Main theme: The Edge by Casey Lee Williams and Martin Gonzalez
Theme: The Streets Are Long-Ass Gutters from the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack


73AGW, 7 years before the beginning of the Second Great War...


Ilia Amitola did not remember her parents.

She was young, small and frail, weak and sickly. The slums, filthy and disease-ridden, were not a place to raise a child, especially a Faunus girl.

Neither Atlas or Mantle were kind to the Faunus, especially the young and the small. Too many people willing to take advantage of them. Too many people willing to try and use them for their own gain, whether it be for one reason or- or another.

Ilia Amitola did not know her parents, and she did not wish to know them. From what she had heard of them, her father, some noble born from Atlas, had abandoned her mother, a prostitute and personal lover, when he found that she was pregnant and cast her out into Mantle. Sometime later, a few months after she was born, Ilia's mother was killed by a thug in the slums, leaving her in the hands of a group of strangers.

She didn't wish to know anymore than that. She hated her father and pitied her mother. To learn anymore than that would just lead to unnecessary suffering for herself.

It might seem cruel, but it was how she thought of it.

The people that she fell in with were much like herself, in all honesty; outcasts and strays, the banished of Atlas and Mantle. They were all children and young people like her, mostly Faunus, that had been born into both cities and cast away because of it, because of their heritage. They had never chosen who or what they were born as, and yet they had been, and were to be, punished for it.

She didn't want this life. None of them did.

But the universe did not care for their wants and needs, did it?

"Hey, Ilia."

The air around her was cold, blisteringly so. The world around her was deep and dark, only illuminated by the faint glow of the lamp next to her. The container that she was boxed into was damp and cold, a slick sheen of frost covering the walls as much as it did the clothing around her. The squatters that once lived in here had recently vacated, most likely in a hurry if the few things that they had owned were still here, abandoned and now covering with ice.

It wasn't much, but better it belong to her and her lot than anyone else if they weren't going to use it.

"Ilia."

The young girl blinked, and then looked to the side to see another girl her age looking at her. A Faunus girl with hooves for feet. She was as thinly-framed as she was, her clothes scarce and spartan in design, barely anything there to protect her from the cold. Ilia was much like her, covered in clothes that she had scavenged from dumpsters and bins, all of them torn and haggard, barely able to keep them warm against the freezing cold outside. No wonder so many other homeless kids her age died from hypothermia.

The girl, Starros (no last named, Human, liked to refer to herself in the third person) said, "You know what time it is. Let's move."

Ilia nodded, and with an adjustment of her torn clothing, she followed her and the few other children in their group out through the door, and into the open.

Nicholas' Folly had seen better days.

As had all of Mantle

The ramshackle metropolis was a hideous addition to an already ugly city, a messy network of tents and shacks and crates. Entire blocks of the tent town were made up of rusting, let colourful assortments of abandoned shipping containers stacked atop one another, each one converted into a home for the luckiest of their homeless residents, or crowded into by children and the elderly and those most vulnerable to the cold, cramped in together like sardines in a can. Other blocks were made up of tiers of metal shacks and fabrics, held together by buckled lampposts, dead trees, and scattered, derelict and cracked-open buildings. Roofs and ceilings made up of long strips of cloth and metal hung over the streets, tied in place by those same dead trees and broken lampposts, sheltering them from the snow above like umbrellas. Rows of old lamps, gaslit or fuelled by dust, hung on the walls by hooks and jagged edges alongside rows of salvaged strip lights and stolen, colourful LED lights, flashing like a rainbow in the dreary cracked streets around them, pitted with potholes and old rubbish, frozen over by frost and made slick with black ice. Down below the frozen streets of Nicholas' Folly, the old catacombs and sewer systems, abandoned by officials and left to flood and crumble, were peopled by those so desperate to escape from the cold that they would rather sit and die amongst the stink and disease-ridden filth than freeze to death in the cold (Ilia wasn't sure which fate was worth. Solitas wasn't kind to those who didn't have any chance of opportunity).

In the distance, the lights of Mantle glowed in the night, though long plumes of smoke rose up into the sky above, ashy soot raining down and dirtying the streets below. Mantle was a rung above Nicholas' Folly in the pecking order above Solitas, but everything and everyone was at the bottom rungs when Atlas stood at the top of the ladder.

Or rather, hovered at the top.

Ilia looked up to the floating city above, where the rich and the gluttonous and the greedy, who made good of the spoils handed down to them, or stolen from the hands and backs of those that had worked for them, and grew fat from the spoils. They claimed that under their rule, Atlas would be prosperous, Atlas would be the kings and queens of the world without ever having to say it out loud, and that under their rule, Mantle and all those that lived in it would be uplifted and prosperous once more as well.

Yeah.

When pigs fly.

Atlas may claim to rule all of Solitas and all the people in it, but in Mantle - in Nicholas' Folly - those colours didn't run.

They dared not think about the blood on their hands, of Mantlian or other. Only what they held in them.

Ilia turned back to Starros and the rest of the children as they scurried over the rooftops, and followed them over the wooden plank bridges and wiry tightropes that connected the various container houses together like a vast spiderweb, one made of the threads of poverty perpetuated by greedy men. Occasionally, the five of them-

(Starros, a Human girl called Mollie Emory, a Human boy with no real name, though they all called him Twitch due to how he stuttered and twitched sometimes, a boy that they all called Sammy, who's Faunus trait covered his back in Hedgehog quills, and then herself, Ilia.)

-Had to duck under old tents (some of them still occupied by indignant homeless people) to hide away from the spotlights of ships overhead, none of which Ilia knew the designation for.

The iron fist of Atlas was brutal, and their eyes were always watching, hanging overhead like a guillotine, ready to cut their heads off if they ever dared to stand against them.

"Clear out, now!"

And speaking of which...

Ilia took the chance to crawl over to the edge of the building and peek her head over, seeing the cracked streets below. Atlesian droids and military police prowled those same streets, intimidating anyone that they came across. Even when they were not wanted, they wormed their way into every location, and every part of a person's life.

She looked to the side, and saw a trio of Atlesian soldiers standing before a group of homeless sheltered around a fire, one made from an old bin that illuminated everything around them in a warm orange glow. They held electrobatons in their hands, patting them against their palms, their helmets offering no glimpse to the person underneath them.

"Hey now," one of the homeless said, his voice weak and raspy, "We're not doing anything-"

"You're crowding," the lead Atlesian MP said, those same letters printed in white on the wide faceplate of his helmet, "Now clear out."

"But we're-"

The Atlesian didn't let him finish his sentence. He marched forward and kicked the burning rubbish bin over, letting its flaming contents crash onto the streets below, letting out a puff of smoke as the individual pieces of burning refuse went out in the cold and the frost. One of the poor souls that had been huddling around it raised their hands in surrender, but the Atlesian swatted him across the head with his electrobaton and sent him crumpling to the ground, yellow electricity sparking over him and blood weeping out of a wide gash in the sickly man's head, soaking his hair in a shining wet red.

"Get the wagon," the lead Atlesian spat out, "We've got more criminals for the labour mines."

"W-We're citizens! You can't treat us like this!"

"Oh yeah?" the Atlesian cracked his electrobaton over the man's head once more, "Says who?" behind him, the second Atlesian military policeman laughed at the sight. The other said nothing.

Ilia narrowed her eyes at the sight. Typical Atlesian arrogance, always thought that they could bully those under them like they were nothing. She was young, yet she knew it to be sickening.

"Ilia, let's go," Starros hissed to her, and she got up and followed her over the roofs once more, doing her best to ignore the sounds of the homeless men below her as they were beaten by the Atlesian soldiers.

Over the rooftops and bridges they went, jumping over ledges and climbing up walls as they traversed the heavens of Nicholas' Folly, eventually reaching the edges of the tent blocks and container homes, and climbing over the rooftop bridges and wooden and metal planks connecting them to the stone and brick buildings next to them over a wide gap, allowing them to leave Nicholas' Folly, and enter into Mantle.

The city of Mantle was a maze of stone buildings and misplaced fortunes, of those still clinging to old glories as the new guard of Solitas trampled over them. The only difference between those that peopled this city and the ones that populated Nicholas' Folly was that the people that lived in the former just barely had enough money to live in homes. Other than that, they were all equal in the eyes of Atlas.

