The one and only good thing about being in the middle of the desert? Nobody's around to see me have a mental breakdown.
Of course, that doesn't make the situation any less weird. My hopes that maybe I was just hearing things get dashed when the voice comes again: "Oh, Twin Gods. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck-"
I slap myself.
"What the fuck."
It takes several long seconds for me to stop hyperventilating, during which time the stream of confused profanity does not cease or even slow down. However, I do pick up on two things: one, that the voice is actually coming from behind me and just sounds slightly off, which is reassuring. And two, that I recognize the owner of the voice, because I've been watching videos of him for almost two months now. When I turn towards the source, it's confirmed- Arnaut is standing right there.
Well, sort of. It's Arnaut, but he's translucent and colored entirely a warm orange-gold color- the color of his Aura. And his face is twisted in an expression of confused, impotent rage as he spits out his words: "How the f-" As his eyes take in my face, the rage loses its impotence, if not its confusion. "Wait, you're the son of a bitch who murdered me!" He sounds a little bit muted, yet also closer to me than he appears to be.
More than a little confused, I instinctively mutter "I'm a girl" in response.
He narrows his eyes and then sneers. "So you are. Daughter of a bitch, then."
"What the hell is this?" I wave a hand towards him and it passes right through. Alright, so he can't touch me.
"How should I know?" His hands are actually twitching from rage.
"Is this your Semblance?"
He makes an expression of revulsion at the concept. "No, it absolutely isn't. "
"Well then what-"
"Don't you change the subject!" His voice burns with raw indignation- it's almost funny. The man dies, and his reaction isn't rage or sadness, it's just his pride turning into disbelief that I'd have the nerve to kill him. I study his body, looking for some kind of clue to the truth, maybe evidence that this is a hologram of some sort. "Stop ignoring me!"
"If I could ignore you, I'd be doing it right now," I mutter under my breath, sitting down in the sand with legs half-extended, elbows on my knees. "But it looks like you're here to stay. Hooray."
"You have the nerve to act like you're the one inconvenienced here?"
"…Yes?"
He has to take several visible deep breaths in order to calm himself before responding, and even then it's still in a strangled snarl. "You murdered me!"
"I mean, you let me murder you."
"Let you-"
"Yeah. It was on your watch that I killed a person," I point out. "Some Huntsman you are- which, by the way, don't you have something better to do than haunt me? Maybe hang out with your family in the afterlife or something?"
"You think I'd be here if I had a choice?"
"Well I sure as hell didn't bring you here..."
He stands there, silent and still, for a few long moments before dropping down into a sitting position with legs crossed. When he speaks, it's in a voice impressively composed for someone who died less than four hours ago. "Is this some kind of elaborate ruse? A prank?"
"If it is, you're the one pulling it on me," I reply blithely.
"Then it isn't one at all," Arnaut sighs. Another few quiet moments pass, and then- "Hey! You did it again! Stop derailing the conversation; you murdered me, you bitch! What the hell could you possibly have to say for yourself?"
"I mean…" I shrug. "I'm getting paid for it, if it makes you feel any better."
"It absolutely doesn't! You don't even have any feud with me personally? I'm dead because of some-" He pauses. "Wait, how much?"
"Huh?"
"How much did they pay you to kill me?"
I can't help the wide smile that covers my face in response to that, and laughter follows suite. "That's what you're worried about?"
"No, in all seriousness, how much? It has to be… at least thirty thousand Lien, right?"
"No, twenty." It's sixty, but I feel like messing with the man.
"Oh, bullshit, I'm worth more than that," Arnaut protests.
I spread my arms and shrug. "The free market has spoken on it, man, sorry. Twenty thousand and not a cent more."
"Just because you whored your services out for dirt cheap doesn't mean that I'm that easy to kill." Arnaut crosses his arms. "You should have asked for more."
Just for a moment, I allow an impish grin to mount my face: "I mean, it took one attack from a teenage girl."
His expression flickers into resentment at that. "How dare you- You're really going to sit there and tell me that was a fair fight? I did ninety percent of the work taking down that Terrawyrm-"
"You did fifty percent at best," I correct. "You spent- what, twenty minutes? More? -whacking away at it, but you were getting jack shit done until I beat it unconscious for you. Plus, you blew it up in my face. Apologize."
"Why would I-" The mild annoyance flashes right back into rage. "Wait, you haven't even apologized for murdering me yet!"
"Oh, yeah," I roll my eyes. "Sure, sorry."
