Chapter 25: A Red Bull Gives You Wings

C4C3 was brought to you today by the Rating M, and the number of words I wrote. Blah, blah, blah, trigger warnings and such. By now you're probably desensitized to most of this anyways.


NEPTUNE

MONDAY

The negative energy in the school was palpable. Like a miasma, a gloom in the air.

Neptune and Sun had been hanging out in the school library for the weekend. It should have felt like old times, before Beacon. It didn't. The video about Lionheart, outing their deceased headmaster as a traitor, lingered in everyone's minds, so none of the staff or other students cared that the pair of them weren't currently enrolled. Sun seemed to have accepted the veracity of the video, and while he didn't confess it outright, Neptune figured: Blake must have told him. On one hand, Neptune could easily understand why Sun hadn't shared that bombshell with his teammates. On the other hand, it still hurt that he hadn't. As far as partners went, it felt more and more like he and Sun weren't so much friends but just... guys who'd randomly been sorted together to be on a team for four years. Hadn't they fought evil, side-by-side? Hadn't they built up some sort of trust in the little-over-a-year that they'd known each other?

Sun had trusted Neptune with his report on how he'd hung out with 'Dominic' after watching Ghira leave. As usual, he'd seemed unnervingly upbeat about how he'd had lunch with a lunatic. Conversely, Neptune had lied about what he'd been up to. In his defense, Neptune wasn't the one who'd ran off with Blake when Vale was falling apart, abandoning his team - a larger sin than keeping his lineage close to his stylishly-clothed chest. He knew he wasn't faunus, and maybe that had played a part in Sun's choice, but anybody with an ounce of genre-savvy in their bones knew the number one rule: never split the party when shit hits the fan! Menagerie wasn't off-limits to humans... it was just faunus-friendly. The boys could have had his back... or they could have helped him realize that the situation in Mistral was dangerous after Cinder's last broadcast went out. Not that he wanted to diminish what Sun and Blake had accomplished in getting the faunus to sail up to fight against the White Fang's second attempt to take out a CCT tower... but Blake would probably have managed fine without him. She'd had a whole island of friends.

Speaking of the CCT, though, the local network had been down all morning. 'Down For Maintenance', it read whenever he tried to access the data servers. Explains why the hard-copy books in the library are so popular today... His scroll vibrated. It was a text, from his cousin, of all people. Well, at least basic scroll functionality was still going.

~Where are you?~ It read.

Neptune typed in a quick response and tucked his scroll away. ~At school, chillin with a good book'.~ Piter normally didn't text him, but Neptune knew that it would be poor form to ghost the Crown Prince. Haha, bet he's pleased I responded so quickly. Normally it was one of his secretaries or, at best, June, who contacted him for family stuff.

Neptune wanted to ask Sun more about their plan for dealing with Taurus; Sun's skeletal outline - 'keep tabs on him, make sure he doesn't hurt anyone or get up to anything, and see if he leads us to the other baddies' - was lacklustre. Primarily, the fact that they'd had very little luck keeping a lock on where the criminal was at any given time was problematic. Sun had attempted to tail him - no pun intended! - to the faunus district, but lost him in there. To be fair, the entire district was a messy slum, and everyone there dressed like they were hiding after some sort of crime. Neptune didn't want to say that it was because they often were, but... well, the statistics spoke for themselves. Besides the failure to know where he was, they'd also not had any luck finding out what he knew about Cinder and the rest. At least they could feel somewhat safe in the knowledge that Taurus' current objective seemed to be to get out of Mistral... but Neptune would feel better if he wasn't heading for Vacuo. He'd feel even better if Sun didn't seem to be confused about whether or not 'Dominic' was Taurus or not.

It would have been better for everyone if Taurus had just gotten on one of those ships heading for Menagerie.

Neptune wanted to talk to Sun about Taurus, but he struggled to figure out a way of saying it that didn't immediately dredge up the fresh wound of Sun's abandonment of the team and Lionheart's true nature. He tried, but the conversation turned to Menagerie fashion and both boys felt safer in discussing that than anything substantive. Sun was happy to talk about how his outfit had been pretty much on par with what the other faunus there wore; he'd described the continent as a desert, but the faunus lived in a little tropical seaside oasis. It made Neptune hard-pressed to feel sorry for their so-called plight, when they lived in a paradise of scantily clad cat and bunny girls. If Sun had told us Menagerie was teeming with girls like Blake and Ilia, he'd have had no problem convincing the three of us to come along for the trip!

"...and I mean, I was hanging with Blake for most of the time, but hey - what can I say - my eyes wander to take in the 'sights' sometimes, y'know?" Sun continued, in the midst of recounting the sheer number of sheer tank-top clad beauties on display in Menagerie, when his scroll began to buzz.

"That your alarm or something?" Neptune yawned. "We've been up all night." Praise be to energy drinks, the salvation of the young academic!

"It's Scarlet!" Sun said as he quickly accepted the call.

Neptune put his hands behind his head and leaned back. "Finally. It's about time they finished that job." The thought that the other two were finally going to return relieved him; the three of them could work together to press Sun to move on the Taurus issue.

The face that appeared on the screen was not their teammate.

"Hi, is this Scarlet's team leader?" The woman asked. "He needs help."


They sprinted most of the way, down half the mountain to the aptly named Midhigh District. A mixture of adrenaline, worry, and caffeinated beverages pushing them forward until they approached the park where Cammy and Scarlet were hiding.

Scarlet's arms were so bad he hadn't been able to use his own scroll.

"Yeah, well, he still took the time to have me put my hand in the wrong pocket and..." Cammy gave Scarlet a glower, "how did you put it? 'Feel around for it in there?'" She turned back to Sun and Neptune. "Honestly, if it wasn't sort of my fault he was like this-"

"He's always been like that." Neptune clarified, referencing Scarlet's flirtatiousness rather than his physical condition as Cammy had implied.

"-then I'd have put him into a state like this." She finished. "Ugh. He is the absolute worst sort of huntsman."

"Huntsman-in-training. Mind the last part. Technically still needs to graduate, and with grades like his..." Neptune clarified further. Sometimes he felt like he was the only one who cared about his grades. Out of the four of them, he would probably be the only one to pass the exams unless he could manage to convince any of these jokers to straighten up and work hard for once.

"Gir~r~rl, I can help you gradu... gradu...gradutate..." Scarlet slurred, painkillers from a nearby pharmacy taking effect on his motor functions.

"Okay, Cammy was it? Where did you say Sage fell?" Sun asked, reminding them that while Scarlet looked bad, Sage could certainly be in worse shape.

She pulled out her scroll and tried to bring up a map of the city. All she got was a bland screen that read 'Down For Maintenance'. She swore. "Looks like my boss is doing his job. Ummm... it was dark, but we'd jumped out of the window towards the west cliff - that's the way my boss' window faces, because when the sun comes in through his window he normally calls it a day - and were gliding for maybe a minute or two? I don't know how much distance we got with Sage's spring semblance, since I was... umm..."

"She was clinging to my leg so tight! Soo... tight..."

Cammy gulped. "Yes. It's dark! Anyways, we wouldn't have cleared the mountain entirely, so he probably could have used the buildings to slow his fall."

Assuming he could see them, Neptune thought dourly. "Alright, so west side, below the station, straight line out. I guess that gives me a starting area. Cammy, you okay staying here with Scarlet for a bit while we go look for Sage?" He took the bottle of painkillers. They'd probably need it.

Cammy looked at Scarlet and nodded. "I'll try to make sure he's no worse than he is now when you get back. Oh, and try to avoid soldiers, authorities, and sorts like that. We might be renegades at the moment."

Sun and Neptune shared a look.

"You want to... elaborate on that?" Neptune asked, "maybe explain how they got into such rough shape? I thought you said you had something to do with..." he gestured at Scarlet, "this."

"I guess I could fill you in, but it's a long story."

Sun grabbed Neptune by the arm. "Okay, we'll hear it when we get back. Who'd Scarlet piss off this time?"

"The Crown Prince of Mistral." Cammy said darkly. "It wasn't Scarlet, though. Well, I guess some of it was. It wasn't our fault, though!"

"Okay, Crown Prince, the guy who is in charge of the Kingdom's military. Great." Sun shook his head. He tugged at Neptune's arm. "Come on, let's go find Sage."

Neptune's mind was in disarray. Sage would be injured; he - or whatever was left of him - would need immediate attention. The knowledge that his cousin was upset with his teammates was almost as concerning. He had half a mind to text Piter then and there. "Hold up. What's got the Crown Prince after you?"

"He found out about Lionheart being a traitor, Adam Taurus hiding in the faunus district, and his wife cheating on him with Ghira in the space of a few hours. He wanted to keep the video of that last bit under wraps, which is why he wanted to arrest us as witnesses and had my boss put the local network on maintenance mode." Cammy reported. "He's convinced the faunus have essentially declared war on him. On Mistral."

Same thing in Piter's mind, Neptune considered. He decided to not text Jupiter until he had the chance for Cammy to give them the full story. A part of him wanted to think that this was all a misunderstanding. Instead of texting Jupiter, he used his scroll instead to try and contact Sage. No answer.

Sun and Neptune tried to keep to themselves as they moved through the lower city. It wasn't hard to do; everyone down here has something to hide. At least if the network was down, Piter couldn't release an arrest warrant for his teammates very quickly. Unless they ran across his soldiers, there was little risk of them getting detained. A glance skyward rewarded him with the knowledge that his cousin had many, many eyes in the sky. Far more than is typical - has he launched the entire air fleet just to find three escapees?

"This place is a maze. How're we going to find him? We barely know where he fell from." Sun complained as their search drew on.

"I've got a thought. We can't access the local network, but we can still use our aura apps on our scrolls. Sage is connected to that." Neptune said.

Sun took out his scroll, frowning at it. "Fat good that does us. All this stupid thing tells me is that his aura is broken."

"Yes, but look at the interscroll connectivity. If you swap from the bar graphic to a percentile readout, the numbers change when the reception is stronger."

Sun clicked his scroll, then started waving his scroll around. "Like a compass?"

"Like a compass, but it points to Sage instead of north." Neptune said as he began to wave his own scroll around, ignoring the fact that he looked ridiculous doing so. Sage was depending on them to find him! "It's not perfect. There's a lot of local interference and the signal bounces around off buildings like an echo sometimes."

"It's better than searching every alleyway!" Sun grinned. "Well, I guess it's to be expected from the brain of team SSSN!"

"Pretty sure I'm the style, too." Neptune chirped. He continued waving his scroll around as they made their way towards the source of the signal; as he did, a text came through.

It was from Piter. ~Have you made plans with your teammates?~ Innocuous. If Neptune hadn't been warned by Cammy, he would have just assumed that Piter was interested in hanging out or something. Two texts from his cousin in a single day, what an honour!

Piter was subtly asking him where his loyalties lay. He may as well be asking "are you plotting against me with traitors?" He wasn't showing his hand, though. If Neptune was unaware, it would give Piter a chance to collect him before he did touch base with his errant teammates.

Sun shouted out from the next street up. "Neptune! I found him! He's at the end of this alley!" Followed by a much louder cheer, "he's alive!"

Even as he helped Sun carry Sage's unconscious, battered, and bruised frame up the mountain - ignoring the concerned looks from passerby - he continued to wonder about Piter's question. He wasn't sure where his loyalties lay at the moment, but his priority was getting Sage somewhere safe; somewhere above the scummy lower levels he'd tumbled into.

"This isn't looking great, Nep." Sun grunted, straining not to jostle Sage in any way that would harm him further. "We've got no way of getting in contact with Ghira. Or Blake. Or anyone who would know what to do about international diplomacy."

"At least Sage is... alive? Good work using Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang to splint his legs." Neptune praised how Sun had used his weapons. Hopefully we won't need Sun to be armed for a while. He felt optimistic about that: if Piter was texting him, he didn't know where he was. He wondered what steps, if any, Piter had already taken to find him.

Sage made a little moaning whimper, prompting Neptune to move a bit more slowly as he cradled the green-haired man by the butt while Sun hoisted him up by the arms. Sage's legs leaned gently against Neptune's chest and over his shoulders, kept straight by Sun's nunchuck staves.

Concerned looks from passerby. Sage's clothes were torn to ragged strips; he wasn't bleeding anymore - his aura had recovered a smidgen before they'd found him in a crimson puddle, but he would attract the wrong kind of attention if they weren't careful. Neptune tilted his head seriously at a man who looked like he was going to accost them. Nothing to see here, just mind your own business like usual... The man seemed torn between some small desire to inquire as to what had happened, and fear about being Sun and Neptune's next victim. With a lingering look at Tri-Hard hanging on Neptune's back, he shifted away and let them by without incident.

"Yeah. This is bad." Neptune said. "Do we have a plan?"

