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For three weeks, Roman had been forced to wallow in the crummy room he'd managed to cobble together in one of the offices overlooking the maintenance depot. It was built right into the mountain that gave Mountain Glenn its name, just off to the side of the reinforced mouth of the subterranean train line and overlooking the maintenance yard beside it. The Fang's camp had swallowed up whatever space they could find between the maintenance sheds, lifting equipment and materials they were using to refit the old trains that had been left long abandoned in Mountain Glenn's bowls. They were simple groupings of tents in little circles, with storage and trash tents scattered between them and fires burning in the middle of each grouping where Roman could see the 'freedom fighters' enjoying their meal.
Meanwhile, all he had was a pouting nineteen year old sitting on her bed, glaring into his back…
"I know, Neo." He sighed, "You're not happy… Neither am I, honestly, but what am I supposed to do? Just let them do whatever they want? That's worked out so great for us so far…"
She knocked twice on the wall and he turned to watch her sign, "We should just go, like I said before. We have friends in Mistral, and Vacuo is huge. Plenty of space to get lost in."
"Yeah, but…" He sighed and turned, taking a seat on the edge of his own bed and resting his elbows on his knees. "Vale is my home. Which, yeah, bleeding heart, pansy ass, sob story and all that. But… It still is, you know? Everything I know is here, everything I have, everything we have built… I can't just leave it all."
"You'd still have me…"
"I know." He smiled, rubbing his fingers together slowly and murmuring, "But… What kind of life will I give you like this? One in the rubble, where even kids are free game? No… I worked too hard to change things just to just- I need Vale for-"
He sighed and shook his head, but he could tell from Neo's soft face that she understood-
Vale, to him, had always been something to improve to leave behind for her. Leaving it behind may as well have been giving up on her future, as far as Roman was concerned. And…
"No." He shook his head, "We've never run from our problems, have we?"
"Not even when we should have." Neo nodded, smiling thinly as he stood and came over, dropping onto her old bed with enough force to make her bounce. He threw an arm around her and hugged her close, and she sighed as she relaxed into his side. Still, though, she signed, "Red isn't worth the risk, though."
"Maybe, maybe not." It didn't matter to him, really - kids were off limits, and if he could help it, he would protect them. He couldn't help himself when it came to that. Not since he'd met Neo, at least. But Neo was self-interested, and needed more than that. So, he argued, "She's valuable. The old man in the tower, he moved her ahead personally. Which means we can lean on her, and on him through her, and get out of this shit-show."
"That also means if we fail we'll be in more trouble than we are now…"
"Yeah, well…" Roman sighed, running his fingers through Neo's hair and watching the window. "Our life is all about making bets. Right?"
"Right…"
"Hey." He thumped the side of her head gently, smiling when she turned just enough to glower at him. Smiling, he said, "I'll keep you safe. And you'll keep me safe. That's the deal, right?"
She just nodded and turned again, resting on his shoulder while he leaned back against the wall behind them. As her breathing started to slow, she signed a quick, lazy and sloppy, "Love you, pops."
Roman just snorted, "Don't call me pops, brat."
But he could tell she was already gone.
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Following the pull of his Gauntlet's magic eventually brought them to a warehouse, sequestered near the back of Mountain Glenn, where actual, more traditional construction gave way to stone-cutting work built into the mountain directly. It was long and wide, and stuffed with dust and dirt covered old equipment, rotting wood, and bug-eaten cardboard. It cut deep into the mountain, with collapsed cranes along doors running beside a three lane rail line mostly buried in rubble and broken, crushed train cars.
"Industrial freight." Fiona explained as they meandered through the old storage building under flickering lights that, funnily, made it easier for Jaune to see and harder for Fiona. She ran her hands along the middle of a long line of stone bricks and chuckled. "Just makes sense, right? Mine out what you need for the train tunnels, and set up stone-cutting on this side to ship it back to Vale for it to use."
"Double dipping on a project." Jaune nodded, "Right?"
"Yeah." He heard her voice dip a bit, "I… Wonder if that is part of why Mountain Glenn failed."
"What do you mean?"
"Well… Reports on what happened here vary, you know?" He slowed down and cocked his head as Fiona caught up to walk beside him, following where his Gauntlet led. "As far as anyone knows… Mountain Glenn fell because Grimm breached into one of the train tunnels. But look at them."
He did, looking out the old, worn open bay doors at the walls on the other side. Confused, he muttered, "It's… Normal stone as far as I can see?"
