Exposed
The first snows of winter lay upon the streets of Vale, a gentle dusting covered the slanted rooftops of the terraced avenues and crunched underneath the feet of Sunset and her fellow team leaders as they walked, led by Weiss, down those same streets.
Snow lay on the ground and on the rooftops, but in between, Vale was a riot of colour: balloons of blue, green, yellow and white rose in bunches, tied to lampposts, to window frames, to the signs of public houses, to anything that would restrain them as they reached eagerly up towards the sky. Bunting in those same four colours, the colours of the four kingdoms of Vale, Mistral, Vacuo and Atlas, hung across the roads down which the students walked, wafting gently back and forth as a chill wind blew between the buildings.
It was like this all the way to Beacon, balloons and bunting lining the way, along with banners reading ‘Welcome to Vale’ similarly strung between the buildings.
“Either the people of Vale became a hive-mind about this sort of thing,” Yang observed, “or someone put all of this stuff up.”
“That would be me,” Skystar said, her voice carrying down the street from where she stood, supervising the raising of yet another ‘Welcome to Vale’ banner. She was dressed in a white winter coat, with a fur-lined collar, heavy boots, and thick-looking gloves enfolding her hands. Her turquoise hair was covered by a blue bobble hat that wobbled a little as she waved enthusiastically to the huntresses. “Hello!”
“Skystar,” Weiss said enthusiastically, and her step quickened as she closed the distance between them, dancing amidst the crowds traversing the street and leaving Sunset, Yang, Blake, and Rainbow Dash to follow in her footsteps towards the First Councillor’s daughter.
“Weiss,” Skystar greeted, taking Weiss’ hands in her own. “It’s so good to see you again.”
“Likewise,” Weiss replied. “And how are Silverstream and Terramar?”
“Well, we finally managed to get Silverstream to take that top off that you signed for her,” Skystar said, with laughter in her voice. “Her mother had to promise that your signature wouldn’t come off in the wash.”
“Of course not,” Weiss declared. “That was special Schnee-branded waterproof ink, guaranteed to survive all washes of less than ninety degrees.”
“That’s what we said, but Silverstream still worried,” Skystar said. “Thank you so much for agreeing to meet her; it’s been the highlight of her year.”
“Oh, it was nothing,” Weiss said airily. “Always a pleasure to meet a fan. Especially one with such a talented voice of her own; has Silverstream ever considered going into the music business? Because if so, I could put her in touch with one or two people.”
Skystar’s eyes widened. “Really? You’d do that?” She squealed in delight as she flung her arms around Weiss. “Cardy never told me how generous you are! This is amazing!”
Weiss laughed uncomfortably. “It’s nothing really. Certainly nothing compared to the amount of work that must have gone into all this.”
Now it was Skystar’s turn to laugh. “Oh, you know, I try my best. Everybody’s worked so very hard on this.”
“Um, Weiss?” Yang muttered. “Aren’t you gonna introduce us to your pal?”
Weiss cleared her throat. “Of course, forgive me. Skystar, these are some of my fellow team leaders. Now, I believe you’ve already met Sunset and Rainbow Dash-”
“Hey there,” Rainbow said.
“Hello again,” Sunset added, in a fondly-meant imitation of Pyrrha’s sing-song voice.
“Nice to see you again!” Skystar chirruped cheerily.
“So that leaves Yang Xiao Long and Blake Belladonna,” Weiss said.
“What’s up?” Yang asked with a wave of one hand.
“Good afternoon,” Blake said, inclining her head a little.
“It’s a pleasure to meet both of you,” Skystar declared. “Thank you so much for all your service.”
Yang let out a little nervous laugh as she scratched the back of her head. “Come on, let’s not go nuts about all this.”
Weiss continued. “Everyone, this is Skystar Aris, daughter of First Councillor Novo Aris and Amity Princess of this year’s Vytal Festival. She’ll be the one responsible for representing Vale and for organising all of the festivities. The amount of planning and preparation that you’re putting into all of this must be breathtaking.”
“I have some help from my mom’s people,” Skystar admitted. “But yes, everyone’s working so hard on a great programme that’s going to blow everyone away. We’re going to have dances, parades, open-air theatre… I just hope it’s enough.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Rainbow declared breezily. “After all, it’s only the tournament that anyone really cares about.”
“Rainbow Dash!” hissed Weiss.
“I mean, uh, that other stuff sounds pretty cool as well,” Rainbow added.