"First off, we need to stabilize our friends. After that..." Sun began. It didn't matter. It would take hours until Sage would be able to so much as walk on his own, and Scarlet, while in slightly better condition thanks to his aura not having broken, was still going to need a few hours of rest and recovery.


It was well past noon when they finally got Sage sat down next to Scarlet, who showed immense relief that his partner hadn't died. Sage had drifted into consciousness a couple of times, only to whimper before passing out again. Cammy was happy to see them return, a bit of survivor's guilt lifted from her mind. "Okay, so what now?"

"You and these two seem to know the most about what's going on right now, and they're sort of out of it. Do you want to fill us in a bit more?" Neptune replied while he gave Sage another dose of the pharmacy painkillers.

Cammy explained what had happened over the past couple days, beginning with Rothy's revelation of Adam Taurus' location, through their race to beat Bole back to the city, their meeting with her manager and Piter, and the accidental première of the explicit film of Blake's father with June. "We have to do something to stop him, or else he is going to ruin the progress the faunus made in Mistral. Innocent people will get hurt!"

Sun was keeping watch atop the playground's slide; the public park was deserted since most people were at work or at school, but there were still the occasional young mothers bringing their toddlers. A gang of armed teenagers hanging around the play structure was enough to convince those to keep walking, but eventually someone would complain. "We need to get somewhere... safer." He looked up the mountainside. "We get them to Haven, they'd have medical staff and specialists there. Best place for these two to be right now."

True, minus the fact that my most recent text to Piter was that I was at school. "That'll be the first place they look for them, though." Neptune warned. Cammy nodded in agreement. "Some other place we can go?"

"Anyone got family we can hide with?" Sun asked, making Neptune sweat. "Wait, scratch that, they'd probably look for us there, too."

"You're right. My house is probably under watch; my employee records have my address, and my boss wouldn't do anything to interfere with catching me." Cammy said glumly. "He probably was only too happy to hand over my personal info."

Sun pursed his lips. "Well, if all else fails, the best option is to just walk into the trap?" He looked around for approval.

That's his style of leadership, I guess borne of living with his clan? Democratic, not that he would call it that, Neptune assessed. It was a bit odd to be included in decision-making so often; all the other team leaders at Haven had just told their group what the plan was and moved on.

"You mean, go to Haven anyways?" Cammy asked, giving him a sour look. "Wouldn't we just get arrested?"

With a smile, Sun nodded wisely. "I'm open to other offers, but at least we won't be walking into an ambush unawares."

Scarlet piped up, much more lucid that he had been earlier. "We could always just hoppity-hop on the ship. It came into port. Beats getting into another fight."

"Wasn't much of a fight," muttered Cammy while Sun dropped down from the slide to try to put his hand over Scarlet's mouth.

"Sail right on out of here to Vacuo. Woosh! Woosh!" He imitated the sound of waves, making Neptune clench his hands up into fists.

Sun's eyes bulged out, his hands reached out to calm Neptune down. "Okay, Nep, dude, you gotta understand, there were no airships to Vacuo. Nothing. Everything's been repurposed for local defence missions and patrols; international travel has kind of taken a backseat. Only workable option we had was by sea, since they couldn't turn all of the boats into airships. The tickets were loads cheaper, too, which sort of matters since Haven ain't footin' the bill for this jaunt."

"Could have waited. Could have chartered an Atlesian private jet with Taurus' bounty, or walked west and taken a quick flight over the sea to Sanus." Neptune began, but he just felt betrayed. These assholes had been plotting against him! "Whose plan was this?"

"I'm confused." Cammy said.

"Okay, well, if we wait too long we won't even make the second semester at Shade. As for Dominic, sure, he looks a lot like Taurus, but are we sure they're one and the same? I mean, he doesn't care about Blake; he wasn't concerned at all about her departure at the train station. I think we'd all feel pretty ridiculous beating up a guy who looks sort of like a wanted man, dragging him to a military facility, then having to apologize once it turns out we made some wrong inferences." Sun said. "Imagine how that would look on your permanent record!"

He would have a point, if it wasn't almost painfully obvious that Dominic was Adam Taurus. Anyone who interacted with him could see the similarities! Still, Sun's doubt was infectious. Neptune wondered if he was, in fact, getting ahead of himself. Accusing people, without evidence? That's not how Junior Detectives were supposed to operate. Neptune resolved two things: that Sun was right, and that Sun must never realize that he was somehow better at detective protocol than Neptune. Wait a second, I'm angry! "Whose plan was this?!"

"It was mostly Sage's plan." Scarlet accused Sage, possibly because he knew that Neptune would not attack his injured compatriot. Possibly because he knew Sage was too out of it to defend himself articulately.

"Dominic hasn't done anything we could arrest him for." Sun continued. Neptune wasn't entirely sure he agreed. Just because they hadn't witnessed any violence from Dominic, didn't mean he wasn't out there slaughtering Mistral citizens. Bodies turned up regularly in the lower districts, typically attributed to gang disputes and such, but there was no way to know for sure.

"That makes one of us," Neptune said as he lifted Tri-Hard off his back. He might not be willing to attack Sage in his current state, but the other two seemed just as guilty of this plot.

"Woah, woah, woah, now let's all just calm down a little." Sun said, putting his hands up. "Bigger problems than getting to Vacuo right now!"

"I'm feeling confused and scared, now." Cammy reported, pressing herself up against the wall to get away from the boys.

"Ah, it's just Neptune bein' Nep, love. He's got a fear of water. Hider-phobia." Scarlet explained, his accent and drugged status making him sound ridiculous as he tried to accuse Neptune of being hydrophobic.

"No, I don't! But even so, (incorrectly) thinking that, you two thought that it was a fine idea to get me on a watercraft?" Neptune shrieked; a piece of him at the back of his mind chastised himself for starting to lose his composure.

Sun leapt forward while Neptune was looking over at Scarlet, grabbing onto Tri-Hard. The pair of them wrestled over it for a bit before they fell to the ground, rolling on top of each other getting playground gravel all through Neptune's clothes before he was able to repel Sun.

"Okay, hear me out: if the grimm attack an airship over the water, you'd get just as wet. At least on a boat everything is done to keep the inside of the boat dry! An airship just assumes it will never even touch the water." Sun appealed with what Neptune considered to be the opposite of logic. "An airship doesn't have lifeboats! In a boat, you're much less likely to drown."

"We're not going to Vacuo by boat!" Neptune shifted Tri-Hard into its trident form. That conveyed his strong feelings on the matter of travel arrangements enough for Sun to sit down and surrender the point. "You're not getting me anywhere near the water!"

Scarlet made a rude sound with his tongue. "Boo. It's been ages since I've been a-sailing. It's all Neptune's fault."

Cammy jabbed him in the side of his gut, making him squirm. "Don't think I've forgotten about you just because you're all dosed up. You promised to explain what all that was between you and your buddy the Prince up in the station once we found Sun. Well, here he is back with us, so if we don't have a plan can we at least get an explanation or five?"

Scarlet grumbled and lay down in the gravel, his eyes snapping shut.

Against his better judgment, Neptune tabled his anger about the boat tickets and agreed with the reporter. "You know, I'm kind of curious about that, too." Neptune said, moving over and booting Scarlet in the side. "Get up. I've seen you feign sleep enough times to know it when you do it. Start talking."

"Bloody git." With great reluctance, Scarlet sat back up. "Fine. Seems like we may as well clear up some matters here, right? I guess I drew the short-straw, so I'll start." He cleared his throat and rubbed his forehead, then began examining under his fingernails for dirt until Neptune's foot poked him in the ribs again. "The wonderful Crown Prince Jupiter forced me to become his spy. Got me into Haven Academy without any of the required tests or papers. Sort of a community service situation. Authorities caught me and me crew for piracy and vagrancy and such, were set to lock us up 'til we were grey in the beard. Jupiter found out and took an interest in me since I was at the right age for the role and had the skillset to manage the coursework, so he generously offered me the task. Best deal we had on the table: I keep him up to date on the exploits of team SSSN, he lets my boys out of prison. So, I signed on."

"You were a pirate?" Sun asked. "Cool!"

"I was a fantastic freebooter, free upon the sea." Scarlet said, a wistful tear glistening in his eye. "Beholden to nobody but the tides and currents. Oh, and the occasional need to get lien and food and dust."

"Dude! You should have told me; it sounds a lot like living with my clan!" Sun said, forgetting that the key part of piracy was violent crime particular to robbing the unfortunates they came upon. Though I have to admit, Neptune wondered, just what does Sun's clan get up to? They're faunus...

"You're taking the whole 'me-spying-on-you' part of that okay?" Scarlet asked, and Sun shrugged and nodded.

"Each of us has reasons for going to combat school." Sage wheezed. "Not like I didn't mention our adventures to folks of mine. Or to a couple cute reporters for tabloids..."

"Wait, so you're how the paparazzi found out my favourite flavour of soda pop?" Sun whispered, looking shocked at Sage's lack of secrecy.

"So what changed?" Cammy asked. "Why didn't you go and show his men where Rothy was? Why'd you help us get away?"

"Nothing changed, that's the bloody problem, isn't't?" Scarlet retorted, "my boys are still lost to me. He's got them all screwed up in the head, following his orders. They're still in prison! Plus, he's a giant arse and I wanted to stick it to him at least once real sweet-like."

"Well, I guess that explains why he recognized you. Thanks for not selling us out, I guess?" Cammy said. "Though I suppose that just meant Bole got a few hours of extra freedom. Doesn't explain why he wanted you spying on your teammates, though. What makes them so important to him?"

"Is that really important right now?" Sun asked nervously.

"Perhaps he wanted to keep tabs on Lionheart's golden boy here." Sage speculated. "It would make sense for the leader of one of the most socially conservative kingdoms to pay attention to foreign faunus attending their academy."

"Not them. Just Neptune." Scarlet said, ignoring Sun and Sage.

"Neptune?" Sun asked with a laugh, then realized Scar was being serious. "What's he want with Neptune? You mean he wasn't worried that I was some sort of faunus spy from Vacuo and put him on edge?"

"Are you?" Sage asked with a half-raised eyebrow.

"Well, no, but given the tail and what I saw after Beacon..."

"He didn't like you - definitely doesn't like you - and he thought you were scum, but I got the feeling he was just sort of relieved Neppy wasn't the team leader."

"What'd he care about Neptune for?"

"He had you spying on me?" The exclamation finally burst out of Neptune; it rankled to think that his own kin would do something like that, interfering with something so sacred as huntsmen team selection. He planted Scarlet on my team? Scarlet's been feeding him info about me all this time? Why would he care about what I do? As everyone turned to scrutinize him, Neptune felt like it was his turn to share. No sense hiding it anymore, I guess. Not that it was ever really a secret... "Yeah, so, um. I'm his cousin." He put one hand behind his head, flashed a peace sign, and grinned wide. Then he slumped down and began into the gritty details. "My parents sort of disowned themselves from the family, but they never really talk about why. I never mentioned anything about my family because it's not really part of who I am. I grew up in Argus and only saw them for the occasional holiday. But I did hang out with him last week for a bit. You know, just a nice, polite little family hello, since I was in town and not busy with schoolwork."

"Did you... tell him about Dominic?" Sun asked.

"No," Neptune sneered, "I didn't tell him about our target. Was sort of hoping to keep that to ourselves until we could get paid for it. To avoid having to sail anywhere." Of course, Sun's first concern was Dominic. Just like how he'd thought Scarlet had been sicced to spy on him. Maybe I should have been team leader. His gaze moved to Sage. Or maybe Sage. Yeah, probably Sage. At least his only issue was being incapable of keeping a secret when a cute girl was in front of him.

"Okay, so you're a prince-"

"Not really." Neptune corrected. Technically he was, but it wasn't like he had ever planned to push his noble blood claims.

"-and he was spying on you. Sun's a faunus who left the team to go to Menagerie after Beacon-"

"I didn't leave the team!" Sun tried to convince them, but failed to even convince himself. "It was more of a... leave of absence."

"-chasing after the daughter of the guy the Crown Prince's wife slept with."

"Did you watch the same video as I did? Didn't look like much sleeping happening in that room!" Scarlet joked, but the thought of the affair just made Neptune and Sun wince.

"So what's Sage's secret?" Cammy finished. "Any big reveals from you?"

Everyone looked to Sage expectantly.

Sage's eyes fluttered open, and without missing a beat he announced: "I'm secretly five beowulves in a man suit. Give me all of your people secrets, arr-woof!"

He said it so calmly, so honestly, that the play structure was completely silent for several seconds. Then, Sun began to chuckle. Within moments, they all were.

Cammy was the first to regain herself and called the rest of them back to order. "Okay, okay, I get it. Not everyone has a big backstory and secrets. With all that out in the open, what are our next steps?"

"I say we run for it. We don't have to go to the ship for Vacuo, let's just get out of the city." Sage said.

