(A/N) Doing some art of Wlan, then finishing up writing the last chapter for this arc. It should be out by Tuesday night, hopefully.
With the Branwen Tribe and Manhunter Marie both off my back, the way to Mistral City is quite a bit less eventful than the rest of my time in the kingdom has been.
I'd even call the thirty-one day hike boring if it weren't through some of the most stunning terrain I've ever seen. The beaches on the southern shores of Lake Matsu are few and far between- for most of the trip, sheer cliffs of rock drop down into the perfect blue waters, with all kinds of flora growing atop and along them. There's a ton of islands, but they too jut tens to hundreds of meters almost straight up before levelling off into miniature forests.
The road is overgrown as well. Fear of the Branwen Tribe coupled with it being far too winding and steep for commercial vehicle use have left it in relative disuse. Moss and vines cover the chipped gravel walkway, which often breaks for long, unreliable-looking rope bridges across chasms between little inlets of the lake.
I focus on Aura exercises. The ground is too treacherous for swordsmanship practice, and the stunning vistas are apparently helpful to the calm, meditative nature of Aura strengthening.
"Alorn always said Mistral was the most beautiful of the Kingdoms," Arnaut muses one day.
"Meh," I say, more to stoke a conversation than anything else.
"Vacuo is… Vacuo," Arnaut continues. "And Vale is pleasant, but boring. Alorn always claimed that only Mistral and the Dustlands could compete-"
"The dust wastes?" I ask incredulously. The seas of dead grey dust and rock, marred only by built-up Grimm ash and broken industrial wrecks, were practically the polar opposite of the beautiful nature scenery sweeping all around us.
"No. Before the Ash Knight ruined-"
"The Ash Knight?" I ask again, testing a wooden plank of yet another shaky bridge with my foot before proceeding onto it.
Arnaut goes quiet, eyes clouding with an ancient sort of sadness. "An old enemy of Alorn's from the war. He's… responsible for the current state of the Dustlands."
A mournful darkness enters him, and we don't talk for a while after that.
After a thirty-one day hike, passing through twelve small fishing villages, I crest one final mountain to look down into the Raion Valley- a hollow carved in the intersection of three larger mountain ranges, with the titanic Mount Raion looming at the very center, and built atop the mountain itself, the city of Mistral.
As with all four of the Kingdoms' capital cities, it's monstrously large; the mountain stretches nearly twelve kilometers into the air, and easily twelve wide at the base. The city itself branches out even further still at ground level to fill up almost the entire valley with houses and farming fields.
Like the rest of the kingdom so far, it's a beautiful sight- but I know all too well how much of a facade the pretty view is.
Directly before me is the Wall, a relic from the time where it was the absolute peak of military technology. Stretching for hundreds of kilometers all around the peaks of the mountains to fully encircle the valley, it's a marvel to be sure, but an ancient, derelict one. Once manned by legions of guards, it now lies abandoned and falling apart. The place where it crosses the road before me is covered in rubble that might have once been an archway.
After that final obstacle, the path grows more easily navigable. Rice paddies line the edges of the mountains on either side of me as I tread my way down, lying fallow for the season after being harvested only a few months prior. Snow builds up along the oddly geometric steps of the fields and along the gravel road before me. The slight slicking of the steep road might have proven problematic for an average person, but I've taken to keeping my passive Aura amplification on almost all the time, and my balance and coordination are far above average.
Eventually I reach the bottom of the foothills and find myself in a level plain of first more fields of various types of grain and foods, and then housing.
I'm coming from the west, so this is West Outer Mistral- one of the city's seven sectors, with the others being North, East, and South Outer Mistral, which hold most of the homes for the people of the city and the farming that keeps everyone fed. Then there's Lower Mistral, the industrial slums, Central Mistral, the bulk of the city, and finally Upper Mistral, home of the wealthy and Haven Academy.
As I stalk through the ramshackle and dilapidated houses of the suburbs, I start drawing eyes once more. Most ignore me, but some are put off enough to bring in their children or draw closed their shutters. I'm far from disappointed- I already hate this city, so my expectations weren't exactly high.
Now that I'm in the city, I slow to a walking pace, unwilling to suffer the extra attention that sprinting might draw. The city guards of Lower Mistral are… unpredictable, and avoiding any and all interaction with them whenever possible is my best bet.
After two hours, I reach the Lion's Run, the massive river that connects Mistral City's waterfall- and its factories- to Lake Matsu. It's still not frozen over, too large for the relatively mild winters of Mistral to threaten, and there aren't many footpaths across the hundred-meter divide. The people in charge of Mistral like to keep the river clear for the trading and shipping boats, regardless of the inconvenience to ordinary citizens.
Still, the main road I'm walking does rise into an ancient, ornate bridge carved with depictions of lions. It doesn't have any lanes for cars. Not that anyone wealthy enough to afford the Dust necessary for a car would be caught dead down here.
With my hood up, I melt into the mass of people walking both ways along the bridge. It's the middle of the work day, so most of the people around me are the young, the elderly, or housewives doing the shopping. The workers themselves will already have risen with the dawn and filed onto the mass public transit railways leading into the factories- a rare instance of the Council doing something for the people, and even then it's only because it increases economic efficiency.
When I reach the far bank, there's a scream that immediately draws my gaze downwards.
A middle-aged woman has her back to a wall, terrified by a half-alligator, half-turtle Grimm with a long sideways-opening mouth that even now is gnawing away on the metal railing keeping the pedestrian footpath separate from the Lion's Run waters. A memory of Arnaut's rises to mind with the creature's name scribbled on a chalkboard in some lesson: it's called a Kappa.
I make a snap judgement to ignore it. With the safety railing there, the woman should just be able to run away, and city guard should show up soon enough to prevent the Grimm from-
The railing breaks far too quickly, and a child's voice joins the woman's. I whip my head around to see that she'd been holding a young daughter behind her.
The Razormaw's head shoots forward, wide jaws snapping snaggled teeth inwards from both sides to crush the woman.
Before it can, I land with a falling blacksmith blow, chopping through its jaws in one smooth strike. They turn to dark dust that pelts the woman and her child instead of savaging them.
The Kappa's eyes widen in pain and it emits a gurgling screech, unable to even hiss with the front three-quarters of its head gone.
I end its suffering with another quick slash to its neck. The body falls away into the depths of the river as the head lands and dissolves before me, a single curl of dark mist making its way into me- and causing my Grimm eye to pulse a little.
Confused, I glance towards the safety railing and realize why it shattered so quickly- it's practically already broken, falling apart at the seams and completely rusted over. The funds to fix it must have instead gone to another fucking public art installation in Upper Mistral.
When I turn around, a crowd has gathered at the railing of the bridge, which gives a scattered round of applause. The woman looks at me with an overwhelming gratitude. "Th- Thank you, Huntress."
"Don't mention it," I murmur, snapping Aurora back into its sheath and walking off. Thankfully, none of the onlookers pursue me or ask me any annoying questions.
The Lion's Run serves as an unofficial divider of sorts between Outer Mistral and Lower Mistral, and now that I'm firmly back in the place I spent two years in after leaving Atlas, the hate begins to curl up within me like some parasite gnawing on my organs.
My rage is manageable when I see the homeless lining the streets, covered in the same grime as everything around here. Most of them are missing something- a limb, or part of their sanity, it doesn't much matter. Odds are they lost whatever it was to the factories and got discharged afterwards for no longer being useful to the Upper Mistral profit margins.
My rage is still manageable when I look up to the Central Mistral shops and homes, a pretty little facade covering the grim truth of this city. Central Mistral is a place for bureaucrats and managers, the middlemen of the grand system, standing on the heads of the downtrodden workers.
But where my rage bucks, where it threatens to rip its way out of me, where it brings a red glow to my left eye that penetrates even the double-layered bandages, is when I look up at Upper Mistral. At the mansions and statues, grand, ornate symbols of the power of the ruling class. The ones who stand both figuratively and literally atop the shit heap, feasting on the profits of their industry while the cockroaches below settle for scraps.
Arnaut seems to read my mind and sighs. At first I think he's going to try to convince me to look on the bright side, but… he doesn't.
"I'd heard of the problems, but I'd never realized it was this bad."
I don't respond, eyes trained firmly on the alley wall, pointedly not looking up at the symbol of all I grew to despise with every fiber of my being while starving on these streets.
