building which stood proud in the midst of the well-tended lawns on all three sides of it that Ruby could see. Flowerbeds, blossoming with chrysanthemums of every colour, sat on either side of the stone wall, topped with iron rails, that surrounded the grounds, while more flowerbeds lined the path that led to the embassy itself.

    The embassy was a tall building, six floors high, with lights burning in every window that Ruby could see.

    The gates that would have barred the way onto the grounds were thrown open, and on the grounds themselves, Ruby could see armed men, and armoured; Turnus' men, presumably, including Turnus himself, who seemed a lot bigger than he had the night before as he walked towards her.

    "Ruby!" he called out to her. He was dressed in armour now, Atlesian armour covering his chest, his legs, and most of his arms, except for his left upper arm where there was only a black sleeve and a gold armband like the one that Pyrrha wore. His helmet was the only thing that didn't look Atlesian; it was metallic and crested, and it hung from his belt, knocking gently against his hip as he walked. He wore a sword about his waist, and in one hand, he held a long spear, with a point at each end.

    "Hey," Ruby said, smiling.

    As he drew near, Turnus bowed his head to Pyrrha. "Pyrrha."

    Pyrrha offered a very slight curtsy. "Lord Rutulus."

    Turnus turned his gaze on Jaune, staring at him for a moment.

    Jaune stared back.

    Neither of them said anything.

    "Hmm," Turnus murmured, before returning his attention to Ruby. "I'm glad you could make it," he said.

    "It's no trouble," Ruby replied. "It might even be fun."

    "I'm not sure about that," Turnus said, "but I hope you won't be too bored. Now, come, I'll introduce you to some of my men."

    He turned away, gesturing with one hand for her to come with him.

    Ruby did not follow immediately, but looked to Jaune and Pyrrha. "Well, have fun, you guys."

    "Thanks," Jaune said. "You … you too, I guess."

    Ruby smiled at him, then caught up with Turnus in a couple of quick strides as they walked back down the path, stepping over the flowerbeds — but not on the flowers — and onto the well-kept lawn, to where a couple of men were stood waiting for them.

    "Ruby, this is Lausus Agylla," Turnus said, "and this is Ufens Aequius. Lausus, Ufens, this is Ruby Rose, Beacon student, Juturna's friend, and up and coming huntress who has already done more valour in arms than any of us."

    Ruby laughed nervously. "That's … you're too kind."

    "None of us have looked a grimm horde in the face," Ufens declared. He was a big man, even bigger than Turnus — who was looking rather large himself tonight — muscular, with broad shoulders. His head was completely bald, but there was a black beard growing around his mouth, covering his jaw and hiding his lips. Like Turnus, he wore Atlesian armour, but he had painted his black all over, and there was no armband on his arm. Across his back, he had a bow and an axe slung. "None of us are likely to either, gods willing. That you have, well, that's something to be in awe of in anyone, especially your age."

    "Well, I…" Ruby wondered if she ought to tell them that she'd been unconscious for the actual fight at the Breach … but she had sort of looked it in the face down in the tunnel. And she found that she kind of enjoyed somebody thinking she was awesome. "I've always tried to do my best. Anyway, it's nice to meet you."

    "A pleasure, Miss Rose," said Lausus with a bow of his head.

    He was a man who looked about Turnus' age, tall and gangly, a bit like Jaune; he even had the same floppy blond hair, although Lausus' hair was even longer than Jaune's, so Ruby wondered how he stopped it from getting in his eyes — eyes which were hazel, where Jaune's were blue. Lausus was adorned with jewellery, gold bracelets upon his wrists, a thick gold armband upon his left arm and a smaller, slenderer one upon his right, a golden torque around his neck made like a serpent eating its own tail, rings on his fingers. Even his cuirass, which was made of white linen, had golden clasps joining the various parts of the armour together, most prominently at the shoulders. He had a sword at his hip, and across his back were slung a shield and a spear which was sufficiently heavy- and metal-looking that Ruby thought it might transform into something, although she couldn't say exactly what.

    "Lausus and I will be inside the building," Turnus said. "Ufens will be in charge of everyone outside; you'll be working with him. Not all of my personnel are huntsmen, but Ufens is a Haven graduate."

    "A few years ago now, my lord."

    "A huntsman is still a huntsman, right?" asked Ruby. "It'll be a pleasure to work with you!"

    "I have two men, Nisus and Euryalus, on the roof across the street watching the embassy," Turnus explained. "I have another two, Tarpeia and Tulla, on the roof of the embassy watching the surround, and the remainder here on the grounds while I am inside with Ufens, who I will let decide how to best place you. Until later, Ruby. Ufens."

    Ufens nodded. "My lord."

    "Lausus, come with me."

    "At once, my lord," Lausus said, and he followed Turnus as the latter set off towards the embassy, stepping back over the flowers and onto the path, before disappearing through the sliding doors into the embassy itself.

    "So," Ufens said. "My lord tells me you don't fancy coming to work for him."

    "No," Ruby said. "No, I don't. To be honest, I don't really like the idea of working for anyone. It doesn't sound like the sort of thing a huntsman should be doing. Um, no offence."

    "None taken," Ufens said evenly. "Though I'm curious why you think that."

    "Because huntsmen are supposed to use their own judgement on how to help people and when and … everything else, not just follow orders," Ruby said. "You … don't think so?"

    "I can't say I ever thought about it," Ufens replied. "I come from a place called Nersae: hardscrabble place, bad soil, hard, you have to work to get the bare scrap of life out of it. As if that wasn't enough, there are grimm about too. We plough the earth armed, because ploughing unarmed is an invitation to become dinner. We plough armed, and we hunt in the woods, and I decided that I preferred the axe and the bow to the plough, so I went to Haven. I can't say I had any high ideals about what it would mean to be a huntsman, just … more of the fighting grimm that I preferred to farming."

    "Then how did you end up working private security?" asked Ruby.

    Ufens scratched the top of his bald head. "Well, I didn't end up doing a lot of grimm fighting in the end. My first job after graduation was backing up the police in a raid on … they were growing something illegal, I forget what it was. That turned into a couple more jobs, and in the end, the old lord — my lord's father — said I might as well come and work for him full time, since I kept coming back regardless. And then … when the old lord passed away, and my lord asked me to come and help him out with this … it seemed like the right thing to do by his father, you know?"

    "Yeah," Ruby said. "Yeah, I think I can get that."

    "If you were to ask why other huntsmen might do this, or go into mercenary or security work," Ufens went on, "I think they'd tell you — certainly, Messapus would tell you — that when you're twenty-one and newly-graduated, being a huntsman sounds grand: fight the grimm, fight the crooks, be a hero. And then you turn forty, look around, and realise that after twenty years of contract work, you've got no savings, no pension, no house, and nothing to fall back on when you get too old or too injured to keep doing that job."

    "That … that makes sense," Ruby admitted. "My Dad became a teacher."

    "Good for him; that's safe work if ever I heard of it," Ufens said. "But being a teacher requires certain skills. Skills different from the certain skills you pick up in the field, so for a lot, it's easier to get a job like this. Now, I'm going to ask you a couple of questions, if I may: what's your semblance?"

    "Super speed."

    "And your weapon?"

    Ruby proudly pulled Crescent Rose out from behind her, stepping back away from Ufens as she unfurled the weapon to its full glory. "A combination scythe and high impact sniper rifle."

    "Sniper rifle, eh?" Ufens said. "In that case, I think the best place for you would be up on the roof with Tulla and Tarpeia. Keep an eye out for anything suspicious that might be headed this way and shout up if you spot trouble."

    XxXxX​

    The ballroom in the embassy was a spacious chamber, with a mosaic floor depicting, if Pyrrha was not mistaken, the Emperor Theseus receiving the blessing of a wizard and a witch prior to assuming the imperial dignity. As the tale went, they had not only blessed him and his enterprise but also showed him visions of Mistral's future, which gave the artists who had constructed the mosaic plenty of licence to surround the future first emperor with scenes of Mistral's later glory: the wars it had fought and the heroes who had made it great. From the ceiling hung suspended a great chandelier, a magnificent work of crystal and glass, so many layers that it was impossible to count them all, showering the ballroom beneath with refracted light. The ceiling was painted in a contrast to the floor: while the mosaic's tiles depicted events on earth, the fresco above concerned the doings of the gods, the play of Seraphis and Re and their hermai of the sky who danced and sang for their amusement. Serving staff in traditional Mistralian tunics of deep green moved around the room, passing amongst those guests who were already present, bearing trays laden with drinks or canapés.

    Towards the back of the ballroom, a cluster of musicians played soft music that invited but did not overpower.

    Pyrrha and Jaune were not the last to arrive, but nor were they the first; the ballroom was not full, but the floor was obscured in places by clusters of guests who mingled about, conversing in a soft hubbub in which no words or single conversation could be made out. Ladies and gentlemen alike were clad in an eclectic mixture of traditional Mistralian and more modern Valish or Atlesian styles, in a riot of colours which radiated beautifully under the light of the chandelier. Jewels glistened from around the wrists and throats of the ladies, sparkling like a field of stars.

    The ballroom was reached by descending a wide, grand staircase, the marble tiles concealed beneath a red carpet, with ornate iron bannisters set at intervals for the air of those who might struggle otherwise. Down those stairs, the two of them descended, into the assembly below.

    Pyrrha was dressed in a gown of rich green, with a halter neckline that wrapped around her neck and left her back and shoulders bare as it descended downwards, wrapping around her body beneath her armpits. The skirt was a full ballgown, with a layer of lighter, lime-green colour, decorated with leaf patterns running along the hem, at the bottom, partially concealed beneath a layer of the same rich emerald green as the bodice, which parted like curtains in the front and rode up at the sides, where a riot of red roses, leaves of green and purple and inky blue-black, large gleaming pearls, and golden chains were sewn at her hips.

    A pair of long opera gloves, of the same lime green colour as her inner skirt, concealed her hands and arms beneath her honour band, while the neckline of her gown was hidden from view by the necklace that she wore: three thick bands of gold, on which were set three sparkling, diamond-shaped emeralds, and from those bands of gold descended three more gold ingots shaped like arrows or spearheads lancing down, with another emerald set in the central arrow. Chains of gold emerged from the outer arrows, looping around Pyrrha's shoulders to fall down her back.

    "Lady Pyrrha!" the slightly guttural, accented voice of Lord Wong, Mistral's ambassador to Vale, hailed Pyrrha as she and her friends reached the bottom step.

    It did not take long for her to spot Lord Wong himself coming towards them. The ambassador was a middle-aged man with a round, pock-marked face, a moderately thick moustache upon his upper lip, and a very modest goatee upon his chin. He was dressed conservatively but after the Valish fashion, in a three-piece suit of dark grey, with the chain of an old-fashioned pocket watch stretching across his waistcoat. In one hand, he gripped a cane with a golden head shaped like an eagle. With him were a woman about his age, with black hair in gentle curls framing a heart-shaped face, dressed in a red cheongsam with a white lotus flower print, and a little girl with the same hair and eyes, wearing a green dress and white stockings who bounced up and down eagerly as she approached.

