It wasn't ever canonically established how many days the Vytal Tournament takes place over and how the team-double-final matchups are structured, so please forgive me if my math ends up a little funky. I went by real-life sporting events, the instantaneous Dust biome cleanup, and the visual time of day during the matches we see before the schedule changes due to Yang kneecapping Mercury, as well as the fact that there were canonically 32 teams in total from the four schools.
Also, Aura sensing is a canonical thing, although how it precisely works is a little fuzzy. Since that particular emotion was never shown, I'm using the color white for fear in Ren's petals, since red seems to equate anger, orange frustration, blue sadness/grief, and purple guilt. The green petals are a bit funky, since they seem to denote either calm, forced serenity, or envy, depending on your interpretation of Vine and Winter's mental state in V8E7.
"So we all know that this was Tyrian, right?" Jaune asked the next morning, after the flurry of scouting and reporting activities that the student teams had sadly been sidelined out of. He, Ruby, Sun, and Penny were all gathered in the headmaster's office alongside Ozpin's group, none of whom looked any happier to be there than they were.
"Tyrian," Qrow nodded, a little gallows-eyed and with his ubiquitous flask replaced with a cup of coffee after having spent most of the previous night pestering various coroners, hospitals, and police departments for first-hand information.
"Tyrian," Ozpin agreed, steepling his fingers before his nose with a sigh. "The… pattern of brutality, was most distinct, even if the methods differed from victim to victim."
"No one was poisoned, but there are few serial killers willing to toy with their prey the way he does. They murder for the thrill of it and only escalate to torture when mere killing stops giving them the same high as it used to," General Ironwood said, and Penny gave him a worried look as he pinched and rubbed the base of his nose, like he was trying to ease a headache. "And I cannot believe that this is just some random maniac cropping up so close to the Vytal Festival."
"I find myself equally concerned with the target demographic," Professor Goodwitch said, her mouth tight. Penny saw the others looking at each other in confusion, and so she piped up, drawing on the data that she had scanned over and downloaded from her Scroll.
"All of the victims were friends or family of the teams sent here for the Vytal Festival," she said, and watched Sun, Ruby, and Jaune go pale. "What is more, the style of attack changed depending on the school said teams attended, which may indicate that Tyrian Callows is attempting to imply that there are multiple attackers targeting rival academies."
Although Penny was not intended to target human and Faunus criminals –not yet, anyway, not so soon after she was made– she was still raised in a military environment and was perfectly well aware of the structure behind serial killers, mass murderers, spree killers, and all the other horrible types of people that killed other people.
Spree killers committed wild acts of passion, usually, murdering multiple people over a very short period of time. A good example might be a jilted lover who killed their ex-lover, the intrusive party, and perhaps several members of the intrusive party's family, or mutual friends who tried to stop them from killing their ex-lover.
Mass murderers killed many people at once, but unlike spree killers, this was done by an organization or a group rather than one person. Terrorist attacks, for example, slid under the definition of mass murder, or a cult that demanded all its members commit suicide at once.
A serial killer, however, was someone who killed multiple people over a longer stretch of time, and was characterized by their method of operation –a chosen, unvaried method of killing, body disposal, and/or victims (who tended to fit a mold). The extended length of time between choosing and attacking victims and their possession of a pattern were what differentiated them from spree killers. Also, as General Ironwood said, their killings tended to escalate over time, going from simple murder, to torture before murder, to taunting the police, to going to riskier and riskier lengths to obtain victims, all in search of a better "high".
Penny made a face.
In any case, Tyrian Callows was clearly a model for a serial killer in the later stages of his progression. Being a Huntsman-level fighter, he used his weapons as a signature method of killing; he tended to torment his victims both physically and mentally before killing them; and he was clearly reckless in both attacking them and in drawing the attention of the police.
What concerned her was that by varying his method of attack –striking the couple from Atlas swift and silent from behind, like an assassin; bludgeoning the father from Mistral like a common thug; slicing the sibling from Vacuo to ribbons; catching the three friends from Vale in a barrage of gunfire– he seemed to be attempting to make this look like a series of spree killings. Like crimes of opportunity that were perhaps committed by people from different kingdoms against their rivals…
"This is targeted," Sun said, his tail waving uncertainly as he stuck both hands in his pockets. "Isn't it? I mean, they're obviously trying to pump negativity into the populace, so if people think some crazy maniacs are going around beating up competitors' friends and family…"
"It could pressure people out of the tournament," Ruby said, looking worried.
"More importantly, it makes Vale itself look dangerous," General Ironwood said. "Since Cinder's plans to destabilize the tournament itself have probably fallen through, Callows is picking up the slack by making it seem like the walls themselves can't keep the citizens safe…"
As he began to tell the others about the security measures he had put in place –which Penny had already learned about, thanks to her newly-reinforced VPN– she checked out of the conversation a little bit, flickering her way through her internal database as she looked for the file she had downloaded earlier.
Although technically not in the military, Penny was still given the clearance level of a team medic, so she could access the Atlesian criminal databases with relative ease. She had spotted Tyrian Callows' file sometime last night, and mentally tabbed it so that she could take a look later. She hadn't looked then, too worried about someone perhaps sneaking into the dorm rooms to harm her friends –or Ilia, who had reassured her via Scroll that nothing was happening in the Emerald Forest and she was still fine.
Now seemed an excellent time to catch up.
The file she pulled up was, rather concerningly, painted over with a number of black bars, censoring sometimes what seemed like whole sentences of information. She made sure to take a good look at the two photos provided –one a mugshot, the other what seemed to be a slightly-blurred image caught by a Scroll of Tyrian Callows in the middle of fleeing– in order to make sure that she wouldn't mistake him.
Thin face, yellow eyes, pale skin, a piercing in at least one ear, and long dark hair he kept in a braid. She couldn't read his stride from the still photos, but she could make an estimation of his height, which should also make it easier to pick him out in a crowd.
Penny's eyes moved to the text, and her worried frown dug deeper into her face.
CALLOWS, TYRIAN
Male, Faunus (Scorpion -Poisonous Tail). Age: Presumed Mid-to-Late Thirties. Wanted for murder, assault, kidnapping (section truncated -see attached criminal record). Considered armed and extremely dangerous.
Following is an excerpt from Incident Report [REDACTED]
Apprehended by Atlas and Mistral officers in a joint operation (see attached Mission Report A_812) with Mistral Huntsman, F. Pickerel. Prior to transport from Mistral to Atlas, Pickerel was insistent that additional units were necessary in guarding the prisoner. This request was denied. It is obvious Pickerel believed Callows would attempt to escape. Pickerel was removed from the transport team after failing to cooperate. [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED]
At 0331 on the day of transport, a distress call from pilot T. Cornetto was received. Cornetto reported a "swarm of Grimm" had engaged their ship. Grimm activity in the area had been declared "minimal to none" 12 hours prior to the event (see GR_12). Audio continued to transmit for another 6 minutes and 13 seconds. Over the course of the encounter the ship suffered extensive damage and was eventually split in two. The bodies of [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] were never found and it is presumed they were [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] Cornetto, continues to speak despite clearly suffering several injuries from the crash. Most notable was his repeated phrase "What are you? What are you?" It is unclear to whom or what Cornetto was directing this question at. Immediately following this moment, Cornetto is fatally attacked by a Grimm. Callows' voice is the last recorded. The suspect seems to be weeping before stating the word "Beautiful." Transmission ends immediately.
No survivors were found. Tyrian Callows' body was never found. He is presumed dead.
