Chapter 6: Succubus Nation
"You're insane!"
"Says you and several psychiatric professionals."
— 16 —
"Island Girl, the Tories want me go home
Pull up with my wrist looking like a snow cone."
The song from the other room woke Coco up. Velvet's scroll. She just knew that genre from her random playlist of loud morning music. It sucked because it wasn't a bad beat, just wasn't appropriate for six in the morning. Not when they technically didn't have to be anywhere until the evening. And this hotel bed was way too comfortable to get out of. Uuuugh!
The walls would have probably been insulated. But for some reason, Coco hadn't been comfortable leaving the two sets of rooms separated. They had left the door connecting them open so they could reach each other in the middle of the night just in case. It was a habit she had developed out in the field. Just like how it generally wasn't smart to split the party, it wasn't smart to set up barriers to communication. Even in a bougie hotel like this.
Coco rolled over and just sort of stared at the ceiling, listening to Velvet wake everybody else up. Eventually the sleep would go away. Eventually. You know, whenever. Probably after morning coffee. She wasn't even a human being without caffeine. Coco remembered the first time Velvet's alarm had woken up everyone in the room, right after the teams had been made during their freshman year. The brand new Team CFVY had its first real coming together moment when they all decided collectively to try to kill the super excited yet socially awkward Velvet. Morning people were the worst. And they were the most productive way to start the day with. Velvet was still the only person on the team who actually set up a morning alarm. Everyone just kind of used her as their wake up by proxy. It was almost a tradition to let her annoy everyone else awake with whatever obnoxious song was playing that morning.
She would have checked her scroll for anything on social media or the news or, realistically, to just watch some kind of video as she woke herself up. Except she heard Fox roll out of bed and just hit the ground hard. She crawled to the edge of her covers and stared at him.
"You good?" she asked, straightening out her messy bed head.
Fox was just laying there face down on the carpet. "No, this is exactly how I like to wake up. I love having my nightmares interrupted by Feather Dolls. Rap music really does wonders for the horrible monsters chasing you down in your dreams."
"Sounds rough, buddy," Coco said, folding her arms beneath her chest.
"The rough part was when they started singing." Fox inhaled sharply and got up to his knees. "Alright. I'm gonna go cry myself awake in the shower."
"Save some hot water for me?"
"No," he said. Although calling it said was wrong. He was using his Semblance, sending his thoughts directly at her, and she was communicating in kind. It was a weird feeling, but one she'd gotten used to being his partner.
Fishing her beret out of the nightstand, she said, "Is this because what happened last mission?"
Fox walked straight into the dresser and banged his knees. He didn't really react to that. Coco personally suspected that a lifetime of being blind had given him knees of pure iron. But he did turn his body and look at her over his shoulder, which, given the lack of eyesight, meant he was doing it purely for effect.
"No. I am not going to use all of the hot water out of petty spite because I'm still angry that your coffee-scented bath soap completely ruined a natural hot spring."
"It was an honest mistake!" she said.
"An entire species of carp is extinct because of you."
She sucked in air through her teeth. Fox just went back on his way, slouching and feeling his way into the bathroom with his hands. With him out of the way, that began Operation Coffee Machine. Every hotel worth its salt had a shitty little coffee machine in the room. The problem was, it was right there on the dresser, which was distinctly not in her bed. She wondered how she could remedy this problem. And no, impotently reaching out for it while laying in bed didn't seem to do anything. No matter how badly she needed the caffeine, she couldn't awaken her latent telekinetic abilities. Which meant crawling out of bed. And then trying to figure out what bizarre hotel brand of coffee maker these guys were using.
By the time she had finished, and the first cup was brewed with proper cream and sugar, Fox was done.
"The hot water really lasted that long?" she asked, blowing softly into her glorious morning brew.
Still toweling himself off, he said, "I ran out of tears first, sadly."
"Tragic!"
"I know," he said with just the faintest smile. "Hey, make me a cup while you're there?"
"One condition."
"Being?"
"I need to know how today's outfit looks on me," she said, putting in the next little pod of coffee. Coco actually had no idea what it was called. Those little fibre plastique cups you put in the machine that it then filters water through for the modern automatic coffee machine. "It's going to be an important day. Our first big mission of the semester. Meeting some big councilman in his city. I have to know I'm looking my best."
Fox sat down on his bed and stared at her. With a slight squint, he said, "Alright. That's the best outfit I've ever seen you in. Everyone is going to be impressed. You'll have several marriage proposals from the local elite in your email by eight in the afternoon."
Coco smiled. "Aw, ya think?"
"I mean, I literally have nothing to compare it to, because I've never seen anything ever," he said in his typical deadpan. "But I'm not about to let things like details and facts get in the way of getting my coffee."
She handed him the styrofoam cup. "See, that's what I like about you. You always tell me exactly what I want to hear."
He frowned sharply. "And here I thought you liked me for my riveting personality and great sense of humor."
"No," she said simply, with just the right amount of tease.
"I take it back. I have more tears to cry. I'll be in the shower for the next hour." He sipped at his coffee, trying to use the cup to hide his smile.
Coco saw him tilt his head fractionally towards the middle door in the room, and her eyes were tracking before Velvet even burst in. Coco had learned long ago to always be the eyes for Fox. Whenever something seemed to catch his attention that no one could perceive, it was good to pay it mind.
"Guys, guys!" she said, waving her hands around. "You're never going to believe this. They have a full—we're talking the full works of everything full stop—a complete complementary déjeuner Sanéain downstairs for breakfast! Guys, we have to go! Put some clothes on already!"
