AUTHOR'S NOTES: Again, a fairly quiet chapter, but necessary. It's also something of an infodump chapter, as Blake talks about why this world's Menagerie is in Scotland. (Man, if they ever animated this...Ruby and Yang would have Southern accents, and Kali and Ghira would talk with Scottish brogues, which feels oddly right.)

In reality, Holy Loch is a submarine base, and doesn't have an airfield, but this is a different world. Paisley exists, and is indeed right next door to Glasgow's other, smaller airport. There's a reason why I have the Belladonnas living there, that will be revealed later. Incidentally, if any of you are George MacDonald Fraser fans, Paisley is where Harry Flashman's wife Elspeth was from.

Eielson Air Force Base

Fairbanks, Alaska, United States of Canada

4 June 2001

Nora Valkyrie climbed down the ladder from her A-10, took off her helmet, then leaned against the fuselage, exhausted. Lie Ren, who had landed ahead of her and waited for her to taxi into the hardstand, understood. The A-10 did not have an autopilot, and had to be "hand-flown" everywhere. It was tiring, especially in a long flight such as the one from Dawson Creek, Alberta to Fairbanks, Alaska. The next leg—to Japan—would be even longer. Ren's rear end twitched painfully at the thought. Ren remembered his father had suffered from hemmoroids; he'd read tales of some fighter pilots actually leaving puddles of blood on the seat.

He put those thoughts aside. Ren did not like to think much about his parents—not because he didn't love them, but because he loved them too much. They were dead, had been since he was a child, and that was that. Aside from Nora and Pyrrha Nikos, and to a certain extent the members of Ruby Flight, there was not a lot of room in Ren's heart for sentiment.

Ren walked over to her. She looked up at him tiredly. "Think you can carry me to the equipment shop? And then to the chow hall? And then to bed?"

He smiled. Even exhausted, her eyes surrounded by dark circles, her hair plastered with sweat, and not smelling particularly fresh, Nora was still beautiful. "I think I could manage carrying you to bed, and that's about it."

"Um. I'll take it." She got back on the ladder, grabbed her helmet bag, stuffed her helmet in that, and plodded along behind him as they walked down the flightline. Pyrrha was waiting; she didn't look much better than Nora. The F-22 did have an autopilot, but Ren suspected Pyrrha didn't use it—either because she didn't trust it or because she simply liked to fly without it. Sometimes Ren wondered if Pyrrha would've been more comfortable flying a Spitfire than a Raptor. "Where's Ruby?" Nora asked.

"I don't know," Pyrrha replied. "She landed first, but then she took off like a shot after she taxied in." They drew even with Crescent Rose. "She even left her helmet." Ruby's red helmet, still with a bare metal gash in it from her high-speed ejection after ramming Cinder Fall, lay on the canopy rim next to the ladder.

Moments later, they spotted Ruby running back towards them. She pulled up short when she reached the rest of Reaper Flight. "Whew!" she puffed. "Sorry, guys. I had to pee like a Russian racehorse."

"There is a relief tube," Ren reminded her.

"Made for guys," Pyrrha said. Modern aircraft weren't exactly made for female pilots, at least when it came to relieving oneself. There was an attachment, but getting to it at 35,000 feet and 500 miles an hour in a cockpit smaller than the average closet was an exercise in contortionism.

They waited for Ruby to retrieve her helmet, helmet bag, and duffel out of the luggage pod slung under her fuselage, then resumed their walk towards the equipment shop. After putting away their flight gear, they would need to report in to the base commander, then the wing commander, then processing—it was a lot of paperwork, especially for four tired fighter pilots.

Though it took the better part of an hour, eventually all the paperwork, saluting, and exchange of written orders took place, and Reaper Flight could make their way to the Visiting Officers' Quarters. As Eielson had been around since the 1950s, the VOQ here was much more plush than the ones in Alberta. Someone in the USAF had thought ahead, and realized that, despite being on the tip of the spear against the GRIMM, rested fighter pilots were better fighter pilots. One look at the rather nice shower, and Nora decided that eating could wait. She informed Ren that she would be going first, closed the bathroom door, peeled out of the rank flight suit and her underwear, and walked in. With the water spraying across her tired body, Nora thought that a girl could get used to this.

Nora Valkyrie believed that, if a thing was worth doing, it was worth doing well, so she was still in the shower forty minutes later when Ren walked into the bathroom. "I got us dinner," he called out.

"You're a saint, Renny!" she yelled back.

"Mind if I join you?"

"Hell, no!" Nora grinned at the thought of a soapy, wet Ren in the shower with her. She wasn't that tired.

