MISTRAL, 2043 LOCAL TIME...
In the streets of the Kingdom of Mistral, one of the four bastions of light in the world of darkness known as Remnant, people of all kinds of class, of all kinds of races ans species, Faunus or human, the rich or the poor, were all talking about one same thing.
The Mistral Regional Tournament was drawning to a close, and the champion was incredibly predictable.
Of course, of all contestants, the victor was clear. The champion was about to be Pyrrha Nikos, as of right now, three-time champion of the tournament, gaining her nickname of the Goddess of Victory, replacing her older one, the Invisible Girl.
No one couldn't stop to talk about the Spartan (or the Amazoness?) about her latest victory.
No one, except a person, who was wearing a long, gray coat, sunglasses, black cap, jeans and a pair of shoes, who was walking aimlessly.
However, when you looked closer, the person was a female, a beautiful girl, with a cleverly-hidden red ponytail and a pair of emerald eyes behind the darkened glasses. Yes, people, she is Pyrrha Nikos herself, walking around, admiring the scenery, without anyone noticing her. As of right now, that concealment was needed, as she was walking in the rich district of the capital. Now, she loved her fans, and she knew that most of her Mistralian fans were from the higher class, but if anyone noticed her, she is going to be smothered by the people walking around her. And she was walking around, not to just clear her head about the upcoming final round of the tournament, but she was worrying about something else.
She was worrying about the future.
Or, for her, the past.
As you can see, she is different than others, not just in combat experience. She came from a different Remnant, where the dark has destroyed the last remainder of the light. And she remembered her home dearly, or in this case, the Remnant that she hailed from.
She remembered the day when she graduated from Sanctum Academy, a Huntsmen preparation school, and the day when she entered Beacon Academy, a prestigious Huntsman Academy, an event that would happens 4 months later.
She remembered meeting with her friends -her true friends- for the first time. Ruby Rose, Wiess Schnee, Blake Belladonna, Yang Xiao Long, Nora Valkyrie, Lie Ren, and especially...
Jaune Arc, her future partner, best friend and crush.
She remembered the quality time with her friends, especially with Jaune.
She remembered seeing him in the rooftop, where he revealed his biggest secret of lying to get into Beacon and denied her help, and the day when he apologized to her and letting her to help him.
The time she poured to train him, to make him a warrior on par with herself...
The time when they were around to help each others' problems...
The dance...
And every time when he was around her...
It brought warmth to her heart.
But then, she also remembered the day when it fell apart.
The finals for the Vytal Festival, the day when she took a life. Yes, that life was an android, but she had Aura, and she can felt it. She was alive!
The day that Beacon fell...
The day when she died...
But her soul kept her alive, and moved her to the body of the boy she still loves till this day, thanks to her unlocking his Aura during Initiation... to let her live inside him...
...to let her see how he tore himself apart, thanks to her sacrifice to save him.
...to see him blamed himself for her death...
...to see ventured into an impossible quest with his remaining friends...
...and to see him fallen down by the hands of the mastermind.
She remembered it. It had the look of an elderly woman, but with deathly white skin and hair, black eyes with red pupils, dark veins ran through her cheeks. It was the mastermind of the entire Fall of Remnant, the Queen of Grimms. It stabbed him in the stomach with her hand, smirking nefariously and cruelly, and watched as he bled to death, and died painfully and slowly.
But then, she was back. Back from the dead, back from that hell, and into the past.
The first time she saw this, she was shocked. Shocked at the fact that not only her parents survived, but she had become a baby, a toddler. Shocked at the fact that she not just had returned to the land of the living, but also returned to the past.
She realized that she now had the power to change the future, change her destiny, and so, she planned her moves, she upgraded her weapons, she trained to become even better, even stronger than before, so she can defeat the darkness lurking far away from the walls of the four kingdoms.
So she can be with the one she loved again...
'Jaune, I wish you were here with me...'
"Mistral. A fucking shit-hole of an emerald. Unless you're some kind of a crazy warrior celebrity, the government will just throw you away like a fucking trash. That's why I like operating in Vale better."
