The Name of the Game

a RWBY/The Gamer crossover, SI.

Arc 4: Bad Blood

Chapter 13: Gangland

Watching Miltia massage the side of her jaw, I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. "Is it that bad?"

"You try keeping your mouth open for that long," she shot back before a thoughtful look crossed her face. "No, I suppose you do, between the three of us maybe longer."

Smiling, I reached out and stroked the side of her face, casting a quiet Heal. Almost reflexively, she turned her head slightly to press further into my touch. "Better?"

The red-clad twin nodded. "Much, thank you."

Turning my attention to Neo, where she sat atop a table in what passed as a meeting room in the lower floor of the building where I'd found Roman, I asked, "You're sure they'll be here?"

Looking up from her scroll, Neo twirled the unfurled parasol/umbrella that was her weapon in one hand. "After the scare Emerald and I gave them? Yeah, they're coming. We've still got an hour or so to go. Just relax, they'll start trickling in soon."

'Soon' turned out to be five minutes before the deadline as a group of ten men and two women all made their way in at the same time, telling me they had coordinated their arrival. Neo hopped down off her table and I asked her, "Is this it?"

"Everyone that didn't split and isn't on loan from Junior," she agreed with a nod that sent neopolitan colored hair shifting atop her head.

"So, this is the new guy? He doesn't look tough," the largest of the mooks asked and my eyes tracked to the top of his head: Jim Bean, level 15—I recognized him as the man who had driven Roman and myself to the airport. The others were between level 8 and 10. It annoyed me that mooks could have a higher level than a Hunter, even a hunter in training, but then I suppose that Aura was all sorts of unfair if it put someone like Jun above them by virtue of being able to use hers even if her level was technically lower. It was like the level difference between grimm and myself—all of the cannon fodder grimm I'd killed to date had been higher level than me, yes, but without special skills they might as well not even put up a fight.

In a way, it was disappointing. In another way, I had the eerie sense of always waiting for the other shoe to drop where grimm were concerned… I realized that, around Vale, other Hunters mostly kept things cleared out. That meant that the grimm I had been killing off recently were nothing but leftover trash or were so new they hadn't fully crossed over into the real world. How much stronger were grimm that weren't fresh off the boat, so to speak? 'Figure it out later. Deal with this now.'

Instead of answering Jim verbally, I pushed off the table I'd been leaning against and moved to stand in front of the big guy. At 6'3", I was actually slightly taller than him when I stood to my full height—at least, with the boots. By comparison, the man was about twice as wide as me, with the sort of muscle mass I'd expect from a professional boxer—or leg-breaker. My hand streaked out, punching him in the gut and doubling him over my fist. He gasped and sucked air down and I stepped back, waiting. The moment he stood, his fist streaked out and impacted my face—doing exactly five damage to my mana, seeing as I had my buffs running. I blinked, eyes locking with his over my mask. "Good enough?"

The mook grinned, pulling his fist back and offering his hand to shake. "Good enough. The old boss never could take a hit."

Shaking Jim's hand, I regarded the group gathered before us. "So, as Jimmy here kindly pointed out, I'm the new guy. I'll be taking over where Roman left off. First order of business: no more drugs. We don't need that kind of heat from the cops in the long term."

"We pay the cops," another mook pointed out, and I didn't bother reading his name before replying.

"And eventually that stops being enough or someone new comes in who isn't on the payroll. I want it gone. Clean it out and burn it safely. I want no evidence leading back to us on this. Understood?" I asked, getting a round of nods. "Second order of business: in order to make up for the loss in revenue, we're going to be expanding. Girls?"

That was the twins' cue as they took up places to either side of a large map of Vale we'd stuck up on the wall. The map itself was laminated and covered in lines of dry erase marker, delineating territory the girls knew of—which was most of it. Combined with data from my map, which now had color filters for territory, we had been able to make an accurate map of Vale's gang territories. "We are here," Melanie began, highlighting the section of the map where our current base of operations resided with the laser pointer in her hand. "In the past day, half our territory has become contested with the news of Roman's arrest as the other gangs attempt to move in. However, as you can see, all of that territory is bordered by territory belonging to the Red Hand—even if it's not all the Red Hand causing trouble."

"If we take the Red Hand, we can use their numbers and territory as a buffer zone against the other groups. The best course of action is likely going to be a surgical strike, here," Miltia circled an area in the Residential District, fairly close to our own apartment. "The leader of the Red Hand, 'Akamaru' as he calls himself, makes his home here—it's also his primary offices and, as such, is heavily defended against massed attacks. Like most crime bosses, Akamaru has several former Hunters or people who flunked out of the academies in his employ—but there's only one we really need to worry about."

Melanie took up where Miltia paused, shifting her pointer to one of the many photographs the twins had collected over the last few hours. This was all new information to me, however, as I had been busily adding what my map told me to the physical map. "Howling Palm is Akamaru's primary enforcer and bodyguard. Unfortunately, we have no photographs of him or even an actual name, though we do have most of the rest of their upper command structure and at least some basics. As the nom de guerre implies, he's a wolf Faunus who specializes in hand-to-hand combat. He's one of the smart ones who realized that being a Hunter was a losing game and decided to join a gang—beyond that, as I said, we don't honestly have much on him."

"Not that it's going to matter," I pointed out, to which the twins nodded.

"Okay, so we're cutting the head off the snake. How are we getting in if this place is so well-guarded?" Jimmy asked and the four of us turned our collective gazes on him and the men and women behind him, where his sentiment was echoed. Clearly, they didn't like the idea of a suicide mission, when the numbers weren't on their side. I couldn't say I blamed them, really.

"You're not," Neo deadpanned. "We are."

Gesturing towards the map, I continued for her. "Your job is to roll through our territories and secure them one by one. Clean out or run off any assholes trying to move in and move on to the next." Grinning, I moved over to one of the other tables, this one covered with a sheet, which I pulled off to expose the pile of weapons beneath, courtesy of Roman's stash from the hangar. "The name of the game here is going to be 'overwhelming force.' Scare the shit out of anyone who doesn't belong, but make sure you let a good number of them take the option to run. The more that run, the further and faster news will spread that we've taken out the big guns and aren't playing around any longer. That should buy time and convince the other gangs it's a bad idea to move in on our turf. Ideally, I'd prefer you not kill anyone. The more people left over, the more of them we'll have to add to our own numbers later when we move into the recruitment phase. However, don't put yourselves at risk needlessly. If they're dug in or something, it may be safer to just wipe them out and move on. Also, try to limit civilian casualties if at all possible."

"This could bring the cops down on us, even worse than the drugs," Jimmy warned, and I nodded.

