Nora lay back on her bed, arms and legs spread out like a star, staring up at the ceiling.
Not thinking about anything much, just … staring up at the ceiling.
There was a knock on the hotel room door.
"Coming!" Nora called as she rolled off the bed and just about managed to land on her feet instead of flat on her face. She padded across the room, her footsteps muffled by the carpet, and opened the door to find Ren, dressed in his combat outfit, waiting for her on the other side.
"Good morning," he said. "Are you coming down to breakfast?"
"Uh, yeah, sure, in a second," Nora replied. "But first, can you come inside?"
Ren frowned ever so slightly but said, "Of course." As Nora stepped back to let him in, he followed her and closed the door behind him. "Is everything okay?"
"Yeah, yeah, everything's fine, for now."
"'For now'?" Ren repeated.
Nora hesitated for a moment, half leaning, half sitting against the table that sat in the center of the room, resting her hands upon it. She looked away from Ren, down at the magenta carpet of the hotel room, before she said, "Do you … do you ever think about the future?"
"No," Ren replied.
"'No'?" Nora asked. "Never?"
"Nora, one year ago, did either of us think that our lives would be turning out this way?" Ren asked. "That we'd know what we know, that we'd have done what we've done. Who, out of us — or Jaune or Pyrrha or anyone — who could have guessed what we'd find out? A year ago today, we thought that we were about to start the first of four years of study, but now, we're Huntsmen already, graduated and accredited. Who would have thought that giant alien robots from another world would have become a routine part of our lives or that we'd be on our way to Jaune and Pyrrha's wedding?"
Nora grinned. "I bet Pyrrha didn't even dare hope for things to be going this well this fast, huh?"
Ren's lips twitched in a kind of smile, even if it didn't last for very long. He really ought to smile more often; it made him look really cute.
"My point is," he said, "that we can make as many plans as we want, and then something will happen to sweep them all away. So … why bother thinking about it? Better to just take things as they come."
"I hope not everyone thinks like you, or it won't be much of a wedding once we get to Mistral," Nora muttered. "You really mean that? You don't— you haven't thought about it at all?"
"You have?" Ren asked.
"Kinda, yeah."
"What about?"
Nora shrugged. "Oh, you know," she said quietly. "Jaune and Pyrrha are getting married, and yeah, it doesn't mean that the team is going to break up today or tomorrow or next week, but … but they're getting married. They might start a family sooner or later, and I've been thinking that, maybe, probably at some point, they might not want us around anymore, you know? And I've been wondering … what that'll mean for us."
Ren was silent for a moment, and then for another moment after that. "You do make a good point," he conceded. "But, if and when that happens, we'll deal with it."
Nora chuckled lightly. "That's it? You're just not going to think about it?"
"What can I do about it now?" Ren asked. "What can you do about it now? If there comes a time when Jaune and Pyrrha grow tired of us and want their privacy, then that's their right. There's nothing we can do to stop them, and letting it consume our thoughts won't make it any more or less likely. All we can do is be their friends, for as long as they wish our company." He smiled. "And if they do grow tired of us, then we'll hit the road again and wander through Anima, like we did before we came to Beacon."
Nora smiled. It wasn't entirely the answer that she wanted, or at least it wasn't the answer that she would have liked best — the answer that she would have liked best was, well, pretty obvious, probably, that they'd still have one another and that they could start
their family, the way that Jaune and Pyrrha were starting theirs, or would be soon — but it wasn't a bad answer, no sir.
They'd still be together, after all.
They'd always be together.
Even if not quite the way she wanted.
Maybe I should kiss Jaune anyway to see what you do.
No, I couldn't do that, not after Pyrrha said no.
I'm too scared of her, for one thing.
But also, I love her too much to do that without her permission.
I hope they don't send us away too fast. Even if it will still be me and Ren … I could live with me and Ren, like things were before, like they were for years. I could live with it. I could love it again, the way I used to.
But I'd rather it were the four of us, the way it has been.
She knew that she wasn't Pyrrha's best friend, but that didn't stop Pyrrha from being hers. She hadn't known her, or Jaune, for as long as she'd known Ren, for not nearly as long, but at the same time, though it had only been a year, it had been long enough. Long enough for them to become a part of her, even if she had not become a part of them. Long enough, more than long enough, to learn to love them.
I cherish you both, and I don't want to say goodbye.
But Ren was right about one thing: there was nothing she could do about it, one way or the other.
"Yeah," she said, putting on a smile. "Yeah, we will. We should probably head for breakfast before the lovebirds eat everything. Or start making passionate love in front of the buffet."
"I don't think either of those are very likely," Ren replied, "but we should go, all the same."
Nora chuckled. "Hey, if things don't work out, maybe we can join the circus again."
"Absolutely not."
Ren and Nora still hadn't arrived yet when Jaune and Pyrrha received another visitor.
Ember had gone, satisfied with Jaune and Pyrrha's acceptance of her request for help, saying that she would leave them to get on with things and not get in their way — although she had given them a couple of addresses of places to start looking.
"It looks like this won't be the leisurely breakfast that we thought," Jaune muttered. "We should eat quickly, then move out as soon as Ren and Nora get here."
"Agreed," Pyrrha murmured. "Those poor people might not have much time."
"But where are Ren and Nora?" Jaune asked, craning his head so that he could see better. "I thought they'd be here by now. Do you think I should send them a text?"
"Ah! There you are, my lord the king!"
The voice that hailed them did not belong to Ren or Nora, although Nora for one could have matched the volume, even if Ren could not. It was a loud voice that boomed out across the dining room, drawing attention from guests and wait staff alike, and drew the attention of Pyrrha and Jaune to the man who was making his way towards them.
He was a young man, perhaps a few years older than them, but certainly no more than that, tall and pale, as pale as Weiss and perhaps even a little paler; certainly, he made Pyrrha seem positively swarthy by comparison. His hair was red, as red as a carrot, and it sat in a rough, somewhat untidy shock upon the top of his head that was somewhat reminiscent of Jaune's own hair in style, although not in color. He was dressed in a rather old-fashioned style, although it was hard to focus upon the style due to the volume of the colors: his coat was green, trimmed with silver facings that glimmered in the lights that shone from the ceiling, and worn over a waistcoat of red embroidered on the breasts with a golden lion and a silver unicorn combatant, with a white cravat worn across his neck. His trousers were as green as his coat — and with a glossy effect as well — while white socks or leggings were just about visible between the end of his trousers and his white pumps which squeaked upon the floor a little.
He wore a sword at his hip, a curved saber with a golden hilt shaped like an elephant, with a head and then a long trunk curving down to form the guard. He gripped the weapon by that same hilt, holding it up so that it did not tangle up in his feet.
He was accompanied by a woman, a tall woman, taller than Jaune, certainly taller than Pyrrha; she was smaller than Yatsuhashi Daichi of Team CFVY, but he was the only person Pyrrha could think of off the top of her head who would make this woman, whoever she was, seem smaller by comparison. Her hair was dark, and her face was round, but with a firm jaw and a nose that looked as though it had been broken once and then reset.
She was Mistrali, or at least, she had spent some time in Mistral, for she wore an honor band of black iron on her left arm, girding around muscles as defined as Pyrrha's, if not a little more. Her armor was black, covered so by black velvet bound around the cuirass, the vambraces on her upper arms, the greaves and cuisses on her legs. The only spots of color were the sash of green — the same shade of sea green as the young man's coat — she wore around her waist and the badge of silver and gold embossed upon her cuirass depicting the same lion and unicorn as upon the red-haired man's waistcoat.
She had a figure-of-eight shield slung across her back and a spear — that might become more than that, if need be — wedged between the shield and her back.
They approached, the woman trailing a step behind the man, who bowed elaborately as he approached their table, spreading his arms out wide on either side of him, fluttering his hands in little circles, disturbing his lace cuffs in the process, as he began to bow and lowered his head so far that it went past his waist and began to approach the floor.
"Your Highness," he said breathlessly, rolling his 'r's. He looked up. "Do I have the honorable pleasure, to say nothing of the pleasurable honor, of addressing Jaune Arc?"
Jaune looked as though he would very much like to say no, but his honesty got the better of him, and he said, "Uh, yeah, sure, that's me."
"Huzzah!" the young man cried. "Gods save Your Royal Highness! And this must be your bride to be. " He reached out, taking Pyrrha's gloved hand in his — she did not resist — and raising it to his lips. "Charmed," he declared. "My name is Beresford,
Lord Kay Beresford, if you will, and this is my own dearly beloved wife, Enyo."
Enyo smiled slightly and bowed her head very little. "A pleasure," she said.
"Likewise," Pyrrha murmured.
"May I sit, my prince?" asked Kay Beresford.
"Yeah, sure," Jaune said slowly. "But I'm not a prince … and I'm pretty certain that you're not a lord, either."
"Pish tosh!" Kay declared as he sat down, scraping his chair across the floor to make room for himself. His wife did not sit down but remained standing, looming one might say, over the table and all who sat around it.
"Who says that I am not a lord?" Kay demanded. "Who says that you, noble sir, are not the true prince of Vale and heir to the throne? A rabble of pot-bellied burghers and self-serving shopkeepers, tradesmen without the decency to know their place. By what right do such men as these deny my blood, or yours? You are descended from the line of kings; my ancestors fought with those same kings to make a kingdom out of wild woods and Grimm-infested valleys, riding dangerous roads to make Vale safe from monsters and brigands alike. What have they done, these men who deny us our birthright, equal to the deeds of those who came before us?"
"What have
we done that people ought to fawn over us?" Jaune asked. "My ancestors might have been great people, they might have done great things, but one thing that my year at Beacon taught me was that I am thoroughly ordinary in everything … except the extraordinary good luck I had falling in with some pretty extraordinary people."
Jaune did himself a grave disservice by that remark — there was much in him that was as extraordinary as any quality possessed by Pyrrha or by his friends, not least his remarkable courage — but the remark, generous-spirited as it was, and so sincere, brought a smile to Pyrrha's face regardless, as well as bringing a faint flush of color to her cheeks.
Kay smiled. "Your humility, Your Highness, is most moving, most inspiring; truly, the virtue of your line has bred true in you. And yet, notwithstanding your admirable humility, I will continue to refer to you by that proud title which should be yours, for though the law may deny us both, you remain to myself and to many others in this city a prince of hearts, and so, on behalf of Freeport and all the eastern lands of Vale, I welcome you to our fair city, made fairer still by your presence. We rejoice, not only at the coming of our prince but also at the arrival of a hero, one whose valor is as beyond dispute as your acts of valor are beyond counting."
Jaune glanced at Pyrrha. "There were a lot of heroes at the Battle of Vale," he murmured, "and a lot of them more heroic than me." He raised his voice and went on, presumably before Lord Beresford could compose another panegyric upon his humility. "If you don't mind me asking, and please, I really don't want to sound rude, but who are you?"
"Lord Beresford, as I have said, my prince, and I have the great honor to be the city's Commissioner of Police and son of the Viceroy of Freeport, who governs this land under the authority … that has yet to be determined." He smiled. "My lord father, Duke of Blytonbury, sends his apologies; he would have come to greet you himself, but he is sorely oppressed with a most horrendous gout and struggles to so much as rise from his bed in the morning."
"We're sorry to hear that," Pyrrha said, "but perhaps, as Commissioner of Police, I might suggest that your energies might be better placed investigating the disappearances that have taken place in your fair city recently?"
Kay looked at her. "Your bride to be, my prince, is a rare beauty to be sure, a beauty worthy to be called a princess." He laughed. "Well do I know what it is to be struck down by the loveliness of a Mistrali warrior, as if by one of the shafts of…" — he looked up at Enyo — "my love, which is the one who shoots arrows?"
"What kind of arrows, my love? Callisto leads the hunt, but Amorus wields the bow of love, so the stories say," Enyo replied, her eyes on Pyrrha as she said it. "To be shot by the one might be thought to be great pain, but the other … the other is sweetest pleasure, wouldn't you say, Pyrrha Nikos?"
"Oh, without doubt," Pyrrha replied. "We are fortunate beyond measure, are we not?"
"Either way, to be struck with love for a Mistrali is like being hit with arrows," Kay said, "and yet, I'm sure you will agree, Your Royal Highness, that there are certain matters best discussed in private conference."
Pyrrha's reply to that was to put one hand down on top of Jaune's and smile a pleasant smile … for now.
How much longer it would remain pleasant depended on how long Lord Beresford wished to try her patience.
Enyo laughed. "Darling, you speak of being shot with arrows, but do you really think that you can separate a husband and wife, or near enough, when they are so deeply in love? Didn't you see them on TV in the Vytal Festival, how devoted they are to one another? You couldn't tear them apart if you had
my strength." She smiled. "I'm not sure I could tear them apart either."
"I'm sorry," Jaune said. "We might have had time to chat, but we're actually a little busy—"
"Busy with Ember Summerfire, whom we saw coming out of this hotel?" Enyo asked. "I'm guessing she's the one who told you about the faunus going missing, told you that the authorities weren't dealing with it, begged for your assistance?"
"Is it not so?" Pyrrha asked. "
Are the authorities dealing with it?"
