Bartholomew looked down and checked his scroll once again before letting out a rare noise of annoyance. Yet again, the time was far beyond what he had expected, and yet again, he was met with disappointment. He shifted his grip upon the suitcase in his opposite hand as he glared down at his device, shaking his head.
9:47 AM.
"So much for being ready in fifteen minutes," the boy mumbled to himself as he ran a hand through his shaggy dark green hair. "It's been more than double that. Next time, we wake them an hour early and lie."
"Don't tell me you're surprised," Qrow balked as he stood with his arms folded across his chest. The Branwen boy had kept his punk-inspired outfit from Vale largely the same, with a band shirt and loose-fitting jeans with chains hanging from his belt. "You should know by now- those two are always late if they run off somewhere together. They're probably groping each other in the shower right now."
"Right. Because they'd stop at just groping," Raven added as she rolled her eyes. She had chosen to keep her usual clothing- a crossed-over robe top in scarlet and knee-length black skirt- while out in the desert. With a weary sigh, she bowed her head to Team BASS, who stood assembled roughly ten feet away from her. "I'm incredibly sorry to keep you all waiting. You're doing us quite a favor by escorting us to Shade, and we'll find a way to make it up to you while we're here."
"No problem at all, and there's really no need to compensate us," Ghira consoled with a wave of his meaty hand. "Truth be told… we're usually not up this early, and we were headed back to campus anyway, with or without you. We're happy to wait while your companions… occupy themselves."
"I'm actually still asleep right now," Fox said from his position perched atop the back of one of his team's odd-looking motorcycles. "The blind sleep with their eyes open, as it makes no difference to us. I only woke up just now to talk to you."
An awkward silence passed over the group as Velvet rubbed at her forehead and Sage shook his head with a chuckle.
"Uh… do they really…?" Summer asked innocently.
"…no," Velvet clarified in a weary tone. "No, they do not. If Fox tries to convince you of anything, vision-related or otherwise, you should likely just ignore it. He's an utter scamp."
"And you absolutely love it."
"I do not."
Willow suppressed a giggle into her hand as she watched the scene play out before her.
"…you all remind me a lot of our teams, to be completely honest. I'm glad that we happened to run into each other. You seem like decent people, among what many of us expected to be questionable company."
Ghira stiffened slightly as he looked Willow over, and she raised a brow in response to his sudden shift to a more scrutinizing gaze. The oddly judgmental expression changed almost immediately as the large faunus looked over at Adam instead, only for the younger man to give him a curt nod. With a steadying breath, Ghira turned his attention back to Willow, who looked more confused by the seemingly bizarre behavior than anything.
"…and you as well, Miss Schnee. This will certainly be an… interesting few weeks, if you choose to keep in contact with us. We generally keep to ourselves while at the Academy, but I think it would be rather… enlightening to spend some time with outsiders. Share our experiences with you, as you share your perspectives with us on all manner of things."
Taiyang watched the exchange with an increasing amount of unease. He could feel the nervousness radiating from Willow, as well as Ghira's inexplicable and sudden desire to keep his guard up. Despite the clashing emotions pelting him so suddenly, what had really caused Taiyang to start to sweat was the intense mixture of frustration and conflict he could sense swirling inside of Adam as the faunus stood at his side. It was enough that Taiyang had to take a step backward to put some distance between himself and his friend, only to see that every pair of eyes in the parking lot had snapped to him as he began to move.
"Uh… I-I'll go check on Roman and Kal," Taiyang offered as he hastily turned, beads of sweat forming on his brow. "I'll rustle them out of the bed if I have to!"
"Please do," Bartholomew insisted as he adjusted his glasses by pushing them up the bridge of his nose. "Meanwhile, despite your insistence otherwise… can you think of anything we could help you with, now or upon reaching Shade? You are doing us a rather large favor, as much as you would like to downplay that notion."
"Hm…" Sage grunted from atop the other bike. "Well, for starters, you could tell us what exactly you're transporting in that suitcase of yours. If it ends up being something dangerous, our asses could be on the line."
