So! Overwork, applying for jobs, and catching a cold is not fun! This slowed down WFM, which in turn slowed everything else down.

"I still don't understand why you are informing me about all the legal details of this possible future."

Adam Taurus never gave compliments to humans, but some alcohol after such a stressful mission and after the aftermath, well he really needed it. In the next few days, he would have to lay low alongside the entirety of the White Fang, which meant spending endless days at Torchwick's hideouts, pressed together like sardines, all the while discussing their future moves with the thief himself, a dirty human he would be forced to coexist with.

Alcohol didn't solve problems, but at least it made him forget about them for a while. That was all he needed.

Junior's alcohol wasn't the strongest he'd ever tasted, but it would do the job. He wasn't planning on getting blackout drunk with Neo around – he wasn't sure how he'd wake up, if at all.

"I thought you said you didn't want to step down from being leader," Torchwick replied from where he was sitting across the table from him. Banesaw and Deery occupied the sides, while Neo had an extra chair right beside Torchwick. For a second, Taurus had feared the miniature assassin would pull another trick, but after sending him a grin she'd just pulled up another chair and sat down. Much to his hidden relief. "You need to know this stuff if you're the leader."

"I thought you said you'd be the one to take care of the legal stuff," said leader retorted, glaring at him from behind his mask. "While I handled the White Fang's actual business and freeing the Faunus in the mines."

The five of them were sitting in the VIP room, and to be honest it was at that very moment that Taurus realized that VIP actually meant Very Important Person. He hadn't even known it was an acronym. He just thought it meant something along the lines of 'filthy rich, snobby, dumb upper-class person'.

Regardless of what he thought of VIPs, however, he could understand why they liked their VIP room so much. Not only it was quiet, but the seats were very comfortable and they had a lot of space to themselves instead of being pushed left and right during rush hour.

"You need to be aware of what I'm doing, or one day you'll up and say 'hey, why am I letting a dirty human take care of anything in my organization?!'. Then you'll kick me out of the position and you'll try to do it yourself, which is why you'll need to actually know how to," Torchwick explained cheekily, making Neo grin at his unflattering impersonation. Taurus wasn't sure if Deery and Banesaw had found it funny or not, but both were avoiding his eyes, so he took it they had. Torchwick then continued as if nothing had happened. "Look, you need to know this stuff. You may not be the public face of the 'new' White Fang, but you're still going to be the one leading it. Eventually, even the political decisions are up to you."

Taurus begrudgingly had to admit the human had a point, although even the thought was making him sick. "Didn't you say we were here to celebrate?" he gruffly said instead, trying to delay the Law and Business lessons he knew were coming up. As careless as Torchwick was, he seemed to adore being able to lord his better education over everyone's head and dropping advice from above. It fit his personality, he supposed. "I prefer not to talk about work during my celebrations."

Torchwick chuckled and raised his own shot. "Alright, Mr Grumpy. Cheers to Cinder's death!"

The bull Faunus immediately perked up. Cheering for an insignificant human's death was so far below him he didn't even allow his men to do it, but cheering for the successfully executed murder of their main tormentor was another matter entirely. He went as far as clinking his glass against Torchwick's and Neo's, something he would never do otherwise, before draining it in one go. "Damn yes. It was about time we took care of her."

"I've heard that her underlings escaped capture," Deery spoke up, placing her shot glass down. "What were their names? Emma and Mercury?"

"Emerald Sustrai and Mercury Black," Torchwick offered helpfully as he slowly refilled everyone's glasses. Normally, they would be served by one of Junior's men, but in their particular case the criminal had asked the owner for max privacy. Considering they were going to get drunk, it was probably for the best if no one was around to hear any slip-up.

"Those two, yeah. I've heard they escaped and showed up at one of the meeting points," she continued. "I'm not sure where they are right now, but most likely they're still there. Ours was a secret mission, so they shouldn't be able to find out anything, right?"

"No, and even if our mission had been played a little less close to the chest, those two combined wouldn't have enough brain cells to turn on the light, much less actually find out our plan," Torchwick reassured her as he refilled Banesaw's glass, who nodded in thanks, before moving onto Neo's. "Right now, they aren't those we should we worried about."

"It's Ozpin, right?" Taurus asked, impatiently.

"Actually, no. He's going to let his little dog Ironwood loose on us, sure, but as long as we remain hidden we should be fine. If you ditch the masks and uniforms, it's not like Faunus can be arrested just for being Faunus, right?" As he finished his assistant's glass, Torchwick placed the bottle down and raised his own glass again, although he didn't toast this time. "The ones you should be looking out for are the students."

