Chapter 3 – loKate

Adam knew where Ilia and Blake would land even before the jump pad launched them. The thickest clustering of trees clearly drew the eyes of both stealth fighters. He often felt that their team was slightly lopsided, as he was the only heavy frontline fighter paired with two assassins who preferred sneaking about. Then again, K was never meant to be a blunt instrument. James often said that Atlas' military was a shield and the Specialists' Corp was a sword. If so, then K would be the knife stabbed into the enemy's back, or perhaps the poison in their drink. Honestly, with his overpowered combat semblance and his talent for swordsmanship rather than espionage, Adam was actually the odd Faunus out of their little bunch.

He aimed himself for the same area of trees, knowing that despite his Faunus trait, the girls could be more stubborn than he was when they wanted something. Some of the children around them, one blond human with a simply laughable excuse for a blade, seemed to truly struggle with their aerial maneuvering, but Adam had launched from stolen Mistrilian blimps from heights up to 8000 feet. Compared to that ordeal, this was human's play.

Adam didn't land alongside them, but he was close enough to see where the two of them had ended up. A quick jog brought K back to full strength.

Well, not quite.

"We need to find our new member right away."

The statement itself was rather uncomfortable to say. While K had taken Ilia as a new member after 2 years as a duo, that change had been when Adam was barely a young man. The three of them had grown up together, trained together, and become who they were meant to be together. If either of the girls fell in battle, Adam would honestly consider throwing himself and the survivor (if they willed it) on Wilt, for even death would be preferrable to the eternally thrawn life that would follow.

And now, just like that, we're supposed to accept some random imbecile into our

Adam sighed and took a breath to calm himself. His temper had always been his worst trait. Reaching into his back pocket, he felt for the calm-down kit that James had advised him to make for times like this. The pocketknife, a sewn emblem of his family's wilting rose crest that his mother had given to him, and now, most recently, Jacque Schnee's little chess piece. Despite all being small enough to fit in his hand, these were all tokens commemorating the most important moments in his life.

Remember who you are. The pain, the rage – you master them, not the other way around. It's only in your head, and you're the king of your own mind.

It would be fine. Perhaps this would be the first day in a new chapter of K's growth. Adam briefly entertained the fanciful notion of his little task force developing into a full-on covert operations agency, managing the work that Atlas couldn't be seen doing and keeping the kingdom safe. Or maybe this new member that James was sending his way would take the skills that he or she learned while with the trio and found a new child branch that Adam could be the 'James' of. Adam suppressed a laugh. I suppose it would have to be called L.

As the eldest member and de facto leader, Adam's pride and joy was his team. The idea of more and more Faunus under its banner serving J̵a̵m̵e̵s̵ Atlas and the greater good appealed to him greatly.

Adam produced his data chip and inserted it into his scroll. The familiar hologram popped up of a dog Faunus with a bushy tail curving upwards as his animal trait. He'd studied the face extensively when a private moment came his way, but that was all he had – the face. The young Faunus appeared to be closer in age to Adam than Blake or Ilia, but his cheery smile clearly set them apart.

"Here's our man. Key physical traits: dog Faunus. Dark green hair, brown skin, blue eyes. Mid-20s, approximately 6 feet tall, slim build. Dress is expected to be light tan wifebeater and blue slacks."

Ilia nodded and plugged a chip into her scroll. Her eyes roved over the data onscreen as she read it aloud. "Named Marrow Amin. Former Specialist. Formal story: discharged for conduct unbecoming of an officer. In actuality, he scored too high on his combat examinations and was upgraded to Atlas elite. Heh – it says this guy applied for the Ace Ops before us."

Adam snorted. "I can just imagine those pompous dipshits touting him around as their token Faunus." As an off-the-books agent of Atlas, Adam had never actually had the displeasure of meeting them, but their swashbuckling little propaganda videos spoke for themselves. Although, he would admit that they had quite the track record of criminal captures and kills. Among the White Fang, the Ace Ops were both the laughingstock and the dreaded.

Blake plugged her chip in last. Instead of compartmentalized information, a single red dot on a sweeping green circle appeared, providing them with a distance and bearing. "He's got a tracking device implanted into the base of his skull," explained Blake. "It's to help us find him in this madhouse before some hapless huntsman or huntress accidentally makes eye contact."

So, James had prepared for the eye contact thing. That made sense – as Vale's closest ally, Atlas would be aware of the not-so-secret secret regarding the eccentric headmaster of Beacon and his absurdist teaming protocols.

"Yeah, sure – finding him," scoffed Ilia. "And it's definitely not permanently fixed into his head so that we can keep track of him when he inevitably lags behind on a mission."

