Mercifully, the next town on my route that I bother stopping in at- Gilded Mile- is actually fairly familiar. Also, larger than a fucking soccer field for a change. Much larger.
The reason it's familiar to me is that it's Armstrong's preferred haunt. The reason for that, and for its size, is the fact that it sits at a crossroads for most of the important routes that branch throughout Southern Vale, as well as right along the biggest river in the kingdom. It's the biggest city south of Vale City itself, with a skyline visible for miles- specifically, one very distinctive blot on the landscape sitting right at the heart of the city.
Armstrong's setup here is the one exception to the general rule that you can't afford to keep a single base of operations for long; the risk of guardsmen or Huntsmen tracking you down increases exponentially the more you operate in one specific area. I think the only reason he gets away with it is that he's in bed with anyone that could give him any real trouble. Huntsmen, like any well-trained attack dogs, aren't a danger unless their master tells them to be.
As I approach the main gates, I'm given barely a passing glance by the attending guardsmen. The larger the city, the less blatant people are with their prejudice- yet, at the same time, the more obvious the effects of that prejudice seem to be. It's nothing compared to Luskhan, but for the first time in damn near a month now of travel, I'm met with the sight of beggars. Not all Faunus, but… disproportionately so. More than I remember there being half a year ago.
I realize what I'm doing and blink- Maybe Arnaut is actually infecting me. I shake my head and turn my eyes away from their plight. Out of sight, out of mind.
Despite the name, Gilded Mile is a sprawling trash heap of a town. There's a lot of older architecture- and I mean very old; many of the buildings I walk through are hovels straight out of medieval landscape paintings. Everyone here seems dirty, and the whole place reeks of cigarette smoke and mud.
I take a left and head towards the waterfront. The town sits along Drake's Run, a river that stretches all the way from the northeastern mountains of Vale down to the southwestern coasts. It's a dark, slow, murky thing, and I know better than most how many of the people who got on the wrong side of Armstrong ended up on its riverbed, food for the fishes.
When I actually reach the river, I turn right and walk along the docks, passing by several shadier people, some of whom recognize me and nod. This part of the town is somehow even nastier than the rest. The timbers beneath my feet creak with rot and mud, the ancient streetlamps flickering with actual Fire Dust and not electricity, and I can hear through the walls when I pass the third brothel.
Despite the lawlessness, I'm a bit more careful here, as there's now a genuine probability of several professional Huntsmen being within shouting distance on the off chance I get recognized from an earlier job. Even after five straight weeks of seven average hours a day practicing Arnaut's Way of Wind, I'm still skittish to try my luck against a real Huntsman. It's too much of a gamble.
"Arnaut, is there a system for ranking Huntsmen?"
"…Why do you ask?" Arnaut seems mostly confused by the question, but there's a hint of suspicion there too.
"Because it's always such a crapshoot with you people," I reply, voice a hushed whisper. Roman always complains about the sheer amount of research he has to do whenever a Huntsman gets involved- there's no solid metric there to judge them, and every encounter is a dice roll with one end being some brainless fresh Beacon graduate whose parents paid their way through the academies and the other end being a fucking killing machine like Qrow. "The skill gap between the best and worst Huntsman is ridiculous."
"It's no greater than the difference between upper-level criminals and average thugs," Arnaut bounces back.
"Yeah, but there's a pretty well-defined system in place for ranking us thugs," I sigh. I briefly feel a tiny flicker of hesitancy about explaining this subject to a Huntsman, but at this point I've accepted the fact that it's probably best Arnaut knows what I know. He's incapable of doing anything to harm me and is occasionally even useful. "I told you about the Syndicate, right? Well, at the very top you've got the three sitting Overbosses- Cairn's in charge of North Vale, Roman's in charge of Central Vale, and South Vale, shithole that it is, belongs to Armstrong. Underneath them you have people like me and Neo… I guess you'd call us upper-level thugs. The term in the Syndicate is Enforcer."
"When you say Armstrong, do you mean-" Arnaut cuts himself off and shakes his head. "Nevermind."
"What is it?"
"It's nothing. Move on." His tone has darkened significantly, and I can tell just by looking at him that pressing him on the subject won't yield anything useful.
"Okay, so then you cut the big chunks of Vale down into sectors and dish out each sector to a Boss. Out here, a sector's probably a good three or four village's worth of area, but in Vale City- well, Moonshine's a Boss and all he does is handle the docks and shipping portion of the city. Beneath the Bosses, you get individual crews. Most of them have their own leaders, goons, specialists, whatever."
Arnaut just laughs. "Gods, you're… meticulous."
It feels weird being complimented for organization by Arnaut of all people, but soon my focus is shifted by a quick glimpse I catch of a hooded figure on a rooftop ever so slightly turning their head to track me, as well as a few tiny movements of their jaw that indicate talking. Armstrong's not taking any chances, huh? It doesn't much matter, though, so I turn my attention back to Arnaut: "I take it that means that Huntsmen really are just all theoretically the same rank?"
He pauses. "No, not necessarily. Academy Headmasters outrank nearly all other Huntsmen and tend to be the best of the best at their time of appointment. Academy Instructors are experts in their fields, but not necessarily any better outside of their specialties."
I roll my eyes. "Great, I'll keep that in mind if I run into any schoolteachers."
"Very funny. Outside of that, well… I'd heard Atlas has instituted military structure and sorted their Huntsmen into rankings based on specialties and skill, and more recently heard about Vale also pushing for skill-based ranking. I can't tell you much about that; I don't follow the authoritarian political hand-wringing of other kingdoms."
That's right, I remember. Vacuo doesn't have a central government, everything's run on a city-by-city basis with Huntsman and various job licenses being the only things kept track of universally throughout the kingdom.
"In Vacuo at least, technically, yes, most Huntsmen are equals, but… well, I assume with all this analysis you make, you're aware of the statistics kept for most active Huntsman?" I nod. "There aren't defined ranks- at least, not in Vacuo- but things like mission success rate, numbers of Grimm eliminated, time efficiency, and cost efficiency are all apparently increasingly important to employers."
His use of the word 'apparently', coupled with the shift in his tone to a general distaste, betrays that he has more to say. All I need to do is give him a little poke: "But…?"
"But I never put any stock whatsoever in that statistical analysis garbage," Arnaut spits. "If you ask me, it's a godsdamned plague on anyone trying to fulfill the role of a true Huntsman."
"What, did you get one too many bad reviews?" I know that can't possibly be the case, but I'm genuinely interested in this, if only because available information on Huntsman is unusually specific. Definitive, useful types of data like the missions success rates Arnaut mentioned, average pay, average job difficulty, and level of skill or training are damn near impossible to get one's hands on… Yet at the same time, all the numbers that serve to glorify them- like total Grimm killed, their flashier weaponry, and vague, impressive-sounding descriptions of their Aura and Semblances- is freely provided to the public, even encouraged for consumption…
Oh. It all comes together then and there for me. It's to sell the myth, like Arnaut did. It's always a little bit sobering to realize that the government really is trying to manipulate the populace, but I suppose everyone's complicit in the narrative- media companies sing praises of Huntsmen, video game, movie, and toy companies glorify them, and even everyday people tell their kids stories about the noble, brave Golden Guardian before bed.
Arnaut shoots me a dirty look at my snide remark. "My numbers were among the highest in the country, but as a result, I was told to focus my efforts on highly populated areas to ensure the greatest exposure- and sometimes, when I was outsourced to Vale, told to focus my efforts on certain… influential figures that needed my assistance far less than many others without as much money or political sway." He sneers at the ground. "Alorn always said bureaucracy is the death of honor."
I run out of time to consider the topic further when I reach my destination: The Golden Leviathan, an ostentatious casino Armstrong operates out of. It's built right on the water in the middle of the river, atop stilts of concrete rather than wood, with two drawbridges leading to either bank. For people trying to cross the river to the other side of the town on foot, the only option is to go right through it.
The pyramid-shaped building absolutely towers at nearly 300 meters wide on each side and thirty stories tall, dwarfing anything else in the town. The entryways on either side are framed by the twin legs of five-story golden statues of a Leviathan-Class Dragon Grimm. People stream in hordes across the narrow wooden drawbridge leading into it- it's ludicrously popular as the biggest casino in Vale, especially after Armstrong acquired and dismantled any competition for it.
