Everyone was on their way home after the ball. Ruby was thinking about the events of the last few days and what she had been told. Luckily, she had not been expected to say much at the ball and Pyrrha had been good for a few suggestions. She had been embarrassed by the standing ovation and was comforted when she had been told that they had been standing for most of the introductions.
An advantage of being so young was that she had been able to keep Maria around her as a chaperone who told people where to go if they pushed too far or gushed too much. She rather liked the woman. Although she was sharp tongued, Ruby knew inside that it was good natured. She already had suggested techniques for how Ruby could control the power used by the eyes, so she was not left helpless after using the power once. Ruby was hoping that they go into the Emerald Forest with Professor Port or Goodwitch tomorrow and try some of the techniques out.
Maria had also made it clear that there were forces in the world who would want to destroy her because of the power her silver eyes gave her to destroy Grimm. It had happened to her thirty years ago and even though she had killed all her attackers she had been left blind until Polendina had designed the odd glasses for her. The two were old friends and Maria and Pietro were sitting with Penny at the back of Winter Schnee's Atlas air force jet. The jet was in part funded by the SDC which explained some of the special features and luxury fittings.
Maria had been very firm when Ruby had started saying that to protect the rest of her team from the people who would want to destroy her, she should push them away as it was selfish to bring them into danger. She had hit Ruby over the head with her stick (which Ruby gathered was what was left of Maria's own weapon) and told her not to be as stupid as Maria had been. The fact that maria had travelled alone had made her an easier target. Ruby's life was worth preserving for her own sake and for the good of Remnant. If she pushed friends away, they would only feel guilty if she died because they weren't there. This rang bells with Ruby. Both Qrow and Taiyang had felt angry and guilty because mum had not taken them along on the final mission on which she had died.
She was sitting next to Weiss. Both were making a fuss of Zwei who was sitting on Weiss's lap and enjoying the attention. Weiss was also happily explaining to her, Blake and Yang what had happened over the last few days were so important to Atlas. Ruby was only half listening to Weiss. She heard what was being said, but she only fully concentrated when the discussion involved individuals she knew. She had at least mastered the art of making interested sounding noises at appropriate points. Luckily Blake was making more substantive interventions.
Ruby held Weiss's hand. It was somehow comforting to listen to her pontificating about the world. She then looked at Yang. Yang looked distracted and Ruby knew that her sister was noy yet ready to talk about what was bothering her. She had said as much to Yang last night and told her that when she was ready to let off steam, Ruby was willing to listen.
Ruby also thought about what she had been told by Professor Ozpin, Professor Goodwitch and Uncle Qrow about Salem, maidens, and the real threats to Remnant. She was unhappy not telling her teammates the truth and this had been one of the reasons she had been tempted to avoid having them around her. Even now, she still had qualms about not warning them about why there were dangers being around her. However, she could see how easy it would be to give in to despair if you were told that the Grimm had a human queen who could only be temporarily inconvenienced. Also, the fact that Ozpin was immortal and reincarnated each time he died was rather hard to believe.
She would try and spend some more time with Penny. It was odd being around someone who was more awkward than her socially, although Penny did seem to be incapable of feeling embarrassed. She had also contributed to the weapons session with Velvet and Leslie had been very grateful for the new crossbow bolts. He had said that he was also going on a mission now the ball was over. He was also on the plane in uniform and talking with Winter Schnee. He was accompanied by a glamourous fox Faunus who clearly knew Blake well and Yang said was a marvellous singer.
Ruby wondered whether they were boyfriend and girlfriend. They seemed relaxed with each other, but Ruby had always rather liked the idea of him and Lydia together. She had ever since initiation day when after collecting their relic they had gone off and hunted Grimm together for half an hour before going to the pickup point. He had even carried Lydia's golf bag which contained her collection of vintage sporting weapons.
She also thought that Brede and Anne were better suited to each other than Brede and Weiss. The papers and scroll sheets were all speculating this morning on the new power couple in Atlas, but Brede did not look at Weiss in the same way as he looked at Anne. He was also fundamentally too gentle a person for Weiss to be happy with. She gathered that in the last few days he had shown herself an agile player, but he had to force himself into it.
