Little else beside this had been written about the fields outside of Odessa: "No dust. Bad soil."

The grass was healthy, but of a short variety. Nothing else in the way of flora prospered here. Professor Belladonna pointed at a nearby mountain range.

"There's a forest on the other side of those. We're going to pass under them, through a cave system, and come out into the AO that we think the Grimm are in."

She looked to each of her four students, waiting for a question or a nod. It was only in this moment that she realized how incredibly young they all looked. Their weapons were comically large for their size, and they all had the posture of a spoiled civilian- All but Mud.

Mud simply stood. The awkward pose was itself a sign of childhood. Robin raised her hand hesitantly.

"Go ahead," Belladonna nodded.

Robin had a look of excited ignorance.

"How come there's no forest on this side of the mountains?" she chimed.

"Because of the mountains," Mud mumbled.

"Can't the seeds get on this side?"

"Talk while you walk," Belladonna sighed.

She turned and lead them, trying to hide her less-than-imposing smile. The chatter was welcome, but she knew the kids respected her for being a hard ass.

They all took up the pace, and Sapphire added her voice.

"Seeds can get here," She explained, "but there isn't any rain for them. The mountains create something called a rain shadow. That means that the pressure difference caused by a cloud rising over the mountains makes it drop its rain on the way. So when it-"

"-UUUUUUUUUUGH, shut up!" Kale drawled.

"What? Robin asked me why-"

"Quiet," Belladonna repeated.

She held out her scroll, to show the incoming call.

"Belladonna, Beacon," she answered.

"Morning, Huntress. This is Cruiser From Shadows, Mistral Second Expeditionary. We're on patrol in the area, performing checkups."

"Something wrong?"

"New Little Odessa was destroyed three days ago. There is a travel advisory in effect for the whole area. We were following a small pack of Grimm back to their swarm but they've dropped off tracking."

"That's what we're here for," Belladonna smiled.

"Glad to hear it, Professor. If you need to contact us again, we'll be circling the greater area for another day before we depart. Good hunting. From Shadows out."

Belladonna closed her scroll and reversed her walk, to progress while talking to her students.

"Before you get any big ideas, I'd like to remind you that you're first years. This is a Search and Destroy mission, but that doesn't mean that we can just wander into a swarm and engage them all at once. We pick our battles, we strike hard, and we run. And if I decide that even one of you can't handle it, we skip the first two steps. We are in the wild, and we are on our own, and that means our first objective is to survive."

The children gaped at her, horrified. And the scariest Grimm they'd ever seen was an Ursa, maybe something giant. She turned forward again, to hide her smile.

"She's so cool," Robin whispered.

"Shh! She's a faunus. She can probably hear you," Sapphire hissed.

"We can't just hear anything," Kale corrected.

"I can hear you," Belladonna confirmed.

"See?" Sapphire hissed, "You're a dog and she's a cat-"

"Here we go," Robin mumbled.

"-and cats have better hearing, which you would have known if you studied as much as I did."

"Did you really just-"

"-Can we not have the race talk again?" Robin interrupted, "we already have to take a class on it. It's been like fifty years since the White Fang laid down their weapons and went moderate."

"Twenty," Sapphire corrected.

"Twenty three, three months, and eight days," Belladonna corrected.

Her scar itched. The jagged line twitched, and the spasm followed its hard edge from her eye, down her cheek, around her jaw, across her throat, and under her collar. She placed a hand against it gently, and tried to forget.

"Whoa. She remembers that?" Mud mumbled.

"Duuu-uuh," Sapphire leaned, "Do you even read the optional textbooks?"

"No?"

"But, haven't you heard of team RWBY?" Robin offered.

"Yeah?"

His teammates all gestured at Blake Belladonna's back.

"Whoa. Whoa, wait, wait, wait, like the Belladonna? Really?"

They all slapped their foreheads.

Kale chuckled, "You... Seriously? You've had a crush on her since day one, and you didn't know that?"

Blake turned a smirk over her shoulder. Through the dirt on his face, Mud turned red. Robin reached out to offer him a toy.

"Hey, wanna play with this finger trap?"

"I'm not stupid," he mumbled, "I just didn't know."

Sapphire sighed, "Robin, please tell me you didn't bring all of your magic tricks with you."

"Just the ones I like," she chimed.

Everyone groaned.

Blake missed her friends.

They camped the first night at the base of the caves, when their path intersected that of a caravan exiting the system. Both groups were small, but together, they would give pause to a Grimm smart enough to otherwise kill them all. Blake assembled her students before the parties agreed to merge. She gave them this advice: "We're staying the night with them. It is customary, outside of the walls, for strangers to stay together at night. There is safety in numbers. But you never, ever discuss your business, in case you find out that you are enemies. These men are criminals."

