Here we go.

Cover Art: Kirire

Chapter 91

By the time she and Jaune arrived at her parents' house it was clear Kali had been convinced to believe what she'd told them. Maybe Ghira had introduced her to one of the anomalies chosen to shadow him, or maybe he'd just looked so serious that she couldn't doubt him. Either way, Jaune didn't receive as warm a welcome as he had the first time.

And he was used to that.

"This isn't Jaune's fault," said Blake. "He wasn't the one who told me to lie to you the first time. That was something I decided on." Their gazes switched to her but only slightly. They kept one eye on Jaune the whole time. "If you're going to blame anyone, blame me."

"We're not so emotionally absent that we can't blame both of you," said Kali.

Ugh. How generous. There were times it was obvious where Blake's spiteful nature had come from.

"The lies aren't the problem," rumbled Ghira. "Everyone lies, and the falsehoods you spoke weren't in bad faith. The problem is this danger you speak of. A shadowy organisation that decides who lives and who dies, and which our daughter is somehow working for."

"And straight out of the White Fang as well," groaned Kali. "What did we do to raise you with such a lack of common sense? Bad enough you refused to open your eyes and see Adam for what he truly was—"

"That's unfair!"

"Is it?" Kali wasn't having it. "You said those same words to us when we criticised him the first time and we were right."

"Oh, come on. Is this an I told you so moment? Because that's immature!"

"We did tell you so! We told you so many times! You ignored our warnings one and all and look where it led you. You never listen, Blake. Never! In your head, you just can't imagine a world where someone could be right and you could be wrong, and never mind the fact we have twenty years more experience in life than you!"

Blake's ears flattened to her head and she hissed.

Kali hissed back louder, sharper.

Jaune shifted, obviously wanting to be anywhere other than where he was at that moment. Ghira simply sipped his drink and let his wife tear into his daughter. So much for her support. The least Jaune could do was back her up. Blake elbows him in the side but he took it with a grunt and refused to be dragged into it.

"How many times will this have to happen before you entertain even the slightest possibility of being wrong?" asked Kali. "Twice? Three times? We told you not to join the White Fang and not to listen to Adam and you were wrong on both accounts. The first time is forgivable, the second a pattern. What does it say when you ignore our advice a third time, Blake? Incompetence? Stupidity? Stubborn pride?"

"Like you both haven't made mistakes!"

"Not on the level of joining a power-behind-the-throne company that's willing to wipe out entire kingdoms to keep its secrets! Don't even pretend losing control of the White Fang is close to that." Kali sniffed. "And you don't get to criticise us for that either since half the reason we lost it was because our own daughter was feeding information to Sienna!"

Blake flinched.

"Oh, did you think we didn't know?" sniped Kali. "Sienna was all too eager to rub that in our faces. But your father and I didn't want to alienate you any further, so we swallowed our feelings of betrayal and hurt and did our best to support you."

"I… but… I…"

It was true. When Sienna and Adam had convinced her of the future of the violent path, she'd fallen in love with it. Even more than Adam. Her early protests as a child had only served to show her that no one was listening. People had thrown rocks at them. The peaceful way wasn't working, and all that stood between them and a more successful path was her parents. It must have been pitifully easy to convince her to betray them. Looking back, she wasn't sure the methods they'd used, but she knew she'd been a soft sell.

"We never planned to tell you we knew," Ghira rumbled. "It was in the past, or so we thought. We didn't plan to tell you now either." He eyed Kali, who grumbled and refused to apologise. "Your temper is getting the better of you, dear."

"Better my temper than let our daughter make a third mistake. And don't tell me it's love again."

"It's not!" Blake's face flushed bright red, but it was more the embarrassment of that being said in front of Jaune than any notion of reality to it. "This is… This is loyalty, sure, but it's not love. Not like that. After Adam… Look, it's not love. This is my job and I have to do it, and I don't think I can just leave and go back to normal after what I've seen. This job changes a person."

Kali heaved a sigh. "You've had this job for less than four months. Don't tell me that's enough to make you a PTSD-stricken veteran."

"Most new recruits don't survive two weeks."

That was Jaune's contribution to the conversation, and Blake couldn't tell if he was on her side or trying to turn her parents against himself even further. She stared at him, asking with wide eyes what the fuck he thought he was doing. Apparently, he didn't get the memo or had mistranslated her headshaking, because he continued to "help" with his next statement.