When I approach and flash the Torchwick emblem, the two door guards recognize me and nod me in without any trouble.
Inside it reeks of the same cigarette smoke and alcohol that every casino does. I do my best to withhold my contempt for the people as I pass them, but it's a challenge- for anyone who's starved, watching fortunes being thrown away in pursuit of some cheap momentary thrill is a vicious slap in the face.
"Poor bastards," Arnaut sighs as we walk past the end of the slot machines and reach the casino center, where an extremely wide spiral staircase leads up the many floors, going in a circle around the elevators. The floors alternate between slot machines, sports betting, restaurants, and a ridiculous number of hotel rooms, but every gradually gets higher class as it approaches the top of the pyramid.
Arnaut perks up when we reach the eighteenth floor, which is devoted to high-stakes card games, reserved for people rich enough to afford the exorbitant buy-ins: "Hold on, are they playing poker? What odds are they offering?"
"Even the Golden Guardian's got his vice, huh?" I continue right past the spread of tables offering a hundred slightly different ways to play at a monetary disadvantage to the house. It always seemed like common sense to me that a casino would never offer a game that they weren't nearly assured to see an increased return on, so taking them on at their own game with their own rules in their own house would be a fool's errand.
Another one of Arnaut's memories surfaces- one that's particularly relevant, and brings a smirk to my face. "Oi, Arnaut, didn't Alorn always say never to simply accept an enemy's challenge? Because-"
He scowls. "Because he who controls the fight, wins the fight, and to cede control to a foe before swords are even drawn is the height of folly. Don't quote the Wind Knight to me, Dreki."
"But I'm right," I mutter, grinning.
"No, you're wrong," he sighs. "Games of skill like poker, with unbreakable rules, are the exception. The battlefield isn't defined by the house, it's perfectly even. What's more, you're playing against other players more so than the dealer, and with luck theoretically flattening out to even for all involved, the defining factor is manipulation and cold reading people."
"Warm reading for you, I suppose," I grin, wiggling the fingers on one of my hands.
His response is exaggerated chagrin, gasping and staggering back a step with his hand over his heart. "I don't know what you think you're implying, but I would never use my Semblance to cheat at the gentleman's art of cards."
"No?" I raise an eyebrow.
"It would ruin the purpose. To meet another man in poker is to clash the strength of your wills, of your self-control, of your analytical prowess and instinct. It is the purest possible battle of two minds, testing each and every possible skill to outmaneuver your opponent through that which separates man from the beasts: intellect."
I grin. "But your opponent can just get lucky and all-in with an out-of-nowhere royal flush in the last round, right?"
That seems to burst his bubble a bit. "Well, technically, yes, but the odds of that happening are so astronomically… you aren't listening to me, are you?"
I've already strode ahead, finishing the very last flight of stairs and reaching a circular waiting room of sorts. The walls are red inlaid with golden designs, Armstrong's coat of arms- a curled bicep framing a screeching eagle- emblazoned on each of the cardinal directions, along with his catch phrase of sorts- 'Better Luck Next Time'. A final set of straight stairs at the center of the room leads up to the highest point in the building, Armstrong's personal suite, but standing guard at the bottom of the staircase is-
Oh, come the fuck on.
A grinning teenage boy with bright gold hair and eyes squints at me for just long enough to get my hopes up that he might not recognize me, but then breaks out into a grin that crushes those hopes. He strides forward with the same exaggerated, powerful gait that seems just as out of place on him now as it did when he was twelve- in fact, everything about him seems unchanged. The same dumb smile, the same movie-star twinkle in his eye, the same confident posture when he finally stops and offers me a handshake:
"Dragon! It's been far too long!"
Well, there is one thing that's changed, and of course it's his fucking accent getting even stronger. He says 'far' like 'faah', drawing out each word just slightly longer than it should be in a way that still gets on my nerves to no end.
The moment Ace speaks, Arnaut audibly gasps and takes a step backward, but I'm too occupied to figure out what his problem is.
"Ace, it's… good… to see you," I manage, reaching out to take his hand-
Only to be yanked into a tight hug that I have to forcibly extricate myself from. Even after I shove him back, Ace still has that unshakeable friendly grin. "Well, well, well, how long's it been, huh?"
"Just over a year now, right?" The first time I met this oppressively friendly boy was just after Roman picked me up out of Mistral. He'd taken me and Neo along with him on a meeting with Armstrong, but left us outside to hang out with the Overboss's son: Ace. Ace fucking Armstrong. His real, actual name that his parents gave him. At the time, I still hadn't shaken off skittishness around strangers, so when Ace opened with a hug I responded by beating him near-senseless.
Unfortunately, from that moment on he decided… well…
"'Bout time for another rematch, ain't it?" Ace theatrically flexes his arm muscles. "I'm about to break my damn losin' streak." His record against me is 0-8, one loss for each and every time circumstances brought me within the same city as him.
"Not right now," I mutter, registering Arnaut's look of extreme amusement and taking a mental note to make him suffer for it later.
"Aww, c'mon, Dragon," Ace needles, dropping into a fake boxer's stance and shadowboxing the air in front of him. "I ain't trained for two years just to get the cold shoulder from my sworn rival."
"And I ain't walked two thousand fucking kilometers through the god damn dust wastes to get the cold shoulder from your dad," I mock. I'm not normally this much of an unnecessary dick to people, but I'm cranky from the long walking and know that Ace is physically incapable of taking offense at anything.
Ace shrugs, gesturing helplessly up the staircase. "He's got company, Draggie-"
"Do not call me that," I growl.
He only smiles wider. "How 'bout you fight me, and if you win, I won't ever say it again."
"Maybe later," I grunt. Some of Roman's business meetings could take multiple hours. I can't stand around outside Armstrong's office for hours, not with Ace-
"Draggie?" He pokes me in the bicep. "Draggie, c'mon. We got a nice lil duelin' ring set up a couple a floors down below us. Why don'tcha come and box with me while we wait for pops to finish up?" I don't trust myself to respond without losing my temper, so I cross my arms and slowly shake my head-
Until Ace lays a hand on my shoulder and brushes up against the scar on my neck-
'It appears the key to the symbiosis lies in the bone structure-'
Before I fully realize what I'm doing, I've twisted Ace's arm off my shoulder and brought my other arm slamming into his stomach, discharging enough Aura to blast him through the wall of the room with a shattering of wood. Through the hole, I can see a shocked-looking accountant whose desk was just crushed by 250 pounds of muscle-bound idiot.
Son of a bitch, I think. "Guess subtlety's kind of out of the picture, then. Oh well."
I stomp my way up the stairs, briefly noting the Dust projectors lining the floor at the top- inactive Hardlight ones that could seal the office off, and active Sound Dust dampeners that prevent any noise from crossing the threshold.
Even as determined as I am, clearing the top and seeing the interior of the Southern Overboss's domain still takes me a minute to process. The fifteen-meter-square room is walled off on all sides by the upward-sloping sides of the pyramid, which form into a point above me, all built from a gold-tinted glass set in a frame of gold. Behind a gold-inlaid desk at the center of both the room at the city, looking down on everything within sight, sits Knox Armstrong.
In case the pyramid and statues might have been too subtle, his suit and tie are both gold as well… even his sunglasses, quite a few of his teeth, and his damn fingernails are shinier than Aurora. This man makes Arnaut's color scheme seem humble and muted, and yet…
And yet I need to remember that Armstrong is probably among the deadliest men in Vale, and absolutely one of the most powerful.
That second point is driven home by the man sitting across the desk from him. The current sitting Southeast Vale Councilman- I forget his name, politics was never my strong suit- looks so very small, limbs like toothpicks compared to Armstrong's ludicrously toned arm laid flat on the desk.
Despite the shared color scheme, there is a stark difference in how Arnaut wore gold compared to Armstrong. Where Arnaut's warmer Aura and ornate carved armor brought to mind heroism, sunlight, and life, Armstrong's flat golds seem dead. They reek of strength, of conquest, of wealth… of power, but not of glory. It's like the gold of a dragon's hoard, sitting there for no purpose other than to fulfill some insatiable greed and pride.
The councilman turns to see the source of the interruption and his expression sours immediately upon noticing my tail. "Armstrong, you promised me a reliable team."