    "Lady Pyrrha," Lord Wong repeated as he drew closer, his cane tapping upon the mosaic floor. "Welcome to the embassy. We are honoured and delighted by your presence."

    Pyrrha bowed. "The honour is all mine, my lord; thank you for your gracious invitation."

    "Nonsense!" Lord Wong cried, waving his free hand dismissively. "A party without the pride of Mistral in attendance would have been unthinkable. Allow me to introduce my wife, Meyrin—"

    Pyrrha bowed once more. "Lady Wong."

    "Lady Pyrrha," Lady Wong replied. "Welcome to our humble residence."

    "And my daughter, Soojin," Lord Wong went on, a smile playing across his face. "Who is something of an admirer of yours, aren't you, Soojin?"

    "I'm your biggest fan!" Soojin cried, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet.

    Pyrrha chuckled. "Is that so?" she asked, as she knelt down in front of the excited little girl. "Then I am delighted to meet you, Lady Soojin."

    Soojin's smile widened yet further. "I can't believe I get to finally meet you! I've seen all of your matches, but I've never been able to go to one in person because we live here, and Papa and Mama said I was too young, but I really hope I get to go one day, and while you're here, can I ask you how you get your shield to—?"

    "Soojin," Lady Wong interrupted her reproachfully. "This is a party, not a fan expo; Lady Pyrrha is here to enjoy herself, not cater to your every question."

    "Although," Lord Wong added, "perhaps a photograph or two—?"

    Pyrrha got to her feet. "Of course, my lord; it would be my pleasure, but first, I would be remiss if I did not introduce my…" — her smile brightened — "boyfriend, Jaune Arc."

    Jaune bowed, as Sunset had taught him how to do. "My lord and ladies, it is an honour to be here."

    "Many would say that the honour is to be here on the arm of Lady Pyrrha," Lady Wong observed.

    Jaune let out a wry chuckle. "Believe me, my lady, I'm well aware of how lucky I am."

    "I am not sure if that can be true, foreign as you are," Lord Wong said, making Pyrrha's stomach grow cold at the thought of what might be coming, "but you are both young still, with many years ahead of you. I remember when I was a young man—"

    Lady Wong cleared her throat, while glaring sharply at her husband.

    "But those days are long gone and have little bearing on anything," Lord Wong said hastily.

    Pyrrha smiled graciously. "Now, about that photograph…?"

    Lord Wong laughed. "Of course, of course! Lady Pyrrha, if you please. Mister Arc, perhaps you will do the honours."

    Jaune's smile lost a lot of tension as he said, "Of course."

    As Pyrrha knelt down once again with little Soojin, placing one arm around the girl's shoulders, Jaune accepted the scroll which Lord Wong plucked from his breast pocket, before he and his wife retreated a short distance out of earshot.

    Jaune opened up the scroll and held it at arm's length in front of him, pointing towards Pyrrha and Soojin.

    "Everybody say … everybody say 'win'!" Jaune said.

    "Win!" Soojin cried at the top of her voice, while Pyrrha hoped that her smile reached her eyes; in all her interactions with her fans, those with children were the ones where she hoped most to avoid disappointing them.

    The flash on the scroll blazed out once, twice, three times. "There," Jaune said, reversing the scroll so that Pyrrha — and Soojin — could see the picture. "How does that look?"

    Soojin clasped her hands together. "Thank you!" she said brightly, with a bow in Jaune's direction.

    "Nothing would please Soojin better than to spend all evening with you," Lord Wong said, as he retrieved his scroll from Jaune, "but we have other guests to greet and speak to, and so, farewell for now, Lady Pyrrha, Mister Arc; hopefully, we will be able to speak again later."

    "I … hope so too, my lord," Jaune murmured.

    "And I hope that you will cheer for me, and for my teammates, in the Vytal Festival," Pyrrha added to Soojin. "We're all counting on you."

    Soojin's eyes widened at that. "I will! I will!"

    "I have promised that if she gets good grades in school, then she may attend the tournament in person," Lord Wong confided. "It isn't every day one gets to watch their hero bestride the grandest stage in Remnant."

    Pyrrha coughed gently into one hand. "Well, I shall certainly do my best. Thank you, my lord, my lady; have a good evening."

    "And you, Lady Pyrrha," Lady Wong said. "Come, Soojin."

    "But Mama!"

    "Come," Lady Wong repeated, taking her daughter by the hand and leading her away. "Pyrrha is not a toy for you to have all to yourself."

    Pyrrha watched them go. She slipped her hand into Jaune's as the two of them began to drift leftwards, clearing the stairs for anyone who might come after. "That went well, I thought."

    "Yeah," Jaune agreed. "Yeah, I think it did."

    "Although I do wonder," Pyrrha added, "if she has seen my fight against Cinder. She said she'd seen all of them, but some parents might not consider a fight to the death to be appropriate."

    "Maybe you could ask her?" Jaune suggested.

    Pyrrha looked at him. There was a smile on his face.

    "You're teasing me, aren't you?"

    "Only a little," Jaune assured her. "Does it matter? If she knows anything about what's being said, it doesn't seem to have dented her enthusiasm."

    "No," Pyrrha said. "No, I suppose not."

    "And Lord and Lady Wong seem to be on your side as well."

    "Yes, although I'm glad neither of them felt the need to bring up the subject," Pyrrha replied. She paused for a moment. "I sincerely hope that I don't disappoint her expectations, especially if she's going to be watching live."

    Jaune scoffed. "As if you could," he said. "Who have you got to worry about?"

    "Well, I'll certainly try and make you worry," Arslan's voice slipped between them from behind.

    Pyrrha turned around. "Arslan! You look … very nice."

    Arslan Altan was dressed in a gown of sheer gold, the fabric reflecting the light from the great chandelier above them, that flowed outwards in all directions and draped upon the floor at the hem. A pair of black lines ran horizontally across the bodice, one at the waist and one just beneath her breasts. An illusion neckline, a mixture of black lace and intricate gold scrollwork in swirling patterns covering her chest and wrapping around her throat. In place of her usual necklace of fire dust beads, delicate beads of amber hung from her neck to hang down across the illusion neckline, while a string of black pearls was clasped about one wrist. Arslan had taken the trouble to get her wild mane of flaxen hair under control — to an extent, at least — arranging it in artfully messy ringlets that fell down on either side of her face.

    "Just because I don't usually make an effort, P-money, doesn't mean I can't," Arslan said, a little tartly.

    "Of course not, I'm sorry," Pyrrha said. "I'm just a little surprised to see you here."

    Arslan grinned. "Turns out, second place is still good enough to get you invited to the good parties. Jaune."

    "Hey," Jaune said.

    "To be honest, I'm a little surprised to see you here, Pyrrha," Arslan said. "I knew you'd get invited, but I wasn't sure that you'd show up, what with … everything."

    "I … I won't be forced into hiding," Pyrrha said. "I've nothing to be ashamed of, nothing at all."

    "No, you don't," Arslan agreed. "I just wondered if you might take the easier path, that's all." She paused. "Especially since the press are here."

    "Are they?" Pyrrha asked.

    "This is a news story," Arslan reminded her. "Mistral's been banging on about getting this ruby back for years; what's so special about it?"

    "It's a symbol of our history, our heritage," Pyrrha said.

    "Your history, maybe, your heritage," Arslan replied. "This isn't exactly going to make people's lives better down on the lower slopes, is it?"

    "No," Pyrrha said. "But the point is why should the Valish have possession of some of our history, especially when they looted it in battle?"

    "The faunus might ask when we're going to start giving back all of their stuff in our museums," Arslan muttered.

    "That … one would hope that faunus living in Mistral see themselves as sufficiently Mistralian that it is our shared heritage," Pyrrha replied. "If not … then we have done them wrong and must do better, but if they really do feel that way, then by all means, their own treasures should be returned in … in turn."

    "But I don't see it happening," Arslan said.

    "No," Pyrrha murmured. "No, neither do I, not at this present moment. The point is … the point is that Vale has always snapped its fingers at Mistral's demand for justice in this matter, but now—"

    "Now, we've got them over a barrel, and we can put the screws to them," Arslan said.

    "A little crudely put, but … yes," Pyrrha said mildly.

    "I'm a little surprised that we wanted to hang onto it so badly," Jaune said. "I mean, like Arslan said, it's just a ruby, right?"

    "And a symbol of your victory over Mistral in the Great War," Pyrrha said. "I … there are times when I get the impression that … Vale and Mistral are very different in many ways, but I think our two kingdoms may be united by a sense of decline. A sense that our future will be less than our past, even as … even as for other kingdoms, the reverse may be the case."

    "You mean Atlas," Jaune said.

    "Yes," Pyrrha admitted. "And so … we cling to our pasts, to our histories, to the memories of what went before, when our lands were grand and glorious, when we had power. In Mistral, that past is a rather older one, the age of heroes, the Imperial golden age when Mistral flourished. For Vale, it is their victory in the Great War."

    Jaune frowned. "I don't know about Mistral, but I don't see it that way. I think we've got a lot to look forward to."

    "Like what?" Arslan asked.

    Jaune hesitated. "Well … what kind of things do you mean?" he asked back. "Are we going to be as technologically advanced as Atlas? I don't know. Maybe not, but maybe we will, maybe all those Starhead robots will give us the edge. Or not. Maybe we'll never be as rich as Atlas, maybe we'll never be as powerful as Atlas; we'll probably never have as strong a military as Atlas, but so what? Is this a game where we have to try and beat the high score? None of it matters so long as people are happy and able to live their lives. So long as we're rich enough that everyone can afford to do that, strong enough that everyone is safe to do that, then … then what else matters? If that's the future, then … then things look pretty good, I'd say."

    Pyrrha smiled. "You … you speak a great deal of sense," she said, "and if more people felt that way, then the world would be a better place, but … with Vale in the mood that it is now, I think it might be a mistake to be forcing them to hand over a symbol of their triumph."

    "And yet, here you are," murmured Arslan.

    "Yes," Pyrrha said. "Here I am." She paused. "And, since I am here, since we are here … I think we should probably start mingling, shouldn't we?"

    "Yeah," Jaune said. "Probably, we should." He held out his hand to her.

    Pyrrha placed her gloved fingers into his palm, and his fingers closed around them.

    And so, together, they walked into the crowd.

    XxXxX​

    "You have to admit, my lord," Lausus said, as he watched Pyrrha and Jaune move into the crowd swarming about the ballroom floor, "they do make a cute couple."

    "Is that so?" Turnus muttered. "You should be keeping your eyes on Lord Kiro; we are working after all."

    "I can keep my eyes on many things at once, my lord, if there's call to," Lausus said. "Although I must say, one question does tug at my mind: why she had to go all the way to Vale in order to find a lean and long-haired blond when I'm right here?"

    Turnus looked at him, fixing Lausus with a somewhat baleful gaze.

    Lausus was unabashed; it was a consequence of him knowing Turnus for so long that he had no fear of him. He met Turnus' gaze with a smile, and a shrug. "You may look at me as hard as you like, my lord, and I'd not normally be the sort of cad who would interfere in another fellow's meal, only … well, to be blunt, the main course doesn't seem to want you very much. Look at the way she looks at him."