"Yeah, it could, in the short term—long term, it'll likely be forgotten by the end of the month. Still, that's why you're going to have air support. One of you is a pilot. Who is it?" I asked, and one of the women there raised her hand—Angel White, level 10. "Okay, good. You're in charge of Bravo team. Take four men, arm up with heavy weapons—machine guns, RPGs, and grenade launchers. Whatever you think it would take to bring down whatever the police could muster against us on short notice. There's a Bullhead parked out back. Strap in and stay on standby. Alpha team will be lead by Big Jim here," I grinned, gesturing to the man in question. "If you run across something you can't handle, call for air support or extraction if necessary. It shouldn't be necessary, but I like having contingency plans for when shit hits the fan."

"The plan sounds good, boss, but what about you? How are you all planning to get into the Red Hand's base without backup?" Jim asked, and I smirked under my mask before subvocalizing for Invisibility.

Slipping up behind the man, I pressed two fingers into the small of his back and dropped Invisibility. "I think we've got that covered."

"Fair enough," the large mook nodded and I moved back to rejoin the girls. "When do you want us to start?"

I turned to the twins, who spent a moment checking something on a scroll before answering. "Now, actually. One of our legitimate businesses is being harassed for protection money. They're the dry cleaner's just down the street. The owner's wife sent a text saying her husband is getting beaten with a bat for not agreeing to pay."

"On it," Jim acknowledged before turning to his men. "Arm up and grab ammo, we leave in one mike!"

"Former military?" I asked as an aside to Neo, who nodded.

"How'd you know?" she asked, and I shrugged.

"The way he looks, moves, and talks. Aside from that, I suppose it makes sense that we've have one or two… let me guess, Angel there is also former military?" I asked, gesturing towards our pilot.

The woman apparently heard as she took several paces closer before dropping into a quick salute before coming to parade rest. "Commander, Atlasian Navy. Honorably discharged, sir. I flew drop ships running black ops for a few years before an incident with grimm got most of my crew killed and earned me a medical discharge. My right leg is artificial, below the knee—that's where I took a Giant Nevermore's pinion."

I frowned at that, asking, "They don't provide benefits?"

The woman's face took on an annoyed look. "I'm not an invalid, sir. I'd rather be in the air and doing what I love than stuck on the ground for the rest of my life—even if that means working for someone other than the government."

Jim's group were beginning to pour out the front door. "You'd best go get prepped, then, Commander. We don't want to leave our men without CAS, do we?"

"No, sir," the woman's grin turned slightly feral as she turned on a heel and stalked out the back for the Bullhead, the crew she'd chosen following behind.

The sounds of cars starting up came from outside, followed shortly by the Bullhead's engines spooling up to idle. Turning to the twins and Neo, I grinned. "We ready?"

Neo smirked, leading us out by the back door. "I asked for them to bring a spare car for us. As much as I loved traveling by line launcher, I didn't think you could carry all of us."

"Probably not, but more for lack of ability to maneuver than exceeding the hardware's capabilities," I admitted, climbing into the black sedan, Neo taking the front passenger seat and the twins in the back. "Mm, leather seats," I hummed in appreciation as the seats conformed to my body. "This doesn't belong to anyone, does it? Or can I eat it, later?"

"I'll ask," Neo shrugged. I tilted the rearview and looked in the back seat, finding Melanie and Miltia doing something with their scrolls. Shrugging, I turned on the radio and opened my map, setting a waypoint for a parking garage near the target area.

The ride over was short and spent in companionable silence aside from the radio playing classic rock—from Earth. I still wanted to figure out how that got here, at some point. Parking the car, we got out and I drew the girls into a huddle. "Neo, if you would?"

The ice cream themed girl grinned and I felt something settle around us. "We're veiled."

"Okay. Just to make doubly sure… Party, for serious business," I began inviting the girls. Once we were partied, I began applying Invisibility to each of us. With us all in a party together, we could all see each other, or at least a sort of semi-transparent version of each other. "Let's go."

The girls followed and we made our way across the street. "Door's veiled," Neo announced and we quickly made our way inside the lobby. "And so are the guards."

"Sleep," I began, waving my hand and hitting the guards stationed in the lobby. "Where's the security room?"

"Nineteenth floor, under the penthouse, which is Akamaru's private quarters," Melanie answered.

Miltia gestured towards the elevators, "Sensors on the elevator doors and in the stairwells. There are only two security companies in Vale and both of them set things up pretty much the same way."

Nodding, I moved us to the elevator. "Create ID." One empty Instant Dungeon later, we were through the elevator doors and looking at the open shaft. "I can hit the roof from here and pull us all up. Grab on."

The twins latched onto my sides and Neo hopped up onto my back. "And this is why we took the car," she chuckled against the back of my neck.

"Yeah, I'm definitely getting you three your own line launchers," I mused aloud, firing a line up to the roof twenty floors above us and taking hold of the Illusion Barrier around us before swinging us out into the elevator shaft. Once we'd stopped swinging, I held down the winch controls and reeled us up to the entrance to the nineteenth floor. Expanding the Illusion Barrier around the door, we got them open and exited the shaft, dragging the ID with us to the door to the security room. Cutting through the door, we entered and I dropped the ID and quickly hit the three guards on monitor duty with an overpowered Sleep.

Taking a seat at one of the monitor stations, Miltia went to work while I sat at another and set about locating our target using their own security system against them. "The building is isolated. It's about what we thought—they hired someone to set up the gear, but they're doing all the monitoring themselves," Miltia surmised. "Security is disabled for the time being. Have you found Akamaru?"

"Yeah," I grinned, gesturing towards one of the monitors split into four camera feeds. "He's in his office. You didn't tell me Howling Palm was a woman."

The girls blinked, shifting their attention to where the boss had a female Faunus bent over his desk and was pounding away at her. Thankfully, the audio feed was muted. "She looks bored," Melanie pointed out.

"And his technique sucks," Neo critiqued at the white-clad twin's side.

Miltia rolled her eyes. "Not everyone can use Aura and not everyone with Aura can keep it up 24/7. Cut the guy some slack for being a normal person."

Looking between the three, I shook my head. "Do you talk about me like that when I'm not around?" When the trio exchanged guilty looks, I rolled my eyes. "I don't want to know."

"We don't talk bad about you behind your back," Miltia assured. "We do talk—about things we enjoy and things we'd like to try."

Melanie gestured towards the monitor. "Come on, we're wasting an opportunity here. We've got both the boss and the top enforcer with their pants down, in the literal sense. We couldn't catch them more off guard if we'd planned it. Let's not waste the opportunity talking about things that can wait."

"Agreed," Neo and Miltia chimed, turning to look at me for confirmation.

I shrugged. "The feed from his office is looped, so if they go over this later all it's going to show is a half-hour loop of them banging away. Let's go."

