Chapter 19, The Trail


"Well, he's certainly not what I was expecting." Ozpin said as he watched the holographic display built into his desk. On it was a recording from the periphery cameras that had been set up to help monitor the upcoming initiation, specifically footage of a man in a long gray coat with armored shoulders fighting a Grimm. And screaming.

On one hand he did feel a small desire to send some token of thanks to the man for taking care of the Nepidion that had managed to establish its territory at the Beacon water docks. On the other hand, the man had robbed his third year students of a wonderful learning experience about how vigilance was needed to keep a safe area, well, safe.

He and Glynda were currently in his office atop the CCTS Tower at the heart of Beacon Academy, where she was bringing him up to speed in the most recent notable event to have occurred at his prestigious Academy. News that was equal parts alarming and nonsensical. The only sounds echoing through the space were either the shifting of one of the clockwork gears found within or the distorted sounds of the video playing.

"Certainly less calm than the other minions She has sent over the years, and without her protection." The Headmaster continued. On the screen the man had managed to lure the aquatic Grimm on to the shore, where he proceeded to attempt to use a rock to bash its head in. Maybe it was also time for an anatomy lesson on the more esoteric varieties of Grimm, seeing as not all of them had proper heads, or in the case of the Nepidion, had vestigial heads.

He had to give the Queen's agent credit. It was one of the most entertaining fights he had seen in a long time. Of course there was always the slim chance that this was a free agent of sorts, someone who was merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. But even a free agent could be useful as a distractionary element.

"Ozpin, he was here. At Beacon." Glynda reiterated.

"To pull banking records, of all things." It didn't make any sense, which meant it was simply one part of a larger scheme. He rewound the footage. "And no record of his almost three hours on that terminal remains, which tells of a deep familiarity with the CCTS systems. I'll need to get in touch with Ironwood, it's more than likely this 'Private Investigator' is from Atlas or Mantle."

Private Investigator indeed. Glynda had looked up the man's license in Vale's database, and had found a half complete profile embedded in their files. It only had his odd name, which didn't follow any naming convention Ozpin knew, and a picture of a man in a dirty poncho in a red tinted sandstorm. His Deputy Headmistress had had the foresight to save that exact version to her personal Scroll before she chased after him. Afterwards, the same profile suddenly had the standard amount of information gathered with a far more appropriate picture.

The only other data on the man was a standard, Short Duration Visitor's Pass issued from the Vale Security Wall; a piece of paper that operated as a temporary ID for those without Scrolls.

It spoke of both incredible technical know-how married to an incredible lack of common sense.

"Quite the strange character, our Float Man." Ozpin mused.

"Not you too." It had taken several hours, which was surprising in its own right that it had taken that long, but a video of the chase between the self professed 'PI' and Glynda had begun making the rounds through the student population. Seeing as he had never drawn a weapon, it seemed that most of the students had assumed that Hakke was an upperclassman who had managed to draw Glynda's ire. Seeing as he had managed to escape said ire, and by floating off a cliff to boot, he had earned a rather unique nickname for himself in the process, and an undeserved spot in the annals of student antics at the school.

Ozpin was willing to let that misunderstanding persist, if it meant that the truth that a potentially dangerous criminal had been loose on the campus was swept under the rug for the time being. When one was waging an eternal Shadow War, sometimes what you didn't do was more important than what you did.

"What about the police? Have they learned anything of note?" He asked, switching back to topic.

Glynda nodded, appreciatively. "Alarmingly, yes. There was a shootout in an apartment building a handful of blocks away from where my... car was found. Seeing as it happened in the middle of the night, practically no one there got a good look at who was involved, although the police did catch several badly injured gunmen with fake police badges."

"The cameras?"

She sighed. "They were scrambled. And in exactly the same way as the cameras we had installed for Initiation were. In other words, unusable. However, a traffic camera on the street caught this image."

Glynda swiped her Scroll, and an image appeared on Ozpin's desk display. It was blurry, all the finer details being completely unreadable. But the major details were there plain as day. The man in question was standing in the back of one of the most common varieties of contractor van, one hand holding on to the ceiling, the other cradling a machine gun that he seemed to be firing at another van.

