Chapter Eleven
Chance
2.5 km above the Nord Sea - 1230 AMT (Atlas Mean Time)
Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na…. BATMAN!
Batman had his own damn private plane and wasn't forced to stowaway on Winter Schnee's luxury flying yacht, and while it was a beautiful and streamlined bullhead, it was tiny and only contained a cockpit.
I wish I was Batman, but being me was so much better. I got to kill people, while he had his whole non-lethal approach to criminals.
Which included me...
I could take him.
Now, I could have taken one of Summer's bullheads, but nooooo, I decided I wanted to get to Atlas immediately and couldn't afford to wait.
Surprises rarely could.
I sat crouched outside the cockpit while Winter and her guest performed actions best left known for older audiences. The bottle of wine Qrow had brought along was my only companion and he was kind enough to leave me a few mouthfuls to help me pass the time.
He had either been massively observant about the shimmer I had let him see, or the bottle had rolled out when Winter jumped him and pressed him down into his seat.
Can't remember which, but I was kind enough to close the cockpit door to give them some privacy.
As much privacy as I could get as my ears could still make out the various noises the two inhabitants emitted, and by the moans coming from Winter, Qrow knew how to work her over.
Amazing what being several thousands meters from anyone you knew caused them to do because they did not act anywhere close to this when I saw them yesterday, but all that sexual tension had to go somewhere.
He definitely knew I was here and doing his best to fuck with me, or I was getting paranoid in my old age, whichever number I happened to be on. I couldn't remember where or when I stopped counting. My memory was going.
At some point I needed to get off and Qrow distracting Winter with his talents worked in my favour as I managed to open the rear hatch and slip away. I didn't need to struggle as the near vacuum pulled me straight out and down. The craft was thankfully depressurized and Winter wouldn't even notice the automatic sealing system kicking in; much too distracted by her boy toy.
I was correct in my estimate of dropping out of the craft as I plummeted down towards the capital districts of Atlas. In the bright and clear afternoon, I could make out Castle Schnee glinting far in the background mountains along with my target: the SDC HQ.
A quick internet search had showed my what it looked like.
It was a beautiful glass skyscraper set smack in the middle of the districts, almost telling everyone this was where the seat of power of Atlas stood.
I wasn't aiming for it.
I angled my descent down towards a park a few blocks away, shrouding my descent to reflect the environment around me. It wasn't perfect, but no one would notice a plummeting blur moving at terminal velocity.
There was still the option of splash landing in the lake, but wet clothing was harder to conceal as it left an annoying trail I needed to cover up and sometimes forgot to. I channeled by Aura around my body, reinforcing every single point, from the skin all the way down to the marrow and impacted the ground hard, leaving a large crater.
Dirt, grass, and rock exploded as my Aura tanked the impact force of a million Joules, shudders of aftershock traveling all the way up to my hips. Barely a percentage of Aura lost, but it was quite a freefall. Had a crick in my neck from the sightseeing on the way down.
Maybe the lake would have been better landing site, but on an afternoon in the city of business, no one ever went to the park for their lunch, and those that did had no easy way to explain the sudden appearance of hole in an otherwise well kept lawn.
Never underestimate the ability of a human to write off the improbable.
Dusting my clothes off, I came across the hole Summer left in my top and the dried blood on my slacks. The scent of copper invaded my nostrils, soothing the adrenaline rush from the fall. I should have changed before I left, but it was a moot point. It wouldn't matter anyhow as any disguise I put on would hide it.
Except for the smell, but there shouldn't be any dog patrols in a building in the middle of the capital districts.
My worst enemy would be any thermographic cameras, but seriously, those were probably installed in their labour camps and not in this building. The worst I had to deal with were the sleepy security guards and the run of the mill CCTV cameras which flickered for the slightest reason.
I was in bigger danger from accidentally bumping into someone, but the average human mind could rationalise almost anything away. They were funny that way.
Another bigger, some might say biggest, danger was me not paying attention. Such as me getting lost in daydreams of massacres and atomic blasts, and running into the janitorial go-kart in charge of maintaining the park.
Picking up and twirling my parasol, I made my way out of the park, ignoring the startled look of the custodian who watched a parasol appear out of the air and then disappear just as quickly. .
In this large amalgamation of districts, no one should notice if I didn't want to be noticed. I just had to do the mundane and wait for the traffic lights to cross and walk along the side of the roads instead of the sidewalks.
My walk to the building was spent altering and perfecting my disguise to not reflect light, and while this should've left a small vantablack humanoid walking about, it didn't. If anyone looked directly at me, my Semblance would react and show them the image of whatever happened to be behind me.
It was an almost sentient part of me and could work against multiple sightlines, bending and creating illusions where and when it saw fit. At worst, someone might notice a shimmer of the illusions shifting before they settled.
I could have chosen or created any corporate shill as a disguise, but I lacked the needed identification to pass as said disguise. At least while around Beacon, I could use the malleable identification Summer provided for me and could pose as Kara.
Waiting until someone entered the revolving doors, I followed behind him in the next compartment.
Just as predicted, there was a large lobby with nothing more than a bored security guard staring at a black and white segmented screen filled with the view from multiple cameras. The largest 'problem' were the gates requiring a keycard.
A problem for anyone who wasn't currently invisible.
Timing a gap in the guard's attention, as if he even had one, I vaulted over the gate, landed, twirled and bowed to him.
He scratched his ear.
I stuck my tongue out at him. Some people didn't appreciate art.
Sucked I didn't even get an applause as I needed to climb several dozen sets of stairs to reach the top floor of the near triple digit story skyscraper. Where else would narcissistic company executives plant their offices?
All those years of climbing stairs was finally going to pay off and I was finally going to get those toned calves every woman wanted. Just what I needed: to add sweat to my already stained slacks and torn top.
Once I reached the eightieth floor, I really started to feel the burn and was forced to slow to a crawl or risk my entire Semblance collapsing due to a lapse in concentration. Summer at least owed me a new top for the effort I was putting in, and Kara owned me a few head scratches. I was so going to collect.
