Rest in Peace 4

Rest in Peace 4

Slate Silva

The forest was rife with the sounds of life. My kills were flawless. Not even the nearby birds noticed a life being snuffed out.

I collapsed Silence and headed down to find Adam's headless body laid on the train car. The genocidal douchebag was dead. No plot armor, no miracles, just a slug through the back of his head, like the rabid dog deserved.

The rail company and the SDC probably received an alert from the destroyed droids. At a guess, I had a few hours at most before a bullhead arrived with an inspection team, plenty of time to hide the body.

I dragged his corpse off the railway and began lugging it deeper into the forest. I'd had plenty of time to find a place to bury the dumbass over the past two weeks.

Even this was too good for him. Alas, if I left him be, the corpos would find the body and blame the Fang, probably taking credit for my kill at the same time. They likely would point fingers anyway, not many would want to hit an SDC train, but they'd have proof if I left Adam be. Not that I cared about making trouble for the Fang, but it could be inconvenient for me.

And the Fang… they would see their headless leader on the news, his girl gone with the wind. They'd come to the, admittedly correct, conclusion that Blake betrayed Adam. They'd then think that she somehow killed him before running off. They'd spare no effort in tracking her down to make an example of the traitor.

I couldn't allow that. Blake Belladonna was, fundamentally, a coward. She was, both literally and figuratively, a pussy. There wasn’t a proven correlation between Semblances and personality traits, but she was the best example of such I'd seen, a desperately conflict-avoidant person with a Semblance designed for running from her problems.

If the Fang hounded her, she'd go to ground. She'd abandon Beacon and leave Vale entirely, choosing to live as a nomad rather than grow as a person. She'd make up some excuse that sounded pretty and righteous in her head, but the gist was that she'd run.

Which was also why I had no plans to hunt her down myself, at least at the moment. Let her think she left Adam to lead an increasingly radicalized White Fang. Let her join Beacon in search of redemption. If I confronted her now, team RWBY would never form.

This way, the White Fang would only know that Adam and Blake went missing. Without the authorities parading Adam's body around, they'd figure out what happened far too late. It would only be a difference of a month at most, but that time was priceless for Blake to form her resolve and decide her course.

Besides, the thought of my idiot student ending up on the same team as my on-again, off-again girlfriend's kid sister sounded hilarious. On the minor plus side, I got to keep Adam's fancy toothpick and sheath. They were admittedly solid as far as trophies went.

“I hope the dick was worth it, oh idiot student of mine,” I grunted as I buried her bad decisions.

X

Junior’s club was a mess. The glass pillars that decorated the dance floor had been removed and I could see some shards of broken glass that had yet to be swept up. The checkered tiles of the dance floor were similarly cracked in places and the DJ’s booth was completely trashed.

I looked around and let out a low whistle. His men limped about, bruised and battered but still contributing to the cleanup. Someone had swept in here like a hurricane and I had a good feeling I knew who.

Personally, I felt that Yang deserved actual consequences for this. She hurt a lot of people and made enemies of an influential figure in Vale’s underworld. Even discounting that, she started a huntsman-level fight in a club full of civilians. The fact that no one died was itself a miracle.

I shrugged ambivalently. At the end of the day, Yang’s utter lack of personal discipline was none of my business. Although, I wondered what Blake would say in the future if I told her that I saw Adam’s same, bullheaded stupidity mirrored in her girlfriend?

I found Junior restocking his bar. He moved stiffly, especially his right shoulder. He didn’t look like he could raise it without pain.

“What is it?” he grunted without turning around.

“I’m back. Dare I ask what happened?” I asked as I took a seat. “This place is trashed.”

“Thank you, I hadn’t noticed.”

“Not gonna lie, I appreciate the music being off for a change. The quiet suits me better.”

“What do you want, Silva. And which fuckwit let you in?”

“Hey now, no one let me in. They were just smart enough to not try to stop me. Besides, I’m here to make good on my promise. I took care of what I needed so I’ll do a free job for you, within reason, of course.”

I heard a pair of identical footsteps behind me. Turning, I found Melanie and Militia Malachite sliding onto the stools next to me. Gone was their usual grace. The twins forewent their usual cocktail dresses in favor of casual jeans and sweaters.

That was just as well. They probably couldn’t have pulled off the cabaret-chic aesthetic at the moment, anyway. Melanie sported a massive black eye on her face, a splotchy, purple bruise as big as a fist that no amount of makeup could cover. Miltia wasn’t any better, with busted lips and a matching bruise on her cheek.

They’d be fine in a few days at most, as would most of Junior’s men. Aura was great like that. That didn’t stop them from glaring absolute murder at anyone and everything.

