Chapter time!
In the modern world, there were many debates, especially among the faunus population, about whether Menagerie should be considered as the fifth kingdom of Remnant, or not.
The supporters of the idea often claimed that since the island was largely independent of all the other kingdoms, it should also be considered its own nation.
The opponents, meanwhile, always pointed out how the political power of Menagerie was far too insignificant to be considered one.
For all the faunus of Remnant, it largely meant that their fight for an equal footing with humans was an unending struggle to raise the strength of their kingdom up to par with all the others.
At least, it was the case up until about a year ago.
Sienna Khan, the otherworldly hero and returning leader of the White Fang, still couldn't believe just how much the people under her command could have butchered their chances at bringing equality to the world in the single year of her absence.
It was frankly absurd how terrible the situation was for them.
All the hopes and ideas about Menagerie becoming a fifth kingdom of the world had been completely destroyed the moment White Fang stopped fighting for freedom of faunus. Instead, the institution she fought so hard to lead well, became just a terrorist organisation, all the kingdoms' governments always pointed to whenever something bad had happened to their country.
The fools in the current leadership were even actively seeking out such reputation! They claimed it would make the humans fear the might of the faunus's wrath', whatever that meant.
Sienna groaned as she read through the final reports of all the things that had happened to her Fang when she was gone.
Repairing the White Fang from all the damages its members did to it when she was gone, wasn't even supposed to be her job, anymore.
She was supposed to be gunning for Vale, right now, and trying to find all the other heroes to kill, not waste all her newfound powers on executing all the traitors to the cause and overzealous terrorists.
Her head was already starting to hurt at the mere thought of all the work she still had ahead of her.
Was it really worth it?
After the war ended, the political climate of the entire world was going to change so much that all the attempts at fixing the White Fang by her could disappear in a span of a single second.
Hell, if she played her cards right, and won the war in the correct, public pleasing way, she might even gain enough fame to grant her kingdom credibility for it to become official.
Of course, by the time it would happen, the unsupervised White Fang could cause so much damage to the reputation of all faunus her victory might end up meaningless, as well.
A wistful sigh escaped her as she leaned back in her chair, away from all the documents in front of her.
If only she could find some truly capable people to entrust her White Fang with.
The first people that entered her mind would have been her companions back from the Nature's Realm, but not only would they have been rejected by the vast majority of her organisation for not being faunus, they also couldn't have been brought to Remnant in the first place.
She used to think that she could trust her lieutenants with leadership positions, but the disaster they brought to their own image made her lose that trust nearly instantly.
The only thing those people brought to the Fang was their battle prowess.
It had been extremely useful back when she was still leading the White Fans as an ordinary faunus with some fighting skill. However, after she had returned from the other world, and becoming far more powerful than any other living person on Remnant, that strength and fierceness became nothing more than an inconvenience.
There wasn't any point in organising any raid, at the moment, anyway.
With the so-called great tragedy of Vale still fresh on the minds of every person who watches the news, any type of incursion they could make would only bring uncomfortable comparisons to them.
The best they could do, for now, was to stay quiet, and wait for her to finish off all the other heroes to become a renowned hero of this world.
Sadly, it was something, she was well aware, the hotheaded and easily angered people of White Fang wouldn't be able to reliably do. Especially, with a leader that would try to fuel their anger even further.
Sienna looked towards the ceiling of her throne room with a wistful expression.
If only she could find a leader capable of preventing her people from doing something stupid while she fought in Vale.
She would even take someone completely ineffective at making people accomplish anything significant, if it meant that her people wouldn't screw themselves over in her short absence from a leading position.
A realisation struck her as that thought entered her mind.
Wait a second, an ineffective leader of the White Fang that couldn't accomplish any decisive victories, for the life of them?
That sounded just like that pacifistic fool, Ghira Belladonna!
She chuckled to herself a little.
It looked like she would need to pay the old White Fang founders a small visit.
"Corsac!" She called out loudly for one of her two closer aids, that she didn't feel the need to execute.