I narrow my eyes and step forward, only to immediately freeze when Armstrong activates his Aura- It's bigger than mine, bigger than Qrow's… hell, it's significantly bigger than Arnaut's and mine combined. I'm still new to Aura sensing and can barely make out most people's, and yet his nearly threatens to flatten me, nearly warps the very air around him-
And then it's gone, and Armstrong goes back to ignoring me entirely. He talks in the same heavy accent as his son, but where Ace is all high pitch and kinetic energy, Knox is pure potential. Heavy, slow, controlled, less a drawl and more a carefully controlled treatment of every word. "Councilman Waymond, this ain't one of my guys. She's a liason from North Vale, where I'm sure they have different… values, but rest assured I know full well to make sure I only use native Southie boys, born 'n' bred."
"I hope you do," the politician responds, standing abruptly. "With all due respect, I hope you understand when I say I hope we won't see each other again for a long time."
"Agreed," Armstrong intones, offering his massive arm and hand for a goodbye shake, which the councilman grants him before turning around to leave- but not before giving me one final venomous look.
In turning to watch the man leave, I catch another look at Arnaut, who's staring at Armstrong like he's seen a ghost, eyes wide and mouth slightly open. I'd ask him what the fuck is going on, but… first things first.
When I turn back to Armstrong, I swallow, suddenly regretting my rash decision to interrupt his meeting. He just fixes me with an unreadable gaze, raising my stress to a fever pitch with each passing second he avoids speaking.
"I… sorry I interrupted your meeting, sir," I manage, bowing my head in deference.
There's a heavy pause, but eventually Armstrong just grunts. "Excused. I understand some people from your, ah… breed can have problems controlling themselves."
I curl a hand into a fist and look up to see he's swapped to a vaguely curious, superior expression, eyes daring me to snap back at him. I'm sorely tempted- far more so than I thought I'd be- but I know full well what picking a fight with this man would mean.
With that said, I can't make myself choke out an agreement to what he said. The words refuse to exit my rebellious throat, catching on the mental image of the sneering Southfen man and the desperate Faunus girl that might have suffered the unspeakable, all due to the bigotry that I'm supposed to just acquiesce to?
Armstrong tilts his head, resting it on the raised palm of his hand with that goading little glimmer in his eyes still there. "What, forget human speech? I heard lizards had short memories, but I never realized it was this bad."
I bite my lip painfully, reopening the same wound just under my left canine and tasting blood, but steel myself enough to bow. "Sir, I just came back from an extended assassination contract in Vacuo, and I have some questions I'd like to ask, if that's all right?"
He's still got the mischievous gleam that worries me, but for the moment he simply shrugs. "Ask away."
"Thank you. I was wondering if you had anything on Roman's status?" It's a risk to show this level of weakness and discoordination before another Overboss, but it's one I have to take. "Apparently he's still in deep cover, but it's been multiple months now. Are the Vale police cracking down especially hard on him?"
Armstrong considers me with that same unmoving little half-smirk that pisses me off far more than it has any right to, before answering laconically, as though the conversation is beneath him: "Adorable. Is the lost little pet tryin' to head home to her master?"
I can hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears, and I don't even need to look down to know that the veins along my forearms are shifting color. I fold them both behind my back in what I hope comes off as a display of deference, desperately trying to think of how close I am to a return to normalcy. If you can just ignore this asshole for another fifteen minutes, you can get back to Roman and Neo.
I force what I know is probably the world's least convincing grimace of a smile and nod stiffly. "I'm just trying to get back to Roman, sir."
"Then root out your own problems," he sighs, appearing to lose interest in me. Fucking wonderful, I came here and took all that shit for nothing.
Another question occurs to me, and I figure I don't have much else to lose at this point: "Did you organize the Faunus girl kidnappings outside Greenbarrow?"
Armstrong immediately loses the disinterest, but it's replaced by that exact same fucking smirk, eyes glinting with glee that he knows something I don't, that he holds power over me. "Who cares if I did?"
I only now realize my mistake dragging the conversation on even a second longer. At this point, it's all I can do to bite a bleeding gash into my lip and stare furiously at the floor, thinking as nice of thoughts as I can possibly muster.
"Dreki, hold it together," Arnaut counsels, already seeing what's coming.
Armstrong somehow knows what he's doing, the bastard, and keeps talking: "Let's face it. You were born to serve, weren't you? You see your own damn kind, bein' kidnapped and abused, and you come crawling here pretending you'd do something about it- but you won't, will you? You'd lick my boots if it meant getting back to your precious human master."
My gaze snaps back up to his, my vision darkening and beginning to go red, my claws starting to elongate, my veins beginning to trace black up my forearms, and I come so fucking close to breaking-
But Arnaut steps in between us and interrupts my view of Armstrong's cold golden eyes with his own warm ones. "Think of Roman and Neo, Dreki. If you die here, at his hands or by losing yourself and becoming a monster, you will never see either of them again."
Roman. Neo. I let out a long, shuddering breath, square my shoulders, and find my way back to the safety of cynical, jaded, passionless disinterest. When I meet Armstrong's eyes again, my vision has returned to normal. "Armstrong, if you don't have anything useful to say to me, then I'll just fuck off."
There's another long, heavy pause… then he slowly starts to grin, before outright breaking out into jovial laughter- a warm, exaggerated chuckle far too likeable and contagious for a man like him. "So you finally did get over your lil temper issue, eh, darlin'?"
"I'm sorry, what?"
He reclines back in his chair, all sense of danger lost. "Oh, chin up, you passed my test. I wanted to see if you could keep that Grimm Semblance of yours under control without your boss or little girlfriend around to calm you down."
"She's not my girlfriend," I correct instinctively, then color at the thought. I'm surprised he knows what my Semblance is; I've only told three people, and one of them is Arnaut. What's somehow more surprising is that him knowing it doesn't make me anxious like I know it should- it's unbelievable how all the tension and rage I felt towards him has been dispelled in a matter of seconds, yet then again, it just speaks to how much Armstrong controls the room.
Arnaut's charisma was like that of a hero. It made him seem distant, untouchable… somehow farther away from you than he actually was. Armstrong is like the polar opposite. Even sitting across the room in a chair behind a desk, he feels closer than he is- when he was trying to instigate my rage, it felt like he was looming over me, and now when he laughs, I feel comfortable around him in a way I rarely do around anyone. I've met this man maybe eight times, each time holding my tongue for the most part and standing behind Roman, and yet his bright grin and infectious laugh make him feel like an old friend.
Arnaut's magic was to make people see him as an infallible hero, despite being just another man. Armstrong's magic is to make people see him as just another man, when in reality, he's one of the deadliest people on the continent. Even I, knowing about the executions he's ordered and how viciously he stamped out any dissenters in his rise to power consolidating all the crime in South Vale under his thumb… even I have trouble resisting the urge to return his smile.
"C'mon, missy, sit. Sit!" Armstrong gestures to the chair before his desk, and I cautiously oblige him. "Now, then, sorry 'bout all that. I was just, ah… confirmin' a rumor."
"What rumor?"
He smiles knowingly, eyes dancing with the veiled sparkle that I'd mistaken before to be curiosity, but now register as the only recognizable outward sign of the dangerous intellect lurking behind the statue that sits before me. "One about your Semblance."
I blink, and Arnaut chimes back in with a sigh. "Twin Gods, Knox, you haven't changed at all. Dreki, he didn't know your Semblance." I make a small, confused noise, partially at what he means and partially at his apparent familiarity with Armstrong. He goes on: "He wasn't checking if you could control yourself, he was checking if you needed to control yourself. He confirmed something was keeping you from losing your temper, and then narrowed in with a more specific guess."
When I realize what Arnaut is talking about, my perception of Armstrong shifts drastically on the spot. He put me on the back foot with all the aggressive shit right off the bat, and then identified my Semblance while I was still off-balance, my guard down from the relief of him dropping the tension. He probably even intentionally brought up Neo in the same sentence with his guess as a way to distract me into all but confirming it by not denying it.
When I glance back at him, he still seems outwardly like such a caricature of a man- ludicrously muscled, in a tacky golden suit and tie, hair slicked into a pompadour look that hasn't been fashionable in decades- but it's a facade. I begin to wonder if everyone truly powerful has some false personality; Arnaut had his hero persona, Qrow his drunken disinterest, and now Armstrong his larger-than-life friendly uncle routine. Out of the three, though, Armstrong's is by far the most effective.
