Main theme: Enemy by Imagine Dragons and J.I.D
Arc theme: Can't Trust Anyone by Jeff Williams
Theme: Unseen from the Destiny 2: The Witch Queen Soundtrack

Trust is not a right
It is a privilege
To be earned by the deserving

Uncredited haiku, written supposedly during the days of the Great Hunt

"Did you read Cipher's latest entry?"

"You mean last week's? Yeah, about those ex-White Wolf people trying out for the Acolytes, right?"

"No no no, I mean the newest one. The one that they released last night?"

"What? Really? I thought that they said that they were going on a break."

"Yeah, well, apparently they were able to squeeze out another entry of The Hunter's Tale in between whatever they're doing with their time."

"Huh, talk about commitment."

"So, have you read it?"

"Have I read the- have I read the entry that was released last night that I've only just heard about as of five seconds ago."

"Seven."

"What?"

"Eight seconds ago."

"You're an- no, I haven't read it. Gods above, why do I still hang out with you?"

"Because you love me."

"Yeah, I do... right, just show me the damn entry."

"It's really good."

"Yeah, well, they usually are."

Neon couldn't help but preen at the comments that the two passer-by's in the corridor outside the kitchen. When she had begun to write those anonymous online entries under the penname of Cipher, she had done it as a way to pass the time - as a way to gather her thoughts and put everything in her mind into words. She had found that writing it all down was the best way for her to deal with the stresses that had come before (everyone had their ways of handling stress and grief), and when she had presented herself with the choice of putting it out onto the CCTnet, she had found nothing wrong with doing so. No one would know that it was her if she put herself under a different name than her own, anyways, and her ghost writer in Velvet would never tell anyone. Hell, she didn't even know that it was Neon sending her the logs to be edited after she found that Pyrrha made for a bad advisor.

She had no idea that her blogs would've blown up as much as they had. Apparently people really liked her works, and they were calling for more, so Neon continued to write more logs and release them to the public.

And they loved them all.

It made Neon feel really happy. She knew that the people of Beacon loved to hear her works, but there had been one that she had wanted to impress with her works.

Jaune Arc.

The one that had saved them.

The one that she loved.

She had hoped to impress him with her logs, make him gasp in awe at the hero that she had helped to show him to be, at how she had expressed the greatness of his accomplishments. He would see all that she had done for him and the legacy that he would leave behind.

He would see what she had made for him, and he would be proud.

But when she discovered his opinion of her works, she had been... she had been saddened by his reaction.

He found them dreadful? Embarrassing? Like cheap fan fiction?

She had made him into the great hero of her works, and he had been disheartened by them? She had put so much work into them, and he disapproved of them?

It had left her in a state of depression for a long while. She had put her heart and soul into her work as Cipher, and he hadn't liked any of it.

She hadn't updated those logs for a long time.

But then Jaune Arc was taken to Atlas, and the next time that she saw him, he was on the screen telling everyone to stand up and fight against the armies of the Ascendant Court that were banging on their walls, and she found her love, and her need to chronicle to the tales of the accomplishments of Beacon, renewed once more.

She would improve. She would get better. She would make something that he would be proud of, and she didn't care how long it would take.

It would all be worth it in the end.

Still, it was always nice to hear people compliment her works, even if her hero couldn't find the time to do so (Flynt would say that she had the biggest hero crush he'd ever seen. She would say that she had a medium sized crush). In times of war and poverty such as the one that she lived in now, it always helped to have a good pick-me-up from time to time, just to keep her head out of the waves of maudlin energy around her.

(She should know. She'd lived through enough times of war and poverty to tell.)

Plus, it made the endless tide of dishes that she needed to wipe much more tolerable.

Neon hummed in frustration as she tried to scrub away the offending stain off the equally offending plate. So far her entire day, barring a few breaks, had been dominated by dish cleaning and pan wiping, as had it been for the entire week previous. She had long since lost count of the amount of cutlery and glasses and the likes that she had been forced to polish time after time again, and now it was finally beginning to wear on her.

Could these people please stop using so much damn crap when cooking and eating and just use their hands? Remember when their ancestors lived in caves and ate their food off the floor without any care for hygiene at all? Those were the days.

She grimaced. The plate stared back at her with a grimace of its own (in her mind, at least. It was a big mean frowny face from a big mean, er, meanie).

The stain refused to be cleaned.

"No matter how much you glare at the plate, it's not going to clean itself."

Her current company wasn't helping.

"It might go quicker," Neon didn't look Blake's direction as she continued to scrub at the plate in her hands, "If you gave me a helping hand," or paw, she humorously thought to herself. She herself was a cat Faunus so she was allowed to make that joke.

Was that how it worked? Neon liked to think that that was how it worked.

"You're the one being punished, not me," Neon swore that she heard a hint of smugness in Blake's voice, "I don't have to do anything."

"Then why are you here?" she couldn't help but ask.

Blake said nothing.

This time, Neon did look Blake's way. Her fellow cat Faunus (she no longer wore a bow across her ears, since the people down in King's Rising below needed as much spare clothing and fabric as possible) was dressed in her casual clothes, that being a purple crop top, with her midriff exposed (a very fine looking midriff, in Neon's personal opinion. Needed more abs, though. Forget pansexual, Neon was ab-sexual) and a black leather jacket over her shirt. A pair of black trousers hugged her legs and ended at her ankles, exposing them as a pair of flat-bottomed black shoes covered her feet and stayed still on the floor.

