Chapter 14: A Longer Chapter Where Things Resume Their Downward Trend

"The air is full of the plaintive cries of fools struggling pitifully to bend the arc of their own destruction. Thus it has always been."

— 32 —

To listen was to live. Velvet remembered the time she volunteered to enter a soundproof room once. Her teammates at the time, long before she was at Beacon, had thought it would be funny. Put the girl with the rabbit ears and the enhanced ability to hear into the room that didn't have sound, that didn't reflect sound, and that didn't let sound in.

The ears are a remarkable organ, she had learned that day. Surrounded by a bevy of background noise every single moment, you will learn to tune out almost everything. It came to her with clarity, the sound of her own blood, the way food moved through her organs—and this weird creaking sound that she realized was the stretching of her own skin. All of these important details relegated to the background, completely tuned out and ignored as a matter of course for the sentient condition. You'd go insane if you actually paid attention to that everywhere you went.

To listen was to live. To be able to hear everything was insanity. But right now, standing on watch with Shamrock, she couldn't help but twiddle her fingers as she heard that sound again. The nearly imperceptible sound of skin stretching. Hair shifting. The absence of light made it easier to focus on those noises. And it was all the worse when they weren't coming from you.

Green eyes glinted back at Velvet, reflecting the light like a cat. Shamrock's eyes hadn't done that before, she was sure. Velvet would have noticed the same way she noticed about Blake. It was something of a truism that humans weren't typically attentive enough to notice a faunus hiding in plain sight. To those whose lives were all ears, you could go through life and never have that fact pointed out. But those who lived with the condition knew the signs. She suspected she could look over and ask Blake where she was from, and Blake might hesitantly reply, "from the northwest," a generic answer that could mean anything, but in the right circles it meant you were faunus.

Velvet kept staring at Shamrock. "Where are you from?"

The red-headed girl turned to look at Velvet, as if seeing her for the first time. "Beacon."

Somehow, the response felt like a slap across the face.

"No, I mean—before that. Where are you from?" Velvet tried to stress the syllables right, to make it clear she wasn't really asking for a true answer.

"Does it matter?" Shamrock said, leaning against her halberd. Her eyes kept scanning the darkness that Velvet couldn't perceive.

Velvet swallowed. She put one hand on her hip, near her camera, as though it were a sidearm. "It's just—"

Shamrock adjusted her hat, some sort of top hat that made her look like a circus ringmaster. "Just what?" she asked, sounding more annoyed than anything.

Honestly, it would have been easier if Shamrock said something Velvet could pretend to be annoyed by. Like the way Blake had talked about faunus in the caves, yet been eerily silent after everyone had met LaChance. Velvet had partially hoped that by giving her a hard time about that, Blake would have dropped the act. The way her eyes reflected the light gave her away. It was actually pretty sad to keep pretending. Once, Velvet had considered hiding her ears. She could have wrapped them up or maybe worn some kind of desert headdress like some women in Vacuo did. But the idea struck her as somehow disgusting. Hiding something that she couldn't change about herself, that did give her an edge, and that she was proud of.

If Shamrock did something like that, Velvet probably could have poked and prodded until Shamrock just up and revealed the truth. None of this dancing around the topic that itself was a bit too awkward to address directly. Especially considering the way that Velvet was convinced she hadn't seen this earlier. It had started when she noticed that weird sound of skin stretching. Like someone in a silent room trying to do the splits.

"You don't talk much, do you?" Velvet asked.

The girl just stared at her, not replying.

Velvet faked a cough. "I mean, you were talking to Fox way back on the airship. But then as soon as we get down here, you're just silent. Fading to the background."

"I like it that way." Terse, not hostile, but not happy either.

"Do you?" Velvet asked, not really sure where she was going. "I mean, we're on watch here for a couple hours, you don't really say much. You were pretty silent when we found the way down here. You don't really leave much of an impact, do you?"

Shamrock's lips tightened fractionally. "People are always worried about leaving impressions on things. Most of us forget the deepest impact we're ever going to make is a six foot deep hole in the ground we can charitably call a grave. We're all going to the Gods one way or the other."

It couldn't be helped. Velvet actually laughed. "Okay, now I know you're just screwing with me. You're trying way too hard."

The smallest hint of a smile. "Maybe. But you're kind of annoying."

Velvet scoffed. "Am not! I'm just making conversation because we have watch for a couple hours and I don't want to just pass out here from boredom."

Still smiling, Shamrock said nothing.

"Is that really how you're going to play it out?" She rolled her eyes.

"Die mad. Die silent," Shamrock said with a wink.

"I have tons of really interesting things to talk about." Velvet held up her camera. "Like scrapbooking and pictures! Also, I'm not good at art. Also, also, I'm really good at figuring out how people fight."

"I'm good, thanks," Shamrock said with an almost artful level of casual disinterest.

"The latest album from the Achieve Men? The top 100 charts? For heaven's sake, we're both faunus—we've got something in common there, right?!"

To Velvet's surprise, that seemed to rattle Shamrock. The girl blink, bringing those cat eyes back to Velvet. She just stared, as if silently begging her to go on. Velvet rubbed her hands together.

"You," Velvet tried. She looked up towards the ceiling of a cave, where little motes of light danced around a smoky ceiling. It was so warm down here. "I mean, half of your team must be faunus, you and Blake. There aren't many of us in Beacon. It must be kind of nice."

For a moment, Velvet suspected Shamrock was going to try to lie. Pretend that Blake was just a human girl, like she was faking at. To keep up that polite fiction that was almost embarrassingly offensive to Velvet.

Instead, Shamrock said, "Blake can be whoever and whatever she wants to be. Same as me. If being faunus really matters that much, then good for you. It's just a means to an end."

Velvet made a face. "What does that even mean?"

"It means whoever she and I are, that's for us to decide. You don't get to make that call and put us into any predetermined box. If Blake doesn't want to be seen as faunus, then for all I care she's human—that's that."

Velvet folded her arms. "Now hold on just a second!"

With a series of strange, left-handed gestures, Shamrock scowled. "She's my teammate; I know her. You're just the girl letting herself get bullied and then getting pissy when people try to stand up for you."

It was like being smacked. Velvet hissed. "Don't you dare! I'm trying to be nice here. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Shamrock shifted her weight, leading her face up against her halberd. It smooshed her cheek as she talked. "Everyone saw it. And I know lots of people tried to talk and offer to help. But I swear to Papa Doc that you almost get off on being the victim. You were angry at my friends for trying to help you. And back there on the ledge, you somehow tried to turn a rescue mission about Coco all about you and how you were afraid."

