The Name of the Game

by literalsin

A man from Earth wakes up to find himself stuck in the body of a fictional teenage boy with an ability that turns his life into a video game and foreknowledge of events to come. What could possibly go wrong? A take on the RWBY/Gamer crossover niche with an SI twist, a focus on world and character building, and fleshing out some of the details RT missed. Rated 'M' for a reason.

25. Vertigo

The Name of the Game

a RWBY/The Gamer crossover, SI.

Arc 7: Fall of Fall

Chapter 25: Vertigo

---

Frowning in annoyance, I tapped my map, where the icon I'd been chasing for the past twenty minutes sat. Normally, there were three types of icon for people on my map. The first appeared either as a small green, red, or white dot for friendly, hostile, or neutral targets within range. The second was standard quest markers, which I'd only ever rarely seen. The third kind appeared as a person's personal emblem if they met the threshold to have their personal icon on my map, such as Ruby's rose. Unlike all of those, this one appeared as a small circle of what looked like condensed static or snow off an old analog television, slowly cycling through colors. It was an anomaly, an aberration. My Semblance either couldn't, or wouldn't, identify it. "What the hell are you?"

Despite tracking and following it across half the Commercial District, I had yet to actually catch sight of the person responsible for it within the crowd and it was beginning to get frustrating. Closing the full map, I dropped down to street level, cloaked under my full stealth set. I noticed that my unwanted observer was back, as the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my detection skills pinged.

Moving through the crowd, I followed the slowly moving icon as it appeared to go into one of the many Dust stores in town—the last one I'd robbed, in point of fact. 'They still haven't fixed the damage from my fight with Penny,' I noted, taking up a position to watch the door of the store without being in the way of the crowd while keeping the minimap in the corner of my eye. Until I got eyes on it, I wasn't willing to get any closer.

Several minutes later, a figure wearing a knee-length navy dress with black trim and a set of black heels stepped out of the store. She was short—around Ruby's height—with hair the same shade as her dress pulled back into a tight bun. A flash of metal at her hip caught my eye as she turned, and I caught sight of her weapon. It was a sword—silver and polished to a shine that was highly visible in the morning light. The handle lead to a small cylinder surrounded by a four sided quillion, where I could make out the faint glow of Dust—white, red, blue—and below that, it tapered to a long, thin blade. A rapier, specifically.

'I know that sword,' I realized, and my eyes trailed up to her face as she began walking in my direction. Ice blue eyes were set in a lean, angular face, and her beautifully pale skin was marred only by a scar over her left eye—though, to be honest, it did more to add some sense of maturity to her face than detract from its beauty. I glanced at my minimap again, which still showed a circle of static slowly cycling through colors. Most alarmingly, perhaps, was her nameplate—while it didn't hurt my brain to look at, it was unreadable, seeming to be made entirely of static itself. Her name, title, and level were all completely hidden from me. Even without the nameplate, I recognized her.

'Weiss,' I mused, glancing at my HUD's time and date. 'Did you come to Vale a week early just to prepare for Beacon, or for something else?'

My curiosity piqued, I sent a message to the twins and Neo and let them know I'd found something interesting and would be a while. Immediately, I was bombarded with questions, and I sighed, knowing I couldn't exactly get out of answering—and that, considering they were in party, they could easily find me.

'What did you find?' Melanie sent.

'Or who?' Miltia added.

'Show us!' Neo demanded, and I rolled my eyes.

Penny's response was somewhat more urgent. 'Do you need my help, Jaune?'

'No, thank you Penny, I'm fine,' I quickly dissuaded the gynoid from simply summoning herself to my position. I sent a view through my eyes as Weiss passed by. The responses were varied. Neo sent the mental impression of a leer, while the twins both emoted curiosity.

'I know that face,' Miltia mused, Melanie echoing agreement. 'That's the younger Schnee heiress. The one that did that recital that was on all the networks recently. Heiress, rich, pretty much elevated nobility, and a minor pop-idol—she's pretty popular. Why is she in Vale?'

'And in disguise,' Melanie added as I moved to follow Weiss, ascending to roof level so I could move freely. 'Someone like that thrives on attention. I highly doubt she'd be in disguise to get away from paparazzi.'

It was Neo who hit the nail on the head. 'She's going to Beacon. She's their 'W.' That's why she's in Vale, but it doesn't explain the disguise.'

'Neo, please do not complete that thought,' I warned.

'Too late,' the twins synced. Melanie continued, asking, 'So, you what, know the future?'

'I will make you forget,' I sent, deadpan.

'You won't,' Miltia denied. 'More to the point, I don't believe you can. Specifically, because I remember the last time you did it.'

I palmed my face as the girls called my bluff. Bad news: the twins were resistant to my mental spells. Good news: they were probably also immune or at least very resistant to mental Semblances now. Win some, lose some. 'Neo's not immune.'

'We've got another mask,' Melanie pointed out. 'At the very least, Miltia and I should be safe to know the whole truth now—if you want to tell us.'

Below me, I watched as Weiss stepped into an alley, looked around to make sure she wasn't being watched, and drew her weapon. A white glyph lit up beneath her and she jumped, taking to the rooftops and shooting off across Vale, one hand on her sword and the other holding her scroll up with a map on it. I dropped into Flash Step and began ascending, using the taller buildings around us to stay above her while keeping a steady pace behind her. 'Later, maybe.'

A feeling of shock and slight panic washed over the link from Miltia, before she hurriedly asked, 'Wait, if we're resistant to mental effects now, does this mean no more mind-control sex?'

I stumbled and nearly face-planted on my next landing. 'You've been given an ability that can no-sell lesser negative mind-altering effects and you're worried that it'll ruin one of your fetishes?'

'Absolutely,' Miltia defended herself. 'If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't ask you to do it, Jaune.'

Our conversation went quiet and I continued to tail Weiss. Eventually, she dropped into another alley and put away her sword before walking into another Dust store. Following her down, I quickly ID'd my way into the Dust shop and watched. Looking around, I noticed the walls were particularly bare—meaning they likely hadn't gotten in a new shipment since the last time I'd robbed them. Then again, that could've been on that train I took, so that would tend to put a damper on getting replacement dust. Her conversation with the owner was quiet, but my newly enhanced hearing had no problems picking it up, especially when combined with actively using Listen.

Weiss held out her scroll and the owner's eyebrows headed for his hairline. "I'm conducting an investigation into the recent string of Dust robberies here in Vale and your shop is among those hit most recently. Would it be possible to get a copy of your surveillance footage of that night?"

"Certainly, Miss Sc—"

She held up a hand, a small, strained smile on her lips. "I'm sure Vale City Police and Atlas Security Forces are perfectly capable of finding the culprits, but we're investigating this as a potential internal matter. I'm sure you can appreciate the need for discretion. I would appreciate it if you forgot I was ever here."

The man behind the counter nodded. "Of course. Let me just get you that footage."

Weiss waited patiently while he worked on transferring the data from the security system to her scroll. "Did anything else about the theft stand out?" she asked as her scroll pinged, signaling the transfer was complete.

"The police and Atlas already asked all of that and I'll tell you the same thing I told them: I'm a one man operation here. I own and run the shop myself. I'm the only one with the codes and keys to the door and I sure didn't steal the Dust myself. There was a group of them—about eight or nine guys, all wearing masks and hats, according to the footage from the street cameras. They were in and out quick and quiet and they took everything not nailed down. They never set off the alarms. Thing is, the CCTV footage is useless. It just shows the empty store for the duration of the robbery. One minute everything's there, the next it's gone. The footage from next door shows them pulling up and getting out of a car, then the men and the car disappear and it's looking at empty street—same for the street cams, from what I've heard."

"I see," Weiss murmured, closing her scroll. "Thank you for your cooperation."

The disguised heiress made her way outside and I followed by ID, taking to the roofs before she decided on a destination. 'So, she's looking for us. I wonder why. That story she gave was obviously bullshit, but then, I suppose you'd about need Outsider's Perspective to know that. Pretty sure Weiss doesn't have the authority to chase this down on her own. In fact, I'm almost positive that her daddy wouldn't approve of her chasing this down on her own and putting herself in danger, when there are police for that sort of thing.'

Well, there was one way to find out. Smirking under my mask, I set up on a highly visible rooftop and dropped my stealth spells. Seeing as it was morning and I was profiled against the sky while wearing dark clothes, I stood out like a sore thumb. 'Look up,' I urged the girl below as she studied her scroll again, likely trying to decide where to go next. 'Come on, look up, damnit. Ah! Yes... no, not there,' I rolled my eyes as she looked off to the side of me, before her head suddenly turned and her eyes locked on my position. 'There we go. Now, let's see how serious you are.'

I took a short running leap to the next building, heading up the street and in the general direction of the Industrial District. A glance at my minimap showed her odd icon to be following at a distance, and I grinned wider, picking up the pace. We crossed districts and I came across a large building labeled as a textile mill on my map, with a wide, flat roof, and I'd crossed nearly half of it before a white flash in my peripheral vision and my detection skills going off alerted me to the heiress suddenly closing the gap.

The heiress appeared in my path several feet away, sword drawn as she took up a ready stance. Her skin was slightly flushed and she was breathing hard. A few strands of her temporarily dyed hair had slipped loose, framing her face nicely. For a moment, teenage hormones betrayed me and my brain did the rest, transplanting that image to a bedroom scenario. "Halt, thief!"

I stopped, her voice derailing the vision in my head abruptly—and leaving me cursing those teenaged hormones. Looking around slowly, I pointed to myself. "Who, me?"

"Yes, you!" she spat out, her voice going up an octave in her anger.

"Okay. I've halted. Now what?" I asked and she blinked, anger deflating as I obviously failed to follow whatever script she had in her head.

She recovered admirably, however. "You are under arrest—"

"Are you a Hunter?" I interrupted, earning an annoyed look and a shake of the head in answer. "Are you an officer of the law?" I asked, and she frowned.

"Well, no, but—"

I nodded, deciding to roll for bullshit. "You're right. No 'buts.' You are neither a Huntress nor an officer of the law. You have no legal authority to pursue, detain, or question suspects, nor to make arrests. In fact, attempting to do so with no legal standing and no probable cause is either stalking, kidnapping, or assault. So, halt, villain!" I shouted, pulling up everything I remembered from the very few episodes of fansubbed Sailor Moon I'd watched, and Usagi's tendency to speechify, and dumping it into Intent backed with Charisma. Thumbing the release on the weapon at my side and ejecting two of the escrima-style Dustcasters that would form the main body of my weapon when locked together, I pointed one of them at her. "Or you shall be punished!" My new Acting skill pinged a level gain, the notification disappearing after three seconds.

"W-wha? I— you... but," she spluttered, before she went red with anger—all the way down, as far as I could see. "Stop trying to confuse me!"

"You should have considered that before confronting an innocent pedestrian with false accusations of a crime you haven't even named and attempting to illegally detain them," I countered. "I am making a legal citizen's arrest!" Acting leveled again.

"No, you're not," she growled. "I have evidence of your crimes! You were at no less than three of the crime scenes of the most recent robberies—"

"Circumstantial evidence at best. It'll never hold up in court," I denied.

"You engaged in a sword fight in the middle of the street with that Fox character in the commission of your last robbery!" she shouted triumphantly.

I shook my head. "I was merely an innocent bystander who happened upon a robbery in progress and stepped in to deescalate the situation and detain the criminals for the police to pick up in a legal citizen's arrest, when he attacked me without warning or provocation. Perhaps, because I was wearing dark clothing and it was night, he assumed I was with the real thieves. It was a case of right place, wrong time and mistaken identity. Again, circumstantial at best and no court is going to prosecute—"

"You stole a train full of Dust! Entire box cars!" she interrupted, now breathing heavily as her knuckles went white around the hilt of her sword.

She was so close to snapping. I wondered, for a moment, if I shouldn't ease her back from the edge. 'Nah. This is too much fun,' I decided. Then and there, I knew I would be making it a regular thing to get her riled up once I got to Beacon. As beautiful as Yang was when she was angry, Weiss was just as much so—and so much easier to get wound up. "I did? Do you have proof?"

The heiress whipped out her scroll, tapping away at it a moment before she turned a smug look on me and turned it around so I could watch. There on her tiny screen, I watched myself slip up behind a guard and put him in a sleeper hold. He thrashed for a few moments before going limp—because I'd hit him with a subvocal Sleep at the time, as I did for all of the guards, because I didn't want anyone waking up any time soon. The me on the screen made his way into the security control room and the footage ended as I'd shut off the cameras. "Huh. Well, I'll be damned. It looks like someone's trying to frame me for a crime I didn't commit. And I don't see any box cars disappearing there."

"What?!" Weiss hissed, eyes going wide as she saw her carefully gathered evidence once more about to evaporate. "And of course you don't see them disappearing, because you shut off the cameras!"

"Nope," I shook my head. "If you'll look closely, he's not even wearing the same armor as me, nor are we even using the same weapons." I resisted the urge to laugh out loud as Acting leveled again. 'Even my Semblance is telling me I'm so full of shit that my eyes should be brown.'

"Because that armor was destroyed by the Fox!" Weiss countered.

I shrugged. "Was it? You'd have to bring him in for questioning and ask him to confirm that theory." Which would be impossible, unless I got Penny or Neo to do it. I was sorely tempted, just for laughs, but it would cause all sorts of questions and problems I didn't want to deal with.

"But you just said…" she trailed off, slowly closing her mouth with a quiet click. She put away her scroll and drew her sword again. "Right. That's enough. No more distractions. No more fast talking. I am taking you in to the police."

"If you attack me, I'll subdue you and take you in to the police for assault," I countered, reminding her of my earlier bluff. "It seems we're at an impasse."

"We're really not," Weiss growled. "What's your name?"

"Me?" I asked, fighting and failing to resist the grin that spread across my lips under my mask. "I'm Batman."

Weiss blinked twice, before her expression went completely flat. "That's it, killing you now."

One hand went up and spun the Dust cylinder in Myrtenaster. White glyphs appeared around the roof and she began her attack. 'She's fast,' I assessed silently, watching her as she moved closer. 'But Ruby was faster before I started training her.' I powered up Haste and she appeared to move in slow motion, landing in front of me and striking out with a thrust aimed at the side of my face. It would hurt if it connected, but wouldn't be lethal. I brought the escrima in my left hand up, parrying her strike off to the side, and countered with a kick to her stomach. The blow connected, sending her rolling backwards across the gravel roof. 'Wow. She can not take a hit.' I couldn't tell her HP or MP, since her health and mana/Aura bars appeared scrambled, but from her physical reaction alone it was plainly evident I'd hurt her.

Weiss coughed and rolled to her feet, blue eyes meeting my red and narrowing as she reassessed her situation. "Yeah, Princess. I'm a lot faster than you. Want to try again?"

Another glyph formed under her and she launched herself upwards, taking the fight three-dimensional as she attempted to strike from an angle I couldn't block or counter from. She'd learned from the first hit and didn't sit still long enough for me to counter, throwing out thrusts and slashes as she pinballed around me, probing my defenses. She would have wiped the floor with me when I first came to Remnant. A couple of weeks ago, I would have been hard pressed to match her. Now, I played Flash Step tag with Ruby Rose on a daily basis—who happened to be the fastest person I'd ever come across on Remnant. Weiss couldn't touch me—and that fact soon became apparent to the heiress, as her frustration leaked through the icy mask she wore.

As she neared again, attempting to string together a multi-hit thrust combo hoping I would miss a parry, I leveled one of my Dustcasters at her and hit the switch. Her eyes widened and she dodged quickly out of the way as a wave of fire exploded from the end of the weapon. I shifted the weapon to track her and she countered with an ice wall—apparently, she had been playing by some sense of fairness, as it seemed that my use of offensive Dustcasting provoked an immediate escalation to the same on her part, as opposed to simply using it to enhance her movements. A blur of motion told me she'd taken to the air, and she spun the cylinder again before attacking. Spinning in midair as a glyph formed under her, she thrust Myrtenaster at me and a set of six blue bolts of energy raced away from her, curving around to converge on my position.

Slapping the ends of the escrima in my hands together and twisting to lock them into place, turning it into a quarterstaff, I swatted one of the Dust attacks away, dodged under another, and Leapt above the rest as they converged and exploded. A bolt of red streaking in and my detection skills going off warned me of an inbound attack and I twisted in midair. My thumb hit the selector for my Dustcaster on one end and I swung. A wave of condensed frost washed out from my weapon, neutralizing the wave of fireballs Weiss had sent streaking at me. 'Maybe I shouldn't have started off with Grade 4 Dust in this thing. Sure, it was just to test with so I could get a handle on how it performs, but it's kind of fucking me at the moment. We seem about evenly matched as far as Dust Grade goes, so a Dust battle between the two of us is going to boil down to selection, skill, and intelligence. And Weiss is as much of a caster as I am, just with a focus on Dust. Yeah, no—fuck fighting on her terms.'

Touching down, I ejected the third and fourth segments of my polearm, quickly snapping them into place. Another fireball streaked in and I spun the completed weapon in hand before batting the fireball into the air, where it exploded harmlessly. I grinned as my Semblance alerted me to the fact that I had just imported a skill: Polearm Mastery, at level 20. A quick detail check confirmed what I'd suspected—that the skill covered more than one type of weapon. Just as Sword Mastery covered every type of sword and Firearms Mastery covered every type of gun, Polearm Mastery covered every type of pole weapon—from quarterstaves, to bo, spears, lances, halberds, and other exotics. I didn't have time for more than a glance though, as Weiss was on me again, combining her speed with what looked like an Aura Strike.

That was fine by me, because I was looking to test the other part of my weapon. When I'd slapped the pole together, I had connected the Dustcaster ends—leaving the shotgun ends facing outwards. Right now, they were loaded with a combination I'd come up with and turned out a couple hundred rounds for: Grade 4 Gunmetal Gray propellant and Grade 4 Burning Crimson shot, sized at number 7. High recoil with a nasty burn for anything it hit, but the shot itself was composed of smaller pellets—bird shot, essentially. It would be mostly harmless against anyone with Aura, as far as penetration went—most of its damage would come from the velocity of the shot and the burn effect. I wasn't using it for damage, though.

With Haste running, it was almost pathetically easy to get the timing right as I tilted the pole and jumped, firing at the same time. It went off twice more as I used it to spin me around and build momentum. Weiss spun her Dust chamber and another glyph flared to life under her—green, this time. Wind rushed around us and she leaped up to meet me, sword forward in a thrust as she flew at me at ballistic speed, propelled by what must have been wind Dust of some sort. The first strike hit the inner wrist of her weapon hand, sending her rapier spinning off to the side and skidding across the roof as she was disarmed. The other end of the pole came around and slammed into the shoulder of her opposite arm with all the force I'd gathered. The pole was not a particularly light weapon—it had a good deal of weight to it, mostly lightened by built in weight reduction enchantments. More important than its weight was its mass. Enchantments may have told gravity to fuck off on a semi-permanent basis regarding its weight, but they didn't alter its mass at all—meaning it could impart a lot more force than it seemed capable of. And it struck Weiss, who was moving at a good clip at the time, with the force of a motorcycle slamming into a telephone pole—it was only thanks to her Aura that the impact didn't exact that sort of toll on her body.

Weiss' shoulder popped out of socket with a sick crack and she bounced when she hit the gravel roof, rolling twice before coming to a stop. For a moment, she lay still, stunned by the impact as I touched down on the roof. Her senses returned to her and Weiss whimpered as she cradled her shoulder, tears stinging her eyes. Her dress was ripped and bloodstained. The skin under it was cut and abraded from where she'd rolled, but her Aura was swiftly healing that. The arm, on the other hand, wouldn't be healing without help. 'If she came looking for me, what's to stop her from going after Emerald or Mercury, if they ever slip up and do something to draw her attention? Those two wouldn't hesitate to kill her if they thought they could get away with it. Or, God forbid, Cinder? If she started a fight with Cinder, the woman would take her time roasting Weiss, if Weiss managed to piss her off—which she was almost universally capable of, in canon. She's going to get herself killed if she keeps this up.'

I grimaced at the thought. I couldn't let that happen. Reaching down, I thumbed the selector switch for my Dust blades. Bringing the pole around, I locked it into the hilt of the sword and drew. I felt the attention from my unseen watcher increase, but sensed none of the danger I'd felt when I'd pulled this trick with Yang. Moving to the girl's feet, I hit the switch to connect the Dust in the blade to the crystal in the hilt of the sword. The blade lit up red down the center and heat began to roll off it. I gave it an experimental twirl before leveling the weapon at her face. Weiss stared up the serrated, glowing Dust blade, tears of pain in the corners of her ice blue eyes. There was anger there, yes, but also resolve. Determination. I nearly sighed. She had strength of will, but in this instance it may just get her killed. 'This is for your own good.'