“Yang Xiao-Long. Can you kill her?” Melanie hissed, holding out a video footage on her scroll.

“Slowly?” her sister added.

I raised an eyebrow towards Junior. “Really? This is what you want to burn your favor on?”

“No,” he denied, ignoring the twins’ mutinous glares. “She’s too high-profile. Not worth the heat.”

“Just as well. Even I don’t want Qrow Branwen hounding me for offing his precious niece.”

“You’re surprisingly well-informed for someone who recently came back to Vale.”

“I am,” I agreed, offering nothing else.

“Fine, whatever. Keep your secrets,” he grunted. He pulled out an expensive bottle of whiskey and poured us four shots. “Look, I need you to go out of the city again.”

“Oh? I would have thought your jobs would be in Vale proper.”

“Eh, you'd be surprised. I need to get my information from somewhere and some of the best sources are merchants who travel often. I try to help them out where I can.”

I sipped at my drink, savoring the smoky burn. Whatever else could be said  about the man, Junior knew had fantastic taste in alcohol. “Don’t tell me, a merchant buddy of yours wants me to kill off a competitor while he’s away from Vale?”

“You watch too many movies. It’s nothing like that. His brother has a farm in a village near Stonerest called Hantoki. There are some bandit sightings nearby and huntsman response has been pretty slow. They’re a pragmatic sort. They don’t care who you are so long as you can solve their problem, yeah?”

“You’re willing to burn my favor… on a routine mission that a huntsman team will get around to eventually…” I said blankly. “How much do you owe this merchant buddy of yours?”

He coughed awkwardly. “A fair bit. Look, do me a solid, alright? He was one of dad’s contacts who stuck around when I took over. Not a lot of people did, and that means something.”

“I get it; favors are important.” What Junior wasn’t saying was that he was a “fixer.” If he couldn’t “fix” something like this, especially given what his club looked like right now, he could kiss some of his contacts goodbye. He needed to show that he was still capable of doing his job, which was ultimately to keep people like me connected.

“That’s right. So? Up for another trip out of the city? I’d send the twins, but they’d half-ass the job if it means they can come home sooner.”

“Fuck yeah, we would,” Melanie said with zero shame. She downed her shot like a seasoned pro, bringing it down on the counter with a louder-than-necessary clink. “Camping isn’t our vibe. Modern plumbing or fuck off.”

“Not like we could like this,” her sister sighed, a bit more honest with herself. “That blonde bitch fucked us up pretty bad. Say, you sure you won’t take a hit on her?”

I pretended to think about it. “Hmm… No. She’s a Beacon student, right? Or going to be? Yeah, that sounds like a pain in the ass.”

“How about just to rough her up a bit?”

“I’m not going to beat up a student because you girls got your shits rocked.”

“Tch.”

“Although… I wouldn’t mind making her life difficult just for funsies,” I mused. As Blake’s teacher, it was my Death-given duty to make her life miserable. And, since Yang would be her partner, she was bound to get caught in the crossfire. “Anyway, Hantoki’s near Stonerest, you said? This merchant wouldn’t also happen to be one of your contacts into Mistral, would he?”

“No comment,” Junior said, which meant yes. “All I’m saying is that I owe him a favor, big enough for me to burn yours.”

“I understand. I’ll set out tonight.”

“Thanks, I appreciate it. Fair warning, Slate, you might run into a Beacon team. It’s summer, but that just means the kids don’t have classes and can get some field experience. Bandit sightings are just the kind of low-risk missions that they like to give to their students.”

“Your buddy double-dipped? Rude.”

“His brother isn’t the only one with contacts in Vale. I’m just saying, it’s possible.”

“Alright, I’ll be careful. One way or another, the bandits are going to die. That’s all that matters, eh?”

X

I took a train to Stonerest, then a cargo truck to Hantoki. Hantoki, near the eastern coast of Sanus, was an agricultural town situated on a low hill. It had thick, squat walls with a wooden watchtower on each corner. With only a thousand or so people living here, there were enough people to farm the land and little else. It was the kind of sleepy place where being a good neighbor was itself a currency.

Life here followed a predictable flow dictated by the seasons and the monthly caravan of cargo trucks to and from Stonerest. The villagers purchased technology and dust from Stonerest in exchange for produce. There were several towns like this one near every major city, each built specifically to support the larger settlements. In turn, the cities provided security and acted as dispatch hubs for huntsmen.

It was a neat, concise system, in theory. In practice, this arrangement often led to significant delays in huntsman response. Because the CCT network was unreliable here, it could take a full week just to post a job, another two for a huntsman team to decide the pay was worthwhile and get out here.

