(A/N) So for the benefit of some plot points way down the line, and because I want to try writing something different from what I usually do, I've swapped Drauger's gender to female and renamed him/her Dreki. As an extension, I've made some slight changes to prior scenes to fit the new reality. For obvious reasons, ignore this author's note if you started reading after I published this chapter.

I skirt around the next town I run into, unwilling to risk any attention and ruin things when I'm so close to my objective. Without human interaction besides Arnaut, the days and days of stalking through the wooded roads practicing sword swings blend together, as do the names of the thousand moves he keeps coming up with.

"Falling Leaves is a variation of Lashing Branches, but modified to be used from Spring Rain stance. It's better against less mobile targets, especially those that require multiple… Dreki?" Arnaut waves a hand in front of my face. "Dreki!"

"What?"

"Are you paying attention?"

"Yeah," I say, suppressing a smirk from coming onto my face. "Something about leaves?"

Arnaut gives me a look of reproach. "You shouldn't treat this with so little care. Learning these techniques could mean the difference between life and death in a real fight."

"I somehow doubt knowing the right verse of poetry to recite while swinging my sword one extra micrometer to the left is going to change anything, Arnaut." He just shakes his head without even looking at me in an annoyingly superior way, which makes me want to snap back at him: "By the way, who came up with all these moronic names? Did you seriously look up a list of words associated with seasons and just slap a move onto each one?"

"Enough." There's an immediate shift in his tone and expression to something more serious than his usual annoyance, and I instinctively stop speaking when I see the anger in his eyes. "Do not ridicule the Way of Wind."

That's the first time I've heard him name the technique he's been teaching me. I'm not quite sure how to respond, as the tone of the conversation shifting more intense leaves me feeling out of my element.

Arnaut, however, continues: "There are people who'd spend tens of thousands of Lien for a few lessons in the Way, understand?"

I have to blink away my surprise at that. "…What?"

"It's one of the-"

"It's a fucking sword technique," I spit. "There're idiots out there who'd blow that much to have someone else nag them about their 'improper form'?"

Arnaut narrows his eyes. "Do you know who the VDC champion was the first twenty-three consecutive years after it was founded?" When I obviously don't have an answer, he muscles forward: "Have you heard the name Alorn Rihfaris?"

The name rings a bell, but I genuinely don't know if that's Arnaut's memory or mine. "Maybe?"

"I forget sometimes that you never had much formal schooling," Arnaut sighs. Before I can take offense, he continues: "You haven't studied the Great War much, have you? I'll assume you know the sweeping details, Vale and Vacuo fighting for personal freedom against the tyranny of Atlas and Mistral… When Vacuo first joined the war, they pushed Atlesian and Mistrali forces out of the kingdom in days, despite not having an organized military up until that point. A large part of their success was due to the Wind Knight, Rihfaris Alorn, a seventeen-year-old boy with a rusty metal greatsword that killed over six hundred enemy soldiers in three days."

I've always had a little fragment of me that buys into the larger-than-life characters in stories and history- maybe born out of the deadly respect drilled into me of Qrow from an early age, or maybe due to one of my only sources of joy while on the Mistral streets being sneaking into dueling tournaments. Hearing about someone who apparently puts all the dueling champions of my childhood to shame has me respectfully quiet for the first time in a while.

"In the final Battle of Shade, the King of Vale pulled off a march across the dust wastes in mere weeks and arrived to annihilate the Atlesian forces from behind… But the only reason Vacuo hadn't fallen by then was the Wind Knight. When the east gate fell, he held the gap alone for ten hours. They say that after the battle, the King of Vale found him alone atop a mountain of corpses, and offered him an appointment as the headmaster of Shade Academy.

"He turned it down in favor of roaming around doing Huntsman work and fighting in the newly established VDC. For the first twenty-three years, he was the undefeated champion, but quit at age forty-five to establish a family."

"And you're his son," I guess, seeing where this is going.

Arnaut releases that signature long, annoyed sigh accompanied by a head shake. "No. He had three sons, but none of them lived long enough to have children of their own. They say that the blood he spilled during the Great War has cursed his legacy to die with him."

I blink. "But then how do you-"

"He took me on as a disciple," Arnaut says, voice dropping even further into solemn reverence. "I am the fifth person in history to fully master the Way of Wind, and it remains untarnished- in eighty years, not a single person who has mastered it has lost a duel, you understand?"

I refrain from commenting on what I did to him. It wasn't a straight fight anyway, I think, but then another thought occurs. "Hold on, you said his legacy was cursed, right? Doesn't that extend to you?"

An expression of remorse crosses his face. "Perhaps. I haven't left behind any children to survive me, and Alorn swore to never teach another soul were I to die young as well, so…"

I swallow, for the first time feeling vaguely guilty for killing him . "But you said you had a wife, right…?"