Velvet just stared, mouth open. It took her a couple of false starts before she was actually able to reply. "You have absolutely zero chill, do you? I'm just trying to make polite conversation. Where the hell is this coming from?"

"Oh, sorry, am I just making assumptions without knowing the full story?"

"Okay. Wow. Holy crap, it is supposed to be some kind of weird object lesson because I presumed we'd have something in common because we're both faunus?" Velvet laughed. "That is just so insanely petty that I kind of feel bad for you. And it's not my fault I don't know anything about you; you barely talk!"

Shamrock just regarded Velvet for a very long moment. "The first person ever born was a woman. Alone in life, her sole unique ability was mortality."

Velvet made a face. "Wait, what are you doing?"

The girl with the cat eyes continued, speaking as if in some kind of trance. "When the gods discovered her, they were amazed that such a fragile creature could live and exist. How could such a frail thing even breathe without destroying itself? How could it live without immortality. So protective were they of her, that they brought her to Heaven in the shell of a walnut to keep her safe.

"When she was presented to the Great God, the mother-father of all creation, they simply said, 'This is the most dangerous creation in all of my garden.'

"But at least she never tried to shove away the people concerned for her while whispering 'Oh please, bully me more, Daddy, I'm so wittle and helpless' when she was alone. So either be like that delicate creature and actually be scary behind closed doors, or just admit in public you have a weird kink. You're a Huntress; despite your ears, you're not some scared little bunny rabbit. You smashed in that one skinwalker's face. So act your part. And stop bothering me."

Velvet stammered, trying to think of a good response to that. "How dare you!"

"I play a lot of dares, a lot of bets," Shamrock said flatly and rolled her eyes. "Part and parcel of having a nasty gambling habit."

She growled in her throat. "Well maybe I don't want a violent solution to a stupid problem. Did you ever think of that? What am I supposed to do when someone has a problem with my ears, punch them in the face? The only thing that does is piss them off and teach them their hatred is justified. It's stupid, thuggish, and counterproductive. I didn't ask for help because I didn't need it, and I'm not going to ask for help because I still don't need it."

Shaking her head, Shamrock just leaned up against the rock they were standing guard by. She looked out into the darkness of the cave. "And that's why I don't respect you. Plus, you were kind of a bitch to my friend, Blake."

Velvet couldn't help herself. "So it's better to fake it and pretend to be a human to avoid discrimination instead of embracing who you are and trying to live with it? That's not noble, that's just sad. Your friend is pathetic!"

Shamrock gave her the side eye. "You saw through that hair bow too, huh?"

It took a Velvet a moment to collect herself. "Yeah, duh. It's obvious. Her eyes look different in the dark, too. It's not hard to figure it out if you pay even the smallest amount of attention to things."

"Cool," Shamrock said passively.

"That's it? 'Cool.' Really?"

"This conversation is over."

"Uh, no. No, it most certainly isn't!" Velvet stamped. "I'm trying to be nice and you're just being standoffish and a bitch."

"You done?"

Velvet threw her hands up. "Why, you—" She snapped her attention to the side, hearing some strange creaking noise like old metal. "Did you hear that?"

Shamrock took a step forward, sword in one hand, shields in the other. "I think your nasty attitude attracted Grimm."

In a lower voice, Velvet said, "Me? You're the one being rude!"

Shamrock squinted.

Without enhanced night vision like the cat girl, all Velvet could do was rely on her hearing. There was a sound like something flapping. Then a cage door being closed. She put her hand on her camera, entirely conscious of just how little hard light Dust she had on hand; the stuff was expensive to use. Was it another skinwalker? Any moment now, were things wearing the faces of her friends about to come lurching out of the darkness?

She swallowed.

Someone struck a match in the cave.

It illuminated a feminine figure standing in the shadows of the cave, beneath the otherwise infinite black shade of a giant mushroom. A humanoid wearing a mask, hands clasped behind her back.

Velvet hissed. "Tools. Matches are tools. Do skinwalkers use tools?"

"Shut up," Shamrock snapped

The masked figure cocked her head to the side. With an unnaturally exaggerated motion, they swung one arm around and pointed a finger directly at themselves, like a mime trying to indicate surprise.

Velvet tried to send a message to Fox. But evidently, he was either asleep or wasn't tuned into her. Was she supposed to scream, then? Just start shouting that there was someone out there watching them as the light of their match died.

The figure in the shadows lifted herself on the balls of her feet, leaning forwards like a guy in a low-cut top. She rubbed the chin of her mask, and then seemed to realize something. Meeting Velvet's eyes, the figure extended a hand and snapped her fingers to kill the match she was holding.

Instantly, dozens of flashlights lit up from the darkness, pointing straight at the pair of girls. Hissing in sudden pain, Shamrock grabbed her eyes and rubbed her palms into them. It was the first time Velvet was glad not to have night vision eyes.

"Oh, that's a lot of guns," Velvet whispered. And then, with a dawning sense of horror: "Oh God, it's the White Fang."

Shamrock grabbed her eyelids and forced them open. The white fang woman stepped out from the shadows, illuminated from behind by the scores of flashlights. She was wearing a white bridal gown, a horned Grimm mask over her face. With every step she took, she hummed to herself as if in contemptuous contemplation.

"Ah, well, sorry to have ruined your riveting conversation, but I'm less sorry that you blew up the bridge," the Humming Lady said, every word like the undercurrent of a song. "We probably would have left you alone if you hadn't made such a nasty fuss and upset all the creatures in the cave. Of course, there's always the chance you didn't make it out alive at all and your conversation was just a ruse. And we have a pretty strict policy about killing any skinwalkers that start acting a little too smart for their own good."

"You guys," Shamrock said. "I thought you were LaChance's personal Huntress on retainer. But you're White Fang!"

The woman made an exaggerated shrug of shoulders. "In my defense, I tried to be as unhelpful as possible and keep you from getting down here. But it seems like the message didn't get through. Now, we can either make sure you get the message the easy way, or we can just shoot you dead and play it safe. Your call."

— 33 —

Blake dreamed of something. That was the annoying part of getting suddenly woken up. That nearly indescribable urge to go back to something you were really enjoying, but being unable to remember what it was as wakefulness invaded your headspace.

"Blake!" Jaune said frantically, shaking her awake and trying to pick her up at the same time. "Blake, get up!"

"Eugh," she said elegantly, and might have thought she was still dreaming if not for the way she drooled onto the boy's hand. The sudden look of amused disgust on his face slapped her right across the soul like injecting black coffee straight into her veins. Blake was mostly sure any dream of hers that included Jaune wouldn't involve her making a gross mess of herself.