    Turnus had been keeping an eye on Elagabalus, as he mingled amongst the guests in the ballroom — and seemed to be partaking a little too liberally of the free drinks being offered by the wait staff, to be perfectly honest; hopefully, he would manage to get through his speech without falling over — but he spared a glance in the direction of Pyrrha and … Jaune Arc.

    They looked … she was looking at him … to be appallingly honest, it reminded him a little of his parents.

    "I may not have known Mom, but I know Dad didn't marry her because of what her last name was or how strong it would make the family."

    You are as foolish as Juturna, Pyrrha, if you think you can simply ignore such things, especially now.

    But at the same time, they really did look … in love.

    Dammit.

    The practical arguments in favour remained, the reasons and good cause he had to feel entitled remained, but … now that he had seen … now that he had been reminded of…

    He was not a cruel man, save to those who gave him cause for cruelty. He practised to be kind and generous to his friends, a faithful and benevolent lord and employer to those who served him, an honourable man to those who warranted honour.

    He had never killed a man who had not earned death; he had never betrayed anyone. He had been … mildly corrupt, financially speaking, upon occasion, but never to the detriment of a friend, and he had been generous to complete strangers to balance out the scales.

    The idea of severing a happy relationship, a … a loving relationship, it did not fill him with glee. He did not rejoice at the idea. He hated it. His mother, were she alive, would surely scold him for the very idea of such a thing.

    But then, if my parents were alive, I wouldn't be in this position, would I?

    I have to think of what is best for the family.

    What     is best for the family?

    "Turnus," Lausus said, "if I might speak to you not as one of your soldiers but as someone who has known you since we were five years old with snot dribbling down out of our nostrils—"

    "That was you, not me," Turnus said.

    "Have you considered," Lausus went on, "that perhaps you ought to give this up as a bad job?"

    Turnus was silent for a moment, a scowl settling upon his face. "I … am considering it now," he admitted through gritted teeth.

    "Then do it!" Lausus cried. "For gods' sake, let it go! Unlike some of us, you have no need to marry into money, or good family for that matter; your family is better than most already, and you're already rich. Look to … a girl who wants you. A really nice girl who might not bring wealth or a grand old name to the table but who brings beauty and virtue and … and a heart full of love. Is that not enough for a man in your circumstances, blessed as you already are in material comforts?"

    "You speak like a poet," Turnus said.

    "Oh, thank you; I've been practising."

    "You also conjure a paragon," Turnus went on. "Where is such a wonder to be found?"

    Lausus stared at him so flatly it was almost enough to make Turnus think that he had something on his face.

    "I … I don't even know where to start with you, sometimes," Lausus said.

    Turnus frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

    "Nothing, my lord, nothing at all," Lausus said. "Now, not counting Lady Pyrrha, do you think any of these other ladies gathered here are single and eligible?"

    "I expect a good many of them will be Valish," Turnus said. "How much of Mistral's high society could you find in Vale on any given day?"

    "I don't mind Valish," Lausus said, craning his neck a little to see better. "So long as they're rich, or their fathers are."

    Turnus' eyebrows rose. "What happened to beauty, virtue, and a heart full of love?"

    "That was for you," Lausus said. "You can afford it; I must marry well if I'm to restore the family fortunes."

    "Is that why you're loaded with more gold than a treasure ship?" asked Turnus.

    Lausus raised his chin. "These are the equivalent of a peacock's feathers; they're how I advertise myself as a potential prospect."

    "It doesn't seem to be working very well," Turnus said dryly. "Perhaps you should do a dance."

    "Do you think that would help?"

    "No," Turnus said firmly. "We are, as I remind you again, working. Keep your eyes on Lord Kiro."

    "The only danger Lord Kiro is in is if his liver gives out on him," Lausus said.

    Turnus paused for a moment. "I must say I'm inclined to agree."

    "Does he always drink this much?"

    "He's a connoisseur."

    "He's not drinking like a connoisseur right now."

    Turnus frowned. "He has no job, no responsibilities, nothing to occupy him." His frown deepened. "In that respect … he's a lot like Juturna."

    XxXxX​

    "Pyrrha and Jaune are up there," Bon Bon murmured.

    "Hmm?" Tempest asked, looking up.

    The two of them were both dressed in the grey jumpsuits of janitors, their faces concealed beneath grey caps. They had arrived at the embassy that morning and had spent the day performing various janitorial tasks or getting yelled at for not doing said tasks to the best of their ability. Bon Bon had spent the day emptying bins, restocking those little yellow things in the urinals in the mens' toilet, mopping floors, vacuuming. Tempest had probably spent the day doing much the same thing.

    Now they stood in the embassy basement, in the dark, with no lights on, surrounded by various bits and pieces that had ended up accumulated in the basement over the years.

    And with a bomb between them.

    "Pyrrha Nikos and Jaune Arc," Bon Bon explained. "The A and the P in Team Sapphire. They're upstairs, at the party."

    Tempest was silent for a moment. "Does that bother you?"

    "A little bit, yeah," Bon Bon admitted.

    "Why?" asked Tempest.

    Bon Bon frowned. "What do you mean?"

    "I would have thought that it was an obvious question," Tempest said. "Why does it bother you? Are they friends of yours?"

    "No," Bon Bon said. "No, they aren't. But they are my classmates, and so, it bothers me that I might be about to blow them up."

    Tempest stared at her for a moment. "Well," she said, "if it makes you feel any better, I don't think that anyone is going to get blown up."

    "Even though we brought a bomb in here and tampered with the security system?"

    "We have to look as though we're making an effort," Tempest explained. "But, although Doctor Watts stands to benefit either way, I think that he stands to gain more from our failure than from our success." She paused. "But they are our enemies, and there may come a time when we have to kill them. Is that going to cause problems?"

    "Only from Pyrrha's skill," Bon Bon said.

    Tempest snorted. "Yes, that … have you seen her fight against Cinder?"

    "I saw her fight against Sunset first-hand."

    "You should watch the video," Tempest told her. "It's … instructive. Honestly, while I appreciate Doctor Watts' confidence in the success of the Vale operation, I don't know what we're going to do about her."

    "Does anything need to be done about her?" Bon Bon asked. "Her or Sunset? I … you know the endgame here, don't you?"

    Which is more than I can say, unfortunately.

    Tempest hesitated. "There is … an object, somewhere in this school. Something that Professor Ozpin is hiding. Hidden somewhere only Cinder can access. We need to find it, and we need to get it out."

    "And if that could be done without fighting—"

    "Impossible," Tempest said. "We need a distraction in order to draw eyes away from the hiding place, wherever that is."

    "You don't know?"

    Tempest shook her head. "Somewhere at Beacon, that's all I know."

    "But what I mean is," Bon Bon said. "There's no kill list?"

    "No," Tempest agreed. "No one is marked for death. It can be done with as much or as little bloodshed as necessary; it doesn't matter." She paused. "Although, I think if Professor Ozpin himself could meet his end, that would be a welcome bonus."

    "As little bloodshed as possible would suit me," Bon Bon said.

    Tempest smiled. "It's fine to say so, but if you'll allow me to offer you some advice: tell everyone that's because you prefer a more elegant solution to your problems instead of Cinder's brutishness. It will make you sound a little less squeamish. I think Doctor Watts prefers elegant solutions as well."

    "I'm not sure how elegant a bomb is," Bon Bon pointed out.

    "There is only so much you can come up with on a tight timescale," Tempest replied. "What did you tell your teammates, to excuse your absence?"

    "I told them I was meeting an old friend, one I hadn't seen for a while who had arrived in Vale unexpectedly," Bon Bon replied. "I told them that I was going to spend as much time with them as I could, so don't worry if I didn't show up tonight. I know the restaurant I'm going to say we went to, the club where we went dancing … I've got everything planned out. You?"

    "I told Trixie I was going to enjoy my Valish liberty before we have to return to the curfews and lights out of Atlas," Tempest said. "A lot of students have been indulging themselves in the freedom of Beacon. It's part of the cultural exchange that is the bedrock of the Vytal Festival."

    "Lucky you," Bon Bon said. She paused. "So, now we wait."

    "Yes," Tempest replied. "Now, we wait."

    XxXxX​
    Author's Note: Pyrrha's dress was designed and illustrated by Tiffany Marsou
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Chapter 65 - The Heart of Mistral, Part Two
  • Threadmarks
    • The Heart of Mistral, Part Two

    ​

    "You want a lollipop, kid?"

    Ruby's eyes narrowed as she glanced sideways at Tarpeia, who had spoken. "I'm fifteen, not six."

    Tarpeia grinned. She was a tall, muscular woman with visible muscles defined upon her bare arms, with a grey tail — a wolf's tail, maybe, or a dog's; Ruby couldn't work it out for certain — sticking out through a hole cut in the back of her pants. Her hair was black but shaved off on one side of her head and brushed entirely over onto the left side where it fell down across her face to the shoulder. Her left ear was hidden beneath her straight hair, but her right ear was covered in piercings practically from top to bottom. She wore a plain and slightly dented and beaten metal cuirass strapped across her upper chest, over a black halter top, and a dark purple skirt over black leather pants and boots with steel toecaps and bands of metal running around them. She was wearing black fingerless gloves on her hands, but little of them could be seen beneath metal vambraces that covered the backs of her hands and forearms. Her upper arms were covered in tattoos, as well as the purple bandana tied around her right arm.

    She was festooned with axes, with two thrust into the tiger stripe sash she wore around her waist, two slung across her back — the handles were visible sticking out above her shoulders — and two more worn at the back of her waist, their handles also emerging from behind her so that she could grab them.

    In addition, various pouches also dangled from her sash, into one of which she was reaching now, opening it up to reveal that it was full of lollipops in a riot of colours.

    "I don't carry these around in case I run into children," she said, plucking a red one out of the pouch and begin to unpeel the plastic wrapper. "But it's your loss," she added, as she stuck the lollipop into her mouth, the white straw sticking out from between her lips, bouncing up and down slightly as she sucked on the sweet.

    Ruby hesitated for a moment. "Okay, I'll have one. Do you have any lemon ones?"

    Tarpeia's grin broadened as she grabbed a yellow lollipop out of the pouch and tossed it to Ruby, who caught it one-handed.

    "Thank you," she said.

    "Tulla?" Tarpeia asked, taking the lollipop out of her mouth. "You want one?"

    Tulla gave the slightest shake of her head, not taking her eyes away from the grounds around the embassy as she stood at the edge of the roof, one hand resting upon the stone wall that stood between her and the drop. She was only a little taller than Ruby, with black bear ears emerging from out of her blue-black hair, which she wore in a bowl-cut, longer at the back than the front. She was dressed in white robes, trimmed with red and clinched with an orange belt around her waist, and baggy black trousers. Her sleeves were cut back, so that they left her forearms free and didn't get in the way of the bow that she held lightly in her left hand, while on her right hand — the one resting upon the wall — she wore one of those archer's gloves that probably had a name which Ruby didn't know, that covered her first two fingers but left the others bare.

    "Do you see anything?" Ruby asked as she unwrapped the lollipop that she had just caught.

