Volume I | Part II

"You got spirit, Red. But this is the real world! The real world is cold! The real world doesn't care about spirit! You want to be a hero? Then play the part and die like every other Huntsman in history!"

- Roman Torchwick to Ruby Rose during the Fall of Beacon

Exiting the dust wastes is a lot easier and less tense than my way in was. This time around I forgo stealth for speed, as my priority is to get away from any possible pursuit by Dustborn hunting parties.

The Grimm I encounter are all dealt with without too much difficulty. I'm getting better and better at wielding Arnaut's sword by the day; his theory about me inheriting his muscle memory seems more and more likely.

Unfortunately, while the Dusties gave me back my weapon, they neglected to return any of the ammo for it, so I'm currently without any long-range options- not that it much matters when I have Arnaut's Aura to work with. I'm moving faster and hitting harder than I ever have before.

Still, with each Grimm that I kill, Vestus's words gnaw away at me. What did he mean by saying I had multiple Grimm inside me? And something about human souls fed to the Grimm? When I notice that ever-present little trail of dark mist flowing from the corpse of an Ursa over into my chest, my curiosity only grows stronger.

"Arnaut, how did you find out what your Semblance did, exactly?"

"One day I just started being able to see people's thoughts when I touched them," Arnaut replies. "Seems fairly self-explanatory."

"…Alright." I sheathe his sword and move on, turning northeast and following the mostly ruined, cracked, broken strip of asphalt that might have once been a main road of some sort..

It takes three and a half days sprinting along that road for me to get out of the wastes, as the dead grey sands give way to brown earth, grass, and eventually even trees. Southern Vale seems a paradise compared to the desert I've been confined to for months, and things only get better when my first two hours trekking into the forest pass without me getting attacked by a single Grimm or bandit.

The road I'm walking, however, doesn't get any nicer. When I hop over a two-foot-wide, two-foot-deep pothole, Arnaut speaks for the first time in a while:

"This path must be left over from the days of the Dustlands being rich mines. It's no wonder they've fallen into disuse now that crossing the dust wastes on foot is practically suicide." He says the last words with an audible pointed look that I don't bother meeting.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. I'm still breathing, aren't I?'

"You're only alive because of the mercy of one specific Dustie girl and that Grimm creature. I told you not to walk the wastes, and-"

"Oh, are you seriously gonna try to hold that over me? Everything worked out, so just let it drop."

"Why do you have such a complete disregard for your own life?" Arnaut sounds more exasperated than genuinely worried.

"That's not it."

"Then what-"

"I just don't ever give much of a shit about anything," I sigh, putting on an affect of casual indifference. "Getting emotionally invested in other people's shit, worrying about danger, being afraid of ways I could die- all of that can trigger my Semblance, so I avoid it."

"You just… turn off your empathy? How…" Only now does Arnaut seem troubled.

"Practice," I reply. "I've had to deal with it since before I can even remember." A lie, but the truth isn't something I plan to ever get into with Arnaut of all people.

"That reminds me- how early did Roman take you in? Did you ever attend a combat school of any sort?"

"Think I was maybe eleven when Roman picked me up out of Mistral."

"Mistral? You said Solitas the last time I asked you-"

"Yeah, it was Solitas first, then I left for Mistral, and then Roman took me to Vale. It's pretty simple, try to keep up." A small movement off to my left causes me to snap my gaze over towards the treeline-

Only a deer. My hand drops from where it had snapped reactively up to my hilt, but then I hesitantly bring it back up and unsheathe Arnaut's sword. "You wanna get to it?"

He knows what I'm asking without it needing to be said. "Where did we leave off, the Fading Wind gambit?"

Ah, right, I remember, All the moves have names. "Sounds vaguely familiar."

"Against a foe smaller and faster than you, the Fading Wind gambit is useful for managing to surprise them. Start with a full overhead blacksmith's blow, but favor your right side." I do as he says. "A confident opponent will dodge to their right rather than directly backwards, which leaves them one step off- transition into a grab with your left arm, but use the right to build momentum back and around yourself with Aurum- yes, good. If both the overhead and the grab are dodged, the opponent must be off-balance enough that you can guarantee a direct strike with the sword if you extend your arm and sweep the full arc around your back. They'll need to watch the grab as well, so the bulk of your body should hide the sword swinging around behind it until it's too late for them to dodge."

