p class="MsoNormal""So let me get this straight."br /br /Coco pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers as she tried not to look at where Blake and I sat at Amber's dining room table. Place settings were out, ruffled feathers were mostly soothed… but Coco had been suspiciously quiet the entire time Blake and I went over the how and why she was /br /In hindsight, I really should've seen this coming. Coco emloves/em getting the last /br /"Instead of trying to call your brother—or gods forbid, send him a emtext message/em—you instead..." She brought up her fingers to start counting off. "Found somebody who knows enough about the CCT system to track somebody's location. Had them track your brother's Scroll for you. Went I don't even know how far across the damn continent—"br /br /"I was in Forever Fall, it's not that far from—"br /br /"emHup-up-up/em!" Coco snapped. "You emdo not /emget to talk yet, Kitty. As I was saying, you tracked him down, followed him emacross the continent/em, and then snuck in the bedroom window of a house, one of whose occupants is emmore dangerous than you could possibly begin to imagine/em."br /br /"Now imagine if I emwasn't/em drunk!" Qrow chortled, clearly claiming that title for /br /"Do I have the long and short of it?" Coco /br /"... maybe?" Blake offered. "When you put it that way..."br /br /"I swear, for the love of..." Coco trailed off, groaning aloud. "You two. Brother and sister. I'm just going to assume your parents are similar. So I have to ask." Coco fixed the two of us with a death glare, and I felt Blake push further up against my side. "What is it with Belladonnas and emoverreacting/em!?"br /br /"... it seemed like a good idea at the time?" Blake offered. Coco just threw her hands in the air and walked just off to the side, throwing herself down onto an armchair in /br /"Can we go back to the part where you got him to open the window with a laser pointer? Because trust me, I definitely didn't see that one coming." Fox /br /Blake and I both reached behind us and tossed the throw pillows from Amber's dining room chairs at his face (yes really, there are chairs like that…). A third from Velvet hit him in the /br /"I'm serious," Fox said, nonplussed. "Is that actually a thing that works?"br /br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /br /Ghira Belladonna looked over the papers on his desk, adjusting his overly-small reading glasses with one hand and tilting the papers to get a better angle with the other. The only light source in the room was a small lamp, but that was the beauty of being a Faunus: you get to save some money here and there, and on an island like Menagerie, every Lien saved went to good use somewhere. That did not, unfortunately, make it any easier to parse the document in his hand: night vision or no, too-small reading glasses or no, legalese is still /br /And much as they tried to disguise it, Ghira was not about to let an SDC shell company purchase water rights to set up an offshore mining platform between Anima and Menagerie. Was it well-hidden? Yes, he had to admit that it was. But there emwere/em some benefits to remaining in contact with his old protege Sienna, and one of them was access to her information network. Human-passing Faunus in the Atlas securities office were very quick to share what they could, after all; it just had to be hidden along with leaks that look more like insider trading or corporate espionage, and pointed to—br /br /emRed dot./embr /br /Ghira looked up, eyeing the dot that had landed on his paper. It bounced up and down a couple of times, and ever so slowly, he raised a hand to… and it was gone. He blinked once or twice, wondering if he'd been spending too much time reading; maybe it would be better to put the paperwork down and—br /br /emRed dot's back./embr /br /This time it appeared in the middle of his office. Ghira pushed himself up from his desk chair and followed the dot, even as it meandered across the floor of his office and out into the hall. The dot led him through the hall, and into the dining room—br /br /"Oh good, you're here," Kali said, fiddling with a laser pointer in one hand while the other gestured at their dinner table. "The food was almost cold."br /br /"I thought we agreed that you wouldn't use that emthing/em again," he said with a gesture to the laser pointer, though his tone remained /br /"I changed the agreement when you didn't show up for dinner last week," Kali told him with a piercing look, offset by her grin. "emTwice/em. Now please, dig in. I got some swordfish at the market earlier."br /br /That was all it took to get Ghira in his seat, much to Kali's /br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /br /"It depends," I admitted, "but assume it'll work on most cat Faunus. And that it's emreally racist/em to do that unless you're also a cat Faunus. Even other Faunus, if they aren't cats, tend to get looked down on for doing that to us."br /br /"Faunus culture, ladies and gentlemen!" Qrow said, gesturing with the glass of whiskey in his hand, which had replaced his earlier wine. "Don't play to someone else's stereotype, but playing to your own is fine. Yup, sounds just about right." Blake, Velvet, and I fixed him with simultaneous death glares. "But let's get back on track. The people watching us."br /br /"Tan or Vacuan with mint-green hair, Atlesian or north Mistralian with silver hair, right?" Coco asked to /br /"That's the ones," Blake /br /"How close were they watching?" Qrow asked, leaning forward. "And more importantly, emwere you seen/em?"br /br /"I don't think I was seen," my sister said, choosing to answer the more important question first. "Humans, and Faunus whose trait doesn't give them better senses—sorry Noah," she shot me an apologetic /br /"No worries," I waved it /br /"Anyway, they tend not to look emup/em. They just… don't have much reason to. And yes," she plowed on to stop Qrow from interrupting, "I did pay attention to see if they did anyways. They didn't."br /br /"Which means they weren't trained at a Huntsman academy," Qrow mused. "If you kids haven't had Port or Goodwitch start breaking that habit, you will soon. Attacks from above tend to be part of your end of year practicals, at least on non-Vytal Festival years. What about their weapons?" Qrow directed this back at Blake /br /"The girl had a pair of… it was either small shotguns or big pistols at the small of her back," Blake said, fidgeting. "The guy… I think his weapon was in his boots? They had shotgun shells around the outside."br /br /"Did you get a picture?" Qrow asked the obvious /br /Blake… /br /"Oh for fuck's sakes," he said. "Catnap, your sister has emno/em common sense."br /br /"Hey!" Blake yelled, ears lowered in /br /"emMoving on/em!" Coco clapped her hands, drawing everyone's attention. "Without that picture, all we can do is keep a lookout for these people. Most of us with our eyes, Fox with his Semblance. But we're spinning our wheels here people; we still have a mystery to solve, and if we have to have an extra person involved, I'm sure as hell going to take the extra pair of eyes." She slid her Scroll across the table, the video she'd captured during the midday excitement already loaded up and ready to play. "You watch that. Everyone else? Start throwing ideas."br /br /"Well, the first thing that comes to mind is relative Aura levels," Fox said. "It's possible Coco and Velvet were out of range, but I know both Noah and I got hit by that Semblance. Even so, we were unaffected, but the Fresnel students—with unlocked Auras, to boot—did get hit."br /br /"So you're suggesting that how much Aura somebody has could change things?" Amber said, carrying a large platter over from the kitchen, a large sum of fresh-sliced, medium-rare roast beef laid out upon it. "Oh, could anybody help me with the rest of the serving bowls?"br /br /"I got it," Fox said, getting up to help her. I moved to stand, but Blake's hand on mine had me sitting back down. Amber caught the motion, and swiftly hid a giggle behind her hand, even as Blake blushed and her ears folded in embarrassment. "Also, what Amber said is the gist of it: I think how much Aura the user has compared to the people they tried to hit is a controlling factor."br /br /"But doesn't that give us another problem?" Velvet asked. "Who's the user?"br /br /"Didn't you mention a boy running in with the warning?" Blake asked, tapping at Coco's Scroll to find the footage. "Here, him. You said it happened after he showed up; wouldn't it make sense if it was emhis/em Semblance?"br /br /"That hurts White-eyes' idea about Aura levels," Qrow said, jostling the ice cubes in his tumbler of whiskey. "I've only known a few kids to have more Aura at that age than a combat school student. My nieces were two of them, but they're emnot/em the standard to go off of. And schools make you tell them if your Aura's unlocked, emor/em they'd find out anyways, and from there it's not hard to measure a kid's Aura levels."br /br /The lot of us went silent as Fox and Amber returned with the rest of the food: a massive bowl of garlic mashed potatoes, and a baking dish filled with roasted vegetables. She set them on the table and then sat down, and one by one we all served ourselves. Blake only gave herself a small amount of meat alongside a heaping helping of vegetables, then gave me a half-hearted glare when I plunked another piece of beef down onto her /br /A moment later there was a click, and Blake and I looked over to where Velvet sat, her camera in hand and a fond smile on her face. Then her ears perked up as something seemed to come to /br /"Hey Fox?" Velvet asked. "I just realized. When we had Noah try the Semblance, you said the mice got scared. What about the people in the crowd?"br /br /"Hmm…" Fox closed his eyes as he chewed (not like he needed them…), thinking away. Then his brow furrowed as something seemed to come to mind. "It… wasn't all fear. There was some, but there was also shock, confusion, and uncertainty. And then it just emgrew/em, and eventually it all turned to fear."br /br /At that moment, a thought came to mind. About assumptions that had been made, and ways that they may be /br /"... what if we're wrong?" I /br /"How so?" Qrow looked at me with /br /"Well, we're looking at this whole thing on the assumption that none of us were affected," I said. "And that especially makes sense for Coco and Velvet, who were up and removed from the whole thing. But what if we're wrong about Fox and me?"br /br /"What if the two of you emwere/em affected by the Semblance, but just didn't realize it?" Velvet asked as a vegetable fell from her /br /"Which also makes the assumption about it causing emfear/em invalid," Coco supplied. "And if we're wrong about emthat/em, then what does the Semblance actually emdo/em?"br /br /"I… don't know," I said, /br /We returned to our meals, eating in relative silence as we turned the situation over in our heads. The answer was in front of us, but we somehow weren't seeing it. Telepathic