Chapter 26: Trojan Wood
SUN WUKONG
Monday Evening
"It's been too long. He should have been back by now."
Sun didn't say anything in response. He just looked at the dark windows of the building.
Scarlet and Sage were examining themselves, watching as the medicine Neptune had picked out of the infirmary surged through them and gave their auras a temporary healing boost. Sage got up and stretched, drawing his sword and testing his footwork. Scarlet tested out how a push-up felt and seemed satisfied.
"Did Neptune not have something for us to do while he went to the armoury?" Cammy asked. "I feel stupid just sitting here waiting, not doing anything."
"He said to give him half an hour before worrying about him." Sun repeated. "So we're going to wait." He looked at the medicine bottle. Speaking of feeling stupid, he thought to himself as he read over the instructions printed on the side again. Neptune had known it would take a while for them to take effect. The guy was such a brain sometimes - it seemed like he knew everything. Sun doubted the scroll network being down even bothered his partner. The man probably retained every speck of information on it inside his noggin anyways. There were times when it demanded a fair amount of effort to convince himself that he contributed to their partnership. Neptune knew all the laws front-to-back, had that logical mind capable of deductive reasoning, everything to be a great detective. All Sun had was his amazingly good looks, cheerful demeanour, faunus enhanced perception, and intuitive ability to be in the wrong place at the right time.
Sage walked up and grabbed onto Sun's shoulder. "He's fine. We'll make it through this. Together. We're all here; have faith."
"Man, what'chu talking 'bout? 'Course I'm not worried. This is Neptune we're talking about. I bet he's just slow getting out because his spindly little arms are trying to carry all the dust his hungry eyes found for us in the armoury." Sun put on a brave smile, and Sage went back to attending to Scarlet.
"How does he think he'll get away with this?" Cammy asked, gazing out at the fleet of airships hovering over the city. "The other kingdoms won't stand for this."
Sun looked at his disabled scroll. "Nobody will even know. How will they find out? Atlas isn't letting anything in or out. Vale and Vacuo are out of communication range since Beacon fell, and they're too far away and too weak to intervene this far from their borders."
"It's a fucked-up thing to do, though. Time like this, we have to stand beside one another against the grimm, not turn against ourselves with monsters at the gates." Scarlet remarked. "I won't think too long on why Neptune is so against the idea of embracing his bloodline - I've had enough time before tonight to wonder about that bit, but he certainly can't do a worse job than Jupiter's doing."
The others looked at him, speechless.
"Don't go telling him I said that, though!" Scarlet hissed. "His ego's big enough as it is, right?"
Sun let out a little chuckle. "I'm totally telling him. Sounds to me a lot like admiration for the blue-haired target of your stalking endeavours. Maybe after watching him so carefully for so long, some deeper feelings have evolved in you for Neptune?"
"Scarlet!" Cammy said, barely holding in her laughter. "I thought you only had eyes for me! Now you mean to tell me that Neptune already holds the key to your heart? Oh, cruel fate, that would tease and tempt a fragile soul such as mine!"
Scarlet rolled his eyes as Sun and Cammy began singing infantile songs of mockery about Neptune and Scarlet.
"...K-I-S-S-I-N-G, first comes love, then comes marriage..." The pair sang quietly, delighting in the quick amusement of humiliating Scarlet for a change.
A cough from Sage put a stop to their entertainment. "We've waited long enough. The medicine has done as much as it can do. Let's go find out what's actually taking him so long in there. Not that I'm concerned that he'd give up our location if he were to have been caught by the soldiers, but we should move." He walked up to the side of the building and began climbing up the drainage pipe from the eavestrough.
Sun decided to show off, climbing up the wall by leaping from window to window. He got inside and waited for the others to come in. Scarlet and Sage rolled in through the window.
"Where's Cammy?" Sun asked them. He looked out the window and saw her down at the bottom, struggling in vain to climb up the pipe as Sage had.
"I didn't do well in gym class!" She stage-whispered up at him. "Help!"
Sun popped back into the building and looked at the boys. He considered just leaving Cammy down there. Certainly, if Neptune happened to come back to meet up with them, he might wonder where they'd all gone. He might worry that they had been captured.
