A Changing World
Act 2
Chapter 16: Moving Forward (Part One)
A/N: So the ending of this story is due in a few chapters.
I hope you all enjoy what is still to come.
…
"It seems the Albain brothers escaped and killed your parents, Blake Belladonna."
"Yeah, those two who were content to stay in prison without attempting to escape before, choose to do it now. The timing is quite convenient, don't you think, Banesaw?"
"Regardless, it has happened. I thought you should know."
"S-spare me the fake sympathy! I wouldn't accept that from a-anyone, l-least of all you! Mark my words Banesaw, I will find you and kill you!"
A dull thud was heard next, before the recording of the call that had been extracted from the CCT ended.
The group that had been present for the attack on the White Fang headquarters was now; minus Ruby and Yang (but plus Gobber), assembled in a white-tiled briefing room aboard General Mondschein's ship, noon, two days after Blake and Banesaw's death.
The room was furnished with a large round oak table and chairs that surrounded it.
Atop the table was a desk scroll, which had played the recording of the scroll call.
"My work here is done. I'll be taking that scroll to be destroyed now," the InfoHunt technician who had arrived with the recording of the call said as he snatched it up.
"My men know to escort you to the hangar so you can get back to Atlas. Thank you for your time," said General Mondschein.
"No worries," said the man before leaving the room.
"That would have been just before I found Blake in her bedroom. I should have known about this," muttered Weiss.
"None of us knew, Weiss. Try not to feel bad about this. There was nothing we could have done," said Hiccup.
"Take it from someone whose first wife left me for a tribe in Mistral and my second wife died while Yang and Ruby were much younger. Losing people you care about hurts, and not everyone can handle it."
"That applies when you lose teammates as well, but I hope you don't have to go through that as team JNPR did," said Oobleck.
"Did you lose someone, sir?" asked Weiss.
"My team leader and his partner. He lost her first during Mountain Glen, then sacrificed himself to save me and my partner, only for my partner to leave and turn to a life of crime," he explained.
"But enough about that. I believe we ought to question our guests about the whereabouts of these Albain brothers."
"I'll leave that to everyone else here because if I have to go talk to them, I don't know what I would do. In fact, I don't want to know," said Weiss.
"In that case, I'll do it as I already have an idea," said Qrow before turning to address General Mondschein. "I'll need to see Banesaw's corpse."
"Why? What are you planning?" asked the General.
"We should talk about that alone, but I will need you to get in contact with the morgue," replied Qrow, getting up out of his seat while speaking and then leaving the room, ignoring all the stares that last part of his sentence drew to him.
…
A fist met part of the wall of the hallway on the top deck of the ship. The fist left behind a small dent, with the owner of the appendage sporting red eyes and glowing hair.
Yang cursed under her breath, before letting loose a barrage of punches while ignoring the looks of passing soldiers as they traversed the ship on patrol.
She paused to suck in a breath, before continuing until her chest heaved from the effort.
"Yang, I know you're mad, but can you stop that before we can get in trouble?" asked Ruby, wincing as the dent got bigger and bigger before her sister's fists suddenly disappeared inside it.
Her words prompted Yang to cease the act of letting her anger burn. She retracted her fists from the wall as her semblance simmered down. Then she spoke. "If the General has a problem with this then he can come and say it to me, himself. But anyway, what about you, Ruby?"
"What about me?"
"Do you need a shoulder to cry on? I can help you there. It's what a sister is for after all."
Ruby nodded and ran forward to embrace Yang. It wasn't long afterwards that Ruby's façade broke and Yang's shirt grew damp with tears.
"Let it all out, sis. It's okay," murmured Yang, tightening the hug as she spoke.
"I just can't believe she's gone! My mum, Pyrrha and now Blake! They're all gone!" sobbed Ruby. "How many more people will we lose?"
To her annoyance, Yang found she couldn't answer that question in any satisfying way, so she settled with saying nothing as she hugged Ruby.
Then approaching footsteps alerted both girls to a certain blond-haired boy. "You two doing okay?"
"One of us more than the other," said Yang. "What about you, Jaune?"
"Better, thanks to Arslan. Which brings me to why I'm here. My team, family and Arslan want to have a party to cheer everyone up. I think Ruby could use one in particular."
"I agree," mumbled Ruby before separating from Yang. "That's a good idea, Jaune. Did you come up with it?"
"Nora actually. She hates feeling gloomy. Anyway, shall we go find the others?"
"I'm up for you doing that for my little sis," said Yang with Ruby nodding along, not even protesting when Yang ruffled her hair.
"Great! Let's get back to the others then you two," said Jaune.