Semblance, check. It affects emotional states, eventually pushing them towards fear… not quite check, because I know neither Fox nor I became afraid, and I don't emthink/em there was anything funky going on with my mental state. Unless, of course, that was another invalid assumption, and that's not actually what it did. The Semblance probably belonged to the young boy, and I'm not sure where he came from—br /br /"Hang on a second," Blake said. "The boy that ran up. You think it's his Semblance, right?"br /br /"That's the going theory," Qrow said. "What are you thinking?"br /br /"How much Aura did you all use up getting into town?" she continued. "And what time does the school have its combat and Aura training classes?"br /br /"Barely any," Qrow said. "And they have those classes right before lunch; it's not a great idea to do strenuous physical activity right after eating, and the food helps them refill their… Aura…" Qrow blinked, the hand holding his whiskey stopping halfway to his mouth. "It scales. That's why the civvies and Fresnel kids got hit, but you kids didn't." He suddenly pushed back from the table, grabbing his Scroll in the process as he headed outside. "I got an idea. Need to go talk to someone."br /br /"Wait, what're you planning?" Velvet /br /"We're cancelling combat and Aura classes at Fresnel tomorrow," he said. "And making sure civvies without Aura stay out of the square. White-eyes and Catnap, you two'll be down in the square like last time. Hat 'n Glasses, you'll be on overwatch again."br /br /"What about me?" Velvet asked, then looked across the table. "A-and Blake?"br /br /"Well Kitten shouldn't even embe/em here," Qrow admonished with a glare. Blake shrunk in her seat, and I glared at Qrow. "That said, I'm still gonna use ya. Folks are following us? Well Shutterbug, you and Kitten have better hearing, and a emcamera/em. Find them."br /br /With that, Qrow left the house. A moment later, I felt a pulse of nausea coming from my gut—less than last time Qrow had shown up, but still powerful. Enough to make me put a hand over my /br /"You okay?" Blake asked, a hand on my back. "You look a little green."br /br /"I'm fine," I said, looking at the half-eaten vegetable still speared on my fork and seeing a perfect excuse. "Just wasn't paying attention and grabbed a brussels sprout."br /br /"Oh." Blake's eyes fell to the half-eaten sprout on my fork, and her ears flattened in distaste. "emEw/em… who even emlikes/em those things?"br /br /"emAhem./em" The two of us glanced across the table at Velvet, who had her arms crossed, nose wrinkled, and glared at us with a look of consternation. And in front of her, I saw… most of the rest of the brussels sprouts Amber had /br /"... sorry?" I offered. She just took a bite of her own sprout with a harrumph, chewing away as she style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal" br /When we got into town, the change wasn't immediately apparent. A moment's time actually walking in the square, though, gave me enough time to note the differences. And it was one of those things where it can't be unseen: once you're aware of it, you can't help but notice. The big difference that stuck out once I knew to look for it?br /br /The kitschy vendors and food carts. Oh, they were still there… but nobody was actually embuying/em from them. A closer look at the food cart—or well, a closer emwhiff/em—was enough to tell me that nothing was actually cooking. I still heard the occasional sizzle, but that was literally just water being dropped onto a hot skillet or grill to make the sound. Everybody in the square had their Aura unlocked. I would wager we had every single professor from Fresnel Academy here, in disguise and prepared, as well as all of the students. Yes, emall/em of the students: I counted no less than thirty weapons slung on backs, hanging at waists, or outright held in /br /em"Okay team, get into position,"/em Coco ordered over our link. em"Fox and Noah, dead center of the square. Blake and Velvet, get as high as you can, and each of you cover one-eighty degrees; keep an eye out for mint-green or silver hair. Branwen and I will be up on the roofs as overwatch."/embr /br /The lot of us took up our positions as ordered. Qrow and Coco crouched on the roof of the town hall, Coco having exchanged her favored aviators for a different set of glasses with matte lenses that didn't reflect anything. I saw Blake and Velvet up at the top of the bell tower, Velvet looking east through her camera's viewfinder, while Blake handled west with a pair of binoculars that Amber had loaned her, as well as her Scroll's /br /Meanwhile, Fox and I spread our telepathic senses over the crowd, keeping our third eyes peeled for whatever might be /br /em"Uh, excuse me if the answer is obvious, but…"/em Blake hesitated before finishing her question, and I could feel the embarrassment over our psychic link. em"But what if… well, nothing happens?"br /br /"That's information on its own,"/em Qrow said, his mental 'voice' taking on a professorial air. em"It could also mean a number of different things. Maybe the boy is acting on somebody else's direction. Maybe somebody is actively manipulating the boy, and he just doesn't know it. Maybe there's something else entirely at play, and the boy is completely innocent here. Doesn't matter either way for you two. Any sign of Mint or Silver from up there?"br /br /"Nothing yet,"/em Velvet said. em"But we're probably not going to see anything until and unless the boy cries Beowolf, right?"/embr /br /As she said this, I sensed something through my copy of Fox's Semblance, and from the way he stopped and turned in the same direction, Fox did too. There was a sense of trepidation from an alleyway leading into the square. I focused harder on that spot, trying to identify what I was 'seeing'. There was hesitation, worry, but also satisfaction and… emhope/em?br /br /em"Fox, are you getting this?"/em I asked /br /em"Eyes up people,"/em he said. em"Boy's here and he's coming into the square, but something's off. Qrow, we might need you down here."br /br /"On it."/em I caught a glimpse of Qrow hopping down from the building, and from the way his thoughts spiked with alarm, so did the boy. But then the strangest thing happened… his thoughts changed to emrelief/em, and he broke into a dead sprint for Qrow. Fox and I immediately went to go meet our assigned Huntsman where he'd landed, and the three of us presented a united front when the boy finally came to a stop in front of /br /"You're Huntsmen?" he asked, with no preamble. "Real Huntsmen? Not like the teachers?"br /br /"You know, I was expecting the first word outta your mouth to be 'Beowolf'," Qrow said, arms crossed as he looked down at the /br /"I—!" He took a step back before looking down, fists clenched tight as his shoulders shook. "The… the first time was an accident, I didn't mean it. But when it kept being real, and the Huntsmen kept believing me, I thought… maybe if I did it enough times, they'd trust me, and… and help…" He trailed off. A quick glance at his surface thoughts, courtesy of Fox's Semblance, told me all I needed to know about this /br /em"It's genuine,"/em I said. em"Something happened to this kid, and he is terrified."/embr /br /"Kid." Qrow took the hint and kneeled down next to him, a hand coming to rest on his shoulder. I could see the instant the boy's barriers crumbled, and just how hard he was resisting the urge to give Qrow a hug. "Why did you need the Huntsmen to trust you?"br /br /"I tried to tell them," he said. "I told them I saw a Grimm, that it was emdoing things/em to Ma and Pa and me. And—and it emkilled/em them. The Huntsmen said they'd died of somethin' emelse/em, but I emknow/em it was the Grimm!"br /br /em"He says a Grimm killed them,"/em Fox said, confused. em"But any Huntsman should be able to tell when a body died to Grimm, right?"br /br /"Not always,"/em Qrow said. em"I got a real bad hunch here, and I /emreallyem hope I'm wrong."/em Then, with his voice, he spoke to the boy. "Kid—"br /br /"Grayson," he said. "M'name's Grayson McReady."br /br /"Grayson then," Qrow said. "This Grimm. Did you get a good look at it?"br /br /"It looked like a skeleton with bits of black," he said, and Qrow stiffened. "Its arms, they were so long it dragged in the dirt. And the emscream/em…" He shook his head. "I found it in the barn after Ma and Pa wouldn' wake up. It screamed, and… and I just fell. And then I screamed back, 'n I could emmove/em again. I been trying to keep it in the barn!" Grayson protested. "Screamin' at it, like when I said the Beowolves was coming!"br /br /"You're absolutely certain?" Qrow said, his voice severe. "A corpse with arms that dragged on the ground, and a scream that made you fall." He nodded. "And it was in your barn." Again, Grayson nodded. "... emshit/em."br /br /em"Qrow?"/em I asked, hoping he'd tell us what he realized. The description had something tickling at my memory, something I'd forgotten… but I couldn't quite put a finger on /br /"Wait with these two," Qrow told Grayson, pointing at Fox and me. After Grayson nodded, Qrow stood up and walked to the middle of the square, then stood on the outer rim of the fountain. "Students of Fresnel! Get your asses back to the Academy; this situation is officially too dangerous for you. Professors of Fresnel and Huntsmen of Bearded Bay! Get your asses over here, on the double!" He turned towards us, and motioned to come over. em"If you're up high, stay high. This is a good time for a watcher to sneak around."/embr /br /Coco, Velvet, and Blake got the message, and stayed where they were even as the crowd began to move. The various students in the crowd grumbled, but left without overly much issue. The professors and Huntsmen, on the other hand, started to raise a bit of a stink when they realized that we'd brought Grayson over to the fountain with us. Murmured accusations were directed his way, as well as many a harsh look as he shrank in on himself and began to /br /All of that was broken when Qrow whistled, drawing the attention of everybody /br /"Alright, I need a show of hands." Qrow raised his own. "How many of you even emknow/em what the Apathy is?"br /br /… oh. Oh /br /Three hands went up. Of them, two shook like /br /"Lesson time then, huh," Qrow murmured to himself. "I'll just say this. If there's a documented type of Grimm out there, I've fought it. Out of all those types, none are worse than what we're going up against."br /br /"Are you sure you're not exaggerating?" A Huntsman, a wolf Faunus by the look of his ears, spoke /br /"The Apathy are the slowest Grimm of them all," Qrow said. "But even with that, you won't see them coming. You'll emhear/em them. They'll scream, and you'll fall. You'll feel the life drain out of you, the will to fight nothing more than a ghost. The Apathy will come closer, staring you in the face, and no matter how much you know you want to fight it, you won't. Cause you can't move. You can't think. You're left there, watching as this thing just shambles towards you, and when it leans down to take a bite, you better hope somebody else is there to save your ass. The only thing you can be thankful for is that they're emrare as shit/em. You find an Apathy, it's the unluckiest damn day of your /br /"Now, boy who cried Beowolf here," Qrow pointed at Grayson, who shrunk beneath their withering gaze, "gave me a picture-perfect description of an Apathy. Again, a emrare Grimm/em. So unless you covered that in school, I'm inclined to believe him. Which means we got a hunt on our hands, cause Apathy? They're like Beowolves. They roam in packs."br /br /The disquiet among the crowd /br /"If you're confident you can fight these things, you're coming with me. If you're not—or if you got better than normal hearing—you stay the fuck away. If you can hear them, they can get you. Now. Any volunteers?"br /br /Hands went up. Not many, though; out of the twenty-odd people here, only six raised their hands. Two among them, a pair of Faunus with animal ears, had initially raised their hands, only to lower them with shame on their faces when Qrow mentioned the bit about /br /em"Catnap, White-eyes, you two are with me,"/em Qrow said. em"Apathy have a telepathic presence, so White-eyes,
