SAPR

by Scipio Smith

Backdoor Pilot (New)

Backdoor Pilot

The moon was out, but Adam kept the shadows as he approached the dark and unlit house, moving with a grace more feline than bovine as he moved silently towards the back door.

He pulled back the screen, and the door itself opened at his slightest touch, admitting him into a lightless kitchen. Adam’s one good eye was not so adept in the dark as… as Blake’s had been, but nevertheless, he was able to make out the outline of the room: the oven, the surfaces, the coffee maker and the toaster, the chairs surrounding the small table.

He could make out the figures coming in the doorway at the other end of the room.

“You came alone?” The voice that spoke was deep and guttural.

Adam’s lips curled into a sneer. “Unlike you, I don’t need bodyguards,” he said, gesturing to the two warriors who flanked and loomed over the man who stood between them.

Adam didn’t know his real name. He went by the moniker of The Purifier and hid the name he had born with as completely as he hid his face.

“Not everyone can be so great a warrior as you,” The Purifier declared unapologetically.

Adam was in no mood for flattery, certainly not from someone who had summoned him like a churl. Nevertheless, he kept his temper in check; The Purifier enjoyed Sienna Khan’s favour and was held in high esteem by her for his skill with explosives. For that reason alone, it would not do to kill him and invite the wrath of the High Leader.

Not until he was ready to move against the High Leader also. But that would require the prestige of a victory that he had not yet won. And so he kept his tone courteous as he said, “I’m surprised to see you here, brother; I thought you were lying low in Menagerie after that indulgence with the Atlesian actress.”

“'Indulgence'?” The Purifier repeated. “Since when does Adam Taurus disdain killing humans as an indulgence?”

“All humans deserve death,” Adam declared. “But since we cannot kill them all at once, we must choose our targets carefully.”

“Is that what you have been doing, here in Vale?” The Purifier asked. “Choosing your targets carefully?”

“I am on the verge of such a victory as will make Fort Castle pale by comparison!” Adam declared, taking a step forward and sweeping out his hand to encompass the whole world in its expanse. “Everything that I have done has been a step towards that end.”

“Everything that you have done has been at the beck and call of a human, if what we hear in Menagerie be true,” The Purifier replied. “The High Leader is… perturbed.”

Adam bared his teeth, unable to keep a low growl from escaping his lips. Cowards! He cursed those old men, the so-called veterans of the struggle, those who had lingered on from Ghira Belladonna’s day and from the youth of Sienna Khan. Tired old men with no fire in their bellies, full of caution and bereft of hope or fire or initiative. They had always hated his plans and the alliance that he had made; they had always been unable to see. He had suspected that one of them had betrayed him – that was why he’d killed them all – but it seemed that one of them had sent a message to Menagerie before they died.

Worse than useless. Faunus fit to be slaves. Little wonder the struggle was so futile while it was waged by such as them.

“I am no one’s hound, to come when called,” Adam declared.

“Then you do not work for a human?”

“I work with humans,” Adam said. “Their goals and ours run alongside one another. We both desire the transformation of the world and the destruction of the societies that hold our people captive.”

“You speak more like a prophet than a warrior.”

“And what would you know of war, whose skills are a slave to your petty grudges?” Adam demanded. “Perhaps I am a prophet, for I have seen the future, and it belongs to us, if only we have the courage to reach out and take it!”

“This is worse than the High Leader feared,” The Purifier cried. “She sent me here just in time.”

“I have no need of another bomb maker,” Adam declared. “I have more than enough explosive skills within the chapter to accomplish what I need.”

“I am not here to make bombs for you and your delusions,” The Purifier said. “The High Leader has sent me here to assume command of the Vale Chapter.”

Behind his mask, Adam’s eyes – burned and healthy alike – widened. “You mean to depose me? With my great work incomplete?”

“A good thing too, else I would have come too late,” The Purifier said. “Your vaulting ambitions have led this chapter from one defeat to the next.”

“I have stolen a Schnee’s ransom in dust from under the noses of this kingdom’s defenders!”

“And lost good and experienced fighters doing so, and brought the might of Atlas overhead!” The Purifier snarled. “But I will make good use of the dust, I promise you.”

“How?” Adam demanded. “By cowering in fear? Or will you get back into your old habits and waste a bomb upon the Amity Princess?”

“I will ensure that those who have opposed and defied the White Fang are seen to pay for their transgressions: the Mistral princess and the Atlesians who soar so high… and Blake too.”

Adam snorted. “Now who is defying the High Leader?”

“Her affection for the girl is a weakness in her, as it is in you.”

“I feel no affection now,” Adam retorted. “I feel only… hatred.”

“So you say,” the Purifier murmured. “Will you submit to me and to the authority of the High Leader?”

Adam stood silent for a moment, his hands clenching into fists at his side. He would not suffer this. He would not meekly endure to be put aside. He was not a pet for Sienna Khan to cherish one day and then grow bored with the next. He was Adam Taurus, the Sword of the Faunus, and he was on the cusp of something that would shake the kingdoms of the world. He would not step aside now. He wanted nothing more than to kill the Purifier and his men, to draw Wilt and hack them into pieces. But he had a better idea, an idea that would not necessitate him shedding the blood of brothers of the White Fang, nor risk that his followers might prefer to follow the High Leader’s commands instead of his own, nor would he even have to admit weakness in front of his human allies by begging for their aid.

No, he had an idea, an excellent idea. An idea that would put his enemies to work on his behalf and blind them to the true dangers that confronted them.

At length, he smiled. “Of course I will obey,” he said and dropped to one knee before the other man. “What would you have of me?”

---

“Ah, Glynda,” Ozpin said as the deputy headmistress stepped lightly out of the elevator, her heels clicking upon the floor in counterpoint to the heavy grinding of the gears above. “Thank you for coming.”

“Of course, Professor,” Glynda replied, her tone cool and professional. “What’s this about?”

“It’s about a request that I’ve recently received from Lieutenant Martinez of the VPD’s Flying Squad,” Ozpin said. “She’s asking for a student team to be assigned to shadow her unit.”

Glynda’s eyebrows rose. “'Shadow'? For how long?”

“Indeterminate, at this stage,” Ozpin replied.

Glynda pursed her lips together. “I understand that training missions are an important part of the curriculum, but that doesn’t mean letting four students spend more time with the police than they do in class without any sort of end date on when they’ll be back.”

“Indeed, a fact I shall make clear to Lieutenant Martinez when I respond,” Ozpin said, nodding his head. “Nevertheless, within certain conditions – making the basis of the shadowing incidental, on a case by case basis perhaps – I am minded to accept her request and assign her some students.”

Glynda’s face was disfigured by a frown. “I’m not sure that I agree with you, Professor.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, it was only a few years ago that the Flying Squad was investigated by Internal Affairs,” Glynda reminded him. “If I recall, there were allegations that they were rather too close to the criminals they were supposed to be pursuing.”

“You recall correctly,” Ozpin said, a slight trace of a sigh entering his voice. “But I believe the investigation is closed by now, and just in case, I contacted one or two senior officers about the character of Lieutenant Martinez. Like you, I wouldn’t want any of our students to be exposed to bad influences.”

“And what did you hear?”

“That twenty years ago, she would have been the perfect police officer, but now, she’s a relic unlikely to rise beyond her current rank,” Ozpin explained.

“What was that you were saying about bad influences, professor?”

“Society marches on, of course, Glynda,” Ozpin declared, “but for myself, I am not without a certain fondness for old ways, as I hope you can understand. If we were to turn our backs completely on tradition and embrace the new and the modish, then I would have to wind up this school and give over our protection wholly to James and his robots.”

“I have a feeling he would be a little offended to hear you say that,” Glynda murmured.

“Yes, I imagine he would,” Ozpin admitted. “And he would have a right to be. Nevertheless, my point stands.”

“Some things are lost when the old is thrown out,” Glynda accepted, “but some things are gained, and some things, frankly, deserve to be cast aside.”

“True enough,” Ozpin conceded. “But… leaving aside our concerns over the content of the lieutenant’s character, I can hardly refuse to assist the police when they request it, and it may be that they require it, quite seriously.”

“That is unfortunately true,” Glynda murmured. “Very well. I just hope they don’t pick up the wrong ideas.”

Ozpin chuckled. “If they do, I can think of no one better to guide them down the right path than you, Glynda.”

“One of these days, Professor, flattery is not going to help you persuade me to take on an even greater workload,” Glynda said sharply.

“Is that day today?” Ozpin asked, a hint of a smile playing across his features.

Glynda glared down at him from over the top of her spectacles. “No,” she muttered.

“Speaking of extra workload – albeit one that you took on entirely of your own volition – how are Miss Nikos and Miss Xiao Long getting on?”

“Neither of them has room for great leaps of improvement, but I think they are both benefiting incrementally from the challenge,” Glynda replied. “Miss Dash has visited me three times, trying to gain admittance for herself and Miss Polendina.”