But they had money, and the children of Nicholas' Folly desperately needed money.

Up in the air. A ship passing overhead, shining spotlights down onto the ground. Ilia and the others ducked down into shelter, herself using her Chameleon Faunus traits to shift the colour of her skin into that of the colour of the rooftop floor beneath her, allowing herself to go unnoticed by the ship and the people in it as it passed by. Down below, she could see what it was shadowing: a truck, dirty and covered in grime, emblazoned with a snowflake symbol on the top of its hood, rolling up the road and stopping right under them.

"Alright, ride's over!" from the back of the open top truck, a soldier dressed in whites and and blacks, that same logo on their upper arms and rifles in their hands, jumped off and pointed to the pavement next to them, "Now get off, and get back here by tomorrow, five o'clock sharp!"

A collection of exhausted groans followed from the frail-framed and dirtied workers as they clambered off, a few of them almost slipping off the truck as they climbed down and marched off, their arms limp, their shoulder slumped, and their heads hung low. Their clothes were covered in filth and mud, some of them coughing up what looked like tiny shards of rainbow dirt amongst the spittle and phlegm. She looked up to one of the giant clockwork mechanisms that stood tall amongst the sooty chimneys that poked out through the utilitarian and polluted housing. They all read ten o'clock at night.

She should be in bed right now, or at least what counted for a bed in Nicholas' Folly.

But once again, the universe did not care for wants and needs. Nor did Atlas.

She continued to follow the others across the makeshift pathways across the rooftops, eventually reaching a part of the city along its outskirts that allowed them to climb down safely, allowing them to move through the alleyways unimpeded, save for the few poor souls like them that had tried to make their luck in the darkened slums of the alleys of Mantle rather than in Nicholas' Folly. Through these corners and backways, hiding behind stuffed bins and open rubbish containers, they look between the gaps and to the people walking along the streets, unaware of the desperate children watching over them.

Ilia, Sammy, and Starros leant in closer, using the advanced hearing that being a Faunus privileged them with (a strange choice of words, considering their current situation) to listen in on the conversations that the people of Mantle were having with each other. Behind them, Emory had to hold Twitch's hand and hush him quiet to make him stop tapping his foot on the ground.

One conversation. Two men.

"-Can't keep him in school. The fucking tuition fees are just too much. I can barely afford to keep the lights on, much less keep my own son in education."

"Can't you just home-school him?"

"I'm at work most of the time, - I have to be in order to pay for just living - and the costs of tutors these days..."

"All of them from Atlas?"

"Yeah."

"Figured."

Another conversation. Two women. One of them had a limp. The other was a Faunus.

"They denied me the right of treatment. At first it was because I didn't have the right insurance."

"Bullshit."

"No, it's true. I got a fucking limp from working in the damn mines, and they told me to fuck off just because I don't have the right fucking insurance. Thank the gods that that Polendina guy was around to treat it, otherwise I would've probably had to amputate the whole leg."

"Yeah, that tracks. They denied me the right to see about my hearing earlier because I couldn't provide proof of injury."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, I know. They're making it up for sure."

"Any reason why?"

"What do you think?"

Ilia frowned. Figured that they would do that.

A third conversation. A man and woman.

"I can't keep doing this, man. I can't keep working in the mines. I swear, I saw another worker get dust lung and croak. I just- I can't let that happen to me, man. I just can't."

"If you quit the mines, then you won't be able to afford to keep living at home."

"If I don't, then I'll die from fire dust burning me from the inside out. At least then I can stick it to the fucking SDC and-

"Shush, keep your voice down! Atlas has eyes and ears everywhere. The second that you speak out against them-"

"They won't kill me."

"They won't need to."

A fourth conversation. Another man and woman.

"I heard that there's this chick that's been making rounds in Mantle. Pretty young, but she's got promise, apparently."

"Who? That Hill girl and her lot? I doubt it. We're already dirt poor, for god's sake. We can't afford whatever charity she's setting up."

"Maybe, but at this point, what more can we lose? We're already dirt poor as it was, and Atlas is still trying to squeeze us for cash. What more can we afford to lose?"

"Our homes?"

"Hard to call them that as it is."

A fifth conversation. Another man and woman.

"Atlesians have been making a lot more rounds than usual, recently. Have you seen the amount of ships in the air?"

"And soldiers on the ground, yes. Apparently the SDC are opening up more mines, and they need more miners for it. I've heard rumours that they're not just stopping at paid employees and camps for criminals now."

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. I've heard of friends who've witnessed soldiers pressganging people into service from the mines. Not too long ago I saw them arrest someone for not having the correct papers for... I don't know, it was something silly. My best guess is he's at the mines right now?"

"My god..."

"Look, just keep your head down, alright? Atlas have got Mantle under lock and key, and the last thing we need is- shit, one of those soldiers is looking at us."

"Keep to yourself, Kyler. Don't bother them, and they won't bother you."

"I wish I had your confidence."

A seventh conversation. A soldier, a military policeman, talking to a voice in his helmet. Ilia leant back, and she and her fellows kept their distance.

"South side is clear. No hostiles detected. Not yet at least."

"Copy. Move onto west side. The slums are getting rowdy again."

"We making arrests?"

"Most likely. More for the labour mines at least."

"Heh, copy that."

Ilia clenched her fist.

Eighth conversation. A woman pressing a scroll to her ear, a bag in her other hand.

"Yeah, I've got the- Finch, I've got the money. Tell that loan shark asshole that I've got his money. He can get off my ass now, and I-"

"Now."

Starros ran out of the alleyway and into the open, right in front of the woman with the bag.

"-Can finally- oh, hello there little-"

Starros slammed her palm onto the woman's leg.

"Give Starros the bag and scroll."

In an instant, the woman fell silent. The flash of a star shimmered over her face and her eyes turned multi-coloured.

Starros' weird forcefield stuff, and her even weirder superpower, always came in handy during textbook robberies like this.

Without a thought or hint of protest, the woman leant down and handed the girl her bag filled with money and her scroll. Starros gestured her hand, and Emory and Sammy moved out of the shadows, snatching both items from her hands and running back into the alleyway. Starros watched them scurry back into the darkness before she let go of the woman's leg and followed them out of the street and into the back alley.

The purple star around the woman's face vanished in a flicker, the rainbow colour slipping away from her eyes. She blinked, shivered, asked groggily, "What the... where..." she then looked down, blinked again, and then screamed out, "Where the hell's the money?!"

Time to go.

The four children ran, and Ilia followed them. Their little feet pounded against the ground as behind them, the woman yelling out behind them as they sprinted away from the scene of the crime, fresh goods in their hand. Lien cards would do them all well, especially in a place like Mantle where the rule of money was the only law. People followed after them. Heavy feet and boots sounded off against the wet and slippery ground, rushing to follow and shouting for them to stop.

Atlas' soldiers were fast, but they - but she - was faster.

Past the old stone walls and frozen over canals they went, and into the torn tents and slanted container homes they entered. They ran through the scattered crowds of people, sheltering together around burning bins and old abandoned cars just to survive in the freezing temperatures. Some of them saw the five children with their new loot, on the run from Atlesian militants, and gave them smiles of pride and accomplishment, happy in their plunder and showing up those that would think them their betters.

Others, however, looked to them with a degree of anger and desperate greed. They saw that which the children had in their possession and became envious of them, jealous of the things that they now had.

It was understandable why. Atlas nor Mantle was not kind to those who had nothing. To even have a single chip of Lien in a place where such a thing was non-existent was to be hold power in your hands. To have an entire bag full of the stuff was to hold it all.

The children looked to each other, and then behind them. Three military policemen. Five of them. They looked to each other and nodded as they approached an intersection in the makeshift road.

They split off, going five different ways as they silently promised to meet up at their regular hideout in the middle of the ramshackle city. Ilia scampered across the floor as she swung herself around to run down a thin alleyway, dodging scattered vagabonds and ducking underneath overturned bins and dumpsters as she ran. Behind her, a soldier decided that she was the one to chase and ran after her, vaulting over those same dumpsters and weaving around those same vagabonds with a grace that Ilia couldn't help but admire if she was anyone else.

But she wasn't anyone else. She was Ilia Amitola, and she wasn't going to-

"Got you!"

