Still sick. Still Covid. Still writing.
Cover Art: Kirire
Chapter 13
Blake squeezed the trigger and placed her shots with care. The zombie – it wasn't, but the word fit – was no longer alive and so normally fatal shots like to the brain weren't going to do much. Instead, she aimed for the hands, the wrists and its shoulders, hoping to sever ligaments important for dragging itself up the staircase. She almost certainly did with some of them but the slugs replaced the ruined limbs, acting like make-shift muscles to force ruined limbs hanging on by threads to movement.
"How is it so organised!?" she snarled. "The one in the field could barely stand up."
"I don't know. It-" Jaune swore suddenly. "Crap, crap, crap. It's a hivemind! Just our luck!"
The way he said it suggested ARC Corp didn't have good experiences with hiveminds in the past, and Blake wasn't sure she needed to ask why. A series of organisms controlled by one central intelligence was a favourite theme of horror and sci-fi novels, and while those weren't her usual fare, she was a varied enough reader to have tried some. That would place the slugs in the field as drones cut off from the hivemind by distance and reduced to helpless and random flailing. Here, under the influence of the hivemind, they were far more organised, capable even of controlling a dead body and replacing muscle tissue.
It also suggested a certain inhuman intelligence behind it all, which was all kinds of bad. The creatures they'd faced thus far were normally animalistic in nature like Timothy or the Rusted Queen. They could act and react but couldn't plan or strategize, and they didn't seem to have motives beyond survival and their immediate comfort. This one had somehow convinced a farming family to be its caretakers, however, and to spread it into the fields. Worse, they'd been down here on the regular to take buckets of the slugs away. It didn't make sense that helpless farmers could have done that without harm if they were this capable, which meant the anomaly let them, which meant they served its interests. Which meant it had interests. Designs. Plans.
Did those plans include several government agents who could act as carriers to take the slugs back to the city? They'd be as helpless as the drones in the field, but maybe it wanted someone to transport the hivemind itself. The intelligence had to be somewhere. A slug queen or something.
Jaune stepped in front of her suddenly, his sword gripped between his hands, one on the scabbard and one further up on the hilt. He was holding it wrong, she noticed glumly. He had the scabbard vertical before him and the hilt in a reverse grip that'd be next to no use in actually swinging it. Blake wasn't surprised. Just disappointed.
"Close your eyes," he said.
"What-"
In hindsight, she should have closed her eyes. That meant she had no one to blame when Jaune drew the sword upwards with a click. He didn't draw the whole thing, in fact he only drew it about four inches, enough to flash some of the blade like a burlesque dancer might her thighs. That was enough to cause hot, bright white light to come pouring out. It engulfed the room, splashed back against him and around. She didn't even see it directly, just the light bouncing off the walls and coming around Jaune, and yet even that was enough to make her hiss and stagger back into the door, hands flying up to rub at her stinging, spotty eyes.
She heard the click of the blade being sheathed again and dared to look. Blessed darkness. Faunus vision was more susceptible to light than most, that being how they could see in the dark, so hers were watering badly. The worst part was that she couldn't even blame Jaune. Blinking the dancing spots and flashes of light away, she peered past him down the staircase to where the body possessed by slugs was burning away, flames still licking gently over its inert form as the slugs shied away from the staircase, literally swimming so hard there was a puddle of dirty water and blood without any wriggling bodies.
"W-What the hell was that?" she stammered. "Is your sword an anomaly?"
"Yes."
Honestly, she ought to have guessed. He never used the thing properly and had even fought the holder of the Blank Slate while keeping it sheathed. When he did have to fight, he tended to use his fists. "Is it a Slaved Anomaly like the Fist Office uses? Why didn't you mention it?"
"No to the first and it never came up." He swung the thing back over his shoulder so that the leather strap had it resting around his back. It was such an inconvenient position from which to draw it, but then if only a few inches did this then he didn't want to draw it fully. Another thing she ought to have noticed. "The Containments Office doesn't believe in enslaving anomalies. Using them like that is what got ARC Corp into trouble in the first place. This… This is an exception. It was from my father."
"Your father – who despises and kills all anomalies – gave you an anomalous sword?"
"It's complicated."
"Why didn't you use it on the slugs right away?"
His answer was to turn, and Blake sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of him. Jaune's skin was pink and flaking like he'd spent an hour on the beach with no suntan. There were little dots of white where his skin was already starting to peel and curl. It was nothing that wouldn't heal but it was also an extreme reaction, and from only a few seconds of exposure. If the whole blade was drawn and for any length of time, she wasn't sure what it would do to the average person. Skin cancer or just flat-out setting them on fire?