“You have refused?”

“Miss Dash doesn’t fight; she brawls,” Glynda sniffed. “I’m not sure what James has been teaching her, but I don’t think there is anything she could learn from me.”

“Is there anything that Miss Nikos or Miss Xiao Long could learn from fighting someone with a, shall we say, unclean fighting style?” Ozpin asked.

“If I admit too many students, then it becomes simply an extra combat class,” Glynda replied. “Are you asking me to consider this?”

“James believes that Miss Dash has promise, as does Miss Polendina in a different way,” Ozpin murmured. “If they are to step into the circle, then… any advantage you can give them would be to the good.”

Glynda was silent for a moment. “I will think about it.”

“That is all that I ask,” Ozpin replied.

“Although, frankly, I would rather admit Miss Belladonna, now that she is out of the hospital.”

“Yes, she is very impressive, isn’t she?” Ozpin asked. “More impressive than I could have imagined when she was first admitted. Flawed, of course, but impressive all the same.”

“She is too good for Atlas,” Glynda said flatly. “They don’t deserve her in the north.”

“Now who is insulting James, Glynda?” Ozpin chuckled. “And when was the last time that anyone got what they truly deserved?” He paused for a moment. “I was considering Team Sapphire for this police assignment. What do you think?”

“I think that it is still too much, too soon,” Glynda told him. “By the end of semester, when all teams take missions, then yes, grant Team Sapphire another, but before that? When other teams are still waiting for their first opportunity? It will be noticed, especially an assignment like this one. You know how prestigious police missions seem to the students.”

Indeed, the allure of a badge was considerable. “They are the best team in their year,” Ozpin pointed out.

“But not the only team,” Glynda replied. “You still haven’t assigned a field mission to Team Wisteria.”

Ozpin paused for a moment. “Do you think they’re capable of it?”

“I have seen a change in Miss Schnee lately,” Glynda said. “I would not have said so before, but now? Yes, I think they are capable. More than that, I think they’re ready.”

Ozpin was silent for a moment. “Perhaps it would be better to hold off on Team Sapphire in case a… sensitive assignment presents itself,” he murmured. “Very well. I hope that you’re right about this, Glynda.”

“So do I,” Glynda murmured in response.

---

“Hey, Sun,” Blake said, as she sat down at one of the tables in the library. “How’s Sage?”

“He’s doing a lot better,” Sun replied, as he sat down opposite her at the table. “What about you? How are you doing?”

Blake hesitated for a moment. With her right hand, she gripped her left sleeve; although she couldn’t feel the marks of her injuries beneath the cloth wound around her arm, nevertheless, she knew that they were there. She would probably never not be aware of the fact. However, the pain was almost gone by now, she could move as freely as she had before without so much as a twinge of aching irritation.

“I’m… better,” she said.

“Great!” Sun cried, a bright smile illuminating his whole face. “It’s just that I was hoping, if you were better, that you might be better enough to want to come out-”

“I… I can’t,” Blake murmured, her tone apologetic even as she cut Sun off. “I’d like to, but I… I’m working on something at the moment. Something… with the Atlesians.”

Sun, to his credit, didn’t seem put out to hear that. “Anything that I can help with?”

“I’m afraid not,” Blake said. “It’s all very… need to know.”

“Not allowed to talk about it either, then, huh?”

“No,” Blake confirmed. “I’ve told you all I-

“Blake?!” Tukson cried, as he ran across the library towards her, his voice frantic and his expression aghast, with eyes wide and an open mouth. “Blake!”

“Tukson?” Blake replied, getting to her feet. “What’s wrong?”

“I just got word from someone in the White Fang,” Tukson began.

“I thought all of your contacts were dead?” Blake asked.

“So did I, but apparently, I still have a couple of friends left whom Adam hasn’t gotten to yet,” Tukson told her. “And one of them just got in touch.”

“I take it that it isn’t good news,” Blake murmured.

Tukson shook his head. “It’s not good news at all, Blake; The Purifier’s in town.”

---

Weiss wasn’t entirely sure why she had been called up to the headmaster’s office, but it had to be better than the last time that she’d been here.

Of course, it didn’t have to, by any rational way of looking at it, but she hoped very much that this was the case.

Not least because she’d been trying hard to do better than she had previously, and she wasn’t sure what she’d do if she found out that it was all for nought and, no, she really wasn’t doing any better than before.

She stepped out of the elevator, back straight and chin up, no sign of her worries or misgivings visible upon her face as she advanced towards the headmaster’s desk. She held her hands straight by her sides, brushing lightly against the sash she wore around her waist. The gears of the clock cast their intermittent shadows over her as she walked forward.

“You wanted to see me, Professor?” she asked, her voice firm and even.

Professor Ozpin looked at her, a genial smile upon his face. “Yes, Miss Schnee, I did, and there’s no need to worry; this isn’t that sort of meeting.”

“I wasn’t worried, Professor.”

“If you insist, Miss Schnee,” Professor Ozpin replied, his tone mildly amused. Weiss wondered how he knew; her expression, posture, and tone had all been perfect. She was a Schnee; she shouldn’t be that easy to read!

She cleared her throat. “What is this regarding, Professor?”

“How would you and your team like a training mission, Miss Schnee?” Professor Ozpin asked.

Given how easily Professor Ozpin had read her already, it was probably pointless of Weiss to try and keep the surprise off her face, but she did it anyway out of sheer habit. It was the same with the elation that she felt. Finally! Team WWSR was getting a mission! Although it had not been said aloud either by Professor Ozpin or, indeed, any other members of the faculty, it had not escaped the student body that assignment of a training mission served as a measure of Professor Ozpin’s trust – or lack thereof – in a particular team. Teams YRDN – as it had been at the time – and SAPR, the gold star teams, had been given missions very early on in the semester, a fact which had given an official imprimatur to what the students themselves already knew: that they were the teams to beat, the teams which were set above the rest, the elite of Beacon. Other missions for other teams had dribbled in, some of them more challenging than others, but there had been none for Team WWSR or for Team BLBL, and that, too, had confirmed what everyone already knew: they were the problem teams, the screw-ups, the bottom of the pile.

Weiss had hated that, but now… now it seemed that her efforts, and the efforts of her teammates, had begun to bear fruit because they were being offered a mission!

Only two things prevented her from accepting on the spot, the first being how unprofessional it might look to accept a mission without knowing what it was. The other was that it was not only the fact of a mission, but the nature of it that indicated the faculty’s trust in a team: the greater the trust, the more challenging the mission. She was, she could confess to herself, curious as to how trusted the new Team WWSR was.

“May I enquire as to the nature of the mission, Professor?” Weiss asked.

“You will be seconded to the Flying Squad of the VPD, Miss Schnee,” Professor Ozpin said. “To provide back up to the detectives there, should they require it.”

“I see,” Weiss said softly. Service with the police was not unheard of when it came to training missions, and she had learned from the older students that it was considered a choice assignment to be given, although she confessed that she did not understand why. Still, if it was an honour to be offered, it was an honour she would gladly accept, even if she was left with questions. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with the Flying Squad.”

“Serious and organised crime, Miss Schnee,” Professor Ozpin explained. “So-called because they operate throughout the city of Vale without being restricted by district boundaries.”

“I see,” Weiss murmured. “And how long will this mission last, Professor?”

“This will be a slightly unusual mission, Miss Schnee,” Professor Ozpin explained. “You will work with the police when your supervisor, one Lieutenant Martinez, requests it, and in between times, you will continue your studies here at school. I should warn you that this work may take you out to class for substantial periods at a time; you must be prepared to catch up with any missing work.”

“Of course, Professor, I’m perfectly willing,” Weiss declared. “And so are my teammates.”

“I’m glad to hear it, Miss Schnee,” Professor Ozpin said. “Do you need to discuss this with your teammates?”

“I don’t think that’s necessary, Professor; I think I know what they’ll say,” Weiss said. They all, after all, wanted to be better; they had all agreed to work to be better, and this was a significant part of that, proof that their efforts up to now had not gone unnoticed or unappreciated. “I accept, and I promise we won’t let you down.”

---

The lift was large enough for all four members of Team WWSR to stand side by side and even somewhat spaced out as it ground downwards towards the depths of the VPD facility.

Weiss had to admit, she’d never heard of an underground police station before, but she supposed that there must be a good reason for it. She imagined it was very secure against attack… although if that was a consideration, then that itself said something about the VPD, or at least the Flying Squad.

The details of their assignment had mandated casual dress, which meant that Flash had donned a pair of blue jeans and an unkept white t-shirt with a ragged collar and his symbol of the yellow lightning bolt on blue, with a black jacket trimmed with red and white worn over the top; while Cardin was wearing a grey turtleneck and brown corduroy trousers, with a brown jacket. Russel had discarded his vambraces and shoulder pauldron. Weiss was wearing her habitual huntress attire, because ‘casual’ didn’t have to mean common now, did it?

