Ch 4

Clark took a knee, pressing it into the soil and taking in a deep breath through his nose. Only the stench of his own sweat filled his lungs. The rustling of leaves in the breeze was the sole sound to reach his ears. He released his breath and stood up.

It was day three since he'd been sent to Remnant, he had not showered, he had not slept. He had no idea how many miles he'd walked, but he knew he was close to his destination. The Agricultural sector of Vale, just south of the city proper. The sort of place one could grab a cheap hotel-room and eye the scenery without anybody calling the cops.

It would be a nice place to decompress, stock-up, and prepare for the next stage of the operation.

Sadly, the aesthetic of the hotel was more "tavern" and less "holiday inn". That made sense, considering the local culture and terrain. It still made him nervous. Frankly he wasn't going to like having a bunch of rambunctious drunks beneath him beneath him at night. No telling if anybody was sneaking up on him.

Clark pushed his way past a table full of half-conscious drunkards, they hardly even turned their heads. One of them was face-down, the man's drool dribbling into a pool on the rough wooden table.

He probably would not be eating here.

Clark made his way to the counter, if this tavern had any attractive staff, they didn't work the morning shift. The woman who greeted him was fifty-five if she was a day. Warts, moles and hairs covered her face just under ill-kept gray hair. She squawked out a greeting.

"We just stopped serving breakfast, you'll have to look somewhere else."

"What about a room? You have one of those?"

"Yeah, five thousand Lien a night. Another on deposit."

Clark did his best not to flinch. Japanese currency model, he reminded himself. Still steep, but he had somebody else's ill-gotten gains to burn through. He pulled out a stack of Lien held together by a brown rubber-band. He began to count them out into two piles in front of her.

One for the room itself, the other for the deposit. He ran out and had to grab another stack. The piles reached the same height.

The crone nodded.

"Stairs are to your right, first room to the left is yours." She slapped down a key and grabbed the stacks, shoving each into a different pocket of her apron. He turned and walked upstairs. The key snicked into the lock with practiced, almost worn ease.

Clark set the duffle down by the twin bed, shedding his clothes and making his way to the bathroom. It was sparse, but clean. The only decoration was a likely mass-produced wood burning of a little girl clutching onto a running horse for dear life. Three words had been stenciled under her.

"Hold your horses!" Clark rolled his eyes and got into the shower.

Ten minutes and an entire mood shift later Clark strolled out of the bathroom, he picked-up the bedside table, walking it to the doorway and placing it under the horizontal lever-handle.

The fact that the handle was still horizontal told Clark this was either a low-crime area or the hotel had no compunctions about its guests being robbed. Horizontal handles were easy to actuate by sliding something under the door, almost as easy to bypass as a chain-lock.

He took a seat on the bed and finally fell unconscious atop the sheets.

When he woke up the sun was setting again. The next phase of the plan after decompression had been stocking-up. It was time to go shopping.

The first order of business was to get a cell-phone; a "scroll" as everybody insisted on calling them. Then he would hopefully be able to navigate himself to the various stores he wanted to hit before he got into the city proper.

He made it down the final step into the tavern, the night crowd had come; it was considerably more animated than the day crowd. The lights were low; the tavern looking to emulate lantern-light. A pair of patrons fell to the floor in front of him in a brawl. Clark scanned the room, in the corner both he saw a couple kissing in the dark, a pair of waitresses scampered about the room. They were dressed tastefully; the girls showing just enough cleavage to the tipsy patrons to secure their tips. Then they walked away to the next customer.

He hadn't ended up in some sort of brothel, which was reassuring.

He made his way to the counter again, the short woman behind it looked at him then greeted him with her biggest customer-service smile.

"Are you looking for a table tonight sir?"

"No thanks, I'm staying in one of the rooms upstairs. You guys keep any pamphlets around, maybe a guidebook?" Her smile remained, but her eyes told him she was a deer in the headlights. She didn't speak, hoping he could provide her some details and room to think.

"I'm looking to do some shopping. Outdoorsy stuff, camping gear, maybe pick-up a new Scroll since mine's smashed." She finally recovered, pulling out her own scroll and placing the transparent device on the countertop. She pulled open a mapping feature.

