(A/N) Two arcs down! If there's anything you particularly like or dislike, please let me know.
There's this common stereotype of criminals having slovenly lifestyles; a popular idea that people who commit sin must basically wallow in it. The mental image of a gang member for most people is pretty uncharitable- sleeping in late, drunk all the time, eating unhealthy food and keeping terrible hygiene.
The thing is, that's an idea gathered from mug shots published in morning newspapers, from stories about crackhouses that police have broken into and TV dramatizations of famous investigations. It's a picture painted from what the public sees, and that's just the thing- what the public sees.
A perfect criminal will never even be known outside of maybe their name, and even that will be fake ninety percent of the time. A successful hitman doesn't have their mug shot posted in the morning news, a successful drug dealer doesn't have police break into their base of operations and photograph everything, and a successful mob boss will never have a movie made about them- who wants to watch the bad guy win?
So in a way, it's helpful that everyone thinks all us criminals are lazy, drug-addicted slobs. It makes them all the more surprised when a pretty girl like Neo steals their key cards from their back pocket, and when a dapper, articulate man like Roman tricks them into giving up the location of their vault.
I benefit less from the illusion. No amount of cleaning up will hide the jagged, seven-inch horns arcing back over my head, or the slit pupils in my eyes. Once someone sees either of those, they tend to hold on a little tighter to their wallet.
But I digress. The thing is, successful criminals are the ones that have good self-control and planning skills. Drug lords don't get to where they are by snorting half of their own merchandise, hitmen tend to be a lot less effective if they look as morally corrupt and dangerous as they actually are, and thieves don't last very long if they can't be bothered to sacrifice sleep.
It's the last one that's always been the easiest for me. After Roman picked me up out of Mistral, I jumped at the opportunity to learn new and useful things, to eat healthier foods, to stay clean, and especially to train and exercise, but one thing he didn't need to teach me was being a flexible sleeper.
That's the thing about spending a large chunk of your childhood alone on the streets- you learn to live with what you get. I'd already long since learned to fall asleep without needing a bed. In a corner, against a wall, even up on a ledge some nights, I can sleep pretty much wherever. I've also always been pretty good at tuning out ambient noises; I had to be if I wanted to sleep a wink at any point.
That doesn't mean I have issues waking up, though. Once an alarm goes off, or someone else wakes me, I'm good to go almost immediately regardless of how long I slept. Roman made sure to test the limits of that, too- his favorite time to operate was two o' clock in the morning.
In fact, it pissed him off to no end that Cinder's endlessly shifting timetable ended up forcing him to rob some Dust shops at gunpoint during business hours. Doing stupid shit like that is what gets your mugshot in the news and your name in a TV show about how the the biggest crime boss in Vale got taken down by some spunky Huntress-in-training.
God, was Roman ever pissed after that one. Apparently Goodwitch herself came to save Little Red from being vaporized by Cinder, and Roman had to bail on most of the Dust. Cinder was a scary fucking lady, so all that bottled up frustration was later released in a drunken rant to Neo and I that basically boiled down to 'Why the fuck would we compete with Huntsmen over the day when we can have the night all to ourselves?'
Of course, according to societal media, most of the night belongs to them, too. The prototypical image of a Huntsman is like the reverse of a criminal, because Huntsmen only make it into the news in the latest exceptional tale of daring heroism. Hell, they just paused production on the thirteenth Huntsman movie (The Huntsman: Return of the Red Huntress) due to the Fall. People eat that shit up, and it all builds towards this myth of every Huntsman being a practically unsleeping, perfectly kept, good-looking, hard-working and intelligent master warrior.
So imagine my surprise when I find out that most Huntsmen are goddamn lazy bastards.
I wake up around eight A.M, blinking tears out of my eyes, and rolling the crick out of my shoulder. Sleeping in a chair in the back corner of the fourth floor wasn't the worst place I've had to conk out, but it's still not the greatest.
The first thing I notice is that almost every other person in the building is still asleep. The fourth floor is the highest one, so I have a nice view down on three floors practically empty of people except for the ones that are in sleeping bags outside the makeshift shelters.
Civilians I get; if I lived a life as mind-numbing as theirs I'd try to be dreaming for as much of it as possible, too. However, most of the Huntsmen are still fucking snoozing, despite this being the morning of one of the most important operations in Vale history.
I rise carefully from my chair, sling Aurora and my backpack over my shoulders, and then stalk off in search of some breakfast.
Junior didn't give up all of his club to the Huntsmen- he kept the fourth floor for himself. Granted, that's because it's the smallest floor and mostly just consists of housing for himself and his more important employees.
I stride down the hallway towards the door that I remember being his, check the name on it to be sure, and then step up to grip the handle-
Only to stop when I hear a sound that I can only describe as an explosion of feathers behind me and then feel a hand on my shoulder. "Hey, kid, I, ah… wouldn't do that if I were you."
I lower my hand and turn around to see Qrow standing on the balcony behind me. How the fuck did he get up here? The entire floor was empty five seconds ago.
I swallow. "Why? Is Junior busy, or something?"
He gives the ghost of a grin. "You could say that."
I blink when I realize the implication, and then widen my eyes in surprise when I realize the implication of the implication. If Junior isn't alone in there, but he gave up on all women other than Goodwitch, then…
I slowly start to grin. "Holy shit. He actually did it."
Qrow grins just as wide. "No kidding."
"The man, the myth, the legend," I murmur, even as I turn away from the door to scan the other floors for possible food. The ration stockpile would work as a last resort, but…
Shit. I spot the kitchen, but it's on the first floor and likely manned by civilians. "Ah, son of a bitch."
"What?" Qrow asks.
I flinch, somehow having forgotten he was there. "Uh, they serving breakfast yet?"
"Should be."
"You…" I break out into another smile at the absurdity of this moment, but… if Junior can land Glynda Goodwitch, then I guess I can ask a favor of Qrow Branwen. "You mind grabbing me some?"
"Why?" Qrow asks, then hesitates. "Oh. They really that pissed at the Faunus right now?"
"I mean, yeah, but also… I might've picked a fight with Cardin Winchester yesterday." I gather the confidence to look him in the eye. After my run-in with Armstrong, and spending a week with CRDL, I'm a little more at ease around Huntsmen.
Of course, Qrow being Qrow, I'm still poised to hop the balcony the second his hand touches that broadsword handle.
Thankfully, the issue doesn't come up. He just gives another slow grin and nods. "Yeah, that'd do it. Heard he picked on some kids in my niece's class, so… sure, I'll grab you something. You can tell me what the hell happened to your face while you eat."
I blink and he's gone, already having leaped across to the third floor and rebounded down towards the second.
Wait, what did he mean, my face?
I run a hand along the long scar tracing down the left side of my face. Apparently Russel's Semblance can only do so much.
It isn't a particularly nasty thing- the skin seems to have healed fairly well, but there's a visible line starting above my left eyebrow and running straight down to underneath the side of my chin. It's pretty damn close to centered on my pupil, and together they make up an almost unbroken line stretching all the way down my face.
I feel like I should be angry, or upset, but… I already have enough scars, and most of them bring up far worse memories than this one will.