"No shit. I just came here for a few days and I already hate the place. Wish the brass just sent me to another kingdom..."
"Suck it, Sergeant. You know why we're here."
"Yeah. The group is about to attack the tournament when the finals commence, and we're here to stop their ops, yada yada. The General fed me enough intel already, give me a break. Hope you're in your position, we're about to start the operation."
"Okay, hold up. Are the others in position?"
"Well, most are, except me and you, but they're all waiting for us, 2-3."
"Tell them to wait for me, 2-1. Delta 2-3 out."
In the rooftops of the lower class of Mistral, a lone man was running quickly towards something. He was wearing a cap, sunglasses, an urban camouflage trousers, a black hoodie and a similarly urban-camouflaged plate carrier with many pouches for ammunitions, a kukri knife strapped in a leather holster on his left rib-cage, and a holster for a pistol rigged on the upper part of the vest, a fully equipped war belt, hiking boots, plus a black, sleek rifle slung on his back. He got a mission, and that mission involved killing terrorists.
He, and the people in this mission, are a part of a technologically advanced (unofficial) peacekeeping paramilitary group calling themselves The Exiles. They had a long and mysterious past, with some even suggests that they are linked to a forgotten legend, or a fairy tale of sorts. But what only a few chosen people knows is that they use technologies far ahead of the strongest and advanced official army in the world of Remnant. Weapons that pack heavy punches, armors that are built around defending against their own weapons, tactics that are built around killing human targets and Grimms, vehicles built for endurance and speed, a network of intelligence that surpassed anything the smartest mind in Remnant can comprehend. For example, the plate carrier that all Exile Operatives wore had an extremely strong, light and auto-repairable ceramic plate with nano-steel and kevlar coding, perfectly capable of saving the user from a direct missile hit. And they answer to no one but themselves. Some say that they are just a big group of mercenaries and bandit, but who witnessed their actions in the field says otherwise. At best, they are warriors that are equal to Remnant's elite protectors, Huntsmen and Huntresses, and at worst, they are dangerously hired guns with an extremely high moral code.
Anyways, soon enough, he saw the location. An abandoned warehouse on the outside. Graffiti spayed across the entire wall, the door seemed rusted. Yet, there were some sort of light inside, a small and yellow light, but a light nonetheless.
The sign of someone inside.
And that someone was planning for terrorism.
As soon as he got sight into the warehouse, his earpiece cracked, and one of his comrade said:
"Welcome to the AO, Delta 2-1. Intel said this is where they put their weapons and explosives for the finals. Welp, guess it's our time for blow this shit up, right?"
"Yup. So what're we waiting for? Get to position and prepare for breach and clear." He replied.
"Patience, Walker."
"Radio protocol, 2-2." The man, now identified as Walker, snarked angrily.
"Look, Walk- I mean 2-1. We're on a secured channel, and nobody on Remnant except us is using radio this days. Why do you give a shit about protocol again?"
"Hey, can't be too prepared, you know?"
"Yeah, yeah. Tell it to the dead tangos. Moving to breach."
"Copy that."
He reached for his rifle. His rifle is an Exile-made, standard issue HK416A5 Assault Carbine with ACOG Scope, a vertical grip, a 11 inches barrel with a suppressor, firing 5.56mm rounds. The standard ammunition of the rifle used a special gunpowder that is more potent than Dust, increasing the bullets' velocity. The iconic Exiles' Magnetic Barrel also helps boosting the firepower and accuracy, although he didn't know how the hell did The Exiles integrated every single weapon with magnetic barrels, including shotguns and pistols, and somehow still making them function properly without stoppages, keeping their durability and their length, or increasing weight. It was like the mystery of life itself.
This carbine had served him extremely well. He knew that the weapon is reliable like those AK rifles, with the added bonus of a lightweight and accurate rifle of an M4. He had lost count of how many times this rifle had managed to save his ass over and over again, especially when he was in the boot camp.