"You attacked me. I disabled you. Don't make it personal, Princess. Drop your investigation. It ends at the point of a sword, if you're lucky. If you're not, well, you'll probably die screaming. There is more going on in Vale than you realize, and I am the least of your worries. The way I see it, you've got two choices: crawl off back to Atlas and daddy to lick your wounds, or…" I turned my gaze to the east, where Beacon sat atop the cliffs. The school stood out like its namesake even in the daylight from this distance, its tallest towers visible from the city below.

Weiss followed my gaze and frowned. "How did you know?" she ground out through the pain.

"I didn't, until you told me, just now," I said—it was a complete lie, but she couldn't know that. Flipping the polearm over, I deactivated the Dust blade and buried it a foot into the roof where it would stand on its own. I knelt beside her and she flinched away. Frowning, I grabbed her arm and put a hand on her shoulder. "This is going to hurt," I warned, then carefully popped the arm back into place, earning a muffled squeal that tapered off into a pained whimper. Standing, I collected my weapon and began the process of sectioning and storing it. "If you come after me again, I might not be so kind, Princess."

I turned and began making my way off the roof. "Wait," she called, and I paused. I turned enough to see her stumble to her feet and move to recover her own weapon. "What's your name?" I opened my mouth and she quickly added, "And don't tell me it's 'Batman.'"

My jaw clicked shut as she cut off my first answer. After a moment of consideration, I decided it couldn't hurt too much—it was a name I'd made up to separate my identities, after all. "Shiro."

"Shiro," she murmured, tasting it for a moment before nodding. "I will remember this, Shiro. One day soon, you and I will cross blades again. I will not lose a second time."

"Well, then," I hummed, a smirk pulling at my lips. "You've got a lot of catching up to do. See you soon, beautiful."

The heiress' eyes went wide, before narrowing into a glare. I tossed her a wave over my shoulder, before sighting in a taller building nearby and using my line launcher to draw me up. I smirked as, between Listen and my enhanced hearing, I heard her let out a quiet growl of frustration as I left.

---

"Sit still!"

Gunshots sounded out across the field we'd taken to using to practice as Yang launched into a flurry of blows. On the other end of her wrath, Neo wore a cocky smirk, dancing quickly back and forth between red Dust rounds. Stepping into Yang's guard, she popped open her parasol, directly into the path of Yang's next blow. The round detonated atop the parasol, fire sheeting off of it as Neo spun under it, temporarily cut off from Yang's view. One white boot struck, catching Yang behind the knee and putting pressure on it as Neo stepped in, pulling the blonde into an intentionally erotic embrace as she forced Yang to one knee, her face coming to rest between Neo's breasts. Lilac eyes locked with strawberry and vanilla for a moment, before the sound of a blade sliding out drew Yang's gaze to the side, where Neo had compressed her parasol again and extended the blade at the end, moving it around to rest against Yang's back.

A leer crossed the tiny girl's lips as she nodded. "Well, if you wanted to take a break, you should have said so sooner."

"I hate you," Yang's muffled voice sounded from the valley of Neo's corset-clad breasts.

My attention was pulled back to my own fight as Ruby came flying in low—literally, in this instance. Somehow, the girl had worked out how to use wind to lift herself a couple of feet off the ground in a feat of minor levitation. She couldn't do it for long without burning through her Aura, but then she didn't really need to. On a straight line run, she had figured out that she could drop low to the ground, use wind to reduce her drag and friction, and use Crescent Rose's recoil to boost her well above what she'd been capable of before—on top of using Flash Step and her Semblance. Now that I'd taught her Haste, the only reason I even stood a chance was because Ruby was holding up her end of our deal: that being that, if I taught her Haste, she wouldn't over-rely on it. So, her sparring sessions were done without Haste, while I let her cut loose on Grimm so she could level it quickly to get the time dilation effect. She absolutely needed it, now.

Swinging my staff into the path of her scythe, I batted her aside—more redirection by using her own momentum against her than directly overpowering her attack—sending her tumbling several yards and bouncing along the ground before wind kicked up around her and she suddenly stopped, righting herself and setting back down. I raised an eyebrow at that. "Neat trick." And it really was—using wind for makeshift thrust vectoring was beyond what I thought she'd be capable of. Then again, Ruby was a prodigy, and I hadn't exactly tried to do it myself yet so I wasn't sure what the requirements were.

"Really? It took a bit of playing around to figure out how to do it without ending up face down in the dirt," the little redhead admitted.

"You're doing really well," I sent her a smile, before snapping my staff into a pair of quarterstaves. "Now, let's go for some CQC."

Silver eyes narrowed and Ruby chambered a new round into her rifle, before taking off with a shot and closing the distance between us in a blur of red. Unlike Ruby, I wasn't just using Haste, I was abusing the shit out of it to close the gap between us. It only really helped so much, however, and I took more than my fair share of licks from the girl's oversized weapon as we traded blows. 'This is so far from working, it's not even funny,' I mused. 'I'm going to need to practice more. In the meantime, it might be better to abandon CQC and break off.' Humming in thought, I grinned as I sighted in one of the trees on the edge of the clearing. Part of the forest the clearing bordered was still within the bounds of the empty ID I'd created for us to train in unobserved, and a change of terrain would force Ruby to change tactics. Hitting the right button combo, I fired one of the line launchers built into the weapon and dragged myself out of her range.

"Hey, that's cheating!" the girl yelled, immediately giving chase.

Pulling myself up into a tree, I lead my target and opened fire, throwing out a couple of fireballs from the Dustcasters. Ruby dodged them with ease, but was forced to slow down and direct more of her attention into dodging, using the trees around us as cover. I would have lost sight of her more than once, if not for her red cloak and guessing her most likely path by the trail of rose petals that using her Semblance left behind. 'Really need to work on your stealth,' I mused, leading my target and dropping another Fireball in her path.

Instead of dodging, the little reaper blew through the flames, coming out the other side of the impromptu wall of flame and sighting me in. Ruby flipped her scythe around and fired as she Leapt at me, the recoil combined with the Powered Leap kicking up a small wave of dirt where she'd last stood. Wind whipped around her, setting her cloak to fluttering and scattering a trail of rose petals in her wake, as she blurred into Flash Step. I caught sight of a buildup of red Aura along her weapon, pooling in the scythe blade, before she swung it at my head.

I dropped down in time to miss a swing that cut through the trunk of the tree I'd been standing on like a hot knife through butter. I watched as a thin line of solidified Aura slid off the blade of her weapon, leaving behind a crimson line of energy that mowed down everything in its path as it punched its way up through the treetops behind where I'd been standing—an Aura strike that would have likely cleared a small horde of Grimm by itself. I almost dreaded what would happen once she started modifying Crescent Rose again—she'd mentioned something about retractable Dust blades, and I didn't think I wanted to be on the business end of one of those.

Snapping the pole back together as parts of trees and branches rained down around us, I used Air Walk and kicked off with a Leap of my own after her, recoil helping to throw me into an intercept course as she realized what I was up to and fired her own weapon to bring her around into a spin. A smirk crossed my lips as she missed and I sailed over her. Spinning around, I leveled the Dustcaster end of the staff at her and thumbed the selector to green Dust. "Ventas!"

Mana and Dust combined as I fired off the spell, amplified many times over by the Dust from the staff. A wall of wind slapped the red-clad reaper out of the air, sending her slamming into the ground. Touching down nearby, I moved to check her over. "You okay?"

"I'll live," she grunted, coughing once as she heaved herself up to her feet and leaned on Crescent Rose for support. "New spell?"

I nodded. "I'm working on rounding out the basic elemental stuff. Wind was up on the list, and I've got a couple I wanted to make. So, have you figured out Surface Walking yet?" In our morning sit down to work on new techniques, that had been what I'd worked with Ruby on. The twins, on the other hand, were given something to even the playing field between themselves and the more experienced melee fighters of the group.

Ruby rolled her eyes and proceeded to walk straight up a tree. "Give me something harder, next time."

Chuckling, I said, "Okay. Fine. Now do that on water, then thin air."

The small redhead blinked, dropping to the ground as I gestured her towards the edge of the forest. "Is that how you change directions mid-air?"

"Yup," I nodded. "Come on, let's go check on the others."

"Jaune! What am I supposed to do?!" Penny called the moment we stepped back out of the forest. I shot the gynoid a questioning look and she gestured between where Neo was still keeping Yang occupied and where the twins were harrying Blake in a flurry of bladed claws and heels.

"So, you've got a hostage situation?" I assessed, and Neo nodded.

"I might have told her if she went to help Blake, I'd hurt Yang," Neo admitted.

I shot the girl a put-upon look. "That wasn't nice." Over our link, I sent, 'You know damn well Penny takes things too literally at times and still has trouble spotting bullshit.'

Neo shrugged. "It worked, didn't it?" Unheard by anyone else was the other half of that response: 'And taking advantage of her like this will force her to adapt faster than babying her will, Jaune.'

'I'm not babying her. But you've got a point.' Nodding, I turned back to Penny. "She's not going to hurt Yang, obviously, but it's a valid question. How are you supposed to handle a situation like this?"

"I… I do not know! What do I do?" Penny asked, and I shrugged. "How am I supposed to choose one friend over another?!"

"I know what I'd do." Turning to Ruby, I asked, "What about you? She's got your sis—"

I wasn't even finished speaking before Crescent Rose folded down into its compact form, Ruby leveled it, took aim, and popped off a round at Neo—knocking her flat on her ass and freeing Yang. "That was my titty!" Neo yelped, whimpering and clutching her chest. "You little bitch."

"It worked, didn't it?" Ruby deadpanned.

The ice cream themed girl turned a look on me and I shrugged. "It's what I would've done."

Neo blinked, shifting her gaze and looking up to find Yang standing over her, offering her a hand up. Raising an eyebrow, she allowed herself to be hauled to her feet. "Jaune, I think I need medical attention."

"Is that what you call it?" Ruby muttered under her breath, rolling her eyes. Shifting her aim, she began popping off rounds at the twins. "Penny, take the one on the left; Yang, go get Blake! Hit them hard and fast, before they try to go invisible on us!"

Moving over to Neo, I watched a small smirk cross her lips as I cupped her 'injured' breast. We were only using Grade 2 Dust for training, and between all the defensive buffs running on everyone, even Ruby's precious sniper rifle wouldn't do much more than knock someone flat and leave a hell of a bruise. "She's coming along nicely," Neo murmured as Ruby, Penny, and Yang joined the fray and gave Blake some breathing room. Both twins disappeared and the four girls took up a guard formation, back to back.

"You all are, really," I corrected, giving her a gentle squeeze and drawing a quiet gasp from her lips as I felt her nipple stiffen against my palm. "Want to go help the twins?"

Neo rolled her eyes. "But I'm enjoying myself here." She hissed as I tweaked her nipple, shooting a look at me that was half glare, half lust. "If you get me worked up here, you're taking care of it."

"Not much of a threat."

"It wasn't a threat," Neo smirked, shifting her gaze back to the fight. "I suppose we should help Melanie and Miltia. Yang's figured out how to force them visible. I'm kind of surprised Penny's still playing fair and hasn't just told them where the twins are."

I rolled my eyes, watching a wave of fire wash away from the blonde. "Yeah, well, it's kind of hard to stay invisible when the ground and air around you are on fire. And Penny knows shit like that," I gestured towards where the group was concentrating fire on where one of the twins had been a moment ago, "doesn't happen if they're just given the answer." Releasing her breast, I joined my staff to the hilt of my sword and drew the completed weapon from its sheath. 'I still need a name for you,' I mused, looking down at the bladed polearm, going over what I remembered from Earth mythology. There were several obvious choices to draw inspiration from. Many came to mind—the holy lance of Longinus, Luin of Celtchar, Gungnir—but I discarded them each in turn. I'd had this thing made with a purpose in mind, and it wasn't just as a replacement weapon for Shiro. Certainly, it would do a fine job of killing men, but it was made to kill monsters first. And despite not having run across any yet, or even knowing if they existed here, in the land of monsters, the biggest and nastiest of those tended to be dragons. 'Ascalon.'

Spinning it once, I leveled the newly-named blade at the group gathered back to back. "Try to pull Ruby off. I'll take Blake. Let the twins have Penny and Yang."

"Got it," Neo agreed, and we took off at a dead run, as I jumped ahead of her in a Flash Step to give her an opening.

---

By the time we called it quits for the day it was getting late into the afternoon and we were all tired, sweaty, and a little worse for wear. I brought the Bullhead in directly to Fox Hunt's new helipad on top of the barracks—the retractable landing pad and its folding roof actually added another floor to the top of the barracks, but it gave us a safe place to touch down and take off from out of view of everyone else. My radio squawked as I neared the lighted circle. "Fox Hunt Ground Control to inbound Bullhead, identify yourself or be fired upon."

"Roger that, Ground Control. Identification code as follows," I replied, reading off the daily code I'd picked up that morning when I got in from playing with Weiss. Identification codes for incoming air and ground traffic was another bit of paranoia on my part. I'd ordered men put on rotation in guard positions on the buildings with the best vantage points, armed with sniper rifles and rocket launchers, in order to deal with annoyances trying to get into the compound. Anyone who failed to identify themselves, or claimed to be someone that worked here and used the wrong code really would be shot. Those who did identify themselves but who did not have permission to be here would be directed to the central landing pad, where they would be met with a detail of armed men whose job it was to figure out what they wanted and either report to a superior or send them on their way, with force if need be, depending on the situation.

There was a pause as my codes were checked before the lights on the helipad blinked from red to green. "Welcome home, Foxtrot-Actual. You're cleared to land."

"Thank you, Ground Control," I grinned, easing the Bullhead the rest of the way down onto the platform. I killed the engines and the platform beneath us began sinking into the building, taking the Bullhead with it. Above us, shutters on the roof slid closed and the lights kicked on. Standing, I stretched and popped my back. Helping Neo out of the co-pilot's seat, I hit the door controls and we piled out of the aircraft, making our way into the building.

"Dibs on the shower!" Ruby called, vanishing in a burst of rose petals.

"Uh, she does realize there's more than one, right?" Blake asked.

Yang shrugged. "Yeah, but she's probably going after the best one."

"Mine," I deadpanned, at the same time the twins and Neo said, "Ours." The trio shot me an amused look before I shrugged and corrected myself. "Ours."

"So, clean up, then what?" Yang asked, and I hummed, shooting a look at Blake.

"We've got an op to run for Blake, actually." That drew the faunus girl's attention, eyebrows climbing towards her hairline in question. "Get me a location and we'll arrange transport. This will be your op, though—we'll follow your lead on this." I had officially added Ruby, Yang, and Blake to the guild this morning. Ruby had been added as an Officer while Yang and Blake had both been added as Veterans. None of them, however, had been added to the PMC nor did they have official ranks within the PMC. There were a few reasons for that, but most of it boiled down to the potential for a list of our personnel getting out in the wild with their names on it.

"This is an official, Fox Hunt thing, right?" Miltia asked, and I nodded. The twins shared a silent conversation, apparently dragging Neo in a moment later as they all shared looks, before the more reserved twin continued. "Then I'll stay behind, since only one of us should be out 'in uniform' at a time. Jaune, can I borrow your bike so I can run some errands while you're out?"

I shrugged. "Sure. We'll head down to the parking garage before we leave and I'll summon it for you."

"Well, in that case, we'd better go get ready," Melanie grinned, grabbing her sister by the hand and dragging her off towards their room.

Blake sent me a nod before heading off for the room we'd loaned out to her in the new place. "I should have a candidate village within the hour."

"Everyone seems to have left," Penny pointed out, and Neo turned a grin on her.

"Sweetie, why don't you go keep Ruby company?" the illusionist suggested, and Penny raised an eyebrow.

"I am not sure about that. I do not think Ruby would enjoy company in her shower," Penny pointed out.

'I'm a little surprised she got that one. I mean, given how the twins, Neo, and I share showers all the time I'd almost suspect she'd have come to expect shower time to be shared,' I mused.

"You'll never know until you try," Neo countered, and I shook my head.

Penny blinked, casting a long glance between myself, Neo, and Yang who stood there watching with an amused look—still trying to figure the ancula out, apparently. "Are you asking me to keep Ruby company because she may be lonely, or because you want me to distract her so you can talk to Yang?"

"Eh?" the blonde asked, gesturing to herself. "What?"

"That second one," Neo nodded.

"Oooh, I see," Penny nodded, beaming a smile at us. "I will endeavor to be very distracting, then!"

I blinked as the gynoid ran off to the master bedroom, and the attached bath where Ruby was currently ensconced. "Neo," I began, almost hesitant to ask. My voice came out as a hoarse, disbelieving whisper of mounting horror, "What have you done?"

"No idea. But it'll probably be amusing," the smaller girl grinned. "Speaking of amusing," she turned and cast a leer at Yang. "Come with us."

Yang put one hand on her hip, cocking them to the side as she put on a smirk. "Oh really?"

Rolling my eyes, I stepped up and quickly swept Yang up by the back of the thighs into a fireman's carry, resting her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "Come on, blondie."

"Hey! Careful," the blonde whined. As I followed Neo to her bedroom, she said, "The least you could do is cop a feel while you've got your hand there, Jaune Jaune."

"I will not," I denied, though I very much wanted to. I mean, it was so tempting—her ass was right there, all of an inch away from my hand. Yang, on the other hand, had no qualms about copping a feel of her own, as she grabbed my ass with both hands and squeezed. The sound I made was a manly squawk, not a squeak, as I quickly flung her the rest of the way across the room, where she landed on Neo's bed with a whoosh of air. "That was my ass."

"And a nice ass it was," Yang nodded. "Wouldn't mind another feel." Looking around, she shot us a leer as Neo shut and locked the bedroom door. "Sooo… What's going on in here? Did you finally decide you couldn't resist my charms?" the blonde leered, wagging her eyebrows and spreading out over the blanket in a pose that caused me to nearly stumble as my eyes roved over her form.

Shaking my head, I took Neo's desk chair, turned it around, and dropped down into it. Crossing my arms, I gave Neo a nod and leaned back in the chair to watch. "No. We're here to talk about your punishment."

"Oh? What kind of punishment? Cause this is looking more interesting by the moment," Yang chuckled, before frowning as she asked, "Wait, what am I being punished for?"

"For not following instructions," I deadpanned.

"Oh, that thing at The Club," Yang nodded. "You know, I'm still mad at you about that."

"No, you're not," I denied as Neo slipped onto the bed beside the blonde. "Annoyed, maybe. Disappointed, too. But you see the point of it. Otherwise, you would have said something. You're not exactly the passive aggressive type, Yang."

"True," the blonde nodded, lilac eyes turning to Neo. "What're you doing?"

"Me? Oh, that's easy," Neo beamed. Striking quickly, she snagged Yang's arms and pulled the blonde into a short scuffle, which ended up with Yang laying on her stomach pressed into the mattress and Neo straddling her waist from behind. "You see, Jaune won't lay a finger on you, because he knows it'd hurt your sister." Lilac eyes met my blue, and I nodded. "Lucky for Jaune, I've got no such compunctions."

"I spent a while trying to think up a fitting punishment. Some way to rub your nose in it, that you wouldn't just shrug off. And while I'm sure I'd enjoy spanking your ass red, I'm also pretty sure you'd enjoy it too, so it wouldn't really work that well as disciplinary action. So, instead, we talked it out and decided a little humiliation and frustration would stick with you the longest." I allowed a smirk to tease my lips upwards.

Neo leaned down, molding herself flush against Yang's back, shifting both the blonde's hands from behind her back to above her head and moving them to one hand. At this point, Yang could have easily overpowered the smaller girl, which meant that the blonde was there entirely of her own volition. Observe gave me her emotional state as curious, aroused, hopeful, and excited—so she wasn't exactly about to say 'no' at this point. Digging into her pocket, Neo pulled out her scroll and opened it, selecting the file she wanted and setting the volume loud enough to hear but not so loud that it'd be heard outside the room. Shifting to get comfortable, she held the scroll out to where Yang could see the display, while still being able to watch me from where I sat—though, it was more so I could watch her face to see her reaction. Neo hit 'play' and Yang's gaze was soon riveted to the screen. "Now, the fun begins," Neo murmured.