With the security disabled, we called the elevator and went up to the penthouse. There were more guards of various levels who looked up in confusion the moment the elevator doors opened. Hitting them with Sleep and Forget, we moved on to the office. "Door?" I asked Neo, and she nodded. Opening the door, we were 'treated' to the sounds we had missed out on in the security room. "Sleep," I deadpanned, cutting the sound of frantic sex over a desk off in favor of a pair of bodies hitting the floor.

"Now what?" Neo asked, raising an eyebrow as she observed the pair on the floor.

"Now the mind-fuckery begins," I grinned before hitting the pair with Confuse, Charm, and Forget, followed by Dominate. Dismissing Sleep, I had them put on clothes before I began the next part. "How many men do you have under your control?"

Compelled to answer as they were, the Faunus woman stepped forward and answered with, "Thirty five capable of mobilizing for combat, including myself."

"Twenty… three I believe, on the financial side of things," Akamaru answered after a pause to think it over. "Those are direct employees only, of course. I'm sure many of them have underlings themselves."

"Where do you keep your financial records?" Miltia asked, already inspecting the desk and its contents. "The real stuff, not the cooked books."

Akamaru gestured towards a single laptop style computer on top of his desk. "The only copies are kept on my personal computer, which remains disconnected from any networks. There are no physical copies and the data is encrypted and password protected. The laptop case itself is actually a shell containing a GPS tracker and a set of incendiary explosives—should the case leave the building, the unit self-destructs. A little paranoid, certainly, but one can never be too careful in our line of work." A little mental prodding got him to fork over the passwords and Miltia set to work copying the data off to a removable drive she'd brought along.

"How permanent can you make this?" Melanie asked, gesturing towards the pair.

I honestly didn't have an answer, seeing as I had never tried. "Not sure. I've always had ethical qualms against complete brainwashing."

From her place at the laptop, Miltia hummed. "It may be worth considering. They're raking in a lot of cash and we could use their resources and men on a more permanent basis."

I met Neo's eyes and the ice cream themed girl shrugged. "We trust you not to do the same to us, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't use it where it's advantageous. Convincing them they work for us should be enough."

This was another of those stark reminders that some of my girls had a more flexible morality than I was used to. Thinking it over, I met Akamaru's eyes despite the fact that he couldn't actually see mine—or anyone else, given that Invisibility was still up and running across the board—and asked, "What about you? Would you agree to partner with us, knowing what you do at this moment?"

"Yes," he answered, before quickly adding, "However, you are a threat. Eventually, I would attempt to find a way to either get you under my control or kill you if that proved not to be a viable option."

Frowning, I asked, "And how would you go about getting me under your control?"

"My first option would be to attempt to uncover your identity and, from there, to approach your family if you had any that we could find. I would have one of them taken hostage and made comfortable here, with the understanding that things would become uncomfortable for them should you refuse to cooperate."

Listening to this criminal casually talk about how his first option for getting me under his thumb would be going after my family, I was suddenly glad for having put a few layers of separation between myself and the Arc family. It hit me suddenly that I was out in deeper water than I'd thought and one false move, one slip-up, and I would sink and drag down everyone around me. I was a grown damn man with no criminal experience in my previous life and my entire plan for infiltrating the criminal underworld boiled down to either abuse my Semblance or wing it, usually both in combination. It was only my good fortune of having the twins and Neo in my pocket and blind, stupid luck that had kept my family safe so far—that, and what I had thought was an unhealthy level of paranoia.

'God, I should have listened to Joan. These people play for keeps. Why did I ever think I could just stroll into this world with no backup and no plan worth a damn and survive? And I'm too involved to get out easily now. The girls know who I am and I wouldn't abandon them even if I did want out. Cinder knows my face for fuck sake, which means I either have to avoid allowing her and 'Jaune' to come into contact or convince her that I'm not working against her. Can't just mind-wipe her either, like I did with Emerald. And then there's my other alter ego, who needs to start making reappearances soon… And of course, most pressing at the moment, keeping these idiots off my back. What am I going to do about them? Too valuable to throw away, too dangerous to leave them to their own devices.'

Howling Palm was level 25—at the moment, I had no doubt she would be able to ambush and kidnap Jun should the need arise. That thought roused something inside me—a slow-burning anger that I was intimately familiar with, but hadn't felt since waking up in Remnant. My eyes narrowing in a glare as any thoughts of not abusing my powers went up in smoke, I threw an overpowered Confuse and Charm at them, holding the spells until I felt something click. "We're all friends here though, so there won't be any of that, will there?" I asked.

"None at all," Akamaru agreed, Howling Palm nodding along at his side. What I could sense from Dominate told me they weren't even attempting to fight it—the wonders of Charm at work. I would have to come back in the next day or so and check in on them, but I got the feeling I may have just permanently puppeted them—at least until I dismissed the spells myself. And you know what? I was fine with that, considering they would not have hesitated to do me and mine harm. Realistically, not much about their lives would change—they would still carry on their business, still think and act as they normally would have… except in regards to me and mine, where I had subverted that little place reserved for 'god' in their minds. At least, I hoped. Was it distasteful? Yes, undoubtedly. The thing was, I was a better person than these people and their ilk and wouldn't abuse my powers against the innocent or those near and dear to me. Criminals were fair game now, as far as I was concerned. It wasn't just self-righteousness or some sense of moral superiority.

"I think we're good," I told the girls. "Miltia?"

The red-clad twin disconnected the portable drive and powered down the computer. "Good."

"Okay," I nodded. Slapping the pair with a quick Forget, I erased everything from the moment we'd interrupted them while leaving the previous spell effects in place. Waiting a moment for the spell to take effect, I began giving out orders—firstly, to secure their borders and stop allowing members of other gangs through, then to stop harassing our territory, and finally to leave a tithe of money out of their earnings at a dead-drop location weekly on the border of our territory. That done, I had them move into the private bedroom suite and go to bed as they normally would, then hit them with Sleep and Confuse in order to convince them they had simply screwed and then decided to have a nap. If I had layered my spells correctly, they would wake up little different aside from my standing orders and new status as their superior—and it wouldn't even be me in their minds so much as someone, given they wouldn't remember any of this.

"We're good," I announced to the girls, and we went back down to the security room, where we set about fixing the security system. That done, I woke the guards on watch duty and hit them all with Dominate, before ordering one to go to the lobby via the elevator. We rode down with him and I woke the guards downstairs before hitting them all with Confuse. Finally, I hit the guard who had walked us down with Confuse and Forget, before ordering him to go back to the security room and delete the last few minutes of footage. Once he was in the elevator, we made our way outside the same way we'd come in. Once I'd gotten feedback from Dominate that my last orders had been carried out, I dropped the spell and we made our way to the car, and from there back to the office.