"Blake almost died multiple times in her first week. It's only thanks to her aura and training in the White Fang that she survived at all. Between being eaten from the outside by a house, or from the inside by leeches, or being trapped in an endless loop of textbook questions, there have been plenty of close calls."

"Thank you, Jaune, but maybe you should leave the talking to me—"

"No." Ghira interrupted her. "Continue."

Jaune did so. "Blake has been a vital part of my office and has saved my life on occasion as well, but even in her short time with me she's been put in more life or death situations than most people see in a lifetime, even with the Grimm. Beyond that, just knowing what we know changes the way you look at the world. It'll happen to the two of you on a smaller scale now, but there's bliss in ignorance. You only know about the existence of anomalies. You don't know what they're like, what they can do, or how pervasive they are."

"Then tell us."

"No." Jaune shook his head slowly. "I won't reward Blake's service by reducing you to nervous wrecks. It's better you stay as ignorant as you can. It's safer that way, too. Many anomalies are as harmless as they are precisely because people don't know about them."

Ghira leaned forward. "If you won't tell us, then how can we trust Blake with you?"

"You can't."

Ghira and Kali reeled back.

"I am an anomaly even as I am someone who hunts them down. At any moment, I could be consumed by my power and turned into a monster Blake will have to put down or die to. Even if that weren't the case, I can't guarantee she'll be safe. Devoured, lost for eternity, trapped in another dimension, or simply erased from time and existence. Any of these could be her fate, and we don't know the risks of many of our jobs until we're already on them. I'd be lying if I said you could trust me to keep her safe. Every job is a gamble. That's why we pay so well."

Jaune was doing a great job of turning her parents against said job. That might have been his plan from the start, though she couldn't tell if this was some stupid attempt to "save her" or just him wanting to rip the plaster off. She hoped it was the latter because she meant it when she said she couldn't just retire and go back to a normal life.

"What if we demanded Blake stay here?" asked Kali.

"I think the better question is, what will change if Blake stays here?" Jaune fired back. "And I'm sure Blake could tell us."

All eyes were on her again.

"Ugh. Thanks for that, Jaune. Damn it. Assuming I didn't just sneak away and back to Vale the moment I got the chance, and I was somehow magically kept on Menagerie…" Blake thought for a second. "I'd probably be too paranoid to accept a normal life. I'd form my own ARC Corp office here, or some PI job, and I'd constantly hunt down anomalies on the island if only so I can get to them before they can get to me. I'd be a paranoid wreck forever wondering when something will get to me, jumping at shadows, getting aggressive with people."

"I wouldn't have Jaune to watch my back while I slept, so I'd probably live alone. How could I place someone else in this kind of danger by getting into a relationship? I imagine I'd run into trouble with the White Fang since they would want to gather and use anomalies, and I'd want to stop them. It might just be some verbal sparring and threats for a while, but it'd only take one case of us both being after a dangerous anomaly to change that."

"What does that mean?" asked Kali.

"If both the White Fang and I were hunting down an anomalous item that could be dangerous for Menagerie, or an anomaly that could threaten people's lives, I'd step in to try and kill it – and if Sienna or the Albain brothers got in my way, I'd kill them as well. Or I'd try. They might get me first, and even if they didn't the next leader of the White Fang would come after me for revenge."

"Don't talk of killing like it's so simple," said Ghira.

"But it is simple," Blake replied, shocking both her parents. "Because if the White Fang gather too many anomalies and get cocky, then ARC Corp will find out. And if ARC Corp finds out that the people of Kuo Kuana know the truth then the safest option for them would be to purge the island and kill everyone. A quick genocide masked as a Grimm invasion, and every witness will be silenced." They were horrified. "That's why I wouldn't hesitate to kill the Albain brothers or Sienna. It's a few lives against tens of thousands. An easy choice all things considered."

The silence that hung in the air was as depressing as it was shocked, and the former came from herself and Jaune. It would have been easy to say her callous words were intended to shock and didn't have much truth to them, that she just wanted to win the argument, but that wasn't the case. The threats were very real and the only reason she could hold to any sense of normality in life was because she and Jaune could share the burden of knowledge between them. When she slept, she trusted him to wake her if any danger came near.

