Here we go

Cover Art: Mystery White Flame

Chapter 9

The Long Melody – formerly the Long Memory – wasn't a weapon he'd custom ordered so it didn't really fit him or his style, but there was something special about learning to use something you'd stolen with your own hands. Roman stabbed and slashed within their small apartment, playing with his new toy while Neo did her best to ignore him and the news on the TV. It had been several days since the incident at the museum, almost a week, but the TV's focus remained the same.

His face again. Ah, Lisa Lavender knew her way around a story. There'd technically been a lot of shots that would have shown him badly, with him being held hostage by Ozpin and getting knocked around, but "headmaster of Beacon is strong" didn't make for exciting news. "Master thief outsmarts headmaster" was much more controversial, and that was what got her stories traction. As such, Lisa had made sure to only show his best moments and to play it up as him outsmarting just about everyone.

What a mutually beneficial relationship they had. He provided her the stories, and she provided him the coverage. It was symbiotic. Of course, the edited footage was doing the rounds online and his fan forum had swelled in size. They were even arguing over what huntsmen he could beat in a fight and which he couldn't. His face was everywhere, his name on every pair of lips, and his handsome smile saved on desktops across the four kingdoms.

Presumably, anyway.

No. Definitely. There was no way the women of the world could resist!

"Hiyahhh!" Roman twirled and smacked the pillow Neo had launched at him out the air. "Nice try, but you'll have to wake up early if you want to outsmart the Roman Torchwi—ooof!"

He buckled as Neo tackled him and knocked him to the ground. She straddled his stomach and held her sword against his throat. One of her eyebrows was raised, inviting him to chip in and defend his prior statement. Roman sighed.

"You know I can't fight you seriously, Neo. You're too important to me and I'm afraid I might hurt you." Her eyes rolled. "None of that, now. Just because I go easy on you doesn't mean you're not strong – and stop rolling your eyes. I taught you everything you know!"

Which explained why the mute didn't know sign language, but hey-ho. He wasn't perfect.

He was just as close to it as any mortal could get.

The buzz of his scroll interrupted his merriment. Sighing, he reached down and answered it without moving Neo off his stomach. "Hello and good day. You have reached the voicemail of the sexiest man in existence. Leave your message—"

"Don't play games with me, Roman. I trust you are free."

"Ah, Cinder." He rolled his eyes. "As free as I can be when I'm laid out flat on my back with a pretty woman riding me."

"Ugh," Cinder gagged.

"…" Neo gagged with less sound, peeling herself off him and making retching motions. Chuckling at having gotten the better of both of them, Roman sat up and pulled himself back onto the sofa.

"I'm quite the catch I'll have you know – but I suppose you're too focused on feeling the need to validate your strength by threatening people."

"Coming from the man who needs to stroke his ego by committing crimes."

"I've no idea what you mean. My crimes are an expression of art, the city my canvass and my audience… well, they're still my audience, but much more appreciative. I'm not some thug in a mask holding up old ladies on the street."

"Inspirational." Cinder sounded anything but impressed. "I don't care enough to argue. Your little stunt with Ozpin had me ready to claw your eyes out, but at least you managed to escape – though I refuse to believe you were half as competent as that reporter would have everyone believe."

"You're free to believe what you want, Cinder. I think the results speak for themselves."

"We'll see if that holds true in Mountain Glenn."

The smile was wiped from his face. "What?"

"The White Fang are beginning an operation in Mountain Glenn and need leadership there. Beyond that, they also need someone capable of facing off Grimm while they work."

"No."

"Hmmm?"

There was a dangerous note to her inquisitive hum and Roman winced. He hadn't meant to anger her, but Mountain Glenn… It brought back memories. Even if he had never been there, he and his team had been in the tunnels.

"Ah. I didn't mean to refuse you, Cinder, only… I might not be the best person for this."

"Explain."