    "No," Tulla murmured. "Nothing yet. Of course…"

    "Of course what?" Tarpeia asked.

    "I was just thinking," Tulla said. "If you wanted to cause trouble … you might want to get inside before we showed up."

    There was a moment of silence up on the roof.

    "That … makes sense," Ruby said. "Depending on what kind of trouble you wanted to cause."

    She still wasn't sure who would want to disrupt an event like this; Valish who were unhappy about giving the Heart of Mistral back? It seemed unlikely, but then, Ruby would have said that the ways in which Vale was descending into cruelty and bitterness seemed unlikely if you'd told her about it before it started happening.

    Still, that was the only motive she could come up with for attacking this event; the White Fang didn't like Mistral very much, true, but the White Fang in Vale was pretty much gone after what had happened in Mountain Glenn, and Cinder had no reason to make a move here.

    It seemed strange to think that the return of an old gemstone could provoke strong feelings in anybody.

    "But," she added, "I think Valish police are on guard here normally."

    "If you trust cops," Tarpeia muttered. She got out her scroll, opening it up and running her thumb over the screen.

    Turnus' face appeared on the screen. "Tarpeia? Is something wrong?"

    "Not up here, my lord," Tarpeia said, "but Tulla just had a thought: what if trouble was already in the building when we arrived?"

    Turnus was silent for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was raised louder. "Tulla, can you hold the fort up on the roof by yourself?"

    "Yes, my lord," Tulla said.

    "Good," Turnus said. "Tarpeia, come inside; you can help Lausus search the building. There's probably nothing here, at least I hope so, but it is a possibility. Well done, Tulla."

    "Thank you, my lord," Tulla said.

    "We'll be right there, my lord," Tarpeia added.

    "'We'?"

    "Ufens sent Ruby up here too, my lord," Tarpeia explained. "And you did say for Tulla to hold the fort alone."

    "Yes, yes, I did, didn't I?" Turnus said. "Very well, I look forward to seeing you again soon, Ruby."

    "We'll be there," Ruby said, as Tarpeia hung up. "Thank you," she added.

    "If Tulla's right, then she's going to be very bored," Tarpeia said. "And you seem like the kind of girl who appreciates some excitement."

    Ruby chuckled. "You could say that."

    Tarpeia stuck the lollipop back into her mouth as she walked briskly, almost jogging, loping with her long legs, across the roof of the embassy. Most of said roof was flat, complete with space to land an airship on the roof — although there wasn't one there now — but there was a little structure jutting out on top of the roof, with a door leading to some stairs down into the embassy itself, and it was towards that door that Tarpeia moved, with Ruby following.

    Ruby was right behind Tarpeia as the latter reached the door, taking the metallic handle and turning it.

    Nothing happened.

    Tarpeia frowned, pushing against the door, rattling the handle.

    The door did not open. It didn't even move.

    "Must be locked," Tarpeia grunted out of her half her mouth.

    Ruby licked at her lollipop. "I guess they didn't want anyone coming in that way during the party. Or else they keep it locked more often than not."

    "Either way, we don't want to go kicking it down," Tarpeia said. "We're supposed to be the security, not the damage. We'll have to go down the ladder and get in by the front door."

    That was how Ruby had got up to them in the first place: by climbing the grey metal ladder that ran all the way from the ground to the roof, passing by the many rows of windows as it went. Again, Tarpeia took the lead, her boots rattling upon every metal rung as she descended methodically downwards towards the well-kept lawn of the embassy.

    Ruby would have slid down with her hands and legs on the outside of the ladder, but with Tarpeia between her and the bottom, that wasn't really feasible, so she, too, climbed down one rung at a time, her cloak rustling behind her as it bounced lightly up and down.

    "Do you really think there's anything in there?" she asked.

    "Likely not," Tarpeia replied, calling up to her, "but we get paid to consider it. I mean, technically, we're paid to protect Lord Kiro, not the embassy, but since he's in the embassy, you know."

    "Yeah," Ruby said. "I think so. Can I ask, are you a huntress?"

    "Nah," Tarpeia said. "I never went to any school or passed any exams. I'm … just a bit of a thug, really. Why?"

    "I just wondered," Ruby explained. "How many huntsmen are there in Rutulian Security?"

    The only sound as Tarpeia thought was the sound of her boots on the ladder. "Five … I think. I know Lausus graduated from Haven, but I don't know if his old man ever did; I don't know everything about everyone's past. Sorry."

    "It's okay," Ruby assured. "It doesn't really matter; I was just a little curious."

    "Nothing wrong with that," Tarpeia said. "Can I ask you something?"

    "Sure."

    "What do you get out of going to that school?" Tarpeia asked. "Like I said, Lausus graduated, but Camilla never did, and she'd rip him apart if it came to a fight, and the same for my lord, too. Even I … I don't know if I'd win, but I'd be willing to give it a shot. And from the sounds of it, you're pretty damn handy already, and you're only … first year?"

    "Yep."

    "So what are you learning that makes it worthwhile? Because it doesn't seem like you learn how to fight," Tarpeia said.

    "No, I guess we aren't," Ruby admitted. "Although we do get to see how a range of opponents fight in combat class, sparring with our classmates. Different weapons, different styles and techniques, so that if we run into something like them in the field, we aren't caught by surprise, I suppose. But mostly—"

    "Book learning?"

    "Some of that, yeah," Ruby said. "But … Professor Ozpin says that most of the students have already arrived at Beacon knowing how to fight, but that school teaches them how to be heroes."

    Tarpeia reached the bottom of the ladder, leaping the last few feet onto the grass. "You mean like a mindset thing?"

    Ruby slid down the ladder the last bit of the way. "I think so, yeah."

    "Is it working?"

    "Um … for some people," Ruby replied diplomatically.

    Tarpeia didn't reply. She just sucked on her lollipop, pushing it from one side to the other around her mouth, and smiled.

    The two of them walked around to the front of the embassy. Ufens spotted them, lumbering over even as they came closer to him.

    "Something up?" he asked.

    Tarpeia took the lollipop out of her mouth. "I hope not, but my lord asked us to come inside, help Lausus search the place, in case someone got here or something was done before we arrived."

    Ufens grunted. "Makes sense, I suppose. Does Tulla need anyone up there with her?"

    "She says not," Tarpeia replied.

    "Hmm," Ufens murmured. "I might send Catillus up there anyway. Good luck in there; I hope you find nothing."

    "I hope so too," Tarpeia replied, turning away from Ufens and approaching the door.

    The door which, as they walked towards it, was covered from outside by a green barrier, a lattice of hexagons making up a wall that covered up the doors and windows and surrounded the whole embassy, rising upwards toward the roof.

    "What the—?" Tarpeia muttered.

    "Is that hard light?" Ruby asked.

    Tarpeia didn't answer, except to pull one of the axes from her sash and throw it at the door. The weapon spun through the air, before striking the barrier, where it simply stopped, dead, the blade biting nothing, before the axe flopped down to the steps with a thump and a rattle.

    Tarpeia twisted her wrist, and a small purple stone — or not a stone, a gravity dust crystal — began to glow, along with a second crystal set in the shaft of the axe itself as the axe flew back into her outstretched hand. "Ufens!" she yelled. "We've got a problem here!"

    It was not just Ufens; from the corners of Ruby's eyes, she could see all the Rutulians who had been scattered across the grounds moving towards them.

    "I guess it's a security measure," Ruby said. "Something to protect the embassy against attack. Although that doesn't feel very Mistralian, no offence."

    "None taken," Ufens said. "But this is Vale, not Mistral, after all."

    "Sure, but why is it up?" Tarpeia demanded. "If there was anything out here to be worried about, we'd know about it before anyone inside."

    Ufens got out his scroll, his fingers moving with surprising deftness. "Euryalus, do you see anything?"

    "Other than the shield that just went up? No, nothing."

    "I'll see what my lord has to say about it; maybe something happened inside," Ufens muttered. He frowned. "I can't get a signal. How can there be no signal? He's right there."

    "Could something be jamming it?" asked Tarpeia.

    "But why?" demanded Ufens.

    Ruby got out her own scroll, flicking through her call lists until she found Jaune's name. She pressed the call button, but an error message flashed up on the screen — no signal, just like Ufens said. "I'm not getting anything either," she said.

    Jaune, Pyrrha, what's going on in there?

    XxXxX​

    "Pyrrha Nikos!"

    Pyrrha stopped, inhaling through her nostrils, and ever so slightly tightened her grip upon Jaune's forearm as she turned, her skirt rustling as it swooshed around her, to face the woman who had called her name.

    She was a reporter; Pyrrha had seen her on television, and her name was … Merope, Merope Plei, a woman about Professor Goodwitch's age, with brown hair worn in a tight bun at the nape of her neck. She was dressed in an all-white jacket, blouse, and pencil skirt, with sparkling silver sandals on her feet. A necklace of seven diamonds, sparkling amidst a string of black pearls, hung moderately loosely around her neck. She held a microphone in one hand, and a cameraman followed her, the camera fixed upon his subject.

    Pyrrha affected not to notice the camera. This was something at which she had had no small amount of practice: keep your attention on the interviewer, don't look into the camera unless you're being invited to speak directly to camera: it looks nervous and rude to the interviewer.

    "Yes?" she said, in a tone that was calm and polite. "Hello."

    "Pyrrha Nikos, I'm Merope Plei of MBC In the Evening, may I ask you a few questions?"

    "Of course," Pyrrha said, because there were times when refusing to answer a question was worse than the worst answer you could possibly give. She loosened her grip upon Jaune's arm so that he could step away from her if he chose to.

    He didn't, for which she was quite grateful.

    Merope held the microphone out towards her. "Would you agree that this is a proud and historic day for Mistral?"

    Pyrrha felt gratified that they were starting with something actually relevant to tonight's event. "I'm sure that many people will be glad to see this part of our heritage returned to Mistral, where it can be enjoyed by all Mistralians in the Mistral Museum," she said.

    "That isn't exactly the question I asked: do you think this is a proud moment for Mistral?"

    "I think … that those who negotiated the return of the Heart of Mistral have reason to be proud of their accomplishment."

    "You're like a politician, Miss Nikos; you're not answering the question."

    Pyrrha hesitated for a moment. "I think… I think that there are many things of which Mistral can be proud, but I must say I'm not sure that getting a ruby back, however much history it possesses, is one of them."

    "So you don't think that this is a historic moment?"

    "It is … of historical significance," Pyrrha replied.

    "I see," Merope murmured. "Are you proud of yourself?"

    "I beg your pardon?"

    "You've had a bit of a tough time of it lately with the allegations made against you, but you've clawed back some of that support with your recent actions, your duel against this mysterious Cinder Fall, are you proud of yourself for that?"

    Yes, I am. I'm proud because I won, because I proved that I could win, that I could triumph over her. I am proud because I proved to myself that I am not doomed to irrelevance. "I wish that I had finished her," she said.

    Merope's eyebrows rose. "You wish that you'd killed her?"

    "She was my enemy," Pyrrha said. "She is an enemy of the world."

    "How so?" Merope asked. "We know so little about this woman, except that she's been declared an outlaw."

