Reign of Steel

by MahinaFable

In a world threatened by Grimm of titanic scale, mankind designed enormous war machines to face them head-on: the infinitely modular Armored Cores! All his life, Jaune Arc wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father, the legendary pilot of the first Armored Core. When tragedy strikes, will he be able to live up to his family's legacy, and defend the people of Vale?

7. Inferno

A/N: You know, if you, dear reader, "prefer your own headcanon," as one anonymous reviewer put it, there is nothing in the world stopping you from posting your own mecha AU. Seriously! Go for it! I won't stop you - I don't own RWBY, I don't own Armored Core, I don't own squat.

In fact, if you find yourself thinking "I liked the premise of 'Reign of Steel,' but I don't like the direction the author took it," and then go and write and post your own RWBY mecha fanfic - and tell me about it, I'm not a damn psychic - I'll read it! I'll even make a shout-out to it in one of these author's notes, suggesting it for other people to read, just like I did for ClemPrime13's mecha story, By the Power of Our Hearts. By the Power of Our Hearts, available to read here at fanfiction - dot - net.

All that it'll cost you is some time and effort.

But don't get angry at me for not writing my story the way you would write yours. That's for you to do.

[/]

Vale's docks were always bustling with activity, irrespective of the time of night or day. That morning, with a crisp breeze in the air and a passenger liner coming in from Argus, the dock was particularly crowded with people milling around, waiting to see friends or loved ones coming in from Remnant's newest city. Argus had been built on the north coast of the continent of Anima, and represented a joint effort between the Kingdoms of Mistral and Atlas to expand safe urbanization beyond their respective capital cities. It was a lovely new city, and its opportunities had convinced Saphron Arc that it would be the ideal place for her to make her own way, out from under the shadow of her father.

She loved her father, of course, but the man could be...controlling, when he wanted to be. Emotionally manipulative, even, and over the strangest things. The worst part was how she was the only person who seemed to have seen it. The rest of her sisters thought that she was crazy, or just trying to get away with bad behavior, while her only brother, Jaune, had a bad case of hero worship for their father. At the same time, her mother had continually loomed over Saphron's personal life, insisting that her daughter do things "the proper way." Of course, to Isabelle Arc, "proper" meant "the way aristocrats in Old Mantle did things a hundred years ago," which drove Saph to distraction. She had married her girlfriend, Terra, when it was right for them, and no one else. All told, while Saphron loved her family, putting some space between herself and them had been the best thing for all involved. Still, Saphron was an Arc, and when word had reached her that her father had had a heart attack and nearly died, she was booked for the first passage available to her hometown.

Her wife, Terra, had even put in her leave from work early, to ensure that she could accompany her to Vale. While Terra was still in the early stages of her pregnancy - she had just the cutest little baby bump! - she was still a pregnant woman on an ocean crossing, and had endured significant discomfort just to ensure that she could support her wife in her family's time of need.

There weren't enough foot rubs in the world for Saphron to pay her wife back for what she had done for her, but she fully intended to try. They made quite a pair; Saphron was tall, willowy, and had the blonde hair that the Arc children had inherited from their mother. Meanwhile, Terra was shorter and rather mousey in appearance, with a deep tan complexion and hair that was so black that it almost shimmered blue.

Saphron grinned widely as she saw the oldest Arc sibling, her sister Viridian, who was looking for her in the crowd of disembarking passengers. When they were younger, they had all taken to dying their hair the color after which they were named - much to Saphron and Jaune's blonde vexation - but Viridian had dropped the practice some years ago, calling it 'childish.' Still, whether her hair was green or blonde, Saphron would recognize her big sis anywhere.

"Viridian!" She smiled broadly as she greeted her sister, embracing her warmly.

"It's good that you're here, Saph," Viridian said, once she stepped back from Saphron's embrace. "And it's nice to see you as well, Terra. Are you well? Do you need anything?" she asked, mindful of Terra's delicate condition.

Terra waved off her sister-in-law's concern. "Just a place to put my feet up. My ankles start to swell at the drop of a hat these days."

"I know that feeling," Viridian commiserated, remembering her own pregnancy woes. "I remember -"

She was interrupted by the sound of a klaxon blaring. "Attention - all civilians report to the emergency shelter. Repeat: All civilians report to the emergency shelter."

The three women shared a look. Grimm incursions were just a part of life. It was doubtful that anything would actually get close enough to the docks to injure any civilians, but every proper citizen of the Kingdoms knew that complying with evacuation orders and getting the hell out of the way made it easier for the Armored Core pilots to do their job. Fortunately, the Council had long ago invested in multiple, heavily-reinforced bunkers in major public locations, of which the docks very much qualified, and after a minute or so, the three women were safe within one. While there was seating within the bunkers, there were never quite enough for everyone, and so were highly-coveted. However, having a visibly-pregnant woman with them meant that Terra, at least, got a seat on one of the benches without any complaints. Saphron sat on the floor in front of her, offering up her shoulders for her wife to put her feet up and keep the swelling down, while Viridian sat next to her.

Just another day in Vale.

One enterprising soul, having invested in the latest Scroll on the market, the Atlesian one with the built-in projector, keyed up the local news feed and projected it onto one of the walls for people to watch. From the depths arose a quartet of large, bipedal lizards, their tall, dual row of bony dorsal spikes breaking the surface before the rest of their bulk. Zillas were a fairly common form of aquatic Grimm, looking like enormous, bipedal iguanas that had been mutated and twisted. The lead Zilla roared, a screeching sound like a rusty gate being slowly forced open, before a bullet to its boxy, oversized chin forcibly shut its mouth.

With it's hovercraft base zipping over the waves, Bartholomew Oobleck's Armored Core, Antiquity, was instantly recognizable. The veteran pilot wove deftly between the four Zilla Grimm, harassing them with handgun bullets and singeing their hides with gouts of flame from his flamethrower.

Inside the shelter, Saphron shook her head as she watched the fight. "It's so crazy to think that Jaune's one of them, now. Is he all right?"

Viridian nodded. "He's okay. Apparently, he's actually gone out on a couple of missions like this, though he hasn't gone without his Lance-Captain with him. Now that's a fine specimen of a man," she noted.

"Viridian! You're a married woman!" Terra gasped, scandalized.

"And there's nothing wrong with just looking!" protested the oldest Arc daughter.

The projection on the wall showed one of the Zillas rear back, its dorsal spikes glowing blue as it prepared to fire a beam of plasma towards both Antiquity and the city behind it. Ooblekc's Armored Core sideslipped around the blue-white beam, which was intercepted, long before it could endanger the city, by a reverse-legged Armored Core. The Zilla's breath attack was stopped cold by the oversized blue plasma shield of Anesidora, one of the newer Armored Cores in Beacon's roster. As soon as the Zilla's attack dissipated, Anesidora deactivated its shield and took off in a great vertical leap. Of course, where one saw Anesidora, its partner AC, Gianduja, was usually not far behind. In this case, it was right behind, and as soon as the reverse legs of Anesidora carried it out of the way, it opened fire with dual heavy gatling rifles, one in each arm.

"How has Dad taken not being out there fighting himself any more?" Saphron asked.

"That's…" Viridian shook her head. "If you'd asked me this time yesterday morning, I'd have said 'surprisingly well.' But something happened last night. Something strange. I think Mom and Dad are having a fight."

"A fight?" Saphron echoed blankly. "We're talking about the same Mom and Dad, right?"

"Sad to say, we are," the older sister said with a philosophical shrug. "It's the weirdest thing. Mom's...well, she hasn't exactly barricaded the door, but she's locked herself away in her room. She isn't letting anyone see her, not even little Violet, and Dad slept in his study last night. All that he would say about it was that we'd find out when Jaune visits today."

Saphron just stared incredulously at her sister. "That's just...weird," she finally said. "Do you think it has something to do with Jaune becoming a Beacon pilot?"

"I mean, what else could it be? Though it's strange that it's happening now." Viridian quirked her lip in thought. "Unless there was something Jaune and Dad were hiding from her, until Dad was recovered from his heart attack."

On the far wall, the reverse-legged Armored Core had taken out the last of the Zilla Grimm with a shot from a laser rifle that hit right between its eyes. The crowd of civilians waited with bated breath as the reptilian monster collapsed beneath the shallows, with Grimmsmoke rising from the waves a moment later.

"Attention, civilians," an announcement came over the loudspeaker in the bunker. "We have been given the all-clear. Please exit the shelter in an orderly manner. The Kingdom of Vale and the Armored Core pilots of Beacon thank you for your cooperation."

The gathered civilians gave a brief cheer for the Armored Core pilots that had summarily destroyed the Grimm well before they could harm the city or its inhabitants. With Terra's condition, the Arc sisters opted to wait for most of the people to file out before standing. A group of children, excited from the spectacle, were running around not far from where they sat.

"Nuh-uh!" An angry little rabbit Faunus girl was shouting at a human boy, one of the little bits of inevitable quarreling that arose whenever children spent any time together.

"I didn't say you couldn't play with us, I just said that you can't be a pilot too!" the boy tried to placate the angry little bunny girl, but she wasn't having it. "You just have to be the mechanic. Faunus keep them running and humans pilot, that's how it works!"

"That just shows that you're a stupid! The one with the shield is piloted by my auntie Velvet! She's a Faunus, just like me!"

The human canted his head curiously. "How does she fit her ears in the helmet?"

"How are you gonna fit a helmet when you've got a big stupid bolo head?!"

The children's argument was broken up just after that, with their mothers having finally found their wayward children. The angry bunny girl was taken in hand by a rather striking brunette, who listened to her daughter's complaints with a bemused expression on her face.

"Do you think there'll be children talking about Jaune like that one day?" Saphron asked, standing and helping her wife off of the bench.

"Given who our father is? Probably," replied Viridian. She sighed as the trio left the bunker behind and emerged back into the crisp morning air. "I'm glad that you're here," she repeated, smiling at her younger sister. "Whatever is going on, we should face it as a family."

[/]

A part of her really did enjoy just being Blake, Armored Core pilot and future savior of Menagerie. It was a...relief, of sorts, to set down her burdens, even just partially, and be just another teenage girl among other young people, fighting Grimm, training alongside her peers, and even, dare she say it, having fun with her team. She had a picture of the young pilots of Dragon Lance, taken during their impromptu ice cream excursion, framed on her wall, and it still made her smile to look at it. Her time at Beacon had taught her a great deal, and about more than just the direct operation of an Armored Core, than she had thought when she'd agreed to Director Ozpin's deal.

For one thing, she had plans involving seeking out talented educators, in the like of Lance-Captain Xiao Long, amongst her people, training them in AC piloting and tactics that she learned in Vale, and having them teach and lead others. The organization of a force of Armored Cores could be just as important as the individual talents of specific pilots, and building that organization would be crucial to ensuring the establishment of a safe and prosperous Kuo Kuana. Her own ability to pilot Gambol Shroud was incredibly important, yes, but she alone could only hold off the Grimm for so long. She certainly had no desire to hold them off alone for years on end.

If she could just get some of the pilfered mass-produced ACs - and their pilots - over to Menagerie, it would do so much more good there than wreaking havoc on one of the Kingdoms whose stability she and her mother sought to emulate. Of all of the decisions that she had made since leaving Menagerie, the one that she regretted the most was agreeing to discuss their next moves, following the disruption of the original mission, with Adam Taurus in private. Had they had their bitter argument in front of their men, could she have swayed them to her side? Even had she not, had they seen Adam draw his sidearm on their princess and force her to flee, she had to believe that they would have refused to follow him and take his orders.

