A/N

Technically, the speed of my updates are increasing. Maybe this will be a weekly series one day.

"Damn it!"

A dull note rung softly through the room. Blake opened her eyes to find her fist planted firmly against Alpharius' chest plate. In any other time and place, she might have felt embarrassed as she pulled her fist back, but in the heat of the moment she was much too frustrated to care.

"Is there anything I ought to be doing from my end?"

It was the fifth time he'd asked something along those lines.

"No. Nothing at all." Blake took deep breaths, calming her temper and her racing pulse. "It isn't supposed to be this hard."

"I have read that aura draws upon the soul for its power." Alpharius stood up, his mechadendrites silently fanning out and gliding into their usual places. "Could it be the heart of the problem?"

Blake bit her tongue to stop herself from immediately saying 'yes'. Her team was on good terms with him; she couldn't just call him soulless. When he was in the mood to try, he certainly ranked amongst the best conversationalists she'd met, so it was in her interest not to alienate him.

Of course, this was all underscored by the fact that she was trying to get a favor out of him.

"It's- It's hard to explain."

She racked her mind, trying to dredge something up to describe it. 'Soulless' wasn't completely accurate. Whatever it was though, she just couldn't use it to unlock his aura.

"It's like reaching into water for a fish." She hazarded, "You know it's physically possible, and it's seems simple enough on the outset. But as you reach in, hundreds of factors start playing against each other. The refraction of the water, the ripples you're causing, the way the fishes try to evade you; it all meshes together. Out of nowhere it just turns into a chaotic mess, even if it never looked like that to begin with."

Alpharius regarded her in silence for a moment, his head tilted to the side. The contraption over his left eye lens telescoped inwards as he replied.

"I imagine that would be troublesome."

Blake groaned inwardly. Of all analogies and anecdotes, why did that have to be the first one to come to mind? In a rare show of mercy, Alpharius changed the subject.

"Perhaps I shall never access my aura. Still, it would be remiss of me to give up any hope of comprehension, especially while you are here. The Encyclopedia Mistralia mentioned that in order to protect oneself with aura, one must be aware of a threat. Do you think you could elaborate on the specifics of that statement?"

"Elaborate on it?" Alpharius gave her a quick nod, before he crossed the room, busying himself by packing the contents of a drawer into a wooden crate. "Well, the key idea is that it's far more efficient to focus one's aura around a single area than it is to make a head to toe barrier. It's also a real pain to constantly keep your aura up and ready, so we generally don't do it unless we think we'll take a hit soon."

"Perhaps I misspoke." He stopped packing, but his mechadendrites resumed the work for him. "What exactly constitutes a threat that aura can block? And what is the mechanism behind a given threat being blocked?"

"Well…" Blake supposed she should have seen it coming. He always drilled straight down to the meat of things. "To be honest, those are really tough questions Alpharius. We haven't exactly gotten aura completely figured out yet."

"How about this then." He was hardly fazed by the obstacle. "I'll present you with a hypothetical scenario, and you'd give me your best guess of what would happen. Perhaps we'll be able to draw some inferences."

Blake nodded, watching as he swept across the room towards the line of crates neatly stacked against the far wall, extricating an empty flask from one.

"Suppose I told you this contained a tranquilizing agent, and that it would diffuse into the air of this room in a minute. Would you expect your aura to help you in anyway?"

Still a tough question, but it was reasonably answerable. She'd never heard of the specifics of scenarios like this, but at least her intuition had something to go on.

"I can only speculate here." Blake frowned as she considered it. "Push comes to shove, I'd say my aura would probably help me to some extent. I wouldn't bet my life on it though."

"Very good. Now given that your aura is capable of blocking the gas, would your aura begin to deplete, as it would against more conventional attacks?"

And suddenly they were back in realm of impossibility.

"Alpharius, I have to reiterate that we don't know much about aura on Remnant. To us, it's practically magical. These are really arcane and convoluted interactions that you're asking about, and we're getting to a point where I can't tell you in good faith that my answers are going to be any better than guesses."

"Gas attacks are arcane and convoluted?" The idea seemed genuinely disconcerting to Alpharius. "Are there truly no trends or heuristics that might apply to this scenario?"

"For this scenario? Not that I know of. There's only one real way to find out what those trends are in the first place. It'd be interesting to know, but I don't think anyone's ever tested it."

A shiver ran down her spine as she remembered who she was talking to.

"I see."

His helmet turned, and she followed his gaze towards a glass cabinet cluttered with flasks. When she first arrived, he'd mentioned that he was packing everything away to move. There was only one thing in the room that wasn't mostly or completely packed into a crate. Instead of one of the usual wooden crates that were littered about the room, a steel one sat at the foot of the cabinet, with a thin layer of frost dusting the surface.

Each flask in the cabinet was sealed, and full of a clear liquid. She had a feeling it wasn't water inside them. The glass seemed far too thick for that. Her attention was pulled away from the cabinet as she felt Alpharius' eyes on her.

"Could I put you down as a volunteer?"

The Legionnaire wanted to test his progress. A poke here, a prod there. All of their responses added up in the end, letting him keep a finger on the pulse of the abomination that was his relationship with team RWBY. It was a creature that grew erratically, and unpredictably. There were days when it seemed to be on the verge of coughing up its brain matter in a series of bone shattering convulsions. There were days when it seemed to double in size and vitality and learned to breath fire. There were also days when it seemed content to sit there, doing nothing at all.

Maintaining the relationship was simple, though progressing it was anything but. All the trouble had yet to pay true dividends, but the Legionnaire trusted his initial judgement. If nothing else, their antics were fascinating.

Which was why he took this opportunity. He wondered if Blake considered him familiar enough to discard the notion of her being a possible test subject. The worse outcome could be resolved by passing it off as a misunderstanding, and nothing would be lost.

But, upon deeper consideration, that wasn't completely true. If she called his bluff and agreed, he would be at an impasse. He wasn't prepared for an exhaustive experiment on the interaction between gases and aura, and he had more pressing matters to attend to. It had potential, but for now, its appeal was far more intellectual than practical.

"You, bothering with volunteers?" She remarked dryly. "Goodness, how the mighty have fallen."

A faint smile played across her lips, but a hint of caution never quite vanished. The legionnaire had come a long way from being the mysterious alien they'd struck a questionable deal with, but he had far further to go before he became a trusted friend. Progress was slow, but sure.

"You wound me." He made a mollifying gesture, even as he mentally conceded the point. "But enough about me. You wanted something in return for helping me unlock my aura, did you not? I'd be a poor host if you left disappointed."

Blake shut her eyes for a moment, deep in contemplation. It was an important moment for the Legionnaire. Important, not only as an indicator of where he stood, but also as a sign of where they might be headed.

"Anything? I can ask you any favor?"

There was a tremulous shade of incredulity in her voice, and perhaps rightfully so. It was a very generous offer, but hardly a gamble. He knew she wouldn't ask for much in return. Blake's sense of justice was far too strong for that.

"Anything." His voice was level and soothing. "Anything at all."

He let the words hang in the air, watching and waiting with rapt attention. Blake seemed to struggle with the decision. He patiently rode out the silence, content with the knowledge that the longer she wrestled with it, the more weight it would hold in her mind.

"I'd rather you not tell anyone about this." Blake began after some time, wringing her hands.

Now, this was unexpected. A request for any kind of secrecy was a truly unforeseen boon.

That Blake seemed willing to put such a degree of trust in him was a remarkable sign of progress. Well, it was either that or desperation, but here and now the distinction wasn't important. Bidding her to continue, he gave her a silent, solemn nod.

"Even my team." She looked away, her speech hushed and quick. "I'd really don't want to get them into trouble, and this really is my burden to-"

"Blake." He caught her eye. "If you want to keep this confidential, then in my eyes that desire alone is justification enough. Unless you have a change of heart, my lips are sealed."

He needed to impress the idea upon her, heavy handed as it was. While he would have liked to know why she didn't want the rest of her team to hear of this, now was certainly not the time to ask. It seemed to be enough for her distraught expression to soften. A moment later, she finally spoke.

"How much do you know about the White Fang?"

"As of now?" Blake nodded, and he began querying his data banks. "They are a paramilitary group, made up purely of Faunus. The ideological and political front they profess is unlikely to be superficial, as the profitability of almost all their enterprises would be dubious at best."

"That's certainly one way to put it." She kept a painstakingly neutral expression on her face. "Do you think you could find out anything else?"

"Now that I have reason to, I could certainly uncover more given time." He let his eyes settle on her bow, not failing to notice a nervous twitch. Perhaps he'd found her motive. "Would you like me to find you a recruiter?"

"No!"

Something unknowable flashed across Blake's face, and the Legionnaire could only guess at what it was. Indignity? Alarm? Guilt? He was legitimately surprised by the forcefulness in her voice; so urgent and harsh after minutes of tranquil politeness.

The legionnaire suddenly became acutely aware that they were striding across thin ice, with best-forgotten memories boiling up through the cracks. It was entrancing in a way, seeing a foundation of her character bared for a split instant. Like watching the wake of an agriworlder's till, as millennia old bolt casings bubbled through the parted soil.

"Please don't." Her usual calm and assertive demeanor reasserted itself quickly, yet it was so clearly strained. "I think that they're planning to do something in Vale, and I want to stop them."

"And you would like me to expedite the investigative side of this."

Blake nodded, holding his gaze. The legionnaire considered it straightforward enough. She was leaving him with more questions than answers, but he couldn't fault her for returning the favor. There were many possible reasons for her reaction, but none stood out in particular. He could always find out more later, whether Blake was forthcoming or not.

When the Legionnaire solely considered the matter at hand, the decision was simple. It was within his power, and his interest to fulfill the favor, and he had nothing but time to lose. Barring Amadeus' situation deteriorating, there was no real cost to it. He had no reason not to take the opportunity.

"Very well. I'll update you regularly, but I can't promise immediate results."

Blake could practically feel the apprehension drain from her. She came here knowing that Alpharius was probably the only person who wouldn't pry deeper after hearing her out, but she couldn't help the trepidation she felt while asking him. It felt very odd, having reason to expect Alpharius to be more sympathetic to her than her team, if only for this instance.

"Thank you." She let out a breath she didn't know she'd been holding. "I really appreciate it."

"Just as I appreciate your insights into aura, Blake. It's good that we can help one another."