"Exactly." Fiona said, "Normal stone. Why didn't Vale use these bricks, or even just concrete, to reinforce the tunnel? Subterranean Grimm aren't a particularly new thing, but the companies hired to handle all this did nothing…"
"That's… A good question." He murmured, looking at the walls in a new light, and turning the same look on the stone bricks left to rot for decades. All this stone, taken away from defense to line some corporate interest's coffers, left to rot when the Grimm destroyed it all. Shaking his head, he ran his hand along the old stone and sighed, "What a waste…"
"Yeah…" He turned to Fiona, whose gaze had turned towards the ground, her ears flattened against the sides of her head. "It really, really is."
"Hey now…." He murmured, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She turned and let him pull her into a hug, wrapping her arms around him in spite of his armored bulk. He wasn't sure what was bothering her, exactly, but… He just ran the tips of his armored fingers down her back gently and hummed. "It's alright, Fiona. We… We can leave soon, I promise."
"I know, it's okay, I just…" She sighed, shaking her head, "This whole place, all these people, it reminds me of Mantle."
"It's that bad…?"
"Sometimes, yeah." She nodded, pulling away and grimacing. "But… That can wait. I'm sorry, I just got upset and-"
"Never apologise for needing comfort." He cut her off, resting a hand on her shoulders and smiling, "We take care of each other. That's the job, right?"
"Right." She sighed and nodded, giving him a smile, "Thanks, Jaune."
"Of course."
"Well…" She bounced on her feet, suddenly seemingly more awkward, "Let's keep going. We should be close, right?"
"Right." Or at least, he felt way closer to… Whatever was drawing him in, at least, even if something else seemed to tug at the magic trail he was following, too. Whatever it was, it was small but, now that he knew how to look for it, he could feel it, echoing quietly before the more powerful pull washed it away. It came back, of course, moments later, but only to be washed away again. "Weird…"
"Jaune…?"
"Nothing." He shook his head, "Just a feeling."
"One to follow?"
"No." He shook his head, "At least… Not now. It isn't the Hive."
"You're sure?" He nodded and Fiona smiled, turning with him as he stepped past her and moved on, ignoring the quiet echo as best he could.
A job made just a bit easier when they stepped out the final bay door and turned towards a deep, rumbling growl that echoed from further up the murkily lit tunnel.
The Grimm looked like a huge hedgehog the size of a car, covered in spines that stuck straight out of its back, starting out greyish black and streaking to white at the tips. Smaller, shorter spines bristled across its face, protruding from its bone-white face-armor, but those typical crimson eyes were so small Jaune could barely see them as it lumbered forward. But its legs were short and stubby, keeping it low to the ground and protecting a stomach Jaune could tell from here was unprotected.
"Fiona…"
"A Skewer." She explained, pulling out her crossbow-staff. "They don't see well and they're slow as sin, but… Well, they're hard to attack and- Use a Mana Blast!"
She leapt back and to the side to dodge a pair of long spines sent hurtling towards them, and Jaune's Gauntlet snapped up and into a familiar. The Push of mana hurled the spines away from him, clattering across the old tracks, but that only seemed to agitate the creature which turned once more, raising a shoulder and pitching it down as muscles flexed and ejected the spines in another inaccurate shower aimed in their general direction. The attack was just as broad and inaccurate as the first one, of course, but…
Well, volume had a kind of accuracy all on its own.
"Ideas?" He asked, scattering the attack the way he had the first and sweeping his axe around to cleave through the spines protruding from the ground in front of them. Turning, he did the same to the ones on either side while Fiona frowned.
"I have a trick up my sleeves, but…" She sighed, watching the monster bristle and shiver, the spines further along its back shifting up, towards its shoulders, as if the skin itself were twisting and squirming around to refill the relatively empty patches on its shoulder where only shorter, barbed spines protected it. "It's expensive."
"Exp-" He scoffed, "I will buy you another what-cha-ma-call-it!"
"It's not something you can-" She squawked as Jaune turned, Blasting away another shower of spines as he stepped forward, closing the distance with the monster and searching for a weakness that didn't involve trying to squirm under it and hoping for the best.
"Okay, fine!" Fiona shouted, sliding in front of him and barking, "Throw me at it!"
"You want me to what?"
"Throw me!" She repeated, tossing her staff aside and rolling her shoulders, "It's a short range thing, so… I gotta get closer."
He wanted to argue, to ask what her plan was - or at least if she'd be alright - but the way she spoke… Her voice was firm and hard. Professional. Like the Huntress she was, taking command of a Grimm encounter as she had a right to. So Jaune just nodded and punched his fist down into the ground, summoning his Mana and letting it explode out in front of him as he had done a hundred times.
This time, like she knew right when it was coming, Fiona leapt and curled into a ball, letting it hurl her towards the roaring Grimm.