As they descended underground, Weiss felt as though the weight of the earth above them was pressing down upon her with all the weight of her own expectations, threatening to crush her beneath the enormity of the many tons of them. This was her big chance. This was their big chance. This might be their only chance, if they did not take it – if they fumbled it, what was worse – how long would they have to wait to get another? Would they ever?

Certainly, it was hard to see their reputations recovering from it. They had to get this right. It was their only shot.

And they would have to work together to make the most of it.

“Forgive me if this sounds superfluous,” she said, “but I want to make sure that we’re all united in our desire to make a success of this, the first mission that we have been offered.”

“We know that if we screw up, we’re not likely to be offered another,” Cardin muttered.

“That is true,” Weiss said. “I’m also not sure it’s enough. Not enough to want to not fail, we have to want to succeed as well. This is a great opportunity for all of us to prove our worth. We may not have been able to capture Roman Torchwick, but we will have an opportunity to apprehend serious fugitives and put our names on the map at Beacon where they belong. I hope we’re all willing to work hard to make that happen.”

“Don’t worry,” Flash assured her. “We all want this to go well as much as you do.” He paused. “Maybe not quite as much, but we’re all in on this.”

“I’m just amazed that I’m going into a police station voluntarily,” Russell said. “What would the folks back home say if they could see me now, going to work for the fuzz?”

Weiss chuckled, as did Flash and Cardin, the tension in the elevator – the tension that Weiss, at least, had been feeling – dissipating like a dead beowolf turning to smoke and ashes.

“Thank you,” she said. “All of you. Police assignments are highly sought after; I’m sure that we wouldn’t have been trusted by Professor Ozpin like this if it weren’t for the improvement that you’ve all demonstrated recently. Now we just have to try and build off that.”

The elevator ground to a halt, and the yellow door rose above them, disappearing from view to reveal a spacious area, well-lit by lights hanging from the grated ceiling, interrupted by a few desks with computers set up, leading to a set of large screens taking up most of the rear wall. A pair of staircases led upwards to places that could not, from the elevator, be seen, while doors in the side and rear walls promised further locations within. Uniformed officers in tactical gear with rifles and submachine guns guarded the only way down into the room – although none of them troubled Team WWSR, presumably because the officers up top had already verified their ID and issued them the badges they wore on lanyards around their necks – while all of the people at the desks or moving between them were in plain clothes of varying degrees of quality and various states of dishevelment.

As Team WWSR stepped out of the elevator, Weiss’ attention was drawn at once to the horse faunus woman, her tail emerging out of the pants of her dark pantsuit, who was standing not too far away arguing with a slightly swarthy man with a red kerchief around his neck.

“An illegal card game, are you kidding me?”

“I was only-”

“It’s illegal!” the faunus woman snapped. “We’re officers of the law! We may bend the rules sometimes, but we don’t pee all over them just to make money! Any more of this crap, and I’ll turn you in to IA myself, understand?”

The man, though he was taller than she was and broader in the shoulders too, took a step back. “Sure thing, El-Tee. I got it.”

“Good,” the woman – El-Tee – growled. “Now get out of my sight.”

He scurried off, while she remained in place for a moment that lasted right up until she noticed the four young huntsmen of Team WWSR. She turned to face them, making a visible attempt to banish the black fury from off her face. “Great,” she said, the forced enthusiasm clashing against the sincere weariness in her voice. “You must be the students.”

Weiss curtsied. “Team Wisteria of Beacon Academy at your service, ma’am.”

“Okay, first of all, don’t call me 'ma’am.' I’m old, but I’m not that old yet. My name is Lieutenant DJ Martinez of the VPD, and you can call me Lieutenant or El-Tee until I give you permission to call me something else.” The Lieutenant was pale, with hooded eyes and ducky lips that seemed set in a sort of permanent pout; her hair was long and light brown, matching the tail that descended towards the floor. “Second, cut out all of that fancy frou frou stuff; we don’t do that here. This isn’t the military, this isn’t a fancy party, so no salutes, no… whatever that was; just do as you're told quickly and efficiently, and we’ll get on great, understand?”

“Perfectly, Lieutenant,” Weiss replied.

“Awesome,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “In that case, and without further ado, welcome to the Basement. This is Flying Squad headquarters.” She turned around and began to walk towards the opposite wall, leaving the students to follow behind her. “Do you know what it is we do here?”

“Organised crime?” Flash ventured.

“We fight against the worst scum in Vale, and we stand between them and ordinary, law-abiding citizens,” Lieutenant Martinez declared. “Everybody listen up: these are the huntsmen that Beacon has provided us. Give everybody your names so that they know what to yell when they need you.”

“Weiss Schnee, the leader of Team Wisteria.”

“Cardin Winchester.”

“Flash Sentry.”

“Russel Thrush.”

“Awesome,” Lieutenant Martinez repeated. “Everyone else will introduce themselves to you when they need something. You’ll get a tour of the place some other time, but right now, we have work to do.” She looked up at the blank screens attached to the rear wall. “Assuming that we can actually bring anything up,” she added, gesturing to an empty desk with a particularly complex computer set-up. “Where the hell is Koren?”

“He called in sick, boss,” replied a young detective, barely any older than Weiss and the other students, with long, light brown hair reaching down to just past his shoulders.

“Great,” Lieutenant Martinez muttered, her tail flicking irritably to the right. “Just great. Does anybody here know how to work a computer?”

Russel raised his hand tremulously. “Uh, I know a little bit?”

Lieutenant Martinez looked at him with only vague incredulity. “Really? Well, be my guest.”

Russel scampered across the Basement to stand in front of the desk and the computer perched upon it. “Um, what is it that you want me to do?”

“I want you to take the scroll plugged into your terminal and put the call it's plugged into up onto the board,” Lieutenant Martinez, gesturing up at the big screens.

“Is that all?” Russel asked incredulously.

The lieutenant’s only response to that was a glare that would have melted the glaciers of northernmost Solitas. Russel ducked, swallowing. “I mean, um, that, uh, that’s a very complicated process; I’m not surprised that it gave you some trouble, uh, give me one, second.”

He started tapping at the keyboard, hiding his face behind the dual monitors as he did so, until the screens flashed up above them with the face of Blake Belladonna.

“Blake?” Weiss said.

Blake blinked. “Weiss? What are you-?”

“Your school friends are here to help me out with some police work,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Miss Belladonna, meanwhile, is here because she never was a White Fang scumbag after all but a pure as snow Atlesian patriot with a lot of useful info from her days undercover.” She gave a very strained smile. “Ain’t that right?”

Blake did not immediately respond. Weiss could hardly blame her. In her position, she would have struggled to respond herself.

She glanced at Cardin, who looked as if he wished to be a little smaller and less noticeable than he was. Weiss could hardly blame him in the circumstances, all things considered.

Blake seemed to have decided to deal with all of the awkwardness by ploughing on as though it did not exist. She cleared her throat. “I have received word from a source in the White Fang that a skilled bombmaker had arrived in Vale. We call him The Purifier.”

“Does he have a real name?” Lieutenant Martinez demanded. “A name we can actually look for?”

“I’m afraid that I don’t know it,” Blake admitted. “Or what he looks like.”

“If you don’t know his name or his face, then how do you know that he’s even real?” Cardin demanded.

“Because someone blew up the airship carrying Chestnut Magnifico and Canter Zoom home from Argus, and someone gutted the Atlesian military facility at Crystal City-”

“Crystal City?” Flash repeated. “Did you say Crystal City? That was him? That guy is here in Vale now?”

Lieutenant Martinez whirled around, her mouth opening but no words emerged, at least not for a few moments, and when they did come, her tone was soft. “This mean something to you, kid?”

Flash clenched his jaw. “My… my father,” he said, as though he had to force the words out. “He was… one of those killed in the Crystal City bombing.”

“Flash,” Weiss murmured, placing one hand upon his shoulder.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Lieutenant Martinez said quietly. “Really, that… no kid deserves to grow up without their parents.” Her voice began to rise and assumed a more professional tone as she said, “Unfortunately, it’s beginning to look like those incidents are about the only things we know about our suspect.”

“Are we sure that there is a suspect?” Cardin asked.

“I didn’t imagine the bomb that killed my father,” Flash snapped.

“I never said you did, but that doesn’t mean that both bombs were the work of some bogeyman with no name-”

“Even if the White Fang have just sent an ordinary bomb maker, isn’t that bad enough?” Blake demanded. “I didn’t go to the Atlesians to tell them a ghost story, and that’s not why they told me to pass this on to you; it’s because I’m worried that people are going to die.”

“If I didn’t get that, I wouldn’t be listening to you,” Lieutenant Martinez reassured her. “Is there anything, anything at all, that you can tell us about this guy?”