On screen, a blonde head of hair which looked suspiciously like her own bobbed up and down, before one hand came up to shift the curtain of hair away, exposing her face and, more importantly, what she was doing—namely, that her pink lips were wrapped around the shaft of my cock as her head bobbed. The real Yang blushed, suddenly going very still. Yang's eyes went wide as she realized what she was seeing, and even in the low light of the room, I could tell her pupils had dilated as she focused on the screen. Every now and then, lilac eyes would track over and meet my gaze, before quickly returning to the screen.

Neo caught my eye some minutes later as Yang squirmed under her. I nodded, and Neo shifted to lay beside Yang, shifting her grip on the scroll to her other hand after releasing Yang's wrists from her hold—the blonde wasn't going anywhere. Yang barely paid any attention as Neo's free hand fell to her lower back, just above her shorts, and started tracing slow patterns there, creeping slowly downward. Slowly, gently, Neo's hand inched down under the waistband of Yang's shorts, along with the yellow panties under them. Yang definitely noticed when Neo's small hand cupped her bare ass directly. Lilac eyes went wide again and she made to look at Neo, only to stop and gasp quietly as the ice cream themed girl beat her to the punch, leaning in and catching Yang's earlobe with her teeth. Biting down gently to get her attention, Neo pulled the delicate flesh into her mouth to play with it for a moment, eliciting a quiet whimper from Yang, before she spoke—hot breath brushing over the blonde's ear.

"We know what you want, Yang," Neo whispered softly, lips teasing Yang's ear with the movement of every word. "We've seen the way you look at us. You want that for yourself and your sister, don't you?" When Yang nodded slowly, Neo continued, voice dropping low enough that I had trouble picking it up even with the enhanced hearing and Listen active. "You know Jaune won't touch you, and it only turns you on more, because it means he's not willing to hurt Ruby for a little fun with you. Am I right?" Another nod from the blonde, and Neo spent a moment teasing her ear with lips and teeth. "We share everything. Can you live with that? With not having him to yourself?"

"Y-yeah," Yang breathed, the answer coming out sounding more like a whimper than anything else.

"Nobody gets left out. Everybody can play with everyone else. Are you okay with that?" Neo asked, before slowly dipping her hand lower into Yang's panties, and apparently making contact with something sensitive as the blonde gasped. "With this?"

Lilac eyes locked with my blue for a long moment before Yang bit her lip, then nodded quickly. "Dust yes."

"Good," Neo purred into Yang's ear, her grin stretching into Cheshire proportions as she apparently redoubled her efforts on the blonde, if Yang's sudden twitch of her hips was any indication. "Now, be a good girl and watch the movie. Unless, that is, you want me to stop?"

"Don't stop. Sweet Dust, don't stop," Yang whimpered, shaking her head frantically as she turned her eyes back on the scroll and the scene playing out.

'You know, that is ridiculously hot,' I sent to Neo, who met my eyes with a leer. 'Now remember, don't let her come from this. Not yet.'

Neo rolled her eyes. 'Yes, dear. I haven't forgotten the plan,' she retorted, before chuckling quietly as she asked, 'So, how hard are you right now?'

'My dick is like diamonds,' I sent back, and the girl raised an eyebrow. 'I had to turn Gamer's Mind back on, or I wasn't going to be able to sit here much longer. As it stands, I may have just blue balled myself anyway. Still, worth it.'

Nuzzling into Yang's neck and brushing her teeth against the blonde, eliciting a shudder for her trouble, Neo smirked. 'Poor thing. Want me to take care of it later?'

'Absolutely,' I agreed. I shifted in my seat, adjusting myself in my pants as I watched Neo slowly torture Yang. Idly, I wondered if we hadn't taken this too far, before shaking my head.

Eventually, the movie ended, and Yang lay there softly panting, squirming under Neo's fingers. "Well, I believe that about does it," Neo said, beginning to sit up and remove her hand from Yang's pants.

Yang turned wide lilac eyes on the shorter girl. "But… but I haven't finished! You can't just leave me worked up like this?"

I snorted softly, drawing Yang's gaze to me. "And why not?"

"Because it's not fair!" Yang whimpered. "Come on, you can't just leave me like this!"

Smirking, I shook my head. "No, I very well could. It's what we had planned, originally. Leave you all hot and bothered, then go fuck in Neo's shower." The look on the blonde's face was absolutely priceless, at that. Turning to Neo, I shrugged. "I suppose it's up to you. She's not really going to return the favor—"

"I could!" Yang offered. "I totally could! Come on, don't leave me hanging."

"Could, but you won't," I countered. "Because I'm not going to let you. As fun as that would be to watch, when Neo's done with you, I'm going to have my way with her."

Neo hummed quietly, then smirked. "Well, lucky you, I'm feeling generous." Yang's face lit up in sudden hope, before being forced down into the blankets as Neo grabbed a handful of hair at the back of her head and roughly shoved her down. Yang squealed as Neo went back to work on her, and I shook my head.

I was honestly surprised Yang hadn't reacted violently at that, given her protectiveness over her hair. 'Then again, she looks like she's just too turned on to give a fuck. Or maybe, since she is so protective over it, she's never had anyone really muss her hair good or otherwise give it a good pull and she's discovered she enjoys it.' I'd have to ask, later—both to satisfy my curiosity and to see the look on her face. "You're going to break her," I warned.

The ice cream themed girl raised one fine pink eyebrow. "Is that a challenge, Jaune? Cause that sounded like a challenge."

Considering it for a moment, I asked, "What are the stakes?"

"Who needs stakes? Seeing her break will be payment in and of itself," Neo smirked. "Hey Yang," Neo murmured, leaning down to the blonde's ear again as she pulled her head back. Dazed lilac eyes rolled in their sockets for a moment before locking onto Neo. An instant later, the illusionist's form shimmered from head to toe. Medium length chocolate and strawberry hair seemingly shortened, darkening to black and red. Mint colored eyes shifted to silver. Her face blurred before resolving into that of Ruby Rose. Yang's eyes widened as she stilled. Taking advantage of the sudden opening, 'Ruby' darted in and kissed Yang full on the mouth, tongue darting past her lips as one hand squeezed one of Yang's breasts and the other went back to work. The reaction was instantaneous, as Yang locked up in Neo's arms and squealed into the shorter girl's mouth as she came.

A wet squelching sound reached my ears and I raised an eyebrow, as did Neo. "Huh. I think she just squirted. I thought that was just one of those made up internet things," Neo mused quietly, mostly to herself. The squelching stopped and Neo removed her hand, drawing a shudder from Yang as she did. Bringing her soaked hand up, Neo gave it a hesitant sniff. "Doesn't smell like piss." Her pink tongue darted out and licked one of her wet fingers and I wrinkled my nose in mild disgust. While normally, the sight of Neo licking another girl's juices off of her fingers would have been pretty high on my list of things I enjoyed watching, as she and the twins knew well, I'd been of the same mind as Neo on the subject—namely that 'squirting' was a made up internet fetish and was just piss, and that just wasn't sexy. "Tastes like… honeysuckle? No, wait, that's just her. Don't think it has a taste." She reached over and grabbed a box of wet wipes off her bed stand, cleaning her hand and throwing them in the trash can beside the bed, put there for that purpose.

"Yes, thank you Neo," I rolled my eyes.

The girl's form shifted back and she sent me an impish grin as the insensate blonde in her arms struggled to regain her breath. "I did mess up a few details, though. She waxes. Also, puffy vulva. Not roast beef sandwich, though, in case you were wondering."

I palmed my face. "That's enough."

"I've never come that hard before," Yang muttered, rejoining the waking world as she stretched languidly. "Man, I feel really good. Can we do that again?"

"No," I deadpanned.

Yang pouted, before turning a grin on Neo. "So. About returning the favor…"

Neo shot me an amused look and shook her head. "As tempting as it is, and oh, it is very tempting… no. It wouldn't be fair to Jaune, for starters. This was something we both agreed on, but I'm not going to play with you any more if he can't too. We don't do that."

Yang nodded. "Yeah, I get it. So, uh… this is kind of awkward."

Neo rolled her eyes. "It really doesn't have to be. We like you. We think you're fun, an overall good person, and worth keeping around—also, ridiculously hot."

"I know, right?" Yang grinned, and I rolled my eyes.

"Don't stroke her ego," I warned, a smile playing across my lips as I said it.

Neo continued as if she hadn't been interrupted. "But as much as we'd enjoy keeping you around, Jaune's not going to hurt Ruby by picking you over her."

"To clarify," I quickly added, before that could be misconstrued, "she's not saying Ruby's in the way or anything. Just that I'm not going to destroy my friendship with her, or your own relationship with your sister, over something between us."

Yang shot me a glance and nodded. "I know. And I appreciate it—I really do. It's just… frustrating."

"You could talk to her," I suggested, drawing a raised eyebrow from the blonde. "Tell her what you want. It may really be that simple."

Yang snorted. "Not likely. But I'll keep it in mind." Sighing, she rolled away from Neo and pushed herself off the bed. "So, can I borrow your shower?"

A mischievous look danced in Neo's eyes as she shook her head. "Go borrow Blake's. I'm sure she won't mind."

'Oh, you are evil,' I sent, suppressing the desire to smirk. "Yeah, it'll be fine."

The blonde shot us suspicious looks before shrugging, doing interesting things for her breasts in the process. "Eh, why not?" She started for the door, only to pause and dig out her scroll. "Mind sending me that video?"

Neo sent me a questioning look and I shrugged. Digging out her scroll again, Neo started swiping away at it. "Don't show it to anyone," Neo warned, and Yang nodded.

"Yeah, yeah," the blonde agreed, already distracted as her scroll pinged and the video came up.

As she left the bedroom, I turned an amused look on Neo. "What is it with sisters in Remnant? Every set I've met has been a lot closer than most people would consider normal."

Neo shrugged. "Have you considered the possibility that it's just you?"

I rolled my eyes. Before I could respond, however, Ruby's voice coming from the hallway caught my attention. "Yang?"

Something about her tone sounded off, and a quick inspection of the link between us caused me to facepalm. "God damnit," I grunted, pushing off my chair and sticking my head out into the hallway, taking in the scene there.

"Uhh," Yang floundered, watching as Ruby stared intently at the scroll in her hands, having apparently taken it from Yang. A scroll playing a very familiar video. "It's not what it looks like?"

Aura flared and wind momentarily washed down the hall at that. "Really, Yang? Because it looks pretty self-explanatory to me." Neo poked her head out of the door beside me, the motion drawing Ruby's attention. Silver eyes locked with my own and a sudden flood of emotion washed across the link between us—disappointment, betrayal, anger, hurt, and more that I couldn't categorize. "I—" Ruby began, but whatever she was going to say was cut off as Neo's form shifted beside me, taking on her impression of Yang again.

"It was me," the brunette-turned-blonde at my side quickly intervened. "It's me in the video. It was my idea to film it. Jaune was against it the whole time, specifically because he was worried this would happen. Yang didn't have anything to do with it. She only has it because I was teasing her with it."

Ruby's eyes closed and the emotional storm coming down the link between us lost much of its strength. It was still there, churning slowly and strong enough that she couldn't help broadcasting it, but it wasn't as bad as it had been. Tossing the scroll to Yang, she turned and headed for the stairwell to the roof. "I'm leaving."

The stairwell door slammed behind her. 'I kept her occupied as long as I could, Jaune,' Penny sent, and I nodded. It wasn't Penny's fault—just bad luck.

I turned my gaze on Neo and the girl winced as she shifted back to her usual choice of coloration. "You told me so. I know."

"I.. I was putting it away when she saw it," Yang started to explain, and I held up a hand.

"Not your fault," I denied.

Beside me, Neo sighed and made her way towards the stairwell. The door to the twins' room opened as she passed and Neo snagged them by the wrists. "Come on, we're going after Ruby. Jaune, stay here. We'll be back soon."

"No, I should—"

Neo shook her head. "No, you really shouldn't. Just trust me, okay? Let me fix this—like you told me I'd have to. Let me take responsibility for my fuckup. Please?"

Sighing, I nodded. "Okay. Let me know how it goes."

The trio made their way out, Neo quickly filling in the twins on the situation. A check of my map confirmed that Ruby hadn't gone far—she was still in the building, but I couldn't tell what floor. Considering that stairwell only lead to the roof and the floor immediately below and the door further down was locked, the roof was the most likely place. "Jaune, I'm sorry," Yang apologized, and I waved her off.

"Don't worry about it. Go get cleaned up. I'm going to do the same. Tell Blake we're putting it off until tomorrow, so she's got a bit more time to plan now," I told her, heading for my own bedroom and the shower therein. Penny followed, and I shot her an amused look. "You can't shower with me."

"I was not going to, but if you would like me to wash your back, I will," Penny offered.

I snorted softly. "Thanks, Penny. I appreciate the offer."

"What did Ruby see that upset her so?" the gynoid asked, and I hummed in thought, wondering how to phrase it.

"Well," I began, "Neo's Semblance creates illusions. She used it to look like Yang while we…"

"Made love? Had sex?" Penny asked, quickly continuing with, "Made the beast with two backs? Rode the bologna pony?"

The sound of flesh smacking flesh echoed through the master bedroom, as I face palmed nearly hard enough to take damage. "Penny. Penny stop," I whined. "Penny, why do you know those things?"

Penny beamed. "Oh, because Neo, Melanie, and Miltia explained what sexual intercourse was! When two or more people love each other very much, or just really want to fu—"

"Yes, Penny, I am aware of the specifics of what it is," I interrupted her.

"So, Ruby was upset because Neo looked like Yang while you were making love?" Penny asked, and I nodded. "Is she jealous?"

I nodded. "A bit. And justifiably hurt."

"But why?" Penny asked. "She wants to be intimate with you. Yang does as well. Why can't they just share?"

Dropping to sit on the bed, I patted the seat beside me and waited while she sat down. "It doesn't always work like that, Penny. Ruby's worried I'd choose Yang over her—"

"You wouldn't!"

I nodded. "I know that, you know that. Even she knows that, but it's still a fear she can't shake yet. Every boy she's ever been interested in has gone after her sister, once they met Yang—so Ruby's self-esteem and self-confidence are kind of low, in that regard. A lot of it stems from the fact that Yang is, well, better developed in certain areas than her sister—more mature, physically, where Ruby's still filling out."

"But Melanie and Miltia are just as small," Penny countered, and I nodded.

"Again, she knows this," I pointed out. "That's the thing about being human, sweetie. Not all fears are rational. In fact, most are irrational. Spend enough time living, and I'm sure you'll start having them yourself."

Penny frowned. "I am not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing, Jaune. It sounds awfully inconvenient."

"Oh, it is," I agreed. "Now, I'm going to go get a shower. Why don't you go help Neo and the twins? Be a shoulder Ruby can lean on."

"I will do my best, Jaune!" Penny agreed enthusiastically, quickly heading out the door. Moving into the bathroom I paused in the center of the room as my enhanced senses picked up the scents in the room. 'Roses. And arousal. Damnit, Ruby. Really? Did you have to use my bathroom for that? Now the smell is going to be in my nose the entire time I'm showering,' I groaned quietly. Flipping Gamer's Mind back into the Defensive position, I shook my head and stepped into the shower. I'd just have to deal with it, and hope the girls convinced Ruby not to do anything rash.

By the time I got out of the shower, Ruby and Yang were gone and I'd already gotten two text messages on my scroll. Frowning, I checked the messages as I equipped clothes. The first was just a quick message from Neo, letting me know that they had talked things over with Ruby and that she wasn't angry any more. The second was from Cinder, asking when I would be available to show her the cache of Dust I'd taken. Frowning, I hummed in thought at the wording. 'She's asking, as opposed to tossing around orders. Wonder what that's about?'

I gave up on figuring that one out today. I headed out into the main living area where I found the twins, Neo, and Blake sitting around on my couches. "Where's Penny?"

"Went home with Ruby," Melanie answered, and I nodded.

Looking to the faunus girl, Miltia asked, "We're not doing Blake's mission today?"

"No, it's getting late and I'd rather not show up on someone's door step in the middle of the night," I denied.

"That's fine. My stuff can wait until tomorrow," Miltia shrugged. "Blake was just telling us about her plan."

"Oh?" I asked. "Tell me about it when I get back? Something came up with Cinder and I need to go take care of some things."

The girls nodded and Neo hopped up out of her chair, following me to the stairwell exit. "I think we got her settled down," Neo murmured as we stepped into the stairwell and made our way up. "We had a long talk. She's not mad at you any more."

"And what about you?" I asked, and Neo shrugged.

"She's annoyed, but she gets that it's sort of my thing. She did request that we not make any more home movies with her sister's likeness in them," Neo grinned. "Or her own."

I stumbled on the stairs, turning an amused glance at Neo. "You did tell her you haven't been wearing her face, right?"

The shorter girl nodded. "Yeah," she agreed. "So, want some company for this?"

"Nah," I denied, switching to my Shiro gear. Looking down at Ascalon at my side, I hummed as we stepped out onto the helipad. Taking the sheath and its attached harness off, I set it on the ground, created a small ID, then duplicated it before equipping both copies—one at my right hip, one at my left—and moving my backup pistol to a shoulder holster under my left arm. 'I should get a jacket, or a cloak or something,' I mused. Well, I did have a spare copy of the girls' cloaks sitting in my inventory, and materials to make two more. I didn't necessarily need the abilities it granted, but the living cloth aspect could be very useful. 'I'll have to think about it.'

"Are you coming back tonight?" Neo asked, and I heard a hint of something in her voice that drew a raised eyebrow.

Hitting her with Observe, I hummed. 'I see.' Nodding, I pulled down my mask and pulled her into a kiss that curled her toes. "I'll try. And just so you know, I'm not mad at you. I did warn you, though."

"You did, and I'm sorry—"

I placed a finger on her lips and cut her off. "Shit happens. You took care of it, as you said you would. We're okay, Neo." Smirking, I added, "Though, if you're angling for either angry or makeup sex, or some 'punishment' of your own, I'm happy to oblige."

The shorter girl nodded, a smile spreading across her lips. "Sounds fun." Standing up on her tiptoes, she planted another kiss on my lips before turning and heading back down the stairs. "Hurry back, love."

She had already disappeared down the stairs and I was halfway into hitting the roof access controls before what she'd said registered, and I chuckled. 'Is it too soon for that?' I wondered, throwing on Invisibility and creating a small ID around myself as I Leapt outside, snagging a nearby building with my line launcher and heading to my first destination. With no weight on it, the roof began retracting again behind me. 'It's been less than a full month. Normally, you'd wait like six for the 'I love you's. Then again, this isn't Earth and I really need to stop judging Remnant by Earth standards. Still, I don't exactly know the social norms…'

I frowned, shaking my head as I touched down at a tech store and ID'd my way inside before making my way over to the security systems for sale and stowing several copies in my Inventory, before heading back outside and moving on to my second stop—a farm house on the outskirts of Vale that Roman had purchased and kept around, potentially as a fallback bolt hole, since there was little strategic value to it that I could see from my map's details other than its open field, barn, and cellar or some other underground structure. Both would come in handy for my purposes. 'It boils down to a simple question: do I love them, or am I just playing around?' Well, the second part of that was pretty simple to answer—I didn't play around. I wasn't that kind of person. As for the first part… 'Yeah. So I suppose that really, the only thing left is telling them.' That decided, I focused on the task at hand—namely, setting things up so I could show Cinder what I had for her.

---

"It's… small," Cinder pointed out as she stepped out of a Bullhead, its running lights turning off and casting the field she'd put it down in into darkness. She had come alone, as I'd hoped she would when I'd implied I would tell her where the Dust was but that I didn't exactly trust Emerald and Mercury with the location. By not bringing Neo, who I knew Cinder assumed was my own most trusted subordinate, it would imply that we were the only two who knew where this place was, and that any breaches in security would have a very short list of suspects.

"It's secure," I countered. "There's no one around for about two miles in any direction. It's still well inside Vale's patrol zone for Grimm. No one's been here for years." I gestured her towards the barn. Outside, it looked completely innocuous. Inside, however, was something I'd spent a good two hours putting together by itself. Unlocking the doors, I slid one of them a few feet open along the rails they were set into.

Looking inside, Cinder blinked, then frowned. Tilting her head, she took in the outside of the structure before sending me an amused look. "It's bigger on the inside."

"Yeah, and it was a pain in the ass setting that up," I admitted. "Bounded Fields are useful once they're in place. Before that, they're years of study and anywhere from hours to days worth of prep time to set up. And the cost in Dust…" I shook my head, before pointing to her dress—specifically, the glowing red tracery thereon. "But then, I suspect you know that."