"My officers assiduously and ardently search the city, I assure you," Kay declared, "but please, sweet prince, noble lord, gallant sir, lift your eyes up from such unworthy rabble, who do not deserve a single pitiful gaze from your most regal countenance to be cast down upon them like pearls before swine; rather, raise up your eyes to the high and noble pinnacles that cry out for the attention of the true prince. Why scrabble through the slums looking for faunus when a great kingdom has need of you?"
Because they need help, Pyrrha thought,
and it is our duty to provide it to all who are in need, be they ever so high or ever so low.
Jaune frowned. "What are you talking about?"
Kay leaned forwards. "My prince, I am here not only on my own behalf, nor that of my father, but on behalf of my good and wise and eminent men here in Freeport, men who are good men, men who are hard-working and have prospered out of their assiduousness, men who are true-hearted and full-throated in their backing of a true and noble cause.
"Your Highness, you say that you are in great haste, to which I say in return that there is nothing, nothing at all in the whole of Remnant that I abhor so much as tedious and empty verbiage. Nay, not even rats or, or
pigeons incur my wrath so much as wasted words. Therefore, my lord the prince whom gods protect, as brevity is the soul of wit and tediousness the outward shows and flourishes, I will be brief: we would make you king."
"WHAT?" Jaune cried.
"I did tell you I'd be brief," Kay said.
"Yeah, but I'd appreciate a little more detail than that!"
I'm not sure that more details will make it less absurd, Pyrrha thought.
Or less dangerous, for that matter.
Vale had no king. Vale needed no king. There had been no kings in Vale, Mistral, or Mantle since the end of the Great War. Kings and Emperors had laid down their crowns at the feet of Vale's last king, and then he had laid down his own crown in turn, in the name of liberty and democracy, of free will and choice.
The age of kings had ended then upon that battlefield, cut down by the Valish king as surely as his many mortal victims, but the extravagantly dressed Kay Beresford was far from the first in the four kingdoms to dream of bringing it back, to suggest that it could be done, that it
should be done. Vale's last king had barely died when one of his close relatives had claimed the throne by descent and sought to raise an army in order to press his claim against the parliament. That same parliament had named him a traitor to the people of Vale and the Last King, defeated his army, and cut off his head. In Mistral, a grandson of the Emperor had similarly sought to claim what he regarded as his birthright; he had been more fortunate, escaping with his life but with the forfeiture of much of the family wealth and property, withdrawing into semi-exile in the north, far from Mistral proper and the center of power in Anima.
There had been plots by dreamers and deranged fanatics alike, and scions of the old ruling or noble families had been ensnared by some and been the prime movers in others. All had come to nothing; to less than nothing, in fact, for Pyrrha's knowledge did not afford her a single instance of anyone who had been touched by one of these conspiracies coming out of it better — or even no worse — than they had entered into them.
She feared for Jaune. Not because she did not trust his judgment — she trusted that absolutely; she trusted his judgment as she knew his heart, knew that he did not seek power, that he did not, would not, would never wish to be King of Vale; all of that she knew — and yet … even to be implicated…
All it would take would be for one of these idiots to blurt out his name, to confess that he was the one they sought to place upon the throne, and all those who cheered Jaune, who called him hero, who took their pictures, who bought magazines about his engagement, all of them would call him traitor, tyrant, despot in the making.
Perhaps Professor Ozpin could protect Jaune from being cast into a dungeon cell as so many others had before, could speak to his character, to his good service, to his fundamental innocence in all of this. And if it were not so, then Pyrrha would fight all the armies of the four kingdoms before she let them tear Jaune from her side, but even to be thought so ill, to be despised and detested by those whom it was his dream and wish to fight for and protect … that would be a cruel fate, and Pyrrha did not wish that for him.
Quite the contrary, she wished for so much more and so much better.
She wished for these two and their dangerous dreams to leave them be at once.
"I'm sorry, but you've wasted your time," she said, with a chill snap in her voice. "Now, if you wouldn't mind—"
"Come now," Enyo said. "There's no call for rudeness—"
"On the contrary, madam, this is courtesy," Pyrrha replied. "If you wish me to demonstrate rudeness, that can be arranged."
"Freeport is suffering!" Kay declared, slapping the table with one hand. "This city, this great city, this prosperous city, this city that teems with fair advantages, this city that would have been the heart of its own kingdom but for an accident of timing is condemned to be but the secondary metropolis of a far-off land. Why should we pay tribute to Vale, obey Valish law, submit to Valish Councilors who know nothing of the hardships we face outside their city walls, be treated not even as a second head but as a kind of … an extended leg? Vale is weak, shattered by the Decepticons, its defenses dented, its alliances broken; now is the hour of destiny, or there is no such hour to come. Now is the time for Freeport to rise, to lead our own kingdom on our own land. Why should we not be free to live in freedom and enjoy our own laws on our own land? Free to restore all things as they should have been, as they were before the last king in his folly threw them all away."
"Free to be a lord in truth, not just in name," Pyrrha said.
"Free to give this land the governance it requires and deserves," Enyo said.
"And this has what to do with making me king?"
"What is a kingdom without a king?" Kay asked. "Though Freeport is not Vale, we are — we all do know and do concede — sprung out of Valish root, with some Mistralian stock mixed in for the exotic flavor which we love so well, and as a Valish city, who better to rule over us than the Valish king? With the true prince to lead us, a hero in these wars bearing the sword of heroes, who can doubt that this is no self-interested venture that we are engaged in, but an act of glorious restoration? We may not have the strength to march on Vale and place you on your stolen throne, my prince, but I guarantee that we will furnish you a throne so grand that Vale will seem a tawdry little place by the comparison. Please, my prince, Your Highness, all the people of this city and this land turn their eyes to you. All those who are oppressed by Valish taxes, ground down by Valish regulations, who desire liberty and the restoration of the good old order cry out for leadership!" He raised his hands heavenward, then gestured towards Jaune. "They cry out for you."
Jaune put one hand on top of Pyrrha's, squeezing it gently, glancing her way with his beguiling blue eyes.
He returned his gaze to the Beresfords.
"I'm sorry that you wasted a trip, coming all the way down here," he said, in a calm and admirably measured voice, "but I have no interest in taking the throne of Vale, or anywhere else for that matter. I've got no interest in leading Freeport or helping to break up Vale or … if you believe that independence is the best thing for this city, then fine. I'm not a Valish soldier; I don't take sides. I'm a Huntsman; that's all I am, and that's all I want to be, and right now, my job isn't to rule a city or lead a city or even stand up for this city's economic interests; it's to look into these faunus who have been going missing, and that's what I intend to do here before I leave for Mistral and my wedding."
Kay was silent for a moment. "And that is the last word of the last prince?"
"It is," Jaune said. "I'm sorry you wasted your time."
"My lord prince, I am as rich in the treasure of time as Laird McCullen is wealthy in lien," Kay declared. "If I am sorry, it is that you did not grasp the great destiny —
your destiny — that lay before you. But if that is your decision, then what more is there to say?" He got up. "I bid you farewell."
He bowed once again, as elaborately as he had bowed the first time, and turned away, his shoes squeaking upon the floor as he departed.
His wife lingered for a moment or two longer, her eyes on Pyrrha, a sort of smile, or what looked as though it might be a smile, playing upon her lips, before she, too, turned away without another word and followed in her husband's wake.
"You handled that very well," Pyrrha said.
"Do you think so?"
"Better than I," Pyrrha murmured. "She was right; I was becoming angry. I just didn't want you to become unwillingly involved in something that would do you harm." She paused. "Do you think that perhaps you should tell—?"
"Who?" Jaune asked. "The police? He runs the police, remember? At least, that's what he said. And anyway, from a guy like that, it's probably all talk. We've got more important things to worry about."
"Of course," Pyrrha agreed. She smiled shyly. "But, you know, some might say that the person who is best suited to rule is the one who doesn't want it."
"Yeah, well, that wouldn't be best for the guy who doesn't want it, would it?" asked Jaune. "You met Rouge, and when we get to Mistral, you'll find that she isn't the only one of my family to take the royalty thing seriously, but I meant what I said: a Huntsman is all that I want to be. A Huntsman, and your husband."
"I know, and I'm glad of it," Pyrrha replied. "Both because of the risk, but…" — she smiled shyly — "because if you were set upon a throne — and I think that you would be a great king — then … then we would be parted, for a worthier bride."
Of course, some might argue that her own blood rendered her the worthiest bride for a king that could be found, but she had no intention of telling him that and would much rather that he did not find out by any other means.
"That would never happen," Jaune insisted, leaning closer to her.
"I know," Pyrrha replied. "For if it came to it, I would kidnap you from your coronation and carry you off into the woods to live like romantic brigands of old."
"'Romantic brigands'?"
"Romantic brigands," Pyrrha repeated. "On wild berries and the king's deer."
"Yeah, well, that is a possibility," Jaune agreed. "Or we could just forget all about those two idiots, go to Mistral, get married, and live in a house like normal people."
"That's probably a much better idea," Pyrrha agreed.
"Hey, you two!" Nora called, waving one arm as she led Ren towards their table at last. She had a grin on her face as she asked, "Should I say sorry for being late or sorry for still being early enough to interrupt?"
"We're glad you're both here," Jaune assured her. "I'm afraid that sightseeing will have to wait; we've got a job to do."
"Is it Grimm?" Ren asked.
"No," Jaune said. "Unless Grimm have started kidnapping people, which … let's hope the world hasn't gotten
that crazy. Faunus have been going missing; Ember asked us to look into it."
"That sounds like a police matter," said Ren.
"They're faunus," Pyrrha pointed out.
"Point taken," Ren muttered.
"So, it's a rescue mission, then?" Nora said as she sat down. "Pity that we didn't get to go to Griffin Rock, huh?"
"I'm sure we'll find a way through somehow," Jaune said. "We have to; people are counting on us."
"And we won't let them down!" Nora agreed. "So, where do we start?"
Kay Beresford strode out of the hotel and walked elegantly across the street, looking both ways as he did so, to where his ally, his new connection, his route to power and success and the restoration of all ancient titles waited for him in the form of a dashing red sports car.
Enyo followed after him, but when he reached out behind him for her, she took his hand and quickened her pace — that was not difficult, considering her height and the length of her legs — until she was walking beside him.
"I'm sorry that didn't go better," she said to him.
Kay looked up into her face, his wondrous amazon, his fair battle angel. "What mean you, dearest? Things went precisely as I thought they would."
Enyo's eyebrows rose. "Darling, when was the last time any of your lies actually took me in?"
Kay thought about that for a moment. "Last week, when I told you that I had prepared a fabulous meal for us—"
"I know that a dog didn't break in, snatch the steak, and then run off," Enyo told him. "I found the burned remains in the trash."
Kay recoiled. "What were you doing rooting about in the trash?"
"I wanted to see what had really happened to the steak," Enyo told him. She smiled down at him, a smile like the sun breaking through the clouds to shine down upon him and him alone. "But don't worry; the fact that you tried is enough for me." She wrapped her arms around him to lift him bodily up, his legs dangling in the air like a child as Enyo pulled him close, pressing him against her armored breast, kissing him gently on the lips.
A car honked at them as it drove past, swerving to avoid hitting them.
"Go around, you pleb!" Kay snapped. "Can't you see we're having a moment?" He paused. "When we are lord and lady in truth, as gentle in our circumstances as in my birth, then I shall never have to try cooking again. A hundred servants will prepare our meals and keep our house and press my clothes and do your hair—"
"I can do my own hair," Enyo reminded him.
"But you deserve not to have to," Kay informed her as they resumed their journey towards the waiting vehicle. "You are my goddess," he said. "My Callisto, my Eros, my … all the rest of your Mistralian goddesses. You are my goddess, and you deserve to be my lady, to have servants and attendants, to have grandeur and luxury such as the princes and the princesses of old possessed. I would see your armor gilded and adorned with jewels."
Kay Beresford was not unaware of what he was: a rather ridiculous fellow, with little to offer but his name and his family connections, and name and connections both were somewhat fallen in state from what they had been in the good old days. He owed his position entirely to his father, but when his father died … what then?
He had no idea how he had been so fortunate as to snare someone so strong and bold and beautiful as Enyo, he had no idea what he had done in this or any other life to deserve such a woman, but deserving or no, he had won her, and having won her, he was determined to give her all that she deserved.
If his name was all he had to offer, then he would make that name as grand as it had ever been, grander, even. He would be master of Freeport in all but name, a grey eminence … no. No, not grey; that was an awful color, so drab and dull. He would be an eminence of many colors, a rainbow eminence, a beautiful, glamorous, elegant eminence, but an eminence nonetheless, a power behind the throne.
And Enyo would rule beside him, and all would know her worth and praise her with tongues of silver.
"Oh," Enyo replied, amusement creeping into her voice, "would you really?"
"Yes!" Kay cried, letting go of her hand and striding ahead, turning to face her. "Dear heart, when we are ensconced in power, then I will make you … Lady Marshal of the City, defender of Freeport by day, darling of its society by night."
Enyo laughed. "Is that so? Well, that does sound fabulous." She paused. "I'm sorry it didn't go better for you."
