Arc I Conclusion: Pieces to Their Places, Part 2
I beheld a great tree, unspeakably vast in its width and height. So wide it was, that the span of its branches encompassed all of eternity. So great were its dimensions that it towered over worlds, and each leaf upon its great, gnarled branches held universes unto themselves. I saw within those leaves pasts, presents and futures that could have been and were.
I felt, more than saw, a great and terrible force that twined among those branches, touching upon each leaf upon that tree. Of the leaves that it touched, some would burn all the brighter for its ministrations while others would blacken and fall from their perch.
I looked down and beheld an endless sea where those blackened leaves lay. Within this sea that was not a sea, lights of infinite stifled possibilities flickered and died. And I saw that Remnant lay among these dying worlds. I saw many worlds like it, different in form and function, but all withered beyond redemption. I saw men and kings alike laid low by horrible, unnatural beasts of white, and I wept in remonstrance of so cruel a fate.
There are things that man ought not to know. Things that would drive most to madness and despair. Things that have lurked beyond the veil of the cosmos since great antiquity. Remnant's fate had been sealed since long before man came to first walk upon its surface.
There are those who say the end is coming. I cannot agree with them. The end is not coming, my brethren, for it is already here.
– An excerpt from Remnant: Historia Obscura, Vol.3 Ch.1: "On the Divinations of the Mad Prophet Lenore"
Vale
The door to a small, dingy room swung open with a weak creak of protest, revealing Roman Torchwick. Loosely clutching a plain plastic bag in each hand, he mindlessly hummed a jaunty melody as he strode inside and deposited the night's spoils on the rickety table.
This building, tucked into a seedy back-alley located quite a ways off of the main road, was allegedly an office space. Admittedly, Roman had no idea what respectable business would want this particular lot but he certainly couldn't complain about the price. He had rented it out under a pseudonym to act as a base of operations, considering his rather extended stint in Vale.
Roman loathed having to stay in one region for too long, and his time in Vale most certainly qualified as "too long." He didn't get to where he was by settling down and becoming complacent. If you were a criminal of any notoriety you either had significant backing that allowed you to remain in one place, or you kept light on your feet. When things got too hot, you left and laid low for a bit until people forgot your face. That's just how it was.
Sure, the bit-players and the small-time crooks could afford to hang around and no one would bat an eye, but he was Roman freaking Torchwick. There wasn't a single government on the face of Remnant that wasn't out for his blood. He was used to being on the move, and the sudden shift to a protracted campaign tolled on his nerves greatly, making him antsy and waspish. Realizing that a rather heavy scowl had begun to work its way onto his face as he ruminated on the unfortunate series of events that led him to this current predicament, he busied himself with sorting through the goods he had procured.
Reaching into one of the bags that sat on the table, he produced a small, cardboard package. The label read "Papa Joe's Microwave Meals." This one was spaghetti, it seemed. Cracking open the box, he placed the small, plastic tray in the microwave and keyed in the appropriate time with a series of obnoxiously loud beeps. Slowly, the aged device rumbled into motion with an inconsistent hum and the groan of aged, overused gears.
Nodding in satisfaction, he began pulling a series of identical boxes from the remaining bags on the table and began piling them into the grimy, slightly-tilted refrigerator. One of the perks of this particular lot was its proximity to an all-hours convenience store.
"Torchwick."
"Brothers!" Roman cursed, dropping several boxes and whirled to the source of the unexpected voice. "Can you please stop doing that!?" He shot an ugly glare at the figure that he had somehow managed to miss entirely. "Normal people give a heads up, or call, or, Brothers forbid, wait outside and knock. How do you even keep getting in..." The man trailed off before sighing heavily and slouching against the scuffed countertop, "You know what? Nevermind. I don't want to know."
This wasn't the first time he had come home to Phoenix already waiting for him. The first time it had happened, he blasted a sizable hole in the kitchen wall. That same wall was now boarded up with spare scraps of cardboard and held together with a generous application of duct tape and prayers. He certainly wouldn't be getting his deposit back. It was also the wall which Phoenix now leaned against, staring pensively at him.
"What news?"
"Same as usual." Roman mirrored her, leaning against the kitchen counter, his gaze never wavering from that imposing form. He may have gotten somewhat used to his new associate, but he'd be damned if he ever willingly showed her his back. Not that it would matter either way. "That witch is tight-lipped as always. I've tried goading her lackeys into spilling something, but she's got them trained well and good."
Her expression was less than impressed.