Scarlet shook his head and pushed him back towards the window.
Obviously the ex-pirate didn't feel confident enough in his waxing strength to go down and get her himself. Sun shrugged and clambered back down and grabbed the girl with his tail, then climbed back up.
"I feel like that damsel from the Giant Gorilla movie, being taken up the big tower before the airplanes come to - actually, nevermind what happens after that." Cammy complained. It didn't matter. Sun had seen the movie - it was a classic! The gorilla got shot off the tower and fell to its death at the end of the movie. Given their current situation, the reference was a bit morbid.
Sun wondered if he was going to get his entire team killed with this course of action. Really, what could the five of them hope to accomplish here?
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like that." Cammy said as he released her through the window. He followed her through. "It was just a new thing, being carried around by tail. New things all the time with you guys today. First my job, then my aura, now this. New things!" She looked around the building; it was her first time inside the school's hallowed halls, probably. "Right things, though. We're doing the right thing."
"You guys would tell me if this was a bad idea, right?" Sun asked his teammates.
"I'm pretty sure I told you that this was a dumb idea and that we should have just gotten on the boat." Sage reminded him. "But it is a good idea."
"Also, it is slightly easier than forcing Neptune onto a boat." Scarlet added with a smirk. "I'm much more comfortable fighting the entirety of Mistral's armed forces than try to get that guy wet."
Sage looked around. "Which way to the armoury?"
"That... is a good question. Do none of us know the way there?" Sun asked with a tinge of alarm.
"Kind of relying on you for directions, unless you want us to light the place up with our scrolls to see." Scarlet said, grabbing onto Sun's tail. With his other hand he grabbed onto Sage,who in turn grabbed onto Cammy. "Lead on, oh leading leader."
Sun nodded. Leading time. Alright, I'll just try to retrace my steps to the infirmary and then go the way Neptune had gone when we parted. Maybe I'll get lucky and he'll have left a way to follow him. Of course, that would only make sense if he was captured and taken off-route by soldiers. On the other hand, Neptune was a smart guy; he'd probably have figured that Sun didn't know the way to the armoury. He would just have to trust in Neptune.
Trust.
Trust the cousin of the man who they were currently aligning themselves against. The man who was declaring war on Sun's species.
Sage was right. This was all a dumb idea.
Despite that, he led his team through the mahogany-trimmed hallways. Down a staircase. Along more hallways, past classrooms and training chambers. As his doubts rose to a fever-pitch, he suddenly heard a sound.
"Do you guys hear that?" He whispered to them.
"No."
"What is it?"
"You mean the sounds from outside? Not really." Sage said.
The ongoing announcements over the loudspeaker weren't what Sun had meant. "No, closer. From inside, up ahead. It sounds like..." He lead them further, toward the source of the sound, "a fountain?"
Halfway down the corridor was a drinking fountain, bent off the wall, spraying water all over the floor. Sun moved up and shoved the fixture back into place, stemming the flow of water slightly.
"Do you think the soldiers did that?" Sage asked.
Scarlet was looking out the window at the grounds, spying on the students and staff and soldiers milling about outside. "How long d'you figure they'll keep them out there?"
"Until they've all been cleared, I guess, of association with Lionheart's plans?" Cammy guessed. Scarlet nodded.
"Why would they break a water fountain?" Sage asked again.
For a moment, Sun was as confused as his human compatriot. Then his keen faunus eyes spotted the glint of little puddles further away from the leak. "Might have been a fight." He moved in closer and examined the little puddles. "Look - these are in the shape of Neptune's shoe pattern. He walked away from here and got his shoes wet." He looked further down the hallway. The footprints continued.
"Dare I ask how you know what his shoe prints look like?" Cammy inquired, looking like she wanted to make a cutting remark about how close their team was.
Sun shrugged. "Dude made me sit for three hours in a shoe store while he was buying them. Felt like forever. He spent a long time talking up the tread on each one. It isn't the sort of thing I wanted to use my brain to remember, but it just took him so damn long to pick a pair of shoes!" Sun ran his palm down his face as the memory of trying to patiently wait for his partner to leave the shoe store returned to him in full force. "He's lucky my weapon is blunt, otherwise I would have been tempted to just cut his feet off."