Arnaut seems uncomfortable in the silence, and tries to fill it with words: "Mistral always had the strongest class divisions of any kingdom, except perhaps Atlas. From the very beginning, Upper Mistral was the seat of political, social, and economic power in the kingdom, while Central Mistral was originally the place for tradesmen and artists. However, in the wake of the Great War, when the cities were expanding, and industry spread to Mistral… the low-rung workers began to find housing in Outer Mistral, while Central Mistral expanded to include the middle class of the city. Unfortunately, that left…"
"Lower Mistral," I manage, voice kept calm and measured.
Lower Mistral is built around the base of the mountain itself, all tightly packed housing between the massive factories. The overpopulation, combined with the discovery of Dust reserves beneath the feet of the mountain, lead to it being built downwards over the years, a deeper and deeper pit of towering industrial spires crisscrossed by streets and alleys and tenements.
Its populations is made up of all the people who were desperate enough to come in from Outer Mistral but couldn't make it, all the people born in Lower Mistral and couldn't escape it, and all the people who failed out of Central Mistral, trapped in one thick slum of failure, poverty, and crime. I can't even count the number of times I barely escaped being snatched by brothel recruiters, human traffickers, policemen looking to snag any suspicious-looking kid to frame and close the lid on whatever case they were meant to actually be working, or some of the darker types that would simply make unlucky kids disappear.
One of those aforementioned unlucky kids comes stealthily from the darkness of the alleyway to my right. They're smart, and quiet- without my Grimm Eye to sense their Aura, they might've even made it to me without my noticing.
But notice I do, and turn to snap my gaze onto a grimy little girl with grey hair, the shade of which is impossible to determine through the filth matting it to her head. She's looking at me with wide eyes, irises as black as her pupils giving her a blank sort of stare.
The Grimm eye sees the circular trail of unactivated brown Aura looping around her waist beneath a muddy, patched coat. She's a Faunus. With a tail that long and thin, I'd assume a mouse Faunus, to be specific.
"What do you want, kid?" I ask, raising my one visible eyebrow.
She's still frozen, trembling, eyes wide. There's a deep-rooted fear there that almost hurts for me to see.
"Look, kid, I'm not gonna hurt you," I say, squatting down so our eyes meet. "You were probably gonna rob me, but it didn't work out, so… no hard feelings?"
She makes a little squeaking noise, pauses for another few seconds, and then swallows. "You're… are you the Grimm Guardian?"
There's that name again. I frown. "Maybe."
She wrinkles her brow. "What's that mean?"
"It means…" I trail off, not sure what I'm doing talking to this girl. I glance back towards the alley mouth, but hesitate again- the kid is painfully thin and trembling slightly, obviously hungry, and if she's out here on the streets, it means she doesn't have anyone else to help her.
It's late now, close enough to dinnertime. I sigh. "Hey, kid. You want to go get something to eat?"
She nods furiously, quickly enough that I wonder if I've just been manipulated.
It turns out that her name is Nezumi, and her mom passed away early enough that she doesn't know what caused it. Her dad is working at the moment, and even though he apparently left strict instructions for her to stay at home, she's taken it as her opportunity to roam the streets.
"It's good sneaking practice," she tells me, a mischievous little gleam in her eye.
When I ask her what she's practicing for, she tells me that she's going to try for a spot in Sanctum, one of Mistral's four primary combat schools and the one inside Mistral City itself.
"She's not very likely to make it," Arnaut says in a matter-of-fact way. My heart darkens at the thought. "Not only because of the physical requirements, but Sanctum is notorious for choosing based more on birth than on personal merit."
Thinking about this girl's dreams being crushed by this city draws the Grimm, so I pivot. "So, Nezumi, who's this 'Grimm Guardian' you mentioned?" That question is the line I feed myself as to why I'm here in a restaurant with her, both of us digging into plates of questionably sourced fish. Regardless of origin, it tastes delicious.
She finishes chewing her way through a massive bite, swallows, and then answers: "She's the coolest! Everybody's talking about her beating a buncha Grimm and a Mary lady and even the Braunnen Tribe!"
I don't bother correcting her on the names.
"But she's a Faunus, you know?" At this, Nezumi leans in a bit and drops into a conspiratorial whisper. "On the news they kept saying she was fake at first… but now they're saying she's real, but she's a human, but I know you're a Faunus." The little girl nods sagely.
I allow a ghost of a smile to cross my face. "Oh, really?"
"Yeah, miss! You're the-"
I raise a finger to my lips and she quiets instantly, dropping from a heightened, energetic state to obedient calm far faster than I expected. "Okay," I say, doing my best to think over how I'm going to deal with this obnoxious spreading folk tale about me, with the first step being Nezumi: "Don't tell anyone you met me, okay?"
She nods.
The man behind the counter places a bill in front of me, and I slide enough plus a fair tip back to him in return. "Hey, Nezumi? If you're gonna try for a combat school, try…"
Arnaut brightens up. "Oasis and Cove both have fairly good reputations."
"Oasis or Cove," I finish, then glance around the restaurant. No one appears to be paying me any attention whatsoever, so I reach into my coat and produce a 100-Lien card, surreptitiously sliding into Nezumi's hand.
Her eyes widen when she sees it but I once again signal her to stay silent.
"Don't tell anyone about that," I whisper. "You can use it to pay for transportation to the trials for Oasis or Cove Academy, alright?"
Nezumi's grin has more than a few stained teeth, but it fills me with a bright feeling lighter than snow. Before I can react she flickers forward to wrap my waist in a hug, murmurs "Thanks, miss," and then scampers off.
From the moment she leaves, my smile fades gradually into a scowl, until I walk out of the doorway almost as downcast as I was before she showed up.
My mood is not improved by Arnaut speaking in a tone I haven't heard from him in months. "I've found the line you won't cross," he announces, a spot of satisfaction in his tone.
"Whatever you say," I monotone, making it very clear that I have zero interest in this conversation.
"It's children, isn't it?"
My composure cracks.
He pounces on the opportunity. "I knew it. You have a soft spot for children, don't you? You didn't have to help that girl, nor did you have to save the mother and daughter earlier. And even before, in Luskhan, in Southfen, outside Tsubaki… you have no empathy for adults, but children…"
"You're reading too much into it," I protest weakly. The words are hollow and we both know it.
Arnaut's eyes flicker oddly over to my tail and then back up to meet mine. "Your actions speak a lot louder than your words, Dreki."
I bite my lip, annoyed by his insistence, and don't respond, hoping that the line of questioning will simply die out on its own.
"It speaks to the fact that there is some good inside you," he continues.
My eyes widen slightly. "Oh, fuck, Arnaut, I thought we were past this-"
"What did Roman Torchwick do to you?" he asks, and the fury threatens to boil over.
"Roman Torchwick only ever gave me a safe place to sleep and enough food to eat, which is a hell of a lot fucking more than your Kingdoms ever did for-"
"No," Arnaut sighs, and the interruption pisses me off more than I let show, but still not even close to as much as what he says next. "I'm asking what he did to you to take away your faith in humanity? What did he do to destroy your innocence?"
The implication he's making, about the one person in the entire world to have shown me anything resembling kindness, makes my blood boil, and before I can stop myself my floodgate breaks and the pent-up rage comes pouring out.
"You want to know what the fuck 'ruined' me, Arnaut? Do you?" I sweep an arm towards the grungy city that now surrounds us on all sides, sidestepping into an alleyway to get out of earshot of the passers by. "It sure as hell wasn't Roman, and it wasn't Salem, and it wasn't the fucking Grimm. It was living outside of whatever pretty little bubble you've been stuck in for forty years. Living in Lower Mistral.
"Tell me, Arnaut, have you ever slept next to a dumpster that you just scraped a meal out of, with your stomach grumbling because you didn't get enough food? Lying there two feet underneath a window, where you can hear another kid getting their third helping of dinner because they were born to the right parents at the right time?" Arnaut opens his mouth, but I'm not done. "Have you tried begging, but been ignored while watching kids that look more normal- because they have eyes that look the right way, because they don't have fangs and horns and scales- get showered with enough money to buy their fourth change of clothing while you've been in your only set for two weeks?
