Bump in the Night
[Beacon Tavern, night time]
Qrow, Sun, Yang, Ruby, and Melanie were sitting in a circle in the Tavern's basement, all except Melanie wore their preferred mask. A table stood in the center of their chairs, photographs and hand-drawn blueprints strewn over it as they mused on the situation. Ruby's computer quietly hummed in the background, busy running some homebrew code to cover her most recent incursion into the Vale P.D.'s network.
"I guess there's no way around this..." Qrow finally growled, sitting up straight. All eyes turned to him, expecting a grand plan to issue from his mouth.
"We're going to split into four teams" Qrow announced. "Red will remain here and maintain our comms, as well as monitor our locations and relay messages." Ruby nodded, cracking her knuckles as she glanced back at her computer, ready to go.
"Melanie" Qrow continued, turning to face the criminal who sat across from him. "You and Trickster will intercept Sky Lark before he makes his delivery of black market faunus and..."
"You promised me I would be saving my sister!" Melanie interrupted, a frown crossing her face.
"That was before General Arc entered town" Qrow replied smoothly. "The Vale PD is going to be very jumpy about the security of such an important figure, and the more of us who try to infiltrate the building, the more likely we are to be caught. Besides, your presence will most likely deter Lark from running, at least initially."
"Fine..." Melanie growled. "I'll play your game, as long as I get my sister back."
"You will" Qrow assured her, his tone serious and sincere. "I never go back on my word. As I was saying, you and Trickster will apprehend Lark and seize his faunus. You will then proceed to close the deal with the client before Trickster will escort you to the rendezvous point where you will be reunited with your sister." Melanie and Sun both nodded, Melanie not bothering to question why they were to close the deal first.
"Phoenix" Qrow turned to Yang. "You're going to follow Trickster and Melanie as they apprehend Lark and close the deal with their client. You will then shadow the client to determine their residence and hopefully their identity. If you are discovered, do not engage. Just lose any pursuers and return here, your safety is more important than finding every person who plays the black market." Yang nodded, throwing Sun a wink that he playfully returned.
"As for me" Qrow continued, again turning to face Melanie. "I will infiltrate the Vale PD and rescue your sister, evade the police, and meet up at the rendezvous point. From there, you two will leave Vale immediately and indefinitely." Everyone around the table nodded one last time in agreement, and Qrow clapped his hands to signal the beginning of the night's activities.
[Vale PD]
The word 'chaos' barely even began to describe the Vale PD barracks. Neptune, bored of waiting for their new CO to arrive after only one hour, had taken it upon himself to start a pillow fight by hurling the nearest feather-stuffed sack of cloth at Nora's head. Nora, also bored and not receiving any contrary orders from Ren, immediately returned fire with her own pillow, which had flown wide and solidly struck Scarlet in the spine. Enraged, Scarlet threw his thin frame into the fray, hurling pillows left and right with feral ferocity. Sage came to Neptune's defense as the air filled with feathers, and it wasn't long before all four were deeply involved in the greatest pillow fight of their careers. Coco smirked a little at the antics of her team, abstaining from joining them in their senseless yet completely natural roughhousing. That is, she abstained until a stray pillow knocked her prized beret from her head, whereupon she unleashed a hail of non lethal rubber bullets from her chaingun while her eyes blazed with fire behind her designer sunglasses.
Amidst the chaos Ren and Yatsuhashi sat side by side in the lotus position, their eyes closed and their breathing regular as they meditated. The combined aura of their inner peace radiated around them, deflecting the flying pillows and deadening the mock war cries and playful shouts of their comrades. Each was deep within their own mental exercises, dead to the rambunctious activities of their comrades. However, while Yatsuhashi was genuinely taking the opportunity to restore his body and aura, Ren was busy finalizing the last details of an intricate plan, one that was sensitive to the activities of almost every person in the Vale PD.
And all that's left to do is wait... Ren thought to himself, letting his intricate mental models fade away into blank nothingness as he finally slipped back into his meditative trance.