She really liked the black in Blake's outfit. It was a good contrast against her pale skin and purple crop top. Still, Neon remembered pulling her and Ruby's sister out of the fire during the Initiation Massacre, and she had a lot of white in her outfit to contrast the black. She then remembered that after the Initiation Massacre, she had changed out the white in her outfit for grey. Now she was wearing almost all black clothes. That wasn't to say that it didn't look good on her, because it did, but still, it was a eyebrow raising change in fashion.

In Neon's opinion, at least. She liked to consider herself as something of a fashion diva. Not as much as that Coco girl, sure, but she still liked to think herself as one.

Neon quirked an eyebrow up at Blake's silence. She then shot her fellow Faunus a one-sided smirk, "What's the matter, Kitty? Cat got your tongue?"

Blake's slight smugness gave way to a glare, "I don't appreciate those jokes."

"Is that right?"

"I don't like those jokes. They're mocking. They're degrading."

"Well, if you can't take the heat then don't step into the fire."

"I'm being serious, Neon."

"Well I'm not," Neon shrugged, "I can be just as catty as you, you know."

"Now you're just mocking me."

"Like you were with me just now. Doesn't feel good, does it?" Neon lifted the same plate from before up, that stain still there, "Now are you going to help me or not?"

Blake went silent once more. Neon figured as much.

She went back to washing the plates at her side, scrubbing the sponge against the plate in order to get the stain off. It didn't work. She dropped it into the sink full of water beneath her, let it soak, and then pulled it out of the water to scrub again. No luck. Time to break out the ball of steel wool.

Ten minutes into rubbing the stain away with the steel wool, and with her unexpected intruder in the kitchen constantly watching her, Neon heard Blake say to herself, "This is degrading..."

She blinked, and looked at her, "What was that?" she heard what Blake had said perfectly, what with her advanced Faunus senses and all. She just wanted to hear Blake say it.

"I said that this is degrading," Blake said much louder this time.

"How so?" she asked as she went back to scrubbing at the stain on the plate.

"You're a Faunus. You're a warrior... and yet you've been forced to scrub plates and pans as if it's somehow your station."

"So are Jaune, Melanie, and Ruby," Neon pointed out, seeing where the conversation could be going but choosing not to point it out.

"And the reason that you were put in here?" Blake carried on, not acknowledge it, "They put you here because you wanted to go enjoy yourself for a single night. Hardly seems fair."

"I thought that too as well," Neon went, quickly adding in before Blake could continue, "At first, at least. I guess I'm still sour about it, but... hey, we broke protocol. It is what it is."

"Is that what you believe?"

"Can't help but."

"You were trialled and sentenced to this because you wanted to-"

"Is this going somewhere, Blake?" Neon looked at her with a furrowed brow, "Because from the sounds of it, you're trying to make it a race thing."

Blake rose her own brow, "Isn't it?"

"You tell me."

"Where are Arc, Malachite, and Rose?"

"Jaune, Melanie, and Ruby," Neon corrected, "Are in separate kitchens, performing their own duties."

"Cleaning."

"Yep," she popped the P.

"You sure about that?"

"Are you?"

Blake ignored the question, "How do you know they're not running around and forcing others of our kind in their place for them?"

"How do you know they're not right in those kitchens right now carrying out their punishments?"

Blake looked away. She didn't blink, "Just speculating."

"Well stop. It's bordering on treasonous," before Blake could throw in another comment, Neon added, "And besides, Ruby? Forcing someone else to take her place, and doing so with a racially motivated stance? Really? You served under her in Team RSBL, remember? You should know that that's not how she works."

Blake raised an eyebrow as she looked back to her, "Oh really? You think so?"

"Well, yeah, obviously. Why don't you?"

"I don't know, Rose and the rest of High Command have been becoming a bit more... ruthless nowadays. More willing to make hard calls."

"Necessary evils," Neon justified, even if she felt uncomfortable with them.

"If that's what you call them," Blake said, "And by the way, you're a hypocrite."

That got Neon to stop scrubbing for just a moment, "The hell do you mean?"

"You called me out for not trusting Rose despite being on her team," Blake mused, "And yet you were on the same team as Malachite, and what the hell did you do to her at the beginning of the school year?"

Neon stared at her. She bit the inside of her lip. She knew what she did. She knew very well.

At the beginning of the school year, a month or so after they had walked out of the Initiation Massacre, she and Melanie had an argument. Scratch that, they had a verbal beatdown of each other, and Neon had said some things that she regretted to this day. She'd called Melanie a tyrant, a terrible leader who didn't care about anyone but herself. She hadn't talked to Melanie much after that, and they barely got along at all nowadays. Neither of them had even tried to repair the bonds that they had broken then, and Neon didn't know if it was even worth trying to apologise to her for it. She doubted that it would change anything anyways.

Someday there was going to be a reckoning for what she had done that day, and for what she had said. Someday someone on her team was going to hold her accountable for the things that she had did and said.

Just not today. Not while the world was in chaos.

Still though... she regretted what she had said to Melanie, but... in a way, she didn't. It sounded cruel of her, but...

She'd lived under bad leaders before. Cruel ones. The memories of everything in Mantle - everything that she had done, everything that had been done to her - flashed in her mind. Ironwood's rule of Mantle had left her in poverty and destitution. The crowds that she had drifted into were their own brand of evil, and...

And she had seen those same things in Melanie.

Maybe she was just projecting. She probably was, but she still saw them. Melanie always seemed to have an air of ruthlessness around her. As if she was willing to do anything - anything - to achieve her goals and justify them. Her brief interaction with her former team leader back in the old settlement of Communo proved as much to her. Add on to what Neon considered to be poor management of her own teammates back when they were Team MNCC, and, well, she could see the signs in there.

Melanie had a corruptive aura to her, one that threatened to leech out and corrode everything around her. She was a woman born from a dark place, and from the looks of it she had never left it.

