Chapter 7: Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

"Anyone who runs is White Fang. Anyone who stands still is smart White Fang."

— 18 —

Staff Sergeant Marcus Sabès Pétion thought the burning city of Montluçon smelled homey. He flicked his forked tongue into the air as he fell through the sky, and thought it tasted like Catchfire. He doubted many of the men with him knew what that was like. They were by-and-large humans, which meant most none of them were either from or had ever been to la Ville Lumière. It was a pity. The city had gone to shit over the last twenty-four hours. He'd been guarding a tunnel and comfortably enjoying being dead inside before orders came to pull back. Pétion supposed that meant those eight Huntsmen kids were dead or something. The staff sergeant didn't care to ask. Orders were orders, and it meant he got out of that goddamn sewer. Then the tunnels exploded. There was a river of liquid Grimm, somehow, leaking from the ground like the aftermath of a burst Dust pipe. And those damn demons were pouring through the tunnels and generally ruining everyone's day. He'd gotten exactly two hours of sleep before being told to put on his battle rattle, drink something with a near lethal dose of caffeine and amphetamines, and prepare to jump.

Just another day in the life, Pétion supposed. He wasn't paid enough to have "opinions" on things one way or the other.

Grav Dust harness tight to his chest, he watched the bullhead they'd all jumped from become like a speck above him. He pulled the cord on the harness, and felt the Dust sing to life and shove him against gravity like the kick of a beowolf. Jump boots did the rest of the work. Pétion and his men hit the roof of the Pavot Rouge hotel soft enough that no one broke their knees, which meant it was a successful jump. Didn't mean it didn't send shockwaves of pain up his spine, but learning how to jump and land was part and parcel of being air cavalry.

"We good?" he asked, scanning the seven other men on the rooftop. Most had hit the ground on or around the hotel's bullhead landing pad. The question was almost entirely a formality, but it never hurt to be sure. Just because everyone was able to stand up didn't mean they were good to fight. A fireforce tactical insertion wasn't kind to the body, even with a grav harness.

"Only broke one hip that time, sarn't," a soldier said candidly, rubbing his back.

"Don't worry; you got a spare," Pétion said.

The soldier flashed a thumbs-up, unfolding the stock of his assault rifle. Like most of what the Royal Army used, it was a Volikov of some description.

Another bullhead soared over the rooftops, shooting ordinance towards a street a few blocks over. He and his men were one of the few teams on special assignments like this, instead of working with the rest of the Army to protect civilians and limit the damage from the Grimm. They were high enough that blowing the street up didn't rattle them, even as fire and dust spewed into the air. Even if it was closer, he knew these men had their éperons, their spurs. Like him, they'd done the trial and earned the right to wear spurs and wide-brimmed hats outside of combat. They were the toughest of the tough. Loyal brothers to one another.

Specialist deSilhon whistled. "Whoever just blew up is having a bad day."

"I'll make yours worse unless you shut up and move," Pétion said, gesturing to the only door up on the roof. It led to a sort of rooftop bar. The door was unlocked, which upset him. He'd really wanted to kick open a door.

His squad didn't really need to speak any coherent language. All they needed were gestures, nods, and the occasional grunt to figure out what to do and how to approach. Point at the man, point towards a door, and he covered it. They covered each other with overlapping fields of fire as they entered the roof. Nothing of interest beside bottles of alcohol in the bar that had fallen off the shelves and shattered where the city started going to shit.

"RIP in peace," deSilhon said, making the sign of the saints over the bottles.

Next step was the stairwell. Sure, there was the elevators, but you'd be stupid to take that. At the top floor, the only button on the lift was a singular one labeled Appeler. That was how you knew for sure you were in the Valean heartland. Pétion's mother tongue, like most kids from Catchfire, was Valais. While the royal government might officially use the language of Patch for all administrative and trade purposes, in his experiences serving on the wider continent of Sanus, Pétion estimated only a third of the people in the country fluently spoke Vale's own official language. It was a prestige thing; the most well-off people in the country wouldn't speak Valais or any form of Graadian, and it was what they insisted foreigners learn if they wanted to work with Vale. So learn it growing up Pétion had.

The men burst into the stairwell and found it empty. It went down several stories. Drop a coin down the space between the stairs and it'd kill a man by the time it landed. There were so many floors they could go from here. So the sergeant checked the list.

Staff Sergeant Pétion's direct superior officer, First Lieutenant Sousan, had stressed this was an order Pétion should take to his grave. Not in so many words, just in his body language and tone. Pétion understood the Eranstani officer's mannerisms enough to get the message. As far as he was concerned, he was just following orders that came from thin air, and maybe making up a few of his own along the way. Nobody knew anything incriminating. And as long as no one knew anything, the people who did know anything would protect that. That was how these things worked. He'd been around the block before.

Out on the frontier, there was an unspoken understanding between soldiers that a lot of what they did in pursuit of the mission were somewhere between ethically questionable and internationally illegal. He'd committed some crime in Vale, and the judge offered him a choice between labor camp or the service. The justice system patted itself on the back for being "tough on crime" and sending dangerous men like Pétion far away for such horrible crimes as "felony trespassing" (refusing to leave a no-faunus-served breakfast joint while severely hungover) and "sleeping with the wrong human's daughter." He'd hardly been alone, either as a penal legionnaire or in choosing to re-enlist once his sentence ended.

