Ch. 78 Place of the crime
"Right, let's go." Jaune said as the forest shifted around them.
The group took a collective step forward and a part revealed up front.
Qrow was the most wary of them, despite trusting the kids' words. He was simply too used to things going wrong.
Raven was no less alert, but she had a way out at all times. Instead she thought back to what Jinn showed her and Jaune.
Nora was attentive, though mostly she just enjoyed the atmosphere while walking hand in hand with Ren who was lost in thought.
While Jaune walked on ahead Ruby thought about what they planned.
Soon they came to the clearing, the blood crimson tree meeting their gazes.
"Grata! Iaune et Ruby. Et aliis, ego sum Keel."
Jaune nodded to Keel in recognition, but instead of translating took out the Relic of Knowledge and called for its sole occupant. "Jinn!"
As time crawled to a stop around them, the group along with Keel looked at the spirit of knowledge. Unlike Jaune and Raven, the others had only the statue in the main hall of Haven to represent Jinn until now and so they marvelled at her ghostly figure clad in gold chains.
"Well aren't you a clever cookie." Jinn spoke, pointing at Jaune. "Of course you're aware this isn't how my powers are meant to be used." she added.
Though before Jaune could reply Keel's old voice spoke up again, though this time the words only echoed in ancient Valean as the words turned into modern speech.
"Not how the dragons intended to chain you… Hmmm… Perhaps… I don't suppose you'd let me try my hand at breaking those chains, miss? Is that why you brought her Iaune?" Keel spoke up, surprising most of the group. Jaune meanwhile smiled at Ruby and gave her a big thumbs up.
"It was one of the reasons, yes. Though I admit I'm seeking advice on another matter, one perhaps contradictory to the act of freeing those chained."
"Do you wish to bind a being instead? You'd easier find answers from the Wizard rather than I… He did, after all, bind these two." he pointed over to Qrow and Raven.
"He did what!?" the siblings yelled out in sync.
"He did bind those forms of yours to you. I admit I was curious what it was that you seeked, miss, when you flew over my domain. It did not occur to me it was indeed I which you were looking for."
"Um, I believe introductions are in order! I'm Ruby Rose, we've met but didn't have a chance to uhhh… converse?"
Keel chuckled at Ruby's nervous demeanour.
"Do not change your manner of speak for me child. The spirit in our midst is doing a splendid job making sure we're all understood."
"I uh, yes! Um, these are my uncle and aunt, Qrow and Raven Branwen." Qrow offered a quick nod while Raven tried to appear stoic.
"And this is Lie Ren, and that is Nora Valkyrie. They are our teammates." Ren bowed while Nora waved with a smile.
"Valkyrie… what a peculiar name. I am Keel though some call me the Blood Tree."
"You're the craftsman Jinn showed us. The one the God of Destruction took the Crown from." Raven added.
"Hmmm… It is nice to once more be recognised as a craftsman… Ah, is that why you're here?" Keel pointed out Raven specifically. "Knowledge is chained yet you wish to know more… Hmmm, perhaps Jinn can aid me in my retelling. After all it is not the knowledge I desire, simply your skill as an orator."
Jaune moved unprompted and handed Keel the lamp. "Here, do your best to see her free and I promise to try and bring the others one day."
"That… is a good promise." Keel replied before crimson poured out of his hands, and seeped into the gold of the lamp.
Jinn's chains visibly dulled and cracked in places, yet held.
"You are aware there is a price to knowledge." Jinn spoke to keel, her tall form still dwarfed by the tree.
"Your domain is it? Take what time you need. I have experienced plenty of it."
=O=O=O=
Yang walked through the door with confidence. This was her field… or well at least a field she played in before. A shady bar selling information.
Then again, they weren't looking for information so much as an explanation.
The lady behind the bar eyed them with aversion from the moment they stepped foot inside. Though that was nothing new.
Yang sat on a bar stool while Blake and Pyrrha stood behind her. Just as she opened her mouth to order a strawberry sunrise however the woman stabbed a knife into the countertop in front of them.
"Well, what do we have here?" she scowled at them.
Blake took the moment to look back at the patrons, though instead of patrons enjoying their alcohol the thuggish looking people were brandishing blades and other weapons.
Blake growled as she palmed at her own weapon while Pyrrha did the same. Yang's reaction was much the same as she activated her gauntlets and slammed down her armoured arm on the counter next to the blade. "What you have here, is a fucking problem!"
As Arthur walked on the street, now a considerable distance from the Spider's Den, all he heard from the distance was a loud boom as glass metal and fire exploded out of the building.
=O=O=O=
Weiss was currently sitting on board a supply transport headed to Mistral. There were several reasons for that, but most importantly she wanted to meet her friends again.
Was she aware that she was acting like a spoiled child in the sense of using her family name to get to Mistral? Oh, she was aware alright, just didn't really care anymore.
As far as she was concerned, she could never misuse her family name to the same degree Jacques did. But he was behind bars… well on house arrest in one of their vacation homes and under investigation from the authorities but those were minute details really.
Whitley took over SDC and together with her and Winter removed half of the upper management just in the first two weeks. Faunus were being promoted left and right within the SDC and safety audits were being conducted by third party contractors.
But since Whitley was doing such a stellar job and the media loved him for it since he has so far locked the price of dust from going up and let the profits take the hit instead, Weiss felt… unneeded.
