(A/N) Welcome! This is a fic I've been intending to write for a good while but never actually sat down to. I'll be updating probably 1-2 times per week with ~10k word chapters, at least for now. Any criticism is greatly appreciated, and I try to act on it if possible. I hope you enjoy.

Volume I | Part I

Our greatest weapon against the Grimm is not our Aura, nor our Dust, nor anything else Huntsmen and Guardsmen are trained in. It is something that any man, woman, or child can have: Faith. Faith in gods, or in your friends, your protectors, your kingdoms... simple faith will drive the Grimm away more effectively than any gun or blade.

- Professor Ozpin, to the 80th Graduating Class of Shade Academy, 80 A.W.

For what must be the hundredth time in the fifteen days since the Fall of Beacon, and the thousandth time since Roman sent me on this gods-accursed job, I wonder what the hell I'm doing in Vacuo of all places. When he pitched it to me, it sounded so simple- "Dreki, I need you to take out some Vacuese has-been named Arnaut Silvas. I gotta finish up this train scheme, but that ends with me spending the next few weeks locked up in that flagship. Coincidentally, someone else is also offering me a small fortune to get rid of Arnaut in those same few weeks, and I can't be in two places at once. Do you see where I'm going with this…?"

Unfortunately, Roman (in his infinite wisdom) neglected to mention that Arnaut is a real-life urban legend in Vacuo, a Shade graduate who's saved multiple towns from Grimm invasions and earned himself a godsdamn superhero nickname: 'The Golden Guardian.' Parents probably tell their kids not to be afraid of the monster under their beds because this guy'll protect them. The man's also obnoxiously social and spends way too much time flitting around from job to job, city to city, and party to party, which makes pinning him down alone practically impossible. Whatever small odds I have against him in a fair fight would wither away into nonexistence if there were bystanders there to interfere on his behalf.

Doubly unfortunate, calling said odds 'small' is probably the understatement of the century. Microscopic would probably be a better term, because I don't think Roman knew the full story when he called Arnaut a has-been. He may have quit the dueling circuit a few years ago, but that was after winning the Vacuo Dueling Championship six times in a row and then quitting to- and I quote- 'Give someone else a turn.' He's still an active Huntsman to this day, and after spending hours and hours spent studying his fights for weaknesses, I'm still confused why Roman thought I had a snowball's chance in hell of taking him on.

Triply unfortunate, I don't have much of a choice but to try to do it anyway. By the time I realized the fact that Arnaut was beyond out of my league- well, to be fair, more like by the time I accepted the fact that Arnaut was beyond out of my league- Beacon had fallen, and the CCT network with it. That means I can't ask Roman for permission to stop, and I can't ask for more funds to continue. At this point, I've gone through most of the Lien he gave me, and what's left will barely cover food and shelter for another two, maybe three days; not even close to enough for a ride back to Vale.

What would be enough, however, is the sixty thousand Lien I've been promised for putting Arnaut six feet under. For that much, I could probably buy the shipping company itself and still have enough left over to fund Roman's operations for years upon years to come. It's only the raw colossal size of that payoff, coupled with the hole I'm in at the moment, that led me to take it seriously when an unmarked message came to my Scroll:

'479 Umber St. 9:30 PM. 11/08. Arnaut Contract Altered.'

Typically I wouldn't have gone for a scam so incredibly obvious, but with my time, money, and patience all dwindling away rapidly, and no progress on cracking the Arnaut problem… well, I'm desperate enough to grasp at a straw like this.

So here I sit in the back corner of the seedy hole-in-the-wall tavern indicated, looking at the clock on the wall that reads 9:27, and scanning the entrance each time a new person enters. Which is not very often, given that this is Thursday night and the general feelings in the populace since the Fall of Beacon aren't exactly party-conducive. I hear the hinges squeak just slightly and look up to see a scrawny accountant step in just to instantly beeline for the bar, ignoring me completely and dashing my hopes once more.

For the third time today, I pull out my scroll and reread Neo's last message to me from before the Fall: 'Breaking Roman out tonight. Finish up your mission already, slowpoke. Our lord and savior wants you back for the next job after this whole Cinder thing blows over. Miss y-"

The door opens again, but this time in walks a tall man in a dark green trench coat that comes down to below his knees. Unlike the others I've looked over, he immediately pauses and scans the room two times before taking a real step inside. Classic Huntsman technique, I note, even as his tree trunk legs take him across the room in four strides before he drops himself into the chair opposite mine.

"Dreki." His voice is like gravel, deeper than any I've heard. It's more than a little intimidating. I notice his eyes going from my hands- checking for active weapons, I think- to my sides- checking for concealed weapons - and then to my horns, for which I can't tell if the motive is verifying my identity, or simple curiosity. Probably making sure it's me. He doesn't seem like the curious type.

"And you are...?" I finally reply to break the silence before it can drag on too long.

