Team Technicolor - Immortal_Lurker - Multifandom [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1: First mission

Chapter Text

"Alright team Technicolor! This is your last chance to pull out," Professor Port shouted over the wind and the noise of the bullhead's engines.

Team TTCE was silent. This was a simple mission. Beowolves were a seasonal problem in these gullies. The herd was predictable, the terrain was well known, and the nearest population center was well guarded with easy evacuation.

In short, Sunrise Gully was one of a few sites that were perfect for a team of huntresses to be given their first extermination mission without oversight.

Traditionally, your first 'unsupervised' trip came in your third year. For gifted teams, it could come in your second. Legends of teams that did it in their first year always circle around.

Getting it two weeks after initiation was unique. Then again, so were the members of team TTCE. They, ah, weren't from around here.

Despite the simplicity of the mission, it mattered to the team. It mattered because freedom from oversight was always useful. It mattered because proving yourself to your employer was good for your prospects. It mattered because stories demanded the exceptional. It mattered protecting the innocent was a pure ideal of justice.

Of course, not all the reasons applied to all members.

"It looks like you're all set! Split into teams of two once you hit the ground, but stay in constant contact with each other! Remember, if you need me, press the button. Or just wave to one of the camera drones."

Doing either would mean an instant failure. Failing to ask for help if Port judged they should have would also result in failure, and in not being allowed to try again for a good long while. This was only supposed to simulate an unsupervised mission, not actually be one.

One by one, the members of team TTCE jumped from the bullhead.

--

Taylor Hebert went first. Not because she was the leader, though she was. Her bugs could confirm that there weren't any Grimm to disrupt their landing. She had chosen the landing zone, even if the clearing wasn't as wide as she liked.

Her parachute deployed a little late, and she had to roll with the landing. She barely felt it through her body armor. She'd arrived in her Weaver costume, but now the armor plates were some dust composite material.

She pressed a button, and her backpack began spooling the parachute back in. She didn't worry about it folding properly, Atlas tech was almost as good as tinker-tech. It some ways it was better, and didn't fail as often. It wasn't as nice as her flight pack, but that had broken before the journey to Remnant. As good as Atlas tech was, it couldn't make heads or tails of tinker-tech.

She breathed in, and went through the senses her bugs were giving her. The bugs here were weird, that was the first she had noticed after she had fallen through one of Khonsu's portals. Well, Khonsu's and Scion's; one of the golden man's attacks had clipped it before she fell through. Strictly speaking, pain had been the first thing she had noticed, but pain was something she was used to.

The point was, her power worked on these strange bugs just fine. She could sense the (sort of) grasshoppers in the clearing, the (near) cicadas in the woods around it, and various critters along the bottom of the stream that ran through the clearing. There weren't any Grimm in range, unless a burrowing type was below the ant tunnels she could sense. Burrowers were slow, noisy, and usually didn't show up in these regions though. Some of the burrowing Grimm looked like insects, she should ask Port to bring one to class to see if she could sense it.

If she could control insect Grimm, she wondered if she should even choose to reveal that information. She needed to be useful enough to get what she wanted: a way back to Earth Bet. But not so useful that they didn't dare let her go.

Or she needed to be so powerful that they didn't dare deny her.

--

Tanya von Degurechaff was next. Tanya was wearing the uniform she had arrived in, and using the same weapons. Well, mostly the same weapons, a few were too useful for any sane soldier to pass up. And Tanya was nothing if not sane.

But the uniform had to stay. If and when Remnant made contact with the Fatherland, she needed to be sure that she appeared to be the model soldier trapped away from command. Ready to follow orders and striving at all times to get back.

Privately, she hoped that contact was never made again. Von Shugel's device malfunctioning and sending her away from the Fatherland's doomed war was the best thing to have happened to her since she got pushed in front of a train in her first life.

Did it hurt to have all the career capital she had spent so much time, and so many risks to life and limb building stripped away? Yes, but pain was something she was used to. Being X was making her a chew toy again, but still proved he fundamentally misunderstood her.

She landed on the ground gently, but she did have to land. Her main flight battery had been shot right before the device had malfunctioned, and no one had figured out how to build a proper replacement. The secondary battery was tiny in comparison.

Taylor had that still look she got when sorting through the information her... superpowers gave her. Tanya supposed it made sense to give command of a small unit to someone who could gather information so easily, but Taylor was the least experienced of the four. And her experience was primarily in law enforcement.

Even without the position of leadership, Tanya could still create a life she wanted. A fulfilling and rewarding career with a comfortable retirement. Not as a huntress, that would be ridiculous. Ozpin had the right idea. Training and directing hunters was where the money and benefits were.

Being X was going to have to try harder than a world full of mindless monsters if he wanted to crack her.

--

Falling through the sky, Edelgard von Hresvelg's hair trailed behind her. She enjoyed the feeling of the wind tossing it around.

Edelgard could almost pretend she was back at the Officer's Academy. That Byleth would be waiting for her once she landed, to quietly correct her wyvern handling skills. That she hadn't made the rash decision to push the professor out of the way, and gotten caught in Solon's trap herself.

She could pretend that she was still home.

But she banished the feeling. Landing would required absolute focus. She needed to hit as many branches as possible, or she would break bones when she hit the ground, crests or no. She could have asked for Tanya's assistance, but this was their first mission. It was important to show you could stand on your own. Or fall on your own, as the case may be.

The ax head of Yagrush unfolded, and the handle extend. After dozens of hours of practice, it finally felt natural. Its similarity to Aymur had helped.

She held Yagrush's polearm form out in front of her, perpendicular to the branches that were rapidly approaching.

She didn't close her eyes as she crashed into the thicket of branches.

Each impact felt like a dozen hammer blows. Branches and trunks snapped and shattered as she smashed through them, sending splinters flying. She grit her teeth and fought to keep Yagrush upright. She needed to keep as tall a profile as she could, to cause as much devastation as possible, all to slow her fall.

Suddenly, there were no more branches, and still an awful lot of falling to do. Her descent had slowed to practically a crawl, but that wasn't going to help if she picked all that speed back up again in the next thirty feet.

Edelgard twisted the grip, and Yagrush's blade folded around a tree branch. Now back in its ax form with the branch trapped in its grip, Edelgard could weigh her options as she dangled.

Shifting her weight, she managed to swing to the trunk and climb down. There weren't any hand holds, but that didn't matter as much when wood could bend and crack in your grip.

Finally reaching the bottom, she let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding. She pulled a ragged splinter out of her shoulder, that had found its way in between the sections of her armor. It hurt, but pain was something she was used to.

Silently, she focused her Crest of Flames to heal her wounds. Anything serious would be too much for her, but small wounds like this were well within its powers. Tiny cuts on her face and hands disappeared.

Standing up straight, she wiped away the blood and pulled her hair back into its ponytail, and put it underneath her helmet.

She had considered using her Flame Emperor mask. But that would have been... wrong. Warriors of Remnant carefully tended their appearance. Self expression was paramount. It felt wrong to wear a mask that represented something she would rather not be. Merely had to be.

She took a moment to appreciate the flowers around here. Pale whites and blues. This world was saturated with color. Another constant reminder that this world was different. That maybe she could be different.

Edelgard shook her head. Her path had grown longer and stranger, but remained fundamentally the same. But perhaps this portion of the journey would not require her to be a destroyer.

--

Catherine Foundling splashed feet first into the water. She didn't worry that it might not be deep enough. For one, her Name enhanced eyes could see clear through the muddy yellow water, and she knew it ran deep.

For another, falling was not all that dangerous to Named.

She splashed feet first through the surface, plunging below. She kicked off the stone streambed. The instant she got out, she regretted her choice of landing. Her aketon was soaked underneath her plate. At least she didn't have mud in her sabatons.

She trudged through the pale flowers on the stream banks, drawing her sword. This place looked peaceful, but it was apparent crawling with monsters. She drew the longsword at her hip. It was stronger and tougher than even goblin steel. It was, very importantly, not in any way magical, or even terribly special. Magic weapons would always betray you when you needed them.

Strapped to her back, in a position too inconvenient to draw from, was a sword that was very much magical, very much special, and had very much betrayed its owner when he needed it.

The memory burned. She understood some of Black's fury at the injustice of the universe. She had won. She had stolen her resurrection. The Lone Swordsman was dead, Heiress was bargaining desperately, and then it was all stolen. Gone in an instant.

"Someone who should really know better is interfering. They couldn't do anything about your victory," Bard said, as the dimension began collapsing into the portal.

"So they sent you on an adventure."

Would the Fifteenth be able to hold together in her absence? Would the governing council for Callow even happen without her? She had technically won in Liesse, but everything that victory had been for was stripped away. Cheating Choirs.

Now the angel's feather was strapped to her back. She couldn't even get rid of it. It was the most metaphysically important object she had on her. With any luck, Masego could use it to track her.

The weapon burned her to touch, and even through its scabbard and her armor it hurt for it to be so close. But pain was something she was used to.

This world was something she was very much not used to. Powered lights in every conceivable space. Instant global letters that most people didn't use because everyone had a scrying device in their pocket. Flying machines. A floating city that wasn't for killing your enemies and being immediately destroyed.

The band of four she was in was another thing she wasn't used to. Not yet. They all clearly had their own stories going on, though if the narrative was even a force here remained to be seen. Balancing everything was going to be complicated.

How did stories work on Remnant? What did Beacon Academy really want from them? Could she get home before it all fell apart? She didn't know enough about this world, about anything.

She did know that she wasn't going to let this stop her.

--

Two hours in, the fighting had gotten nearly monotonous in Cat's opinion. They'd found a well made stone bridge across a narrow but steep part of the gully. The waterfall that splashed below it was a pleasant sight and sound between the brief fights. Honestly, the bridge was so nicely built that it was a shame to use it as a choke point. Years of couples and visitors had carved their initials into the rocks, and some of them had been crossed out or erased by the stresses of battle.

Its loss would have to be suffered. It was useful as a choke point. Immature Grimm were willing to walk into it. Killing them in such favorable circ*mstances was so easy that Cat could even strike up a conversation.

"So, aren't you a princess or something? Why do you fight like you're used to being on the front lines?" While speaking, Catherine's shadow deflected a Beowulf over the railing of the bridge into the ravine below.

Edelgard's shield scarcely budged as it stopped a flurry of teeth and claws. "My crest grants me strength beyond that of ordinary soldiers."

"Huh. It gets like that for Named as well. I've got thousands under my command, but I still need to be where the fighting is thickest."

It was a slight thing to detect. A narrowing of her eyes. A slight pause before spearing through the next Grimm to lay itself at her feet. But to Cat's enhanced senses, it stood out. These next words were considered, and were important to Edelgard somehow.

"It is much the same for crest bearers. A crest is considered necessary to rule, but bearers are also expected to fight themselves. It is a... misguided practice."

"How so?" Cat grunted as she plunged her sword down through another monster. She winced as she felt a paving stone crack. If this bridge broke, they were going to have to find another choke point.

"I have seen many fine soldiers ignored because they lacked a crest. I have seen fools and monsters granted high station because they had one."

A gout a flame poured from Edelgard's hand, and the remaining Grimm caught fire. Edelgard said it was a spell she couldn't do in the heavy metal armor she had arrived with, but the lighter stuff of this world didn't seem to interfere.

It worked wonders on enemies foolish enough to bunch up in front of it. It tidied off the last of this wave.

Cat sat down a nearby rock that had stayed reasonably clean, she rubbed a knot that had been forming in her left shoulder. One of the 'camera drones,' as Taylor had called them, hovered noisily overhead. Creepy little things. She would have tried to smuggle one back to Calernia, but the Gnomes would raze the continent if they ever got word of them.

"Its a bit like that in my world. The unfairness of it. Named just tend toward the top of any organization they find themselves in. Coincidences pile up. That isn't even counting the outright corruption."

Dig just a bit deeper. Catherine breathed out. "It doesn't stop there. If you're considered a Hero, well... the world will twist itself to make sure you win. No matter how horrible your victory would be."

She heard a noise approaching. Cat groaned as she stood up from her sitting rock. Not even enough time to catch her breath.

Edelgard grasped her shoulder. "Heal." There was a soft white glow, and the pain in Cat's shoulder disappeared.

"My world will also tie itself in knots around crests. I have... heard of horrible things, done in their name. Children bearing them seen as little more than brood mares. Children without them abandoned and left for themselves. It seems there is no limit to what people are willing to justify, if its done in the name of crests."

"I've given up on justifications," Cat said. "They don't matter. I'm going to do what I can, what will work, and everyone with a problem can form a line for my head for all I care."

Edelgard quirked an eyebrow.

"Forgive me for prying, but it sounds like you care about justice a great deal. You care about who can and cannot call themselves a hero. It seems more like you object to how your world defines it. What they call justice is unreasonable, and that offends you."

"Abstract justice as a goal doesn't work well," Cat said, shaking her head sadly, "Its too easy to spin around, and too easy to make anything sound right. Why you do it doesn't matter. Justifications don't matter. The only thing that matters is what happens."

"If we are willing to abandon even trying for justice, what separates us from the monsters?"

"Apart from the fact that we aren't raving loons trying to conquer the world with an army of invisible tigers? The real monsters are the cackling madmen. Or they are the people who never compromise, no matter what. Ideals have filled more graves than spite."

"I suspect, that even in your world, and perhaps even in this one, apathy is the most prolific killer of all."

Cat would have liked a minute for them both to stew on what the other had said, but it looked like she wasn't going to get that chance. The next wave was coming. She just hoped her sitting rock stayed clean.

--

Taylor avoided clenching her jaw. Outwardly, she was perfectly impassive. She was running out of Grimm within range. Well, her publicly advertised range. This mission was a careful balancing act. Appear powerful enough that she could make demands if she needed to. Keep enough hidden that she could catch them off guard if relations ever soured.

She looked at the camera drones. Tiny little things, four propellers each. They were filming everything. Any slip up would be captured, recorded, and reported back to Beacon.

"I'm not seeing any hostiles," Tanya said. "Are you?"

Even if the drones weren't there, anything Taylor said or did was making its way to Ozpin. Because the tiny girl in front of her would tell them.

"There is nothing in my range that I can make out clearly," Taylor lied. There was a Beowulf of unusual size right at the edge, and she could make out its shape perfectly.

"Your powers are an amazing force multiplier. You will make an incredible asset for Beacon."

Everything from the way she stood and dressed to the way she spoke just screamed deference to authority. From what Tanya had told the team, she was a high ranking officer in an incredibly militaristic country, and she had been at war, killing people for serving a different country, since she was eleven.

The fifteen-year-old child soldier would report whatever she did up the chain of command, and not even realize it was a betrayal.

She would have preferred to have the others here. If push came to shove, she wanted to outvote or at least outnumber Tanya. But the current test demanded they split into partner pairs.

The situation was still manageable. She didn't need to use her full capabilities. She was in a forest. There were more bugs than she knew what to do with. Even if she weren't, her more obvious tricks worked just fine on immature Grimm. They would react badly to swarming and biting, which made finishing them off trivial. Older Grimm knew most of their biology was decorative. Like Endbringers, though orders of magnitude less powerful.

Mostly, she lured the larger Grimm into an open area to have their heads blown off by Tanya. Eventually, she would encounter Grimm that either couldn't be lead like that, or wouldn't go down with a shot to the head. There were a number of plans for those, but they hadn't needed to implement them yet.

The hillside was currently clear, with good sight lines to the valley below. The path up was rocky enough that anything really dangerous would have trouble climbing, especially while under fire. There was a gorge nearby that Tanya could fly them both across if they were getting overwhelmed, but that would expend her battery almost instantly.

Actually seeing through her swarm was difficult. The bugs were different here. But she always knew where her bugs were, and so it was practically impossible for anything to get near her without Taylor knowing exactly what it was. All in all, everything was going perfectly.

The four camera drones picked that exact instant to fall out of the sky. No build up, no fanfare. The lights turned off and they clattered to the ground. One was flying higher than the others, and shattered when it landed. Shards of white plastic scattered across the stones.

Taylor pulled out her scroll. Dead. Tanya already had hers out. The shorter girl tapped a few buttons, then shook her head.

"Damn it. Cat and Edelgard are out of my range."

Tanya nodded, and loaded a flare. "Yellow?" she asked.

Yellow was for retreat back to town. Green was the all clear, or a request for a response. Red meant help immediately.

There would need to be a lot more monsters before she was concerned about actually losing to them. But this mission was ultimately pest control. The Grimm would be here tomorrow, so there wasn't any reason to continue if something unexpectedly dangerous was happening. Port might even fail them if they didn't come back after communications were cut.

"Yellow," Taylor confirmed.

A brilliant yellow star, bright even in broad daylight, shot into the air. At the apex of the arc, a small charge of gravity dust detonated, leaving it to drift above the treetops.

Moments later, Cat and Edelgard answered with their own flare, also yellow. Good.

Taylor had her bugs run patrol routes. Even if she couldn't see through them perfectly, she would still know if they ran into something. Flies zipped through the trees. Bees and hornets gathered in strategic locations. Ants listened underground. Tunneling Grimm weren't native to the area, but nothing was supposed to be able to take out the electronics either.