Way too eager for this early in the morning, Velvet bounced back into her room with Yatsuhashi. Coco just idly starred as she left, sipping her coffee. Her entire expression was blank. She needed another hour, maybe two, before her face began to work.
Fox suddenly looked thoughtful. "Wait, 'put some clothes on'? Coco, are you naked right now?"
"Wouldn't you like to know!" she said with a laugh.
He gave her a skeptical look. "Only a little bit. The girls at Beacon are smarter than you would think. You can only walk into the girls locker room and survive with the excuse 'I'm blind, just feeling around with my hands' exactly once before they get wise."
Coco choked on her coffee. "Oh my god, that's awful." She paused. "You didn't really do that, did you?"
In the background, she could hear his scroll talking to him. Blind as he was, the hands-free device narrated itself. It took verbal commands as well. Coco heard it giving the exact time, date, and the weather report.
"You're not really naked, are you?" he asked back, avoiding the question. Suspiciously avoiding the question.
Finishing her cup, she said, "You already said that I'm perfectly well-dressed. The best you've ever seen."
Fox tapped his chin, idly listening to his scroll. "Yeah, you're right. You're the fashion expert, not me. I'm sure high society is totally going for the coked-out stripper look."
She snorted. "It's called blending in. Now let's blend in with breakfast. I think I've got enough caffeine to make it to the elevator without dropping dead."
But for real this time, Coco suited up in her Huntress finest instead of idle sleepwear. The only other matter was the car keys that had been hiding on one of the nightstands. Hers had been the room to have them. She put that in her purse before dragging Fox outside with her. By the time the team all left their rooms together, Velvet was practically bouncing on her feet.
"See this?" she asked, holding up a pamphlet. Her tan rabbit ears looked particularly alert this morning. "This is the hotel brochure! Breakfast is complimentary and there's a restaurant down here for lunch and dinner. And a cocktail lounge! And because of the room we have, we get to go to the extra special penthouse VIP cocktail lounge we went through last night!"
"Yes," Yatsuhashi said, scrunching his shoulders just to fit in the hallway. It gave the seven-foot-tall Mistrali this look of being perpetually uncomfortable. Which, in hindsight, he probably was. "This is a resort city, I think. I read the other brochure. It's the bare minimum of what you would expect."
"You sure seem excited about a cocktail lounge," Coco said, pressing the call elevator button.
"I think they're overrated," Fox said, hand in his pockets. "It's like half of the things in Vale or its colonies or whatever these are called, it's all about drinking."
"You're just saying that because you've never tried rum and coffee before," Coco said.
"I think it's because he's from a country where alcohol was illegal," Yatsuhashi said helpfully, in a way that just somehow made the entire conversation turn awkward. It was kind of amazing how he could do that.
The boy looked around, as if trying to figure out what he had done wrong. Velvet just elbowed him playfully and flashed him a peace sign. He gave her a nervous smile.
"I'm excited," Velvet said, picking back up like nothing had happened, "because I've always dreamt of going to Montluçon. Beaches, hot springs, rich history, an atypical lack of existential threats for a big city beyond the four kingdoms. It's basically the obligatory relaxation arc in any story. The calm before the storm." She helped the much larger Yatsuhashi from getting his sword stuck in the door as they all entered the lift. "I know it's the off season, midwinter, but the town is named after a mountain for a reason. Maybe after we sort this problem out, we can take a quick ski break. I've always wanted to learn how to ski!"
"I hate snow," Fox just said, without any real tone behind it. Like he was trying to fill the silence.
"You are very helpful," Yatsuhashi said, rolling his eyes.
"Well at least someone here respects me for my sunny disposition and ability to make anybody laugh," Fox said, waving his hand at Coco.
Yatsuhashi made a face. "I was being sarcastic and do not feel that way at all."
Without missing a beat, Fox said, "I exist in a permanent state of self-delusion and no amount of facts will ever sort me out."
As her team fought, Coco couldn't help but find herself smiling. She was doing her best to look cool, leaning in the back of the elevator, her arms crossed, her beret at just the perfect angle. But it was a moment like this that really made her team feel like, well, like a team. The way they kind of both did and did not get along. When things got rough out there in the field, she liked to think back on moments like this. Where even if things weren't smooth, they were all working together without complaint or question. Her mind made like Velvet's camera and snapped an image of this moment for the future. This city might be a calm before the storm, like Velvet said, which meant it was all the more important she enjoyed it. These moments of friendliness defined a team's real dynamic. It's what truly made you appreciate the people you worked with, and want to make sure that they survived no matter what when the chips were down.
It made her wonder what Team BASS was like behind closed doors. Did they get along this well? Were they able to have fun together, or were they just people together on a team because paperwork said so? Would they fight together as a unit when the going got tough?
Could her protégé actually nail the landing?
There was a reason why she selected them. Mostly because of Jaune, but the rest of the team were all pretty good. Not impossibly dangerous murder machines like Team VYPR, but the kind of people she wanted to see in action, and to guide in the future. Maybe if it all worked out, then it could be she would retire and be a teacher herself one day. She'd be the second coming of Glynda Goodwitch. The thought made her laugh.
"Ooh, something funny?" Velvet asked. "I want to know. Please, I need somebody to distract me from this hell!"
Just in time, the elevator opened up. Coco made a magnanimous gesture towards the main atrium of the hotel. "I'll tell you over breakfast. When we're all together. Speaking of which!"
She pushed past Fox and waved at Jaune, who was just kind of awkwardly standing there staring towards the lounge where they were serving breakfast.
"God, I can't believe you're awake this early too," she said, taking up a totally very cool spot standing next to him. The two of them were pretty much striking a pose, two imposing team leaders up awake and early, ready for the fight. The boy had good posture, so it helped.
