Raven

Raven eyed the town from her vantage point on top of the hill as she waited for her scouts to return.

Behind her, thirty of her tribe's best warriors lazed around as they patiently waited for her to give the order to attack. It had been a while since their last raid, and some of her men had grown unruly during that time. She had been planning this raid for weeks now and as the days grew closer, there was a growing buzz among the members of the tribe.

Towns like Oathspur in the Mistral frontier usually hired groups of huntsmen as bodyguards.

While she didn't doubt that her warrior's strength could handle a few huntsmen, full on battles like that were never worth the risk/reward ratio. She would almost be guaranteed to take some casualties and human resources was not something that she was willing to lose, not when it was already difficult enough to recruit new members into the tribe. No, there was no reason to attack a town when its defenses were at their strongest.

Oathspur might have regularly hired huntsmen to defend their village, but there were always gaps in between contracts. When one contract finished, there was always a little time in between before a town could find another group of huntsmen to take the old guard's place. It wasn't difficult to get that information, just time-consuming. She'd send out a woman or two from the tribe to infiltrate the town and gather intel. It was a long and carefully planned out process to map out that exact timeframe she liked to call the 'golden time', but it always paid off in the end.

A town without a paid huntsmen guard made for the easiest target after all.

Some bushes rustled in the clearing nearby and she held her fingers over her sword's hilt just in case. Her worries were unfounded, however, as her scouts soon popped out of the bushes with eager grins on their faces. They were among some of her younger members, a pair of twins, Lena and Leon, that had joined up with her tribe after running away from home. Kids like them made for the best scouts as most people would overlook them. Yang was probably around the same age as them these days.

Raven closed her eyes and let out a breath. This wasn't the time to be sentimental. She didn't have room for that type of weakness in her life.

"It's all good boss." Leon, the older twin reported. "All those mercs they hired left town yesterday morning."

Raven opened her eyes. "You're sure?"

Leon and Lena shared a brief look with one another.

"... Well, there was this one guy we saw at the town square." Lena tentatively spoke up. "He looked pretty well-equipped with a sword and some heavy armor."

"He's too young to be a huntsman though." Leon added. "Maybe a huntsman-in-training?"

A minor complication then.

It wasn't strange for Haven Academy to send some of their brats on missions out in the frontier now and then. It was strange that he didn't have a team with him though, but that could be chalked up to Lena and Leon not being thorough enough in their search. Either way, a group of kids wouldn't be much of an issue to deal with, anyway.

Raven looked back at her warriors who were all antsy for some action. She doubted that she'd be able to turn them back now even if she wanted to.

"Alright, everyone!" She shouted out gathering everyone's attention. "You all know how it goes. I want us in and out, no screwing around. Food and supplies first, and then you can check out the valuables. You all got that?"

They greeted her with a series of nods and the sounds of various weapons being drawn.

"Alright you lot, let's move out."

They were all off the hill and into the nearby trees within minutes. Her warriors weren't on the level of huntsmen, but she had trained them well enough to get the job done. They hid themselves in the shadows within the trees surrounding the town, waiting for her to give the signal. There were two guards with rifles by the village gates, but they were just regular armed civilians.

Nothing that she hadn't accounted for.

Reaching into her bag, she pulled out a flare and shot it into the sky. That was the signal to attack. She led the charge towards the front gate herself while another group of her tribe attacked from the rear gate. The guards at the front didn't even have a chance to fire off a single shot before a couple of suppressed rounds from the treeline took them down with deadly precision. Lena and Leon were mainly scouts, but they both had uncanny aim, which made them excellent snipers as well.

Raven and her men were through the gates within seconds.

Screams echoed through the air as anyone that stood in their way was promptly cut down without a second thought. It wasn't worth the time or the risk to take prisoners and terrified villagers drew in the Grimm, so it was better to just raze the place to the ground instead. The strong survived, and the weak died, this was just a result of the law of the world.

Raids were always chaotic, and it was difficult to keep track of everyone at all times.

She trusted in her men enough to get the job done, however, so she simply focused on taking down any high-priority threats. There might not have been any huntsmen here but a villager with a gun could still deal some serious damage to someone's aura. By the time she had netted her fourth kill, most of the initial chaos had died down.

It was mainly stragglers now and her men had already started tossing any supplies they could find into their bags.

There wasn't a point in going after any of the remaining townsfolk now that initial assault was winding down. Their morale had all but shattered and whatever meager defenses they had mustered up had been systematically crushed. Her warriors showed no mercy to those that fought back, but there wasn't a point in hunting down the rest. That was just a waste of time that could have been better spent looting and scavenging.

They'd all be long gone by the time the Grimm showed up, anyway.

Raven had been halfway done filling up her own bag before she heard glass shatter and saw one of her men get tossed through a window of the town inn. The wooden doors to the inn swung open, and a boy walked out. She could hear the metal from his greaves clank against the ground with every step he took. Black hair with white streaks covered his head while a fancy-looking sword hung by his waist.

Their eyes met, and he offered her an easygoing grin. As if the stench of blood and death wasn't all around them. As if they weren't both in the middle of a battlefield right now.

"I finally found you, Raven."

Her eyes narrowed in response.