"My team and I, back when I dreamed of being a huntsman, fought in the tunnels to Mountain Glenn. I got out alive while they remain there still, buried under the rubble." All except for one coward who survived. "I'm not sure I'll be at 100% if you send me there, and the White Fang are incompetent enough as it is without sending someone who will be constantly distracted to look over them. Surely you have someone else."

"I do."

Roman breathed a sigh of relief.

"But I will still be sending you."

"Bitch," he swore. "I mean… well, I mean you're a bitch in all honesty." Self-preservation be damned, he was in a dark mood. "You'd better not expect perfection, then, because you sure as hell won't be receiving it."

"That could work in our favour anyway. I need you to get captured come the end of this. I need you on an Atlas battleship for the final stage of our plan, and General Ironwood will surely take interest in you after you unleash Grimm within the city."

Roman's heart was racing. "After I do what-now?"

"The White Fang are going to be clearing the tunnels to Mountain Glenn, and then you shall be riding a train back to the city to knock open a direct path. The Grimm will come soon after, and it'll be the largest terrorist act by the White Fang in recent history. Atlas won't be able to ignore it, and they'll take you in for questioning, hoping to flip you against the White Fang."

"If they don't kill me on the spot," he fired back. "You recruited me saying you needed a thief, Cinder. Not a mass-murderer!"

"Don't tell me you're incapable."

That dumb bitch. Of course he could kill – a child with a gun could kill. Killing was easy. Building a reputation like his without killing was where the difficulty was. It was hard to have so many crimes to his name with little to no fatalities.

Known fatalities, anyway.

There had been more than a few mobsters in his time that thought they could cash in on his fame and muscle him into their gangs. He'd always kept a clean sheet against the victims of his crimes, but self-defence was self-defence, even if it was sometimes very enthusiastic self-defence. But for someone like Cinder, of course, who lived off terror in the same way he did attention, killing was the ultimate art.

Because this bitch loved nothing more than to remind herself she had power over other people, and what better a way than to take something as fundamental as their lives away from them. Not for the first time, he wished he could have put a bullet in her head. And he might have tried it, too, if she wasn't forever flanked by those two brats. Whatever their skill, he'd experienced Emerald's Semblance and it was a potent tool in Cinder's arsenal.

"I don't like this," he told her. "In fact, I damn well hate it – and you should know better than to have upset employees, Cinder. They don't stay loyal long."

"They'll find their exit interview more final than they expect. You have your job, Roman. I expect results. For the man who outsmarted Ozpin, I'm sure that won't be any problem." The call ended with a click.

"BITCH!" roared Roman, hurling his scroll at the wall. Neo caught it before it could smash. "Thank you," he growled, then lost it again. "That damn bitch! Who does she think she is sending me there of all places? Heartless piece of shit!"

He liked to keep his foul language to a minimum on the job as it didn't make him sound very sophisticated, but here in the sanctum of his own apartment he could cuss, fart, lounge, and wear comfortable clothes no matter how unfashionable they were.

Neo mimed a gun to her own temple, twitching her head to the side as if shot.

"I'd love to have a crack at killing her, Neo, but it's not as simple as attacking her. We know what Emerald's Semblance is and there's a damn good reason she accompanies Cinder everywhere. For all we know, we might be talking to and attacking a figment of our imagination, and Cinder is watching from a short distance away with fire at the ready." Neo clicked her tongue. "You don't get to bemoan illusions for Semblances, Neo. You should know full well how annoying they are."

Sadly, Emerald's were in some ways better than Neo's. Neo created illusions, which meant more people could see and be influenced by them. Emerald's hypnotic illusions could only be spread to two people at most, and with some physical distress from what he'd seen, but those would feel much more real. When Neo threw out illusions, most people could tell something was wrong because she was creating things out of nowhere. Emerald could trick your eyes and completely rewrite a scene.

Better for convincingly fooling a small number of people, or for making a fight between them and Cinder close to impossible. They'd be attacking one another, him seeing Neo as Cinder and with her the other way around.