"You can sound a lot more sincere than that. You murdered me for twenty thousand-" He frowns. "Hold the phone, who hired you for this, anyway? Knox swore he wouldn't. Was it Kayro? If that son of a bitch had me killed just for leaving him out of the mission report when we took down three Nevermores together, I swear on all that is holy…"
I consider the situation for a little bit, then shrug. If he's really a ghost, I guess I'm not too worried about him knowing anything, considering he can't even touch me. "Some behemoth of a dude named Hazel. I'm pretty sure he sent that Terrawyrm, too."
Arnaut curses a few times, which piques my interest: "What? Is that important?"
"No…?" He doesn't sound very confident in that answer, but I opt not to press the point further.
"Give it to me straight, do you genuinely have zero clue what's going on here?" I cross my arms. "Are you certain your Semblance doesn't have anything to do with this?"
"Yes."
"How can you be sure? What the hell even is it, anyway?"
He frowns. "It's… you know what? You first."
Once again, I see very little harm in telling him. "I partially transform into a Grimm if I get too pissed."
If possible, he looks even more disgusted and hateful, but I've learned to stop giving a shit about people's reactions to my appearance and Semblance. However, if I've judged him right, he'll probably feel honor-bound to tell me about his after promising me he would. It takes a few seconds, but he finally forces his face into a fake smile and speaks: "Fine. I can read minds of people I touch."
"That why you flipped your shit when I shook your hand?"
"Yes."
"Cool, cool." I fiddle with my fingers a bit, trying to think of an explanation for the situation we're both in, but instead landing on a realization that only makes things more complicated: "Wait, so your Semblance is to see and feel flashes of emotion and thought when you touch people, right?"
"Yes."
"Let me guess: it doesn't work through clothing?"
"Not unless the clothing is designed to channel Aura- hold on, how do you know that?"
I let out a low moan and hang my head backwards, trying to think of a way to say what I believe may be the reality of the situation: "I think I have your Semblance."
"What?"
"The last three times I've touched people, I've been having hallucinations that I'm now suspecting is what your Semblance shows as their thoughts." I take a few more deep breaths, trying to reprioritize things in my mind to make sure I'm getting the most important questions out first. "How do I turn it off?"
"Why would I tell you that?" Arnaut scowls at me like a petulant child.
"Because we're Semblance Buddies now?" I extend a fist for a fist bump before remembering that we can't touch and dropping it awkwardly. "So, Semblance Buddy, how do I stop having trauma flashbacks every time I touch another person?"
"You stole my future and my Semblance, scum. You can suffer." Arnaut's become terse now, which is behavior more towards what I would expect from someone talking to the person who killed them. Abruptly he rises from his cross-legged position, turns around, and just walks away without another word, which I'm inclined to let him do. Having the ghost of a popular Huntsman tagging along with me and explaining to everyone in earshot what I did to him seems like a great way to get jumped by every idiot Vacuo citizen with a knife and a hero complex. For all of eight seconds, I genuinely allow myself to believe that that's the end of it.
Like an idiot.
"Ah, son of a bitch!" Arnaut shouts from behind me, and I turn to see him only five meters away miming as if there's an invisible wall in front of him. He bangs a fist on it a few times and then turns back around with murder in his eyes: "So not only am I not able to pass onto the afterlife, but now I have to spend eternity sitting in the middle of the desert as well?"
I experimentally shift myself forward a few inches and see his arms move with me, followed by his body when the wall of force runs into it and begins to push it along. "Looks like you're trapped within five meters of me."
"Your degenerate Semblance is the most fucked-up thing I've ever seen in my life," he spits.
If only he knew, I think, but instead say "What makes you think this is my Semblance?"
"Out of the two of us, which one has more to do with taking souls? That's the whole purpose of the Grimm, no?" He doesn't know that the Grimm wasn't even out when I killed him, but I don't feel like explaining that to him at the moment.
I try to think of a rebuttal to that, finally settling on one: "Okay, but I've killed way more people than just you. How come you're the only one coming back to annoy me?"
"It's your Semblance, you tell me," Arnaut shoots back with a snide look on his face. Before I can reply, he gestures all around us and shifts to a slightly more conversational tone: "Look, can we walk and talk? As much as watching you get eaten by Grimm would be a nice bit of poetic justice, it's possible that I'd end up sitting here next to your corpse forever."
The sun is indeed threatening to disappear behind the dunes to the west, and I still have an hour or two of walking with my new Semblance Buddy to look forward to. Wonderful.