This gap in security was patched by the village militia and the handful of roaming huntsmen who made their rounds through the rural villages who were subsidized by Vale’s Huntsman Association. If a village was lucky, a huntsman might decide to settle down, leaving the city behind in favor of the agrarian life. 

I hopped off the truck and headed for the town hall. It was actually an old farmhouse that the villagers repurposed as a meetingplace. There, I found the chief, a middle-aged man with a heavy tan and a solemn frown.

“E-Eh? You're here because Carson's brother asked for a favor?” He asked in surprise when I told him my circumstances. “W-Well, not that I don't appreciate having a huntsman drop by for us, but this is a little awkward.”

“How so? Are the bandits handled already?” If so, that’d be wonderful news. I’d fuck around here, pet some baby calves, then go back a few days later, favor fulfilled. I wasn’t getting paid, after all; I didn’t mind if someone “took my kill” or somesuch nonsense.

“No, that's not it. I was told that a team from Beacon will show up either tomorrow or the day after.”

“Oh? Students?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Ah, if that's all, there's nothing to worry about.” I didn’t have any special grudge against the academies, nor did I have a warrant out for my arrest in Vale. At least, not one that wasn’t years out of date.

“That's good to hear. I was afraid there would be some issues over payment…” he trailed off sheepishly. Such was the lot of a small village, doomed to balance competent help with the help they could afford.

I waved him off with an easygoing smile. “Normally, that could be true. Luckily for you, I'm not being paid at all. This is just a favor for an acquaintance of mine. Now, tell me about these bandits.”

“Well, the bandits showed up a month ago. They're here, then they're not. We think they're circling around and hitting multiple villages since we don’t individually have much to give them. They tend to show up shortly after a trade caravan, probably because they know we have goods from the city to loot.”

“So they're running the rural equivalent of a protection racket? Collecting ‘taxes’ and such?”

“That's exactly what they call it. They only ever roughed us up a bit until ol’ Dick went missing. He went for firewood and never came back,” the village chief said gravely.

I decided to play devil's advocate. “Murder is quite an escalation, though. Are you sure it was the bandits? Dick could just have had an accident, run into grimm, or anything else.”

“Does it matter? His two brothers were livid and shot four of the bandits,” he said with a tired sigh. “After that…”

“I understand. Can I talk to the brothers?”

“Dead. They hung both men. Look, I know you're looking for an easy solution, son. Brothers bless you for that, but there's no room for peace anymore, not when blood's been spilled already.”

“I see… Tell me, how many bandits am I looking at?”

“I-I'm not sure. Two dozen at least. It might be better to wait for the Beacon team if you don’t want to get surrounded.”

He did have a point. I didn’t know the area as well, and here in the wild, there was a non-zero chance of attracting grimm towards the village accidentally. “Any with aura? Any of them look like they have huntsman training? Unique clothes or weapons would be dead giveaways.”

“One for sure, maybe two. I’m not sure that we’ve seen their leader at all. Every time they came to collect, they were led by someone different.”

I took it all in. It sounded to me like the bandits were running a tight ship. They did a good job in keeping the village ignorant as to their true size, which meant I’d have to do some recon on my own.

From their perspective, they'd had a good thing going. Then, one of the villagers snapped and they were forced to kill the man and his brothers. Now, they were trying to milk this village for all they could before moving on. Or maybe, one of the four men the villagers killed was close to the boss and this was a matter of revenge.

“What about the local militia? Do you have anyone with aura?”

“We did. That was Dick.”

“Fine, I get it. I’ll do a bit of scouting until the Beacon team gets here,” I said. “Anything else you can tell me?”

“Not really, no. You can stay in a spare room here until this is settled.”

“Alright, thanks, chief.”

X

I found the bandits four miles away, in a small ravine sandwiched between two, sloping hills. The village chief had been right. There were about thirty of them clustered in a number of forest-green tents.

From what I could tell, they had four or five people who likely had aura. Two, a man and a woman, were the obvious leaders, with the full ensemble of huntsman stereotypes. I identified three others as maybes after watching for hours and seeing them do vaguely superhuman things.

I saw a handful of faunus among their ranks. I couldn’t decide if I approved or disapproved. On one hand, they weren’t with the White Fang, which was smart of them. On the other hand, this was their alternative? 

I shook my head in annoyance. Nightfall killed my scent before I continued my approach. Faunus were always a mixed bag as far as which senses we inherited. Most just got some improved night vision. Then there were people like me, with godly vision and hearing in exchange for slightly muted smell and taste.

Hell, I wasn’t the most extreme example, in my opinion. One of my students, Ilia Amitola, was a literal stalker-gecko. The chameleon faunus inherited her skin cells wholesale from her lizard counterpart and could become damn near invisible. She was the best infiltrator in the White Fang because of it. Pity she spent most of her time stalking my other student.

