I stared into my fathers eyes, his vision swirling with deep internal trouble. It was a look that had never graced his face before, at least not in my rather limited time with him. Typically, my father wasn't one to panic; he always had his expression locked into a hardened expression, he kept his head cool and his temper mild, he'd always done so and refused to explain why. To see the raw panic in his eyes, told me everything I needed to know.
There was no chance this was just a semblance, given his reaction.
This was different, I was different. Whether that was good or bad, was yet to be decided.
"I'll assume you have no idea what this is either, then?" I asked.
A response was formed on his tongue, but he paused for a moment, seemingly to mull over the words.
"No, I do not. Never in my life have I seen anything even close to this." he muttered, he almost seemed… shamed? His tone was low and his words forced out, he was deeply troubled over this regardless of how his brain was processing my clear non-normality. To be fair to him, it wasn't as if I was taking this too much better, I was just better at hiding my true feelings about the matter.
Internally, the terror of seeing a potentially fatal wound should have sent me straight into shock, and I likely would have died even faster than expected, were I not different to others in such a blatant way. I should have been absolutely petrified that a wound such as that had formed on me, and yet once the wound had been cleared and the bark of my innards was revealed, I felt a sense of calmness and familiarity wash over me. It was strange, I could not find any reasonable explanation as to why I was calm or familiar with this visage.
One thing was for certain about this substance coating my insides though, it looked near identical to Boiswood.
My father continued "It cannot be a semblance, for your Aura is not yet unlocked… So this is indeed something else. Whatever it is, I know your mother cannot be allowed to see it."
This confused me. It had already been made perfectly clear that mother had next to no interest in me beyond expressing her disgust. I don't see any manners in which this strange quirk could change her behaviour any further. I'd possibly be labelled a freak or a monster, sure. but a change in the insult sent my way was inconsequential at the end of the day, she could call me whatever she wanted and I would likely not care.
"Why, father?"
"Because I know her, unfortunately. She has been getting worse recently, and she's already mentioned some… plans in regards to you. With this new variable in the mix, I cannot in good faith let her know, but she'll find out sooner or later if you stay here." My father said, his face slowly returning to its general blunt state.
"What plans father?" I replied.
My father's expression remained unchanged, yet his eyes seemed to harden in that moment.
"During your recent… tenure in the black room, your mother and some of your sisters came to me with a plan to get rid of you… They wanted to sell you off, Jaune."
Oh.
"They wanted to sell you to an old Mistrali contact she has from when she still lived there, a human trafficker that used to sell slaves to the old Mistrali Royals before they all died out about 5 years ago." His tone was stagnant, his face blank. I could hear his breathing run slightly ragged, I could see the signs. He disagreed with my mother and elder sisters, vehemently so.
This was… difficult to process.
I knew they hated me, they made that perfectly clear over the years. But this? Slavery? Selling me off like some unwanted lecher that broke into their basement, or like a wild animal that stumbled onto their property one day. How could they? How could anyone stoop so low? That feeling from this morning was bubbling within me, this vile pain that twisted within my core, it felt like my chest was a lock being slowly pried apart by bolt cutters.
For what possible reason do they harbour this hatred for me? What had I truly done to them to deserve any of this, had I spit in my mothers food when she wasn't looking as a toddler? Did I embarrass her at a school parents meeting? Did I have a sister I never remembered that I killed? Something? Anything?
I needed some way to rationalise this.
I looked down towards the wound. Any evidence of the wound was gone completely, where a wooden wound existed but a minute prior was now nothing, normal skin covering a normal, uninjured limb, it looked the same as always, if a little bit less fatty than I remember it being. In the right-most corner of my vision I could see that the glass cuts in my hands were also completely absent, practically no evidence of the prior injuries. Although I did notice the same change in fatty content as with my leg, the fat under the skin was lesser than I remembered it being and the muscles looked more defined, strangely defined; the muscle looked less like a collection of small fibres making up a smooth shape and more akin to a series of thick muscular strands.
I found it funny that I could even see it, I shouldn't be capable of seeing that hand, given that my eye doesn't work.
Wait.