She activated the taser mode on her knife. It was dust powered, and it hummed to life without complaint. She began walking. Tanya followed, three or four paces behind. It was a long way back to town, and she didn't want to get caught out of breath if they were attacked. Well, when they were attacked. There was no way this was an accident.

"Theories?" Taylor asked.

"Bandits, " Tanya said. "They are basically unheard of in Vale, but if anyone were to start, Sheffield is a reasonable target, provided you can disable the defenses. Far from support, forests for air cover, dyes are expensive and easy to sell."

"I don't buy that random thugs can just make an EMP like that. Someone has been lying to us. Even the White Fang shouldn't have the resources to make one," Taylor said. Her eyes never stopped scanning the trees.

"Either way, this feels like a distraction."

--

Cat sprinted back to Sheffield, wondering if she had just doomed the rest of her team. She had the fastest land speed unless Tanya had somehow gotten more flight time, so she was sprinting ahead. She could get to Port sooner and learn what was happening. Edelgard was left far behind, but she would send up a red flare if she needed help.

Would she? Even back home, it would still be in doubt. Cat had left just as the situation was developing, which usually meant she would return to a disaster. But Cat was also the teammate sent to fetch reinforcements, coming back at the darkest hour. Virtually guaranteed survival.

But did either story have power? Did any story have power in Remnant? Did stories even have power over her any more? She had her Name, she had her powers, but would they respond normally? The time had never been right to test an Aspect.

Her enhanced strength and speed were at least working properly. This pace wasn't even uncomfortable. The only part of her that hurt was her back and shoulders, and that was because of the Penitent's Blade. She hated the name, but if she renamed it, that would make it her sword, and that had to be avoided at all cost. She was simply next to it. Hopefully, angel feathers could be scryed across dimensions, making all this hassle worth it.

She heard Sheffield before she saw it. Loud cracks that her instincts said were sharpers, but her mind knew were guns. That was bad. Sheffield was under attack. Worse, the turrets she had seen on the wall were huge. And that mechanic had bragged about being able to fire hundreds of shots a minute. There wasn't nearly enough sound for that.

Sheffield was a small satellite town of Vale. It had a concrete wall, surrounded by long fields of some distant domesticated descendant of the flowers that had been in the forest. They grew on raised trellises, their long roots harvested for dye.

Those trellises had fallen over, the flowers trampled. Smoke billowed up from behind the walls. Large holes had been clawed through the stone, and dark shapes climbed through them. Atop the walls, the turrets lay silent.

Even with all the differences between her world and this one, Cat could tell that this city had been too long at peace. Buildings had been allowed to get too close to the defensive structures, providing cover. In one place, it was bad enough that a determined athlete could probably scale the wall.

That was useful, because all the real entrances were occupied by monsters.

Cat scaled the wall, with minimal effort. A Beowulf was using the same path she was, but it was young, and had no armor. She cut through it, and it had begun evaporating before it even hit the ground.

From her vantage point, she could see a significant fraction of Sheffield. The town was is in disarray.

Pockets of resistance were holding out near the landing pad. Irregular militia mostly, wielding rifles.

The town, all in all, was in no position to provide help. In fact, it rather needed help. Alright then. It was time for an ironic reversal. Instead of going to get help, Cat was going to call for help from her team. If they had to, they could fight their way through.

She loaded a red flare. Just as she fired it into the sky, she saw a bright light in the distance.

Arcing over the trees and trailing smoke, was a red flare. Then a second. And a third.

f*ck.

She had to decide, and she didn't know enough to make the decision properly. Go back to her team alone right now, or save Sheffield and hope her team held out long enough for her to come back with an entire militia?

She didn't know how soon they needed help. She didn't know how much help they needed.

So without enough information, she decided on what she did know. She looked at the three red points, and turned around.

The streets of Sheffield were in chaos. Cat jumped, rooftop to rooftop, just barely above it. Her eyes scanned the battlefield, never pausing on anything for more than an instant. Her stomach curled at some of the sights, but she pressed on. She could save some of them, probably, but they weren't who she needed to save.

She needed to find the pivot. The one point one which the whole battlefield turned.

To do that, she needed to save a specific person. The thread was tenuous. But there was space there for a story to work, if stories still worked. She didn't know what an ee em pee was, or how the turrets broke, or why the hand carried weapons hadn't broke. But that sounded like a mechanical problem, and she knew a mechanic. A shy woman who had opened up when talking about the towns defenses. Anna, or Alice, or something. It had been a really short conversation, and it had mostly been about guns.

It was a long shot. It relied on two unknowns colliding in the exact right way to be helpful, and either unknown being slightly off could have horrible consequences.

Horrible consequences were already happening. Her team had enough fire power and smarts to hold out. But the town was dying around her. She'd been in dying towns before. This wasn't her homeland. This wasn't even her home world. But for all that it was different, a town under attack sounded just like what she remembered.

Confusion. Desperation. Screaming. Fire.

The sword on her back burned as she drew on her name for strength. This should work, she was the Squire, squires were supposed to deliver weapons. Not normally in the heat of battle, but still. She'd never actually focused on that part of her name, but there was a first time for everything.

Streets and alleys blurred past below her. Occasionally her sword would flash out, carving a gash through a Beowulf that had climbed up some rubble. She saw faces, some brave, some terrified, some dead. But not the woman she was looking for.

This was taking too long. She needed to get up higher.

There was a tall building nearby. It looked like a temple, though not to a god that Cat recognized. She scrambled up the side in leaps and bounds.

When she cleared the roof and got to the steeple, the gaps in the stonework were too small to fit her gauntleted fingers in-between. She made to take them off, but had an idea halfway through. She concentrated for a bit. The blurred edges of her shadow grew defined, then sharp. In a short, violent motion, her shadow arm lashed out at the steeple while her flesh and blood arms stayed still. A small chunk of the mortar was cut, making a decent handhold. Then another, and another. Her shadow continued to cut as she climbed.

The angel feather grew even more uncomfortable. She wasn't even using her Name that much! This wasn't even an aspect. But hers was a Villainous Name, sort of, and she was destroying a church, sort of. Once she got to the top, she shoved off the metal symbol to leave a flat space, wide enough to crouch down on.

Breathing in, she drew on her Name again. The sword on her back felt like she was standing a hand's breadth away from a raging bonfire, but Sheffield snapped into focus. She could make out everything, and everyone. Rapidly, she went from one face to the next.

She saw Professor Port. He was currently being a decent hammer in a hammer and anvil strategy with the largest and most organized groups of militia. A group would engage Grimm, holding them down, and when Port got there he would destroy them before moving to the next group.

Grimm that got to close the rotund man didn't just die, they splashed. His weapon whirled between its forms. He would shoot one Grimm, disintegrating it, and use the recoil to shoulder-check another into the ground, where it died to his ax.

But he was one man. He was moving fast and trying to keep a safe zone, but it was a big town, compared to one huntsman. He wasn't who she was looking for.

Where was she... There! Cat jumped off the steeple. The wind whipped past her, and she rolled with the landing. She turned the roll into a jump, and she was on the next roof. She felt the movement get lighter as she kept leaping from one roof to the next. Finding her stride and building momentum. She frowned, but banished the thoughts. Win first, worry later.

Cat hit the ground, on a street just inside the wall. It was a long ways away from the bullhead landing pad. And from Port. And from any of the shelters. It had been hit badly, with burning debris from the nearby houses.

A young woman was running along the same street, towards Cat. It was definitely Alice. Same red hair, same rabbit ears. She was dragging along a boy in a blue jacket, desperately fleeing from the Beowulf behind them. It was probably her brother, he had the same ears as her, though he had light brown hair.

Her brother was stumbling, not fast enough to outrun the Beowulf. Alice probably wouldn't even be fast enough without him.

Cat though? Cat was fast enough.

With all the burning wreckage on the road, there wasn't enough room to pass them. That didn't matter. She jumped to the side, and ran for a few steps along the wall. Before her momentum ran out, she kicked off it. That gave her lunge enough leverage to go clear through the Beowulf, shoulder to shoulder.

As the creature dissolved, Cat stepped up to the people she had just rescued. The boy was cheering, but Alice was still trying to pull him along.

"Alice, you know a lot about the guns, can you get them online again?"

Alice did a double take, suddenly recognizing Cat. But she didn't waste any time. "All of them? No. We upgraded ten or fifteen years back to the same shielded circuity. It broke anyway. But one of the turrets might, uh, not be as up to date as its paperwork says it is. It should still have the full manual override."

One gun, against a horde. It would have to do.

Alice looked around, nervously. "I was almost there when that Grimm chased us away. Could you get Peter somewhere safe? I'll go back and fix the gun."

Before Cat could respond, Beowulf, by the dozen, began to scramble around the corner, from the direction that Cat had come in. They tripped and fell over the bits of burning building, and over each other, as more and more came. There was no other exit that Cat could take while carrying a squirming child. The only way out was towards the gun.

Alice scooped up her younger brother and ran.

"Go! I'll hold them off," Cat said. She had always hoped she would never have to say that.

Right. Time to strategize. The problem was that she was the only thing standing between a horde of monsters and the only thing that could save the town in time to help her team. Her resources were herself and about one block of distance to retreat over. She would have killed to have Juniper solve this problem.

First, try to get more resources. She fired off her orange flare. She'd already used her red one, but maybe someone would get the idea. She wasn't counting on it.

Second, use the environment. Cat primed a sharper. She didn't care that the shop owner had called it something else, it was clearly a sharper. She threw it at a tall building lining the alley. One fiery explosion later, and it collapsed into the narrow street just as the stampede was passing underneath it.

Bricks and wooden beams spilled into the street.

It didn't crush them all like she had hoped. There wasn't nearly enough debris. Instead it looked like it was only slowing them down, and not even all of them.

Cat could use that. There were only a few that had scrambled over and around the crumbling brickwork without pausing. For their efforts, they got a flash of steel through the skull.

The trickle of darkness became a river, and it was all she could do to swim in the flow. Her name roared in her ears, hungry for blood, or whatever it was that Grimm had.

Black had said that leading a band of Named in battle was more like conducting an orchestra than anything else. This was a solo. Frantic and violent, but there was music in it all the same.

The distance set the tempo. Up close and personal, the beat was fast and frenzied. Desperate strikes, and snapping jaws in half as she pulled them off of her armor, or flesh. Far away, the beat was slower, as she played for spacing and single, devastating lunges.

Her shadow kept its own voice at all times. Fast and precise, making small cuts. Paws were tripped, rubble was thrown. Anything to keep the opposing movement from swelling to a point where it would overwhelm and kill her.

And always, constantly, falling back. Getting surrounded was death. Running out of room was also death. So she made them pay for every step backward. Not it lives, they had lives to spare. She made them pay in time. She didn't give up ground until she had to, and she was covered in cuts from when she should have given sooner.

She took another step back. She was pouring sweat, and her breathing was pained. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed it. A small alley. It was lined with the detritus of small shops and small handicrafts.

It was an utterly unimportant street in a fairly unimportant town. It was only remarkable because it was the last exit. From here, there was nothing but strong brickwork to her left, and the hardened stone of the wall to her right.

If she took one more step, she was committed. If she tried to run down the main street, she would be hunted down exactly like a deer by a pack of wolves. The side alley was her last exit.

She breathed out, and took another step back.

The swarm pressed in, and the tempo of the battle increased. The soft noise of cutting and the high notes of shrieking Grimm were replaced by harsh clangs as her sword met hardened bone plates. The younger Grimm from before were exhausted. The new ones were older, tougher, and knew how to strike when her back was turned.

That, of course, wasn't enough. With a grace that didn't fit its size, a massive two headed snake was coiling its way past the flimsy barrier of rubble she had thrown into the street earlier. A King Tie-something.

It wasn't even a normal two headed snake! A normal, a proper, gods-fearing abomination of a two-headed snake should have two heads and a tail. This one's tail was its second head. At least it had a black-and white motif, one for each head.

The Grimm didn't even react properly. They should have formed a ring for the two elites to fight in. Instead they pressed in even closer. She could barely get proper leverage on her sword strikes.

The snake struck with its white head, and she barely rolled out of the way in time. The street shattered. The massive white snake had slammed snout first into it, its jaws snapping shut where her feet had been moments before. It then flicked its head up, and was annoyed that there wasn't anything to swallow.

The place Cat had dodged to was better, but not by much. She was buried in a pile of teeth and claws, that found mostly steel, but more found exposed skin than she was comfortable with.

She drew deep on her Name, and her shadow exploded out of her, sending the Beowolves flying.

She was bleeding, exhausted, and surrounded, but at least—

"DUCK!"

Oh, now what? Oh. The gun. The gun that this had all been for. It was so large that you didn't carry it, you rode it, in a clunky steel cage behind a long gleaming barrel of death.

Alice had gotten it armed, and was pointing it at the Grimm in the street. The problem was, Cat was in the middle of the Grimm that they wanted to shoot at. Ducking wouldn't help, and even if it did, it might get her eaten alive before...

Oh.

Cat saw the black snake rear its head, and got a horrible idea. A horrible idea that was obviously her only way out.

She crossed her arms in front of herself, and did a little hop.

Quick as a blink, the jaws of the black snake slammed down around her. Its fangs scrapped against her sabatons as its mouth closed shut, and she was enveloped in darkness.

She felt a violent jerk as the snake head flicked into the air. She was almost started to slide down into its gullet when she stabbed with all her might, drawing on the dregs of her Name's power.

Her sword didn't pierce its flesh like she thought it would. She supposed that made sense, you wouldn't swallow fully armed humans if you weren't armored on the inside too.

But she didn't need to kill it, just slow it down.

There was a thunderous noise. Even from inside the Grimm, it sounded like an entire tenth was trying to wake her up by beating her eardrums with a hammer as fast as they could.

A second of weightlessness, as the muscles trying to swallow her went limp.

Cat braced for impact as the dead snake crashed into the ground, throwing her free.

She was surrounded by carnage as she stood up. The defensive gun had chewed through the mostly unarmored Grimm like a scythe through wheat. The snake that had swallowed her had been sliced neatly into white and black halves.

All while she had been safe in the literal jaws of death, above the line of fire.

The gun hadn't killed all of them, but what was left here was only clean up. And they would need a way to leverage one functioning gun into a saved town, but Cat could feel it in her bones. This story beat was over.

Alice's little brother raised both fists into the air and cheered. "That was totally awesome!"

Yeah. Definitely over.

–

Cat waited on the wall of Sheffield. She paced. Port had been unwilling to leave the town unprotected. He was the only one able to drive the only vehicle they could get working.

As he had left, there was a massive explosion from the forest that Cat could feel in her teeth. Ten minutes ago, Port had fired his green flare from somewhere withing the trees. So everyone was either safe, or already dead.

Cat paced the walls.

Had she made a mistake?

In the distance, she could make out figures leaving the woods. First one. Then a second that had to be Port. Then a third...

She waited. Just barely, she could see a fourth figure. Cat breathed a sigh a relief. Everyone was walking under their own power.

Cat had done everything right. The tension left her body.

Her teammates made it back to town. They were coated in soot and gore, but they were unharmed. Tanya was more upset about running out of flares than anything else. Taylor was upset that she'd never even confirmed the existence of whoever was behind this.

Working cars made their way into Sheffield, carrying supplies and aid. For a breach in the walls, the damage had been quite light. Team TTCE was able to hitch a ride back to Beacon on the second or third departure, all the wounded already being seen to.

As the truck started to roll away, a voice called out to wait.

Alice caught up, holding her brother.

Peter handed her a bright blue scarf. It was clearly something he had made himself. There were missed stitches, broken lines, and it was only even if you squinted really generously.

“I—I wanted to, I wanted—you're just so cool and” He stopped and started a dozen times, too excited and too shy to stop himself from tripping over his own words.

His sister took mercy on him, smiling. “He wanted to give something to the Hero of Sheffield.”

Cat's smile went brittle as she took the scarf.

She felt the weight of the Penitent Blade. She could maybe, barely, feel the heat. Or maybe she was just pretending she could.

Chapter 2: Winding Down and Up

Chapter Text

The after action meeting had been tense. Tanya supposed it was natural, this had been their first time seeing real combat as a unit, and they each wanted to give a full account of their actions. Catherine gave a story that strained credibility. Port had said she was instrumental in freeing up reinforcements, but to hear her tell it, she had single-handedly fixed the problem.

When pressed, she has simply said that it was common for people of her socio-political-religious status, called "Named", to be at the center of many conflicts. It was deeply inconvenient that one of Tanya's teammates was bound by cultural expectations to embellish their own accomplishments, but at least she was as open about it as she could be.

Despite how serious it was to color your own reports, that was not what most of the meeting had been spent on. Tanya's commanding officer—no, not commanding officer, team leader—was a conspiracy theorist. Absolutely paranoid, through and through.

Normally, a bit a paranoia was a good thing. You wanted to look for dangers. Sometimes even from your own allies and superiors. But those concerns needed to be grounded in reality. Taylor simply assumed that the unexpected presence of Grimm constituted bad faith, and seemed aghast that Tanya had not agreed. Far more likely, team TTCE was simply collateral damage in a failed attempt to cripple the town of Sheffield.