It was probably why ARC Corp offices needed people like Terra around, because they kept the office directors sane. Let them close their eyes and be vulnerable because they knew they had someone to look out for them. Blake wasn't sure how Jaune ran his office alone before she came, but she had a sinking suspicion it was with a fatalistic attitude. That he'd opened his office in Vale fully expecting and accepting that he would die, and just going through the motions until that happened.

"This threat is very real even if Blake isn't here," said Jaune. "Kuo Kuana is in grave danger if my family ever finds out about this arrangement with the White Fang. That's why we're here informing you, because the two of you are best placed to limit the number of people who find out. And because you can control what news makes it off the island."

"And everyone here will die if ARC Corp finds out," spat Ghira. "That's a lot of pressure on our shoulders."

"No." It was Kali who interrupted. "It's because it lessens casualties, isn't it? If only we know then ARC Corp can just kill us and the White Fang and spare the civilians."

Jaune inclined his head, but also added, "In an ideal world, they'll never find out – and there's a chance they'll let you live even if they do. If they find out you knew, kept it a secret, and were able to keep the people ignorant, then you won't be a threat but an asset. They may not approve of you having sided with us, but they'll know you still served ARC Corp's secrets. You kept the anomalies from becoming common knowledge and curtailed the White Fang from exposing them. My family despises anomalies, but they're also pragmatic. They'll take over and turn you against us, but they won't kill you. If that happens then it's best you make it clear I threatened you into compliance, that I held Blake's safety over your heads. Pin the blame on me."

"The blame is on you!" said Kali. "We are being threatened. Maybe not by you, more by our own daughter, but we're still in a position where it's either do as you say or place our daughter in extreme danger."

Blake winced but couldn't deny it. She'd as good as taken herself hostage, but the reality was that she hadn't lied or exaggerated any of it. That was how she'd act if she was cut off from Jaune, and it wasn't a fate she wanted either.

"We're not planning to let ARC Corp find out about the White Fang's involvement here," said Jaune. "The stakes are high, but the chances of something going wrong aren't. Blake is just trying to make you aware of how badly things could go if you didn't take this seriously. You've seen the anomalies," he said to her father. "You've seen what they're like. Stupid, naïve, but not evil. They just want to be taken seriously and to have some control over their own lives."

"And what of the dangerous ones you mentioned?"

"They can be fought back, and the White Fang and even those anomalies you help will support you in it. They'll defend you against other anomalies and fight to protect the freedoms you grant them. Naturally, Blake and I will come the moment we hear of any danger as well."

"Definitely," agreed Blake. "I'm not trying to be a bitch or say you're wrong here. Mom, you were right about Adam. I accept that. Dad, I'm sorry for letting you down." Blake dipped her head low, the very real guilt eating at her. "I know I haven't been a good daughter—"

"Blake, no," whispered Ghira.

Kali writhed with discomfort as well. "I wouldn't go that far, sweetie—"

"I would!" she interrupted. "I've been an awful daughter to you both and I won't hear it any other way. I do love you, and after seeing more of the world I understand just how much you love me and how lucky I've been to have you." As opposed to being born to Jaune's family for instance. "But ARC Corp is my life now. It's what I am, whether I enjoy it or not. I can't just stop being an agent because even if I wasn't working here, I'd still act like one. I can't just walk away from this job any more than you two could walk away from being my parents."

And that was it. There was nothing else to say.

"Are you…" Kali hesitated. "Are you at least happy with what you do…?"

That was a complex question and she wished she could lie. "I'm satisfied by it. There's a real sense of purpose. Happy is… well, I'm not always unhappy. There are good moments, bright moments. There are fun people, some cute anomalies. Here, look at our pet!"

Blake excitedly moved over to show them a photo on her scroll of Timothy in bed with her, curled up over her chest atop the covers with his legs on either side of her. Their faces were close, his giant molars by her skull as she took a selfie with a tired smile.

"He… um… he looks nice…?" Kali hazarded.

"What does it eat?" asked Ghira, much more worried.

"Insects, birds. He doesn't eat people, or he'd have taken a bite out of Adam." Blake flicked through a few more pictures of Timothy, but her parents didn't seem to find him as cute as she did. "I also get paid amazingly and visit this spa and massage once a week, and I think I consider the girls there friends. We always talk, even if they're terrible gossips. And then there's Ruby, Yang and… uh… Sun…."

"Sun?"

"A guy I'm dating."

