Main theme: Enemy by Imagine Dragons and J.I.D
Arc theme: Can't Trust Anyone by Jeff Williams
Theme: Questioning the Light from the Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Soundtrack
We live in a time of recovery and recuperation.
As the March rainfalls of 81AGW finally begin, our people find ourselves awash in the quiet peace that comes in between the grand battles and campaigns that take place in any and every theatre of war. There's the silence, the calm before the storm. There's the contemplation, and then there's the waning warmth of comfort in the quiet circumstances that they've built around themselves.
Many of our people think that now is a time of peace, a return to the prosperity that we once held ourselves within.
Some of our most naïve even seem to believe that the war is over.
But for those of us in Beacon Academy, both as its Hunters and its soldiers, the war is waging as hard as ever.
Only now, the frontlines have shifted. Now the enemies we fight no longer march against us in armies and fleets across wide battlefronts, but skulk away in the shadows and make their moves in the shadows. They move in groups and squads and packs, and so we must adapt and move in turn as well.
The war is not over. Not yet.
But one day, it will be. One day we will be able to put away our weapons, rest our weary bodies, and on that day, we will celebrate. We will cheer. We will come together with love and compassion in our hearts.
On that day, we will truly know peace.
Excerpt from Entry Twenty-Five of The Hunter's Tale, written by Cipher
The room crackled with light, and she leapt forward.
Her opened palm slammed into the chest of a training droid and ignited it with sparks. The robot's lights frizzled and flickered before it was sent flying into the wall, the massive dent in its chest leaking oil like blood as it slumped to the ground, leaving a splatter of oil and a massive spiderweb-like crack in the rock behind it.
Behind her, another training droid threw its pugil stick down at her, but she quickly caught it and threw it back into the head of the robot. Despite being covered in soft padding, the metal head still crumpled under the blow and flew off, skipping across the floor and hitting the opposite wall with a loud {THUD}. A third tried to grab her, but she got it by both the arms and jumped up, planting both her feet into its chest and, via summoning a burst of wind, threw herself back and ripped both its arms off, the machine letting out an electronic warble as she used its arms to cave in the chest of the fourth training bot.
A fifth training droid tried to catch her off guard by swiping her at the side with its pugil stick, but she quickly summoned a ball of wind into her hand and throwing it back, firing a stream of lightning from her hand into the robot and frying it as well as the pair of bots – sixth and seventh – that it collided with as well.
Behind her, the eighth tried to land a hit on her. No such luck. She wrestled its pugil stick from its hand and slammed it back into the droid, sending it flying out of the ring and slamming into the ground, before she turned her gaze to the next bot in line and-
Damn. They were surrounding her.
All the remaining training droids in the arena rushed at her, throwing their pugil sticks down and aiming for a finishing blow, only for her to summon a violent burst of wind from within herself-
{FWOOSH}
-And let it out. A tornado three times her size grew from her and pulled every droid around her into its vortex, swirling them around in the air before throwing them all out of the ring and onto the ground, each one hitting the floor with twisted limbs and burst mats and leaking, splattered oil and lubricant.
No more droids in the ring. Training match over.
"Was all that really necessary?"
Nora looked to the side to see Ren giving her a straight look, his eyebrow raised. He was dressed in his combat uniform. Ren's armour was green and black in colour, with a green chest and limbs, black torso, and green helmet with black cheek pits and a pink visor, as well as a pink line running down the right side of his head. A pair of black holsters sat on the sides of his white and black coloured armoured legs. His armour had barely any mods to it other than the holsters at the side and the knife and sheath attached to his right spaulder.
She, meanwhile, was not in her combat armour and gear, but in a black body suit with blue luminescent energy regulators spread out in lines across the arms and legs, all of them measuring the energy outputs that she had been giving off through both her semblance and the Winter Maiden powers.
"What do you mean by that?" Nora asked as she flexed her arms and legs. The metal brace that was clasped around her left leg whirled as she crouched, a slight ache leaving her knee as she straightened herself.
"Tossing all the droids around the ring like that. You left splatters of oil and dents in the wall," he pointed to one of the training droids on the ground as it twitched and spasmed before going still, "They were covered in pads and mats, and you still left dents in them. They're not cheap, you know. These things are expensive by the Beacon Militia's perspective now."
"I don't know what you're talking about," Nora's expression was laced with smugness, "I think that was absolutely necessary, in demonstration of my awesomeness."
"Seriously?"
"Seriously-seriously. It was awesome, I was awesome, and I was-"
"Sloppy."
Nora's brow furrowed as she looked to the Obsidian Guard trainer approaching her, scrollpad in hand as he tapped in the latest numbers and charts of her abilities, "Oi."
"It's true," the trainer didn't mince his words as he spoke, "Your moves? They're brutish and uncoordinated. Your use of the Winter Maiden powers is blunt and without much finesse to them. Plus, you missed one."
"Missed wha- AUGH!"
One of the training droids sneaked up onto her from behind. She'd missed it. It slammed its pugil stick down onto her right shoulder and sent her to her knee. In the next motion she threw her hand up and planted her fist into the bot's chest, sending it flying back and crumpling against the wall. Another dent to the collection.
"You got distracted," the trainer continued, still tapping away at the scrollpad in his hands, "You got tunnel vision, got too focused on throwing yourself at whatever threat is in front of you that you allowed yourself to be blindsided by an opponent. You do that on the battlefield, and you're liable to lose a limb. Or your life."
Nora groused, but conceded his point, "Got it…" she rolled her limbs out of annoyance, listening to the clicks of her bones as she flexed her arms and clenched her hands and fingers. A groan left her as she cracked her head from side to side, and walked across and off the ring, to Ren's side, "Lose a limb… ridiculous."
"What was that?"
"Oh, nothing," Nora said as she patted Ren on the shoulder, before turning to the trainer and going, "Hey, training's over, right? I beat all the droids. You know what that means?"
The trainer sighed, "Yes, your training for today is complete."
"Yes!" Nora smiled as she ran out to the training room, Ren following behind her, "C'mon Ren! Vale awaits!"
DJ always had a knack for solving mysteries, but this one was really starting to grind on him.
He was best known, when he was younger, human, and going by his deadname (deadnames had different contexts between different people, of course. For Techions, deadnames were the names that they were referred to before they were converted into Techions and gave themselves new monikers), as the brainy child of the village. He was the one that the other kids would go to whenever they needed a mystery that needed investigating, like if someone's boyfriend was cheating on them, or if someone's cat had been doing a dookie on next door's garden again, or if a tongue really did stick to metal when it was cold (That had been one hell of a trip to the hospital). He was the one with the spyglasses and magnifying glasses, the notebooks and pens, the forensic tools and all the like.
His semblance helped a lot as well.