A pair of bony hands wrapped around her frail frame and lifted her upward. Ilia, after overcoming the sudden shock of being grabbed, began to writhe in place, struggling in the grip of the person that had taken hold of her as she was spun around and-

{SLAM}

"Augh!"

-Shoved violently into the wall next to her, the rusty metal of the container home flaking as she was pressed against it, the rust slitting her skin and threatening to dig deep into her thin flesh.

It wasn't the soldier that had grabbed her. It was one of the homeless people that populated the various crevices of Nicholas' Folly. His long beard was as messy as his hair, his trench coat was pitted with stains and holes, and the knife in his hand was bent, yet sharp, marked by old stains.

"You got money on you, ya little shit?" the man with a lisp, his mouth missing teeth. The rest were yellow and black with neglect. The hand around Ilia's neck was calloused and course, the skin toughened from roughing it out on the streets so much. The man's voice reeked of desperation, out of a desire to get off the streets and out of the cold that would be understandable if he wasn't holding a knife to a child and demanding something that she didn't have, "I need money, dammit, and you got it, don't ya?! I need money-"

The hand around her neck tightened.

"-And you're gonna-"

{SLAM}

{CRACKLE}

The man screamed as he fell to the ground, electricity crackling over him as blood wept from his forehead. Ilia dropped to the ground, coughing and wheezing for air, and then looked up. The Atlesian soldier from before stood over the man that had grabbed her, panting for breath as the electrobaton in their hand fizzled.

The man got up, surging through the pain and lingering electricity running through his body as he roared and attacked the soldier. The two scuffled briefly as Ilia fell onto her backside and arms, enraptured by the sight as the two wrestled on the dirty ground amongst the scattered rubbish and rats scurrying around the cracked floor beneath them.

Somewhere in the fight, the soldier lost their helmet as it rolled to the side, only for them - her - to grab her helmet and slam it into the side of the man's head, knocking him out as a splatter of blood covered the white and blue helm, and allowing her to push the unconscious body off her and get up onto her feet.

Ilia looked to the soldier, and the soldier looked to her.

Pure white hair cut into a short pixie cute, and cold, sapphire blue eyes greeted her, attached to a smooth, pale face like snow. Ilia would've blushed at the sight of the beautiful woman before her if it wasn't for the fact that this very pretty woman was a soldier and she herself was a scrum rat about to be arrested for trying to survive in this hellhole.

But then, the soldier looked down at the unconscious figure groaning on the ground, then to her, and then sighed.

"Get out of here, child."

Ilia blinked dumbly, once, twice, thrice...

And then she took the chance and ran, without ever looking back.


The soldier kept her gaze on the girl as she ran, watching her dart around the corner of the rusty container home nearby before disappearing from her sight. She sighed and looked down at the man below her, her hands clenching into fists.

She tried to wipe away some of the blood off her helm (only serving to smear it in more) before putting it on, her eyes darting to the ping of her comms and answering it.

"You okay? Where are you?"

She nodded to herself, "I'm fine, but the child got away," not a complete lie.

"Yeah, same on our end. Ugh, the lieutenant's going to have our heads."

She bit her tongue at the causal tone of her brother in arms, "Maybe not. I came upon a man trying to assault a girl and stopped it. I'm taking him in."

"Heh, someone else for the labour mines, then."

"...I suppose."

"Take him back to the nearest APC and get him loaded up. Major Ironwood wants us at point beta. Apparently there's some rally taking place in Mantle, and we're pully security."

"Copy that," said Private Winter Schnee.


"Ow! Be gentle, won't you? I'm fragile."

"Hardly," Stephanie Brown said as she pulled another shard of rust from Ilia's opened cut, "I've seen you take a gut punch from one of those big men in armour. You're the least fragile thing I know."

"Person you know. I'm a person."

"Tell that to the people up in the sky."

Ilia bristled at Steph's words, but decided to cease her protests. The room around her - one in the makeshift orphanage that she and her fellow vagabond children lived in - was damp and dim, the rags hung over the metal bucket next to her wet and dripping into the water, smudged with rust and blood stains and flakes of old metal. The towel beneath them was, much like everything that was owned in Nicholas' Folly, worn and full of holes, and did little to help keep the cracks in the floorboards from digging into their legs and knees as they sat in place.

Ilia wanted to look at Steph, but she had forbade it. The tent wasn't well-lit by the gas lamp, and even then her fellow Faunus had refrained from allowing Ilia to keep her in her sight for the past hour. Ilia had obeyed without much thought, but at the same time...

At the same time, she was seven years old, and that came with it an endless curiosity.

"Why won't you let me look at you?"

"Because..." Steph said as she ran one of the wet rags over her neck, soothing the bruising around them before using it to clean one of her cuts.

"Because what?"

"Because..." Steph used her makeshift tweezers, made out of a pair of broken scissors (the people of Nicholas' Folly were nothing but adaptable), "Because."

"'Because because'."

"Yeah."

"That's not an answer."

"Yes it is."

"No it isn't!"

"Yes it-" she made sure to tug on the piece of rusted metal as she pulled it out, "-Is!"

"Ow!" That was enough. Ilia wheeled around to look at Steph and went, "What's your... oh."

Even in the dark, Ilia could see it perfectly.

Stephanie Brown's face was covered with bruises. Her eyes was swollen and her lip was cut. Her finger looked like it had been broken, only to be healed by that special forcefield stuff that Starros had as well. Her Cat's tail laid limp on the ground, looking like it had been stretched and stepped on. Dried stains of smudged blood covered her lips, and when she tried to send Ilia a reassuring smile, she showed her teeth to be a muddy red.

"...Who did this to you?" Ilia asked as she ran a hand over Steph's face, freezing in reaction to her friend's wince, "Was it someone from here?" she meant the orphanage.

"No, it-" Steph stopped, shivered, then answered, "Bad men. From Atlas. Big place up above."

Ilia frowned, "Again?"

"Mm."

"Why?"

Steph picked up her tail, "Because I'm a Faunus."

Ilia retracted her hand from Steph's face and felt it clench, "I'll make them pay, Steph. I'll-"

"N-No!" Steph grabbed her friend's shoulders, forcing her to calm down, "You do that, and they'll hurt you! They'll hurt you bad!" she looked away, averting her gaze, "Don't want that to happen to you..."

"Don't want that to happen to you either," Ilia mumbled in turn, "But still did..."

Steph sighed. It was clear that she didn't have a rebuttal to that.

Eventually, she said, "Just a kid... You don't deserve that."

"None of us do."

It was the truth.

They were children. Biologically, they were children, only ten years old.

But mentally... they were the opposite.

Mantle was a cruel place that was not kind to anyone, the young most of all. They were children, but they weren't allowed to be kids. They weren't allowed to 'Act their age', as the saying went. They had to mature to survive, they had to grow up just to live.

They weren't allowed to have childhoods. Not in a place like Mantle.

She had heard of other children having that sacred treasure that was a happy life. She had heard whispers of those her age in other sides of Remnant, running and laughing and playing and the like, all without a care in the world as they lived in their little worlds, naïve to the sufferings that so many other people were subjected to day by day.

Ilia envied them. She really did. All that innocence to the darkness in the world. She wondered if they could share a bit.

She sighed and leant back, allowing Steph to pick out the last of the rust shards inside her cuts. Once her wounds had been cleaned and all the chances of her getting infections from the rust gone (at least, she hoped so), she got up and began to walk to the door, Steph following after her after picking up the gas lamp, using it to light their way through the orphanage's walls.

The building was old and decrepit, the walls stained with old rot and torn paint and paper. The floor was mired in cracks and holes, and the children that lived there always had to mind their step lest the ground beneath them swallow their foot hole. There was little light afforded to them, apart from the sun and moonlight that shone through the cracks and holes in the roof. The faint smell of old rags and musty wood filled their noses, uncomfortably worming their way into their nostrils as they walked down the creaking stairs and into the hallway, covered with old robes for carpeting across the ground, an empty socket in the ceiling where one of those fancy glass light decorations went. The walls were missing doors in their frames, and the glass windows were shattered and plastered over with wooden planks that looked like they belonged in a tip, half broken and covered over by fresh frost held back by the few candles and gas lamps that the children of the nameless orphanage held in their possession.