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In the Adel luxury jet (besides Madame Adel, her top designers, and top models) Team JNPR, Team CFVY and Team VBES were seated. There was a fashion show in Vale tomorrow lunchtime and Madame Adel was keen to show off her new signings Emerald and Sun. Mercury and Jaune had been given ambassadorial contracts whereby they were paid to wear Adel branded clothes in public.
Pyrrha knew that the fee being paid to Jaune was inflated because of his association with her. That was fine by her and Jaune did not seem to be upset by it. Mercury was positively amused by the fact that he was being paid money in part because people assumed that he and Emerald were an item. Pyrrha thought that actually they were rather like Ren and Nora last term. They were together but not together/together. She was sure that Mercury was attracted to Emerald and that Mercury was Emerald's best friend. Certainly, he was the one she turned to if anything happened or was said.
Pyrrha was also thinking about what had happened at the ball. Fox had told her telepathically to keep an eye on John Marigold. She had noticed him pat his pocket and head towards the Schnee table, and she had told Jaune to be ready to trigger his semblances. When the man had reached into his pocket both her and Jaune had reacted immediately. With Jaune's boost she had been able to divert the gun down and then deflect the bullet into the table.
A second later the dog Faunus Marrow Amin had stopped the man in his tracks and Atlas security had disarmed and arrested the man. She had initially been unhappy with General Ironwood or whoever in Atlas Security had asked Fox to involve her and Jaune. He had gambled that her semblance was strong enough to ensure that Jacques Schnee was neither killed nor seriously injured. They had also taken the risk that she could calibrate her semblance so that no one else was killed or injured. In the end it had, but no one could have known for certain.
In the end, after an initial look of fear, Jacques Schnee had been delighted that the last act of a man who knew that he was about to be arrested was to try and kill the head of the SDC. This only increased when Ironwood resumed his speech. If half of what he had said about the Marigold family was true than they deserved to be arrested publicly in a setting with all the important people in Atlas present to watch it. Killing their own sister, her husband and trying to kill their child as well filled her with contempt and disbelief. This overshadowed the killing of the journalist and the attempt to kill the ex-head of security for the Marigold family, but in Pyrrha's eyes these were also heinous. People taking the view that killing employees to hide the sins of the family members was justified was a mindset she just could not understand.
After Ironwood had finished his speech Brede and Weiss had come up on stage and announced a second set by Weiss. It only lasted 15 minutes, but it gave time for order to be restored and quiet down the hubbub.
She had then watched the game of Atlas Leapfrog being played at its most ruthless and cynical. People who only minutes before had been schmoozing the Marigolds or at any rate had been sitting at neighbouring tables wasted no time in rushing up to General Ironwood to commend him on his display of leadership and/or to butter up Jacques Schnee and the senior members of the Campion family. Councillors Camilla and Sleet also had more than their fair share of sycophants. She also noticed that some other attendees who had made a dignified dash towards the exit were being detained by the Ace-Ops and other Atlas military members. Another ten or so who had not made a dash for the doors had their shoulders tapped by waiting staff or diplomatic security types and were led towards the doors. At least one was told that their urgent call had come through at reception and the look the recipient of the message gave made it clear that they knew what this meant.
More amusingly Yang went around telling them all that for once it was not her fault and that she had been out twice this week to a nightclub without random acts of violence breaking out.
After she had finished her second set to enthusiastic if distracted applause Weiss had come over and thanked them for protecting her father. She said that she had been told that no one had expected John Marigold to try and kill her father. The security had been around the Campion table and as three members of the family had strong auras and the diplomatic security teams had been confident that there was no risk.
Later Clover Ebi came over to them and took them into a side room. "I apologise for us putting you in the position you were. Only a minority of us thought that he might try and kill someone, and it was expected that he would either go for George Campion or more likely Captain Corkran. It was only when he moved in a totally different direction that one of us worked out what he might be up to and asked Mr Alastair to call you in aid."
Pyrrha then realised who must have spoken to Fox. After all her semblance was not widely known and she rarely used it nowadays. She looked round and excusing herself from Jaune's side for a moment headed towards Fox.