One time she had dreamed she had showed up to class in her underwear, that horribly embarrassed cliché of a dream. Jaune had seen her, realized everyone was staring at her, and decided to strip down as well so that it wasn't weird. He told her, "Well, shit, looks like we both showed up to class wearing the same thing. One of us has to go home and change!" Then Weiss caught fire and for some reason was also a black man.

Point being, this wasn't like that. She sucked in a breath and found her legs beneath her.

"Jaune?" she said, covering her eyes from the harsh light. "Why is it so bright?"

"We've got hostiles!"

Against the pain of the brightness, Blake forced her eyes open and saw. Her heart sank into her guts. The little overlook they were camped on was surrounded. Men and women in Grimm masks, with hints of animal ears or tails or other features here and there among them. Blake did quick estimations and saw maybe thirty of them, all heavily but irregularly armed. They were all faunus. They were all with the White Fang.

It's butcher's work either way.

No, no, oh gods no. They shouldn't be here. Blake was counting on LaChance being dead wrong about them, just a racist old bastard. Because if they were here, that meant this wasn't a job for Huntsmen anymore. This was a job for psychopaths like Kornilov. There wasn't going to be a way out of this that didn't involve good people getting slaughtered by the dozen.

Velvet and Shamrock were pushed forwards and stumbled into the campsite. Unharmed, but looking pissed. Behind them came a woman wearing what looked like an old bridal gown carrying a bird cage. The little avians inside chirped excitedly, their beaks and talons equipped with metal armor. She instantly recognized her as the really rude woman who had met them at the hotel when they first landed in Montluçon. She hadn't realized the woman was faunus.

"I see everyone is awake now," the lady hummed. "Excellent. Believe it or not, children, if I don't have to kill you, I won't."

Of all people, Weiss replied first. She hadn't had time to put on her shoes after getting out of her sleeping bag, and was just nervously spitting the revolving Dust chamber of her rapier. "But you will if you think we're not people."

The Humming Lady cocked her head. "I know you, Weiss Schnee. Just because you don't think we're people doesn't mean I can't be the better woman of us two."

"You're murderers and terrorists," Weiss said. "I saw the bullet holes in the little shrine on the other side of the river. That was your people, wasn't it?"

"Weiss!" Shamrock said, putting a hand on her partner's shoulder tightly.

A very big faunus—maybe part bear or gorilla, and carrying a machine gun fit for the creature—grunted. "Face-eaters," he said.

The lady nodded. "It's smart business to leave the Grimm here alone. We ignored them, and they didn't bother us until LaChance dug a hole into the caves. It's let us use these caves safely. But we've always had a policy of culling any skinwalker that became a little too precocious, a little too adroit at wearing faces."

"We're not them," Coco said, still carrying Jaune's revolver. She was trying to stand up, but slouched forwards oddly. "We're human."

"I'm not," Velvet said, standing beside her kind of a partner. "I mean, human. I'm faunus like you all."

Blake resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Only to cringe a little as the lady made a scoffing noise.

"Oh, please, you mongrel," the Humming Lady said evenly, almost like she was bored. "You really shouldn't be trying to get sympathy points from me."

Velvet flinched. "What—I, what?"

"Velvet Scarlatina, daughter of Meg Scarlatina," the lady said. "She was a Huntress. And apparently she wasn't willing to make her rather rich human husband wrap it up before having you. She even took his name, how old fashioned. You're a mongrel, plain and simple. And from far too well off of a family to be one of us even if you weren't."

Velvet's eyes were wide, her body arched in a position somewhere between having just been punched in the guts and considering running away. Blake knew what that feeling was like.

"How—how could you possibly—what?" Velvet stammered.

The lady rolled her eyes. "I had a lot of time sitting on the roof of the hotel waiting for you to arrive. I literally just looked up your About pages on HuntsHub. Your team has some rather detailed articles. I put the pieces together."

"My HuntsHub," Velvet said, before trailing off. Her attention went to Coco. "You, you, You're the one who actually does that, aren't you? Did you actually update my page to put that very private information in public?"

Coco stuttered. "N-no! I didn't."

"Don't you lie to me, Coco! Who else could have done it, Yatsuhashi?"

"I don't use websites," the giant said, trying to look small, which for his stature just made him really one head above everyone else instead of two.

"I wouldn't lie to you, honest!" Coco said, holding her hands up.

"Then—then how!?"

Coco looked around frantically. "I don't know. Our team is kind of famous. Who your mom is isn't really private knowledge. Maybe one of those online creeps dug the information up and decided to put it up there?"

"It doesn't change the fact that she's not even faunus," the lady said. "Just another mongrel. Your opinions matter less than dirt, rich girl."

While everyone argued, Blake focused mostly on finding her weapon. She reached down and grabbed her sword, flicking it into the handgun state. She felt the ribbon on her arm tighten, attached to her weapon. How many did she think she could take before they realized what she was doing? The hardest part was she didn't want to hurt them in any real way, didn't want to kill them. But handling them non-lethally with bullets wasn't exactly an easy task.

Jaune looked over at her and their eyes met. He gave her a small, reassuring smile.

When she looked back up, the Humming Lady was staring directly at her. Somewhat Awkwardly, Blake said, "Forget about mixed race or anything. Dial it back a notch. How do we prove we're people?"

Jaune stood up a little more straight, looking ready to pull out his sword. He started to glow with that awful no color Aura of his. "Simple as. I wrong? Y'know, if the complete freak out about HuntsHub didn't clue you in before, this should solve it."

No one replied. Slowly, the teams of Huntsmen looked around each other and flexed their Auras. Little bursts of light. Nothing that would use much of their Aura in case they needed it for the fight to come. Still slightly panicking, Velvet took a moment to get hers to work. Coco aggressively stared at her feet the whole time. Only Jaune kept his on afterwards, glowing in the back of his eyes like he always did.

"Well, that's one reason not to kill you off our list," the lady hummed. The birds and her cage went silent. She refused to elaborate, and her men didn't lower their weapons. The only thing that happened was everyone kept looking around each other, as if afraid of who would be the first motion. Of what the other wanted. What the other side could do.

Until that gorilla of a man lifted his mask slightly and tried to bring an old cigarette to his lips. It didn't come with any sign of a fire Dust ignition patch. Blake hated the fact that she knew that meant it was a brand from Menagerie, cheaper and heavier on the tar. The kind of brand her father liked. That Adam used to sometimes indulge in.

