Rogue Huntsman
Understanding
«»
A surge of energy and fire encompassed the hallway on the other side of the wall behind me.
Its light was contained by the user, despite her anger, but Kitsuki was still far too close and far too worried to be out of its blast of heat.
Anoel loved losing herself at times… it played to her personality well, especially her affinity, but it tended to draw up more collateral damage than necessary.
With that thought, I stood up and made my way over to the door, fresh cinnamon bagel in hand.
I placed my free hand atop her head, between her ears, and repositioned her to the right and out of the doorway just as the heat hit. The two furry appendages bounced and perked up for a moment in surprise, pressing into the sides of my hand, but I let go before anything more happened.
The kitsune's eyes quickly snapped to me as I took her place and held up my bagel, taking the heat in place of her.
"Easy on the heat there, Ano," I muttered, getting a small twinge of tension in my partner's shoulders to rise, but otherwise… she was leveling her gaze at the kid in the beanie inside the room across the hall.
Arex looked… embarrassed, for lack of a better word.
This was her problem, anyway. Why'd you have to get involved, Anoel?
The flames slowly lessened, receding into the room Anoel just walked into while I brought up the bagel I had been holding out to the woman's flames.
It was toasted to satisfactory levels, so I bit into the heated bread with a crunch and stepped out into the hallway.
"Did you just help me? Or were you just toasting your bagel…?"
Kitsuki's hands flashed through a couple signs behind my back as I swallowed the chunk I tore from my snack, something hard to miss considering she wasn't prone to doing anything else with her time but isolate herself.
"You mean exploit my partner to achieve a selfish goal?" I asked over my shoulder, giving her a minor glance off to the side as I turned toward her general direction.
"You didn't have to-"
"Phrase it like that?" I finished, lowering my bagel for a moment, "It doesn't matter how it's phrased, just that I did it."
I met her eyes out of the corners of my own, keeping my side toward her as I brought my bagel back to my teeth.
"Isn't that the common consensus these days?" I took a bite as she frowned, thin eyebrows furrowing for a moment as I watched her tails curl up.
A sign of tension… or anger, perhaps? Her heart confirmed the latter. She was angry at me.
"Don't group everyone like that. There are still people who care."
"And look where that ideology got you," I responded curtly, catching a swift display of shock and immediate regret pass through her fiery eyes, "The world's filled with scum who conform to the popularized will of the masses and corrupted seats of power who control what gets popularized. Those people you speak of?"
I held up my bagel, two bites gone and one more soon to be taken.
"They're too scarce to even be graced with the term of existential prominence."
"But we have huntsmen, and they-"
"Kill," I finished again, "Murder, maim, slaughter, rip limb from limb… is that not what they do? For every 100 Grimm slain, one hunter falls. And yet… the Grimm feel more prevalent and plentiful than ever before while they slowly dwindle."
If I were actually caring enough to pull an assumption from that, I'd say something was stirring the Grimm moreso than they have in the past several decades. Someone out there was playing their hand while we sat still in a world of peace.
What better time to strike? While we're all asleep and dazed under the exhilarating intoxication of happiness and prosperity.
Peace was always the calm before the storm.
Peace allows tension to be bred amongst the people outside of our little bubble of unstable ignorance.
I wonder if another war will break out… should be fun. The last one was pretty boring.
"Do you believe in humanity… Niro…?" Kitsuki asked, her gaze leaving mine as I glanced back to her.
She was quick to evade my eyes, something the skittish fox was quickly making a habit of.
Do I believe in humanity, huh? Humanity, as a whole, brought up a world from ash and dust. They stepped up when no one else could, fought the battles everybody else kept away from, drilled through time and history just to make a footprint on this remnant of a planet we could've done without.
It was a dark place to live, yet this is where we were born, where we've prospered from century to century.
After the Shatter, this planet has always been the home of this Aura-born humanity… and we've always kept it.
But do I believe in them?
"I used to."
They say a huntsman is defined by their morality, not the reach of their blade or the draws of their aura. Each one is personified to either be a warrior of the light… or a mercenary of the dark. There's always been that consistency over the lifetimes of humanity.
Good and evil have always had a home in a world as real as Remnant.
To achieve the fruits of their morality, they use tools and powers to protect or destroy. They utilize, they captivate, and they take control.
But control is fleeting these days.
