Chapter 27: Red Sun at Night

"First blood must spill like wine at a feast/The calm only comes once the carnage has ceased" This Time, RWBY OST

AN: Edits to previous chapters. Posted a review to explain.


CAMMY

Monday Night

Despite several failed attempts to wake up, Cammy wasn't fully convinced she wasn't at home in bed, having a nightmare. What else, other than everything she'd witnessed, could explain how her entire life had been torn asunder in such short order? It wasn't like she deserved any of this - she'd been a model citizen! She'd gone to school, got a job, paid her rent on-time each month, ate healthy. She'd done all the right things!

Now, here she was, on a hijacked military air transport, in the company of her fellow renegades and rescues, staring out the porthole at the glittering mountain city she'd always dreamed of making it 'big' in.

"It handles pretty easily." Scarlet soothed from the controls, failing in his attempt to abate Sage's concerns for his aptitude as a pilot. "Now that I've gotten the feel of it."

"I stand by what I said earlier. A barrel-roll was not a reasonable thing to attempt in a ship like this."

"Well, it's not like you can do any better." Scarlet shot back at his partner. "Flying this thing is just like using my semblance."

"Really?"

"Well... no." He admitted. "The controls are nautical-themed, but very different in function."

Cammy looked back out the window. She hoped Neptune, more than Scarlet, knew what he was doing, what he was getting them all back into. She'd been all-too-happy to run away, but now she had her aura unlocked. She was like a huntress-in-training. That sent a shiver down her body. Responsibility. She prayed that her semblance wouldn't end up messing her life up any more than it already had been. The series of possible, horrible semblances she could end up with raced through her mind again.

On the other hand, there was the concern that Neptune knew all-too-well what he was doing. This whole plan was shaky at best. For her first day as a huntress-in-training she was hesitant to feel any degree of confidence in their odds, but it wasn't like she had been able to offer up any better options for the team.

"Ugh, this feels so strange." Sun whined as he let Neptune put manacles around his wrists so that they looked secure. Sun waved his arms around slowly, then with a quick pop, they released. Neptune redid the disguise without comment. "Hey, Scarlet, Sage! Your turn. Hand the controls over to someone in a uniform and then get over here to get your own disguise set up. Cammy, you, too."

Cammy took in a deep breath. Her part in all of this: acting like she was Neptune's prisoner, like the rest of the team.

She'd seen that movie Neptune had referenced to explain his plan to the boys. She remembered that scene ending with a lot of guns being shot at the heroes when things went haywire. Well, she thought to herself, I'm traveling with huntsmen now. Maybe that's where Neptune plans for this to go - has to get messy before we can clean this mess up or something.

Not doing much to ease her fears, though, was the fact that she was also familiar with the full story of the Wooden Horse. Neither she nor Neptune had seen fit to mention it, but that entire tale revolved around a massive fortress that had been seized by a rebellious clan of faunus. The choice of a giant horse had appealed to their faunus traits, and they had seen it as a peace offering; an acknowledgement of equality and respect to conclude the stalemate.

The Mistralians had slaughtered the entire faunus garrison once their deception worked, pouring out of the hollow horse that the faunus had brought into their walls. The faunus didn't get a taste of freedom again until the Great War, hundreds of years later.


Two vessels came up beside them, escorting them to the flagship. The flagship itself was a massive blimp that was like an opulent island floating in the sky. It was more of a parade showpiece than military hardware, but its sheer size and grandeur made it Jupiter's choice. The city lights reflected off the polished metal of the barge and the sky-blue dirigible, making it impossible to conceal in the dark of night, so Cammy understood the escort wasn't there to guide them. Bright lights shone across their ship, blazing through the portholes and into the side doors. Cammy did her part, making sure to put on a defeated, dejected face that said: 'I am captured and beaten'. Neptune gave the ship a stiff little salute.

They didn't open fire on them, so it must have worked.

Whichever disguised faunus was piloting the ship gently nuzzled their ship up alongside the flagship. Besides several Mistral soldiers, two of the Crown Prince's masked guards were present to greet them. This time she noticed Scarlet's hands clenching up into balled fists at the sight of his converted chums. She wanted to comfort him, but she didn't know what she could say or do that would help.

"Disarmed?" Asked a soldier who came aboard to inspect them. Neptune ignored the question and led his 'prisoners' across the extended gangplank, then followed the guards. Nobody made any further mention of the fact that Neptune's entire group were carrying their weapons.

The ship was enormous. Gravity dust allowed for the carriage to be much larger than the buoyant gas balloon would otherwise allow, one of the many wonders dust gave humanity. The walk was long and slow, permitting Cammy some time to settle her nerves as she followed along. They had a plan. It was going to work. Neptune was going to make everything right. Soon, Cammy would be back in her bed, praying for an extra ten minutes of coziness with every silencing of her scroll alarm telling her to get up for work.

After this experience, she'd happily return to the dull comfort of the daily grind.

They were brought to a large ballroom which must have been hastily converted into a military command centre. What had once been the location for Mistral's elites' fanciest soirees now had communications terminals instead of buffets and armed soldiers instead of dancers. The soldiers were lined up on either side, making a path for them to a magnificent throne overlooking the ballroom from a raised balcony.

Cammy tried not to gape in awe at the sheer opulence on display: gold-trimmed balustrades over reinforced steel balusters, the entire ceiling was a high-definition picture display that currently showed an accurate image of the night sky full of stars. Behind the lines of soldiers, the transparent walls offered an unobstructed view of the city and surrounding countryside.

Enough wealth and power to satisfy the wildest of ambitions. The man whose ambitions they presently served kept a languid gaze fixed on them as they stepped past the rows of soldiers. "Cousin. You had me concerned for you all day." Jupiter began neutrally; the vagueness of his greeting underscoring the uncertainty of the situation. They were surrounded by at least thirty soldiers standing at attention, not to mention the two of his personal guard that had led them here and another two that stood beside where the Prince sat on the throne. Plus, the Prince himself.

Did he suspect the ruse?

Or... was it a ruse at all?

"My apologies, Pit. We all have busy lives sometimes, right?" Neptune said, stepping ahead towards his cousin, moving past the first two guards. Even though Neptune was noticeably taller, Sun seemed to shrink as his partner left him behind. Diminished. "So, what's going on here? My team explained their version of the situation earlier." Neptune finished with a flourish of his hand at the ship. "I don't normally get involved in the family business, but I am troubled by what I am seeing in Mistral."

Both men looked at each other in silence for a moment. Sizing one another up? Gauging the situation?

"What did you see that troubles you?"

"Turmoil." Neptune responded. "Faunus..." He let the word hang in the air.

"Then you will be pleased to know that such sights will not trouble anyone in Mistral for much longer. Tonight, I will redefine humanity's position in this world. Our world." Jupiter looked at the gathered soldiers. "Now and for all time! Mistral Magnificent!"

The soldiers cheered and clapped.

"-being branded." Neptune continued from where he had paused, once the soldiers had quieted. "Like animals."

Sun straightened as his partner affirmed his disgust for what the military was doing.

"Told that it was done on your orders." Neptune went on, stepping closer to Jupiter as he did. "I hear you're planning to attack Menagerie. You've shut down the local scroll network. People are getting hurt. I came here on what faith I have in you so I can ask you now: why?"

Jupiter's mouth transformed into a hard frown. The Crown Prince gave no motion to his soldiers, yet, seeing that Neptune was armed, but outnumbered.

"The Empress... grandmother... is going to pass the crown to me very soon. Her health..." Jupiter paused, letting the implication of that sink in. "The first days of my reign as Emperor approach, and I have to wonder how my reign will begin. How will it be remembered? Will humanity survive to remember it, even? I have a responsibility, the weight of the world on my shoulders. The world is in bad shape. Terrorists attacking our institutions, schools falling, and global communications crippled. A dust shortage because of a new wave of Atlesian insularism. Monster assaults getting bolder."

"It's not all bad. There's good, too, progress towards improvements." Neptune cut in. "The White Fang is reforming. We saw it at Haven, there is not a uniform hatred among the faunus against humanity."

Jupiter stepped up onto the railing of the balcony and floated - floated - down to the ballroom floor, his cape flapping upwards as his aerokinesis semblance slowed his descent. "Yes, Haven. What did we see there? Was that really the result of a schism between a militant faction led by Taurus finally coming up against a previously silent faunus majority rebuking him? Or was it all a show, conceived a decade ago by Ghira, to lull us into a false trust?"

"Ghira Belladonna wants peace. He was honest with you!" Sun shouted.

"It was you that signed the agreement with him; shook hands and brokered a beneficial arrangement. Why renege on those contracts?" Neptune asked, taking another step towards his cousin. He already knew the answer, thanks to his teammates and Cammy, but he wanted to hear it from his cousin's own mouth. He wanted it to be confirmed.

Jupiter lurched forward and grabbed Neptune's shoulder to pull him close, whispering in his ear. A thin veil of rushing air, like a bubble, surrounded the two of them and denied even the keenest ears the opportunity to eavesdrop on what was said, until Jupiter took a step back.

"Did you even ask her if it was true?" Neptune asked loudly enough for everyone to hear.

"Ask her? ASK HER? I will erase that video from existence. I will erase that animal from the face of this planet! I know how his semblance works - knowledge gleaned from the days before the world granted Ghira and his ilk freedom. She is innocent in all of this! The victim of a faunus plot to take advantage of our goodwill and generosity."

"I mean, she looked pretty involved from what I saw." Scarlet taunted. "In my experience, if a girl's hips are shaking like that, it means that- ouch!" His ribald remark was stymied as Cammy dug her knee into his hip. "Watch it, that hurt!"

Cammy realized that, now that she had aura, she had to remember to actually pull her punches. She began squeaking out a quick apology, but Jupiter interrupted with a roar. "Enough of this! If you're not with me, then you're an inconvenience. Soldiers! Take them back to the ship they came here on. Have it transfer the prisoners to the theatre for re-education. Misters David and Ayana can at least still be of service as rural huntsmen, but be as rough with David as you want to be. Keep the ape separate and avoid injuring his face; I must decide what role he'll fill in our future dealings with Vacuo or Menagerie, but for the time being he may have more information about what Lionheart's schemes were. That information could prove to be of the utmost value."

The nearest guard reached out and firmly gripped Cammy by her shoulder; the other grabbed Sun while the two that had stood beside the throne came down the elegant staircases on either side of the balcony to approach Scarlet and Sage.

"Was needing Sun for politicking the only thing keeping you from launching an unprovoked attack on your citizens?"

"No, there was-" Jupiter began.

Neptune kept talking over his interruption. "The only thing stopping you from etching your name into history as a brutal, racist tyrant like so many others in our lineage?" Neptune pulled out his weapon and expanded it into a trident. "It sounds to me like your pain is making you see enemies where none exist. If you're not willing to even talk with her about what happened..."

The masked ex-pirate that had put his hand on Cammy's shoulder jerked to a full stop, looking at Neptune instead as Tri-Hard pointed at their liege. The soldiers raised their weapons. Cammy locked eyes with Sun, who shook his head slightly. Not yet.

"Ah, I take it nobody ever told you about Ghira's semblance, then? None of your faunus 'pals' saw fit to fill your in on the uncomfortable truth?" Jupiter scoffed, his hand on the hilt of his spear but not raising it defensively. "Keeping you in the dark. Of course, that is where faunus are strongest."

Jupiter pointed at his eye. Nightvision.

"One of many lessons we learned at Fort Castle." Jupiter ran his finger down his chin, tapping it thoughtfully. "You are still a student. Perhaps you simply require a lesson? Knowing what I am fighting will help you see things properly - from my perspective. Ghira's semblance... Grandmother named it 'Purrsuasion', back when he was her prized pet." Jupiter continued, a sneer lighting up his face with glee. He turned to address the others on the bridge. "Clear the room. Royal Retinue and our recent arrivals only; everyone else go wait out in the hall. Class is in session." He waited for everyone else to obediently march out.

Once it was just the ten of them, he continued. "Purrsuasion. It lets him plant a suggestion in people. Used at maximum strength, decades ago, it was a powerful hypnotic-type semblance. I doubt age has weakened it any."

"Hypnotic-type. A mental semblance. Which usually means it has limits, drawbacks." Neptune said, his anger clearly being momentarily overridden by his intellectualism as he recalled lessons and books on the subject. "But you're implying that he used his semblance to... rape Juney?" Neptune's weapon wavered and fell slightly. "That doesn't make sense...why would he..."

Cammy felt her stomach curl up on itself at the mention of such criminal misuse of a semblance. If what Jupiter was saying was true, then his wife probably didn't even remember it happening. If the local communication network was restored without all evidence of the tape being scrubbed, she would be as surprised as everyone else to see the video she starred in.

"The mechanics of Ghira's power is not the only thing grandmother told me, Neppy. She has entrusted me with a few big family secrets lately. I'll share another one with you about your golden friend over there. His buddy, Lionheart? Working for the terrorist Cinder Fall." Jupiter waited for a reaction, but was disappointed by their lack of surprise. "Hmmm. I guess you've already seen that on the network. Well, that wasn't the most damning secret I'm going to share with you. Just a bit of an appetizer. Let's try this one: did you know that Cinder represents the grimm? Not in a 'she has a semblance that lets her control them' sort of way, or in a 'she is using the chaos she creates to draw them in to further her own schemes' sort of way. In a 'there is an intelligence leading the grimm, and she is working for it' sort of way. I was the one who put all the pieces together and saw the entirety of the conspiracy. Cinder works for a grimm intelligence called Salem. Lionheart worked for Cinder. Your schoolyard chum there... works for Lionheart"

Neptune had rested the butt of his weapon on the floor to listen to his cousin lecture, but then he turned to look at Sun. His face was etched with lines of confusion.

"It's not true, Neptune!" Sun shouted. "I don't know why he made me team leader!"

"I'm honestly hard-pressed to find evidence of any faunus who aren't just as suspect. Believe me: I'm a fair man. I tried! Couldn't find a single notable faunus that didn't have probable ties to all of this. At first I thought that finishing our forefathers' work, isolating them all in Menagerie, would suffice to keep humanity safe. I was mistaken. We have to clear the board. Clean house. Humanity is at war with the grimm - we always have been - and it looks like the faunus have chosen their side in the war after we gave them their freedom. I'm disappointed, and truthfully I am a little bit surprised." Jupiter stepped back up towards his throne, relishing the sound of stunned silence until he sat, gazing down at the assembly. "Those that are kept alive will seek penance for the sins of their treacherous race by providing labour to the state; dust mines that were closed a century ago will be reopened. If Atlas will not give us the dust we need to fight this threat, then we will harvest it from our own continent, like our ancestors did in Mistral's prime."