The Royal Army was, one way or another, still a primarily conscription force drawing mostly service treaties with the disparate parts of the Valean empire. As the core of the nation, for some reason, Vale and Patch themselves were generally exempt unless you found yourself on the wrong side of the law. Something like "you are to provide us so many men every year in exchange for being otherwise left alone to govern yourselves." A superior once explained it as a scalability thing to him. The high turnover rate of soldiers combined with limited resources forced the Royal Army to be highly efficient and innovative to survive during peacetime. And even if Parliament was highly skittish of militarism publically for the votes, in private they knew that if Great War Two or whatever broke out, Vale could quickly mobilize millions of former servicemen into a military that could punch way above its own weight class with minimal effort. An all-volunteer force like Atlas couldn't respond or compete with that.

The Army's backbone, though, remained the officers and NCOs like Pétion who decided to stick around past their original conscription because it wasn't all that bad once you were institutionalized into it. At least the Royal Army didn't care what you were born as so long as you shot the animals on the frontier who shot at you first. Someone once told him, and he believed it, that there were more faunus in the Royal Army and its reserves than all Menagerie.

He flicked his tongue. The stairwell air tasted of concrete dust and old solvents. He checked the list for a room number and put it away. They went one floor down before bursting into the hallway. The electricity worked in some places, but not in the building right now. Most people would have to follow the illuminum paint near the floors to navigate. But there was a reason the Royal Army liked to make use of faunus like him. He didn't need the light to see. Pétion had an uncomfortable view of the hotel's luxurious carpets. He'd never be able to afford staying in a place like this. He doubted any of his men ever would.

But Pétion knew it was all so much a mummer's game. People could come to Montluçon for its veneer of high society and fashion outside the capital. The ideal destination resort far enough away to be nearly foreign, but close enough to be a couple hours' flight back home. Never mind the factories towards the end of town, the workers laboring in mines or refining, or the faunus girls working in the bunny ranches that his fellow soldiers liked to visit. For everything that the city pretended it was, and the people who came here thought of themselves, Pétion couldn't help but notice this hallway still had those same generic vending machines in the end like every other hotel.

He took point, moving ahead of his men. It wasn't proper technical procedure, but he could see better than them. The flashlights mounted to the rifles just made a dizzying mess of his vision. He kept flicking his tongue, tasting the air. And then he tasted something wrong just around the corner.

Sergeant Pétion liked to think he was one of the few people in the world unfortunate enough to know what licking Grimm was like. It wasn't an exact comparison, as one human annoyingly tried to explain to him. It wasn't so much that he could taste things in the air as some kind of weird thermal lizard sense. But what the fuck would a human know about being faunus? As far as he was concerned, Grimm tasted like putting a leather glove over your tongue and sticking it out under the exhaust of a motor carriage.

Pétion tasted just one, and held up his hand in the sign for freeze. And then he made the gesture for Grimm, holding up one finger. The soldiers behind him obeyed and took position without question. It was the benefit of being drilled and experienced. They might not be the superhuman Huntsmen who had apparently just gone into the caves and died, but that didn't mean he and his men couldn't handle Grimm. The only thing separating this instance from the countless other times the Army had dealt with them by themselves was the close quarters urban nature of the hotel.

Slowly, he put his hand on the wall and extended himself away from it, a common tactic to increase how much you can see of the bad guy and how little they can see of you when you turn a corner. In movies, the military for some reason liked to face targets at an angle, positioning your body so that your side faced the foe and you looked more cinematic. But body armor was thickest on the front and back. You wanted your torso to face the bad guy directly. Or the inhuman abomination of evil, depending on the situation. He braced the stock of his rifle into his shoulder, snapped his eyes to look through his reflex sight, and counted his breaths before popping the corner. Pétion had never been a particularly good shot standing up. He hoped the close distance would alleviate that. Or feeling that, overwhelming firepower from his men.

The creature was a black morass in the hallway, scratching at one of the doors. Covered in red veins that acted as a kind of highway, its four eyes traveling up and down them instead of being able to move around in some kind of socket. It looked almost like a cocoon, its several limbs stretched out and grabbing the floor, the wall, and the ceiling. Pétion didn't know what to call it. Exact information about Grimm was something Huntsmen liked to keep for themselves. Maybe it was called Clarence for all he cared. Its four eyes circled around its body and formed a kind of bony face looking right at him. If he hadn't known it was there beforehand, it probably would have gotten the jump.

The sergeant depressed the trigger at the bottom of his breath, and then kept firing. The Grimm gave a deep pitched wail, its smokey arms retracting from the walls and shooting out towards him. It grabbed onto the ceiling and launched itself towards him and his men. He didn't think about it; he just kept shooting quick single shot after quick single shot.