My hands shot to my right eye, prodding at the once blackened abyss.
I could see my hand, and my father behind it, a concerned stare adorning him.
"My right eye works again." I told my father.
"I can see that, and it only solidifies my point. Your mother cannot know, nor your elder sisters."
My father stopped talking, he looked down to the floor as his hand grasped at his chin.
"It's ballsy, but I have a plan… you wanted to be a Hunter, Jaune?" He asked, a small smirk adorning his face.
"You know I did father, and I still do. Helping people was all I ever wanted to do."
His smirk grew larger.
"Good to hear, son. We need to get out of this house, it has been… corrupted by this family." His expression fell noticeably, however he quickly forced himself back to his feet with a small grunt, and turned towards the fire.
"Can you stand?" He asked.
"I'll see." I replied. I moved the previously wounded leg to see how bad the wound was under the surface. To my surprise and abject horror I couldn't feel any pain or discomfort in my leg which contained a wound capable of killing me, not even a minute ago.
I shot up to my feet with far greater strength than I remembered having, it was as easy as breathing.
"See for yourself, father."
He turned back to me, and his smirk remained.
My father sighed, and said "Jaune. Son, listen to me and listen well. I have no doubts that the rest of the family seeks to sell you off behind my back already, and with this revelation I have no doubt they are now guaranteed to do it. Therefore, we need to do something rather brash."
"What must be done, father?"
"I'll explain as we go, but first… pick a weapon" My father replied, as he raised his arms and gestured around the room.
Father was… offering me a weapon from his study? That made no sense, these weapons were his pride and joy alongside the family histories. They meant everything to him, for him to hand a weapon from his collection away so eagerly was borderline unnatural.
"Father, I thought these weapons belonged to your friends, aren't they important to you?" I asked, trying to sway him to normalcy.
He sighed again, and his hands fell down to his sides again.
"Son, you are correct. These weapons belonged to my old Hunter team, alongside other friends of the family. Friends of mine, rather. But they do no good rotting away in these containers. So pick one, any you like and I'll train you on how to use it as best I can."
I looked at my father sceptically. "These aren't your weapons, how will you know how to use them?" I asked.
"Not to worry, I have used all of these weapons extensively, although less than with my own weapon. My team and I used to swap weapons all the time back at Haven… and when they all fell, I couldn't bring myself to not pick it up and continue their legacy."
Father swallowed hard and winced slightly.
"I know some of these weapons better than their creators, that's all I have left of some of them… and I'd prefer that you carry on their legacy, and not mine."
Convinced for the moment, I turned away to look at the 6 display cases.
I had a decision to make.
Each weapon was incredibly different to the last, one was some sort of steel cane sharpened into a blade, another was a halberd, and another was some sort of boomerang with blades attached to it.
While these weapons, apart from one, all seemed practical and usable, the contents of the fourth case stopped me dead in my tracks.
A sniper rifle.
Or more specifically, a sniper rifle that was ludicrous in all aspects.
It was colossal, well over 2 metres in length and thicker than a sledgehammer. The barrel was thickened to the point it seemed almost comical, the scope was gigantic and gaudy. The magazine was bigger than anything I'd ever seen before, the bullets had to be bigger than a beer bottle.
I walked to the fourth case, steps light and slow.
There was an engraving above the magazine well. "H.R." it read. Something about that name, it called to me. I felt this strange familiar yearning within my core, my soul
"Ah, I see you're eyeing up Anzio there. I can't say I really recommend it, the guy who used it had it reinforced to be used as a melee weapon as well as a rifle, the strongest man I ever met."
I opened the case, and reached my hand towards the rifle.
"I heavily doubt you'll be able to-" My father attempted to say, but he was cut off as I lifted the rifle from its case with complete ease and spun it around until I had the proper grip on it.
I looked over to my father, his face stunned into complete silence.
I smirked.
"Anzio was it? Well, I think Anzio and I will get along well." I said with a notable purr in my voice.
I ran the action, it was simple enough. The same concept as the old low calibre rifle that my father taught me to shoot with years ago, before mother took it away from me, like everything else.