Qrow returns after a couple of minutes. I close and pocket my Scroll, smiling at the sight- and smell- of what would appear to be two breakfast burritos. "Are they making those for everyone?"
Qrow just grins and hands me mine. "Nah. Being a famous Huntsman has its perks, though."
"Thanks," I reply.
There's a pause as we both start to dig in, but eventually Qrow looks up from his food- "So, spill it, kid. The hell happened to your face? I don't remember that scar from- what, two weeks ago?"
"Thoo am' a 'af," I say through a mouthful of various breakfast ingredients, and then swallow. "Two and a half. It's, uh… you remember how I mentioned I picked a fight with Cardin Winchester?"
Qrow's expression darkens and I resist the small urge to get away from him. "You tellin' me he kept beating on you after you went Aura critical?"
"No, no," I clarify, raising my hands in a placating gesture. "It was… my fault. I shunted all my Aura into my sword, so when he hit me with the mace it broke from almost forty percent."
Qrow subsides back into the lazy, impassive expression. "Huh. Well, sorry about-"
"No, it's fine," I say.
A thought seems to occur to him, and he straightens a little. "Wait, so how long've you been here? A cut like that should've taken a long time to heal, but I don't remember seein' you around before today."
"Oh, I just got here yesterday. One of the guys on Cardin's team has a healing Semblance." I'm not sure if telling other people about someone Semblance is impolite, so I avoid naming any names.
We go back to eating in silence, and even after the food is gone, simply sitting in silence. Qrow nurses a flask of something strong and I take out my Scroll to read more of Rihfaris Alorn's biography.
It says that before the Great War, he was something called a Hunter- an older form of the Huntsmen and Huntresses.
Hunters didn't have licenses and weren't really regulated, apparently. There were still scattered primary combat schools where you could learn to fight, but no Academies. Hunters would align themselves with workshops, essentially guilds that specialized in their own kind of Dust- Alorn was with the Crow Workshop, known for use of Wind Dust.
Intrigued by the mention of Hunters, I start digging more into them, yet…
There's nothing more. I frown and skip around, checking through website after website. Nothing. As much history as there is on the Great War, on the kingdom structures before the Great War and ever since, mention of anything having to do with hunting the Grimm pre-war are few and far between, and wildly inconsistent with each other.
I frown and excuse myself from the table. Qrow doesn't seem to notice. Once I've stepped far enough away, I turn to Arnaut: "Arnaut, what were the Hunters?"
"The Hunters? You're referring to the prototypes for the current Huntsman and Huntress system, yes?"
"Yeah. Why isn't there more about them?"
Arnaut perks up. "I've spent a fair amount of time looking for the answer to that very question. Alorn is one of the only people left alive who remembers, and he always refused to talk about it. From what I could gather, it seems that King Oskri eradicated them after the Great War, replacing them with the four Academies."
"But why would he do that?"
"I don't know," Arnaut admits. "However… the stories that I could find mentioned them engaging in dark pursuits and channeling evil powers. To be honest, though, that isn't reliable enough to go off of, considering that those same kinds of stories will list the Faunus as half-demons and Dust as witchcraft. It could just be that people didn't understand Aura enough at the time and saw the Hunters as warlocks."
I nod slowly. "But, still. Even if they were evil, wouldn't they still be taught about? That Bloody Baron relative of yours that you mentioned sounds like a real monster, so if he wasn't dark enough to be erased from the history books, then…"
"I don't know," Arnaut repeats.
I lean back against the wall, mulling over the new information, for about ten seconds.
Then a hand settles on my shoulder, startling me into cursing and instinctively striking out with a palm.
Qrow easily catches the blow and gives me a curious look. "Jeez, kid, take it down a few pegs. That's the fourth time you almost killed me." I snort at that, and his curiosity deepens. "What, I say something funny?"
"No, it's just- 'almost killed you'." I shake my head. "You'd take my head off before my hand even touched my sword."
He narrows his eyes, and for a moment I worry I've made a mistake, but once again he seems to sigh and let go of whatever suspicions I aroused. "Way to flatter me, kid. Look, I figured since you just showed up, Glynda might not've patched you in." He raises his Scroll, which is flashing with an alert- a thirty minute warning for the start of the city-clearing operation. "Get ready to go."
"Thanks," I reply, glancing out over the balcony to see the various Huntsmen and Huntresses starting to get up and about. Given that the thirty minutes included time for all of them to eat, get changed, and prep their weapons, I'm in no real hurry at the moment.
After ten minutes pass, Arnaut says "You should probably speak to Glynda about your assignment."
"Huh?" I turn to him. "I thought this kind of thing was… I don't know, open season, or whatever."
"No," Arnaut replies, amused. "You'll likely be assigned to a specific region of the city."
I blurt out "Fuck" and hop the railing before making an Aura-empowered leap across the club's central gap, rolling off my landing down on the third floor and dashing over to Glynda.
It's only after I arrive in front of her that I see she's speaking with Qrow. They both turn to look at me, but Goodwitch is the first to speak. "Ah, Dreki, wasn't it? Qrow was just recounting his encounter with you a few weeks ago. He speaks highly of your fighting ability."
"You flatter me," I respond, and it's not just me being humble- back in Southfen I was a novice compared to my skills now; Arnaut hadn't really taught me anything of substance in the Way yet. Despite it only being a three week gap, I'm far more capable now than I was then.
However, I now need to turn my mind to considering how I can get myself assigned to the region with the crashed Atlas flagship in it.
That's the reason I'm agreeing to help deal with the Grimm- Neo found something, some clue in that flagship, that led her to Mistral. I need to know what it is.
Goodwitch pulls something up on her tablet. "At the request of Russel Thrush, I've placed you with team CRDL holding the King's Square choke point. Cardin Winchester will be using his Semblance to draw in Grimm, and after suffering massive damage after the crash of the Atlesian flagship, King's Square has only one remaining road leading into it. Cardin's Semblance will force most of the Grimm to charge through the narrow road, making it a perfect killing ground."
I nod, barely believing my luck in getting assigned literally on top of the fucking flagship.
"Now, while I'm confident that team CRDL will be able to hold the choke point well enough, your mobility would be extremely helpful in dealing with Grimm that find their way over the ruined buildings." She taps a few more things in, and then looks up to meet my eyes. "Best of luck."
"Thanks."
I yank Aurora's blade out of the skull of a Beowolf that was intrepid enough to scale a five-story office building, shift down into Spring Rains, and decapitate another two that were brave or stupid enough to follow the first one.
It's honestly pathetically easy, mostly because of Cardin's Semblance. I can slightly feel the effects of it from my spot on the rooftops nearly a hundred meters away from him, but the Grimm… to the Grimm, it's like a matador flag. They'll charge up buildings, run through walls, even trample each other to get to him- hell, the last two ignored me even as I was cutting their fucking heads off.
That's not to say I'm not starting to feel the fatigue. After two hours of continuous sprinting across the rough square of rooftops lining the edges of Kings' Square, I'm short of breath. However, every time I try to take a breather-
"Nevermore!" someone shouts, and I look up to see one approaching from my direction.