"Hazel."

He doesn't seem to be lying about that name, which means he's either a really good liar or doesn't waste time with deception. Either way, I suppose I'll just use the moniker he provides: "Alright, Hazel, how do you know who I am and what my job is?"

"I'm the one who hired Torchwick to put Arnaut down in the first place," he growls. "He's taken far beyond the expected time, and now I see why."

"Hey," I protest weakly, "It's not my fault. You try walking into a country by yourself and killing their golden child." He reacts very slightly to that, but it's too minute for me to gauge accurately. "Why are you here?"

"You've failed." He says it like a statement of fact, flat eyes betraying no emotion.

"I think it's a bit early to call that," I respond, leaning back a bit and raising an eyebrow. "It's a toughie, that's for sure, but-"

"No." Hazel crosses his arms over his chest. "You've had your chance. The contract is done."

I'm split by that, but the parts of me that are upset by the news- my pride, my ambition, my desire not to fail Roman, and my need to get back to Vale- outweigh the parts that aren't. "You're just telling me to stop? Why not leave the contract open?"

"The problem's being solved in a different way," Hazel responds, and the ominous tone there is too obvious for me to miss. "You're not useful anymore." A sudden spike of fear goes through me as I realize I sat with my back to the corner, meaning my only way out is past him.

I restrain the fear before it can trigger my Semblance, taking a deep breath before gathering myself and looking Hazel in the eyes with as much confidence as I can muster: "Are you planning on killing me tonight?"

"…No."

The dread stops mounting in my mind just briefly. My relief is strong enough that it rolls right over my inhibitions and before I can stop myself I've already spoken: "How're you going to do it?"

Hazel just stares at me, and I make the wrong choice between backtracking and explaining myself: "Well, it's just that he's really mobile, and usually with people or fighting Grimm, and if you try to attack him in a place with other people they'll interfere, and you risk other Huntsmen coming, so then you have to get him alone, but he's only alone when he fights Grimm, and nobody can predict Grimm attacks, so… I guess…"

I trail off as I see Hazel's face twitch with some suppressed reaction, realizing that if I analyze my way onto his plan by accident he'll probably end me to keep me quiet, so instead I make a Hail Mary attempt to defuse the situation through comedy: "Anyway, about the payment… do you do, I don't know, severance pay? Cancellation refunds?" It isn't working. "Can I renegotiate my contract to retroactively pay by the hour?" Still nothing. "Maybe a participation award?"

I could have sworn I saw his mouth quirk up with the tiniest hint of a smile at the last one, but in all honesty that's probably just me seeing things to make myself feel better. In any case, when Hazel finally speaks, it's with the first question he's asked me since sitting down: "Why are you insistent on keeping the contract?"

I sense he's giving me some kind of chance here. If he wanted to just leave, he could, which means he's basing some decision off of my answer. "Because…" I consider fabricating some lie about a personal vendetta against Arnaut but decide against it. I also cross off blaming it on curiosity or bloodlust before finally landing on honesty, which in this case is probably the most obvious option. "I need the money."

"Hmm." Hazel begins to stand.

I watch my lifeline to Vale slipping away from me and desperately search for something, anything else to say- "Because I… I need to bring it back to Roman…"

"Loyal little zealot," he grumbles down to me. He's standing up but hasn't walked away, instead towering over the table like some gigantic statue. "Are you so afraid of failure?"

"No," I finish, abandoning any attempt to read him and instead hoping sincerity- Yuck, not my proudest moment- will see me through. "I need the money to get back to Vale and help Roman and Neo. If they die and I'm not even there to try to protect them, I…"

Hazel is silent for another long stretch, before finally rumbling out one final reply: "Arnaut'll be alone in Shinston Village tomorrow at 12:30 PM. You get one more day to deal with him. This is your last chance."

"You… how do you know that? Why would you tell me?" I try and fail once more to read the stoic titan as he disappears out the door, into the night.

I briefly consider jumping up to my feet and chasing him but decide against it, instead sinking deeper into my seat and mulling over my remaining options: stay in Ilaria and try to find enough odd jobs to afford food and shelter while also saving up for a ship ticket, or head directly to Shinston and bet everything on succeeding where I've failed for six weeks straight.

At 11:30 the next day, I'm striding through the eastern gate of Ilaria's wall and out towards the southeast, carrying everything I currently own (a depressingly small collection of three worn outfits and a toolkit) in my backpack. It's only fifty kilometers or so to get to Shinston, and this is close to central Vacuo, which means I probably don't have to plan around Grimm attacks. Ilaria is Vacuo's beating heart of sea trade, meaning plenty of Huntsmen linger around and the populace is generally happy, by Vacuo standards at least.

By funneling Aura into my legs and feet, I can tear off at a pace of roughly fifty kilometers per hour and keep it up without expending too much energy. That should get me to my destination right around when Arnaut arrives, ostensibly by himself.