After all, what kind of sad excuse of a world raises heroes to the slaughter? What kind of place breeds for the sake of balancing out the toll of the death rates across every sector of civilization?
What kind of society enslaves its very people under no other scrutiny but fear and injustice?
That's what the world turned to, even after all it's been through. It fails, in every regard, in every inkling of dwindling hope, to ever, in any circumstantial way…
Be capable of ever being something I believe in.
It was as hopeless as Jaune Arc's chances of killing a Dremoha.
"Then maybe you should try to make it something you'd believe in."
Kitsuki's silent words brought my focus back to the kitsune. Her golden-orange eyes were peering through her bangs from a down-turned gaze, donning a sheepish countenance that easily fit her persona perfectly.
How… naïve.
"I don't trust myself enough to take charge. With my luck, the world would unite and form the largest widespread crusade in history just to overthrow the king and start a democracy all over again."
A monster reigning over the common people of the world? Yeah, Hell had a better chance of freezing over than that ever coming to fruition.
Oh wait… Dante exists. Scratch that last thought.
I'll overthrow that white-haired asshole myself.
"It doesn't matter if you trust in yourself or if you have the guise capable of earning the trust of the people. What matters is that you seem to be the only person who knows what they're talking about…" Kitsuki continued, her sheepishness wavering slightly and getting replaced with small twinges of confidence.
My bagel was getting cold.
"I don't suppose you know what you're talking about?" I didn't feel like speaking lowly to her, like I do with most people.
I wondered why for a few moments… but it was probably because she got enough of that from Cardin. These last few days must have been a reprieve for the fox… That Winchester knows how to make the life of a targeted faunus pretty miserable.
It seemed he'd taken a liking to Kitsuki.
Kitsuki turned her gaze down again, tilting her little head for a moment as I watched her ears fold atop her head, "I'd like to believe I do…"
I kept my eyes on hers for a few more seconds, watching to see if they would look away again as I stared. But even with that kind of pressure, her irises never averted from my own.
She had a backbone behind her statement, it seemed…
I brought up my free hand and placed it between her ears again, giving her soft hair a little rub as I turned away, "You believe in too many things. The world doesn't work like that, not like it used to."
Her eyes soon disappeared behind swaying strands of hair as I turned away fully and walked off, taking my hand away from her head to take my leave.
The little heart beating in the fox's chest was cheerfully coming to life.
I seem to have convinced her of something… Did she pull something from that conversation of ours? I could just chalk it up to the petting. After all, that's something she grew addicted to as soon as Arex pet her.
But that kind of response was impossible from anyone… as long as it was me doing it.
Monsters don't deserve that kind of response.
As I walked, I took another bite of my bagel.
Damn. It's not as hot as I would've liked it to be.
"Are you sure you're fine?" Anoel asked, hands still gripping Arex's shoulders tightly after a long few seconds of checking her body for any injuries, marks, or discrepancies.
No, it was exactly the way she left it.
"Yes,Anoel, I'm fine," Arex reassured, trying her best to quell the inferno brimming from her sister's eyes, "He just… wanted to make sure I was the real deal before offering me a job."
"A… job, he says," Anoel narrowed her eyes, fixing the girl in her hands with a stern gaze, "What kind of job?"
"I just have to build him something," the little phoenix responded earnestly, giving her sister a small tilt of the head.
"Did you ask him why?"
Arex paused for a few moments, bringing her eyes back to Anoel's before shaking her head, "It seemed reasonable, so the exact details weren't too important."
Anoel could only sigh at that, "How much?"
"Hasn't been decided yet."
"Range?"
"Ten thou to ten mil."
"And you didn't think to ask questions…?"
Arex shook her head silently.
"Okay then…" Anoel took in a breath, slowly letting it out as the flames brimming from her hair and skin began to dwindle and fade away, "You can leave that part to me."
Arex could only nod and stay silent. She was being chided by her sister, lightly berated too, it was her sister scolding her for not thinking things through… but to be honest, she was only in it for the potential for new designs.
She could get a lot out of this kind of research into energy conduits, which she assumed the processors were for.
It wasn't that she didn't think about what he needed them for, she didn't need to ask those questions. She was adept with technological integrations into the forging world and its creations, so she had a few guesses as to what Ray was trying to build.
In regards to actually questioning him though… she didn't want to quite tell him upfront that she knew what he wanted to achieve.