He got undressed and walked in next to her, turning the hot water up—mainly because Nora had already used a lot of it. "It's Burger King, but better than nothing," he informed her.

"Fine by me." She grabbed the soap out of his hand and began washing his back. "Allow me." As she scrubbed him, she said idly, "You know, we didn't run into any GRIMM today."

"You're complaining?"

"Not this time." Nora's A-10 had been loaded with ferry tanks, which cut into its already unimpressive speed even more. Other pilots held that the Warthog was the only aircraft that had to worry about bird strikes from behind. "Just weird, though. Supposedly we're in the biggest hotspot in the USC, but not even a Beowolf."

Ren turned around and got the soap back; if Nora was in charge of scrubbing his front, she'd concentrate on one particular area at the expense of all others. "I suppose even the GRIMM have to get a day off."

"Ren," Nora said, all banter from her voice gone, "someone got that Nuckelavee."

He paused. "Who told you that?"

"Pyrrha. While you were in the can at base HQ. The wing CO told her and Ruby." She regarded her lover, watching his expression. "They're not sure who got it, or if the thing just up and exploded. Either way, apparently there's wreckage scattered all over the place, down in eastern British Columbia or something."

"That's confirmed?"

She'd asked Pyrrha the same thing, knowing Ren would ask. "Yeah. I mean, as much as anything is confirmed in the military. I suppose we could ask for pictures." Ren went back to soaping himself, then stood under the spray and sighed. "Come on, Ren," Nora pleaded. "That's good news. It's gone."

"Just like that?" he asked. "Something that we watched destroy a battalion of troops and kill…kill my parents, just destroyed? Like nothing? A GRIMM that's been around for 20 years just blew up?"

"It's not like we've ever heard of someone doing preventative maintenance on a GRIMM," Nora argued. "Maybe the damn thing just finally took more damage than it could handle, or maybe this Salem person self-destructed it. Or maybe someone in the military used a tacnuke on it."

"Tacnukes are banned."

Nora laughed grimly. "And you believe that? Remember that orbital weapons are banned too, but Ozpin used one on the Wyvern at Beacon. Maybe one of the higher ups said 'Fuck it' and blew up the Nuckelavee before Congress has a chance to shut everything down." Ren nodded; that was entirely a possibility. Heads were rolling in the American government, but maybe someone had decided to use it or lose it. She leaned forward and hugged him. "C'mon, Ren. Whatever blew it up, this is a good thing. Can't you just be happy about it?"

Ren looked down at her, at the cute face framed by reddish-orange hair, and the pale blue eyes. He chuckled—at himself. Then he leaned down, kissed her, then reached behind and turned off the shower. He slid open the door, grabbed her, and swept her up into her arms. Nora giggled. "But Renny! We're all wet!"

"Then grab some towels." Nora managed to drag two off the rack as he carried her towards the bed.

Near Glasgow

Lower Scotland, Menagerie

5 June 2001

Blake Belladonna stood on the ferry as the River Clyde slid beneath her. The river did not smell at all pleasant: it smelled of fuel oil and diesel fumes. But then a breeze blew down from the mountains, bringing a scent of pine.

She smiled, despite herself. For better or for worse, she was home.

"Whew," Sun Wukong said, joining her at the rail. "Smells a bit like home."

She turned to him in surprise. "Where are you from?"

"Shanghai. I suppose all port cities smell about the same." He leaned against the rail. "So this is Menagerie. I have to say, it's not what I expected." He gazed down the inlets that carved into the green mountains. Blake knew them by heart, since she'd hiked over them plenty of times with her parents: Loch Long, Gare Loch. And Holy Loch, to their left and falling behind.

"What did you expect?"

"I don't know," he admitted, "but it wasn't this."

Blake watched the ferry's wake curve away from them. "After the Faunus helped stop the GRIMM invasions of the late 60s," she said, "the humans sort of woke up and realized they were now sharing what was left of the world with a new species—one that was faster and stronger than they were. There was actually a scramble to create more Faunus—Europe had plenty, thanks to the Schnees, but everybody else wanted their instant armies too. They had a point; so many humans had died in the Third World War that warm bodies were needed, even with universal conscription.

"But there were enough humans that figured out we were sentient people, not really smart animals. Once things quieted down, the Faunus themselves protested for equal rights." She smiled. When she was little more than a kitten, Blake had been on the front lines of those protests, waving a sign for equal rights, even though she didn't know what that really meant, and it had been after the creation of Menagerie. She'd never really dealt with racism herself: her father was a decorated Royal Marine, her mother an equally decorated Royal Air Force pilot. If anyone called the Belladonnas names, they did so out of earshot. "Though there were a lot of humans that did accept us, even some that married Faunus, there were many that hated us, or were afraid of us. So they demanded we live apart from them."