Sage and Scarlet were quiet and looked confused, too, shooting glances at one another. Cammy imagined that she probably looked the same. It was a lot to take in.

"It's not like I ever even did anything with the title! You guys always did whatever you felt like doing anyways!" Sun continued. "I don't know about any of the rest of it, but I don't work for Cinder!"

Smart grimm? Sure, some were cunning. The alpha nevermore, that had led its murder against the train ride from Kuchinashi, had composed a strategy to capture its prey... but that wasn't sentience. The alpha nevermore would never have been capable of scheming, of conspiring with Cinder.

Hypnotism? One of the most dangerous semblances, mind-control. Its misuse carried the harshest penalties by the laws of all four kingdoms.

Conspiracy? What if it was all true?

Now it made sense as to why he'd dismissed the rank-and-file. He was only telling them this in order to woo Neptune to his side; he couldn't let the general populace know something like this. If people knew about a grimm intelligence... law and order would be subsumed in the inevitable panic. Mistral was not in any shape after losing so many huntsmen to deal with that. Obviously his personal guards were too far conditioned to pose a risk of spreading the news, and the rest of SSS_C were going to be sent to prison or something.

I don't want to go to prison!

"Menagerie is traditional Mistralian territory, which we were forced to cede to the faunus when the rest of the world pressured us to give it up after the Great War." Jupiter continued, looking completely at-ease as he crossed his leg over his lap. "As if we'd done any more wrong than they had in our dealings with the faunus. We weren't alone in using them as slaves. All four kingdoms used them! But because we are the largest of the four Kingdoms, the other three ganged up on us and decreed that we should lose our land claims to give the faunus a place to call their own." He shook his head and laughed. "The irony, of course, is that even after all of that the animals didn't even want it! We gave them land and told them all to go there, and they rose up in rebellion instead!"

"Dude, I'd never work for the grimm!" Sun shouted out. "Plus, I didn't know she was evil when I said she was kind of sexy! All girls are sexy in the Haven school uniform!"

Maybe it was the black hair. Maybe Sun just had a weakness for dangerous women. Cammy didn't have time to ponder that issue, as Sage suddenly spoke up. "Sustrai's green hair is kind of cute, to be honest. Maybe I'm biased there. Prince Jupiter, my lord, I know this has been a very stressful, rapid series of events, but we can work through this diplomatically. There's no need to start a war! I'm not at the front of the line for trusting Sun either, but he's not guilty of what you're accusing him of."

The mesmerizing classroom atmosphere Jupiter had created was dispelled - as in most schools - as the thoughts of boys fled away from education to instead focus on girls.

"Yeah," Neptune nodded his head and looked up at his seated cousin. "Call your attack ships off, Piter. Killing defenceless civilian transports and rounding up your own citizens? Re-instituting slavery? Even for the right reasons, that'll be a smear on your entire rule. Is that how you want to start your reign? We can get Chieftain Belladonna back here to explain things, and we can figure out how to protect ourselves against his semblance. Let justice prevail and give him the chance to answer the charges against him."

"That's just what they'd want - to keep us from acting decisively, keep us talking, while they gain more ground, steal more, take more!" Jupiter raved, a deranged look in his eye. "He set all of this up. There's no way of telling how far his plan goes! He and Taurus have been playing us for fools, relying on our generosity and diplomatic inclinations. His semblance only works if we let him hear him out!"

"Wait, how is Taurus involved in this?" Neptune gulped. He glanced back at his team.

"Oh, yes. There's the next lesson you need to be instructed with. Adam Taurus, despite assurances to the contrary, is very much still alive. My current theory is that Ghira used his semblance on the huntsman, Rover, to convince him to pronounce Taurus as dead. The certainty that comes with Rover's history of accuracy from his divination semblance ended all further inquiry on the matter. Rover is still being debriefed at the theatre, so I'm still waiting on the truth of that. It's probably somehow even worse than what I assume, at this point. Regardless, the current state of affairs is that the faunus have been united under a single banner: Ghira's reformed White Fang. That was his plan all along. I imagine he came up with it when dissent against his leadership formented a decade ago. Now his rivals are discredited or dead, and the faunus see him as a paragon of peace and virtue. If he had fought against Sienna Khan's coup back then, it would have weakened the entire movement; with patience, he's lost nothing! He's on his boat, paid for from our treasury, celebrating his victory over us! Meanwhile, his agent Taurus is lurking in our city streets, pursuing an unknown objective! Ensuring Taurus is ended is another reason why I've been moving so swiftly."

Besides the gentle resonance humming of the ship's systems, the ballroom was quiet for a dozen long seconds.

"Grandmother told me the secret to dealing with Ghira's semblance." Jupiter said, breaking the pensive recess. "Tatarian honeywood extract nullifies the effect when ingested. Protection lasts for a while, depending on your metabolism."

"Based on its similarities to catnip, and the latter's effect on actual cats?" Neptune asked. "Since he's a cat-faunus? I don't suppose it would yield a non-racist response to figure out how grandma figured out that trick..."

"Well, it works, so don't complain. If you know to use it beforehand, at least, but if he used it on a servant, to have them sabotage the honeywood tea... I could certainly ensure that some people are protected, for a while, but not everyone all the time." Jupiter smiled. "You see why I have had to do this, now. What was it you said at the end of our game of Remnant? 'Sometimes all you need to succeed is a change of attitude' or something like that? Don't you see, Neppy? I've taken your words to heart. You need to practice what you preach if you want to be on the winning side."

Jupiter gestured to the grandeur that surrounded them. Mistral, magnificent.

"Did you learn today's lesson? Can I count on you to travel up north to Argus and get your branch of the family onboard? I need loyal, well-informed governors in Mistral's strategic outposts. A snowstorm or something has delayed the train that goes up the coast, but my yacht is in the harbour. Mister David there should be able to pilot it, given his history. I assume you're aware of all that, by now? Well, if you did not, I think the necessity of having an inside-man has passed for team _SSN. If you're willing to vouch for him, I'll remand him to your custody for that purpose." With a wave of his hand, the guards surrounding them took steps away.

Cammy had to wonder: would it be worth it to just accept Jupiter's words, let the chips fall where they may, if only to keep herself and her allies free? No, she scolded herself as little Rothy's face came to mind. The faunus didn't deserve this. She had an aura, now. She had responsibility now. She had to use her power like all the storied huntresses of yore, standing tall and firm against injustice and evil. Even if Neptune turned against them, she was reasonably certain that at least Sun and Scarlet would join her in the fight. Sage would... well, he might just run. She wasn't sure about where he stood on all this, really.

No matter the odds, she could go down fighting.

Her knees trembled.

Or she could try to run. Maybe Scarlet could glide her away to safety again...

She looked out through the ballroom windows, taking a count of how many ships floated around the blimp.

"Yacht?" Neptune whispered.

Cammy considered arguing that it was just as likely that someone had set all this up to turn humanity and faunus against one another; if this grimm intelligence was a real thing, wouldn't another Faunus War be just what it'd want?

She tried to tell her arm to rise up, to show teacher that she had a question for the class, but her arm didn't move. She'd always hated talking up in class.

It was easier to just wait for someone else to ask the question. She wasn't the smartest girl - certainly someone else would have thought of her question, too.

"Coast?" Neptune whispered, slightly louder now. The other three looked at him.

Jupiter was too engrossed in talking about his plans to see, and Neptune had his back to her, but Cammy could feel his aura flare up and could imagine the way his pupils were dilating in terror at the mention of a watercraft of any sort.

"I've already sent word to Tony down south - miserable sod took off right after you beat him in our boardgame - so he should be dealing with his folks on that border... they're closer to Menagerie, so he'll have the rougher time of this debacle compared to yours in Argus. I don't think the faunus-lovers in Vale are in any position to stand against us since the fall of Beacon, Vacuo is a dump, and if Atlas would come out of their shell I'd count that as a win no matter what. If they do come out, I think we'll find that most of their citizens will share our views on what has to be done to protect human interests, especially once I talk to their envoys about what I've just told you. We can't let Mistral collapse while we dither, cousin."

"Yacht?" Neptune hissed. "Boat?"

Jupiter raised an eyebrow, still not having realized his tactical error. He might even almost have been close to convincing Neptune of the rationale behind his tyrannical actions, but for one simple miscalculation.

Neptune was still afraid of-

"Water?" Neptune shrieked, then his body became tall and imperious. He pointed his trident at his cousin. "This is wrong, Jupiter! I won't let you do this! You're basing this all on assumptions and hearsay - you're driven entirely by your emotions and ignoring the rule of law! You say the faunus have betrayed humanity, but what is humanity if not a society of people united by law and justice? In the name of the law, for the sake of our family and people, I WILL STOP YOU!"

It was a powerful moment. Neptune, regally raising up his weapon, taking a stand against his own cousin's madness, one voice of reason in a night of insanity. That's how Cammy wanted to remember the scene in front of her.

Instead, she shook her head as she saw the underlying nonsense: Neptune was just afraid of getting on a boat!

Well, whatever gets his mind focused on the truth, rather than Jupiter's lunacy. She looked at Sun. Sun looked at the three of them and nodded. The four of them unlatched their shackles and drew their own weapons. Cammy held a pistol Scarlet had taken from one of the airship's crew when they hijacked it. It felt heavy in her hands - she really hoped she didn't have to use it.

"Treason after all, then, Neptune? Very well. I figured you for a rotten branch anyways after your parents ran away like they did. Shirking their duties. Forsaking the necessary obligations that comes with belonging to this family." Jupiter scowled, shaking his head with disappointment. "It doesn't matter. You've already delivered the monkey. My armies can handle the rest. In the end, you've only succeeded in throwing your own potential away." He pulled out his scroll. "All ships. This is Jupiter. Drop your payloads on the faunus district."

He grinned.

He waited.

The confident grin slowly morphed into a frown.

"Confirm orders: engage operational orders against the faunus district!" He repeated angrily to the console.

"Sorry, that won't work." Neptune revealed with dramatic flair. "Picked up a little toy of yours down at Haven - an Atlesian Disruptor. Reset it and turned it on when we came up beside you. None of your orders are going to go through."

"You little shit!" Jupiter raised his spear and pointed it at Neptune. "Enough of this. I don't need you. Retinue! Arrest this traitor!" Nothing happened. Jupiter looked at his retinue. "What are you waiting for? Shoot him!"

"Can't attack. Royal blood." The nearest one responded through gritted teeth. "Primary orders are to protect the Royal Family of Mistral." Cammy wasn't sure, but she almost thought she heard a faint hint of amusement in the guard's voice at being able to disobey a direct order and piss off Jupiter a little.

"Well, then arrest him... for his own protection!"

The guard began to shudder, then took a step towards Neptune.

"I order you not to arrest me!" Neptune said. The guard stopped moving.

"Fine! Be that way! We'll have a chat about your insubordination later, Rufio." Jupiter's face was beet-red with outrage. "For now, deal with his friends! Subdue the lot of them and drag them away! I assume you have no issue with orders of that nature? I'll deal with my errant cousin personally." He charged at Neptune; trident and spear met in a great discharge of electricity, the cousins screaming at each other as the battle began.

"Sounds like we're going with Plan B!" Sun shouted out but sounded relieved, his staff becoming a whirl as it deflected a volley of shots from the guards, who clearly didn't have any reservations about arresting the rest of them. Combat was something Sun understood; politics and conspiracies, not so much. "Let's beat some sense into this whack-job."

Cammy, for her part, dashed between Scarlet and Sage. She wasn't able to defend herself from bullets like the others, so she relied on the boys to block most shots that sought her out. Even so, her aura absorbed a couple of hits. If I didn't have aura, I'd be on the ground bleeding now.

Scarlet shot Hook's grapple at the balcony, grabbed Cammy, and swung the pair of them up out of the fray. Elevated, she enjoyed a bit of cover and perspective, scrambling over to shield herself behind the throne. Scarlet followed her, and while she caught her breath he used Hook to fire at one of the two guards he'd left Sage to deal with. His shot hit the guard square in the chest, making him stumble away from Sage.

"Use your gun to give us some more covering fire. Don't worry, they've all got aura so they'll take a beating before you'd have to worry about off'ing any of my lost boys. And even if you're not a great shot, all you have to do is distract them from time to time." Scarlet told her, though the fact that his crew were superhuman-strong and willing to harm was weak comfort. Before she could protest Scarlet was away, sword in hand, to rejoin the melee below. After several long moments spent steeling her resolve against a backdrop of violent sounds from below, her curiosity overwhelmed her sense of self-preservation and she poked her head around the throne to get a look at what was happening.

Jupiter and Neptune were parrying back and forth, their polearm-style weapons sparking wildly in the middle of the room.

Sage was swinging his massive sword in large arcs, while his opponent dodged and rolled around him nimbly.

Sun was a blur of motion, his staff whirling around him as he kept the attention of a pair of enemies. Cammy couldn't even keep track of what Sun's weapon was, as he kept shifting it through its different modes.

The guard Jupiter had called Rufio disengaged Sun and decided Cammy was an easier target; taking aim at her, a spew of rounds fired out from his sword at her, making her shriek. The rounds stopped and Cammy peeked back out; Scarlet had tackled Rufio. The man Scarlet had been fighting began moving away from where Scarlet and Rufio rolled around on the floor in a flurry of punches. For a moment, Cammy hoped that the man was simply a coward running away, until she realized his plan. He's going for the ballroom door! She took in a breath to steady herself and raised her weapon. He's going to alert all of the soldiers Jupiter dismissed earlier! Their group stood a chance of winning a fight with even numbers - even if she counted herself - but if all those soldiers swarmed back in they'd be finished for sure.

"Sure you can't talk your buddies down from this, Scarlet?" Sun called. "They're putting up a lot more of a fight than I thought they would when you said their brains were scrambled."

"They're all brainwashed, but not weaker!" Sage replied in his partner's stead, since Scarlet's face was currently getting pummelled.

Cammy's pistol fired, blasting the floor beside the moving guard. She fired it again and got him in the shoulder. His aura flared, enough to divert the piercing force of the hit, but the kinetic energy still knocked him off balance and he fell to his knee. He pivoted around and took aim at her with a rifle, and she thanked Mistral's royal family for making the throne such a convenient shield. The guard must have realized that, too, and began sprinting towards her with his sword, instead. His eyebrows were furrowed in anger, and she knew that she'd really gotten his attention.

At least he isn't going for the door anymore. As he dashed up the left flight of stairs to reach her balcony, she scrambled down the stairs on the right, eager to keep as much distance between her unseasoned aura and his sword as possible. She looked around for a new place to hide.