I reach the outskirts of Luskhan at around 8:30 PM, just as the last few rays of sunlight are winking out of existence in an impressively beautiful sunset that fills the sky with oranges, reds, and yellows. I sincerely wish I could enjoy it, but unfortunately my attention is all being used up to deal with Arnaut, who is now needling me constantly with questions about my Semblance, looking for a way out of our current situation. I have a personal theory that he's going through the five stages of grief... for himself. He did denial and then anger out in the desert, and has gradually transitioned into bargaining:
"So, have you ever tried… I don't know, expelling a soul that the Grimm has eaten? Or something like that?"
"I don't even know that the Grimm ate your soul, remember?"
"Then what did?"
"How the hell would I know? Maybe your Semblance just… read your emotions and gave them to me, or…" I trail off. That's an extremely stupid theory, and I can see in Arnaut's smug, oh-so-punchable face that he's about to give me hell for it, so I transition into a new one before he can: "Maybe you're just a ghost. You can't prove that you aren't, right?"
"But-" Arnaut stops, giving me a brief but beautiful moment of peace and quiet when we get within eyeshot of Luskhan's outer wall. Most cities in Vacuo that I've seen are walled off in some way (probably a necessary byproduct of living in a Grimm-infested wasteland), but the majority of the small towns and villages like Shinston have what can only be described as a fence with delusions of grandeur.
However, the big cities, like Ilaria and Luskhan, are where the real feats of architecture reside. Huge, sweeping monoliths of stone form a rough circle around the city, easily eight meters thick and fifty meters tall, made of solid concrete reinforced with steel and infused with Gravity Dust. The tops are lined with turrets and the occasional guardsman, and the only way in is through one of the four gates set in the cardinal directions.
Every city has its quirks, and Luskhan's seems to be a wall that shows obvious signs of use and repairs, as well as more damage than I've seen in other cities. It makes sense considering that this city is the embodiment of what most people in other kingdoms stereotype all of Vacuo to be: a hive of scum and villainy where the city guards are either in the pocket of the gangs or in the gutter bleeding from their throat. All that negativity tends to attract Grimm, but if there's one thing that'll get scoundrels to work together, it's a common enemy. I passed through here during a Grimm attack while chasing Arnaut a few weeks ago and saw the spectacle for myself- gangs out in force defending the place, manning the wall alongside guards and Huntsmen. Like one big, corruption-riddled, murderous family.
When I approach the wall, a human guard that somehow looks more weaselly than your average weasel Faunus steps out into my path and raises his hand: "Halt. Do you have any illicit Dust or Dust weaponry to report?"
"No."
Arnaut suddenly breaks his silence, stepping forward past me to speak eagerly: "Yes, Officer! Yes... she does…" Arnaut trails off as he's ignored entirely, coming to the very same realization I did the moment I entered vision of the city. Glances from those manning the wall and those milling about inside the open gates were directed at me, but not one was sent towards him- which means he can't be seen by people other than me. Nor, apparently, can he be heard, judging by how the guard completely ignores him in favor of appraising me with his eyes.
"I'm gonna have to see a license for that sword you got there," the guard finally says.
"Really? You do this to everyone who comes here?"
"Random inspection," he replies with a shrug, but the glint in his eyes lets me know exactly what is going on here: he thinks he can shake me down. Unfortunately, as well-equipped as I probably look, I have no Lien whatsoever to appease this asshole. Not that I'd give him anything even if I could.
"Look, this might work on bright-eyed Huntsmen who come in here thinking they're gonna clean the place up," I growl out, allowing a little bit of nascent rage to slip into my voice and my mind. The grey scales on the forearm that I reach out fade to white, while my pale skin flushes to black, leaving the hand that I bunch his shirt with looking like that of a Grimm. Without seeing it, I know that my eyes are flickering with a red glow and the scales around my neck and the edges of my face are undergoing the same transformation. "But I'm not one of them, idiot. Now, you can call your guard buddies for help," I continue, raising him slightly from the ground until he has to tiptoe to keep his balance, "But I can snap your neck before they get here, and I'd rather spend a couple hundred Lien bribing my way out of jail than paying your incompetent ass."
"Grk- Stop, stop, you can go, you can go!" He scrabbles a bit at my arm but I drop him in a heap once the words leave his mouth. Only a select few bystanders seem to have noticed, and none appear too willing to step in. That's one of the very few nice things about Luskhan, and the reason I can pull a stunt like that without fear of repercussions- nobody gives enough of a shit to intervene in anything that isn't their business.
