//------------------------------//
// Time Off 
// Story: SAPR 
// by Scipio Smith 
//------------------------------//


Time Off


Pyrrha walked out of the shower. 
It had been a long time since she had had a good, long shower like that. Lately, even when she wasn’t up all night on stand-by, she had to wash so quickly in case there was an emergency that it felt as though she hadn’t been allowed to luxuriate in the act of cleaning since she left Beacon. She hadn’t been allowed to just stand under the hot water, letting it run through her hair and trickle down her skin; hadn’t been allowed to feel it washing all her cares away along with the sweat and the grime; hadn’t had time to rub in the expensive shampoo that left her hair smelling of jasmine, rose, and frankincense; hadn’t had time to condition. But she had time now, thanks to Terri-Belle and the knowledge that if anything else happened today, the Imperial Guard would take care of it. 
It felt good to have allies. It felt good to be able to idle away under the water that streamed down upon her and not feel immorally self-indulgent for it. It felt good to be able to take some time to herself, trusting in someone else to take care of the world while she was preoccupied. 
It almost felt like being back at Beacon. 
Of course, the situation wasn’t quite that rosy. There were problems with this new arrangement: inefficiencies that might cost lives before they were dealt with, this disgraceful deal that would be offered to the bandits. And of course, the threat of Salem – and her followers firmly ensconced within the walls of Mistral – still loomed over them. But for now, just for today, she could put aside the leader of the Myrmidons, put aside the Champion of Mistral, and just be Pyrrha Nikos as she luxuriated in the shower, preparing to go out with her fiancé. 
Go out and only slightly belatedly celebrate their engagement. Their engagement! With all that had happened over the last couple of days, the shine had barely even started to come off the news. She was engaged! She wanted to skip down the street shouting it for everyone to hear. 
Hopefully, she would manage to maintain her composure once she and Jaune actually left the house. 
She said hopefully, but there was a small part of her that rather wanted to skip down the street yelling to everyone that she was engaged to be married. People did seem to be so interested in her business, after all. 
Eventually, having made up for all the time that she felt she had lost in all of those quick-changes and hasty washes on stand-by, Pyrrha climbed out of the shower, dried herself off – taking a long time to dry herself off with a nice, warm, fluffy towel was another little pleasure that had been denied to Pyrrha recently – and wrapped another towel around herself as she emerged into the bedroom. 
Nora and Arslan were waiting for her. Arslan was leaning against the wall, drumming against it with her fingers, while Nora was sitting on the bed, holding the dress that Pyrrha had chosen. 
“Is this what you’re going to wear, Pyrrha?” she asked. “It looks like something from Mantle after the Great War.”
“Yes, I believe that was the inspiration,” Pyrrha replied. “Rainbow Dash’s friend Rarity found out that I find that style quite pretty and made me a few things after the fashion. I wouldn’t wear something like that all the time, and I’m not going to bother with the gloves, but… I think it looks rather nice, and it’s not inappropriate.”
Nora examined the red dress critically. “I guess not,” she admitted. “I mean, I wouldn’t wear anything like this, but you’ve always had more of a girly side than some of us.”
“I always thought that was just part of your ‘princess’ brand,” Arslan said, “but you really enjoy it, don’t you?”
“Upon occasion,” Pyrrha said. “Is there something wrong with that?”
Arslan shook her head. “It would be pretty stupid to complain about your fashion sense when there is so much going on that deserves to be complained about far more.”
“Are you talking about my decision to work with the Council?”
“I’m talking about the Council’s decision to work with the people we’ve been fighting for the past three months,” Arslan replied. She paused. “Was Kurt at the meeting when this was announced?”
“Yes,” Pyrrha replied. “She had things to say about it too and said that you’d feel the same.”
“She still knows me that well, then,” Arslan muttered. She bit her lip, a look of shame crossing her face. “When me and Kurt were little – well, when we were younger than we are now, anyway – there was this guy named Mister Hong, he owned a laundrette a couple of streets from where we lived, and Kurt and me…” Arslan’s whole body shifted uncomfortably. “We used to stand across the street and threaten to throw bricks in his windows unless he paid us not to. We used to call it 'guarding his store.'” Arslan huffed. “I’m not proud of it. When I got my first big payday, I gave half of it to old Mister Hong to apologise for being such an ass when I was a kid. He sold the laundrette, and I think he moved to Kuchinashi.”
“All’s well that ends well?” Nora suggested.
“I hope so,” Arslan muttered. “The point is that any bandit who takes this pardon is just going to be playing ‘guard your village’ with the Council; give us money, or we’ll start breaking things.”
“I fear there is some force in what you say,” Pyrrha agreed, “but what can we do about it? The decision has been made. I daresay that couriers will be despatched soon to spread the word.”
“Maybe the bandits will eat all the messengers without bothering to hear the message?” Nora suggested.
“I’m not sure that I feel quite comfortable wishing death on people,” Pyrrha murmured. She frowned. “Eat them?”
Nora shrugged. “I’m sure it happens sometimes.”
“Not too often, I hope,” Pyrrha replied, with a slight shudder. “What do you think of this?”
Nora did not immediately reply. She looked like she would; she opened her mouth, but no words came out. She closed her mouth again, waited a little bit, then opened her mouth, only to – once again – not say anything. She repeated this two more times before she finally said, “I mean, it’s not good, but it’s hard for us to complain too much when we’re talking about places that were too far away for us to protect. I’m more worried about the fact that we can’t do anything without authorisation from Captain Mohawk. What if we have to do something to stop Salem? What if someone tries to get the Relic of Knowledge?”
“Then I suppose we’ll either have to be very discrete or be prepared to face the consequences of our actions,” Pyrrha said. “Or try to be the first and be prepared for the second.”
“Hmm,” Nora muttered. “That’s not a great answer.”
“No, but it is an honest one,” said Pyrrha. 
“I guess,” Nora grumbled. “But hey! No more talking business; tonight is supposed to be our day off! Finally, we get to have some fun around here.”
Pyrrha chuckled. “Yes, it has been a long time, hasn’t it?” She considered. “I’m going out with Jaune tonight, but Terri-Belle did say that the Imperial Guard would cover the region for the next couple of days. Assuming nothing changes, why don’t we go out tomorrow, us girls?”
“Ooh, hen night rehearsal,” Nora declared eagerly. “Love it!”
“Just the three of us?”
“Perhaps,” Pyrrha said. “Or we could invite more, if you’d prefer. Think about it, both of you. Do either of you have any plans for today or tonight?”
Nora slumped back onto Pyrrha’s bed with a weary sigh. “I wish.”
Pyrrha’s look was sympathetic, and so was her tone even as she said, “Dare I say you need to practice what you preach, Nora? I’ve heard about the advice you gave to Jaune.”
“It’s always easier to give advice than to follow it,” Nora groaned. “Besides, I’m following your playbook, remember? Only ‘wait around for the idiot to notice me’ isn’t working?” Nora tilted her head backwards to look at Arslan. “Any advice?”
“I… am exactly the wrong person to ask about this,” Arslan said. “But I do have plans. Nadir, Bolin, and I need to have a talk.”
“You’re exactly the wrong person to ask about this when you’re dating two guys?” Nora demanded.
“They’re my ex-teammates, and it’s not a date,” Arslan replied sharply. “We’ve just got a lot to talk about.”
“Then I wish you luck with that,” Pyrrha said.
Arslan nodded. “Good luck to you, too, P-money.”
“Thank you,” Pyrrha said. “I… I’m really looking forward to this.”



Pyrrha was getting ready, so Jaune waited for her in the study. 
He himself had already changed out of his armour and his Pumpkin Pete hoodie and put on a yellow short sleeved button-up shirt with a dark casual jacket on over the top. He’d changed his jeans too, although it wasn't obvious because he’d changed them for… just another pair of jeans. 
He was only casually dressed because it was still only the early afternoon; he and Pyrrha were going to go out for lunch, seeing as they had free time as an unexpected benefit of Terri-Belle’s generosity. They were also going out for dinner and the ballet later that evening, at which point he would dress up a little more, but for now, he felt that this was fine. 
Whether he would still feel that way when he saw what Pyrrha had done was another matter. She had been some time already, making Jaune a little nervous that he had misunderstood things and ought to have dressed up more. 
He didn’t feel too uneasy though, as Pyrrha wasn’t the kind to hold it against him if he was a little underdressed. She wasn’t that kind of girl at all. 
While he waited for her, he got a little more work done. Just because they had more allies in the fight didn’t mean that the fight was over, after all. There was still so much that they didn’t understand. 
There was a knock on the door. 
Jaune stood up. “Pyrrha?”
The voice that came from the other side of the door belonged to Swift Foot. “No such luck,” she said, “but can I come in anyway?”
“Uh, sure,” Jaune said, and he stayed on his feet as the door opened and Swift Foot walked in, still wearing her armour. “You know, given the news, you could probably take that off.”
Swift Foot grinned. “I could, but in my zeal to join the great adventure I didn’t bring any other clothes with me.”
“Right,” Jaune said, with a sympathetic wince. “But now that we’re all friends, I’m sure that you could go and pick something up from the palace. That is, if you want to stick around.”
Swift Foot’s eyebrows rose, disappearing amidst her mass of hair. “Why wouldn’t I want to stick around?”
“No reason,” Jaune replied. “It’s just that you came here because you weren’t in the fight, but now your family is so in the fight that your eldest sister is leading it and another of your sisters is captain of the Imperial Guard, so-”
“So you’re telling me to go back, grovel to my sisters, and ask to fight alongside them?” Swift Foot finished for him.
“No,” Jaune said. “If you want to stay here, then you can, by all means. I just meant that if you want to go home instead, then you can do that too. There’s nothing keeping you here.”
“Nothing… except my will,” Swift Foot murmured, glancing away from Jaune as she ran one hand through her hair. “I think that I would rather stay, if it is all the same to you and Pyrrha. My family…” she trailed off. “So, you and Pyrrha are taking advantage of your new liberty?”
“We might as well,” Jaune replied. “We all might as well. I doubt that we’re the only ones who are taking advantage of not being on any kind of stand-by.”
“No, the house is going to be nearly empty,” Swift Foot said. She looked at Jaune. “You’re a lucky man,” she told him.
Jaune chuckled. “Everybody always tells me that, as though they’re afraid that I’m not well aware already.”