"You remember how to shoot, son?" My father asked, the smirk returning to his face.
"Of course father, you'd never forgive me if I forgot… Say, who'd this rifle belong to?"
My father's smirk fell as he looked down towards the floor. He sniffed and looked back towards me, his expression once again locked in a stoic state.
"It belonged to one of my students, he never got his hunter licence but he was damned close. His motives weren't the norm, while most joined for fame or glory he joined to protect his elder sister from the sidelines since she seemed so driven to the hunter's life."
My father's face twisted into some sort of cross between a scowl and a frown.
"He was the last student I ever took on before the accident with his sister. He disappeared after her death, disillusioned with hunters in general… last I heard he was still missing, I kept the rifle in memory of both of them… Nothing was left of his sister." He spoke softly, tentatively.
"I asked for a name, father." I replied.
He stilled for a second, before raising his gaze and meeting my eyes once again.
"His name was Hazel Rainart."
I recognised the name, vaguely. He was one of the people who used to help father when he had to build a new wing to the house, he was quite the burly man if I recall. Always stuck to greens and browns in his clothing, something about blending in when he was in the woods.
"I recognise the name, but nothing beyond that. Who was he?" I asked, and his eyes seemed to sharpen in response.
"He was the last hunter I ever mentored, he and his sister Gretchen came from a bad place in the woods of Vale. Gretchen got accepted to Beacon through Ozpins choosing, although I never bothered to learn the exacts of how that went down. Hazel approached me after Gretchen blabbed about me, and he practically begged me to train him. And I did. Hazel was damn-near the best student anyone could ask for."
Father's mouth quirked into a smirk as he talked.
"Hazel took every instruction seriously, he tried his damnedest for his sister, but he knew that he had to be smart about combat to have his wish of both him and Gretchen surviving…"
My father's expression soured.
"After his sister died, well… He felt he didn't need the rifle. It was his way of protecting his sister from harm from a distance, I remember her semblance being very destructive to everything around her so she had been forced into working as a solo hunter. It was heartwarming, really."
Father grimaced, and sucked in air through his teeth as he adjusted his position on his right knee, the one that always bothered him.
"Hazel Rainart has not been seen in 7 years, when he left after Gretchen passed he left the rifle to me. He didn't need to protect anyone by that point, his care extended to Gretchen, and only Gretchen."
Father's expression was growing more painful by the second.
"I presume he met a tragic end, then?" I asked.
"I'll never know for sure, Son. But he's almost certainly dead. While he was a crack shot and even better with his hands, he never found his semblance as far as anyone knew. He was young, only a couple years older than you. I should have known better, I should have moved to keep him safe the second I heard about Gretchen."
Father's eyes were watering. I had never seen it before. It was a strange sight, and a sorry one. To see a man who keeps himself stoic near constantly approaching his breaking point.
I swung the rifle to balance over my shoulder while one hand kept in place, and the other gingerly extended a hand onto his shoulder.
"You know he likely wouldn't want anyone to pity him, he doesn't seem the type for it. On top of that, do you really think you, with the litany of responsibilities and travel you do every year, would be able to keep a leash on him? You couldn't keep an eye on your own children most of the year… I mean no offence, but you could not have saved him for very long, father."
The watering ceased, and his default expression returned.
"Yes I know that perfectly well. It stings is all, he never had to die, and I'm sure that while Gretchen burned his soul more than he ever knew, there is always a reason to continue living, even in this world. You just have to find the reason, and I know Hazel could find something to keep himself going if someone had kept him on the path, or if Gretchen never went down. Then again, Gretchen did have a death wish, she kept forcing Ozpin into giving her what practically amounted to a suicide mission. To this day, I've never seen someone take on such ridiculous odds and come out on top as many times as she did. But she knew her time was coming fast, and she chose to take those risks."
"Father, you've only made it clearer that there was nothing to prevent this from happening."
He sighed, and he looked to the rifle, grunting as he adjusted his bad knee again.
"You speak… different to how I remember, Jaune. Did something happen while I was away? Or am I really so absent from my own family that I forgot what my only son sounded like?"