"It's not a total loss, though" he assured, tiredly rubbing a hand over his eyes while the other fidgeted restlessly, tapping a nervous rhythm on the laminate surface. "It's not my job to know where the dust is headed, but it's someone's. I just had to find them." An uncomfortable frown wormed its way on his face. "It's not exactly concrete, but I heard one of the Fang–one of the logistics kids–mention something about shipping the dust somewhere for re-delivery."
That piqued her attention.
"The final destination?"
"Back to Vale, apparently," Roman admitted, a harrowed expression on his face. "He said, and I quote: 'It's going to be a hell of a bang, humans won't know what hit them.'"
She mulled over this new information. "A terrorist attack, then?"
"Sure seems like it. The mutts have been getting bold since Tauros started playing leader." He idly scratched at his chin, "I still need to look into how they plan to deliver the cargo. Not even he would be brazen enough to try and fly a bullhead full of dust into Central Vale. It's no Atlas, but Valean defenses aren't anything to scoff at. A lone, unregistered craft would be shot out of the sky before it even cleared the forest."
"Something for later consideration." She placed a knuckle to her chin, pondering deeply. "Potential damage?"
Roman hummed. "Ballpark? So far we've stolen enough dust to blow up a few city blocks. It would be a hell of a spectacle, I can tell you that much." He made a dissatisfied noise in the back of his throat. "If it were just the Fang, I'd actually believe that they just want to stir up chaos and do some damage.
"But you don't think that's Cinder's plan."
"That woman doesn't do things 'just because,'" he pointed out. "She's got bigger ideas. She mentioned crippling Vale, but we have nowhere near enough dust for that, even with an ideal location."
"We still don't have enough information then," Phoenix concluded.
"Nope.
They stared tensely at each other for several moments. The microwaved shrieked persistently in the background, but Roman didn't move to retrieve his meal. The rumble of a truck passing on the narrow, adjacent side-street cast a brilliant glare through the blinds, sending shadows tumbling across the length of the room, and bathing their forms in alternating strobes of light and darkness.
Phoenix pushed off of the wall she was leaning against. "Very well," she finally said, producing a small, thick envelope. She offered it to Roman, causing him to flinch reflexively before hesitantly accepting it.
"What's this?"
"Payment for services rendered," she replied blandly. "You said it yourself. This is a partnership, and a partnership can only exist where there is reciprocity between both parties."
He shot her a dubious glance. "I'm going to be honest," Roman started, as he cautiously pulled the cards from the envelope, fully anticipating some sort of trap. "I was expecting you to say something like, 'your payment is your life,' or some other evil-boss sounding line."
"I am not without reason," she responded simply as she strode to the door. "I will be seeing you, Roman, Neopolitan." At the second name, the sound of shattering glass revealed a petite girl in the formerly empty corner where Phoenix had nodded.
"Yeah, yeah," Roman mumbled, thumbing through the lien cards, before perking up as if remembering something. "Hey, call next time! Stop breaking into my house!"
But she had already vanished in that odd way she always did, disappeared the moment she turned the corner.
"How does she always know where I am?" Was all Neo could bring herself to sign.
Roman groaned.
Somewhere in Mantle
Mantle and, by extension, Atlas, had a long and storied history. It was only natural that, over the course of such an expanse of time, superstitions and legends would inevitably be formulated. The majority of them were little more than passing fancies–tall-tales told to terrify toddlers and misbehaving children. Others, however, held a seed of truth at their core.
Of the myriad urban legends and wild gossip that passed through the lips of the people of Mantle, there was one that had emerged relatively recently with the rise of the CCT towers. It persisted not only due to its relation to one of the Kingdom's most defining accomplishments, but also because there was some amount of proof to its veracity, though most of the evidence was largely circumstantial. The rumors spoke of a ghost that lived in the CCT. It was supposedly a wraith that flitted about the cross-kingdom filaments largely undetected, save for the times it chose to make its presence known.
Who or what it was was a mystery. The only things anyone knew of the elusive entity were the moniker it had adopted: RABBIT, and the fact that it had supreme control over Atlas's CCT network.
Indeed, RABBIT seemed to be nigh omnipotent. Wherever unscrupulous individuals sought to intrude upon the sanctity of the communication network, they would inevitably find their path barred. In the case of persistent or especially egregious offenders, Atlesian authorities would later find a full dossier containing said offender's personal information and location deposited onto their personal devices.
One particular individual had clashed repeatedly with RABBIT, but, unlike the others, was not stupid enough to get caught. He was the disgraced Doctor Arthur Watts, presumed deceased. He had been commissioned to construct a virus by the grimm witch he called his master–a task he undertook quite readily. The premise of the plot was quite simple, really: the CCT was the only way for Remnant's continents to remain in contact. Sever the lines, isolate the kingdom and strike at its weakest. Divide and conquer. Simple, yet elegant.
