Narrow Misses
It was a nice early afternoon to be wading through throngs of city-goers today, the sun sitting contentedly in a mostly clear sky. Verandas outside of restaurants were full, arcades packed, ghosts of workers busily passing behind the windows of the many high-rise buildings. Voices chattered, footfalls competed and airship engines roared overhead, giving the suburban landscape the common bustling atmosphere it usually had. As much as Obaz hated the incessant noise he would later reflect on and analyze for understandable information, it was better than the ungodly silence that reigned the last time he was down here in Vale, which hadn't gone very well for him.
There was no way he could have hidden away idly in Beacon for long; coming down to Vale was necessary to get in touch with Hank, and any research into Omeghis couldn't easily be done from within the school. Right now, he wanted to see if the contents of the letter he got recently held any water, and using an anonymous source to look into the mentioned associates of Omeghis would be the wisest choice. He was approaching some kind of shop having a grand re-opening, judging by the white banner with said hastily scribbled message being hung there, when he noticed something on the ground just off from the corner of the building; stooping to grab the small brown square, it turned out to be a wallet.
Obaz flipped open the leather item and skimmed the ID inside, noting that the elderly man pictured within looked much like the one hanging the sign in front of the shop, which at some point had started to fall on one side that he was now quickly trying to right. He approached the old fellow and held the ladder for him. "A common rule of safety is to avoid the use of ladders without assistance."
The man glanced down at Obaz with a smile and a raspy chuckle. "Thank you kindly, sonny. I don't have the kind of Lien to pay an assistant, so I appreciate your help." He overextended to nail in the last corner of the banner, and miraculously he didn't snap any ancient bone in his body. Stepping down from the ladder let Obaz release the tool to hold out the wallet he still held.
"I found this just around the corner. I believe it belongs to you." He was startled, and taking the wallet he double-checked that his pocket was empty.
"Right you are, boy- and my money's gone, of course... Still, thank you for bringing it back to me. The dark-skinned girl with greenish hair must have swiped it just before I gave her directions to Tukson's Book Trade..."
"Red eyes, black and white top surrounding an olive shirt, white pants under brown breeches, black heels?" If he startled the old man any more he might cause a heart attack.
"That is definitely her..."
Obaz nodded. "I saw her on the way here... and I am a regular customer at Tukson's Book Trade. Let me see if I cannot catch up with the girl." There were some thanks and shaking of his hand, but Obaz kept them both short in favor of hurriedness.
Tukson's Book Trade, though... It had been a while since Obaz had been around, and he was fond of the selection there. It was nearly worthy of the owner's slogan, honestly, and Obaz might have been the only good human customer of the Faunus there up until joining the Academy. Tukson himself was well-mannered and knew his facts –it was a shame that he hadn't the time to visit the man and browse for new titles. Hopefully the pickpocket had no ill intentions of robbing the store, though Obaz had some confidence that the Faunus man would catch her in the act given she tried.
It was a several block walk, and by the time Obaz reached the store he was puzzled; despite the hours of operation, the windows were dimmed out and the door was locked. There had been no sign of the girl up until this point... Perhaps Tukson had gone on a vacation, and she had been deterred from here? Obaz tried calling the store, at which point he heard the phone ring inside and eventually draw out to the usual voicemail. Under most circumstances, Obaz wouldn't go off of a hunch, but this was unlike Tukson; as a businessman he was professional, and would have at least left a note or changed the scheduling of hours.
Now unfortunately wasn't the time to be breaking into places even with reasonable doubt, so Obaz called the police with his claims and asked someone to look into the matter. He requested they call him back to either confirm or assuage his doubts once that was done, and explained that he had not seen Tukson within twenty-four hours; the legal time it took for someone to be considered missing, though he neglected to mention that he had no reason to have seen Tukson within that time. As they assured him they would investigate the store, Obaz went about his own business, not knowing where the pickpocket would have gone after this.
Rather than a place to buy books, Obaz' original destination was a place to borrow them for free; the public library. There were enough computers there; all with nondescript IP's attached to them. He shifted the heavy double doors, wandered in with a small wave to the familiar librarians, and took a seat at one of the middlemost machines. They were fortunately cubicled, and though it may have been unnecessary, within seconds a memory wipe was prepared as an early precaution. He got to work.
Today was a quick fishing mission, no hacking involved; it was too early to be rifling through their locked files unless he wanted to be captured immediately. Information on their open history, business transactions, and affiliates would suffice for the time being until he had a better location and equipment that wouldn't be seized afterward. If he were to break into their unmentionables now, even if he got away they would take every computer here in hopes of finding something to trace back to him; soon enough he would have a machine to be dismantled or destroyed after use, but those options weren't open to him yet.