Before, when I'd mentioned that Qrow hid a monster behind a veneer of drunken incompetence, I could still see it through the cracks, and it terrified me. Only now, sitting in front of Armstrong, I'm hit with a chilling realization that his monster is so well hidden that, if he hadn't all but given it up by flaunting his success, I'd likely still buy into it.
"What's the matter, missy, cat got your tongue?" He raises a golden eyebrow at me, and lost in thought as I am, I distractedly ask him the question on my mind.
"Why?"
He blinks and strokes the single pointed strip of beard that trails down from beneath his chin. "Why, what?"
"Why the game? You could've just asked me what my Semblance was, couldn't you?" I'm somehow even more on edge than I was before.
He slowly grins and gives me another peek at the prideful monster beneath. "Ol' Grandpappy Trueman always said if they just tell it to ya, it ain't worth rememberin'."
"Grandpappy Trueman also said that the Faunus Rights Act would bring about the End of Days if it got passed," Arnaut sighs, reigniting my curiosity while also starting to put an inkling of a theory into my head.
I really hate politics. Outmatched as I am, and seeing that Armstrong's apparently feeling more generous now, I give up any attempt to beat him in subtle conversational power plays and just ask what's on my mind: "What happened to Roman after the Fall, Armstrong?"
"That's a darn good question, but I ain't got an answer that'll satisfy you," Armstrong sighs, shrugging his right arm in a helpless gesture. When he isn't fighting, he only uses his right arm to do things; the left arm has sat motionlessly at his side since I entered the room. "Fact o' the matter is, no one's seen or heard from him or Neo since y'all trashed Beacon. I'm told our friend Roach is using it as an excuse to bump himself up a few pegs in the pecking order, and Vixie's none too happy about it."
"So, are they outright warring right now?" I frown. Roach was always overly ambitious, but… I'd figured he'd know better than to challenge Vixie for the spot of backup Overboss. I muse out loud, "Why would he risk his life just to get the throne for a few weeks until Roman gets back?"
Armstrong tilts his head a little bit, lazily resting it on his palm again. "Why d'you think he's doin' it?"
I look downwards, masking my confusion as to why Armstrong is asking me these things. I must not do a very good job of it, because Arnaut can tell what I'm thinking and chimes in from behind me: "He's still testing you, Dreki. It's always the fucking tests with him."
I let out an extremely quiet "Huh?" under my breath, far too quiet for Armstrong to pick up on, but Arnaut seems to have no trouble hearing me no matter how softly I talk.
Sure enough, he elaborates: "This is to gauge your ability to think for yourself- whether you will defer to his judgement on the matter by returning the question back to him, or attempt to piece out the root causes on your own. If you choose to do so, he's also learning whether you're intuitive enough to successfully figure it out."
God, this is irritating. Conversations like this, with an unspoken second meaning behind every fucking word, piss me off; maybe in part because I'm not very good at them. Roman typically handles all this shit for me- I'm too direct for the subtle power plays, and Neo's not exactly suited for them either, for obvious reasons.
I'd rather be the one standing behind Roman, doing my best to look intimidating, but that's not really an option right now, is it?
Fine, fuck it, I think. If Armstrong wants me to play his game, then I'll play ball. I've worked with Roach enough to know he's theoretically dumb enough to try something like this, but at the same time… there isn't enough payoff to make the effort and risk worth it. It all trails right back around to risk-vs-reward, and stealing the second-in-command spot to Roman isn't particularly enticing. Unless…
"He's making a play for Central Overboss, isn't he?" I lean back in my chair, thinking furiously. "That means he's going after Roman once he beats Vixie, which means… he knows something." In the criminal underworld, you don't start something unless you know for a fact that you can finish it. Roach pulling something this ambitious means he has to know a way to deal with Roman, which in turn means he knows where Roman is.
I clap my hands together and face Armstrong with a grin. "All right then, time to go stomp out a cockroach." He looks at me in a new, oddly approving light, and I remember my other question: "Wait, before I go- were you the one behind all those Faunus kidnappings?"
He tilts his head. "I ain't gonna say it again. If they just tell it to ya for free, it ain't worth rememberin'."
Right, him and his stupid fucking tests. I hear a clatter from behind me that sounds suspiciously like someone climbing out of a pile of rubble and figure out a way to kill two birds with one stone: "Your son seems intent on a rematch. If you promise to answer my question, I'll humor him."
The approval returns to his gaze, and I start to feel that sense of instinctive trust and companionship again. Even more so than his son, he's got the features of a movie star- the twinkle in his eye, the chiseled, solid jawline, the perfectly kept hair and distinctive eyebrows, even the way he smiles with pristine teeth- but at the same time, has an endearing, rugged quality to him. It's unfair that someone blessed with his raw strength, good looks, and Aura also has so much intellect.
In a way, I start to understand the origin of all the tests. If I were so far above everyone I met, both literally and figuratively, I'd probably start poking at them out of bored curiosity as well.
"You're on," Ace says from behind me. I turn to see he's pretty much unharmed, even after taking that blow with no Aura active. Despite only being a year older than me, he's already easily 6'2" and starting to look like as much of a tank as his father. Armstrong genetics, I guess.
Forty-five minutes later, I'm leaning back against the edges of the boxing ring on the casino's tenth floor and suppressing my extreme annoyance at the long delay. My annoyance only further grows as the people slowly start to trickle in- many I recognize from odd jobs run in coordination with the South Vale branches.
I begin to wonder why Armstrong would bring in all these people- that is, until I see Lilah, his right-hand-woman, setting up a bookkeeping table in the corner. I even laugh, much of my frustration dispelled, when I see the sign go up: 3 to 1 odds in favor of Ace.
She meets my eye and we both grin. Out of all the Southerners I worked with, Lilah was always my favorite. Unlike the vast majority of her comrades, she could appreciate the value of some nice, professional silence.
Unfortunately, she's immediately mobbed by people taking bets, which isn't particularly surprising. I don't know what she's thinking, offering odds like those. Ace is 0-8 against me, who in their right mind would-
I catch a glimpse of the table through the crowd and see that damn near every single person has put down money on him.
It's damn harder not to feel insulted than I thought it'd be. "What is this bullshit," I whisper to Arnaut, mostly just to vent more than actually establish conversation. "I've fought Ace eight fucking times and creamed him every single time."
Arnaut raises an eyebrow. "And were these fights public?"
I snort. "No, why would that… matter." Right, why would he spread the news about his son getting beat up by a younger, northern girl? "But still…"
"Dreki, look at him." I oblige Arnaut, taking another appraising glance towards Ace, and concede that, yes, he does look like a demigod. He's got more classically beautiful, chiseled features than his dad, looking like a full-grown man at seventeen. Despite that, every visible inch of his toned dark skin is shaven, and there's a lot of visible inches, considering that he's wearing traditional boxing… boxer shorts, and literally nothing else, which brings a flush to my face when I realize it.
That turns my thoughts to my own apparel, which I'd been furiously trying to avoid thinking about, because I'm wearing a top that's practically just a compression bra and my own pair of boxers as well. I feel out of my element like this, exposed, and it's not just the amount of skin I'm showing (although don't get me wrong, that plays a pretty massive part).
I always feel like this when I'm away from my more important belongings- specifically, the coat, a few mementos inside it, my Scroll… and Aurora now, too, I realize with no small surprise. It's grown on me in the same way Arnaut has.
I take another glance at the betting table and see a few more familiar faces- Armstrong's other Enforcers- surreptitiously sliding in and dropping pretty significant bets in my favor. Figures.
The Enforcers of each Overboss are more than muscle- they do all the dirty work for their respective leaders, including any jobs too important, too delicate, or too clandestine to entrust to lower lackeys. They're also the ones that do work outside of their region of Vale, which is why I recognize them more than their underlings.
"Wait- how did you know Armstrong?" I ask Arnaut, remembering his fairly extreme earlier reactions. Just off the shared eye and hair color, I'm already fairly sure what the connection is, but I'd rather hear him confirm it.
"I… really do not want to speak about it," Arnaut says, eyes clouding briefly with annoyance before he deftly changes the subject: "The group that just bet on you, you know those people better, I presume?"