I felt my face contort into a vile grimace at the mere mention of it.
"The black room."
Father's eyebrow quirked, as if waiting for a response.
He has to know, right?
Right?
"You seriously don't know what's been going on here at all, do you?"
My father looks to the ground, and sulks. His left hand clenched as he chose his words.
"I don't… your mother and I… we don't get along as well as we used to, and your sisters have taken her side. I shouldn't be surprised, and they've been so adamant to continue arguing whenever I'm home that I never get the chance to see you much anymore. What is this… black room, son?"
My grip on the rifle clenched, the trigger guard quaking as the pressure mounted.
"The black room is as it sounds, father. A room with no lights, it's a closet that mother installed locks on. There's no furniture, no food, no water. Just a blank room with nothing in it. She locks me in there when I misbehave, or whenever I get on her nerves, I guess. I dunno, she seems to use it as she pleases."
I looked towards the fire behind my father, unable to meet his widening eyes and lowered jaw.
"I'm not sure how long I've spent in there, whenever she puts me in there it's usually for a week, that happens I'd guess every month or so. Yesterday, when I came to your office and I'd forgotten where my room was, she had just let me out after what she said was a month… It felt a lot longer."
My mind desperately begged, gnawed at me to look back to my father and meet his eyes.
It took every ounce of willpower to return my gaze to him, and I couldn't manage a moment longer.
His face was arranged in a display of emotion that was unfamiliar to his face. Anger. True anger.
It was nice to know someone else at least thought this whole black room thing was insane. And It was oddly cathartic to speak about it to someone who was willing to lend an ear.
My father clearly lacked the words to respond. He bit down on his hand, and after a few seconds of violent chewing on the yellow aura that encased him, his expression cooled, and he stood.
"If you're gonna use Anzio, you need to understand it, learn from it. Be one with it. Anzio is a reinforced sniper rifle, making use of high velocity rounds that are capable of accurately firing over 10 kilometres. Look down the scope."
The impression that father was disgusted with the previous discussion topic was evident, given that he had nothing to say. My father was a quiet man under most circumstances, but the man could talk if he had to.
I did as he requested, aiming the barrel towards the fire, I could read the marking for 1x on the top left corner of the view.
"The scope accounts for that frankly ludicrous range, it can be adjusted anywhere from one times to one-hundred times, and basically anywhere in between. All you have to do is twist that knob on the left. Adjustment for windage and drop can be done with the two on the top and the other side."
I looked out of the scope, and back to my father with what I can only hope was a playful smirk and not a creepy grin.
"He took this 'protect from afar' thing very seriously, didn't he?"
"Deadly so, son."
I looked back to the rifle, and ran the action.
"Semi automatic, shells are 20mm by 200mm. Hazel got em custom made by the hundred, I've still got a few boxes so you'll need to carry the load for what I'm planning. The shells are quite complex, but there's a good few gunsmiths across the world that could reverse engineer a shell and figure it out."
I ejected the magazine and lifted it up to my face, pushing down on the internal plate to check the spring still had enough life in it.
"Those springs are industrial grade, they can be found in most hardware stores. Hazel wasn't a gunsmith of any sort, so his weapon was designed with simple repair and maintenance in mind. This gun fires a round effectively, and makes for a mean club. That's all she does."
Club? Did Hazel use this oversized dart gun as a melee weapon?
"Oh, I almost forgot. I can tell you're confused by that, Anzio is reinforced well beyond what is required. If you've got the strength, which you seem to have even more than he ever did, it can be used as a large blunt weapon, a club or a hammer of sorts. Hazel was quite efficient with it but the gaudiness led him to just drop it in combat and get dirty with his hands."
Satisfied, I rammed the magazine back into the magazine well, and ran the action again.
"You still remember your firearms training, clearly."
I looked back to my father, who was walking to a cabinet in the corner of the room. Once he opened the cabinet's door, he lifted out a large backpack that quietly rattled from the sudden jolt of his hands yanking it free.
"This was his munitions bag, I haven't changed a thing since I got it. It's more than just ammo though, it's his survival kit. Medical kit, survival gear, his hunting knife, everything he ever needed."
