A.N. (2/20/23) - Short chapter today.
Atlas (5) - Reunion
The next day, Rin set out into the city for lunch.
Due to her deal with Ironwood, Rin had a room reserved for her at Atlas Academy for her to live in. While she would have preferred living in Mantle instead, due to its nature of being close to underground where wealth sprung from, she resigned herself to staying within the paranoid general's sight to appease his worries. In a way, he was also a type of Second Owner like her due to his connections and status. Because of that, Rin did not feel like challenging his authority while she remained in the city.
Atlas was located on a gigantic landmass floating in the sky, hovering above the former capital city of Mantle. A true flying island, something that would only occur in nature due to large deposits of Gravity Dust contained within the rock masses. It was a city that promoted the ambition of striving towards the future, the hopes and dreams of their Kingdom. Everything was engineered to be neat and orderly, making efficient use of the limited space on the floating island.
"Would it kill the urban planners to add a bit more color to this place?" Rin grumbled.
Arriving at her destination, Rin found a spot in front of the door and sat down on a chair. She was in her usual attire, but she regretted whether or not she should have worn something else. It was something that wouldn't seem out of place for a casual stroll down the streets, but the fact that Terra picked a fancier venue for them today made her feel underdressed.
Despite being in Atlas for several months now, this would be the first time she would be meeting with Terra since the older woman moved out of Argus. While they kept in contact with one another through calls and messages, it wasn't the same as meeting in person. So Rin found herself humming happily as she awaited the arrival of her friend while she skimmed the café menu before her.
To her embarrassment, she was so caught up in reading about the specialty deserts that she barely heard the sound of somebody coughing to catch her attention.
"Ahem."
"Huh?" Rin looked up in surprise, before furiously blushing as she realized who was standing before her. "O-Oh, you're here. Guess I was lost in my thoughts."
"That's so like you." Terra smiled and sat down. "It's nice to see you again."
"Likewise. I know it's my fault for not seeking you out before, but I know you're busy with your new job."
"It's alright. I'm just glad we get to meet again after all these months."
"Has it been that long? I guess that's what happens when you're working for one of the top scientists of Atlas." Rin reminded herself to keep quiet about her usual cover story of working for Pietro since Terra would be one of the few people to realize that it was untrue. "So I know I was the one to call you first, but you made it sound urgent when you invited me to lunch today. Is there something you want to talk about?"
Terra started to speak but paused as a waiter came to them to take their orders. Rin spoke first and waited for her table partner to also pick something before their order concluded. Once the waiter left, Terra seemed to think over what to say while Rin waited patiently for her to speak.
"To be honest, I don't know who else I can talk to about this. But if there's anything I learned from last year, it's that you're probably my best bet."
Rin frowned. "What exactly is the problem?"
"Do you know what my current job position is?"
"Not really. I know that you're one of the assistants that supports Doctor Polendina, although I'm not sure what that entails."
"Basically, I'm part of a team that's assigned to whatever project Atlas prioritizes at the moment. For the past few weeks, that's been the maintenance of Amity Arena and the software that controls it. What that means is that I've been spending a lot of time commuting between my workplace and the arena to fix whatever issue crops up. That's only possible since Amity is currently parked on Atlas instead of Mantle for the time being." Rin nodded as Terra continued. "Yesterday, one of the maintenance staff reported a break-in. During one of his rounds, he witnessed someone leaving one of the restricted section's emergency exits where the intruder managed to escape capture by security."
"Restricted section?"
"That's the part where you can't physically enter unless your clearance level is high enough to bypass the gates. Usually, that means people like me or other technicians, not janitorial staff. You recall the CCT incident with the staff Scrolls, right? It's a similar system there. Thing is, that means that only a few people are authorized to enter the place and there aren't many ways to trick the system."
"Are you under suspicion of abetting the intruder?"
"What?" She seemed surprised by the question. "No, of course not. The intruder managed to disable the entire system, but only after he or she entered the restricted section and accessed the control room inside. Only someone with a high clearance level or an extremely skilled hacker can do something like that. And if it wasn't for the fact that they were caught leaving, we wouldn't even have noticed that anything happened."
"What exactly did the intruder do?"
"That's the million lien question, isn't it? Although the cameras were shut down, we know they were in there for at least an hour or two. Nothing was stolen and none of the terminals have been touched. No bombs have been planted, and Atlas checked for evidence if the White Fang were involved or not. As far as we know, the intruder came in and out of the restricted section without doing anything."
"You don't believe that."
"I'm pretty sure nobody believes that's what happened. But we've combed over everything and nothing has turned up. All we know about the intruder is from the janitor's testimony, that they were dressed in black from head to toe and left quickly before anybody else could catch them. Which would make sense if they entered during the middle of the night, but it was late afternoon when the intruder was seen."
"Late afternoon?"
That caught Rin's attention as she recalled exactly what else happened yesterday around the same time. Was it a coincidence that an intruder broke into Amity Colosseum right as another group of mercenaries broke into a secured Atlas facility outside the city? Not to mention that General Ironwood did not speak of this incident during their conversation. Did he not hear about it until later, or did he intentionally keep quiet about the matter from her?