"Tell me, Arnaut, from up there on your high fucking horse, have you ever slept next to another kid who's too sick to walk, but can't go to the hospital because he's gotten one too many petty crimes logged into the Mistral police system? Have you listened to someone slowly die over four hours, too scared to help him because you might get sick too, but too tired to comb over the city for another spot warm enough to sleep in without freezing to death? Have you robbed a diseased corpse because it's your best chance to get a decent meal, but still been turned away from a convenience store for looking a bit too much like every other starving, out-of-options Faunus kid who decided to try robbing the place after their parents didn't come back from the factories?"
Arnaut starts to reply again, but I roll right over him, taking a perverse sort of enjoyment from finally spitting out what I've been bottling up for years. "Trust me, Arnaut, you don't fucking want me to start to think about joining your moronic fucking crusade against the Grimm, because if I have to pick a side, it's gonna be the one that wants to burn this whole fucking shit heap of a world to the ground and try to make something new out of the ashes. You Huntsmen are so sure that you're fighting to protect the innocent, to secure a better future? That's horseshit. Salem doesn't work people to death in these factories. Salem doesn't funnel Mistral's social funding into her pockets while children starve on the streets. Salem hasn't enslaved the Faunus for fucking millenia. Salem didn't hang my fath-"
I stop myself, but the damage is done.
Arnaut's eyes widen. "What did you say about your father?"
I draw in a long, shuddering breath, shutting my mind down before it steps past the point of no return. "I said nothing, Arnaut. And this time, I mean that." I add with a flare of my Grimm eye.
He seems to get the message, quieting, but not without a fair amount of restrained defiance that worries me.
I fucked up. Now that I mentioned that, I know he's not going to let it go- and unlike everything else I've told him, delving into my first ten years of life is something I cannot do.
But… maybe that isn't something I need to keep secret. "Arnaut, I…"
He waits patiently.
"Arnaut, you know how the other times I asked you to stop pressing me, you did? And it turned out alright?"
"Yes." There isn't even a trace of insincerity in his nod.
"Well…" I bit my lip, reopening the scar again. The sudden flicker of pain helps sharpen my mind, focusing it. "This time it's different. I… can't think about this, alright? I just can't. My Semblance will…"
There's still awkwardness left in me when I expose myself like this, but… less. If Roman and- If Neo is like my family, Arnaut is a friend, and I'm able to be a little bit more open with him after four months of time spent alongside him. I meet his eyes. They're sad, but don't judge me.
"The time before I was ten is… off limits, alright? Even if you… I don't know, think it'll be for the best for me, it won't. And it definitely won't be for anyone around me when I lose it."
Arnaut's silent this time, for a surprisingly long stretch, as if really thinking it over rather than just insincerely agreeing in the moment.
Before he can respond, a newcomer drops down into the end of the alleyway. I whip my head over to see who it is-
And the previous conversation is instantly wiped from my mind, because Adam fucking Taurus of the Vale White Fang is crouched back there and panting like he's just run a marathon.
I'm so taken aback that I genuinely have no clue what to do. Arnaut is looking at Adam like some kind of exceptionally disgusting sewer creature that just appeared out of his toilet- equal parts horror, curiosity, and confusion.
"What in the name of the Twin Gods-"
"Are you doing here?" I murmur, shooting another glance at the mouth of the alleyway to make sure this isn't some sort of elaborate trap before stepping up to Adam.
When he senses my approach he snaps upright with a hand back slightly behind him, upper face covered by that Grimm mask of his but the lower half twisted in rage.
Once he recognizes me, he relaxes, although his face doesn't lose the derision as he spits at his feet. "You."
"Adam," I mutter in response, before finally gathering enough of my wits to formulate a coherent sentence: "What the fuck are you doing here?"
"Dealing with Haven Academy," he sneers, a flicker of pride appearing before his rage surges once more and replaces it. "I was about to make them pay- but then fucking Blake had to go and ruin things. Again."
His Aura swells enough that I almost take a step back- it's a bright, vibrant, furious red, and he has almost as much of it as Arnaut did. "What are you talking about- wait, you were going to destroy another Huntsman Academy?"
Adam's hand drops to his hilt and mine flickers up to Aurora's in response, but once again his rage redirects towards something… someone else. "That bitch… she knew I was coming. Ilia betrayed me… did Fennec and Corsac…? No, they wouldn't."
I can't read his eyes, but I sense they must be wild beneath the mask.
He turns and leans with one palm pressed up against the wall, still muttering to himself. "Those fucking cowards wouldn't even… and Ghira, he took the humans' side? And the fucking sheep in Menagerie followed him!?"
Watching him right now is like watching a helicopter spinning out of control. I gently try to prod him, to figure out what the hell happened- if he succeeded in destroying the Academy's CCT tower, then communications in all of Mistral City are going to be shot. "Adam! What the hell happened?"
He finally turns the mask back towards me and regains some small semblance of composure. "You- I know you. You're Torchwick's underling, the one who disappeared."
"Sure, that's me," I say, desperate for information.
"You know, it'd be wonderful if you simply arrested him," Arnaut suggests. "He's a terrorist who may be in league with Salem."
"I can't beat him," I murmur under my breath.
"I figured," Arnaut responds gloomily, but I'm already turning my attention back to Adam as he comes to grips with my identity.
"What are you doing here?" he asks. "I'm not going to pretend to mourn Torchwick. He was a racist piece of shit. I worked with him because he was the only option. But I sure as hell didn't kill him, if you're after revenge." He touches his hilt again. "Not that I wouldn't mind a little… venting right now."
As much as I want to, I know picking a fight with him would be suicide. Roman made it clear to me that Adam held his position because he was the strongest fighter in the Vale White Fang, not because he was the best tactician or most charismatic leader. When I don't make any aggressive moves, he moves on.
"Are you here to finally join us?"
I shake my head. "Hell no. I'm just here to find out what the fuck is going on, Taurus."
He sneers. "So you're, what? A sympathizer, or a coward?"
I sigh. "A coward, I guess. Look, I don't have any problems with you, so… if you don't want to tell me what the Vale White Fang is doing in Mistral, then I'm just going to leave."
"I have no words for sheep," he growls.
I just turn and walk off, ignoring the bitter insults he hurls at me from behind. Once I step out the mouth of the alleyway, he's gone from my world, if not from my mind.
"If he did destroy Haven Academy, then Salem's halfway through winning her war," Arnaut worries.
I gesture up towards Upper Mistral, which is lit with a thousand bright, flowery colors despite it being the dead of night. But for the small collection of Mistral Guard Airships floating around Haven, it looks perfectly normal- it's far too high up to make out any details, of course, but there aren't any fires or signs of fighting.
"Looks alright to me," I murmur, and suddenly all my built-up fatigue crashes down over me like a tidal wave. I haven't slept properly in weeks, and couldn't properly Aura Sprint through the awkward cliffs, so I'm sore as hell from the constant climbs and descents.
I find the nearest hotel and get myself a room in a sort of daze, not even bothered by the ratty mattress and nasty smell as I collapse into a bed and surrender to a dreamless sleep.
I forgot to set an alarm, so when I eventually wake up, it's already 2:30 in the afternoon. By the time I find food and get out the door, it's 3:30.
I check my Scroll again. Yesterday it didn't show any new messages from Neo, but today- today, it can't even get a signal. I ask the hotel's desk manager what's going on.
"Didn't you hear? Haven got attacked by a bunch of Faunus yesterday," she sighs, giving me a look as if I was there myself. "Tower's shut down while they try to get the bombs out of it."
The news is frustrating, but not the end of the world. Neo's somewhere in the city, and I know who to ask for a more specific location.
Heavy rain slams against my raised hood as I make my way down a final set of steps and into the domain of the Spiders- the Riverbed.
It's a leftover chunk of flat land, originally part of Outer Mistral but cut off when the Lion's Run river was artificially extended to fully encircle the mountain (for the sake of better trade efficiency, of course). The resulting ground was too polluted and muddy to grow things on, but too unstable and liable to flood to extend the factories onto, so it exists in a nether state of sorts between the two regions and yet separate from both.
As a result of there being no factories, the industrial haze of Lower Mistral is lessened… but it's just as grimy, old roads lined by old buildings, neither of which have seen repairs in decades. The street is lit by archaic lanterns, ancient things. Even the bulk of Lower Mistral uses streetlamps. Here, though… it's like it's own little world, decades behind everywhere around it, because the government of Mistral has forgotten its existence.