you can feel them coming. Catnap, if I'm right, the boy's Semblance is specifically a counter to the Apathy; we might need that, and I'm not willing to bring him along."br /br /"What about us?" /emCoco /br /em"Get back to the house with Amber,"/em Qrow ordered. em"We can't leave her undefended, and an Apathy hunt can take a /emwhileem. Kitten, back porch; Shutterbug, front porch; Hat 'n Glasses, foyer. Get Amber to the second floor. We'll check in every hour; if you don't hear anything, you send an SOS back to Beacon."br /br /"Roger that,"/em Coco /br /"Well kids." Qrow turned to us, a scowl on his face. "This is gonna emsuck/em."br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /Qrow divided the volunteer Huntsmen into two teams of three, and gave very strict instructions on how the Apathy hunt was to be handled. First, only one person would ever enter a building, structure, cave, or enclosed area at a time. Second, they would have a button on their Scroll depressed to constantly emit a signal. That way, if they found an Apathy and got the drop on it, they could rapidly press the button and send a signal, or if the signal outright emstopped/em, it was a distress call. Third, if they started feeling tired, they were to back up emimmediately/em and wait for reinforcements. And fourth? Earplugs. It wasn't a surefire solution, but any chance was better than no /br /It took about twenty minutes for the Huntsmen to lead us to the McReady farmstead, and they immediately broke off into a spiral pattern search of the surrounding area upon our arrival. We only had one somewhat-confirmed sighting of an Apathy, and that was inside the barn at the farmstead itself. It was a simple enough barn: red paint, tall doors painted yellow, a tractor and other assorted farm equipment out front. What was telling, though, was just how emquiet/em it was. Not a single bird chirped. No insects buzzed. Heck, it even seemed like the wind wasn't /br /"Alright," Qrow said aloud. "White-eyes, you feel anything?"br /br /"The barn," Fox said. "It's weird though. Grimm have a feel. This one has that, but it's…" I could see Fox frowning, searching for a word. "Heavier."br /br /"Any idea where in the barn?" Qrow /br /"No." Fox shook his head. "The whole emthing/em has that heavy feeling."br /br /"Which means we gotta go in there… emfuck/em." Qrow pulled his sword from his back, the mechashift extending it to its full length, and led us to the barn door. "Rules. I go in alone. White-eyes, keep track of my condition. Catnap, you got the best vision in the dark; if you see something, let me know, and use the kid's Semblance." With that, Qrow pulled open the barn doors, and gave us a glimpse of the /br /An old, rusted flatbed pickup dominated one side of the barn, along with a flatbed trailer still hitched up to it. The trailer was filled to the brim with bales of hay, secured with bungee cords. On the other side looked to be either a stable, or a paddock, or… something. I don't know the terminology, but it looked like an area that could hold wildlife. In the back there was a ladder, leading up to a loft above us. There was a pervasive feeling about the place, like something was horribly emwrong/em with this picture. Like we shouldn't be /br /It felt like we were stepping on something's grave… and I considered that the thought may not be wholly /br /Even so, I looked at the interior of the barn as closely as I could. Given the darkness, I couldn't make out color easily, even though everything else was plainly /br /"I don't see it," I told Qrow. He gave me a nod, and took one tentative step inside the /br /Something wooden creaked high /br /As one, we all turned to face each other, raised our weapons in hand, and looked /br /Deep crimson eyes stared back at us, full of loathing and spite. It opened its mouth to /br /Qrow was /br /Five shots rang out through the barn, and the sound of bullets rending flesh and breaking wood filled the air. An ugly, wet emthump/em came from just ahead of us, and I turned to see the Apathy, its corpse already beginning to dissolve into the air. Qrow looked at its body and shook his head, a deep frown fixed on his /br /"Something's not right," he murmured. "White-eyes, anything else?"br /br /"That was it," Fox confirmed, a similar frown on his face. "And now that I know what I'm searching for… nothing." He turned to face Qrow. "I think that was it."br /br /"No," Qrow said, his sword still held tightly in hand. "Apathy travel in packs. You don't just get emone/em Apathy; even if you do try to capture one, the rest of the pack emwill/em find it. It's not a maybe kind of situation, the rest emwill/em find them. And they move slow, but three weeks? They should have—"br /br /My Scroll buzzed, loud and urgent. I took it from my pocket and checked the screen, my blood running cold as I saw what it /br /"Blake just sent a distress message," I said, turning the screen to show Qrow. His eyes went wide as his face /br /"We gotta get back to the house," he said. "emNow/em!"br /br /Qrow took off at a dead sprint, and Fox and I were right behind him. I saw Qrow pull out his Scroll and call as we ran, but I wasn't paying any attention to /br /Blake had sent the distress signal. I needed to get there as soon as /br /I did emnot/em finally reunite with my sister just to emlose her style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /Blake Belladonna stood on the back porch of a house that wasn't hers, Gambol Shroud in hand, eyes and ears trained on the forest around them. A black ribbon obscured her feline ears from the world, disguising her nature, but not muffling the boon it gave her. It was a trick she'd learned from her time in the White Fang: when people know you're a Faunus, but don't immediately see your animal feature, they tend to make one of two assumptions. Some will assume that they just don't have the right angle to see what it is, such as a Faunus' tail not being visible from the front. Other times they'd assume that they were looking at a human-passing Faunus, like Noah. It was amazing just how many people saw a little black bow, and completely ignored the possibility of ears being hidden under /br /Velvet and Coco, her brother's teammates, had both given her odd looks when they watched her put the ribbon on. Coco's had been of uncertainty, followed by emapproval/em, of all things, once she'd given Blake a once-over with the ribbon on. She got the distinct impression that the approval was emnot/em at her hiding that she was a Faunus, but rather at the overall effect of her appearance. Velvet, on the other hand, had given a look of confusion, followed by understanding. That, in and of itself, confused Blake. What kind of understanding could the rabbit Faunus have gleaned from just… watching her put a ribbon over her ears?br /br /The thought of her ears brought the discussion in the square back to Blake's mind. A Grimm whose scream was its most dangerous weapon… she shuddered, thinking about just how emeffective/em a monster like that would be against Faunus encampments. The White Fang tended to use Faunus with enhanced senses, Faunus like her, as their scouts and sentries. It made sense, given their ability to find possible threats that others couldn't even emnotice/em. And yet, here was a Grimm that could take advantage of their unique abilities, what made them different—embetter/em, some might say—than humans. A Grimm that could disable them—disable emher/em from further away, and far more effectively, than it could a /br /Blake remembered reading a text about how certain Grimm were adapted to hunting in particular environments, and other times Grimm changed to accommodate hunting a particular emculture/em. The sand shark Charodons of Vacuo, in particular, rose to prominence as tribes and caravans grew bolder in their attempts to cross the desert separating Vacuo from its neighbor on Sanus, Vale. Three hundred years ago, prior to the mapping of accepted pathways, there hadn't embeen/em any Charodons. And yet, only thirty years later, sightings /br /And it made Blake wonder: had the first Apathy been adapted to hunt emFaunus/em?br /br /The thought chilled her, and her bow stopped her ears from folding down at the /br /Off in the treeline, a group of birds flew away, chirping as they went. Blake stiffened, eyes scanning the forest in that general direction. When she saw nothing, she forced herself to relax, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. A beat passed, then two. Even as she searched, nothing moved before her eyes. Beneath her bow, her ears strained, looking for any errant sound that may—br /br /A board behind her creaked beneath the weight of somebody on it, the sound so light as to be inaudible to a /br /But not to a /br /Blake threw herself to the side, an ephemeral copy of herself taking its place. emSomething/em passed through where she had been, gouging wood of the deck, and a shape displaced the fading wisps that remained of her clone as it dissipated. Blake raised Gambol Shroud and fired three times; her efforts were rewarded as somebody's Aura flickered, and its owner appeared an instant later. Blake grit her teeth as her brow furrowed; it was the girl from yesterday, the one with the mint-green /br /The girl stared at her with wide red eyes as Blake raised Gambol Shroud and fired again, but swift reflexes saved her Aura any more damage as she once more faded into nothing before Blake's /br /"We've got company!" Blake yelled. "Mint-Green can—"br /br /"emDown/em!" Coco yelled her command. Blake obeyed without a second thought, throwing herself to the deck as her brother's leader filled the air with bullets. Only a few of them caught Mint-Green with glancing blows, but with whatever ammunition Coco was packing, those little hits were