The heavy ammunition blew its arms off. And the hail of gunfire from him and his men ripped apart what was left of it. Its eyes shattered, spewing chunks of Grimm bone across the hallway. It sailed forward on its inertia and crashed into a door. Pétion didn't stop firing until the creature started to turn to ash.

They reloaded quickly and waited for any other kind of trick. You never presumed these things were actually dead. You never presumed anyone was dead, really. As a young private, his own sergeant had told him that if someone looks dead to you, keep your rifle trained on them, and step on their balls. If they so much as flinch, it's legal cause to shoot them. That was the practical method, even though, legally speaking, the manual recommended doing some kind of weird rubbing motion against someone's sternum to see if they were really dead. But nobody had time for that out on the frontier. A quick and efficient double tap was all you needed.

"Que dalle," Pétion said, aiming his rifle down the hallway.

"Rien," slowly came the echo back from his men. Nothing to see. The area looked clear. Although his men were being somewhat less crude.

"Hold up," Specialist deSilhon said, gesturing at the door the creature had been clawing at.

The sergeant lowered his rifle and walked down the hall to examine the door. The Grimm had been making half-hearted scratches all around the door frame. The handle itself was clawed to oblivion, the card reader destroyed. He was about to dismiss it as anything of value when he noticed the room number.

He checked it against his list and swore under his breath. "Merde! Cover me." Pétion lowered his rifle to knock on the door. He heard someone gasp from within. "MP Jouhaux, are you in there? This is your rescue."

Someone tried to say something behind the door, but it came out muffled.

"Jouhaux, the Grimm are gone. I need you to open this door."

Another muffled response. "I can't. The handle is broken from this side too." Male, adult. Probably the MP. Pétion didn't actually know the proper way to address a member of the House of Commons. He supposed it didn't matter.

Pétion let out a sigh. "Sir, I need you to stand back from the door if you're there." with his men covering him, looking down the hall, he allowed himself a small smile. He was going to get his fantasy of kicking down a door today one way or the other. And Pétion was a big man.

With a single heavy kick, the door broke open. He pushed it aside and flicked his tongue, tasting the air. There were three people inside the room. The entire thing was a mess, with bits of furniture haphazardly used to barricade the door, and not done very well. He pushed a dresser aside, keeping his rifle by him. His men didn't go in with him. Only one of them bothered making eye contact with him before he turned away and focused on getting into the room.

Three people. The Grimm had attacked late enough at night that everyone on the list should have been in their respective rooms. They were all in various states of undress, probably woken up by this mess. Adult male standing in the front, looking rattled. Behind him was an adult female, crouching down on the floor clutching a girl who couldn't be older than seven.

"Oh thank the Saints!" Jouhaux said with a frantic little laugh. "It's the army. Leonette, we're going to make it! Gods above, thank you!"

Jouhaux extended his hand to shake and took three steps towards Pétion. Honestly, he only got that far because the sergeant was making the left-hand sign to ask Celiphie for pardon. Three steps before he got his rifle up and fired. The man's wife screamed.

He supposed he should have felt something more. But honestly, why would Staff Sergeant Pétion care for some Tory MP? These were the same bastards who put Pétion behind bars and drafted him into the military as an oblique form of execution. The same military they had no love for, and outright banned from Vale itself. Pétion hadn't seen his mother in nearly a decade because of men like this. It had just been one thankless assignment after thankless assignment against frontier animals and Grimm after another. The MP was paying for his own short-sighted idiocy with a bullet through the heart.

But no matter how Pétion rationalized it to himself, he knew he was doing this because orders were orders. It wasn't like he really cared about politics or the people who ran the system. He didn't have a say in it, one way or the other. A criminal record permanently disbarred him from voting. But apparently it didn't prevent him from wearing the Valean twin axes on his shoulder and dying for his kingdom.

Funny how that worked.

The orders hadn't said anything about the family, but he wasn't stupid. He knew what he was doing. And so he made up a couple orders all on his own.

The kid went first. Honestly, he was aiming for the mother, but it was like she was trying to use the kid of the shield, the way she was holding her. The next shot stopped the harridan from screeching and screaming.

Three people. Three bullets. Three corpses.

Pétion felt his heart throbbing in his chest. He ran a hand down his face, wiping off the sweat. He looked upon his works, and felt a detached sense of nothing. That was always the worst part. The first time he'd killed a man, he'd been in uniform, and he distinctly recalled not being upset that he murdered somebody, but hating himself for feeling nothing. He couldn't even say that he felt numb because they were human and he wasn't. First person he ever killed was a frontier faunus, just another animal out there in the wilds.

He took a long breath before making the sign of the Saints. He picked up his bullet casings and pocketed them before stepping out of the room.

"Sarn't?" deSilhon asked, not looking him in the eyes.

Pétion took out his list and crossed the name off. But there was so much more to do.

"Dead when I got there," he said loudly. No one was fooled, but everyone would pretend they were. It was better for their souls and their careers that way. His team had been chosen specifically for that reason. They knew which way their bread was buttered. "Eaten by Grimm. C'mon. Maybe we can get there in time for the next one. It's a long list of VIPs we need to extract."