There were still things to do to finish securing our territory even with the coming cessation of hostilities from the Red Hand. Half the battle would be in information—mostly in knowing where our men on the ground were needed most at any one time. With two car-loads of men, they could split up and cover more ground while still having air support on standby, so the twins and Neo set about gathering information and directing the separate groups. The twins placed calls, finding out where trouble was, and relayed the information to Neo who passed it on to our groups in the field.

With the exception of my real-time map telling us which general areas were contested there wasn't much I could do there, so I left the girls to it. Instead, it was decided that I could make better use of my talents elsewhere—specifically, abusing magic to turn the other two rival gangs against each other. With Invisibility and Confuse, along with some of the guns I'd pilfered, I could use my map to locate rival gang patrols on the borders between the other two factions in Vale and stage hit and run attacks—and between those two spells, a single invisible enemy became an unknown number of ghosts, always retreating before the patrols could catch sight of them, or so they supposed. Drawing two such groups from rival factions together and getting them to exchange fire was surprisingly easy that way—even more so if I threw in the occasional Berserk directed at the mooks who appeared to be giving orders.

More importantly, it gave me lots of human targets I wouldn't feel at all bad about experimenting on as far as spell creation went. I'd been meaning to round out my mental spells for a while and playing around with Dominate had given me a couple of ideas for both benign and malicious spells. Read Thoughts allowed me to delve into the target's thoughts and memories, pitting my INT against their Will Save. The problem with that turned out to be too much access to a target's thoughts. I compared it to walking into a library and trying to find something specific with no guide, no references, and no labels. Pulling surface thoughts was useful, but actually attempting to go rooting around in someone's mind turned out to mostly useless by itself—and not just because I had no point of reference.

Forget, by comparison, I could at least direct. Read Thoughts, when used to view memories, seemed to cause the target to actually remember those memories at the same time I attempted to access them—which made sense, from a technical standpoint, if you looked at the brain as a biological computer. Of course reading or writing data from long term storage—a hard disk, in my internal comparison—would show up as you were doing it. And people started suspecting something fishy was up the moment old memories started surfacing for no reason whatsoever, completely outside their ability to control—as in panicked screaming and clawing at the eyeballs. Because mind reading couldn't just be as easy as a Google search, even with my Semblance.

Read Thoughts turned out to be much more manageable when combined with other spells—specifically, Dominate, since that meant I could issue mental orders the target couldn't refuse. In my library metaphor, it was the equivalent of running down a librarian and demanding they bring you the materials you wanted—because they're the ones that organized it in the first place, so they would know where everything was. However, as with Dominate, once I dropped them and whoever I'd used them on came to their senses they tended to panic—well, freak the fuck out, really. Again with the clawing of eyeballs. One had even started firing blindly at everyone around before I slapped him and everyone around him with a quick Forget, erasing the incident from his mind. That meant that if I wanted to go hunting for anything deeper than surface thoughts, I'd need to mind-wipe whoever I used it on afterwards.

The synergy between Dominate and Read Thoughts gave me an idea for a more benign skill in Telepathy, however—which allowed me to share thoughts, send messages, even share senses with whoever I was connected with over a good distance. Combined with the party system, it would provide for secure communication between teammates and allow for faster reaction times to threats—maybe more. I couldn't really test its limits on enemy mooks, nor did I want to share that sort of connection with them. I made a mental note to test it out with the girls later—it couldn't be used to pry memories out of people, so there was little chance of me slipping up and spilling the beans about Roman to Neo.

Between Read Thoughts and Telepathy, however, I was able to glean the locations of several drug houses, weapons' caches, and storehouses being used to hold stolen goods. The drug houses got burned to the ground, while the weapons were added to my growing stockpile. Of the stolen goods, most of it was primarily high-value items—telescreens, game systems, and the like—that were of little use to me personally. They were, however, of use to the gang—they could be sold to turn a profit, so they were marked for pickup and the twins called with the locations for later. There were a couple of stockpiles of Dust as well and those got thrown into Inventory as soon as I found them. I couldn't get them all, since no one mook knew where all the goods were stored, but it would be enough to convince both of the other gangs that someone was making a move against them—and given how I'd been stirring up trouble along their borders all night, they should naturally suspect each other.

By the time I decided I'd done enough for one night, it was nearly 3A.M., which seemed to be a bit of a pattern I'd fallen into—go out, get things done while the twins worked, get back in shortly after they did assuming we weren't already together. By then, I had received word from the girls that our ground operation clearing out our territory had been successful—and they hadn't even had to call for air support. I had also been exchanging texts with Cinder, when I wasn't exchanging gunfire and spells with mooks. She had been absolutely livid with Emerald's supposed behavior. I had offered to come over for some 'stress relief,' but the red witch had declined citing a need to move on to the next phase of her operation and had left town that morning—which was why she had been out of contact all day. I could read between the lines enough to translate that: Cinder had left and taken Emerald with her to both try to smooth some of Emerald's ruffled feathers and keep from burning something important to the ground.

Officially, I was supposed to be gathering Dust while she was out of town—pretty much taking over where Roman would have originally. I would have to deliver on that or Neo would suffer the consequences, but there was some leeway for causing problems for Cinder's plans. For instance, if I grabbed mostly low-grade junk Dust to take up volume, I could keep the high-grade stuff for myself for the most part. Some would have to go to Cinder, obviously, but I could make sure it was a lot less than she was hoping for. And with some creative crafting, I could even mold low-grade Dust to look like higher grade Dust—meaning I could make up a lot of the volume of those high grade crystals she was expecting with trash forgeries.

In addition, with Sanguine's knowledge of bounded fields, I could do all sorts of nasty things to the larger Dust crystals themselves—things like rigging them to explode if mishandled. The only real way giving her trapped Dust I'd stolen could backfire, aside from being found out, was if she wasn't having it stolen to use but simply as a means of resource denial. The thought had me reconsidering simply stockpiling Dust for my personal use and to keep out of Cinder's hands. If I duped the Dust before I stole the originals, I could have a ready store on hand in the event that it was truly needed, which I could make sure found its way where it needed to go.

Of course, with a convenient excuse from Cinder, that meant I'd have reason to hire some goons out from Junior to perform the actual smash-and-grab thefts in the real world while the girls and I pulled simultaneous heists inside Illusion Barriers. There were a couple of reasons to go the overt route here as opposed to the covert route. It would give 'the Fox' an obvious target to pick a fight with later, to bump him further up Cinder's shit list. With Neo's Semblance, I was pretty sure I could stage some sort of confrontation between Shiro and the Fox that would provide enough evidence to rule out them being the same person to Cinder, and if Ozpin was watching—and I was sure he was—draw his attention to the Dust thefts.