Fox was speaking to Lisa Lavender who had also been allowed to join the Adel jet. She seemed to have decided that after her scoops she could risk doing what had used to be her bread-and-butter work and interview fashion models and celebrities especially when they were also hunters and huntresses.
Lisa was asking Fox why he had known to tip her off that something was going to happen when May Marigold and Captain Corkran approached the Marigold family table.
Fox referred her to Coco who said hugging her Faunus teammate "Velvet here overheard a bystander saying to another person that May Marigold looked in no mood to take prisoners and that fireworks were bound to happen. We thought you may as well have a chance of another exclusive. After all you were just behind the front line with Fox and Yatsuhashi at Kulsa."
Pyrrha decided to wait until they were back at Beacon before asking the question. Actually, she might as well ask the person she suspected of providing the tip off tomorrow at Beacon.
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Yang was also listening to Weiss and Blake talking politics. She was happy enough to be next to her partner on the team and holding hands.
She had enjoyed staying with the Schnees. When she had left Schnee mansion she had hugged Willow Schnee and invited her to come clubbing with her when Willow was next in Vale. Willow had laughed and said that she would take Yang up on that offer. Whitley had also been given a quick hug to both embarrass and please him. Jacques had shaken her hand and said that she was welcome any time. The man positively beamed despite someone having tried to kill him last night He had looked rather like Blake had when she had discovered the Fish Noodle special at A Simple Wok in Vale.
Weiss had explained later that being shot at by John Marigold was a public relations dream come true for Jacques. Considering how many other people who the man might feel he might as well try and kill before he was arrested for conspiracy to murder, the fact that Jacques was top of the list was remarkable. Speculation on the motivation ranged from the SDC being Atlas Gold's biggest competitor to being killed for his newly professed pro-Faunus views.
Yang had also hugged Klein when he dropped her off with Weiss at the military airport. She had thanked "Cuddles" for looking after her during the stay and particularly getting her home after her excesses at the Mantle club. He had smiled at her and pinched his cheeks in the same way as his uncle the character actor in films.
Weiss had also hugged Klein which was more than she had done with her family other than Willow. Weiss explained that the family were not that demonstrative and would not know what to make of it if she did embrace them.
It was clear that Weiss was getting on far better with her family now then she had when they had first arrived. Initially Willow Schnee had been very careful around Weiss, but as she had got involved in arranging the ball the two had relaxed around each other and even gently teased each other in a rather formal manner. While there was still some way to go it looked like the relationship had improved.
She was not entirely certain what had changed, but Whitley had become less snide and had seemed genuinely glad to have Weiss around.
Yang guessed that Weiss having become an asset to the business had impacted on his approval of her. Willow had expressed the view that the fact that they had spent time apart from each other and knew there was only a limited time that they would spend together had made both Jacques and Weiss more tactful with each other.
It probably also helped that Jacques was making the right noises in public and private about moving the business in the direction Weiss approved of. The new market in Menagerie and the scandal in Vacuo three years ago made decent treatment of Faunus important for business reasons.
It had been fascinating seeing Brede and Weiss as a double act. They had always been friendly at Beacon without seeming close. Playing politics together they had actually seemed an intuitive double act. Perhaps the time away from Atlas had meant they had more things in common than previously and not being under the family gaze had made it easier to be natural together.
Kali had come to the military airport to see Blake off. Kali was staying in Atlas to negotiate business deals and Dr Oobleck was staying for a few days with her to advise on how to protect existing local businesses and avoid the problems which vacuo had had with the multi-Kingdoms. Apparently the egg donor's statements were being looked at for ideas. Out of earshot of Weiss (who after all had a conflict of interest) Blake had confided that Menagerie probably could not be as aggressive as the egg donor because it did not have significant dust deposits although another think Kali was doing was seeking to recruit dust geologists.
Watching Blake and Kali at the airport had caused her mixed emotions. She was happy for Blake and Kali, but it made her miss mum even more than ever. She also knew that she needed to speak to dad and Uncle Qrow about why mum had taken on the mission she did. In retrospect the timing had been significant. It was just after Kuroyuri and Kulsa. Perhaps things had been so bad then that mum felt that she had no choice but to take on the mission despite the fact that she knew that there was a real risk that she would not come back.