Anyway, he silently climbed onto the roof of the warehouse, moved to one of the skylights, and scouted the area inside. There was a few people inside, wearing black hoodies, white vests, Grimm masks, and some got animal features shown. Walker mentally mumbled to himself: 'Yup. Intel was right. The White Fang.' and then broke the window, tossed a smoke grenade, and rappel down quickly. There were three more sounds of glass breaking, something fell down to the ground, and the POP with sounds of smoke coming out and filling the large room. Although he would like a stealthier approach, he knew from the field is that when the White Fang, or hostile Faunus are around, conventional stealth methods is ineffective. They got natural night vision and enhanced hearing, after all.
While The Exiles didn't have those, they have their own Tactical Contact Lens. They don't just change the wearer's eyesight to perfection, they also acted as a HUD of sorts. It means that the wearer will perfectly see what the other wearer see, capable of seeing the obstacles, allies and enemies, even blindfolded, plus they give the wearer their own NVG, and other kinds of magic that he didn't want to know it works yet.
As I said, like the mystery of life.
As soon as the smoke grenade spitted out the gray smoke, the unfortunate White Fang members were extremely confused and panic, they didn't get a chance to react except blindly firing something or to run to cover when they got shot multiple times by muffled gunshots, and all of them fell down lifelessly, except one member. The remaining member, while swinging his sword wildly, hoping that he hit someone, felt something punched his nape hard, and he fell down, dropping the sword. He tried to reached it, but he didn't see it, and he felt he got kicked in the face. The foot kept him there, on the ground, like an animal. Could the attackers are human supremacists? Huntsmen? The police? When the smoke was cleared, he saw a fellow Faunus holding him on the ground. He is a Monkey Faunus, his tail showed it to the world, but the other three were clearly human. All of them had different clothes, but the only thing that made them similar in clothing was the vest, which had the same urban camo, and the same rifles, which had different scopes and grips. He wondered who the hell were these guys, and why was a Faunus helping them.
"Nice job, 2-4. I owe you a drink after this." The man with a cap said, which made 2-4 replied:
"Nah, thanks, but no."
"Suit yourself, corporal, but that entry was epic. Anyway, 3 and 2, I want you to check if the objective is in here," He said as he grabbed the terrorist and made him stand up. "And I and 4 will check if this fucker got some intel and-"
The White Fang then broke free of the restrains of the attackers, grabbed one of their sidearms, and aimed at them. He laughed as he was about to get some sweet, sweet revenge. However, he noticed that when he escaped from their grip, they tensed up, and then relieved a bit. Maybe they were surrendering?
"Hahahaha! You think you humans are superior to the Faunus race? You are wrong!" Then, he looked at the other Faunus: "And you, brother of the Faunus-kind, why did you join those foul humans, and leaving your own kin to their iron grip? Why did you choose to be their pet?!"
"Seriously? The White Fang's original goals were good, but now, they're just fucking nutcases who wanted to kill innocent civilians of both races to show who has the bigger dick, human or Faunus. Either way, we're better at helping both sides than dividing them, unlike you bastards." He answered with a nearly bored tone, and a neutral face melted itself to his. It seemed that he had given that answer many, many times.
"Then you will die with others."
He aimed at the head of the leader, pulled the trigger, and...
Nothing happened.
He squeezed it again, and nothing happened. But when he tried check the ammunition inside of the handgun, the weapon exploded in his hands.
Another fact about Exiles' tech: If an unauthorized personnel tried to use an Exiles' weapon, the biomectric scanner of the gun will scan that person's fingerprints and DNA. If the gun doesn't receive anything, it will not fire at any circumstances, even if someone remove the scanner. If you are an Exile Operative, then it will fire normally. If not, the gun will enter a 3-second-delay self destruct mode. And it does what it says on the tin.
Once again, like the mystery of life itself.