I'm significantly better suited for wielding this sword than I thought, and it's not just due to Arnaut's muscle memory. It may be bulky, even in the hands that begin to feel more and more practiced with each day, and awkward if I overcommit to a blow and the enemy avoids it- but I can supplement it by using my off hand for unarmed combat during the recovery period. My hands catch the enemies too fast for his blade, and his blade cuts down the enemies too big or numerous for my hands.

I catch another movement in the corner of my eye and return to a more ready stance, sword one-handed at my right side and angled slightly downwards, left hand poised for whatever's coming. I narrow my eyes and see that this time, it actually is a Grimm, but just a lone Beowolf.

Not worth my time. I turn and continue down the road, grinning slightly when Arnaut's belated reaction finally comes as he realizes my intent.

"What are you doing? Go kill them!"

"'Them'?" I turn again and look more carefully this time, spotting a few more dark forms moving amidst the pines. "How did you- nevermind. Look, are you forgetting the terms? I'm done running odd jobs for you, we're out of Vacuo now."

"But aren't you…" Arnaut trails off hopelessly.

"What? Were you expecting the experience of helping people to suddenly cause me to give a shit about them? And there aren't even any people anywhere near here; these Beowolves are just minding their business and you want me to go out of my way to kill them." Not to mention that I have a sinking feeling about why the Grimm within me has been getting harder and harder to keep a lid on.

Arnaut falls silent as I keep going along the lonely path.

It's another three days of stalking through the wilderness before I see a sign of another human being. In those days I've killed four Grimm, all in necessary self-defense.

Eventually the forest begins to thin, giving way to a nauseatingly idyllic countryside. In the distance I can see crops growing behind a wooden palisade of some sort- a frontier settlement. There's quite a few of them in Vale, most extremely small and extremely poor, although for those exact two reasons I don't have much experience with these types of villages.

However, more pressing than my view of the landscape is my view of several large dark forms blotting out a good chunk of it. An instinct that is not my own causes me to start towards the combat, but I immediately reign myself in and take full stock of what I'm looking at:

Several large Ursi, a two-headed snake Grimm, and a swarm of smaller Beowolves are fast approaching the flimsy wooden walls of the town. I can pick out a few defenders- too few, and none of them look particularly skilled in combat.

Ah well. I shrug and begin to take the long way around the town. Live and let die.

"No," Arnaut breathes. "No, you absolutely cannot."

I look upwards incredulously. "What the hell makes you think that I'd ever be willing to risk my life fighting Grimm for complete strangers?"

Arnaut doesn't reply for a good while, but eventually points towards the village: "You'll need to restock on supplies soon, yes?"

"Yeah…?"

"If that town is destroyed, you won't be able to buy anything there- but if you help them, they'll probably repay you with whatever you want."

I stop and mull it over for a little bit. He makes a good point; I'm not sure when I'll run across any civilization next, and it doesn't seem like fighting any of the Grimm there would be too difficult. Maybe if I-

Wait a minute. "If I just let them die, then I'm guaranteed to get whatever I want, right?"

"No." Arnaut's furious enough at that statement that his voice has looped right back around to deadly quiet.

"Yeah, I'm just gonna wait here." I sit back and rest my elbows on my knees, squinting to see the Grimm already within the village- mostly Beowolves and Ursi, nothing I can't handle. Besides the big snake, there's at least one Boarbatusk as well, which might be a little bit more of a challenge.

"Holy shit," Arnaut says, not even to me. He's staring over my shoulder at the woods back behind me. I rise up onto my feet and follow his line of sight to see-

Holy shit. Qrow fucking Branwen is hurtling out from the treeline directly towards me. My eyes widen and I stumble a step or two backwards, hand rising slowly- too slowly- to the hilt over my shoulder, but he closes the fifteen-meter-gap in the blink of an eye.

"Hey, you! If you can use that sword, get your ass in there and give me a hand!" He somehow sounds disinterested even as he blitzes right past me and draws the blade from his back, vaulting up over the three-meter wooden wall and into the village. Almost immediately I can hear the sounds of cutting blade and multiple gunshots.