"But the faunus!" Sun protested. "We should go up to the school, rally the students there. Start a protest movement!"

"Piter texted me before we left. Asked me where I was. Sent me a second text when we were looking for Sage, either asking me if I was free to get together or asking me whose side I was on, depending on how much I knew about what was going on." Neptune informed the other three. "He's definitely going to have something waiting for us at school. If he cares so much about me to put a spy on my school team, he'll want to collect me now." He crossed his arms and pouted.

"Can you maybe talk him down from this over the scroll?" Cammy asked. "Get him to calm down a little?"

"How're your legs?" Scarlet asked Sage in the background.

"No worse than your arms, partner. I don't think either of us are going to be much use in a fight if that is what the school has in store for us." Sage replied.

Neptune shook his head. "I think I might know why he cares about me so much, and it means that he won't take orders from me. If I tell him to stand down, he'll see it as a challenge to his authority - more than that, a challenge to his legitimacy. He's older than me, but my mother was older than his father, so he's probably always had to listen to people who whisper to him that I could claim greater legitimacy, even though my parents forsook their bloodright." The others gave him queer looks. "Which I never would, especially since my older brother would have an even better claim. Anyways, since I didn't respond to his second text - actually, since my initial response didn't lead him to me - he'll probably have a trace ready to lock onto my scroll signal if I call him again. It would lead him to us, or at least narrow down where to find us."

"He has the power to do that?" Sun asked.

Scarlet shrugged and nodded. "He does almost run a whole kingdom; he runs the military."

"He's got the network under his thumb, that's for sure." Cammy added.

"Let him trace it and come!" Sun said. "Then we can talk. The important thing is that we re-open a dialogue before this spirals out-of-control and someone gets hurt."

Scarlet cleared his throat.

"I mean, before anyone cool gets hurt!"

Sage cleared his throat.

"Before anyone else gets hurt!"

"I don't think he'd come in person. He'll send soldiers, overwhelming force, to arrest us and take us off the board." Neptune tried to set aside the emotional turmoil inside himself from the revelation that his family had been messing around in his life at Haven, and tried to examine the current situation analytically. "Like what he's planning for capturing Taurus. Do you really think he needed to go to the broadcast station with a bunch of armed guards to berate an aging manager? He is acting risk-averse. He's taking advantage of the resources that he has." Neptune explained, remembering how cautious Piter had played games in the past even when he had a clear advantage. "He might either see me as being a faunus pawn or being in control of them - perhaps believing that I am using them as a means of making a power-play? His paranoia will paint me as a real threat, not as a concerned relative. I agree, Sun. We need to re-open a dialogue with him, but it has to be on our terms. Face-to-face, from a position of undeniable strength so that he knows that we're not intending to take him out, so as to put his fears to rest."

"Can you just make your scroll untraceable?" Sun asked.

"I'm no tech-whiz." Neptune admitted. He looked at Cammy. "How about you? If I could send a text to try, without letting him know where we are... actually, that sounds just as suspicious as anything else." If he were in Jupiter's shoes, and he had set up a trace on Neptune's scroll to figure out where his cousin was only for it to be blocked, it would support many of his paranoid concerns.

Cammy shrugged. "I stand on the other side of the camera; if Bole was here maybe he could help. If he wasn't such a selfish, stupid, racist prick."

They looked at their feet for a moment. The easiest option, texting Jupiter, wasn't a good option. A last resort, at best.

"Hey, you know what I just realized?" Scarlet asked rhetorically, "we never got bleedin' paid for this job!"

Cammy took out her pockets, letting the lint float down to the gravel. "Don't expect to get much lien from me for the bodyguard services rendered."

"Good thing we got those cheap ship tickets, then." Sage said.

"Don't you start up with that again!" Neptune hissed, threatening his teammate with the backhand of his hand.

Sage ignored him, continuing his campaign to convince them to get out of dodge entirely. "I would remind us all again: we could, in fact, just leave. We are under no obligation to interfere with government affairs."

Sun stood up and put his hands on his hips. "What about the moral obligation? I didn't bring the people of Menagerie to Mistral to save them from terrorists just to have Neptune's cousin decide to muck everything up chasing a needle in a haystack! We're huntsmen! As huntsmen, we have a duty to protect the people!"

"Huntsmen-in-training..." Scarlet and Sage muttered.

"We need to act like it. It's time to be heroes. So we're going to march up to Haven - Sage, you can walk a bit now, right? - get some medicine and dust crystals (because I think we're mostly out), and then figure out how to deal with this."

"Can't we turn the soldiers against the plan?" Sage asked. "If Prince Jupiter is acting so out-of-line, won't it be a simple enough matter to just get his forces to ignore his orders?"

"They're fanatics, disciplined and trained to obey orders." Neptune explained. "Less negativity from disobedience. The typical solider is subject to mental conditioning in schools and other social institutions. The original idea was that if people are happy with the government, we could avoid negative, rebellious emotions that draw in the grimm. Plus, there is still an unhealthy amount of racism in Mistral, so targeting the faunus isn't as outrageous a consideration as it would be in, say, Vale or Vacuo."

"How d'you know all that?" Sun asked, "is that a family secret?"

"No. I read. Books. You should try it, sometime." Neptune spat with disdain for his teammate who apparently didn't even make an effort to do readings for their schoolwork at Haven. "Did they not have books in Menagerie?" He knew the education system in Vacuo was... sporadic outside of a few permanent settlements, and as far as he knew, Sun had grown up in a nomadic caravan clan.

Sun rolled his eyes. "I'll have you know Blake's dad had a decently sized library."

"Had?"

"Blake sort of burned it down during that big fight with the cultists."

Neptune's face fell at the news of this horror. Blake, how could you? I thought you were a kindred spirit, a lover of literature!

"So, who is on our side?" Cammy asked. "Why aren't you three fanatically obeying his orders, too? Why aren't I?"

"The soldiers were groomed here in the city. Mistral is all about centralized power, centralized control, which is why most attempts to start new settlements flounder more often than not - no government support for anyone who rejects the government. In regards to our own retention of common sense: Scarlet was apparently some sort of seafaring brigand, I was raised in Argus, and Sage is a country kid like you. As for who else would be on our side..." Neptune stuck up a few fingers. "The faunus will be on our side, but even if we warn them they don't have the sheer firepower or remaining numbers to resist Mistral's army. The rest of the civilians would probably be slightly against the action, and I think we can expect Piter to want to mitigate or avoid pissing off too many of his subjects, but with the network down we cannot really do much to get a protest going. The people's council would certainly tie up declarations of war in debate for days if not weeks, if they were consulted on any of this, but legally they don't have to be for explicitly military matters during an emergency. There might be trials and inquiries about this later, but nothing that could stop it while everything is still happening. The monarchy is too strong for any of that to work. So that just leaves the students at school. Some of the experienced staff that Lionheart didn't send off on suicide missions."

"Wouldn't those be the ones most likely to have been Lionheart's closest allies?" Scarlet nagged. "I mean, sure, they'd be up for standing up to the Crown Prince, but they wouldn't do us much good in calming him down if we show up with them in tow. He'll just see it all as a continuance of Lionheart's plot."

"Is that a sure thing, by the way? We only just heard last night about that." Sage asked. "Lionheart seemed like a good guy."

There was a moment of silence as the team remembered their - albeit limited - time as his pupils. He had given their class a warm welcome to the school, oversaw their training from a distance. Their interactions with him had been brief, but who could have suspected that his gentle smile hid such evil intentions for the kingdom?

"Yeah. Lionheart was working for Cinder. Blake... Blake told me. Her team had to fight him at the school; he set up the entire ambush against them or something. Sorry I didn't tell any of you guys, it just seemed... Blake told me to keep it a secret. For the good of Mistral and stuff. Knowing the man educating your protectors was a traitor? That's the sort of thing that makes people panic, draws in the grimm. Also she said she would get in trouble if anyone found out she told me..." Sun admitted. "From the sound of the recording that leaked, it sort of seemed like he was being blackmailed or coerced by Cinder."

"As if that is much consolation. People died. Because of him." Neptune clenched his fists, the two fingers sticking up to represent their plausible allies folding inwards. "So really, it is just the five of us. That's all we can rely on that's here to stop Piter from attacking innocent civilians."

For a moment he felt like blaming this all on Sun's decision to wait on taking down Taurus. If Taurus had been captured by them, surely Jupiter's head wouldn't have been so overwhelmed with malignant thoughts. If nothing else, Piter wouldn't have the excuse of capturing Taurus to justify attacking the depopulated faunus district.

The moment passed as Neptune considered that he was just as much to blame in letting Taurus go free. He had accepted Sun's decision without any real argument.

Sage stood up, shakily. Neptune handed him Tri-Hard, shifting it to its guandao form, for him to use as a walking-stick. "I can make it, but I can't fight." He looked down. "With your weapons letting me walk, you'll both be at a disadvantage as well. Cammy is unarmed and without aura. We have little ammunition, and Scarlet can't use his weapons without risking aggravating his arms."

He's not wrong. Neptune thought. If it came down to a fight, they were burdened with several crippling disadvantages. Keeping Cammy out of harm's way alone would be a challenge. They needed a show of force to bluff Jupiter into standing down, but if he called that bluff they'd be screwed at this rate. They needed a strong hand, but right now they just had a house of cards.

"Okay, well, I still think the school is where we should go. Jupiter will have sent something there, which might give us new information or opportunities. Even if it is quiet up there, we can still rummage up some better aura meds and dust ammo. We're just going to scout it out." Sun reassured him. "Maybe we won't even have to fight, and we'll try to avoid one as much as we can. There's no need for any more injuries from this mess."

"Aye. As you wish."

"You are the leader."

"Hold up. I'm running on fumes and the lingering taste of coffee." Neptune pointed at the other two, "and it looks and sounds like these two need to refuel, too. Auras need calories. Of the three of us, Cammy is the least noteworthy. Why don't we have her go and get some food for us before we do any of this?" He took out his wallet and sorted through his lien, since he was pretty sure he was the only one among them who had cash to speak of.

Cammy crossed her arms and took a step away from him. "Nuh-uh. I can see where this goes. Poor little Cammy the civilian goes off to get food, comes back to find you lot already gone. You think I can't handle myself?" Cammy argued. "You think I want to be left alone in this situation?"

"Miss, I wasn't even thinking of doing something like that." Neptune lied. I was considering how much of a hassle keeping her around would be, but it seems like it might take just as much effort to stash her away or ditch her as it would to just bring her along. "I'm just starved. Besides, you know where we're going, so it isn't like we could evade you for long."

"Hey, Cammy, do you have your aura unlocked?" Sun asked, suddenly playing the part of responsible leader. "I know you're involved in all of this. It's dangerous for you as much as anyone here."

"No." Cammy said sheepishly, then quietly added, "I'm afraid of what my semblance would be."

The other boys shared a look of confusion. "Why're you afraid of your own personal superpower?"

"What if it's bad or annoying or irritating? What if I can't control it? What if I'm forced to go live in the distant hills as a hermit for my own or others' protection? I'll never be able to use a bathtub or watch my shows again, I'll probably get really hairy and one day I'll get eaten by a grimm and nobody will know or care! They'll only know what happened to me by piecing together my story from my bones and a badly-written journal!"

Neptune suddenly felt a great deal of sympathy for Cammy. Semblances... they weren't always great. He felt saliva pool in his mouth and gulped nervously. He continued to feel the liquid flow down his throat, into his stomach, absorbed into his body. Water, water, everywhere...

Sun put his hand on her shoulder. "No matter what your semblance is, it is a reflection of who you are... and do you really want to be afraid of who you are?"

"Actually, there's a lot of theory that points to personality being determined by semblance, rather than vice-versa." Neptune said. Everyone gave him that look that said they didn't care. "I mean, I've read that, anyways..."

"Right now, you've got to decide whether you want to act, or if you want to watch. If you come with us, we can't guarantee your safety. If I unlock your aura now, it'll at least mean we won't have to count you as a liability. It takes most people a while to discover their semblance, too, so you probably won't even have to worry about it today." Sun continued. "Listen, I'm all for getting as many people involved in solving this problem as possible, but I don't want anyone to get hurt. Especially if we can avoid it."

"Can we afford your aura taking a hit like that to unlock her?" Scarlet asked.

Sun nodded. "If she wants it, I'm willing to do it if it means keeping her safe from harm."

Scarlet moved and removed Sun's hand from Cammy. "I meant logically. My aura's pretty charged; hanging onto the ambulance was a strain, not affected by my aura (besides increasing my strength and endurance to let me hold on). I can't do much with my aura, though, since my arms are dull. I guess I could headbutt or kick someone, but with my arms like this... If she wants her aura unlocked, I'll do it. That way, you'll still be good to fight while I'll still be useless. Keep you at full strength, right?"