As I neared the apartment, flashing blue and red lights drew my eye and I changed course to swing in for a look. Dropping down onto a building overlooking an alley a couple of blocks down from the apartment, I took in the scene. A police car was parked in the mouth of the alley with its headlights illuminating the scene while a couple of other vehicles were parked along the street. I couldn't quite make things out from this range, so I opened my inventory and equipped my glasses. They immediately focused an zoomed in on the upper half of the body of what looked like a man resting against the wall of the alley. Only the upper half, because the lower half was twenty feet away. Focusing Listen, I was able to make out conversation below as a couple of crime scene techs scurried around photographing everything.

"It looks like an animal attack," one observed to a pair of men who looked like stereotypical detectives—one in a blue suit and navy jacket, the other in a brown slacks, a white button down, and a brown trench coat. I noted their names as Gordon Jones and Harvey Smith, Jones being the younger looking of the two in the blue suit with short, military-style cut blond hair and blue eyes. Smith was the elder of the pair in brown with long, stringy dark red hair run through with gray and brown eyes, and a bit overweight. I was mildly amused to see yet more evidence that the Color Naming Rule seemed to only really apply to Hunters most of the time. "We'll send the photos in for processing, but if I had to guess I'd say this was done by a bear just going by the evidence."

"What about grimm?" asked Smith, voice rough from years of smoking it sounded like. "Ursa, maybe?"

"It's not an Ursa," a familiar voice called, drawing their attention to a black clad form that had been slipping up the alley behind them and I had only failed to notice because of the fact that I still had the glasses zoomed in—which pointed out a glaring vulnerability I'd need to keep in mind when using them. Shifting my focus, I found myself looking down on Kuro from above, the masked woman moving around the detectives to kneel near enough to the body to observe the wounds directly. Pointing at the dead man's right arm, she said, "Ursa's got a longer bite pattern than this and would've taken the arm clean off. And these claw marks across the chest? Too narrow for an Ursa. Not a Beowolf, either—not their style and you don't see lone Beowolves unless they're old, and those avoid cities."

"But is it a grimm or not?" Smith asked, impatience clearly audible.

"Maybe," she shrugged. "Shiro, get down here and have a closer look—tell me what you think."

Shit. She hadn't looked up, so either she spotted me coming in or she sensed my Aura from there. The two detectives and the crime scene tech spared a moment to look around before spotting me as I dropped down. Taking off the glasses, I stowed them in a side pouch before joining Kuro at her side. "They don't know?" I whispered, kneeling beside her to have a closer look.

"We're just Hunters until they can prove otherwise," she answered, equally quiet, before pointing at the bite mark. "What do you think?"

The angle I had been viewing the scene from earlier had prevented me from seeing the man's face, and now I wished I'd stayed up there. He had no face—the flesh had been stripped down to the bone. The killing blow, however, I would have to speculate as the bite circling the victim's head—whatever it was had put his head in its mouth and killed him with a bite through the skull to the brain, two large fangs doing the work of penetrating the bone there. The rest of the damage… the rest made no sense in the context of a wild animal. Maybe a grimm, but I didn't know enough to say for certain. I wasn't sure they were typically this violent with their prey.

Grimm were killing machines, yes, but other than feeding on fresh kills I didn't think they tended to mutilate them. The skill book I'd eaten to gain Favored Enemy: Grimm hadn't had that information—which gave me an excuse to go later and pick up more skill books and other books on grimm… and actually read the books I'd borrowed from the library. Well, at least this time I had the money to buy them instead of stealing them. I subvocalized Observe and was unsurprised when it couldn't give me a name or other personal details—no Aura, which is what I figured my ability to see names and titles ran off of, and no face to identify it. Observe gave me the full list of the body's injuries and I winced. What did I think? I didn't think it was an animal attack, maybe not even a grimm. I'd need a bit more to prove that, however.

"Can we roll him over?" I asked, curious to see with my own eyes what Observe had told me would be there. The tech looked to the detectives who nodded, then carefully rolled the body over to expose its back, where there were two sets of raking claw marks starting directly between his shoulders and going down near to where the body was severed.

I made my way over to the lower half of the torso and hit that with Observe as well just for the full details, but I don't think I'd have needed to. "Smaller bites and some clawing on the back and sides of the legs."

"So, what, more than one of these things?" Jones asked, as he and his elder partner moved in to have a look.

I shook my head. "No, same bite radius, just… less of the mouth used. It nipped him." I shared a glance with Kuro before asking, "Are grimm prone to playing with their food?"

"Not usually," she answered, shaking her head. "It does look like that's what happened."

"Maybe," I mused aloud. "Have you checked to see if this guy has a wallet in his back pocket?"

"Not yet. I can now, if you would like," the tech offered and we nodded. Pushing the partial body up enough to check, he fished out a leather wallet, handing it over to Jones who'd already held out his hand for it.

Opening the wallet, Jones read off the identification there before grimacing. "I'll run the ID through the database, but the guy's name is Wenge Cunz. Faunus of some kind."

"Shit," Smith grumbled, drawing the word out. "Well, let's hope the chief agrees that it was a grimm. Then it stops being my problem."

"It was a grimm," I agreed—though I doubted it was a normal stray grimm at this point. On a hunch, I looked around a moment, looking for a blood trail I suspected I'd find before rolling my eyes and putting my glasses back on and taking out my scroll. Connecting the two, I set the glasses to scan for and highlight blood and grinned when all of it became highly visible. As I had suspected, there was a trail leading out of the alley. Following the trail, the blood grew progressively more sparse as it followed a path along the sidewalk and up the street in the direction of the bridge to the Commercial District before finally stopping just shy of the bridge.

"Blood trail ends here," Kuro sighed at my side. "Those things are cheating, you know."

I rolled my eyes behind the glasses in question. "Not really. I could have tracked it without them, they just makes it easier." Looking at the woman beside me, I asked, "So, out of curiosity, what were you doing here tonight?"

Kuro shot me an annoyed look under her mask. "Like you don't know."

Frowning, I shook my head. "I wouldn't have asked if I did."

"Right, and here I thought you were being clever when you arranged for delivery on my roof," she deadpanned. "I was being polite by ignoring you and not prying into things outside of the job, but since you brought it up, I was going home. Thanks for fixing the sanctification over the building, neighbor. I hadn't had the heart to since Sang… well, for a while now."

My eyebrows climbed towards my hairline for a moment before I palmed my face. "You live in the other penthouse suite, don't you?"

"Yep."

I groaned. 'Great. Who else knows either who I am, what I look like, or where I live that shouldn't?' I griped silently, asking, "How long have you known?"