I crack a smile. "Yeah, they're his Enforcers."
"So many?"
"…Yeah."
"But didn't Torchwick only have you and this Neopolitan girl?"
"He runs things differently," I reply. Roman keeps his cards close to the chest, so he picked Neo and me up early- a mute, and a girl who couldn't get emotionally invested in anything. Neither of us are or ever will be threats to his reign, because neither of us are leaders. By keeping his inner circle to two people that he can implicitly trust, he maintains enough secrecy that no one's willing to challenge him- back to that core principle of risk-vs-reward, when the risk is unknown, most criminals will assume the worst. It's the best way to stay alive, at least, and that's what I respect about him most.
When I see Arnaut still waiting for me to elaborate, I sigh. "He operates off of secrecy."
"Ah. Is that the norm? What of the Northern Vale Overboss?"
"No, he's more…" Cairn, the North Overboss, is someone I have even less experience with than Armstrong. According to Roman, he rules with an iron fist by being the strongest fighter in the region, crushing a new challenger once every couple months. He has a massive number of Enforcers and uses them for most jobs that require combat, keeping the minor gangs around primarily for menial labor. "He's got a lot of them. They have more of a might-makes-right thing going on up there."
"I see." Arnaut doesn't ask about Armstrong, but my thoughts naturally turn to him anyway.
The South Overboss sits somewhere in the middle between the two, and yet also off in his own unique direction. He keeps a decent number of Enforcers, but also makes full use of his gangs; he rarely threatens violence or fights himself, yet he's also shockingly open with his underlings. "I've never been able to figure out Armstrong's deal. He isn't even close to as discreet as Roman, but no one ever challenges him like they do Cairn-"
"It's manipulation," Arnaut immediately clarifies. The fact that he's apparently figured out something that confused me for five years of working under Roman annoys me, but not enough that I don't want to hear the resulting explanation. "Haven't you noticed? He's friendly with them all, but always maintaining an unspoken superiority. No matter how casual the conversation, they all refer to him as 'Overboss'. I'd hazard a guess that he collects significant portions of the profit, but dishes it back out fairly evenly?"
My jaw drops. "How did you-"
"That establishes him as the source of the profits in their subconscious, even if they were the ones to personally obtain it in the first place. He was speaking with a Councilman when you first came in, and he did it here, in the center of his personal casino, not even trying to hide the corruption- in fact, he flaunts it. It's another way to demonstrate how invincible he is.
"If I had my Semblance, I could confirm it, but I'd be willing to put money on the fact that they maintain loyalty out of a belief that his management is the most profitable, safe state for everyone involved. He rules through genuine admiration, not fear or secrecy."
It takes me a little while to respond to that. "Arnaut, for someone who claims to be out of their depth in the world of criminals, you sure have a lot to say about it."
"This isn't crime, Dreki. It's politics, and as much as I may vehemently dislike politics, I'm very well-versed in dealing with it."
Well, it being politics explains why talking to Armstrong feels less like a conversation and more like a cold war. "Ah, well," I sigh, cracking my knuckles as the countdown timer reaches one minute remaining. I've had more than my fill of- as Arnaut called it- political hand-wringing, and now I return to my element.
I vault over the ropes, stifling a blush at the crowd's murmured reactions to my getup and keeping my eyes trained on Ace's ludicrously well-defined abs. "You ready?"
"Am I ever!" He grins, dropping into a boxing stance. His technique is extraordinarily dated, like the shit I see in broadcasts from before even the Great War, with his balled fists held at the ready out in front of his face, bouncing on the balls of his feet like an excited toddler.
"Dude, I thought we were gonna actually fight, not engage in a light bit of fisticuffs," I grumble.
"I wouldn't mock the Armstrong family's boxing technique," he replies, as chipper as ever. "Great-Grandpappy Trueman won the Vale tournament of warriors with this. It's been passed down our family line for generations." I might have remained annoyed but for the fact that he just provided me with the mental image of his father performing the same idiotic-looking hand movements and bouncing back and forth on the balls of his feet.
"Oh, I wouldn't dream of it," I sigh back, falling back on good old sarcasm.
It's then that Parker, a newer one of Armstrong's Enforcers that I've only seen maybe once or twice, leaps into the ring and blows a whistle. "Alrighty, ladies and gentlemen, let's have ourselves a match!" The crowd cheers, whistles, and- again forcing me to suppress a violent blush- tosses a few catcalls. "Now, I want a nice, fair fight out of the both of you, hear? The exchange is 'til one of you is Aura critical, with no weapons to be used. No cheap shots, no headbutts, no bitin', and no clawin', even if it means going against your… instincts." By the end of that sentence, he's clearly just talking directly to me.
On the bright side, Parker is theoretically of equal rank to me, so I don't have to take his bullshit. "Right now, my fucking instinct is to take that microphone and shove it where the sun doesn't shine."
Parker sneers at me, but help comes from an unexpected direction: Ace. "I'm sure Dragon wouldn't cheat in a bout like this. Rest assured, ref, we're gonna have an honorable match."
Parker might be a racist, but he's your armchair variety that wouldn't die on the hill of Faunus suppression. He shrugs and vaults back out of the ring, leaving the two of us to stare each other down. While waiting for the signal to start, I find myself subconsciously slipping back down into Spring Clouds, but with my bare hands instead of the sword.
Then the whistle is blown and I tear forward like I've been shot from a cannon.
Ace has his hands up in a classic boxer's guard, preventing me easy access to his face. He fights like a master of his domain, technique flawless, and he'd be extraordinarily formidable in a straight match- all that strength and Aura, coupled with the perfect form, make him an absolute beast. There's a reason he's one of the highest ranked contenders in the Vale Boxing League despite his opponents being adults, and despite conspiratorial rumors, it isn't due to his father rigging the matches.
I've watched the footage, and it's obvious why he wins so much- his opponents fight like him, but slower, weaker, and with less Aura.
Unfortunately for him, the reason I have always beaten him, and will likely continue to always beat him, is that I don't fight like him. I might not know boxing to the degree that he does, but I know it well enough to identify weak points, and more importantly, I know enough of five other martial arts to exploit those weaknesses in ways that he doesn't plan around.
I ready my right arm at my side while charging, a clear boxing tell that I'm winding up a massive right hook. He grins and answers it with one of his own- with his Aura and strength advantage, any trade of equal blows is a win for him.
Moments before our fists would reach each other, though, I dive forward into a roll, grabbing his exposed ankle and twisting it out from under him. He controls his fall well enough, even mixing it up with an elbow drop I immediately recognize from Mistral Wrestling TV- the move is unexpected enough that I forget to dodge and eat it directly to the collarbone. Fortunately, though, it is a move from MWTV and therefore designed more to look impressive than actually deal damage, so I can shrug off the blow easily enough.
He climbs to his knees, but I've already kicked back against the floor from my lying position to launch myself into a roll across his back, catching his arm on the far side in a judo grip with it levered over my shoulder. He might have almost a hundred pounds on me, but I have leverage and Aura on my side. All I have to do is step forward and pull down, and he's catapulted over my shoulder, flying into the edge of the ring, which flickers with the hexagonal patterns of Hardlight Dust walls.
To his everlasting credit, Ace manages to land on his feet and recover far faster than I expected. Instead of dropping back into a defensive position, he surges forward with a burst of Aura through his legs, forcing me to abandon my advance and roll to the side.
I make sure to loop my tail back around his ankle, though, and trip him out of his full-speed assault, which-
The whistle blows, and I look over to see Parker giving me a look of disgust. "No using the tail, Dragon."
"Really?" I narrow my eyes at him, about to vent a tirade along the lines of 'If I'm so inferior then why are you handicapping my ass with a thousand rules just to keep the fight fair', but before I can do so, Ace chimes in again.
"No, Parks, I'm fine with it."
Parker looks at Ace with genuine surprise. "You sure?"
"Yeah," Ace says, dropping right back into his stance. "If I win because of some bullshit technicalities, then what's the point?"
I think this is the first time since I met him that I genuinely feel respect for Ace, and I decide to show it by kicking his ass even harder. "Your funeral," I growl, dropping into a modified melee version of Spring Rain, legs wide and body low to the ground.