He started with the Khiver incident. Taking place three years and eight months ago, Khiver Lybel had only been with the company for about two years before that. As Yang said, an accident in his work caused him to lose his mind an attack his employer, and once a verdict was reached he was sent to Sliverhang Correctional. The exact details of his work gone wrong and what his dementia was like were unknown according to just about everyone who reported on the subjects... About nine months ago now was when he escaped this Asylum, but despite having a lunatic on the loose most didn't seem to be fazed much by it. The news that he had gotten out hadn't even been headline news the day it took place, and only with the recent antics of thievery and retaliations against those pursuing him were the populace of Vale so much as learning his name; likely the Correctional staff had been trying to cover up what happened in hopes of getting him back under control sooner than this.
Any sort of connections between Omeghis and Averro Co. or Diminu Pharmaceuticals would not be out for all to see, but the construction records for Wiles Infra should be less than protected for any establishments they had been responsible for that were in plain sight. Checking the records of the Omeghis main branch in Vale, as well as those for the other two, showed that they were expansions to buildings already present once success demanded space. Outside Vale, any smaller branches and bases of operations were made from the ground up, but every single one of these projects had been handled physically by Construction companies of varying titles; it appeared that Wiles Infra only designed the infrastructure, and rather than build the structures themselves networked the requests and inventoried necessary materials to the best company for the job, based on finances and reputation. The designs and project management demanded a relatively small fee, and the rest went to those brought in to muscle up. The further he peered into what had turned out to be more of a planning agency, the more he was puzzled.
As he scrolled through the corporation's past undertakings, he noted that everything Wiles Infra did was done electronically, and getting something done through them suggested not ever meeting one of their subordinates. Digging deeper, the company's owner and lead designer came up, and reading this name in particular made him feel dizzy and slightly nauseous for a second. Reading it again once these things had weakened, he understood even less.
When Obaz read the name 'Carson Wiles', he associated the term with himself.
There was not an ounce of doubt in his mind that if he heard someone say the name of Wiles Infra's owner, he would turn and respond as if it were the natural thing to do. Even though he could not for the life of him explain why, that was just how it was. When one looks at a box, one automatically links the shape to that of a 'cube'. When one looks at a cloud, they think it is 'white'; this is just the way a person coordinates their most simplistic knowledge without having to actually think about it, and that was the only way he could interpret the name he had just become familiar with –apparently for the second time.
But where did Obaz come from, and who the hell was Pierce Noccio, if he was Carson Wiles?
He felt exactly the same about both the monikers Obaz and Carson, but far less so when posed with Pierce. If he was Carson Wiles, this meant he had somehow come to be the owner and lead designer of a company within the years he could not remember, which were between the ages of twelve and fifteen of his life –and that made no sense. The scattered pieces of info he could scrounge up on Wiles Infra became fewer and less useful as time went on, and finally Obaz –or Carson? –deemed it time to head back. Perhaps he couldn't avoid occasional excursions to Vale, but he could certainly make them short ones. The planning agency was definitely a hunk of this puzzle that needed to be processed more closely, and being as vague a connection to Omeghis as it was he could easily say that this were research for expansion on Petto Automotive, which he had actually been trying to convince Mr. Petto to do, making this less than a lie. Still, it left a sour taste to cut his search for answers short when he had unearthed such an unusual and deeply personal question.
It was time to return to Beacon. He was feeling hungry, and normally this would have been the opportune time to go to Lani's Plate, but that restaurant would be one of his well-known haunts if Omeghis had so much as asked around. They had had enough trouble with Khiver there; leading OTAF into some kind of stakeout turned raid on the place wouldn't be polite. The docking station for airships back to the school wasn't far, so Obaz packed up and left the shelves upon shelves behind. Perhaps it really was about time for him to find the origins of his 'first' name...
Obaz passed through the front courtyard, planning to stop by the cafeteria having chosen against eating in town. He stopped to watch in mild fascination as a tide of students fled the cafeteria, followed closely by a swarm of angry soda cans. He took a moment to peer through the larger side windows to see teams RWBY and JNPR having a food fight of proportions that suited the school they were going to, and just as soon shook his head of the nonsense in order to leave. Yang blasting out of the roof of the building almost tempted him to turn back and watch some more... almost.
Glynda and Ozpin strode past him on the way into the school building, Ms. Goodwitch with a look of anger that suggested she had found out what was going on in the cafeteria while the Headmaster seemed indifferent as he usually did. After stepping aside for the two to pass despite not really having to, Obaz navigated the nearly empty hallways after acquiring his gear from the lockup with the basic training room in mind; the one where he and Blake had first shared words. It was likely that the cafeteria would be both fixed and void of students by the time he had gone through a workout, and by then his appetite will have peaked with the exercise.