"Play nice, Ilia," admonished Blake.

"Actually, it might be best to get the teasing out now," recommended Adam. "If he's going to be our fourth member for the foreseeable future, we can't go around openly mocking him. K needs to be a cohesive units. Ilia, say your jokes now so you don't accidentally let one slip when–"

"Okay, so first, I think it's really sweet that you're already looking out for him. Someone needs to…throw him a bone. Eh? Next, I doubt he'll be up to our standards. K is really going to the dogs. I mean, this guy might look tough, but I bet his bark is worse than his bite. Maybe he's a punishment for some slip up we had on the White Fang job, and we're in the doghouse."

"Any more?"

"If he runs into any Grimm in the Emerald Forest, they're in for a pound-ing. Now, let's go fetch K's newest member."


Blake smelt them before she saw them. Beowolves.

Unlike other Grimm, they tended to have a distinct scent. Blake wasn't sure if it was some manner of Grimm musk, a side effect of specific behaviors unique to the species, or just the general scent of death that emanated from one of the most common Grimm on Remnant. Regardless, they smelled like…well, it was impossible to truly describe a scent without comparing it to another scent, and Beowolves smelled somewhere between loam and poundcakes.

The world was host to some of the most bizarre, exotic, lethal monsters that man or Faunus could imagine. Manticores, for example, were flying lions with manes of horns, barbed tails, and fire for breath. The fact that Beacon sent its initiates into a forest of plain Beowolves said something interesting about the level they expected their students to be at.

Despite technically being the most successful Grimm at killing people, Beowolves were incredibly weak. They were pack hunters that relied exclusively on quantity over quality, boasting little more than the same fangs and claws nearly every Grimm had. Statisctically, more deaths were attributed to them than any other Grimm, but that was because of their near omnipresence and proneness for seeking out humans. Going with the Manticores for comparison, the winged Grimm typically lived alone in mountainous climates near Northern Mistral and would leave you alone if you stayed out of their territory. When an entire species only saw about a hundred stragglers annually, it tended to be ranked as least dangerous regardless of its actual threat level.

"I think I'm going to sit this one out," said Ilia, taking a seat on a stump as the flock of Beowolves came into view. "But you two go on ahead. Don't wait for me or anything."

Adam took note of the Grimm's numbers as the beasts surrounded the two remaining fighters. "Just three Alphas. You think you can solo them, Blake?"

"Eh, sure. Why not? But you bet your lazy butts that I'm gonna load you up with all the hard work when the Schnee inevitably turns evil and becomes the primary antagonist for our time at Beacon."

"Turns evil? Is that to imply that she isn't already evil?"

Blake drew Gambol Shroud and left a shadow clone where she had been standing. A clueless Beowolf tried to swipe her down with its paw, but all it got was a fistful of shadows. Blake felt bad for the poor thing, so she gave it a consolation prize in the form of a cleaver. It graciously thanked her by dying.

Three more bounded towards her, enraged by the loss of their flimsy companion. Blake lined up the shots of her submachine gun and popped each in the head with a single Dust round. Even though Atlas now commanded a virtually limitless supply of Dust that would self-replenish, there was no need to be wasteful.

The first of the Alphas howled, and all remaining normie Beowolves snarled in response. Blake flung her weapon's ribbon into a tree, hoisted herself up in a single fluid motion, and let them come. Beowolves were too stupid to know that they weren't Ursai and thus had no ability to climb. Clamoring at the trunk, they also didn't seem to realize that Adam and Ilia were still on the ground. Of the three equally unafraid people, only Blake had attacked them, so only Blake was their target.

Throwing a ribbon to a nearby tree, Blake took a running leap off her branch and swung across the landscape, carving through the Grimm as she did. She'd intentionally chosen to land in the heaviest thicket for this purpose; in this environment, agility made one queen. Landing gracefully in another tree, she ended up with four fewer Beowolves to deal with. The Alphas now outnumbered the regular Beowolves, meaning that their dominance over the legions was basically useless.

One of the senior Grimm got impatient and threw its smaller colleague at the tree. As weak as they were, Alphas definitely possessed more strength then normal Beowolves, so the airborne Grimm ended up as little more than a splatter when it crashed into the trunk. Nevertheless, the force of its impact was enough to splinter the wood and render it structurally unsound, so the Alpha had succeeded in its quest of forcing Blake to the ground. As she landed in a somersault and dashed forward with her katana, she couldn't help but think that it was probably regretting that success right about now.