"A little," she allowed. "I'll admit, this is beyond my expertise. Is it safe?"

"Fuck no," I snorted softly. "Space expansion fields are not fit for human habitation. If the field failed while you were inside…" I shook my head. "Imagine everything in the room being suddenly forced towards the middle while being rent to shreds as the folded space inside collapsed, and then the entire thing exploding and blowing to flinders as it compressed to the point of combustion. There wouldn't be enough of you left to bury." Seeing she looked sufficiently hesitant to step over the threshold, I smirked under my mask. "On the other hand, that only happens if you damage the field array or it runs out of juice. It's running off redundant Dust crystals for power, so it's not going to go down that way any time soon. As for damaging it, well, it's possible but not likely. No one's ever here. So, to answer your question: it's relatively safe." I was actually kind of pissed about that fact, because it meant I couldn't do something cool with my jacket—namely, the whole sealed in armor plates thing. Any damage and that section of the seal would go up, likely taking the ones beside it out, instigating a chain reaction that took out the rest. I didn't fancy accidentally exploding myself.

Cinder turned molten gold eyes on me in an assessing look. Finally, she nodded and stepped into the room. "How much did you take for yourself?"

"Twenty percent off the top," I admitted, then quickly amended, "After using what I needed to make the field."

The woman nodded. "That's fine. Have you had a chance to go over it?"

"Some," I shrugged. "There's a lot. I haven't exactly been stealing shipping manifests and store inventory lists." I gestured over to the side, where racks held canisters of Dust and metal crates sat stacked, containing the loose Dust crystals I'd stolen from the various stores across Remnant.

Opening one of the box cars, Cinder grinned wide upon seeing its contents—box upon box of Dust crystals, stacked on top of each other, and secured to pallets for easy removal from the shipping containers, all unopened. "So, if you don't mind my asking, how did you transport eleven box cars here without being seen?"

I blinked in surprise, then shook my head. Thankfully, she had her back turned, otherwise she might have suspected something. I had no answer to that. "How would you have done it?" I asked, stalling for time to come up with something.

"I would have stolen the train, moved them to a secure location, then moved them by truck," Cinder answered, turning golden eyes on me and raising an eyebrow.

'Okay, so I know Invisibility works on targets I cast it on,' I mused as a plan came together, and I built a heist backwards from there. Walking over to one of the crates, I leaned against it and vanished, taking the crate with me as I cast Invisibility. Dropping the spell after a moment, I met her gaze and smirked. "I snuck in, took out the guards, and shut down their security. After that, well, it's a lot easier to move something when no one sees it moving. Between Neo and myself, we were able to move them two at a time with two Bullheads over the course of an hour or so. We cut it kind of close as the response teams rolled up on-site not long after we got the last boxes out, but in the end it paid off."

"That is good," she murmured. Moving across the room to the cache of loose Dust crystals, she opened one of the boxes and had a look, casting a blue glow over her face from the box's contents. "Shiro, have I ever told you how much I love seeing competence in my business associates?"

"I believe you just did," I pointed out, and the woman rolled her eyes, moving on to open another crate, close it, then open another.

"If only you didn't have that mouth on you," Cinder lamented. After the fifth box, a wide grin lit her face as a red glow spilled out of the newest container.

I snorted softly. "Oh please. You enjoy it. I'm pretty sure you'd forgotten what normal conversations were even like before I came along."

The woman smirked, closing up the Dust container and straining to lift it. It refused to budge and she turned an expectant look on me. Raising an eyebrow, I moved over and took one end of the container while she took the other. The handle dug into my hand as I lifted it and, even with Aura, it was a bit of a strain. I'd mostly just moved this stuff around with Telekinesis, so I didn't really have a grasp on exactly how much Dust weighed until now. We moved it into the Bullhead she had come in and dropped it on the deck before securing it with rope, just in case. "This will come in handy, soon. The rest can stay here, for now." Gesturing towards the farm house, she asked, "Is there more?"

I shook my head. "Nope. The barn was big enough to hold it all. I cleaned the house up in case I needed it as a bolt hole myself and stashed some weapons and supplies in the cellar. Other than that, it's pretty much empty."

"No one is watching the Dust?" Cinder asked, turning a frown on me.

I smirked, shaking my head. "Guards imply there's something worth guarding. A locked barn door probably just means farm equipment the owner doesn't want stolen. And I never said no one was watching." Pulling out my scroll, I slid it open and tapped the newly created link to the freshly installed security system on the farm. I held it where she could see and swiped through camera feeds until coming to one showing us standing there. I waved, and she turned and tried to spot the camera.

"They're well hidden," Cinder admitted.

"Like I said, the best security is the kind that you can't even see." Moving over to the barn doors, I slid them closed and slipped the lock back on the chain holding them together. "So, is this satisfactory?"

"It is. You've been well worth every lien," the woman complimented.

"So," I began, wagging my eyebrows and gesturing towards the farmhouse, "Want to break in the bed?"

A considering look crossed her face before she sighed, shaking her head. "I would. I really would," Cinder admitted. "But I have some business to take care of out of town and we're going to have to spend most of tomorrow between prep and travel, so I need my sleep."

"Too bad," I admitted, crossing my arms and leaning against the side of her stolen Bullhead. "Part of those emergency supplies included a small stash of bourbon."

Molten gold eyes narrowed and Cinder stepped into my personal space, her eyes boring into mine. "Do not tempt me, Shiro."

Pulling down my mask, I smirked and hefted her up in my arms. Her legs went around my waist automatically and I kissed her, turning and pressing her into the side of the aircraft to pin her in place. After making sure she was nice and breathless, I put her down and pushed her towards the Bullhead's side door, smacking her ass as she went and earning a glare in return. "Something to think on, while you're out of town again."

"You are a cruel man, Shiro," Cinder frowned, and I smirked as I smelled her excitement from where I stood. "When I come back, you are mine."

"Whatever you say," I shrugged, making a shooing motion towards the cockpit. "Go on now. Before you get distracted."

"Ass," she hissed, hitting the door controls and closing them in my face.

Laughing, I watched the Bullhead take off and shook my head. "Now comes the fun part," I sighed, unlocking the barn door and moving inside. I had to open all the shipping containers and catalog and sort the Dust therein. Then I had to decide what to take for myself to make sure Cinder never got her hands on it. Then I had to come up with a way of making sure she and her lackeys wouldn't be able to use it. When I'd first come across Sanguine's notes on bounded fields, I had thought to modify some of the crystals with enchantments to make sure they exploded when used. After further study of both Dust and bounded fields, however, I had changed my mind. The risk of the things going off in my face was not insignificant. More than that, though—if I wanted the whole thing to go up, I had to make sure I couldn't be implicated in it, and that meant that I couldn't just trap the crystals. 'I'll think of something. Until then, I have sorting to do. Then I need to get back to Fox Hunt, since I promised Neo some attention.'

As it turned out, I had a lot more Dust, in many more different types, than I knew what to do with—or was even capable of identifying. Oh, there were labels, certainly—each box was labeled with its specific color and each grade of crystal or powder was grouped together and labeled numerically, but with no idea what they were, I had no way to readily guess at the value of most of it. There was Dust in every color of the rainbow, and a few in between that seemed to be either made up names or things that were only vaguely descriptive as to what it might do. "Great. More research. As if I didn't have enough shit on my plate," I grumbled. 'I should ask the girls for help with this one. At least that way, I'd have someone who might know what we were looking at. Assuming they know anything about Dust. Damn shame I don't have Weiss in my pocket.'

---

The headset over my ears crackled to life and Melanie asked, "Why are we doing this in person?"

There were only five of us in the Bullhead, plus Angel and a small fire team in the Razorback in case we ran across trouble. I was currently in my Fox regalia, as this was an 'official' excursion. Beside me, Penny was clad in a white, mid-thigh dress with matching stockings and boots, her hair temporarily dyed white to match the theme. On her face was a smaller, more female version of my fox mask, and I occasionally caught a glimpse of bright blue eyes under the mask. Behind me, in the back of the Bullhead, rode Neo, Melanie, and Blake.

Neo was clad in one of Fox Hunt's new female officer uniforms: white uniform jacket over a black blouse and skirt, all of which had gold trim, along with matching hose and thigh-high boots that zipped up the side. The normal uniforms they'd decided on would be white with black trim, while officers' uniforms were to be black with white trim, with a black-on-white long coat. The gold trim on Neo's and Melanie's uniforms were to further visibly show their higher ranks.

Neo's hair was currently a dark shade of blue and on her face she wore a mask almost identical to Penny's. Across from her, Melanie wore a matching dress, with the addition of her cloak in shawl form at the moment, her mask already out—she was waiting until we landed before shifting the cloak into its Nameless configuration. Since we had agreed that the twins would both share duty as the head of our Intelligence division, Miltia was currently hanging around back in Vale, borrowing my bike to run errands. Blake, by comparison, wore her usual black outfit with a simple cat-themed mask.

"Because we want to make an impression," I answered, checking my gauges and adjusting course slightly as the Razorback ahead of me adjusted their own course to avoid what looked like a flock of Nevermores, difficult to see with the morning sun at their backs as they flew vaguely westward. "Showing up in person shows a personal interest. Allowing Blake to give her message herself will show that we're supporting her."

"I still say it's a bad idea," Neo sighed. "We're outsiders. Odds are good they're going to just dismiss us."

"They won't do that," Blake denied. "These people are downtrodden and desperate. They've been denied real chances at life for years. We'll be offering them something better—a chance at a new life. New jobs where they don't have to work back-breaking twelve hour shifts in cramped, dangerous mines digging out Dust for the SDC. They will accept."

"We'll see when we get there," I cut her off before she could get wound up good.

'She really can't see this happening any other way, can she?' Neo sent.

Melanie added, 'That's why you agreed. It's why you wanted us to come in person. Wow, Jaune, you can be a bastard at times.'

'Not necessarily,' I temporized.

I could hear the snort in Neo's mental voice. 'Bullshit. Oh, I don't think you want to see her break—you're not the kind of person to get off on that. But you've got a good idea what's going to happen, don't you? Something on Earth paralleled this, right?'

'Kind of, sort of, not really. I can think of a few instances, but the short of it is that I suspect the faunus here are going to be mistrustful at best, and certainly aren't going to trust what they perceive as the equivalent to a race traitor. American Negroids had a term for that, for a black that tried to act 'too white,' or otherwise tried to get along with whites: Uncle Tom. Because doing well in school, holding down a job, and otherwise being a respectable member of society is for crackers and integrating into the culture of the nation you've found yourself in is bad and they should conform to you,' I rolled my eyes. 'Eventually, after long enough, they became the victims of themselves. That attitude continued to hold them back to the day I ended up here. And while this is Remnant so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping I'm wrong, I won't be surprised if I'm not.'

'If it's that bad, why would anyone tolerate it?' Melanie asked. 'I mean, we don't really see that here. Then again, there aren't really many of them.'

I held my initial response, and instead asked, 'How many is 'not that many?''

Looking back into the rear of the Bullhead, I caught Melanie and Neo exchanging looks. It was Penny who provided an answer, however. 'According to the most current census data posted online, less than five percent of the total population of Remnant. Though, when you factor in that Faunus races mirror Human races in both makeup and roughly in percentages of population and take Faunus out of the totals, that number changes correspondingly.'

Frowning, I thought back to what I'd seen around Vale, before I realized what must have happened. It was a combination of factors, really. Firstly, my perceptions were based heavily on what I knew of the series. The simplest solution was laziness—namely, RT had used the same basic character models during the first two seasons and the only variations they made to account for race was skin tone. Unfortunately, that's not how race worked, biologically. As anyone with eyeballs and an ounce of honesty will tell you, racial markers run the gamut from highly visible, such as eye, nose, face, and skull shape and hair type, to only visible internally, such as brain structure—down to intelligence and behavior as a direct result of brain complexity, hormones, and so forth. Painting a Caucasian with a spray on tan doesn't make them a Negroid, in the same way white-washing a Negroid in photoshop doesn't make them look Caucasian—in fact, the effect in both instances results in something just this side of the uncanny valley for most people, as the brain stumbles over what the eyes are reporting and fails to compute.

Secondly, one of the less obvious consequences of a world that had been forced to redraw the borders and relocate populations due to Grimm and population decline: interbreeding in different numbers and between different races than seen on Earth, due to geography, in addition to large swathes of the population simply culled by Grimm. To put it simply, race mixing had lead to a higher population of people with mixed Caucasian, Indian, and Southeast Asian traits—which included Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and more. Emerald came to mind immediately, because I'd had trouble figuring that one out from the first time I'd seen her. There were traces of both Caucasian and Asian heritage there—skull shape, eye and nose shape, overall bodily size, shape, and development, and the skin tone common in that area of the world.

The third factor was also possibly the most interesting: that Remnant, while Earth-like and with a good number of parallels, had developed a few tangents along the way. Dust and Aura were the biggest. I was not even certain whether Aura was entirely without biological origins, possibly due to exposure to Dust in the ground water, or exposure to Spirit, or any one of a number of other things. Another of those divergences was the potential that entire races of Humans had come about that were simply not seen on Earth. It was pure speculation on my part, until I saw evidence one way or another. It honestly piqued my interest for study—later. When I had time.

Pulling myself from my thoughts, I shook my head and answered Melanie's original question. 'Indoctrination from a young age. If you repeat a lie enough, eventually people will believe it. The bigger the lie seems to be, the more people seem to believe it. It's one of those weird sociological effects that are like exploits in the human brain. One of the biggest lies perpetuated by the schools where I came from is the idea that everyone is equal. All the physical evidence, centuries of study, decades of statistics, and so forth go completely against the idea, and yet, the idea of equality is so appealing to some, and the desire for it so strong that they would lie to themselves and everyone else to try to impose their desire upon reality and force it to be truth. Simple fact of nature is, people are different—and differences mean that naturally, no one can possibly be equal. Man and woman, child and elder, any race you care to name—they're all different on every level and it's impossible for them to ever be truly 'equal,' and trying to force equality upon them is a disservice. When every method you attempt in order to achieve the desired result fails, you switch to more and more drastic methods. If Joe Average can't be uplifted to the level of John Exceptional, then in order to make these two equal, the exceptional must be reduced to average—in which case you get a Handicapper General and the plot to a dystopian Vonnegut novel. The truth is, as people, we're not equal. Some are better than others. And you know what? That's normal. And in any other animal, that's okay, but apparently you're not supposed to apply the rules of nature to man. The only ones truly bothered by it are those that can't accept reality for what it is, and their sense of 'fairness' or pathological altruism won't let them leave it be.'

The two went quiet as they thought that over and I began descending for a landing. After a long moment, Melanie sighed. 'I don't disagree, but… you've really lost all faith in humanity, haven't you? I can understand why, if things were as bad as you're saying, but this isn't Earth.'

'People are people, no matter where you go,' Neo countered. 'But I suppose it's good that you still have some hope that people can be better than they really are. I'm sorry, but I'm with Jaune on this one. You're a 'hope for the best but prepare for the worst' sort of girl. We're more, 'expect the worst, prepare for worse than that.' But hey, it leads to pleasant surprises from time to time! Like you and your sister, and Jaune.'

"I'm putting us down near the rail station," I announced as I throttled down and dropped the landing gear, putting a temporary end to the conversation. We settled with a thump and I turned to make sure Melanie had engaged her cloak's skills before hitting the door controls. Blake was the first out, dropping to the rocky ground and looking around, her ears visibly flicking around unconsciously as she had taken off the bow for this. Melanie and Neo followed her, and I went last, keying the door closed behind me with my scroll. Foxtrot-2 dropped down nearby and cut its engines.

"So, the entire town is faunus?" Neo asked of Blake, as we made our way towards the center of the small mining town.

Blake nodded. "Yes. It's a Schnee company town. Places like this are mostly self-sufficient, because they don't have the money to trade with other towns and villages."

"Isolated?" Melanie asked, and Blake gave a nod in answer.

We started getting stares immediately. My detection skills itched, both with the feeling of eyes on us and the building hostility in the air. 'This was a horrible fucking idea, Blake.'

Blake, I noticed, slowly seemed to wilt under the glares for a time—until her fist clenched at her side, her ears perked back up, and her back straightened as she steeled herself. I could guess at what was going on in her mind—she felt she needed to do this, that she would be helping these people. She seemed to either be ignoring or ignorant of the fact that even more of the glares were directed at her than they were at us. Windows shut, curtains were drawn, and children pulled aside as we passed, and I knew that had to hurt Blake to see.

We reached the center of town, spotting the town hall, which also served as the governor's office. It was a one story prefab building—one of the few in town, it looked like, as most of the rest of the buildings were wood. From here, near the top of the hill overlooking the town and the valley below, I could make out much of the village. Buildings were pressed close together, some even sharing walls. I spotted what looked like a general store, a smithy, a school further down, and even a hospital—the only stonework in town, aside from the wall circling the town itself. It was easily the most defensible position in town, and likely a fallback shelter in the event of Grimm attacks, given the fact that there was a wooden guard tower or sniper's nest on top of it which was currently occupied by two guards—one armed with a long rifle, the other with a pair of binoculars. 'That's probably the best gun in this town,' I mused.

Following Blake, we made our way into the town hall. The first room was the largest, and appeared to take up most of the building. It was a large, mostly empty room with stacks of metal folding chairs and a few folding tables leaned against the right wall, with a whiteboard and corkboard on the far wall, where I could make out what looked like some sort of schedule. 'Guard rotations on the cork board. Sloppy,' I pointed out to the others, and Melanie and Neo both nodded agreement.

The back offices were separated from the front by a wall, with a short hallway leading to a set of four rooms, all helpfully labeled. We stopped at an office labeled 'Mayor Bloedig' and Blake knocked. "Come in," a deep voice called.

The mayor was a large man, with a grizzly beard and a full head of dark, red hair. He wore a simple red and black flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, along with a set of well-worn jeans and boots. Aside from his physique, two small, round ears covered in reddish-brown fur stood atop his head as the only clue to what sort of faunus he was. He stood, looming, as we approached and offered a huge paw of a hand, his grip strong but not crushing. Bloedig had the tan and physique of a man who'd spent most of his life outdoors, and looked as though he'd be more at home with an axe in his hand than a pen. Certainly, he looked alien behind the small desk. Sharp, dark eyes took us in, sweeping dismissively from Neo, pausing on Melanie for a long moment, then moving to Blake and myself. "As it says on the door, I'm Mayor Dragen Bloedig. You folks have caused quite a stir. My people don't take well to strangers, as you may have noticed, so I figure it's best to hurry you on your way. So tell me, what's brought you to Stofhol?"

Blake turned her head in my direction and I nodded, gesturing her on. Turning back to the oversized man, Blake sat in one of the two available seats crammed in front of the desk. "Actually," she began, suddenly sounding almost unsure now that she'd been put to the question. If I had to guess, I'd say she had never actually figured out what she was going to say. "We were wondering if there was anyone in town looking for a better job."

The huge man snuffed quietly in an almost laugh. "Didn't your boss tell you, we already turned you guys down once. Tell him if I have to tell him again, the message is going to be delivered at muzzle velocity."

Blake's head shifted back to me and I shook my head. "He thinks we're White Fang." Turning my gaze on the mayor, I asked, "Am I right?"

"Only one group comes into towns wearing masks and looking to recruit faunus," he shrugged. "Who else could you be?"

"We're not with the Fang," Blake denied, and I knew she had to be feeling weird to be saying that. Reaching up, she took off her mask.

"Dust, you're just a kid. You can't be any older than my daughter. What the hell are you doing out here, girl?" he asked, black eyes shifting to me in accusation.

"I… I grew up as part of the Fang. Before it all went bad," she clarified, and his bushy eyebrows moved into his hairline. "I left, but I couldn't just leave people to suffer. So, I'm trying something new. The Fox," she gestured towards me, "owns a Private Military Company run out of Vale. They're looking for people—laborers, craftsmen, and the like—to fill non-combat roles. It would pay better than working for the SDC—"

Leaning back in his chair, Bloedig reached into his pocket and fished out a pipe, then another for tobacco. "I get it," he began, packing leaves into the pipe. He began patting down his pockets and frowned as he came up empty. Stepping forward, I snapped my fingers and lit a small flame at the end of one. "That must be a real hit with the ladies."

"Not particularly," Neo and Melanie both deadpanned.

I shrugged. "I don't really need parlor tricks to impress."