"Sun!" Scarlet admonished, "be reasonable! That wouldn't solve anything!"
"Yeah!" Sage growled. "He'd just make you wait even longer while he went to choose a wheelchair!"
Scarlet and Sage gave each other a high-five. "Yessss!"
Sun looked at Cammy. "I apologize. I could have left you outside, where you wouldn't have had to deal with... this." He gestured to his friends, apologizing for who and what they were. "Anyways, everyone link back up. I can follow these tracks, until they dry up. Let's go, and get ready for a fight."
"Cheer up, Sun. Maybe Neptune's fear of water has just gotten worse to the point that he's attacking random objects associated with water now." Sage speculated, grabbing onto Sun's tail.
Scarlet grabbed onto Cammy and Sage. "It's not like crazy doesn't run in his family, right?"
Sun led his team after Neptune's tracks.
Trusting that his teammate was still sane enough to be trustworthy.
Following the tracks, he led team SSS_-C towards a slightly-ajar door, light streaming out from inside to the hallway. The air was full of a strange odour that Sun didn't like. Neptune's footprints didn't leave the room. Either he'd dried off, or he was still stuck in there. "Do it raid-style," he whispered the order to his friends. They surrounded the door; Sage on the left, Scarlet on the right, and Sun burst through to surprise whatever was on the other side. He stopped in his tracks, not even getting a chance to shout the catchy police-sounding one-liner he'd had prepared.
Faunus.
The armoury was full of faunus prisoners.
"What's going on here?" Sun asked. "Where's Neptune?"
"I'm in here!" Neptune's voice came from a side chamber. There was a sound of a scuffle; Sun moved quickly and saw his partner - all of his partner - wrestling to keep a pair of similarly exposed women beneath him from being able to reach their weapons or scrolls. A number of other women were scattered around the room, flushed, sweaty, and unconscious. "Lend me an appendage here?"
"Prince! We must detain your former teammates at once! Our orders!" One of the women beneath Neptune screeched, while elbowing him in the jaw and grasping desperately towards a pistol.
Sun kicked the pistol further away. "Neptune. Explain."
"Woah!" Scarlet whooped. "Neptune, you dog! To think, Sage and Sun were worried about you!"
"What's going on in - oh my gods! Why are they all naked?" Cammy exclaimed, having followed in after Scarlet.
"Seriously, anyone, feel free to- OW!" Neptune pleaded as he got hit in the jaw again. "Stop hitting me in the face!"
Scarlet pranced into the room, gazing at the women like a child in a candy store with a handful of lien. "Neptune, teammates share, ya know. Besides, I know better than to hit you in the face."
"I meant her! You can feel free to help me restrain them! They branded those faunus in the other room!" Neptune howled. He tried to explain further, but the woman underneath him used her knee to deliver a blow between his legs that took the wind out of him. "ARGH! Okay, okay, the face! Hit me in the face!" She quickly complied. "By comparison, that feels better."
Sage walked into the room. "Are there keys for the restraints on the faunus out here?" Neptune nodded and pointed at a nearby soldier coat. Sage went to it and drew out a ring with a number of keys dangling from it. "Cool. Thanks."
Scarlet gathered up the soldiers' scrolls, and Sun pushed all their weapons into a pile away from them. Sage released the faunus prisoners, then came back into the side-room with the manacles and gags. All the while, Neptune struggled against the two soldiers beneath him.
"Guys please!"
"Seriously this isn't as humorous as you seem to think it is!"
"This isn't helpful!"
"If this is because of that one time: I apologized! I'll apologize again! I'm sorry! I didn't know my red shirt would do that to your laundry! I thought it would save time doing it all as one load!"
Sun sighed. "Alright, the bit's not getting any funnier. Sage, Scarlet, help me shackle the soldiers and put the gags in them. Can't let them raise an alarm or get away for a while." Sun finally relieved Neptune of his fight, tying up the women beneath him so that he could get up and fetch his pants.