A smirk crept up her black painted lips. "Since day one. I hadn't actually seen you yet, or caught you coming or going, but I could sense your Aura. By the way, do me a favor? Either ward your apartment to shield it from Aura or invite me over, because that shit's getting annoying. Like I said, I thought you knew and were doing it on purpose, at least once you asked for delivery on the roof."

Blinking in confusion, I asked, "Doing what on purpose?"

Kuro frowned, eyes narrowing as she studied me. "You, and those twins, and the other one. All the time."

Oh. Oh. Of course. If she could sense my Aura normally through the walls, then it must have gotten a bit irritating when Dating Mode was updated to being an always-on passive skill. And with the way Auras interacted during sex, something which rituals like Sanctification took full advantage of, I could see why she'd be a bit annoyed. We'd been blue-balling her the entire time. That could very well explain why she had been pissy lately. A smirk slowly crept across my lips under my mask and I teased, "So is this why you've been irritable here recently?"

"Shut up, smartass," she groaned. Shaking her head in dismissal, she turned and began following the pattern back, looking down and attempting to match strides with the occasional partial boot print. "He was running—limping, really. It chased him. No, it toyed with him, like you said."

"Yeah." Moving back into the alley, I gestured to a new puddle that trailed partly in the direction of the top half of the torso. "This is where it brought him down. Caught him with both sets of paws in the middle of the back."

"Pounced, you mean," she corrected, and I nodded. "So, some sort of great cat?"

"Ye—" I blinked, eyes narrowing in thought. "Yeah."

Kuro did not miss my hesitation. "Something up?"

I shrugged. "Not sure yet. Maybe. Ran across something I hadn't seen before the other day and it got away before I could kill it, or identify it. Looked kind of like a cat."

"What, like a puma or something?"

"Could have been, or a lynx maybe. If, you know, it was a grimm," I admitted. I gestured towards the puddle of drying blood and the way it was smeared over the ground. "Looks like he tried to crawl away here and wound up where he is now—well, most of him."

Kuro followed the trail before taking another look at the upper torso. "So, the bite marks on the arm? They don't look defensive. It looks like it grabbed his arm and used it to roll him over onto his back. Then it worked over his face before splitting him down the middle and tossing the bottom half. Pretty sure the bite that killed him came after all that. It left his eyes, and based on the bite marks, his last view would have been straight down this thing's throat before his head went crunch."

I couldn't disagree, since that was along my own lines of thought. "I don't think it did all this to toy with him. I think it was terrorizing him, in the literal sense of the word."

The older girl shot a look over her shoulder at me that clearly said she didn't like where that line of thought lead. "Let's hope not. That implies intelligence and smart grimm are bad news. Do those fancy glasses of yours have a way to track this thing?"

"No," I shook my head. "Already tried."

It was at that time that we were rejoined by the two detectives, Smith looking especially relieved. Around us, the crime scene crew were already packing up and departing. "I am happy to inform you that this is officially not my problem. Do us a favor and let whatever Hunter gets assigned to tracking this thing down know what you found out."

Kuro nodded while I turned to Jones and asked, "So, anything on this guy?"

The blond man shot me a look that said I shouldn't even have to ask. "Rap sheet a mile long for petty stuff—drug possession, dealing, theft, domestic violence, drunk and disorderly. Real piece of work." He turned to his partner before adding, "Also suspected of being involved in that mess last year."

Smith frowned, a look of irritation crossing his face before shooting the body a glance. "Well, it's not related."

I was missing something here, obviously—and something Kuro apparently knew. "What mess?" At the looks I got from the detectives, I sighed. "I'm new in town."

"Turf war bullshit," Smith shrugged. "Some deal went bad and a Huntress got caught up in it and killed. After that… officially, it was a gang war and we—that is, the Vale City Police Department—were ordered not to intervene. Unofficially? The girl's old team got down and dirty with some good old-fashioned vigilante justice and wiped out most of the people involved. I guess a few of the roaches managed to get out from under the boot before it came down. Even if we took an official stance on it, well… Hunters." That word summed it up in his opinion, judging by the tone.

A dawning realization crept up on me as I shifted my focus to Kuro. "What was her name?"

The black-clad woman looked away, confirming my suspicion before she even answered. "Sanguine."

I sighed, nodding and putting that aside to ask about later before turning to the pair of detectives who were already heading for their car. "Hey, should we maybe try to run some of these guys down, if they're back in town?"

"What for?" Smith asked, climbing into the car and rolling down the window before closing the door. "One death isn't even a coincidence. Our Mr. Coon was probably just in the wrong place at the wrong time and got the end he deserved."

"Cunz," his partner corrected as he dropped into the passenger seat.

"That's what I said. Coons," the elder detective argued.

"Hey! Argue over how to pronounce it later. Are you sure this isn't something worth following up?" I asked, to which the brown-coated detective laughed.

The car started, nearly drowning out his response, but I made it out over the roar of the engine bouncing off the alley walls. "If you want to try to run down a gang that went into hiding, be my guest! We've got criminals to catch."

I watched the car back out of the alley, the whole place going dark as their headlights pulled away before I turned to face Kuro. "Were you one of her teammates?"

"No," the woman sighed. Seeing my expectant look, she rolled her eyes. "If you want the story, I'm going to need a drink for this shit."

I followed the black-clad woman back to our apartment building, taking a left coming out of the stairs from the roof instead of a right. She opened the door and waved me inside, where I found what was functionally a mirror of my own apartment, save that she had a smaller telescreen. "How much has he got you paying for this place?"

"About two grand," she admitted.

As I sat in the seat she'd gestured me to, I asked, "So, why not trade services for rent? It's what I wound up negotiating."

Kuro shot me a deadpan look from her kitchen as she dug through her refrigerator. "Firstly, not everyone is that great at creating bounded fields. Secondly, materials are expensive and it was cheaper to simply kill anything that wandered nearby. Thirdly… it didn't feel right." I waved off the offered drink as she returned and took her own seat and the shrugged. "More for me."

"So," I began, watching her sip at her drink. "What was Sanguine to you? The landlord gave me her notes—that's how I set up the Sanctification—but I don't really know anything else and they're kind of sparse on personal details."

Sighing out through her nose, the older girl rolled her glass between her palms for a moment before admitting, "We went to school together. I was in the year below her team, but… circumstances made interacting with her on a regular basis unavoidable. We got to talking and she offered to help me with a few things, and we just sort of hit it off. She had a thing for the guy on her team, but his head was so far up my s—his teammate's ass he couldn't see it. She didn't want to cause trouble though, so she refused to admit anything to him—and considering she was a naturally reserved person, it wasn't hard for her. The other girl wasn't horrible about it, though—the opposite, really. She was crafty about trying to set them up, he was just that dense. Long, complicated story short, we had a thing and I kind of figured Sanguine's teammate would get the message across eventually and I didn't really mind the guy myself so wasn't opposed to the idea… Well, family stuff called the guy away and he had to quit being a Hunter and everyone sort of just went their separate ways after graduation. We got together again about two years ago on a particularly nasty hunt and that's about the time I decided I wanted out of the Hunting business. I took up this job, but couldn't pay the rent for a while so Sanguine let me stay with her. Eventually, I made enough to pay for this place and we kind of coexisted for a while."