Into one of the rooms they went, and looked across the bare, once cyan walls, and looked down to the floor. Starros and Molly were on the ground, splitting the Lien cards into little groups and debating on how much the scroll - which looked second-hand and cheap - was worth in its possible selling price. Sammy, meanwhile, was in the corner of the room with Twitch, doing their usual routine of helping him through his stuttering and motions, and trying to learn how to control them. Ilia suspected that he never would.

Around them, a few other kids had gathered around them and were eyeing their bounty eagerly. A few of them tried to slowly reach out to them or even snatch them, but their hands were always quickly swatted away.

The rest of the children at the orphanage were out and about, either hanging around in the crowded hallways (the orphanage was always crowded when even half of its residents were present) or were out on the streets, begging where they could, and stealing when they had to.

It was a terrible life, but it was their life. All they could do was try to make the most of it as they could.

"Ilia, Steph," Starros called out to them as they entered, "Get over here," they pushed through their fellow children gathering around Starros and Molly, and sat down next to them and the little groups of money, "Steph, your parents taught you how to work with numbers, right?"

Steph blinked, and Ilia looked at her. Right, Stephanie still had parents, didn't she? However, they were always at the big snowflake company's mines, trying to earn as much as they could to keep both herself and the rest of the children in the orphanage fed (at least, as much as one could in the slums), so they were almost never around to keep an eye on the children.

"Ah... o-only a little," Steph said, looking between the stacks of money between them with a nervous glance, "Not that much... too busy in the mines... but they did teach me a little."

They didn't teach her how to read, though. They didn't teach any of the children to do so, though not to any fault of their own. Again, they weren't around that much, but in a place like Nicholas' Folly, learning how to read and write tended to take a backseat to learning how to defend oneself and how to judge a thing's value and monetary worth (everyone needed to feed themselves, after all).

"...Right," Starros sighed, before presenting the scroll to the child next to her, "Ilia?" said girl looked up to her, "You're good with numbers, aren't you?"

Ilia nodded. She was good with numbers, much more so than Steph. She wasn't sure why, but she had always been good with numbers, as well as learning and memorising information. Molly always said that her brain worked differently than everyone else, but Ilia always shrugged in response. How was she supposed to know how everyone else's brains worked? Her mind had always been the way it was, and nothing had ever changed that. She doubted that anything ever would.

"How much can you tell Starros this scroll is worth, then?"

Ilia blinked, then narrowed her eyes at the old scroll, the ten-year-old Chameleon Faunus humming to herself before answering.

"Fifty to a hundred Lien."

A chorus of groans and saddened whines followed after her statement.

"That's not enough," Starros sighed, "That's not nearly enough. We're barely able to feed ourselves as it is, and the city's hiking up the prices of, well, everything," she scratched the back of her head, "We've got too many mouths to feed, and the shops that are willing to sell to us, homeless children that we are, are either closing down or raising their own prices to keep up with the demands from the sky city."

Starros clenched her fists.

"The money that we're getting from Steph's parents isn't enough anymore. Either we start selling off whatever we can from this place... or we start cutting meals."

That aroused a chorus of protests from the children.

"What?!"

"But we don't have anything!"

"We only have a few rags and lamps!"

"I don't want to give up Mr Teddy!" one little girl with a broken horn sticking out of her head said, clutching a torn woolly teddy bear, missing a leg and eye, close to her chest.

Starros waved her hand to quieten their words and cries of denial, "Starros knows, and Starros doesn't want to sell anything of ours either. It's not like we have much to bargain with to begin with... but what else can we do? If we don't find a way to make more money soon, then forget skipping meals, we'll starve to death entirely."

Starros got up, and gestured her hand around the room.

"Gather everything you can that might be of value, hell, anything at all. Starros doesn't care if you're willing to part with it or not, we need to put a price on anything that we can and start thinking about selling. Doesn't matter if it's broken or not, we need to make some money no matter what, and if we can't steal it, then we'll just have to sell it."

She looked down to the small girl with the broken Teddy Bear.

"Including that too."

The girl whimpered, but one of the children next to her, a boy with two broken horns in his forehead - his brother, Ilia believed - put his hand on her shoulder, calming her.

Ilia and Steph looked to each other, each one in understanding. Neither of them had anything to sell. All they had were the clothes on their backs, and nothing else. Nothing but their flesh, of course, but they would rather die than let that happen to themselves.

As the rest of the children began to reluctantly scatter, Ilia and Steph moved to follow them, only to be stopped by Starros.

"Not you too," Starros said to them, "Starros has another money run for you."

The two children looked to each other, and then back to their unofficial leader, "So soon?" Ilia asked, "The heat won't be off us by now."

"You hear what Starros said?" she asked rhetorically, "We need money more than ever, and Sammy told Starros that there's supposed to be some kind of rally in the centre of Mantle."

"And...?"

"And it's the same place where a second-hand jewellery shop is located."

Ilia and Steph immediately understood.

"Okay."

"We're on it."


"""""NO MORE RACE WAR! NO MORE RACE WAR! NO MORE RACE WAR! NO MORE RACE WAR!"""""

The chanting of the crowd was thunderous and attention-grabbing, turning the heads of everyone around them to the raucous source of the noise. More than a thousand people, the majority of them Faunus (though there were a good many Humans and Techions amongst them as well), marched through the streets of Mantle, stomping their feet against the ground as they continued their sojourn through the road, watched over by soldiers and military policemen at all sides.

"What are we?!"

"""""THE WHITE WOLVES!"""""

"What do we want?!"

"""""JUSTICE FOR FAUNUS!"""""

Their mantra was a roar, a cry into the heavens, demanding the Gods themselves to listen. Gods, or man. The rows and rows of battered Faunus and rundown Humans and rusting Techions (but mostly Faunus) were on a warpath, justice for their brother and sister kin on their minds. Their clothes were a wash of whites and blacks and blues, which Ilia assumed to be the official colours of these 'White Wolf' folks. In their hands they held banners and picket signs, marked by the symbol of a blue Wolf against a white background, and lines of text and scribbles over them.

Ilia wished that she knew what they said.

Around them, soldiers stood along the pavement and between the gaps between the stone buildings of Mantle and watched the massive protest like Hawks, like Vultures, carrion birds ready to feast on their prey. Their hands wrapped around their guns anxiously, like they were ready for a fight, preparing for one, eager for one. Big cars armed with what looked like water cannons kept their sights on the crowd. Men with riot shields kept their hands to their waists, inching closer and closer to their electrobatons. Men stood atop the rooftops above. More were crossing the street ahead of the crowd, as if amassing for something.

At the front of the crowd were three individuals leading the charge. All of them were Faunus, and all of them were adults, two women (very pretty ones, in Ilia's mind), and one man (not as pretty, in Ilia's mind). One of the women was dark-skinned and haired, with sharpened features and piercing amber eyes and fingers like claws. The other woman was tanned with golden hair, amber eyes adorning her features as well. The man of the group was big and bulky, and had dark hair to go along with his emerald green eyes. All three of them walked with a purpose, intent rolling across their faces and bodies. They were going to speak, and they demanded to be heard.

Too bad Ilia knew that no one would be listening. No one ever did.

As the protesters began to pass by them, Ilia and Steph continued to hide away in the shadows, sulking away behind a red-rimmed dumpster as they watched the march of the six thousand (or more), eyeing the soldiers as they themselves eyed the protestors walking past in their crowds and formations. Everyone was looking at the protestors, and that meant that there would be no one watching them.

Unfortunately for the both of them, Ilia's eyes were on the protestors as well, watching them swell in number, prominence, and providence as they continued their trek through the streets.

Her gaze drifted to the three Faunus at the front, and her ears picked up their words.

"We are not animals! We are not beasts! We are people, same as you!"

"Our hearts beat like yours! We breathe the same air as you! We bleed the same blood as you!"

"You call us animals, yet we speak! You call us brutes, yet we show civility! You call us beasts, yet we act like any other man and woman would! You call us monsters, yet we extend to you a hand of kindness! If you would call us the scum of the world, then what does that make you!?"

A chorus of cheers and shouts followed from behind them.

"Mantle for Mantlians!"

"Justice for our brothers and sisters!"

"No more police state! No more corporate rule!"

