CNBR Chapter 2:

"So who else is joining us?" Reese asked around a mouthful of noodles. The Cove's mess hall offered a surprising amount of variety for a military installation thanks to the amount of huntsman and third-party consultants that passed through the base. Coco held up a finger as she chewed her food.

"I'm eager to find that out myself," she said after a moment. "I made several recommendations but they all got turned down. Stonebridge and the others apparently have a very specific idea of who they want to bring in."

Reese made a face. "Seriously? You don't know what we're after, you don't know who's coming with us, and you don't know who's causing all this trouble. I thought you were the conductor of our little party train."

Coco set her utensils down with a loud 'CLINK' and gave Reese a hard look. Reese bit her lip to keep from snickering at Coco's reaction.

"I may be in charge, but even conductors have bosses," Coco said in a measured tone. "We've actually got an idea of who might be doing this, but I want to wait for the other two to arrive to discuss that. In the meantime, you can work on paring down that ridiculous amount of gear you brought into an amount you can actually carry with you."

Reese held her hands up. "Hey, no one told me what I'd be doing, so I brought stuff I was picky about and some things Vale might not be willing to share. I'll just bring my most versatile tools and anything else useful that I can carry. Of course, it's more difficult to prioritize if I don't know the mission parameters."

Coco sighed pinching her temples. "Alright. Some villages in the southwest have been attacked over the last two months. The White Fang has periodically raided them in the past, so normally we'd treat it like any low-level Fang or bandit activity: send the least important team capable of handling the situation once we worked through more critical missions. But there's something unsettling about these attacks that made Vale leadership concerned."

"Unsettling?" Reese asked. Coco leaned across the table and Reese mirrored the movement.

"A couple villages were completely slaughtered, a no-prisoners affair like a bandit attack. One was a complete ghost town; everything left untouched, from laundry on the lines, to food in the ovens. No signs of struggle, no locked doors, not even spent shell casings from a dust weapon. Everyone just gone. News from villages that are still intact in the region mention weird things happening that Vale would normally disregard, except that one of those things is an unusually high amount of disappearances."

"You think it was some new kind of grimm?" Reese asked, quiet.

Coco shook her head. "I've seen some weird stuff since deciding to become a huntress, and this is royally creepy, but I think that whatever this is, it's human—or faunus; either way these attacks left the buildings untouched for the most part. Grimm lack that subtlety. We think bandits or a group of White Fang got their hands on some sort of new weapon or armor, and they're testing it in the remote corners of Vale; familiarizing themselves with it before they use it for anything of strategic importance. This horror movie crap they're doing is just a way to conceal their numbers and keep people from figuring out their motives."

Reese rubbed her chin, looking thoughtful. "If it's some new tech that explains why they wanted me along."

Coco raised an eyebrow. "Why, do you fight ghosts in your spare time?"

Reese shook her head. "No. I like fighting, but I'm not really good at it. But give me some tools and enough time, and I can make damn near anything you want if it runs on dust."

Coco straightened up, comprehension spreading across her face. "So that's what Arslan meant by 'dust engineer'."

Reese grinned. "Right. I'm not sure if it's a low-key semblance or just the way my brain works, but dust tech just instinctually makes sense to me. I'm not a programmer, and I can't build anything major like aircraft or an Atlesian Paladin, but I can make things like personal dust weaponry, medium-sized generators, sensors, and some other nifty stuff." She patted the hoverboard leaning against the bench she sat on.

"You got any other tricks?" Coco asked.

"I can backwards engineer things more sophisticated than what I can design from scratch. Not well enough to replicate them, but enough to understand the basics of how they work or make some minor functional changes."

"Could you hack some Atlesian Knights?"

"Not if they're already attacking like at Beacon. But give me a deactivated one and I could upgrade its weapons, maybe rewire the IFF system—though the one time I tried that, it didn't go so well."

Coco gave her an amused look. "Your talents sound out of place on Team ABRN."

"Ugh, tell me about it," Reese said leaning back. "Arslan doesn't trust anything that needs ammo, and Bolin thinks he's so damn cool running around with a bo staff. It's like pulling teeth trying to get them to upgrade their gear."

Coco snorted. "Easy, killer." She stood and stretched, leaning to one side until her neck popped.

"Let me show you where we put your stuff."