The fact that Beacon was averse to sharing details about who their geopolitical enemies were and what they were doing was inconvenient, but hardly surprising. Governments didn't like their own citizens knowing about clandestine warfare, much less four girls who had appeared from literally nowhere claiming origins in nations that couldn't be found on a map.

Governments who couldn't quite admit they were the government had the itch for secrecy even worse. For all that Beacon was technically just one plot of land in the city of Vale, it could hardly escape the notice of anyone paying attention that there were four nations of geopolitical consequence, and coincidentally four organizations capable of creating top tier huntsman and huntresses.

Still, as ridiculous as it was to assume that Beacon needed to tell team TTCE all their sordid details and air their dirty laundry, Tanya was willing to take any excuse to be removed from the front lines. Beacon, after all, can't send the team to die if they can't send them anywhere at all. Which was the one solution Taylor had emphatically shot down, with the support of Catherine and Edelgard.

Taylor was not willing to be confined to Beacon's campus.

"Whatever is going on," Taylor said, "We won't find it if we stay here, where Ozpin controls everything from the food we eat to dorm where we sleep."

That seemed a perfectly reasonable compromise to Tanya. Ignorance of things that weren't your business in exchange for education, room, and board. But Tanya thought she was fairly good at reading people, and could tell that this comment would go unappreciated.

What was left? Only the most common solution to any interpersonal problem. Take it to human resources. Tanya could be transferred to a separate team, allowing Taylor to be paranoid to her hearts content in a way that did not affect Tanya.

But classes came first. Student life was hardly enthralling. Mostly, it consisted of basic skills that Tanya already had, or combat advice rooted in aura, which she could never have. Observing the other students to learn what was and wasn't socially acceptable was of more value than the lesson plan.

At a minimum, some classes provided time apart from her more confrontational teammates.

Professor Port's class was not providing the minimum, in any sense of the word. Team TTCE had it together. Professor port had lost the attention of nearly every student. One was openly sleeping. Two were engaged in an eraser stacking competition. Most were passing notes which had nothing to do with the lecture.

The lack of attention went unnoticed. It seems both sides of this student-teacher relationship were being utterly phoned in. Tanya wondered if "Professor" Port actually had any teaching credentials, or if he even noticed the disarray in the benches. The student body would have been better served by wandering around outside the walls and getting attacked, at least that would teach them to be alert.

According to Catherine, he had conducted himself quite well in the attack. Perhaps teaching positions were viewed as rewards for illustrious careers, rather than a career in themselves? That would make Tanya's strategy difficult, if it meant that she had to go through the dangerous hunting business before getting a safe desk job.

At the end of the 'class' Port announced that he would not be available for questions afterward, as his leg was bothering him, and he wanted to rest.

The walk from the lecture halls to the headmaster's office was not a long one. So Tanya was almost halfway there when she realized that a fellow student was either following her, or going to the exact same place.

Tanya slowed down, strategically. She was fairly certain this student was Ruby Rose. And well, a huntsman academy was like the clergy. Your eldest inherited, and your second eldest went off to give your family moral legitimacy and forge connections.

There were a handful of golden networking opportunities that she had found when doing her research on the student body and the faculty. Among the first years, there was Cardin Winchester, whose father ran a large weapons supplier. Pyrrha Nikos was the equivalent of an Olympic gold medalist, who wouldn't have much power herself, but would have access to the circles of the rich and famous.

Weiss Schnee was probably more valuable to know than most of the professors. She was the heiress to a fortune that was difficult to calculate, because it could never be liquidated without crashing the economy of the entire kingdom.

And Ruby Rose, if Tanya remembered correctly, was Weiss Schnee's team leader.

"Are you also going to the Headmaster's office?" Tanya asked innocently. "I'm trying to head that way as well, though I'm not sure I'll be able to manage the last few turns."

The simple question caused the girl's entire train of thought to catastrophically derail. She jumped like a startled cat, and landed gracelessly. Wasn't every student at this school supposed to arrive a trained combatant?

"What? Yes, I'm the same. Well, not the same, I think I know the way, I mean we are going there for the same reason. Well, maybe you are going for a different reason, your team is probably fine."

The girl's silver eyes widened. "N-not that my team is bad or anything! They're great! Yang is great! Blake and Weiss are... my team is great! We are normal, just like your team!"

She emphasized “Your team”, by pointing at Tanya rather dramatically. And before Tanya could even compose a response, the other girl continued at a mile a minute.

"Wait, aren't you on that weird team that had their own initiation? Wait, no! You aren't a weird team! I'm not on a weird team! I'm in charge of my older sister and that is totally normal, normal knees all around."

Tanya regarded her silently for a few seconds. She had no idea how to turn whatever this conversation slash outburst was into an attempt to network.

"Would you like a do-over?" Tanya asked. " I'm Tanya Degurechaff. I'm looking for the Headmaster's office."

"I'm-I'm Ruby Rose. Its this way..." said Ruby.

Then, quietly, under her breath, Ruby said to herself. "No one exploded. Progress."

--

Edelgard was struggling with classes. It was not a situation that she was used to. She was in remedial history, which she expected to be. But she was also in remedial math, because she had never heard of calculus. Remedial math was algebra, which she had also never heard of.

The turn from irritating to concerning came with Grimm Studies. At least algebra seemed to be some demented branch of geometry. With Grimm Studies, she wasn't sure what Professor Port was even supposed to be teaching.

Normally, she would reach out to her team. Tanya had actually managed to test out of the math requirements, and was willing to aid Edelgard and Cat whenever they encountered concepts that hadn't been invented on their own worlds.

But today, there had been a large argument in the after action report. Emotions were high, and Edelgard expected everyone would need a day or two before they could approach things in a logical manner again.

So she would have to reach out to another classmate. The list of possibilities was short. One name, in all honesty. Their was only student who had managed to go the whole class while paying attention and answering questions somewhat intelligently. Her being called upon repeatedly was the only reason Edelgard knew her name.

"Weiss Schnee?" Edelgard asked.

"Yes, to whom am I speaking?" The girl in white held herself with such a practiced poise that Edelgard instinctively tried to remember if there was some sort of title she was missing.

"Edelgard von Hresvelg. You seemed to have a firm grasp on the material in the previous lecture. I was wondering if you knew what reading I could do to better prepare myself."

"Well, I'm glad that at least a few of my classmates are taking their education seriously." If this girl had been at Garreg Mach, she would be a Major Crest holder, at least. No one else carried themselves with such instinctive authority.

"Hmm..." Weiss continued.

Edelgard was amused, though she tried not to show it. She was familiar with this look. The demands on the time of noble children were endless. Extremely innocuous requests could be veiled attempts at gaining influence. This was the look noble children had when they wanted to see if this new friendly face was just like all the others.

It was a new experience, being on the receiving end. She had to travel quite a long way for the name Hresvelg to not open any door she cared to knock at. When it came to small things like this, at least.

Whatever test Weiss had in mind, she nodded as Edelgard passed it.

"There isn't a particular book he is working from. Well, maybe he has a biography. But the useful information is mostly in a few books... let me message my team, we can form a study group. We can go to the library in the meanwhile."

They made their way to the library, where the minutes passed slowly. Weiss perpetually checked her device. Edelgard thought it was a scroll. It was supposedly a work of artifice, not magic, though Edelgard could scarcely comprehend how. She'd tried listening for a hour, and by the third time Taylor admitted she had some idea how a particular principle worked on her own world, but couldn't see how it worked here, Edelgard decided she had more practical things to study.

Weiss was able to explain professor Port's lecture. Or rather, she had a decent idea of what the lecture should have been, based on the tidbits of actual value in them.

"So, really this class should be teaching out of 'Grimm Ecology', or maybe one of the Huntsman Almanacs if that is too dry. Those are biased towards the region of publication, but all the students will be here for a few years anyway."

The girl in white checked her scroll again, and closed it with an irritated huff. "I'm sorry, it seems my team doesn't consider their education to be worth their time at this moment."

"It can be frustrating, having classmates who don't seem willing to put in the work." Edelgard thought of Linhardt specifically. He might be the most talented man she had ever met, but seemed insistent on reducing his effort until he was merely above average. That meant he sometimes had to skip class for a week straight.

She wondered if she would ever see him again. Or Byleth.

"It is something else, though, for the instructor to care so little," Edelgard said

Weiss frowned at that.

"We... most likely should not make negative assumptions about the faculty. After all, they are the ones responsible for the academy as a whole. Besides, I hear that Port recently had a mission, he may be unusually tired."

"I'm fairly confident that I could now give a better lecture than I received from Port, and I'm fully confident that the class would be better if you were teaching it."

Weiss held herself taller at the compliment. "Thank you. Its nice for someone to recognize my efforts, though there is still more to cover if we want to excel."

Edelgard quieted the little voice inside her that yearned for freedom. She needed to do well. She needed to excel, because...

Wait, why did she need to? Her brow furrowed, slightly. The old justifications were so wrote she barely needed to think them any more. But the more she thought of them, the less they actually seemed to apply.

"Is this particular subject matter of interest to you?" Edelgard asked.

"No, I find it too generic for practical value. There is some math that might come up next semester."

"Is there someone you need to impress with your performance in this class?"

Weiss caught on. "My grade point average is flawless. I like learning. But not this specifically."

"Forgive my assumption, but I think we are alike in that our whole lives, everything we did had to meet impossibly high standards. Perfection, or better."

The girl in white was quiet for a few seconds. "Lets assume, for the sake of conversation, that I at least understand that perspective."

The princess took breath. "What if, today, that isn't true? What if, for today, good enough will be good enough?"

"This was my last class today," Weiss said, co*cking her head. "Its barely three, what would I even do?"

The smile which had slowly been building on Edelguard's face froze. What would she do? A day off had been an impossibility for so long she couldn't even conceive of it anymore.

"Whenever I had the fantasy of a day off,” Edelgard said, “I would spend it eating sweets."

Weiss paused. She took out her scroll, and tapped it a few times.

"I think I can find a candy shop in Vale,” Weiss said as she dragged around a small map on her scroll. “Lets see where being lazy takes us."

--

"So, um, I heard your team was so awesome that there was a secret initiation that only you qualified for!" The girl in Red had boundless energy, and an endless willingness to get back up after stepping on conversational landmines. Tanya supposed that was something like strength.

"We also had to take the initiation exam in the Emerald Forest, but we took it earlier. Circ*mstances... well, it made sense to keep us on the same team, at least at first. Ozpin did not want us accidentally paired with another group."

Tanya was confused when she saw her classmates face drop. Ruby had just expressed a desire to be normal alongside another normal classmate, and now she was disappointed to hear that her classmate was fairly close to normal?

It occurred to Tanya that she needed to view this conversation from Ruby's perspective. While Ruby was young, naive, and excitable, Tanya should not assume she was dumb, or completely unmotivated. She would be looking to advance her career much as anyone else.

The pieces fell into place. Ruby was also looking for networking opportunities. Just because you were on a team with Weiss Schnee didn't mean you could rest on your laurels. There was no guarantee you would be able to successfully leverage that relationship.

Blindly hoping the person you were talking to had special powers was a little hamfisted, but you could hardly expect a teenager to be perfect at a skill some adults never reached proficiency in.

Her team was actually less powerful in some important ways. They could not awaken their Auras. They had tried a total of 26 times across different experts, different team members, and different methods.

Persistent Awakening Failure, or PAF, or being Aura Broken, was such a rare condition that the odds of all four of them having it by accident were astronomical. It seemed far more likely that humans from Remnant were slightly different than humans from elsewhere, and team TTCE would simply never have unlocked Auras.

They had to consistently put up exceptional performances before Beacon had been willing to take them on as students. Even now, their demands for more and more freedoms put them on thin ice with the faculty.

Still, Tanya could still present herself in the best light. She could give Ruby something to be excited about.

"However, the extra time has had excellent results. Team Technicolor was cleared for unsupervised missions yesterday."

"What?! That's so cool! Wait, Technicolor starts with a T..."

"Yes."

"And your name starts with a T..."

"Yes..."

"Are you their leader?"

"No. Our acronym is T, T, C, E. I am, I suppose, the second T."

Tanya was more than a little irritated by that fact. Taylor had, by far, the least experience with command, and had no formal training in it. Edelgard or Catherine would have been fine. Tanya had assumed the lofty rank of Major at the age of fifteen would have been an extremely impressive feat, but apparently she had underestimated the extreme swiftness of promotions across the multiverse.

Catherine was scarcely older than Tanya, and had already made general.

Meanwhile, Taylor was effectively law enforcement. Giving the job to the woman best suited to it was something Tanya respected, but Taylor actually seemed temperamentally unsuited to command structures of any kind. She might take control because she hated being told what to do, but that was a poor reason to give her authority and expect her to behave with it.

"What do you think makes a good leader?" Ruby asked.

Tanya hmmed as she thought.

"It is a complicated question, with many acceptable answers depending on the context."

"Ugh, you sound like every adult ever! What do you think a good leader should be?"

Tanya hmmed again. The problem was not simply condensing a concept as broad as leadership down to a few sentences. It was picking the particular distillation that would satisfy Ruby. And she couldn't just pick an answer based on flattery. Ruby would remember and resent advice that lead her astray, which would damage Tanya's access to Weiss Schnee.

So she instead of answering, she asked more questions. Ruby would speak in raw worries, that Tanya would slowly chisel down into concrete expectations and doubts. More than once Ruby nearly panicked about being inadequate in some fully general way.

They were no longer approaching the Tower. They were circling it. Tanya was in no particular rush, and mentoring was usually a sensible investment in human capital. Especially if you did early enough, you could sometimes reap the returns to that investment personally.

By the time they had made their third lap, Tanya was quite confident this was more an issue of nerves than anything else.

Ruby, it seems, was something of a gifted student, being admitted early and granted a leadership role. While obviously advantageous to her career as a huntress, failing to meet such high expectations was a setback that could look like a disaster from the perspective of someone just getting started.

In short, a talented but inexperienced employee was going to her supervisor for guidance. Tanya approved. Furthermore, this was quite fortunate for Tanya. How Ozpin handled Ruby's request would be a weather balloon for how he would handle Tanya's request for a transfer to another team. She would just have to ask Ruby how it went after she left Ozpin's office.

Tanya tried to steer the conversation, and their feet back on track.

"You'll be fine," Tanya reassured. "This is a normal request that Ozpin probably deals with four or five times a year. Just be sure to phrase your request so that it sounds like a strength and not a weakness."

"I don't think I can be a good leader! How does that make me strong?!"

"Trivially. You don't say that. You say that you are excited about your new position and responsibilities, and you want to make sure you use every resource to excel at it."

At that point, any decent boss would trip over themselves at the chance to mold their employee into their exact image of a productive worker.

The elevator doors opened, and Ruby's face dropped. There was no line at all to get into Ozpin's office. She would have to face the music now, not later. It was a completely irrational and almost universal human desire, to painfully wait for the inevitable a little longer, rather than face it immediately.

The huntress in training hesitated, and Tanya suppressed a sigh. She was going to ask Tanya to go first, so that she could spend another few minutes suffering pointlessly.

"Um... could you come in with me?"

Tanya blinked, then nodded. The cost was nothing, and the benefits were timely.

Ozpin was doing paperwork at his desk, and slowly sipping a hot beverage.

"I'd like to congratulate you on being the first to make use of my office hours this year. Most students wait until the semester is almost over."

Ruby looked to Tanya for reassurance, then breathed in deep. "Weiss—My teammate doesn't think I'm a good leader. Is she... right?"

It was unrealistic to expect a child to stick to the script exactly, but the script was only one sentence long. Tanya again suppressed the urge to sigh.

"That remains to be seen," Ozpin said.

"Good leadership is not some innate quality that you already possess or do not possess. Its putting the effort in. It is consistently giving it your all, and taking the role you've been entrusted with seriously. You cannot only be a leader during battle, only to slack off during training. Similarly, you cannot only be a leader when things are calm, only to break down in a crises. It is both, it is always."

There were multiple layers to this speech. Ruby was nodding along seriously to the surface layer, while Tanya was cursing her own stupidity on the second.

Of course Taylor had to be selected as a leader. The rest of her team wasn't even an option. They couldn't dedicate themselves to the team full time; they had conflicts of interest. Conflicts were too mild a term. If the interests of, say, Adrestia ever went against the interests of Beacon, it would be ridiculous to even ask Edelgard to put the empire she was heir to second. It would be rude to even put her in a situation where that was implied.

Tanya and Catherine were little better. They had sworn oaths to their respective countries. Taylor, meanwhile, was law enforcement. She was tied to another world via an employer who had missed the last several paychecks. Taylor wasn't a poor choice, she was the only choice.

Ozpin turned to Tanya. "Did you also have a question?"

Now she was in a pickle. Ozpin had just gone out of his way to justify his decisions in the middle of a conversation with another student. He would not be pleased if she undermined that immediately. She needed another way out.

In a few seconds of panicked thinking, she had one. Or at least the basics of one. She needed to stall a bit to get all the pieces arranged in her head.

"Ruby, I don't want to imply that I don't trust you, but my question concerns my team as a whole. Could you give the professor and I the room?"