"We want peace! We want food! We want to live!"

"Down with tyranny!"

More cheers of support. More shouts of indignation. Ilia and Stephanie kept themselves in the back as they watched the protesters continue their march. Up ahead, a roadblock was being formed. Soldiers with riot shields came together to create a wall, with big cars and men with guns and canisters in their hands behind them.

The crowd stopped. The big burly man stepped forward. Ilia couldn't help but listen to what he was about to say.

"We haven't come here to seek violence," his voice was big and booming without ever having to yell, "And we haven't come here to seek war. You face us with guns and swords and bayonets, and we face you with empty hands and open hearts. We don't want violence between our people. Not peoples, not groups, not factions and divisions, but our people. One people. We are all alike. We breathe the same air, we eat and drink the same food and water, our hearts beat in unison with yours. Humans and Faunus. The only difference between our species is a set of ears and a tail at our waists, so why must we let that be what defines us, what makes us different?"

Ilia couldn't help but be enraptured by the big man's words. She didn't know why. They weren't putting food on the table or money into her hands, there was no reason for her to care about anything that he was saying at all.

But at the same time... she couldn't explain it. It was like he was saying nothing yet everything at the same time. She wasn't sure why, but something about what his words... they were mesmerising.

"We come in peace, yet you seek to show us violence," the man continued, "Yet it does not have to be this way. The revolution has been over for years, and yet have we not learnt our lessons from it?" several of the soldiers around them flinched at that last statement. Ilia didn't know much about this revolution thing, but she knew that it was a real sore spot for a lot of people in the floating city above. The man continued his speech, "Only together, hand in hand, can we march forward into a better future. You come at us with hate unfounded, illogical, bound in fiction and mangled facts, misremembering the past that came before us and using it to justify your vitriolic rage. But we? We present to you our hand in friendship.

"Please, let us pass. Show us no violence, for violence will only make you less than men, less than people. It will only show you to be that which you call us, animals, beasts, monsters. Show that you can be more than that. Show that you can rise above the hate that those that direct you try to teach you. Only together can we change the world and bring it into a new era of peace, pushing aside the darkness that dwells within all of us, that divides us and tears us apart. Only when we stand as one people, hand in hand and proud of who we are, uncaring as to what makes us different from each other, can we reclaim all the things that we lost in the wars that came before us.

"Only together can we unify our world, and be remembered as the people that we can become, rather than the remnants of a lost, painful world that we once were."

Silence covered the world as his speech ended.

Ilia let out a silent sigh.

She knew how this was going to end.

From behind the wall of shields, two cannisters were thrown into the air, leaking smoke as they arched down to the ground below, landing in the middle of the crowd. Before anyone could react, the two cannisters-

{BANG}

{BANG}

-Exploded, unleashing thick plumes of smoke into the air.

No, not smoke.

Gas.

"F-Fuck! Tear gas! They're using tear gas!" someone in the crowd (Ilia assumed that it was one of the two women at the front of the crowd) screamed before coughing violently.

"Ah, screw the protest! We need to-" the Faunus that said that was unable to finish his sentence, as he was silenced by the electrobaton slamming into his forehead.

The army men moved in. A loud roar from one of the soldiers sounded the assault as they charged forward, firing stun bolts and chucking tear gas into the crowd, and beating down and dragging away anyone who attempted to flee. The crowd was left screaming in angst and panic as the soldiers marched on them, their momentum turned against them as what once began as a peaceful protest turned into a riot, picket signs and banners being thrown about in the scrum.

All eyes were still on the crowd, now devolving into chaos.

None of them were on Ilia and Steph.

Good.

"Ilia, let's go," Steph tugged at the Chameleon Faunus' hand, begging for her to get going. The jewellery shop was just a few buildings away. No one would notice them slipping in through the back of the shop and taking everything inside.

But Ilia did not move. For some reason, she couldn't. Her eyes were still transfixed on the scene of the riot playing out before her, her mind still replaying what the big man had said, again and again and again.

She felt angry. Angry at the soldiers and the army men. She always had been angry at them. Every single day she had watched these men in armour and whites and blues stomp across her home, wave around their flags and symbols and trample over everyone beneath them like they were nothing, like they were less than nothing.

She was always angry at them, but now... for some reason, she felt enraged. She had heard the words of the big man at the front of the crowd, and she had become enraged at them- no, enraged because of them. Enraged at the meanings behind the words, enraged at how they had refused to be heard, and enraged at those who had refused to hear them.

She wanted to hear more of the big man's words. She wanted to hear more of all of the people's words. There was something about them that enraptured her, that ignited a passion in her, that ordered her to go out and seek justice against those that had wrong her. They inspired her, inflamed her, demanded her to seek action.

"Ilia."

And then she allowed herself to be moved, and the strange feelings of all-encompassing rage simmered and cooled.

Ilia broke her sight away from the crowd and followed Steph down the alleyways of Mantle's backstreets, hiding behind piles of frozen over bags of rubbish and worming their way under dumpsters as they moved. Up ahead, a pair of soldiers were making their way down an alleyway, guns in hand, and the two children had to duck out of their sight and into a neglected entrance to an old home, the wooden door chipped and rotting as they slunk into the wide porch, keeping themselves out of the sight of the two men in armour. Ilia caught their conversation as they passed by.

"-Don't like this, man. They're just protesting. What's so bad about that?"

"You know the law. No gatherings of thirty people or above. Did that look like thirty people to you? Because it sure as hell didn't to me."

"Yeah, but they weren't doing anything."

"Apart from the massive gathering."

"How is that a law? When did protesting become an illegal offense?"

"Are you questioning orders, son?"

"N-No sir, I just... they're just protesting, sir. There's nothing wrong with that."

"You watch your mouth, boy. Talk like that will land you in the labour mines alongside those Faunus."

"Are you serious? Who in charge of this operation?"

"That doesn't matter. All that matters is the extra little bit of money to my monthly check from the SDC whenever I send a worker to the mines."

"Oh my God..."

"Welcome to Mantle. Now get used to it and help me wrangle more of those protesters before they escape."

Ilia couldn't hear the other soldier's reply as they rounded around a corner in the alleyway and back into the street, only the faint echoes of their conversation amongst the cacophony of noise sounding off from the other side of the buildings as the Faunus and protestors that had once been peacefully going about their purpose were now being corralled and rounded up like dogs.

The two young Faunus ducked out of the entryway once the two soldiers were out of sight, and made their way further down the alley. Then, they came across the backdoor to the jewellery shop that they were supposed to target.

"Hit the security," Steph said as she dug through her pocket, producing a small rope and a shard of metal from the pocket of her torn trousers. Ilia nodded and moved to the side of the building and into the shadows, spotting a rusted metal box attached to the wall, a hushed beeping behind it. Prying the metal panel with her small dagger was easy, as was goring the wires within, stabbing into them and cutting them apart until they sparked and the beeping went quiet. Mantle always had to content with hand-me-downs equipment from the city in the heavens above.

Ilia pushed the old panel back onto the metal box, and ran back to Steph, telling her that the security was down. No cameras, no alarm. Steph nodded and wrapped the small rope she had around the metal shard, turning it into a makeshift prying tool. Jamming it into the small gap in the door, the Cat Faunus pulled down hard on it and broke the lock, opening the door. The shard of metal was busted by the end of it, so she tossed it aside.

They opened the door and stepped inside, bombarded by a soft heat. The inside of the shop, with its wooden and glass displays and boarded up windows, was warm, even if only slightly. Ilia could make out a small, portable radiator that had been jerry-rigged into the wall, switched off at the mains. Whoever owned this place was gone, having only just left. Good for them, no witnesses. They'd left in a hurry as well, as all the jewellery in the shop was still on display instead of in a safe. Even better.

Ilia and Steph pulled rocks out of their pockets and smashed them into the display glass, shattering them. From the same pocket, Steph pulled out a small carrier bag and unfolded it, the two of them picking their hands through the glass (Ilia cutting herself several times as she did so) and shovelling jewels and rings and necklaces galore into it, stretching the thin plastic as they unloaded the cabinets of their displays and loaded themselves up with old accessories and possibly fake gold.

All of this jewellery was old, and possibly knockoff as well, but the people that they were going to pawn off and sell it to wouldn't know. Or care, if they were desperate enough to buy from a bunch of street rats.