"And someone got the bright idea to give the Faunus Scotland," Sun remarked.

"Yes. It was already separated from the rest of the United Kingdom by the Midlands Dead Zones. The Scots were barely surviving as it was. So the European Union said, 'Fine, dump the Faunus there!' and off we went. Someone said it was like the world's largest menagerie, and that's the name that stuck."

Sun nodded. "What did the Scots think?"

"Strangely enough, they went along with it. They got independence from the UK—sort of; Menagerie's still part of the Commonwealth, and Queen Elizabeth is still technically the head of state. I guess the Scots figured that one pack of outcasts was joining another." Blake shrugged. "This happened just before I was born, in 1976. I came along a year later." She smiled. "Mom said that I might have gotten started during the celebration of Menagerie's independence."

"And then Menagerie scored the North Sea oil strike, and all of a sudden the place wasn't so poor anymore." He laughed at her questioning look. "That part I know. I wasn't asleep the whole time in school…though they don't talk much about Menagerie in China."

Blake turned back to the Clyde. "Well, not all the Faunus live here, of course. Most of the ones in Asia stayed put. Same with a lot of them in South America, since the climate's not all that great for jaguar Faunus and such. And a lot of American Faunus stayed where they were, too. But about half the world's Faunus came here, because here we can be ourselves, and…" She caught herself. "And there I go, sounding like the White Fang."

Sun looked around the ferry. Nearly everyone onboard were Faunus, of every species imaginable. Whereas Blake's cat ears and his monkey tail would've at least merited a glance at Beacon, no one paid them any attention here. "Speaking of the White Fang…"

"They're more or less legal here. I mean, Sienna Khan can't walk around openly, but they can fundraise."

"Don't people know what they do?"

Blake nodded. "Sure. About half of them agree with the White Fang. The other half are too afraid of the first half. Oh, there's a few, like my folks, that speak out, but the White Fang here just blame the murders and the bombings on the radical fringe. And a lot of Faunus believe them." She remembered that had been one of the Fang's greatest weapons: plausible deniability. Even though Blake herself was wanted for various acts of terrorism across Europe, she could walk the streets of Menagerie with impunity.

Or she would have, had she ever returned home when she was with the White Fang.

They reached the shore a few minutes later, and Blake and Sun boarded a bus for Glasgow. The bus was crowded, and Blake worried someone might recognize her—but no one paid any attention to them. Neither were in uniform, but in casual clothing bought aboard the Reagan at the ship's store before they'd flown to Holy Loch this morning. Now Gambol Shroud and Ruyi Bang were safely in a hangar at the base airfield, under armed guard; if Blake or Sun needed to get to them, it was less than an hour's drive and ferry ride from Glasgow to the base. Neither spoke much on the bus: Sun was too busy looking around as they drove through the busy Port of Glasgow, and Blake was lost in her own thoughts.

Before she knew it, the bus had stopped at the Glasgow Airport. It was the old one, at Abbotsinch; the new one, at Prestwick, was a good bit to the south. She pulled Sun out of the seat and they stepped off. He looked around. "Uh, Blake…this is the airport."

"I know. My house is this way." He followed her as they left the airport, walked under the M8 motorway, and walked for about two miles. Sun was quickly turned around and a bit lost as they walked into a downtown district. "This is Glasgow?"

"No, not quite. The main part of town is that way." She pointed further east. "This is Paisley." Sun kept looking around, to the point that Blake wanted to just hang a sign on him that read TOURIST. Finally the downtown district gave way to rows of flats. "So which one's yours?" Sun asked. He pointed to one that was a bit larger than the others. "That one?" Then to another that was garishly painted orange. "How about that one? Or maybe your folks are modest?" Sun expected the Belladonnas to live in a slightly bigger house than the norm: as some of the founders of the White Fang and some of the earliest advocates for Menagerie independence, he imagined they'd done rather well for themselves.

They reached the end of the flats—or at least Paisley's; there were more in the distance—and looked out over a park and a golf course. Blake tapped his shoulder and pointed. "That's my house."

"Holy shit," Sun breathed.

The Belladonna Lodge—or more properly, Bashaw House, though no one called it that—was on a small rise at the edge of Paisley. It overlooked a wide park; to the north was the golf course; behind the house was a walled garden. It was a stone edifice that Sun figured had been around since the 18th Century, or earlier, though there were subtle hints of not being entirely just a Scottish manor house: the flares on each end of the roof gave it an Asian flavor, and Sun remembered that Blake's mother was Indian.

