The Thief and his Master (and her Master and...)
As soon as Weiss had been informed of the likely raid on the SDC shipment she had gone to the CCT to make contact with her sister.
It might have made more sense to go to her father and the SDC proper, given that it was them making the shipment and in charge of its security (at least until the shipment was unloaded), but given her last conversation with him, she wasn't exactly keen on going to him again.
It wasn't as though Winter was unaware of the risk of attack, but it didn't seem that Atlas had heard about the quantities of Dust that had been stolen.
It wasn't overly unusual for there to be major runs on Dust in kingdoms, particularly just before the Vytal festival, so Winter had assumed that the delivery was simply because of innocent reasons rather than a series of thefts (which was entirely unprecedented, given how little practical purpose there was in gathering quite so much Dust).
Learning about the real reason for the need for the shipment had clearly shocked Winter.
After all, the only reason for a terrorist group to collect so much Dust was for an attack.
Winter had left the call as soon as she had heard about why the Dust was missing, leaving Weiss much less reassured than she had intended.
She hadn't even managed to confirm when the delivery was due to arrive.
When she returned to her room worries about what might be happening at the dock ran through her mind, leaving her unable to pay much attention to what her teammates were talking to her about.
Finally she was unable to sit there unsure of what was happening any longer.
"I am going to ascertain what miss Belladonna is doing," Weiss announced, slipping into her more formal manner of speech automatically. One of the things her call with her sister had done, which she hadn't thought even considered, was remind her where she had heard the name 'Belladonna' before.
It was no wonder she hadn't realised why the name was familiar, she had no reason to suspect that someone related to the chieftain of Menagerie would study at Beacon.
Atlas had ensured that Menagerie had no Huntsmen academy, though, so a moments thought left her without questions as to why she was there.
Before the level of bonding the Grimm teammates had forced upon her and Blake she might have been worried about the risk of a connection to the White Fang, even without any guarantee that she was a Faunus rather than being from a human line of the Belladonna family (something not entirely unheard of), but as it was she was certain that she hadn't asked for the delivery timing in order to help organise an ambush.
"You want to know what's happening with the delivery," Yang announced, nowhere near as dense as she acted.
Weiss ignored her, and made her way to team URBNs room.
After her first knock the door was opened by Pyrrha, enough so that Weiss could see that only the Ursa was in the room with her.
"Oh, Weiss wasn't it? I was hoping-"
"That it was the rest of your team?"
Pyrrha hesitated, which was enough answer for Weiss.
"They were worried about the Dust robberies," she told Pyrrha. "I think they planned to stake out the next SDC shipment."
Pyrrha winced. "They wouldn't answer their scrolls when I tried contacting them, they must have turned them off to stay undetected. They didn't even leave me a message," she finished in a tone Weiss found hard to place, and that seemed to draw the Ursas attention.
"It's doubtful they'll be back tonight," Weiss stated. "The Bullheads don't run this late."
"There's always the forest," Pyrrha pointed out, "it isn't that hard to get through."
The Ursa snorted behind her.
"Unless they've already been in a fight," Weiss felt she had to point out. "If the delivery arrived this evening they most likely won't stand by when the thieves attack."
A look crossed Pyrrhas face. "Even if they left me behind, I can't just leave them to fight alone," she decided, backed up by a growl from her team leader.
"As a Schnee I can't just let my classmates deal with this either," Weiss announced. "Not to mention your other teammates friends would likely want to stand with him in such a fight."
"It sounds like we're building up quite the group to rescue them," Pyrrha stated, having clearly not realised the connections her team had built with others from her teammates actions.
Not that Weiss had connected with too many students herself.
It might have been due to the way she was raised, but she hadn't gone out of her way to talk with anyone.
When this is over, she decided, it was time to change that.
[]
"We have a problem, Ozma," Salem began, once she was sure they were alone.
She might not care for his masquerade, changing his name every generation or so, but that didn't mean she was about to reveal his real name.
It wasn't as though it would do any good, and would likely damage er goodwill with those who knew his secret.
Sure, her goodwill with Goodwitch might have been damaged from the Knight situation, but there was no way she was going to leave them alive longer than needed.
"What sort of problem?"
It was irritating the way he just kept calmly sitting behind his desk, drinking coffee from the mug she had gifted him so many years before.
"That weirdo that declared me her friend," and she still couldn't believe that happened, "told me that she's being sent to protect a delivery at the docks. She seemed to believe that I would be going with her."
Ozma paused. "She's under orders from James." He sighed. "Don't tell me he's overstepping his authority again."
"Again?"
"James... doesn't have the best of luck with his semblance."
"Oh?"
"His semblance serves to suppress his emotions and ignore anything incidental to his goals."