Again, maybe she was projecting, but she had been under bad leaders before, and she didn't want to take the chances.

That left Jaune and Ruby. Jaune was a given in being a good leader, seeing as he had led them out of the Emerald Forest and the Grimm Tidings, brought them victory against the Choir of Silver in the Sleeping City, and then saving the whole goddamn world back during the Surge when he brought Atlas crashing down onto the Ascendant Court's powerful dreadnaught.

He saved them. He saved her, and became her hero (and love). He was a hero, through and through. Simple as that.

…Except that it wasn't, because she remembered meeting him again in Jewel over two weeks after the Surge, during their brief fight against the girl named May Zedong, who had been possessed by her single silver eye and summoning a small army of Silver Grimm to combat her and the rest of the first years (that was a story and a half, it was). During that brief fight, Ruby had offered to end the poor girl's life, and Jaune...

He had almost given her the go-ahead.

It had taken Neon's insistence to remind Jaune that May was as much a victim as the rest of them and not doing anything of her own free will at that moment. It had been Neon who had to remind Jaune that they were supposed to save innocent people's lives, not take them. Melanie and the others hadn't stood up to him and told him that what he was doing was wrong (and Melanie even agreed with it later on, further adding to her dislike of the woman), and so it had to be Neon to tell him that what he was doing was wrong.

And Jaune did listen to her. He did save May, and he did it without any loss of life at all, but still, it didn't sit well with her.

And that left Ruby.

Something about Ruby always felt... off. As if there was something not right about her. Neon didn't know how to explain it, but back in the Sleeping City, the sudden shift from meek and unconfrontational to murderous and bloodthirsty felt so unnatural to her. It was like a switch was flung in her brain, and Neon wasn't sure if it had ever been flipped off.

Neon wasn't sure about Ruby. She just didn't know how to feel about her, and she was certain, somehow, that putting her in a position of power was a bad idea.

She didn't know why exactly, but she just knew it.

"I made mistakes in the past," Neon said to Blake, "And I intend to make up for them one day."

"Once all of this is over?"

"You read my mind," Neon's tail swished behind her, "What about you?"

"What?" Blake asked immediately.

"Do you have anything you regret?"

"...A few."

That was the first time that Blake ever seemed honest today.

"Like what?"

"Do I have to answer this?"

"Well, I've been so forthcoming with you since you decided to barge in and make my business your business, so I would like to think that you do."

Blake said nothing.

Neon couldn't help but smirked, "Someone's catty today."

"Stop making those stupid jokes. I told you that I don't like them."

Neon turned to her and smile coyly, "As long as it pisses you off, then no."

Blake glared. Neon smiled sweetly. Blake turned her head away.

Neon went back to scrubbing at the plate, "Why are you even here? So far you've been no help at all. You've just stared at me and tried to make everything a race thing. Like cleaning plates."

"But what if-"

"It isn't."

"If the three that were punished alongside you were really punished, then they'd be here alongside you."

"Beacon's a big place. It's got more than one kitchen now."

"You think that?"

"I know that."

"Funny how things work like that-"

"Truth is, you must think you're really trying to make a point here, don't you?" Neon couldn't help but say, "Like you're re-educating little ole me about this and that, but the truth is you're making a point about nothing. From what it sounds like to me, you're trying to make a point out of no point at all."

Blake said nothing for a long while, before going, "Pretty sure Melanie would have a field day with what you just said."

Neon snorted. It was the first funny thing that Blake had said during all their talk, "Yeah, she would. Grammar and all."

"You must be a riot at parties."

"All the girls and boys that I've taken to bed say the same thing."

She could feel Blake's glare on the back of her neck, "You are insolent."

"And you are intrusive," Neon cut back with, "And would I have got the same reaction out of you if I said the opposite of what I said? If I sleep with a bunch of people I'm a whore in need of mocking. If I don't, I'm a prude in need of mocking. Am I right?"

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't need to."

"I'm trying to be serious."

"So am I."

"I'm trying to have a serious conversation."

"No you're not," Neon chastised, "You're trying to convince me that me being punished for sneaking out during a mission along with three humans - humans, might I add? - somehow has something to do with my race. I've been around people like that before - people on both sides of the argument who have tried to use my identity as a Faunus to judge me as something that I am not. I've been in those camps before, and I know the tactics that they use. And Blake? You make for a poor tactician."

She could feel Blake's stare for a long while, before she said, "You were in groups that desired the subjugation of the Faunus?"

"I was under a city full of them," Atlas made for a poor occupier in Mantle, "And I've been in groups that demanded the supremacy of the Faunus. All of them were wrong, and I got out of them while I still could."

"Is that what you think?"

Neon had had enough of this conversation. She turned her head towards Blake and saw her questioning look. She shot the onyx-haired Faunus a question of her own, "Who the hell are you? The other Faunus I've talked to in this school have all been cool with their lot in life, relatively speaking, but you... you seem like you're looking for a fight. You're looking for an excuse to accuse someone of racism."

Blake shot Neon a glare. Neon shot her a glare of her own.

"So what the hell are you after?"

Blake said nothing. Neon sighed and turned back to the plate with the stain.

"You make it seem like Beacon is discriminatory when it's not. Things aren't that good for Faunus in Vale, yeah, but it's a lot better than a lot of other places on Remnant. Like Mistral, like Atlas, hell even like Vacuo. Things aren't perfect, but they're sure as hell a lot better than they were fifty years ago, when we were put in cages and sold to the rich human families and nobility as slave labour?"

She paused for effect.