"What in the hell...?" a voice came from the doorway, and everyone froze as they turned their gaze upon the newcomer. He was tall and broad at the shoulders, his well-toned muscles were just discernible through the thin fabric of his dress shirt, the top button of which was undone. His blond hair was close-cropped in a military buzzcut, and his hard blue eyes took in the scene before him with equal measure of confusion and resignation.
Scarlet was hanging off of Sage's broad back, his thin arms wrapped in an ineffectual chokehold around the massive man's neck. Sage was serving as a body shield for Neptune, taking the brunt of the hail of bullets Coco had been spraying from her chaingun. Coco herself was aiming her weapon with one hand, using the other wrestle with Nora. Nora, the irrepressible and often irresponsible soul that she was, had just pulled the pin on one of her dust grenades, a maniacal grin slowly melting off her face as she realized just who had walked in on their mock battle.
"Good evening, sir" Ren greeted emotionlessly, saluting as he stood up. "And welcome to Vale."
"Thank you..." General Arc returned, his face impassive as the five soldiers in front of him hurriedly put away their weapons and stood at attention, trying and failing to look innocent.
"If I may, sir" Yatsuhashi inquired, his salute relaxed yet crisp. "What brings the most famous general in all Remnant to the Vale PD?"
"Excellent question" General Arc returned, gesturing for the five VCT officers plus Nora and Yatsuhashi to stand at ease. "I'm here for the same reason you all are: the elimination of Vale's 'vigilante problem'."
"Is it really that bad, sir?" Coco asked, one eyebrow raised.
"You don't know?" General Arc asked, somewhat surprised. When he got five heads shaking 'no' at him, he sighed.
"I guess I should have expected that..." he mumbled resignedly, covering the lower half of his face with his hand as he mentally bemoaned the military's policy of compartmentalization. "To answer your question, analysis of existing and new data suggests that these 'vigilantes' might not be just vigilantes. If the pattern that has been discerned in their actions is not coincidental, then we may have a case of domestic terrorism to handle."
Ren's eyes narrowed imperceptibly at General Arc's last sentence. Though vague, it more or less confirmed that the military agreed with his theory that 'Paladin' and his accomplices were liberating faunus from the black market. Coco caught his eye and imperceptibly nodded, remembering the data he had shown her on the roof.
"However" General Arc continued, his tone serious. "It is known that these vigilantes are in their late teens, meaning that we would have tens of thousands of potential culprits if we hunted by traditional methods, which would be a massive drain on time and resources." He paused, letting his statement sink in as he pulled up a table and set his scroll upon it.
"Which is why we're adopting a different strategy" General Arc said, activating a hologram function and pulling up a virtual map of Vale. "Since hunting for the vigilantes themselves is impracticable, even if we wired the entire red-light district and waited for them to make a move, we're going to go after the root problem: the criminals themselves."
"Isn't that impractical in of itself, sir?" Ren asked politely. "According to Vale law, each of those criminals is entitled..."
"I am aware of Vale law" General Arc stated shortly. "However, the analysis of the crimes committed within Vale's red light district over the past five years is so bleak that I have been authorized to cleanse it. The Council wishes the operation to go off quietly and smoothly so they can put this problem behind them and get on with their bureaucratic lives."
"So, we shoot to kill?" Scarlet asked, an almost hungry look in his eyes as he licked his thin lips.
"More or less" General Arc replied calmly. "All that matters is that we sweep away the source of the vigilantes' activities. Additionally, we are to reclaim stolen property, capture high value targets for trial, and keep our actions low-key enough to avoid the attention of the citizens of Vale. Any questions?" The group shook their heads, indicating that everything was perfectly clear to them.
"Dismissed" General Arc said, picking up his scroll as he turned and left the room.
"Harsh, if you ask me" Coco muttered, falling back onto her bunk and folding her hands behind her head. "Even if the General is instituting martial law, everyone still deserves a trial..." Yatsuhashi, Sage, and Neptune all nodded in agreement. Scarlet, seeing that his innate bloodthirst was outnumbered, wisely chose to remain silent. Nora happily skipped past Ren and out of the room, singing a little ditty about being the queen of a castle. Ren resumed his meditative pose and waited, his mental clock ticking down.