enough to throw Mint-Green a good dozen feet, where she rolled to a halt on the grass as her Aura shattered around her. "Keep an eye out f—emoomph/em!" Her voice cut off with a crash of gunfire and breaking wood, followed by a pair of heavy footfalls landing on wooden /br /"Coco!" Blake turned away from Mint-Green to—br /br /Something emslammed/em into the side of Blake's head, throwing her into the wooden railing of the deck. Her Aura took the brunt of the hit, but she still slumped against the rail, blinking stars and blurriness out of her vision as she turned to see who had struck /br /A muddled figure of muted silver and gray, the silver-haired male who she'd seen following her brother's team earlier, stood in the living room, his foot lowering from the follow-through of whatever he'd done to hit her. Blake heard the whine of Coco's minigun warming up to fire, and fought to keep the smirk from spreading across her face; if a couple of glancing blows from that minigun had been enough to take out Mint-Green, then it wouldn't need much more to—br /br /Silver spun and rapidly kicked in Coco's direction, the shotgun attachments on his boots firing off a pair of shells at Coco. Her minigun fell silent as Blake heard the telltale sound of somebody's Aura breaking. At the same time, another sound came to Blake's attention: crashing and sounds of a struggle upstairs. She had to do something. /br /Blake raised Gambol Shroud and squinted to steady her still-swimming vision, then fired off a trio of shots in his direction. One of them winged him in the arm, but the other two missed /br /And now she had his full /br /Blake forced herself to use her Semblance, the clone shoving her off to the side and behind cover before a burst of compressed air shattered the wood she'd been leaning on. She leaned around the edge of the patio door, and had to duck instantly back into cover when she saw the boy winding up with a kick. A shotgun shell blasted past where her head had just been. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves, and then with one more use of her Semblance, sent a clone rounding the door. The shotgun blast took it in the head and it faded away into /br /But it had given Blake more than enough time to round the door in a crouch. She steadied her aim and fired full-automatic, four bullets taking him in the chest before he managed to duck out of the way. Blake grimaced—she'd seen his Aura take all four of them, and knew she had a ways to go before he was down. But how was she supposed to keep him busy and protect Coco, while there was another fight going on upstairs? Noah's team had been tasked to protect Amber, and here she was, stuck downstairs. What was she supposed to do?br /br /Blake sent another clone running into the living room, and winced as it was blown apart moments later. It was a stalemate, she realized. Unless somebody else arrived, then… wait, Blake realized. There emwas/em somebody /br /The sound of gunfire from the living room rang in her ears, but she emrecognized/em the sound of those guns. Except at the same time, she didn't. Something about the sound was off, like it was being played through a speaker. Blake dared to glance into the living room, and felt her eyes /br /Velvet stood there, the box she wore on the small of her back pulsing with a soft blue light. In her hands, she held a pair of hard-light wireframe constructs, gunblades that Blake would recognize anywhere, no matter the form. But what was more startling was the emway/em Velvet held her replicas of Fang and /br /She held them at the ready, Fang held low and back in her left, Claw up and in front of her with an arm bent, ready to swing, block, or parry. It was emNoah's/em /br /Velvet squeezed the trigger on her copy of Fang, throwing her forward as she brought Claw around to strike at the kickboxer in front of her. He knocked her faux-Claw up and out of the way with a strike from his hands, then moved to kick Velvet in center mass as she was stuck in the follow-through. But an instant later, Velvet fired a round from Claw, and the recoil sent her beneath the man's leg, her copy of Fang raking across the weapon on his grounded foot. The sound of metal rending metal filled the air, and with one more shot, Velvet was clear as the kickboxer looked down in shock at his ruined /br /"You…" he snarled, glaring at Velvet with hate in his eyes. "You emfucking/em—"br /br /The sound of shattered glass came from upstairs, and an instant later a emthird/em assailant landed beside the fallen form of Mint-Green in the yard. She wore a deep black catsuit, a half-empty quiver slung along her back and a metal bow with bladed arms in her hand. She rolled twice before coming to a stop, and looked up, her eyes widening behind the butterfly-shaped mask she wore once they landed on Mint-Green, who lay there /br /"Retreat!" She reached down to grab Mint-Green, and a wave of her hand melted the broken glass around her before it reformed into a barrier in front of the two, which blocked the bullets Blake sent her /br /"But—"br /br /"emNow/em!"br /br /Silver grimaced at this, but reached into a pocket and pulled something out, at the same time that the new woman did. He threw it at the ground, and an instant later Blake emscreamed/em in pain, her hands flying up to protect the ears hidden beneath her bow, and stars bloomed in her vision as a bright light temporarily blinded her. She could dimly make out Velvet's identical scream of pain as she fell to the floor, eyes screwed shut and whimpering as she waited for the world to stop buzzing and sparking at /br /She wasn't sure how long the they lay there; Blake dimly recalled a pair of small, warm hands helping her up and leading her to something soft, and the comfort of a sofa or mattress as she waited for the ringing in her ears and the sunspots flashing in her vision to go /br /A hand landed on her shoulder some time later, shaking her gently. Blake opened one eye and couldn't help the relief that flooded her when she saw Noah staring back, his own golden gaze filled with /br /"Are you okay?" he /br /"Nngh…" Next to Blake, Velvet stirred, a hand going to rest against her forehead. "Aah, my ears… what, what happened? Did they get away?"br /br /A moment later, Noah had grabbed both his fellow Faunus in a hug, pulling them close. Blake could feel the urgency and fear in him, even as the tension in his shoulders slowly /br /"You're okay," he said, voice breathy with relief. "You're both okay… what happened? The whole place is just—"br /br /"It was Mint-Green and Silver," Blake said, her voice low, a throbbing behind her eyes telling her that even this much was pushing it and that she emreally/em needed to rest. "There was one more, s-she wore black, and… controlled glass? I think?"br /br /"Three of them?" Another voice broke in. Blake looked past Noah to see Qrow standing before the ruins of what had been the dining room table, and Amber sitting in one of the intact chairs, her hands white-knuckled as she bunched up the fabric of her skirt in her fists. Beyond him, she saw the other boy on Noah's team—Fox, that was his name—tending to Coco, helping collapse her minigun back into a purse before carrying her over to one of the more intact armchairs in the /br /"Three," Velvet confirmed. "I got a clear photo of the one in black, I think. I'll have to check."br /br /"If you did, then at least emsomething/em came of this mess," Qrow said, tapping at his Scroll before holding it up to his ear for an audio call. "Oz, it's Qrow. We need a bullhead at the 'cottage' yesterday. Seven passengers." He stopped, listening to the voice on the other end. "Yeah. Belladonna's little tagalong, and your niece. It ain't safe out here anymore… three, yeah. They got thrown for a loop Oz, we'll get a full debrief back at Beacon. Right. Got it. See you soon." Qrow ended the call and put his Scroll away, turning to the occupants of the room. "Bullhead's gonna be here in an hour and a half. Rest up until then kids; you've earned it."br /br /Blake let out a breath of relief, resting more of her weight on Noah, who still held her in a hug. She closed her eyes, letting her breathing /br /Rest… rest sounded like a good option right style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /"What happened!?" Emerald flinched away before her, but she paid the fear and shock in the girl's eyes no mind. "We went in the back to emnot/em have to deal with a Faunus, but you were emstill/em found. What. emHappened/em!?"br /br /"I, I don't know!" Emerald blurted out, backing away from her until a tree trunk prevented the girl from getting any further. Even still, her eyes shifted from side to side, searching for an escape—a reflex Cinder had yet to break her of doing in her presence, it seemed. "I had everything masked, and she emstill/em found me!"br /br /"She heard you," Mercury spoke up, not looking up from where he busied himself with that ridiculous contraption he called a weapon; Cinder couldn't help but bristle at the impropriety he showed, not even bothering to emlook at her/em when he spoke. "Girl went down to a flashbang like a Faunus with extra ears. Bet it was hidden behind the bow."br /br /Cinder stopped, turning that over in her head. The girl did look emremarkably/em similar to the pale-skinned male from the team of Beacon rookies accompanying emBranwen/em—the same boy that Emerald noted had reacted empoorly/em to an absurdly minor slight against his fellow emanimals/em. She wanted to rage, to express her emfury/em at the absurdity of it. A plan with three separate means of coming to fruition, failed… because of a Faunus with a emlittle black /br /"C-Cinder?" She cast her gaze back to Emerald, who flinched away as if struck. "W-what… what do we do now? The plan—"br /br /"Is emruined/em," Cinder spat, fists clenched tight. "It—"br /br /"May yet work," a new voice spoke, echoing through the clearing that the erstwhile trio occupied. A chill ran down Cinder's spine, her eyes flying wide as her eyes landed upon a dull crimson shape, swiftly /br /The Seer Grimm floated into the clearing, its blade-tipped tendrils drifting limply behind it. She relaxed a fraction, but only that; had its mistress truly been wroth, the Seer's ribbon tentacles would have writhed, coiling in the air, awaiting an impulse from its eldritch mistress to skewer anything before /br /"Lady Salem!" She held herself stiff, and at attention. "I… Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean? My plan—"br /br /"Your plan was sound, dear Cinder, but we are not the only ones with plans in motion." Within the Seer's giant eye, Salem canted her head to the side. "For the moment, the Fall Maiden is out of our grasp… but the greater outline of your designs may yet be salvaged, I do believe."br /br /"But how?" Cinder asked, her voice small. Small as it had been when she had first come across the Witch. Small as it had been when she'd been but a glorified slave, powerless before those with money and influence. "Without the powers of the Fall Maiden, we can't retrieve the—"br /br /"The Crown of Choice was emnever/em the true objective, Cinder dear." Salem smiled, and Cinder felt the blood in her veins turn to ice. She'd been… emwrong?