There was a touch of amusement in Swift Foot’s voice as she asked, “Does it irritate you?”
“Not really,” Jaune said. “Not from most people. I mean… I totally get it. I mean, I am a really lucky guy. Pyrrha is… gods, where do I even start with how great she is?”
“Yeah,” Swift Foot agreed, her voice mild and gentle. “She really is, isn’t she?”
Something about the way that she said it, the almost wistful tone in her voice, made Jaune’s eyes narrow just a little. “Did you come in to tell me that I’ve got competition?”
Swift Foot let out a bark of laughter. “You might, but not from me. I am not Pyrrha’s type. And yet… she intrigues me.”
Jaune frowned. “How do you mean? Um, would you like to sit down?”
“Thank you,” Swift Foot murmured, as she took the seat in front of the desk. Jaune, likewise, sat down. 
Swift Foot crossed her legs and clasped her hands around her knee. “You know, don’t you?” she asked. “You know all her secrets.”
Jaune considered his reply. “The ones she’s keeping from most people,” he said. “But if you expect me to tell you what they are-”
“Don’t worry; I’m not such a fool that I’d expect you to betray the confidence of your betrothed,” Swift Foot assured him. “I just… I came here because I knew that Pyrrha – that all of you – were doing good, but at the same time, I was fully prepared to find out that there was more going on.”
“You were fully prepared to find out that Pyrrha was increasing her popularity in preparation for a coup attempt?” Jaune suggested.
Swift Foot’s lips twitched. “I had considered the possibility. I’m not the only one.”
“No, but you might be the only person entertaining the idea who came to join up with us anyway,” Jaune pointed out.
“As I told you, you were doing good for the Kingdom of Mistral, and that mattered to me,” Swift Foot explained. “It mattered more than your future plans. If those plans turned out to be directed at the political advancement of Pyrrha Nikos, then I could, in good honour, decide whether I wished to stand with you or against you.”
“You mean you might have stood with us?” Jaune said.
“I might yet.”
“Except that you won’t have to because we’re not planning anything of the sort,” Jaune added quickly.
Swift Foot’s smile hung dangerously close to a smirk. “No,” she said. “Of course not.”
“I’m serious,” Jaune declared. “Pyrrha harbours no ambitions for the throne of Mistral; none whatsoever. Pyrrha…”
“Doesn’t have an ambitious bone in her body.”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Jaune said softly, “but Pyrrha’s ambitions are of a different kind. A more selfless kind.” He shook his head. “I’m still kind of hung up on the fact that you might have been on our side if we’d been planning the kind of nonsense that some people seem to suspect we’re planning.”
Swift Foot shrugged. “My father’s position was passed down to him from his father, who had it from his mother. Might we not call him King instead of Steward?”
“The Steward can be outvoted,” Jaune reminded her.
“You don’t have a passion for ancient history, I take it?”
“Um, no,” Jaune admitted. “Why?”
“Because if you did, you’d know that there are plenty of examples of kingdoms where the monarch did not enjoy absolute power. I can still remember Terri-Belle asking how many years needs it to make a Steward an Empress, if the Empress desires it not, when we were both a little younger. Let’s be honest, the only reason we don’t have a monarchy is that the Last King of Vale intimated that we would get more lenient peace terms without one. But a republic has little claim upon the imagination of our culture, nor does it sit easily with our society.”
“Some people seem very determined to defend it,” Jaune replied.
Swift Foot laughed. “Make no mistake, Jaune Arc, those who prate the loudest about the need to defend our free commonwealth would crown themselves in a heart’s beating if they thought they could. We are a society driven to outdo one another, and what says ‘I am set above you, so far above you cannot touch me’ more than a crown?”
“‘And hold your head up high above all others,’” Jaune murmured, remembering the words that Pyrrha had quoted to him. 
“Exactly,” Swift Foot said. “A monarchy is the historical natural state of our kingdom’s governance. Why should we be constrained in the ordering of our kingdom - our kingdom - by the will of a Valishman many years dead?”
“Why are you telling me all this?” Jaune asked. “I mean… I feel as though I probably ought to make some kind of robust defence of the system but, honestly… knock yourself out. If your father wants to put a crown upon his head and call himself king or emperor, then so be it. I’m not sure how Pyrrha feels about the institution more generally, but if the people cried out for a king to lead them, I don’t think she’d be upset about it – provided that it wasn’t her.”
“Because her ambitions do not that way tend,” Swift Foot paraphrased.
“Precisely,” Jaune confirmed. 
“All that she is,” Swift Foot mused. “How far she is set above any of the rest of us, and still, she does not seek the power that would fall into her hands like a ripe plum the moment that she opened her hand to it?”
“No,” Jaune declared. “That’s not who Pyrrha is.”
“She is instead someone who seeks to do good… merely for goodness’ sake?” Swift Foot asked. “Out of mere righteousness?”
“She’s a hero,” Jaune replied. “Isn’t that what a hero does?”
“Not if you actually read the stories,” Swift Foot replied, with a certain grim humour in her voice, “but with Pyrrha… I could almost believe it.”
“Only almost?”
“If it were true, it would make her one in a million,” Swift Foot said.
“She is,” Jaune replied. “Although in that way… I’ve been very fortunate in that regard.”
“Hmm,” Swift Foot mused. “Once more, I say you are a lucky man, Jaune Arc.”
“So I’ve been told.”
Swift Foot chuckled. “Be honest? Does it annoy you?”
“Only when it’s…” Jaune paused to collect his words. “Only when… sometimes. I’m not sure I could explain when it is and when it isn’t.”
“She is the daughter of Mistral,” Swift Foot said. “She has lived her life in the view of the city so that many of our people know her better than they know their nieces and nephews. You must allow us a mingling of pride and protectiveness.”
“I do,” Jaune said. “It only bothers me when…”
“When it is used not to imply her fine qualities but your lack thereof?” Swift Foot suggested.
Jaune considered that, slowly nodding his head. “Yes, pretty much that.”
“Understandable,” Swift Foot allowed. “For what it’s worth… I think she’s as lucky as you are.”
Jaune stopped for a second, stunned into silence. “That’s… the first time anyone has ever said that to me.”
Swift Foot smiled. “Neither of you saw me, but I was at that party a year ago that my father hosted, and I saw you. My sisters were away – and I can’t say that I wasn’t glad that at least two of them weren’t around – hunting down grimm near Higanbana. I was standing alone, ignored, forgotten, and I looked over and there, across the courtyard, I saw that the great Pyrrha Nikos was in the exact same position as I was. She looked… it was like gazing into a mirror. And then you came over to her, and it was as though a transformation came over her. And I was so… I wished that someone would come over to me and rescue me, the way you rescued her. But no one did.”
Jaune wasn’t sure how to reply to that. “I… I’m sorry,” he murmured, knowing how inadequate it sounded. 
“Don’t be,” Swift Foot said quickly. “You have too much to be happy about to be sorry.”
“I know,” Jaune said, “but, at the same time-”
The door opened. “Jaune?” Pyrrha said, as she stepped inside. “Is there-? Oh, hello, Swift Foot.”
Swift Foot got to her feet. “Pyrrha,” she said. “Jaune and I were just chatting while he waited for you.”
“I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long,” Pyrrha said. “Jaune?”
Jaune made a kind of noise that might have passed for communication amongst some primitive tribes living in caves in some bygone era but which was in no way recognisable as modern speech. 
Pyrrha was wearing a red, tea length, one piece dress with a sweetheart neckline and yellow flowers adorning the shoulder straps; a golden belt encircled her waist before the skirt flared out in an A-line around her legs, while spindly silver sandals gripped her feet and legs tightly. Her engagement ring gleamed upon her finger, while a pair of sapphire teardrop earrings hung from her ears – she wasn’t wearing her circlet or the emerald drops that usually dangled from it – and she had exchanged the black armband that she had worn since returning to Mistral for the gold one that she had worn at Beacon. Her hair was loose, unbound and descending to the level of her waist in gentle curls. Rich red gloss shimmered upon her lips. 
She was, not to put too fine a point upon it, gorgeous. 
“Too much?” Pyrrha wondered in an apologetic tone.
“Pyrrha, please,” Swift Foot said. “I don’t believe every word to drop from the lips of my sister Blonn Di, but I believe her when she says that there is no such thing as ‘too much.’” She looked at Jaune with a smirk. “It’s ironic that we were discussing the transformation that he effected on you, when you’ve just transformed him from interlocutor to mush mouth.”
“I’m fine,” Jaune insisted. “I just… you were worth the wait.”
Pyrrha beamed radiantly. “I’m so glad to hear it. So, what were you two talking about?”
“You,” Swift Foot informed her baldly. “Jaune here was just singing your praises.”
Pyrrha looked at him. “Really?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Jaune said. “Unless you’re impressed, in which case, it was exactly like it sounds.”
Pyrrha giggled, covering her mouth with one hand. “But, seriously-“
“Seriously, we really were talking about you,” Swift Foot maintained. “All that you have and all that you could be if only you wished it.”
“But I don’t,” Pyrrha replied. “As I told you-”
“You are not what my father fears,” Swift Foot murmured. “Nor what so many in Mistral hope you to be.”
“There is nothing I can do about that,” Pyrrha said. She hesitated. “Nothing that I am willing to do any longer. I… I can only be what I am, and if that is not good enough, then… I am sorry.”
“You have no need to apologise to me,” Swift Foot told her. “As I was saying to Jaune, I might have followed you even to the steps of the Petal Throne, but if that is not your road, then I have no cause to complain of it. I will follow you against the grimm nevertheless.” She bowed her head. “And now that you are here… I’ll leave you to it.”



Pyrrha smiled as Jaune pulled out her chair for her. “Such a gentleman,” she observed playfully.
“I’m learning,” Jaune said with a smile. “Slowly, but I’m learning.”
Pyrrha giggled quietly as she sat down, then waited for Jaune to take his seat in turn. His chair scraped over the stone just a little, and again as he pulled it back in towards the round wooden table. 
They were sat just outside an artisanal café, partially shielded from the pleasant sunshine by a red awning that jutted out from the wall. A waitress in a white cheongsam with a blue floral pattern approached, bowing her head to them as she placed two menus down onto the table. 
“Welcome,” she said. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
“Could we have some water while we look at the menu?” Pyrrha asked.