Kali and Ghira looked to Jaune, who smiled harmlessly back. Had they really thought she and Jaune were bumping uglies? Obviously, they had.

"I'm not sure if I can continue with Sun," she said. "It's the same as what I said with you. He doesn't know about all this and he's so carefree and happy and nice, and I don't want to just take all those good parts about him and heap them on a bonfire. He'd come out of it all paranoid and cold like me, and that feels way more unfair with how nice he is. I was like that before thanks to Adam. It wasn't that big a change for me."

Her parents exchanged looks. "We're going to need some time to think over this – and to plan what to do about the anomalies shadowing Ghira tomorrow. Why don't you come see me tomorrow, Blake, and Jaune can shadow Ghira along with them and make sure everything is safe on that front."

Splitting them up so they could interrogate them each. Blake grimaced, but she supposed her parents deserved it, and she'd much rather trust Jaune to her father than her mother. Ghira was direct, but so was Jaune. Kali would eat him alive.

"Yeah, that's fine."

"You can stay the night—"

"We promised we'd stay close to Sienna and the anomalies," Blake lied. She trusted her parents, of course, but she didn't want to be under the same roof if they were going to argue over her. It'd be too awkward. "But we'll come back tomorrow morning."

Jaune didn't call her out on her lies. He just nodded and stood with her, bowing his head and thanking her parents for their hospitality.

"That went well," he said on the way out.

"Jaune, a bomb in a city centre goes better than your family meetings. That doesn't mean what happened back there was good. It's just less shit than your messed-up life."

He laughed. "Yeah, that's fair."

/-/

"You're back," said Sienna. The worrying part was the relieved sigh she let off. "Good. We were hoping to catch you. We have a problem."

"Damn it," cursed Blake. "What have those idiot anomalies done now?"

"It's not them this time. Small mercy, that. In fact, it's not something new either. Rather, it's something that's been a problem for a while, but we didn't know why. The context provided by the anomalies gives the answer, though I'd honestly forgotten about it until now."

Jaune caught it. "You found an anomaly."

"We think so. I expect you'd be able to tell for sure. And we didn't find it – it's been known for over a year and a half. Mostly as an urban rumour. We've been keeping it that way."

"We?"

"The White Fang." Sienna sat back on her throne. "The basic story is that we found an old bunker on the island. The distant past of Menagerie isn't fully known but bunkers have existed ever since the Grimm have. I believe every village and town used to have communal ones, back before homes started being built with reinforced basements."

Blake nodded. She wasn't sure of the history herself, but it made sense, and people back then would have had less options to deal with Grimm since they'd have lacked the technological edge of today's world.

"It's dug into the ground with stone walls. Halfway between a mineshaft and a war bunker – maybe it was from a war so distant no one can remember it. We're not sure. Either way, people were almost too keen to explore it and that's where things took a turn. Most didn't come back, but one did return stark raving mad. She claws her own eyes out and, despite our best efforts to contain her by tying her up, she managed to wriggle her way to a wall and smash her skull open upon it. The guards heard her dying screams, and they say she said, they can't get to me if I die out here." Sienna let that sink in. "Worrisome to say the least."

"Did you close it off?"

"I wish." Sienna sighed. "We obviously assumed Grimm or some twisted serial killer, and we're the White Fang. We sent people down there. None returned alive. After that, I clued on and had the entrance sealed up, but the concrete we used crumbled the very next day, opening the entrance again. We lugged a huge amount of scrap metal there and blocked it up with that, welding the edges shut, but the metal was torn asunder in the night as well. Whatever is down there wants the entrance open, which was around the time I decided to station barbed fences a good distance around it and just declare the area no man's land."

"Wise," said Jaune. "You made the right decision. No one has gone in since?"

"I don't know. I didn't set guards on it but there's always a chance some idiots snuck in thinking themselves clever and died. I wasn't prepared to risk my people on it, and I didn't want to draw attention to it by making a big deal of the whole thing. I wanted people to forget it existed. I've even had stories disseminated of the wire keeping people away from unexploded Atlas bombs."

How very ARC Corp of her. Stem the flow of information, control the narrative, don't draw attention to the things you wanted to keep hidden and let them fade into obscurity. Sienna may well have saved more lives by doing that.

And that was back before she knew anomalies existed at all.

