Chapter 49 – trophy Kase

"I was out in Vale when the attack happened, and I saw what happened on TV. My rocker locker…m-my rocket locker was still linked to my scroll. I don't know if it was an oversight, a blessing, or a conscious choice by Professor Ozpin somehow foreseeing that it would need it, but I just rolled with it. There's just enough space inside one for me to cram inside and ride around in it. You can thank Cardin – he's, uh, the guy who helped me figure out that little factoid."

"But the vault," said Blake. "How did you know to come down there? How did you even get down without the elevator?"

"Oh…that." Jaune rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. "Errrrr…so, Pyrrha 'n' Yang 'n' Sky were up at the top of the CCT, teamed up with Ozpin to fight this mega-ass dragon-y Grimm thing circling around in the sky overhead. Pyr had just got back from her visit when the attack happened, so she had to go and regroup with Team Yellowjacket-P. I thought that they might need my help, with me being the missing fourth member of the team and all, so I ran straight to the elevator to join them. I was so focused on the battle going on forty stories above that I didn't see the elevator was destroyed until I'd already stepped inside and was falling to my doom. My neck is still sore from how craned I was, looking up pretty much constantly."

"Why didn't you…you know…"

"Go splat? I gotta lotta aura, and my semblance lets me amplify its effects. I just took the hit and caught my breath for a minute or two. When I got up, I saw that the entire place was fucking falling apart around me, and you and that fire woman were having a catfigh–"

"Don't."

"–having a girl fight between girls that may have minorly aroused me, but then there was a bright light, and Cinder was about to stab you, so I just reacted." Jaune shuddered. "That was the first time I killed a person."

"No," said Blake, placing a hand on his shoulder to reassure him. "That was the first time you saved all our lives."

Jaune smiled.

Ilia slapped him on the butt, causing Jaune to turn redder than Ruby with a sunburn dipped in ketchup. "Second time, for some of us. Who'd've guessed that Adam's big ol' apprentice would be the one saving the school from complete destruction?"

Jaune's part would certainly be remembered by K, but it was actually Blake who'd turned the battle with the Grimm around. Even with her broken aura, the new Fall maiden was still more than a match for the remaining Grimm forces laying siege to Beacon.

That was the weirdest part – when Cinder was dead and they all got back up to the surface world, the Grimm actually weren't remodeling Beacon the old fashioned way, and not for lack of the ability to do so. They had been retreating.

Grimm didn't retreat. It wasn't within their nature. They fought to the death, knowing nothing more than rage and an innate desire to see all of mankind and Faunus alike brought to ruin. So, after congregating in never before seen numbers and launching a coordinated attack on the school, the Grimm had then decided to defy their most fundamental trait by fleeing, and only after the death of a woman with a Grimm monster shaped into an arm that Adam had confirmed was sentient independent of Cinder herself.

Something's controlling them. Something with a mind.

It couldn't have been Cinder, despite the evidence that may have inculpated her. She was already dead when K made it out of the collapsing vault. Had she somehow found a means of commanding the Grimm, they would have presumably lost that organization upon her passing. No, there was someone else out there that had given Cinder that arm and granted her temporary control of the Grimm forces, and that someone had decided to pull out when the maiden powers were lost and the battle became a doomed cause. Tock had pulled rank once or twice over Hazel, suggesting that this unseen enemy had set up a hierarchy and a command structure. That implied the existence of an army, which was a thought that Blake didn't like to dwell on.

She was the Fall maiden now, and she knew that eventually, conflict with the mysterious Grimm consciousness was inevitable given that status, but it was too soon to think about that. For now, the biggest priority was licking her wounds and helping scrape together what she could of Beacon's leftovers.

The school was in the process of being rebuilt, and the wounded were still being treated. The dawn of the morning after had just broken, so it was too early to determine a casualty count, but it was believed that nearly one in every four students had died. Fortunately, none of Team Rabies or Team Yellowjacket-P had been among that number. Unfortunately, Team Sword was equally unscathed. Blake would never wish death upon those buffoons, but if such a high number of students had died, it would've at least taken some of the stress off to learn that the crappiest of the bunch were deceased as well and had been artificially inflating that statistic.

K was fine, but Ruby was still resting. Yang was looking after her, unsure of what to make of her sister's condition. There was no physical harm upon the young girl's body, but they couldn't exactly convey just how damaging having maiden powers sucked out of you by a Grimm arm was, so they hadn't even tried. As far as the world knew, Cinder Fall was just another normal teenager who'd lost her life in the chaos of the battlefield, her body likely eaten by some random Grimm.