Telecommunication was what he called it. He didn't know how or why, but his aura and semblance had been unlocked at a very young age, and it had allowed him to progress and develop so much quicker than all of the children of the village. His was a Headmaster semblance, and it allowed him to perceive electromagnetic signatures and radio communication frequencies as if they were visible and right in front of him. He could spy upon them and see their colours, weave his hands through them like threads and taste the individual strands of information on his tongue. It would take him a long time to master, but soon, with the right equipment, he would be able to decode the signals as well, picking them apart and prying the hidden secrets from them like sweet treats in wrappers.
But he didn't know this, then. He didn't really know much about the gifts that he had been given, and the people around him knew nothing at all. To them, he was the one with the smarts and the tools and the keen eye for everything, and he was the one which all the children and adults saw as the rising prodigy that would bring greatness to their settlement.
That afforded him a comfortable position in the village, because when he came to the elders and warned them of the Grimm horde that was coming their way, they were quick to listen.
It hadn't been too hard to discern. He observed the radio call strands between settlements around him that warned of herds of Grimm gathering before he IDed multiple nearby radio calls for help from stranded villagers and Hunters, giving him the chance to triangulate the sources of these distress calls and compute where they were going to strike next.
It hadn't taken him long to figure out that his village was the next target, so he made sure to warn the village leaders of it. A few of them were dismissive of him, but the rest were quick to listen. Thanks to him, by the time the Grimm had struck their village, most of its people had already been evacuated.
Most of them, at least.
Someone had been left behind. DJ couldn't remember her name, but he could see her underneath the rubble, crying and screaming as the Grimm got closer and closer, ripping and tearing through the town and houses and setting everything ablaze, and...
Well, he moved without much thought.
It was a completely illogical move, but even to this day he didn't regret it.
No matter how much it cost him.
The woman was safe in the end, but by the time he had been pulled out of the rubble, his body had been mangled and torn, to the point of being beyond saving. He had to be turned into a Techion just to survive.
Since then, he had been... obsessed was not the right word. Passionate more like. He had become passionate about solving every mystery that he came into contact with. He would observe every communication, decode every frequency, and decipher every riddle.
He would do everything in his power to solve every single mystery that he found, and he wouldn't let any stray detail stop him from doing so.
Yet now, after everything that he had been through, he had been presented with one mystery that he couldn't quite solve...
Or two, actually.
The first mystery was figuring out what the hell former Professor Watts was up to...
"You know, I was wondering if you wanted to, um, go down to the Forge, to the workshops, and, I don't know... work on something? Something together? Maybe?"
The second was how to convince Skipjack that he wasn't into him.
"Skipjack," the lumbering red Techion said as he and his friend walked through the hastily constructed barracks within the old Beacon Academy courtyards, ducking under overhead pipes as they walked through the cramped hallways, "No matter what you say, I'm not just going to magically change my sexuality just to go out with you."
"Oh, no no no! I'm not- I'm not saying that. I just... I'm just saying. Asking. I'm just asking."
Judging by the slight blush on Skipjack's face - his head being the only organic part of his body left - he wasn't just asking.
"You're just asking?" if DJ had an eyebrow left to raise underneath his cyborg shell, it would be all the way up into the sky right now, "Right..."
"I'm being serious."
"So am I," DJ said in a resolute tone. Skipjack was nothing if not persistent, but this was just getting annoying. DJ loved him as a friend and brother-in-arms, and that was it. He'd spent the last damn three months trying to hammer that fact into Skipjack's head, but for some reason the nail just wasn't sticking. It was infuriating.
Skipjack looked away from him for a few seconds as they stopped outside of his room in the barracks (it was a rare luxury to have a room all to yourself in the Beacon Militia, and luckily for him single rooms were reserved for former team leaders and present commanding officers, of which he was both). His four springy legs shook slightly beneath him as he tapped his clawed arms together for what felt like a full minute before going, "Please... just give me a chance."
"Skippy," DJ sighed after a pause of his own as he moved to open his door, "I've told you this before, and I'll tell you again: I like you as a friend, not as a lover," another sigh, "I'm not into dudes, man. Plain and simple. I don't know why I have to keep telling you this."
He opened his door. He didn't want to deal with this again. He had a case to solve.
Over the last four to five months, he had been performing a one man investigation on Professor Arthur Watts and his suspicious activities. From how easily he went out with Miss Goodwitch in the Sleeping City (because there was no way both he and Miss Goodwtich, two professionally trained Hunters, could fall into the same trap so easily. There was bad luck, then there was straight up incompetence) to the encrypted transmissions coming in and out of Beacon, to his strange connection to Esper Fyre (a fellow former Huntress-in-training, who had severe anger issues and a serious sadistic streak), to his generally creepy demeanour and whatever the hell he was doing down below Beacon in the restricted levels (because no matter what Jaune said, he knew that there was a secret entrance into whatever facility Watts had underneath the Wishing Well lake, he knew it).
He didn't know what Watt's deal was, but he knew that he was planning something (he knew!). He just needed to find out what the hell it was.
"Look, I really don't want to have to go over this again," DJ muttered as he walked into his room, Skipjack hovering just outside, "I've told you enough times before, and I really don't want to have to say it again. It was cool at first, but now..."
He turned him around, and kept his hand on the door.
"Look, just give me some space for now, alright? Please? I just- I'll hook you up with someone. Please."
"...I don't want anyone else," Skipjack muttered to himself as he looked down to the floor.
"Yeah, well I do," DJ went, "Now please... I've got stuff to do."
Skipjack didn't reply. DJ took that as a sign that the conversation was over, and shut the door.
He sounded like he was being mean to his friend, but he couldn't help it. Skipjack had been annoyingly persistent in his attempts to try and take him out when he was clearly not interested in him. He had been patient with him before, but now he felt like he was in the right to get annoyed and more forceful in his rejections than before.
He walked into his room, and gave the usual inspection. His single recharging and maintenance station was undisturbed. So was his chipped wooden desk in the corner of the room and the red and orange DJ music station/signal decryption set that sat in the middle. He turned on the single strip light in the middle of the ceiling, and his quarters was bathed in a pale white glow. Nothing he could see had been disturbed.
He hadn't made any progress today with his investigations, but that had never stopped him from doing his best to solve a mystery. Besides, either way he still had to log in his reports of the day into the system. Russel Thrush, in between his countless racially-motivated arguments with Alexis Kennedy, would call him a diarist. He would prefer to call himself a journalist...
And investigator.
He walked towards his booth and pressed his hand against the print shaped interface. Time to log in his newest report and-
All the files had been wiped.
DJ swiped through his notes. They were all gone. His previous logs. Gone. His decoded transmissions. Gone. Even his music playlists.
All gone.
Everything had been wiped. Even the backups on his hard drives were gone.
That just confirmed it.
There really was a traitor in Beacon Academy.
Weiss Schnee's life hadn't been going well since the Fall of Atlas.