"Yes, my leader." Corsac said with a calm voice, as he entered the room. "What is it, that you require of me?"
She turned towards the fox faunus with and an amused smirk appeared on her face.
Sure, Corsac and his brother might have thought themselves manipulators, and were actively trying to make her do all the dirty work for them, but at least they weren't actively making her organisation look worse, and usually were rather entertaining to keep around.
Besides, their constant habit of trying to manipulate people could be of use when taken advantage off properly.
"I need you to set up a meeting between me and the Belladonnas." She said. "It also needs to be kept a secret from all of our common grunts, understood?"
"Understood." Corsac nodded with a sly expression on his face. "Me and my brother can assure you that no one aside from us, and the people you deem important enough to tell, will be aware of your meeting."
Corsac turned towards the room's exit, and quietly moved to leave.
"Ah, there's still one more issue I would like to bring up to you, my leader." However, just before he left the room, Corsac stopped himself and turned towards her with a request. "It's about potential recruitments in Vale."
A quiet chuckle escaped Sienna as she heard Corsac speak.
Observing, far weaker and less experienced, people try to manipulate her never ceased to bring a smile to her face.
There was just so amusing about seeing people she could kill with a single flick of her finger, believing they could make her do anything she didn't want to do herself.
"Don't worry about it." She said with a wave of her hand. "After my talks with Ghira and Kali go according to plan, I will be going to Vale personally to deal with that myself."
Corsac widened his eyes a little in surprise.
"Ah, I see." Corsac coughed a little into his hand to hide his expression. "In that case, I will be on my way to set up your meeting."
"Be sure that you do." Sienna said lazily, before stretching from tiredness.
She didn't believe convincing Ghira to retake his position as a leader would take much effort from her. The only issue, she was foreseeing for herself, was convincing all the White Fang members to welcome the man back.
A yawn escaped her.
Ah, whatever, if those guys truly proved themselves to be an issue for her, then she would simply do a little demonstration of her new powers, and throw some threats around.
That should work well.
It worked the last time some upstarts believed they could take the leader position from her just because she was gone for a year, after all.
She chuckled a little.
There wasn't even a need to kill that guys afterwards.
(...)
When she was accepting Qrow's offer of alliance, Pyrrha knew it would come with new obligations from her side of the deal. No partnership could work well if only one part of it did all the work, after all.
What she didn't expect, however, was for her to be almost immediately asked to head to Vale, with next to no explanation whatsoever.
Sure, she might have known that Qrow had some information gathering powers, and that she could probably trust him, but it didn't mean that she was happy doing some arbitrary tasks for no reason.
The worst thing about it was that she wasn't even sure Qrow himself knew exactly what she was supposed to accomplish in Vale.
When she had asked her ally for clarification, all she got in response was that his powers told him it would help them gain one additional ally to their small group.
That didn't explain practically anything!
What was she meant to do here, anyway?
It wasn't like she could easily find and defeat other heroes in Vale, and she would rather not take part in the war at all than go out of her way to attack people unrelated to the war, for no reason.
A subtle shiver ran down her spine as she guiltily looked around, she already caused more than enough pain on this world while fighting against Jaune.
The once proud and grand city of Vale, the capital of the kingdom, now looked more like an enormous emergency refugee camp. The only difference from one was that all the refugees came from this very city.
It was all without mentioning all the crime and paranoia present on all the barely functioning streets of the city.
Although, the first wave of help from the kingdom of Atlas has already arrived with its medical supplies and foot soldiers, it couldn't do much about the absurd growth that all of the Vale's underworld experienced.
Nowadays, there were so many criminals running around the city, that if one wanted to be relatively safe they would have to assume every other person they found on the street would actively try to rob them.
The fact that average criminals had apparently increased in strength due to unexplained reasons only exacerbated the issue.
Pyrrha sighed as she thought of all the problems haunting the city, at the moment.
It wouldn't take a genius to figure out that at least one of those issues was related to another otherworldly hero hiding somewhere in the Vale, someone capable of lending their powers to others.
Sadly, it also meant that almost all the other problems could be unfortunately traced back to her actions.