— 19 —

Subject: Death Certificate of PM Ayden Jouhaux

Date: January 19th, '52

Personal Details: Age 46, male, of mixed Patch-Valais phenotype. A Conservative MP representing the 43rd district, Les Jardins. Former Liberal-Democrat. MP Jouhaux, his wife, and their daughter were attending the Midwinter Gala in Montluçon. Jouhaux was reportedly found in his hotel room with his family, who similarly perished. He is survived by no children. His seat in the 43rd district is up for a snap election.

Cause of Death: Lost to Grimm. No reason to suspect foul play. Corpse never recovered, presumed eaten.

— 20 —

Pyrrha Nikos found Ruby sitting on the wall behind the crowd of people, staring up at the low white clouds. While Nora and her partner, Yang, were closer to the stage, closer to General Ironwood's demonstration. Ruby was lost in the sky. She reached a hand out and closed her fist over the nothingness above her.

"I don't think you got them," Pyrrha said.

Ruby blinked. "Huh?"

She made a gesture. "Whatever you're doing, I don't think you captured them or anything."

Ruby looked back up at the sky. "It's not something you can really capture. We've got a Forgiven Field rolling in on the forecast."

"I think you should be paying more attention to our mission," Pyrrha said, nodding towards the throngs of people gathered before General Ironwood and his stage demonstration. Not that the mission was hard or anything. She'd chosen it because it looked interesting, not difficult. The only really hard one was the assignment Team CFVY brought Team BASS along with for.

All they really had to do was act as a sort of public goodwill liaison for a diplomatic mission from Atlas to Vale. There was some politics wrapped up in it that was beyond Pyrrha. The general wanted to show off Atlesian technology and mechs or something. If it was actually dangerous, actually worth major attention, this would have been a mission for licensed Hunters. As it was, it seemed mostly a social event down in the city that had become Pyrrha's temporarily adopted home.

General James Ironwood was the power behind the Kingdom of Atlas as General of the Armed Forces of Atlas and their elected Chancellor too. Pyrrha mostly knew of him due to Atlas' rather overbearing influence in Northern Mistral, particularly her home city of Argus. To Pyrrha, that was just the way the world had worked for as long as she could remember. But older denizens, like her mother, remembered when Atlas wasn't on everyone's doorstep. Even back home, a lot of people referred to Mistral's prime minister, the "Prostatis," as the Pimp for the way he seemed to sell out his own nation to Atlas. Pyrrha couldn't deny the positive influence Atlas did have, and it seemed like General Ironwood and the Valean Tory party were working on trying to normalize relationships between their two countries for similar mutual benefits. Thus this public display of technology to try to impress the voting populace of Vale and get them to see the benefits of international cooperation.

Her own opinions on Atlas only went as far as how Atlas treated her own people, the Akhaioi. Really, everything north of the Throat of Pereiklon was its own country. Akhaia, as it was properly called, possessed too distinct a people. In a vague sense, the Akhaioi, Joseon, Nuang Bao, Hua, Yamato, and the dozen other ethnicities in Mistral didn't belong together. It reminded me of her brief stop in the former Tsardom of Graad on her way to Beacon, marveling at how such distinct people were such fiercely loyal subjects to the crown of Vale. At least Mistral could claim the Argeiad king, Megas Alexandros, had brought Mistral under one law when he conquered it and forced himself on the last daughter of its Chrysanthemum throne and united the bloodlines of the North and South. Megas Alexandros was a red-haired god with the full blessing of the Glory; he forged one nation through fire. What did Vale have holding it together?

But, like she said, politics. It wasn't her business to have opinions on how two foreign nations interacted. She just did the missions Beacon asked of her and called it there. Her focus laid squarely with her team, VYPR, and what things like this meant for them.

"They're fine," Ruby said absently, kicking her legs idly on the wall. Pyrrha always thought how strange it was that Ruby's attire seemed to prioritize leg mobility, given her rather subpar cardio. That black corset really didn't do her core any favors. She wondered how the girl could breathe in something that tight. She probably couldn't even really bend over. It just seemed a terrible outfit for a Huntress to wear. "It's a rare phenomenon in Vale."

"I didn't take you for a weathergirl," Pyrrha said with a slight smile.

Ruby shook her head. "It's a lucky sign, y'know? A Forgiven Field."

"I'm unfamiliar."

Her partner frowned. "When the clouds come in low like that, it's called the Forgiven Field, because from above it looks like white tulips. They're the symbol of forgiveness, of worthiness. Not as cool as roses, in my humble opinion, but still a pretty cool flower." She pushed off the wall and landed on her boots. "See, there's legends of a Huntress who launched herself into the sky during an epic battle. Feet bare and dress swaying in the wind, inertia stopped there in the low clouds. She hung in the sky for what felt like forever before gravity remembered her. She looked down at Vale through the clouds and thought they looked like white tulips.

"See, up in the clouds, it puts everything into perspective. We're so small, all of us. Our problems look like everything when we're all we can see. But in the air, seeing the whole world, you can see your problems for what they are. They look like nothing you can't live with, overcome, and forgive."