The gorilla struck a match, but couldn't seem to make the cigarette light up. He grunted to himself, holding his massive rifle in one hand.

Jaune stepped forwards. Weiss gasped softly, and all eyes were on the boy. Blake tried to grab his arm and pull him back, but he slipped from her grip. But instead of trying to get off a sucker punch or do something stupid and boyish, instead he just produced a pack of cigarettes and offered it to the man.

The gorilla of a faunus turned his head, looking around his compatriots as if for approval. No one said anything, they just kept pointing rifles at Jaune. So the giant of a man just shrugged and accepted the cigarette. Jaune held up the side of his packet to light the man up. With a single exhale of smoke, the man relaxed, and more than a few people removed their fingers from their triggers.

"You-you," Jaune stuttered weakly, and failed. He glanced over his shoulder, first at Coco, and then at Blake. She returned him that same kind of little reassuring smile he gave her, and it seemed to be all he needed. The boys stood up a little straighter and said in a more commanding voice, "Y'all ain't shooting. Means you want something from us besides a corpse. So let's talk."

The Humming Lady cocked her head at Jaune, almost thoughtfully. The birds in her cage chirped excitedly, and Blake tensed.

"Out on the old frontier," she hummed, "humans and faunus used to make peace talks over a mutual love of nicotine. Of course, they were never negotiations. The humans never expected to give ground. They expected to hand us the terms of our own enslavement. I'm happy to see that some human habits never die."

More than anything, that made Blake grit her teeth. This rude bitch was coming out of nowhere, trying to hold everyone hostage, and insulting her friend and partner. Jaune was practically all alone out there, the only one trying to talk, and not trying to just stand around looking intimidating like an old Vacuan standoff. She tightened the grip around her sword and stepped forwards.

She took up a position beside him, practically touching him. Shoulder to shoulder, her hands on her hips like she didn't care, but where they were was just a flick of a wrist away from whipping her ribbon out. Jaune made eye contact with her, and she winked. He rolled his eyes.

"There's thirty of you and eight of us," Blake said, more cool than Jaune had been able to. She had been in life or death struggles against people before. "If you thought you could take us, you would have done so. Your weapons are mismatched and outdated; your armor looks like highschool theater class. But, of course, you're a Huntress. You know we'd win. One bullet for each of you, and all your ammo just to take one of us."

"Do you know that for a fact?" the lady asked calmly.

Blake shrugged. "Do your men know you're LaChance's housepet?"

Blake expected that to come across like a slap across the face. Something embarrassing that she was trying to hide. If the lady was trying to play both sides, pretending to be the city's good little Huntress while also leading the local cell of the White Fang, this might embarrass her or put her on the back foot.

Instead, all the lady did was laugh. Blake bristled.

"Housepet?" the Lady hummed. "Now that is rich coming from you. But, I bet with that bow, you're used to rolling over and showing your belly for human boys. A girl like you should really learn to cover herself up in a dangerous place like this. Then again, I wouldn't expect you to understand politics, little kitty."

Blake's eyes narrowed. "Come a little closer and say that to my face."

"Hmm. Nah." She flicked her wrist, her cage breaking apart into a series of long metal chains. The bottom she kicked up and caught in her offhand, using it as a shield. The birds within it came out screaming into the air. All rifles rose and aimed directly at Blake.

One of the little black birds came squawking out of the darkness, dive bombing Blake's head. She nearly lost her footing as she swayed to the side, trying to swat the animal away. Which gave a perfect opening for a second bird to swoop in from behind.

She felt more than saw anything as it grabbed her bow and ripped it off. Loose follicles of hair that had gotten wrapped around the bow or stuck to it in the sweaty heat of the cave jerked and stung her scalp. Blake yelped in pain, and then felt a cool breeze on her exposed ears.

Her teammates and friends and whatever she considered Velvet all gasped. Except Jaune, who made no real reaction. For some reason, that almost hurt. But it paled in painful comparison to everything else.

Even behind the masks the White Fang wore, she could see their eyes. See the bit of bitter judgment and disgust in them. It was like what happened to Velvet, only far worse somehow. For a moment, she just wanted to back off into the shadows, to use her semblance and pop a clone just to hide behind so no one would look at her. She felt exposed. Almost naked in some bizarre way. Not because everyone could see her cat ears, but because someone had forced them out into the open. It hadn't been her choice to undo her bow. Someone had made it for her against her will.

Jaune grabbed her hand and studied her. She nearly smacked him in blind reaction to the sudden touch. But, for all she joked about getting violent with him, she didn't think she could ever do that. Not what he was giving her that concerned, supportive look.

Her hair bow slowly fell down to the ground beside her. She swallowed, stiffened her posture, and resumed her stance next to her partner. She didn't go for the bow.

Fox, the blind boy with the hole in his neck, looked around and made a face. "Wait, did something dramatic just happen? What's going on?"

Velvet elbowed him. "Blake is a cat faunus. She was hiding it this whole time under a hair bow."

Fox blinked. "Oh. I mean, oh no—we're surprised by this, right?"

"You knew?" Shamrock asked him

Fox shrugged. "I can see her Aura outlines. Includes ears. I just presumed everyone knew?"

The Humming Lady rolled her eyes. "Is there any one of you that didn't know that?"

Coco and Yatsuhashi raised their hands.

The lady shook her head. "It's something I never understood. Bootlickers and housepets some of our kind may be called, but at least they're proud of who they are. They don't pretend to be human for brownie points. But now!" She swung her chains over her shoulder. "We can all face each other honestly, like how you're honestly about to leave this place, tell LaChance the mission was a failure, and no one here has to die. We'll even help you find your way out."

"We can't," Jaune said evenly. "We were told to find out what happened to Team CCHS. Until we know, we're staying and spelunking."

It felt kind of weird to Blake. For some reason, she always imagined her ears being made nearly public knowledge would be more of an event. Everyone would focus on her and start asking questions and demanding answers. But here it was, and pretty much everyone already knew. Jaune seemed to have always known, and Weiss had been too busy talking about her fears of getting pregnant by a dog to really get upset.

Just as soon as it happened, people were forgetting and moving on. It was like it didn't matter. Blake was Blake and that was all that was to it. Suddenly, the idea of hiding her ears felt somehow narcissistic.

"I—" Coco said, and hesitated. She glanced at Jaune, looking like she was staring down an oncoming train. Sucking in her lips, she turned to the Humming Lady. "Yeah. We're Huntresses and Huntsmen. We don't leave a job half finished."

"They're dead," the lady hummed, shrugged. Her little flock of birds circled overhead like vultures. "We didn't have anything to do with that."