"If it comes to a fight." Sage said, balancing himself upright with Tri-Hard. "Hopefully seeing a family member can calm the Crown Prince down long enough to change his decision."

"He's right." Neptune added, backing up Scarlet. "If it comes to a fight, Jupiter will come for me and you. Scarlet and Sage are - no offence - less important to him. I'm a potential threat to his legitimacy and you're a faunus hand-picked by this kingdom's biggest traitor. We need to allocate our resources smartly." It was just like a strategy game: protect archers against a cavalry charge with spearmen, protect civilians from harm with recovering units. He knew where Jupiter was going to strike at them, so that is where he would have to reinforce.

"Speaking of which, you didn't know about Lionheart before Blake told you, did you? Assuming, of course, Blake actually told you at all." Scarlet said. "I mean, realistically, you're mighty suspect, mate. A faunus, from another continent, shows up and immediately gets made into the leader of Haven's best young team?"

"Not sure that we were the best..." Sage countered as he struggled to stay up and awake.

Neptune found his hands going for Scarlet, grabbing him by the scruff of his shirt. The redhead was lucky Neptune was currently unarmed. "How dare you even accuse him of that right now? You know Sun! He's our friend!"

"Yeah. Yeah, bloody right I do! He might be a shiftless, lawless dope, but his heart's always in the right place. Problem is, outside of we here, who knows all that that hasn't left for Argus or Menagerie?" Scarlet said, wriggling away until Neptune's hands released his shirt. "Media is going to tear him apart. He needs to think about how he'll distance himself from Lionheart. You need to think about what you're going to say to yer cuz to make him not see Sun as a faunus, or else we do this and Mistral excommunicates us."

"He fought with Blake against Adam at Haven. On video!" Neptune said.

"Did he win?"

"Adam ran; fled the scene and abandoned his forces." Sun said, a bit of pride in his voice as he remembered his victory.

"Was Adam defeated? A different spin by the media, and suddenly he is on video letting Adam get away." Scarlet countered.

"Hey, Blake told me not to chase after him. Said he'd just get us away from the crowd before picking us off when we were alone." Sun said. "I wanted to go after him at the time, but we had wounded and Adam's surrendering forces to attend to."

"Forces that are now sailing freely away to Menagerie." Scarlet shot. "We gotta put some distance between our reputation and Lionheart, or else it'll dog us for the rest of our lives."

"I'll do it." Cammy said, taking all of their attention back to her and away from the question of Sun's loyalties. As they looked at her, she took Scarlet's hands. "Unlock my aura." She gulped and looked at the rest of them. "Is there like a ritual or a ceremony? What do I have to do? Does it hurt?"

"Most people do recite a chant or a prayer as they unlock an aura, often to invest the person with the guiding principles they follow, to give them a model for how to put their strength to use." Neptune recounted from books he'd read. "Oftentimes, it becomes a form of family mantra. In Argus, a child's family is typically present for the occasion and there is a celebration afterwards."

"Yeah, if you've got family like that. Other times, you just do it and get it done. Weren't no fancy-pants ceremony for unlocking my aura by me crew." Scarlet said, showcasing his absolutely uncivilized background. Neptune shuddered a little at the thought that he'd shared a room for so long, unwittingly, with a convicted felon that had apparently had a vested interest in his activities. Still, he isn't so bad. Just a little rough around the edges. Scarlet certainly brought a unique skill-set and outlook to their team dynamic: his general pessimism, critical analysis, and pragmatism complimented Sun's constant optimism and Neptune's intellectualism.

"So do I need to do anything?" Cammy asked. "They didn't really teach us much at all about aura in grade school."

"Think of it like lighting a torch with another torch. He'll flare his aura up, and you just have to will your soul to join up with his and get lit up by his energy." Sun said.

Cammy's face flushed bright red. "Souls? You're making this all sound very... intimate."

"Don't listen to them, it is like getting a haircut. Just a little change that makes you different." Sage tried to explain. "There's nothing intimate about it, so-"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Scarlet interrupted, pushing himself in front of Sage to cut him off. "Ye can get a haircut all the time, but you can only unlock an aura once. Is more like... poppin' a cherry."

Cammy's face was a crimson matching Scarlet's cape, now.

"Uh-huh, Scarlet's making things weird. As usual. I'm going to go get some food." Sun sighed and made to head off.

Neptune latched onto his partner. "Oh no. I know that look. We're in enough trouble without you 'appropriating' some merchant's produce again."

"I was gonna pay for it!" Sun whined, but his shifty eyes told a different story.

"Sure you were." Neptune chided. He looked at the other three. "Unlock her aura however you like, Sun and I'll buy food, we'll eat, then head up to school. If we can avoid getting arrested up to that point, we can figure out where Piter will be."

Scarlet scoffed. "No need for a huge inquiry there. He'll be on the biggest, shiniest ship in the sky, lording over his domain like some sort of heavenly god."

An ostentatious show of power, wealth, and authority? Yeah, that sounds about right. Neptune nodded. "Fair enough."

He walked out of the park with Sun, scouting passerby to make sure none of them seemed to recognize the pair of young heroes. Thankfully, most people were too fully invested in their own affairs to give them a thought - though some ladies did peek at Sun's lack-of-a-shirt as they passed by. So long as the authorities didn't put out a warrant for rock-hard abs and perfect style, they'd be fine.

"So... any other big reveals you want to share?" Sun asked with a smirk. "Is the other side of the family tree nobility from Vale? Maybe Atlas?"

Neptune rolled his eyes. "No, both sides are Mistral royalty."

"Like, the King's kids marrying other nobility?" He looked up at the mountain peak. "How much room is up there for nobles? I mean, Kuo Kuana was a cramped oasis full of faunus, but living on a mountain is probably just as bad sometimes."

"Not much room up there, yeah, so they tend to go out and claim other little mountains in the surrounding area. It's a big country." He felt a moment of guilt that his ancestors had been the most vocal proponents of forcing all the planet's faunus onto a desert island with so few resources, while their own sprawling territories were so lush and green. He sighed. "Not what I meant, though. My parents had more issues with the status quo than the mental conditioning used to reduce negative emotions tied to rebellion. Both sides of my family tree are the same family tree."

Sun looked at him, confused, then realization dawned on him. "Oh. Oh! Ew! Yuck! Why would they do that?"

"The family is obsessed with power and control. What better way to keep both than by... keeping the power in a single family?" Neptune said with a flourish of his hand. "Before you ask, I'm not going to marry my brother."

"You have a brother? Right! You mentioned that. Is he cool?"

"Yes. Oddly enough, also named Jupiter. Bloodlines aren't the only thing my family likes to cling to tightly; he was born while my parents still lived in the city."

"So we're going to go fight your cousin Jupiter because he thinks you want to oust him, but you also have a brother named Jupiter who has a better claim to the chair?"

"Both named after my great-great-grandfather, but you probably wouldn't have liked him." The old Emperor reputedly had had a soft spot for gladiatorial combat, and a true love for watching faunus kill one another. "Also, hopefully this doesn't end in a fight because Sage and Scar probably won't make it out pretty."

They walked along in silence for a bit.

"Now my clan doesn't feel like such a strange way to grow up." Sun admitted.

"You want to talk about them?" Neptune asked.

Sun shook his head, pointing at a noodle stall. "Nah. Besides, we'll have plenty of time to introduce you and the boys to them when we make it to Vacuo. Until then, gotta keep some mystery in this partnership."

If we make it to Vacuo. "No boats!" Neptune reminded as they placed an order with the man behind the counter.

"If you grew up in Argus, weren't you by the water like, all the time? How're you afraid of water?"

"I'm not afraid of water!" Neptune tried to say, though it came out as more of a protesting squeal. The vendor gave him a quizzical look, then resumed preparing their order.

"The first step towards solving a problem is admitting that you have a problem." Sun said, imitating Sage's voice and temperament, "and you, my friend, are terrified of water. I mean, I've seen you come out of the bathroom shower with a snorkel and an umbrella. Not to mention you'd never use the changeroom showers."

"I'm not afraid of water!" Neptune repeated. There was a clear distinction between hydrophobia and his own reluctance to be anywhere near water and other people at the same time. He reached over to the counter and paid for their food, and began walking with the bowls of noodles back to the park.

"Cool, cool. Whatever. Hey, do you think we really have a chance of stopping your cousin?"

"We have to try. Otherwise there's going to be a lot of dead faunus."

Sun stopped.

Neptune kept walking. "I mean, they're all trapped in their district. Can't get in, can't get out. Only way to fix it is to stop the one giving the orders before the bombs start to drop."

"Kill them? I thought Cammy meant he was just going to arrest them and keep them locked in the slums until he can force all of them to go to Menagerie, until he can uproot Adam. Why would he kill them?"

Neptune shook his head at his partner's optimism; even after what he'd seen at Beacon, with his growing understanding of why the White Fang existed, he was still so naive when it came to racism. "She also mentioned long-range strike craft. Those'll be to go after Ghira's boats. None of those ships are equipped to deal with bombardment - just the occasional close-range grimm attack."

"But those ships had human crews! They're owned by human shareholders! Jupiter paid for them!"

Neptune shrugged. "It's like you've never even read one of the historical treatises on the wars. Piter has." He thought back to their last game, how Piter had stacked the deck against him. He looked out at the float of airships hovering around the mountain. The deck is certainly stacked in his favour right now. The trick would be making Piter forget that. I need some sort of edge, and I'm coming up empty over and over. There's got to be some easier solution than relying on his rationality or my weakened team fighting Piter. "And it seems like he's convinced that the faunus have already shot first. Lionheart, this video of his wife, they've re-contextualized the situation for him."

"Huh?"

"He's seeing it all from a different perspective, now, one where every action the faunus and their allies - anyone not under his control - have been ubiquitous attempts to undermine, usurp, and ulcerate his Kingdom."

Sun wasn't smiling anymore.

"He thinks the faunus are all bad guys, with these recent revelations as proof of such." Neptune summarized, finally getting Sun to understand the emotions driving Piter. They walked in silence for a bit while Sun digested some noodles with his thoughts. "On another note, have you thought that maybe we should just go back to school, just us? Without the other three?" Neptune asked. "Even if Cammy has aura, they'll still be easy targets; with just two of us, we'd probably have a better chance of sneaking in and not being spotted and caught."

"What are you saying? Just leave them in the jungle gym, waiting for food? You take me to see your estranged cousin-king alone?" Sun pondered. Clearly, he wasn't completely against the idea of having more food for himself, nor the possibility of sparing his teammates further injury. Sun looked over his shoulder at Neptune, an odd, suspicious look flashed across his face for a moment. "No, we need to do this as a team. United. Friends sticking together, trusting each other."

Neptune nodded, but the way that Sun had said all that was off-putting, especially the emphasis on how he'd said 'take me'. He doesn't think I'd turn him over to Piter or something, does he? Neptune thought. Just because Piter is some sort of megalomaniacal cuckold now, doesn't mean my entire family is rotten. Most of it, maybe, but I'm still better than the type of coward willing to sell-out my friends for profit and safety. He wasn't like Lionheart! He wasn't going to betray his sworn brothers-in-arms just to ingratiate him to some other power... even if handing over Sun is a sure-fire way to prove to Piter that I'm on his side... a gift capable of stopping a fight by redirecting his attention.

Hmmm. Food for thought?

"Okay, fine. It was just an option." Neptune ceded. "At least now you know the stakes. This could get... bad."

They arrived back at the park and ate. Cammy finished first, eager to get back to focusing on her newly unlocked aura.

"My hand is all shiny! And I think one of my pimples went away!" She squealed with delight. "Look! Look at it glow!"

I would never sell out my team, Neptune continued to assure himself. Even if it cost him his freedom, the path of a huntsman required honour and sacrifice. He strove to embody those virtues - it was his dream to be a huntsman! On the other hand, something self-serving, something underhanded like that, would be a move that Jupiter could relate to - understand, even. As the old saying went, 'comfort breeds complacency'; a ruse wrapped in a familiar action would be given much less scrutiny, a much higher chance of successfully deceiving his opponent.

"Yup. One of the many benefits of having your aura unlocked." Scarlet said to Cammy, while looking at Neptune out of the corner of his eye. "Amazing what a little taste of power can do for a person, right?"


A short time later...

Two smaller airships hovered over the campus; the freshly-appointed headmaster's voice echoed out of the wired public address speakers as he directed students and staff to follow the orders of the soldiers as they were herded about. Even through the booming PA system, he sounded reserved and out-of-place as the leader of the kingdom's elite protectors in Neptune's mind. Beige was no leader, he was an over-promoted bureaucrat who, at best, would excel at the logistical aspects of the role.