What sort of hero was she, if all she did in Remnant was make the situation so much worse?
Frankly, it was a miracle grimm didn't decide to invade Vale at any point during all of this. The negativity in Vale must have been at an all-time high, because of all those terribly disasters that struck it so suddenly.
At least, Beacon was keeping its students away from all the trouble.
None of her classmates deserved to endanger their young lives in such chaotic times, especially so when each of them couldn't do much to help all the suffering people in Vale, in the first place, anyway.
A sudden panicked scream from right beyond the corner brought her out of her musings.
She reached for her old weapon, back from when she was still a competitive fighter at Vytal festivals, and quickly made her way towards the shout. It looked like she really did stumble her way into trouble.
"Stop what you're doing, right now!" She shouted as she entered the scene of robbery.
The four men dressed in black suits with red ties turned towards her with mirth on their faces, while one of them still held onto their victim.
"Screw off, kid." One of the men said with a rude tone. "This ground belongs to Xiong family now! I don't know what sort of gang you think you're affiliated with, but now the whole Vale belongs to us!"
The other three of the black suited men shouted excitedly in confirmation, and their victim whimpered in fear.
A frown appeared on her face.
Did those people really think she was a member of another gang?
It wasn't like she was doing anything to hide her identity as a Beacon student, and she was already quite famous herself, as well. The situation in the city must have really deteriorated by a lot, if the people couldn't recognise their own huntsmen in training anymore.
"I'm not a member of any gang." She said with a scoff, before reaching for something in her pocket, and showing it to the criminals. "I'm the representative of Beacon, and have full legal qualification to send you to jail if I have to!"
It was one of the compromises she and Qrow had to accept from Ozpin, if they wanted her to traverse through the Vale.
The Beacon's stance on the situation clearly forbid all of its students from leaving the school's ground for the foreseeable future. However, since she was an otherworldly hero and had an in with Ozpin, they had to do something to allow her access to Vale.
Therefore, she received a tittle of Beacon representative and a batch to confirm it.
All the gang members exploded in laughter at her actions.
She grumbled.
It was a pity that none of the criminals ever treated that batch seriously.
"Alright, I will just beat you up, then." She threw her shield at one of the goons' head.
"Argh!" The gangster shouted in pain, as her weapon hit him.
Immediately, all the gangsters turned towards her with anger in their eyes, threw the victim away, and started their assault with a shout.
After gracefully catching her shield on its return flight, she instantly dashed forward to meet the criminals head on. It was the first time she fought against this one gang in particular since arriving in Vale, but she was confident her training as a huntress should be more than enough to take care of them.
Like almost any fighter without any training, the four gangsters started their attack with wide and easily telegraphed swings.
Having experienced more complex attack patterns back when she was still a kid training to be a huntress, Pyrrha didn't have any issues with weaving and dodging between all the strikes sent at her.
Compared to professional huntsmen, those people were children.
Compared to monsters like Jaune, they weren't even ants.
It wasn't until she tried to attack one of the more aggressive gangsters herself, that she found any resistance stopping her from defeating them instantaneously.
The moment her weapon met the body of said gangster, it drastically bounced backwards with force almost equal to the one she put into the attack in the first place. It was almost as if it met a wall of near indestructible material.
"W-What?" She asked in surprise as she felt her arm drag her back from the enemy.
"Surprised?" The man she attacked laughed. "With our boss's newest deal in effect, even the low guys like us can defeat huntresses like you!"
A slight frown appeared on her face as she saw the indestructible man begin to charge at her, while the remaining three gangsters moved to surround her.
It looked like she found the people the other hero was lending their power to.
She grinned.
With a small spring to her step and a small help of her semblance, she easily jumped over the charging man, and positioned herself in such a way that all the gangsters were beneath her.
Now all she had to do was defeat them and learn who exactly gave them those powers.
The air swirled a little as she quickly spun in place before straining her arm, and throwing her spear directly into the group of gangsters. She might not have the idea, what sort of powers they received from the mysterious hero, but with no proper training, they shouldn't pose too big of a challenge to her.