He tossed the bag to me, and I caught it with a free hand. I looked at the top of the bag, and saw a small badge, a soft brown leather with 'H.R' imprinted on it.
"We'll have to replace the badge, now put it on and let's move."
—-
My father creaked the door open a crack, peeking through the newly formed gap that flowed through to the hallway I had bled all over not even 5 minutes ago. His head leaned side to side as he analysed the path beyond the door, and once satisfied he swung the door open and began marching at full bore.
"Follow, stay close." was all he said to guide me.
"Listen to me and listen well, Jaune. We need to leave this place, and I know where to go." Father stated, his expression locked into its usual stoic pose.
He briefly flickered his head back to look behind us before swinging back around to face forward and continue speaking.
"We need to go Boethia, a village about 20 kilometres south of here, it's safe and it has people I trust in it, there's a blacksmith there by the name of Jordie…"
Father briefly paused his explanation of his plans, seemingly thinking on something for a few seconds before continuing once more.
"Jordie is a friend, someone I can trust. He'll be able to reverse engineer the rounds for your rifle and produce a batch for you, with your strength I have no doubts you will be able to carry the load."
Father looked down and to his right to face me.
"We will go to Boethia together, I will train you as much as I can, and when I am out of time and must return to this place I will direct you towards Vale, from there I trust that some of my allies will be aware of your presence and either take you in or assist you."
He took in a deep breath, seemingly steadying his nerves.
"I know you can do this, son. I know you can survive the oncoming trials."
I said nothing, and we settled into a reasonably comfortable silence, as we walked to… wherever father had deemed to take us.
So long as he kept me well away from the wenches that wandered these halls, I was content.
I noticed he was walking different to how I remembered, his body was sort of hunched forward like an animal, and his walk was much more of a prowl than anything else, keeping his footfalls light and his presence even lighter, my own footfalls sounded like explosions when compared to the mere whisper of my father's boots.
Father was prowling, the same way he did whenever he was hunting. I'd see him do it whenever the howls of a Grimm could be heard, his whole body language would alter into almost an entirely different being.
After about a minute of very fast and effective sneaking around a house that he built, my father had managed to get us into the front foyer building, where the primary exit from the house resided. It was a thick wooden door that lacked windows, a deep brown hue with steel lugs bolting through it. It was an intimidating door akin to a castle gate, but it was designed for keeping the Grimm out, as it was the weakest link of the building's defences.
Once he reached the door with me in tow, he reached for the door handle but paused and almost violently swung his head back towards me, panic clear in his eyes.
A second later, and I could also hear what had panicked him.
Loud footsteps, approaching at a reasonable pace matched only by the clear huffing and puffing of someone truly furious.
My mother was on a warpath, and presumably I was the target.
My father rapidly shuffled us into a darkened corner and pushed me down onto the floor as quietly as he could, although a gentle shove is still a shove.
When I landed I was about to groan from the landing, but my father covered my mouth and placed a finger over his mouth, he wanted me to stay quiet. I nodded as best I could with his palm tightly gripping my face.
His grip slacked as he stood up and meandered quietly back towards the door, and into the sightline of my mother, who had just entered the room from the same direction we came from. If we had been just 30 seconds late we would have been caught doing whatever it was we were supposed to be doing.
"Aurelian! Do you know where our son is? The darling twins watched him bust through their window, and then he had the gall to charge out and disappear, leaving a puddle of blood on the brand new floor!" My mother explained, rage flowing so strongly from her it was almost oozing from her pores with each breath.
My father urged himself forward slightly as if to speak, however my mother rapidly cut him off.
"Honestly, that boy. How does he go from behaving himself to being so violent, I mean he broke his sisters fucking nose! Oum's sake…" My mother's anger suddenly twists, it warps rapidly into a condescending smirk as her eyes flickered around the room, seeming to bounce across everywhere in the room but where I was hidden.
"When I find that boy, I'll make sure he'll never hurt a single one of his darling sisters again, mark my words Aurelian." Her smirk seemed to twist further with every syllable uttered, her tone quieting from a wailing rage induced wail to a cold and calm tone that seemed almost completely devoid of emotion, almost like a doll.