What? I had my own quirks.
Ninety four was the last floor in the seemingly endless staircase to heaven. If a fire broke out then the people at the very top would die faster of smoke inhalation or exhaustion on the way down than the damned building collapsing. Aura just let me jump from any height and land perfectly fine.
Don't try it at home kids.
Seriously, what the fuck did one company need ninety four floors for? Beacon got by with less than four and it managed more collective personnel than this entire company did if you didn't count the 'indentured servants', to use the politically correct term.
Anywho, the top floor was a immaculate hell for the corporate with cheap, but effective carpet, and cubicles crammed next to one another. A few younger workers gossiped in the area they designated as their common area, obviously lacking an actual room to take a break.
Again, a complete lack of security because who the hell was going to trudge up all of those stairs just to avoid the chance of getting compacted into an elevator and risk the entire operation. Surely no one was so dedicated to perform espionage against the richest company on the planet?
Amateurs.
My target, however, sat behind glass walls and doors, indiscriminately typing away at his computer. Entering the office would have to wait until he either left or until someone entered the office.
And would you look at the time.
My arrival just happened to coincide with the usual time almost every executive took lunch, and like clockwork, the man stood from his desk, grabbed a lunch pack, and strode out the door. The soft close feature of the glass door meant it closed slower than the norm.
Repetition and schedules got people killed, on a completely separate note.
A finger in the door invalidated the security system on the door, no matter if it was secured by a fingerprint scanner and a voice recognition box and my gloves meant I would leave no fingerprints, assuming they even detected anyone.
I walked carefully to the desk, avoiding leaving any trace of my presence in the room, not even bothering to sit in the chair.
The schmuck hadn't bothered to log out of his session so gaining access to the literal contents of the SDC Criminal Empire was a breeze. Kara was working her ass off for no reason, running through several million permutations of a password I no longer needed.
I was still hedging my bets on it being 'guest', 'password', or 'admin', but guess I'd never know.
Slotting the USB hidden in my sleeve into the appropriate slot, I began ransacking the hard drive, looking for whatever incriminating information I could find.
Where would I start?
Pictures of course.
I blinked when I opened the folder. Blinked again and cleaned out my eyes this time. Welp. Incriminating evidence was incriminating evidence, but my journey would continue.
But damn, some people needed to learn to separate work life from their private life, especially this kind of private life. At least encrypt the folders and files if you're going to leave them on your work computer.
There were several other unencrypted folders labeled 'Operations' sitting innocently in the Documents tab. Typical when your CSO had a degree in Musical Theory and not in the actual department he was working in.
Easier than stealing candy from a baby, but why would I ever do that when I could go to Mistral and splurge to my heart's content. Everything I needed was in these folders, including guard rotation schedules and numbers, coordinate locations of each camp, average output of each camp, census, etc.
Summer had her work cut out if she was planning to rescue this massive amount of people, but as long as I got a camp for myself, I would be satisfied until our next spar.
Then I'd hunt Ozpin down and beat him with his own cane for letting such atrocities occur on this planet. I have resolute morals, thank you very much, even if they didn't align with most people's.
Copying all the files, just in case there were other things Summer could use, took less than five minutes and I spent the time pacing idly by the windows, gazing down on the city living and profiting from slavery. It brought a snarl of disgust to my face as I had thought humanity couldn't stoop lower, but give them a chance and the worst would enslave who they believed to be their lessers.
Bloody civil wars were once fought for nothing more than the equality everyone deserved, back when society segregated those of higher melanin count from those with less. Women didn't need to ever fight wars for their equal rights, but there had been protests, hissy fits, and general idiocy from the men with death grips on their aging seats of power.
History always loved to repeat itself and was always bound to if people didn't learn from their past.
The file transfer was done in the time I spent pondering the vast stores of memories squished within my brain. Dislodging the stick, I tucked it back into my sleeve and swept the room again to make sure I left no trace.
The entire mission was done within half an hour.
Kara would be pissed and I'd get a cat fight out of it.
It was more disappointing than the time Ozpin had dragged me to an opera. I stabbed him in the calf for that and he had an actual excuse to use his cane other than bopping students with it, and looking regal.
He at least had the curriculum vitae for the latter.
Without bothering to check my surroundings too carefully, I walked out of the office and back into the hallway. If anyone saw the door open, then they'd chalk it up to a hallucination and continue on with their boring 9-17 lifestyles.
It was time to make my way back down the endlessly spiralling staircase to the ground floor. It was considerably faster this time and blessedly less strenuous. I would have preferred to just skydive from the roof, but the doors to it usually held alarms and I was already pushing it with my time in the building.
It'd have to come back some other day and see how long I could live in this building before someone noticed. They probably had their own shower and food amenities and I wasn't just a thief in name, but would they have a laundry service?
Something to keep my thoughts occupied on my flight back to Vale.
Which I had not planned because I didn't expect the security in this building to be this lax. I was expecting to walk into the lobby and trigger some alarms to test their response but I got nothing; just a bored guard, keycard readers, and a criminally invested CSO.
With the way this was going, I was going to have to charge Summer Lien for my services. I at least deserved compensation for having to take a ship or plane all the way back if I couldn't pilfer one.
Stealing codes to private aircraft was a hassle since all the luxurious ones ran off personal scrolls rather than keys. It was a vast benefit to securing craft from thieves, and I hadn't yet paid anyone to write an algorithm to break those encryptions.
I might be able to persuade Kara to write one for me, just after she finished trying to take my head off.
Now I was left with the options of stowing away again or buying a ticket to Vale, whether by boat or plane.
What would a girl, whose bank accounts rivaled the Schnees, do in such a situation? I was not going to stowaway again, not when there was a first class suite on an airliner with my name on it.
Well, not Neo On on it, so Kara Rose was travelling back to Vale without actually having to bypass customs to get into Atlas in the first place. That would be a fun situation to watch, but I'd be long gone by then.