"They're lying," Weiss snapped.

Coco looked at her with wide eyes, saying nothing.

"I know how you people operate," Weiss said. "Murder, terrorism, extortion. They probably walked in on your secret lair and you had to get rid of them. Just like you were afraid we were about to. So now you're trying to convince us that you just want peace, so you can shoot us in the back the moment we turn around."

"Weiss!" Shamrock said through grit teeth.

The Humming Lady put one hand on the wide hip of her gown. "Schnee girl, as much as we want to kill you specifically, you're probably safer with us than up with LaChance. More people hate you than just us. Murdering you would be a hassle; LaChance would just find a way to get more of your kind down here. I'll have to find more creative ways of keeping them out instead of passive aggressive vehicle rentals."

"So you're some kind of double agent?" Velvet asked, and flinched as the lady side-eyed her.

"LaChance is a racist bastard. And like all racists, he underestimates anyone different than him." She scoffed, a strange kind of humming noise in her throat. "Being around him, I learn the kinds of targets I can and can't get away with. I can help our people out in the city and those working the mines, targeting the people LaChance is willing to ignore. He cares about the bottom line. I care about removing little tyrant managers and siphoning Dust and weapons to the big boss. It's an uneasy system, but it works and keeps the heat down enough to make a tidy profit."

Blake saw spots in her vision. "Who is your big boss?"

For just a moment, Blake saw the twinkle in the lady's eyes. A flash of an almost knowing smile that made her feel sweaty.

"I don't need to tell you anything," she said with a slight laugh. To everyone else, it would look like she was being suddenly cagey. Drawing the information line here. But Blake knew better. She understood that knowing look and that amused smile.

Adam. She knows about me and Adam.

And then, a horrified moment later: What if she tells him where I am and what I'm doing? Suddenly she didn't want to speak anymore, didn't want to press the issue and tried to look tough. Even if it meant just standing here in silence beside Jaune like scared eye candy instead of a Huntress.

A pit welled in the base of her throat. It was an almost nauseous feeling like the time she'd stolen one of her father's cigarettes and tried to smoke it with her girlhood friend Illia.

"You sound like you're a useful idiot for LaChance," Weiss said, still rolling the cylinder on her rapier. "Doing his dirty work and pretending like it's freedom fighting. How can any of you follow her?"

The Humming Lady's eyes widened fractionally. "Oh please, little girl. This is hardly the time for a nuanced discussion of politics and the needs of the worker. But if you'd like, we can make this the time of our nuanced discussion of how to eat your liver."

"Threats? Really?" Weiss scoffed. "I'm with my friend, Blake. I think we can take you."

Gritting her teeth, the lady said, "No, you really can't. And if you think you can, then what's deeper in the tunnels will finish you off. It's what we tried to warn Team CCHS about. The exact same bomb we're here to tell you not to trifle with. The only thing I want is to keep this place peaceful and secure so we can continue smuggling supplies and people through here safely. We're not looking for a bloodbath. And we certainly don't want to be inconvenienced by a bunch of dead kids drawing in bigger, stronger teams of professional Huntsmen to chase after you. An endless parade of corpses is going to make my job much harder. So I'm trying diplomacy, for what it's worth, little girl."

"What bomb?" Jaune asked.

The lady spread her hands, her chain whip dragging on the ground. "Metaphorical. The place is… haunted, for lack of a better word. It's where the Grimm are slipping in through. A couple of them have nested down here, and those stragglers are the skinwalkers and other monsters on the other side of that lake." She pointed over the water, towards the burning mushroom forest. "We don't go down into those parts of the tunnels. We tried to wall them off, seal them. That's where CCHS went."

Jaune nodded slowly. "But you don't know if they're dead."

"You don't have to be a betting girl to know the odds on favorite are death down there," she hummed.

The boy closed his eyes for a moment, just thinking. "There's eight of us and I'd like to think we're all pretty badass. Our mission is to find what happened to CCHS and confirm it. If you didn't kill them, then we never saw you."

Weiss made a noise. "Jaune, you can't be serious."

He gave her a mild look. "No, I can be. I just mostly choose not to." He returned his attention to the lady. "I am going to presume part of whatever deal you wanted to make for us just leaving was to say we never saw you and come up with some convincing lie."

The Humming Lady tightened her lips, saying nothing.

"If you didn't kill them, then we didn't see you. Dealing with you is above our pay grade, to use an old expression." He shrugged. "If our mission objective is still out there, we're going to complete it. And then we're going to be off on our merry little way, and no one has to die, no one has to get hurt, and we all win."

"Does he speak for all of you?"

Blake hesitated before she nodded. "Yeah."

Shamrock agreed. Weiss took her time, making a low growing noise in her throat, before she consented. Team CFVY didn't say anything at first, just looking at Coco.

The girl looked pale, still slouching slightly with the revolver in her hand. Something in her eyes looked strained, like she had swallowed water down the wrong pipe and was trying to avoid coughing. She almost looks surprised to see her team waiting for her to give the call.

"We don't know what happened to Haakon or the rest of Team CCHS," she said slowly. "And until we do, we can't give up. We have to keep going on. So, yeah, I'm with blondie here."

With her agreeing, the rest of her team fell in line.

Jaune folded his arms. "Now you can fight us and lose, or you can point us in the direction of the forbidden caves or whatever it is that they went down, and let us handle it."

"Why are you so insistent on pressing deeper even though I'm telling you you're going to die?" the Humming Lady asked.

Blake had to admit, it was a good point.

"All you are implying is that there are Grimm down there, and even then you sound a little unsure yourself," Jaune said. He spread his hands as if there was nothing he could do about it. "Our order exists specifically to kill things that go bump in the night. People trusted us with this mission for good reason. Between the eight of us, we've got enough firepower to topple a small Vacuan government. Aaaand also cute girls are watching me; I can't back down when I'm this deep into it."

Several people collectively rolled their eyes. Blake especially. Even if she was pretty sure he was talking about her, which was almost kind of flattering. In a suicidally stupid kind of way that seemed entirely within his character.

"He's stupid, but he's right," Blake said, one of her cat ears twitching. "None of us signed up for this profession to give up when it looked a little difficult. We're going to find Team CCHS, then we're going to get out of your hair, and if anyone asks, we never saw you. Is that deal fair enough for you to help us out?"

The gorilla of a man finished his cigarette. He tossed it on the ground and stumped his boot over it. "Don't think they're backing down. We shoot 'em?"

