Interlude 3-3: Homefront, Part I

"So, how was Vale?" asked the Baroness as she poured a glass of coffee out for Kali.

"Oh, it was wonderful," proclaimed the first lady of Menagerie with a smile. "You know, I learned the most interesting things while I was there."

The Baroness raised a single eyebrow as she sipped her own coffee. "You personally fought alien invaders and a Grimm incursion. What could possibly top that?"

Kali leaned forward conspiratorially. "Well, did you know that Glynda Goodwitch is adopting two grown children?"

"Really?" asked Baroness. "I presume this is related to her public declaration of love and engagement to James Ironwood?"

Kali finished her sip before nodding. "Mmhmm. She's adopting his son and daughter just as soon as they're married. It kind of reminds me of what you did with Alexander."

Baroness let out a scoff. "Alexander was hardly an adult when I adopted him. Though he is certainly older. My husband's indiscretions might have been ill-thought out, but in the end, they have brought us great joy."

"That's what I want to ask you about, Ana," said Kali with what Baroness recognized as a note of embarrassment. "What was it like? Were there any difficulties?"

Baroness let out a small chuckle. "This is about that little firebrand you're carrying home with you, isn't it?"

Kali chuckled herself.

Baroness's expression was still jovial, but when she continued, her voice was grave. "You should tread carefully, Kali. That little girl is a Schnee; never forget that. No one else will."

Kali's amber eyes narrowed. "Ana, after all she's done, you still say that?"

"After all I went through with the White Fang, how could I not?" rhetorically asked Baroness, making an expression of shame appear across Kali's face. "You think your people more honorable than they are, more enlightened. In a way, it's admirable, it drives people to want to fulfill that dream … but at the end of the day, that's all it is: a dream, not reality."

"I'm not going to let that happen," vowed Kali resolutely. "Not again."

"I want to believe you, and I think you want to believe you, but…" Baroness trailed off and shook her head. "I sympathize with her – I think I have to, since she is me in so many ways – but the world is going to need to change far more radically before she can be accepted for who and what she is."

Kali was silent, her gaze turning out towards the window that looked out on the south-southeast, out towards Menagerie.

Baroness continued. "I've started to come into contact with an organization that I think could change things, but it seems to still be in its infancy. As you're so fond of saying, change takes time. The question is whether or not you have that time. After all, it's not like Sienna Khan will allow you—"

"Sienna Khan can go frak herself!" snapped Kali suddenly, so suddenly that Baroness jumped at the speed and righteous fury that twisted her friend's face. "That witch has been nothing but trouble for my family and all faunus. If she comes after us for housing Weiss, then she will be met with fire and fury the likes of which the free world has never seen before!

"In fact, let her come. Let her come with all her vitriol and vices, and we shall show our virtue by violently casting her out. She has led an organization myself and generations of people have worked to make prosper in its mission into destitution such that it now actively harms its core purpose. Enough! The line must be drawn here, and it must be the starting line for a counterattack!

"Ana, she tried to kill you, and you asked us to forgive her. I admire your character in this matter, but she did not see your magnanimity for what it was. She took it as weakness that gave her license to kill hundreds, thousands! The misery she has brought to this world is incalculable, and it's time someone put a stop to her. If she comes to me and asks me to violate the laws of hospitality to satiate her mad bloodlust, that person will be me, and it will be all the forces of House Belladonna, and if she pushes, then the whole of our nation's beloved military will be used to drive her back into the pits of annihilation from whence she crawled!

"And if any of our people should forget their duty and lower themselves to thinking that racial solidarity trumps common decency, I shall remind them forcibly that they are the Army for the Defence of Menagerie, not the Army for the Defense of the Faunus. They swore an oath to defend everyone living in our beautiful land without prejudice, and that includes the humans. That is the ideal that the White Fang struggled so long for, and ideals never die."

Baroness was taken aback, but then she sat back and smiled.

"I don't think you need my advice on child rearing."

As they flew toward Menagerie, Weiss's thoughts drifted to the southern nation and she began paging through the little travel brochure she'd picked up in Vale. While their relations with Mistral and Atlas were rather … cool … to put it mildly, Menagerie's tropical climate meant that there was some tourism from the more temperate Vale.

Menagerie – so named in Old Valish by the explorers who first discovered it for its wide variety of exotic native wildlife – is the largest island in the southern hemisphere, and the smallest continent on Remnant. It is also the name of the kingdom that resides there, though if it were to follow the naming conventions of the Kingdoms of Man, it would instead be called Kuo Kuana. However, quite atypically of other polities, Menagerie had not come into being as a single city-state but rather as many smaller settlements that sprung up from the wave of migration, both forced and eager, that happened after the end of the Great War. Therefore, in order to create a more harmonious coexistence, the founders of Menagerie put into practice the then-theoretical idea of a nation-state.

Things had been rocky, at first, but the hostile environment, the dangerous wildlife, and the ever-present threat of the Grimm did much to band the disparate immigrants and pioneers together long enough to forge more lasting bonds. Where others might have taken the insult and stewed, enough of those early colonists to the "concession" the newly-freed faunus had received from Mistral after the Great War had decided instead to fight to build something that would last. The Mistrali elite thought they would die out in that desolate land, but they chose to prove them wrong.

Still, grit and determination alone could only go so far. Had the fledgling community been limited to the rejects and refugees of Mantle and Mistral, whether outright deported or otherwise "encouraged" to go, survival may have been beyond its grasp, let alone prosperity.

