A bit quicker than last time, this one. Partially to make up for the previous wait, and partially because this chapter was a lot easier to write. I've also finally finished watching Volume 7, and man, I really don't like a lot of the things they're going for right now. Still, it was okay. Hopefully, you'll think this chapter is okay, too. Please let me know, and enjoy!
Chapter Twenty-Three: Hatred and Hope
The forest was really, really beginning to annoy me. Grimm seemed to be hiding behind every ancient tree, hidden in every bush. At least I had managed to find some edible herbs and mushrooms, but that was about it. And by this point, I didn't exactly have much of a Dust supply left to defend myself with. If I ever got out of this, I'd never be able to look at a stroll in the woods the same way ever again.
And these Grimm didn't even have the decency to be numerous but weak, like the ones back on Patch. Why couldn't it be more like in the games and movies, where the more enemies there were on the screen, the weaker they seemed to get?
With an irritated grunt, I cut the head off yet another Beowolf. It hadn't even been five minutes since my last encounter. Though, to my great relief, the number of Grimm was at least lower than it had been last night, possibly because I had killed so many already.
I was still heading west, towards the area where I'd seen a column of smoke the day before. I had no idea what I would find there and if the people would be friendly, but at this point I'd even prefer a White Fang cell over the Grimm-infested woods.
I wondered if my friends had already begun to look for me, and if so, where they'd start looking. When I boarded the White Fang airship I hadn't had a clue where they would be going, and because I jumped out in mid-flight I could be just about anywhere.
Well, I'd know soon enough. If I could find the origin of the column of smoke, I'd surely be able to find a map or something that would tell me where I was.
I blinked when I stepped into a ray of sunlight. Was it my imagination, or were the trees actually spread a bit further apart here? I looked around, trying to take in all of the environment now instead of only scanning for Grimm as I had been doing for most of the day. The trees really were getting thinner! Could that mean I had finally reached the edge of the forest?
I walked on eagerly — and nearly stepped right off a cliff after about ten steps. Well. That surely explained why I couldn't see any more trees directly in front of me. What I had believed to be some shrubs instead turned out to be the crowns of the trees that grew at the bottom of the cliff. And now, standing on the edge, I could see just how much forest there still was.
"Yeah. Figures…" I muttered.
I scanned over the treetops, looking for the column of smoke in the hopes I'd at least be able to tell if I had any chance of reaching it today. To my surprise, I spotted it much further to my right than I had expected. I hadn't even realized I had gotten so far off course, and I was suddenly kind of glad I had found the cliff. If it hadn't been there I might have walked way past my destination without ever knowing it.
I walked along the edge of the cliff, keeping my eyes on the trees to my right in case any Grimm would decide to jump out to throw me off, but luckily for me, nothing seemed to be tracking me at that moment.
As I walked further along the cliff's edge, the column of smoke became more and more visible, and when I reached another edge, the column seemed to be only a short walk through the forest down below, past the clearing I was now overlooking.
I looked down, trying to find an easy path to scale the cliffside. Without Dust, I'd have to take a slightly more careful approach than just jumping off and recoil-boosting at the right moment.
Something rustled in the bushes at the edge of the clearing, and I crouched down to make myself harder to spot. Something in a white mask ran from between the trees, but it wasn't a Grimm. It was a White Fang member, erratically spraying the forest behind him with bullets from his submachinegun. He might as well have been firing BB pellets for all the good it did him, because the Deathstalker that was following him could easily shrug off the stream of fire.
The White Fang member tripped, and only narrowly dodged the Deathstalker's stinger before getting back up and running away. I clenched my jaw. White Fang or not, I couldn't let someone get killed by a Grimm in front of my eyes.
"Hey! Run over to the cliff's edge, quickly!" I yelled.
The boy looked up, startled, but as soon as he spotted me he began to ran in my direction, with the Deathstalker close behind him. I carefully tracked the distance, and when the White Fang member had just about reached the cliff's sheer wall, I put what little Aura I had into my legs and jumped off, sorely missing Weiss's glyphs to give me some extra momentum as I flipped forward and swung Crescent Rose over my head with all my might.
I smashed right through the Deathstalker's hard exoskeleton, and pulled Crescent Rose forward to split the Grimm's front end into two smoking pieces. Without taking a moment to take my breath, I immediately whirled around and readied Crescent Rose to defend myself in case the White Fang member decided he'd thank me for saving his life by shooting me in the back, but to my surprise he was still pressed against the cliff wall, his gun on the ground by his feet.