(UPDATE) The body of F. Pickerel has been found in his home. We are now declaring Callows 'missing'. (Additional reading recommended: FA_01, [REDACTED] WR_01-27)
She remembered that Ruby and the others had said that Tyrian was a devoted –and rather crazed– servant of Salem, so this report probably detailed his recruitment. The sudden swarm of Grimm out of nowhere, the way Cornetto had shouted "what are you?" over and over again –had he seen Salem? Had she come to personally call Tyrian Callows to her side?
Lack of human nerves or bodily reflexes did not mean that Penny could not shiver, and she did so now.
With her clearance, she couldn't peel away the blocked-out parts of the text, but she did not really need to. From this, Penny knew enough, and she minimized the text in her vision and looked up again as the others continued speaking.
"The kind of attack Cinder planned –according to your foreknowledge– may have a lot of moving parts to jam, but it is also, in part, like an avalanche," Professor Goodwitch was saying, tapping her riding crop idly against her side. "Although we have her under lock and key, the attacks last night make it obvious that Salem intends to push her forces into the attack anyway. She has a chance to reclaim her Maiden candidate as well as devastate the school, so she nearly must."
"She'll find it a hard task," General Ironwood said grimly. "Trust me, I'm well aware of the risk. Pending supposed maintenance on the main ship's terminal, the control system for our robotic forces has been shifted from the main battleship to one of the escorts, and I've tripled security on both ships. Human security, so there's no fear of them being hacked."
Penny caught the tiny apologetic glance he sent her way, and smiled and shrugged so that he knew she wasn't offended.
"Speaking of, any luck on prying any secrets out of our dear friend Cindy?" Qrow drawled, rather too casually in Penny's opinion, and General Ironwood let out a frustrated sigh.
"Nothing. We both know that she's responsible, but she refuses to admit anything either way, much less talk about Salem. I'd give it one more day, Ozpin, before we try the Aura transfer machine. Maybe her pawns will be more willing to speak after they know she's dead."
"I'm still not entirely sure that that's the safest option," Ozpin hedged, tapping his thumbs together from where his hands were folded on his desk. He frowned at the polished surface. "We are not sure just how much the Aura transfer will take from the person it transfers from, and we can ill afford an amalgamation of Cinder and Amber slipping past our trust. Amber was already fiercely protective of her independence prior to the assault, and I fear she may react poorly if we try to control her even a little."
Everyone looked towards Ruby and Jaune.
"What do you think about using Cinder to attempt to restore the Fall Maiden's powers?" General Ironwood asked, raising an expectant eyebrow, and the two returnees exchanged a glance.
"I dunno…" Ruby said.
"We never saw an Aura transfer finish the whole way," Jaune explained, looking equally dubious.
"Think we're kinda out of our depth here for once…" Ruby admitted in a low mumble, scratching her cheek.
"I say we give it a go and hope for the best," Sun said, and shrugged when everyone looked at him. "That Amber lady's dying anyway, so… what does she have to lose? Stick Cinder in the switcharoo machine, rip out her Aura and stuff it back into Amber, and either Amber wakes up or she dies, but either way, Cinder's not gonna be a problem anymore and we can figure out what to do with the Fall Maiden."
Ruby nodded slowly.
"I think Sun's right," she said. "Amber didn't… in the future, she never… we should try to give her a chance, at least. Even if it does mesh her soul together with Cinder's, we can deal with that then."
"I'm not sure either way, honestly," Jaune said, passing the metaphorical baton with a shrug and a pensive frown.
"Then barring any sudden change of heart from Cinder, we shall attempt the Aura transfer process tomorrow," Ozpin sighed. He leaned back against his chair. "Following that… if Salem intends to strike at the Vytal Festival regardless of which agents she uses, we must prepare ourselves to stymie her."
"Tyrian's a tough opponent, but he's still just one guy," Jaune said. "He's going to have backup."
"I'd ask your little friend to chat with her contacts with the White Fang, see if they're still gearing up for something," Qrow hummed. His red eyes were unexpectedly sharp as they glanced across to Penny. "Have her keep it quiet, though. This close to the finish line, anyone poking around for information is gonna get more than just stitches."
"One of us can go talk to the people in the hospital," Ruby suggested. "Maybe we'll notice something that nobody else can."
"And our teams are still in the running for the tournament," Jaune said, giving a little nod to Sun. "We'll keep our eyes peeled for anything strange."
"I can do another sweep, looking for any viruses or anomalies within the Vale and Atlas systems," Penny said.
"And in the meantime, we'll clamp down on security and monitor everything we can," General Ironwood said, setting his jaw. "The ball is still in our court. Salem knows that her agent has been captured, but nothing about what we've done so far could be attributed to anything except Cinder's clumsiness and our good luck. As far as she's concerned, all we know is that Cinder's team was here for nefarious purposes and likely involved in a plan against Beacon."
"Let's keep it that way," Professor Goodwitch said.
"Indeed," Ozpin said gravely, and then rose to his feet. "Qrow, to that end, I might suggest that you go drifting amongst the bars of Vale. I want to know the general mood of our population, and no one's better at sussing that sort of thing out than you."
Ruby's uncle made a perfunctory, somewhat sardonic salute, and the meeting broke up as Penny piled into the elevator with her friends for the first ride down.
Neo had told them to board a particular bus at a particular time and ride it until she made contact, and Blake and Weiss had been the ones to go into the city to do so, reasoning that the two of them would stand the best combined chance at getting the most information from the still-living victims in the hospital.
"Something interesting?" Blake asked, hooking her legs under the seat as the bus rumbled through downtown Vale. Weiss was occupied with her Scroll, a decided tilt to her mouth as she flicked through a series of messages.
"My family heard about the attacks in the city," Weiss hummed in absent reply. "My father's insisting I contact him at the first available opportunity, which I'm sure will involve a discussion about how I should be training in Atlas instead."
There was a chime as Weiss deleted that message without a second thought.
"Winter and Whitley are more genuinely concerned."
Weiss's fingers flew across the keys as she began formulating a reply to both of them.
Blake waited for Weiss to say anything about her mother, and when nothing was forthcoming, sighed lightly. Navigating the labyrinthine tangle of her sibling relationships was hard enough for Weiss, she knew, and Blake's own impression of the Schnee matriarch had been less than stellar.
Still.
Still, Willow Schnee had been willing to throw herself into harm's way to protect her children from the Hound, back in the Atlas that wasn't, and Blake rather doubted that they'd have been able to eliminate the Hound as cleanly without her aid.
She wasn't going to mention that to Weiss, though. She wasn't going to push. Blake knew better than anybody how annoying it felt for someone else to push their nose into your family drama, like they had any right to judge the complex net of ties that bound you all together. There'd certainly been enough sharp, cruel words between her and her parents back when she'd first peeled away to join the new White Fang with Adam, and she had snapped at anybody who had even looked like they were going to try and stick their oar in.
They both looked up as someone sat across from them, and relaxed at the sight of a woman wearing an olive-toned sunhat, blouse, and sensible navy skirt as she settled across from them. Her dark hair was cut in a sharp-edged bowl, and her eyes were a steady brown. All in all, she was the spitting image of the same woman who had started this whole incident, lunging for Yang with a sword drawn from the illusion of a briefcase in the Central Location as Neo's Aura shards glittered away to reveal-
Blake's fists clenched, and she remained diplomatically silent.