Just like that, she'd outsourced the worst of the work to an alien mastermind. And not too soon either.

She'd spent too much time trying to find leads on her own. It'd quickly become clear that she wasn't cut out for that kind of work, and her perseverance was starting to affect her team too. They were already finding her all-nighters suspect, and if they found out it was all about the White Fang? Blake could imagine exactly how well that would go over with them.

But that wasn't being completely fair, was it? She supposed their hearts were in the right place, and without any deeper context, maybe her behavior could be interpreted as obsessive. Misplaced as their worries were, she couldn't fault their compassion. Their hearts were in the right place at least.

"Ah, but there is something I'm obligated to tell you. In my experience with these groups, when we do find information, it tends to be extremely time sensitive. You said that you wanted to stop them, and that you also wanted to keep this between us."

Alpharius seemed to have a knack for magically detecting anyone's worries. Once, her team had jokingly compared it to the Grimm's attraction to negativity. Blake hadn't laughed quite as hard as everyone else at that one.

"If it comes down to it, I'd need to know your priorities. Am I correct to assume that you value impeding the White Fang more than the secrecy of that desire? If that is the case, divulging any information to your team might be a far simpler solution. I'll strive to act on your preference for confidentiality, but operationally, we would be crippled if that were an absolute constraint."

"If it comes down to it... Yes. I want to stop them."

Why was it so hard to say it out loud? The idea of hiding things from her team felt like a lose-lose, but that didn't stop her from wanting to.

"I guess if there wasn't any real alternative, you'd probably have to tell my team about this."

She'd needed help the last time she'd run into the White Fang, and she wasn't so delusional as to think that a few months of training had magically made her Torchwick's equal in combat. Still, she felt terribly anxious about telling them anything about this. She trusted her team with her life, so why did she feel so differently about this?

Why was it so damn hard?

"Just… don't let them know I was the one who asked you to start looking."

Static laced the edges of a chuckle.

Alpharius' razor tipped mechadendrites glinted in the low light, swaying like branches in the wind. Two mismatched pools of azure light stared down at her from far above her head. His shadow flickered like a greyscale mirage, weaving darkness around him in a slow, swirling spiral. Locked away from the rest of the world in deep sea green plate, he reached out to her, dying light dripping off the armor in shifting streams of blood.

When had it become a familiar sight?

"Believe me, Blake."

His gauntlet rested on her shoulder. It was cold. So cold.

"I can keep a secret."

Amadeus had to admit that the handler general Ironwood selected for him was good at her job.

Perhaps the impression stemmed from her seeming disdain for the concept of ever being off-duty. That alone would have earned his grudging acceptance, but Winter had done more than that. Since the moment she stepped off a dropship in the dead of night, she made it explicitly clear that she was here to investigate him alongside their quarry. She didn't treat him like he was made of glass, nor did she think him blind to the consequences of sending a bolt through the next abhuman he saw.

Amadeus knew how far they were from the Imperium. He was surrounded by reminders, both within and without.

This hunt was a respite of order and purpose. Whether or not she knew it, Winter's relentless drive on the chase was exactly what he'd needed. Like a Canoness born to the wrong planet, she lorded over her subordinates, demanding perfection from them and receiving more. Her mask of serene confidence may as well have been sewn to her face, for all the times he'd seen it shaken.

It was no wonder Amadeus was brought back to his days seconded to Ordo Xenos. Rooting out the traitor's den was not completely dissimilar to hunting down a genestealer cult. It was simply sedition most foul, breeding in the dregs of civilization. The details were only important in as much as they influenced the operation to excise them.

Which made her apparent betrayal all the more shocking.

A day ago, they had finally reduced the number of possible locations of the turncoat's lair to one hundred and thirty-seven. One hundred and thirty-seven physical locations. All of them, addresses for secondary and tertiary CCT stations. It wasn't perfect, but nothing ever was. The tactician deep in his bones positively jumped at the chance. A simultaneous raid on each location, and the game would be up. With himself held in reserve for a deep-strike, it was the perfect opportunity to put an end to the bastard's machinations.

Winter never made a move.

In retrospect, it was hasty of him to assume her inaction to be entirely her own choice. Nonetheless, how could he have known in the first place? This damn world had such a twisted view of decorum that he couldn't distinguish rank without consulting a blasted chart. The fools had handed off the investigation of a Chaos space marine to a soldier with less sway than a regimental commissar! It was utter blind luck that she was up to the task.

And the death squads he'd assumed were out in the city, hounding their quarry? Utterly non-existent. He was told that Atlas' military couldn't deploy for operations like that on Vale's soil. That knowledge alone had opened an entirely new can of worms.

Apparently, Remnant's leadership was completely decapitated at the planetary level. The Alpha legionnaire must have been positively salivating. Divided by wide oceans, and a tiny industrial base, there were distinct political entities spread across the planet. By the warp, even the continent he was on had two entirely separate ruling councils. And not a single one could claim to possess a hive of at least a billion souls! What did the governments even do with so few to administrate?

Prohibit military operations evidently. And therein laid another layer of insanity that his mind staggered to comprehend. Vale had not only invited another polity's military to provide security for their borders, but also never bothered to maintain armed forces of their own. And on top of that, Atlas was the only nation on Remnant not complicit in this lunacy.

It had been one of the few reasons he was able to maintain any real composure initially. A few thousand men, and a proportionate number of atmospheric assets struck him as a suitable response to the appearance of a Chaos marine, especially considering that none of the involved parties knew the true significance of the matter. It was something he had clung to for a while. Remnant's rulers may have been insane, and its people were completely unenlightened, but at least they were armed and suspicious. They needed to be when fighting against this foe.

When he had heard a private off-handedly mention they were only deployed in the first place to stand vigil over a local festival of sorts, it had frayed his nerves to say the least.

And now, they saw fit to inform him that negotiations had been underway for weeks. Negotiations with an Alpha Legionnaire. Whether she knew it or not, Winter had the next few minutes to restore his faith in Remnant's citizens. There'd better be a damned good explanation for this travesty of justice.

If not, he'd paint the halls red, damn the consequences.

"I'm not permitted an opinion on the policy General Ironwood is pursuing, but the reasoning is clear enough."

Winter looked at him much in the same way she always did, her electric blue eyes boring into his, utterly calm and composed. She was the very image of poise and self-assurance as she took his interruption to her midday meal in stride.

"Simply put, Alpharius has been more cooperative than you."

He bit back a snarl at the barb. Winter was never one to mince her words, but he'd rarely been on the receiving end of her sharp tongue. While she never shied away from that particular flavor of directness, now was certainly not the time. He wouldn't tolerate it.

"Care to elaborate, Specialist?"

Winter reined in a flinch with a well-practiced tranquility. He was far better at intimidating her than she would have liked. With that deep growl in his voice, the right inflections could send anyone into a cold sweat. His morbidly ostentatious armor wasn't helping matters either, but Winter gathered that it was designed with that intent.

Troubling as her thoughts were, she didn't let them show.

In fact, she couldn't allow so much as a hint to surface. She had to banish every thought of doubt from her mind, all to maintain her façade of a steadfast heart. It was one of the constraints of the mask she was wearing. The role she played called for her to reply with naught but an arched brow, and a wholly unimpressed cast about her eyes.

Winter had accumulated a vast collection of masks throughout her life. She wore whichever was best for the occasion, but she never hesitated to craft new ones. Winter could be anything she needed to be: An efficient subordinate, an enterprising heiress of the SDC, a cold blooded soldier, or even a stern older sister.

The mask she had to wear in front of Amadeus was like no other. Acting out her role was equal parts exhausting and exhilarating. Winter knew she was prideful, but after she stepped in front of Amadeus, she had to practically radiate an aura of perfect confidence. She had to completely discard the notion that others would question her. She had to live each waking moment as if time were her arch-enemy.

But it worked. Dangerous, draining and dizzying as it was, she liked wearing and perfecting her newest mask. She positively loved it.

The end result was an entirely new Winter. They'd crafted a Winter who could singlehandedly cut through Alpharius' layers of deception. A Winter whose subordinates held in reverent terror. It was a Winter molded by Amadeus' expectations of her, and the mask she'd so carefully fashioned was something he could respect.

And now, Amadeus was upset, and dangerously so. Smoke wafted off him slowly, carpeting the floor in a thick, billowing miasma of darkness. Supernatural phenomena were not a rare sight whenever Amadeus was involved, but he always used some means to keep their effects to a minimum. That he hadn't done so yet didn't bode well.

"Let's approach this differently Amadeus." She judged it safer to distance herself from her superior's decisions for now. Redirecting his immediate attention away from the General was the best course of action. "From what you've told us, Alpharius intends to plunge Remnant into a dark age of murder, despair, and unimaginable horror."

"I'll humor the understatement." His short, clipped tones lost none of their severity.

Information from Alpharius had led them to believe otherwise, but now was far from the best time to bring it up.

"And what of your intentions? You'd have Remnant cede sovereignty to this Imperium of yours, wouldn't you?"

"The Imperium entrusts its subjects with considerable autonomy-"

"Please, Amadeus. If you want honest answers, the least you could do is return the favor."

Winter bit her tongue as his fists clenched, but her nervousness didn't show. Anywhere else, wearing any other mask she might have flinched, but here and now it was unthinkable. Amadeus exhaled, unclenching his fists and letting them fall back to his sides. Winter didn't miss how his fingertips brushed against the hilts of his weapons.

"For what it's worth, I truly believe it would be the best outcome for all parties involved."

Every last trace of resentment and anger left his voice, giving way to only cold, distant pity. Winter knew that tone well. She'd once even used the same one herself in Atlas, lining deserters up against a wall. She heaved a sigh, and reinterred the memories into their shallow graves.

"Wouldn't you imagine that Alpharius would say the same?" Amadeus nodded minutely, as if the point was barely worth raising. "Regardless of either of your true motives, Alpharius wants to make exchanges and trades. We acknowledge that some of his behavior is far from ideal, and our investigation into him was more than warranted. Still, the fact remains that he is providing us value that you are not. Can you blame us for-"

"Perhaps in a vacuum, ignorance of the danger he poses might be cause enough to stay my hand, but we do not live in a vacuum." Amadeus growled as he leaned across the table, the ruddy mahogany beneath his hands hissing and bubbling. "It is because Remnant knows so little of the poisoned honey that he drip-feeds you that the consequences are so perilous. A world falling to the Arch-Enemy is the last thing the galaxy needs. I will not stand idle as your planet's rulers unknowingly consign dozens of others to war and damnation."

