Ascendancy: A Brief Interval Chapter 3: The Aftermath, a rwby fanfic

Main theme: Let You Down by Dawid Podsiadlo
Chapter Theme: Heartless Journey from the New Danganronpa V3 Black soundtrack

…

The first thing that Reese noticed was the light.

It hurt.

It peeked through her eyelids like an invasive force, blinding her in the darkness. Letting out a hiss of pain from the light, she tried to raise her left arm to swat it away, only to feel nothing from it. Everything else felt like lead. Something rapidly cast shadows over her eyes.

She groaned as she tried to roll herself in place. She ached all over, except from her left arm, all the way up to her shoulder. She couldn't even feel any pins and needles from it. Had she been sleeping on it? Her face was hot, sweaty. She tried to wipe her hands across her face to clear it up, but something metal hit her in the head.

Metal palm. Five metal fingers.

She opened her eyes.

A metal hand greeted her through the blinding synthetic light from above her, coloured in metallic black and segmented into steel plates over threadbare coils and mechanical muscles, each joint connected to a cylindrical servo. She followed her gaze back down to the hand's metal wrist, and then down to the black iron elbow, and finally finishing at the jointed shoulder, covered by a smooth obsidian shoulder resembling that of a pauldron on medieval armour. Green streaks of light ran down the side of the arm and through the middle of the joint. Silver flecks of luminescent dotted each segment of the finger.

The mechanical limb was connected to her shoulder. It was her arm.

And as the memories of pain and horror found their way back to her...

Reese screamed.

The air inside the makeshift hospital was as stale as the walls, tasting of metal and chemicals and memories.

Reese hated it.

When she had woken up, something besides her (she wasn't sure what it was called specifically. An alarm for all intents and purposes) had alerted the doctors to it. They had found her tearing out the syringes and tubes connected into her body and clawing at the steel limb grafted onto her shoulder. It had taken a dozen people to hold her down and sedate her back into her slumber (people with aura tended to be stronger than the average person, and Hunters of any age even moreso.

When she woke up again, still in a dazed state, but still somewhat lucid, she started asking questions. As it turned out, she had been in a vegetative sleep for over two weeks since the end of the Battle of Mistral. When she asked as to what had happened to end the battle, she was told that the Grimm had turned tail and retreated from not just Mistral, but all of Anima as well, but not before ravaging the Bandit Confederation's forces on their way out and forcing them on the retreat as well. Now all that were left of the Ascendant Court's forces were stragglers and small pockets of resistance lingering in the wilderness, performing regular small-scale raids on the walls whenever they could. When Reese had asked them what they were trying to take from the city, no one had answered her. During the time that she had been under, the doctors (whatever ones could be spared) had busied themselves with saving her life, sealing with wounds, and building her a new arm. She could feel the Black Ether in her steel appendage mixing with her blood. She was lucky not to suffer from MDR, Mecha-Dissociative Rejection. If she had, then the end results would've been... messy.

(She remembered the stories that she had heard about MDR, of the seizures and organ failures from poor mixing with Black Ether. She had heard of the whispers of the first Techions, of how they had gone into comas from the coldness of their bodies, of how they had torn themselves to pieces, thinking that they were trapped in bodies not their own and wishing for freedom. It was... a disturbing thought.)

Two weeks. She'd been asleep for two whole weeks. It wasn't a very long time, but since she had woken up, it felt like the whole world had changed whilst she was sleeping.

And so had she.

The arm that was attached to her was cold and alien. She felt nothing from the shining slab of metal grafted onto her body. The metal hand gripped around the handrail of the balcony she stood in tightened. She couldn't feel it leaving an indent.

The city that she looked down on was a metropolis of debris and scaffolding. Metal towers, bridges, and platforms lined the walls of almost every building that was still intact, few as they were, or at least the ones that could be repaired. Almost all the other ones were being harvested for spare parts and rebuilt from the ground up, the old architecture that made Mistral special being paved over with something more utilitarian. She could see it in the metal plates being pressed against each other, the square huts and squat buildings.

They looked so unlike that of Mistral, so much duller, so much colder.

High above the half-broken city, the holographic projection of Bram Thornmane, still somehow no worse for wear (both the hologram and the man behind it) looked no worse for wear.