I lowered Crescent Rose and he seemed to relax the tiniest bit.
"You…you saved my life," he said. He sounded as if he didn't really believe that.
"Yep," I replied.
"W-why? I'm your enemy, aren't I?" he asked.
I sighed. "Are you really?" I asked. "All you were to me just now was someone whose life was in danger and who needed help. I'm not just going to stand around watching people die, even if they wouldn't do the same thing for me."
The boy cocked his head, then slowly nodded. "Thank you," he said softly.
He raised his hands, which had scale-like patterns on their backs, and took off the white mask he was wearing. His eyes were bright yellow and had slit pupils like a snake's, and around his eyes were same kind of scales as he had on his hands.
"My name is Coral," he said. He hesitated a moment, then slowly extended his right hand to me.
I looked at it, then back at his eyes. I smiled and took his hand.
"I'm Ruby. Nice to meet you, Coral," I said.
I felt a warm glow inside. Maybe the White Fang weren't all beyond redemption.
"So, what are you doing in this forest, Coral?" I asked.
We were both leaning against the cliff wall, letting the sun warm our faces. I was constantly scanning the forest in front of us, but other than that I felt pretty relaxed. It was so nice to finally have someone to talk to again, after a whole night and most of a day on my own.
"I was supposed to observe the Grimm," he said. "Look at their behavior, their size, the differences between these Grimm and the ones we're used to around the kingdoms."
"Differences? What kind of differences?" I asked.
Sure, these Grimm had seemed stronger, but I had thought that that was just because there weren't any people around to kill them.
Coral shrugged. "I'm not exactly sure," he said. "They don't really tell us much." He flicked a small stone away with his fingers. "I don't even know why we're here on Perditus at all. How am I supposed to fight for Faunus rights in a place where there aren't any Faunus or Humans?"
"We're on Perditus?!" I shouted.
Coral gave me a confused look. "Uh, yes? Where did you think we were?" he asked.
I shook my head. "I don't know, but certainly not here…" I muttered.
Perditus. The Lost Continent. Away from all the kingdoms and Huntsmen in the world.
"So that column of smoke I saw…?"
"Is from our base, yes," Coral said with a nod.
I groaned and let my head fall into my hands. "Great, there goes my chance at getting out of this stupid forest," I said.
"So you didn't come here to destroy our base? Because that's what the pilots said when they came back, that a team of Huntresses had boarded their airship, but they managed to fight them off before the airship reached the base," Coral said.
I laughed. And kept laughing. "They said that?" I choked out between bursts of laughter.
I must have looked pretty stupid, laughing so hard at something that wasn't even that funny, but finding out I was on Perditus, of all places, was so serious that everything else seemed hilarious by comparison.
"They lied to you," I said eventually, after I'd stopped laughing. "I was the only one, and I didn't really have a plan. I just knew it was my only chance to find out where the base was, and I took it."
I thought back to what had happened in Northern Star and I became serious again.
"How did you do it? How did you get the Grimm to attack Northern Star?" I asked.
Coral looked away. "I don't know," he said. "It has something to do with 'the Guide', but no one seems really sure who or what it even is. I think only the leaders know."
He sighed, and seemed to struggle for a moment with something.
"What's wrong?" I asked apprehensively.
The Guide. Again, that mysterious name. If even the White Fang themselves didn't know anything about it, how were we ever supposed to deal with it?
Coral took a deep breath and then looked into my eyes. "I think my leader here might know what the Guide is. I've heard enough about it around the base to be quite certain that the Guide has something to do with our work here on Perditus, I just don't know what it is."
He clenched his jaw and looked away.
"And I've seen the footage from Northern Star. I…What happened there is…I never wanted anything like that," he said through gritted teeth. "Yes, I wanted to fight for recognition, like so many Faunus do. I was proud to be doing something, making strides towards a better future for all of us…"
He angrily shook his head.
"What a huge lie that was. And I was an idiot to ever believe in it. I wanted to frighten the Humans, show them that we Faunus aren't to be messed with. I don't want to murder every single Human on the planet, and I certainly don't want to destroy every safe place on the planet. What we're doing now isn't helping the Faunus; it's hurting them just as much as the Humans. But our leaders keep telling us that we're doing great work, that freedom will soon be ours, that Northern Star was a great victory thanks to the power of the Guide."