Which doesn't answer the question of how I'll deal with him then, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

When I near the village, I slow down out of my Aura Sprint and narrow my eyes to get a better grasp of the situation I'm approaching- there's a few plumes of smoke rising from ruined buildings, and as I get closer still I can see the source is an extremely large Deathstalker making its way through the village center. There does not appear to be anyone resisting it, which is to be expected; small villages like this rarely have dedicated Huntsmen and simply city guardsmen would fold like paper when confronted with a Grimm this size.

I check my scroll one last time: 12:28, putting me right about on time for Arnaut's arrival as I take a running jump over the city's tiny three-meter wall and roll off my landing on the other side, taking a quick glance around to make sure I'm not in any danger. Nope.

The next order of business is scaling a building near me for a good vantage point. I choose a church based on the neutral grey of its shingles, which is a decent enough match for my coat and hair, and the fact that it has a bell tower. After darting over to the dwelling in question, I scale it fairly easily, using clawed fingers to simply gouge places for my hands to find purchase in the wood wall. Practiced technique gets me up the side and onto the roof in a few seconds flat.

Step three: Find Arnaut, I think to myself, taking a much larger look around the town. There's little fragments where barricades have been broken apart, but no traces of people- at least until I see the last stragglers heading into a makeshift defensive position set up at the city's northern gate. They disappear into a set of doors diagonally set into the ground. An evacuation shelter.

The Deathstalker screams and as my attention jumps back to it, I realize that Hazel must have known it would attack. That opens a Pandora's box of questions about who he is and what kind of power he has if he can-

I stow the thought for another day when a glint of metal off to the south of me all but broadcasts the Golden Guardian's arrival to the scene. I can instantly tell it's him even from nearly a kilometer away, given his bright-shining golden armor and hair- leading me to take a moment to reflect on how he could possibly be such an accomplished Huntsman with the kind of decision-making skills required to end up choosing that outfit.

Upon seeing the Deathstalker, Arnaut doesn't even slow down, drawing his massive sword- compensating, I idly note- from the sheath on his back and unfolding it to its true length, almost as tall as he is, blade nearly a foot wide and colored solid gold. Because of course it is.

The fight's over practically before it begins. The Deathstalker gets one attack off, sending its stinger forward with blinding speed for a lethal blow, and Arnaut responds with a corkscrewing leap forward over the limb, his sword trailing gold in a spiral until he lands by spinning into a crouching position with the blade held behind him.

The tail falls into pieces, cut at each individual joint. Its owner suffers for another two seconds before Arnaut leaps up and backwards, back into the air above the Grimm, and sends his Aura flowing through his blade to discharge a single wide slash of golden energy directly down at the beast.

The Deathstalker is cleanly bisected from front to back, armor doing absolutely nothing, and falls to the ground in two mirrored pieces that crumble into dark powder and fade away.

My hopes that perhaps the myth was exaggerated are dashed, as are those of him being wounded and worn down by the Grimm. Given that it's the only one that attacked…

Wait. Deathstalkers are relatively large Grimm, and it takes a lot of negative emotion to draw those out from their territory. All that emotion should also have brought smaller Grimm like Beowulves and Ursi, yet… there's no evidence of those anywhere.

The ground starts to rumble slightly.

Why did Hazel send one Deathstalker if Arnaut could do this to it so easily? I frantically search the area with my eyes but again see nothing out of place. Arnaut hasn't yet sheathed his sword, apparently sensing like I am that something is wrong.

The rumbling grows and grows in strength until I wonder if there's some sort of earthquake. If Hazel can control the Grimm, maybe he can control other natural disasters? It's a thin thread, but it's all I ha-

Holy shit.

The ground around Arnaut explodes as a black form erupts out of it. I get only one good glimpse of a five-meter-wide circular maw lined with endless rows of teeth before the spreading cloud of dust obscures my vision. What the hell is that?

The dust never settles, and the cloud only grows as more sand and dust are shaken by the rumbling earth, but it does thin and calm down enough for me to look forward and see the massive Grimm's head plunge right back into the ground, leaving a length of its body following the path from the exit hole to the entrance hole. The dark body is lined with white scaly plates that spin and shake rapidly, moving at great speed and tearing through the earth like it's nothing.

There's no way Arnaut survi- but the words fade from my mind as I catch a glint of gold through the dust cloud. He must have dodged just as the earth gave out beneath his feet, as he's a few meters off to the side of the beast and even now dashing forward, bringing his sword down in an overhead cleave.

A wave of golden Aura slashes into the worm Grimm and does noticeable damage, but the injured portion is whisked underground almost immediately and replaced a new patch of hide, and then a new one after that, as the seemingly endless length of the monster goes ripping in an arc from hole to hole.

