A/N: Alright, next chapter's up! Introducing one of our four new protags, ladies and gentlemen, here she is, Elune Althea!

The Thief

SDC Corporate Office, Vale Branch, midnight

By Oum and the two brothers, I can't wait for this shift to be over, Cole Noire thought to himself. Not only had the SDC guard ended up with the graveyard shift this week, he also happened to be patrolling alongside Chatty McChatterson himself, Sal Reddin, the most annoying man in Remnant, at least insofar as Cole was concerned.

Suddenly, Cole realized something was wrong. Sal was silent. Sal was never silent; there wasn't so much as a single minute in any given day when Sal wasn't running his mouth about this nonsensical dream or that ridiculously boring event. Turning, Cole saw Sal staring, mouth agape, towards the entrance of the office building they were patrolling around. Following his gaze, Cole noticed something off about the Atlesian Knight 130s that were guarding the entrance. Namely, the fact that all three of them were on the ground with crossbow bolts lodged inside of them, one jerking erratically, the other two completely still.

Making his way over to the knights, Cole observed that the bolts were expertly placed, hitting their targets in key areas with minimal armour so as to take them out as quickly and quietly as possible.

"Sal," Cole said, breaking the other man out of his stupor and surprising himself with how calm he was remaining. "Go. Sound the alarm. Get the chief, the VPD, anyone you can. Now."

Sal looked at Cole, back to the building, then once more at Cole, before nodding and running off to the guard post nearby as Cole slowly and carefully entered the building, preparing himself for whatever he might encounter within.

At the facility's mainframe on the second floor, a woman in night blue jeans, dark grey steel-toed boots, a navy blue v-neck shirt and a hoodie with a camouflaged pattern in dark shades of grey and blue was busy copying files onto a flash drive. On a dull black belt around her waist rested a pair of self-reloading hand crossbows, with their limbs collapsed against the stock. Both crossbows had a small symbol on the outer side of the handle, a white circle with crosshairs beginning just outside of the circle and ending halfway to the centre, as well as a dot in the middle with three equally spaced lines jutting out from it, just as a bolt and its fletching would appear from behind. Her dull black gloves flashed across the keyboard as she searched for the files she was here for. Suddenly, she glanced up, hearing movement near the door. Drawing her crossbows, she rose from the computer, took a few steps back, and all 5'2" of her vanished into the shadows near the wall.

Slowly entering the mainframe room, Cole raised his standard issue dust rifle, not for the first time wishing they could be provided with something with a bit more firepower. Suddenly, a cloak of darkness fell over him, and he found himself completely blind, unable to see even the backs of his own hands.

As he fumbled around in the sudden darkness, some tiny part of his mind registered hearing a faint "twang", and he suddenly felt a painful impact in his chest, followed by an intense electrical shock and a brief warmth in his pants, and then, mercifully, nothing, as he thudded, unconscious, to the floor.

Collapsing the limbs of her crossbows and stowing them once more on her belt, the intruder, Elune Althea, had just started back to the computer when she heard the alarm ring out.

"Shit."

Hurrying to get everything she needed onto the flash drive before she could leave, Elune was paying so little attention that she barely noticed another figure at the door, until she heard a weapon discharge, and she barely ducked under a blast of energy from what seemed to be some sort of dust-powered plasma rifle. While she managed to avoid the shot, her hood fell off, revealing white chin-length hair held back by a pair of hair pins, and, rather more interesting, a pair of owl's ears on top of her head.

"Shit," the faunus muttered once more, seeing several more guards running up to join the one she was already facing. Fortunately they were only armed with the same simple dust rifles that the first one had had in his hands, but this was still far more trouble than she had planned on tonight.

Activating her semblance, Elune once more dropped an orb of darkness over the area, leaving the humans with practically no visibility, while her own faunus eyes could still see them clearly. Leaping aside to avoid any shots they might fire at her previous location, she took out her crossbows once more and fired several more lightning dust-imbued bolts into the guards at the entrance, dropping them like flies.

What she didn't expect was for the lead guard, the one with the plasma rifle, to avoid her shot entirely, follow her precisely with his weapon, and let off several more perfectly aimed shots.

SHIT! She thought to herself. I'm really not doing well tonight.

She just managed to avoid the first two shots, but the third and fourth hit her, first in the arm, then square in the chest.

Using the force of the shots to propel her, she rolled under a nearby desk for cover. Damn, that hurt. Ok, pull yourself together, she thought.

"You can't hide from me," she heard the guard say, as more blasts from his weapon punched into the desk around her.

Another bolt came flying past him, and he dodged easily, before he noticed that this one had some sort of cord or wire attached to it. Hearing a whirring noise, his gaze flew back to where his target had been hiding, just in time to see her flying through the air towards him, pulled along the cord at an incredible speed, before her knee collided with his face. Flying backwards, he heard the crossbows loose once more, moving automatically to evade the bolts he was certain were flying his way. However, when he went to stand once more to confront her, he found the floor beneath him slick with ice from dust within the bolts.

Smirking, Elune congratulated herself mentally on successfully hampering her opponent's movement, before she brought up her crossbows again, once more loaded with electric dust bolts.