“Of course,” the waitress said. “I’ll bring it right away.” She turned and walked briskly back inside the building. 
Pyrrha resolutely ignored the photographer taking pictures of her and Jaune from the other side of the street. A part of her was tempted to whip his scroll out of his hands with her semblance, but that would have seemed rather petulant of her, let alone spoiled the mood, which she was determined not to do. So she ignored it. It was nothing that would – or could – dent her happiness today. 
She sighed. “It feels wonderful, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Not to have to worry, if only for a little while.”
“It feels great to have some time to ourselves,” Jaune agreed.
“To be able to leave things for others to take care of,” Pyrrha continued. “It almost feels like…”
“Like being back at Beacon?” Jaune suggested.
Pyrrha nodded. “Yes. Almost.” Like being at Beacon, except our friends aren’t here. She shook her head. “But we didn’t come here to talk about that, did we? We came here- oh, thank you,” she said, as their water was brought to them.
“Of course. Have you chosen your order yet?” the waitress asked.
They hadn’t even opened the menus. “Not yet, I’m afraid,” Pyrrha murmured, as she opened the little red book, and Jaune did likewise.
“Very well,” the waitress replied, before moving to another table.
“You realise she probably won’t check on us for another twenty minutes at least?” Jaune said.
“Does that matter?” Pyrrha replied. “It’s not as though we have anywhere better to be.”
Jaune smiled as he reached across the table and grabbed one of her hands. “No,” he agreed. “I guess we don’t.” He glanced down at the menu. “Do you know what’s good here?”
“Sencha is very safe and ordinary, but I’m quite fond of it,” Pyrrha replied. She hesitated. “Um, Jaune… there’s something that I need to discuss with you.”
Jaune looked up at her. “'Discuss'? That sounds serious.”
“It… I suppose it is,” Pyrrha admitted. “Which might make it a little inappropriate, except that it concerns our wedding. More specifically… it concerns… our name after we’re married.”
“You mean the fact that I’m going to take your name,” Jaune predicted.
Pyrrha’s eyes widened, if only momentarily. “You knew? Did my mother tell you? I hope that she didn’t-”
“Your mother didn’t say anything,” Jaune assured her. “Like I said, I’m learning, slowly, but I am learning. You’re Pyrrha Nikos, and your family founded this city. That matters to people, and even if it didn’t… I know that your family’s history is important to you. I know that you draw strength from it.”
Pyrrha wasn’t entirely sure what to say. He had pre-empted her so completely that he had rendered her speechless. “You… you’re taking this very well.”
Jaune beamed at her. “It’s just a name.”
“It’s your name.”
“And you’re my fiancée,” Jaune replied. He squeezed her hand. “And I’m honoured to become a part of your family. Besides, there are plenty of other Arcs to carry on the name, right?”
Pyrrha looked into his eyes, her heart melting. She glanced down at their hands, joined together, his thumb resting upon the sapphire that was set into her ring. “You’re being so wonderful about this that it makes me feel rather selfish. You’ve already left your home and crossed the ocean for me, and now, you’re giving up your name as well?”
“Would you rather I puff out my chest and demand that you give up your name for me?” Jaune asked, an undercurrent of laughter in his voice. “If we fought about this, would it be easier for you to feel righteous?”
Pyrrha covered her mouth with her free hand as she laughed. “Well, when you put it like that, I suppose, instead of complaining, I should be grateful that you’re so understanding about… about everything.”
“I wouldn’t say no to a little gratitude, future Mrs Nikos,” Jaune teased.
Pyrrha shook her head, her long red hair swaying gently back and forth. “The future Mrs Arc-Nikos.”
Jaune’s eyebrows rose. “'Arc-Nikos'?”
“It might sound completely absurd,” Pyrrha admitted, “but the fact that you’re so very willing to give up your name… is exactly the reason I can’t just take it from you.”
“Jaune Arc-Nikos,” Jaune murmured. “Jaune and Pyrrha Arc-Nikos.”
“Not exactly short and sweet,” Pyrrha admitted.
“But I love it,” Jaune finished.
Pyrrha’s lips twitched upwards. “And so do I.”
“And hey,” Jaune said, “that’s our first decision out of the way. If we can get through them all like that, then this whole thing will be a piece of cake.”
“Some decisions are easier than others,” Pyrrha reminded him. “Some decisions… I don’t know when we ought to get married. I’ve really no idea. Or rather… I suppose you might say that I have two ideas fighting in my mind. One part of me wants to drag you away from this table, find a notary, and get married right now, this instant, while we have the chance. And another part of me… another part of me would like to hold out, hope the storm passes, and that we are granted enough peace for us to have the wedding of our dreams.”
“The wedding of your dreams,” Jaune corrected.
“It’s your wedding too, Jaune,” Pyrrha replied, with a touch of reproach in her voice. “You’re allowed to have some ideas; in fact, I’d welcome them.”
“I know,” Jaune replied. “But the way you said 'dreams,' as if you’d been planning it for years.”
“Well, it’s not as if I have binders or anything,” Pyrrha insisted good-naturedly. “And, to be honest, it wasn’t until I came to Beacon that I really knew what I wanted out of my wedding.”
Jaune waited for her to continue. When she did not, he prompted, “Go on.”
Pyrrha felt a faint blush rise to her cheeks. “Well… I knew I wanted you as the groom, to begin with.”
“Obviously,” Jaune said, with faux confidence, as with his free hand he gestured to himself up and down.
Pyrrha chuckled. “And I… I wanted Sunset and Ruby to help me get ready, to weave flowers into my hair and walk behind me.” She glanced down at the table in front of her. “I suppose we’ll have to resign ourselves to the fact that we’re going to be getting married without our best friends there.”
“I guess,” Jaune agreed. “I mean, it’s not like they can come over from Vale any more than any of our Atlas friends could make it down, even if we could let them know. What are we supposed to do, send invitations?”
Pyrrha snorted. “But we have each other, and that means… even if it isn’t the wedding of my dreams, it will still be the happiest day of my life to become your wife.” She paused. “But really, you have no ideas at all?”
“I didn’t really think about it,” Jaune admitted. “I mean, when I was… before I left for Beacon, or before I finally made up my mind that I was going to go to Beacon, I… I don’t know, I suppose I thought I might get married, but if you were to ask me who I’d be marrying, I’d have had to admit that I couldn’t imagine any of the local girls being willing to marry me. And then at Beacon, with Weiss… marriage wasn’t really on my mind back then, and then after that… I guess I just didn’t think about it when we were going out. There was always something else going on, and it wasn’t until Kendal gave me the ring that… I suppose, if I had thought about it, I would have said that I would have liked my family to be there to see it. But they’re not going to be there any more than Ruby or Sunset or Penny will be.”
“I’m sorry,” Pyrrha murmured. “Perhaps your sister in Argus-“
“I couldn’t ask them to make that trip, not now,” Jaune replied. “It’s far too dangerous, and they have Adrian to worry about.”
“No, I suppose it would be a great deal to ask, with the world in its present condition,” Pyrrha agreed. “So, our wedding will be attended by my mother and our new comrades… unless you’d rather a much smaller ceremony?”
“I’m learning, but not that fast,” Jaune said. “What is small or large in Mistral?”
“It depends; there are a lot of different cultures in Mistral,” Pyrrha said. “We are a cultural melting pot in many ways.”
“I’d say it’s more of a salad bowl,” Jaune replied. “I haven’t seen all that much melting since I’ve been here.”
“No, you make a very good point,” Pyrrha said. “Case in point, a traditional wedding for Ren would be quite different from a traditional wedding for Nora.” She paused. “I wonder how they’ll address that.”
Jaune was taking a sip of water when she said that, and he almost choked upon it. “Ren? Ren and Nora? I didn’t know they were even-”
“They’re not,” Pyrrha allowed. “But Nora certainly wouldn’t say no.”
Jaune nodded. “I’m not surprised. When she was giving me advice, it certainly sounded as though she wasn’t talking just about me.”
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to be of much help when she asked me for advice,” Pyrrha confessed, “and it’s so hard to tell how Ren feels because, well…”
“It’s Ren,” Jaune muttered.
“Indeed,” Pyrrha agreed. “Perhaps you could have a word with him?”
Jaune looked a little alarmed. “I’m not sure that I’ve got any standing to be giving anybody advice on getting into relationships.”
“You managed to get into this relationship rather easily,” Pyrrha reminded him. “But you’re right, we probably shouldn’t interfere.” If Sunset had told Jaune how she, Pyrrha, had felt about him after Pyrrha had confessed her feelings on the train, then she probably would have been mortified. Certainly, she would have been outraged at the betrayal of her confidence. True, if things had worked out, then she would have certainly forgiven Sunset, but if it hadn’t… if Ren didn’t feel the same way as Nora… no doubt that was why Nora was so mired in hesitation: they were such good friends, and she feared to jeopardise that by venturing into territory he might not want to follow. 
Poor Nora. All I can do is hope that it works out for you.
"In any case," Pyrrha continued, "my point is that there really isn't any such thing as a traditional Mistralian wedding, or rather, there are so many different traditional Mistralian weddings. Besides, we might prefer a more Valish or Atlesian ceremony. They are… very romantic after all."
"Why not both?" Jaune suggested.
Pyrrha blinked. "Two wedding ceremonies? That might be a little extravagant, don't you think?"
Jaune chuckled. "No, I mean, we could mix and match. You're from Mistral, but I'm from Vale, and you did just say that it was our wedding. A bit of one, a little of the other, maybe a touch of something else, that wouldn't be so bad, right? Would anyone complain?"
"Would we care if they did?" Pyrrha countered. "A mix and match," she mused. "Some of one and some of the other. Yes, that… that sounds quite lovely."
It was so lovely, in fact, that they spent a great deal of time discussing it, albeit in a rather aimless fashion, with frequent digressions and diversions and passing changes of the subject before they returned, in the end, back to the subject of the wedding. They didn't make much progress beyond their initial intent: they hadn't set a date, let alone settled on any of the other details that would need to be nailed down, but in a way, that wasn't really the point. The point was that, for the first time since coming – returning, in Pyrrha's case – to Mistral, they had the freedom to just sit down and talk about this – talk about their wedding, talk about themselves, talk about their friends – without worrying that the sky might fall or waiting to get a call that somewhere was under attack and crying out for help. For a little while, they were not the Champion of Mistral and her General; today, they were just Jaune Arc and Pyrrha Nikos, young and in love and engaged to be married.