    "She worked with the White Fang to cause the Breach here in Vale," Pyrrha said. "Is that not enough to name her an enemy?"

    "Do you know more?"

    "No," Pyrrha lied.

    "Even though she was friends with your team leader, Sunset Shimmer," Merope said. "That's been substantiated by witnesses; they were frequently seen together."

    "Sunset was deceived by Cinder," Pyrrha declared. "As many others were."

    "Such as Professor Lionheart?" Merope asked. "Do you think he has questions to answer?"

    "I would not presume to say," Pyrrha replied.

    "But you were not and are not associated with Cinder Fall in any way?"

    "No," Pyrrha said firmly. "As I believe I proved."

    "So you deny the rumours that the fight between you was staged."

    "I would invite anyone who thinks that fight was staged to put their name to that accusation," Pyrrha said, her voice sharpening like the edges of Miló. "They may get the opportunity to see for themselves that I do not stage fights."

    "Are you saying you would fight more duels?"

    "If I must," Pyrrha said, "to protect the integrity of my name."

    "To the death?"

    "No, of course not," Pyrrha replied. "I would never try and kill anyone merely for the sake of my pride or my reputation."

    "Unless their name was Cinder Fall?"

    "Unless they deserved death for other reasons," Pyrrha corrected her.

    "So will you be challenging those who are petitioning to have you stripped of your honours in the temple?"

    "I will challenge anyone who is trained to fight," Pyrrha said. "I will not attack anyone who does not know how to defend themselves."

    "I see," Merope said evenly. "And are you worried about losing your temple honours?"

    Pyrrha wasn't sure if she was being asked if she was afraid it would happen or if she would mind if it did. "I would rather it didn't happen," she said, "but I don't think it will."

    "You don't think you'll lose your honours in the temple?"

    "No," Pyrrha said. "I think that I've shown these accusations for the nonsense they are."

    "You are willing to state, here, categorically, on camera, that there is no truth to the allegations about your relationship with Cinder Fall."

    "I am," Pyrrha said. "Absolutely and without hesitation."

    "Then where do these allegations come from, and why do so many people believe them?"

    Pyrrha hesitated for a moment, gathering her thoughts, assembling her reply, mustering it like a lord raising an army beneath their manner. How much ought she to say, how cautious ought she to be, how mild and modest, how conciliatory, how…?

    Except that that hasn't actually helped me, has it? It has not stopped the breeding of these people who seek to tear me down.

    Well then, so much for them.

    "I," she said, "am Pyrrha Nikos. I was trained by the great Chiron himself, I am descended from the Emperors of Mistral past, and I have four times ridden in triumph through the streets and dedicated my spoils to Victory. And I am … blessed in the love of the people who have taken me into their hearts and raised me up with their unfailing support."

    That was not entirely how she saw it, certainly not all of the time, but this was not time to get into the particulars of how, exactly, she felt about being an object of celebrity and adoration.

    "But that support, those triumphs, the honours which I have done by Mistral have bred envy in others, and I have no doubt that that envy, and the desire to see me humbled, the belief that I am made too proud and set too high, is behind these scurrilous and wholly untrue accusations against me. Those who could not defeat me in the arena wish instead to see me stripped of all those things which I earned by my own skill and effort. Very well. Let them take them, if they can. I hope, and I believe, that the people of Mistral whose support has always strengthened me and driven me to victory will see through this ridiculous defamation of my name, but if not, then let it be so.

    "For I am Pyrrha Nikos, and someday, I will become a huntress, and whether I am a huntress as I will be or a student as I am now or something completely different, my sword and shield will always be at the service of Mistral, whether Mistral admires me or reviles me or is completely indifferent to my existence, then I will ever be at her service. That is my vow, upon my honour and before the gods of home, and I mean to hold to that vow such that one day men will look at my life and say it was impossible to believe that I was ever other than what I appear to be: someone who loved her city and was as she was to herself. Can my slanderers say the same?"

    Merope stared. "I … think we'll leave it there," she said. "Thank you, Lady Pyrrha."

    She started to bow her head, then seemed to think better of it and stop herself before it could be proven to be anything more than a particularly deep nod, then backed away, then turned away and disappeared into the crowd, her cameraman following after.

    Pyrrha let out a sigh of relief she hadn't known was building up inside her. She looked at Jaune. "How did I do?"

    Jaune smiled, although his smile had a slightly nervous tint about it. "You really went for it at the end there. Pulled out all the stops. Are you sure that was the smart thing to do?"

    "Honestly, I have no idea," Pyrrha admitted. "But it was how I felt, and I … hiding how I feel did not really help me at all, did it?"

    "No," Jaune replied. "No, I guess not. It was … impressive. I'm not sure how people in Mistral will react, but from where I was standing, it was impressive. They certainly weren't able to say you hadn't answered the question on that one."

    "Indeed," Pyrrha said, a touch of amusement entering her voice. "I take comfort from the fact that she stopped asking afterwards; with luck, she had no more questions to ask."

    Jaune nodded. "And for what it's worth, even without knowing everything I know, I don't know anyone who could look at what you've done and think that you could be in league with Cinder. Although…"

    "'Although'?"

    "Although you might not have wanted to be so clear about the extra duels," Jaune suggested. "You don't want to get yourself so backed up with challenges you don't have time for anything else."

    Pyrrha chuckled, covering her mouth with one green-gloved hand. "Well, I hope that it won't come to that," she replied. "If I have that many challengers, or those whom I must challenge, then things are bad indeed."

    Jaune smiled. "And you're fine calling everyone out like that?"

    "I'm not looking to enter politics," Pyrrha said. "I didn't like the thought of giving up my reputation unfought, but at the end of the day, I don't need the good opinion of anyone. Well … not of most people. Especially," — she took a step closer to him — "especially if I'm going to be working in the shadows for the foreseeable future. In which case, I must admit, it might be better if I were regarded with indifference, but—"

    "But you're allowed to like being liked," Jaune assured her. "For all the trouble that your life, your status, everything about it has caused you, I think it's okay for you to admit that, actually, being admired for something you're good at isn't all bad."

    Pyrrha bowed her head for a moment. "If I had never been an object of admiration, then that would be one thing, but … to have it, frustrating as it has sometimes been, only to lose it for reasons that are not my fault, which are completely unfounded and untrue … that would be a stinging blow indeed."

    "Good thing it won't happen then, huh?" Jaune said. "I mean, look at the ambassador's daughter. Look at—"

    "The reactions to my fight," Pyrrha added. "One of many reasons I'm glad I fought that night."

    Jaune nodded. "You have had more of a spring in your step since that night."

    Pyrrha's eyebrows rose. "Really? A spring in my step?"

    "Uh-huh," Jaune said. "More confident, more sure of yourself. You don't hesitate as much when you speak."

    "I don't?" Pyrrha asked. "I had no idea. But I suppose I do feel more certain of myself. I haven't felt this confident in who I am since before the dance."

    "You're Pyrrha Nikos," Jaune told her.

    "Yes, I am," Pyrrha said. "But now I feel as though I know better, or know once more, what that means."

    Anything else they might have said to one another was interrupted by the sound of Lord Wong clinking the side of his champagne glass. Gradually, all the chatter in the ballroom fell silent, and the eyes and faces turned to the ambassador.

    "Ladies and gentlemen, honoured guests," Lord Wong said, his voice raised to carry across the room — not that he needed to raise it far, for he spoke loudly already. "We are gathered here for a moment of restitution. A moment when a ghost of the past is finally laid to rest. The Heart of Mistral, that most brilliant and precious gem, was not the only thing that Mistral lost at the Battle of the Four Sovereigns, or in the wider Great War."

    Indeed not, Pyrrha thought, thinking for a moment of all the men and women who had marched from small villages and quiet towns across Anima, answering the summons of their lords and of their Emperor, shouldering spears and staves and sharpened hoes because they could not let the Valish challenge pass them by.

    We'll show them all, whate'er befall,

    Old Mistral counts for something still.

    They had not won the war, they might not even have proved that Mistral counted for anything in the modern world, yet Pyrrha did wonder if those men and women who had fought the war, who had marched from their small villages and quiet towns, and the petty lords who had led them on, taking their ancestral blades from off the walls and girding their ancient armour on, might not have displayed more of the famous Mistralian valour than all the heroes of The Mistraliad.

    "But this is at least a loss we may bring home again," Lord Wong went on, "and for that, Vale has our gratitude. And so, it is my pleasure to welcome tonight, the First Councillor of Vale, Aspen Emerald."

    A round of polite applause, in which Pyrrha and Jaune joined, greeted Councillor Emerald as he stepped out of the crowd, the light from the chandelier shining upon his proud antlers. In his hands, he held a wooden casket, a carved box which no doubt contained the Heart of Mistral within it.

    But first, he turned to the crowd.

    "My grandfather fought in the Great War," he said, "and he was proud to have done so. He was proud to have fought for Vale and for the freedom of the faunus. No doubt, there were many who fought for Mistral who were equally proud to have fought for their kingdom, its pride, its flag, its honour. After the war, I fear that there were many who did not heed the words of the Last King of Vale: with malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as we are given to see the right, let us bind up the wounds of all our kingdoms. Nowhere, I fear, is this more apparent than in the matter of the Heart of Mistral: an item taken from a slain enemy and kept as a trophy; a symbol of victory for Vale, but for Mistral, a sore wound that refused to heal.

    "No more. Today, at last, we bind up that wound. Today, we leave the injury of the past behind and look towards a new, bright future of Valish and Mistralian cooperation. Tonight, it is with both humility and pleasure that I return the Heart of Mistral to the descendant of its rightful owner, Lord Elagabalus Kiro, on behalf of the Council and the People of Mistral."

    More applause, a little louder this time, as Lord Kiro stepped out of the crowd, his boots squeaking on the floor.

    Pyrrha noticed Turnus edging towards the front of the crowd, with Lord Lau— no, he wasn't a lord any longer, was he? His family had been stripped of that rank — with Lausus Agylla, then, by his side. Their eyes were fixed upon Lord Kiro.

    Pyrrha had met Lord Kiro himself a few times before, although not very often. She could admit to herself that he had not impressed her greatly; he was like many of the men she had met before Jaune; he saw her name, her reputation, but not herself. And though she could now admit that she was not wholly indifferent to that same reputation, that still did not mean that she liked it to be taken as the sum total of all she was.

    Plus his breath frequently smelled of drink to an uncomfortable extent, at least when Pyrrha had encountered him.

    Judging by the slight roll to his gait, like a sailor, as he walked forwards, Pyrrha thought that that might be the case now, if she had been close enough to smell his breath.

    "Thank you, First Councillor," he said, plucking the wooden cask from Councillor Emerald's unprotesting hands. "Thank you so much indeed for your warm words. Yes, we are most fortunate, most blessed, to have with us the highest representative of the Kingdom of Vale, the kingdom which killed my ancestor and stole his property, here to finally give back what is rightfully mine." He laughed. "Except that it is not mine, is it? This gem, this precious jewel," — he opened the box and took out the Heart, holding it up so that the light from the chandelier caught it, making it sparkle beautifully — "this was bestowed upon my house by the Emperor himself upon his daughter's wedding day, and if it had not been looted from a corpse in war, it would be with my family still. But, because there has been a ghoulish intermission in my family's custody, I am told that I may not take back what is mine, but only carry it homeward, to be placed in a museum for the common people to gawk at."

