Juniper Bough Chapter 2 (9/15)

“COUNT ALISTAIR OF VACUO TO WED VALEAN SOCIALITE”

Weiss chuckled at the headline. Beneath it, sketches of the Vacuan Count and Coco Adel, his bride-to-be were gazing at each other in adoration. In a way, the Ruby Masque had made this marriage possible, since Count Alistair was paying a healthy sum to ensure that Coco never learned about his relationship with his Mistralian bodyguard, and Miss Adel was paying quite generously to ensure that he learned nothing about her Faunus handmaid.

It was foolish. The two of them would learn eventually. Weiss was in the intel business, and that meant a fair amount of work with blackmail. And that had taught her that marriage doesn’t change a person. You can pay all you want to make sure your husband doesn’t start asking unfortunate questions or to keep your wife from learning why a certain maid suddenly had to visit her “ailing mother” for a few months, but if you don’t change, you’ll keep making mistakes, until you make one money can’t cover up.

And in this case, the both of them were making the same mistake and a dose of honesty about it could have given them a, well, not healthy start to their marriage, but something more normal than the usual bankrupt count marrying a wealthy socialite as they traded respectability and money between the two of their families via marriage. An idiotic social arrangement, in Weiss’s mind, and one she herself had narrowly dodged. Heavens above, she was thankful she wasn’t like the new Count and Countess, where their wedding merely started the clock until their infidelities were brought to light.

But until then, Weiss kept counting the money and favors this brought in. Miss Adel, in particular, was an interesting connection. She sipped her coffee, thinking of how interesting she would be. Oh, yes, her future husband was a Count, but a Vacuan Count, and Weiss didn’t care about that. But Coco Adel didn’t throw parties, she hosted events, and that meant that Weiss—and the Masque—now had a direct line to influence those. Who got invited. Who got snubbed. But also… if a certain Faunus servant just happened to be more than a caterer, she might just hear what General Port would say after a few two many glasses of his namesake, and certain people in Atlas would pay handsomely for that information.

“Weeeeeeeiiiiiiiiss,” a certain, annoyingly high-pitched voice cut into her musings. She glanced up from her paper to see that Ruby was draped over the table in an exaggerated fashion, like she was performing her death scene on stage. “I’m bored.”

Weiss had dealt with this before. She just replied, “I asked if you wanted to accompany Blake and Yang and you said no,” then sipped her coffee.

“But I thought you and I were gonna do some strategy stuff!” Ruby jumped up from the table, suddenly shifting from self-pitying lamentation to sheer, manic enthusiasm. “Like, think out how to spy on the cult’s operations! Or- or- or- thinking up some cool gadgets we could use in the field against-”

“If you’re bored, I’m sure Glynda can help you relieve your boredom.”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “Weiss… I want action, real action! With guns and explosions and-”

“And you thought you’d get that with me, instead of your sister?”

From the way Ruby’s expression drooped, Weiss realized that this was more than just Ruby’s bizarrely childish attitude towards their work. She sighed. “Why did you really decide to stay behind?”

“...I thought it’d be mean if we all went out and left you behind.”

Weiss almost had to laugh. This was their crack-shot sniper and sapper, arguably as much blood on her hands as her sister, and she was the one fretting that, what, Weiss would be lonely? There was something painfully adorable about their little assassin, and Weiss, though she hated to admit it, was endlessly charmed by Ruby’s antics.

Well, some of Ruby’s antics. She was definitely a woman of… multitudinous appetites, some more upstanding than others. But Weiss knew that a girl was entitled to pursue her pleasures in privacy, and she didn’t need to be interrupting that.

“Alright,” she said, a smile tracing her face, “You want something from me, so we can-”

“Can we get pancakes?”

That brought her over the edge into laughter. Hell and damn, how could she be such a child in this line of work? But Weiss had been thinking of making a move out into the Quarter, and there was a place they could go for pancakes and to get some work done...

“Of course,” she said with a grin as Ruby cheered her good fortune.

