Ch 18 - Fangs in the Snow

A/N: This is certainly gonna be an impactful chapter.

Also, I'm tweaking some character's ages, if that doesn't become obvious later.

FFN keeping my formatting if I download the google doc to word and then upload to FFN seems to still be working.

Trigger warnings: Kidnapping of a minor and terrorism. I realize that these might seem a bit weird to specifically call out as a warning to some, but on the off-chance there's someone reading this who is triggered (either in anger or because of unfortunate events earlier in their lives) by those things, I wanted to give a warning so they're aware without having to actually read the contents of the chapter. That is all.

Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Souls or RWBY. Dark Souls belongs to From Software and RWBY belonged to RoosterTeeth. I only own my OCs.

(Whitley)

SDC employees looked up at him even as they continued to move dust to loading bays so they could be shipped to one of the facilities that funneled the wrath of nature up to Atlas via the massive cable-pipelines that ran from Mantle to the floating city. Whitley's eyes roved around, noting how most of them were faunus, and how there was a noticeably lower amount of dust being moved than there should be, the impact of Roman Torchwick's crime spree visible even to the untrained eye.

"I just want to thank you again, sir, for coming down here," the facility supervisor said. "With everything that's been going on, a lot of the company's employees have been very nervous about the security of their paychecks, worried that upper management is gonna be cutting salaries or laying people off to cover expenses."

Whitely shrugged, giving a practiced fake smile, even as he replied, "Well, workers who are unseasy harm productivity. A calm and happy workplace benefits everyone in the company, and not just the board. It was the least I could do."

They arrived at an elevator, boarding the car and leaving the ground floor, the doors opening onto the offices above a dozen or so seconds later. Along the way, the supervisor continued speaking. "The break-in, murder, and subsequent arson at the administration office in the next district over has also left a lot of people uneasy. We're planning on having some private contractors update the security on the exterior doors and windows next week."

They arrived at the supervisor's office, the two company guards accompanying them remaining outside the door, the sounds of typical office banter muting as said door shut. A seat was pulled out, and Whitley gave his thanks as he sat in it, before the supervisor moved around his steel desk to sit on the other side.

"Uh, sir?" the supervisor asked, seemingly hesitant to speak.

"Go on," Whitley said with a wave.

"Right, thank you sir," he replied, taking a breath before continuing, "This isn't going to come up to the board until the quarterly report over a month from now, but since you're here now, I wanted to bring this up. Retailers across Mantle, especially in the poorer districts, have been reporting to us that they've been making a lot less revenue lately. Some stores are selling up to 60% less inventory than they were three months ago. Which is… incredibly confusing, because according to analytics, with the dust shortages being caused by Torchwick, especially compounded with the embargo, demands, and consequently sales, should be increasing. And not only is the opposite happening, but it's happening by a drastic margin. It's as if someone else is supplying the city, especially the poorer districts, with dust, which should be impossible given the circumstances. And we haven't received any reports about dust shortages anywhere in Mantle. At the same time, this trend only started occurring roughly the same week as Torchwick's first robbery, and additionally, Robyn Hill's popularity on polling for the council seat has also skyrocketed since that same timeframe."

Whitley sat up straighter than he was before. "That… is a very unlikely string of coincidences."

"I don't have any evidence at the moment, but in my personal opinion, I don't think they are coincidences, sir."

"What do you-" Whitley trailed off, because from out the window behind the supervisor, he could have sworn he saw movement on the roof across the street. A glint of green, for just a moment, as if he had inadvertently made eye contact before the person had ducked out of sight. He leaned to the side, squinting and taking a closer look.

"Is, something wrong, Mr. Schnee?"

"No, no. I just… thought I saw someone on the roof across the street for a second. It must have been my imagination. My apologies. Now, you were saying that you believed that there was a correlation between Roman Torchwick's robberies in the city and Robyn Hill's skyrocketing popularity?"