Neo made a few more deadly motions.

"Yes, we'd need to kill Emerald first – and then we might as well take out Mercury while we're at it. He's only muscle as far as I can tell but there's no reason to take any chances. With them gone, us two on Cinder might be easier. Might be. You've seen yourself how strong she is. It might be easier for us to kill those two and just make a run for it.

Neo spread her arms wide and nodded, asking why they didn't do just that.

"I need to stay in Vale…"

Neo stomped her foot angrily.

"It's not just about the fame, Neo. I could get that anywhere." He closed his eyes, nostrils flaring as he let out a long breath. "Vale is where everything started for me. It's where my teammates lay. I swore I'd make the city my bitch for what it did to them." He opened his eyes and stared back at Neo. "And I'm not prepared to run away with my tail between my legs because some jacked-up huntress with a powerful Semblance and an inflated sense of worth is threatening me."

There were lines he wasn't prepared to cross, and for better reasons than fame. Better in his own head, anyway. He got the feeling Neo didn't approve of them.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This is just the way I am. You know I'll not begrudge you leaving—" Neo snarled and shook her head. Roman smiled. "Hm. Fine. Look, we'll do what Cinder says for now but believe me when I say I'm not planning to stick around and see what her endgame is. She isn't giving us all the information here. We need to find out more and then decide how to turn this on her."

Neo nodded, raised a brow, and made a stabbing motion with her hand.

"If it comes to it, yes. But the authorities are also after Cinder – even if they don't know it yet. There are ways to deal with her little underlings without pinning the blame on us." He and Neo shared dark smiles. "Emerald will need to go first."

Neo nodded, shivering with vicious glee. Cinder had called his capability into question and had this been a few weeks ago he might have caved and sought to side with her. Better to be on the winning side, after all. But that was old-man Roman talking. That was washed-up, has-been Roman letting his insecurities get the better of him. He'd woken up. He was back to being the king of Vale, wielding a headmaster's staff and with his face splashed across the news.

And even if she thought he was incapable of taking a life, she'd have a rude awakening if she lumped Neo in with him. Without his calming influence, she'd have amused herself will a killing spree across Vale years ago. Vale had no idea how many he'd saved by giving the diminutive killer a safe outlet for her dark urges.

/-/

"You lot again?"

Roman sighed as he found himself face to face with Perry once more – the enthusiastic, if dense, faunus somehow hadn't taken his advice and left the White Fang. Instead, he'd knuckled down and signed his death warrant coming out here to Mountain Glenn.

The city was as he'd imagined it was. He'd never been since he'd been studying in Beacon when the city fell and dispatched to the tunnels with so many others to clog it up and die like hair down a bathroom sink. After, he'd never felt the need to visit for obvious reasons, but the place looked like he pictured it would, with skeletal structures and broken-down walls. Mountain Glenn looked like it had been abandoned for a hundred years, but the truth was closer to it still being partially under construction when it fell. Those buildings hadn't crumbled; they simply hadn't been completed.

"How the hell did you lunatics get a train here?" he asked, jerking a thumb back at it. "I know for a fact all the trains were dispatched from Mountain Glenn filled with children, so there shouldn't have been any here."

"Ah, well, there were unfinished remnants of trains, sir." Perry bounced on his heels. "Most didn't have engines and weren't close to being functional, but we were able to bring parts and finish the construction to get this one operational. Though there's still more work to be done on it."

Good lord. They were smart enough to jury-rig an unfinished locomotive but not smart enough to realise how suicidal this excursion of theirs was. Even if they survived impact, they'd be left concussed and injured at the wreckage site while the Grimm poured over them, ending their lives in complete agony. Cinder was a piece of work, and it looked like her ally in the White Fang was no better if he or she was prepared to throw lives away like this.

"Is that what you're doing, then?" he asked. "Finishing up the train?"