Ozpin seemed hesitant to agree to K's taking of the maiden powers back to Atlas, but with the aura transfer device destroyed, there was nothing he could do short of killing Blake. He didn't seem like the kind of man to resort to such drastic measures, and he probably couldn't even if he wanted to. Plus, with Beacon's defenses torn in half, the loss of their treaty with Atlas would be suicide. For now, he seemed content to begrudgingly allow them to return home with the power. After all, Blake had proven herself to be on the side of righteousness (or at least not be an ally of Cinder's), and all her arguments about K being able to keep the maiden powers safe were true, regardless of whether Ozpin wanted to accept them or not.

"So, Jauney-boy, where you been hiding all this time?"

"G-Guitar lessons. Gotta put bread on the table."

"No shit!" squealed Ilia, joy in her voice. "So some little snot-nosed brats are gonna be goin' around saying that their former guitar teacher offed the mastermind behind the Falmost of Beacon? Oh, that'll be funny as heck!"

"Actually, we're keeping the Cinder situation under wraps," said Blake. "We don't want to cause a panic among the masses by saying that the Grimm were working with a huntress." Also, they didn't want to have to explain who they were to anyone, not even Jaune. Ruby knew, but…she was Ruby. They'd talk to her when she woke up. Otherwise, their mission was now over, which meant they'd be leaving before the end of the day. Officially, it was the stress of the battle that convinced them to hang up their weapons and retire as hunters. Jaune hadn't questioned it, nor had Team Yellowjacket-P, and none of the other students really knew them well enough to care.

"Wait, what do you mean by former guitar teacher?" asked Jaune, after a moment's delay.

"Well, aren't you re-enrolling in Beacon? The school needs every huntsman it can get. I doubt the board of governors or council would intervene if you applied to get back in now of all times."

"I…I've decided to stay in Vale. I don't regret saving you or anything, but…people died. Tons of people. A quarter of the school, nearly. And I added one more name to that list. Even if she was evil, I don't think I could ever lift Crocea Mors again without thinking of the time I pushed it straight through someone's brains. Besides, business is booming at 'Jaune's Guitar School of Guitars and Kids with Guitars', and Pyrrha is enough of a huntress for the both of us. We're going steady now, and she's…she's quite a woman." He exhaled and puffed out his cheeks. "Whew."

Blake nodded. "You two finally, uh…you know…do it?"

"We did," said Jaune, exhaling. "It was awesome."

Ilia nudged him. "C'mon, lover boy, tell us the saucy details."

"Well, it was during Yang's match when Pyrrha had come to visit me. I was in the middle of a group lesson with a bunch of kids when she just came in and, well, jumped me. The kids got super excited from watching it and kept cracking jokes about it for the rest of the lesson."

Ilia literally turned blue with horror.

"Kissing," said Blake, after her heart missed a beat. "You think doing it refers to kissing."

"Yeah. What else would it mean?"


Adam wasn't hiding from his team. Honest. It was just that, after everything that had happened, he needed some time to just decompress and breathe. The fight had gone so poorly for him that he hadn't even participated in the second half of it, and he was supposed to be their strongest fighter. He wasn't going to do something crazy like quit the team or get angsty over it, but he just needed a moment to calm himself down.

Turning his chess piece over and over in his fingers, he inspected the carvings. He'd felt it over and over so thoroughly that he could probably remake it from scratch if he needed to, but this little king was more valuable to him for the sentimental worth it held. It was formerly Jacques Schnee's, claimed as a reward to commemorate K's inaugural mission's success.

At the time, he'd dreamt it would be the first of many, but now that seemed so impossible. Adam fully planned to keep fighting for Atlas, but if every mission took as much out of him as the most recent one had, both mentally and physically, he wasn't sure if an early retirement to a desk job would be in the cards for him eventually. Perhaps he'd become the commander of an airship…or rise up through the ranks until he made General, like James had. He desired nothing more than to stay with Blake and Ilia and possibly soon Ruby in the field until the end of his days, but the future may have had other plans.

The doors to the room he was h̶i̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ not hiding in opened.

Is a minute's peace and quiet too much to ask? Dust's sake…

"–keep telling you, I got more Grimm than either of you combined!"

"I maintain my assertion that that record belong to me."

"Russel, what about you? How many did you get?"

There was no response but breathing.

"Dude? C'mon, bro, don't be like that."

Of fucking course, it had to be Weiss Schnee and her loon platoon. Adam stayed still, as the desk he sat underneath obscured him from the view of anyone at the front of the classroom. Perhaps if he waited long enough, they would simply leave.

