//------------------------------//
// Boots on the Ground (Rewritten) 
// Story: SAPR 
// by Scipio Smith 
//------------------------------//


Boots on the Ground


“So,” Sunset said, her voice raised a little to be heard over the sound of the engines outside, “how much of your new sword did you get a chance to use when you were here with Pyrrha last?”
“Not much,” Jaune replied, raising his own voice in turn. “The grimm didn’t stick around very long, and I didn’t get the chance to use more than, well, just the sword, really.”
Sunset grinned. “So this will be your first chance to use the new special features then.”
“Yeah,” Jaune said. “Yeah, I guess it will.” With his free hand — the one that he was not using to hold onto one of the grips that hung from the ceiling — he touched the hilt of Crocea Mors, the new hilt with the phial of dust, blue ice dust at present, set in the pommel like a precious stone. “I hope I can make good use of it.”
With her own free hand, Pyrrha reached out and touched his shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly. 
She had no doubt that he would do fine. In fact, she was looking forward to seeing how he performed with his new, improved weapon.
Considering how much he had improved already, his next step should be something to behold. 
The engines of the Bullhead roared as it carried Team SAPR to their designated landing zone, a clearing a short trek from their first objective. They hadn’t had a huge amount of explanation yet as to the nature of the mission itself, but what they had been told made it seem quite straightforward: they were being set down as close to the objective as the terrain allowed, and they would have to make their way to two positions — a pair of security monitors, meant to alert Professor Ozpin to the activities of grimm within the Emerald Forest, which had both recently gone offline — one after the other. Killing any grimm they encountered along the way, obviously.
“Is it usual to be assigned missions while we’re on vacation?” Jaune asked.
“I mean, we’re still at school,” Ruby pointed out. “It’s not like we all left to go home.”
“It’s because we’re so awesome,” Sunset declared. “There’s no one else Professor Ozpin can rely on for anything.”
Pyrrha smiled a little, but said, “More likely, it is because so many students did go home. Blake, Weiss, and Flash haven’t returned from Atlas yet, and Team Bluebell … there are not many teams at full strength who could undertake this assignment. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time that we’ve had to undertake a task while on vacation for lack of any other available hands.”
Sunset snorted. “Maybe, but my explanation sounds a lot better.”
Pyrrha smiled slightly and shook her head. Sunset’s mood had improved greatly since vacation began, the dark clouds that had hung about her head after the Breach having been banished by that mission she had undertaken with the Atlesians Trixie and Starlight — whom Pyrrha probably ought to thank for whatever they had done — with a brief lapse around the time of Pyrrha’s duel which, fortunately, had also passed. It was good to see her in good spirits, without a doubt; it was much preferable to melancholy — and she said that as someone who could be prone to melancholy herself — but at the same time, one could carry it to excess. 
The Bullhead descended to just above the level of the trees, hovering over a small clearing at the base of a set of modest cliffs that, while not especially large, were nevertheless sheer enough that they formed a natural alleyway through the forest, a small valley where a path had been cut through the trees, although what the path was supposed to lead to on the other side, Pyrrha really couldn’t have said. 
“I think this is where we get off,” Sunset said, before she became the first of the team to leap down from out of the Bullhead to the ground. Ruby followed, with Pyrrha and Jaune going last of all.
As her boots touched the ground, crunching the soil beneath her, Pyrrha pulled Miló and Akoúo̱ over her back, holding Miló in spear form while Akoúo̱ rested upon the vambrace on her arm. 
Sunset checked — once again, having already checked before they got on the Bullhead — that all the chambers of Sol Invictus had a round in them. “Okay, is everybody ready?”
“Shield up, shoes tied,” Jaune said as he drew his sword and unfolded his sheath into a shield. “Ready to roll.”
Sunset grinned. “Okay. So, we didn’t get much of a briefing on this before we got here, but apparently,” — she pulled out her scroll, and unfolded it to reveal a map of the area — “the first security platform is about here, which doesn’t seem too far away. And Professor Port will be in contact if we have any questions. So for now, let’s just all enjoy a mission without Salem or Cinder or the White Fang or any of the other complications that we’ve had in our lives. Just the four of us, a place to go, and a bunch of grimm unlucky enough to get in our way. A nice, simple assignment.” 
She hesitated. “Just the four of us, for…” She trailed off. “Have we ever had a mission that is just the four of us?”
“No,” Pyrrha replied. “No, I don’t believe we have.”
“Huh,” Sunset said. “That’s … huh. Okay then! Our first mission, as a team, on our own, nothing out of the ordinary to make things complicated or get in our way. Huntsman basics, piece of cake, let’s get it done!”
Ruby pumped one fist. “Let’s go Team Sapphire!”