LINE BREAK RUBY

Sitting in their favorite cafe in the Mistralian Quarter, Ruby was licking her lips in anticipation as she poured blueberry syrup all over her big stack of soft, fluffy pancakes. Readying her fork, she prepared to-

“What do you notice about the cafe?”

What? Was Weiss seriously about to ask her questions while she was about to get her pancake going? Was she out of her mind?

Grumbling, she looked up from her delectable treat. “You mean the juniper bough hanging over the counter, the fact that the store’s been recently cleaned, the traces of a bloodstain they didn’t fully clean up on the back wall—definitely a bullet from the splatter pattern, close range shot, small arms, probably an ambush—the muscle at the counter who’s about to get to eat her stack of pancakes, or is there more you need me to rattle off?”

Weiss blinked at her in surprise. “I, um, just noticed the bough...”

“Okay, well, how about you take a look at all the other things, cause I’m eating now.”

Not waiting for any response from Weiss, Ruby furiously set into her meal, practically inhaling it. Oh, they were so, so good! Authentic Mistralian recipe, made by a refugee family that knew how to make the perfect syrup that was so sugary sweet and blueberry-y and didn’t soak the pancakes right through, with fresh, fat, juicy strawberries and-

“Do you even taste anything when you just swallow it all whole?” Weiss asked, a hint of distaste across her face.

Not stopping her eating, Ruby shot back. “Yesh, ulmp, I tashte everyshing! All the flavoursh, glomp, sho good!”

Weiss rolled her eyes. “You’re ridiculous.”

With a loud swallow, Ruby finished off the last of her treat. “And I thought I told you to take a look around the place and tell what’s changed?”

A flustered pout crossed Weiss’s normally perfect face. “I- I’m not like you! I read people, not… crime scenes!”

“Well, judging from the stain they forgot, it was probably from when the Quarter changed hands and they just thought they’d come back to really clean it up but forgot in the hassle, and I would bet it was more to-”

“How about this,” Weiss sent her a challenging smile, “You said the woman at the counter’s muscle, right? But you’re wrong.” Ruby’s eyes narrowed as Weiss’s grin widened. “From the orange-red hair, I know that she’s Northern Mistralian, probably of Atlesian descent. She’s dressed for fighting, yes, but the chain along her right shoulder tells me she’s not looking for a fight today, since it’d give her opponent something to grab. A dress uniform. More importantly, I happen to know that chain—Mistralian style to indicate a holy order. And judging from the cleanliness of her shoes, she’s not at a rank that slugs it out in the muck. Altogether, it paints the picture of someone who’s got a background like your sister’s, but she’s been promoted out of it.” Then she gave Ruby one of those grins she hated. “And I know one thing you absolutely did not pick up on.”

Ruby folded her arms in front of her chest. “Oh?”

“She’s been listening to our entire conversation since we came in.”

Ruby flushed at that. She should have known that Weiss not lecturing her about maintaining operational discipline meant that she had something up her sleeve! She was always pulling stuff like this!

“So you can come join us…” Weiss said, raising her voice but not taking her eyes off Ruby, “Let me know how accurate my read was...”

Ruby let her hand slip under the table, ready to reach her pistol if this bruiser decided to come out angry, but instead, she just laughed, a big, booming laugh that caught Ruby off guard.

“That was amazing!” the girl cheered, “You were right about everything… well, you were wrong about one thing...”

“What!” Weiss scowled, then turned red as she realized how much emotion she’d just shown.

“Yeah,” the girl replied, not acting on Weiss’s embarrassment, “You can’t take pancakes slowly. You gotta eat ‘em like your friend here, or it’s an insult to the host! Least, that’s what I’m always telling Ren.”

Ruby felt the smile stretch across her whole face. “Oh. Dust. I told you, Lila!” Ruby, of course, knew not to use Weiss’s real name out in public, “I told you, you have to eat pancakes-”

“Thanks for that,” Weiss groused to their guest, “Now she’ll never shut up about it.”

The girl just shrugged. “Serves you right. Pancakes are my second religion. Now, I figure you wanted to talk about something, since you wanted to get my attention and all. So what is it?”