Ruby made an expansive gesture to the crowd. "Sometimes when life seems too much, things look like they're going to crush me, when it's all so… y'know? I like to think that up there, all my problems look so small. That I just need a little perspective. We all need that. Sometimes that perspective is high in the Forgiven Field. Sometimes it's just talking to a friend and realizing you have options. You have people who'll stand by your side."

Pyrrha folded her arms, feeling her weapon hanging at her hip. "If the weather's such a good omen, then come on. It means we can't go wrong with our little assignment."

Ruby shook her head. "Oh, it can. It's dumb to think it can't just because you saw a good sign or found, like, a seventeen-leaf clover. Yang and Nora have that angle of the stage covered, so I figured it'd be smarter to be back here where no one's looking." She shrugged. "See, in the original Valais legend, the King of Patch, Robert Damecrown, won. He defeated the Huntress. He burned her and her cause at the stake. Conquered Vale. Just because her problems looked so small in comparison, it didn't mean she didn't have to fight for them for all she was worth. She let perspective poison her. And she burned for it. Never let the big picture distract you from giving your problems all you're worth. Or you'll end up another nameless, forgotten martyr."

Pyrrha folded her arms. Not quite hugging herself, but still. "Something bothering you, Ruby?"

Ruby made an incoherent gesture, a half-hearted attempt to point at something, and gave up. "Maybe? Dunno. Just got a bad feeling about this whole thing. It's too easy, this mission. We're not fighting Grimm. Not saving people. Just playing eye candy to some guy from Atlas and his robots."

With a gesture for Ruby to follow, Pyrrha started walking the edges of the plaza. The place had been chosen well for the demonstration, and the crowds had turned out in droves to see the Atlesian general and his show of the so-called "Atlesian knight," a humanoid type of combat robot that gave Pyrrha a weird feeling to look at. This was only one such demonstration, Pyrrha knew. The holographic recorders were taking the general's physical image from this plaza and projecting it to a dozen other places across the city.

"That's why when we had a choice for our missions, I went with this one," Pyrrha said. "Sure, there were missions to dangerous places to do dangerous things. But, I think we could do those easily."

"So why didn't we? I'm bored. And feeling weird." Ruby slumped her shoulder theatrically. "And stop walking so fast. One of your steps is like two of mine. Stop having long legs."

Pyrrha smiled. "It wouldn't be a problem if you had better cardio."

Ruby made a sour face. A moment later she evaporated into a storm of rose petals and zipped across Pyrrha's field of vision to a bench just in front of her. A man standing by the bench yelped in surprise. "Sorry!" she said.

The man held his hands up and slowly backed away.

Ruby frowned. "Look what you made me do, Pyrrha. I scared someone trying to make a point!"

"Could it have really been such a good point if it scares the people around you to make it?" Pyrrha asked, hands behind her head.

"Yes! Because it has to be made. And that point is, cardio's overrated," Ruby said, blowing a bang of dark red hair from her face. Pyrrha used to think it was black, but Ruby was very insistent it was a super dark red, which wasn't entirely convincing. "Why should I work on something useless when I can turn into roses and just zip around. I'm, like, I'm one of the best, fastest members on this team, and I have the cardio of a malnourished pug. And pugs are awful dogs. They can't even breathe right by design. They were bred to die. I mean, literally!"

"Ruby," Pyrrha said, reaching out to put a hand on her partner's shoulder. Ruby was getting carried away again with one of the seemingly random things that would set her off. She had really strong beliefs about the most inconsequential of topics. Sometimes trying to bring her back to reality was like fishing for sky-eels, a self-defeating task.

"No!" Ruby said loudly. "This has to be said. Pug owners should go commit unalive. They were bred just so you can watch something you love slowly suffocate to death in front of your eyes. If you own a pug, you're evil. And that's a fact. Someone has to say it!"

Pyrrha rubbed her forehead. "Just like someone has to say there's more to being a Huntress than mindless violence and fighting Grimm. That's why I chose this mission."

Ruby rolled her eyes so hard that her entire body shook with the gesture. "Ugh. You're such a mom, Pyrrha. And not even the cool or mean ones. I thought you were from Mistral; why aren't you a rough tiger mom?"

Looking over at General Ironwood as he made a speech to the oddly quiet, unenthused crowd of Valeans, Pyrrha said, "I'm not going to let you distract me. And tiger moms are a southern stereotype in any case. If you're going to be culturally insensitive, at least get my culture right."

"Got it," Ruby said dryly. "Learn about the diversity of foreign cultures so I can be racist more accurately. Good talk, fearless leader."

"My point is, there's a lot more to being a Hunter than violence," Pyrrha said, shaking her head. "I think I learned this the first time a little girl came up to me and asked for my autograph after I won my second tournament. I realized that being a champion fighter and being a Huntress were a lot alike. It wasn't so much about being able to fight, as what you represented to people. Do you see the crowd there? They don't view us like they do their military, like that soldier general they're all here to see. They view us as being different. We are a living symbol. And as symbols, we can either be something they fear, or something that inspires them. Are you afraid of the Grimm?"