"Atlas may be gone, but its spirit shall live on in us! Through us, we shall bring about the birth of a new Mistral! A stronger Mistral! A greater Mistral than ever before!"

Reese had long since tuned herself out from what he was saying. Apparently since Atlas fell and the battle had finished, Bram had taken up leadership of Mistral all to himself, holding himself and his cadre of Mistralian and Atlesian elites up in the old Haven Academy up in the cleaved mountains above.

Leonardo Lionheart wasn't there anymore. He'd gone missing. Whether he had been killed or simply fled the city, no one knew.

Either way, good riddance to bad rubbish.

She was currently overlooking the city from a balcony in the improv hospital on the city's upper levels. Apparently it used to be the headquarters for the Mistral Trading Company, the SDC's inferior little brother, but had been abandoned at the start of the battle three weeks ago. Now that the MTC had fallen through with the apparent collapse of the dust trade, all of its facilities were up for grabs and were currently being nationalised by the new forces of Mistral (or being scooped up by the various warring criminal factions in Mistral, or even the roaming bands of raiders from both the Bandit Confederation and the Ascendant Court).

The view of the city of Mistral was not nice. Not anymore. There were too many war wounds puckering the city, too many bomb holes and architecture buried under stratums of rubble. It looked like someone had taken a knife to a painting and slashed it several times over, like mottled skin covered in gaping chasmic wounds.

She decided that she no longer wanted to stare at the dark image before her. She needed to find the only friend that she had left in this city. She needed to find Arslan. She needed-

"Reese."

A voice prickled at her ears. A male voice. Not Arslan's. Who then? She turned her head to greet the voice, only to see a somewhat familiar face looking back at her. Dark-skinned, green-haired, golden-eyed like a serpent. Three long dagger-like scars ran down his face. His opened jacket was replaced by a rugged flak vest covered in marks and wounds, his arms and legs covered by salvaged, mismatched armour coloured in greys and whites and blacks.

"Sage?" Reese proffered. He nodded, "I didn't... recognise you," her voice was still raw from being in a vegetive state for over two weeks.

"No one does," he said as he leant against the balcony rail next to her.

Silence followed between them. The faint sounds of a shuttle lifting up from the ground and speeding off into the sky echoed past them. Then more silence.

"Where's your... sword?"

"Pilgrim? Lost it."

"Oh..."

"...Your hoverboard?"

"Syrinx... lost it."

"Ah..."

More silence.

"...Why are... you here?"

He turned his head to her, "Your team and mine were friends... I had an obligation."

"Ah... and the others?"

"Hm?"

"The other... students?"

"Oh... sure."

Reese shot him an inquisitive look.

He sighed, "Not that many of us left now... more dead than living."

"Oh..."

Then, Reese remembered.

Scarlet, Neptune, and then Sun...

All of his team... they were gone.

"I'm sorry..." she muttered. When he didn't say anything, she continued, "Your... team..."

"...I know."

Reese wasn't sure if she believed that.

But she knew what it was like, regardless, to lose members of her team. Nadir and Bolin... she hadn't been with them when they died, and it was one of her biggest regrets. She wished that she could've been there when they passed on, to try and save them, or at least to say goodbye to them whilst she still could. But now she couldn't, and that regret would plague her for the rest of her life.

She only had one thing left to fight for in this place.

If she was...

"Sage... where's... Arslan?"

"..."

"Sage... where is she?"

…

"...No... oh god... no."

…

"I'm sorry."

There wasn't much left of Arslan's corpse. Reese didn't need them to flip over the sheet covering her corpse to see that.

She was glad that they didn't as well.

She could see the outline of her ravaged body underneath it. She was missing her legs and an arm. A chunk had been taken out of her waist and chest. She could smell the metallic scent of blood in the air from it, though that might just be the collective smell of all the corpses in the makeshift morgue. When they lifted the sheet from her head, revealing her once beautiful face, Reese gagged and choked on her own horror. The flesh from the right side of her jaw had been blasted off, revealing the mangled and blackened teeth and skeleton underneath. Part of her head was missing two, on the upper left, exposing part of her brain underneath. Her head was smeared with blood. No one had wanted to clean it up. Her lion's tail dangled off the side of the table, swaying with every movement, coloured a stale crimson.