She typed in "scroll" and immediately three red arrows appeared on the map. She selected one, then held out her scroll to him.

From the looks of things there was one about half an hour's walk away. He nodded and smiled politely.

Damn kids and their scrolls these days.

"Thank you Miss, you've been a great help." She broke eye-contact as soon as she could, giving Clark no reply.

She was probably a poor fit for hostess.

Clark made his way out of the entrance began to walk the long path to the electronics shop she had mentioned. It was a sad necessity that any hope of successfully navigating the concrete jungle lurking just beyond the walls of the city proper was going to require a scroll. This world was simply too advanced and his knowledge of the terrain was nil.

On that subject, he should probably use this idle-time to consider the unknowns of this mission.

First in terms of priority was figuring out how to contact Ozpin. That part was a mixed bag. The man was a high-ranking public official who ran a secret war against evil on the side. Ozpin was going to be paranoid. Worse than that, he was going to be very busy. Clark was going to need to find some way to get that man off his plateau and into a meeting room. That got get easier once he had a 'scroll'.

Next-up was figuring out what exactly was happening in Vale. The situation was bad enough that bandits had made their way from other continents to take advantage. He was going to be very upset at some people. They probably were not going to get up and walk away afterwards. Which brought him to the issue of supplies.

What exactly did Clark need in order to wage an urban guerrilla war against terrorists and maybe an organized crime family or two?

He knew what he wanted. Everything, including the kitchen sink and some Draino to go along with it, but what did he need? More importantly, what could he actually get?

Clark had worried that the electronics shop was going to be Remnant's answer to an Apple Store, clean, staffed with tech-savy youngsters, and overpriced. That is not what he found. It was a small electronics repair shop.

Sceevy's Scroll Emporium.

Clark's smile returned from its long hiatus. When he talked to the proprietor, that man's grin was conspiratorial. Clark walked out with a large brown bag and the kind of warm feelings towards capitalism that came only with being a satisfied customer.

He pulled out a scroll, one of the nicer "refurbished" ones, and looked up a sporting goods store. Showtime.

The sporting goods store was large, almost the size of an Ikea, but you couldn't tell from the outside. The store's proprietors had piled earth against the walls and allowed produce to be grown on the berms. Apparently this was a trend out here.

When Clark walked through the doors he felt like he was entering a bunker and a Cabela's simultaneously. He followed the signs to the gun-section up two sets of escalators. They reminded him of the Mall in Union Square.

Clark had noted earlier that living in a world filled with supernatural monsters had led to a more liberal stance on gun rights than even the modern US of A. Clark had thought the days of being able to buy a gun off the shelf of the local store was a thing of his distant past. The idea was as quaint as paying twenty-five cents for a gallon of gasoline.

Here stood at three entire aisles of handguns, their only protection was the hard plastic cases with RFID tags hidden within. Guns as available as razor-blades.

He made his way up to the counter to speak to the scrawny young man behind it. The boy was obviously bored and looking to stave off sleep. Clark opted to help him. He rapped on the glass display counter. The kid sprung from his stupor.

"Good evening Sir. You window-shopping or lookin' to buy?" His smile was only half forced, some gratitude for the interruption had wormed its way into him. Clark returned the smile.

"Looking to buy. I'm in the market for something semi-automatic and durable." The associate nodded, sliding him a small smile.

"I 'sume you're not just looking to do some plinking, eh?" Clark shook his head.

"No, looking to replace my revolver. I need a good balance between power and capacity. I just got done dealing with a large group of shitheads. Reloading got got real tedious." The salesman nodded, stroking his chin with his thumb idly.

Clark took his moment of distraction to take a look at the show-models in the display case. To his great sadness there was no 1911 to take home with him. There was no shortage of revolvers just a few cases down, and a truly obscene number of striker-fired semi-automatics.