"That thing is way too dangerous to just be carrying around. What if someone draws it?"
"It only reacts like that around anomalies," he said. "And only organic ones at that. It'd just be a normal sword if someone drew it, so it's not as big a problem."
An anti-anomaly anomaly. Was that why ARC Corp hadn't destroyed it? She had to admit it sounded useful to have around, and that same use might have convinced Jaune's father that it should be the last one destroyed. "Does this mean I could use an anomaly if I wanted to?"
Jaune eyed the slugs to make sure they weren't coming back. They were still shying away from the flaming body, as afraid of the fire as they were of the sword. Satisfied they were safe, he turned back to her to say, "I told you we don't use Slaved Anomalies. But-" he added, "If there's ever a situation where an anomaly we have could be useful on a job then I don't mind. As long as it isn't dangerous. No taking the Blank Slate out."
As if she'd ever touch that thing and risk her entire identity being erased. Blake shivered at the thought. "Not that. I just… I have to admit, the idea of having some heavy ordinance like Terra and Saphron did is pretty cool."
He groaned. "Please don't choose something that fires literal stars at people."
"Was that-?"
"Yes. Terra's anomaly is called the A Scene of Stars and lets her view remote parts of the universe. We're not sure how. That she can then take something from it and bring it into our world is the least terrifying aspect. That star she fired at the Rusted Queen is gone, Blake. Removed. Astrologers can and will notice it, though they'll probably assume it died on its own. Terra could quite literally deplete the sky of stars if she wanted."
"That's weird, I admit, but I don't see how it's terrifying. Aside from the obvious idea of her shooting that at a population centre."
"It's terrifying because we have no idea if life exists out there."
Blake snorted. "Aliens?"
"You live in a world with anomalous items, Blake. Are aliens a step too far?"
She shut up. "Good point."
"Now imagine that there are other worlds out there, other civilizations and such like our own, and imagine that Terra just took their sun away."
Everything dies. There were plenty of videos online – some education and some recreational – that explored the concept of what would happen on Remnant if the sun were to go away. Freezing temperatures, the death of plant life, no crops or food. Those were just the long-term problems. The short-term boiled down to everyone on Remnant dying. And there was a chance, slim admittedly, that Terra might put that fate on someone. Or worse, just pick out their star and fire it off without realising. The globe didn't look like a precision implement. What if she took their sun away one day? They'd be fucked.
"Anomalies aren't toys." Jaune said, accurately reading her shocked expression. "So, while I'm not against you finding and using one if you want to, please make it something unlikely to lead to the apocalypse."
"I'll run anything past you."
"Probably for the best."
Jaune sighed and lowered himself down to sit on one of the steps. It felt strange to take such a relaxed posture with the absolute nightmare fuel going on not twelve steps down, but there was little to be done other than wait. The water was still rising but that was slowly. It'd be another three hours at least before it reached their feet. Reluctantly, Blake did the same, squatting on the top step as high up as she could with her back to the door.
"Do you want me to draw your sword if they come up again?" she offered.
"Not much point. It'll react to the slugs and blind us both anyway." He slung it around and rested it atop his knees. "If they're afraid of fire, that one below should keep them away for a while. Human fat burns well."
"Do I want to ask how you know that?"
He sighed. "Work experience."
"You?" she asked with a slight grin. "Like Ruby?"
"With my mother. You don't think I was allowed to be an office director without some experience under my belt, did you? We all had to shadow more experienced members to see how things were done. That's after years of theory and study and training. We're not thrust into it blindly. We shadow someone three times and then they shadow us while we're tasked with solving an anomaly."
"To make sure you're not in any danger?"
"Hmm." He nodded. "I followed mom for my three and then she shadowed me for mine."
"What was it?"
"You want a story?" he asked with a hint of a smile. "Now?"
Blake gestured to the slugs below and the burning body. "What else are we going to do?"
"It'd be a boring story since it wasn't eve an anomaly."
"Huh?"
"Things like that happen," he said. "Something looks strange on the outside, so unusual you have to assume there's an anomaly involved, then you go and discover the real reason is just a lot of crazy stuff happening between people. I thought this might be as well to be honest. My first thought was that the Rigsby were poisoning the fields with normal poison. I mean, why use anomalous slugs when you have pesticide?"