"Come at me," he replies, and I'm more than happy to oblige.
As confident as I might be in my win, there's nothing I can do about Ace's fucking enormous pool of Aura. If this were a normal duel I'd use Aurora or Dust infusement, but limited to my bare hands and feet, it's a slow, painful process to chip away at him. However, the simple fact remains that I'm probably the worst possible unarmed matchup for him, and no amount of raw durability will make up for that.
As the fight goes on, it dissolves into something of a rhythm, almost. Armstrong is an immovable mountain sticking mostly to the center of the arena, and I flow around him, a river weathering rock. I throw a glancing punch that ricochets off his forearm, but before it even landed I'd already begun the motions of a wide leg sweep that takes his out from under him.
Never stop moving.
He attempts to grapple me on the way down, but he's a full second behind me and I'm already in the air above him, focusing Aura in my raised fist as I slowly turn back to face him.
I unleash the Aura strike right down onto his back, launching myself back in the process but landing in a prepared crouch. As Ace regains his feet, I turn towards one of the wall-mounted televisions and see that my combination of attacks managed to drop his Aura from eighty-five percent to eighty-two percent.
Rather than discouraging me, the sight brings a grin to my face. I'm actually immensely enjoying myself- there's no real way to describe the feel of a good fight to someone who hasn't felt it. When you get a feel for your opponent and they get a feel for you, and neither of you need to hold yourselves back anymore, everything else fades away. I know Ace's limits, so I can throw caution to the wind and just let loose.
Despite the battle trance, I can feel the ways I've changed as well. Before, I'd had viciousness and adaptability, snatching moves off of whatever style I happened to be watching but never taking to heart the actual philosophy behind the motions. In part, that was because none of the techniques spoke to me- I was too cynical for the honor and masculinity of boxing, too flighty for the rooted grappling of jiu jitsu, and too wild for the calm discipline of most Eastern styles- so as a result, I was unwilling to commit to any one of them, to let any of them tie me down.
Right there in the ring with Ace, something snaps. Maybe one of Arnaut's key memories surfaces, or maybe I just reach a breaking point of understanding, but either way something in my perception of all that I've learned shifts.
The Way of Wind isn't a sword style.
The moves I learned weren't important for the specific weapon being used, they were teaching me something else, something far more important.
I laugh as I step forward into a bastardized version of the Fading Wind gambit, leaping and bringing a fist downwards just to the right of Ace, reaching out with the grab that he obviously avoids but spinning into a backhand blow that slams square into the side of his abdomen with enough momentum and Aura to knock him back a few steps.
The core tenets of the Way of Wind aren't built on the limitations of me, but the limitations of the people I'm facing. The realization comes with an odd surge of euphoria, everything just starting to make a little more sense. It isn't the moves that are important, it's the thought behind them, the concept, the philosophy that I so hated in every other style, but reduced down to a bare mantra: Never Stop Moving. By understanding the limits to how my enemy can move, how much damage they can take, I can whirl around them without ever taking a single hit.
A memory enters my mind, a mental image of Rihfaris Alorn cutting his way through a battlefield. It's an old video Arnaut saw somewhere, and yet, in this moment, I feel as though I am right there beside the Wind Knight. I can see where he earned his title- he doesn't use any Semblance, nor any high-tech armor, and yet he blows through entire squadrons like a summer breeze, leaving behind only trails of corpses. He's untouchable, like the wind itself- impossible to grasp, nowhere and yet everywhere all at once.
Never Stop Moving.
Each of my blows weaves into another as I whirl around Ace, only growing faster and more fluid by the second. I've learned his attacks, his technique, well enough now that I don't even need to break my barrage to dodge- he attempts a jab and I lean just barely out of the way, kneeing him in the gut and forcing him to stagger back a few steps.
He can't even find his footing before I'm on him again, whirling into a blur of attacks like some sort of dervish possessed, forcing him ever back. The corners of my eyes pick out vague hints of the colors on the screen, note his Aura flickering from green, to yellow, to orange.
There's nothing he can do but try to block my blows, and the strikes often come too fast even for that. Every time he retreats, I stick to him like a glue. Every time he tries to throw an attack of his own, I evade or dismantle it, and he eats several blows for his trouble.
The sounds of the crowd have long since faded to a dull roar, yet they gradually come back as I notice Ace's Aura drop into the red.
It's then that I make a mistake. My single-minded focus fractures for just a moment, and Arnaut's Semblance, which I'd been subconsciously suppressing for ages, triggers on one of my blows-
Joy. Genuine joy. Elation, the pure kind found only in a long-held desire fulfilled, and at the center of it all… a warrior maiden, hair and eyes shining silver, with horns and fangs large enough to seem fierce yet somehow at the same time small enough to make her unbearably endearing. Extraordinarily fast, and strong, and skilled, yet not boastful; honorable, yet with no pride except in her-
I break back, heart pounding, eyes wild, rhythm broken. Ace has time to breathe, which he makes full, greedy use of.
What was that? I look at him in a new light, feeling a slight return of the self-conscious embarrassment for whatever reason, and make a mental note to ask Arnaut how to interpret the visions.
For now… I break my grin back out and meet Ace's eyes. "You ready to end this?"
"I should be askin' you the same thing," he manages, still slightly out of breath, but dropping into a firm stance with unbroken resolve.
There's no need for anything else to be said. I charge him wordlessly, shoulders hunched, low to the ground, surging up like some predator of the night erupting from the ground.
He steels his golden Aura enough to make it visible and plants his feet firmly, winding up for a right hook hard enough to shatter stone. I won't be able to deflect this one; with his Aura reinforced, it would take more raw striking force than I have to stagger him.
The fist locomotives forward into the space just right of where my head was- he guessed my dodge, and corrected for it.
Unfortunately for him, what he didn't expect- couldn't expect- was my dive through his legs at full speed, rolling into a crouch with Aura already being poured into both my leg and my hand.
There's an art form to the charging period of Aura Strikes. In every situation, there's a set period of time that you can afford to handicap yourself by focusing on charging Aura in preparation for an attack; the longer you wait, the more Aura you discharge and the more damage you deal, but waiting too long and getting hit means losing focus and therefore wasting all the time and Aura for nothing.
The more skilled of a fighter you are, the more you understand your opponent, the greater the risk you can afford to take and the harder your strikes can be.
Ace figures out what I'm doing and swipes blindly back behind him with his left elbow in order to try and break my charge…
But he attacks at standing head level, and I'm crouched well underneath the danger.
There's a truly beautiful moment of realization dawning in his perfect golden eyes, and then I slam a fist with a good ten percent of me and Arnaut's Aura combined into his sternum, putting even more strength into it by discharging another five percent out through my back leg.
The reinforced stone floor beneath me shatters in a spiderweb shape as Ace is launched flying all the way across the arena, slamming into the far wall of military-grade Hardlight Dust hard enough to actually crack it.
And yet- despite his Aura being near-critical, despite the power I put behind that blow- he's still not out.
Which is nice, because I'm already hurtling across the arena in a followup attack that would be a pretty assholish move were his Aura to have been broken by the first strike. With five meters left to go I leap, both legs leaving the ground, and slam two feet against Ace, pinning him against the wall mid-fall.
Then I kick, and blast out a ten percent Aura strike through both legs at point-blank range.
The Hardlight wall instantly shatters, and Ace gets launched directly into a crowd that's just starting to scatter, far too late. I minimized the blowback on the attack by focusing all of the energy out into Ace, which means that despite the havoc I just wreaked, I drop down to the ground surprisingly softly.
I dust myself off, feeling somehow even more energetic than I was when the match started. "Well? No comment, Parker?"
I'd expected another disgusted look from him, but instead he looks utterly cowed. It gives me an undeniable little rush to be able to see his thought process clear as day in his expression- Holy shit, I was bad-mouthing this chick that could kill me.
"There gonna be a count-out, or…?" I sigh and lean back against the wall.
"N- No need," Parker stammers. "Ace's Aura has dropped to critical. The match goes to: Dragon."
The room erupts with a… shall we say, mixed bag of reactions. I note (with no small hint of smug satisfaction) that the most common one seems to be some variant of 'I want my money back', but Lilah doesn't doesn't budge.
"Sorry, folks, but y'all know there ain't any refunds for this stuff. If you want to win your money back, there's a perfectly nice casino on your way out. Better luck next time!"