Reese was glad she hadn't eaten anything at all since she woke up. She didn't have anything to vomit up at the sight.

Next to her, Sage spoke up, "She was saving people, you know. During the charge. Some of the Atlesians had been bogged down and she was trying to save them, but a group of Grimm got her in their cross sights, and... I think her aura was down and-"

"Stop," was all Reese said, "J-Just stop... please."

Sage said nothing else.

Reese just stayed in silence next to the body as the mortician covered Arslan's face back up, pushing it back to join the dozens, perhaps hundreds of other bodies that filled the wide warehouse that had been turned into the city's collective morgue. Everything was silence. Everything was numb. Her metal arm flexed sporadically. Her eyes were locked to the floor beneath her.

Silence befell her once more. It was deafening.

…

Reese collapsed to the floor and began to cry.

It was all that she could do.

The metal arm that was attached to her was cold to the touch, and Reese doubted that she would ever get used to it.

How could anyone ever get used to missing a limb and having it replaced by a lifeless chunk of iron and coil? How could anyone have a part of themselves cut away and given up for the icy touch of steel and expect themselves to just go about their business? Reese wondered how the Techions did it. She wondered how they were able to trade their flesh for machinery and live with it as if nothing happened. Did they understand the anxieties of not being able to feel the subtle touches of the wind through the hairs on her skin, the little pressures on pressing her palm against a surface, the sensations of running her fingers through something soft, something lush and gentle to the touch?

Someone had taken a piece of her and replaced it with something alien.

And someone had taken something else from her two.

Someone else.

Arslan.

She was gone. Gone, just like Scarlet, just like Neptune, and just like Sun and Nadir and Bolin.

But Arslan's passing had meant so much more to her.

Arslan had been her first love, her friend from years passed by. The Lioness girl had been the subject of her very first set of memories, and had been on her mind for the rest of her life. Reese had made such grand plans in her mind, about how she would find her once again once they were all grown up, how Arslan would fall in love with her as much as Reese was for her in turn, how they would grow up together and have many children together and eventually pass away in each others' arms.

But now... now...

Now that dream was gone.

Arslan was gone.

And Reese had never had the opportunity to tell her how she felt.

Maybe Arslan already knew how she felt. Maybe there was some part of her that knew how she felt, and maybe - just maybe - that same part of her felt the same way.

But that didn't matter how.

Arslan was gone, and Reese would never be able to see her graceful form, listen to her soothing voice, never look into her mesmerising olive green eyes, never imagine running her hands through her luscious blonde hair, never stare at her lips and wonder what it would be like to kiss them, never feel the butterflies in her stomach at looking at her beautiful figure, never be there to see her talk or laugh or smile, or even just to be there in her presence...

Now, she was gone, and Reese could never be around her ever again.

She never even got to say goodbye to her.

All she had left now, of Arslan, and of Nadir and Bolin and Scarlet and everyone else, were memories.

Nothing but painful memories.

Apparently someone had taken one look at her out of bed and decided that she was cleared for duty. She was now back in active service to Mistral. Back in active military service (and so soon as well. Only a few days after she had woken up. That had to be illegal, but desperate times and all...).

Yeah, military service. Apparently the remaining students of Haven had been folded in with the rest of the Atlesian soldiers that had stayed behind with Bram Thornmane and his ilk, as well as whatever volunteers had fought during the battle, into one unified militia force for the city of Mistral.

Reese couldn't help but smile bitterly at that fact.

She hadn't even turned eighteen yet.

How many people did they lose before the Battle of Mistral's end? Was the council really that desperate for fresh troopers, for bodies to throw onto the enemy, that they had decided to conscript actual children, of whom couldn't even legally drink yet, into their battalions? Was Bram? Were the people of Mistral?

How many people had died? It scared Reese to even consider the question.

She, Sage, and a few others - former Atlesians in armour coloured in Mistral's hues. They looked more like militiamen, or roughhouse mercenaries, than career soldiers - had been sent down into the lower layers of the city to deal with a group of Grimm that had somehow infiltrated the city. Apparently they had been sighted by civilians sheltering in some of the old homes down below, but were staying out of sight whenever they could.

Reese, Sage, and their guys were to head down into the Mistral Below and weed them out.