Many of them looked like they had enough machinery or mass to manufacture the bullets as they fired them, for all he knew they did. Finally the young man nodded to himself and bent-down to open a display case. He pulled out what had to be this world's answer to the Desert Eagle. To his credit he kept his finger off the trigger and pulled back the slide, but Clark shook his head near-violently. The associate put it back. He withdrew what looked like a silver brick next. Clark let him pitch this time.

"The Chromski RA-10 is well known for its stopping-power, it's capacity is also market-leading." Clark just smiled.

"Does it come in black? Perhaps any other color?" The kid shook his head and returned the Chromski to it's proper place.

There were a half-dozen other guns. Each had their own flaws. Low capacity, shitty quality, squishy triggers, you name it. There was an entire row that the kid refused to even let him look at.

"I cannot in good conscience let a man walk out of this store with a Scorpius thinking it will save his life. If you can't afford any-other gun, just use a slingshot."

Clark took a look at them, noted that the sweatshop workers that had cobbled them together had clearly not been fed that week, then moved on.

Finally the associate pulled out a… unique handgun. It looked like a Glock or HK had made love to a Ruger Mark IV. It was black, metallic, and obviously built sturdily. The barrel was long, protruding outwards roughly half an inch out of the slide. The frame was sleek, and smooth. The barrel's diameter was considerable for a handgun.

Clark pulled back the slide, the Ruger analogy broke down here slightly, it was more like a counter-weight that moved on a track. It bore more of a resemblance to a Browning Buckmark, this was no twenty-two rimfire though. Clark saw something funny.

"Is that hexagonal rifling?" The kid nodded.

"Schwar uses hexagonal rifling in all their guns, they say it helps with muzzle velocity." Clark nodded appreciatively, cycling the action a few times.

"What's it fire?"

"It's a point-forty Atlas, its the more common general-purpose caliber, it'll handle smaller Grimm just fine. The action's a low-profile roller-delay."

"Sounds a little complicated for a practical handgun."

"Technically it's a competition gun, its made for low-recoil and quick follow-up shots."

Clark was familiar with the roller-delayed blowback system, it was the same one the MP5 used. This was the first time he had ever heard of it being used on a pistol, but Remnant's tech supported it. He ejected the magazine.

"What's the capacity?"

"Its a double-stack, fifteen rounds plus one in the chamber." Clark was doing his best not to smile, he noticed something.

"These competitions point-shooting?"

"What? Ohhhh, there's no irons on those. The gun uses a hardlight dust projector." Clark raised the weapon before him as if to fire it. A sharp green chevron appeared not far above the top of the weapon, a red dot just under the tip. It was just as overkill as the rest of Remnant's engineering, providing contrast no matter the background.

Clark finally lost the battle against his grin.

"You guys have an onsite range?" The salesmen smiled.

"Right this way."

The range itself was pretty standard looking, cubicles, lanes, and paper targets on a cable line. It was deserted this time of night, a roomba-like machine roved the floor, collecting the day's fired brass with a steady whirring and beeping. The salesman removed a set of earmuffs from his belt. Clark's newfound aura meant he didn't need any. It was a neat trick.

The salesman pulled out a box of FMJ Nerts, the point-forty Atlas was clearly Remnant's answer to a ten-mil.

Clark started on a human silhouette at twenty-five yards. He began to practice his Mozambique Drill. Pop-pop pop, pop-pop pop. His aura-enhanced strength meant that the recoil was dramatically reduced, not to the point where it felt like he was firing a .22, but maybe a .380 or a .38 special. The salesman had also not been lying about the time between shots. The action was blisteringly fast.

The magazine ran empty after his fifth iteration, he pressed the release and the magazine ejected. The empty mag clattered against the table. The salesman hit a button and the paper target returned to them.

The rounds to the torso had wound up in a pattern roughly the width of a quarter. The group in the head had wound up the size of a challenge coin. The attendant's eyes for their part had wound up the size of dinner plates. His mouth was slightly open. Clark decided to snap him out of it. He pointed at the channels that had been cut diagnally into sides of the barrel.

"Last question. What are these for?" The poor kid shook his head.

"They're quick-attach points for muzzle-breaks, this is usually the part where I'd pitch you one after you scattered rounds all over the paper." He gave a longing look to the ten holes in the target's chest before continuing.