Soon... He thought to himself as his aura tracked Nora's boisterous presence through the Vale PD. Soon...
"Shut the hell up!" Sky Lark hissed, accentuating his words with a swift blow to the gut. The target of his ire, a doe faunus with soulful brown eyes and swaths of soft fur along her bare arms, doubled over with tears in her eyes, biting her lip to keep from crying out.
"Asshole..." Sun muttered from his hiding place just outside the abandoned apartment complex's parking lot, his staff held low and at the ready. "Tell me why we're waiting, again?"
"Logistics" Melanie replied, carefully keeping any irritation out of her voice. "When you destroyed Warehouse 3, Lark only had a single van's worth of space to take his merchandise with him. Thus, he's staking everything he's got left on this deal. If we let him load all the faunus into the van before we jump him, we save ourselves some work searching the place."
"I really want to break this guy" Sun growled, his tail twitching in anger as he witnessed yet another female faunus get dragged across the lot and shoved into the waiting van.
When Lark finally turned for the driver's side door instead of the apartment complex, Sun made his move. He dashed from the shadows, his staff held low as he sprinted across the lot. Taken by surprise, the grey-haired faunus dealer fumbled with the door before trying to draw his halberd from his back, his shaking hands costing him the chance to escape or defend himself. Sun's staff struck Lark across the jaw, knocking him into the side of the van. Leaving the stunned criminal to Melanie, Sun rushed to the back of the van and threw open the doors. Seven faunus were crammed inside, all staring at him with eyes wide with surprise and fear.
"Evening ladies and...ladies" Sun said, leaving out the second half of the phrase as he noticed that the faunus were all female. "I am Trickster, friend and colleague of the vigilante Paladin."
"Paladin?" the doe faunus spoke up, her brown eyes flickering with hope. "The man with the sword and armor?"
"Yes, that's him" Sun agreed politely. "I'm here with my..." He winced as he heard the sound of metal striking flesh, followed immediately by Lark's very high-pitched cursing and moaning.
"...temporary ally, to help take out players on the black market" Sun continued, his tone becoming apologetic. "To that end, I'm sorry to say that you won't be freed immediately." The crestfallen and even depressed looks that the seven faunus gave him tore at his heart, but he steeled his resolve. Qrow's plans hadn't failed them yet, after all.
"However" Sun hurriedly added, wanting to leave them with hope. "Paladin will arrive within three days to free you. We just need to know who's working the black market, so we can take it down permanently. Can you all just bear with me on this? Please?" The faunus slowly, reluctantly nodded, most still too shocked to properly respond. Nodding, Sun shut the van doors and returned to Melanie, who was standing over an unconscious Sky Lark with a look of distaste.
"Sang like a bird" she announced, kicking the limp body aside as she pulled open the driver's side door. "I'll drive." Sun wordlessly crossed to the other side of the van, taking his place in the passenger seat.
It was a silent drive through the empty streets of Vale's red-light district, neither Sun nor Melanie having anything to say to the other. Melanie focussed all her attention on driving, soothing her injured pride by constantly reminding herself that this arrangement was temporary, that it was all to save her sister. Sun took the opportunity to swap his customary flaming bananas bandana for a black balaclava, adding Lark's leather jacket and tucking his tail under his shirt for good measure. Though it was unlikely that anyone knew his appearance, he wasn't going to take any chances.
"We're here" Melanie stated, pulling to a stop in a wide but concealed alley. Another van was already waiting for them, the driver lounging against the hood as he casually smoked.
"Let's get this over with" Sun muttered, unlocking the doors. The two stepped out at the same time, and the anonymous driver threw away his cigarette and stood up, glancing their way with dull eyes.
"You have the goods?" he asked, his tone rather bored and his voice nasally.
"You have the money?" Melanie returned haughtily, raising an eyebrow and folding her arms across her chest.