"I've been up for three hours," he said evenly.
She lowered her shades to him. "You want to run that by me one more time?"
"It's a Tuesday," he said. "I had to do chest. But the gym in the hotel sucks, so I had to make do with subpar workouts for way too long."
"You really are obsessive about that, huh?"
"I can't afford to always be walking around shirtless if I'm not in the gym everyday," he said, flicking that oddly gorgeous feather brooch on his chest.
"Have you considered buying a see-through shirt?"
Jaune blinked. "Those are real?"
Coco shrugged mischievously. "Well, the college girls on spring break trying to win the wet t-shirt contest have to wear something, don't they?"
As her team filed away to find breakfast, Velvet held up the brochure as she walked by. "Ski resort and cocktail lounge!" she said in a stage whisper.
"You hear that?" Coco asked. "Cocktails. I bet we could just slip away for drinks after work to review the day's progress. Keeping notes and updates and stuff. Seems like the professionally unprofessional thing to do."
The boy made a face, waving his hand at her. "Nah, I don't do cocktails. Last time I ordered a cocktail, I got the distinct taste of balls instead of the cock I ordered and that just ruined my day."
She followed his eyes out towards the hotel atrium. With the buttressed walkway, the massive glass ceiling which had to be heated to keep the snow melting and the skylight open. Marble flooring. The restaurant tucked away in one corner like a mall. Everything was so clean that she actually felt the need to wear her sunglasses for a legitimately practical purpose. It definitely had airs of being somewhere way too rich for her to be able to afford normally. She could see why someone like Velvet might have always wanted to be here but never could; it had to be beyond a lot of people's pockets.
At least this part of town. Coco was vaguely aware that the city was a big exporter of lithium and other precious metals. More to the point, rich people on vacation needed people to attend to their needs. You couldn't have a city based on the rich alone. They were the one percent for a reason. And Montluçon was a big city. Nowhere near as big as Vale, but maybe on the level of Five Wives on Patch.
"Okay," she said with a sigh, "I'll bite. Why are you just standing in the middle of nowhere like an idiot? Ten words or less. I'm hungry and breakfast is right there."
"Word limits, really?" he asked, rolling his armor-plated shoulders.
"Three words down, seven to go. You better think twice before talking!"
"Think twice? Baby, I don't even think once."
"You have exceeded your word limit and my ability to care," Coco said, walking off. She waved at him over her shoulder. "Feel free to just stand around and brood like an idiot. Is your team down there already?"
"Yeah."
"Well, let's go! We can plan our attack together!" She wiggled her brows. "And maybe schedule in some time to go to the hottest fashion boutiques in the city! See-through mesh shirts aren't going to buy themselves, Jaune."
She left him behind, presuming he would follow like the little duckling he was. The little restaurant thing in the hotel lobby was surprisingly packed. Probably nowhere near as many as during the on-seasons of spring and summer, but still a respectable gathering of people. It was a kind of formal buffet style that she probably wouldn't have been able to afford if the hotel hadn't been part of the package, which was half of the reason she was so willing to volunteer for the assignment. Although maybe she didn't have a choice, the tradition being that the best sophomore class picked a freshman class to bring along with them. But she could ruminate about the futility of false choice later. Right now she was hungry.
And naturally, her first stop was the coffee machine. It was Valais pressed and piping hot. True to Velvet's insistence about the brochure, the rest of the breakfast was indeed a déjeuner Sanéain. Some half remembered part of her brain thought that the proper term should have been petite déjeuner, but she never really cared for foreign languages. Or, technically, the native language of Vale? The one her mother spoke. Colonial outposts like Montluçon were a lot more native, and not quite as culturally homogenous as the modern culture of Vale, offering a potential window into the world that could have been if House Damecrown never conquered Vale. Whatever the case, she recognized most of these breakfast items as being part of the occasional list of food you can get at Beacon. Visually recognized, at least. It wasn't a true déjeuner Sanéain unless you couldn't pronounce at least most of the food.
Breakfast and coffee acquired, she sat down at the tables that the two teams of Huntsmen had claimed for themselves. Velvet waved happily.
"What's up, guys?" Coco asked, getting a bevy of mumbled greetings from the other six people here. Six. Jaune hadn't shown up yet and was probably just somewhere in line getting food. Because there's no way he would just be standing out in the middle of nowhere for half an hour.
Coco looked at Fox's plate and gagged. "What did you do to your breakfast, man!"
Fox looked up from his plate. It could only be described as an atrocity. Several war crimes had taken place, the food all mixing, and some of the objects just flat out upside down. "What?"
"It looks like you ate everything and vomited," Velvet said.
"It's the same thing you all got," Fox said with a huff. "I can smell it. We all got the exact same thing more or less."
"I got a tartine," Yatsuhashi said. "It's a fancy word for bread here. Why do they have so many words for bread in Vale?"
Coco waved Yatsuhashi off. "But did you have to just smash everything together, Fox?"
Fox rolled his milky eyes. Very slowly, he stabbed his fork into his food and shoved it into his mouth. Chewing it all, he said, "It doesn't matter if it looks ugly. It tastes the same. I'm not some fancy celebrity chef, man."
One of the members of Team BASS, a girl looking a bit like a ringleader with the colors of a playing card, leaned over. "So, you're really blind. How does that work for dating?"
Fox squinted. "What?"
"I mean, do you judge people on how their voices sound instead of their looks?" she asked, brushing away a stray bang of red hair. Shamrock, that was her name! "Is personality the thing you actually see first?"
"That's a good point," Velvet said. "How would that work?"