"My mission involved people disappearing under mysterious circumstances and their bones being found spread around a small village." Jaune continued. "An anomaly had been found and killed in the area a few years before so it was thought we might have missed one, or that it bred before it was found. We went in, asked questions and got to exploring the surrounding area." He looked up as though remembering it. "We spent ten days there. Ten days of searching and hunting and following tracks. I got impatient but mom told me to stay calm and keep my wits about me. Of course she figured it out sooner, but the point was to let me discover it. I did two days later. A fresh body appeared and this one had cuts in the bone from an axe."
"It was a serial killer?"
"Fucked up stuff," he admitted. "He was twelve, Blake. The killer. Could hardly wield the axe but then everyone turned their backs on him. I found it out when he tried to split my head open. I… killed him."
Blake let out a quiet sigh. "I'm sorry."
"It happened too quickly and I was panicky," he said. "I still thought there might be an anomaly involved, maybe the axe, so I wrestled that off him but then he went for his father's hunting rifle. Since I don't have aura… well…" He shrugged. "He turned his back on me while I had an axe. The rest… You can imagine…"
"He went out the same way his victims did. There's some ironic justice there. Nothing bad came of it?"
"Mom had been collecting evidence while I did, sort of a safety precaution in case I missed anything, and it was more than enough to prove I was justified. I was only fifteen at the time as well so I had an excuse there. No one argued against us."
There was an awkward silence that lingered after the tale, one during which she wished she hadn't asked in the first place. It wasn't like she or anyone else would blame him for defending himself when he was younger, not against someone with a gun, but she didn't know what to say, and "good job" didn't feel right when a lot of people died including children.
"Did you have to do another with a real anomaly after?" she asked instead. "To make up for the fact that one wasn't?"
"No. I followed protocol and came to the right conclusion myself so mom decided it counted. I still went along with some of the other offices on their jobs, even apprenticed under the Fist Office for three months." He grimaced. "Saphron and I argued throughout the whole thing. Me about not killing harmless anomalies and her about me being soft. It got to the point Terra would just leave the room when we started." He shrugged. "I was bounced around between the offices until I hit seventeen and decided to open my own. And the rest you know. What about you?" he asked. "What's your story?"
It was only fair she supposed that she share it. Blake leaned back on the door. "You know I was in the White Fang before this? Well, you could say I was born into it…"
He listened as she went over the old story of her family, the peaceful White Fang and how she'd been sucked into the more radical side. Telling it again, she still didn't feel like it had been the wrong choice. The way her parents handled things just hadn't worked because no one cared what the loud protestors thought. They'd faced stones and rocks and minor criminal charges, all but proving the odds they'd change anything to be null. Sienna had been right to say they needed to force it, but terrorism hadn't helped. Then again, they'd never intended to become terrorists. That was just the label Atlas slapped them with and that the other Kingdoms, relying on good relations with Atlas, accepted as fact.
After, Sienna and Adam gave up on trying to change it and even embraced terrorist tactics. That was where it started to go wrong in her mind. Adam had angrily said that if the world wanted to see them as monsters, he would become the kind of monster they'd fear. It sounded so powerful and passionate in the moment that she'd cheered him on. She wondered if he'd have been a better person now if she had the strength or foresight to tell him that wasn't the answer. Hindsight was twenty-twenty, however. It wasn't like she'd disagreed with him at the time. Almost unbidden, she started talking about her parents after, lost in the moment and with little else to do but talk, she told him of her more recent struggles.
"I know I should reach out to them; they must be worried about me and I don't want that, but what am I supposed to say? Sorry I ruined your life's work and turned it into a hated terrorist group. I've left it and started a job in Vale? What will they think?"
"I've no idea." Jaune said.
Honestly, she was pleased with that answer. Most people would have told her they loved her and that she should call, but that was all so much bullshit from people who had never met her parents. While she didn't think they'd hate her, she didn't know, and complete strangers sure as hell didn't.
"Do you think I should?"
"Working with ARC Corp is a very dangerous job to have and the life expectancy isn't great. There's a very real chance you'll be torn apart by an anomaly or lost in another dimension, time or state of existence. Death is usually the preferred choice."
"Wow. Thanks for painting such a lovely picture."
He shrugged. "Just being honest. Look, I think you've probably figured out my relationship with my father is… not great."
Bake nodded. She had, in fact, guessed that on multiple occasions. Jaune never said it but there was just too much that added up. She didn't get the feeling he'd been abused or hurt, but there was a certain cold detachment whenever he talked about Nicholas Arc. She suspected it was because of the Arc family's duty. Maybe his father had been absent working and left Jaune to be brought up by his older sisters.