Arnaut narrows his eyes and then rolls to the side milliseconds before the ground explodes beneath him once more, but this time fires off another two slashes of energy almost immediately. The worm turns in the air and aims directly at him, diagonal and then horizontal to the ground as it chases after the man.

Arnaut sees the pursuit and starts curving his path to the left before abruptly slamming his sword into the ground and spinning himself around it to turn ninety degrees in the blink of an eye. As the Grimm can't correct in time, it goes roaring past him and right through the wall of an administrative building- but not out the other side. Back underground then, I think.

I can tell from the first few strikes how the fight's going to go. Arnaut's attacks are able to actually damage the beast in a noticeable way, but it spins on multiple axis and constantly burrows forward, which means he can never build up meaningful damage on any given spot. In turn, however, the worm is too bulky and has a turn radius far too wide to actually catch him, meaning that it only ends one way: death by a thousand cuts for the monster. Boring, but predictable. That leaves me to watch the battle drag on and on, minutes on end passing as I observe from my vantage point-

"Help!"

My Faunus ears, a bit more effective than most humans', immediately locate the source of the cry, and equally superior eyesight reveals the rest of the story to me: there's a child caught in some rubble of the collapsed building across the street, only a few meters away from the rapidly moving outer layer of the Grimm's hide.

For about two seconds I entertain the thought of just ignoring the little brat, but-

"Help, please!"

My eyes snap back to the situation and take in more details- the kid can't be older than ten, at least as far as I can tell through the thick layer of dirt and dust (the non-magical kind) coating him as a result of, you know, having a building dropped on his head. He's wearing ratty old clothes that are scuffed and torn but stitched together in ways that let me know the damage isn't just from today, and that the boy doesn't have someone to buy him new ones. Hell, he didn't even have anyone to take him to the evac point. He reminds me a little too much of… something.

He's gonna die, I note mentally with a lot more sorrow than I'd like. Shit, I can't afford to… My right forearm flickers a bit, the scales lining the back of my hand briefly shifting to a whitish color and the veins underneath going black. Just ignore it, he'll be alright and you don't have to blow two months of cover just to-

"Please…" This time it's quieter and cuts off into coughing as the kid uses a dirty sleeve to try to wipe the dust out of his eyes, completely unaware of the danger that his emotional transition from panic to despair has placed him in. By the time he opens them, the worm Grimm's maw has punched up through the remains of a wall beside him and yawns open only a few meters away.

Before he can even scream, I've landed from the Aura-empowered leap I took off the church, doing my best to shake off the impact and grab the kid as I dive to the side a split second before we both get reduced to… well, whatever Grimm do with the humans they eat. Hell if I know about Grimm biology.

The kid is now crying out of shock, which unfortunately keeps a target the size of a small city painted on my back as far as that Grimm is concerned. I'm forced to sling the little shit over my shoulder and book it down the street, flaring my Aura around my feet with each step to take multi-meter strides and keep ahead of the impending death just behind me. "Shh-hh-h, it's okay, everything's okay," I try to comfort the boy. "It'll all be over soon."

Wait, no- but now I've set the kid off crying even harder. Shit. I reach a lamppost and- copying a trick from Arnaut- reach out with my free hand to use it as an axis, turning sharply without any momentum cost but ripping it out of the ground in the process. Shoddy Vacuo workmanship.

I catch a glimpse of golden blur in the corner of my eye and toss an annoyed "Do something!" at Arnaut, taking a breath to re-evaluate my plan. Letting the kid die would've set off my Semblance and blown my cover anyway, so I made the executive decision to protect him and probably earn Arnaut's trust in the process.

When I see something black covering the road ahead of me, I curse internally. The worm Grimm's path crosses mine, and four vertical meters of twisting hide and bony plates cuts off my escape route neatly. The left and right take me into ruined buildings, which the beast is probably faster than me in, given that it doesn't have to worry about navigating uneven surfaces, and behind me isn't an option for obvious reasons.

Well, guess I don't have much of a choice then. Reaching into my coat to pull out a crystal of red- nope, I'm currently carrying a kid. That rules out Burn, Lightning, Ice, pretty much all the fun ones, leaving me with… Gods damn it.

I take out a tiny, thin shard of Gravity Dust and aim the pointiest end of it towards my right palm. This is gonna hurt like a bitch. Regardless, I push my fingers inwards and pierce my skin with the raw Dust.

The pain rockets from my hand up along my nerve endings. In an instant, my whole arm is screaming at me and I can't even tell if I'm screaming back. I drop the kid and stop myself with two Aura-enhanced feet slammed into the ground hard enough to crack the cobblestone pathway, but know I have only a few moments before death via tooth blender and try to think through the pain.

