Crimson Immoderation Part 21: Black and White 2

“No! Really!” I exclaim, “Someone explain the gunship!”

“Dear Vlad, you need look no further than who is running this operation,” Cinder tells me, nodding to where the Lieutenant is disembarking from one of the bullheads with some grunts. “It's tragic that Auburn could somehow be considered the more subtle in comparison to anyone but, this is the nature of the White Fang. Their mandate is as freedom fighters, not thieves. If they have resources at their disposal, they'll use them.”

“Had no idea they had a gunship though,” Emerald mutters.

I give Cinder a look. “Cinder, did you know they had that?”

She glances at me, smirking. “It was only reasonable to assume they had resources they were keeping secret from me.”

I hold my look.

She glances at me again.

A third time. “Fine I didn't know, okay?” she grumbles, looking away.

“Consider yourself lucky this box is so small I can't punish you here and now.” Try to pretend at that unflappable attitude when you have as much idea what the fuck they're doing down there as I do. She's in for such a pounding when we get back to Beacon.

And yes, that does refer to spankings and her taking it in the ass again. Even though at this point I don't think she minds either. The excited wiggling she fails to suppress tells me that much even if I hadn't already figured that out.

“It's starting,” Emerald says urgently.

Sure enough, Blake has leapt down from her building perch and is skulking through the goons. To her credit, she is very fast. To the point it's hard to keep track of her sometimes for how good she is at keeping eyes off her. Even when I'm looking for her she seems to vanish from one place to reappear somewhere else.

Up on the rooftop she just vacated, another blonde woman dressed predominantly in white hangs over the edge, watching anxiously. Is that girl Sun? She might be the most distinctly different of all of the genderbended characters so far. Still has the abs, naturally. Still more than happy to show them off. But instead of an open jacket and jeans she wears a midriff-baring, white crop-top and some kind of billowy white pants I'm not sure of the precise term for, her monkey tail poking out the back and swaying anxiously.

Where she can get away with it she quickly takes out one of the goons and disposes of them somewhere out of the way. All the while moving closer and closer to the tajitu-masked leader until–

-(-)-

BLAKE

She wasn't sure what her plan was going into this. She hadn't wanted to believe that the White Fang were involved in petty dust store robberies. She wanted to prove that they wouldn't stoop so low. Sun had said that if she wanted to prove they weren't behind it, then her best chance was to check out an ideal situation for a robbery and find whoever was actually responsible.

Well... Sun had put it a lot dumber than that... But her logic was sound and her heart was in the right place.

But then watching this place her fears had been realised. They were behind this. On the face of it, this heist wasn't any different than robbing the SDC shipment arriving by train. The mission she had abandoned Auburn for good. It was still taking dust that would have made a profit for the Schnee off the backs of faunus labour and putting it to a better cause. But here, with it paired with petty robberies, the context was different. Hurting Jacques Schnee, securing resources to fight the good fight, that was one thing. This was different. Dust stores had been hit. Shipments had been hit. They were attacking dust supplies at every level of the supply chain.

They were engineering a dust shortage. This wasn't fighting for equality anymore, fighting to be heard. Auburn was preparing for war and Blake had no idea why.

But she knew what she had to do about it.

Gambol Shroud lashed out, snaking around the throat of Auburn's number two, dragging him back and off balance as she launched herself at him. Her blade struck once, twice. She didn't hesitate. She couldn't afford to. Not against him.

It didn't matter. As she slid under his reaching arm his movement changed to a vicious backhand before grabbing the ribbon of her weapon. Yanking on it, he ended the flight he sent her on and dragged her back to him. His muscular fingers clung to her throat. “Well now, of all the people I expected to meet tonight, I did not think for a moment it would be you. Good to see you in such playful spirits, little kitten!” he spoke with menacing cheer. “I see Auburn taught you to play rough.”

Thirty seconds. That was how long she could afford to not breathe without weakening. “Why are you doing this?” she choked out, “Why are the White Fang trying to weaken the kingdom?”

“You lost the right to those answers when you abandoned us, kitten,” he responded, his fingers clenching only to find nothing between them. “Ugh, fine. We will do this the hard way,” he spoke as he searched around for her, “Either way, I will bring you back to Auburn. I'm sure she would like to express her displeasure at your actions in person. Hm?” As he tried to spot Blake he instead saw another faunus girl diving headfirst into a fight with his soldiers. Sun it seemed had seen Blake in distress and chosen to act.

