For those of you who don't read Worm, Interludes were chapters narrated by someone other than Taylor (who acts as a narrator for most of the story), in between arcs or sometimes in the middle of one. The arcs typically cover events closely tied to the story for that arc, or at least a close tangent. Since I'm already narrating from a variety of points of view—and I'll be doing so with non-Undersiders in future arcs—I'll probably end up doing more background types of things. I have a very solid idea in my head of why the Undersiders are in Remnant, for instance, as well as a lot of assumptions I've had to make about Remnant culture, both of which I hope to expand on in the Interludes. It also lets me back off and look at the story from a different angle. Hopefully, you readers will enjoy them.
I considered doing the Interlude in a first-person perspective, partly to mix it up, but decided against it. It's hard to write a short first-person piece that describes a person without drifting into effectively third-person limited, and harder to do so when you've already written the section in third-person limited.
Interlude 0—Pierre Delany
Pierre Delany was no stranger to hardship. His parents were slaves to the Schnees in all but name, and Pierre had been becoming the same. The Schnees had ruined his family. Without them, his parents could have gotten decent jobs, but because of the Schnee oppression of their faunus workers, disaster after disaster hit their family. Pierre's father died in an accident, a batch of dust all reacting at once due to carelessness and killing many workers. The Schnees just hired new workers. His elder brother lost a hand in a large machine, and the rest of his forearm had to be amputated. The Schnees fired him and hired a new faunus. Not only Pierre but also his mother and little sister had to work, just to get enough cash to pay the company for their tenement, food, and scant luxuries. For sowing all of this evil, the Schnees reaped grotesque profits. Pierre wondered how they would feel if it was that bastard Siegfried who lost his father, whose brother was crippled and whose mother and sister had to work in a processing plant just to support him and them. Someone would probably care. But the Delanys, they were just workers, just paupers, just faunus. Why would anyone care about them?
Pierre had brooded ever since the day his father died, dwelling on the debt the Schnees owed his family and all faunus, a debt that accrued interest every day that passed. He wanted his chance for revenge, more than anything else. Some days he wanted to torture the Schnees, some days to force them to work in their own plants, and some days he just wanted a chance to take a Schnee and kill them with his bare hands.
Not quite three years ago, fortune smiled on Pierre. He didn't get his hands on any of the Schnees, but the first step on his path for revenge had been taken. The Schnee plant was attacked; it was burned to the ground with its human employees locked inside, a message from Amund Volkov to anyone who would oppress the faunus. The workers who survived were recruited. Some fools considered it slavery to a different master, but Pierre saw differently. He saw opportunity—an opportunity for revenge, for justice. For once, Pierre had a chance to improve his station, to make his world and the world at large a better place. Whatever dreams he dreamed, whatever he wished to inflict on the Schnees, being in the White Fang could make it happen. The only thing that marred this otherwise-perfect day was the tragic death of his mother.
Pierre was young and healthy, strong and clever, and above all dedicated to the cause. This gave him great potential, which was wasted for over a year in the lowest ranks of the White Fang, working as errand-boy, foot soldier, and other menial positions. It was vital that someone do those tasks, which alleviated Pierre's frustration somewhat, but not enough—someone had to, but why him?
But at last, Pierre attracted notice from his superiors rose to a position of power, leading the lowly members of the White Fang where he had been so recently. He had hopes of becoming a real officer, someone important, someone who might be sent on important missions. There was a job being planned for a couple days from now, a couple operatives blowing up a Schnee train carrying Dust across the wilderness. Pierre would have liked nothing more than to be one of them, finally beginning to collect on the Schnees' debt, but everyone knew it would be one of those mentor-student pairs, and Pierre had neither a student nor anyone who he could specifically call a mentor. Probably Adam and his protege, if neither of them embarrassed themselves or died in the meantime.
Instead, he was stuck overseeing a stupid warehouse, of all things. Pierre understood that the warehouse itself was important—it was used to store things too big or numerous to store elsewhere, as a meeting place and a safehouse. He just didn't understand why it was so important that he needed to be watching the rookies guarding it instead of doing something useful. Nothing ever happened at the warehouse, except dealing with the petty arguments of his charges. Someone would come in with a crate of weapons or Dust or masks, and someone else would take a crate of parts or alcohol or uniforms. Sometimes a group of new recruits would be trained, and Pierre got to oversee them. Mostly, he made sure everyone did what they were supposed to, which they did maybe half of the time. Pierre's only consolation was that this was an opportunity to demonstrate what a good leader he was, how he could keep discipline among the ranks and deal with typical problems. If he could keep it up for a couple more months, Pierre would probably be promoted to a lieutenant.
