A crowd was gathered.
Tukson's bookstore was normally a quiet place that gathered little attention. It was just another small business inside the bustling city of Vale.
"Please disperse. There is nothing to see here," an officer of the law said.
Nobody moved. They were transfixed. The officer was lying, there was everything to see. A scene that couldn't even been found on television without being censored.
Someone puked, splattering the sidewalk in yellow and green chunks. A child cried as her mother held her hand not seeming to comprehend that her child shouldn't be witnessing this horror. A teen snapped a photo thinking that it would make a sick cover for an album he was going to make one day.
The owner himself was the reason for this commotion, but by the looks of it, he hadn't gotten a say in the matter. Tukson was strung up in front of the store, suspended about eight feet in the air by a variety of materials from rope to old 2x4s and even the man's own innards. It was no engineering marvel and was constructed out of trash more than anything else, which made the smell all the more worse, but it held.
Tukson was positioned in a way where both his arms were tied together and pulled to his right like he was pointing to something. It didn't go unnoticed that he had claws and they were extending although three on them were damaged or missing completely, likely having been torn off. His left side was also torn open reliving a mass of red flesh and organs. This is where some of the materials for the suspension had come from although they looked more like inhumane decorations than necessary support. Tukson had many smaller injuries all over his body, but the one that drew the most attention from the crowd where the two holes in his face where his eyes should have been. (They would later been found in an alleyway two blocks away in near pristine condition.) It was a haunting sight to see a man with no eyes staring at you.
Clearly Tukson was dead, but for what reason, and how did he get there without anyone noticing? It wasn't late day but it wasn't that early either. Autopsy would later put his death at around 6:00 in the morning, a good two hours before anyone noticed the dead faunus. That didn't necessarily mean he had been hanging there for two hours, but no matter what time he was strung up someone should have seen it happen. This street was a quiet part of the commercial district, not a deserted part.
Police would later interview the nearby businesses, whose employees should have been there before 6:00 to open their stores, but each of them would give a different version of the same story. No one had seen the body, but they all admitted they hadn't really been paying attention to the storefront, and had just done their normal routine, but no matter how many question the cops asked no one could give a reason for how they missed a decaying body hanging right above them. The smell alone should have given it away, but when asked, everyone just said the smell of blood somehow didn't register with them as a cause for alarm. It was because of this that it wasn't even clear when the body had been hung or who had been the first to discover it. One second everything was as normal as could be then a mass of people saw it all at once. It was like they had all been wearing blinders that were suddenly removed.
"Everyone please back away. You are interfering with a police investigating," the cop said to the crowd that still refused to move. Jaune and Emerald watched from the other side of the street. His stay in Bury and toughed Jaune to this stuff, but neither he or Emerald could say they were completely unaffected by the bloodied sight.
"Thinking what I'm thinking," Emerald said.
"That we should get involved? I'm not sure. We have even less reason to believe that this is supernatural than with Bury. This might just be the work of a madman."
"I thought you wanted to help people?"
"I do but if this is police business, I don't want to get in their way. They have their job and I have mine. It would be best if we don't accidently sabotage each other or worse they see me as a suspect for poking around."
"Coming from the guy who snuck into Beacon's initiation and recruited me to rob a museum," Emerald chuckled. "I think we're way past trying to avoid places we don't belong."
"I really wish you would stop pointing out my hypocrisy. You're worse than my sisters. Can't you just be the loving sidekick who response to everything I say with 'of course, mister Arc' and 'I'd be happy to assist you.'"
Emerald paused liked she was pondering the thought. "I'll think about it if you can solve this case. Maybe I'll even wear a maid outfit as a reward." She brought her finger to her lips and twisted her hips like she was a nervous schoolgirl. Jaune just groaned. "But you do want to help, don't you?" Emerald said, seriously.
Jaune looked at the crime scene again and his fist clenched. Of course, he wanted to help. This was awful, but what if he just got in the way? What if he failed? Grimm where awful, too, but running into a grimm pack to join a huntsmen party would do more harm than good. Same with the police, they were trained do this kind of job. Just because Jaune was stronger and had aura now didn't mean he should butt in and disrupt the flow of things. An ego like that, believing not only you could help but you had to, could get people who specialized in that type of stuff hurt of even killed for your incompetence. Jaune was mature enough to admit that, now.