"And therein lies the problem." Winter retorted. "Isn't the core of this issue that Alpharius is willing to open a dialogue with us? In one breath you tell us that our ignorance of the wider galaxy is dangerous, and in the next you condemn our attempts to resolve that same problem!"

The dispassionate stare of a steel skull was her only reply. Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he took a step back from the table. His swaying chains were practically inaudible. Would she be able to draw her saber before he reached his hammer? What if he went for his sidearm? Even his sword was an unknown-

No. The Winter Amadeus knew wouldn't let such petty worries cross her mind. She needed to be perfect, she needed to be in control. She needed to defuse the situation with naught but a flick of her hand. To the Winter he knew, would this gambit even qualify as calculated risk?

What a ridiculous thought.

"So why not explain your rationale? If you truly think it's so perilous for us to dig deeper into this by ourselves, then guide us." His hand faltered halfway to his bolt pistol. A triumphal spark ran up Winter's back. "Apprise us of this minefield we're blundering into, Amadeus. If a chaplain of the Imperial Fists isn't qualified to do so, then who is?"

"If I were to- This danger the galaxy faces is incredibly complex…"

"I don't doubt that, but shedding light on this underlying issue strikes me as a worthy use of our time. As you've so aptly pointed out, our investigation is on hold after all." She gestured to the seat across from her, looking every part the magnanimous arbiter. "Have you so little faith in yourself to explain it? Have you so little faith in me to understand it?"

In utter silence, Amadeus seemed to take in the room around him for the first time. Slowly, the deep, dark smoke that enveloped the room billowed into nothingness. Rivulets of light began to detach from the contours of the walls, their sickly crimson glow boiling away as sunlight poured through the windows.

He took a seat across from her, practically buckling the chair, but it held. Setting his helmet on the table, Winter found herself on the receiving end of two hauntedly appraising looks.

"Perhaps you're not wrong to call it a lack of faith." He began after some time. "We lost far too much before we realized the nature of the threat. To fully learn of it, the Imperium paid a bloody toll as it was founded. No world deserves to suffer as we did."

"Maybe this marine who hides behind the name of his dead Primarch strikes you as a rational being. Studious and logical. Even if his motives are mysterious, you can sit at a table and negotiate with him. Why would he ever devote himself to the antithesis of civilization, when he's such an exemplary product of it? Alien as he might act, you'd never reconcile your image of him with that of a burner of worlds, and the end of order."

"He lost his mind long ago, Winter, in a deeply profound sense. Even I can't fully comprehend how it happens, but I accept that it can. Those who devote themselves to the ruinous powers discard their humanity in a terrifically fundamental way. They care not if they do good or evil, for they have neither desire nor ability to distinguish between right and wrong. This 'Alpharius' pledged himself to the destruction of humanity's works, and what are ethics and rationality if not constructs of the human mind?"

"It's one of the Arch-Enemy's first and most devious traps. Without firsthand knowledge, the terrific virulence of Chaos' depravity seems impossible. You'd tell yourself that mad lunatics and wicked criminals are capable of terrible things, but they're a regrettable by product of human existence. Unavoidable friction in the cogs that turn society. But it would seem impossible on the scale I'd describe. You'd never be able to picture how a single errant whisper from beyond the veil would take less than a year to plunge an entire forge world into the abyssal depths of ritual human sacrifice."

"I could tell you hundreds of such tales. Stories of terror, despair, and failure. But I'll never capture the utter pervasiveness of Chaos' insidious omnipresence. You'll never be able to picture it happening to Remnant. For that I need to start with something closer to home."

He took a single slow, steady breath, his eyes shut in contemplation. When he opened them, his steel grey eyes bored into hers with a challenge.

"From what I understand, the Grimm of Remnant are creatures of evil and destruction, shrouded in mystery and darkness." Winter nodded wordlessly. She would have sooner killed than stop him speaking. "One might say that we have a similar problem in the wider galaxy. The nuance and scope are considerably different, but for now their existences are analogous enough. Save for one key difference."

The guitar strapped to his back flared under its veil of grey silk.

"Our Grimm can speak."

Pyrrha wondered if she was going mad.

If nothing else, she supposed the increasing frequency she asked herself that didn't bode well for the answer. Pyrrha shut off the faucet and wiped her face dry. She went about it with careful mechanical precision, willfully prolonging the act, knowingly stalling for a scant few moments more. She set the cream colored washcloth alongside the pale porcelain, and looked up into the mirror.

She wished she could have been surprised by what she saw.

Pyrrha looked well enough for someone who'd acquired a fear of sleep. Despite the dark rings under her eyes, it seemed that she'd managed to keep her hair and clothes tidy enough. She took her time, knowing what little normality she could cling to would be swept away the moment she looked beyond her own reflection.

With a quiet sigh, she took in the rest of what the mirror told her. The entirety of the wall behind her had been ripped away from the side of the building, with gnarled masses of twisted rebar peeking out of the rubble and dust. Through it, she saw that the rest of Beacon hadn't fared much better.

Illuminated in stark daylight, figures dressed in black and white hurried about Beacon's grounds, stumbling over ditches and craters as Grimm ran them down. Their bleached masks flared brightly with each rifle's muzzle flash, the fiery bursts elongating and foreshortening as their aim swept about wildly.

A vast trench of fire and debris carved its way across campus, the remains of her wall perfectly tangent to the path it sliced into the concrete and soil. The cut's edges were sharp and deep, as if archeologists had excavated a canal from civilizations of old. It ended close to the cliff, neatly bisecting a shuttle dock before splitting apart, widening and diverging to wrap around a vast, half-buried spear-tip.

Thick smoke clouded it and made it difficult to discern anything beyond vague shapes. Dazzling flames sprung from it, stretching across part of the horizon like a mid-day sunset. Griffons flew above the inferno in lazy orbits, leaving argent vortices swirling behind them, their momentum bleeding into stillness as they faded back into the smoke. Every so often, one would swoop down, disappearing into the maelstrom of ash and soot. A few breaths later, they'd rise out of the fire, carrying off human shaped pieces of charcoal, tearing into them even as they soared back to the sky.

The wind changed, and Pyrrha smelt the burning dust, felt the heat of the flames, and saw the grass desiccate before her eyes.

The smoke cleared, and she stared down upon the vast form of a fallen angel, not clad in armor and wings, but only its skeleton: A titanium spine prismatically enclosed by thousands of aluminum ribs, caging a molten storm of dust. It burned blue, orange, green, and thousands of hues in between, the meters-long tongues of flame intermingling, intertwining, but never quite mixing. Against the light of the burning dust, the metal spars were dark ruby shadows, pulled thin and sharp as blades. Some held onto their forms even as they buckled, the flattened ellipses marred by splitting sandwich structures, with stray struts swinging in each gust. Others had shattered, the clever rings and hollows within them exposed to the inferno, their shorn tips shaking like autumn leaves.

Knife shaped nacelles jutted out of the ashes, their shattered blades trailing ramified snarls of wires, cables, catwalks. The ghostly tangle glowed white hot as the burning wind whipped them into a vast, venous web. Pale fumes murmured from jagged tears in the metal, stubbornly clinging to the hull against the gale. They poured down its edges to coat the scorched earth in a pool of quicksilver.

After a while, the smoke built up again, and obscured her view. Pyrrha let out a slow, shuddering breath, and turned around. The immaculate tiles of her washroom wall mocked her expectant gaze. She reached out, and ran her fingertips along a line of mortar, feeling the fine grains rasp against her skin.

She spared a glance over her shoulder. The burning reflection of an Atlesian airship still stared back at her.

She walked out into her dorm room and shut the door behind her firmly. There were two people in the room, but only one seemed to notice her.

"I'll have to catch up with Nora before she gets Jaune into any trouble." Ren had just pulled on his jacket and made his way over to their window. "I don't suppose you'll be joining us?"

The room's other occupant ran a hand along Akoúo̱, just out of Ren's line of sight. Her fingertips brushed the surface of the shield, new groves etching themselves into the bronze under the shadow of her hand. Ren didn't react to the metallic snicks behind him.

"No, I'm afraid not." She buried her troubles under a well-practiced smile. "I'll catch up with you in class though."

Ren closed their windows. Their view of the main avenue was nothing new to her, but as the thin planes swung shut, the glass refracted the daylight. For less than a heartbeat, it was just enough to let Pyrrha have a momentary glimpse back into the chaos; a Bullhead thundering by, and a pair of Nevermore hot on its tail.

"Pyrrha."

The windows clicked shut, and the view out the windows flashed into normality. She could see Nora dragging Jaune past the academy statue. Atlas' airship fleet floated above the cliff, the gargantuan warships attended by dozens of bullheads and shuttles. There was no rubble, fire or Grimm. Any reflections in the glass were nearly invisible. Nearly.

"Pyrrha." Ren repeated, making sure he caught her eye. "Maybe you should take the day off. If anyone can afford to miss one of Goodwitch's lessons, it's you."

"I've just been a little distracted recently. Some spars will do me good."

"It's no secret you're tired Pyrrha." He spared her an appraising glance, but a moment later he made his way towards the door. "I'll trust your judgement. If anything, it'll make your fights marginally more even."

He stopped in the doorway, his voice becoming a touch softer than usual, a hint more concerned.

"You'd tell me if something was wrong, wouldn't you?"

"Don't worry about me." As much as it crushed her heart to say it, she had to. She knew it was for his own good. "Maybe you're half right. I could use a little rest, but something tells me that showing up to our first team synergistics class at three-quarter strength wouldn't be the best of starts."

Ren smiled, but he seemed more disappointed than reassured. Perhaps rightfully so, Pyrrha thought. In the end though, he nodded to her, and stepped out the door.

"I'll see you there then."

It swung shut with a dull thud. Not a moment after the door closed, Pyrrha backed up against a wall and held her head in her hands.

She knew none of the things she saw were really there. She was dead certain. They couldn't have possibly been real. It was easier to compartmentalize the visions in her dreams, but now? When she was perfectly lucid? When it was her own eyes and ears telling her that something that couldn't be there actually was?

