No updates next week due to my work event, sigh.
Oh and now more fun, as my seventeen-year-old cat urinated blood today and cried multiple times when I tried to pick her up. She's resting now but I'll be taking her to the vets tomorrow and I can't help but think that it won't be good at her age.
Cover Art: Solace O'Autumn
Chapter 43
"Report."
"Ma'am." Yuma knelt on the ground before Sienna. "Ilia has been compromised."
Sienna Khan sucked in a breath. "The human bested her?"
"No, ma'am. Blake leaving the White Fang and calling us violent monsters has Ilia holed up in her room refusing to come out."
Sienna clapped a hand to her face. "Damn it, Ilia. This is what I get for trusting teenagers in positions of power. Was she at least able to report to you what she found about the human musician?"
Yuma began to sweat. "Um. Yes… but… well… it's a little… disjointed…"
Sienna raised an eyebrow but told him to continue, at which point she was forced to sit through the most bizarre and nonsensical report she had ever heard. Something about music, birds, fish, gods of the ocean, and late-night trips to throw steak and beef joints to sharks in the bay. Only one of those things made sense and it was the first. The rest had her wondering if Ilia hadn't just taken drugs while she was meant to be watching him.
"Ahem." One of the Albain brothers, who had come to listen in, cleared their throat. Sienna rarely cared to pick out which it was, so unified and unimaginative were they. They were useful, though. That, she couldn't deny. "I've asked some of our more faithful to interact with him and the fishermen he's been spending a lot of time with."
Faithful. Sienna never could understand how the White Fang had created some kind of faith. It didn't make sense. Faiths were born around deities, and the White Fang neither had nor worshipped one. Maybe if they'd concocted some faunus god of war to worship then it would have made sense, but they seemed to focus their faith more on the individuals in the White Fang.
It's a cult, Sienna thought. We have a literal cult of personality. I should probably be more worried about that.
But, again, they were useful. Not every recruit was swayed by passion or fear or hate for humans. Some were weirdoes who needed to believe they were doing it – it being whatever she needed them to do – for a higher purpose. In the end, she'd rather those idiots take the brunt of the hits than actual, competent, smart faunus.
"According to them, the human has been building a power and support base among Menagerie's fishing industry."
"Odd choice."
"It's actually quite genius," said the other brother. "We rely on fishing for the majority of our food – particularly protein. If the fishing were to stop, we'd all feel the impact within a day or two. Belts would need to be tightened."
"Having them on his side makes it difficult for us to move outwardly against him," said the other. "If we were to harm him now, the fishing would halt in protest, and that would quickly make people hungry. They'd blame us for causing it."
That was only a problem if they planned to harm the human, which Sienna had made clear they would not do. The White Fang needed to appear kindly and gentle to the locals, especially the children, and ganging up on one non-violent human would do more harm than good. Of course, that wasn't how the Albain brothers saw it.
"He needs to be dealt with, Sienna! Whether by strength or threat, he needs to be taken off the island. If he stays, he risks undoing the support we've meticulously built over all these years."
"Is our support really so fragile that one human could ever do that?" she had to ask. "Even if he proves himself a friend to all faunus, we can argue he's the exception to the rule. We fight against the worst of humanity, not necessarily all of it."
It felt like a good statement to her, and yet the worried looks exchanged between Albain and Albain had her wondering just what message they were trying to give the people. Genocide had never been the plan when she convinced the White Fang to splinter from Ghira and Kali, but she was beginning to wonder if she hadn't made that clear enough.
Obviously, Sienna hated the humans as much as anyone else, but she wasn't going to go around calling for the deaths of children. When she said, "all humans are scum" what she really meant was "most", and she'd assumed everyone understood that. Now, she wasn't so sure.
"What is his relationship with the fishermen?" she asked, hoping to regain some semblance of sanity.
"They believe he is a deity of the sea."
Okay, never mind. Sanity was overrated. "What?"
"They believe he is a deity of the sea," the brother repeated. "I never said it made sense. It's something ridiculous about how he's able to summon fish or communicate with sharks. I personally think it's because he's trained and released some docile sharks in the area. That explains why he has to feed them and why there haven't been any attacks recently. He's a fraud."
Sienna was still struggling to comprehend all this faith nonsense. The only thing she had faith in was the hard-working nature of people, and the capacity for the faunus to overthrow the yoke of cruelty placed around them. Godly figures were beyond her interest.
But not theirs.
"Well, that sounds like a matter for the two of you, doesn't it?" Sienna smiled politely at them and felt some amusement at their shock. "You're the ones in charge of the White Fang's more… spiritual side." She hated saying that. "If you want to protect the monopoly you have on people's belief on the island, you should be the ones to challenge their beliefs. After all, I'm hardly equipped to convince our fishermen otherwise when I don't believe in gods."