"I haven't seen the boy since he got out." My father eventually replied in a rather plain manner, it came off almost practised, as if he'd been rehearsing the line at himself in the mirror before trying it in person. After an uncomfortably long silence in which they stared at each other while my mother held her expression almost uncannily still, my mother finally swivelled at the heel and walked back the way she came, into the depths of the manor.
I was about to raise myself out of this dingy and dark corner, however my mother suddenly stopping dead still mid-stride froze me in place just as still as she was.
"Aurelian, if you see that boy…" she spoke, her tone incredibly quiet, a tone so subdued it felt almost alien compared to her normal high-pitched whiny tone.
It frightened me, more so than anything else I had seen before in my life.
"Make sure the kid pays his dues."
My father froze as well for a second, but was quick to nod and turn back towards the front door, idly fiddling with the lock mechanism while he waited for her to continue her stride back into the manor's labyrinthine halls.
With a satisfied nod, she began to march again, back into the manor.
After a few seconds of waiting for her footsteps to fade completely, I rose from my corner and faced him.
His eyes looked strange, almost glazed over. Kind of like those doughnuts that he brought back from Menagerie a few years ago, some sort of local delicacy according to him.
I was getting off track.
Father's eyes seemed listless, they weren't focusing on anything and they seemed to be fogged over, on top of that his finger movements in pretending to manipulate the lock had went from dexterous movement of pins and rolling of combination locks became full arm movements that fumbled vaguely at the various locks keeping the door sealed tight.
The longer I watched, the worse it got.
After a few seconds the movements stopped entirely, his mouth unhinged and drool started to drip lazily from his mouth like a leaky faucet.
I fumbled towards my father as quickly as I could and hooked a hand tightly on his shoulder, giving it a good shake.
"Father, you need to snap out of it before she comes back!" I whispered desperately, trying my damnedest to get his attention and break him free of this mental lockup.
My method was foolish.
An extremely loud clang rings throughout the entirety of the room, simultaneously snapping my father back to reality and driving all the fear from the last 2 prior minutes back in full force.
I turned behind me towards the source of the cacophonous clang.
The rifle, my rifle.
I'd forgotten I had it, and it had fallen out of the corner and onto its side, leaving a dent in the flooring where the muzzle brake had made first contact with the ground.
In the distance down one of the corridors, I heard the familiar whine of my mothers screech, and the echoing clatter of her running towards the us once again.
We have to move fast.
"Father! The door!" I say, as curtly as possible.
He nods, and immediately turns back to the colossal door sealing us within this labyrinth.
One by one, lock after lock, each protective element of the door falls from its frame with turgid clanks against the floor as they fall from the chains keeping them afloat at the door.
Finally one lock remains, a crank that will twist out the internal locks and allow the door to open. As quickly as the human body can allow, my father grasps the crank and immediately gets to work, the lock whining and wrenching with each pump. Eventually, a cold wrenching noise sounds, and the door immediately swings open a good few feet, sending in a flurry of fresh air the house sorely lacked.
My father turned back to me, panic in his eyes.
"Jaune, you need to go! Head straight ahead to the south, keep going and you'll get to boethia, find the blacksmith Jordie, you can trust him, I'll meet you there. Go!" he said, as loudly as he could without running the risk of mother noticing. He flicked his head back towards the hallway my mother was coming from, and turned back to me a half-second later, fear in his eyes.
Fear. True, honest to god fear of my mother.
What had she done to him?
"Go!" He reiterated, this time shouting as loudly as he could.
And so I ran, sniper rifle slung over shoulder and Hazel's old pack hung around my back as I sprinted out of the house as quickly as I could.
Facing ahead of me was a cobble path that led a few dozen metres further from the house until it ended abruptly, being swallowed by the incredibly thick woodland surrounding the house on all sides.
There was no garden for this house, nor flowers nor shrubbery nor defences. Nothing. It was an incredibly jarring juxtaposition to what I faced in the manor. By all means, a manor should have its grandiose and expensive garden. Or given Father's perchance for planning, some sort of grand defensive complex designed for both Grimm and bandit protection, despite the relatively low amount of Grimm within this region.