She had the details worked out, one unexpected hug later. It had just been basic career advice, but it was nice to be appreciated.

The door shut, and Tanya turned to face Ozpin.

"My team has serious concerns about their safety."

"I understand. You signed up to be trained as huntresses, but what happened at Sheffield was well above what any student should expect in terms of danger. I am looking into it, personally, to make sure nothing like it happens to team TTCE again."

Translation: we are sorry you got wrapped up in our charlie foxtrot. We are changing our operational approach in response. It was a nice sentiment, but she really would prefer to just be confined to within city limits until whatever it was had blown over. It wasn't like the wilderness had anything exciting to offer.

"The problem, as I see it, is that too many people know of our unusual origins. You could figure it out just by carefully following the news."

"That was unavoidable, I am sorry. Four portals opened across town in the middle of the day. Too many people had their scroll's ready."

"Regardless, the schedule for students isn't secure enough for any of team TTCE's away missions to be secret."

Ozpin's brow furrowed slightly. He wasn't sure where she was going with this.

"As an alternative, any mission that would normally be scheduled for us as part of our education could be replaced by a mission from the ordinary huntsfolk mission board."

Now he seemed very skeptical, but not outright dismissive.

"We would coordinate with you, or with another professor, to make sure that the mission we selected was of an appropriate skill level, and met any other criteria you wanted."

The "another professor" part was key. If there was a leak, this might let them pin it down. The threat of pinning down the leak might prevent ambushes all on its own. Assuming the enemy even cared about team TTCE.

"Miss Degurechaff. Team TTCE is not required to go on missions at all, much less missions alone. You aren't prisoners. I won't stop you. But whatever protection I can provide diminishes outside these walls."

There was the rub. Tanya would like nothing better than to simultaneously receive education and protection. But her teammates refused to sit still. Ozpin had a marked preference for the original teams, which meant her opportunities would be greatly reduced on her own.

And her career would go much smoother with TTCE if she established herself as a team player early on. So she should come back with this win.

What sort of man was Ozpin? What sort of reason would he prefer? He was sentimental, and an idealist. Not the most welcome traits in a leader, but his record was good, so he obviously had reasonable sentiments and ideals. So something pro-social, but framed in a very personal light ought to play well.

"When I began my training, I expected to fight the Francois. All the propaganda said that the Francois were monsters. That we were protecting everything good or civilized in the world."

Well, most of it was actually asking civilians to either enlist or use less valuable materials, but that was beside the point.

"When the war expanded, the posters said that the Commonwealth soldiers were monsters. Eventually it said that the Russies were monsters."

Tanya was fairly sure the communist leaders were monsters, but that was also beside the point.

"Then I found a Francois poster. It said we were monsters."

She paused a bit, to help with the timing.

"While I am here, I would like to be the protector I was told I could be. I would like to use what I've learned to fight actual monsters."

It was a decent speech, and none of it was strictly false. Killing Grimm was about the purest example of a pro-social activity that you could find, up there with medical services and firefighting. Getting paid for upholding the foundations of society had a certain satisfaction inherent to the task.

Ozpin thought, and the nodded, slowly.

"There will be more details. But treat this as a provisional yes."

--

Edelgard was passing one hand back and forth through a streetlamp. She couldn't imagine how you would build such a thing, and she couldn't imagine why.

Though perhaps she should not judge. After all, the same society which had build the nonsensical lamp was the same society that had made the confection she held in her other. It looked as if someone had captured a cloud and died it blue, and it tasted sweet beyond anything she had ever tasted before.

Weiss had called it cotton candy.

The next term she learned that day was "Gaming Arcade". Weiss was only mostly sure what they had there, only that it was something that teenagers were supposed to do when wasting time. Edelgard barely noticed that they spent an hour turning what seemed like a large amount of Lien into a small amount of candy. She only wished she'd had more.

The conversation bounced between a dozen different things. Inevitably, gaps in Edelgard's knowledge were made apparent, and there was only one explanation.

"I am from another world, yes."

"Wait, that news story about the portals, that was you?"

"It was me and my new team. I have spoken with the scientists that are examining exactly what happened, but there is nothing that I can do personally."

The topic was handled with more grace than Edelgard expected, with Weiss willing to let the topic lie for now.

There were plenty of other topics.

"Wait, you're a princess?"

Edelgard tried to hide her face behind her hand. "I am heir to the throne, yes, but please don't let our different circ*mstances Impose upon our friendship."

"Impose? Hardly. I just realized something. This whole time, you've had no idea who I am."

"You're Weiss Schnee, correct?"

"Ah, but that's not how most people say it when they realize."

Weiss put on a shocked face and a high voice. "Weiss Schnee? Those Schnees?"

"Is it that bad?"

"Yes. You are heir to a throne. I am heir to the largest company and largest fortune this world has ever seen. You might be the first person I've ever met who didn't know my family before they knew me. Well, not the first, but its a small group."

After that, the floodgates opened. So much did not change, no matter the world, or the exact flavor of power. Troublesome parties, where the world would apparently end if you did not pretend to be interested in what some blowhard was saying. Sometimes events across the world meant you couldn't play with your old friends next door. Perfection was of course expected constantly. Libraries were a beloved escape.

They had no end of things to talk about, but more than anything else, they talked about their teammates.

"She is practically a child! I came to Beacon with perfect transcripts, and high recommendations. I worked hard to get here. And now my fate is shackled to that dolt!"

Edelgard knew all about being tied to allies you would rather not have. But this wasn't the time for that. She also knew about exasperating teammates.

"The stories I could tell about classmates back in Fodlan. Linhardt could not be relied on to attend any lecture that occurred before noon."

"No!"

"Yes," Edelgard said, grinning. She cared for all the Black Eagles. But it was nice to finally admit that some of times they made her want to pull her hair out.

"I can't understand behaving like that!"

"Oh, he was not the most difficult. Bernadetta did not leave her room anything besides meals for the first three weeks. She is still terrified of her own shadow."

"Okay, that, I can understand. I used to get the most terrible stage fright. I never did just hide in my room, but I can understand wanting to."

"Oh? How did you overcome that?" Anything that Bernadetta could use, she was interested in.

"It was my older sister. It was a biggest hall I had performed in yet. There had been a loss in the family recently. I was... I was back stage, composing myself, and I guess Winter heard. She found me, she looked me dead in the eye, and told me I was stronger than this."

Edelgard winced.

"No! It wasn't like that. It wasn't an admonishment. She was telling me I didn't need to be afraid, and even if I was, I would pull through anyway. She wasn't telling me I should be stronger, she was telling me that I already was. And she knew it, even if I didn't."

Weiss smiled at the memory.

"So, I don't know if Bernadetta has anyone she trusts enough to hear that from, but maybe you could tell her that the next time... oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean—"

"It is fine. My path back to Fodlan is unknown, not uncertain. I will return. And I think that is something Bernadetta could stand to hear. I have staked my life on her bow arm more than once, and she has never let me down."

"What? She's an accomplished huntress while still being too immature to leave her own room?"

"Strength and weakness are more mixed than I would have guessed. Many of my old classmates have their.... unique circ*mstances. You learn to provide what they need, so their strengths can shine."

The hours passed, as hours do.

Chapter 3: Some Fights are More Serious than Others

Chapter Text

So apparently there was a thing called a ‘Runner’s High’, and Cat was eager to see if that was real. It would help with the headaches, both literal and metaphorical. The literal headache was because she hadn’t been able to find any wakeleaf apart from what she had happened to have on her once the portal opened. Though honestly, the discomfort was too mild to be a proper headache.

Mild discomfort was about all she was feeling right now, even though she was running in full armor, and Taylor looked like she was only kept upright by pure spite.

The metaphorical headache was honestly too serious to be called a headache. The handmade blue scarf in her pocket was more dangerous to her than most sword fights. Well, not most of the fights Cat specifically had been in, too many of those were somewhere between mostly and completely fatal.

Hero.

That is what they had been calling her. That is what they thought about her. That is what the stories they told other people said.

Cat wasn’t a hero, and she absolutely could not, could never, be a Hero.

“What do you think, three more?” Cat said over her shoulder as she slowed to a stop. The taunt was more bravado than anything. Cat was honestly impressed. Sure, she was only just starting to feel the burn, but having a Name was basically cheating. Taylor was in far better running shape than Cat had been when she first got her Name, and Cat had never been a pushover.

Taylor was resting her hands on her knees, only slightly leaning against the statue for support. The statue was polished granite, two figures standing atop a large rock, with a Grimm fleeing before them. An idealized representation of huntstfolk.

An idealized representation of Heroes.

Back home, in Calernia, being a Hero meant a lot of different things, but it meant one thing above all. Heroes fought villains.

In Remnant, being a Hero probably meant a bunch of things as well, but one thing above all. Heroes fought the Grimm.

“So, above everything else, what have we learned here today?” Cat asked.

Taylor was too busy breathing to retort, and Cat wondered if she was pushing it too far. But then she felt the flies jump in sequence. Left hand, damn, that meant no progress. Well, technically some progress, but not what they were hoping for.

Cat was not a full Villain yet. Technically. If you squinted and then misinterpreted everything. Sure, she could perform necromancy, holy objects burned her, and her shadow could loom menacingly and stab her enemies if she told it to. But she was the Squire, and Squires could evolve into Heroic Names as well as Villainous. But if she actually came back as a Hero… Well, lots of things would happen.

But the biggest change was that Black would kill her. In a warped way, she was probably the closest thing to a daughter he would ever have. But Black was not moved by sentiment, even from his own soul. He wouldn’t like it. He wouldn’t hesitate.

“That bad, huh?” Cat observed.

Her team leader was too winded to say anything, so continued saying nothing. Should Cat just do nothing, refuse to do anything this world considered Heroic? That wouldn’t work. That story was a dead end. The stakes would just keep rising until Cat couldn’t stay out of it while still being Catherine Foundling. She didn’t want to be someone who could watch the world burn just to get what she wanted.

So the scarf stayed in her pocket. A reminder that she still needed to reject it. Reject it in a way that was real, in a way that she could mean. And a reminder of what was waiting for her if she failed.

Black hated Heroes. He hated that they always won in the end. The Calamities had conquered Callow for wealth and grain, yes, but also for the pride of one man. A man who wanted to etch an irreversible victory into the eye of fate. Cat was his apprentice in large part because she was willing to accept that he had won, and was willing to deal with the realities that came with it. As opposed to drowning half the world in blood trying to undo what had already been written. If he even suspected she was going to steal his victory by becoming a Hero, she would die.

And Black might not stop with her. Anything she’d touched would become suspect. Her officers in the Fifteenth Legion of Terror would have their careers end. If they weren’t executed outright. Callow’s slivers of independence that Cat had sacrificed to get would be burned to ashes.

And Black would find someone else to cement his legacy.

Or maybe he wouldn’t. Heroes won all the time when they weren’t supposed to. Maybe she would kill Black.

She imagined standing over him, his blood on her sword. The man who had given her power. Who had taught her. Who had brought the cackling madmen to heel, and killed any who saw cruelty as an end and not a means. Who was proud of her.

Warped streets can run both ways. He was, in a strange way, the closest thing Cat would ever have to a father.

“Alright,” Cat said. "Let's find somewhere else to talk about it.”

–

Ozpin couldn't be trusted. That wasn't some unique failing of his, it was just a fact. He wasn't even being honest about why they were being allowed into Beacon. He controlled their housing, their food, and too much of their information. It didn't matter if his intentions were benign for now, that was too much leverage. Taylor knew this.

Tanya, for some reason, didn't. Taylor had struggled with that, and there had been an argument. But at least Tanya had come back after that argument with a solution. Taylor liked that. Even angry, her teammates could be trusted to keep in the right headspace. Though she couldn't say too much more that would apply to all of them.

It wasn't just that taking standard missions gave Ozpin less control, even if he was allowed a veto. The mission board gave money for completing it. They had only taken one so far, but the money was decent, as room and board were already being covered.

Lien was normally on a card, but wasn't too hard to turn into untraceable cash. She was working on getting a fake ID she could use if she ever needed to disappear, but it was difficult. Not all of her teammates could see the need.

Cat, at least, could see sense.

"Of course he’s hiding something. He’s hiding so many things it's a wonder they all fit inside that skull of his."

The shorter girl wasn't even winded, even though they had just run six miles. That was further than Taylor usually ran, but she had been using that time to concentrate on what lay beneath the ground of Beacon Academy.

Concentrating on what, annoyingly, she could not see. Not with her eyes, or with her swarm. Beneath Beacon Tower, there was a blindspot. Beneath the basem*nt, there was a basem*nt sized region of space where her power did not function. Bugs that entered the region ceased to report or obey commands.

Burrowing insects could approach the barrier, but all they could feel was the outside of a room. Bugs could enter the elevator, but they cut out before the doors open. She could read the password easily enough, but there was no way to approach the elevator without being seen.

Ozpin was hosting some kind of conspiracy beneath Beacon Tower. Glynda Goodwitch was a member. Taylor didn't know who else was, because the secret basem*nt was only rarely used, and she couldn't spend every hour of every day on lookout.

Today’s efforts were supposed to give a workaround to that problem. Her beetle variants weren't able to chew a hole in the mortar, though her burrowers were able to move the tiny flashlight another few meters through the dirt.

She hoped to one day force a camera through the barrier, then pull it back out.

Once they were back in the privacy of their rooms, and Taylor could confirm they weren't being overheard, she gave Cat the report.

"I couldn't get in. The flashlight made some good distance today, so we can start moving the camera tomorrow."

Cat sat cross-legged on the top bunk, frowning. She stroked her chin as she thought.

"And you're sure they can't spy on the camera? Every techy thing in this world seems to talk to every other techy thing."

Taylor suppressed a hint of irritation. Cat had started calling everything with a circuit board "Techy", pretending it was some great unexplainable mystery. Taylor was pretty sure Cat actually understood it fairly well, and only kept the pretense up to be annoying.

"As sure as I can be. It's an analog camera. It uses chemicals." A digital camera would have been far, far easier to move through the dirt, carried by her tunneling bugs. Finding a real analog camera had been difficult and expensive.

"Right, it doesn't run on techy magic, it runs on different techy magic."

"Neither one is magic."

"Excuse me, one needs the paper bathed in special substances, within a ritual room where light is forbidden to enter. The other requires an instrument crafted to such a degree of purity that a single speck of dust at the wrong time would make it too unclean to function. They are clearly both magic."

Taylor couldn't argue that point. Not because it was right, but because it was about time for another team meeting, and the other members of team TTCE were coming into range.

It was time for team TTCE’s second after action report. This had been their first mission from the regular huntsfolk board. It had been a standard extermination job. Nothing unusual had happened.

Taylor was considering cluing in Edelgard to what they knew of Ozpin's secrets, but she didn't see a compelling reason to. Cat had only been told so she could coordinate alibis. And there was no way she was telling Tanya.

They gathered around, getting comfortable. Tanya pulled out a chair. Cat stayed on the top bunk, swinging her legs over the side. Edelgard sat on the bottom bed of the opposite bunk. Taylor awkwardly leaned her back against the windowsill in between the two. All in all it formed a lumpy, uneven circle, but everyone could at least face each other and pass things around.

Tanya started. "Right, so that mission obviously went much better than Sheffield. Comms were stable, our backups worked, the Grimm behaved as expected, and the raw dust explosions worked great for area denial."

That much was true. Her swarm was able to carry enough dust crystals into position to create a sizable explosion. It wasn't really fast enough to chase down something trying to run, but it was fairly easy to explode things until they got channeled towards one of the brutes, or into line of sight of the blaster.

However...

"We can't really tell how much better we've gotten. That wasn’t a real fight. Communications stayed up because no one attacked our communications."

"There is always room for more iterative improvement, but I thought I would start the review on a high note by focusing on the positives."

Taylor didn't narrow her eyes, but her bugs did twitch more. Always non-confrontational when in front of a group, always searching for a way to phrase what she wanted as something that no reasonable person could possibly oppose. Tanya always tried to be frictionless. So slick it came off as slimy.

Progress was decent though, even Taylor couldn't deny that. Their gear was getting better, as they learned what local technology could and couldn't do, and how to integrate it with their weapons. Cat and Edelgard hardly needed to speak to one another any more to coordinate on the front, and Taylor's swarm was integrating useful species.

There were problems too. Nothing critical, just normal things requiring work. There were a lot of things that were hard to do if you found yourself in a brand new world. Taylor counted herself lucky that there had been no three seashell style problems. Things were going about as well as could be expected.

"It's just that everything would be going faster if we weren't wasting our time pretending to be school children," Taylor said. For one thing, she could devote however much was needed to getting into the secret basem*nt without anyone noticing anything was wrong.

"It isn't all wasted," Edelgard said. "Just this week history covered the abolition of slavery."

"That doesn't help us get home."

"And what would?" Edelgard asked.

"Leverage." "Good credit."

Taylor and Tanya blinked at each other. Taylor facepalmed. This was going to just be another rehash of the same argument, wasn't it?

Better to get her half of it over.