Their food arrived while she was deep in thought, and the conversation was paused as they both took a break to eat. Still, Rin was distracted as she continued to ponder the possibility that yesterday's events were related to this incident or not.
"Why are you telling me this?"
Terra bit her lip. "I can't say for certain, but someone I know thinks that this might be a prelude to something bigger. Do you remember the group of huntresses that saved me when I was kidnapped? Their leader, Robyn Hill, was called in to assist with authenticating the witness testimony. Yesterday, we had a chance to speak with one another when I tried to thank her for back then…" Her face flushed. "A-Anyway, she told me her suspicions that this might be related to one of the mob bosses in Atlas. Recently, she's been keeping track of someone named Amoncio Glass due to a theory that he might have been one of the members of the former Allies of Humanity before it disbanded."
The Allies of Humanity. On the surface, it was a human supremacist group that dealt with faunus trafficking by kidnapping poor and homeless individuals and shipping them across the world. In truth, it was a scapegoat that was set up by Merlot to divert attention away from his experiments on faunus test subjects. During the Merlot incident, most of the organization had been taken out by a combined effort between Atlas and Mistral. However, it was inevitable that a few members would slip through the cracks and escape capture.
The older woman continued talking. "Although Robyn was unable to find any evidence that he had ties to Merlot, she did notice that he and his men have been very interested in the operations of Amity recently."
"You think he sent someone to break into Amity?"
"Maybe. The problem is that Amoncio might have caught wind that somebody is onto his plans, so Robyn and her friends have been running into a lot of roadblocks lately. He's been hiding from the public eye recently, so there's not much of an opportunity to spy on him. However, they did manage to figure out that he plans to make an appearance at the upcoming Schnee gala."
"I thought you said that he was a mob boss."
She scowled. "Apparently, he has enough pull with law enforcement so that he's pretty much untouchable by the law. Officially, he's just another member of the Atlas elite with legitimate business operations placed across the entire city. Either way, Amoncio is definitely going to show up at the gala, if only because he plans to smarm his way into making business deals with other high society elites."
"You know, Terra. When I invited you to join me to attend the gala, investigating a crime boss was not exactly what I had planned in mind." Rin's unimpressed look caused Terra to fidget in her seat. "Why exactly are you involving yourself in something dangerous like this? And please don't tell me it's because of your hero crush on Robyn."
"I-It's not like that!" Terra denied. "The reason I want to look into him is that Robyn thinks that he might have been the one behind the faunus kidnappings in Mantle months ago. I can still remember the faces of all the children that you rescued back then. If you hadn't found them, they would have suffered the fate of becoming part of Merlot's twisted experiments."
The older woman might not have intended it, but Rin felt a pang of guilt as she recalled her own involvement in Merlot's research. Had she not researched deeply into the essence of Grimm, Merlot would not have been incentivized to capture so many people to experiment on them. The kidnappings, the attack on Argus, the Greem—all of that was partially her fault as well.
Rin slowly started to meditate, her breathing falling into a steady rhythm as she took control of her emotions. Since her surgery, the Mystic Eye made it easy for her mental state to fall into turmoil. Although defensive meditation was one of the fundamental skills for a magus, it was not always enough to prevent a wave of emotions from overwhelming her.
A few seconds passed before she finally calmed down.
"Do you have a plan for when you meet Amoncio at the gala?"
"One of Robyn's teammates has a Semblance that helps them become invisible. I know this is a lot to ask for, but can you help them sneak into the gala to spy on Amoncio and see if he says anything incriminating? At the very least, they can tail him once he leaves the party and follow him to his hideout later."
"This kinda seems like a gamble…"
"That's because the situation is urgent due to how close the deadline for the Amity launch is. Robyn and her team aren't working with the law this time, they need to get results fast before Amoncio does something to jeopardize the launch."
Honestly, Rin had her doubts that anything big was going to happen. Since there was no mention of any major events like this prior to the main storyline, it was unlikely that things would go as Terra feared. Still, she thought the same thing once when she first got involved with Merlot. If her actions caused another ripple effect that cascades into a series of events leading to another incident, maybe she should do something.
"Fine. It would probably be best to hash things out with the others first, but I'll help Robyn and her team out."
"Great." Terra smiled. "With this, I feel like I can repay my favor to them for saving me."
"By that logic, you owe me one as well. On an unrelated note, should I speak to Saphron about who you've been meeting lately? They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it seems that your heart is veering instead."
"N-No, please. That's a misunderstanding…"
The conversation soon shifted to other mundane topics as they caught up with one another. For now, they could move on from the prior discussion as they reaffirmed their friendship with one another.
A prelude to the next event that Rin has to face. This chapter is a bit shorter than usual since I'm getting back into the flow of writing. Don't worry, the plot should pick up soon starting next chapter.
I'm thinking of trying to stick to a set release schedule and posting twice weekly on Mondays and Fridays. It's been a while since I tried going with a deadline, but I want to see if I can keep to it while I write the rest of the Atlas arc.