"We will get by," he assured her. "With the help of our friends, we will get by."
They walked the rest of the way to the car, where Enyo opened the door to the driver's seat. Kay got into the back, directly behind her.
Or at least, he would have been behind her if she'd gotten in; as it was, she had to take off her shield and her spear, lodging them above the passenger seat, the tip of her spear prodding the roof as it was wedged as best it would fit.
"Must you put that there?" Knock Out asked, his lugubrious voice issuing from all around, or perhaps out of the surround sound speakers. Kay was not entirely certain how all of this Cybertronian nonsense worked. "I can feel it poking me."
"I'm sure you'll survive," Enyo replied as she got into the driver's seat.
"How would you like it if I stuck a toothpick into the roof of your mouth?" Knock Out grumbled. He sighed. "So, how did it go?"
"The answer is no," Enyo said.
"I can't say that I'm surprised," Knock Out said. "Someone who goes to a self-proclaimed school for heroes can't be expected to know what's good for them."
"Unfortunately, you appear to have a point," Kay admitted. "Although I had hoped that a scion of our ruling line, descendant direct of so many princes, would possess that same instinct for power that had won his ancestors the throne these many ages past."
"And yet," Enyo remarked, "if he had not been a hero, then he would have been no good as a figurehead."
Kay chuckled. "As always, you have hit the mark, like one of Callisto's arrows."
"Am I to be deluged by the use of her name now that you have been reminded of it?" Enyo asked wryly.
"For a day or two, perhaps," Kay replied. "Like the time you told me the name of the night goddess, what was her name—?"
"If it's to mean a repeat of all those references, I don't think I should remind you," Enyo said.
"You cut me to the quick, my sun and moon; you wound me as grievously as ever Percy was wounded by the swords and spears of her foes."
In Knock Out's rearview mirror, Kay could see Enyo smiling.
"Thessaly is the name," she told him.
"Thessaly!" Kay cried. "Let it no longer be said that you skulk or creep or do wickedness by night; rather, let it be said that you are one of Thessaly's Foresters and that you are about the goddess' business."
"What is our next move?" asked Knock Out impatiently.
"Our next move was always our most likely move," Enyo said. "If the heir to the throne does not want the throne, then we must get a new heir."
"And how is the old one to be disposed of?" Knock Out asked.
"Leave that to me," Enyo said. "I have a plan."
There were parts of Freeport that were very prosperous, that could rival any part of Vale or Mistral and even perhaps some parts of Atlas.
There were also parts of Freeport that were … to put it mildly, a little less prosperous. It was in such a part of Freeport that Team JNPR ventured: a place of narrow streets that seemed to lean inwards as though they were trying to meet in the middle and block out the sunlight shining down from above, a place of cramped terraces with narrow houses all jammed together, a place lacking yards or any open spaces.
A place of broken streetlights that would doubtless lead to very dark streets.
The perfect streets to ambush people walking by.
At the moment, it was not dark, still being very early in the morning, and the houses were not quite so close together that they blocked out the light. Pyrrha could see the houses well enough, and the broken lights and the roads with potholes that would perhaps make these roads rather awkward to drive along and various other signs that this part of Freeport was not getting the attention that it might be said to require from the municipal authorities.
It reminded her a little of Arslan's colorful descriptions of growing up on the lower slopes of Mistral, the accounts that had always made her rather glad to have grown up in Argus, where everyone enjoyed a roughly even standard of living, and a reasonably comfortable one at that.
Of course, if one wanted to throw stones and to establish blame for this state of affairs in Freeport, one might blame the Summerfires, who owned so many railroads that the old family patriarch could afford to lose three of them betting on a game of golf but whose workers — or clients, one might say, after the old usage — lived in these cramped tenements cheek by jowl with one another.
But then … that was the way of the world, was it not? A few had much, and many had far less.
And Ember
had been sufficiently concerned with the fate of her workers — the fate of her clan — that she had approached Team JNPR to solve the mystery of their disappearance.
In that, at least, she was ahead of the likes of Jacques Schnee.
"So," Nora asked, "what now?"
"Now…" Jaune trailed off for a moment, turning in place to look all around him. The narrow street lay before them with its terraces, but behind them were not terraces but rather, on the one side of the road, a modest park, one that had seen better days as far as its playground equipment was concerned, which was perhaps why all the children were eschewing the slightly rusted swings and the horse-styled spring riders that were in need of a new coat of paint, but were instead playing a game of soccer on the grass.
On the other side of the road, opposite the park, was a large building — a warehouse possibly — silent and empty-seeming. There were no lights shining from the other side of the small, high windows.
Jaune cast a glance in that direction but walked in the direction of the park and the children playing soccer there.
They were all faunus, some with a few scales upon their cheeks, others with reptilian tails sticking out of the backs of their trousers, others still with horns, or leather wings, or little claws on the ends of their fingers. They laughed and shouted to one another as they kicked the ball around, aiming for one of two piles of shirts they had made on either end of the grass.
"I can never understand the rules of this game," Ren observed. "What, exactly, is 'off-side'?"
"I don't know," Nora said. "But it looks fun, though." She glanced at Pyrrha. "I bet you'd be good at it."
"Me?"
"You've got the legs for it," Jaune said idly, as though he were remarking on the weather.
The rest of Team JNPR came to a stop, all eyes upon him.
Jaune stopped too, his face first going very pale and then turning a slight shade of red as he seemed to realize what he had just said.
He said nothing more.
Nora's mouth began to contort into an array of twisted shapes and crinkled lines, her body trembling as though she were dying not to laugh.
Pyrrha folded her arms, a smile playing across her features. It was … well, to be perfectly honest, it was rather nice of him to notice, and if a man couldn't admire the legs of his soon-to-be wife, then what was the world coming to? There had to be limits upon prudishness, had there not?
And it wasn't as though she went to any great lengths to
hide her legs.
At the same time, she could quite see why it amused Nora.
Jaune coughed into one hand. "Anyway," he said, saying nothing else that might have built on that but vaulting over the low stone wall that separated the park from the road.
The football, kicked by one of the playing children, skidded across the grass towards them.
Jaune stopped it with one foot, and no small degree of grace in his movements, blocking the ball with one touch and then putting his foot on it with the other to hold it still.
"Hey, kids!" he called out to them. "You got a second?"
The children looked at them, and some of their eyes widened as they looked at Team JNPR, the rest of whom vaulted over the wall to join their leader.
"It's Team Jupiter from the Vytal Festival!" one of the children cried.
"It's not Team Jupiter, dummy; it's Team Junifer!"
"What's a Junifer?"
"It's 'Team Juniper,' actually," Jaune said.
"But you can call us Jupiter or Junifer or anything else you want to," Nora declared, kneeling down so that she was closer to the height of the kids. "Just so long as you put a J in front of it, for our fearless leader, Jaune."
One of the children, a boy with leathery wings sprouting out of his back, poking out of two slits cut in the back of his jersey, folded his arms. "My pa says you're a dork whose girlfriend is way out of your league."
"Does he now?" Pyrrha murmured.
"My dad says that you're the king," said another boy, this one with a reptilian tail emerging out of the back of his pants, swishing back and forth just above the ground. "And you're gonna make everything better. Are you gonna make everything better?"
"I don't know about everything," Jaune said, following Nora's lead and crouching down, his arms resting upon his knees, descending to eye level with the children. "But my team and I are gonna try and fix what we can around here. But we need your help to do it. Have you kids noticed anything odd going on in this neighborhood recently?"
"You mean folks going missing?" asked a girl with square glasses over her amber eyes and horns growing out of the sides of her head, curving upwards and then straightening up so they were like a pair of daggers.
Jaune nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what we mean. You know about that?"
The girl nodded. "My daddy says I'm not allowed to stay out late; I have to be home before it gets dark."
"That's wise of him," Ren murmured.
"Do you all have to get home early now?" Jaune asked. "Do any of you know the people who have been going missing?"
"We've seen them around," said the boy whose father was apparently another supporter of Jaune's kingship. "Only not anymore, you know."
Another boy, a slightly chubby young man whose shoes were falling apart, with claws upon the ends of his fingers, edged closer to the boy whose father didn't think much of Jaune and began to whisper to him. The other boy turned his head towards him and began to whisper back.
"You gotta tell 'em."
"Shut up!"
"Come on; it might be a big deal."
"They won't listen anyway—"
"Whatever it is," Jaune said, "I promise that we'll listen, and we'll take you seriously. But if you know something, if you know anything at all, then you should tell us. The smallest thing might help save a lot of lives."
The two boys hesitated. The winged boy, the one whose father disdained Jaune, muttered, "Me and Ash hang out here at nights because…" He hesitated. "Because we don't wanna go home," he muttered.
"We trade Micromon cards or play video games on our scrolls," Ash said.
"How do you see?" asked Nora.
"With our scrolls," said the boy with the wings. "Only, some nights, we hear stuff."
Jaune nodded. "What kind of stuff?"
"Like a big door opening," the boy said. "Like that door over there." He gestured at the empty-seeming warehouse on the other side of the road. "And like a fast car driving past, only we don't see no lights, do we, Ash?"
Ash shook his head. "And we hear a big rumbling sometimes, like it's coming from beneath us, like the earth shaking or something."
Pyrrha frowned.
Underneath them? The sewer system? Or a subway, like under Mountain Glenn, perhaps?
"And you've never heard that sound before?" she asked.
Both boys shook their heads.
"Thanks, both of you, all of you," Jaune said, rising to his full height once again. "You've been a big help." He kicked the soccer ball back towards them. "Now take care of yourselves, okay?"
They left them to their game, turning away from the children as they all walked back towards the wall separating park from road. They climbed over it, standing on the street once again before they began to speak.
"Do you think that whoever is abducting these people could be taking them underground?" Pyrrha asked. "Transporting them through the sewers?"
"Transporting them how?" inquired Ren.
"I don't know," Pyrrha murmured. "A train? Trucks?"
"How big are these sewers?" Ren asked, sounding faintly aghast at the idea.
"I've really no idea," Pyrrha replied. "This is my first time in Freeport."
"We should check out that place, since it's right there," Nora said, pointing with one fingerless-gloved hand at the warehouse — or whatever it was — opposite.
"I mean, you're not wrong," Jaune agreed. "Maybe we'll find a lead there, but if not, then we'll check out the sewer system after."
He led the way, the rest of them following after him, walking across the street that was undisturbed by any car upon the road, until they reached the door of the building.
There was no name upon said building, nor a sign, nor any clue as to what it might be or who owned it. There wasn't even a notice stating that security was protecting this building.
There was only the building itself, dark and silent.
"Why would anyone want to go into a place like this?" Ren asked. "Nobody was walking home through here."
"Unless they were," Nora remarked.
"That doesn't seem very likely," Ren replied.
"We'll find out more once we can take a look inside," Jaune declared.
The doors were large and heavy, a set of great metal doors painted in a dark blue that was slowly chipping away, doors that looked as though they rolled sideways to expose an entrance big enough to drive a truck through — fair enough, Pyrrha supposed, since there was nowhere else that she could see for vehicles to go.
Jaune put his hands to the door, fitting his fingers into the grooves in the uneven metal, and pulled upon it, grunting with the effort. Pyrrha could see the muscles on his arms straining where there was a gap between his hoodie and his detached orange sleeves.
Despite his effort, the doors did not budge.
Nora cracked her knuckles. "Step aside, Jaune; I'll take care of this."
"Actually," Pyrrha murmured, "I may be able to deal with this without tearing the doors to pieces in the process."
Nora grinned. "Be my guest."
Pyrrha held up her right hand towards the doors, and as she held out her hand as though she were reaching out towards them, so she reached out with her semblance, feeling the metal of the door as though she were running her fingers over it. She could have wrenched it apart had she wished to do so, she could have torn it into shreds, she could have hauled on it until it broke.
But she was hoping to be just a little more subtle.
So Pyrrha reached out, feeling the door, feeling the metal frame, feeling for the locks that held the door in place. She closed her eyes, ignoring what she could see, what she could hear, even the cool winter air upon her cheeks; she concentrated only on what she could feel with her semblance, a feeling that was passing through the metal surface and into what lay beneath.
She could feel the locks, three of them. And having found them, it was very easy — just a tug here, a lift there — to snap them open.
And after that, a gentle pull upon the doors with her semblance was enough to send them rolling sideways out of their path.
"Whoa!" came the awed sound out of many voices, alerting Pyrrha to the fact that they had an audience, the children in the park who had stopped playing soccer and started to watch Team JNPR instead.
"That's right, she's awesome!" Nora called, pointing to Pyrrha. "I mean, we all are, but Pyrrha especially."
"Focus, Nora," Ren reminded her gently.
"I am focused," Nora replied. "I'm focused on not frightening the kids."
Sunlight streamed through the now-open doors and into the warehouse, although not so much that it could dispel the impression of a dark and gloomy interior. The first room of the warehouse was as empty as it had seemed from without. The sunlight streaming in illuminated … nothing. Nothing but a barren, concrete floor with space large enough for a truck to park, perhaps, and another wall beyond, with a door set in either end, and a high ceiling of corrugated iron and steel roof beams above.