Pyrrha led the way, down the little valley cut into the forest. Pots and amphorae as tall as she was or as broad as a creep littered the path and the trees on either side, overgrown with vines and half-obscured by bushes. She wondered idly what they had been used to hold — wine, olive oil, garum, something else altogether — and why they had simply been left here, abandoned in a forest like this.
I suppose it wasn’t a forest when it was abandoned.
But even so, why would they just leave so many things lying around like this?
The dirt path down which she had led the team surprised her by transforming into a paved road, covered with regular square stones that were slowly being worn away, more by the elements than by any regularity of foot traffic — at least as far as Pyrrha could see. She put her curiosity aside for a moment as she reached the edge of that road, which led to another cliff and another — much larger — drop down in the level of the land. 
Below her was spread out a large flat basin of land, with a circular stone courtyard set in the centre of it and half-crumbled pillars and the remains of walls dotted here and there throughout, along with more of the abandoned urns and amphorae that Pyrrha had seen up above. All of the ruins were weathered, worn and overgrown as trees grew tall around the edges of the basin, and blue butterflies fluttered amongst the brightly coloured flowers which grew in clumps here and there. 
None of which was anything like as important as the score or so of creeps sunning themselves lazily upon the stone courtyard, absorbing the heat both from the sun and the hot stone as their armour plates began to sizzle in the sunshine.
She could hear them making contented snuffling noises from here, but she knew that wouldn’t last long once Team SAPR descended amongst them.
“Get ready,” she murmured, as she knelt at the edge of the cliff. “Enemies nearby.”
Sunset knelt beside her. “So I see,” she said. “But I think we can take them. Hey, Jaune, now that you’ve got a bunch of cool new modes for your sword, why don’t you go down there by yourself and show us how it’s done?”
“Very funny,” Jaune said. “Ruby oughtta stay up here and give us covering fire.”
Sunset nodded. “Good call.”
Ruby unfolded Crescent Rose into its full and imposing length and used the blade of the scythe as a stand to brace it on the ground as she cocked the rifle and took aim. “You got it.”
“Okay then,” Sunset said. “Pyrrha, Jaune, let’s go.”
Ruby had fired the first shot as soon as Sunset leapt off the cliff, blowing a creep’s head clean off while Pyrrha and Jaune were still descending.
She shot a second one as the herd — or pack or swarm or whatever the technical term for a large group of creeps was called — was starting to wake up, growling and snarling as they picked themselves up and started to waddle towards their attackers, snapping their jaws and waggling their tails as they came.
When she was a very young girl, and her only experience of grimm had been pictures in books, it had been the creeps that had frightened Pyrrha the most; something about their heads, about the designs on their bone masks, about the way that they seemed crueller and more vicious than other grimm. 
Now that she was a huntress in training and had some experience under her belt, she knew much better. They tore through the creeps, aided by Ruby’s excellently directed covering fire. Though more creeps sprang up from out of the ground all around them, though the grimm came for them in threes and fours, though the monsters vastly outnumbered them and sought to drive them apart and get them alone, nevertheless, the huntsmen shredded them and turned them all to ashes. 
Once they had done so, when the grimm were all reduced to smoking corpses on the ground, Ruby was able to leap down from her cliff-top vantage point to rejoin the rest of the team. 
“Nice work, students!” Professor Port’s jovial voice boomed out of the earpieces linked to their scrolls. 
Despite the Breach, or perhaps because the threat to Vale proper had dissipated as a result of the Breach, most Valish huntsmen remained scattered across the small towns and villages that made up the periphery of the kingdom, leaving scant numbers to supervise students on missions. As a result, Professor Port was monitoring and supervising several teams — Team CFVY, for example, had just left on a mission of their own in the vicinity of Alexandria — remotely. In addition to the cameras distributed throughout the forest, Sunset was wearing a miniature camera on the lapel of her leather jacket that was allowing Professor Port to watch everything they did from his office at Beacon. 
Professor Port went on, “Now, as you know, we’ve been having some trouble with the security network in this area. We need boots on the ground to investigate. That means you, team. Onward!”
Pyrrha had switched Miló into sword form as the battle went on, and it became close work to deal with the creeps, but now she shifted it back into spear form as she looked around. “You know, it’s almost a pity that we have to fight in a place like this.” 
She turned in place, looking all around her, taking in the walls and the columns, the courtyard of stone on which the grimm had rested to take advantage of late — very late; the weather would take a turn to the chilly soon, without doubt — summer sunshine; at the basin mouth, leading out towards their objective, the skeleton of what had once been some kind of stone arch stood; there had been an inscription engraved upon it once, but time had worn it away to such an extent that Pyrrha couldn’t read it. In the grass, she could see the remains of a mosaic showing the hunt for a monstrous wild boar, not a boarbatusk, but an actual boar, albeit one of enormous size and probably unusual ferocity as well; one of the columns was carved with images of feasts and hunts and parties. 
