Music Choices: The Hunt by Eon
Author's Notes: Annnnd we're back.
Eclipse
Chapter 74
Épée et bouclier
In the brief hours before true morning and true night, a woman slept in her bed alone. The room's blackout curtains prevented any stray light from peeking in before it was welcome, and lay in a soft darkness, uninterrupted.
The bedroom was located on the faculty floor of one of Beacon's dorms, well away from the noise of students who kept odd hours, or fellow faculty who kept even odder hours. This was a brief and sacred quiet that few on Remnant would dare interrupt save in a true emergency, considering the occupant of said room.
Brrrring-bing-bing
The woman stirred beneath her covers immediately, letting out a frustrated huff before dutifully reaching for the scroll on her nightstand.
Brriiiing-
She answered it with a brisk swipe of her thumb, blinking the sleep from her eyes quickly. She didn't recognize the number.
"Arc," she quipped, sitting up, her posture quickly flowing into alertness.
"Professor-"
The voice on the other end, however, she did recognize, immediately.
"-it's Summer."
Joan moved immediately to get out of bed, her blue eyes falling instantly on her sword and shield, and the armor and supply bag next to them. She could be battle ready in under a minute, and out the door in less than two. A minute thirty if she hustled.
She could also admit to herself that she was getting slower. It was inevitable, after all. Time was catching up, as it ever did, and the pace she had kept for the past twenty years had hardly been gentle.
Still, Nwyfre would absolutely rag on her if she knew she ever figured out she was slipping; and gods forbid Joan ever let that happen.
"Yes, what's happened?" Joan moved, listening as she picked up her underclothes and began to throw them on. She engaged her Semblance as well, using it to pull her armor to her and arranging it on the bed, the straps already undone.
"It's a lot to explain, but-"
It always was.
"Verdant moved on ARSN, and STRQ responded-"
Joan inhaled slightly, mentally running through the potential calamities that had befallen her students in the brief hours she had been asleep.
'Moved on ARSN' relayed a lot of information to her in itself. Sigyn was Summer's adoptive sister, and the daughter of Tormund; attacking or capturing ARSN in some way would be a twisted, yet logical choice for a man trying to gain the upper hand over STRQ. In the moment at least. The long term effects, however….
Are they trying to bait the Witchfingers into reacting as well? Such a decision could cause a bloody civil war!
Not that such a thing hadn't been on her radar as of late; the current King had been bucking the constraints of the Council and the laws imposed by Ozpin over his lifetimes.
The political situation in Vale, and most Kingdoms, had been tense sincr the war for faunus civil rights; and despite what the media outlets had tried to portray, the situation had hardly cooled down despite the accords.
The world was a barrel of Fire Dust, ready for a single spark to set it alight once again.
"Where are you?" she asked, keeping her tone calm, preparing herself for catastrophe.
"I'm sending the coordinates. But the short of it is that Verdant was acting outside the Service's knowledge, and was stalking us on campus-"
Joan inhaled once again as she utilized her Semblance to quickly pull on her plate mail and adjust the straps.
Fucking hell's, I'm a daft fool alright.
She'd known the moment she'd looked that venomous man in the eyes just what he was. What he wanted, what he was capable of - a reckless, cruel, and crafty brute totally dedicated to the path he'd chosen, one who wouldn't compromise or consider cutting his losses for even a second.
A man who saw kindness as weakness; and compassion as a flaw to be exploited.
And she'd let him walk out to go do whatever he bloody pleased to innocent people. To her students!
She hadn't had a choice at the moment, or she had told herself she didn't, and now she was kicking herself because the bastard had done exactly what she'd feared he would.
Right under her bloody watch!
Joan almost always knew her enemies, when she looked them in the eye. Ever since she was a little girl, she could look a person square in the face and see - see them, for what they were.
Who they were.
Though she had learned the hard way that her perceptions were far from perfect. And her ex-partner and former teammates had definitely…sown the seeds of doubt, when it came to her own motivations and skills of perception.
You look at this world and the people in it and see only the potential you WANT to see! You've got one good eye and want to tell the rest of us that we're fucking blind! What right do you think you fucking have, Joan Arc? To shape the world, when you fucking hate half of it?! Do we degenerates not get a say too?!
"-and now I can't get to the others, and the Service has been summoned-"
Joan focused instantly on that, interrupting in calm, firm tones.
"Why have you become separated from the rest of STRQ, Summer?" Joan asked, sitting briefly as she used her Semblance to pull her boots on and tighten the straps of her plate armor.
It wasn't an accusation - Summer was easily one of the best team leaders she'd taught in years, and the reason the little faunus could have been split from her team in such circumstances would clearly be a serious one. However, in a situation like this, a team was its most vulnerable when it was segmented, especially when split from its leader, whether by distance or interpersonal factors.
A lesson she had learned herself most, most cruelly all those years ago.
And if the others were split from one another as well…
"Because there is apparently an enemy aetheri involved who is targeting me -"
Summer sounded skeptical and angry, a very unusual combination for her in Joan's experience with her student; it painted a picture for Joan very quickly, allowing her more insight into the situation despite a lack of other details.
Joan surmised that Summer hadn't engaged this aetheri personally yet. She was working off someone else's intel, possibly having been pulled from the conflict against her will.