{SLAM}
She curdled up onto the floor upon the fresh impact to her face, her clothes singed and blood trailing from her lips, nose, and an ugly lump forming on her cheek. Not too far away, her bodyguard, Ciel Soleli - dressed in Beacon Militia Guardsman armour coloured in black, white, blue, and a little bit of gold at the centre of the helmet - was being held back by a pair of Faunus in White Guard gear as a gang of former first years and Guardsman crowded around the fallen maiden, throwing insults and threats down to her as they laughed and guffawed at her misery.
Weiss tried to pick herself up as her legs shook underneath her, but collapsed once more as a steel foot-
{KICK}
-Connected with her stomach and sent her spiralling down to the floor with a pained cry.
A Techion - widely considered by many to be the unofficial third race of Remnant, being that of Humans and Faunus turned into cyborgs, encased in robotic shells and fed a substance known a Black Ether for blood - towered over her, coloured in dark greens and deep yellows, blood red incandescent lines flowing across his body - particularly the two pairs of lines on either side of his bulky shoulders that had silver mortar cannons protruding from them like pillars. A silver faceplate hung underneath his blood red visor as his head was covered in a black helm, and his body was big and bulky, with enlarged biceps, a long waist, and silver metal thighs with red lights running down them as they connected to bulky dark green legs with dark yellow feet.
"Fucking Schnee," the Techion that went by the ridiculous name of Harrower - one Weiss recognised as a former Huntsman that had been turned into a Techion sometime prior to the Surge - grumbled as he pressed his foot against Weiss' head, "Race traitor. Your whole family are traitors, and we're meant to let you sit at the same table as us, let you eat our food, give you the fucking privilege of sleeping and shitting in the same home as us? Nah, fuck that. I ain't about that bullshit."
"Let her go," Ciel demanded of them in spite of the two Faunus White Guardsmen that held onto her, not giving any attention to the two thugs twisting her arms to keep her silent, "Or I will-"
"You'll what, stooge?" went the Techion without turning his head towards her, "You'll what? Hurt me? Beat me? You Atlesians have done plenty enough of that already, haven't you? I think it's time we dished out some of what you've given us all these years as, oh what's the word? As recompense. As payment."
"How dare- ACK!" Weiss' retort was cut off by another kick to her stomach, leaving her heaving as if she were about to throw up. The other thugs in uniform around her smiled and laughed as Harrower planted his steel boot down onto Weiss' skull and began to apply pressure.
"How dare I what? What? The hell do you think you're going to do, huh Schnee? What the fuck do you think you're going to do? Sue me? Fuck off," he laughed, as did the others around him, "C'mon, make something up. Threaten me. Make me laugh some more, will you?"
"If you- ack!" she strained as she felt the Techion's heavy boot press against her skull, "If you don't stop now, then I will-"
"What? Crack open like an egg when I crush your skull under my boot like a grape?" Harrower snorted, "Now that... that's funny."
Weiss tried to let out a growl in response.
"You want to know something, Schnee," Harrower growled, "I think there's something fittin' about this, about me pressing my boot into your head. You and yous family have been trampling all over us less fortunate, pressing your boots on our backs and heads for years on end, and now we get the word that your mommy and daddy sold us out to the Grimm? Honestly, this is nothing short of poetic, don't you think?"
Weiss said nothing.
He pressed his boot harder onto her head, "I asked you a question."
Weiss gritted her teeth.
Her life after the Fall of Atlas and the Surge had been, so far, nothing short of hell. When Atlas fell to the ground, the Schnee Dust Company had collapsed with it, completely falling apart as the global dust market shattered into pieces and was left almost completely irreparable. As the value of the Lien fell to zero around the world, and Remnant's new currency became the bullet and not to the coin, Weiss found herself poor and destitute, and with no home and kingdom to return back to.
Worse yet, it had been revealed that her father, Jacques Schnee, had been working with the Imperium, the tyrannical ruling body of Atlas, and had helped in the slaughter of millions.
Weiss had been horrified. Her father was a bastard of a man, sure, but she had never imagined that he would've been capable of... that. Of slaughter, of mass murder on an industrial scale, all so that he could turn a profit on what he assumed to be the 'Winning side'. It was monstrous and horrific, and Weiss had been sickened to her core by the evils that the man that had only married into her family for the company. So much so that she had been willing to cast aside her own name and leave him with no heiress at all, and then bring down the man himself (hell, she had been willing to run him through with her own blade if she had to. She didn't necessarily want to, but at the same time she wouldn't say no).
But then she found out that he was dead.
Her father was dead.
The man that had tortured and abused her, broke her, tried to make her his happy little puppet and dance to his happy little tune... was dead.
Dead.
And she was left without anything.
No family, no fortune, no company, no resolution for all that had happened between her and her father.
Nothing at all.
On top of it all, her mother, Willow, was dead as well (apparently she died a hero. Even after three months, Weiss still didn't know how to feel about that particular fact), and so was Klein. Meanwhile Whitley had decided to leave with Sienna Khan (the leader of the House of the White Wolves, the same half of the batch of terrorists, alongside the Acolytes of the Ascended, that had been terrorising their family for years! Gods, what was Whitley thinking?) to Menagerie, and Winter had flown back to Solitas to help build the city of Shelter in the ashes of both Atlas and Mantle...
Leaving her all alone.
At least Ciel had decided to stay with her. Her assigned bodyguard from before Atlas had been destroyed had a duty to perform, as said bodyguard had put it. Her last orders had been to keep Weiss safe, and she was going to stand by that. She had been assigned as head of security in the accounting levels of Beacon just to satisfy her.
However, that had proven to be a difficult task.
When it had come out that Jacques had aligned the SDC with the Imperium and participated in the mass genocide of millions in Solitas, the people of Beacon Academy had turned on her as quickly as they had turned on the SDC. She couldn't go outside, or even leave her own room, without getting a wad of spit in her face and a derogatory name called out to her because of her family and their actions, despite all of them being because of her father's callous actions.
She was Beacon Academy's walking punching bag now, and her actions five months ago in response to Ruby becoming leader hadn't helped. She had tried to apologise for them (because god knows she regretted it), but Ruby hadn't wanted to hear it.
Eventually, she just gave up trying.
The team that she was once a part of, Team RSBL (the same team that was supposed to be the best of the best, the one that Ozpin counted and relied upon in his secret war against Salem) was eventually proven to be irrelevant in the course of the Second Great War now that Salem's existence was confirmed to the world and Ozpin was discredited as a leader, and then soon disbanded upon the creation of the Beacon Militia. The others in her team were pressed into combat roles within the armed forces... and she was shunted into management.
She'd become an overseer in the Beacon Militia's accounting and finances. It was such a pale shadow of all her life's aspirations that she suspected it to be a subtle dig.
She'd been promoted and demoted at the same time. She'd become a glorified accountant, a tax collector, a census taker of little value or importance to anyone. Just another cog in the machine. A machine that did a lot of good for the people of Vale... but a machine nonetheless. One that she had been swallowed whole into.
It was a mockery of everything that her life had been and was previously leading up to.
Still, like said before, Ciel had her back. She always did.
Then Weiss remembered something her bodyguard had said to her not too long ago.