Who knew – maybe listening in like this presented a rare chance. Adam had lost his title as their heavyweight fighter to Blake, the new maiden, but this was a golden opportunity to usurp her as their stealthiest spy. Adam quietly laughed to himself at the thought of it and listened in. Maybe I'll collect some critical piece of intel that ties them to Cinder, and James will greenlight me bodybagging this lot.

"I shot down ten, no, twenty Gryphons!" said Dove.

"Your claim loses veracity when you change it midway," said Schnee. "My Glyphs aided you in all of your kills, so I believe I shall claim them as assists. That means my individual sum is equal to that of your collective. That means I win."

"Yeah, but I've killed more Grimm since the start of the year," said Cardin.

"Oh, sure, go ahead and change the contest midway," grumbled Dove. "And I'm pretty sure that it was actually me who killed more Grimm this school year overall. Back me up, Russ."

Silence.

"Leave him, dude. Don't ask that asshole to back you up, or he might back up a knife between your ribs."

"Do either of you have actual numbers to put to your claims?" said Weiss. "I'm rather curious now."

"What'll…" Dove's breathing intensified. "…what'll you do for the winner?"

THWACK!

"If you phrase it like that, nothing."

"Chill, Weiss, chill! I just mean, like, give me an autograph or something."

"Very well, winner gets a signed CD of my best works."

"Address it to the Dapper Dove, because I've got this. Forty-seven Grimm, including last night."

Cardin snorted audibly. "Oh, I got you beat. Fifty-three Grimm, and one Faunus."

Adam nearly bit his tongue off.

A new voice chimed in. "A Faunus? You killed a Faunus?"

"Oh, so now you're interested? What, you think you can beat my numbers, Russ?"

"When did you kill a Faunus?"

"During initiation."

Shit, I was joking about hearing something important. Fuck me.

Cardin, all this time? Seriously? How did he even do it?

"How did you even do it?"

Well thank you, Weiss.

"Smashed his head clean off with my mace. I landed close to him when we launched. The second I locked eyes with that mutt, I knew right then and there that I wasn't gonna be saddled with an animal for a partner, no matter what Ozpin said. But then, the Faunus up and tells me that he doesn't want me either!"

"The audacity!" cried Dove.

"So I played along, said we'd stick together until we found some other folks, and waited 'till we saw some Grimm. He flared all his aura up on the front and said he'd protect me, and BOOM! Decappuchino, in one clean strike to the back of the head. Never saw it comin'."

Adam recalled how there had been a second cut in Marrow's corpse, angled and just below the first. Looking back, it could easily have been another flange on Cardin's mace, the one directly below whichever one had severed Marrow's neck.

"You wanna know the funniest part? I found this little doodad stuck into the dog's neck I got him and decided to keep it as a souvenir."

Cardin didn't seem to mention how horribly Marrow's body had been mutilated for him to retrieve the tracker. Perhaps he wasn't sure if even his radical teammates would be that extreme. Russel's voice had sounded distressed, but the other two, Dove and Weiss, hadn't raised any objections so far. Time would tell how okay they were with this open admission of murder.

"I thought it was some gay Faunus jewelry or something at first, but this guy I know, Barney, he does repair work on electronics for cheap, and he told me it was some kinda fancy tracking device that sends out a frequency to tell Fido's owners where he was. Son of a bitch was microchipped!"

Dove burst into a fit of sniggers. "Holy shit, that's hilarious! Dude, they say they aren't animals and then go around doing shit like that – it's like, c'mon. Why even pretend?"

"I…" Schnee cleared her throat. "That's…I'm not sure…"

"Don't worry. No one even care that I put down the mutt, Weiss."

You're wrong about that.

K's mistake had been being so focused on themselves and their mission that they entirely discounted the possibility that Marrow's death had just been a random occurrence taking place in parallel. Ilia had seen Cardin in Weiss' party, but he was such a weak fighter that they ruled him out without ever seriously considering the possibility that he'd killed an Atlesian specialist.

And, at the time, it had made sense. If Marrow had been killed by an assassin, it followed that said assassin would be strong.

But it hadn't been an assassination, and that was how they'd flubbed it so poorly. They had simply assumed that, due to their line of work, everything was a conspiracy that led up to a grand duel between master swordsmen, not Marrow making a poor judgment call, assuming that a child of Beacon was a friendly, and turning his back at the most inopportune moment. The inexperienced Faunus would have had no reason to suspect foul play at the time, after all.

