Music Choices: Let's Kill Tonight by Panic! At The Disco, Square Hammer by Ghost, The Killing Moon by Echo & the Bunnymen

Eclipse

Chapter 59

The Hunter's Moon

Part II

There was a place in Vale that never closed. A super mall, that extends deep underground, and connected to the underground rail system that linked the major districts inside the Kingdom; at one point, it had even connected to Mountain Glenn, before the tunnel had collapsed.

The Emerald Shopping Center was part bunker, part shopping district, part apartment complex, part city block. A person could technically live inside the ESC and never go above ground if they so desired. There were daycares, bars and clubs, community gardens - something there was always lit up and open and full of people; and it was there that ARSN eventually regrouped, having taken multiple, circuitous routes to ensure they weren't being tailed, and if they were, to lose them.

It was around nine by the time the teammates regrouped in the packed arcade. They planned on staying there, surrounded by people, as well as scrolls and cameras that Reinhardt could access to keep an eye out for any unpleasant surprises. ARSN gathered around their favorite co-op game, a first person shooter where they were killing aliens instead of zombies; Nat and Sigyn were mowing their way through the levels and talking with the boys as they did so, trying to break down what had gone wrong.

"We stayed pretty far back the entire time," Sigyn said, her voice unnaturally cool, her eyes an icy blue. "He never even looked at us and we deff weren't acting like we were tailing him. He's never seen us before, either."

"True. I don't know how he could have spotted me, or when," Natalia admitted, blowing alien brains all over a crate. "Or how he snuck past - unless he was using Semblance glyphs I don't know about. Is possible. But he would have had to know I was there, or suspect. And I stayed well out of range for human to detect- and most faunus."

"Well we've really fucked ourselves on this one, girls," Reinhardt declared, hands on his hips. Argent glanced at his partner, raising a brow. Reinhardt nodded seriously. "Really, just right up the old cooter - and Raven is gonna shit. No doubt."

"I told you, we should have waited," Natalia muttered darkly.

"We needed intel!" Sigyn protested, tearing through a cluster of giant alien monsters, all squealing and oozing green blood. "It's not like we did anything, ya know, bonkers or whatever! Or provable! Right?"

"Not a trace," Reinhardt insisted, pointing upwards.

He'd scrubbed all traces of Nat on that roof and replaced the feed with nice, boring nothingness that nobody save another technokinectic would be able to detect.

"Maybe he knew we were trailing him, because he was already watching us?" Argent prompted quietly.

A moment of silence, filled only by the squeals of dying aliens and gunfire.

"How would he?" Reinhardt asked nervously. "He'd have to be able to come onto campus, which he can't legally do, and then somehow avoid detection from the drones and everyone else on campus, which…."

He trailed off, looking over the crowd's heads as if expecting to see Verdant there, watching him. His arms were breaking out in goosebumps again.

"If he has a Semblance or glyphs that can conceal his presence, then what's to stop him from doing that?" Argent continued thoughtfully, also keeping an eye out on their periphery.

So far, the only people who had given them any mind were little kids and other youngish people who were intrigued by them chewing through the game at light speed; however, no one was lingering or seemed unnaturally curious about them.

"His Semblance is some form of mental domination, command based," Natalia chewed her way through her fourth toothpick, obliterating a swarm of aliens in concert with her partner. "I don't know more than that, or it's limitations, but it isn't invisibility or illusion."

"What if he just, like, tells people to not look at him? Or forget they saw him?" Sigyn suggested.

"Excuse me sir, what are you doing in our dorm - Don't look at you? Ok, nevermind, have a good day. Thanks for coming to Beacon!" Reinhardt said in a cartoonishly cracking voice. "That wouldn't explain the drones not recording him."

"Say, hypothetically," Argent started, leaning against the arcade console next to him. "For the sake of argument, that our boy has been making himself invisible and sneaking onto campus to spy on our friends and incidentally us. He wouldn't be able to come into the dorm without Summer catching wind of him in a heartbeat. Hells, he'd have to conceal his scent to come anywhere on campus, on top of concealing himself from the students, the teachers, the drones-"

"There's scent masking soap," Nat droned as they cleared yet another level. At this rate, they were going to beat their high score. "Theoretically, he could mask scent."

"Yo, seriously?" Argent paused, looking down at Natty. She nodded, obliterating yet another swarm. "Hey Rein, we should get you that."

"Bro, fuck you, I have good hygiene ok? I shower every day and I brush my teeth!" Reinhardt shook his fist up at his partner. "Every day! And I wear deodorant, I don't wanna hear it!"