Jaune knelt down on the floor of the warehouse. "Hmm, this place might be empty," he said, "but those kids were right; this place isn't deserted."
"How can you tell?" asked Pyrrha.
"If this place hadn't been used for a while, the floor would be a lot dustier than it is," Jaune informed her. "People have been moving around here."
"In cars, it would seem," Ren murmured.
"But why?" asked Nora. "If you're kidnapping people in a car, then just … drive them to your hideout or something."
"If they're being moved through the sewers," Pyrrha said, "then it may be because it is safer to do so there, without prying eyes to see."
"So there's … some kind of underground entrance around here?" Nora asked.
"There's only one way to find out," Jaune said. He drew his sword, the blade catching the sunlight which glimmered off the metal. "Let's go."
Nora pulled Magnhild over her shoulder, the grenade launcher transforming smoothly into a hammer. "We've got your back, Fearless Leader."
"Indeed," Pyrrha murmured, as she pulled Miló and Akoúo̱ into her hands, Miló in spear form, her shield held before her against any enemies that might emerge, though there was no sign of them yet.
Jaune was silent, considering no doubt where to begin their search. Without a word, he gestured with his sword to their right and began to move in that direction, keeping his legs apart, his body lower to the ground than his full height, such that he would be well balanced in case some threat attempted to ambush them.
They all moved with him, eyes peeled, taking nothing for granted. They moved towards the door on the right, the gray metal door on the right.
The door was not a sliding one; though Jaune had to push a little bit, it nevertheless opened when he reached it, throwing it open to reveal, on the other side, a row of … pods, lined up against the wall, with gaps occasionally between them: here, there, over there. Chambers of metal, with glass fronts demonstrating that there was nothing within them, just the pods themselves like empty cocoons, waiting for the caterpillars to crawl inside. They were all sitting at a slight angle, so that anyone who had been lying in the pods would have been looking upwards at the ceiling. There was a humming coming from the room, a humming of energy, being driven most likely by the glowing boxes attached on the left of each pod, a battery or a power cell.
"What are these things?" Nora asked, as the members of Team JNPR made their way tentatively inside. "Are they … are they for holding people prisoner?"
"That would explain why there are some missing," Ren said.
"Abduct people, bring them here, place them inside these … chambers, and then … what?" asked Pyrrha, walking slowly towards the row of pods, her red sash brushing against her leg. "And to what end? Why go to all this trouble?"
"I don't know," Jaune admitted. His arms, though still holding his sword and shield, fell down to his sides as he walked slowly towards the row of empty pods. "But that kid outside was definitely right."
"Mmm," Pyrrha murmured, her green eyes flickering between Jaune and the empty pods on which he was advancing. They were set at angles, on metal poles that did not seem to be part of their designs, rather … rather they almost looked like rails.
"Do you think—?"
The words were taken out of her mouth as Jaune reached the pods, standing directly before them.
The floor opened up beneath his feet, a square tile of what had seemed to be immovable concrete sliding out from underneath him to reveal a deep black hole, a hole into which Jaune plunged with a startled cry, flailing his arms wildly.
"Jaune!" Pyrrha cried, reaching out towards him as Jaune disappeared into the darkness, the tile that had slid out from underneath sliding back into place to cover up the hole once more.
No. No! Pyrrha's heart hammered in her chest. She reached out with Polarity to the trapdoor. As she tugged at it, it resisted … for a moment. That was
Jaune down there, and rather than bother with subtlety or fiddle with the mechanism, she instead tore it open with main force, sending an ear-splitting shriek and a cacophony of cracking and crumbling echoing throughout the building.
"Jaune?" Nora yelled down. There was no answer. "JAUNE!"
There was no answer from the darkness, only the echo of Nora's own voice raised in concern.
"I'll try his scroll," Ren said.
"I have a better idea," Pyrrha told him. "If you don't hear from either of us, alert the authorities."
And with that said — and, crucially, without giving either of them time to object — Pyrrha leapt down in the pit after him.
The metal rail that Pyrrha had noticed ran down the hole; Pyrrha guessed that it was to lower the pods down into the darkness and the deep once they had been filled with the victims of this kidnapping scheme. Whatever it was for, Pyrrha grabbed hold of it, using her semblance upon the metal to slow her descent just a touch, so that she did not fall blindly into the dark, flailing as Jaune had; rather, she fell like a thunderbolt from heaven cast by Seraphis to strike some hapless mortal down: all control, knowing exactly where she meant to go.
For though she did not know what waited for her at the bottom, she knew that Jaune was there, and
that was where she meant to go.
And so, Pyrrha descended into the dark, her booted feet skidding down the stone wall, her gloved hand gripping the metal rail tight. Akoúo̱ was upon her back, but Miló in its spear form remained in her hand. Though the light had faded from above, Pyrrha reached out blindly with her spear, feeling for the walls on either side of her and finding none. She guessed, though she could not see, that all of the pods could be lowered down here at once, if someone wished it so.
What they would do with them once they got down there, she knew not.
Down and down, Pyrrha descended, like Alyx falling through the world, until, at last, she felt the solid ground beneath her feet.
She stood … somewhere. She knew not where. She could not see a thing, though her eyes scoured the darkness for anything, anything at all they could make out.
"Jaune?" Pyrrha called.
Rather than pull Akoúo̱ back onto her arm, she reached for one of the pouches on her belt, pulling out a crystal of fire dust, to which she applied the faintest touch of aura, not enough to ignite it, but enough to make it glow and for a heat to rise out of it.
It was the light, the red light, that she was after now as she tossed the crystal down at her own feet, lighting up the world around her like an early morning when the sun has only just begun its rise.
She stood in a cavernous space, a tunnel wide enough for Optimus Prime to drive down in his truck mode, and possibly at least one other Autobot to drive in parallel with him, high enough to fly down at low — very low, admittedly — altitude, a vast space of stone dug out beneath the city of Freeport and seeming as best Pyrrha could see to stretch on away from her also. The floor was flat, there was no dirt beneath her feet, nothing staining her boots; this was no sewer, or at least, Pyrrha did not think it so. Perhaps an underground city? Perhaps someone had, at some point, had the idea to make a second Freeport under the first, just as Mountain Glenn had been built as two cities, one above and one below, a refuge for the people in case the walls were breached and the Grimm gained the Freeport above? Perhaps this had been intended as an underground road, or a railway but the tracks had not been laid?
In the end, it mattered little what it was; what mattered was finding Jaune.
"Jaune?!" Pyrrha called out again, louder this time and more frantic. "Jaune, where are you?"
"Hey," Jaune said, stepping into the light cast by her fire dust crystal, colored in red by the glow so that, for a moment, he seemed almost ominous, or sinister, as utterly ridiculous as that was. This was Jaune, shaded red or not, her Jaune, safe and sound. "It's alright. I'm right here." He smiled. "No need to shout."
Pyrrha let out a sigh of relief so ragged that her stomach sucked itself in of its own volition, and she was almost bent forwards because of it. "I … I was worried. I didn't know…" She shook her head. "I was worried."
Jaune chuckled. "If there'd been anything down here, I could have handled myself for a little bit. You taught me that well."
Pyrrha managed to smile. "Yes. Yes, I … I'm sorry."
"It's fine," Jaune informed her. "Just don't underestimate me in future. I'm a lot tougher than I—"
"COWABUNGA!"
Jaune looked up, a startled wordless cry managing to escape his lips before a screaming Nora landed directly on top of him, driving him down into the floor below.
"Oh, hey, you found Jaune!" Nora cried.
Jaune's words were muffled by the floor beyond all recognition.
"What was that?" asked Nora.
"Perhaps you'd better let him up?" Pyrrha suggested.
"Oh, right, yeah," Nora said, wincing a little as she scrambled off Jaune's back.
Pyrrha held out a hand to help Jaune to his feet. "What are you doing down here? I told you—"
"You don't think I was going to let you have all the fun, did you?" Nora asked. "Or all the danger, either? If Jaune had dropped down into trouble, you really think I'd hang around up there getting put on hold by some cop while you two were fighting for your lives?"
"I'd say thank you," Jaune groaned, taking Pyrrha's hand and letting her help him to his feet, "but you could have been a little more careful about where you landed."
"Huh?" Nora said. "You're lucky I didn't use my landing strategy."
Jaune shook his head and rotated his arms and shoulders in circles. "Whatever you could have done to slow your fall, I guarantee it would have been appreciated."
Nora's eyebrows rose. "I don't think you
or Pyrrha would have actually appreciated me firing grenades down here to use the blast up to slow me down, but okay." She grinned. "But I can bear that in mind for next time, if you like."
Jaune laughed nervously. "Well, no, I … I guess I hit my head a little harder than I thought. For a second there, I couldn't remember what your landing strategy was." He laughed again. "So, where's Ren?"
Ren took that opportunity to drop down as though he had been waiting for someone to ask, landing on his feet with an easy grace. "Jaune, are you alright?"
"I'm fine, no thanks to Nora," Jaune said.
"Nora was concerned for you, as we all were," Pyrrha said gently.
"Right, but … I'm fine," Jaune said. "I don't know what the deal was with that trapdoor, but I'm fine. I fell, but my aura cushioned me, and then there was nothing here. At least, nothing here at the moment. I wouldn't say that I haven't found anything."
"Quite," Ren murmured, looking around at what the glow of Pyrrha's dust crystal revealed. "But what
have we found?"
"Another piece of the puzzle," Pyrrha said. Ordinarily, she enjoyed puzzles, but this one … she feared there was a grim discovery waiting at the end of the road. "Someone — we still do not know who — is snatching people off the streets, the faunus that Ember asked us to find. They are being brought here, and we may surmise they are being placed into those pods; they may be life support pods of some description. I know in Argus, there are patients being placed into stasis for long term conditions, but I have never seen the means. In any case, when they are full, the floor opens, and the pods are lowered down here, and … here we are."
"Sounds about right," Jaune said. "Although we still don't know why. But, since we're here, we might as well take a look around, see what we can find."
"Indeed," Pyrrha said. "Let us hope that these poor victims have not been taken too far away."
Sadly, they were not so fortunate. Though Jaune led them on, taking the fire dust crystal in his hand and leading them through the vast underground tunnels, they found nothing, no evidence of where the pods and their human cargo had been taken, no sign of train or truck or anything else that might have caused the rumbling under the earth that the children had heard. Jaune took first this turn, and then that, and perhaps they had taken the wrong ones — although, of course, he could hardly be blamed for that, if so — but the end result was that, from a beginning that had seemed so promising, they spent many hours underneath Freeport, with little sense of where they were going, whether they had been down this particular stretch of featureless tunnel before, where they were in relation to the surface, until finally, they returned above ground with precious little to show but time wasted and tempers somewhat worn.
It was a rather dispirited Team JNPR that began the trek back to their hotel as the night drew in, not least because not all of them wished to return.
"We can't just go back to the hotel and go to bed!" Nora declared. "These people are counting on us!"
"We've done the best we could for today, Nora," Jaune said patiently.
"But our best hasn't been good enough yet, has it?" Nora said sharply.
"Nora, calm down," Pyrrha urged. "I understand your frustration, we all do—"
"Does Jaune?" asked Ren. "Do
you want to go back to the hotel?"
Pyrrha shifted uncomfortably. "I am not sure how well I will sleep, but loath as I am to leave a job half-done, we need rest. We will be no good to anyone fighting our own fatigue."
"I'm not saying we need to go without sleep for days," Nora said, "but we know that the warehouse is important; let's stake the place out and see who comes around."
Jaune shook his head. "At this point, whoever is behind this probably knows we're looking into it. I don't think they'll use that warehouse again."
"Then what are we going to do?"
"You're going to do what I say!" Jaune snapped. He paused, taking a breath. "I'm sorry, but … this is why we need to rest. That's why we're going to go back to the hotel, we're going to get a good night's sleep, and we're going to start fresh again tomorrow. Understood?" He waited a second for objections that did not come. "Okay then. Let's go."
Pyrrha took her circlet off and set it down on the little dressing table up against the wall.
She glanced at her reflection in the mirror, noting the slight frown disfiguring her brow, the way her mouth was turned downwards.
She looked concerned.
She
was concerned; it wasn't like Jaune to behave that way, to snap at Ren and Nora, to give up before the job was done. Yes, his arguments had made sense, but at the same time … it didn't feel like something Jaune would say.
As much or more to the point, it didn't feel entirely like the best thing for all those people who were missing. True, wearing themselves out in the search might not be the best thing for those who were missing either, but to just leave them? To go back to this nice hotel, to have dinner, to have a hot shower, to sleep in an extremely comfortable bed? It stuck in Pyrrha's craw somewhat; these were the actions of a Mistralian lord, scornful of the worth of those beneath him, not of a Huntsman.
And not of a good man like Jaune, either.
Pyrrha got up, her expression reflecting her resolve in the mirror. She would speak to him about this. She would insist upon it. She would … she would get no sleep, not in these circumstances, therefore, they might as well get some benefit out of her sleeplessness by resuming the search.
At the very least, she would ask that Jaune explain himself to her more fully, and to her greater satisfaction.