…

After leaving the mess hall they walked to a small hangar across the base from the command building, arriving at a nondescript side door. Coco pressed her palm to a digital pad set into the wall next to the door. The door slid open without a sound and they walked in.

"After they moved your gear in, this placed got keyed to the three big wigs and our team members. No one goes in or out without someone directly involved in the mission knowing."

Inside, crates stacked three high and several rows deep bordered the room. A pegboard with a vast array of tools lined the back wall along with a few workbenches. In the center of the room, a matte black bullhead sat like a squat but menacing raven. Reese's crates sat apart from the Vale military ones, sitting in the shadow of the bullhead's tail.

"I thought you said we were travelling light," Reese said, scanning the room.

"We are, but Dr. Rouge thought it best to keep everything in a larger storage building; hide everything in plain sight. A fraction of a fraction of this is actually coming with us."

Reese snorted. "Whatever. But when we get out there, I better not find an extra bag with your fall wardrobe becau-UMMPPHH!"

Coco clamped a hand over Reese's mouth and dragged her behind one of the stacks of crates. She locked eyes with Reese, raising a finger to her lips. They exchanged nods, Coco let go of her, and they pressed their backs against the crates. Reese gave Coco a bewildered look.

"What's wrong?" she whispered.

"I heard someone," Coco hissed back. "Stonebridge, Sylva, and Dr. Rouge are the only other people who have access right now, we've got a break-in."

"How do you know it's not them?"

"They all have places to be this time of night. Besides, listen:"

Reese cocked her ear towards the center of the hangar. At first she couldn't hear it, but then the sound grew louder. Footsteps crossed the floor towards their side of the hangar, moving towards a spot about half the length of a bullhead down the row of crates they were hiding behind. Over the footsteps, someone was humming.

Reese gave Coco a flat look. "I doubt that an intruder would be stupid enough to hum while they were sneaking around."

"You're telling me you've never fought anyone dumber than your teammates? Besides, do you really think any of our superiors are the humming type?"

Reese raised a finger in protest, then lowered it. "Okay then, what's the plan?"

"I don't want to open fire in here because a stray round could hit the bullhead or one of the crates of dust, but I can use my gun in melee when it's compact, and I saw how you used your board in your match against Team RWBY. We sneak close to whoever this is, I'll come at them around the side of a crate and you go over the top. If anything bad happens, I'll hold them here while you go for backup."

"What's the signal for jumping them?"

Coco drew one of the dust rounds out of her belt then pantomimed tossing it underhand. Reese nodded.

"Gotcha, lead on."

Coco and Reese moved behind the crates as quick as they could without making a sound. They stopped opposite the intruder, the humming now accompanying the sound of rummaging through a container. Coco boosted Reese so she could scale the stack of crates, then edged into a gap in the front row. Reese inched to the edge of her perch, pricking up her ears. A few moments later, she heard a pinging noise as the dust round bounced across the hangar. She heard the intruder shift to look towards the round and pounced.

"SURPRISE MOTHE—"

A hand caught Reese's boot as she leapt down and yanked her out of her initial trajectory, swinging her into Coco as she came around the corner. The blow sent Coco flying, landing on her back several feet away. The intruder spun, swinging Reese into a crate and knocking the wind out of her. Before she could react, the intruder hefted Reese by her collar and shoved her against the stack of crates glaring at her. Reese froze, her vision filled with orange.

Coco got to her feet, grabbed her gun, and then stopped. Her jaw dropped open.

"Nora?"

The redhead turned to look at Coco, and her expression quickly cycled from grimacing to smiling to mortified shock.

"Coco!" she said, dropping Reese. "I'm so sorry! Are you okay?"

"I'm…confused," Coco said. "How did you get in here, Valkyrie?"

Nora cocked her head, looking at her like she was trying to figure out if Coco had a head injury. "I used the door?"

"Right, but that door was secured by a handprint lock, which…" Coco trailed off, making the connection. "You're part of the special recon team?"

"Yep!" Nora chirped.

"No! I can't believe this, this is, this is—"

Reese climbed to her feet, massaging her shoulder from where it had hit Coco. She looked between Coco failing to process this new development and Nora frowning at her reaction. Reese clutched her head as it started to throb in sync with her shoulder.

"I have no clue what's going on. Why is this a problem?"

"Yeah!" said Nora. "I mean I know we didn't spend a lot of time together at Beacon, but we've seen each other fight."