Kuro paused, looking up from her glass and meeting my eyes. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said half that shit, just forget it. She was a friend and a bit more than a friend, and that's enough."

I nodded, willing to let it slide. I'd noted women tended to get loose lipped at times around me after Ruby pointed it out—my Aura at work, I suppose. "So the dead clown is not even a coincidence, like the detective said?"

Kuro nodded. "Wrong place, wrong time. You know what they say: twice is coincidence, thrice is enemy action. This… it's just one body. Yeah, it may stir things up if her old teammates hear about it, but I wouldn't worry about it. Besides, if he was involved in what happened to Sanguine, then that was just karma catching up—justice, really. If not, well, I'm not going to pretend to feel bad about another piece of shit being off the streets for good."

"Mm," I hummed agreement, thinking it over before asking, "There was a journal mixed in amongst the notes the landlord brought. Did she have family that would want it?"

The older woman shook her head, finishing off one drink to swap it for the second. "No. She was an orphan and a Faunus so no one cared enough to find them before us, and by the time we knew her… well, I looked, but never found any records. There was a fire a few years back that destroyed the orphanage she grew up in, along with all the hard copy records—and I can't get into the digital copies. Her team and I were the closest thing to family she had. I wouldn't mind having it, neither would her old team, but I don't think I'll find anything too sentimental in it. And if you're using her bounded field notes, then the journal will probably help—she wrote in the damn thing all the time, so there are likely notes better detailing some things in it."

"There are," I confirmed. "Out of curiosity, what kind of Faunus was she?"

Digging through her pockets, Kuro came out with her scroll and began flipping through it. "I'll do you one better. Here."

Taking the scroll, I took in the photo she'd supplied. The girl in question was on the tan side of the Caucasian spectrum and had short hair a shade of red so dark I initially mistook it for black, similarly to Ruby's own hair, minus the brighter highlights. Perched atop her head were two short, reddish-brown ears with small rosettes, one canted slightly to the side as if a sound had caught her attention. It was her eyes that stood out, however—one a bright coke-bottle green, the other an equally bright electric blue. She was, in a word, beautiful—in a plain sort of way. She made no effort to make herself look good, she just took care of herself and the look came naturally. In the photo, she was curled up on a big leather chair I recognized as the one from my living room, a book in hand an a tolerantly amused expression on her face—clearly humoring the person taking the picture. She was short, but athletically muscled under her clothes—stocky, really. Sitting there as she was, she looked one part woman, one part apex predator at rest—then again, Faunus. That's exactly what she was. "Some kind of cat, then."

Accepting the scroll as I handed it back, Kuro quickly put it away. "Yeah. Jaguar or something—we were never quite sure. The ears looked right for it, but there are occasionally house cats with that coloration. The only way to really tell domesticated animal type Faunus from wild animal type, if it's not plainly obvious by looking, is over long term study of their behavior or genetic analysis. She didn't want to get gene-sequenced, but the behavior patterns matched for wild cat as opposed to house cat. More territorial, enjoyed swimming, solitary for the most part, crepuscular activity patterns, and most assuredly a stalk-and-ambush predator—and definitely a carnivore."

"I thought Faunus didn't necessarily act like the animal they were patterned after?" I asked, curious as to how that worked exactly. I needed to do some research on the topic at some point anyway. Eventually, I'd come across Blake at some point…

Kuro rolled her eyes. "Faunus rights groups whine about that as a point of contention, yes. Some don't, some do. Mostly, it comes down to the individual. The instincts are there, either way. Some Faunus go out of their way to avoid or ignore it. Others accept that they're different and use their instincts to their advantage. Sanguine was very much an 'I am what I am' kind of person and didn't really care what people thought either way. She wasn't one of those pushy 'in your face' types, but she didn't back down from a confrontation about it either."

I chuckled, observing the girl across from me smiling at the memories. "You did your homework."

"A bit," she admitted. "So, are you going to go chasing after this thing or leave it to the Hunters?"

Thinking on it, I shrugged. "That depends. If I run across it, sure, but with no way to track it I can't really do anything." Sighing, I admitted, "I saw something similar the day I Sanctified the building, but I didn't get a good look at it. Maybe they're related, maybe not. If it's the same grimm, then it's my responsibility to take the damn thing out since I let it get away. Yeah, you're right that the guy it killed wasn't the greatest specimen of sentient life and nothing of value was lost with his death, but the next one could be someone a lot less deserving of a sticky end. What about you?"

"I'm not a Hunter any more. Well, officially, I still am—I just avoid most of it. It's not my responsibility any more. Not yours, either. Just let someone else deal with it." Judging by her tone, there was a story there. Something must have given my curiosity away because she spent a moment studying me before elaborating a bit. "Parents expected too much and I failed my team when they needed me. I didn't show up to a mission they needed me for after Sang died and they went with someone else instead. Can we not talk about depressing shit, please?" She finished by draining the last of her drink and switching to the one she'd poured for me.

"Sure. So…" I began, a smirk creeping up under my mask as I decided to change the subject for her. "Didn't realize you were a voyeur."

The black-clad girl groaned. "If you keep wasting my batteries, I will come over there and do you harm." I raised an eyebrow in amusement and she huffed, then threw back the second drink and downed it in one long pull. Sighing, she slammed the glass down on the table beside her chair.

"I'm going to bed." She stood and made her way towards her bedroom and I shrugged and, figuring the conversation was over, decided to head back to my place for some sleep. I had made it to her front door before she called out, "Wrong way, jackass."

Blinking, I turned and threw her an amused look. "How do you figure?"

"You owe me, damnit. The better part of a week of lost sleep and frustration." I could feel the glare she was leveling me under her mask.

Scratching my head, I asked, "So, we just saw some guy gutted like a fish in an alley, then talked about your old flame, and I flirted at you and now you want to screw? How does that work? How are you even in the mood after seeing that?"

The woman across from me snorted. "Compartmentalization. Being able to put away shit to deal with later is an essential skill for a Hunter, so I'd suggest learning it now. So, in or out?"

Seeing that she was dead serious, I chuckled and pulled out my scroll. "You mind if I check in?"

The woman rolled her eyes and shook her head. "No, that's fine. Just don't take too long."

Watching her sashay into her bedroom, I hit the speed dial for Miltia's number. She picked up on the fourth ring. "H-hello, Jaune. Uh… what's up?" There was a strangled 'eep!' a moment later, followed quickly by her hand covering the phone and a muffled cry of, "Stop that!"