This wasn't her responsibility; that was the message she conveyed. The Albain brothers, self-proclaimed masters of the White Fang's faith, looked at one another and conceded the point.
"Then, to be clear," said the smaller one. "You are content for us to take over the matter so long as we do not threaten his life?"
"Yes." Sienna nodded. "Disparage him, prove him a fraud, eat away at his support. Do whatever you wish. Just make sure it doesn't reflect badly on the White Fang or threaten Ghira and Kali. They have popular support, and we don't want to appear at odds with them."
"We'll see it done. By the end of the day, the human will be proved the fraud he is!"
That ought to keep them out her hair for a bit. Sienna sighed and leaned back, eager to get back to normal paperwork. At least that made sense. All this talk of gods and divinity and fish was driving her up the wall.
It would be a relief when things went back to normal.
/-/
"CORSAC IS DEAD!"
Sienna Khan sprayed the beer she'd been drinking out over her knees, hacking as she banged her chest. Before her, Fennec – and she realised she'd never have to get mixed up over their names again – stood before her with tears streaming down his face. There was blood across his wet clothing.
"What happened!?" Sienna shrieked. "Did the human do this?"
"YES!"
"Ilia told us he was harmless! Did he attack you? Why didn't anyone intervene—"
"He had the sharks do it!"
Sienna's brain failed to parse that information. Her guards raised eyebrows and looked to one another, shrugging in just as much confusion as her. "Explain," she said, slowly. "What do you mean he had the sharks do it?"
"He must have," Fennec wept. "How else could this have happened?"
"I'm missing a whole lot of context here. Start from the beginning."
"Right, so… Corsac and I visited the fishermen to talk to them about the human and find out directly from the source what he had said to them. They were reverential towards him, calling him the chosen of the sea and an emissary of the gods—"
"But not a god himself?"
"Some saw him as such, but others said he was an aspect of the sea god, or just a messenger from him. A prophet." Fennec snarled angrily. "Obviously, we told them that was nonsense and that the human was tricking them! But they wouldn't believe it. Those superstitious fools will believe anything."
Well, they believed in the Albain's cult, so Sienna couldn't argue that one.
"What happened next?"
"Corsac called him a fraud and said the sailors had all been fooled by what were trained sharks, that the fish had been herded into their nets by said creatures. We tried to reason with them, but they said it was obvious he was blessed by the sea. In the end, we decided to go with them on their haul and prove it once and for all."
Sienna had a bad feeling about that but, for the sake of politeness, refrained from saying it was a bad idea. "Go on."
"We went out with them into the fishing areas and, sure enough, the sharks were there – just circling lazily. Even the fishermen agreed they weren't acting naturally. No attacks on swimmers in the shallows, and that despite coming into them to be fed by hand by the human! I've seen the pictures from curious onlookers, Sienna. He sticks his hand in the water holding meat and they gently take it from him!"
Odd behaviour to be sure. Sienna trusted a lot of animals to be hand fed, including dogs, horses, cows and more. Unlike Blake, who had an almost racially insensitive aversion to dogs as a cat faunus, Sienna loved them. Dogs were great. It was cats who were little bastards, and she should know since she shared traits with them.
Sharks, though? Absolutely not. Even if someone had scientific proof a shark was tame and wouldn't bite, she didn't think she would offer her hand.
"Again, the nets were cast and again the sharks started pushing the fish into them like sheepdogs herding cattle," Fennec went on, growing increasingly distressed. "It was just as we said! Proof, if we needed any, that they've been trained to do it so that human can sell the idea of him being divine!"
Sienna had a bad feeling as to how they'd tried to prove him wrong. "And what did Corsac do?"
"Well, he jumped into the water to prove it to them of course!"
"Of course he did." Sienna had to refrain from insulting the man, because idiot or not, if he was truly dead, she didn't want to speak poorly of him. "And I assume that's when things went wrong."
"The sharks attacked him!" Fennec wept. "The human must have trained them so they would savage any faunus they saw!"
"I find it unlikely that sharks can differentiate race…"
"Corsac tried to touch them," said Fennec, not even hearing her. "To prove they were docile. He even put his arm in the mouth of one to show them they were docile, trained beasts! But they bit down and tore his arm off, and then it was a frenzy!" Fennec fell to his knees and pounded the floor. "And the sailors held me back from saving him!"
Good. Sienna would have to thank them for preventing any further loss of life. As Fennec broke down, Sienna's guards looked at her as if asking what they were supposed to do. This was quite clearly not something they could blame the human for, for Corsac had as good as fed himself to some sharks.