And it felt wonderful.



Pyrrha had told Swift Foot - and more than once - that she, Pyrrha, was not what Lord Diomedes feared her to be. That she had uttered such words was of no great surprise to Swift Foot; in many circumstances, she would have dismissed them with a simple "well, you would say that, wouldn't you?" But when it came to Pyrrha Nikos… what was most intriguing to Swift Foot were the ways in which she was not what Swift Foot had thought to find within the House of Nikos and the ways in which she was exactly what she seemed – or it might be better said, presented herself, or at least had herself presented – to be.
She had come here thinking to find a would-be tyrant, and instead, she had found… what? What was Pyrrha Nikos, who was she? The obvious answers suggested that there was nothing to fear and much to wonder at.
Swift Foot had read Autumn Blaze's ever-expanding account of the adventures of the Myrmidons, but not to learn anything about the people she would be meeting on her mission; she understood – or thought she had understood – the relationship between Autumn Blaze and Pyrrha Nikos. In the same way that you could not look at an old painting and imagine that you were getting an accurate likeness of the subject, so too Autumn's depiction of the Princess Without a Crown ought to have been her very best self, at the least, if it was not an outright fabrication. No one could be as Pyrrha Nikos was held up to Mistral's adoration: a force of nature on the battlefield, yet one who had not a single drop of rage within her spirit, mild and gentle, her ears ever open to good counsel, who led through being well-beloved by those who followed her. Swift Foot had not known Pyrrha before she came here; she only knew of her reputation, she had seen her once or twice across a crowded room at this or that social function, and while she harboured no ill-will towards her, nor did she rate her as the paragon that sprung from Autumn's posts. No doubt, she wished to appear lordly and generous as a queen of old, but in desperate hours, generosity might be repaid with death, and surely, Pyrrha could not be blind to that fact. This was no story of demigods and heroes, this was no fairytale; this was Mistral, a city as stained with dirt as it was beautiful, where the darkness was as deep as the light shone brightly, and surely, no one who had to move in that real, stained, dirty city could be as free from dirt as Pyrrha was.
Swift Foot had come to the House of Nikos thinking to find not a fraud – her achievements were real enough, and Swift Foot was even willing to concede that there might be, in part, a noble motive underpinning them – but a human being, who fell short of the high standards which they set for themselves yet sought to hide the fact behind flattering words and good press.
She was beginning to think that if Pyrrha fell short of her own standards, it was only because those standards were too high.
Admittedly, Swift Foot had not been here long, but in the short time that she had known her, Pyrrha had seemed in nature to be exactly as she was depicted: always kind, never cowardly or cruel, rarely angry and then such a very mild kind of anger – and that directed only at what most would agree to be justified targets, like the brigands preying upon the villages and towns of Mistral – that it was barely worthy of the word. From the inquiries that Swift Foot had made amongst the Myrmidons – and she had risked seeming a little too direct at times because she'd been unable to believe what she was hearing – it seemed her greatest fault in conduct was a certain melancholy that clung to her at times in the face of the odds against them, and which undercut some of her efforts to conjure hope in the hearts of her followers. Leaving aside that said melancholy had been dispelled at present by the efforts of Jaune Arc, Swift Foot was not inclined to call that a fault; rather, she was of the opinion that a hero should be melancholy. One who is invulnerable in body must be vulnerable in spirit, or they would be untouchable.
The fact that she was also the Fall Maiden, possessed of ancient magic bestowed upon her by… someone or something – who? What? That was something Swift Foot had not determined, nor was she entirely certain yet how to learn it – only added to the sense of a hero sprung out of some tale, a figure fashioned for a grander world than the one that Swift Foot lived in.
And yet, she did not seek the throne, the one thing that she was practically obligated to do by her birth and newfound situation as a people's darling at the head of a body of armed warriors sworn to her service and loyal in their hearts. Even when Swift Foot had tried her best to entrap Jaune Arc – incidentally, Swift Foot was beginning to think he must be more than the Valish chancer she had thought to find, taking advantage of Pyrrha's naivete; she was beginning to think he might actually care about her a great deal – the most he would concede was that the preservation of the republic was not one of his priorities. He had attributed that sentiment to Pyrrha as well, and although Swift Foot yet had doubts that Pyrrha would stand aside for any would-be monarch, she found herself increasingly believing that Pyrrha spoke true when she declaimed all ambition.
And not only for the obvious question of why, beloved as she was, in the public eye as she was, at the head of a gallant company as she was, touched by strange ethereal powers and possessed of magic as she was, she had not sought to sate ambition if she had it. If she reached for the throne, then it would be hers, while by waiting and doing nothing, well… all temporal glory was transient, the mob was fickle, and in the end, there would come an evening when they who had cheered her loudest in the morning would tear down the statues of those they had fawned upon and say to one another "'see what an ugly face she has! I never liked that girl!"' Delay did nought but put in doubt the success of her enterprise… or made it likely that she had no such desire in mind.
Her ambitions do not that way tend. I can well believe it.
This would have been so much easier if she were… ordinary.
Swift Foot had never in her brief life been one to believe in things; growing up in her father's house, she had seen precious little worth believing in. There was nothing inspiring about her father's machinations to maintain his own supremacy, about the vanity and casual malice of Shining Light and Blonn Di; Terri-Belle was her sister closest to being admirable, but even she was too workmanlike in her service to the kingdom, too willing to compromise herself in obedience to their father to inspire her younger sister. Somehow, Swift Foot doubted that Pyrrha had ever compromised herself in her entire life. She had defended the kingdom when no one else would, and done so, it would seem, out of sheer altruism. No other reasons suggested themselves, unless it was a certain sense of noblesse oblige.
Swift Foot had been sent into this house to destroy Pyrrha Nikos, to make her power crumble around her. And she could do it, too: she had not missed the look of jealousy on Arslan's face when Pyrrha unleashed the powers of the Fall Maiden; she had noted the way that Cicero grew snappish at any criticism of the Council; Lie Ren appeared to be in a perpetual ill-humour about something. There were fault lines upon which she could play… if she wished.
It would have been much easier to do so, had she not been confronted with someone whom, for the first time in her life, she felt that she might be able to believe in.
Unfortunately, she doubted that her father would see it the same way; in fact, she had a sinking feeling that if she attempted to explain it to him, then he would only become more afeared of Pyrrha Nikos and her influence. He already coveted her magic.
This was Swift Foot’s chance to prove herself to him. Her chance to vault over the heads of Blonn Di and Shining Light – both of whom were useless at anything requiring tact or subtlety – and be second only to Terri-Belle in the respect that came from being useful to their lord father. A chance for Swift Foot to show her quality.
If she wished to take it.
As she thought, Swift Foot allowed her feet to carry her towards the dojo. The house and grounds were practically empty; everyone was taking advantage of their liberty in some fashion or other, even if it was by putting a sock on the door, and she didn't expect to find anyone else training as she went into the dojo to work off some of her doubts.
But it was not empty. It was already occupied by Lie Ren, who was slashing at a wooden dummy with the blades on the ends of his StormFlowers, scoring the wood deeply with the metal tips.
He sensed her coming, stopping what he was doing and glancing towards her, his body quivering a little with weariness as he took deep breaths in and out.
"We have no need to worry about the call to battle," Swift Foot observed. "For once, you can do whatever you want, and yet, you choose to train. You are an unusual fellow."
Ren took a deep breath before he turned to face her. "I could say the same thing to you," he pointed out.
The corner of Swift Foot's lip twitched upwards. "You could," she allowed, "but I am much newer to this than you are. I haven't spent so long on stand-by, waiting, watching. My need for liberty is not so pressing."
"You should seize it nonetheless," Ren told her. "You don't know when you'll get another chance."
"I could say the same thing to you," echoed Swift Foot.
Ren turned his back on her. "I need to keep training," he said. "I'm not strong enough."
"Strong enough for what?" Swift Foot asked. "I've seen you fight; you are the least of Team Prawn but far from unskilled, and to call you the least of them is more to praise your comrades than to condemn you. And I think you're smart enough to know that. So what pursues you?"
Ren didn't reply. He made as if to resume his attack upon the wooden grimm.
"What are you doing here?" Swift Foot blurted out.
Ren lowered his weapons – and his hands – down to his sides. "I take it you don't mean in this dojo."
Swift Foot snorted. "No. You are correct in that."
"What makes you think it isn't the same reason you're here?" Ren asked.
"Because I am here for the honour of my family," Swift Foot replied. "I came here to uphold the standing of my name when no other Thrax would do likewise. I follow Pyrrha for the same reason that Pyrrha leads me: because the wealth and privilege and all the luxuries we have enjoyed are no more than unearned pretty baubles if we do not fight when Mistral calls on us in its hour of need. But you are no lord of Mistral, you come from no noble house, you are no scion of an ancient line. So why are you here? Why do you follow Pyrrha Nikos, in spite of the hostility of the Council and the risk to your life every time you venture out into the battlefield? Why do you follow where she leads?"
"It isn't only Pyrrha that holds me here," Ren muttered, walking away towards the far end of the dojo. He stopped, facing the wall and away from Swift Foot. "During the Battle of Vale, Nora and I lost our team leader; her name was Yang Xiao Long."
"Another Mistralian?" Swift Foot asked.
"No, she was born on a little island off the coast of Vale," Ren replied, "but I think she must have been of Mistralian descent. We didn't really discuss it. We… didn't really talk as much as we should have, as much as, with hindsight, I would have liked.
"Some teams – the most famous teams to attend the great academies – become like family. Some teammates fall in love, like Jaune and Pyrrha; others forge friendships that will last a lifetime. It was never like that with our team, but that doesn't mean that Yang didn't leave an impression on me. She was… fearless. Nothing would stop her; she would fight any battle no matter how desperate, meet any obstacle no matter how difficult; I don't know exactly how she died, but there is no doubt in my mind that she fought valiantly to the last.
"I didn't know Yang as well as I would like, but the memory of her courage keeps me moving forward," Ren said. "I have to go on, for both of us, and do whatever I can. Because that is what a huntsman does."
