Main theme: Let You Down by Dawid Podsiadlo
Chapter Theme: Rise of the Ultimate from the New Danganronpa V3 White soundtrack

The thing that Reese would never forget about the beginning of the Second Great War was... just how quiet it was.

There was no sudden explosion of warfare and violence along the shores of Anima (not like it had been in Vale). There was no immediate call to arms or summons to war. There was no massive mobilisation of Hunters big and small. There was no immediate anything at all.

Instead, the beginning of this new war was a quiet burn, a flame that slowly smouldered in the background like a secret spy, building and building with each passing hour, though unnoticed by anyone at all. Not until it crept up on them all. Not until it was too late.

It took Reese a whole week to realise that the war had truly begun. Sure, there had been the announcement on the news, but in her mind they had always been at war with the Grimm, no matter what form they took. This was just the official announcement for it.

But other than that... Haven seemed to hardly changed. Sure, there was more traffic in terms of Hunters going in and out of the academy, but that was it. Her team and her were still going to classes, the teachers were still teaching them, and the people in the city below were still going about their business as if nothing had changed.

It wasn't like in Vale, where people were panicking in the wake of the battle that had just been undertaken on their borders. In Vale, people were scarred and scared and eager to find the safety and security that they had once known before.

In Mistral though... it was just business as normal. Businessmen were still going to work, gardeners and builders were still tending to their patches, mothers and fathers were still tending to their children, and their children were still going to school. It was like the call of war was nothing but a distant echo, a fabled warning from a far-off land that held no real weight in any of their lives.

It both amazed and disturbed her just how... normal everything was. How normal everyone was.

However, in the days that came to pass, Reese finally began to notice the slight differences that had overtaken the population of not just Mistral, but all of Anima. The looks of anxiety in people's faces, imposed rationing of certain supplies, such as food, medicine, and weapons, a rapid escalation of criminal activity from the underworld, stretching up even into the upper levels of the city.

But it was in the week after the announcement of the war's beginning did the gentle flame of realisation reach fever pitch and burn hard and fast within Reese and everyone else.

One morning, she woke up from what should've been a usual morning to the sound of a low drone slowly building in the air. Opening the window to her dorm, she looked outwards to the far distance to see a dozen small shapes moving through the air.

Shapes that were growing larger and larger with each passing second.

Reese narrowed her eyes (she prided herself on her excellent eyesight) and tried to make out the distant shapes as they got closer and more numerous. They looked like... ships. Airships, fighters, and Bullheads. The big ones she could make out as Atlesian warships, from Aequitas-class frigates to Saviour-class fighter/Bullhead carriers. The swarms of ships around them were said Fighters and Bullheads, from Verity fighters to Vulture drone helicopters, Scythe bombers to Noah and Rio-class shuttles.

And it was as this fleet of Atlesian ships met the city and began to land at its edges, did the waking horror, and unsettling truth, finally hit her.

We're at war, Reese thought to herself, We're really at war...

Atlas was an unwelcome presence in the streets of Mistral.

The face and form of the Atlesians' resident political officer, one Bram Thornmane, was a constant presence, his hologram on every street corner, and looming over the city itself as a magnificently massive projection, as big as a tower and as wide as a block. His was an insistent voice and personality, always there out of the corner of the eye, always watching, always looking, always demanding your attention.

"Atlas is here to protect! To help! We are here to keep you safe from the monsters that would seek to bring about your ends!"

His words were alright at first - just nice enough to keep the people of Mistral somewhat pacified in the face of their invaders...

But that's what the people of the city thought of their new Atlesian neighbours: invaders. Occupiers.

This wasn't protection to them. It was an occupation, and the people were growing sick of it.

The Atlesians weren't helping. Reese could understand the logic behind some of their moves, but that didn't meant that she liked them. No one had liked the announcement that the commander of the Atlesians present, one Lieutenant Colonel Olive Harper, that many of the nearby settlements that surrounded the cities of not just Mistral, but Wind Path and Kuchinashi as well, were to be evacuated, and their populaces herded into the cities for their protection.