"The students?" Deery repeated after downing her own shot. Taurus subtly glared at everyone – was he the only one not comfortable with drinking alcohol with not one, but two humans?

"He's not wrong," Banesaw interjected in a rare show of intelligence, perhaps brought on by the alcohol. "Think about it. Ozpin still has to follow the law. Those students have already interfered with Torchwick's operation at the docks, and before that a young Huntress trainee attacked him during a robbery. It's sadly known that the Beacon students, especially the first years, tend to be out of control and to believe they are Godsent angels of justice or something, and that they are fully within their rights to go into the city and start causing trouble to 'find the bad guys'. Which usually ends with those 'angels of justice' being a pain in the ass for everyone."

Everyone stared at him as he lowered his gaze to stare at his glass. Realizing everyone else was silent, Banesaw glanced up. "What?"

"You kind of went on a tangent there, Bernard," Deery informed him, offering Torchwick her glass to refill. "But I suppose you're right. They are the ones who could act even without an authorization, or that could act without proof. I've heard that at the start of the year, a Beacon applicant even wrecked this club entirely, completely unprovoked, and walked away scot-free. If that one comes after us, she might just wreck meeting point after meeting point until some of us do something stupid and fight back."

"Which is technically self-defence, but that if done with a weapon with the White Fang brand might be problematic," Torchwick nodded, catching on. He knew of Yang Xiao Long's unbelievable act of destruction at Junior's – he was the one who'd gathered that info and sold it to that reporter, after all. And after being chased all over the docks by said girl, he really couldn't help but agree with the girl's statement. "She's right, Taurus. You should be careful. If the White Fang suddenly were to turn a new leaf, even if legally you were to be untouchable, some hero wannabes might try to 'take you down for the greater good' or some other bullshit like that."

Taurus glared down at his glass. 'I don't like the thought of being afraid of kids,' he grumbled to himself. 'Not to mention, Blake is in Beacon, and she'd never believe I might change ways. As 'good' as she is, she doesn't believe in other people's change of hearts.'

'Not that I had a change of heart, of course,' he added. He would be the first to admit that his actions were heinous, cruel and sometimes downright inhuman. He knew that and he was okay with it. If that was what it took to reach his goal, then he would do it. 'But changes are Blake will somehow do something. Either try to do something herself, although I doubt it, considering how much of a coward she showed herself to be, or try to get the authorities to do something. It's not likely, but with someone as knowledgeable about the White Fang as Blake, I cannot rule out the chance she might try her hardest to stop us no matter our intentions or methods, simply because of her prejudice.'

It didn't escape to him how he talked about prejudice when he saw humans as all the same, but he didn't care.

He downed his fifth shot as soon as Torchwick refilled his glass. "I suppose you have a point, Deery," he said, pointedly not giving credit to the human criminal. "But I don't think we should be worried. What are the chances of us running into some students, especially once we start laying low?"

/-/

"Are you sure this is the best place for our date's end?" Ruby asked doubtfully, looking around at the red-lit club they had just walked into. The blaring music was jarring, but she supposed she could get used to it. It wasn't too different to how Yang was whenever one of her favourite bands published a new song.

"I know this looks really bad, romantic-wise, but the food here is really good, and I know for a fact Yang will try to track us down, so going where she doesn't expect us to go may help." Jaune rubbed the back of his neck. "I wanted to go to a restaurant, but-"

"No, I get it, having Yang squealing at us over our shoulder all the time would be so awkward." Ruby knew a thing or two about sisterly embarrassment, and she was sure Jaune knew even more. Yang would somehow find out where they were if they had gone to a restaurant. It was just how she was. Plus her dad and uncle knew about Jaune too, now… and they weren't much better.

"But still, Junior's…"

Jaune looked away, face burning in embarrassment. He hadn't thought this out enough. It had just sounded weird to go to a restaurant with Ruby on their second date or something, especially considering how awkward both of them were in social situations. But he'd totally failed to consider that a club wouldn't be a good place for a second date with anyone who wasn't Yang.

'Great going, Jaune, now you've ruined the date. And you're gonna have to plan a third one to make up for this,' he grumbled to himself.

"Are you two going to order or are you just sightseeing?"