I wipe the negative thoughts from my mind and the changes to my skin go with them- when I open the gates for the Grimm so slightly, closing them is fairly quick and easy. As I stalk forward into the city, I make sure to walk as confidently as I can, straightening my shoulders and back while glancing around with the faintest hint of a smirk.
"What's with the act?" Arnaut asks, trailing right behind me with a vague air of distaste for his surroundings and a defeated tone, at least for now. He must have been planning to out me to the residents of the city for a while, and is probably recalculating the best way to reduce my quality of life with his new limitations in mind.
"Thieves are always looking for the easy mark," I respond under my breath. Arnaut seems to hear me just fine despite the low volume, so I keep going, quiet enough that it's unlikely I'm being overheard: "It's risk-vs-reward; there's outliers where the reward is high enough that they'll go after someone no matter who they are, and then there's the opposite where someone's so pathetic-looking that they'll get mugged for their last couple cents.
"It's not about looking unbeatable, it's about looking like you're not worth the effort. Your abomination of a sword probably helps with that, although I can't unsheathe it here or everyone in a mile radius will be trying to steal it and melt it down."
"You seem to know a lot about this," Arnaut notes. Probably trying to imply something, as if I didn't just gut him for money. He's going at the wrong angle if he's trying to offend me.
"I was that kid once," I say, nodding towards an urchin sitting against the wall in an alley. He turns to see me and extends his cupped hands, murmuring some quiet plea, but I keep walking without slowing.
"Yet you feel no pity for him?"
I gesture across the street, towards two innocuous-acting people with the slight bulges in their clothing that indicate concealed weaponry. "Those two're watching over the begging in this sector. Anything that I give to him, goes to them."
Arnaut sounds even angrier than he was about his own death when he finally replies, "That's… evil."
"That's reality." I reach a large crossroads between two main streets and turn to the left, towards the bar mentioned in my original contract. I scan the city and notice I'm leaving the general territory of one of the gangs and entering another's, judging by the change in color in little details of the residents' clothing. Stripes around one ankle, patches and stitches in coats, and so on; it's not immediately obvious, but once you see it you can't help but notice. Even the two or three guards that have the audacity to pretend to be patrolling the street I'm walking are affiliated.
"Hold on, did you really just call my sword an abomination?" Arnaut speeds up to get ahead of me and then turns to face me with hands on his hips. "How dare you? Her name is-"
"Her?" I ask incredulously while walking directly through him, trying to mask my amusement. Holy shit, this is too good.
"Yes, her name is Aureum Rupti, and-"
"You named it!?" A few onlookers perk up and look at me as I appear to be talking in a raised voice to thin air, so I quiet back down to an anxious whisper. "This is fucking comedy gold. You're screwing with me, right?"
"No, most Huntsmen name their weapons," Arnaut continues, a touch of annoyance entering his voice. "They're an extension of your Aura, a part of your very soul."
"It's a piece of metal." I start walking again, but now with a smile stretching across my face as I pay Arnaut back for the hours of nonstop whinging he unleashed on me during the walk to Luskhan. "An obnoxiously large, obnoxiously shiny piece of metal, to be specific."
He gasps. "You take that back!"
"Make me."
"Why would you even go to the trouble of taking my sword if your awful tastes lead you to think it's such an eyesore?"
I shrug, turning another corner to approach a dead-end street. "You'll see. I'm planning to sell it after this meeting though."
"Don't you dare sell Aureum Rupti to some... rapscallion Luskhan pawnbroker."
"I mean… stop me?" I grin wider as Arnaut curses and approach the inconspicuous-looking door set into the wall at the end of the cul-de-sac, taking my scroll out of my pocket and pulling up a symbol of blazing torch. When I show it to the two-meter hunk of paid muscle guarding the entrance, he nods and steps aside to allow me in.
"What is this?"
"A bar," I say under my breath as I cross the threshold.
"That's not what I-"
"Shush." I scan the room, taking a few wide sweeping checks for trouble but finding none in the scattered assortment of patrons. The resident Spider is hanging out in a booth towards the back, so I make a note of their location for after I finish with my main objective: the bartender currently cleaning a glass- what a stereotype- but setting it down as I sit down on a barstool.
"Whatcha want?" The man looks like he's either just gotten out of bed or is just about to get into it. Maybe both. He's probably twenty-something but looks way older due to crow's feet and bags under his eyes, which blink often and are slow to open after closing. I have to stifle a yawn just looking at him.
"Payment. I'm told our mutual friend left it with you?" He and I stare at each other for a good fifteen seconds, during which time I start to wonder if he's maybe falling asleep, until I realize that I've forgotten about the most important part- "Right, for Arnaut Silvas."