"If things go south, I'm getting you out of this school."
She had a feeling that Ciel would be pushing that option onto her sooner rather than later.
The boot pressed down against her skull. Even as she brought forth her aura, it still felt like cracks were forming in the bone.
"This is what you get, you know?" Harrower growled, "You, your family, yous all been spitting in the faces of us common folk for years. You, your family, and all those who stood with and by you. You've all been trampling over us for god knows how long, and now here you are, under the heel of those you oppressed, bloody and kneeling like the rat you are. Some would call it fitting."
He grounded his foot into Weiss' head.
"D'you know what I'd call it?"
He pressed it down.
"I call it jus-"
{BANG}
A round embedded itself in the wall next to the lumbering green and yellow Techion. Nearby, the military-dressed former student known as Razor Azure lowered the ML-15A in his hands towards the grounds as the column of AK-PD Beacon Police Droids stopped behind him and aimed the RM-35 Pulsar Repeaters in their hands at the crowd before them.
"Now then," Razor called out as he gestured, with the gun in his hands, to the small army of droids behind him, "Seeing as I'm the one with the army of robots behind me, and the only one with the authority to call them off, how about we all make ourselves scarce and go about our days?"
Harrower looked at him for a long while, before letting out a loud snort and going, "Don't protect this little bitch, boy."
"I ain't protecting anyone, old bot," Razor shot back. Behind him, the two AK-PD droids at the front of the column stepped forwards as a show of intimidation. Judging from the reactions of the people around Harrower, Weiss, and Ciel, it was working. Razor continued, "Now, seeing as I really don't want to have to do any paperwork right now, and I really don't have patience for any of this bullshit in general, I would suggest we all go our separate ways and forget about this little incident, no?"
Harrower said nothing.
"Get the hell out of here."
A long silence, before the thuggish Techion let out a growl of annoyance and retracted his head from Weiss' head. Weiss took in a loud breath of air as her aura began to seep through and fill the cracks that had been made in her skull. Next to her, the two Faunus White Guardsmen dropped Ciel to the ground, not stopping at all as, even before she found her feet and stood back up, they had already disappeared down the opposite end of the corridor.
Harrower stared at Razor for a long while, no doubt glaring at him behind the red visor covering his eyes, organic or otherwise. However, as he noticed the rest of the people that once formed his group of thugs lose their confidence and retreat back into whatever hidey holes they had made for them, he in turn lost the will to continue on, and turned around with a huff. His steel feet almost crashed against the ground beneath him as he stomped off in a hasty march, his hands balled into fists and his massive shoulders almost hit the walls and ceiling around and above him as he hastily beat a retreat.
And soon, he was gone. They all were.
Ciel leant down and wrapped her hands under Weiss' shoulders, pulling her up onto her feet and keeping her still as she stood there shaking. Her brain was rattling within her own skull as her aura finished healing the cuts and bruises in her skin, as well as the fracture marks in her skull. It still hurt though, as she felt her head and body sway from side to side from dizziness and ache. It felt like her brain was pulsating within her head in union with her own heart.
How had that happened? How had all of this happened? How had she even allowed herself to be beaten and broken like that? She used to be a Huntress, one of the strongest in the school even and one of Ozpin's inner circle (even if for a short time). How had she allowed herself to fall so far.
She knew how. She had been pushed into management, not combat. Every day for the last three months had been nothing but work for her in helping to sort out Beacon's finances and resource caches, with no room for combat or training of any sort. She had been given no chance to keep up her skills in fighting and her semblance, and as such her instincts were beginning to dull. She was loosing her touch. She was getting rusty. She was getting soft.
She was getting weak.
It took her a few long moments, almost a minute, to regain her focus, so she didn't see Razor walk forwards and stand before her as the Police Droids cleared out around them. She couldn't see through the red visor of his customised black and white armour and helmet - covered with spare ammo pouches and a flashlight on the shoulder - but she knew that he was looking her in the eyes.
"You good?" was his gruff answer.
"Forgive me for asking... but why do you care?" Weiss couldn't help but ask as she gently shook her head to try and orientate herself. Forgive her for the rudeness, but she had just had her head almost crushed by a brute in armour, so she wasn't in the mood for kind words.
"I don't. Not really. Pleasantries and all," huffed Razor unapologetically, before shrugging and asking, "Do you want me to?"
"..." Weiss didn't have a response for that.
"We're fine on our own," Ciel went as she began to pull Weiss along with her, "But thank you very much."
"You sure?" he didn't look away from Weiss.
"You just put a bullet hole in the wall, and there will be people incoming to find out what the noise was. I believe that you have bigger problems than us right now. Now if you excuse us, we have places to be and not much time to get there."
Ah, Ciel and time. She was always so obsessed with being on time, and Weiss appreciated having her around.
But still...
"Alright, fine," Razor went to her, "You take care then," he then spun himself around and began to walk away-
"Wait."
She needed a friend, not an assistant.
(She would never see Razor's sad smile under his helmet.)
"Augh! Shit!"
Yang wretched her hand away from the sparking knot of wires and circuits as it let out a puff of smoke and flickering embers into her face. The cracked bullet that she had pulled out of the knot and metal sat in the middle of her pliers like dead metal, a burnt bronze offense to the eyes. Her engineering gloves, once brown and padded with black gloves, were stained with oil and covered in soot and burn marks. Her goggles were as marked as her facemask and hardhat helmet with grime, and she wiped the sleeve of her dark blue overall over them to try and wipe the dirt away.
"Ridge!" she yelled out, her voice muffled by her mask, "I thought you turned off the electricity in this thing!"
"I did!" her co-worker leant over from inside of their work in progress with a gasmask over his face, "Drained the fuel as well. Some of the electrical conduits in the ship must've been disconnected from the main system in whatever fight it came back from."
Yang huffed, "Great," and dropped the blunted bullet into the container next to her. With a sigh she called over another engineer to begin checking and disconnecting the individual circuits of the gunship, and then switched her pliers out for a wrench to begin unfastening the bolts and screws in another plate of armour covering the innards of the ship in front of her.
The AAT Gunship (she briefly remembered the Hawk Gunships that the House of the Golden Sun used, and came to the conclusion that the Hawks were a customised model of the AAT) was battered, bruised, and currently being cannibalised for parts. The ship was slagged after whatever engagement that it had been forced into, and though it dished out one hell of a beating (they always did), it also took an even bigger one. A torrent of gunfire from both light and heavy weaponry, as well as a stray round from an RPG (if she was correct om that assumption judging by the blast mark on the back of the ship), had pounded away at the Gunship's armour and shredded the internal components. The ship had barely made it back to Beacon's underside hanger before its reactor gave up and powered down, which was a lucky break on the half of the crew. None of them had died (the AAT Gunship was purposely designed to be as sturdy and survivable as possible for its occupants), but one of the civilians that they were evacuating from the firefight had been grazed from a gunshot wound, and three of the White Guardsmen in the ship had been injured by shrapnel from the RPG blast.