"Victra always said she wanted children, but I…" he sets his mouth in a hard line, but his eyes betray a mournful regret that I can't help but look away from. "I always pushed it off for later, after I'd set the legend of the Golden Guardian in stone. I suppose it's too late, now…"

"Look, Arnaut, I…" I bite my lip hard enough for one of my elongated canines to draw blood. "I'm really, really sorry. I didn't realize…" But then again, what didn't I realize? Is this what killing another person is, and I've been deluding myself and avoiding thinking through what I've done for my entire life? I robbed him of children, I robbed his wife of a whole family… hell, I robbed all of Vacuo of a protector. Why is it that I can walk around alive while he-"

The telltale flickering of black tint traces out onto my fingers and forearm from under my glove, and I clench a fist, doing my best to trample the thoughts. I know better than to think about that stuff. Why now?

It's only after a prolonged silence that I turn to see Arnaut regarding me with an unreadable swirl of resentment, pity, sympathy, and curiosity in his eyes. For the first time since I've met him, he seems to be at a loss for words, but eventually gives a rueful shake of his head and speaks wistfully. "If only someone had set you on the right course from the beginning."

The ship sailed on that one when Atlas-

Shit. In order to avoid the Grimm again, I pivot back to what we'd been talking about earlier. "You said something about a curse?"

"Yes, Alorn taught three sons the Way of Wind and watched each of them die before their time, not in battle but by tragic happenstance. He'd sworn to bear the burden of those he'd killed alone, but I… convinced him to teach me. I was convinced that the curse was nothing but idle hearsay, yet now I'm not so sure."

"Oh, and now you're teaching it to me, huh?" I slip back into the annoyed smirk Arnaut usually brings out from me. "Seems like a pretty convoluted way to get revenge, don't you think?"

"I suppose we'll see."

It's another two days' walk before I run low on food again and need to chart a course for the next village roughly on my way towards Vale proper. The village in question, Greenbarrow, is a fair bit larger than the last one, and hopefully contains some less obnoxious-to-deal-with people.

The main gate is wide open, so I cut a path right in. Initial signs seem to be negative- people stopping what they're doing, gesturing towards me, dropping into whispered conversations- but then again, it's impossible to tell from that whether it's me being a Faunus, or just my general appearance.

In fact, with my coat fastened all the way down to my waist, my hood up, and my sleeves rolled down, all anyone can reasonably see of me is the horns, tail, and maybe a glimpse of my shaded face.

Speaking of which, that reminds me to draw my tail up and wrap it around my waist. It's not particularly comfortable, but it reduces the odds of people picking up on me being a Faunus from a distance, so it's worth it. The horns I can't do much about.

In small towns, the tavern tends to be along the main road and towards the center of the- yep, there it is. I take one last glance around to see if any of the attention I've drawn has passed the stage of idle curiosity, then step in through the saloon doors and find myself in a surprisingly bustling room. In fact, there's only a single table left open, which I claim by dropping Arnaut's sword across it. The five-meter monstrosity pokes out off the edges of the table on either end, but it's still a godsend for my increasingly sore shoulder that bears the brunt of the sheathed sword's weight whenever I don't have it out for practicing.

"Arnaut, do Huntsmen really name their weapons?"

"Yes."

I narrow my eyes. "Do Huntsmen really name their weapons with lengthy Old Sanus phrases?"

"…Some of them do."

I sigh. Ever since the talk he gave me about what he actually entrusted me with by giving me lessons in the Way of Wind, I've felt an annoying sense of debt to him… so as dumb as it feels to me, and as small of a thing it probably is, I feel like the least I can do is humor him in some of his idiosyncracies. "I guess if I'm going to be committing to this tradition thing, I might as well go all in, but… Aurum's a shit name for a sword, no offense."

"I believe I see where you are going with this," Arnaut grins. "You'd like me to do the honors?"

"Keep it at or below three syllables, and don't have 'Um' in the name," I stipulate, mildly dreading what I may have gotten myself into.

Arnaut doesn't respond immediately, even taking long enough to think that a waitress arrives at the table with a smile and a tone sweet enough to give my teeth phantom pains. "Can I get you anything, miss?"

I shoot a look over at the menu above the bar and settle on a turkey club, then relax back into my chair, deeply enjoying the chance to just shut down for a little while.

Which means it pretty much tracks that I'm almost immediately jolted out of it by someone sitting down at my table in the seat across from me. I open my eyes to the deeply unsettling sight of a man sitting inside Arnaut, whose semi-transparent golden form overlaps in and out of the dark skin of the newcomer.

The man seems to sense something, frowning and placing a hand over his heart in confusion, only dropping it when Arnaut gets up and out of the way. The confusion remains for a bit longer in his expression and his voice when he asks "Feel that? There a draft here, or something?"

I'm too busy furiously racking my mind for where I've heard that voice before to answer, finally landing on something a lot more recent than I'd expected. "Holy shit, Moonshine, is that you?"

"What, three months enough t' forget a friend?" Moonshine fixes me with a smile, a crescent of pristine-white teeth that serves as part of the basis for his nickname. "C'mon, Dragon, how's it been?"

"What, you mean my month and a half in Vacuo? Or the three weeks of hiking through the Grimm-infested wasteland?" I raise an eyebrow. "How do you think it's been, genius?"