Pyrrha didn't want to ask herself why she was the only one seeing these things. She didn't want to weigh her trust in everyone around her against that in her own senses.

She knew the answers, soul crushing as they were. Despite her certainty, the conviction of her belief, and her absolute surety that they were illusions, it couldn't amount to anything in the end. What did it matter, when the fact remained that she could look into a reflection and see an apocalypse in the making?

It's one of the most interesting parts of the human condition, Pyrrha. There's always a degree of uncertainty in your epistemological foundations. The implications just happen to be more immediate for you.

Pyrrha flinched as Enshattered spoke. It was as if the words were cast straight into her mind, blowing straight past her senses, and stabbing right to the depths of her temporal lobe. She wasn't sure how she knew the name either. It simply appeared at the forefront of her mind, as if she'd known it her whole life.

"Why?" Pyrrha took an unsteady step towards Enshattered. "Why are you doing this?"

Enshattered set down Akoúo̱, wisp-like strands of smoke trailing from her fingertips to the bronze shield. Tremors spread across the silvery mist that made up her body, wavefronts disappearing and warping as the ripples met hairline discontinuities in reality.

Her hollow, dark eyes were the only features Pyrrha could make out, but they alone were more than enough to meet Pyrrha's gaze with a look of purest sincerity.

Would you believe me if I said it was curiosity?

She was supposed to believe that all her nightmarish visions, sleepless nights and existential panic-attacks were the product of someone's idle amusement? Not some grand scheme, but a mere passing curiosity?

Mere, you say? Pyrrha, there's no need for self-depreciation. Something new and unknown passed within my reach, and I recognized the golden opportunity for what it was! You know as well as I do that it was an irresistible temptation. After all, isn't that how you got yourself in this situation in the first place?

So Enshattered knew exactly what she was thinking. Pyrrha supposed that a hallucination could have perfect knowledge of her thoughts, if she went down that line of thought, where would it leave her? Her only meaningful option was to accept what she saw as reality. So what did that give her to work with now? She still had some unknowable monster in her head, feeding her visions of Vale's cataclysm.

If nothing else, it was a starting point.

She took another step towards Enshattered. Something about seeing the mastermind of her misery in the flesh steeled her nerves. Maybe it was some ill-founded feeling of confirmation that she wasn't slipping into insanity. Regardless of where it came from, it lit a flame in her heart. Something warm ran through her veins, and she felt something beyond bleak hopelessness for the first time in days. Her heart was in her mouth, and her pulse raced, but that same feeling drove her forwards.

"As I understand, this is happening because I tried to take hold of you with my semblance." If Enshattered didn't want Pyrrha to approach, she didn't show it. "I realize that I wronged you somehow, but when you- whatever you did, this strikes me as a little… disproportionate."

Appealing to a daemon's conscience? I must say, I'm flattered by the implication. For the record though, I think our actions are analogous enough.

Enshattered positively radiated mirth as she drifted towards team JNPR's cluttered bookshelf.

Your semblance, Pyrrha. How much do you know about the way it reaches through the empyrean? It grasps, pulls and buckles the aether, practically dripping with an intent to control. Veritable shackles whipped through the antithesis of reality; The realm in which I live.

Enshattered's words echoed in her head, a whirring, silky voice of wonder.

Perhaps it amounted to nothing in the end, but I don't think I'll ever quite forget the moment you reached out to me with your semblance. Few languages have words for it. Incarceration, enslavement, ego-death. To be irrevocably tied down and redefined by lines writ in blood. To my kin, it's quite literally a fate worse than death. Could you imagine how absolutely horrific the thought of those fetters were? Could you ever truly understand the choking terror of the moment? The threat of such utter violation?

Despite herself, Pyrrha's blood froze at the thought. Had she been that careless? How could she have known her semblance would do something like that?

Ah, the people of Remnant truly are a breed apart. If you knew what it could do to me, you really would have let it stop you, wouldn't you? Another distinction between daemon and human I suppose. That alone makes me insatiably curious about you, Pyrrha.

There was the word she kept hearing. Demon. Was Enshattered a new or undocumented type of Grimm? The sadistic mind games more than fit the bill, but it was a superficial similarity. She'd never heard of any Grimm that putting off murder like this. Even if ancient Grimm were rumored to retreat from lost battles, to do so when a kill was well within their grasp was unthinkable. Enshattered was almost certainly not a Grimm. But knowing that left her with nothing useful. Did anyone know what Enshattered was?

Her keeper might know. On the rare occasion a professor felt inclined to offer an explanation, they insisted that he was a hunter who had been in the Grimm-lands for a great deal of time and needed Beacon's help re-adjusting to society. Naturally, nobody believed it. The prolific rumor mill that was Beacon churned out theory after theory. Some people thought he was Atlas' latest stab at AI, loaded onto an experimental combat platform. Others thought he was a prospective professor, juggling offers of tenure from all four hunter academies. Surprisingly, the prevailing student consensus was that he was an alien, coming to inspect their society for moral degradation. Whether or not Remnant was making a good showing was a far more contentious topic.

Regardless of the veracity of the ideas, the fact remained that the second armored monstrosity, Amadeus she recalled Goodwitch calling him, kept Enshattered in tow. Logically, he must have some sway over Enshattered, or at least a means to keep her in check. She didn't like the idea though. The other one was an utterly remorseless murderer, so what were the chances of Amadeus being any more reasonable? What little impressions she had of him didn't bode well for the outcome. Damn it, she needed to know more!

Amadeus? Ah, my most distinguished host. His hospitality leaves much to be desired, but is an ocean not named by its storms? I wouldn't give him up for the world. I think of him as a well-meaning, but oh-so-traditional patron of the arts. I wouldn't be able to stand here without him, but when he does come knocking, I strive the hide the more… risqué of my projects. For propriety's sake of course.

Shards of golden light sharpened into daggers, fluidly paring away from Enshattered's form. She paid them no heed as they swam about her, perfectly content to peer at the spines of their textbooks.

To you though, he's something else entirely; cold, uncaring fate clad in ceramite and steel. The reaper himself, rolling into town with armor.

As if by some sleight of hand, Enshattered eased a great leather bound tome from the room's bookshelf. The front of it featured a minimalist depiction of a raised fist, set against a white circle. Blood dripped from its pages, but Enshattered paid no mind to it. Red lines ran along her hands, blending and weaving into her ghostly form, but never quite diffusing; oil poured into water.

Of course Enshattered would oppose contacting him, but why?

See for yourself. He's the end of the line.

The door swung open with a crash. Splinters danced across the carpet, the lock sheared clean through. Pyrrha knew the deep black plate, and the mirror set into a leering skull mask. She knew the cursed guitar on his back, wrapped uselessly in Beacon's coat of arms. Staring down at her, like a pair of apertures into a horrendous furnace-

Blinding pain shot through the side of her face. She was stumbling, dizzy and shaking. Something hot dripped from her face, staining the carpet bright red. It fell further than she expected. No, that wasn't quite it. Was it that it looked odd? Unless she couldn't see through her left eye- She couldn't see- She couldn't see at all. She could feel it now, a furious mass of agony twitching pointlessly in a slurry of crushed bone and flesh. Her eye was gone. It was gone-

Had she fallen? Was she pushed? The floor boards were cold against her hands, and dozens of little fragments of wood biting into her skin. She was staring up into a perfect circle of dark steel, a spiraling tunnel to a shadowy wonderland. Light played along the polished metal, coruscating along its sharp edges. The otherworldly portal descended, revealing itself to be the muzzle of a gun. Was it painted red, or was her other eye failing her now? Maybe she could call her own weapons to her, they were close enough to-

Something weighed down her outstretched hand, pressing down with implacable strength. She felt something rigid under her flesh burst into powder, and a wet crack shot its way up her arm. Pyrrha wondered if anyone heard her scream. And for that matter, what was she hearing?

"-and embrace the Emperor's grace for those who lay down their lives to strengthen his Imperium. I, brother Chaplain Amadeus of the seventh legion Astartes do accept your most noble sacrifice in his stead. Through the mercy of his angels, know that this is the absolution of your sins."

A bright white flare blossomed before her, filling her vision. It rolled over her mind, melting into utter darkness.

Mathematicians call it a trivial solution. An artifact of analysis that, while valid, holds no true meaningfulness. To bleach away value and worth in a wash of zeroes. This is one of them. Were I truly capable of it, I think I would hate them.

Pyrrha opened her eyes to find herself kneeling on the carpet, holding the book in a white knuckled grip. She let go, practically flinging it away, but it levitated in the air. Ever so gently, it bobbed up and down in rhythm with the crests and swells that spilt off Enshattered's ghostly body. She turned over a leaf in the tome, and with a gesture, split it into thousands more.

Perhaps if you approach it carefully, you might find a world where he hears you out. Maybe if you dig yet deeper, you might find a world where he offers you his condolences, beyond your last rites. But know this: he will end your life each and every time. If he catches wind of our secret, it will be a leap across the precipice overlooking your demise. Once you begin that journey, no matter how you struggle, every road converges at death's door.

"Why would you care?" Pyrrha looked at Enshattered, her gaze met by dozens of her own fearful emerald eyes. "What does it matter to you?"

Why Pyrrha, you can hardly sate my thirst by dying in such a morbidly boring way. An Imperial Fist slaying the possessed? There's nothing new to that, and beyond the gore, it isn't really that interesting.

"So my untimely death would ruin your entertainment." Pyrrha felt the most curious spark of spite in the pit of her stomach. It was odd to think that vengeance could drive someone towards suicide. "What a pity that would be."

It isn't just my entertainment on the line. Ultimately, we both exist for the same duty. And this need not be an entirely unpleasant experience for you. Naught but misery and sorrow would get dreadfully monotonous after a while.

"Really? Well, for whatever reason, things aren't looking too good on that front." Lashing out felt cathartic, even if she knew her bitterness meant little to Enshattered. "Beyond getting out of my head, I can't imagine anything improving those prospects."

Enshattered seemed to take pause to that, staring into space in a moment of total stillness. A while later, she drifted away, tucking the great tome back onto their bookshelf. Its colors bled into a puddle around it, swirling into the blood that leaked from its pages. Ever so slowly, it began to dissociate into mist and pale strands of dust stretching towards the ground.