Constructing the virus had been child's play, and Watts had taken to testing its potency on Atlas's network security. He had home-field advantage here–he knew the ins and outs of this system like the back of his hand. He had built it, after all. The goal was to have the virus integrate itself into Atlas's system via the backdoors he had conveniently left open prior to his unfortunate departure from Atlesian society. From there, it would propagate itself through the various devices connected throughout the inter-kingdom CCT system before latching onto the tower closest to Beacon. It was a remote, yet insidious attack with no clear assailant. There would be no need to access Beacon's CCT tower directly, nor any reason to even enter Vale at all. It was a plan that promised the greatest chance of success while minimizing personal risk–parameters which he could wholeheartedly embrace.
His was the most ingenious mind in the entirety of Remnant, but that was no reason to get careless. Constant vigilance had served him well over the years. It allowed him to claw his way to the top of the Atlesian hierarchy and, later, into Salem's highly exclusive inner-circle. He always made sure to cover all of his bases and planned for every conceivable contingency, no matter how mundane. If nothing else, he was the very definition of 'meticulous.'
With the resources at his disposal, the Atlesian system was putty in his hands. Or, at least, it should have been.
For all his genius, RABBIT matched him, step-for-step. This current attempt was hardly the first time his bids to gain entry into the system had been rebuked. For every attack, RABBIt had been his erstwhile opponent. His virus could not get a foothold. No matter how deep into the system he planted it, no matter how innocuous he made it seem, it was always detected and expunged within moments.
He raged internally as his attempts at wresting control of the system were foiled yet again. It was absurd! Impossible! He literally designed these systems! He had constructed the entire security system of Mantle's CCT network from the ground up with his own two hands! No one should know this code better than him!.
But someone did. This "RABBIT" had not only stymied any attempts at unauthorized access to Mantle's system, but it had been so kind as to patch up the security flaws he had purposely left before his departure. It had even gone as far as to ramp up the general security protocols of his system, far beyond the scope of what even he had thought possible. The framework had been altered so utterly and thoroughly that he had trouble identifying any of it as his own handiwork.
RABBIT was skilled, to put it lightly. Despite this, it seemed content to only defend. Watts could not detect any instance of his invisible adversary attempting to uncover his location or identity, nor did it attempt to wrench control over his device from him. It simply deflected incoming attacks and then waited, like a hermit crab retracting into its shell. There was simply no agency in its actions.
Briefly, Watts entertained the thought that Atlas had finally managed to produce a hyper-intelligent Artificial Intelligence and had granted it full sovereignty over their network, though he didn't deign to follow this train of thought very long for a bevy of reasons. Chief of which was that he doubted anyone on Remnant was capable of producing an AI of this scale. Even he balked at such a monumental task.
Even if such a feat was possible for the cretins in Atlas's Research and Development Division, there was no way the resultant program would be allowed free reign. RABBIT seemed to have permissions of the highest degree, and unmitigated access to just about any device connected to the network. The city officials were notoriously heavy-handed over it's control over the chain of command. For the higher-ups to simply hand over their CCT network to an AI, no matter how intelligent, was simply unthinkable. Ironwood certainly wouldn't, he knew that for a fact. No, whoever, or whatever was doing this was a separate party, independent from Atlas.
Watts exhaled deeply in exasperation. He loathed to admit defeat, but even he had to acknowledge that these defenses were ironclad. As prodigious as the system security had been before his departure, it was now doubly so. It was an insurmountable wall that no amount of ingenuity or trickery would allow him to circumvent. He needed proper access credentials, and the chances of obtaining those were nil.
He had a backup plan, of course, not that he thought it would ever be needed. His contagion would need to be physically jacked in to a relay tower. The target of this plan would be Vale's own relay tower, as it was a significantly less daunting prospect than persuading some Atlesian official to allow him access to theirs. He had his ways, of course. He had made many acquaintances and offered many favors to people in high places, but he did not wished to utilize these quite yet. The timing simply wasn't right.
Watts made one final round of all noted vulnerabilities, hoping against all logic that a crack in the armor would show itself, that he had somehow missed something, and wouldn't need to resort to the Vale plan. It simply had far too many opportunities for human error for his tastes, and he didn't exactly have the highest opinions of that whelp, Cinder.
To his surprise, he found something, though what it was, he wasn't quite sure.