Fox put another forkful into his mouth. "Oh, that's the easy part. If she's into me, I assume she has incredibly low standards. And I refuse to date a girl who sees me as beneath her."
Shamrock adjusted her top hat. "So you're only into girls who aren't into you?"
He nodded. "It lets me pretend like I actually have self-respect, when instead I'm just bitter and jaded."
The red-headed girl regarded Fox for a long moment. She almost seemed disappointed somehow. With a glance to the side, she returned to her team. Speaking of which…
Coco sipped her coffee and then said loud enough for everyone to hear, "We need a plan of attack for how we're going to deal with LaChance. Upper class party, eight Huntsmen showing up. We need to make an entrance and we need to keep our questions solid. We don't want to look stupid."
"It's kind of weird he's bringing us to a party," Blake said, balancing a fork on one finger. "You would think it would just be some low-key affair. Bring us in private, make sure we know what's going on, and then send us on our way. We have the mission dossier."
Weiss made a face. If Coco squinted, she swore she could see a fading scar above her eye. But it may have just been a trick of the light. Not that it mattered much. Her face wasn't exactly where Coco kept glancing under the cover of her sunglasses.
"I should think it's obvious," Weiss said. She was the only one at the table who actually folded her napkin. When she set her utensils down, it was always in a perfectly measured line equidistant from the other utensils. Mildly OCD, really. It was cute. "I did some research. Well, Jaune and I. Kieran LaChance, the man who requested our support, is a major figure in the Conservative Party. The hereditary leader of this city, he has a permanent seat on the Council, but his technical status as a colonial citizen means he can't really implement direct policy in the House of Commons or Lords. Getting us out here, I'm sure he wants to display us to potential rivals and supporters alike. I'd bet it's to demonstrate he can wield the power of Beacon on a whim. Likely, he's also trying to cover for the embarrassment of losing the last team that was in his service. Lose one team? Here's two more at my beck and call. Your move."
Coco regarded the girl. "You seem to be presuming a lot about politics here. Isn't it a little too early in the morning for that?"
Weiss turned her nose up just so slightly. It was a really nice nose, too. Cute and small without being a button. "I'm used to this kind of thing. My father used to like getting the support of Huntsmen for union busting and dealing with Grimm in mining settlements outside of Mantle. General Ironwood—the man who's basically in charge of Atlas, for those who don't know—didn't have complete control of everything, and being able to wield Huntsmen as tools under his nose like that for political ends was a subtle power play."
Blake pursed her lips. "Atlas uses Huntsmen for labor disputes?"
Something in Weiss deflated slightly, like she realized she had made some kind of gaff. "Politics back home are complicated. Huntsmen are just another kind of soldier to the General. I really can't explain the intricacies without a lecture, and for that it is too early."
As they continued talking, breakfast seemed to be vanishing alarmingly fast. That's why Coco had gotten three cups of coffee. Even when the food ran out, she could keep sipping.
"Alright," Coco said, stretching her arms out above and behind herself. "With the stuff we don't really care about out of the way, we still need to figure out how to deal with this rich powerful guy. Do we come in hard like badasses, understanding and obedient, or throw it all the wolves?"
"You make it sound like one of those choices in a dating game," Velvet said, and instantly everyone was looking at her. She shrank down slightly, an effect diminished in part by the height of her ears. "I mean, not that I would know. I don't have several of them on my scroll. And Yatsuhashi never had to talk me out of buying a body pillow. Stop looking at me!"
Coco was about to say something, but then she saw Fox white knuckle his utensils. He visibly let out a breath to calm himself before going back as if nothing was happening.
"Oh, are we doing a dating simulator now?" Jaune said, finally appearing out of nowhere. He leaned himself against the wall behind Coco, where he had a pretty good view of the teams and the rest of the building.
"There you are, Jaune!" Blake said. "Where the heck were you? You just vanished on us."
The boy shrugged. "I left to get early breakfast and then hit the gym. Just finished. Had to shower, change, dry off, and then get lost on the way here before showing up."
Coco squinted. Something about that felt like a lie. Like the timeline didn't match up. He had just been standing there when she saw him, as if he were passing the time. Right now, breakfast was ending, and you couldn't get any more. But it hadn't been running that early in the morning beforehand, had it?
With a frown, Blake said, "Ah. Yeah, that sounds in character of you. C'mon, we're planning how to deal with the man who gave the school this mission contract and apparently it's going to be a dating game."
"More like implied power politics," Weiss said, folding her arms unhappily.
"Ooh, I've played a dating game or two," Jaune said. "I'm sure we just treat this respectable figure like some 2D girl and it'll all be fine."
Velvet muttered something, her hands in her lap. Coco could swear it almost sounded like "I only know how to deal with 2D boys."
"I'm not really sure what this is," Yatsuhashi said slowly, "but I have the sneaking suspicion it's going to indirectly offend me and my culture."
"Nah, it only going to offend people with two X chromosomes," Jaune said.
"I'm also uncomfortable insulting women," he said.
Jaune made a face. "Your inexplicable feminist agenda aside, I've got this covered. Watch me do it with Coco and see her spill all her secrets."
Coco adjusted her beret, giving him a skeptical look. "Alright. I'll bite. Assume I am Kieran LaChance. How would you approach me?"
"Well, if it's anything like the last dating game I played." He snapped his fingers and gave her the finger guns. "Hey, babe, what cup size you rockin'?"
Everyone collectively spat out whatever was in their mouth. Except for a Velvet, who seemed entirely too familiar with this situation. She was just nodding to herself.
Coco laughed, lowering her shades to meet his eyes. "See, this is why you're single, Jaune. A real man could tell that just by feeling me up."