She shot up towards the roof and spun, slamming into the roof legs first and throwing her arms out to either side. They shimmered with Aura as she kicked off the ceiling and caught the two long, studded metal rods and threw them. Each had fins that stretched to either side as they fell and the Grimm turned, trying to track her, but neither rod hit it. Instead, they slammed down in front of it and off to either side, just as Fiona vanished behind her.
He shot up when she left his sight, fear wracking his mind-
Before lightning flooded the area the Grimm took up, coalescing into a ball that turned more and more liquid as rock, metal and everything else around it melted away and condensed. It was so bright it nearly blinded Jaune and, when he covered his face with his Gauntlet, he saw spots dancing. And then, it expanded, so far it ate into the roof and the wall and down into the floor. And so far Jaune had to turn, running back into the warehouse to make distance without risking climbing the pile of rubble and scrap blocking the tunnel off a hundred yards up. Finally, though, he saw the light around him recede and turned to watch a ball of molten red condense once again until it was…
Well, roughly the size of a truck, resting in the middle of where the Grimm had been - or at least, twenty feet straight down from where it had been.
The rods were gone, now, but whatever they were had more or less annihilated everything in a circle of about sixty feet, reducing it down to that little ball. Fiona was on the other end of the hole it had dug, waving nervously in the flickering lights that still, somehow, were mostly working in the tunnel. At least well enough for him to see her take a seat at the edge of the hole.
"What was that?" He called over as he slid down the mostly smooth slope and staggered to a stop in the middle.
"Fusion pylons." She answered as Jaune pitched his axe up to where she was and then used the armored claws on his Gauntlet, and natural cracks in the stone, to climb up towards her. "Basically, they use a ton of Gravity Dust to make stuff really heavy, Lightning Dust and magnetic systems like their airships use to contain the field, and just… Crush it."
"Never… Heard of it…" He grunted, pulling himself up onto the edge of the hole and rolling over, more tired from climbing with all his armor than he was from the walk or the fight. Breathing, he muttered, "Why not?"
"Gravity Dust is already experimental." Fiona shrugged, "Far as I could tell from the, uh, paperwork we acquired, this was an experiment of an experiment of another experiment. Super expensive, and only one was made."
"One you stole…?"
"You saw the damage it does." Fiona pointed out, "Imagine Atlas dropping this on 'terrorist cells' in Mantle."
"What, like the Fang…?"
"And, according to some, the Happy Huntresses, yeah. Along with half a dozen other activist groups we… May or may not help steal stuff, from time to time." Fiona said, turning and flopping on his chest with enough force he grunted. Fione rested her chin on her arms and pouted at him, "Why are you acting like I weigh a ton…?"
"I-I'm not." He stammered, "You just, uh, landed on my sternum?"
"Uh huh…" She rolled her eyes and rolled off him, hopping up and turning to offer him a hand up that he took. Rolling his shoulders, he turned as Fiona asked, "Which way?"
"...There." He grunted, pointing at a hole her bomb had revealed in the rock along the wall, through which he could only see darkness. But… "I feel the power from before, coming right through there. And it's potent, too."
"That's… Convenient." Fiona murmured, to which he could only shrug as he brushed past her and moved for the crack in the stone.
It wasn't wide enough for him, unfortunately, but he was able to punch away the edges with the base of his poleaxe, expanding it until he was just about able to squeeze through. As he stepped through he found himself in a narrow sort of… Not quite a landing, but something like a stone outcropping with winding, rough rock paths leading to either side, one up and one down, that he could only pass through sideways. But he could see, thanks to odd crystals jammed roughly into the walls every foot or so, and that told him this wasn't Grimm. And given the size…
"Jaune…?"
"The Overlord." He corrected gently, raising his fist and growling, "And I demand that my Minions come to me."
Moments passed before, in the distance, he heard… Something. Like the faintest rustling of cloth. And then glowing yellow eyes lit up the shadows further down the tunnel, one pair at a time until there were dozens of eyes staring up at him, and he smiled.
He smiled and nodded, "Finally…"
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Qrow landed on the car and stretched his wings to rest them before he turned to step off the edge of the ancient, rusted roof. He landed on his own feet and then stretched them, too, easing out human muscles he hadn't dealt with for hours on the flight over. Looking around him, Mountain Glenn was just as dead as he'd been told it was after the little fuck-up back in the day. But, when he pinged his niece's Scroll and she shared her location, she was only a half-mile away, up and around a ruined apartment building.
"Perfect." He rumbled, wary of the good luck in picking his landing spot as he closed the map and sent her a message to stay where she was. Growling, he drew Harbinger and let it rest on a shoulder, rumbling, "Let's hope my luck holds out…"
Of course, he knew it wouldn't…
But that was why he had extra ammo.
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Lea :
About Qrow… Lol