Ilia stole a glance at Emerald. The thief returned the gesture and nodded toward the opened door on the adjacent wall.
"Go for it, as soon as you've got a clear opening. Three people's a bit much, but my semblance should be able to hide me from them for at least a minute or two."
"And what are you going to do with that time?" Ilia asked as her skin shifted to better match the texture and coloration of the stack of crates.
"Get some evidence," Emerald answered. "No more talking. Just watch and wait."
Ilia leaned back out around the wall of boxes, taking care to remain hidden as she looked the trio over. The group of unfamiliar figures was facing away from her, and in the limited light within the basement, there was only so much she could make out. Two men in sleeveless shirts were dragging crates across the floor of the basement, seemingly arranging the boxes into groupings. The woman paced back and forth across a small stretch of the concrete floor behind them, her arms folded across her chest as she walked.
"More and more gravity dust," the woman said with a hint of derision in her tone. "Useful for us, but… why does the tin man need with so much of it? What's he trying to get into the sky… or keep above the water?"
Ilia leaned back to try to catch Emerald's eye only to find that the other woman had crept around to the opposite side of the length of crates. With a quick hand motion, Emerald summoned up an auditory illusion of a harsh clattering sound to draw her targets' attention to the far corner of the room.
"…the hell was that?" one of the men asked as he stood up straight and drew a serrated knife from the side of his belt.
"Be on guard," the woman in charge commanded as she unslung a rifle with blades on either side of the barrel from her back. "Likely just a rat, but we can't be too careful…"
As the trio began a slow approach toward the corner, Ilia seized the opportunity to stealthily move for the massive steel door. The faunus hurried across the open section of the basement and slipped past the weighty door to crouch in the shadows. Ilia braced her hand on the side of the metal and leaned over to watch through the opening. Emerald stood up and walked to the side of the group of three, her scroll held aloft. Somehow, the mysterious leader didn't seem to notice as Emerald circled her, taking pictures with her scroll before walking briskly for the door to join Ilia in the darkness beyond.
"…I don't see anything," the other grunt complained as he turned to face his boss. "Let's hurry this up. I don't want to be seen."
"The upstairs door is locked," the woman reassured as she turned to look at the bulkhead with narrowed eyes. "And no one followed us. Enough with the paranoia. Get back to work moving our share."
Ilia made a beckoning motion with her hand and turned to begin walking down the hall hidden behind the door only to grunt in pain as something solid impacted her stomach. Emerald collided with her back soon after, and it took the faunus quite a bit of willpower to let out little more than a pained hiss as she looked down at what she had run into. Through the darkness, Ilia could see a metal handlebar attached to a mine cart pressed into her midriff. The bucket of the cart was loaded with crystals, though Ilia couldn't make out their coloration. Beneath the small transport vehicle was a length of track leading off into the darkness, surrounded by walls of rock that looked quite like those of the dust mines outside of Mantle.
"What the fuck…?" Ilia whispered as she squinted and peered farther down the tunnel. "Is this all connected to the Schnee system, or is it something else?"
"I don't know, I can't see shit," Emerald complained as she reached a hand out into the darkness. "Guide me?"
Ilia stiffened up as she felt Emerald's searching hand brush against the skin of her waist. The faunus was quick to seize Emerald's digits in her own and pull the other girl along as she marched into the tunnel, working quickly to put some distance between them and the heavy door.
"Pitch black in here," Ilia said softly as the pair continued to walk. "I'm really, really hoping this doesn't actually lead to a dust mine. I have a thing about the mines…"
"I'd guess most faunus do," Emerald acknowledged. "How deep do we plan to go, exactly? I got some photos of her, and we do not want to get caught down here in… whatever this is."
"…deep enough to see what this tunnel leads to," Ilia considered. "This has to go somewhere, and if it really does connect to Jacques' mines… well, that would be a hell of a coverup, wouldn't it? Robyn Hill with a direct line to her competitor's resources? If they're colluding, or she's stealing from him… then she's completely sunk. It's exactly what we need."
"…people supposedly looking out for the public being in bed with massive corporations is the opposite of what we need," Emerald muttered as she tightened her grip on Ilia's hand. "I've had enough of being lied to and manipulated by people who were supposed to care."
"You and me both," Ilia agreed. "I see a light up ahead. Come on, let's speed up a bit…"
Ilia and Emerald broke into a jog, their boots clopping along the stones beneath them. Eventually, the sounds of the impacts became punctuated by occasional splashes, and orange light began to spill into the tunnel. Ilia slowed and Emerald moved to walk at her side as the tunnel widened. It was only then that Emerald let go of Ilia's hand to draw her weapons from their holsters. Ilia followed suit, taking out her own and holding it at the ready.
"Be ready for anything," Emerald suggested. "Something doesn't add up down here."
"You've got that right," Ilia agreed as the pair exited the tunnel and found something else entirely.