Neptune and Jupiter imitated a brutal parody of the dance's floor's intended function, spinning and whirling around each other, testing each other's defenses and surrounding themselves with a field of electrical discharges. Cammy had seen huntsmen show off before, but watching Neptune and Jupiter fight was impressive - and terrifying. Jupiter's spear stabbed down at Neptune but instead impaled itself into the floor as Neptune executed a quick leap away, sending fractal burns radiating through the varnished hardwood as the yellow crystals in his spear glowed.

"Not bad, cousin, but you must realize this is a fruitless endeavour for you. I have years of training and experience over you." Jupiter taunted, yanking his spear out of the scorched floor. "If you surrender now, though, perhaps I will look kindly upon your parents and not blame them for raising you for this treason."

Cammy skirted around the edge of the ballroom, keeping a very safe distance from the feuding feudal scions. As she slid behind a buffet-table that had been covered in blinking military equipment, the guard chasing her opened fire at her with his rifle. The rifle tore apart the equipment on the table, and a couple rounds exploded through and barely missed Cammy.

Jupiter broke his attention away from Neptune for a moment to chastise his henchman. "Curly! Stop messing around with the reporter! You're just breaking military hardware! Go alert the soldiers outside! I need that ship these ones came in on under control, I need the disruptor turned off, I need reinforcements in here, and I need-"

Whatever else the Prince felt he needed was cut off, as Neptune tried to sweep his cousin's legs out from under him. Jupiter leapt up into the air, surrounding himself with a burst of air, catapulting himself a distance away, before using his semblance to send concentrated air-blasts at Neptune. Neptune parried them with his trident, and the howling gusts of wind made further orders inaudible.

It didn't matter, though. 'Curly', the guard, immediately stopped shooting at Cammy from the balcony and started towards the door again. Cammy took a couple shots at him, but his aura absorbed the single shot she managed to land on him. He didn't go down this time, and she realized her first success had been a fluke born of her having hit him by surprise.

Curly wasn't the only one who'd heard Jupiter's orders, though. Sun took notice as well, and tackled Curly to the ground and began laying into him with his fists. Sage had been right behind Sun, also having wanted to intercept Curly, so now Sage fended off the two guards that he and Sun had been fighting while Sun rolled around on the polished wood floor with Curly.

Scarlet and Rufio were locked together, wrestling on the floor, biting and headbutting and elbowing each other. Scarlet seemed exhausted, and seemed determined to keep his former friend in a limb-lock so that neither of them could contribute to the fighting elsewhere.

Team SSSN was tired, and hungry, and sore. Jupiter and his guards may have been up since yesterday night to prepare for this military exercise, but they had the luxury of having not jumped off a mountain, having proper meals, and not having had to fight their way through soldiers to get dust and an airship.

Neptune kept putting as much pressure on his cousin as he could manage, but Cammy worried that even if he were in peak condition - which he wasn't thanks to his 'activities' with those soldier ladies at the school and the small resistance put up by the carrier's crew - Neptune still would find himself outclassed by Jupiter.

Jupiter seemed to make the same assessment. He stopped using his semblance to batter team SSSN's resident nerd so that his words were not suppressed by the loud winds. "Curly, you idiot... Slightly! Nibs doesn't need your help dealing with Ayana; get the foot soldiers back in here so we can put an end to this ridiculous farce!" Jupiter pulled out his scroll to articulate his point. "I need communications back! Now! Enough delays!"

Slightly broke off from fighting Sage and began going for the door; nobody was left to stop him. If Cammy hadn't been so useless, the guards would not have always been able to be double-teaming one of her allies. Cammy fired the last of her clip at the man, but her aim was terrible and her weapon unfamiliar - what's that say, though? Any weapon in my hands would feel unfamiliar! Counting the fight as having ever been even odds was just a lie that she'd told herself to justify not trying to escape immediately when negotiations failed.

She wasn't contributing.

Jupiter would win. His men would come in, they'd all get arrested, and he'd command the fleet to bomb the innocent faunus.

A single sentence on his scroll, and so many lives would be lost for nothing.

As Jupiter grinned at the sight of his minions finally managing to follow his commands, at the sight of his soldiers being summoned through the open doorway, Neptune charged at his cousin and bashed his hand with Tri-Hard, knocking the scroll from his grip.

It skid across the floor and came to a stop right in front of Cammy. She picked it up.

Jupiter was screaming in rage, surprise, and pain, his tempest of emotions manifesting as a tornado that tossed Neptune aside; with a sickening crunch, Neptune hit the wall and fell to the ground, his aura breaking. The burst of wind slammed into the desk Cammy was hiding behind, knocking it and her back against the window.

The glass cracked, then shattered. Cammy screamed and somehow managed to grab onto the frame of the window with her hand as she rolled over the table which quickly disappeared into the sky. Her pistol was gone, too. The windowframe cut into her hand with razorglass teeth, but she held on to it anyways because the alternative was falling to her death. Her other hand held onto Jupiter's scroll.

Over the rushing wind outside the airship she heard Jupiter's voice giving orders, getting louder. "Seize the carrier they came up here on! Find and negate the Atlesian disruptor they stowed aboard it! The rest of you, arrest the monkey and the other guests!"

Cammy dangled out of the window as she heard more fighting from above. Thanks to her unlocked aura, she had enough strength to hold on, but she was still far too weak to actually manage to lift herself back in. All she was able to do was hold on, listen to the sound of her friends losing, and look down at the city. No, stop looking down! It's so far! She forced her eyes to look at her hand, blood seeping between her fingers as the glass cut through. That's not much better... She looked around: not down, not up.

She saw the carrier detatch and begin flying away. The faunus they'd rescued from the school were making a break for it before the soldiers came for them, too. She felt good that at least some faunus would survive... but if the carrier was gone, and Jupiter wanted them all arrested, SSSN-C had no way to escape. It was a bitter feeling. She looked at Jupiter's scroll. It was locked and she didn't know his password. She considered just letting it fall.

No, she thought to herself, he'll just use another device to command his troops. It's more valuable to me as a bargaining chip based on its personal value to him, assuming he has personal files and photos on here or something. If she could leverage the scroll properly, maybe she could just... go back to her normal, hum-drum life.

She felt his footsteps approaching. She couldn't hear anything until he was right beside the window.

"Where is my scroll?"

She displayed it in her hand, holding it as tightly as she did the frame.

"I don't suppose you'll just give it to me." He shouted slowly and deliberately so that she could hear him, evidently confident in the turn of the battle behind him and his semblance to not be worried about standing beside the window. "And I doubt you'll trust any deal I offer you for its return." He rolled his eyes. "If it falls with you, I can just search for its signal with my wife's scroll. You can't unlock it. So, realistically, your choice here is to fall with the scroll, or not fall with the scroll."

She instinctively looked down. Down at the ground. So far below.

"It will probably take you a minute or two before you hit the ground. More if your clothes give you a bit of a parachute for wind resistance, but you're not Scarlet David - otherwise you wouldn't have been holding onto him so tightly when you escaped last time. Hand me the scroll, and you can go to prison."

Jupiter's air semblance probably gave him some expertise when it came to the matter of defenestration calculations. Jupiter was standing beside the window, and had a clear view of how far down to the ground it was. What Jupiter couldn't see was the pair of newer-model Mistral airships flying up underneath the flagship.

If I can just draw this out, maybe I could drop down onto one of them and get away? She didn't know where she would go, whether she'd be able to hijack an airship on her own... or if the ships would even come close enough for her to be brave enough to try dropping.

"I could smash it!" Cammy retorted as steadily as she could manage, and she decided to believe that the quiver in her voice was mostly from the wind.

"It's a long fall. Nasty way to die, prolonged drop with a long amount of time to think about how painful the impact will be." Jupiter snarled, letting the tip of his perfectly-shined boot tap against her bleeding fingers.

"You've probably got a lot of stuff on here. Personal schedules, appointments, reminders, photos? Yeah, with my aura I could probably crack this thing up so bad the data would be irrecoverable! So maybe you should try to negotiate a bit better!"

He crouched down so that he could hear her as she spoke. She knew it was a losing position to argue, but the ships were getting closer. Another dozen seconds and the second one would be underneath her at this rate - the ship in the front had veered a bit to the south, but the second one was still flying straight along the undercarriage of the flagship. Probably better for her to drop on the follower ship rather than the leader, since the following ship's pilot would see her drop onto the first. She glanced hopefully at the first ship as it continued veering off to the south; even with the tactical advantages of dropping onto the second, her hand was starting to hurt from holding onto the broken window frame. Maybe the pilot would see her and pity her?

The first ship was ridden by Adam Taurus. Standing in the hold of his ship were several women, one of which was - without any doubt - the little girl from Kuchinashi that had accidentally thrown Cammy's life upside-down. Little Rothy was safe...

"No you don't." Jupiter caught her as her grip went limp from the shock of what she had seen. He reached out with his semblance and his falling scroll flew up on a gust of wind into his other hand. "Ah, see? Was that so hard?" He let her continue to dangle out the side of the ship, looking at her curiously as he stood up while holding her out. Behind him she briefly saw Sun, Sage, and Scarlet around Neptune, backed into a wall and surrounded by soldiers closing in on them with guns and spears. "Whatever you'd hoped to accomplish here, it's over."

He was still inside the ship. She was still outside the ship. Only she could see the second ship. Only she could see the familiar dark figure standing on top of its deck, in a strange mirror of Adam's stance on the first ship, as it came up alongside the flagship. But if Adam is on the other ship... maybe it was Raven Branwen I saw on the train?

"What is that ship doing out of formation? I-" Jupiter began, suddenly looking at the approaching vessel, but was cut off by his own yelp as the entire hull of the incoming ship lit up like a neon sign. "Argh! My eyes!"

Jupiter dropped her, and somehow she managed to latch onto the window frame again with her arms, holding herself half-way inside the flagship by her elbows and forearms. The glass bit into the entirety of her arms, but her instincts knew that the pain was worth not falling.

The neon glow stayed lit up for several seconds, like a second moon hanging in the night sky, and then suddenly the glow changed. Now, rather than the whole hull gleaming brightly like a bulb, the keel was covered in giant neon letters:

FAUNUS FLEE BOMBING INCOMING
BOMBING INCOMING FAUNUS FLEE

The words scrolled around the ship's underside. Bright and large as the text was, it wouldn't be enough to be noticed or read by people on the ground through the light pollution of the streetlights.

Oh, wait, the faunus district doesn't have streetlights because they're chronically underfunded when it comes to city infrastructure! Cammy found herself thankful for the racism inherent in the system. Still, even if the words were legible on the ground, it was the middle of the night. Everyone would be asleep.

Everyone... except the faunus underclass that are forced to work late into the night. Again, inherent racism somehow worked (for once) in the favour of the oppressed.

Cammy felt hope that maybe everything she and the boys had fought for would not be lost; their struggle not in vain! She could only hope now that the inhabitants of the faunus district heeded the miraculous message in the sky and got to safety.

"No!" Jupiter yelled, likely intelligent enough to come to the same conclusions Cammy had. "Neptune! This is your doing!" Then he began to laugh and unlocked his scroll. "It doesn't matter! I win! Mistral Magni-"

The dark figure launched off the glowing ship through the window, tackling the Crown Prince of Mistral.


DOMINIC

Tuesday Morning

As much as he wanted to fight the Crown Prince of Mistral, upon entering the flagship's large ballroom his first priority quickly changed to extricating Sun from his present predicament. Somehow, the simian-faunus had gotten himself surrounded by humans. His allies looked bruised and beaten.

Dominic leaped into the mass of human soldiers and immediately took their attention away from team SSSN. Any that thought to ignore his entrance on its own aggressive merits still paid him heed, as their Crown Prince shouted orders while rising back up to his feet on the other side of the room where Dom had tossed him. "Adam Taurus!? Forget Neptune and his stooges, kill Taurus!"

What did I do to him to piss him off so much? Dominic wondered while severing the hand of a man who had been aiming a rifle at him. The man screamed and fell backwards, allowing another human to move in to jab at Dom.

"Uh, Dominic? Dominic!" Sun shouted, clearly confused by the sudden appearance of another friendly faunus face in the fray. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, you know, I was in the neighbourhood. Figured you were in over your head and could use a... hand." He replied, kicking the severed hand of the screaming man through the legs of his comrades towards where SSSN was pressed up against the wall.

"Eugh, dude, that's totally gross!" Sage commented as the hand came to a stop at his feet.

"Can you... not kill people?" Sun asked, while unceremoniously bashing a soldier on the back of the head now that everyone's attention was diverted to the newcomer.

Wilt connected with another soldier, sinking deep into a thigh and severing what felt like a thick tendon there. "You don't need a hand to live, and maybe being crippled will teach this guy valuable life lessons about racial equality despite faunus' natural physical advantages."

"He's going to bleed out!"

"Unless they back off and give their wounded some medical attention, yes." Dominic said, more to the soldiers than in response to Sage's comment. "Which I will give them opportunity to do, if they move away from us."

The soldiers who were not presently injured helped pull the ones that were away from the merciful fellow wearing the black hat and eyepatch. Only four of them didn't seem to be inclined to live, and Dom assessed from their outfits that they were some sort of elite, royal guards.

Blessed with a bit of space to move, Dominic made his way to where Sun and his friends were. "How bad off are you?"

"Neptune's out cold, Scarlet's out of aura, Sage's legs were broken this morning, and I'm tired." Sun reported, then under his breath he hissed, "why didn't you make a run for it?"

"I mean I got here as fast as I could, but I can't really run into the sky." Dominic replied with a shrug, fighting off the parts of his brain that wanted to wallow in thoughts regarding how he had gotten up here. "Took a while to get a suitable ride."

Sun shook his head incredulously and muttered under his breath, "sometimes you need to be there for a friend even when they don't want you to be... Guess this is what it's like to be on the other side of this." He laughed. "So alike, and yet so different sometimes."

Dominic didn't know what to make of that, and so he found himself stealing a glance at Neo's neon ship floating outside the window. As much as he knew he should hate the idea of trusting her, after this stunt of hers he had to admit he owed her. She'd proven herself to be... better than most humans, at least. That's a pretty low standard, especially after what I've seen tonight.

"I told you! I knew it! See? You're all working together! I should have known that something was up earlier - the clues are so obvious in hindsight. Why else would Ghira's daughter have destroyed the listening device installed in her residence the night before her father came to visit? They definitely talked about something that we weren't supposed to be privy to, otherwise they would have made a scene about it!" The Prince raved from across the room as he kept himself noticeably behind his soldiers. "Taurus! Lionheart! Wukong! Belladonna!"

Dominic vaguely remembered something Bedlam had mentioned having done while secreting his own spy camera into RWBY's abode. Jupiter's anger about that was outweighed by the fact that he had been left in the dark about all the juicy secrets RWBY and company had talked about in that room; Dom couldn't be angry at Bedlam's accidental role in the current state of things.

