The final match of the day was ongoing, and nearing its end. Team CRDL of Beacon was fighting Team CRMN of Atlas. Lejule was pleased as he watched the new teamwork displayed by the ones who had once been the Academy's resident bullies.
Cardin was keeping one of the remaining members of CRMN pinned down with swift, wild swings of his mace, fists, and feet. With an unspoken command, the orange-haired young man ducked down just as Russell's spinning charge flew over his head.
The green-haired dagger-user kicked the Atlas student in the face and followed it up with a few slashes of his daggers. Like a well-oiled machine, he twisted out of the way to allow Cardin back in to deliver the final blow, triggering the Aura buzzer.
In a similar manner, Dove was peppering the opponent of him and Sky with bullets to ensure that she would be hit by some weapon at any time. Before long, a final strike from Mr. Lark's halberd caved in her Aura, and she was eliminated.
With that, the match was over. "Team CRDL is victorious."
While Dr. Oobleck asked the attendees to calmly leave the Coliseum (although his method of doing so was most certainly not calm as just about everyone winced), Lejule led his family to a transport heading for the fairgrounds. To his surprise, they were joined by Teams RWBY, MOON, and PLTM before the ship took off. Yang was the first to speak. "Hey, Prof. What are you planning to do for the rest of the day?"
"My family and I are having dinner at the fair before turning in for the day. You?"
"Hanging out with friends." She gestured to the other students.
Lejule looked over the assembled adolescents. "Friends, huh?" Then he noticed the pure venom in the gaze one of the members of PLTM, Ebon Typhon if he recalled correctly, was directing at Weiss. "Is there a problem, sir?"
Typhon's response was not directed at the professor. "My sister was worked to death in one of your mines, Schnee."
The heiress tried to be diplomatic. "I am not my father. Those practices will die with him. I promise."
The snake scoffed. "The promise of a Schnee is as worthless as a house outside of a Kingdom's walls. All of you see the Faunus as worthless animals."
"That is not true."
"Oh, really? Then what do you think about the nine Faunus in this room?"
Team MOON's Nichol's brow furrowed. "There are only eight Faunus here." Lejule heard her add, under her breath, "Although that's eight too many for my comfort."
Typhon blinked. "You really can't see the obvious? Stupid human. How many people does that–"
"Enough." Lejule fed a little of the thu'um into his voice, granting it an authoritative depth.
Phoenix laid a hand on her teammate's shoulder. "Let it go, Typhon. It's not worth it."
He smacked her arm away. "'Not worth it?' 'Not worth it?!' My whole family slaved away in a Dust mine just so that the Schnees could line their pockets with more and more Lien. My parents died in a cave-in, while I watched my sister waste away from fatigue and abuse, and you say that trying to demand recompense is 'not worth it?'"
"I'm sorry."
All eyes turned to Weiss. "You're…WHAT?"
"I'm sorry for what happened to your family. I promise to do what I can to improve the lives of every Faunus who works or has worked for the Schnee Dust Company. I don't know how long it will take to undo the damage my father did, but I swear that I will do it."
While that did lessen Typhon's anger, it was not completely abated. "All well and good when such a promise is just words, but can you actually see the Faunus as people? What would you do if you learned the truth about the one you trust?"
"I already know."
"Really? How much did you tell them, Blake Belladonna?"
The normally calm black cat glared at the serpent. "Excuse me?"
"What? Did you honestly think that a bow would be able to disguise who and what you are? From the moment I saw you, I knew. Any Fang would."
Weiss backed up in horror. "You're a member of the White Fang?"
Lejule prepared a choice spell for if things got out of hand.
Cadmin rather roughly shoved Typhon behind her. "Was a member. He's been gone, what was it, three years?"
Ebon opened his jacket to reveal a stylized white wolf head on a blue rectangle "Two. They rescued me from that f*****g mine. I ran with them for near a decade. And then the high and mighty Blake Belladonna left."
Blake growled. "Don't. Bring. That. Up."
Before another word could be said, Lejule cast a new spell he had crafted while he was here: System Shock; it was designed to hide a strong Paralysis effect inside a Shock Damage effect. It worked as intended, Typhon's body recoiling from the electrical blast before locking in that position and collapsing to the ground as the Paralysis bypassed his Aura. "Now then, I expect everyone to behave in a civil manner for the rest of the day and to, for the most part, pretend that this conversation never happened. Understand?" The kids nodded. "Good."
Aela leaned against one of the trees ringing the fairgrounds and considered the evening amidst the dwindling crowds.
It had taken a great deal of self-restraint for her to keep her wolf from unleashing its fury on the repugnant snake. Even though she had only been here on Remnant for a few weeks, she had managed to learn about the White Fang. The group claimed to be fighting for the rights of the planet's beastfolk, the Faunus, but they were indiscriminate in who was affected by their activities. Faunus and humans alike were harmed by the "bombs" they used to target those who oppressed the Faunus. Recently, however, they had also been targeting those Faunus who advocated a peaceful coexistence with humanity.
The only reasons Aela hadn't struck the serpent were 1) he had left the Fang, and 2) Lejule had dropped him first.
Speaking of her husband, he walked up and tossed her a bottle of mead, Honningbrew, of course. She caught it and popped the cork. Taking a swig, she asked, "The kids alright?"
Lejule opened his own bottle. "Yeah." He took a drink. "Ma'isha is playing a 'Test-Your-Strength' game where you hit a target with a hammer. She and Nora are each trying to outdo the other. I think the game will break before they're done."
The she-wolf laughed. "Yeah. Our daughter doesn't give up, and she hates coming in second." Another swallow of the honey-wine burned its way down her throat. "And Ma'rahka?"