Right?

Blake the Armored Core pilot might have had room for doubt within her. But Princess Blake Yen'Kali Sen'Neyra Stellanotte Belladonna - Blake, daughter of Kali, granddaughter of Neyra, Star of the Night - could not. Her people needed their princess, needed her to bring an end to Adam Taurus's renegade insurgency, and to do so in such a way that would secure a safe and prosperous future for all of them. Blake the pilot tended not to wear much in the way of makeup. Princess Blake painted her face and neck to create a perfectly smooth and unblemished visage that conveyed both youthful vitality and royal dignity. Blake would often let her long, midnight-black hair fall loosely around her shoulders in gentle ebon waves. Princess Blake carefully arranged her hair, her nimble and practiced fingers weaving it into a high and elaborate style that spoke to aristocratic elegance. Blake, when not in her flight suits, would prowl around in outfits not too dissimilar from her Valean peers; in the Dragon Lance ice cream photo, she wore a white and grey hooded sweatshirt with black denim pants, looking like any other young Faunus woman in Vale. Princess Blake carefully donned an elaborate gown of ruched and shimmering silk in dark indigo, which, beyond its square neckline and small shoulder puffs shaped to evoke floral imagery, was also intersewn with golden thread that caught the light as she moved and accentuated the bright gold of her eyes, a trait that she had inherited from her mother and grandmother. The bodice was tight, drawing in her waistline before flaring into a long, wide skirt, forming a perfect A-line.

It wasn't what Blake would have preferred to wear, but when she met with the Vale Council to discuss the White Fang insurgency, they couldn't look at just Blake the random cat Faunus. They needed to see a princess of her people, someone with the gravitas to negotiate on behalf of Menagerie. In a sense, her face wasn't hers anymore - for the duration of the crisis, her face was that of her people, and in that, she could not falter.

The Crown Princess of Menagerie gathered up her skirts and left her apartment within the Beacon tower. Underneath the persona, Blake quietly regretted having to leave regular Blake the pilot behind. She had enjoyed her time as just another pilot, and after today, she knew that her colleagues - would it be proper to call them her friends? - wouldn't look at her the same way again. Still, sacrifices needed to be made for the future of her people, and if the freedom of her little excursion were all that she would need to sacrifice before the resolution of the crisis, she would make it without a second thought and consider herself tremendously fortunate in the process.

She met Director Ozpin and the rest of Dragon Lance, the latter of whom looked, well, "surprised" wasn't quite a strong enough term, especially for Cardin. The large young man practically gaped like a fish at her royal appearance, which only deepened when the Director bowed politely to her. "Princess Blake," he greeted her. "Thank you for agreeing to meet with the Council once more."

"We should hope for a more productive meeting than our first, ill-aspected encounter with your Council," she said, her tone slightly chiding. Ozpin couldn't help but wince. When he had deployed a force of AC pilots, including Cardin Winchester, to intercept those responsible for the theft of the first run of mass-produced Armored Cores, he had expected some kind of terrorist organization, not a band of ragtag Menagerian nationals who, upon having been fed up with years of ignored and dismissed attempts to secure aid for the establishment of their city, went to steal the technology they needed to fend off the Grimm. He certainly hadn't expected the Crown Princess of Menagerie to find her way to Beacon, claiming that the renegade Adam Taurus had wrested control of the force from her, and was preparing to wage a campaign against Vale. She was a resource that could sway the insurgents away from Taurus's command, and he had been careful to keep her safe while having Taiyang teach her what he could about both piloting and commanding an AC force.

Princess Blake's first meeting with the Vale Council had been...well, one of the Councilmen had been so rude as to have said aloud that he had expected her to be wearing skins, with a bone through her nose, which typified the sort of disregard and disrespect with which the Kingdoms saw Menagerie. That particular embarrassment had also been one of the more jingoistic voices on the Council pushing for war against Atlas, and as such, would not be present at today's meeting, due to a fatal visit from Qrow Branwen.

Director Ozpin turned to address Dragon Lance. "Today's mission is rather different from your normal duties. You are to accompany the Crown Princess of Menagerie as she meets with the Vale Council." He waited for the various sounds of surprise from Blake's fellow pilots to die down before he resumed speaking. "Yes, she is a princess, and yes, both myself and Lance-Captain Xiao Long were aware of this. At any rate, you are to serve as Princess Blake's honor guard for this occasion. Upon entering the Council Chamber, you are to hang back and refrain from speaking unless I give you a direct order to speak. Are there any questions?" Upon seeing the flabbergasted young pilots just exchanging looks with one another, he decided that that was good enough. "Princess, if you will follow me, we have a car waiting for you."

"Thank you, Director," Princess Blake replied. She walked alongside the Director, though she paused for a moment to regard the absolutely flummoxed Cardin Winchester, who had neither spoken nor closed his mouth since she had made her appearance. She regarded him with a carefully-measured expression of amused disdain. "We have decided to forgive your crude insults against us, made as they were in ignorance and hurt." Princess Blake reached up and gently pushed his chin up. "Do try to keep your mouth closed today. We find that silence becomes you."

Cardin remained rooted in place, unable to tear his eyes from the princess as she swept by him. Had she always been so...so...well, he wasn't a poet, damn it! He was still trying to wrap his mind around the sudden shift from 'that Fang whore' to 'Blake' to 'stunning vision' that she had undergone in his mind. He was so distracted that he didn't come back to Remnant until he felt a sharp pain in his foot.

"Yeow!" he yelped in equal surprise and pain as Nora had stomped on his foot, hard. "What'd you do that for?" he demanded.

"Because nothing else was getting through!" the orange-haired girl huffed. "We tried calling your name, snapping fingers under your chin, but you were too busy staring at Princess Fancy-Britches over there to pay attention to me - us," she quickly corrected, shooting a glance at Lie Ren, who stood by her side as always.

Cardin knew enough to know that he was in trouble, but not enough to know how to get himself out of it. "Uh…"

"Oh, well said," Nora snarked, her tone bitter and a little hurt. "I'm sure she'll be impressed by that." She shook her head. "We need to go. There's a second car for us, which you'd have known if you weren't off daydreaming."

With nothing else to say - nothing he could say after having been so thoroughly busted - Cardin just fell in behind Nora as she stormed her way out of the lobby and towards the black van that was waiting for them.

He saw Arc on the verge of panic as he grabbed Pyrrha's shoulders. "Whatever happens, you cannot tell my mother that there's an actual princess here at Beacon," he demanded, eyes wide in terror. "Promise me!" he said, giving her a little shake.

"I promise, I promise!" Pyrrha shook him off. "Sheesh. What are you so worried about that for, anyway?"

"You don't know her," Arc replied, his tone haunted. "The matchmaking. Dear gods and Maidens, the matchmaking."

Next to him, Ruby Rose gave a little squeak of alarm, the first time she'd "spoken up" all morning.

Pyrrha smiled brilliantly at the younger girl before returning her attention to Jaune. "Don't worry, I won't say anything."

Arc visibly slumped in relief. "Good. That woman can be scary when she sets her mind to something."

Cardin dismissed the rest of their conversation as he followed Ren and Nora into the van. She took a window seat and stared out of it, arms crossed with a huff.

Whelp. Shit.

[/]

Adam frowned as he watched his team at work. They'd successfully disrupted the flow of metal into the city of Vale, but the mass-produced Armored Cores had taken a beating in the process. Two of the machines were destroyed outright, with their pilots killed in the opening missile salvo. The squad was able to salvage what they could from them to repair their own units, but it was slow going. Worse, neither of the two Beacon Armored Cores that they had destroyed had been all that notable. They needed to do better, much better, especially against the likes of veteran duelists, like Summer Rose and her Shooting Star.

He needed to keep up the pressure on Vale, but without overly-straining his forces before the city itself was vulnerable. He needed a softer target, but one that Vale simply couldn't ignore. To bring Vale to its knees, he needed to light the biggest fire the world had ever seen.

The fall of Vale would be heralded by a raging inferno, the all-consuming fires of justice. The ashes of the old order would nourish the seeds of the new world, a better world. All Adam needed to do was to find the best location to strike the match.

[/]

"It remains a simple exchange," Princess Blake said to the gathered members of the Vale Council. "Diplomatic recognition of the Kingdom of Menagerie and amnesty for all who lay down their arms upon our address to the White Fang, save for the renegade Adam Taurus. With the immediate crisis resolved, we may then resume negotiations for terms regarding the importation of Armored Core technology into Menagerie."

One of the Valean Councilors leaned forwards in his seat. "Do you truly believe that you can infiltrate our nation, steal Armored Core technology, and then run off back to your little island?"

"In a word: yes."

The Princess's statement caused an uproar among the Valean Council, while Blake stood unphased by the outburst.

The Councillor who had spoken earlier spoke up again once the furor had died down. "How dare you?" he practically spat at her.

"We dare from our desperation," she calmly replied, cool and serene in her demeanor. "We respectfully suggest that Vale learn from our example, and exercise a degree of flexibility in its doctrine."

"Princess Blake," another Councillor spoke up, putting his hand on his colleague's chest to forestall his outrage. "Suppose that we were to cooperate with your royalist faction in order to end this White Fang insurgency. Laudable a goal that may be, why would we bother with further dealings with a...let's be charitable and grant Menagerie the status of 'a nation.' That doesn't change the fact that it is a desperately impoverished nation of semi-nomadic tribes, with precious little to offer anyone. It certainly has nothing to trade equal to the value of even a single Armored Core, let alone a squad of them, inferior models though they may be."

The princess remained nonplussed. "We must express some degree of surprise that the Vale Council would adopt such a...short-sighted view of international geopolitics. Firstly, having five secure and prosperous Kingdoms instead of four is simply a gain for all, adding further resilience to the Alliance paradigm. Secondly, while we have been unable to establish permanent outposts to best make use of Menagerie's resources, particularly mineral wealth, that does not mean that we do not know where such deposits are. We -"

Blake was interrupted by the belligerent Councillor from earlier. "That's still no cause for us to grant such concessions to a small, weak band of tragic primitives huddling around their campfires to ward off the Grimm. If you really are as a princess to these people, then holding a gun to your head and demanding that the White Fang disarm on pain of your death should do the trick just as well. And as for your so-called mineral wealth - if it even exists - there is nothing stopping a modern fighting force from simply occupying Menagerie and extracting it. Why trade for what we can merely reach out and take?"

Her amber eyes narrowed dangerously. "One operative, Councillor. One proper operative from Menagerie successfully infiltrated Atlas, learned at the feet of the preeminent soldier of your entire alliance, made off with a state-of-the-art Armored Core, then trained auxiliaries to steal and pilot enough Armored Cores to operate the equivalent of a Lance. And that was when we had no quarrel with you beyond your refusal to heed our cries for aid. Currently, Adam Taurus is a criminal renegade, having gone far beyond the scope of the mission assigned to him by my mother, the Queen. Her Royal Majesty has no wish for war with Vale; imagine how that would change should your nation actively harm the Crown Princess. One renegade operative has pushed your backs to the wall. Consider, if you can, entire squads of such saboteurs, running amuck with the fury of blood vendetta."

"That's a bluff."