"So, you roll commando?" Cammy asked, staring as much as she could at the ceiling. "Is that an Argus fashion thing, or a personal choice?"
Neptune ignored the reporter. "Thanks for the save, guys." He grabbed an ice dust crystal from a drawer and held it against his now clothed groin. "Wasn't sure if I could have pulled that off otherwise. I was at my limit there."
"What exactly is going on here, bud?" Sage asked, giving voice to what they were all wondering.
Neptune sat down, speaking loudly enough to be heard over the enraged grunts and muffled growls of the soldiers as they woke up. "I got picked up by a patrol and brought here. They led me to the disruptor - the broken-apart white thing in the corner, there, and gave me some dust, after I convinced them to help me. They wanted to alert Piter about me being here, though, so I had to think fast. So, I offered to... ummm... incentivize them for their hard work protecting the kingdom with some physical encouragements. Figured I could wear them out and free the captives, but even with my training it was cutting it close."
"Ya fucked 'em silly and called that a plan?" Scarlet summarized. "Good on ya, mate. Way to represent what our team is all about and what-not." He looked at the restrained soldiers. "Any of ye still feelin' unincentivized?"
They made a variety of angry sounds.
"Bah. I'll take that as a nay." Scarlet said, shrugging, before being forcibly pulled away by Cammy on the premise of 'helping her tend to the wounded faunus'.
"So. What is the plan now?" Sage asked.
"Same as before. Get to Prince Jupiter, get him to stand down and think this over when his head's cooled off." Sun said. He looked at Neptune. "How do we make that happen?"
"We can arm the faunus we just freed with the soldiers' weapons. We could even disguise them with the uniforms. Obviously not enough to go around for all of them, but I'm not expecting the little ones to join us. We make our way to the grounds, incognito, get aboard the carrier touched down in the middle, and fly it to my cousin. Hop aboard, do a show of force and intimidate him, then calm down and show him that we're all reasonable and should talk out our differences rather than punching him in the stomach anymore. Because he has to know I'm not after his stupid title, and he has to see that the faunus aren't our enemies."
"How do we get to the carrier without being spotted?" Sage asked.
"We can cause a ruckus. Maybe a couple of us go welcome the new headmaster to the post. Steal his speakers and start a riot? I don't know. What'd work best?"
Sun turned away from them. "I don't know. Figure it out. I'm going to chat up these guys, see how many of them can help us." He walked out of Neptune's sex nest and back into the main armoury. "Hello. I'm Sun Wukong; I'm from Vacuo but studied here at Haven. There's some bad stuff happening with Mistral's government and military right now directed against the faunus - for really idiotic reasons. My team and I are heading up to stop it by getting up in the Crown Prince's face, but there's only five of us. I know you've... been through a lot already tonight, and I feel bad asking..."
"What Sun's trying to say is: do any of y'all feel like pitching in with us to help stop this royal rubbish?" Scarlet chimed in. "We throw soldier uniforms on ya, give you their weapons, we might have a shot at this. No pressure, though."
"If you are huntsmen or have your aura unlocked, you could save lives." Sun said.
The faunus shrank away. They seemed to have had the fight taken out of them.
"You want us to fight the human government? Won't that just get us in even more trouble?"
"I just want to go home."
"Running away seems easier. Let the politicians fix this mess - it's what they're elected to do."
"I didn't do anything wrong! I'm just a janitor!"
Sun's tail twisted around his leg. If I can't get faunus to support our plan, what are the odds of it succeeding at all?
A small boy with hairy knuckles stepped forward. "I can help. My grandpa said that we always have to do what we have to do, to protect our families from monsters - even if that means doing things that other people say is wrong. I'm not afraid of the humans or their Prince. How can I help?"
"Ward!" A similar-looking girl, not much older than the boy, scolded. "You don't have to get involved any more! They could hurt you more! Is that what you want?"
"She's right - there is a big risk here. I'm asking a lot of you, and honestly, I don't expect any volunteers. Even from brave kids like you." Sun said, trying to give the youngster an easy out. He'd already done enough - the older faunus looked a bit ashamed of themselves for refusing to fight when a child was willing. "Is this your sister? We can get you away safely..."