Swift Foot's brow furrowed very slightly. She thought – she suspected – that there was more to this than he was letting on; something, perhaps, that he did not feel comfortable sharing with a stranger. That was not to say that he had lied to her; he had not, or else he was a better liar than she gave him credit for. Rather, he had told her only as much as he felt safe to say. "So Pyrrha has nothing to do with it?"
"I think we both know that's not possible," Ren said.
Swift Foot nodded. "She… makes you want to be better, just so you can try and be half as good as she is."
"Indeed," Ren murmured.
Swift Foot drew her rhomphaia over her shoulder. "Would you care for a sparring partner? I'm more of a challenge than that ursa."
Ren turned around, his eyes narrow as they looked up and down.
Silently, he nodded and raised his StormFlowers.



It was called the Temple of Victory, and it rose on the western side of the Square of Heroes, positioned so that the white marble columns, the gold that decorated the roof, the bronze statues that stood at the top of the long row of steps leading up to the temple, all caught the rays of the morning sun as it rose in the east and gleamed effulgent in consequence. It wasn’t gleaming so much now, being a little late in the afternoon as it was, but there was still a little twinkle here and there as the sun began to set on the other side of the city. 
In the old days – this was a pretty important place for tournament fighters, so Arslan knew more about it than about some other things – the temple had been where the great generals and conquerors of Mistral had dedicated the spoils of their victories. Whether they actually thought there was a goddess in there or they were just dedicating their triumphs to the city or both, Arslan didn’t know; she just knew that whenever a victorious general came home, they would ride in triumph through the streets, accompanied by a woman dressed and made up as Victory herself, and their chariot ride would always end up here, outside the steps of the temple.
She knew that because it was what happened to the tournament champion. Mistral didn’t have any victorious generals any more, not since the Great War ended, but when the regional tournaments were over, the victor would ride in a chariot, just like the warlords of old, accompanied by some young actress dressed as Victory, and they would be borne through the cheering crowds until they came here, to this temple, which had become a sort of hall of fame for the great fighters. 
Four times, Arslan had watched Pyrrha ride in a chariot alongside Victory, her brow adorned by laurel wreaths; it was only now that she’d recently gotten to know her better that Arslan could begin to imagine how excruciating each one of those four triumphs must have been for P-money. Four times, Arslan had watched and felt a squirming sense of resentment in her stomach. She had dedicated her own spoils, of course; there was a spot in the temple that was just for Arslan Altan. But she had never gotten the triumph, and it had always rankled with her a little bit. She had always told herself "‘next year"’; next year was going to be her year, or the Vytal Festival was going to be it, or… or it was never going to happen now. She was never going to get that chariot ride.
But someone else will, because there’ll be a chariot ride, and there’ll be someone to dress as Victory, and there’ll be a Temple of Victory for them to be driven to the base of the steps of because I’ll have helped to keep this kingdom safe. And that’s worth it.
Arslan turned her eyes away from the temple; she wasn’t here for that, not today.
The square on which the temple stood was called the Square of Heroes for the obvious reason that it commemorated the great heroes of Mistral’s past. Past in the sense that they were all dead, at least. In the centre of the square rose Agrippa’s Column, with a statue of the Emperor who had conquered the northern territories on top; the corners of the square were marked with equestrian statues on thick stone plinths with names on them that Arslan didn’t know enough to recognise. And the square was lined on three sides – saving only the side on which the temple stood – with other statues, in bronze or gold or marble, statues of men and women on foot, warriors and generals, standing on modest plinths with their names and perhaps a few achievements inscribed on them. 
It was one of those statues that they were here for now. 
It was new, the newest statue to grace the square, having only just been completed in the last few days after months of work by the artists and the casters. It was a statue of Commander Yeoh, who had led the ill-fated Mistralian army to Vale and died alongside so many of her troops during the battle there. She looked very much as Arslan remembered her, when she had been approached by the commander to record a little piece in support of the troops: proud, confident, straight-backed. One hand reached for the sword she wore at her waist, and her face was turned slightly upwards toward the sky. 

	Georgia Yeoh


	Commander of the Mistralian Expeditionary Force of 2121 CE


	Perished at the Battle of Vale, fighting alongside her gallant soldiers


	This monument to her and all the men and women who gave their lives in the Battle of Vale was paid for by the Yeoh family


Arslan glanced to her right, where Bolin stood; his hands were resting upon his staff, the butt of which was placed upon the stone of the square. She glanced to her left, where Nadir’s head was bowed, with a touch of water visible in his eyes. 
This was not a monument to Reese, but at the same time, it was the closest thing that Reese Chloris would ever get. This statue was of Yeoh herself, but it didn’t only commemorate the commander but also all the other soldiers who had died at Vale but who weren’t "‘important"’ enough to get their own memorial. 
The statue was of Yeoh, but the monument was to everyone who hadn’t come back from Vale, and that had to include Reese, even though she wasn’t a soldier. 
Arslan frowned, looking down for a moment, turning her eyes away from the statue. “Reese… Reese told me once that in Atlas, they have a big statue where… where everyone who loses someone goes and sticks a photo of them, and that way… that way, it’s like the whole city is honouring them. Or something like that. She didn’t explain it very well, mostly because I don’t think she got it.” Reese had been born in Atlas, but she didn’t seem to have liked it there. When she got to Haven, she had started being more Mistralian than the Mistralians, complete with buying into all the anti-Atlas propaganda that got put out after the Breach. “We don’t have anything like that here,” Arslan continued, “but… maybe we should.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a picture of Reese. It had been torn out of a team photo, so it was obviously ripped around the edges, but it captured her with a grin on her face, which was more true to who she was than an official photo that caught her looking stuffy and too formal. 
Arslan reached out and stuck the photograph onto Commander Yeoh’s plinth just beneath the words. 
“She didn’t deserve to be here,” Bolin muttered.
“I know,” Arslan said softly.
“She ought to be standing with us,” Bolin continued.
“I know,” Arslan said, her voice sounding half dead.
“She shouldn’t-“
“I know, okay!” Arslan yelled, whirling around to face him. She stared at him for a moment, shame swiftly replacing the anger that had so briefly welled up inside of her. She looked away, closing her eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “I’m sorry, you guys.”
She felt a hand upon her shoulder before she heard Nadir’s voice. “It’s not-“
“Yes, it is,” Arslan said, shrugging off his hand and taking a step away from them. “It isn’t even that I wasn’t a bad leader; it’s that I was barely even trying to be a leader at all. All I cared about was getting my shot in the one-vee-one rounds at the Vytal Festival. I didn’t even think about… about why we were supposed to have all come to Haven in the first place.” She slammed her fist into her open palm. “I never even asked you guys why you wanted to become huntsmen.”
The two boys were silent for a moment. It was Bolin who spoke first, in a voice that was small and a little ashamed. “Honestly?” he said. “I was bored at home. I thought this looked as though it might be fun.”
Arslan sniffed. “So you saw those ‘be a hero’ adverts, huh?”
Bolin nodded shamefacedly. “Something like that.”
"Nadir?" Arslan asked.
Nadir said nothing for a moment. "My father expected that I should."
Arslan nodded slowly. Nadir's father had passed away just before the start of the Vytal Festival; she knew that much, at least. "Well… wherever he is… I'm sure he's proud of you right now."
"I hope so," Nadir said softly.
"I know so," Arslan replied, with force in her tone. "Listen, I know that I was a terrible leader, but I also know that we – all of us – are doing a good thing here and now, with Pyrrha and the others. Something that your father and Reese and the whole city can be proud of. We're defending this kingdom against the darkness."
"Is that all we're doing?" Bolin murmured.
Arslan looked at him, her eyes narrowing. "What do you mean?"
"We know that you know more than you're letting on," Bolin said. "Everyone knows that there's an inner circle around Pyrrha: you, Jaune, Ren, Nora, Sun, and Neptune."
"Not everybody likes it," Nadir added. "Sage and Scarlet feel left out, and they're not the only ones."
"Really?" Arslan replied. "And what about you guys? Do you feel left out?"
"Should we?" Bolin demanded. "Violet's excluded, so it's not the sub-commanders; for that matter, Nadir got to run point when the four attacks came in, but he hasn't been invited either-"
"That was just a one-time thing," Nadir said quietly. "It's no big deal."
"So what do you talk about?" Bolin continued. "Is it something that we should know? Something that we should worry about?"
Arslan was silent, pondering, wondering how she could answer him. I should have seen this coming. We all should have seen this coming. They hadn't exactly been discreet, even if discretion were possible in the situation they found themselves in. "You're right," she admitted. "There is an inner circle, and the people you named – me included – do know more than the rest of you. But I swear to you, on… Victory, on Reese's memory, on anything you like, nothing that I know puts you in any more danger than you accepted when you decided to join the Myrmidons. And if that's not enough for you... then I'm sorry, but I've got nothing more to offer."
Bolin didn't reply. Instead, it was Nadir who said, "You know, it's really sad, and so unfair, but Reese was the only one of us who you could call a true huntress."
"Yeah?" Arslan said. She'd never asked why Reese wanted to be a huntress either.
"She wanted to help people," Nadir explained. "She said… that she wanted to bring hope to the world. In Atlas… in Atlas, the huntresses swear to be a light in darkness, when all other lights go out. That's what she wanted to be."
"Of course she did," Arslan said. "You can take the girl out of Atlas, but as much as she might talk about how much she hated it…" She bowed her head. "I… I don't deserve to be your leader," she said. "And I'm not asking for the job back; I'm better off where I am, and you're better off without me, but I promise you both, I will honour Reese's memory."
"We all will," Bolin said, and Arslan felt him take her hand in his. Before she could say anything, she felt Nadir take her other hand.
The three of them stood, facing the memorial to the dead of Vale, looking down at Reese's face smiling out of the picture.
"She never got the chance to be a huntress," Arslan said. "But she will bring hope to the world, because we're going to do it for her, in her memory."
"In her memory," Bolin said.
"In her memory," Nadir whispered.
Arslan glanced towards the Temple of Victory, the building that had loomed so large and gleamed so effulgent in her imagination. She had never gotten the chance to ride in the chariot, and now… she never would.
She was set upon a different road. For Reese, for Mistral, for her family… and for her self-respect. Understanding the world better as she now did, knowing so much more as she now did… how could she not take a different path?
Pyrrha was right all along; the world is in peril, and we have to fight for it.
Can I do less?
She turned her eyes away from the temple and all it stood for.