Team Strength was currently using the room as it turned out, along with Sophia. His own teammate smiled and waved just after finishing a few thrusts of Matenlock that were being measured by a relative of the speedometer, tipping off the other team present.
"Where have you been all morning?" His blonde associate wondered.
"Vale." Steven barked a laugh at the vague response that was typical of him. Obaz said nothing further even as she rolled her eyes, unfolding Pariah in flamberge form. Steven wandered over, glancing between his own members and Sophia who were just finishing up common practice.
"You know... With Obaz here, that puts us even. How about a three-on-three mock battle?" Sophia grinned, while the girls of Steven's own team were interested. Obaz' mouth straightened, though he didn't frown.
"Sophia and I would have to be on opposing sides, in order to be fair. If one trio were made up solely of your team's members, they would have the advantage, where our side will not have cooperated much with our third candidate." Steven nodded, thinking about it. "I was thinking it'd just be a multi-spar anyways. This room wouldn't survive if we all went free-for-all."
Sophia grabbed the twins and backed away from the others. "These two are inseparable, so this works for me." She seemed eager to say the least. That left Helena and Steven alongside Obaz, and if they were anything like they had been during the initiation, this mock battle was already in Sophia's favor.
Helena stepped back to their assigned end of the room to start at, drawing her two kukri. "So what would these teams be called, do you think? SHO and NTS?"
Obaz shook his head. "Four-letter acronyms translate to team names. Anything less is coded as a color; in an event such as this, we would be red team, and they blue team." Steven looked down at his red plaid shirt, making a face of understanding and nodding about the fact.
Sophia swung her lance twice before pointing it at red team, a fierce look about her. "Alright then, you dirty reds! Us blues are gonna mop the floor with you!"
"I'm not even Blue. This green is more yellow than it is blue." Teresa whined, apparently against being the odd one out of her trio. Nicole pat her on the back as if it would help, telling her that being on red team would have made her closer to orange, which was apparently worse. Sophia continued to slander them solely for being red team.
Helena gave Steven a look. "I think you broke them... And something feels backwards about this whole thing –like it should be you calling them names, or something."
Steven sighed, getting into a proper stance. "We'll count down from five."
"Does that five just now count, or are we counting down from five after we say we are?" Sophia questioned. Steven made an incredulous expression to answer her, soon stating 'four' to clarify where they were in the countdown and going from there. At two, Helena now asked if they were counting down to zero or going at one, at which point Steven dropped position and turned to her in frustration. "Yes, we are including the number zero-"
At this, blue team rushed them while shouting something about skipping the number one and how the reds were filthy cheats. Obaz wondered to himself if somehow these girls got drunk off of competitive spirit before deflecting a strike from Nicole's spetum.
Steven and Sophia weren't budging an inch from where they met despite Sophia having taken him by surprise, the redhead making his switch from casual student to relentless fighter. Bashing at her shield, trying to get shallow swings around the sides and kicking at her weapon to move it from where she wanted it to be, the attempts to force an opening were being met with opportunistic stabs and swipes of her lance and clawed glove when it seemed he might be recklessly trying to break her guard. He caught her lance by curling an arm around the shaft of it, while his blade sunk with only one hand to heft the bulky thing. She caught his forehead in her hand when he tried to headbutt her, her own weapon needing both hands to lift initially for an attack it fell also. They were at a stalemate until she scratched his face while diverting it away, trying to ram her shoulder into the base of Matenlock while Steven kicked Anvil Cleaver off the ground with his foot to propel it into a clumsy upward swing at her ribcage. Both were narrowly avoided once the two had no choice but to break apart.
Teresa and Helena were clashing at intense speeds, with Teresa's pistol katars meeting Helena's kukri at every which angle they tried for. Helena had to step back into a crouch on one leg to avoid and uppercut followed by a horizontal slash, coming up with a windmill motion of her body twisting as it rose to slice upward numerous times. Teresa rolled out of the way of this, bringing the katars up for a shot-enhanced lunge that Helena flipped over, kicking the other girl in the back of the head just before landing to send her stumbling away.