Behind them. Sounds at the backdoor. The click of a gun.

"What the fuck...?"

A soldier.

Ilia and Steph ducked out of sight, Ilia taking the bag of jewels from Steph as they did, as the man in armour stepped into the back of the shop, Steph shuffling herself behind the ransacked display cabinets whilst Ilia scrambled under the old desk at the far wall of the shop opposite the sealed windows. The two young Faunus quietened their breath as the soldier treaded into the room. The insides of the shop were dark, and Ilia and Steph could use that, and their enhanced Faunus senses, to their advantage. Previous experience had taught them that not only were all the soldiers that occupied Mantle and Nicholas' Folly Human, meaning that they didn't have the advanced eyesight that all Faunus did, but the helmets that they wore didn't have night vision. Apparently someone up top was all about cutting corner, and saw night vision for every soldier as a needless expense.

But then the soldier turned on a flashlight attachment to his rifle and began to scan the room, and Ilia swore in her head. That would make sneaking out of here difficult. No doubt he already knew that they, or at least someone, had broken in, and as he scanned the pillaged displays, the shattered glass on the floor cracking underneath his boots. Ilia didn't hear him report into his radio about the break in yet, no doubt investigating it for himself for whatever reason he had (personal glory? Wanting the bonus of capturing the burglar for himself? That was the problem with corporatizing the police and military. Self-interest and greed made mercenaries out of all of them), so the least that they could hope for was for him to bugger off, report the robbery outside, and allow them the chance to-

She shifted her hand, and accidently ruffled the bag next to her. The jewellery inside the bag chinked against each other slightly.

Shit.

The soldier heard that, and the flashlight was suddenly aimed at the desk. Ilia silently sucked in a breath as she shrunk into herself, going still and hushing to barely a whisper or a whimper. The man in armour began to creep towards the counter desk, flashlight trained on the old wooden furniture as shards of glass cracked into splinters under his armoured soles.

Ilia began to count the steps as he inched closer.

One step.

Two steps.

She needed to make a move.

Three steps.

Four steps.

He had a gun on him. What was she supposed to do? She didn't have the forcefield stuff that Steph had. He'd shoot her, and he'd kill her.

Five steps.

Six steps.

Make a move. Make a move, dammit, before he kills you.

Seve-

"Got you!"

Ilia screamed as a hand lurched under the counter and grabbed her by the throat, retching her out of her hiding place and onto her feet in the open. The bag and dagger that she had in her hands dropped as she began to grasp at her throat, glaring down at the man in the helmet and the armour as he trained his flashlight, his gun, on her. The bright light hurt her eyes and left little patches and spots in her vision, but she still managed a glare alongside the choked growl that rolled out of her mouth.

"Got me a little thief, huh?" the soldier let out an amused chuckle, "Trying your hand at a little daylight robbery, eh? And a Faunus too, huh? Probably with the pets and their owners outside as they marched, too. Burglary, breaking and entering, and unlawful gathering, plus, possession of a weapon," the soldier tutted mockingly, "That's one hell of a long time in juvie, kid. Lucky that the labour mines have sections for little criminals, don't they? juvenile mining."

He barked out another laugh and flipped the switch on his rifle. It wasn't already on stun? Ilia sucked in a breath.

"That bonus is-"

A flash of blue light, and Steph leapt out from her cover, a blue trail of light leaving her back as, in a split-second, she darted from one side of the shopfront to another, grabbing the dagger on the ground with both hands and-

"MiAAAAAAAAUGH!"

-Stabbing the blade through the grooves of his armour and into the back of his knee.

The soldier released his grip on Ilia as he kneeled over, only to scream again as Steph pulled the dagger out of the back of his leg, blood splattering out onto the ground and coating the blade, and then thrust it into the other gap in the back of his leg. The man shrieked as she pulled out the dagger, blood soaking the backs of his legs and beginning to drip onto the ground as he, whilst bleeding and in incredibly pain, reached for the rifle that he had dropped upon being stabbed.

Steph, in her adrenaline-fuelled panic, dropped the knife and grabbed the startled Ilia by her shoulders, "Come on, let's go!" Ilia limply let herself be dragged away by her fellow gutter rat, one hand grasping onto the plastic bag of jewellery as she-

The soldier on the ground grabbed the bag by its second handle and refused to let go. So did Ilia. The two of them engaged in a brief tug-of-war over the bad of gems and jewels, despite Steph's shout for them to get going, stretching the bag-

{RIP}

{CLATTER}

-Until it broke, the flimsy plastic tearing in two and scattering the bounty inside across the ground.

Steph stopped waiting for Ilia to move on her own and grabbed her, pulling her towards the back of the shop as the soldier on the ground grabbed his rifle. The clatter of metal and the flick of a switch, and a loud bang echoed through the shopfront as a red line slammed into the wall next to them, dislodging old plastering on the wall and leaving a smoking hole that glowed in a bright orange ring. Then another shot rang out, inching closer to them as another line of blue light erupted out of Steph's back, speeding them back toward the open exit out the back before-

{BANG}

"AUGH!"

-Another shot rang out and hit Steph in the back, the glowing forcefield stuff around her shattering as the bullet casing rolled off her back, but leaving a fine, deep gouge in her back that wept blood, a thin red spray on the wall next to them.

"Steph!" Ilia cried as she picked her up, the Cat Faunus groaning and crying in pain as she pulled her out of the shop and back into the alley from which they had come.

Not too far away, she could hear the shouts of more soldiers, having just heard the gunshots themselves, approaching them rapidly.

Ilia ran. She ran through the alleyways and backstreets, through the cracks and the crevices of Mantle and Nicholas' Folly, carrying a wounded girl with her and leaving behind a splatter of blood on the walls.


"O-Ow," Steph winced as Ilia ran the cloth over her wound (it was already scabbing over. That forcefield stuff was nifty indeed) and cleaned the blood off it, "S-Stop pressing, please."

"Now who's fragile?" Ilia couldn't help but mutter in an amused voice before Steph let out another whimper of pain. This time, the little smirk on Ilia's lips dropped as she said, "Sorry," and got back to work.

Steph shivered and winced, and wriggled slightly against the cloth, smearing her back with water and blood.

"This would go a lot quicker if you hold still," Ilia stated.

"Sorry. This hurts. Lot of pain."

"You got shot. Of course it hurts. Would be weird if it didn't," Ilia dunked the cloth that she was using to wipe Stephanie's back into the bowl of water, squeezing and cleaning it, before sighing at the fact that she was now going to need to change the water. Luckily they had a lot of snow outside, at least. They just needed to boil it over a fire, first. Ilia continued, "That forcefield thing that you have is handy. You got shot in the back. It should've killed you. It didn't, but it shouldn't."

Steph, through the pain, turned her head to her in a frown, "You're just a well of joy, aren't you?"

"I know. I'm hilarious. Now hold still. This might hurt."

"What might- AUGH!" Steph yelped and hissed, seething as Ilia pulled out what looked like a stray bit of splintered metal from the bullet that hit her from her wound, tearing at the scab that had formed around the gash and letting a fresh line of blood drip down her back.

Steph shot Ilia a glare, "'Might hurt', you say?" she hissed in a sharp tone of voice.

Ilia blankly stared, "Did I say 'Might hurt'? Sorry, I meant to say 'Will hurt'. Slip of the tongue, sorry."

"You are the least empathetic person I know, are you aware of that?"

"Excuse me, I do have empathy, thank you very much," Ilia frowned, "I just don't show it as much."

"Your brain?"

"I'll have you not think of my condition like that, thank you very much."

Steph blinked, then looked down, "Right... sorry."

"No, I should be sorry," Ilia said, "I should've warned you properly. I'm sorry."

"It's fine."

"It's not fine, it's-"

"Ilia," Steph cut in with, giving Ilia a look that she couldn't quite understand, "It's fine. Really."

"...Sorry."

"I know."