My fist balls involuntarily and pushes the remaining millimeters of the Gravity Dust in, sending a new wave of pain, but this one's weaker than the first, and I'm already acclimated to the sensation. I snap my eyes up towards the incoming monster- it's only a few meters away and closing extremely quickly, so I steal another trick from Arnaut and vault up into the air above it. It makes no effort to track me, continuing straight on its course towards the kid.

In the air I bring back my right arm, still sending lightning bolts of agony all the way up to my shoulder, but muscle through it. My focus is set purely on the worm Grimm that has now passed where I initially jumped from, about one second away from reducing the orphan kid to a bloody mess.

One second is all I need to punch downwards with my arm amplified by Gravity Dust, flaring as much of my Aura as I can to strengthen a fist that already carries many times its natural weight behind it.

Thoom.

The resulting impact flattens the Grimm's body to the ground and then flattens the ground beneath it, creating a decently sized crater. Shockwaves of force and then of dirt and dust erupt from the focal point of my punch, but they're aimed downwards and outwards from where I unleashed it and I simply fall to the ground at the eye of the explosion. I briefly check on the kid to see he got knocked off his feet and back against the side of the Grimm, but thankfully avoided being shredded now that it's stopped in its tracks.

"On your left!" I turn briefly to catch another blur of gold as Arnaut somersaults past me, extending his sword and swinging it down hard enough to slash open a gaping hole in the worm's hide. I expect him to make a few more of those slashes, but now that the beast's immobile, he seems to alter his strategy by twisting the claymore in his hands and activating something near the hilt. The handle splits in two and folds back to form a flattened V shape beside the crosspiece of the sword, which he then nestles back into his shoulder.

The result is him holding his sword horizontally, one hand grabbing the handle within the blade itself and the crosspiece pressed up against his shoulder like the stock of a rifle. What the hell is this?

My question is answered by a surge of energy near the tip of the blade, which actually has a gap in it that leads down to some sort of barrel. The barrel's mouth glows orange-red, brighter and brighter until the light disappears due to Arnaut jamming it into the wound he's already opened. I get a brilliant smile directed at me, coupled with a "Fire in the hole!" before he pulls the trigger on the Dust cannon his sword's turned into.

I have a fraction of a moment to react by shoving my right arm into the ground, digging in with the claws, before being buffeted by a surge of heat and force that forces me to shut my eyes.

When they reopen, the monster is beyond dead and currently crumbling away into dust, with the exception of a ten-meter-radius chunk of it that's already been blasted out of existence. Arnaut was flipped backwards by the shockwave but lands with agility, using his sword jammed into the ground as a way to stop himself. His Aura flickers weakly- not broken, but very close. I'm unmoved but covered with Grimm ash, soot, pieces of rubble, and traces of fire Dust, the increased weight of my arm having kept me at ground zero for his little trick. Son of an absolute bitch. My near-full Aura and the hide of the Grimm itself kept me from being actually harmed by the explosion, but damn if it isn't annoying blinking four different kinds of dust out of my eyes.

"That was a damn good show, kid!" Arnaut sheathes his sword and steps forward to clap me on the back, but I dodge his touch instinctively, only to catch the faintest narrowing of his eyes in suspicion.

"Uh… yeah, you too," I respond blandly, hesitating now despite knowing what I need to do. Something about the situation just seems… wrong, wasting a guy two seconds after he just helped me save an orphan and take down a massive monster. I've killed my fair share of people, but it's always been... necessary. Always in situations where it was them or me.

"You new? Don't think I've seen you on any missions before," Arnaut continues, offering a hand to shake. The man seems oddly keen on contact, but my instincts are screaming at me to pick either fight or flight. I'm not hardwired to navigate this kind of deceptive conversation.

"Nah, just… graduated?" I realize I have zero clue when Shade graduates its classes.

"Six months early?"

Wow was I ever off. "No, six months late," I say with a self-deprecating smile, reaching out to take the handshake he offers. "I messed up a lot in school and had to do more remedial work than you could possibly believe…"

"Better late than never, I suppo-" the moment our hands touch, Arnaut flinches and brings his free hand whipping back towards the blade on his back. Acting on instinct, I clench my left hand around his and pull him closer while flattening my right hand's claws into a point and sending it shooting forward towards his chest, sending a surge of my Aura into it. His own Aura is near-depleted from the waves he sent out and the explosion he ate, so the attack should be able to break through what's left of it with relative ease.

Too much ease, in fact, as the pointed claws I'd intended to shatter his Aura instead sail forward right through what's left of it and his ribs before poking out of his back. I only realize what I've done when I feel the cool breeze on my bloodied fingertips.

Shit. This is why I hate Gravity Dust. It alters the way my body works in awkward ways, ways that I often can't plan around and-

Well, then again, I suppose it did just help me kill Arnaut Silvas. It almost makes me want to laugh. All that hunting and planning and all his enemies and that giant Grimm, and he's dead because of my mistake.