Weiss flashed her professional smile, the kind Ruby had seen a hundred times by now, but still really impressed her (and Blake always started blushing whenever she saw it and thought nobody was watching! It was so cute!) with how… natural and yet, really powerful it was. “Well, as you heard from my associate, we’re scouting out how the new leadership in the Quarter is affecting a business near and dear to our heart, and-”

“And we mean that literally,” Ruby cut in, pounding her fist on the table, “Not as a trick!”

Ruby watched as Weiss’s smile slid off her face, replaced by her sternest gaze of annoyance. “How… many… times… have I told you if you say it’s not a trick you-”

But Ruby just looked the tough square in the eyes. “If you change this cafe or its pancakes in any way I will rain hell upon your-”

“I could never!” she gasped, “This- this is, like, my second home! I swear on the pancakes, I will not let any harm come to my secondary place of worship!”

“Not going to swear on the Bough?” Weiss asked, “Or the… what’s her name, the iron maiden or whatever she’s called?”

Even Ruby could see how Weiss’s casual blasphemy caused the girl to stiffen, her cheerfulness disappearing at once. “Our Esteemed Lady’s name is not to be taken in vain,” she growled, “So if you were coming here to see if you could fight-”

Ruby slapped Weiss’s shoulder. “Lila!” she chastised her, “I thought I told you, if you can’t keep from being disrespectful for one minute, I will ditch you, rather than lose my access to pancakes.” She turned to the tough, her tone as apologetic as possible, “I’m so sorry. My friend, sometimes she’s just a total butt for no reason!”

Weiss rolled her eyes. “Anyways, we’re in Intelligence, subcontractors, really. We’re trying to get a sense of what’s changed so we can find out if we need to be ready for the Constables to come down on the Quarter, and I have to assume that’s a question you’re asking yourself, too.”

The girl stroked her chin, trying to get a read on Weiss. But while Ruby wasn’t as good as Weiss was at reading people, she got the feeling this girl had taken the bait. Ruby would have appreciated if Weiss told her they were pulling this scam, but it was easy enough to snap into position and set up the typical good constable/bad constable—or, perhaps, bigoted constable—routine to get this girl to start thinking of them as possible pragmatic allies. Not too good to be true, but at the same time, more likable than their usual underworld contacts thanks to a shared love of pancakes.

“Alright, ‘Lila,’” she finally said, “I gotcha. I’m Nora, Nora Valkyrie. Not a code name, not even trying to hide who I am—ask around, anyone can tell you all about me. And if you’re regulars here, well, we’re probably going to be crossing paths a whole bunch, so… might as well be on a real name basis. But, yep, everybody’s scouting us out right now. What have you heard?”

Weiss was about to speak, but Ruby knew the game, “accidentally” blurting out some facts in her excitement to have gossip. “Apparently, the Constabulary’s taking note of you guys! There might even be some bounties posted...”

Her voice trailed off. Ruby wasn’t a good actress, not like Weiss and Blake, but this wasn’t acting. Much like her fake smile, Weiss’s fake fury was intense, even when Ruby knew it was fake. And Ruby’s cringe was very sincere.

Nora just laughed. “Thanks,” she shot a smug smile to Weiss, “that’s gonna be real helpful! Oh, and what’s your name?”

“May,” Ruby said, her shame unfeigned as she still felt Weiss’s anger boring a hole through her as she extended her hand, “It’s… it’s a pleasure to meet you, Nora.”

“Pleasure’s all mine! And seriously, ask around about me—I’m kind of a badass,” she said as she flexed, showing off her impressive forearms.

Damn, this girl was built as hard as Yang!

But with them being “bested,” Weiss clammed up, unwilling to give up any more and Nora, content with her victory, sauntered off. Pancakes eaten, excitement had, Weiss left some lien on the table and signaled that they were done here. To an outsider, it was because she was mad and wanted to leave.

But Ruby knew it was because they had schooled their target and had nothing left to win.