"So please, stop trying to make everything an issue about race. We've got enough problems on our hands at the moment as it is, and we're still progressing as a people in gaining inequality. The last thing that we, the Faunus, need is a trigger-happy girl with a temper looking for fights which don't exist. I've been around people like that before, and it never ended well. I've seen people hijack our need for equality for their own ends, and it ended even worse for them."

"...Sounds like you've just given up."

Blake finally saw fit to leave, her business seemingly concluded. With a spin of her heel, she stomped out of the kitchen without another word, slamming the door closed behind her.

Neon frowned, and turned back to her plate with the annoying stain on it. Turned out that Blake had left a token of appreciation onto her plate as a wad of spit trailed down the porcelain disk.

She growled, and dipped the plate back into the sink of soapy water beneath her.

Who was Blake Belladonna?

And why the hell did she seem so familiar?

(She was probably just imagining it, because she swore that she heard Blake, under her breath, call her 'Stephanie Brown'.)

Leadpipe raked his tool through the wet soil beneath him as the rain continued to pelt against the glass frame of the warehouse-sized greenhouse around him. The blue, purple, and white Techion felt the artificial light seep through the gaps in his armour and through the optics behind his glowing red visor. It wasn't as good as natural light, and he suspected that the plants felt the same way as well. If what was left of his organic body could feel the overhead lights underneath the steel plates and wiring covering him, it would no doubt feel hot and uncomfortable, like a fork going over the skin.

Better than leaving the plants out to drown in the rain though.

The recent rainfalls had been torrential. Riverbanks and drains had been overflown and the streets without any shelter or drainage were constantly covered in a sheet of water. The shattered roads and buildings of the old city of Vale had been turned into a swampland of lakes and flooded underground sewers which had collapsed into themselves and left the surface above a maze of ruins and rubble. King's Rising was safe for the most part, at least, but the rest of the city, even in the newly developed areas, had to deal with collapsed sewers that created lakes of rainwater and old rotten sewage from cracked septic tanks that smelt like death and carried thousands of diseases with them. Vines and overgrowth was beginning to spread through the grooves and curves of the chipped stone and rusted metal of Vale.

The old city was being whittled away. If they weren't careful, the entirety of Vale might get swept away by the floodwaters.

He pushed his rake through the soil beneath him alongside a hundred other farmers. Nearby, he could hear his fellow Techion, a lumbering brute of a former Huntsman known as Harrower, gesturing to him and laughing, whilst the other former Hunters that were guarding him and the rest of the farmers, alongside a disapproving Flynt Coal and Jolie Kobal as they stood guard with the rest of the Crimson Guard in the facility. Whether they were disapproving of Harrower or himself, Leadpipe couldn't tell.

That wasn't to say that he wasn't used to it.

Leadpipe was used to a lack of respect. He didn't get much of it in Beacon, and he certainly didn't any after he left. His meekness and being part of RSBL before it all came crashing down didn't help, and his trying to end the confrontation between the various teams peacefully the night before the Sleeping City incident only served to degrade whatever credibility he still had by that point.

His friendship with Blake was a constant point of contention on top of that.

But when he decided to leave the Beacon Militia and live amongst the farmers trying to rebuild the farmlands under the constant rain and raids, whatever good will that he had garnered within Beacon itself dried and shrivelled up. 'Traitor', he had been called. 'Deserter'. 'Coward'.

He still went up to Beacon sometimes, just to keep in contact with Blake. But he wouldn't stay there long. It brought back too many bad memories.

He couldn't help it. Beacon wasn't the right place for him, before the Initiation Massacre and after. He didn't have the skills or courage to be a Hunter, and he had no interest in taking a life; all he wanted to do was save them. He had no skill in fighting, and he didn't want to. Not anymore. Not after everything that he had seen and been through.

He couldn't.

He just couldn't.

His rake pulled through the ground and shifted the soil, splitting it into rows and columns alongside the hundred other farmers within the giant greenhouse. Outside in the pouring rain, there seemed to be a commotion. He put it down to a wild animal or two. It happened a lot these days.

At least here he could be of use. He was always more of a farmer than a fighter. He had never even wanted to be a Huntsman in the first place. He had just come along with the rest of his chapter of Techions because of peer pressure. At least here his actual skills could be of use. At least here he was appreciated. At least here nobody asked him where on the spectrum he was.

At least here no one thought him anything less than what he was.

Let the others cajole him. Let them mock him and hate him. He was happy here with his new lot in life, and he didn't have to listen to those that wanted to call him evil for simply not wanting to fight anymore. He could stay here and farm, feed the cows and take care of the chickens, clean the barns and rake the growing few fields that they had.

He was happy here.

He was-

A red blast shot through the glass wall away from him and landed on his back.

-About to die.

Leadpipe landed on the floor from the force of the blow, smoke bellowing out of a wide hole of melting metal and sizzling slag in the wide metal pack that covered his back. The blast hadn't pierced through enough of the armour to damage his organic innards, but it was enough to keep him in the soil for a good few moments, rocking back and forth in place before the shellshock left him and he could turn his body to the side to see, through the panicking and screaming farmers, the one who had just shot at him.

A Choir of Silver raiding party.

There were two variants of Grimm to be found in the small crowd. One of them was the Disciple, the regular cannon fodder type Grimm that made up much of the Ascendant Court and Choir of Silver's armies. These Disciples were cloaked in silver drapes and patchwork shards of armour, their bodies frailer than before and their claws sharpened around the blunt weapons that they held in their hands.

The other type of Grimm was a new variant, clad in red patchy armour with silver lights covering it - most likely salvaged and reverse-engineered from Atlesian technology - were tall and imposing and roaring commands to their minions, big boxy weapons in their grasps which flashed with red light and held long bayonets at the bottom. They were the Deacons, a new rank of Grimm exclusive to the Choir of Silver.