"Opening the portals is going to be difficult. What if it costs a billion lien to send a single person through? They aren't going to do it for us if it doesn't get them anything. Even if they agree to help us, we don't have enough expertise to know if they are actually trying. So we need to chip away at those imbalances. Promises made in public, guarantees we can measure. Rivals we can go to if they don't hold up their end of the bargain. We need leverage."

Tanya, politely, summarized her half. She could go on for far longer than anyone here had the patience for if she wanted to.

"Opening the portals certainly won't be free for our hosts, but there are four whole worlds on the other side of those portals. Cost isn't an issue. Risk is an issue. What if our homeworlds turn around and harm Remnant, once a stable connection is established? We've each told them it's unlikely, but why should they trust our word? We need to establish good credit."

Both Taylor and Tanya looked at Edelgard. This argument hadn't used this exact wording before, but it kept happening, and it kept being the same. If she was provoking it now, she had a point.

"To do either one of those things, we must understand this world. Being outsiders makes that difficult. Anything we hear or read could be false in ways we do not know enough to spot."

That was why they were doing the missions. Taylor could get real, hard to bias information by interacting with the world directly. Team TTCE already had a good idea of what the area immediately around Vale looked like.

Edelgard continued. "It would be better, if we had a source of information from people that liked us personally."

Cat narrowed her eyes in mock suspicion. "Edelgard, are you trying to convince us to make friends?"

"It... would be more accurate to say that my own efforts have borne fruit, and we could work together to improve the results."

Cat's eyes narrowed further. "So you are saying you've already made friends, and they want to hang out."

"Everything I've said is true.”

"But I'm right too, yes?"

"Yes." Edelgard smiled, only slightly abashed.

"No." Taylor's voice was firm, and reflexive. There was a time when that would have sounded wonderful. But she was not doing school again. "Students this young aren't strong enough."

Tanya arched an eyebrow. "I suppose it would make sense to preferentially network with students high on some kind of leaderboard."

"Wrong sort of strength. I don't care how many Grimm they can kill, but nine out of ten people our age can't be relied on to do what is right when the chips are down. If Ozpin is ever against us, random students are going to fold under institutional pressure, no matter what we've done with them or for them. Connections to them are a liability, not an asset."

"There is a difference between walking a path, even alone, and walking it blind." Edelgard didn't rise, but her feet were planted firmly on the floor. "Give them a chance."

"Fine." Taylor could suffer through a few hours of mindless talking.

"No."

All heads turned to back Cat. Taylor had to keep herself from scowling, as she looked up at her teammate sitting on the top bunk, grinning because it seemed she liked causing problems on purpose.

"Commit, or commit against. Whatever is in your head right now, it won't matter what these new people do, you won't trust them. Refuse outright, or actually give them a chance. Create some situation where they can actually succeed if they do the right thing."

"Do you have something in mind, or are you just commenting on my trust issues?" Taylor's voice was cold, and perfectly flat.

Cat shrugged.

"I dunno. But you're clever, I'm sure you'll think of something."

The rest of the meeting was more productive, in Taylor's mind. It seemed like it was possible to book training time, and study rooms. They needed to figure out how, but it should be fairly simple. Having these meetings in their dorm room was irritating. Taylor was able to help Edelgard after her locker somehow reset its combination. A dozen little things.

But the constant pushback and questioning of her decisions irked her. It wasn't like Taylor expected her team, or anyone, to have her back. But the constant reminders that her teammate’s worldviews ran from incompatible to diametrically opposed set her teeth on edge. She hoped that their shared circ*mstances would keep them mostly on the same side.

She would prepare for when that hope failed.

–

Suppertime arrived. Team TTCE ate together sometimes, more out of convenience and a coincidence of schedules than any sense of camaraderie. They had been through danger together, but danger was something they were all far too used to for it to bind them together.

Today, they were all eating separately. It wasn't even because of high tensions at the meeting. It was just how things were with their team.

Cat was three tables over, eating some of the messiest, unhealthiest food the cafeteria was willing to sell to students.

Tanya was sitting at the end of one of the long tables, having found an actual chair that let her eat without the table surface coming up to her chin.

Edelgard was the only one actually talking to other people, enjoying her meal with some of the other students from beacon.

And at the edge of the room was Taylor. It was a fine place to scarf down some calories while reading. It kept people from approaching her.

"Ow, that hurts!"

That dragged Taylor out of her thoughts. She was up and moving before she had even realized it. Her bugs filled her in on the details before she had even taken the second step.

A student with rabbit ears was having those ears pulled by a larger red haired student.

"See, I told you they were real!"

The voice was loud, confident, and cruel. The sort of casual cruelty that expected everyone to laugh along with it, even the victim. That was used to everyone denying anything had even happened.

She wasn't even sure what she could do. She hadn't gotten the hang of using scrolls to record video, there had been too much else to learn. Shouting and drawing attention to it might stop it temporarily, but then the bullies would just escalate where they couldn't be seen.

One person wasn't enough to solve this problem.

Then she blinked. She wasn't alone. Not in the literal sense that the dining hall was crowded, but in the reinforcements sense. Cat was already at Taylor's back, from three tables over. She must have moved quickly.

"What's the plan, Tay?"

"Never call me Tay. We are stopping that." Taylor gestured at the girl getting her ear pulled.

A voice from below piped up. Tanya had ducked below the crowds, and was only a few steps behind. "ROE?"

"Don't touch anybody."

"Goodwill mission, understood."

Edelgard managed to catch up in the last few steps.

Her team hadn't noticed the attack, except for maybe Cat. They had noticed Taylor, and each other. They weren't sure what was happening, but they were here, behind her.

A small voice in the back of Taylor's head grew a little quieter.

"Is this guy bothering you?" Taylor asked the rabbit Faunus.

Team TTCE stood behind her, trying to look imposing. It was something most of them were remarkably bad at. For all their power, skill, and confidence, Taylor realized she was the only one taller than five feet. Maybe Edelgard, but it was a near thing.

Tanya was short enough that she had to have student ID ready, because teachers kept assuming she was a child who had gotten lost.

"Oh, I'm not bothering her," the red headed boy said. "We're just horsing around, right?"

"Yeah, Cardin is just horsing around!" his posse chimed in.

The actual victim stood stock still for a moment, then nodded.

This wasn't unexpected. Cardin had a story the authorities couldn't confirm was false without more effort than they were willing to spend. He had witnesses who would agree with him, and an implicit threat that he would escalate against any attempt at self defense.

It was a common strategy. But one that happened to depend on actually being able to out escalate your opponents.

"Well... as long as we're just horsing around..."

To get him to give up, Taylor just had to show him how that would go.

"Then I want in," Taylor said.

Cardin was ready for a punch. He was ready for someone to grab him or shove him. He was not ready for Taylor to throw a cupcake at his face. All she had to do was reach over a student, grab the dessert, and toss it at him. It splattered right between his eyes.

Cardin sputtered in anger.

Taylor's teammates ranged from amused to almost as indignant as Cardin.

Someone, Taylor wasn't sure who, shouted "FOOD FIGHT!"

The situation descended into anarchy immediately.

All of Beacon, it seemed, was itching to blow off some steam. Students grabbed anything they could get their hands on. Fistfuls of foodstuffs went flying in every direction.

Taylor had to retreat behind a table once watermelons started getting lobbed around. Those might be fun and games to most students here, but one of those could give her a concussion if it hit her head. Tables were upturned and chairs were stacked as an impromptu no man's land began to form in the middle of the food court.

Edelgard was also huddled behind the makeshift shelter, glaring daggers at Taylor, though she'd been laughing just a minute before.

"I request a change to the terms of this fight."

"Oh?"

"Yes. I would like to stab someone."

"No."

"Just one someone."

"Still no."

"She threw soup in my hair!"

It was true. The noodles were still dripping.

Taylor knew how much effort it took to keep hair that long that nice, but she still shook her head.

"If you need to work off some energy, go help out Tanya."

Tanya, it seemed, refused to throw any food, and refused to retreat. This had been noticed by the majority of the food warriors, and they had taken her impenetrable shield as a challenge. A few of them had somehow found coconuts, and were seeing if they could wear her down.

They'd stop if Tanya asked them to. Probably.

The princess looked annoyed, but nodded. Then she realized something, and grinned.

"If that is your strategy, I suppose you can not complain if I follow it."

"Wait, what—"

With hardly a grunt of effort, Edelgard picked up the whole table that they had both been hiding behind, wielding it as a shield as she made her way across no man's land to assist Tanya.

Her table shield was able to push back the coconut throwers, who laughed as they were forced into the crossfire of a larger skirmish.

Taylor was only tangentially aware of these things through her swarm. Because Edelgard had run off with the only safe haven within reach.

Food came arcing in from both sides. Dodging everything was impossible. All she could do was dodge the worst of it, block what she could, and accept everything else.

Her swarm noticed one boy with a ladle filled with cheese dip. She had no direct line of sight to him while he was crouched, so she had to lob a potato over his barricade, jostling his aim before he could hit her.

Dignity mostly intact, Taylor slid underneath a mountain of chairs. It wasn't terribly well constructed, but it wasn't too hard to fit in between the thicket of metal legs. It was at least dry down here.

Moving was hard, and seeing would be worse if she wasn't able to use her swarm. But it was perfect for her needs. From here, she could see the battlefield, and control it with a slight nudge here and there. All while being essentially immune to counter attack.

Most of the action seemed to be in individual duels. They were slow motion and awkward, as the duelists tried to not destroy their makeshift weapons. One enterprising team had broken into the school pantry, and was passing out some local bread that was extremely similar to a baguette.

Cat was perched up high. The dining hall had two tiers of windows, stacked on top of each other. Cat was resting on the sill of one of the second tier windows, drinking in the action. She hurled some insult at someone below, then her shadow lazily caught the apple they threw in reply.

As the apple was being eaten, Taylor pulled out her walkie-talkie. Everyone on the team had gotten one after Sheffield. It was massive overkill for this situation, but Taylor needed to tell her teammate something complicated, that she didn’t have bug signals worked out for.

“Yeah, Tay?” Cat said through a mouthful of fruit.

“Get on the west side of the building.”

“Why?”

“Because it is late in the afternoon.”

Cat swallowed what she had been chewing, the walkie-talkie transmitting the sound in infuriating detail. “Understood.”

The general made her way across the food fight, only really taking hits once. Some girl was using her warhammer to launch cabbages at speeds that probably weren’t appropriate for a food fight. Taylor wasn’t going to be the one to tell her to stop though, that laugh had been disturbing.

People were starting to dismantle the defensive pile of chairs, so Taylor had to crawl out. She walked along the edges of the food fight. She could see through her bugs well enough to dodge attacks, as no one was trying to aim at her specifically.

She looked over at Cardin and his minions. Her plan was working well enough.

Commit, or commit against.

Well, it could be going better. And she would learn something either way.

Taylor’s hand grabbed a tomato right before it could splatter into the face of a pale girl in a red cloak.

The girl startled, silver eyes widening in surprise and then relief.

“That was so cool! Thanks!”

This was one of Edelgard’s friends. At least, she was on the team Edelgard kept sitting with.

“I need your help with something,” Taylor said. There was an annoying amount of foodstuff being thrown at them. Taylor used her swarm to divide her attention. Predicting trajectories was easy when you had dozens of angles to view it from. She was dodging without looking, while still keeping the majority of her focus on the conversation.

“What, how are you doing that while looking at me?”

Taylor didn’t think it was a good idea to dig into the nitty-gritty details of her power right now, so she pressed on.

“Do you see that guy over there? That is Cardin Winchester. He is a bully, and a racist.”

The girl in the red cape frowned. She had been close enough to see something, but she hadn’t reacted. People were like that sometimes, preferring to be passive unless they were put on the spot.

So here Taylor was, putting her on the spot.

“We need to let him know that we aren’t blind to it. That his victims won’t be defenseless.”

“Okay!”

Taylor blinked. She expected hesitation, or at least some thought.

“What do you need me to do?” The girl asked. Taylor looked into her silver eyes for a bit, trying to figure out what her angle was.

“Engage him in the food fight. Win.”

“Um, if I can’t win? It’s luck of the draw sometimes if I don’t have my scythe.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’m stacking the deck.”

She didn’t waste any time, entering some kind of breaker state to zip across and start throwing an assortment of fruit at Cardin.

In Taylor’s opinion, her form could use some work. Taylor had a theory that most Huntsfolk were overspecialized to work with their own weapons, and had trouble whenever they were forced to deal without.

The girl in red was no exception, but today that didn’t matter. Because Cat had finished making it to the window. She was silhouetted by the late afternoon sun. Her shadow stretched faintly to almost the whole room.

It looked like It was weaker when it got that big, but when all you wanted to do was place your thumb on the scale, it was perfect. Everything Cardin threw was nudged slightly off course. It wouldn’t work on anything thrown with serious power, but on improvised weapons that couldn’t be thrown forcefully without crushing them? It was more than enough.

Cardin was losing quite soundly. And more to the point for her plan, he was losing publicly and humiliatingly. He couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn, and his opponent was getting creative.

A whirlwind of red petals surrounded him. Occasionally, the huntress in training would form out of the petals, and strike when his back was turned.

The third time that happened, he struck back. Not with food, but with an elbow. The girl in red was sent away, backflipping to keep her balance.

The crowd hushed for a moment. Honor and reason had long since been abandoned, allies turning on one another, but up to this point it had all been a food fight.

Taylor waited. This was unexpected, but something she could handle. If Cardin wanted to escalate, she could escalate right back.

The girl in red burst into petals. Seconds later, there was a crash. Cardin flinched, but the crash was on the other side of the mess hall, towards the kitchen. He relaxed at the exact wrong time, as a red streak solidified into a Huntress right above him, and emptied an entire barrel of apples on his head.

Though Taylor wouldn’t learn this until later, there was apparently a large cider making club at Beacon, that had just received dozens of barrels of apples. And one by one, those barrels had their lids smashed with aura enhanced strength, and were emptied on top of Cardin.

He tried to fight back. But an apple rolled unnaturally, courtesy of Cat. He tripped.

Laughter echoed.

And then died.

Tables were righted. Students were separated. Messes were swept into manageable piles. All by one unseen telekinetic hand.

Glynda Goodwitch was here. She did not look angry, or even disappointed. She looked as if the mess hall was turned upside down every day, and it was simply her turn to deal with it.

“Children,” she said, stressing the word, “Who started this?”

Fingers were pointed. Blame shifted around.

Lots of people were sent to various officials, in various groups. For starting the fight, team TTCE was sent to see Headmaster Ozpin, along with Ruby Rose, for doing the most property damage. Cardin was disciplined by Glynda separately.

Taylor just now realized that this was the first time she had heard Ruby’s name.

–

The five of them were sitting in Ozpin’s office. There wasn't nearly enough comfortable furniture, so most of them were sitting in folding chairs, beneath the quiet gears in the ceiling.

They waited.

The gears were too quiet. None of them were in mesh. That irritated Taylor. It felt like it was making some sort of statement that she wasn’t getting.

Ozpin was busy filling out some sort of paperwork on his computer. Something to do with salaries. It looked vaguely important, which was why they had to wait for their dressing down until he finished it. Or until he was finished letting them sweat, one of the two.

Most of team TTCE waited with something between boredom and patience. Ruby, on the other hand, looked like she was deciding if bolting or throwing up would be better.

Ozpin sighed.

“Glynda has already given you the riot act, as it were?”

Nods all around.

“Then all I need to do is back her up. Taylor, I know your position here is unusual, but I do expect you to hold yourself to the same standards that I hold all Beacon students to. The same goes for you too, Ruby, though in different ways.”

Taylor filed that away mentally.

“A part of those standards is a respectful learning environment. A little chaos is fine, but what happened today was far more than little. The students are here to learn, and it is my responsibility to make sure that they do.”

It was difficult to avoid tuning him out entirely. The speech just seemed to hit all the notes that every other speech hit.

“...but that being said, Tanya, I was told that despite the chaos, you did not actually throw any food yourself. Is there anything you would like to add to that report?”

The short girl paused for a moment. Clearly choosing every word with care.

“It was a decision we reached as a team. We will accept the consequences as a team.”

Taylor… wasn’t quite sure what to think about that. Tanya was better than that. It would have been trivial to pin all the blame on Taylor, just say she was following the chain of command. That was basically what had happened, she could even sound apologetic when saying it, so it wouldn’t hurt her reputation.

“I see,” Ozpin said. “Well, Ruby, you aren’t on team TTCE. Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Thinking about what Tanya’s angle was would have to wait for later. This was the real test Taylor had set for Ruby. She didn’t particularly care if Ruby could beat Cardin in an inconsequential fight; she cared what Ruby would do when actual consequences were coming home to roost. Because she could easily say that Taylor had told her to do it.

Ruby was nervous. She was fidgeting with her fingers. But she shook her head.

Ozpin sighed again.

“Well, you leave me no choice.”

He paused, apparently for drama.

“Detention for all five of you. Saturdays, from ten to noon in the library, for the next month. Also, Ruby will have to write a letter of apology to the cider club. Now get out of my office, I have work to do.”

They filtered silently out of the room. No one spoke a word as the elevator doors closed.

They were nearly at the ground floor before Edelgard said, in a falsetto, “Oh no professor, not detention!”