It wasn't a popular decision, to say the least. Mistral was already dealing with an overpopulation crisis in its main cities, thanks to the constant raids from roaming Bandit Confederation (a loose alliance of raiders, marauders, and mercenaries, now formed into a criminal occupational empire) clans as well as hordes of Grimm. The recent reports of attacks by these new Grimm, this 'Ascendant Court' were not helping that influx of people.

Worse than that, those settlements that were being evacuated around the city's periphery were all farm steads and fisheries along the local rivers, and they provided seventy-five percent of all of Mistral's food, of which were already being rationed as it was. There just wasn't enough food to go around for all the thousands of mouths that had just been shoved into the city, and while the Atlesians had said that they would be using their drones to automatically continue the settlements' farming and fishing operations, but it wasn't hard to notice that the shipments that they were getting from these newly automatic food production facilities was a lot less than what they had been getting beforehand.

The truth was clear for all to see: the Atlesians were shucking off food from the supply in order to feed themselves.

"We all have to make sacrifices for the greater good," were the words of Olive Harper to not just the Mistralian council, but also the people of Mistral itself, "That is the nature of war."

What the hell are you sacrificing? Reese couldn't help but bitterly think to herself, The people in the city below are crammed together, dying and starving, and there you are up in the air, in your big ship with all your big guns, eating like kings and queens, so what the hell are you giving up for the greater good?

It was then that Reese realised her own crushing hypocrisy. Haven was spacious and well stocked. The students of Haven Academy, herself included, slept in dorms and comfy beds, ate good food, and were stocked up with weapons to defend themselves with. They themselves were living like kings and queens.

…

And who was a king without his kingdom...?

"I have an idea," Reese said to Arslan, and then to the rest of the students of Beacon.

She was only half surprised by how unanimous their reply was.

They had loaded as much food and the like onto a group of Bullheads that belonged to Haven Academy, and flown them down into the city below, forming a square of steel chariots in the centre of a public park as they began to form relief tents and a food court. Many others of their own had been sent off into the city, an army of men and women, teenagers and children, with bags and boxes of relief in their hands. From layer to layer they were to go, up and down the city walls and cliffs, portioning up the food and cloth that they had on them between those who didn't have enough to those who had enough, and even collecting more from those whom were willing to share.

Soon enough, massive queues of needy refugees and hungry city-dwellers had formed in the square that they had occupied as their own, stretching out from the middle of the park to beyond its edges and faraway walls. Other tents by local do-gooders and charitable strangers were also being set up around the lines, handing out their own items of comfort and reprieve, from hot soup to warm blankets and so on. Some people had even begun to build first aid stations for the wounded and disabled, and over on one side of the square some people were handing out sleeping bags and warm wear for those without, and even provided a few tents for those who couldn't move or go anywhere else to rest and sleep in.

It was a grand sight, more powerful than any gun or sword. It was a community coming together for the betterment of all, and it was a beautiful sight to see.

It warmed Reese's heart to see so many of her peers had gone down into the city with her, handing out whatever they could to the new arrivals and sharing the bounties that they had enjoyed in the school above, on top of all the unfamiliar faces that had come out to do their part as well. She hadn't expected so many of them to join her in this task, truth be told. She had expected herself to be the only one willing to hand out her stuff, clothes and food, to the people below. It pleased her to be proven wrong.

It was good work, in all honesty. Reese found herself enjoying the looks of relief and happiness on the faces of the people - men, women, and children, all of them refugees from the outskirts and Grimmlands - when she handed them their bags of spare clothes and rations. The sparkle in their eyes, the tight smiles across their faces... it was always a pleasure to see.

(Reese suddenly realised why the people back home in Jewel had always been so kind to others. Being good felt real good.)

What wasn't a pleasure to see was their operation ending before it could even begin.

"What the hell do you mean you're shutting us down?!" Reese cried out in despair, gesticulating her arms wildly in tandem with her words. Around the edges of the square, Atlesian soldiers, Mistralian Hunters, and police officers were pulling themselves out of APCs and jeeps and marching into the square, pulling down tents and picking up boxes and dispersing the lines of starved refugees with torn fabrics covering their frail bones.

"I'm afraid so, Miss Chloris," was the quiet, mouse-like voice of Leonardo Lionheart (ironic as it was), his holographic projection shimmering in the darkened world around them and painting their surroundings in a pale shade of celurean blue, "You and your friends have stolen supplies needed in Haven-"

"Stolen?! They were from our own shares!" Reese barked back.