But from Vale – a kingdom of opportunity that had already been undergoing reforms under its last king – and Vacuo – a kingdom that had long valued strength over heritage – had come others: faunus who had succeeded despite the cultural inertia in Vale or the harsh conditions of Vacuo, entrepreneurs and adventurers, farmers and explorers. They brought with them the skill and capital that allowed Menagerie to flourish.

In the decades of peace and security that followed, however, the Kingdoms of Man grew and innovated, threatening to leave Menagerie behind. The fifth kingdom would need to look outwards to grow.

What would become House Belladonna – then just a maritime trading family – is credited with planting the proverbial initial seed that began Menagerie's agricultural expansion from industrial farming that served its own needs into an international pure profit powerhouse, exporting cash crops such as coffee and certain exotic southern Mistrali spices.

Weiss felt a wry smile cross her face at that. That it also meant undercutting Mistrali prices and thus thumbing their noses at the descendents of their forefathers' slave masters almost certainly added a certain element of satisfaction.

Of course, all that money flowing into Menagerie had to go somewhere, and one of those places it went was into the coffers of the government through taxes. Unsurprisingly, the brochure gave little detail to the Menagerite government's military expansion over the decades, but, well, the heiress of the SDC could hardly be allowed to remain uneducated about world history and at least the basics of politics. Menagerie's military had started small, a response to the threat of the Grimm and the still-dangerous wildlife of the continent, but it didn't stop, largely due to lingering fear of their northern neighbor, Mistral, and now, Menagerie had the second largest military on the planet, or at least they did before the Autobots and Decepticons decided to restart their little war.

It was perhaps unsurprising then that Menagerie didn't have a Cross-Continental Transmit tower. The CCT was, after all, proprietary technology of the Kingdom of Atlas, one that they jealously guarded against all the "lower" kingdoms. And there were some in Atlas – some quite vocal – who saw Menagerie, with its growing military power, as a potential rival for the security Atlas offered the world in exchange for diplomatic influence and favorable trade agreements.

A Menagerie without the near-instant long-range communication offered by the CCT network could only extend its diplomatic overtures so far, after all.

Even when the subject of adding to the CCT network had been considered, there was an additional roadblock, for it had been designed around four towers; adding the capacity for a fifth would involve extensive modifications and expansions to each of the existing towers. The other kingdoms were disinclined to surrender something so precious as even a scrap of land that lay behind the walls that kept them safe from the Grimm. Or so, at least, was Mistral's excuse, even a reasonable one, given the city-state's cramped and mountainous terrain, but the fact was that bad blood still remained between Mistral and Menagerie, exacerbated by Menagerie's inroads into Mistral's own export economy.

No matter how they spun it, the Kingdoms of Man just loved keeping the faunus down. They wouldn't just let Menagerie take its place in the sun, especially not Atlas. That frozen wasteland locked in darkness for half the year would never surrender their place as top of the world, and would do everything they could to…

Weiss slapped herself, hit her flightsuit's helmet, and then shook her head instead.

She couldn't think like that. She couldn't slip back into that mindset that bred the White Fang. She couldn't return to that mindset of looking into the mirror and seeing the blood of a monster running through her veins.

Even if it did…

"Ma'am, are you all right?" asked the pilot, Second Lieutenant Anders, from the front of the cockpit.

"No," Weiss answered honestly.

"Sorry to hear that," replied Anders with a slightly downcast tone. "You'll feel better once we land though, I know it. The air of Menagerie makes a man free, after all."

Weiss considered that comforting phrase and realized something. "Don't they say that in Vale too?"

"Yes, but we actually mean it," answered Anders.

The snowcapped girl looked out the canopy … at the empty ocean behind them, then down at the display in front of her showing the view from the forward camera of the land they were arriving at and thought that he must have been right. It looked absolutely gorgeous, with brilliant blue-green oceans running alongside a bountifully green coast. It looked like a tropical paradise.

Well, except for the scrubland and the giant desert in the distance.

Of course, Weiss realized, given the distinct lack of melanin in her body, she'd need to dress appropriately, or she'd end up like those crispy fried fish platters that Blake liked so much, and that would just be embarrassing.

Blake wasn't sure what she had expected upon coming … home. It had been a long time since she had left, and she had been … a different person back then.

No, she'd been a little monster.

It had seemed so simple, really. There were faunus being mistreated and discriminated against, and Menagerie had the mightiest military in the southern hemisphere. The solution had been obvious: make the humans treat faunus better. By force, preferably.

She hadn't understood why her father refused to go to war. They would obviously win. There was only one other military in the world, after all, and it was all so very spread out, while the ADM could concentrate and strike them like a mailed fist into a sheet of tin foil.

After seeing what Vale had become after the Decepticon attack, however? Yes, she understood now.

Sienna Khan was wrong. She was wrong philosophically, and she was wrong morally. It didn't matter whether or not the faunus could win a war with humanity or not, because war … war was hell.

No. War was worse than hell. There were no innocents in hell.

Her father knew that; he had known it all along.

But now … well, while she hadn't been sure what to expect, her homecoming had already run into complications. After they landed, they'd been informed that her father, Ghira, wasn't home.

Which is why they were here, at Grandfather's.

She glanced to her right at Weiss, who was … clearly not handling the heat and humidity well, but she was stoically – or perhaps "stubbornly" might be the better word – pushing on, despite her red face and the rivulets of sweat.

"Are you sure you're okay, Weiss?"