It was a directory that had most certainly not been there the last time he had accessed the system. To begin with, this portion of the system was largely defunct and forgotten, as it pertained to a section of the Atlesian CCT infrastructure that hadn't been in use for well over a decade. It was the reason he planted one of the vulnerabilities in this portion of the code; no one else should have been accessing it. Yet there it was: a directory he didn't recognize titled with two words:
"White_Rabbit"
A quick command to display the directory contents showed only two things: a simple text file titled "ReadMe" and a continuation of the directory path he was currently following, this time titled "red_pill". He opened the text file. It was simple, only two lines, commented out as one would to exempt certain portions from a block of code:
/ After this, there is no turning back.
/ You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
A warning then? Or a threat? Arthur scoffed. Whoever this "RABBIT" was had a sense of humor, he'd give them that. He proceeded down the path, intent on seeing just what it was RABBIT wanted to show him, only to find another directory, this time labeled "down". He opened that to find another of the same.
And another.
And another.
And another.
He followed the path, always finding another "down" folder awaiting him.
It was infuriating.
For a few minutes, the only sound that could be heard was the rapid clacking of the keyboard and the faint whirring of his machine as Watts delved further into the rabbit hole. He had lost track of how many levels deep into the path he was and had half a mind to wash his hands of the whole affair when he hit something different.
"Wonderland"
Ostensibly his destination. Not even encrypted. For a supposed super hacker, it was entirely too careless, too obvious, and this set off all sorts of alarms in his head. These alarms intensified upon opening the directory and seeing its contents.
It contained only a final, nested directory, titled, "For the Consideration of Doctor Arthur Watts."
Watts was torn between retreating from what was obviously a trap, and an intense sense of intrigue. The natural curiosity of the scientist in him would not allow him to leave it be. A quick scan confirmed no discernible form of malware, so he dared to open the path–with all the proper precautions, of course. He was curious, not stupid.
At first glance, it contained very little of immediate interest. It was a vast repository of text and image files, all collated and indexed under a peculiar schema. It was, presumably, a name, preceded by a series of numbers, likely corresponding to dates. What struck Watts as odd was that none of the dates, if that's what they were, corresponded to any system that Remnant regularly utilized. He opened one file at random, an image titled 2014_02_12_Nagazora004.
Watts quirked a brow at the contents. It was a city, though not one he recognized. The buildings had been reduced to rubble, and monstrous, white-shelled creatures could be seen roaming the streets. The few humans that hadn't perished were clearly fleeing. In the bottom right, a time stamp informed him that the photograph had been taken late in the night.
An odd scene, to be sure, but what really piqued his interest was what was clearly meant to be the prime subject of the photograph. It seemed to be a human girl in her late teens floating in midair. A single, segmented wing of what seemed to be condensed lightning crackled at her side, and the same purple energy arced about her being, frozen in a single snapshot. She cradled an unconscious, white-haired girl in one arm.
Watts entertained the idea of an unknown maiden wandering about, but immediately discarded the notion. The maidens were either under lock-and-key, or else hidden and protected by other means. There wasn't any chance that one would simply be running amok in what appeared to be a major metropolis.
The Nagazora index went on for several hundred files. Some were pictures while others were documents that looked quite official, though he hadn't the bloodiest clue what "Schicksal '' was. Thoroughly engrossed, he quickly typed in a command to create a copy of the directory on a personal drive and continued to browse randomly through the list of images.
2014_02_12_Nagazora026: A picture of a magnificent airship the likes of which Watts hadn't ever seen. It most certainly was not of Atlesian make or model.
2014_02_12_Nagazora049: A woman in what appeared to be a scarlet, mechanical battlesuit, wielding a great, flaming blade stood opposed to the teenage girl.
2014_02_12_Nagazora123: A small girl with some floating mechanism following behind. She held a yellow rabbit plush.
And on and on it went, scenes of some cataclysmic battle in a place that Arthur knew nothing about, using technology and powers that he had never seen. He bemoaned the fact that video files had not been included as well.
So enthralled was he in this strange new discovery, that he had missed the whisper of static that crackled over the radio. It wasn't all that unusual for sources of interference to bring the device to life for a short while, perhaps from a passing vehicle, or someone in the tenement block using a microwave. The crackle of white noise followed by a high-pitched whine was similarly ignored. What wasn't ignored was the sound to follow. An impossible sound. A sound that turned Arthur's blood to ice.
This device was positively ancient. It was a simple, archaic model that only allowed for radio transmission. The infrastructure that transmitted to the device was completely separate from the CCT and any radio stations that it could have received from were largely defunct. Watt's had only left it on as an afterthought, in the event that it did pick up something important that he would have otherwise missed. It should have been impossible to gain direct access from any CCT line.