She would also ask them what mum had meant in the letter about the egg donor being a better person than most people believed and whether there was any truth in Raven's hint that she knew mum would fill the gap which the egg donor had left. Jacques Schnee had talked about Raven being a person of her word; Sienna Khan clearly trusted her (albeit that she might have had no choice); Oobleck had said that the woman had clearly chosen advisors who had thought clearly about how to form a new republic; dad had after all been in love with her; Blake had told her that when she had been with the White Fang in their Mistral base she had been a demanding but fair neighbour.
Weiss had suggested that it was shame and a fear of rejection which stopped the egg donor reaching out to Yang. Yang could see how this was a story which Weiss would want to believe about her own parents. That Jacques outburst had been so calculated to wound Willow that neither of them dared mentioning it again despite the fact that it had poisoned their lives and that of their children.
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Back in Atlas General Ironwood was taking stock of last night's ball and its aftermath. Initial reactions were even better than he had expected. Most of the arrestees other than the Marigold family were rushing to turn kingdom's evidence. He was going to recommend to Sleet and Camilla that plea bargains be accepted with most of them but that large cash deposits as sureties for future good behaviour and signed affidavits and witness statements disclosing all they knew about the Marigolds be required from them.
In addition, the remaining members of the Atlas Gold security team had also been negotiating for plea bargains. Apparently they did not trust John Marigold not to throw them to the wolves and were getting their retaliation in first.
He had some interesting choices to make in relation to the Marigold family. May's father had signed the document approving the murder of their sister's lover and her imprisonment on the grounds of insanity. The proof of her insanity was that she had had sex with a Faunus. Her brother had been involved in plotting the putative coup. He had been a particularly poor judge of character as 80% of those he had approached had reported him to the authorities. This left a twelve-year-old sister and an eight-year-old daughter who could not be expected to exercise the voting rights.
Clover Ebi had been in touch with Robyn Hill to suggest that May apply for custody of her siblings and exercise control of her father's shares in Atlas Gold pending the court cases. It also appeared that while they had publicly disowned May they had not formally documented her being cut out of the family line of inheritance. He had not explicitly told Clover to cultivate Robyn but had instead said that he had no objection to the friendship developing. While he did not like opposition, he saw that cultivating an opposition which was loyal to a concept of Atlas which he could recognise was better than one which threatened to bring down the whole edifice.
In relation to the 20% interest claimed by Captain Corkran, Ironwood saw no option but to support that claim and press for a default judgement. The DNA in the bones discovered in Vacuo had matched the medical records of Lilian Marigold and Colonel Magenta had forwarded an affidavit signed five years before by a member of the Mohawk tribe testifying to the finding of the dead woman and her guards together with a young Faunus boy who had apparently run away from the people who had killed his mother and who was now known as Leslie Corkran. The DNA testing had been conclusive that he was a member of the Marigold family and the Dunsterville family. The marriage certificate and birth certificate had been genuine.
John Marigold had agreed not to resist the application in return for his son not being prosecuted for conspiracy to murder. He did not know that Henry Marigold had admitted to knowing of the proposed murder in advance, but not any details about it. This would leave him vulnerable to a civil action from his aide's relatives and a certain amount of social disgrace.
The real whammy was the interaction of the treason rules and the civil liability cases. On being convicted of treason an individual's possessions became subject to forfeiture to the kingdom. There was provision for the kingdom to only exercise this right in part, but it had been made clear to the Marigolds that the kingdom was not inclined to mercy.
Traditionally the way round this was to gift your assets to relatives who were not involved in the plot. However, such gifts could be blocked if they also were used to defeat claims for damages. A claim for 23 years' worth of dividends on a 20% voting shareholding in Atlas Gold was a large enough amount of money that the courts would block such a gift. To make things even better it turned out the siblings had shared the dividends between them and had also sold up their sister's assets and split the proceeds. All three were up the creek without a paddle.
It had even turned out that there was a will leaving everything from the mother to the son. A single practitioner in Mantle had written the will and two associates had witnessed it. The mother had then handed it to Fria to deposit in the Atlas vault. He had notified Ironwood first thing this morning and before leaving Winter had retrieved it. With the will were blood, fingerprint and skin samples of mother and child to further prove authenticity. Even though DNA testing had only been a theory then, blood groups and fingerprints were established, and Lilian Dunsterville had been a resourceful woman.