Police here are few and far between, and all in the pocket of the Spiders, along with every third person on the streets. Around here, everyone's watching, and once you know it's hard not to shake the feeling of a thousand invisible eyes weighing down on you. This place might be less cramped than the rest of Lower Mistral, but there's a reason very few of the street kids ever dared come here- it's the hub of most of the criminal activity in the city.
You can tell a place is a front for illegal activity by how nice it is. I pass by a few obvious contenders- an inn and a market that are well-kept and clean in sharp contrast to their surroundings- before finally reaching my destination: the Tipsy Spider, the inconspicuous-looking home of the largest spying organization in the world.
As I approach the purple curtain where a front door would be, a woman in tan-yellow robes and a dark brown hood shoulders her way out of the building from deeper inside the building, chin tucked and brow lowered enough that I can't get a good look at her face. There's something slightly familiar in the way she walks-
But she's gone into the crowd in moments. I shrug off the fleeting suspicion, stepping inside.
The place has all the appearances of a nonchalant restaurant, but the atmosphere is… off. A slight cloying poison in the air. I halt where I stand and scan the place-
Every other customer is a Spider.
More than likely, all of them are, considering the likelihood of some having their tattoos hidden. I resist the urge to bring my hand settling around Aurora's hilt- it's a nervous habit of Arnaut's that I've picked up alongside his muscle memory. However, doing it in a place like this could easily get me killed.
Two less-stealthy Spiders stalk forward, a tall man and shorter woman with the same sandy blonde hair colors and clothing all in various shades of purples. They cross their arms and stand before the table at the very back of the room.
The colder half of my mind immediately looks them over. With the spikes on their clothing, as well as their posture and lack of visible weapons, it's likely they're both geared more towards close-range fighting. The girl is physically weaker, though- so she's probably concealing some sort of knife weaponry, perhaps the poison that Roman said many of the Spiders favored. That makes her more dangerous, so-
I stifle the thoughts and raise my hands palms-forward to show they're empty, before nodding to the lone woman sitting at the very back of the room. "I'm just here for some information."
"Pay up," the man says, hand outstretched.
I snort. "Before you even know what I'm after? How are you so sure that you know what I want to know?"
The man opens his mouth to respond, but he's cut off by his mistress's South Vale accented voice. "Girl's got a point. Let her through."
Both lackeys obey without even a flicker of resistance, stepping back to clear my path. I still don't drop my guard as I stride up to the chair and- very slowly- take Aurora off my back and lean it against the table, though I make sure that the side of the sheath that opens is facing outwards. Just in case.
"Miss P-" I start, and then choke on my words. I was too focused on the surroundings to catch myself using Neo's nickname for the woman- 'Miss Piggy.' Neo picked up the habit of giving nicknames from Roman, although hers are often a bit less… charitable than his. Still, I didn't get far enough to offend her (hopefully) and correct myself: "Lil' Miss Malachite."
"Dreki," she responds. I don't comment on her knowing my name. "I'd like to offer my condolences on what happened to our friend Roman. I will be missing his, ah, professionalism. Men with his ambition are such a chore to find."
I nod, pointedly not thinking about it. "Thanks."
Her eyes narrow a fraction of an inch as she snaps her fan open and uses it slowly, lazily. "But that's why you're here, now, isn't it?"
"In a way." I try to keep my words brief. With this kind of person, any extra detail I give could come to bite me in the ass later. "I need to know where Neopolitan is."
"Do you, now?" She raises one thin eyebrow. "Well, ain't that convenient."
"How much do you want?" I ask, reaching over to my coat pocket-
Only to freeze when she answers, "Oh, don't bother with Lien, sweetheart. From you… what I want is information."
I curse mentally. Arnaut, on the other hand, leans forward across the table and narrows his eyes. "…Mabel?"
"You know her?" I mutter without moving my lips. Out of necessity, I've gotten extremely good at speaking near-undetectably, to the degree that even the spymaster across the table from me barely notices the movement.
"Twin Gods… She's my cousin. Maybelline Armstrong- or, Malachite, now?"
At that, I cannot hide my reaction. I can sort of see it now- she has the golden hair, the slight superior curve to her eyebrows- but her skin is so much lighter than Arnaut's or Armstrong's. It's a warm pink, cheeks flushed even when she isn't blushing, almost like-
Malachite takes notice of my change in expression and narrows her eyes at me. "You all there, sweetheart?"
I swallow and try to buy time as I deal with the new information. "Yes."
"Well, ain't that perfect?" she asks, accent undeniably deep Southern Vale- and with the same slightly cultured, superior air that Armstrong had, now that I notice it. She takes another bite of the small dessert cake in front of her daintily, and then leans back, crossing her arms in a way that indicates the time for pleasantries is over. "So, why don't you tell me what Roman sent you to do five months ago?"
It's actually been almost half a year, I realize. The days of walking across the kingdoms blurred into each other, and even though each one often felt like it dragged on, as a whole the time feels far shorter than it really was.
"I, uh…" Shit, if I tell her I killed Arnaut…
Arnaut knows what I'm thinking. "Don't worry about it, Dreki. She's firmly in the camp of my family on the issue of Faunus Rights."
At the news, I blink and take another sweeping glance around the room. Not one person in the tavern is a Faunus… and come to think of it, I can't remember ever meeting a Spider, in any of the cities important enough to have one, that wasn't human.
When I look back to Malachite, I now recognize the derisive edge to the way she shoots a glance towards the female bodyguard before turning back to me and speaking as if to a small child. "Sweetheart, the question ain't that complicated."
"I fulfilled an assassination contract on… Arnaut Silvas," I finally say, sitting on the card of knowing her family history. It may be useful to play later, and bringing it up now could only complicate things.
She rocks back in her chair slightly, doing an exceptional job of hiding her reaction to finding out her own brother is dead… Wait, she must have already known, right? I frown. And that Spider saw me show the Luskhan contract manager Arnaut's sword… so she knew I did it. Why did she ask me that?
A memory of Alorn's craggy voice enters my mind- 'If you're a lamb, play the wolf.'
So I remove my fang from my lip, straighten my back, and look Malachite dead in the eyes: "But you already knew that, didn't you?"
Lil' Miss Malachite blinks, expression betraying nothing. "Did I, now?"
"Dreki, keep going," Arnaut suddenly says. "Mabel always had a greater bark than bite growing up."
"Yes," I press on, "You did. And it's because you're worried about me lying to you." She seems about to say something in response, but I don't hand the reins back over to her. According to Arnaut, quieting for someone else subconsciously establishes their control. "But I know better than to lie to you, just like Roman did- if I lie, it breaks the trust between us, and I won't be able to work with the biggest source of useful information in Remnant. For me to throw that away would be stupid."
It's only part true. If saying something to her would endanger me too much, I'd try my absolute hardest to wordcraft my way around saying it.
However, my little speech seems to have been enough to sway her. She looks me up and down, eyes opening just a hair wider as if only now starting to view me as a person. "So the rumors about studyin' with Arnaut…?"
I intentionally don't respond, waiting a few seconds for her to come to her own conclusions before proceeding: "Now, where is Neopolitan?"
"Not so fast, sweetheart," she sighs. "You ain't answered all my questions yet. Are you the Grimm Guardian?"
"You get one question, I get one question," I say firmly, fully aware of the fact that anything I tell her is likely to make its way into the ears of any future enemies I make. Even telling her about Arnaut was a calculated risk that I'm regretting more and more by the second.
"I don't think you understand who exactly you're dealing with here, missy," she says, eyes cold.
"And neither do you," I respond, meeting them head-on.
There's a long, tense moment where we both effectively play a game of chicken with our eyes-
But she's the first to look away, sending a wave of relief through me. I'm ill-suited for this kind of political tiptoeing, and part of me wants to just draw Aurora and make her tell me what I want to know. A much, much larger part knows all too well that I'd take twenty bullets to my back before I could even stand up.
She looks at me in a new light, so much like Armstrong in the way her dismissive eyes re-evaluate me and settle on a cold sort of respect- as though I were some particularly impressive cockroach. "Well, well, well… fine. I'll give you your answer… in a week."
I open my mouth to protest but she raises a thick-fingered hand before any words exit my mouth. When she speaks, it's with a deadly, poisonous edge just below the surface. "We need time to find it out for ourselves, sweetheart. We can't just… snap our fingers and know things. You understand, don't you?"
I try to read in her eyes whether she's plotting something beneath the surface, but they're just like Armstrong's- as impenetrable as she wants them to be, only betraying emotions she wants me to see.