He just raises two hands in a placating gesture. "Sheesh, no need t' bite my head off."

"You're right, I'm sorry," I sigh. "Look, I haven't exactly had a very nice couple of months, so let's maybe skip the small talk?"

"Aww, but you know that's my favorite part," Moonshine jokingly complains, before shrugging off a hint of the mirth to get serious- or, what passes for serious for him. I don't think I've ever seen him not smiling; another part of his nickname comes from a running joke among some of his crew that he'll brighten anyone's day.

"Look, what're you doing here?" He's in charge of eastern Vale city ops, which mostly translates to overseeing smuggling things through the docks. I genuinely don't have a clue as to why he'd be in this bar in southern rural Vale.

"I'm on, ah… let's call it a vacation," he grins. "Roman's keeping up a low profile for a while on this one, so I'm takin' an opportunity t' visit some family out here."

"You never mentioned fam-" I pause as something else he said registers. "Wait, Roman hasn't shown yet?"

"Nah," Moonshine replies, waving over the waitress. "Hey, sweetie, could you be a doll and grab me a bottle of rum? Sunset if they have it, but anythin'll do so long as it ain't that Menagerie dogshit." She nods and walks away, but he snorts a laugh. "Comin' from Menagerie, damn well might be actual dog shit, if you know what I'm talkin' about."

I raise an eyebrow at him, uncurling my tail from my waist and tapping his leg with it. He just shifts into a slightly more subdued smile and rolls his eyes: "Look, you know I don't mean any offense, Dragon."

"None taken," I respond, too anxious at the moment about Roman and Neo to go into any prolonged discussion on racism, especially not with Moonshine, whose issue is more not knowing when a joke is in poor taste than any ingrained prejudices. "Look, Roman was supposed to surface a month after the Fall, and it's been two."

"Roman was also supposed t' crash the ship into the bay, not the middle of th' city, but here we are." Moonshine takes the drink directly from the waitress's hand as she arrives and just starts pounding it back, using his free hand to grab her by the sleeve and hold for for the fifteen seconds it takes him to down the entire bottle. "Ahhh, hits th' spot," he sighs, before handing it back to the waitress: "Might wanna snag me two more, missie."

"Shit, dude, you mind waiting until after our conversation to commit war crimes on your liver?"

Moonshine shoots me a wounded look, but can't maintain it for long and we both break down laughing at the same time. "I ain't a lightweight, kid. This watered-down boonie shit is nothing."

"I figured." Our food- well, my food and his two additional bottles of rum- arrives, and I dig into it immediately like a starving hyena. Honestly, the hiking, the sleeping outdoors, hell, even the fighting off Grimm doesn't particularly bother me on these treks- not compared to the absolute hell that is night after night of eating disgusting concentrated ration bars.

As flavor- real flavor- sinks into my mouth, I groan in ecstasy and relax down into my chair a bit. Neither me, nor Moonshine, nor even the uncharacteristically quiet Arnaut spoil the moment with words as I demolish both halves of my sandwich in under a minute and, following Moonshine's example, order two more.

"So, what'd Roman send you off for, anyway?" Moonshine asks between sips.

I briefly consider the risks of opening up to him about my mission and decide not to open up all the way: "Assassination contract."

He whistles. "Must've been pretty damn important or pretty damn lucrative for him t' send you all th' way out to Vacuo alone."

"Both," I grunt.

Moonshine nods slowly. "Open contract or exclusive?"

"Exclusive. Think it was a personal thing for someone, though," I sigh.

"What makes you say that?" Arnaut asks.

"Later," I whisper back, before tilting my head at Moonshine: "But enough about me. Tell me, how did the plan go, up until Roman missed the intended crash site?"

Moonshine just shrugs. "I don't know, I weren't up there on the ship." I shoot him a deadpan look and he relents: "Fine, I think it went pretty much accordin' to that Tinder lady's plan. White Fang showed up n' did their part, Grimm broke in, and Neo got the virus uploaded to the flagship. Only hitch was…"

"Yes?"

He seems to pause, as if searching for the right words. "Well, I told you about Roman droppin' outta contact and crashing in the middle of th' city, right?" I nod. "There was that, and then later, a huge dragon Grimm just exploded out of a damn mountain and flew halfway across Vale up t' Beacon tower."

"Sure," I reply, curious as to where this is going.

"So then, when th' dragon Grimm made it to Beacon tower- and I shit you not, here, this actually happened- there's this big flash of white light, and then it turns to fuckin' stone right then and there."

I snort out a surprised laugh, unsure what I was expecting but fairly certain that that wasn't it. "What are you talking about?"

"Yeah, yeah, seemed weird to me too, but…" Moonshine shrugs and trails off, polishing off his third bottle of shitty rum and setting it down on the table.

"So who took over for Roman?"