It was better for her to keep that to herself and just take what she could from the contract, especially the experience and the exposure to something new.
"Y-you know, the door was unlocked…"
Anoel could only glance back to the one who spoke up, eyes flashing in a brief moment of embered flames.
"What door?"
"The, uh, the one you exploded?"
The phoenix glanced back to the wooden door in question, splinters of it still burning across the carpet. She silently took those flames back into her aura, leaving the carpet only slightly singed while the rest of the door was…
Mildly… intact?
Maybe?
"It doesn't look like a door anymore, does it…?" Arex pointed out.
"It's really just a frame now, isn't it…" Anoel replied.
"Yeah… thanks for that…"
"Oh hush up, you have the money to replace it don't you?" Anoel retorted, switching her gaze back to Ray huddled stiffly into his desk chair.
"I do, but… you broke it, not me."
"Oh? My bad. I suppose I should go tell Ozpin about this little incident… he'll love to know why I broke in."
"Of course he would…" Ray mumbled in reply.
Anoel brushed some of the blackened shards of the door aside with her boot, swinging the remains of the brutalized door closed.
Well, for what it was worth… the hinges still worked.
Unfortunately, closing the door didn't constitute not being able to walk out anymore. There was a hole drilled through the middle of the entire entryway, easily large enough for her to still step back out into the hallway.
"He seems to have taken an interest in you," Anoel replied, glancing at the door one last time and fixing her slightly skewed hat.
Privacy was overrated anyway.
"Of course, though, I'm more than sure he already knows about your door. What I need to know," Anoel turned back to her sister, causing the shorter girl to lock up for a few moments again before eyeing Ray, "is exactly why you need my sister. Would you care to explain that?"
Ray shuffled nervously in his seat, a short sigh escaping his lips. "I need her help, because I'm under supervision. You think I'm not capable of doing this myself?"
"That's the issue. I think you're fully capable of building this thing yourself. But you've done well to stay hidden these past six years, what's changed?" Anoel asked. If he was under 'supervision', then that could easily mean someone was suspicious of his actions or whereabouts.
Or worse… someone was babysitting him…
Ray's eyes narrowed a fraction, "You know who I am then? Impressive."
"I'd hardly call it impressive. You're the spitting image of Orion Chroma himself, but I didn't need something as clear as that to give it away."
"You're with the networks, I assume? They're the only ones that even came close to keeping track of us."
"I head the faction in Vale, if that's what you're assuming," Anoel replied, picking up on the word 'us' in his response rather easily as she crossed her arms, "Is she still in the kingdom?"
Ray shrugged, "Your guess is as good as mine."
"I suppose so," the info-broker sighed, glancing to the dorm window for a brief second, "I can always just reel her in with a shiny object or something, she's into that. But the interest in Orion's son fell off as quickly as the first long year drifted by after his disappearance… And yet, here you are, in Beacon no less."
"I'm only here for as long as I need to be, once I have what I need, I'll be making a hasty retreat."
Anoel sighed as she tilted the rim of her hat up, resting her head in her hand, "Does this have anything to do with your father's weapon?"
"What do you think? I was told the last piece I need was here, thus I am forced to retrieve it manually."
It explained why the heir to one of the greatest minds of the last century was here, of all places. Ray's ideology toward Beacon was as potent and stubborn as Niro's was, if she could even put Ray anywhere close to her own partner's level of cynicism.
To put it bluntly, Ray would rather burn Beacon to the ground with a flood of alcohol than participate in its educational programs.
Niro would just let the place rot in history at the focal point of all uselessness across any generation of the world's decisions.
They both had their reasons…
But they were both equally stupid.
Still, for good reasons.
"I haven't heard anything about a piece of Avramosis residing within Beacon's walls, only a few rumors of one being in Vale. Did she give you that information?"
Ray only nodded in response.
Anoel sighed again. She'll have to pay that girl a visit… Ray's cousin may have dabbled heavily with the phoenix's interkingdom information network, but she wasn't always perceptive enough to recognize false intel from the real deal.
If this happened to be true, and if this information really was out there, then it was likely Ray wasn't the only person after his father's incomplete artifact.
Which would be really annoying…
Less for her, but more for Niro. She could only imagine what a bunch of treasure hunters on campus would do to her poor partner's well-being.
He might kill them.
Remorselessly.
And with cafeteria food.