"Now that I know what may really be down there, I don't think I'll rest easy unless it's dealt with. This is your forte, right? This is your business. And I figure if we leave it be, well, what if the rest of your family hears about it and sends someone to deal with it? They might stumble across the village if that happens."

"You don't need to force us into taking the job," said Jaune. "We would have agreed had you just asked."

"Hm." Sienna let it go. "I'm used to harsher methods. Sorry. I don't know how you plan to deal with it and I don't know what it does. I know you can get out because one person did, but don't take that as meaning anything. The girl that escaped didn't have aura or even a weapon, whereas a full team of our people lost their lives inside."

Another typical dangerous anomaly. Blake wasn't sure if she should be happy it wasn't something ridiculous like dealing with anomalous democracy, or annoyed that they were being thrown down a tunnel to their doom right after she'd told her parents about the risks. They weren't going to be happy, but she'd cut their legs off rather than let them shadow her, and she had a feeling her parents would want to. Technically speaking, they could fight, but that wouldn't matter a thing against many anomalies, and she wasn't going to let them accompany her like it was some kind of field trip.

"We have a few questions if you can answer them."

"Ask them," said Sienna, sitting up.

"Were you able to maintain contact with the team you sent in or was it lost immediately?"

"Comms were fine until they weren't, but it wasn't a sudden thing like them disappearing. The radio became erratic and the team inside complained of the batteries draining faster than they should have. We kept contact until they went out, with my last order being for them to pull out for fresh supplies. They never made it back."

"I don't suppose you tried any drones?"

"We don't have the technology for that."

"Can you get us a remote-controlled car and a spare scroll?"

Sienna paused, then grunted. "I suppose that would have been a simple solution. Irritating I didn't think of it. Yes, I'm sure I can get you those things. The batteries on those may drain faster inside the bunker as well, however."

"That's fine. I want to be sure this isn't a dimensional rift."

Sienna let a single eyebrow rise. "A what now…?"

"He means whether your team were whisked away to an alternate dimension," Blake explained, enjoying the stunned and then nervous look on her face. "But that's probably not the case because you were able to stay in contact. The CCT is cross-continent, not cross-dimension."

"R—Right. And how common are dimensional rifts?"

"Not very, thankfully." Jaune offered what he no doubt thought was a comforting smile. "Otherwise our world would be overrun with other-dimensional beings, and everyone here would have either been killed or subsumed by now. You only have to run into one dimension with a sapient species and suddenly you have an inter-dimensional war on your hands."

"One we'd win, surely. We have aura and Semblances."

"No telling what they might have," said Blake. After finding out Sienna leaked her involvement in the White Fang to her parents, she wanted the woman to suffer a little. "Their technology could eclipse ours by thousands of years, or maybe our aura wouldn't even stand up to them. Oh. Did we mention that aura is an anomaly as well?" Sienna stiffened. "We have no idea what it's doing to people or their souls, so it's one we've kind of given up on fixing. Good luck with your soul, though."

"Blake." Jaune sent her an amused but stern expression, then joined in. "There are some things we don't tell people. How doomed their immortal souls are is one of those things."

"H—Hey. What does that mean?"

"Nothing, Sienna. You'll be fine."

"It doesn't sound like I'll be fine!"

"You'll be fine," he repeated, to no real comfort on Sienna's part. "Now, why don't you show us to this bunker and grab those parts I asked for, and we'll try and fix your problem before it engulfs all of Kuo Kuana and the people living in it. That thing is luring people down into it for a reason, after all."

Sienna blanched and hopped off her throne, running and barking out orders without looking back. Blake snorted, and crossed her arms, her eyes meeting Jaune's as he smiled faintly back. It was cruel, perhaps, but after all the trouble the White Fang had lumped on them, she wasn't afraid to make them suffer.

And besides, it was for the best if Sienna had a very cautious view on anomalies. They wanted the White Fang to know they'd gotten lucky this one time with the sapient anomalies in the village. That things had worked out here, but that they shouldn't get cocky and play with things they didn't understand like the Schnee had.

"My parents are going to kill us when they hear about this," she said. "Are we telling them or are we just going in and dealing with the fallout later?"

"We? They're your parents."

"Don't do this, Jaune. Don't do this to me."

He clapped a gloved hand on her shoulder. "You know them better than I, Blake. I'm sure you can convince them." His eyes crinkled as he smiled. "Good luck."

Son of a bitch.

Next Chapter: 4th March

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