AN: It's been a while. I still have my gripes with the last chapter. I'll see if I can eventually manage dialogue that doesn't sound cringe.
Riven had a long list of problems. Chief among them was that she had absolutely no knowledge of how far or how deep this went. She took stock of what she knew:
Firstly, the White Fang seemed intrinsically entwined with the local government, with a sort of odd love-hate relationship there. Internally, it seemed just as fractured. She'd had members who assumed her a Vastaya, or a Faunus as they were called here; members who associated her appearance with a clan of people they appeared to utterly despise, some who hated humans, others with varying degrees of indifference. In the end, it seemed a very fractured group united only by a vague purpose. Discipline evidently only went as far as their leaders' immediate eyesight, she mused, while tugging the driver's corpse away into the sand along with the gunner's hulking body.
Unfortunately, she also knew nothing solved disciplinary issues like an immediate threat. She was known as potentially dangerous. The little execution squad made that much clear. Her coming back with dead bodies would be an issue, as would these people not returning, depending on whom they'd spoken to about their excursion and how honest they'd been. All things she had no way of knowing.
Wait, she was being an idiot! Grunting in irritation, Riven promptly moved the bodies back into the vehicle proper. The stabbed driver got himself a broken windshield soon enough, while the gunner was slumped over his weapon as he had been when she'd eliminated him earlier. The Noxian specialist then had herself a long, hard look at the weapon he'd been using.
It was a vehicle-mounted firearm, much like those in use by the denizens of Piltover and Zaun, as well as various pirates across the globe and some of her countrymen. Though, among her ilk, firearms were a good bit more rare than one might expect. Your average Noxian grunt really didn't need a gun, when a javelin was thrown by hand with all the force of a ballista. But, the locals did seem to favour them. They had similar issues to the denizens of other nations back home, in the end. Where your average person needed an Ox to plough a field, or a machine, Riven could do it just as fast by hand. Nobody really knew why, except perhaps the accursed Black Rose, but if there was one thing LeBlanc and her blood magics had achieved, it seemed to be a people of grotesque physical strength. Hrm. Small wonder the scorpion Vastaya had thought her a magic user. Or had a local mage detected her arrival? Either was possible. Both definitely factored in on her next steps.
Riven took a handful of sand and began to feed it into the mechanism of the machine gun, clogging it up and creating plenty of friction. She also pulled several bullets from the belt and pried them open, removing the dust contents used as igniters and mixing them in with the sand proper, even shaking the weapon back and forth so that it spread around inside. Then, the rest of that red dust was sprinkled right across the ammunition box to the gunner's feet, a box located precariously close behind the driver's cabin. Riven made sure to carefully insert the hairy Faunus' finger into the trigger guard, then hopped down from the vehicle and moved a ways away while carrying one of the men's guns with her.
A bit of careful aiming from a dune and a pull of the trigger later, the scenario she'd created exploded in a devestating bout of flame and metal, a nigh full munitions box shredding the corpses the fight had left behind and making it exceedingly difficult to determine what had killed them. Riven then lowered her energy barrier again and put the gun she'd acquired into her saddlebags. She also took one of the White Fang soldiers' Grimm masks for good measure. The next step involved wet sand and her hair. It was going to itch terribly, but it had to be done. The silvery-white colour was just too distinctive. There wasn't much she could do about her clothing, but from a distance or a casual glance, that should suffice.
Come nightfall, Riven arrived back at Kuo Koana. Entry was easier than expected. An adept climber, she simply scaled the mountainside proper and left her llama outside, carrying her saddlebags over her shoulders. Once in the lush forests within the valley, years of life in Ionia made slinking through the woodlands a breeze. She wasn't shy about theft either. Whatever it took at this point. Fortunately, people here hung their laundry out to dry, making it relatively easy to acquire something that fit her.
The next fifteen minutes were harrowing. A White Fang member strolling through town, even in the middle of the night, was nothing abnormal. But even with her pilfered garments and the gun slung over one shoulder to make herself look local, she felt watched, as if anyone could realize she was a fraud at any given moment; or see the runeblade she'd tucked under the saddlebags. It was sort of unique, after all. When she reached the Belladonna estate, she was just waiting for the other shoe to drop, except it never did. Riven elected to avoid the front door and do a running jump over the garden wall instead. Better to stick to darkness, better to-
Pain. Intense pain. All over her face.
With black spots dancing in her vision, Riven found herself looking right up at the stern face of Ghira Belladonna, who, much like an actual cat, evidently spent time skulking around in his garden at night. By the blood gods, someone that big had no damn right to be so quiet!
"You have a lot of explaining to do.", the man began, moving down to take off her mask. Riven let him, of course. It was the easiest way out of this situation. That, and she could feel the sudden blow and brutal impact into the earth had opened the injury in her side again. At least she got herself a front row seat to poor Ghira's expression when he recognized her. All three of him, even: "Riven?!"
"We have...something of a problem.", she replied, somewhat unaware she was addressing his left shoulder instead of his face.
"I can see that. Let's get you inside. And then you can tell me all about why you decided to play infiltrator.", he decided, reaching down to haul her upright so that she could stumble her way into his living room.