In a matter of minutes, Luksus Airways was a couple thousand Lien richer, and I also had a taxi on the way to take me to the airport.
Slipping back into Kara was like slipping back into a set of worn pajamas. The few hours I had spent in her form, and the years of practice with my Semblance, left it a seamless process. Feline ears twitched, reacting predictively to a breeze as if they were real and shoulders rolled in mirrored, linked perfection.
The taxi showed up when and where I asked to be picked up and I entered without any greeting. These drivers were expected to shut up and drive, and were handsomely rewarded for their discretion, not caring if you were Faunus or not.
Lien was the language spoken in Atlas so Jacques Schnee made sure Faunus could never amass enough of it, burying them in lawsuits and extortion schemes, notably harming their families. The rich stayed rich while the less fortunate dreamed.
Several forms of political ideologies had been tried on this planet, back before the Atomic Crises, from anarchism to absolutism and every ideology in between. The few which tried to distribute wealth, such as socialism, worked spectacularly, but when most of civilization was wiped out, so too was history.
My favorite try was the fascist Third Reich back when years were counted from the birth of some religious character. Confused the hell out for me because I had a completely different way of counting years when I first learned about it. Stabbed that legionnaire for insulting me.
I got to shoot that Hitler chap. Knew how to run a country and motivate it, but for all the wrong reasons. Did the same in the People's Republic of China to Mao Zedong before Ozpin kindly reminded me why I was there in the first place
I got him a new cane as an apology gift; the same one he keeps around today. It may have been modified it from its original appearance, but at its core, it was still the same one. He knows how to make a girl feel special.
At the airport, I gave the driver a hefty tip for keeping his silence during the drive. Once I stepped out onto the promenade, I was met with various stares and glares of disgust from the citizens of Atlas.
Second class citizenship didn't protect Faunus at all from bigots, idiots, and other like minded ilk.
Wait until they learn they all shared a common ancestor, or they wouldn't be able to reproduce with one another.
My dress wasn't exactly what people flying first class wore, consisting of a black tee and jeans. I didn't wear formal clothes, not even as disguise. They were stuffy and unbearable.
Priority checking was quick and effortless, and with Kara being registered so high up, checking in my parasol only got a raised eyebrow.
No matter how much the Hunter Academies were respected, private airlines would not allow hunters to carry weapons with them and had to have them checked. Ammunition needed to be stored securely in waterproof containers and explosives weren't allowed at all.
They may have taken my parasol but they wouldn't find the carbon fiber knives hidden in my boots or the ones disguised as belt buckles, or the capsule of ricin hidden in a fake tooth, or the high tensile diamond wire masquerading as a bracelet.
The parasol was just my favourite. It didn't mean I was defenceless.
Nothing set off an alarm as I passed through the security checkpoint because everything had an innocuous purpose. The bracelet got me an investigative look and I needed to pull out my scroll to explain it wasn't a weapon of murder used to strangle people or break their thyroid cartilage. Diamonds weren't cheap after all.
Any other day, the bracelet wouldn't even warrant a glance, but when a military base gets attacked, absolutely everything had to pass muster.
I snickered inwardly. Kara was definitely going on a watchlist after this.
Timing seemed to be my specialty as I arrived at the gate only a dozen minutes shy of boarding time, and as a first class passenger, was boarded with haste. No one turned away money, even if they continued to stare at my ears in distrust.
The older generation needed to learn all humans had equal rights while the younger would be taught. The mistakes of histories past needed to be learned, not matter how the continents were arranged, which countries existed, or which subspecies of homo sapien waddled about.
Or they could continue making those mistakes and prove my point about the unintelligent doomed to the endless cycle of repetition. Enough of those repetitions and someone always hit the reset button.
A glass of champagne waited for me on the folding tray, congratulating me for a job well done. While the pay was terrible, meaning not at all, it offered a much more tempting incentive in the form of stress relief for psychopaths. Had much fewer opportunities for those after the population of the planet plummeted, but it hovered around three to four billion now. Enough of an excuse.
I fell asleep before the airplane finished taxiing to the runway, clipping my safety belt together to avoid the ire of any flight attendant checking in. I usually couldn't fall asleep, just in case something happened in flight, but the freefall or mass hysteria would suffice as an alarm clock.
Vale International - 2300 VMT
I had to choke a bitch when the flight attendant woke me up for dinner, but after explaining it was impolite to wake a Huntress in such a manner, it was her who apologised, and as appetizing as artisan garganelli pasta tossed in a creamy wild mushroom sauce finished with slow roasted tomatoes and grated pecorino cheese sounded, I wanted to continue sleeping.
It was sinfully delicious and quenched my grumpy demeanor.
Until I realized I was in Vale without anything to do. How Ozpin dealt with the dredges of boredom escaped me. Summer didn't have her mask completely created yet so had no answer to boredom, substituting it for work. My hobbies included killing and ice cream, and couldn't do the first without adding to Summer's workload.
Ozpin would punish me and send me somewhere isolated. Last time he locked away my Aura and dropped me smack in the middle of Cassus. Schlepping my way to the coast took weeks and when I got to Beacon eventually, I brained him and stole his cocoa.
The resulting chase around Beacon nearly gave Glynda a coronary as her Headmaster went seemingly senile, chasing an invisible target around in circles, madly mumbling about midget mercenaries and the malicious appropriation of packets of chocolate.
That was almost an alliteration.
So I had two options. Go back to Beacon and find a member of Team SKBN to play or go and check in with the White Fang. After Roman's death, they had no reliable way to reach me other than scroll and I had no messages.
There was a tug on my Aura core before I could properly retrieve my parasol from the baggage carousel, as if the caller knew I was back on land and not in the air. Funny how it worked like that.
Salem needed my consent to drag me into her hell dimension.
I had been in hell once and it wasn't as bad as people thought it was. Hot as hell, pun for the win, and people were being tortured left, right, and center, but I got bored quickly.