"I'm Ward, and this is my sister, Lee. The soldiers brought us here from our school." The boy said.
"Liana, actually, Liana Lionheart. Our grandfather was the previous headmaster here." The girl said proudly. "He wasn't afraid of the government or the military. If he was still... if he was still here..." She got a far-away look in her eyes and turned away.
"Lionheart?" Sun repeated. He felt a pit in his gut. The girl said it without hesitation or shame - there was no way that she knew yet about what her grandfather had done. Ward's words came back to Sun's mind. Doing things that other people say is wrong. The media - and Blake! - said that the Professor had been a villain, but that couldn't be true. Nobody was a villain. People were just people, misunderstood, doing what they thought was best or what they had to do. Maybe Lionheart's reasons for fighting alongside Cinder's crew were standing here, in front of Sun and his team now.
Sun had to believe that inside every person was a shred of decency, a perspective that justified their actions as right. Sun had to believe that anyone could be persuaded to be better just as much as they could be tempted to cruelty and bitterness.
One of the other faunus, the one who said that he was a janitor, looked like he was about to say something. With a small, vigorous shake of his head, Sun dissuaded him. They had enough problems right now. He had to get these kids to safety, and keep them from learning that their grandfather had betrayed Mistral and been the catalyst for all this pain and suffering. They deserved to be able to live their lives, unburdened by guilt for the sins of their family.
Like Neptune.
Sun's heart sank - if there was one thing he prided himself on, it was always being able to be optimistic about people. Seeing the good in them. Yet, here he was, doubts mounting about his closest bud! Neptune didn't deserve to be distrusted just because he was related to someone they were fighting. It wasn't like team RWBY distrusted Yang because her mother was a bandit chief! It wasn't like anyone distrusted Jaune just because he'd cheated his way into enrollment at Beacon! Everyone deserved the benefit of the doubt, everyone deserved a second chance, because everyone made mistakes!
They would get to Neptune's cousin, and they'd help him, too. They'd put all this right.
With a renewed glint in his eye and a smile on his face, Sun looked at his friends and faunus. "Alright. Here's the plan: we dress you lot up as soldiers, and the kids and the ones we don't have uniforms for get led to the carrier by the ones that do. We'll act like we have orders to leave, so we'll get on the ship and fly away. We'll hijack it in flight. Once we're in the night sky, we'll drop you guys off somewhere safe and then go up to meet the Crown Prince. You get somewhere safe, stay hidden, until this is all resolved." He looked at their very-visible faunus brandings. They'd have a tough time laying low if things got any worse in Mistral.
The faunus clustered up and began muttering amongst one another.
"Seems like the best option. They probably have the perimeter of the school secured." Liana said. We got in easily enough, Sun thought, but then considered that maybe they'd just gotten lucky. He refrained from countering the girl's support of his plan, while also sorting through how he felt for a Lionheart to be supporting him again. One made me leader of a huntsman team, now this...
"Could just stay in the buildings. I know a couple secret rooms, staff rooms, utility hallways, that the soldiers probably won't find anytime soon."
"With the headmaster backing them up? Patrols've probably got blueprints of the place on their scrolls."
"Well, if we're going to go with Sun, we can't make him risk his team and the other faunus in the city by trying to get us to safety." A middle-aged woman with frazzled black hair and whiskers - cat, seal, or something similar - declared. "I might just be a civilian, but we know we have a duty to aid huntsmen if we can; more importantly, to not hinder their efforts. If we-"
"I've got a family!" Another complained. "I didn't sign up to be a hero."
"Most of us are hurt!" The janitor added. "We can't be flying up with huntsmen to fight against soldiers."
Sun pursed his lips, then stepped up to them. "We're not planning on fighting them. We just need to talk." He paused, then continued. "If a fight breaks out, though, then we can just run away. Or fly away, I guess, because airship. Can any of you pilot?"
Lionheart's relatives both raised their hands while nodding. Figures. The other faunus seemed to be placated by the plan. Sun went back over to check on his partner while Sage and Scarlet began handing out the soldiers' weapons and uniforms to their recruits.