Blake thought for a moment. “Not a lot is known about The Purifier, but the rumours say that he used to work for the SDC, in one of the dust refineries. Apparently, that’s where he learned how to manipulate dust. Also apparently, there was some kind of accident that left him injured… and seeking revenge.”

“What was that about no ghost stories?” Cardin muttered.

“I’d like to say that you’ve been helpful, but… you haven’t,” Lieutenant Martinez said to Blake. “Still, thanks for the tip. We’ll take it from here.” She gestured for Russel to cut off the call, which he did, before she turned to face the huntsmen. “So, there we have it: our target is The Purifier. We don’t know his name, we don’t know what he looks like, we don’t even know if he really exists, but we do know that the White Fang is sitting on top of a hell of a lot of dust, and if they have brought a bomb maker to my city, then we are going to find him, and we are going to bring him in, dead or alive, because no more children are going to grow up without their parents because of this bastard. Not on my watch. Understand?”

“We’ll do whatever you ask,” Flash declared. “Whatever it takes.”

“If he really did work for the SDC, then we could start by checking the company personnel records,” Weiss suggested. “Maybe if we cross-reference known refinery accidents against employees leaving the company, we can narrow down a list of possible suspects.”

“If we had the personnel records; the SDC doesn’t give up that stuff without a fight,” Lieutenant Martinez argued. “We’d need to get the consulate in Atlas to approach a judge to give us a court order for-”

“I can get hold of them,” Weiss declared. “Today. Right now.”

“Really? I know you’re the boss’s daughter, but-”

“Really,” Weiss confirmed. “I guarantee it.”

Lieutenant Martinez nodded. “Okay. You do that. You, Russel, help her go through the records. You boys, come with me.” She began to stride towards the elevator.

“Where are we going?” Cardin asked.

“To do some old school police work,” Lieutenant Martinez replied.

---

Cardin was grateful that the faunus cop for which he had found himself working hadn't yet recognised him as the incredible racist who had been caught on tape supporting the genocide of all faunus, but he wasn't inclined to push his luck further than he had to, and so he allowed Flash to get into the front passenger seat of the black SUV while he got in the back.

The lieutenant was a faunus. He took a degree of comfort from the fact that this didn't upset him. It surprised him, whatever that meant for good or ill, but it didn't offend his sensibilities. She was a faunus, yes, but she also seemed like a decent person; she'd been quick enough to express her sympathies to Flash when she found out about his connection to this, and she wanted to stop the White Fang with no apologies for them or suggestions that they might have a point. She was…

Cardin would have said that she was one of the good ones, except… except looking at it, he was having a hard time thinking of nearly as many bad ones as good ones. Blake Belladonna and Sunset Shimmer were the only two who really came to mind as 'the bad ones,' and he was not so lacking in self-awareness not to realise that he had provoked Sunset more than a little and that Blake was at that very moment acting as an informant for them. Against that, there were Silverstream, Terramar... their father was a pretty decent guy as well, and an officer in the Defence Force to boot; Velvet Scarlatina had put up with more from Cardin than he had a right to expect, and now the lieutenant too.

There's still the White Fang.

And there are still all the faunus who aren't in the White Fang.

The lieutenant's brown eyes were reflected in the rear-view mirror as she looked at him. "So, you're the racists, huh?"

Neither Cardin nor Flash said anything. So she had known, after all.

"That's right," Lieutenant Martinez said. "I recognised your names. So if taking orders from a faunus is going to be a problem, you can go back to Beacon-"

"No!" Cardin cried quickly, before Flash could say anything. Screwing up this mission – their first chance to really make their mark – would be bad enough, but getting kicked to the curb before the mission had even started would be even worse! Team WWSR would be the laughing stock of the whole school, and it would be all his fault. He would have let all of his teammates down, and he didn't want that after they had just started to come together. "It won't be a problem," he assured her.

"Really?" Lieutenant Martinez said. "Because on that tape, it sounded like you want me dead."

Cardin winced. "That… what I said… it doesn't reflect what I really think. It's complicated, but-"

"I don't think it's that complicated," Lieutenant Martinez cut him off. "In fact, let me tell you what I think. I think that Blake Belladonna never was any Atlesian agent; I think she was White Fang, plain and simple. I think you knew that, and you didn't like it, so you and your lady friend decided to run your mouths hoping to provoke a reaction out of her. Only you came out of it looking worse than she did."

Cardin frowned. "How did you-?"

"I've been a cop for twenty years; I can smell bull from right across the city," Lieutenant Martinez interrupted. "And I've been involved in enough undercover operations to know that, sometimes, you say something you don't mean." She paused. "I also know that you were a colossal idiot."

Cardin bowed his head. "I know," he muttered.

"I get it," Lieutenant Martinez said. "I could name more than a dozen guys in this city who I know are guilty as sin, but I also know that I've got nothing on 'em, and I'm not going to get anything on them by walking into their houses trying to goad them into hitting me."

"So what do you do?" Flash asked.

"I keep my eyes on them, and I wait for them to make a mistake," Lieutenant Martinez said. She glanced at Flash. "And what about you? You hate the people who killed your father?"

"The faunus didn't kill my father," Flash said softly.

Lieutenant Martinez took a moment to reply. "Okay," she murmured. "Okay," she repeated, louder and more firmly. "I'm going to trust you, all of you, but if you do try and kill me… don't try to kill me; it won't end well for you."

Cardin snorted. "You've got nothing to worry about with us."

"Lieutenant," Flash said tentatively. "Why are you taking the two of us with you and not your partner or any other detective?"

Lieutenant Martinez tightened her grip on the steering wheel of the car. "Do you know where they're holding Roman Torchwick?"

"On board the Atlesian flagship," Cardin replied.

"Right. Exactly. The Atlesians are holding him aboard their ship because the last time the VPD had him in custody, he got out again within the next hour. And the time after that, he got into a fight with a couple of Beacon students, and they heard him talking about dirty cops." Lieutenant Martinez frowned. "This squad… let me tell you something about the Flying Squad: we're not huntsmen, but we fight monsters, except the monsters we fight aren't so obvious as the ones that you kids are training to go up against. They wear human faces, and they hide in the shadows, which means that we have to live in the shadows right alongside them. You won't find any knights in shining armour here. We rely on human sources of intelligence; you know what that means?"

"Informants," Flash said.

"Exactly, we rely on people willing to talk to us, and yes, they are often criminals. We let things slide from the small fry in exchange for intel to help us land the big fish. It's a line… one that not all cops manage to stay on. If Torchwick really has bought cops, then I can't guarantee that some of the cops he's bought aren't down in the Basement. I have one rookie down there I trust absolutely. And I've got you." She smirked. "Worried?"

"Determined," Flash said. "We won't let you down, lieutenant."

"Damn straight you won't," said Lieutenant Martinez as she started to reverse out of the parking lot.

Cardin hastily fastened his seat belt. "So, where are we going?"

"It takes more than dust to make a bomb," Lieutenant Martinez explained. "Sure, you can make an explosion with just dust, but that's not the kind of thing you bring in a bomb maker for. You need other elements to make an actual bomb, at least a good one. I don't know where you'd come by that stuff, but I know a guy who might."

She drove them to a parking lot about an hour’s drive across the city from the Basement and then led them on foot a block or so to a seedy-looking pawn shop in a street otherwise taken up with betting shops, off-licences, and 24-hour bars. The sign above the store was so dirty that Cardin couldn’t make out what it actually said, but from the confident way that Lieutenant Martinez walked in, it seemed like there was no doubt this was the place she was looking for.

“Do you have any idea how this place is going to help us catch a master bomber?” Cardin whispered to Flash as they trailed after the detective.

“Not a clue,” Flash muttered. “I just hope we’re not wasting our time.”

“Pay attention, and you’ll find out how this is going to help,” Lieutenant Martinez lectured. She looked at them. “I have a tail instead of ears, but that doesn’t make me deaf.”

“Of course not, Lieutenant,” Flash said. “I just-”

“Want to catch the bastard who killed your old man, I get it,” Lieutenant Martinez replied. “But I’ve been doing this for longer than you’ve been alive, and I know what I’m doing. So trust me, okay.”

“Yes, Lieutenant. I’m sorry.”

“Now when we get in there,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Keep your mouths shut and your eyes and ears open, okay? This is how we do things in the Squad.”

She turned and led the way inside the pawn shop, the inside of which looked exactly as seedy and down at heel as the outside, with cracks in the glass of the cabinets and a musty smell in the air. Standing behind one of the counters was a small little man, balding on top of his head, with dirty spectacles perched upon his nose and a stained brown overcoat engulfing his diminutive form. He looked up as the tinkling of the bell announced their arrival, and instantly, a whimper escaped his lips.

“M-Missus Martinez,” he stammered in a thin and reedy voice. “H-how lovely to see you again.”

“Great to see you too, Petey,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Flash, flip that sign on the door over to ‘closed’.”

The shopkeeper, Petey or Pete or Peter or whatever his real name was, blanched visibly. “There’s no need for that, Missus Martinez!”