"M-Miss Chloris, please!" Leonardo shivered in response. What kind of reaction was that? He was supposed to be a Huntsman, wasn't he? Where did he get off being so frightful? "T-These supplies are needed to keep our fighters well-fed and ready for the battles to come!"

"They're fat enough as it is!" it was Sun who called this out to the hologram, "The Atlesians have been taking from the city's stocks, we all know this! People are starving down here and they've got no clothes or medicine! Soon enough, we won't need the Grimm to start killing us! We'll be doing that for them!"

"M-Mr Wukong, I understand you're all angry at these circumstances-"

"We're a bit beyond furious actually," Arslan blunted her statement with respect, "Sir."

"-B-But there's nothing that I can do. The council has already decided-"

"The council!?" Reese cut in with, "The council are corrupt bastards! They- hey! Put that back!" the Atlesian soldier ignored her as he carried away one of the boxes closest to her, "Don't you ignore me you son of a-"

"Reese, don't," Arslan firmly grasped her shoulder, "They'll arrest you at best. At worst, they'll kill you."

"...Dammit."

"They wouldn't kill-"

"I think they would, sir."

"Did they put you up to this!?" was Reese's furious question, "The council. Did they tell you about this? Did they offer you a pay raise if you sell us out!?"

"N-No, of course not-"

"Then what, old man?! The council are corrupt and everyone knows it! Whoever's not in the pockets of the fucking syndicates are only interested in protecting themselves, not the people they serve! You and them? You're all sentencing these people to death if you go through with this, you old bastard!"

"Reese!" Arslan barked, "Enough! Now!"

Reese growled, at Arslan, at Leonardo, at the Atlesians around her, but at herself most of all.

"I-I'm sorry, but there's nothing that I can do," Leonardo said in a tone of tragic finality, "The council have good reason to- to shut you down. Illegal gathering, unlicensed distribution of goods, squatting in a public area, theft of supplies, trespassing in a public space, the works. They have enough grounds to not just stop you, but seize your goods - and Haven's by extension - and arrest you as well."

Reese looked around her. None of the soldiers, Hunters, or policemen were paying them any mind as they finished scattering the people that had been drawn into the square, disassembling their tents and stands, and carting away all the war supplies that they had brought with them.

"But they won't," it was another Hunter in training who said that. She wasn't sure who.

"But they won't," Leonardo sighed, "The council are... letting you off with a warning... I'm sorry."

"You're a bastard," Reese seethed out.

Leonardo just sighed, "I know," and with that, he was gone, his holographic visage collapsing back into the scroll as the Atlesians and their entourage left the park...

Leaving the Hunters in training alone.

"RAAAAAAUGH!" Reese cried out as she threw the scroll in her hands into the mud and grass beneath her and stomped wildly on it, cracking the glass and bending the metal. It was an expensive thing, a scroll, but she didn't care. She needed something to take her anger out on.

"...Reese-"

"I have to go."

"Reese-"

"Arslan, please, I... I can't. I just can't."

"...Just come back home, okay. Back to Haven... we'll figure something out. I'm sure of it."

"...Okay."

And so they all headed back to Haven, with heavy hearts, empty hands, and misery on their minds.

The roads were dark, claustrophobic, and lined with beggars.

They were like soldiers at sentry posts, armed with cardboard signs and cups needy for coins. Their armour was thin cloth sheets and torn clothes covering their forms, and their shields were boxes of scraps that they had at their sides. Reese was disturbed at the fact that there were more Faunus than Humans amongst their numbers.

They all looked at her with hungry, desperate eyes. Their frames were thin and fragile, like skin woven over bone. There was little meat in their bodies, and mud and muck stained their flesh and fabrics and lingered like old friends unwilling to say goodbye. Reese had long since run out of change to give them, and it pained her to her heart to see their starving faces looking at her with frail yearning writ across them, only to be let down when all she could do was spare them a sad glance and move along.

Reese and the others had wanted to open up Haven for these refugees to stay in, but that idea had been shot down. The council at work once again.