The armour that she wore was clunky and uncomfortable around her, and the helmet sights looked like they had been pulled from a museum (not only was Mistral running low on manpower, it was running low on material as well). Her entire body felt as heavy as the metal arm attached to her. She was tired and miserable and she hadn't even been given anytime to properly mourn those that she had lost.

But duty called, and she was forced to answer it.

The streets of Mistral Below were almost deserted, save for the lone wanderer and rats scurrying through the detritus scattered over the floors. The lower levels had suffered the least out of the Ascendant Court's bombardment, but many of the people who lived there had either been conscripted into the services of the gangs or Mistral's armed forces after the battle, or had died during the battle itself. Now everyone below was either hiding in their abodes, holding up inside their criminal strongholds, or squatting in the homes of the dead.

One of the latter houses was their destination. It was said that that was where the little pocket of Grimm were sleeping, so that was there that they were heading. Once they reached the supposed house in question, they surrounded it and slunk away into the shadows, waiting for the confirmation that they needed that this was the place of residence for this little group of Grimm squatters.

And soon enough, they had it.

A figure in a full body cloak, mask and all, walked up to the house. A box of metal wires and scraps was in their hands. Thin wisps of black smoke, barely visible unless one was looking specifically for them, flowed out from between the gaps in their garments. They jostled the box into one of their hands and knocked on the door. It opened slightly, and an obsidian head with a single red eye encompassing its face peeked through the gap. Words were exchanged, and the door was quickly opened. The figure stepped through. The door closed.

"Move in."

As soon as the order was given, Reese, Sage, and the others with them moved to the sides of the house, covering all the exits and blocking up all possible avenues of escape. Reese and Sage stacked up on the front door alongside two more, and a fifth member of their team marched towards the door with a breaching hammer.

The militiamen slammed the hammer into the door, and they moved in.

"Get down!" Sage yelled out as he raised his BRN-180 to the room as they marched into the house. Reese did the same with her ML-15A, and took notice of the messy kitchen and dining room hybrid that they had entered into.

Around the table in the middle of the room, a pair of Grimm sat with their hands up, screaming their surrender. A half completed robotic leg sat on the table, covered in spilt Black Ether and surrounded by tools and a torrent of curved metals and rusting wires and coils. One of the Grimm had a welding tool in hand. The other was missing a leg. Behind them, the front door to the house was breached and another pair of Grimm were tackled to the ground by militiamen.

"Get down on the ground, now!" Sage yelled as he grabbed the legless Disciple and threw it onto the ground. The other jumped to the floor and put its hands behind its head as more militiamen flooded into the house. Sage then turned to Reese, "Check upstairs."

Reese nodded and went to the stairs. In the living room connected to the dining room. three Grimm around a small glass table right next to a fireplace, a small bag of Lien cards scattered over it, raised their hands as a pair of militiamen pointed their rifles at them and forced them against the wall. Behind her, Sage did the same with the two Grimm, dragging the legless one across the floor to do so.

Reese made her way upstairs to more shouting. In the bathroom, a Disciple tried to clammer through an opened window to freedom outside, only to be dragged out kicking and screaming by another militiaman. In the bedrooms, more Grimm were forced up onto their feet at gunpoint and marched downstairs, and from one of the storage rooms on the far end of the upstairs corridor-

{BANG}

"What the hell!?" Reese cried out as her ears rang from the sudden shot of violence. The helmet she wore did a good enough job of muffling the loud echo of the shot ringing out, but her ears were still ringing, especially when a gun had been fired indoors. She shook her head to try and clear out the sound and looked forward to see a militiaman standing over the entrance to the storage room, door swung wide open. The fading corpse of a Disciple laid on the floor, a smoking black blood splatter on the wall and ground and a knife limply dropping out of its hand. Was it attacking the man or defending itself? Another Disciple was kneeling at its side, clutching its disintegrating body and letting out a gurgled cry in a language that Reese couldn't understand.

It was like it was crying.

A Grimm, crying...

Reese didn't know how to comprehend that.

The militiaman pulled the Grimm onto its feet and dragged it downstairs. Reese forced herself to turn her head away from the body on the floor (it had faded away now. All that was left was the knife and a few lingering traces of smoke) toward one of the rooms, spotting a messy scattering of papers on the floor. She entered the room and looked down at the papers.