"Proof?"
"Pardon?" When I figure out he's not going to repeat himself or do anything other than stare at me expectantly, I scowl. "He's dead, haven't you heard? Shinston got hit hard eight hours ago and he got taken down with it."
"…Proof you did it," the bartender finally manages.
"Oh, yeah. Right…" I unsling the sword from my back and lay it flat on the bar, cracking it slightly out of the sheath to show the golden glint of metal, as well as the faint shimmer that implies residual Aura from its user. "This enough proof for you?"
"Hmph." One arm snakes behind the bar, reaching for something and taking long enough that I start to get antsy and double-check for people sneaking behind me. Eventually, his hand reemerges with a single unmarked envelope, which I impatiently snatch and tear open to check: Five, ten, twenty, forty… sixty thousand Lien . It's all in red 1,000-Lien cards, neatly stacked in six side-by-side piles of ten cards each.
"That's triple what you said it was, you lying bastard," Arnaut hisses, but there's no real venom in his voice compared to how pissed he was earlier. Odd.
With a nod to the bartender I turn and move towards the booth in the back that I marked earlier, taking a seat across from a hooded figure in purple-marked clothing. A tiny black emblem of a Spider peeking out from under their sleeve is all that distinguishes them from any other antisocial bar dweller, but its presence makes them extremely important to my interests at the moment.
"Spider?"
"Yes." It's a young woman's voice, but otherwise fairly bland and unmemorable. Exactly the way that she wants it, probably.
"What's the going rate on Vale?" I don't have a clue what the correct jargon is for this, so I mimic the times I've watched Roman do it as best as I can, wishing I'd paid more attention to the process back when I was witnessing it.
"Who's the mark?" I can barely make out the girl's face from beneath her hood, and it makes it difficult to act confidently- but if I show weakness or confusion, she'll probably give me incomplete information, overcharge, and sell out my own presence to the Vacuo authorities. Shit, I worry, did she see me take out the sword at the counter?
"Roman Torchwick."
"One thousand," she replies after a brief hesitation.
"What? There's no way I'm paying you a thousand Lien for the equivalent of a web search…"
"That's quadruple the normal rate," Arnaut notes absentmindedly over my shoulder, momentarily distracting me from the conversation and making me wonder what kind of Huntsman uses Spiders for information.
"I'm not paying quadruple the normal rate," I add. "Three hundred, take it or leave it."
I swear I almost catch the faintest whiff of humor on the shaded features, but it's gone when I blink, and the girl's responding in a monotone: "Five hundred. Your internet isn't an option anymore, is it?"
She's cranking prices due to the CCT dropping. That's… actually almost respectable, and I crack a smile, glad to see that it's a real human sitting across the table from me. "Done."
Once I hand over the payment, the girl shuffles it into some concealed pocket in her clothing and then folds her hands on the table. "Roman Torchwick was last seen being taken on board the Atlas Dreadnought above Beacon Academy. During the fall of Beacon, it's assumed he took control of the ship, as it fired on allied craft and transmitted a signal that turned all Atlas robots against the defenders before intentionally crashing itself into the city despite taking no damage."
Well, I knew the first part, but the back half is what interests me. That means that Neo succeeded and she and Roman left the ship as planned, which in turn means that they're probably waiting for me somewhere in Vale, around the Beacon area. However, that's not enough for me to go on- "Do you know where he or Neo are?"
Another pause, then "No. Roman is officially presumed dead-" Of course he is- "And Neopolitan is currently a fugitive, wanted for crimes against the Kingdom."
What a surprise, I complain mentally, then reconsider. I might not have confirmation on where exactly my partners are, but I do have confirmation that the plan went off without a hitch, which will help with my worrying, which will in turn help keep the Grimm off my back.
"Pleasure doing business," I offer as I stand and turn around, only to see a table full of people near the door all staring at me. There's three of them, all whispering to each other, and I track a pointed finger from what looks like the ringleader towards the hilt on my shoulder. Son of a bitch.
"You know these guys?" I ask Arnaut under my breath.
"No, but I do believe you may be about to suffer the consequences for your actions," he notes with a victorious smirk.
"Fans of yo…" I trail off as the talkers abandon their seats at the table to step over towards me, instinctively raising my hands at my sides and slightly flexing the clawed fingers. The one at the front is too anxious, I observe, which means that he's trying to impress someone. The one on the left is just bored, which makes the one on the right the leader.
