Ch26: Break.
(Sat, Y+1, M+4, D+4)
"Hey Dad! Weeeer'reeee baaaaaacccckkkkkk!" I proclaim, opening the door to our house and walking inside, my sisters trailing behind me.
We are greeted by an overjoyed yipping corgi.
"ZWEI!" Ruby shouts, zipping inside and picking up the dog, hugging him and laughing as he happily licked her face in greeting.
"Hey! Dad! You home!?" Yang shouts, as we notice the conspicuous absence of our father.
"Where is he?" I ask, walking into the kitchen, seeing a note taped to the door of the refrigerator. "I found something!" I shout.
Soon Ruby, Zwei and Yang are in the room with me, looking over my shoulder.
I read the note out loud. "Will be in meeting at Signal until four. Remember to feed Zwei."
"What time is it?" Ruby asks.
"Three-forty. Why must you two always ask me for the time?"
"Because you've got a watch."
"You two really need to wear watches. Anyway, I'll be in my room." I say, walking off with my duffel bag. 'Sure is nice to be back here.'
[Four thirty-ish.]
"Hey kids! Sorry I'm late!" I hear dad shout.
We all soon gathered in the family room.
"What took you so long dad?" I ask, laying back in a reclining chair.
"Meeting went overtime."
"What was it about?"
"Just increased Grimm activity in Forever Fall. Qrow got sent out to join a team of novice huntsmen and make sure they get back in one piece."
"Awwww. I wanted to see uncle Qrow. We haven't seen him for months." Ruby pouts.
"And I haven't met him at all." I say, as I had been busy getting the snot beat out of me by Nora and Ren the day Qrow came to visit. He'd been busy with teaching for most of the year.
"How long should the mission last?" I ask.
"A couple of weeks. They're being very thorough, Forever Fall is much too close for comfort."
"I should hope so." I say.
"I heard you kids stopped a robbery a couple of weeks ago. Nice job."
"Actually that was Ruby, Kurt and a few friends of ours. Weiss and I didn't get there in time." Yang says.
"Actually, Kurt probably did the best of all of us. He took down five Bullheads." Ruby says a bit abashed.
"Five?" Dad asks, impressed.
"Yep. Two with a big gun and three with these." I say a knife in each hand.
"You took out three Bullheads with a pair of knives." Dad says, surprised.
"Considering the fact that I can teleport anywhere I want to instantaneously, it's actually not all that hard." I say honestly.
We talk for a few more hours about our various experiences at Beacon and our team.
"Well, I guess it's time to head in for the night." Dad says, looking out the window to the darkened world beyond.
I make my way to my room and dad follows me. when I sit down on my bed, he sit next to me.
"I also heard what you had to do at the docks." He says quietly. "It didn't feel good, did it?" He asks.
"It still doesn't. I had nightmares for just over a week. I still have them occasionally. It doesn't get any easier does it?" I ask Dad.
"No. Not really. The first one always haunts you. And so does the second. And the third. It still isn't easy." He says, staring off into space.
I nod. "Do you still remember?" I ask.
"Like it was yesterday."
"I guess I should really get to sleep soon." I say.
"Don't dwell on it too much. You did what you did and there's no changing it." He says with finality.
I don't respond, I just close the door and change into a tee-shirt and gym shorts. I turn on my scroll and set my music to shuffle.
I fall asleep to When You're Evil by Voltaire.
(Sun, Y+1, M+4, D+5)
It was midday and I was wandering around Vale, we had decided to go to Vale and just spend a day relaxing. Nothing to do, nowhere to be. Just going where we may.
"Hello Mister Wagner. I'm Cyril Ian with the Vale News Network and I would like to talk to you about the incident a couple of weeks ago near the docks." The reporter walks up to me with a cameraman and sticks a microphone in my face.
"Well first of all I would like to tell you what I told your colleagues last week: if you want information, look at the police report. I have nothing to say about the incident that night that the report cannot provide in greater detail."
"But we would like to know how you fee-" The reporter says.
"How I feel? How I feel about jumping in front of an explosive fired by a man trying to kill my little sister? How I feel about watching my life flash before my eyes as I wondered whether my combat armor would stop a bullet with my name on it, with almost no Aura to help absorb the impact?" I say agitated, rapping on the chestplate that saved my life. "How I feel about pulling the trigger and ending a man's life a split second later?' I say, getting angry. "The answer is that the people who could understand what I felt don't need me to explain what I felt, because they've felt it too." I say much more calmly. "Have a nice day." I say, turning on my heel and walking away, a bit irritated. "Bastad." I mutter under my breath, leaving the reporter and his cameraman far behind me.
A few blocks later, I was standing in front of Tukson's shop.
"Hey Tuckson." I say, walking in.
"How're you doing Kurt?"
"Not bad. Just a bit annoyed."
"What happened?"
"Reporters. You'd think after two weeks they'd either forget or move on."
"Why don't they bother the others?" The owner asks as I pick out a random book and flip through it.
"Because one of them can almost break the sound barrier and they can't find the other two."
"Why don't you just teleport away?"
"I don't want to telegraph my abilities that much."
"Well then I guess that makes you fair game."
"I guess it does." I say, putting the book back and flipping through another.
For the next hour or so we talked back and forth as I flipped through random books.