/em "Your objective was twofold: divide the kingdoms by destroying the CCT… and emremove Ozpin/em. The powers of the Maiden would have helped, yes…"br /br /The Seer's glass orb cracked, splitting open as a rush of acrid, deep-black smoke filled the air. Moments later, a heavy presence fell over the area, as the smoke cleared to reveal the Queen of the Grimm herself, resplendent in her malefic glory. Emerald and Mercury leapt away, and Cinder herself was quick to try and kneel. But Salem reached out a hand and grasped her by the forehead, pulling her close as emsomething/em flowed from the Queen's hand and into /br /"But it's become abundantly clear that my methods have become… empredictable/em. And even so, there is more than one way to make a Maiden." Salem smiled, her outstretched hand alight with arcane /br /And Cinder's eyes emburned/em with umbral flame./p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /br /Ghira Belladonna looked over the papers on his desk, adjusting his overly-small reading glasses with one hand and tilting the papers to get a better angle with the other. The only light source in the room was a small lamp, but that was the beauty of being a Faunus: you get to save some money here and there, and on an island like Menagerie, every Lien saved went to good use somewhere. That did not, unfortunately, make it any easier to parse the document in his hand: night vision or no, too-small reading glasses or no, legalese is still /br /And much as they tried to disguise it, Ghira was not about to let an SDC shell company purchase water rights to set up an offshore mining platform between Anima and Menagerie. Was it well-hidden? Yes, he had to admit that it was. But there emwere/em some benefits to remaining in contact with his old protege Sienna, and one of them was access to her information network. Human-passing Faunus in the Atlas securities office were very quick to share what they could, after all; it just had to be hidden along with leaks that look more like insider trading or corporate espionage, and pointed to—br /br /emRed dot./embr /br /Ghira looked up, eyeing the dot that had landed on his paper. It bounced up and down a couple of times, and ever so slowly, he raised a hand to… and it was gone. He blinked once or twice, wondering if he'd been spending too much time reading; maybe it would be better to put the paperwork down and—br /br /emRed dot's back./embr /br /This time it appeared in the middle of his office. Ghira pushed himself up from his desk chair and followed the dot, even as it meandered across the floor of his office and out into the hall. The dot led him through the hall, and into the dining room—br /br /"Oh good, you're here," Kali said, fiddling with a laser pointer in one hand while the other gestured at their dinner table. "The food was almost cold."br /br /"I thought we agreed that you wouldn't use that emthing/em again," he said with a gesture to the laser pointer, though his tone remained /br /"I changed the agreement when you didn't show up for dinner last week," Kali told him with a piercing look, offset by her grin. "emTwice/em. Now please, dig in. I got some swordfish at the market earlier."br /br /That was all it took to get Ghira in his seat, much to Kali's /br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /br /"It depends," I admitted, "but assume it'll work on most cat Faunus. And that it's emreally racist/em to do that unless you're also a cat Faunus. Even other Faunus, if they aren't cats, tend to get looked down on for doing that to us."br /br /"Faunus culture, ladies and gentlemen!" Qrow said, gesturing with the glass of whiskey in his hand, which had replaced his earlier wine. "Don't play to someone else's stereotype, but playing to your own is fine. Yup, sounds just about right." Blake, Velvet, and I fixed him with simultaneous death glares. "But let's get back on track. The people watching us."br /br /"Tan or Vacuan with mint-green hair, Atlesian or north Mistralian with silver hair, right?" Coco asked to /br /"That's the ones," Blake /br /"How close were they watching?" Qrow asked, leaning forward. "And more importantly, emwere you seen/em?"br /br /"I don't think I was seen," my sister said, choosing to answer the more important question first. "Humans, and Faunus whose trait doesn't give them better senses—sorry Noah," she shot me an apologetic /br /"No worries," I waved it /br /"Anyway, they tend not to look emup/em. They just… don't have much reason to. And yes," she plowed on to stop Qrow from interrupting, "I did pay attention to see if they did anyways. They didn't."br /br /"Which means they weren't trained at a Huntsman academy," Qrow mused. "If you kids haven't had Port or Goodwitch start breaking that habit, you will soon. Attacks from above tend to be part of your end of year practicals, at least on non-Vytal Festival years. What about their weapons?" Qrow directed this back at Blake /br /"The girl had a pair of… it was either small shotguns or big pistols at the small of her back," Blake said, fidgeting. "The guy… I think his weapon was in his boots? They had shotgun shells around the outside."br /br /"Did you get a picture?" Qrow asked the obvious /br /Blake… /br /"Oh for fuck's sakes," he said. "Catnap, your sister has emno/em common sense."br /br /"Hey!" Blake yelled, ears lowered in /br /"emMoving on/em!" Coco clapped her hands, drawing everyone's attention. "Without that picture, all we can do is keep a lookout for these people. Most of us with our eyes, Fox with his Semblance. But we're spinning our wheels here people; we still have a mystery to solve, and if we have to have an extra person involved, I'm sure as hell going to take the extra pair of eyes." She slid her Scroll across the table, the video she'd captured during the midday excitement already loaded up and ready to play. "You watch that. Everyone else? Start throwing ideas."br /br /"Well, the first thing that comes to mind is relative Aura levels," Fox said. "It's possible Coco and Velvet were out of range, but I know both Noah and I got hit by that Semblance. Even so, we were unaffected, but the Fresnel students—with unlocked Auras, to boot—did get hit."br /br /"So you're suggesting that how much Aura somebody has could change things?" Amber said, carrying a large platter over from the kitchen, a large sum of fresh-sliced, medium-rare roast beef laid out upon it. "Oh, could anybody help me with the rest of the serving bowls?"br /br /"I got it," Fox said, getting up to help her. I moved to stand, but Blake's hand on mine had me sitting back down. Amber caught the motion, and swiftly hid a giggle behind her hand, even as Blake blushed and her ears folded in embarrassment. "Also, what Amber said is the gist of it: I think how much Aura the user has compared to the people they tried to hit is a controlling factor."br /br /"But doesn't that give us another problem?" Velvet asked. "Who's the user?"br /br /"Didn't you mention a boy running in with the warning?" Blake asked, tapping at Coco's Scroll to find the footage. "Here, him. You said it happened after he showed up; wouldn't it make sense if it was emhis/em Semblance?"br /br /"That hurts White-eyes' idea about Aura levels," Qrow said, jostling the ice cubes in his tumbler of whiskey. "I've only known a few kids to have more Aura at that age than a combat school student. My nieces were two of them, but they're emnot/em the standard to go off of. And schools make you tell them if your Aura's unlocked, emor/em they'd find out anyways, and from there it's not hard to measure a kid's Aura levels."br /br /The lot of us went silent as Fox and Amber returned with the rest of the food: a massive bowl of garlic mashed potatoes, and a baking dish filled with roasted vegetables. She set them on the table and then sat down, and one by one we all served ourselves. Blake only gave herself a small amount of meat alongside a heaping helping of vegetables, then gave me a half-hearted glare when I plunked another piece of beef down onto her /br /A moment later there was a click, and Blake and I looked over to where Velvet sat, her camera in hand and a fond smile on her face. Then her ears perked up as something seemed to come to /br /"Hey Fox?" Velvet asked. "I just realized. When we had Noah try the Semblance, you said the mice got scared. What about the people in the crowd?"br /br /"Hmm…" Fox closed his eyes as he chewed (not like he needed them…), thinking away. Then his brow furrowed as something seemed to come to mind. "It… wasn't all fear. There was some, but there was also shock, confusion, and uncertainty. And then it just emgrew/em, and eventually it all turned to fear."br /br /At that moment, a thought came to mind. About assumptions that had been made, and ways that they may be /br /"... what if we're wrong?" I /br /"How so?" Qrow looked at me with /br /"Well, we're looking at this whole thing on the assumption that none of us were affected," I said. "And that especially makes sense for Coco and Velvet, who were up and removed from the whole thing. But what if we're wrong about Fox and me?"br /br /"What if the two of you emwere/em affected by the Semblance, but just didn't realize it?" Velvet asked as a vegetable fell from her /br /"Which also makes the assumption about it causing emfear/em invalid," Coco supplied. "And if we're wrong about emthat/em, then what does the Semblance actually emdo/em?"br /br /"I… don't know," I said, /br /We returned to our meals, eating in relative silence as we turned the situation over in our heads. The answer was in front of us, but we somehow weren't seeing it. Telepathic Semblance, check. It affects emotional states, eventually pushing them towards fear… not quite check, because I know neither Fox nor I became afraid, and I don't emthink/em there was anything funky going on with my mental state. Unless, of course, that was another invalid assumption, and that's not actually what it did. The Semblance probably belonged to the young boy, and I'm not sure where he came from—br /br /"Hang on a second," Blake said. "The boy that ran up. You think it's his Semblance, right?"br /br /"That's the going theory," Qrow said. "What are you thinking?"br /br /"How much Aura did you all use up getting into town?" she continued. "And what time does the school have its combat and Aura training classes?"br /br /"Barely any," Qrow said. "And they have those classes right before lunch; it's not a great idea to do strenuous physical activity right after eating, and the food helps them refill their… Aura…" Qrow blinked, the hand holding his whiskey stopping halfway to his mouth. "It scales. That's why the civvies and Fresnel kids got hit, but you kids didn't." He suddenly pushed back from the table, grabbing his Scroll in the process as he headed outside. "I got an idea. Need to go talk