- To Serve With Honor -
An hour after leaving Tukson's, Jaune stepped into his and Winter's shared quarters and breathed a sigh of relief as he set the bundles down beside a crate of case files.
"Honey, I'm home," he said sardonically to Winter, who was hunched over a file on the other side of the table as per usual.
"If you brought more police files, I'm filing for divorce," the other Specialist responded without missing a beat. After another moment, she heaved a frustrated sigh and slammed the file shut, tossing it onto a growing pile on the floor beside her.
"Doesn't the VPD have analysts for this kind of tedious bullshit?" Jaune asked rhetorically as he drew a combat knife from a concealed sheath in his waistband and cut the twine on the two packages.
"They do, but no one ever responds to my messages when I request to see the analysts' synopses," Winter deadpanned. She padded across the room and flopped onto her bed with a huff.
"I could ask one of the guys at the CCT to hack their files for you," he offered, crumpling the paper from the packages and tossing it to the floor at the foot of his own bed.
"Give me a week and then offer again. Are those your textbooks?"
"Yep," Jaune popped the final letter, "Everything from Remnant History and Grimm Anatomy, to Public Relations and Fundamentals of Long-Term Wilderness Survival. Plus," he picked up the smaller treatise and tossed it underhand to Winter's bed, "A little something special from the homeland."
Winter reached out and lazily drew the book into her line of sight, and then shot upright. "You need to get rid of this," she declared instantly.
"Vale overturned Ironwood's "request" to have the book banned," Jaune shot back with a taunting grin. "It's perfectly legal to own here. And besides, Herr Feldmarschall is a very knowledgeable and capable military leader; why would I turn down an opportunity to study his words?"
"I'm serious Jaune, the Special Task Force will draw and quarter you if they find out that you have a copy of this!" she insisted vehemently.
"I'll put a random dust jacket on it and keep it stashed somewhere else," he said with a placating wave of one hand, stepping over and plucking the book from her grip. "And besides, there are copies of this in the Atlas Academy library for curriculum studies; if I get caught with it, I'll just say that I was doing some independent research in order to better direct the narrative for your political science course."
"You're not putting that on me," Winter grit with a jab of a gloved finger for emphasis.
"Which is why it's independent study," Jaune repeated, "Calm down. I'll finish the book by the end of the week and then dump it somewhere if you're so scared of it."
"I'm not scared of it," she growled, "Heinrich Rommel's treatise is an insightful contribution to modern military science. It's just that… He makes the unfortunate decision to spend a bit too much time discussing domestic affairs in the process."
"Brothers forbid a man talks about the fucked-up state of affairs in the crumbling ruins of his home nation that Atlas promised to help rebuild in return for transferring the seat of government," he drawled back with a roll of his eyes. "The atrocities being perpetrated in Mantle can't remain a secret forever, Winter. If Atlas doesn't own up to it or if Mantle itself doesn't put the word out, the Zealots are just going to leverage it someday to drive their own campaign. Why would we not let the world know on our own terms?"
As he tucked the book into the back of his pillowcase, Winter swung her legs over the bed and leaned forward to fix him with a mixed gaze. "You keep saying 'we,' Jaune," she stated flatly.
"And?" Jaune responded, flopping back and turning to her with a puzzled expression.
"You're Valean, Jaune," the female Specialist insisted.
"I've earned my stripes," he retorted firmly. "Legio Patria Nostra. The Legion is Mantle, and Mantle is the Legion. My enlistment oath was an oath of citizenship," he propped himself up on one arm and pointed to the scars on his face with his other hand, "And I sealed that oath in my own blood."
Winter folded her arms beneath her chest and frowned. "You know that you could apply for Atlesian citizenship now that you have your commission, right? What purpose does Mantlese citizenship even serve to you?"
Instead of responding, Jaune simply laid back down and stared up at the ceiling, his gaze growing distant as he held a deathly silence of reflection.
This silence held for several agonizing minutes, in which time Winter watched and grew more and more concerned by his stillness even as she reflected and winced internally at the callousness of her own words.
Before she could muster the courage to say anything else, however, her companion finally spoke.
"There's not much that I'm proud of about the time that I spent in Mantle," he admitted, one arm resting across his stomach while his head rested on the other. "We followed orders and did things that we're not proud of, because we knew then or we know now what we did just. Wasn't. Right." He exhaled, distress creasing his brow as he still refused to look at Winter.
"Why did we do it, Winter?" Jaune asked rhetorically, "Why did we follow orders if we knew that they would hurt our own people?"
The eldest Schnee daughter had no reply.
"I guess the better question is," he continued, "Why would I?"
His breathing slowed and his eyes clouded over.
"And really, the only logic answer is that... Considering that killing is really what the military teaches you to do first, and to do best..."
"LOWER YOUR WEAPON, NOW!"
The young woman clad in rags of winter clothing kept the battered rifle pointed at him, the frozen clouds of her breath doing little to disguise the manic terror and hatred in her eyes.
"I said LOWER YOUR FUCKING WEAPON!"
She gritted her teeth, and then bellowed a hoarse battle cry as she jerked the trigger, the volley flying wide over his shoulder.
His linear rifle barked twice, and she crumpled like a marionette with its strings cut, accompanied by a sickening crunch as her neck landed sharply on the hard edge of the crumbling wall behind her.
She felt no pain from it, he knew; she was already dead from the second round that had torn through her eye and blown out the back of her skull.
"... Following those orders just comes naturally afterwards."
A distant startled cry registered, and a boy - no older than six or seven - scrambled up the slope on the far side of the wall and through the doorway, skidding to a stop beside the rapidly-cooling corpse.
"PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM!" he heard one of the others yell at the boy. The child heard none of it, bright young eyes welling with tears that streamed down his cheeks and froze before they even reached his chin.
He held out an arm to stop one of the others from approaching the boy and the corpse. "Get out of here, kid!" he shouted sharply.
The boy wheeled around, the woman's rifle - comically large against his tiny frame - pointed at them.
"DON'T DO IT!"
The boy uttered a vengeful cry and squeezed the trigger.
"And usually... We die, long before we ever have to consider the consequences."
Two final shots left Jaune's rifle, and a familiar deathly silence fell once more upon the ruins of Mantle.
He laid there, staring insensate at the ceiling, at something far beyond the plain of the living.