On the other hand, they couldn't do nothing with Corsac dead. And, as if this wasn't already weird enough, this would probably hurt the White Fang's faith in Menagerie. Not only the Albain's strange cult, but her own reputation, since it was one of her people who went and died to prove a human wrong.
"You have to deal with him!" Fennec cried. "Please, Sienna! For my brother's sake!"
Sienna Khan sighed. "I will deal with him, Fennec. Go get some rest and prepare to host a funeral for your brother. He will be remembered for all the good things he did, even if there is no body for us to bury."
Weeping, Fennec stumbled to his feet, and Sienna waved for one of her guards to detach and look after him. The man came down and supported Fennec, helping him out while talking about getting him some food and rest, and how Corsac wouldn't want him to disregard his health.
"What will we do?" asked Yuma, her remaining guard. "We can't ignore this, but the human also didn't do anything. Not good or bad. He spent most of the day being forced into new clothes by Mrs Belladonna. He's the perfect alibi, and an embarrassingly bright wardrobe of tropical shirts to prove it."
"I said I would deal with him, Yuma." Sienna took a deep breath. "And I shall."
/-/
"Let me get this straight." The human in the garish neon blue shirt with yellow pineapples on it pointed at himself. "A terrorist group wants to hire me, a human whom they hate, to play some live music for them…?"
He didn't look all that special. This was the first time Sienna was facing the existential threat on her island, and he looked remarkably normal. Handsome, she had to admit. He was a little too young for her, but his angular face and clear blue eyes told her he would have been a hit on any beach outside of Menagerie. Here, he was a little too human for most girls to be interested in. Prejudice ran deep, and it felt ironic for her to say that given she was the one digging the trenches for it to do so, but she wasn't criticising the prejudice. Just acknowledging it.
Faced with him, she didn't feel too threatened. He looked nervous to be in front of her and kept glancing at her armed guards. He knew he was in danger and had been as polite as could be, which meant he knew the balance of power. That took away a lot of her own concern, as the Albain brothers had made him out to be a cunning manipulator.
But then the Albain brothers had also thought it smart to go swim with sharks, so she was forced to admit she might have taken their earlier warnings with a little too much seriousness.
"Yes." Sienna smiled. "That's right. I'd like to pay you to be a musician at a small gathering of ours."
"And this isn't an illegal one?"
"No. It's to be a meeting between myself, the Belladonnas, and several important people in the city, as well as important people in my own organisation. We're discussing budgets for the year ahead."
"The White Fang has budgetary meetings!?"
Sienna laughed, but she had to admit she had shared the sane scornful opinion when she first took over. They were terrorists, damn it. Why did they need to plan for budgets? But, of course, the reality soon took hold.
"Money, supplies, and food don't magically appear at our door. Even a suicide bomber has a cost attached to them – though thankfully we don't use such methods. Our lives are a little too important to be thrown away so casually."
The human looked around for the camera crew. "Why me, though…? I'm human and you're… well… terrorists."
"We may fund terrorists off the island," Sienna said, stretching the truth into knots, "but we're really more of a community support group here. What else are we to do? Until you arrived, there wouldn't be any humans here for us to fight against. It should be obvious what we do on Menagerie is less fight humans and more help faunus."
"I guess that makes sense. There's no one for you to fight."
Oh, there was. They fought ideas, they fought sympathy, they fought empathy – because here, far away from human cruelty, it was easy for faunus to forget the pain and wonder if maybe humans weren't so bad. It was their job to keep the hatred and fear going, which was why this nice human was such a problem.
But if he was working for them, even if just being paid to play music, then he'd become the exception to the rule. "Oh, he's not like other humans," people would say, "He works with the White Fang, so he's different."
Instead of becoming a threat to their authority, he would become a symbol of their strength, that the White Fang – and Sienna Khan in particular – was so persuasive and so good that they could convert a human to their side. It would benefit him as well since then she could openly encourage the people to be nice to him without there being any risk of him sapping their support. He'd stop being "the human" and start being "the Whit Fang's ally" in the eyes of the people.
"And all I need to do is play some songs? I can do that." He smiled. "I've been looking for a way to pay back Mrs and Mr Belladonna for all their kindness."
"Kindness, yes…" Sienna eyed his garish shirt. Kali certainly hadn't been kind with that one. "How does a hundred lien an hour sound?" It was a fairly good wage. "It may not be much, but we have a lot of initiatives to fund and the meeting is to address our poor budget."