"He ignores the existence of emotions yet was promoted to general? Didn't you know that Grimm hunt negative emotions? And how are the treaties between kingdoms incidental?"
It took her a moment to realise that she had let slip that she was aware that the 'James' Ozma was talking about had to be general Ironwood, something she wouldn't have been aware of unless she had been planning to act this generation.
She shrugged internally. For all he knew this was her plan, or something had happened, leaving her with no choice but to replace her actual plan with this improvisation.
"James tries not to use his semblance. And while Mettle isn't active his emotions run as normal."
"And you are more concerned about him overstepping his authority here than what he wants the girl to deal with?"
"Talking can help me think about other things. For James to order Penny to protect the shipment... it suggests there is something different about her. He mentioned a project that..."
The way he trailed off made it clear that he was thinking of something that she wasn't supposed to know about.
"Yes yes, you have an aura transfer machine you're hiding in the basement," Salem rolled her eyes, "and clearly this 'Penny' has something do with it."
"You have an ex-Atlas scientist working for you," Ozma concluded, narrowing his eyes.
Salem shrugged. "That doesn't answer the question of what you're going to do about the docks."
"My hands are tied. Huntsmen aren't allowed to interfere with police business without invitation."
"Even when the risk is about a terrorist attack? That seems shortsighted."
"In any case, there is nothing that can be done by anyone with a Huntsmen license. Probably why James contacted Penny."
It was clear what he was trying to do, with the way he specified a license.
"Of course, while the law prevents me from interfering, if people hear that you knew and didn't help-"
"You assume that the city would survive. That Beacon would be left standing."
After all, she wasn't on his side, something it seemed he needed reminding of.
"Except, by the sounds of it, Penny has told James about you, so if you fail to do anything Atlas will know all about it. And whatever your goals, they will hardly be helped by Atlas being able to report your inaction."
Salems eyes narrowed as she stood to leave the office.
"You know," she told him as she left, "the way you default to manipulations when you can't simply run away from the problem makes me question how we were ever together. Not to mention," she pondered out loud, "it is hardly the attitude you expect from a knight."
There was a sharp sound behind her, one that Salem recognised as him breaking his desk.
The thought that she had hit a nerve brought a fleeting smile to her face.
[]
Roman Torchwick felt his frustration with the animals he was forced to work with growing.
Much as it might not seem like it, he wasn't actually racist against faunus.
The White Fang, however, those he loathed with a passion.
A regular criminal didn't want to disrupt the kingdom, they simply wanted to overcome the hand fate had dealt him, much like him.
The White Fang, on the other hand, existed only to cause damage, which did no good to anyone, including them. All that their attacks did was increase hatred for faunus and security, in turn making his job even harder.
The White Fang, rather than doing anything towards their supposed goal, merely acted like rabid animals, something that would get him killed if he said it out loud.
With his boss, and to think that he had a boss now, giving him no choice but to work with them, with his only means of progress calling them 'animals'.
Faunus that worked to overcome the hatred, like the pair his 'associates' were trying to kill, those had his respect.
Of course, that had nothing to do with him telling the Fang to leave them alive, as a criminal without aura he had to be much more pragmatic, something that many didn't understand, feeling that aura could only serve as an advantage.
The idiots.
Rogue Huntsmen, and others with aura, were the responsibility of Huntsmen, while regular criminals merely had the police to deal with.
The lower wages for police made bribing them much more viable, not to mention that when a Huntsman ended up involved with stopping him the lack of aura left holes in their fighting style.
After all, they were used to fighting opponents with aura or that they had to kill.
Their entire fighting style was built around these two goals.
And a human without aura, one they had to take alive, was something they couldn't deal with so easily.
If he knew his semblance would be something useful then of course he would get it unlocked, but that didn't mean he would use his aura in any fights after, he wouldn't want to give up his advantage after all.
The White Fang, on the other hand, didn't put any thought into how their lack of aura should affect their approach to fighting.
By trying to kill a Huntsman academy student, they forfeited their right to be taken alive, and ensured that trained Huntsmen would be sent after them, something that would ensure they wouldn't survive.
He was almost thankful for the sudden gunfire that rained upon the White Fang that had the students cornered.
By the sounds of it there was some kind of rifle and the sniper used by that girl he ran into on his last raid before Beacon started.
A few seconds later they were joined by a shotgun, as well as the sounds of charging idiots.
With enemy reinforcements there was next to no chance of the robbery being a success, of course, and his boss wasn't going to like it, but better he fail there, and possibly be arrested, than see the students killed and be hunted down by Huntsmen.
After all, if he was caught by police he could always bribe them or escape, and his boss was hardly going to eliminate him over a single failure caused by multiple waves of enemies after all the effort she had to put in to get him to follow her orders.