Pyrrha wordlessly pushed herself up from the ground. Absentmindedly, she strapped Akoúo̱ to her back, and hefted the duffle bag she kept her armor in. She took a deep breath, trying to re-center herself in reality. Right then, team synergistics and sparring, all with a sum total of four hours of sleep in the last two days. She could do it. She had to.

I suppose it is time I threw you a bone. I would hardly be a daemon if I wasn't open to trades and exchanges. How would you like to end the day with Jaune in your bed?

Pyrrha whipped her head around to find Enshattered holding a picture frame by her nightstand. Blond hair, blue eyes- She'd never actually printed the picture, much less framed it! Pyrrha bit back on her shock, forcefully reminding herself of the situation. An intangible monster was in her head, parasitically keeping tabs on everything she knew. She was just probing any tender spots she found.

Even with that in the forefront of her mind, she couldn't deny the temptation. She hated how much she wanted it, and how long it was taking her to convince herself that it wasn't worth it. After all she'd been through, was it so wrong for her to want a night's distraction from her problems? Especially if that distraction entailed something she'd only ever dreamed of. Maybe she could take a chance and see what happened. She could just hear the demon out and see what she wanted. Things could hardly get worse for her after all.

"But not for Jaune."

She hadn't meant to speak out loud, but she couldn't bring herself to care. Her own circumstances might be unimaginably hopeless, but she couldn't say that same about Jaune's. He'd gotten into Beacon against all odds and felt like he was on top of the world. With the exception of his partner developing a recent case of insomnia, he was living the dream. She could never take that away from him.

"You'd drag Jaune into this too?"

Naturally.

"Then no." She meant those words with every fiber of her being. If there was one thing she wouldn't give up, she'd found it. "I don't want any deals from you."

She made to leave, bracing herself to push past Enshattered, but as she stepped through the phantom, nothing impeded her. Like a smoke plume from a dying airship, the demon parted and reformed, studiously watching Pyrrha's retreat.

Not at this point, I suppose. Baiting me into forcing the hand of time? Well played Pyrrha. Well played indeed.

"There's nothing you could give me."

She swung the door shut behind her with a slam and started running. She didn't hear Enshattered's laughter, so much as feel it. The demon's amusement radiated through brick and stone, burning against her back like the sun.

Ozpin blinked as Ms. Nikos sprinted past him like a bat out of hell.

It was a far from shocking sight at Beacon. In was a school full of teenagers, there had to be dozens running in the hallways at any given time. He should have shrugged off the sight without a second thought.

Yet in the instant she dashed past him, Ozpin was overtaken by the most disconcerting sense of déjà vu. There was an eerie familiarity to her disquieted face. It was far too much like an expression he'd seen decades ago, staring back at him in a mirror. The tapping of his cane echoed up the stone stairs, drowning out the receding sound of her footfalls.

He shut his eyes and heaved a sigh. It was becoming far too easy to find more things to worry about. There were simpler explanations to be had, and there were better things to focus on. Rounding the last flight of stairs, he concentrated on the familiar voices floating down the corridor, recognizing the ever elusive lilt of professor Peach's voice.

"Ms. Xiao Long, I don't think you grasp the fundamental issue here."

"There's enough room for it though!" The student in question stifled a sneeze. "It's not leaking either, and there's no loose wires or anything!"

Dust blanketed the office, clinging to the furniture in a hazy bluish film. Perhaps the same could have been said about the offices of professor Peach's counterparts in the other Huntsman Academies, but in Beacon it was the far more mundane and inert variety that plastered the walls of the Dust energetics professor.

The professor in question paid little heed to the state of her office, and the powdery clouds puffing up in the wake of her stride. Pandora Peach wore dark trousers, heavy walking boots and a pale coat, buttoned up to her throat. Her long, coral hair was pulled back in a braid. A few stray specks of dust sheened in the air as she reached into the office's cabinets for tea cups.

"Be that as it may, the safety officer told me there was liquefied air sloshing around the bottom of it. I'm having trouble finding good reasons for a team of first years to be near anything of the sort."

"Professor, is it strictly prohibited?"

Pandora let her attention drift away from her tea, casting her eyes back to the lounge the students sat in. Miss Schnee had spoken up from her seat, glancing disconcertedly at the worsening state of her skirt.

He supposed he was to blame for the sorry shape Pandora's office was in. For the last year, he'd constantly kept her on expeditions and investigations into the Grimm lands, hoping she'd find signs of Salem's doings.

The entire situation was one of Ozpin's greatest regrets, though it was an obvious blunder in hindsight. At the time he was simply delighted to discover such a bright, rising talent. Pandora had struck him as a paragon of curiosity and rationality, all bound together by a drive to do good. With a mind like a razor, and a tongue to match, she would have made an excellent lifelong ally against Salem.

He'd never expected the same acumen he'd prized her for to turn her away from him.

"Miss Schnee, it's easily twice your height, and it's condensing one of the most flammable liquids on Remnant. Frankly, I'm impressed could ask that with a straight face."

"I- I'm afraid my question still stands professor."

"While I can't say miniaturized cryogenic plants are explicitly blacklisted by Beacon's dormitories, there's a slew of health and safety regulations that ought to cover it." She spoke softly as she stirred her tea, the spoon ringing softly through the room. "That's far from the best road to go down, team RWBY."

Ozpin stood just outside the doorway, waiting to catch her eye. The warm patience filling her violet eyes glazed over as she noticed him. To her credit, he wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't expected the reaction. It was an unfortunate, if understandable response on her part. Giving him a quick nod, Pandora's eyes settled back on two members of team RWBY.

"Let's not turn this into a permanent black mark on your records. Whatever this monolith in your room is, hanging on to it can't be worth having the book thrown at you. Am I correct in recalling that neither of you seem willing to claim ownership of it?"

"It isn't one of my purchases." Ms. Schnee shared an anxious look with her teammate. "We… aren't entirely sure who it belongs to."

"Isn't that an odd notion though? An object of unknown origin found its way into your room, and you knew nothing of what it was, or how it got there." She hummed in thought, setting down her tea. "Many students would have reported it, and saddening as it is to say, the majority would have started their own little independent investigations. Yet for whatever reason, our most promising team of first years decided to go as if nothing were out of the ordinary. Do you really expect me to believe that's what happened?"

Agonizing silence was her only answer.

"I don't know what you expected to get out of hiding this, but we'll find out soon enough." Pandora promised with quiet conviction. "Consider yourselves fortunate that the Headmaster and I need the room. I'll give your team a fresh start with this, so let Ms. Belladonna and Ms. Rose know that I expect them here by nine tomorrow morning, and that I expect them to have answers."

She beckoned him in as the two girls filed out of the dusty office, whispering furiously to each other as they brushed past him. He wasn't sure what team RWBY had done to earn Pandora's displeasure, and he would have consoled them if he had the time. Heavens knew he'd be the subject of her disdain soon enough, and as much as it hurt to admit, it was black mark on this life he'd long gotten used to.

Speaking with Ozpin was always an interesting affair.

Pandora guessed that the sentiment wasn't mutual, but then again, she did treat him much in the same way as an elderly relative experiencing the onset of dementia.

"I trust you read through the files you received?"

Stylishly late for the meeting he requested, Ozpin made himself at home in her excuse of an office. Rather than sit, he elected to stand, no doubt after seeing the miserable fate the pair of first years suffered in her armchairs. Not for the first time, she wondered if dust covers would be a prudent investment. Ozpin hardly kept her at Beacon long enough to make use of the space.

"I have. It's a lot to wrap my mind around."

An understatement if there ever was one. If not for the staggering amount of documented evidence that he'd thrown at her, she'd have written it off as one of Ozpin's latest delusions, right alongside his undying occultist crossbreeding Grimm in the wilderness. Of all Hunter Academies, why did Beacon have to make first contact with aliens?

Well, if she was going to be perfectly frank with herself, of all organizations in the world, it was fortuitous that Beacon was fated to be such pioneers, but that said more about Remnant than Beacon by her reckoning.

"Who else is privy to this kind of information about them? This could get out of hand quite quickly."

"The senior staff, and parts of the Atlas delegation. We're working closely together."

A need to know basis then. It was a short term solution, but even she had to admit the attractiveness of keeping something like this a secret. There were countless ways to exploit the relationship even if only one side wanted to keep the truth under wraps. But for those same reasons, anyone looking in from the outside would expect the relationship to be completely rife with malicious collusion, and she wouldn't blame them. Even if everything was done with the best of intentions, it was a very dirty secret to keep.

And news of something this big would get out eventually. The longer it took, the worse the fallout would be in the end.

"Atlas and Vale." She hummed as she poured out two cups of tea. Outwardly, it promised to be strong alliance, but memories the two nations' last cooperative venture into the mountains were still fresh in her mind. "With your connections to Vale's council, and General Ironwood's indomitable armada in the picture, you're certainly not lacking raw resources."

"Raw resources aren't what I need, Pandora. This whole situation is delicate as it is, and there's too many things that need to be done, and too few people we can trust to attend to them appropriately. We need you. I'm sure you know what's at stake for Remnant's-"

"Ozpin." She sank into her high-backed leather chair with a sigh. "I've thought it through overnight. I'll help you. You don't need to sing praises for a cause like this."

"I'm glad we can see eye to eye." Tension visibly drained from him, and he spoke with no small amount of relief in his voice. "I was half convinced you wouldn't believe me. If anything, this entire situation struck me as more outlandish than anything I ever told you about Salem."

"Then we'd best get down to business before that reality properly sinks in." She leaned back in her chair, shielding her tea from the gusts of dust that wafted into the air. "You must have something in mind for me. Should I be more concerned about Alpharius or Amadeus?"

"Alpharius." He took a sip from his tea and winced. "After some negotiation, we're getting a tentative technological exchange. From what I understand, if we want artificial satellites in orbit, we need to provide him a proper place to launch them from."

"He's letting us choose the location?"

"There's quite a few criteria he's demanded, but for all intents and purposes, he is."

"A surveying mission then." She mused aloud. "A place safe from prying eyes, save for ours?"

"Exactly. The conditions are what we agreed on, but he's getting impatient. If he starts looking elsewhere-"

Ozpin was interrupted by the buzzing of his scroll. He checked it after sending an apologetic glance her way. He furrowed his brows as he read, setting down his tea with a clatter.