"It's a sword."
Everyone assembled in the lot outside of the Schnee manor slowly turned to look at Fox, who had aura wisps of a rusty color emanating from his body.
"It… is?" Bartholomew asked as he was overcome with dread. He removed his glasses and began to buff the lenses upon his shirt to avoid looking at Team BASS, his mind racing. "You are certain?"
"Yeah," Fox replied as he narrowed his milky eyes, which had begun to glow with the same orange color as his pulsating aura. "My semblance allows me to 'see' using aura. It's almost like echolocation, which means I can bounce aura all around the environment if I've got the time and energy to blow. Took a second to get through the cracks in that case, but there's a sword in there. Feels… ornamental. Weird, filigree style gaps in the curved blade, maybe three feet long, four or so including the grip? Yeah, that's definitely a decoration of some sort. I think it'd shatter the second you swung it into something, unless it's got some sort of weird technology reinforcing it."
Qrow and Raven both exchanged looks with Summer, who stepped forward and put on an uncharacteristically serious poker face.
"That would make sense. Professor Ozpin didn't tell us exactly what we were supposed to bring to Shade, but he did say that it was a gift, and a sort of artifact that belongs in a vault somewhere. I'm sure it's just a show of solidarity for your headmaster, to create a bond between our academies. Maybe a sort of… 'we've got this as long as we work together' message for the only other school currently accepting faunus hunters?"
"That would be nice," Velvet considered as she gave the parcel a suspicious look and flicked one of her rabbit ears.
"Yes. It would," Bartholomew agreed as his grip tightened upon the handle of the suitcase. "Though, given that we don't really know the specifics about what we're transporting, and we cannot open the case… erm… I suppose…"
"Perhaps you could tell us about those?" Adam jumped in as he nodded toward the pair of vehicles that Fox and Sage were occupying. "I've never seen or heard of such a vehicle in Solitas or Sanus…"
"There's a definite reason for that. They're called dunecrawlers," Velvet said enthusiastically as she perked up a bit and turned her attention to Adam.
The rabbit faunus rested a hand upon the wide back end of Fox's bike and ran her fingers along the deep green polished metal. The vehicle was long enough to comfortable fit two people upon its padded seat, which had a tall, cushioned backrest. The wheels of the motorcycle were nearly three feet wide and studded with rubber protrusions for extra grip. Velvet hopped up to sit upon the broad head of the vehicle, facing Adam with a smile.
"Dunecrawlers are a Vacuan invention, built specifically to run over sand and jagged rock. These two were gifted to our team for being top of our class in confirmed grimm kills during year one."
"Impressive," Willow remarked. "I somewhat wish Beacon tracked those stats…"
"I'm a little surprised that they don't," Velvet replied as she tilted her head and patted the side of Fox's bike. "Would you like to know how they work? I'm a bit of a gearhead."
"…hold that thought, Vel," Ghira interrupted as he held up a hand. "Looks like we're about to head out."
Velvet scrunched her face, looking slightly annoyed as she watched the party of three approaching from the Schnee beach house. Kali wore only a string bikini top and short shorts, with Roman's usual leopard print scarf draped lazily around her neck. The faunus' hair was still wet and hanging in messy strands around her face, which had a devilish grin plastered upon it. Roman's hair was equally messy, and he wore a pair of board shorts quite like Taiyang's along with a sleeveless white shirt and several bracelets on his right arm. What skin was visible of the lanky boy's chest through the v-neck cut of his top was crisscrossed with fresh red scratches, and he had a dark red welt growing upon the side of his neck. Taiyang looked ghost white and a little sick as he walked ahead of his friends, gradually increasing speed in an attempt to escape them.
"You alright?" Raven asked as she hiked a brow and offered a hand.
"…I've seen too much," Taiyang said quietly as he slipped his fingers into Raven's. "Things I can never un-see. Let's… let's just get going…"
All around the woman's head was a field of black, coarse cloth. The fabric rushed forward into her mouth as she tried desperately to control her breathing to no avail. She had no idea what had happened or how she had woken up in captivity- all she knew was that she was being carried, and her vision had been blocked by stained burlap.