The four elite guards came at him. Forgoing their rifles - since Wilt had proven adept at protecting Dominic against those - they came in with their swords.

"Help!" The human woman at the window cried out. Dominic had sort of forgotten about that, whoever she was. Not a threat, not a faunus, he'd left her to her fate and chosen to attack. Sun didn't seem to share his attitude, and broke ranks to go save the dangling damsel in distress. The guards barely took note of him scampering away. They were intent on following their Prince's orders to kill Dominic. With Dominic, Sage, and Scarlet fighting against the four elites, it almost made it a fair looking fight. For the guards.

Sun grabbed the lady and hoisted her up, his tail wrapping around her to give extra lift. "Oh gods I was so scared thank you thankyouthankyou!" The lady sobbed, "Sun, I think it's time we start getting out of here."

"Going somewhere, faunus scum?" The Prince asked, moving over to deal with Sun and the lady. "While my soldiers deal with your terrorist friends, I think I'll take care of you myself! My people shall adore me for rooting out your lies and evil, history books will -"

Sun didn't give him any more time to keep talking, though, and neatly stepped around his spear and tripped him with his big red staff. Jupiter let go of his spear and punched Sun in the face, then grabbed him by his shirt and pulled the man's shirt over his head. A regular human would have been rendered blind, but Sun had faunus senses enhanced by aura, so he didn't get disoriented; instead, he gave the human a solid uppercut and tackled him.

Dominic would have kept watching, but the elites had pushed Scarlet and Sage back and so it was up to Dom to fight them four to one. He had to use Blush as a shield to give himself more options, but even so he started to feel a bit of frustration. These four humans had aura, and they were strong. More importantly, they didn't seem to have any fear - the sight of the wounded humans behind them hadn't made them hesitate at all. If he had to guess, Dom would say that they were fanatics. They certainly wanted him dead, so the only question was why? Because they were anti-faunus? They hadn't been so aggressive against Scarlet and Sage. Or were they just focused on him because they'd been told to kill him? Dominic doubted that the human Prince had given his men the go-ahead to kill any of Sun's human teammates. Regardless, Dominic kept them at bay for a long stretch of time while Sage and Scarlet occasionally helped with some suppressing fire or a sweep of Sage's large sword.

Then Scarlet, rather than reloading his flintlock, used the grapple-shot in its butt to wrap around the ankle of one of the elites and, with a yank, pulled him prone. The man fell flat on his back right in front of Dom, as tempting a target as possible, so he raised Wilt and prepared to ram it straight through a human heart.

"Wait! Don't kill him!" Scarlet shouted suddenly as he saw what Dominic was preparing to do.

"He's trying to kill us!" Dominic hissed, deflecting another guard's sword strike with Blush and feeling the muted impact as his semblance absorbed the energy.

"It's not his fault! They're being controlled!"

"Brainwashed." Sage added as the prone guard rolled away to safety.

Dominic hoped he wouldn't regret that lost opportunity later. "Well, if I can't kill them, what's the point of fighting? This isn't a sparring match."

"An excellent point, monster." The Prince yelled out. Dominic noted that Sun looked like he'd been smacked around like a pinata, but was putting himself between the lady and the Prince defensively. "You may as well all just surrender now and receive lenient sentences. Labour for life seems fair. If you don't? Execution for treason."

As he spoke, Sage and Scarlet surreptitiously grabbed Neptune and began dragging him towards where Sun and the lady stood, letting Dominic deal with the soldiers on his own. He was forced back, as the unscathed soldiers began supporting the elite guards with a hail of rounds from their rifles.

Dominic took cover behind an overturned table, absorbing as much energy as he could into Wilt. A plan began to form in his mind. If he could kill the leader, the soldiers would panic and rout. Even if that doesn't work, at least it'll count well towards avenging what happened to... what they did to Salt.

He felt his aura roiling with the power of Moonslice.

"Enough of this, I'll deal with him myself!" Jupiter announced, pushing through the crowd of soldiers and lifting up his spear. "Die!"

A bolt of lightning surged at Dominic and Jupiter let out a gleeful laugh that ended when he saw Dominic standing with Wilt glowing a deep crimson in front of him, rather than being electrocuted to death on the dancefloor.

"Is that all you've got?" Dominic snipped. "I had worse beatings than this when I was a kid."

"Do you mean kid like a child, or kid like a young goat?" One of the soldiers asked, then shrunk into his uniform when Jupiter glared at him.

"Wait, I thought he was a bull-faunus." Sage said.

"His name is Dominic!"

"Wait, so is Dominic Adam, or not?" Sage asked. "He's literally wearing the same outfit he did the night he fought you and Blake at school. It's him - no doubt about it, yeah?"

Dom realized that, without the disguise of the trenchcoat he'd donated to Salt earlier, he was, indeed, much easier to identify as Taurus-esque. Before he had time to spin a convincing lie, though, he received help from an unexpected source.

"No, the other one is Adam I think." The human lady whispered to the boys, but Dominic heard her say it as he edged his way over towards them and away from the soldiers.

"Other one?" The boys asked in unison.

"If it looks like Adam Taurus, and fights like Adam Taurus, and it's a faunus, then kill it now and sort out the name and faunus-type later!" Jupiter instructed his men. "One week extra paid vacation each year if you can gut that terrorist before he sabotages human civilization anymore!" He looked at Sun's team wickedly. "How about this: if you take down the terrorist yourselves and save my men further hassle, I'll knock fifteen years off your sentences. If you don't, and demonstrate what I've been saying all along - that the faunus are conspiring against humanity and you lot are witless pawns - then there's no reason to halt my plan to bomb the faunus district any longer. They've certainly not had enough time to escape their fate, even with that obnoxious warning."

"Not without this, you won't." Sun said, producing a scroll from his pocket.

"What?" Jupiter shoved his hands into his own pockets. "How did you-?"

Sun shrugged. "Nicked it off you earlier, after I pulled Cammy back aboard." Then Sun chucked the scroll out the shattered window.

The leader of Mistral's military uttered a string of rude expletives, broke another window behind him with his spear, and dived out of the airship.

"Did we just... win?" Dominic asked as he got closer to his... allies? Not really friends, since most of them are human, but at least they're as much a benefit to the cause right now as Neo is. "Is he dead?"

"I think his semblance lets him fly." The human lady told him. "So he'll be back once he catches his scroll."

The soldiers continued taking pot-shots at them, but without Jupiter there to order them forward they seemed happy enough to merely hold their side of the ballroom. Dominic and Sun's friends were granted a temporary reprieve from the fierce combat.

"Pssst!" Sage whispered at Dominic. "Dude, I'm just going to ask: are you Adam Taurus or some random faunus?"

"That sounds really racist, man." Scarlet added, "do you think all faunus look alike now?"

"I mean, faunus girls all look cute."

"Says my partner who printed up actual business cards with his picture, name, age, and scroll contact info, then handed them out on the street to every girl passing by when we got to Vale."

"Do we have a plan to get out of here?" The lady asked. "The carrier we hijacked - with the faunus we rescued from the school - to get up here flew away. The faunus aboard must have seen the soldiers coming for them and decided to make a break for it."

"Who am I? Who are you?" Dominic asked the girl, smiling a little at the knowledge that a few more faunus had escaped this mess.

"This is Cammy. She's a reporter?" Sun said, looking at her questioningly. "Or something?"

"Former reporter now, I think." Cammy clarified. "Pretty sure I'm going to be fired for this."

"As for a plan to get out of here, no. We have no plan to get out of here. So, if it isn't rude of me to ask ya: with our ride gone - can you call your ship back?" Sun asked.

"I could. Assuming we wanted to run off rather than finish this."

"You think you can win this fight? There's like a dozen of them, plus Prince Jupiter and Scarlet's four brainwashed buddies." Sun scoffed.

"There would be less of them if I could-"

"No killing! We don't want to start up another Great War!" Sun admonished. "We're heroes! Heroes don't kill."

Dominic looked down at his outfit. It was dark enough that the bloodstains that had soaked through his coat earlier weren't especially visible. With his penchant for a black-and-red colour motif - which by association with Belladonna Sun would be aware of - perhaps the other faunus just hadn't noticed that Dom reeked of human blood. Yeah, I'm going to just go ahead and not tell the guy about how many humans I tore through earlier tonight.

"Yes. They only lie, cheat, and steal." Sage recited the list of his team's misdemeanours.

"The faunus below have had time to get away, so now we need to get out of here so we can stop them from killing Ghira. I don't even have the beginning of a plan on how to deal with that..." Sun said, then explained, thinking that Dominic was unaware of the full scope of the human battle plan, "he's sent a bunch of ships to attack Ghira's exodus fleet."

"I'm aware." Dominic replied. "That's being attended to."

"Attended to?"

"I think what he means is that Adam Taurus is going to go deal with that while he deals with us here." Cammy explained, "I saw him with Rothy in the other ship that was in front of yours, plus before on the train."

"You know Rothy?" Dominic said, genuinely more surprised that she knew the faunus girl by name than that she'd spotted his clone.

"Wait, I thought he was Adam!"

"Mate, I told you. You? Racist." Scarlet scolded his partner.

"You said it, too!"

"Guys listen: let's sort this out later, but right now we gotta bail." Sun said, taking charge of the situation as only a faunus really could. "Dominic: call your ship over to pick us up. Cammy and Scarlet: get ready to haul Neptune onto that ship. Sage: use your big sword to help me cover them while they do that."

Dominic deflected a gunshot with Wilt and walked behind the three guys, letting them handle the sporadic attacks from the humans on the other side of the dancefloor, as he pulled out his scroll. He called Neo. She picked up almost immediately, but didn't greet him. Probably not sure if I'm still in possession of the scroll. Cute of her to think that a gaggle of humans like this could best me. "Bring the ship back over to where I came in. Sun's team and I are done here."

She didn't respond, but her ship began veering towards them so he ended the call.

"Alright. Get ready. I'll cover our escape."

"How are you going to do that?" Sun asked warily.

"My semblance. It lets me store up energy from attacks I block with my sword. So I will just... use that."

Sun stared at him blankly for a moment. "They'll die, Dominic."

"Yeah, but the nuance of it is that it won't be me killing them. It will be their own energy killing them, so it's not really murder. It's suicide." Dominic explained calmly, wondering how it was so hard for Sun to understand such a simple concept as righteous retaliation. "Fighting me is tantamount to suicide."

Neo nearly bumped into the flagship to get in position, using the extended wing-flaps as a makeshift gangplank onto the upper deck. Cammy and Scarlet started across with Neptune carried between them, quickly getting over to the airship and opening the deck hatch to get Neptune into the hull.

"Okay, after this? We are definitely going to discuss the concept of basic morality... but if appeals to that won't work on you, how about this: if you kill all these men here now, it will just prove that what Jupiter fears about our people is correct. Instead, you have to show them that faunus are not out to kill them; we're just people, too."

Dom gritted his teeth. Sun was being very annoying right now. He was like a blonde Blake! How did he keep getting wrapped up with these idealists all the time? Brazen and Bedlam had been so much easier to work with.

"Well, I can't hold onto this energy for very long, so what would you say I should do with it?" Dominic argued, "want me to just shoot it up into the ceiling?"

"Yeah, that could intimidate them. There are ways of dealing with people that are non-lethal." Sun responded happily. "Obviously not fighting at all is the best option, but beating your chest to show that you're ready to fight can't hurt."

"You... would have gotten along very well with Sienna." Dominic sighed, then steadied himself into a stance to prepare to unleash the full force of Moonslice into the ceiling. If he was going to intimidate them, at least he'd make sure they were damn-well intimidated.

The room went black, with only the bloodstains and other reds in the room retaining their hue, as Moonslice began to fire.

"Wait, is that fire dust in your sword that makes it red?" Sun suddenly asked. As Dominic swung his blade, he vaguely heard Sun screaming something about 'elementary school chemistry class' and 'hydrogen blimp'.

Oh, the humanity.

Moonslice tore through the ceiling, tore into the blimp's gas envelope in a searing red blast that was consumed by the resulting combustion.

Everything spun and pain laced through him; when his eye opened back up, the entire ballroom was burnt and the blazing inferno raging above overwhelmed his senses of hearing and smell. He could still see, somewhat, through the smoke, but the smell was too much for him.

"Sun?" Dominic called out after coughing up what felt like an entire lung. He kicked over a burning table. "Sun?" He staggered over to the window. All of them were blown out now, and the smoke billowing down from the burning blimp flowed out into the night sky. "Sun!"

"Ack." Sun moaned from a little ways away as he pushed a large monitor off his chest.

"That was a mistake." Dominic said as he rushed over to help Sun get up. "Are you alright?"

Sun pulled out his scroll and looked at it. He frowned. "Aura is gone. So is Sage's - where's Sage?"

"I don't know. We have to get out of here."

Sun started shifting through nearby piles of broken furniture. Dominic huffed angrily, but joined him in the search.

"Maybe he's on the ship?" Dominic said, "unless you want to end up like those soldiers over there, we need to go or we'll die."

Sun kept trying to find Sage, but the smoke in the air made him struggle to breathe, struggle to move. Dominic, having grown up in poorly-ventilated mine shafts, was a bit better at dealing with such environmental conditions. It was almost homey in its familiarity. The groaning bodies of the soldiers on the other side of the room were of no concern to him now. If anything he was just relieved that they were no longer a threat. As he grinned at the sight of the soon-to-be-killed humans (either from the fire or from the impending crash), Dominic spotted a tuft of green hair sticking up out of a pile of smoldering debris.

He made his way towards it, but then stopped himself.

He's a human. Racist. Lecherous. Dangerous.

There was really no need to save Sage, was there? One more dead human, this one not even really Adam Taurus' fault.

That is not how Sun will see it. Who started the fire? If Sage dies, Sun will hold a grudge about it forever. Besides, Sage is not the worst sort of human. He is like Neopolitan: faunus-friendly.

If he were to save Sage, Sun wouldn't hold a grudge. No, Sun and Sage would feel gratitude towards Dominic. Dominic liked people recognizing how much he'd done to help them. After all, what he was doing wasn't just about freeing his people, it was also about getting the respect he deserved. He pulled Sage out of the rubble. "Here. Can we please go now?"

Sun rushed over and felt Sage's chest. "He's alive!" The two of them carried Sage to the window. Neo had flown the ship away from the exploding blimp, making it so that they'd have to jump to safety.

"You don't have aura. Neither does he." Dominic noted. Without aura, the leap would hurt. "Sling him around my front, and hold onto him while hanging on my back. I'll get us down."

"You still have aura left after that blast?" Sun said incredulously.

Dominic nodded. Maybe not as much as he'd like to have, but he could feel the power protecting him. All my physical training the past week is paying dividends.