"Of course" the driver grinned, reaching through the open window of his van and pulling out a briefcase. He flicked it open to reveal neat stacks of bills, which Melanie imperiously gestured for Sun to investigate. Fighting down an urge to roll his eyes at how cliche the whole proceedings were, Sun complied, making a show of rifling through the stacks before nodding over his shoulder.
"Right this way" Melanie said, leading the driver around to the back of the van as Sun took and closed the briefcase. She opened the back doors of the van, allowing the driver to climb in and glance over the faunus.
"Everything seems to be in order" he said, nodding in satisfaction as he stepped out. "Let's make the transfer quick, eh?" With Melanie standing guard, Sun and the driver quickly shifted the faunus into the other van. Sun whispered an apology to each of the faunus he moved, again promising that Paladin would be along to free them. The deal was done in less than two minutes, and the anonymous driver pulled out of the alley without even saying goodbye.
"I'm really going to enjoy breaking whoever hired him" Sun muttered, stepping up to the driver's side door. "Get in, Miss Malachite." Melanie huffed in resignation, lightly stepping into the passenger's seat. All she had to do was hold her composure for a little while longer and then she and her sister would be reunited and on their way out of the city.
Qrow slowly tensed and relaxed his muscles, feeling the wind gently pressing against his body as he lined up his jump for the third time. He was standing on the rooftop of a rather tall apartment building, which faced the Vale PD Tower across four lanes of city traffic and two wide sidewalks. The horizontal distance between him and the Tower was roughly fifty feet, and the vertical distance he had to rise to reach the roof of the Tower was perhaps an additional fifty. This created a perfect 45-45-90 right triangle for his jump to follow, and some mental math told him he needed to cover at least 71 feet along the hypotenuse to reach the roof of the Tower. He flexed his neck and back, getting out some cricks and limbering up his muscles, 71 feet at a 45 degree angle was nothing he hadn't done before.
"You there, Red?" Qrow asked, finishing his stretching and pacing several feet back from the edge of the building.
"Yep!" Ruby's voice came clearly over the comm unit nestled snugly in his ear.
"What kind of window am I looking at?" Qrow asked, mentally adding up seconds as he envisioned moving through the Tower.
"You'll have at least one minute and no more than two starting from the second I pull the plug" Ruby stated. "After that, the police will be able to bypass the manual lock and activate the backup generator. You need to be away from security devices long before then."
"Easy enough" Qrow muttered, slowly planting his feet for a running start. "You ready?"
"The code's all set" Ruby replied happily, and Qrow could practically hear the smile creeping across her face as she held her finger above the enter key.
"Three..." Qrow began, allowing himself a slight smile at his image of Ruby's childish glee. She had loved anything and everything technical ever since she was young, and she had taken to hacking and tinkering like a duck to a pond.
"Two..." He continued, beginning to run forward. She reminded him so much of Summer, what with both being incredibly intelligent, friendly, and empathetic. They both embraced the world with open arms and open minds, and both possessed an eternal optimism that he never had.
"One!" He finished, jumping off the edge with a boost from his semblance sending him upwards with great force. He was glad he had lined up his path in advance, as all light in the Tower was instantly cut off. He felt rather than saw the edge of the roof pass beneath him, and he let gravity pull his upper body forward as he landed in a tight roll.
From there, Qrow instantly began to move. His keen eyes made out the edges of a stairwell entrance against the marginally brighter skyline. The door was unlocked, and he dashed down the stairs in utmost silence, readying himself against the door that led to the top floor. Glancing through the window, he noted the elevators just across the empty hall. He opened the door and sped up to the elevators without hesitation, briefly channeling his aura as he pulled the outer doors open. Grabbing the wire, Qrow stepped into the shaft before closing the outer doors behind him. From there, he quickly let himself slide down, the wire rubbing against the palms of his leather gloves with a slight noise. His only interruption came when the stopped elevator car came into view, and he used his semblance to flicker soundlessly from the wire to the nearby maintenance ladder. He paused for a moment counting seconds.