"Don't you?" she repeats.
"…Yeah," I finish, standing and sweeping Aurora back over my shoulder before nodding deferentially to her. "A week, you said?"
She returns my nod. It's just as much of a formality from her as it was from me.
I spend the first two days actively looking for Neo in Lower Mistral- but Mistral is a city of twenty million people, eight million of whom live on Mount Raion itself. The majority of those are in the slums of Lower Mistral, packed like so much meat into far too small of an area. Almost all the housing is shared, assuming one is lucky enough to find housing in the first place.
Trying to find a single girl who's likely even trying not to be found in this sort of situation is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. My frustration grows, yet it never boils over- I know Neo must be hiding for a reason, I just don't know what it is yet.
On the third day, I set out for Central Mistral. The buildings there are almost all of newer construction, and very few are just houses. Most are workshops, stores, offices, or schools. Relatively few people live here- only around two million, spread out over the greatest part of the mountain. The majority of the people working here come in from the nicer parts of the outer suburbs.
Once I near one of the central lifts, though, I hesitate and then halt in my tracks.
Mistral City Guards are running ID checks on random people. I might have risked it anyway, but then I notice that the 'random' part isn't exactly the case- they're only stopping Faunus. Probably something to do with the attack on Haven. Another case of the White Fang simply kicking the hornets' nest without accomplishing anything.
What I learn of the attack, I learn from word of mouth. With the tower still being rebuilt, the news comes from individual people's recountings. Despite stories varying wildly from source to source, this is almost more reliable than Kingdom news- the few details that remain the same across all the stories are the ones that can be trusted. When everything about an event is consolidated under one, Council-approved story, you don't know what to believe.
What all the sources agree upon is the broad strokes: the White Fang, led by Adam Taurus, attacked Haven Academy. However, going any deeper than that yields only confused contradictions.
Some people claim that a rival group of Faunus from Menagerie arrived to stop them, while others claim that the Menagerie Faunus were aiding them in their attack. There are rumors that Leonardo Lionheart, the headmaster of Haven Academy, is dead, but whether he died fighting for or against the White Fang forces is up in the air. Stranger still, there are rumors of the Branwen Clan's involvement, of a return of the Butcher of Byakura from beyond the grave, and of some sort of greater clash between monsters occurring inside the mountain itself- large impacts were felt that night by people on the mountain, which seismologically traced back somewhere in its very center.
The last one is the one I place the least stock in, especially when some people claim it's the Pridemane, some sort of old, legendary Lion Grimm that terrorized Mistral in the far past, come back from beyond the grave. Apparently the old Mistrali folklore hero Ozuki Lionheart- an older life of Ozpin's, I now suspect- dropped a mountain on it, leading to the mountain's name: Raion, Old Mistrali for Lion.
On the fourth day, I decide to sneak into Central Mistral anyway. My identity isn't in their criminal system, and I have forged proof of my time in Vacuo in my Scroll if I need it.
In the end I don't. The police seem to be so occupied cracking down on the Faunus in Lower Mistral that they're few and far between in Central Mistral. I keep to the backstreets anyway, in case some straggler cop or Huntsmen see me and get any ideas.
However, what I failed to expect is the raw anger towards the Faunus that I'm met with. Even in a bar, when I step up to the bartender and ask for a drink, I'm met with a sneer:
"We don't serve your kind around here anymore, traitor."
I know better than to push my luck.
It's the same almost everywhere. I eventually rest in a dead-end alley between two shops, out of sight of the street, and mull over my options.
Arnaut drops into a sitting position beside me. "Dreki… these people are simply scared. You can't judge them too harshly-"
"I can't?" I ask drily, shooting him a flat look.
He winces. "What I meant to say was… try to keep in mind that these people are likely not acting like their normal selves. The Fall of Beacon shook the entire world, and rumors spread throughout the Kingdoms that it was the work of the White Fang… so now, to find out that their own kingdom nearly suffered the same fate as Vale? They're simply terrified, and upset, and lashing out at things they consider connected to the Fang. Most of these people are simply guilty of failing to understand that the crimes of the Fang are simply the work of a radical few, and that the terrorists of the Fang do not speak for all the Faunus."
I don't react. I'm far from aligned with the White Fang, but the backlash against them- specifically, the indignation of people that the Faunus would dare strike out against them- touches on a deeper rage within me. "They shit on the Faunus for centuries," I mutter, "And get so fucking shocked when they finally bite back."
Arnaut frowns. "Are you justifying their actions?"
I let out a hollow laugh. "I'm sure as hell not angry at them."
"They're criminals-" Arnaut stops himself with a glance towards me. "Right, right. But… they're not even criminals. They don't act in their own interests. All they do is hate and destroy."
"And why shouldn't they?" I ask, eyes snapping back up to Arnaut. "Why the fuck shouldn't they? No, wait, don't tell me- is it because the Faunus are already equal?"
He doesn't reply, because he can't.
"We aren't. And you know as well as I fucking do that the only thing that got us this far was the Revolution. The second we stopped fighting, the progress fucking evaporated."
Arnaut's troubled by my words, but he eventually finds his reply. "And will bringing the kingdoms down make things better for the Faunus?"
"I… don't know," I say, rising back to my feet in a way that signals the conversation is over. "But what I do know is that leaving them be won't."
I start to walk away, but hesitate when I hear Arnaut's mutter of "Perhaps." When I turn back, he's mournful in a way that's surprising to me- a rare reminder that maybe he isn't blind to the flaws in the world he spent his life protecting.
Directionless, I find myself drifting around the Central Mistral streets, straying from the naturally lit outer areas in towards the Deepstreets.
Mistral being built on a mountain means that the architects had to get creative, and what they settled on was building outwards, with the city expanding in layers on top of itself. Most of Mistral's very bottom layer at ground level is in the shadow of the flat 'ground' layer of the level above it, which itself has another layer above it, repeating on and on until Upper Mistral. Ironically, most of the 'City On the Mountain' ends up feeling as if it's underground.
Everywhere is lit by the flickering neon signs of shops and electrically powered streetlamps- still shaped like lanterns, but connected by wires and shining too steadily and brightly to be burning Dust within. All the lamps are closer to white than anything, but each has a slight tint to indicate zoning; districts are loosely color-coded, with green lights signifying commercial districts, blue lights signifying business, yellow lights signifying offices, and so on and so forth. In the pale white banking district I pass through, people shy away and a few door guards shift uneasily as I pass.
It's an hour or two before I finally realize that I've been walking aimlessly- and that, directionless, I ended up finding my way to the Lionheart Stadium. Back in the years I spent on the Lower Mistral streets, the manager was nice enough to let me slip in and watch the fights- registered duels between Aura users, boxing matches, even Mistral Wrestling TV smackdowns. It was a tiny glimmer of hope in the darkness for me then, so I suppose it tracks that I subconsciously found my way to the back entrance I used so often.
However, once I realize where I am, I stop.
There's nobody here to let me in, and only a few off-duty stadium crew are lurking around. One takes a long drag on their cigarette and eyes me distrustfully. For a Faunus as obvious as me to be approaching a crowded stadium in the wake of the terror attacks that just happened is stupid. I should just leave, yet…
There's a little bit of me that hesitates, lost in nostalgic memories. Before I met Neo, this was the only light in my life for nearly a year. The stadium manager, Jakkar Lionheart, even let me sleep in the insulated storage areas on the really nasty winter nights, before I got caught one too many times and the higher-ups started installing security cameras.
But… that time has long since passed, and it's stupid of me to stand here reminiscing when any of those workers could already have called the police on me. I turn to walk away-
Only to stop in my tracks when Jakkar's voice comes from behind me. "Dreki! Dreki, holy shit, is that you?"
I halt, a wave of anxiety spreading through me at the sudden arrival of someone who'd before been buried so far in my past. I suddenly feel almost sick, met with this reminder of the time I spent on the streets coupled with a man I thought I'd never see again. A million worries run through my head, worst-case scenarios- I never said goodbye to him. What if he's pissed? What if he doesn't want me around anymore? What if-
A man's hand grabs my shoulder and I jolt, spinning away from it while raising my own hand to Aurora's grip.
When I see Jakkar's wide, toadlike grin, though, the worry melts away, and I drop my hand to my side, my weapon forgotten.