But clearly, the impossible and reality were clashing in an odd way on this night. A small, tinny noise sounded over the obsolete device. It was warped and difficult to make out, but it was unmistakably the voice of a young girl.
"The RABBIT is always watching."
Vale
"So let me get this straight, Oz." The voice over the line was unexpectedly lucid, Ozpin thought with no small amount of surprise. Sober at ten in the morning, surely that had to be a new personal best for his correspondent. "You want me to drop everything I'm doing and find some girl that may or may not be in Vale, and when I find her I do…?"
"Nothing," the headmaster helpfully supplied.
"Right. Nothing. Don't know why I expected anything else." The sound of rushing wind over the line conveyed the speaker's aggravation. "You, uh, gonna tell me why?"
"This girl, Kiana, has the potential to be a great danger to the people around her. She went missing from Beacon's infirmary several nights ago and hasn't been heard from since."
"Anything else?"
"Unfortunately not. She seems to have disappeared into thin air." Tired as he was, Ozpin could still find it in him to crack a small joke at his friend's expense, "I can't imagine where we may have seen something like that before."
"You think she's got a semblance like Raven's or something?"
"Let's settle with 'or something,'" Ozpin replied evasively.
Qrow didn't pry, instead complaining, "Well, shit, Oz, that's not a lot to go off of. There's a lot of people in Vale, and if she can just teleport wherever, then there's no guarantee that she's even in Vale. Where do I even start?"
"As it so happens, I hear there's been an uptick in vigilantism cases lately." Ozpin swiped through a random news article–a gossip tabloid, it seemed–on his scroll. The headline read, "Moonlight Huntress Strikes Again! Could You be Next?" Unfortunately, the rather garish front-page neglected to include any pictures of sufficient quality.
"And you think this girl's got something to do with it."
Ozpin inclined his head, then, realizing Qrow couldn't actually see him, vocally confirmed. "Correct."
Qrow gave another strained sigh, "Guess I'll have to give Junior a visit then. I hear it's his boys that have been getting their asses handed to them. Don't think he'll be too happy to see me considering he's still closed up for repairs. I'll see what I can do."
"Thank you, Qrow." Ozpin ended the call and leaned back into his chair with a stifled sigh of his own.
The matter with Kiana bothered him deeply. She had shown a terrifying, destructive side that had seemingly lain dormant for the bulk of her time on Remnant, though whether it was a split personality or something closer to his own special circumstances, he did not know. In any case, having such an unpredictable factor wandering about the world unmonitored churned his mind with unease.
He still trusted the girl, to a degree. Over the course of millennia, he would have liked to think that he had gotten quite good at reading people, and his gut instinct told him that her desire to help people had been genuine. That meant that her actions in the forest had truly not been her own–a theory corroborated by the silver-eyed leader of Team RWBY.
The prerequisites for the other "Kiana's" emergence seemed to be quite specific, and Ozpin had very few worries that those requirements would actually be met in the city if, indeed, that as where she currently resided. The girl was clearly trained and quite capable, and he was confident that there were few things within Vale that could provide such dire circumstances to trigger a repeat of what happened in the Emerald Forest.. For now, he would have to settle for Qrow keeping tabs on her.
"Junior! Hey, Junior! Open up!" Qrow banged incessantly on the sealed door of a tucked-away nightclub. The lights in the building were dark–not particularly unusual since it was still midday–but the large "Closed for Renovations" sign drawn in bold, red ink and taped to the entrance told him that the place wasn't closed for just the day. He banged harder.
His persistence paid off, as the door unlatched and swung open just a crack. A large, disgruntled head poked from the aperture, gave him a once-over and snarled, "We're closed. Beat it."
"Whoah, whoah, wait up there," Qrow exclaimed as the door began to shut once more. He wedged his shoe into the space, preventing the door from closing fully. With a small application of aura to bolster his arms, he wrenched the door out of Junior's hands and flung it ajar. "Hear me out, I'm not here for a drink." He paused, "Well, I am, but I'm here for other stuff too."
The large man narrowed his eyes and scratched at his beard in irritation before moving to the side and allowing Qrow passage.
"See?" Qrow patted him on the shoulder, having to reach up to do so. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" Ignoring the rumbling growl coming from the back of the man's throat, he made his way to the bar. "Wow, you weren't kidding about renovations. It looks like a bomb went off in here."
The club was in a pitiable state. A majority of the furniture had been removed entirely, and the impressive lighting fixtures and dance floor were nowhere to be seen. The laminate floors sported ugly scorch marks and deep ruts gouged into the material. The walls were adorned with more of the same, and Qrow could swear he saw the imprint left behind by a person on one.