I guess all's well that ends well, I think to myself morbidly as I remove my forearm from the dead Huntsman's chest cavity and watch his body collapse into a bloody mess on the ground. However, as much as I feign aloofness even to myself, I know that all I'm feeling at the moment is pity and maybe a faint hint of regret. My bloodied hand is red all over now, and I can't see even the faintest hint of white tinge in the scales. It's the first time I've killed someone without enough negative emotion to trigger my Semblance.

There's probably something poetic about that, huh. At the moment, though, I'm too disgusted by the flesh and bone fragments scattered about my forearm to give any philosophical contemplation to the situation. Hey, that rhymes. Poetry everywhere.

Shit, am I in shock? The way my brain is defaulting to childlike reactions to everything reminds me of way back when I first saw Roman kill someone in front of me. Neo hadn't flinched, but I'd felt and acted off for a while afterwards. Thought I'd outgrown it, but-

A little whimper off to my right brings my attention to the boy I rescued, still alive and somehow conscious but looking at me with raw horror in his eyes. When I take a step towards him he flinches and makes another quiet sound of terror- which is fair. I did just impale a man with my bare hand right in front of him.

I start wiping off my coat sleeve and hand on the rubble, also taking the chance to bend over and rummage through Arnaut's remains to see what I can find. He's got a scroll, four rounds for his cannon slotted into special pockets in his coat… and that's it. His outfit is obviously designed for form over function, but I didn't realize he was dumb enough to carry four total rounds.

My plan, which had been to use what I found on him to pay for a direct ship to Vale, is now shot to say the very least. I need to cash in on the bounty reward in Luskhan now, which means they'll find his body before I could get to the docks, and I have no chance of getting out of the country through a guarded border without papers if they're on red alert. Speaking of cashing in on that contract…

I detach the clasp on the belt attached to his sword's sheath, then take the whole thing and sling it over my back instead. I'll need either this or his head to claim the bounty, and I do not feel like carrying a bloody head god knows how many kilometers through the blazing sun all the way to Luskhan.

The kid whimpers again and this time I turn and walk all the way up to him. He's obviously scared shitless of me, but if I leave him like this he'll attract the smaller Grimm that'll probably follow in the wake of the big one. Then again, that Deathstalker was alone, so maybe this one is too?

As if just to spite me, my eyes pick out an Ursa coming around a corner. Too far away to notice me, but it'll sense the kid before the authorities can. Damn it.

I try a smile but the fangs running down the sides of my mouth obviously only make things worse, so instead I settle on just lifting him up and patting his head-

A surge of horror and fear, along with a mental image of some kind of humanoid Grimm demon, bloody all down one side, with a mouth full of fangs and huge claws-

Wait, is that- I stumble back a little bit and frown. Why did I see that? Is it his Semblance? I see no hint of Aura on his body, but it's possible he just has too little to detect. Either way, I scratch physically reassuring him off of my list, leaving me with using words as my only option. Great, my favorite.

"Okay… kid?" He doesn't react. "Kiddo? Child?" Nothing. "Uhmm… what's your name?"

He mutters something incomprehensible.

"Wonderful, I'm just going to call you Timmy. You look like a Timmy. Here's the deal: you need to run over to the east entrance to the city. It's where everyone evacuated to, so you…"

I trail off as he just starts silently crying instead. For the second time I contemplate just leaving the brat to die, but at this point it's honestly a sunk-cost fallacy more than anything and I'm competitively invested in keeping him alive despite what the universe apparently wants.

"You know what? Fine." I scoop him up by his ragged shirt, throw him over my shoulder, and take off at a modest pace towards the checkpoint I mentioned. "Alright kid, here's the deal: I'm gonna save your life here, and in exchange, you don't tell the cops what I did to that other guy. We square?"

He sniffles.

"Okay, look, I'm about to fu-" I choke on the word as I realize who I'm talking to- "Flipping walk across an entire flipping continent. The absolute last thing I need is flipping cops chasing me the whole way, you understand?"

The comment about police seems to draw a bit of a reaction from him, so I chase that thread: "What, you like the cops?"

He shakes his head, and I laugh out loud. "Wow, we got ourselves a little rebel here. Here, I'll let you in on a little secret: I'm not a big fan of 'em either. I know, hard to believe, right?"

I'm rewarded with a genuine smile- a tiny one, but I'll take what I can get. He remains silent, and I finally figure out why the hell I'm so instinctively protective of him. The little rugrat reminds me of Neo, way back before we met Roman.

My ears pick up sniffing and some guttural noises from around the corner, so I drop the kid and look him in the eyes: "We're almost there, but I need to go take care of something, okay? Give me thirty seconds."

I don't wait for a reply and instead dart around the corner to see two Beowolves pawing back and forth, sniffing the ground. By the time the first one sees me, I've already landed two swiping punches to its head. I dodge under a swing of its claw and knee the underside of its head, then dash inside its next swing and land four more quick jabs point-blank on its chest, sending it stumbling backwards.