"Roach n' Vixie are, ah… settling that little discussion right now," he sighs. "To tell you th' truth, that's part of th' reason I took it upon myself to take a nice little vacation for a while 'til all this shit blows over." Just as my food arrives, he lays down some Lien on the table and rises to his feet. "Look, Dragon, I'll give it t' you straight: I've been at this shit for a long time, n' I've never seen this kind of bullshit before. Cultists hiring gangs to clean out entire kingdoms, Huntsman academies breaking down, Atlas about t' declare war on everyone, giant monsters comin' out of th' ground…"

He scratches his neck and, for the first time that I can remember, drops the smile to look me in the eyes, dead serious: "Be careful, 'kay? You take care of yourself, now."

"I…" Without the white teeth to distract from it, I only now notice how tired his face looks. He's a lot older than I'd thought. "Uhm, sure thing, Moonshine." I nod once, and he turns to leave.

"See you 'round, Dragon."

I'm slower to devour the next two sandwiches, worry about Roman and Neo that I can't quite stifle refusing to go away and giving me a nasty feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Dragon, hmm?"

I don't know why, but a flush spreads through my cheeks at Arnaut's use of my nickname. "Yeah, it's… look, we try not to use real names in the Syndicate."

"Syndicate?"

I realize that he likely doesn't have much experience with Vale. "Ah, the Syndicate is like… okay, you know how most of the crime in Vacuo is split up between a thousand smaller gangs that each operate in one, maybe two cities?"

"Vaguely, yes."

"The Syndicate is basically a… well, it's not one big gang, it's more like a… kind of a government for the gangs. For the most part people in the individual organizations underneath can pretty much do whatever, but the Syndicate enforces some hard rules and sometimes organizes some much larger-scale stuff."

"So you belong to this… Syndicate?"

"I belong to Roman, and Roman's one of the three people in charge of the Syndicate."

Arnaut goes quiet after that, expression indecisive as though he were weighing whether or not to say something, but eventually turning to face me with what seems like genuine empathy on his face: "When you say you belong to Roman, is it… how did he come to 'own' you?"

I roll my eyes. "Oh, spare me. I'm not his slave, if that's what you're asking."

However, when I look back towards him, he meets my gaze dead serious. "It isn't."

That does take me aback a bit. "Then… what are you asking?"

His eyes carry a sort of sad curiosity that I've never seen before. "How did you lose your will to do the right thing? What happened to change you from someone like that innocent little girl you saved a few days prior into what you are now?"

I swallow. Even thinking about my past is a risk, especially in such a crowded and public place as this. One slip could snowball into something I don't want to consider, yet… if Arnaut is here to stay, and if he's literally incapable of dying or abandoning me, I feel like I can be a little bit more open with him.

"Roman saved me from Lower Mistral." Arnaut looks vaguely disappointed, as though he expected more, in a way that annoys me. "Have you ever been to Lower Mistral, Arnaut?"

"No, I can't say that I have. I've… I've heard stories, though."

"It's…" I shake my head, curling my hand a little tighter around my drink as my thoughts turn to the pile of shit I lived in for two years- too tight, as I hear a faint cracking noise and see that my fingers have sharpened and lengthened into claws that are now digging into a spiderweb of cracks in my glass.

Shit. I forcibly take my mind off of Mistral and turn to Arnaut, calming myself to an apathetic state. "There's a reason I don't talk about this stuff, understood?"

He just nods.

"Alright." I take a look over at the menu board and mentally add up what I owe for my food, then slap enough and a hefty tip to the waitress on top for dealing with Moonshine's bullshit. As I rise to my feet and bring my tail back within my coat, I remember what I'd originally spoken to Arnaut about- "You land on a name yet?"

He thinks for a few moments more before his eyes land on one of Moonshine's discarded Sunset Rum bottles and a smile creases his face once more. "Aurora."

"Aurora," I parrot, trying the word out in my mouth. "Why Aurora?"

"It means 'Sunrise'," Arnaut replies, "And it also refers to the colors that light up the night sky in the far north, where you're from, and the far south, where I'm from."

My heart skips a beat as his words remind me of something I thought I'd lost- a memory before Mistral, even before Atlas. Sitting in the cold snow, but with a warm hand holding my shoulder, and another pointing into the sky, where dancing lights of green and blue and purple stretched as far as the eye could see.

That is the light of the Valkyrie, Dreki, the fiercest and most loyal warriors of the gods. That is the light of their world that pierces the veil into ours when they fly through to fetch the strongest, bravest warriors and bring them to their true home in the next life.

I blink a few times, eyes and throat feeling suddenly raw, but shake off the memory and shelve it away with the precious few others from that time that remain uncorrupted. When I've gathered myself enough, I turn to Arnaut with what I hope is a composed facade: "Arnaut, I… thank you."

He seems to have a sense that something outside his perception just happened for me, but to my gratitude doesn't push the subject, instead just nodding. I sling Aurora and then my backpack over my shoulder and move to exit the bar. It's only about 7:30, so I can get quite a bit more walking in, even after I take my brief detour into the local Huntsman supply shop.

Inside, the counter is manned by a middle-aged woman with frizzled red hair and a sad-looking smile. When she speaks, it's in an equally dejected tone: "Miss, I'm sorry to say, but we're no longer selling Dust products to civilians or inactive Huntsmen."