He speaks in his oily, gravelly little voice that would sound more in place for a back-alley bookie than the man in charge of the entire stadium. "Dreki! Shit, it's been forever, hasn't it?"
It's been five years since I last saw him, and yet he's exactly how I remember, the squattest adult man I've ever seen in my life- I was barely shorter than him when I was ten or eleven, and now at age sixteen, I have easily ten inches over him. Unruly dark green-brown hair juts out in a frizz around the edges of his head, but most of his crown is completely bald, which coupled with how short he only accentuates the round shape of his his head. He's also relatively heavyset, with an almost invisible neck, and short, pudgy limbs. The large, sullen circles under his eyes clash with the deep laugh lines around his mouth and the wide grin he's wearing that shows off several false teeth.
"Dreki! You little shit, I thought you were dead- I'm gonna kill you!" He reaches up with both arms as if to strangle me and I instinctively shy away again, which causes him to drop his smile if only for a moment. "Jeez, my bad, kid. Kidding, sorry."
I allow a tiny, hesitant smile onto my face. "Jakkar…"
"But honestly, where the hell've you been, you little street rat?" His throaty voice goes right back to a fast-talking pace. "Shit, it's been… what, three years now?"
"Five, I correct," my smile fading momentarily as I glance over his shoulder at the workers. The one who eyed me earlier is pulling out a phone-
But Jakkar is having none of it. "Hey! Hey, Kirro! Don't you fuckin' touch that Scroll!" He waddles over towards the gathered workers, who all eye him with the same uneasy bemusement, even as he unsuccessfully tries to swat the Scroll out of Kirro's hands. When he's pissed, he tends to overenunciate his words, which only serves to amplify his inner-city accent: "I told you goddamn rat creatures not to use your Scrolls on break! You're fuckin lazy enough as it is! And if you're usin' the stadium signal booster without payin' for tickets, I will fire your ass on the spot!"
Kirro finally sighs and pockets his Scroll, just as Jakkar turns back towards me. "Hey, brat, get over here. Tonight's the Winter Championship Final. I don't wanna miss any more of it than I already did running all the way down here to fetch your ass."
Again, I hesitate. This moment seems too nice to be true- too much to ask, that he'd even remember me, much less pick up where we left off and invite me to watch a match with him.
"Fuck, do I gotta repeat myself again?" He waves a bit more urgently. "Get your ass over here!"
"Go, Dreki," Arnaut says gently, as though he implicitly understands all the thoughts running through my head. "There's nothing to be afraid of."
He's right. I break out of my frozen position and jog off in pursuit of Jakkar, even matching his wide grin with a smile of my own. "Yeah, yeah, I'm coming."
"That's the spirit," he replies.
He leads me down the same deep tunnels lined with pipes and electrical wiring, past doors to storage areas and eventually even contestant dressing and locker rooms, until we reach the arena lift. After activating it, Jakkar turns to me again.
"So, what happened? You find somethin more fun to do for a couple years? Or what?"
"I found a… job in Vale," I reply.
"So why come back now?" he asks, raising his eyebrows. "Didja get fired or somethin?"
"No. My boss…" I stop myself from biting my lip and swallow my lingering emotions. "Died."
The moment is surprisingly raw. Arnaut's expression is mildly surprised at the fact that I was willing to share that information. I'm surprised myself, but… outside of Roman, and perhaps Arnaut now, Jakkar was the only authority figure I ever trusted. The silence is thick, but peaceful-
"Ah, shit," Jakkar replies in his croaking voice. "So how'd he bite it? Grimm attack? Old age?"
I blink.
"Hope it wasn't old age," he grumbles. "That's a bitch way t' go out. So, spill it, kid. Which way'd he kick the bucket?"
"He…" To my immense surprise, the words come out far more easily than I thought they would. "Got shot, then rode an Atlesian flagship down into a burning city before it exploded."
"Hell yeah," Jakkar says with another oily grin. "That's the way to do it. Give 'em somethin' to remember you by. Plus that way you don't leave a body for the funeral runners to gouge your family over throwin' some big party for all the fuckers who're still alive. What the hell did they do to earn a party? Wake up?"
I realize with a jolt that I've said too much- yet Jakkar shows no signs of recognizing my near-exact description of Roman Torchwick. I narrow my eyes slightly and look him over, searching for anything that might give away whether he's hiding a reaction-
But he turns and looks up into my eyes with a squint of his own. "So what now? You lookin' for a job? I could use some help with, ah… security, here. Assumin you know how t' use that beauty." He gestures to the sword over my shoulder. "Shit, if you're good enough, I could even sign you up as a fighter."
For a moment, I allow myself to fall into that fantasy- staying here, with this odd little man who offered me his hand when no one else would. Training more with Arnaut, learning the Way of Wind until I could hold my own against the strongest of Mistral, becoming a Duelist and perhaps even a Dueling Champion. I could make a life for myself, find a husband or wife, grow old, and ignore the problems mounting everywhere. Ignore Salem, the Grimm, the White Fang, the racists, the Spiders, the Syndicate…
But that would mean leaving Neo behind, and letting Roman go unavenged. I know, somewhere inside of me, that both those things would fester away with every passing day, growing larger and larger in my mind. I look down at my hands, at the scars and scales peeking out from where the gloves end just past the roots of my fingers, and clench them- I've long since accepted that I was not meant to find peace.
I turn to give my answer to Jakkar, only to find him listing off some sort of liability statement- "And I'm sure as hell not fuckin payin for it if you get injured, you hear me? It ain't my problem. Your insurance is on your ass, not mine. Another fighter goes a little overboard? Take it up with them. Ain't my problem. You go too hard training and tear somethin? Ain't my problem. You-"
"That's okay," I interrupt. "Thanks for offering- really, thanks," I add, meeting his eyes with as much sincerity as I can muster. "But I've got some stuff I need to deal with. Maybe somewhere down the line."
"Sure thing, kid," he responds, just as the lift clunks to a halt.
When the doors open, I rock back a little bit, hit with another surge of nostalgia as I see metal beams of the arena rafters that I watched a hundred different matches on. Thin walkways with shaky railings crisscross all around the massive roof of the stadium, but both me and Jakkar turn sharply and head across a specific route until we reach a small platform and stop. It's a path we walked a hundred different times, and I still know it by heart.
This larger chunk of platform probably served some purpose during the construction of the arena, but now sits empty, looking diagonally down all the way to an unobstructed view of the fight and- more importantly- a prime view of the jumbotron screen showing a much closer-zoomed shot.
Jakkar's eyes go to the action right away. Mine used to, but today they do what they did the very first time he took me here- sweep down over the majesty of the Lionheart Stadium.
Like the rest of Mistral, it had to be built atop the buildings underneath it and accommodate for the slant of the mountain. However, as massive as these sorts of arenas tend to be, there simply isn't enough horizontal room for a full circular build-
So the architects adapted, and built it in a massive, sweeping crescent moon shape, like a circle with one third removed, opening it up to a view of the entire western quadrant of the Raion Valley. The sun is setting behind the mountains right now, bathing much of the valley in a warm orange-pink glow and serving as the backdrop for the final duel in the Winter Championship of the Mistral Dueling League.
Silhouetted by the sunset, two figures spin around and clash against one another, moving with a grace far beyond most Huntsmen, who tend to prioritize brutal efficiency in their movements over the poise and finesse on display today. These two combatants are Duelists, trained Aura fighters who compete in tournaments across the kingdoms. Most come from wealthier families that can afford the exorbitant training and equipment costs- the old saying goes that 'Duelists are just Huntsmen that don't need to worry about paying the bills.'
Focused on the fight, I only catch Arnaut leaning up against the railing of the platform beside me in my peripheral vision. "They're skilled," he says thoughtfully. "But Natsu's going to win."
Before I can ask which one is Natsu, a chime sounds out and the fighters slow to a halt, bowing to one another and each returning to their side of the arena for a brief rest period. In the meantime- after several advertisements for various Mistral-produced products appear- a graphic comes onto the screen.
The fighter on the left is Take Tamashi, a young man with the thinner eyes of Southern Mistral. He's clad in multilayered green armor, made of light polymer bent into the curving shape of bamboo plates. I've watched enough dueling and combat footage to know the names of most kinds of weapons on sight, but his weapon is obscure enough that I have to trawl deep to remember what it's called- a Kusarigama, I think. It's a Southern Mistrali weapon made by attaching a long chain and heavy weight held in one hand to the butt end of a small handscythe in the other.