Nicole's spetum was giving Obaz a hard time with the wide range of slashes and stabs it was capable of from a distance, leaving him on the defensive at first. Nicole was used to keeping the blade from getting unbalanced from deflections, as even when he tried to parry the attacks to allow some of his own she caught herself earlier than he could move in and act. It was the exact opposite of fighting Yang; she was always too close but too fast to counteract, while Nicole was too far and always in control of the battle's tempo. Needing to take a risk in order to bring about his own favor here, Obaz ducked a diagonal swipe of the spetum in order to punch it up further and give a straight kick to the shaft made up of shotgun barrels, pressing the weapon into her as well as pushing the girl back. She drew her grip on her weapon closer to the blade head as Obaz pounced, swinging Pariah into a rapid onslaught of swings in short blade form that she struggled to keep from cutting into her sides. Soon she managed to slide to the side and limbo under one of his slashes to cross-check him in the head, followed by stabbing at his chest, which he took a gash for.
Sophia defended against a heavy blow from Steven, who slammed the flat of his sword into her shield. She was shocked when he moved so the end was tilted toward the ground between her legs, and he shoved into the flat on his side after dipping low, lifting her up and above him even with how much she and her gear weighed together. Leaning backward, he pushed as hard as he could with his hands to keep her airborne and turned his momentum upward into a cartwheel backward, sending Sophia into the ground and landing on his feet just past her to get into his overhand charging stance. She was rattled for a moment, but managed to roll out of the way before the executioner's razor came down on where she lay, recovering with a roundabout swing of her lance that took him in the back and threw him toward Helena and Teresa, both of whom had to jump back from the other to escape getting hit by the red leader.
Obaz had switched to rifle form, firing at the ceiling for reasons none of them could understand just yet, which drew Helena's attention long enough to get slashed in the leg and shoulder by Teresa. She leapt to the side to avoid a chestward thrust and made a comeback of five or so strikes at Teresa, who danced out of the range of these but was clipped at the waist by the last of them. Sophia nearly trampled Helena as she chased after Steven, knocking her aside with Matenlock's shield and offering Teresa another chance to lunge for her blonde teammate, but the girl flexed her back and slammed both of her heels into Teresa's stomach, getting to her feet soonafter.
Pariah's blade sprung back out glowing blue with radiation, causing Nicole to retreat in order to gauge what this would change about her opponent. As he swung at her and their weapons connected, electricity coursed through her spetum into her hands briefly from the contact, and after only a few of these her arms were going numb. The heat it was giving off was also making her sweat now, and with another underhand swing he knocked the spetum clear out of her hands to follow up with a bash of his hand guard into the side of her head. She kicked upward for his jaw, but he stepped aside and turned to face the way she was next to her. He wrapped his arm around her neck from the front, and brought his knee up into her spine hard enough to knock her partly into the air for another hard hit of the hand guard into her chest, pounding her into the floor.
Nicole had been defeated as she wasn't planning to get up anytime soon, and Teresa somehow tied with Helena, both having worn each other out and now standing out of the way. Sophia and Steven on the other hand were like two titans duking it out, hitting their opponent with such force that the sound reverberated through the room and shook it oftentimes. Eventually, Steven won out against her, at a point where he caught Matenlock by the lance shaft again and swung it like a club into her head. She was sent careening into the wall on the opposite end of the room, and with a groan she rolled over but wouldn't stand for another round.
"Looks like Red team takes the cup, guys." Steven minimized his weapon and holstered it on his back. Obaz was already on his way out, which didn't surprise him; what did surprise him was the fact that Nicole had been bested by the guy. The changes made to his equipment must have really made the difference, as skill-wise he hadn't thought Obaz would win against the quieter twin. He had been turning to the girl in question when he noticed the ceiling where Obaz had been shooting starting to fall apart.
"Heads up, Obaz!" he shouted a warning, but the area that collapsed was too large to get out from under, and the room above this one was one of the regulator rooms for the upper floors; an entire furnace was coming down, the ground beneath it unable to hold it any longer. Sophia was running toward her teammate, but despite her shout of desperation and outstretched hand the debris came down on him too quickly. As the dust from the collapse settled, team Strength stared in bewilderment at the result.
Sophia's purple-colored aura was coalescing at her hand directed to Obaz, where it was flowing over itself in a weaving motion across the palm of her hand. Obaz had his left arm up to protect his head, but that slowly came away as he took in the fact that everything had fallen around him; his own aura was wildly swirling about his body, purple woven into his own cobalt which was somehow bolstering it to such a degree that it had completely shielded him from harm, where normally this could have injured him badly...
Apparently, they had just witnessed the birth of Sophia's semblance.
This event was immediately overshadowed by Glynda entering the room, fixing the ceiling, and chastising all six of them to no end. It only stopped when fingers were pointed at Obaz, and his defense was this; "From today's examples alone, it seems to me that the structural integrity of Beacon itself is hardly trustworthy in the first place."
Ms. Goodwitch then dragged him aside, and allowed the other five to go on their way.