Both of them jumped at the sudden interruption, Ruby's hand flying to where her scythe normally was and only finding air. The woman who had addressed them was almost unrecognisable from the other black-suited, black-hatted, red-glasses'd goons in the local, except for her peculiar short green hair flowing out from under the hat. She didn't look like a waiter, more like a gangster, but she was holding a notepad and a pen.

"C-Can we sit down first?" Ruby asked. No point in turning back now.

"Ruby, it's fine if you-"

"Sure, follow me." The woman completely ignored Jaune's protest and led them to a separate area of the local, where they were shown to a table with a small menu already on it. "What can I bring you?"

"How did you know we were here to eat something and not to just party?" Jaune asked, confused.

"I overheard your conversation." Was it just them, or did she seem to smirk when she said that? "Do you two need some time to order?"

Ruby frowned at the familiar voice. Had she met her before? Perhaps when they had visited the gambling side of Junior's club? Also, she hadn't seen any women amongst the club's staff last time. Was she perhaps new? Or… and her face burned at that… had she been one of the scantily-clad dancers?

"Uh, sure, we'll just need a couple of minutes." Jaune passed her a menu before grabbing the other one as the 'waitress' walked away. He glanced up to meet her eyes. "S-Sorry about this, Ruby… I guess I really didn't think this through."

Ruby hid her lack of enthusiasm behind her menu. Yang had warned her that Jaune might not be Prince Charming, but to be honest it was just a mistake. He was only human, after all. "Don't worry, it was my fault too," she tried to reassure him. If she hadn't just let him plan the whole thing without lifting a finger, she couldn't expect everything to go well.

Jaune let out a frustrated sigh and looked down at his menu, obviously having picked up on her disinterest. "Do you want to get out?" he asked, placing his menu down, although he had already picked his order. "Honestly. There's no point in staying if neither of us is going to enjoy it."

Ruby didn't lower her own menu. "Yeah…" she admitted softly. She didn't want to ruin Jaune's fun, but how was it supposed to be a date if one of them was uncomfortable the whole time? She liked Jaune, but this time he'd really messed up. It was bad enough he dragged her to a club the first time, but a second one? "We should just go back to Beacon."

Jaune's face fell, but he didn't seem very surprised. "Yeah…"

The two of them stood up and she dropped her menu, deeming it useless. She wasn't going to come back at the Xiong local anyway. She didn't try to reassure Jaune because frankly, now wasn't the time nor that was the place, but she smiled a bit to at least let him know she wasn't angry or anything. Just a bit disappointment.

"We all live in a yellow submarine~ Yellow submarine~ Yellow submarine~"

Both of them froze when they heard a chorus of voices singing, one of which both recognized. They turned and, much to their shock, saw a mismatched group stumbling to the door of the club.

There was Torchwick, drunk, his bowler hat on his shoulder instead of his head, walking arm-in-arm with a large tan-skinned guy who looked remarkably like Yatsuhashi from Team CFVY, and a thin girl with small white antlers peeking out of her beige-coloured hair, both of which just as drunk as the thief himself. Right behind them came a man dressed in all black, with bright red hair and black horns, the White Fang mask covering his eyes. His singing was the best one of the bunch. And on his shoulder rode a petite girl dressed in pink, white and brown, with pink and brown hair split in two colours down the middle.

To say both parties were shocked would be a lie, because the criminal quintet completely ignored them as they stumbled out of the door, still singing at the top of their voices.

"I think Ozpin will want to know about this," Ruby commented. Her own voice felt distant, and much calmer than she actually felt.

"Yeah…"

/-/

Far, far away, in the deepest parts of the Grimmlands, where no human or Faunus had ever ventured into and returned alive, a solitary castle stood amidst gigantic formations of purple crystals and surrounded by hundreds of Grimm of all kinds.

Within its walls -and windows- a large hall was currently inhabited by three people, two humans and a Faunus, who were some of the most terrifying villains the world would ever encounter.

One of them was a giant of a man dressed in shades of green and black. He had brownish skin and brown hair and looked like he could easily lift a car. His name was Hazel Reinhart. Beside him sat a tall, thin man in an Atlasian dusty purple suit with thick grey moustaches and short hair. He wore a cunning smirk worthy of his Atlasian origin. His name was Arthur Watts. And finally, sitting across the table from them, there was a tall man with a muscular built, dressed in an open shirt and wearing a psychopathic grin. A long, black scorpion tail swished behind him as he cackled maliciously. His name was Tyrian Callows.