Typically, if you beat the shit out of the one in charge, their underlings tend to see things your way. Criminals like these aren't like Hunters and Grimm; they're cowards at heart and don't have any cause they're willing to die for. I subtly shift my weight onto the balls of my feet and slow my breathing, preparing myself for the fight, and mark my target as-
"That the Golden Guardian's sword?" The leader asks, his intent imperceptible.
I hesitate briefly, restraining myself from striking as I probe the situation: "And if I say it isn't…?"
He smiles with too many teeth. "Then I'd be disappointed."
Huh? I pause for an awkward stretch before finding a response. "Uhm… are you not here to avenge him?"
He turns to his buddies and shares a look before they break out laughing. "Ha! Hell no, I'm here to congratulate the chick who finally put that SOB in the ground!"
"Good riddance," the eager one echoes.
"You were saying?" I whisper under my breath to Arnaut, before reaching over my shoulder and drawing out a foot of glinting golden metal. "Well, congratulate away."
"Holy shit, you actually did it," the man says with a grin that makes me uncomfortable for some reason. He offers a hand: "Name's Clint. You?"
"…Dreki," I eventually answer, accepting the handshake-
A terrified girl screams in the corner as the wall gets blasted open, revealing a shining, heroic figure of pure gold that flies forward in a flurry of blows, his sword moving impossibly fast for its size and easily disarming and capturing-
The handshake ends and I curse under my breath but mask it as a cough. "Yep, he died like he lived- overestimating himself and blinded by some dumb cause."
Clint laughs again, and I'm set on edge once more. Something inside me is repulsed by the man, and I can't figure out what it is, even as I'm ushered to sit down at their table and asked what I want.
"C'mon, get the girl a beer," he shouts at the bartender, before turning back to me. "Why'd ya do it, eh? He steal your family, too?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
"The rat bastard went and turned my own wife n' kid against me, threw me in jail when I tried to fight back. He can rot six feet under… hell, maybe I should go take his family, eye for an eye n' all that."
"Oh, gods," Arnaut breathes behind me, before speaking more loudly and urgently: "Listen to me, Dreki, don't trust anything this man says. He's a heinous criminal."
"By your standards or mine?" I ask in response, disguising it as another coughing fit just as the beer arrives and Clint hands a bottle over to me.
"By anyone's but his own. I took a mission to…" Arnaut trails off Clint keeps talking, his voice growing noticeably more slurred as he finishes up putting down his own beer.
"So, why'd ya ice him?"
"A very large amount of money," I respond tersely, glancing at my own drink but not picking it up yet.
"Ha! Kid thinks she's some kinda assassin, eh?" Clint turns to his buddies with raised eyebrows, and I take the opportunity to swing my attention back over to Arnaut:
"What did he do?"
"He hired me on a mission to protect his cargo ship on the trip from Vale to Vacuo. It kept getting attacked by more and more Grimm, too many for me to deal with on my own, so I ordered an evacuation of all crew to the lifeboats. We left the ship behind, and that would've been the end of it, but… something was off. I knew that many Grimm wouldn't be drawn by a skeleton crew of sailors, so I went back to check the wreckage and-"
"C'mon, girly, you killed the fucking Golden Guardian," Clint drawls, placing an arm over my shoulder. "Live a little, drink up!"
I reach for the beer he bought me reluctantly- I've drank before, but only at meetings with Roman where it was necessary to keep appearances up. As I tilt the bottle back, its harsh contents pour down my throat- Ugh, Vacuo swill - and I have to force myself to to swallow, wiping my lips on my sleeve.
This is apparently satisfactory to the three onlookers, who give a raucous cheer. Clint claps me on the back before turning back to his friends to keep up whatever conversation they're holding, while I turn my focus once more onto Arnaut.
"He was a human trafficker for slaves and prostitutes. The entire ship was loaded with soundproofed shipping containers full of people- living, breathing souls that he condemned to death by suffocation or Grimm, just to avoid getting caught. If he'd told me, we could have saved them. There were so many bodies…" I turn briefly to see Arnaut's head hung, his voice taking on a bitter tone. "After that, I spent three months hunting him down, chasing leads wherever I could get them, following a trail of people he'd sold to, until I finally found his base of operations. The things I saw there…
"In the end, even though I caught him, he was too careful to truly pin down. The only people who'd seen his face and knew he was guilty were his wife and child, but the day before they were going to testify against him in court, he had them both killed. He pretended he didn't know what he'd been shipping- we could only get him for two years on criminal negligence, and I knew he'd been released recently, but-"
"Whaddaya say, Draggie?" Clint flicks a finger against one of my horns. It doesn't hurt, but it's demeaning, and I feel strangely threatened by him. "Heh, you kinda look like a dragon, too…" He blinks a few times in confusion, then widens his eyes as he remembers what he was doing- "Right, so you comin', or not?"