Most of the White Fang looked ready to fire. But more than a couple of them, mostly the ones closest to the Huntsman, looked a little more nervous. If things got a little violent, they would be the first to hit the ground.

The Humming Lady didn't say anything. She just kept humming to herself, looking at all of the students. It was like she was trying to do some kind of visual calculus. Of all things, it reminded Blake of a cat estimating the length of a jump. Blake tensed, expecting it to go badly.

But at length, the woman sighed, loosening the tension in her shoulders. She raised one white gloved hand. "We did our best. I didn't want any dead children on my conscience if I could help it. But now it seems like I can't. If you really want to go down there, we can show you the way. I merely ask for concessions."

Weiss folded her arms, and Blake seriously thought she was about to say We don't negotiate with terrorists or some other stock Schnee line. Instead, with the slight loosening of tension, she took a couple of steps towards Blake and Jaune. Shamrock followed until the entire team was in one guarded cluster, almost like a phalanx.

"I already told you," Jaune said, "if y'all didn't have anything to do with killing the Huntsman, then we didn't see you."

"Jaune," Coco said, like someone walking a tightrope. "Just because they don't want to kill us doesn't mean we can trust them."

He nodded. "Actually, yeah. She makes a good point. Concessions depend on what you're after."

"You blew up a bridge," the Humming Lady said. "How?"

That somehow seemed to throw the boy off guard. "Oh, I, uh, I brought along some explosives. I kind of never thought I'd ever get the chance to use them, but then I did, and it was kind of stupid. Why?"

"Because the Grimm have been acting up since you destroyed the one way across this cavern," the lady said. Some of her birds had landed around the campsite, idly poking through the remains of the fire and people's sleeping bags. "If you have any more explosives, we can use them to destroy a couple of the smaller tunnels around here. It will be the least you could do, helping us keep our back safe down here since you kicked the hive."

"Okay, now you've got to be joking," Weiss said. She threw one hand up. "That's a ridiculous request and you know it."

Blake made a face. "I… also have my reservations about giving them high explosives. Dust is one thing, but plastic explosives are a whole different ball game."

Jaune sighed, nodding. "Sorry. I'm finna hafta agree. I trust you to send us to our death. I don't trust you with my really awful explosives. You're likely to get yourselves killed more than anything. Lord God knows I did myself nearly."

The Humming Lady folded her arms. "I see."

Despite the situation, Fox snorted. "That makes one of us. Ow, Velvet, don't punch me!"

"Idiot!" Velvet said, one of the little birds near her feet squawking in protest that she got a little too close. "That joke stopped being funny the second time."

Even with the distraction, Blake would have had to have been an idiot not to see the tension mounting up again. She folded her arms, one hand tightly on her sword as she stood beside her partner. For all the times he noticed the weirdest details, Jaune didn't seem to really catch on. He just kind of looked around as everyone got silent. Honestly, knowing him, he did pick it up, and was just aggressively pretending like it wasn't there.

Apparently, telling the lady no to her explosive request bothered her. And as she and Blake briefly met eyes, Blake could tell there was more going on. Maybe she had planned it to use the explosives for some kind of scheme, some way to aid the White Fang, or god forbid funnel them to Adam.

"You good?" Jaune finally asked. "Everyone just kind of went silent. We can go back to putting mindless violence on the table if you would prefer?"

But at long length, the lady sighed. "No. Let the ghosts kill you. I don't want dead children on my hands, exactly. Not without a couple degrees of separation." She shrugged. "Gather your belongings. The way deeper isn't far from here. The sooner you get to it, the sooner we can get to preparing defenses for the tunnels we can't blow closed."

Coco made a noise. "Really? Some of us barely got two hours of sleep, four at the most. Can't you come back tomorrow?"

With a hideous smile, the lady hummed, "I only come back tomorrow for people I can trust to still be here, but we don't really have that kind of professional working relationship between us now, do we?" It sounded more petty and annoyed than anything.

But petty and annoyed was better than angry and homicidal.

Small victories wherever they came from.

— 34 —

Gathering up camp was a more involved process than anyone had probably expected. About the only thing I had going for me was the fact that I was the only one who knew how to ranger roll my clothes and other equipment; everything packed up quickly and neatly all because of some half paranoid field recollections from my time in basic training two years ago. I'd actually never been out in the field since then. During my training post-basic, the rapid onset of the plague meant they weren't comfortable with us going on the field for an exercise. And when I finally graduated into the real army, my unit didn't really do anything.

But to be fair, that was because if we went off post to do any kind of field exercise exploration, we'd end up in Baltimore, where we'd all get shot and killed. Us military intelligence boys were too soft and weak for that.

The end result was a lot of me just awkwardly standing there, not sure what I should be doing. Meanwhile, everyone else just kind of flailed around with their bags. With the exception of Coco, who didn't have anything. If not for the way we had been woken up a very infuriating two hours into our sleep cycle, we'd figured out the way we would spend the night was we all just kind of pile up some spare clothing on her to use as a blanket, and she could share my pillow but from a perpendicular direction so it wasn't like we were together.

It was uncomfortable, but it gave her something to rest on. She needed some elevation for her back.

I just kind of stared at the Humming Lady, giving her a limp wristed wave when she looked back at me every now and again. I'm sure she thought we would gather up camp quickly and she could push us off to what she expected would be our deaths, but this was starting to get almost depressingly long. Embarrassing.

When all was said and done, flashlights at the ready, we set out. The destroyed bridge had connected to something of a path. If given the opportunity, it was probably where we would have gone in the morning, or whatever time of day it was. But beyond a vague direction, that was it. We really didn't know where we were, what we were even doing. All I knew was that the mission wasn't complete, but I had faith in our ability to bullshit our way back to the surface if things got rough.

The White Fang, though? Blake had talked about them to some degree. Implied more than she had said. Something about an ex-lover named Adam. Some time as part of a terrorist cell. But altogether, my respect for her boundaries led me not to ask any questions if she didn't volunteer in the information herself. Which meant I really didn't know anything about the White Fang.

I glanced at my partner, walking beside me. She had this look on her face I really couldn't put words to, but it gave me this irrational urge to squeeze her hand and wink. Just to try to reassure her. The conditions were widely inappropriate, it would probably send the wrong message, and in any case it was weird. So I just imagined doing it before focusing back on our prison escort.

Technically, we weren't prisoners. They weren't frogmarching us or binding our hands or anything. But the way they kind of circled around us, keeping their lights in our direction or the cave ahead of us made me feel like we didn't really have a choice. Yet they kept their distance as if afraid of pushing it too far. We had superpowers and they did not. But they had a lot of guns and we only had a handful. It was enough to give each side hesitation before fighting the other. Which was probably the only reason they hadn't tried to go for the throat.