God damn it. Flying Grimm are the worst to deal with- I have to blow an obnoxious of Aura to jump up to their height, but if I miss them, I'm completely and utterly fucked... so I have to just wait for a near-perfect opportunity, all while dodging eighty million feathers.
"You know what," I mutter, "Fuck you." I level Aurora, preloaded with a Burn/Beam round, at the Nevermore and squeeze the trigger. The laser of bright orange heat streaks fifty meters and punches a hole right through the chest of the Nevermore.
Unfortunately, I'm only left more pissed as I realize that I just wasted a hundred Lien on that shot.
And to top things off, I don't even get five seconds of rest before hearing the scratching sounds of even more Beowolves climbing up the side of the building. When I lean over the edge, I see at least five of them making their way up.
I just channel Aura into Aurora's blade and then discharge it in a wide downward slash. The first two Grimm are cut right through, and the other three take glancing blows that dislodge them from the stone and send them tumbling down to their deaths anyway.
"Dreki! To the east!" Dove shouts, and I immediately turn to sprint across the rooftops, leap across the wide gap over the road blotted out by the veritable horde of Grimm being held back by Cardin, Sky, Dove, and a few other Huntsmen, and land without losing any momentum.
Sure enough, what Dove's echolocation picked up on was a King Taijutu worming its way up a half-collapsed apartment building. It doesn't seem to notice me right away, so I land at the crumbling edge of the roof and start concentrating Aura in Aurora's blade.
"Try keeping the Aura within the blade when you attack," Arnaut advises. "If you can use the Aura to empower the strike, but then bring it back into your body, you can avoid losing it."
I don't reply, simply waiting, and charging, and-
The Taijutu's white head pokes up over the edge and I immediately slash at it, begrudgingly trying Arnaut's recommendation of keeping the Aura within my blade.
Unfortunately, I keep too much of it in and my strike only goes a few inches deep into the Taijitu's skull. Doubly unfortunately, I can't even easily extricate the blade, wedged in as it is.
Fuck.
I meet the glowing red eyes of the Grimm, which is a colossal mistake because it means I don't notice the other end swinging around until it's too late to dodge.
The black jaw opens impossibly wide and snaps down on me, but I move on instinct at the last split second, letting go of the sword and bracing two hands upward to catch the large fangs before they can ravage my Aura.
The bottom half of the jaw digs through the ground at my feet, and I notice it too late to prevent it. All I can do is jump the fangs and slam two boots into the bottom of its mouth.
There's a fleeting instant where I realize my stupidity, suspended entirely off the ground, clinging to the front of the Grimm.
Then it sends its head slamming downwards, pounding my back through six floors of concrete and then slamming me against the ground hard enough to dent me in a good foot and a half.
I cough, the breath gone from my lungs. Even with my Aura braced in my back, protecting me as well as it could, I still lost damn near fifteen percent of it there-
Then the ground underneath me gives out and the Taijitu slams me down another three layers of parking lot. This time I don't brace my Aura as well and lose another twenty percent.
Fuck.
I lose my grip on the Taijitu as it rears back up to strike again, using my now-free arm to reach into my coat, snag a shard of Burn Dust, and stab it into my palm. As winded and dazed as I am, the pain is dulled considerably.
The Taijitu finally comes snapping down again, but I'm ready for it. In one smooth motion I roll out of the way and up onto my feet, right arm braced behind me as I concentrate Aura into it for a few moments while the Taijitu is dazed from slamming its head into the ground.
"Dreki, remember to conserve your-"
"Shut the fuck up!" I roar the last word and blast out another six percent of my Aura through the flame-enhanced fist.
The results are… dramatic. Although I didn't realize it, all the Aura training I've been doing to get more results from Aura expulsion yields dividends when combined with the Dust infusion. A massive explosion erupts from my fist, blasting the Taijitu's head into charred fragments.
Problem is, it doesn't stop there, also devastating several integral pillars and a good chunk of the floor above me.
"Well, that was petulant," Arnaut yawns. "Also, you might want to get out of here."
He's right. I look up to see the building already beginning to crumble further and don't waste any time, chaining a series of jumps together to ricochet off the jagged edges of the floors that I'd just been slammed through, tearing past the now-limp black half of the Taijitu.
I only get faster with each rebound, tearing out of the basement levels but still going up the broken floors of the building, eyes on my target: the other half of the Taijitu.
It doesn't notice me until I come flying out the rooftop at blinding speed, snatching the handle of Aurora as I tear past it and yanking it cleanly out of the Taijitu's skull.
For a moment I hang there in the air as my momentum peters out, but my hands are already loading a Gravity/Puncture round into Aurora's barrel, and I turn and fire it upwards in order to launch myself flying back downwards.
The Taijitu doesn't even have time to turn before I stab Aurora's blade down all the way through its head, discharging another five percent of my Aura in a strike that carries the skull down into the rooftop hard enough to shatter it-
And that's the last straw for the building, which was already beginning to fall apart after having a vertical hole torn all the way through it and its basement blown up. The whole thing collapses, me at the center still holding Aurora and standing atop the now-dead King Taijitu's skull. I feel a few seconds at the eye of a hurricane, rubble breaking apart and falling all around me, and then close my eyes at the massive wave of dust that billows out from underneath me.
When I reopen them, the entire building's fallen down into the parking garage and I'm standing on a slowly dissipating Grimm corpse at ground level.
Holy shit, that was fucking awesome. I let out a euphoric laugh, high on the roller coaster of near-death and victory.
A pack of Beowolves emerge from the dust and rubble, and I drop into Spring Clouds, still smiling. "Alright, who's dying first?"
Apparently, all of them, because a newcomer practically teleports into existence at the center of the Grimm, spinning a flaming staff around him ludicrously quickly and incinerating them all in the blink of an eye.
When he straightens up, things only get weirder- he's even taller than Cardin, and yet seems so thin that he probably weighs half as much, clad in a buttoned shirt and tie underneath a long brown greatcoat. He's got wildly unkempt green hair poking out from underneath his strange bowl helmet, and I can't read his eyes from under his round-rimmed glasses.
Then he darts up to me, crossing the twenty meter gap in a twentieth of a second, fast enough that his tailwind blows my hair back a bit when he stops.
When he speaks, it's in an equally rushed and slightly raspy voice, almost like he's afraid of someone cutting him off. "You! Miss Huntress- please refrain from any unnecessary property damage. We are here to reclaim this area, not to destroy it."
I have no clue how to respond to this- and yet, somehow things get even weirder when I hear the sound of an incredibly loud gunshot, followed by an Ursa Major's corpse flying out from around the corner.
In its wake comes another man, this one much shorter and much rounder, and also a bit older if his grey hair and mustache are any sign. The barrel on his combination battleaxe/blunderbuss is still smoking, and he's dressed in a burgundy and gold suit. "Come now, Barty, give the girl a bit of slack, won't you? Not many Huntresses her age can face a King Taijitu alone!"
'Barty' clicks something and his staff begins to change, shortening and consolidating into a thermos that he takes a long sip from. "One can never be too young to learn respect for public property."
The shorter man reaches us and hefts his weapon to rest over his shoulder, turning to face me first: "You should go back to guarding the flanks, miss. We can hold this front."