Then, tears began to stream from his wide, quivering eyes. His expression otherwise remained stoic, even as his body was wracked by shallow gasps and quiet sobs, and his heart tried to beat its way out of his chest.
He distantly felt, but his eyes refused to see when Winter seized his shoulders, tugged his chin to look into her eyes, and shook him as she called his name.
Jaune stared up at her; but all he saw were the dull, dead eyes of a murdered child.
His final words before his eyes rolled back and his consciousness fled were thus:
"Adam was right."
- To Serve With Honor -
Pax entered the squad bay with a distant gaze and an absent mind; as such, it was understandable that he failed to recognize the current occupants until he crashed squarely into the back of one. "Sor-" the young man stumbled back, only to freeze as he realized who he had just bumped into.
A Zealot Sergeant - denoted as such by the blue and grey horizontal stripe across their mask - stood motionless and stared back over their shoulder without a word.
Pax instantly scrambled to attention. "My apologies, Sergeant," he croaked.
"Accepted," a soft, feminine voice replied. "Why are you here, Paxton?"
"This is my squad bay, Sergeant," he replied with a bit more confidence.
"Your squad was reassigned to another bay this morning," the Sergeant stated. "Your squad leader was supposed to inform you several hours ago."
"I've been filling a gap in the watch rotation until just a while ago," Pax said apologetically. "I'll find my squad leader and get out of your way; I apologize again for the interruption."
"Wait," someone else barked from further down the bay; Paxton paled as he recognized the voice of the Commander. "On me, Paxton," Adam instructed.
With a last silent apology, Pax sidestepped the Sergeant and shuffled quickly between the Zealot infantry occupying the bay until he was standing just over arm's length from the Commander. "Reporting as ordered, sir," he rattled off with a hasty salute.
"At ease," Commander Taurus grunted with an amused smirk. "Your timing is impeccable; I was just about to call for a local to accompany the strike team."
"Strike team?!" Pax squeaked incredulously; he then cleared his throat in embarrassment. "Strike team, sir?" he tried again.
"Strike team," Adam nodded. "Get the door, Sergeant."
"Yes sir," the Sergeant from before called back; Pax heard the metal door slam shut behind him with an ominous reverberation.
"Needless to say, you're not to discuss any part of this briefing or the accompanying operation with anyone until such a time that you are cleared to do so," the Commander intoned.
"Understood sir."
"Good. Take a seat." Adam turned on his heel and gestured absently to one of the empty cots set on either side of the aisle as he walked towards a rolling chalkboard that Pax finally noticed, which was currently covered by a map of Vale's Commercial District.
"Our sources have finally been able to positively identify the Atlas Legionnaire that was present at the morning robbery and during our subsequent ambush," the Commander started before Pax had even found a seat, resulting in the young Valean nearly missing the cot in astonishment. He was further startled as a Zealot reached over his shoulder with a wallet-size color photograph, which Pax accepted with a stammered thanks.
"The man in that photograph is Corporal Jonathan "Jack" Amsel," Adam continued, "Formerly of the Atlas Foreign Legion, now an Atlas Military Specialist partnered with Specialist Winter Schnee. Amsel is the intended target of this strike."
Pax took a moment to reconcile the picture in his hand against the memory of the tired young man in armor from the Dust shop, and found that there was no mistaking the resemblance. He felt a small pit begin to form in his gut as he looked back to Adam and nodded in acknowledgement.
"We have the motive to suspect, and the beginnings of the evidence to prove, that Amsel is the man responsible for the creation - and possibly even the placement of - the explosive device that foiled our first strike into Vale last week, and took the lives of six of our comrades in the process."
The pit deepened and stirred as Pax tried and failed to reconcile this allegation against the kind, hopeful, and merciful words and acts of the young man from the Dust shop.
"Amsel is here to aid and corroborate intelligence for the Vale Police Department's investigation into our ongoing acquisition of Dust within the Kingdom. This fact, combined with his recent direction action against our forces, marks him as a significant threat and a high-priority target which must be removed in order to ensure the future success of our objectives in Vale."
Pax nodded again numbly.
"Despite the importance of this task, we have few resources to spare for an assassination due to most of our current commitments to other operations," Adam stated with a small displeased frown. "So much as I would like to execute the Corporal's demise in a more personal and thorough fashion, we'll have to settle for a brief, high-impact precision strike with minimal time-on-target afterward to verify his death."
The Commander shook his head and turned to tap his knuckle over a red circle on the map. "Active and retrospective surveillance has revealed that the two Specialists are residing at Beacon Academy, and that Amsel primarily travels between the school and Vale on a public shuttle serving this port on the east end of the Commercial District." He turned to look Pax in the mask. "Are you familiar with this area?"
Pax swallowed a lump in his throat and nodded after a moment of thought. "A friend's daughter started at Beacon last year," he explained, "I've met up with her there a few times, and I've had to wait in that plaza outside of the terminal before."
"Good," Adam nodded in satisfaction. "I want you to accompany the Sergeant and her unit as a local advisor. She will consult with you on the placement of the strike teams; you'll remain on-site to survey the area and corroborate the success or failure of the attack, and then you'll guide the unit out of the area in the event that the primary exfil is compromised by the authorities."
Adam stopped and folded his arms across his chest, staring intently at Pax and assessing his reactions. "Are you up to the task?" he finally asked with a bit less intensity.
Pax looked down at his boots and seriously considered the question.
'This guy has proven what he's capable of when faced with a threat like Adam,' Pax noted internally. 'If we can get rid of him before things get too bad, we'll be able to avoid a lot of future damage to Vale that those two could do when faced off against each other.'
A snippet of a memory started to play in the back of his mind.
"What I want is for no one to die here,"
"It doesn't have to be this way… I don't want it to be this way!"
"Well then, I suppose I'll have to stop you after all."
"I don't need an army."
"I am Legion."
'He's too dangerous to be left alive.'
"I'll do it," Carmello Paxton finally nodded with grim resolve.
"Excellent," Adam clapped his hands together. "Effective immediately, you're attached to Sergeant Tajra's strike team. They'll get you kitted out, and then you will all mobilize to a safehouse near the site. The whole team will be on Quick Reaction Alert, ready to move into position as soon as we get word of an opportunity."