"Dear gods, Amadeus is an entirely different beast to handle. It's as if every little misunderstanding leaves him utterly apoplectic. The number of fires I've had to help that poor Specialist put out…" He collapsed his scroll and shot her a grimace. "I really need to go. Do you think you can find a location tomorrow? Forever-fall might be promising."

"Forever-fall it is then." She stood and walked with him to the door. Perhaps she could combine a detention with the outing; first years did need all the experience they could get. "I'll get back to you by tomorrow evening."

The headmaster of Beacon nodded his affirmation and swept down the hall, anxiously passing his cane from hand to hand. Pandora waited a few moments before she shut the door. With a flare of her semblance, something not dissimilar to a scroll materialized in her hand.

Had this happened a week ago, she would have called Ozpin a genius for reading her so perfectly. That he knew he could pull her into this if he committed and went all in. He knew that at her core, she wanted to do what was best for Remnant, even if it meant indulging the fantasies of a schizophrenic.

Perhaps it still was an ingenious feat, considering what he had to work with. Given what he knew, she couldn't find fault his thought process. From his perspective, with a simple memo and meeting, he'd obligated her into assisting Beacon with their extraterrestrial problems, and made a major step rebuilding bridges with an estranged member of his staff. Even if she refused, he knew that she wouldn't be able to live with the consequences of selling the information to the highest bidder. Not when it would do more harm than good.

Minimal risk and high reward. If his information was perfect, it would have been an equally perfect move. But life wasn't a game of perfect information.

She pressed the pseudo-scroll to her ear and called.

People went about, making choices in their lives with information that was far from perfect, filled to the brim with the upmost baseless confidence in their decisions. Pandora wasn't so much of a hypocrite as to blame them. Nobody in their right mind could say Ozpin was at fault.

Six answered on the second ring.

"How goes the hunting, Twenty Seven?"

"I've been held up. I won't be able to collaborate with the investigation into the terrorists. Optimistically, it'll be at least twenty-four hours before I can contribute anything."

"You'll probably miss the test run too then." Six's voice was far clearer than it would have been on a scroll. She could hear him drum his fingers in thought. "No matter. We'll bring you up to speed."

"If it's any consolation, I've found a source of exceptionally high grade information. A real game changer. It might even derail our primary timetable."

"Is that so?"

Six sounded far more animated by news of a month's work going up in flames than he had any right to. Of the ones she'd spoken to, Pandora was convinced that the single digits were mad. They'd whole heartedly welcome the prospect of their plans falling into chaotic shambles, if only for the challenge of rediscovering order in the turmoil. It was like they lived for it.

She could hear it in Six's voice too. She could hear how curiosity laced each of his words, carried across Vale with uncanny clarity.

"Do tell."

Ruby nearly tripped over as she spun around for a double take.

Her eyes hadn't deceived her. That mop of orange hair couldn't have belonged to anyone else. Penny was strolling out of the cafeteria, cradling a pear with a peculiarly uncertain expression on her face. Ruby hadn't seen her since the big fight at the docks, and with everything going on, she'd never gotten around to finding her. At least it looked like Penny was doing well, and that really was the important thing.

Wait a minute, she had to tell everyone! Penny was a friend of team RWBY, even if a few of her teammates shied away from admitting it. To think Yang had the nerve to call her socially inept! Quick as she could, she hammered away a few messages to her team on her scroll, making sure to repeat the good news a few times. You never knew if the messages would be lost in transit after all. Weiss always told her it was utterly redundant and pointless, but Alpharius praised her healthy early adoption of pessimism and paranoia. Ruby wasn't too sure what that meant, but he made it sound like a good thing.

After finally finding the little winking face with its tongue sticking out, Ruby fired off her last message and put her scroll away. It was probably time to go up to catch up to Penny. It was just a chat, and Penny always did make a point of insisting that they were friends, so she didn't have any real reason to be nervous about it. A quick burst of speed would make short work of the distance between them.

Ruby took a deep breath and steadied herself. She was on the verge of launching forwards with her semblance when something hard practically crushed her shoulder. Nearly jumping out of her skin, she spun around towards her assailant. An all too familiar greyscale giant filled her vision.

"Do you know what that is?" Alpharius' voice was rushed. His other hand clamped down too, pinning her arm to her side. Ruby bit back her panic; it was just Alpharius, but her heart was in her mouth all the same.

"How close are you to it?" He hissed.

"What do you mean?"

Ruby winced as he tightened his grip. She had no idea what he was so excited about, but he didn't need to shake her to get answers out of her. A hologram projected from the mishmash of gadgets on the side of his helmet; a slowly rotating snapshot of Penny's head. Was that what this was all about?

"That's Penny."

"Penny then." He said dismissively as the hologram flickered out of existence. He was practically lifting her up now, his grip slowly ratcheting tighter. This was starting to get out of hand. "How much do you know about her?"

"Alpharius-" She yelped as she felt something in her shoulder click under his gauntlets. "You're hurting me."

Nothing happened for a few moments. Her eyes started stinging as his glowing eye lenses seared their azure after images into her retina. Ruby felt her heartbeat pounding in her head, and her trapped arm going numb. She wasn't sure if she could get away if she wanted to. For a moment she wondered if she'd be able to reach Crescent Rose if she needed to, but a flash of guilt buried the thought. It was ridiculous to think of. He'd never hurt her on purpose. Wouldn't he?

Suddenly, Alpharius took his eyes off her, and relaxed his grip. Ruby hadn't realized how his mechadendrites were swarming around her until they retreated to their usual places. Deep-sea green hues bled back into his armor. He let out a breath slowly; a grainy rumble in his helmet's speakers.

"This is important to me Ruby. I will make contact with it." He intoned. His words were calmer and more measured, but no less driven. "While I would prefer to do so with your assistance, by no means is this contingent on your cooperation."

Well, when he put it that way, she couldn't exactly say no. Ruby still wondered why he was so curious about Penny, but she didn't see how any harm could come of it. Except for Weiss, he hadn't really met anyone from the other kingdoms, so maybe that was why. Now that she thought about it, maybe Penny felt the same way when they first met her.

"I'll help." She sighed as she massaged her collarbone, wincing as she traced the edges of a fresh bruise. "I wanted to talk to her too, though."

"I just need an introduction. Something to set her at ease." Alpharius tilted his head to the side. "See if you can bring her to Beacon's gardens. It'll be quiet enough."

"Introduce you, and set her at ease..."

She guessed it sounded doable, even by her standards. Damn it, who was she kidding? She had to introduce an almost-friend to another almost-friend. It looked simple on the surface, but something in her gut told her it was a really delicate niche of a situation, and far beyond her metaphorical paygrade.

She really didn't want to tell Alpharius that she wasn't the best person for this job. Maybe Weiss would have been cut out for it, but she'd gone to the CCT to call someone. She had no idea where Yang and Blake were, but last she heard they'd gone somewhere to ritualistically repent for the team's health and safety violations. Whose idea were those bunk beds anyways?

Not that the details really mattered. What mattered was that Ruby found herself alone; heartlessly abandoned by her team in her time of need. Cowards, the lot of them. She wouldn't let it get her down though, not while she still had a fighting chance! Was this what it meant to be a Huntress? To be beset by adversity, but still have the strength of will to deny the siren-song of surrender? To cling to the thinnest threads of hope, and defy the gravatic pull of death's door? Her heart burning with conviction, Ruby reached out to her only hope for survival; a lunge for a lifeline in the stormy sea of socialization.

"I-I don't know what to say. What should I tell her?"

Alpharius took pause at that and tilted his head to the side in thought.

"Tell her that I'd just like an acquaintance."

"An acquaintance? It always struck me as wasted potential. Friendships seem far more valuable."

"That may be the case, but the term still holds merit, if only as a classification. Some would consider their acquaintances a superset of their friends, or perhaps a transitory state."

The Legionnaire's mind barely registered the conversation with his mark. A screed of threat assessments and auspex returns swamped his vision as he pondered his next course of action. He was ready to drop everything for this. His project priorities were being radically shuffled by this revelation.

But he had more immediate concerns. He took in their surroundings: Ruby had managed to bring them to a suitably secluded place in the gardens; a quaint little pavilion sunken into the flowerbeds. Blast fronts would reverberate well against the marble floor if the worse came to pass.

"A transitory state. I like that." The machine beamed up at him. "It makes everyone's future sound brighter when you put it that way. To think that all my acquaintances are on their way to becoming my friends! Acquaintance-Friend Alpharius, I truly appreciate the insight you've brought me."

The damned thing really did have a winning smile, he had to give it that. The facial substructures were so very complex. Was it a network of miniaturized servos, or mesh of electroactive polymers? The legionnaire could only imagine the way it changed configurations.

The Legionnaire had no misconceptions about the risks he was taking. Millennia of experience cried out for the upmost caution, for the greatest restraint, and for him to hose it down with a multi-melta until it was a mire of bubbling slag on the ground. Truth be told, he really was itching to run silent. It would be easy enough to deactivate all his high throughput transceivers, and switch to purely passive sensors.

But as nice as it would have been, he couldn't do that. He initially found the machine with a regular omni-directional auspex sweep and interrupting that regularity of the signal risked tipping it off. It was the optimal choice, but he didn't like it. He may as well have been periodically setting off a bolter in front of a sleeping dragon, praying it was deaf all the while.

"It's the least I can do. Ruby did say you were getting used to the culture here." It was interesting to see how easily Ruby discarded all her friend's little oddities. It shed a little light onto her view of him too. "She did mention that you were from Atlas. Are you or any of your friends competing in the Vytal tournament?"

"Well, my team is here for the festival." It looked contemplative, and sent a glance Ruby's way. "I never had the opportunity to make friends before I came to Vale, so I would hope that they are competing. It's been far too long since I've been able to see them!"

While he considered it a blunder to even imply an upbringing with such a degree of social isolation, perhaps he only thought of it as such because he knew exactly how it was bluffing. It was still an interesting mistake. Given that it comprehended language, a basic tree search would have uncovered far better responses. Still, it was impossible for such an error to be an issue of design. He couldn't be so arrogant as to think that, not in the face of something the fabricator general would have sold his soul for a glimpse of.

The only answer he could live with was that it was still learning. Even a superintelligence was bounded by the universe it perceived. But that uncovered an entirely new set of questions. He wasn't sure how it was operating on such a high-functioning basis without an overwhelming wealth of data about the world. What he wouldn't give up to know, though...