"Uh huh," Bloedig rumbled, taking a long pull of his pipe and reaching over to open the window beside him, to give us some fresh air. Turning his gaze back on Blake, he shook his head. "Look, kid, I get it. You came from nothing and it makes you feel like, when you finally have something, you owe it to yourself to help people who were like you. Thing is, we're nothing like you. Nobody here grew up in a cult—"

"It wasn't a cult," Blake denied, golden eyes narrowing in a glare.

Bloedig shrugged. "So you say, and I'm sure that for you, it didn't seem that way. To the rest of us though, it sure looks like one. Everyone in this town grew up here. Everyone knows everyone else. We look after our own. We don't have much, except each other. We're a community. You're going to find that most places like Stofhol are. You're not going to find what you're looking for here."

Blake raised an eyebrow. "We're looking for people who want to get out from under the Schnee—"

The huge man laughed, once. "No, that ain't it. That's the how, but not the why. The why is pretty simple. You feel you've got a cause. You say you're trying to help people, but really, all you're doing is trying to alleviate some sort of misplaced guilt—guilt that you got out and others didn't. It's selfish, really. Like humans that feel guilty that faunus have it bad, so they stick their noses in where they don't belong. What you, and they, fail to understand is that we don't want help. We're not oppressed out here, girl—we're free. This is a faunus town, run by faunus, owned by faunus. Schnee pays us to mine their Dust, and they don't pay worth a damn, but at least they're not trying to tell us how to live our lives. We have our own economy, out here, independent from the bigger towns and cities. We've got forests full of deer, two flocks of sheep, and a small herd of cattle and horses—from those we get leather, meat, wool, milk, cheese, and so on.

"There's a river running through the bottom end of town there, full of clean water and fish. From the mines, we get iron, copper, brass, coal, Dust, and even a little gold and silver. We make our own weapons and ammunition. We've got a school and a hospital, a couple of teachers and an honest to Dust Aura healer who used to be a Hunter, once upon a time." I raised an eyebrow over that, under my mask, and added a visit to the town healer to the top of my list of places to visit before we left.

"About the only things we bother to go into other towns for are seeds, fruits that we don't already have trees for, and a few other sundries. We neither need nor want handouts. About the only thing we've got to complain about are the Grimm, and since we're a company town, the SDC will send out a squad or two of men if we get in a bind—it's happened twice in my forty-odd years now, and both times we've held the town against them long enough for backup to arrive. We've got a deal with old Ozpin—a few times a year, he sends Hunter trainee teams by. His kids get free room and board, and in return they cull the Grimm and leave. He provides a service we would otherwise have to pay a hefty sum for. As far as I'm concerned, it's an even trade and his kids are welcome here, so long as they keep their noses out of our business."

Kicking his feet up on his desk, the big man grinned. "No, missy. We're not 'oppressed' out here. We enjoy it and wouldn't leave it for the world. But then, your kind never seems to get that. Do yourselves a favor." Taking out a pocket watch, he flipped it open and hummed. "Take a look around, if you're not convinced, but you'll want to be leaving around dusk. The only spare beds we've got are up in the hospital, and those are typically reserved for Oz's kids. You ain't Hunters, so I'm afraid you'll find Stofhol's hospitality a bit lacking. Now, if you don't mind, I need to get back to my paperwork. Never would've let them vote me in, if I'd known what came with the job ahead of time."

Taking that as the clear dismissal it was, Blake pushed herself up out of her chair and made for the door, slipping her mask back into place. Once we were outside the office, she muttered a quiet, "Fuck."

"Sorry," Neo murmured.

The eyes set in Melanie's mask rolled. "What now?"

"May we tour the town?" Penny asked, turning her masked face up to me.

I shrugged, turning to Blake. "This is your op. What's our next move?"

Blake sighed, making her way towards the door outside. "Let's go have a look."

That plan changed the moment we opened the door leading outside. A flash of red caught my eye and, in the slowed perception granted by Haste, I made out a tomato spinning through the air. It hit its target with a wet splat, impacting the right side of Blake's mask and spreading juice, flesh, and seeds all over Blake's mask, hair, and upper body. Reaching up, the catgirl wiped the fruit away from her eye. A crowd had gathered around the Mayor's office, composed mostly of older townsfolk, many of them bearing hoes, pitchforks, shovels, axes, and pickaxes. "You don't belong here!" an older female voice called from the crowd.

"We don't want you here! Go home!" Another called, and another piece of overripe greenery sailed towards our group, hitting the door behind us as it missed its intended target.

Blake's fists were trembling at her sides, I noticed. "Is this normal?" Penny asked, and I shook my head.

A head of lettuce caught Blake in the chest, and she growled quietly before exploding. "Don't you get it?! We're here to help you! You don't have to live under the SDC's boot heels any more!"

"We don't want your help!" another in the crowd catcalled.

Something brown and small caught my eye and I held up my hand, snagging it with Telekinesis. A rock hovered a foot away from Blake's face. "I think it's time to go," I told her quietly, even as the crowd stilled for an instant, before more rocks came flying in, to be snatched out of the air in the same way, this time not aimed at any of us in particular.

Blake didn't say anything, simply standing there staring at the rock that would've hit her in the head. She didn't protest as Melanie took her by the elbow and dragged her with us as we made our way through the crowd. More vegetables, fruits, and rocks joined the floating mass of intercepted projectiles around us. The crowd lined the street, moving with us all the way to the train depot, before departing as we neared the Bullhead. It was plainly obvious why, as Foxtrot-2 had taken to the air and was hovering ominously over the Bullhead with its guns already spun up. I caught sight of Angel in the cockpit, who waved and pulled the Razorback away to a few hundred feet above us, slowly circling.

As we got closer, I saw a figure leaning against the aircraft. It was a girl wearing a set of overalls, boots, and a green flannel long sleeve, with her arms crossed over her chest and eying where the crowd had disappeared with an amused expression. Her hair was a reddish brown and the name over her head gave away her identity, but I frowned upon taking in her ears—they were larger than her father's, triangular, and gray. Where the mayor's ears looked to belong to a bear, this girl's looked to belong to a canine of some sort. 'Was her mom a wolf faunus or something, or am I missing something important here?'

"So, pops told you to hit the road, huh?" she asked, grinning. "I heard you talking to him."

"He did," I agreed.

"We weren't exactly expecting to get chased out of town," Neo huffed quietly, glancing back at the pile of rotting food and rocks I'd dropped as soon as the crowd had left us.

The girl shrugged. "It doesn't happen often. Though, twice in a week is a bit much," she murmured. "I'm Sid, by the way." She pronounced it like 'seed,' but my Semblance provided the proper spelling above her head.

"Are you sure he'd approve of you talking to us?" I asked, and she grinned wider.

"Absolutely not. At least, not where anyone could hear him. Can we talk inside?" she asked, gesturing to the Bullhead.

Shrugging, I keyed open the Bullhead door with my scroll and watched as she leaned down, grabbed a large, heavy-looking duffel bag, and slipped inside before dropping it on the floor and taking a seat. We moved in after her, closing the door behind us. "What's up?"

"I want to go with you," Sid shrugged. "Stofhol is a great town, and it's home, but dad wasn't quite honest about us being self-sufficient. Sure, we've got all of that, but trade skills are at a premium. Dad and I, and old Smeden are the only ones in town who know a damn thing about metalwork. Dad doesn't have nearly as much time as he used to now that he's Mayor and old Smeden is, well, old. Being able to pull nails and make horseshoes is all well and good, and any apprentice can do that, but not everyone can repair a drill, or a rifle, or make cheap armor for our men on watch. I'm good, but I'm still learning. You said you're looking for skilled craftsmen, right? Got anyone who can make armor? What about a mechanic?"

I traded a glance between Neo and Melanie and they shrugged. "I've got mechanics. It's armorers, weaponsmiths, and the like that I don't have," I admitted. "But making Hunter-grade armor and weapons is a far cry from hammering out a plow. And I thought you said you were a blacksmith—that's not exactly the same thing."

Sid rolled her eyes. "Pfft. Please. Part of being a blacksmith out here means you're also a mechanic, a gunsmith, a welder, and a handyman. I've been pulling apart farm and industrial equipment since I was old enough to know which end of a wrench to hold—which was pretty young, really, considering my tiny little hands could get to a lot of places pops and old Smeden couldn't without disassembling something." Leaning forward in her seat, she asked, "How about this: you provide me with a place to sleep, and material to study, and I'll help out where I can. You told dad you were a PMC, so you've probably got a motor pool, but you said you were looking for armorers and the like. Put me where you need me. I'll adapt."

'We did need to check on that next,' Melanie reminded. 'If she's as skilled as she claims, let's put her to use.'

'Agreed,' Neo sent.

I hummed. "Won't your dad get mad, if you take off with strangers?"

Sid laughed, quietly. "He'll be fine. He knows I can take care of myself, and he knows we need the kind of skills I'm looking for. Besides, even if it's kind of crappy, we do still get CCT reception out here—it's not like I can't scroll call him later. Once I get a scroll. There are all of four in town, and I don't own one. Do we have a deal?"

Trading glances with the others, I asked, "Can you take orders? This is a military organization. You'll be granted a rank and pay grade, and you will be expected to take orders like anyone else, even if you're not going to be in the field."

"That's not a problem," she agreed. "What rank will I start out at?"

"We'll be starting you off as an E-1 Private. We can get someone to assess your skills later and that may change. Consider yourself tentatively hired. Barracks and meals are provided free to staff staying on base, but if you want a private room you'll have to either earn a promotion or pay for one out of your salary. You'll be in training, so we'll get someone to work out a schedule for you to be able to study and work, and see about some OJT as well. There's a mandatory service period, but some of that can be waived if you work it off. You'll technically be paying for your own training, so we'll either need you to stick around a while or provide services worth training you. Your first job is today. We need you to look at some equipment and give your professional opinion on its serviceability."

The brunette nodded. "Can do."

I frowned under my mask. "'Yes, sir,'" I corrected.

Sid winced. "Right, sorry. Yes, sir."

"Get a handle on it quick, Private," I warned, before pushing out of my seat and heading for the cockpit. Slipping on the headset, I keyed up to let the Razorback know we were moving. "Foxtrot-2, Foxtrot-Actual. We're on-route to second target."

"Copy that, Actual," Angel acknowledged.

I went through startup, shifting my gaze to the side only momentarily as Blake dropped into the seat beside me. "You knew," she accused.

"I suspected," I admitted. "I'm going to help you with this, but I'm not going to pretend to be blind to the difficulties you're going to face." Honestly, I agreed with Bloedig—and she needed to hear that from someone who wasn't me. That it had come from another faunus, and one in a leadership position, almost couldn't have been better as far as delivery went. The problem was, Blake was stubborn and I got the impression that she would only hunker down and redouble her efforts from this point on. It was going to take more than someone telling her directly to convince her that not everyone needed or even wanted saving. She needed to accept reality, but I knew that the truth couldn't come from me, or any human really—otherwise, she'd never listen. Never accept it.

We were in the air by the time she finally muttered, "Thank you. I just wish it had gone better, but I don't think there's anything you could have done." Amusingly, my Semblance picked that time to let me know I'd completed part one of Blake's quest, with a total of one faunus collected, and it had advanced to the next in the quest chain.

"Not really." They weren't going to listen to a human, especially not if I started implying that their way of life there was less than it could be. It reminded me a bit of stories of Old West border towns, back in the early days of the US, or the Amish. Towns either living on the ragged edge or intentionally cut off from the outside world, insular and mistrusting of outsiders, because it kept them alive. I couldn't fault them for listening to instincts, even if it put me on the business end of them. In-group trust and preference lead to stable, secure communities. It's only when you started throwing open the borders and letting outsiders in that problems really started to kick up. The truth was that history showed that the best communities tended to be small and homogeneous.

'Where are we going?' I sent to Melanie, and a moment later my scroll chimed and the Bullhead's HUD lit up. Rolling my eyes, I set a waypoint and got us moving.

Two hours of flight later, I sat us down at what looked to be an old military outpost, fallen to disuse. The tarmac below us was cracked and overgrown with grass, and the air traffic control tower's windows were all boarded up. Rounded concrete structures circled the tarmac, all of them with ramps leading down to steel doors. A small land vehicle, looking like a beefed up Humvee with a mounted gun on the back, sat waiting for us, on the edge of a road leading off the base. Three men climbed out of the vehicle, two of them carrying rifles and wearing fatigues, while the third wore a suit and carried a holstered pistol at his hip. A fourth man sat at the vehicle's main gun, which sat in a resting position pointed skyward.

Foxtrot-2 landed first, the hatch at the rear of the Razorback lowering to the ground and a squad of six men filing down the ramp with weapons ready but not up, taking up positions in a circle around the Razorback and where I was putting the Bullhead down. Once I'd killed the engines, we made our way out into the warm air, where we were met by the man in the suit. "Welcome to Depot 57, sir," he greeted, and we shook hands. "I'm Benjamin Greene."

"Mister Greene," I nodded, "What do you have for me and how much of it is for sale?"

"Well, to be honest sir, the Kingdom is looking to sell whatever you're willing to take off their hands. As for what we have," he grinned, digging out a ring of keys and moving to the first bunker. There were two doors, I noticed—a normal-sized door for personnel and a much larger door for vehicles. Selecting a key matching the bunker's designation, he slipped the key in and keyed in a six digit code into the old style keypad to the side of the door. It opened with a clank and a squeal of metal against metal, having not been oiled in a while. There was a loud pop as the overhead lights came on and I followed Greene inside, whistling as I took in the sight before me. Taking out his scroll, the suited man began reading off a manifest for the materials here. "Ten LAV-39 8x8 amphibious armored reconnaissance vehicles, each armed with a main 25MM chain gun and positions to mount other weaponry—that's this group here. In the other storage bunkers, we have…"

I only half paid attention as he listed out what was available—most of which seemed to consist of IFVs geared towards specific purposes. They were a mixed bag of weapons, from things like the LAV-39's 25MM, which would be good against ground-based grimm, to mobile flak cannons, and even a few mounted with large 120MM main guns that I was fairly certain had been on the M1A on Earth. "Private," I called Sid over and gestured towards one of the LAV-39s. "Have a look and tell me what you think."

While she was busy with that, I asked, "What is the Kingdom of Vale asking for all of this?"

"Ah, well," he hemmed, flicking through his scroll before coming up with a number. "One hundred million lien."

I blinked, turning to shoot him an unamused look before remembering I was wearing my masks. Honestly, based on what I knew of the economy and a rough guess of how much similar vehicles on Earth had cost—the Abrams going for over six million, as a baseline—I knew it wasn't a horribly bad deal. On the other hand, these had sat unused for years and were not exactly top of the line any more. The first LAV's engine turned over and I frowned as I realized that wasn't an internal combustion engine. 'Dust-based, I suppose.'

The machine moved forward and back a few feet, before the emplacement on top made a half turn left and right before settling back to facing forward. A moment later, the engine shut off and Private Bloedig stuck her head out the top. "They run, but they're going to need some serious work, sir. Complete overhaul, all the way around."

My finely honed bullshit detector pinged, and I hit her with Observe. 'Lying. Likely for Greene's ears—at least, that makes the most sense. So she's willing to help us out here.' I turned to Greene. "You heard her. I'm going to have to do a good deal of maintenance on them before I'll be able to deploy them for missions—which is going to take both more time and money, putting me behind schedule. And we both know they're not exactly top of the line any more. Let's call it thirty million."

"They're still functional, and even if they're not the youngest girls at the ball, they can still dance. Seventy five," Greene countered.

'Ah, now we're negotiating,' I hummed. I was not above cheating, however. Casting a silent Charm on him, I asked, "How about fifty? The Kingdom gets these off its hands, comes away getting to say they made a tidy sum off some old hardware they had mothballed, and I get my armor."

"Well," Greene hemmed, then shook his head. "To be honest, I was told that if I could squeeze at least forty out of you, that'd be fine with the council."

"You're not really getting anything off the top for the sale, are you?" I asked, and he shook his head. "How's forty and one sound? Forty for Vale, and I'll pay your commission for making the sale."

Greene smiled. "Well, as long as it's commission and not a bribe, sir," he chuckled.

"Oh, absolutely. A man should be rewarded for a job well done. Bribery implies someone's getting shafted on a deal, and that's plainly not the case here." Clapping him on the back, I turned and began walking for the exit. "Now, how about we head back outside and see about getting these things signed for. I'll arrange payment later today."

'Jaune, we don't have forty million, do we?' Neo sent, and I sent the mental impression of a smirk.

'Not at the moment, dear. Remember how I said duping money from banks was a bad idea? Well, I've got a bad idea,' I sent back. 'The Vale Trust Bank is the Kingdom's bank, right? How much cash do they keep on hand?'

'Several hundred million, due to various laws in place to prevent inflation and questionable economic practices,' Melanie answered. 'What's changed your mind?'

'Necessity. I didn't need that much money before, when I could just farm for it. This is for the Guild though, so it's fair game as far as I'm concerned.' We stepped out into the sunlight and the bunker was closed up again, and we got on with the boring details of paperwork. 'I'll wait until we've got them all back to base and repaired before we dupe them all. Also, we need to do something about an air force. I'm thinking we need to find an actual air base and see about duping some more aircraft.'

---

Finding an air base to detour near enough for me to fly to had been relatively easy, considering Penny had up to date knowledge of most of Atlas's installations, stolen from their network with the Queen Exploit, as I'd come to call it. Neo knew how to fly and had volunteered to take the Bullhead back with the Razorback, so it was just Penny and myself for this little test run. Stepping out the Bullhead's side door with Penny in the grasp of my Telekinesis, I sighted in the base and focused on what I wanted, calling up mana and my previous experience with playing around with flight. Skill creation kicked in and I grinned as I got my first official flight spell in Wings, which granted the caster a set of mana-based wings modeled after what the caster wanted. At the moment, the wings I could feel flapping away and slowly draining my mana, but keeping us aloft, were large and better suited to gliding than maneuverability.

Focusing on what I had in mind, I cast the spell on Penny, and the gynoid blinked. "Oh! That feels odd," she commented as she rose slightly, a smaller set of insect-based wings buzzing quietly at her back. I released her hand and she buzzed around, getting a feel for them as I hit us both with the full stealth set of spells. Focusing on my own wings, I dropped a few feet in the air as they reshaped into something smaller and more maneuverable.

"Okay, let's drop down low and slip inside," I told her, hitting us both with the full set of stealth spells. I stopped my wings, dropping like a stone with Penny following right behind me.

Penny squealed in glee as we fell and I chuckled quietly, before engaging my spell again as we neared the tops of the trees. Leveling off, we shot off towards the air base. "What are we taking, Jaune?" Penny asked as we cleared the fence, and I pointed towards the largest aircraft on the base.

"That one."

The vehicle in question was large and angular, all sharp lines. I recalled seeing something like it in season two—one of the smaller ships Ironwood had hovering over Vale. Then again, this one seemed smaller and sleeker than those, but scale was hard to get a grasp of given their animation style—for all I knew, it could be exactly the same, or it could be an entirely different class of vessel. RT had been vague on those points. "That is a corvette class vessel," Penny supplied as we dropped to the tarmac and I created an ID around us and the ship.

"Can you get into it?" I asked her, and Penny beamed, nodding.

"I will certainly try," she enthused, finding an access panel beside the door. Placing her hand atop it, her eyes lit up green beneath her mask and the panel lit the same color as opposed to its normal blue. A moment later, the door hissed open. "I believe the bridge is this way."

I followed the smaller girl through the ship, taking note of things as we passed. 'Armory, officer quarters, officers' latrine and showers, XO's quarters, captain's quarters.' A door hissed open as it parted down the middle and we stepped onto the bridge. I paused to take it all in. There were two levels, divided by stairs. On the upper level were what looked like four stations—two screens, one to either side of the door, both with holographic interface keyboards, and two more on a waist-height console running across much of the upper level, with the stairs running to either side of it. Below, there appeared to be ten more stations: two on either wall with large holo-screens, four in the middle along a divided table of sorts, and two more at the front. Circling the bridge was a set of windows giving a view of the airbase outside—or at least, this side of the ID outside the ship.

"That has to be the worst bridge design I've ever seen," I muttered, shaking my head. "Where are the chairs? Are the people working here just expected to stand for the entirety of their shifts?"

"Perhaps the Atlesian Navy does not use chairs?" Penny asked, and I rolled my eyes.

"That'd be absurd," I denied. "Design oversight. Has to be. Anyway, can you get her in the air?"

Placing one hand on a console, the console and screen lit up green. "Oh! Jaune, this ship is equipped with a VI."