Those were the only details that she could get from the Guardsmen and civilians when they exited the craft. She didn't even know who they were fighting against. Apparently she didn't have clearance to know about their mission, She was an engineer, they had said to her, Not an asset to their current assignment.
They didn't have to be so rude about it.
Or, well, rude in her mind at least. She got that this wasn't as much a Hunter's academy anymore as much as it was a military base, but still, that didn't account for...
Gods, Beacon Academy was a military base now. When the hell had that happened?
Yang swallowed down a bead of nerves that she would swear to anyone that she did not have. Over three months ago, the surviving Hunters, soldiers, and whatever armed forces from Atlas and Vale were left over from all the fighting had converged around Beacon Academy and formed the Beacon Militia, the most powerful state in the entire kingdom. Initially, Yang wanted nothing to do with the paramilitary force now knocking at Beacon's door - she had signed up to be a Huntress, not an army woman - but then Ruby was placed as one of the senior commanders of the Black Guard-
Despite Ruby being sixteen years old, for fuck's sake. Gods above, how many of the adults from before the Surge were left? Were they all dead? Were they really that desperate for leadership that they needed to put a sixteen year old in a position of power that was clearly out of her depths because all the other leaders were all six feet under?
-And she wasn't about to leave her little sister on her own in that mess.
It only got worse from there. Ruby's new duties and connections (damn you, Jaune, and damn you Melanie) had left her even busier than ever before, and even if Ruby had any time to spare with Yang, the same couldn't be said for her. She had been tinkering with Bumblebee (her custom bike) in her spare time when she had been spotted by an engineer, and because the Beacon Militia, at that time, were short on tech heads, her acting superiors (in the form of Skipjack and Mei Dei) had Hey You'd her and thrown her (conscripted her, some would say. Pressganged, she would counter with) into the hastily created engineering corps.
Now she was running double duty as both a fighter and a mechanic, which meant constant tutoring lessons on how to dismantle certain vehicles and weapons on top of hours long work days of breaking down vehicles and building and repairing new ones, as well as countless combat drills and training sessions alongside missions into the city marching about the streets alongside the Crimson Guard on the lookout for crime and terrorists, whilst also working alongside the White Guard around the outskirts of their territories, on the look out for Ascendant Court forces of Choir of Silver stragglers.
She would've liked to have worked with the Obsidian Guard, seeing as they were Ruby's unit, but they had never had the chance to cross paths on assignments.
She was perpetually overworked, as was pretty much every member of the Beacon Militia. There was very little downtime for any of them aside from sleeping hours, and the little time to themselves that they did have was mainly just rest and recuperation, and trying to rest their weary muscles on the sofas and couches.
This was not how her life was supposed to go.
She was supposed to be a Huntress, a woman of thrills and fun and adventure, not- not this. Not a fucking mechanic in a military base filled with former students and army men and her sister that was supposed to be with her by her side and-
She felt her semblance flare up. Her shortened hair (and how she missed it so much) began to glow underneath her smoking helm.
She took in a deep breath. One, two three. Another deep breath. One, two, three.
Her eyes changed from red back to lilac, and her hair stopped glowing with heat. If it had got any hotter, her cybernetic nerve system would've begun to short-circuit.
Cybernetics. That was still something that she had to learn to adapt to, even after six months. Back during the Initiation Massacre, a Disciple's sword had got a good shot on her. Stabbed right through her stomach and spine, it had. Severed the latter in two. Had to be augmented with Techion tech (heh) just to be able to walk. It was fucking ridiculous.
Everything was just... so fucking ridiculous. Ludicrous, even.
Her mother was dead, her egg donor was missing, her father was dead, her uncle was dead, their home was destroyed, and they were now at war with a new breed of Grimm over a barren broken wasteland of a kingdom.
Fucking ludicrous.
…
Dammit...
She moved her hand and almost knocked over the container next to her. She didn't notice that the crumpled bullet inside had the crest of Atlas - with three slashes running diagonally down it - engraved into its side.
She took in another pair of deep breaths. She needed to calm herself. She really fucking needed to-
"Dish duty. Hate it. Fucking hate it."
-Calm herself.
She recognised that voice, and the faint valley girl accent behind it.
She looked to the side to see a familiar face walking by. Melanie Malachite, dressed in protective armour to shield herself from stray shards of metal and sparks in the mechanic's bay, and followed by a pair of Crimson Guardsmen as they walked through the bay. Melanie had her hands at her sides and balled into fists as she moved, whilst in contrast the two military policemen behind her kept themselves professional as they held their guns in their hands and kept the barrels pointed at the ground.
"I mean, seriously? Pulling me off my double duty as a strategist in High Command and combat roles with the White Guard to wash nothing but dishes and pots and pans all day! For two weeks straight! It's fucking ridiculous and somehow even more exhausting! Tedious as all hell it is! All just because we wandered off for a few hours to take a break! The hell is wrong with that?"
"It's against protocol," commented one of the Crimson Guardsmen. Yang couldn't make out which one it was.
"Yeah I know... but still, if someone under my command had their ass kicked from one way to another and asked for a break whilst on mission, I'd let them have it. No trouble at all. I don't see why there has to be any problem with it."
"Again, you went against protocol."
"I know, I know..."
Yang felt her hands clench briefly. She knew Melanie. She had been the one who had trashed her and her sister's bar before shit hit the fan and it all came crashing down. She also knew that she and Ruby had been growing closer together over the last six months whilst she and Yang had done nothing but grow apart.
That needed to change.
She could start that process right here. Melanie was as eager for a good fight as she was, and she knew this. She could challenge the twinless twin (she could already hear the normally white dressed girl nagging at her about how 'Twinless' wasn't a word) to a friendly spar, offer her the chance to train under her wing when she inevitably woops her ass like she did in the Lightbright (the name of Junior's club) all those months ago, and then use her connection to Ruby to get back her connection with her sister. She could repair her bond with Ruby, and she got to use training as an excuse to take her frustrations out on Melanie with a good few matches, just like back in the first few months of Beacon, and definitely like back in Signal (before the Patch Massacre).
It was fool proof!
And so, moving to put her plan in motion, she called out to the woman on her mind, "Oi! Melanie!" said girl turned her head towards her. Perfect, "Remember me, the one who beat your ass? You want to go and grab a rematch sometime soon? Settle our old debts in the training grounds until we're black and fucking blue?"
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
…
"Who're you?"
Yang blinked once. Twice. Thrice. Melanie stared at her.
"...It's me," she flipped her goggles up and pulled her mask down, "Yang."
"..."
"Yang Xiao Long?"
"..."
"From Team RXOR?"
"..."
"Ruby's sister?"
"...Ruby has a sister?"
Yang reeled her head back. Had she... had Melanie really forgotten that fact about her?
…Had Ruby?
"I-I'm Yang," don't gob. Don't gob in front of someone, "Yang Xiao Long."
"...Eh?"