    "This is not what I expected him to say," Jaune whispered into her ear.

    "I don't think this is what anyone expected him to say," Pyrrha replied, equally quietly.

    Lord Wong looked as though he was determined to look anywhere but at Lord Kiro, with the result that he was examining the mosaic on the floor as if he was seeing it for the very first time. Councillor Emerald was looking straight ahead, a rictus smile set on his face as though it had been painted there.

    Merope Plei's cameraman was filming all of it, as whispers ran through the crowd.

    "Of course, the esteemed Valish councillor is not the only guest we are fortunate enough to have amongst us tonight," Lord Kiro went on. "We are also graced by Lady Pyrrha Nikos, the Princess Without a Crown, whose great-grandfather ordered my ancestor, and many other valiant Mistralians, to their deaths in the Great War, and specifically in the Battle of the Four Sovereigns. All hail to the butcher's descendant, let us all thrill to her beauty and her grace. Although if the rumours are true, it seems that butchery may run in the family."

    Gasps of shock ran all through the crowd, although Pyrrha guessed that at least some of those who gasped did so in shock that he had been so gauche as to say aloud what others merely thought in private.

    "Wait here, Jaune," she murmured as she took her hand from his arm.

    "What happened to not challenging those who couldn't fight?" Jaune said softly.

    "I'm not going to hurt him," Pyrrha said. "But I need to make my position clear."

    She could not fight Lord Kiro — he had never trained in arms, at least not to her level; if she fought him, she would look like as much of a mere bully as if she had challenged Jaune's former brother-in-law to single combat — but she could make it clear that she had no intention of suffering in silence to be insulted.

    She stepped forward, just past the edge of the crowd, so that she could be seen without seeming to seek to grab all attention.

    "Lord Kiro," she said, "if you were a warrior, then I would call you out. As you are not, for which you may be thankful, I ask if there is a warrior here willing to champion you and defend your lies." She looked at Turnus. "Perhaps you, Lord Rutulus?"

    Turnus' eyebrows rose, and it seemed to take him a moment to realise that she was sincere. When he did, he let out a sort of cough laugh before he said, "That would be a rare sparring match, I have no doubt, Lady Pyrrha, but I fear that I cannot champion words that I know to be false. I do not doubt your honour, I will not question it, I will not fight in defence of one who questions it." He stepped forwards, taking Lord Kiro firmly by the arm with his free hand. "However, I ask you all to pardon Lord Kiro, he is … unwell, and would not speak thus if he were in health. With your leave, Lord Wong, I will take him to the bathroom to … recover his composure."

    "I am not unwell—"

    "Come along, you," Turnus muttered, effortlessly manhandling Lord Kiro, in spite of his squirming struggles and his protestations, towards one of the exits from the ballroom. Lausus followed after them.

    The silence that followed Lord Kiro's departure could only be described as 'embarrassed.'

    It only felt moreso the longer it was given to settle into the room, like a guest who, though uninvited, proceeds to sit down on the window seat and make themselves very comfortable indeed, so that with each passing moment, it becomes harder and harder to bid them go without seeming rude.

    "Perhaps," Lord Wong said, "Lady Pyrrha, scion of the House of Nikos, who once held the Heart of Mistral in their possession, might say a few words upon this occasion."

    Thank you very much, my lord, Pyrrha thought, as eyes began to turn in her direction.

    Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking…

    She closed her eyes for a moment and tried to gather thoughts she had not known she needed until a moment ago.

    "This," she said, "is a proud and historic moment." Thank you, Ms Plei. "A moment of gratitude and celebration."

    She spoke slowly, enunciating each word with immense precision, practically drawling her words as much as she could, giving herself time as she slowly spoke each word to think about the words that would come after without seeming to hesitate or break up her sentences. It was not something that she did in private conversation, because it sounded incredibly artificial to her own ears — or worse, made her sound stupid — but it was a technique she had been taught for getting through interviews after matches, which was really the worst time to be interviewed, when you were tired, coming down off the adrenaline rush, with the roar of the crowd still ringing in your ears.

    Although this situation is giving it competition. "We celebrate the return of this beautiful jewel to Mistral, where it belongs not to my family or any family, but to the whole kingdom to see and enjoy. And we are grateful to Vale for returning it to us." She bowed her head, and her speech quickened to something closer to normal as she said, "Thank you, First Councillor, thank you, if I may be so bold, from all of Mistral, with all of our hearts."

    Fortunately, everyone understood that she had finished — Lord Wong had only asked for some brief words, after all — and began to applaud, clapping their hands together lightly, fingers to palms.

    Councillor Emerald smiled and nodded to her as the musicians began to play once more.

    Pyrrha's lips twitched in a smile. "How was that?" she asked Jaune in a hushed whisper.

    "You sounded a little … odd, at times, the way you were stringing out your words," Jaune said.

    "I know," Pyrrha muttered. "That's why I prefer to hesitate when I'm unsure what to say."

    "But there was nothing wrong with the sentiment," Jaune assured her. "I'm sure that with practice, you'd be great at that."

    "I do not really desire practice," Pyrrha replied. "I rather hope that I never have to do anything like that again."

    XxXxX​

    "Get your hands off me," Elagabalus protested weakly as Turnus half steered, half-dragged him towards the nearest bathroom. "I am paying you to protect me—"

    "I am protecting you," Turnus said, "from embarrassing yourself any more than you have already."

    "Is it embarrassing to speak the truth?" Elagabalus asked.

    "Sometimes, yes," Turnus replied. Even when it isn't dangerous.

    There was a bathroom not too far from the ballroom, marked by the illuminated sign lit up in green beside the two doors for men and women.

    Turnus pushed open the door into the men's toilet and dragged Elagabalus inside, Lausus following behind them. The mossy green carpeted floor of the corridor outside was changed at once to magnolia tiles, slightly slippery as though they had not long been mopped, with a row of sinks — or rather, one continuous sink-trough with a row of taps running along it — taking up one entire wall. The other wall was occupied half by cubicles and half by urinals.

    "Hold my spear a second, won't you, Lausus?"

    "Of course, my lord," Lausus said, taking Turnus' spear, Actor, from his hand.

    Turnus guided Elagabalus towards the back of the room, leading him along the rows of taps, while Lausus remained close to the door, keeping a respectful distance.

    "What are we doing?" Elagabalus asked sourly.

    Turnus turned on one of the taps, sticking his free hand under it; with his glove on, he could not feel the water, but he could see it pooling a little in his hand regardless.

    Until he flicked it into Elagabalus' face. And then he did it again.

    "Gah!" Elagabalus growled, flinching away from the water, raising his arm to shield himself. "Stop that! What are you doing?"

    "Trying to recall you to your senses a little," Turnus said flatly. "How much did you have to drink, or don't I want to know?"

    "I had a little aperitif in the hotel bar before we came here," Elagabalus said. "It was nothing, really, just something to steady my nerves."

    "Your nerves?" Turnus repeated. "What did you have to be nervous about? All you had to do was take the Heart from the First Councillor and say a few pleasant nothings. Instead … what were you thinking?"

    Elagabalus put down the box containing the Heart of Mistral, resting the wooden cask down in the trough that served as a communal sink for anyone who wanted to use the bathroom. He bowed his head, and Turnus thought for a moment that he didn't want any more water thrown in his face, but then a bitter laugh escaped his mouth, causing his shoulders to shake.

    "What am I thinking?" Elagabalus muttered. "What am I thinking? Perhaps I have thought too much, or perhaps you have thought too little. Perhaps I am thinking clearly for the first time in my life."

    Turnus did not reply. He wasn't sure how to even begin. Elagabalus wasn't making any sense to him, but he trusted — he hoped — that there was more to come that would make sense of it.

    Elagabalus looked up at him. "Look at us, Turnus; look at us." He gestured to the mirror fitted to the wall above the taps, and to their reflections looking back at them. "Look at us." He jabbed at his own reflection with one finger. "Men bred to rule the world." He laughed again. "Men bred to rule a world that does not exist. Born, bred, fashioned, taught, suited by blood and upbringing to command armies, provinces, kingdoms. To have our names lay all of Mistral at our feet." He sighed. "We are raised on stories of a world that was, but the world that is has no room for us. Look at us, Turnus, and Lausus too; look at us. Would not our ancestors weep to see us brought so low?"

    Turnus looked at his reflection in the mirror, dressed in Atlesian armour, standing in a bathroom whence he had just brought a somewhat inebriated man to get a grip on himself.

    My ancestors would have had a slave do this.

    My ancestors would have put Camilla in chains and taken her to bed for their pleasure every night until they were tired of her.

    Let us not pretend that the past was a golden age from which we have declined immeasurably in all things.

    "Times change," he said, "and so does the world we live in."

    "Especially when change is forced at swordpoint," Elagabalus said. "Vale did this to us. Vale and the House of Nikos, whose incompetence led us to ruin. How can the people cheer her, acclaim her, praise her, when it is her family that is the present cause of all of Mistral's woes and sorrows? Is not the Great War the reason behind everything?"

    "Eighty years ago," Turnus replied. "I doubt most people care."

    "No," Elagabalus agreed. "Of course they don't care. Shortsighted peasants who don't care about anything earlier than this morning and later than tonight. That is why … but it is their fault, the fault of that family. That is why … I can believe that she is all that they say she is; after all, her family has been destroying Mistral for generations back, why not her?" He paused a moment. "You wouldn't defend me. I'm rather hurt. Were you scared of her?" He chuckled. "Is the great duellist afraid?"

    Turnus snorted. "Don't be ridiculous," he muttered. "But as I said, I cannot defend a position that I do not believe in, and I do not believe that Pyrrha Nikos is a traitor."

    "Why not?"

    "Because if the most notable champion our kingdom has had in years, our greatest warrior, has turned upon us, then we are truly lost," Turnus said. "Woe unto Mistral if even our best believe that we are beyond saving."

    "What if we are?" Elagabalus asked.

    Turnus frowned. "I do not believe it. Our ancestors rose from nothing once; we are not so badly placed we cannot rise again."

    Elagabalus was silent for a moment. "Perhaps," he murmured. "Perhaps…" He fell silent for a moment. "We could have had everything, you know."

    "Let's not wallow too much in self-pity," Turnus said. "We have a great deal, still."

    "Mmm," Elagabalus said, "Perhaps. Perhaps you're right." He straightened up. "I feel better now, thank you."

    "Are you sure?" Turnus asked.

    "Quite sure," Elagabalus said, picking up the wooden casket with the Heart of Mistral inside, with one hand scooping it out of the trough. "I am ready to return to the ballroom."

    "Perhaps going back to the hotel would be better," Turnus suggested. "Certainly, it would be less embarrassing."

    "I can handle embarrassment," Elagabalus assured him. "Besides, I think that I owe Lord Wong an apology, don't you?"

    "He's not the only one," Turnus said. "But very well, if that is what you wish."