Although they shared a moment of knowing eye contact, the woman did not speak to them, nor they to her, as she settled across from them in the four-seater section and brought out a book, lowering her eyes towards it modestly. One finger tapped the back of the cover facing them, and a tiny, subtle shimmer flickered over it as letters only a slightly different color than the brown leather shimmered into being.
Taking orders from Watts now.
Blake exchanged glances with Weiss. It was just as they'd feared.
Been told to lay low, plan going forward as normal. White Fang included. Break out partner.
Despite her eyes being lowered to the book, Neo's lips twitched in a tiny sneer.
Told not to worry about the rest. Supposed to eliminate resistance on battleship, take down other two ships to deactivate robots. Then support WF.
Blake hummed thoughtfully. It seemed like their plans and security measures had changed Salem's scheme somewhat –rather than hacking the robots, she was settling for dismantling them, and Torchwick and Neo, rather than commandeering the flagship and –presumably– raining chaos on the people below while they protected the virus, were supposed to reinforce the White Fang themselves in the attack.
But Blake could read between the lines as well as Neo, and the picture they painted was not kind. Neo was supposed to break out Torchwick and only Torchwick, indicating that Salem planned to extract her more important agents herself, and then stay behind to protect the pawns that Salem had already proved she had no issue with throwing away. They were essentially being left behind to hold the doors while Salem and her agents retreated without a scratch.
Torchwick and Neo were on their own, now.
Or, that is, on their own except for Blake and the others.
"You already know my account number. The money there is at your disposal, should the two of you need it at any point," Weiss said in an undertone, barely moving her lips. Neo's eyes briefly rose above the book, and she gave a small nod, before glancing back down.
"Do you know anything about the attacks? About Tyrian?" Blake asked, just as quietly.
Watts keeps information close. Been told not to ask questions. He's supposed to be "stirring the pot."
Causing chaos and unrest in the city, in order words. If the foiled Breach wasn't enough to raise the ambient negativity in the kingdom, then Salem's faction were clearly willing to try other means. Blake could understand why Neo didn't have any more information, though –her time in the White Fang had taught her all about the wisdom in splitting up plans between teams and individuals, and only letting the commander hold all –or most– of the pieces.
People who served as supply runners didn't need to know where or how an attack happened, only that they must get these supplies to this location by this time. Those who served as boots on the ground only needed to learn the outline of the plan during the pre-attack briefing. Leaders of specific cells only knew how to reach Sienna and one or two other leaders. By limiting the flow of information, they helped close up the holes that spies might slip through.
When scheming at this level, you told people exactly how much they needed to know, and not a particle more. From Salem's perspective, Neo needed to know that she answered to Watts, to be on standby to break out her partner, to assist the White Fang afterwards: and nothing more.
Could Neo put more pieces together on her own? Yes, certainly, but that was her problem –and her risk. Salem did not appreciate her plans being interfered with, even by an ally.
Salem, however, was going to have to reconcile herself with that. Blake set her jaw and rolled her shoulders a little, feeling the familiar, comforting weight of Gambol Shroud against her back.
"We're going to go question the victims in the hospital." Weiss murmured softly. "Two of our teams are still competing in the tournament, JNPR and SSSN. One of them, at least, will try to fail out."
"Do you know anything more about the White Fang?" Blake asked.
Neo's eyes flickered to her briefly.
About Adam?
Something clenched deep in Blake's chest –fear, anger, or simple surprise over Neo knowing who she was talking about; she didn't know which. Maybe all three. His name still had power over her, even after all the time that he'd been dead and gone and not her problem, anymore.
She unclenched her jaw to speak. "Yeah."
In Vale. Supposed to lead the WF. Ideas?
"We could-" Weiss began, but Blake cut her off, voice hard.
"I'll handle him."
Weiss gave her a sidelong glance, full of surprise. Blake met her eyes steadily.
"This is my mess to clean up." she said, and meant it. It was not her fault, who Adam had become –who he was– but Blake had some culpability for the damage that he had done to Vale, all the same. It had taken all of her grit to sever the line of the train cars and separate the two of them, but she knew, looking at it in the cold, harsh light of logic, that she should have also swept Gambol Shroud through his neck.
She knew Adam better than anybody, knew how he would take her loss –her escape. It didn't matter that his thorny vines of manipulation and control had been still wound tight around her heart, scratching her and making her bleed for every inch of freedom as Blake took a deep breath and cut their lives apart. It didn't matter that part of her had still been helplessly bound to him, so that it took all her strength merely to snap that thread. It didn't matter that it had been wiser to flee, with her mind still overshadowed with him and her too young, too inexperienced to face him in battle, to face him at all.
She should have buried Adam along with her old life, there in Forever Fall. Everything would have turned out so much better, that way.
But Blake had a chance to fix her old mistake, now. She had run from the White Fang rather than attempt to fix it –one of the few times she truly had run away like a coward– and foolishly believed that by saying she was done, her old life would not come back to haunt her. She knew better, now. If she wanted to jump ship, then she had best make sure that she cleaned up after herself before she left. That was why they called it cutting ties when someone left an organization in the way that she had: it was sharp, definitive, final.
And Adam was the biggest mess she had left. It was her responsibility, her duty, to be the one to make sure he could not make things worse.
"I might've run away from the White Fang because they were going down the wrong path, but I left them in the hands of someone like him," Blake said, meeting Weiss's eyes and willing her to understand. "It's time to fix that."
And Weiss looked at her, and nodded coolly, without argument.
Neo coughed slightly and turned a page, making them look back to her and her book as the bus began to slow.
I should meet the others in Amity. See you with this face during the doubles tomorrow?
"Sure," Blake said, and Neo glanced up, closing her book. She gave the both of them a mysterious smile, and then rose from her seat and waltzed away down the crowded aisle. Blake's eyes followed her as Neo left the bus, strolling off down the street like she didn't have a care in the world.
Hopefully, their hospital visit would go just as smoothly.
The bell jangled above her as Ilia pushed her way into the relaxingly lit bookstore. The scent of paper and glue and worked leather drifted around her in dusty clouds as the door swung shut behind her, making a tiny part of Ilia relax at the familiar smell. It reminded her of Blake, but even more than that, it reminded her of simpler times, happier times. More peaceful times.
At that thought, she ducked further into the store. Ilia was human-passing, but more importantly where her fellow (ex?) White Fang members were concerned, she did not possess any distinguishing features. Ilia was dark, lithe, and small, with a perfect acrobat's body, and bundling herself up in a hoodie and a pair of jeans made her pretty much indistinguishable from most of the other residents of Vale. The patches of scales blending into her cheeks could be mistaken for birth marks except at very close distance –or if she changed color– and although she hated the caky, dusty sensation, layering foundation onto her face could hide even that.
Following her natural reflex, she glanced left and right, checking the room. Books and bookshelves were everywhere, lit by overheads that were turned just slightly dimmer than what most humans would be comfortable with. There was a panel on the wall near the door to adjust the light levels further, alongside the mechanism she recognized to darken the windows to hide the interior of the store. Usually, that was in case a Grimm incursion occurred: she didn't doubt Tuckson used it for other reasons.
Most of the shelves on the floor were also at her chest or lower, which was suggestive. It would be hard to take someone by surprise in here, far harder than the stores where the shelves were stretched as high as a ladder.
Keeping her hands in the wide pocket of the hoodie to help hide the telltale pointed bulge of her weapon, Ilia meandered deeper into the store. According to the others, Tuckson had both not participated in the White Fang's disastrous mission to Mountain Glenn and avoided being exposed to the police by any of the survivors. He had also not said anything about her to the rest of the White Fang despite her contacting him several times, which made him a prime target for her first visit.