"We invite you to test that notion." Princess Blake shook her head. "And as for delusions of imperial conquest? You can scarcely secure your own nation when under siege from Grimm and a solitary renegade, and you think you will occupy Menagerie? You would need to scout out those resources for yourselves, commit to building the infrastructure to exploit it, and send young men and women across the world in a mission of blatant imperial conquest. Meanwhile, you would have the unenviable task of explaining to the populace why, exactly, their sons and daughters must go to attack a small island nation when it had come to you with an offer of treaties and trade, like civilized people." Her tone was sharp and biting as she emphasized the term 'civilized,' stressing the role reversal between the supposedly civilized Valeans and the assumed barbarism of the nomads of Menagerie. "This is to say nothing of how your Faunus population would react. Citizens they may be, but it would be a hard sell to explain to them why Vacuo, Atlas, and Mistral are worth allying with, but the world's sole Faunus-majority nation is not."

"Our Faunus citizens are loyal to their Kingdom."

"An assurance we should find difficult to accept on faith, given that there are none here represented on your Council to speak on their behalf."

Blake pressed on, viciously driving her point deeper."But we can assure you that your dreams of imperial occupation would swiftly turn to a nightmare. We have neither walls nor Armored Cores to see to our security. We imbibe the doctrine of guerrilla warfare with our mother's milk. Subterfuge and fluid elusiveness are our way of life, as natural to us as breathing. Our warriors charge colossal Grimm from atop horses to ensure that the tribe itself survives. We wage war against marauding invading giants every day. What's one more? Particularly since all that your bringing war machines to Menagerie would accomplish would be to save us the trouble of shipping them there ourselves. So should you really wish to put your imperialist ambitions to the test, Councillor, we invite you to roll that dice. But let not one say that we never warned you of the consequences."

She smiled coldly, dropping into a curtsey that was somehow mocking in its perfection. "Good day, ladies and gentlemen of the Council. You have our terms. Depending on your course of action, the White Fang insurgency will either be a brief, failed assault from a criminal terrorist, or the opening shots in a bloody, cruel, and above all, pointless war. We stand ready to resume our negotiations, particularly once less...savage voices have prevailed." With that she gathered up her skirts and calmly strode from the Council chamber. At a nod from Director Ozpin, the assorted pilots of Dragon Lance fell in behind her, ostensibly to protect her person, but also in an unmistakable display of the Director's inclination to treat her as a respected dignitary.

At the head of the procession, Princess Blake Yen'Kali Sen'Narya Stellanotte Belladonna, Crown Princess of Menagerie, strode with purpose. If none could see the turmoil and anguish behind her royal masque, all the better. She certainly had not wished to make such threats to the lovely city of Vale and its warm, friendly people, but in the face of such threatening posturing from a member of Vale's governing body, what else was she to do?

Rarely had her royal burden weighed on her so heavily.

[/]

It was strange, just how the impossibly insane could come to seem normal. Mercury was keeping a wary eye out over Tyrian, they were inside a Grimm, Tyrian was cackling at jokes that only he could hear, they were inside a Grimm, Cinder was being a horrendous gutterslut, and oh right, they were inside a Grimm!

Emerald wasn't sure which one of them had actually lost their mind, Mercury or herself. The entire, impossible scenario just felt surreal. The interior space of the Grimm was just somehow, fundamentally wrong, a painful-looking infusion of infected-looking organic tissues with bizarre machinery and metal supports that bent at odd angles. If Emerald focused too deeply on her surroundings, the bizarre, inhuman designs started to cause an ache behind her eyes, and as a result, she spent a great deal of time inside the cockpit of her stolen Armored Core, seeking solace in the more understandable, sane environment inside her mech. Ultimately, she had to concede that she just didn't have that wild an imagination, to come up with even half of this crazy shit. So yes, she was forced to come to terms with the fact that she most likely was not, in fact, within the thrall of a multi-day long delusion that included the tactile sensation of placing her hand against the cool, oily flesh of the Grimm, something she'd only done once.

Oh gods. This was real.

The worst part was the realization of what her situation implied. They were inside a Grimm, a Grimm that had, thus far, been entirely docile towards them. A Grimm that had clearly been modified by human beings, albeit deeply disturbed and twisted ones. Someone could control Grimm, and the only one that Emerald could think of who could fit that bill was the mysterious "Queen" that Tyrian raved about. Well, bringing this sort of monstrous firepower to the table would enforce that Queen's claim to rule with a fuckin' quickness. After all, Emerald rather doubted that the big, fuckoff cannons grafted to the Grimm - Cinder called it "the Midnight Titan" - were there to fire rainbows and the power of friendship at people.

Honestly, the realization that Tyrian was right in proclaiming that he served a mighty and powerful queen was nearly enough to finish off Emerald's fraying psyche right then and there.

She needed to get away, even if it was just for a moment. So she had gone to Cinder and endured her cruel mocking upon telling her that she just needed some air. Cinder had had Mercury take her down to the ground in his Armored Core, Talaria - clearly not trusting Em to resist the urge to flee in Fevered - and had given her leave to wander outside for a half an hour. The sick light in her eyes as she'd granted her such a favor had Emerald worried about what price she might try to extract from her in the future.

Emerald had never considered herself to be a nature-lover in any sense of the term - Mantle was, after all, the most heavily-urbanized place in the world - but even a short time aboard the Midnight Titan had altered her. One never appreciated the natural world quite the same after having stayed in the sterile confines of the very antithesis of life. She reveled in the feeling of grass under her bare feet, having taken her boots off to feel the sensation. Emerald could hear crickets in the distance, and the singing of birds amidst the trees. Upon finding a small stream, she sat on the bank to soak her feet in the cool, rushing water. The occasional tiny fish would swim by, largely ignoring the obstruction, while, after a moment or two in sitting in silence, Emerald saw a pair of deer emerge from the trees on the far bank to drink.

The sheer relief of her momentary escape struck her, soon followed by the realization that it was merely a temporary reprieve, and that she would have to return to the inside of that awful monster as Cinder and Tyrian prepared it to destroy Vale. She was trapped, strapped to the side of a streaking rocket, and Mercury, the man she loved, had been the one to tie her to it. A tear rolled down her cheek, then another, and then Emerald was sobbing helplessly into her hands.

"It seems like you could use a hand."

She yelped and leapt to her feet, almost pitching forward into the stream at the sudden sound of a man's raspy voice speaking to her from above and behind her. Spinning around, she saw a tall, lanky man, in his late thirties or early forties, with dark hair and rugged stubble. He was sitting casually in the branches of one of the trees behind her, legs extended and hands behind his head as though he'd been relaxing himself.

"Who are you?" demanded Emerald. "Why are you here?"

"Well Minty, I'm here because a giant fuckin' Grimm like that kinda attracts attention. As for who I am, well, I'm just one of the many, many people who have a vested interest in keeping that thing from wiping out Vale."

Emerald froze. On the one hand, this man could be a danger to her, and more importantly, to Mercury. On the other, he could also be the way out that she was so desperately looking for.

"Ah, that's the look," the man replied, an easy grin on his face. "The look of someone who knows that they need to cut a deal, but hasn't quite come to terms with that yet."

"How do you know?" she spat, not wanting to admit that he was right. "I could be just fine and dandy with where I'm at."

He just looked at her, and she felt herself flush with embarrassment from just how childish that sounded.

"So, lemme see if my guesses were on the money about you," the man said. "You're here in stolen Armored Cores. You're the brains, your silver-haired boyfriend is the muscle. Something went wrong, and I'm guessing he ganked somebody - possibly lots of somebodies. That guy's just looking for an excuse to kill someone. You can see it in his eyes, in his body language. Now you feel trapped, because you're accomplice to murder, and while you might be a thief, you're not a hardened killer. Don't even bother denying it - I know a killer when I see one, and you're not that at all. So now everything is spiralling out of your control, and you've been drafted into a war of conquest you sure as hell don't want to be a part of. Am I on the money?"

Emerald was quiet for a long moment. "...You're very observant," she finally muttered.

"I'm a spy. Observing's kind of my job."

"All right then, mister super-spy. How are you supposed to help?"

The man grinned. "Think of it as a mutually-beneficial business exchange. I need information on the big scary monster over yonder. Anything we can find out about it can help us fight it, and that can save a lot of lives. And in exchange, well, I've got a lot of pull in Vale. A word from me that you were crucial to the success of my mission, and your criminal history is gone. You could start a new life, free and clear and in the good graces of the Director of Beacon himself. You're just not going to find a better offer anywhere else."

"Oh?" Emerald stared down at her bare feet as she sat back down on the bank of the stream, slipping them back into the water. "Tyrian says that his Queen rewards her servants well, and she's got, as you said, 'the big scary monster over yonder.' Isn't that the safer bet?"

"Maybe," the spy admitted. "But let's say that she wins. Stomps Vale flat, goes on to trash everyone everwhere else too. What kind of a world is that to live in? Whatever people will be left - and that would be damn few - would be herded into facilities just like that Grimm you've been in now. I don't think you need me to tell you just how unpleasant that is. It'd be a world where the only joy is sadistic, the only laughter is cruel, or mad, and where everything that lives is twisted to her will."

Despite herself, Emerald shuddered, drawing her feet back out of the water and hugging her arms tightly around herself before she realized what she was doing. She stared at the man in the tree, who was gazing calmly at her with reddish-brown eyes. "...It isn't finished yet," she finally said.

"What?"

"Cinder calls it the Midnight Titan," she continued. "She controls it from her weird AC that's in its head. The reason we haven't moved out yet is because it isn't done yet. I asked her, and she said that there are...pools or something under its feet, and that it makes the armor. The hide on its legs isn't all the way built yet, and she's waiting for it to be thicker before we move on Vale."

He nodded. "That's good. That's very good."

"I can get you more," she said. "Just...wait for me to come back out here, and I'll have more for you. You're sure they won't see you?"

His grin was back. "You didn't, and you're the sneakiest one I've seen here."

"Right." She stood. "I...don't know if I can break away before the attack," she said. "But if I do this for you, you'd better make good. My name is Emerald Sustrai."

He nodded. "Qrow Branwen."

"I'll remember the name."

"You'd be surprised the doors it can open."

Emerald looked back to the Midnight Titan. "Right. I need to get back. I'll see you soon." She turned back around, only to find that Qrow had somehow vanished from the tree in which he'd been sitting.

"Fuck. He is good."

She steeled herself for the return trip back to the Grimm. Back to Cinder.

Emerald stopped to put her boots back on before hailing Mercury to come pick her back up. She climbed up the rope ladder that Mercury had left for her, sitting comfortably on the Core, right by the entry hatch for the cockpit, holding on as he gently worked the boosters on his stolen machine to smoothly ascend to the entry hatch grafted into the side of the Titan. After the Armored Core had been secured into its gantry, Emerald slid down to the steel walkway, waiting for Mercury to emerge.

"Hey, babe. Have fun on your nature walk?"

She forced herself to smile at him as though nothing was wrong. "I did. I was thinking, once we've run away together, I'd like to have a garden of my own. A little piece of nature to escape to, you know?"

He shrugged. "A little piece? Why so small? You could have the entire forest if you want. There won't be anyone else around to say otherwise."

Emerald giggled as she surreptitiously triggered a software program on her Scroll while the couple descended the gantry. It sent out a signal that latched an 'anchor' to the electronic computer of the strange Armored Core embedded within the Midnight Titan's skull. She just needed one more anchor, and she could triangulate with her Scroll and steal what she needed to give to Qrow. But for that, she needed to be in close proximity to Cinder's Scroll, and to maintain extended contact for her program to 'sweep' traces clean in her wake.

"Well, it might be worth keeping some people around," she teased, as though they were an ordinary couple discussing what houseplants to keep around instead of a pair of international criminals weighing the benefits of a total extinction versus "merely" a near-total genocide. "Like Cinder for instance."