"How do you know who Qrow Branwen is?"

I blink a few times, heart pounding. "You kidding? Roman's terrified of him; he's Ozpin's personal attack dog." I can still hear Roman's explanations of how me bungling my portion of whatever scheme he'd cooked up would lead to Qrow hunting all of us down and skinning us alive. I'd rather die than say it out loud in front of Arnaut, but Qrow- or at least, my mental image of him as a half-crow demonic grim reaper- had a starring role in some of my nightmares when I was younger.

"How do you know who he is? He's a Vale Huntsman."

"He's got a… how you say… reputation." Arnaut sounds equal parts awed and distasteful, a weird combination. "On one of my earlier assignments, I tailed a nasty King Taijitu all the way across the dust wastes, only to get ambushed by three more of them right at the Vale border. Qrow showed up, absolutely wasted beyond belief, and killed all three of them, then drank another full flask of liquor and killed the first one I'd been tailing for weeks in about four seconds. Wandered off before I could thank him."

I blink a few times. "So you're saying…"

"He's the deadliest Huntsman I've ever run across."

I've never seen Arnaut concede that someone could fight better than him at all, much less deify someone like this. "Ah, son of a bitch," I mutter, reaching up to unsheathe his sword and beginning to jog into the village.

"What are you… oh." Arnaut comes to the same realization that I did- if I leave, Qrow will probably run me down and ask me some questions that I do not have answers for. "Wait, I need to give you a field probationary license."

"A what?"

"Just open up both of our Scrolls and follow my directions."

"Hell no." I speed up to a run towards the palisade. "I'm not a registered citizen of Vale, so I seriously doubt you can make me a registered Huntsman. Besides, I don't want a paper trail connected to me."

"But if Qrow asks-"

"If Qrow's as hammered as you say he is, I don't think I need to worry about my paperwork." With that, I reach the edge of the wall and attempt to vault it, a lot less gracefully and quickly than Qrow did, but managing to clear it easily enough and finding my landing zone empty except for a few of the faint scatterings of dust left behind by dead Grimm. "Now, where do I-"

My question is answered for me by a scream coming from back behind a building to my left. I take off with an Aura-enhanced leap that takes me back up onto the tip of the palisade, and then another to rebound off it and up onto a rooftop, rolling off the landing and breaking out into a run. Jumping across two more rooftops brings me to the source of the screams, a terrified girl backed into a corner formed by the walls of two buildings and the palisade itself.

The Beowolf stalking towards her doesn't even have time to register my presence before I've slammed Arnaut's sword three feet deep through it and into the ground beneath. I once again register the faint trail of dark mist floating from the dust it leaves behind into my chest, but have to turn and see a pack of more Beowolves at the mouth of the alleyway.

"Clever," Arnaut comments. "They probably set that as a trap for you."

I actually laugh at that. "You're giving them way too much credit."

"Are- are you a Huntress?" The girl's voice trails from behind me, but I don't take my eyes off the slowly encroaching pack of Grimm.

"Something like that, yeah." I give Arnaut's sword a spin as I raise it to lie horizontal beside my face, parallel to my chest, lowering myself into the stance he's trained me to follow over the last few weeks. "C'mon, you dumb bastards."

As if it understood me, the first of the Beowolves immediately take off- but towards my left, even as another aims for my right. "What-"

"The girl!"

Even as my conscious mind registers what Arnaut is saying and realizes that the Grimm are ignoring me and focusing purely on attempting to get the more terrified target behind me, my body acts on a combination of my own instinct and Arnaut's.

The first Beowolf is bisected by a clean sideways swipe, which I transition into a stab that impales the head of the second into the alley wall. A third comes back on my right again, but I use a free leg to kick it with an Aura-enhanced blow, hard enough to send a spiderweb of cracks running through the wall it slams into. A fourth leaps overhead, but I manage to extricate the sword and swing it in a blacksmith's blow that opens the airborne Grimm's chest before arcing down and decapitating the still-stunned victim of my kick.

A fifth Beowolf mixes it up and comes at me, mouth opened wide, but I loosen my grip on the sword and duck beneath the pounce, snagging the bottom of its jaw and slamming it headfirst into the cobblestone ground, shattering the bone of its skull.