Try as she might, she couldn't wriggle herself free. Instead of falling from her captor's grasp, she received a painful stab from some sort of hooked blade within her right thigh. A scream escaped her, muffled by the cloth. The flesh around the wound felt as though it was on fire mere seconds after the jab, sending a coursing pain through her system unlike any she had ever felt before.
"Try that again, and I'll pick a smaller muscle to string," a syrupy male voice taunted from somewhere on the other side of the cloth. "Now behave. You're about to meet your new master…"
Before the woman had a chance to reply, she felt herself falling rapidly toward the ground. Where she expected to meet with fluffy snow, she instead impacted smooth stone. She let out a grunt of pain as her shoulder collided with the rocky surface, only for her head to be wrenched backward as someone grabbed the sack around it. Within seconds, the covering had been removed, and the dimly lit cave around her came into focus.
Standing just ahead of her was a burly man almost twice her size, his arms folded across his barrel chest as he looked toward the grounded woman with disgust. At his side was a portly little faunus, his leonine tail swishing nervously behind him. A third figure- a man with short, slicked back black hair and a scorpion's tail with a bloodied stinger circled around to the captive's front, all smiles amid the darkness. The prisoner thought that the three occupants of the cave were all that there was to see, but that notion left her mind as a feminine voice full of authority pierced the darkness with perfect clarity.
"Rise, only to your knees."
Something about the woman's voice compelled the prisoner to simply obey as shivers crept up her spine in a chilling wave. Even without the ability to see the one addressing her, she could tell from the speaker's tone of voice alone that defiance would likely mean death. She knew that there were nearly a hundred other guards just like her that could be brought to the cave and tested for their obedience if she didn't play along. She knew that she was expendable, and that there was nothing remarkable about her among her clan.
She knew that no matter what she did, she likely wasn't leaving the cave alive… but she also knew the value of seconds if she had only minutes left to live.
"Very good," Salem praised as she strode out of the shadows, her black dress gliding gently upon the stone floor as she approached the kneeling captive. "I have questions for you. Questions about your organization. Are you willing to answer them for me to save yourself… or will you die with your pride?"
All of her training, all of her meditation and practice in the art of endurance mattered for nothing in that moment. As she looked up into Salem's eyes, she was gripped by a fear unlike any she had ever felt before. Salem's red irises were filled with a cold, calculating malice despite her tight-lipped smirk, and the abyssal voids where the whites of her eyes should have been seemed capable of draining someone's very soul.
"Y-yes, I'll answer," the woman stammered, her whole body shaking as trails of sweat and blood oozed down her face. "Anything. Ask your questions, and spare me… please…"
"Perhaps," Salem considered as she folded her hands before herself. "Tell me first of Arowana- his semblance, his weaknesses…"
The woman straightened up slightly and licked her chapped lips, seeming confused as she dared to look Salem in the eye.
"He… Arowana lies dead. He was slain months ago, by his daughter… his body lies within the central temple, in a casket of stone…"
Leonardo cowered behind Hazel as Salem turned to look at him. He avoided her eyes as best he could, his voice quivering as he wrung at his tail.
"I-I told you, they cut off contact months ago!" the man pleaded. "I didn't know! How could I h-"
Leonardo stopped speaking as Salem slowly raised a hand. She turned her attention back to the woman kneeling upon the floor and moved closer, stooping down to look her in the eye. Salem cupped the woman's cheek, her icy touch eliciting an involuntary shiver from the terrified guard.
"Arowana- your clan leader- truly lies dead?" Salem questioned with an impartial tone as she searched the other woman's face.
"Y-yes," the prisoner replied as she began to tremble, a tear running down her cheek.
"Poor child," Salem consoled as she reached a thumb up and wiped away the young woman's tear. "Would you like me to change that?"
Author's Note:
The less I say about this for now, the better…
-RD