“These ruins are so beautiful.” She sighed, a sigh that had in it both appreciation and a sense of the forlorn that such beauty had descended into ruin.
“Ah, yes,” Professor Port declared, in that voice he had that would have done very well on the stage had he chosen a different destiny. “The Emerald Forest is filled with the ruins of ancient kingdoms. Keep an eye out for artefacts. Doctor Oobleck is always looking to expand Beacon’s collection.”
“Then perhaps Doctor Oobleck should have come out here himself,” Sunset said. “I’m keeping this.”
Pyrrha looked around. Sunset stood by the base of a tree and seemed to have found something by the roots which she was currently holding in her hand. Actually, on slightly closer inspection — as Pyrrha took a couple of steps closer towards her team leader — it turned out to be two somethings. Two chess pieces, both white, a knight and a pawn both carved out of some kind of horn or bone. The knight had a tiny red amethyst for an eye and a socket on the other eye hole to show where a second amethyst would have gone; the pawn, fashioned like a foot soldier rather than the more abstract representations of modern chess, was biting the top of his shield, the slightly manic look on his face providing some explanation for why he might want to do such a thing. Though they were both quite badly knocked around and had obviously seen better days, there was nevertheless something quite charming about the pair of them.
“Cool, huh?” Sunset said as she slipped them both into her jacket pocket.
“If you like old stuff, I guess,” Jaune said.
“Yes,” Pyrrha murmured. “That’s … that’s all that it is now, isn’t it? Old stuff.”
“Pyrrha?” Jaune asked. “Are you okay?”
Pyrrha looked around once again, at the arch and the columns and the crumbling wall of stone, at the mosaic and the courtyard and all the rest. “What do you think this place was? Who do you think built it? And what do you think happened to them?”
“I … I couldn’t say,” Ruby admitted. “I don’t pay too much attention in history class.”
“That wouldn’t help anyway, Oobleck’s classes focus on modern history,” Sunset said. “I…” She took a step back, and seemed to be quite intently framing everything in her head. “Do you think … a palace?”
“'A palace'?” Jaune said.
“Yeah,” Sunset said, and as she spoke, she clapped her hands together and a wave of green light spread out from her body, engulfing the entire basin and clearing away all the remaining detritus of their battle with the grimm as she conjured ghostly, ethereal images from out of the air and from her own imaginings: the columns repaired and completed, set above with a high vaulted ceiling painted with images of winged figures dancing amongst the clouds; a raised dais where she had found the chessmen, where the high lords and ladies sat and ate and talked and, yes, played chess; a throne for the king, and petitioners kneeling before him in the stone circle. Rows of tables leading to the archway at the end of the basin. 
“Wow,” Ruby murmured.
“I’ve got no proof, obviously,” Sunset said as she pried her hands apart and the vision faded from their sight. “But it could be. It would be cool if it was.”
“And a little dispiriting,” Pyrrha said. “If this was a king’s hall … who now remembers the king or the kingdom? Who now remembers what this place was? Whatever this place was, it is now nothing more than a forgotten ruin.” Her brow furrowed for a moment. “Is that what is to become of all of us, in the end? Will Beacon, Vale, and Mistral all fall to ruin and all that we did to protect them be forgotten?”
Sunset sat down on one of the crumbling columns. “Our very names erased, until none remember how bravely we fought.”
“Or how fiercely we loved,” Pyrrha whispered.
“What a dispiriting thought to bring up,” Sunset said. “I would dearly love to say that it’s impossible, that we will do deeds of such magnificent grandeur that they will endure in the memory of man while man has a memory … but I’m sure whoever used to live here thought the same thing.”
“Does it matter?” Jaune asked.
Sunset looked at him. “Of course it matters. What’s the point of being a hero if nobody remembers that you were one?”
“As long as we help people, then those people will remember what we did,” Jaune replied.
“Until they’re dead.”
“Yeah, but by then we’ll be dead as well, so … so what?”
“It’s not about memory, it’s about…” Pyrrha paused, trying to find the right words to explain herself to him. “If Vale and Mistral and all four kingdoms are fated to fade out of memory and us with them … if we leave nothing behind us, then what have we done?”
“We’ve helped people,” Ruby said. “We’ve saved lives. We’ve hunted things. We’ve had some amazing adventures together, and we’re still having them. No one can take that away from us, even if they forget all about all of it.”
“Then you’d be fine with the idea that one day, a couple of thousand years from now, someone is poking through the ruins of the dining hall at Beacon and trying to work out what it was?” Sunset said. “Or looking at a piece of wall and wondering what dork decided to carve S-A-P-R on the wall and why?”
