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I flew South down the coast. I was pretty sure I'd know the monster when I saw it and I could cover and scout a lot of ground from the air.
The creature was enormous as it waded from the ocean along the rocky shore.
The Hydra had sixteen heads on long serpentine necks. They waved in the air like a reptilian anemone as it marched along. Its body had thick Grimm white bone and hundreds of little limbs on it's back and side to deal with anybody who thought climbing into it was a good idea.
Its body was roughly the size of twenty-seven school buses stacked on top of one another in a great rectangular prism. Its heads sprouted from its broad front. Its clawed limbs were as massive as a pick-up truck at the thigh before tapering down to massive calves and a foot the size of a four door.
But…
I managed it.
I took the threat and I handled it. It was the size of a skyscraper in Atlas and each head had some fresh surprise for me. I didn't give it time to breathe and I killed it. I ripped it in half with a climb-hazard and cut off every head before it could heal.
It was tough but it was doable. For me at least. Most other people would have died. Most other people didn't have Limit Breaker.
I landed back at Beacon with a rush. I'd been up all night flying and briefly fighting. It was Saturday so I had time off and if I asked Glynda would have given me the sick day. It was early in the morning when I arrived. Seven or so. I pulled out my scroll and sent Augustine a message with the local comms.
Job's done.
I pressed send.
He promised to pay me handsomely for it. It was a two point five million Lien bounty. I accepted but the money hadn't been the point. Maybe I should have asked him for a favor but I didn't want to hold the city ransom. Could you imagine? 'Yeah, you just need to give me whatever I want or I'll let everybody die. Sound fair?' So no, I couldn't really do that. Well, I could, strictly speaking, do that. I just shouldn't?
I also couldn't go to bed yet. There was still work to do about my little serial killer. Cerise Genfield. I had to help out team CMAD with their little mission. Personally I thought it was too big for their boots. My personal feelings didn't really factor into their mission a whole lot, though. And besides, maybe Velcruse would help me score a catch. That would count for their mission. Just finding the killer and letting me handle the bloody work of adding her sniper rifle to my shelf would be enough.
I sighed and marched through the campus. My weapon rested comfortably against my back as I marched across the school gardens. I walked into the main lecture hall building as opposed to the dorms and made my way to the teacher's lounge. Glynda was inside drinking a mug of steaming tea. I could smell it even over my own sweat.
"You're back," she noted. "And the beast?"
"Monster is slain. Bangarang." I snapped my finger at her so that I ended up pointing distantly at the ground.
"You look tired. You should get some rest."
"Can't. I have to help team CMAD with their serial killer mission," I informed her.
"Why?"
"Why do I have to help them or what help do I have to give?" I asked.
"Well, both at once I suppose."
"The killer came up into my network about a week ago. It's sort of my responsibility to keep an eye out for people like this."
"Your network?"
"My criminal contacts in the city," I said, nodding. "I have the name and semblance of the killer."
"That's most useful."
"That's what I strive for. I wake up everyday and say 'oh, if only I could be most useful today.'"
She narrowed her eyes at me. But then gave me a dismissive half shrug. "Ozpin often wished to be able to tap into those elements for this very reason but couldn't figure out how to get started. I mean, it's nice to say you want to build trust and contacts like that and quite another to go out and succeed at it."
"They want you to kill people for them sometimes. And sometimes you have to kill some people just to put the fear in 'em. Or torture people. Whatever."
"Should you be telling me this?"
"I mean, what are you gonna do about it?" I pressed. "What is anybody gonna do about it? Besides, I thought it was 'most useful.'"
"Maybe not what you have to give up to make it happen. That's perhaps why Ozpin never succeeded."
"You have to have a hard stomach. And at any rate I need to be able to see my sisters coming or, god forbid I even say this, my Mother? Could you imagine her rolling up on us?"
"I don't really want to. Would she?" Glynda asked.
"She mostly acts through intermediaries when she can. I can… feel her? Her location? All the time. So I'd know if she was moving around at all. Instead she just hangs out on one of the kingdomless continents. Ayan. So she stays far away from any kingdom and acts from the shadows."
"I don't know how concerning that is. How concerned should I be?"
"Somewhere between one and ten. Depending on how much thought you want to give it," I answered. "Just don't think about it very much. That's what I do. And I'm… mostly fine?"
Glynda shook her head at me nice and slowly. Gentle but firm denial.
"Well, I'm as 'okay' as could be expected?" I wondered.
"I don't think so," she disagreed still.
"Exactly how 'okay' am I supposed to be?" I kept up. I was curious. Considering what I'd been through it was ambiguous where I should be in terms of mental wellbeing.