“What? I just want to make sure we’re not disturbed,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Don’t look at me like that, Petey, that hurts; I thought we were buddies. I thought we had a special relationship. The kind of relationship where I don’t bust your ass for handling stolen goods because you give me tips on all the crooks who come through here.”

Pete trembled visibly. “If some people knew I was talking to the cops, they’d chop me up into little pieces.”

“And none of those people will ever find out so long as you make it worth my while to keep it a secret,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Flash, get the door.”

“Right,” Flash murmured and flipped the sign over; he locked the door as well for good measure.

Pete swallowed. “What, uh, what can I help you with, Missus Martinez?”

Lieutenant Martinez advanced towards the cracked and badly cleaned counter. “What do you know about explosives?”

“Now, you know me, Ma’am,” Pete said. “You know I don’t touch nothing like that. No guns, no bombs; I’m not a violent man. I… I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

“Uh huh,” Lieutenant Martinez said sceptically. “And how is Missus Hoffman?”

“She’s having an affair with the bloody milkman,” Pete muttered.

“Really? That’s rough. Just don’t kill him, or I’ll have to bring you in,” Lieutenant Martinez said. She leaned forwards, her elbows resting on the counter top. “You know, you’ve been good to me, Petey. If you help me out, I could help you out. Have one of my boys go around and make a few things clear to Mister Milkman.” She glanced at Cardin over her shoulder, a mischievous glint in her eye. “Look at him, look at how big he is; I think he could intimidate just about anyone, don’t you?”

Pete looked at Cardin with a gaze that was in equal parts apprehensive and eager. “You… you’d really do that for me?”

“Sure I would,” Lieutenant Martinez agreed. “You’re part of the team. Explosives.”

“I wish I could help, but-”

“I know that you don’t deal in bombs, believe me; if you did, you and I wouldn’t be having such a nice and cosy conversation,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “But I know that you know all the gangs, and I know that some of them use explosives so: where do they go for their gear?”

Pete hesitated. “And you’ll help me out, with my wife?”

“If you give me something worth rewarding you for,” Lieutenant Martinez said pointedly. “If not… sometimes it takes a lot of effort not to talk too much.”

“Dressinger,” Pete said quickly. “Leo Dressinger, that’s who I know. Owns a firework shop and sells a different kind of bang out the back. He can get you what you need: dust, detonators, the works. He’ll put it together if you pay extra. That’s what I’ve heard anyway. You know, not that I ever asked how much it would cost for a bomb that would blow up a milk float or nothing.”

“Don’t do it, Petey,” Lieutenant Martinez warned him. “I let a lot slide from you, but I won’t let you get away with murder.”

“I know that, Missus Martinez, but a fella can dream, can’t he?”

“Where can we find this Leo Dressinger?”

---

Weiss sat on a stool at the same desk at which Russel was sat, tapping out her requirements on her scroll with both thumbs.

She became aware of Russel craning his neck to see what she was doing over her shoulder.

Weiss sighed. "Russel?"

"Yeah?"

"We are teammates; you can just ask me what I'm doing."

"Right. Sorry. So, what are you doing?"

"I'm specifying my needs so that I can just plug in my scroll and have all the files downloaded to it without having to explain it verbally," Weiss explained. "Let's see, personnel records including termination dates, dates of industrial accidents… disciplinary records; I doubt someone jumps to making bombs without being written up at least once for their attitude."

"Just because someone's a bit of an ass at work doesn't make them a terrorist, though," Russel countered. "I mean, look at Cardin."

"True," Weiss conceded. "Very true. But we're not looking to arrest someone based on this information, just… create a pool of suspects."

"Okay," Russel said quietly. "So, do you really think you can get all of this stuff?"

Weiss looked at him over her shoulder. "For better or worse, I am the boss's daughter."

"Yeah, but you're also still a kid," Russel reminded her in turn.

"A kid who might complain to her daddy if she doesn't get what she wants," Weiss said. As far as they know, anyway. She would have liked to think it was a misconception on their part, born out of her father's success in keeping his domestic troubles out of the public eye, but the truth was… that was exactly what she had done, wasn't it? 'Daddy, Daddy, fix my public image!' The truth… the truth was that if she needed to, she would go to him again, for this, so important was it that they make a good showing here.

Hopefully, that would not be necessary.

She hopped down off the stool, all her requirements specified, and looked around the Basement. Most of the officers were several years older than her, and between the way they ignored her and what Lieutenant Martinez had said in her brief introduction, Weiss got the impression that they would not appreciate being disturbed. The young detective who had informed the lieutenant that their regular computer person was off sick seemed the most approachable, so Weiss walked towards him, her heels tapping.

"Excuse me," she said, in a tone the politeness of which verged upon apologetic. "I'm sorry to disturb you-"

"That's quite alright, Weiss," he said. "That is, if I may call you Weiss," he added hastily. "We're pretty informal around here, but I don't know what it's like up at Beacon."

"Weiss will be fine," she assured him. "When in Mistral, as they say."

He chuckled. "Yes," he said. "Great. Sorry, you were, I mean it's no trouble at all; you're doing more work than I am right now. But you were saying?"

"I was wondering if there is anywhere private I can make a call to SDC headquarters to get the information we require," Weiss said.

"Of course," he said. "This way." He gestured towards a door behind her, walking over to it and opening it to reveal a corridor that could have done with being better lit, with exposed pipes running along the right hand wall. "This corridor leads to the emergency exit," he explained. "It's a set of stairs leading aboveground, really, with a door that can only be opened from the inside. But there are also a couple of rooms where you can video call without it being obvious that you're in a police HQ. For undercover work, you know. I'm Mallard, by the way, Mallard Carter, Detective Mallard Carter."

Weiss smiled. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Detective Carter."

"Mallard, please," he said. "As I said, we're quite informal here." He stopped outside a grey door with a metal handle. "Here we are," he said, opening said door.

The room within was completely black, the walls having been painted that way in paint so thick that all trace of the brick beneath had been concealed. The only light was red, casting the room in a hostile glow. A terminal sat on a desk against the wall; it and the chair to sit on were the only furniture within.

"Cosy," Weiss murmured.

"Sorry," Mallard said. "It's the best we've got, I'm afraid."

"It will be fine," Weiss said. "This won't take long." I hope not, anyway.

"I'll wait outside," Mallard said, and as Weiss entered the gloomy and forbidding room, he shut the door behind her.

Weiss managed to find her way to the chair and sat down in it, placing her scroll on the desk beside her. Activating the terminal, she was confronted with an array of call backgrounds, ranging from a suburban sitting room to an exterior street to a rough-looking bedsit. Weiss considered for a moment, finally landing on the one that, to her eyes, looked like a library, with a lot of books stacked on shelves behind her.

That done, she called SDC World Headquarters in Atlas.

Hopefully, she could get this done without having to involve her father – or without him being informed by an employee. She thought it was unlikely – Jacques Schnee tended to take a big picture view of the affairs of his vast corporation, refusing to be mired in trivialities – but not impossible. If he found out… he would probably not be happy. There was a reason she wasn't about to approach him directly; there would be a price for his help, as there always was.

With a little good fortune, all of that could be avoided.

A face appeared on the monitor, a young woman with chestnut brown hair cropped to just above the shoulders, with the Schnee snowflake upon a blue background rotating slowly behind her. "Thank you for contacting the Schnee Dust-" She looked up, brown eyes widening in surprise. "Miss Schnee! Good afternoon! I'm afraid Mister Schnee is in a board meeting right now, but I can inform him if this is an urgent matter-"

"That won't be necessary," Weiss said quickly; not only would it entangle Weiss in ways that she did not wish, but it would also probably get this poor girl in trouble for the interruption. "I'm aware that my father is a busy man; I don't want to disturb him."

"Of course, Miss Schnee; shall I inform him that you called?"

"That won't be necessary either," Weiss said. "I just need some information. I've compiled a list of the files I require." She plugged in her scroll to the terminal.

"I'm receiving your request now, Miss Schnee," the young woman on the other end of the line said. Her eyes widened just a little. "May I ask why you need this information, Miss Schnee?"

"It's for… a school assignment," Weiss said, and it wasn't even completely false. "One that I need to do well in, and to do well, I need this information."

"Some of this information is… I'm sorry, Miss Schnee, but some of these records are confidential. I can't just distribute them outside the company."

"I see," Weiss murmured. She hesitated for a moment. "Very well. I would like to speak to my father, please."

The young woman answering her call gasped. "Wait just one moment, Miss Schnee, if you'll just let me double check our data protection policy… ah! I'm so sorry, I misread…" She mumbled something too quietly for Weiss to make out. "Please, accept my apologies; I'm downloading all of the data you requested to your scroll now." She looked directly into Weiss' eyes. "Please don't mention this to Mister Schnee; I need this job. If I lose it, I'll have to move back to Mantle to live with my parents."