“I hope so,” Skystar murmured wistfully. She took a step away from Weiss. “I mean, Atlas set a really high bar last time.” She sighed. “The Amity Princess is more than just a crown. It’s a promise to bring people together and never let anybody down.”
If this was Equestria, she’d probably have started singing by now, Sunset thought. Thinking about it like that, she almost wished that Skystar would start singing. Sunset… kind of missed having the music and song all around like it was in Equestria.
Perhaps that explained the sudden urge she felt to tell Skystar ‘you got this.’
“Well, if there’s anything that I can do to help, you know that you only need to ask,” Weiss offered.
“Oh, Weiss, that’s so kind of you.”
“Are these two old friends?” Blake asked.
“I don’t think so,” Sunset murmured. “Skystar is Cardin’s girlfriend.”
“Cardin has a girlfriend?” Yang exclaimed.
Skystar and Weiss both looked at her.
“Dude has good taste,” Yang added, looking away.
“What really worries me is that the Vacuans are going to get bored,” Skystar said. “I mean, they’re arriving so early; nothing is scheduled to start until next semester!”
“They can make their own fun, like me and my team,” Rainbow said.
“Wait wait wait wait,” Yang demanded, holding up both hands. “Vacuans? You mean there are Shade students arriving here today?”
“That’s what they tell me,” Skystar confirmed. “Quite a shock, I have to say. Apparently, their ship is scheduled to dock some time today, so I’m making sure that everything is ready to welcome them.”
“And when Skystar told me, I thought that, as representatives of Beacon Academy - and Atlas, I suppose - it was our duty to come down to the docks and join Skystar in extending our welcome to those poor unfortunates from the desert.”
“'Poor unfortunates'?” Blake murmured.
“Why do they call it Shade Academy?” Rainbow asked.
Sunset, who knew what was coming, shook her head. Yang shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Because everyone’s always throwing Shade on it!” Rainbow declared. She was met by a stunned silence from Blake and Yang. “Okay, that joke absolutely kills it in Atlas.”
“I’m sure it does,” Blake muttered.
“I have to go now,” Skystar said. “So much stuff still to do. Have a good day, everyone! And thanks again for everything, Weiss! Silverstream is going to be thrilled!”
“I’ll be in touch!” Weiss called after her as Skystar dashed off. She turned around to see Sunset, with her arms folded, staring at her. “What?” Weiss demanded.
“That poor, naïve girl has no idea that you’ve manipulated her, does she?” Sunset asked.
Weiss gasped. “Excuse me? I have not manipulated anyone!”
“You’ve gotten her to give you inside track information on the Vytal Festival-”
“And in return, I’m giving her things that mean a great deal to her and her family,” Weiss replied. “I wasn’t lying about those industry contacts, for your information. I fully intend to put Silverstream in touch with my last producer. And if that means that I can-”
“Scope out the competition as they come in,” Sunset said. She grinned. “Hey, I’m not criticising. I wish I had the connections to pull that off.”
“It’s called quid pro quo, and it keeps the world turning,” Weiss said. “There is absolutely nothing shameful about it.” She turned on her heel and stalked away, the snow crunching underneath her feet.
“I never said there was,” Sunset said as she and the others followed.
Rainbow wrinkled her nose. “Is it me, or is anyone else getting a really bad smell of fish?”
“We are near the docks,” Blake pointed out.
“Yeah, but come on,” Rainbow moaned.
They reached the docks, which were currently looking pretty empty and vacant. Sunset had read that the docks of Vale had once been the busiest in the whole of Remnant, but now, most travel and transport was by air, and the shallow seas around Vale meant that the largest blue-water craft couldn’t fit in the docks in any case, so the Valish wharfs were a mere shadow of their former glory, mostly tending to Vale's fishing fleet. Aside from those fishing vessels, there was only a single ship currently docked, a long cargo vessel of some kind with an empty deck. The five students wandered along the promenade, Sunset’s finger tips scraping the cold iron of the railings separating them from a dip in the sea, until they heard a shout of "Stop that faunus!" coming from the ship.
They all turned, watching as a young man in a white shirt – that he had left unbuttoned – leapt from the ship to land with a roll upon the low wooden jetty below. He ran down the jetty, pursued by the cries of the sailors aboard ship, vaulting over the iron rails to mount the steps leading up from the docks onto the promenade, which he took three at a time.