"Anything is fine. I lost my wallet, scroll, and access to my bank accounts when the ship I was on was wrecked by the Grimm. Right now, even a hundred lien is a serious amount of money."
"Well, you'll earn more than that since the meeting is a few hours long," she said. He wasn't so hard to get along with, honestly. Now that he wasn't a problem.
Of course, she'd need to answer to Kali soon and assure the overprotective woman that she had no ill-intentions towards him. Kali had been a mess ever since Blake left and was no doubt making up for years without a child by smothering him.
Honestly, Sienna had never really liked the idea of Blake parting with them. In her mind, Blake could have fought with the White Fang and also stayed with her parents. It would have benefitted Sienna more to have good relations with Menagerie's chieftain that way, but no, Blake wanted to split from them because she was too stubborn to try and make peace, and because they hadn't liked Adam.
Which, to be fair, was to be expected. Parents were always going to be iffy about the first boyfriend, especially if said boyfriend was a terrorist, older than her, and if Blake was below seventeen.
What had she expected…? Adam deserved to be on some kind of list.
That relationship was one Sienna had been content to pretend didn't exist, and content to have no involvement in. Now that they'd broken up, she could finally stop looking at Adam as if she needed to be worried about the younger members.
"The meeting is in two days," she said. "Here's a deposit of a hundred lien. You can show up when Kali and Ghira do – and tell Kali she can come bother me about it if she really wants to."
"I will. Thank you."
"One last question, though."
"Yes?"
"What did you do to Ilia?"
"Oh, the chameleon faunus?" He winced. "She came over and asked me to play a sad breakup song for her… and then she kind of…"
"No need to continue." Sienna held up a hand. "I think I can figure out the rest."
And here she'd assumed something nefarious.
The human excused himself soon after, looking relieved to be let go in one piece. Again, she was pleased he knew his place – and also pleased he hadn't brought up Corsac. He hadn't even been nervous about that, suggesting he just didn't know. Obviously, the sharks hadn't been trained or, even if they had been, it wasn't like he'd have known what they got up to away from him.
"Ma'am," said Yuma, "Are you sure this is wise?"
"It's a simple solution. He works for us now, which means he's exempt from being seen as any other human. It also means we benefit from him not being racist, as it becomes our success in converting him rather than him being a good person."
"Not that. That all makes sense."
"Then what?"
"Fennec, ma'am. He's going to hear about this."
"Oh." In truth, she hadn't really considered him. She'd promised she would deal with the human, and she'd dealt with him. Literally. A deal had been offered and taken. "He isn't going to take this well, is he?"
"No ma'am. I don't imagine he will take you favouring the human who killed his brother well."
"Sharks killed his brother, Yuma. The human was being a dress-up doll for Kali."
"I know, ma'am, but that's not how he is going to see it."
"Hmm. I see your point, but will he really go off the rails that badly…?" Sienna laughed. "What's the worst he can do?"
/-/
"An evil deity!" Fennec preached like he had never preached before, standing tall and flinging out his arm as his flock knelt, eyes wide, caught in rapture. "A monstrous denizen from the deep ocean! A shark in human flesh, come to feast upon our loved ones, our families, your children!"
There were gasps from the faithful.
"Already he invades your schools, speaks to your children, and at night he feeds chunks of meat to the sharks! What happens when the meat runs out!? Your children will be fed to them next!"
A woman swooned.
A man stood. "No! We won't allow it!"
"He must be stopped!" another cried. "Won't someone think of the children!?"
"We must think of them!" Fennec roared. "We must be the ones to act! Ask not for salvation if you shall not have the strength to reach out for it! We have arms, we have hands, we can take the beast from the depths ourselves and cast him back from whence he came!"
"Fish monster!"
"Foul shark! Corsac's bane!"
"The music is a part of it as well!" a woman cried, hysterically. "He played it and I felt attracted to him, forcing me to have cheating thoughts against my husband."
"Monstrous!" Fennec hissed. "To taint and corrupt the minds of good, honest folk as well. Truly, he is a beast that must be stopped. We will show this to the world. We will expose and destroy him once and for all! We shall end him for the sake of all faunus!"
"For the sake of all faunus!" the faithful cried, rising to their feet.
"DEATH TO THE DEEP ONE!"
/-/
"You're probably right," Yuma said, shrugging. "Maybe I'm worrying over nothing."
"I think so," Sienna agreed. "Fennec is grieving, but that doesn't mean he's going to lose his mind." The man had always been relaxed before. The loss of his brother was sure to be a shock, but he'd bounce back. "I'm sure everything will be fine."
It's short, I know. Finishing prep work for event and also looking after my cat.
Next Chapter: 13th October (two weeks)
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