“Sure,” Ruby said. “I mean, at least it would mean there was someone around to look and wonder, right? So long as humanity doesn’t get wiped out by the grimm, or Salem, then it’s fine that nobody cares about Beacon anymore, or that they don’t remember what it was … so long as it means that something better came along. Maybe it means they don’t even need huntsmen anymore.”
Pyrrha chuckled. “Yes, I suppose no one can argue with that, can they?”
Ruby nodded, and then suddenly began to giggle. “Guys, I just got it.”
“Got what?” Sunset asked.
“What if,” Ruby said, stifling more giggles. “What if this whole place was the cafeteria of a school?”
There was a moment of silence before everybody started laughing. It wasn’t that funny, and it was historical nonsense, but the sudden injection of the image into her dour thoughts very nearly had Pyrrha in stitches, and the basin rang with the sounds of their laughter for a good few moments until everybody calmed down.
“Thank you, Ruby,” Pyrrha said. “Thank you very much.”
Sunset got up. “And now, keeping an eye for any more artefacts for our collection — I mean Beacon’s collection — we should probably keep moving.”
They continued on, fighting their way past another group of creeps that had joined up with a few immature young beowolves to assist them in the struggle for survival. It didn’t help as much as they might have hoped. 
“I have to say, Professor,” Pyrrha said, “it doesn’t appear that the problems with the security system have allowed a major breach in this sector.”
“Hmm, you have a point, Miss Nikos,” Professor Port said. “We’ve been fortunate that no more dangerous grimm have appeared to take advantage of the lack of early warning.”
“Or just the normal ones that roam around here,” Sunset said. “When we did that exercise last semester — the one where I got paired with Arslan and Ruby with Blake and then everything went wrong with all of those grimm — we had nevermores and ursai—”
“And that cyclops that went after poor Twilight,” Pyrrha added.
Sunset nodded. “And Arslan had some trouble with a pretty weird grimm too.”
“You’ve got a point,” Jaune said. “Flash and I had to run from way worse than we’re seeing here.”
“Uh-huh,” Sunset said. “So where are they now? Why are we only meeting a few creeps and young beowolves?”
“Don’t question your good fortune too much, Miss Shimmer, or it may desert you,” Professor Port cautioned. “Now, you’re almost there. Up ahead, you’ll find a wooden bridge leading into a cave. That’s where the security control centre is located.”
They did indeed find a bridge, if you could call a few planks laid out haphazardly over a chasm a bridge. Nevertheless, they crossed it, however much it rattled as they pounded over the wooden boards, and passed through the cave that they found on the other side. 
Dust crystals, growing like stalagmites and stalactites out of the cavern walls, glowed fluorescent blue, illuminating the cave in azure shades; in fact, they provided so much illumination that whoever had installed the security system had felt no need to put in any other lights. The security centre itself was … well, it was … Pyrrha was having a hard time describing it, to be perfectly honest; it was a metal tube on four legs, but she couldn’t really say more because she had no idea what all the bits and pieces were or what they were called. It just wasn’t her area of expertise. 
“Right,” Sunset said, folding her arms. “Now, I do know a little bit about computers and coding, but at the same time, I can’t help but feel it might have been a good idea to have brought an expert with us … unless you know how this works, Ruby?”
“Sorry,” Ruby said, “I prefer my mechanics to come with grease involved.”
“Miss Shimmer,” Professor Port said, “I’m afraid the cameras in this cave that monitor this monitoring station have all gone offline, so I’m going to have to ask you to face the listening post straight ahead.”
Sunset turned away from Ruby and faced the device once again, standing very still, back straight, hands clasped behind her back. 
“Better, Professor?” she asked.
“Much better, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Port replied. “Hmm, it doesn’t appear to have been damaged by grimm in any way; rather, there seems to have been a foreign object placed on the sensor.”
“You mean that red box with the M on it?” Sunset said, gesturing with one hand to the object in question. It was, as she had said, a box, a rather shallow box, rectangular in shape, with a red border and an equally red, somewhat stylised M upon it.
Sunset went on, “I didn’t see anything like it on the pictures of these monitoring stations I looked at before we got on the Bullhead.”
“Quite so, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Port said. “That was not there when the station was installed in the forest. Someone has added it since, and I’ll wager that it’s that device, whatever it may be, that is blocking the signals that this sensor should be transmitting to Beacon.”
“So,” Jaune said, “if we take it off, will that fix the problem?”
“What if there’s a bomb inside?” Ruby asked. “Or maybe if we just rip it off, it’ll short out the monitoring station? We could make things worse.”
“Miss Shimmer, if you pull the red lever on the side of the listening post directly in front of you, a control panel will reveal itself,” Professor Port said.
Sunset approached the monitoring station, pulling the lever that Professor Port had indicated. The panel directly in front of her flipped down, revealing a keyboard on the other side with a monitor above. 