The instructions from Corkran were that he would consent to the shares held by May's parents being transferred to her on terms that her siblings were each entitled to 25% of the income from the dividends but she was entitled solely to the voting rights together with the family home. In relation to Iris and John Marigold's holdings then any deal would need to result in him and May between them owning 67% of the voting rights and John Marigold and his family paying in full out of all realisable assets.
The thought of one of Atlas's major multi-Kingdoms being run by a Faunus who had lived most of his life in Vacuo and May Marigold was bizarre, but on balance worked for him. May would be forced either to be a hypocrite or take over the family company as CEO. No doubt there would be major investment in Mantle businesses, but that worked for him.
An unexpected bonus had been that the film of Marrow telling John Marigold to stay had become a meme in Mantle. The sight of an Atlas aristocrat being treated by an obvious Faunus like a naughty puppy seemed to tickle everyone's sense of humour. With luck it might also help rebut the accusation that the Amin family were modern, albeit wealthy, Stepin' Fetchits and make the father a more realistic candidate for the Mantle council seat.
He knew that he must strike while the iron was hot. In a few months' time the well to do of Atlas would realise how weak they had become, and he would need to make certain that they remained divided. Fortunately, there were plenty of precedents for expediting treason trials and making plea bargains for not insisting on the death penalty.
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Robyn Hill and her team had sat up all night with the Lynx Faunus and a hastily assembled legal team. May would be seeing her father and her lawyers would be meeting the other family members lawyers later today. The message which they would be receiving was that the only way of keeping the company under family control was to put May in charge.
She was the only member of the family whom the long-lost cousin would work with. Besides which the treason trial would happen before any civil case was heard and Ironwood and Sleet had made it clear that any attempt to strike out his claims would be heard before an honest judge and not one on the Marigold payroll.
May's cousin had been surprisingly willing to be generous to May and her two younger siblings. John Marigold and his children would be lucky to be left with a tenement flat in Mantle.
One stipulation which had surprised even Robyn had been his insistence that the company be renamed Mantle Gold. That was not a problem. The second was that after the dust had settled they investigate a demerger whereby May would take control of the Atlas and Mantle businesses and he would take control of the Vacuoan mines with the rump remaining under joint control.
It was possible that the tax implications would make this unworkable but May had no problem in principle with this.
It was Fiona who had pointed out that the Happy Huntresses could no longer be protestors begging donations for soup kitchens and community projects from businesses, but instead would be the major contributor and the ones insisting on matching funding from other sources. They would also have to run the company so that the B shareholders with no voting rights could not complain that they were being defrauded.
They were being forced to become part of the establishment and Robyn and May would have to schmooze the Amins. Campions and Schnees to secure their support for their initiatives. At least they could happily redirect the Atlas Gold foundation to sponsoring more projects in Mantle. The Lynx Faunus had also promised to use what influence he had with Marrow, Weiss, and Brede to ensure those three families charitable foundations redirected funds to Mantle. However, they would also be expected to invest in Vacuo and especially establish scholarships for members of the Mohawk tribe who wanted to go to one of the academies or to university.
They'd sort of won, but it would not be as much as fun. Besides which May in the long term would need to bring up her siblings to share the beliefs which motivated May or take some difficult personal decisions.
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Emerald was sitting in the Adel corporate jet drinking champagne and questioning her life. Since Kulsa her life had been a fairy tale of the sort which she used to cry herself asleep with in the orphanage or on the streets. For the first time in her life, she had real money of her own and strangers looked at her with admiration rather than with suspicion. Walking down the catwalk and seeing faces looking at her with interest, enthusiasm, and thoughts of romance as much as lust was what a girl on the streets of Mistral dreamed of. She had enjoyed going to the ball and had seen another orphan's dream of revenge unfold in front of her.
She was ashamed as well. She was betraying Cinder who had been the first person to spot potential in her and give her a regular comfortable bed for the night.