He had ignored those words when he dad told him something similar when Jaune had explained his desire to be a huntsman for probably the thousands time. He had believed it was always better to do something instead of nothing. It sucked to be wrong especially when it came to your parent, but Jaune still desperately wanted to help in some way. There was no proof this wasn't a supernatural incident, after all. "We'll look into it," Jaune told Emerald, "but if something else comes up we'll switch to that and let the police handled this."
"I'm telling you I've got a good feeling about this one." Jaune didn't know if she should be concerned for how exited Emerald sounded. Out of all the words he could have used to described his feelings about this 'good' was near the bottom of the list. "Murders happens all the time in Vale, but not like this. Normal killers don't risk getting caught by displaying their victims, most aren't even sadistic enough to do it."
Jaune decided it would be best not to ask how Emerald knew so much about killers. Emerald was hardly an innocent girl, but even Jaune would like to think he wasn't working—and sleeping in the same room—with a street-born psycho. "We should get going."
As Emerald and Jaune left to go strategize, another figure dismissed herself from the crowd of people. Her face was passive as she walked away from the sight, but if you were observant you could tell that she was walking stiffly and that the black bow on top of her head would twitch in anger.
Tukson's murder had already been big news around Beacon, but when the police dug up some evidence that he was part of the White Fang the student body really went into motion. You couldn't walk from one classroom to another without hearing about it. Speculation that it had been the work of an angry human, who had discovered the truth, or a hit by the White Fang themselves was running rampant. Some of the more bullheaded students were hoping to be sent out to help catch the killer.
It was all so much, and it was the reason Blake had confined herself to her room for most of the day. Beacon wasn't what she expected it to be. It felt like she was only learning about things she already knew and being taught skills she already had. Her whole reason for coming here was to make a difference and work towards the right path to equinity, but how could she do that when she was stuck in a classroom? She had begrudging put up with it before, realizing that she couldn't change the world in a week, but Tukson's murder had reminded her the world wasn't going to stand still while she sat around. If his death really did have something to do with the White Fang, someone needed to investigate. Unfortunately, the teachers seemed more concerned with the papers they assigned than the killer currently on the loose.
"Hey, why are you looking so grumpy!" Black jumped nearly a foot off her bed and barley managed to stop herself from hissing at the sudden appearance of her partner, Yang Xiao Long.
"What have I told you about sneaking up on me!" Blake said, not the first time she had been irritated with her partner. Yang wasn't a bad person, far from it, but her personality and Blake's were just on opposite ends of the spectrum. In combat class, they proved they could work together and complement each other's fighting style, but outside the arena they had a little tougher time getting along.
Alright that wasn't exactly true. Yang was more than happy to talk and hang out with her partner, but Blake was hesitant to open up around her. Yang was the type of person that once they got their foot in the door there was nothing you could do to stop them, and Blake wasn't ready for that, yet. So, for now, their partnership was defined by mostly one sided conservation where Blake would offer her input from time to time.
It wasn't the best of relationships, and it was easy to tell that Yang was trying to make it more, but with Blake's secrets, she couldn't just be comfortable around people she didn't know that well. Maybe it was unfair to her team, especially since she was made leader for some reason, but they just wouldn't understand her plight if she came out to them. Yang didn't seem like the person who would dislike her just because she was a faunus, but there was no telling how she would react if she found out she had been part of the White Fang. Even if she didn't have any personal vendetta against the White Fang, she might still turn her in out of obligation. Then there were the other two member of Team BRYL (Beryl), Russel and Sky weren't outwardly racist against faunus from what she'd seen, but they clearly didn't have any interest or problem with the current position of faunus.
"Blakey, you're spacing out again," Yang said poking the black-haired girl's cheek. "You thinking about a scene from that porn novel you've been reading?"
Blake had stopped trying to justify her reading material to Yang a long time ago. "I'm thinking about that murder if you must know. I can't believe someone could do something like that."
Yang expression lost its cheer and she sat down next to Blake. "I know what you mean. Ruby was mortified. The grimm are supposed to be our enemies not each other."
"We should do something," Blake stated.
Yang shook her head. "I would love nothing more than to go and hunt that bastard down, but we're students. If we go out there we'd just being running around wasting time. That's if Miss. Goodwitch doesn't stick us in detention for trying."