"I'm fine," the former heiress ground out through gritted teeth as she wiped her forehead with the back of her sleeve. Blake suspected she was now regretting her change in color scheme.

At least she'd accepted the parasol Mom had thought to get her when they landed.

As they approached the house at the end of the long driveway, a scornful voice bellowed out from within.

"Politics! Time and time again, I ask: when has politics ever made money?"

Weiss glanced at Blake questioningly.

"My grandfather, Richard T. Belladonna," Blake whispered with a wince. "He runs Black Lotus Shipping, and he … never really approved of Dad going into politics."

"But isn't he the chieftain?" asked Weiss in disbelief.

"Grandfather never really thought much of the position, or any other position Dad achieved," Blake explained. "No matter what he did, Grandfather always considered it dishonorable, disreputable, and despicable. They've been at each other's throats for as long as I can remember, and I'm not sure how anything could have changed in the last five years. I don't think he ever forgave Dad for not staying in the family business."

That he also wouldn't have approved of his granddaughter becoming a terrorist was just something Blake took as a given.

"Black Lotus is one of the largest transcontinental shipping companies in the world," Weiss pointed out thoughtfully. "A company that size takes a lot of work to keep running. Who's going to be taking over?"

Blake winced again. "Um … that's … yet to be determined."

Weiss turned her sweaty face towards Blake in disbelief. "But … isn't there anyone in the family who can do it? Tricky Ricky won't live forever. What's going to stop my father's plans to buy up all of BLS's assets after the CEO dies?"

Blake shrugged. "I have no idea."

"You don't have to worry about that," Mom assured them, looking back for a moment. "Measures have already been put in place to make sure neither Jacques Schnee nor anyone else can buy the Black Lotus. Now, let's make sure Ghira and his father haven't made it necessary to explain more than that."

The door to the home was opened, allowing the three women to enter and see that there was indeed an argument taking place, red eyes glaring into golden.

One of the men was her father, Ghira Belladonna, and he seemed to be more like himself now than when she last recalled seeing him: gigantic, instantly eye-catching with his broad shoulders and height that seemed like he was nearly as tall as two Weisses but was probably closer to just one and a half Weisses. His plain khaki pants led into an asymmetric fur-lined purple jacket that didn't even bother to contain his chest and so was tied together with two cords, with a minimum of modesty provided by a strange belt-buckle carapace thing over the abs. So many emotions surged through her upon seeing him, but perhaps the most prominent was the strange amusement that came to her from knowing that if he had shown up at Beacon looking like that, there were several fashion-conscious students who would have conniption fits being torn between horror at his outfit and the notion that, as the leader of a kingdom, he was automatically always in style.

Grandfather was as tall and lean as always, coming up to Father's mouth, but he seemed smaller now; before, he had a presence that always seemed to fill whatever room he was in. That probably had more to do with how much Blake herself had changed over the last half decade than anything else. He wore a short-sleeved collared shirt in a collage of eye-searing colors that revealed lean muscles that didn't seem to have changed a bit since she'd last seen him. His nose was as flushed as ever, standing out on his weathered face, and his salt and pepper hair looked a fair bit saltier than she remembered. His long mongoose tail, emerging out of his khaki shorts, puffed up angrily like the hairs on a bottle brush, a tell he never bothered restraining around family. His eyes, normally pink, were now red, a sure sign of anger even if he had been keeping his tail under control.

Grandfather liked to use his foyer for informal business meetings, so it was furnished accordingly with five stuffed chairs, a side table by each, and a low table in the middle, and the large windows off to the left allowed in the afternoon sunlight, casting the room in a warm glow. Father stood in front of one of those stuffed chairs, obviously trying – and failing; this was Grandfather, after all – to use his greater height and bulk to his advantage in whatever disagreement they had this time.

In through the other door entered someone Blake was very glad to see: her grandmother, Nagida Belladonna. She was clearly a little miffed, given how the cobra hood on her neck was starting to extend, a sure sign that she was seriously peeved. She was dressed in a saree with some bangles, much like Mother, which was perhaps appropriate, given that they were also about the same size and had similar skin tones and styles of hair, though Grandma's was a bronze that had gotten very white over the years.

With many years of experience – and no small amount of gumption – Grandma brought the tray of hot malasadas she was carrying over to the table, put it down, picked up two of the delicious pastries, and then quickly stepped over to shove both treats into the mouths of the two arguing men.

"Gah!"

"Hrk!"

Grandma clapped her hands together. "Oh look, boys. Visitors!"

As the two men turned to face them, Blake felt her throat close up.

"Blake?" Father whispered after a hard swallow.

The word broke her into action.

"Papa!" she cried as she dashed forward, throwing herself into his chest and wrapping her arms around him. "Papa, I'm sorry," she murmured, her voice muffled. "I'm so, so sorry."

She felt her father's big, kind arms protectively embracing her. "Blake, you're back. Thank all the gods in all the heavens, you're back."

"Papa, I never should have left," she sobbed.

"It's all right, Blake. It's alright," Dad said as he began to comfortingly stroke her back.

She felt another hand on her shoulder.

"Good to have you back, kid."

"Good to be back, Grampa."

"I'll get started on the reunion dinner," declared Grandma with a smile that could be heard in her voice. "Kali, dear, can you help me with it? This deserves to be a celebration."

"Of course I can, Mom," said Mom.

"Excellent, I just bought some new ingredients, and it's not like we're going to get a better chance to use them up," Grandma said eagerly . "Oh, but before we begin, there's just one little thing. You forgot to introduce your friend here."