    "Then lead the way," Elagabalus told him.

    Turnus did as was bade, sidling past Elagabalus — who made way for him — and retrieving his spear from Lausus as the two of them stepped out of the bathroom first, with Elagabalus behind.

    They were about to start making their way back to the ballroom when Turnus' scroll went off.

    "Hang on a moment," he said.

    "Of course," Elagabalus said, taking a few steps backwards to give Turnus some space.

    Turnus leaned his spear up against the wall, got out his scroll, and answered it. It was Tarpeia.

    "Tarpeia?" Turnus said. "Is something wrong?" He hadn't heard anything from outside to indicate that there was, but he didn't know how well insulated the embassy was against that sort of thing.

    "Not up here, my lord," Tarpeia replied, "but Tulla just had a thought: what if trouble was already in the building when we arrived?"

    Turnus pursed his lips together as he considered that. He should, he realised, have considered it sooner, but he had trusted that the Valish police would do their jobs and ensure that there was nothing amiss at the embassy before the reception.

    Careless of me. Of course it is possible for someone to slip through and into the embassy if they wished. He confessed that he could not immediately think of who would wish to do such a thing — one of the reasons he had been … complacent was that it was hard to imagine who would want to disrupt this handover; he had been more concerned about the possibility or pirates trying to steal the ruby on its way back to Mistral than anyone attempting to attack the embassy while it was being given to Elagabalus.

    Of course, some people don't need a reason. And for others, the fact that a theft is less likely here would be all the more reason to attempt it. He raised his voice so that he could be heard across the embassy roof. "Tulla, can you hold the fort up on the roof by yourself?"

    Although he could not see Tulla, he could hear her reply clearly. "Yes, my lord."

    "Good," Turnus said. "Tarpeia, come inside; you can help Lausus search the building. There's probably nothing here, at least I hope so, but it is a possibility. Well done, Tulla."

    "Thank you, my lord," Tulla said.

    "We'll be right there, my lord," Tarpeia added.

    "'We'?"

    "Ufens sent Ruby up here too, my lord," Tarpeia explained. "And you did say for Tulla to hold the fort alone."

    "Yes, yes, I did, didn't I?" Turnus said. "Very well, I look forward to seeing you again soon, Ruby."

    "We'll be there," Ruby said, before Tarpeia hung up.

    Turnus snapped his scroll shut and put his scroll. "Lausus," he said, "start searching the embassy, check all the corridors, all the rooms that are unlocked; I'll speak to Lord Wong about having the locked rooms unlocked. Tarpeia and Ruby will be joining you soon. Lord Ki—"

    Turnus turned around, and as he did so, a barrier of green hard light, such as they had in Atlas for use in prisons, shields, that sort of thing, descended from the ceiling, planting a see-through wall down the middle of the corridor between himself and Elagabalus.

    "What the—?" Turnus said. "What is this?"

    Elagabalus did not look ruffled by this at all; in fact, there was a smirk playing upon the edges of his mouth as he looked up and down. "This? This is a hard light shield, I think, although you would be more familiar with the like than I would from your time in Atlas. I understand that these things were installed all over the embassy recently, when the White Fang attacks began."

    Turnus frowned. "What's going on?"

    Elagabalus was silent for a moment. "We could have had everything," he said. "You and I. I would have given you everything, you could have been my right hand, I would have made you my Steward, given you whatever you wished. All you had to do was help me."

    "Help you?" Turnus repeated. The conversation from yesterday? "What have you done?"

    "You told me that there was an heir to the throne with a better claim than me," Elagabalus said. "And that is true, but it won't be true for very much longer. You told me that nobody would want me to assume the throne, but the minds of the people will change once I have struck a blow against Vale and avenged the injuries done to us in the Great War, when I bring home not only the Heart of Mistral but also Mistral's pride and glory too. And you told me you would not help me, but when you are gone, it strikes me that your pet dogs will be looking for a new master."

    "When I…" Turnus' mouth hung open for a moment. "If you kill me, then Camilla will take your head the moment you set foot back in Mistral, you absolute idiot!"

    "I'm not so sure."

    "That's because you're a moron," Turnus snapped. "Take this barrier down right now—"

    "Or what?" Elagabalus demanded. "You're in no position to dictate terms to me."

    "I'm the only person who can keep you alive!"

    "I will be Emperor of Mistral by the time this year is out!" Elagabalus declared. "And you … you will not even be a footnote in the history of my rise." He turned away without another word and stomped off with what Turnus could only think to be a degree of petulance in his gait, his steps thumping despite the way the carpet muffled them.

    "With respect, my lord," Lausus said, "he was always a bit of a little twat, even when we were at school."

    Turnus snorted. "Harsh, Lausus. Not necessarily wrong, but harsh."

    "What do you think he meant about killing us, my lord?" asked Lausus.

    "I don't know for sure," Turnus said, "but I don't intend to hang around to find out."

    XxXxX​

    Tempest and Bon Bon stepped out in front of the brightly dressed man with the ludicrous hair who came down the corridor towards them, appearing out of the shadows to bar his way.

    "Lord Elagabalus Kiro, I presume?" Tempest asked.

    He straightened out his bright yellow coat, tugging on the lapels. "I am," he said, "and you are?"

    "Our names aren't important," Bon Bon said. "What's important is that we are your chauffeurs for tonight, and your car is waiting, if you'd care to follow us."

    "Of course," Lord Kiro said. "I can't wait to get out of here."

    And so they led him out of the embassy and down into the underground parking garage; no sooner had they stepped out of the building proper and into the car park than a hard light barrier rose behind them, sealing off the way and ensuring that they could not be pursued — and that nobody could escape the embassy that way.

    Bon Bon jogged ahead, reaching the cleaning company van that they had used to get down here in the first place, unlocking it and climbing into the driver's seat.

    "This?" Lord Kiro demanded. "A cleaner's van?"

    "I am sure that you can arrange to arrive in Mistral in a style suitable to your exalted station, my lord," Tempest said as she opened the rear doors for him to climb in. "If you wouldn't mind."

    Lord Kiro groaned. "Very well, if I must. What about the bomb?"

    Tempest grinned. "My lord, what with all signals into or out of the embassy being jammed, there is no way that we could activate the bomb from here. So we started the timer before we even left."

    XxXxX​

    "My lords, ladies, and gentlemen," Turnus said, his voice loud enough to strike the ceiling as he strode briskly into the ballroom, accompanied by Lausus but with no sign of Lord Kiro, "I am sorry to inform you that Lord Kiro has betrayed us. I think it would be best if everyone were to evacuate the building immediately."

    "'Betrayed'?" Councillor Emerald repeated. "What do you mean, 'betrayed'?"

    "He talked about wanting to kill you, me … and Lady Pyrrha," Turnus said, glancing in Pyrrha's direction.

    She felt Jaune's hand tighten on her arm.

    Me? But why would he … surely not because of the allegations? No, no, if that were so, then he would hardly want to kill Lord Rutulus and Councillor Emerald too.

    "His scheme is absurd," Turnus went on, "but that doesn't mean the danger isn't real. I don't know what he means to do, but I advise that everyone get out now."

    "And if this is a trap?" Lord Wong asked, placing his free hand upon his daughter's head. "If Lord Kiro means to frighten us outside, where—"

    "I don't think he's that clever, my lord," Turnus said, "and even if that is so, my men are outside; we will protect you."

    Lord Wong hesitated for a moment. "Very well; everyone, please make your way towards the exit; there is no need to panic."

    He might as well have commanded the winds to blow, but not too strongly; at once, the whole assembly — the guests in gowns and suits and togas and sparkling gems, the wait staff, the musicians, Councillor Emerald, Lord Wong — all began to move up the steps out of the ballroom and towards the front door in a great rush, pushing and shoving, all distance between people collapsing as everyone fought to be ahead of everyone else.

    Pyrrha and Jaune were jostled by the crowd, but able to keep their feet; others were not, or might not, be so lucky. Pyrrha saw an older lady shoved down in front of her and stopped to help her up. She and Jaune held back; she felt it right that they should be the last to leave, being huntsman and huntress, and if Jaune disagreed with her, he did not say so, nor show it in any way. Rather than joining the press moving towards the door, they moved sideways along the back of the crowd, joining Lord and Lady Wong — Lord Wong's stick slowed his progress — and little Soojin, and Arslan too.

    "Do you need any help, my lord?" Pyrrha asked.

    Lord Wong shook his head. "I'm fine, Lady Pyrrha, but if you could take our daughter, make sure that she doesn't get hurt in all this madness. Calm down!" he shouted, which had as much effect as shouting at the clouds.

    "Of course, my lord," Pyrrha said. She smiled for the young girl and bent her knees and back alike so that she was closer to Soojin's height. She held out her arms. "May I hold you?"

    Lady Wong nodded eagerly. "Go with Pyrrha."

    Pyrrha kept on smiling as Soojin ran forward, and Pyrrha swept her up in her arms, holding her close, feeling the little girl's hands moving through her hair and touching her neck above her golden necklace.

    "That's right," she said. "Hold onto me. Everything is going to be fine."

    "We can't reach the door!" someone screamed from up ahead, at the front of the crowd.

    "Let us out!"

    "We're trapped!"

    "What?" Arslan demanded. "What are they saying? Pyrrha, you're a stork; can you see what's going on up there?"

    "I'm afraid not," Pyrrha murmured. For one thing, she was standing at a long angle, beneath those ahead, which severely limited her ability to see over their heads; for another, it was always difficult to see over a large crowd in any case. "Jaune?"

    Jaune shook his head. "No, nothing."

    "Can you lift me up on your shoulders?" Arslan asked.

    "Like a kid?" Jaune asked.

    "I'm not asking you to give me a piggyback ride," Arslan said. "Just let me jump on you."

    "Okay," Jaune said, presenting his back to her and holding out his hands.

    Arslan didn't use his hands — she didn't need the boost — she simply jumped up and put her hands on his shoulders, wrapping her arms around his neck as she dug her knees into Jaune's side like he was a horse.

    "Thank you," she said. "Good thing I wore a gown with room to spread my legs. Right, what have we here?" She frowned. "The door's blocked by a barrier, it's … is that hard light?"

    "Yes," Lord Wong said. "We had barriers installed in case of a White Fang attack."

    "Okay," Arslan said, "but who turned them on?"

    "I don't know," Lord Wong replied. "I can, but I didn't."

    "More importantly, can we turn them off?" asked Jaune.

    "How, when I didn't even know they were turned on?" snapped Lord Wong.

    "What about the windows?" said Arslan, slipping down off Jaune's back. "Can we get out through the windows?"

    Lord Wong shook his head. "The barrier covers the whole building."

    "The whole building?" Pyrrha repeated.

    Lord Wong nodded. "I'm afraid so."

    "I'll call Ruby," Jaune said, getting out his scroll. His eyes widened. "No signal? Does this barrier of yours block CCT signals as well?"

    "It shouldn't," Lord Wong murmured.

    "EVERYONE CALM DOWN!" Turnus bellowed, his voice cutting through the cries of those trying futilely to escape via the door. "There is no need to panic! My men are on the other side of that barrier, and I have no doubt that as we speak they are trying to find a way to rescue us."