"The girls off today?" he asked, taking a seat on a stool.
With practiced ease, Junior sidled behind the bar and pulled a pair of glasses from behind the counter. He set one down and busied himself with wiping down the other, though it was already quite clean. "Miltia and Melanie are at home. Everyone's at home. Like I said, we're closed."
"But you're still here."
"I am." He confirmed brusquely. "What do you want, Qrow?"
"I'm looking for someone."
"Seems like a lot of people are doing that these days." He raised the glass to the light, inspecting it, before continuing to wipe.
"This person might have something to do with the recent vigilantism cases." Eyes darted towards the barkeep. "Know anything?"
A great exhalation, like that of an irate bear, puffed from flared nostrils. "Vigilante? You mean the Moonlight Huntress? Have you been living under a rock or something?"
Crimson orbs narrowed, all signs of faux friendliness gone. "Let's say for a moment that I have been living under a rock for the last week. Who's this 'Moonlight Huntress'?"
"Dunno. No one does." the tall man returned his attention to the immaculate glass in hand, as if scrubbing hard enough would make the nuisance sitting at his bar disappear. "It's a mystery."
"Give me something here, Junior," Qrow warned, arm dipping down and behind him, reaching for Harbinger.
"I might be convinced to think a bit harder," came the retort.
Qrow eyed him shrewdly.
"Look, Qrow, maybe you've forgotten how this works." Junior gestured to the building around them. "This is a business." He then indicated to himself with a thumb, "I am a businessman. It would be a pretty poor business if I just gave away information to anyone that asked." Finally, he pointed at Qrow with an index finger. "You are here to patronize my business. No one eats free here, pay up or get out."
Qrow grunted in dissatisfaction before tossing a few cards on the counter. "Fine, there you go. Get me a drink while you're at it, will you? No, not that diluted garbage, give me the top-shelf stuff."
Junior returned the bottle he had grabbed to the bottom shelf and straightened, deftly procuring one from the top shelf instead. He spoke as he worked.
Clack, clack, clack, a series of chilled stones were retrieved from the mini-fridge and deposited into both glasses.
"She showed up about a week ago. No one knows from where, or who she is. All anyone knows is that she's been taking out low-level crooks as if she had a personal vendetta against them."
Qrow watched the amber liquid splash onto the whiskey stones, elbow on the counter, arm lazily supporting his head.
"And the name?"
Junior finished pouring the first glass and moved to his own. Again, the sound of sloshing liquid played in the background.
"You can thank the media for that one. The first person to meet her–a woman who had been assaulted by some White Fang goons–took an interview with the VNN, said she flew down from the moonlight and single handedly knocked out her pursuers." Broad shoulders shifted up and down in a careless gesture. "You know what the media is like; they find a title they like, they stick to it like ants."
Qrow sipped a bit from his drink, sighing in contentment as the smooth, potent liquid ran down his throat.
"Any idea where I'd be able to find her?"
"Most of my boys got busted in the Commercial District," the man's voice dipped into a slight growl at this. Clearly, it was still a sore topic. "She's really doing a number on my margins, I'll tell you that. She'll probably be hanging around there. The Industrial and Agricultural Districts don't have much loot for most aspiring criminals, and there isn't an idiot in Vale that wants to test the security in the High-Class District."
"What should I be looking for?"
Junior actually chuckled at this. It was a low, humorless sound. "Can't miss her. She isn't exactly subtle." He rattled off the description he had gleaned from his men, "Teenaged, possibly a fresh graduate. Wears a lot of white. Wears some freaky bird mask. She likes to stick to the rooftops, from what I hear. Damned fast, too." He shrugged once again. "Like I said, there's not much information on her. Nothing concrete anyway."
"Hmm…" Qrow digested the scant pieces of information. It wasn't much–barely more than what he had learned from recent headlines, really. They settled into a silence in which Junior cleaned and Qrow nursed his drink. He could already feel a headache incoming, and he definitely didn't want to be sober for that. To his dismay, he soon found his glass empty.
"Gimme another," Qrow requested.
As Junior moved to comply, he fished for another bit of information, one unrelated to his current objective. One that he had been tracking for a while now.
"I hear the Phoenix is back in town"
Junior stiffened before nodding sagely. "That she is. I hear she's been snooping around asking about the dust robberies."
He poured the amber liquid from the decanter into Qrow's empty glass, which the man sipped glumly.
"Not gonna make me pay for that tidbit?"