“Excellent, Miss Shimmer,” Professor Port said. “Now, if you insert your scroll into that dock on the right hand side just above the keyboard, I can upload a repair diagnostic from here that should restore connectivity without the risk of anything untoward occurring if you try and remove that foreign object.”
“You’re a computer expert, Professor?” Sunset asked, getting out her scroll and plugging it in.
Professor Port chuckled. “No, Miss Shimmer, but I do know how to press a button. You know, I’m sure I’ve seen that M symbol somewhere before.”
Sunset’s eyes narrowed. “You know, Professor, now that you mention it, I think I—”
The roar of a beowolf echoed into the cave. 
“Never mind that now. It sounds like you’ve got company,” Professor Port said, sounding rather pleased to hear it. 
“So it would seem, Professor,” Sunset muttered. “Okay, they’re only coming from one direction, so—” Before she could finish, more roars started coming from the other entrance into the cave. “Me and my big mouth. Right, both ways it is: Jaune, Pyrrha, take the back; Ruby, you and I have got the front.”
Pyrrha silently took up her position facing the southwest entrance, nearly opposite the way that they had used to enter the cave. The entrance way was narrow, which would surely help. She switched Miló into rifle mode and raised it to her shoulder, resting her barrel on her shield.
She heard Ruby and Sunset start to fire — the deep booming thunder of Crescent Rose alternating with the higher staccato crack of Sol Invictus — a moment before the first beowolf stuck its head into the cave for Pyrrha to blow said head off.
She’d momentarily forgotten that she wasn’t the only member of their partnership with some ranged capability anymore when she saw the blasts of white ice dust flying past her shoulder as Jaune tried to support her. His aim was poor, but that wasn’t really his fault; it was Pyrrha’s opinion that most swords were terrible to try and aim with on account of wrist movement.
“Jaune, wait until they’ve broken out of the corridor,” Pyrrha said. While the chokepoint was useful, once they broke out of it, they would do so in such a mass that they would be impossible to miss.
These beowolves were older and more experienced than the young adolescents they had come across with the creeps; they were larger, they had more armour on their bodies, and the spurs of bone protruding from the black were larger and sharper; and they were smart enough to have been able to work out that there were two ways into the cave and to launch a coordinated pincer movement. But they were limited by the nature of the entrances themselves, which enabled Pyrrha to empty two magazines into them before they broke out into the cavern proper. As they poured out into the cave, Jaune opened fire again, glowing white balls of ice dust hitting the grimm as they flooded out in such a dense black mass that he could hardly miss. 
Pyrrha stayed close beside him, switching Miló into sword mode rather than spear as the grimm came closer, because it didn’t require as much room for her to move as the spear and she wasn’t sure that she would have that movement. She slashed left and right as she took the blows on her shield and lashed out with it to stun the grimm before delivering the coup de grace. Her aim, besides killing the grimm, was to make sure that Jaune never had to face more than a single beowolf at a time; had they been younger and weaker, then she might not have been so determined, but these were older grimm, larger, stronger, their bones cracked and their bodies scarred with many battles. Jaune might be stronger now, and he might have better weapons now, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be in big trouble if he were mobbed by four or five experienced beowolves converging on him from all sides.
He did well against one beowolf after another, while Pyrrha covered his back and his flanks and ensured that he never had to fight more than one at a time. 
Curiously, some of these beowolves appeared to have been in a battle quite recently: their armour was freshly cracked, they had new wounds on their black hides, and some of them were even missing forelimbs. Pyrrha tucked the question of who could have done this and why SAPR hadn’t known that another team of huntsmen were in the area away for when the battle was done.
The alpha beowolf came last, when most of its pack had been slaughtered already, crouching through the stone passage and emerging into the cave with a roar. 
Pyrrha threw her shield at it, striking it between the eyes — between its eye and where the other eye should have been, at least/ it had a scar and a crack in its mask and no second burning orb — and causing the monster to recoil backwards, seemingly stunned.
Pyrrha didn’t wait for it to recover; instead, she made a flying leap that carried her through the air, Miló shifting to spear as she flew before she buried it in the alpha’s neck. She pulled it out with the help of her semblance, landing on the ground and pirouetting in place to deliver a series of slashing blows across the grimm’s belly. A kick to the chest and a shot to the face were enough to finish it off before it could recover.
Another victory, she thought as she landed. “You did well, Jaune,” she said. “Good work.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve still got nothing on you, though.”
“Give it time,” she told him.
Sunset and Ruby had dealt with all of their opponents by now, and Professor Port had finished recalibrating the control centre. 
“I’ll get some of our staff to see if they can find out anything about that symbol,” he said. “In the meantime, you should proceed to your second objective. Excellent work so far, team; keep it up.”
Sunset frowned. “I really feel as though I’ve seen that M before as well. Does anyone remember that?”
“No,” Ruby said. “Sorry.”