Probably because I wasn't actually meant to be there in the first place. I was on my way to the kitchen for a snack and I got lost.
I am not a clever woman.
I let Salem know she had my consent and my vision was obscured in a miasma of pulsing red and purple, and I appeared already sitting in my assigned seat around the beautifully carved table I would have stolen any other day, if I could carry it.
Looks of ire were shot my way as I was the last to arrive, having been otherwise occupied sleeping in a comfortable recliner and having food and drink served to me. To my left sat Cinder, with Emerald and Mercury hovered behind her, and to my right sat Tyrian, looking unhinged as ever.
"Neo, good of you to join us." Salen nearly purred at me. That wasn't a good sign, especially when less than a week had gone by since Beacon resisted her attack. If I was the last one to be here then they could have discussed whatever they wanted without my knowledge. I'd be sending duplicates in my stead from now on.
Just needed to work out how to communicate back and forth. I could message Emerald my answers but I'd need some way to receive communication.
Wait.
Test time.
I was busy snooping around Beacon. Had my scroll silenced. The message was sent to Emerald instead of me just showing my scroll, but she didn't react, so either her scroll was also silenced, or she didn't get anything. I let Emerald read off my scroll.
This meant I couldn't rely on any support in case I was caught and this place could also not be sieged, as it either wasn't in the range of any CCTS system, a low chance of that, or it wasn't even on the plane the system existed on, and by the weird Grimm floating about freely, I'd bet on the latter.
I'd have to visit Vacuo soon and try my luck at their casinos.
Now that one of my ideas was out, it thusly ruled out my other idea of slipping a microphone under the table, as with the lack of the international communications network, it wouldn't work. It was down to a game of chance where I'd have to stake my life to whether Salem's informants could figure out my deception.
Hadn't had to stake my life in awhile, but when dealing with an inescapable pocket dimension controlled by an insidious goddess-level being, I had no other option.
Vacuo was definitely going to see me soon.
"And what do you have to report?"
I tabbed to the report I had compiled sometime during my flight and slid my scroll over. She paused, eyes imperceptibly widening at the high definition photo of Summer, taken at such an angle to only show her functioning silver eye. Her scythe was conspicuously missing.
"Who is this?" I mimicked the motion to scroll down, where all the information I had compiled on Summer was waiting to be read. Which, in retrospect, wasn't much more than her name and her physical traits. "She's supposed to be dead."
She got a look which universally meant: no shit. I was responsible for her capture, but after I handed her over, she wasn't my responsibility. The only reason I knew about her death was because Salem had told me after I asked, but not the circumstances of it.
"And you're sure this isn't her child, Ruby Rose?" I gestured Summer was taller than Ruby and had witnessed they were two separate entities. The second part was conveyed through signs until Salem prodded me to repeat the message for the benefit of everyone else.
She's the one rumoured to have taken down the dragon and then spearheaded the defense of Beacon. This one I typed out to keep Salem from asking me nicely again. Nice just didn't work with her. And Ozpin is alive.
Cinder shrank under Salem's glare. If Ozpin really did die from Cinder's attack then he didn't deserve to be the Headmaster. Cinder was nothing more than an upjumped child who stole the powers of a Maiden and then decided to test them, even if she had a misconstrued reason for taking them.
While neither him nor her had lost, Ozpin had to deal with the imminent collapse of the Vault and his school if he did go all out. Cinder had walked away only because Ozpin cared, not because he was less powerful. He could kick my ass with three of his limbs cut off and while blinded.
Cinder he could defeat while submerged in a tub of lard and bereft of all his senses. He'd perform the polka and then cane her, all with a smile on his face. Wasn't that a scary thought?
And never threaten his cocoa.
Ever.
He gave me nightmares, and I thought I had seen every type of nightmare in the known and unknown universes.
I was wrong.
Salem was still smiling, which either meant she didn't care Summer Rose was somehow alive, would plan to capture her and brainwash her (again?), or her resurrection didn't matter to her overall scheme.
As much as Salem was a threat to Beacon, she wasn't the primary target for Summer. She understood that while Salem controlled every single Grimm and was a larger, single threat than the White Fang, the latter posed a greater, cumulative threat against them. The Huntsmen were specifically trained to face Grimm, not other humans.
With how Salem's goals were aligned, along with Cinder's, they were really only after the Maidens and the Relics, which admittedly, didn't require the destruction of the Academies. The Grimm and the White Fang were means to an end, and if Summer could cull one of them, then they'd have to reanalyze their plans.
The only caveat to Salem's plans was that to get to the Relics, they needed to get to the Maidens. Summer and Ozpin protected the Fall Maiden, even though the power was split between her and Cinder, and the other Maidens were scattered somewhere around Remnant to the point where neither Ozipin nor I knew where they were.
Why the power had to transfer to another from the dying's thoughts was a system I didn't understand completely, but I wasn't the one who created it in the first place.
"Find out who she is Neo. I refuse to believe this is the woman I killed more than a decade ago. I want her real name and I want her abilities." The twitch on the side of her neck told me her outward calm demeanor masked a roiling tempest. "I need you to keep tabs on Pyrrha Nikos as well."
Am I getting paid this time? Emerald read off my scroll, slowly backing away as if I was marked for death.
"Standard rate?" I nodded. The trip from Atlas would pay itself off soon with the retainer Salem paid me. Where she got the money, I don't know, but I tested for forgeries and all the bills always come out clean. "You'll get your money in a few days." I nodded again, taking in my dismissal.
You can send me back now. I managed to sign out before I was again engulfed in the portal and deposited back at the airport promenade. Could have asked to be placed at Beacon, where she wanted me to go, but she already wasn't questioning why I was at the airport.
Reminder: test whether or not Salem knows where I'm coming from and whether she can teleport me places. She always drops me off from where I came from, telling me she had no layout of where I was and had a psychic link to me and not my position, much like how a sensor could detect the direction someone is at, but not the precise location.