Blake heard a startled squeak from Weiss and turned in her father's arms.

"That's Weiss, my best friend." She smiled. "We call her 'Firebrand.'"

Grandpa gave her an appraising look. "Please tell me it's because you burned down your own house, and not because you're into politics too."

Dad just groaned.

By the time dinner was ready, the sun was hanging low in the sky at an unseasonably late hour. At least, it was unseasonable to Weiss. Intellectually, she knew that the seasons were reversed down south, but it was quite another thing to actually experience it.

It was incredible to Weiss just how welcoming Blake's grandparents had been after she had been introduced. They seemed to take a shine to her and weren't the slightest bit hung up about her past, or at least, they didn't seem to be. It certainly went a small and perhaps significant part of the way towards explaining why Mrs. Nagida Belladonna had given her a very breathable saree to replace her own sweaty clothes and why she was at that very moment seated at the Belladonna family table during their own celebratory meal.

"—fortunately," Weiss continued, "Blake's ninja training helped us infiltrate the Decepticon warship and sabotage the communication jammer from within. We managed to get out just in time before everything exploded. At least, I thought it was going to explode. It looked like it was going to explode, but in the end, it just sort of … 'poofed.' Starscream's legendary failures even failed to fail properly."

"So you're a ninja now?" asked Tricky Ricky – that is, Blake's grandfather – in disbelief from the head of the table.

Blake – who sat to his left and on Weiss's right – shook her head. "No. In order to call myself that I'd need to complete my training at an accredited ninja training ground."

Grandfather Belladonna gave a dismissive wave. "So what? Just because you don't have some piece of paper doesn't mean you don't have the skills."

"But without that paper, I won't be able to get a job as an instructor, nor would I get hired for ninja missions," Blake explained, then frowned thoughtfully. "Also, people who call themselves ninja but lack accreditation have a tendency to disappear. Unintentionally, I mean."

"Sounds dangerous," Blake's father rumbled from across from his daughter. "First a Huntress, then a ninja? Are you trying to get yourself killed, Blake?"

"Dad, both you and Grampa have trained for years to be able to defend yourself. Functionally speaking, the only difference between that and going to Beacon is that I'll get paid when I use my skills," countered Blake.

The elder patriarch seemed to get very interested at that point. "Oh really, and how much pay is that? Enough that you're picking up some business management skills?"

His wife shushed him from the other end of the table. "Oh, do behave, Richard. We're at the dinner table. So, Weiss, how did you and Blake first meet?"

Weiss thought about it for a moment. Did that brief encounter when she'd first met Ruby really count? They had hardly exchanged words. Or the night before initiation? They hadn't even spoken to each other. Did even fighting alongside each other during initiation count? She didn't think so; they hadn't even really spoken then either.

"Through a mutual acquaintance, I suppose," she said finally after a bit more thought. "Our team leader, Ruby Rose."

"'Ruby Rose'?" echoed Blake's grandmother, furrowing her brow.

Ghira looked at her, then to his father, a querying expression on his face. "Isn't she the girl that…?"

"Who ran into a three-way firefight and got shot," finished Richard, a pinched look of disapproval on his face. "I hope you're not picking up any bad habits from her, Blake."

Weiss considered it a tad bit lucky that Ruby herself wasn't there, but really, if she hadn't wanted to be known as that by every person on Remnant for the rest of time, she shouldn't have run into the middle of a three-way firefight and gotten shot.

"No, of course not," answered Blake quickly, then paused for a moment. "Well, I hope not," she backpedaled. "There have been a few incidents where I've acted rashly and gotten us into trouble because of it."

Weiss frowned. "Blake, you don't need to keep bringing that incident up. It was my fault too."

Blake looked at her in confusion. "How were you responsible for me breaking Yang's mask?"

"What?!" Weiss replied in equal shock. "I'm talking about when I found out you were a faunus."

"What?!" Blake echoed. "Weiss, I told you, that incident was completely my fault. I shouldn't have tried to control your life."

"You had good reasons," Weiss assured her. "I was in a bad place at the time."

"Excuse me, dear, but why would you try to control someone else's life?" Blake's grandmother asked of her in a disapproving tone.

"I'm more concerned with how in the world anyone could have not known you were a faunus," Chieftain Belladonna said grimly. "Why would you try to hide yourself, Blake?"

From the head of the table, Tricky Ricky's pink eyes flicked between everyone at the table. "Anyone else pick up that she apparently does this so often they can't keep the incidents straight? Anyone? Anyone at all? Just me then? Okay."

Across the table from Weiss, Lady Belladonna kept her expression hidden behind a cup of pomegranate juice that was being drunk with excruciating slowness.

Meanwhile, the two teenagers were still arguing.

"I was judging you just for being a Schnee!" Blake protested.

"Which I was!" Weiss reminded her.

"Ahem!"

This time, the table fell silent, and they turned their attention to the man who had so loudly cleared his throat.

"You ... are Jacques Schnee's daughter," Tricky Ricky said, staring at Weiss intently.

Weiss nodded, suddenly feeling very small. Well, smaller than usual, considering how petite she was.

"So he raised you to take over the family business, I assume," he continued. "Got you the best tutors money could buy, had you sit in on meetings, took you to social events where you'd see him hobnob with the other rich big wigs, all that stuff."

"Y-yes, sir," Weiss replied meekly with another nod.