"I saw him talking with Weiss over coffee earlier." He drew a long draught from his bottle. "If my eyes weren't deceiving me, I think I noticed an Amulet of Mara in his pocket."
Aela sputtered. "Truly? Our boy's looking for love? Hmm. I guess there could be worse choices than that Ice Queen."
Lejule sighed. "You, too, Aela? Really? Weiss is called that by so many people already that she doesn't need anyone else doing so."
"Sorry. Since I mainly saw her friends using it, I thought it was an affectionate nickname." She finished her bottle. "Speaking of romance, would you like to join me for a 'hunt?'"
Tipping the bottle up to catch the last dregs, the cat replied, "I suppose it could be fun. Won't be much prey we can use, however. Just Grimm."
"Eh, those'll do. I just need to run."
Lejule nodded, knowing what she meant. While he could control and contain the beast far better than she could, even his wolf was itching to be released. He had not shifted since Mountain Glen.
The pair of them slipped into the trees and out of sight of anyone else. A few hundred feet from the perimeter of the fairgrounds, they took off their clothes, stuffed them into Lejule's satchel, and shifted into their beast forms.
With twin howls of joy, they bounded into the Emerald Forest. Over the next hours, the two werewolves tore apart any Grimm they came across. Their first victims were a trio of ursai, one a major. Before the bears even knew the werewolves were there, Aela had dug her claws into the mask of one and tore its head off, while Lejule had snapped off two of the bone spines of the major and driven them up through its skull. The last ursa backed up, roaring at them in challenge.
Neither werewolf was impressed, sharing a glance and a mental conversation. They rushed forward, bowling the bear over and pinning its forelimbs down. Then, Lejule and Aela bit down and began eating the Grimm alive.
Aela immediately spat out her first bite. Ugh. It tastes horrid, like the thing's made of tar or something.
Lejule swallowed his bite, shuddering at the taste. I have eaten worse, but Grimm flesh isn't feeding the wolf. I guess our prey needs to be infused with a soul for Hircine's gift to register the offering. He reached over and snapped the ursa's neck. Let's keep hunting.
In retrospect, Emerald realized, trying to follow the disruptive Faunus by herself was probably not the best idea, but she had thought she'd find him, or at least a trail, before the light died. Instead, she'd found the tracks left by the less-stealthy woman who was with him. Greatly confusing Emerald was the fact that the footprints stopped a few hundred feet into the trees, giving way to two sets of beowolf-like paw prints.
Exacerbating matters was the fact that, when she found the trail, night had fallen, and she had to use the light of her Scroll to see clearly. A pack of beowolves ambushed her, and, in the melee, she lost track of everything, including which way was which. She pulled grabbed her Scroll to call Mercury, but the device had been damaged at some point, and what little of the display worked showed that there was no signal in the area she was.
For the first time since joining up with Cinder, Emerald felt afraid, worrying that she may never get out of this forest before something ate her. She almost started wandering the Emerald Forest before realizing that such an action would simply get her more and more hopelessly lost. Instead, she climbed a tree and settled in to wait for daybreak, the best option she could figure out at the time.
"Crap, crap, crap." A howl pealed out from her left, deeper in the forest. However, it sounded unlike any howl she had ever heard before. "What the–?" She strained her eyes, which were beginning to adjust to the darkness, and, through the tree branches, saw something she could not understand at the absolute limit of her visual range.
There were two beowolf-like creatures, one with dark fur and darker stripes standing over another that seemed to have dark red fur. And they were…procreating.
Emerald immediately covered her eyes and tried to purge that image from her mind. Then she felt the wind tug at her hair. She gasped and her eyes widened in horror as she realized that said wind was blowing in the direction of the creatures, and both wolves and beowolves had incredible senses of smell. Acting quickly, she focused her gaze on them and tried to blot her scent out of the collection they were getting.
She wasn't fast enough, as she saw the one on top perk up, sniff the air, and look in her direction. Removing multiple sensory inputs from two minds was beyond the capabilities of her Semblance, currently, and the resulting migraine hit her with so much pain that she recoiled and fell out of the tree.
Either she blacked out, the pain rendered her insensate, or the creatures could move with the utmost stealth (Emerald wasn't sure what was the worst possibility.), because the next thing she was aware of was the striped creature, that she now realized was mostly brown, standing over her. Panicking, she reached for her carbines, but her holsters were empty. This is it; this is where I die.
That was nowhere near what happened. The monster reached down toward her, and she covered her face with her arms. Then her eyes widened again, this time in surprise, when its arms slid under her knees and shoulders and it gently picked her up.
"What?"
It gave no response, instead carrying her for some minutes. Finally, when the lights of the fairgrounds faintly came into view, it put her down and pointed towards civilization before loping off back into the forest. A second later, her kusari-gama/carbines flew out from behind a bush to land at her feet.
Still dazed from how her head was spinning, Emerald numbly bent down and retrieved her weapons before backing toward the festival. Mercury found her rather quickly. "What happened to you? Where were you? Why didn't you answer your Scroll?"
She answered in reverse order, pulling out the ruined device. "I thought I saw something in the forest. Turned out to be a pack of beowolves. I got lost in the fight and took a while to find my way back." All of those were half-truths, as she was sure that her partner wouldn't believe the whole truth; she wasn't sure she believed it, and she had experienced it.
The assassin's son held out a hand to her. "Come on. You're no good to anyone dead."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The section with Emerald surprised me by literally writing itself. It wasn't planned. What was planned was Lejule and Aela stumbling across and massacring a White Fang encampment, but instead...