"Doesn't matter. You'll hear about it eventually. Everyone's talking about it." He paused, before adding thoughtfully, "Well, everyone that matters."
"Meaning everyone that's been doing some really shady shit while she's been gone," Qrow surmised.
"A lot of people have been getting tied up in some business or other." Junior admitted. "Business that definitely wouldn't have flown a decade ago. It doesn't help that some of them figured Phoenix had finally kicked it. Idiots."
His face looked like he badly wanted to spit at the floor in derision, but he refrained. "I reckon the Fang's got something to do with the recent uptick. They've been having a greater presence in Vale recently."
He paused, "Consider that last bit a freebie. Don't say I never do anything for loyal customers."
"Yeah, thanks for that," Qrow responded dryly. "You don't sound too happy about any of this."
"I'm not." He growled, strains of true frustration tinting his voice. "I've already told my boys to back off from any heist jobs for the foreseeable future. Do you have any idea how much of our work that covers? Between her, that vigilante, and the sorry state of the bar, my income is in shambles."
Qrow hummed noncommittally, draining his glass once more. "Any idea what she's looking for?"
He shrugged, grabbing the empty glass and depositing it into the sink. "Not a clue. I just hope she finds it and disappears again. Too many things start happening when she gets involved in Vale. All sorts of bugs come crawling out of the woodwork. It's either the idiots that come out to challenge her, or else it's the poor saps that've been toeing the line a bit too aggressively and are trying to high-tail it out of the city. Naturally, the cops get all riled up, eventually, which is just one more thing to add to the shitshow. All that change in such a short time really puts us through the wringer."
"Sounds rough," Qrow offered lamely. "Though it sounds like you've dealt with her before."
Junior paused in his ministrations over the glassware and raised an eyebrow, tapping his index finger to the countertop. Qrow rolled his eyes before sliding over another card.
Junior pocketed it neatly before returning to his cleaning. "That I have. Remember that whole deal with that Ward fella a few years back?"
"Never heard of him."
"Right. I forgot you're hardly ever in the region. Well, some guy shows up one day, traveled in from some no-name settlement or other. Went by the name 'Ward'. That was it, didn't even say if it was his first or last name." Junior paused, eyeing Qrow cryptically. "Said that he met God."
He sputtered on his drink at this, and began coughing violently.
"Yep, had the same reaction myself. Not just that, but he said God gave him 'gifts'."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Qrow managed to choke out between heaving gasps. Alcohol really burned coming back up.
"Said he could control the wind. Showed off a few times too. He whipped up a storm like it was nothing. Never did figure out how he managed that. If it was his semblance, then it's the strongest semblance I've ever seen. According to him, that wasn't it either."
Caught up in trying to recall the particulars of such an old tale, Junior didn't even notice that his customer froze stock-still.
"He said something like God still had more gifts to give, and once it was over he would be able to blow Vale off the face of the map. Really crazy stuff, I tell ya."
"Are you sure he was a man?" The words were measured and deliberate–a far cry from their usual lackadaisical nature.
Junior looked at him oddly, finally noting Qrow's odd behaviour. "I'd say so. If he was actually a she, then 'she' had to be the ugliest woman on Remnant."
"Whatever," Qrow dropped the subject, filing the information away for later. "What happened after that?"
"About what you probably guessed. The Phoenix came around a few days later asking about him. I nearly wet myself when she showed up sitting at the bar out of nowhere. Of course, I wasn't stupid enough to lie, so I told her everything I knew. A week later, Vale PD got tipped off to a body on the outskirts of the Emerald Forest. It was Ward, of course."
"She got him."
"That would be the leading theory, yes."
"How'd she do it?"
"Well that's the odd thing." Junior finished organizing the now-clean glassware. This time his eyes drifted to the ceiling as if recalling something. "I got access to the autopsy reports afterward and all the tests came back inconclusive."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning the tests were inconclusive," he snarked dryly.
A dull glare from Qrow prompted Junior to leisurely begin rattling off what he could recall of the report. "No apparent cause of death. No external injuries. No signs of toxins or other substances in the body. Airways not occluded. No outstanding medical conditions. Nothing. For all intents and purposes, the man just dropped dead out of the blue. It's like his mind just shut down and his body followed."
"That's…"
"Odd? Crazy? Impossible? Take your pick," Junior cut him off. "There's a reason why anyone with half a brain tries to stay on her good side." His tone clearly indicated the true warning behind his words. "I'd think long and hard about that before doing anything stupid, Qrow."
The man in question hopped off the barstool, flipping one final, plastic card onto the counter. "Thanks, Junior. That's for the trouble my niece cause you. See ya."