I nod slowly, treading a few steps backwards and then sprinting off back towards the far rooftop, which in my absence has been overrun by Grimm.
The joy returns to me as I tear right through the first few Beowolves that made it to the ground and take a flying leap to impale one climbing its way down the building's wall. I vault backwards off the wall, firing off another wide Aura Slash upwards that cleaves through four more climbing ones, land on the ground for a brief instant, and then blast out another surge of Aura through my feet that carries me all the way up the wall and onto the roof, cleaving through two more slowly climbing Beowolves along the way.
I drop into Spring Storm as I land, sizing up the Beowolf Alpha on the rooftop before me, and then Lightning Strike right into its head.
The battle dissolves back into a blur of opponents. My right arm is still in pain from the Dust infusion, but it's a manageable level; the fragment that I used was a pretty small one. I can't dwell on the injury, either, as I'm run ragged once again tearing across a combined almost three hundred meters of rooftop, dealing with various climbing and flying Grimm. Somewhere along the way I find a shadow of the calm that I do when fighting human opponents- a similar feeling, but more vicious, more animalistic, as I tear through so many Grimm that I lose count.
Gradually, the flood slows to a trickle, and for the first time I have a moment to stop and breathe, sheathing Aurora and dropping my hands down onto my knees, panting heavily.
"Dreki! Dodge!"
I instinctively obey Arnaut's panicked voice, leaping forward into a somersault just as I hear a loud crunch behind me.
When I rise into a crouch and turn around, I see a meter-long, needle-like javelin made of what appears to be pure white bone, punched nearly six inches deep in the ground where I'd been standing. A long black thread emerging from the back end of it leads back to another rooftop, but as I watch it goes taught and then a girl comes flying in along the end of it to land almost silently on the roof. She pulls the javelin out of the stone almost effortlessly, spinning it around her fingers in a display of incredible dexterity until it stops- pointed at me.
"Hmm." She tilts her head, and I drag my eyes off of the javelin to actually take in her appearance. She looks… wrong.
Her facial features make her seem even younger than me, maybe thirteen or fourteen, but she's so incredibly tall, easily six and a half feet. In fact, her whole body looks like someone took a normal girl and stretched them- she's painfully thin, with long, spindly arms and fingers wrapped around the bone javelin. Her skin is even paler than mine, the palest I've ever seen, and her hair and eyes are an extremely light, faded pink that only adds to her looking like all the colors have been drained from her body. She's wearing a long, pink, frilly dress that ends in a flower petal pattern near the bottom, as well as matching gloves that look straight out of some pre-war painting. Instead of shoes, she's just wearing long, thin, white stockings- pristine, somehow, despite the dust and debris all around.
"Thou art the murderer of Arnaut Silvas and the thief of Aureum Rupti," she says. Her dialect is ancient, from far before even the Great War- the kind that you'd only ever hear spoken in documentaries and historical dramas. "Judgement hath been passed for thine sins- wilt thou submit thine life?"
"No," I respond slowly, drawing Aurora back out and settling into Spring Storms.
When Arnaut speaks again, he's audibly shaken. "Dreki, do not even think about trying to fight her. Run for help- those two teachers might be able to hold her off for long enough that more Huntsmen could arrive."
What? "Who the hell is she?" I mutter to him, edging slightly to the side to try to find an avenue back towards the central plaza of Kings' Square.
"She's… technically a Huntress, but more of an assassin. She only takes dead-or-alive bounty jobs on humans and always opts to kill the targets. She's infamous for it; she's been doing it for almost eighty years as a freelance Huntress skipping around the kingdoms." Arnaut's tone is solemn in a way that shakes me. "She's even earned a nickname for it- Manhunter Marie."
"Armstrong-" I cut myself off, but Arnaut gets what I'm saying.
"Yes, Armstrong warned you- damn, I'd forgotten. We both did. Listen, Dreki, you cannot fight her. She was one of the original Hunters, you understand? Her Semblance has kept her alive for an unknowable number of years."
"I get it," I mutter, loading up Aura in my back leg, and then launching myself-
"Fuck!" I barely manage to shift myself out of the way of her thrown javelin, which streaks a few millimeters to the right of my head before slamming into the wall of a neighboring building.
After my ungraceful midair correction, I hurtle out past the edge of the building and fall five stories, slamming into the ground. I don't even get a moment to gather myself before a javelin nearly takes my head off again.
I once again barely manage a dodge, feeling the shattered fragments of pavement on my cheek as the weapon pounds into the ground beside me, before scrambling to my feet and taking off. If she only just threw her weapon, then I can afford to turn my back on her for a few seconds-
"Dreki, no!"
A second javelin shatters the remaining thirty percent of my Aura and impales my bicep, then makes a clicking sound as an array of thinner barbs come stabbing out of it and into the flesh of my arm. It now looks almost like a shaven pine tree, with a scattering of smaller, thinner, sharper limbs stabbing diagonally out and back along its length.
I tumble forward off my feet and then immediately stop short with an unbelievable amount of pain as the barbs on the needle yank me to a halt, and then proceed to slowly drag me back towards the girl.
Still in shock from the sudden, brutal wound, I dimly register the trail of blood on the ground behind me, and then look up to see Manhunter Marie smiling down at me. "More's the pity. I would have expected much greater resistance from she who had slain the Golden Guardian."
Her other needle comes stabbing down at my head- but is knocked aside by a gunshot, and then Marie does a backflip away from the flaming arc created by Barty's weapon.
She comes to a stop again in an oddly graceful pose, one leg slightly bent behind her with toes to the ground, before activating something and causing my arm to send out another scream of pain as the needles retract from her javelin. Then I almost black out when the javelin is ripped out of my arm and soars over into her waiting hand.
After catching it, she raises the thing to her mouth and licks off the blood from it.
Holy shit, I think, this girl is deranged.
She smiles, and her hair and eyes suddenly flush with a red color, going from light pink to a brilliant scarlet.
Arnaut is still looking at her with a deeply unsettled worry on his face. "I've encountered her a few times before. Her Semblance is to drain the life from people by stealing their blood- she absorbs their life force, prolonging her own lifetime and adding their Aura reserves to hers."
Barty levels his flaming torch at her. "What business do you have here, Miss Fuilii?"
"A contract has been opened for the one who struck down the Golden Guardian," she responds cordially, the picture of a polite little girl, while tossing a Scroll at him.
He catches it and looks it over, but frowns. "The contract stipulates 'live capture, with execution only if irrefutable proof has already been obtained'. Do you have evidence that this girl committed the crime?"
"She carries his blade," Marie responds, spinning one of her javelins around her hand before sheathing it away horizontally behind her waist.
"You'd need more proof than that to execute a child," the other, shorter man says, jogging up with his axe held at the ready. "Have you no shred of morality?"
Marie just smiles wider, snapping two new javelins out into her hands and holding them in a graceful stance, almost like a ballet dancer. "If thou wouldst stand obstructing the path of my lawful execution, then I shall simply have to claim two more lives."
There's a long pause, and then, without any warning whatsoever, both Barty and Marie disappear and reappear ten meters closer to one another, Marie with her arm outstretched in a fencing stab using her needle and Barty blocking the blow with the long shaft of his torch.