to someone."br /br /"Wait, what're you planning?" Velvet /br /"We're cancelling combat and Aura classes at Fresnel tomorrow," he said. "And making sure civvies without Aura stay out of the square. White-eyes and Catnap, you two'll be down in the square like last time. Hat 'n Glasses, you'll be on overwatch again."br /br /"What about me?" Velvet asked, then looked across the table. "A-and Blake?"br /br /"Well Kitten shouldn't even embe/em here," Qrow admonished with a glare. Blake shrunk in her seat, and I glared at Qrow. "That said, I'm still gonna use ya. Folks are following us? Well Shutterbug, you and Kitten have better hearing, and a emcamera/em. Find them."br /br /With that, Qrow left the house. A moment later, I felt a pulse of nausea coming from my gut—less than last time Qrow had shown up, but still powerful. Enough to make me put a hand over my /br /"You okay?" Blake asked, a hand on my back. "You look a little green."br /br /"I'm fine," I said, looking at the half-eaten vegetable still speared on my fork and seeing a perfect excuse. "Just wasn't paying attention and grabbed a brussels sprout."br /br /"Oh." Blake's eyes fell to the half-eaten sprout on my fork, and her ears flattened in distaste. "emEw/em… who even emlikes/em those things?"br /br /"emAhem./em" The two of us glanced across the table at Velvet, who had her arms crossed, nose wrinkled, and glared at us with a look of consternation. And in front of her, I saw… most of the rest of the brussels sprouts Amber had /br /"... sorry?" I offered. She just took a bite of her own sprout with a harrumph, chewing away as she style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal" br /When we got into town, the change wasn't immediately apparent. A moment's time actually walking in the square, though, gave me enough time to note the differences. And it was one of those things where it can't be unseen: once you're aware of it, you can't help but notice. The big difference that stuck out once I knew to look for it?br /br /The kitschy vendors and food carts. Oh, they were still there… but nobody was actually embuying/em from them. A closer look at the food cart—or well, a closer emwhiff/em—was enough to tell me that nothing was actually cooking. I still heard the occasional sizzle, but that was literally just water being dropped onto a hot skillet or grill to make the sound. Everybody in the square had their Aura unlocked. I would wager we had every single professor from Fresnel Academy here, in disguise and prepared, as well as all of the students. Yes, emall/em of the students: I counted no less than thirty weapons slung on backs, hanging at waists, or outright held in /br /em"Okay team, get into position,"/em Coco ordered over our link. em"Fox and Noah, dead center of the square. Blake and Velvet, get as high as you can, and each of you cover one-eighty degrees; keep an eye out for mint-green or silver hair. Branwen and I will be up on the roofs as overwatch."/embr /br /The lot of us took up our positions as ordered. Qrow and Coco crouched on the roof of the town hall, Coco having exchanged her favored aviators for a different set of glasses with matte lenses that didn't reflect anything. I saw Blake and Velvet up at the top of the bell tower, Velvet looking east through her camera's viewfinder, while Blake handled west with a pair of binoculars that Amber had loaned her, as well as her Scroll's /br /Meanwhile, Fox and I spread our telepathic senses over the crowd, keeping our third eyes peeled for whatever might be /br /em"Uh, excuse me if the answer is obvious, but…"/em Blake hesitated before finishing her question, and I could feel the embarrassment over our psychic link. em"But what if… well, nothing happens?"br /br /"That's information on its own,"/em Qrow said, his mental 'voice' taking on a professorial air. em"It could also mean a number of different things. Maybe the boy is acting on somebody else's direction. Maybe somebody is actively manipulating the boy, and he just doesn't know it. Maybe there's something else entirely at play, and the boy is completely innocent here. Doesn't matter either way for you two. Any sign of Mint or Silver from up there?"br /br /"Nothing yet,"/em Velvet said. em"But we're probably not going to see anything until and unless the boy cries Beowolf, right?"/embr /br /As she said this, I sensed something through my copy of Fox's Semblance, and from the way he stopped and turned in the same direction, Fox did too. There was a sense of trepidation from an alleyway leading into the square. I focused harder on that spot, trying to identify what I was 'seeing'. There was hesitation, worry, but also satisfaction and… emhope/em?br /br /em"Fox, are you getting this?"/em I asked /br /em"Eyes up people,"/em he said. em"Boy's here and he's coming into the square, but something's off. Qrow, we might need you down here."br /br /"On it."/em I caught a glimpse of Qrow hopping down from the building, and from the way his thoughts spiked with alarm, so did the boy. But then the strangest thing happened… his thoughts changed to emrelief/em, and he broke into a dead sprint for Qrow. Fox and I immediately went to go meet our assigned Huntsman where he'd landed, and the three of us presented a united front when the boy finally came to a stop in front of /br /"You're Huntsmen?" he asked, with no preamble. "Real Huntsmen? Not like the teachers?"br /br /"You know, I was expecting the first word outta your mouth to be 'Beowolf'," Qrow said, arms crossed as he looked down at the /br /"I—!" He took a step back before looking down, fists clenched tight as his shoulders shook. "The… the first time was an accident, I didn't mean it. But when it kept being real, and the Huntsmen kept believing me, I thought… maybe if I did it enough times, they'd trust me, and… and help…" He trailed off. A quick glance at his surface thoughts, courtesy of Fox's Semblance, told me all I needed to know about this /br /em"It's genuine,"/em I said. em"Something happened to this kid, and he is terrified."/embr /br /"Kid." Qrow took the hint and kneeled down next to him, a hand coming to rest on his shoulder. I could see the instant the boy's barriers crumbled, and just how hard he was resisting the urge to give Qrow a hug. "Why did you need the Huntsmen to trust you?"br /br /"I tried to tell them," he said. "I told them I saw a Grimm, that it was emdoing things/em to Ma and Pa and me. And—and it emkilled/em them. The Huntsmen said they'd died of somethin' emelse/em, but I emknow/em it was the Grimm!"br /br /em"He says a Grimm killed them,"/em Fox said, confused. em"But any Huntsman should be able to tell when a body died to Grimm, right?"br /br /"Not always,"/em Qrow said. em"I got a real bad hunch here, and I /emreallyem hope I'm wrong."/em Then, with his voice, he spoke to the boy. "Kid—"br /br /"Grayson," he said. "M'name's Grayson McReady."br /br /"Grayson then," Qrow said. "This Grimm. Did you get a good look at it?"br /br /"It looked like a skeleton with bits of black," he said, and Qrow stiffened. "Its arms, they were so long it dragged in the dirt. And the emscream/em…" He shook his head. "I found it in the barn after Ma and Pa wouldn' wake up. It screamed, and… and I just fell. And then I screamed back, 'n I could emmove/em again. I been trying to keep it in the barn!" Grayson protested. "Screamin' at it, like when I said the Beowolves was coming!"br /br /"You're absolutely certain?" Qrow said, his voice severe. "A corpse with arms that dragged on the ground, and a scream that made you fall." He nodded. "And it was in your barn." Again, Grayson nodded. "... emshit/em."br /br /em"Qrow?"/em I asked, hoping he'd tell us what he realized. The description had something tickling at my memory, something I'd forgotten… but I couldn't quite put a finger on /br /"Wait with these two," Qrow told Grayson, pointing at Fox and me. After Grayson nodded, Qrow stood up and walked to the middle of the square, then stood on the outer rim of the fountain. "Students of Fresnel! Get your asses back to the Academy; this situation is officially too dangerous for you. Professors of Fresnel and Huntsmen of Bearded Bay! Get your asses over here, on the double!" He turned towards us, and motioned to come over. em"If you're up high, stay high. This is a good time for a watcher to sneak around."/embr /br /Coco, Velvet, and Blake got the message, and stayed where they were even as the crowd began to move. The various students in the crowd grumbled, but left without overly much issue. The professors and Huntsmen, on the other hand, started to raise a bit of a stink when they realized that we'd brought Grayson over to the fountain with us. Murmured accusations were directed his way, as well as many a harsh look as he shrank in on himself and began to /br /All of that was broken when Qrow whistled, drawing the attention of everybody /br /"Alright, I need a show of hands." Qrow raised his own. "How many of you even emknow/em what the Apathy is?"br /br /… oh. Oh /br /Three hands went up. Of them, two shook like /br /"Lesson time then, huh," Qrow murmured to himself. "I'll just say this. If there's a documented type of Grimm out there, I've fought it. Out of all those types, none are worse than what we're going up against."br /br /"Are you sure you're not exaggerating?" A Huntsman, a wolf Faunus by the look of his ears, spoke /br /"The Apathy are the slowest Grimm of them all," Qrow said. "But even with that, you won't see them coming. You'll emhear/em them. They'll scream, and you'll fall. You'll feel the life drain out of you, the will to fight nothing more than a ghost. The Apathy will come closer, staring you in the face, and no matter how much you know you want to fight it, you won't. Cause you can't move. You can't think. You're left there, watching as this thing just shambles towards you, and when it leans down to take a bite, you better hope somebody else is there to save your ass. The only thing you can be thankful for is that they're emrare as shit/em. You find an Apathy, it's the unluckiest damn day of your /br /"Now, boy who cried Beowolf here," Qrow pointed at Grayson, who shrunk beneath their withering gaze, "gave me a picture-perfect description of an Apathy. Again, a emrare Grimm/em. So unless you covered that in school, I'm inclined to believe him. Which means we got a hunt on our hands, cause Apathy? They're like Beowolves. They roam in packs."br /br /The disquiet among the crowd /br /"If you're confident you can fight these things, you're coming with me. If you're not—or if you got better than normal hearing—you stay the fuck away. If you can hear them, they can get you. Now. Any volunteers?"br /br /Hands went up. Not many, though; out of the twenty-odd people here, only six raised their hands. Two among them, a pair of Faunus with animal ears, had initially raised their hands, only to lower them with shame on their faces when Qrow mentioned the bit about /br /em"Catnap, White-eyes, you two are with me,"/em Qrow said. em"Apathy have a telepathic presence, so White-eyes,