Like sticking your hand into a bag full of various shapes and pulling out the one you wanted, but doing it with people through how their Aura felt. Which didn't bode well if Summer and I shared similar Aural patterns and Salem went fishing around for me.
Needed to buy popcorn for such an occasion.
I didn't like having a link to her, but it was better than her tracking where I was. She'd eventually notice I spent an inordinate amount of time in Beacon and I didn't really have an answer to why I stayed around at least two sensors who could completely strip away my ability to hide.
Summer and Ozpin weren't sensors in the traditional sense, but they always knew where I was, regardless of any disguises. He liked to humor me by playing along and Summer couldn't care less. She actually couldn't care less which was the funny bit.
But seriously, couldn't she have dropped me off somewhere at least close to Beacon?
And why the fuck was it suddenly midday?
Continuing with my masquerade of Kara, I secured a bullhead and darted off towards Beacon, ignoring the gaping looks of stunned awe. It wasn't everyday the small Hunter attachment to the airport was visited by a member of the High Commander's team.
Go away fan girls. There are another six S-classes in Vale. Go and accost them for autographs. Summer would send them scattering but Ozpin would entertain their notions.
The balance of power was completely skewed with Team SKBN taking roost at Beacon. The city-states usually held, at most, three S-class Hunters at any time, given the turnover/death rate. Ozpin and Branwen were the two in Vale, and I was the unofficial third, but Beacon now had seven with the other Branwen rapidly closing the gap to his sister.
Atlas' Hearth Academy had two, Ironwood and Ironwood, and Vacuo's Haven and Mistral's Sanctum also had two to my last count, so at 7-2-2-2, Beacon could manhandle anyone it wanted.
I also wasn't counting that officially, other than Branwen and Ozpin, Beacon didn't have more than two S-ranks in its service. With Summer taking the title of High Commander, that number rose to three, while the rest of her team was classed as A-ranks.
Also, I wasn't counting that neither Ozpin, Nova, or Bianca were classed as regular S-ranks, and were unofficially classed as SS-ranks, and each higher rank was exponentially harder to achieve than the one below it. I wasn't sure where I fit on the scale, but I knew I sat in the S-tiered class.
Of course, this was expecting the worst case scenario of another Great War, which to me was either World War Seven, Eight, or Nine. Too many years between them all to keep track.
Fighting against conventional weaponry, an S-ranked Hunter was worth anywhere between a few hundred to more than a million infantry units, depending on their specialization. Kara, who lacked any large area of effect attacks, was on the lower end, while Summer, who could cut down thousands before they blinked, was at the top.
I was above Beacon airspace within a few dozen minutes, and the traffic controller was dead confused. Probably because Kara wasn't registered as having left. He knew better than to deny her access to her home, but he was sure to report it anyway.
At some point, someone, somewhere was going to notice two instances of Kara Rose kept popping up everywhere where they couldn't be.
Hangar Two was the designated LZ for the High Command team, as Hangar One was Ozpin's. He almost never used it, but rumour had it, it was stuffed with entire shipping containers of cocoa; his panic room.
The roof opened upon detecting a member of Team SKBN and I landed off to the side of two bullheads in the process of being torn apart. A familiar blonde stood in the midst of the chaos wielding an acetylene torch. Tangles of wire, circuit boards, displays and other vaguely aircraft related parts lay scattered about her.
"Hi Neo." I wasn't fooling her with this disguise. I waved at her and she went back to building the skeleton of her ship while I danced around the scattered workstations.
A small grey blur detached itself from a mass of cables and ran after me, nipping at my heels as I approached the doors.
It was a dog.
A fuzzy, black-headed tricolor corgi with grey eyes stared up at me in confusion. I grabbed him by the scruff and held him to my real eyes. He licked the fake image of me, causing it to destabilise.
Smart dog.
He just continued to pant at my face and gave me another lick. I looked over to Nova, but she was lost in a hail of sparks and smoke, so I was stuck with him now.
Reapplying my illusion, I left the hangar heading to the dorms with the dog trotting behind me. He was quiet and investigative, sniffing and ducking between my feet as he tried to understand who I was and why I was masquerading as Kara, someone he must've known if he was camping out with Nova in her hangar.
He was a nimble little thing as he dodged the playful stabs of my disillusioned parasol; rolling, hopping, and bending in every direction to avoid the pokes before chasing after me, when he noticed I darted forward, to continue the game.
This continued all the way up to the dorms and up the stairs, where I managed to trip him by accident and watch him fall, only for him to snort, get back up, and continue after me. What did Nova do to this dog? He literally just fell down a full flight of stairs, head over heels, and just barks at me.
Team SKBN's door opened up to my scroll and I got the end of an artillery barrel as I crossed the threshold. I pushed it aside with a finger, smiling at the deadly force in my face. Out of the room's four inhabitants, Kara was the only one not leveling her weapon at me; Nova had her gauntlets extended and Bianca had a glyph at my feet.
The poor dog looked even more confused at the presence of two Karas, but instantly jumped onto Kara's bed when she patted the spot next to her. I dropped the disguise.
"You're back early." Summer stowed her weapon and returned to her ever full inbox.
I went exploring. I walked over to their shared dresser and started rummaging around, searching for clothing which could fit my size. Sadly, Bianca didn't have anything in my favourite colours, but Summer's clothing was too large for me. The clothes' owner shook or nodded as I pulled out shirts and slacks alike.
"Where'd you go?" I smirked maliciously at Nova's question. So many places yet to visit when everytime you looked away, something new popped up. No one batted an eye as I started to change in front of them.
Sometimes it was hard dealing with psychopaths, no matter the level of affliction. Nothing phased them anymore.
Challenge accepted.
Atlas. Kara's fingers twitched. She knew I had no reason to be in Atlas before my assignment. I took the drive out of my sleeve and handed it over. Disconnect from the network.
Kara disabled the adapter and slammed the drive in, pursuing its contents. Her nose twitched in such an adorable fashion as the hundreds of folders I pilfered streamed across her screen, from the SDC assets to the incriminating ones.