Cat burst out laughing. Taylor chuckled a little. Cat noticed, and started laughing even harder.

Taylor scowled. Tanya cracked a smile at that, which just made Taylor scowl even more, and by then Cat was practically doubled over as the elevator doors opened.

“I laugh,” Taylor protested. “Sometimes.”

Edelgard nodded solemnly. “Yes, I also laugh on occasion. I have the court scribe record such instances, to be used as documented proof lest any knave deny I have a sense of humor. I can recommend one, should you require a similar service.”

She got about halfway through before cracking up. Taylor tried to school her expression. She could have expelled all feelings into her swarm. But she didn’t. This… it felt good. The way nothing had felt good in a while.

The only one who wasn’t enjoying themselves at the moment was Ruby, who was a little panicked.

“Guys, could you take this seriously?! We just got in trouble.”

Taylor shook her head. “That wasn’t trouble.”

“Someone trying to kill you counts as trouble,” Cat clarified helpfully.

“And what Cardin was doing counts as trouble," Taylor said. "There are only three Saturdays left in the month. We spend more time than that studying regardless. Moving six hours of study to the library is a price I’ll pay to help someone, every time.”

“She’s so cool,” Ruby said later, quietly. When she thought Taylor couldn’t hear her.

–

Cat felt the heavy, stone weight of satisfaction as she walked back to the dorm. Not because of anything she had done today, it had been too simple to be challenging. Hearing Taylor set up a team get-together with team RWBY was nice, but that wasn’t the cause either. Some events had shed light on one of her headaches.

In this world, Heroes fought Grimm. But conversely, people who fought Grimm were Heroic, which was a very different statement. Relevantly, Cardin fought Grimm, but there was no way anyone considered him a Hero. He was never going to be given a handmade blue scarf from a grateful child.

Sure, he planned to spend his life fighting the common enemies of everyone everywhere, but he was also a bad person. And perhaps more relevantly, he was just generally unpleasant. The narrative went cross eyed and refused to synthesize those facts. Cat had no intention of being a racist or a bully, but where there were two exceptions, there were a hundred.

All Catherine had to do was stand for something Remnant didn’t like, and the label of Hero would start to slide off her. She would keep her eyes peeled. Morality had too many parts for everyone to agree on everything.

–

“We don’t agree on everything here,” Glynda said. “I think they got off too lightly. Team TTCE is too jaded to actually learn from such a minor slap on the wrist.”

Ozpin hmmed in acknowledgement, but didn’t nod. He was looking at two videos on his screen. One was from months ago. It showed four combatants from other worlds, having just arrived in unfamiliar territory, wielding weapons and semblances as if they fully expected that anyone and everyone would try to kill them at any moment. Only a great deal of trigger discipline had prevented outright fatalities in those first seconds.

The other video was also of team TTCE, but it was from a few minutes ago. It showed friends, who were laughing because they’d just gotten one over on their stuffy old professor.

“I suppose that depends entirely on what lesson you are trying to teach.”

Chapter 4: Detention and Differences

Chapter Text

Studying was done quietly, with most being able to bear detention without fidgeting. Ruby had too much energy to sit still for long. Tanya supposed that energy was good long term, if a little inconvenient in the moment.

No moments last forever. Ruby and team Technicolor were given permission to leave. Instead, they began to prepare for the next event. Schedules had coincided, and the best time and place for team RWBY and team TTCE to meet was in the library, immediately after detention.

A dedicated social area was placed away from study rooms. Noise and food were permitted, provided you had library cards and cleaned up after yourself. A tiny but useful bit of knowledge about the world that you usually didn’t get except by living in it. Tanya hoped this was the first of many useful things team TTCE gained from their partnership with team RWBY.

Weiss arrived first, carrying a bag of chocolates and looking rather sheepish. Tanya eyed the bag hungrily, but Ruby’s face fell.

“I thought you were making cookies?” Ruby said.

“There were unexpected difficulties,” Weiss said.

“Aw, don’t leave out the good part!” Yang said. “Weiss-cream here set off the fire alarm!”

Yang had a large cardboard box, carried easily in one hand as she used the other to give Weiss a sarcastic pat on the back.

“There was a fire?” Ruby asked.

Her eyes glittered in a way that Tanya thought was dangerous.

“There was smoke,” Blake said. “And my ears are still ringing from the alarm.”

“Regardless, your efforts are appreciated.” Tanya said. “I’m sure everything will work out for the best.”

Her eyes kept being drawn back to the bag.

--

Most of Remnant’s board games were not suited to eight players. They had broken up into two groups of four. One of them was playing some fast paced but dizzyingly complicated strategy game that sounded like Risk mixed with a trading card game.

Tanya was enjoying the rather more subdued game of resource management. Some confused plays early on meant that some extraordinary luck towards the end had tied the game up in the final round. The Rules were being consulted to see if Tanya or Ruby was the ultimate winner.

“Wait, the first tiebreaker is the youngest player wins?” Tanya asked.

“That sounds like sore loser talk. Whoo!” Ruby cheered.

“Don’t be so certain,” Tanya said. “July 18th.”

Ruby tilted her head mid cheer. “What? It doesn’t matter, I got in two whole years early.”

“I remember, you told me. I am also fifteen, and I was born on July 18th.”

“"You mean you're also younger than everyone else, and you didn't tell me?" Ruby gasped. "Why am I just hearing about this now? We could have suffered through their mockery in solidarity!"

Weiss huffed. "I merely pointed out that you were immature. Something that Tanya does not seem to struggle with.”

“Irregardless!” Ruby said. “October 31st! I’m still the youngest.”

Weiss buried her face in her palms.

--

“By the way,” Edelgard asked. “What are these pieces even made of?”

“Huh?” Yang said. “You don’t have plastic back home?”

“So what is plastic made from? It is unbelievably light for how strong it is,” Edelgard said.

“I… I think oil? Maybe? But there are a bunch of steps in between.”

“I see. One moment please.”

Edelgard walked away from the table.

“Wait, where are you… Ah, you do you, it's not your turn anyway.”

Edelgard returned before her turn, with a book.

–

“Sorry,” Blake said. “I don’t think we actually did introductions. I’m Blake.”

“Cat.” Cat said, shaking the other girl’s hand.

“Wh—what?” Blake said.

“Cat. Short for Catherine.”

“Oh, your name, of course,” Blake said.

“No worries,” Cat said, trying to brush whatever awkwardness the dark haired girl had aside.

She reached into the bag of chocolate. Eating nonchalantly usually convinced people you were relaxed, and maybe they should be too. She was surprised to find out how little was left.

“Huh,” Cat said. “It looks like we are running low. I thought we had more.”

“We’ve all been hungry,” Tanya said. It was slightly rote, like she had been going over what she was going to say as soon as someone noticed.

Though speaking of noticing, Cat wondered how she was going to let Blake know that she knew. She couldn’t begin to guess why Blake would be wearing a bow to hide her second set of ears; there were too many possible reasons, and Cat didn’t know enough about the world or about Blake to pin down which one.

Hells, who was the secret even being kept from? Did the rest of team RWBY know? The more Cat thought about it, the more complications arose. Blake seemed perfectly content to sit and absorb the atmosphere of the party, smiling faintly as she watched her friends have a good time.

Cat was content to let her.

–

Yang dealt out the starting cards for the war game. Edelgard only had a grasp on the basic mechanics, and was embarrassed to admit she had spent more time reading her book on chemistry than listening to the rules.

“So this is your faction power,” Yang said again. “It's like your semblance. It's something you can do that others can’t.”

“We do not have semblances where I am from, but I think I understand you,” Edelgard said.

She danced lightly around the fact that they also did not have Aura where she was from either. Aura was thought to be the power of the soul. Not having Aura implied not having a soul either, though that view was becoming increasingly unpopular. Weiss knew, and did not judge her for it.

Weiss tilted her head. “You’ve mentioned Crests before, and they sounded similar. What is the difference?”

“Crests are significantly rarer.” Edelgard said. “I’ve been told that everyone with an awakened Aura has a semblance. Perhaps one in a thousand in Fodlan have a Crest. And they are inherited, rather than being unique.”

“Well, you aren’t so alone here,” Weiss said. “The Schnee semblance is also inherited. It's the only semblance proven to work like that.”

“So I guess imagine around a dozen house Schnees, each with their own inherited semblance,” Edegard said.

“That sounds… very questionable,” Blake said. She hadn’t spoken since the board had been set up.

Edelgard had to choose her words carefully. “What do you mean by that?”

Blake crossed her arms self consciously. “I mean, it seems almost designed to imply that some people are better, more worthy of power than others.”

Edelgard blinked. She hadn’t often heard her own stance from another’s mouth so readily. “I am… aware… of the contradictions inherent to Crests. There are times where a part of me wishes the Crest of Seiros had passed me by.”

She touched her shoulder self consciously. There was always a part of her that wished the Crest of Flames had passed her by.

“You shouldn’t feel guilty for being strong,” Weiss said.

“Her Crest didn’t make her strong,” Blake said. “Strength isn’t something the outside world can do to you. It comes from within. Edelgard made herself strong.”

Blake realized she was coming on a little too intensely for idle chatter while setting up a board game, and backed down, awkwardly.

“Regardless,” Weiss said after a moment. “You don’t need to be ashamed of being strong, whatever expectations or baggage is attached to it. You are your own person, not some proxy for your family, or society as a whole.”

“Double regardless,” Yang said, “Your faction power means you get to draw an extra card if you attack twice.”

Edelgard let the conversation be steered back to the game. She was smiling softly.

–

The first game had just been for learning the rules. The second game she lost intentionally, in order to switch tables. Now, finally, the third game. The third game was for real.

In this third game, Tanya was going to network with Weiss Schnee. Which meant Tanya had to perform spectacularly. That wouldn't be a problem.

Yang was too aggressive, and usually relied on greater experience with the rules to pull her out of tough corners. Edelgard was new, and only half paying attention. She had fallen into a cycle of starting a book, which used a concept both fundamental and unexplained, which forced her to start another book.

But like golf with the CEO, you had to as well as you could while still losing.

Which presented a problem. Weiss was atrocious at board games, and knew it. She wouldn't appreciate transparent flattery.

Tanya had to provide another option. Some skill Weiss could demonstrate that would make her feel positively about this encounter, with Tanya being caught in the halo effect.

'I was wondering if you could help me with something,” Tanya asked.

“Oh?” Weiss said.

“You have the highest marks in Dust Studies, and seem to use more of it than our other classmates. Do you know any reputable suppliers of esoteric types?”

“A few, but what are you looking for?” Weiss asked.

“My flight battery is broken. It should be able to store enough for hours of sustained flight, but I'm getting less than twenty minutes. I was hoping the experiment—“

“Absolutely not!” Weiss cut Tanya off. “Dust is dangerous. Maybe, maybe, I would feel comfortable enabling you if you read and appreciated this pamphlet on Dust safety.”

Weiss shot a glare across the room at Ruby, as she dug around her backpack to retrieve the paper.

“I was rather hoping there would be more than a pamphlet.” Tanya said dryly. So many people just assumed that she was cavalier about danger. Did she need to carry a sign explaining that she was quite fond of living, and generally took safety as seriously as her career path would allow?

“There is, but everyone stares at me strangely when I hand them the full manual!” Weiss said. “It’s like they don't want to be fully informed.”

Sensing an angle, Tanya pressed. “I find Dust fascinating. There isn't anything like it back in the Fatherland.”

“It is fascinating. It’s not just for combat or energy, Remnant would have starved to death if Earth Dust couldn't be used to enrich soil. It was the number one usage of Dust right up until artificial nitrogen fixation was discovered.”

“Wait, nitrogen is broken? I just read about that, and now it's broken somehow?” Edelgard had been reaching over her books and moving her pieces, but she paused to ask her question.

“Actually, the name just refers to a process for making artificial fertilizer,” Weiss said.

“Ah, I see, another use for Dust.” Edelgard said.

“I don't think so. Nitrogen fixing was discovered recently in my homeworld as well.” Tanya said.

Edelgard nodded. Then she dropped her pieces, and her eyes went wide.

“Where. Which shelf?”

“I'm not sure—“

“Right, right, the librarian.” Edelgard said as she marched off.

Yang groaned. “Okay, so I'm just gonna say she ended her turn there.”

–

“Looks like we ran out of chocolate,” Cat said, trying not to look Tanya in the eye when she said it. “The student convenience store should still be open, so I'm going to restock.”

She walked away quietly. Cat and Taylor had a few things in common, and one of them was that they heard more than the average person would guess. Names were like that. But right now, Edelgard was talking about things that Cat didn’t want to hear.

Far flung technology that she couldn't ever replicate was one thing. But agricultural innovation was the one thing she knew for sure could get you a Red Letter. Cat would rather not know things that could turn Callow into a glowing crater if she let them slip.

And she didn't particularly feel like explaining gnomes.

--

Tanya and Edelgard were combing the shelves, looking for a book on logistics. The topic of history had come up. Tanya had to admit, some worlds had a better grasp on managing the broad sweeps of history than others.

“The Church of Seiros seems quite rational, for a religion,” said Tanya.

Edelgard seemed to pause at that.

“I suppose it may seem that way, to an outsider.”

“Oh? But based on what you've told me, there hasn't been a war between any of the great powers of Fodlan who regularly send their elite to learn at Garreg Mach. Surely that is in the Church's interest, to keep all of its faithful unified and on friendly terms with each other.”

Fewer wars meant more wealth, which meant more coins in the collection basket. It was hardly a paradise, but two hundred years without so much as a proxy war between three powers on the same continent was a result that spoke for itself. Also, if a crusade ever needed to get called, everyone with military training would associate the church with the golden days of their youth.

Purple eyes grew hard.

“Perhaps. But I've found that however reasonable they might seem, the Church of Seiros tends to make people unify around a very unreasonable idea of justice.”

Blue eyes grew hard.

Tanya knew, oh how she knew, how infuriating it could be to deal with someone who claimed divine justification for their actions. How they could throw your life into disarray and demand you thank them for doing it. How they could fail utterly to deal with the world and declare themselves righteous.

Tanya looked into the other girl's eyes. She saw determination. She glanced back at the table they had come from, loaded down with the dozen books Edelgard had collected over the afternoon. Agriculture. Chemistry. Physics. She looked at those books and she saw someone who was actually trying to make a rational plan.

Learning more about the situation was necessary. For all Tanya knew, Edelgard found it unreasonable that the church didn't support the divine right of kings and empresses. But looking at Edelgard... she doubted that very much.

Tanya took a breath, trying to compose her words. And then gave up. There were too many people in the room to delve into a topic as... delicate as this one.

“I think there might be some useful books on metallurgy I could find,” Tanya said.

–

"So really, the number of high quality weapons in my world is limited by the amount of high quality materials. We have plenty of skilled forge masters, but there is only so much they can do with how long it takes to make good steel," Edelgard said.

"Here it’s the opposite!” Ruby said. “All the weapon nerds agree that with enough dust you can get material to have any properties you want it to have, with some limits that are so absurd they don't really matter. The real trick is making a weapon that suits the fighting style, which is hard," Ruby said.

"Which is absurd!" Tanya said, throwing up her hands. "95% or more of all encounters will be against the Grimm. For all their size and ferocity, they can't think and can't adapt. Find a weapon load out that works and refine it. I have seen actual circuses with more standardized uniforms!"

"But that assumes every Huntress, every Grimm, every location in need of defense is the same," Blake said. "There is no one perfect huntress, no one perfect weapon. We all need each other."

"Bah, that is a technicality and you know it. There is no perfect pencil either, but you can still make them in a factory by the millions," Tanya said.

“Remember the board games?” Yang asked no one in particular. She could hardly see over the fortress of books that had accumulated around Edelgard without standing up.

"I'm curious, without modern information infrastructure, how do you actually know where your industrial bottlenecks are?” Weiss asked. “How did you organize that information enough to actually make use of it?"

"Uuuugghhh!" Yang moaned, cutting off Edelgard's reply.

“But Yang, they're talking about weapon logistics. That makes it cool! They're talking about swords, that go fwoosh! Stab! Yeah!"

“That’s… that’s great Ruby,” Yang said.

“Well you see, the scribes—”

Edelgard’s reply was cut off again when Yang slammed her palms on the table, causing the large tower of books next to Edelgard to ominously teeter.

"Right, I am assuming control of this conversation! Edelgard, Weiss, Tanya, you owe me your eager support for torturing my ears and not taking your gosh darn turns for the past half hour!”

"I will of course participate," Edelgard said, nodding solemnly. And slightly abashedly. She hadn’t noticed how much time she had been monopolizing.

Tanya just laughed. "I'm not signing your blank conversational check, and I need to go to the bathroom, anyway. Taylor, watch my scroll.”

“I’m watching everyone’s scrolls. Constantly.”

Taylor stated that as if it was an obvious fact, but Edelgard did wonder if her team leader knew how unsettling her proclamations could be sometimes.

“And what is the decision of the conversation Czar?” Blake asked.

"The topic is..." Yang said, drumming her fingers on the table to build suspense. "How many Grimm kills do you all have? I'm sitting pretty at one hundred and sixty, including four alphas and a Brothers to Brothers full grown Nevermore."