The Alpha who betrayed his kin was closest, so he was going to be slain first. Blake decided to make his death poetic and clipped the nose of another Alpha with a thrown cleaver, pulling the weapon back to her once she'd gotten its attention. Both Alpha's descended upon her, but Blake ducked out of the way and placed a shadow clone where she'd been standing. The betrayer Alpha got to her first and slashed its fists through the smoky duplicate, right into the chest of the second Alpha. In its mindless rage, it dug its fangs into the neck of the one who had killed it, which happened to be its kin. Both Grimm slumped forward onto one another as they perished then disappeared into a cloud of smoke.

A single Alpha and a single plain Beowolf remained. Blake shot the smaller of the two and threw Gambol Shroud at the larger. It lowered its head to avoid the weapon and growled, but Blake simply tugged the ribbon and recalled her katana towards her, slicing the Grimm in half from behind.

"Enjoy the show?" she called out.

There was no response. Blake turned around to look for Adam and Ilia, a proud look of triumph on her face, but both of them were gone. Climbing up a tree, she took a wide look around the jungle.

"Guys?" she shouted. "Are you o…K?"

"Yeah, we're o…K." The answer came from beyond a ridge that obscured Blake's view of the two Faunus. The tree-swinging fight had taken Blake far from their initial position, but she had enough awareness of her surroundings to know that the two of them had also moved.

The responds had their collective name in it, so, the two hadn't been discovered by some student or anything like that. Had Ilia said they were fine, Blake would have known to keep all discussions rated for general audiences.

"Ilia, I swear to the Brothers, if this is some dumb prank–"

"Blake. Get over here."

It was Adam that spoke this time, in a commanding tone. Blake bent into a crouched and nimbly leapt from tree to tree until she rejoined her comrades. I hope Ilia doesn't say some dumb line about my 'catlike' agility.

She landed in front of them. "Alright, what's so important that you two had to straight-up abandon me when I was at the mercy of those brutish fiends?"

"We found the specialist."

"That can't be," said Blake, pulling out her scroll. "It's my scroll that has the program to locate the trac…wait, what?! That's impossible!"

Her scroll was saying that the signal was gone entirely. Not missing, but disappeared off the face of Remnant entirely, as though the tracker had been destroyed. Blake slapped it with her palm in a futile attempt to get it working again. "How can this be? The tracker was a subdermal implant in his head."

"Blake."

"What?"

Ilia pointed behind her. Blake turned around and saw…Marrow.

And the marrow inside of his spine as it stuck out of his neck.


Ilia had seen enough death as a member of the White Fang to not be overly affected by it. General Ironwood typically kept it to a minimum by having K subtly discourage the raids that would end in bloodshed and inform him when they couldn't so Atlesian soldiers could prepare accordingly. But every now and again, he had to let some go through, lest the Fang assume (correctly) that they had a mole. And she wasn't referring to Truman, the mole Faunus who sold them weapons. The point was, Ilia had seen her fair share of corpses, both human and Faunus. One particularly nasty victim of a Spider Droid's laser turret had stuck with her for a while, but she was pretty desensitized to gore and gruesomeness by this point.

Or so she'd though, until she laid eyes on the carcass of Marrow Amin.

That was what he was – a carcass. It was completely impossible to tell that the mutilated remains had ever been a real Faunus. All of his clothes were torn off, revealing deep purple bruises along every inch of the body was coated in. Blood seeped out of several long lacerations onto the forest floor. The real kicker was his…

"HURK!"

…head. Poor Blake.

It was missing entirely. His neck was little more than a bloodied surface of exposed flesh.

"Grimm?" Ilia managed to stutter.

Adam knelt down before corpse and gently lifted it to give himself a better view of the wound. "Awfully clean cut for Beowolf or Ursai paws. And have you ever known a Grimm to mutilate a corpse like this rather than just gnaw it apart and eat it?"

"A-Are you saying this was the work of a person?"

"Possibly. We need to analyze the body here and now. An autopsy is out of the question; we can't bring the remains with us without having a full on investigation, and K doesn't need that."

How was he speaking so calmly? Ilia was barely able to hold together her nerves. "Should we call off the mission? Bring him back, and then…I dunno, say we're too traumatized to go to Beacon?" That actually wouldn't be too far from the truth, as far as Ilia was feeling.

Adam shook his head. "That won't bring Marrow back. I'd never sacrifice an innocent Faunus for any mission, especially one who's a member of K – new or not – but what's done is done. We'll have to leave him here." Rising from the body, he removed his eyepatch. "You don't need to take part, Ilia. I'm used to this. I've seen injuries worse than this in the SDC camps. Mining raw Dust can lead to some grizzly ways to depart this world. I wouldn't blame you if you can't stomach the–"

"N-No. I can do it."