The tracks on the floor reached out into a massive cavern and ran farther into an underground lake. At the edge of the water was a small motorboat, and far in the distance was another tunnel larger than the one extending from beneath Robyn's tavern, its floor covered by water of indeterminant depth. Piles of dust crystals were assembled a good distance from the shore of the lake, arranged by typing and size. Of note was a large stack of pale purple gems waiting near the boat, which Ilia moved to inspect as she took out her scroll.
"…well, I'll be damned," the faunus exclaimed as she crouched over the pile and began to scan the arrangement. "It's the missing dust from the downed transport. Matches up with what was stolen, so I'm almost positive. Robyn is stealing from Ironwood…"
"…or her partner in the basement is," Emerald suggested. "Or both. This is pretty damning… and I think you and I might have just found enough to de-escalate the situation tonight, or at least redirect Ironwood's anger away from us."
"I hope you're right," Ilia considered as she lifted up a crystal and turned it over in the low light of the cave. "It's raw. Freshly mined. Definitely Schnee quality."
Emerald walked over to the pile, holstered one of her guns, and picked up a few crystals of her own only to tuck them into her belt.
"I don't fully understand what's going on with all this, but… for what it's worth, good work tonight."
"You said that like it's got some finality to it," Ilia pointed out as she followed Emerald's gaze to the lonely boat waiting up against the underground shoreline. "What are you thinking?"
"…I'm thinking it might be in my best interest to just… disappear," Emerald said slowly. "But I'm also thinking that I don't necessarily want to. Going back with you is a huge risk… but so is running. I don't know which is bigger, and I don't know which could have worse consequences. I also don't know which one I deserve. I've got nothing right now."
"I know that feeling," Ilia tried. "I'm not going to ask if you trust me- that would be stupid, since you barely even know me. But I will ask if you wish you could trust me."
"…what?" Emerald asked as she looked back to Ilia and gave her a confused blink.
Ilia averted her attention back to the tunnel leading to Robyn's tavern, where a series of lights was beginning to approach. She scanned the walls of the chamber and found another tunnel sloping upward into the darkness, not far from where she and Emerald were standing.
"Think about what you want. What you really want out of life," Ilia suggested as she began to walk briskly toward the unknown exit. "And then consider whether getting in that boat or coming with me has a higher chance of giving it to you. I had to make the same decision not that long ago. I chose to go with Sun, because what I wanted was family, and running wasn't going to give it to me. It took a while, but now? I've got it. If you stick with me, I'll stand up for you the same way he did for me… even if you don't deserve it. I sure as hell didn't."
Emerald hesitated for a moment as Ilia disappeared into the upward tunnel. It was only a few seconds before she took a deep breath and ran to follow the faunus.
"Ren?" Nora asked, her voice coming out panicked and higher than usual.
"What is it?" the boy asked as he kept his foot on the gas and squinted into the darkness. The sudden onset of falling rain had made it significantly more difficult to navigate the road. "I need to concentrate…"
"Their scroll signals," Nora began. "Every single one of them just went offline."
Ren felt a chill spread down his spine and across his shoulders. His mouth went dry as he stole a glance sideways to Nora's device, where each and every portrait of his friends had a red 'X' in the corner.
"…it might be your scroll," Ren suggested.
"It isn't- you're still in range, and so is Torchwick," Nora answered as she scrolled frantically. "Something just happened. Something big, a-"
Ren looked back to the road just in time to see a figure emerge within his high beams. The teen swerved out of the way at the last second, barely missing the pedestrian as he instinctively shot a hand out to clamp down on Nora's thigh. The vehicle skidded to a stop and turned slightly in the mud, the figure in the road disappearing from the lights as they angled off into the forest.
"Are you alright?" Ren asked.
"I-I'm fine," Nora answered as she unbuckled her seatbelt and grabbed Magnhild from its place on the floor of the vehicle. "We need to see who that was!"
Ren followed suit and unclasped his seatbelt before grabbing his weapons and hopping out of the car. The boy kept his guns trained low so as not to appear threatening as he scanned the surrounding area, his semblance engaged to mask both himself and Nora from any encroaching grimm.
"Hello!?" Ren called into the darkness as he remained in the edge of the high beams. "Are you injured?"
"We're here to help!" Nora added as she moved along the other side of the cone of light, clutching her hammer tightly. "Just… come on out! We're hunters!"
Through the rain, a figure walked out into the edge of the high beams with their hands up in a gesture of surrender. Mercury Black's hair was soaked and hanging down in his face, and he looked utterly exhausted as he stared down his two enemies.
"…if you two have any sense, you'll turn around and leave," Mercury said slowly as Nora clenched her jaw and Ren raised his firearms. "I'm on the way out, after some of the shit I've seen. I don't want anything to do with this anymore, and from the looks of things, you're driving toward a losing battle."
"What is that supposed to mean?" Ren asked as his posture stiffened.
"Look behind you," Mercury suggested with a nod toward the tree line.
Slowly, Ren looked over his shoulder in the direction of the resort. A thick column of smoke was rising over the trees far in the distance, where the building should have been.
Author's Note:
Several people have said they can't imagine things in this story getting any worse for the protagonists.
I can.
-RD