The screen says the weapon's name is 'Slither', which seems kind of... bland to me. Don't most Duelists and Huntsmen name their own weapons? "Why would he…" I murmur under my breath.
Arnaut hears it and infers my meaning. "It's one of twelve old Mistrali weapons from long before the Great War. You've already encountered another- Shear."
I nod, eyes already floating to the right side of the screen.
Take's opponent is named- like Arnaut recognized- Natsu Lionheart. "Jakkar, is this guy-"
"Yeah, he's in th' family," Jakkar says, sounding displeased. "My nephew. Entitled little prick. Probably gonna win it, now, too- the real final was earlier, when I was grabbin your ass from outside; his semifinal fight against Pyrrha Nikos's little sister. She lost. Pyrrha mighta been able to give Natsu a run for his money, though. Too bad she croaked in Vale."
His complete moral bankruptcy and irrelevance for death actually brings a crooked little grin to my face. I read more from the screen.
Natsu's a tan-skinned kid only nineteen years old, with eyes squinted a bit less than his opponent's- typical for Middle Mistral. His hair is a sandy yellow-brown and flares out behind him like the mane of a lion, framing yellow eyes and a confident smile of perfect white teeth, canines larger than normal but not large enough to indicate Faunus heritage. He leans cockily backwards in the photo, holding an ornate glaive resting against his shoulder. The point where the hilt ends is carved to look like the snarling head of a lion, after which there's a long, curved blade that gets thicker towards the top, with rings hooked into its back edge. The equally ornate red-and-gold medium armor he's wearing doesn't appear to weigh him down at all.
I look up at the screen to see the weapon's name is apparently 'Roar'. With a quick glance at Arnaut, his nod confirms that it's another of the old weapons, but this one appears pristine unlike the slightly worn metal of Slither or the battered, jagged, rusting blades of Shear.
A chime sounds, and the fighters each stalk forward, readying their weapons. Natsu snaps the shaft of Roar apart, momentarily confusing me before I realize that the weapon comes apart by design to become a shorter standard javelin in one hand and a curved sword in the other.
Take starts to slowly spin the weighted end of his chain, giving occasional nervous glances to the round timer up above them.
For his part, Natsu appears to be having the time of his life, leaning back with a cocky grin and even tossing some indiscernible small talk over to Take.
When the chime sounds again, I realize why.
Natsu moves forward faster than anyone I've seen except maybe Qrow or Marie, sending a flurry of stabs into Take, who barely manages to catch a few of them on the handle of his handscythe before one gets through and stabs into his chest. Take barely manages to slide sideways enough to turn the blow into a glancing one before darting backwards to get more space.
That was Scattered Showers, I realize with a cold feeling, which only gets colder as Natsu takes a long, rotating step and launches the javelin towards Take, firing some sort of Dust firearm within it to accelerate it to a streaking blur.
Take again manages to just barely sway out of the way- only to take a blow square to his chest from Natsu's Lightning Strike, which is then chained into a Thunderclap that knocks him flying into the far wall. He ended the last round of fighting with sixty percent of his Aura, and now- despite being a Duelist, trained to optimize blocking efficiency and defensively flare his Aura to minimize loss- he's already lost another ten percent.
Natsu's a league above him, and it shows- the Lionheart boy doesn't make it quick. He plays with his food, stepping in and out for quick blows, performing unnecessarily complicated acrobatics between strikes, allowing Take time to get up every time he gets knocked down. With each spinning jump or complex flurry of strikes, the crowd cheers louder.
Take does gain his footing enough to launch an attack- once. He spins his chain overhead and sweeps it horizontally, forcing Natsu back, and then steps forward with a downward hooking strike of his handscythe. Natsu raises Roar in glaive form to block the strike almost lazily.
But at the moment where solid impact should have been made, he detaches the two components. Take, expecting to meet resistance, stumbles forward and overextends a hair-
And Natsu punishes him for it, slamming a knee into his stomach to disorient him, before following it up with the rifle end of the javelin, blasting a Wind Dust round into him. It's a smaller caliber and only knocks him a meter or two skyward.
However, Natsu follows it by opening his mouth wide and unleashing a roar that blasts Take up halfway to the stadium roof. The sound is so animalistic, so guttural, and so loud that seeing it come from the teenage human in the ring's center looks utterly incongruous, almost like bad special effects. A tiny infographic appears on screen announcing Natsu's Semblance, 'Lion's Roar', the hereditary Semblance of the Lionheart family. I pay it little mind, instead watching the best Duelist in Mistral claim his victory.
Natsu rotates in place, snapping Roar back into glaive form. He produces a crystal of raw Sound Dust and feeds into the open mouth of the carved lion, before spinning the glaive around himself, up over his head, around his back, accelerating it to become a near-invisible blur, and then- right as Take comes falling back down- slams the golden metal into his torso.
An earsplitting roar erupts from the weapon, a thousand times louder than the one he produced himself. It's enough that my own eardrums hurt, and that's through the Hardlight walls, which themselves crack just from the sonic force. It must have somehow been even louder inside-
But I realize that's the least of Take's problems, because that one strike took his Aura from thirty percent down to zero and blasted him all the way up into the upper reaches of the funnel-shaped Hardlight wall. His limp, unconscious form starts to slide down the slope, but before it can hit the ground, Natsu darts up into the air to catch it, rebounds backwards with a flip, and lands in an acrobatic crouch, gently placing his foe's prone form on the ground before raising his own weapon in victory.
The crowd, which was already going wild, explodes with shouts and applause.
Jakkar's just annoyed. "Goddamnit. Little shit's gonna be insufferable for a fuckin year now."
The cheering drags on, and on, until I look at Jakkar in mild confusion. "Is it always this… intense?"
His ugly features mash into an expression of distaste. "Pyrrha Nikos won the Winter Championship three years runnin, and she's from Argus up in Northern Mistral. People're losin their shit because this is the first time in four years that th' trophy comes back to Mistral City."
I nod, turning my eyes back to the center of the ring, where Take's unconscious form has already been hauled off and Natsu is dramatically cycling between various stances with his weapon in an intricate martial dance, much to the crowd's delight.
Seeing him shift into Spring Cloud, then Spring Rain, then Spring Storm sends a jolt through me. "Arnaut," I murmur quietly, "How's he-"
"Alorn taught him as well," Arnaut sighs. "Not for as long as me, and not as much as me, but… I was not the only pupil of the old Wind Knight."
The news hits me harder than I thought it would, and I look back down to Natsu with renewed interest. It's not jealousy that I feel; more a little flare of competitiveness, as if he's a rival, a… benchmark for me to surpass.
But that'll be a long time coming, considering how badly he just dumpstered Take Tamashi, who in turn likely could've dumpstered me. As the award-bearers come out to present him with his winnings, I sigh and lean back with another wave of memories- for my younger self, this is when the pleasant dream always ended, and I had to go back out into a city that ate away at me.
I turn so that my back is to the railing, elbows laid down atop it, and find Jakkar's eyes. He shifts his gaze to meet mine, face sullen-looking but in a way I know is just his resting expression. "Whaddaya want, brat?"
"Jakkar, I… thanks. For everything."
"What, y'mean lettin you in t' see this fight?"
"No, I mean… everything. All the times you let me in to watch duels, and sports, and wrestling matches. It was… more important to me than I think you knew. Back then, I…" a lump enters my throat. I swallow to clear it. "Things were shitty, but you made them better- not forever, and not every day, but-"
"Fuck, kid, you gonna start crying?"
I come to a halt in my speech, emotionality fading rapidly to make way for confusion and mild offense. "Huh?"
"Remember what I said before?" he asks, as generally unfazed as ever. "I am not-"
"'Your dad'," I finish for him. "I know, but-"
"I meant it. You want a buddy to cry with n' talk about your feelings, go find someone else." He scratches his nose. "I ain't gonna solve your problems- shit, I don't even wanna know your problems. But if you're ever passin' through Mistral and you wanna catch a fight, then let me know."
I nod, a weight rising off of my shoulders. "Then… I'll see you around, Jakkar."
"See ya, kid," he responds. "You can leave through the front door. The lazy fuckers refuse to check tickets for people on their way out- hold on, what the fuck're you-"
I vault the railing and land on an unoccupied seat, glancing around to see that most of the people sitting this high have either already left or are too fixated on the screen to notice me. As I stalk down the steps, even Aurora doesn't draw too many eyes- many of the spectators are Huntsmen and Huntresses with weapons of their own.