"That it?"

"Yes- no." The correction comes as I sense a new presence enter the mouth of the alleyway. When I bring my gaze up, my nasty feeling is confirmed.

A Boarbatusk paws the ground once, twice, before lowering its head to charge.

I can't dodge to the sides in this confined space, but if I jump over it, then-

A fresh whimper from behind me reminds me that dodging isn't an option, here. I still don't have any ammo for the dust cannon, but I also can't swing the blade hard enough to break the Boarbatusk's armor, especially not if it's rolled up and charging.

Speaking of which, it lets out an enraged squealing noise and takes off, moving far faster than anything its size and build has any right to. The running transitions into a forward diving roll, details lost to a ball of blurred white and black and red, rapidly approaching me-

"Planted Roots, Dreki! Now!"

My body once again acts before my mind does, and I perform the named technique by slamming the sword point-first into the ground and grabbing it by both the hilt and handle midway down the blade, pouring my Aura into it to strengthen and reinforce it, mere milliseconds before impact.

Then the Boarbatusk hits me and my senses are lost- a barrage of sparks and bone fragments, a vicious vibrating pressure, and the screaming of bone on metal. Split seconds feel far longer than they should, and yet it ends as quickly as it began.

The pressure subsides as the dark body of the Grimm flies past me on both sides, split down the middle and turning to dust before it can even hit the ground.

I dimly register screaming from behind me, which fades away as I turn around. I'm met with the wide eyes of the girl, which fill first with wonder, and then with tears as she starts sobbing.

"Oh, shit. Uh…" I look around despite knowing full well that there's no one else to take over for me. "Arnaut, how do I…?"

"She's scared," Arnaut sighs. "Comfort her. Give her confidence that you can protect her."

"Hey, little girl," I begin awkwardly. "Uh… don't be afraid, I'm here to protect you, okay?"

"I want… I want my mommy…" She manages between sniffs, wiping away at her eyes with the backs of her hands. "Can you get my mommy? Please?"

"How about you come with me, and show me where you live?" I sheathe Arnaut's sword and sweep her up in my hands, turning to vault up onto a rooftop. "Can you point at your house?"

"Miss, why do you have a tail?"

"I- what?" I'm so taken aback by that abrupt change of topic that I'm actually at a loss for words.

"Are you secretly a monster?" A sudden flicker of fear crosses her face and I immediately shake my head, unwilling to deal with the Grimm that her being terrified will bring down on me.

"No, I'm- I'm a Faunus."

"Huh?"

"Have you not seen a Faunus before?"

"Nuh-uh. What's a Fanna?"

I turn to Arnaut with confusion plastered all over my face, and he shrugs. "She's likely lived in this village in rural Vale all her life. If there weren't a Faunus in the village, how would she have met one?"

He makes a valid point, but I'm still wrapping my head around how a person could have never once met a Faunus in their life- not even knowing a Faunus existed. I don't know whether to be offended or not.

"Okay, a Faunus is-"

"Maybe not right now?"

"Yeah, you're probably right," I nod and mutter under my breath, then lift the girl up onto my shoulder: "Okay, now where's your house? Just point, and I can take you back to your parents?"

She points towards the biggest building in the village, a two-story country mansion ringed by a wrought-iron metal fence. Maybe I'll get a reward if I happened to rescue the daughter of the richest people in the village, I think with a fair little bit of humor, before dropping her into a fireman's hold over my shoulder. "Hold on, kiddo."

Then I take off, launching myself from rooftop to rooftop and burning a fair amount of Aura to go as fast as possible. While I'm holding her, I can't afford to fight any Grimm, so speed is my best bet.

It only take about thirty seconds to cross the small town and land just before the double doors of the villa. I knock on the door with my free hand, and it's only a second before the door is ripped open and I find myself looking at a man in an expensive-looking suit.

He speaks with a country drawl and an air of superiority: "Look, I told you we're not gonna let people in- hold on, who the hell're you, scaly?"

I blink at the fact that he just called me scaly. That used to be a favorite for some of the less open-minded humans in Mistral to call Faunus with reptile attributes, but it was the kind of thing that could get you beaten pretty badly if you said it in the wrong company. "I'm sorry?"