There was a small flight of wide stone steps up to the front door. Blake stopped at them, remembering. There is where she had stood, sniffling in the rain, as her mother waited patiently for the bus to take her to her first day of school. The little discolored spot was where she'd slipped and fell and gashed her knee; there was still a tiny scar there. There was a spot where a particularly hardy bramble screened part of the stairway—that was where she'd stolen her first kiss from Adam Taurus.

Suddenly Blake didn't want to go up the stairs. She wanted to turn around and run back to Holy Loch, get in her Tomcat, and fly back to the United States, to tell Rissa Arashikaze—wherever she was—that they'd made a terrible mistake. But now Sun was bounding up the stairs, so there was nothing else to do but walk after him. Then they stood on the porch, the same porch where Blake had shouted at her parents that they were cowards and that the White Fang was the only way the Faunus would ever have true equality, by blood and not by talk.

"Wow. Big knockers." Sun's comment at least got her mind of that unhappy memory. It was a rather Yanglike comment. Naturally, Sun was referring to the door knockers on the lodge's double oak doors, which were rather large, at that.

Blake reached forward and took hold of one. Her hands were trembling. "What's wrong?" Sun asked.

"Last time I left here…it wasn't…well, it wasn't on good terms."

"Want me to do it?"

"No." It came out a little more forceful than she meant it to, but Blake nonetheless raised the knocker and let it fall. The sound was like a howitzer going off. Sun jumped. "Okay…that's a bit intimidating."

Wait until you meet Dad, Blake thought. There was silence, and Blake wondered—and half-hoped—her parents weren't home. Then the soft padding of feet, the thump of bolts being drawn back, and the thudding of Blake's heart, and then the door opened.

Kali Belladonna stood framed by the entrance. She was, Sun noted without surprise, an older version of Blake, though her hair was cut short and her ears were much larger. She was dressed in a comfortable looking long dress and a decorated shirt with an Mandarin collar. Sun blinked: he wasn't sure what he had been expecting with Blake's mother, but although Kali had to be pushing forty, she was slim, and her bare arms showed the muscle of someone who regularly worked out. And, he noticed, she had big knockers too.

Kali actually saw Sun first, but her greeting died on her lips when she saw Blake. Her mouth opened, then shut, then opened again with no sound.

Blake felt her eyes starting to fill. "Hi, Mom."

"Blake?" It came out as a whisper. Kali reached forward to brush her hand against her daughter's cheek, as if to confirm she existed at all. "Blake? Is it really you?"

A tear fell to drift across Blake's face. "It's me, Mom. It's me."

"Oh my God." Kali crushed her daughter in a fierce hug. "Oh my God. You're home. My baby girl." Blake returned the hug with all the love she could, as if she could destroy all the years of running, all the hard words, and all the sorrow she'd caused by the act.

"Kali? Who is it?"

Blake's heart hammered even harder, if that was possible. There were heavy footfalls on the lodge floors, and Ghira Belladonna hove in view. Not that there was any missing him.

Sun fell back a step involuntarily. Ghira was the biggest Faunus he'd ever seen—no, Sun corrected himself, he was the biggest anything he'd ever seen, including Yatsuhachi Daichi. Ghira had to be nearly seven feet, and the slacks and T-shirt he wore did nothing to hide a build that a professional wrestler would be proud of. Sun, who prided himself on his abs, felt puny and out of shape. The face matched the body: hair slicked back in the fashion of an earlier generation, and an enormous thick beard. His hands were big enough to palm Sun's head—with one of them.

Ghira stepped forward, and Kali moved out of the way. Blake wiped her face. "Hi, Dad."

His curious expression became one of utter shock. "Oh," he said at length. "You're…you're home." Then Blake saw her father do something she'd never seen him do: he began to cry.

Naval Air Station Pensacola

Pensacola, Florida, United States of Canada

5 June 2001

Rissa Arashikaze twirled a pen through her fingers, a nervous habit she abruptly remembered was a nervous habit. She stopped and set the pen down on the government issue steel desk in front of her; nervous habits were human traits, and it was not her job to be human.

The door opened and a young man dressed in a flight suit walked in. The flight suit had a patch with the pilot's name on the breast, and an American flag on one shoulder, but no other patches; the name patch had no wings on it, because the pilot had not earned his wings of gold just yet.

He stared at her for a moment, and she gazed back, though her look was like a someone shopping at a supermarket, looking for a choice cut of meat. His face was pleasant enough, though Arashikaze would hesitate at calling it handsome: he looked incredibly young, too young, like a little boy playing fighter pilot. Gad, he's even got freckles, she thought. His black hair was a mop, tousled from just taking off a helmet.