The soldiers had set up sites in several outdoor areas, as well as stationing themselves in the staff building that had been the site of team RWBY's victory. A third, much larger style of troop-carrier airship had landed in the open central garden. "Why aren't they fighting back?" Sun asked, wide-eyed at the scene. He was less concerned with the headmaster and more concerned with their peers and teachers. The students and staff seemed to be upset at being taken out onto the grounds, rounded up and subjected to interrogations like criminals, but none of them were doing anything about it.

"No reason to." Sage said, leaning on Tri-Hard. "They're not huntsmen-in-training, just here to learn to fill support-roles; they don't want to ruffle any feathers and mar their records. Easier to just submit to this and wait for their innocence of any ties to traitors be validated so that they can continue with their life goals."

"Plus it means they have an excuse to skip homework tonight." Scarlet offered.

Unthinkable! Neptune thought. "You're right. They should be fighting back. For the sake of their night's readings!"

While Sun and Neptune kept watching the activity around campus, Scarlet and Cammy took their scrolls out: he was trying to connect her aura to her scroll's application programs. He muttered a string of profanity, followed by, "hey, scrolls aren't working."

"Yeah, they've been down all day. Did you sneak more of those pills or something?"

"No, like, the thing isn't working at all." Scarlet clarified, turning his device around to let the rest of them see the screen. The device was on, but there was a big red icon that read 'LOCKED'.

Neptune squinted at the hovering airships. "They might have a disruptor onboard the carrier. Or in one of the campus buildings."

"So even if those teachers wanted to put on a scuffle, they aren't able to call in their weapon lockers. Bet that they're unarmed." Scarlet said as he put his scroll away. "Why would they invent a machine that buggers up scrolls?"

"For situations like this, it seems." Neptune gave a dark little laugh. "Easier question to answer is who: Atlas, of course. It's a security thing. If your scroll is connected to the disruptor, it gets put on a whitelist so it doesn't get affected."

"That's dumb." Sun stated. "What sort of person makes a device to prevent people from using tech that could save lives during a grimm attack?"

"Sacrifice freedoms for security. That's society." Neptune shrugged and gestured to their group and the students in the campus. "I can't say that it isn't doing its job as intended, though."

"If they'd had one of those at Beacon, perhaps Cinder Fall's broadcast would not have succeeded." Sage speculated. "Or, perhaps, the way she seized control of communications inspired this device?"

A silence came upon them as their minds travelled back to Beacon's ruin.

"Alright, team SSSN. It looks like most of the activity is happening outside, so as long as we steer clear of that big building with soldiers in it we could probably sneak into the school to get some stuff from the infirmary. What do we do after that?" Cammy asked.

Sun knelt down and drew a quick map of the school in the dirt with his tail while he spoke. "We'll get in through the second-floor windows here-" he pointed at a squiggly square that represented the combat class gymnasium building, "-so that Nep and I can sneak over to the long-term care infirmary on the third floor upstairs, just in case they've got guards in the other buildings."

"How will you get these two in through the second floor?" She shook her thumb at her elite bodyguards, sprawled out in pain behind her.

"Sage'n Scarlet'll wait out here with Cammy, hiding." Sun replied. "Once we get whatever medicines and aura boosters we can snatch up, I'll get them back to the injured while Neptune makes his way to the armoury to get some ammo. Or should he be looking for this scroll-hater?"

"Wherever the disruptor is, they'll have it guarded." Neptune said. "There's a chance they'll have it in the armoury, anyways, just to protect two eggs in one basket."

"Okay, well, if the armoury is guarded, break off and get back to the group?" Sage suggested.

"No." Scarlet said. "Take them out. Get the dust, knock out the guards."

"They'll be able to raise an alarm. Their scrolls should - if the disruptor is working like its schematics intended - still be working." Neptune said. "Best case scenario, they send more soldiers and I get caught."

"Alright, well, forget the disruptor, just see if you can nab some dust. Yellow and red are probably best for making a distraction, but beggars can't be too choosy. What are the odds we can get onto one of those ships in the air, make a breakaway to get Neptune to the Crown Prince without him knowing we're on the way?" Sun asked.

The boys shrugged.

Sage shook his head. "I couldn't jump that high on a good day."

"Not from the ground, but maybe from the top of the CCT?" Scarlet looked at the school's tower.

"They're too far away from the tower, and you can't glide like this." Sage responded.

Scarlet pursed his lips, then muttered, "well, not if I was going to have to fight afterwards, but Spring and Soar could probably get us onto one of those ships. Just don't count on me after that for anything."

"Yeah, that sounds like a great plan. Show up to Jupiter with a bunch of half-dead huntsmen-in-training, telling him to stop what he's set in motion." Neptune drawled. "Sun, got any happier thought-out-plans for us? Anything, really, can't be worse than Scarlet and Sage killing themselves to steal an airship."

"We don't know for sure where the disruptor, or the troops, are right now." Sun said, looking at his crude map. "We might luck out and be able to get some ammo, or some stuff to fix these two up. If we can get that, we can... ugh. I don't know. This is all over the place." His tail slumped down beside his crude map.

Neptune looked up at the airships, then past them at the sky. "Well, I think for now we just focus on getting into the infirmary. We'll figure out the rest from there, hopefully before it gets dark. If we're scuttling around with flashlights, we'll be spotted immediately."

Sun stroked his chin. "Who needs flashlights?" His faunus eyes glinted in the setting sun. He looked over at the inhabitants of the academy. "Looks like they're going to be processing the student body and staff for a while, yet, assuming they've been at this all day already. We can get the meds, scout out for the thingy that's messing up with scrolls-"

"Disruptor."

"-get some ammo if we can, then when darkness sets in, we take out the disruptor or reset it to turn off the soldiers' communications as well."

"That could work, if we're quick."

"Maybe arm the students and staff and rally them to take these three ships to go confront Neptune's cousin." Sun finished.

Scarlet shifted forward. "The conditioning that the soldiers go through to make them loyal to the Crown Prince: is that limited to him, or would it extend to any member of the royal bloodline? If we make it sound like Neptune is going to challenge the fucker for the Crown or sumthin', would they stand back? See how things stand after the dust settles?"

"I'm not really keen on starting an internecine conflict here, on top of everything else." Neptune stated with gritted teeth. I would, in fact, like to be able to continue civil relations with my family after tonight!

"Wait, you're saying Neptune could command the soldiers around, too?" Sun said. Everyone looked at Neptune.

He shrugged. "I don't know. I've never tried. What kind of dick goes around ordering people around like that? Maybe it would work? I'm not going to have us rely on that, though. I'm not really publicly known as a prince."

"Come on, man, you have to beat fire with fire, combat authority with authority. If Jupiter's authority comes from your lineage, then we must counter it if we can." Sage said, but his words failed to sway Neptune's mind on the subject. It would be totally uncool! Sage gave up on the topic and instead began talking with Sun about the crop of first-year support students, discussing a handful of useful prospects with semblances that could be used in combat - nothing spectacular on that front - and their loyalty to the Prince based on the assumption that city folk would be more loyal than rural-born students. Overall, he surmised that over half of the people gathered at the academy would not be completely conditioned by patriotic propaganda; while they might not be naturally rebellious, they would at least listen to SSSNC's case.

On one hand, Neptune wanted to be impressed by Sage's encyclopedic knowledge of first year students, since they didn't have the scroll network to rely on. On the other hand, Neptune noticed that Sage's insights only seemed to pertain to female first year students.

Wait, are we calling ourselves team 'sunk'(SSSNC)? Is it just me, or is that foreboding? Neptune wanted to interject, but Scarlet pulled him aside.

"Hey," Scarlet whispered, "sorry about the spying business. I have to ask, though. Say for the sake of argument that ye can order the soldiers about: do you think you could order about me boys if they're guarding Jupiter on his ship? Seeing 'em all earlier, I thought I'd lost 'em for good... until I thought more about what makes 'em tick, about how Mistral wires its folks."

"It depends on what's making them follow his orders. I know it is not Piter himself; his semblance is all about air and wind, so it isn't a psychic thing. I figure one of my other cousins, or someone on staff, is a psychic. Maybe a hypnotism semblance? They'd not want to waste work making elite soldiers loyal to a single man - my family is concerned with the power of the family, not an individual member; if Piter had done it to them himself, I'd say no. But family would make them loyal to the family. So it'd just be a matter of proving that I'm a member of the family." He paused, hesitant. "If he'd told you to do more than spy on me..."

Scarlet blanched. "He had everyone I'd ever known at his mercy. I had no choice." He threw on the puppy-dog eyes and that pout. The one that made Scarlet nearly impossible to stay mad at. Neptune had seen a girl catch Scarlet with another chick, only to give him another chance when he threw that look their way. It was overpowered! It should be banned! No force known to man nor faunus could stand against such a forgivable face!

Right. Neptune sighed. "Well, at least your lost boys won't be keen to attack me. Might have more luck trying to break whatever spell he's got on them yourself with some sort of emotional appeal. A shared vivid memory or the equivalent." He moved back to listen to Sage's description of first-years' semblances. He'd started with what he regarded as the most powerful ones (possibly the cuter ones); now he was going through what could generously be referred to as the dregs (and any first-year boys he'd interacted with). The ones with any real promise hadn't wanted to squander their time at a gutted facility like Haven and had made their way to Shade, or just stayed at their primary schools to wait for a more optimal year to begin. He pulled Sun up from his messy dirt doodle by the shoulder. "Sounds like we've got a target. Come on, let's go get these two some boosters."


DOMINIC

MONDAY EVENING

The sight of Neo's parasol led the pair towards their human accomplice. "What's the fastest way inside that doesn't get us spotted, Neo?" He panted, having made good time up the mountain-city from the base level to the girl's coordinates. Even with the pair of twins jogging through the darkening streets, Neo had had enough time to navigate her way outside.

She threw her thumb over her shoulder and sarcastically gestured at the high wall of the facility.

"Doesn't look like it will be an easy climb, but it's getting dark at least." Dominic said, looking upwards. It wouldn't be long until Neo's human eyes couldn't even see the top of the wall.

"Throw me up, I'll take out the guard." The boys said in unison, then looked at each other awkwardly for a moment.

"Great minds, you know?" Brazen said to Neo. She had a look of astonished confusion on her face, glancing back and forth between the imposing defensive structure and the twins.

"I'll go up, you stay with Neo here until I give the all clear."

"Once you're up, how do we get her up? Or me? I don't think she can toss me up like you could."

Dominic nodded. Even with aura-strength, Neo probably couldn't get Brazen up high enough to scale the wall, not to mention the question of how she'd follow them up. He considered that they could just have her take another way inside, but they were relying on her to guide them to the prisoners as fast as possible, and sticking together - with an illusionist to conceal their infiltration for as long as possible - was the ideal solution. He looked down the street. "Hardware store. Neo can get some rope or cord there and I'll toss it down for you two."

Five minutes later, Brazen had thrown him up to take out the guard silently with a from-behind sleeper hold. Dominic crouched down a short distance away from the edge, bracing himself while holding the top of a knotted cable so that his twin could come up. To his surprise, it was Neo who rolled over onto the roof first, standing up and patting flakes of the wall's weathered paint-job off her outfit. Dominic felt a twinge of regret at having missed the opportunity to watch Neo from below, then the cable once again went taut; Brazen soon joined them atop the tower.

"Might have motion sensors on the grounds." Brazen whispered. "Can your illusions fool tech?"

Neo shook her head. She patted her weapon.

"We have no time for an extended break-in fight, and these buildings seal up tight against external attack if they need to. We need to get inside before the alarm is raised." Dominic took the rope, tied it tightly to Wilt, and hurled it across the courtyard into the main building of the complex. He began upside-down crawling along the rope to cross. Neo calmly walked along the rope, showing off some insane-level of balance. And definitely pausing right above me to smile down at me while letting me take in the view of her from below. Once all three of them were across, Neo pried open a ventilation exhaust and gestured to them to follow her as he untied his sword from the rope and sheathed it. They made their way through a maze of hallways and rooms. Dominic began to wonder if Neo knew where she was going, until she pointed at a room with a metal door labelled 'CELL SURVEILLANCE CONTROL ROOM'. Dominic nodded and tried the door. It was locked. He shook his head, and moved his hand to grasp the hilt of his sword. Neo put her hand on his and scowled at him. She pushed at him, giving herself space to work at the door.

[Her illusions do not affect sound.] Brazen reminded as Neo played with the door handle.

[Can she get us in quickly? Every moment we tarry, faunus suffer.] Dominic tapped his foot impatiently.

[If she can, then we retain the element of surprise, ensuring a higher chance of success. If she cannot, then Wilt is our secondary access route.]

Dominic nodded. A reasonable proposal, to be expected of his own mind. He took a deep breath. Hearing Lichen's cries earlier, even over the scroll, had rattled him. He'd heard those cries from her before, long ago. He had a foreboding sense of what the humans had been up to. If they had Salt... no, he told himself. He would save them this time. The alternative was too horrible to think about. His mind obsessed over the crimes humans perpetrated on his people enough as it was.