She couldn't just leave it like this. As his teammate, and as his bride to be, she wanted and felt entitled to know what was driving him.
Pyrrha walked to the door, her red sash fluttering a little at her side, brushing against her legs.
She opened the door, only to find that Jaune was already standing on the other side, one arm raised to knock.
"Hey," he said, leaning forward to plant a kiss upon her lips before she could say anything. He smiled, that winning smile that normally made his blue eyes sparkle, although it didn't seem to be quite reaching them tonight. "Good timing, right? Or … or not," he added. "I mean, if you were going somewhere—"
"No," Pyrrha replied. "Well, yes, I was, but only to see you."
The smile remained, and it was as bright in his mouth as it ever was, but still went nowhere near his eyes. "Right. Good thing that I'm here then, isn't it?"
Pyrrha chuckled. "Yes," she agreed. "Yes, I suppose it is." She retreated a couple of steps from the door, back into the room, and then another. "Please, come in."
"Thanks," Jaune said, stepping inside Pyrrha's room and closing the door behind him with the same hand that he had been about to use to knock upon the door. His other hand, Pyrrha saw now, was otherwise occupied, holding a dark green bottle of sparkling wine that he now held up for her better view. "I thought we could share this. I'm told it's a pretty good year. I should probably know this stuff, since we have a vineyard back home, and you already know that Rouge is starting up her own vineyard in Vale, but … I don't really get it, what makes a good year or a bad year, the grapes and the soil and everything. But the guy behind the bar told me that this was a good year, and I trust that he knows what he's talking about."
Pyrrha blinked. "Jaune…"
"You don't like it?" Jaune asked, disappointment seeping into his voice as his eyebrows turned downwards.
"I've never really tried it," Pyrrha murmured, "but that isn't the point; the point is that this … it feels a little inappropriate, in the circumstances."
Jaune put the bottle down on the dressing table, next to Pyrrha's gleaming circlet. "You mean because we called off the search and came back here."
Pyrrha nodded. "It's one thing to say that we need rest and that we won't do anyone any good by running ourselves ragged, but to come down here with wine as if you want to celebrate … what are we meant to be celebrating while there are people in this city missing and depending on us?" She paused. "Usually, I … I flatter myself that I can tell what you're thinking, but in this, I fear I am confused."
"Well, when you put it like that," Jaune murmured, reaching up to scratch the back of his head. "I didn't see why we had to be all doom and gloom just because we were on a job—"
"I'm not saying that, and I don't think Ren or Nora were either," Pyrrha replied, "but there is a great gulf between being doom and gloom and …
this." She gestured towards the bottle of wine. "It isn't like you."
"No," Jaune agreed. "No, it isn't. I … I don't know, I just … I understand that we have a job to do, I just … I suppose I just didn't want to let go of the dream of a romantic vacation before our wedding."
"We will have it," Pyrrha promised him, taking a few steps towards him, closing the distance between them as she reached out to take his hands. "We have had it, and we will have it again, in Mistral and on your family estate, on the rest of our journey that lies before us." She smiled. "Barring any more emergencies like this one, if it does not tempt fate to say so."
Jaune didn't laugh. He didn't even smile. Rather, he looked away from her. "Yeah," he muttered. "Yeah, about that…"
Pyrrha waited for him to explain — about what? — but he did not. Having trailed off, he said not another word.
"Jaune?" she prompted.
"Do you think that we should go back out there?" Jaune asked, looking back at her. "Do you think that we should keep looking, through dark and on?"
"I think…" Pyrrha hesitated for a moment. "I think that we are not so weary that we could not stand to do it . Our auras are strong; our bodies are healthy; we have not been pushing ourselves to our limits. I don't think that we're in dire need of rest; we could exert ourselves, if called upon. Rest is necessary, but sometimes, it can be done without, if it must."
"And you think it must?" asked Jaune. "You think we should?"
"I think … I think it may be difficult to tell Ember Summerfire that we felt it was getting late so we called it a night just when we were on the right track," Pyrrha said quietly.
"
If we were on the right track," Jaune replied pointedly.
"If, yes, I suppose, but we were on
a track, at least," Pyrrha said.
"Were we?" Jaune asked. "We could have been wandering around down there for hours more and found nothing. I needed to consider our options."
"Is that what you're doing now?" Pyrrha asked. "Considering your options?"
"Yes," Jaune said earnestly. "Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing."
He began to walk towards the bed, pulling Pyrrha gently with him, leading her by the hands until he sat down, the mattress giving way heavily beneath him.
Pyrrha sat down beside him, their shoulders practically touching one another, her hands still holding his.
"What is it?" she asked. "Is there something wrong?"
She felt somewhat certain — no, not certain, perhaps, but confident at least — that the answer to that was 'yes,' but at the same time, she didn't want to presume.
"Not exactly," Jaune said. "I mean, this could be great. I think it will be great. I … I'm thinking about what Kay Beresford said this morning."
Pyrrha could not help but frown. "In what way?"
"What if he's right?" Jaune asked. "What if Vale needs me? What if Vale needs a king? What right do I have to turn him down, to turn this whole kingdom down? What right do I have to refuse the crown just because I don't want it?"
"Every right," Pyrrha replied, her voice rising with concern. "No one has the right to demand such a thing of you, and no one can force you to accept it … these things are in our choice, as our lives, our destinies, they are all within our own choosing. Nobody can chart our course for us."
"But that doesn't mean we have the right to do whatever we want, right?" Jaune asked her. "We can't kill whoever we want, take whatever we want—"
"No, of course not, that's ridiculous," Pyrrha said. "There are laws, rules—"
"Obligations?" suggested Jaune.
"Yes," Pyrrha murmured. "But it seems to me that what Kay Beresford desires, the world that he envisages, has more akin to taking what he wants than any sense of obligation."
Jaune chuckled. "Maybe," he admitted. "All the same, I … I think that he might have a point."
"You think that Vale is so badly governed that it's crying out for the return of the king?" asked Pyrrha.
"I think it could do worse," Jaune said, "and Freeport could certainly do a whole lot worse. You heard what he said: this city, this whole area, is neglected, put upon—"
The city is not the only thing being neglected at the moment, Pyrrha thought. "And you think a king would solve this problem?"
"I think…" Jaune paused for a moment. "I think that, as Huntsmen and Huntresses, it's our job to help people, right?"
Pyrrha nodded. "Of course."
"Well what if the way that I could help the most people the best was by taking the throne?" Jaune asked her. "If that was true, if that was the best thing I could do for Vale, for the world, then wouldn't that mean that I had to do it? Wouldn't that be my duty?"
Duty. That was a hard word, a demanding word, a heavy word, a word that was hard to deny. In some ways, it was a harder word than "destiny." Pyrrha could understand a little better now Jaune's actions, why he had been behaving so erratically. She could not understand so easily how he had come to this view, having seemed so certain in his refusal at breakfast, but if he had come to see it this way, then it explained at least some things.
"What brought this on?" she asked softly. "At breakfast, you turned Kay down, and you seemed so certain in doing so."
"I know," Jaune admitted. "But as the day went on … I guess that it was preying on my mind. I instinctively said no, because, you know, it was such a weird request, but when I stopped just thinking of it as something weird and started thinking of it as something to actually think about … it became harder to see why it was ridiculous."
"I … I understand," Pyrrha murmured, and felt ashamed of herself for not having noticed his inner turmoil before now. "If … I must say that I am not convinced that the situation is thus, but if it were so … the choice would still be in your choosing, though I concede that it would be a hard choice, to do what was best for the world and in so doing sacrifice your own happiness…"
"So you wouldn't consider making your own claim?" asked Jaune. "Because it wouldn't make you happy to do it?"
Pyrrha blinked. "My … my claim?"
"To the throne of Mistral," Jaune said, as though it were obvious, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, as though he had just pointed out that the sky was blue when the sun rose up.
Pyrrha blinked again, and again, she blinked rapidly several times. "I … I … I never told you about that." Quite the opposite, in fact; she had gone to some considerable lengths to stop him from finding out about it. So how
had he found out about it?
And why would he just drop the fact that he knew in casual conversation with her like that?
He wouldn't. Pyrrha knew that, as she knew Jaune; if he had found out, even in the midst of this decision that he was mulling over, then he would have come and talked to her about it, asked her why she hadn't told him, listened to her explanation; he wouldn't simply come out with it like this.
"You didn't?" Jaune asked. He let out a little laugh, and his tone became instantly more casual. "I mean, of course you didn't; that's why I had to find out from my sisters."
"Your sisters," Pyrrha murmured.
Jaune nodded. "They checked out your ancestry; apparently, they wanted to get a sense of who your family was, who your 'people' were, they said, for the wedding. Because, you know, this whole thing is a big deal to them—"
"It's rather a big deal to me too," Pyrrha said softly.
"And me," Jaune agreed. "But, you know, my sisters … they've got this whole royalty thing, they take it so seriously; some of them, anyway, not Verte, but Rouge, you know…"
I know that Rouge didn't say anything to me when we visited her, Pyrrha thought.
And I know that you didn't hear from your sisters today.
"Anyway," he went on, "they found out that you're descended from the Emperors of Mistral." He smiled. "Snap, huh? Who would have guessed that the King and the Empress would find each other like this?"
"I'm not an empress," Pyrrha said, refraining from pointing out that he was not a king either. "But, yes, I appreciate the irony of it."
She let go of his hands and got up off the bed, crossing her arms together across her stomach as he walked towards the window. She felt her sash brushing against her hip between her cuisses and her skirt.
She felt the tingling in her hands as she began to use her semblance. Though she had her back to him, she could feel him on the bed, feel his armor … and feel the metal underneath that she should not have been able to feel.
Pyrrha grabbed him, whoever he was, with the full force of her semblance, Polarity closing around him like a fist, and as she rounded on him, sash whirling around her, she raised her hand up and lifted him towards the ceiling.
She pulled his arms and legs so that he was spreadeagled in mid-air.
"Pyrrha!" he squawked in Jaune's voice. "Pyrrha, what are you doing?"
Pyrrha didn't respond. She held him in place as she got her scroll out of one of the pouches on her belt. With one hand, and all the while keeping her eyes on her new captive, she opened up the device and called Nora.
"Pyrrha!" he yelled. "Pyrrha, what's going on? What's gotten into you?"
"Hello?" Nora answered.
"What's up, Pyrrha?"
"Nora!" he yelled. "This is Jaune; Pyrrha's gone crazy, she—"
"Nora," Pyrrha cut him off, though her own voice was quiet by comparison it was as sharp as Miló's edge, and it sliced through his words as effectively as her weapon carved up Griffons and Manticores, "get Ren and come to my room, and bring your weapons with you."
"Our weapons?" Nora asked.
"Yes!" he shouted. "Yes, bring your weapons; you have to stop Pyrrha—"
"Trust me, Nora," Pyrrha said. "I'll explain everything when you get here."
"Nora," he said, "as your team leader, I am ordering you to help me."
"And as your friend," Pyrrha said, "I ask for your forbearance, for just a little while."
There was a moment of silence.
"Okay, Pyrrha," Nora said.
"Ren and I will be right there."
Pyrrha could not restrain the sigh of relief. "Thank you, Nora. I will see you soon."
She hung up, and — still with one hand — folded her scroll up and put it away.
"Pyrrha," he pleaded, his blue eyes — or at least the appearance of them — growing larger. "Pyrrha, please, what—?"
"Don't," Pyrrha growled, the word leaping out of her throat as though it were a dog that wished to spring on him with teeth bared. "Do not address me in that familiar tone, you have no right!" She took a deep breath. "I have two questions for you, and this once, I will ask them with courtesy: who are you, and where is Jaune?"
"
I'm Jaune!" he cried. "I'm right—"
"No," Pyrrha declared. "Jaune would never simply walk away with a job undone and people in danger, Jaune wouldn't be considering trying to get a throne for himself, and Jaune didn't know about my heritage, and he wouldn't keep the fact that he had found out to himself. So, again—"
There was a knock on the door.
"Nora?" Pyrrha called out. "Is that you?"
"Yeah," Nora's voice was a little muffled by the door, but recognizable all the same. "Me and Ren, we came as fast as he could."
And very quickly that was too, Pyrrha thought as she used a touch of Polarity from her other hand to open the door for them.
Nora had Magnhild in its hammer mode, resting upon her shoulder; Ren stood behind her, silent and watchful.
"Hello again, both of you," Pyrrha said calmly. "Please, come in."
They entered, Nora managing to get Magnhild through the doorway without fuss, Ren closing the door behind them. Nora stopped as she walked far enough into the room to see Jaune's imposter suspended in the air near the ceiling.
Nora stared at him for a second, then looked at Pyrrha. "Whatcha doin', Pyrrha?"
"Nora! Ren!" he said. "You have to—!"
"That is not Jaune Arc," Pyrrha declared. "I can feel the metal with my semblance."
"'Metal'?" Ren repeated. He looked up at Jaune. "You're a—"
"Pretender," Pyrrha growled. "You're a Pretender, aren't you?"