"I'll visit her, she's probably still in Vale somewhere," Anoel breathed out, making her way back into the center of the room and taking her sister by the shoulders, "As for you, we'll be talking more about this little job of yours later. But for now, out you go."
Arex's own reply was cut short as Anoel directed her through the gaping hole in the door, letting her sister safely step out into the hallway and toward Kitsuki's waiting arms across the hall.
"I'll be there in a bit, yeah?"
"Anoel, are you-"
The door in front of the info-broker suddenly glazed over in a heated veil of orange energy, completely masking everything inside with the volcanic heat equivalent to Niro snapping his fingers.
Fire rapidly melted across the walls around the doorframe as Anoel's irises flashed with Aura and light, her skin burning once again as she let the flames spread to engulf the entirety of Ray's room.
"You and I still have some… unfinished business, do we not?" Anoel asked dismissively, turning her gaze to an empty desk chair, then turning it further to find a violet shell of hardlight energy pressed into the far corner of the room.
"Listen lady, I completely understand how pissed off you may or may not-"
Anoel calmly stepped across the room as her fire swept over Ray's shield, engulfing his little corner in a wave of searing warmth.
"-be, b-but I wouldn't have d-done this if it wasn't necessary." He flinched as the flames crawled up the surface of the shield, gulping heavily as his eyes flickered within his safe dome.
His pitiful safety dome.
"Necessary? I suppose you'd find it understandable, to some extent, to attack my little sister," Anoel smiled sweetly, reaching his shield after a few short, agonizingly long, seconds of letting her flames spread further.
Ray's entire dorm room was engulfed in scorching fire now.
"It's a bit rude to come to an understanding without a face-to-face conversation, you know," the phoenix spoke against the shield, pressing her fingers gently into the shining manifestation of hardened light and Aura.
"So long as we only use our words and not our god-like powers."
"Oh, honey, we're long past just words here," Anoel chided, pushing her hand forward and passing it through Ray's shield of energy.
Violet fragments began to wilt away around her burning fingers, chipping and fluttering outward in burning embers of energized ash as her eyes simmered within the shadow of her own black hat.
"After all, it's only fair to return fire after being so unjustly attacked without good reason."
"I'll s-say the same to you as I did t-to her, it wasn't an attack."
"You broke into my sister's scroll, shattered her emotional integrity, and nearly ruined her chances of ever staying in Beacon altogether. Do you have any idea how hard it was getting her to agree to even sleep here?"
"T-that wasn't the intention…"
"Doesn't matter, what you did still had those very same outcomes, whether you intended it to or not," the flames dismantling Ray's shield finally reached far enough to reveal the boy inside, and within a few short moments, the rest of his shell cracked and shattered into a thousand sparks of light.
Ray immediately dove past her as soon as his shield fell, scrambling across the floor and fumbling to snatch a book from beneath someone's bed along the way.
"Midget! Wake up!" he screamed frantically, chucking the book at the sleeping girl on the bed, only for it to miss and strike the bedside table, nearly knocking the lamp on top of it over its edge.
He tried again with another book as Anoel calmly stood back up.
"Damnit, Scarlet! I'm gonna die!"
His next throw struck the far closet door as the girl on the bed rolled over in her sleep, curling up into her pillow within the shield Anoel formed around her bed.
She was only after Ray, after all. So the girl was protected from this kind of blistering heat.
"You couldn't hit the broadside of a Goliath with that aim," Anoel commented, suddenly crouching next to the boy crawling backward across the ground and flicking his nose with a burning finger.
"W-what do you want?! I-I can pay you… I'll literally pay you to go away. Anything, any price. I'm aware I fucked up, but is death really the consequence here?!" Ray sputtered out, crashing into the foot of Scarlet's bed with his back as he yanked on her blanket.
She was still out like a light.
"Money is no substitute for what you did," Anoel replied curtly, standing to follow Ray across the room.
"T-then information! Anything you want to know, I can get it."
Anoel hummed and tapped her chin as she slowly reached him, "Tempting, but not interesting enough. Is there anything else you want to offer? Your life, maybe?"
Ray took a deep, ragged breath, "I-if you want neither of those two things, then is there anything else other than my life you want? Okay, I broke your sister's will to stay here. Frankly, I don't blame her, but I seriously doubt that killing me will improve the situation."