The door opened a sliver. Neo stepped away, giving them a little bow, as Brazen congratulated the human on her continued usefulness with a thumbs-up and a pat on her head. Dominic stole inside, keeping low. Inside was a bright room, lit by the glow of dozens of monitors. Various rooms from inside the facility were recorded - even the surveillance room itself. He gazed up. A small little device embedded in the ceiling. The camera. He felt fortunate that Neo's semblance had hidden their approach so far.

"Gee, seventh squad sure are having a good time down there with the prisoners." A human relaxing in a chair said, leaning back with his hands behind his head and his feet resting on a desk while he nursed a warm beverage. Coffee, if the pungent smell permeating the room was being honest to Dominic's nose. "I wish I hadn't swapped for monitor duty tonight. How was I to know guard duty would be so busy?"

"Hey, nothing wrong with monitor duty. At least we get to watch. Beats gate duty. Look at those guys, having to deal with the crowd all shift. Ha!" Another human soldier said from a counter, pouring himself a cup of coffee from a machine. His eyes glanced right over to Dominic. Without missing a beat, his eyes kept moving until they fixed upon the man in the chair. "Besides, from what I've heard of the new orders, we'll be swimming in tail real soon."

"Oh man, I hear that. I can't wait to get a little one for myself. I know the wife might not like it at first, but once she sees how it can help with the housework and other stuff, I think she'll come around. If that doesn't work, I'll try convincing her by..." The man continued talking, but Dominic stopped listening. His eyes had locked onto one of the monitors, which the two men had been observing intently enough to miss the fraction of a moment between Dom's entrance and Neo's semblance concealing his entrance.

"Dominic." Brazen whispered low enough so that only a faunus adjacent could hear.

Dominic spun around. Brazen's face was full of sorrow and hatred, and Dominic knew that the same expression would be on his own countenance. They nodded to one another, and two red swords appeared out of nowhere to decapitate the two guards on monitor duty. Neo watched her illusion shatter into pieces as the bodies hit the floor, their heads rolling away into the corners. The dark uniforms became dark and sleek as blood poured out, forming puddles on the pristine floor and splashes of vitality splattering against the monitors. The room became red as the light was filtered through the blood on the screens.

Brazen accessed the computer terminal while Dominic pointed at the door while looking at Neo. She obliged and closed it. Thankfully, she didn't seem too concerned with the lethal attack. If anything, her glance to the dead could be considered one of mere curiosity. Seems like Torchwick got his hands dirty sometimes, too. Dominic looked back at the screen. "Where?"

"Five floors down in the sub-level." Brazen said after several moments of inspection, then gave explicit directions on how to get there. Dominic saw the map of the facility Brazen had pulled up. "There are a lot of guard posts in the way - the elevators are heavily secured - but if you take the roundabout route with Neo, and take these flights of stairs," he gestured at a series of side passages, "you should manage to get there undetected until the final checkpoint."

"With Neo? Where are you going?"

"I'm going here, into the side yard." His clone pointed at the map again, then at a video feed depicting a few aircraft being tended to by human mechanics. "It's a landing field and aircraft servicing area. I'll commandeer an exit strategy for us. They won't just let us leave as easily as we came in. Meet up there. I'll try to draw as much of their attention out there."

Dominic grabbed the door handle. "Take Neo with you. I won't be taking the scenic route to save Salt. Can you disable the alarms or anything from here?"

Brazen dabbled with the controls, but shook his head. He looked like he was about to argue the point, then stopped himself. "Neo and I will cause enough of a ruckus to keep their attention long enough for you to complete the mission. One for all."

One aura between them to save the closest thing he had resembling friends. One aura between the two of them, so he'd better not squander it. One alarm to notify the entire base to come down on them like a hive of ants.

That's alright. It was a longshot to think that he could do this and stay undetected.

It was a naive hope to think that Salt would be left unharmed.

I am going to kill them all.

Dominic walked out of the room, Wilt in hand, alone and determined. His pace quickened. He took longer strides. Quicker. He broke into a run. Faster! He sprinted down the hallway. His aura flared, seeping into his muscles, turning him into a blur as he flashed down the hallway. The first guard post was a set of metal doors, locked and barred, with a checkpoint in between; but it was designed to protect against attack from the opposite side - not from against a threat from inside the base. He decimated the first door by ramming into it at full speed and poked Blush into the small gap in the checkpoint safety glass meant to receive packages. With a point-blank shotgun blast, the back of the resident soldier's shredded body armour was splattered to the wall, leaving a gaping hole in the broken cadaver that slid away out of sight under its desk. He opened the barred door from his side and walked through. Two guards there were already standing, one with his hand grasping a scroll while the other drew a pistol.

A pistol clutched by a spasming hand fell to the floor. A head, its eyes rolling to look up in disbelief at its body still holding a scroll, fell to the floor. For a moment, Wilt came to rest in the still-beating heart of the now-handless ex-human being, now an upright corpse. The last thumping beats of the heart resonated through the fire dust-infused steel through his glove, sending blood to a limb that was no longer connected, pulling air from severed veins into the body. Then Wilt was wrenched back and returned to its sheath. The corpses gurgled and slumped to the floor as blood sprayed out with restless abandon.

He heard muted gunfire from elsewhere nearby. Ceiling lights flared red. A klaxon began to sound. Dominic didn't take a moment to enjoy the justice he delivered. There was more to do.

There were more humans to kill. Retribution for the faunus to be taken. At least I don't have to worry about Brazen - I can take care of myself.

Dominic advanced forward. Ever closer to where the humans were forcing themselves on Salt, like some inexorable spectre of death come calling: judgment incarnate for their sins.

Kill them all!

He shoved Wilt into the elevator doors and pressed the button to call it up, then peeled the doors back with his strength.

Five floors down. Sub-level. Bottom of the base.

The elevator rose up, diligently responding to his summons. He wondered if there were already soldiers aboard it, coming to determine what the cause for the alarm was. As the elevator began rising from the next floor down, Dominic decided that he didn't actually need the elevator. He just needed a quick and clear path to the bottom.

Wilt cut through the woven steel cables, causing the elevator to fall and his mind to soar in exultation at the thought of the occupant humans' terror as they plummeted to their deaths.

For all of about four feet, then it came to an unsatisfying halt as a variety of safety mechanisms activated. That's not how it works in movies! Dominic frowned, then hopped down onto the elevator. He heard excited voices from within. He contemplated shooting into the elevator with Blush, but wasn't sure if the rifle could penetrate the metal cabin. So, instead, he just squeezed down beside the elevator and jumped. He grabbed onto the cable underneath to slow his descent, counting the doors as he went by.

One. Two. Three. Four. He gripped tighter, friction tearing apart his glove but aura keeping his hand unscathed.

Fifth floor down. He glanced down the shaft. There was another floor below. Probably just a maintenance area or something. He glanced back up and counted the door he'd passed. He was at the right level, according to the facility map Brazen had read. He leapt over to the door and pried it open with Wilt, and was immediately met with the next checkpoint. The guards were protected here with erected barricades and had aimed pistols and rifles down the hallway. Over the sound of the alarm, he didn't even hear the order to open fire. Their rounds missed him entirely as he zig-zagged forward, or ricochet off his whirling blade. The latter merely charged his semblance. He could feel his semblance charging frequently. Brazen must be fighting hard. Good. More dead humans. Less oppressors in the world.

Dominic shot over their barricade, spinning in the air while locking onto targets with Blush and firing quick bursts into the chests and faces of his opponents. Quick, brutal executions. These men deserved pain and suffering, but no more than Salt deserved quick liberation. The balance between a single faunus' protection against the need for retaliation's due was uneven; the needs of the faunus were first. So, as much as he longed to draw out each death, to savour the terror and mortal understanding of their inferiority, Dominic tore through them as efficiently as his considerable talents allowed.

By the time he reached the third checkpoint, they'd had time to erect hardlight shields, activate turrets, and turn off the lights. They must've not known what was attacking their base. The darkness was no threat to him. He forged ahead. The turrets fired in automated, predictable patterns. Lesser men would be forced to a standstill from the barrage - if they were not pierced by an unlucky ricochet. Adam Taurus was a few tiers above that sort of fate; Wilt blocked each shot once the pattern was evident. After each reload delay came more fuel for Moonslice.

Part of him worried about how he was going about this - charging in like a raging bull, smashing through obstacles - but it was the only coping mechanism he had. If he tried to use his brain, he'd only be able to realize that he'd already failed to save Lichen and Salt from human villainy. So he had to make do without his mind's higher functions for the time being. The hardlight shields were a barrier. If the shields hadn't been bolstered by the turrets, Dominic knew that they would have been a more substantial barrier that his rage-brain would have struggled to overcome. With the turrets conveniently acting to charge his semblance, the shield was simply another nuisance - one which Moonslice would make quick work of. He used Blush to take out the turrets once their service had run its course, and he focused on the energy coursing through his aura. The darkness deepened, and only the faint dim glow of the red alert sirens retained colour as the blast of his semblance overloaded the shields capacity and opened the way to the next batch of waiting corpses.

He couldn't hear the klaxon, anymore, no more than he could hear the agonized wails of the dismembered and dying around him. All he could really hear was the echo of Lichen through Neo's scroll call.

All he could think about was the image on the monitor, of Salt's situation and how he had been too late to stop it.

I should have known this would happen. He wanted to blame Ghira; if so many faunus hadn't left the city, the humans would not have had the gall to arrest and molest the girls. He wanted to believe that was true, but a part of him understood that humans would never have been deterred from their evil ways by any minority of faunus residents. I should have told them to go with Ghira. I should have at least gotten them out of town. That last idea seemed foolhardy. Out of town? Even out of town wasn't safe. His eyes, while focused by fury on the image of Salt, hadn't neglected to spy young Rothy curled up behind where Lichen shook the bars of her cell.

Nowhere was safe.

Humans were everywhere.

The last guard slid off of Wilt, and Dominic felt a tear fall down the left side of his face from his ruined eye into the fabric of his eyepatch. Everything was going wrong lately. He'd gotten distracted; Blake, Cinder, they had diluted his essential drive. He had to protect his people, and the only way to do that was by overthrowing humanity. Without enemies, his people would be happy. He didn't need their praise. He didn't need their adoration. He was their saviour, whether Ghira would accept that or not, and only his methods would work against the vile scourge that ruled Remnant. He had to be strong, because who else was able to do what needed to be done? Who else would avenge the mutilation of his species?

Praise and adoration would be nice, though.

He sprinted down the cellblock, sparing only a glance to the side as he passed her by to see Lichen looking at him with weary scorn. This is your fault! She must have said. You brought this upon us! Upon her! This is because of you! Dominic heard her say, even though the world stayed muted as klaxon sirens rang out and her lips were set in a stiff grimace. Past the cellblock, now, to the interrogation room, and he kicked open the heavy door.

Their weapons, armour, and clothes scattered about the edges of the sound-proofed room, the men were no threat to him. Their gazes turning to regard him rather than their victim, their expressions filling with confusion, then dread and panic. They made noises, but he paid them no heed. One threw up his hands in surrender, another leapt for his gun. The rest were motionless, taken by surprise as the base's klaxon alarms became audible to them and informed them of the gravity of their situation.

With their attention focused on him, Salt was granted respite from their base urges. With their attention focused on him, Salt was safe. With Salt safe, the need for retaliation's due was given greater weight. These men could suffer; would suffer. These miserable wretches would die slowly, painfully.

In a motion that none mistook for mercy, he sheathed his sword.

For this, his hands would suffice.


NEPTUNE

MONDAY EVENING

"Okay, this should be enough to get Sage walking." Neptune said as he handed some capsule containers to Sun, who looked at their labels curiously. "I'll head to the armoury to see what is happening over there. If I'm not back out in half an hour... I'm probably going to need rescuing. No leaving me behind, right?"

"I'm not going to leave you behind, man." Sun replied, then shook the capsules he was holding. "You sure about these? What's in them? Are they vegan?"

Neptune slouched a bit and shook his head, sadly. "It boggles my mind how little you actually retained - or learned at all - from our studies here. These pills are made from local herbs and spices, mixed with charged dust residues and salts by students in the medical branch." The Huntsmen Academies wouldn't have very large student bodies if they only taught huntsmen. The Academies filled their halls with people wanting to use their semblances for civilian life, too. Pharmacists, strategists, historians, grimm research, all of that and more were fields that came from the Academies. "They inhibit pain receptors in the body, which lets your body stop draining your aura for useless mundane aches and pains, and thus helps restore aura faster than simple rest alone. Do you want me to go through each ingredient, or do you want to get back to saving people today?"

"Right. Apologies! See you outside, science-sensei." Sun bowed apologetically and took off.