She jumped as he smacked his hand on the table, rattling the tableware.

"Finally!" he crowed triumphantly. "Someone I can talk to around here with some business sense!"

"I— I d-don't think that's— What I mean is— Good sir, I am hardly qualified to discuss such matters with one so esteemed in the field as you," whimpered Weiss, a dozen competing emotions warring in her head, and most of them revolving around her father and her blood and all the horror they had brought.

The shipping magnate frowned, his brow furrowed, and the color of his eyes changed from a pleasant pink to a fiery red, like two hot coals. "Kali, may we have a word in private?"

Lady Belladonna put down her drink. "Of course, Father."

Weiss watched, her brow furrowing in concern as they walked out of the dining room. What—?

Through the doorway, she could still see the two talking furtively, glancing back at the table on occasion, with Tricky Ricky's expression growing soft as he looked at her. After a moment, he stormed off.

Lady Belladonna watched him for a moment before turning and returning to her seat at the table.

Weiss wanted to ask what was wrong, but fear formed a lump in her throat.

"Kali, dear," Mrs. Belladonna said, "what was that about?"

At that, the other woman leaned over to whisper in her mother-in-law's ear. Whatever she said caused the older woman's hood to flare open for a moment, and she turned and reached out to pat Weiss on the shoulder.

"Don't you worry, dear," she assured her. "Rick's not upset at you. He just gets a little passionate about things sometimes."

"Pfft! Ain't that the truth," groused the chieftain.

The grandmother glared at him. "Oh, come now. Everyone in this whole family gets passionate about things from time to time." She glanced back at Weiss and smiled. "I think you'll fit right in."

"I don't want to impose," Weiss assured her.

"Oh fiddlesticks," cursed Mrs. Belladonna. "This has been no trouble at all, but if you really must pay us back: tell us more about what's happened. The real story, I mean, just the facts. Rumors are so bad around here that the papers were even saying that poor Blake was dead for a while."

Blake groaned, her head collapsing into one hand while the other played with her utensils.

Lady Belladonna smiled like the cat that caught the canary. Wait, was that racist? "Oh but she was, from a certain point of view, at least. Here, I even got some pictures of her memorial."

"MOM!"

With that, she fished out her scroll, opened it, and then quickly brought up a collection of pictures that she began to display on the screen. She then passed it off to the grandmother, who took it in both hands.

"Mom, please, you're embarrassing me," Blake whined like a child, seeming to shrink down to the size of one.

The older woman's hood started to deploy, a beautiful pattern of colors on the flaps, as she brought her hand up to her mouth. "Oh no, my poor darling granddaughter … her grave looks like a pauper's."

"It's not a grave, Grandma!" complained Blake. "It's a memorial! That's totally different."

"Well, it certainly could have been put together better," her grandmother remarked as she handed the scroll back to the mother, who handed it to the father. "Weiss, why didn't you take better care of it?"

"I didn't even know she was dead until after she came back," Weiss defended herself.

"Not you too, Weiss!" Blake complained. "I wasn't dead! I was just brooding! I mean training! I was training!"

Chieftain Belladonna took out a set of reading glasses as he looked at the pictures. "Ah, so that's why people thought you weren't a faunus; you were wearing your friendship bow on top of your head. …Wait, no, that doesn't make sense. Were you wearing it even while you were sleeping?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Blake whined.

"She did," confirmed Weiss. "And in the locker room. And when she went to the shower."

"Blake, I thought I taught you better than that," Blake's mother scolded her. "You'll ruin your hair doing that."

Weiss saw the chieftain look at her in bewilderment. "And you didn't think that was odd?"

The snowcapped girl shrugged. "Our team leader always wears a cloak over her clothes."

"She's not wrong," Blake agreed.

"I assumed such eccentricities were normal," Weiss continued, "and that Blake was just a little bit extra."

It was at that moment when Blake's grandfather walked back into the dining room with a smile on his lips and a spring in his step. "Well, now that that's taken care of, what did I miss?"

His son handed him the scroll. "This. Blake apparently died. This is her memorial."

"Dad, I didn't die. I'm right here," complained Blake.

Her grandfather sat down and squinted at the screen as he flipped through several pictures mumbling to himself. "Looks like people remember you doing a lot, but where's the organizational and economic accolades? You mean to tell me you were there for how long, and you didn't think to take any classes on how to balance a budget or network with contacts? Good grief, girl. You were leading an independent terrorist cell, and you're telling me you didn't learn anything about resource management or acquisitions?"

"The visiting Atlesian professors did offer an etiquette class that covers business negotiations," Weiss spoke up. "Blake was gone for most of that semester though, so I'm fairly certain she missed them. I think Sun attended some though."

"'Sun'?" the chieftain repeated. "Now who is that?"

Blake was very deliberate in her answer: "He is a boy, who happens to be a friend of ours."

That was … technically correct.

"He's Blake's boyfriend," cut in Lady Belladonna, filling in the gap with a more accurate statement.

"Mom!" hissed Blake. "I was getting to that!"

"Oh, are you trying to hide your boyfriend from your family like in one of my programs?" asked Mrs. Belladonna with a coy smile. "That's adorable, Sweetie, but you don't need to worry. We won't bite. It's not like Ghiry is going to ban you from going back to Vale to stop you from seeing him. He would never be so silly."

The last line was said towards the chieftain himself, who seemed to be blushing under his beard. "Come on, Mom," he grumbled. "I'm not a walking stereotype. I can totally be hip with the kids. Besides, if he's taken etiquette classes, I bet he's fantastic in politics."

