A/N: Sorry it's been a while. Things have just been kind of crazy on my end, and I'll be posting chapters pretty slowly for the next few weeks. Enjoy!

It's Sienna's time to run.

She thought a White Fang takeover could be the best option for Vale. The White Fang aren't kind or merciful, but most of them are at least pragmatic. They could have established a government. They could have given Faunus the rights they deserved. They could have won this fight.

Taurus has destroyed all of Sienna's grand dreams in one fell swoop. He's been discreetly killing off council members, making their deaths look like the result of natural causes or run-ins with the police. She was the last one of the old moderates left, the last one who could oppose him, and he turned even her own bodyguards against her.

Sienna ducks into the next building, an abandoned school that was later converted into a brewery. It's brick, about a century old, no different from the buildings beside it apart from one critical factor.

Sienna gives the owner, behind the counter, a friendly smile, and tries to look like she isn't running for her life. She hates to put him in danger from the White Fang like this, but she has no other option. He smiles back, revealing pointed teeth. A snake Faunus, one who showed up to more than one of her protests, arguing that his business had little recourse other than illegal trade thanks to the policies against Faunus in business. A friend, to some degree, although the important factor is the building itself rather than its inhabitant.

"Your basement," Sienna says. "What's it used for?"

The man licks his lips in concentration for a moment, then speaks.

"We have some distilling vats down there, but most of it is just storage space. Why do you ask?"

Sienna brushes past him and heads for the rickety wooden stairs, hissing "I was never here" at him and shuffling through her pockets for the map.

The East wall, the one farthest from the river. Sienna rushes around two copper vats and begins squinting at the wall, occasionally tapping it, searching for any sign of an area of the wall filled in much later.

There are too many scuff marks on one portion of the wood floor, next to the wall. The wall has been painted over, but Sienna scratches through that effortlessly, revealing bricks much newer than the ones in the walls above. Perfect.

Beyond the layer of bricks is a thick wood panel which Sienna pummels through with chain wrapped around her fists, then a tunnel. It's perhaps six feet tall and four wide, propped up by half-rotted timbers, the floor a thin layer of water. Sienna steps into it.

These tunnels are almost everywhere, relics of Prohibition. Sienna's family were smugglers back then, and the old knowledge got passed down through generations, although more recent family members have seen it as nothing more than an adventure story. Sienna listened to every story, spoke to her great-grandparents when they were still alive and wrote down everything they said about the tunnels. People get lost down here and never come up, or die when tunnels cave in on them in the soft soil near the river. Tunnels get cut off by sewer lines or filled up by excess concrete from a deep foundation, leaving the existing space even more mazelike. For the time being, it's safer than being aboveground.

Sienna doesn't like to abandon her followers. She doesn't like hiding away, taking the safe cowardly option and avoiding combat. She's always been something of a martyr.

Martyrdom is only valuable if she dies for good reason, she reminds herself. An internal power struggle isn't enough to die with honor.

…

It was a mistake from the start.

Blake saw a back-alley mugging, neither of the people involved wearing White Fang insignia, and decided to intervene. Harmless. Just a bit of practice to keep her reflexes sharp.

She twisted the mugger's wrist and caught his knife when he dropped it, then brought one foot around to hook his ankles and send him to the ground. He didn't move. Tough, but that just means he falls harder.

Blake pointed the mugger's own knife at his neck, hoping to allow his victim time to run. The victim didn't move, instead grinning.

"Found a hero," the mugger rasps, swatting the knife away casually, as if it's a mild annoyance rather than a sharp blade.

"Took you long enough to show up," the second man comments. He's thinner, has a voice that alternates between high and low pitches.

It's a setup. These two are White Fang grunts, or members of another gang trying to curry favor with the White Fang by catching a hero. The semantics aren't important. Either way, Blake walked into a trap.

The second man pulls a gun and she kicks it out of his hand before dodging away from them. It's a dead-end alleyway, the buildings to either side new brick with no handholds. Her first option is to fight her way through them. She doesn't like the odds: two against one, in a frontal assault with no chance at the stealth tactics she relies on. Option two it is.

Blake feints left, then right, then left again, deeper into the alleyway, letting the walls narrow around her. Both men follow her; they're good in a street fight, but not disciplined enough to leave a guard at the entrance. Thankfully.

Blake jumps to one wall, then to a higher spot on the other wall, and runs, hitting the ground behind the two men. A risky tactic just to get a head start, Blake knows, but these people aren't used to fighting heroes. They can counter her in a standard fight, but can't predict what tricks she has. That's her best advantage for now, until she can take to the rooftops and retreat to her hiding spots.

A flat-out sprint along one of the small streets close to the docks isn't the stealthiest choice, but it's Blake's only real option. Blake sticks close to the wall in case they decide to start shooting, searching for an easy way up to the roofs. Both men are in hot pursuit, although they don't appear to have any backup.

A hand shoots out from the side of a building and drags Blake down. Blake instinctively fights back with everything she has, weapons and hands and teeth.

"Stop," a voice hisses into her ear. "You're safe."

Blake wrenches her way out of the hands restraining her and turns to face Sienna Khan.

The woman looks a little worse for wear since Blake last saw her. There are new scars, and new wounds that are still fresh. One ear has a ragged piece torn out of it.

They're in a tunnel that looks hastily-made, with walls that are slowly collapsing. Blake is ankle-deep in water, a common hazard close to the docks even with better construction work.

"Where is this?" Blake asks.

"Not important," Sienna says calmly. "It's good to see you."

Sienna isn't one for pleasantries, so she means it. She needs Blake for some project or another.

"A fellow traitor to the noble cause of the White Fang?" Blake says, only half-joking. Sienna scowls at her.

"I betray no cause. Adam Taurus betrayed the White Fang and their cause, subverts our mission to his own ends."

Sienna left the White Fang. Blake doesn't know whether that makes her a traitor or a refugee or simply one more villain with their own ends trying to carve out territory in Vale.

"I need your help," Blake says simply.

Sienna laughs bitterly.

"You want a contact inside the White Fang, don't you?" she says.

Blake doesn't need to answer.

"Blake Belladonna, you and I both need assistance," Sienna says. "We both have a grudge against Taurus. Neither of us can take down the White Fang alone."

An unstable alliance with a fellow outlaw wanted by the government and the White Fang alike. Another person to protect. A constant reminder of her past.

"I'm in," Blake says.