"We can't just do nothing. We're huntresses!"
"Huntresses-in-training," Yang corrected. "I'm sure if the police needed someone to help catch this guy, they wouldn't be turning towards first year Beacon students. Why are you so worried about this, anyhow?" Yang eyes widened and she went very still. "Did you know him?"
"No." Not personally. She had heard his name being passed around while she was in the White Fang, but she had never meet the guy. It was a coincidence she had been there to see the body. She had been wanting to get some books, and maybe pry a little into what the White Fang had been up to.
Yang released a breath she had been holding. "That's good…well not good, but you know what I mean. Listen, don't get too caught up in this. I'm sure the police will get this guy soon." Yang smiled like her reassurance was proof that it would happen.
It wasn't the answer Blake had been hoping for, but maybe her partner was right. Maybe Blake was seeing connections that weren't there. This might have nothing to do with the White Fang or faunus. She had come to Beacon to get away from it all. It wouldn't do to get pulled back in due to one isolated incident.
The door to Team BRYL's room was kicked open as Russel cam bragging in. "You're never going to believe it. There's been another murder!"
"Another death in 12 hours. This doesn't bode well," Jaune said, quietly. This time the murder had taken place in the agricultural district. A faunus farmer killed and positioned in a similar way to Tukson, suspended from his barn shed, although this one still had his eyes, and was facing north instead of south. Jaune didn't know if that matter but considering that made it so both bodies had their arms pulled to the west it seemed important enough to note.
The police had already cleared most of the crime scene by the time Emerald and Jaune had got there They were lucky to catch a glimpse of the body before it was taken down. It had seemed the police had tried to keep the second killing under wraps, but something had leaked and all of Vale knew by this point. It was scary how fast those reports could run a story. They had already gotten the location, the name, and the similarity between the earlier killing down all before the police had finished cleaning the crime scene. Pictures were the one thing that hadn't made it out, though, so if you really wanted all the details you had to come yourself. Police swiftly kicked all the onlookers out and threated to arrest them if they came back which was enough to get them to leave, all except Jaune and Emerald.
They kept their distance and stayed hidden while the police looked for clues. Emerald's semblance offered an additional level of protection in case someone wandered into their hiding place, so there wasn't any worry of them being discovered even when the cops were on high alert for sneaky journalist or crazy thrill seekers.
The two intruders weren't doing anything but waiting around behind some barrels beside the barn. The police were being loud enough that any clues they found were relayed to them. Nothing came up that really mattered though, and Emerald was starting to get really board. "I'm going to stretch my legs," she said.
"Are you crazy. You're going to get caught," Jaune whispered, harshly.
"I'll be fine. I'm just going to walk around for a bit. They won't see me."
"What about me? If one of them comes over here and you're not here to disguise us with your semblance, I'm a sitting duck."
"They're not going to come over here, and if they do they'll just kick you out and tell you too stop being nosy. It's no big deal." Emerald left it at that, not giving Jaune the chance to go down his whole list of worries as she entered the barn to stretch her legs. The police weren't guarding the place anymore since they got the body out. There was still a chance that one of them could walked back in, but Emerald wasn't that concerned. She pulled her arms above her head and listened to the satisfying cracking of her back and shoulder. She had used to do that every time should woke up but sleeping in an actual bed really helped.
She walked around the barn to get some blood flowing back into her legs. The barn was more for storage than anything else. Emerald saw a couple pens where animals might have been kept but they weren't there now. Apparently, all the animals running loose had been what alerted the journalist and the police to the scene in the first place. There was still a dark, dry spot on the floor from where the blood had leaked down from the corpse.
Emerald tried to avoid that, so she ended up walking closer to the wall and noticing something because of it. There was an impression on the wall. It wasn't very big or very clear but something was definitely there. It looked kind of like a nevermore print, but Emerald had never known a nevermore to walk vertically. Also, the print was far too big to belong to a juvenile but far too small to belong to regular one. Emerald ran her hand along it, but quickly pulled away as her hand became sticky. Resisting the urge to wipe the foreign substance off, Emerald examined it.
It was clear and kind of looked like spit. Pushing her pointer finger and thumb together then pulling them apart created a connecting line of the substance that wobbled in the wind but was surprising hard to pull apart.
Emerald went to get Jaune so he could see it.