Ilia sighed and picked up the bucket of dirty water, walking over to one of the opened walls in the room and dumping the contents outside, hearing it splash onto the icy ground below. The night was setting in and the sun was cresting downward over the distant hills-

If she looked hard enough, then she wondered if she'd be able to make out the outline of the supposed fortresses that the House of the Winter Shores occupied in the faraway mountains, or the toppled remains the Heaven's Reach tower, or maybe even the frozen over remains of New Valhalla on the edge of the Azure Ocean, built out of a shard of the Salvation Gateway and once populated by what was left of the Valkyries of the Night, now emptied out and abandoned, its inhabitants deceased and surrendered to the frozen wasteland that was the Solitan tundra.

-Darkening the skies above. It was difficult to see the stars through all the light pollution that both Mantle and Atlas, as well as the ships above, gave out, but she was still able to make out a few of them, even if they were made murky by the flickering streetlights scattered across the ransack city.

She looked out over her home.

Nicholas' Folly made for an ugly corpse. It was a vast urban jungle of lost hopes and decay, bumpy and uneven. Rusting towers made out of old metal jutted out of the town's (could she even call this place a town?) body and into the air, waving around old torn banners and flags like trophies (those made Ilia a little angry. She considered it to be a waste of cloth). Improvised bridges made out of ropes and planks connected the various towers and stacked container apartments like a spiderweb, resembling something of an urban playground, a parkour enthusiast's heaven as she observed faint figures, barely outlined against the darkness and shaded by the flashing lights, jumping over container roofs and in and out of old huts and shacks. Aging old buildings, scattered as they were, stood out like chipped gargoyles, gothic ruins that spoke of an age that had come long before, their foundations cracked and crumbling, barely held together by makeshift walls and supports. Around certain homes, palisades made of twisted metal spikes and rotting wooden planks had been set up to mark property lines by the most territorial of Nicholas' Folly's residents, jealous of their homes and envious of others. Other residents of the makeshift city prowled the streets at night, doing their best to find a place for themselves to sleep for the night before simply settling down in the first stretch of unoccupied, somewhat safe corner in the road and making their bed there.

Ilia turned her head to look at the far end of Nicholas' Folly. A ring of holographic tape covering a patch near the crumbling old walls that surrounded not just Nicholas' Folly, but all of Mantle as well. Just the other day, there had been a breach in the wall, and a Saybr Grimm had broken in and killed ten people. Whatever protection they once offered was now long gone, forgotten, made into a joke without a punchline.

She could hear the sound of a dog barking in the distance. Nothing out of the ordinary in Nicholas' Folly, but still rather annoying.

She dumped the old bucket on the ground next to her and reached for the pot in the corner, the water inside boiling and steaming over the small fire that had been made. It was hazardous to start a fire inside of a building, yes, but this was one of the rooms in the orphanage that had been opened up to the elements outside. Two of the walls were gone, and the ceiling was held up by metal rods twisted into pillars. What remained of the old walls were jagged and broken, frozen over by ice and worn down by time. The old room was now nothing more than an oversized balcony with a giant roof over its head. Perfect for lighting a campfire in and boiling water with.

They always had to duck out of sight when one of the ships from up in the sky came down, of course. The last thing they needed was a spotlight shining onto them and-

"I want to be a Hunter."

Ilia almost dropped the fresh bucket of water before she picked it up, "What?"

Steph turned herself around to look at her and repeated, "I want to be a Hunter... a Huntress."

"...You're kidding."

"I'm not."

"You have to be."

Steph looked down, "I want to do this."

"And I want to have a home and a warm bed," Ilia countered, "But we can't all have what we want now, can we?"

"Don't talk to me like that. That's something we all want."

"Sure, unless you're you, and you want to go run off and galivant with the same people that are oppressing us."

"I said don't talk to me like that."

"Then what would you like me to talk to you like, then? An idiot? You have to be in order to-" Ilia caught her elongated tongue, stopping herself from spluttering, and then said, "Didn't you get beaten up by a bunch of students from the sky city? Them... whatever they say, them schei- them scheißes?" she used the word in the other language that she'd heard the people in Atlas use sometimes, "You want to be like them? Exactly like them?"

"I don't want to be anything like that, like them?"

"Then why do you want to be a Hunter?"

"Because I want to be better than them!"

The two of them had only just realised that they were shouting. Not too far away, the barking of that dog from before seemed to be getting louder, but neither of them paid them any mind.

"...I want to be more than them," Steph said after a long pause, "Better than them. Better than they ever could be."

"And what would joining them prove?" Ilia did her best to keep her voice level.

"That I can beat them at their own game," Steph answered, "I can go, get stronger, be stronger, whatever. I go, I learn, I come back here, I help all of us better. Protect all of us better."

"You're a Faunus," Ilia retorted, "And they're all Human. If they don't kill you, then they'll ruin you," she slumped down onto the ground, "You heard what the big man from the crowd earlier said. They see us like monsters. They'll never let you in."

She shook her head.

"They didn't just rig the game; they made the game."

"...That doesn't mean that I can't play."

"You'll lose!"

"Maybe!" Steph shot back, pausing for a moment to catch herself before she then said, "But it's better to try than to just waste away down here...! It's better to try and die rather than live and never do anything, isn't it? Isn't it?"

Steph leant back, sighed, caught her breath.

"I want to do what's right by us, what's right by everyone... and we can't do it here," she threw a hand out in a rough gesture, "In this place. Not when the people from the sky are trying to hurt us."

"You just said you wanted to join them."

"I said that I wanted to beat them at their own game, not sign up with them," Steph shook her head, "There are other places out there. Other schools that I can go to. Go there, get stronger, come back here and..." she paused, trying to find her words, "I don't know. Make things better. Make a different."

"How'd you know it'll be any different over there than it will here?"

It was a good question, and all that Steph could do was shrug in response, "I don't know... can only hope."

"...Hope won't put food in our mouths."

"Maybe..."

They sat in silence for a long time.

"...What about the big guy?" Ilia broke the quiet with, "The big man?"

Steph looked at her and blinked, "From the parade?"

"Protest."

"Same thing."

It really wasn't, but Ilia wasn't about to correct her, "What about we go with him? He had a lot of words, a lot of things to say."

"A lot of promises."

"If that's what you think they are."

Steph scratched the back of her head, and Ilia continued.

"We could go find him. Find where he is, go with him."

"'Go with him' where?"

"Anywhere other than here," Ilia stated, "He had a lot of words, lot of things, lot of good things to say. Smart things. Right things."

Steph seemed unsure, so Ilia pressed further.

"It's like you said, isn't it? There are other places out there, other places that we can go to. We go there, get stronger, come back here... we use his words to make a difference."

This time, it was Steph's turn to throw what Ilia had said back at her, "How'd you know it'll be any different over there than it will here?"

"What'd you mean?"

Steph shook her head, "Just because the big man says the right things doesn't mean he's right."

"What does that mean?"

"I think you know."

Ilia bit her lip, "What does it matter?"

"It matters a whole lot."

"How?"

"Because if I get into a fight, I want to know if I'm fighting for the good guys or not."

Ilia found herself bristling, "They are good guys."

"I'm sure the people upstairs," she gestured upward to the ceiling, but really she meant the floating rock in the sky above, "Think the same thing about themselves as well."

"What does that mean?"

"People like the big man and his lot always think of themselves as the good guys," Steph began, "They always start off as good, with good inten... inten... intentions," she finally remembered the word, "But then whatever they're fighting for changes. Or the methods change. Or the people change. Something changes, and what they become is no longer good. They become bad, all for the sake of trying to do something good.

The ten year-old girl sighed as she leant back.

"There's a saying."

"There is?"

"'The road to hell is pathed with good intentions.'"

"Is that how the saying goes?"

"Yeah?"

"Then how is becoming a Hunter any different?" Steph looked at her, "Is that hypo... hypo-thingy?"

"Hypocritical," Steph corrected, "And... yes. Yeah, I guess it... I guess it does."

Ilia scoffed. That was true.

Atlas, and all the people that ruled and populated it... They all thought themselves as gods, as the righteous blessing their servants with their 'Blessings' as they called them. They all thought themselves good men, great men, all of them leading the world into the future...

But in reality, they were all nothing more than greedy men. They were all liars, to others and to themselves. They told themselves that they were superior to everything, told themselves that they had never lost a battle, had never lost a war, had never lost to anyone at all. What a joke. Atlas had been born from a war that its ancestor lost, and the one war that it did fight in, it lost as well, and lost hard. The only reason that they didn't count the Faunus Rights Revolution as the war as it was, unlike the Colour Revolution that preceded it, was because it was a war that they had lost, and one that had lost to angry mobs and militias of Faunus, and not another kingdom or people that they could prove their supposed superiority to.