He sighed deeply, hands pressed together in concern. "How many casualties?"

"Surprisingly, none. Most of the men the police found needed hospitalization, but no deaths. It seemed he was trying to disable that van." She said, gesturing to the image. "All of them had ties to the Syndicate."

Vale had a reputation of being cleaner of organized crime than most Kingdoms, and in some ways that reputation held true. The Vale crime Families didn't operate quite as brazenly as the ones in Mistral, or hold as much outright power as those from Vacuo, but that wasn't to say they didn't hold far more power than most would expect. They just did so quietly, making sure as to not step too far out into the open as to attract attention.

Truth be told, it would be difficult to find a normal citizen who could name even one of Vale's major criminal powers. They preferred to keep their crime 'clean' in the sense that it was out of sight and out of mind. The underworld tended to largely self regulate in an attempt to keep the police and Huntsmen at bay. For Syndicate men to be found at the sight of such a public attack was concerning. It spoke of turmoil, and fear, within the confines of the underworld.

The question then became, why?

"So far none of them have said anything useful, either. It's alarming how fast he seems to be moving, usually someone would lay low after such a public display, but he did not. He spent three hours at that terminal; who knows how much data he took? The banking data may have only been the last pieces for all we know."

"Hopefully it's enough data to slow him down. It takes time to parse the sort of volume he took, time we can use to find him. Keep working with the police, I will let them know the basics of what we expect, that a suspected criminal hacked the CCTS. That should explain why I'm having you look into this personally."

"I'll get in touch with the Detective in charge of the Syndicate men, Richard Ponci, I believe his name was."

"Perfect. I have the utmost faith you will unravel this puzzle." He said with a smile. A few pleasantries later, and Glynda was down the elevator to begin her hunt anew. He sat there in silence for a moment. She was one of the best, and one of his most trusted allies. He had meant what he had said, even if this was rapidly turning into the sort of problem he would prefer to throw Qrow at. If only his spy wasn't already busy with something that was potentially even more important.

Eventually, he returned to the video. There was a particular detail that he wanted to inspect, from the best angle he could. The Float Man video had begun with a peculiar off-camera explosion, one originating from the PI as Glynda had told it.

There. He paused the video and zoomed in. The PI was above the snapping mandibles of the Nepidion, one hand outstretched to send three orange fireballs at the Grimm. Being able to summon physical objects wasn't the most outlandish thing he had seen Huntsmen do over the years. Far from it. What he was looking at fit the bill for a Semblance perfectly. Except for one little detail. Elemental Semblaces typically were activated with Dust, with their user either far more proficient or relying on its presence. There were exceptions, but none like what he was looking at.

None that transmuted sections of their user's hand into flames as they threw fireballs. Homing fireballs at that, that set the entire Grimm aflame for a moment before dissipating without a trace.

He was fairly certain that it hadn't been a Semblance. Too many little details felt off. And if it was magic, it was magic he was wholly unfamiliar with. Increasingly, he was beginning to suspect that this was something new. Something else, connected to that black, sharp, magic he had felt some time ago.

"Who are you?" He asked the figure on his screen.

As if to taunt the ancient wizard, the figure remained silent.


"Good to know the Grimm come in giant water scorpion form. Won't be seeing that in my nightmares." An even grumpier than usual Hakke muttered. It was almost the two week anniversary of his arrival on Remnant, and to celebrate the occasion it seemed the planet had decided to reintroduce him to his least favorite variety of life.

Well, maybe not the least favorite, but rapidly approaching the bottom tiers.

After the disaster that had been his supposedly simple, mundane visit to Beacon Academy, a place he would be more than happy to never return to, he had attempted to swim his way back to Vale. Seeing as the waters were infested with Grimm, he had instead walked. Seeing as there were cameras in basically every direction he had turned, that walk had been more of a shoreside slog.