"Yes. It should be done in a couple of days."

"And then?"

"And then we ride it back to Vale, I think. We're supposed to create a breach."

Roman crossed his arms. "And then…?"

Perry didn't get it. "What…?"

"And then what, Perry? What happens to you when the train hits?"

"Oh. Ohhh!" Perry laughed. "You're asking if we'll die on impact. No, we should be okay. We have military robots—"

"You have what?"

"They're smaller than the one you hid in Vale, sir. More exosuits than anything, but they should give us the armour we need to survive the crash and get out alive. There's training going on here as well so everyone can use one."

Psychotic fools. "I think I need to see these things," he said. "Show them to me. Neo, come along as well."

Perry agreed uncertainly and brought them to the train, past people working on it and into one of the back carriages. It was a passenger one, but presumably that was just because they'd been working with whatever carriages were left behind.

"The back few carriages will be empty," he says. "That's where the bombs will be."

"Ah, yes, the bombs." Roman's eye twitched. Cinder hadn't mentioned bombs. "You'll have to fill me in on how those are going later. And I assume—" and hope "—that these carriages can be disconnected so that the bombs don't catch us."

"Oh, of course. It's a remote system operable from the head of the train. You'll be the one in charge of that from what I understand."

Good. Then he could disconnect the carriages early and detonate the bombs a safe distance away from Vale. It wouldn't stop more Grimm pouring into the tunnels behind them, but it'd make it easier to seal up from Vale's end. Roman sighed and puffed on his cigar, shoving his hands in his pockets and grumbling internally about being the good guy. There wouldn't even be any recognition for his work here. Bloody typical.

"Here we have the suits," said Perry, leading him into what appeared to be a cattle carriage. As in, it would have transported pigs for slaughter once. Fitting that it would now carry the White Fang, he supposed. This superiors were certainly prepared to serve them up to Vale like livestock. As for the suits themselves, he could see why Perry called them suits and not mechs. They were about seven to eight feet tall and had less of a cockpit and more of a harness reinforced with metal plates. If you took one of the arms off, you'd probably take half the pilot's arm off as well.

"These look practically ancient by Atlas standards," he said. "I'm sure they moved on from these models some twenty years ago."

"Ah. Yes. Apparently, we got them from a collector…"

"Wonderful. Let's hope they actually function, or you lot will be torn apart by the Grimm coming after us."

Perry swallowed. "I—If needs be, I'm prepared to die for the cause."

"You dumb prick." Roman snarled and lashed a hand out, catching Perry's chin and yanking him close. "Cut that shit out right now! The cause doesn't give a hoot about your life, Perry. Neither will Vale. The only cause you'll be progressing is the cause of every nationalistic fuckwit out there who thinks we should pre-emptively get rid of all the faunus."

"You don't understand what it's like!" Perry garbled past Roman's fingers.

"I damn well don't, but I sure as hell know what it's like to walk among bodies crushed by fallen rocks and torn asunder by Grimm. There's not much glory there, Perry. Believe me. There's blood and piss and shit. That's what exists there." He gave the idiot a harsh push, knocking him back into one of the suits. "So you put your mind to work and check these damn suits, because your lives absolutely do rest on them. And while I may not be able to cure stupid, I can at least give you idiots the best shot at coming out of this alive."

As thankless a task as that was going to be.

"This is a disaster and no mistake," he said to Neo after, the two of them hunkering down to talk while the White Fang gathered to eat and rest. "I don't buy Cinder doing this just to help the White Fang. And what does she need me on an Atlas airship for? It sounds like she's looking to split the two of us up."

Neo shook her head.

"I'm against the idea as well but it is what it is. We can dump the bombs early, but we may need to sabotage the train a little. Make the impact in Vale more of a gentle breach than a gaping hole. The problem is plausible deniability. Cinder will kill us if she knows we're behind all this. We need someone else to take the fall, or someone to blame our failure on."