She had grown to like the members of her team. Neptune had all this surface confidence, but underneath was a mass of insecurities. It was clear to her that he just needed to play it cool with Weiss and wait until she was out of Atlas. Still, he had not been in Vale and seen the Campion aristocrat look at the Pig Faunus and fear that she was badly injured.
Sun was just a big child, but one could not avoid laughing with him (OK, sometimes at him, but mostly with).
She was beginning to admit to herself that since she had started at Haven, life had been more fun. Even Team ABRN with their chips on their shoulders about Pyrrha Nikos had become friends. At Kulsa she had fought with Team JNPR in defending the refugees from the Grimm and then on the walls with everybody else. She had enjoyed being part of a bigger team and being recognised for being good at what she did. She liked being a good girl and being praised for it.
Then Coco Adel and Team CFVY had walked into her life. She felt guilty for comparing her with Cinder, but Coco was about enjoying herself and having fun with her team. She was leader but did not require unquestioning admiration from them – admiration yes, but only if she earned it. The blind Vacuoan had great fund teasing her and even the shy Rabbit Faunus was not afraid to make fun of her. The huge Mistralian was the straight man of the team but had a wry sense of human if you listened carefully. Mercury got on well with the two men on the team. She did wish Cinder could be more like Coco.
Even Madame Adel had been straight forward with her. "As long as you make money for me, I will pay you a fair whack. It is in my interest for you to be successful unless you become more trouble than it is worth. I think we understand each other."
Straightforward and after having dealt with the jealousies inside gangs and the orphanages, simple instructions to follow.
The problem she had that the only person she had around her to whom she could speak honestly was Mercury. She shared with him her concerns that they were planning to betray all their new friends, sabotage the Vytal Festival and destroy the Academy they all loved. He simply replied "Em, we are being paid to be the bad guys and I do not spend the rest of my life running from Cinder, Tyrion, and Hazel if we betray them let alone the witch. I like these people and I will not enjoy killing them. If I have to I will, although I will be glad to find an excuse not to."
He also mocked her when she said she owed Cinder. "Cinder's just the new "big momma" or 2big chief" in charge at the orphanage or the gang who will allow a little more food and less onerous chores if you praise her and do her favours. She enjoys manipulating you in the same way as she enjoys playing with Roman. She's more dangerous than my father and I can't kill her, so I grin and bear it."
And yet at Kulsa when they both thought that they were going to die pretending to be good guys, he had knuckled down and stayed on the front line fighting hard. When Little Red as Roman and Cinder called her pulled their balls and tits out of the fire, they had embraced and for that moment both of them had meant it. Where they both lying to themselves?
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On the way back to Mistral, Claire Arc invited team ABRN and Amber to spend the week before term started and Amber's new contract began to spend time in Ansel with her, Nicholas, Lavender, and the twins. She also asked Professor Pink, but he needed to return to report to Professor Lionheart.
Her daughter and Team ABRN accepted. It had been interesting being in Atlas, but the announcements from Kuroyuri had put them all in a difficult position. They had therefore enjoyed noticing the parallels between what had happened in Mistral City after Kulsa when a couple of factions in Mistral politics had been purged with what had happened last night in Atlas.
It was clear that Atlas was now run by a triumvirate and that General Ironwood was the dominating personality. Claire and Amber Arc knew enough about Mistral history to realise the dangers of even well-meaning military rulers running the entire show. The Mistral government may be corrupt and inefficient, but in some ways it was a feature not a bug. The current system was in part designed to avoid the madness which had started the great war and then the Faunus wars.
The current system had failed in preventing the kingdom splitting into two. Perhaps the shock meant that there was scope now for making an alliance between the LGDF leaders in the provinces; Professor Lionheart and his supporters; some of the more enlightened crime gangs; the Argus true believers who thought that a mix of Mistralian improvisation and Atlesian method was the way forward; and the moderate old aristocracy (including the Lark family) who had decided that separate but equal was no longer viable to improve things. It was certainly worth trying.
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Fox was reflecting to himself on the events of the last few days. He had impressed himself by being able to run three separate networks at once with his telepathy semblance and never getting it wrong in determining who was meant to be able to contact whom.