"Yeah, I've got no idea," he said after doing the same test Emerald did, "but it definitely isn't human or faunus."
"So, we've hit something other worldly?"
"I don't know any animals capable of this," Jaune replied taking his sword out and cutting into the wall. "You can start rubbing it in now. You were right and I was wrong."
"Do you really think so little of me that you think I would throw this in your face." Jaune finished cutting a square in the wall, pulled out the section with the print on it and gave Emerald a look of absolute bewilderment.
Emerald smirked. "Because you'd be right. First Bury now this, you might want to hand that book over to me because it starting to look like I'm the one with the magic touch."
"Just because you said this would be connected to the supernatural doesn't mean a thing. You would have said that at any sign of violence. There was plenty of evidence to this just being a serial killer. The police were mentioning how they found White Fang propaganda in the house. This could have easily gone the other way. It just so happened you were right."
"Aww honey, it's okay. I didn't mean to bruise your ego." Emerald cracked herself up. "I'll try to be more considering of your feelings in the future."
Jaune really wanted to do something to her. He didn't know what he wanted to do he just knew he wanted it to be bad, but the sound of footsteps put his plans on hold. "We need to get out of here."
"Do you think they heard my laughter?" Emerald asked, innocently.
"I pretty sure the dead heard you laughing. Come on let's go."
Blake was out alone. Yang just didn't get it. Someone was hunting down faunus, and doing it quickly. It was already dark, and Blake was sure her team had noticed her absence by now, but she couldn't bring herself to care. She did not run away from the White Fang to sit on the sidelines. If the other students didn't want to help, then she would do it herself.
The location of the second murder had been cleared out by the police at this point. All that was left was a deserted farm and the chirping of bugs in the night. Blake didn't expect to find much but it was the best place to start.
The house groaned as she walked up the front steps. The door was locked but it was so old that Blake had barley even put her hairpin in before it gave up and unlocked. The house felt like any stereotypical grandparents' house. Old and odd thing hung on walls, cabinets and tables. The placed was as filled as it could be without being considered cluttered. It would actually work in Blake's favor making it more likely the police would have missed something.
She explored the house seeing that some rooms had obviously had a rougher search than others. The bedroom had obvious sighs of tampering and movement. Blake checked them anyways. The police hadn't released anything about the farmer being a White Fang supporter, so there was no way Blake could have known for sure, but she had a knack for jumping to conclusions and just assuming these things. It was a fault that had probably played a part in many of her past mistakes and would certainly lead to more in the future, but this time it would sever her well.
It led her to noticing the subtle sighs, like the scuffing on the floor that would have been too much for just one person make, that lead her to finding the hidden compartment in the basement. A White Fang mask and flag, a rife, a small amount of dust and a stack of documents.
It made senses. A place away from the city and out of the way would make a perfect meeting place. It would be a stretch to say this play was a safe house or a hideout, but it was definitely a place where the White Fang could gather and organize.
It was now perfectly clear to Blake the someone was targeting the White Fang. Both victims had been members and while they couldn't be considered upper leadership they were certainly more important than the common member. But, how was the killer getting this information and why was he killing them in such a brutal and public way?
There were a thousand reason for the why. Hating and even killing faunas out of anger was nothing new, Blake had seen how some humans reacted when they felt the "worthless animals" were stepping out of line, but the how was a more difficult question to answer. The police hadn't even known about this, so how would the killer.
The answer become clear the more she thought about it and it made her want to vomit. The only way someone could know this much about the White Fang was if they were part of it, or had been part of it. Just like Blake someone had betrayed the White Fang, but they were taking it to a point that she couldn't even considered. The White Fang might have lost their way but no one deserved that fate, and if Blake didn't do something, more bodies were certain to pile up.
Jaune could see some faunus protesters, ones that weren't associated with the White Fang, from his apartment window. The two faunus murders had stirred up the public and anti-faunus discrimination was the main topic. So far, nothing had really come of it, but the increase in the movement had only been alive for a few hours. If things went on too long it might spiral out of control. It would be a prime time for the White Fang to up the ante and increase their recruitment, and those in power we're well aware of that. It was very possible they might fire the first shot out of fear.
It wasn't a good situation and as long as these killings continued it would only be getting worse, which it would. This killer wasn't going to be swayed by protest, public opinion or appeals to his morals. Jaune doubted it even had any. This probably wasn't even about faunus at all. It was likely just a coincidence that both victims were faunus with White Fang connections.