The second Beowulf leaps at me and I roll beneath the attack before coming around with a right hook directly into the skull of the first one just as it rises from the ground. I pour a bit of Aura into the attack, amplifying the strike on top of whatever little dregs of Gravity Dust remain active on it. Bone turns to powder.

I'm on Beowulf number two before it can rise from the awkward sprawl it collapsed into after I dodged its leap. This time, I forgo technique and just slam my foot down on its head, thwarting its attempt to get up, before leaning down and taking a wide swipe with my hand through its unarmored neck, pouring and focusing my Aura into the tips of my claws. It dies silently as its neck is severed in four clean gashes.

As the corpses turn to dust and blow away with the wind, a few wisps of dark mist rise from each and funnel in towards me instead. It's a side effect of my Semblance, but I've never quite figured out why.

My Semblance is both incredibly simple and incredibly useless: I'm the host to a Grimm. There's a monster lurking somewhere in my subconscious that only comes out when I let myself get too wrapped up in negative emotions, which is why I need to keep those in check most of the time. I can usually keep a handle on it when it comes out, but the strength of the emotion seems to dictate how difficult it is to keep the thing under control.

Of course, when I say 'comes out', I really mean it alters my body and mind. I might get faster and stronger, but my appearance changes to be more Grimm-like and I start to lose sight of things like reasoning, diplomacy, strategy, and really anything other than hatred and bloodlust. I've learned to fight without it, because it's a slippery slope and letting go of control in a real fight will lose it for me more often than not. Figures that the universe would give me a handicap for a Semblance instead of something useful.

I wipe the thoughts from my mind as I step back around the corner to see the kid exactly where I left him.

"See, told you I'd be right back." I scoop him up and, acting on instinct, sit him down on my shoulder instead of slinging him over it to carry him in a less awkward way, and he doesn't resist. Progress. "So, where were we? Right, we were talking about how you are not going to tattle on me to the Shinston city guard."

"Mhmm." The little noise of assent takes a bit of weight off my shoulders, just in time to see note the slight glint of a rifle scope pointed at me. I smile and wave down the open street, towards the barricade set up a couple hundred meters away. Just in case, I also point to the kid sitting on my shoulder in case any trigger-happy policemen are having ideas. For the most part, Faunus are treated relatively equal in Vacuo, but I'd rather not take chances.

"Why don't you like the cops, anyway?" I look up at the kid, curious now that the urgency and danger have passed. "Thought kids your age loved the good guys."

He shakes his head, eyes downcast.

"What, they catch you stealing or something?"

A nod.

"What, no shi- I mean, no kidding?" Too much like Neo. "Well, you'll get better at it. I did, anyway."

He glances down at me with a new light in his eyes, and I try not to let it inflate my ego too much. "Trust me, all it takes is practice. And sometimes, extreme violence. But mostly practice."

"Really?" The first discernible real word leaves his mouth, and I breathe a silent sigh of relief.

"Yep. And also not ratting out your buddies," I say, giving him a meaningful look. He giggles and pats me on the head-

Another flash, this time of wonder and relief, accompanied by the sight of a wide-smiling girl below me, hair and eyes both shining silver, with an infectious, mischievous grin-

The moment his hand leaves my head, the image is gone. I do my damndest to hide the flinch that goes through me and it doesn't seem like the kid notices it, thankfully. By now what looks like a Huntsman- and Huntress-In-Training have vaulted over the barricade and made their way over to me, concern lining their faces as they hit me with a barrage of questions:

"Where did you come from?"

"Who are you carrying?"

"What's the situation in the city?"

"Have you seen Arnaut Silvas?"

"Are you a Huntress?"

"Are either of you injured?"

I wave them off and do my best 'shell-shocked civilian' act: "The city's destroyed, I… there are so many Grimm, Grimm everywhere… and the big one, it… it…"

"It what?" The male Huntsman, who can't be more than seventeen by the looks of him, prods me urgently. "What happened to the Terrawyrm?"

I sniffle. "It's… dead. But the Huntsman who came to help me…" I attempt a fake sob but it comes out extremely poorly. Luckily, Timmy decides to join the conversation at this point and whips out an act that puts mine to shame:

"The big thingy was… it was gonna eat me, an' then she-" he gestures vaguely down at me- "Came an' helped me, an' then the Golden Guardian came to help, but…" A few tears snake their way down his face, and I genuinely can't tell if they're real or not. "The big monster ate him. But… but he got it from inside, he killed it back!"

Our two saviors buy the act, while I digest that Timmy knew Arnaut by his nickname and still decided to help me out. Apparently even the kids around here could care less about the law or authority. Only in Vacuo...