He shook his head. "Nah. I've spent enough time undressing you with my eyes to know mine are bigger, and I have nothing to feel envious about."
"You wanna bet?"
Blake tried drinking water and just ended up choking on it. "Could we fucking not?"
"Agreed," Jaune said. "Unless a girl can outperform me during chest day, why bother?"
Coco made a show of thinking it over. "I see. And I do think you have the biggest chest on your team."
"Alright, and that's going too far from you, too," Blake said, stabbing a finger toward Coco. "Both of you cut it out."
Jaune shrugged helplessly. Coco just laughed as she finished her third cup of coffee. Choosing to bring along Team BASS had certainly been the right call. They were a goddamn riot if nothing else. She was definitely going to enjoy this mission.
— 17 —
She was definitely not going to enjoy this mission.
After breakfast, the teams had gotten together to wander the parking garage. It was really all they could do. Take the keys and press the unlock button, walking around until eventually they saw one of the cars light up. They found the rental car towards the front of the underground parking lot. It was a motor carriage on the bigger end of things. Built in one of the motor factories in Vychodnograad, it looked a bit more like a converted industrial pickup truck than anything else. Sure, it was a modern design with all of the modern features, and had enough seats for both teams, but there was just one goddamn problem.
"Why the hell would they give us a stick shift!" Coco said, letting her cool slip. "They had to have gone out of their way to request the one stick shift left in this entire country. I swear to god, if I see that humming lady again, I'm going to kill her. She did this on purpose!"
"Calm down, Coco," Velvet said, her accented voice echoing through the parking garage. "I'm sure it was an honest mistake. They managed to get a motor carriage with enough seats for most of us. That couldn't have been easy."
"It looks like something they use to haul mining equipment with some bells and whistles," Coco said. "It's like makeup on a pig. How are we supposed to get around town when we can't drive the damn car?"
Jaune opened the front door, looking around the cabin. "It's just a big SUV," he said.
"What's an SUV?" Weiss asked.
The boy opened his mouth, and then shrugged.
"It doesn't matter what weird car it is," Coco went on, pacing back and forth to try to calm herself down. "We're going to have to take public transportation to something. I think this city has a good metro. But sure, let's just grab all of our weapons and armor and stand around like idiots on a subway."
It was even worse, now that she'd say it out loud. Everyone all together in a cramped subway car like sardines, under tons of rock and dirt, beneath a city of steel and concrete, in a narrow little tunnel. The idea itself was the real reason she couldn't help but pace. Screw being locked in a high speed underground deathtrap with no escape. She'd sooner walk across the entire city than be trapped in a metro! At least she had the open sky that way.
Being in the underground garage was bad enough. She felt oddly closed in on all sides. Not terribly. But enough that she felt this compulsion to keep checking her corners. And to avoid getting too close to the walls to ensure she had maximum space around herself.
"It's not that bad," Jaune said.
She snorted. "Of course it is, unless you can drive stick."
The boy examined the clutch for a good moment, before he shrugged. "Yeah."
"Wait, for real?" Blake asked, leaning to the side from where she and Weiss had been examining the trunk.
She wasn't the only one surprised by that. Really, although she had to hide it behind her shades and her veneer of cool detachment, Coco was nearly bouncing. Did this mean they could actually go outside in a car? No cramped metro sardine cans! Goddamn, she knew there was a reason she brought this boy and his team along!
He made a so-so gesture. "I'm a good few years out of practice. And even then, it was my father's girlfriend teaching me one day on some hilly terrain and it was kind of awful. But I know how to drive it. Give me a couple minutes to figure out the clutch and we's gold."
Lingering next to Fox, the girl Shamrock said, "That's one problem inexplicably solved by one of your many random abilities. It does not explain why we have a stick shift car in the first place. I feel like someone's trying to tell us something."
"I don't think we should think too much about that," Velvet said, hands behind her back. She seemed distracted by the way her voice echoed through the garage. "I mean, we're out in the colonies. It's probably just what they had on hand."
Yatsuhashi made a face. "Are you doing that thing again where you're obviously lying so we don't have to deal with unfortunate implications?"
Velvet frowned at him. "No, this is totally, totally just perfectly normal and not at all a bad sign, just like that rude Huntress. Everything is fine and there's no red flags here!" she said with all the cheer of a girl in a porno who was just a little too insistent she was exactly eighteen. A little too insistent she was starring in the video by her own free will, and was not at all a victim of human trafficking, and this was not a cry for help, and Coco's freshman pet project to help bust a human trafficking ring had been legitimately soul-destroying.
Coco shook her head and rubbed her eyes. "Okay, people trying to subtly screw with us aside, let's get this boy in the car so he can figure it out and we can get out of this garage." She realized she needed to add in her own sense of false cheer, so she said, "And then we can whittle the day away with the finest boutiques in the city!"
— 18 —
Monsieur Kieran LaChance didn't think the children Huntsmen fit in at all, and he found that was by design. He had watched on his scroll as the eight children had stopped outside the door to the gouvernoral mansion to try to figure out a plan of attack. The little CCTV feed gave him proper audio as well. He had observed the way the girl in the white dress with the decidedly Atlesian cut had bullied the valet into taking a crash course in driving a stick shift, before leaving them to their devices. LaChance thought he knew the girl from somewhere, but couldn't quite place it. Her mere sight gave him the unpleasant taste in his mouth of foreign aristocracy. People who should have been left paupers by the Great War before Vale's own embarrassing inadequacies had let them rise back up.