"Yeah, she mentioned wanting to see you when you got back," he said. "Sounds like a fun time. You want me to join in?"

"Not this time, babe," she said, giving him a little kiss. "Just gonna test the waters first."

"All right, have fun." Mercury leaned down to kiss her again as they stopped in front of their cabin. "Let me know if she's any good."

"Will do."

Leaving Mercury in their room, Emerald pressed on to Cinder's cabin. She took out her Scroll, setting her program to start, then pocketing it once more before knocking on her door.

"Emerald," the raven-haired vixen purred. "I trust you enjoyed yourself?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Emerald, averting her eyes to play up the role of the submissive pet that she just knew that she wanted. "Would you allow me to express my...gratitude?"

Cinder greedily reached for her, grabbing her roughly on the hip and pulling her into her cabin. "I thought you'd never ask, my little whore."

An hour later, Emerald left Cinder's cabin, wincing at the ache. The sadistic bitch had not been gentle, and the only pleasure that she seemed to derive came from wrenching pained gasps and muffled shrieks from her. Still, Emerald had kept her distracted long enough that she never had the opportunity to notice that her Scroll had silently latched onto hers - and had, apparently, obliterated some kind of virus that Cinder had had on it that tried to counter-infect her system - and made off with all sorts of technical data regarding the Midnight Titan and the strange AC that made up the command and control module. Then the 'clean sweep' had erased all traces of her intrusion into the system before de-linking the three systems.

Mercury was asleep in their bed when Emerald entered their cabin. She slipped into their tiny, cramped shower - she didn't know how a Grimm had plumbing, and she didn't want to know - and quickly scrubbed the blood from between her legs. While sending Mercury on a berserk fury to slaughter that bitch would be cathartic as all get-out, she simply couldn't take the risk that the Grimm itself would somehow attack or retaliate. That would be a fight that even Mercury couldn't win. As such, she needed to erase all signs of Cinder's particular tastes.

She curled up next to Mercury, switching off the lamp. In the darkness, she could almost pretend that this was normal.

[/]

"So. Blake's a literal, actual princess. Who would've guessed?"

Jaune looked over at his sister as they ambled their way towards the Arc family estate. "It's always the quiet ones, I guess," he answered with a philosophical shrug.

"You know, you missed out. 'Prince Jaune of Menagerie' has the ring to it, don't you think?"

He sighed. "You know, years from now, when they're asking me questions about the world-famous Pyrrha Nikos, I'll have to tell them the truth. That underneath the sweet and innocent exterior, Pyrrha Nikos is an absolute troll."

She stuck her tongue out at him. "Although, Blake did have her eye on you, you know."

Jaune scoffed. "What? When?"

"Remember the first time the girls all saw you dancing ballet?" She rolled her eyes at her brother's oblivious look. "Jaune, she practically shoved her breasts in her face as she asked you about gymnastics."

"Oh! That was the first day Ruby and I worked on Crocea Mors," Jaune finally remembered. "I remember I was all worried about stinking up the place when we got to work and…" he trailed off as he saw Pyrrha giggle into her hand. "What?"

"You. Have it so bad," she teased.

"What? No I don't," protested Jaune.

"Jaune," she fixed him with a look. "I just mentioned that the beautiful and alluring princess of Menagerie shoved her breasts in your face, and your immediate reaction is to remember how you felt before meeting with Ruby later that same day. Which was the only way you could even recall those events, because you didn't even notice the aforementioned beautiful and alluring princess shoving her breasts in your face."

Jaune had the good grace to blush. "...I may like her," he finally conceded.

"Uh-huh."

"...I may like her a lot."

"Almost there. You can do it!"

He shook his head. "Speaking of almost there, we're almost there. Are you ready?"

Pyrrha sighed, the mirthful smile fading. "Well, it was nice while it lasted. Are you ready?"

"Yeah. You might have to keep it under wraps for Vale, but our family deserves the truth." Jaune had disagreed with the decision to keep Pyrrha's paternity and their father's misdeeds from the public, wanting instead to trust the people of Vale to react in a mature and levelheaded fashion. While Pyrrha had understood his perspective, she had insisted that they needed to trust Summer Rose's judgement, born as it was from her greater experience in protecting Vale from the Grimm. Neither sibling had come away entirely convinced of the other's point of view, but in the end, Pyrrha found even that to be comforting, in a way. It showed her that she could disagree with her brother without him cutting her loose. Her relationship with him didn't depend on her being in lockstep with his perspective.

"Hey." He put his hand on her shoulder, rousing her from her musings. "It's going to be okay."

"Yeah. Thanks, Jaune."

He rang the doorbell and stepped back. A moment later, the door opened, revealing, to his great surprise, his missing sister, Saphron. She blinked in visible shock at how his appearance had changed since she had struck out for Argus. "Jaune!"

"Hi, Saph." He embraced his sister. "It's been a while, hasn't it?"

"I'll say," she teased, stepping back to get a good look at him. "You've grown so tall! When I left, you were just this skinny, gangly brat with bad acne. Now look at you!"

"Aw, Saph." Jaune shook his head ruefully.

"And who's this?" she asked, taking in Pyrrha.

"Um, hello," Pyrrha waved sheepishly. "I'm Pyrrha."

"I'm sure you are," replied Saphron, openly eyeing her up and down. "The others mentioned you were talking about some cute redhead, and I gotta say: nice." As Jaune and Pyrrha blanched, Saphron held out her fist for her brother to bump, only to cant her head in puzzlement as he just crossed his arms.

"Right. Well, this is awkward," he said. Jaune sighed, looking up to the sky and running his hand through his hair, a gesture he'd inherited from his father. "Before we go any further, I just wanted to tell you that you were right, Saph. About everything, and I should have listened to what you were trying to tell us. Dad really was trying to control us, and he was doing that because he has...or had, things to hide. And one of them is Pyrrha here."

"Hello again," Pyrrha stepped away from Jaune to let Saphron get a better look at her. "I'm...well, I'm your half-sister, Pyrrha."

Saphron's jaw dropped. She looked from Pyrrha to Jaune, an expression of pure astonishment on her face.

"It's true," he said, his face practically carved from stone. "Beacon did DNA tests, and Dad himself admitted it a week ago."

"Oh fuck," Saphron blurted out.

"About sums it up," agreed Jaune.

"Oh, fuck," she repeated, horror dawning on her face as it sank in to her how young Pyrrha was, and what that meant for her parents.

"It's worse than that," Jaune said, his tone grim. He interrupted Saphron before she could swear again. "Yes, we get it."

"Oh. Uh, right," she flushed at having had her foul mouth gently corrected by her younger brother. Then she realized how her repeated obscenities could come across to the tall redhead standing awkwardly next to Jaune. "Er, sorry," she apologized, awkwardly rubbing the back of her head. "I'm sure you're a sweet girl and all, it's just...you know."

"Oh fuck?" Pyrrha helpfully offered, a rueful little smile on her face. Beside her, Jaune just let out a long-suffering sigh.

"Yeah, that," Saphron agreed. "I guess that's the big deal that caused Mom and Dad to have their big fight last night."

"A fight?" echoed Jaune. "How bad was it?"

"Well, Mom kicked Dad out of their bedroom, and pretty much barricaded herself inside. The rest of us have been taking shifts trying to talk her into coming out, but so far none of us have had much success. I guess you'll be giving it a shot?"

"You guess right," Jaune nodded. "So, I'm sure you can understand why this is a big deal. Just be prepared for some craziness, Saph. Did Terra come with you?"

"She did."

"I'm glad that she's here for you, but...there's gonna be some yelling, I bet. Are she and the baby going to be okay?"

"They should be...but maybe I should help her upstairs all the same."

"That might be for the best." Jaune clapped his sister on the shoulder as Saphron turned to see to her wife. "Well, that's one down, six more to go," he said to Pyrrha as he led her inside the Arc family home. "That wasn't so bad, right? Well, except for the part where she assumed that we were a thing."

Pyrrha could only shake her head. "Honestly Jaune, have you never taken a girl home before?"

He coughed into his fist, hoping to avoid answering the question before they entered the living room. Five of their six non-Saphron sisters, the younger four plus Cerulea, were gathered in the living room, seated on various sofas and chairs. A chorus of casual, if pleased, greetings met him, with one more from the stairway as Viridian came downstairs to say hello to her little brother.

"Hey, everyone," Jaune began. "So, this is Pyrrha."

"Hello," she politely waved. "I'm so happy to meet you all."

"She's an Armored Core pilot from Beacon, just like me. There's...well, there are some complicated things that we're going to have to talk about today. Where's Dad?"

"He's in his study," Viridian answered. "What's all this about?"

"Hey!" Rouge spoke up, surprising them all. "Pyrrha looks like me!"

Jaune looked at his oldest younger sister and did a double-take. With her hair dyed red, the fifteen-year old Rouge did look like a slightly shorter, blue-eyed Pyrrha. There were still some differences from being half-sisters, of course - Rouge had her mother's chin, while Pyrrha had the Arc chin played straight - but Pyrrha and Rouge looked more like sisters then Ruby and Yang did. Jaune didn't know why he hadn't made the connection before, but with Pyrrha and her younger half-sister in the same room at the same time, the resemblance was impossible to miss.

Cerulea caught on to the implications first, her hands rising to her mouth. "Oh my gods."

"What is it?" Viridian raised an eyebrow at her younger sister's suddenly ashen face. "You haven't gone back to not eating, have you?"

"Viridian," hissed Cerulea, her tone low and urgent. "She looks like Rouge."

As Viridian realized what her sister was trying to tell her, Jaune put his hand on Pyrrha's shoulder.

"But seriously," Rouge began again, looking from her strange new green-eyed doppelganger to her older siblings. "Why does she look like me?"

"So. You've come."

The room fell silent as Gil Arc strode into the living room. He locked eyes with Jaune, who just gazed steadily back at him. After a moment, Gil just sighed, sitting heavily in his chair and running his hand through his hair. "Would you be so good," he asked his only son, "to go upstairs and retrieve Saphron and your mother? The entire family should be here for this."

Jaune didn't move from Pyrrha's side. "Will she be okay on her own?" he demanded, crossing his arms and jutting his chin up slightly towards his father. The younger girls, Rouge, Noir, Lamera, and Violet, gasped in shock, firstly that their father had asked Jaune instead of ordering him, but moreso that Jaune had challenged him, his tone openly suspicious.

"What good would that do me now? If they haven't already seen it, they will soon enough."

Cerulea gasped, her hand over her mouth once more. "Oh my gods…"

Violet, the youngest of the Arc children, looked back and forth at her older siblings and her father. "What's going on?"

"Don't worry," Jaune told her, trying to be reassuring. "Things will be a little rough for a while, but everything will be all right. I promise."

Pyrrha gave her brother a brave smile. "You should go. I'll be okay."

He nodded, then looked to his older sisters, Viridian and Cerulea. "Be kind to her," he said, half-ordering and half-pleading with them. "None of this is her fault." With that, he turned and made his way up the stairway. He found Saphron in the hall leading to their parents' bedroom, where she was talking to her mother through the locked door.

"Jaune's here," she announced.

After a moment, Isabelle's muffled voice came through the door. "He doesn't need me. No one does."

Jaune shared a glance with Saph. "That's not true," he said. "I'll always need my mom. And the younger girls really need you right now. Pyrrha, she looks a lot like Rouge, and the girls could need their mom more than ever."

"...You brought her here?"

"I did."