Kara didn't say anything, but she closed the laptop, swung herself to the side of the bed, and cracked her neck. My only warning was the dull flash reflecting off her blade's sheath. Performing a backwards one handed cartwheel, I ended up crouched on the other bed.
Let the games begin.
Re-equipping Kara, I dashed out the window and glanced behind me, only to witness a demonic shade of black lurking in the window I evacuated through.
Challenge completed.
My position was obliterated in a storm of bullets, revealing it to be a copy as I flipped sideways and bowed upon regaining my footing.
A couple of shadows gave chase to us, presumably to mitigate any damage; my favourite Ironwood and the dog watched our dance.
Kara didn't appear to be moving; standing there, smiling condescending.
It was only my years of experience that saved my new top from destruction as Kara blindsided me, her sword shearing a few precious strands from my hair. An illusion took my place as Kara pressed her attack while I returned the favour.
For every fake she took out, I returned an attack, grinning as the wide variety of Dusts kept me off my footing. The fire Dust singed my hair, the earth and ice dust caused me to lose precious milliseconds to wrench my rapier free, the lightning Dust sent shocks at me, the water Dust doused me, and so on it went.
Where she stored this many types of Dusts was a mystery as her leg pouches didn't look to have much space, and unless there were crystals or vials embedded in her sheath, a foolish decision with how aggressively she was using it, then she was magically spawning them out of thin air.
Dumping most of my considerable Aura reserves into my illusion, I stopped and parried her Gambol Shroud with mine, the sheer density of my Semblance stopping hers in its tracks, with only a minuscule shimmer rippling along my blade's length.
We stood at a stalemate, grin meeting grin, and strength meeting strength.
Zwei tackled little Red in the background, zeroing in on his Master rather than paying attention to our fight.
"Hi mom." Kara and I momentarily peaced out and took the time to wave back.
"How're you doing that?" Blake alternated stares between the two Karas, unable to ascertain which one was the real one. Both looked exactly the same, except the right one wore a darker scheme, and the left one wore a lighter scheme.
Kara and I shared a look before attacking each other again, disappearing in showers of multicoloured Dust, her fire Dust masking my tiny mirror fragments, hiding my Semblance from prying eyes who might recognize it.
Little Red and the Belladonna had seen my Semblance being used after all when Roman and I had stolen one of Atlas' Paladins and showcased it to the White Fang. I had been against the showboating, but Roman was convinced this would bolster the Fang's moral and get him paid more for his services.
Twit.
A lovable twit, but still a twit.
If it wasn't for his vast connections to the criminal underworld, his flair, or his ability with his cane, then he really wasn't much of a threat; just a lesser version of Beacon's own spymaster.
Other than the teasing stabs or close shaves, Kara wasn't putting much effort into harming me, abstaining from using her bullets.
That wouldn't do.
I parried her next strike, pushing her off balance before wrapping around her, throwing my weight onto her shoulder and balancing upside-down on them. Gravity pulled me down and I used the leverage to send her flying backwards into the following pair of Belladonna and Red. She tried twisting around the duo, but the lack of any controls surfaces caused her to bowl them both over.
The clone fell apart to water.
"How is she doing that? My clones aren't able to hit back!" Belladonna picked herself up, watching me analyze my surroundings. The dog and Red had swirls in their eyes.
I would eventually learn their names.
There were two possibilities to her question. Either Kara had long surpassed her own ability with his clones, getting to the point of autonomous control, or one of us wasn't a clone and was an imposter Kara was trying to kill.
The proper procedure in this case was to strike fast but non-lethally, ask questions later, and then kill if the questions weren't answered correctly.
Non-lethally? Get out of my head Ozpin.
Damn. Now I was calling him by his new ridiculous name.
So rather than fending off three Hunters, and a dog I couldn't bring myself to harm, I was dealing with one incensed one. Granted, we were around equal, especially with the roundhouse kick she delivered to my head, sending me forward to create a furrow in the ground outside Beacon.
Weren't we just next to the administration building?
A large shimmering dome of glyphs trapped the five of us against the beginning of the Redwood Forests. Bianca sat at the top of it in a meditative trance, no doubt ready to interfere if anything went wrong.
If Bianca and Kara were as smart as I gave them credit for, then this dome was here for a reason. It wasn't to keep Kara and I in, it was the keep the other three in.
I had stopped specifically in front of Red for a reason, and while I didn't mean to drag the Belladonna into it, and the dog just seemed to follow whoever he wanted to follow, she'd have been told eventually.
Summer said not to tell her about my part in her mother's death, but she said nothing about screwing with her. Her specific wording was to not tell her yet, but by that point I'd be fending off Qrow before her.
A wave of pink, brown, and white mirror shards traveled around the interior of the dome, trapping out the blinding white light and replacing it with those of ice cream nature. Bianca would still be able to see in from the outside, but only from her point of view.
"I didn't know Bianca could this." Red poked the illusory sky and a piece of it shattered into shards before being instantly replaced. Stop touching it and get the picture of what I was trying to show you.
"Do you remember when we were in the Districts and we discovered the Fang had stolen an Atlesian Paladin?" Red nodded along. "And when we tried to get it back, we had to fight Torchwick and his companion?" Another nod. "And they were able to escape because she tricked us?"
Blake slapped the fake sky, causing a larger hole to appear with a loud crack as the pieces shattered before I replaced them again. I had their attention now.
A deafening crack from across the enclosed field tore their attention to us again. The air in front of Kara shimmered and rippled before the pieces dropped and revealed me as Neo, and not as Kara.
Kara didn't react to this, and disappeared in a burst of air, dropping out of the battlefield. She made her way behind me, and I blanketed her behind another illusion. I didn't know how long her invisible state could last, but the only reason I could keep track of her was because I bothered remembering I was a sensor.
But where was the fun in using it?