"You heard me, lizard. Was a single time not enough for your-" He finally seems to see the girl draped over my shoulder and immediately pulls a fucking gun on me: "Drop my daughter right the fuck now or I paint my lawn with your brains."

In a state of shock, I lower the girl to the ground, and she runs off into the house, but the man's not done: "Now, you. Hands where I can see 'em."

"Excuse me?"

"You dumb fuckin' animal, get your paws up in the air and away from that sword. I'm not gonna repeat myself again." I do as he says, raising my hands and staring directly into the muzzle of his older-model revolver pistol. That kind typically fires superheated fire Dust rounds with high speed and rotation, and I don't trust my Aura to completely block the shot from point-blank range, at least not after the fighting I just went through.

"I just rescued your daughter from Grimm, sir."

"Like hell you did," he spits. "I hadn't pulled a gun, you woulda charged me to bring 'er back, no doubt."

"I'm a Huntress, sir. I just-"

"Then let's see your fuckin' license, now," he hisses. "They let half-breeds into the academies now? I'll believe it when I see it."

My mouth goes dry. "I, uh... I left it with my things, I can go get it if-"

"Bullshit," the man sneers. "I know your kind, you'll say whatever the fuck you need to to squirm your way out of trouble."

The shock is beginning to fade, but as the cold surprise melts away, the vacuum it leaves behind is filled with a white-hot rage that I can barely restrain. I've seen the uglier side of discrimination my entire life, but the buried resentment that I always locked away threatens to send my Semblance into overdrive now that this single egregious caricature of all that I hate is standing in front of me, gun to my head.

"I need to go protect other people now," I say as calmly as I can. If I kill him now, Qrow will end me for it. If I let the Grimm out, Qrow will end me for it. What I need to do is just restrain all the rage, all the hatred, and just walk away. "There are more Grimm that I need to take care of."

The man spits in my face and I have to throw my hand behind my back in order to keep him from seeing the surge of black that overtakes it, scales turning white and nails lengthening into claws. Shit, shit, shit…

"Daddy, she killed a whole buncha monsters." My salvation comes in the form of the little girl, who managed to stumble her way back out onto the porch and tug on her father's pant leg. A woman- her mother, probably- follows her out and scoops her up into her arms before giving me a glance just as disdainful as her husbands.

"Honey, that's an it, not a she," the man corrects. "And it's a monster, too."

I shut my mouth as my fangs elongate further, even the normal front incisors lengthening into sharp points. I can't risk talking at this point without giving myself away, so I shut my eyes and do my absolute damndest to think of calming things. Roman and Neo are just a few more days away.

"Then why'd she kill all the wolfies and the piggy? She's too nice to be a monster, daddy."

I reopen my eyes to see that the gun has been lowered and the man is looking at me with less hatred, if still the same amount of disgust. "Is that so." He points towards the rest of the village. "Go on, get off my property."

I immediately turn and vault off, stomach churning with raw rage at the unfairness of the fact that I just spent time and energy protecting something for that fucking racist worm. The rage is still there, but fades away just like it has every other time as I seal the encounter away with all the others like it, banishing it from my mind as I come across a particularly large Ursa.

"Dreki, that-"

I ignore Arnaut's voice as I slide between the Ursa's legs and do a full spin with my sword outstretched, severing both of its feet from behind and bringing it crashing to the ground. It's a simple matter of stalking over to beside its head and bringing the brunt of my blade down against its neck, harder than is probably necessary but still not enough to get rid of that resentful burn deep within me.

"That, Arnaut, is the last little piece to why I can't make myself give a shit about humans." I turn and flow through the Lashing Branches technique, a series of quick horizontal slashes that injure and force back another Ursa. "They're selfish, and petty, and evil." It roars and brings a paw hurtling around to smash into me, but I slam the sword down into Planted Roots and the beast cuts its own forearm off on my unmoving blade. "They'll use any opportunity, any reason, any excuse to treat each other like shit, much less anyone unlucky enough for them to see as different."