A map. It was a makeshift map of the city. Of course it was. The Grimm must've used it to get into the city. Now, judging from the maps, they were planning to...

Wait. Something wasn't right with the maps. All of the arrows on the map, they were pointing the wrong way. Instead of pointing towards the city, they were pointing away, through a series of back alleys and avenues, through designated weak spots and holes in the walls, past patrols and toward freedom.

The Grimm weren't trying to get into the city, they were trying to get out.

That meant that they'd been inside the city all along, but why Reese didn't know. Were they infiltrators, and their task was accomplished? Had it failed? Had they crashed into the city from a downed Grimm ship during the battle? Had they been smuggled in and were regretting their decision?

She wasn't given much time to contemplate on this discovery as, from downstairs, Sage called out, "Reese! Get down here! We're filing out!" Sage seemed a bit too into this whole military thing.

Reese sighed and pulled her eyes away from the map on the ground, marching herself downstairs and-

"What the..."

-Seeing Sage and the other militiamen in the house pointing their guns at the dozen Grimm lined up on the wall.

"Sage, what are... what are you doing?" she asked in a tired tone, keeping her ML-15A pointed to the ground, her finger off the trigger.

Sage didn't turn his head toward her. He kept his gaze locked on the Disciples on the wall, "We're keeping these guys in line. Make one move and they'll gut you every time."

"You've got them at gunpoint. They're not going anywhere."

"Damn right."

Reese immediately guessed that that wasn't the right thing to say.

"No hurt, no hurt! We give, no hurt!" one of the Disciples called out. It seemed like only Reese heard it. They could speak? She froze up. She remembered the Grimm in the hologram when the Battle of Mistral began. That one spoke. So did the Daughter. Yet it still surprised her that this one was able to talk as well. Shocked her even.

It was disorientating to hear a Grimm speak, and even moreso to see a Grimm walk and talk and think and feel like these ones were. For all her life, the Grimm had been mindless monsters, beasts of war dolling out death to whomever crossed them. They didn't think, they didn't feel, they didn't do much else than fight and kill. They were simple, and as such it was simple to comprehend them.

Grimm bad, everyone else good. Easy as pie.

But now, when she saw the Grimm on the wall before her, shaking and quivering and looking to each other with shrunken irises and slick sweat across their bodies, she could see the fear in their eyes, the terror writ across their bodies. These Grimm weren't mindless: they were afraid. They didn't want to die. None of them did.

Reese knew that she should be filled with anger at the sight of these upright creatures. She should be indignant at their continued survival. She should be demanding their deaths for taking Arslan away from her, and for taking Nadir and Bolin and everyone else as well.

But instead... she looked at them and saw the humanity inside of them. The thought and wants and personality that the Grimm never had.

These things were alive. Well, before the Second Great War they were, but not in the same way that that she and everyone else was. But now, they were thinking, they were breathing, they were living, and their minds and thoughts were so much like hers now.

They were alive in every sense of the word, and that left Reese so conflicted on what to do.

"Maybe we should cuff them, shackle them up," one of the militiamen said, "We could do with more labourers."

…Labourers?

"No shackle! No shackle!" the Grimm cried out, waving its arms in a panic, "We friend! We-"

"Shut the hell up!" one of the militiamen cried out, pointing his gun at the head of the one who just spoke and going, "You know what? Fuck it. We've got enough labourers as it is. We can spare to lose a few."

"No! No please! We good! We-"

{THWACK}

"Shut. The fuck. Up," the militiaman removed the butt of his rifle from the Grimm's head, "Yeah, we can afford to lose a few."

"That's what you said about the last ones."

"Ah, shut up."

"We should arrest them."

Reese was surprised to hear that the voice that had just spoken was her own. Sage and the militiamen looked at her. She could sense the questioning looks under their helmets.

"Look, these Grimm, these guys, they don't- they've surrendered. They're no threat to us. Surely there's a place for us to, I don't know, throw them in or something."

"They're Grimm," Sage retorted, "The moment we turn our backs, they'll try to kill us," he silenced the cries of fearful protest from the Grimm by jostling the pointed gun in his hands.