It was an academic question for now. A more pressing concern was if anyone else held the same suspicions he did about Penny. He couldn't make an accurate guess without more information, but by his reckoning the odds were suboptimal at best. It wasn't exactly a Callidus assassin. He'd only spoken to it for a scant few minutes, and he was already wondering why it even bothered with the charade.

"We were really worried about you Penny." Ruby said pensively. "We thought you weren't hurt in the fight, but when you disappeared…"

Ah, but of course. In the name of friendship, Ruby Rose would sweep any discrepancy under the rug. Did it choose to approach Ruby with that in mind? He had made a remarkably similar decision after all. Regardless, he couldn't complain. Enabling any of the machine's ineptitudes would only serve him in the long run.

"I would have stayed if I could, Ruby! But I was asked not to talk to you, or anyone else for that matter." Penny frowned in confusion. Or at the very least, it made a show of it. "I was told to not venture off on my own. I still don't completely understand; Isn't it normal for girls to engage in recreational activities with their friends?"

"Recreational?" Ruby blinked. "Penny, we were fighting terrorists."

"Indeed we were!"

It was good to know that Ruby had seen it in combat, but that matter was neither here nor there. More pressing was the fact that it was capable of violating the explicit instructions of its creator. The thought of it bothered the Legionnaire, but he understood the appeal though and through. Each and every Magos, Warpsmith and Techmarine worth their salt inevitably learned to covet the balance between elegance and risk. No matter what you designed, safety mechanisms invariably detracted from your creation's operational aesthetics.

The legionnaire couldn't deny that the device before him was a beautiful one indeed.

"Ruby told me a little about that fight." Its fundamental inner-workings aside, he needed to steer the conversation towards something he could extract value from immediately. "While it was certainly gracious of you to help your fellow huntresses, I'm surprised you were able to do so on such short notice."

"Don't be surprised, Alpharius." Penny clasped its hands together, fixing him with a shining smile. "I'm combat ready!"

The legionnaire's combat stimulants entered his bloodstream on a dangerously fine timescale. The injectors were operating with pressure gradients most commonly seen in turbo-pumps for drop pod engines. As it was, the hydraulic shock was on the verge of rupturing his hearts. His targeting cogitator hammered his black carapace with pings; an ultimatum for control of his gun hand. Mechadendrites panned, spun and clattered as their ambulatory algorithms iteratively optimized attack schemes. The legionnaire felt a deadly, subsonic purr against his back, his reactor spinning up to full output.

His processors informed him that he out massed it.

It was a sparse combat diagnostic if he'd ever seen one. Penny's designers had done an admirable job with sensor shielding. Even with his periodic auspex pings, he could only resolve a vague outline of Penny's metallic substructure. He couldn't get away with any directional scans, and his threat assessment programs never gave him speculative returns. But he was a veteran of the Long War, and he'd done his fair of speculation over ten millennia.

So what could he do with that lone piece of data? He doubted Penny's power and locomotion systems were close to the grade of even pre-heresy power armor. From his vague scans, it was hydraulics and electric motors all the way though, without a hint of anything more advanced. But what of its durability? An irrelevant consideration. Either plasma and melta weaponry were effective, or he'd be running for the hills. Now, that did raise the question of its maximum speed-

He felt Ruby's eyes on him. She was looking up at him, her wide eyes silvery pools of concern. And not all of it was for him. That wouldn't do at all. If Ruby had brought him a dividend like this so soon, he'd be beyond foolish to harm their relationship so carelessly. He needed to incentivize team RWBY to bring these things to his attention in the future. Hard as it was to admit, perhaps he was too on edge. Or at the very least, he needed to be subtler about it.

"Combat ready you say?" The satrophine in his veins slowed his speech, but between his physiology and the vox-caster, his audience would never know. "I suppose most hunters of any worth would be. Tell me Penny, what's your Semblance? Do you have one?"

"I haven't unlocked one yet, though not for any lack of trying." There was forlorn edge to Penny's voice he hadn't heard yet. "Ever since I unlocked my aura, my Semblance has been of great interest to many people. They keep telling me to stay patient, and I'm not sure why. It isn't like I have any choice in the matter."

"I'm sure they don't mean it that way, Penny." If only Ruby knew she was trying to mollify a cogitator. "Lots of people unlock their semblances later in their lives, it's perfectly normal!"

To think that a machine could have aura... In that case, it was probably more immaterial than biological phenomenon. Now did that fact say more about Penny, or about him? Had his soul degraded to a point that an Abominable Intelligence had a more human soul than he did? The company he'd kept over the millennia was hardly ideal if that was how it worked. It was a viable theory, but an untested one. And for that matter, was the state of his soul even a consideration for unlocking aura? What if only Remnant's natives could manifest it, and their souls never came into play?

"Perfectly normal?" Penny's downcast expression seemed to soften. "Is it?"

"Yes, of course it is!" Ruby nodded vigorously. "I think I read about it once. They asked hunters in Vacuo and Vale about when they unlocked their semblances, and it turned out to be bi-medial. Or bi-maxal? Bi-something."

"Bimodal." He supplied absentmindedly.

"Yeah, that one. They unlocked it either super young, or later. It's weird to think about, but apparently it's true. So I'm sure you'll unlock your semblance soon!"

"That's actually very reassuring." Penny's smile returned in full force. "I'm surprised that my father never brought this to my attention. That's what friends are for, I suppose."

Recalling the same study from his database revealed that the second mode was close to thirty, but who was he to sabotage Ruby's efforts? It was admirable growth on Ruby's part.

Nonetheless, this was raising far more questions about Penny than the Legionnaire would have liked. On top of that, he also needed to keep in mind that there was the possibility that Penny was lying, and actively attempting to mislead them. If that were the case, nothing he was doing here was of any real value. He couldn't discard that branch, but he couldn't operate under that framework either. For that matter, even if Penny wasn't actively trying to mislead him, what incentive did it have to tell the truth at all? It was a curious predicament.

"Ruby, I was wondering how you and Alpharius became friends." Penny's gaze ricocheted between him and Ruby, seemingly taking in the disparities between them for the first time. "Is Alpharius also a perfectly normal Hunter from Atlas?"

Now this wouldn't do at all. He wasn't planning on handing out information here, especially not through Ruby. He ran the risk of snubbing her, but he'd make that exchange each and every time.

"I was fortunate enough to meet Ruby when I first arrived at Beacon. Team RWBY were and remain to be a great boon to me, at the very least in terms of understanding Vale's customs. Wouldn't you agree?" Penny gave him a sagely nod; one gourmets might share over a bottle of fine amasec. For her part, Ruby gave him a dirty look for cutting in, but there wasn't any real annoyance behind it. All in all, a passable start. "I'm not from Atlas, sadly. I'm sure you're aware, but there's many frontier towns and villages in the wilderness between the kingdoms."

To her credit, Ruby caught on to his intent immediately. She bit her lip and shot him a hurt glance. If Penny noticed Ruby's reaction, there wasn't any outward indication of it.

"What was your hometown's name? I studied many maps of the regions surrounding Vale before I arrived here. We'll be able to bond over our mutual recognition of its name and location!"

"My home is called Gryphonne, but I'd be surprised if it was on any of the maps you studied. Places with small populations are often passed over by cartographers, especially deep in the Grimm-lands."

"Alpharius…" Ruby started with a waver in her voice. "Shouldn't you-"

"Shouldn't I what, Ruby?"

He turned his helm to face her, matching her gaze. Despite himself, a shiver of anticipation ran through him at the thought of Ruby voicing the truth. But it was baseless thought. Only one of them could back down here, and they both knew who it'd be. Ruby looked away after a moment, faint bitterness fading into disappointment. Heaving a quiet sigh, Ruby shook her head, and when she looked towards Penny, her usual amicable smile was fixed in place. It was fascinating how well she'd managed it, but Ruby had much further to go before she could fool him.

"I guess if there's one thing team RWBY's good at, it's getting mixed up in everything that's happening." Ruby said. "Weiss says we might be getting over-ambitious with our networking, but we all know she doesn't really think so."

"Goodness, I haven't asked you about your teammates, Ruby. Are they physically and mentally content?"

The legionnaire's mind was pulled away from the conversation as his auspex alerted him to a sizable squad of soldiers entering the gardens. Atlesian, from their gear. From what he understood, there was a special task force dedicated to monitoring his activities, but they shouldn't have been able to track him properly yet. It was supposed to have taken them longer to find him at Beacon.

The Legionnaire decided they couldn't have been there for him. It was too improbable. Looking for another explanation, his gaze settled on the monstrosity Ruby was occupied with. He already suspected a military project, and he supposed that the people of Remnant probably were naïve enough to let such an invention run off on its own. A cluster of them split off from the rest, striding along a path that looped around the perimeter of the gardens.

The soldiers gave him an opportunity.

With the celestial majesty of planets aligning, Penny's body would eclipse their silhouettes. As a starship could hide a sensor sweep in the noise of a star's radiation, the Legionnaire could disguise the target of a directional auspex scan. It was a genuine chance to get data on the machine's inner workings, but even then he couldn't be certain of the secrecy. What if Penny knew that the soldiers would never warrant such an extensive scan? Would it even call his bluff, or would it try to conceal its knowledge of his?

It was a gamble he wasn't sure if he wanted to take. He wasn't sure if the benefits outweighed the risks. He could think of dozens of uncertainties and perils here, each more terrible than the last. Yet no matter how many dangers there were, he was weighing them against the promise of the clockwork soul.

The scales hardly budged. He took the scan.

"Ruby, do the Atlesian soldiers normally search these gardens?"

"The ones that came with the air fleet?"

Ruby hummed as she thought. The legionnaire barely took notice of anything she said; so utterly fixated on his readouts. Aluminum, steel, titanium, and of all things, a sizeable mass of iridium. The legionnaire was surprised that Penny's creators chose hydraulic systems as the primary actuators, but they operated parallel to much smaller servos and motors. Stealth systems and auspex spoofers were split-ring based, and augmented with layers of passive absorbers, impressively advanced for Remnant's current technological progress.

"They're always patrolling around the whole campus, but I don't think they've made a habit of searching the gardens." Ruby glanced out of the pavilion's arches. "Do you see them somewhere?"