Neptune stalked down the hallway, making his way slowly to the armoury. The hallway lights were dimmed, or off entirely. It felt like the school was still closed for summer break. After the events transpiring presently, perhaps it would be. It was hard to imagine what the coming days would be like. Best not to think of that, and focus on the current objective. He tried to remember the way to the armoury. It had been a long time since he'd gone there. How long ago had it been? He'd never used it to modify his weapon at all, having been much more comfortable in the library. Come to think of it, he might not have actually been to the armoury since the orientation week tour. Now, here he was, trying to find his way to the place in the dark, without a scroll capable of loading a map.

So much for his lauded intelligence...

He eventually found a hallway that, if he tilted his head and squinted, seemed familiar. Desperate to find the armoury to appease his waning self-confidence, he moved quickly down the hallway. As he did, he tripped over something on the ground. A broom? No, a mop. One of the janitors must have left it there as they were taken away by the soldiers for inspection. He hopped on one foot for a couple more steps as momentum confounded him, his arms waving about for balance like an imbecile, then went head-first into a water fountain. His weight and velocity tore the instalment from the wall, spewing the dreadful water all over the place! All over him!

He gave out what, if asked later, he would relate was a very masculine howl of distress. Certainly not an infantile shriek.

A female voice came from a nearby corridor. "Sounds like some little girl's in trouble!" Within moments, a trio of soldiers had Neptune lit up in the path of flashlights mounted atop their standard-issue rifles. "Hey, who are you?"

Neptune rose to his feet, scooting away and getting some distance from the (rapidly growing) water hazard. "Oh, me?" His brain didn't have time to come up with something witty, or a clever lie, so he just told them the truth as nonchalantly as he was able. "I'm Neptune of Team SSSN. Haven trained." Maybe not training presently at Haven, but at least he could lie by omission without much forethought.

"Stay still!"

"Don't move!"

The lights and associated rifle barrels stayed aimed at him.

"How are you fine ladies doing this evening?" He threw on his most charming smile.

One of the lights wavered, then pointed down. "Oh, I remember watching him in the Vytal Festival!" One of the soldiers exclaimed.

"Isn't he-"

"That team of total hotties!"

"...Right! Was he the one who did the topless photo-shoot for the Huntsman Magazine?"

One of the others snickered. "Didn't remember that guy's face, Fah? I think that was his teammate."

"Alright, well, anyways, hello Neptune of Team SSSN. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be out with the other students at the assembly?" Asked the soldier at the front.

Neptune, sensing that the mood had shifted adequately towards him not-being-shot, and having been given a bit of time to come up with a foolhardy scheme, decided to push his luck. "Yeah, I was actually out in town all day taking care of the less fortunate-" Not a lie! "-and just got back to school and realized I need a new crystal for my scroll. My cousin, Crown Prince Jupiter, was trying to contact me earlier while I was busy, so I can't really go without a working scroll right now." A little piece of him withered and writhed as he threw around Jupiter's name, but he had to. It was for the greater good. "I'd hate to make family wait up on me like this any more than necessary."

The soldiers gave one another looks that were hard to read through their masks and the light shining in his face. "You're in luck, pretty princeling. Follow us. We've set up in the local armoury and it's still got some dust stocked up. You'll be talking to the Crown Prince in no time. It also might be a new tech toy the brass wanted us to guard that is messing up your scroll, not a dead battery."

Great, Neptune thought to himself as they took him to his destination; the talkative one leading the way, the other two flanking him. He didn't bother to check: his aura-boosted danger-sense told him that their weapons were readied to make sure running wasn't an option for him. He considered it anyways. My aura could probably tank a few shots in the back, but that'd just put all the soldiers on alert and spoil the element of surprise. They'd probably spread out and eventually find the other guys, too. He rather easily resigned himself to hanging out with these admittedly cute chicks in uniform for a while and hopefully getting something accomplished by that.

That's what he'd claim later, if anyone were to be so bold as to accuse him of following the brain in his pants again.

At least one benefit of having the two of them flanking behind me is that their gun-mounted lights are giving me a good view of the talkative one's curvy butt.

As they went further through the hallways, down a flight of stairs, his nostrils were assailed by a mouth-watering aroma. He tried to think: where were the kitchens in relation to the armoury, or the cafeteria? Where was the cafeteria in relation to the armoury? Did the combat training building have its own kitchen? Were the soldiers just having an impromptu barbecue as they carried out their orders? Yes, that's what Neptune needs right now! He decided, grilled meat, cute girls in uniforms, and an entire armoury of dust crystals! He began to salivate at the thought of those things.

His fantasies were cut short as the women escorted him into the armoury. They weren't cooking meat.

They were branding people. Specifically, people with obvious faunus traits, had been shackled and gagged; a soldier in a uniform bearing a couple extra bits of flair to denote a senior rank was sadistically applying a hot metal rod to their flesh. The current - and apparently last - victim receiving this treatment gave out a muffled scream as her skin sizzled audibly even over the anguished groans of the captives against their gags. Two additional soldiers watched the other perform the cruelty with apathetic stares.

"-and if you have a scroll 3.6 model, I think the dust batteries for those are in that container over there." One of the soldiers who had led him in finished saying, and he realized that she'd started talking as they'd entered the armoury while he'd been staring, unbelieving, at the savage situation unfolding within.

"Um, what?"

"What scroll model do you have?" She repeated.

"No, I mean what are you doing to those people?" He restated, gesturing towards the faunus. "Are you branding them?"

"Well, yeah." One of the other soldiers replied matter-of-factly, not even a bit ashamed of it. "Now even if they get rid of their faunus features they won't be mistaken for humans by people."

Humans. People. Faunus. As if the terms are meaningfully distinct.

"Can't have people getting confused about who's what, am I right?" One of the soldiers who'd been watching the scene unfold said with a jarring cheerfulness in her tone.

The third soldier that had come upon him had gone over to the one who had just finished branding the student. He heard her distinctly say his name, Piter's name and title, and either Sun's name or his team name. Neptune fervently wished he knew which one it was, and was struck with a renewed hatred for the fact that his team name and team leader's name were one and the same. They might be talking about his own faunus connection, or his affiliation with the school... at this point, is either topic to my benefit? Still, he wished he knew whether they were concerned about Sun or SSSN.

I bet Jaune's team never has problems like this. There should be a rule that teams should not share their name with any member of the team.

"So, you brand them?" Neptune asked, his voice creeping up an octave; he was keeping his distance from the woman with the hot iron. "Why are they tied up like that?"

"Those are our orders for dealing with these suspect traitors." The soldier replied in a tone that implied that having been ordered to do it justified their actions.

"Anyways, your scroll?" Asked the other one again. "Gotta get you in touch with the big bossman, right?" She winked at him, but the flirtatious gesture didn't have the same charm as it had before he'd found out what their squad was tasked with doing.

Neptune looked away from the prisoners. "3.6 model." As he looked away, he saw a large, glossy white-metal oval hooked up to a yellow dust power generator. Definitely Atlesian tech. It looked just like what the schematic for the disruptor said a disruptor should look like, down to the part where the schematic had it blown apart to detail its inner workings. If Neptune had to guess, Mistral had acquired a disruptor from their Atlesian allies - by some method or another - and had taken it apart to figure out how it worked. That's probably against the End User License Agreement. They seem to have decided they needed it functioning before they had time to undo their invasive attempt at reverse engineering. It looked like a broken egg, and, true to the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty, nobody had been able to put it back together again. Despite all that, the localized malfunction of his friends' scrolls proved that it managed to function properly. He took a dust crystal from a full case and went through the motions of replacing the 'dead' battery in his scroll, using a bit of sleight of hand to keep the soldiers from noticing that his scroll hadn't been powerless.

Thankfully, the ladies were too busy complimenting his fashion sense to pay much attention to what he was doing with his scroll. He made a mental note to brag later to 'All About Abs' Sage about how his slackless tailored jeans had saved them all yet again.

He turned it on. "It's on, but it still isn't working." He said, innocently, while looking with concern at the underwhelming number of cases of dust stored here. Either the embargo is hitting Mistral really hard, the Academy has other stores of dust elsewhere on the campus, or perhaps the military has already diverted the Kingdom's supply to keep itself stocked. The soldiers had probably had to take a fair amount of any stored dust to get the disruptor running, too. With the pitiful amount of dust in the room's containers, Haven could manage to take out a nascent nest of Lancer grimm and little more. Still, it was more than team SSSN was fielding presently.

"Oh, right, the jammer." The soldier said, smacking herself on the side of her helmet with the flat of her hand as if to punish herself for forgetting. "Yeah, we'll need to get you whitelisted or you'll be locked out anyways. Here-" she held out her hand for his scroll.

Well, it wasn't doing him any good in its current state. He handed it over to her. She took it and walked over to the disruptor with it. Jammer? Who calls it a jammer? What's it doing, making berry-spread for toast?

She fiddled around with both devices for a few seconds, giving him a quick opportunity to snatch a few more crystals of electric dust from the open container. At least Tri-Hard wouldn't want for juice when he got it back in his hands. She stopped fiddling with his scroll. "Good to go!"

Neptune glanced at the nearest prisoner. He was a young boy, far too young to even be a student, with salt-and-pepper hairy knuckles. Perhaps he was the child of one of the staff members who'd been unfortunate enough to be caught up in all this? The boy's wide eyes gleamed with tears, looking at Neptune with hope, while a girl a few years older but with the same colour hair on her hands leaned against him. The kid had probably seen Neptune taking the extra dust crystals. Fuck. Neptune felt awful. The boy definitely harboured some expectation that Neptune, if willing to steal dust, might commit further rebellious acts up to and including liberating the faunus prisoners. He looked away, back to the woman with his scroll. Compared to what these folks had been subjected to, he couldn't help but feel his privilege and fortune like an itchy winter sweater all over his body and he hated that right now he couldn't do anything to help them that wouldn't immediately risk damning himself.

Suddenly very aware of how he was unarmed, he mentally swore at himself for leaving his weapon behind. Sure, scaling up the side of the building with the bulky polearm would have been a challenge, but he probably could have managed it. Ugh. Not like I really want to be fighting soldiers anyway. We're all supposed to be good guys on the same team here! Pacifism and platitudes about how distracted he'd been aside, he felt stupid for making the mistake.

"Wow, you have a lot of contacts in here!" The soldier said, oblivious to Neptune's racing thoughts. "A lot of cute girls! Are they all huntresses?"

"Hey, are you done with my scroll or not?" Neptune demanded, struggling to not let the anxiety turn into an irritated tone that would sour their fragile relations, or a whine that would lessen his cool appearance. His aura was itching, that feeling that he was being watched; the soldiers were circling around him. Beads of sweat gathered on his neck. It was anxiety akin to giving a class presentation without having prepared properly or something. As the prey-surrounded-by-predators sensation increased, despite his reservations about fighting his own people, he desperately wished he'd not left his weapon with Sage.

Even unarmed, I could probably win a fight with them. Or at least, get away. But even just getting into a fight would put the soldiers outside on high alert: objective failure.

"Yeah, yeah, don't fret. It didn't take long for me to get you in the system. You should be able to get in touch with the Crown Prince now to answer his summons. I just thought, 'hey, maybe this Neptune hunk would like my own scroll contact info in here for later', 'kay, handsome? Maybe he knows some nice restaurants in town that he could introduce a boring girl like me to some quiet evening."

Neptune tried to force a charming smile, giving her a rigid nod as he felt his attempts to extricate himself from the situation flounder. While he was no stranger to having girls aggressively trying to prompt him to ask them out, the atmosphere of the situation was well beyond his normal tolerance. Keeping his composure would have been a lot easier to do if the air wasn't ripe with the smell of burnt skin and the sound of trembling sobs.

"You can put my contact info in there, too, while you're at it." Whispered another soldier as she closed in on him. He flinched a little as she reached in and took his scroll. Additional slim arms slid under his and embraced him while a third soldier entered her digits. She didn't let him go once it was done, but instead she caressed his chest as the scroll passed to another one of the soldiers.

"Mmmmm, he really fills in that fashion, doesn't he, girls?"

There were purrs of assent from all around him.

"Our job here is pretty much done, we've been so bored I sent those three out on a patrol. I don't think anyone would mind if we all took a little break from our duties." A hand crept up under his shirt, easing eagerly like an eel up to his pectorals, searching around for any concealed weapons he may have.

Neptune's mind was fracturing. He was lost in a raging current of conflicting emotions and feelings.

Pretty girls touching him!

People being tortured on Piter's orders!

Crowd of victims watching him get felt up by pretty girls!

Scarlet's secret spying!

Lionheart's treason!

His partner. If he couldn't depend on Sun to stay with him when things got tough like they did after Beacon, and if he didn't have his family to rely on, what rock could he cling to as the tide rose against him?

The brain in Neptune's head was shutting down.