I frowned. "Is it? Huh. Think you can deactivate it? I don't need it fighting back."

"It has been deactivated," Penny confirmed a moment later. "The ship is ours, Jaune."

"Excellent. Can you give me the basics? Specs, armaments, and the like?" I asked, and the ancula nodded.

"This ship is called the Daedalus. It is a corvette class airship and is equipped with a standard sized Dust reactor. It is 100 meters long, by 40 meters wide, by 20 meters tall at its extremes. The Daedalus is capable of speeds up to 700MPH, with an operational ceiling of 30,000 feet, and an operational time of years with a full military-spec Grade XI Electric Blue crystal—which it is currently equipped with. It houses twin forward laser batteries, a single forward main railgun, ten smaller railguns along the upper sides, two missile pods each with sixteen hypersonic anti-aircraft missiles, in addition to its point defense system which is composed of flak cannons and gatling guns. The Daedalus carries a complement of twenty Atlesian Knights in a rear drop compartment for rapid field deployment." While she was listing off its features, an image of the ship had come up on the holo-screen before us and each feature was highlighted as she named it.

"The ship itself is meant to house between twenty and forty crew, plus mission-specific crew if any are assigned to it. This is its internal layout," she said, bringing up schematics for me. There were two decks, the upper deck consisting of the rooms we'd passed before, plus engineering, which spanned both upper and lower decks. The lower deck was mostly crew quarters, latrine and showers, and the mess hall and a small recreational area. Like most naval vessels of Earth, everything was small to conserve as much space as possible.

I frowned, looking over the bridge consoles. "It's meant for at least twenty crew? Can we even get it in the air with just the two of us?"

Penny hesitated a moment. "Perhaps," she murmured, and I turned to look at her. She looked nervous, even with the mask on.

"What is it, Penny?" I asked, and she sighed.

"The VI took care of many of the ship's basic functions. Without it, no, the Daedalus will never fly. However, with it active, it is likely to never allow us to fly it because we do not possess the proper privileges."

I hummed, asking, "But you've got an idea about that?"

The ancula twiddled her index fingers and nodded. "I could… create a copy of myself and overwrite the ship's onboard VI. But I would have full control of the ship—"

I pulled off my mask and turned an amused look on her. "Do it."

Penny looked even more distressed. "But Jaune, I would be in control of the weapons—"

I shrugged. "And? You've got weapons right now. Why wouldn't I trust you with the ship?" She looked away and realization dawned. "You unlocked your memories from Atlas, didn't you?" I asked, and she nodded. "How bad was it?"

"I have lots of questions about things," she admitted, "But I realize now that no one ever really trusted me—not even my father! Jaune, what kind of father doesn't trust his own daughter?"

"A poor one," I answered quietly, reaching out and pulling her into a hug. "Penny, I trust you—I've tried to show that since day one. If you were going to kill me, you've had plenty of opportunities to kill both me and the others in our sleep by now. You've spent the night with Ruby—did you try to kill her in her sleep?"

"Of course not!" the smaller girl denied, shaking her head against my chest. "Ruby is my friend! I would never hurt her."

"See? There you go," I chuckled. "Now, how about we get this thing back to Vale?"

"But I am comfortable," Penny whined, and I rolled my eyes. A moment later, she sighed and pulled away, moving back to the console. "Overwriting native VI," she murmured, and a moment later all the screens flashed from blue to green. "Assuming direct control."

I palmed my face, sliding my mask back on. "Penny?" I asked, and a moment later both her physical body and several digitally drawn versions of her face turned to regard me.

"Yes, Jaune?" they echoed, and I shuddered slightly.

"Do me a favor, Penny? Never use that phrase again. In fact, I'll get you a list of things," I shook my head. 'I don't think I'd stay on the ship if she told me, 'I can't let you do that, Jaune.''

The digital representations of Penny's face disappeared, replaced with various displays of the ship's systems. "This is amazing," the physical copy of Penny muttered. "The ship's computer is so much faster than this body's onboard processors. I wonder if this is what it'll feel like when I finally level up enough."

I raised an eyebrow at that—it seemed that the processor bump was even enough to change her speech patterns slightly. I didn't have enough information to speculate on the 'why' of that though. "What exactly did you do? Did you make a direct copy of yourself, or what? Because if I just store this thing for days or months on end, wouldn't that copy of you be stuck in limbo for that time?"

Penny giggled. "Relax, Jaune. It's a VI, based on me. I can slip inside and control it directly like I am now, or I can leave her to operate autonomously. She's not sentient. I wouldn't damn a copy of myself to live like that, because it's something I fear myself."

Relieved that she had thought ahead of me, I turned my attention to something else she'd said. "Speaking of levels, how many have you gained?" I asked, and she quickly opened her menu.

"Four. I have choices available," she answered, and I raised an eyebrow. "I have stat points, yes, but it seems I also have several 'trees' by which I may upgrade my body's hardware."

"Really?" I asked, conjuring a couple of chairs for the two of us and taking a seat as the ship lifted off and quickly ascended, turning towards Vale as I dragged the ID with us. "What sorts of things?"

Penny made her menu visible and turned around for me to read. 'Skill trees? No, more like development trees. She's got a lot of options here. The sorts of things I'd expect for an android, like endoskeleton, internal armor, options for skin, sensor suite enhancements, power system enhancements… Oh! Nice. Onboard weapons, stealth, shields, and other systems. Damn, this is kind of cool. But what's this last tree? The whole thing is grayed out. Maybe it requires some condition to unlock—like a prestige class or something.'

"You've got a few points here to spend. Do you mind if I make suggestions?" I asked, and she shook her head. "I'd go with the cloaking device first. It covers things Invisibility doesn't and can be upgraded later. After that, maybe upgrade your electronic warfare suite, to have a better range for hacking things remotely. After that, well, it's entirely up to you, Penny. Whatever you would like to do. Well, even before that, really—feel free to make your own choices, I'm just giving you the ones I'd pick."

"Thank you, Jaune. For being my friend," Penny smiled, latching onto me in another hug.

"You're welcome," I smiled, reaching down and scratching the top of her head. "So, was there anything specific you wanted to ask, about the memories you unlocked?"

"Yes!" Penny nodded, pulling back. "Jaune, what is a 'brood mare?'"

I blinked once, then blinked again. "In what context?" I asked slowly.

"Ahem," Penny cleared her throat, then when she spoke again it was in a woman's voice. "So I heard the old man's using spare parts to turn his pet project into a brood mare." She paused a moment, then continued in another voice, a man's this time. "Damn, sounds sweet. Tiny little thing like that? I bet she'd be as tight as an eight year old. I wonder how long until they go on the market?" Another switch, another woman. "You wouldn't need an eight year old if you didn't have a pencil dick, Johnson." The man again, "Fuck you, Shepherd. It wouldn't feel like a pencil dick if you'd stop fisting. If it has to be the size of a horse cock before you can feel it, you're too loose." The first woman again, "Anyway, don't give them any ideas. With how things are now, they're just as likely to try it with men, too. They've already got one cooking in a tube. It wouldn't be a huge leap to stick a couple of balls in the male model they have and set it loose. Preservation of the species or not, I don't want to stare one of those things in its cold, dead eyes while it's hammering away at me like—well, exactly like a machine."

Penny went silent, slowly pushing up her mask as she regarded me with wide eyes. "Jaune? Did I say something bad?" she asked carefully, and it took a second to figure out why she'd asked. The sound of chirping birds filled the bridge and, when I looked down, I saw a ball of concentrated rage clenched in my hand—more elements than I could easily identify. Taking a slow breath, I dismissed the half-formed spell and reabsorbed the mana. 'Did I just cast that on emotion and intent alone? Was that even a spell, or just pure elemental manipulation? Play with it later, deal with Penny now,' I mused.

Reaching out, I pulled Penny out of her chair and into my lap, into a hug while casting Lighten on her so her weight wouldn't bruise my thighs. "No, Penny. You didn't." I paused, then shook my head. "Well, no. The content of what you said was terrible, but you didn't do anything wrong by telling me about it. I'm not angry at you, I'm angry for you."

"No one has ever been angry for me before," she admitted.

"Well, it happens," I shrugged. "Why don't you tell me what else you can remember along those lines?"

When we were close enough to Vale, I put my hand on the ship's console and activated Claim Vehicle. The entire thing flashed briefly before disappearing around us and dropping us into empty air. Hitting us both with the Wings spell and stealth set again, we dropped out of the empty ID and made our way into Vale. Immediately, I felt the vague sensation of being watched, and frowned. The feeling seemed to come from further away, and was much fainter than I usually felt it, but it was there—as though I were not specifically the target, but rather the entire city was somehow being observed.

'Definitely some sort of scrying ability, then. Alright, let's put together what we know. It's invisible, intangible, undetectable to Penny's sensors, Ruby's eyes can't pick it up, and it doesn't register as any sort of Illusion Barrier to my Semblance. Let's call it a technique, or spell for now. There seem to be multiple instances of the spell running across Vale. One following me, whenever it manages to tag me. There was the general one used to scan the mall a few times, which is how they probably managed to spot me as Jaune. It can track, but not see through, my IDs—that's about the only way it could've spotted me in a crowd—but something about using an ID means it loses me for at least a few seconds before it picks me up again. That implies it's a handicap of some sort. Maybe it's different versions of the technique? One to see normally, one to see Illusion Barriers? It either can't or won't see past an Aura Containment ward. It can see though my stealth spells.'

Looking up, I curved our flight away from my target destination, curving around the outskirts of Vale in an effort to triangulate the source of the feeling. 'That's about all I know about the technique, unless I've missed something. So, what do I know about the person behind it?' I shook my head. 'Not much. They're interested in Shiro and the Fox, and may have worked out who I am—but if they have, they've been content to sit on that information near as I can tell. They've got a lot of time on their hands, to be able to spend it on this technique. Likewise, that they can keep it running for so long and in multiple instances implies they've either got a lot of Aura, or a lot of control over it, or both—meaning high level, either way. The thing that stands out most though is how it reacted when I fought Yang: greater interest the whole time, then killing intent the moment I started moving in, then it pulled back when whoever was on the other end realized I wasn't going to hurt her. Also seemed to really get interested about the time I went to actually draw on her. It didn't show that much interest when I spanked Weiss.'

"Where are we going?" Penny called beside me.

I pointed towards the sky over Vale. "I'm trying to get a fix on something. Someone's been following us for a while and I'm using my detection skills to try and triangulate one of the spells being used."

"I do not detect anything, though," Penny pointed out. "Are you sure there's something there?"

"Yeah," I nodded. "Either that, or something's screwing with my Semblance. But if you're bored, you can head back to Fox Hunt."

Penny shook her head. "I enjoy spending time with you, Jaune. And flying is fun. I think one of the next upgrades I'm going to try to get will be flight."

"Sounds good," I nodded, turning my attention back to my thoughts. 'Okay, so it's probably a technique and there's probably a human—or a faunus—on the other end of it. Let's work on suspects. From most probable to least: Raven, in the top spot. She just got back into town for an unknown job. She's got 'portals' as a Semblance. No idea what she can do with it, beyond the one large, glowing, non-moving portal we saw at the end of season two though—which is kind of the problem there. Yeah, getting pissy when I fought Yang could point to her. On the other hand, the woman hasn't even seen her kid in a decade or more, so maybe not. And as far as her power set goes, there's a lot of scary shit she could do, but it'd depend entirely on how OP that Semblance is. It could be anything from one portal capable of blind local jumps only, to trans-continental travel, to invisible portals sprouting swords from your asshole.'

I winced at the mental imagery—I did not want to cross someone with the ability to separate one part of me from the rest of me on a whim, or slip a sword into my lungs from inside my lungs. That seemed like an absolutely bullshit and overpowered Semblance—not at all fair, even for Remnant. Then again, Remnant was a known death world, and Raven's allegiances were unknown at best. 'Maybe I'm her job. Maybe I pissed off Atlas by taking Penny, or the Schnees since Weiss was hunting me herself, or even just managed to make it to Ozpin's shitlist—the why doesn't matter so much as the fact that it's possible. If it is her, why hasn't she confronted me yet? What is she waiting for? Assuming it's not Raven fucking Branwen, who's left?'

I set us down on a roof and took a minute to look over my map and make notations, before moving on. 'Well, the next obvious choices are Qrow and Tai. No idea what Tai's Semblance is, but you can bet if he saw some guy beating up his baby girl, he wouldn't be able to keep from stepping in, so it's probably not him. Qrow's sneakier than Tai, and I think I heard a rumor or spoilers somewhere that his Semblance allows him to turn into a crow, but that's what I get for not watching season three as it aired—all I've got to go on is spoilers I couldn't avoid and Monty's streak for the obvious and fetish for crows showing up in his previous works. Problem is, the spell is capable of things an animal form isn't. If it was Qrow, he couldn't hide from my Semblance. And that's only assuming I'm right on the 'Qrow is a crow' thing. He and Raven are supposedly twins, so they may have similar Semblances—haven't seen Melanie and Miltia's or Jane and Jean's to have a baseline to go off of. I need to remedy that soon, if only for knowing what they're capable of. Hell, have Melanie and Miltia even figured out their Semblances yet? I never see them using one during spars and everyone else uses theirs pretty much with impunity. Well, until we learn something different,let's bump Qrow way down on the list of suspects for suspected lack of ability.'

Having mostly ruled out Yang's immediate family, I moved on. 'What if the thing with Yang was a red herring? What if whoever is on the other end of that spell doesn't like seeing girls get hurt, but calmed the fuck down when he or she realized I wasn't actually going to hurt her? It would explain why there was hardly any reaction to fighting Weiss, if they knew I was bluffing. Could be one of the Seven Deadly Sisters I haven't met yet. Hell, could be one or both of the twins since I don't know what their Semblance is, but I kind of doubt it since both know I'm Shiro. That still leaves three it could be. Or it could be one of the Arc parents. Maybe they've returned to Vale and are keeping an eye on things, perhaps at Ozpin's request? Well, there's an easy way to rule them out—ask one of the sisters what their Semblances are. And one of them did want me to meet with her soon, so I could kill two birds with one stone there. Ruling them out for now, that still leaves an impossible number of people it could be, if the answer is 'someone with a stealth or scrying Semblance.' Hell, could be Oz or Glynda for all I know—maybe Ozpin's Semblance is information gathering through scrying, or maybe Glynda's got a spell for that, since there's no way her Semblance is 'telekinesis.' I've seen it in action, it's magic like what I use, though maybe not on the same scale. Of course, on the other end of the spectrum is the possibility that it's someone working for or with Cinder—and that would be bad.'

So really, the short list of suspects boiled down to: Raven, Qrow, an Arc, Ozpin, Glynda, or an unknown party. It was still a pretty long list. I wasn't going to get anywhere with it until I had more information, or whoever it was slipped up. If it was Raven, then she was somehow capable of hiding from my Semblance—and not in the same way Weiss confused it, which I still hadn't figured out the trick to. 'And even if I knew who it was right now, what could I do about it? Without a location, I've got noth…' I stopped dead on a rooftop, resisting the urge to facepalm. Pulling up mana, I focused on Skill Creation and intent, only to frown as I was denied, with an entirely new error message. ''Spell Field in use.' So, what, I can't create a general scrying spell because I'm already using scrying spells? How? I'm not…'

I frowned as something clicked into place and little inconsistencies about my Semblance started adding up. Deciding to try to test that hypothesis, I tried for another spell—something for remote viewing. This time, I was met with a familiar error message complaining about lack of base INT points. 'Okay. So I can create a remote viewing spell, eventually. But a general 'scrying' spell is out of the question. What about prediction?' I wondered. Giving it a try turned up the same kind of 'no' response I'd gotten when attempting to make any sort of spell that relied on anything of a divine nature. 'Future sight is out. How about probability, instead? Pure number crunching.' Another attempt made, and this time I earned my second 'Spell Field in use' error message.

'Okay, that's good-ish. It tells me something important, at least. Namely, that I've got at least two hidden skills running. Except they're not really hidden, are they?' No, the quest system didn't exactly try to hide itself—nor did the map. It made sense, though. If those entire fields of spells were in use and I wasn't using them consciously, then it would have to be some core element to the Semblance itself. Probably something I used all the time, at that. 'How else would my quest system generate quests, except by either foreknowledge, direct interaction or proximity to someone and overhearing something, or situationally? The first one explains some of the general quests I get, but the rest are either all situational, or things like with Blake that could be explained by foreknowledge, but only pop up when they get into range—which has been expanding as I've leveled. Meaning some sort of scrying ability is highly likely. And Observe also has to run off scrying. Of course, that means I can't create a scrying spell to use myself, and that my Semblance is already using one and it's not picking up anyone watching me except with detection skills… which also probably fall under the generic 'scrying' category. Then why was I able to create those and not something to let me search manually?'

I growled in quiet frustration before moving on. 'Well, fuck it. What about defenses against scrying?'

That also turned up nothing, though I wasn't actually too surprised on that count. At least being told I didn't meet the INT requirements made more sense than being told to fuck off because the entire category of spells was already in use—except I was right back to the argument that defenses against scrying could be counted as part of the scrying field of spells. 'Back to square one,' I groused. Pulling up my map, I took in the data I'd marked so far. "Penny, could you look at this and tell me what you think?"

"Of course," she agreed with a nod, and I set my map to visible. "Your attempts at triangulation appear to be correct. The source of the spell you are detecting appears to be over the city center."

"And at altitude," I murmured, tilting my head up in its general direction. "If there's something up there being used for recon, then whoever's on the other side of it has a bird's eye view of the city. Probably how they spotted me immediately after the fire. Damnit. So my options are lie low, or pretend to ignore it and wait until whoever is on the other side decides to do something." In other words, I was exactly where I had been since I'd first detected it. I simply didn't have enough information to go on to form more than a guess as to the who, why, or how of it. 'Then I'll worry about the 'when.' How's that saying go again? Hope for the best, prepare for the worst?'

"It would seem that way. What now?" the gynoid asked, and I sighed.

"For now, back to base. Then I'm going to go hit a bank."

---

I blinked, then blinked again as I stood in Fox Hunt's parking garage—rather, I should say the private parking garage under our barracks for officers, as opposed to the general motor pool garage. It was empty, save for the five of us. Miltia had joined her sister, Neo, and Penny while Blake had apparently gone upstairs, in a bit of a mood after the thing in Stofhol. Melanie and Neo had sent our new Private off to get settled into her new quarters while I had ordered the small security detachment stationed on the ground floor to give us the room. "That looks nice. I thought you were running errands?"

"This was an errand," Miltia smirked, looking inordinately pleased with herself. I couldn't say I blamed her, though. When I'd loaned her my copy of Bumblebee this morning, I hadn't expected to be given back what might as well be an entirely new bike. It had been modified from the ground up, it looked like. The tires had been swapped out from street tread to all-terrain. In fact, it looked as though someone had replaced the single-tire configuration with dual tires both front and back, that wound up being half-again as wide as the original set had been. The suspension had been drastically altered from its racing street bike configuration to all-terrain bike. 'No, that's not quite right,' I mused, leaning in for a closer look. 'It's been converted into a four-wheeler. It splits down the middle. Probably has four-wheel drive, as well.'

The plastic fairings, panels, and fenders had all been replaced by metal equivalents in a similar style, possibly titanium or something similar—light, but capable of taking a hit better than plastic. The new fairings and panels were all white with gold trim, with the double crescent painted on both sides of the bike's fairing side panels, just below the fuel tank. The exhaust had been replaced by tail pipes tucked under the tail, where they wouldn't get in the way when the rear split open. The seat and foot rests had also been replaced, and I hummed in thought as I noticed what looked like straps to lock in feet on the foot rests. The side fairings looked a bit wider than I remembered, and a visual inspection confirmed there were seams that hadn't been there before. 'They open. They're storage compartments,' I realized. 'Where have I seen something like this before?'

Even the lights had not been spared—the headlight having been replaced with a pair of HID lights that were alarmingly bright, along with a trio of smaller red lights around them, presumably for night running without alerting everything around. The tail lights had been replaced with both a standard red tail light and a HID like those on the front, and I noticed that folded under the tail with the tailpipes was some sort of folding metal contraption. Finding a switch on the back, I hit it and it folded out, extending the length of the bike by a few feet, while the rear foot pedals shifted slightly. 'Gunner's position? With the light there, makes sense. If you're running from something, there's no point in not shooting back…'

Realization struck, and I laughed quietly as I figured out where I'd seen it, or something close to it. 'It's like a modified version of Cloud's bike from Advent Children. If, you know, he went kind of overboard on modifying it.'