What followed was a bag of ice on her aching skull and a brief recanting of what she'd experienced. When she was done, Ghira's expression was grave, his conclusion immediate: "We need to get you out of Menagerie sooner, rather than later."
"How?"
"Ever been to Vale?", he asked instead.
Naturally, Riven had not, so she shook her head in response.
"I can pull some strings and get you out of Menagerie tonight, but I will not lean myself out of the window for you like this without you doing something for me-"
"Within reason.", she interrupted him firmly.
The large cat man smiled wryly and spread his arms apart a bit: "If I read you right, you won't mind. Our daughter eloped with one Adam Taurus. He's an...angry young man and a bad influence on her. He also leads the Valean chapter of the White Fang. I'd like you to make certain our daughter is alright and, if possible, get her to call us. If you can do that, I am more than happy to take a risk on you tonight."
Riven didn't need to think about that for long. Her fist hit her left bosom before she even realized she was doing it. Somewhat awkwardly, she offered her hand afterwards. "On my honour."
"You might want to try not to sound less like my grandfather while you're at it.", he narrowed his eyes and added: "Your side is bleeding again. Your aura should have taken care of that by now."
Riven hadn't noticed and it was written all over her face. In her dazed state, she had no excuse either. Like a rat before the cat, her wide, golden eyes practically spell out 'Oh shit! Oh shit! How do I explain this? I don't even know how aura works!'.
Ghira soon drew the obvious conclusion: "You don't have aura. You can jump over my garden wall in one go from the streetside and you don't have aura. How?"
With her head still throbbing and, on some level, simply tired of being dishonest with the man, Riven shrugs and glances to the side for a second or two, before stating: "Been a warrior since I was a child. Never had the time to delve into the esoteric, so I barely know anything about aura beyond that it exists."
"You have a semblance. That makes no sense.", he pressed with a scowl.
"It is not something that belongs to me. It is something that was done to me. The power is not really my own.", she replied, which caused the Faunus to look absolutely horrified for some reason she didn't quite fully grasp. She assumed it had something to do with the connection between aura and the soul.
For a while, Ghira Belladonna did not know what to say or, for that matter, do. Eventually, he took a deep breath and stated: "I would be far more relaxed about this if you let me unlock your aura."
"You want me to trust you with my soul!?", Riven snapped, sharper than she'd intended. But the mere notion of someone messing with such things did make her skin crawl on a sheer instinctual level.
Ghira spread his hands disarmingly, however, and put the nail in the coffin of her resistance: "I am trusting you with my daughter."
That hit harder than it should. It brought back all kinds of buried memories from her time as an amnesiac in Ionia, the family that had taken her in, even though her comrades, or perhaps she herself, had killed their actual child. She still felt guilty about that and grateful enough to make it the sort of emotional cocktail that gave the Faunus a gigantic big red button to push that he didn't even know about. Riven sighed, slumped her shoulders and stared at the table in front of her for a bit, before speaking in a distant voice, as if she weren't quite in the present at that moment: "Aye. Just get it over with then."
She could feel the large hand on her shoulder, as the man mumbled something. Her ears didn't seem to process it properly, however. All she could hear for some reason was "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" on loop in her mind. All she could see was sickening green flames bursting out of a wagon before her, dousing her skin in injuries that might never heal, followed by a kindly old man in far eastern garb, bleeding out with shards of runeblade stuck in his gut. 'A fine price for helping me', she thought bitterly, her thoughts straying to what ill might befall Ghira Belladonna for his mystical aid. Would he drop dead from the weight of her sins?
It didn't seem that way for the time being. She felt foreign magic push itself inside of her. It itched a bit, and despite not feeling a shred of malice from the man, she couldn't help her discomfort. Void, she could almost feel his concern; no, wait, she could actually feel it. He seemed to bare the weight of the world on his shoulders, bearing it all with a determination that she might be able to muster on her better days. It was admirable, but also a learning moment there, to feel the innermost essence of someone who bore countless scars but just kept on walking forward steadily regardless. For an animal, oddly enough, he seemed far less feral than she was. He reminded her of Darius, in a way. An exemplar of how purpose met strength and neither would let the other falter in a perfect balance.
When it was done, she sat there in silence for a while, staring blankly at the table. She felt she could never measure up to Ghira Belladonna's nature. And that galled her something fierce.
Ghira himself, meanwhile, took a few moments to study the young woman seated before him and process what he'd just gleaned from her. There was something odd about her and her powers. He'd seen her soul, for one. That was a wounded animal if he'd ever seen one. She reminded him far too much of Adam in that way and for a moment, he wondered if he'd made a mistake. There was a lot of hate in her, as well. Strangely enough, most of it seemed to go inward. Was that why she denied being a Faunus? Passing as human was one way to avoid the worst of the persecution in some parts of the world. What that might do to someone's mind in the long-term, well, he assumed he had a pretty good idea after unlocking Riven's aura. Those eyes, the night vision, the elongated canines? The girl had likely been fooling herself all her life.
For a moment, Ghira wondered if he'd done the right thing. Especially as he needed to put some things in motion this very night, if they wished to avoid complications from the Fang. When he stepped out of the room, he stopped for a moment, looked his beloved and terminally curious Kali in the eyes and asked her to: "Look after her, please. I need to head out."