"That means any advice I could give isn't going to be good," he went on. "But what's the worst that could happen?"
"They hate me and blame me for ruining their life's work and want nothing to do with me."
"Okay." Jaune said. "Sorry for asking. Is that likely?"
"I don't know. I haven't talked to them for five years."
"Well, maybe you just need to stomach it and do it. More for yourself than for them," he added as an afterthought. "You're obviously stressing over it, which means that's just going to get worse if you ignore it. If the worst happens…" He shrugged. "Well, you haven't lost anything, have you? You barely have parents as it is."
Blake snorted. "You're really bad at this comforting thing."
"Yeah, I know." He shot her a wry smile. "But, I mean, you could probably get over it if they did hate you. I know it's not optimistic but the worst case is they get angry, you tell them to fuck off and end the call and walk out their lives. You never talk again – which is pretty much the state you're in right now anyway. Best case, they cry, you make up and feel a lot better about yourself. In a way, it's a situation where you don't have a lot to lose but much more to gain."
"Hm. Balance of probabilities, then?"
"I figure math is probably a decent way to decide if we're both helpless with talking to our parents."
Yeah, that was a dark but amusing way to put it. He had a point, though. She stood to lose very little, having no relationship with them anyway, and if they did forgive her like she thought they might then she'd gain a lot more. It would be painfully awkward and she'd be opening herself up to a lot of stress and fear, but if she was stressing already? Well, the symptoms were already there. Might as well rip the bandage off and see whether the wound had healed or not.
Blake smiled and asked, "How are we both so useless?"
"I mean, I was born into a family with a century's old duty to protect the world from monstrous creatures and artifacts that can turn people into slug-infested meat puppets, so inter-family relations were always going to be weird." He cocked a smile. "What's your excuse?"
"I'm a complicated girl." She kicked his back gently as she said it, careful not to apply too much pressure and literally kill her boss by knocking him down into the slugs. "Besides, it's just a bad relationship with your dad, right? It sounds like things are going well with your mom."
"We used to have a good relationship."
Blake grimaced. "What happened?"
"An anomaly killed her."
I really need to learn when to keep my damn mouth shut…
/-/
Ruby stood outside the farmhouse with an absolute mob behind her. It had been surprisingly easy to convince the people of Wheat Valley of the treachery of the Rigsby family. To be fair, she'd had a dead body found in someone else's field to help prove her point, and she'd also made it clear they would be arrested and convicted only with evidence, so the people were more of the mind that it wouldn't be a problem if the family were innocent. Now, how to prove they were guilty.
A heavy crack of a gunshot and the sharp cry of a man falling clutching his arm handled that for her. The farmers roared and dragged the injured young man aside, while others brandished farming implements or guns themselves.
"Enough!" Ruby shouted. Her voice wasn't mean for it, or her lungs weren't, because it came out squeaky. The suit helped, though. While she may have sounded like a child, she looked like an official as she strode forward. "You are under investigation by ARC Corp!" she called to the house. "Surrender yourselves and open your doors. If you are innocent then there will be no reason to fear."
"Come on out, Rigsby!" a farmer yelled.
"Damn traitors!" another shouted. "Show yerselves!"
The front door opened and a man strode out. He looked to be around thirty or so, with farming boots, overalls and a plaid shirt. His hair was balding, though he had a bushy beard, and he carried with him a shotgun. "What's all this, then?" the man shouted to them. "Since when is it that an armed mob can walk onto another man's farm and make demands of them, eh? Take yer city folk nonsense back to the city. We're good folk here."
"You good folk have two people locked in your basement that you tried to kill." Ruby accused.
"What? What nonsense is that, little girl?"
Little girl. Ruby bristled at the insult. "We have the authority to search any farm we want." It wasn't entirely a lie. Jaune could get that permission and ignore the need for a warrant. Or rather, the Council would write him one on the spot. "You will let us inside or we will force our way inside."
The man brought the shotgun up. "Now, how's a little thing like you expect to do that?"
In a flash of red, Ruby was at his side and smiling impishly up at him. "Like this."
"Bwuh-?"
Her hand slapped the shotgun up and out his startled hands, and then she drove her foot into the back of his knee. He toppled down the stairs and fell flat on his face, swiftly brought down by the mob behind her. Ruby darted through the door and into a hallway with tables and cabinets turned over and men, women and even some children pointing guns her way.
"Kill 'er!" a man howled.