The store was quiet. Not too quiet –she could hear someone humming and moving around in the back room– but Ilia was currently the only customer, which was all to the good. She was too used to infiltration missions to say anything or call out, but merely approached the counter and rung the bell.
"Be right there!" called a voice from the back. Ilia hunched her shoulders and waited as there was a rustling thud she recognized as a cardboard box being set down, and then the two double doors to the back swung open.
Tuckson was a dark-haired man with sideburns creeping down his jaw and brawny arms covered with more hair: his general fuzziness, however, did not hide the muscles flexing powerfully beneath that hair, and Ilia was willing to bet he had a few scars beneath his shirt.
She was not interested in seeing said scars, however, and she saw his jaw tighten and throat bob as he saw her and recognized her, even beneath the hoodie and the pancaked layers of makeup.
"Ilia."
"Tuckson."
There was a moment of long, lingering silence, in which Ilia suppressed the urge to scratch at her powdery face, or even better, run it under a hot tap. Ugh, she hated this. She hated every moment of this, actually.
"I'm not here to turn you into anyone. I just want to talk," she said at length. Tuckson nodded slowly.
"Right…"
Another long silence. Cars rushed by outside. Ilia thought about how best to ask a man clearly teetering on a tightrope of stress whether or not he had been asked to attack a kingdom, and also if he was willing to share information in a way that placed him squarely in the White Fang's crosshairs.
"I got out thanks to some Hunter friends," Ilia said eventually, figuring she may as well lead into it. "And they're interested in what's been happening in Vale lately."
"Mmm." Tuckson folded his brawny arms across his chest and nodded. His face was stony.
"Very interested."
"Mhm."
"Interested enough that they don't really care where their information comes from, as long as it's good," Ilia continued encouragingly. She knew better than anyone that you couldn't just ask a fellow Faunus to cough up details up front. All of them were far too used to being squeezed for information and then cast aside, with nary a care as to what happened to said informants afterwards.
You could write a book on all the ways that happened to her people both before and after they entered the White Fang.
"They know about who tried to set up that train mission," Ilia said, figuring that it was best to lay all her cards on the table and let him decide for himself. "And they know that even after she got arrested, she's got a backer who is very interested in seeing their plans go forward. Plans that involve the White Fang."
There was a flicker of something in his eyes.
"Plans that involve the White Fang attacking Beacon," Ilia continued, and watched his shoulders deflate in an enormous, oh-gods-why-is-this-happening-to-me sigh. She finally had him.
"I'd wondered about that," Tuckson muttered, and at her raised eyebrow, elaborated –although not without one last reluctant, longing glance towards the door, like he wished he could just run out into traffic and leave all of his problems behind. "There was a message sent out to pretty much everyone left, after the raids. We're supposed to be gathering up tonight, going off grid. The message was wrapped up in a lot of propagandistic crap about taking up arms to avenge our fallen and/or arrested siblings from the Mountain Glenn attack, but I know a bad mission when I see it."
Ilia tilted her head.
"No names, no details, just a location and an order to show up armed and masked," Tuckson rattled off, tapping his fingers nervously against one folded arm. "You know what that kind of stuff means."
Indeed she did. Ilia frowned.
While the White Fang's status as a terrorist group or a militia was a matter of scholarly debate, as it were, neither Atlas nor the White Fang themselves denied the simple fact that it was an organization built solely of volunteers. Volunteers meant that the overwhelming bulk of their forces were civilians who had merely had it up here with whatever bullshit they had been forced to endure, and were willing to take up arms about it.
Willing did not necessarily mean able, however. Training was sparse, and their leaders were often forced to strategize accordingly. Missions that involved actual military action were usually given based on sheer numbers –the idea of engulfing the enemy rather than relying on skill or finesse– and stealth missions were overwhelmingly preferred. Far better to sneak in, plant bombs, and leave, rather than try to bring down a mining camp with brute force.
The problem with that approach, though –of having the leaders plan all or most of the strategy– was it meant that the volunteers got into the habit of obeying orders from above with blind trust, assuming that whoever was in charge of the cell knew best. It also meant that whoever was in charge became used to treating their subordinates like sheep that needed to be corralled and herded.
Ilia frowned because orders like these were generally given before the bloodier missions. The missions where a cell leader knew there was a high chance of somebody backing out, because while a grocer or a university student might volunteer to shoot at Schnee robots, they shied away from the idea of executing mining personnel in cold blood.
She was very familiar with the general idea. Call up any and all members of the cell who could come, give them a location, tell them to come armed to the teeth and ready for trouble. If you had to tell them about why they were meeting, make it sound pretty and palatable. When everyone arrived, inform them of the true context of the mission then and only then, when it was already too late to go back. That way, their attendance on said mission would seem mandatory, or the alternative to attending much worse.
Knowing what she knew now, Ilia could fill in the gaps for this meeting easily enough. Call any and all White Fang members who were ready to answer in Vale to… wherever this undisclosed location was, probably far outside the walls, and tell them that they were going to avenge the members arrested or killed due to the Mountain Glenn mission.
Wait until they all arrived, and then tell them that they were going to attack Beacon Academy.
What could they do? They were civilians, and yet they had already shown up with weapons in hand. Would they get in trouble if they returned to Vale, and law enforcement learned of their involvement with this attack? How would they even get back, since all the transports would be under control of their superiors? And everyone else in the crowd seemed enthused about the attack –or at least, ready to go through with it. And their leaders were confident. Surely this couldn't be so bad… surely…
And besides, these were high stakes they were playing with. Adam in particular had never proven kind to deserters –if they voiced an audible protest, if they spoke out against this… would their former brothers in arms turn against them?
Best to keep quiet. Best to just knuckle under and do it.
Yes, Ilia was well-familiar with the tactics the militant members of the White Fang used to drag their more reluctant comrades into violent missions.
"I'm not going," Tuckson said, and they both knew that that was dangerous, too. It was a sign of defiance, reluctance, and it only ever took one mole to destroy a cell… failing to show up, particularly to one of these kinds of missions, was never treated lightly. "Are you?"
"No," Ilia said, and pinched her lips together, thinking hard. Tuckson warning other people not to attend wouldn't just be taken as a sign of insubordination –that was tantamount to a declaration of defection, which, with the games Adam was playing, was a trigger for execution.
At the same time, though, the fewer people who attended this meeting, the more would survive the inevitable assault against Beacon. And while Tuckson's information was certainly valuable, especially if she reported it back to Blake and the others and they took steps to disrupt the meeting… Ilia doubted that it would be the final staging ground for precisely that reason. Adam was no fool: he knew that by passing on the location to the rank and file, there was every chance they'd talk to a friend, or a neighbor, or even report back to whomever they were spying for, and there went the White Fang's plans for the assault.
No, this meeting's location was likely one of multiple pre-staging grounds: where he and the other leaders gathered those willing to come, marked down who had not showed up or who were reluctant, fired the crowd with his rhetoric, and then took them to a secondary location. If anyone… if anyone proved a threat to the mission, they would be taken care of at this, the first location. Their leaders would make a demonstration of it, to both cow and inspire the remaining rank and file.
Everyone's Scrolls and any form of outside communication would be confiscated at this initial stage, further preventing the possibility of second thoughts or information leaks, and then they would be piled into the vans or Bullheads that would take them to the true staging point. Everyone would be armed and prepped for the actual assault itself at the second location, when it was too late to back out at all.