She thinks I'm going to get her fired, Weiss realised. That had not, honestly, been in her mind – she had been about to ask her father for another favour – but looking back, she could see how the poor girl had gotten that impression. She felt sickened at the idea that people thought she was capable of that kind of petty cruelty, and even more sick that she couldn't deny the fact and risk losing the girl's cooperation. "Thank you," she said. "In that case, that will be all."

The other girl blinked. "You mean you don't need to speak to Mister Schnee?"

"No," Weiss said. "That's no longer necessary."

The young woman sagged with relief. "Thank you, Miss Schnee. Have a nice day."

As Weiss hung up and extracted her scroll, it didn't feel like a particularly nice day.

Still, she had what she needed. She just hoped it was worth it.

---

Rather than walking any distance, this time, Lieutenant Martinez pulled up right outside the fireworks store, mounting the kerb with two wheels of the SUV and managing to line up the driver's side door directly with the front door of the shop itself.

The shop was called Sparkle with Flare, and it was both in a much better neighbourhood than the pawnshop they'd just visited – around here, most of the neighbouring shops were chain retailers, with the immediate neighbours being a bookstore and a middle class boutique. Sparkle itself was better maintained than the pawnshop, with clean windows displaying a dazzling array of fireworks popping with colour.

Cardin would never in a million years have expected that a place like this would also be a haunt of organised crime.

"It doesn't seem right, does it?" Flash murmured.

Lieutenant Martinez looked at him. "Why not?"

Flash hesitated. "Well… because…"

"Come on, say it," Lieutenant Martinez instructed. "It's because this is a nice part of town, isn't it?"

Flash bowed his head. "Yeah."

"You never know what's happening behind a closed door until you kick it down," Lieutenant Martinez said. "Like I told you, the monsters that we fight don't always look the part."

Somebody's stomach rumbled loudly.

"That wasn't me," Cardin said quickly, although the truth was that he was feeling pretty hungry. They'd skipped lunch in order to get started on their big break mission, and he, for one, was starting to regret it.

"No, it was me," Lieutenant Martinez admitted. "With this bomb threat, I haven't exactly had time to eat." She leaned over, across Flash, to open up the glove box. She pulled out a bright red lollipop, which she started to unwrap. "You boys want one?"

"No thanks," Flash murmured.

"Can I take one for later?" Cardin asked. He wasn't sure how it would look to go and talk to the suspect sucking on a lollipop – not that that idea seemed to bother the lieutenant – but he was hungry.

Lieutenant Martinez nodded, and Flash handed him a green lollipop that he tucked into a pouch he wore on his red sash.

"I started carrying these around for my kids," Lieutenant Martinez explained. "I ended up getting a taste for them myself." She unwrapped the lollipop and stuck it into her mouth, with the straw sticking out like a toothpick. "Okay," she said. "Let's see what Mister Dressinger has to say for himself."

They got out of the car and entered the store, where fireworks lined the walls in rows, rockets bulging on top of long metal poles, with fuses wrapped in rubber to prevent premature ignition. Behind the counter stood a man in a loud red shirt, with lions and lionesses frolicking upon it, wearing a chunky gold watch and gold chains around his neck.

"Afternoon, fellas," he said affably, although not without a hint of wariness. "Can I help you?"

"I hope so," Lieutenant Martinez said as she sauntered towards him. "Leo Dressinger?"

He nodded. "That's right."

"You want me to get the door again?" Flash asked.

"Good boy, learning fast; that's what I like to see," Lieutenant Martinez replied.

Dressinger's golden eyes bulged a little as Flash closed and locked the door. "What is this?"

"This is me asking you about bombs," Martinez said. "Had any customers lately?"

Dressinger swallowed. "Now listen," he said. "Just because you can afford a couple of huntsman bodyguards don't mean that you can go around asking questions like that. I've got friends-"

"Yeah, I know the kind of friends you have," Lieutenant Martinez said. "Trust me, they're not as tough as you think you are."

"And who the hell are you?"

"I'm the Flying Squad, and I haven't had my dinner," Lieutenant Martinez said. "So unless you want a kicking, you'll tell me everything I want to know."

Leo Dressinger stared at her for a moment. Then he turned and bolted out the back door, slamming it behind him.

"Always run," Lieutenant Martinez muttered. She turned an exasperated glare on Flash and Cardin. "What are you waiting for, an invitation?"

Cardin was the first off the mark, reaching the counter in swift strides and vaulting smoothly over it. He tried the door. It was locked, so he took a step back before bulling into it, shoulder first. The lock yielded before his strength, the door flying open as he staggered through it into a white, tile-floored corridor, half obstructed with boxes full of stock, down which Leo Dressinger was fleeing.

"Hey!" Cardin yelled as he chased after him, his own legs pounding on the tiles. "Stop!"

Dressinger looked behind him, fear on his face, before he continued to run. Cardin could hear Flash's feet pattering behind him as he forced himself to run faster, closing the distance upon their quarry. Dressinger started pulling down piles of boxes as he ran, obstructing the path behind him, forcing him to take more care of where he stepped as Dressinger reached the fire exit at the back and burst out into the street behind the store.

Cardin emerged a few seconds later and had to look around to see Dressinger heading west. He resumed the chase, not knowing or caring if Flash or the lieutenant were behind him. He yelled for people to get out of his way, and as Dressinger pushed an old lady to the ground to clear his own path, Cardin ignored them. Someone else would help them out; his only focus was on the quarry.

He felt like he was gaining. Dressinger crossed into the street-

A black SUV, tires screeching, came around the corner and hit Dressinger hard enough to knock him off his feet and send him rolling six feet down the road. He came to a stop, moaning in pain as he lay upon the tarmac.

The car door opened, and Lieutenant Martinez stepped out. "Great job, boys," she said. "Couldn't have done it without you." She looked past Cardin. "Flash, is she okay?"

Cardin looked over his shoulder to see Flash helping the old woman whom Dressinger had knocked down back on her feet.

"I think so," Flash said. "You don't need me to call an ambulance, do you, ma'am?"

"Oh, no, dear," she said. "You're very kind, but I'll be fine now I'm back on my feet and that ruffian is off his."

Lieutenant Martinez smirked as she crossed the street to where Dressinger lay on the ground.

Dressinger groaned. "I think I broke some ribs."

"I'll break more than that if you don't tell me what I want to know," Lieutenant Martinez growled, bending down to grab him by the arm and the scruff of the neck, hauling him to his feet. "Leo Dressinger, you're under arrest and coming with me."

---

Weiss ran towards the elevator door as it began to open, her side ponytail flying behind her. “Lieutenant!” she cried, as she saw the lieutenant emerge from out of the lift with Flash, Cardin, and a slightly bruised and beaten-up looking man held between the two boys. Weiss paused for a moment, before rallying quickly to say, “We think we have a name for The Purifier.”

Lieutenant Martinez stared at her for a moment. “Yuma,” she said. “Take this scumbag to the Cage; I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Sure thing, El-Tee,” Yuma, the tall man whom Weiss had seen the lieutenant arguing with earlier when they arrived, muttered and strode across the squadroom floor to take the suspect off Flash and Cardin’s hands, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and dragging him towards one of the sets of stairs. The suspect, for his part, did not resist. That seemed very wise of him.

Lieutenant Martinez walked forwards, with Flash and Cardin trailing after her like faithful hounds. “Go on,” she said sharply.

Weiss gestured towards the screens at the back of the room, where Russel was bringing up the photograph of a handsome-looking man in his early twenties, whose black hair had an almost velvet quality to it and whose eyes were a striking red against his pale skin. “This,” she said, “is Krot Krasny, a mole faunus. At the time this photograph was taken, he was employed by the SDC in the refinery at Crystal City. The mines there were tapped out some years ago, but the city authorities for a long time subsidised the SDC to keep the refinery operational to preserve jobs… until eight years ago, when a fire broke out and swept through the entire plant.”

“Arson?” Lieutenant Martinez asked.

“More likely, it was aging equipment that wasn’t being maintained properly,” Weiss murmured. “My father might keep the plant open, but he wouldn’t invest in it in those circumstances.”

Lieutenant Martinez looked at her, eyebrows rising slightly.

“I’m my father’s daughter, not his publicist,” Weiss explained.

Lieutenant Martinez smirked. “Don’t mind me. Go on. Krot Krasny.”

“Krot Krasny was one of the workers injured in the fire… and one of those laid off when the SDC shut down the facility in the wake of the fire,” Weiss went on. “According to the records, he suffered severe burns.”

“'One of'?” Lieutenant Martinez repeated. “What makes you think he’s our guy?”

“Because he had a disciplinary record,” Weiss went on. “Before the fire, he’d been written up twice for a bad attitude.”

“That can’t be unique either,” Flash said.

“No,” Weiss allowed. “But Krot Krasny arrived in Vale just five days ago, and it might have taken that long for Blake’s contact to learn he was here. Krasny used his own passport to get through security.”