“Did anyone else think that those grimm seemed like they’d been in a recent battle?” Pyrrha asked. “They had wounds that looked almost fresh. Professor, are there any other huntsmen operating in this area right now? Or recently?”
“No, Miss Nikos, the last person to enter this area in the past month was you for your little encounter with Miss Fall,” Professor Port said. “If there is someone out there hunting grimm in the Emerald Forest, they’re unknown to us. If you find them, congratulate them on their bravery; it takes true grit to venture into a grimm-infested forest and hunt the enemies of mankind without anyone being aware of the fact.”
“That’s assuming they’re still alive when we find them,” Sunset muttered. “It might be brave, but that doesn’t make it smart.”
They didn’t find any rogue huntsman or team of huntsmen battling grimm in the area on their own account. More to the point, once they exited the cave and proceeded through the verdant eaves of the forest, they didn’t find much in the way of grimm either. A couple of boarbatusks lurked amidst another cluster of ancient ruins, dwelling amidst the debris of a kingdom so ancient that even its name had vanished from the history books, but that was it. Other than those two creatures, whom they dealt with swiftly, the Emerald Forest — or at least this part of it — was devoid of the monsters who made it their home. Not devoid of life, certainly — butterflies fluttered above the flowers while bees buzzed past them; flies seemed drawn to the huntsmen as they made their way down the old dirt pathways; squirrels darted up the trees and across their path more than once — but devoid of grimm in a way that was remarkable, and remarkably disconcerting in some ways. Pyrrha began to wonder if there was some very old and intelligent grimm stalking them, waiting for them to enter some kind of fiendish trap.
This foreboding feeling stayed with her as they emerged into more ruins, some kind of wide building — another palace, perhaps? Or another dining hall? — overlooking the cliff edge. It was a true cliff this time — Pyrrha didn’t want to try and guess how long the drop was — and the presence of stone railings suggested that whoever had raised the house — of which only a interconnected stone archways and a couple of stone roof beams remained — had built it so that they could come out onto the wide balcony and look out across the magnificent vista.
Jaune whistled. “Quite a view, huh?”
“Echo!” Ruby yelled as loud as she could and beamed as her own voice was hurled back at her from below.
It was a view, to be sure: the tall tower, like the tower in which The Girl in the Tower had been imprisoned by her cruel father, rising up from out of the sea of trees; the winding river that cut through the landscape and the mountains that nestled along the river’s bank large enough but at the time mere foothills to the truly mighty peaks that lay beyond; the ancient trees that grew so tall that they were almost reaching the balcony where SAPR stood, their leaves rustling in the gentle summer breeze. 
It was a beautiful view, and yet, Pyrrha found that her ability to appreciate it was being hampered by this sense of wrongness.
“Does it seem too quiet to anyone else?” she asked.
Sunset turned away from the view and leaned upon the ancient balcony rail. “I know what you mean, but if the grimm were waiting for their moment, how come they haven’t reached it yet?”
“Because they know there’s a better place waiting?” Pyrrha suggested. “And is there an alternative?”
“There really aren’t that many grimm around here,” Ruby suggested. “It could happen.”
“Whichever the answer is, we won’t find it here,” Sunset said. “If there is an ambush waiting, then we’ll deal with it, just like we’ve dealt with everything else fate has thrown our way.”
As they moved a little further on, to an old stone bridge from ages past, the chances of an ambush decreased a little in Pyrrha’s eyes as they came across the residue of a battle, quite possibly the same battle that had given those beowolves the injuries that had perturbed her earlier. 
But it was not a battle against huntsmen, but against robots, robots of a kind that she had never seen before — after enough time around the Atlesians, she could tell the difference between the various kinds of androids they employed, and these robots were none of those — robots that had been left in pieces strewn across the stone road that led to the bridge and to the bridge itself. Some of the robots were red, some were white, and all of them — and Pyrrha proved this by levitating a cluster of different parts into something that resembled what one of the robots might have looked like intact — were larger than a man by a considerable degree. She and Jaune were the tallest members of the team, and yet, these robots were about twice their size. She’d never heard of giant androids before. 
Ruby folded Crescent Rose away and tucked it behind her back as she picked up a gun that one of the destroyed androids had left behind. She cooed over it as he turned it over in her hands, always pointing the large barrel down towards the ground while her fingers ranged over the weapon, searching for something.
“Ah, here it is,” Ruby declared triumphantly as she did something that caused a blocky ammunition drum to eject from the back of the gun, followed shortly after by a tube of some description. 
“Woah,” Ruby said. “Guys, I think this is a combined rotary cannon and grenade launcher! That is so cool! Only…”
“What?” Sunset asked.
“Who’d give a robot a gun this neat?” Ruby asked. “Atlas only gives theirs the basic rifles, right? This … I dunno, I could see a huntsman with a gun like this.”