Pax heard a unified shuffle of cloth and canvas behind him, and glanced back to find the entire Zealot unit standing at attention facing the Commander; he swiftly followed suit.
"This is not a new task to most of you," Adam spoke to the entire squad bay, "Nor is this a new enemy. But make no mistake, your target is far from a conventional foe; take him lightly at your own peril.
"You are all members of the single most effective paramilitary fighting force on the face of Remnant; but remember that you are effective because you have spent your lives fighting men like this one. You are precise, you are efficient, and you are ruthless; but when you stare this man down, you will be looking in a mirror. In the face of imminent demise, he will be everything that you are, and he will have nothing left to lose."
Pax's breath hitched, and he swallowed thickly.
"If you hesitate or falter for even one instant, he will be inside your head in the next," the Commander pressed, striding deliberately down the aisle as the Zealots parted before him. "And if you allow him a third instant, you will be dead."
Adam stopped in the center of the room and turned on his heel, looking around and meeting the masked gazes of each and every man and woman present with gravitas.
"This man is currently the single greatest threat to our mission. So, before he can make up his mind and become an obstacle…"
Adam removed his sheathed sword from his belt in one swift motion; the butt of the sheath met the floor of the squad bay with a resounding clack.
"Jonathan Amsel. Must. Die."
The soldiers of the White Fang saluted as one and sounded off strongly.
"SIR! YES SIR!"
- To Serve With Honor -
When Jaune awoke, he was lying down with noticeable tension across his chest, shoulders, and shins.
Without opening his eyes, he processed the situation in his groggy and exhausted mind, and exhaled at length through his nose.
"A familiar situation, I presume?" a vaguely-familiar male voice asked from beside him.
"Waking up strapped to a hospital bed?" Jaune responded rhetorically with a snort, "Beats waking up strapped to a metal chair with part of my jaw missing."
"I suppose it would. Could you please open your eyes for me, Jaune?"
His eyes shot open, and he glared at Doctor Grey.
"I thought that might do it," Grey smirked unrepentantly as he took out a pen light and checked Jaune's eyes. "Dilation is normal, albeit sluggish. Cognitive functions still a little hazy?"
"I'm just… Tired," Jaune admitted slowly. "Did Ozpin give you my name?"
"Peter was required to disclose it in your psychological evaluation, which I have access to," the doctor replied flatly, still making notes on his clipboard. "As an aside, you probably should have asked him to put in at least a few flags for the sake of honesty if you're going to be doing this often, because I don't think that the Headmaster will be too agreeable to having an all-clear report on his desk as the subject is being restrained in my med bay."
"I didn't…" Jaune groaned as a headache struck, "... didn't ask Port to give me an all-clear."
Grey hummed, scratching at the appropriately-colored scruff on his chin. The older man set his clipboard down on a counter across the room, and then turned back to Jaune and folded his arms over his chest as he contemplated the Specialist strapped to the bed.
"... Can you untie me now?" Jaune asked awkwardly, fidgeting to demonstrate the point.
"Just a few more questions before I do," Grey replied, reaching up and pushing his squared glasses higher on his nose with a finger. "Do you remember the events leading up to your current situation?"
In his room with Winter. He'd just brought back the books, and she'd said something about Rommel's treatise. He'd started waxing philosophical, and…
"... Fuck," he finally cursed under his breath as he fully recalled his prior train of thought.
"I'll take that as a 'yes,'" Grey said wryly, pulling a rolling stool out from under the counter and dragging it across the room to the bedside.
Once it was there, the doctor sat down heavily and sighed. He leaned on his elbows and wrung his hands together, and finally reached up and took off his glasses, hooking them on the breast pocket of his open white medical coat.
"Doctor-Patient Confidentiality continues to apply to everything that goes on behind this closed door," Grey rumbled slowly and a little uncertainly, "And more than that, I would hope that Soldier-to-Soldier Confidentiality supersedes that. I may not have been deployed in Solitas, but I did spend ten years at various posts across the frontier in Sanus with the VDF, and I've seen my share of combat fatigue. If there's anything that you want to discuss, Jaune, I'm not required to report it now that Port has submitted his documents, and I swept the exam room for bugs this morning."
"So does that or does that not imply that Ozpin has bugs that you already know about?" Jaune asked with a sideways glance.
Grey responded with another wry smirk, before reaching behind the metal bedside table and pulling out a small silver dot; the device was crushed with a tiny metallic crunch between his fingers.
"The Headmaster is a shrewd spy; but for all of his enigmatic ways, he can't beat good old-fashioned military paranoia," the older man said with a grin.
Jaune returned a slight tired smile before sighing and turning his head back to stare at the ceiling tiles. "Are you close with anyone from the Legion, Doc?" he asked quietly.
"My brother-in-law works for a humanitarian group that's been fighting to gain access to Solitas for years," Grey replied. "He's interviewed numerous discharged and disgraced Legionnaires who were denied their pensions, forced to leave the continent, and went to work for PMCs in Mistral; but even with first-hand accounts, the stories and petitions that his organization submitted never make it past the Council."
The doctor sat upright and stared at the window on the far end of the room. "The last time that he tried to turn his findings over to the media, he was paid a visit at his office by a group of rather unfortunate-looking gentlemen who confiscated or destroyed all of his documentation, and strongly advised that he abandon his pursuits." Grey looked down again and met Jaune's sideways glance. "I've since identified at least one of the assailants as a Signals Lieutenant in the CCT garrison's Special Task Force detachment," he concluded grimly.
Jaune grimaced. "So he's told you the stories?"
"I've committed every detail to memory," Grey nodded, "I've always felt that the greatest injustice is learning of another's plight and then forgetting it. Inaction is motivated by a broad spectrum of motives, but there's simply no excuse for dismissing or erasing the memory of an unanswered crime, no matter how great or small."
"That's a pretty good philosophy," the Specialist noted.
"Seems like it has its ups and downs, particularly if you were an accessory to the injustice in the first place," Grey responded bluntly.
To that, Jaune groaned painfully. "Would you mind dialing it back there, Doc?" he ground out.
"My apologies," the doctor said unapologetically, "But after the conversation I had with Specialist Schnee yesterday, I've hypothesized that getting straight to the crux of the issue will likely yield more results than dancing around it."
"Yesterday…? How long have I been out?"
"Two days."
"So it's… Thursday?"