you can feel them coming. Catnap, if I'm right, the boy's Semblance is specifically a counter to the Apathy; we might need that, and I'm not willing to bring him along."br /br /"What about us?" /emCoco /br /em"Get back to the house with Amber,"/em Qrow ordered. em"We can't leave her undefended, and an Apathy hunt can take a /emwhileem. Kitten, back porch; Shutterbug, front porch; Hat 'n Glasses, foyer. Get Amber to the second floor. We'll check in every hour; if you don't hear anything, you send an SOS back to Beacon."br /br /"Roger that,"/em Coco /br /"Well kids." Qrow turned to us, a scowl on his face. "This is gonna emsuck/em."br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /Qrow divided the volunteer Huntsmen into two teams of three, and gave very strict instructions on how the Apathy hunt was to be handled. First, only one person would ever enter a building, structure, cave, or enclosed area at a time. Second, they would have a button on their Scroll depressed to constantly emit a signal. That way, if they found an Apathy and got the drop on it, they could rapidly press the button and send a signal, or if the signal outright emstopped/em, it was a distress call. Third, if they started feeling tired, they were to back up emimmediately/em and wait for reinforcements. And fourth? Earplugs. It wasn't a surefire solution, but any chance was better than no /br /It took about twenty minutes for the Huntsmen to lead us to the McReady farmstead, and they immediately broke off into a spiral pattern search of the surrounding area upon our arrival. We only had one somewhat-confirmed sighting of an Apathy, and that was inside the barn at the farmstead itself. It was a simple enough barn: red paint, tall doors painted yellow, a tractor and other assorted farm equipment out front. What was telling, though, was just how emquiet/em it was. Not a single bird chirped. No insects buzzed. Heck, it even seemed like the wind wasn't /br /"Alright," Qrow said aloud. "White-eyes, you feel anything?"br /br /"The barn," Fox said. "It's weird though. Grimm have a feel. This one has that, but it's…" I could see Fox frowning, searching for a word. "Heavier."br /br /"Any idea where in the barn?" Qrow /br /"No." Fox shook his head. "The whole emthing/em has that heavy feeling."br /br /"Which means we gotta go in there… emfuck/em." Qrow pulled his sword from his back, the mechashift extending it to its full length, and led us to the barn door. "Rules. I go in alone. White-eyes, keep track of my condition. Catnap, you got the best vision in the dark; if you see something, let me know, and use the kid's Semblance." With that, Qrow pulled open the barn doors, and gave us a glimpse of the /br /An old, rusted flatbed pickup dominated one side of the barn, along with a flatbed trailer still hitched up to it. The trailer was filled to the brim with bales of hay, secured with bungee cords. On the other side looked to be either a stable, or a paddock, or… something. I don't know the terminology, but it looked like an area that could hold wildlife. In the back there was a ladder, leading up to a loft above us. There was a pervasive feeling about the place, like something was horribly emwrong/em with this picture. Like we shouldn't be /br /It felt like we were stepping on something's grave… and I considered that the thought may not be wholly /br /Even so, I looked at the interior of the barn as closely as I could. Given the darkness, I couldn't make out color easily, even though everything else was plainly /br /"I don't see it," I told Qrow. He gave me a nod, and took one tentative step inside the /br /Something wooden creaked high /br /As one, we all turned to face each other, raised our weapons in hand, and looked /br /Deep crimson eyes stared back at us, full of loathing and spite. It opened its mouth to /br /Qrow was /br /Five shots rang out through the barn, and the sound of bullets rending flesh and breaking wood filled the air. An ugly, wet emthump/em came from just ahead of us, and I turned to see the Apathy, its corpse already beginning to dissolve into the air. Qrow looked at its body and shook his head, a deep frown fixed on his /br /"Something's not right," he murmured. "White-eyes, anything else?"br /br /"That was it," Fox confirmed, a similar frown on his face. "And now that I know what I'm searching for… nothing." He turned to face Qrow. "I think that was it."br /br /"No," Qrow said, his sword still held tightly in hand. "Apathy travel in packs. You don't just get emone/em Apathy; even if you do try to capture one, the rest of the pack emwill/em find it. It's not a maybe kind of situation, the rest emwill/em find them. And they move slow, but three weeks? They should have—"br /br /My Scroll buzzed, loud and urgent. I took it from my pocket and checked the screen, my blood running cold as I saw what it /br /"Blake just sent a distress message," I said, turning the screen to show Qrow. His eyes went wide as his face /br /"We gotta get back to the house," he said. "emNow/em!"br /br /Qrow took off at a dead sprint, and Fox and I were right behind him. I saw Qrow pull out his Scroll and call as we ran, but I wasn't paying any attention to /br /Blake had sent the distress signal. I needed to get there as soon as /br /I did emnot/em finally reunite with my sister just to emlose her style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /Blake Belladonna stood on the back porch of a house that wasn't hers, Gambol Shroud in hand, eyes and ears trained on the forest around them. A black ribbon obscured her feline ears from the world, disguising her nature, but not muffling the boon it gave her. It was a trick she'd learned from her time in the White Fang: when people know you're a Faunus, but don't immediately see your animal feature, they tend to make one of two assumptions. Some will assume that they just don't have the right angle to see what it is, such as a Faunus' tail not being visible from the front. Other times they'd assume that they were looking at a human-passing Faunus, like Noah. It was amazing just how many people saw a little black bow, and completely ignored the possibility of ears being hidden under /br /Velvet and Coco, her brother's teammates, had both given her odd looks when they watched her put the ribbon on. Coco's had been of uncertainty, followed by emapproval/em, of all things, once she'd given Blake a once-over with the ribbon on. She got the distinct impression that the approval was emnot/em at her hiding that she was a Faunus, but rather at the overall effect of her appearance. Velvet, on the other hand, had given a look of confusion, followed by understanding. That, in and of itself, confused Blake. What kind of understanding could the rabbit Faunus have gleaned from just… watching her put a ribbon over her ears?br /br /The thought of her ears brought the discussion in the square back to Blake's mind. A Grimm whose scream was its most dangerous weapon… she shuddered, thinking about just how emeffective/em a monster like that would be against Faunus encampments. The White Fang tended to use Faunus with enhanced senses, Faunus like her, as their scouts and sentries. It made sense, given their ability to find possible threats that others couldn't even emnotice/em. And yet, here was a Grimm that could take advantage of their unique abilities, what made them different—embetter/em, some might say—than humans. A Grimm that could disable them—disable emher/em from further away, and far more effectively, than it could a /br /Blake remembered reading a text about how certain Grimm were adapted to hunting in particular environments, and other times Grimm changed to accommodate hunting a particular emculture/em. The sand shark Charodons of Vacuo, in particular, rose to prominence as tribes and caravans grew bolder in their attempts to cross the desert separating Vacuo from its neighbor on Sanus, Vale. Three hundred years ago, prior to the mapping of accepted pathways, there hadn't embeen/em any Charodons. And yet, only thirty years later, sightings /br /And it made Blake wonder: had the first Apathy been adapted to hunt emFaunus/em?br /br /The thought chilled her, and her bow stopped her ears from folding down at the /br /Off in the treeline, a group of birds flew away, chirping as they went. Blake stiffened, eyes scanning the forest in that general direction. When she saw nothing, she forced herself to relax, taking a deep breath to steady her nerves. A beat passed, then two. Even as she searched, nothing moved before her eyes. Beneath her bow, her ears strained, looking for any errant sound that may—br /br /A board behind her creaked beneath the weight of somebody on it, the sound so light as to be inaudible to a /br /But not to a /br /Blake threw herself to the side, an ephemeral copy of herself taking its place. emSomething/em passed through where she had been, gouging wood of the deck, and a shape displaced the fading wisps that remained of her clone as it dissipated. Blake raised Gambol Shroud and fired three times; her efforts were rewarded as somebody's Aura flickered, and its owner appeared an instant later. Blake grit her teeth as her brow furrowed; it was the girl from yesterday, the one with the mint-green /br /The girl stared at her with wide red eyes as Blake raised Gambol Shroud and fired again, but swift reflexes saved her Aura any more damage as she once more faded into nothing before Blake's /br /"We've got company!" Blake yelled. "Mint-Green can—"br /br /"emDown/em!" Coco yelled her command. Blake obeyed without a second thought, throwing herself to the deck as her brother's leader filled the air with bullets. Only a few of them caught Mint-Green with glancing blows, but with whatever ammunition Coco was packing, those little hits were enough to throw Mint-Green a good dozen feet, where she rolled to a halt on the grass as her Aura shattered around her. "Keep an eye out f—emoomph/em!" Her voice cut off with a crash of gunfire and breaking wood, followed by a pair of heavy footfalls landing on wooden /br /"Coco!" Blake turned away from Mint-Green to—br /br /Something emslammed/em into the side of Blake's head, throwing her into the wooden railing of the deck. Her Aura took the brunt of the hit, but she still slumped against the rail, blinking stars and blurriness out of her vision as she turned to see who had struck /br /A muddled figure of muted silver and gray, the silver-haired male who she'd seen following her brother's team earlier, stood in the living room, his foot lowering from the follow-through of whatever he'd done to hit her. Blake heard the whine of Coco's minigun warming up to fire, and fought to keep the smirk from spreading across her face; if a couple of glancing blows from that minigun had been enough to take out Mint-Green, then it wouldn't need much more to—br /br /Silver spun and rapidly kicked in Coco's direction, the shotgun attachments on his boots firing off a pair of shells at Coco. Her minigun fell silent as Blake