“Hey!” the blonde cheered, “Well I guess Blake's okay after all so I'll just have some fun with–“ The monkey faunus cut short her words as she ducked beneath the swing of one of the grunts, flipping on one hand to kick him in the face and turning it into a twirling motion with her staff spinning around her, demolishing multiple White Fang members in quick succession. “With these guys!” she finished,e her statement. Her staff snapped open into a set of nunchaku, twirling on end to crack a faunus' aura in one shot, firing the shotgun inside it mid-motion to deal with another.

Blake could feel the Lieutenant's annoyance even through his mask. He nodded at something above. She took this moment of distraction for all it was worth, scything out at the faunus' legs, dancing around him, striking several times in a matter of instants to chip away at his aura. But as he grabbed hold of his weapon to deal with her she saw what he was nodding at. “Sun, Look out!”

“What?” the monkey faunus asked, oblivious, more interested in the grunts who were backing away from her. “These guys are kind of wusses. Running away? Some freedom fighters you are–“

BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BANG!

“SHIT!” the blonde exclaimed as she dove out of the way of the gunship's strafing run, taking cover behind a shipping container. The gunship came around for another pass–

While the Lieutenant was busy tangling with Blake for an instant he could see what was about to happen. “DON'T SHOOT THE CONTAINER!”

“SUN!” Blake called out at the same time.

The monkey faunus quickly put two and two together where she was, what she was hiding behind and what the gunship was about to hit and bolted, first running then making two clones to throw her away further.

BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-BA-!

The sixth shot hit the container dead centre in the middle of the SDC logo. And as the high-caliber round penetrated the sheet metal–

BOOOOOOM!

Whatever else was happening, it all was forced to a stop as every faunus present had to take cover from the explosion. The result could have been far worse than it was. As far as Blake could tell, that particular container contained only ice and earth dust. Though the ability to say it could have been worse was Blake's imagining of the worst case scenario of something like explosive and gravity. The result of the dust in the container being activated was the two types of dust going off, expanding to the point they caused enough pressure that the container detonated like a frag grenade, shrapnel firing off in every direction. It was a lucky thing none of the pieces struck another container to cause a chain reaction. If that had happened, the harbour would be gone.

Sadly for the White Fang, some of those at ground zero who had fought with Sun were caught in it. With weak aura and some already having reached aura break... It wasn't pretty. Sun was unlucky enough to have been hit in the back by a large piece of metal. Her aura shattered.

But Blake was a little too occupied to check on her friend. She had to focus instead on the hulking man waving a chainsaw menacingly in her direction. “It seems to me you ruined our operation here. The police will come running. But at the very least I can make sure I bring back something Auburn will appreciate.”

-(-)-

VLAD

“Weiss, I think I found your teammate,” I speak hurriedly into my scroll.

“What?! Where?!” She asks quickly, excitedly.

“I'm not 100% but there's a lot of explosions going on over at the harbour so if I had to put money down–“

“Is she fighting someone?! Never mind! Please, get down there! I'll be there as soon as I can!” She hangs up.

“Soooo... Are we going down there?” Emerald asks. “Saving the cat and the... I dunno, other cat? I don't know my animal tails all that well.”

“It's a monkey tail,” I answer the latter question first. “And for the other question, anyone see anyone else showing–“ I'm silenced by Neo's finger on my lips as three people, three women leap from our rooftop. Two I expected. One I didn't. But in hindsight I really should have. “Well. Okay. Yes, we're going down there, but there's no rush. Longer we wait, the less of a problem we have to deal with later. Speaking of which, Neo I think it's time for you to go get in position.”

She gives me a jaunty salute and our box covering shatters, letting her drop over the edge of the building and get where she needs to be.

“Alright,” I say as I get to my feet, rolling out the discomfort in my joints, “let's give it a bit and then follow those three in.”

-(-)-

RUBY

Gunfire! Explosions!

Blake! It had to be! “This way!” she shouted to her companion as she used her semblance to dash from building to building across the industrial district.

“Ruby–!” she heard from behind her, but there was no point in slowing down! There was a fight and she was a huntress! Even if it wasn't Blake she had to go help!

Jump to jump, she made her way closer to the sounds. There was a tremendous explosion but she didn't hesitate to continue towards whatever was going on. Before long she found herself on a roof of a warehouse at the waterfront. And down below between the shipping containers, “Blake!” she exclaimed quietly, unfolding Crescent Rose as she saw her teammate in the middle of a fight with a White Fang member! She sighted the masked villain, taking aim and BANG! The report of Crescent Rose drowned out her hearing for an instant as she fired. Down below the villain's chainsword (so cool!) was deflected and blasted aside, letting Blake get some damage in.