"Are you going to be able to carry both of us?"

"Just do it!" Dominic ordered, yanking Sage out of Sun's grip and wrapping his arms around the unconscious human. Sun hopped on his back.

The blimp shuddered.

"Wukong!" Jupiter's voice carried across the room. The Crown Prince flew back into the ballroom, the power of his semblance letting his shout clear the air as a strong gust. "You'll pay for this!"

"Dude... I'm totally broke." Sun whispered into Dominic's ear. "I can't pay for any of this stuff."

Dominic gave Sun a quick exasperated look, then turned his attention to the Prince. "Your airship's going down. Looks like we're heading right into a human district. They'd all be asleep at this hour... what a shame."

"Public execution! I'll hang you both from the gallows after making you beg for death!" The man took aim at them with his spear.

Dominic held the unconscious Sage between him and the Prince; not a great shield, but a human shield was better than nothing. Better still was not testing whether Jupiter would kill a human to get to him, though. "Of course, if you used that semblance of yours, maybe you could redirect the crash out of the city."

Jupiter paused, considering Dominic's statement.

Then he flew back out through the window.

"Alright, let's go." Dominic said, sighing with a touch of relief at the Prince's departure, and hopped down towards where Neo was slowly flying away.

When he impacted, he made a sizeable dent in the deck of the ship, causing him to wince in pain, and he felt a sizeable chunk of his remaining aura get eaten up, but he made it. Sun got off his back and took Sage, then hauled him through the open hatchway towards the confused voices coming from inside.

"What was that? Did something just hit us?"

"Maybe a piece of debris?"

"Nope! It's just Dom, Sage and I. Did you guys try to leave us behind?" Sun said.

"We almost did! This girl tried to kill us, then the flagship exploded, and she wouldn't listen to us when we told her to stay close by so you could escape!" Cammy accused, pointing angrily at Neo where she sat nonchalantly in the pilot seat. "Which was probably for the best, since there was a lot of debris..."

Dom caught a hint of a smile at the mention of how Neo had tried to kill Sun's friends. Had she been upset, thinking that he'd died in the blast? Dominic pushed past them and stood beside Neo. "Give me the controls."

Neo got up and let him sit down in the chair, then promptly sat back down in his lap. He didn't bother to resist. We're in a rush, there's no time to argue about where she plops herself.

"Hey, isn't she one of Cinder Fall's henchmen?" Sun asked as he squinted at Neo. "From Beacon?"

"Yeah." Dominic answered after a moment of silence, since Neo didn't seem inclined to explain herself. She seemed much more inclined to just slowly wriggle, acting very comfortably in front of her audience. Dominic looked up at the burning blimp. As he watched it, it was enveloped by what could only be described as a sideways tornado and began drifting away from the city's airspace. "Looks like the Prince is distracted by his attempt to mitigate the damage from the crash. Where are we going?"

As he spoke, the ship's radio buzzed on and they heard Jupiter's voice. "All available units! Target escaping felons, currently in the captured G3 Airship. The glowing one. Fire with prejudice."

Damn, I was hoping he'd be too distracted or something to sic his people on us so soon. "We'll never get away from a pursuit in this." Dominic relayed to the rest of them as he checked his ship's status dials. "Most of the fuel went into my brother's ship to save Ghira. This one has enough to make it... halfway to Kuchinashi. Maybe."

Sun's hand came to rest on his shoulder, and he pointed down at the city. "Then we'll get on the transport ship. We've got tickets."

"Mate, they'll just shoot the boat when they find out we're on it." Scarlet said. "There'll be civilians aboard with us."

Dominic shook his head and nudged Neo's back with his shoulder. "How much more can your semblance do tonight?"

She looked at him and showed him her scroll; 40% read her aura meter. Infiltrating the military base and covering the entire airship in bright glowing neon had taken a lot out of her.

"We can get on our ship and stowaway to Vacuo. It's not hard to go unnoticed in Mistral - everyone here is hiding from someone in the lower levels." Dominic said, not bothering to hide from Neo where he was planning to go, or from SSSN the fact that he was well-versed in going undetected from authorities. "Neo can distract them and fly this ship out to the city limits and ditch it out there."

"That's not a terrible plan." Scarlet said, "but I've got one change to make to the plan. We won't get away on the transport ship, even if they don't see us get on it. We bought tickets in our names to board it, so they'll check for us there when it leaves - assuming they don't just lock down the harbour before it departs. What they won't be able to stop us from doing is taking another ship entirely. Let's take the royal yacht - sounded like Jupiter was willing to let Neptune take it out, anyways. Nobody will miss it, it has clearance to do whatever it wants, and with a ship that small we won't need an actual crew - just me."

"Am I the only one worried that Neptune will freak out if he wakes up on a boat?" Cammy asked.

"No, but there's no other option. Sounds like we won't get away on foot or by air." Sun said, then patted Dom on the shoulder. "Okay, take us down to the harbour. We'll get off before the air fleet catches up on us."

Dom nodded. "Neo, deactivate your lights on the hull. We've given as much warning as we can, I think, and not being lit up will make us a harder target to track for the humans."

Neo frowned and gave him a look.

"Sorry. I meant, the bad humans. You're one of the good ones." He gave her a pat on her hat that she seemed to accept as an apology. They flew down into the warren of Mistral's labyrinthine city streets with the ship, flying low and dangerously through the boulevards of the upper city. It was so late at night all the humans were inside; the streets were empty. They wound down the mountain, trying not to stick out for any pursuit to spot.

Sun and his team headed to the back of the ship, preparing to disembark with Neptune and Sage. Dom heard Cammy whispering back there, distinctly making out her saying the words "sadist" and "grinning murderer".

Once the others were out of sight, Neo used her semblance to create a miniature image of his brother, 'Adam'.

"Don't fret. My brother will come back once he's saved the migrant ships from the other prong of this human attack, then the two of you can get back to your mission." Dominic whispered under his breath in an attempt to reassure her. "That's the plan, it'll work out."

Neo stuck her tongue out and crossed her arms. She still didn't like the plan.

"Oh, don't be like that." He stopped patting her head and poked her tongue with a finger. She began poking back at his finger with her tongue. He chuckled. "You're just insistent on being troublesome, sometimes, you know that?"

Neo shrugged, and clasped onto his wrist with both hands. She rolled her eyes in a way that implied 'can we go home, yet?'

"I've got to leave Mistral with Sun and his team." That wasn't particularly true - I could stay - but his mission was to reform the White Fang and lead it against human tyranny. Without any White Fang in Mistral to lead, he had to move on, the sooner the better.

Neo casually stuck his finger into his mouth, slowly swirling her tongue around his digit.

Dominic groaned, remembering other things Neo had done with him during their strange association. "It's not too late for you to change your plans. You could come with us. With your semblance masking the yacht, we'd be able to get away like that, rather than having you lead them away on a false chase. Probably. We could make it work. Come with us to Vacuo - Br... my brother can find Cinder on his own and deal with her... appropriately. We might even be able to arrange his bringing her to us at the other end of my trip." The sudden image of Brazen dragging Cinder, in chains, into a new - better - White Fang inner sanctum in Vale, throwing her down in front of Dominic's imperious throne sprung into his mind.

Neo looked pensive as she continued suckling on his finger. Like she was considering the offer.

The sudden fantasy of his throne suddenly had Neo laying across his lap. Her illusionary faunus feature was undetermined, but she certainly had something. Just as quickly as the idea had sprung into the forefront of his mind, something else started to spring up.

Am I really that keen on having another human tagging along with me on what is essentially a faunus-focused mission? Dom looked at his gloved finger sticking into her mouth. It gave him another thought. Neo didn't know that he shared the semblance of Adam Taurus... yet.

Brazen would forgive him for whisking the cute little human girl away with him to Vacuo. It wasn't like he had any claim to getting upset about such a thing.

Adam Taurus' semblance allowed him to absorb energy and reflect it through his weapons, Wilt his sword and Blush his rifle-sheath. Really, what was a glove other than a sheath for a fist? He wasted no time testing out his latest epiphany's practical use. Not because I'm desperate to convince Neo to accompany me or anything, I just want to see if it will work. Yes, that's it. The cockpit faded to stark whites, the remaining reds glowing by contrast, and the minute energy of her tongue's attentions were reflected into Neopolitan. He watched a shiver roll through her body as she jerked back in surprise.

"My brother and I share a lot of traits. Burdens. Ambitions. A semblance." Dominic said. 'You' went unspoken, but implied. "It lets us trust each other completely. You can come with me, or you can wait for him, but either way you have to trust us. It's not your responsibility to find Cinder." He went back to patting her on the head.

Neo grabbed his hand and pushed it away, then stood up and looked down at the approaching harbour. A miniature Roman Torchwick appeared on the dashboard, and she looked at it longingly. It almost looked like she was having a conversation with the illusionary ghost of the man. She felt the rim of his hat on her head, and finally turned back to look at Dominic. Her fingers moved. [Wrong]

"You know signs? How long have you been able to... it doesn't matter, I guess." Dominic sputtered as he saw her use Atlesian sign language.

[I trust our plan and your brother, but I owe it to him.] She pointed at the image of Roman. [I stay] She looked torn by her decision, but seemed resolute and final in it.

She was capable of using Atlesian sign language rather... fluently; not a skill she'd just acquired. Dominic nodded. "But once the hunt is finished, he'll follow after me. You'll come with him?"

Neo smirked as Dom said the last part, and he realized she'd taken it in a more lewder manner than he'd intended it to be taken. She nodded.

"There's the yacht!" Scarlet reported from the hold, "it's the big one with the Mistral insignia all over it, painted teal."

Dom stood up and gestured to Neo for her to retake the controls. They looked at the yacht floating beneath them. Watched SSSN and Cammy clambering aboard it, Scarlet immediately heading to the controls to warm it up.

"Stay safe, Neo, and... thanks for all of your help tonight. We couldn't have done this without you. Plus, being with you taught me that not all humans are... completely useless. Not all humans are bad, even if a lot of them are." He thought of all the humans he'd killed that evening, and how many more he'd wanted to kill. If Sun hadn't whined about it... Well, he was going to have to get used to that sort of thing. He was going to be with Sun for a while, and that meant being surrounded by humans, too. "I'm hopeful that Sun's got good ones, too." Dominic admitted to her as he went back to the rear exit, unable to notice how Neo reacted to his gratitude and acknowledgement of her.

He hopped down onto the deck of the yacht and watched as Neo flew away. Once she had regained some altitude, her semblance lit the ship up again to make sure the enemies knew to follow her, and they did just that; the rest of Mistral's air fleet swooped down from the sky to pursue her, having no time in the darkness to spot team SSSN and company's escape from Mistral.

He'd have to add a text to his scroll to warn Brazen that his human pet knew sign language, and he wondered if that had let her glean anything crucial about their current multiplicity; Dominic had little doubt that Neo would manage to live through her current task. If she did know anything troublesome, at least she was on their side. He did sort of kind of trust Neo - a thought that felt entirely strange. He'd thought about her before, but back then it had been trying to rectify how her relationship with Brazen would affect his own path. He hadn't been thinking about himself - well, not this version of himself. She was, undoubtedly, a human. With her semblance, though... nobody else has to know that. She could pass for faunus similar to how Ilia had managed to pass for human.

He sighed deeply. There were reasons beyond tactical advantage for him wanting Neo to have stayed with him. Well, if there is one silver lining, it's that because of the Relic of Choice, she'll still technically be staying with me - just another version of me. He tried to comfort himself with that rationale as the yacht sailed out of the harbour, out into the open ocean.

That was more excitement than I'd expected my departure from this fetid city to have, but it is all okay. I'll be back in Vale soon enough, back with my loyalists. Dominic thought. Back where I belong.

He tried his best to flush his problematic thoughts about what he was leaving behind in Mistral. He still had work to do, and that meant making time with Sun to figure out why so many faunus had risen up to oppose him - Blake, Menagerie's populace, and even his lieutenants. He had every confidence that Sun would prove most insightful and helpful. They were stuck on a boat together, so he had no choice!


BRAZEN

Tuesday Morning

"And the worst part is, I have no idea what they'll do to him." Rothy's mother continued in a hushed whisper. Rothy was sleeping at her side, but the quiet words were still loud enough for Brazen to hear. "His own comrades arrested him and took us away from our home. If they'll do that to their friend..."

Lichen was trying her best to comfort the woman, but was clearly dealing with her own anger over what had happened. What was still happening. Salt was in the co-pilot chair, staring at the view-screen showing the passing landscape. She'd been like that since they'd gotten aboard. Brazen didn't feel like he was suited for helping her right now. All he could do was focus on the path ahead of him.

Blips on the radar.

"We're getting close." Brazen warned his passengers. "Stay buckled into your seats."

The radio buzzed alive. "Pat, is that you back there? Thought we didn't have orders for you to bring that bucket-of-bolts out on this run, since you don't have payload capacity. You here as a messenger or something?"

"It's about to get hot." Brazen said, noting the barely visible silhouettes flying above the forest ahead. The attack ships would have the advantage of surprise against Hazel's camp; Cinder's people didn't have faunus night vision. He pressed a series of buttons that began the warm-up sequence for the ship's armaments. The newer ship might lack a bombing pod attached underneath, but it had a dust gun above the prow's sail and Brazen had double-checked to make sure that it was loaded with juice.

He looked at the targeting screen as it gauged the distance to the nearest ship. The gun locked on easily enough; his enemies were sitting ducks. The first shot would be easy, the second, third, and fourth ships would be the trouble.

A thought occurred to him. He looked at Salt. "You want to take the first shot?"

She gave him a vacant stare for a second, looked back at the view-screen, then down at the monitor that showed their gun locked onto the closest human ship.

"Just press this button to fire it."

Salt hovered her finger over the screen, hesitating. Brazen smiled, wistfully remembering his own first kill. The blood spilling out from the body of the human, slumping down against the convoy truck. The way that Sienna had defended him from Ghira's reproach. "Ghira, he saved your life!" The cheers of his comrades.

Glorious.

The voice came through the radio again. "Pat, your comms system broken or something?"

Salt pulled away from the screen at the sound of the pilot's voice.

Brazen fought off a frown. How could she not want to press it, after what the humans had done to her? Perhaps killing someone in person, face-to-face, was just more cathartic. A first kill was a special occasion, memorable. Really, what sort of closure does pressing a button and knowing that you killed someone really get you? How could anyone look back at pressing a button with fondness? It wasn't like he could give her what she deserved; Dominic had stolen those kills from her at the military base. I'm not a therapist, she'll just have to work through her issues on her own in Menagerie, I guess - far removed from any conveniently-located humans to vent her rage out on. Brazen wasn't sure if a person could even heal under such conditions. If she wasn't ready to heal using the Taurus-Method (patent-pending?), he wasn't going to push the issue. He'd just push the button - himself.