"Ready for this?" He asked. Neptune was staring at a set of old armour, bronze. It reminded Sun of Pyrrha's outfit, very Mistral-traditional. Neptune picked the horsehair helmet off the display. "What, thinking about an outfit change?"
"Just... thinking about Mistral, I guess. Lots of history here. A lot of battles, lot of fights." Neptune said, then put the helmet back on the stand. "Showing up in heavy armour would send the wrong message, though, and it isn't really effective against modern weapons."
"Decent against the creatures of grimm, at least." Sun said, admiring the sword and shield resting underneath the ribbed breastplate. "So, ready for this?"
"Nope."
"We're doing it anyways, though?" Sun asked.
Neptune was silent.
"So, boat then?"
"We're doing this." Neptune said adamantly. He moved towards the main armoury; Sun followed. "With that in mind, even if your plan goes off perfectly, a rogue vessel out-of-formation approaching the flagship won't go unnoticed."
"Fly dark - turn off all the lights?" Scarlet suggested. "We used to do that back in the day on the Jolly Rogered."
"Wait, that was the name of your pirate ship?" Cammy shot, before snickering. "Did you-"
"I did not pick the name." Scarlet clarified. "Anyways, they can't shoot us out of the sky if they don't see us coming."
Neptune shook his head. "Even if we broke all the lights on the hull - which we'd have to do after hijacking it in flight, so that would be... difficult..."
"We could just dangle Scarlet out on a line." Cammy suggested. Scarlet looked aghast at the proposal.
"I could hold onto the rope." Sage offered with a bit too much glee in his tone to put Scarlet at ease.
"They would still see the silhouette against the city. Moonlight would give us away if we tried to arc over them. They're not blind, and they're not stupid. Plus, the other ships and soldiers on campus will report the movement of the carrier at some point, at which time the gig will be up. So we have a choice: fly headlong at the ship, taking flak and risking everyone aboard."
"Not an appealing idea." The janitor said.
The other faunus murmured with consent: taking fire right away didn't sound like an inviting method of surviving the evening. Even Sun wasn't sure if his teammates would survive a barrage like that. When the ships had flown up to Haven to arrest the White Fang, the faunus terrorists had quickly lost the will to fight against firepower of that magnitude. Adam only got away because he sped off into the trees and out of sight - a single small target is hard to hit with a ship's cannon. But another ship? Easy pickings, comparatively.
"So what's option B?" Sage asked. "You have an option B, I presume?"
"Well, option B is to have them invite us to talk." Neptune said, matter-of-factly.
"I thought we weren't going to contact Jupiter. I thought you weren't going to contact him. Tracing the call and all that." Cammy responded, crossing her arms. "Why'd we go through all the trouble of all this if we were just going to call him up anyways?"
"Saved some faunus." Sun said, defending his partner.
"Also healed up a bit, and we'll be a lot more mobile once we're on the ship. We won't be calling him to pick me up; we'll be actively approaching him on our own terms. We've made good use of the element of surprise to set up our deck."
"Seems like that's the sort of thing that would bother him." Sage said.
Scarlet wrapped an arm around Neptune. "Deck? Was that a ship or a game joke?"
"Yes." Neptune replied to both remarks.
"So why won't he shoot us down if he knows we're coming?" Cammy asked.
"Anyone remember the story of the Wooden Horse?" Neptune asked.
"Is this from a book?" Sun rolled his eyes. "Or a lecture? I might have skipped that day in class."
"Ditto."
"Yeah, I don't know that one."
Sun stood tall beside Scarlet and Sage, happily not alone in the group at being ignorant. I might be ignorant, but at least I'm not lonely!
"Tsk!" Neptune chided, shaking his head with mock-disappointment. "Figures."
"Wait, I know that one." Cammy said. "A city was under siege by Mistral, but the walls were too thick to break. So the attackers built a giant wooden horse as a tribute and retreated, and the defenders brought the statue into their city as a symbol of their independence. But the horse was hollow, and the invaders snuck out during the night and unlocked the gates, so that they could take the city."