Managing to regain his balance on the slippery floor, the guard looked up and saw two more bolts flying towards him, and this time he knew he wouldn't be able to avoid them. A blast of electricity coursed through his body, and he flew into the wall, out cold.

The smirk faded from Elune's face as she remembered that, while she had taken care of this particular threat, the alarm was still going off, and she still needed to finish up here.

She moved quickly back to the computer, seeing that the file transfer had just completed. A smug smile returning to her face, she removed the flash drive from the computer, before putting two electric dust bolts into the building's electrical systems, shorting them out and taking down the entire building's network. She started out of the building, but before she reached the stairs to the first floor, she came upon a window, and, glancing out, she saw at least a dozen VPD officers, led by what looked like a Huntsman, approaching the building.

Knowing she wasn't up to fighting a professional Huntsman, especially after taking several shots earlier,she took off running in the other direction, taking out her crossbows as she went and switching out the clips within them with new ones she had on her belt. As she ran, she raised her left crossbow and fired a bolt crafted with fire dust, blowing a hole in the wall opposite her as it hit. Leaping through the new hole, she twisted and fired the right crossbow at the top of the building on her left, the bolt flying upward and trailing a cord behind it. As the bolt hit and her dust-powered reel started bringing her up, she caught a glimpse of the Huntsman just reaching the top of the stairs from the first floor and turning towards her. Using her semblance once more, she dropped an orb of completely impenetrable darkness over him, blinding him as she escaped across the rooftops.

White Fang forward operating base (FOB) for the City of Vale, in the slums in the South-East, the next morning

The White Fang lieutenant in front of her smiled to himself, his tail wagging slightly, as he checked the files on the drive she had given him. "Heh. You've given us more than we could have hoped with this. We'll be able to do something real, make a serious difference, thanks to the information on here," he told her.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Look, just give me my promised pay and I'll be on my way."

"I'm serious," he continued. "Your skills have been a huge benefit to the Fang, and you've proven yourself a valued ally time and again. Are you sure you won't consider joining us as an official member? You could go far in the White Fang, I guarantee it."

Elune cringed inwardly at that, though her face betrayed no emotions. "No. I've told you before, and my answer hasn't changed. Just because I've done a few odd jobs for you to pay the bills, doesn't make me an ally; I don't want to be tied down, and frankly, I don't care to be a part of your war."

"Heh. You're a faunus, kid. You're a part of the war whether you want to be or not. Bah, I can see I'm not getting through to you. Ah well, I'll get this to Adam, he'll be interested in it. Heh, this one in particular ought to be right up his ally- an SDC train full of dust, and heading right by his camp in Forever Fall, too, tomorrow morning. I'll give him the info on that right now, give him more time for prep."

Seeing the exasperated look on Elune's face, he heaved a sigh and left the computer, moving to the side of the tent, texting the aforementioned details as he walked. "I know, I know, 'just pay me the money and I'll leave', I get it. Here you go, kid, and good doing business with you. And if you're interested in a bit more work, there's details on another job in there, one that Adam Taurus himself ordered done, and requested you for." He hefted a briefcase onto the table in front of her, popping it open to reveal several high-quality dust crystals as well as a substantial amount of Lien.

As she pulled the briefcase towards her, they heard muffled shouting and gunfire from outside of the room.

"I'll go sort that out, whatever it is," the LT said. "I know you always like to count every Lien. Heh. Hopefully by the time I've sorted out those idiots out there, you'll have finished."

Elune merely nodded wordlessly, taking the Lien from within the briefcase and sorting it, counting to ensure that the payment was, indeed, the agreed upon amount. As she did so, the LT grabbed his double-ended spear before he opened the door and headed out, shaking his head in disappointment, partially at her refusal of his offer, and partially at the idiots he was in charge of, who seemed to be incapable of keeping their disagreements (which also seemed to be getting more frequent) quiet and inconspicuous. Seriously, they were inside Vale itself! With the rate those morons got into fights, and the volume of those fights, they would be lucky to get away with only being discovered by the VPD, as opposed to a Huntsman or Huntress.

Elune continued counting the Lien within the briefcase after the door closed, meticulous in doing so, though she knew the Fang wouldn't cheat her. They relied on her too much to alienate her by stiffing her on payment for jobs.

Finally finished her count, she placed all the Lien cards back in the briefcase and took the note on the new job they had for her, noting absently as she looked over it that, rather than diminish, the sounds of fighting outside had instead grown louder since the LT went outside, though they were finally beginning to subside now. As she clicked the briefcase shut and locked it, a crash made her look up in shock as the LT slammed straight through the door, taking it off its hinges with the force of the collision, and crashed into the opposite wall. Raising an eyebrow, she stood up, grabbed the briefcase and made her way casually to the door.

A/N: A short description of each character's semblance will follow their introduction chapter, to ensure that I've made clear how they work. So, without further ado: Elune's semblance, Lights Out, allows her to restrict visibility by reducing or even completely eliminating all light within a fixed spherical area. She can centre this area anywhere within her sight line, though the closer it is to her the easier it is to maintain; likewise, she can adjust the radius of the sphere- the larger she makes it, the less time she is able to keep it up for.