The streets themselves were as decrepit and broken as the people around them. Cracked mirrors sat in the middle of stained walls. Holes in overhead roofs shone rough artificial light from the flickering streetlamps lining the pavements down into uneven circles on the ground. The cobblestone roads were chipped and cracked and puckered with loose stones, the concrete wearing down around it. Graffiti had been sprayed into the brick and wooden walls, and esoteric markings had been scratched into doors and entrances as a symbol of allegiances, providing apotropaic protection against those whom would escape from harm to the homes of their fellows.

Reese wondered as to why the Mistralian government had neglected this part of the city at first, but stopped herself. This was in the middle layer of the city of Mistral, right on the edge of the various criminal empires that ran the kingdom from the shadows. It was a dangerous place, and no one wanted to touch it.

It was also as far as she wanted to go. The lower levels were filled with gangs and the Grimm they kept as pets. She had no desire to risk her own safety by going down into those dark places. She'd heard the stories about the visitors and newcomers to the city who were disappeared down in its depths. There was only so much that she was willing to risk.

The same could not be said for the brave fools and refugees who were just trying to find a home for themselves.

She watched a family of four marched through the old roads and weak crowds, passing the threshold and into the point of no return. They moved through the streets like a man, woman, and children on a mission, like so many of the others that had followed them downwards into the dark streets below. She wanted to call out to them, to tell them to turn away from the dark below while they still could. But what was the use? How could she convince hundreds of desperate travellers, starving and without a home, to cease risking what little they had on a gamble of hope when so many others, even around her now, had tried to do the same? They were going to be taken by the gangs and have who knows what done to them, and there was nothing she could do about it.

And it hurt. It hurt her knowing that there was nothing she could do to help. But what could she do? One woman against the entirety of Mistral's criminal underworld? They'd kill her in seconds.

There was nothing that she could do, and she hated it.

Up above, the gargantuan holographic projection of the Atlesian political officer, Bram Thornmane, continued to wax his propagandic speeches. But now the veneer and cover of his words had slipped away. His eyes were all zealous patriotism. His words were propaganda disguised no longer.

"Atlas is invincible! Atlas is indominable! Atlas will not bend or break for anyone or anything! Not while the monsters at our door would seek to destroy all that makes us glorious! Stand with us or stand aside, for Atlas has come, as always, to bring about a new age of prosperity upon all that it touches!"

Thus the veil is lifted, and Bram Thornmane's true colours were revealed. How very Atlesian of him.

Reese sighed. It had been two months since the Atlesians had arrived in Anima with the announcement of the Second Great War, and so far things had just been getting worse. More and more people were being herded into the city like cattle, more and more street corners were being occupied by the homeless, food was becoming more scarce, and many people had begun to flee the city and take their chances with the wild outside. The council had gone into hiding, bandit confederation raiders were beginning to take advantage of the uncertainty and build their numbers with those that were fleeing the city, and the gangs below were beginning to wax and wane in a way that hadn't been seen since the end of the Rights Revolution decades around forty years ago.

The Atlesian occupiers weren't helping matters at all. For all their talk of protection, Atlas had marched into the kingdom and made it their own. This was an invasion if she had ever seen any - one that the council (and Lionheart by extension) had allowed to happen without a fight and all out of fear of an enemy that she'd never seen before - and the Atlesians were making good invaders.

Worse yet were the rumours. The hushed conversations and talltales. Reese liked to think herself an expert on rumour and hearsay, but even now she was having a bad time picking apart what was truth from fiction.

Many rumours ranged from plausible to outlandish, such as the rumour of the Ascendant Court being a fake story Atlas used to gain control of the world, to the rumour that the council had sold themselves over to the Atlesians for their own protection, to even the rumour that Headmaster Ozpin had arranged for the Atlesian takeover in order to consolodate power for himself.

However, there was one rumour that seemed the most persistent, the most insistent on being passed around, the most demanding to be heard and known as the truth.

The kingdom of Atlas had cut off all contact from Solitas to the rest of the world, and abandoned those that it had sent out to fend for themselves.

This was the rumour that Reese heard the most, and yet it seemed to be the most unbelievable. Atlas just sealed itself off from the people that it was supposed to 'Protect', and had cut itself off from the people that it had sent to do just that? It didn't make sense to her. It didn't make sense at all.