Anoel's lips twisted into a tiny smile as she knelt before Ray against his partner's bed, fingers lightly touching the blazing ground as she leaned in closer to him, "I never said I was going to kill you."
She leaned in closer, the fire engulfing the room around them growing stronger as her burning cheek barely grazed the surface of his own. She wanted to make sure he heard her next words loud and clear… and took them as gravely as a real threat on his sad excuse of a life.
"Just never try something like that again. Sound fair?"
"Done." Ray gulped and nodded once, his response quick and bold.
"Care to… convince me?"
Ray's hand scrambled across the ground for a moment as he threaded a line of hardlight wire through the carpet, quickly snagging and pulling his messenger bag from beneath his own bed into his grasp.
"C-compensation, then?" he asked, withdrawing a couple thousand lien.
He didn't have any more than ten thousand lien in his bag, especially after his partner got to it and exploited it for her midnight snacking escapades.
But it was everything physical he had on-hand at the moment.
"There's no earnesty in money," Anoel replied, but she wouldn't say no to seven-thousand lien. She gently plucked the offering from his hands before she leaned away from him.
Ray's hand then quickly dipped back into his bag and withdrew another thousand.
"And for your sister, too…"
Anoel smiled sweetly and accepted that offering as well, pocketing the lien before placing a heated hand on his shoulder.
It didn't burn him immediately… which she noted briefly, but she wasn't putting any lethal heat into the touch at all in the first place.
Instead, the center of his iris sparked momentarily in the shining color of her own flames… contrasting the amethyst colors of his eyes.
"I believe we've come to a civilized understanding then."
Ray grimaced and let out a deep, mumbled, "Civilized my ass…"
Anoel nodded with a warm smile as she tightened her hold on his shoulder, "And if you do it again," she tilted her head calmly, keeping her smile innocent, "I'll take your life as payment."
The kid in the beanie could only gulp and nod his head in understanding, "Understood."
"Perfect~" Anoel purred, slipping her hand from his shoulder before standing up.
The flames engulfing the room slowly melted away, fading into the air and trickling back into her aura as she gave the energy a small dismissive wave of her fingers.
"Arex will be fine. If it was anyone else attacking her scroll with that kind of success, she'd be gone in a heartbeat. But it seems she'll be staying after meeting this particular attacker…"
Her gaze fell over the room one last time, everything as intact and spotless as it was when she walked in a few minutes earlier.
Save for the door.
Ray's partner remained untouched as well, only just now stirring from her slumber.
"I hope you're the kind to keep your promises," Anoel commented one last time, making her way to the ruined door before pulling it open, "I hate it when people go back on their word."
As she left, she heard the brief voice of Ray inside as she noticed him turn his gaze to his awakening partner.
"You're useless…"
I stepped off the roof of another one of Beacon's bullheads and stepped foot back into the city of Vale. Noon had passed by now, the sun working its way down as I stuffed my hands into my lean pockets.
Didn't think someone as infamously important as the son of a great intellectual mind in the scientific and technological community would ever step foot in a school hell-bent on training warriors.
But like hell that'll ever stick, considering how hypocritical that thought is.
I'm going to Beacon, after all. What does that make me?
The victim?
I've always been the universe's chew toy, so this isn't much different.
In any case, I turned to the shadowy purple aura faintly rushing across the rooftops on the other side of the city, closer to the water.
It was running alongside a golden image of the monkey I sensed earlier.
"Ah, so they're heading there too," I muttered, making my way toward the direction of the docks.
I had someone I wanted to meet.
Apparently, they caught wind of the arrival of an old friend as well.
Ah, now that I've stepped foot into my own personal arcs, it's time to jump back into the plot of canon as well.
I really need to get to that. It's been way too long of just character developments XD. I think you know the OC's well enough by now.
In any case, Anoel is REALLY protective of her little sister. So, do your best not to hurt Arex.
One more thing. Did any of you pick up on the fact that Niro casually stood up and moved over to set Kitsuki aside after the explosion of heat went off? Which means he moved within the span of a fraction of a second to save her from the heat?
And so boringly too… XD, I hope you did notice this. I do it a lot… Niro does a lot of abnormal things that, in his perspective, are 100% casual and normal things for him to do.
Keep an eye out.
For now, Favorite and Follow.
I look forward to seeing REVIEWS for this. You'll be introduced to a LOT of concepts of mine. Feel free to give me your thoughts.
Cya XP