"So, you want us to hide in a horse?" Sun asked.
"Right. Okay, let me try another reference - this time from a movie. Remember in the original Solar Battles movie, where San Holo pretends to be a tempest-trooper taking his Cookie partner Woobaka into custody to get past the sentry post?"
The boys gave one another a look.
"I wasn't notified." Sage said. "I'll have to clear it."
"Who is this? What's your operating number?" Scarlet responded.
"Boring conversation anyways?" Sun said.
"Kind of short for tempest-troopers, aren't they?" Sage said.
"Good to see that you three at least have an encyclopedic memory when it comes to brain-rotting movie quotes." Neptune sighed. "Why couldn't you put this much effort towards your studies?"
"You can't ask a girl to go with you on a romantic date to history class." Scarlet shot back, quickly being rewarded with high-fives with Sun and Sage. "Well, you probably could get away with doing whatever you wanted in Port's class at Beacon. The man didn't even notice Sun swapped out for a semblance-clone to go play outside that one time."
"That was Grimm Studies, not history, though." Neptune whined to no avail. "Whatever. The soldiers whitelisted my scroll, I think I can get all of yours cleared, too. The other option is to smash the disruptor, which would run the risk of alerting the troops outside that there's something amiss in here. So put your sword away, Sage - seriously! Away! I'll just put our numbers in there so we can use our scrolls on school grounds or however far this thing's range extends."
Neptune went over to the Atlesian device and began fiddling with it; Sage, Scarlet, Cammy, and a couple faunus shuffled over to have their scrolls unlocked. Sun kept watch until everyone else had gone through before he had his own number cleared. He logged into the local network. It felt good to be connected again, even if it wasn't the same as Pre-Battle of Beacon.
"Actually, we might be able to put this thing to better use." Neptune patted the disruptor tenderly. He called over to a couple of the faunus for help lifting it up.
Gotta trust Neptune. Gotta trust Neptune. He repeated the words in his head; a mantra. Neptune knew what he was talking about, what he was suggesting was the most sensible thing for them to do in order to get to his cousin. Sun knew Neptune had been alone in the side room, in the armoury entirely, without any of the team or Cammie watching him. His scroll had had functionality. Nothing to say that he hadn't concocted this plan of his with his cousin, with the soldiers. Or at their behest. If I agree to this plan, I could be marching us right into a trap. On the other hand, he had faith that this was a plan well within Neptune's capabilities of devising single-handedly. His partner was one of the smartest guys he'd ever met.
Despite Blake having called him 'earnest', he still couldn't ask Neptune if he was on the level. If Neptune was acting in good faith to them, then posing that question to him might break him. If he was on their side, then fighting his own blood would be taking a serious toll on him mentally.
He trusted Neptune.
"Guys, focus." Sun commanded. He looked at Neptune. "So, which of us is the Cookie?"
He trusted Neptune. After they boarded the carrier airship on the pretense of taking the malfunctioning disruptor away for technical support, they subdued the crew without any fuss. The disruptor made sure that only their scrolls could work. He trusted Neptune, but as they began their ascent towards the flagship of Mistral's airfleet and Neptune sent a text to his cousin informing him that he was on his way to deliver team SSSN and the runaway reporter Cammy to him, Sun decided it might be prudent to send a text of his own.
To: Night_Striker
~Mistral government declaring war against faunus. Attack coming for faunus district tonight; humans found out Adam Taurus is there. My team is going to try to get to Crown Prince to defuse this, Neptune is his cousin? Did not know that, and I'm not sure which side he is on right now. Boat in harbour, get there and get out of town. If I don't make it, I have family in Vacuo that can help.~
Dominic might not be awake to get the text. He may already have been arrested on the likelihood that he was, in fact, Adam Taurus with cheap hair-dye and a new outfit. There was even the chance that Sun was putting too much faith in the serendipity of their relationship. Sands, there was even the possibility that Dominic was just a random dude who looked a lot like a wanted terrorist. Still, sending the text gave Sun an extra gleam of hope that whatever happened next between his team and Jupiter might not doom the local faunus population if SSSN wasn't capable of fixing things.