"Yeah, but you just said that you've got a place to store them, place them."

"Not me who said that."

"But there is a place for them, right?"

"Not big enough," said one of the militiamen.

"He's right. It's not nearly big enough, and we can afford to lose a few Grimm," Sage continued, "Besides, these guys had chips of Lien on the table. Boxes of metal. They could've been trying to make a bomb for all we know. They were obviously plotting something."

And you're obviously looking for an excuse to kill them...

"Make leg for friend! I make leg for-" the Grimm was silenced by the sounds of safeties being flicked off.

"Sage-"

"Step outside, Reese," Sage ordered, "If you don't have what it takes to do what's necessary, then step outside."

"Sage, I-"

"Step. Outside."

…

Reese lowered her head and stepped outside.

She hung her head in shame, trying her best to ignore the sounds of gunfire behind her.

The cells were empty.

Reese's hands flexed rapidly from hand to fist and back as she looked up to the wide collection of cells in the abandoned prison that was soon to be converted into a temporary apartment complex for the homeless until the reconstruction of Mistral could be completed. Around her, workers and cleaners of all sorts roamed around the corridors and wide halls, sweeping up dirt and sorting up rubble into separate piles for eventual collection. A wide frame of scaffolding and building platforms covered the holes in the walls and floors, metal pipes and wooden planks littering the hallways and lining the sides of the walls as the cold air blew through and left a smattering of frost, snow, and ice across every surface close to it. The whole prison felt hollow and cold.

Every single cell was empty.

Deserted.

Lifeless.

There was no Grimm here. No prisoners. Nothing at all.

Sage and his men had never intended on the Grimm alive.

Reese didn't know why it made her so angry. They were Grimm, lifeless monsters with no soul that had been killing her kind for so long, who had taken so many people from her, and even killed the love of her life. She should be angry at them. She should hate them.

And she did.

She did hate them. She was angry at them.

But what happened then, with the Grimm on the walls, with the fear across them, with the scared look in their eyes, the feelings of shame that had overcome her as she had left them to die...

Suddenly, the hate that she had felt for them suddenly felt so petty, so childish, and she...

There was so much that she had to take in, and she wasn't sure if she could.

She wasn't sure if she could process anything at all.

The sounds of footsteps approaching her. Sage. He stopped next to her and asked, "What the hell was that back there?"

Reese frowned, "All these cells are empty."

"I asked you a-"

"You lied to me. All of you did," Reese said, looking at Sage with a grimace on her face, "There is no place where you're keeping the Grimm as prisoners. You were always planning on killing them."

"That's not true and you know it. It was a group decision."

"It was your decision!"

"And everyone else was okay with it."

"I wasn't!"

"Why? They're Grimm. They're monsters. They've been killing us for years and years on end," the same points that Reese had made to herself, "So why do you care so much?"

Reese had no answer.

"Besides, we do have a place to store the Grimm. We do have a place for them, a use for them."

"As labourers?"

"Yeah."

"What the hell, man?"

"The council were clear on what's meant to be done with them. They can afford to lose a few Grimm when we've already got a good few hundred."

So casual executions of surrendering prisoners is suddenly okay now..?

Wait a minute...

"The council... you're on Bram Thornmane's payroll now?"

"We all are. I am, you are, everyone in the militia is."

"What the fuck...?"

"They're the ones in charge."

"And they're the ones saying that it's okay to execute those who surrender?"

"Only if they're Grimm."

"And if they aren't? If they're Bandit Confederation?"

"Then they get the same treatment as the ones who we do spare?"

Reese narrowed her eyes, "What the fuck is wrong with you, Sage? What the fuck happened to you?"

"Me?" Sage's face turned to a scowl, "What the fuck is wrong with you? I lost my entire team to these motherfuckers! Scarlet, Neptune, Sun... they're all dead! They were all killed by these bastards! So was your team! You should be just as angry as I am! You should hate these bastards just as much as I do!"

I am! I do! she thought to herself (but found that it didn't hold true as much as it used to. She didn't have much use of her hatred anymore. All she had left was sad indignation), but she didn't say that. Instead, she just said, "That's not an excuse! You've got no right to use your trauma as an excuse to make others suffer!"

"Even if they're Grimm?"

Reese couldn't stop the answer that came out of her mouth, "Yes."