“Perhaps it belonged to a huntsman,” Jaune suggested. “One huntsman using robots to back themselves up.”
“There’s no sign of them,” Sunset said. She knelt down on the bridge amidst the android components. “So, here’s what I think happened. These robots are sent to hunt down grimm. We can’t say why, but why else would they be here? And they do so, they cleanse the area of grimm; that’s why we haven’t seen that many of them around. Until they come across a pack of beowolves; these beowolves are old and experienced, and they’re able to outwit the droids and take them out, but not without cost. Those are the same ones that attacked us; that’s why they were wounded.”
“Makes sense,” Jaune said. “But doesn’t explain why anyone would sabotage the security systems.”
“I never said that I had all the answers,” Sunset said as she rose to her feet. “Maybe we’ll find them further along.”
The evidence — or rather, the continued lack of any grimm presence to spoil the virgin countryside — seemed to bear out Sunset’s hypothesis as they headed towards their second objective, another control centre. This one was placed atop a raised stone platform that must have served quite a different purpose back when this place was a flourishing city. Pyrrha couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to everyone who had once lived here and why they had all abandoned their homes in this way. Had the grimm overrun the place? It was hard to see what else could have caused a whole sprawling city to be abandoned like this. 
Upon the ground sat several large cages, each one big enough to hold an ursa in them if required to do so, with wire meshing in between the glass or plastic of the walls and that same elaborate M symbol stamped upon them as they had seen upon the object that had, so they assumed, been interfering with the monitoring station. 
Pyrrha further assumed that these cages were not part of the usual aesthetic of this part of the forest. 
“Cages?” Ruby asked. “Was someone trying to capture grimm? But everyone knows that grimm don’t survive long in captivity.”
“I don’t know about that, but I know where I’ve seen that symbol before!” Sunset yelled as she pulled out her scroll. “Blake!”
“The symbol belongs to Blake?” Ruby asked.
“No,” Sunset said, “but Blake’s been on a few adventures up in Atlas; she hasn’t just destabilised the SDC and threatened to dry up the dust supply.” 
She opened up her scroll and began to scroll through the various options. “Faunus were being kidnapped, and I don’t know why I didn't remember this until now. She sent me some pictures; here, look at these.” 
She held out her scroll to Ruby, who took it from her unprotesting hands. Pyrrha and Jaune gathered around, looking over Ruby’s shoulders as she scrolled through images of robots that looked exactly like the robots whose remains they had found on the other side of the bridge. 
And bearing that same M symbol upon their chests.
“The same robots we saw in pieces,” Ruby said.
“The robots were doing the kidnapping,” Sunset replied, nodding her head. “Blake, Rainbow, Weiss, they fought them to stop the kidnappings and rescue everyone.”
“Kidnapping faunus in Atlas, now capturing grimm in Vale,” Pyrrha said. “Why? What’s the connection? Who does the symbol belong to?”
“Something called Merlot Industries,” Sunset said. “According to what Blake told me, they were a company started in Vale about twenty years ago or so; they were based in Mountain Glenn, but when the city fell … everyone died, and the company folded. They hadn’t been doing so well beforehand.“
“Students, I couldn’t help but overhear,” the voice Professor Port boomed into their ears. “Indeed, I’ve just had a report that confirms much of what Miss Shimmer has just told you.”
“But thank you for bringing the Atlas connection to my attention, Miss Shimmer; I had forgotten,” added Professor Ozpin, his voice a new presence into their ears.
It appears he is as adept at appearing on the line as he is in person.
“Professor Ozpin?” Sunset asked.
“Indeed. I’m afraid that I must make a request of the four of you: given the Merlot Industries connection, it makes sense to continue the investigation into this mystery in Mountain Glenn, and given your experience there … I am sorry to ask this of you.”
“It’s alright, Professor,” Pyrrha said. “We’ll go and get to the bottom of this, won’t we?” she asked, looking at her teammates.
“Sure we will,” Ruby said.
“I kind of want to find out the answers to all this,” Jaune said.
Sunset hesitated. Her ears drooped, and so too did her tail; it hung limply down between her legs. If the colour had faded from her hair somewhat, Pyrrha would not have been greatly surprised by it. She did not look straight at any of her teammates; rather, her eyes darted between and past them, in the spaces where they were not. 
“I … I’m not sure,” she murmured.
“Sunset,” Ruby said, “we have to go. Who else can do this, if not us?”
“Someone else,” Sunset said sharply. “Anyone else.”
“No one else is going to be as good as us,” Ruby said. “No one else knows Mountain Glenn like we do.”
That might be the problem, Pyrrha thought. Certainly, it was the best reason she could come up with for why all of Sunset’s pep and vigour from the beginning of the mission had deserted her.
“That doesn’t mean—”
“And after the Breach, there won’t be many grimm left in the city, will there?” Jaune added. “So it should be a lot easier than it was the last time.”