“Pretty ballsy move, not trying to hide,” Cardin growled.

“He doesn’t need to hide; nobody knows who he is,” Lieutenant Martinez explained. “That’s the point of this game with The Purifier; he hides behind a name and a myth, and meanwhile, Krot Krasny gets to go about his business, a law-abiding citizen. Using his own ID was smart; using a fake could see him get picked up, get a lot of questions asked that could lead to his criminal activities. Do we have surveillance of him at the airport?”

“We got lucky,” Russel said, his fingers flying across the keyboard as the screen was consumed by video from an airport security camera. “According to the time of the video and when his passport was logged, this is our guy.”

To say that he looked different from the handsome man in the photograph would have been an understatement. His hands were gone, replaced by a pair of cybernetic hands protruding from out of the sleeves of a black hoodie. The hood was down, if only temporarily, for he put it back up again as soon as he had cleared customs, but while it was down, it revealed a head that had been consumed by fire; the velvety hair was gone, and in its place, only the burned flesh, melted and cracked and malformed, remained.

On the video, Krasny snarled at a young child who had stared too long, throwing up his hood and reaching into his bag for something that they couldn’t see because he passed out of sight of the camera.

Lieutenant Martinez folded his arms. “Okay,” she said. “Okay, I can buy that’s our guy.”

Flash frowned. “Crystal City,” he growled. “He went back for his revenge.”

“It’s beginning to look that way,” Weiss murmured.

“Do we know where he went?” Flash demanded.

“Nobody’s required to give up that sort of information,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “And even if they were, just because he’s using his real name doesn’t mean he’d necessarily give the right address. Still, good work, you two; at least we’re chasing a man now, not a ghost. Do you have any paper copies of those photos?”

“Here,” Russel said, holding up a folder with print-outs of all the information; Mallard had warned them that Lieutenant Martinez preferred to deal in hard copy.

“Thanks,” Lieutenant Martinez said, snatching the folder out of Russel’s hand. “I’m going to go question our guy; you four can watch if you want. The Cage is upstairs.” She gave them no more instructions than that but turned and made her way towards the same staircase up which Yuma had dragged the guy that Martinez, Flash, and Cardin had brought in. Cardin barely hesitated before he followed after her.

Russel hopped off his seat. “Are you coming?” he asked.

“In a moment,” Weiss said quietly, her attention fixed upon Flash. She felt, rather than saw, Russel walk around behind her and follow Cardin and the Lieutenant.

Flash didn’t look at Weiss. His eyes were fixed on the screens above, upon the images of the man who had... who might have... who they thought had killed his father.

Weiss looked at him not looking at her. It was subtle, but it seemed to her as though his whole body was shaking.

“How… how did it go out there?” Weiss asked, deciding to ease in to what she really wanted to talk about.

Flash’s brow furrowed. “We learned something, I suppose,” he said. “I can’t say we added much.”

“It’s our first day.”

“You seem to have made a good impression,” Flash replied.

Weiss didn’t acknowledge that; privately, she thought so too, but now wasn’t the time for bragging. She wanted to reach out to Flash physically but worried that he might not appreciate it right now, and so she settled for saying, “And… how are you?”

Flash turned away from her, walking across the squad room to the far wall, resting one hand against the breeze block and leaning hard upon it. Weiss followed after him, her shoulder almost touching the wall as she stood where she could see his face. His head was bowed, and his eyes were closed, his blue orbs invisible.

“I never thought about the person who did it,” he admitted. “It was always the White Fang that had killed my father, never a man. It was the group – not the faunus, not like that – but… it was almost a mass of them. A group in masks and hoods. I never thought about the person who had built the bomb, who had planted it, detonated it. And now… now, I have a name, a face… I’m not a good person, Weiss.”

Weiss frowned. “What in Remnant are you talking about?”

“I know that I should feel sorry for that guy, for what he went through,” Flash explained. “I know that I should… but I don’t. I don’t care. All that I can see when I look at those pictures is that he’s the reason… and a part of me wants to ask him why, and another part of me is terrified to find out the answer.”

Weiss was silent for a moment. “When I would hear about White Fang attacks on the SDC,” she said, “when my father would come home in a foul temper because of some new incident… I used to want to ask them if it was worth it. I used to want to ask if what they achieved was worth the suffering they caused. And yes, I counted having to live with my father in a bad mood as suffering, but I don’t think that makes me a bad person. Or at least, I hope it doesn’t. Just like I don’t think you’re a bad person either. You’re one of the best people I know: kind, compassionate, brave. You had reason to grow up hating the faunus, but you didn’t. But I think you’re allowed to hate the man who killed your father. If you’re not… I don’t see the point in setting the bar for virtue so high that you can’t be a human and pass it.” She paused for a moment. “We will catch him,” she promised. “The four of us, together.”

“I hope so,” Flash said softly. “I don’t want anyone else to go through what I did.”

“They won’t,” Weiss vowed. “Now, we should probably hurry, or we’ll miss the interrogation.”

Flash turned around and looked at her at last; she fancied that she could see a trace of gratitude in his blue eyes. “We wouldn’t want that,” he said, forcing a lightness into his tone.

They hasted upstairs and caught sight of Cardin and Russel standing in front of a set of monitors with Detective Mallard, watching the images from cameras located on the inside of a metal box not far away, with said cameras being the only way to see what was going on within.

“The Cage is completely soundproof,” Mallard explained as Weiss and Flash joined them. “This is the only way to see or hear anything.”

“What did we miss?” Flash said.

“Nothing yet,” Mallard replied. “The lieutenant likes to sweat them for a little bit first.”

Indeed, on the cameras, they could see Lieutenant Martinez sitting calmly on the other side of the table from Dressinger, calmly sucking on another lollipop while Yuma prowled restlessly up and down the wall, the smoke from his cigars spilling out into the room.

Dressinger also said nothing; he just kept glancing nervously between the two police officers.

“Fireworks, huh?” Lieutenant Martinez said. “You know, when I was a kid, I used to love fireworks. How about you, Yuma?”

Yuma shrugged. “They got a little loud sometimes.”

Lieutenant Martinez chuckled. “When I was a little girl, every New Year's and every Vytal Opening, my Dad used to throw a party with fireworks. When I was really young, I asked if we couldn’t go to the big party in Winchester Park, but Dad said there was no point; you couldn’t see nothing with that big crowd. And so we had a barbecue, with all of the neighbours, and Dad would set off fireworks, just for us, in our own garden. I used to spend all day waiting to see what kind he’d brought this year, 'cause it seemed like every year was better than the last. I loved it. Do kids still love fireworks, Leo?”

Dressinger blinked. “Some of ‘em, sure,” he muttered.

“I bet they do,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Do you ever think about how many of those kids, who love your fireworks, have died because of the bombs that you also sell? How many of those kids have lost their parents because of the bombs that you also sell? Do you ever think about how many of those kids will only have memories of the fireworks their Dad brought for them last New Year's because of a bomb that you sold? Well? Do you?”

“I… I…” Dressinger stammered, cringing away from her.

“Don’t bother to deny it, Leo; I’m not interested in hearing your excuses,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Why, Leo? For the money? Does that help you sleep at night, the lien you make from the blood of innocent people?”

“I… I… I want a lawyer,” he managed to say.

“I bet you do,” Lieutenant Martinez growled. “But what I want is information, and since this is my kingdom, we’ll cover that before we get to what you want.”

“Y-you can’t do this. I got rights-”

“Let me tell me something about rights!” Lieutenant Martinez snarled, slamming her palm down onto the table as she got to her feet. “Rights are for decent, ordinary, law-abiding citizens, rights like the right to be kept safe from scum like you and the people that you supply explosives to. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t have any rights, because rights are not for villains or those who deal with them. What you have is a chance to talk before I toss you into a cell and throw away the key!” She flipped open the folder, shoving a picture of Krot Krasny’s burned face under Dressinger’s nose. “Do you recognise this guy?”

Dressinger flinched. “No!”

“Are you sure? Look closely now!”

“No, I…” Dressinger paused, glancing back at the photograph. “I mean… I never saw his face, but he wore a dark hoodie, just like that.”

“He had the hood up?”

Dressinger nodded. “And a mask. He had a mask over his face.”

“A mask?” Lieutenant Martinez repeated. “A white mask?”

Dressinger shook his head. “A black mask. It covered his whole face; it… it was like a screaming face, in agony, you know, a really wide mouth with the points facing down. It creeped me right out; I was glad when he left.”

“You weren’t so creeped you didn’t sell to him, though, were you?” Lieutenant Martinez demanded. “Were you?!”

“No!” Dressinger admitted.

“What did he buy?”

“Detonators.”

“Timed or remote?”

“Both.”

“How many?”

“A dozen… no, fifteen.”

“Fifteen?” Lieutenant Martinez repeated. “Fifteen detonators? Fifteen, gods… anything else?”