Argent laughed as his partner punched his shoulder.

"Ok, ok, my bad!" he chuckled, holding his palms up in surrender.

"I AM NOT STINKY! THAT IS A HURTFUL STEREOTYPE AGAINST NERDS, YOU BIG MOOSE-"

"Reinhardt, it's not that fucking deep, my dude!" Sigyn interrupted, reloading her plastic gun toy like an actual shotgun. "Look, let's get back on track, boys!"

"Stay on target, boys," Natty drawled with a slight smirk.

"We gotta stay fuckin focused, boys!" Sigyn shouted, mowing through a dozen aliens. Behind her, a random guy whooped in encouragement, apparently thinking she was talking about gaming. Sigyn lifted her fist in solidarity briefly, before reloading again.

"I am on track," Argent chuckled. "I am on target!" Reinhardt protested, waving his arms.

Natalie spat out her shredded toothpick, and picked another out of her chest pocket without ever setting her toy gun down.

"But are you fuckin focused?" Natalia asked, exploding an Alien nest by shooting up Dust crystals growing out of the mine-shaft. Her character was caught in an animation sequence as the mine shaft ignited furiously; their characters ran frantically away from the oncoming roll of fire, before jumping into an underground lake.

"I am so fuckin focused, it's almost painful! Look, if homeboy is creeping around on campus?" Reinhardt started. "Then he's already made the first move! He's not waiting around for STRQ to make a play - he is on the offensive! He is taking the ball, and he is making it go!"

"And if that is case, then he might already know what wind is blowing," Natalia suggested, cracking her neck and waiting for the animation sequence to end. Once it did, she was scooping up the new weapons and ammunitions drops before she could pass them up. "Trying to remove us as potential threat."

"So this guy doesn't sit around waiting for shit to happen to him . He makes shit happen," Argent said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully as he tried to put himself in Verdant's head. "Ok: he knows we're trailing him. But instead of keeping that to himself and counter surveilling us…. he reveals that he knows. He tries to scare us, and it works. Why does he wanna scare us? What tactical purpose does that serve, other than being a dick?"

ARSN fell silent again, until Natalia spoke up.

"He wants to see where we'd run," she muttered grimly. "Who we'd run to."

"Dust on a fuck, he's watching us right now, isn't he?" Reinhardt cursed, pulling up the dozens of cameras he had access to. "I need thermal imaging, and none of these fucking shit cameras - or motion or aura tracing, something-"

"Stay cool, guys," Sigyn insisted, keeping a surprisingly level head at the moment. "He can't do anything to us. And we all have trackers on us!"

"Wait, we do?" Reinhardt paused, blinking rapidly. "I don't-"

"They have extra good shielding cuz they're my dad's, and if any of us get pulled into an unmarked van or some shit, he's gonna know exactly where we are and what's happened," Sigyn continued, raising her voice a little. Reinhardt caught on and fell silent. "And then it's game over, cuz dad will wear that little man's asshole like feety pajamas!"

He wasn't sure if there really were any trackers, but he wouldn't put it past Sigyn to put some in their clothes; however she wasn't saying all this for his or the other's benefit. It was so Verdant would think twice about trying to grab any of them up or black bag them.

Ohhh fuck me, this went super sloppy seconds sideways didn't it?

The girls continued to slaughter their way through the final levels, while the boys talked urgently between themselves, trying to keep their voices down.

"We can't stay out here all night," Reinhardt whispered to his partner. Argent had that look in his eye that betrayed he was considering some rather risky strategies. "I mean we can, but we gotta leave at some point to get back to school. Even if he follows us there, we can run to like, Professor Arc. Or maybe even Ozpin."

"If we leave the mall, there's a higher chance he can snag one of us where there are fewer people watching," Argent muttered back, face stoic as he tried to pinpoint where Verdant might be hiding. "With that Semblance, he could especially cause us some trouble. We're safe here for the moment, but we need an exit strategy. Cuz he isn't gonna wait around forever, eventually he's gonna make a move."

"Yea, what if he calls for backup?" Reinhardt hissed hoarsely. "He's got us pinned down in here, if more of them show up? We're uh oh spaghettios, bro. What if we take a sheet out of his toilet paper and go on the offensive? We've got him outnumbered for now, let's use that to our advantage!"

"We can't legally touch him unless it's self defense," Argent insisted, nodding at all the people around them. "Witnesses are working to protect us, but they're protecting him too. And even then, the law will work in his favor."