"Well ideally with a one being the worst and a ten being the best you'd be at a ten, Cloud," she insisted over her mug. She pressed it to her lips and took a calm sip.
"I'm like a five. A hard five. That passes muster."
"A hard five which way?"
"Yeah, fair cop," I agreed. "Good point."
"I wasn't even making a point," she insisted.
"Well you made it anyway," I muttered.
"Go to bed, Cloud. Your serial killer can wait. What? Are you excited to add to your little collection?"
"Am I more or less messed up if I say 'yes?'"
"You're just a mixed up kid."
"I mean… yeah. I knew that. But am I more or less fucked if I say I want to add her sniper rifle to my collection?"
"You know her weapon?"
"Answer the question."
"I… I would say that you're more mixed up than less. Not everyone has a collection of weapons from serial killers they've stopped. Not everyone thinks about adding to it. You are more mixed up than not. You've got to really be at least a four out of ten. Admit that to me."
"It's really probably at most a three," I rubbed a hand through my hair.
"Go to bed."
"I'll go to bed. After I send team CMAD my dossier so they're not going in blind," I agreed. "I think she's too dangerous for them or the police to take on. If they find her, sure, good enough. But I really don't think they should fight her."
"You can't coddle them."
"I'm tryin' not to but there's a serial killer on the loose and they have some real power."
"What about you?" She wondered.
"What about me?" I asked, a little confused.
"You're a serial killer serial killer," she accused.
"What? I'm not a… serial killer."
"Don't emphasize 'serial.' It doesn't do anyone any favors."
"Mass murderer? Sure. Spree killer? Probably. But I don't do it for psychological gratification."
"Don't emphasis 'psychological!'" She rubbed at her forehead. "You need to find a sweet girl to look after you. Help put you back together. If you even like girls that is. I didn't mean to imply anything."
"I like girls," I dissuaded her. "I've got team RWBY."
"They're not here. What's wrong with Miss Gainsborough?"
"You mean besides the fact she's my student? Off limits, remember? Besides, she's seen a little into how fucked I am and probably shouldn't want any of that mess."
"What if she does anyway?"
"I think I would know by now?" I wondered. "I'd like to believe I would. But I don't really understand girls. Just throw me at a monster or serial killer or something and let me worry about that. Girls are complicated and hard and complicated."
"Not really," she said, tossing her hair back and pulling it behind her in its curls.
"Girls like games and hints and teasing around," I defended.
"Do you think I'd play games?"
"I think you're probably an exception and not the rule. You and Weiss both."
"Miss Schnee?"
"Yeah. I mean, I think so. She doesn't like games or hints or playing around with her feelings either. I think that's why she barely tolerated me when we went to school here."
"You were attracted to her? In your time as a student?"
"Still am," I confessed. "That hasn't really changed. She was my first real crush. I had fake memories of crushes before that but I really woke up for the first time at Beacon after I was set loose. And then I met Weiss. Beautiful. Smart. Way out of my league. We're not even playing the same ball game." I ran a hand through my hair and felt the grime there.
"Good for you," she informed me.
"Why?" I asked.
"I think that's healthy. I'd be a shade more concerned if you really weren't attracted to anybody and you had nothing to strive for. Not that there's anything wrong with being asexual. But it's important to have personal goals for yourself and not just professional ones."
"I'd love to impress her. Still. I'm just not really sure how. You know? In her time as the heiress or whatever she probably had all sorts of guys appeal to her so she's pretty much seen it all. I have no moves to make that she hasn't seen somebody else do better than I can. And I doubt my little collection of mass murderer trophies would make her stop and think in a good way."
"Have you tried not appealing to her at all. Maybe you should just be honest with yourself and her and let your personality impress her."
"I'm a schizoaffective loser," I claimed.
"You're not a loser just because you're schizoaffective," she helpfully informed me.
"I know that. I'm not stupid. I have totally separate reasons for why I'm a loser. I'm not funny and my personality isn't particularly pleasant to be around."
"You have charm. You can be funny. Not exactly cracking jokes or something similar but you have a certain dry humor. Use that to impress her. Plus you've become surprisingly competent."
"Well, thanks. I'll just use all those assets when I see her again and blow her away. Anyways. I'm safe. I'm back. My mission was a success and I thought you'd like to know that." I pulled my scroll from my side pocket and started tapping away and putting together what information I had on Cerise Genfield for CMAD. "Let's see if we can't wrangle ourselves up a serial killer. Yee-haw. I always did love outlaw justice. It's super fake. And it's basically all the murder with none of the guilt."
"Do you really think that?"
"A little."