When the pistol exploded, the White Fang's hands was gone, and what was left was a bloody mess, and he tried to scream, but whatever words inside his throat was snuffled when the Operatives filled his head with bullets. After that, Walker issued an order: "We spent enough time for sightseeing, gentlemen, find the objective and blow it up to hell, and get the fuck out of here. Police and Hunters will converge into the immediate area fast, so move!"
They split up, and check the warehouse quickly, and soon enough, one of the containers inside the warehouse got tons of weapons, Remnant rifles and pistols, plus a metric fuck-ton of explosives.
"Jackpot. Alright, planting X-4, cover me."
However, his TCLs suddenly marked a orange diamond at the entrance of the warehouse. It meant that enemy reinforcements had arrived. He stood up, set the charge to remote detonation, and signaled his men to intercept the interlooper.
Unfortunately, they were about to meet some unexpected guests.
For what will follow next is destiny... but not the way a certain Exile Operative has predicted.
Pyrrha was running fast towards the source of the strange sounds.
First, it was the sounds of automatic gunfire that arose from somewhere, and what followed was a small explosion. As soon as she heard this, she rushed towards the general direction of the gunshots and explosions, following her huntress instinct.
What will follow next is destiny... but not the way she had predicted.
As she ran into the dark alley, she saw a large, abandoned warehouse, but there was a distinctive marking on the front wall.
Three scratch marks on the wall.
During her time at Beacon, Blake told her about the White Fang's hideouts, and the mark. It helped all of the potential recruits to know where to sign in for the Fang, safehouses for evading capture, and the staging ground for terrorism.
However, when she quietly entered the warehouse, she saw that this place wasn't a safehouse anymore. She could count a dozen or more dead White Fang members lying on the ground, their faces locked forever in agony as blood oozed out of their bullet wounds. She even saw one member with his face completely deformed with concentrated fire, and his hands exploded. She couldn't help but to threw up, completely disgusted at the amount of gore in front of her. She had never kill anyone, except Penny (and that was unintentional), and the sight of red blood splatted everywhere sickens her.
She looked around, avoiding the blood stains, until she saw shadows inside. And as she tried to quietly navigate the darkened warehouse, she felt like she had already being spotted, and they were just playing mind games with her. She was mostly right.
As soon as she opened a door, she immediately ducked as a burst of bullets coming toward her. Thanks to her Semblance, she could redirect the bullets, making them flew a bit further away, but she got to admit, those bullets were faster than what she was used to.
"Who are you? You aren't Faunus, so you're not the Fang." A voice appeared. She could say that the owner of the voice was of her age, and it sounded... familiar?
"My name is Pyrrha Nikos, student of Sanctum Academy. May I ask you, what is your name?" She hoped that her name will at least made the intruders back away a bit, or to shock them, as she is known to be the Goddess of Victory for a reason. However, thanks to the reply, she realized that at least, the speaker either didn't care about her name, or didn't even know about it.
"Motherfucking hell, a god-fucking-damn Hunter..." She heard the voice whispered, before it increased the volume again. "This isn't your business, Huntress. Get out of here before things go more messy than it already is."
"And if I may, what is your business?" She tried to be polite, hoping that this might be the step to solve this peacefully.
"As I said before, none of your problem. Suck it and get the hell outta here!" The voice was becoming more and more irritated, because she was becoming stubborn. Well, she was known to her parents as a stubborn girl.
Unbeknownst to her, the Exile Squad in front of her was prepared to leave the AO immediately, not because of her fame, but because of their history with Huntsmen. Actually, the history of The Exiles and Huntsmen in general. Both factions have the same goal: protecting humanity and Faunus-kind, but their methods to achieve that goal is extremely different. Huntsmen and Huntresses will value human lives as high as themselves, sometimes, even higher, and will try to knock them down, rather than kill them. Also, they are more focus at combating Grimms. The Exiles, however, only do that to VIPs, HVIs and the villagers or bystanders that either they need to protect or just minding their business until they got caught in the crossfire, and they will always try to neutralize the situation by using lethal force, if needed. Hell, they had carpet bombed a tribe of bandits once, and they never looked back. This made both sides hate each other because of their approach towards problems, and it sometimes even blown to small conflicts.