heard the telltale sound of somebody's Aura breaking. At the same time, another sound came to Blake's attention: crashing and sounds of a struggle upstairs. She had to do something. /br /Blake raised Gambol Shroud and squinted to steady her still-swimming vision, then fired off a trio of shots in his direction. One of them winged him in the arm, but the other two missed /br /And now she had his full /br /Blake forced herself to use her Semblance, the clone shoving her off to the side and behind cover before a burst of compressed air shattered the wood she'd been leaning on. She leaned around the edge of the patio door, and had to duck instantly back into cover when she saw the boy winding up with a kick. A shotgun shell blasted past where her head had just been. She took a deep breath to steady her nerves, and then with one more use of her Semblance, sent a clone rounding the door. The shotgun blast took it in the head and it faded away into /br /But it had given Blake more than enough time to round the door in a crouch. She steadied her aim and fired full-automatic, four bullets taking him in the chest before he managed to duck out of the way. Blake grimaced—she'd seen his Aura take all four of them, and knew she had a ways to go before he was down. But how was she supposed to keep him busy and protect Coco, while there was another fight going on upstairs? Noah's team had been tasked to protect Amber, and here she was, stuck downstairs. What was she supposed to do?br /br /Blake sent another clone running into the living room, and winced as it was blown apart moments later. It was a stalemate, she realized. Unless somebody else arrived, then… wait, Blake realized. There emwas/em somebody /br /The sound of gunfire from the living room rang in her ears, but she emrecognized/em the sound of those guns. Except at the same time, she didn't. Something about the sound was off, like it was being played through a speaker. Blake dared to glance into the living room, and felt her eyes /br /Velvet stood there, the box she wore on the small of her back pulsing with a soft blue light. In her hands, she held a pair of hard-light wireframe constructs, gunblades that Blake would recognize anywhere, no matter the form. But what was more startling was the emway/em Velvet held her replicas of Fang and /br /She held them at the ready, Fang held low and back in her left, Claw up and in front of her with an arm bent, ready to swing, block, or parry. It was emNoah's/em /br /Velvet squeezed the trigger on her copy of Fang, throwing her forward as she brought Claw around to strike at the kickboxer in front of her. He knocked her faux-Claw up and out of the way with a strike from his hands, then moved to kick Velvet in center mass as she was stuck in the follow-through. But an instant later, Velvet fired a round from Claw, and the recoil sent her beneath the man's leg, her copy of Fang raking across the weapon on his grounded foot. The sound of metal rending metal filled the air, and with one more shot, Velvet was clear as the kickboxer looked down in shock at his ruined /br /"You…" he snarled, glaring at Velvet with hate in his eyes. "You emfucking/em—"br /br /The sound of shattered glass came from upstairs, and an instant later a emthird/em assailant landed beside the fallen form of Mint-Green in the yard. She wore a deep black catsuit, a half-empty quiver slung along her back and a metal bow with bladed arms in her hand. She rolled twice before coming to a stop, and looked up, her eyes widening behind the butterfly-shaped mask she wore once they landed on Mint-Green, who lay there /br /"Retreat!" She reached down to grab Mint-Green, and a wave of her hand melted the broken glass around her before it reformed into a barrier in front of the two, which blocked the bullets Blake sent her /br /"But—"br /br /"emNow/em!"br /br /Silver grimaced at this, but reached into a pocket and pulled something out, at the same time that the new woman did. He threw it at the ground, and an instant later Blake emscreamed/em in pain, her hands flying up to protect the ears hidden beneath her bow, and stars bloomed in her vision as a bright light temporarily blinded her. She could dimly make out Velvet's identical scream of pain as she fell to the floor, eyes screwed shut and whimpering as she waited for the world to stop buzzing and sparking at /br /She wasn't sure how long the they lay there; Blake dimly recalled a pair of small, warm hands helping her up and leading her to something soft, and the comfort of a sofa or mattress as she waited for the ringing in her ears and the sunspots flashing in her vision to go /br /A hand landed on her shoulder some time later, shaking her gently. Blake opened one eye and couldn't help the relief that flooded her when she saw Noah staring back, his own golden gaze filled with /br /"Are you okay?" he /br /"Nngh…" Next to Blake, Velvet stirred, a hand going to rest against her forehead. "Aah, my ears… what, what happened? Did they get away?"br /br /A moment later, Noah had grabbed both his fellow Faunus in a hug, pulling them close. Blake could feel the urgency and fear in him, even as the tension in his shoulders slowly /br /"You're okay," he said, voice breathy with relief. "You're both okay… what happened? The whole place is just—"br /br /"It was Mint-Green and Silver," Blake said, her voice low, a throbbing behind her eyes telling her that even this much was pushing it and that she emreally/em needed to rest. "There was one more, s-she wore black, and… controlled glass? I think?"br /br /"Three of them?" Another voice broke in. Blake looked past Noah to see Qrow standing before the ruins of what had been the dining room table, and Amber sitting in one of the intact chairs, her hands white-knuckled as she bunched up the fabric of her skirt in her fists. Beyond him, she saw the other boy on Noah's team—Fox, that was his name—tending to Coco, helping collapse her minigun back into a purse before carrying her over to one of the more intact armchairs in the /br /"Three," Velvet confirmed. "I got a clear photo of the one in black, I think. I'll have to check."br /br /"If you did, then at least emsomething/em came of this mess," Qrow said, tapping at his Scroll before holding it up to his ear for an audio call. "Oz, it's Qrow. We need a bullhead at the 'cottage' yesterday. Seven passengers." He stopped, listening to the voice on the other end. "Yeah. Belladonna's little tagalong, and your niece. It ain't safe out here anymore… three, yeah. They got thrown for a loop Oz, we'll get a full debrief back at Beacon. Right. Got it. See you soon." Qrow ended the call and put his Scroll away, turning to the occupants of the room. "Bullhead's gonna be here in an hour and a half. Rest up until then kids; you've earned it."br /br /Blake let out a breath of relief, resting more of her weight on Noah, who still held her in a hug. She closed her eyes, letting her breathing /br /Rest… rest sounded like a good option right style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!- [if !supportLineBreakNewLine]-br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" /!-[endif]-/p
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p class="MsoNormal"br /"What happened!?" Emerald flinched away before her, but she paid the fear and shock in the girl's eyes no mind. "We went in the back to emnot/em have to deal with a Faunus, but you were emstill/em found. What. emHappened/em!?"br /br /"I, I don't know!" Emerald blurted out, backing away from her until a tree trunk prevented the girl from getting any further. Even still, her eyes shifted from side to side, searching for an escape—a reflex Cinder had yet to break her of doing in her presence, it seemed. "I had everything masked, and she emstill/em found me!"br /br /"She heard you," Mercury spoke up, not looking up from where he busied himself with that ridiculous contraption he called a weapon; Cinder couldn't help but bristle at the impropriety he showed, not even bothering to emlook at her/em when he spoke. "Girl went down to a flashbang like a Faunus with extra ears. Bet it was hidden behind the bow."br /br /Cinder stopped, turning that over in her head. The girl did look emremarkably/em similar to the pale-skinned male from the team of Beacon rookies accompanying emBranwen/em—the same boy that Emerald noted had reacted empoorly/em to an absurdly minor slight against his fellow emanimals/em. She wanted to rage, to express her emfury/em at the absurdity of it. A plan with three separate means of coming to fruition, failed… because of a Faunus with a emlittle black /br /"C-Cinder?" She cast her gaze back to Emerald, who flinched away as if struck. "W-what… what do we do now? The plan—"br /br /"Is emruined/em," Cinder spat, fists clenched tight. "It—"br /br /"May yet work," a new voice spoke, echoing through the clearing that the erstwhile trio occupied. A chill ran down Cinder's spine, her eyes flying wide as her eyes landed upon a dull crimson shape, swiftly /br /The Seer Grimm floated into the clearing, its blade-tipped tendrils drifting limply behind it. She relaxed a fraction, but only that; had its mistress truly been wroth, the Seer's ribbon tentacles would have writhed, coiling in the air, awaiting an impulse from its eldritch mistress to skewer anything before /br /"Lady Salem!" She held herself stiff, and at attention. "I… Pardon my ignorance, but what do you mean? My plan—"br /br /"Your plan was sound, dear Cinder, but we are not the only ones with plans in motion." Within the Seer's giant eye, Salem canted her head to the side. "For the moment, the Fall Maiden is out of our grasp… but the greater outline of your designs may yet be salvaged, I do believe."br /br /"But how?" Cinder asked, her voice small. Small as it had been when she had first come across the Witch. Small as it had been when she'd been but a glorified slave, powerless before those with money and influence. "Without the powers of the Fall Maiden, we can't retrieve the—"br /br /"The Crown of Choice was emnever/em the true objective, Cinder dear." Salem smiled, and Cinder felt the blood in her veins turn to ice. She'd been… emwrong?/em "Your objective was twofold: divide the kingdoms by destroying the CCT… and emremove Ozpin/em. The powers of the Maiden would have helped, yes…"br /br /The Seer's glass orb cracked, splitting open as a rush of acrid, deep-black smoke filled the air. Moments later, a heavy presence fell over the area, as the smoke cleared to reveal the Queen of the Grimm herself, resplendent in her malefic glory. Emerald and Mercury leapt away, and Cinder herself was quick to try and kneel. But Salem reached out a hand and grasped her by the forehead, pulling her close as emsomething/em flowed from the Queen's hand and into /br /"But it's become abundantly clear that my methods have become… empredictable/em. And even so, there is more than one way to make a Maiden." Salem smiled, her outstretched hand alight with arcane /br /And Cinder's eyes emburned/em with umbral flame./p