Though, after they stepped out, she had to ask. “Did you plan this when I asked for pancakes or-”

“Streets have ears, May, but...” she flashed a confident smile, “I’ll have you know, I’m very good at seizing the opportunity I’m presented with.”

LINE BREAK YANG

“I need you to reassure me about one thing.”

Yang gave her companion a sly smile, knowing exactly what that one thing was going to be.

“When you said you wanted to talk to your contacts, were you only saying that because if you said you were going to talk to Sun I wouldn’t come along?”

“Blake!” Yang said in mock injury, “I’m surprised at you! I can’t believe… it took you this long to figure it out!”

Blake groaned. “And I suppose you-”

“Want you to take the lead? Glad to see you’re already on board!”

“St. Ozma, I hate you sometimes.”

Yang’s smile was too big for her to care, though. And Blake was all talk—that girl was absolutely in love with her—and the two of them were going to have a fun day hitting up Yang’s contacts and finding out what they could about the shakeup in the Mistralian Quarter.

More than the mission, Yang had a personal interest in this. She thought she had a pretty good sense of the Quarter’s situation. A lot of her contacts she’d made back when she was a pitfighter still lived in the Quarter and, as chaotic and ever-changing as that place was, Yang thought she had a pretty good ear to the ground. So this cult sweeping in… it was a personal insult. One she’d settle like she settled everything else: with her fists.

Stepping to the front door of the pool hall, Yang graciously opened the door for Blake. “My lady,” she said with a bow.

Blake rolled her eyes, but took the door anyways. Oh yeah, she totally had the hots for her.

It wasn’t hard to find Sun. He was the monkey Faunus with four furious men surrounding him, three of whom were accusing him of cheating, one of whom was demanding money he owed. To be honest, a disappointingly dull situation by Sun’s standards. Usually someone had a gun.

“Listen, fellas… we can talk, can’t we? Just talk?” he asked, nervously backing up, “Believe me, there is nothing I can’t explain with this- Oh! Blake! I’m so glad to see you!” he said, noticing their entrance, “Gentlemen!” he said with sudden, dignified poise, “There are ladies present! And my fiance here can easily pay off the-”

“For the last time,” Blake growled, “I am not your fiance, you-”

“You did accept the ring!”

Blake’s composure broke.

‘You put it on my finger while I was sleeping!“ she screamed at him, rushing to join the pack of men threatening him. And at a crowd of 5, with one debt collector, one furious woman, and three people accusing him of cheating, that was more in line for a Sun situation.

But, as entertaining as it was, they had business. “Fellas...” Yang said with a smile, “My friend would like exclusive rights to give this two timing bastard her personal justice, so give us some space so we can-”

“You think I don’t know this scam!” the debt collector thundered at her, “You’ve pulled this shit on me before, Xiao Long!”

Ah shit, she vaguely recognized him, didn’t she?

Alright, Plan B.

The man was about to say something else, but he was cut off as Blake’s foot smashed into his head, her sudden roundhouse dropping him, hard. Yang would take boxing any day of the week over Blake’s martial arts, but dang if it didn’t look pretty. Ah well, Sun had already headbutted another one of his accusers caught off guard in the confusion, and if Yang didn’t join the melee now, she was liable not to get a chance!

Racing forward, one of her opponents, a snake Faunus, tried to enter some kind of fighting stance like Blake’s, but he was not prepared for the Xiao Long special: an unstoppable fist right into his idiot face. These boys weren’t pushovers, but Yang was a professional ass kicker, and she hadn’t met anyone she couldn’t take in a street fight. A fact proven when whatever fancy trick he had planned was too slow by half as Yang’s fist crashed right into him, sending him tumbling over a table, ass over elbows, and then onto the floor.

The fourth decided it was a good time to run, and Yang respected that. Discretion was the better part of valor, and more poolhall thugs needed to learn that lesson.

For instance: Sun should probably learn that lesson at some point.

“Alright, dumbass. We saved your ass,” Blake growled, “so you’re going to give us some answers without hitting on me or-”

“Can I still tell you that your hair looks lovely today?”