I continued watching for a full day and night. I learned that one of the men had a unique Semblance that could store nonliving objects inside a pocket dimension. He apparently used to use it to smuggle shit in and out of Mistral before he crossed the Spiders and was forced to flee to Vale. That explained how they’d been moving so cleanly, and with so many supplies.

I made a note to kill the glorified pack mule first, maybe just as they were getting ready to move. It’d be really funny if he pocketed everything, only for their entire supply to literally vanish into the void because I popped his head like a grape. Or maybe it’d all come exploding out as the pocket space collapsed without him? Either way, I was curious now.

Whatever the case, I left them be for the moment and made my way back the next morning. The village chief let me use his house so I got to see the Beacon team arrive.

I’d never met the man before. That said, the well-combed, gray head of hair and massive handlebar mustache were good clues. This was Peter Port, the great orator of Beacon Academy. Even here, out in the sticks, he dressed in an immaculate suit jacket and tie.

To my surprise, he wasn’t as short as the image I had in my head. At a guess, he was about five seven? Eight, maybe? Perfectly average. But he felt short. He had shoulders like an NFL linebacker, pads included. Even beneath his suit jacket, I could tell he had muscles atop muscles atop muscles. With a stocky build like that, and an ax as his preferred melee weapon, I couldn’t help but think of a well-dressed Gimli.

Behind him were his four students. Team CFVY was here, led by Coco Adel. The fashionista didn’t do anything in particular to draw attention, but she had a certain charisma that pulled the eye. With a cute beret, stylish handbag, and a sway of her hips, she really did look like she’d just walked off a runway.

Fox Alistair–false advertising, he wasn’t a fox–came next. He was a tan, young man with hair like copper and countless scars on both his arms. He favored a pair of tonfa-like blades attached to his forearms. Which was… a choice… given the lad was blind. I had a feeling I knew how he got those scars on his arms.

He immediately got on my nerves. I had nothing against him personally, but he wore an almost invisible earpiece known as an Accessibility Dialogue Assistant. The ADA was basically sonar, and quite a bit more advanced than the tech I remembered in my old life. It was sophisticated enough to allow blind huntsmen to operate in the field.

While I didn’t quite have echolocation, my hearing was unreasonably sensitive, sensitive enough to hear the low thrum of the ADA like an undercurrent of mosquitoes buzzing. I had no idea how Velvet put up with this. He was obviously skilled enough to be here, but I decided I’d keep my distance from him.

Then there was the choco-bun herself. She was just as distracting as her teammate, albeit for the completely opposite reason. The leggy brunette was gorgeous, and adorable, and the way her perky ears twitched back and forth made me want to chase her. It wasn’t as if I felt some cannibalistic urge to bite her or anything, but I found my eyes constantly drawn to the ears, like a cat presented with a laser pointer.

In comparison, their final member, Yatsuhashi Daichi, was a refreshingly normal person. Sure, he had a full head on me despite our age gap, but he was normal. No fashionista swagger. No annoying buzzing. No adorable ears that triggered my swoop instinct. Just a tall, buff dude with a fuck-massive, single-edged sword reminiscent of a zanbato.

Truthfully, I’d been waffling between murdering the bandits in their sleep at three in the morning or working with the Beacon team. There was always a risk to acting on my own, but after watching them for a day, I was pretty sure I could pull it off without any splashback on the village.

Then, the Beacon team arrived and I chose restraint. I was curious to see what these “named characters” would do. If they messed up, unlikely with a professor watching over them, I could always get back to the “be their sleep paralysis demon” plan later.

Besides, this was supposed to be an educational mission for CFVY. Far be it for me to take away a learning opportunity.

Author’s Note

I definitely didn’t expect to be writing a chapter of this so soon, but meh. Slate returned to Vale just in time to see the aftermath of the Yellow trailer.

I’m not actually sure why I decided to introduce CFVY. 

Animal Fact: There are roughly ninety spiders within the family commonly called “assassin spiders.” They’re also called “pelican spiders,” but that’s not as cool or edgy so we’ll ignore that.

They were first discovered in the 1840s, not from a living specimen, but from amber samples found in Europe. The samples were dated to 40 million years and it was thought that they were ancestors of modern spiders that had long since died out. Then, the first living specimen was found in 1881, in Madagascar.

They are easily identified by their long “necks,” which are hard to describe in text. They also have long mouths that can be used to protrude outward. Oh, and they look so funky because they exclusively eat other spiders. Their long necks allow them to spear their prey and hold them at length, avoiding any counterattack.