Jaune stifled a yawn in his hand. It was late, passed midnight, but as much as he wanted to, he couldn't go to sleep. Jaune doubted this creature was killing for no reason. The body positioning was too much for it not to have any meaning. This thing, whatever it was, was trying to accomplish something, the killings were just the setup, and it was setting up fast.
Jaune returned to the floor, since his apartment lacked a table, were Emerald was helping him look for a possible match to that print they pulled from the barn. She had Roman's book while Jaune read through the journal he made. There was also a map between them. Jaune had gotten it from the travel pack he'd taken to Bury. There were two straight red lines drawn on it. Both bodies had been position to point somewhere, so Jaune had focused on that, but nothing came out of it. They both pointed west out to the sea, and the farmer's body, in the agricultural district had been position directly below Tucson's body, in the commercial district, on the map, so there had to been some meaning behind it, but Jaune couldn't find. The lines themselves ran parallel to each other and didn't cross anything of importance, important being defined as being significant the people of Vale, there was no telling what this creature considered important. The next logical step would be the area between the two lines, which was concerning since it encompassed the west side of the residential district, most of the industrial district and all of patch if you followed the line to the end of the map. It was so broad an area that Jaune and Emerald would never be able to cover it alone.
"Did you find anything?" Jaune asked.
"No, your friends didn't seem interested in categorizing any of the creatures' footprints. They only talk about how they look and what they do. Not much help since we haven't seen the thing."
"Then try to find something about that slime. There can't be too many things that do that. I'll keep trying to figure out why it's doing this."
"I feel like you gave yourself the easier task," Emerald huffed.
"We can trade if you want. I'd be glad to take a break from holding the mental image of two gored corpses in my head and trying to extrapolate some kind of meaning from them."
Emerald got back to work glossing over pages. They both really needed a break, but they couldn't risk taking one. The next killing was probably just on the horizon. It could have already happened and they just didn't know about it. Jaune's hand reached for his scroll, not for the first time, thinking about giving Roman a call, but he pulled back. He couldn't just call Roman every time he got stuck. Jaune regretted using the first one on something so stupid, so he had promised himself that last two would only be used for emergencies. The issue was determining if this was an emergency or not. People were being killed, yes, but what was this thing's end goal? Was it trying to wipe out all of Vale, or was it just an isolated event only related to itself and those it had killed? Right now, there was no way to tell and that worried him.
"Here's an idea," Emerald said setting the book down, she couldn't read another word. "What if this thing really is targeting faunus for a reason? Both of them being White Fang dose seem like a little too big of a coincidence?"
"Then it's another layer that we don't know a thing about," Jaune snarled, he really was too tired for this. "What I'm more worried about is if the position of the bodies are related to some kind of magical apparatus, shouldn't their removal broken it or caused something else to happen."
"Maybe they only needed to be there initially or for some small amount of time. They could still be channeling their soul energy or something for all we know."
"That's what I'm worried about. If it's something like that, then we don't have a way to retroactively stop it. We'd have to stop this creature directly, and I don't think I need to remind you how well that's going." Jaune's finger dug into the pages of his journal, nearly tearing them, as he looked back at the map. Those lines had to mean something! He was sure those bodies were pointing that direction for a reason.
Jaune rolled onto his back the map held in the air above him. Think, there had to be something he was missing. Jaune went through everything he knew in his head. Two White Fangs members were killed, one was a bookstore owner the other was a farmer. Their bodies were strung up in similar positions and, on a map, they were on the same Y-axis. Whatever killed them is smart enough to avoid detection and seems to have the power to scale walls and produced a sticky substance.
Jaune's forehead creased. That didn't give him anything. Maybe he should be focusing on the differences instead of the similarities. The farmer had been killed at his farm when nobody was around. Tukson's was killed at his bookstore on a busy street where anyone could see his body.
Actually, that wasn't really true.
Their bodies had been found in those places but that didn't mean they were killed there. People had just assumed that since both faunus owned the places where they were killed. In fact, weren't Tukson's eyes found in some alleyway. It was completely possible he had been killed there, away from prying eyes, and moved back to his store.