"Go to sleep. Let the police and team CMAD track her down," Glynda ordered.
"I hear you. I'm off to bed." I nodded, shooting my dossier off to CMAD with their school addresses with a few taps and flicks of my scroll. I closed the display and breezed a hand through my hair. I needed a shower first. I'd been inside the Hydra briefly when I was bisecting the body to get to the interior portal. I was covered in it and it was gross. Not that you could tell with my black tunic.
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I took a shower and a four hour power nap. I was still groggy and tired but it would hold me over. My dog was out with team RYPP and hopefully being helpful. So I was totally alone.
I wrote a letter to Weiss and Ruby. I told them that the Council had found me and was starting to deploy me. But it was a fair cop. There wasn't anything to be done about it and I had to accept those sorts of missions. Agustine came for me personally. Which at the end of the day had been decent of him. He could have been a total prick about it. Instead he'd been polite and generous. It was a little like my days in GaiLong with Beihfing-Dono. We both had each other by the balls. Agustine could have made a lot of demands of me at least legally speaking and if he got a judge to sign off on it and Ironwood pressed charges he could probably conscript me into the Vale Guard.
Of course to actually take me into custody if I resisted wasn't easy. If I didn't want to come quietly, they were going to have a hell of a time since I was a nightmare-man. So nobody really wanted it to come to that. Nobody wanted me to be an enemy of the Vale state in any regard so Agustine hadn't gone that route. Instead he went with money which was fine considering how little he knew about me. It wouldn't be enough to keep me doing what he wanted forever because I'd be making the stuff too fast to reasonably spend.
He'd have to start playing ball a little bit differently if he wanted me under his thumb and I probably never would be. Which I suppose was bound to make him a little nervous but how do you buy somebody like me off and put me in your pocket for keeps? You probably couldn't even with a bunch of favors because I didn't really need the Council's favors anyways. I needed favors from information brokers and people with eyes on the ground. Sure. But what was I going to do with Marcus Agustine's favors? Really?
Not a whole lot.
He didn't really have anything I couldn't get fairly quickly. He didn't have the power to threaten me in any meaningful fashion which didn't make me an open enemy of the Vale state. And nobody wanted that. He didn't have the power to deal with my Mother which was the one thing I really needed or eyes to see my sisters with. He had money and political leverage but I didn't need that either.
He pretty much had to count on the fact I wasn't a scumbag. And all because I'd won the super power lottery. It was GaiLong all over again except it was bigger and more people could die. But really that wasn't anything new for me. Cinder had been like that with her maiden powers.
So when the Hydra started cruising up the coastline and he sent a half dozen double full teams and they'd all come up short he'd done the only thing he could do. He begged for my help and promised me a lot of money.
Which was fine and all but it didn't really help me tackle my big problems like my family or acquit me of my past crimes. Ironwood hadn't pushed super hard but that was because I meant well and he couldn't really do anything about me and at least I was another continent. That made me someone else's big issue to deal with.
It also didn't help me tackle the little problems like my favor to Junior, smoothing things over with the Malachites, or finding Cerise and putting a stop to her.
It didn't help me teach at all. I was supposed to pass on valuable, life saving wisdom. It didn't do that. It didn't even help me grade papers or set up class standings. Minor things but still things I had to get done.
So sooner or later he would have to get in deep with me or start throwing curve balls my way to even get my attention if I decided I didn't want to handle whatever problem all of Vale was facing. And that sucked. For him and the other Councilors and military leaders that was.
They'd need to do quite a bit to really even make me blink and if I started deciding I was only a last case scenario for him there wasn't much he could do about it. That meant losing and spending military assets on problems I could basically snap my fingers at. Like the Hydra. Okay it wasn't that easy but it chewed up almost fifty fully trained hunters and I flew away from it and left it disintegrating in my wake. Most of my time had been spent traveling rather than fighting and granted, Hydras were a bit of a peculiar case but still.
I paced in my office and blinked a little. I stared down at Cinder's weapons under the display glass. I'd spent so much time preparing myself to face her and in the end she'd only been a stopping block for my real problems. My Mother was at the heart of it all and she'd always been behind Cinder Fall like a marionette. Sooner or later I was going to have to face or make her someone else's problem and that was possible but wouldn't be very respectable of me. I could play protector of Vale but if I didn't ever face my Mom I wouldn't have accomplished much.
I toyed with the glass blade and ran my fingers across the sharp edge.
I'd die.
I would. I was mortal. My Mom was not. And could I really sleep for eternity knowing that I probably had the best chance out of anyone to stop her ever and I just did nothing?
No.
Not me.
I'm not bitch-made.
"Professor?"
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-WG