Goodbye.



Swift Foot's sparring session with Ren had ended, and he had gone off… somewhere. He hadn't vouched where, exactly, he was going, and Swift Foot hadn't asked him either; he probably wouldn't have told her even if she had asked.
Still waters ran deep with that one, she could tell.
Still, she was too preoccupied with her own situation to spend much time considering what Lie Ren might be thinking or feeling or doing. It appeared that he had left the house, as almost everyone had, and who could blame them? Well, almost everyone amongst the Myrmidons. The maids were still here, but they paid her very little attention, and she paid them no mind at all as she made her way into the library.
Swift Foot herself could not have said exactly why she went there – she wasn't expecting to find the answers in a mouldering book of philosophy – but she had nowhere that she particularly wanted to go outside the house, and inside the house, the library was as good a place as any. The chairs were comfortable, and as she made her way past the high, towering bookshelves, she could see that there were a few books worth reading.
Swift Foot was just about to take one off the shelf when she heard someone sneeze on the other side of the shelf.
Intrigued - or more accurately, a little bored and with nothing better to do - Swift Foot glanced around the other side of the shelf to see Ditzy Doo, the Atlesian girl who seemed to have come here without a team to back her up or even any friends to fight alongside, sitting on the floor looking down at her scroll.
She glanced up at Swift Foot, or at least, she was probably looking at Swift Foot. It was hard to tell with those wall eyes. "Sorry," she said. "It's a little dusty in here."
"Don't worry; it's not as though you were making a racket," Swift Foot replied, in an easy tone. "I was just a little surprised to find anyone else in here."
"I thought about going to see the new robot movie," Ditzy explained. "But I… well, I… yeah."
Swift Foot's gaze took in the photo that Ditzy had up on her scroll: a classically handsome young man with striking blue eyes and hair to match, spiked upwards as if the wind was blowing through it. "Cute. Is that your boyfriend back home in Atlas?"
A blush rose to Ditzy's cheeks. "N-no!" she stammered, and she didn't just put the picture away, she outright deleted it from her scroll. "He's just… it doesn't matter any more."
Swift Foot's eyes narrowed. She hadn't missed – it was very hard to miss – the way that Ditzy stared after Neptune Vasilias. She leaned against the shelf. "So, did Neptune not want to go to the movie or did you not have the courage to ask?"
Ditzy's face got even redder. "How did you-"
"It wasn't hard to notice," Swift Foot replied. "Sometimes, even eyes like yours are pretty clear on what they're looking at." She squatted down on the floor next to Ditzy. "So… blue hair is your type, huh?"
Ditzy stared at her – kind of – for a moment before a snorting chuckle sought to escape her mouth, and would have done so too if she hadn't covered said mouth up with both hands. "He seems really nice, you know. And I think it might be nice to… to see what happens."
"Nothing is going to happen if you hide in here with pictures of your ex-boyfriend," Swift Foot said. She laughed at the hypocrisy of it, coming from her.
"What's so funny?" Ditzy asked.
"I just…" Swift Foot said. "Why is it so much easier for us to give advice to other people than it is to know what we ought to do for ourselves?"
"Oh, that's easy," Ditzy replied. "It's because no matter how terrible the advice is, it probably won't do us any harm when someone else follows it."
Swift Foot's eyebrows rose. "For someone who seems so sweet, you're quite the cynic."
"Really?" Ditzy sounded a little worried to hear it. "I just meant that it's easier to give suggestions; when it comes to us, we have to pick something."
"And making a choice," Swift Foot said, "is always difficult."
Ditzy nodded. "I struggle to decide what to have for lunch sometimes. When there is choice."
Swift Foot snorted. "I never got to attend an academy or a combat school, but from what my sister has told me, the correct menu choice was always 'none of the above.' I remember Terri-Belle used to come home for dinner every night, until our father forbade it. Then she snuck back, ate by herself in the kitchen with the servants, then crept back onto campus and hoped no one reported her missing."
"Didn't her teammates notice?"
"She used to have the servants prepare food she could bring back with her to share with them, so that they'd have no reason to tattle on her," Swift Foot explained. "It got her through four years of Haven, though I'm not sure what she did when she had to go to Vacuo for her first Vytal Festival."
"I don't know either," Ditzy said. "I've never been to Vacuo."
"Nobody has been to Vacuo," Swift Foot declared. "There's nothing worth going to Vacuo for." That had certainly been Terri-Belle's description of the place.
Ditzy didn't laugh. She just said, "So what are you trying to choose?"
"Hmm?" Swift Foot murmured. "What makes you think I'm trying to choose anything?"
"Because you're here, with me," Ditzy pointed out.
Swift Foot let out a very small snigger. "Point," she allowed. She sat down, resting her head upon the bookshelf behind her. "I'm trying to decide whether I should stay here or go back to my father and serve under my sisters," she said. It was a complete lie, but it was a lie that – though factual nonsense – held the emotional truth of her situation within it.
"I suppose, now… you'll be helping people either way," Ditzy said.
"Mmm," Swift Foot murmured. "Why do you stay here, Atlas girl? Why do you fight for Pyrrha Nikos, when neither this struggle nor this kingdom are your own?"
Ditzy smiled. "If everyone only ever helped themselves, it would be a pretty rotten world, don't you think?"
In my world, nobody helps anyone other than themselves, although it may sometimes seem otherwise, but those who appear to be helping others are still only seeking after but their own advantage. They seek favour or preferment or simply financial gain. Nobody does anything just to help a friend. Still less for someone more removed from them.
And you're right, it is a rotten world.
But it is the world we live in. All of us but Pyrrha Nikos.
Pyrrha and the gallant swords that she has ranged about her. 
How is it that she has assembled in her company all the virtue that is in Mistral, all the virtue in a city that seemed to have lost all trace of such?
Or perhaps the virtue was always there, hidden, dormant, waiting upon the right person – a princess, a Fall Maiden, or simply a righteous girl – to draw it out and into the light?
"Is that why you follow her?" Swift Foot asked. "To save off the rottenness of the world?"
"She was the only person to follow at the time," Ditzy pointed out.
"True," Swift Foot allowed. "She isn't now."
"No," Ditzy conceded in turn. "But… I don't know Pyrrha very well, I admit; I'm not one of her best friends or anything. But I know her a little. I know that she's kind. My mom always used to say if more people were kind to one another, then the world would be kinder, too."
Swift Foot sighed. "The world… is not kind to kind people," she whispered. "It breaks them."
"It tries to, sometimes," Ditzy replied. "But Pyrrha's strong, too."
"Strong enough?"
"On her own? I don't know," Ditzy said. "But that's why she's got all of us, to be strong for her."
Before Swift Foot could reply to that, she was interrupted by the sound of the library door opening.
"Hey!" Neptune called. "Is anybody in here? Ditzy?"
Ditzy leapt to her feet with a dizzying speed. "Yeah!" she replied, maybe a little louder than necessary. "I'm right here, Neptune." She emerged into view from behind the shelf; Swift Foot, though she rose a little more slowly to her feet, did likewise.
"Oh, there you are," Neptune said. "Hey, Swift Foot."
Swift Foot smirked. "Good afternoon, Lord Neptune."
Neptune groaned. "Please, don't. I'm pretty sure I've been disowned by this point anyway."
"Your mother may think differently about you, now that we are all good servants of the Council," Swift Foot pointed out. "Loyal warriors of the Kingdom of Mistral."
"I wouldn't count on it; my mother isn't the kind to admit she was wrong," Neptune replied.
"I understand you perfectly," Swift Foot murmured. "In any case, what are you still doing here? Where is the rest of your team?"
"They went to see that robot movie," Neptune explained.
"And you didn't go with them?" Ditzy asked.
"No, I wanted to see if-"
Neptune was interrupted by a cry of "Ren?" as Nora strode in, flinging the doors open so far that they slammed into the walls. "Ren? Come on, Ren, where are you?" She stopped, her blue eyes focussing upon the trio in the library. "Have you guys seen Ren anywhere?"
"We sparred together just a little while ago," Swift Foot replied. She allowed herself a smile of justified pride. "After I won, he left. I think he was going out somewhere but he didn't say where."
"He went out without telling me? Of all the inconsiderate-" Nora stopped abruptly at the very beginning of her rant against Ren. Her eyes skewered Swift Foot as they narrowed down like the walls of a death trap closing in. "You sparred with him?"
Swift Foot felt as though she might have made a misstep somewhere. "…yes?"
Nora skidded along the floor, shoving both Neptune and Ditzy aside – Neptune fell over with a startled cry; Ditzy reached out to help him up – until she was standing mere inches away from Swift Foot, snorting like a bull, their faces close enough to kiss, or head-butt. "Ren was sparring with you?"
Swift Foot swallowed. Nora Valkyrie was diminutive, but having observed her in battle, Swift Foot could say that she was small in the same way that a wolverine was small, which was to say that it wouldn't stop it from biting your face off. "I came in, he was training, I offered-"
"If Ren needs a sparring partner, then he has me," Nora declared. "Because I'm his partner!"
Maybe you should talk to him about that instead of getting in my face.
Fortunately, Swift Foot was rescued by the arrival of Autumn Blaze, who came running into the room with her red hair askew, panting for breath, holding up one finger of her right hand as she rested her left hand upon her knee to keep from doubling over. "Thank…" she began, then had to stop because she still hadn't got her breath back. "Thank goodness," she eventually managed to say. "There is someone still here, and I don't have to call Pyrrha and interrupt her. Because you guys are awesome, you should be fine. Just grab your weapons and come with me, okay? Okay, let's go." She turned away, gesturing for them to follow.
"Wait! Hang on a second," Nora cried.
"We don't have a second," Autumn replied. "Or, maybe we do, but we don't have a lot of seconds, so-"
"Why not?" Nora demanded. "What's going on? Is there a village under attack?"
"Yes," Autumn said. "Sort of."
"Then we should call Pyrrha," Neptune said.
"Why?" Swift Foot asked. "The reason everyone's gone is that my sister Terri-Belle and the Imperial Guard are-"
"Okay it's not a village 'under attack' under attack, like grimm or anything," Autumn admitted, "but it is a village in trouble, so won't you just-"
"I think you need to just stop, Autumn," Neptune said gently, taking a step towards her as he spoke in a tone as soft as the lapping of the ocean waves against the shore. "Just stop for a minute and tell us what's going on."