Suddenly, a pang of uncharacteristic worry shoots through me and I vault through the gaping hole that I punched in the walls, landing beside Ace. When enough force is applied to break a person's Aura, the Aura prevents as much of it as possible… but when it shatters, the remaining force is applied to the person as normal.
Ace was sitting on maybe twelve percent Aura, and I hit him with a one-two combo hard enough to shatter a wall of weapons-grade Hardlight Dust. Shit, please don't be-
I realize my folly quite quickly when Ace groans, lifts himself into a sitting position propped back up against a shelf of boxing gloves, and just sighs. "You win again, huh?"
"Good match," I reply, and I really mean it. I sit down with my back against the shelf as well, deciding to ride out this new sense of kinship, at least for a little while.
"Nah," he grins ruefully. "The gap ain't closin'. If anything, it's gettin' bigger. I think my best shot was the first time, when you ain't even had a single actual combat lesson and still beat my sorry ass black and blue."
I can't help but let out a real laugh at that. "Come on, don't be too hard on yourself."
He shakes his head. "Shoulda known it could only go downhill from there."
"Hey, look on the bright side. You actually landed in a Falling Elbow of Heavenly Wrath on me, and I'm pretty damn sure you're gonna be the only person to ever-"
"You recognized that move?" Ace sits bolt upright and turns to look at me with an uncomfortably sincere, intense admiration in his eyes.
"Uh… yeah, I used to sneak into MWTV matches all the time way back."
"No kiddin'? Shoot, when I was younger I always wanted to be a pro wrestler," he sighs.
I actually giggle at the thought of him in a skintight leotard prancing around shouting about whatever the most recent ridiculous, contrived plotline was, but immediately snap a hand over my mouth. I can't remember the last time I laughed like that- without a trace of cynicism, just a pure, mirthful sound.
Ace notices my laugh and brightens up. "I swear, I'd tune in to every episode. My favorite was always-"
"No, wait, let me guess," I interrupt. "Money Man Midas?" A ripped dude in a glittery leotard whose special move was spray-painting the other wrestlers gold seems right up his alley.
He shakes his head.
"Uh… Big Boss Man?" His gimmick was showing up to the ring in a full suit and tie. I was there for his intro fight, where he knocked out Dusty Dongo and unveiled his signature finisher: in front of the entire crowd, setting up a desk and filing a life insurance policy on his opponent, then beating them to death with a briefcase. To ten-year-old-Dreki, that was just about the coolest thing imaginable.
Ace shakes his head again, and I try to dig deeper."Uh… Boom Boom Bigelow?" Another head shake. "Shit… Machismo Man? Daddy Damage?"
He snorts. "Now you're reachin'."
I throw up my hands in concession. "Fine, I give up. Who was it?"
"The Huntsman."
Huh. The Huntsman was absolutely super popular, but… their entire shtick was being a fighter for justice who beat all the other 'criminal' wrestlers. Coming from a Syndicate Enforcer, son of a damn Overboss… that's a surprise. "…Really?"
He reads my expression well enough to figure out my confusion. "Yep. Believe it or not, back then, I actually wanted to be a Huntsman. Not anymore, of course."
And the surprises just keep on coming. "…Why?"
"Oh, my dad wouldn't let me go to combat school." Ace doesn't sound torn up, just a little bit wistful.
"No, I meant why want to be one in the first place?" I can't remember a point in my life where I felt anything but distaste towards Huntsmen and Huntresses. They always seemed so… full of themselves, so sure that they were helping and saving the kingdom even while people without the resources to hire them were abused. Mercenaries, but with delusions of grandeur and a needle-narrow worldview.
I almost don't need to ask when I see Ace's expression of simple reverence. "I guess I should say that I just wanted to help people-"
"Please don't."
"-But truth is, I always just wanted that glory, that honor, y'know?"
I really, really don't. "Sure?"
"And then, when uncle Arney took off, I heard about him getting famous as a Huntsman, so I told dad I wanted to do it, too." He laughs good-naturedly, but there's a hint of sadness in there. "Boy was that a mistake. 'Course, now that I got to see all the shit that Huntsmen go through, and how much glory they actually get, I'm pretty damn glad dad kept my head on straight."
He goes silent after that, but my curiosity refuses to be silenced. After a brief hesitation, I cautiously brush a hand against his arm and activate Arnaut's Semblance-
A noble figure standing on a desert dune, far away, silhouetted by a brilliant sunrise. Piles of corpses, human and Grimm alike, arrayed around beneath his feet, all while a crowd chants his name-
I vaguely notice him shift to look at me, and the image abruptly changes-
The same maiden of silver, smile white as the snow of her home, eyes bright as the stars. Even her laughter is like the-
I yank my hand off of him, blushing again despite myself. "S- Sorry."
He remains silent, but looks at me with a simple, honest purity far out of character for a criminal and the son of a crime lord. I look away instinctively, and notice Armstrong sitting at a table twenty meters away. For an instant so short it could have just been my imagination, his eyes burn with a terrifying rage- but I blink, and instead he's giving me a simple raised eyebrow that just says, 'Well?'
The moment shattered, I rise to my feet and offer my farewell to Ace, then swing a bit out of my way to snag my belongings before sitting down across from Armstrong once again. There's a long silence, enough to make me fidget nervously, before I realize he's probably testing my willingness to take the initiative. "Oh. Well, let's hear it."
The welcoming grin returns like it was never gone. "You got me there, missy. Truth is, I got nothin' to do with these kidnappings, you have my word. I did a little diggin', and turns out it's a splinter branch of the Old Guard that set up down here. Rest assured, I'm gonna be bringing 'em in line soon enough."
The name means nothing to me. "What's the Old Guard?"
He doesn't react to my question.
"Right, how could I forget. How do I earn the answer to that? Do you want me to fight your son again?"
It's then that I notice his smile has changed- it no longer reaches his eyes, which stare at me with a cold, dead dismissiveness. "Actually, I want you to leave my city and only come back if Roman drags you here kickin' and screamin'."
I blink, completely unsure of how to respond to that. "Why-" Oh, right. The 'earn your answers' bullshit. "I'll leave in exchange for you telling me why you want me out of here."
A flicker of respect crosses his dead gaze, but it's gone just as quick as it came. "Because you draw my son towards both the mistakes that got my brother booted all the way out to Vacuo."
Vacuo… brother… Uncle Arney. I turn to see Arnaut standing there with two balled fists and an expression of vicious hatred towards Armstrong. Holy shit. Several details snap together in my head. Arnaut Silvas is actually Arnaut Armstrong. Arnaut is Armstrong's brother.
Oh, fuck. I killed Armstrong's brother, and have his sword braced up against the side of my chair.
My eyes are what betray me as they snap over to look at the sword. Armstrong's too clever not to notice the obvious tell, and his tone drops to ice. "I noticed you picked up a new sword, Dragon. Mind showin' it to me before you head off?"
The words are friendly enough, but the voice that carries them makes it clear that this is an order, not a suggestion.
I freeze up, my heart pounding into my ears and my breath erratic. If I show him the sword, he'll fucking ruin me. His reputation, especially in the northern half of the kingdom… they say that he slaughtered so many people during the original formation of the Syndicate that the bodies piled up past the surface of Drake's Run, forming the foundation for both this building and for his empire to this day. Anyone who didn't fall in line under him met a watery grave. It's then that people started calling him the River King, named for the demon in old Vale folk stories.
But if I don't show him, if I lie, he's just gonna see it anyway. My panicked mind goes back to hazy memories, only half-remembered snippets of Roman keeping me and Neo distracted while Armstrong worked over two captured would-be betrayers in the basement below us. I didn't see anything, but the sounds-
"I ain't gonna ask again," Armstrong says more firmly, and I vaguely register the red seeping into my vision. As if the situation wasn't shitty enough, my Semblance triggers off of any negative emotions- including fear. Fuck. Fuck fuck-
My savior is once again Arnaut. "Show him Aurora," he spits. "He'll probably fucking reward you for taking my life."
I numbly obey, bringing Aurora up to the tabletop and drawing it from its sheath.
For another few seconds that feel like an eternity, Armstrong just looks it over, but finally shakes his head and grins. "That dumb son of a bitch really lost to you?"