Her aura took the few shots she couldn't dodge and it was lucky she entered first and not the farmers or they'd have lost a lot of people. She wished she had her baby here, but nooo, a weaponised scythe would send the wrong message, Jaune had said. Bah. She'd have blended in more with the farming community with a scythe. As it was, she darted between the people, over barricades and among them.
It was a known fact that Ruby was in the bottom ten per cent when it came to unarmed combat in Signal. That wasn't her fault as she sparred with Yang for years and her dad also taught her, but her small body and thin limbs could only do so much. It was a misnomer to say she was bad at unarmed combat, however. The bottom ten per cent of a school training huntsmen and huntresses still put her ahead of a lot of people. It certainly did a bunch of farmers. Ruby darted from one to the other, a kick here, a backhand there, a jab to the throat. Petals flew behind her as she disarmed and dealt with them, her black suit coated with roses and her cloak flapping behind her.
It was over in a matter of seconds. The men and women were down, groaning and clutching their faces, and she used her Semblance to speed around picking up their weapons and then darted outside to lay them down and shout "More inside to be arrested – they tried to kill me!" before flashing back in, vaulting a cabinet and shouting out, "Jaune! Blake!"
One second. Two seconds.
A banging came from an adjoining room. "Here!" Blake shouted. "We're in here!"
Ruby followed the voice to a kitchen and didn't have any trouble figuring out where it came from. There was a table, several chairs and a bookshelf wedged up against a door. The chairs were easy to move, the table had to be scraped away along the floor, but the bookshelf was harder. After a few seconds of grunting and struggling with it, Ruby instead wedged her small body into a gap between it and the wall and pushed with her feet, managing after ten or so seconds to topple the thing over instead. It fell with a crash, and then Blake and Jaune were able to get the door open about a foot. It was enough for Blake to shimmy out of, and between them they were able to drag the shelf away.
Jaune looked terrible as he came out. All pink and burnt. He slammed the door shut behind them, staggered past her worried concern and over to a rusty pipe on the wall. He yanked and twisted the wheel until, with a gurgle of water, it stopped. Only then did he turn to her.
"Good job, Ruby. You really saved us."
All annoyance forgiven. Ruby bounced on her heels. "Eeeeeee! Does that mean I'm in!?"
"How old are you?"
Urk. Her excitement was put down like a wounded animal. "I…I'm nearly sixteen."
You know, just, like, nine months away from it. No time at all.
"Child labour laws, Ruby."
"But I want to work!"
"Sorry. Nothing I can do." He patted her head, only making her feel more like a child. After she saved his life, too! "You can apply when you're sixteen and I'll give my recommendation."
Ruby gasped. "Really!?"
"Yes. I'm sure Blake will agree as well."
"Given I was nearly eaten by slugs?" Blake looked haggard. Utterly spent. "Yes. All the yes."
"Don't get too excited." Jaune said. "We're not done here. What's happening?"
Oh, right. Professionalism. Ruby stood to attention. "I gathered the farmers into a mob and we've stormed the place. They're arresting the Rigsby family after I disarmed them. What are we going to say about the anomaly? We can't let them see anything."
"It's an infestation of parasitic insects that needs to be burned or it'll flood the valley and kill all the crops." Blake answered. "I mean, it's pretty much the truth. Let's just go with that."
"Not before we find the progenitor queen." Jaune said.
"Oooh!" Ruby bounced on her feet. "It's, like, a hive queen?"
"Yes."
"That's so cool!"
"It really isn't." Blake said tiredly. "Not if you'd been stuck down there with us, it wouldn't have been. I'll go handle the farmers," she said. "I think I need some fresh air after that. Is that okay?"
Blake really did look out of it. Jaune agreed because he nodded and said, "Ruby and I can handle the rest. Just make sure they know not to come in and make things worse. Tell them we're afraid of contamination or something."
"I'll handle it."
Blake staggered out the kitchen and immediately began calling out orders. The fact she came out at all must have been proof enough of Ruby's claims her friends had been abducted. The farmers began dragging the Rigsby family members outside. Hopefully, they wouldn't think to take justice into their own hands. Ruby looked to Jaune, genuinely a little worried by how emotionally drained he looked, and the way he tried to smile for her didn't help any. "Are you okay?"
"I'll be happier once this is over and done with," he said. "Let's move on. This whole place is going to need to be burned down but not before we confirm if the queen is or isn't here. If it's outside somehow, we'll need to find it."
Ruby nodded. The reasons why were obvious. This could happen again and again if they didn't deal with it. "What will it look like?"
"No idea. Most animals that work like this have a queen that's an egg-layer but those slugs were self-replicating. It's probably bigger at the very least. It should look vaguely alien. It definitely won't look like a normal animal."