The White Fang were obvious enough choices given how amateur they were, but then they'd need to kill all witnesses and he didn't really want to do that. Where were a bunch of meddling huntresses when he needed them? Roman sighed.

"We have time, anyway. Let's just do a less-than-stellar job defending against the Grimm. Let a few through. A couple of close calls ought to light a fire under their asses. Cause some mistakes in their rush. You focus on that, and I'll keep my attention on the bombs. Drain some dust to weak those. Sound good?" Neo nodded. "Man, it's a shame Lisa isn't here to record this, but I guess this will have to be one occasion where our exploits don't make the news."

Probably a good thing in all honesty, as he really didn't want his name plastered above or below news of a terrorist attack. He was a gentleman thief, not some fanatical zealot. Life really had taken a downturn the moment Cinder waltzed into it.

All the more reason for her to waltz the hell out, too.

"Sir! Sir!" Perry came jogging up. He looked panicked. "Sir, our scouts reported a Bullhead flying over Mountain Glenn. We think they've dropped a squad off in the city."

"You idiots got yourselves noticed already? That's cute."

"It can't have been us, sir!"

Neo stared at Perry.

Roman rolled his eyes. "You can't possibly think it's our fault when we've been here less than an hour. It'd take them longer than that to organise something like this."

Perry winced. "But we've kept our heads down and spent most of our time in the lower levels of Mountain Glenn, underground in the subway systems. There just isn't a way we could have been seen when we've been terrified to stick our heads out and draw the Grimm!"

Then this must have been a leak further down their line, a mole somewhere in the White Fang or a captured agent, or, and Roman wouldn't put it past her, something on Cinder's part. Either a part of her plan to expose them, or a monumental fuck-up she hadn't wanted to admit to him. Both were as likely as one another, and she was certainly arrogant enough to make a mistake and not realise it.

"Keep your heads down then and stay hidden," he said. "Mountain Glenn is a big place, and they won't find us easily. Go tell the others." Once he'd done that, Roman grinned at Neo. "I think we've found our patsies, Neo. Not our fault if the White Fang drew attention before we arrived, and the authorities catch them." Neo was smirking as well. "I need you to go scout them out. Take some photos if you must and see what we're working with. Don't harass them."

He chuckled at her pout.

"This is a rare occasion we need them alive and confident enough to interfere, Neo. Don't worry. I'm sure you can crack a few heads once we have to make our epic escape, but we need our interfering friends in good health."

Neo pointed at him and raised an eyebrow.

"Me? I… I'm going to go pay some respects in the tunnels." Neo looked concerned, of her variation of it. "I'll be fine. It's just been a while and I feel like I should say a few words if I'm here. You don't need to worry about me turning into a weeping old loser."

Poor Neo looked like she wanted to comfort him but wasn't sure how. She was a killer, plain and simple, and while he knew she cared, he understood she struggled to express it. And that was fine because he already knew she wanted to, and it was the thought that counted. Though when she awkwardly placed her hands around his back and patted him like one might a dying relative you'd never met before that moment, he couldn't help but laugh.

"I appreciate it, Neo. I really do." He squeezed her back. "Go on. I'll be fine."

Neo vanished.

And Roman sighed and trudged to his feet.

It'd been years since the fall, so the tunnels were filled with skeletons instead of bodies now. Those left behind had rotted once their bones were picked clean by vermin, and the bloodstains had long since become a part of the rock and stone and faded from memory. Little bits and pieces of belongings lay here and there, discarded toys and clothing, the odd teddy bear. Most all of the children had been evacuated in the first wave, so it was likely parents hoping to meet their children again with a favoured toy. They'd never made the journey.

He could still remember the sounds and taste of it all. They'd been nineteen, second years in Beacon, and cocksure of themselves. None of them had expected this to be the end of their team, and none of them had known what a real incursion by the Grimm could be like. They'd fought them in the forests around Beacon, but these confined tunnels had been a fresh hell.