"Nora," Coco said, taking a deep breath to steady herself. "I respect your abilities as a huntress. Pound for pound, I think you're one of the toughest students out of Beacon. But this is supposed to be a stealth mission, and words like 'sneaky' and 'quiet' aren't exactly what springs to mind when someone mentions you."

"Oh," Nora said, brightening. "The whole stealth thing! It's not my favorite approach, but don't you worry, I can adapt to the mission."

Reese flinched at the volume of Nora's voice. "No offense, but I'm skeptical."

"The Councilor thought you might say that! He said if I laid low for a while after getting here, I could demonstrate just how sneaky I can be. I almost made it three days, but I guess my luck finally ran out."

"You've been here for three days?" Coco asked, frustration creeping into her voice.

"I didn't miss a whole lot," Nora said, waving a hand. "Mostly it was you working out, sleeping, and checking in with the rest of Team CFVY on your scroll."

A sheepish look crossed Nora's face and her cheeks reddened. "Don't worry, whenever the conversations started getting…personal, I left the room or put on my headphones. I have no idea who was on the other end of the line for those conversations."

Reese glanced at Coco. The brown-haired girl looked like she couldn't decide between murdering someone and setting herself on fire. A strange quavering sound creaked out of her mouth, resolving into a growl as it grew louder. Before she could burst Reese stepped between the two, facing Nora.

"So, Nora," Reese said, mentally grasping for any topic change. She remembered the girl now, recalling the Vytal festival and the battle of Beacon afterwards, but she struggled for details beyond watching her fight. All she could recall were Nora's weapon, her semblance, her team—

"Did anyone else come with you?" Reese asked. "You had that one guy on your team who dodged sniper fire. If he's coming, we're going to kick some serious ass."

Nora didn't lose her enthusiasm, but it dulled just a little. "No, it's just me."

"Really?" Coco asked. "Not even Ren?"

Reese froze, a feeling of unease rippling from her stomach out to the ends of her limbs. Coco had almost burst with anger moments ago, but all that emotion was gone now, replaced with a calm, but intense curiosity. If the sudden shift in her mood had unsettled Nora the way it had Reese, Nora didn't show it. The redhead just folded her arms and shrugged.

"They were going to visit Ruby and Yang on Patch, see if they could keep them company and if we could figure what to do next."

"Okay," Coco said, "But you guys—after Beacon—"

"Ren's a great fighter, but his stamina wouldn't cut it on this mission. And Jaune…Jaune needs a little more time before he does anything like this."

Silence fell over the room at the allusion. Reese shifted her feet. She had never directly interacted with Pyrrha Nikos but she had seen her that final night of the tournament, and every media outlet in Mistral had run a story on her passing; everything from token obits, to the retrospective of her short career in The Sporting Mistralian. Coco took off her beret, then broke the silence.

"That seems like a sound decision."

"Oh absolutely!" Nora said, changing the subject. "Do you know who our fourth team member is?"

Coco gave Nora a tight smile. "You'll know as soon as I do. Judging by how I found out about you, I'm sure it'll be just as unexpected."

…

After their encounter with Nora, Reese retrieved a few items from her crates and Coco showed her their quarters. The rooms were small, like someone had placed a single bed, a small desk, and a small closet inside a slightly bigger closet; but they were single rooms so they felt just on the cozy side of cramped.

Reese settled in, but had trouble falling asleep. The day's events looped in her head, starting with her argument with Arslan, and ending with the unusual exchange between her new teammates at the end of their encounter in the hangar. Something about it nagged at her more than the other things that had happened, keeping her roused well after she turned off the light. After dwelling on it for a while, she chalked it up to the inherent discomfort of bringing up a death that had been both extremely personal and extremely public for Nora and her friends. Reese turned on her side and closed her eyes for what felt like a few minutes. Cracking one eye open, she saw a half-hour had passed.

Sighing, she flicked the light back on and pulled on her hoodie. She drew the sheet around herself to keep warm and sat at the desk, opening a notebook. She scribbled in it for a bit, deciding which tools she would bring on the mission and drafting some design modifications to her hoverboard until her eyes grew heavy, then flopped back down on the narrow bed.

She had almost drifted off entirely when her scroll buzzed. She jerked, groaning as she reached over to her scroll. The screen read 'Coco'. Reese grumbled, but answered the call.

"Come to the hangar," Coco said. "I want to talk to you about upgrading my gun."