They had appeared on the radar of the Beacon Militia by the time that Leadpipe had left the organisation a month ago. Apparently certain sects of the Choir of Silver remnants had been suffering from a lack of formal command structure due to their losses in the previous months, and since their ranks were made of mostly Disciples, these new ranks had been made to fill in that gap. The new Deacon rank within these sects (which was a terrible thing to consider, if there was unity between certain groups of the Choir of Silver. They would need to- not him. He wasn't part of the Beacon Militia anymore) were designed to fill in the ranks that the Barons and Scions of old had once filled, leading separate parties and bands of raiders and mercenaries on missions, and serving as frontline commanders and the first of a new line of ranking officers within the Choir.

There were other ranks as well, exclusive to the Choir of Silver. Leadpipe remembered, in Eri's intelligence report from the Sleeping City incident, that she had observed a drone-like Grimm similar to that of the Dragonfly drones used by Atlas. Closer inspection of them had revealed that they were actually metal frames with Grimm organs surgically placed within them, seemingly as a prototype for the Grimm Techion processes that Hephaestus, the current surviving leader of the Choir of Silver, would use in Atlas. These had been referred to by their fellows as the Punished, Grimm that had gone against the wishes of the Choir and had been mutilated for it.

Secondly, there was the Reverent, golden-clad Grimm that operated as the highest rated operators and commanders within the Choir of Silver remnants. Usually in charge of their own clans within these united sects, they served as overseers on important military operations within the Choir, and also acted as frontline generals and tier one operators for dangerous assignments.

Finally, there were the Chosen, Grimm Disciples that had been awarded for their zealousness to their beliefs and covered in ornate silver armour and armed with only melee weaponry, such as hardlight swords and shields. These Grimm were some of the most dangerous of the Choir of Silver, and were usually sent either in pairs or on their own to carry out the most difficult and suicidal missions of the cult. Fanatical in their devotion to the cause and with no ambitions beyond sharpening their blades and dying for the honour of the Choir, Chosen Grimm were the ultimate pinnacle of prestige within the Choir, and were regarded by everyone as living weapons all on their own.

Leadpipe was sure that there were other ranks that now existed within these sects of the Choir of Silver, but he knew better than to try and find out. He was a civilian now, and had no clearance to that kind of information. But even so, he knew that the fact that several Choir of Silver sects and factions had somehow, even loosely, united together to create these ranks was troubling to say the least. The Choir of Silver had already been a dangerous threat on their own back during the Battle in the Sleeping City, and Jaune had reported that Hephaestus and his remnant of the Choir had helped Cinder Ella and the Imperium to gain power in Atlas before fleeing before it all came crumbling down.

An alliance of Choir remnants was already bad news, but with Hephaestus out there, it made them all the more threatening. If the Beacon Militia didn't do anything soon, they might be looking at another Grimm civil war breaking out in the wildlands and city streets of Vale.

Why was he thinking all of this to himself?

Oh yeah, one of them was just about to kill him.

Leadpipe finally smacked himself out of his stupor as he looked up to see one of the Deacons staring down at him, a snarl leaving the six vents in its chest as it lifted up it's boxy cannon at him, charged a humming blast of energy at the edge of its rounded barrel and-

{STAB}

"AUGH!"

-Was impaled by a fist punching through its armour, entering through its back and puncturing through the chest. Black blood splattered all over the ground and Leadpipe as the Grimm went limp, before another hand grabbed the bottom of its waist and-

{RIIIIIP}

{SQUELCH}

-Pulled it in two, covering the ground with spilt black blood and ichor before both halves were lazily tossed to the side like garbage, its smoking entrails and organs spilling onto the ground and trailing like dead worms as it began to disintegrate in the air, leaving only empty shells of armour and metal behind, wisps of smoke filtering through the groves and gaps.

Leadpipe looked up to see his saviour, and found the blank faceplate and angry red visor of Harrower looking down at him, Leadpipe didn't get the chance to offer his thanks before the brute gruffly called out to him, "You could've saved yourself, you know. You're an ex-Hunter, aren't you? Next time why don't you-"

A trio of wide red blasts slammed into Harrower's back. However, unlike Leadpipe, he didn't go down immediately. With a cry of his own, he spun himself around and tanked another trio of blasts, melting his armour and exposing his internal wiring and synthetic organs. He dropped to a single knee, and the giant cannons atop his bulging shoulders flipped downwards and sent a twin pair of wide red cannon blasts into the two Deacons that had been firing at him, slagging their armour and causing the Grimm underneath to pop like balloons, spraying smoky blood and organs and shards of flesh and bone over their surroundings and colouring the soil beneath them in a deep obsidian black.

Leadpipe looked around him, and saw that the fight was over as soon as it had begun. How long had he been dazed for? Minutes or seconds? Had he been out that long, or had the fight been that short? Flynt and Jolie were standing in the corner of the room around a pile of smoking bodies scattered onto the floor, their armour smeared and dripping with black blood, their chests rising and falling as their shoulders slacked and heaved from sudden exhaustion. The Crimson Guardsmen standing at the sides had rounded up all the other surviving Grimm, being most of the Disciples and a single Deacon, with fading columns of ashy smoke leaving small bundles of cloth and metal scattered around them.

Next to him, Harrower fell to his knees as Black Ether, blood, and oil dripped out of the wide smoking holes in his armour, "Harrower!" Leadpipe called out to the wounded Techion, ignoring the still hot hole in his back as he approached Harrower and-

"RAUGH!"