Ruby made a face. "No. I go up against some all the time. It's not that they're not scary, I'm not stupid. But…" She shrugged.

"Familiarity," she said. "It's like exposure therapy. The most tried and true method of overcoming trauma is repeated exposure to it until you become used to it, until it can't hurt you anymore."

"Yeah, I know. I cheated off your notes to pass that exact same psychology test, Pyrrha," Ruby said.

"Studying with me is not cheating."

Ruby nodded enthusiastically. "It's the only way of cheating they can't prove. I go into my tests having read the books and notes. I've memorized all the answers beforehand. It's the perfect crime."

Pyrrha sighed with content. "So it's the same way with us and people like them. They're terrified of Grimm because they're just some demons beyond the walls of their cities. So the people who fight them have to be even scarier, they must think. That's why Beacon wants us to go out into town and help with the Vytal Festival. They want people to see us as people like them. Not terrifying warriors of the night or whatever. But just people with a special gift doing their best for everyone else. We have to mingle with them. We have to let them see us. We can't ever get it in our heads that we and they are different on any fundamental level. So when I saw a mission to go out and mingle with people, to get ourselves out there, I chose it. We can all kill monsters all day and be fine. But it's things like this that, sure and that we are there for the people, that grounds us in reality."

"You mean we'd get our heads up our butts if we didn't do this kind of stuff," Ruby said, folding her arms.

Pyrrha nodded. "That's how I think about it. When that little girl came up to me for an autograph, she didn't see me as a fighter exactly. She didn't see the weeks and months I put into training, strict dieting, and practice. She just saw someone like her who could be a hero. And I never want to forget that feeling. That people aren't afraid of us and look up to us. This is valuable."

Ruby cast her silver eyes to the Forgiven Field and sighed. "You don't want me to lose perspective."

"You could think of it like that," Pyrrha said with a little smile.

"Doesn't mean I don't still have a weird feeling about this all," she said unhappily.

"You're out of your comfort zone, and that's good," Pyrrha said. "If I had wanted to stay in my comfort zone, I wouldn't have left Mistral. I wouldn't have traveled across the world to experience a whole different culture and way of thinking and everything else. Everything from the fashion to how you think of citizenship is alien to me, and that's okay. It's out of my comfort zone. And learning to understand and become comfortable with discomfort will make me a better person."

Ruby looked out at the crowd. She scowled slightly as the robots kicked down older models of Atlesian machines. The crowd gasped, whispering and making uncomfortable noises. "I get the fashion. Pretty much nobody but me knows how to dress good."

"You're wearing a corset and a combat skirt," Pyrrha said.

"Because I am stylish and delicious and deadly," Ruby huffed. "We need to bring capes back into vogue. Civilization lost something when we all stopped wearing capes and began wearing jackets."

Pyrrha raised an eyebrow. "Next you're going to tell me that we should bring back trench coats."

Ruby shook her head vehemently. "Heck no. Trench coats are for losers who like to jerk off in public. Capes are for people who are dangerous and mysterious, and don't jerk off in public. It's a scientific fact."

The crowd got rowdier. More people talking, sounding generally displeased, and occasionally yelling out questions to the general that he ignored. There was a general malaise to the entire mood of the crowd, and nothing the general could do with his show of robots and talks of political cooperation seemed to mollify them.

"Ruby," Pyrrha said, and sighed. "I think we're getting—"

The girl held up her finger, staring intently at the crowd. "That's a Szolacs jacket."

"What?" Pyrrha tried to ask, but Ruby was already breaking apart into a cloud of force petals. The girl moved faster than a lubed pegasus, scaling up a drainpipe and reforming at the top of a three-story building overlooking the plaza. She watched as Ruby pulled out her scythe and adjusted the scope so she could look through it.

That gave Pyrrha a bad feeling. She looked around to try to find another way out, before just giving up and going the easy route. Pyrrha found it in the drain pipe, which was a predictable feature of Valean architecture. While there were parts of Vale that were beautiful, so much of it felt devoid of soul. In the quest to be efficient and modern, Vale had become gray and hollow. It reminded her of the newest parts of Argus, rebuilt after the Great War, and how it just felt like a carbon copy of this heartless style.

In the oldest parts of Argus, Pyrrha had fallen in love with how her people used to be. The ancient harbor and the city walls were a clean, polished white, accentuated with bright red tiles the same color of Pyrrha's own hair. It was important, symbolic of how the Akhaioi were the descendants of the red-tailed dolphins. They swam across the world's oceans to escape extinction at the hands of the Final Empire's fishermen; their blood was important to several of their profane rituals. The red-tailed dolphins swam until they ran out of ocean, and made a deal with the Great Miscreant, Ouzakhi. He made humans spring from the dolphins' wombs so their children could escape onto land in exchange for stealing their ancient songs.

It was what separated Akhaioi from any other race, human or faunus. It was why they were able to conquer and drive off the native Mistrali, the Pelasgians, from the North and make it their new home. Why citizenship among her people's cities required you to have two pureblooded Akhaioi parents of the polis. And it was the Akhaioi who gave Remnant red hair, true red hair exactly like Pyrrha's, instead of the black hair Ruby insisted was red or that flamboyant mop that Nora had.