Blake looked unimpressed. "The Nevermore was a team effort, and Ruby got the killing blow. That goes in your stats as an assist. And, for the record, six hundred. Including that same Nevermore by Yang's rules."

Team RWBY's jaws dropped.

"That’s so cool!"

"That number strains credibility," Weiss said.

"Bullsh*t!" Yang said.

"Look me in the eyes Weiss. Tell me I'm exaggerating."

After a staredown, Weiss blinked. "You are quite the talented huntress. I suppose with enough industry, it's just about possible."

"Well, I suppose my record against Grimm is comparatively short. forty, I believe." Edelgard felt almost sheepish. She was used to standing out.

"It is so weird that none of your worlds have Grimm," Ruby said. She looked contemplative, torn between sadness and hope. Then she seemed to snap out of it. "You're still really good at fighting them though!"

"Thank you,“ Edelgard said. “Bandits, it seems, provided more than adequate practice."

Something was wrong. Blake had just stiffened.

Taylor noticed as well. Reading her moods was difficult, but if Edelgard had to guess, her team leader had just gone from relaxed to full alert.

"Two thousand during initiation," Taylor lied. It was a ridiculous, implausible lie, that half the witnesses could prove false. It was trying to smash the flow of the conversation like a battering ram.

“Weiss, Ruby, and Yang looked confused.

"That's nice," Blake said to Taylor, and did not break eye contact with Edelgard. "What exactly do you mean by bandits and practice?"

Ah.

"I mean that removing bandit camps was a common occurrence in Fodlan. It was part of my duties as an Officer in training at Garreg Mach academy. That is where I gained most of my combat experience."

A fly was buzzing insistently near Edelgard’s ear. It was obvious that Taylor wanted her to lie, to deflect.

Edelgard was never one to shy from what was necessary, or the ugly realities it implied.

"And by remove you mean kill, don't you?" Blake said.

Taylor winced at the word kill. It was too late to forget this happened now. Weiss winced too.

Ruby was aghast. "Wait, you've killed people?"

Edelgard kept still. To kill was sometimes the only path to justice. To kill and then lie and say you hadn't would blind you so completely you might never find yourself again.

"I administered justice, yes."

Fire burned in Blake's eyes. Not a roaring, sudden sort of flame, but white hot embers that had been burning a long, long time.

"The penalty for theft is murder, and you call that justice? No attempt at rehabilitation? No looking into the injustices that forced them to steal to survive?"

Edelgard closed the book she had open in her lap, and balanced it carefully on the pile. Then she walked around the table. This would require eye contact.

"I'm not sure you understand what bandits are. I don't deal with pickpockets or cut purses. Bandits are usually well armed men and women who accost upstanding citizens on the open road, making travel dangerous and trade almost impossible," Edelgard said. She didn't back down.

Blake didn't seem interested in backing down either.

"I'm sure that's how you understand them. And I'm sure you think it’s necessary. Everyone always thinks the crackdowns are necessary. They hose the blood off the streets and thank the Brothers that they kept the peace. What gives you the right to decide who lives and who dies?"

Weiss stood up, making placating gestures at both of them. “Blake, don't you think you are being a little harsh? Edelgard is my friend, and she is under a lot of pressure that you don’t understand, and is from a world that none of us understand.”

Edelgard smiled appreciatively, but calmly moved Weiss’ hand aside. There were battles you had to fight on your own.

"Eliminating bandits isn't a right, it's a duty as an officer in training at Garreg Mach. When I become Empress, it will be my duty to my vassals. If I didn't keep the roads safe from bandits, my vassals would have every right to declare me in violation of my Imperial oaths."

"There has to be a way besides killing them!" Ruby said.

"You're equating keeping the roads safe with murdering everyone between you and that goal. You don't even realize you're doing it," Blake said.

Edelgard's eyes were still. Not a peaceful, small sort of still. Her eyes had the quiet of an ocean, too big and too deep to be moved by the storm. She stared Blake down, hardly acknowledging Ruby's words, or even her presence. There would always be those that balked at the cost of the path.

There would be blood far dearer than bandits spilled, on the path to true justice for Fodlan.

"And you are equating compassion with actually solving the problem. If you could solve the problem of banditry, truly solve it, I would give you wealth and honors that this world has never seen."

Edelgard leaned forward, into Blake's space. Blake growled, quietly. Almost a hiss.

"This is not a jest. I swear upon my honor that if you ever come to Adrestia, and solve the problem of banditry within five years, I will give you lands and a title. The church might elevate you to sainthood. All I ask is that, should you fail, you look one hundred children in the eye and explain why their parents had to die for your compassion."

Blake looked to the side, breaking eye contact.

"Do you see what you just did? I can't do that. I can't keep my hands clean and then look away when the problem isn't solved. I am heir to power I never asked for and sins I never chose, all tangled together. I can plunge both hands in and try to make it better, or I can leave it on the side of the road to fester."

And Seiros would reign forever.

And Crests would reign forever.

Blake was about to snarl a retort, but Ruby interrupted. "Blake! I think we're all done tonight. Let’s just go home."

The teams awkwardly, silently, began to gather their things and go their separate ways. Blake kept shooting furious glances at Edelgard, who accepted them with cold silence. Cat and Tanya eventually returned. They read the room, and didn’t say anything, simply helped with cleaning up and putting everything away.

As Ruby was turning to leave, Edelgard reached out and tapped her shoulder. She had no idea what she wanted to say. And she would never learn, because instead of turning to listen, Ruby burst into rose petals and reassembled three feet away.

Ruby awkwardly stuttered something out, before she and her team left.

In the street outside, team TTCE walked quietly.

The holographic streetlamps flickered occasionally. A discarded pamphlet drifted across the road in the wind. No one was looking each other in the eye.

Tanya spoke first. "What, exactly, happened while I was away? I was hardly gone for five minutes, and when I got back relations had deteriorated from boisterous comradery to icy contempt."

"The subject of combat experience came up,” Edelgard said. “The children balked at the idea of there being casualties in real combat."

Tanya processed that for a minute. "Well, it’s unfortunate that cultural misunderstandings ruined an otherwise productive evening."

"Edelgard understood exactly what she was doing," Taylor said, all the frustration boiling over.

"All I did was respond to her points."

"In a way you knew would upset her," Taylor said.

"She implied I was a murderer, to my face, twice. I should think that, across any culture, that would be far more offensive than my words," Edelgard said. She couldn't stop all the heat from leaking into her voice.

"We wanted team RWBY as allies to help us deal with our lack of local knowledge. Now we can't do that," Taylor said.

Edelgard rubbed the bridge of her nose. Regardless of differences, she had worked with far more odious allies productively. She didn't know why such comparatively minor disagreements with Blake caused such problems.

"You are correct. I reacted emotionally, and hindered our common goals. I apologize."

Taylor let, or perhaps forced, her shoulders to relax. "It should be recoverable. There are other teams."

Unless, of course, team RWBY decided to spread the information they had gained. No point in worrying about that now.

It was a short walk back to the dorms. But everyone agreed, without discussing it, that they should take the long route, letting team RWBY take the short route.

Cat broke the silence the second time. "I've killed people too. If it sets us apart here, well, at least the two of us are apart together."

Tanya snorted. "Don't think I didn't notice the obvious attempt to get the rest of us to voice similar statements. It's patently obvious all four of us have inflicted fatalities in combat."

"...Is it that obvious?" Taylor asked. Her voice was flat. Even more than usual.

In contrast, the bugs around them were rustling. Quietly, subtly, but strangely. Edelgard knew Taylor could offload tasks onto her insect servants. In a burst of clarity, Edelgard realized that she could not only give them mental tasks, but emotional tasks.

At this moment, Taylor didn't know what or how to feel, so she was having her power do it for her.

Edelgard had not been willing to lie to Blake. To lie to Taylor, about something that mattered so much to her that she needed to hide it, was unthinkable.

With all the grace and solemnity she could muster, Edelgard nodded. She had seen that look too often in the mirror to not recognize it.

More silence.

They were all back in their dorm, having gone to bed, before Edelgard considered breaking the silence again.

‘I am trying to be grateful that they do not understand,’ Edelgard thought. ‘That their world is close enough to justice that it allows gentler, kinder paths. Was that not what we were fighting for? A kinder world?’

It was late. The silence remained.

Chapter 5: Interlude 1.1 Sleepless

Chapter Text

It had been a few days since the unproductive board game night. Tanya couldn't sleep. It was ridiculous and irrational. She was a trained soldier. She had slept on cold muddy ground with artillery shells bursting overhead. She had burned down civilian factories that refused to surrender and then slept like a baby. She could sleep anywhere, anytime, under any conditions. Her dorm room had a soft bed, strictly enforced quiet hours, and a thermostat if ever got too hot or too cold.

She couldn't sleep.

She decided to stop cursing the darkness and go for a walk. Maybe she would get tired enough to sleep afterward. She quietly put on her amulet, shoes, and coat, and walked out into the cool night air.

The moon was nearing its brightest phase. Both outside of the planet’s shadow, and rotated so that the debris gave extra surface area to reflect light. A decent night for a walk.

Beacon was a beautiful campus, a triumph of Valish engineering. It was well lit, so pedestrian traffic was possible at all hours, though little was required for this particular night to be well lit. Running into other people this late was still uncommon. Even more uncommon was meeting up with a roommate from the room you had just left.

Catherine was seated on a bench. Surrounding her were a dozen or so small plastic bags. She would open one, bring whatever substance within it up to smell, then wrinkle her nose and move on to the next one.

Tanya looked around frantically. She didn't know what the substance abuse penalties were like in Vale, let alone on Beacon's campus. No one seemed to be watching, but she still hustled next to Catherine to hopefully obscure as much from view as possible. She had no idea what would happen to her if her teammate were caught.

Catherine took one look at her face and then flashed that infuriating smirk of hers. Tanya tried to keep the rage and most importantly the volume out of her voice. She was used to dealing with superiors, subordinates, or competitors. A teammate was a rarity. She couldn't shout at Catherine for being insubordinate because she wasn't a subordinate. But she didn't have to grin and bear it because she wasn't a superior.

“Do you have any idea how much trouble you are in?” Tanya whispered.

Catherine's smirk stretched into a lazy grin. “None.”

“You mean you don't know?!”

“I mean I do know the legal consequences, and there aren't any. I bought these from a legitimate dispensary.”

“So you are free to find an addiction in peace then, are you?” Tanya said as Catherine opened and rejected yet another bag.

Catherine scoffed back. “Hardly. I'm trying to see if any of these are wakeleaf.”

Tanya tilted her head. “Oh? Is that a Callowan opioid?”

“Nope. It's like smokeable coffee, but better. It clears your head, helps you focus. Mild headache when it wears off, or when you go without for a while.”

Damn. Coffee was already a hot commodity. Finding something that could do that would be valuable indeed. Shame about the smoke though. Tanya hated smoking.

Catherine checked the last bag, but it apparently was not wakeleaf, as she crumpled it up and put it away. She put her face in her hands and rubbed her forehead. Her elbows were on her knees, and her shoulders slumped in defeat.

Tanya commented dryly. “Don't despair. Next time you can try the truly illegal goods.”

One eye peeked out behind her hands and hair. “That was last week. And the week before that was the grocery store.”

“Oh um. There... there?” Perfect, Tanya. Surely your attempt at consolation will be a bright spot on your record.

“Ugh. The headaches are subsiding anyway. I'll manage.” She sat upright again, and both girls stared awkwardly into the night.

The silence stretched. It wasn't a comfortable silence. They both wanted to say something. Neither seemed to be able to. If they both stayed quiet they could pretend nothing had happened, that neither one of them noticed. That Catherine and Tanya were both out here coincidentally. Even though Catherine wasn't doing anything that required the cover of night, and Tanya wasn't doing anything at all.

Cat had always been more willing to wade into peril with no plan and no backup.

“So why are you out here?” Catherine asked. All her joking manner had left her voice.

“Same reason you are, I suspect.” Tanya's voice was flat.

“They're both pretty young to have nightmares like that.”

“I've seen them in younger,” Tanya said. It shouldn't bother me like this.

“Same here. Doesn't help,” Catherine said.

No. It doesn't.

The silence stretched once more. But it didn't matter; the seal had been broken.

Tanya spoke first this time.

“I haven't had the misfortune of dealing with them myself. Before, it was always one of my mages. They were the only people who slept close enough to me for me to hear. I could juggle assignments, make sure they were with friends for a few days. Once, it became unacceptable, and I had to fudge paperwork to get them some medical leave.” Tanya's mages came first..

Tanya rested her head back against the bench. “I could always do something.”

Catherine put her hands in her pockets and looked up at the stars.

“I was put in a general's tent as soon as I left officer's school. I was more removed than that. Except for Kilian, and she... She never had those problems.”

Tanya had never heard the name Killian before. Though she supposed it would make sense to try and not to think about people you might never see again.

“But wait, if you've—” Oh.

“Yeah.” There was more than a bit of resentment in that word.

If she hadn't seen others have nightmares like that, that meant she had been the one to have nightmares like that.

Tanya tried to pick her next words carefully. She was already miles out of her emotional depth. One wrong move could cause catastrophic failure. She was used to pressure. She was used to danger. It just normally exploded literally and not metaphorically.

“How did you... stop having them?”

Catherine shook her head bitterly. “Didn't. Because—“ the last word was full of spite, until Cat bit down and cut herself off.

Catherine's face was a studiously blank mask. No emotion, no openness, no mercy.

“You say that you've never had those sorts of dreams. Elaborate.”

Was it a demand for justification? A need for an explanation? Tanya couldn't tell. She couldn't read anything. It wasn't that Catherine's poker face was good, because Tanya had actually played poker with her and knew she had tells for days. This face was different. This was not a face you used for games.

So how to put this? Tanya cleared her throat.

“Danger was just something I got used to. It terrifies me, I don't like it, and I always try to minimize my risk before going into battle. I try to avoid battle whenever I can. But whenever the shooting starts, I'm always the one in control. I've been ambushed, but I just make a plan and execute it. I've even been ambushed while I was alone, but I was still in control. I called every step in that Charlie Foxtrot. From the second I was told I couldn't retreat I knew I was good enough to fight my way out.”

Catherine's face was still blank. “And the rest?”

Ah yes. Personal danger wasn't the only thing that could cause nightmares.

“You were a general. I was a Major at the very peak of my career. I didn't pick my strategic objectives, I received them. Command decided what was worth killing or dying for, I just made sure I did it with as little dying as possible. I wasn't perfect, but the 203rd consistently had the fewest casualties of any mage battalion that saw our level of action. As for killing... I stayed within the laws of war.”

That was technically true. Just like a large number of technical truths associated with her career. But Catherine… Catherine was aware of the necessities and practicalities of war. She didn’t need to sugar coat it.

“I had to stretch it sometimes. Provoked enemies into crossing the line so I could cross it back. I played tricks to color within the lines and fulfill the objective while still keeping myself and my mages alive. But I never broke a single treaty first, even when my enemies flaunted them..”

She had always tried to keep the war sane. She minimized pointless slaughter. There was slaughter, but always for a point.

Tanya knew she was far less sentimental than most. So it struck her as odd that it seemed like she was the only soldier left in the world not willing to kill for spite. It seemed that seeing the inherent dignity of your fellow man was simply not as durable as finding their deaths wasteful. She'd gotten more medals than she could sensibly display, but that commitment to sanity, to only killing when there was a point to it, had been the part of her conduct that Tanya had been most proud of.

“I never destroyed for the sake of destruction. It was never worth it to burn everything, just to declare victory over the ashes.”

If that wasn't enough for Catherine to not hate her, then to hell with Cat.

Tanya looked up to see Catherine again. Her face was hard, but it wasn't blank. Eventually, Catherine nodded. Whatever test there was, Tanya passed it.

“I still have them,” Catherine said, “They're just quieter these days. Less intense. They got better... for a couple reasons, really. Time. My Name whispering in my ear, telling me I'm in the right. Help from my friends. Friends I could count on, people I could let my guard down around. That was the biggest thing.”

“sh*t,” Tanya swore.

Catherine laughed. “Gods Below, what kind of a response is that? I bare my soul and you cuss at me?”

Tanya waved her hands defensively. “No, uh, I didn't mean it that way! I just meant... Look, if you said they needed two rivers crossed and a fort to be cleared of enemy presence, I'd have known what to do. If you told me they needed a mountain of gold, I’d have least known where to start. But apparently they need time, which I can't get more of, some religious super power—” Catherine laughed, and Tanya ignored her “—that I don't even think is real, or help from their friends, which means us, which means they're doomed!”

Catherine had nearly doubled over in laughter at this point. Tanya's scowling failed to make her combust, or take this seriously. In fact, she started laughing even harder once she looked up and saw Tanya's face.

Tanya crossed her arms and tapped her foot.

Catherine took a deep breath, and straightened up with her Officer Face on. The face you wore when the grunt's antics were actually pretty funny this time around, but you couldn't let them know that. Except that Tanya was an officer too, and could see all the tiny cracks in the mask.

It would have to do. Tanya cleared her throat.