"Coming to… what?"
"I'mma pay back that gilded son of a bitch for what he did to me. Eye for an eye, wife for a wife… hic ," Clint hiccups, obviously heavily intoxicated after what must be his third bottle since I sat down and who knows how many since arriving at the bar. His face and voice both darken. "Plus, why don't you come along? I could use a little female company after a couple years in prison. If you say you killed a man for money, how much else'll you do if I pay you, huh?"
The implication spreads a cold feeling through me and I suppress a surge of disgusted wrath while choosing my next words extremely carefully: "I think you might be drunk and saying things you don't mean, pal."
He frowns and drifts slightly back towards lucidity. "What, you some kinda noble assassin? Why're you pussyin' out now after gankin' Arnaut yourself?"
I glance around the bar to see that only the bartender remains, everyone else having left by now. Okay, I think as I swallow and step back from the table, using a plaintive tone and my best crack at a playful wink: "Hey, I'm just tired is all. You guys go on and do whatever you want, 'kay?"
Arnaut sounds like he's on the edge of panicking: "You have to report this to the authorities. If that guy gets to Victra, I-"
"Can't do that," I apologize under my breath as I continue towards the door. "I'm not registered as a citizen or visitor in the Vacuo system, so I can't file police reports. Plus, this bar doesn't officially exist, so my story wouldn't be plausible."
"If you let my wife die, I will…" Arnaut takes a few deep breaths, then offers: "If you save her, I will open my personal bank account for you. There's twenty thousand Lien-"
He stops when I reach the door and, instead of going for the handle, slide the barricade bar down over it to keep it shut, then pull a knife from my coat and slam it through the wooden bar and into the door itself, effectively sealing off the interior of the bar. No one in, no one out. The bouncer outside beats on the door, but I know I'm not in any real danger- he can't very well call the police, can he?
The conversation ceases at the table when they see what I've done, but for now my eyes are only for the bartender, who catches my wink and pales rapidly before dropping to the floor. I let out a long breath and finally decide finally let go of my emotions a bit, feeling a surge of quick, shallow anger- anger at Clint for what he's done and threatens to do, anger at Vacuo for keeping me from the ones I love.
In its wake, though, threatening to surface despite my attempts to hold it back, I can feel the deeper hate, the kind that never truly goes away- Hatred of my parents, for leaving me alone. Hatred of Atlas, for years of being hunted, hatred of Mystral, for years of neglect and struggle to even survive. Hatred of humanity, for a thousand slights laid upon me just for my species. But most of all, hatred of the world itself for the hand it's dealt me.
A spreading darkness on my skin spreads from the backs of my hands, growing to cover most of my arm below the elbow, even as more darkness spreads from my ankles to cover my lower legs. Another patch expands from between my shoulder blades to cover most of my back, creeping up my neck and around the edges of my face, all while the scattered groups of scales across my body fade to white. My vision tints red even as my senses heighten and a new one emerges- I feel the fear beginning to blossom in my target's soul as Clint sees me and realizes what's about to happen.
Too late.
I'm halfway across the bar in the time it takes the nearest one of his friends to even notice me, and by the time he can raise a hand my own Grimm-mantled fist simply goes through it and caves in his skull in the blink of an eye. He doesn't even have time to scream.
"What the fuck are you-"
Clint stops talking and flinches backwards as I take a wide swing of my claws around the table at him. His other friend reaches for something on their belt, but I send my tail, now covered in white scale plates and ending in a point, swinging around to punch through their head from the side. Auraless, his bones break like paper beneath my attack. Two down, but the Grimm in me senses Clint's soul flare with the activation of an Aura as he pulls a gun from behind his waist.
I leap at him regardless, taking two bullets to the chest mid-flight, but that's not enough to crack my own Aura and I land heavily on top of him. With my knees pinning his arms at his sides and my tail curved around to hover before his chest, I feel a strange rush of power, as well as a swelling desire to make him suffer.
"This is for the people you've hurt," I hiss, increasing pressure with the pointed end of my tail until his Aura begins to flicker, and sputter, and crack, and then finally shatters, leaving him vulnerable beneath me. It's a lie; this isn't for any cause. It's for me.
I'd expected him to beg, but instead he spits in my face. "You lying cunt. You didn't kill Arnaut at all, did you?"