I'm too scared to feel offense. "Y- Yes."
"How?" Armstrong tilts his head at me, reminding me that I'm not out of the woods yet.
"I… he didn't realize I was, uh…" I swallow and steel myself. "I pretended to be a fellow Huntsman, got in close, and got his heart in one attack that he didn't see coming."
"Bleedin' heart- ha!" Armstrong's smile widens at the unintentional pun, and he claps me on the shoulder. "S'pose that's a fittin' way for him to go out, trustin' a Faunus with his life."
"Bastard," Arnaut spits, and I'm inclined to agree.
Armstrong recovers composure once more. "In that case, I owe you thanks." He offers a hand, and I nervously shake it. "You got rid of a problem of mine, even if you didn't know it."
"Fucking slime," Arnaut mutters, with far more hate than he ever had for me.
He found out his own brother is dead, and this is his reaction? Mentally revising my read on Armstrong from bored genius to full-on sociopath, I glance towards the door, but of course he notices that too.
"You're free to go, but first…" he leans back in his chair. "I reward people who help me, so I'm gonna give you a little warnin'. Manhunter Marie showed up in Vale two weeks ago, and she's been turnin' the kingdom upside down lookin' for a girl with grey scales, horns, and a tail. Sound familiar?"
Who the fuck is Manhunter Marie? Almost afraid to ask, I just nod and rise to my feet, glad to escape the conversation with my life. The sick feeling of terror curled up in my stomach stays even after I leave the room, even after I leave the casino, and traces of it remain even as I exit the town.
Arnaut doesn't speak at all for a while, lips locked in a firm scowl of abject hatred. It's only after three hours of walking through the black of night that I gather up the willpower to press him:
"Arnaut, are you actually related to-"
He immediately wheels on me, enraged. "What the fuck do you think, half-breed? I know the concept of family might be alien to you, but try to-"
Arnaut cuts himself off, slapping two hands over his mouth with an expression of horror. For my part, I'm more shaken than I thought I'd be- I've heard a hundred names like that from a thousand mouths, but it stings in a way it hasn't for years and years coming from him.
The jab about my family, though… you never get used to hearing that one.
I swallow and turn back away from him, biting my lip hard enough to reopen the wound for a third time. At this point, it's probably going to leave a scar. I can't bring myself to care.
"Dreki, I'm sorry."
I force a laugh. "Nah, it's fine. I've heard worse, trust me-"
"Dreki." I stop, and slowly turn to see that he's earnestly remorseful. "I'm sorry. Saying that was beneath me- beneath anyone. I let my feelings about the past get the better of me, I regressed to a person I thought I'd left behind, and I apologize. You're not the one I'm angry at."
That's the first time anyone has ever apologized for insulting me. It's a surprisingly warm feeling. "So Armstrong really is-"
"My older brother, yes." Arnaut shakes his head. "I lived under the same roof as him for the first fourteen years of my life, up until I left for Revere Academy. I even might've turned out like him."
"Why didn't you?"
"Victra," he answers simply. "My wife. While I was away at school, I fell in love with a Faunus girl, which was not something that a man carrying the Armstrong name was allowed to do. In the end, I cut a deal with Knox: he'd send me to Vacuo and help set me up with a new life."
"But… what did he want in return?" I ask, confused.
"Nothing. For him, getting his troublemaking brother out of the family and off of the continent must have been itself the reward. I did make him promise not to open any contracts on me, and I suppose I was right to trust him to keep his word on that- Knox is many awful, vile things, but a liar is not one of them."
"I… don't get it. Why did it matter who you married? Why couldn't you just move to Northern Vale instead of leaving the kingdom?"
Arnaut looks skyward. "Some families, some legacies aren't the sort of thing you can just walk away from. The Armstrong family is- was- Vale nobility, back in the days of the monarchy before the Great War. We ruled South Vale… my great-great-great-grandfather was the Bloody Baron."
He expects me to react to the name, but it means nothing to me, which he picks up on soon enough. "Ah, right. You never had real history classes, did you?"
I look down at my feet. That's a bit of a sore point for me, because I do like history- but a life spent either on the streets or running jobs for Roman means I never had a real opportunity for studying it. "No."
"Well…" Arnaut suddenly looks self-conscious. "If you haven't heard of him, let's just move on, it's not important-"
"No. Tell me."
He scratches behind his head, suddenly awkward. "Blodford Armstrong, the Bloody Baron, is... well, there's no easy way to say this, but he is probably the most famous abuser of the Faunus in Vale's history. Not the world, mind you, but here in Vale, he was the face used to rally support during the Faunus Revolution. The stories about him… he led raiding parties to Faunus-majority areas and captured slaves, held pit fights to the death between different sorts of Faunus as entertainment, organized Faunus hunts on his personal estate. He even formed an inner circle called the Old Guard, which persists to this day as a sort of underground Anti-Faunus society."
I realize my mistake in asking Arnaut to elaborate, and also remember the other reason I don't delve into history. "Okay, but what does your ancestor's shittiness have to do with you?"
"He was just an example of- nevermind. The point is, when Oskri, the Final King, disbanded the monarchy, it didn't change the fact that the noble families still owned most of the land and resources. Some of them have fallen from their thrones, like Valkyrie, Winchester, Arc… but some have kept a stranglehold on their power. The houses of old; Alorn, Schnee, Armstrong, to name a few… they remain important enough to determine the fates of kingdoms.
Arnaut had strayed into loftier tones when talking about the nobility, but now he retreats back into the mask of resentment. "For me to 'dirty my bloodline' with the blood of a Faunus girl was unacceptable. My grandfather would have preferred to have her and I both killed than see that, as would my father. Knox… to this day, I don't know why he helped me in faking my death and setting up a false identity in Vacuo. Maybe there was still a shred of brotherly love in him. Either way, with me gone, he was the uncontested heir to the Armstrong agricultural fortune, although it would seem he's expanded into more… disreputable ventures as well."
I'm not sure how to respond to that. It's a lot to take in, and I lapse back into silence for a long time, eventually speaking only when my curiosity pokes its head out: "Uh, Arnaut, you know how your Semblance only shows images?"
"Yes, at first. You'll get better with it, though." He seems immensely glad at the change of subject.
"Okay, so, when someone looks at you, the image is warped, right? What does it mean when they see you… differently?"
Arnaut shrugs. "They mean essentially what you'd expect. If you appear more monstrous or threatening, they're probably frightened of you, if you appear more heroic or impressive, they admire you. If you-"
"Okay, so…" I'm fairy sure that I already know the answer to this, but I need to be certain. "What does it mean if they just see you, but, uh… prettier?"
Arnaut turns and narrows his eyes at me for a little bit, then seems to put two and two together. "Are you referring to Ace?"
Did he notice me use his Semblance earlier? "Uhm... yeah."
"Twin Gods, that would explain… everything," Arnaut breathes, mostly to himself.
"Arnaut, what does it mean?"
He looks back to me with equal parts sympathy, amusement, and sorrow. "It means he's in love with you."
What?
(A/N) The longest chapter yet takes place over the shortest period of time. Go figure.
The Final King, or Oskri, is the same as the King of Vale that fought in the Great War, one of Ozpin's previous lives.
There's explicit discussion of monarchies before the Great War, so I'm expanding on it with a ruling noble class. Even after losing official titles, it's not like all the power and influence of real-life noble families vanishes away. It also allows me to do interesting things with quite a few canon characters.
The kingdoms in RWBY proper always felt small to me, but I think that might just be a byproduct of the show being limited to the amount of stuff they can show in thirteen episodes a year. Either way, I'm going to try to expand on them as much as I can, splitting them up into regions and adding more settlements. I assume that if Argus can exist in Mistral, then Vale can have other large cities as well, despite Mountain Glenn imploding.
Knox Armstrong is based on Jay Gould, an infamous American tycoon from the late nineteenth century. He's not quite a storybook character, but there's enough folklore surrounding his legendarily unscrupulous business practices that it's close enough for me at least. 'Knox' is in reference to Fort Knox, which is closely tied to the color gold, complying with the color naming rule. I feel like the River King login theme would make a pretty good character motif for Armstrong. It's got a Southern sound to it, but comes across just as foreboding and ominous as he does. His aura and primary color are a colder gold, hex #d4af37.