The Atlesian officers and propagandists, Bram and Olive and so many others, had done much to assure the people that these rumours were false, going on interviews and conducting local CCT broadcasts on their stability, but this insistence on their stability only fuelled the whispers of hearsay.

The sound of a scuffle reached her ears. She turned her head to see, further down the dilapidated street, a group of Atlesian soldiers beating down a pair of Faunus refugees, swatting stun batons into their heads and kicking them in the stomachs whilst they were down. The two Faunus men begged for mercy, but received none as they were beaten black and blue.

Reese should intervene. She should help them. She should do what a Huntress was supposed to do and save those Faunus, stop those Atlesians, and help these poor souls find a home for themselves.

But she didn't.

Because the woman who intervened before her - a Human woman - was thrown in with the two Faunus and beaten just like them.

Reese huddled into herself under her black and brown cloak. She wanted to do something, but she knew that she couldn't. To fight the Atlesians would be to make an enemy of them that she couldn't win against. To help the refugees would be to make an enemy of the council as well. To try and invite these people back into Haven would be to make an enemy of everyone, as that suggestion had been shot down immediately.

There was nothing that she could do.

Nothing at all.

Reese turned herself around and headed back to Haven, swallowing down the shame in her gut as the sounds of brutality continued on.

The council had gone underground. Leonardo wasn't giving up their location to anyone. He seemed even more frightful than ever.

Three months into Atlas' occupation, and things were getting worse than ever. More and more people were flooding into the cities, more and more food was being cartered away by the corrupt men in power, more and more gangs were growing in strength, and the mercenary clans of the Bandit Confederation were beginning to mass in the peripheries of the three capital cities.

Mistral was just about ready to explode, and all Reese could do was sit on a balcony high above the city and watch it all fall to pot.

At least she had a good view of the setting sun. Much of Atlas' big airships, save for a few, had buggered off, apparently on General Ironwood's orders, according to rumour. They'd all disappeared up to the northern coastlines, to where Argus resided alongside similar coastal settlements. Something big was going on down there, like a training exercise or something, and many of her peers were being called down to join them.

Well, less called, more ordered.

She looked behind herself to the empty hallway she had come from. Haven was being neglected, its halls emptied and hollowed of life. More and more students - students. Children - were being sent out by Atlesian officers to either help supplement their forces along the outlines of the three major cities, or shot off to the north to assist in whatever the hell they were setting up down there. First it had been the resident pro Hunters that had taken up residence in there. Then it had been the fourth year students, then the third, and then the second...

And now it was their turn. Her turn.

Now the place that she had known as home for the last three months was emptying itself of all that once made it its namesake: a haven. All its halls were cold and its dorms bare of life. Haven suddenly felt less like a place of residence and more like a mausoleum to Reese.

She sighed and looked down at the city. Although much of the previous Atlesian presence had left some time ago, they still left a heavy shadow over the city. Tall silver and blue towers of metal and radar dishes jutted out of the city like thin forks from a pike. Three large airships hung over the city and held it in a vice grip. Military shuttles, gunships, and Bullheads continued to ship troops and war supplies from one side of the metropolis to the other. Soldiers still patrolled the streets and enforced their law and order onto the people. People still resisted the soldiers. The anger underneath continued to build.

Everything was going to hell, and not a shot had been fired (yet).

She looked up and saw something far off on the horizon. Little dots against the setting sun. Even with her amazing eyesight, she couldn't make them out as they slowly got bigger and bigger. Must just be Atlesian reinforcements. Great. More jackboots for their throats.

For all of Atlas' talk of protection, Reese certainly didn't feel grateful for it.

And speaking of...

"Atlas is here! Atlas will not fall to anyone! Atlas is now and forever!"

Oh shut up, Bram.

A hand fell on her shoulder. She looked behind herself to see Arslan behind her, a gentle, yet sad smile across her.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah," was the automatic reply. A few moments passed, "No. Not really."

"Well, at least you're honest."

"At least the second time around."

"True," Arslan said, joining her in leaning against the balcony rail and looking out onto the city below. Her Lion tail swung gently beneath her with the wind as they both took in a deep breath as they observed the world that they were living in. Arslan spoke again, "What's wrong?"