"We want to help," Nora added, "but we need to understand."
Autumn Blaze sighed. "Okay. Okay. So, I come from the village of Erika, about fifty miles outside of Mistral. And Erika has – had – this statue of a golden kirin-"
"You mean the statue is made of gold, right?" Nora asked.
"Yes, it is a golden statue of a kirin not a statue of a kirin that is gold," Autumn clarified.
"What's a kirin?" Ditzy whispered.
"A legendary creature," Swift Foot explained out of one corner of her mouth. "Often associated with the imminent arrival or passing of a ruler."
"This particular kirin was also the guardian of our village," Autumn said. "It was kept in a shrine, and every equinox, we'd leave it offerings as part of the Spring and Fall Festivals to thank it for keeping the village safe."
Ditzy blinked her wall eyes. "But it's a statue."
"You say that, but we didn't have a grimm attack since my great grandpa's time, so it seemed to be working pretty well, until it was stolen," Autumn said. "A few years ago, a group of traders – they said they were traders – came to our village and stole our kirin right out of our shrine. They stole our protection!"
"That is pretty low, even if we are talking about gold," Nora said.
"Exactly!" Autumn cried. "And because of that, Erika had to take a vow of silence, and I had to-"
"'Vow of silence'?" Neptune demanded.
Autumn sighed. "Our leader decided that without a guardian to keep the village safe, the best thing to do would be to decrease our negativity by not talking. If nobody could talk, then nobody could say hurtful things to one another, and nobody would get upset, which meant that no one could attract the grimm."
"That's pretty extreme," Nora remarked.
"I know, and believe me, there's only so long Sudoku can keep you entertained," Autumn groaned. "That's one of the reasons I left home and came to Mistral to pursue my dreams; I just couldn't take it any more in that silent prison. Didn’t we learn anything from Mantle before the Great War?”
“Is that why your first musical was about Mantle before the Great War?” Swift Foot asked.
“Possibly,” Autumn conceded. “’Cause rainbows won’t light up the sky unless you let it rain, and shiny'… anyway, the point is that I just got word there's an auction being held at the Curds'n'Whey, like, right now, and the golden kirin is one of the items, which is why I need you guys help to get it back."
"Are you sure?" Nora asked.
"Yes, I'm sure; someone I trust gave me this information," Autumn said. "Please, this might seem stupid, but this statue is really important to my village, and I'd go get it myself, but it's being guarded by a whole lot of bad guys, and I… I really need some help here."
"And you've got it!" Nora declared, pumping her fist. She turned to face the other three. "Okay, guys, what do you say? We don't need Pyrrha, and we don't Ren or Arslan or anybody else, because we've totally got this. Who's with me?"
"Wait just a second," Swift Foot said. "For something like this, shouldn't we just call the police?"
"This is Li'l Miss Malachite we're talking about," Autumn replied. "The police won't do anything without giving her fair warning in advance, and we'll never get the statue back."
"But we're not supposed to do anything at all without informing my sister," Swift Foot protested.
"And what's your sister going to do?" Neptune asked.
"Terri-Belle… will call the police," Swift Foot said, because her sisters would view this sort of thing as completely beneath them to deal with.
It was completely beneath them to deal with, but at the same time… 
If everyone only ever helped themselves, it would be a pretty rotten world.
"Okay," she said. "I'm in."
"Me too," Ditzy said.
"And I make four, I guess," Neptune said.
"Alright," Nora cried. "Let's go Team… Team…"
"Venison?" Swift Foot suggested. "Spelled VSDN. The colour of meat cooked to your personal preference. Mine is medium rare."
"Okay, Team Venison," Nora said. "Let's go!"



Autumn Blaze brought Team VSDN to a part of the city that was low in every sense; it was on the lower levels of the city, where the slope turned very gentle as it descended into the valleys all around, and it looked – and smelled – like kind of a dive to Swift Foot. This was the kind of place where one-eyed men sold an array of vicious-looking bladed weapons to all kinds of unscrupulous characters, where masked men did shady deals out in the open without a trace of fear, where people walked quickly and kept themselves to themselves and tried not to catch the eye of anyone nearby. 
She had never been to any place quite like this. She was the Steward’s daughter; she had grown up in the palace, high on the hill, looking down upon such neighbourhoods as this in every sense. This was her father’s city, and she had known nothing of it, and she suspected that her sisters were no better. This was her father’s city, and it was… not the nicest place to be, to put it bluntly. There might be no grimm here, and none who bore the name of bandit, but Swift Foot suspected that you might be in more danger here on a regular basis than in many of the towns and villages under the protection of the Myrmidons. 
Do you know anything about this, father?
And would you care if you did?
Besides wondering whether or not the Steward of Mistral, her father, had any concern for the plight of the people of Mistral, Swift Foot also found herself wondering what she was doing here, in this rough part of the city, surrounded by danger, in the company of these people who were not her friends. 
Who were not her friends… although it seemed that they had effortlessly offered her their friendship without even thinking about it.
She had been sent into their house to destroy their captain and tear down the company to which they had pledged their lives, but they had put their lives in her hands without a thought.
Why is everyone here so trusting and so honourable?
Have they not a single cynic or distrustful misanthrope amongst them?
The fact that they had not might be said to be good for her, but at the same time, it was also making it harder for her to complete her mission in good conscience when these people were showing more and more that they did not deserve to have her visited upon them.
It was bad enough when Pyrrha alone had shown herself to be a paragon, but all these others, too?
What was she doing here? She was here… she was here because they trusted her. She was here, it seemed, because friends had each other's backs. They had Autumn’s, and they trusted her to have theirs. 
And she did not despise them for it. 
Autumn led them to a narrow alleyway, where a spider’s web had been sketched on the wooden post of one of the two white plaster buildings that loomed over the tight passage. 
“It’s through here,” Autumn said.
The four young huntsmen paused outside the alley. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be taking much notice of the fact that three of the four of them were armed and Swift Foot was dressed in a way which suggested that she did not belong. There were benefits to this being the kind of neighbourhood where nobody asked too many questions. 
“So,” Nora – who had taken over the leadership of the group simply by acting as though she was the leader – said, “we’re probably looking at a lot of bad guys in there, right?”
Autumn winced. “Probably.”
“So what’s the plan?” Swift Foot inquired.
Nora cupped her chin with her fingers. “Autumn, you should probably stay here while we take care of this.”
“But how will you know what the kirin looks like without me?” Autumn asked.
“I should be able to recognise it,” Swift Foot ventured.
“Besides, it’s a gold statue of a mythical creature, and how many of those can there be?” Nora said. “Neptune, get up on the roof and wait for us to come out.”
Neptune drew Tri-Hard over his shoulder in its carbine configuration. “Let me guess: covering fire.”
“Yep,” Nora acknowledged, “and Ditzy, think that you can find your way around the back?”
“I can try,” Ditzy said. “If you give me a little time.”
“Sure, we’ll give you a minute,” Nora said. “Once you find the back door, don’t do anything until you hear us do something.”
“How will I know what that sounds like?” Ditzy asked. “Are you sure I’ll be able to hear it?”
Nora produced her hammer. “Oh, you’re gonna hear it alright,” she said with a grin that Swift Foot still found a little unnerving, even though they were on the same side. 
“Are you sure you’re going to be alright by yourself?” Neptune asked. “I mean, there might be guards back there; on your own-”
He was silenced by a pat on the shoulder from Ditzy as she smiled up at him, her eyes closing as she beamed. “It’s okay, Neptune,” she assured him, pumping one fist. “I’ve totally got this!”
Neptune said nothing for a moment; he just stared at her. He grinned back, teeth flashing. “Go get ‘em, tiger.”
“You got it,” Ditzy said cheerily, as she set off back the way that she’d come in search of another approach to the criminal den. 
The extra time that she would need to get there gave the three girls plenty of time to stare at Neptune with various degrees of knowingness in their looks.
“Hey!” he protested. “What are you three looking at me like that for?”
“Oh, don’t pretend you don’t know,” Nora said in a sing-song voice. “We all see you, the way you look at her, the way you act towards her-”
“The way you didn’t go to the movies with your team because you were going to ask her out,” Swift Foot finished.
Nora swung her head around to look at Swift Foot. “Really?”
“I would put money on it,” Swift Foot said. “If I wasn’t broke because I ran away from my father’s house and I don’t have any money.”
“I’m broke too, so we could bet for bragging rights,” Nora suggested. “Except that I’d rather you were right.” She looked at Neptune again. “Well?” she demanded.
“Well what?”
“Spill it, dude,” Autumn cried. “Were you going to ask her out or not?”
“Are we really going to do this now?” he complained.
“We’ve got a little time,” Swift Foot said. “Besides, I haven’t had a chance to do anything like this before, and… I’m enjoying it.”
“See?” Nora said. “We’re not just prying into your business; we’re educating the baby!”
“My name’s Swift Foot.”
“Of course it is, Sweetie.”
Neptune sighed, and scratched the back of his head. “I… I was going to ask if she wanted to go and see Tryst in the Mist, but only as friends.”
“'Friends,' huh?” Nora said, drawing out the word.
“Young friendship,” Autumn said, with barely concealed laughter in her voice. “Always so cute.”
Neptune rolled his eyes and leapt up onto the roof to get away from them. 
“He does like her, doesn’t he?” Swift Foot asked.
“Oh, totally,” Nora said. “And he’s showing it, too, which is more than some guys manage.”
Swift Foot winced. “Listen… Ren and I really did just spar.”
“'Just spar'?” Nora demanded. “He didn’t say anything?”
Swift Foot shuffled uncomfortably. “He… he talked about your team leader, from Beacon. I asked him why he was doing this, and he told me that her courage inspired him.”
Nora’s face became more dour and serious. “Yang… Yang was pretty amazing,” she admitted.
“Is that why you’re here, too?”
“I’m here because look at me, what else would I be doing?” Nora said, gesturing to herself and her giant hammer with one hand. “But… yeah, I’m here for Yang too. For Yang… and for the good fight. What we’re doing is important, kid, don’t forget that.”
“I’m only a year younger than you,” Swift Foot felt obliged to point out.
“A year is a long time when you’re as young as we are, right?” Nora replied.
“I guess,” Swift Foot muttered. “So with Neptune on the roof and Ditzy around the back, what are we going to do?”