-A Disciple jumped him, tackling him to the ground and roaring a shrill cry. How had the others missed this one? The spear in its arms was made of wood with a sharpened stone tied to it with rope at the end. The Grimm's single eye was wide and darting from side to side. The creature was shaking and frailer than normal. It seemed desperate. That must've been why they attacked the greenhouse. They were all desperate. The Grimm thrust its spear down towards his neck-

{GRAB}

{CRUSH}

-But a giant silver fist reached out and grabbed the creature by the head, crushing it and turning it into a smoking mush of bones and fading meat. Black blood splattered down onto Leadpipe and covered him in a wispy black wash as the dead monster slumped down and fell to the floor, relieved of the burden upon its shoulders.

Above him, Harrower unflexed his smoking, bloody fist-

"Next time... take care of yourself."

-And then he slumped over, his lights going out.

Ciel didn't trust easily.

That's not to say that she didn't trusted anyone. She did. Just not everyone.

Nowadays, with the world at war with both enemies from within and without, and with foes potentially behind every corner, trust was more a commodity than a right. It couldn't be given out freely.

They'd done that before, and had been disappointed by the results.

So, Ciel kept her cards constantly to her chest. Even around Weiss, her charge as a bodyguard, she held her hidden truths to herself. Everyone was entitled to their secrets, her more than anyone else, so she always held others at bay and kept them at arm's length.

Maybe it was a sign of weakness - maybe her unwillingness to open up was a signal of her own fragility - but she chose not to take up on it. It was her life, her trust, and her choice for whom to open up to.

It had always been that way for her. Ever since she could remember, she had been forced to keep her cards to herself under the spotlight of soldiers and scientists. Her semblance was very special, apparently. Very useful if she could unlock its fall potential. Her earliest days were always under the microscope, being examined by men in suits and masks, poked and prodded like an animal under their scrutinising gazes. White labs were her first homes, and white coats were her first parents.

(She didn't know her real parents. She suspected that she may have killed them with her own semblance.)

So, she stayed holed up in a place known as Outpost Orion for most of her life, tested and worked and experimented upon for days on end, before the scientists realised how dangerous her semblance could be and, for the most part, locked it away.

(Across her hands and chest, a trio of clock arms spun for just a single moment before fading into nothingness.)

That had been three and a half years ago.

She had been transferred out of Outpost Orion a whole year before it fell and sent to Atlas Academy to be placed under the tutelage of General James Ironwood. She had prospered in those years. Her Autistic Spectrum Disorder worked well in the orderly halls and timely conditions of the Atlesian Military, and she quickly grew accustomed to the regimented schedules that the people of Atlas were governed by.

She had grown comfortable in it (and never once considered the fact that she began training with the Atlas military when she was fourteen years old after spending all of her childhood in their labs) and never, in all the three years of being there under General Ironwood's stewardship, did she ever imaging leaving it.

Until she was forced to, when General Ironwood assigned her as the bodyguard of Weiss Schnee.

She had protested, in her own logical way. She didn't like change. She wasn't good with or for it. She liked the repetitiveness of her life, the patterns and neat orders. In her world, everything had its place and everything made sense. Any change that came into her life was an invader and needed to be thought, less it destroy the precious thing that she called change.

However, this change had been forced upon her, and she had accepted it because Ironwood was her superior and she could trust him to mke the right choices, right. So out of Atlas and off to Beacon, and into the jaws of a nightmare that no one could ever have imagined she went

She had traded her comfortable routines for hell on Remnant, all because she trusted Ironwood.

(Maybe Ironwood knew what was going to happen in Atlas, and got her out while he still could. She didn't know, but Ironwood, despite his clarity, definitely seemed to have bouts of intensity from time to time, when his eyes dulled over and he began to hyper focus on certain details ahead of others. Maybe he figured out Cinder Ella and the rise of the Imperium before it ever happened and got her out before it all happened.

Or maybe he didn't know.

Or maybe he did, and just let it happened. She remembered Jaune talking about how Ironwood had turned Atlas into a mobile fortress, something that was weaponised twice against the Ascendant Court's armies during Solitas' occupation. Sure, those weapons must've been instrumental to winning the fight against the Court, but the fact that they were there in the first place... it didn't bode well for anyone.)

So Ciel chose not to trust easily. It was always easier to expect to be disappointed in someone than to believe in them, and in the days that followed the Initiation Massacre and the Surge, that sentiment had held true in almost every regard.

Even now.

She could see Weiss and Razor talking in a corner of the room nearby, a table between them. Weiss had waved Ciel away to the side as she and the former team leader had their talk, whatever it might be. The two of them had begun talking to each other a few days ago when he'd assisted her with getting away from Harrower, and apparently they had hit it off. She seemed to be smiling. Happy for the first time in a long time, or at least she seemed to be. Ciel couldn't see Razor's face behind his helmet.

She didn't trust it.

She didn't trust him.

For all their talk of being a space for casual and kind social interaction, the Recreational Area of the old Beacon Academy was not as inviting as it once was. The room was one of the few places in Beacon that had not been changed in the renovations, still retaining their cream coloured walls, wide windows, and laurels in the wooden panels and stone plates running up and down the walls. The Cafeteria, Library, and Lounge remained divided and identical to what they were before the Surge, and the last of the three remained as comfortable as ever, albeit a little more crowded than before. A dozen Guardsmen of both the Crimson and White Guards socialised with each other in their own little groups around the room, alongside another dozen former Hunters. The room was crowded, yet everyone was speaking in jovial tones with each other.

Yet all of them kept a wide berth around Weiss or Razor's table.