His skin was a little tanned by the sun, and his blue jeans were ragged and torn, but his red vambraces and the staff he carried lightly in one hand looked well-maintained. His eyes were a clear blue, like a tropical ocean, and his unkempt hair was a sandy blond. A monkey tail swayed gently behind him. He ran up the steps and stopped, an easy grin coming to his face.
“Nice afternoon for a walk, huh?” he asked.
“Hey!” a couple of sailors had descended from the boat and were even now in pursuit. “Come back here, you no good stowaway.”
“Or a run,” the monkey faunus said. He winked at Blake and then took to his heels, disappearing around the corner and out of sight.
The sailors, by contrast, were visibly out of breath by the time they climbed the steps up onto the promenade.
“Why-” one of them gasped. “Why didn’t you stop him?”
“Because I missed the part where that’s my problem,” Sunset replied.
“That no good filthy-”
Sunset folded her arms and looked at the man with a look that suggested he really didn’t want to go there as her tail swished behind her. Even Rainbow Dash looked a little put out.
The sailor was not completely stupid. “Ah, forget it,” he snapped, turning away and beginning to walk off in the opposite direction. “Damn stowaway.”
Sunset turned her back on him. “Well, if the Shade students are coming today, they’re not here right now, so why don’t we get some coffee or something and see if they turn up later?”
“Sounds good to me,” Yang said.
“Me too,” Rainbow agreed.
“I suppose there’s nothing else for it,” Weiss said, slightly regretfully.
“Blake?” Sunset asked.
Blake looked a little spaced out, a touch of colour had risen to her cheeks, and her eyes were unfocussed.
Sunset smirked. “I see, you’re one of those girls.”
“One of what girls?” Weiss asked.
“Hopeless romantics,” Sunset lied.
“What? No, that’s not it at all, I just,” Blake cried, recovering herself a little. “I mean, um, yeah, going for drinks sounds fine.”
Sunset sniggered but didn’t tease the poor girl any more as the party continued to drift across the promenade. Their progress was arrested when they came across a sight that put a bit of a dampener on Skystar’s welcome preparations.
It was a dust shop, and like so many across the city, it had been robbed, and recently too. The yellow police tape across the shattered window was still fresh, and there was a small crowd watching the two detectives examining the crime scene.
Drawn by curiosity and with nothing better to do right now on their Friday afternoon with the Shade students nowhere in evidence, the five huntresses wandered towards the crime scene.
“What happened?” Yang asked.
One of the detectives, a heavyset man with a full beard, glanced at her. “Robbery, what does it look like?” he said. “Second dust shop hit this week.”
“'This week'?” Sunset repeated. “They’re getting faster.” Perhaps Ruby was right; nobody seems to be doing anything about this.
“They left the money again,” the other cop, younger and with messy dark hair, declared. “Just like all the rest. Gods damn pattern. Who needs this much dust?”
“An army?”
“You thinking the White Fang?”
“I’m thinking if this is part of some kind of crime wave, then it ain’t our problem. Write it up, hand it off to Major Crimes, and let’s go get a beer,” the heavyset detective said, ducking under the police tape and wandering off, leaving his partner to run after him.
“Vale’s Finest,” Sunset muttered.
“Hmph,” Weiss muttered. “The White Fang. Such an awful bunch of degenerates.”
“What’s your problem?” Blake demanded.
“Oh no,” Sunset muttered, putting her head in her hands because she knew, she knew with absolute certainty that-
“What’s her problem?” Rainbow snapped. “Weiss doesn’t have a problem, she’s talking perfect sense.”
Blake began, “The White Fang are a misguided-”
“The White Fang,” Rainbow interrupted, “are a terrorist group, they’re a collection of scum and murderers-”
“They’re fighting for the equality of the faunus!”
“Oh, come on!” Rainbow yelled. “I have put up with some crap out of you, but I’m about to reach my limit.”
“Your limit?” Blake repeated. “Your limit?”
“I don’t know where you get your ideas from, but you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, you naïve... little girl!”
“'Naïve'?” Blake cried. “I’m naïve? You’re the one who believes that your good friends on the Atlas Council are going to solve the problems of faunus rights! If you’re so worried about the White Fang, then tell General Ironwood to stop throwing us chicken feed and start giving us equality and justice!”
Us? Sunset thought. Did she just say ‘us’?
Rainbow didn’t appear to notice; she was too angry to notice little details like that. She bared her teeth, growling as she stomped angrily towards Blake. “What did you say?”