He pretended to mingle with the party guests. The influencer crowd of youths bringing tourism and good publicity to the city in exchange for favorable rates or compensated guest rooms in hotels. The nouveau riche of Valean commerce and business attracted to the city for its lovely views and air of high society. Hereditary landowners that had managed to claw their way back into the House of Lords following the revolution, picking up the pieces of a broken country so they could continue to leech off it without learning their lesson. And of course, the elected politicians: Tories from the House of Commons, many of whom owned property in the city as vacation getaways, most all of whom lacked a coherent ideology, and all of whom forwent their spine in the interest of corruption for its own sake; and those rats from Union-Labor, who seemed to purposely dress down and avoid suits as a matter of course in order to make some asinine political statement about wealth. He had tried inviting the leader of the socialist party, Twinred Sokolov, but his secretary had returned his RSVP with a curt message: "Go fuck yourself."
It would make his plans far less convenient, but he'd made better progress with less before.
He checked his scroll again. The children were still outside, bickering amongst themselves. LaChance found himself drumming his fingers on his cane. He cast his eyes out towards the only figures in the gala he actually cared about, the few in the military garb. Specially invited guests, and about the only people he genuinely trusted to do their job and be productive.
He locked eyes with one of them, who slowly cocked an eyebrow. LaChance stared back, idly waving off a waiter and his tray of hors d'oeuvres.
"Monsieur LaChance," the man in the crisp formal black dresswear of the Royal Army said. The rows upon rows of medals on his chest were nearly blinding, a sea of colors and awards. The only one that really stood out to him was the crown of thorns surrounding the Valean axes, marking him as a hereditary member of the Order of the Great Vacuan Death March. The eagle with its wings stretched out on his collar signified his rank as colonel. His name tag simply read Kornilov.
"If I didn't know you better," the infamous Colonel B. T. Bind, Torture, Kill Kornilov continued, "I'd think you were insulting me. I get myself all dolled up for your posh event and you don't even have the courtesy to pretend you don't know me." Despite the words, the middle-aged man with the beard didn't seem terribly offended. If anything, he seemed mildly charmed by the situation.
It was an almost unnerving expression, LaChance thought. Colonel Kornilov had this way of smiling using only his face, his eyes completely dead. Or, no, not dead. Dead implied they weren't doing anything. Calling them dead did a disservice to the way they completely looked through LaChance. The subtle way they commanded fear and respect without needing to say anything. The man could smile at you with a friendly face, and you'd piss your pants. LaChance supposed it was appropriate for the highest ranked man in the Royal Army.
One of the highest ranked men, in any case. Ever since the civilian government managed to overthrow the military dictatorship of General Wojciechowski following his victory over la Révolution, the military had been stripped down to avoid that ever happening again. The highest rank any man could achieve in the Royal Army was colonel. In the same way at the highest rank in the Royal Navy was commodore. Montluçon was probably the closest the man could legally come to Vale without violating la loi du pomœrium.
"Colonel Kornilov," LaChance said, meeting the man's steely gaze. If he were not so accustomed to the man, he might have been unable to do that. But their relationship went back years. "I'm trying not to scare the children."
The Colonel cocked a slight smile. "The Huntsmen you requested to assist, rather than accept the generous offer of my men."
LaChance shrugged a shoulder. "Between the two of us, we have enough reputation to make mothers weep and virgins run screaming for their chastity belts. I'm trying to make a good impression."
"And how's that going for you?"
He held up his scroll, showing the footage of the students just standing outside, talking. "They've simply been standing there, arguing and cracking witty banter for the past eight minutes. One begins to wonder if I shouldn't go out and fetch them to save us all the embarrassment."
As the footage played, one of the Huntsman, a girl with sunglasses and a beret, said, "Look, I've taught you everything I know about this kind of thing. We've got this."
A blond boy made a face and said, "You haven't taught me anything about this at all. In fact, you've never talked about this kind of thing before."
She made a motion of her head like she was rolling her eyes. "Yeah, no duh. That's because that's everything I know."
"Nothing?"
"You got it in one," she said, clasping a hand on the boy's armored shoulder.
"Oh for the love of god, I'm just going to kick the door down," the Atlesian girl said, running her hands down her face.
Colonel Kornilov looked up from the scroll and made a face. "I—I don't—are they trying to be funny?"
LaChance sighed, grabbing a glass of burgundy from the tray of a passing waiter. "I understand standing around talking to be nearly half of what the kids do these days."
Stroking his neatly trimmed beard, the Colonel said, "Headmaster Ozpin must not have taken your request seriously. Need a reminder again that I have the First Team on standby? The 1st Cavalry can handle this without the needless prattle."
Mercy of mercies, the main door to the event opened up. It was the girl in white leading the way, and everyone just kind of ambled after her like lost ducklings.
"Keep your cavalry near at hand," LaChance said, keeping his voice low. "Had I actually wanted them to succeed, I would not have asked for students."
Colonel Kornilov merely gave a thin smile, saying nothing. He let LaChance leave in peace.
Monsieur LaChance met the students in the middle of the ballroom, square center on the red carpet, nearest the indoor fountain. He leaned slightly on his cane, adjusting his suit jacket. He was in full view of the entire room, and that meant the Huntsmen were as well. All eyes were on him exactly as he wanted. It was useful for this part of the game.
He counted eight of them. Excessive force, but perhaps it was required for delicate matters like this when he specifically requested students from the academy. The Atlesian girl, a looker with a black hair bow, a girl dressed in a formal fighting suit that nearly seemed to fit the occasion, and a tall, lean boy with a tattoo sleeve. From the way they grouped up, it seemed they were one team, probably under the leadership of the girl in white. The other team included the girl in the beret and the incredibly tasteful sense of fashion even he had to acknowledge, an absolute giant of a boy looking like he came straight from the Mistrali frontier, a kid with arm blades and an air of not taking anything seriously, and—oh. A faunus. Seeing her, he somehow felt vaguely less guilty about what he was about to do. Not that guilt typically factored into any of his equations. He didn't want the students getting hurt, but he would care just ever so slightly less if misfortune did strike them now.