He fell silent, staring miserably at the ground in front of him. I felt sorry for him. His story kind of reminded me of Blake's, and I wondered once again where my friends would be right now.
"It's not too late, you know," I said. "You can still do the right thing."
He scoffed. "Right. And everyone in the world can be friends and all the problems will go away."
I rolled my eyes. "That's not what I mean. I know Weiss might think otherwise sometimes, but I'm not naïve enough to believe that everything will work out if we all just hold hands together. But it's never too late to start fighting for a better future. Isn't that what you already wanted to do, anyway? You've just been going about it the wrong way. If you hurt people, do you think they're going to repay you by being kind and understanding? Isn't your people being hurt the very reason you decided to fight back in the first place?"
Coral fidgeted a bit, as if he wasn't really sure how to respond to that. I didn't even really know where my outburst had even come from, so I didn't blame Coral for being uncertain about how to react.
"I…Maybe. I guess. So…what now, then?" he asked.
The change of subject was so obvious that even I had no trouble picking up on it, so I decided not to press the idealism for now.
"Well…" I said, thinking out loud, "If your boss knows more about the Guide, then I want to talk to him."
Coral looked at me incredulously. "I don't think the boss will want to talk to you as much as shoot you on sight with all the rifles he has at his disposal," he said bluntly.
I shrugged. "I've been shot before. And I have to go to the base anyway, because I need to get off Perditus as soon as I can. My friends are going to be looking for me and I don't want them to worry any more than they're already doing."
Coral nodded slowly, apparently resigning himself to his fate. He got up and dusted himself off. "Alright, then. Come on. I'll take you to our base."
I was both nervous and excited as we made our way to the base. Coral and I had come up with the plan to present me to the White Fang base commander as a prisoner to get me close, and then I'd confront him, find out what I wanted to know, then steal the airship and escape.
How was I going to do all that? Well…I was sure an opportunity would reveal itself. Y'know, something about well-made plans often failing and all, so perhaps a not-particularly-well-made plan would be more successful. Maybe it was a bit overconfident of me, but I'd escaped from the White Fang before. Surely I'd able to do it again.
"Okay, we're almost there," Coral said. "Give me your weapon. And I'll have to tie you up, too." It pained me to let go of Crescent Rose, since she'd been the only one keeping me safe against the Grimm, but I knew Coral was right. If I was going to be a prisoner, I couldn't be armed.
"Keep her safe, okay?" I asked as I handed over my sweetheart.
Coral nodded. "You'll get it back soon enough, I promise," he said.
He tied my hands with a vine he found, but kept the knot loose so I'd be able to free myself later. He put his mask back on and gestured for me to keep walking.
About a minute later we arrived at the base. It was a hastily built, shoddy looking square complex surrounded by steel and concrete walls. At each corner, there was a watchtower with an automated turret in it, much like the ones we'd seen in the treetop village.
There was a keypad next to the gate, and Coral entered the code, while keeping his gun aimed at me with his other hand. It wasn't loaded, but the feeling of someone aiming a gun at me wasn't a nice one.
The gate began to open, and Coral nudged me in the back with the barrel of the gun. "Come on, keep moving!" he barked.
We entered through the gate into a courtyard filled with several eerily similar-looking concrete buildings. In the center of the courtyard was a building that looked to be a bit bigger, which was probably the command building, but I had no idea what any of the other buildings was for.
"What do you have there, Coral? One of those Huntresses Sand was talking about?" a woman asked, approaching us with her weapon drawn and aimed at me.
"Yeah. Caught her snooping around just outside the base. I haven't found the others, though," Coral said. "I'm taking her to see the boss."
The woman nodded. "Smart, but the boss is out right now. Put her in the holding cell until he gets back."
My eyes widened. The holding cell?! But that would mean that I'd be separated from Coral…and from Crescent Rose. But I knew that Coral wouldn't have a choice but to agree with this woman. There really wasn't anything else he could do. So I just glared as fiercely as I could at the woman, and allowed Coral to push me to a small building that looked so flimsy Yang could probably punch it down. I, sadly, probably couldn't, but escaping wasn't my plan just yet anyway.
The building consisted of only an entrance hall and three empty cages. Yeah, Yang would definitely be able to break this place down.
Coral shoved me into one of the three cages, then whispered, "I'll bring your weapon with me when I'm taking you to the boss later. Don't worry."