Marie draws a second needle so fast that I can't even track the movements. It flickers forward but stops short of hurting Barty- caught on the axe blade of the shorter man.
Marie giggles, a hollow sound. "Then thou hath made thine choices, and Widowmaker shall drink deep this day."
"Professor Port, I believe this young lady is in need of a lesson on respecting her elders," Barty says to his partner.
"I've never agreed with you more," Port replies.
And then the fight begins in earnest. They're so fast and skilled that I'd have trouble making out the details even if I were in perfect condition, so in my blood-deprived state I can barely catch a few glimpses- Marie cartwheeling out of the way of a fireball from Barty, parrying some sort of larger projectile from Port's gun by catching it on one of her threads and bouncing it up into a building where it explodes, tossing a javelin skyward and then following it up by throwing two more at Barty.
I only realize the danger when Arnaut shouts "Dreki! Above you!"
Oh. The upward-tossed javelin is arcing down towards me, but by this point I'm lying in a veritable puddle of lost blood and can barely even move.
Just before it'd slam into my chest, a green dagger knocks it out of the way. I look up to see Russel's worried face, and then feel his hands laid on my ravaged arm.
My vision has long since started to go black, but now my hearing fades, too- except there's this muted sound, almost like…
"-eki! Dreki! Can you hear me?"
"Huh?" I blink spots out of my eyes and then straighten up. "Holy shit… Holy shit. Holy shit!"
Russel winces as blood starts rapidly spreading on the sleeve of his shirt, but it gradually slows down and then stops. "Dreki, what the hell happened? Why are Professor Port and Oobleck fighting that girl?"
"She…" I try to gather my thoughts, but with my heart racing and adrenaline surging, it's a difficult task. "She, uh… she thinks I killed Arnaut. I guess maybe they thought someone murdered him in Vacuo, and since I had his sword, she's after me."
"Holy shit," Russel mutters. "She really fucked up your arm- what the hell happened to cause all those internal injuries?"
I don't respond, instead turning my eyes back to the fight, where Marie is pelting Oobleck with a barrage of needles one after the other, drawing each one back in by the thread when it's deflected. He can't mount any offense or even drop his guard for a second.
Suddenly, she yanks on a thread attached to one of the fallen, deflected needles near his feet, and it comes flicking upwards, wrapping around his forearm. She grin and gives a heave on the rope, discharging a visible flash of scarlet Aura and bringing Oobleck ripping forward towards the waiting needle in her other arm.
Port shouts and blasts her with his blunderbuss, but she yanks on another nearly nearly invisible thread leading to a wall behind her and safely pulls herself out of the way. Without her there to catch him, Oobleck hurtles by and slams through the wall of the building.
"Why dost thou struggle so?" she asks, in that same quiet voice-
And then shatters the windows of all five stories behind her as she flickers forward towards Port. The burly man fires his gun again, but in midair she yanks on the thread of a javelin stuck in the ground to off behind Port and to his right. The gunshot misses.
She's so fast that I can barely make out a streak of white and red as she lands with two feet against the javelin in the ground, bending it backwards, and then turns back into a blur that flies towards Port from behind. He turns to stop the strike, but she's already passed by him again, moving along his blind spot as he turned, and now stands behind his back once more.
For a second he stands there, unharmed and slightly confused.
Then she yanks in a sideways motion on the thread still attached to the javelin she jumped from and sweeps his feet out from under him, before pouncing into a two-handed downwards stab on his prone, airborne form-
But the blow is stopped, caught in the crook of the blade of Qrow's scythe.
The downwards force exerted, even through the needle, causes the ground beneath her and Qrow's feet to shatter radially.
"Alas, another lamb to the slaughter," she murmurs, only to tilt her head when she sees who it is. "Nay, a wretched, unlucky old crow."
Port regains his feet and treads slowly backwards. "Qrow, she's after the Faunus girl back there- accused her of murdering the Golden Guardian."
Both Qrow and Marie flicker backwards into readied stances facing one another.
"She have any evidence?" Qrow asks, without taking his eyes off of her.
"None except that the girl has the Guardian's sword," Oobleck responds, striding back towards the battle from the window. The three Vale Huntsmen spread out, forming a rough circle around her. "Now she's attempted murder on one Huntress-in-training and two Vale Huntsmen. We're obligated to bring her under arrest."
"The Treaty of Shade promises unhindered extradition of the accused," Marie says, still eerily calm as she spins a needle in each hand. "The law is with me."
"The Treaty of Shade promises unhindered extradition of those provable as guilty beyond reasonable doubt," Oobleck corrects. "Simple possession of his weapon is circumstantial evidence at best."
"She didn't steal it!" Russel calls out. When all four of the combatants turn to look at him, he deer-in-the-headlights for a moment, but steels himself quickly. "They're Pathists. He left her his sword so she could lift his Ancho… look, it's a religious thing."
"Thank you, Mr. Thrush." Oobleck nods and turns back around towards Marie. "There is your explanation. Now, everything so far can be chalked up to simple misunderstanding, but if you continue your efforts, we will be forced to bring you in for attempted murder."
Marie just stands there, spinning the needles faster and faster, until they're little more than circular white-tinted blurs around her hands…
And then stops and sheathes them behind her back in an instant, bowing deeply. "Then I must offer thee a sincere apology." When she rises, she meets my eyes directly in a way that makes my spine shiver. "I shall return to seek out evidence of the true culprit."
She knows.
Then she launches another needle up onto the rooftops and yanks herself off in a blur of pink, leaving everyone else to relax.
Russel's the first to talk. "Professor Oobleck, who was-"
"Doctor Oobleck," the green-haired man corrects. "And that was someone you hopefully won't ever encounter again."
"I swear she looks even younger now," Port mutters, stowing his weapon away behind his back. "Why does Ozpin allow that… creature to act within Vale?"
"You know Oz," Qrow grumbles. "Married to his own rules. She doesn't technically break any laws, so…"
I rise to my feet, rolling my shoulder. My arm feels fine, but my coat has a hole punched through it now that'll have to be stitched up. "Russel… Oobleck, Port, Qrow… thanks."
"Now, what kind of Huntsman would I be if I didn't step in to protect a fair young maiden from a monster," Port responds. Everything about the man seems… fatherly. Kind.
"I would recommend caution for the next few weeks, though," Oobleck advises. "I suspect her apology may not have been genuine."
I nod.
The fighting all around seems to be slowing down a bit, losing its urgency. Oobleck transforms his weapon back into a thermos and takes a long swig from it, then turns to Qrow: "How are things on Patch? Are Miss Rose and Miss Xiao Long recovering well?"
Qrow chuckles. "Believe it or not, Ruby already left with what was left of Pyrrha's team. They're on a boat to Mistral right now, actually. I just dropped in for this battle, and then I've gotta go keep an eye on 'em."
"And Miss Xiao Long?" Port asks. "An indomitable spirit like hers must be raring to get back out there!"
"Yang is…" Qrow's expression darkens. "It might be a little bit longer for her."
The mood sinks after that, but Port doesn't let the silence drag on: "Barty and I were actually planning to head to Patch after this, to catch up with Tai. We'll see if we can't cheer her up while we're there."