"Right, so I know this may sound ridiculous, but the circumstantial evidence is all pointing towards it. I think that-"

They were interrupted again, but this time by the sound of gunfire. Something crashed through the window, looking like a canister, bouncing off the ceiling before landing beneath the seat of the supervisor. Whitely barely had time to open his mouth, some confused question yet to even reach his lips, before there was a bang and a wave of force, an explosion ripping the supervisor to bloody tatters and perforating the metal desk he was sat behind, the material the furniture was made of being the only reason the shrapnel hadn't continued on to shred Whitley's own legs. As it was, his chair was knocked over, and he was thrown into a wall, the impact knocking the wind out of him, and his whole body was now in extreme pain. He honestly wasn't sure if he had broken something or not. The gunfire was much louder now, both from outside, and rapidly getting closer from the inside. The door to the room opened, the two guards rushing in, only for one of them to take fire to the back and collapse like a puppet with the strings cut, blood starting to pool from beneath him. The other guard ducked behind the doorframe, spraying rounds of his own towards whoever was attacking them, but before he could even empty his magazine, a round punched into and through his helmet, splattering his brains behind them. It took Whitley a second to realize that the screams he was hearing were partly his own.

Five masked, uniformed figures fanned into the room, and Whitley's breath froze. White Fang. Oh fuck, White Fang. Their weapons all trained on him, and one of them, antlers on their head, raised a hand to their ear. "This is team seven. We have eyes on Blanc. Repeat, eyes on Blanc. Guards have been eliminated, and we are moving to secure. Requesting teams form up on us for support and extraction."

One of the other terrorists lowered their weapon, picking Whitley up by his throat and slamming him into the wall, drawing another cry out of his lungs. A second walked up to him, raising their weapon, and the last thing he saw was a rifle-butt swinging towards his head, before a sharp pain dragged him into the depths of unconsciousness.

(Ironwood)

James Ironwood was in his office in Atlas Academy when he was informed of the attack, less than a minute after it had begun, by no less than a dozen different sources. He scrambled local fleet assets above the city, who would be on sight in less than five minutes. The White Fang had begun to flee the scene within three, the identical vans splitting up as they tried to go to ground. Surveillance systems in Mantle began to crash, making many of the vans impossible to track, and Ironwood knew that it was no coincidence. With how old the technological infrastructure in most of Mantle was, the White Fang wouldn't even have to manage a direct attack on the system, or try to make and use a backdoor. They could simply bombard the network with junk data until it overloaded, crashing cameras across the city. The security systems of Mantle had been something he had been planning to update for a while now, but first the attack on Beacon had occurred, and then the Amity Project had taken precedence. Mettle spiked, and he winced as a headache rose with it, already knowing that regardless of what else he wanted, anything that wasn't going to Amity was going to be redirected to update security in Mantle as fast as possible. The fact that terrorists could manage something like this in broad daylight spoke leagues to the potential of an infiltrator working for Salem to be able to wreak havoc.

One by one, pursuits of the White Fang vans fleeing from the site of the attack began to fail as they escaped, and Ironwood's prosthetic fist clenched so hard he could hear metal grinding. And that's when an officer opened the door to his office and brought the bad news.

"Sir, we just got a preliminary report from the battalion sent to secure the site of the attack. Whitley Schnee was identified as having been present at the start of the attack, but is now missing."

The general's eyes widened in shock, wondering how this situation could get any worse. The terminal on his desk began to buzz with an incoming call, and considering that he had muted it to all non-priority messages as soon as the crisis had begun, that meant someone important was on the line. A quick glance to the caller ID read Jacques Schnee.

Ah, that's how it could get worse, he thought, already dreading the next few minutes even as he reached to answer the call.

(Miltia)

The Malachite twins had been on the roof of a building across the street when everything went to shit. The intent had been to scope the place out, more thoroughly after they closed, to see if it would be viable for Roman to hit later on, but of course that went out the proverbial window when the White Fang blew out the literal windows with grenades. The twins weren't stupid. Not only was this not really their problem, but they also weren't exactly hero types, so they just hunkered down and tried to watch the proceedings without catching notice, getting ready to slip away before the military would inevitably show up. That was, until…

"Holy shit, they're kidnapping a kid!" Miltia whispered as they watched a contingent of White Fang insurgents carry an unconscious, white-haired teen towards one of the idling vans outside the building they were assaulting.

"He looks, like, two years younger than us. Three max," Melanie shot back.

"That's still messed up!" the younger twin hissed.

"So? This isn't our problem."