Tricky Ricky glared at his son. "I think the business sections of that course are far more relevant and important, not to mention respectable."

"I think you both will love him once you get around to meeting him," interjected Lady Belladonna with the clear hope of preventing another argument. "He's kind and smart and fiercely loyal, almost like a cute little puppy."

"Sun is not like a dog!" insisted Blake with a beet-red face.

"What's wrong with dogs?" asked Weiss innocently.

"They're filthy, diseased mongrels!" shouted Blake with a glare at her white-haired teammate. "You can't trust them, Weiss. You can't trust any of them!"

The whole family seemed taken aback by the outburst.

"Ooookay, so Sun isn't like a canine at all," relented Lady Belladonna. "He's still a very handsome young man, and I'm sure that when he meets the rest of the family here, you'll love him just as much as I did."

The chieftain leaned back and crossed his arms. "And where is this boyfriend of yours? Don't tell me he's scared to meet your family. Or are you ashamed of him?"

"He went back to Haven, Dad," Blake replied, exasperation in her voice. "He's a team leader; he's got responsibilities."

"Also, there weren't that many seats on the Night Ravens," put in Blake's mother. "The pilots were already complaining about just moving the schedule around enough to get Blake and Weiss down here."

"Fair," admitted the chieftain. "Hopefully, him being part of Haven Academy won't cause many issues for your relationship."

"He's already given me his mailing address, I've given him mine, and we've agreed to communicate via letters," Blake told her father respectfully. "We always knew that we would be involved in a long distance relationship and that communicating via the CCT wouldn't always be an option. We've prepared for this."

"Well, that's good to hear, but it's not what I was worried about," Chieftain Belladonna said, a look came briefly across his face, and then he went back to eating. "Say, Mom, these mashed potatoes are great."

Blake, flummoxed at the change in topic, looked mildly distraught.

"Well, I'm glad you think so, Ghiry, but those aren't potatoes," Mrs. Belladonna replied with a very flat expression.

Weiss could see that Blake obviously wanted to ask her father what really worried him, but she didn't want to disrupt the conversation, and because she couldn't do that, her imagination was filling in the gaps. The chieftain was clearly a good man, he had raised Blake and built up Menagerie into being the greatest nation on Remnant, but he hadn't seen his daughter in years and had just as clearly forgotten that she was a worrier. So it fell to Weiss to step up and alleviate the problem.

"Chieftain Belladonna, if I may be so bold, what issues were you worried about?" asked Weiss pointedly.

He chuckled. "Come now, Weiss; my daughter's best friend doesn't need to be so formal with me."

Tricky Ricky groaned in disgust. "For crying out loud, son, speak plainly! It's bad enough you shame this family in public with your doublespeak, but do you have to disquiet it in private too?"

"Dad, I'm just trying to be polite! I don't want Blake worrying over nothing," the Chieftain said defensively.

"Are you sure? 'Cause now you got the girls worrying over the complete lack of information you've provided. If you had stayed in the family business back then, you wouldn't be in this mess," mocked Tricky Ricky.

"Dang it, Dad, right now I'm the only thing standing between democracy and Sienna Khan turning Menagerie into a military dictatorship!"

"Oh? It's all on you, is it? Son, since you've clearly forgotten, this nation's political system is predicated on the idea that politicians are expendable, replaceable, and not at all indispensable. What makes you so different?"

"I'm the guy in the hot seat right now! Not anyone else. It's all on me to fix this problem with Mistral."

"Is that what this is about?" demanded Tricky Ricky.

"Yes! The Mistrali have been agitating for weeks about a Menagerite threat," revealed the chieftain in exasperation, his voice cooling down from the rant very suddenly. "I just don't know what we could have done to offend them."

Tricky Ricky sighed. "You didn't do a gosh-darned thing, son. They're just scared because the Atlesians have gone home, the headmaster of their academy was a traitor who killed most of their Huntsmen, and the PMCs just shot up their prices. Some idiots want someone to blame besides themselves, and we're it."

"But why us?" asked the chieftain.

"Because they know that you'll do nothing, nor should you," Tricky Ricky told him simply. "You should just wait for this all to blow over and not panic."

"But what if Sun can't wait that long?!" asked Blake in a mild panic. "What happens if he runs into problems because of me? What if—?"

"No, no, we're not doing this again," interrupted Weiss.

"Weiss, it's a perfectly reasonable concern that Sun might have issues because of the current political climate," Blake said, trying to sound logical.

"No, it isn't," insisted Weiss. "Neither is the concern that Sun might leave you because of that pressure."

Lady Belladonna actually broke out laughing at that part.

"It could happen," Blake declared futilely, almost incandescent from the blood rushing to her face. "He's had two women throw themselves at him already. I didn't even agree to marry him. Why wouldn't he run off with a girl who won't cause him trouble?"

By this point, Lady Belladonna was doubled over on the table in hysterical laughter, and the three other non-teenagers in the room were torn between helping her and the drama unfolding between Weiss and Blake.

Weiss put out her fingers and began counting off. "One, he was completely oblivious to Yang and Penny's advances. Two, you didn't agree to marry him yet."

"What?!" shouted Chieftain Belladonna.

"Three, because he's Sun, and you're his whole world. He revolves around you," finished Weiss without missing a beat. She hoped the chieftain wouldn't be too offended.

"That's geocentrism, which is quackery," was Blake's pouting response as she crossed her arms.