Strange... he thought to himself as he again let himself slide down, the grey walls of the shaft flying past him. The power should be on by now... Letting that minor issue fade from his mind, Qrow paused his descent next to an exposed air vent.
"Red?" he muttered, taking care to not let his voice carry. "I'm at vent number 1F-42, get me to Malachite's cell."
"Sure thing" Ruby replied, a little confused but unquestioning. "You're going to have to..."
Qrow silently crawled through the air ducts, taking each turn as it was described by Ruby. Soon enough, he paused just behind the grille that allowed fresh air to flow into a cell, specifically the cell that contained one Miltiades Malachite. She was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit and lying down on her cot, her breathing deep and slow. Qrow mentally reviewed the path he had taken to get this far, and ran it three times in reverse. Confident that he wouldn't get lost, he slowly drew a broad and deviously sharp knife from its sheath on his chest and positioned it just above the grille. Assuming someone heard, he would have ten seconds tops before they barged into the cell and perhaps another minute before his exits would be covered. He took a deep breath and held it for several seconds, the knife beginning to glow faintly with aura as he tensed and untensed his muscles in preparation.
Here goes everything... he thought, drawing the knife across the grille in four quick swipes.
The screech of metal on metal filled the air, but the grille hardly had time to fall before Qrow was in the room and reaching for Miltiades. She awoke with a start, unable to cry out as Qrow's hands pulled her firmly from the cot and stuffed her up into the air vents. He followed a second later, pulling himself up and pushing her along ahead of him. The sounds of their rapid scuffling filled the vent, as did the surprised murmuring and shouts of a few policemen who had just entered the cell. Qrow followed Miltiades out into the elevator shaft, throwing the girl onto his back as he rapidly climbed the waiting ladder.
Reaching the paused elevator car, he took a risk by reaching out and banging against the wall. Receiving no response, he pulled himself onto the top and again drew his knife. Gripping the cable firmly in one hand, he made a single cut that relieved the cable of most of its tension. Miltiades screamed as they flew upwards, air whipping past their faces and the ceiling approaching alarmingly fast. Qrow let go of the cable in time to jump to the exterior elevator doors, his fingers wedging into the slight crack between them and finding a tenuous purchase.
He wasted no time, forcing the doors apart and dashing across the hall and up the stairs to the roof. Only one person stood in his way, a very confused-looking officer who held a flashlight in one hand and with his other resting lightly on his pistol. Qrow bowled him over in an instant, grabbing the officer's head in one hand and bashing it against the railing as hard as he dared. The officer fell with a satisfying thud, even as Qrow continued his mad dash onto the roof. Miltiades screamed one final time as he leapt off, and the two stood suspended in time for a moment as they slowly began descending towards the street. Then, with a sudden explosion of black rose petals, they vanished into the night.
[Approximately five minutes earlier]
"The fuck...?" Neptune gasped, flinching as the lights suddenly went out.
"They'll be back on in a minute" Scarlet assured him, rolling his eyes at the blue-haired man's foolish expression. "Probably some issue with a breaker or something."
"Breakers are ancient!" Neptune replied shakily. "With Dust as today's primary power source, blackouts..."
"Neptune" Coco interrupted, knowing that the tanned tech wizard was about to go on a rant. "Shut it. Ren, does this happen often?" She received no reply, and she was about to repeat the question when she noticed that there were only five of them in the room: Herself, Yatsuhashi, and Team SSN.
"Meh..." Coco muttered, relaxing back onto her cot. "He probably went to the bathroom or something..."
In fact, Ren had not gone to the bathroom. He had gone to the closest stairwell and vaulted the rail, letting gravity pull him down to the ground floor. He rolled to disperse the force of his fall, rising to pass through an electronically locked (and thus now-unlocked) door that led to the staircase down to the basement levels. The initial blackout had been caused by Nora's hacking into the computer system and rerouting all power through various unnecessary systems. While the IT engineers were busy trying to undo the fiendish malicious code she had introduced, it was his job to ensure that the backup generator never came online.