"What isn't?" that said it all.

"What happened in the square last month wasn't your fault. I keep telling you that."

"I know," she just didn't agree with it, "But with everything that's going on, with the war, Atlas, the refugees, the council, and everything else hitting us at the exact same time... I just..."

Reese sucked in a breath through her teeth.

"It's just so much, you know... it's all so much and the- there's nothing that I can do about it."

She looked to her (crush) team leader.

"You know?"

Arslan looked to her for a long while before she answered, "Yes, I know. With all the corruption in the council, Headmaster Lionheart's negligence, the Atlesian oppression and propaganda, the refugee crisis, and..."

The expression on her face made it clear that she hadn't meant to list all of those things off. It became clear to Reese that underneath her calm visage, Arslan had been struggling with everything happening to them as she was.

"Oh Arslan, I'm-"

"Don't say you're sorry," Arslan shook her head, "Not when you have nothing to be sorry for."

Reese didn't know what else to say.

"With everything that has been going on, that has happened to us and everyone else, to Bolin, to Nadir, you, myself, it isn't hard to imagine how much you're going through, Reese, and... and I wish there was a way for me to alleviate you of those fears and anxieties. I really wish there was, but I... I can't."

She sighed again.

"All I can tell you with absolute certainty is that all things are... ephemeral, in a way. Short. They come and go in the blink of an eye. A life, a day, a happiness... and a sadness too. All good things fade in time, but so do all things bad in turn. Dark times come, and they go. This dark age will end one day. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But one day, this war will end, as all things do. We just have to make sure that we're there to see it happen."

Reese paused, taking in her words before giving her a wobbly smile, "You're right."

"About what?"

"You're not good at alleviating worries," and I still love you for it, "But thanks anyway. For trying."

Arslan frowned, clearly wanting to do more, but not able to add anything else. Much like Reese herself. In the end, she finally finished with, "I suppose in the end, all we can do is try."

A pause.

"But... yes... you're welcome."

A longer pause.

"They've called for us," Reese looked to Arslan, "Haven't they?"

"...Yes," was Arslan's resigned reply, "For us, and for the rest of our peers. We're to travel up north and join the rest of Haven's students along the coastlines."

"Why?"

"They didn't say."

Of course they didn't, "How long ago?"

"An hour ago," Arslan answered, "You... looked like you needed time to yourself."

Reese let out a puff of air, "Yeah... it feels like time is all we have these days."

She turned back to the city beyond the balcony, looking across the city of old architecture and culture spliced into new technological progress and ambitions. Cold unflinching steel pressed against warm accommodating wood. She gazed upon the damned city that she had called her own and wondered if she would ever see it again.

Considering how the world seemed to be turning in on itself, she worried that she wouldn't.

She reached up, and began to pull away from the balcony rail, readying to turn herself around and-

Wait.

What was that?

In the distance, against the suns...

The ships had grown bigger, and they weren't Atlesian.

One-thousand meter long destroyers with a large ball structure at their fronts, and two pairs of horizontal wings at the back of their structures. Two-thousand meter long ships that were rectangular in nature, yet also rounded and held within a purple organic shell. Two-hundred meter long oval shaped support ships at their sides, black in colour and with a massive yellow spotlight built into their fronts, wires and tendrils jutting out of their bottoms that numbered in the dozens. Hundreds of horseshoe-shaped fighters and blocky support ships flying alongside them.

Around the city of Mistral, hundreds of Bullheads and ships of the like rose up from Mistral's city, and the three ships that circled it began to shift in place and move towards the fleet of alien ships.

Oh no.

Reese clutched onto Arslan's hand and held it tightly as the massive projection of Bran Thornmane in the middle of the city flickered and spluttered away, only to be replaced by a face of malicious intent. A featureless head with obsidian black skin, six vents in its neck, and a piercing red eye with a yellow pupil completely encompassing its face.

The face of a monster that was undeniably a Grimm.

And as the first lances of red and purple light stretched out from the ships in the distance to the city below her, Reese realised one horrifying truth:

The Second Great War had finally come to Mistral...

"People of Remnant, beware..."

"The invasion of Atlas has begun!"

And they had all run out of time.

What, no reviews? I got no reviews at all from my last chapter?

Big sad :(