Sopping wet and very pissed, he had forgone public transport for a cab. One that he was fairly certain had doubled its price on him. Not the end of the world, but not ideal. After some communicating with Callie, he managed to get his Scroll to pull up the City's database for warrants and bounties to see if his recent escapades had landed him in really hot water. Dodging police wouldn't be the hardest thing he had ever done, but it wouldn't make things any easier, especially if he and Cerulean needed to head out to investigate a site or something.

It's not that he didn't feel Callie was up to investigating such things, it was just that neither he nor his Ghost had the experience. Neither knew what to look for to further their investigations. So far they had lucked out and found some items that may still provide dividends, but they could have missed something important too, something that would have given them a more direct line of attack. Not to mention they attracted trouble like a magnet.

He paid his fare and stumbled his way down a few blocks to the Garage. Another perfectly good day wasted, and this time he couldn't even blame the Syndicate. Just himself and who he really hoped was just someone doing his job. If Goodwitch or any of her associates ended up also working for the Syndicate, things would get a whole new level of messy, and do so fast.

"So. Anything good come out of this mess?" He asked Callie once inside.

"Possibly. There's a lot of data to sift through, and I'm not sure which connections are the ones that are actually useful. The main account we found definitely connected to Doc, although it's not his personal account. It seems to be his dues to some sort of mercenary outfitting company. Maybe the group he belongs to. Thankfully, I also pulled the accounts that were upstream of his, shell companies mostly, but there's some strange trails nonetheless. I'll let you know when I have something concrete."

Possibly. Fantastic. Alerted one of the most influential individuals in the Kingdom to his presence, got caught hacking into the CCTS, all for a chance at forward progress. For nothing more than a probably. He stopped himself. That was harsh. He had faith in Callie, of course. She might still bring out a miracle from the data yet, she had done similar feats in the past.

"So. I noticed you didn't put together anything on those runes like I asked." Cerulean said from the second floor room. The Warlock stopped, muttering curses in Eliksni under his breath before he turned to look up at her. Under no circumstance was he even going to consider writing down anything in Hive. That was the worst of several bad ideas.

"What do you know about one Glynda Goodwitch?" He asked instead.

"Oh no, you don't get to slip this one with vague words like every other question I've asked." She began.

"You answer my question, and I'll answer your…" he waved his hand, "statement."

"Look," She leaned over the side rail. "I've been more than patient with you. Accepted your backstory with no questions, all on one caveat. That you don't hold back anything related to this case. You know those runes. If you won't share, then tell me why not."

He floundered. "I already told you that the weapon I'm looking for is covered in these things, right?"

"Right." She began walking down the stairs.

"And I scribbled one down as a sample, right?"

"Right." She reached the bottom.

"I don't know what that weapon does, but I do have a reference point."

She stared at him. "What the hell does that mean?"

"There's a bigger crown out there in the world, although the big one is contained. I think. It had this same style of writing on the inside, right where you'd put your head. Well someone wore it, a person named Gahlran."

"And?"

"With half of the lettering, it broke his mind in a couple of minutes. Drove him psychopathically, uncontrollably violent." The fact that Gahlran had also been a two ton war turtle with a species wide cleft lip was beside the point. And irrelevant. The original Crown of Sorrow had shattered the mind of a being bred to take the strain, and done so with half of the lettering. The fact that an evil goddess had written said lettering, and that it was probably far more potent was also beside the point.

"I'm not really following."

"It's… calling it a language isn't really right." He paused, searching for the right words. "Do you know what a cognitohazard is?"

She stared openly at him, a look he couldn't place etching itself along her face. He continued on.

"Cognitohazard means cognitive hazard. A weapon designed to deal damage to the mind itself." He stopped again, trying to think of some vaguely relevant analogue that Remnant had. "Look, before you call me crazy, there are Semblances out there that affect the mind, right? It's like that. It attacks your mind. I don't know how it works, and frankly I don't want to know. That's, sort of how that works."

"That's insane."

"Welcome to my world. When I find a way to prove what I'm saying without running the risk of infecting us with a viral language, I'll do it. You have my word on that. Besides, I only have like, three runes down." He blinked. "Probably should have led with that. Would have come off as less of a lunatic."

She clapped him on the shoulder, looking at him with a wary concern. "Definitely. Do that next time. Please."