"Currently sixteen-forty-three hours."
Jaune rolled his head back and pressed it into the pillow as he groaned again through gritted teeth. "They're getting longer…" he said to himself.
"Do you know how many of these episodes you've experienced?"
The Specialist's eyes clenched tightly before he reluctantly admitted, "Seven."
"When did they first begin occurring?"
"... I had the first in Asteria, two nights after my original squad leader was killed in combat," Jaune admitted after a long moment of hesitation. "The second was five months later, after I'd been assigned as interim squad lead, and after I'd lost six of my men; I was ordered to attend my first counseling session after that one. The third was while I was being held and interrogated by the Zealots, the fourth while I was still in intensive care, and the fifth and sixth while I was undergoing Specialist training."
"How many counseling sessions did you attend while in Solitas?"
"Three. The first after Dimitri was killed; the second after I was rescued and recovered enough to have a coherent conversation; and the third after I broke down for the first time while training with Winter at the Schnee estate. I managed to talk Winter out of a fourth appointment only because the first three obviously hadn't helped."
Grey nodded absently as he scratched the scruff on his cheek. "So what was different about your conversation with Peter compared to the ones that you had in Atlas?"
"All three of the shrinks in Atlas tried to put me on drugs, for one," Jaune sneered in distaste. "I've seen dozens of men in my section and even my squad who were rendered barely functional after being put on "medication" for "burnout" in the field. Every single gods-damned one of them ended up zoning out and being killed in the field, or committing suicide in the FOB."
The doctor hummed contemplatively. "Well that would explain why you were so dodgy when I offered to write a prescription for your wounds a few weeks ago."
The Specialist's expression softened, and he shifted under the belts holding him to the bed. "I opened my door to my squad after I first recognized the pattern, but all we ever ended up accomplishing was commiserating and then walking ourselves to and from the bar."
Grey snorted in morbid amusement. "Sounds about right," he said. "No offense, but you're not exactly in a position where you should be giving other people advice in the matter."
Jaune laughed humorlessly. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
The two sat in silence for a while as Grey stared at the edge of the bed, wringing his hands and apparently contemplating how to proceed.
"Were you ever driven to attempt suicide?" the doctor finally asked outright.
"Once," Jaune freely admitted, "When I was being held by the Zealots. I guess it was a good thing that I was comatose through most of my later hospital stay, because otherwise I probably would've tried again."
"What stopped you in captivity?"
"One of my captors," he grimaced, before his expression softened, "The only medic who would ever treat me. Dark hair, bright eyes, these cute little ears…" He stopped and let out a short, bitter laugh. "I don't think Taurus was too happy that she was visiting me, but she'd show up every other day or so and stop the bleeding. Gave me antibiotics once when it looked like my face was going to get infected, though I'm pretty sure she caught hell for it afterwards.
"Anyway, after about the third week of getting nothing useful out of me, one of the Zealots left a shard of glass by my chair on his way out; said I should do everybody a favor and free up my bread and water rations for somebody who actually needed it.
"It was a fair and practical suggestion to make, in all honesty," Jaune sighed, relaxing slightly as he slumped under the belts, "The Zealots and other insurgent hold-outs around Mantle usually live hand-to-mouth, and the refugees in their care usually outnumber the fighters in a given cell two- or three-to-one, so even a scrap of bread that's going to a prisoner is a scrap of bread that could be going to a starving woman or child instead.
"By that point, I'd been in captivity for about two weeks, and I'd heard enough about captured Legionnaires to know that Atlas would never send for me. My squadmate, Torrez, had also been killed the previous morning while under interrogation - he'd been dragged in half-dead in the first place, but it was still a harsh blow to my morale."
Jaune closed his eyes, and his volume dropped a notch, prompting Grey to lean forward a bit in his seat. "I had no logical justification not to die. I was never going to be rescued, I would never break or cut a deal, and I was being a drain on resources that could be going to people in need - at that point I was alive purely out of spite for Adam Taurus and my interrogators, and even that motivation was wearing thin.
"By then I'd been beaten and starved to the point that I could barely move my arms and legs, but after an hour or two of shuffling, I'd managed to move the ropes around my arms enough to where I could put my hands on my legs. I had the glass in my hand, and I'd finally mustered the strength to get it about halfway to my neck when the medic came in and slapped it out of my hand."
Grey quirked a brow as he rested his forearms on his legs. "Why?"
"Told me that she'd expended too much medical supplies keeping me alive for me to put all of her effort to waste by killing myself," Jaune laughed. Grey snorted in disbelief and then chuckled in agreement.
"I suppose I can get behind that from a professional standpoint," the doctor said wryly. "Any other reasoning?"
"She told me point-blank that each and every death, be it a refugee, a Zealot, or a Legionnaire, was another win for Atlas; that at the end of the day, every death in Mantle and Solitas was another mouth that Atlas didn't have to feed, as well as another body and soul that couldn't possibly rise against it in rebellion."
"Another fair point," Grey commented idly, "Though a rather ironic one to make to a Legionnaire."
"My life was a travesty to Atlas and an inconvenience to my enemies," Jaune countered, a single corner of his mouth curling into a tired smirk. "That was a rebellion that I could get behind considering that I'd been abandoned like hundreds before me; and so, I lived. I only saw her three times after that, and then for the full week before I was rescued, she never returned. I can only assume that she was reassigned or killed; but by the time Winter broke down that door, staying alive was all I could muster the strength to think about."
"Sounds like you discovered a reasonable motive for living," Grey stated after a moment's consideration. "Why do you figure then that you would have tried again had you been conscious in the Atlas hospital?"
"Because the military would've found a way to make me wish that I was dead," Jaune scoffed. "Four weeks alive in captivity, when no other prisoner had been recovered alive in decades? Inconceivable. I must've broken under torture, or cut a deal and the Zealots had decided that I was worth more alive; and after a military tribunal reached that conclusion, I would've been sentenced or "disappeared" to a penal camp in the Wastes, if not just executed outright."
"Speaking from experience?"
"There are enough stories of similar scenarios and worse that it was a reasonable assumption to make at the time," the Specialist shrugged. "Best case, I would've been drummed out of the Legion and left in the breeze. In any case, Winter saved my life in more ways than one when she secured my commission."