The dust gun sent an arc of lightning straight into the rear propeller of the closest ship, immediately short-circuiting its engines and setting it ablaze. The ship fell out of the sky to explode into the forest below. Brazen might not be able to see the dying humans, but the knowledge that they were there put a big smile on his face nonetheless. One less ship, one more visible warning to Hazel and his kids that trouble was coming. Brazen took his ship lower, keel brushing against the treeline, as searchlights shot out from the remaining three enemy ships. They illuminated his stolen vessel, and were followed by the deck crews' rifle fire.

Salt screamed as a bullet rattled off the outer hull. Brazen winced.

"Lichen!" Brazen called, but she was already crawling up to deal with her daughter.

"Come on. Leave Taurus to his... work." She said, taking Salt by the arm and dragging the unresponsive girl away from the cockpit.

Brazen's 'work', as Lichen called it, continued, as he raked the deck of the next ship with the dust gun. The soldiers aboard were vaporized, and the sails caught fire. The ship tried to stay aloft, but the pilot clearly noticed the state of his vessel and grounded it rather than try to stay in the fight.

The other two ships began coming about to bring their own weapons to bear on him. They didn't bother - or perhaps they weren't able - to limit their radio chatter.

"Gods! That ship is firing at us!"
"I'm taking damage, setting down before I burn up!"
"Who's on that ship?"
"If I don't make it, tell my-zzzzth..."

Brazen fired the gun again, not waiting for the computer to lock onto a target. The arc of lightning missed the hull of the left-most ship, but seared through its topsails. With the fire spreading out like a burning crown, at least it was a much easier target. After he took his shot, he had to take evasive action as the two ships finished turning and unloaded their own weaponry at him. Unlike his newer model of ship, they were still equipped with archaic dust cannons that fired earth and ice dust loads, sending a boulder and snowball hurtling past his portside as he veered out of the way while closing the distance between them.

Then the rapid-fire sound of machine guns echoed through the woods and tracer fire pierced through the ship Brazen had lit on fire; a bullhead rose out from the canopy and began tearing the easiest-to-spot Mistral vessel to shreds.

Brazen pressed a button to open unrestricted communications, while his other hand continued veering his ship out of the last ship's firing cone. "Hazel, this is Adam Taurus. I'm in the podless Mistral vessel. These other ones came to attack your camp; I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen."

The final ship continued shooting snowballs at where his airship had been, turning too slowly for its cannon to get him in its sights. Not understanding that there was a second threat rising from the forest behind it.

Hazel's bullhead didn't stop firing, easily turning its guns on the other ship. Within moments, the exploding wreck followed its brethren down to smash into the forest. Smoke rose up from the ensuing wildfire, and the two ships faced off against each other in the air. He heard the girls behind him coughing, as the smoke came in through the rear access openings of his ship.

"Coming in to land at your camp. Need to have a chat, Hazel." He said into the radio.

No response. It brought its nose to bear on Brazen's ship.

Brazen swallowed. He didn't like sharing the sky with the superior craft like this without being certain that he wasn't about to be fired upon. If he is going to fire at me, he'd do it already, though. He wouldn't be giving me a chance to shoot first. Even though my dust gun won't be as effective against a bullhead as it was against those outdated Mistral patrol ships, I could still do some damage if I wanted to. He considered just firing at the ship and speeding off south to save Ghira, but knew that was a stupid idea the moment it crossed his mind. He needed the bullhead first and foremost. Brazen had intercepted the ships sent to bomb Hazel's camp only because they'd traveled with the main detachment sent to destroy Ghira right up until they came to the point closest to Hazel's location before daring to break off; presumably for the safety of numbers in Mistrals recently less-than-safe claimed territory. Brazen had come straight to Hazel's defense, a more direct route, allowing him to catch up in time to pull this heroic stunt off. He wouldn't be able to do the same thing to get to Ghira in time; the main detachment of bombers had a solid lead on him, and only a more modern aircraft had a chance to let him save the insolent faunus he'd chosen to save from a fate they had brought upon themselves by betraying Adam Taurus' vision. And yet, I'm still going to save them, despite the spite I feel. Besides needing the ship aiming its guns at him to save his people, he also couldn't deny that he would prefer Hazel to not be his enemy, too, if his overarching mission was going to be a success. Hazel and Salem were telling him things, now, things that they trusted him with as an ally, and Brazen intended to keep it that way until he knew everything there was to know about who and what he was dealing with.

The standoff continued. Brazen started to become restless. Why weren't they responding, or firing, or doing something? Anything at all? What were they waiting for?

"Rargh!" Hazel yelled as he vaulted out of the forest canopy into the rear access opening of Brazen's ship, making the ladies scream and, in the case of Rothy's mother, faint with fright.

"Hazel?" Brazen asked in shock, looking at the new boarder, "what are you doing? Who's piloting your ship?"

"It's pilot, obviously." Hazel said as he looked at the occupants of Brazen's craft. "I was... expecting soldiers. Not you. Certainly not again so soon after just saying our farewells."

"Obviously."

Hazel tore a pair of pure, unrefined fire-dust crystals out of his biceps. That can't be healthy - or painless, Brazen knew.

"What is going on, Taurus?" Hazel asked, tearing more dust crystals out of his thighs. That's one way to jump higher.

"Like I tried to tell you over the radio when your bullhead joined the fight, Mistral found out about your location. I found out that they found out and, in my benevolence, came to render you such aid as I was capable of provisioning."

Hazel narrowed his eyes. "What do you want?"

"Let's talk on the ground."


"That fire is going to bring more attention to us. Luckily, we were just in the process of getting ready to leave anyways." Hazel addressed Brazen and the faunus who'd disembarked from the Mistral airship with him. "You want something. Say your piece."

"I need your ship." Brazen said. "I'm offering the one I came in with as trade."

Hazel looked at the Mistral patrol craft. Then he looked at the bullhead behind him where Mercury was engaged in helping Emerald stand up.

"This deal is heavily weighted against our favour." The grimm cyborg accused, raising its rifle at Brazen. "The offered ship is inferior."

Brazen wasn't deterred by the abomination's protests, and continued to address Hazel. "I need a fast ship - your bullhead. My ship is loaded up with enough fuel to travel most of the way to Vacuo (all the way if we grab fuel from those ships we shot down)... just not in a hurry." He gestured at the raw dust crystals that Hazel had, now removed from his arms. How is he not in pain from that? "Mistral's government isn't only sending ships to attack you tonight. They're attacking Menagerie, too. I made the stop-over here at the expense of intercepting that... in the hopes that I could stop both attacks."

Mercury and Emerald joined the conversation, only for Hazel to immediately tell Mercury to run out and salvage as much dust as he could from the downed ships.

"Why would Mistral risk an international conflict?" Hazel mused, once Mercury had sped off. "I'll be honest, such an attack against Kuo Kuana would fail... and the resultant tensions would not be poorly received by Salem."

"They're not attacking the settlement, they're going after the faunus on ships that just left Mistral. Women, children, people who could never make the journey on their own, the underclass of Mistral, their travel arranged by Belladonna."

Hazel looked at Brazen for a long moment. "Aren't those faunus your... rivals? I would have thought, given your past behaviours and attitudes, you would not flinch at... what do your people call it?"

"Just because they stopped me at Haven doesn't mean I'm going to let humans wipe them out. They lack faith in me and my methods, but I still fight for them. Won't let them die at human hands."

"Ah, right." Hazel said as he crossed his arms against his chest. "A 'necessary sacrifice'. That's what your people kept calling a situation like this, no?"

"This is different. I can save them. I will save them." Brazen stated. "I will use your bullhead to achieve that goal."

"This deal is not in our favour. Refusal." The abomination replied, making Brazen growl.

"I can sweeten the pot." He took out his scroll. "I had a candid camera put into team RWBY's house a while ago. They were talking about how they need to protect something they took from Haven in Atlas."

"That is good to know." Hazel said.

"Is it?" Emerald piped up. "We already knew they were heading north. That's what Malachite told you."

"Malachite seems to have betrayed us once tonight; at least this lets us think the information was true. Be grateful, girl. At least knowing our enemy's next steps will lessen some of our shame at failing to destroy Mistral's school." Hazel looked past Brazen, at the four faunus huddled back by the Mistral airship. "There's no need for any violence here." He looked at the fire quickly approaching through the woods. "Well, no further violence. Why not take me up on my initial offer? Drain that flying boat of its fuel, toss your people in with us in the bullhead, and we can all go report to Salem together. I promise that your people will be treated as guests, unharmed, and your questions for us will be answered. It's the safe decision, and you'll get what you want from our cooperation despite recent setbacks."

"A choice between flying off to save Ghira and letting him reap what he sowed?" Brazen replied tersely, "with no time to waste?" A part of him earnestly wanted to take Hazel up on the offer. So what if I show up at Salem's door unexpectedly, without any news of Cinder? She has other resources to track down Cinder if the human is truly important. I'm not her minion! Still, to fail at the task she'd given him... well, hadn't he had enough of failure already? Not to mention the added sting of failing the faunus fleeing to Menagerie; not even Ghira's demise did much to soothe his soul in that outcome.

Ghira and his faunus made their choices, joined the humans. They are owed nothing. Salem's connection to the grimm, her control, is the only way to safeguard faunus-kind against the humans. Saving Ghira is a short-term solution, a bandage on a lethal wound. Focusing on Salem is the route to power and change.

Cinder is easier to deal with, though, and Neo is back in Mistral, waiting, promised help with the hunt. Salem's order was to find Cinder - how would she respond to another failure? Lionheart's fate implies that Salem does not take kindly to failures.

What do I owe to Ghira? Brazen's thoughts became jumbled. The man had been like an uncle to Adam Taurus for many of his formative years.

Sienna Khan was like an aunt. How did that end for her? Severing such false familial facades is necessary. Family does not protect. Only personal strength can achieve personal safety.

Pain surged through Brazen. Guilt? Sienna had to die, she had been a... fuck. Necessary sacrifice? Really?

Can't make the same mistake twice. Ghira has to be saved, despite everything he's done. Everything he plans to do, even. And Adam Taurus has to be the one to save him, to remind the faunus who their real hero is in the war against oppression.

Brazen knew that if he went through with the plan to try to save Ghira and the rest of his reformed White Fang, it could end up getting him killed. Not just him. Lichen, Salt, Rothy, and... whatever Rothy's mother's name was. They would all be at risk, too. Was it right to put their lives in danger like this?

They would have died in a Mistral cell - or suffered for the rest of their lives as chattel - if Dominic hadn't saved them. They know the plan and are willing to come along. There's no guarantee that Salem would honour Hazel's promises of safety for them - she is a completely unknown actor.

Alternatively, the four of them could act as envoys to Salem. The mission could continue, while Lichen represents the faunus interests at Salem's side.

Envoys? Or hostages? Brazen glanced at the four of them. He hadn't gone through all this trouble to just put the four of them in another cage. Brazen chuckled darkly, his mind made up. "So that I can be there to shoulder the blame for Cinder's failure at Haven? No, I'll meet your mistress when I'm well and ready. From a position of strength, success. Besides, Vale's bullheads only have six parachutes and I don't trust that... thing to not intentionally crash in a grimm-plot to destroy our lives."

"You think you can stop them in a bullhead?"

"I'm a decent enough pilot." Brazen boasted. "I think I demonstrated that a few minutes ago..."

"That fire is getting closer!" Mercury interrupted with an annoyed sigh, walking over to rejoin them, his pockets and hands full of salvaged fuel crystals. "Are we leaving now?"

"Adam here wants to trade ships." Hazel told him. "For strange reasons."

"Saving faunus is not a strange reason!" Brazen defended. The attack against Haven had cast him in a poor light, maybe, and could be construed by his enemies as a selfish, perhaps even self-destructive, endeavour, but Adam Taurus was always thinking of faunus. Sometimes I just get distracted thinking about a single faunus deserter, or how I could use the faunus cause to promote my own station, but I'm pure now. Brazen's path was totally devoted to serving the faunus! He was willing to do anything to empower his people, no matter what he had to do and who he had to do it with!

Anything.

"Strange isn't always a bad thing." Hazel replied, taking a step back. "I'm just saying that you've... changed."

More than you know, Hazel!

"So, what are we doing?" Mercury asked.

"We're not fighting Taurus. This Mistral ship is slow, but reliable enough; the slower it takes us to get back to the keep, the longer we have to come up with a reasoning for our failure at Haven that will satisfy her fury. You'd better get going, if you want to save those children, Taurus."


"I can't be a huntress." It was the first thing Salt had said since they'd left the city. Brazen glanced over at her. She was balled up in the noticeably nicer quality co-pilot seat of the bullhead, arms around her legs, face between her knees, buried into the fabric of the dark trenchcoat she'd received from Dominic. Brazen wished he wasn't so thinly spread that they'd only been able to send a single ship to deal with each problem. Limited resources were a problem even when I had the Fang behind me... an Adam for each objective will still be enough. It has to be enough. I have to be enough.

If he couldn't save his people this dawn, his reason for existing was meaningless. Why bother learning about magic and mysteries if there was nobody left to use it to protect?

Well, there's always revenge, I guess.

They flew for several more minutes in their silent reflections before she spoke again. "Your... scars. How do you do this all the time? How can you live like this?"

"Didn't get any say in the matter. Sienna found me and unlocked my aura when I was a bit older than Rothy is now. My childhood was rough. Unmerciful. I joined up with her group. Found people I could rely on for the first time and just... I joined. Totally. Surrounded by voices that had been through what I had been through, suffered like I had. Cared about me as a person."

"The violence doesn't bother you at all?"

"When I got older, I found out that I was good at being... being a warrior, I guess we'd call it. The others respected me for it, and I... making humans suffer for what they do to us felt good. Feels good." Brazen said quietly. He didn't want to wake the three in the back, though Lichen already knew Adam's tragic tale of woe. "Being a warrior doesn't require you to go to one of the humans' fancy academies to become a huntress, or being willing to protect people you don't know. It's just a matter of having aura, a semblance, strength enough to control what happens to you, rather than being controlled. Violence is a necessary means to an end."

When you fight, people get hurt.

"It's the difference between being the pilot or the co-pilot of your own life." He summarized.

"What say did I have in this? What does control matter if every option leads to... this? If we had gone with Ghira, the humans would still be coming for us." Salt choked. "Why isn't there a way for us to be happy?"

"You can still choose... just not by relying on one of the human schools. Ghira gathered like-minded faunus and formed the White Fang decades ago; there's nothing stopping us from making our own school in Menagerie with like-minded faunus. So that we can protect what is ours."