Said psychopath was currently grinning madly as he stared at his sweating opponents, both of which weren't looking very good. He lowered his hand, slamming a green four on top of the green seven on the table. "Uno."

Arthur Watts contained a sigh as he briefly scanned his cards – all five of them. Then he grabbed a red four and played it. "Hazel."

The large man didn't change his stoic expression as he played a draw-four card. "Blue."

Tyrian's grin faltered as he was forced to draw four cards, and was then replaced by a grumbling pout as the man realized he had no blue cards.

Before they could continue, however, the doors of the hall swung open, and all three of them sat up straighter. Well, Hazel and Arthur did. Tyrian simply crouched on his chair, straightening up a little.

A tall woman glided into the room. Her skin was paler than a corpse's, with black veins running all across it. She had a long black dress with a small cleavage window, and her hair was done in a series of pigtails that made it resemble a white spider. Her eyes were black with red irises and black scleras. She was Salem, Queen of the Grimm.

The woman glanced at the ongoing card game and simply took her seat at the head of the table. "I have news regarding Cinder and her mission."

"Ah, has the Breach occurred yet?" Arthur Watts asked while Tyrian drew another card and whined, playing a blue nine. Watts then played a red nine.

"No, and I have reasons to believe it won't happen at all." That piqued everyone's interest, though not as much as Hazel's second draw-four, which caused Tyrian to whimper pathetically as the colour was changed back to blue.

"And why would that be, Milady?" Tyrian asked as he drew another quartet of cards, reaching nine, and played a blue draw-two on Watts, to which the man replied with a yellow draw-two, forcing Hazel to draw four cards instead.

"Because it seems that our dear Cinder has not chosen her servants carefully," she explained easily, looking on with slight interest as Tyrian stopped Watts with a yellow stop card.

"What has happened?" Watts asked, unimpressed with the news. "I did warn her against choosing allies without checking their motives and avoid using mere intimidation. I suppose their alliance could not last."

"Indeed it didn't." Salem raised her eyes to meet Watts's before continuing. "They seem to have betrayed her."

"Do I need to fetch her back from Beacon, Milady?" Tyrian giggled insanely, eager to be of use.

"No," denied the Queen of the Grimm. "After all, it would be pointless to retrieve a corpse."

Her three underlings exchanged glances. They all knew Cinder hadn't been a good choice as Salem's fourth enforcer. She didn't have the intellectual capability to come up with successful plans, like Watts, nor did she have the unyielding and complete loyalty to Salem that Hazel and Tyrian had, causing her to deviate from the original plans.

For the first time ever, the first collective thought that didn't involve games to pass the time went through the minds of all three of them – Salem had made a mistake when she'd chosen Cinder.

True, Cinder was just going to be the little puppet with the Maidens' powers until Salem could have the Relics. Lured with power to give Salem the ancient artefacts, she would've been disposed of. They all knew that was their fate – they just hoped Salem wouldn't win for another hundred or so years. Just until they kicked the bucket on their own.

"So, what now, Lady Salem?" Watts asked, calmly folding his hand of cards, following by Hazel. Tyrian angrily gathered them all and pocketed the full deck, irritated by the incomplete match.

Salem narrowed her eyes. "We wait. From what I could gather from my Grimm, the situation in Vale and in Beacon is too chaotic to take advantage of. Not to mention that Cinder failed to obtain control of the CCT system, which means we won't be able to hack into the Vytal Festival on time."

She closed her eyes, and remained silent for a few seconds before opening them again. "I believe we should simply observe for the time being. If the situation is salvageable, then I shall send you, Watts, to deal with it accordingly. Otherwise, we will abandon the plan, for now."

The three servants nodded, knowing fully well that serving Salem meant waiting a lot – she'd lived for millennia, of course a few years weren't going to bother her one bit.

Tyrian took out his Uno playing cards again. "Uno, anyone?"

/-/

Blake Belladonna was a normally very suspicious person. In both senses of the word. She was naturally suspicious of everyone, and she also attracted other people's suspicious, sometimes. Especially whenever she got lost in her novels.

No, she shouldn't be thinking of that. Of all that perfectly good… literature… going up in flames in some sort of ridiculous ritual that had probably attracted the attention of everyone in the school and had also creeped them all out. It wasn't such a big surprise their friends hadn't hung out with them a lot in the past week. Pyrrha was off to train more often than not, Weiss was visibly uncomfortable every time they spoke, and Nora was slightly subdued (not that anyone could notice, of course) whenever the topic of books came up.