The point was, everyone at this initial meeting place would be jumpy and armed to the teeth, ready for precisely the kind of attack Ilia was considering. Still, that idea was worth passing on to the others… even if part of Ilia shuddered at the idea of willingly telling Atlesian forces about a White Fang meeting.
There was something else to consider, too.
Ilia had been in hourly contact with the others via her Scroll, so she knew exactly how much Ironwood was beefing up security around the festival in response to Tyrian Callows' attacks. It was hard to imagine, even with smuggling Grimm into the grounds, that the White Fang would be able to do anything more than bloody Beacon's nose. There were simply too few of them in Vale after Mountain Glenn, and Ironwood was preparing his tactics specifically around the possibility of his robots being hacked.
A distraction, perhaps? Throwing the White Fang recklessly at Beacon in order to draw their attention away, while Salem did… something else?
"Do you know anything else?" Ilia asked, trying to see if there was anything she'd missed. These pieces weren't fitting together.
Tuckson snorted softly.
"Someone said something about tame Grimm, or at least Grimm that won't attack us, but I'll believe it when I don't see it," he said, scoffing disbelief clear in his voice. "Tame Grimm. What next? Magic?"
Ilia stretched her face in a plastic smile, even as her heart sank.
There was her missing piece.
"Thanks anyway, Tuckson," she said, and adjusted her hood, making sure it was properly covering her face. "I'll see you around later, I hope."
"Yeah, no offense, but I hope not," he said, but his wan smile took any aggression out of the words as she turned away and left the store.
There was a heavy frown on her face as she made her way back to her camp in the Emerald Forest, which was currently being guarded by that cute little puppy Blake's team had given her.
Ilia may know only a little about this Salem woman, but her life had been based on shifting public opinions for years, and this was snowballing in a way she didn't like. The White Fang were too few for a proper assault, and security was too tight for the virus to sneak in the way it supposedly had last time. And yet, Salem was pushing the White Fang to attack Beacon anyway, and that Tyrian guy was attacking people in Vale.
And he was a scorpion Faunus.
Salem's plans for Vale as Ilia understood them were clear-cut: raise ambient negativity in the populace, create some disastrous event during the Vytal Festival, call in a swarm of Grimm to destroy Beacon, fracture trust amongst the kingdoms –and seize both the Fall Maiden and the Relic of Choice, if she could manage it. Her original plans had been to do so by sabotaging competitors and making it look like Hunter students were attacking each other, but that seemed to have fallen by the wayside.
Instead, she seemed to have turned her attention to the Faunus, and Ilia did not like that one little bit.
As evidenced by the White Fang's very existence, Faunus-human tensions had never really been settled after the Great War, especially after the joke of their so-called reconstruction efforts that had ended with the kingdoms doing their best to dump their Faunus populations on Menagerie and say it was a success. Everything was fixed now, so shut up, take your crammed-to-the-rafters island as a peace settlement, and call it a day.
Ilia ground her teeth, and then took a deep, steadying breath. The very resentment she felt was proof that if Salem was angling this the way she thought she was, it might very well succeed. If the White Fang attacked Beacon along with a swarm of Grimm, well… whether they succeeded or failed, it would still create a deeply polarizing image.
Because, firstly, the White Fang were attacking a Hunter school, but secondly, that they were doing so alongside Grimm. Working with Grimm.
Questions and controversy and inflammatory accusations would explode across Remnant. Were Faunus linked to Grimm? Were the Hunter academies hiding something? Were Grimm peaceable if not for human interference, somehow? Were racist humans right to treat Faunus the way they did, since they clearly seemed to be allied with the creatures who hated everything that lived?
It would be a tinderbox of resentment and uncertainty and distrust, and all it would need was a few more sparks to fan it into incendiary flames. Sparks that Ilia had no doubt Salem would easily provide. Haven Academy's headmaster was a Faunus, wasn't he? But he was also a traitor –how would dealing with him heighten the conflict on Remnant?
It was a tangled, thorny, impossible problem, and Ilia would have congratulated Salem if it wasn't such a callously cruel move.
Well, thankfully they had caught it –and hopefully caught it in time to stop it.
Ilia slipped through the shadows of Vale, heading for a spot where she'd feel safe enough to pull out a Scroll and text her new knowledge to the others.
Ren's Vytal Tournament had not been going the way he'd planned for it to go, way back when he had first signed up for Beacon. Had initiation really been less than a year ago? It felt like forever, and he hadn't even been the one to time-travel.
For one thing, the first day of the tournament had not been a steady, concentrated effort between him and his teammates as they sought to avoid the ignominy of being struck out during the first rounds, or a well-thought-out effort to cheer on their friends and fellow students if his team had not qualified to participate to begin with.
No, it had instead been a tense, teeth-gritted balancing act as he and the others teetered on the edge of believability, trying to lose without looking like they were trying to lose in front of the people specifically trained to notice such things.
Their failure to be eliminated from the tournament had meant that yesterday was supposed to be a day of scheming, as the second half of the teams dueled each other and the brackets moved onto the doubles matches for the third day.
It had not been.
It had most assuredly not been a day of scheming, because most of yesterday had been spent practicing and waiting and discussing and fretting, Team JNPR feeling hung on tenterhooks as they paced the halls of Beacon.
Ren had, in fact, spent the second day of the tournament feeling nothing but uneasy as the information slowly trickled in from Vale, about Neo's lack of involvement and Ilia's suspicions about the White Fang and Blake and Weiss's visit to the hospital.
The group had spent most of yesterday talking about it after the latter duo had returned to Beacon, with Qrow and Professor Goodwitch swinging by on occasion to let them know of their mutual progress. Tensions were simmering in Vale, but right now it was only suspicions and dark looks, no real conflict. General Ironwood was scouring the area for staging points the White Fang might use for their rallying ground in order to figure out where to place his men. Nothing untoward had been reported in the festival systems or the CCT.
Although he was no strategist, Ren knew that Salem's attack probably wouldn't have befallen them during the second volley of team rounds even if security hadn't been tightened. The White Fang gathering did not necessarily mean that they would launch an attack the same day: in fact, depending on their supply lines, that might be impossible.
No, it would be today, on the very last day of the festival –in the doubles rounds, or the finals later this evening.
He was not alone in his tension. All of Team JNPR were rigid in their seats, all of them probably reliving the last time they had been surrounded by the screaming, thrashing crowd of Amity Colosseum, the last time they had been looking down at the combat rings as the crowd booed and cheered around them. Relic-born vision or not, all of Jinn's illusions had felt real.
He hated this, the deep breath before the plunge. They were all ready, but they weren't going to get any readier with waiting. He itched for something to happen, for a trigger to finally snap this tension and propel him into motion.
It did not help that he still had not yet managed to unlock the evolved form of his Semblance. He was trying –and knowing what the eventual evolution was meant to be made up for much of the difference– but he had been trying for over a month, and he still felt no closer to it than he had been on the day he stumbled, disoriented, out of Jinn's lengthy vision. It was frustrating.
It was so frustrating, because in all of their flurried plans about the White Fang and their tactics and what Watts' presence in Vale meant for cybersecurity and whatever lingering nasty surprises Cinder had left, Ren felt that they had missed how something was off about Tyrian's attacks in Vale. When Blake and Weiss had interviewed the recovering patients in the hospital, they had mostly intended to confirm what everybody already knew –it was Tyrian– and see if any alarming details popped out.
After all, they were the ones best suited to catch such details.
And even Blake had admitted that there was nothing overly untoward about the witnesses' statements. They had all been out in the city on various errands, at different times during the night, and while the tight schedule meant that the victims had either been preselected or Tyrian was a very fast traveler, still, it was solid.