Maybe that was why they were so brutal in how they ruled Mantle like a proxy state: they were still sore about how they had lost the only war that they had fought in, and were taking it out on the people of the kingdom that birthed them, like a son bullying their mother.

Ilia scowled. Atlas treated her home, Mantle, like a common whore, something, or someone, to be used and abused, and then to be thrown away at the earliest convenience. They trampled over her people, over Faunus and others, considered them all worthless, and bullied them and made them feel great pain over nothing, just to satiate their own insecure need to confirm their own false superiority.

Those who lived in and ruled Atlas thought that they were gods, that they were superior, that they were better than everyone else. But none of them dared to even step one foot into Nicholas' Folly, or even Mantle itself. If they did, then they might see the horrors that they wrought and be sickened by them.

Maybe that was why they never came down. They didn't want to ruin their pretty suits and dresses with their own vomit.

Heh, nah. They didn't come down to Mantle because they didn't want to commingle with the unwashed masses.

The sounds of that dog barking were really loud now. Okay, seriously, what was with that? Why wouldn't its owner just give it a treat and shut it up already-

Ilia's ears prickled with noise. So did Steph. Activity, downstairs. The shouts of a child. Warnings. The shouts of an adult. Demands.

They both rose up from where they were standing, Ilia knocking the hot bucket of water over as it splashed over the fire underneath it, blanketing them in darkness. However, it was a darkness that was short-lived as a thunderous noise filled their ears, accompanied by a harsh light enveloping and almost blinding them. Harsh winds bellowed against them and pushed back buckets and rags to the far side of the improv balcony as they shielded their eyes from the light, accompanied by that harsh noise that sounded like a mechanical scream and roar of fire.

Ilia peered between her fingers and through the light, and saw that which was blinding them. An Atlesian gunship, shining a bright light down onto them.

Ilia then remembered how Steph had been shot back in the jewellery shop. The splatter of blood that had been left on the wall... the dog that had been barking.

"Sniffer dogs," Ilia got out, "They must've used sniffer dogs to track us down," that must've been the dog that was barking earlier.

More sounds from down below. They heard the sounds of shuffling and shouting below and around the orphanage.

From the gunship, a loud voice boomed over an electronic speaker, "Ilia Amitola! Stephanie Brown! We have you surrounded! Come out with your hands up!"

The two children didn't listen.

"We've got to run!" Ilia called out as-

"No shit!"

-She and Steph ran for the door, stun bolts following behind them as they slammed the door open and legged it downstairs.

"They're right at the doors!" Starros yelled as she and the rest of the children ran towards one of the backrooms, "They're about to break in!"

"What do we do?!" behind Ilia and Steph, the sound of glass shattering hit their ears. The barking dog got louder.

"Same plan as we've practiced before," Starros, Molly, and Sammy pulled at the rug on the ground, revealing a rusty metal hatch leading to the derelict sewer system down below, "We climb down into the sewers and scatter. We go to ground, go off the grid for as long as the heat's on us, and then we-"

The hatchway burst open, and an Atlesian soldier pulled himself up through the dank hole and swatted Starros away.

The children screamed and began to scatter, attempting to run out of the room, only to be stopped and rounded up by the Atlesian soldiers and military policemen that were breaking in. Ilia and Steph, suddenly scared out of their minds, tried to climb and leap out of one of the shattered windows in the room, only for it to be-

{SMASH}

"AAAAAH!"

-Shattered further as an Atlesian soldier jumped through, slamming his boots against the ground and pointing his rifle at the screaming children beneath him, whilst the other door to the room was forced open, shattering and splintering as another soldier came in, the lead of a barking, snarling monster in his hand as it leapt onto Steph, the girl with the blood scent that it had been tracking, leapt onto her and roared at her, its claws digging into her flesh and attempting to tear away at her soul forcefield.

Big, one-eyed, large claws and covered in chitinous armour. A Reaver. Green spittle flew out of its mouth as its razor-sharp teeth prepared to eat the screaming, crying Stephanie whole.

Ilia was screaming herself as the butt of a rifle hit the back of her knees, and then the back of her head, the pain rolling over her as she was pushed onto the ground, shouts from above her, from angry soldiers with big guns, yelling at her to put her hands on her head, alongside all the other children in the room surrounding them.

Two other soldiers walked in. The two of them seemed familiar. One of them looked down at her with a tilted head, the other limped toward her on metal stilts and looked like he was poised to kick her, the back of his legs coloured red.

Ah, he was the soldier that had shot Steph. From the looks of it, he was out for blood (at least as much as he lost, and then some).

"There you are, you little shit," the soldier snarled, a pained growl to him as he limped over to her, electrobaton in hand and crackling with energy, "Been looking for you and your little rat friend. Lucky that the Reaver caught her scent then, eh? Now we've got you and a whole bunch of little thieves as well? Looks like a lot of bonuses for us, and more little criminals for the mines as well."

A chorus of whimpers followed from the children, accompanied by chuckles from the soldiers.

All except one.

"Let's not be hasty, Sergeant," the soldier next to the one with the metal stilts said, and Ilia recognised it as the white-haired woman that had saved her before under the helmet and armour, "These are just children, after all."

"They're little brats who stabbed me in the fucking legs," the soldier next to her snarled, "Let them rot in the mines for all I care."

"They're children, Sergeant. Homeless children at that. They're just trying to survive."

"Aren't we all?"

"Sinclair-"

"Speak back to me again like that, private, and I'll have you written up for insubordination. After that, you can kiss your monthly check and bonuses goodbye."

The soldier girl clenched her fists, "I didn't join the army for the money."

"Sure thing," went the soldier next to her, in a tone that was either obvious disbelief or mocking, and a few of the soldiers chuckled, "Now shut up and rack these kids up. They have dust in the juvie mines to dig up."

The soldiers began to cuff the screaming and crying children, and the soldier with the stilts pulled the Reaver off the bleeding form of Stephanie by its leash before harshly cuffing her.

Behind them, Starros seemed to panic as a soldier began to cuff her, and slapped her arm on his and let a star sign flash across his helmet, "Let go of-," then, she was silenced by a stun bolt that went into her, knocking her unconscious.

"Take her up top," one of the soldiers said as another pair dragged the limp Faunus girl out of the room and away from them, "The boys upstairs will want to look at that semblance of hers."

The children sobbed as they watched their friend and unofficial leader being dragged away, out of their sight and help, and Ilia, eyes blurred by tears, looked up to the soldier that had saved her earlier, hoping, praying, that somehow she might be able to do it again.

"...I'm sorry."

Then, she reached her hand down to her, and Ilia felt whatever freedom she had slip away.


To all those who don't know who I am, I'm Titanmaster 117, author of the Ascendancy saga, and I'm here with a long awaited prologue to Ascendancy and how so many things led to where they are in the story present.

This wasn't actually meant to be, though. Originally, I had wanted to post this in my main story, that being the current second phase of the Ascendancy storyline, and I was really excited for it as well. Unfortunately, I got quite a bit of backlash for it though, and I was advised to put it onto a separate story instead of putting it onto the main page, so that's what I'm going to do.

It's quite disheartening and demotivating, but I've been wanting to write this arc for a long time, so I'm not going to stop now.

You know, back in the day, I had always wanted to portray Atlas as a hellhole to live in, and I don't think I did a good enough job of that in the first phase of Ascendancy. Sure, there were the hints and little scenes and all that, but it was mostly me telling you of it instead of me showing it, and while I don't think I've heard anyone complaining about it back then, I still wasn't completely fine with it.

So, I've decided to actually show it instead of telling it, and hopefully communicate what I envision Atlas to be in this universe: a military dictatorship and corporate state where capitalism has gone awry and everyone is trampled over in the name of a cheque.

Originally, this chapter was meant to be longer, but I've decided to split it into two. The two scenes don't really feel like they go well immediately after each other in the same chapter, so I'm just going to split it up to let it flow better.

Anyway, with all that said and done, please leave a review, follow and favourite, and as always, I shall see you all next time!

Titanmaster 117 out!