Down below on the floor, away from Ciel's lonely beanbag chair, the little drone known around Beacon as AR-1, or Ares, but more commonly known by her nickname of 'Eri', was twirling around in the air and splaying its - her - four mechanical arms wide in an X formation, letting out a series of what Ciel could only describe as happy chirps as she played with the equally little Corgi known as Zwei, Beacon Academy's unofficial mascot. The dog let out a playful bark as it - he - jumped up and down and caught one of the arms in his jaw after the drone had led him in every direction around the room on a high speed chase for a good few minutes. They were like children, they were. Weiss occasionally stopped mid-conversation with Razor just to coo at the two of them.

Ciel's charge always did have a weakness for animals. Specifically the small and fluffy variety.

In another corner of the room, Ciel could make out Blake leaning against the wall, her eyes locked on Weiss and Razor. Ciel knew that both Blake and Weiss had a terrible relationship with each other, with lots of bitter resentment between the two. Weiss had gone on long rants with her about Blake's flippant attitude and disregard for anyone but herself, not to mention her abrasive personality and somewhat radical opinions about Faunus rights and the SDC's dealings, and as for Blake... well, Ciel had never been good at picking up emotions, but even she could tell that the look that Blake was shooting her charge was anything but friendly.

Blake was not a fun person to be around. Ever since they had arrived in Beacon and survived the Initiation Massacre, she had been nothing short of confrontational with everyone around her. It was like she was constantly looking for a fight wherever she went, eyeing up all the people around her and seeing which buttons she could press for the best reaction.

Not to mention how aggressive she was about matters relating to the Faunus. Ciel had no say in those matters, nor did she want to have a say. That would mean having to interact with people outside of her charge, and she was not a fan of talking to people that she didn't know or didn't want to know. But even she could tell that there was a difference between having a discussion about a topic, and almost starting a fight over it.

That wasn't to say that Faunus rights was something to take lightly. It was. The Faunus had only been emancipated and freed from slavery fifty years ago at the conclusion of the Rights Revolution, and there were still a lot of laws and elements within Vale (such as those that still believed in that outdated book known as the Utopia Manifest) that did not support the Faunus.

However, whenever anyone tried to discuss it with Blake, she seemed like she was always one step away from putting a knife through someone's throat. It was weird. She was eager to enter a conflict with someone over it.

Some would say that she was passionate about her views. Ciel would say that she was needlessly radical. She hated the Schnees, but the SDC were all gone, and all that's left was the children. There was no need to keep harbouring that old hatred for people that had nothing to do with their forebearers' decisions.

But, of course, wants and needs rarely agreed.

She noticed Blake stay clear of Zwei, the dog, in contrast to everyone else who kept watch on him and Eri and cheered on their playtime with each other. Every time he got a little close to her, the Cat Faunus let out a quiet hiss under her breath and inched further up against the wall.

So much for breaking stereotypes.

Ciel's ears picked up something outside of the corridor. A frantic rush and cry. She looked through the opened door to the Lounge to see that the same lumbering Techion from a few days ago, Harrower, was being wheeled through the hallway on a wide bed, pushed along by a pair of Techion mechanics as a familiar former Huntsman in training, in a blue, white, and purple carapace trailed after him.

He should not be here.

"Leadpipe?" she heard Blake ask as the girl bounced off the wall and marched out of the room. Ciel picked up the conversation outside of the room, "What are you doing here?"

"Bringing Harrower back home. I know I shouldn't be here, but he saved my life. I have to make sure that he's okay."

"...Is that so?"

Ciel didn't hear Leadpipe's response as the two of them continued on down the corridor outside the Lounge. None of the others in the room looked their way. Not even Weiss or Razor.

Ciel didn't give them any further thought. She just kept her eyes on Weiss and Razor as they continued to talk in the corner of the room.

Ciel didn't trust him.

Ciel didn't trust him at all.

You are loosing control.

Ozpin frowned, Nothing is lost.

Yes it is. It all is. You just can't accept it.

The (former) headmaster gave the voice no response. He simply stayed staring at the glassy pod before him as the world continued to turn and turn around him. Outside the wide hall, the cold, dark waters of the Wishing Well lake were kept back by the myriad of reinforced windows around him, constantly rippling faint sunlight and bubbles as the rain poured down onto the surface of the lake above. Coral and underwater growth covered the bottoms of the windows, matted by algae as fish swam through the currents around the underwater base at the bottom of the lake.

The two pods in front of him were made of one way glass. One of them was empty. The other held a very important person to him. One that he once considered a daughter of sorts.

Like Emerald?

He winced. Emerald Sustrai had been a girl that he had found on the streets of Vacuo, hungry and poor and as frail as a leaf. He had taken her under his wing, fed her, taught her, and encouraged her to join Beacon Academy in its first year. Gods, it had taken so long to acquire her trust after bringing her in. He'd had her in her care for two whole years, and it was only the day before she had gone to initiation that she had finally opened up to him, treating him like something akin to a father than a captor.

"I know you don't trust me."

"..."

"You don't have to."

"..."

"I just ask that you take what I said into consideration."

"..."

"Please."

"...Okay."

He had thought that he was doing the right thing. He thought that he could do something right for the first time in such a long time.

But then the Initiation Massacre came and went... and Emerald never came out of that forest.

He had wanted to do something good in his life - wanted to live up to the ideals of a Huntsman, the same ideas that he had created in the first place - for the first time in so long, and the universe punished him for it.

Emerald is just one of many, isn't she? One of the many that you've failed. Maria, Port, Harold, Ann, Peach, Qrow, Tai, Raven... Summer... your four daughters.

Ozpin winced, Stop it.

No.

Please.

No.

Why are you doing this?

We could ask the same question about you, the voices, all in unison, said to him, All of our lives, all of our victories and accomplishments, and this is what you make of them? A ravaged world plagued by war, mankind tearing itself apart, and you choose to hide away in the shadows and skulk about in the darkness. Like always.