What made Ren suspicious– no, not even suspicious– what bothered him, a subtle tickle like a loose thread at the nape of his neck, was how none of the victims had seen Tyrian. All of them talked about being caught by surprise or their attacker coming out of nowhere, which made perfect sense if Tyrian was trying to feign being multiple people, but… still. Still.
If Tyrian (and through him Salem) was trying to ignite conflict by passing as attackers from different schools trying to sabotage the competition, then it would make much more sense for him to dress like someone from a different kingdom and let his victims see that, or claim that he was doing this to give his school's competitors a leg up.
Unless none of them were meant to survive long enough to crawl to witnesses and then the hospital, but Ren found it deeply unlikely someone like Tyrian would do such a thing. The man was a sadistic lunatic who worshiped Salem because he believed she would destroy the world and he saw such a thing as beautiful. Thanks to his childhood travels across Mistral, Ren was passingly familiar with similar brands of madness in the criminals and ne'er-do-wells he had encountered. Like a Grimm, the only reason Tyrian would let someone go after tasting blood was because he was interrupted –or he had been ordered not to kill them.
And he had not been interrupted in any of the attacks.
So if he had been ordered to spare some of his victims, why not try to sell Salem's supposed story even further by acting as though he was trying to eliminate rival schools? And if he was not doing that –was that truly the angle Salem was trying to work? Was she trying to ignite Faunus-human tensions, like Ilia thought? But if that was true, why didn't Tyrian let any of his victims see his tail? Did Salem have some other scheme she was trying to weave, and they just weren't seeing it?
Ren winced as another loud, booming cheer rattled across the stadium. His worry and the popcorn-redolent air were making his head pulse and his stomach churn with nausea. He felt stifled by the mass of sweaty bodies on either side, muffled, like he couldn't breathe.
He leaned forward and tapped Jaune's shoulder. Jaune twisted around immediately, looking at him with naked fear –but when Ren produced a pained smile, Jaune's stiffened stance eased.
"I need some air," Ren said, and tipped his head towards the landing docks. "See you guys in a bit?"
"Yeah, sure. Be careful."
Jaune's smile was wan and tight, and he flinched slightly at the loud clang of weapons from the dueling pair of partners below them in the arena. Ren squeezed his shoulder, then let go, edging his way as quickly as was feasibly polite through the tangled forest of legs until he was in the stairway. He took a deep breath, feeling like his lungs could finally actually expand, before shaking his head and making his way up the stairs.
The roaring sound of the crowd was muted behind him as he passed into the labyrinth of passageways in Amity's interior, although it did get a trifle louder again when Ren passed out onto the docking area. He sat out of the way on a service bench with a sigh, tipping his head back against the concrete wall behind him and letting the coolness soak into his body, soothing away all his countless little pangs of annoyance, as he looked out onto the open blue sky.
Ren was not a person prone to displaying his emotions, even when he had them –he had always assumed that since Grimm were drawn to fear and negativity, it was safer to pack all of his feelings down as tightly as possible, to try and let nothing ripple his calm inner surface. That, for years, had been his image of an ideal Huntsman –someone utterly unflappable even in the face of impossible odds, confident and self-assured no matter what calamity was bearing down on him.
And since he had been working towards that ideal for years, it was somewhat difficult to unlearn that mindset, particularly when he had not actually, really, truly experienced the events in Jinn's future forecast.
Seen them, yes.
Understood the truth of them, yes.
But not actually experienced them.
He knew that the key to further evolving his Semblance was to not only grow beyond who he was now, to understand his own emotions, but also to understand the emotions of others and how they interplayed with one another to create actions. This was, of course, fairly straightforward in theory, but the difference between knowing that and actually evolving his Semblance was rather like knowing that Professor Polendina had programmed Penny and actually staring at Penny's code and trying to edit it himself.
Ren knew the method, but he didn't know how to implement it. He didn't even really know where to begin.
Jaune had been as helpful as he could be, telling Ren how he had trained during their time in Atlas, how he'd worked on Aura sensing and how that had seemed to help him improve. Ren felt as though that was somewhat stating the obvious: Aura sensing was a fairly advanced technique. It essentially allowed someone to sense the living creatures around them, right down to animals –and in humans, reading Aura signatures could even give you insight into emotions and mental states. Hunters who had mastered this technique were not to be taken lightly, since it was essentially impossible for Grimm, beast, or person to catch them by surprise.
The only student that Ren knew had mastered Aura sensing –at least in Beacon– was Fox Alistair of the much-renowned Team CFVY, and he suspected that that was due in no small part to Fox's blindness. Being able to orient himself by the people and animals around him, and know when Grimm were coming, gave Fox an edge he would not have otherwise enjoyed, even with his ADA earpiece.
Ren had, of course, spoken with him to try and get a better handle on training to sense Aura, and had found Fox to be a bit of an odd duck. He'd said that he admired Ren trying to get a better handle on things, but hadn't seemed particularly talkative beyond giving instructions. He had also, to Ren's surprise, been comfortable enough in his blindness to make jokes about it –saying that eventually it would become "as plain as the nose that I assume is somewhere on your face" and then solemnly telling him at the very end that "I can glimpse great potential in you," before grinning slightly as if he could see Ren's nonplussed expression, and knew that he was wondering whether or not it was polite to reply to that.
Ren got the impression that for all his apparently solemn and silent demeanor, Fox enjoyed practical jokes.
He closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind and center himself. He was getting better at sensing the presence of other people, although trying to do something like that at Amity was a recipe for an instant migraine. There was something, though, in that moment of stretching out his mind and feeling the flickers of his teammates in their dorms or the training room –Nora's exuberance, Pyrrha's rock-steady concentration, Jaune's overwhelming sense of love and duty– that almost felt like improvement.
Ren couldn't even begin to describe it, but sometimes when he stretched his still-shaky Aura sensing to the limit there was something that ghosted against him, like feeling butterfly wings fluttering near his cheek in a pitch-black room. An almost-sensation too ephemeral to even describe.
He felt on an instinctual level that it might be important to evolving his Semblance, however: so, naturally, Ren was doing his best to pin that feeling down during his practices. That was what he was doing now, closing his eyes and attempting to use his Aura sensing to reach out to the nearby attendants, feeling out their location against the back of his eyelids and waiting for that tickle of something-else that drew his attention.
Doing so while the crowd roared and thundered in the stadium behind him might not have been the most optimal situation for practice, but then again, Ren would have to get used to wielding his Semblance in less-than-ideal scenarios if it was going to be of any use in the field.
There were fewer than a dozen people within his immediate range, all with Aura reserves too low to be anything but civilians. His brow furrowed slightly as he tried to focus on the form of their Aura, how it bled out into the air around them, how their emotions shaped it…
A whistle and howl of rushing air made his face pinch in annoyance as an additional ship pulled up to land on the docks. Stretching his senses out to it, though, made him sit up a little: a singular passenger, with Aura bright and strong enough to denote a Huntsman. Were they agitated? There was something about their Aura…
When he opened his eyes just in time to see the bay door shriek open, Ren blinked as a twist of something vibrant flickered up past Qrow Branwen, who was standing in the gap. It might have been a mere speck of napkin, a random twist of white paper or debris, but it seemed too… bright for that, shining almost like a spark before it vanished with his next blink.
Progress?