Instead of yanking the blade from the dirt, I use it as a springboard to launch myself at the still-reeling Ursa and slam an Aura strike fist directly into its head, knocking it backwards. "It really says something that, because my people look different, humans decided to treat us like animals for a thousand generations." I land straddling the Ursa's neck, looking it dead in the eyes as I slam a fist directly into its skull again, and again, not bothering to expend any unnecessary Aura as even my normally enhanced blows begin to crack the bone.

"Don't get me wrong, Faunus are the same way. If they'd been the ones on top in the beginning, I'm sure they'd find some way to justify enslaving and stepping on the humans instead," I continue, slamming blows into the same spot over and over, each one causing more and more chips of bone to fly off and causing the Ursa's struggles to weaken. "You know why I would've left this village to burn? Because that fucker in his pristine mansion is gonna live now, and I sure as hell won't be getting any thanks for it.

"That piece of shit is representative of humanity- a selfish asshole, cowering in his house while his daughter might have died, and then shitting on me after I bring her to him." A final blow shatters the skull of the Ursa and it roars one final time before dissipating into dust beneath me.

"Because of you, the girl is alive," Arnaut finally responds. "She is representative of humanity- at their core, people are always good, always kind."

"Not for long," I mutter. "Not with those parents."

Arnaut's silent for a long time after that, before finally answering: "That's beside the point. Absent the poisoning influence of others, she could grow to be-"

"And that's the difference between you and me," I interrupt. "You see people for what they could be, and I see them for what they are."

It's another half hour of fighting before the last of the Grimm are dealt with, and then another hour of people letting each other know that the attack is over. The entire time, I'm met with responses ranging from open curiosity at my Faunus nature to hostility and distrustfulness. I'm beginning to see why Roman avoided the outer settlements.

At the same time, though, there's something off about this place. I'm sitting on the finely shingled rooftop of a three-story mansion, of which there are several in this small border village that should by no means have people loaded enough to pay for that kind of construction way out here. "Arnaut, you know why there's so many rich people in this tiny town out in bumfuck nowhere?"

He hesitates before answering. "…No."

"Arnaut." I've spoken to him enough to know his tells, at least the more obvious ones.

"I don't know."

I look over at him but he won't meet my eyes directly, all but confirming that he's keeping things from me. "Arnaut."

"I don't…" He trails off, looking up at the reddish sunset sky, before finally sighing. "It's possible that… look, I've heard rumors of people upset about the Faunus integration laws being passed in Vale deciding to move out to border settlements."

I turn back around to look and see what he's talking about. The opulent buildings are all newer than the older wooden homes. So some of these assholes are people who would rather abandon their kingdom than share it with Faunus? The bastard who pulled a gun on me earlier today seems to fit that description just fine.

I shake the subject from my head before it can start to piss me off, but before I can find a new one to replace it, I feel a hand placed on my shoulder-

Shit! I roll forward, bringing a hand up to my weapon. I didn't even sense anything approach, what the hell could possibly have…

"Hey, calm down, kid," Qrow grumbles, laying a hand over mine and preventing me from drawing Arnaut's sword. I cautiously relent, but all of my instincts are screaming bloody murder at me, because this man is dangerous unlike anything I have experience dealing with- except maybe Hazel. My world is one of lower-rung Huntsmen and criminals; men like Qrow and Hazel do not belong to it.

The slight haze of his eyes, the slumped posture and apparent lack of attention, it's all too clear to me now that it's a front. Either intentional or not, his outward appearance belies a monster beneath the surface- not just a monster, but something that can slaughter monsters as easily as breathing.

Today, I killed maybe ten percent of the Grimm attacking the village, and that's being generous. The rest was all Qrow- the couple of times I caught glimpses of him at work made me think that maybe my younger self's nightmares of a demonic reaper weren't too far off the mark. The scythe is an apt choice of weapon, because he made the Grimm look like nothing more than weeds to be trimmed.

"Kid?" He cocks his head a little bit and shakes me a couple times by my shoulder. "Kid, you awake?"

"Yeah, yeah," I manage, unwilling to meet his eyes. "I'm fine."

"You did decent work today," he says, as if I did anything more than save him an extra five minutes of exterminating. I can't restrain my snort of laughter at that, but he either ignores it or doesn't notice. "You seem new at this. Beacon kid?"