The news of what was happening were slow coming from Mistral and personal messages even more so. So when Weiss got the news of Haven nearly burning down she wanted to leave immediately.
But unfortunately for her, despite how hard she worked to get out there to face her father, to make the world think she was back to her feet, she had quite a bit of both physical and psychological therapy ahead of herself.
She came into contact with quite a few people from project Phoenix during that time. Most of them were training to get back to active duty the moment they were cleared by the medical personnel and Weiss realised she was no different.
As one among the first to undergo the procedure she was also one of the first ones cleared for return for duty and the moment she was she talked Winter into assigning her to a one way mission in a supply transport.
From what Winter said, someone who needed to get from Mistral to Atlas would replace her on the way back.
Soon they reached the airspace above Mistral. Weiss froze up when she saw the smoke from below them. A mechanical arm grasped her shoulder firmly yet gently.
"Those your friends down there, Weiss?"
"Most likely…"
"Seems fitting, no? Go, we're almost there anyway."
"But… the mission…"
"Could be jeopardised if nobody stops the unrest. I'll tell the brass that you made a preemptive intervention."
Weiss teared her eyes from the window to look at the woman behind her. Miss Agat was another huntress cleared for duty after receiving a project Phoenix prosthesis and Weiss knew she could trust her to cover for her.
They nodded to each other before Weiss ran over to her duffle bag she borrowed from Winter. Moments later she was falling through the sky towards the ongoing battle.
=O=O=O=
Roman stood just in front of the door to Goodwitch's office and focussed on his semblance for a second before taking a deep breath and walked through the door.
"Glyn! My beloved!" he spoke up before a barrage of pens and pencils embedded into the wall and door behind his head, missing him by a hair's breadth.
"I swear Roman! If you do this one more time, I'm going to invest in letter openers and box cutters!"
Roman smiled, before continuing his walk into her office. "I have some great news! For whatever reasons unknown to me, the odds of taking back Beacon went up significantly! We need to launch an offensive as soon as possible, before we miss our chance."
"Roman, you know that's not how this works."
"And you know this is exactly how this works. We've had nothing but successes since I started advising."
Glynda Goodwithc sighed and nodded. "Fine, I'll get you a meeting with the council. If you can convince them then we can move."
"Fine, but I'm taking the kids with me, I don't have a babysitter for tonight."
It took less than an hour for Glynda to get an emergency session with the council. The collection of old and influential people of Vale trickled into the conference room and engaged in idle chatter for a while before the last of them entered the room.
Henry Winchester entered the room with a serious face and sat down in his spot. Silently eyeing the door he just came through.
In the past months most councilmen learned that Winchester's mood before these meetings were indicative of how they'd go. His serious demeanour today spoke of the importance of this meeting.
Soon the delegation that called in this meeting came in through the door. First was the stoic headmistress Goodwitch, who just sat down in her chair up front. Next was a young man carrying a whiteboard, followed by his partner Cardin Winchester. Then came Roman Torchwick, wearing his signature white coat and bowler hat, his cane confiscated by the security upon entry to the building. The last to enter the room was… Headmistress Goodwitch?
She looked over to her seat and frowned, walking over to it with purpose and slapped the other her up the back of her head, shattering the mirror.
"That's quite enough miss Vanile, please join the others up front." she said to Neo, deliberately using her old surname in front of the councilmen.
Neo grinned at her as she skipped over to Cardin.
"Well then, let's get down to business." Roman spoke up to get the attention on him.
He took out a marker from his breast pocket and stood in front of the whiteboard Sky put together. "Thank you mister Lark. Now! Most of you present are aware of my semblance to some degree, and aware of my reputation, whether as a criminal or more recently is irrelevant for today."
Glynda frowned but didn't say anything. In the end Roman was right that changing how people looked at him was easier than building up a new "brand" (as he called it) from scratch.
Roman quickly drew up two perpendicular lines slapped a 100% and a 0% on the vertical axis and started sketching a graph from memory
"THIS are our chances of retaking Beacon since it fell. Here's when we established the wall, there's the reclaiming of the 46th street and this spike down right here is last week's… excursion." He paused for dramatic effect before drawing a line up. "Today our chances at this shot up to here… It hasn't been that high ever, we struggled to get 50/50 odds and now we have a 74% chance suddenly for no discernable reason."
A murmur passed through the council.
"And you would like us to sanction a full mobilisation based on a hunch."
"Based on my semblance, which works off of facts. I don't have to know the dice has been weighed to know the odds of how it lands, doesn't change the fact someone switched the dice. Something got set in motion today and our odds increased unprecedentedly. I don't care if it's Atlas sending warships to help reclaim it, or if it's the headmaster of Beacon coming back as a zombie. Now is the time to act."
Winchester senior looked at his son who gave him a subtle nod.
"I, Henry Winchester, hereby call for a vote on full mobilisation of Vale's huntsmen forces with the intention of retaking Beacon Academy from the Grimm."
=O=O=O=
Author's note:
Okay, full disclosure I think I tried to do a few too many things in this chapter. I thought about just doing a Keel focused chapter but there are a few too many things in motion that need to be set up beforehand.
I'd like to address one thing, Blake's relationship with Sun is a little more convoluted than just a done deal and though we haven't gotten there quite yet I think some of you may know where I'm going with it after this chapter.
But hey if you want to support me you can do so on P a treon . com (slash) OlympianScribe
Anyway I hope you enjoyed and are looking forward to the next chapter: Ch. 79 Child of Keel