His attention was arrested, however, by the tension visible in Qrow, and Ren shot to his feet as the Bullhead remained locked in a hover rather than coming in for a landing. That couldn't be good: it meant that whoever Qrow was here for, why he was here, he didn't expect to be here for long.
Shouting over the roar of the engine was ludicrous, so Ren's pace quickened as he made his way towards the Bullhead.
"Hey, hold up!" Jaune called behind him, making Ren turn in surprise, and his misgivings grew exponentially as he saw his team and Team RWBY jogging out of the arena, worried expressions in place. Jaune still had his Scroll in one hand, and Ren pulled his out without looking towards the others. There was a message there, from Qrow, and ice ran down his spine as he read it.
Team SSSN injured. Be at the docks in five.
The first thing that floated into Sun's head was the steady, thundering roar of an engine. Then the fact his mouth tasted funkier than it did after an all-night gaming marathon, all dry and plasticy and maybe even a hint of blood, and then that incomprehensible blend of textures you got from a medivac bed beneath him and then ow ow ow ow holy shit fuck ow whatever painkillers he was on were not enough-
Then he remembered what had happened and his eyes snapped open and his body snapped up –or tried to, anyways. The slightest twinge in his abdomen made pain roar through him, so thick he grew dizzy and almost choked on it as hot flares of agony spread through his midsection. He collapsed back against the rickety bed, sweating, with a whimpering groan of pain.
Everything hurt. It felt like he'd been run over by a truck –literally, laid flat on a road and then had something large and heavy wheel over him, crushing and bruising each individual part of his body, but mostly his midsection. He had to squeeze his eyes shut and just breathe through it for a few minutes, trying not to spark out as staticky dots swam behind his closed eyelids.
"Oh, gods," he wheezed after the urge to either hurl or faint –or both– finally started ebbing away.
"Sun?"
He peeled his reluctant eyelids open to see Penny, hovering worriedly. He couldn't actually tell much laid out flat on his back like this, but if she was here, the others probably were too –yup, there were Ruby and Jaune and Blake and Yang and even Ilia swarming to crowd around his bedside, and probably more of the others that he couldn't see in his peripheral vision. The grey walls and the thundering drone of an engine all around him let him know that they were all still probably on a transport ship out of Amity.
"Neptune?" Sun asked, his voice a rasping croak as fear suddenly seized him. His last memories before blacking out- what he'd done- had the others made it?
"We picked up everyone. The rest of your team is… in stable condition," came Qrow Branwen's rough voice from somewhere behind him, and he felt a touch on his shoulder. Even the tiniest attempt to crane his neck back to look back made everything revolt, and he closed his eyes again as the pain-drenched nausea came in another wave.
"They're gonna be okay," Ruby said, and Sun clung to that even as his mind caught on the hesitation in Qrow's voice before he'd told him what condition the other guys were in. "Sun, what happened? Was it Tyrian?"
"I…" Sun winced, licked his lips. "I-I don't know."
There was a moment of silence as he desperately wished for water, even if he knew trying to lift his head would only end in disaster.
"Did… did you not see him, or…?" Nora tried after a few seconds, sounding nonplussed.
"The injuries to his abdominal section could not have been inflicted from behind," Penny chipped in immediately, and he watched her frown, luminous green eyes flicking from below his nipples to his face and back again. "The slicing pattern conforms to a short, curved blade that matches the description of Callows' wristblades."
Sun involuntarily shuddered. Yeah, he remembered that bit –spending the last dying flickers of his Aura into Via Sun as his glowing doubles took the guys and ran out the door, before his desperate spin of his staff missed where he'd guessed his attacker to be and something hit him in the solar plexus like a pair of blenders, making his legs buckle as he coughed out a blood-spattered breath and those sharp knives twisting and twisting and twisting as they tore through his guts–
He swallowed rapidly and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to curb the rising swell of nausea. If what he was hearing sounded correct, he did not want to try and puke right now.
"I didn't see anything," he gasped. "I didn't- he was right there in front of us and I didn't see anything, he broke Neptune's wrist and none of us even noticed 'til he started screaming, I didn't know, I didn't even see-"
"Hey." Qrow's calming touch became a squeeze on his shoulder, something grounding and steady. "Breathe, kid. You're okay. All four of you made it out alive, and trust me, that's impressive enough."
"Tell us what happened," Ruby said, soft and encouraging, and Sun shuddered and went boneless as Jaune's hand spread over his pec, the strange but entirely welcome feeling of someone else's Aura draining into his filling Sun's body.
"We were getting ready for our doubles match later," he said, his breath coming a little easier. "Sage and Scarlet were there helping psych us up. It was… we were in the locker rooms, we didn't hear anything. We were just messin' around, getting ready."
The others peered at him worriedly.
"And then, just…" His hands lifted a tiny increment, as much as he dared without aggravating his injuries. "Snap. Neptune backs away from his locker, screaming, and, like, we don't see anything, but he bumps into something behind him, and then we-"
Whoookay, and there's the painkillers kicking in as Jaune took some of the load off his Aura. Sun blinked the euphoric wave of dizziness away.
"It's like we were fighting a ghost," he mumbled after a hot second to reorient himself. "Couldn't see shit, but we felt him. And he fuckin' tore us apart."
Qrow drew in a long, slow breath over his teeth.
"That tallies with the security videos," he said, worry clear in his rasp. "Door opened, but there was nobody there, and then nothing for a good five minutes –except screams– from inside, until your Semblance bursts the door back open, dragging your friends."
"You were very lucky," Penny told him, blinking down at him solemnly. "Your Semblance managed to get the others to one of the Atlas security posts before it broke, and they were quick to retrieve you and call the incident in."
"Heh. Not luck, just skill," Sun gave the best approximation of his usual grin as he could manage, trying to pep up his agonized-looking friends. "Looks like letting you guys whale on us had some pretty good benefits, after all."
"I don't understand," Blake said from over by his knees. "Tyrian's Semblance is –was– Aura disruption. The only person we know with an invisibility Semblance is May, and she would never-"
"Doesn't have to be a Semblance, kiddo," Qrow said, and then scratched at his stubble. "Atlas has stealth tech clothing that adapts to light –coupla shipments got stolen in Mistral, a few years back. Apparently it's got a tell, a bit of a shimmer in the air when you look straight at the person wearing it, but it's still a hell of a lot better than most cloaking technology. Could be that. Or it could even have been magic."
"I thought magic was a chick thing," Sun mumbled, feeling increasingly light-headed as Jaune's Semblance worked and the painkillers flooded his system in greater and greater amounts.
Yang snorted.
"That's the Maidens," she teased him, sending him a grin that was only slightly lopsided by his painkillers. Sun did appreciate the effort to keep up his spirits, though.
"In all seriousness, you guys need to open your eyes a bit," Qrow said. "I know the Maidens've probably eaten up all your attention for a while, but you're forgetting me and Raven can shapeshift. We got that from Oz, and there's a hell of a lot more that both he and Salem can do that they count as party favors and we'd count as a bloody miracle. Only reason they don't use said party favors more often is 'cause they've both only got so much magic, and all the rest of eternity to use it."
"Gotta conserve resources," someone said, and Sun's vision was well and truly swimming now as Jaune took his hand away and presumably went to go help the guys. The all-over agony had faded to a throb flaring persistently at the edge of his awareness, though, which was nice.
"Why's he doing it like this, though?" Ruby's squeaky voice floated through his haze as Sun blinked dizzily up at the ceiling. "Staying unseen? What's the point?"