Even she was surprised by that.

She was just tired, and she didn't want anyone else to suffer.

She didn't want anyone else to suffer at all.

Sage shot her a look of disgust, "Then you might as well go join the Grimm if you love them so much."

Reese's spat out, "You know that's not what I meant."

"It's exactly what you meant."

Reese scoffed and turned her head away. She didn't have the energy to continue this conversation anymore.

They stood in uncomfortable silence for a long time.

…

{CLANG}

The sound of a tool (a hammer? A chisel?) hitting the ground. Reese turned her head to see a creature picking up a building tool (a screwdriver) off the ground. A humanoid creature with smoking black skin and a single eye.

A Disciple.

A Grimm.

Reese reached for her gun on instinct (it wasn't there) and her metal hand slapped against her side. She hissed in pain from the sudden movement against her raw flesh before raising her fists up in a battle pose, ready to dish out some punishment onto the intruder-

A hand fell upon her right shoulder (her organic shoulder) and pulled her back, "Wait- hold on a minute Reese! It's fine, it's fine."

Reese didn't take her eyes off the Grimm, "What? Oh, so now you're cool with-"

"You stupid fool!" Reese's eyes snapped to see an overseer for the reconstruction efforts at the side, a remote in hand and a snarl on his face, "You shame yourself even now!"

It was then that Reese noticed the collar around the Grimm's neck.

The overseer pressed down on the remote, and the collar around the Grimm's neck was suddenly alight with electricity. The Grimm screamed in pain as jolts of yellow light stretched out across its body, peeling its obsidian flesh and leaving it collapsing onto the floor, clutching itself and crying out in agony.

Eventually, the overseer released the button in his remote and the electrical shocks stopped. The Grimm curled up into a ball - the foetal position - and rocked itself as it whimpered in pain.

"M-Many... apologies, master."

The overseer sniffed, "See that it doesn't happen again," and got back to his grizzly work. After a long moment, the Grimm, its skin bristled and blistered, got itself up onto shaking feet and began its own work once more, whatever that might be.

Sage snorted quietly to her, "Abomination. That's what it deserves, I suppose."

But Reese wasn't listening to him. She wasn't listening to anything at all.

…Labourers

Labourers...

How could he... how could this...?

"...I... I need to go," she eventually said as she spun herself around and began to march out of the old prison. Reese didn't stop her, "I just... need some time alone."

And as she left, one horrible thought echoed in her mind:

A slave.

That Grimm was a slave.

The streets were chipped, riddled with potholes and impact fractures, and smothered in dust and ash, but at least the majority of the debris was being cleared from them. Not all of it, though. Reese still found herself stepping over piles of rock and the occasional piece of metal that had been left out on the roads before her. The carcasses of smashed cars under the weight of entire buildings and bombs lined the pavements, accompanying the cindered trees and bend lampposts. The old homes and businesses and structures around her were like gaping corpses, bloodied with their own suffering and locked in a scream. They had holes in their rocky flesh, massive gashes that pulled out steel beams and concrete innards like a corpse.

And yet, despite all the architectural horror around her, it surprised her how normal the people around her acted.

The streets of Mistral were not as bustling as they used to be of course (a lot of people had died during the battle. Too many, in fact). But there were still people walking up and down the streets, going on walks, handing out papers, traveling to their jobs, and just going about their lives.

It was disorientating, how something so normal could exist in such a desolate place.

And yet, when she looked at all their faces, in all their eyes, she could see it. The lingering shellshock, the festering trauma, that shaky look behind their faces as they peered behind themselves and all around, on the lookout for threats that weren't there.

Was this casual display of normality in the face of such a massive tragedy an act of defiance, or simply a way of covering up the wounds that had been inflicted on all of them?

Either way, they were brave for doing so.

Scaffolding of all sorts covered the buildings around her. An army of scrappers and salvagers worked on their remains, using aerial lifts and cranes to haul blocks of metal and stone from one side of the rebuilding efforts to the other. Workers in overalls and protective gear ran welders and hammers and wrenches and blowtorches over the wrecks around them as they disassembled all the old and broken architecture around them. The sounds of buzzing saws and metal impacting with mineral became background noise to her.