The Huntsmen say their goodbyes and stride off, not in any apparent hurry. The battle would seem to be winding down, the trickle of Grimm petering out into a few straggling droplets, which means…
Oh, shit. I whip my head around towards the wreck of the Atlesian flagship. Once the Huntsmen get on board, it'll be impossible for me to find anything out about Roman.
I start walking towards it. "Hey, Russel, I'll be back in a sec, okay?"
"Where are you…" he trails off as I break out into a sprint.
I vault up onto a broken chunk of the ship's wing, then another portion of the side, and then finally up onto the tilted, sloped roof. The entire thing is an absolute broken mess- the hull stuck together in larger pieces, but everything else blasted, crushed, or burned beyond recognition.
It's only once I reach an open hatchway that I realize I have no clue what I'm doing. "Arnaut, any chance you know where to find the video cameras on this thing?"
"The camera footage is undoubtedly destroyed," Arnaut replies. "However, there is something…" he falters, as if unsure whether to continue. "Are you… sure you want to proceed?"
"What are you talking about?" I ask, refusing to think about what he might be implying.
"What if… you find something that-"
"Stop." I shake my head. Roman… can't be dead. Roman's biggest skill is surviving- surviving with a whole kingdom of Huntsmen trying to catch him. If Qrow Branwen couldn't hunt him down, if Manhunter Marie couldn't hunt him down, then there's no way in hell that Little Red, a first-year Huntress, could have killed him. "I need to know if he… got captured."
Arnaut is clearly uneasy, but proceeds despite it. "Then… almost all flying vehicles have an Aura detector sealed off in a disaster box, so that officials can tell what went wrong if it crashes. That should have a record of the Auras of all the people on board the ship up until it hit the ground."
"Great. Where is it?"
"Typically towards the center of the ship," he says. "To lessen the likelihood of it being knocked off and lost."
Center of the ship, huh? I walk through twisting hallways, lit by the red glow of emergency lights- each one self-powered by Burn Dust, and remaining functional even after the ship loses power.
I pass by quite a few inactive robots, as well as a scattering of dead crew members, many of whom have the small but deadly wounds inflicted by Hush. It makes me grin- Neo, by herself, managed to bring down this entire ship and break Roman out. I wonder if this humiliation was enough to teach Atlas that brute force alone is rarely ever enough.
Eventually I reach another staircase and step down into what appears to be a central corridor, then follow that towards the rough middle of the ship, and eventually come across a spot where the floor has been shattered, twisted up around a large black box that punched through it.
"That's it," Arnaut says. "Now, typically you'd need the ship's master code to access it, so-"
"I have that," I respond, pulling out my Scroll and digging back through older conversations with Neo and Roman, until… bingo.
Roman sent both Neo and I the master code for the ship, back when the plan was for us both to come break him out. I might not have ended up being there for that plan, but the code should probably still be good.
"Let's see… 3 - S - D - 3 - W - W - 8 - F…" the code is excessively long, but once I plug it all in, the box lets out a little beep and then the top opens up to display a projected see-through diagram of the ship as a whole. Underneath is a number pad and a timestamp.
"Seems fairly self-explanatory," I mutter, typing in the date and time when Neo should've gotten on board, and then sit back to watch what happened.
Tiny people of muted colors- Auras that haven't yet been unlocked- walk around the ship, as well as several robots. As I watch, a smaller figure with the mixed pink and white of Neo's Aura steps out from the cargo hold and walks right by several others without incident- her Semblance letting her disguise her way through fights.
Once she gets closer to the prison block she starts the killing. With Neo, it might be merciless, but it's never savage or vicious- she moves from room to room, always finding the blind spot of the inhabitants and starting from there, usually getting two people through the heart or throat before anyone even realizes what she's doing.
She's killed twenty-two crewmen by the time she makes it to Roman's muted grey Aura, all without the alarm being tripped. In fact, the two of them make it to the bridge and take over the entire ship without a single robot ever being aware of an intruder- until the program is uploaded, and the robots turn their guns on the crewmen. In the space of a few seconds, almost every Aura on board except theirs is eradicated.
Some time passes without much happening, but then a deep rose-red figure comes hurtling in and slams into the roof of the ship. Little Red. Neo goes up to check and pauses for a bit, probably notifying Roman, and then Roman goes up to join her.
Roman can fight better than some Huntsmen despite being born unable to access his Aura, and Neo can fight better than most Huntsmen using hers. The fight is exactly what you'd expect- Little Red getting beaten around by the two of them and eventually almost getting launched off the ship, only catching herself on… something. Neo stalks forward to finish things, and then…
She goes flying off the edge.
What? I zoom in as much as I can and look again- Neo moves her hands in the distinctive motion of drawing the blade from Hush, points it down at Little Red, and then… Little Red reaches up and activates something. What could… Oh. She must have opened up the umbrella.
I lean back. So that's how Neo got knocked off- Little Red got lucky and tricked her. I know she lands fine; I'm not particularly worried about that, but I am curious what happens next.
Little Red climbs her way back up onto the deck, moving slowly enough that I'm pretty sure she's probably shouting some monologue about good always beating evil. Roman proceeds to completely hand her her own ass, knocking her down and beating on her with Melody (his cane; don't know why it's called that and never asked).
There's a brief lull where he rears back to deliver a final blow.
And then his Aura flickers out.
My heart stops for a moment. I wind back a few seconds in disbelief, trying to see what could possibly have happened- he's stalking forward, raises the hand that likely has the cane in it, and then… vanishes.
I look at Little Red and see her walking backwards with one arm outstretched defensively-
She had a rifle, I remember dimly. A high-caliber sniper rifle that could have… that would have killed Roman in one clean shot since he had no Aura.
That did kill Roman.
No.
Roman Torchwick, my savior, my teacher, my friend… the closest thing I ever had to a father, is dead.
"Dreki, listen to my voice," Arnaut warns. I can barely even hear his words over the sound of my own heartbeat in my ears, the repeated rush of blood and the pulsing red in my vision, getting darker with every beat.
Red like blood. Red like roses. Red like the Aura of the girl that just shattered my world.
Arnaut says something else. I'm so fucking far past hearing.
I can feel my bones reknitting, my arms stretching, my claws lengthening. The black traces through my veins, up my arms and legs, down my back. My thoughts fade even as a new, overpowering instinct emerges- to hunt, and to kill.
I can't care. Not anymore.
As black traces in at the edges of my vision, I stumble backwards into a blank void, alone. Always alone. Even when I find someone else, the world just rips them away from me.
The creature in my body starts to move, stalking back down the corridor, claws leaving long trails of ripped metal along the walls in its wake. It picks up on the Aura of a pair of Huntsmen searching the wreck, walking along a floor above, and swipes right through the metal roof. They drop in and are eviscerated before they can even hit the ground.
Lost in some dark corner of my mind, I curl up into a ball, and for the first time in nine years, allow myself to cry. Really cry, not from momentary pain, not from some fleeting disappointment, but letting violent sobs of grief wrack my frame.