Her weapon soared through the air almost as fast as any bullet, but before it could reach anyone, it was suddenly caught in a weird teal-coloured sphere that seemed to have somehow slowed it down.
"Don't think such attacks are going to get us!" One of the men, supposedly the one who stopped her spear, shouted.
She didn't bother responding, and instead she simply propelled herself forward as her feet touched the ground.
Her weapon already proved itself to be ineffective against at least one of her enemies, it made much more sense to abandon her weapon completely and fight with her fists in such situation, anyway.
After all, if her opponent could bounce off any attack launched against him, then ordinary grabs should still be a viable method of winning.
"Don't come any closer!" One of the gangsters fired a couple small wind bullets from his fingers in fear of her quick approach.
The grin didn't leave her face for a single moment, as she easily ducked under those projectiles, before sliding directly towards the indestructible gangster, that had bragged about their strength earlier.
"You!" The man shouted as he sung his arm widely.
Instead of simply dodging away from the attack, she chose to close onto the attacking man, and grab his swinging arm with both her arms in such a way he wouldn't be able to move it.
"W-Wha-?" The man asked in surprise.
With a quiet groan of effort, she swiftly shifted her whole body around, throwing the man she was holding directly into all the other three gangsters.
One of the gangsters tried to swat the flying man away with his own attack, but the indestructibility of the person she threw, made that efforts pointless, and all four of the gangsters quickly found themselves stuck in a pile of their bodies.
"Damn you!" One of the gangsters shouted in pain from the pile of bodies, and she chuckled in response.
The weird slowing field dissipated as its caster lost consciousness under the pressure of all the people laying on top of him, and Pyrrha's weapon fell down for her to catch.
She nodded her head.
It should be enough to take care of these guys for now.
With a kind expression on her face, she quickly looked around to look for the victim of the robbery, to ask them whether they were alright, but upon doing so she couldn't find anyone left aside from the four people she had just defeated.
They must have escaped during her battle.
Good, it meant they should be somewhere safe by now.
She turned towards the defeated gangsters.
It was a decent moment to try and get information about the other hero, she supposed. Any lead she could get on their identity, was an advantage she might need at some point in the future, after all.
Before she could get to them, however, she heard a loud projectile soaring towards her from behind.
Following nothing but her instinct, she immediately dodged to the side, away from the attack's path.
The projectile ended up hitting the ground just before the pile of four men she had defeated, not hurting anyone. It was obvious that whoever had just attacked her was an ally of those thugs.
She clicked her tongue in annoyance as she turned towards her mysterious attacker.
There, way behind her, on top of some destroyed building's remains, she noticed a young looking girls with mismatched hair and a cruel expression on her face.
Was that girl the hero who could grant powers onto others, or simply another one of their goons?
Whoever that girl was, it was beyond obvious that she was an enemy. As such, Pyrrha instantly turned her weapon into its riffle form, before unloading a couple of shots at the antagonistic girl.
Although such an attack wouldn't do much against a fellow hero, it should be more than enough to clue her in on whether the person she was fighting was actually a hero in the first place.
As the bullets flew through the air, she didn't notice the girl doing anything to intercept or dodge them, instead the mismatched haired girl merely stood in place unconcerned.
Just when she was about to frown in confusion at the girl's bizarre behaviour, her bullets managed to hit the target, and the girl shattered into countless glass shards in front of her eyes.
Pyrrha instantly became tense.
"An illusion?" She murmured before turning around in the opposite direction.
While doing so, she noticed a thin blade coming directly towards her from just below her eye-level, prompting an instinctive response of leaning back from her.
The blade came millimetres away from hitting her, and before she could regain her bearings or put some distance between herself and the enemy, she noticed two small whirlwinds of compressed air forming right in front of her.
It was another attack!
She gritted her teeth, and ducked down a little.
If her opponent wasn't willing to give her any opportunities to breathe, then she would simply have to make them herself.
With a subtle flick of her wrists, she transformed her weapon back into the spear form, before quickly grabbing it with both of her hands.