If multiple aetheri were involved, like the meddling first year Joan had just sent to bed not even a few hours previously, then it was possible any manner of enemy magic wielders were running amok in the area of engagement.
Bloody hells, does the Service have aetheri in their arsenal now?! We never should have let it go this long, I TOLD him-
"What do you mean by apparently, Miss Rose? " Joan prompted, opening her nightstand and pulling out several pieces of engraved black iron and a familiar mirror piece she still hung on to for 'practical' reasons. She paused briefly to glance at the framed photographs on the nightstand, eyes ghosting over the smiling faces of her family, and a photo even older than that, one that still caused a guttural pain in her very core, before stuffing the countermeasures into her belt-pouches. "I need you to be specific on this. If it is multiple high level magicians involved, I will only be so useful on my own. You understand?"
Joan could probably handle a single aetheri solo, even if they were fully awakened. She'd done so on several unpleasant occasions, though it had hardly been easy. And on more than one occasion, she had nearly died.
Usually, their own hubris was something she could utilize in battle to her advantage, as some aetheri seemed susceptible to underestimating their mundane opponents; but Joan had had to rely on the trinkets and baubles of other magic users to do so, including Ozpin's own wards.
Unlike those individuals, she did not rely on assumptions that opponents would be weaker than herself.
If it was more than one, however, she would need his direct assistance in mounting a rescue. Or to call in one of the other members of their little club, who was still extremely green and extremely irksome at the best of times.
"It - Ciara is assisting the rest of STRQ currently -"
Joan's eyes widened a fraction.
She'd met Ciara only once, and it was not under ideal circumstances.
To say the least.
But things might have changed a bit, considering recent events…. hopefully.
Ciara is fiery yes, but she cares about her people and her children; in this matter, we should be aligned.
"- and there are two unaffiliated aetheri assisting us at the moment," Summer hurried on. Joan didn't miss that either.
There was no such thing on Remnant as unaffiliated when it came to politics or magic. There was simply what was known and unknown. And unknown factors were, in her experience, typically the deadliest.
But…not always…not always…
Nothing on Remnant was truly just black or white, either; magic and politics included. There was, not so simply, a thousand thousand different factions; a million fractured lines masquerading as some shade or another as the moment suited.
And navigating those countless barriers as honorably as possible was her duty, and had been, for her entire adult life.
For better.
And for worse.
"But the rest of the Service is there and I can't provide assistance directly without apparently compromising the situation -"
Joan scooped her sword and shield up finally, sheating her weapon in it's scabbard, before heading for the door without hesitation.
"Summer? I need the names of these assistants, too," Joan insisted, twisting the handle. "I need to know what I'm walking into, and what other factors I need to take into account. Withholding that information will not assist me, nor your teammates, quite the opposite."
Come on, kid, don't get sucked into the Ursa shit too - you're too smart for that! Use your bloody head, Summer!
Though a person's head was never really the issue in such matters; no, quite the opposite, if she was being honest with herself.
A pause on the line, before Summer spoke again.
"Ah…it's um - Baphomet? And the Grimm Reaper? That's their titles-"
Joan held the door partially open, pausing briefly as her fingers stiffened, her frame buzzing with a sudden righteous rage she was all too familiar with, but refused to let rule her in the moment.
"I see."
Briefly, she reached for the mirror piece in her belt pouch, recalling things she'd much rather forget; but her heart would hardly allow her.
She considered marching over to the Headmaster's quarters that instant, but…
No. I want her alive. I want her alive and on trial for the things she did. And extracting ARSN and STRQ from whatever madness these people have drug them into are my priorities at the moment. The fucking Reapercan wait. For now.
The Grimm Reaper would answer for the things she did one day, if Joan had anything to bloody say about it; and she did, of course, have plenty to fucking say about it. However, her student's lives came first.
"Stay where you are," Joan ordered, reaching in one of the belt pouches for the Semblance glyph Ozpin had given her; one that would allow her to move outside the time stream and cross distances that should take hours. "I will be there momentarily."
"Uh, Professor? Listen, I know there's like, some kind of tension or something between you two? But right now-"
"My students safety comes first in this matter, Miss Rose," Joan insisted briskly, pulling Ozpin's glyph into her hand. "As always. I would never jeopardize that, especially over matters that don't concern any of you. Now - as I said - stay exactly where you are and don't do or consider doing anything too rash if you can. It affects the time-steam and makes things tricky."
Navigating via Ozpin's Semblance, when one was not Ozpin, was to be very frank - a bloody horror of a nightmare; but Joan was used to nightmares.
She had them every time she closed her eyes.
And she still refused to flinch.
Summer acquiesced after a slight hesitation.
"Understood. Standing by."
Joan funneled her Aura into the glyph, breathing softly as she felt herself pulled by the navel firmly into the ground; and the air around her stopped moving, growing stagnant. In her periphery, she saw countless glowing threads splitting off, weaving and warping over the fabric of space-time itself.
Other ominous shapes moved, flitting and flirting with the spacial vector she was inhabiting currently. One outside the laws of three dimensional space, and inhabiting realms that brushed against the outer limits of human and faunus understanding.
Such shapes and entities would pursue her, making the journey not only difficult, but frightening in and of itself; however, the advantage of using such methods was critical in circumstances such as these.
Joan took a brief, grounding breath; before setting off into the unknown.
Once again.