Eventually, he came to a collapsed section of rock. His teammates, two of them anyway, might have been buried several more kilometres down it than where he was. They had been closer to Vale than Mountain Glenn when the tunnels collapsed. A structural failure, they called it. The Grimm had weakened the tunnel walls with their reckless attacks.

Roman snorted.

Vale liked to call itself sophisticated, but it was a city the same as any other, and that meant it favoured its own existence over the average persons. Sacrifices had to be made. That was just the way things were.

Sighing, he sat cross-legged in front of the wall of fallen rock.

"Hey guys…" His words were stilted. He'd been to the monument in Vale, the memorial, but that always just pissed him the fuck off. This was the first time he'd properly visited their grave. There were no flowers here, no wreaths or pretty words about sacrifice. "Sorry it's taken me so long. You didn't deserve that. Not that you deserved any of this. A cold grave under the rubble, your bodies still there, and everyone moving on in Vale like none of it ever happened."

He bit his lip. "They never bothered to reclaim Mountain Glenn. Just up and shrugged their shoulders at your sacrifices, blocked up the subway entrances and acted like it never happened. Didn't even bother to dig your corpses out. There used to be a service every year but that stopped a couple back. You get a minute of silence now. Sixty seconds of fat fucks pausing in the act of cramming doughnuts down their throats because they feel awkward if they don't." He paused. Sighed. "That's probably not what you want to hear, is it? I'm doing okay. Had a bit of a crisis and started moping around, but I've bounced back."

"I'm on TV now. Pretty much all over the place. Master thief Roman Torchwick strikes again! It's been huge. I've even got my own mini-me. You'd like her. Well, you'd say she was hot, but you'd probably be terrified of her in reality. She's a bit crazy. Well-meaning, though. To me, anyway. I'm pretty much all she has left." He rubbed a finger over his nose. "How fucked up is that? Me, of all people, as a role model to some young woman. Though calling her young when she's older than you guys were…"

He trailed off. They'd been too young to die. Too alive, too real, too filled with ambition and dreams and stupid moments. His teeth clenched together as something hot burned at his eyes. Roman tugged his bowler hat down over them and lit another cigar.

"I wonder what you all think of me now. Probably rolling your eyes up in wherever you are. I promised I'd make Vale pay but I haven't really done much of that, have I? Haven't even made Bart pay for his part in all this. Fucker." He puffed out a cloud of smoke. "I might be coming to see you all soon. Got myself in a right pickle, I have. Trying to work my way out but Cinder is a dangerous one. Best I can do is make sure Neo has an exit strategy. If needs be, I'll buy time for her to run and give my life. Might as well go out like you all did, right? Holding the line for others to escape, and betrayed by someone that was meant to be on your side."

The cold rock was silent as the grave of the many hundreds of people it served as. A tomb. He hoped they died quickly in there, because any trapped in pockets would have been forced to wait for oxygen to run out.

"I'm sorry I didn't come sooner," he whispered, standing and staring down at the rubble. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry I lived while you all died." There was no answer. "Fuck me, I'm a mess."

Turning away, he scrubbed an arm over his face and took a deep breath. His fingers shook as he fumbled another cigar into his mouth and let the poison into his lungs. It took the edge off his stress, wrapping him up in smoke and grief.

He'd known coming here was a bad idea.

A text from Neo came, a photo of the team she'd spotted. Of all people, it was Red and her selection of idiots. Trust Beacon to send children into Mountain Glenn again. They'd obviously learned well from the tragedies of the past. Fuckers. He flicked through the pictures until he caught their huntsman attaché, and nearly dropped his scroll. Bartholomew Oobleck, entrusted with the lives of four huntresses in the hellhole that was Mountain Glenn.

What a sick joke.

A little sad chapter but it needed to happen and I wanted it to show a little of why Roman is so messed up here that he needs the constant validation.

Next Chapter: 12th March

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