"I like it," I grinned, sliding onto it and starting the engine. Unlike before, where Yang's Bumblebee had been tuned as a street bike, this thing was nearly silent as it sat idling. "How much of this is the original?"

"Not much," Miltia admitted. "The engine, fuel tank, and most of the frame. The rest is new."

"How long have you been working on this?" I asked, turning to the trio of girls. "Surely it wasn't all planned out in a day."

"Pretty much since you got it," Neo admitted. "We got together with one of the local shops and went over what we thought you might need. By the time we were done, all they really needed was the bike and a few hours to put it all together."

"Why?" I asked, killing the bike. "I mean, not that it's not awesome—it is—but why not just repaint it?"

"Function, mostly," Melanie admitted. "It'll be good for when you're limited to what you can use. Or when you need a way of getting around out in the wilds as a Hunter, and not just in Vale."

"I'd still have to summon it," I pointed out.

"Ah, not exactly," Miltia chuckled. "We paid for storage tech."

I raised an eyebrow and hopped off at her urging. Taking out her scroll, she held it up to the bike's control interface and selected something. A moment later, the whole thing folded down in a blur of moving metal parts and light. When it finished she held a metal disk, rounded on one side, white with gold trim and with the Arc double crescent on the top in gold. I could make out a clip on the flat back, as well. Stepping up closer, she reached in and clipped it onto the left side of my belt. "It's Gen-7 storage tech. Brand spanking new, straight from Atlas. Expensive, but worth it."

"How expensive?" I asked, and the girls traded looks.

"Jaune," Melanie began.

"It's bad form to ask how much a gift cost," Miltia pointed out.

I sighed, palming my face. I would definitely have to get the girls nice things after this, otherwise I'd feel like a complete heel. In the meantime, they deserved some sort of reward for their efforts. Putting that thought on the back burner for the moment, I asked, "So, what's it called?"

Another shared look, and Neo grinned. "Arclance."

"That's… actually better than anything I've come up with, to date," I admitted. "I suck at naming things."

"We know," the twins and Neo echoed, and I rolled my eyes.

"Ha ha, very funny," I chuckled.

"Well," Miltia hummed, "the guys at the shop actually wanted to call it a Puma. Or a Warthog. They couldn't really make up their minds. Doesn't look much like either, if you ask me."

I blinked. "You're joking?" I asked, and she shook her head. I'd have to swing by some time myself, if only to see if there really was someone in Remnant resembling RvB's Red Team—I kind of doubted it, though. In all honesty, it was probably just a coincidence—like the armor I'd found with Penny. That, or I needed to seriously reconsider some sort of potential bleed-over between worlds, given Earth-related media showing up here. "If I wanted another several of these made, how hard would it be to get them done?"

"Ooh, for your team," Penny realized, and I nodded.

"And Ruby's team, assuming we're not on the same team," I stressed, and Neo rolled her eyes. "And you, as well. It'd be something too useful not to carry around. It's light, quick, easy ground transportation." Pulling the badge the Arclance had been folded down to off my belt, I looked it over before finding a switch on the back. Hitting it, I tossed the badge away as it began to move, and it righted itself as it unfolded, before landing with a small jolt to the suspension. "Damn, but that is awesome," I murmured, taking out my scroll and keying it to switch back, then scooping it up and opening my Inventory. Equipping it in the appropriate slot, it reappeared on my belt in a small flash of light.

"The guys we used customized it for nearly all terrain types—it's even amphibious. The struts they replaced the foot pegs with can lock your feet in place, so you or a rider can anchor yourselves if you decide to go for vehicular combat. The rear seat is pretty much a gunner's position, as well—or a sniping platform, if you wanted to use it for that," Miltia added. "About the only thing it can't do well is fly. Jumps really well, though."

'Too bad it doesn't have a horn. I'd set it to play Dixie every time it went airborne. Of course, I'd have to repaint and rename it, if I did. Then again, I don't think Remnant is ready for the General Lee, and a bike just doesn't do the car justice,' I mused. "Who wants to help me rob a bank?"

"You're going to ID it, right?" Melanie asked, and I nodded.

"Meh," both the twins shrugged, before Miltia added, "There's no sport in it. Cut your way in, snag everything not nailed down, throw it into Inventory."

"We've seen that enough times now that we know it's not much fun to watch," Melanie nodded.

Neo chuckled. "Sorry, Jaune, they're right. It's not theft, it's shopping."

I shrugged. "Fair enough."

"We'll call Greene and set up a time to meet again tomorrow. Did we have any other plans today?" Neo asked, and I sent a questioning look to the twins, who shook their heads.

"I'm going to take Penny and maybe Angel and see about getting us some birds, when I get done making a withdrawal. After that, I need to go see my sister." Before they could ask which, I answered, "Jen. She said she wanted to talk, next time I came around. I figured now's good. I'll meet you all back here tonight." I turned to Penny. "Can you get ahold of Angel and have her make out a wish list, and get me a map of where to find them?"

Angel's wish list, as I found out a couple of hours and over a hundred million Lien later, consisted of Bullheads, Razorbacks, and one of something I hadn't seen before—a large equipment mover, looking for all the world like a Remnant equivalent of a C-5 Galaxy, if the Galaxy were sized up by a factor of two. Looking it over, I turned an amused gaze on Angel. "Really?"

"You said a wish list, sir," she pointed out, before reaching out and tapping the display with the HALV—Heavy Air Lift Vehicle. "If you've got machinery to deploy in a hurry on the other side of the country, this is your girl. It's been out of service a while—since Vale dissolved its armed services and began relying on Atlas tech. It's one part anti-gravity lift, one part good old-fashioned aeronautics, and purely Vale tech. She's not quite VTOL, but she'll lift off and land from a short runway. I might know a pilot who would be interested in flying one, actually. He and the rest of his crew retired years ago, but they're still kicking around bitching about how they've got nothing to do."

"Oh?" I asked, getting a feeling I knew where this was going.

"My uncle, sir. He's the main reason I became a pilot. I'm pretty sure there's one or two of these up for sale, actually," Angel admitted. "When the others mentioned moving a lot of armor, I remembered hearing about it. Pretty sure your man Greene knows, as well."

"I'll run it by the girls," I nodded. "That aside, anything else? Are there any other large ships in Vale? I made a copy of the Daedalus today—"

Angel blinked, frowning as she sat back in her chair. "Your Semblance allows you to copy things?" she asked, and I tilted a hand back and forth in a so-so gesture. "How many times?"

"Once. And I'd appreciate if you kept that quiet," I said, and she nodded.

"In that case," she pulled out her scroll and opened up a map.

"Angel?" I asked, and she looked up. "You're in the guild, high enough to access basic functions. Say 'map.' Or think it."

She hesitated a moment before saying, "Map." The blonde woman blinked, eyes focusing on the middle distance. "This is also part of your Semblance? Looks like part of a TACNET."

I frowned. "I thought someone explained all of this to you and Jim?"

The blonde chuckled quietly, looking suddenly embarrassed. "I uh… I thought it was bullshit, sir. A lot of the men did. I'll relay the message and get them straightened out. I think I've still got a copy of that guide your girls sent in my email." She began doing something with her map and I opened mine as points began to display. "What's this button do, sir? 'Map link.'"

"Probably exactly what it says, but let's try it and find out," I shrugged, and the woman nodded.

"I clicked it. It says 'waiting,'" she said, and at the same time a blinking icon on the side of my map popped up, showing an available link. Clicking it, my map shifted to display the information on Angel's. "Handy," the woman hummed, then began drawing circles around areas of the map. "There are a few Atlas air bases outside Vale. Most of them are refueling areas. Some of them are drydocks for doing repairs and refit. Others, like these," she tapped three in particular, "are where they keep their reserve fleet. It's not much. Couple of corvettes and a destroyer per base, probably, but it's more than we've got. Last I knew, Atlas only kept three destroyers on station in Vale for rapid response to large nasties. As you can imagine, most of Atlas's toys are kept at home. Keep in mind that I'm not even counting smaller aircraft like the Bullheads and Razorbacks—I'm talking about warships, not gunships. Ships that require a large crew and stay in the air for months at a time. Of those, corvettes are the most popular and make up the majority of the fleet, numbering a couple of hundred. Destroyers are the next most common, at around fifty. Beyond that, they have around twenty battleships and all of three capital ships—the Dauntless, Dreadnaught, and Invincible. Those don't leave Atlas, except under special circumstances. What you kind of have to have been in the service to know is that, despite how many ships they have, they don't keep them all in the air full time. Only about a third of the fleet is in the air at any one time. Most are rotated out in six-month increments. The big three are rotated out yearly. Scuttlebutt was that Atlas would eat itself if they tried to keep everything in the air all the time."

Thinking it over, a smile stretched across my lips. "So what you're telling me is that, at any one time, two thirds of Atlas's fleet is on the ground?"

"Yes, sir. Either in drydock or on the tarmac," Angel nodded.

I hummed, considering my map. "Okay. New goal: copy the local reserve fleet. For that, we're going to need somewhere to hide them, first of all. After that, fuel, food, ammunition, and crew." I now knew Penny could spin off VI copies of herself and control the ships. The only problems with that were that I didn't feel like Penny should have to bear the burden of running our fleet all by herself and I wasn't sure if the VI copies of Penny were as reliable as the real thing. Not just that, but Penny wasn't purpose-made to run one of those ships. No, if I was going to stick anything inside one, I'd want to build an AI just for that purpose. Even then, I'd still want at least some human crew, probably. It wouldn't really be fair to an AI on a ship to be grounded or shut off most of the time, when not in use. 'No, I'm going to have to crew them or find a way to keep them up full time, which means a steady supply of Dust. Damn.'

"If you can duplicate Dust, then fuel and ammunition shouldn't be a problem, sir. Well, aside from getting into and out of the depots housing fuel and munitions," she shrugged.

"It's not a problem," I agreed.

With a nod, Angel closed her map. "Well, then crew is where you're going to come up short. How did you even get the Daedalus, sir?"

"I have my ways, and let's leave it at that."

"Yes, sir," Angel nodded. "What are we going after first?"

"I'll snag us some gunships. Talk to Jim and see if you can find somewhere to put down a couple of corvettes and a destroyer. I don't plan to run them unless it's an emergency, so we can just sit on them for now. I'd rather everyone didn't know we have our own fleet until it's too late for them to do anything about it," I grinned. "And we'll need to falsify some paperwork on where we got them, too—even if the supposed dealer would have had to have stolen them. We can't have a fleet appearing out of thin air, at least not on paper." On that note, I probably should do the same for the ground vehicles as well. I could just keep them in reserve off-site, but better safe than sorry.

"Understood, sir. I already have a short list of pilots and crew for gunships made up. With your permission, I would like to try to recruit them."

That was good—we would be able to start moving troops around soon. Once we got more troops. 'One thing at a time,' I mused. "Granted."

Angel pushed herself out of her chair, wincing as her artificial leg shifted slightly, before drawing up into a salute and leaving after I'd returned it. "Some days," I whispered, "I feel like I'm just playing a role on a stage for these people. I wonder if that's how real officers feel."

Shaking my head, I got out of my own chair and made for the door, sending a message off to Penny to meet me on the roof of the barracks. Moving to the barracks building and punching in my access code to get into our quarters, I made my way to the work room and snagged my new jacket, throwing it into Inventory. I needed new armor for Beacon, since the old stuff I had wouldn't really do, and I needed to make sure it would go over the jacket—which meant taking it to someone who made armor and getting measurements done. It was one more thing I could check off on my list of things to take care of before Beacon started.

With that done, I headed for the roof, where I met Penny. Aside from the general feeling of the town being watched, it appeared that my watcher had either lost me or was taking a break from directly observing me today and I was going to use this window for all it was worth.

---

Gravel crunched under my tires as I braked, bringing the Arclance to a stop in front of the Arc family home and killing the headlights and engine. Hitting the button to compress it, I slipped it back into place before moving up to the front door. The door opened and a pair of green eyes gazed out at me from under red bangs for a moment before I was intercepted by a human missile. "Jaune!" Jun cheered, and I laughed.

"Good to see you too, munchkin," I greeted.

"You have a package!" the tiny redhead announced, and I raised an eyebrow in question. Jun detached from my waist and lead me inside, and under the lights I saw that she was already dressed in her pajamas.

I dropped onto the couch and she went into the kitchen, coming back a moment later with a cardboard box, addressed to me here at the Arc home. "Okay," I murmured, wondering what the hell it could be. Pulling out my knife, I cut open the top and pulled out the paper stuffing. In amongst the wadded up newspaper, I found a metal cylinder. A smile crossed my lips as I realized what it was. "Thank you, Joan," I murmured, pulling it reverently from the box. It looked like a lightsaber hilt, to be honest, though not nearly as large as one—more the size of a medium-sized flashlight. The main body was a black metal tube with a rubberized grip on one end and a hole on the other. There was a single, recessed button near the upper half, a covered trigger below that, and a twistable selector switch at the bottom just above where it would unscrew. On the side of the tube opposite the button and trigger was what looked like a small rail mount, so it could be mounted as an under-barrel attachment.

Digging through the box, I found and ate the manual and set about reading it a moment later. "Is that what I think it is?" Jun asked, and I shrugged.

"It's probably pretty close to what you think it is," I answered absently as I read. "I told Joan I wanted a Dustcaster attachment for my weapon that looked vaguely lightsaber-ish. Apparently, she went whole hog on it." Following the directions, I twisted the end of it and it opened with a click, before allowing me to slide out a piece of metal about the size of the tube. There were eight slots inside, sized and shaped for cut Dust crystals in a regular icosahedron cut of a familiar size. I chuckled quietly, upon realizing what I was looking at. 'It's an 8d20 lightsaber. I am sorely tempted to paint numbers on all the faces when I fill this thing in and set them all for 20.'

Since I didn't have dice—that is, Dust crystals—to load into it at the moment, I quickly duped it and opened my Inventory. One copy was attached to the Blazefire Saber on my right, while the second copy found a place attached to my belt on my left side, so I could draw the Dustcaster by itself without having to also drag out the Saber it was attached to. Turning to Jun, I asked, "Your sister in?"

Jun made a face. "Depends on who you ask," she muttered.

I raised an eyebrow. "What's that mean?"

"I mean, she's been acting funny since she got back home."

"Funny how? Actually, why don't you just give me all the details?" I smiled down at her as she flopped onto the couch beside me.

Jun opened and closed her mouth in more than one false start before finally saying, "Funny like you, except the opposite. When you came back from the hospital, you didn't even know who we were, but you were nicer than you'd ever been—not that you were really mean before, just… you didn't seem to care. You paid attention to me. You made Joan smile again. Before she left, Jen was the fun one. She always had time to play with me. We used to talk all the time, but now she barely says a word. She always tried to keep the peace, when things got bad. Now? She's here, but not here. And she's kind of jumpy, now. Like she's always expecting something bad to happen."

"Have you talked to her about it?" I asked, and Jun shook her head.

"I tried. Jean and Jane tried. Even Joan tried. She just sort of sits there until we go away, if we try to ask," she admitted.

I had nothing to go on, there. I didn't have much in the way of memories of her—just a short, curvy thing in a blue dress, smiling and laughing as we spun around a dance floor, years ago if my height at the time was anything to go by. "Well, I was going to talk to her anyway. I suppose I could ask. Where is she, anyway?"

A flash of a smirk crossed Jun's face for the briefest of instants before she took on the most falsely innocent look I'd ever seen before. "I'll take you to her," she stood, taking my hand and hauling me to my feet and leading me upstairs. I rolled my eyes when I realized exactly which door she'd brought me to. Opening the door and peeking her head in, Jun called, "Onee-chan! Onii-chan is here!" Pulling her head back out of the bathroom, she smirked at me for a moment while I rolled my eyes.

"She hates that, doesn't she?" I asked, and Jun nodded.

"Absolutely. Well, I'm going to bed! Have fun," she beamed, pushing me through the door with more strength than her tiny body should possess, then slamming the door closed behind me.

I sighed in the steam hanging thick in the bathroom. The sound of something moving in water drew my attention to the tub, where a pair of blue eyes set under blonde hair, made dark with water, met my own blue. "It was her idea," I groaned.

Jen sat still for a long moment, simply regarding me, before shrugging—and doing interesting things to her bare, soapy breasts that I found particularly eye-catching. "If you're going to stay, wash my back," she quietly deadpanned.

Chuckling, I moved over to take a seat on the toilet and took the offered fluffy loofah, already covered in soap. "You're not worried I'm going to peep?"

"No. If you look, you look," she murmured, eyes going half-lidded as I started on her shoulders and neck.

When it appeared that she would be quite content letting any conversation die stillborn, I rolled my eyes and began talking, in an effort to force her to engage. "What did you want to talk about?"

She sighed quietly, leaning forward in the tub and bringing her knees up to her chest, allowing me access to her lower back. "The others told me what happened. You really don't remember anything?"

"Not much," I admitted. "What else have they told you?"

The blonde hummed. "About your Semblance. That you're doing shady things. That you slept with Joan and Jane."

"Did they?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. I was surprised about that, to be honest. I realized Jean knew, and appeared to be jealous as fuck, but I didn't know they'd told anyone else. "How many of you know?"

"Joan, the twins, and myself are the only ones who know everything—depending on what you've told Jun or what she's managed to figure out for herself. The others know about the accident and that you don't remember much, but they weren't told anything else—just in case someone in Vacuo or Mistral was listening to their scroll calls. We'll probably tell them when they come home to visit soon. As for the sex? Probably just us older four, but you can never tell with Jun. She picks up more than she lets on," Jen admitted.

I digested that for a moment. "Does it bother you?"

Jen shook her head. "They're grown women, they can make their own choices." She turned her head to meet my eye over her shoulder. "How much of it is just exposure to your Aura?" I raised an eyebrow, and a small smirk twitched at the corner of her lips. "You think we didn't notice, Jaune? It's a mental effect. I've been wet since you walked in the front door." She paused, before quietly admitting, "I could shrug it off, but it's honestly the best I've felt since leaving Atlas."

"What does that mean, exactly?" I frowned, going over what Jun had said. "What happened?"

She clammed up, and I handed her the loofah back, long since having finished scrubbing her back. Rinsing my hand off in the bath water, I leaned back on the toilet seat and thought it over. After a moment of contemplation, I hit her with Observe, and immediately frowned at what I found there. "You were fast tracked for the Specialist program."

Jen's head whipped around, eyes locking with mine. There was something there, buried under that flat look that I couldn't quite place, and Observe was no help. "The conditioning failed and you left. What sort of conditioning, Jen?"

"Jennifer."

"Jen," I countered. "Is it what I think it is?"

The blonde looked away. "Can't talk about it," she whispered.

"Won't, or can't?" I asked, wanting clarification on the wording.

"Can't."

Nodding, I hummed. "Do you want to?" She nodded. "What if I said there was a way you could show me? Would you want to?" Another nod. "Okay." Standing, I grabbed a towel. "Rinse off and come on."

Jen sighed, slipping underwater for a moment before popping back up again and hitting the drain plug. She stood and stepped out of the tub, meeting my eyes with that flat gaze as she did—either unashamed or uncaring of her nudity, and I wondered exactly what sort of mental damage could do that. Observe had given me a good idea, and it was worrying. I held out the towel and she accepted it, beginning to dry off. Stepping out of the bathroom to give her time to get dry, I went downstairs and made my way to the kitchen. After a minute of digging around, I came up with a bottle of some sort of spiced rum. 'Wonder which of them drinks this.' Shrugging, I filled two glasses with ice and headed back upstairs.

Jen stepped out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped around her body and a second around her hair. Taking in the glasses, she raised one fine blonde eyebrow before turning and stalking down the hallway, turning into one of the bedrooms. I followed, closing the door behind us. Jen had pulled out a tee-shirt and a pair of what looked like boxer-briefs, and begun pulling them on. Setting the glasses and bottle down, I moved over and took the towel around her hair. "Here, let me," I said, pulling up water elemental mana. With a little focus, I pulled the excess water out of her hair and deposited it on the towel, leaving her hair only mildly damp as opposed to soaked. "That should be good enough."

"Neat trick," she commented, pulling on the tee-shirt and dropping down to sit cross-legged on the bed.