Miltia blinked, turning to look as they loaded the poor sod into the back of a van right below them and began to embark into the vehicle themselves. It was honestly amazing how few people tended to look up to check if they were being watched, because that was literally any of the dozens of terrorists would have to do to have a very good chance at spotting the twin pairs of emerald orbs peering over the lip of the roof. And Melanie was right. It wasn't their problem, not really. They weren't even from the city, and considering their backgrounds, and what they were doing now, fighting the White Fang was basically the last thing that would be in character for them, and would probably hinder their goals to cause havoc for the SDC, nevermind aid them. But still, something about this just didn't sit right with her. Unbidden, she recalled the time that a rival crime lord in Mistral had locked her, Mel, and Roman in a basement with a Grimm, and how the entire scenario had been engineered by Roman in the first place just so he could get out of babysitting them while the Lil' Miss Malachite's Spiders were off fighting a gang war. But, at the end of the day, even if it was to save his own hide, first from the Grimm, and later from their mom gunning for his head on a platter, Roman had still stepped in to save their lives, even if he was the one to endanger them in the first place. Actually, now that she thought about it, this was a pretty terrible scenario to use as an analogy for the current situation. But again, that nagging feeling told her she should do something, and she had seconds at best to take action before the van sped off.

So, deciding to act a bit more like her sister for once, she made a snap decision, reaching into her aura and feeling Wallflower wash over her. "Tell Roman and Robyn what happened. I'm finding out where they're taking him." And without waiting for a reply, she jumped off the roof, landing with a thump on top of the van they'd shoved the young man into. Of course, her landing made a loud bang on the roof of the van, and she was plainly visible to anyone looking… but no one noticed her. I could definitely get used to this semblance, she thought, as she deployed her claws and punched them into the roof for stability, and then the van was speeding off, Miltia being taken along for the ride.

She really hoped she wouldn't end up regretting this.

(Robyn)

The fact that Melanie had barged in alone wasn't actually the first thing that had clued Robyn into something. Her information networks in Mantle were pretty thorough, and got back to her before the news was able to cover the event, and said news also painted a pretty good picture of the scenario. Robyn had cursed when she was first made aware of it, sending Fionna to go find Torchwick. The White Fang in Atlas had gone completely quiet in the wake of the attack on Beacon, and Robyn should have known better than to think that they wouldn't start stirring up trouble again.

Still, considering the twins were usually joined at the hip and the fact that she knew the both of them had gone out together to scope out the building that got attacked to see if they could rob it raised alarm bells. And when he arrived, for once even Torchwick didn't have a snarky comment on hand as he was told that Miltia had decided to hop on top of the van that was transporting the now-identified Whitely Schnee to wherever they were going to hold him hostage. Even May, Joanna, and Fionna didn't look too pleased by that particular development.

That was when the scrolls of everyone in the room pinged simultaneously, and they all checked to find that a mass email had evidently been sent out to every device that could receive it. On it were two attachments: a video file, and a text file. With some trepidation, the would-be councilwoman let the others crowd around her as she hit play.

The screen revealed a black background, with no features, defining or otherwise, whatsoever. Likely a green-screen in a basement, but this showed that whoever recorded this was clever, ensuring that no one would have any clues to determine where it was recorded at. The person in the foreground was in a White Fang uniform, though a heavy cloak was wrapped around their sides and back, with a hood over a head which bore a full mask preventing any skin or faunus traits from being visible. The voice that also began to speak was using a voice modulator, ensuring that nobody would be able to identify the speaker or the location.

"Oppressors of Atlas. I represent the White Fang. We have kidnapped the heir to the slavers that are the Schnee Dust Company. Attached to this message are a list of demands for sweeping changes concerning labor and racial laws in the kingdom. If these changes are not enacted, we will kill the child, and mail the demon that sired him the severed head. You have three days to meet our demands."

The video ended, and Torchwick was the one who opened the text file first. They all skimmed it on their own scrolls, though once again the hatted hoodlum was the first to finish it.

"There's no way these demands are getting met," he remarked aloud, and Robyn was forced to agree. It wasn't the proposed laws aimed at vastly increasing the expenses required to everywhere worker safety that made it something that the SDC wouldn't agree to. It wasn't the proposed laws that would ban the prevention of unionization of workers, or laws that would enact harsh legal penalties on practices who discriminated in their hiring or management demographics based on racial grounds. It wasn't even the laws aimed at shortening the workweek by eight hours. While the demands had been directed at Atlas, at the end of the day, it was the Schnee heir who was kidnapped, and even though he wasn't on (and all-but-guaranteed to fail to get onto) the council, Jacques Schnee still had enough economic and political influence to ensure that the demands would be refused if he saw fit to do so.