A moment later, the door swung open, revealing Isabelle Arc. Her steel-gray hair was done up in a severe bun, and she wore a loose, black dress. Her eyes were rimmed red, and it was obvious that she'd been spending most of her time since her husband's confession weeping.

"Aw, Mom…" Jaune pulled her into a tight hug, Isabelle standing still and stiff in his embrace. "Mom?"

The Arc matriarch drew herself up, gathering what stoic dignity she could around herself like a cloak to ward off the cold. "Jaune. Saphron." she said, acknowledging her son and daughter with a nod. "Very well, children. Let us see what your father has done."

Jaune and Saphron fell in step behind their mother out of force of lifelong habit, descending the stairway. When she laid eyes on Pyrrha, Isabelle couldn't help but let out a sharp, choked gasp. She strode over to the teenage girl, reaching out to cup her face with shaking hands. Despite her husband's confession, a part of her had hoped against hope that his words were somehow a mistake, a tragic compounding of errors, but now, with the girl before her, she knew that they had been true. Her chin was all Gil's, along with the shape of her ears. She looked distressingly-similar to Rouge, actually. But the differences were what drove an icy stake into Isabelle's heart. The girl's eyes, beyond their startling emerald green shade, were also of an entirely different shape, one shared by neither Gil nor herself. The tip of her nose was shaped differently as well. A tear rolled down her cheek as she took in the mixture of her husband's features combined with a stranger's.

"Whose child is this?" she whispered. "Whose child is this?"

"Mom!"

Isabelle blinked at her son's interjection, feeling his son's strong hand on her arm, pulling her hands away from the girl's face. She realized, with a start, that somewhere along the line, her grip on the child had turned white-knuckled with how hard she was grasping her face, the girl visibly struggling to keep from crying out at the painful treatment. With a gasp, she forced her fingers to open, fully releasing the girl, who took an involuntary step back from her.

"I'm...I'm sorry," she said. "Who is your mother?"

Pyrrha swallowed, rubbing the side of her face, where red marks in her skin from Isabelle's grasp were visible. "Her name is Ceres Nikos, ma'am. Or...was. She died two years ago, fighting the renegade Armored Cores at Mountain Glenn."

Isabelle went as still as the grave. "Renegade Armored Cores?" she echoed.

"Y-yes, ma'am," Pyrrha answered, confused that the family of an Armored Core pilot wouldn't have at least heard of the White Fang insurgency. "The ones that the White Fang stole? They ended up in a vicious fight with the Beacon Armored Cores and broke a cease-fire during a Grimm attack. They were caught between the Grimm on one side and the White Fang on the other, before Captain Xiao Long led the breakout. A lot of pilots died, and...my mother was one of them."

The Arc matriarch was silent for a long while. "Jaune?"

"Mom?"

"Would you be so good as to take your half-sister to one of the sofas? I'm afraid I must scream at your father, and I should hate to frighten the poor child more than I already have."

Jaune scrambled to gather up Pyrrha and lead her to one of the couches along the wall. Isabelle turned her head to her husband so fast that Jaune was a little worried that she'd hurt her neck. "Gil." Her tone was positively glacial. "A little duelling,' you said. 'An exercise in vanity for young pilots,' you said. A lie. Another lie. You enlisted our son into a war, and I have to find out from your bastard daughter?!"

From behind her, Pyrrha winced at the phrase 'bastard.'

"What's a bastard?" Noir asked.

"It means that your father betrayed me," answered Isabelle, her wrathful gaze boring into her husband. "He broke his marriage vows and had an affair with another woman, and Pyrrha is the result of that."

"...But how can he do that if he's married to you?" Violet asked. "An Arc never goes back on his word…right?"

"It seems that that saying has been somewhat overstated."

The younger daughters were quiet for a long moment before Lamera burst into tears. When she went, Rouge soon followed, and then Violet as it finally hit her what all of that meant. Gil winced at the sound of his youngest daughters crying, slowly rising to his feet. He glared at Jaune and Pyrrha. "Look at what you've done," he chided them. "I hope that it was worth it."

Saphron, who had been silently watching the proceedings from the sidelines, was having none of that. "Don't blame Jaune for what you did!" she snapped. "If he hadn't gone to Beacon, we wouldn't have known about any of this, would we?"

"Not to mention Jaune training to fight other people," Viridian added, backing up her sister. "Was that ever going to come up if he hadn't called this meeting to tell everyone everything?"

"Pyrrha looks to be around Jaune's age. How long has this been going on, Dad? Your entire marriage?" Cerulea glared at him as she struggled to console her weeping younger sisters.

In retrospect, Gil didn't know why he was surprised to find his eldest daughters wolfpacking on him. He had, after all, been the one to teach them to band together to protect their younger siblings. Saphron, especially, had always been the most fierce of his children, and had had some bones to pick regarding how he chose to run his family long before this business with Pyrrha had ever arisen.

"Are there other kids of yours out there?"

A heavy silence fell over the room at Saphron's question - even the children stopped crying - and all eyes turned back to Gil. He ran a hand through his hair. "...Pyrrha is the only one who has come forward," he began, drawing a cacophony of protests from the older daughters.

"How many?"

The Arc daughters fell quiet once more as their mother's voice cracked through the room like a whip. "How many women?"

Jaune and Pyrrha shared a glance as the silence dragged on, Gil squirming under the gaze of his wife. Before Jaune knew it, he was speaking. "Beacon is conducting an investigation," he said. "Pyrrha's mother was eighteen when she was born. I can't name any names, but we know of a woman who was seventeen at the time, twenty years ago, and another has stepped forward to tell of an affair fifteen years ago. That's just in Vale, though."

"Actually, my mother was in Mantle at the time," Pyrrha corrected him. "We didn't move here until a few years before Mountain Glenn. It's why the Director expanded the investigation to the other three Kingdoms."

Gil swallowed, then walked over to Isabelle. If the matronly woman looked in rough shape before, she looked positively devastated after hearing the full extent of her husband's misdeeds. Gil tentatively reached out to her. "I know this looks bad, but -"

"Don't touch me." She slapped his hand away.

"Isabelle…"

"Get out."

He blinked. "What?"

"Get. Out."

Jaune slowly stood. Each step towards his mother weighed on him as if someone had parked Crocea Mors right on his chest. Still, he pressed on, one heavy step after another, until he flanked his mother. "I think it's time for you to go, Dad."

The old man looked around the room, at the absolute emotional devastation wreaked on his wife and children. "And so it is." He turned and left for the front door, stopping to pick up a suitcase that he'd left nearby. Looking over them all, he tried to find the words.

Nothing came to him. He left in silence.

"Jaune," Isabelle said to her son. "Would you help your old mother back to her room. I need to sit down."

"Sure thing," he said, offering her his arm to steady herself on. As they passed the sofa where Pyrrha sat, Isabelle stopped.

"Tell me...what is it that you wanted, girl?" she asked.

"At first, I wanted to know my father, ma'am." answered Pyrrha. "Or, at least, to give him the chance to...well, to accept me, or reject me, or just to know that I existed. Then Jaune came into the picture, and…" Pyrrha wiped a tear from her eye. "Ma'am, I make a good living as a pilot. I never needed any money. Beacon's investigation has to be kept under wraps, so I can never be publicly acknowledged as Gil Arc's daughter. All that I wanted was a family. To know my brother and all my sisters, to let them know me...if that's what they want."

Isabelle was quiet for a long moment. Finally, she sighed. "You will understand, I am sure, that I simply cannot bear to look upon you, to see my husband's features mixed with those of another woman."

"Mom -" Jaune began, until his mother held a hand up to signal for him to let her finish.

"Perhaps that will change someday. But not today."

"I understand, ma'am." Pyrrha began to rise, only for Isabelle to hold her hand out to halt her.

"Stay. If your half-siblings wish to get to know you, then I will not interfere."

Pyrrha stared at her. "I...thank you, ma'am."

Without further acknowledgement, Isabelle nodded to her son, and Jaune began helping her back up the stairs. Pyrrha let out a breath that she hadn't even known she'd been holding. Jaune's mother could be scary...but then, Pyrrha supposed that she had met her at a bad time, to say the very least. Given that she'd expected to be driven from the Arc house alongside her father, being allowed to stay and introduce herself to her sisters was a better outcome than she could have hoped for. Of those sisters, Saphron had gone upstairs, presumably to inform her wife about the afternoon's developments. Viridian was on her Scroll, looking up something while occasionally rubbing her forehead at a headache developing there. Cerulea was embracing one of the younger sisters - Lamera, if her sea-green hair was any indication - while Noir looked as if she wanted to charge right up the stairs after Jaune. Finally, Rouge was whispering something to Violet before both girls looked to her. Pyrrha offered an awkward little wave, and after a moment of conferring with one another, they gathered up Noir, and the three girls bravely approached her.

"Hello again," Pyrrha said, a faint smile on her lips. Her three younger sisters looked to one another before little Violet spoke first.

"You're an AC pilot? Like Jaune?"

"That's right," she said.

"Do you know Miss Summer?"

Pyrrha's smile deepened. "I know Miss Summer very well. She's been my mentor, and I'm close friends with her daughters. Jaune and I are in the same Lance with them."

"I didn't know that there were so many girl pilots."

"Actually, most of Dragon Lance are girls," said Pyrrha. "Here, let me show you." She pulled out her Scroll and activated the projector, showing the picture that the pilots of Dragon Lance had taken on the ice cream excursion.

Noir gasped in betrayal. "He went out for ice cream without us?"

"Well, it was sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing for the team," Pyrrha consoled her. "But this is us, Dragon Lance. All we're missing is our captain, Miss Summer's husband. But here are their daughters, Yang and Ruby," she pointed out the sisters. "Yang is the tall blonde one, and Ruby is the small girl with the silver eyes."

"That's the one that Jaune doesn't shut up about, even when he thinks he's not going on about her," Rouge pointed out.

"Yup!" Pyrrha agreed happily. "But then there are the other girls in the Lance. There's myself, of course, but then there's also Nora. She pilots an Armored Core with more missiles and explosions than anyone else. And this girl here is Blake. She's actually the Princess of Menagerie."

Violet's eyes sparkled. "You can be a princess and a pilot?"

"That's right. Her Armored Core is on four legs and has all the lasers she could cram onto it. But she's also downright scary when it comes to negotiations."

"But there are some guys too," said Noir. "Some cute guys too. What's he like?" she asked, pointing out Cardin.

Pyrrha tried to fight down a wince, and made a mental note to try to ask around for someone who could help her half-sister develop better taste in men. "Well, that's Cardin. He's very...loud. And rude. But he's very loyal to those he considers his friends, and deeper than most people give him credit for. And finally, we have Lie Ren. He tends to keep to himself, but when he does speak, he can be devastatingly funny."

"Wow." Violet looked up at the picture. "So, who's the best pilot?"

"Well, that's a matter of debate. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and it's our captain's job to figure out how to make them work. That's why we train so hard in simulations." Pyrrha smiled at the youngest Arc sister as an idea occurred to her. "Actually, how would you like to hear about a virtual duel I fought with Jaune?"

"Really?" Noir asked, also interested.

"That's right. So, we were both piloting simulated versions of Crocea Mors, and the simulation put us on a highway…"

Upstairs, Jaune had led his mother to a chair in her room that faced a window looking out over Vale. "I'm sorry, Mom. It had to be done. I know it hurts, but the lies and secrets were poisoning our family. It was like...an infection, and we needed to burn it away."