Ilia would never back down when Adam was handling it this well, especially when her cushier background was the reason behind her squeamishness. She was a member of K, and she would do her job with composure befitting one of her rank.

Kneeling next to Adam, she looked over the corpse and tried to be professional. "He was beaten viciously. If it was a person, they certainly felt it was personal."

"The even cut suggests an edged weapon," stated Adam. "Likely a sword, but any weapon with a sharp blade could do this."

"Or a semblance."

"Possible. We shouldn't discount anything for now. If this was done by a human–"

"A human or a Faunus."

"I meant as opposed to a Grimm. But if Amin's killer was a person, it is possible he was intentionally targeted."

Ilia looked up. "No one knows K exists."

"There are no signs of a struggle. To inflict this much damage and then kill an Atlesian Specialist-level fighter? Only an equally trained combatant or an assassin of exceptional skill could do such a thing. This was not the likes of one of those mindless cretins who tried to bully us yesterday, nor was it the mere Beowolves that Blake slaughtered. Someone this powerful would be wasting their talents by coming to Beacon…"

"…unless they aren't really a student. Unless they're like us."

Blake reappeared from wherever she'd snuck off to.

"Are you alright?" Ilia asked as though she herself hadn't been on the verge of a breakdown just seconds ago.

"I'm fine," Blake answered. "I found his head. The tracker…it was cut out."

Adam sighed. "Someone was looking for him."

As much as it brought her discomfort to admit it, Ilia knew he was right. To sever a person's head was one thing, but to know where the tracker was and specifically cut out the one thing that tied Marrow to…

Oh, shit!

"Can they use the tracker to find us? Can they reverse it?!"

Blake looked at her scroll. "I don't think so. It's supposed to be a one way signal."

"But they might not have known that," Adam noted. "This could have been an attempt to locate us. Good eye, Amitola."

Ilia's head perked up. "They could have killed us. But they didn't."

"You're right," Adam said, a small smile on his face. "We may have narrowly avoided death at the hands of a vicious murdered, had we stumbled upon this scene but a few minutes earlier. Fate must be smiling upon the three of us."

"No – well, yes, but that's not the point I was trying to make. I think our identities aren't made. Whoever did this must know agents of K are in the school, but they don't know the three of us are those agents. After all, why go through all the effort of taking a tracker out if you know your targets' names or faces? We haven't tried to hide, and there must have been plenty of chances to kill us. Dust, we could have had our throats slit when we slept."

Blake nodded. "Or, if they didn't want an audience, they could have followed our trajectories when we launched and located us in this forest. It wouldn't have been that difficult; Adam did it."

Ilia looked at her two friends. "Our identities haven't been compromised. So we continue the mission."

Adam grunted in agreement. "Let's get out of here. We need to keep moving."

The trio covered the remains of their fallen would-be member with some vegetation and torn up underbrush to prevent his body from being found. Ilia was slightly upset that he wouldn't receive a proper military burial, but she knew that any true Atlesian agent would never insist on ceremony at the expense of an ongoing mission.

Adam looked around as they walked away from the makeshift tomb. "Where are the relics?"

"Ozpin said that–"

They couldn't have been more than 50 meters from the site of Amin's death when Blake abruptly stopped talking due to the unexpected presence of a tiny human who wandered in front of them. This little girl was clearly just as startled, for she nearly jumped out of her skin and shrieked when she saw them.

She was cleaning off a scythe.


Omake – deleted scenes

Blake: Let us have a moment of silence.

Ilia: It's a real shame Marrow's dead. I guess it really is a dog eat dog world. He must not have been the top dog.

Adam: An innocent Faunus is dead.

Ilia: And that's a real paws for alarm. Someone at Beacon has revealed themselves as a vicious murderer – they've really shown their true collars.

Adam: That's it. I'm calling off the mission.

Ilia: Oh, no. We mustn't stray from our task, even though someone sleigh-ed our husky new member.


Author's Notes

RIP Marrow you were loved by all and also killed to death RIP in piece 1 like = 1 dead Faunus.

I did warn y'all that this would be something of a murder mystery. And what better way to start it off by murdering the mysterious 4th member? I heard a lot of guesses (esp. Velvet or Weiss), but basically no one was expecting Marrow Amin. To be fair, who would think it would be some rando from Season 7 who prolly dies or something IDK I skipped V8.

The reason James Ironwood chose him to be the 4th member was because: a) Adam wouldn't like a human on the team. Sadly, he won't be joining the team in anything beyond an honorary sense. However, what does stick around is the question of whodunnit and why. And we already have our first suspect! Hooray!

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