Which left me facing off against Red and Belladonna, while they were left without the help of their superior against me. They knew almost nothing about my skills, other than the fact I could control what they saw and they could break my illusions easily.
They treated me as their enemy, meaning they'd rather attempt to attack me first rather than wonder why Bianca was keeping them trapped in here with me. Maybe they assumed everything before the dome was an illusion and they were trapped in here on my merit.
They didn't know how much a threat I posed to them as I'd only ever fought against the blonde on the train and didn't fight against them in the Districts and only acted as an escape for Roman.
If they knew I could defeat them without lifting my pinkie finger, then their only option was to escape, which they believe they couldn't. So they'd attempt to test me, but when they learned they couldn't beat me, they'd try to escape.
Logically sound, but they'd be dead if I was fighting for real, or tired enough to not escape when I was through with them.
Moral of the story: don't engage an enemy who could trap you without any effort on her part. I would lose against Bianca if she managed to trip the real me, and the only person I could think of who could get out would be Taurus, as his Semblance specifically dealt with cutting through Aura.
Perhaps they wouldn't engage me as they stood at the other end and weren't moving. They both had their hands on their weapon, but their dog looked to be nonplussed about being trapped. Much like with Summer, he had no intentions to read off of me.
Red fired a shot straight up at the dome, and nothing but a crack appeared before being sealed back up. If her bullet couldn't get through it, then neither were they, and they knew they were truly stuck here.
The dog started to take a nap.
We all sweatdrop. I hadn't threatened him in our first meeting, and had taken the time to play with him so he knew I had no reason to hurt him now.
Two Beowolves materialised next to me at my command and charged forward, snapping the two to action. They couldn't interact with their environment, noted with how their paws didn't displace the grass, but they served as distractions.
The Belladonna remained still and shattered the Beowolf as it leapt at her while Red met her opponent halfway. Through the remains of Red's Beowolf, I appeared and grabbed her cloak, flinging her at the ceiling.
She was terrifyingly light.
Belladonna, seeing her partner slowly peeling off the dome interior, took the chance to run at me. Much like the fight I had with blondie, I didn't need to use my Semblance. Her strikes were wild and predictable and I only needed to slightly shift my body to avoid each one.
A scythe threw a wrench to my style as it approached my back from high while a sword attacked me from below. They were improperly timed as the scythe approached faster. I twisted and bent backwards, allowing the massive scythe to pass over me while I committed to a bridge, planting my hands after the sword passed my top.
While upside down in my bridge, I cheekily smiled as Red passed above me, her scythe trailing behind her. Flipping into a handstand, I propelled after her, stomping down on her cloak and halting her progress forward, clotheslining her with her own accessory.
Belladonna was on me, jumping in to the rescue, but she was much too slow to effectively deal with me. Any slash was sidestepped and any stab was swayed around, and she was starting to lose her cool as her attacks become more erratic.
Catching one of her slashes against my parasol, I let it twist it around, ending with my own rapier pointed at me. Hooking the crook handle around her foot, I pulled her leg forward and slammed the ferrule into her kidneys, driving the air from her lungs. She only had a short chance to contemplate her lack of air before she impacted the ground.
Rough and almost no teamwork between the two, other than the sad attempt to lock me between their two weapons. If they learned to time it better, it'd fell a lesser enemy, but anyone who needed to have the move used on them always had a counter or escape move.
Summer had her work cut out for her, but in little more than four years, she had transformed from whatever this was to an opponent I couldn't spar against without using my Semblance, and even then, couldn't see her move.
I would call hacks, but I had a pretty sweet Semblance too. Less 'let's obliterate the enemy army before they can blink' and more 'let's fuck with the enemy army and have them obliterate themselves'.
The many World Wars of this planet were a gift, allowing me to infiltrate and deceive every which way. The Second World War between the Axis and the Allies was my favourite by a long shot, especially as it was a war against the systematic targeting of a people based on such a silly thing as religion or race.
If you're going to kill people, do so equally.
Everyone deserves the embrace of death, and war solved the usual problems of ideological difference while culling the population of the young and stupid who are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.
The haunting words of my mentor echoed in my mind, spoken in a different and forgotten tongue used in the world of my birth.
All men must die, and all must serve.
Still wasn't sure what the second part meant, but philosophy was Evander's thing, not mine.
Ha!
Got the name right!
The dome outside my illusory sky dissolved and Bianca crashed down next to me, observing my handiwork.
"That was sad." I nodded in complete agreement. Kara appeared next to me without a sound, staring down at her younger version as the latter slowly made her way back to standing, fingering her weapon's grip.
She was grinning.
Ruby was above the three of us, ready to slash through and obliterate the illusions of Bianca and Kara.
Except they weren't illusions, so a glyph redirected the scythe into the ground, keeping it locked there with another one.
I was never fighting against Bianca. Against Nova maybe, but against the woman who could immobilize me, trap me, or control my actions with a thought, no thank you.
Ruby stared at the glyphs keeping her weapon imprisoned and tried pulling it free, but to no avail. A few more tugs revealed she was getting nowhere and she huffed in annoyance.
Which left Kara to disarm Blake as she tried to skewer me, twisting the offending arm behind her back and planting her own knee on her back, manhandling her into the dirt.
They were learning the 'attack first, then ask questions later' principle.
"Are you two quite finished yet, or would you like a repeat of this morning's practice?" Fear creeped into their eyes as they immediately stopped struggling in their actions. Bianca was a sadist, good to know.
The things we could get up to together, and throw in her wife…
"Ruby, Blake, this is Neo." You forgot my titles Bianca. Queen of Masks, Mistress of Malice, Docent of Deception, Pandit of Pain, and Buddha of Bitches. Hear me fucking roar.
"We met, briefly. She tried to kill us." Blake managed out while arranging her internal organs back into place. Ruby massaged her own throat, feeling for any damage.
"If she wanted you dead, you'd be dead." Roar. :3 "She's an Aura user on par with Kara and Summer."