Pyrrha focused her Aura and used it to get a solid grip on the drain pipe. Credit where it was due, people in this country were serious about drainage. The pipe didn't collapse as she climbed up it, although she did leave several finger dents in the tin before pulling herself up onto the roof. She felt her heart rate elevate; even if she was fit, it wasn't exactly the easiest task.

"Ruby!" Pyrrha snapped. "Put that scope away; there are people down there."

Ruby flexed her fingers, demonstrating that they weren't anywhere near the trigger. "Trigger safety observed. Weapon isn't loaded. The bolt is pulled back just to be safe. I'm using the sight," she said as if she thought Pyrrha was somehow stupid. "See that jacket?"

Pyrrha scowled. She had to admit, this was a great vantage point. Something about the way the plaza was built gave them surprisingly good audio reception up here. She could hear the general talking, and even some of the louder voices in the crowd. But she shook her head. "I see lots of jackets, lots of coats. No capes, though, sadly. What are you talking about?"

Ruby had a weird way of looking through her scope. She kept both of her eyes open. It was a way to prevent losing depth of field, Pyrrha knew, but it had the unintended effect of making Ruby look almost comically focused. Like the one eye should see was bulging out of the socket from just how intently she was staring.

She'd always wondered how a girl like Ruby could so effortlessly swing and fire a weapon so massive. Pyrrha preferred something lighter and more efficient. It was why she was happy with her weapon, Miló, and shield, Akoúo. Sleek and mobile, able to transform to handle threats at close to medium range. With a symbolic importance beyond just cool and badass like Ruby seemed to focus on. On the recommendation of an Oracle of the Four-Eyed Sky-Eel, Pyrrha had forged Akoúo with an abstract symbol for Eriginio, the god of music and violence.

"It's the off-white, sun bleached jacket," Ruby said. "Look at those two guys making their way to the front of the crowd."

Squinting, Pyrrha had to pay particular attention until she saw them. They were a little too distant to make out clearly, but their jackets stood out. They looked almost dirty; white leather jackets and blue jeans. Pyrrha thought the aesthetic somehow in poor taste. She had never been a fan of leather jackets; they made too much noise and you couldn't really wash them. Plus they were sweaty and too tight.

"I see them both, but why does it matter?" she asked.

"Because they're Szolacs jackets," Ruby said.

Pyrrha gave her a go on expression.

Ruby took her eyes off the scope and looked a little flabbergasted. "Uh. You're a foreigner. Right. Hm. They're a kind of homemade leather work jacket. The material tends to get a bleached white color from sunlight. Débardeurs in Szolacs tended to wear them, keeping them around for generations, and the look stuck for lots of dockworkers and laborers. The lefties like to wear them. Union-Labor dudes."

"There's something really weird about hearing you of all people talk politics."

"I'm not; I'm trying to avoid politics. You're the one who got us on this stupid political mission. But colors have meaning. And those two guys who are wearing those white Szolacs jackets who just made it to the very front of the crowd and are currently heckling Ironwood are probably there for political reasons."

Pyrrha inhaled sharply, whirling around. "They're what?!"

If not for the peculiar acoustics of the plaza and the rooftop, she might not have been able to hear them. Honestly, if she hadn't known to listen for it, she would have gotten lost talking to Ruby about jackets again. It meant that she missed the start of the conversation, but it really wasn't a chit chat. It was a human and a faunus in sunbleached jackets yelling at the general.

"So how come you Atlas military types get to walk into our city, when we don't even let our own army here?" the human asked with a local accent that Pyrrha needed to process to understand. The crowd seemed to yell in agreement.

Somewhere in the background, she saw Yang and Nora lurking behind the stage. They were hanging back, out of sight of the main crowd, but in the area. In front of them were the humanoid combat robots the general had been trying to show off to the people of the city.

Then General Ironwood made a mistake. He tapped his microphone and talked to the man. "Because our two great nations have nothing to fear from mutual cooperation, and everything to gain. Atlas stands behind me. They voted me into this position, and I speak with the authority of my nation. It doesn't matter that I'm a soldier. What matters is that I'm here as a friend, as the voice of my nation. Merely look around you and you'll see the benefits cooperation can provide. How many of the stores and shops here are owned by Atlesian citizens? How many jobs in this city alone does industry from my country provide you?"

The jacketed faunus snarled. "You can take your racist slave industry somewhere else. How many of the jobs actually bring a living wage? How many actually care about this kingdom, instead of the bottom fucking line? Why the hell are we letting this war criminal into our city?"

Ironwood shook his head. "Please, there's no need for that. I know you have your misgivings. I truly can't blame you. The relationship between our nations has been rocky at best. But between the hardest rocks lay the smoothest water, the deepest harbors. I was invited by Martin Gladstone—"

"Fuck the prime minister," the human said.

"And fuck the Tories for letting you into our city. For letting you and all your cronies in."