I nodded gratefully, but when Coral locked the cage and left the building, I did feel my heart beating in my throat. How was I going to get out of this one?
I had no idea how long they left me in the holding cell. Through the tiny, barred window I could see that it had gotten dark, but beyond that I knew nothing. Then, at long last, the door of the building opened and Coral came in.
"It's time for you to meet the boss," he said, trying to sound gleeful at my soon-to-happen execution for the benefit of his comrades.
I could see Crescent Rose on his back, and I wondered why his comrades hadn't gotten suspicious. Maybe he'd just 'claimed' her as a trophy?
This time, rather than tying my hands with a piece of vine, he put actual metal cuffs on me, but didn't fully close them.
I silently followed him outside, into the courtyard, which was now lit by giant floodlights. He marched me over to the main building in the center of the courtyard, and he led me through a long corridor, which ended in a room filled with desks, behind which White Fang members were looking at monitors displaying all kinds of graphs and charts I didn't get. I silently counted the number of White Fang in the room.
Behind a desk in the center of the room, just in front of the far wall, there was a thin, wiry looking man disinterestedly typing something on his computer. Including him, there were thirteen White Fang members in the room.
When the man saw Coral entering with me in front of him, though, he got an unpleasant smile on his face and got to his feet.
"Ah, our esteemed guest has arrived."
He walked around the desk and gestured at some of the White Fang members working at the desks closest to his own. They got up and aimed their guns at me. Regular machineguns, not Aura suppressor ones. That was good; I'd have a chance against regular weapons, especially since I'd have room to move freely. If nothing else, the couple of hours of rest had restored my strength a bit, even though I was hungry.
"Please allow me to introduce myself…"
I'm a man of wealth and taste, I added in my head, and I tried to suppress a small smile.
"My name is Indigo. I am the commander of our Perditus base. I…"
"Why do you have a base here, anyway?" I interrupted. "There's nothing here but a bunch of Grimm."
Indigo looked at me coldly. At least, I thought he did, since I couldn't see his eyes behind his white mask.
I felt Coral put his hand on my shoulder, signaling that he was ready to give me Crescent Rose the moment I made a move.
"I'm afraid that that information is classified," Indigo said. "And I'm also afraid that this is the end of the line for you. Shoot her."
The moment he finished speaking, I whirled around and threw off the handcuffs. Coral thrust Crescent Rose into my hands, and I could feel that she was heavier than before. He'd reloaded her! I gave him a quick look of gratitude, then focused my Aura and sprang into motion.
The four White Fang members at the front had been the only ones with drawn weapons, so I dashed forward in a storm of rose petals, taking down the two on my left before they'd had a chance to open fire.
The two on my right quickly swiveled and opened fire, so I hooked my blade under the desk and swung it in the path of the bullets, immediately jumping up after it and landing between the two White Fang, who couldn't open fire without risking shooting each other.
I didn't give them time to regroup, instead quickly beating down both of them with the back of Crescent Rose's blade.
By this point, the eight other White Fang had readied their guns. I flared up my Semblance again, leaping and bounding through the room, returning fire mainly into the terminals and desks to make the White Fang dive for cover. I wasn't going to kill anyone if I could help it.
These White Fang weren't Huntsmen, and without Aura suppressor rifles there wasn't a whole lot they could do to stop me. It didn't take me long to get all of them knocked out. They'd have a bit of a headache and a whole bunch of bruises later, but at least they would survive.
Indigo, the coward, was pressed up against the far wall. I leapt towards him with a recoil boost to scare him just a little bit more, and casually rested Crescent Rose on my shoulder as I stared him down.
"The…the other guards are on their way. You can't escape!" he said.
I shrugged. "They won't be able to help you. The door's locked."
I gestured behind me, and stepped aside to let Indigo see Coral standing in front of the door, twirling the keycard in his hand.
I focused my attention on Indigo again. "Now, again: why do you have a base on Perditus? What is the Guide? How can you control the Grimm?"
I hoped I sounded tough and in control. In truth, I was more nervous than I'd ever been before. I was only copying the things cool action heroes did in movies and games. Threatening someone in real life was something altogether different. Well, I wasn't going to actually hurt Indigo, of course, at least not badly, but he didn't have to know that.
Before Indigo could answer, however, the intercom on his desk began to beep.