I skirt along the edges of the throng until eventually I find myself stalking out into the streets before the arena's front entrance, which is before and below the opening in the arena that faces out from the mountain. The crowd is pouring out onto a plaza, some people stopping to look out at the last traces of the sunset fading away into darkness while others simply pour off towards public transit back to their homes and still more head to apartments within the city itself.
A very small few step into their own small private airships and lift off, bypassing the crowd as they head back up to their homes in Upper Mistral. Among them is Natsu himself, who exits the building flanked by bodyguards that shove anyone too slow out of the way, clearing a path for him to get into an expensive-looking custom Bullhead with red-and-gold lion detailing along the front and sides.
Then my attention is yanked away by a hand on my shoulder. I almost lash out but catch myself, because this time I recognize the contact- I've felt it enough times before. Before I even turn, hints of a smile flicker at the corners of my face. "Qrow?"
"In the flesh," he mutters, and then breaks out into a full grin of his own when he sees my face. "Shit, kid, you actually did it? No fu-" he pauses, winces. "No way."
I finally stop holding back my own grin and just let myself accept the odd little kinship I've built with this man that used to give me nightmares. "Yeah, I, uh… convinced your sister I was dangerous enough that I'd be better off left alone."
He slowly shakes his head, producing a flask from his coat pocket. "No shit?"
"No shit," I confirm, sighing. "Had to fight some kid called Wlan Branwen. Relative of yours?"
"Nephew. My cousin's kid, actually. He was a baby when I left the Tribe." Qrow looks out over the valley as he takes a long drink. "Well, then this one's to Raven, kid. May she stay a coward for the rest of her life."
I nod, and a strange little peace enters the still air, a simple breed of respect between the two of us. Even without knowing much about each other's lives, we both know what it is to wander the continents and fight for our lives, and that's enough for me to oblige him in his toast. Even after he drops the flask to his side and sighs, we stay quiet, peaceful, as the last fading rays of the sunset thin and die out.
And then the peace is shattered when a girl flies over to us in a burst of red flower petals. A girl I know. She's my age, but four inches shorter, a head of dark hair with the tips dyed red, and eyes of a shining silver. Her smile is wide, pure, and as innocent as a child's-
Too fucking innocent, I think, hair prickling as my entire body tenses and my Grimm eye flares, because the girl who stole Roman Torchwick from me is standing only a few feet away and smiling without a care in the world.
"Wow was that cool. I like Pyrrha's sister's weapons-" She stops, noticing my presence, and then turns to me with a wide smile. "Oh, hey there! My name's Ruby Rose, what's yours?" She offers her hand to me. I don't react. Standing this close to her, my rage is a looming, terrifying thing, made only stronger when her seemingly indomitable grin only widens. "Are you a friend of my uncle's?"
It's like she doesn't even fucking know what she's done. Like killing Roman was some triumph for her, a happy memory, a little plot point in her story, while for me it's shattered my entire world. She robbed me of the future I could have had alongside him. Of the things we could have done after Cinder left, all the schemes and heists and plots. But what gnaws at me most aren't those grand plans… what twists painfully in my core is the loss of the simpler moments. Because of this girl, never again will Roman brush my hair out of my eyes and tell me I should smile more. Never again will Roman spar with me and beat me with some little trick to teach me a lesson about fighting fair. Never again will Roman and Neo and I sit down for a dinner after a successful job and talk about all the inane little things- and never again will I hear Roman's laugh, or feel the warmth inside me that always came with the knowledge that it was my joke that brought the sound from him.
She's stolen half of my world from me, and she doesn't even fucking know it.
The red glow of my left eye gets bright enough that they both notice it. Ruby smiles it right off and re-offers her hand, but Qrow furrows his brow and shifts slightly sideways to place himself between the two of us. When he speaks, it's with a barely noticeable edge. "This is… Drakey, right? Sorry, kid, I don't remember-"
"Dreki," I respond, voice a brittle whisper. My right hand is clenched into a trembling fist, my breaths now coming deep and heavy. My claws elongate from little more than sharpened nails into long, wicked things that pierce the skin of my palm. The Grimm, seeming so much larger than it was only a few months ago, floats at the edges of my consciousness. Wordlessly urging me to let go, to give it control, to kill the bitch for what she did to Roman.
"Dreki, you have to get a grip," Arnaut insists, stepping between us. I look up at him with dead eyes, barely focusing on his words, as a hurricane swirls within me, memories of Roman that now each carry a raw weight of grief with them- and with the grief, an ice-cold rage, centered on the silver eyes of Ruby Rose.
Another girl approaches, this one a year or two older but even shorter and slighter than her friend. "Ruby, Qrow, what's going on-" she pauses when she meets me, raking her eyes over me with a cold dismissiveness that I might have been able to ignore on a good day, but right now threatens to tip me over the edge. "Who's this?"
"A Huntress-in-Training I ran into a couple times over the last few months," Qrow says, without taking his eyes off of me. He activates his dark red Aura, which flickers almost imperceptibly to my Faunus eye but to my Grimm one suddenly explodes with power comparable to that of Marie, of Raven, of Arnaut.
For an instant, it reminds me of my nightmares-
Which is just long enough for me to register Arnaut's words: "Dreki, if you try anything here, you'll die… would Neo want that?"
The thought of Neo brings me further back from the edge, enough that his words really sink in. The brief moment of rational thought is long enough for me to realize that he's right. I'm not strong enough to even think about challenging Qrow Branwen-
Not yet.
So I bite a bleeding gash into my lip, shove my hands into my coat pockets, tear my eyes off of Ruby Rose, and nod one final time to Qrow. "See you around, Qrow."
"Take care, kid," he mutters in reply, but still with an edge of suspicion. Regardless, he doesn't challenge me as I stalk off, firmly planting one foot in front of the other while forcing my mind off of the girl with the silver eyes.
The memories of Roman are harder to move away from, but every time they come to the forefront, they're accompanied by the simple sight of Ruby's red Aura ending his muted grey one. While she lives, I cannot mourn him, so I gather all the thoughts of him and shelve them away with everything else. Every time something like this happens, some… tragedy occurs, and I have to add yet more to the reservoir of hatred in the back of my mind, I fear it will be the last straw. Fear that the dam will break, and me along with it.
But as I step up to the railing and look out at the sight of pale moonlight against the snow over the Raion Valley, I drive back the darkness with thoughts of Neo. With her in my mind, even the sight of Upper Mistral is manageable- because as much as I despise this city, it's what brought her into my life, and in a way, Roman too.
As long as I have her, I can bear this pain, defy this rage. Two more days, I remind myself, and with one final heavy breath that mists in the air before me, I step away from the darkness. Just wait two more days, Neo.
(A/N) Mistral in the show is... tiny. Like, really, really small, especially for the capital city of the largest kingdom. I've sized it up and modernized a bit in my fic, but I tried to keep the core idea (which I love) of a mountain metaphorically representing a small minority sitting atop an oppressed majority. Mistral needs to have industry somewhere, and I think it's likely to be centered around the best-protected and most central area of the kingdom.
Now, onto the new characters: Nezumi's name translates to 'mouse' in japanese for the color rule. She's based on the mouse/rat in the story of the Chinese zodiac as her fairy tale character, and her primary color and aura are light pinkish grey.
Jakkar Lionheart's last name has 'lion' in it, and his first name is from the japanese 'Jakkaru' meaning Jackal, both of which are associated with fur colors. His primary color and aura are dirty green/brown, like the fur of his fairy tail character: Shenzi, the lead hyena from the Lion King.
Natsu Lionheart's first name directly translates to 'summer' which is associated with the same yellow colors as the 'lion' in his last name. His fairy tale character is the tiger from the story of the Chinese zodiac, and his color is the golden yellow of lions' eyes.
Just as a few worldbuilding tidbits: in this fic, the water for the waterfalls is produced magically by the lake inside the maiden vault. The oxygen concentration is higher on Remnant, which means that the people at the top of Mount Raion can still breathe comfortably despite being multiple kilometers in the air. The images of Mistral used in the show are from Upper Mistral, which I haven't gotten to yet, but it's a lot nicer and traditional-looking than the rest of the city, with more nature as well. Only the wealthy can afford to waste space on little streams and trees and old-fashioned architecture.