Yatsuhashi had watched Mercury and Coco had kept an eye on Emerald. Neither had done anything really suspicious, although Mercury had watched Emerald and Leslie like a hawk. He had actually given a small clap at the insulting of the Marigolds. Still Fox and Velvet had done the same. For Fox the Lynx Faunus was a Vacuoan. His parents may have been an Atlas aristocrat and a Faunus from Mantle, but he had grown up in Vacuo and was one of them. An opportunist who gambled because you never knew when the fates would conspire to kill you without warning.
Coco had reported that Emerald's eyes had filled with tears when Ironwood described how an eight-year-old boy whose father had been murdered before he was born had watched his mother being killed by a hit squad she had outrun for eight years. There had been a look of joy when Ironwood described how fifteen years later justice was now about to take place and an orphan was to receive his due inheritance.
Velvet had referred to an old set of stories from the mines and plantations of Mistral. The Comrade Rabbit stories which for obvious reasons she had loved as a child where the trickster Faunus fooled Comrade Fox, the slave owner, and Comrade Bear, the police or soldier.
The fact that the man had called on Fox to activate Pyrrha to save Jacques Schnee's life showed that he was an Vacuoan. If the sand swallowed someone in your group, a sandstorm hit or a herd of Grimm appeared you saved everyone you could, even if you despised them.
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Winter Schnee used part of the flight to catch up on sleep. She knew that as soon as she reached vale she would be speaking with Ozpin with a view to forcing him to make a call about passing on the residual Fall Maiden powers to a new candidate. She would also be discussing the progress of the hunt for Arthur Watts and the other members of Salem's gang with Qrow and try hard to keep her temper.
It felt odd transporting two members of the White Fang in order to enable them to negotiate with Adam taurus to lay down his arms. It was even more disconcerting that one was also a captain in Atlas Military Intelligence.
Last night the General had talked to Winter and Marrow late last night about what had happened and what they thought he should do about the lynx Faunus. He had seemed relieved when both had said leave him alone and encourage him to stay out of Atlas while he finished his stint at Beacon. With luck the man would stay in Vale and live off his dividends from Atlas Gold and the compensation he received from his uncles and aunt.
Marrow had taken the view that the man was a double agent for both Atlas and the White Fang and had managed to serve both faithfully without really betraying either while using both of them to facilitate him taking revenge for friends, family, and himself. He advised Ironwood and Weiss to read the works of Redyard Kipling and in particular Stalky and Co.
Winter also took the view that the man should be left alone. She had pointed out that what the man knew about Atlas's clandestine operations would not look good if revealed to the rest of Remnant. She also pointed out that a man who had saved Parsifal and Brede campion's lives, was best friends with a great niece of Vale's two richest woman and had a talent for causing his enemies to self- destruct should be ignored.
As far as she or Marrow could work out he had revenged himself on all his enemies and if he wanted to tackle Adam Taurus as an encore he should be left to it. If the man succeeded and then retired, it would be a great relief to everyone. Perhaps he would marry the Fox Chanteuse or the Vale potential heiress. In an ideal world, he would go back to Vacuo and establish a proper government, but that seemed like a challenge too far.
She watched. It was odd seeing Cardin Winchester, a member of the Mohawk tribe and two Faunus drinking champagne together.
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As the two airships approached Beacon, Qrow waited for them to land. He consulted his list of meeting rooms and hoped that Glynda would be first off the ships. He checked the time. Roman, his cousin and the Faunus logistics expert had already arrived and had been parked in Glynda's office. Qrow would make certain that Glynda was told that this was on Ozpin's instructions. Raven, Lionheart and Rainart were due in five minutes and would be sent to another room.
He sighed. Even without his semblance he was not looking forward to the conversation that he would shortly be having with Taiyang, Yang and Ruby.
This is the end of the Atlas arc of the story. I am now into the endgame of my version of volumes 1 to 3, but now the strands link together in The Branwen Republic story.
I thought it worth showing the characters reactions to what happened last chapter and what it reveals about their motivations. I suspect it may be obvious where some of them are heading, but I prefer face/heel turns or heel/face turns to be foreshadowed rather than come out of nowhere.
Any feedback gratefully received. I did have fun dumping responsibility on the Happy Huntresses.