They headed for the stairs and made their way up while Blake explained the situation to the farmers outside. The upper floors of the Rigsby home were cluttered with barrels of food and furniture, but otherwise looked normal. A bedroom here, bathroom there, a cupboard for coats and cloaks. Ruby stuck her head in each one to make sure there weren't any people in. They might have had children left behind, and the last thing she wanted was to burn a house down with a baby sleeping in a crib inside. There was nothing luckily, and no room that implied really young children at all.
It was while they were checking the rooms that Jaune called out for her. Ruby darted out and down the corridor to a door at the end of the corridor. The room inside was lavish, clean, but reeked of mould and something horribly and sickly sweet. The smell was so bad she gagged and covered her mouth and nose with her cloak, and Jaune was already doing the same with one gloved hand.
It was a bedroom with a single double bed at the back, and in that bed, apparently resting, was an old woman. Old didn't do her justice, however. The woman's skin was sunken and sallow, stretched thin like parchment with bone sticking out in places. It looked like a corpse that had been partially mummified and put up in a museum. The lips had rotted back to show cracked yellow teeth. But worst of all, worse by far, was the fact that its chest rose and fell and a rattling hiss escaped its mouth.
"I-Is that thing alive!?" Ruby squeaked.
"No." Jaune approached but kept a safe distance. "It's not. It's just pretending."
He took out his scroll and snapped a picture, then took several more before putting it away. The corpse let out some mutterings that might have sounded like words but didn't. It was closer to gibberish, and most of it breathy and scratchy.
"Is it like the one in the field?" Ruby asked. "You know, a puppet?"
"I'm guessing so. This one chose to hide in a host, however. This might be our queen."
The corpse's mouth chatted open and shut. "Is it trying to speak to us?"
"It's mimicking human behaviour. Even if animals could speak, they wouldn't understand human language, so it's just making random noise. That might have been enough to fool a messed-up family unwilling to admit their mother had died." Jaune indicated the spot beside her on the bed, which featured a noticeable dent.
Ruby felt sick. "Are you… Are you saying something slept beside that?"
"They must have thought she was still alive. She's moving, isn't she? Some kind of unknown Semblance or long-lived ability. That her skin is like this, well, she's just growing older and older. Maybe they listened to the random words and thought she was talking to them. Maybe they assumed her mind was deteriorating."
Jaune took a broom leaning against the wall and held it by the brush. He pressed the tip of the handle into the woman's stomach, and to Ruby's dismay, her skin parted like dry parchment, ripping open with so little pressure. Small, yellowish tendrils came springing out like little hairs, twisting and flailing in the open air before gripping the edges of skin and pulling them taut again.
"O-Oh my god…"
"We've found our queen." Jaune said. "Ruby, you might want to leave."
"What are you doing to do?"
"Burn her." He brought his sword around before him and sent her a grimace. "It's not going to be a nice sight, smell or experience. There's really no point both of us having to sit through it."
"What about the people outside? They'll say she's in here."
"That's why I took the pictures. Do you really think anyone will believe she was still alive? There's bone sticking out of her. They'll see those, realise the Rigsby family were keeping a corpse in their bedroom and assume they'd gone mad with grief." Jaune nodded again for the door. "Go outside and grab some cans of fuel if you want to be useful. We'll need them to burn this place down."
Ruby darted out the room and closed the door. A moment later, there was a bright flash of white light under the crack of it, and a hiss of sound and a horrid stench. Gagging on it, Ruby flashed away in a streak of petals. Jaune was right; she really didn't want to see what was left behind after that.
/-/
The clean up was almost too simple in Blake's mind. The farmers accepted the story that the Rigsby family had been breeding a parasitic crop-killing insect and using it to poison the Tawney fields out of some deep-seated grudge. That the insects had gotten out of control and hit other fields was just a sign of how bad an idea it was, and how the infestation was so bad they needed to burn the house down to contain it. Those Rigsby members captured had protested that their mother was inside, but one look at the photo evidence Jaune had taken had people shaking their heads and ignoring anything the criminals said after that.
Even a fool could tell that woman was dead but grief did things to people, and not everyone took it well. Clearly, the Rigsby family had lost their marbles somewhere along the way, and this latest scheme of theirs must have been cooked up in the madness. The farmers provided them cannisters of dust that Jaune, Ruby and Blake sprinkled around the house – and which Blake threw a whole heap of down into the basement – and then they stepped back and lit the house up.