In the corners of my vision, I see the Grimm look upwards from the two mangled corpses, sensing the Aura of even more people in the levels above it.
I thought… I thought that maybe if I just let one person in, and I made sure to pick a survivor, I wouldn't be made to regret it.
Fuck it. Let it all burn. If this is really what life is, if I'm never going to be able to let anyone in, then… I'm too tired to keep going.
I'm too tired of being alone.
I lie there in the darkness, surrendering to my grief, remembering everything Roman did for me- teaching me to steal, to hide, to survive, all out of his own kindness. Bringing Neo and I to clothing stores, to ice cream shops. Giving us all the thousand little things that we never had before. To Vale, he might have been a villain, but to me… to me, he was something irreplaceable.
And now he's gone, and I'm alone again.
The Grimm narrows in on three non-Huntsmen, technicians of some sort, that turn the corner and see it. Even as it charges them, its vision fades from my mind as I fully disconnect from my body, and the shadows overtake everything around me. I sit in a sea of nothing and no one.
Then, a light in the darkness- a glow like a sunrise coming over the horizon, banishing the night.
I look up to see Arnaut standing in the abyss with me.
"Come on, Dreki. Come back."
"No," I manage, my throat raw.
Arnaut doesn't snap or order me to stop. Instead, he just lets out a long, weary sigh and drops into a sitting position in front of me. "You know, Dreki… I don't blame you. If this is where you want things to end, I won't begrudge you that decision. But… if you do this, if you give in and let the Grimm out, and the Huntsmen kill you… what about Neo?"
"I don't ca-" the word catches in my throat. In that moment, it's almost like I can see her in front of me- the girl that saved me just as much as Roman did. The other person I allowed within my walls.
"Will you leave her alone, as so many people have left you?" Arnaut isn't accusatory, just… calm. Peaceful. Understanding. "If you do so, then you either acknowledge that what they did to you was right, or that, unlike you, Neo deserves it. Does she?"
Neo.
I hesitate, and in that moment of hesitation, my mind finds its way back to the memories that mean the most to me- back to before I met Roman, before I'd set foot in Vale. Back to the two years I spent without a penny on the streets of Mistral.
I think of the first time I saw Neo.
One day on the streets of Lower Mistral, I'd noticed her walking down the street in a pristine dress, head of pink hair clean, perfect. I'd taken her for an Upper Mistral girl coming down to the slums with her parents. Just one more beautiful thing far out of my reach.
Then I saw her steal the wallets off the couple and step back, and I realized that she wasn't like them- she was like me. But where I couldn't leave the shadows, she was able to move around in the open light. She did things I could never do- stole from the pockets of the arrogant Upper Mistral residents who had the conceit to try a day in the slums, of wealthy bankers coming down to promote their latest publicity stunt charity project, of the endless stream of politicians that promised a better life in airy terms and policies that I could never fully understand.
She might have been a petty street thief, but to me, she was like some kind of angel- a being I wished I could be, doing things I wished I could do. She never looked grimy or dirty; it was like she was above it all, above the muck and the grime and the poverty… above me.
I think of the time that Neo first saw me.
I'd developed a bit of a fascination with the thieving angel, and noticed a pattern in how and when she'd strike. The next time I was fairly sure of where her mark would be, I moved to the mouth of my alley to wait- and lo and behold, as if summoned, she appeared. On her way out, I caught her eyes- grey met pink and white. I was so surprised that I'd managed to reach her- to attract her notice- that I forgot to smile.
I kept trying. I'm not sure if it was the next time we noticed each other, or ten attempts later, but somewhere along the line, we developed… something. A bond, of sorts. After she'd pull off an especially impressive steal, I'd try to catch her eyes with my own and smile. After still more time, she'd look up after each victory and seek out the eyes of her mirror image, so like her and yet of the shadow while she was of the light.
I think of the time that I first helped Neo.
I'd taken to watching her heists, idolizing her more and more with each one, but for one of them she got extraordinarily unlucky and the sandwich she'd replaced with an illusion got ordered almost immediately. The trick fell apart and she fled down the alleyway I rested in, dropping the food along the way- but I managed to catch it and hide back behind some debris. The guard never caught her or me, but after ten minutes, I gathered up the courage to poke the garbage can that hadn't ever been there the last few weeks.
I can still vaguely remember the way the glass shattered into infinitely small, weightless fragments upon touch, and the terrified Neo it revealed- but much more powerful is the memory of how her face lit up when I offered her the food, and the way my own heart lit up when she gave half of it back to me.
I think of the time that Neo first helped me.
The deepest winters in Mistral can get deadly cold, so I found myself a heating vent to sleep under that worked, every night, for two weeks- until one night, I went to bed with it keeping me thawed, and woke up midway through the night with it off, already chilled to the bone. The cold and the wet seeped in, and the urge to go to sleep, to just let everything go and rest despite the probability of never waking up, was too much. Arms and legs with frozen clothes lining them refused to obey.
I fought sleep for what felt like an eternity until I saw her: my own personal angel, the girl who lived in the same dirt and grime as me but never let it touch her. I remember her bringing me a blanket- a tattered, ripped thing, but to me in that moment it was life itself- and climbing up the wall and into the window of the building so gracefully that I could have sworn she had wings. When she came back down, the heater had been turned back on, and after I succumbed to sleep, I woke up the next morning alive.
I think of the time that I saved Neo.
As clever as she was, as quick as she was, she made enough mistakes over a year and a half that, somehow, a group of city guards caught on that the string of robberies was all one person. They must have set a trap for her in one of the other areas she liked to hit- she slipped away, but they managed to get her with Aura suppressant cuffs. She couldn't use her Semblance, so she just ran, and ran, and ran, back to the alley of the dragon girl she'd grown to trust.
When I saw Neo that day, her Semblance suppressed, showing all the bumps and scrapes and dirt and bruises without any illusions to hide it all away… when she tripped on something and was too tired to do anything but crawl the rest of the way to hide behind me… and when the Guardsmen arrived in the alleyway… for the first time in two years, I surrendered to the rage. I let the demon out.
When I'd reduced eleven men to splinters of bone and blood, my fear remained- fear that my angel would now look upon me in horror, as anyone else would. Fear that, by fighting to keep Neo, I'd lost her anyway.
But when I turned, she did not run. She looked upon me not with hate, nor fear, nor disgust, nor any other emotion that would feed the demon- she looked upon me with gratitude. With friendship. Absent the rage, the demon fell away and left only me behind.
For the first time, my angel stayed. She remained with me for two days, sharing the food she stole and helping me to bandage the leg that I'd broken while fighting for her.
And finally, I think of the time that Neo saved me.
One day, only a few days after she'd started helping me, she left for food and did not return. Doubt turned to worry, worry to fear, fear to panic, but I could not search for her with my leg broken, so I took the only option I had and tried to have faith in my thieving angel.
And three days after she'd disappeared, when I was close to losing hope altogether, she returned, alongside a tall, redheaded man far too well dressed for the slums. There was some story- she'd tried to steal from him, and he'd seen the potential in her and offered her a place at his side- but I couldn't care less about the details. All I cared about was that this girl was not like the others. She'd returned to me. She didn't leave me alone.