“So, we've established that neither one of us is an effective friend in this situation. What now?” Tanya asked.

Catherine slid into her Thinking Face.

“Let’s pretend it isn't a problem about friendship. How do you normally solve problems?”

“Use any established authority I can find,” Tanya said. “Make my problem the bureaucracy's problem. If my problem falls outside the purview of the system, either expand the system or ask the system for permission to shoot the problem. You?”

“Lies, violence, and the odd goat,” Catherine said.

Goat. Goat. That triggered something. A memory... from one of the introductory brochures? Surely it couldn't be that simple...

“...I'm pretty sure the school therapist is a goat faunus,” Tanya said.

“I don't even know what a therapist is and I'm certain that will work. Goats have never failed me in the past.”

“They're trained experts in psychology. They try to help people process their problems in a healthy manner.”

“I should tell Black about them. My world would run out of Named if we had enough people like that.”

Black was another name she had never mentioned before. Tanya made a mental note of it.

“It doesn't always work. Especially if the patient isn't cooperative.”

Catherine got up, and stretched from side to side. “It's what we've got for right now.”

Catherine began walking back to the dorm, and Tanya followed. The night was getting colder, and Tanya had her fill of walking. But one thing nagged at the back of her mind.

“Catherine, just how many plans of yours involved goats?”

A grin split Cat's face. She swept her hand dramatically to set the scene. “So there I was, at officer's school...”

Chapter 6: Interlude 1.2 Restless

Chapter Text

Most people could not be productive for eighteen hours straight. The mind wandered. It demanded distractions. It began to slow, then plod. Willpower was a renewable but finite resource, and you couldn’t just keep going simply because what you were doing was important. No matter how willing the spirit, the flesh was weak.

Most people were not James Ironwood. The flesh may be weak, but Mettle was stronger.

His semblance was the only reason he could hold two seats on the council, maintain the duties of both, while simultaneously protecting Remnant from threats most never knew of. In the depths of Mettle, he might need sleep, but never rest. His only limitations were physical.

Those limitations were choosing this moment to rear their heads. Surprisingly not hunger or tiredness this time. His right hand was twitching oddly.

He frowned. That arm was good work. There wasn’t anything debilitating about the twitching. It was an infrequent, small movement. He could write and he could fight, if he had to.

Ironwood got up anyway. He could fit a trip to the workshop in between an informal status update.

His boots clomped on the polished white floors. Moonlight pooled in through the hallways' tall windows, and was almost banished by the automatic lights reacting to his presence. How many days had he been inside, to not notice how bright the nights were getting?

Moonlight returned behind him as the lights turned off, and he grew worried. There were only a few people on the graveyard shift, and it was possible none of them were actually in the main lab at the moment. He didn’t actually know what they were doing today. He might be wasting his time. These sorts of mistakes always kept cropping up whenever he stopped paying attention.

The doors slid open, revealing the lab. A central cluster of computers, surrounded by hologram whiteboards, plus a handful of physical ones because Pietro had insisted. Further out, machinery and benches, with a handful of scattered computers.

There were a few scientists and engineers. Most of them were in what Ironwood thought of as the “nod and then verify” section of the lab. Portals to other worlds would be strategically unmatched, with options he couldn’t have dreamt of before suddenly available. But the actual details of it were so far beyond him, he could only nod when given an update or asked for more resources, then desperately try to verify if he was being hoodwinked later.

The secrecy of the project made it exceedingly difficult, and the ‘travelers’ recalcitrance had not aided matters. Ironwood breathed out. He shouldn’t blame them. He wouldn’t want to live in a laboratory either, especially one controlled by forces he couldn’t know or trust. Much freer, to be a student.

The scientists were making the sort of angry math and theory noises that were generally associated with progress. Ironwood decided to leave them be. Though Dr. Tenebre was known to throw whiteboards when she was riled, so he didn’t tune them out completely.

The basics of maintenance were straightforward enough. All the tools he needed were here, and of high quality. Critically, all the steps could be done with his left hand. He sat down on an out of the way bench next to a hulking mass of machinery.

“Salutations!” said a bright and chipper voice, totally at odds with the lateness of the hour.

Ironwood was startled, but tried his best to restore his composure. “...Miss Polendina,” he said.

Penny Polendina was… Well, the P.E.N.N.Y. project had been Dr. Polendina’s magnum opus, but Penny had become Pietro’s daughter. Her situation was… odd. Both metaphysically, and currently, physically. A mass of wires and machines surrounded her, until only her head was visible.

The P.E.N.N.Y project was a machine that could generate Aura. Penny was that, and also a girl.

“Grandfather Ironwood!” Penny said.

Ironwood dropped his screwdriver. “What?”

“Well, my father is Pietro, and he says he works for you...”

“That's… not the sort of relation we have.”

“Uncle Ironwood?” Penny tried.

“Still not it.”

Penny frowned.

“What should I call you?” she said, stressing the word ‘should’.

“Call me James.”

“Oh! Father told me about this, it is a symmetrical protocol! You may call me Penny.”

James tried to smile genuinely. It was a little wooden after a long stint inside Mettle, but Pietro was saying that Penny needed as much social practice as she could get.

“Well then, Penny, I’m sorry for waking you up. Do you mind if I use this bench for a while?”

“Not at all, James!”

The robot—the girl he corrected mentally—hummed as he collected what he needed. The screwdriver from off the ground. A decent oscilloscope. A computer that could accept the serial port readings, in case there were any error codes.

The scientists on the other side of the lab still hadn’t noticed him. The volume was growing a little unprofessional, but you didn’t end up on the night shift for a top secret project by having thin skin or by being a people pleaser.

Ironwood sat down, and peeled off his glove.

Penny gasped when she saw his arm. Her speakers digitally and perfectly recreated the sound of a shocked intake of air.

“James,” Penny said, “are you—”

“I’m not synthetic,” James said flatly, and immediately.

Some people said that General Ironwood was heartless. His job would be less complicated if that were true. Letting a girl believe the impossible while he searched for a gentle way to let her down might have been easy, but it would have been cruel.

“Oh.” Penny said.

Penny was quiet, and the silence stretched for a bit. Ironwood hated solutions that looked exactly like the problem.

“I’m sorry,” Ironwood said.

“‘You never need to be sorry for what you’re made of’,” Penny said, in a slightly deeper voice. “If nothing is wrong with being organic, and nothing is wrong with being synthetic, it must be fine to be a bit of both! It would be illogical for the result of a linear combination of vectors with strictly positive components and scalars to have any negative components. No one ever suggested that morality uses modular arithmetic.”

Ironwood smiled. He wasn’t quite sure what all of that had meant, but Penny had snapped out of her momentary gloom.

“I suppose it is a part of me,” Ironwood said. “Part of my history. I’ve had this right arm longer than I had the old one. It’s part of how I interact with the world, part of how the world interacts with me.”

Ironwood plugged in the leads for the oscilloscope while he talked. These signals almost never had problems, but he was in no rush. He had the time to do the maintenance methodically.

“If that is true, then why do you only cover up your right hand with a glove?”

Ironwood blinked. “I… you know, would you believe it’s actually the other way around?”

Penny tilted her head as best she could within the confines of her charging station. “I guess I would believe it if that were true? But why would I see a glove on your right hand if it's actually on your left? Wait… are you a magician?!”

“No, I mean that when I get ready in the morning, I put both gloves on,“ Ironwood said. ”But my hands sweat if I’m indoors, or down south. When I feel that happen, I usually get irritated and take the glove off. But that only ever happens with my left hand.”

“So you are asking if I would believe that it is not that you are only wearing one glove. It is that you are only not wearing one glove.” Penny said.

He hadn’t meant for a basic rhetorical device to be interpreted as a philosophical question, but he was willing to see where this went. Pietro also said that philosophy would be good for her.

The distraction giving him some quiet while she thought was a related benefit.

There was a series of minute clicks and whirs, as Penny’s optics shifted and her pupils dilated. She focused with laser intensity on both of his hands.

“It is no use.” she said. “Wearing one glove and not wearing one glove sound like opposites, but they look exactly the same! How am I supposed to know?”

“Sometimes you can’t know what the right decision is,” Ironwood said. ”You just have to learn what you can, decide, and then do your best.”

Penny kept quiet for a while after that, and Ironwood had some time to focus on measuring the signals in his arm. Lights flashed in her eyes as she wirelessly trawled through databases and archives. She would occasionally ask questions, but they were simple ones. Honestly, the scientists were the bigger distraction.

“I am trying to learn what I can,” Penny said. “I think to make the right decision, I need to know about your right arm, but I can’t find any details. I also can’t find any evidence of you being put on leave to upgrade it, even though your medical leaves are a matter of public concern by Atlas law.”

“A friend made it for me,” Ironwood said. “The blueprints were never released to the public.”

“Oh, is that why you have been waiting to upgrade it?” Penny said. “You’ve been waiting for your friend, because no one else would do it right?”

James laughed.

“What? Did I get it so wrong it was humorous? You have to tell me if that happened! Father said it was sometimes okay to laugh about others’ mistakes, but you had to tell the person what was right, and you couldn’t be mean about it!”

“No,” Ironwood said. “I’m laughing because you got it exactly right. That’s almost word for word what he said.”

Penny smiled. “Maybe you could call him? I bet your friend would know how to fix the jitter!”

“I can’t.” Ironwood said. “He passed away.”

“Oh.” Penny said.

Again, she was quiet.

“I have decided,” Penny said after a while. “You don’t have only one glove on. You have only one glove off. Friends are too important to cover up with a glove.”

Ironwood nodded.

Eventually, he was able to diagnose the issue. He had needed Penny’s help, as her eyes were able to notice fine details that he couldn’t. It seems the maintenance flap hadn’t been properly sealed the last time he had done this on his own, and some ink had fallen through the gaps.

He was in the process of putting tools back where they came from when the noise on the other side of the lab changed tone. They had progressed from raised voices to harsh language, and Ironwood was wondering if this argument was about to become his problem. All he could gather was that some of his people had spirited opinions over what did and didn’t count as valid data for the portals. And equally spirited opinions on anyone who held different opinions.

“Do they… do this often?” Ironwood asked.

“Oh, frequently!” Penny said, cheerfully. “I usually sleep through it, but I go through the audio logs once I wake up. Science is loud. And interesting!”

“Did you know,” Penny said, “That there are four girls from other worlds in Vale?”

“Yes,” Ironwood said.

“Do you think I could meet them, some day?”

Gears shifted, scraped, and crunched inside Ironwood’s brain. Ten seconds ago this conversation had been fairly calming, and about safe topics, like what rain felt like, or what his favorite type of math was. Now one of the most complicated, high value situations he knew of was asking to be put into direct contact with the one of the other most complicated, high value situations he knew of.

Penny was undoubtedly a person, but she was not just a person. She could, potentially, be the key to victory in the war. The war. The one against the Grimm. Against Salem. Penny didn’t even have to fight herself, it would be enough if some of her later siblings joined the fight, if there ever were any.

Similarly, the travelers were people, but they weren’t just people. They were possibly the only link to other worlds. Worlds with weapons and powers unavailable here. With healing beyond the wildest dreams of medicine. Even if all they could do was trade for grain, farms that didn’t need protection from the Grimm would be a brother’s sent miracle.

But Penny and the travelers were complicated and volatile. Penny had her difficulties, secrets the world had to be prepared to accept. The travelers were powerful, and clearly had their own loyalties and agendas.

You didn’t let complexities multiply. What if one of the travelers decided that Penny was an abomination, and refused to cooperate with anyone from Remnant ever again? Ironwood didn’t even trust his own citizens to not think that, not without guidance. What if Penny got told she was an abomination, and entered a spiral she never recovered from? Or if the travelers weren’t hostile themselves, what if they led Penny into a hostile situation by accident?

No, complex and volatile situations were kept separate. Multiplying complexities led to mistakes, and Ironwood could not afford to make mistakes. General Ironwood’s mistakes got people killed.

Perfect solutions were a fairy tale. You learned what you could, decided, and then did your best. But you damn well didn’t invite failure inside.

“We need to respect their privacy, at least what remains of it. They don’t want to be approached by strangers,” Ironwood said.

“We could exchange information.” Penny said. “Then we wouldn’t be strangers, and we could meet.”

“Ozpin would be upset with me if I handed out their private information, as would the travelers themselves.”

Penny furrowed her brow, thinking. “But the fact that they are in Vale isn’t private information. So if I cross their path during the Vytal Festival, we can meet then.”

“There will be thousands of people at the Festival,” Ironwood said, growing weary at the size of the headache that was being created in front of his eyes.

“And if I meet all of them, the only task left will be finding out which four are the travelers!”

This needed to be cut off at the root. “Penny, you can’t meet every person in Vale.”

“Why not? I’m going there to introduce myself to the whole world! I’ll just do it one at a time for a few.”

“Why do you even want to meet the travelers so badly?!”

“I… hoped they might understand.”

“Understand what?” Ironwood said.

“Those scientists over there?” Penny gestured with her head as best she could with constraints of her massive charging station.

“They keep saying, ‘They’re unique! The travelers are unique! There isn’t anyone else like them, not in all the world! That makes guessing what happened so hard!’” Penny said.

“So I guess, I am hoping, since they’re older than I am, they might understand how to be unique. Because I don’t,” Penny said.

A dozen objections sprung to mind. The travelers were only unique here, not where they came from. And even if that weren’t the case, they were teenagers, and probably didn’t understand their role in life any better than Penny did.

Penny was just latching onto a word.

Because she was desperate for any connection.

Because she had been in a lab for most of her short life.

Because there wasn’t anyone else like her, in all the world.

Some people said Ironwood was heartless. His job would be less complicated if that were true.

“I will talk to Ozpin,” he said.

Penny’s gratitude was interrupted by the engineering dispute hitting a boiling point. Dr. Tenebre began to hoist one of the physical whiteboards above her head, and it officially became Ironwood’s problem.

He had the length of one dressing down about workplace professionalism to think about how he was going to get Penny her meeting.

He’d made his decision. Now he just had to follow through.

–

Tonight’s moon probably had an official name, but Emerald had always just thought of it as one of the unlucky ones. It was too bright, too easy to get caught. Bad things happened on nights like these. People got hurt.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Cinder was too busy pacing to look at it. Her heels clicked against the cement of the rooftop. The Emerald of a year ago would have guessed she was deep in thought. But by now, she could notice all the little details. Her jaw was slightly clenched. Her right hand kept twitching. It looked like she was brushing away nonexistent wrinkles in her dress.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

Emerald wasn’t worried. Cinder would turn this around. Cinder had never failed Emerald, and would certainly never fail herself. Cinder was the type to never rest until she won.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

“And this on top of the mission changing at the last minute,” Cinder said.

Clack. Clack. Clack.

“Did Watts say anything else?” Cinder asked. Emerald could hear the smile in her voice, but it was a smile that had teeth.

“No. He just said that I should tell him everything you say. That you might… that he might take control soon.”

Clack.

Cinder turned around. “Did he say that exactly?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Emerald,” Cinder said, “Did he use the word ‘take’, or not?”

Emerald shook her head. “He just implied that you might not have it for much longer if—if things like Sheffield kept happening.”

“You can’t say things like that!” Emerald said. “Cinder is the boss.”

“Is she?” he asked. “Figured everything out on your own?”

Emerald hesitated.

“This is her project, I’ll grant you,” he said. “She is in control, and I am here to humbly assist. But you’ll note, everything I’m assisting with keeps working, and everything she plans keeps failing. Your education has been, well, different from mine, but I expect it was superior in teaching that failure is rarely tolerated for long.”

Emerald rolled her eyes. “It also taught me that pulling a knife is a good way to end up with one in your back.”

“Of course, of course. That is why you count the knives first.”

“Sheffield does not even qualify as a setback,” Cinder said. “We are already halfway done with one of our original goals.”

Cinder called forth a tongue of flame, just to emphasize the point.

“And for these new objectives, we’ve seen them fight. We learned that their leader’s range is longer than we assumed. They can only guess at what happened, or why,” Cinder said.

They had too much warning. Cinder had been able to gather that from just a few moments examining the tracks at the battlefield. The Grimm had been given orders to subdue instead of kill (Emerald shuddered at the idea of Grimm being given orders), but the monsters never even got close enough for that to be a possibility.

“And if he isn’t willing to take what he wants, then all he is doing is posturing,” Cinder said. “And he knows what is waiting for him if he ever tries to do more.”

Cinder looked into the distance. She wasn’t looking at the moon. She was looking… West? North-West? Emerald couldn’t hear the confident smirk in her voice anymore.

“You're unconvinced,” Cinder said. She didn’t even need to turn around.

“You told me not to worry about him succeeding, so I’m not,” Emerald said. “But if Watts tried to recruit me, he might try to get Merc as well.”

That was hard for her to say. Surprisingly hard to say. Cinder had seen her worth, had raised her up from nothing. All Mercury had done was fight beside her a few times, and snark. Lots of snark.

“Well. If the poor boy needs a victory to remind him who is really powerful… I’ve heard of just the opportunity.”

The smile was back in her voice, with more teeth than ever.

“And it just so happens that our greatest step forward yet will have no role for either one of them to play.”