"What's this about Blake getting married?" asked the chieftain.

"Oh calm down, son. She's clearly just being paranoid," answered Tricky Ricky with a lie.

Not that he knew that, and not that Weiss was going to correct him just yet.

"Let's switch topics," he continued. "What do you girls plan to do with your lives? Go back to Beacon?"

"Not for education, no," replied Weiss, interlacing her fingers in front of her. "Thanks to our aforementioned activities in our little conspiracy of light, Professor Ozpin awarded all of us on Team Rainbow – and Yang – our Huntsman licenses. I can start picking up missions whenever I want, and I intend to the moment this dinner ends."

"Hmm. Dedicated, hard-working," mused the businessman appreciatively. "Anything else?"

Weiss paused in thought. "Well, I've gotten back into singing recently, so hopefully, I can use that in some way to help people and fund my Huntress activities."

Tricky Ricky nodded thoughtfully. "Good show. Feel free to drop by the office any time you're in town, by the way. We'd love to have you, and I think I've got a few jobs that could use a Huntress of your … well, availability, to be frank."

Weiss was touched. One of the best businessmen in the world wanted her to work for him? That was … disturbingly familiar, actually. Things would be different here though. Tricky Ricky wasn't her father; he was a faunus inclined to excellent character, not a human prone to … and she really needed to stop thinking like that. It wasn't something any of Blake's family wanted, and it wasn't something she wanted either; it just … kept happening. She would get over it though. She had to.

"Thank you, sir." Weiss answered with a slight bow. "I will gladly oblige your request."

"What about you, Blake?" asked Chieftain Belladonna. "What are you going to do with your life?"

The paranoid look of worry was knocked off of Blake's face slowly, and she blinked as she seemed to come around. "Huh? I'm sorry. What was that?"

"What do you want to do with your life? Besides Huntress and ninja contracts, I mean," rephrased her father. "I mean … your mother and I, I think we pushed you into the same activism we were into. We dragged you along, not really caring about what we were doing to you. We took your childhood away, you joined Sienna in the Fang, and … I'm sorry, Blake."

Blake, clearly not expecting any of that, seemed at a loss for words. "I'm not sure … Dad, you don't need—"

"What are you planning to do with your life?" Weiss interjected, repeating the question to recenter her friend.

"Oh! That's…" And Blake trailed off again as she searched for the right words, a blush of embarrassment coming to her face even as her expression became hopeful. "Well, I kind of want to be a prize fighter."

"WHAT?!" the chieftain roared incredulously.

Blake leaned back, watching the fist fly past, inches above her face, then stepped back twice, swaying back and forth with each step to dodge the follow-up blows. A left haymaker flew past her left cheek as she sidestepped and ducked in low.

Her fist connected with her opponent's jaw in a staggering uppercut that sent her opponent sprawling onto the sands and the crowd into a roar of excitement.

The bell sounded, and the referee called that her opponent's aura was critically depleted, which was probably redundant, given the fact that he was obviously unconscious.

The announcer strode out onto the sands with microphone in hand. "Ladies and gentlemen, the winner by a knock-out: the untouchable, unbeatable Eight-Lives BLAAAAAAAAAAKE!"

He raised her right fist into the air, the only part of her with any blood on it. The medics tended to her opponent. The crowd continued to cheer.

"Blake! Blake! Blake! Blake! Blake!"

The crowd was calling her name, shouting her praises, hundreds of faunus leaping for joy with her. Oh, and a few humans too, not just some of the tiny sliver of humans that lived on the island, but also her agent. It was electrifying.

Her agent, a human woman by the name of Joanna Huff, rushed forward. She climbed up onto the stage and somehow managed to get through the press of people around the guard ropes. She snagged a towel and a water bottle as she moved and brought those over to give to Blake.

"That was a great fight, kid! You really knocked it out of the park," she cheered, handing off to Blake the towel and bottle, which she immediately started to make use of. "We're going to make so much money off of this."

Blake didn't respond at first, instead looking at her opponent. The medics broke some smelling salts under his nose, and he suddenly shot awake, coughing and hacking. He looked around and found Blake offering him her hand. He took it, and she helped lift him up onto his feet. The crowd liked that, and they really liked her raising his hand up too.

After nearly a minute of cheering, the two combatants shook hands and separated with smiles, each going their own separate ways. The crowd was only barely starting to calm down.

"Good job," complimented Joanna. "Good sportsmanship is exactly the sort of thing people need to see. It plays well with the audience and sponsors, and it keeps the other fighters from poisoning your drink."

"They do that?" asked Blake.

"Not enough to kill," clarified Joanna as they stepped out of the ring. "Just enough to hamper you in the fight. So long as we stay out of the underground circuits, anyway; we go there, nothing's off-limits." She flipped through her notepad and consulted it. "Anyway, this win gets you past the qualifiers for the upcoming tournament, which gives you a shot at the title fight."

"One more step on the road to Mistral," murmured Blake, just loud enough to be heard.

"I've seen that movie. It's pretty funny," replied Joanna with good cheer. "This is more than that though, since a win here will show the whole fighting scene that you're the real deal. Winning with dust and weapons is one thing, but unarmed combat is the real basics. Just you and your semblance, can't get any purer than that."

"Which is why Arslan Altan is the mistress of it, and why she's a foe to be respected," mused Blake, her mind awash with the plan.