It had taken six hours to burn through. Six hours that they spent showering, eating and recovering at the inn before heading back to rummage through the ashes. Jaune didn't want to leave with any chance the slugs would survive, but it didn't look like they had. The basement was a mass of ash and cinder, with the water soggily mixed among it. They brushed through it all with farming tools designed for shovelling hay and found no movement. The tiny slug bodies had been burned to nothing, just like they had been when the farmers torched their rotting fields.
It was seven in the evening when Jaune called it done and they made the trip back to Vale, and seven-thirty when they landed. Ruby's father was already waiting at the landing zone impatiently. Ruby had thankfully called ahead so he didn't think they were kidnapping his daughter, but he did look a little annoyed by how late she was being kept out. That faded on seeing their dusty, soot-covered suits and their worn, desperate expressions.
"Tough day?" he guessed.
"We found the bad guys who poisoned the fields," Ruby said, yawning cutely. It was the official story the Council would propagate so there was no harm him knowing. "But it was a parasitic insect so we had to burn the place down."
"And that took all day?"
"Mmm. Had to sift through the ashes to make sure none survived."
"Ah well, that makes sense." He ruffled his daughter's hair and let her lean against him. It had been that long a day. "Looks like you've had quite the exciting day. I hope Ruby wasn't too much of a bother."
"Ruby was a great help." Jaune said. "We'd have been in trouble without her."
"Oh?"
"The bad guys didn't let themselves get arrested." Ruby said sleepily. "But I was super cool. All pow, and wow and -yaaawn."
"Is that so?" Taiyang chuckled and picked Ruby up despite her protests. "I guess all that training in Signal won't be going to waste after all. You can tell me more about it tomorrow morning." He nodded to the two of them. "I'll leave the two of you be if that's alright. We have a ferry to catch back to Patch."
Taiyang strolled away with his daughter in his arms, and Blake idly wished there was someone to carry her back to her apartment as well. Someone other than Jaune obviously, who looked liable to collapse and drop her himself. "Taxi?" he offered.
"Taxi," Blake agreed helplessly.
It wasn't hard to find one waiting outside the landing pads and the trip back to their apartment block and office was conducted in silence, with both of them leaning back in the back of the cab and trying not to fall asleep. Jaune tipped the driver once they arrived and they took the elevator up, stumbled out and approached the Containments Office.
The door was ajar.
"Shit!"
Jaune was at full wakefulness immediately and Blake not much after. They had anomalies in there – some dangerous. Jaune hit the door and was through first with Blake after, Gambol Shroud drawn. A quick glance told her the camera and the globe were still in place, and unless someone had carried a whole safe out, the Blank Slate should be as well. What wasn't usual was how Jaune's chair was pushed back against the wall, his drawers open and some files littered about.
"Jaune-"
"I don't keep anything dangerous in my drawers," he said. "All the files I have are fake ones. They're planted to make them look like old case files. Nothing risky."
Okay. That was a relief. It must have been another of those basic ARC Corp methods of staying hidden because it sounded much too clever for him to have come up with on his own. Presumably, this sort of thing had happened before and someone adapted. Approaching the desk, Blake hummed and touched some dust on the woodwork, brought it to her nose and sniffed. "It's ash. Cigarette ash."
"Someone broke into my office to have a smoke?"
"It looks like it-"
A clatter and a bang sounded from Jaune's bedroom, followed by an angry hiss and a familiar "Skreeeee!" that chilled Blake's bones. Timothy had heard them. Worse, she realised, he would have heard whoever broke into their office, and might just have decided to go and see if it was them. Blake had no idea what the monster thought they were, but it liked Ruby and had decided Jaune was okay, so maybe it saw them as family. Or hell, maybe it saw them as its pets. It was impossible to know.
Someone else, though? An intruder? Blake shuffled nervously. "You don't think…"
"I think we should check to make sure."
Blake didn't want to but knew better than to leave if there was a potential hostile in the office. Even so, she kept a way behind Jaune as he walked down the corridor and opened the door to his room. It was a mess. His sheets had been thrown about and several books and ornaments were on the floor. It was, she imagined, a hazard of having a six-foot monster spider living in your bedroom.
Said six-foot spider was currently ramming its body against Jaune's walk-in closet and dragging its spindly legs down it with a horrible scratching sound. It didn't even react to their entry, only it hissed at the closed door and rammed into it again.
Jaune cleared his throat. "Is someone in there?"
"Oh, thank fuck!" a panicky voice cried from inside the closet. "I've been trapped in here for hours! Help me!"