No one could doubt that he maintained discipline. He had a presence; most rookies he dealt with realized they should just follow orders within minutes of meeting him, and the others would quickly come to cringe when they saw him or heard him raise his voice. Anyone who failed to perform their duty was punished, those who did well were rewarded. Things worked, they had been working for months. Pierre wondered what more his superiors could want.
~0~
Today was more of the same. He started by checking the schedule of deliveries and pickups. Some plain masks and weapons were being picked up, to be colored and otherwise prepared for the White Fang's new recruits to use. The last of the Dust crates in the warehouse would be picked up, too, with a truck, and some weapon parts would be dropped off at that point—just a crate or two. After that, the morning would be even more boring than usual until someone came by for a bunch of Dust rounds, then whatever some people who hit a Hagel cousin's house brought back, then just killing time until lights-out.
"Attention! We've got some big stuff coming today, so we'll need to make room. The area by the loading door needs to be cleared, and the Dust moved over there so we can have it loaded and out of here nice and easy. We'll need to sort and move the weapon parts they're bringing pretty quick, so we can pick up another shipment this evening. Finally, we need to move the crate of recruit gear and the Dust rounds over by the back entrance. As always, some sentries are needed to keep an eye at the windows. Do I have any volunteers at all?"
A couple volunteered as sentries, but the rest Pierre had to divide up by himself. Some were lazy, some didn't care where they worked, all annoyed him to no end, especially the ones that wouldn't do anything without him directly saying so. Last month, some idiot destroyed a crate of Dust once because no one thought that closing it was an implied part of stowing it with the others. Thankfully, none of the other crates had gone off; even more thankfully, Pierre's superiors realized who was at fault and didn't punish him for their stupidity.
Pierre spent the morning patrolling, watching the idiots who were theoretically supposed to be moving crates or clearing areas, but in practice were wasting time on chatter, bickering, or bugging him on where to move things. More than a few tried to slip away to the common area when he wasn't looking, to pretend to be one of the off-duty rookies or maybe one of the guards. Pierre wasn't so easily fooled, and assigned them menial chores or took away free periods.
The masks and weapons were delivered without much fuss, despite the fact that just half an hour prior he had to deal with the fact that no one apparently knew where they were, and they didn't try looking or anything. Thanks to Pierre's devoted and patient oversight, everything was fine when the truck came by to drop off the weapon parts and pick up the Dust. Efficient and simple to use one truck to do all the deliveries, just the way Pierre liked it. Unfortunately, the remainder of his morning was spent having to deal with every rookie who bugged him about where this, that, or the other group of parts was supposed to go. At last, it was time for lunch break, joyless as always, as Pierre had to keep an eye on the others, had to make sure no one was doing anything stupid.
After lunch, Pierre had nearly half an hour of relative peace before discovering that some idiot had apparently mistaken a crate of weapon parts—which they just sorted—for the crate of Dust rounds. He tried to argue that since he hadn't been someone who sorted the weapon parts, he couldn't be expected to know what crates went where. His lengthy reprimand was interrupted.
"Um…sir?"
It was one of his subordinates—formerly a guard—who showed an unusual degree of competence and work ethic, and who he promoted for it. "What is it, Olivia?"
"There are…there is an unusual number of insects around the common area. Flies and bees, mostly."
"Are they stinging you?"
"No sir, but—"
"Are they trying to steal anything?" Pierre added mockingly. "Break anything? Something like that?"
"No, sir."
"Then I can't see what the problem is. Ignore them. And maybe clean up after yourselves after lunch? I'm talking to you, Aarden!"
Pierre finished the interrupted lecture before continuing to patrol, looking for evidence of sloth or worse. Out of curiosity, he checked the common area for insects. As Olivia had said, the area was unusually buggy—more so than normal. He made a mental note to have the next few slackers he found clean it, but otherwise paid the insects no heed. What craven fool would be afraid of bugs?