"So it would seem," Grey nodded in agreement. "So, compared to those instances, tell me how you're feeling now - or how you felt a few days ago - and explain to me how you're not a threat to yourself or anyone else in your present state."
Jaune's fists clenched briefly - he winced and noted the presence of bandages around one of his palms - and then unclenched as he exhaled at length. His eyes remained closed for another moment as he collected his thoughts and processed his current state of mind.
"... I had a mental break a few days ago," he finally said. "I've been out of my element ever since we arrived in Vale; on top of that, I've finally had time to myself to process everything that's happened over the last few years. Combining that with the accusations and the perspective that Taurus smashed me over the head with a few weeks ago, the conclusions that I drew from my reflections about the morality of my… Actions… Were unpleasant, to say the least. And when faced with these reflections and memories, I…"
"You broke under cognitive dissonance," Grey suggested.
"Sure, let's go with that."
"Well, I suppose it's better that it happened here than back in Atlas," the doctor said with weariness creeping into his voice. The man then stood and kicked the stool away absently as he set a hand on one of the belts holding Jaune to the bed. "Do you believe that you've bled most of those stresses out of your system?"
"I… Think so, yes," Jaune replied hesitantly.
Grey paused, and his dark eyes narrowed and scrutinized the younger man's nervous expression, before he finally shrugged and set about undoing the restraints.
"Either way, Glynda's officially put you under suicide watch, so I wouldn't try to go too far afield until everyone has had some time to stew and talk things over," the older man explained.
Jaune grimaced, knew that there was no point in protesting. "I still had things to do in Vale…" he sighed in exhaustion, slumping forward and running a hand over his face.
"If you're still tired as you've said, then I'll have to request that you at least rest here for a while longer so that I can speak with Glynda and Miss Schnee and get my papers in order for you to be released," Grey said, turning and cross the room to retrieve his clipboard. "At that time, however, if no one else is available, I could accompany you down to the city so that you can settle the rest of your affairs."
"I'd appreciate that, Doc," Jaune replied honestly as he laid back down again.
"It's Nathaniel, by the way," Grey added absently as he flipped through the paperwork and scrawled on several pages.
"Sure thing, Doc."
Grey shot him a narrow sideways glance, only to find the Specialist looking back with a small shit-eating grin.
"And now I'm starting to remember why I didn't like working with infantry grunts," the doctor grunted in annoyance as he left the room.
As soon as Grey departed, Jaune's expression fell once again, and his brow furrowed in contemplation.
'Adam was right,' he considered the words again, '... But he's also probably going to be trying to kill me if he ever finds out that I'm a demolition tech, so what does it matter if he's right?'
Well, it mattered because regardless of factions or motives, every Zealot and Legionnaire to have ever taken a life out of malice and never repented afterward was a monster by the criteria that defined both Adam and Jaune.
'Which then raises the question of, what am I actually going to do with this information?'
A fresh tidal wave of exhaustion struck as he finished his thought, and he yawned deeply. He was out again almost the moment that his eyes closed.
'Guess I can afford to sleep on it for a bit…'
- To Serve With Honor -
Three days after having stumbled into the strike briefing, Pax once again surveyed the interior of the White Fang's safehouse near the transit plaza in the eastern Commercial District.
The "safehouse," contrary to the stereotypes from movies and pop-culture, turned out to be a rather upscale apartment a few blocks from the square. The building that the apartment was located in, as well as the buildings around it, were stark and drab commercial spaces, which would probably explain why one of the strike team members mentioned that the unit had been reasonably priced for its size and opulence.
Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a sizable sitting area, and a massive kitchen somehow managed to comfortably house a dozen elite terrorists (and Pax) and their gear, all of which was able to be covertly moved into the building through back alleys and a service elevator.
The first day consisted of site scouting and survey. Pax and Tajra, the Zealot Sergeant - who was revealed to be a slight brown-haired woman with a pale complexion and feline limbs below her knees in the same shade as her hair - dressed in civilian clothes and took a stroll around the eastern Commercial District, with Tajra hanging off of an uncomfortable Pax's arm while she hawkishly surveyed their surroundings.
He had led the walk to the plaza, where they settled on a bench and he answered questions about the locale and pointed out potential roosts in the surrounding buildings and rooftops for the spotter and missile teams while she awkwardly clung to his shoulder and clinically assessed the entire area.
From then on, a select few members of the team with more concealable Faunus features went out alone or in pairs or trios to the area to check out the buildings and alleys bordering the plaza. One or two of the more personable members might try to speak with tenants or owners to gather details about the structures and their access points, while the stealthier operators simply went out in the dying light of the evening and either broke into or scaled buildings to reach the locations of interest and more directly assess their suitability for certain roles and tasks.
Otherwise, waiting was the name of the game. The team double- and triple-checked their weapons and equipment, monitored communication lines with HQ and other independent observers, and stood watch around the surrounding area in discrete locations, or simply at the windows within the apartment itself.
Between their duties on QRA, the whole team seemed to be out of their element, but ultimately enthusiastic to experience as many everyday amenities as they could while cooped up in the apartment. The nine men and three women set up a schedule on the first day for all of them to rotate between regular duties, rest, and long, hot showers, the latter apparently being a highlight that had their scarred and hardened faces splitting with joyous grins, even in the most taciturn of the operators.
The three most culinarily-skilled of the group - Pax himself, a rifleman called Skipper, and a female marksman called Poof - cycled through or shared kitchen duties. Only one of them was usually required for breakfast, while two might collaborate on putting together a portable lunch menu, and all three would split dinner. Pax would take the lead on the main course for dinner, since the other two seemed to defer to him when it came to the "civilized" preparation of meats and other entrees, as they liked to put it.
The rest of the group spent their down time alternating between sleeping, watching anything that caught their attention on the apartment's substantial hardlight television, writing letters to distant loved ones, and simply lounging or sleeping on the plush furniture. Once Pax introduced a few of the younger ones to mobile games, there were always at least two people parked on one of the sitting room's couches - one person tapping away at his Scroll while the other observed with poorly-disguised interest.
Which led into another interesting revelation - not a single person amongst this group was older than Pax. Even Tajra was revealed to be but twenty-two years of age.
The oldest of the lot turned out to be Skipper, a blond-haired man with small vulpine ears on either side of the crown of his head, who was just a month younger than Pax's twenty-three years and seven months.