She took a single step forward.
The wind projectiles flew just above her head, grazing her hair.
As the young looking girl moved to stab her with the thin blade again, Pyrrha simply pushed her spear, blunt way forward, into the girl's stomach with all her strength.
It was enough to send the girl tumbling back.
Seeing a chance to strike, and knowing how aggressive her opponent was, she tried to capitalise on it and with her spear held with only one of her arms again, she thrust her weapon forward.
There was no possible way the girl before her could have been an illusion again, as she had just punched her back not a second ago, so she attacked with no hesitation.
To her absolute surprise, her spear didn't even touch her opponent, however.
Just as her weapon was about to hit the target, she saw the girl she was fighting disappear into a weird obscure mist, before reappearing a couple steps away, not a single moment later.
"What?!" She couldn't help but shout.
It was the third power she witnessed the mismatched haired girl utilise. Even if she assumed that one of those powers had been the girl's semblance, it still left her with two unexplained powers at her opponent's disposal.
Pyrrha tightened her grip on her weapon.
She was under the assumption that the mysterious power-granting hero, from Vale, was only able to give a single power to a single person. None of the four thugs she had defeated had more than one power, after all.
Did this mean she was fighting the mysterious hero herself, right now?
A subtle frown appeared on her face as she observed the now far more cautious girl in front of her carefully.
Or, were her assumptions simply incorrect?
Whatever it was, the mismatched haired girl appeared to have become tired of waiting for her to continue her assault, and decided to go on the offensive herself instead.
With a slight, devious, smile on her face, the young looking girl slowly raised one of her hands above her head, curled her fingers in place a little, before snapping them, and instantly disappearing from view.
Pyrrha jumped backwards in caution.
There was no way for her to tell whether the girl had just used her illusions to cloak herself, or if it was some sort of new power, she hadn't revealed to her, yet.
Luckily, it didn't take long for her to learn just what exactly the girl had done, as not a few seconds after the girl's disappearance, she noticed all the thugs she had defeated earlier vanish from the alley, one by one.
Not wanting to be left guessing, whether those gangsters were actually gone from their location, or if they just became invisible, she carefully kicked a single piece of rubble from underneath her feet, in the direction they used to be.
The piece of rubble rolled on the ground unobstructed.
She gulped.
It meant her opponent could teleport, quite possibly without any clear limitations, as well.
That ability, combined with the smaller girl's already impressive skill as a combatant, might have just become a tad bit too much for her to handle on her own.
A loud whooshing sound from above of something heavy rapidly falling directly at her, made Pyrrha instinctively tilt her head up, towards the sky, in search of danger.
When the thing she saw upon looking upwards was her opponent flying directly towards her surrounded by a violent hurricane, she didn't waste a single second before dashing away from the place of impact.
Her dash had been just a bit too slow to dodge all the damage, however.
The moment the mismatched haired girl landed on the ground, the hurricane around her exploded outwards in a violent fashion, causing untold damages to all the ruined building around, and making Pyrrha strain herself as she fought against the sudden air pressure.
When the wind finally subsided, and Pyrrha could see the girl she was fighting, charging at her with a bloodthirsty grin on her face, she could only sigh.
"Alright, I guess it's time to stop going easy on you people." She said before reaching for one of the rune-stones with her Guardians.
Although most of her strongest familiars were still recovering from their fights against Jaune, she should still be capable of defeating her current opponent with one of her less powerful spirits.
"Come help me defeat my foes, Gruwhund!" She shouted as the burning canine appeared from the rune-stone to help her.
Upon seeing her spirit, the mismatched haired girl initially reacted with sheer surprise, before, a literal moment later, that surprise quickly turned into a downright vengeful expression of bloodlust.
A frown appeared on Pyrrha's face.
What could that possibly mean?
(...)
Arriving in the city of Vale, the capital of the entire kingdom, would have usually made one feel excited, hopeful, and safe. However, for one Atlesian ex-Specialist, Ebi Clover, it only brought the feeling of dread.
It wasn't even because of the usual reasons anyone else might feel worried about visiting Vale, nowadays.