"They're probably looking for me." Penny seemed more resigned than anything else. "They never seem to approve of me socializing or exploring. I'm not entirely sure why, though."

"You aren't sure?" No scion of the 20th would ever dream of letting a chance like that slip away. "Come now Penny, surely you could speculate."

"Speculate? You'd like me to hypothesize?"

Penny's eyes widened along with her smile. The pair of emerald discs were suspended in a silica derivative, scintillating in the sunlight. His auspex had barely resolved the micro-circuitry behind them, and it didn't look like the trio of riflemen were going to give him another scanning window. It mattered not. He imagined a disassembly would serve him far better than a second scan.

"Ah, but of course Penny. Give us your thoughts."

"Well then." Penny's head tilted to the side. "General Ironwood's worries about me very much. His soldiers admire and respect him, so perhaps the General's concern for me cascaded down their ranks. He has made a point of telling me that this second visit to Vale is terribly timed, and he fears that I might encounter dangerous people. I don't believe it's unreasonable for him to have voiced these feelings with others, so perhaps that's why they want to keep me in sight."

Perfectly plausible, if utterly naïve. Well-reasoned, but acutely misinformed. Was that what he was dealing with here?

"And do you think that worry is well founded, Penny? Why would such dangerous people be interested in you?"

Penny's face was graced by a rare glimmer of severity, an ashen cast of perplexion atop the perfect porcelain. It felt strange to call his presupposition of Penny putting on airs into question, but with no standard to hold her to, what was once a foregone conclusion was now far from certain.

Like an animated marionette, Penny took a breath, filling an elastic sack with air. The air would pass through a duct built into its throat, where a dense sequence of micromechanical systems rapidly varied the geometry of the channel. An unorthodox design, but it lent Penny incredible fidelity to a human voice. The legionnaire would have taken a detailed sound sample, but Penny never got to answer him.

"Penny, this is Atlas military stuff…" Ruby's eyes darted between the two of them. "Should you really be talking about that?"

"I suppose it is important information." Penny blinked. "But Alpharius is your friend, Ruby. Don't you trust him?"

Ruby paled and made a choking sound. The most delightful concoction of embarrassment and anxiety swept across her face. The legionnaire watched Ruby flounder in the mire she'd jumped into, wondering if she'd be able to find her way out on her own.

"I mean-" Ruby stammered, sweat beading on her brow. "But Alpharius is- We don't know…"

He wasn't displeased with Ruby. If anything, he supposed that she was doing him a favor. It wouldn't do to be overeager, and her veiled attempts to admonish his behavior reigned in his ambition, if nothing else. He needed to work on his terms, and the situation here was far from ideal.

Suppose he took the machine here and now, and forcibly restraining it. Ruby would witness him, and would take issue with it, but that hardly took the option off the table. Hurting his relationship with Ruby in exchange for a prototype abominable intelligence? That was a trade he'd make in a heartbeat, anywhere and anytime. But as always, the daemons hid in the logistics. She'd inform anyone she could to stop him, and he doubted he'd get much done before further investigation was made impractical. Considering the number of soldiers in the gardens, there was a non-negligible chance that they'd shoot his research material to pieces. For all he knew they could assemble a dozen Penny's a day.

However ready he was to drop everything to pursue this, he only had one viable option: Patience.

A more opportune time would present itself, or he could manufacture the perfect moment himself. He knew what he needed to do. It was a matter of execution.

"Ruby's more worried that you might find yourself in trouble for telling us. She wouldn't put one of her friends in such a predicament." Penny's eyes danced at that one. "Perhaps I ought not have pried. Forgive an eccentric his curiosities."

"Are you quite sure? Even if I were to get in trouble, I would be more than happy to-"

"Penny, there's at least fifteen soldiers in this garden alone. Their worry must be well founded indeed if such an armed force was dispatched for your sake. You don't need to implicate yourself for anyone's sake."

Penny nodded ever so obligingly. Ruby bit her lip and frowned. She didn't seem to believe he was ready to disengage, and her concern for Penny was coming into the fore. A non-issue. Ruby would play into his hand no matter the choices she made. It was just a question of how she'd fall into place.

"Whether their worry is well founded or not, sometimes I wish they wouldn't watch over me so closely." Penny sighed, staring down at the ground. "There's so much I'd like to do in Vale, but the General always finds something about to take issue with."

"I'm sure the esteemed General inherited his paranoia along with his epaulets. Nobody should begrudge him for that." Ruby winced as he reached out a mechadendrite, brushing a lock of hair out of Penny's face. He wondered if he could get away with a sample. "Still, I do sympathize with your desire to get out from under his thumb. It's a dilemma I find myself in as well."

"I don't understand." Penny looked back up at him, seemingly scandalized by the notion of it. "Why would you be under Atlas' jurisdiction at all? Surely he doesn't have the authority to impede you."

It was an innocent enough question, but only superficially. The state of being armed and organized had a certain degree of universal authority, and Penny already knew that. No, it was a veiled probe for information, and an unexpectedly subtle one at that.

"Well, that isn't really stopping them." Ruby said quietly, unwittingly deflecting for him. "They're really interested in what Alpharius' doing, and it's gotten to the point to where he needs to hide from them."

Ruby snuck a tentative glance his way, gauging his reception of her venture. For Ruby, reading an armored marine was an exercise in futility at best. Biting her lip, she pressed on.

"Penny, you said that the soldiers were really worried about you. If they see you with Alpharius…"

"They wouldn't know that we're acquaintances. They'd make the wrong assumptions." Realization dawned on Penny's face. "It's probably best if we keep this secret then?"

Hypothesizing that it would conceal information from authority figures was one thing, but to see it explicitly offer to do so? Penny's boundlessness never ceased to astound him. Ruby for her part nodded emphatically, sparing a quick look through the pavilion's arches. There weren't any white helmets in sight yet, but the Legionnaire reckoned there soon would be.

"They'd probably follow me away if they saw me first." Penny suggested hesitantly. "Perhaps that would be the best course of action."

"I didn't expect them to turn up like this." Ruby seemed genuinely agonized. "We should try meeting somewhere else next time. I'm sorry about this Penny."

"There's no need to apologize, Ruby. We aren't at fault." Penny's smile wavered. "Do you promise to see me again?"

He and Ruby voiced their affirmations easily, earning a fierce hug for Ruby, and a more sedate wave for himself. It was odd to think that this was the first promise he'd made so whole heartedly on Remnant.

As Penny climbed the steps out from under the sunken pavilion, he felt an urge to draw his storm bolter. Intellectually, he knew that sending Penny off was the superior course of action, but something still rankled him about letting Penny out of his sight. Despite his misgivings, he let the machine depart, watching it lead a growing entourage of riflemen away from Beacon's vast flowerbeds.

Soon, he and Ruby had only the whistling wind and blossoming bauhinias for company.

"Alpharius." Ruby looked up at him after some time. "Why did you do that?"

There might come a time when team RWBY would outlive its usefulness to him, but in light of what Ruby just introduced him to, he had no business disincentivizing their cooperation. Damage control it was then.

"What do you mean, Ruby?"

"I get that you can't help being all spooky and creepy-" The legionnaire wondered if he ought to have taken offense to that. "- but you didn't have to lie to Penny."

"Ruby, come now. I never once-"

"You know what I meant!"

Ruby turned the shade of a bloodletter, embarrassed by her own outburst. The Legionnaire knew it wouldn't stop her though. Ruby might have been shy where her own interests were concerned, but when it was her friends under fire, she was anything but. Pity that her virtue was wasted on an automaton.

Ruby clenched her jaw, taking a moment to settle her nerves.

"I know you're just being careful, but Penny would never tell anyone if you asked her not to. You made a promise to us, Alpharius. You said that all the deception and half-truths would stop. Maybe we only included team RWBY specifically, but you know that's the letter of promise, and not it's spirit. You didn't lie to Penny, but you still misled her!"

Ruby heaved a sigh, burying her head in her hands. When she spoke, her voice was quiet, and agonizingly hoarse.

"We want to help you Alpharius, but you make it really hard for us. Team JNPR is scared of you, and sometimes I can see why. You just met Penny, and you've already tricked her into thinking something completely untrue. That's just wrong, Alpharius. We know you want to be careful on Remnant, but even then it's like you think everyone's out to get you."

She took a deep breath, steadying herself as she met his gaze.

"It has to be tough to be trapped on another world like this. I've got no idea how hard it is keeping your chin up all the time. And to never know if you're going to get back home, or if you'll ever see your friends again…" Ruby shook her head, as if doing so might banish the thought. "We can't even begin to imagine what you're going through, and maybe we never will. But we want to do our best, Alpharius. We want to help you. We really do! But it's just not going to happen if you treat our friends like puppets."

"Is that an ultimatum, Ruby?"

The steely look in Ruby's eye gave him his answer.

Distantly, it reminded the Legionnaire of a sight he'd seen in a mirror, millennia ago. So filled with equal parts of hope, and determination. Her gaze held the audacity to point at a lonely speck of light in the depthless dark and declare it her destination. A shameless, blazing ambition to reach out and claim the better future she yearned for.

Ruby's eyes were filled with earnest hope, plain and radiant. A dream unbowed by the nightmare it was born of. He wondered if it might have warmed his soul, if he had more than a few tattered shards left.

"I hear your terms, Ruby." He let out an acquiescent sigh, punctuating it with a conciliatory gesture. "I'll explain myself to Penny next time I see her."

"You will?" The hard edge to Ruby's gaze faded as he nodded, pleasant surprise spreading across her face. "I know she seems odd, or weird at first, but she's really nice once you get to know her."

"A heart of gold, I'm sure."

Glad that he was willing to make amends, a hopeful smile spread across Ruby's face. She leaned against the railings, watching the afternoon sun play across the verdant terraces. She listened to the water murmuring softly in the mosaic channels. The legionnaire skimmed over the data he'd collected. An invaluable foundation, but auspex returns could only tell him so much.

"You really think so?"

A brisk breeze swept under the roof of the pavilion, the flowers' sweet scents cast from the wind. Rose petals tumbled across the floor, a bright burst of red against the white marble.

"I'd love to know for sure."

A/N

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. With the arc properly set up, I plan to get into some action soon.

And please leave a review. Even criticism gives me motivation to write more.