Her eye twitched, "I'm the one who beat your ass and trashed your bar!"
"...Oh! The blonde bimbo bitch."
Yang's saw red. She threw herself up and began to march towards Melanie with a stomp in her step, "What the fuck did you just-"
"Hey!" one of the Crimson Guardsmen called out, and suddenly Yang was looking down the barrel of a gun, "Stand down, now!"
With a flash of panic across her face, Yang threw her arms up in surrender and backed off, stepping back from Melanie and sitting back next to the broken Gunships. The others around her were tense and worried.
"...I don't have time for this," Melanie rolled her eyes as she spun herself around, "I have to get back to work."
"Don't you-"
But it was too late. Melanie was marching off with her two Crimson Guardsmen in tow, and all that Yang could do was watch as she turned around a broken Rio-class cargo shuttle that was being cut open and gutted, and disappeared from her sight.
…That... had not gone how she thought it would.
Yang let herself fall lax onto the ground as the workers around her sighed, relaxed, and got back to work, the sounds of welding and wrenches twisting and turning around her filling her ears once more.
Her plan had failed before it had even begun...
…
Dammit...
Yang kicked the ground uselessly, and then forced herself back into work. The dream of being with her sister again slowly slipped further and further away.
Dammit...
To say that Nora's life after the Surge and return from Jewel had changed was too simple an answer.
It had changed so much, but at the same time it hadn't changed at all.
Let her explain:
When she and the others of those who had gone to Atlas and Jewel had returned to Beacon, they had found the city of Vale in ruins and rubble, but worse than that they had found it without any form of government or organisation overlooking the entire city. Crime was rampant, and even with the Beacon Militia stepping in to attempt to film the vacuum of power, there were still gangs and crooks attempting to take advantage of the chaos.
That was where she and the Crimson Guard came in.
The Crimson Guard were the military police of not only the city, but also Vale's outlying settlements and instillations. They were mostly made up of newly trained recruits and levies, as well as former SWAT and police officers on top of reserve soldiers and militiamen, but they were also the most numerous of the three Guards and made up the bulk of their forces. Adorned in the reds and whites of their Guard and armed with the most basic of weaponry, the Crimson Guard primarily specialised in crowd control and riot suppression, as well as the regular duties that a police officer had to fulfil, such as responding to one-one-two calls and making arrests.
However, that didn't mean that there wasn't a police force down on the ground. Chief Raymond (was that his first name or last name? Nora had no idea) ran a small force of official officers, but they only numbered in the few dozen now. Most of the conscripted police officers from before the Surge had either been killed during the Battle of Vale, deserted their posts, or joined up with the Crimson Guard. Those that were left in the city force were those that were more loyal to Raymond and his ideals than to Beacon or the council. Luckily those ideals meant protecting the people of Vale, so the Beacon Militia and the Crimson Guard would work with them to keep the people of the city safe and in check.
But the white and red uniforms tended to alert those criminals that the hand of the law was present and gave them the warning that they needed to slink back into the darkness from whence they came from. The armour and gear of the Crimson Guard made them stick out like a sore thumb, not to mention the Beacon Police Droids that they worked with, so a new approach to weeding out potential threats and criminals was needed of them.
And that was where Nora and Ren came into the picture.
They were Undercovers, a sect of the Crimson Guard that had its agents dressed in civilian clothing and accessories, and sent out on their own patrols across the city. Their noncombative appearances made them resemble regular passer-by's more than enforcers of the law, and that would make potential criminals lax around them, or even make them think that they had the opportunity to carry out their crimes in front of them, or even on them.
They would always be disappointed by the end of it.
(At least, they would be if their Obsidian Guard watchmen let them.)
Nora couldn't help but feel like this sect that she and Ren were a part of was a little... what was the word? Dragonian? No, draconian. She couldn't help but feel like she was enforcing a draconian law onto the people of Vale and turning the city into a surveillance state. However, Jaune and the rest of High Command had deemed it a 'Necessary evil', as they so put it, and so the order was given and the unit was formed, and she had been pushed into it because of her 'Approachable attitude', as the recruiters had had it.
Really, she had been approached because she and Ren had complained about being in separate units (she was locked away in Beacon whilst she trained her Winter Maiden powers, and he was locked away in the Farmlands) and not being able to be together (Ren in his stoicism, and Nora in her more passionate way of expression), and their Fearless Leader had pulled some strings to get them in the same unit.
(Isn't that corruption? a part of Nora's mind whispered to her, but she banished the thought.)
But it was only for a few patrols. For the most part Nora would have to stay in Beacon to keep training with the abilities of the Winter Maiden, with Ren now at her side, but they would be able to go out on occasion (under close watch from hidden Obsidian Guardsmen) and patrol the streets alongside the other undercovers and Crimson Guard.
Mentally, she rewound herself back to something that she had said previously. 'Winter Maiden', as in a mythical figure from the old fairy tales, as legendary as the likes of Azul Primus and his White Fang, the Animal God, Sulphur and Omega, Danse Dans Les Ombres, and even the Brother Gods themselves.
She had all thought it was fake. Not real. Just hearsay passed on and lost to Mistralian Whispers over the eons of their existence. She had never believed in a god, or gods in general. How could a god exist and allow her to suffer in the dirt and squalor for so much of her life without doing anything to stop it? How could they let it happen, and how could she believe in a deity that allowed it to happen?
But now, after everything that had happened in Solitas, and all the revelations that had come afterwards... Salem and Ozpin/Ozma, the Relics made by the Brother Gods, the existence of the Brother Gods themselves, Salem's immortality, what would happen when all the Relics were brought together, either by Ozpin or Salem, and now...
Now she was a Winter Maiden, something that she thought was nothing more than a myth.
That was one hell of a revelation that she had never thought would happen, and it had sparked a crisis of faith that she never thought that she would have. If the gods were real, then what? They allowed her to suffer for nothing when they could've intervened? From what she had learnt from both Jaune and his talks with the Daughter, they seemed like the type.
If Salem summoned back the gods, all life on Remnant would be destroyed.
If Ozpin summoned back the gods, all life on Remnant would be enslaved.
The gods might be real, but they were not worthy of her worship.
They never would be.
But holding the title of Winter Maiden was one thing. Mastering the powers of a Maiden was another thing entirely.
Nora had spent much of the last three months since getting used to them and keeping a lid on the abilities that she had been... gifted... during the Battle of Mantle. She had lost count of the amount of times that she had almost blown up the training rooms inside of Beacon Academy (and then the times that she hadn't. Those were fun days), and she had stopped counting the amount of times that she had summoned a tornado and flown herself into a wall after the first twenty each.
Three months later, and she still hadn't mastered them like Cinder Ella had gained mastery over her syphoned Fall Maiden powers - and then the Winter Maiden before Nora inherited it - or the Daughter with her own Fall Maiden abilities. Cinder had been preparing and training for the Maiden powers for years, surely, and the Daughter had been using hers for who knows how long.