"What kind of criminals?" Robin asked.

"You're not supposed to interrupt her," Mud mumbled.

"Loverbiiiiird," Kale hummed under his breath.

"It doesn't matter," Blake continued. "Do not discuss our business, and do not ask about theirs. We will be safe for the night, and we will part peacefully in the morning."

Mud, and no one else, slept soundly.

"He grew up outside the walls," Sapphire explained to the darkness of the tent's roof.

"Gee, I couldn't tell," Kale whispered back.

"He's a really nice guy," Robin frowned.

"You all really need to shut up so I can sleep," Professor Belladonna hissed.

They waited, quiet and alert. The criminals rose and left an hour before dawn.

The next day brought them into the caves. Blake paused at the first fork and felt them out with long stares and silence. She laid out the map for the students to see.

"Pop quiz," she announced, a smile directed at Sapphire.

"This fork leads into two very different tunnels. They are approximately the same length, and they both meet again on our way there and back. Both tunnels have branches deeper into the mountain. Taking what you know about your abilities and what we're likely to find in these environments, which route would you advise to a merchant? Which route would you search to find Dust? Which route is easier to defend if Grimm are on both sides?"

"Dust," Mud pointed. He hadn't hesitated for a second.

Professor Belladonna looked shocked. So did everyone else.

"Sorry, I cheated," Mud smiled.

"How?" Blake wondered.

"All your hair stood on end when you looked down that tunnel. Faunus do that when they're near a lot of Dust."

"Creeeeeeper," Kale sang under his breath.

Well, I've still got it, Blake consoled herself.

"Okay. Well, that's good enough for the Schnee company. I'll give it to you. And how about Grimm? If I'm a Dust merchant with a lot of cargo that's yummy for Grimm, which route should I go through?"

They all waited for the team leader's thoughts to resolve. She was counting and sorting them in front of her with hand gestures.

"The same one," she decided.

Belladonna smiled.

"Okay. Why?"

"Refined dust is flown, trained, or shipped from a refinery straight to a manufactory. Any merchant coming through here will have raw Dust. The Grimm won't notice him in a tunnel that's already full of it."

Blake nodded, "But what happens if the Grimm do find them?"

"They retreat?"

Blake traced her finger along the branches.

"The Grimm would be coming out of the deeper caves. If the merchant gets ambushed anywhere in the winding middle-section, the Grimm can outmaneuver them along the entire trail. They're surrounded. An unarmed merchant will always prefer a situation they can escape from."

"Oh," Sapphire frowned.

"Cheer up," Belladonna grinned, rolling up the map, "No one died."

She stood to face the tunnels.

"Now the last question is for us. I know it's obvious, but suppose we walk in here and Grimm come at us from both ends. Which tunnel do we want to be in?"

She tilted her head and her thumb into the left tunnel, along with everyone but Mud. They all turned to him. Belladonna's smile faltered.

"Okay. That's an interesting choice. Care to explain, Mud?"

"That other tunnels gonna cave in," he mumbled.

His teammates sighed, tired of his nonconformity.

"And how can you possibly know that?" Sapphire challenged.

Mud shrugged.

Belladonna saw his fearful expression, looking down the long expanse of the other tunnel. She smiled.

"Would you be more comfortable in the first tunnel?"

Mud nodded.

The rest of their trip was uneventful. They passed into the forest on the far side, stopped to check the time and whine about no reception, ate, and found themselves a moment later at somewhere of note.

The forest was dense and lively. The chit chat of bugs looking for mates and birds looking for mates and squirrels looking for mates was omnipresent and loud enough to raise their speaking voices. It was loud enough that Belladonna didn't chastise them for noise discipline- not until Sapphire shrieked.

"Kale! Really? Now?"

Kale giggled. Professor Belladonna saw them standing close, and Sapphire adjusting her combat skirt with a tempered smile. The season was in full swing.

"Not too loud. Grimm aren't the only thing out here," she muttered.

This was also when they found their place of note. Kale saw it first. He tapped Professor Belladonna's arm and pointed squad-right. Belladonna motioned everyone into concealment. Everyone turned silent. The forest kept chirping, and would not care if they all died in battle in a few minutes. Blake waited for Sapphire to see their target. She pointed at the team leader.

"Professor Arc's a good teacher. You're in her tactics class?"

Sapphire nodded.

Blake drew her weapons.

"Show me."