Isabelle just sighed. "I gave him all I had to give. Eight children, decades of marriage as a dutiful and faithful wife, all of my heart...and it was never enough, was it? I was never enough. I just…"

Jaune hugged his mother to his chest as she finally broke down in tears. She sobbed into the tough fabric of his Beacon flight suit. After a time, she released him, dabbing her tears away. "Jaune," she said, her tone solemn and grave. "I need you to make me a promise."

"What is it?"

"Promise me that you will never do to someone else what your father has done, to me or to those young girls. Promise me that you'll be a good boy."

"I will, Mom. I promise."

She smiled sadly, placing her hand on his cheek. "My baby boy. I'm so proud of you, you know."

"I know, Mom."

"Good." She patted his cheek lightly. "You should go back. Be with your sisters."

"Will you be okay?"

"No. But I will be unharmed, if that's your concern."

"Mom…"

"Go on."

Jaune sighed. "All right. I'll bring you up some dinner before we go, okay?"

"...If you wish."

"So help me, we'll go full Cerulea on you and make you eat if we have to. The younger girls need you."

Isabelle gazed out the window, clearly dismissing him from the conversation. "So be it."

Reluctantly, Jaune left his mother to her contemplations, and made his way back downstairs. Pyrrha had gathered up the younger sisters into a semicircle in front of her, and was using her hands to help illustrate a story. Violet was following along with wide eyes, and it seemed that whatever Pyrrha was telling her half-sisters had even coaxed Lamera out of her melancholy. Saphron had re-emerged with Terra, the spouses consulting with Viridian, while Cerulea kept a close, if contemplative, eye on Pyrrha and the girls.

"And then Jaune said 'I wasn't attacking you. I was cutting through the strut!'" Pyrrha paused to let the punchline sink in, as Violet gasped and Noir clapped her hands. "Sure enough, the entire highway began collapsing on top of me, and with my Armored Core damaged the way it was, I wasn't able to get away in time."

"So, that makes Jaune the best pilot in your Lance?" asked Noir.

"Oh, I wouldn't say that," replied Jaune as he reached the bottom of the stairs. He gave his younger sisters his best reassuring smile. "Mom's going to be okay in time, I think, but we're all going to need to do our part to help, okay? That means keeping up with your chores and homework without being told, and keeping out of trouble. You can do that for her, right?"

"Yeah…" Lamera looked to the floor. "Are Mom and Dad getting a divorce?"

Jaune sighed, sitting on the floor next to her. "I don't know. That's between them. All we can do is to put our best foot forward and be there for each other as best we can, okay?"

The girls were silent for a moment before Violet spoke up. "Well, what about Pyrrha? Can we keep her?"

Despite everything, Jaune laughed. "She's not a pet, Violet, she's our sister." He shrugged. "So, Pyrrha was telling you about my stunt on the highway, huh? I bet she didn't tell you about our first duel."

"Oh? Tell me!"

Jaune ruffled Violet's indigo hair as he stood up and walked to the sofa, taking a seat next to Pyrrha. He shared a smile with his half-sister. Their family had taken a bruising, sure, and things would be rough going for a while, but just as he told her, everything was going to be okay.

"Well, do you remember when I told you that the big plasma rifle on Miss Summer's Armored Core is super special, and there are only two like it in all of Vale?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, Pyrrha here has the other one."

Pyrrha flushed with embarrassment as Violet gasped, looking up at her like she was some kind of comic book action heroine. Jaune just grinned at her. "Yeah, I think we're keeping her," he said, before starting his own story.

[/]

Emerald gave it a few days before she approached Cinder again, asking for another excursion. She carefully hid the revulsion as she realized that the evil bitch thought that she was asking as a pretext for another session with her. Her skin crawled at her touch, and a cold feeling of dread spread through her as she realized what she'd have to endure a second time. Still, Cinder gave her leave to wander the forest once more, and once again, Emerald went to the bubbling stream that she'd discovered.

"It's been a while."

Emerald was unsurprised to hear Qrow's voice from his tree. "How do you get up there so quietly?" she asked.

"Trade secret."

"I have something for you. Technical data that I hacked from their computers, for both the Titan and the AC she controls it with." Despite everything, she did take a little satisfaction from seeing his eyebrows raise in surprise. "You're not the only one who's good." She took out her Scroll. "I'll open it for link, but you should be careful. She had one hell of a virus on there. It was good, but I made my programs myself, and they're better."

He shook his head as he took out his Scroll. "Yeah, but I got connections, and my stuff comes from the guy who invented Scrolls in the first place." After a moment, when he'd judged his firewalls sufficient, he linked his Scroll to hers and downloaded the data. His jaw dropped as he saw just how thorough her work had been. "How did you get this?" he asked.

"Cinder. I had to get...close to her. She hurt me." Emerald looked away at the sudden look of concern on his face. "Don't even pretend to care about me," she snapped. "This is business, like you said. There's a cost to everything. That was the cost for our last meeting, and the cost for this one? She's going to do it again." She shook her head. "I know the score. I'm a criminal. A thief. A prostitute. Just more Mantle street trash. No one cares about me, just what use I can be for them."

"Trash wouldn't make that kind of sacrifice for other people," Qrow said. "Those other things, those are just things you did. Who you are is someone who realized what all of this meant, and decided to do what she could to stop it." He dropped to the ground, landing lightly on his feet. "You know, you could keep doing good, and get away from these people. I need to get this data to Beacon. Come with me. I can get you clear from these people, set you up at Beacon. I'm getting old, and I could use an apprentice. You're the best I've seen since me. Put those skills of yours to work protecting people, keeping them safe, and I promise you that you'll sleep better at night."

Emerald slowly shook her head. "I'm sorry. I can't leave Mercury behind with these people."

"How are you going to get him out of a situation he doesn't want to leave?"

The simple question hit Emerald like a bullet to the chest. She was here because of Mercury. He had made the deal behind her back, got himself entangled in this mess because he thought that it would keep her safe. Or was it because it offered him the chance to kill as many people as he could? To kill and kill and kill until there was no one left but him and her? An impossible feast upon which to slake his bloodthirst…

"You know, when I was around your age, I knew a girl," Qrow said, from seemingly nowhere. "Absolutely stunning, brilliant, and wholly dedicated to doing right by her country. I loved her dearly - I still do - and somehow, this magnificent angel loved me right back."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure your missus will be pleased to have you back," Emerald said, puzzled as to where he was going with his line of conversation.

"That's just it. We loved each other, but we just weren't right for each other. See, she wasn't just anyone. She had responsibilities, and she knew that she couldn't just abandon them. And for me, well, I'm always on the move, going from this mission to that. I could never be the sort of father that she would need for the children she wanted to have. One or the other of us would have had to completely give up our entire lifestyle to be together, and we both recognized that that would have caused resentment sooner or later. Worse, if she'd abandoned her station, it would have left her whole country in a lurch, and a lot of people could have got hurt in the wake of that." He sighed. "The point is, when push came to shove, I was willing to give up what I wanted more than anything in all the world in order to do right by her. Can your Mercury say the same?"

Emerald was silent for a long time. "They would notice that I left, and they'd know that I had help," she finally said, no longer even trying to defend Mercury or his actions. "Whatever they're planning, it isn't subtle. We know they're headed for Vale, and now that you know that the Midnight Titan exists, you'll be able to keep a lookout for it. If they realize that they've been made, they could change their plans entirely, and either you or one of the other Kingdoms will get caught with their pants down."

Qrow shook his head slowly. "Fuck, you are good. Seriously, if you make your way to Beacon, I will recruit you on the spot." He sighed. "She'll hurt you again."

"I know. It's not the first time a...client has gotten rough. I can handle it."

"I'll make it worth it. I promise."

Emerald looked down at the stream, then over to the setting sun. "It's getting late. I need to go, and…" she trailed off as she realized that Qrow was gone again.

"If I become your apprentice, you have to teach me how to do that!" she called out, knowing that the old bastard had to still be close enough to hear her. She sighed as she took in nature's beauty once more. She didn't know how much longer she would have to endure the hellish Midnight Titan, but one way or another, she knew that it wouldn't be forever. There would continue to be green and growing things in the world, and people making their lives in its midst. Perhaps someday, there would be a place for her as well.

She just wished that Mercury could join her...but as she trudged back towards the Titan, and the punishment that she knew was waiting for her there, Emerald was far less certain about their future together than she'd ever been.

[/]

"Hey, Jaune! How's Crocea Mors?"

Jaune looked up from the hangar console that displayed the schematics and condition of the venerable Armored Core and smiled. "Hi, Ruby. All systems are green and all weapons are loaded for bear. Crescent Rose?"

"Amazing as always," she chirped. "Do you think we're going to be sent out today?"

The pair was on watch that day, which meant that if the Grimm alarm went off for the Emerald Forest, they would be sent out, alongside Lance-Captain Xiao Long, to go take care of it. They'd gone and ensured that their Armored Cores were both in top shape, and were standing by in the event that they needed to take them out.

Jaune shrugged in answer to Ruby's question. "That's for the Grimm to decide, really." He hid a smile at her annoyed reaction to his very literal answer. "On a more important note, am I ever getting my blazer back?"

"Hmm…" Ruby made a great show of thinking it over as she made her way out of the hangar and into the rec room nearby. "We shall take it under consideration, provided you make...uh…" her royal Blake impression faltered as she failed to recall the sort of vocabulary that the young Faunus princess had used at her meeting with the Council.

"Well said, Your Majesty," Jaune teased as he made his way over to the drink machine. "You want anything?" he asked, pouring himself a cup of orange juice.

"Grape, please!"

Jaune poured a cup for her, bringing it to her before sitting down next to her on a comfy old sofa.

"Thanks," she said, taking the grape juice from him. Ruby took a sluck from her straw, sighing in satisfaction. "Grapey deliciousness." She smiled at him, quietly pleased with how close he was sitting next to her. "Hey," she began, her tone softer. "Are you okay? Pyrrha said that things got pretty tense with your parents the other day."

Jaune just shrugged. "Well...yeah. Dad's staying in a hotel somewhere. Don't know if Mom's going to let him back in or if he's going to be moving out, but right now, she needs her space. My older sisters are struggling too, but Saphron's been taking charge while Mom's been coping. With the younger girls, Lamera has had the hardest time with it. I think Violet and Rouge have been distracting themselves from really dealing with it with the novelty of having Pyrrha come into their lives. With Noir -"

"Jaune." Ruby put her hand on his arm. "I didn't ask how they were doing. I was asking how you're doing."

He gazed down into his cup. "Well...it's a mess, Rubes. Thing is, that fuse was lit long before I was even born. I guess all I can say is that I did the rightest thing I could, right?" He sighed. Ruby looked over at him, then scooched in closer. Biting her lip and building her courage, she put an arm around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder.

"Ruby?"

"Chief Engineer Rose has determined that Jaune Arc is in need of maintenance snuggles."

He raised an eyebrow, amused. "Maintenance snuggles?" he echoed.

"Mmhmm. Maintenance snuggles must be applied at regular intervals, to ensure peak performance."

"Well, I certainly wouldn't want to get in the way of your work."

They sat together in comfortable silence for a while. Maybe there was something to Ruby's silliness after all, as spending some time just relaxing with her did make him feel a bit better. He smiled fondly at the girl as she rested her head on his shoulder, casually sipping her drink without a care in the world. "What would I do without you?" he wondered.

"Struggle."