The youngest was the communications specialist, a stocky, muscular, and deceptively soft-spoken seventeen-year-old with dark green scales up and down his forearms, and appendages that were more multi-jointed reptilian claws than human hands, who was called Tock.
"It's an old history gag," Tock had explained with a shrug. "It's a much more benign story than "Skipper" over there."
"A Legionnaire's rifle round ricocheted off the pavement and got lodged in Skip's ass while he was running away," one of the others had cackled, "He's been runnin' funny ever since."
"Funny or not, Jaws, I can still run fast enough to whoop your ass," Skipper had growled half-heartedly. The room had shared a long laugh at that.
In all, the Zealot squad was easily the most interesting and eclectic cast of characters that Pax has ever had the pleasure of meeting.
But when Tajra answered her Scroll on the third day and her features visibly tightened, the mood of the entire room shifted, and Pax knew that their easy time was over.
"GEAR UP!" The Sergeant barked, her mask in hand and sliding over her face as the rest of the strike force tumbled off of couches and made for the scattered piles of kit around the apartment. "Our timeline is seventeen minutes and not a second more! First man out of each team takes everything they can carry, stragglers take what's left! MOVE OUT!"
Pax finished cinching the straps on his matte-grey body armor as Tajra finished speaking. He accepted a satchel of equipment and munitions for his team's launcher from Poof, and fell in behind Tock, Jaws, and a riflewoman called Zipper as they filed into the elevator, filling the cab with just the four of them and all the gear that they each carried.
The lift creaked and groaned down two floors, the occupants falling into a familiar tense silence. At the bottom, the doors ground open, and Pax nearly jumped as Jaws's kit hit the floor and his rifle snapped up.
Out in the hallway, a wide-eyed elderly woman with fading feline spots across her visible skin stood frozen, her jaw agape and body trembling under the rifle's sights.
Jaws waited another second before Tock shouldered past him out of the elevator and stopped a meter away from the woman in the middle of the hall.
"We're going to need you to wait a few minutes while our colleagues depart, madam," the young communications specialist said softly, "We apologize for the inconvenience. Please go about your day, and don't mention us to anyone for at least a few days; if at all. Is that alright?"
The older woman's jaw snapped shut and she swallowed dryly; after a moment of delay, she nodded slowly and took a few steps to one side and out of the team's way.
"Thank you for your cooperation," Tock said, shuffling the bag on his shoulder and making for the back exit down at the opposite end of the hall; the other three occupants of the elevator car filed out swiftly, with Pax taking up the rear and stopping on his way out to offer the woman a small, awkward smile and a reassuring nod before he carried on.
"Actual, Chalk Two-One; civilian in the lower floor of the building," he heard Tock reporting into his Scroll as they filed out of the building, "She's no threat. Maintain situational awareness on your way out."
"Civvie confirmed, keep an eye out," Tajra echoed back over the link, "Actual copies all. Double-time to your stations, Two-One."
"Copy, Actual; Two-One out." Tock tucked his Scroll away and glanced over his shoulder. "You know where you're setting up, Rover?" he called back to Pax.
"Affirmative," he grunted before adding irately, "Your codenames still suck, by the way."
The three Zealots ahead of him barked out laughs at that. As a local attaché, the strike force had chosen to assign him with a unique handle for communications; some budding comedian on the team had suggested "Rover," after a stereotypical name for a domesticated dog, and the name had stuck after Pax had immediately protested the indignity.
Five minutes of mixed sprinting and slinking through back alleys brought the group to the block south of the plaza. Pax's and Zipper's positions were in buildings on this side of the plaza, while Tock and Jaws had another three minutes of sneaking through the grass to the east of the airship terminal ahead of them in order to reach their positions on the north side.
The first four waited a minute, and within that time, the rest of Chalks Two and Three - Tock's and Jaws's teams - joined them, allowing the full groups to set off together for the north side. Chalk Four joined Zipper thirty seconds later and set out, while Tajra and Chalk One arrived moments later, and together they entered the half-empty multi-story commercial space that they would be perched inside of.
"Thank the Brothers for the recession," a man from Chalk One muttered as they ascended the emergency stairs, "Don't even wanna think about the mess this'd be if we had to clear a whole floor of civvies on arrival."
"Stow the chatter," Tajra muttered back as she pressed up against the door at their designated floor and set about picking the lock. The lock clicked open seconds later, and a pair of riflemen swept into the room beyond with their carbines raised to clear the floor.
"Clear!" one called back.
"Clear," the other confirmed.
Pax, Tajra, and Poof swept into the room beyond with the gear bags split between them. They had entered through an empty break room, and passed through a hall of individual offices before emerging into a stereotypical "cube farm," a communal office space, which was lined with wood-trimmed picture windows set half a meter apart from one another in the north wall.
"Get to work," Tajra ordered, setting her bags inside of one of the cubicles. Pax entered another cubicle and found one of their pre-staged pieces of equipment, a waist-high metal mail cart, and opened his bag to load the top surface of the cart with rifle magazines, Burn Dust incendiary charges, and a Scroll docking station which would serve as their communications hub.
He wheeled the cart out into the aisle between the cubes and the windows and set it a short distance away from Poof, who was fiddling with a fist-sized plastic squeeze bottle with a blue dispenser nozzle.
The sniper stood to one side of the window, out of sight of any onlookers, and attached a single small suction cup with a nylon strap handle to the middle of the glass. She then uncapped the tube and began to squeeze a translucent, blue-speckled gel onto the outer edges of the window pane.
"Freeze Dust Gel," Poof elaborated at Pax's curious glance, "A short, high-intensity electrical charge activates the Dust in the adhesive, which will reduce the temperature of the glass beneath the gel to minus three hundred C in under three seconds; at that point the frozen edges will be brittle enough for a quick yank to snap the pane clean out of the window."
She drew a pen-sized device from a pocket of her fatigues and uncapped it, revealing a pair of thin metal prongs; pressing a button on the side of the device caused electricity to jump and spark between the leads. Holding the inert mini-taser near the gel, she held the button for a second, and then drew her hand and the device away as the gel glowed a bright blue and froze the air within its vicinity.
Poof capped and pocketed the taser and took hold of the suction cup's strap with one hand, placing her other hand at the top of the pane to brace it; a swift, straight pull on the handle resulted in a short, sharp crack of glass, and she carefully lowered the intact, separated section out of the window and set it on the floor beneath the next window over.