    XxXxX​

    "What are we going to do?" Tarpeia asked.

    "I—" Ufens was cut off by the sound of his scroll buzzing. He ignored it.

    "That could be the lord," Tarpeia murmured.

    "We couldn't reach him a moment ago," Ufens said.

    "Maybe he can reach us; see if it's him," Tarpeia urged.

    Ufens got out his scroll. "It's Lichas."

    "Who?" asked Ruby.

    "He's guarding the entrance to the parking lot," Ufens explained. "Maybe he can get in that way." He answered the incessant call. "Lichas, we—"

    "Are you seeing anything strange up there?" Lichas demanded. "Because first, I get run over by a cleaning van roaring out of the car park, then I go down to find that there's some kind of barrier cutting off the way into the building, and I can't get hold of my lord or Lausus either."

    "'A cleaning van'?" Tarpeia repeated.

    "Never mind that now," Ufens said. "Lichas, the barrier is up here too, and it's blocking out scrolls. Get up here; we need to come up with a plan." He snapped his scroll shut.

    "Do you think there really was something or someone in there?" Ruby asked.

    "I can't think why else anyone would want to trap them inside," Ufens muttered.

    "But … don't worry," Tarpeia said, and it seemed like she was trying to smile reassuringly, although it didn't come out like much of a smile, really. She put a hand on Ruby's shoulder. "While everyone here wishes that they were inside instead of Lausus, my lord's good. He'll keep everyone safe, if there's danger within."

    "So will Pyrrha," Ruby replied, "but even so, I wish we could find out what was going on. I wish we could get them out of there."

    "We all wish that," Tarpeia said, "but how? Do you think we could attack it? If we damage it enough, maybe it'll drop?"

    "Maybe," Ufens said, "but how long would it take, and do we have time for that?"

    "What about if I call General Ironwood?" Ruby suggested. "A shot from the main cannon of one of his ships should be enough to bring down that barrier, right?"

    "You know General Ironwood?" Tarpeia asked.

    "Uh, a little," Ruby said.

    "That probably would drop the shield," Ufens admitted, "but what if it brings down the embassy as well?"

    "Do we have a choice?" Tarpeia demanded.

    "I think we should give it a second before we maybe blow up our lord and our client," Ufens said. "Let me think." He turned his gaze upwards, up the building, up the barrier that surrounded the building, covering it all the way to the wall that surrounded the roof.

    "The roof," Ruby murmured. "What if it doesn't cover the roof?"

    Ufens' eyes widened. He tapped on his scroll. "Tulla?" he said. "Is there a barrier on the roof, are you standing on it?"

    "There's something covering the stairs down into the building, and something outside, but no, nothing on the roof."

    "Okay, we're coming up," Ufens said, hanging up and snapping his scroll shut. He nodded to Ruby. "Thank you, Ruby Rose." He turned to Tarpeia and the other members of Rutulian Security. "Right, boys and girls, here is what we're going to do: we're going to break through the roof down into the embassy, and then we are going to get everybody out the same way nice and easy, and we're going to see our lord safe home to Lady Juturna. Any questions?"

    There were none, only silence and determined faces.

    "Then let's get it done," Ufens said. "Eulalia!"

    "Eulalia!" they cried, and it must have meant something to them, even though it didn't mean anything at all to Ruby. Maybe Pyrrha would know.

    Once they got her out.

    Ruby thought about that ladder, that single narrow ladder and everyone who might have to climb down it, some in the choice between high heels or bare feet.

    That could take a while. Unless…

    And so, as the Rutulians moved towards that very same ladder, Ruby hung back and got out her scroll.

    "Ruby?" Tarpeia asked.

    "I'm calling Professor Ozpin," Ruby explained. "I've got an idea that will speed things up."

    XxXxX​

    There was a loud bang, still loud for all that it was muffled by distance, coming from somewhere above them.

    "Was that an explosion?" Arslan asked.

    "It sounded like it certainly could be," Pyrrha replied as the guests of the reception murmured and wailed in shock and alarm. "Jaune, would you mind holding Soojin for a moment?"

    "I want you to hold onto me, Pyrrha," Soojin protested, tightening her grip around Pyrrha's neck.

    "I know, I know," Pyrrha said, in what she devoutly hoped was a reassuring tone, "but if I'm holding onto you, then I can't protect everyone else if … if I have to."

    "You don't have your weapons," Arslan pointed out.

    "Neither do you."

    "My weapons are on the end of my arms."

    Jaune sniffed the air. "Can … can anyone else smell that?"

    "Smell what?" asked Arslan.

    "It smells like … rosepetals."

    Ruby burst into the ballroom, her red cloak flying, rosepetals trailing behind her, dropping on the floor.

    "Ruby!" Jaune and Pyrrha cried almost simultaneously.

    "Hey guys," Ruby said, grinning broadly.

    "How did you—?" Turnus began.

    "We got in through the roof," Ruby said. "The barrier didn't cover it up."

    "It was supposed to," Lord Wong muttered.

    "Thank your contractor they did a half-baked job," Arslan told him.

    "We're going to get everyone out," Ruby declared. "Everyone, just follow me!"

    "Lausus, take the lead," Turnus ordered. "Everyone, go, go! Follow her!"

    Nobody needed telling twice, not even Jaune and Pyrrha — she couldn't hang back when she had been given responsibility for Soojin Wong by her mother — they all moved forward, a river of humanity flowing in Ruby's wake.

    "I'm sorry about this, my lord, but this is no time for dignity," Arslan said, a moment before she picked up Lord Wong in her arms, carrying him at a pace that he would never have achieved by himself, with his wife following alongside them.

    They river flowed up the stairs, up several flights of stairs, climbing upwards, upwards, with some of Turnus' men at intervals to make sure nobody got lost or wandered away from the group, moving upwards, ever upwards until they came to a landing, with several doors closed on either side of it and one open door, leading to a bedroom with a brand new hole blasted in the ceiling.

    The Rutulians had made a crude ramp leading from floor to ceiling out of a bed, a chest of draws, a wardrobe at a slanted angle, and various other bits and pieces to provide a semblance of stability, and it was up that ramp, shepherded by the Rutulians, that everyone climbed, one at a time, squeezing a little through the whole in the roof — it was not especially large, although Pyrrha couldn't blame them for fearing to blow the whole roof off or simply for not having enough dust to make a larger hole — out into the open air.

    Airships buzzed all around the roof, Atlesian Skyrays, but also Bullheads as well, all of them with their side hatches open, and people — Professor Goodwitch and Doctor Oobleck aboard two of the Bullheads, and Atlesian soldiers aboard their airships, chivvying or helping people to climb aboard, filling each airship up before it began to pull away from the Mistralian embassy.

    And Sunset, waiting with Ruby as Pyrrha and Jaune climbed up onto the roof.

    "Sunset?" Pyrrha asked. "What are you—?"

    "When Professor Ozpin told me that you needed airships to evacuate after you'd been trapped in here, I was hardly going to stay in our room and wait for you, was I?" Sunset demanded. She reached out and placed a hand on Pyrrha's and Jaune's shoulders. "Clearly, I can't let you out of my sight."

    They got on board a waiting Bullhead, along with Soojin, Arslan, Lord and Lady Wong, along with a few others. The airship was full, everyone slightly crammed in, a forest of hands raised to clutch the bars that ran along the ceiling.

    As the airship began to pull away, Jaune said, "You know what's weird?"

    "What?" Pyrrha asked.

    "We didn't get attacked or … anything really," Jaune said. "Apparently Lord Kiro wanted to kill you, but… how? What was the point of trapping us all in the embassy if—"

    The embassy exploded. Sunset raised her hands — Jaune grabbed her by the collar of her jacket in case she fell — conjuring a shield around the Bullhead as fire burst from every window in the building, as stonework shattered, as debris erupted like a mountain bursting forth when the volcano beneath roars; where a moment before had been a building, there was now a burning husk, flames ripping through the insides, the outsides falling where they had not burst outwards to litter the expertly tended grounds with debris. A pillar of flame, a beacon amidst Vale's night sky.

    "Okay," Jaune said. "I guess now we know what the point of trapping us all in the embassy was."

    XxXxX​

    As the Valish Fire Department battled to put out the fire that was consuming the remains of the embassy — there was a row of fire trucks parked outside, with their sirens blaring, and cops keeping the gawking crowd at bay — Ruby found Turnus slumped against the wall that surrounded the grounds.

    "Are … are you okay?" she asked.

    Turnus did not reply for a moment. "I pride myself on running a successful organisation," he said. "Sometimes, a job does not go entirely the way that I expect, and sometimes … sometimes, with the best will in the world and the most courageous people, things go wrong. But I have never before had a job where the client turned out to be the danger."

    "That's not your fault," Ruby said. "You couldn't have known."

    "No?" Turnus asked. "He was my friend; I knew him. Or not, evidently."

    "What was his plan?" Ruby asked. "I mean, if you know…"

    "He wants to become Emperor of Mistral," Turnus explained, "and so, he planned to kill the heir to the throne, eliminating the line of Nikos, or at least its future, and he planned to kill the First Councillor of Vale to show that he had something to offer."

    "And you?"

    "And me, because I wouldn't lend him my swords to take the throne by force."

    "Right," Ruby murmured. "I mean … honestly, that sounds kinda stupid."

    "It's not just you; it is stupid," Turnus replied.

    "Then I don't think you should blame yourself for not seeing this coming," Ruby told him. "Who would have predicted … that? And besides, everyone got out safely. Nobody died."

    "But I lost the Heart of Mistral," Turnus said.

    "So?" Ruby asked. "What's some stupid ruby compared to human lives?"

    Turnus looked up at her. "That is an admirable way to look at it, perhaps," he admitted, "but I'm not sure the Lord Steward will see things in quite the same way."

    Ruby didn't reply to that, because she wasn't sure that telling Turnus that if the Lord Steward didn't agree with her then he was a callous idiot would really help. Instead, she asked, "What's going to happen to Lord Kiro?"

    "He'll be arrested as soon as he returns to Mistral," Turnus said, "and even if he realises just what he's done, with warrants out for him across Remnant, I'm afraid there's really no escape for him now."

    XxXxX​

    Doctor Watts opened the doors of the van.

    The corpse of Lord Elagabalus Kiro confronted him, lifeless eyes staring upwards, a look of shock fixed upon his face.

    "You might have closed his eyes," he murmured.

    "My apologies, Doctor," Tempest replied, bowing her head as she closed his eyes with one hand.

    "He didn't give you any trouble, I suppose."

    "Of course not, Doctor."

    "What now, Doctor?" Bon Bon asked, climbing out of the driver's seat.

    "Dispose of this vehicle and the body," Doctor Watts said. "I recommend incinerating them both. And then you both return to school as though nothing happened, or at least, nothing involving the two of you. Now, he did have the jewel, did he not?"

    "Here," Tempest said, holding out a very well-carved wooden box that Doctor Watts took from her hands. "And now, Doctor? Where will you go?"

    "I," Doctor Watts said, "will make haste to Mistral and deliver this precious gem into the right hands."
     
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