We weren't much better. Blake let Weiss walk right up to her and punch her in the nose on our first day. Had it been a knife and not a fist, her own better nature would have cost her her life, just like Marrow's had cost him his. It wasn't until we found the corpse that we even realized we were in danger.

They saw a normal crime and ascribed deeper meaning to it because paranoia was what kept them alive in nearly every other circumstance. This had been the false positive, though, and such hastiness in making assumptions had put them through a world of trouble. Dust, we nearly killed Goodwitch over it. We're lucky that we didn't.

Luck. It physical hurt Adam to know that chance was all that had prevented them from such complete failure.

It didn't make sense…and yet, it somehow did. After initiation, there had been no assassination attempts on them, not inexplicable behavior from their peers, no one pressing them for details or investigating them – none of the telltale signs of an enemy pursuing them. Aside for Marrow's corpse (which, while brutally injured, wasn't beyond the realm of damage a huntsman in an academy could incur), not once had there been any proof that would make them think K was being targeted – they had only ever just imagined they were and acted accordingly, because what were the odds that a secret agent just happened to die? Not as low as K had thought, apparently.

"Do you still have it?" asked Russel. "T-The microchip."

"Yeah, I kept it. Here, you can see it."

Sick fuck, keeping a trophy you pulled out of a dead man's corpse. You deserve whatever torment you get when this catches up to you.

The only way Adam could hold himself back from jumping out and slaughtering the three of them right here and now was the knowledge that it would be so much sweeter to see Cardin stripped of everything he'd ever worked for as a huntsman and left to rot away in jail like a fucking slug for the rest of his natural life. Dove would maybe get something for obstruction of justice, or perhaps misprision of felony. He wouldn't drown in misery like Cardin, but he hadn't killed Marrow either.

I'm getting too worked up. Adam reached down into his pocket for his chess piece.

Something made him stop before his fingers could find their way to the small white piece of wood.

This…This is different, right?

The chess piece was a symbol of justice's triumph, whereas Cardin keeping the tracker was just a depraved killer keeping a piece of his victim. Keeping the two items was different. He wasn't like Cardin.

Adam looked at the chess piece a little bit closer.

Had he truly kept it because of justice? As a reminder of a noble moment in his life, like his pocketknife? Or was it just an arrogant way of reminding himself of a foe crushed beneath his heel? If the latter was true…

Then he was no different than Cardin Winchester.

Adam decided not to risk it and crushed the chess piece into woodchips with one aura-enhanced hand. Perhaps it was time he stopped relying on trinkets to restrain his darker emotions and started actually acknowledging and overcoming them.

"You killed a Faunus," said Russel.

"Uh huh," said Cardin.

"You killed someone."

"Something, but yeah. Pretty much. I think that counts as, like, a hundred Grimm. I was already ahead of Dove, so I win the – hey, Russ, where you going?"

"Away from here. Away from you three."

"Uhhhh…dude, I hate to be like this, but it kinda feels like you're about to go snitch," said Dove. "I know we said we'd put our problems behind us, but we're not really in a position where we can just trust you at your word."

"Oh, you don't need to fret about that. I fully intend to report this. All of this."

"See, that's why we – wait, what?"

Adam didn't have his weapons any more, as both were buried beneath the CCT until he could have replacements commissioned, but even unarmed he could handle the three lower life forms of Team Sword. Russel was probably smart enough to hightail it to anywhere but here while Adam handled his barbarian teammates in the impending confrontation.

Schnee's voice spoke. "I…I…"

"Weiss, he's gonna go rat me out. You Glyph him down, I'll –"

"If we've done nothing wrong, we have nothing to fear. R-Right?"

"What? Weiss, you can't be serious. Cardin would be arrested for this."

"We're good people. We're not the bad guys. The White Fang, they're the bad guys. You were just defending yourself. Cardin, you have nothing to fear."

"Weiss, I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I think that I have the prospect of jailtime to fear. Weiss, let go. Weiss, lower the Glyph, he's getting away!"

"Nonsense. You did the right thing, Cardin. You should be proud of it." He could hear the confidence return to her as she once again convinced herself that she needn't think of any consequences and could simply rely on her conviction to get her through. "Let Russel go tell whoever he wishes to tell – he's not a problem."

"Weiss!"

"He's a small, small man who doesn't matter at all," sneered Weiss.