"Shade," I respond, giving as little information as possible.

"Long way from home, aren't you?" Qrow narrows his eyes just the tiniest bit, but then drops back into a more relaxed smirk. "Eh, whatever. I'm not here to grill you, especially not after you helped out these people."

I nod, but can't keep a faint trace of curiosity from crossing my face as to why he's here. He doesn't seem to pick up on it, but nonetheless transitions to answer my unspoken question: "I'm just checking to make sure you aren't bleeding out or anything up here. Anyway, you comin' down? They're celebrating with a feast in our honor."

I blink. Does he not realize what they are? "I think it's best if I don't."

He seems to look me over once more in a new light at that. "You sure?" I nod again, slowly, and he just sighs and shrugs. "Suit yourself."

Qrow disappears down off the roof and towards a large central building with windows emitting the flickering warm glow of firelight and a faint trace of music. Sitting here on a dark rooftop and looking down at the celebration that I know all too well I'm not welcome in reminds me to an uncomfortable degree of the hungrier nights I spent in the Mantle streets. The key difference being that this time I couldn't give less of a shit about what I'm missing out on.

In fact, most of the town's residents being occupied gives me an idea, and I vault over onto another rooftop, cutting a path towards a general supplies shop that I noticed a few times while fighting my way through the town. It's closed, lights dark and door locked, but a cursory inspection around the sides reveals a back door out of sight of the street.

I shake it in its hinges and hear the rattling of a latch on the other side, but draw one of my thinner knives from inside my coat and push it through the gap, lifting the latch and getting the door open within a few seconds. A quick glance to either side to make sure I'm not being observed, and then I quietly step inside.

It's only now that Arnaut seems to pick up on what I'm doing. "Hold on, are you… don't you dare rob these people!"

"Racist fuckers have it coming," I mutter in response. The lights are off in here, but I can see well enough with the night vision my Faunus eyes offer, making my way over to the prepackaged meals section and restocking on ration bars.

"You don't know that the owner of this place is racist," Arnaut reasons. "They might just be a normal person trying to eke out a living-"

"Arnaut, out here, racist is normal. Most people aren't as obvious about it as that piece of shit from earlier, but everyone's complicit. You think that I didn't notice them all keeping an eye on their valuables when I checked on them after the attack? That I didn't notice them thanking Qrow and inviting him to their moronic victory party without so much as a whisper to me?" This might be a convenience store, but being in Southern Vale, it'll have to have- ah, there we are, I think, stepping over to the locked cabinet with the Dust weaponry and ammunition. One glance at the lock is enough for me to know that I won't be able to pick it; that's Roman and Neo's forte. In this case, though, my knife works fine for cutting a circle through the glass surrounding the lock and pulling it out before opening the whole cabinet and snatching the distinctively large thirty millimeter rounds Arnaut's sword takes.

"Don't you see that by doing this, you're playing directly into-"

"Spare me your horseshit, Arnaut." Satisfied, I close the cabinet door and take one final look around the room to see if anything jumps out to me. "Up until now, I was the picture of a perfect little Huntress. I helped them, saved them, and they acted like I was a fucking thief as soon as they saw my tail. If that's how I'm gonna be treated, then I'm at least gonna reap the upsides."

Arnaut takes another long time to respond, as he seems to usually do when confronted by the darker sides of people. "This still isn't right."

I step quietly out the door of the shop and close it behind me. "Welcome to the real world."

Despite the calm, at-peace facade I put up, I'm unable to shake the slight roiling feeling of resentment from my confrontation earlier, even as I exit the village for what I hope will be the final time.

Only a few hours later, I'm midway through practicing a lowered, sweeping stance that Arnaut calls 'Autumn Breeze' when a hand comes down on my shoulder and shocks me into an immediate strike behind me-

Which is blocked by a distinctive segmented sword blade belonging to one Qrow Branwen.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck… I run down our two interactions from earlier that day, desperately trying and failing to think of what I did to give myself away. Did he pick up on me not helping at the beginning? Or wait, did that asshole racist guy spin some story about me touching his daughter!?

When Qrow speaks, I immediately feel like a moron. "Kid, why'd you steal from those people?"