He ignored the gruff voice of warning that followed him put of the bar.
That night, Qrow flew. From the information he had gathered, he deduced that his best chance at finding his target would be from the skies, where he could gain an uninterrupted view of the city's buildings. The moon had been waning for several nights now, but it still provided ample light, and the city below was positively illuminated in the cold, lunar rays.
He had been wandering aimlessly for the majority of the night. It was an hour or two before dawn and was about to call it when he finally got a hit.
He spotted her quite easily. Rather, it would have been difficult not to spot her. The girl didn't seem too concerned about keeping herself hidden as she bound from rooftop to rooftop. Even from his distance overhead, Qrow could make out the stark white cloak she wore. The hood was pulled up over her head, but he had no doubt that this was his target. Who else would be running across the rooftops in the dead of night?
Fluttering down, he alighted upon a railing closeby when she stopped to catch her breath. He gave a throaty squawk, prompting the girl to whirl in his direction. From beneath the coat–a simple white hoody, he saw now that he was closer–he could make out the hints of snow-white hair. A half-mask sat over her eyes, jet black and avian in nature, its hooked beak mirroring his own.
"A crow?" the girl asked herself. She extended a hand to pet him, but Qrow hopped out of her reach, squawking harshly once more.
"That figures," the girl muttered. Then, talking to herself, "Slow night, sun's about to come up soon. I should head back."
She took off, vaulting over rails and scaling buildings with practiced ease. Her progress through the city was swift and seemingly effortless, and just as the first cool lights of dawn began to paint the sky a dull grey, she stopped, apparently at her destination.
Qrow had followed her from the center of the Commercial District all the way to the far edge of the Industrial District, and found that she had taken up housing in an abandoned lot of apartments. It looked uncomfortable, to say the least.
The innards of the building had been mostly gutted, with only the load-bearing walls left intact. It made tracking the girl's progress within a simple matter of peering periodically through the windows. Apparently, she was situated on the topmost floor.
Qrow granted her a few minutes of privacy to get comfortable before flying up and perching on the windowsill to glean a better view of the girl's current abode. The rustling of feathers seemed to catch her attention, and she looked up, surprised.
"You're the same crow from earlier, aren't you?" She questioned, eyeing him oddly from her seat. She sat in what appeared to be a nest of a vast assortment of blankets, cushions, clothes and whatever else she could find to keep warm through the chilly fall nights. "Did you follow me all the way here? I'm Kiana."
When her introduction was met with only deafening silence, Kiana clapped a hand to her forehead.
"I think I'm actually going crazy." the girl groaned, flopping back onto the bed. "Now I'm not just talking to myself, I'm talking to birds." She shooed Qrow away with a halfhearted wave of the hand before pulling a worn blanket over herself and settling in to sleep. The lone candle in the room was extinguished with a breath.
Qrow waited for her breathing to become rhythmic and slow before hopping out of the empty window. Landing on the empty alley below, he adopted a human form once more.
"Mission accomplished," he sent a quick message to Oz and then yawned aloud, not even bothering to stifle the noise.
Qrow gazed at the sun just slightly peeking over the horizon. It had been a productive night. It was time to get some shuteye.
But first, a drink.
Last part of the conclusion. Another short upload. Watts and a mysterious hacker are now in play.
I like peppering in these little excerpts from in-universe "books". I think it adds a bit to the background and history of Remnant(or my version of it, anyway) as a whole, but I'm afraid some people might just see it as a nuisance. I'd love to hear some thoughts on that.
I intended Kiana's new outfit to basically be a plainer version of her White Comet hoodie with Kallen's Sixth-Serenade Mask slapped on. "Moonlight Huntress" still sounds a bit odd to me, but I figured "Moonlight Knight" was a bit too on the nose. Besides, huntress makes more sense in a Remnant context
Don't get too excited if you see another chapter uploaded in a few days, it's probably not a new chapter. I'm nearly done with the rewrite of the Prologue, but I didn't feel like waiting for that to upload this chapter. I'm not sure if this site pings anyone following if I update an existing chapter, so here's a warning just in case.
I'm also writing out a bit of the canon Honkai timeline that I'll probably just upload as a separate document, just to get all the lore in order. All of the pertinent information is just spread out willy-nilly between the game and all the manga auxiliaries, and it would be nice to just have it all collated in one spot. I still haven't been able to go through the VNs since most of them aren't translated. It's mostly for my own reference, but if anyone isn't too clear on the intricacies of Honkai lore, I'd encourage you to check it out when it comes up.