"So why is she here?" Ruby asked. To desensitize you to the fact I killed your mother when Salem eventually releases my past records to the public upon discovering my treachery. Why else?
"She wanted a rematch against you." I beamed up at Bianca.
You were terrible. I typed out. I got overconfident on that airship and you managed to send me flying off due to your quick thinking. Very good, but it won't work again and you can't rely on your luck to save you every time."
You rely too much on your ability to outpace your opponent. You have absolutely no fighting style, but you wield the scythe with skill. There are Grimm out there who can strike faster than you can. Your cloak is also a hindrance to both your speed and your safety.
Blake got her report next.
You on the other hand let your rage overtake your rational thinking. You abandoned your fighting style to strike at me like an untrained brawler. While this works for your blonde teammate, it won't work for you. You also never used your Semblance offensively because I never struck back.
"Thank you for your report Neo." Don't ruffle my head. Don't ruffle my hair.
She ruffled my hair.
Nothing was worse than being the shortest person around. Even Red was taller than me and she was tiny compared to Summer.
Blake and Red stared owlishly at our interactions.
"Aren't you supposed to be our enemy?" Red tilted her head. "We fought on the airship, you invaded our home."
True, but when Roman got killed, I was out of a job, so when Summer offered me a new one, I came here.
"She's somewhat of a mercenary. She works for pay, but not always Lien." Pay me in blood, or sex. "It's a little more complicated than that, but she'll be working with my team for the near future."
Forever and ever as long as I got to fight one of them regularly, or until I got bored. The rest of the world was dull.
"And you trust her?" The dog came to my rescue, placing himself at my feet and begging for belly scratches. Too cute.
"Zwei seems to trust her." FINALLY! A name. "Good enough for me. I'm Ruby."
I shook her outstretched hand. Whether Team SKBN trusted me was a different story.
This girl, who bested me atop that airship, was not Summer. She still had a childish innocence around her, tinged with curiosity and trust. And in less than four years, it was replaced with nothing, no one, a nightmare.
Evander and the rest of Team SKBN had their work cut out for them.
I smiled back. Corrupting her was going to be fun.
Blake still looked at me with distrust, but if Red could accept me, then so could she.
"The only problem with her is she's a known criminal with a vast report throughout the Kingdoms, but has only a few outstanding crimes against our Hunters." Vale doesn't have enough paper to print out my crimes against them.
There were still the charges of the murder of Atlesian personnel on the airship Roman and I commandeered, and the theft of several Atlesian Paladins, along with stealing the source code for their Knights.
Against Beacon, there was the attempted murder of blondie, and while she assumed I could have killed her, only Raven Branwen could confirm it. All she knew was that I completely owned her ass. Aiding and abetting in the murder of a Huntress still only counted as one charge, so the murder of the original Summer Rose was my only major crime against them.
They couldn't count the planned invasion of Beacon as I was neither on the planning committee nor had a say against it. The only people who knew of my part in it were either dead, in front of me, or with Salem. I was supposed to be in charge of Roman's protection, which made me complicit to controlling the Knights, but anything other than that, I wasn't privy to.
I had warned Evander either way.
In the long run, I was still more grey than the majority of criminals. On the top of Ozpin's rules were the big two, but I had no country to betray nor would I ever rape another. Below those two was the 'don't kill' rule, but even he struggled to follow it.
At least, that was how I justified it.
"And how do you plan justifying her employment if she's a publically known criminal?" Blake asked.
"We, technically, don't have to. The position of High Commander is a legal dictatorship over the Hunters, which lets Summer grant her amnesty for her past crimes against us if she agrees to work with us."
"What if Vale finds out?" Thanks for worrying Red, but the Council was a group of humans who believed themselves to be the true power in Vale. They were the bureaucratic and political elite in charge of keeping the country stable. "Won't mom be in trouble?"
"The Council has little to no say about who is hired as a Hunter, but for the meanwhile, no one other than Ozpin, Qrow, my team, and now you two know about her. She really wanted her rematch."
"Can we tell Yang and Weiss?" Needed a rematch with blondie too, and finally knew all the names. People should just wear name tags and skip the introduction step entirely. If it wasn't for Raven and my agreement to protect the train, she'd be dead, so maybe it all worked out in the end.
She too relied too heavily on her Semblance to win fights. Abilities needed to be cultivated before Aura was brought in to enhance them. Much like against Blake, I never needed to strike back, negating a core component in blondie's fighting style.
"Yang still needs a rematch from their fight on the train, so don't tell them yet. After the liberation of the camps, then we'll introduce them to her. And this goes without saying, but if you tell anyone outside the people who already know, then I'll court martial you and drop you from the program, which includes not telling Team JNPR."
"Kay." Red agreed way too quickly to those terms. Maybe she didn't need much more corruption. "Bye Neo. See you around."
Red read from a familiar orange book while she dragged Blake away. Definitely didn't need any more corruption. They had much to think about, especially with my scathing reviews of their poor performances, but individual performance could always be overlooked for partner or team performance, which they needed to work on as well.
"You know how to push your luck, don't you?" I shrugged, spawned a copy of Roman's hat on my head and blew a raspberry back.
Red doesn't seem to know how to hold a grudge; she's too cute. Is she dating anyone?
"Don't know, but I'm pretty sure she's interesting in Weiss. And you will not ruin that or you'll never spar against Summer again." The threat shut me up instantly. They were Summer's handlers, and if they said she wasn't sparring with me, she wasn't.
Blake's going to tell Yang, even with the threat of a court martial, but Ruby should be able to keep her mouth shut until the liberation. Kara signed and Bianca ran after them, concurring with her statement.
I'm still angry at you. Another cheeky smile and Kara redrew her blade, coming after me in a explosion of fire Dust.
AN: Thanks to Luciano Pavarotti for inspiring me to finish this chapter. May his operatic tenor live on forever in our hearts.
Enjoy the earlier that usual chapter. Did change the title of the chapter to a more apt one.
In the works: Chapter Twelve - Blind