Her answer, immediate and blunt as it was, made Jaune choke on his orange juice. He snorted and coughed gracelessly, struggling to keep from spraying citrus all over the rec room table. All the while, Ruby cackled next to him, revelling in her wicked victory. When Jaune regained control of himself, he shot her a dirty look. "Oh, I see how it is," he muttered, while Ruby just giggled to herself. He was about to say something else, when he caught a glimpse of the broad, bright smile on her face, the sparkle of her large silver eyes, and the way her button nose scrunched in her amusement. Whatever he was about to say was lost on the tip of his tongue, forgotten in the face of her simple, unrestricted joy.

Ruby blinked. "Jaune?"

"You're beautiful," he blurted out.

Her cheeks flushed as she raised a hand to her face. "I am?" She sounded genuinely surprised to hear him say that.

Jaune frowned. "You don't think you are?"

Ruby looked away. "I mean, when people say 'beautiful,' they're usually talking about Yang, or my mom. With me, it's 'cute,' if they're being nice, or 'weird,' or 'odd' if they're being honest. I remember one time in school, Yang got in a fight because one of our classmates called me her 'retarded little sister.'"

"That's crazy," he said immediately. "You're absolutely brilliant, Ruby. And sure, you're awfully cute too, but...you know," Jaune blushed. "When you're really, truly happy...you're absolutely breathtaking to me."

Ruby stared up at him, lost in the warm depths of his blue eyes. Was this happening? This was happening! All aboard the Romance Express, Ruby Rose was gonna -

The moment was shattered as the all-too familiar peal of the Grimm Alarm broke the silence that had grown between them.

"Son of a biscuit!"

[/]

A few minutes after their interrupted moment in the recreational room, Jaune and Ruby were ready to launch, Taiyang Xiao Long alongside them in his massive Sun Dragon. The three Armored Cores stomped their way out of the hangar, their heavy steps causing the ground to tremble in their wake. "All right, you both know the drill," Taiyang addressed the two youths as they made their way towards the Emerald Forest. "Keep it tight until we know what exactly we're fighting. Play it close to the chest. Arc, if you do well on this one, I'll tell the Director that you won't need me playing babysitter on these missions any longer. Everyone clear?"

"Copy that," said Jaune. It didn't take long for the trio to reach the edge of the Emerald Forest. Unusually, there was no sign of any Grimm having emerged from the forest to attack either Beacon or the city of Vale itself. That didn't track with what Jaune had come to expect from the insanely aggressive monsters.

"This is weird…" From the sound of it, Ruby agreed with his train of thought.

"Keep calm," the Lance-Captain's voice crackled over the radio. "Some species of Grimm are...cunning, especially if they survive to an old age."

"Should we move into the forest itself to investigate?" asked Jaune.

"Negative. If that's what we're dealing with, then it might be smart enough to set a rudimentary trap. I'm especially worried about Goliaths."

"Goliaths?"

"Very large, very powerful Grimm," explained Taiyang. "Powerful quadrupeds, with long tusks and trunks powerful enough to rip a Core limb from limb. Tend to travel in herds, and worse, they are extremely intelligent. Actually, if this silence keeps up much longer, I might radio for backup. No offense to either of you, but a herd of Goliaths is an enemy a bit above your weight class for now."

The silence was unnerving. Oppressive, even. The younger pilots fidgeted in the tight confines of their Armored Cores, the pressure of waiting to be attacked bearing down on them. Taiyang forced himself to remain calm as the timer he'd set ticked down. When it finally reached zero, he spoke again. "All right, I'm calling in for backup before we go searching the forest. Ruby, Arc, stand by. You're both going to be mainly observing on..."

Taiyang trailed off as a line of flames ripped through the thick growth of the foliage. In moments it had spread, further and further, engulfing a wide swath of the Emerald Forest in a great conflagration. Orange flame licked the skies as thick gouts of black smoke billowed into the air.

"Dad?" Ruby asked. "Do Grimm set fires?"

"No. No they do not."

As they watched, a lone Armored Core emerged from the burning trees, its parts featuring smooth curves tapering into sharp angles. Its black and bloodred paint made it look as charred and molten as the inferno from which it had emerged.

Jaune had a sudden, deep, and overwhelmingly bad feeling about all of this.

"Who is that?" Ruby asked.

Taiyang, meanwhile, had hailed Beacon as soon as the Armored Core had come into sight. "Beacon Control, Beacon Control, this is Lance-Captain Xiao Long, requesting immediate backup. Adam Taurus is at Emerald Forest, I repeat, Adam Taurus at Emerald Forest. He must have hacked the alarm himself."

"Lance-Captain, Lance-Captain, this is Beacon Control, scrambling pilots. Hold on out there."

"That's Adam Taurus?" Ruby asked. "I think I can get him from here."

Taiyang felt his veins turn to ice. "Ruby, hold on -"

Ruby opened fire with her sniper rifle, hitting Taurus's Core. The shot bit into its steel armor, but otherwise failed to penetrate. She growled in frustration. "I need to get closer!"

"Don't you dare -"

"I can end this right now!"

"Ruby, wait!"

Ruby triggered Crescent Rose's Overboost, the back of her Core opening and multiple boosters drawing power. She fired off at Adam Taurus at speeds that no AC could match. Unfortunately, Taurus didn't need to match it. Instead, he just needed to set his boosters in reverse to back into the burning forest, fading into the wood and smoke.

"Get back here!" Ruby cried as she continued her pursuit into the forest.

Taiyang didn't swear. Every second he spent swearing was a second that was better used keeping his daughter from getting herself killed. That there could be anything at all waiting for her in that forest worried him. That Adam Taurus was definitely in that forest and luring her into a trap terrified him. "Arc, after her," he said, his tone frighteningly flat.

Arc had been of the same mind as his Captain, and set off. They were halfway to the forest's edge when a line of the Crocea Mors knockoffs emerged from the trees, blocking their way. That sinking feeling in Jaune's gut deepened as he realized how they hadn't spotted them, nor Taurus earlier, on their approach. The raging forest fire in front of them was playing havoc with their heat sensors. Maybe Ruby's more sensitive radar could have picked them up, but she would have needed to manually engage it... Jaune saw that he was pulling ahead of the Sun Dragon, the heavyweight Armored Core having not been designed with speed in mind. "Captain, need a hole."

"On it. Out of my way," Taiyang ground between clenched teeth. The Sun Dragon cut loose with everything it had. Heavy bazooka shells burst apart, shoulder-mounted rockets streaked forth, and twin heavy bolts of golden plasma crackled through the air. The White Fang ACs scrambled to get out of the way of the cataclysmic onslaught, and Crocea Mors zipped through the space between the two gouts of plasma, following Ruby and Adam deeper into the forest, his armor getting singed from his proximity to the destructive energies his superior officer had unleashed.

Taiyang made to follow, only for the White Fang ACs to surround him, swinging with their plasma blades and attempting to disable his Armored Core. He snarled in frustration, triggering his Exceed Orbit laser cannons to emerge from his core and take shots at the enemies threatening his rear. The veteran captain placed his first shot carefully, the heavy bazooka round knocking one of the Crocea Mors copies off of its feet through sheer kinetic force before the munitions exploded. That one was either severely damaged or destroyed, and Taiyang didn't much care which.

He'd deal with the international diplomatic clusterfuck later. Right now, these people and their machines were between him and his daughter. He would get to her, and Taiyang Xiao Long didn't care if he had to walk over all of their corpses to do it.

[/]

"What's wrong?"

"It's the White Fang! They ambushed the Captain while he had the rooks with him!"

Pyrrha took off for the hangar at a dead sprint, Cardin just a half-step behind her.

[/]

It was somewhere around the point where she realized that the heat sensors were off, her radar was going haywire with crashing, burning trees, and the thick smoke made it difficult for her to track her quarry visually that Ruby Rose realized that she may have made a mistake. The close confines of the forest had been restrictive when she had ventured in with her father, Jaune, and Cardin earlier that week; going in while everything was on fire made everything worse.

She had just resolved to make her way back out of the burning forest when she found Adam Taurus. More specifically, she found the logging camp where she and her unit had fought the Lupus Grimm, only instead of its previous abandoned state, it was now populated by the lumberjacks. The White Fang had subdued them, rounded them up, and had them tied up in the back of one of the large, flatbed trucks that they used to transport logs.

Adam Taurus had his AC's shotgun pointed directly at the back of the truck.

The White Fang leader understood the many and varied uses of taking vulnerable civilians hostage, and upon seeing the incredible straight-line speed of the enemy Armored Core, he swiftly formulated a plan that would provoke its pilot into another blistering - and predictable - charge. The first step was seeing how the enemy reacted to his hostage taking. An experienced soldier would have simply engaged normally, understanding that those civilians were effectively dead men walking the moment he laid eyes on them. But this pilot froze, a telltale indicator that they were young and inexperienced.

"What are you doing? Let them go!"

He raised an eyebrow at the high-pitched voice that came from the open radio channel. A female, and not just young, but very young. "Is Vale so desperate that they've taken to arming their children against me? Have I interrupted a school field trip? Since you're obviously so painfully new to this, allow me to educate you. What will you do, for instance, if I say 'no?'"

"Wha-"

Adam pulled the trigger. In a flash, a razorstorm of Armored Core-scaled shot roared out of the barrel of his gun. The weapon had been designed to flay Grimm and blast the armor off of other Armored Cores. Against hapless humans tied up together in the back of a truck, the raging torrent of lead ripped them apart, not even slowed as it went on to destroy the truck itself. In the blink of an eye, dozens of people were reduced to so much steaming, shredded meat and scraps of bone, a bloody haze in the air lingering over the remains of the truck.

An inarticulate scream of shock, horror, and outrage tore from Ruby's lips, and without thinking she triggered her Overboost, hurtling herself towards the murderer. Adam had already begun shifting position before she had taken off, neatly sidestepping and bringing Wilt's own crimson plasma blade out in a long, sidelong slash.

Wilt had one of the most powerful plasma blades on the market, but the incredible velocity of Crescent Rose at full charge did half the work for it. The red plasma bit deeply into the armor of Ruby's AC, armor that her father had always insisted was dangerously thin and light. Striking just underneath the cockpit compartment of the Core, Wilt neatly separated half of the Core from the lower half of the AC's body.

Inside the cockpit, Ruby tried not to panic as alarms went off and her viewscreens flickered from the optics in her head part being separated from the generator. They flickered back to life off of emergency reserve batteries, just in time for her to see the ground rushing towards her at horrific speed. Her boosters were dead, arms were dead, everything except for the sensors and the damn radio was dead! She braced herself as the top half of Crescent Rose slammed into the ground, the angular front of the Core crumpling from the impact. The half-mech rolled, bashing through burning trees and digging a deep furrow into the forest floor before finally coming to a halt. Ruby found herself on her back, her AC's sensors oriented towards the sky. What little she could make out from between the clouds of smoke and the burning trees had turned a nightmarish orange color, the setting sun catching the particles in the air.

The sky darkened as the enemy AC strode over to her.

"And that's the end of the lesson," he said to her. "Those people never mattered. People never do. Only Armored Cores, and the power they grant, matter. That's something that Vale taught me, and it's a lesson that I'll show the world before I'm done. Goodbye, daughter of Vale."

[/]

Inside Crocea Mors, Jaune tried not to panic. Both Crescent Rose and the enemy Armored Core that Ruby had been chasing had outclassed it in speed, and trying to locate them in the middle of a roaring forest fire hadn't made things any easier. As he emerged into the logging camp, whatever relief he might have felt upon finally finding them swiftly died as he took in the situation. Crescent Rose was in half. The half containing most of its Core was beat to hell, one of its arms was barely hanging on by cables, and the Core itself crumpled in like an empty soda can. Worst of all, Adam Taurus was standing over it, saying something on an open channel about 'Goodbye, Daughter of Vale.'