The boy knew her name. Was he a bounty hunter? She wasn't exactly a nobody, but she wasn't particularly famous either among the many criminals of Wind Path. Some random student at Haven shouldn't have known her name.

Something was off here and her gut feeling was typically right.

She shifted the cartridge in Omen's dust chamber over to lightning. Her blade also switched colors from a bloody red into an angry yellow. She pointed Omen at the boy and tossed her bag to the ground.

"Who are you and what do you want from me?"

"You can call me Charlie." The boy casually replied as he took a couple steps forward. "And what I want… is to kill you!"

He closed the gap between them in a flash. Charlie pulled out his sword and swung. It was so sudden that she didn't have enough time to evade. Raven met his strike with Omen and both their swords clashed. She felt her very bones shake from the impact of the collision as Omen cackled with lightning.

This kid was strong.

Raven tried to pull away, but Charlie was right on top of her and swung again. Omen crashed against his blade again before her sword promptly shattered, spreading lightning dust into the wind. Charlie took this opportunity to take a step forward and attack again. She didn't have enough time to switch to another blade, so she made the only move she could make in the situation.

Raven held her hand out and called upon her maiden powers.

A torrent of flames blasted Charlie right in the face as she took the opportunity to gain some distance. She sheathed Omen and switched to another blade, moving the dust cartridge over to fire this time. As the smoke from her flames cleared, she could hear his metal greaves clank as he continued to walk forward. Her flames didn't even appear to have phased him as Charlie casually held his sword over his shoulder and continued to walk towards her with that easygoing grin on his face.

That smile was off-putting. It didn't match with his current intentions at all.

Raven tried to rack her brain, to see if she had done anything to this kid to warrant this attack, but nothing came to mind. During their brief skirmish, some of her warriors that were nearby seemed to have taken notice and charged him. She wanted to call those idiots off, that this kid was way out of their league, but it was already too late.

He cut down three of her warriors in an instant.

There wasn't a speck of emotion in Charlie's eyes as he flicked the blood off his sword. As if he hadn't just killed three people, but was simply taking care of some mundane chore. Now, she was anything but a saint, but even she felt something from killing someone in cold blood like that.

Charlie seemed to barely register their existence.

When their eyes met again, the light came back into his eyes as he grinned at her. A sociopath? Raven couldn't help but clench her teeth. Either way, this kid was bad news. She needed to deal with him now.

Her eyes glowed as she dug deeper into her maiden powers.

"Not making this easy for me, huh?"

Raven just snarled in response before she blitzed him.

The powers of the spring maiden flowed into her left hand while her right firmly gripped Omen. She willed ice and snow to life, freezing Charlie's sword arm and his feet in place. The boy seemed surprised at that, but she wouldn't give him the chance to respond. She grit her teeth and swung Omen with all her might, fully intending on decapitating him in one swing.

Clang!

Her eyes widened.

He caught her blade with his free hand. The red dust in Omen's blade burned, lighting his hand ablaze, but Charlie didn't even seem to notice. He just smiled before he snapped the blade in two with his bare hand. And then, before she even had a chance to react, he leaned forward and head-butted her, cracking her mask open and sending her flying down into the dirt.

Her aura absorbed most of the damage, but it still dazed her.

Raven heard ice break as Charlie easily forced his limbs free with brute force. She tried to get back up, but she was disoriented enough where it was a struggle to just get her bearings. One moment she was seeing blurred visions and then the next moment she found the boy's sword held mere inches away from her neck.

She needed to do something! She couldn't die here!

Charlie just seemed to shrug off her maiden powers and Omen's current blade was in two pieces on the ground. Her eyes darted back and forth frantically, looking for anything she could use. There was nothing but a burning village and corpses all around her, however.

"W-wait!" She ushered out in a panic. "At least tell me why you want to kill me! If there's any way I can make up for it…"

Charlie said nothing in response.

The seconds ticked by and Raven couldn't help but feel that those were the longest seconds of her life.

And then he started laughing.

"Ha ha! Relax, I was just messing with you." The boy replied before he lowered his sword. "I wasn't actually going to kill you. You still have a role to play."

Raven blinked. For a moment, her brain stopped working.

"... What?" She eventually asked.

"I just wanted to see if you had become the spring maiden yet or not." Charlie simply answered as he sheathed his sword. "I doubt you would have told me if I had just asked nicely."

A dozen or so different questions popped up in her head at the sudden revelation. She squashed them all though and only let out the ones that mattered the most.

"Are you with Ozpin…? Or Salem?"

"Whaaat? Me and Salem?" Charlie questioned, as if offended. "Do I look like a villain to you?"

With how absolutely terrifying he could be, she wanted to scream 'yes', but thought better of it and kept her silence instead.

"I'm not with Ozpin either though." He shrugged. "Not a big fan of his whole 'do nothing and wait' strategy."

She couldn't disagree with that.

"... Then why do you care if I'm the spring maiden or not?"

Charlie squatted down until they were eye-level with one another and grinned.

"Because, Raven. You're going to be the key I need to pop open that shiny little vault over in Haven."

Author's Notes- Hmm, you know I'm really enjoying writing these short chapters in one go. It's a lot easier than spending days on one chapter and waaaay less proofreading.