He recalled getting a guided tour of Beacon Academy once as part of a political delegation. Headmaster Ozpin had been all too happy to talk about how the academy was one of the most progressive places in the Kingdom, and took applicants from all over the world, and any species. LaChance had made it a point to attend every single post initiation team selection afterwards, trying to scout out the best talent of the year, and make connections the students would well remember once they graduated and were looking for proper employment. It was a habit among those in power, and he was no exception. Despite all the high talk of racial diversity, LaChance had always observed relatively few faunus students every year. He had figured, like most people, that Ozpin simply talked a big game in front of the cameras, but knew how to handle animals behind closed doors like anyone who could rub two brain cells together long enough to observe basic facts about reality.
"So," the girl in the beret said. "You the guy?"
The other team leader, the girl in white with the scar, looked like she had been punched in the gut. Grimacing, she tried to say something, and failed.
The boy with the tattoo sleeve took a step forward, standing beside beret girl. The Atlesian stood to the side, conceding center stage to him like he was the leader. "We're here about Team CCHS, sir," he said, proving that he at least had manners. Given how he looked, it was nearly a shock.
"I'm Jaune Arc, Team BASS. This is Blake, Shamrock, and Weiss. And this is Coco, leader of the sophomore team, CFVY. Fox, Velvet, Yatsuhashi." He gestured with each name, and LaChance committed them all to memory.
"While I appreciate the manners, Monsieur Arc," LaChance said, "do not sir me. Knighthood is a dead art. I am simply Monsieur LaChance, Councilman, and the holder to this mission contract with the Academy. I am pleased the response came so promptly, and with such force." He gestured to the assembled eight children. It was a slow thing, his words just as carefully chosen. Anybody listening and would hear them and understand the implications behind them.
One hand on her hip, Coco said, "Of course. There's a team in danger. Wish we could have met earlier to get this out of the way, but better now than never." She shrugged.
The rest of her team just awkwardly stood behind her in silence. The other team was mostly doing the same. Weiss looked like she was grinding her teeth at something. And the Blake girl was squinting towards the partygoers. He wished that he knew their last names; first names somehow felt too informal and improper. But Arc hadn't offered any of them but his own.
"Is that a military uniform?" Blake asked, bobbing her head side to side as if trying to look around some object.
LaChance pursed his lips to the side. "Yes. A number of officers and ranking NCOs are in attendance. The Royal Army and Navy remain some of my city's best clients."
"Why's that?" Arc asked.
He shrugged one hand, lifting it from his cane. "La loi du pomœrium. This is as close as any uniformed personnel can get to Vale. The pity is on the city; we are the resort city for a reason. The best lodging, the best food, and the best entertainment. They would be hard pressed to find better accommodations anywhere on the continent if they tried."
The explanation didn't seem to satisfy the boy. But he also didn't seem keen to press the topic. That was probably for the better. La loi du pomœrium, the law of the pomerium, was a complicated piece of legislature that even modern politicians didn't seem to properly understand, primarily for its implications and what it encouraged the exiled Army to do in its boundless free time on the frontier. La loi du pomœrium was the law forbidding uniformed military personnel from the city of Vale except for extreme cases of national unrest and rioting. Exiled from their home in all but name, they couldn't just sit around taking up taxpayer money and doing nothing like the over bloated army of Atlas. The Royal Army had to earn their salaries. Lacking safe options at home, they busied themselves with frontier guerrilla warfare and support operations, aiding settlements, quashing tribal rebellions, and butchering the White Fang like the animals they were. Not that many soldiers really cared. Most willing recruits came from frontier regions like Vychodnograad, Pays-de-Saint-Saën, or any number of nameless tribes that had sworn allegiance to Damecrown once upon a time. To say nothing of Valeans offered the choice of a prison labor camp or the service.
Monsieur LaChance gestured with a finger for the students to follow. He turned without waiting for their response, expecting them to tow the line. And for everyone to see how he could command eight superhuman warriors with but a gesture.
"We put out a mission contract not long ago," LaChance said, meeting the eyes of party goers who dared to look. "Team CCHS answered. We were in contact with them for some time until the signals got lost down below the city."
"Why were they down there?" Arc asked, wrinkling his nose. "Trudging through the sewers looking for Grimm?"
"Almost. Our excavation projects with the metro encountered unforeseen complications. And digging out the tunnels, we stumbled upon ancient ruins. While the Archeologue Guild made a bid for us to cease all construction to investigate, we were on a tight budget and schedule."
"What's that got to do with Huntsmen?" the boy asked.
LaChance shrugged. "La loi des ruines antiques. These ruins were catacombs. A labyrinth dating back to the Final Empire, we think. Dangerous things. By making the executive decision to invoke la loi, they were seized by the city and declared a hazard. The potential spawning grounds of Grimm. It allowed us to bulldoze and dig as we saw fit in the interests of public safety, provided we took the steps such as requisitioning Huntsman to clear the area. It was far more cost effective than pausing all my work and letting the archaeologists dig for years just to find trinkets."
"So you were trying to destroy ancient history because they were getting in the way of profit margins?" the girl named Blake asked.
"No, that's not it," the animal said. "That rude Huntress said she was working late to make sure there were no Grimm coming through the tunnels. It actually was a hazard."