"The embargo's already having effects out in the rural areas as well?" Arnaut sounds surprised.

"I'm here for food," I grunt back to the woman, finding the corner of the store in question and trying not to think about what I'm doing as I grab another week's worth of ration bars and bring them over to the counter.

"Oh, miss, are you traveling?" There's an edge to her tone when she asks that question that speaks to something else going on beneath the surface.

"Yeah, is that a problem?"

She bites her lip with a deeply worried expression. "Well, miss, I… I wouldn't recommend it, not by yourself."

"No?" I cross my arms, prepared for the usual 'you must keep yourself safe, fragile snowflake princess' talk. "Why not?"

"Because- well, excuse me, but you're a Faunus, aren't you?" I nod. "Well, there's been an awful lot of people disappearing on the road to and from this town… mostly young women, and mostly Faunus. There've even been a few cases of people vanishing inside the town…"

"Okay," I reply, with zero interest in having anything to do with whatever the issue is. Unfortunately, I know Arnaut well enough to count down the seconds until he interjects: 3, 2, 1, and-

"Dreki, I must insist that you seek out whatever is abducting people and deal with it."

Right on time, I think, nodding to the cashier and stepping outside the store for enough privacy to mutter my reply: "I'm going to remind you once again that this is not my damn problem, and I'm not gonna waste my time dealing with it."

"If you don't, who will?"

"I don't know, the next Huntsman to pass through here?" I turn and proceed towards the town's exit. "Arnaut, the only way I'm going to help people is if it's literally a direct byproduct of getting something else that I actually care about done."

"Young Faunus girls are disappearing," Arnaut says, sounding troubled. "Have you no empathy even for people just like you?"

I snort out a laugh at that one. "There are no people just like me."

"That's where you're wrong," Arnaut insists. "You are not alone in your suffering, Dreki. There are many who have suffered the discrimination and poverty that you have. If you believe the world to be unfair, then the power is in your hands to make it better- for yourself, and for others. Becoming a Huntress- Twin Gods, even becoming a member of the White Fang would still be better than simply eking out an existence as a petty criminal doing gloryless mercenary work in Vale for the rest of your life."

The urge to snap at him is nearly too much, but I know all too well what giving into my rage like that will mean. It takes me a few seconds to reign in my anger, eventually turning towards Arnaut without breaking pace and speaking in a measured tone: "Become a Huntress? And where would that take me, Arnaut? Fighting monsters for the benefit of other people my entire life? Tell me, what fucking difference does that make in the world?"

"It helps-"

"It doesn't. It's holding back a flood with your bare hands, and you know it. The Grimm aren't ever going away, and I have zero desire to spend my life fighting a meaningless war. And what, the White Fang? I've worked with them before. They're a bunch of screaming toddlers throwing a temper tantrum, brainlessly flailing away at whatever the nearest target is. All they really accomplish is making humans hate Faunus even more."

I glance at the village gate as we approach it, instinctively avoiding Arnaut's eyes. His tone is still an odd combination of solemnity and curiosity when he finally responds, "So you truly don't resent the Grimm for all the death they bring across Remnant? You don't resent humans at all for what they've done to your people?"

"You know what your problem is, Arnaut? You don't seem to get the simple idea that the strong are always going to prey on the weak, regardless of what you or anyone else says. No, I don't resent humans or Grimm for just following the simplest fucking rule of existence." I finally look up to meet his eyes, daring him to try another stupid platitude or emotional appeal.

Instead, Arnaut responds with the tiniest hint of a smirk, curdling dread in my stomach. "You're lying."

I hesitate a few feet in front of the village's exit gate. "What are you talking about?"

"My Semblance might have been able to tell me when people lied, but after thirty-two years of using it, I've picked up on some tells that even my eyes could spot." From the content of his little speech, I'd expect the words to be smug, but he's oddly apologetic in his tone. "You're harder to read than most, but you have a tell: you won't meet my eyes when you lie."

My blood goes cold. "Arnaut, stop."

"You were lying when you said you didn't resent the Grimm or the humans, so why-"

"Arnaut, shut the fuck up." I unsling Aurora from my shoulder and turn to face him, putting on a hard expression. "If you don't stop with this shit, I'll bury Aurora and never look back. You're bound to the sword, not to me."

He flinches. "You wouldn't."

"Watch me," I say, masking any doubt and looking him dead in the eyes. Ultimately, he looks away first and I reshoulder Aurora before taking to the road with a heavy heart. For once, Arnaut is dead silent, and I try not to think about whether he's regretting his choice to take me on as a student.

I'm thirty minutes out of town, taking a pause to admire a stunning sunset framed perfectly by the trees lining either side of the road, when I see the commotion up fifty meters or so ahead of me. Curious, I tread forward carefully, preparing a hand near Aurora's hilt and focusing my ears to hear what words are being exchanged…

"Shut the hell up, dog-fucker. You're comin' with us."

"No, please, I- ah!"