For a moment, I was in another place and time, listening to another voice answering her phone similarly… Anger flared up as my jaws clenched and my lips curled into a silent snarl. The scroll in my hand squeaked in protest under the sudden pressure. 'No. Stop and think,' I shook my head, forcibly pushing away the unwanted memory and snuffing the anger as quickly as it had come. I had their loyalty—my Semblance confirmed that—and this was Remnant, not Earth. Neither the twins nor Neo would fuck around on me. Still, I was new to this world and not entirely sure on either the accuracy of my Semblance where that was concerned or my understanding of the rules of Remnant. 'Trust but verify,' I mused. "Put me on speaker."

"Okay," Miltia quickly agreed, sounding suddenly anxious. "You sound annoyed. Are you okay?"

"Give me that," Melanie's voice sounded and the scroll's audio bumped a moment as it changed hands. A moment later, she said, "Slide your scroll open."

Raising an eyebrow, I pulled the scroll away from my ear and did as she asked. The scroll in my hands switched to video call mode, giving me a view of the inside of my apartment's bedroom—mostly blocked by Melanie's face, wearing a knowing look. She shifted around a bit on what I assumed was the bed before moving the scroll away and panning it around the room in a full circle, showing it to be empty aside from those on the bed. Holding it further away, she tilted it down so that the video looked down on her from above, and on the two other forms in the bed—Miltia, with Neo's head buried between her legs. "Wave for the camera, Neo."

Pulling away from Miltia enough to turn her head up and look, her eyes met with mine and she grinned. "Enjoying the view?"

"I am now," I admitted.

"Sorry, I tried to get her to stop," Miltia began and I shook my head.

"It's fine."

Melanie hummed, studying the screen for a moment as she asked, "I know you're in the building, and nearby… the apartment next door with the redhead?"

I hummed, shifting my gaze towards the bedroom—it seemed Melanie had just given away a bit of Kuro's real identity. Well, that was fine, since I didn't intend to use it against her anyway. However, something again tickled at my memory. It took a minute, but I finally realized what it was—the way she moved, the shape of her body and lower face, it all fit closely to what I knew of one of the other Arc sisters. Specifically, the second eldest and one of a set of twins. The thing is, she didn't sound like Jane Arc, nor did she act how my limited memories of her said she should.

Thinking on it, I shook my head in dismissal. 'There's a few ways to interpret this. In order of most to least likely… Option one: I'm wrong and the odds favoring someone looking similarly to Jane Arc are higher than the odds of moving into an apartment next to one of my sisters and then accidentally seducing her. With as many women as there are in the world, they can't all be related to me. Option two: I'm right and she's like Joan. Option three: I'm right and she hasn't recognized me. I could just ask, but if I'm wrong, that would give away my own identity—and while I could slap her with Forget, there's always the chance she could resist. No, best not to ask. If she's not who I think she is, it doesn't matter and I'm saved running the risk of exposing myself. If she is who I think she is, well… Wouldn't be the first time.'

"Well, we work in the same field, so I can only say it's been black every time I saw her," I answered, pulling myself from my musings on Kuro's possible identity.

"So, let me guess, she finally got fed up with being exposed to your Aura and demanded attention before she decided to push you down?" she more brusque twin asked as, behind her, Neo and Miltia exchanged knowing looks.

"Pretty much," I admitted. "Though, it seems kind of hypocritical—"

Miltia cut me off with a laugh. "You called. It's fine. Go for it." In front of her, Melanie nodded. Shooting the twins an incredulous look, I shifted my gaze to Neo.

"Is she hot?" Neo asked, an impish grin stretching across strawberry lips.

"Oh, yeah," both twins synced, nodding.

"A bit older," Miltia added.

Melanie followed it up with, "Bigger breasts and a nice ass, too."

Nodding, Neo's grin went wider. "I am okay with this. Think you could get her over here?"

"Probably not," I admitted. I should be used to this by now, but no, it was still very surreal seeing the girls actively encourage me to screw other women and bring them back so they could have fun too.

Neo snorted while the twins broke into giggles. "Your face. Ah, I'll never get tired of seeing that look," Melanie laughed. "Well, go on! Don't keep her waiting."

"We want details in the morning," Miltia added quickly.

"In the meantime, trust us to keep ourselves entertained," Melanie smirked before disconnecting the call, her message delivered.

I really should learn to trust my girls more. I suppose that was another of those pieces of baggage from my old life I'd need to discard if I wanted to be happy here—but it's very, very hard to put aside what had been common sense on one world in favor of accepting things at face value in another. "Shiro!" Kuro called, breaking me from that train of thought. "If you're done checking in with your girlfriends, I'm horny and you're keeping me waiting, damnit."

Dropping my scroll into my side pouch, I grinned under my mask and made my way into her bedroom, pausing to lean against the door frame and take in the scene presented to me—Kuro, laying on her side and facing the door, completely exposed to my eyes save for the mask still over the upper portion of her face. 'Huh, Melanie was right. She is a natural redhead,' I mused, a grin stretching across my lips. I began pulling off my armor as I made my way towards the bed. Reaching up for my mask, she shook her head. "Leave it. It adds a little mystery," she smirked.

"True," I nodded, moving onto the bed and pushing her down onto her back. "But there are two problems with that. Firstly, are you sure you wouldn't rather know who you're screwing?"

Below me, I saw her eyes roll under her mask—bright green. She hadn't bothered with contacts as I had. "I know enough. What's the other hold up?"

"Keeping it on means I can't really use my mouth on you. Or my tongue," I pointed out.

Kuro snorted. "Improvise. And on that note," she slung one leg around my hips and pushed up, rolling us over. "Maybe you'll shut up if I put my mouth to use." I had a moment to raise an eyebrow before she moved downwards, fingers trailing over my chest, pausing long enough to drag her nails lightly over my pectorals. "Mm, muscles," she hummed in appreciation, before I felt the tip of her tongue flick across my shaft.

I smirked, under my mask. When I'd started off, this body had been lanky—tall and thin, with some muscle definition but not much. About what you'd expect from a fairly active teenaged young man who was still growing into his height. Every stat point that had been added to my base STR stat had increased that, but it was the passives that really changed the game. Now, my body was all tightly-packed muscle—exactly the sort of physique you would expect of a martial artist on the small side of the weight class. Not hugely swollen muscles bulging all over, but dense and clearly defined. Honestly, I doubt even the Arc family would recognize me by body alone with my shirt off.

"Shutting up, now," I groaned as her lips parted and my cock disappeared into her cool mouth, her tongue swirling around my shaft and head as she applied enough suction to make my toes curl.