To be fair, it was far worse in terms of Grimm population just a decade prior, something had either driven the Grimm off somewhere else, or they'd been mass exterminated by a group that had not made their name clear. Most locals figured it was related to the ongoing civil war, but that had only started a few years ago.
There was just a path far older looking than the house, run down and stained brown from what looked to be decades of usage, and grass leading up to that dense forestry that awaited me.
Once I had sprinted long enough to reach the treeline, I turned back towards the house and hid myself on the ground within a deeper patch of grass and behind a tree, peeking my head out towards the door I had run from.
I listened as well as I could into the vague shouting of a man and a woman, my mother and father, in the distance too far to discern.
I watched, silently, as the colossal metal doorway slowly and obnoxiously loudly creaked back shut and internally locked once again with a colossal snap that seemed to echo out into the woods for miles.
I stood, and turned to face the dense wood ahead of me. Father stated that going straight ahead would lead me to Boethia, where I could reconvene with one of his old contacts and presumably get myself better set up for travel, hopefully then i'd be prepared enough and be capable of making my way somewhere that I can get sufficient training, given that luck was on my side.
Luck was rarely on my side, and I had a sickening inkling that my streak wasn't going to suddenly take a turn for the best.
Regardless, I had no choice in the matter, it was either death at the hands of bandits or beasts… or back to mother's clutches, where I may get sold off to some slave trader, as insane as that sounds for a world as advanced as ours, with aura and semblances, firearms and dust, floating cities and flying war machines.
Then again, this is no socially advanced world. Despite our valiant displays of technological and biological prowess, that was only the rich or the strong, occasionally both. The average citizen of Vale, Solitas, or Vacuo was typically decently well off, financial troubles had been mostly eliminated in Atlas first, then Vale and Vacuo slowly started playing catch-up thanks to a series of trade deals that father had not stopped talking about for years after, he seemed happy about it.
Despite their economic troubles being mostly removed, with the central cities mostly safe from the Grimm threats and the towns and villages outside of capital walls now had enough defence in most places, the people only had one thing left to fight.
Themselves.
According to my father, the Atlesians were notoriously racist towards faunus, to the point it was borderline ridiculous, insidious and almost comically evil, according to everyone I'd ever managed to ask. That being my family, and a couple of father's old friends, not exactly a large pool of people to get a straight answer from.
The Vacuans weren't racist for the most part, but their laissez faire method of governance had let those who didn't like foreigners build up a small following that was far more steadfast than they likely appeared.
Vale was the best off kingdom socially, it was an established meritocracy that, of course, still had just as much corruption as any of the other kingdoms. But, for the average citizen it was a true meritocracy. The work you put in was what you got out, 1-for-1. Race, species, background, it didn't matter to Valeans.
And then there were the other countries.
Menagerie, A faunus dominant country that had been dealt the hardest hand of the lot, and while they had my sympathies and I'd always assist Menagerie so long as it was under the current leadership, or someone equally as competent. Unfortunately it's the origins and home of the White Fang, a faunus supremacist militarised coalition that had been indoctrinated to believe that not only did the rest of the world deserve retribution through some method, be that supplies, aid or reparations, but that the rest of the world, both human and faunus, anyone who did not fall in their line of thinking, deserved to be exterminated.
If Menagerie and the White Fang cannot be separated, the latter will consume it from the inside, and eventually everything that Menagerie currently stands for will be wiped away, and replaced with genocidal dogma. And the White Fang will likely soon follow suit, either by realising the error of their ways… or facing the wrath of the other kingdoms, united as one against an enemy. It'd be the faunus civil rights war all over again, and this time the consequences would be far worse. And the faunus can't win this one.
As for the last kingdom, Mistral was a veritable shit-show.
Mistral was run by a corrupt government that cared for profit over the lives of their people, with a spineless military leader that let bandits rape and pillage as they fucking pleased like the world was their deranged buffet. Mistral had a military that the general never actualised, no police force, and the lowest population of hunters globally, even compared to Menagerie.