The expressions of Optimus Prime were not always easy to read, but Pyrrha felt that he looked grave, graver than usual — which was saying something — as he stood before them. "Neither we Autobots nor the Decepticons are free of the taint of deception," he declared. "We have both lived among your kind as robots in disguise. But it appears that the Decepticons have found new frontiers for the art of deception; not content with disguising themselves as vehicles, they have found ways to disguise themselves as humans."
"As people?" Jaune gasped. "That … how? I mean … how?"
"They are called Pretender Shells," Optimus explained, "and the technology is very old. Before the Great War, they were developed for scientific and diplomatic purposes, to allow Cybertronian researchers and ambassadors to take on organic appearances, either to avoid disrupting research or to put organic allies at ease. With them, Pretenders can fool not only the eyes and ears, but also touch, smell—"
"Taste?" Nora guessed.
Optimus paused. "I'm afraid I don't know the answer to that," he admitted. "I would never have thought that the technology would be used to impersonate humans, especially for such long periods; it seems the Decepticons are more ingenious than I had anticipated. And already, humans have paid the price for my lack of foresight."
"What happened to Team Funky wasn't your fault," Pyrrha said, taking a step towards him. "Nobody could have known—"
"No, because I did not consider the possibility," Optimus rumbled in his deep bass voice. "Consider it now, all of you. If one of your number is not acting like themselves, it may be that they are not themselves.
"Well that explains a lot," Nora muttered. She sidestepped to give herself more room as she swung Magnhild off her shoulder and into both hands, hands which gripped the long shaft tightly, her fingers whitening. "Okay, buddy, you've got about five seconds to tell us where the
real Jaune is, or I'm going to start breaking things!"
He looked down upon them from where he hung, held fast in the grip of Pyrrha's semblance.
An ugly smirk spread across his face. "You think that you can scare me?" he asked, using Jaune's voice as though he had a right to it. "You think that you can threaten me with … with
torture? Please. You're Huntsmen. You're
heroes!"
He injected such a sneer into the word that Pyrrha wanted to rip out his voicebox, or whatever it was Decepticons had.
Pyrrha lowered her arm, and as she lowered it, she lowered the Pretender towards the floor, even as she pulled upon his arms and legs as though she were a petulant child and he were a doll that she had grown to dislike. He winced in pain, his body jerking unnaturally, in ways that would have alarmed her greatly had they been happening to Jaune.
But this was
not Jaune, this was her best hope of
finding Jaune, and that made a great deal of difference.
"You're right," she admitted as she walked towards him, brushing past Nora as she did so. "We are Huntsmen and Huntresses. We are heroes, or at least we try to be." She closed the distance with the Pretender, lowered his face so that it was level with hers. "But I am also a Mistralian woman in love, fastened by the hand and heart, and if you don't start to answer my questions, then you will see exactly what that means."
She took a step back and gathered her grip upon Polarity, tightening her hold upon his arms and legs before she began to pull.
He squawked in pain, and there was an audible crack before the image of Jaune Arc
shifted, folding and unfolding like a Mistralian paper model, until it was replaced by a monstrous creature of metal, a bat or a gargoyle with orange wings spread out on either side of a black metallic body. The wings resembled bat wings, with the appearance of three bones and two sharp claws, although, of course, it was all metal, no membrane; the body was thin but boxy and squat, with a sharp, angular, cruel-looking head, red eyes and sharp fangs in its mouth and what might be sharp ears or horns growing out of it. A pair of stubby, claw-like feet thrashed in the air, scrabbling for purchase and finding none.
Jaune's shout of agony was transformed into a bat-like screech of pain.
"Wingthing!" he cried. "My name is Wingthing!"
"Wingthing," Pyrrha repeated, baring her teeth in an angry snarl. "Where," she demanded, each word as sharp as Miló's tip. "Is. Jaune?"
Jaune Arc's eyes were closed. His expression was peaceful, almost serene.
It was strange, the way that the cryopods would do that to you, Enyo thought as she looked down at the slumbering King of Vale where he slept in the cold; she had put many people into such pods, grabbing them off the street, dragging them into vehicles, into warehouses, shoving them bodily into these suspended animation chambers. None had ever gone peacefully, none had ever gone quietly; Jaune had certainly not, although once she had sprayed the gas into his mouth, his resistance had rapidly diminished; nevertheless, he had still been feebly trying to fight as the lid of the glass coffin closed over him.
But look at him now, so peaceful-looking, as though he had just fallen into a restful sleep where pleasant dreams, sprung up from the underworld through the gates of ivory, bounded through his mind.
Who, watching him thus, would have guessed that Enyo had been lying in wait for him at the bottom of the shaft to pounce upon him as he fell?
Who would have guessed that he had not chosen to get into that pod of his own volition?
It was the same with all of them, with all of Enyo's victims, with all of those that they had taken.
And yet, now, looking at Jaune Arc through the transparent door of the cryogenic pod, Enyo felt a twinge of guilt.
She raised one large hand and placed it on the glass, looking down at Jaune Arc with his eyes closed, his mind … she didn't know what happened to someone who was placed in cryogenic suspension; did they dream?
Enyo wasn't sure that she wanted to find out.
"He looks as though he's waiting for a princess to kiss him awake," she murmured.
"Hmm?" Kay asked. "Did you say something, dearest heart, apple of my eye?"
With her hand, Enyo gestured towards Jaune. "Our sleeping king. Or your sleeping king, at least. Doesn't he look as though he is in an enchanted sleep?"
Kay walked over the short distance between them to join her, fussing with his lace cuffs as he did so; he, too, looked down upon Jaune Arc. "Yes," he said softly. "Yes, I suppose he does. And, in a sense, he
is in an enchanted sleep."
"Hmph, what nonsense," Knock Out grumbled, his back to the pair of them as he busied himself upon his oversized — but just the right size for him — computer, typing away doing … something or other; Enyo was not all that familiar with the technology of her own people, still less that of aliens.
Something related to the army that these Decepticons were building in the catacombs under Freeport, possibly.
They stood in Knock Out's lab, a cavernous space with a ceiling high enough for any Cybertronian to walk freely in, a space that had been constructed in secret at great expense by Kay's father and their other backers in Freeport who were anxious for a change in the government of Vale. Cables were strewn across the ceiling, sometimes descending downwards so that Knock Out and his fellow Decepticons had to duck to avoid them, usually secured better to the roof that loomed so high above the humans.
Jaune Arc's was not the only cryopod present in the lab. There were others here, lined up row upon row, each emitting a faint blue glow in the darkened lab, each one holding a person sleeping inside.
But it was only Jaune Arc who held Enyo's attention.
Kay turned around to face the back of he who was their host, their ally, and in some sense, their guest. "You, sir, have no romance in your soul."
"I am not unaware that there are numinous powers out there in the universe that science cannot completely explain," Knock Out replied. "I visited Maccadam's often enough in my younger days, for one. But your King Jaune over there is held more securely by science than by any
enchantment. And it doesn't need a kiss to wake him up again, just the push of a button … for now."
"For now," Enyo repeated quietly, almost whispering it. Soon, Jaune Arc's pod would be moved, out of the lab and into the workshop, through the large metal door, the size of a gate, set in the south side of the laboratory.
The workshop where her victims went and were never seen again.
That was the bargain they had made, the Decepticons and the great ones of Freeport: fodder for power, a host of faunus riffraff whom no one would miss swept up from the streets and offered up to the Decepticons like sacrifices made to ancient gods. And in return, Freeport would gain an army, security from Vale, a golden crown and many ermine robes to drape across the shoulders of its best and greatest. Kay's family had possessed the coronet of a marquis; the new king would see it converted to a ducal one, and the baronetcy once held on his mother's side called out of abeyance in his favor.
And all it took was some worthless faunus about whom no one cared.
And Jaune Arc.
"Beloved?" Kay asked, placing one gentle hand — he had such very gentle hands — upon her upper arm, squeezing her bicep just a little. "Enyo, what is the matter?"
Enyo placed her hand on top of his. "He was engaged to be married," she murmured. "To Pyrrha Nikos."
Kay looked up and into her eyes. His own eyes were soft and understanding. "You regret this?"
"How can I not?" asked Enyo. "I would not wish a broken heart upon myself; how can I wish it upon her?"
"The course of greatness often requires great sacrifice," Kay replied.
"And I have made them," Enyo said. "I have compelled others to make them, but this? But Pyrrha Nikos? To rob her of love? Was there no other way? No other who could wear the crown?"
"None whom the people would rally to," Kay replied. "None who command the respect and affection of the commons, none so well known, none so admired, none so lauded, none so well beloved across Vale and beyond. None who, when he stirs abroad, people will whisper to their children 'there! This is he! There is Jaune Arc, the rightful king!' None whom opinion would help and carry to the throne. None … none whom, placed at the head of our most noble enterprise, would help that enterprise to success. None … none."
"It's a little late to get cold feet now," Knock Out said.
"My feet are hot as coals," Enyo snapped. "I simply … I would rather not break the heart of a fellow Mistralian woman, and a warrior besides. If it could be avoided. Which, it seems, that it cannot." To Kay, she added, "Fear not; I am by your side, now and always."
Kay smiled softly. "I would rather doubt that the moon is broken than doubt your constancy, my love."
Enyo nodded, and yet, she was silent for a moment, casting another glance down towards Jaune Arc in his cryopod. "I would not wish a dog's death upon her, but perhaps Pyrrha Nikos ought to be killed. Wingthing—"
"It would arouse too much suspicion," Knock Out said. "How would you explain it? An accident? Suicide?"
"If she lives and finds out what we have done, she will be enraged," Enyo warned.
"Oh, don't worry about that, for Primus's sake!" Knock Out cried dismissively. "There's no way that she could see through Wingthing's disguise, not with his personality emulator. Trust me, this plan is foolproof."
It was at that moment that the north wall of the lab exploded inwards as Wingthing was thrown through the wall to land in a heap on the stone floor.
And through the hole in the wall strode Pyrrha Nikos and her teammates.
Pyrrha strode through the ad-hoc door that she had just created with Wingthing's … assistance, and in the momentary silence that followed the shattering of the wall, her steps echoed in the vast space in which they found themselves, the sound of her boots leaping from wall to wall to the cable-strewn ceiling set so high above them.
Ren and Nora were at her side, and beside them through the breach came Ember, her father, and as many members of the old Summer Fire Clan — Ember's workers, the friends and neighbors of the disappeared, those bound to her by ancient ties of kinship — as could be armed and mustered in haste. They were dressed in their workman's overalls, in jeans and t-shirts, in suits without ties; they carried rifles and shotguns of various vintages. Obviously, Team JNPR would be at the tip of the spear, but Pyrrha had thought they might need many willing hands to get the kidnapped faunus out if they found them.
There was a moment of silence as the dust settled.
"Wingthing," said the Decepticon in a voice that was deep but by no means harsh, "you couldn't have come in just a few seconds earlier,
before I opened my mouth?"
The Decepticon was not quite as tall as Starscream, but by no means small; he towered over Wingthing. Those parts of his body which Pyrrha guessed comprised his disguise combined to give the impression that he was wearing red armor — a red cuirass over his torso, red vambraces upon his forearms, red greaves over his lower legs, a red helmet with a tall crest and star-like ridges upon it — over the gray metal that comprised his true body. His face was sharp and narrow, with a noticeable cleft in his chin.
Wingthing's only response was to let a wordless moan emerge from out of his bat-like mouth.
"By the flames," Ember murmured. "Look at all these people."
The room was filled with cryogenic suspension pods, just like the ones that Team JNPR had found in the abandoned old warehouse.
Except that these pods were full: row upon row of pods filled with slumbering people, all held in suspended animation against their will.
And two humans, awakened, standing in the center of it all: Kay Beresford and Enyo.
"You?" Pyrrha gasped. "But … but why?"
Enyo's only response was to draw her spear and shield from across her back and flow like water around Kay until she was standing protectively between him and danger.
"For an army, obviously," the Decepticon said, gesturing with one hand even as he tucked the other one behind his back. "Something that we both wanted, something that we could each help the other to obtain. A simple arrangement of mutual advantage."
"You allied yourselves with the Decepticons so that they would help you break away from Vale?" Pyrrha demanded. "And then … when Jaune would not become your puppet king, you had him replaced with … with
this?!" She gestured towards Wingthing where he lay on the floor before her. She shook her head derisively, her long ponytail flapping behind her like a standard.
Are you really so foolish? Do you really believe that these monsters will keep their word to you?
She breathed deeply and drew Miló and Akoúo̱ from off her back, Miló in spear mode resting upon the edge of Akoúo̱.
"Let them go," she growled. "Release them all, at once!"
"I'm afraid I can't do that," said the Decepticon. "Just like I can't let you leave here alive." He clicked his narrow fingers. "Vehicons! Attack!"
The great metal door on the other side of the vast chamber began to rise with a grinding and a rumbling sound, hauled upwards and out of sight to reveal, as it rose, a host of those abominations they called Vehicons, lit dimly from below by faint blue lights running along the baseboards.
Pyrrha's breath half caught in her throat. She recognised them from Vale, from Starscream's lab and his experiments. She remembered what had been inside of them, the way her joy at impressing Jaune had turned to ash when they had found the bodies inside.