He opened a set of doors to leave the gala ballroom. The hallway beyond was filled with portraits of famous local figures and celebrations. "Yes. Velvet, was it?"
"Velvet Scarlatina," she said, with this nervous, smiling energy.
"Yes, la gamine a raison, completely correct," he said, a phrase which made him nauseous. "By sheer coincidence, we were absolutely correct. The labyrinth was infested. The mining equipment we had digging tunnels was able to close off most of the entrances. But we had breached enough of the labyrinth to require proper extermination procedures. And when the professional team vanished, I scrambled for as much help as I could get, reaching out to the academy for firepower in a pinch, and requesting my friend Colonel Kornilov bring his 1st Air Cavalry to support in case the center could not hold."
LaChance saw it for a moment. The Blake girl missed a step and nearly tripped. Arc caught her, but she looked like she had seen a ghost.
"This is a simple rescue mission, right?" Coco asked, looking oddly rigid. She kept adjusting her sunglasses, pushing them tight against the bridge of her nose and keeping her eyes hidden behind them. "I read the dossier. Should just be a quick in and out recovery and then we get out of here, right?"
LaChance found his office and entered. Marble busts and statues, more paintings, and a window overlooking the entire gouvernoral mansion in the city beyond. A commanding view of all he ruled. He took a seat behind his mahogany desk and folded his hands, looking over the assembled children.
"We have two theories regarding what fate befell them," he said simply.
"Two?" Arc said, hovering very close to the Blake girl in a way which struck LaChance as vaguely protective. "I reckoned they got et by Grimm."
"The first is that they were overwhelmed by Grimm, yes," he said. "But that doesn't entirely make sense. These were four professionals. Highly trained, and highly rated. Unless there is some nasty abomination in particular down there, the only threat to them would have been a massive swarm of Grimm. But we would have seen that by now. They would have emerged from the tunnels and exits we've dug into. Yet we've only received a trickle of relatively inoffensive demons."
"I'm not sure you could ever call Grimm 'inoffensive,'" Coco said, arms folded over her chest.
LaChance shrugged a hand. "I operate a colony, legally speaking. Grimm incursion and death are an accounted for cost of business. Any losses in human life from this have been well within acceptable parameters."
To no one's surprise, a good few of the students seemed appalled by that. He wished he could be so young and naïve. It made him wonder how many of them had ever actually been outside of the big cities before this. How many of them actually knew what the price of freedom and business were in the real world. At least the team leaders appeared relatively unfazed, just looking a little harder around the edges.
"So if you don't think they were overrun by hordes of Grimm, then?" Coco led on with, gritting her teeth ever so slightly. It was like she expected to receive a public whipping.
Monsieur LaChance turned around in his chair. One leg folded over his knee, he gestured out the window to his city. "Montluçon is a halfbreed bastard of a city. She wears two faces beneath a bridal gown. One of those is the imitation of la Ville Lumière, the beaches, the ski resort, the burgeoning tech companies. The things that would attract investors to stay. The rest—right there, do you see it? The light on the horizon. The burning fire of industry. We are so far away from the great city of Vale that you have to work out which of the lights in the sky is its urban light pollution, and which are the thousands of stars you're probably only now seeing for the first time in your lives. It is the human destiny to rule this world. To reinvent itself time and again with innovation and advancement to push back the tide of Grimm and eke out domination from the jaws of an ever-present apocalypse. It is the nature of civilization to look at our woeful odds and laugh out 'I rebuke thee'. To take the rocks beneath a mountain and turn them into lithium. To combine that with Dust to produce the wonders of technology that let us laugh at doom and indulge in our worst degeneracies both."
Monsieur LaChance produced a pre-cut cigar from his desk drawer and ignited it with a Dust-powered torch lighter. "It is treasonous insurrection and those that doubt the death march of human progress that else could have conceivably slaughtered professional Huntsmen. We have workers, human and faunus alike. And there's always been a White Fang cell in Montluçon. I believe we riled up the hornet's nest when we opened up the tunnels and revealed the secret ways they have been using to get into and out of my city without rightful castigation for their crimes."
He did his best not to stare too obviously at the animal's reflection in his window. Nor the way the Blake girl was glaring daggers into his back. He kept his focus squarely on his city. His birthright and property and the wellspring from which he would save all of Vale.
"It answers so many questions," he said around a puff of Menagerie tobacco. "Why the lack of major Grimm? They've been killing them to ensure their underground railroad of thieves and terrorists remains lubricated with the blood of demons. Why have we noticed more guerilla incidents and worker protests since I've begun this infrastructure project? They know if we keep digging, we'll smell a rat. And who could have conceivably murdered four Huntsmen in cold blood? Well, a rat is most dangerous when it's backed into a corner and its secrets nigh to be dug up."
LaChance turned back to the children, ashing his cigar in a ceramic tray. "If you follow their footsteps and you find the Grimm, you know what to do. It's what you train for. What you live and die for. The contract merely asks that you find the lost team, but I suspect your conscience won't allow the Grimm to remain alive to harm others. And if you find the fuzzy rebel down there, well, we're beyond the mountain, as they say in Vale. Putting down those rabid dogs this far from the light pollution of civilization is a job for the Royal Army. It's butcher's work either way."
He puffed on his cigar. "We're done here. I expect you to keep our suspicions between ourselves. The White Fang have ears everywhere, and they hear better than humans. No reason to tip them off. Merely keep in mind what you have to do down there. I'll have my secretary forward to you the maps we have made of the tunnels so far so you may follow the lost team. Relay any other questions to her. I have a sorry lot of plutocrats to pretend that I can stomach being around."