“Jaune,” Pyrrha murmured. “Perhaps—”
“I don’t get what the problem is,” Ruby demanded. “We have a job to do; we can’t just turn back because we don’t feel like it—”
“Ruby,” Pyrrha said. “Look.”
Sol Invictus was trembling in Sunset’s hands. Her whole body was shaking, in fact, as though it had grown suddenly very cold, far colder than it was here. She was gasping for breath, taking great gulps of air as though she’d eaten something that she was allergic to, her chest straining against her cuirass as if the metal was restraining her like a corset tied too tight. 
Ruby stopped, her silver eyes widening. “Sunset? Sunset … what’s wrong? What’s going on?”
“Are you…?” Jaune trailed off before he could finish asking ‘are you okay,’ presumably because he could recognise the question would be redundant. 
Pyrrha approached Sunset slowly, carefully, as though her team leader were some kind of lost animal who might, if not approached with caution, take flight and bolt into the unknown, never to be seen again. 
Pyrrha slung her weapons across her back and held out her hands on either side of her, so that Sunset — if she was still able to notice such things and was not so lost in panic that the ability to do so had deserted — could see that they were open and empty. 
Pyrrha’s footfalls were light upon the ancient stone as she reached Sunset and, with both hands, gently reached out towards her. 
“It’s alright, Sunset,” she whispered, her voice soft and soothing, like a cool breeze on a balmy afternoon. Carefully, she plucked Sol Invictus out of Sunset’s hands and bent her knees down to gently lay it on the ground. 
Sunset hardly seemed to notice. Her hands remained where they had been, as though they still held the weapon, but they trembled as much or more than they had done before. 
Pyrrha rose once more to her full height and once more reached for Sunset. “It’s alright,” she repeated as she took Sunset’s hands once more in hers. “I’m here.” She clasped Sunset’s hands together; enfolding them in the embrace of her palms, she could feel the trembling in Sunset’s hands like tremors as they shook within her grasp. “We’re all here, Sunset.”
Sunset managed to look at Pyrrha. Her eyes were wide, and again, Pyrrha was reminded of some distressed creature, poised upon the precipice of flight. 
Pyrrha looked straight into her eyes as she held Sunset’s hands within hers.
“There is nothing to fear, Sunset,” she whispered. “I promise you that.”
Sunset stared up at her, and though her eyes remained wide, her breathing began to ease up a little, and she did not shake up. 
Pyrrha smiled at her, a reassuring smile she hoped, and a warm one too, then turned her head away for a moment. “Professor, I’m sorry, but I don’t think—”
“We’ll go,” Sunset declared, her voice hoarse as though her throat had been coated with phlegm. 
Pyrrha looked at her. “Sunset?”
“We’ll go,” Sunset repeated. “We will go to Mountain Glenn. I…” She closed her eyes. “I will not have it said I was afraid.”
Sunset. Pyrrha was not at all certain that this was a good idea, not least because it was manifestly clear that Sunset was afraid, although whether she was afraid of anything that existed in the world or simply in her own heart and mind was something she would not speak to with such certainty. Nevertheless, she was afraid, and she did not want to go to Mountain Glenn. 
And so, that being the case, to venture there for pride seemed to her to be folly. 
Yet Sunset’s pride now drove her on. 
Just as mine drove me. That thought stayed Pyrrha’s tongue. Sunset had had misgivings about some of her recent actions, misgivings that she had entirely failed to keep to herself, and yet, in the end, she had acquiesced. She had put them aside for Pyrrha’s sake, recognising Pyrrha’s desire — her need — to confront Cinder. 
Perhaps Sunset now needed to return to Mountain Glenn, much though she clearly did not wish to do so. 
Therefore, that being so, Pyrrha … Pyrrha was obliged to hold her peace and acquiesce, just as Sunset had; no, better, she would keep her misgivings better hidden than Sunset had. 
I will watch you and take care of you, but I will do so in quiet. 
“Are you quite certain, Miss Shimmer?” Professor Ozpin asked.
“Yes, Professor,” Sunset said forcefully, though the force might as well have been directed against herself as at Professor Ozpin. “We will go, if it is needed.”
“Very well then,” Professor Ozpin said, his own voice quiet and a little solemn. “I will have a Bullhead loaded with supplies and sent to your location.”
“Thank you, Professor,” Sunset murmured. She sighed. To Pyrrha, she whispered, “Thank you.”
“Any time,” Pyrrha said, just as softly and as gently, as she released Sunset’s hands and took a step back. 
Sunset looked down at her hands, clenching and unclenching them for a second or two before she let them fall down at her sides. Her ears pricked up a little as she looked up, sweeping her gaze across Jaune and Ruby. “So, what was that I was saying about a nice, straightforward mission?”