This is what the kidnappings had been in aid of. This is the army that the red Decepticon had spoken of.
The Vehicons, slender and gangly limbed, with narrow legs and high, spiked shoulders, began to advance, the red lights of their visors glowing brightly in the semi-darkness. They moved with clanking sounds and heavy thuds upon the floor, their arms swinging down by their sides as they passed between the cryopods.
"Shoot them!" Ember shouted.
"No, don't shoot!" Pyrrha cried. "Those are your people in there."
"What?" Ember snapped. "What are you talking about?"
"Pyrrha," Ren said, softly but firmly. "What do we do?"
Leave this to me, Pyrrha thought.
This time, things will be different.
She swung her weapons back across her back as she stepped forward, wedging Miló tightly between her cuirass and her shield.
She was unarmed as she faced the advancing Vehicons, her sash and hair alike hanging limp behind her in this windless underground space.
But, of course, a Huntress was rarely unarmed, especially not one with a semblance like hers.
There were a great many Vehicons. Two dozen, perhaps three already. This … would be difficult.
Yet I will do it. I refuse to accept any other outcome.
As the Vehicons bore down upon her, Pyrrha threw out her hands, and threw out her semblance too, casting Polarity outwards like a fisherman's net thrown into the water, reaching out with it to embrace every Vehicon in the ranks that so heavily bore down upon her.
With her semblance, she embraced them all, snaring them with invisible hooks, taking hold of their metal.
And pulling on it.
The Vehicons stopped; they faltered in their advance. They looked at one another; some of them tried to move their arms or legs, others began to twitch or tremble.
"What are you doing?" demanded the Decepticon. "Attack! Shoot them already!"
Some of the Vehicons tried to raise their weapons, but their arms soon fell back down to their sides again.
Pyrrha frowned. She was meeting resistance; the metal of the Vehicons was not yielding easily to the demands of Polarity. She did not know exactly how much aura she had left, but she was grateful that — though she did not possess Jaune's immense supply — it was no small store as she pulled harder upon the Vehicons' chests.
The metal of the Vehicons began to creak and groan.
The red Decepticon growled wordlessly as he took a large step towards her.
Nora stepped between him and Pyrrha, Magnhild held ready for a sideways swipe.
Pyrrha pulled harder still, giving it everything she had.
With that last final tug, with all the power that she possessed, she ripped away the chestplates from the Vehicons' breasts, revealing the open cavities within and the unconscious faunus — men, women, and children all — linked to the robotic shells, supplying them with aura.
Connected by circuits and systems Pyrrha had fried even as she cracked the casings that surrounded them.
Pyrrha's aura broke, her exertions with Wingthing and now the Vehicons had consumed it all; the rippling red light passed over her as she collapsed, falling forwards onto her hands and knees, gasping for breath. The world, this underground chamber, it all spun around her; she felt so lightheaded that for a moment, Pyrrha feared she would pass out.
I must stay awake, she thought, through the fog that threatened to cloud her mind, through the lightness that made thought difficult.
It would never do for Jaune to see me unconscious in a situation like this.
"Pyrrha!" Nora cried, her voice seeming both near and far away as Pyrrha felt the touch of fingertips and the soft fabric of a fingerless glove upon her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
My limbs are too heavy, and my head is too light, but other than that… Pyrrha's breathing came in heavy gasps. Nevertheless, she managed to raise her head to see that all the Vehicons had collapsed as well, sunk to their knees just as Pyrrha had, arms hanging limp and their captive … their captives half hanging out of the broken shells.
The eyes of one such captive flickered open for a moment, before closing again.
Please, let me have succeeded this time.
With her head raised, she could also see Wingthing, lying on the ground in front of her.
Wingthing unbound.
The bat head turned towards her, eyes red and filled with malice.
His wings twitched. His claws opened and closed.
Wingthing screeched in anger as he leapt up and then leapt at Pyrrha, wings extended outwards, claws outstretched to rip her aura-less—
Ren intercepted him before he had gotten halfway, flying into him with a kick that knocked him sideways, green fire blazing from the muzzles of StormFlower as he leapt off one of Wingthing's own clawed feet to rise into the air, flying all the while, bullets slamming into Wingthing's aura — or whatever Cybertronians called it — and dealt another kick, straight to Wingthing's head, to send him slamming back down into the floor.
Nora had knelt down by Pyrrha's side, but now, she rose and took up Magnhild again; as Wingthing fell, she bore down upon him as inexorably as the great wave that rises up must fall again.
With a wordless shout, Nora brought her hammer down on Wingthing's head.
Magnhild rose and then fell down again.
Wingthing's aura broke, the light flickering across his body.
Magnhild rose and then fell again, crushing Wingthing's batlike face beneath it.
Wingthing's feet twitched, then moved no more.
Nora snorted like an angry bull. "That," she snapped, "is what you get when you try and break up this family."
The red Decepticon stared down at her.
He took a step backwards.
"Well," he said, "before anyone does anything too hasty, may I be the one to point out…" He transformed, shifting smoothly into a red sports car of some description, his tires screeching on the floor as he turned and fled through the open arch beneath which his Vehicons had passed and away into the darkness.
"Wait!" yelled Kay. "Come back! You can't just … run away and abandon us!"
"It seems he already has," Ren pointed out.
"Yes," Kay murmured. "Is there no true fellowship remaining in the world? No solidarity?"
"It's standing in front of you," Nora growled, twirling Magnhild in her hands as she took a step forward.
Enyo tensed visibly, her knees bending, her body hunching as she held her shield up before her.
"My love," she said.
"Yes, dear heart?" Kay asked, his voice trembling.
"Hold on tight," Enyo commanded as she turned her back on Nora, Ren, and all the rest and swept her husband up in her muscular arms, bearing him off in the same direction the Decepticon had fled. She did not move so swiftly as he, but she moved nonetheless, darting between the cryopods.
Ren and Nora started after her at once, but Nora hesitated, looking back to where Pyrrha still knelt upon the floor.
"Go," Pyrrha said, gesturing weakly with one hand. "Go, I'll be fine."
"Are you sure?" Nora asked.
"We'll take care of her," Ember promised as she came to stand by Pyrrha's side.
Nora hesitated a second longer, then nodded, and she and Ren resumed the pursuit, disappearing into the darkness and the shadows on the other side of the chamber.
"Be careful," Pyrrha murmured, but they were already too far gone to hear her.
"Okay, everyone, let's move!" Ember bellowed. "Garble, head back up top and call some ambulances. Call
all the ambulances! Everyone else, let's help these people get out of there!"
The men and women of the old Summer Fire Clan surged forwards, slinging their weapons over their shoulders as they held out their hands to help their friends and kinsfolk out of the robots or the cryopods.
"Jaune," Pyrrha murmured. "Jaune." She started to crawl forwards, dragging herself along the ground, forcing her legs to move, although they felt as though she was dragging the mountain of Mistral behind her.
"Hey!" Ember cried. "Are you sure that you shouldn't stay there and rest?"
Pyrrha shook her head, her ponytail fell across her shoulders and touched the ground beside her hands. "I … need to find Jaune."
Ember looked down on her, blue eyes soft. "Okay," she muttered. "Let me give you a hand." She put her hand around Pyrrha's arm, just below her golden honor band, and helped her up off the floor, draping Pyrrha's arm around her shoulders. "Lean on me." She looked at Pyrrha. "You did good work today."
Pyrrha let out a ragged sigh and struggled even to raise the corners of her lips. "I'm glad we could be of service."
"Does anybody see a human?" Ember yelled. "Can anyone see Jaune Arc?"
"Here!" someone shouted back, a voice from the crowd that was spreading out through the suspended animation chambers. "I think I see him!"
"Jaune," Pyrrha whispered, and tried to run towards him, but only succeeded in almost falling over as she pulled away from Ember.
"I gotta say," Ember said as she helped Pyrrha limp in Jaune's direction, "I didn't think you'd be this helpless without your aura."
"It … it isn't just that," Pyrrha admitted. "It's the fact that I've rather overused my semblance."
"Ah," Ember said. "Well, you can take comfort in knowing that it was a good cause."
"I know," Pyrrha replied. "The very best cause."
With Ember's help, she reached the pod, and it
was the pod, she could see that plainly as she got closer. She could see Jaune plainly.
Even in sleep, he looked so very handsome.
Pyrrha pulled away from Ember, and her strength was returning to such an extent that she was able to at least hobble over to his pod, even if she had to lean on it a little.
Or else she was just pressing her hands against the glass close to Jaune's face. Yes. Yes, that was it.
There was a control panel on the side of the pod, and Pyrrha hammered on the big green button with all the force at her command. The suspension chamber hissed, a little steam emitting from out of the crack in the seal as the glass lid slowly began to open.
Pyrrha took a step back, swaying slightly on her feet, as the lid of the pod lifted upwards.
Jaune lay still in the open pod, sleeping still, his eyes closed, his expression serene and untroubled.
Then, slowly at first, his beautiful blue eyes fluttered open.
"Wh-where am—?"
"With someone who loves you," Pyrrha said. She started towards him, arms out, only for her treacherous legs to falter beneath her so that she ended up falling onto him, arms out on either side of him, head resting upon his chest.
"Pyrrha? Pyrrha!" Jaune cried, enfolding her in his own arms, wrapping them around her waist. "Pyrrha, are you okay?"
"I'm fine," Pyrrha murmured. "I'm perfectly fine, now that we're together."
Nora ran through the tunnel.
It was badly lit, but there were enough little blue lights down at floor level along the walls that she could just about see where she was going, although she didn't exactly know where she was. They were under the city, in more of the tunnels that they'd found earlier, the tunnels that Wingthing had stopped them from exploring earlier while he was pretending to be Jaune.
She wasn't sure where they led, but the two people they were chasing seemed to know — or at least hope — that it led somewhere they could escape to.
There wasn't much hope of catching the red Decepticon at this point, but they could still get the two people, the fancy guy and the woman who dressed in that very Mistralian warrior way, kind of like Pyrrha.
Ren was in front of Nora, and their quarry was somewhere further ahead. The lights weren't so bright that Nora could get a particularly good look, but she could get a vague impression of the shapes ahead of her.
Whoever she was, that woman could move. Nora and Ren didn't seem to be gaining on her much — it was at times like these that Nora regretted she had such tiny legs — and she probably knew the tunnels better than they did. If they didn't do something, they were going to lose them both.
"Ren, get out of the way!" Nora shouted as she triggered Magnhild's conversion. The hammer transformed as smoothly as any Cybertronian could, switching into its grenade launcher mode with a succession of metallic clicking and clacking sounds.
Nora took aim for a point just ahead of the shadowy figures running away from her.
She grinned, and a cackle rose from her throat as she pulled the trigger.
The tunnel was dark and badly lit, but the neon pink trail of her grenade made it easy to follow as it soared through the darkness, flying upwards in a shallow arc that didn't take it anywhere near the ceiling before it started to come down, flying over the heads of their fleeing enemies to explode just ahead of them.
The explosion — as pink as the trail of the grenade — lit up the whole tunnel for a second, but as the two people were silhouetted against it, Nora was able to see them much better.
She was able to see them blasted backwards, thrown in the opposite way to where they were running, back towards Ren and Nora.
Magnhild reverted to its hammer mode as Ren and Nora charged forwards.
The Valish dandy lay on the ground, but the Mistralian picked herself up and must have realized that she couldn't get away now, because she turned at bay, shield up, spear drawn back, planting herself between the Huntsmen and her man, like a mother bear protecting her cub.
Ren fired StormFlower as he charged, green fire blasting from the muzzles. Their enemy hunkered down behind her tower shield, letting the bullets ricochet off of it. Ren, a few steps ahead of Nora, reached their opponent first and tried to hook her shield with StormFlower's blades and pull it away. He managed to get the blades hooked on the edge of her shield.
But it turned out she was stronger than he was, and instead of him yanking her shield away, she was able to throw him aside like a toy and slam him into the tunnel wall with her shield.
But in doing so, she'd left herself wide open.
Nora charged, Magnhild drawn back for a mighty sideways swing. She roared in anger as she swung her hammer. Her enemy stepped back and then leaned backwards, her knees and her back alike both bending as Magnhild passed harmlessly overhead.
Their enemy's spear lashed out, striking Nora on the breast and hurling her backwards. She hit the tunnel floor and rolled down it, the stone rough on the bare patches of her arms, before she leapt to her feet and recovered her weapon.
Ren tried to keep his distance now, shooting at her with StormFlower, but their adversary went on the attack, shield before her, spear thrusting out, driving Ren back before her.
Nora went to his aid, and it was their foe's turn to retreat again in the face of Magnhild, but though Nora swung the hammer once, twice, thrice, she couldn't land a hit on her.
She thought she had the last one, she thought that her hit was going to land and knock the stuffing out of this woman, but she dodged enough that her shield wasn't taking the full force of the blow, then turned the rest of the blow aside with that same shield, and Nora realized a little too late that it was she who had just left herself open.
Their enemy's spear struck swift and sure, knocking Nora back with a thrusting blow to the chest, then swiping out, whirling in the hands of their opponent, to cut Nora's legs out from under her.