“We are going to walk right in there,” Nora declared, “and ask for that statue.”
Swift Foot’s eyes widened a little. “Are you sure about that?”
“Sure I am!” Nora assured her. “Why, there was this time when Ren and I… nah, it’s not going to work without him around. Trust me, and let’s go.”
Swift Foot wasn’t entirely sure that she trusted Nora Valkyrie, but she followed anyway as the two of them walked into the narrow side-street until they came to an archway partially covered by a blue curtain with a design of a sword and some laurel wreaths picked out in white upon it. 
Inside, beyond the curtain which they pushed open to admit themselves, was a rather low dive of a place with a floor of dark mottled tiles and walls of yellow brick, dimly illuminated by the paper lanterns that hung from the heavy beams of the ceiling. A few tables were occupied by men and women with guns and knives at their hips, all wearing a tattoo of a spider in its web somewhere about their person, but the majority of the furniture had been pushed to the very extremities of the room to create an open space in which a crowd of well-dressed but nonetheless rather seedy-looking people had gathered. A heavyset woman with short blonde hair stood in one corner of the room, watching the crowd, attended by a pair of frivolously-dressed young ladies in red and white cocktail dresses of the Valish style, with feathers in their hair and jewels around their necks. Rougher, harder-looking men and women lined the walls, and the balcony up above. Some tables had been stacked up on one another to form a kind of stand, and a giant, bearded bear of a man in a suit and tie loomed over the crowd; in his hand, he was holding a two-foot tall golden statue of a kirin.
“Okay, lot number twenty-three, a statue that once belonged to the Emperor Tyndareus himself, said to bring good luck and protection; what am I bid?”
“How about I bid that I not hit you with this hammer if you hand the statue over?” Nora suggested.
Silence fell in the bar as all eyes turned towards them.
The middle-aged woman – Li’l Miss Malachite, possibly – said, “You two girls wandered into the wrong place if you think you can talk like that in here.”
“And you stole the wrong kirin if you think we’re leaving without it,” Nora declared.
“There are two of them, Melanie-”
“-but neither of them look as strong as the last one, Miltia.”
“I think you’re a little outnumbered,” Miss Malachite observed, as her tattooed goons fingered their weapons in anticipation.
Swift Foot put one hand upon the hilt of her rhomphaia. “And I think you’re a little outclassed.” Because she was a daughter of the Steward, a scion of the House of Thrax who had stood and fought at the right hands of emperors and princes, and she would not show fear in the face of these ruffians.
Miss Malachite rolled her eyes. “Boys and girls, teach these two trespassers some manners.”
Nora grinned madly as she swung her hammer high above her head, both hands gripping the handle tight as she brought it down upon the floor – with a pink and smoking explosion as she fired the weapon - hard enough to crack the stone, to make the whole floor tremble, and most importantly, to lift a lot of the spider goons off the floor and suspend them in the air as Nora swung her hammer again in a sideways swipe. She caught about ten of them at once, piling them up, one pressed one against the other, before they were flung in a tangled mass of screeching arms and legs across the establishment. They smashed through two pillars – incidentally bringing a section of the ceiling down upon three more guys – and through the wall at the back as the heavyset woman and her bodyguards dived unceremoniously for cover. 
Swift Foot drew her rhomphaia and turned just in time as some more thugs began to fire from the upper balcony. She weaved her extended sword deftly, bullets ricocheting off the metal as Swift Foot leapt first onto the table and then, still deflecting their fire, up onto the balcony itself. She slashed with her long blade, striking a goon across the chest and tossing him sideways into one of his fellows. She drew no blood to stain her metal. So, these criminals had their aura activated. Good; she didn’t have to worry about holding back. 
She tore into her enemies as they tried to exchange their guns for blades, but they were slow to do so, and their knives and short swords – still less the stocks of their shotguns and rifles – were no match for her Mistral’s Pride, wielded in her hands as she stood, perfectly poised and balanced upon the wooden balcony rail, leaping and pirouetting in the air as she knocked her enemies off the balcony. They fell downwards towards the floor, but with Nora swinging her hammer around down there with such wild abandon – a reason Swift Foot had been keen to leap up onto this higher level – very few of them actually reached said floor. 
Bullets filled the air, but Swift Foot blocked them all, either with Mistral’s Pride or with her shield. Meanwhile, Nora had cleared the bar below of furniture and of most of its occupants, leaving heaps of goons and thugs out cold as she worked her way, methodical for all that she looked like a maniac, towards the statue and the bear who held it.
“Melanie,” one of the two coquettishly dressed girls said, “she looks even stronger than the last one.”
“Maybe,” the other girl admitted, her voice a little nervous, “but she’s definitely slower. Don’t worry, Miltia, this won’t be like last time.”
Swift Foot wasn’t given the chance to wonder what ‘last time’ they were referring to when the two girls attacked, dashing through the retreating survivors of the Spider gang to descend on Nora like a pair of wolves setting upon a bison. The one in red had a pair of claws extending from each glove; the one in white had blades attached to the reverse of her heels. They attacked together, coming at Nora from different angles, forcing the redhead back, ducking beneath or leaping over the cumbersome swings of her hammer, slashing at her with their claws or cutting at her with their blades as they leapt and dived and rolled. Nora tried to repeat the trick with the floor, but although she further ruined the tile work, both these girls were far too agile to fall for that, and the vibrations didn’t disturb them so much that they couldn’t keep on hitting Nora. 
Nora growled in frustration. “New Girl! Tag out!”
“My name is Swift Foot,” Swift Foot muttered, as she descended from the upper level like a thunderbolt. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was rushing to help Nora Valkyrie, of all people, but it had a little to do with the feeling that Pyrrha would be quite disappointed in her if she didn’t… and something to do with the fact that it felt right, however much it involved putting herself at risk. 
I’m a Mistralian aristocrat; putting myself at risk for the commoners is what I’m supposed to do.
She landed upon the shattered floor, bounding over the cracked and broken tiles to place herself like a guard dog between Nora and her adversaries. Mistral’s Pride parried a slashing stroke from the claws of the red-clad girl with sparks and a ring of steel on steel. There was a bang from behind as Nora shot herself upwards, but apart from noticing the pink trails of grenades out of the corner of her eye as the loud girl started firing at the remaining crooks as they tried to regroup, Swift Foot had little attention to pay to that. 
Her attention was all upon the two girls, their faces masks of concentration as they slashed and swiped and swept both arms and legs at her so swiftly that it was all she could do to parry them away. She was quicker than Nora, and Mistral’s Pride a good sight lighter and swifter than that giant hammer, but even so, these girls were themselves so quick – and so coordinated, rarely giving her the chance to focus on just one of them – that she was forced to retreat regardless, parrying again and again by the skin of her teeth, and the counterattacks she made were few and far between and easily dodged or deflected by her enemies. 
These girls… they’re good enough for Haven. They have no business being so much better than the rest of the riff-raff.
And where in Remnant is-
Ditzy burst through the back door. Or more accurately, she kicked a couple of guys through it. “Sorry I’m late, everybody,” she cried. “It’s a real maze out there, and then, once I found the right place, some people tried to stop me.”
“I could use a little help here,” Swift Foot growled.
“No problem,” Ditzy said, darting forward – she effortlessly dodged a grenade on its way to explode amidst a half-dozen goons and send them flying – towards Swift Foot’s battle with the two coquettes. “Leave it to me.”
Swift Foot took that as a cue to retreat towards the exit from the bar as Ditzy got in amongst the other girls, forcing them to turn their attention towards her. The girls in red and white slashed at her and kicked at her, but the Atlesian girl seemed to effortlessly dodge all of their blows, contorting her body like a circus act, flipping onto her hands to strike them both with a kick each to the side of the head. 
Confident that Ditzy had that well in hand and with Nora keeping the heads of the other gangsters down as they tried in vain to shoot her down from behind what little cover they could find at the back of the room, Swift Foot charged for the big guy who seemed frozen in place on his makeshift auction stand, still holding the kirin statue with one hand.
With the other hand, he held a club that was almost as big as he was. He swung it at Swift Foot as the latter vaulted up onto the stack of tables, but it was a clumsy swing that passed over her head as she kicked upwards, rising level with his bearded face to punch him square between the eyes. He toppled backwards, the golden kirin slipping from his grasp... and into Swift Foot’s outstretched hand.
“I’ve got it!” she proclaimed, raising it triumphantly into the air.
“Great job!” Ditzy cried enthusiastically as she hit the girl in white with such a powerful uppercut that the unfortunate girl flew up through the ceiling.
“Oh no,” the girl in red moaned. “She’s even stronger than the last one!”
Ditzy’s next blow sent her flying through the nearest wall.
“Let’s go,” Nora said, leaping down from her perch. “Everyone, retreat!”
There weren’t a lot of enemies left to retreat from, with the ringing of curses pursuing them more than the enemy. A couple of guys tried to follow them out into the alley – moving warily, guns drawn, creeping out with the obvious intent to shoot rather than engage in melee combat – but they were both hit by bolts from Neptune’s rifle, which knocked them to the ground as the three girls sprinted for the alley mouth. 
They burst out, covered by Neptune’s fire against anyone brave enough to even try and follow, and no sooner had they emerged out of the alley than the alley-mouth they’d just emerged from was engulfed by a wall of fire, cutting them off from the immediate threat of pursuit.
“What-“ Swift Foot began, before she noticed that Autumn Blaze was standing nearby with her hand out. “You have a semblance?”
“You learn to take care of yourself, living out in the territories,” Autumn explained. “Did you get it?”
Swift Foot handed it over, with due care and reverence for what it represented to their blogger.
Autumn’s eyes widened as she took it, holding it delicately, awe in her voice as she said, “You guys… I don’t know if I can ever thank you enough. You have no idea what this means to-”
They all ducked as a bullet whizzed over their heads.
“We should probably go,” Nora said.
“No argument here,” Neptune replied.
As they ran through the streets, the four young huntsmen arrayed around Autumn Blaze like a guard of honour, Swift Foot couldn’t help but burst out laughing.
“Are you okay, Swift Foot?” Ditzy asked solicitously.
“I’m fine,” Swift Foot said. “I’m… I’m great. I… I can’t remember when I last had this much fun.”
I… I like it here.
And I don’t want to bring down this thing that does such good.
What, oh what am I going to do?