Of course, he had been preparing for when she tried to get rid of him, ensuring that Neo was ready to get him away if things seemed hopeless.
Problem was they needed a proper escape route out of the kingdom, one that wasn't compromised by whoever sold him out, so while he went on these raids Neo, who he would usually have watching his back, was working on that instead.
In any case, in the here and now he needed to get clear.
The White Fang, rabid animals that they were, didn't have any hope to win this fight, nor any chance of escaping.
The Dust from the shipment was a total loss.
All he could hope for was to get away himself.
With that in mind he turned his back on the faunus that had trusted him to lead them and looked for an opening through the enemy reinforcements.
A peculiar looking girl with orange hair dropped down in front of him.
"You are not getting away, thief Torchwick," she stated.
"About that," he responded, subtly checking the status of Melodic Cudgel, "if you're here, fighting me, that means you aren't doing anything about those violent terrorists over there. And after all, I'm just a thief, I do what I need to live. I don't go and try to hurt anyone, so if you think about it-"
A sword (and did her swords just come out of her back? What kind of Huntress was she?) swung at him, interrupting his argument and forcing him to block. The next sword he sidestepped, angling towards the safety of the city, and the third he had to throw himself aside to avoid.
""Hey," another block, "can't we," leap back, "talk about," a shot from the melee with the Fang hit the next sword, allowing him to sidestep again, "this? Why," block number three, "go lethal?"
"Roman Torchwick. Huntsman level foe."
"Huntsman level," he countered, wishing he had a chance for a physical counter. It was taking all his skill to keep one step ahead of her swords.
There was a pause in her attacks, and he saw her eyes glow.
Not in the same 'burning socket' manner as his boss when she was particularly angry, but rather the entire eye lit up like some king of glowstick.
She stepped back, pausing her relentless swings.
"No aura detected. Reevaluating attack patterns."
Roman grinned, tipping his hat slightly.
"That's the thing about Huntsmen," he told her in a cocky tone (even as he felt his heart racing faster than he liked), "you don't exact do 'non-lethal' weaponry. So, if you'll excuse me-"
A different bizarre looking woman stood in his planned escape route.
"Go and deal with his associates," she spoke past him, to the girl, "I'll deal with the thief."
The words 'deal with' weren't usually too worrying for him, given his usual opposition, but when spoken by a deathly pale, red-eyed individual with veins visible across their face, well, that added a certain tone to proceedings.
"And this is why I said we needed longer to gather the Dust," he muttered to himself.
The woman raised an eyebrow. "Oh? You're not gathering this for yourself?"
"Do I look like an idiot? Ambushing a shipment like this was always just going to draw military attention, even if it somehow went off without a hitch. I don't suppose you'd be willing to let me go if I told you who's behind it."
"You're willing to just sell your boss out?"
Roman laughed. "Normally, no. She has access to police records, if anything I told anyone found its way in she'd know, and then goodbye ol' Torchwick. But you, I can see you're not a Huntress. Not an official one at least, and between the choices of tell someone who might not report it officially and survive them, or keep it secret and likely get killed here and now, there's hardly a choice is there?"
The woman seemed... amused by his argument.
"Very well then. Who is this boss of yours?"
"Well, the only name I've heard for her is 'Fall', which hardly seems-"
She moved faster than he could see, and had him bound in some kind of weird material (a Semblance?), her face right in front of his.
There was an unsettling (even beyond the rest of her appearance) look in her eye.
"You will tell me everything you know about this 'Fall'."
It was not a question.
AN: Sorry if anyone seems out of character, and if the ending seems rushed. I had most of the chapter done in the week, but wanted to get this published in the schedule I had sort of planned if I could.
You may wonder about the auraless Torchwick. It came from an idea someone I know had, and I simply extrapolated why he might not possess aura. I am pretty sure he never uses aura in canon (or if he does it's after this point), so it should still be canon-compatible. And as for his opinion of the White Fang and Faunus, given that we only really see him interact with White Fang this version of his attitude seems entirely plausible.
As for Salem, well, she's hardly a hero. And her magical bindings, I apologise if it's been established that her magic can't do that. I'm about a volume behind (thanks to the laptop I was using to watch going down and taking any idea of where I'd got to with it).
In other news, I have signed up to fictionpress, the site for original works run by the same person. I will be starting a series on there (much darker than my fanfiction) some time soon, but my focus will still be on regular fanfiction updates before that series.
AN2: To clarify about Torchwick; I am pretty sure that at the very least his original appearance didn't establish aura usage for certain, and therefore the idea of him not using aura was usable without going too far from canon as a start point. For the most part, as long as the change isn't directly connected to the main divergence from canon that starts the fic, I try to avoid it, but sometimes a further change will work too well or otherwise be allowed to occur.