“No!” she shrieked in offended fury, “I am this close to just-”

“Yo Sun!” Yang interrupted, “What’s the deal with the Juniper Bough guys?”

“Oh, them?” Sun asked, immediately shifting focus as though there wasn’t a furious woman about to claw his face off. “Figured you’d be asking around. So! Whatcha looking for?”

Yang smiled as Blake struggled to check her anger back to her standard position of neutral disinterest. St. Maria, she was cute when she was flustered!

“We’re just looking for the basics right now. What’s their deal, who’s a member, you know, the usual.”

Sun nodded. “Eh, they’re a secretive bunch, but it’s hard to keep secrets when you’re in charge, y’know?” Yang nodded—many secretive orgs did good work in the shadows that left them ill-prepared for stepping into the light. “Pretty clear to me now that there’s people who do the church stuff and people who do the street stuff. Which is to say, there’s people from the Bough who yell at me for being a heathen, and there’s people from the Bough who yell at me about what street corner I’m working on. You follow?”

Yang nodded. “The religious types like to keep their hands clean.”

But Sun just laughed. “Nope! They try to insert themselves into everything they can, but the only reason they’ve gotten anywhere at all… is because they’ve got people who know how to make things happen. Scary people.” Yang raised an eyebrow, knowing that Sun’s version of scary was something to note. “I’ve picked up that they call themselves ‘Sacristans,’ they work in teams, and they’re the ones that make sure that everything that’s gone down, the taking of the Quarter… they make sure that people listen when the holy rollers come bumbling in.”

“Like Pyrrha Nikos?”

Sun’s smile disappeared. “I don’t know what the fuck she is,” he admitted, “Saw her smash through Junior Xiong’s crew back when the Malachites still thought they held this place. Fights like you do Yang, only, fuck, nobody could hit her, and things just...” he shook his head, “fuck, man, I don’t even know how to describe it, but… things just kept happening. She steps into Junior’s bar, points at the table he’s seated at with his soldiers, whole thing bursts into flames. Junior’s gun, that fucking hand cannon he was always swinging around? It jams as she starts dismantling everyone. I’m ducking for cover, but shit, things just keep happening her way. Rifles try to take position on the upper balcony and it just gives way underneath them! It was… it was crazy, man. And it happened right as I had a guy trying to get me on 300 lien, so it was really lucky.”

“Enough to make you a believer?” Yang asked with a chuckle.

But Sun wasn’t laughing. “That’s the other thing… she wore this mask that had to be made out of stone. She headbutted a guy and what it left was… ugly. So she’s doing this with that on her head, certainly fighting blind, and I’m thinking… I can see why people think she’s a living god. She definitely ain’t like anyone mortal, that’s for sure.”

Yang gave him a wry smile. “I’d like to try my odds,” she said.

He shook his head. “Your funeral, man. Your funeral.”

Sun was not a serious man. Not the sort who took anything as anything other than a joke. But this Pyrrha Nikos had him rattled. Blake thought the fights were staged, but Sun was a con as good as any of them, and if he thought it was real… then there was something to this Pyrrha Nikos.

Not that Yang was gonna say she was a living god yet, but enough to make her think that this might not be as straightforward a case as they were expecting. Cult soldiers and an unstoppable warrior…

Yang grinned as Blake started asking Sun some pragmatic questions of what he knew about the cult’s operations. How they were running their corners, what sort of payments—or “morality fines”—the pushers and pimps were kicking up the line, stuff like that. Yang would hear this again, later, when they were filling in Weiss, but all Yang could think about was what it’d be like to match her fists, her knife, her saber, hell, even her pistols, against whatever crazy shit these cult lunatics had up their holy sleeves.

It did something for her that she rarely felt anymore, not after pitfighting drunken bums and dockside thugs stopped being enough of a challenge to get her started. She felt that quickening in her heartbeat, that heat in her blood. The sensation that told her she might actually get killed this time, that only her strength and skill would decide on waking up the next morning.

It was exhilarating. And Yang was here for it.