“The methods of the White Fang may be a little extreme, but they wouldn’t rob a dust shop in the middle of Vale,” Blake declared. “The White Fang only attacks those who deserve it.”
The White Fang killed Flash’s father, Sunset thought. He had been… Flash hadn’t explained everything, but he’d been some kind of pencil pusher for the military, procurement or something. He’d been in Crystal City to witness the testing of some new equipment, but the White Fang had bombed the R&D facility. Even if Flash is a bigot, he didn’t deserve to lose his father. He might not have become a bigot if he hadn’t; he was so kind otherwise. A kind boy who didn’t deserve what the White Fang did to him.
Sunset was roused from her thoughts by the sound of a smack, as Rainbow’s first slammed into Blake’s jaw hard enough to knock the smaller girl to the ground.
“You little-” Rainbow snarled, and might have done more if Yang hadn’t grabbed her from behind and pinned her arms from behind. “Let go of me, Yang!” Rainbow shouted as she struggled in vain against the embrace, her ears flat with fury against the top of her head. “I’m going to kick this punk’s ass around the block!”
“Can’t do that,” Yang muttered, as she strained to hold Rainbow back.
Weiss looked very sorry that she had ever started this conversation. “Rainbow Dash, I’m not a fan of the White Fang either, but maybe we should try to calm down?”
“Scootaloo was nine years old!” Rainbow yelled. “So were Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. Nine year old girls who loved their sisters and never hurt anybody in their lives and were excited to be flower girls! What had they done to deserve it, huh? What about Fluttershy, or Pinkie, or Rarity? What about Twilight? What had any of them done to deserve the White Fang trying to kill them? You look me in the eye and tell me why those kids deserved to die!”
“'Nine year old girls,'” Yang said. “What are you talking about?”
“The Canterlot Wedding,” Weiss murmured.
“They didn’t actually die,” Sunset said. “But not for lack of trying from the White Fang, from what I heard.”
“I…” Blake stammered, shaking her head even as she climbed to her feet off the ground. “Chrysalis was an extremist; she doesn’t represent-”
“I never said anything about Chrysalis,” Rainbow said, her voice cutting like a knife.
Blake’s eyes widened. “Huh?”
If looks could kill, then Rainbow’s glare would have already turned Blake to ashes. “The name of the White Fang commander wasn’t released to the public in the wake of the incident. Which means there aren’t too many ways that you could know that. Either someone with military clearance told you… or you’re one of them.”
For a moment, they were all still, a frozen tableaux, suspended on the edge of the precipice, like one of those cartoons where the cat hasn’t realised there’s no more cliff beneath his feet just yet.
Yang’s grip on Rainbow Dash began to loosen as Yang herself looked completely befuddled.
Weiss took a step back, one hand reaching slowly towards Myrtenaster at her hip. “Blake? Is that true?”
Blake also took a step backwards. “It’s not what you think. I… I…” She turned away, fleeing down the street in the direction of the promenade.
Rainbow broke free from Yang’s restraint and started to pursue, her rainbow trailing out behind her- until she ran smack into the shield that Sunset had conjured all around her.
“Sunset!” Rainbow roared, rounding on her with fury in her eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Repaying a debt,” Sunset said, as she stood with one hand raised, wreathed with green as she sustained the magical shield around Dash. She kept the Atlesian girl restrained until Blake had disappeared from sight, just as Blake had once led the grimm away so that Sunset and the others could reach their objective.
Only when Blake was away did Sunset drop the shield.
With a wordless growl, Rainbow closed the distance between the two of them in an instant, driving her fist into Sunset’s gut hard enough to knock her to the ground. She clutched her stomach; she had felt that right through her aura.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Rainbow demanded.
Sunset was still clutching her stomach as she got up. “Saved you from doing something you’ll regret.”
“Give me a break!” Rainbow snapped. She pulled out her scroll and managed to dial despite the fact that her hands were shaking. “Ciel! Where’s Twilight?”
“In the library, with Penny and the subordinate members of Team Sapphire.”
“Secure her immediately, then arm yourself and head over to the CCT - with Twilight and Penny - and wait there until I arrive,” Rainbow ordered. “Blake Belladonna is a White Fang infiltrator; you’re to shoot on sight. I’ll take responsibility.”
“Understood,” Ciel replied. “I’m on the move now.”
“What… what just happened?” Yang murmured, shaking her head in disbelief.
And what’s going to happen now? Sunset wondered.