I dropped down across from her. "I'm full of them," I shrugged, snagging the glasses and bottle with Telekinesis, which drew another raised eyebrow from the blonde. Pouring the glasses, I put the bottle back down and floated the glasses over to us. My own eyebrows went up when, as the glass neared Jen, her Aura flared almost invisibly—a faint green luminescence—and I felt the glass pulled out of my control. A faint green sheen covered it as it moved to hover in front of the blonde before me. "Neat trick."

"I'm full of them," Jen retorted, a faint smile dancing across her lips for just an instant.

I hummed, putting on an innocent expression, as I said, "You realize that this means you could've washed your own back. You didn't need my help."

"True," Jen agreed. "But it was nicer with you doing it than by myself."

"Fair enough," I shrugged.

She sipped at the glass and winced. "I don't see how anyone could drink this mess."

"Well, in this instance, it's to get you mildly to moderately drunk," I admitted. Her eyes met mine, a questioning look crossing her face. "It'll lower your innate resistance to mental spells, more than if I tried to brute-force my way in. It may also help you not remember much when we get done. The spell I mentioned to let you show me what happened? Me watching it means you remember it as I go. Can you handle that?"

She was silent for a long moment before nodding. "Yes." Draining the glass, she snagged the bottle with her power and poured herself another. "If the point is to get me drunk, why are you drinking? Doesn't one of us need to 'drive' for your spell to work?"

"I don't get drunk as easily any more. In fact, the harder I try, the harder it becomes. The worst this'll do is give me a mild buzz. No, I'm drinking with you because it wouldn't be polite, otherwise," I smiled.

Jen snorted, softly. "Polite. You? You have changed."

"I keep hearing that. You all make it sound like I was an asshole, before. Well, more of an asshole than I am now." I shrugged. People kept telling me I was an ass. It must be for a reason.

"Not an asshole, per se," Jen shook her head. "You just… didn't handle it well. You drifted apart from us. We should have done more to help. We could have unlocked your Aura, but dad and moms said it would be best if you unlocked it on your own."

I held up a hand. "This isn't the time for that discussion. You did all you could and it wasn't your responsibility. Whatever happened, I don't blame you, and I doubt that'll change when or if I eventually do remember. If anyone's to blame, it's our parents—and it's something I'll take up with them, eventually. For tonight, we're worrying about you. Finish your drink and eat your ice."

Jen shrugged, pounding down the rest of the glass and went to work chewing ice. "Can you make me forget?"

I blinked, meeting her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"You said 'mental spells.' If I asked, could you erase everything from Atlas from my mind?"

Opening my menu, I navigated to my skills section and selected Forget. The spell was level 24 now and I had a pretty decent grasp over how it worked. Still, that was a large section of memories to just wipe, and by default the spell only covered about four hours worth of memories now—ten minutes per level. I could probably overpower it and get more. Likewise, I could probably cast it repeatedly and erase memories in chunks. I'd never done it though, and I didn't want to test it on someone I sort of cared for. I hadn't known her long, but Jen was family here, and I wanted to get to know her, and I couldn't do that if I accidentally left her as a vegetable. "Probably not," I said slowly, shaking my head. "I've only tested it on short-term wipes. I don't feel comfortable trying to knock out that much. Maybe after I level the skill up, but even then, I still have no idea what it'd do. It could cause permanent brain damage, for all I know."

"Can't be any worse," Jen deadpanned.

"Ha. Haha. Haaa. Yes it can. It can always get worse," I countered. "Feeling it yet?"

The blonde nodded. "Getting there."

Shifting around to get comfortable, I prepared myself. "Ready?" I asked, and she nodded. "Okay." Silently, I cast Read Thoughts. The spell brushed against her mind before sliding off, and I frowned. Putting a little more oomph behind it, I tried again. This time, it made contact, before the spell failed again. "This would go better if you'd relax and just let me in."

Jen shook her head. "I don't think I can. You're probably going to have to force it."

'Against someone with the title 'Divine Will.' Right,' I shook my head. "Let's try this. Party, for testing purposes," I muttered. One blonde eyebrow went up before she accepted. Once she was in, I hit her with Telepathy, attempting to establish a link. "Let it connect."

It took several tries, but we eventually got a link running between us. "Your mind feels funny," Jen assessed, and I chuckled quietly.

"Been in a few?" I asked, and she shrugged. "Well, try to get comfortable. Once you're comfortable with me in your head, I'll try digging around."

A soft snort escaped her lips and I looked up to catch her fighting down a smile. Upon seeing my questioning look, she said, "So it's like sex." I blinked at that. "You're inside me, waiting for me to stop wincing so we can get on with it."

I rolled my eyes. "I don't really get complaints like that. Usually, what I hear is more along the lines of, 'harder,' 'faster,' 'deeper,' and 'I'm coming.'"

"You seem sure of yourself," the assessed, and I shrugged.

"A gentleman doesn't kiss and tell, but I will say that of the seven I've been with, five keep coming back and one asked me not to because of her own inability to resist." Raising an eyebrow, I asked, "What's with you and sex talk, anyway? Is there something you're trying to tell me?"

Jen shrugged. "After hearing Joan and Jane talk about it, I'll admit that I'm curious. And considering that being around you leaves me actually feeling something for the first time in months, I'm sorely tempted."

"You've been, what? In shock? Emotionally numb?" I asked, thinking on my own forced calm with Gamer's Mind on. It was useful, I'll admit—but I liked feeling human too.

The blonde tilted one hand side to side in a so-so motion. "Sort of. I can't explain."

Realizing we were back to square one on that front, I decided to try probing her again. Pulling up mana, I cast, and was almost unprepared for it when the spell settled into place—and promptly leveled. Twice. 'Yeah, okay, 'Divine Will' isn't just for show. Her mind actually is ridiculously well defended—especially if it took all the modifiers I used to be able to even connect, and for me to get so much skill experience from it. It's like that first time I cast Sleep on Joan.' I was honestly kind of wondering how many times it would level, by the time we were done.

"I think we're good," I said quietly, first going for her memories of this conversation, as it happened—the newest should be easiest, and with her 'remembering' in real time as we sat there, it was the least invasive use of the spell.

"It feels strange."

"I know," I nodded. "Let's try something. I do have some vague memories to go on, so a common point of reference may help. Remember us dancing when you were wearing that pretty little blue number?"

A ghost of a smile grossed her lips and I saw the memory from her end. Immediately, I noticed something seemed… off. The whole memory seemed somehow leached of emotion—as though it held no meaning to her one way or another. And yet, in the memory, she was smiling—happy, even. "They really did a number on you."

"No, really?" Jen snarked.

I turned a questioning look on her. "So, you can't feel anything…"

"Snark's harder to kill," the blonde answered impassively. "Watch."

Where before, I had been directing her memories, they lurched abruptly to a sort of running montage of her time in Atlas. Everything seemed normal, or at least as normal as I'd expect from a military academy for Hunters. Really, it seemed a lot like descriptions of Basic from the few enlisted friends I'd had on Earth. It was only in the beginning of her third year that things took a turn for the strange.

---

"Cadet Arc? How may I help you?" – Female, brunette, with an odd red skin tone that seemed too bright to be human, because I had seen naturally red-toned humans on Earth and this was like comparing skin to paint. Still, here was proof that my speculation was correct as she appeared to be one of Remnant's unique races that Earth simply didn't have, even though all the other common markers screamed 'Caucasian.' Looking to be in her mid-40s, she wore officer's rank insignia that Jen identified as a Captain in the Atlesian service. 'Combat And Tactics Instructor. CATI,' Jen supplied the answer to my unasked question—meaning she appeared to be Goodwitch's analog in Atlas.

Jen's gaze strayed to the tablet the woman was working on for a moment before asking, "Sir, why am I being transferred?"

Cati, as the cadets called her, regarded Jen over her glasses with something approaching a proud smile. "You've shown excellent progress, so far. You're ahead of your peers in both practical and theoretical work, and frankly, you're one of the strongest cadets we've had in years, in terms of sheer volume of Aura. You've been fast tracked for the Specialist program." She set down the pad and took off her glasses, cleaning them with a handkerchief. "To be frank, you've put in a lot of work to get this far, and it's only going to get harder from here. Do us proud, cadet."

"Yes, sir."

The brunette replaced her glasses and took up the tablet again. "You're to pack your things and report to," she swiped through the tablet for a moment, "landing pad 4 by 0630 tomorrow morning. Dismissed."

---

"Okay, so you were good—" I began, and Jen shook her head.

"The best of the best. They don't let you into the main academy unless you're already one of the best. Top ten percent material. Atlas is actually split into two tracks—one for normal recruits, that turns out average hunters, and the other for exceptional recruits that turns out amazing hunters. The only ones better, on average, are those that come from Vale—and that's debatable."

That was all new to me, but it made sense from a military perspective. They wouldn't want to waste perfectly good troops that could follow orders well—those are the body of any armed service. The others, the exceptional ones, were officer material—which would, on Earth, earn them a ticket to Officer Candidate School. If Atlas started screening and training their officers earlier and avoided the extra few years of schooling in order to turn them out faster, it was about the sort of practical solution I was beginning to see was commonplace across Remnant. That would imply that Specialists were above even officers, somehow. "Jen, what exactly is a Specialist?"

There was more than one false start as Jen tried to find a way to answer, but kept hitting a wall. Finally, she ground out, "The best of the best of the best."

---

A man – tall, Caucasian, balding with brown hair – wearing a set of black fatigues stood in front of a telescreen that took up one entire wall of the classroom. "You were all recruited because you have proven that you are the best of the best. Congratulations—you stand out just enough from the trash of the rank and file that you might prove useful to your country. My name is Overseer King, and from today until the day you earn the title of Specialist, I am god to you. When we get done with you, you will be the best, of the best, of the best. Until then, you're just only slightly better than trash—and only slightly less disposable. The scrolls you've been issued contain your schedules. Read them now."

He waited, while the students took out shiny new black scrolls. Looking at hers, Jen selected one of the only apps available—the calendar where her schedule was kept—and began reading.

0500: Reveille.

0600: Meal.

0630-0930: Orientation.

0930-1230: PT.

1230-1300: Meal.

1300-1800: PT.

1800-2100: Orientation.

2100-2130: Meal.

2200: Lights out.

"Scrolls away. Your first Orientation class starts now," the Overseer announced a minute or two later, and Jen put away her scroll. "Watch the film. There will be a test at the end of the week."

With that, Overseer King left the room, the thick metal doors closing solidly behind him. A moment later, the wall-sized telescreen came on and the light turned off. A movie – a propaganda piece – began to play. A little over ten minutes in, and bored out of her mind, in between moments of the screen flashing black, Jen noticed the light levels in the room had slowly crept up. When the screen lit again, the room was filled with a barely noticeable indigo luminescence. Frowning, she glanced around—no one seemed to have noticed. A look at the girl to her left showed the bluenette completely spaced out—staring at the screen, eyes unblinking. A glance to the right showed the black haired boy there in a similar state. Then the room got brighter, and her head felt light – and the entire memory took on a sort of surreal quality, that I might expect from some sort of drug-fueled haze.

A glance upwards showed the banks of lights, previously off, now putting off an indigo glow. She would have studied it more, but something on the screen caught her attention. Glancing back, she realized just how captivating the movie was – if you could call a pattern of flashing colors and sounds captivating, though to my eyes it looked more like some sort of TV test pattern.

Once more, footage began to play, this time in quick succession – and in every image, I found text. Too small to stand out on a first pass for most people, but then I knew what I was looking for—because I'd seen it before, on Earth.

Beowolf standing in a forest. Enemy.

Faunus male, Caucasian plus dog template. Suspect.

Beowolves running in a pack. Threat.

Faunus female and child, Asian plus cat template. Thieves.

A pack of Beowolves tearing into a group of civilians. Eliminate enemies.

Three White Fang dragging a man into the street and stomping him to death. Murderers.

And so it went, until the screen went white and the lights came back on—normal, fluorescent white lights. Jen shook her head, her eyes feeling strangely dry and a headache beginning to throb somewhere near the front of her head. The doors opened and Overseer King marched to the front of the class. "Report to training field 3. Overseer Echo will be your drill instructor. Class dismissed." He waited for the students to stand and begin shuffling out, before calling out, "Cadet Arc, a word."

Jen blinked slowly, rubbing at her eyes and moving to the front of the room. "Sir?"

"The videos are important, Cadet. If you don't pay attention and learn the material, you'll be cut from the program. Do you understand?" he asked, and something in his tone cut through the haze that had settled over her mind.

"Yes, sir," she answered slowly, and he nodded.

"Dismissed, Cadet. Get a move on," he jerked his head towards the door and she saluted, turned about face, and double-timed it out of the room. As she passed the last desk, she glanced down at the small telescreen system embedded there, and frowned as she caught sight of the small camera built into the system—typically used for video calls. She spent the time during PT focusing and slowly clearing the fog that had settled over her thoughts, finally managing to shake it off just as the first training session ended and they were called to lunch.

She reached the mess hall and got in line, taking the offered tray and finding an empty seat beside the girl and boy she'd sat between during Orientation. The food was bland, and tasted funny. The water had an odd aftertaste that reminded her of the well water back home, but an entirely different flavor—bitter, and just a bit sour. The fuzzy feeling returned and, before she knew it, her scroll was chirping to remind her they had another PT session. She was only vaguely aware of her surroundings as she shuffled back to training field 3. The feeling didn't go away again that day, and she fell into bed that night dead tired—too tired to complain about the idiot who left the lights on in the barracks. Too tired to be bothered by the faint indigo glow that seemed to saturate everything.

---

"They were watching to make sure you paid attention," I surmised, and she nodded. "And he was… what? Trying to keep from wasting a resource?"

"No idea," Jen shook her head.

"Did you catch the subliminal messaging the first time through?" I asked, and she shot me a confused look.

"The what?"

'Maybe it's not something she realizes she's seen,' I mused. Holding out a hand, I cast a small genjutsu—the first image in the set. "You didn't see that word, there?" I pointed at an area of shadow, where a spot of lighter gray spelled out the word 'enemy.'

Jen's eyes narrowed as she studied the illusion. "Are you sure that's there? It's kind of fuzzy for me."

"Yeah. And that's another thing. What was that light?" I asked, and she shook her head. "It looked like some sort of Dust effect. Like the glow Dust puts off when it's in use."

"Couldn't say," Jen shrugged. "After a while, I sort of stopped noticing."

I shook my head. "Right. Keep going."

---

"Orientation is over. Congratulations—you're no longer slightly better quality trash. You have earned the right to be called Specialists, First Class. From today forward, the person you were is dead. Your family, your friends, your lovers—you're dead to them, and they are dead to you. You have been given new names. You will be assigned to a team, and they will become your new family, your new friends. Your team will be assigned to an Overseer and a Specialist Third Class. – Multiple classes of Specialist? Based on rank advancement? Skill level? – They will be your new parents, for the duration of your training. Your new names, team assignments, and the names of your immediate superiors are on your scrolls. Read them now," Overseer King ordered.

Jen opened her scroll, careful to keep her face as blank as everyone around her, despite how much she wanted to tell Overseer King to fuck right off with his 'your family is dead' bullshit. And it absolutely was bullshit! Her family hadn't abandoned her, would not abandon her… but then, did they even know she had been transferred? There were no calls off base—too remote, they said. She dug herself out of her thoughts and speed-read the information on the scroll.

Cadet Identification: Sierra.

Team: SPTR – Specter.

Teammates: Pup, Tango, Romeo.

Leader: Sierra.

Overseer: King.

S3C: Queen.

Schedule: TBD, pending combat review.

Jen blinked, blue eyes shifting up to meet Overseer King's briefly before she closed her scroll and waited. A moment later, the heavy metal doors opened and a group of six people entered the room. – Two men, four women. The class is also unbalanced, heavy on the women. Gender disparity is apparently not just a Vale thing. – All were dressed in the same sort of white uniform, depending on gender. Overseers wore black fatigues, Specialists wore Atlas-white uniforms. Jen's eyes passed over them from left to right, wondering which one would be Queen… – That one. White hair in a tight bun, blue eyes, beautifully pale, classic aristocratic beauty. That's a Schnee or I'll eat my hat. It was just too bad that my Semblance didn't tag anyone in Jen's memories and Observe didn't work. It didn't matter much, though. I had my answer when she spoke—it was all there in her tone and bearing, the way she carried herself, as though she expected to be listened to and obeyed.

Jen waited as, one by one, the first five teams were called by name and left the room with their S3C, before finally, Overseer King moved to the last S3C's side. "I am Specialist Third Class Queen. Team Specter will report directly to myself or Overseer King until you are promoted to S3C, whereupon you will be either sent into the field or held a year to train a group of new Specialists into S3Cs—after which, once you are promoted to S4C, you will be permanently reassigned to field work. Today, we will be using Training Room 6, where you will display the current full capabilities of your Semblances and we will determine how to continue your training. If you have not discovered your Semblance, please raise your hand." No one moved. "Good. Meal time starts in five minutes. Report to Training Room 6 by 1300." Queen turned to King, raising one fine white eyebrow. "Anything to add, Overseer?"

"Negative, Queenie." The S3C's left eye twitching was the only sign – that there was still a person inside her. God damn, this place needs to burn – of her annoyance, while the Overseer's lips quirked up into a faint smirk, before he turned his attention to SPTR. "Dismissed."

---

"Did you ever figure out who the Schnee was?" I asked, and Jen nodded.

"Once I got out. No internet access there. Winter Schnee. Daughter to the current owner and head of the Schnee Dust Company and previously the heiress, until about the time she joined the Specialist program—if my math is right. Currently assigned under General James Ironwood," the blonde rattled off.

"How do you know what her assignment is?" I asked, and Jen's flat look seemed to ask if I were stupid.

"I still have some contacts within Atlas, from before I was made a Specialist. And it doesn't matter what her current supposed assignment is—I'm the assignment, because I went absent without leave. Anything else is a smoke screen. It's how the program operates. They sent Specter to retrieve me. I killed them. The next they would send would be Queen. If that failed, then they'd send King, with two squads for backup—under normal circumstances, anyway. This isn't exactly SOP though," she explained.

"You killed them?" I asked, and she nodded. "Why?"

Jen's eyes locked with my own, and I saw there was not an an ounce of regret there. "Because they wouldn't have stopped, unless ordered otherwise. If someone tries to escape, SOP is capture, and if that fails, kill. SOP falls to pieces when one of their rogue Specialists is someone important enough that people would actually care if they went missing. Inside Vale, they can't touch me, unless they think they can make it look like an accident. In fact, they went so far as to provide transcripts and mark me as a graduate—I have an official Hunter's license and everything."

"In other words, they're trying to make it appear to the outside world as though nothing out of the ordinary has taken place," I guessed, and she nodded.

"Being an Arc comes with its perks, in Vale. I was able to negotiate all my rotations to be either inside the city or on the outskirts—and always with a team. When I'm not out on rotation, I'm here. As loathe as they are to do anything in Vale for fear of public backlash, they won't dare show up here. Even if our parents aren't home most of the time, the risk of Joan or one of the twins being home at the time keeps them away. I'm good, but the twins are better, and Joan is in a league of her own—she gives our parents a run for their money."

Meeting her eyes, I shook my head. "And if they grabbed Jun?" I asked. It was one of my biggest fears, and the reason I went to such lengths to separate my identities.

Jen looked away. "If they got the drop on her, there wouldn't be much we could do. If not, though, it'd be a bloodbath." I raised an eyebrow at that and she asked, "You don't know what our Semblances are, do you?"

"No," I denied. "Actually, I was going to ask if one of you had some sort of scrying or information gathering Semblance."

"We don't," she shook her head. "All of us sisters are along the same lines: energy manipulation of some form. I won't spoil the surprise for you. If you want to know what the others' Semblances are, you're going to have to ask. But to assuage your fears, this is the safest place for both myself and Jun."

I hummed, nodding eventually. "If you say so. You'd know better than me, on that front. So, you want to try and work through more of this? Or are you tapped out for the night?"

Blue eyes locked with my own and the blonde girl spent a long moment searching them for something, before she nodded. "Please, continue."

"Okay. Give me a minute, though," I said, fishing out my scroll and sending Neo and the twins a text. I'd broken the links between us after connecting with Jen, in order to keep anything from accidentally spilling over, but they were still in party so they knew where I was and who I was with.

'Sorry, change of plans. Looks like I'm going to be here all night. I'll explain tomorrow. Think you can bring a Bullhead and pick us up in the morning?'

Not waiting for a reply, I set the scroll on the bed beside me where I could answer it if need be. "Ready?" I asked Jen, and she nodded.

I focused, pulling up more of her memories, and the horror show that was the last two years of Jen's life resumed.