It was all Yang's fault. Her and her blasphemous acts had ruined their friendship.

But that was beyond the point.

Blake was a normally suspicious person, but she was also the type to never really forget about something, especially if she deemed it wrong.

Like the destruction of her beloved books, or the acts of the White Fang.

The White Fang may have recently somehow disappeared aside from a raid at the Schnee mines in Atlas (what were they even doing up there?), but she wasn't going to let them off the hook so easily.

She wasn't really sure of what she could do, aside from seeking them out herself. The police department of Vale, mostly human in employment, obviously wouldn't help – they may have been racist and eager to get their hands on those misguided Faunus, but they were indecently unprepared to deal with the organization, and their combat skill could be compared to Jaune's… no offence to Jaune.

She was the only one who could actually do something. And with her team always so distracted (Ruby and Jaune by each other, Yang by the former two, and Sky by Yang), it would be incredibly easy to sneak out and track down the White Fang on her own. Incredibly easy, and stealthy too – she was the only one on her entire team, and in their entire group of friends if one didn't count Ren (who came with Nora, so no), who actually knew what stealth was.

But what Ozpin had told her back when she'd feared her team's judgement upon her and, more importantly, she'd feared the professors would condemn her for her relation to the White Fang based on the information they had on her parents, well what he had told her was still there in her head, bouncing around like a particularly annoying echo in one of the caves of Ninjas of Love XX: Fill All Holes.

Stop considering yourself the only intelligent being on Remnant.

Or something along those lines.

Ozpin had warned her against believing herself to be right no matter what, and believing everyone else wrong or incapable of having the right opinion. True, to her stopping the White Fang was the only option there was, but perhaps she was being close-minded?

Maybe she could try to inform Ozpin himself about her worries and hope for the best?

But what if he didn't do anything, and he stopped her from even trying after learning of what she wanted to do? Would she risk finding out if his reasoning was sounder than hers? Or would she try her own way?

Argh, they were all really hard choices!

Blake sighed miserably and curled up tighter on her dorm's bed. As much as people thought her to be the calm, thoughtful, careful type of girl, she knew she wasn't. She was aware of how hot-headed she could be, and how emotion-driven she could be. She was more likely to jump in recklessly than to wait and report later.

She wasn't above planning her actions, well sometimes, but if she saw an opportunity, she'd immediately jump in.

She was aware of that particular flaw of hers. But that didn't mean she thought of it necessarily as a flaw – there were moments when sitting back and planning calmly just wouldn't do! Moments where action had to be taken immediately!

'I'll inform my team of where I'm going,' she decided eventually, 'and then I'll try to check out one of the White Fang's meeting points. I'll be really careful, but in case something happens I can still call for help. Hopefully, nothing will go wrong, and I might even find out more about the White Fang, information I could use to save lives!'

Her mind made up, she stood up and swiftly changed out of her pyjamas. Normally, she'd so slowly and sensually, just in case a handsome, sexy ninja were to be passing by and got interested, but today she had no time to re-enact Ninjas of Love III: Love in the Air's initial very romantic romp between the princess and the protagonist.

Casting her eyes around for a suitable piece of paper to write her message on, she spotted the scrap paper Dove had handed her secretly alongside a small USB device, just two days prior, before the Dance.

I know we aren't friends, but I've seen what they've done to your books and I felt really sorry. In the USB there is the full series of Ninjas of Love, digital version of course. Just a piece offering. Sincerely, a fellow NoL lover, D.

At the time, she'd almost been moved to tears by the kind gesture from a kindred soul. She'd definitely put the USB to good use, copying the files everywhere, in triple copy, while also keeping the small device in a small safe to ensure no one could destroy them ever again.

Grabbing a pen, she turned the paper over and wrote a quick message to her team, informing them of her destination, of her Plan A, B and C, and of course asking them not to tell anyone. Since she would be leaving it in their dorm room, it was incredibly unlikely for anyone else to stumble upon it before Yang or Sky could see it.

Her duty to her teammates fulfilled, Blake Belladonna grabbed her disguise kit and headed out of the door, ready to stop the age-long discrimination against Faunus.

Hope you enjoyed!

I know this one was slow, but it was mostly foreshadowing. No action because it's hard to fight when you're drunk or unarmed, lol.

Until next time,

Khor Evik Vlakhavlakh

PS: I wonder though... who is keeping track of the Ninjas of Love, amongst you?