The pitch-black corridors of the basement were nothing before his enhanced eyes, their violet glow hidden behind a pair of common sunglasses. Cheap, but effective. He easily found his way to a room conveniently marked 'Generator Room', where a maintenance worker was fumbling with a set of keys. Ren rolled his eyes at the harmfully redundant security systems employed. He knew that these decisions mostly revolved around fire codes and whatnot, but it still made the building painfully easy to exploit. The man barely even struggled when Ren's arms wrapped around his head from behind, pulling him backwards and down into the floor with great force. Ren rose and gently placed his hand against the door, flaring his aura and channeling it into heat. A few seconds later, and the interior workings of the lock were soldered into place.
"...units in range...Code A8...3, I repea..." A staticy burst of radio transmission crackled through Ren's earpiece, and his eyebrow arched as he checked his watch. Two minutes exactly, apparently Nora worked fast. Straightening his fatigues and putting away the glasses, Ren ran in the direction of The Pit, knowing the cause of the radio broadcast even if the static had cut off most of it.
When he arrived, his cold violet eyes took in the expected chaotic scene. Escaped faunus were everywhere, overwhelming the four armed and armored guards on shift with sheer numbers. The four stood in a compact group, firing wildly into the oncoming horde. Ren flicked out his Stormflowers and added to the barrage of bullets without hesitation, slowly pacing forward to join the four. The faunus kept coming like a rising tide, stampeding over the bodies of their fallen comrades and rapidly approaching the guards.
"Close quarters, gentlemen" Ren announced after a few seconds, seeing that trying to defeat the faunus through guns alone was futile.
He stepped forward, spinning as he holstered his Stormflowers to deliver a powerful roundhouse kick to a faunus' face. The faunus flew back, both his body and the shockwave of aura created knocking several others down as well. Ren didn't bother looking back at the four guards, he simply moved among the faunus as a graceful god of death. His extensive training allowed him to react as multiple attacks closed on him, sidestepping and redirecting force as he closed on one faunus at a time to deliver a lethal blow. Disposing of such a horde was a mindless task for him, and his face maintained its usual stoic expression even as bodies began to choke the floor. He showed no mercy to the escapees, knowing that Nora had already taken care of the one faunus he cared about.
Ren's acute hearing picked up the tell-tale rattling of a chaingun spinning up and he dove to the floor, pulling a struggling faunus down on top of him in a reverse blood choke. Bullets screamed through the air and through bodies with equal ease, and the faunus horde withered and died with much screaming and staggering. Blood seeped across the ground, and the iron scent of the thick crimson liquid assaulted Ren's nose as he patiently waited for Coco's assault to end. The faunus struggled in his arms, trying to break free as his brain was slowly deprived of oxygen. Taking pity on the suffering inmate, Ren shifted his arms slightly and jerked them in opposite directions, performing a flawless hangman's fracture and killing him instantly. He remained down for several more seconds until he was sure that Coco was finished spraying, then spoke up.
"Coco?"
"Ren?" Coco replied, disengaging her chaingun as she glared around with her brown eyes blazing with aura. "Stand down, guys." Ren carefully stood up, holding his arms out a little to prevent his fatigues from sticking together. Coco stood at the end of the hall with Yatsuhashi and Team SSN, their preferred weapons drawn but held low.
"What happened?" Coco demanded, glancing around at the carnage.
"Not sure" Ren smoothly lied, also looking around. "I was looking for Nora when the power went out, then I got a radio transmission ordering all available units to The Pit with an authorization for lethal force."
"It was madness" one of the guards spoke up, leaning against a wall as he carefully reloaded his gun. "I don't know how, but the faunus somehow got rudimentary weapons and all decided to swarm up the lift at the moment the power went out."
"We'll fill out a situational report later" Ren decided, letting his aura fade as the lights flickered back to life and the sound of footsteps storming down the stairs reached his ears. "For now, let's debrief the new arrivals and call forensics." As the others set about following his orders, Ren surreptitiously checked his scroll, nodding in approval at the innocent message Nora had sent him.
Everything is falling into place... he thought smugly, getting out of the way of the forensics team.