"It's past midnight, your gun will be there tomorrow."

"We've been assigned together for less than twenty-four hours, do you really want to argue with me this soon?"

Reese let out an exasperated sigh. "I'm coming."

She ended the call, grabbed her notebook, and walked down the hall. Everything was silent except for the low hum of the lights overhead and some loud snores as she passed by Nora's room. She found Coco standing by the pegboard in the back of the hangar, dressed in sweats and a tank top, her hair pulled back with a strip of cloth. Her minigun sat on a workbench, the inner workings exposed, as she applied oil from a can to the machinery within. Reese suppressed a smirk. Even getting her hands dirty, Coco looked more like a publicity image of a huntress than the genuine article.

Coco pulled one of the triggers. The entire barrel assembly spun, making a whirring sound, and Reese's snark disappeared. The sound relaxed her the same way stuffy classical music always relaxed Arslan. She leaned against the wall, arms folded, smiling at the rotating barrels.

"You sure you need my help for this?" she asked, raising her voice slightly.

Coco looked up, letting go of the trigger. "I can maintain Belle Mort just fine. Designing changes is another story. Anything beyond a rough sketch of modifications, I defer to the experts. I don't trust myself with engineering or implementation."

"What did you have in mind?"

"When I watched your match against Team RWBY back in the tournament, I saw how you switched your board's elemental effect with that dust crystal. I'd like you to modify my gun to use elemental effects without switching drums or using designated elemental ammunition. Is that possible?"

"It might be complex, but I could do it." Reese walked towards the gun, peering into its innards. Coco pulled her back.

"You don't have to do that just yet."

"Seriously? You dragged me out of bed, and now you don't want me to evaluate your weapon?"

"You can if you want." Coco lowered her voice. "I asked you here because I need to talk to you, and discussing weapon upgrades is a good excuse if people ask what we're doing."

Coco's face grew serious, but it wasn't her usual commanding look. There was an earnest element to it, like she was concealing some deep-seated uncertainty or nervousness.

"After we ran into Nora, I patched things over with her; we're good now. Then I talked to Stonebridge—angrily. Told him I didn't appreciate how they withhold information to a degree I feel jeopardizes our ability to prepare for this mission, and asked why we're bringing the most trigger-happy huntress I've ever met on a recon mission."

"What did he say?" Reese asked.

"He said he wanted Nora to go because the big wigs all agreed that they needed someone who—in his words—they knew could 'take a punch'. Truthfully, I'm glad she's with us if things don't go according to plan. I'm tough, but Nora makes me look like a china doll. The thing that concerns me is that if they want that much force, then they really don't want to leave anything to chance—which means that you need to be committed. Have you been having any second thoughts?"

Reese shuffled. "Maybe," she said. "This whole assignment got weird fast."

"Like we said earlier, since you're on loan from Haven you can still drop out at this phase. But the fact that Mistral's ambassador agreed to help Vale suggests they think whatever we're after could potentially affect Mistral as well. If you leave, we'll be losing the only person who can examine whatever weird science is going on in Vale's far reaches. I need you on this, but I am far from the only person who does. Are you with us?"

Coco held out her hand. Reese looked at it, contemplating Coco's words. She thought of chucking empty cans off a rooftop with idiot Bolin, sneaking into bars and watching Nadir attempt to flirt with every girl in Mistral, and Arslan's mostly failed endeavors to culture ABRN. If something happened to Mistral they could probably handle themselves; but their families, their homes?

Reese grasped Coco's hand and shook it. "I'm with you."

"Good!" she said, withdrawing her hand. She began to put away the tools.

"If it makes you feel better, our leaders are pretty risk-averse. If they thought there was a high chance of heavy resistance, they'd be sending more than just the four of us."

"Four? We have our last team member?"

"Stonebridge was frustratingly coy again, but he said we've got our fourth. They'll be meeting us close to departure apparently—which, by the way, is in five days. So you should probably get started on the modifications." Coco hung the last wrench up and wiped her hands on a greasy rag.

"I thought you said this could wait!" Reese said.

"I did, but we're done talking." She gave Reese a playful punch on the shoulder as she walked out. "Clock's ticking, Chloris!"

Reese grumbled alone in the massive room, her shoulders slumped. Then she straightened up, grabbing a few hand tools from the pegboard. She began poking through Belle Mort's internals.

Not like I'm going to fall back asleep anytime soon, she thought.