Mistral was, for all intents and purposes, run by bandits who did as they pleased, regardless of circumstance. Even worse, the social issues that plagued the Mistrali people had caused so much pain and grief across the continent that it was as sickening of a dogma as it possibly could be.
In Mistral, the life of another simply was not worth saving when compared to power, to money.
The bandits were not united, the villages were not united, the cities were not united, nothing was united, everyone was an enemy, even your closest allies, even your family.
Mistral made me sick to my stomach, it was like some sort of macabre mob movie made reality. While I do seek to travel the world, hopefully as a hunter, I will not allow myself to step a single foot on the accursed Mistrali soil. There was no saving that accursed place without the entire culture being destroyed, and that was nigh-impossible unless they were exterminated en-masse by Grimm, or Oum-forbid the other kingdoms.
Locally, I'd seen and heard enough evidence of bloodshed locally in the last few years of the civil war to know my chances of even getting out of this region and getting to Vale unscathed was going to be highly unlikely.
There was slavery, there was genocide, there was war. No matter what the media said in the past, it was clear as day that the frontier civil war was in full swing, Father had stated so himself after being sent to provide protection over a medical convoy. Hundreds of bodies, and thousands more bodies, all mangled beyond recognition, only recognisable by a tag tied to their necks.
There was good reason for the war to be kept quiet, beyond maintaining the supposed peace-time we're in.
The war was made up of two opposing forces, both of which were led to war by bureaucracy over individual choice. Both sides, the western forces of the Allié and the eastern forces of the Achse, were only driving themselves to conflict due to an over-complicated trade deal of some sort that led to both sides bureaucracies turning on each other. The people of the frontier had to pick a side and fight or work for the war effort. Leaving was not an option, every frontier town had chosen a side. There were no neutral villages, and those who abandoned the war were barred from entering villages or townships, regardless of allegiance.
That meant that a frontiersman had to march to the inner circle of towns that circled Vale, without any stops along the way and likely also lacking any sufficient supplies for travelling that distance.
It was suicide, even without the Grimm.
The only people that could get out were children who were forcibly abandoned by their families and shuttled to Vale via bullhead straight into an orphanage, and the hunters. Hunters still had a role to play outside of the war effort, both sides needed the Grimm cleared from the battlefields for the war effort to prosper, therefore they were allowed to act as neutral parties without the barring. They were the only exception.
Orleans and Boethia were both allied to the Allié, however the side really did not matter. I'd be allowed in regardless as a child, and until someone straps a grenade belt to a 9 year old and pulls the pins before sending them into an unsuspecting village, I should have no problems in that regard.
About the only good thing I got going for me right now, beyond this clunker of a rifle.
I needed to get moving, there wasn't time for reminiscing, not while I was still within spitting distance of the place that I had just broken free from.
My hand grasped tightly at the mask I had fashioned this morning, still dangling from my neck.
Straight ahead, do not stray, do not veer.
Time for a walk in the woods.
—-
It had been a couple hours, presumably, of haphazard marching through dense bramble and treeline, with the cacophony of branches encrusted to each central bark blotting out everything behind it. I could barely see more than a few feet in front of me at a time, and I wasn't particularly certain of my surroundings, nor what was around me. All I truly knew for sure though, was that I was still heading in the direction of Boethia, I hadn't changed direction once since I had left, I was sure of that, and I was doing whatever I could to prevent any further changes in direction, keeping my eyes glued in the same direction I'd been walking for hours now.
One wrong turn in a bramble as thick as this, and there was no telling what direction you would now be facing, and there would be little chance of returning to the old path.
The only thing I'd thought about or even considered since I'd left beyond ensuring that I had not changed direction, was that my face was itchy. That mask I had tied around my neck was chafing my neck and, quite frankly, pissing me off.
I reached my left hand off of my rifle's grip, away from the trigger to untie the mask and stuff it in my pack, I needed to check what was actually in it beyond munitions.
I never even had the time to realise my mistake.
A shift in the bramble, and a blackened claw violently jutted out of the woods, towards my face.
To Be Continued…