Oh, this couldn't have been better if they'd tried. Weiss was so delusional that she genuinely couldn't reconcile the notion of her teammate wanting to cover up his crimes with the idea that he was innocent. Adam wouldn't even need to get Atlas involved – Weiss would probably sing Cardin's praises from the rooftops for 'stopping the White Fang,' and that little tracker he'd decided to hold onto was decent evidence if it still had Cardin's fingerprints and Marrow's blood on it. Justice would be served to Cardin, no, to them all.

To Weiss Schnee.

To Winter's little sister.

To Jacques Schnee's daughter.

To the demented little monster so detached from the real world that she would bring about her own team's demise without Adam even having to intervene. He couldn't find it in himself to hate her. Perhaps the woman at the beginning of the year who'd hated Faunus with a vengeance, who'd assaulted Blake for having an extra set of ears, but not this Weiss that was trapped in her own mind, never to return. This Weiss was one he pitied.

Adam let the sawdust and remnants of the chess piece sift through his open fingers.


"Cardin? Seriously?"

Ilia could scarcely believe that he'd been the one to kill Marrow. All this time, and he hadn't ever even made the list of suspects.

"Should we do something?" asked Blake.

"I think Russel and Weiss have it covered for now. We can leave it to them. And if his name doesn't show up in the police reports over the next couple of days, we phone it in to James and watch him get sniped with some binoculars."

"And popcorn."

The aura transfer device was buried so deep in the ground that it would never be seen by human or Faunus eyes again, all halves and wholes of the maiden powers were definitively in Atlas' grasp, and Marrow Amin's killer would soon be facing justice, one way or another. That meant that…

"It's time for us to leave."

Adam nodded.

Adam had called them to meet up at the statue in the front of Beacon, the one with the huntsman and huntress standing atop a defeated Grimm, telling them that he had important news. And, yeah, Cardin being the one who'd caused them so my grief, all by accident, was definitely important news. But now, as their time at Beacon actually drew to a close and Ilia looked over the school one last time, a new, completely unexpected emotion welled up inside of her.

"I don't want to go."

Adam opened his mouth to speak, as did Blake, but Ilia cut them off to clarify her remark first. "I'm not saying we should stay; I just mean that I'm sad that to say goodbye to all the fun we've had here. I know I need to go, but I don't enjoy leaving."

"Beacon wasn't all that great," said Adam. "I mean, are we really going to miss it that much?"

"Atlas has a better campus," added Blake.

"Weiss and her team gave us a lot of trouble," said Ilia.

"The place was crawling with humans," said Adam.

"I don't think I particularly enjoy a single one of the professors," said Blake.

"The curriculum was so flimsy that we could have taught it better," said Adam.

"This school got me killed," said Ilia. "Twice."

"Yang Xiao-Long," said Ilia.

"It barely survived a Grimm attack, and now the whole damn place is in ruins," said Blake.

"Everything that could have possibly gone wrong did go wrong," said Blake.

All three of them sighed.

"I'm going to miss it, too."

"Me as well."

"So damn much."

This had been a flawless mission, just like the White Fang job. All objectives complete, no losses, and their covers were still intact. So why did Ilia feel so empty?

Adam looked past Ilia towards the school, and she followed his gaze. A certain brown haired, red colored reaper came into view, and Ilia realized what was missing.

"Hey, you guys."

"Ruby," said Blake. "You're…up."

"Yep. That I am. Up, up, and away." Ruby's eyes darted to the side. "So…"

"I…I'm the Fall maiden, now."

"Yep. Headmaster Ozpin filled me in."

"Cinder is dead," said Adam.

"I know. I said, Ozpin told me what I missed."

Ilia forced a smile. "How are you feeli–"

"So, Atlas, huh?"

She doesn't want small talk. That's fair, I guess.

"Yes. We've been acting on behalf of the kingdom of Atlas for some time now." Adam spoke slowly, diplomatically, as though he was afraid Ruby would blow her stack at the slightest provocation. She didn't possess awesome powers any more, but they still didn't gain anything by alienating her. In fact, they only stood to lose everything. To lose her.

"Is there anything you'd like to know, Rubes?"

Ruby answered Ilia's question with a look of determination. "Yes. Tell me. Tell me everything."


Omake

Adam: Weiss's team is most likely going to prison.

Ruby: I guess you could say…*jazz hands* her goose is cooked.

Adam: …what?

Ruby: Oh right, that was all a dream. Forget I said anything.


Author's Notes

So, how about that survey? Cardin's name was there from the start, but 100% of everyone got it wrong. Somehow Dove got a vote, but Cardin didn't.

Last chapter is next. I hope you enjoyed the show.

Happy rats, and don't do crime!