"Uhhhh," Reinhardt rubbed his palms together frantically, trying to spark some extra electricity between his ears. "Embarrassing option, but we could call STRQ and ask for a bailout? Raven's got her Semblance, she could get us back - or Taiyang, he might be an even better choice considering, uh, everything."

"Might work, but if one of STRQ comes out, the rest of them probably will, too," Argent paused in his scanning, glaring at an empty space by a vending machine twenty feet away across the tacky, colorful carpet. "And we'll be putting them in range of his Semblance, which again - potentially all he has to do is tell them not to use their Semblance, and then there goes our escape route. And he's got them, too, and they're the ones he actually wants….Fuck man. we're probably just bait."

Argent squinted at the space by the vending machine, sweat beading on his brow.

"Sigyn, can we call your dad? Or one of his people?" Argent asked quietly, glaring across the crowds briefly before turning to look back at his team. "Get em to walk us out?"

Sigyn sucked her bottom lip thoughtfully.

"Yes, but - fuck. Buttfuck! I'm really seeing our conundrum here, boys," she admitted ruefully, eyes flickering. "If he, like, pulls us in for questioning, anyone else we involve will also get totally snatched up and questioned, including my dad or his people. Creeper is messing with us for NOW, but he can get suuuper duper serious at any second, and then we're hanging in our slammie jammies because it's our word against his! If dad is on the outside, he can at least still pull strings to get us out or rally the troops."

The screen flashed as exuberantly as Sigyn and Natalia cleared the final level, having killed the alien queen and exploded the infested mine, collapsing it all and escaping onto the tundra. Natalia flicked her chewed up toothpick into the trashbin nearby, before pulling out her flask and taking a quick sip and sighing through her nose.

"We aren't walking out of here quietly," Natty droned, her eyes grim as she appraised her high score. "Our best option is chaos. Then fleeing separately. He can't chase us all. But he will probably catch one of us. If I act like I am making scroll call, he will target me - I have experience with military interrogation. I will last longest while you get help-"

Argent laid a hand on the gunwoman's shoulder, turning her firmly towards him.

"No fucking way," he scowled. "We walk out together, or we go down together."

"All for one, Natty-beans, you know the drill," Reinhardt chuckled nervously. "No one's jumping on grenades, no one's pullin RaeRaes, come on!"

Nat gripped his hand on her shoulder seriously, before slapping her other palm on Sigyn's shoulder, giving her a little shake. The rest of the team stared at her with wide, uncertain eyes. They'd never seen Natalia look so intense, and it was in that moment they all realized that Natty was afraid.

And if Nat was afraid? Then they'd really gone and fucked the duck on this one, boys.

"If he gets all of us ? Then no one will know what happened or where we went ," Natalia insisted with an intensity that startled them all. "Trackers, no trackers, he'll disable those! We will disappear off face of Remnant into military black site! After they pump us for information - and they will break us eventually and get everything we know - they'll go after others and take them down too! This is just like fucking Atlas all over again-"

"Uh uh!" Sigyn punched her partner's shoulder just as fiercely, snapping her out of it. "Get it together, Krasneyk! WE'RE ARSN! What do we do when faced with stupid fucking odds?!"

Nat blinked at her partner incredulously, rubbing her bruised shoulder.

"We...we out stupid them?"

Sigyn saluted, her mismatched earrings jingling chaotically as Reinhardt broke out in a wild smile.

"That is correct!" Sigyn declared dramatically, tossing her wild pink hair theatrically in a familiar manner. "One braincell gang! You can't scare us, we're too dumb and too crazy to be afraid!"

"This is the way!" Reinhardt shouted, sticking his hand in the middle.

"This is the way!" Sigyn cackled like a banshee, earning nervous looks from a few passersby.

With a dark laugh, Argent stuck his hand in the middle, and after a moment of hesitation, Natalia followed.

"This is the fucking way, girls," Argent declared, eyes gleaming craftily. "Here's what we're gonna do!"

Amidst the chaotic noise of the crowds and cheerful cacophony of the arcade, ARSN frantically whispered as they came up with their desperate, stupid scheme. Next to the vending machine, the barest hint of a shadow shifted across the wall casually. Waiting.

A young man with a service dog walked past the vending machine and the dog paused, her friendly brown eyes leveling as she sniffed at the corner; her hackles rose after a moment, ears flattening as she bared her teeth in warning. A quiet, but very menacing rumble responded to her, and the service dog whined and pushed away from the vending machine, trying to herd her owner to safety.

"Lily? Come on, chill sweetie. What's wrong?" the boy asked, moving away from the vending machine.

After a moment, the nigh invisible shadow drifted away from the vending machine, circling the four young Hunter's hungrily.