I'm ushered forward past the barricade and into an encampment set up around the mouth of a bunker, within which most of the city's residents must dwell. I have zero intention of going down into the shelter and decide to pull the male Huntsman aside- he looks like an easier target if I need to punch my way out.

The moment I touch his shoulder, I'm once again thrust into a mental image of- well, myself, but with minor details changing back and forth- Eyes that flicker back and forth from shaded and untrustworthy to normal, claws that go from unthreatening to wide and jagged, scales that-

Gods damn it! I let go of him and shake my head furiously. Whatever the hell is going on, I need to get it solved as soon as possible. First, however, comes me getting out of this village, hopefully without raising any alarms.

"Look, I got family in Ilaria," I say, naming the city I initially came from hours ago. "I was just passing through when the Terrawyrm attacked, so I booked it to the safety point."

"You a Huntress?" he asks, all business. Shit. I may have misjudged him.

"Dropped out from Beacon when Vale fell," I offer. I'm barely sixteen, but most humans are god-awful at judging ages of Faunus, so I can probably pass for a Huntsman-in-training. "Like I said, I was just on my way to Ilaria when that monster attacked…"

"Got a training license?"

"I…" Shit, shit, shit! "Nope, I lost mine in the chaos around the Fall of Beacon. Speaking of which, holy crap, how the hell does your kingdom keep running?" Maybe flattery will distract him. "Beacon got overrun by a just a bunch of regular old Beowulves and Ursi, and we almost lost the whole kingdom… but that Terrawyrm thing… jeez, do you guys deal with Grimm like that all the time?"

"Sometimes." The boy crosses his arms and nods at something over my shoulder- the hilt of Arnaut's sword. Shit. "Look, do you have any kind of license to be walking around with that thing… wait a minute, is that-"

A child's wail suddenly breaks out behind me and the conversation is disrupted as Timmy worms his way out of the Huntress-in-training's hands and starts running away as fast as his tired, ten-year-old legs can carry him. The girl makes an exasperated noise and gestures towards my interrogator: "Can you deal with the brat?"

"I'm in the middle of something here."

"Well, I'm awful with kids, and if I have to take care of that whiny little street rat for eight more seconds I'm going to strangle either him or you."

"By the Ancestors, Filia," the boy growls as he stalks past me, "Why in the hell do I always have to clean up your messes?"

"Shut up," she snaps back, and by now I've lost interest in the conversation and am slowly backing away towards the camp's exit. It appears I've been forgotten for the moment at least, so I take full advantage and walk as quickly as possible without drawing too much attention until I've reached the open gate that leads out to the Vacuo desert.

I spare one last glance back towards the camp, where Timmy is struggling on a stack of Dust munitions and the Huntsman is trying to get him down without risking ignition of the Dust. The brat has the audacity to actually shoot me a wink, and- try as I might- I can't stifle the deep laugh at the image, and at the idea that the kid just bailed me out.

I keep chuckling on and off as I leave a trail of footprints in the sand that fade away quickly, leaving little trace that I was ever even there to begin with. Soon Shinston is out of even my enhanced eyes, and I check my scroll to reorient myself in the direction of Luskhan, the next city on my route back towards Vale.

For almost an hour, the silence of the desert is surprisingly peaceful as I consider that I'll finally be getting back to Roman and Neo after a month and a half.

Then a somehow familiar voice in my head screams "What the fuck is going on!?"

(A/N) Any and all feedback is extremely appreciated, and I always make an effort to fix anything that doesn't work in my stories.

I dusted off my mediocre art skills to draw up and color some sketches of characters, weapons, and other stuff from this fic. It's under ReaperofLykos on Deviantart, and I'll put a link to it in my profile as well.

Dreki's name translates to 'Dragon', which is associated with fire colors. Her primary color and Aura are dark ash grey, hexadecimal 473231.

Arnaut's last name, Silvas, derives from the same root as 'silver' in order to keep him compliant with the color naming rule, but his primary color and Aura are yellow-gold, hexadecimal ffd700.

A.W. refers to "After War", and I'm using it to date more recent events. 1 A.W. would be one year after the end of the great war.

I fell in love with RWBY's worldbuilding over anything else, and this fic is my attempt at a main story that delves further into developing the world at large and the factions within it. It'll actually start to alter the canon right around the end of Volume 6 but at the moment it's starting right around the very end of Volume 3. In case anyone is wondering, Ruby's still recovering from the Fall of Beacon, Blake is just boarding her boat for Menagerie, Yang is traumatized in her bed and Weiss is just arriving at Atlas.

I hope nobody already abandoned the fic when they saw Dreki's excessive number of Faunus traits. There's a specific, canonical reason for that, and I'll get to it in time. (Although, as a side note, the rules surrounding Faunus genetics always seemed extremely odd to me, especially the part where a cat and dog Faunus could have a mermaid Faunus child...? Like, if a baby is randomly born with gills, then do they just die?)