The spear whirled on as their enemy made to drive it down on Nora as she fell.
Ren attacked from the flank before she could, one leg lashing out for a savage kick that she had to turn to counter. She did counter, blocking his foot with the shaft of her spear, taking his next blow too, but she fell back, and Nora was able to rise to her feet and collect herself.
Ren broke off his attack, retreating a few steps back towards Nora.
"She's good," Nora muttered.
Ren nodded once. "But we'll take her with Flower Power."
The grin returned to Nora's face. "Got it. Can you give me a boost?"
Ren said nothing, but StormFlower disappeared into his baggy sleeves as he turned his back on their enemy, even as he moved towards her.
She charged, not willing to lose the chance to hit him from behind, but Nora was running too, legs pounding.
Ren's hands formed a cradle for one foot, a cradle into which she jumped.
Ren gave her a boost to send her flying upwards — good thing this tunnel was big enough for Decepticons, huh? — and forwards, Magnhild drawn back over her head.
Their opponent retreated as Nora looked to fly over her, backing down the tunnel so that the hammer wielder would land in front of her once more.
Except that she backed right up onto her man, the fancy Valish dresser, and she couldn't go back any further without leaving him exposed to Ren and Nora.
And so, as Nora descended on her enemy like a thunderbolt, the enemy did the only thing she could do and raised her shield to take the blow.
And in doing so, left herself wide open as Ren slid in across the tunnel floor in a sliding tackle that cut the legs from beneath her and sent her tumbling head over heels.
She was flailing in mid-air as Nora brought the hammer down onto the back of her head, driving her head-first into the tunnel floor so hard that cracks spread out in all directions as far as and climbing up the tunnel walls towards the high ceiling up above.
Dark blue light rippled up and down her body as her aura broke.
"Enyo!" the dandy cried, rushing past Nora and Ren as though they didn't exist to reach her side, crouching down beside her, hands on her shoulders. "Dearest? Dearly beloved? My sun and moon, my sweet?"
"She's alive," Ren informed him, little emotion in his voice.
"Please," the Valishman begged. "Please don't hurt … please don't kill her. It was me. It was all me, all my…" He looked down at her. "All my foolishness. Do whatever you want to me, but please, I beg of you, leave her be."
"That's not for us to decide," Ren said. "You'll both have to answer for your actions before the authorities."
He closed his eyes. They were still closed as he nodded his head slowly, taking the warrior woman by the hand.
"I do not wish to see you bound and caged," he murmured. "It was not, it was never my desire. But if it is so, if that is our fate … I shall be as glad to share a cell with you, my dear, as any palace. I'll place my hand in yours and kneel down and ask of you forgiveness for my prideful follies. We two alone will sing like birds in a cage and tell old tales and laugh at gilded butterflies." He swallowed. "And so, within a prison's walls we'll live, and find joy in one another's company, and outlast scores of great ones whose fortunes ebb and flow like the moon." He opened his eyes, and as he looked at Ren, it seemed to Nora almost like he had tears in his eyes. "Come, take us away."
The inside of the
Nemesis's command center was dark and damp with hidden malice that threatened to reveal itself at any moment.
"So, you see, it was really all Wingthing's fault that the operation fell apart," explained Knock Out hurriedly as he stood before Lord Megatron.
They were hardly the only two Decepticons in the command center, though, and that was … a problem, as far as Knock Out was concerned. Not an insurmountable problem, no, but a problem nonetheless. If Megatron had been debriefing him in private, if they had been alone…
Well, at least he would have the chance to buff out the damage before anyone saw him. As it was, he wasn't exactly relishing having his failure —
Wingthing's failure, but of course, he'd get the blame — aired out in public like this.
It wasn't even Lugnut's scorn, Starscream's schadenfreude, or even the half-human local's sadistic glee that bothered him so much as the sight of Soundwave looming ominously beside Lord Megatron. Silent. Watching. Menacingly. Even though he
knew the communications officer had to be upset; Wingthing was one of his little minions, after all, and he doted over them all in his own stoic way.
"And where
is Wingthing?" Megatron prompted, his voice dangerously mild. "I would like to hear what he has to say for himself."
"Uh, well, y'see, um," Knock Out equivocated, "Wingthing is, uh … medically indisposed. Permanently."
There was a shift in movement as Soundwave drew himself to his full height, his gaze focusing on Knock Out.
"Define 'indisposed,'" Megatron ordered.
Knock Out swallowed. "His spark has been extinguished."
He flinched back half a step as Soundwave stepped forward.
"Now, now, Soundwave," Megatron murmured, "we do have so few medical officers online right now."
Knock Out rallied his circuits as Soundwave stared down at him.
"Identify," Soundwave said.
"I … dentify?" Knock Out repeated in confusion. "Identify who? Or what? You're not giving me much to work with here."
"Termination culprit."
Thoughts raced through Knock Out's processor as he considered what that meant.
"That would be the ginger-haired brat from the supersized Huntsman team that kept foiling Starscream's plans."
A disquieted murmuring filled the chamber, not that Knock Out could blame them. An organic? Killing a Decepticon? It was almost unheard of. Not even the Autobots had managed to do that since they awakened. Even Sunstorm still functioned. Somehow.
But he had other concerns, as Soundwave somehow loomed even closer. "Which one?"
Knock Out felt anxiety like he hadn't in megacycles. "The, uh, short one. Shorter one. The one with the hammer that turns into a grenade revolver."
Soundwave backed off, thankfully. "Nora Valkyrie."
"Yeah, that's the one!" declared Knock Out.
He had absolutely
no idea whether it was true or not, but if some other squishy died for this offense, he wasn't going to shed any tears over it. Granted, he couldn't shed tears at all, but the thought wasn't there all the same.
Soundwave turned away and exited the command center.
Knock Out let out a breath. "Woo. I didn't think I was going to make it out of that unscathed."
He felt one of Megatron's enormous hands fall down on his shoulder, and he winced.
"Don't be too hasty, Knock Out," declared Megatron with a menace so deep that it loosened bolt and screw on Knock Out's body. "After all, the first Decepticon fatality on this disgusting mudball happened on your watch."
Knock Out thought quickly and spoke quicker. "That may be true, Lord Megatron, but surely it's better to not compound a tragedy."
"Do not worry, Knock Out," Lord Megatron said in a tone that instilled worry in all who heard it. "I think you might be able to just get through today with damage that's purely …
cosmetic."
Oh, dear.
Pyrrha shut her suitcase.
It was a week later, and they were still in Freeport. They had not intended to stay so long, but they had felt it their duty not only to inform the proper authorities of all that they had encountered — Valish authorities, not those of Freeport only — but to remain in the city until said authorities could respond.
And they had: a regiment of the Valish forces, two squadrons of the Royal Air Lancers, a VPD taskforce, a contingent of Autobots led by one called Ironhide, and more Huntsmen and Huntresses than you could shake a stick at, including the remaining three members of Team CFVY, who had some unfortunate experience with Pretenders.
All of which was to say that, if the Decepticons still had designs on Freeport — or if there were those within the city walls who still harbored ambitions against Vale — then they would find the city a tough proposition, and with so many Huntsmen and Huntresses on the streets, the chances of another wave of abductions was very low.
Freeport was as secure as it could be and had no need of Team JNPR to make it more secure. They could, at last, resume their journey to Mistral and beyond, to Jaune's family home — and to their wedding day.
Their wedding day, where the rightful heir to the throne of Vale would wed … would wed the rightful heiress to the throne of Mistral.
Perhaps I ought to tell him, Pyrrha thought.
Perhaps Wingthing knowing was fate's way of telling me that I cannot keep this secret forever.
And, if he is bound to find out, better that he hear it from me than from some other source.
He will understand if I tell him.
He will understand in any case, but he will understand it better if I tell him.
There was a knock on the door, and Jaune's voice came in from the other side of it. "Pyrrha? It's me."
Another sign from fate, perhaps, Pyrrha thought to herself as she walked to the door and flung it open.
She had seen Jaune only recently, at breakfast, but nevertheless, she said, "Good morning," and leaned forward, standing on her toes a little, to plant a kiss upon his lips.
"Morning," Jaune said tenderly . "Did you have a good … thirty minutes since I last saw you?"
"No," Pyrrha said. "Because you weren't here."
Jaune smiled. He was holding a case in one hand, and he shifted it in his grip. "Are you ready?"
"Yes," Pyrrha said softly. "Yes, I am." She turned around and walked back to where her case rested on the bed. She reached for it but stopped short of picking it up. Her hand lingered just above the handle, not quite upon it. "Jaune," she said, looking back at him. "There … can we talk for a moment? There's something that I want to tell you."
Jaune blinked, and his brow furrowed just a little, but he said, "Sure, yeah, we can talk." He stepped into the room but did not shut the door behind him. He put down his case as he moved closer towards her. "Is there something wrong?"
"No," Pyrrha said, although she wasn't sure that was entirely correct. "No, nothing's wrong, I just…"
She looked away, looking down at her case, looking out of the window. It was a fair day, with clear skies and a view out across the ancient and modern city. It would be fair sailing across the straits to Anima, no doubt.
"Jaune," she said. "I … I should probably have—"
"Hey, you two!" Nora cried from the doorway. "Ren says that our taxi's here early; they're right outside. We should probably get going."
"Oh," Jaune said. "Okay, we'll be down in a second; Pyrrha—"
"It's fine," Pyrrha said.
"But you—"
"It's nothing, really," Pyrrha assured him. "It can wait."
Thank you, Nora.
"Well, if you're sure," Jaune said.
"Quite sure," Pyrrha declared. "We shouldn't delay."
"No," Jaune agreed. "No, I guess we shouldn't." He picked up his case. "Let's get going then."
"To Mistral!" Nora cried.
Pyrrha smiled, if only to herself, as she followed the two of them out, confirming as she left that she would be leaving nothing behind in the hotel room.
Mistral, indeed; Mistral lay before them, Mistral and the Arc estate and their wedding.
Missus Pyrrha Arc.
She could hardly wait.
Surely, no more complications would arise before that happy day arrived?
-
Author's Note 1 (Scipio Smith)
-
I hope that you all like this chapter because I had some fun writing it, even if I do feel like I owe Cody and Cyclone an apology for not always working on it as fast as I maybe could have.
But, as I say, I enjoyed it, and hopefully that comes out and hopefully you all like it as well.
I try very hard to make sure that all of my RWBY OCs have some sort of allusions - often the allusion is about as subtle as a brick through a window - but with Kay Beresford and Enyo I made an exception for myself. Kay actually based on somebody that I went to school with, very theatrical - it probably won't surprise you to learn that he always had a big part in the school and house plays - very grandiloquent; the character's name derives from one of those memories that gets stuck in your mind; a memory of this guy in a history lesson one time, asking if Lord Beresford, a minor nonentity of 19th century British politics, might have replaced Disraeli.
Despite the fact that I wrote him as a villain here, I did actually like the guy. If I was basing a character on somebody that I didn't like I would have been a lot meaner about it.
Enyo, on the other hand… well, she has the name of a minor Greek goddess of war but to be perfectly honest the main inspiration, at least physically, was Cara Dune from The Mandalorian.
I think I took Cody by surprise by writing Wingthing to get killed off by Nora in this chapter, but both he and Cyclone were very good in rolling with it instead of asking me to change it, as they would have been within their rights to do. I suppose I did it because I wanted to give Nora a moment to show how much her friends mean to her: enough that she'll kill for them.
-
Author's Note 2 (Cyclone)
-
Despite contributing to plotting out this arc and editing, I really didn't do any direct writing for this chapter beyond a few lines here and there at most. For those of you who read SAPR, yes, there was a specific desire to do something with this universe's version of Freeport and showcase some of the many differences between the two universes.
We came up with a lot of odd tidbits of history and worldbuilding for the place, but frankly, most of it doesn't matter to the story. For example, this Freeport was named so because of one of the post-Great War efforts to revitalize the economy, which declared it a "tariff-free port."
Pyrrha's Polarity might seem very powerful here — and in previous uses, like in "Motivated Adolescents Raid Starscream" — especially considering potential application against the Decepticons directly, but it does have limitations we've worked out that aren't immediately apparent quite yet.
Also, finally! With the reveal of Pyrrha's secret to you but not to Jaune, we have some dramatic irony again! The distinct lack thereof for such a long stretch was bothering me.
-
Author's Note 3 (Cody MacArthur Fett)
-
I'm the one that wrote the scene at the end with Megatron. Cyclone edited it. I'm really glad the beta reading team liked it.
I'm not sold on the preview, but I'm far too scared over "Red Like Apricots" to argue about it.
One of the little tidbits of history came from noticing that Scipio had included a rebellion by some relative of the Valish royal family. Instead of complaining that we had already plotted out that the royal relatives were either all abdicated or dead we instead came up with a new bit of lore where some estranged relative tried to seize the throne with an ersatz CL-1201 before being defeated by a single daring pilot. … So yeah, an Ace Combat mission. Not that we'll be seeing it any time soon.
Next time, more complications arise before that happy day arrives.
Deadly danger awaits in "You Are Cordially Invited, Part IV."