In other words: Huntsmen and Huntresses do not kill people for the betterment of others. Exile Operatives do.
The situation was getting hotter as minutes passed. They couldn't get out of there without engaging the Hunter, and if their TCLs weren't fucking around, that Hunter had a Semblance related to metal manipulation. Well, if she is strong enough, they were royally and uttery fucked.
"As a Huntress in training, it is my duty to protect humanity as a whole. Therefore, I find that several dead Faunus in an abandoned warehouse is currently, one of my business."
"Well, dead terrorists, to be precise. White Fang planned to attack the tournament during the finals. You're welcome, by the way."
"You have snuffled many lives that could be redeemed-"
"We killed those terrorists so others can live. And the ones got the balls to kill innocents are fucking extremists anyway!"
However, when Delta-2-1 was trying to talk their way out, the other Exile Operatives was trying to get their problem solved quickly. One Operative had a flashbang on his hand, and was close to pull the pin. Delta-2-4 got his finger extremely close to his rifle's trigger, while the barrel was pointing directly at the Hunter's head. And the last Operative was calling evac. He whispered to the mic: "Highlander, where the fuck is our exfil? Walker can't stall the damn Hunter forever!"
"Do you want the locals to start screaming bloody murder at the incoming unknown aircraft? I'm trying my best here to get to your pos! ETA 2 minutes!"
"Make it one minute! Now!"
The situation became even more tense, as neither factions dared to move, waiting for some sort of help or diversion to arrest these men for Pyrrha and to leave the AO for the Exile Operatives. And as the Mexican Standoff remained at a insufferable 5 minutes, as both sides exchanged even more words, trying to stall the inevitable, something happened.
Namely, the sounds of sirens.
The MPD had arrived.
And it was time for the Operatives to bail the fuck out.
Two rifles opened fire upon the redhead Huntress, suppressing her so that she couldn't pay attention to the incoming flashbang. As the Operatives retreated, the familiar *BANG!* had made sure that they got some time to move to the evac zone. They rushed towards the stairs, and ran to the nearby broken skylight.
Pyrrha tried to soothed out the artificial brightness that just appeared in her eyes, right after they threw a grenade at her. For 2 second, she felt like a full hour had passes as she desperately tried to get her vision back, and even then, she would even see the world blurring for another 2 seconds, before forming back together into an image. And the first image was on her mind that the mysterious murderers had ran away, and they were beelining toward the skylight. She had to chase them to hand them to justice for killing people!
Well, too bad for her, then.
The four Operatives turned their backs when they got to the roof, and they wasn't that shocked to see her in front of them. Soon after that, they split up, grabbing covers, and started shooting. Of course, most of the rounds either missed or hit her shield, but some did graze her. She noted that those shot took a big chunk of Aura when it connected. She took a note to use her Semblance more when dealing with those soldiers. That made her wonder, though, who are those guys? Are they Salem's own militia? Mercenaries? But if they sided with Salem, then why were they attacking the White Fang? They are also with it before it betrays them, so...
Who was she dealing with?
Two of those strange men had tried to flank her, and she could see one of them took a shot, and it hit her in her chest. Her Aura took most of the punch, but it was still painful. She rushed towards him for melee attacks, to engage him up close, because they had guns, and because the other soldiers couldn't shoot her, for fearing friendly fire, and then he pulled his kukri knife. As she striked forward, he merely dodged, or blocked her xiphos away. She tried to stab him, he moved to the side. She tried to slash him, he blocked perfectly. She tried to hit him with her shield, he rolled away and shot her with his pistol, which was blocked by her shield. But there was something that she noted while fighting him. He didn't try to strike her, even when he saw an opening. When her brain went overdrive when she realized she had been exposed, she didn't see him use that. He tried to block her attacks, and maybe slow her down, but he didn't want to harm her. The shot that grazed her or hit her in the chest was just stray bullets, that was all. But when she saw the carnage they left, it told her that he won't hesitate to kill his targets. And that was when it hit her: They didn't want to kill her because they didn't want collateral damage. They will kill their targets, and that is all. Who might show up and they will try to fight and maybe disarm them, but not kill them. But why were they holding her back?