I narrow my eyes. A larger man appears to be grabbing a girl by the hair and pulling her up from a prone position, while another two men stand guard holding weapons at the ready.

I increase pace forward, deeply confused as to who would attempt a brazen kidnapping like this, especially one that seems increasingly motivated by the woman's species. As far as I'm aware, Southern Vale is Armstrong's territory, and he might not be the biggest paragon of tolerance, but he's definitely not organizing shit like this.

"Stop struggling, bitch," the man hisses.

It is only because I'm straining my ears that I hear what Arnaut's instincts tell me is the hiss of a Dust round and activate my Aura milliseconds before the side of my head explodes. Even with the defensive layer to protect me, the blast of fire right above my ear causes me to stagger down onto my knees and disorients me. I can barely hear over the ringing in my ears and barely make out anything due to seeing double, clueless as to what could possibly have attacked me.

What I am sure of, though, is that I'm pissed.

"Dreki, there are multiple assailants converging from-"

"Where?" I growl, tensing my legs.

"The one who shot you is directly to your right, and- oh, you're not going to like this-"

I've already unleashed the pent-up Aura in my leg to launch myself towards my attacker, rolling into a sprint as I land while raising a hand to the hilt just over my shoulder. When I drag my eyes up towards my target, I let out a mad laugh- Arnaut was wrong, I love this.

The bigoted bastard from a week prior barely has time to cock the hammer on his revolver for the second shot before I'm on him, drawing and swinging Aurora in one smooth motion to slash his arm, knocking away the gun but not quite breaking his Aura. Before he can even react, I close the rest of the gap to almost nothing and side kick him square in the solar plexus, hard enough to launch him ten meters before he slams into a tree. He flickers slightly with the fading glimmer of a broken reddish Aura.

"Remember me, bastard?" I stalk towards him, but a sixth sense has me swap my grip to Warm Front, lowering my hand to the hilt within Aurora's blade and holding it flat against my forearm, whirling just in time to block a series of bullets aimed for my body. The small-arms fire might be dangerous against my skin and clothes, but barely scratches my Aura with the added reinforcement of metal.

"I count six of them," Arnaut notes. "The two with rifles will be the most dangerous."

I allow a smile to cross my face as I spin Aurora back into a neutral grip and mentally note the six people he identified. Only two of them have active Aura, but the other four- including the one nearest to me, an decrepit-looking old man in suspenders- don't. I drop into Spring Cloud stance, tensing my back leg and directing Aura into it while raising the sword to lay beside my cheek.

The new and yet somehow familiar pose elicits a memory that is not mine- an old man, striding in a circle around me and talking in a tired, craggy voice: Spring Cloud is the calm before the storm, the brief days of true peace before the monsoon rains sweep along. You must find the balance- the point of serenity somewhere between being still and yet ready to strike with the speed and violence of a thunderstorm.

My silent reverie is broken by a deeply unpleasant-sounding barked order: "You might wanna come quietly, half-breed," the man standing closest to the road drawls, hefting his assault rifle and turning his attention away from the woman crumpled at his feet. From the way the others stay quiet and occasionally shoot a glance towards him, he appears to be the leader. "We might letcha off easy."

"Funny, I was just about to say the same thing to you!" The last word is hissed as I release the pent-up Aura in my back foot and surge forward eight meters in the blink of an eye. The old man barely has time to raise his rifle in a futile defensive gesture before I bring Aurora arcing down to cleave through both it and his shoulder.

I brace a boot on his face and yank the now-bloodstained blade out of his torso and the tree I'd impaled him against, leaving his corpse to slide down into a bloody mess on the ground.

The second the body lands, it's as if the silent stalemate has been broken wide open and a barrage of bullets come streaking at me. I barely have time to spin around the tree before the side facing away from me is reduced to splinters.

Arnaut takes a step out from cover, eating six shots that would have killed him were he corporeal, and takes a sweeping look around. "They're trying to flank you. Three of them are hanging back- one has an assault rifle and the other one has a submachine gun, they're the ones keeping you pinned down, but the third one has a higher-caliber hunting rifle. I'd be careful with that. The one coming about ten meters off to your right has a pistol, while the one to your left is equidistant and seems to have a shotgun of some sort."

I nod, tensing and relaxing my grip on Aurora to deal with the adrenaline surging through me. Trying to close on the shotgun user seems like an extremely poor idea, which means… "Arnaut, can you count down until I get line of sight on the shotgun guy?"

"Certainly," he says, tracking his eyes on someone still just outside of where I'd be able to see him.

I swap Aurora into cannon mode and brace it back up against my shoulder, keeping the tip low to the ground for the moment as I load in a black Gravity/Puncture round.

"Five, four, three… Hold on, he's stopping for a moment… alright, three, two, one-"

I step out and level Aurora directly at a middle-aged man, then pull the trigger. His look of surprise is frozen on his features as the sharp, reinforced Gravity round punches a clean hole through his upper chest.

Of course, I don't get to enjoy the sight, because the artificially increased weight of the slug launches me flying directly backwards- and unfortunately, two meters wide to the side of the pistol-wielding man I'd intended to come at.