…
A scroll featuring a picture of Banesaw was held in front of the cells that contained Yuma and Trifa, in clear view of both, much to their visible disgust.
The former looked away from the device after a moment and the latter distanced herself from the sight as much as possible, pressing her back against the rear wall of her cell.
The picture displayed Banesaw with his chest sliced open and a bullet hole present in the centre of his forehead.
"Just so we're all on the same page, this picture was taken at the scene. So, unless you want to end up like this or worse, courtesy of myself, tell me where the Albain brothers are," said Qrow, as he stood in the presence of the general and two Atlas soldiers. "What's it going to be?"
"Alright, I'll tell you! Just please put that scroll away!" pleaded Trifa.
Qrow did so, handing it back to General Mondschein before returning his focus to the two faunus. "Alright you two, spill the beans."
Drawing as close to Qrow and the others present as she could, Trifa spoke. "They're in Menagerie."
"Menagerie? Why did they go there?"
"To take over. The Belladonna family is gone now. Banesaw wanted them to take control before a new chieftain was elected there. They left a few hours before you all arrived," Yuma explained.
"So they'll have a head start. Did they go alone or with a few White Fang people?"
Trifa shook her head. "You don't understand. They're already there. Banesaw sent some people to break them out of prison."
"Right, we're done here. I know what we need to do," said Qrow.
…
"Another trip to Menagerie? Wonderful. And here I thought that we were done," said Hiccup.
The group were now all back in the briefing room from earlier.
"Wishful thinking Hiccup. That rarely happens, so you best get used to it," was Qrow's reply.
"Why don't we have a party first?" suggested Jaune.
"You tend to have parties when someone dies, Jaune?" asked Hiccup, an eyebrow-raising as he spoke.
"I was thinking it would be good to keep up morale in that way."
"I vote to do that after we go to Menagerie."
"C'mon, Hiccup! It'll be fun!" said Ruby.
"Oh, by all means, do that, but count me out. There's something we should all do first."
"Why won't you just forget about working for a little while?" asked Yang.
"Why? Why?!" Hiccup closed the distance between himself and Yang, coming to stand right in front of her, eyes cold. "Because I agreed to let a person who shouldn't have been in a fight, fight anyway, resulting in that person's death for the second time; Pyrrha Nikos and now Blake.
Because maybe If I was fast enough, I could have dealt with Banesaw instead of Blake and been able to stop her from killing herself.
Because Qrow just told us the Albain brothers are in Menagerie, and as we know they killed Blake, we should deal with them before celebrating.
So feel free to party all you want guys, but there is still work to do, so I'm going to head for Menagerie, by myself, if I must," his speech over, Hiccup drew back from Yang before returning to stand next to Astrid.
"Well, I'm staying here with Ruby. She needs some cheering up," replied Yang.
Hiccup nodded. "Like I said earlier, that's fine with me."
"He does make a strong point, however," mused Port. "Who else agrees that we should head out for Megnarie now? Raise your hand if you do."
Weiss, Astrid, Gobber, team CFVY, Qrow, Oobleck, Port, Arslan and Ruby did so, while Taiyang, Jaune, Yang, Nora and Jaune's family did not.
Ren raised his hand partially but retracted it when he saw Nora wasn't going to.
"Alright then," said Port. "Those who raised their hands will go to Menagerie, while the rest will stay here and organise the party. Does anyone have a problem with that?" No one said anything. "Good. It's now settled."
"Well since everyone has made their minds up, you'll need to follow me to the hangar where the airships are stored. Let's get you all back on solid ground, instead of this floating hunk of metal, shall we?" suggested General Mondschein. "If you wouldn't mind following me…"
…
The rising sun was casting the sky orange and rays were glinting through the windows of the SDC Bullhead as it came into land.
Beside it flew two dragons, one on either side, with their riders both in their armour with their helmet visors down.
"Where do you think those Albain brothers will be, Hiccup?" asked Astrid, speaking through the communication device in her helmet.
"Not sure, but Blake's house would be a good place to start looking, I think," he responded through his own helmet.
Raising his visor, Hiccup leaned forward. "Faster bud. Land over there," he instructed, pointing at a large house ahead of them before pushing his visor down again.
Toothless crooned in acknowledgement and sped up, pulling ahead of the Bullhead and Stormfly.
Landing in front of the house, Hiccup disembarked, followed by Gobber.
Then Stormfly landed, with the Bullhead landing a fair distance away from them both.
"You enjoy your first time on Air Hofferson?" Astrid asked Arslan.
"A bit, yeah. Colder than I thought it would be up there, though," she replied. "I can see why you guys like it. How long have you two had dragons for?"