"I don't think you'll be needing one of those." Clark shrugged. He was familiar with the mechanism from the old suppressed M9s they'd given some pilots back in the day. Remnant had never seen the need for such a thing as a suppressor, so the attachment system had been put towards other uses. Didn't mean he couldn't adapt.

"I'd like a cheap one to play around with anyway." The poor kid just nodded. He was still clearly processing how somebody had just slammed fifteen rounds from a near-magnum cartridge into a pair of circles smaller than his eye-sockets. All in less time than it took to say 'Would you like fries with that?'

Clark opted to keep speaking.

"Can I get this one?" The salesman shook his head.

"What?"

"I already got my mitts on it; I know it works, can I buy it?" The salesman just nodded, clearly still a little dumbstruck. Clark was less surprised.

Born in the aftermath of the Second World War, and having lived his life immersed in the Military and Intelligence Spheres, Clark had not merely studied the revolutions in pistol-shooting over the past decades. He had lived them. He'd spent more time with a pistol in his hand than the poor kid had spent at this job, possibly longer than this kid had spent doing anything.

Twenty minutes later, the electronics bag was filled with an empty gun case, a pair of spare magazines, a few boxes of bullets and a small polymer holster. All told it was a bit pricey, but nothing Clark couldn't afford. He was buying life-saving equipment here, if Clark went broke because of this little trip that meant he was still alive to complain. His only other selection here was a waterproof duffle. He was going to be hard-pressed to fit all of this into his old one, and he still needed to carry it to his next store.

Two hours later Clark returned to the Tavern. The last of the rowdy drunks were being driven out by the older hostess from that earlier that morning, broom in hand. She scolded and swatted them out from the doorway, the bristles shaking violently from the impacts.

"… out I say. GIT! You boys can't behave in my house, you don't get to hang-round no-more!" She punctuated this with a smack of her broom to one of the larger men. When Clark attempted to make his way to the door, he was stopped by a blur and bristles tickling under his chin. He locked eyes with the hostess.

"I'm staying here, remember?" Her expression softened slightly, but the broom remained. The bristles were a rather unpleasant texture against his stubble. He needed a shave.

After a long pause the woman finally relented, lowering her broom and stepping out of his path with a sigh. A thumb over her shoulder completed the gesture.

Clark would not be staying here again.

He made his way up the stairs and into his room, the door opened with only a little finagling.

He switched on his light and found a customer and the barmaid… he guessed he could call her a wench now, on his bed in flagrante-delitco. They stopped still. This was for the best as in the next second he had grabbed them by their ears and ejected them bodily from the premises. The door seemed to slam itself shut.

Apparently there was no need to worry about winding up in some sort of brothel, the women didn't even need you to pay them and they would break into another customer's room for you. There were some customers who were served here, and a select few who were serviced. He checked his duffle and all of his affects before sliding the bedside table under the knob again. Then he made to sweep the room.

He would definitely not be staying here again.

Clark thew himself back onto his mattress after he finished, letting his head rest on the pillow. He blew a long black strand of hair out of his mouth. They'd been here a good minute then. Suddenly an interesting question popped into mind.

Was he single? Technically his vows had said, 'till death do us part', and he had honored that with both his first and second wives. Clark hadn't fallen victim to the same bug of infidelity that men who spent their lives traveling for work often did.

But technically single was still only that, a technicality. Clark still loved Sandy dearly. Frankly he already had at least three women waiting on him when he went to go meet Saint Peter. It was already going to be an awkward conversation, no need to go interplanetary and add a fourth. All of that was assuming he ended up in Heaven of course. The Golden Bastard had not been perfectly clear on what was in store for him after the job was done, or if he got himself killed doing it.

Who could say? He could be in for a very warm bath.

Clark gave a final chuckle at that and forced himself back to sleep. Tomorrow was where things would get interesting.

All told it had been a very good day to be John Clark.