The two riflemen repeated this process with two other windows in the north wall; once they were cleared, Tajra passed each of them a bulky shoulder-fired missile launcher and a sling of three projectiles each - one with a brown tip, and two with red tips.
"Load the Rock Dust warheads first," the Sergeant ordered, "We'll follow up with an Inferno rocket as a precaution, and keep the last Inferno in reserve in case exfil gets dicey."
"Aye, Sergeant," the two men acknowledged in sync, loading the brown-tipped projectiles and taking up positions crouched beside their windows.
Poof had withdrawn to a cubicle across from her window, and was standing on the desk within and resting her magazine-fed marksman rifle on the top of the cube wall to get the proper elevation to survey the plaza below.
"Sixty seconds," Tajra reported, posted beside an intact window and peering out to the northeast to survey the incoming airship's approach.
Pax had his own window and a monocular with a nonreflective lens. He swallowed thickly as his pulse pounded and the seconds ticked by. The scope in his hand quivered slightly, and he let out a shaky breath.
"Steady, Rover," he heard Poof's cool voice from behind him, "All you need do is call contact with the target. Take a deep breath, keep an eye on the airship, and chill the fuck out."
"Chilling out," he croaked back, earning soft chuckles from the rest of the Chalk.
His vision settled on the exit of the small terminal building, which was more of a large gazebo that also housed a tiny ticketing office and security station. A pair each of Atlesian and Valean soldiers were part of the security compliment - due to Beacon sharing grounds with the CCT - along with half a dozen "rent-a-cop" security officers paid by the Police Department.
Despite the recent tensions in Vale, the visible officers were still acting relatively lax; two of the cops were standing outside of the west terminal entrance chatting and smoking while keeping half an eye on the plaza and the terminal, respectively. One of the Valean soldiers had just stepped away and was standing on the east edge of the plaza facing Beacon and talking on a Scroll, while the other had been seen a minute ago entering the terminal while conversing with the Atlesians.
'We're gonna have to kill them all if they come outside,' Pax realized, a chill falling over his shoulders. 'How many people are going to die just for us to kill one Legionnaire?'
Judging from the volume of ammo spread between the Chalks, as well as the Zealots' unofficial policy of aiming to use no more and no less than three bullets for every kill: A lot, if they had any say in the matter.
"Passengers are disembarking," he heard the Scroll dock's speaker crackle. "Informant called in twelve to fifteen passengers total including the target."
Shit, this was going to be a bloodbath.
"First passengers exiting," Tajra intoned.
Space and time seemed to slow to a crawl, and Pax's breath hitched as two men stepped out from the west entrance of the terminal.
"Tally-ho," he heard one of the other teams declare, "Chalk Two makes the target plus one. Call confirm."
"Actual confirms," Tajra growled. "Final confirmation, Rover?"
Pax watched numbly as Jack Amsel crossed the plaza in step with an older, similarly-grizzled-looking man, the pair chatting amicably without a clue.
"Rover confirms," he breathed finally, "Good tally on target."
"Actual to all Chalks, green light," Tajra barked sharply, "Three takes lead, One will take the trailer. Fire when ready."
"Three, spotlight - Set," Chalk Three's spotter reported, signaling confirmation of their missileer's target.
Pax's blood froze as down below, Amsel halted on the spot and looked up directly at Chalk Three's position.
"Three, shooter - Spike!"
Across the plaza, two windows on separate floors of a residential complex blossomed with fire, and a pair of guided missiles streaked out as Amsel and his companion took off from a dead stop with surprising speed.
The Rock Dust warheads crashed into the pavers in front of and behind the two men and triggered, and each of the two impact sites "bloomed" with jagged spires that jutted out like petals of a violently blossoming stone flower. The ground for ten meters in every direction was ripped asunder, and Pax watched in muted shock and repressed horror as Amsel was caught squarely by the tip of a spire - though he was rather noticeably not skewered - and then flung raggedly into the air, crashing to the ground nearly twenty meters away by the terminal entrance. His companion had disappeared beneath the overlap of the two stone "blossoms."
"One, spotlight - Set," Poof's voice echoed through the back of Pax's conscious mind.
"One, shooter - Spike!" the pair of rocketeers barked, pivoting around to aim from the windows.
The missiles lanced out, the back blast whipping violently through the office. One missile crashed into the terminal entrance - Pax gasped dryly as he watched an emerging Atlesian soldier's Aura get overwhelmed instantly, with the trooper being immediately impaled by a rocky spire that speared clear through his armor and emerged from his chest for nearly a meter before stopping. The soldier's body shuddered violently in his death throes several times before the newly-made corpse fell still.
The second missile impacted further north on the terminal wall, the rustic masonry exploding in a shower of dust and debris. He watched one of the spears lash out and catch Amsel's prone form, once more failing to penetrate but again throwing him about with the ease of a ragdoll in a hurricane. The Legionnaire flew for thirty meters this time, crashing into one of the few remaining stone benches ringing the center of the plaza and shattering the solid-looking stone seat on impact.
"Three, reload Inferno and fire NOW!" Tajra roared as her own shooters scrambled to do the same. "One-Two, fire on anything that comes out of the terminal! Prioritize soldiers and cops!"
"Copy," Poof drawled, and Pax once again marveled at her impassiveness in the face of the chaos and carnage below.
Just before the second volley had hit, the shocked stillness of the plaza had exploded into terror and panic. Screams ripped out from the civilians and bystanders on the west side of the area as they scrambled out in a frenzy - 'Were there really that many people around before?' Pax wondered with distant shock - and upon the second pair of impacts, the screams doubled as the people in the terminal joined in, accompanied by the short barks of gunfire from Poof's rifle.
Over the din, he heard the low whine of turbines ramping up.
"Chalk Four, take down that fucking Bullhead as soon as it clears the landing pad!" Tajra snapped.
"Affirm," Zipper's low, dusky voice responded, "Chalk Four, cleared hot." And a second later, "Four going loud."
As the aforementioned airship appeared above the eastern roof of the terminal, Chalk Four's machine guns roared to life, and Pax was able to observe with gruesome detail through his monocular as their bullets stitched holes in neat lines across the aircraft's fuselage, eventually finding their target in the twin tilt-rotor engines.