"About two years. But one thing you should know: never try to feed a dragon an eel. They're terrified of them," said Hiccup
"I'll keep that in mind," she said before eyeing Toothless. "Earlier, when you asked which dragon I wanted to ride on, you mentioned his name was Toothless. Why did you call him that?"
"Show her, bud."
Toothless opened his mouth to reveal pink gums before his teeth shot up from within them.
"He has retractable teeth? That's pretty cool," said Arslan.
"Yeah, I found out the first time I fed him fish. The name obviously stuck and shortly afterwards he regurgitated half of it to eat. It was disgusting."
"You had to eat that?" she asked, wrinkling her nose.
"Not the whole thing thankfully; just one bite, but yeah."
"Now I must admit I'm wondering how you're taking this, this well. Most people back home aren't exactly fond of dragons. I expected you to have more questions about them at the very least," said Astrid.
"I grew up reading fairytale stories of dragons as a kid. They were pretty popular in my hometown in Mistral. I'd always wanted to see one back then. But I've never been someone to ask many questions about anything. I prefer simply to experience it."
"Oh, I like this one. If only there were more people like you back home," said Hiccup
"You're welcome? And where is home sweet home? Vale?"
"No, much further away than that. Let's just say you can't get there through conventional means."
"Mysterious," grinned Arslan. "Now I have questions."
"I'm afraid they'll have to wait, Miss Altan," said Oobleck, the others having arrived. "I believe we should go inside now, don't you?"
"Yeah, let's do it," Just as she said this, the heavy double doors of the Belladonna household opened, revealing a pair of White Fang guards about to start patrol around the area.
Spotting the group standing in the vicinity, each guard pointed their rifles at them, at the same time the group pointed their weapons at them.
"Put your weapons on-" one of the guards began, only for his body to seize up and fall to the ground as a lightning Dust round hit him, followed by his companion, who entered the same state and fell beside him.
"Thank you, Weiss, for those Dust rounds," said Hiccup, lowering his axes.
"You're welcome. Now let's go inside and finish this."
…
The Albain brothers were found in the kitchen of the household, sitting at a pinewood table, with a pistol in easy reach of both of them.
Hearing footsteps, they both abandoned their breakfast, picked up their respective gun and watched the door.
Arslan knocked the door down with a full-strength blow, not holding back as she had with Jaune, earlier. Hiccup and Qrow then ran into the room in quick succession.
Corsac and Fennec both fired at the former, but as Hiccup had his shield raised before him as he advanced, it did nothing, merely ricocheting off the metal.
He then stepped aside as Qrow leapt onto the table and kicked the pair to the ground. He then placed a foot on Fennec's chest while Hiccup aimed his axes at both of them. "Stay down now. That was us going easy on you two."
"How did you find us so soon?" asked Fennec.
"The White Fang underwent a loss - your high leader, with those who served him willing to reveal information with the right persuasion," said Qrow. "Now get up. You're coming with us."
Gunfire erupted in the hallway outside, resulting in both Hiccup and Qrow looking in the direction of the door.
In that brief moment of distraction, Corsac kicked at Qrow's leg, knocking the man off balance and allowing Fennec to snatch up his gun.
Aiming at Qrow, he fired but missed, as Qrow turned into a crow upon seeing the gun.
Hiccup then fired at Fennec, incapacitating him and Corsac in quick succession, just like the guards outside.
When Qrow assumed his human form again, he stepped forward and took the guns from both fox faunus', their state meaning they couldn't resist.
It was now over, coincidentally at the same time that the gunfire in the hallway died down.
Putting his axes in the holsters at his hips, Hiccup pulled Fennec roughly to his feet at the same time that Qrow followed suit.
"I applaud you both for trying, but that was never going to work," commented Qrow before he and Hiccup shoved them in the direction of the door and the hallway beyond.
"What happened just now? We heard gunfire?" asked Hiccup.
"More White Fang goons showed up, coming from upstairs. They were surprised to see us. It's all sorted now though," said Arslan, pointing at the staircase situated at the end of the hallway where four more goons lay convulsing atop it, having also been shot by lightning Dust rounds.
"Same here, as you can see. So what now?" asked Hiccup.
"I want to speak with the local council and make a suggestion on a venture to be made here," said Weiss.
"What kind of venture?" wondered Port.
"A memorial. Something to remember the Belladonna family by, in the future."
"Do you know where the council is?" asked Oobleck.
"Yes. I've met with them in the past, accompanied by Ghira. Now, follow me, everyone." Weiss paused before turning to Qrow and Hiccup. "Make sure they can't escape. Use more lightning Dust rounds if they try anything," she added.
"Will do," they replied.