He left the inn at dawn, dropping off his key and receiving his deposit with without even making eye-contact. The wench he'd escorted from his room the night before sat in a dark corner, nursing both a cup of coffee and a headache He judged from the fact she had been on top and the look on her face that she was recovering from poor life choices and not a sexual assault. The man, and it had seemed broad-shouldered enough to be a man, was nowhere to be seen. Clark decided to follow his example and head out the door.

The soft morning light illuminated the road nicely. This close to the city they actually bothered to pave it. It was a false reassurance. What awaited Clark beyond these walls was yet another wilderness, filled with predators.

Clark almost pitied them.

He made his way past a perfunctory security checkpoint. The tired guard, clearly approaching the end of the graveyard shift, let him by after he simply showed his ID. Clark was waved through. The officer behind the desk didn't so much as poke into his bags.

He walked the rest of the way through the arching pedestrian entrance in the wall without incident. It was a long path, likely with hundreds of tons of reinforced concrete bearing down on it. Clark did his best not to think about it and crossed over the threshold into the City of Vale. There was a three-foot thick steel door that hung on a massive hydraulic piston above him. It was a failsafe for the City, not the bystanders.

If the mechanism broke, the people underneath would be turned to paste, but Vale would remain secure. It was a decision that was easy to make in the abstract, and was easier to make if the people who funded it never came in through that entrance in the first place. Clark chuckled.

People never changed, neither did politicians.

He made his way out onto the crowded street. The buildings were… European, in a word. This looked like a touristy side of town. Likely a big, ornate face to impress the bumpkins who had just walked in from rural Vale. It was a good tactic for the City, but Clark wasn't going to find out what was going on from here.

He was needed to get to the less-reputable areas, The Industrial District just beyond this safe and wholesome facade. He'd never had the patience for Eurotrash in his first life and that would be holding here.

So Clark walked… and walked… and walked.

Eventually the clean buildings and swept streets gave way to litter and graffiti. None of it was familiar to him, that would take time and research he hadn't done yet. Eventually he came across an abandoned building. Clark circled it a couple of times, looking for an easy entrance. He found it in the fire-escape, which was not high enough to prevent somebody with aura from jumping onto it.

The building had clearly started it's life as an office building, but for some reason or another everybody had packed up everything that was easy to carry and left. It must have been a big economic reversal, because most of the office supplies and a lot of the furniture had been left to gather dust or just decompose. The cubicles were even intact. The thick layer of dust and debris made it clear that this place had not seen human occupation for some time.

The window opened easily, and no alarm greeted him as he stepped over the sill. He found a good cubicle to stash his gear. It was on an elevated and dry section of the floor, the opening of the cubicle faced away from any windows. The desk had enough room under it that he could stick his stuff in and keep it out of easy view. For the backpack he opened up a filing cabinet next to the desk and stuffed it in.

From there it was a simple matter of finding the staircase and walking out the front door. The locks were easy to open from the inside. His feet made contact with the pavement as he brought up his scroll and looked up the location of the nearest library.

He took a moment to consider how the scroll's navigation worked without GPS. It likely used some sort of triangulation, but what exactly it triangulated off-of was unclear. Zooming all the way out revealed that the map only existed in a rough sphere around the city of Vale, a few tabs at the bottom indicated that there were more maps.

He opted to explore.

Tapping though them, Clark noted that they all appeared to be maps of developed towns and cities, it seemed likely that the navigation app needed some local infrastructure to be useful. There were were six maps of cities. Mantle and Atlas each had their own map and Argus was well-developed enough to earn one as well.

That also meant he was one step closer to being able to jam or spoof it, which could come in handy later.

Clark muted the scroll and set the vibration to max. He was clearly heading into the less-pleasant area of the district and a man walking around with his face in a screen was just asking to be mugged.

Clark took note of the writing on the wall. More specifically, the graffiti. The names may be new, but some messages were universal. The context would be key.

There were simple names, Lapiz wuz here and the like, there was the slander, the rumor, a set of symbols that were likely this world's equivalent of thief's or hobo-markings, all just noise for now.

Then came the Gang-markings. The first couple of walls had them nearly-pristine and clean. Then a he found two that overlapped. A challenge. This was an area that two gangs were pushing up against one-another. A dangerous area, but it was also one with potential. People disappeared during gang-wars.