A minute passed, and Brazen thought about what was 'ours'. Menagerie. Faunus lives. Their dream of better lives.

"But I'm afraid."

"That's okay, Salt. You don't have to be ashamed of it. You think I'm not afraid when I'm fighting?"

Salt shrugged.

"There's always fear, at some level. It's a natural instinct - despite the mask, I'm not grimm. It's just a matter of telling that instinct to go mind its own business so that you can do what needs to be done." Brazen said. "Staring down Hazel and his gang back there? I was afraid that it was going to become a fight. Afraid one of you would get hurt in the crossfire. Definitely worried that the transfer was taking too long, was going to impede the rest of the mission. But we needed the bullhead, so I did it."

"Are you afraid of getting hurt? Of... dying?" Salt asked. "When I saw you on the news, at Haven..."

Not really, no. He tried to think of the last time he'd really, honestly cared about whether he lived or died. Adam Taurus had been ready to go out in a blaze of glory at Haven when Ghira had shown up to foil Cinder's scheme. The attack on Beacon had been too much fun to evoke any fear in him. Maybe... maybe his second meeting with Cinder, after she'd razed his entire camp? No, I'd have fought her if she hadn't stood down and bargained. The mission comes first, fear had to be ignored.

"Not in that situation in particular, but often enough to be used to dealing with it." Brazen explained. "I retreated because the battle was lost, not because I was afraid of dying. I'm not afraid of paying the cost for what needs to be done, but I'm also not keen to just throw my life away for naught."

It felt like a lie. Now that there were three of 'him' running around, his individual life was that much cheaper. It was a paradoxically uplifting and depressing thought to have. Have I become a fanatic to my own hype? When did I get so numb to something so primal as fear? Racking his mind, the last time he remembered being afraid - truly afraid, not just frustrated or upset - was before he'd had his aura unlocked by... Sienna. Sienna had been like him; she instructed him to be fearless. 'Fear is weakness, draws the grimm, invites our enemies to strike. Never show fear, Adam. Only show them our fury!' Sienna had been an asset, but her conservative way of thinking would have trapped them all in the same deadlock struggle humanity and the faunus had always been in. He had hoped that, like her semblance that made her stronger against wounded enemies, she would have sensed the change and stood beside him as they went for the kill on human society. It was like she had been afraid of Adam's victory... and she taught me what to do with fear. Justification hadn't made usurping her any less bittersweet.

"And having my aura unlocked helps, too." Whether or not it was because of the sense of invincibility that came with being able to block damage, or because of the insensibility to fear that came with his semblance blocking him from harm... It's not like I'm suicidal, I just do what has to be done. He hated to think of himself as such, but if he became a necessary sacrifice to safeguard the faunus... or dismantle humanity... there were less noble ways and reasons to perish. "I'll clear Ghira a path to Menagerie and drop you off with him. You'll be safe with him. Once you're in Menagerie, they can help you. Your life will go on, and who knows? Your mom said I could do well teaching in Menagerie, but I'm sure there'll be plenty of folks there willing to train others."

"Why don't you come to Menagerie?"

Brazen stared silently at the controls for a while.

Because Menagerie is full of people who hate me?

Because there's no humans to kill in Menagerie?

Because everyone expects things of me?

...

Because I don't deserve to? Because Menagerie deserves better than me?

Troubling answers, but he found the worst of them all was the idea that had been floating around in his mind for a while.

Because I'm a magically-created duplicate with a singular purpose? It occurred to him that even his concern about his origin was a result of his origin: if his task was to find out more about magic, then worrying about the effects of the Relic of Choice on his mental state would be part of that task. It was recursive reasoning and gave him a headache to think too hard about.

"I just can't. But I'll make sure that you all can." He promised Salt.

Salt considered his answer for a while. "Huntresses are supposed to be noble protectors. They're not supposed to be afraid or angry, but I'm so angry I almost wanted to kill..." She held back a sob.

"You have every reason to be angry." Brazen told her. "Believe me, I'm not one to preach forgiveness for what humanity does to us. So fear shouldn't hold you back from moving forward, and anger can be channeled into something productive." He slid off his mask, letting her see his most notable scar. While she glanced at his face awkwardly, he was reminded of how she had refused when he'd offered to let her shoot down one of the ships attacking Hazel's camp. "It's okay to not want to be a huntress anymore. It's okay to want to live a peaceful, happy life."

He tried to think of what a peaceful, happy life would be like for himself. He came up blank. What would I do if there were no humans left to fight? There were always the creatures of grimm. Did Salem control all of them like some sort of queen bee, or did her powers have limits? Brazen knew his life wouldn't be peaceful so long as he had such questions to answer.

So long as there was a fight for him to focus on, he could ignore thinking about everything he'd ever had to do, every moral failing that Blake and Ghira and everyone had chided him for. So long as there was a fight for him to distract himself with, he wouldn't have to ask the damning question: 'who am I?'

Was he, like his semblance, just a reflection of what had been done to him? Was he hollow underneath the spite and his relentless drive?

After a few minutes, Salt asked the question that they always did after he saved someone from trauma. "Would you unlock my aura?"

For the first time in a long time, he shook his head. "No." Before, he'd always leap at the opportunity to make another warrior for his people. "I want you to take some time, come to terms with yourself, and make sure that it's what you need rather than what you want at this moment. Semblances are dangerous and can be... difficult to deal with. The media makes them all look like fun, superpowers. The truth is some of us spend our whole lives struggling to live with unlocked aura; it changes what you are. I'm not sure if my own view of fear is because of my semblance or my own will. Sienna unlocked my aura without talking to me about what it would mean. I've unlocked people's auras before, so that they could fight beside me. I don't want you to have to fight beside me, Salt. I don't want you to have to bear anymore scars." Brazen explained. After a moment, he added, "also, Lichen would actually murder me if I tried to mess you up like I'm messed up."

Salt seemed to accept that answer. It might not be what she'd expected of him, but Brazen wasn't so callous as to make Salt's entire future - however long or short that was going to be - based on her experience in Mistral tonight. He knew well enough what an aura born of spite and hatred turned a person into. While the research of aura theory was haphazard and mostly guess-work, most agreed that auras that were unlocked by or during traumatic events tended to be more problematic to live with. Telling your soul to cover you in protective spikes might keep you safe, but it makes it hard for friends to hug you.

Half an hour later Lichen stood up in the back and shuffled up; a welcome interruption to the uncomfortable silence in the cockpit. "Salt, have you been able to get any sleep?"

Salt shook her head.

"Get in the back. It's a bit quieter back there by the engine's hum, without all these flashing lights and screens." Lichen said, yanking up her daughter and pushing her towards the cargo bay. After Salt had left, Lichen took her seat. "Any sign of the rest of the Mistral squadron?"

Brazen shook his head. "Should be soon. Another half hour or so, from the flight paths Neo and I got at that base."

"So is the human murderess from Vale the reason you won't come to Menagerie?" Lichen asked pointedly. "Did you finally find someone who likes killing humans as much as you do?"

He shrugged. "She's one of many reasons." One of many humans, all keeping his purpose elsewhere. "There is a mission for me back there that this fiasco is taking me away from, so as I was telling Salt, I'm not retiring from the life. So make sure to enjoy everything our continent has to offer you in my stead."

"Your brother?" Lichen continued to guess.

"He's heading out. Taking care of some other business we have on our plate. Wish it was Dominic that was pulling me back; he's pretty good company." Brazen stretched and stood up. "Mind taking the controls? Feeling a bit cramped, going to check the ammo loaders - this thing held up well enough against those strike ships over Hazel's camp, but I'd like to make sure. Not going to trust your lives to how well the previous pilot knew how to do maintenance."

"It's been a while since I've handled one of these." Lichen took the control stick anyways.

"The radio is set for the Mistral frequency the airship was tuned to, input is off. Let me know if you pick up any chatter."

"Yeah, okay." Lichen said. "One more thing… I guess after this, I owe you again."

Brazen smiled sadly. "You don't owe me anything, Lichen." A thought came to him. "Can I borrow your scroll, though?"

Lichen handed the aging model of scroll she had in her pocket to him. He used it to send his own scroll a message; his scroll buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it.

~Bedlam, read other journal entries and your read inbox messages.~

He might be outside of a local network, but these two scrolls were close enough to talk to one another - and, if his theory was correct (and Dominic didn't read it first), Bedlam might finally be informed about the grimm in his pocket and the general state of scroll synchronization they were enjoying. He felt a bit guilty about sort of forgetting about that, but in his defense, a lot of stuff had been going on in the city.

With that taken care of, Brazen went into the back of the vessel for a while, tiptoeing past the other three, and busied himself with checking and re-checking dials and readouts. Despite his reservations about what the grimm-cyborg pilot was, it seemed at least to know how to keep the bullhead in pristine condition. The only thing he had to do was reload the rounds used up during the last fight. Easy enough work, so it gave him plenty of time to stew in his thoughts. The grimm-cyborg pilot. Salem had turned a human into... that. With whatever power she possessed. That might not even be the limit of her power. 'Despite the mask, I'm not a grimm'. He had to wonder if he was getting in over his head. Sure, he had to even the playing field with humanity, rise above them, but what if Salem was the bigger threat to the faunus? That's what I made me to find out. Bedlam might be responsible for showing Blake how displeased he was with her sudden abandonment of their crusade, but he was responsible for finding out if Blake had been right to join humanity in the fight against Salem.

Salem. What is her goal? She wanted Cinder. She probably wanted his ring. So the other relic from team RWBY was important, too. As he went to add a message to his scroll, hopeful that Bedlam would see it, he noted that Bedlam himself had added his own message for him. It was a lengthy and rambling bit. How long did he go without sleep? It confirmed that their scrolls didn't need to be within range of any transmitter tower to talk. According to his update, Bedlam was in the middle of nowhere. Some human farm between Argus and Mistral. Furthermore, that information was of the least interest of his discoveries while on the trail of team RWBY. His theory that the Relic of Choice allowed him to control Grimm. That the girls' relic let them destroy the grimm like a super-powered flashlight. If Bedlam's theory about being able to control the grimm was true, it would certainly explain Salem's motivations to gather the relics for her own hoard. Brazen hated himself for not having a way to make use of the information in his current situation, though. If he had known he could command the creatures of grimm... a flock of nevermores weren't reliable wingmen faunus in bullheads, but they'd certainly have been preferable to going in alone. There's never grimm around when you need one! He resolved to follow up on Bedlam's ideas later... as soon as he could find some grimm to try controlling on his own.

Disturbingly, there was nothing about the Seer in his pocket. Brazen wasn't even sure if Bedlam had received that message - from the way he was writing, it sounded like he hadn't realized Brazen and Dominic could communicate with him. He typed a quick message into his scroll, relaying what had happened in the city and thanking his clone for the update on Ruby's weaponization of her team's relic. He also told Beldam to read the earlier message he'd sent. Bedlam probably just hadn't seen their earlier communique because the two of them had been testing the function and accidentally 'read' the message, removing the notification. The scroll's chat wasn't individual; when one of me reads a message, all three scrolls think all of us have. In any case, Bedlam didn't seem to be suffering any undue harm at the hands of his pocket stowaway.

He just needs to get Blake and her grimm-vaporizing relic. With the ability to control and destroy grimm, we'd be unstoppable. He pictured the scene of Bedlam, with both relics (sort of) in his possession. Brazen wanted that. More power. More magic. More understanding. It was a shame that Bedlam had lost the Relic of Knowledge. A shame, too, that I couldn't use it for its limited-use purpose. Brazen wondered what he would ask it, if he could ask it anything. Ideas flitted through his mind, ranging from 'how can I best help the faunus' or 'where is Cinder Fall', to more selfish goals like 'what's the secret to immortality', until he got to nonsense such as 'is what I see as blue the same blue that other people see or do they see blue things as red or something'. It was a fun distraction to ponder.

"Adam!" Lichen stage-whispered from the other end of the bullhead.

He was back in the pilot seat in a flash. "Everything okay?"

Lichen shook her head. "Sounded like we're coming into range of them... got a garbled couple of words out of the radio."

"Anything sensible?" Brazen inquired, hoping to know if he'd made it in time or not.

"Sounded like code, or maybe-"

The radio hummed and spat out another, inchoate transmission. In between the static, he was able to pick out the distinct words 'players' and 'masking'. He looked at the radar. They were still too far out of range.

The radio transmissions slowly became more - and less - clear. The words coming through weren't as heavy with buzzing interruptions, but the pilots were mostly using codephrases.

"Director, how's the shot?"
"Says another take at least."
"Decreasing hang to stage."
"Audience deep in their seats."
"Setup for the second act."

And nonsense such as that which meant nothing to Brazen. The voices didn't seem aggravated, nor excited. He couldn't tell if they were just maintaining their heading towards Ghira's boats, or if they were making sure there were no survivors, or fighting in between. The bullhead was getting closer to them, but was it because he was in a faster ship or was he approaching a stationary target now? He took out his weapon and checked Blush impatiently, until the tell-tale blips of his quarry appeared on radar. The rising sun illuminated columns of smoke rising from the ocean. One of Ghira's ships was sinking, but the rest had steered themselves into a protected bay, using the caves in the cliffs revealed by low tide, and their on-board anti-grimm weaponry, to keep the Mistral bombers at bay. The Mistral forces included two blimp-style heavy bombers, like smaller versions of the flagship Dominic had attacked in the city, surrounded by a swarm of a rough dozen or so smaller patrol craft. The cliffs meant that the humans couldn't get anymore direct hits against the faunus, but at the same time Ghira was trapped. The tide would eventually rise, forcing Ghira to expose his fleet or drown.

Fortunately for him, Brazen was here to offer a third choice. A way out.

"Inbound extra."
"Entrance and theme?"
"House. Atlas transponder signature but blueout."
"Runner or cameo?"
"Would have given a cue by now, it can make the blocking."

"Unidentified craft on southward heading, state your purpose for presence in Mistral airspace immediately or you will be forced to ground."