"That voice…" Jaune frowned. "Is that Roman?"
"I'm not here to steal anything!" Roman Torchwick's muffled voice came from among a cupboard filled with clothes. He sounded more than a little agitated, which Blake felt was the correct response to being attacked by Timothy. "Please, I come in peace, just take that thing away from me!"
Jaune sighed and called Timothy over, fussing and rubbing its disgusting head as he led it into the bathroom. There was a rustle of a bag and then the horrific sounds it made as it ate dried crickets before Jaune closed the bathroom door and came back into the bedroom. "He's gone now," he said. "It's safe."
Blake couldn't resist. "It's time to come out the closet, Roman."
"Har-de-fucking-har." The man opened the door, peeked around to make sure they weren't lying and then stumbled out. He staggered to Jaune's bed and sat down with his face in his hands. "Oh man, oh hell, what was that thing and why was it in your bedroom, you absolute psycho!?"
"That was Timothy."
"It has a name. Why does it have a name!?"
"Better question." Blake interrupted. "Why are you here? You can't possibly have thought breaking into our office to steal things would be a good idea. Not after what you saw we were capable of."
Saphron and Terra mostly, but Roman couldn't have known they wouldn't be here.
"I didn't come to steal anything. I promise." He waved his hand at them. "Look, you know how I'm a big player in the underworld?"
Jaune and Blake answered as one. "No."
"Erk. W-Well, I am. I'm a big deal. Big enough to be famous and to have plenty of money and contacts. Big enough, apparently, to receive this." He brought out a royal blue envelope that had been opened and held it out for them. Jaune took it. "And since I heard the name being thrown around and saw what happened on that freaking ship, I didn't feel all that happy about it. Figured I'd come and deliver it to the people who might be able to do something about it."
Blake watched as Jaune removed a thick piece of paper, vellum, with cursive black ink writing and a red wax seal. He read out loud.
"To Roman Torchwick. You are cordially invited to attend a most exciting and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We hereby extend an invitation to bid at an auction of items most mysterious and most valuable. To RSVP, simply send a message to the number included and instructions will be provided on the date of the eleventh." Jaune paused. "That's two days." He read on. "Yours sincerely, Winter Schnee."
"A Schnee auction." Blake whispered in shock. "In our city."
"I didn't tell anyone I was coming to you." Roman said. "Hell, if it weren't for what I saw then I might have gone along and tried for this trinket, but after seeing what I did? Yeah, not a chance. And if something like that is going to get released in my city? Well, I'd rather it didn't. Or I'd rather have warning so I could move. You can stop this, right? Stop it like you did the last one."
"We can try." Jaune said. "And we shall."
"Good." Roman stood. "Well, that's my work done. Good luck and I'll see you-"
Jaune grabbed the man's arm. "You're helping."
"I'm what now…?"
"The invitation is for you. That means they expect you to show up. If they see me, there's no way they'll lead us to where the auction is taking place, which means you're going to accept the invitation and lead us to it."
Roman looked between Jaune and Blake, found no sympathy or sign he'd be spared such a task, and flopped back down on the bed. "Fuck."
"Poor baby." Blake teased. "You'll be fine."
"You're going as his date, Blake."
"I'm what!?" she howled.
"You think I, an Arc, can show up? The invitation is for Roman and he can say you're his girl for the night. Don't worry, I'll shadow along and be there when it all goes down, but we need to know where it is before we strike or Winter will escape with it. We need someone on the inside."
"You have Roman!" she protested.
"Someone I can trust."
It was Blake's turn to scowl and look between Jaune and Roman, and her turn to find a lack of any sympathy. Roman especially was smirking. "Poor baby," he said, throwing her words back at her. "Don't worry, I'm told I'm a catch."
He'd catch a bullet if he kept that up. Still, there was nothing she could do. Ruby was a child and that'd send all kinds of messages, and they couldn't let Winter Schnee run wild across Vale with an anomaly that might be as bad as the Blank Slate. If the SDC sold that one before, how bad would this one be? The big money probably wasn't there for small, harmless anomalies. It would be the scary stuff that would sell best. The kind of anomaly that couldn't afford to let run free.
"Touch me inappropriately even once and I'll feed you to Timothy."
Roman winced. "Noted."
I'm aware I haven't named the slug anomaly yet – don't worry, that name will be revealed next chapter. Jaune and Blake obviously have to write up a record of that before they start this next job, and the auction is in two days anyway so a little time for them to prepare and get Blake a fancy dress.
Next Chapter: 18th July
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