The last demand was for the passing of a law that would ban monopolies, and force the dissolution of the SDC into over a dozen smaller companies. And knowing the heartless bastard that Jacques was, if it was a choice between his son or his company, the absolute scumbag would pick his company every time. After all, the prick could always force his alcoholic recluse of a wife to have another kid, and he'd pull out every trick in the book to not only indoctrinate them, but also keep them under lock and key until the day he died. And Robyn already knew the shining example of everything she hated about Atlas would milk every cent out of martyring the son he wouldn't actually give a shit about.

"We need to save the kid," Robyn stated evenly.

"Are you fucking shitting me?" Torchwick asked, genuine shock plastered onto not only his expression, but that of everyone else in the room.

"He's literally the son of the guy in charge of the company we're stealing millions of lien worth of dust from!" Melanie shouted.

"I'm not going to let them kill an damned kid!" Robyn shouted back.

"He's gonna be an adult in less than a year! This ain't our damn problem!" Roman countered.

"Letting them do that is just… wrong," Fionna butt in, coming to her support.

"And besides," May added, not exactly happy with the situation but still backing Robyn, "isn't Miltia already finding out where they're taking him on a literal whim?"

Roman was unimpressed. "So why don't we just note the location and then slip an anonymous tip to the cops?"

"Because the military would respond, they'd start a siege, and knowing Kamohtik, the bastards would just kill the kid. We need to hit them with a precision strike, fast, before they can react, in order to get him out alive," she explained.

"Kamo-what now?"

"Kamohtik Nostitz, leader of the Atlas branch of the White Fang," Joanna supplied, inserting herself into the conversation. "All we know about him is that he's a fanatic, and unlike Taurus, actually plans his crap out. And it took a lot of digging to even get his name, nevermind what kind of faunus he is or what he looks like."

"And besides," Robyn remarked, going for the one place she knew would be able to convince Torchwick to lend his talents to this undertaking, "just imagine how terrible it would be for Jacques Schnee's reputation if the Happy Huntresses save his kid when the military couldn't, and then we claim that Roman Torchwick was the one to tell us where they were hiding him. How embarrassing would it be for him that after all his efforts to literally kill you, you show just how much you can walk all over him by getting his kid saved before you continue to rob him the very next day? What kind of notoriety would that give your name?"

The hatted hoodlum opened his mouth, then shut it after a couple of seconds, a scowl on his face. The angry frown gradually melted, and he put a hand to his chin as he seemed to mull something over in his head. Finally, he slumped his shoulders. "You drive a very good point," he begrudgingly admitted. "Half the reason I do all this is for the thrill and the rep it brings, and it might not do that much for the former, but that kind of flaunting over Jackass would skyrocket the latter." He huffed, pulling out a cigar and taking a light. He puffed out some smoke, and then leaned back in his chair, a smug grin on his face once again. "Alright, count me in. Whaddya need to pull this heist off?"

"I'll let you know as soon as Miltia gets back to us on where we have to do the heist at." Robyn replied with a deadpan.

Roman took another drag on the cigar and raised an eyebrow. "Fair enough. Kinda impossible to plan a heist if you don't know where you're planning to hit. In that case, I'll be busy waiting. Have one of your three girls go get a dry erase board and a marker. I'm gonna need that to plan this out."

Fionna snapped her fingers, the items in question coming out of her Pocket Dimensions. When she questioned why Roman downright cackled at that, he only replied, "Inside joke. You'd have to meet someone to get it, and trust me, you'd get it as soon as you did."

"Joanna. May. Go tap our contacts who can get us building plans. We'll be needing them shortly." The Happy Huntresses nodded and went off. "Melanie, there's a decent chance your sister will contact you first, so be ready for that." The girl rolled her eyes, but made a show of taking out her scroll and changing the notification from vibrate to sound.

Robyn turned to leave the room, gesturing for Fionna to follow, already thinking on who to call for this operation, but before she cleared the door, she heard a marker being uncapped followed by one last remark from Torchwick. "Heh. You know, this might turn out to be fun after all."