Yeah, no.

He activated his HYDRA multi-missile launcher, quickly landed two locks and launched eight missiles at the enemy Armored Core, firing up his boosters to charge in after the missile volley. Adam was rocked by the explosions, which blasted apart chunks of his armor on his left side, and damaged some of the mechanisms of his left arm. He had just managed to turn to face the new enemy when the enemy mech bowled into him, crashing with terrific force. A shoulder mounted chain gun unfolded and began rapid-fire blasting at him, the point-blank barrage eating away at the armor of his Core, while the enemy's left arm worked its golden plasma blade in short, vicious knifefighting stabs.

Backing rapidly away from the newcomer and falling into a defensive circle strafe, Adam could scarcely believe his eyes. At first, he'd thought that one of his men had turned traitor, but the paint was all wrong, and sure enough, twin gold crescents graced its shoulder. That was Crocea Mors, the real thing, and that meant that its pilot could only be one man. "Gil Arc," he said over the open channel. He fired off a shotgun blast at him, just to keep him honest. "I must say, I had no idea that either you or Crocea Mors were still operational. Today must be the day that heroes die, I suppose. That girl must be, what, a granddaughter of yours? You know, it isn't every day that I get to kill off a nation's past and its future in one go."

He almost jumped at the voice of the young man coming in over his channel. "Just go," the young man said. "Back away and leave. You've made your point. There doesn't need to be any more blood today."

"Oh…" Adam nodded. "An heir to the Lion of Vale. A young cub, looking to sharpen its teeth. Puts your interaction with the girl here in an entirely different light. But as for your offer...no. You say I made my point, but the blood is the point. I will do you a favor though." The complex plasma mechanism mounted onto the back of Wilt unfolded, and soon, a bloodred ball of plasma began forming between the two horns. "Hold still, and I'll make sure you both leave this world together."

Jaune blanched. He had put himself between Taurus and Ruby, but with that plasma weapon charging up and pointed directly at the girl's destroyed Armored Core...if he dodged, Ruby died. He didn't have anything powerful enough to drop the enemy AC in one go. If it fired the plasma weapon, Ruby died. The only thing that he could think of to save her was to keep it from firing at Ruby, and that meant moving the mech it was mounted to. And that meant charging straight for it.

If he misjudged the strength of his armor, he was a dead man. If he did nothing, Ruby died.

The decision was easy.

He gunned it.

Inside Wilt, Adam couldn't help but gasp a little as his opponent made an insane, desperate charge right for him. With his generator at the limit powering the main cannon, Adam couldn't boost away. Fate would decide who lived and who died. "The die is cast," he pronounced, keeping his reticle locked.

Inside Crocea Mors, the viewscreen quickly filled with nothing but red. While internal systems tried to keep the heat to a manageable level, Jaune's skin soon began to blister from the scorching heat, his sweat flash-evaporating from its surface. He grit his teeth and growled as the venerable AC was rocked by the force of the missiles on its back cooking off, blasting off the machine's right arm entirely. But somehow, impossibly, he'd emerged from the other side of the plasma. Crocea Mors was missing an arm and was looking decidedly skeletal from so much of its armor plating melting away, but enough of it was intact for it to shoulder-tackle Wilt to its back. The plasma weapon discharged harmlessly into the air.

Despite everything, Adam couldn't help but salute the young Arc, shaking his head in equal parts disbelief and wonder. "Magnificent."

[/]

Taiyang sighed as he saw Argo and the Executioner racing their way towards him. Cardin sent one of his oversized grenades launching towards one of the enemy ACs. The explosion caused serious damage, and between that and the hideous losses that Taiyang had inflicted on them on his own, the three survivors finally decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and fled into the burning forest.

"Where's Jaune and Ruby?" Pyrrha demanded.

"Ruby chased Taurus into the forest, Jaune went after her."

"Sensors are shot from all the chaos," said Cardin, his voice tight as he clearly fought to keep control of his emotions at finally having a shot at the White Fang. "How can we find them?"

Just then, a veritable column of bloodred plasma erupted from within the forest, streaking into the sky.

"That's them," said Taiyang. "Follow me."

[/]

"You know," said Adam, his tone almost conversational, between blasts from his shotgun that tore away the last of Crocea Mors' Core armor, "Between her Armored Core and your insane piloting, I'm afraid I'm going to have to kill you both. A little more time and training, and you'd become downright dangerous."

Jaune launched Crocea Mors into one last charge, swinging his plasma blade towards the enemy. Taurus casually took aim with his shotgun and fired into the forearm of Crocea Mors. The weakened limb gave easily under the shot, and Taurus had to stifle a chuckle at the sight of an armless old AC, its weapons slagged and useless, standing helplessly before him.

"That's the last weapon you had," he taunted over the radio. "What are you going to do, melt on me?"

In response, Jaune triggered his laser missile interceptors, just like he had against the Lupus. He hadn't expected it to do much, but he'd be damned if he went down without giving it everything he had. A lucky shot from the top right laser actually burned out the optical sensors on the left side of Wilt's head.

Adam growled in frustration. As it was, he'd taken far more damage than he'd thought he would fighting against a five-decade old machine, and parts would not be easy to come by. As it was, he would have to conduct on-foot raids of AC parts depot to get Wilt back into top condition, to say nothing of his men's ACs. "I...have had...enough...of you!" He triggered his AC's Overboost, and just as Arc had gone into the fray with startling physicality, Taurus was about to end the fight by paying him back tenfold.

Wilt hurtled through the air and slammed into Crocea Mors. The remaining parts of the old machine warped during its path through burning trees, the frame bending from the tremendous stresses that it endured. When Crocea Mors hit a rocky incline, the Core, stripped of armor from plasma and shotgun blasts, finally gave up the ghost, collapsing in on itself. Inside the cockpit compartment, despite all of the upgrades that Jaune and Ruby had made to the ancient Armored Core, there was one part that they hadn't touched, and after five decades of hard service, it finally gave way. The safety harness holding Jaune into his seat snapped, and the young pilot pitched forward. He crashed through the viewscreen and hit his head on the bulkhead hard enough to dent his helmet, falling back as darkness took him.

Adam Taurus made his way to the stricken, slagged Armored Core. The world's first Armored Core was a scarcely-recognizable heap of wreckage. He sighed in relief. It was astonishing, what that pilot had coaxed that machine into doing. Better that he nip that in the bud before it could grow into something capable of protecting Vale. Speaking of which...Adam piloted Wilt back over to the remnants of the first Armored Core that he'd destroyed that day. It was far more intact, and its pilot much more likely to be alive within the Core.

He boosted right up to the bifurcated half-mech as he saw the Sun Dragon enter the camp clearing. He'd been lucky that it was to his right, what with half his optics burnt out. "Stop where you are!" he demanded. "Don't move, or I scorch this little girl to death where she stands. Don't test me, Xiao Long, you know I'll do it."

Adam didn't hear Xiao Long's response - he wasn't broadcasting on the open channel - but from the way the enemy AC reluctantly lowered its weapons, he knew that he'd made his point.

"You know, Xiao Long," he said, a little more comfortable establishing control of the situation. "I've always wondered….if you've ever wondered….if Glynda Goodwitch had time to curse you before she died? I mean, we know she had time to shriek her pretty little lungs out as the molten steel burned her to the bone - we all heard that at Mountain Glenn - but do you think she understood just how much of a failure you are? Tough luck for her, having you on her six."

"You're a sick man," Taiyang responded on the open channel, his teeth gritted and voice full of abject loathing.

"No, I'm a soldier. I know what it means to make the hard calls, something that you've never had the guts to do. Case in point: you could end my mission, right here, right now. But not before I've burned that little girl to ashes. Test me, and I swear to every god that ever was that I will melt her and broadcast her agonized screams for all of Vale to hear." Adam grinned. "But that's not what you're going to do, because you don't have the stomach for this line of work."

"Even if you escape today, you know there's no winning this. There's no scenario where you walk away from Vale."

"Oh, I know. But see, there's one thing that a true soldier understands, something that you never did. It doesn't matter if I die, if it means killing the enemy too."

With that, Adam turned back to strike down the pilot girl in the stricken Armored Core. However, as he did, a precisely-aimed shot from a Karasawa plasma rifle glanced off his left arm, shearing away armor and fouling his strike. With growing unease, he realized that Xiao Long had brought in reinforcements, and turned his own trap against him by using the heat and smoke to cover their movements. It was time to go.

A shot from his gun felled one of the burning trees, dropping it between himself and the Valean Lance-Captain, as Taurus turned and booked it, as fast as he could, into the forest.

"Clear the area," Taiyang ordered his two subordinates. "Call for a medevac. Where is Arc?"

"I found him," Cardin's voice was grim.

"Crocea Mors has been destroyed."

[/]

Upon hearing the coded knock - two, then three - that let her know that it was safe, Ruby popped the hatch on her Armored Core. Or rather, what was left of it. She blinked as she looked around. It looked as though the other ACs had dragged the top half of Crescent Rose out of the forest, but the sky was still that eerie orange color. Behind her, the Emerald Forest burned out of all control.

Her father stood before her, his arms crossed and face drawn.

Trouble did not begin to cover her situation.

"Dad?" she asked. "Where's Jaune?"

"I thought you should see this," he answered, nodding towards the scene on the other side of the clearing.

Ruby gasped. Crocea Mors was gone. Its wreckage was scarcely recognizable as having once been an Armored Core, and if it wasn't for the fact that a team of technicians was cutting open the cockpit with a plasma torch, she never would have thought that that pile of twisted scrap metal was Jaune's AC. Then she saw the team go in and pull Jaune free. Pyrrha buried her face in her hands while Cardin embraced her. The team loaded him onto a stretcher and onto a waiting helicopter.

"Jaune?"

She felt her father's hand on her shoulder, as heavy as the stone.

"We need to talk. Now."

[/]

Chapter Endnotes: Well, that just happened.

I had more fun then I thought I word in portraying a Grimm attack from the perspectives of the normal civilians who are able to deal with it as a minor disruption, thanks to the Armored Cores. And in case you didn't get it from the names of their Cores, the two pilots that came to assist Oobleck were Coco and Velvet.

Princess Blake, being all politician-y and stuff. We'll see if she can turn this to her advantage, or if her plans just went up….in smoke. (Yeeeeeeeeahh!)

Poor Emmy. If only she had some sort of mentor, who was able to understand the rough world from which she hails while also being able to treat her with the sort of respect and caring empathy that she needs. Where oh where could such a character be found?

Why yes, Cinder is an evil, twisted sadist, thank you for noticing.

The Arc Family Reunion. Super awkward. Not the most awkward I've ever seen, but up there. The younger ones are kind of latching onto Pyrrha to keep from fully processing what those changes in their family mean for them.

Ladies and Gentlemen: Adam Taurus. He's bringing total war to Vale, and literal scorched earth tactics. A vicious smack to Vale's economy, while also dropping two more AC pilots - but suffering heavy damage to his own machine and further losses of his men. Maybe Jaune in the Crocea Mors Custom could have won, or at least fought to a draw, against Adam, but doing so would have meant letting Ruby die, and that's just not him.

So, the Schnee sisters, along with Penny, are going to be going into a messed-up situation at Beacon. Good times, for all and sundry.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter! Thank you for reading!

As always,

Mahina