Just at a glance, I could tell they were all irregular troops, barely soldiers at all. They didn't even march in a properly staggered column, which is where you march a column of soldiers on the opposite sides of the roads in a zigzag kind of pattern, about five meters apart from each other. Mostly because that was the effective immediately lethal range of a frag grenade. Coupled with the fact that they didn't even have a uniform anything—the closest they had were those Grimm masks, which all looked handmade and seemed more to follow a theme than a definite singular pattern—and I knew these men couldn't stand up in a pitched battle. I personally doubted their discipline under fire.

Not that those really mattered when you got down to brass tacks. Provided they knew how to shoot and all were sufficiently invested in each other as friends and comrades, that would be enough. I actually didn't know whether or not drill was a thing in this world. European combat infantry drills were a system originally designed by an elitist aristocracy to try to turn the peasants that they looked down upon into efficient musket loading machines. By pure accidental happenstance, the shared experience of drill happened to create the kinds of tight-knit social bonds that more than anything produced soldiers who would stand their ground. And in an increasingly interpersonally isolated and industrialized society, battle drills were perhaps one of the few ways to develop those kinds of bonds with anyone. I would know; I was trained in Anglo-American battle drill, which was pretty stupid for the most part.

Professional or not, these men fought for a cause. Call them guerillas, or call them insurgents or militias or a gang, but you didn't need to be a hardened infantry professional to know how to shoot someone. That was the beauty of the gun.

They walked, and kept getting startled when one of us would talk or move too fast or anything. It wasn't a lot of talking, given that I could tell Team CFVY was speaking to itself vis-a-vis Fox's telepathy. I tried to imagine what they were saying. It was probably an argument about Coco and Velvet or, I don't know, fashion or whatever. That seemed in character.

Blake poked me. "Jaune?"

I sucked in a breath of air, rubbing my suddenly very painful eyes. My train of thought didn't so much 'derail' as crash into ice cream mountain. "Wha'?"

"You just… your eyes are all red. You okay?" She gave me a weak smile.

"It's been a long day. But my typical working day is from the hours of fuck to you. I'll manage." I rubbed my eyes again. Even a quick nap with some Aura had helped the blisters. Rubbing my eyes against the back of my hand I felt more like poking at a bruise instead of horrifying burn blisters. "Now, what did I tell you about being concerned for me when you're the one with the, uh, uh—fuck, there's a word for this. You didn't even put your bow back on!"

Blake glanced toward, of all people, Velvet. My partner looked so weird with her ears just out. Occasionally they would shift or wiggle or move in a way that kind of made me want to reach out and touch them.

"It… happened," Blake finally said, rubbing her arms as if they were cold. "I don't know. I always expected they would be more of a cause célèbre. But it's like every time someone finds out I'm faunus—I don't know, it's stupid. It's like no one cares or they already knew, and I just feel stupid and ridiculous."

"You shouldn't feel stupid," I said, shouldering one of the straps of my rucksack. I wondered how much further this path would go. "You are stupid. It's why we get along so well. When we put our collective minds to it, we have at least one brain cell to rub together."

"Uh-huh," she said flatly. "You still think that caramelizing onions means putting caramel on onions. I don't think you are in any position to talk."

I leaned in towards her and said sotto voce, "Yes, but that's still one brain cell ahead of what Velvet has."

Her left ear twitched, her expression flat. But it was hard to keep down the little giggle.

Velvet scowled at us. "I still have really good hearing, remember? Why is everyone giving me shit today? It stopped being funny a long time ago and now it's just really mean spirited."

I whispered back, even though we were several feet apart, "You were rude to my friend and I have no regrets."

Blake put her hand on my mouth. "Ignore him, please. I know we keep getting off on the wrong foot every time we meet, Velvet, but, I don't know. I really don't want us to be—"

"Catty?" Velvet said, then grunted as her partner put a firm but corrective hand on her shoulder. She hissed in a breath. "Didn't mean that. Pun not intended."

Blake still rolled her eyes. "And suddenly I, too, no longer have regrets about you."

I elbowed her. "Okay, Catra."

"Touch me again and I'll bite you," Blake said quickly.

I sniffed, still feeling the tangles of sleep at the fringes of perception. I looked around, watching the insurgent still walking us down the path, yet keeping a bizarrely Covid friendly distance.

"Okay, Catra," I said.

Blake squinted. "You already use that line. I still don't get it but I feel somehow racially offended."

"Okay, Catra."

She blinked. "My God, are we stuck in a time loop?"

"Okay, Catra," I said, trying not to smile, to maintain the same face as before.

"My god, are we stuck in a time loop?" she repeated, and then burst out laughing. I couldn't help myself and laughed like an idiot too. Which only made it funnier. And the fact that we were pretty much the only ones making noise in the entire cave, brought a lot of really uncomfortable attention towards us.

Which was only funnier. We pointed at each other, then gestured around ourselves, and just kept laughing at absolutely nothing.

"I haven't had nearly enough sleep for this," I said, trying and failing to get a hold of myself. Blake swatted her hand at me, but I just twisted the shoulder away. She unbalanced herself and nearly tripped. I caught her on my shoulder, and we just kind of leaned there against each other, barely awake and giggling like madmen.

"I'm glad to see everyone is having such a good time," the lady hummed, the column of irregulars around us coming to a stop. They continued looking around, before giving the aid of us an even wider birth.

I took a couple of breaths to control myself. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. We've all been under a lot of stress and pain and suffering, and now you're all acting so tough and dangerous, and it's just hard to take seriously. Right, Weiss?"

Weiss, who had been oddly silent this entire walk, looked a little blindsided to be put on the spot. "What?"

Coco was sweating more than was called for. She had this weird habit of darting her eyes around like someone in withdrawal. I had to wonder if it was a side effect of the lack of sunglasses. Dark though it was, she told me once she liked how people couldn't see her eyes, and couldn't figure out what she was thinking as a result.

Nevertheless, she stood up a little taller, one hand on her hip, and said, "Yeah. Kid's right. You don't want trouble with us, because we'd be more trouble for you. But I don't really care. I'm not in the business of getting people killed. I hunt demons. Just get back to showing us where CCHS went down and we can get back to pretending like we never met you."

One of the lady's birds landed on her shoulder. It made a couple of low caws, like the bird form of whispering. The lady nodded and pointed a white gloved hand to the side. "We're already here."