I swallow, throat feeling oddly dry all of a sudden. "I, uh…" Lying to him seems like a mistake, and yet I'm not certain he isn't just as racist and unlikely to believe me as all those people from before… oh, right.

I run a tiny flicker of Aura through my shoulder where his hand lies and activate Arnaut's Semblance, immediately feeling a wave of casual curiosity and a mental image of… well, myself, but without the Faunus parts. No horns, no fangs, no tail, and no scales around the hands and neck. I don't know whether to be relieved or offended, and whether that means he genuinely doesn't notice them, or just doesn't see them as important.

Either way, it gives me the courage to speak the truth- or at least, a modified version of it. "I needed supplies for the road to Vale."

"You not have any money, or…?" Qrow raises an eyebrow and takes his hand off my shoulder to cross his arms before his chest, sending a wave of relief through me. "I'm sure if you asked, they'd be grateful enough to lend you a hand."

I pick and choose my words extremely carefully. "Well, sir… they're grateful to you. There's a reason that they didn't ask me to that feast…" Twin gods, does this guy seriously not get it? I guess I'll spell it out: "I think you didn't notice because you don't have a tail."

Comprehension dawns in an extremely subtle shift in his expression, but he does a bang-up job of limiting his reaction to a simple sigh and nod. "That bad, huh?"

I release a held breath, sensing that I'm out of the danger zone. "Worse. I saved a little girl and the dad pulled a gun on me as thanks."

Qrow seems to take a half-look back behind him before shaking his head. "On behalf of Vale, I'm sorry. I promise we aren't all bigots." He offers a hand to me, and I shake it.

"Oh, it's fine," I smile, suppressing the urge to respond with vitriol.

For the first time, Arnaut decides to chime in. "Ask him of the situation in the kingdom as a whole, will you? Information after the CCTV collapse has been extraordinarily hard to come by…"

He's actually on the right track there. Qrow's already started off down the road, but I dart back over to his side and clear my throat: "Uhm, I was wondering…"

"Yeah?"

"What happened with the Fall of Beacon? I heard all these awful rumors… is the academy really gone?"

Qrow's expression darkens, and despite not being the target of his ire I still feel a slight instinct to flee. "Some terrorists sabotaged the tournament and let a bunch of Grimm into the school. It's still standing, but we're still clearing out the worst of the monsters. You here in Vale for long? 'Cause we could use all the help we can get dealing with 'em."

"I'll definitely see what I can do," I respond noncommittally. "But… I also heard that Atlas attacked, is that true?"

Qrow's eyes snap directly onto me. "Where'd you hear that?

"Just a rumor floating around… there was another one, that the Atlas troops got hacked…?" I'm taking a risk by adding that last part, but it's my best chance to segway into asking about Roman and Neo.

A flicker of suspicion crosses the older Huntsman's face, but he eventually replies "Yeah, that's what we think happened."

This is the tricky part, I remind myself. "I heard it was that criminal guy who got arrested for the second Mountain Glen incident… what was it, Ronny something? Ronald?"

"Roman Torchwick," Qrow corrects. "Might've been him, but if it was, something must've gone wrong, since the flagship crashed and he never managed to get off of it."

I'm severely tempted to press on and ask about Neo as well, but know full well that mentioning a specific accomplice after pretending not to even know Roman's name is pushing things too far. Instead, I force a chuckle and shrug. "Good riddance, I guess."

"Yep."

I've confirmed what I got from the Spider back in Luskhan, and that's all I needed to know. The sky is darkening rapidly, which gives me my excuse to wave a goodbye at Qrow: "I'm gonna camp out here for the night. Good luck with fixing your kingdom!"

Qrow nods and disappears down the road in minutes, as I dig into fresher stolen meal packs and lay down my pack as a pillow. However, even as I slip away to dreams, the resentment of that villager's sneering face lingers, refusing to be buried with the other thousand times I've felt it.

(A/N) Honestly, I feel like the Faunus oppression mentioned in RWBY is only ever shown all of... like, two times, and both times it's not even all that bad. I'm going out on a limb and saying that it's probably much worse in rural areas, as well as among non-Huntsmen.

Qrow is still working as a Huntsman in Vale at the moment because Ruby hasn't yet set out for Mistral.