()

A/N: First off, Blanc is a codename, in case someone is listening into communications. It's the French masculine translation for white.

Moving on, I kinda wanted to highlight the fact that no matter how much you plan something out, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Case in point, the Fang didn't know exactly where in the building Whitely was, so the opening of the attack by firing grenades into the building would have killed him if it wasn't for the fluke of the desk that was between Whitely and the grenade being solid steel. Although, if they did kill him, considering that they were planning on killing him later anyways, it wouldn't have really been that big a loss for them. Which is why they did it. I mean, for them, the superior scenario is taking him alive, ransoming him, and then killing him anyways once they get their demands met (although they also deliberately made demands they know wouldn't get met), but killing him outright is also perfectly acceptable to Kamohtik.

Backtracking a bit, it seems that some people on the ground are piecing together the fact that Roman and Robyn are in cahoots. Fortunately for those two misfits, the guy who was on the cusp of figuring it out came down with an extremely unfortunate case of "being riddled with shrapnel," which not only has a 100% mortality rate, but also inadvertently helped Whitely not bite the dust. And Whitely is a bit too busy being kidnapped, then unconscious, and now a hostage to really do anything about what he was told right before extremely malodorous fecal matter hit the bladed, oscillating, wind-producing electronic device.

Ironwood's just been having a bad month. This definitely doesn't help. Ah well, misery loves company, so at least Whitely won't be alone in that particular department.

Also, the Malachite twins happened to be in the wrong (metaphorically, not geographically) place at the right time. Yes, the twins and Roman getting locked in a basement with a Grimm, and that entire scenario being engineered by Roman in the first place just to get him out of having to babysit them, is in fact canon, and happened in Roman Holiday. Seriously, great fucking book. It's just sad that like five of Roman's hats died during the process of its writing. Which also makes it morbidly humorous that his hat is what survived him being Grimm-chow, and that's what Neo recovered… unless that was the next replacement hat, which Neo had brought some time ago as a preemptive replacement for the next one he'd lose. Which would be even more morbidly humorous.

That last bit from Robyn underwent six different rewrites in my head before I actually typed it. Suffice to say, what happened in this chapter had been part of my plan for this original story arc from the outset. And honestly, if it wasn't for Roman Holiday, I'm not sure how I could have pulled off convincing Roman to get on board with this. But once again, the book came in clutch, because it reveals that Roman mostly pulls off ridiculous heists for the spectacle, the notoriety it gives him, and the thrill. The lien is also definitely a benefit that he very much enjoys, but that's ancillary to the other stuff. I've said it before, but I'll reiterate. He could have robbed anywhere in Vale, but he chose the first national bank specifically for the publicity, and on his way to do it, picked multiple wallets from people's pockets while simultaneously replacing them with a card that read "You've been robbed by Roman Torchwick." And when Lisa Lavender reported on his criminal exploits, he sent her flowers as a thank you (and it was an admittedly hilarious callback when she tells him she liked the flowers during the climax of the book). And honestly, him not stealing (primarily) because of greed just makes him that much more of an epic character. And also makes his friendship with Patches much more plausible, so that's a benefit.

As a quick aside, it's occurred to me that I've mentioned that Vyliria is tall (as befitting her Irithyllian heritage, and perhaps also slightly due to her Habsburgian genetics) several times, but never gave an exact height, only alluding to her being taller than most of her friends. So, to give her a definitive height, once and for all, I'm gonna say that she's practically amazonian at 6 feet and 3 inches (maybe a fraction of an inch taller, but definitely not 6 foot 4). So just about taller than Jaune, with around 2-4 inches on Sun and Pyrrha, but Adam, Neptune, Roman, and a good chunk, though not all, of the adult cast (cough cough Maria and Cordovin, among others cough cough) are taller than her. And if she wasn't undead, she'd have probably gotten another 3-4 inches by her mid-twenties, at which point she'd stop growing.

Next up is the misfits on Menagerie, and after that, I might actually try to finish the trip to Mistral. After all, we still have a Nuckelavee to encounter, and suffice to say, I have plans to… spice up that encounter so that it isn't too trivial for VAAPPR. And on that note, I bid you all adieu.