When I saw my angel come back, pristine once more and offering me her hand to take me to a better life… for the first time in five years, I was truly happy.
I… have to protect Neo.
The memories fade away, leaving me with Arnaut once more. I wipe my tears and straighten up, stepping back out of the darkness, out towards the light- towards Neo.
The Grimm falters, screeches. When I look up to see through its eyes, I watch as a Huntsman's Aura flickers away into nothingness, chest ripped open by four twelve-inch claws. The corpse falls to the floor beside two others- the monster already found more prey.
A fourth Huntsmen is fleeing away down the corridor, but the Grimm simply raises an arm, and after a momentary pause, the black head of a King Taijutu erupts out from the palm and tears off in pursuit. It catches the Huntsmen in a vice-like bite, teeth grinding and gnashing against the Aura until it, too, breaks, and the Huntsmen is bit nearly in half.
I need to stop this, I think, sprinting forward towards the light.
Unwilling to be locked away again, the monster fights. It charges down the flickering hallway, ripping a huge chunk of the wall and floor open to move towards the next-closest Aura- one that I recognize, one that I've felt.
The claws rip through another bulkhead and start to swipe at the final wall, so close to the lime green Aura on the other side-
But they falter, fade, dissolve away into dust before they can impact the metal, because I've returned to my body.
My vision returns quickly, as do my other senses. The black begins to flicker away, washed from my veins with each new beat of my heart. My scales shift from white to grey, my claws retract, my arms snap back into shape, and red glow fades from my eyes and from my vision.
Finally, it's just me standing there in the room. I kick open a damaged door and step out into the hallway, turning to see a startled, deeply confused Russel Thrush.
"Oh, Dreki. I was looking for you- they said it's done, the stragglers all got cleaned up."
"Is that so?" I ask in a hollow voice, then realize that this is a decent opportunity to lie and cover my tracks: "There was a nasty Grimm holed up down there, it got a few Huntsmen before we could take it down."
Russel frowns. "Is anyone injured?"
"No," I reply, without the energy to conjure any emotion. Whatever kinship I found with him before is now poisoned by my new purpose, killed by my murder of his comrades, and finally buried by this lie. "At least nine killed though."
"Holy- nine?" Russel peers over my shoulder as if worried the Grimm will emerge, blissfully unaware that it's standing right in front of him. Then his gaze snaps back and focuses on the left side of my face. "What… happened to your eye?"
"What do you mean?" I ask.
"Your eye," he repeats, tapping his own left eye.
I bring out my Scroll and turn the camera back toward my face.
Huh. The Grimm hasn't fully gone yet. My left eye has shifted, sclera turned black and iris now a slightly glowing red that pulses in time with my heartbeat. Try as I might, thinking as nice of thoughts as I can, and yet it won't go away. Shit. "Just… forget about it," I say, too tired to bother with another lie.
"Does it have to do with your Semblance?" Russel asks.
"Forget about it," I reiterate, this time with a hint of danger in my voice- then I remember why I even bothered talking to him: "Who's the red girl, your classmate? Younger than normal? Uses a scythe, I think?"
"Oh, uh…" Russel frowns. "Ruby Rose?"
"Ruby Rose," I repeat. "Thanks." With the name in hand, I shoulder my way past him down the corridor, expression still flat and emotionless.
He seems to sense that something has changed. "Why… did you ask about Ruby?"
"Don't worry about it," I growl, not even slowing down.
"Dreki, where…" he trails off. "Are you still…"
I pause briefly, then half-turn my head back over my shoulder, not quite meeting his eyes. "Russel, just… try to forget about me, alright? It's safest for everyone." There's a threat implicit in the way I growl out the last word.
Then I make an Aura-enhanced leap up through a sparking gap in the ceiling before he has a chance to reply.
Hours later, as I tread along the route out from Vale, Arnaut finally speaks. "Dreki, I'm… sorry. About what happened to Roman-"
"Don't." I stop and turn to meet his eyes, willing my intensity on the subject to show as I continue speaking: "Don't mention him. Understand?"
"But-"
"No. Do you want to know how I avoid what just happened there, Arnaut? How I keep that thing bottled up inside me? It's by taking all the memories that bring it out, and never fucking thinking of them. So from today on, I'm forgetting about Roman's existence." Even saying the name makes my heart ache and my blood boil now. "I can't fucking grieve for my own… for a man who was like my..." father, I think, but can't make myself say.
Not yet, at least. Thinking about him being alive fills me with grief for what I lost, but thinking about him being dead fills me with rage, and with the memory of that blood-red Aura, that upraised arm, that mental image of Roman's life being ended in the blink of an eye.
Ruby Rose. There's a hatred for her that I just can't stifle- it seeps out, keeping my right eye trapped in its Grimm state indefinitely. When I think about Roman being dead because of her, and how she's probably being heralded as a hero for what she did, cheered on, rewarded for ending the life of the man closest to me-
I shake the thoughts from my mind once more. The wound is still too raw, reopened every time I think about Little Red. Maybe once she's gone, the rage will fade, and I might be able to mourn in peace.
But first things first: I need to find Neo in Mistral.
(A/N) The show doesn't ever talk about specifics of how the Grimm were dealt with before the Great War, so I'm taking liberties with that. Also, when referring to the modern people trained to fight Grimm, it only refers to them as Huntsmen or Huntresses, so I'm using the name Hunters to denote a simpler, primitive version of the more eloquent current system.
Speaking of Hunters: Manhunter Marie is based upon the American folk story of Bloody Mary, a witch who consumes the blood of children to prolong her own youth (get it?). Her first name doesn't need to follow the color naming rule because she was born long, long before the Great War, but her family name- Fuilii- is from the Gaelic 'Fuil' meaning blood or bloody. A good character motif for her would probably be the Nui Harime theme from Kill la Kill.
RWBY shies away from one anime trope, and that's the wide power gaps. The top tier fighters we've seen so far- Tyrian, Hazel, Qrow, the Maidens- are just... not that far above where our core cast is. I understand that the current team RWBY and JNOR need to be able to challenge upper-tier fighters to have agency, but it contributes to my feeling that the world is limited and small. An example from Volume 7 would be that RWBY, four Huntresses who only spent one year training at Beacon can then go on to spend one additional year on vacation... and then proceed to dumpster Atlas's cream of the crop. I understand that it makes decent sense in-universe, but that in and of itself is a problem; if Vine and Elm and Harriet are as strong as Huntsmen get, then... there's nowhere left to grow.
Part of my attempt to change that is mostly in 'buffing' the best Huntsmen and Huntresses. Qrow is someone who can walk into Grimm-infested lands alone and come out unscathed, someone who can fight off Salem's second-in-command (Cinder) better than a fully-fledged Fall Maiden, so I'm going to do my best to significantly widen the gap between him and the bottom-tier Huntsmen. People like him and Manhunter Marie are so far above Dreki that they'd kill her in a heartbeat.
The inclusion of Port and Oobleck (who in the power scaling of this fic are some of the stronger Huntsmen in Vale) is to prevent said murdering of the main character, to set up later plot points, and to give a solid timestamp: they're just leaving for the visit to Patch that snaps Yang out of her depressed shell.