Nora? She'd had access to hers for a few months. There was no way that she'd be able to master them in such a short amount of time. It just wasn't possible.
Anyways, that was what had changed. Well, most of it at least.
What hadn't changed, though, was that she and Ren were together. Like always. In a world consumed by uncertainty and war, it was rare for anyone to have any kind of comfort, but she had found hers in her lover.
Lover. Boyfriend. That was a relatively new title that she had given Ren, despite them making it official during their fight in Amity three months ago (that was one hell of a way to start a relationship, let me tell you), but honestly? Their relationship wasn't any different than what they had been doing before? They still slept in the same room together, they still went on walks and patrols together, hell they had even been sleeping together and fucking together before the Surge, when the Initiation Massacre came to pass and they tried to disguise their affection for each other as a purely transactional not-relationship friends with benefits thing, so that wasn't any different from before.
Their relationship... just was. They were the same as usual, standing side by side, hand in hand, and Nora was loving every moment of it as much as Ren was.
At least it was peaceful out tonight. Even with the all the gangs and criminals running about the town, they still stuck to the quiet and shadows, and hardly ever harangued either Ren or her (they always regretted it when they did). That didn't stop Ren and Nora from weeding them out of their hidey holes and leaving them battered and bloody for the Crimson Guard to pick up, but still, it was almost tranquil out tonight, in the broken streets of Vale.
Almost.
"Hey sweetie~ You looking for a good time tonight~"
"No."
Nora smiled as Ren turned down the woman on the side of the street. She saw the woman in question, white skin and hair and clad in skimpy clothes and shorts and a fur coat, roll her eyes at the boy with a smile as she and her partner, ditsy looking and in velvets and reds, began to approach him, "Aw, don't be like that baby boy~ Why don't we just-"
Time for Nora to intervene, "He's mine. Get your own before I break your legs," she didn't bother to hide the growl in her voice as her eyes flared lightly.
That got the two women to back off. With raised hands and a look of surrender across them, the pair backed off and moved back to their corner, looking away from Nora and Ren as one of them pulled out a cigarette and the other looked at her fellow with an expression of disgust.
Nora smiled, "That's better," and then the two of them moved off.
Prostitutes. That's what they were. Sex workers. Simple people trying to make a living in the broken streets of Vale, and having to turn to sex work in order to do it. They had chosen their corner well, as the overhead lamp above them helped to cast them in a sort of ethereal state of being, glowing under the faint light as if they were beings from another world, casting shadows over their figures and curves and assets. Their frilled clothes and accessories definitely worked to colour them in liveliness and sexual energy, the neon blues and greens and pinks assaulting her eyes, along with the tattoos that covered them, as they leant forwards to show off their busts underneath their baggy shirts and curled their hands around their hips and bit their lips at every man or woman that passed them by.
Or at least the former of them did, in her skimpy clothes and fur coat, as she puffed out a cloud of smoke from the cigarette in hand and winked at a pair of passing gentlemen that hurried their way back home. The other of the pair, in her red velvet dress, was much more nervous and apprehensive. She couldn't have made it more clear that she didn't want to be there. Not really.
When they were younger and moving around the world together, Nora and Ren spent a year in a settlement under the protection of the Bandit Confederation (an alliance of raider clans and mercenary factions that had bended together to carve their own empire out of the wildlands of Anima). There, they stayed in a children's home run by a caretaker that called herself Auntie Satou. She was a weird sort of woman – airheaded, oblivious to a lot of things, and blunt with what she was saying – but she had been a good woman to them. A real caring sort of woman that, while she wasn't very good at parenting and nurturing them, she sure as hell tried her best.
Nora respected her for that.
But there was one thing that 'Auntie' Satou had never been good at, and that was keeping them oblivious to her job as a sex worker for the Bandit Confederation, and that she was using the money from it to fund the children's home because she didn't have any other skills needed for official lines of employment, and, admittedly, wasn't bright enough to try and find them (she had been much like the children at the home, lost and orphaned by Grimm or others, and lived without any chance of a proper education. Remnant was cruel to those who didn't live in the right places and had the right opportunities). She was not as subtle about it as she had hoped to be, and it didn't help that her work tended to... follow her home.
A lot of modern day media tended to portray sex workers as either a completely disposable line of work - something to point and laugh at or treat as comic relief - or as something that was completely unproblematic, as if there was nothing to be worried about with the profession that they had either chosen or been forced into.
None of that was true.
Sex workers were treated like absolute shit. The comic cliché of prostitutes being disposable? It wasn't funny. Nora lost count of the amount of times that Auntie Satou had returned to the children's home with a bruised eye, cut lip, and a limp in her step. No matter what reason that someone had for entering what many called 'The Oldest Profession' would be bullied and whored out and degraded by their clients, and then marginalised and socially ostracised by the rest of society for what they did. They would be violated and raped by those who thought that they were easy pickings, kept trapped in the trade by their handlers so that they could milk them for as much money as possible, forced to bend to the desires of their clients no matter how degenerate they were, and had to pretend that they were okay with it all when really they felt dirty and violated and left ruined by it all. An if they tried to pursue legal action to try and escape the trade and their clients? They would be laughed out the doors. In fact, because prostitution was illegal in some places, such as Vale, that meant that police officers, though arresting sex workers, could abuse them in their own ways in the process, using their status as officers and the sex workers as detained suspects to have their ways with them.
It didn't matter what reasons one had for going into the sex trade; they would be seen as dirt and treated as such.
Nora and Ren left that children's home after a single year. It was on the same night they left that they learnt that Auntie Satou had died. She had been killed by one of her clients.
Nora had wept for two months straight. Auntie Satou didn't deserve to die. She was a silly woman without any proper education, all too trusting of others, and not terribly aware of the dangers of her profession despite the injuries that she gathered after so many sessions, but she was a fucking sweet woman and she didn't deserve to die like that.
No one did.
She had hoped that someone would save her, like in those same stories that treated sex workers like trash. She had hoped that someone - a Hunter, a hero, anyone - would step in and stop the bad guys and save her.
But no one ever did.
Nearby, out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a thug in a bandana and hoodie slipping out of an alleyway and approaching the two women on the corner, a knife in hand. Neither Nora or Ren intervened. They didn't need to. A second after he emerged, the black coloured gauntlet of an Obsidian Guardsman grabbed him by the throat and pulled him into a building that had a chunk missing out of the side that was covered in scaffolding. Another two seconds later, the faint sound and flash of a stun blast echoed through the seemingly empty building, and she knew that the thug was out for the count.
She shivered at the thought of what that man could've done to those two girls. He could've killed them. Hell, he could've done a lot worse.
She was glad that she and Ren kept away from all the sex trade. Faunus sex workers and those of colour, as well as migrants and transsexual people, were at greater risk of battery and sexual violence than others, and she just happened to be a transsexual Faunus who had her wings ripped off. Hell, she hadn't even had bottom surgery (yet, maybe. She was still very uncertain to herself in that regard), so her boy parts were still hanging around down there. That wouldn't have flown for a lot of clients. If they had seen a sex worker with, as they saw it, the 'Wrong gender', they would've raised hell and back in one way or another.