"And here's the change." Tuckson says, as I tuck my purchase into my greatcoat. "When'd you start wearing combat armor?"
"Week or so ago. I figure it's better to not need it and have it than need it and not have it." I say, shrugging.
"Where did you get it?"
"Made it myself. Top-spec, all of the fun little gadgets I could stuff into it. And quite durable too." I rap my knuckles against my breastplate for emphasis. "When're you planning on getting out?"
"Next Monday."
"Try Sunday." I said. "Monday's the 13th. Doesn't feel right."
""Allriight then." He says.
"Well, see you around." I say, leaving the store. "Good luck comrade." I say under my breath, remembering Tukson's fate in the show.
(Sat, Y+1, M+4, D+11)
"You're late again Dad. I say, as he walks in with a look of pure anguish on his face. "What's wrong." I ask quickly, a bit scared. I'd never seen him like that before.
"It's Qrow. His team hasn't called in for four days. They've declared them missing and presumed dead." He manages, in a state of shock.
"Just sit down. I'll get you something." I say, quickly searching the house and finding Zwei, quickly picking him up and almost shoving him onto Dad's lap. "This should help you calm down a bit." I say, sitting down in a chair across from him.
"I can't lose another one. I just can't." He sobs.
"Just calm down Dad. They're never dead until they find a body." I say, trying to at least get him presentable before-
"DAD!" I hear, a red blur zipping in. I grab her by the hood and drag her back, setting her into a chair.
"YANG!" I shout, placing a finger over my lips to tell ruby to stay quiet.
Yang runs in. "Hey! Dad's back!" she says. I mime for quiet. "What happened." She immediately gets that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
"Qrow's team hasn't checked in for four days and they've been declared missing presumed dead." I tell the sisters, who immediately break down. Yang just stares into the distance and Ruby won't stop crying. "This is going to be a long night." I say, going to the kitchen to make three cups of whatever tea we had and a large pot of coffee for me.
(Sun, Y+1, M+4, D+12)
"Well Tuckson, I'll try to catch up with you if I'm ever in Vacuo. good luck pal." I say, standing at the inter-kingdom terminal in the Vale Airport. I shake the faunus' hand, giving him a slip of paper with my scroll number. "If you have anything you need to tell me or need any help, I'll do everything in my power to help."
"Thanks Kurt. By the way, I heard something about a base of operations in Forever Fall. They said that they captured a group of hunters searching the area a few days ago."
"Where is the base?" I ask.
"Somewhere near the coast. That's all I know."
"Thanks. See you around sometime." i say, touching two fingers to my brow in my signature goodbye as we part ways.
"This means war." I say to nobody in particular as I make my way back home.
[About an hour later.]
"Dad. I'll be going back to Beacon a bit early. I have a few things to take care of." I say. I hear the news playing in the background.
[Half an hour later.]
I stare down my iron sights at the mook standing guard over the White Fang storehouse, from the intel I'd gathered, it was one of the largest in Vale. Time to get answers.
"Sorry pal. You've just got bad luck." I say, squeezing the trigger. The mook drops, a round through his shoulder disabling him and the shock knocking him unconscious. I work the bolt and feed a new round into the chamber.
I jump from my perch on a nearby warehouse and hit the ground running, slinging my bolt-action rifle over my shoulder and barrelling through the storehouse's door like it doesn't exist.
In a couple of minutes, the other seven mooks in the building are bound, bandaged and lined up near a wall unconscious. I search the building for anything of intel value and toss it all into a large shipping container, along with Dust, any interesting weapons I can find, ammo, and various supplies of value. When the container is full, I bamf to The Cave with my spoils and decide to bamf back to the storehouse to search the rest.
when I get back, I open one large shipping container to find a beautiful sight: old combat androids, the models without integrated weapons. A good thirty or so are packed into the container.
"Score!" I say, my voice deepened by the voice distorter under my white balaclava. I bamf the crate to The Cave and keep searching. The next two containers are also full of androids, I take those too along with a container of weapons with which to arm them. 'Where do they get all this stuff? Probably steal it from dust companies.'
When I return for a final check, I hear a groaning noise come from one of the containers. 'What?' I think, confused. I open the container carefully. 'Mein gott. Nein. Nein.' "Schwien." I say, staring at a scene straight out of history.
Men and women shackled to the floor, beaten to within a millimeter of life, all suffering from various stages of malnutrition. I look at the doors of the crate, they read: For offsite facility FF-1.
I look across the vast storehouse to where I lined up the White Fang mooks. I walk to one of the weapon crates, pick up an AR, and slide a magazine into the weapon. I walk over to the mooks, all conscious by now. I drag them onto their knees, their backs a yard from the wall.
I bring up the AR and press the barrel into the forehead of the first in line and pull the trigger, splattering his brains across the wall. The other mooks beg for mercy. Mercy that only one receives. The first mook that I shot I leave alive, at the end of a row of seven headless bodies. I toss the AR aside, walking to the opposite corner of the storehouse and walking to the shipping container from Hell. I open the door and look inside.
"Soon you will be free." I say to them, as they stare at me in terror. I walk outside to a deserted alley and bamf to The Cave, to go over the spoils of my raid and hopefully forget what I'd seen.