And then the answer appeared... literally.
A unknown aircraft just materialized in front of her, gleaming like a predator. The aircraft was like the Valean Bullhead, with two engines on the sides, and a fixed vertical thrusters, but it was smaller. And it was blockier than a Bullhead, but still slim. Instead, there was room for one pilot, a minigun pointed below the craft, with multiple missile pods on the side, and she could see a symbol of the plane.
A human skull, with a knife stabbed vertically in it, and a name below the symbol.
EXILES.
What does it mean?
To the Operatives, their evac had come in the form of the Exiles' standard VTOL and the most common one, the A-15 Skyranger, the Dust-powered, multi-purpose aircraft with high speed, heavy armor, heavy weapons, and stealth and invisibility technologies. This is the cutting edge, highly powerful and advanced piece of technology that Remnant could see, but will never have. It could beat the P-26 Lockhead aircraft, the Atlesian Air Force's pride and joy and standard aircraft, in a contest of speed and durability.
(A.N: it's a XCOM 2's Skyranger, what do you think?)
As four ropes dropped down from the back of the craft, and the Operatives started running towards the ropes, the Operative she fought gave her a warning:
"Tell the police to get the hell out of here! This place's going to blow up!" He said sincerely, and honestly could leak out from his balaclava and sunglasses, even Pyrrha realized it.
After that, he and the rest of the group grabbed a rope, and those ropes retracted to the craft. The ramp of the Skyranger closed and then flew away, cloaking itself on the way up.
She didn't try to chase the craft, only ran away to warn the police below her.
The warehouse exploded soon later, and the weapons and explosives the White Fang hid there exploded with the charge.
"Mission accomplished. Hell yeah."
"Holy shit. I almost thought that the bitch will get me and drag me to prison. And I fucking refuse to see how they interrogate me."
"Same here, man."
"And I thought you're gonna bite the dust, Walker. Fighting close-quarter against a Hunter is suicidal, and you fucking did it."
"Well, am I special, eh?"
"Nah, your skill was shit, she was just playing with you, dumbass."
The entire group exploded into laughter, as Delta 2-1 simply shook his head and raised the finger while silently smiled at the shenanigans in front of him. The group of soldiers were congratulating themselves after Operation: Hell's Fury, and after striking another serious blow to the White Fang operating inside the Kingdom of Mistral.
As the Skyranger flew away, Delta 2-1 removed his balaclava, sunglasses and cap, revealing a young boy with blue eyes and a short, but messy and militaristic blond hair. He is cute, but the face actually shows that he had already seen too much to be considered as a boy. His pearl-like skin on his face is decorated with two scars; one stretched from the right eyebrow to his left cheek, and another one, a burn mark, to be exact, started on his right cheek and most likely dragged down to his chest. The boy -no, man- is Jake "Damned" Walker, Sergeant First Class, and the newest member of the Exiles' squad: DELTA, one of the most trained Exile Squads on the organization.
At least, that is his name. He had another one, too, but this one is the one that he hated to the bitter end, that he will point a loaded gun at the person who said that at best, or will shoot that person at worst. But nobody needed to know that. What you needed to know is this part of history:
After the Great War, the war that fought between individualism and collectivism (and one of the dumbest reason to wage a war in the eyes of the Exiles), the King of Vale decided to create an organization dedicated to protect humanity and Faunus: Huntsmen. They fought the Grimm and push them away from the great wall of the four Kingdoms. And a lot of the first Huntsmen and Huntresses became nobles. But as the saying goes: Power corrupts.
Let's just say that a Huntsmen family can approve that statement, if you pay enough money to let them spill the beans.
That family's ancestor was a honorable man, a kind person, a public face for both humans and Faunus.