It was cruel, but those clients were cruel people.
Heh, it was funny really. Her entire life had been one of disguises and changes, of new identities and states of being born through her own suffering. It was almost comical, honestly.
Her left leg ached for just a moment. She sighed in response. She had been treating her arthritis for the last three months since the Surge, but even then it still hurt and felt stiff to move.
She wished that Eri was here with her. The little drone that she had made (as a present for Pyrrha after the Initiation Massacre, for saving their Fearless Leader's (her minion in the Weirdo Club) life) was cooped up in Beacon, helping to assemble new crafts and weapons in the factories and recycling pits, and working on those prototypes that Mei Dei had been so insistent on. Nora missed her so much.
She felt Ren grab her hand and give her a comforting squeeze. She smiled at him. He smiled at her.
Behind them, she, with her heightened hearing as a Faunus, could hear a pair of Obsidian Guards emerging from their houses over the endless rainstorm that pounded at the overhead street roof above them. She turned her head and saw three of them approaching the two sex workers on the corner. She hoped they treated them right, or at least the one in the red velvet. She clearly didn't want to be there.
She watched them lead the two workers away. From another alleyway, an Obsidian Guardsman with a red pauldron over their left spaulder (designating them as a commanding officer. Black was squad leader, white was sergeant, blue was lieutenant, red was captain, and double red pauldrons on both shoulders was commander or commando. The same applied for the other two Guards within the Beacon Militia) stepped out from behind a pile of rubbish bags stacked lazily atop one another and a rusting dumpster that leaked what she hoped was water from a wide hole that a family of rats scurried in and out of.
She morbidly wondered what was inside the dumpster. Nowadays it wasn't uncommon to find a rotting body in one of them.
Or two.
Or many.
There just wasn't enough time or men to bury all their dead. There never seemed to be.
The Obsidian Guard captain walked over to them, and Nora put on her usual smile for him. Some days it was exhausting to keep up the usual cheer that she used to carry with her so easily (she used to be so eager to look at all the good things in the world over her admitted cynicism, both the self and the outwards. Nowadays she just felt tired). The sound of thunder clapped overhead, beyond the creaking roof built between the buildings above. Water ran down the fractured roads and chipped drains. In that broken building from before, a family of two women (sisters? Cousins? Wives?) and a child that looked nothing like them (an orphan?) hunkered down in the old room as trails of water pooled through the cracked foundations, tools and bags at their sides.
This city no longer belonged to the prospered and prosperous. Now it belonged to the scavengers and salvagers, the desperate and the depraved, the criminal and the crook.
"It's time to head back to base," the captain said with a lack of pleasantry in their- his voice, judging from the sound of it behind the harsh muffled, electronic warble over it. Obsidian Guardsmen tended to be curt in their delivery, and operated with a lack of pleasantry in them. Fitting for their role as black ops and covert operations specialists.
Even so, Nora found them to be creepy.
"Do me a favour, will you?" Nora tilted her head back without looking, "That sex worker in the red velvet? Be nice to her, will you? She doesn't want to be out here."
They probably wouldn't, though. Nora wanted to say that, but she held her tongue. Nowadays, with Ren at her side as her official boyfriend (she tended to squeal still at the thought), she was less afraid to express her inner cynicism and negative thoughts about the things around her, rather than just keep that same old smile plastered over her face. However, even she knew that there were times to put a tap on the breaks and keep her thoughts to herself.
The Obsidian Guardsman commander turned his head to the corner where the two sex workers once stood, before turning his head back to Nora and giving a nod.
Nora's smile turned a little more genuine.
Reviewer response time:
MiltiaMasker: Yeah, I do remember watching some of Starship Troopers a long time before getting to this point, so I will admit that I pulled some influence from the propaganda reels in that film.
Average Pizza Fan: I do try my best to address any points that someone raises as long as they're respectable and constructive, so thanks a lot for that. Feel free to bring up any other points for me to address if you can find them.
Guest: Yeah, I made it to feel both a little humorous, as well as cheesy and kind of cringy as well, but uneasy? I'm glad that I invoked that reaction, as you're probably going to feel it a lot more in the coming chapters...
ZACK2357: ¡Muchas gracias por las amables palabras! Me gusta entrar en detalles sobre estas cosas, de lo más grande a lo más pequeño, así que gracias por gustarme entrar en esos aspectos de este universo. Con suerte, este capítulo también te dará esas mismas buenas vibraciones.
(Another) Guest: Ominous? Really? In such a light-hearted fluffy story such as this one? I never would've thought!
ReDestroBo: Yeah, it's an unfortunate symptom of acquiring power. I'm glad that I was able to nail it and give you that uncanny sensation. Good practice for the future!
smolhauz: Well, it's good to know that you're willing to keep your opinions neutral. I've seen too many authors on this site complain about all sorts of things about RWBY, some founded, and some not so much. And thank you for all the kind words! I do agree that this whole storyline started off really rocky to begin with, but I like to think that I've got my bearings now! And if you really want to write a 20K one-shot for this story, then I say go for it! I'll read it! Read it and favourite it! And don't worry, Blake has a very important part to play in all of this in the very near future...
smolhauz (again): Nah, it'll be fine! No worries! What on Remnant could go wrong...?
And here we are, a new chapter straight out of the oven! Expect to see more of this next chapter as I continue to set up the new Vale that we're stepping into!
One of the most common complaints about the beginning of the last phase of this story was that I threw Jaune and his allies into the fray almost immediately without much build-up, so this is my way to try and pre-emptively change that and adequately put in the foreshadowing that we need to really make the situations that I'm going to throw these people into pop!
So, yeah, I'm going to be spending the next chapter or so setting the scene and establishing the facts before jumping in, so that means that the chapters are going to be a little bit shorter than what we're used to. In fact, I'd go as far to say that we might start seeing more 10K chapters in the future as a usual word limit, and not the exception to a rule.
Hope that that's alright with you guys!
Anyways, before I go, shout out to Garbage Man over on Ao3 who left about three comments on Phase One and leaving some of the most audacious things I've read in quite a while! I mean he made some good points about the series which I went back and corrected, but when you start calling me a 'Steven Universe Rainbow Leftist Multicultural LGBT Sheep Weakling' (he would really not like what I did with Nora if he ever got past chapter twelve before quitting) and saying that just because I disagreed with what the people of my nation did to the people of China in the Opium War, that I'm suddenly a traitor to my country and the 'Western Empire' and a sympathiser to the 'Dark third world races' who want to take my tribe and women... that's kind of when you lose any right to speak.
I literally can't make this shit up. Go check it out for yourself.
Anyways, with all of that said and done, stay safe, stay healthy, don't be racist or homophobic, and I shall see you all next time!
Titanmaster 117 out!