Reese noticed that almost all of them were wearing collars around their necks.

A group of people rushed past her, through a bridge of scaffolding in front of her and toward what looked like one of the city's public squares. The same one that they had tried to hand out relief aid to the people of Mistral, but got turned away by the council and Atlesians.

Reese sucked a breath into herself. The cries on the other side of the scaffolding were violent and bloodthirsty. Eager for something. She feared what she would find if she followed them.

She moved through the scaffolding.

She was horrified by what she saw.

A wide stage in the middle of the centre, protected by Atlesian soldiers, their armour messily coloured in Mistralian hues. Around the stage, hundreds of people, perhaps more than a thousand, had gathered around the stages, cheering and shouting and yelling out their anger at that which was on show for them.

Atop the stages were dozens of cages stacked atop each other.

Inside the cages were Grimm, screaming and crying as they languished in their prisons. Some of them scratched at the bars of their cells. Others sat still, shrunken into themselves and contemplating their own misery. The collars around their necks sparked them occasionally. The metal binders around their wrists and ankles locked them in place. All of them were sporting lash marks and burns across their flesh. Their eyes supported massive bags underneath them.

The people on the slave, in nice suits and protected by the militiamen, rattled off prices and bargains, going over costs and expenses, and selling the people on owning a Grimm all with a winning smile on his face and a flare to his step.

A slave auction. This was a full blown slave auction.

These Grimm were slaves.

Reese hoped that this was all a cruel joke, like these people up on the stage were going to pull a big twist and laugh in the faces of all the cruel people down below as they carted the Grimm off to whatever prison they were going to be held in.

But he didn't. None of them did.

They were selling the Grimm off like property, and the people were in agreement for it.

She could see their faces, the anger in the eyes of those that were attending the auction. The people of Mistral were angry. Vengeful. They had just lost everything to the Grimm. They had lost their homes, their businesses, their livelihoods, and their loved ones. They were looking down at the face of the monsters that took everything that they loved from them, and they wanted justice for it. Revenge, even. That made their actions somewhat understandable.

But that didn't mean that they were justified.

None of them were.

One of the Grimm cages were opened and a Disciple was dragged out. A chain was attached to his collar and a group of people dragged it into the crowd. She saw its body disappear into the throngs of people. The sounds of violence hit Reese's ears as the crowd beat the Grimm to death. They cheered at the merry violence.

…

She couldn't stay here.

She couldn't stay here...

No one had come back to the house that the Grimm squatters had been sleeping in. The violence that had taken place in the house only a day ago had temporarily warded off any potential homestayers that were looking for shelter in these trying times.

The row of bullet holes in the wall haunted her. She did her best not to look at them.

The scattered Lien cards on the ground were worthless now (apparently the Lien currency had fallen through, lost its value) but that didn't mean that they couldn't be useful. Someone out there might find some use in them. She felt bad about potentially scamming someone with worthless currency, but right now that wasn't her top priority.

She was focused on getting out of the city.

The map on the top floor served her well. The details on it were good, almost accurate save for a few diversions around blocked alleyways and roaming militia patrols. All she had to do was stick to the shadows and follow the path.

Her training as a Huntress served her well in the back alleys of Mistral, a lot more than she had expected. The three criminals who had tried to jump her never got the chance.

Soon, she reached the wall surrounding the city, and looked up to the chipped behemoth before her. The walls were dark and charred, singed by war and bombardments. Massive chunks had been taken out of the wall, leaving chasmic valleys and gargantuan cracks in the foundations. The cannons that sat atop the fortifications were silent, standing like sentries atop their kingdom.

The crack in the wall before her was insignificant compared to the rest of the damage. It was small and person sized. Big enough for her to squeeze through.

Her scroll vibrated. When did Sage get her number?

SAGE: Where the hell are you?

…

Ever since she had come to this city, all she had done was lose that which she loved. She'd lost her arm, she'd lost her innocence, she'd lost her friends, she'd lost the woman that she'd loved the most in the world...

All that was left here was pain and memories.

So why should she stay?

She dropped her scroll to the side and stomped on it. They'd just track her on it. No need to keep it with her.

It was time for her to go to a place where she didn't have to suffer such loss ever again.

It was time to go home.

She marched forward, through the wall, and out into the wild.

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