I break his arms just below the shoulders in response to that, and his bravery dies immediately, replaced by pained whimpering and moaning. Pathetic. For the fun of it, I move my hand up to his unbroken ribs and apply pressure until they break, one at a time, until one pierces his heart and he stops making sounds altogether.
Too bad, I sigh internally, lazily swiping an arm across his throat and nearly decapitating him.
I sense movement from behind the bar and remember the bartender. I note that my original plan was to spare him, but... I can't leave any of them alive. He's as bad as the rest. Another Aura-enhanced leap using Grimm legs sends me flying over the bar, and I stop myself on the back wall using my right arm and leg to absorb the impact. The bartender's lying there, terrified from listening to the violence but not being able to see it through the bar. His eyes drift upwards towards me, settling on my face…
Then he faints.
I raise my clawed hand anyway. He's to blame. They're all to blame-
"Stop!" Arnaut vaults over the bar to stand between the downed bartender and me, raising a hand palm towards me. "You don't need to kill him, Dreki."
The use of my name momentarily confuses me, and that confusion brings first lucidity and then turns to calm as a haze lifts from my mind. I fight back the rage, turn my thoughts away from my past, and eventually the Grimm sinks away, leaving me to breathe a sigh of relief that I was able to restrain it with Arnaut's intervention. I drop my arm and fall back into a sitting position, leaning back with hands against the floor, face tilted skyward as my breath slowly returns to normal.
A few minutes later and I'm still silent as I step over the bodies on the floor. I leave a 10 Lien note on the counter for the table I busted, hesitate, then leave two more for the inconvenience of the bodies. When I rip out the knife from the barricade and raise it, the bouncer, with magnificent timing, runs shoulder-first into the door expecting some resistance, and instead barrels right through it and falls in a heap.
I consider killing him too but decide against it, instead yawning as I roll my shoulders a few times. In a city like Luskhan, three drunk guys being found dead in a bar is a biweekly occurrence, so I don't worry overly much as I stroll down the street looking for a place to sleep tonight. Arnaut tags along behind me, but he's uncharacteristically silent and I don't turn to see his expression, even after I pay for a room and collapse into the bed.
(A/N) Vacuo hasn't been touched on in the show yet, but I'm assuming that it can't all be nomadic. There have to be some nailed down cities, so I'm assuming those would have to be extra defensible against the Grimm- hence the walls.
Lien in the show isn't nailed down with hard, useful numbers. However, apparently in the After the Fall light novel it got stated that Ruby's Volume 1-3 outfit cost about 20 Lien to make. Assuming it's higher-end, made for channeling Aura and durable enough to use in combat, I'd think a comparable real-world price would be about 100 dollars for the whole thing. From there, I'm getting my conversion rate of 1 Lien = 5 dollars.
TL;DR for the rest: Coins are worth 1/100th of a Lien, White cards are worth 1/5 of a Lien, Yellow cards are worth 1 Lien, Pink cards are worth 10 Lien, Orange cards are worth 100 Lien, Red cards are worth 1,000 Lien, and Green cards are worth 10,000 Lien.
For how I got my numbers: in the very first episode, Roman says 'You were worth every penny, truly you were' which implies that there are smaller denominations of Lien and perhaps even coins. There's a RWBY Chibi episode (not canon, I know, but still) where Pyrrha finds a coin with the Lien symbol inscribed upon it. I'm hereby assigning the 'Remnant Penny' a value of 1/100th of a Lien, or 5 cents.
From there, the most common and lowest denomination of Lien seems to be the white cards, which are low-value enough to be simply tipped to various shopowners. Making those 1/5 of a Lien = 1 dollar seems easy enough.
Pink and Yellow Lien are never seen in use, only in wallets that Emerald steals. I'm assigning Yellow cards to be worth 1 Lien = 5 dollars, and Pink cards to be worth 10 Lien = 50 dollars. I'm also inventing Orange Lien, which are worth 100 Lien = 500 dollars, and Red Lien, which are worth 1,000 Lien = 5,000 dollars each.
Two Green Lien cards are used by Qrow when he pays off a 16,000 Lien bar tab. Setting aside the fact that any person could rack up 80,000 dollars of debt at a single bar, I'm going to assume Qrow overpays, and each Green Lien card is worth 10,000 Lien.
A Blue Lien card is only seen in use when Oscar tries to buy a train ticket with it and is denied for insufficient funds. This implies that it's more of a credit card of sorts, because simply swiping a piece of cash and being surprised when it isn't enough makes no sense.