However, his son was... less than stellar. Now, he is just as vicious as former bandit leader Raven Branwen (who had died oh-so-ungraciously when The Exiles decided to just airstrike them to bits and bits with a bit of White Phosphorous), and as greedy as Jacques Schnee. Hell, the two would be best friends, if their company wasn't rivals.
Now, there was a key to destroy the circle of corruption inside that family, and it presented itself in a form of a young boy.
This boy was, literally, the incarnation of the noble Huntsman, including his weak start. Born as the weakest child of the 8 children, he was always being looked down by most of his sisters, but his father forced him to become a exact copy of himself. A copy of a corrupted, powerful man, driven by greed and pride. When he saw that the boy was too weak, he then gave him one chance to prove that he is worthy of his family name... by fighting against him. Yes, a 6 years old boy against an experienced Huntsman. Of course, he nearly died, and the man just tossed the boy out of the mansion, and left him for the Grimms to kill the wounded boy. Fortunately, a lone Exiles patrol found him before the creatures of dark get to him, and patched him up. After hearing the story, the Exiles as a whole adopted him, and after a few years, he started training as an Exile Operative.
That marked the death of the idealistic, kind, dorky boy with a golden heart, and the birth of Jake Walker, the professional, cold man, with a worn heart.
But why did he had to use that name? Isn't a colorless name like that is going to attract some attention?
Well, it had a few history in that.
One, is that the Exiles are from a different... let's just say, settlement.
The place is as isolated as it can be, so the culture is a bit different than all Remnant cultures. In fact, it is a mix of a lot of... towns.
But being isolated doesn't mean it is a third-world nation. In fact, that place is where the Exiles hone, and perfect their tech. Ranging from power sources that is independent from Dust (like, say, microfusion technology), to incredibly hard materials (Mithril-054 is a extremely light and durable metal with strange magnetic properties), to practical space programs (without being held by pesky Dust bullshit and physics like fuel-weight thing), and many others (Exo-skeletons, Orbital Bombardment System, the like).
But sadly, they can't return home, due to... some fire-y problems.
Two, it is for nostalgic reasons.
2nd Lieutenant Jenkins "Outrider" Walker was the name of an Exile Operative that had adopted the boy, and after his death, the kid took the name, as servitude for his service for him. After all, he could had left him there to death, and he didn't. He raised him like a son to him, and when he signed up for Exile training, he had his back, teaching him his own moves and skills in combat and survival... after he had successfully convinced him to let him become an Operative in the ripe age of 15. And let me tell you, it took a year to convince the man. That, and after him showing Outrider his own survival and marksmanship skills. And recommendations from his superiors.
Alas, Jenkins Walker met his end during a skirmish between the Exiles and Huntsmen. And from there, Jake Walker took his legacy and continue his career.
Three, the color trend didn't actually started becoming famous immediately after the Great War.
Thinking about it made the mentioned Operative gripped his hands hard as he remembered the bastard that he called his biological dad, and remembered the death of his true father. He died like a hero, protecting his comrades and the innocent bystander that was going to take a stray bullet hit from the ignorant Huntsman. May Jenkins "Outrider" Walker rest in peace.
Well, he will deal with this little shit after AAR. He ignored the jovial banter of the surrounding Operatives, knowing that he need some personal space and thinking right now. So he closed his eyes, and started trying to wander into the land of dreams...
...if the ride was smoother.
"For fuck's sake, guys, let me sleep."
"Sir?"
"Yes, dear fellow brother of the Faunus-kind?"
"The Mistralian Branch just called. It's gone. It's all gone. Their warehouse is completely destroyed."
"...and who did this?"
"...The Exiles. They ambushed them, and left no survivors, sir."
"..."
"Sir?"
"Get out."
"Uh..."
"I SAID GET OUT!"
"Yes, sir!"
"...damn those Exiles dogs... I will get my revenge. I SHALL GET MY REVENGE, YOU DOGS OF THE HUMAN RACE!"