"The tree-"

"On it," I hiss, even as I reach out with an Aura-reinforced hand and snag the bark, using it as a fulcrum to spin myself around and back at my target. He can't turn in time and takes both of my feet right to his back, falling over and serving as a sled of sorts that I ride forward a few feet through the dirt until the telltale flickering indicates his Aura is gone.

The other three seem to get their bearings enough to train their respective weapons back onto me, but I duck down to snag my hand around my unwilling vehicle and catapult him directly towards his friends with a wild laugh.

The closer one, who doesn't have any Aura to speak of, drops his submachine gun to catch the limp body- and then coughs out a spray of blood as I follow in the shadow of the first man and impale both through their chests in one clean stab.

"You fucking bitch!" The man with the assault rifle loses composure and opens fire through the two bodies in front of me, forcing me to roll back behind another tree. He keeps going for a good ten seconds, but then stops- yet I don't hear the sound of reloading, which means he's waiting, sitting on the bottom bit of his magazine.

"Two to go," I mutter, swapping back to Warm Front and steeling my still mostly-full Aura before shouting over my shoulder, "I hope you put up more of a fight than your friends, you inbred shitstain!"

The man roars and opens fire again, but the spray of chipped bark halts soon after with a barely discernible click.

My turn, I think with another oddly gleeful laugh as I vault diagonally to the man, slamming into the side of a tree with Aura already gathering in my legs. As I suspected, unlike his trigger-happy friend who's currently desperately reloading, Number Six has better trigger discipline than the others, only firing once I step into his clear line of sight. His is a higher caliber hunting rifle, liable to demolish my Aura if it were to land a solid hit.

Unfortunately for him, the moment the bullet exits his barrel I release my stored Aura in my feet, blasting the trunk into splinters as I streak beneath his shot down to the ground a few meters before the pair of them.

"She's fuckin fast-" the still-reloading man can't even finish his sentence before I've rolled off my landing with a somersault into the more mobile Spring Rains stance, legs wide and body low to the ground, Aurora already arcing around to cleave through his body at the torso. With him down, there's only the rifleman-

Shit!

I snap back into Warm Front just barely in time to block another shot from the hunting rifle, and even through the Aura-reinforced metal I feel a good fifth of my Aura shatter away in an instant. What the fuck is this guy's gun?

Regardless, he has to reach up to chamber another round, and I seize my chance to skip forward and transition into the Fading Wind gambit, unleashing a two-handed overhand blow that threatens to take his left arm at the shoulder.

He displays better reactions than I expected, but still takes the bait by opting for a minimal dodge to the side rather than a safer backstep. That leaves him open for my grab, but again he's far faster than his compatriots and spins back to prevent me from getting a solid grip on his shirt.

Unfortunately for him, spinning like that means breaking eye contact with me, which makes the first half of Aurora's arc around my body indiscernible to him. He does soon notice his mistake, but it's too late- half-airborne and awkwardly twisted as he is, he can't defend himself in time against the bulk of Aurora's blade slamming into his side with as much momentum as I could conjure behind it, plus an extra blast of concentrated Aura.

Blasted back by the heavy blade's impact coupled with the burst of sunlight at its edge, he flies a good fifteen meters across the paved road before ricocheting off of a tree and ragdolling into a heap on the ground. By the time he manages to lift himself up into a sitting position, I've sent enough Aura into Aurora's blade to cause it to visibly glow with a warm golden light, raised over my shoulder in preparation.

"Wait, I-"

I unleash a fully-charged Aura slash that cleaves a deep gash through the road and slams into him with an equally bright explosion, shattering what was left of his Aura and launching him flying back into another tree.

Obeying an instinct drilled into Arnaut over a thousand lessons that I can only half-remember, I'm already vaulting forward into a charge, even as the old man's voice comes back into my head: Never stop moving. In the ages before, when all one had to worry about was the sword of the man in front of them, warriors could afford to be stagnant- but now, in this age of modern weapons, to stop is to die. To stand still is to invite the hundred thousand bullets, shells, missiles, and explosives that even a child could end your life with. The only defense left to us is our speed, and our cunning, so you must always make full use of both. I break into a full sprint, dragging Aurora behind me in my right hand while the left is held at the ready just before me.

I reach the boy in seconds. It's a simple matter to swipe up with a clawed hand, catching a good chunk of his shirt, and lift him up against the tree while readying Aurora to-

"Whoa," he wheezes, palms held up in surrender. "Brothers, lass, you've got ta calm down." He's got an incredibly thick Northern Vale accent.

I hesitate, unwilling to sheathe Aurora yet, but then snap my gaze back to the road when I hear a feminine gasp of terror.

Instead of killing him, I sigh and drag him along the ground as I stalk back to the Faunus girl sitting in the middle of the road. She looks every bit a provincial farmer's daughter, like someone who'd belong in any of the towns I've passed so far in Vale, save for the flattened dog's ears poking out of a head of straight blonde hair. When she sees me, she squeaks in fear and hides her face.