Of course, the great tragedy of Vale was a cause for concern to him, but not for the same reasons an ordinary person might have found it worrying. After all, no ordinary person was going into Vale with the thoughts of killing, the monsters responsible for all of that tragedy.
If he were to be perfectly honest with himself, he wasn't sure if he came here for that, either.
It was an easy thing to say that he was going to kill all the other heroes in this war, but actually doing that, even with his overwhelming power, might prove to be quite an issue, indeed.
One couldn't just effortlessly kill eleven different people dubbed as heroes, with the knowledge that would cause the destruction of entire worlds, and not hesitate to do it at least a little bit.
He knew, he certainly wasn't the type of person capable of doing that.
He also hoped none of the other heroes were, either.
As he passed through the entrance gate to Vale, he quickly shook his head to get rid of those unnecessary thoughts.
What was he trying to do by lowering his morale like that?
There was simply no way other heroes were willing to kill each other if they knew the stakes of this war. Not a single person who others could proudly refer to as a 'hero' would be capable of doing that.
They would probably rather join together to teach all those evil deities, who forced them to fight like that, a lesson.
He nodded his head confidently to reassure himself.
Although he failed to notice at in the moment, he had somehow managed to gather quite a bit of attention on himself. Whether it was because of something he was currently doing, or simply because he decided to actively visit Vale in such troubling times, there was no way to tell.
Even if he were to notice all the attention, he probably wouldn't try too hard at hiding away from it, however.
After all, he was a highly-public person wanted by Atlas, so there was no way he could stay hidden for long. He did want to avoid fighting against the poor soldiers general Ironwood tricked into joining their war, though.
Those people didn't deserve to die fighting for other people's conflicts.
"If you continue to stick out from the crowd like that, you'll surely get mugged by someone." A gruff voice coming from his left snapped him out of his thoughts.
He turned towards the direction the voice originated from to see a black haired man in a dusty long coat lazily sitting on one of the broken buildings. The stranger, with his rather lax attitude, looked almost as out of place in the destroyed city as he did.
It could mean the man was a hero like him, but he didn't want to assume anything, yet.
There wasn't any official rule prohibiting people from not feeling terrible in a dire situation, and he certainly didn't feel any feeling of danger from the man, like he did when he had met Coco.
Well, he supposed he could answer the man's warning with kindness.
"Thank you for the warning, kind stranger." He said with an easygoing grin. "However, I believe, I'm more than strong enough to deal with any would be mugger in this city. I'm an Atlas Specialist, you see."
The dusty man looked at him lazily, with one eye still closed.
"Oh, I don't doubt that for a single second, mister armoured warrior." The stranger said calmly before somewhat clumsily jumping off the building's ruins. "It isn't the muggers, I'm warning you about, however. "
His body became tense as he carefully reached for his belt.
"I see." He stated while backing off a little. "I suppose the person you're warning me about isn't you, right now, is it?"
The man looked at him with an unreadable expression on his face.
He shifted a little in place, ready to unleash all of his power at a moment's notice. There was no way, he was going to risk the lives of so many civilians around them by needlessly prolonging the fight.
If it was going to come to blows, he was prepared to end the fight in a single hit.
The stranger chuckled a little at his battle stance, before leaning back and stretching a little.
"Nah, I'm not going to fight you." The man waved his hand. "Certainly not, after all the hours I wasted by waiting for you to get here. Seriously, my contract might be willing to share all the necessary information, but getting the exact dates and hours out of the guy is like pulling teeth out of them."
He raised his eyebrow in confusion.
"Alright, what do you want then?" He asked.
"To offer an alliance." The stranger said.
"Why would I want an alliance with you?" He frowned.
Before he could receive any answer, a disturbingly loud explosion, no doubt originating from a battle between two heroes, echoed through the city.
The dusty man grinned.
"Because, we might end up needing it."
And cut!
The last hero is introduced, and it's Sienna Khann!
There's not going to be her file yet, as she didn't do anything substantial yet.
That's it for now, though.
See ya!