It has always worked before.

Not anymore.

Ozpin frowned. he walked towards the pod with the occupant within, and placed his hand on the glass container. He couldn't see the face of the person within.

Good. You don't deserve to.

Ozpin didn't argue against that point. He had grown too used to the voices of his many past lives over the last few months to even care anymore.

That's a lie. You do care. You care so much. Too much even, and about all the wrong things.

I have been trying my best to salvage this situation.

Liar. You have done nothing.

Ozpin couldn't deny that either. He had spent the last three months alternating between his chamber in the tower above and down here under the lake, watching over the pod and keeping to his own thoughts.

Quite literally.

You have lost, Ozpin.

I have lost nothing.

You have lost everything! The game has changed, Ozpin. The Grimm have evolved and Salem no longer leads them. Mankind is on the edge of extinction after years of strife, and all of their greatest accomplishments have been made without you.

And they fell without me.

Because you let it happen.

It's not that simple.

It! Is! That simple.

Ozpin stopped, winced, scrunched up his hand on the glass. They hadn't stopped. They wouldn't ever stop. He couldn't do anything without the voices invading his thoughts. They just wouldn't stop at all.

He had been made irrelevant by the world, and that had left him with too much time to his own thoughts. He had tried to distract himself at first, with setting up the Beacon Militia (even though he couldn't bear to be at the head of another army. Not again. Not after the First Great War where billions of people died for his mistakes), trying to train Ruby, and, and...

And the voices in his head hadn't stopped.

He was starting to believe that his host, now in his elderly years and with all of his original personality wiped away because of his curse, had an undiagnosed case of dementia. That, or the voices of all his old hosts that he had worn like gloves had always been there, and were only just making themselves known.

What do you want from me? he asked the voices in his head. He knew the answer before they said it.

We want you to end this. We've been doing this for far too long. The game has changed and none of us are players anymore.

We can- I can still salvage this.

No we can't. None of us can. This is it for us. This is the end.

…

Ozpin?

…

Ozma...?

It can't end like this.

It just couldn't. Everything that he had done over the years - all the sacrifices, all the good and all the evil that he had been forced to carry out, all in the name of mankind's survival and unification in the face of the Brother Gods' cruel judgement - it couldn't just be made worthless.

He couldn't just be made worthless.

He had nothing left in the tank. He had been reacting and fighting against Salem and her forces in the shadows that he had long since forgotten what it was like to stop and step out into the light.

He had done so much over the thousands of years of his existence, and for what?

For the Grimm to evolve and overthrow Salem?

For everything that he knew to be completely upturned?

For all of his experiences and lessons to be made worthless?

For everything that he had accomplished over the years to be wiped away, and for Remnant to swallow itself whole?

It couldn't end like this... everything that he had done, everyone that he had lost... it couldn't just end like this.

It has to end like this.

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

…

The voices in his head were never going to stop, were they?

"Sir?"

He spun his head around to see the former Professor Arthur Watts looking at him with that same innately smug look across his face. Behind him, the AK-130s that they had guarding the underwater facility that Ozpin and Watts had ordered made for the person in the pod hummed and glowed a bright green.

"Is everything alright?"

"...Yes," Ozpin said to him as he turned around and made for the exit back up into Beacon, "Yes it is."

No it isn't.

It never will be.

Not anymore.

Not when we've been made irrelevant by the world...

And by ourselves.

Reviewer response time:

MilitiaMasker: BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURN! {DOOT DODODODODO DOOOOT}

rarrarshark: Fixed it! Thanks for pointing that out!

Baneis: Those are some fair points, so thanks for pointing them out. I'll try to work on them in the future. Thanks for the compliment as well.

Average Pizza Fan: Who? Watts? Suspicious? Why ever would you think that?

Zack2357: ¿Te tengo dinero en efectivo en el bolsillo? ¡Agradable! Y sí, los protags no lo tienen bien en estos días. Esperemos que los próximos capítulos mejoren para ellos, ¿verdad? ...¿Derecha?

ccccccc: Aw, thanks for the compliment! I really do take a lot of inspiration from Destiny when writing this fic, so that is one of the biggest compliments that I can get from you, so thanks a lot!

I've just picked up the book Halo: Rubicon Protocol recently, and I'm already over two hundred words in it. I'm loving it. If you guys like this story, then you will like Kelly Gay's recent work as much as I do. You'll love it.

Seriously, it's so dark and gritty at points, and is constantly juggling with themes of hope, despair, the constant struggle for survival against a seemingly invincible foe... and loosing every time.

It's a very good read.

Two years ago, I picked up Halo: Shadows of Reach, and I loved it so much that it became the main source of inspiration for much of the later arcs in that fic, particularly around the fights and wartime manoeuvres.

I think that Rubicon Protocol is going to be the same source of inspiration for this story as well.

So yeah, go get Rubicon Protocol. It's well worth the read.

Anyways, on to the chapter. This one wasn't as meaty as the other ones, true, but I decided to leave a bit more of the real content onto the next chapter. I'm mainly focused on setting up things for the days to come. A lot of people were probably wondering as to why Ozpin was hiding away in his office in Beacon, so I've decided to leave the first clues as to why. His old age is finally catching up to him, let's just say...

Also, I have a poll up on my profile page. Please go check that out and leave a vote on what your favourite arc of Ascendancy Phase One is.

This should be the last chapter spent setting up the events to come. Next chapter we should be getting into the thick of things, so here's to that.

But with all of that said and done, please leave a review, follow and favourite, share your thoughts, and I shall see you all next time!

Titanmaster 117 out!