"Let me guess, the slaves are getting too uppity in Atlas, so you're outsourcing here," the first man went on. "Schnee Dust blood money invested back here, out-competing local businesses with your cartels. You think we'll just roll over for you and show you our bellies?"

The crowd surged in agreement.

Ironwood raised a hand. "I understand your misgivings. You're not wrong to feel that way. But old Mantle is dead, sir. The Kingdom of Atlas is striving towards a better future for all mankind."

"What about faunuskind?" someone in the crowd jeered.

The general seemed to realize his blunder. "Are they too not people, not human? A rising tide will lift all boats. What is good for the individual will be good for everyone between our two great nations."

Even to Pyrrha, who had no particular stake in this argument or this country, they sounded like regurgitated political soundbites strung together on a shoestring. As if the man was just trying to fish for the most politically pleasant platitudes he could manage, devoid of any deeper meaning.

"Oh great, now I'm just another human," the jacketed faunus said. "Next you'll tell me things are so bad for everyone in Atlas, that their White Fang recruits humans too."

"Don't be ridiculous," General Ironwood said with a small laugh.

But the laugh seemed to set the crowd into a frenzy.

As the men in the jackets just stood there, they listened and occasionally egged on the voices spurring from the crowd. "Tyrant!" "Slave driver!" "Chez les Valais les rois sont morts!" "Racist prick!" "Invader!" "Get that foreign soldier out of our country!" "Que veut cette horde d'esclaves?" "If one of us ain't free, ain't nobody free!"

"This is bad," Ruby said. She looked at her partner. "What do we do?"

Pyrrha stared, mouth dry. "I… This wasn't supposed to be difficult. I was just trying to get us—I mean, we're supposed to help the general."

Ruby shook her head. "I'm not about to get involved in arguing politics."

"No, that's not what I—we're supposed to keep them safe. He has soldiers and he has those robots, but we're…"

"So you don't have a plan?"

Pyrrha bit her lip, hesitating. "I… no, we can handle this. We're not going to involve ourselves unless it gets violent. People yelling and getting angry is probably part of the game. We can't let people think we're taking sides. We're just here to make sure no one gets hurt. We're Huntsmen, not police."

"Pyrrha?" Ruby said slowly.

"What? It's a good plan! We're simply going to wait and not rush into this. These are people, not Grimm."

"That's not what I meant." She pointed down at the crowd.

Pyrrha could hear it echoing in on the breeze. A steady, distant chime of alerts. Everyone's individual scroll getting a message. It seemed to roll through the crowd like a wave. At first no one seemed to notice, but then it became something you couldn't not notice when everyone's scroll was blowing up. She even saw Yang and Nora check their own scrolls.

And then it finally got to her and Ruby.

Pyrrha took out her scroll.

Alert! Valean mass notification system! Major Grimm Attack in the city of Montluçon. Registered Huntsmen are to report to emergency mustering grounds. Suspected incursion has potential to leak over into Vale. All citizens should remain indoors until All Clear is given. Remain protected with loved ones. Remember that you are safe in Vale. Hope is our strongest weapon against the Grimm. The Saints watch over us all.

Alert! Valean mass notification system!—

Pyrrha put down her scroll and looked at Ruby. Her partner's eyes were wide, her face looking oddly gaunt.

"Coco and Jaune went to Montluçon for their mission," Ruby said hoarsely. "We have to do something!"

Pyrrha felt her guts roiling. "Ruby, we're not licensed. We're just students. If everyone has to remain indoors, then the mission has changed. We—we need to—to—"

Someone in the crowd screamed. "Holy shit, Atlas has its army in our city, and right next door there's a Grimm invasion."

"Why aren't they doing something about it?"

"Because they don't care!"

"They wanted this to happen!"

General Ironwood looked around. His was the only scroll that hadn't gone off, presumably because he wasn't a native and didn't have a local service provider. "What?"

"Those Atlas fuckers are behind it, aren't they!?"

"Why else are they wasting time here with their robots?"

"Because it's a bloody invasion!"

The crowd broke out into screaming, calling for Atlesian blood. No one was following the alert and trying to disperse or run and hide. No one listened as Ironwood tried to regain control of the situation. Instead, the crowd became a singular organism, focusing with anger on the general. They howled and screamed and demanded answers, getting increasingly frantic, increasingly bizarre and paranoid. Blaming Atlas for everything from increasing Dust prices to political deadlock in parliament to the Grimm.

Until somebody picked up a rock and threw it at Ironwood.

Ruby burst into a cloud of petals. One moment she was there, and the next she was gone. The little ball of roses flew over the crowd and the shape of a helix, like DNA. Until rematerializing as a girl right in front of the general's podium and slapping the rock out of the air.

"Oh gods, Ruby, that's not what I meant!" Pyrrha said under her breath.

Someone in the crowd wearing a white jacket cupped their hands and yelled, "Saints' blood, even the Huntsmen are working for Atlas! Those fuckers are with them!"

The panicked crowd turned into a full-scale riot.

a/n Peak Ruby Achieved! And my favorite take on Pyrrha is Boring Nice Girl who is actually extremely judgmental and bitchy in her own head, and does not like Cyberpunk!France.