"Look, ma'am, I, uh…" I frown. "It's all okay, now."

"R- Really?" She slides two large, watery eyes out from under her hands and takes another look around. "Oh my gods, they're all-"

To my shock, the younger man I'd been holding breaks my grip and rises into a confident posture. "Rest assured, lass, those fiends have been well dealt with."

I snap my attention over to him. "And what the fuck do you think you're doing, shitlord?"

"The real question is, what do you think you're doin'," he replies, all confidence and poise with his hands on his hips. "Are ye a Vale Huntress, love? You seem a little young, eh?"

"No, I'm-" I shake my head. "I'm not answering your fucking questions, scumbag! You were just ten seconds ago about to kidnap that woman!"

"Ah, that is where you're confused," he announces. "I'm a Huntsman-"

"You?" I look him up and down, unimpressed. He's scrawny, not particularly tall, and can't be more than seventeen. "Forgive me if I don't believe you on that one."

"Fine, Huntsman-in-training," he sighs. "And I really don't appreciate you swoopin' in to fuck up my mission just when those dim fuckin' cunts were finally about ta take me to their center of operations."

I blink. "So… you're not…"

"Gods, lass, you've really gone and made a mess of things, haven't you?" He shakes his head. "Those were my only contacts in the gang, and-"

"Hold on," I hiss. "You were just gonna let them kidnap this girl?"

He blinks, glancing down at the girl and then back at me, and narrows his eyes. "No, of course I didnae plan on doin' that. I was gonna break her out soon as we reached the final destination, honest. That plan's dead in th' water now, though."

I cross my arms. With his Aura shattered, I'm not too worried about anything he could try to pull, but still… "I don't believe that you're a Huntsman. Prove it."

He lets out a long, exaggerated sigh and pulls out his Scroll, bringing up some sort of open contract- Contract: Repeated disappearances in and surrounding Southern Vale villages, including Greenbarrow (8), Southfen (3), Furninham (6), etc. 100% of cases either Faunus, female aged 40, or both. Objective: Discover cause of disappearances, rescue captives alive if possible. Reward: 6,000 Lien + 500 per rescued subject.

Guess Huntsmen'll put a price tag on a life, too, I consider morbidly, before dropping my voice to a whisper: "Arnaut, this check out?"

"Yes," he responds, sounding distracted. "But… well, not that I'm not extremely glad to see it, but I thought you weren't going to insert yourself into this."

"And I'm not," I mutter, turning away from the Huntsman and prone girl. "But…" Watching it happen and doing nothing would be more dangerous for my mental state than picking that fight was. "It was a one-time thing, understood?"

Even though his face is a controlled mask, I can hear the barely restrained smugness in his voice when he replies, "Of course, of course."

I gauge for a moment whether pushing the issue would be pointless, then shrug and continue off down the road, only to roll my eyes when I hear someone approach me from behind. "Look, I'm sorry I fucked up your investigation, but-"

"No," the Faunus girl says, biting her lip. "I… thank you for saving me. What you did to those guys… you're amazing."

I cannot prevent nor effectively hide the furious blush that comes from her saying that, so I awkwardly half-cover my face with my hand while turning away from her. "Uh, it was no problem, really." I take a step backwards. "All in a day's work, right?"

"I hope I see you again!" She waves to me as she walks off, back towards the village that the Huntsman has already left for.

"Very smooth," Arnaut comments.

"Oh, shut up," I snap, shoving my hands in my pockets and making the mistake of thinking about the girl-

If I hadn't showed up, she would have been murdered… or worse, I realize. Who knows how many other girls probably already have been murdered by those psychopaths. If I didn't know how to fight, I might be on that list of people who suffered-

"Fuck," I blurt out, noticing the hint of black tracing out from my glove. I turn to Arnaut: "Can you teach me more?"

"Why the sudden-"

"Please." I move my arm back against my side, but Arnaut sees right through my attempt to hide it.

"Is that your Semblance acting up? Why would-"

"Arnaut… please." I hate having to beg, hate being vulnerable like this...

Thankfully, Arnaut seems to grasp the solemnity of my request and simply nods. "As I mentioned, there are four basic styles within the Way of Wind- Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Each of these styles serves as a general technique designed for a type of situation, with an example being Spring being the best for one-on-one duels. Within each style there are stances; I've taught you Spring Cloud and Spring Rain, but I think it's about time we get started on Spring Storm."

I nod as I draw Aurora, all negative thoughts swept from my mind and the Grimm banished along with them.

(A/N) I've read that people are apparently annoyed when Roman is made out to be a more important criminal than he is in the show, which astounds me, because in the show he apparently stole most of the Dust supplies for an entire kingdom and would have gotten away with it if not for Ruby's tenacity and proactive action. To pull something like that off, I'm pretty sure he's not just another thug, and I'm planning to expand on how he managed to do it, as well as the organized crime system in general, more as the story proceeds.

Moonshine's name is related to the color of the moon. His Aura and primary color are off-white, hex #fefcd7. His folktale character is the man in the moon, specifically the Germanic version of the story.