Well, they know I can hear them, so at least that last part was understandable. Brazen didn't grace them with a response. He was here to kill them. If getting torn apart by a modern bullhead didn't put the survivors to flight, then he had no compunction against laying waste to the lot of them. He opened fire at the nearest ship and it exploded as dust rounds tore through its aft engine. The other ships began focusing their bombardment at him rather than harrying the targets in the bay. It was a tactical move - the boats weren't able to get away and were at a height disadvantage. Ghira's counterattacks were limited in how high they could reach up - plus, they'd have to sail out of the covered cove to do so. Yet, for all the power they held against Ghira, the Mistral squad had its own weaknesses, too. Mistral airships were notorious for their inability to rise quickly. They were energy efficient, reliable, and comfortable for passengers; their old-fashioned design and pathetic, flapping wings were more suited for long, slow patrols across Mistral's vast claimed regions. They were very effective in their usual function. Alternatively, bullheads were made for quick vertical take-offs and urban flights, used jet engines rather than propellers, and boasted a full-metal fuselage. Brazen capitalized on these advantages, rising over the bombers to attack them from above. Their canons struggled against gravity to fire at him, allowing him to evade through the chunks of rock and ice that came at him. He swooped in and around the Mistral vessels, decimated another as his quick-firing machine guns breached their magazine. He made use of the rising sun to blind them to his approach as much as possible, switching to relying on his instruments rather than the window to manoeuvre when they tried to use the same trick on him. His faunus eyes were much faster at adjusting to the light as he swept around them.

"Extra dogging us from sky!"
"From the wings. Talon port, Xylo straight."
"Belay. Extra's an eel."
"Blue eagle engine going down! Aiming for water landing."
"Get masking back on Ferries."

The radio chatter was as meaningless to him now as it had been before, but it didn't matter; he focused more on the screams from the ships falling out of the sky than the words. The humans were dying, which was all that mattered. The apprehension he'd been feeling earlier was gone, replaced by the adrenaline rush that he only got when he made humans suffer. Murderous, evil, scum! Here's your reckoning! It's me!

"Adam, I know what they came out here to do, but can you try not to kill them?" Lichen whispered from his left, "the girls have already experienced too much violence tonight..."

As he prepared to argue with her mewling morality - this is a fight, Lichen, what do you expect? - he became acutely aware that Rothy was crying loudly behind him. The bullhead was more utilitarian than the Mistral airship had been, and that meant it was much less comfortable; his passengers that had managed to sleep through the earlier combat weren't able to ignore the sound of the bullhead's machine guns firing. He very much wanted to kill as many humans as he could, but... this was probably the last memory of him the girls would have for a while. He might never see them again. They'll be living in Menagerie among my rivals; I should give them something 'good' to remember me by. "I'll try to pull the fight out over the sea, let them crash into the water rather than hard ground; they're flying boats, so that won't end them." He did a tight spin around a bomber, shearing the wings and the tip of it's mast clean off. Unable to steer, it careened down into the drink. "Happy now?"

Lichen grumbled something that sounded enough like gratitude to offset his irritation of letting the humans survive.

"Extra at coordinates... right on top of me!"
"Took out your mast, Red Eagle."
"Permission to withdraw, director? This is turning into a total flop."
"Granted. All players, exit stage."
"What about the big props? Producer won't like us leaving it behind."
"That's why he sent the twins."

Brazen shot another few human craft out of the sky, chewing off their wings with a hail of bullets to send them down into the sea, further reducing the clutter in the air. With half of their forces out of the fight, the five remaining patrol craft began scattering, abandoning their defence of the two blimps. Unlike the rest, the blimps were not moving away. He'd ignored the blimps for the same reason that the humans had come after him rather than continue hounding Ghira - the blimps seemed like something he could deal with afterwards, nonthreatening as they were to him in the air. Falling bombs would not harm him unless he was fool enough to fly directly underneath them. The reason why the blimps were not ponderously taking flight after the rest became apparent while Brazen continued to regard them with a wary eye. The pilots of each ship had climbed out and atop their respective blimps, abandoning the controls. Then, even more strangely, they began to cheerfully sing; their voices coming through the bullhead's radio.

"Following our orders, our orders, our orders, we're following our orders, whatever they might be. Tee dum, tee dee, a teedle ee do tee day. Tee dum, tee dee, our part in society. Tee dum, tee dee, the words are by memory. Just a teedle ee dum, a teedle ee do tee day."

Before he could lock onto them with the bullhead's machine guns, each one shot off into the air, a trail of exhaust tailing them as jetpacks manoeuvred them towards his ship. He realized that the advantages he'd had against the other craft - that he was smaller and more agile - were about to be used against him by these notably smaller, even more agile enemies.

"Lichen, take the controls!" Brazen let his co-pilot have the stick as he stood up. "I think they might try to board us. I'll fend them off." As he passed by the other three, he pointed up towards the cockpit. "Get up with Lichen in the front." He didn't need to be worrying about his passengers if it became a close-quarters melee.

"Following our orders, our orders, our orders, we're following our orders, whatever they might be. We're out to fight the faunus, the faunus, the faunus, we're off to fight the faunus instead of piracy."

Their jetpacks roared, an irritating sound that grated against his keen hearing, until they were a deafening din astride the bullhead. Brazen drew Wilt and used it to parry the first's lunging advance into the fuselage, but the second came in from the other side. Brazen ducked under the sword that sought him. As he turned to meet the latest threat, the first flyer came in. Brazen positioned himself between the cockpit and the two intruders, holding his sword and sheath in his hands.

The jetpacks turned off, and the pilots' helmets opened up. Brazen noted similarities between them - beyond their matching outfits, weapons, and rocket-packs - and they quickly identified the reason why. "Why, brother, this scallywag looks like Adam Taurus, does he nah?"

"I reckon ye be right, me heartie." Replied the second. "Good thing he's here 'n nah thar."

"Let's give him holes like a sponge, then strike the ship for Piter!"

Brazen didn't have any patience left for human frivolity. "Get off my bullhead and go jet back to your human city. You've lost this fight." He wasn't usually one to offer his enemies a chance out, but Rothy was right behind him. He knew that eviscerating people in front of the little girl would earn him an earful of lip from Lichen.

His thoughtfulness was for nothing. The humans didn't consider it at all, and took synchronized steps towards him. Their masks closed back up.

With the tight quarters granted by the metal walls of the hull on either side, their numbers gave them less advantage. Neither one could get past him like this. Instead, they attacked him one after the other, swapping out after each attack he parried or blocked. They were clearly adept at fighting as a single unit, and Brazen felt beads of sweat on his neck as he kept them at bay. No matter how much trouble they were, so long as he could hold them back he would win this fight. He could feel his semblance gorging itself, Moonslice swelling with the stored energy of every swing he blocked. It coursed through his muscles, screaming for release as it empowered his counterattack; faster, harder, they took steps back. He couldn't see their faces through the masks, but he could smell their growing unease as they realized that in a drawn-out swordfight they were no match for him.

He finally took a step back, sliding Wilt back into Blush. He gritted his teeth as his aura flared, the humans' swords trying their best to slice through his protection as he left himself vulnerable to direct the energy into his sword. Then, as everything went dark and red, they realized what he was doing. Before they could escape, he unleashed his semblance; the power behind his blow sundered its way through their swords, leaving gashes that shone red in the afterglow of his semblance being used.

Their screams were delicious, and he hated that his enjoyment of them was cut short by the reignition of their jetpacks as they vacated his ship.

He calmly walked up to the opening, intending to fire a couple more shots at them with Blush now that their auras were in tatters. Instead, he swung back around to yell at Lichen. "Lichen, get us out of the way!" The warning came too late, though; she'd been too busy watching him over her shoulder to have noticed what the humans did after getting clear of the ship.

The rocket that the human had fired out of his jetpack narrowly flew over Brazen's shoulder, shooting past him in the blink of his eye and out through the other side. A moment later, it created a massive explosion as it hit into the forest.

Acting on pure instinct, knowing that there were two of them, Brazen continued his motion to dodge the first rocket, readied Wilt, and saw the second incoming rocket. It was a better shot. It was going to hit the ship rather than fly through. It was going to hit the cockpit.

Brazen grabbed the steel frame of the ship. There was nothing he could do to stop the rocket from hitting them. It would explode, tearing apart the metal that vainly attempted to protect them.

Dead faunus.

The metal hull that protected them. Closed them in, held them, shielded them. Like a sheath.

Like Blush.

Without knowing if it would work, only knowing that it was his only option, he extended his aura over the whole of the bullhead, and felt every cell in his body scream 'what are you doing'?

The rocket exploded, and he felt his aura shatter, but the ship was... safe. The girls were safe.

He croaked out an order to Lichen. "Take out that blimp."

The sky went dark. The bullhead glowed red. The ship's engines sparked, smoked, and caught fire as the energy overwhelmed the machine. Dials burst from the pressure and the telltale smell of scorched electronics filled his nostrils.

"Adam, what is it doing?" Lichen asked, scared.

"Fire at the blimp!"

The energy of the rocket's absorbed explosive force, fused to the ship's systems, laced out as a brighter-than-bright beam that sliced the nearest blimp cleanly in half. The blimp immediately exploded, every unused explosive and fuel tank aboard combusting together. The massive shockwave sent the bullhead and its occupants tumbling away.

"Lichen!" Brazen called as he saw where they were plummeting to, "get us out of this tailspin!"

She groaned, but the ship kept falling. Brazen looked up at the cockpit and saw that, while their seatbelts were keeping them from spinning around the ship like clothes in a washing machine, all four of them were stunned from the blast. He realized that he couldn't hear anything. The shockwave had deafened him. Even if Lichen was conscious enough to react, she didn't hear his orders. Brazen alternated between climbing, leaping, and running as the orientation of their craft allowed, grabbing the control stick and pulling up before they imitated the first rocket and crashed into the forest. He sat on Lichen's lap, not bothering to kick her out of the seatbelt that had kept her safe, and checked the systems. He mentally scolded himself - that little stunt of channeling his aura into the ship had fried nearly everything. No way in Atlas that that trick is covered by the warranty. The machine guns were liquefied - hot metal fused to the hull. What remained of the engine was beyond his ability to understand - much less repair. If he had to guess, the dust that had been fueling them had acted like the fire dust in Wilt when he used his sword in conjunction with Moonslice; the bullhead hadn't been designed for that, though, and the energy propellant had no idea how to deal with the overload. He could say with certainty that the engine was out of juice, and their prior momentum alone was carrying them upwards. Navigation, communications, even the heated seat - the bullhead was a gliding chunk of debris. It just hadn't realized it yet, but Brazen had. Only Atlesian aerodynamics were keeping them in the air now.

His hearing came back as his ears popped, acclimatizing to the air pressure. The girls all held their hands to their ears, too, as their ears adjusted.

"...'dam, t-that explosion... h-how did..."

"Don't worry about that, Lichen. We've got to bail out. This rig isn't going to hold." He replied quickly, getting off her and undoing her seatbelt's clasp. "Help me get the girls to the parachutes in the back."

"Wha- what's that big mosquito doing on the windshield?" Salt slurred. Brazen looked at what she was looking at and realized the 'mosquito' was the two humans, flying towards the remaining blimp.

"Did we... did we save Ghira?" Lichen asked.

Brazen saw the two humans board their ship, then looked at the devastation created by the other blimp's detonation. Trees for a mile were defoliated or knocked over, a wave of water had surged up onto the coast. He hadn't seen destructive force like that in a long time. He felt a little bit of pride in having been responsible for it.

The remaining blimp tilted and began flying towards the cove where Ghira's ships hid. The two pilots emerged and flew off back to the safely of the city.

Any sense of pride at being responsible for the first blast evaporated from his chest. Brazen realized what they'd done. They were going to plagiarize his maneuver, blowing up their blimp to kill the faunus. Another explosion, to their benefit. A controlled detonation like that, compounded by the cliffs of the bay where Ghira's ships were hiding? Ghira and the other traitors would all be instantly vaporized. The humans would win. After everything he'd gone through to get here, to save them, the humans were willing to destroy their own property to deny him a win. So typical. They'd rather destroy everything than let a faunus come out ahead of them.

"Adam, are y-you c-coming?" Lichen stuttered, holding the last parachute out to him. He looked out the window and saw two circles of canvas descending below the bullhead towards the ground. Salt. Rothy and her mother. They'd be safe there; away from the enclosed bay, the explosion wouldn't do more than rattle the ground. The human ships were in full retreat - whether their last effort worked or not, there was nothing more they could do but go back to the city for reinforcements. They didn't know the bullhead was toasted. Even if they did, their little fighter craft wouldn't be enough to take down the refugee fleet, protected as they still were with anti-grimm guns on their decks. Hopefully Dominic does something to make sure human reinforcements aren't forthcoming. Brazen looked at the controls. The bullhead had no power, but he could still steer it. The humans might not be able to do anything further to influence the outcome of this battle, but he still had an option. He could still finish the job.

"One more thing to do." Brazen said. "Jump. I'll take care of the rest of it."

She nodded grimly and followed her daughter and Rothy's mother out to safety. Lichen had seen the blimp in front of them; there was no objection from her to Brazen's solution. They might be considered comrades, but it had been a long time since Lichen had seen Adam Taurus as a friend. So it was easy for her to see him for what he was now.

A necessary sacrifice.

He flew the bullhead straight at the blimp as it drifted down towards the bay, making sure his cockpit would slam right into the ventral bombing pod. It was going to explode, but on his terms. Before it could get any closer to the exodus fleet. Before it could get into the cove and score a direct blast.

He grabbed a parachute and jumped out the back. In his last moments, as he pulled the cord, he hoped that the girls had made it safely to ground. The blast would hit them harder this way, but they were distant enough for it to not hurt them anymore than make their ears ring some more.

He wasn't going to be as fortunate.

There was a bright light from behind him. Sound stopped again as the shockwave rolled over him.

He was spinning.

Pain was everywhere. His entire back was in agony. Brazen was on fire.

He was falling. He fumbled at his parachute.

His parachute was gone. Burnt away? His arm was singed. Where were his sleeves?

He was falling.

The ocean was above him. Below him? He was flying up into the ocean.

He had no aura. He couldn't move his arms. No energy, and probably a lot of broken bones. Dead weight.

So much pain. It was hard to try to open his eye. The water was white, a choppy froth of ripples and waves, but he saw a reflection of himself. The reflection was in the water, where he'd soon be.

A reflection. Like his clones. Dominic. Bedlam. Adams all.

The reflection watched him fall towards it.

He would drown. They would live. He would die. They would continue.

He hoped Bedlam and Dominic had better luck than he'd had. At least he had done some good, even if his raison d'être hadn't been seen through to the end. Maybe Dominic could figure out what was up with Cinder and Salem and the relics without him, after reforming the White Fang. Maybe Bedlam could get answers out of Blake.

No, I was supposed to find out whether we should ally with Salem. Have to find out what her motives are. I'm not supposed to die, yet.

He found that he didn't want to die. Without his aura numbing him, filling him with that sense of invincibility, he remembered what it was to be afraid.

Not as ready to be a martyr as you thought, eh? Looks like you don't have much choice in the matter now.

He was almost in the water. His good eye saw the corals, fish, and aquatic hosts waiting for him. The shape he'd seen was not a reflection, after all.

Then everything went black, right before he hit the surface of the water. The pain was too much, and his mind shut down. Being unconscious would make what came next easier.