If her men hadn't turned their flashlights in that direction, I might have missed it. It was to the side of the little road, obscured by a patch of man-sized fungus. We were reaching the end of the gigantic cavern, at least I had to presume we were. The walls of the cave here looked like maybe they had once been statues carved into some kind of structures, but age had withered them away until they looked like the gingivitis-riddled mouth of some ancient wyvern. All that was left was stalags and limestone detritus, with little bits of native Dust crystals that reflected the light quite well. Several bullet holes and what looked like shrapnel from explosives pockmarked the stonework around a doorway. There was even some kind of technological device outside, with the wires stapled to the sides of what had once been a building and descending into the tunnel.

Cocoa suddenly looks smaller. And she was already looking small without her heels, her feet dirty. "The doorway?" she asked.

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," I said, looking at the pockmarked entrance around the tunnel. "Weiss, do you still have the little device saying where Team CCHS went?"

Weiss pulled out her scroll and turned it on. After a moment of fishing through the hard-light display, she turned it around and showed me some kind of map. "The map really doesn't do a good job at showing geography, but I think this is it? The map goes dark somewhere around where we were making camp."

The Humming Lady made a face. Her birds almost knickered in their cage. "Who do you think retrieved the information you're using for those maps? Those boxes are their last hubs of communication. A way to try to preserve signals down here for future use. I believe around here is where they cannibalized the parts they were using to talk to the surface in order to map themselves down further below."

Velvet took out her camera and snapped several photographs while the flashlights illuminated the area. Her partner gave her a weird look, but shrugged it off.

"So. We go down there. We hopefully don't find ghosts or anything. We find the missing Huntsmen. We come back," Velvet said. "Am I missing any details?"

"There is the part where you probably die," the lady hummed. "The ghosts of our forefathers don't take kindly to guests."

"We're not guests; we bought a season pass," I said, tugging on my rucksack. I glanced back at Blake, and for some reason that made us both nearly laugh at each other. We definitely were sleep deprived. "Appreciate your understanding of this matter, Humming Lady."

The lady made a weird face under her mask. Her expressions were still pretty easy to read, with how thin and narrow that mask was. "Is that really what you're calling me? I went through all this effort to research each one of you, and you don't even know my name?"

We all looked around to each other, shrugging in our own ways. Coco didn't seem to be listening, just biting her lower lip and staring at the doorway into the tunnels.

The lady shook her head. Her caged birds continued to sound them used, until she shot them a sharp look and they fell silent. "I suddenly feel far less morally worried about your deaths."

"Thanks, you too," Fox of all people said. He kept idly rubbing his bloodied bandage, the place where the skin walker had bitten him.

We did a couple of last checks, before all heading out towards the door. If down there in the darkest part of the tunnel was where we had to go, then that was that.

The gorilla looking faunus tapped me on the shoulder and stopped me. He lifted his mask again and made the gesture for a cigarette.

"The nicotine addiction will kill ya," I said, reluctantly shaking him out a cigarette. "Try to find a cooler addiction. Don't let the bastards grind you down."

It felt weird to be trying to make small talk, humorous talk, with an insurgent. I had been raised my entire life to hate people like this as a matter of course. And then trained in the military to be prepared to kill them. But I didn't really specifically have anything against the White Fang except in the most vague, abstract ways, and the way they made the bile in my stomach rise purely because of what they did to my partner. Aside from her, I didn't have a horse in this race.

The gorilla exhaled. He closed his eyes for a moment, and then reached around and took something from a side pouch of his backpack. He held it out to me and grunted.

Somewhat hesitantly, I accepted the little trade. It was small and metal, with a wire and some kind of hand crank. "What is this?"

"Little hand power generator," he said through a cloud of smoke. "Used to make them before I joined up. Useful in the caves. Charge flashlights and scrolls. Might be the only thing keeping you alive." He paused for a significant moment, enjoying the cigarette. "Thanks. Good luck. Sorry."

I put the little device in a pocket, where it fit somewhat awkwardly. "I wasn't expecting a trade for the cigarette. I'll consider it a gift. Thanks, big guy."

He looked away and grunted, before hefting his machine gun up and lowering his mask over his face.

But the time I arrived at the little broken doorway, it was most just the last couple stragglers. Unlike previous caves, there was enough room here for Yatsuhashi to shoulder his way through. Coco and I watched him go in. She kept nervously scanning the exterior of the cave, looking at all the Dust crystals around it.

I gave her a playful elbow. "Don't tell me you're scared."

She almost seems startled to find me there. It was weird looking down at her, even if it was a couple of inches. I was so used to us being about the same height. "Oh please. Only thing I'm scared of is, uh." She just kind of trailed off there.

I pretended like she had figured out a good retort and rolled with it. "Don't be like that. If you make it out of here alive, I'll let you feel me up. I've still got the best tits on my team."

"I thought you were saving yourself for one of your bros, like Cardin," she shot back, her tone almost nasty.

"I'm saving myself for Blake's dad," I said simply.

Blake looked back at me from the opening darkness of the tunnel. "What? Someone say my name?"

"Nothing, nothing," I said, and swallowed. With the way open, it was once more into the breach. Into the depths of the earth. The belly of the beast. With little more than a couple cans of fruit, potted meat, and a flashlight, we were going to do this. "Let's find out what happened to Team CCHS and get out of this place. Coming, Coco?"

She made a noise in her throat, adjusting her beret. "Uh, yeah. Actually, wait, I mean, not for you. Or." She blew a strand of hair out of her face, the one with the tips of old blonde hair dye. "I think I'm tired of being scared or upset or anything. I almost can't feel it anymore. It's just so much numbness, y'know? Pretend like that was a good and totally very funny retort and save me the effort please?"

"I shall pretend to not only be wittily retorted, but thoroughly seduced. Take me, I'm yours, master of banter, mistress of the backtalk."

She gave me a flat look. But at least it helped her ignore what I knew was her claustrophobia as we started down the old staircase within. "Okay, no."

"Overdoing it?"

"Overdoing it, yeah."

I was about to say something more, when I noticed the shadow on the wall. It was already dark enough. Most of us were feeling around by flashlight and trying to figure out what this tunnel looked like, down the stairs, tunnels, just like when we first entered through the old metro station above. But this was different.

I turned around to see the very entrance to the tunnel, and the gorilla of a faunus standing there. Staring me down, he just hefted his machine gun.

I held up my pack again. "Do you really need a third smoke so quick?"

"Like I said, kid, sorry. But we don't owe you an explanation for this."

The first hail of bullets hit the wild Dust crystals in the walls. And the explosions sent the entire cave down on us.