"Nobody can see him, which means nobody can say definitively that it isn't someone from a rival school," Blake mused slowly. "And the attacks are escalating. First it was friends and family of competitors; now it's the competitors themselves. Maybe they are trying to make it look like the schools are getting out of hand, instead of something with the Faunus."
"Why not both?" Qrow snorted.
"Hitting us on two fronts is definitely Salem's style," Weiss said, and even though he couldn't see her, Sun could just tell she was folding her arms with that characteristic decided frown of hers as she did.
"Our doubles match is coming up soon," Pyrrha said, and Sun managed to feel a spark of alarm at that even through the drugs. He struggled to sit up for a second, his head spinning dizzily, only for several hands to push him back down again before he did too much damage to himself. "Should we forfeit?"
"You should stay th' hell out of that guy's way," Sun told the room at large, blinking and swallowing against another upswelling of nausea because oh yeah his stomach wounds were a thing. "At least until somebody dumps a bucket've paint on him or something."
Ilia was the one to snort this time.
"He's going to let this percolate for a bit," she said, and confidently at that. "Give people time to stew in all their worry. Uncertainty is way scarier than hitting all the competitors at once –and that's exactly what they want, isn't it?"
"Yup," Qrow said. "Speaking of which, we're flying Team SSSN out to Vale. Maybe nothing'll come of it, but we don't exactly want people in Beacon's emergency care ward in this condition if the whole thing with the White Fang attack and floods of Grimm goes through."
"Fair enough," Sun managed.
"Meanwhile, Ironwood's pumping up security and doubling down on interrogations. Unless you guys say otherwise, we're hunkering down behind the metaphorical barracks and getting ready to take this storm in the teeth."
"Sounds good," Ruby said.
"What about Cinder?" Jaune asked from somewhere off over on Sun's right. "I thought you said you guys were doing the Aura transfer today? Is she dead yet?"
"Yes, we are, and no, she's not," Qrow said, then sighed. "Jimmy doesn't want to put her on a ship that Watts can hijack remotely or that the Grimm can take down before it reaches Beacon, and that's taken a bit of searching. Plus, he wants to make sure Tyrian's not going to intercept her –invisible or otherwise– before he gets her to the vault."
"It would potentially be more practical at this point for Salem to dispose of Cinder, given as her identity has been compromised," Penny said, looking worried. "Consolidating the power back into Amber would then free Salem to kidnap or control her directly."
Pyrrha was silent.
Neo had hated large crowds for a very long time. She'd always been heard with Roman, and even back with her parents, she'd been able to communicate (they just hadn't listened to her); but roaring, thrashing masses of humanity like this were some of the only things that made her truly feel mute.
She grumbled with annoyance, tapping Hush in its disguise as a briefcase impatiently against her leg. Standing back against the wall like this gave her some room, but looking down over the tiers of massed heads made her eyes narrow with the urge to stab someone. They were all being so loud, so excited and giddy and carefree, when all she wanted to do right now was pack Roman into the fastest ship she could find and bolt for somewhere else.
Heroism did not suit her. Altruism didn't suit her.
But here she was, grimacing beneath her illusion of a dark-haired woman in a neat olive shirtwaist and skirt, waiting for Little Red and all her friends.
Watts –unbearably, insufferably arrogant man that he was– had told her he "didn't much mind" whatever "silly games" she played, as long as she didn't interrupt his plans to extract Cinder and her lackeys from Atlas's main airship later today. Neo had declined to mention to him how Ironwood was increasing security against precisely that possibility.
She had arrived at Amity too late to keep Team SSSN from getting brutalized by Tyrian. Neo had known he was going to attack competitors there, but Watts had only warned her of it earlier today –to make sure she "didn't get in Tyrian's way," by all the gods, like she was some kind of child– and she had damn well known that he was going to check her Scroll soon after, to make sure she wasn't messaging anyone she shouldn't.
The number she'd given Team RWBY was attached to a burner Scroll for precisely that reason, after all.
Still, Neo hadn't wanted to tempt fate, especially this close to the starting line, and had settled instead for taking an early airship out to Amity in the hopes of making contact with the others sooner. It was a shame she hadn't quite managed to warn them in time, but Team SSSN were still alive, which was definitely more than what Tyrian had intended. He'd be frustrated.
Deafeningly noisy crowd or not, Neo smirked beneath the shade of her faux hat.
Still-
This was it. Salem's plans had been spun up, and so had Ozpin's, and so had Neo's and the little coterie of returning Huntresses (and one Huntsman). The lines had been drawn, and each camp settled down to a grim, waiting silence. As used to her own silence as she was, this kind of waiting made Neo's fingers flutter over Hush, drumming nervously.
She had thrown the dice, and now it remained to be seen if she'd gambled correctly. Oh, she didn't question whether or not Jinn's vision was true –the very idea was laughable– but whether or not it had been correct to throw in her lot with Little Red and the others…
Of that, Neo was still not sure.
She knew that Salem wanted to end the world, killing everyone on it –her and Roman included– but everyone died eventually, and if they had remained on Salem's side and somehow leveraged Neo's future knowledge to replace or outstrip Cinder, then perhaps Neo could have kept the two of them alive for as long as their natural lifespans would go. And then Team RWBY and Salem and the Maidens and the Relics and this stupid world could all go hang themselves together, because Neo and Roman had lived their lives to satisfaction and weren't around to care anymore.
She tsked, and then jumped, half-turning, as someone's footsteps approached.
It was only Yang Xiao Long, and Neo scowled, sheathing Hush from where she had half-drawn it.
"Jumpy?" the blonde asked, popping her lips in a friendly smile that did not quite hide the strain in her eyes or the measured wariness in her stance. "Or having second thoughts?"
Neo looked aside, bobbing her head in that direction before she could stop herself. The latter.
"Everything's looking wrapped-up," Little Red said from where the rest of her team stood, a respectful distance away. Team JNPR –minus Pyrrha Nikos, who was in the competitor's section– flanked them, although Neo noted both the robot and the White Fang girl weren't present. As usual, Ruby was doing her best to act encouraging. "Penny's going to make sure Ilia has backup while scouting the Emerald Forest, and Ironwood is tightening security… again."
Neo snorted softly through her nose. In her opinion, tighter Atlas security was an oxymoron at this point.
"Yeah, I know," Jaune sighed, his shoulders rising and falling. "Still, it's a lot of soldiers and airships flanking Amity, and there's multiple manual checkpoints that Watts can't hack. They've been told to be on the alert for terrorist attacks and encroaching Grimm, and Ozpin's having Goodwitch and a few other hired Hunters patrol Beacon."
Neo hummed. That did sound almost competent.
"We're ready," Weiss told her with narrowed eyes, before looking aside with a huff of her own. "I'm not sure how much readier we can get, to be honest."
"I assume you know Tyrian's upscaling?" Neo asked after a moment, flicking her Scroll out as the small holographic display hovered between them. RWBY and JNPR obligingly closed ranks around her, blocking out the sight of her words from the crowds in the stand below.
"Define 'upscaling'," Blake said with a worried twitch of her ears.
"Friends, doubles, and then finalists," Neo answered. "Pretty similar to what Cinder did last time, except now it's a physical attack in the ring itself."
A boisterous voice rang out across the rising cheers of the crowd, and as one, the group of Hunter trainees gathered around Neo flinched and turned towards the tournament floor.
"Now, for the moment you've all been waiting for! The one-on-one FINALS!" Port roared, and the crowd bellowed in return.
Neo sighed and folded up her Scroll, before reaching up to adjust the illusion of her hat and straightening away from the wall she had been leaning against.
Showtime.