With not even a full second of sustained gunfire, one of the turbines burst into flames, while the other stopped functioning altogether. The bulbous craft hung stationary in the air, and then lazily listed to its left. Gravity and the flaming engine's lift carried the Bullhead in a broad vertical arc away from the landing pad, finally ending in a horrific inverted crash and a shriek of yielding metal as the airship's roof crumpled like a crushed soda can, and one of the turbines was shorn completely off of the airframe.
Even before this disaster had ended, Chalk Three had finished reloading and fired another volley at Amsel's prone form. The entire center of the plaza disappeared in a hellish conflagration that briefly engulfed Pax's entire vision.
When the light and flames fell away into pockets and patches of roaring flames, the Legionnaire was nowhere to be seen.
"All Chalks, report visual on the target," Tajra ordered, her previous feral vigor draining away with her adrenaline.
"Chalk Two, no joy," Tock reported.
"Chalk Three, no joy," Jaws confirmed with audible frustration.
"Chalk Four, no joy," Zipper agreed.
"Chalk One, nada," Poof sighed.
The air was still before Pax started and croaked, "Rover, no eyes."
"Chalk One will put the last volley on target and provide covering fire," Tajra rattled off, already darting about in the cubes and collecting gear bags, "All other Chalks, sanitize your stations and begin exfil."
"Actual, Two-One," Tock spoke again, "Detonators for the Burn Charges are inop; civilians also present in Chalk Two's building. Please advise."
Pax whipped around to face the Sergeant, who met his startled and pleading frown and cursed. "Chalk Two, place your charges and strike out," Tajra sighed, "One will spend a round on your roost once the building is clear."
"Acknowledged; Two-One out."
"One-Two, glass Chalk Two's building and put some warning shots wherever you see civvies," the Zealot Sergeant ordered her sniper. "One-Three, put one on the target's last known and then pack it up; One-Four, save your round for Chalk Two's roost."
The team sounded off scattered affirmations, and Pax numbly set about scooping up Poof's extra magazines and equipment into his bag. A hand seized his shoulder and pulled him up to meet the Sergeant's icy gaze.
"Keep your glass on the square, Rover," Tajra growled lowly, "You're here to make sure that the target is dead; do your damned job."
Pax gulped. "Aye Sergeant," he nodded hurriedly, fumbling with his monocular and poking up over the window frame. His heart, and the leaden weight in his stomach, sank further and further as he surveyed the damages.
The Inferno volley had completely immolated part of the western plaza. Half-molten chunks of stone and metal glowed and burned brightly, even in the high afternoon sun.
His gaze swept over an unidentified lump on the ground near the edge of the blast zone, and he felt his guts heave, forcing a wet cough of surprise.
It was a body. A body that, he unfortunately realized, was still moving.
The young man was still aflame as he dragged himself by one deep red appendage across the square; half of his clothes were burnt away, and most of his exposed skin visibly was melted or otherwise deformed from the heat.
"How did he get there?" Pax heard himself whisper in horror.
"Have you spotted the target?!" he heard Tajra demand from across the room behind him.
"No," he rasped back, swallowing dryly and wetting his lips even as he failed to tear his eyes from the sight, "A civilian was caught in the third volley and is… Melting alive."
The room stilled, and the subsequent shock and remorse was palpable.
Pax started as a hand grasped his monocular, and he glanced up to find Poof, her exposed mouth set in a grim line as she physically redirected his gaze elsewhere.
They both froze as the scope settled on the northwest edge of the plaza.
"Actual," Poof said slowly, "We have unknown contacts, bearing west-northwest."
Tajra groaned in irritation and doubled back to the nearest window. "Four-One, if you're still in place, confirm contacts at west-northwest."
"Four-One confirms. Unknown contacts, bearing three-zero-zero; nine military-age males, black suits, black hats, red ties, assorted small arms and melee weapons."
"Sounds like local mobsters," Tajra grunted uncertainly.
She turned to look at Pax, who was already staring at her fearfully.
"That's the Red Axe Gang," he whispered hoarsely. "They're the largest criminal syndicate in Vale, and we just staged an attack and caused civilian casualties in one of their protected zones."
Tajra fell silent.
Poof suddenly jerked back from her window as the frame splintered and the exterior masonry disintegrated in violent buffs of dust and shrapnel.
"We're compromised," the sniper reported dryly.
"Actual, Chalk Three, our exfil is being blocked by contacts matching Four's description," Jaws reported over comms.
"Actual, Four; we're taking small arms fire from those aforementioned contacts."
"Actual, Two, additional contacts have entered our building and are actively searching for us," Tock added. "Request permission to engage."
"All Chalks are cleared for a fighting withdrawal," the Sergeant snarled, "New rendezvous is Kilo Seven. You have permission to destroy surplus equipment as needed."
The Scroll snapped shut, and she turned to the remaining rocketeer. "Put that missile on Two's roost, then reload and keep your launcher ready. This is going to get messy."
"I'm starting to fucking hate Vale," the other rocketeer groaned.
A small, rebellious, and strangely patriotic part of Pax's mind disagreed as he watched the Kingdom's native gangsters pulling civilians out of the combat area as others fired on the heavily-armed terrorists.
"What the hell am I doing with my life?" the young Faunus sighed wearily.
His answer came with a carbine being shoved into his arms by an unamused Poof. "You're finding us a new route out of this clusterfuck," she ordered flatly.
Pax nodded hurriedly, glancing around to find the Sergeant and the other rifleman staring at him intently with their own weapons at the ready.
'I'm so screwed.'
End Chapter 10
Author's Note: That first scene took a couple of revisions to get the proper punch without veering off in a weird direction, but it got there eventually.
So, while Jaune's state of being can currently be described in terms involving "limbo" and "Schrodinger," the Zealots are getting a taste of the Valean natives' feelings of displeasure towards all of the excitement that the White Fang has imported from Atlas. Rest assured, we'll be getting a taste of Jaune's experience of getting blown up [again, several times]; we'll also get to see RWBY's most iconic gangsters go toe-to-toe with a significantly smaller number of significantly more skilled and aggressive paramilitary operatives.
Yeah, I feel like Roman and Junior aren't going to be pleased with the outcome no matter how you slice it.
Thanks for tuning in, and I'll see y'all in Chapter 11.