"Hey, Neptune, I'm sure Crown Prince Jupiter is pretty busy right now with everything he's got going on. He'd probably not even notice if you didn't call him back for a while. If you'd like, I could give him a report stating that you're in our... custody. I could tell him that you're making sure we're fulfilling our duties?"

Emergency! Neptune's consciousness flared back to life, struggling to surface. Something was said! Prince Neptune? No, that wasn't it. Custody? He wasn't keen on being arrested here, but it wasn't like these soldiers were trained with aura so he could fight his way free if it came to that. Call Crown Prince Jupiter? Yes, that's it. What's wrong with that? Oh yeah! If they call him, that'll spoil our scheme!

From the depths of his panicked thoughts he rose, lifted up by revived determination. The brain in his head was a lost cause for now, so his consciousness re-routed through a secondary backup unit.

A mask of confidence showered over his face. His hand surged up and enveloped the smooth hand that held his scroll, threatening to tap Jupiter's icon. "Ladies," his voice said, "if Piter's so busy, there's no need to bother him with something so trivial as my whereabouts; it would be a waste of everyone's time, when there are much better uses we could be spending it with." He swiped away Jupiter's icon and slid the scroll into his pocket. His semblance felt the water in his body shifting. Arteries dilated, blood began pumping faster, as the new source of his thought-processes swelled. I can do this. The water is inside me, I am the water. I just need to keep it under control. He couldn't rely on Sun and the others to come to his rescue - they'd still be waiting for him to emerge from the building, they'd waste time tracking down where he'd been taken.

One last time he considered that he could just make a break for it, throw caution to the wind and escape back to the boys and deal with the consequences as a team. Refusing to be the team's weak link, Neptune had to do what came naturally to him and play the hand he was dealt as best he could. He just had to be cool and go with the flow.


DOMINIC

MONDAY EVENING

"Salt. You need to get up." He took off the frayed remnants of his glove, ruined by his grip on the elevator shaft cable. He took off his shirt and tossed it to Salt.

She just lay there, inert.

"Salt. I'm not going to leave you here."

He draped his trench coat over her and tossed what remained of her clothes at her. He turned away from her and took out his scroll. There was a new message there, from Sun. For Salt's benefit, he restrained the string of expletives the short message inspired him to shout out.

"Salt. Your mother and Rothy still need to be rescued." He said, trying a new tactic of refocusing her mind to break her out of her dazed state. As much as he wanted to patiently help her, to make her feel safe and whole, it was going to be a long time until she was going to be able to move past this. It had taken her mother months to try to. Between his fading adrenaline rush and the flurry of emotions that Sun's message spawned, his headspace wasn't stable enough to aid her fragile psyche properly. "Follow behind me and if any more of them come, stay as low as you can." Salt showed no facial expression of recognition or understanding, but she slowly moved behind him while clutching at the torn hem of her pants at her waist. The trench coat draped over her shoulders and dragged along the floor like a monarch's cape, his shirt was baggy on her; she was much shorter and slighter than he was built, but at least his shirt and coat gave her some dignity back and dulled her shivering. The two of them crept back out into the cellblock area. When the pair of them came to the cell holding Lichen and Rothy, Lichen gave a sob at the sight of them.

"Lichen. I got here late. Let me get you out of here. My brother is working on our way out." He swiped a keycard taken from one of the now-dead jailers through the cell door and it beeped, glowed green, and opened. Lichen shoved past him and embraced her daughter. "Rothy... are you safe? Did they hurt you?" He looked at a fourth woman whom he didn't recognize, but her faunus features were evident. "How are you back in the city?"

Rothy clung to the fourth woman. An intimate clutch which, while an unfamiliar gesture to Taurus personally, he could identify a familial bond when he saw it.

"You're Rothy's mother? Sorry we couldn't meet under better circumstances. I'm-"

"Adam Taurus. The terrorist, mass-murderer, cult-leader-" She spat.

"Freedom fighter, fighter, social activist..." Dominic retorted, "but we don't have time for that. We need to get to our exit point." She kept herself and her daughter at the far side of the cell, away from him. "I mean, you're welcome to stay here if you want, but your accommodations won't improve."

The women exchanged glances between themselves.

"He killed them. He ripped them apart. With his bare hands." Salt said. Her voice was, for lack of a better descriptor, hollow.

In hindsight, executing judgment upon Salt's assaulters in front of her may have - to a lesser extent than anything they'd done - traumatized her slightly, Dominic realized as Salt spoke. Furthermore, it wasn't like he'd closed the door when he'd entered the torture chamber, so the others would have heard what he'd done to the guards.

There had been quite a bit of screaming.

He wasn't going to apologize for what he'd done. What value was there in an apology? An actual query, that. It's not like anyone has ever apologized to me for what I've suffered. If he was sorry for anything he'd done, it was that he had deprived Salt of her own opportunity for closure by killing them all. Sorry, not sorry. One day she would realize, as her mother eventually had, that letting the humans who wronged them live would just let them get away with it. Revenge is a dish best served hot - with a fire-dust imbued sword.

Dominic moved and scouted out the door. There were no sounds of any more guards coming, though the moderately loud klaxon and warning lights made it somewhat difficult to tell. "If you're coming, stay close." Perhaps it was the fact that he was their immediate option for salvation, or maybe they actually trusted him more than their chances with any humans that might remain, but all four fell in line behind him as he led them through the maze of corridors and stairs until they reached the station's airfield. Dominic was thankful that he'd glimpsed the layout of the place in the surveillance room, otherwise he certainly would have gotten lost.

The area shattered, revealing Neo standing on guard while Brazen's legs stuck out from under the engine compartment of an airship. Neo gave a little wave, the thin parasol blade held in her hand red with blood. A half dozen human corpses lay pushed aside.

"Status?" Dominic asked his twin's legs.

"Less guards responded to the alarm than I would have thought. Didn't have much problem with them or the airship ground crews. Taking the tracking device out of the engine on this thing." Brazen muttered. "Got a bit more fuel from that one over there," he gestured to an airship that looked like it had crashed into the mountain. "The other ship is working fine."

"These look like newer model ships." Dominic noted. "Did you see the text from Sun?"

"I did." Brazen didn't bother to say what he thought about it, since both of them knew that Dominic wasn't going to just run away from a fight. He'd only run away from Haven because his forces had already surrendered. If Sun's fighting whatever is happening, I'll fight, too. "Had a chat with one of the ground crew before Neo finished him off. Faunus district isn't the only place getting hit. They're sending squadrons to intercept Ghira's ships, too. That's why I made sure to get both these ships working." Brazen patted the ship on the hull. "These are newer models. I think they were keeping them here because they were recent makes. Faster, nicer, but it doesn't have that stupid pod hanging underneath it." Brazen listed. "I guess that pod is where they've got bombardment payload canisters loaded on the rest of the fleet. Anyways," he slapped the compartment closed and tossed the tracking device onto the asphalt, "two ships, two of us, two missions, ready to go?"

"Okay. Do we have the position of the Crown Prince, or whoever he's put in charge of this attack?" Dominic asked.

Brazen nodded. "He's on the flagship." He pointed out over the city. "That big shiny one." The flagship hovered over the city, surrounded by smaller, lesser airships like a nest buzzing with wasps. [How are the four of them?]

[I got them here] He replied with his hands. "Then I'll take Neo with me and deal with that. She can use her illusions to make a large display in the sky, hopefully warn the faunus in the district to take cover or get out before their hit, after getting me close enough to deal with the human leader. Maybe estrange the humans from their government, too. Or she can just pilot the ship while I enact some progressive politics. I trust she'll catch me if I have to jump off." He said the last part as more of a question directed to their petite human associate. She ignored it, reinforcing his meagre hope in her loyalty with paper bulwarks.

"Sure. Just try not to send the flagship crashing down on the faunus district, hmmm?" Brazen said. "I'll take the other ship to intercept the separate attack groups en route for Ghira and Hazel."

"Really? Why bother wasting time trying to save Hazel? He never did anything for us - fuck, most of our current mess is his fault! Just go straight to defend the transport ships. Now's not the time to be worrying about Hazel! Faunus lives are-"

"Don't lecture me about faunus lives!" Brazen shouted. "You think I did not want to go with you to save Lichen? I know how to prioritize, too, for the greater good. I've been to his camp. He has a foreign bullhead there. Atlesian. Say what you will about the fuel efficiency of Mistral's airfleet, but I'll take a jet engine over a propeller for speed any day of the week. Plus, a bullhead is stronger in a fight and I'm better at flying them. I'll save them, trade ships, then use the bullhead to save Ghira and the rest of the traitors. Saving Hazel first is the only way I'll be fast enough to save the faunus at sea, since I've got to make up for their headstart." He took a moment to breathe deeply. "Then I'll drop off Lichen, Salt, Rothy, and... I'm sorry, who is the fourth woman?"

"Rothy's mother, I think. Never really had time for introductions. I guess Kuchinashi isn't safe, if they're here now." He turned to the lady in question. "Hey, do I need bother asking if you want passage out of the country for you and Rothy?"

"My husband... we were separated in Kuchinashi when the soldiers came... I have to make sure he's okay." She stuttered.

"He's human, right?" Dominic asked, remembering earlier conversations with Rothy that had stuck with him. "If he's alive, he'd want you to prioritize your own safeties foremost." Dominic didn't know the man, but reasoned that it was what most people who were in dire situations would want - for their loved ones to escape safely. If that wasn't what he'd want, well, then fuck him! "I'd offer to get word to him that you're away, but I don't think that's a promise that could be kept."

The logic seemed to translate well for her. Or maybe she knows her options are limited, and I'm not known for compromising. She crouched down and looked Rothy in the face. "Rothy, we're going to go on a trip, okay?"

"Right, so I'll get these four to Ghira so he can harbour them in Menagerie." Brazen concluded. "Did I forget anything?"

Neo poked Brazen in the back, reminding the pair of them of the diminutive human's presence.

"What is it, Neo?" The pair of them asked.

With a glittering wave of her hand, her face became Cinder's face.

"Once I drop the girls here off with Ghira, I'll come back to our hideout and we'll resume our search. Don't worry, finding Cinder is still a priority. It's important to both of us - this is just a bit more urgent."

Neo stomped her foot down on the ground and shook her head. "HOW DO I KNOW CINDER IS NOT AT HAZEL'S CAMP? HOW DO I KNOW THIS IS NOT A TRICK?"

Brazen pondered for a moment in the silence; Dominic could understand where Neo's paranoia was coming from. It wasn't like they had a strong foundation of trust in their relationship yet; he was thankful every time he returned to find she hadn't turned them over to the human authorities. "Well, I mean, um, first off I wouldn't lie about it - what would I have to gain? We have to find Cinder, why would I waste time looking for her if I already knew where she was?" Brazen stammered.

"THROWING MISINFORMATION AT ME, KEEPING ME LOOKING IN THE WRONG SPOTS. HOW DO I KNOW THIS WAS ALL NOT A RUSE TO DISTRACT ME?"

As Neo and Brazen 'spoke', Salt came up to Dominic. She touched his stomach with her index finger and whispered, "same scars." She looked up at him. "Thank you." She walked back to Lichen.

"You captured me! I mean, I guess I could have known you were watching me and set it all up so that you'd catch me, but... hmmmm." Brazen worked his way through Neo's dilemma, quickly realizing that he was just digging himself into a deeper hole.

Dominic decided to come to his other self's rescue. He patted Neo on the head, taking full advantage of his height and reach over her to do so - making sure she felt small against him. "You don't. You're just going to have to trust him for now." Neo had a sour pout on her face at that and crossed her arms. It looked like she didn't want to move until she got some sort of reassurance from Brazen, but there wasn't any time to deal with her (reasonable) insecurities, so he lifted her up by grabbing her under each arm. "Now come on, we've got a military operation to stop and more righteous deeds to perform." Neo's body was rigid and he could feel her fuming at being carried around like baggage as he hauled her at arm's length to the waiting airship. "You do know how to pilot an airship still, right? A bit of the plan sort of depends on that..."

She didn't answer, of course.

"See? I'm not sure about this arrangement, either! We're trusting each other. It feels great!" It felt revolting. Trusting a human? He couldn't wait to get back to Vale, where he'd be surrounded with his loyal, dependable, stalwart companions once again. He dropped her to the deck and took the controls. They weren't so different from the Mistral ships he'd flown before. A bit sleeker, a bit more shiny, but nothing really out of place. He began the liftoff, and he sighed with relief as all the ship's systems functioned. They really need to put a turbo speed booster button on these things! Neo took the copilot seat, scowling out the window as she watched Brazen and the girls loading up into the other airship below.

As Brazen lifted his ship up into the sky, Dominic's gaze lingered on Salt's head, buried against her mother's shoulder as they sat in the hull beside the starboard opening, her eyes locked with his.

Good luck, child. I still have more humans to kill.