"Coral, can you answer? I don't want to let Indigo out of my sight," I said.
I'd seen more than enough movies to know he'd somehow escape if I gave him a chance, so there was absolutely no way I was going to.
Coral quickly made his way over to the intercom and pressed the button. "Sir, news from Vacuo. The Smuggler's Retreat is under attack."
My blood ran cold. The Smuggler's Retreat? That was the place we'd learned about in the treetop village. My friends could be there!
"Under attack by whom?" Coral asked.
"Unknown, sir. Two airships opened fire on the oasis, that's all we know. We lost contact," the person on the other side answered, clearly not concerned that Coral sounded nothing like Indigo.
I turned back to Indigo. "New question: what's so important about the Smuggler's Retreat?"
Indigo sighed. "It was supposed to be the place where you and your friends would finally meet your end, after which we would crush Vacuo with the Guide's power," he said, clearly giving up on any hope he had to get away from me. "Though since you're here, I have no idea what's going on in Vacuo. Perhaps one of the regular lowlifes there discovered something and alerted Shade."
I didn't reply immediately. As far as Indigo knew, my friends were here on Perditus with me. If I wanted to keep it that way, I couldn't ask much more about Vacuo. So I decided to fall back to my original line of questioning.
"What exactly is the Guide, anyway?"
Indigo sat up straighter, and I could swear he looked kind of proud.
"The Guide will give us the power to finally cast off the Human oppression and carve out a better life for ourselves. The Guide will make sure the Grimm devour our enemies, so we can finally live in peace."
I sighed. This wasn't bringing me closer to finding out anything useful at all. This just sounded like Indigo was trying to get me sold on some religion or something.
"How? How does the Guide control the Grimm?" I asked.
Indigo scoffed. "I don't know, and even if I did I wouldn't tell you. But I can tell you what your precious kingdoms will look like after we're through with them."
I narrowed my eyes and felt my heart speed up. "What do you mean?" I asked.
Indigo grinned at me, a creepy sight because of his sharp fangs. "The Guide was made here, on Perditus," he said.
I felt a chill run down my spine.
"A long time ago, it was used…and ever since then, no one has lived here anymore. There are still far too many Grimm to even attempt to settle it. But it lost much of its power, and we were ordered to try and recover the rest of it."
"It's not a person, then?" I asked.
By this point, I was already fairly certain that it wasn't, but I wanted to be sure. We'd had more than enough incomplete information on this journey.
"No. It's a device, one more ancient and more powerful than I ever could have hoped to exist. Our mission was to rebuild it to its full strength, so we can finally destroy the kingdoms and build our own society!"
"If you destroy the kingdoms you'll be killing a lot of Faunus along with the Humans!" Coral shouted.
Indigo spat at his feet. "Traitors and complacent weaklings like you. They're not a great loss," he said.
Something in me snapped. Something about the way he was so cold and hard in dismissing his own people, in condemning him to die, filled me with a horrible hatred.
I punched Indigo in the face as hard as I could, putting every ounce of Aura I had left into it. His head was slammed back into the wall and he crumpled to the floor, unconscious. I stood over him, glaring at his unmoving body, and breathing heavily.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this angry. I felt sick, as if the emotions in me were poisonous or something.
"Are you okay?" Coral asked softly.
I gave him a sad look. "Yeah…I'm sorry," I said.
He shook his head. "Don't be. If you hadn't punched him, I would have. I…I can't believe he would just sacrifice people like that. I never wanted that to happen. All I wanted…"
I held up a hand to silence him. "I know," I said softly. "And it's okay. I understand. Everyone wants to be free. Everyone deserves to be free. But when people don't listen to you, when they ignore you and hurt you, of course you're going to get angry. Of course you want to fight back. I get that."
I smiled at him.
"You haven't forgotten what's important, Coral. You've proven that. You should come with me, away from Perditus. One of my friends, Blake, used to be in the White Fang too. She…"
I was cut off by the intercom beeping again.
Coral silently walked over and pushed the button. "Sir, a video was just posted online. It shows the airships attacking the Retreat. One's clearly a mercenary craft, but the other one…sir, it's Atlesian special forces, directly under Ironwood's command."
So, some new information about the Guide at long last, even though it's not much yet. Rest assured, more will be revealed soon. Also, a rather large contrast between Ruby's actions here and Weiss and the others' in the previous chapter. Please let me know what you think, and see you next time!