Clark could use that deniability to gather some more intelligence, the gangs would blame one another and Clark could use that chaos to make his way up the chain to somebody who actually knew what was going on. It probably wasn't going to be somebody in one of these gangs, but he could find their suppliers or their sponsors and shake their trees. It would be dirty work. He could already imagine the sleepless nights to come.

He saw an odd piece of graffiti sprayed high on a wall, twenty-five feet at least. It was too high to have been placed by a normal person, it had taken some serious work and serious planning. It had clearly been stenciled too, with its uneven tone suggesting speed had been a key factor in making it. That made sense, since it wasn't gang graffiti.

The Three Claws of the White Fang flared out against the worn brick. This area was going to require further study. He dropped a pin on his map, and kept walking. When he came to a major street that looked well patrolled, he took a hard left down and into another side-street several blocks down. He continued his search.

Seventeen pins later, Clark finally completed the circle and made it back to the first mark he had seen. They had definitely been using a stencil, and considering the fact all of the markings were the same distance from the roof, that meant they were likely dangling themselves off of the roofs to spray it. They had ready and uncontested roof-access to these buildings then. That could be a problem.

On a positive note, Clark had a guess where he could get some answers now. Maybe after a little bit of research, he could ask the right questions.

He paced off, to the library. He could do with some reading and some computer-time, although he wasn't looking forward to finding out what Remnanites called a computer. 'Scroll'? Seriously? He shook his head, passing yet another gang-marker.

One thing was for certain, there was going to be some good hunting in the days ahead.

THREE DAYS LATER

This was Murphy's payment for that sprint across the field, Clark knew it.

A dim bulb cast its light over the interrogation room's table, it looked like every interrogation room from nearly every lazy police procedural ever produced. Two men in VPD uniforms sat in the back corner of the room while a man in a button-down shirt questioned him.

Detective Buttondown wasn't having much luck. Not for lack of trying.

"So… 'John'… where'd you learn to shoot like that? Records don't show your name in any combat academies."

He said nothing, just giving them his politest smile. When they told you that you had a right to remain silent, that was exactly what they meant. Literally saying nothing was the smart play. Let your lawyer do the talking for you.

Clark leaned back in his chair and raised an eyebrow. Button-down continued.

"You know… ballistics is going to match the bullets in those faunus to that fancy handgun of yours. Hate-crimes are treated pretty harshly here in Vale. You could never see the sun again." Clark fought back a snicker. It obviously showed because the next second Button-down slammed his hand onto the table.

"Damn it I'm trying to help you here! Why won't you cut me a fucking break John!" Clark gave a knowing glance up to one of the officers in the corner. The face of the man was one of practiced menace, but his eyes held a hidden mirth that let Clark know that the situation was nowhere near that clean-cut.

There was a knock at the door. The Detective forced out a breath.

"That would be your public defender, don't say I didn't warn you." One of the officers reached for the handle and lifted it. Two men greeted them. One of them was a mousy young man who probably wasn't a day over twenty-five. The other one's age evaded him, the gray hair made Clark want to say fifty, but his skin and body didn't look a day over twenty-five, thirty on a bad day. A really bad day.

The detective obviously recognized the second man.

"Oh, Sir… you passed the Rose girl on the way here, Room Two." The man pushed up his glasses and responded. .

"I am aware, Detective Mireson. I have already spoken to her. I am here now to talk to Mr. Clark. His public defender has agreed to let me speak to him in private first." The detective stood up.

"This is weird Ozpin, he's not one of yours is he? He's too old."

This was Ozpin? Clark had expected a very old man, not to mention a chubbier one. He'd clearly not given aura enough credit. Ozpin spoke again.

"This may just be Mr. Clark's lucky day. If you would be so kind as to grant us some privacy?" He didn't wave the policemen out, he didn't need to. Detective Buttonup gave one last glare to Clark before turning tail and walking out the door.

"You have no idea how lucky you are that I was already stopping by, Mr. Clark." John smiled and nodded, before giving his first actual response of the evening.

"You have no idea."