"Don't worry, I'll make sure the press get that," Joanna assured her as they began making their way out of the arena. "Speaking of the press, there have been questions about where you've been the last few years before you popped up at Beacon."

"What sort of questions?" Blake asked, inclining her head curiously.

"Well," Joanna answered, "some members of the White Fang have been talking about how you've been with them all those years. Now that you're back, they seem to really like bragging about your performance since entering the circuit."

Blake frowned. That was … less than ideal, to say the least.

"Of course," Joanna continued, "there's the other theory floating around. It's the more popular one in Vale."

"Oh, no," Blake closed her eyes and began rubbing her temples. "Please tell me that stupid theory hasn't made its way all the way here."

"What?" Joanna feigned astonishment. "It's a good story: a princess abducted and brainwashed into a child soldier, only to be rescued by a tall, dark, and handsome brooding bad boy. Star-crossed lovers angle optional. You have no idea how well that plays with your largest demographic."

"'Star-crossed lovers'?" repeated Blake incredulously.

"What's wrong?" Joanna asked.

"Adam didn't rescue me from being a child soldier," she hissed.

"Oh," Joanna said, then frowned. "But wait, how old were you when the White Fang turned violent?"

"Twelve," Blake said, wondering where she was going with this.

"And you stayed with them the whole time?"

"Yeees..." Blake confirmed, nodding slowly.

"So that made you a child soldier, didn't it?"

Blake tilted her head to the side as she turned it over in her mind.

"Well, technically, yes, I suppose," she admitted.

"So are you saying Adam wasn't the reason you left?"

Blake opened her mouth, then paused for a moment. Closing her mouth again, she frowned.

"Technically, yes, he's the reason I left," she grudgingly confirmed.

"So what's the problem?"

Blake looked away. The way Joanna – and the public, it seemed – had twisted events around, shaping the facts to fit the narrative … it bothered her. The fact that she still sometimes wondered what might have happened if she hadn't left – hadn't run away – didn't help matters.

Since that conversation at Ruby's birthday party, on the roof of the Xiao Long-Rose home, she'd begun to realize that Adam wasn't really the villainous specter that had haunted her nightmares since she'd left him on that train. No more than he was the cool, mature hero she'd crushed on when she had left Menagerie.

He was just a man – a boy, in some ways – who was, like everyone, shaped by those around him.

She shook her head. She needed to put their past together behind her. Just like he had.

"I just think the press needs to learn not to bring up people's exes," grumbled Blake, mentally shoving aside the confused mess of guilt, fear, and pity that the topic brought up. "Part of the reason I'm here in Menagerie is that I never want to think about him again. I've had quite enough of emotionally-stunted brats, and I'm quite happy being with a real adult man right now."

Her agent looked at her like she was a tad mad. "Not exactly the words I would use to describe Mister Wukong, but I guess he has a sort of enlightened ease to him."

"He's mature enough to not care about acting like a child," Blake explained patiently. "Unlike, say, a certain – as you put it – 'brooding bad boy.'"

"Okay, okay, point made," relented Joanna as they came close to the press conference door. She paused and brought out two earbuds. "All right, here's the commlinks. You take one; I'll take the other. I'll talk you through all the really difficult PR questions. We do this right, and we'll turn this win into a gateway to untold riches."

"How much are we talking?" asked Blake as she took one of the offered commlinks.

Joanna shrugged. "I don't know. I haven't been told."

"Fair enough," relented Blake before entering.

Instantly, she was bombarded by the bright flashing of people's scroll cameras. Joanna scurried off to make herself discreet while Blake strode up to the microphones being thrust out.

"Miss Belladonna, congratulations on the win!" one voice rose above the others. "People on the streets are also saying that this is a win for the White Fang too. Care to comment?"

This, she realized, was an opportunity. Even if it meant going a little off-script.

Joanna was probably not going to kill her. She hoped.

Author's Note 1 (Cyclone):

I'll be honest, this interlude chapter went through a lot of developmental changes along the way, on top of being chopped up into itty bitty pieces in order to ease beta-reading and editing and get this out to you guys faster.

We have art of Tricky Ricky by Sreshtiyer on DeviantArt, and you can view it at one of the sites where we crosspost this story (Space Battles, Sufficient Velocity, or AO3).

Author's Note 2 (Cody MacArthur Fett):

In case anyone is wondering about the name of Blake's agent, Joanna Huff: yes, she is named after the Union soldier who killed Confederate general J.E.B. Stuart. The joke here being that her role was originally going to be taken up by Jem character Joanie Stuart, but it turned out Joanie wouldn't work in that role and so we needed to create an OC to fill the same role. So what better name for the woman who took Joanie's spot than the name of the guy who whacked her namesake?

It's been a long time since I wrote the above paragraph. Not nearly as long as the last chapter, but still long ago.

As Cyclone said, this chapter got split up, and I don't necessarily like it because it messes with the four chapter interludes we've had going till now, but … so much has happened that you guys don't need to be burdened with. All you, the readers, need to know is that the next chapter is coming soon after this. How soon? I have no idea, but the hold up isn't going to be on my end, I assure you.

For those who haven't guessed it, by the way, Blake's grandparents introduced in this chapter, is an allusion to the Rudyard Kipling classic Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. Tricky Ricky is based off the titular Rikki, and his wife Nagida is based off the cobra Nag that Rikki faces off against in the tale. It really is a good short story, for those who are interested, and a lot more morally complicated than the online summaries give it justice.

I hope people enjoyed this chapter, and will enjoy the next few parts of it as well.