Jaune's mind began to whirl. What else were they just assuming as fact? He went through everything again. Jaune suddenly shot up, and Emerald jump as he called her name. "Emerald, you got a better look at the farmer's body than I did. What did you see."
Emerald was still trying to recover from the jump scare when she answered. "I don't know. It looked a like a body, the same as Tukson but with the eyes. Why?"
"Listen I think we've be getting ahead of ourselves. We just taken everything we heard as truth, but it's our job to question everything. We've let the public do our work for us and since they don't have the full picture it's lead us astray." Jaune was starting to talk a mile a minute as he stood up and started doing wild hand motions like an eccentric storyteller. "What if we've got the timeline wrong. It was said that Tukson's body was hung outside his store for hours before anyone noticed. I don't know about you, but that screams unnatural influence to me. Now why would the creature have needed to hide the body if it didn't matter if it was taken down, and why would he be in such a rush to kill two people so close together?"
"Get to the point already."
"It's not that Tukson was killed first then the farmer. That was just the order in which the bodies were found. The police never specifically stated the farmer was killer after Tukson, people just assumed that. I think the farmer was killer first since the creature knew it would take longer for him to be discovered since he lived in a more remote part of Vale."
"Now that you mention it, the blood in the barn was already dry when we got there. I just thought the body had been there for a while, but maybe a while was longer than I thought. Why does this matter though? Who cares who was killed first."
"For a normal killer, not much, but this isn't a normal killer. If the farmer was killed first, for the reason to not be found too soon, it must be important. Putting the farmer's death before Tukson's means that both of them were hanging at the same time. It wasn't just their arms that were pointing somewhere it were their faces as well. They were looking at each other. They're not just circumstantially connected, but directly. The creature didn't care if the bodies were removed because they already created their connection." Jaune grabbed the map and drew a line connecting the two bodes two each other.
"Don't you think you're jumping to concisions. Even if you're right about the farmer's death being before Tukson, that doesn't mean everything else you said is right."
"You're right, I have no grantee I'm right, but I've been doing more research outside just etches and dimensional storage, you know, and forging a connection between two entities is a basis for a lot of magic. It how the transdimensional plate works, at least I think so," Jaune added in a whisper before returning to his mile-a-minute speech. "It might just be a theory but it's the best one we have. That means for this thing to do anything it needs at least two more kills. These lines right here," Jaune pointed to the horizontal line on the map, "aren't leading to anything. They're guidelines."
"So, the next two kills, because it has to be a pair, are going to happen somewhere on those lines," Emerald said starting to see what Jaune was getting at.
"Right! Specifically, one on the bottom line and one on the top although I don't think they have to be killed exactly on that line. Their bodies just have to be moved there."
"That's still going to be a lot of ground to cover, and even if this is this case, the only way we'll find the killer is if he's already killed someone and is positioning them."
Jaune bit his lip clearly just now noticing that problem. If the body only had to be moved to a specific position the kill could still happen anywhere in Vale. "Hopefully it won't come to that. As for where, I think I can guess where the bodies are going to be placed." Jaune took his hand as an improvised ruler, measured the distance between Tukson and the farmer's body, used that measurement to plot two dots down on the horizontal lines and then connected them together with another line making a square. "This would be the most logical place, but we should check the entire thing to make sure."
"I thought we shouldn't be making assumption. Is it wise to use our human created math and geometry to try and explain magic?"
"My etches uses math to do what they do so there's a precedent," Jaune defended.
"What if we don't find anything? It could easy set up behind us after we pass it, and we can't just keep running back and forth.
"Listen, it's not a prefect plan! I'm just coming up with it now. I'll try to flesh it out while we search. You take the top path I'll take the bottom. We'll call each other if we find anything, got it?"
"I guess this is all we can do for now," Emerald said running out the door with Jaune.
Blake removed her White Fang masked and sighed. She had infiltrated a White Fang rally hoping that there would be an attack, or at the very least the White Fang themselves would know what was going on, but no such luck. The White Fang only saw these killings as a way to drawn in more recruits, and it was working. There was a reason she had been able to slip in so easily.
It didn't matter, though. The White Fang were just as clueless as to the perpetrator identity as anyone else. There wasn't even a hint of speculation that it might be one of their own. Blake checked her scroll and saw about a dozen missed calls from her team. It was probably time to head back to Beacon. She wasn't going to find anything more tonight. The killer hadn't reveled himself, and since there was a second body maybe Beacon would do more to help.