He pursed his lips. "Gotcha."

"Quick question. How does Callie appear out of the air like that?"

"I don't actually know. Transmat or something, I think."

"I don't know what that means."

"Kinda figured."

Ever so slowly, Callie floated over Hakke's right shoulder, her singular eye flicking between the Guardian and the Faunus. Said Faunus pointed at the Warlock. "Man's a touch crazy."

"Thanks."

"Oh, trust me, I am well aware." Callie said, bobbing in a nod.

"Traitor."

"And on a note that isn't calling Hakke crazy, I think I may have something. Go ahead and check your Scrolls, I'm sending it over."

True to her word, two buzzes sounded, and both the Detective and the Warlock pulled their separate Scrolls. "How did you know I got one?" Cerulean asked.

"I am very good at what I do and Scrolls are incredibly easy to hack. Anyways, After digging through just about every single scrap of data I could, and trawling through a wide assortment of shell companies, I think I have something." A dense file of numbers and transactions displayed on the blue holographic slate, enough to make Hakke's head spin. He knew numbers, but he didn't know this.

"Whoa whoa whoa, this can't be right." Cerulean said.

"But it is! This was well hidden, scattered all throughout the files we pulled from the CCTS this morning."

"Okay, what am I missing here?" Hakke asked.

"There's some incredibly heavy duty equipment being moved to some farm near the outer wall of Vale. Agricultural district." Cerulean continued.

Hakke looked at the charts more carefully. A range of materials were in fact being sent to one Happy Trails Farm. Steel mesh and poles, a staggering amount of weird industrial and medical equipment, Dust shipments, and plenty more. Far more materials needed for what a quick search over the 'net told him was a minor dairy farm. All of it staggered in terms of delivery as well. For the last year or so, it seemed that someone had been incessantly building up Happy Trails in some strange ways. Something weird was up, especially when he noticed the price tags that some of these items had.

"So whoever owns these shell companies is paying the mercs we're looking for." He began. "And at the same time they're dumping millions of Lien in all sorts of crap into a small business. It's weird, but is this a lead worth pursuing?"

Cerulean shrugged. "I don't see why not. Worst case it's some sort of embezzling front hidden behind one hell of a dense smokescreen. If it is, there's still a few cops on the force I trust enough to hand this off to. Either way, it definitely beats staking out a White Fang warehouse for extra scraps of info."

"True enough. Let's load up some guns and go visit a dairy farm."

"One last thing. You mentioned Goodwitch, you mean the Huntress from Beacon. The professor there, right?"

"Yeah, that's her."

"What about her?"

A pause.

"You know that car we stole?"


Happy Farms is something I've been looking forward to for a very long time. I'd love to say more, but I don't want to ruin the surprise. Needless to say, important plot stuff ahead.

ALSO! Semester be done gents, so until my summer courses begin, I can put a bit more time towards making this mess of a story work gud.

- RangoTango

Yee Yee, it be. Review Time

ue1 - Ooh, das some good stuff. Thanks for bringing it to my attention, there's a very good chance I would have overlooked it and missed out on what turned out to be a pretty kickass story.

Master-ofmanga - He's turning this franchise around!

The Baz - Warlockrise. Might work, but it would put ya into melee range with an elite Huntsmen. Then again, being on the other side of a good blink user is about as disorienting as it can get. It'd probably help a lot at least.

Seyd - Much like everything else, I gotta seed things like 10 chapters before I actually use them. They'll have their time to shine, but not before this current predicament with the Syndicate is resolved. Besides, hard to use Team RWBY when the team doesn't chronologically exist yet.

Flitterflux - Glad you liked it! Panic situations where the plan disintegrates in the worst way possible are always a blast to write

DarkMegatron - Well, he may have escaped without any (real) physical harm, but now Oz & Co. know his name and face. One step forward, two steps sideways.

AidsNinja - 99% Solar for Hakke. He'll probably dip into the other elements of Light as things go on, but it won't be all that common. Nova Bomb will show up eventually. He'll come on and SLAM, and welcome some poor fool to the JAM.