But it was the eyes that held her attention. They were a curious shade of green, bright and oddly flecked with shards of yellow. She'd only seen eyes like that on one other human being.

The stare lasted only a second, then the pilot came to attention. "Ensign Oscar Pine reporting, ma'am."

Arashikaze nodded. "Have a seat, Ensign." He paused, then sat in the government issue steel chair. Everything in the stuffy office was government issue. "My name is Rissa Arashikaze. I'm with the Central Intelligence Agency." His mouth fell open. She sighed; Oscar would be a terrible poker player. "And you can forget you just heard any of that."

"Er…yes, ma'am."

"Now." She opened a folder on the desk and moved it forward a little, so he could tell it was his personnel file. "Ensign, you are due to graduate from flight training soon…mmm, with high marks, I might add. Congratulations."

"Thank you, ma'am." Oscar could not disguise the pride on his face. Arashikaze didn't begrudge him: naval wings were not easily earned. Not only would he have learned to fly, but he would've learned to land on carriers.

She held up a sheet of paper. "According to this, you've made it through the pipeline. You're going to fighters, yes?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "Oh, yes, ma'am!"

"Not an easy task." That was true. The Navy needed more than just fighter pilots: only a few would make the cut. Others, who had joined with starry visions of F-14 Tomcats and F-18 Hornets in their eyes, would find themselves flying less romantic aircraft—in the attack community, the A-6 Intruder; electronic warfare EA-6B Prowlers; antisubmarine P-3 Orions and S-3 Vikings; helicopters like the SH-60 Seahawk; even transports like the C-2 Greyhound and C-130 Hercules. All important, to be sure, but they didn't make action movies about S-3 pilots. She pushed the sheet of paper across the desk. "Here are your orders, Ensign."

Oscar's eyes widened, and he couldn't help but start smiling. "Ma'am? Really? VFA-41? The Black Aces, on the Nimitz?" She nodded. "Wow! Super Hornets."

"Yes, indeed." Arashikaze pulled the sheet back, picked it up, withdrew a lighter from a pocket, and set it on fire. Oscar let out a strangling noise and he reached for the burning orders helplessly, but Arashikaze held them until the flames nearly reached her fingers, then dropped them into the trash can. She admitted to herself it was overly dramatic; so much for not indulging in human habits.

Then she closed the folder, moved it, and pushed across a new sheet. Oscar, dumbfounded, looked at it. He read it twice. "I'm being detached to NAS Atsugi, Japan? But there's no squadron assignment." He looked up at her, and she almost laughed: there were actual tears in his eyes. "Shore duty?"

"Don't worry, Ensign. You're still getting a flying slot. You're still going to be flying fighters—and Super Hornets at that. Just…not for a Navy squadron, per se." She put away the lighter. "You're going to be working for me."

He set down the paper. "Ma'am…with respect. What if I say no?"

Arashikaze smiled. "Then I hope you like flying with the airlines. Because the only way you're getting out of these orders, my friend, is to resign your commission." She looked at the ceiling. "That would disappoint your mother back in Nebraska, wouldn't it? What's the little hamlet you're from—Pilger, wasn't it?"

He nodded. "Yeah," he sighed.

"Don't worry, Ensign. By the time you're done with this mission, you'll probably be a Lieutenant, and be able to name your squadron assignment. Or you'll be dead. Either way, you'll never have to worry about orders you don't like again." She placed the orders in his file. "After you graduate next week, you'll fly to Atsugi. You'll get briefed further there. As far as anyone on this base is concerned, you're being detached to Atsugi for additional training. And that's all you need to know right now."

"What happens if I mention you?" Oscar said, with a trace of defiance.

"Then you're going to meet with an unfortunate swimming accident."

"Oh."

Arashikaze leaned back in her chair. "Relax, Ensign. I'm a friend." He clearly doubted that. "Now. Let me tell you about your father."

Oscar looked stunned again. "Uh, my father died, Miss Arashikaze. When I was just a baby. He died in a plane crash." He brushed a hand across his name patch. "Though he was Navy. That's one of the reasons why I joined."

"Were you told that you were named for him?"

"Yeah." Oscar's mouth quirked into a smile. "Technically, I'm a junior. Oscar Pine, Jr."

"That's both true…and not true." Arashikaze smiled back. "Your real name is Oscar Ozpin…Junior."

"What…the hell?" Oscar said after a long period of shocked silence. "That's not possible, ma'am."

Arashikaze reached down and tossed a thicker file on the table. It was banded with a red seal, now broken, marked TOP SECRET. "As I said, Ensign Pine, let me tell you about your father."