“Friend Ruby, watch out!”

Ruby looked over to see a heavily damaged aircraft looming over her, a mounted gun pointing her way. Oh. That second of deafness was really bad timing.

Before that thought could connect to using her semblance to dash out of the way she felt a body collide with her, knocking her clear the instant she heard the autocannon fire, then several repeated clangs of metal against metal.

Amber. Her aunt had saved her! And she looked angry. Really angry. A staff Ruby hadn't seen before in her hands with huge dents in it. “That hurt,” Amber complained, raising her staff and holding it vertically. “My turn.” The heavy staff opened, awkwardly thanks to the damage it had taken but it was enough, a string folding out of it as the ends took on a vague curved shape. A bow-staff! Aunt Amber wielded a bow-staff! That was so cool! It was just like Mom's except Mom didn't need to carry arrows thanks to her semblance–

…

Ruby's excited thoughts screeched to a halt as the woman dragged her finger across the middle of the bow, back towards the string, drawing it back as a hazy red shaft appeared in place of an arrow, growing more solid as she drew it back further before releasing it.

The teenage girl barely even acknowledged what happened to the gunship. How the blast when the arrow hit put the final nail in the machine's coffin and knocked it out of the sky marked by a giant rose. She was physically incapable of tearing her eyes away from the woman in front of her as she whispered, “Mom?”

“Sen-sational!” Penny shouted at the display. “Would you mind if I gave it a try?”

“Go ahead,” Amber offered, “There's three more to deal with.”

“Excellent!”

A lot of things happened in quick succession after that. She was numb as Amber led her down off the building while Penny went to work dismantling the bullheads. Not long after that, Team VICE showed up to help Blake with the bad guy. He ran away. Vlad was going to chase him but Blake told him not to.

And... And then it was over. Weiss and Yang arrived worried sick. The police showed up and everyone had to answer questions.

The question Ruby dearly wanted to ask would need to wait. Even so, she couldn't stop staring at the woman she had known as Amber for the past two months. In her mind's eye she changed the hair colour. Just the hair colour and nothing else.

And in that moment she didn't need to ask the question anymore. She didn't need to wonder whether she should believe anymore. She knew. And yet knowing just had her asking so many more questions.

-(-)-

Later that morning, a police officer cheerfully walked through the halls of the police department. That he was cheerful was very strange. Not only was he usually a miserable sack of shit on the best of days, on this day the entire department was being run ragged thanks to the huge White Fang bust that happened in the wee hours of that morning. Dozens of Fang had been taken in, more besides had been pronounced dead on arrival. Idiots blew up a container of dust and reaped the consequences.

Still, for all that this officer was getting strange looks, everyone was too busy to give him shit over it. If he wanted to be happy today, more power to him. It even made sense in a way. He was fairly well known as the kind of cop who would always assume a faunus was responsible for any crime he came across. So the apprehending of a whole bus-load of faunus extremists? Yeah, he probably felt like he'd been given a second birthday this year.

No one really gave it a second thought when he went down to the lock-up to check out the prisoners. No one gave enough of a crap if he wanted to talk shit to a bunch of terrorists so the outer guard let him in without a fuss. And without a word, the officer pulled out his gun, a silencer attached and bashed him across the face with it. Whistling a happy little tune, he entered the jail.

Then a few minutes later came out again. Just as cheerful as before, he walked past the unconscious guard, back out to a storage room. Inside was a corpse sitting in a chair, identical to the officer. It seemed he had eaten a bullet. A shame.

Neo patted the corpse on the head as if congratulating him for a job well done before letting her disguise fall away. Quickly she scampered up a wall and through a vent she could only fit through thanks to her small frame. The security cameras would be back online soon and she needed to be gone before then. Moving the vent cover back in place, she retraced her steps back out of the police department onto the roof. From there, she vanished into the city.

Five minutes later the security system came back up and officers scrambled when they found all of their arrests were cooling in pools of their own blood. The guard on duty was roused and told them what happened from his side. A search of the department soon found the corpse of the officer responsible. Clearly his hatred of faunus had finally gotten the better of him. He must have shut down security through some means, gone down to the jail, killed all of the suspects and come here to end himself for what he had done.

Meanwhile, Neo, as Ice Chocola, was happily sitting in a café eating strawberry cake brainstorming ideas for how Vlad could reward her for her efforts today. Do what you love and get paid for it. That's the dream.