She was about to text Yang and let her know that she was alright, but before she could, Blake's cat ears picked up a soft tapping noise. It sounded close, but Blake looked all around the dark street she was walking through and didn't see a thing. The White Fang rally had taken place in a mostly deserted part of the industrial district that was really only full of storage warehouses, so it was expected the place would be devoid of people, but everything still seemed too empty.
She heard the noise again and quickly pulled out her weapon, pointing to where she though she heard the noise come from.
There was nothing.
"If someone's there you better come out. I don't want to hurt you," Blake said her voice echoing off the warehouses' walls.
There was no answer.
Blake relaxed her shoulder. Maybe she was more tired than she thought. She was starting to jump at shadows. She held up her scroll ready to try and text Yang again when something clear dropped on the screen. At first, Blake thought it was just some water but when she touched it is was not only sticky but sickeningly warm.
Blake twisted her head upwards and saw the face of true terror. Crawling along the wall above her was an eight-foot-long creature. Its general shape was like that of a caterpillar except instead of tons of stubby legs this thing had eight long ones that each had two joints and ended in a sort of claw. It was entirely covered in light grey fur that was damp for some reason. If it had eyes they were covered by its fur and its mouths seemed to extended too far down it's body. It didn't have any teeth and only produced this awful gargling sound when it opens its mouth, revealing two purple tongues.
Blake only had time to scream before the thing lunged at her.
An old fairy tale of which no known copies still exist (part 1 of 2)
When the world was still young three great wizards walk Remnant.
One of these wizards was an extraordinarily kind man going from settlement to settlement doing his best to spread happiness to the world. He would cause rain that let crops grow and cured the sick where he could. He was loved by many and was by far the most respected out of all the great wizards.
However, as he observed the happiness of others he wondered why he could not be as satisfied as them. He had powers like no other and yet he felt he was missing something.
He traveled far and wide looking for an answer. Until one day he came across a very small village being ravaged by the elements. Quick to help, the wizard saved the village from being wiped off the map.
Although they did not have much the villagers threw a festival in his honor. They drank and danced for the entire day, and it was there the wizard met a girl. She had a large scare covering half her face from many years ago when her campfire had burn her after it caught a strong breeze. The wizard, wanting to help, offered to heal it for her.
The woman accepted the offer but not before asking if he was doing it to restore her beauty. To which the wizard replied, that he was doing this because she was the most beautiful woman he's ever laid eyes on and he did not want her to hide her face in shame.
They got married and had a son. The Wizard settled down in that village happy with his new life, but one day, when he was out crafting a gift for his son, he returned to see the village set ablaze.
A large tribe had attack the village because they had recently had a bad harvest. They were furious the wizard had not come help them as he done to other so many times before.
The Wizard tried desperately to save his wife and son but they had burns he could not heal. The fire had already eaten his wife by the time he got there and he watched his son take his last breath as the smoke strangled his throat.
Anger the likes of which the wizard had never felt before burned inside him. He swore vengeance against those that had murder his family and used most of his power to curse them and all their decedents. Animal parts started growing from everyone in that tribe be it ears, tails, scales, fur, or anything else.
Not only were they now marked in a way the rest the population wasn't, but now whenever a human saw a person with animal parts they were consumed with an unexplainable rage to hurt or kills these people.
Unable to trade, work together, marry, or hide their marks from other tribes they fell into oppression and suffering. Eventually after hundreds of years the curse that drove the people's rage wore off although the animal features still remained.
Despite this thing did not get better. The magic might have ceased to function but the culture and tradition of hatred still continued and that was far more powerful than any curse. By this time these animal people weren't even considered human and were instead given a new name, taken from wizard who marked them, and had not been seen since that day, Faunus.
An: A new monster appears and Blake has gotten herself in to something she shouldn't have, and there's been some major chances at Beacon now that Jaune's not there. How far these chances go will be revealed in time, but for now there's a much more serious problem on the horizon.
I tried to make this chapter represent the differences between caretaker and huntsmen, specifically between Blake and Jaune. Jaune has realized that if he's going to survive he'll have to slow down although he may have decelerated a little too much, but good old Blake is there to pick up the slack and race head first into problems. To be fair, though, she could never have imagined it would end up like this.