“Fuses. Resistant casing materials. The works.”

“How did he make contact?” Martinez yelled, pressing her face close to his. “I know that a guy in a creepy mask didn’t just walk into your fireworks store during business hours and ask for bomb-making materials, so how did he make contact?”

“It was after hours,” Dressinger said. “I got a call, asked me to wait in the store to talk about a special commission. That’s what people do when they… you know. They want something… out the back like.”

“When they want bombs, not fireworks,” Martinez said flatly.

Dressinger nodded. “Y-yeah. So I waited. And they showed up.”

“What was the number?” Yuma asked.

“I-I don’t know,” Dressinger said. “I-I don’t keep track. It’s better that way.”

“And you don’t know where they went either, do you?”

“No. If I did, I’d tell you, I swear.”

Lieutenant Martinez snorted. “Yeah,” she said. “Sure you would.” She paused for a moment, her face hidden from the camera, before she gestured to Yuma and walked towards the door to the Cage. Outside, Mallard pressed a button to open said door, and Martinez and Yuma emerged, locking Dressinger back in behind them.

“That didn’t seem to go too well,” Russel observed as the two detectives walked towards the group.

“Watch your mouth, kid,” Yuma growled.

“He’s right,” Lieutenant Martinez muttered. “But there’s sometimes only so much you can do when the guy doesn’t know anything.”

“We confirmed that there is a bomb threat,” Mallard pointed out.

“Yes, yes we did,” Lieutenant Martinez acknowledged.

“Though I wish we hadn’t,” Flash muttered.

“We all wish that,” Weiss said softly.

Cardin scowled. “So what now?”

“Now?” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Now we cut him loose.”

“What?” Cardin explained. “You mean you’re going to let him walk out of here?”

“He sells bombs to criminals!” Flash yelled. “He admitted it!”

“And a whole load of people saw us arrest him and take him into custody,” Lieutenant Martinez reminded them. “So, when a whole load more people see a uniform car drop him off outside his store, safe and sound, what are they going to think?”

Weiss frowned. “I’m not-”

“They’ll think he talked,” Russel said. “They’ll think he talked, and they’ll want to find out what he said.”

“Exactly!” Lieutenant Martinez proclaimed. “That’s the theory, anyway. And my hope. And when they show up, we’ll be waiting. With luck, we can nab somebody who knows a little more than Dressinger there does.”

“That sounds… kind of risky,” Flash said. “I mean… what if they kill him before we can get to them?”

“Then there’ll be one less scumbag in the world, what about it?” Lieutenant Martinez asked.

Weiss’s eyebrows rose. “That… is rather cold.”

Lieutenant Martinez looked at her. “Like I told these two boys, we’re not huntsmen here; we don’t have the luxury of holding all lives to be equally precious and worth protecting. I choose to focus on the people who are worth saving, all the innocent people who are at risk so long as The Purifier is out on the streets. I’ve got a bomber who could strike at any time, and if I have to throw someone like Leo Dressinger into harm’s way in order to get him, I will. If you have a problem with that, then you can go back to school. Is that what you want?”

“No,” Weiss said immediately. “No, I just… my apologies, Lieutenant.”

“Don’t apologise,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “Just listen, learn, and move on. Now, let’s get our fly out of here and see what kind of spiders come along.”

---

Flash had told Weiss what Lieutenant Martinez had said to him and Cardin about her not entirely trusting most of her own officers; it explained what would have been the otherwise slightly strange decision to leave the bulk of them back at the Basement.

Only two cars – two unobtrusive-looking saloon cars, painted in common dark blue colours – kept watch on Leo Dressinger. Cardin and Russel were in one car with Lieutenant Martinez, while Weiss and Flash sat in the other car with Detective Mallard, watching as Dressinger walked down the street towards a joint called The Iceberg Lounge.

An open scroll sat on the dashboard linked both to Lieutenant Martinez in the other car.

Weiss, in the front seat, looked over at Mallard, and then behind him to the sword on the backseat next to Flash, sitting comfortably enough beside his Caliburn; her own Myrtenaster was between her knees.

“I… hope you don’t mind me saying,” Weiss said, “but I wouldn’t expect a police officer to carry a sword.”

Mallard laughed nervously. “Well… to be honest… being a police officer wasn’t my first choice of job.”

Weiss considered that for a second. “You… wanted to be a huntsman?”

Mallard nodded. “I wanted to fight monsters, be a hero, defend Vale from the darkness, all that marvellous stuff. Just like the storybooks. I was certain that it was… what I was meant to be. I graduated from Signal Combat School, I had my weapon, I applied for Beacon… I thought I knew where my life was going.”

Weiss’s brow furrowed. “What happened?”

Mallard was silent for a moment. “I failed Initiation. I didn’t find a partner. I got a relic, and I got out, but I got out alone. Professor Ozpin told me that was against the rules; it didn’t count. There was no place for me at Beacon.”

“I’m sorry,” Flash murmured.

“I’m a little surprised,” Weiss confessed. “You survived the Initiation; would it really have been so difficult to have found some sort of place for you?”

“I asked myself that a lot,” Mallard admitted. “I’d made it through the forest, I’d done what was asked of me, I’d shown that I was able to survive, to kill grimm. Just because I hadn’t found a partner, didn’t that just go to show how strong I was? How capable? You could say that it showed that I was more capable than all the rest because I could do it on my own and I didn’t need anyone else to carry me!” He paused. “I probably sound a little bitter, don’t I?”

“Just a teensy bit,” Weiss said.

Mallard laughed. “I… well, I was, I won’t deny that. But now… don’t get me wrong, the two of you – the four of you – are incredibly lucky, getting to go to Beacon, to train to be huntsman… but at the same time, I think that getting thrown out by Professor Ozpin is the best thing that could have happened to me.”

“Because it brought you here?” Flash guessed.

“Right,” Mallard said. “At first, when I joined the police… I wanted to help people, but I won’t pretend that I didn’t see it as a poor substitute for the thing I’d really wanted to do. But working for DJ – the El-Tee; don’t tell her I called her DJ while was on duty – has shown me that… the monsters that we fight are every bit as a dangerous as the ones that you fight, maybe even more, and Lieutenant Martinez is as much a hero as any huntsman. We’re the line between law and chaos, and that… that matters. That matters as much as keeping the beowolf from the door.” He smiled self-deprecatingly. “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to preach at you; I just-”

“Take pride in what you do,” Weiss said. “There’s no shame in that.”

Mallard nodded. “But… if you don’t mind… what’s it like, up at Beacon?”

Before Weiss could respond, they all heard Lieutenant Martinez’s voice coming out of the scroll. “Look sharp; I think we might have something.”

Weiss looked out of the window. She could still see Dressinger, looking warily behind him as he walked down the street, but not quite so warily that he was able to spot the people keeping him under surveillance. Mind you, she couldn’t see anybody following him, so she had very little room to talk.

“I don’t see-” she began.

“The brown SUV crawling down the street in the opposite direction to Dressinger,” Cardin’s voice emerged from out of the scroll.

Weiss looked down the road and saw it now: a big, boxy square vehicle with tinted windows that made it impossible to see inside. It was indeed moving very slowly, so slowly that it was being honked by some of the vehicles behind as they drove around this obstacle to the traffic. The car itself seemed oblivious to the irritation that it was causing, trundling along without a care in the world.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance it’s just a bad driver?” Weiss asked.

“It could be,” Lieutenant Martinez allowed. “But it might not be.”

Dressinger seemed as oblivious to the approaching vehicle as Weiss had been. As the SUV rolled slowly closer to him, he stopped at a roadside pretzel stand, one hand descending into his pockets to fish out his lien.

“What do we do?” Flash asked.

“Wait for instructions,” Lieutenant Martinez replied.

The SUV approached.

Dressinger reached for his pretzel with one hand, holding out a low-value card with the other.

The rear doors of the SUV flew open, and two men leapt out, big faunus – a rabbit and a dog, judging by their ears – with blocky Valish rifles in their hands. Bystanders on the street began to scream in alarm as they grabbed Dressinger off the street, his lien falling to the pavement as they dragged him back and into the invisible recesses of their vehicle.

The vehicle which had already begun to speed away as the doors slammed shut, the SUV accelerating at a rate which seemed almost unbelievable compared to how slow it had been going a moment ago.

“After them!” Martinez yelled, and out of her window, Weiss could see the lieutenant’s car dismounting the kerb and executing a smooth turn to follow in the same direction as the onrushing SUV.

Mallard mimicked the motion from the other side of the road, turning his car around and setting off in the same direction as their quarry.

Flash leaned forward in the back seat. “I thought that the plan was to stop them before they abducted Dressinger?”

“This works out better,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “With luck, they’ll lead us right to The Purifier.”

“That’s-”

“Cold? Yes, yes it is,” Lieutenant Martinez said. “And do you know why that is? Because my job isn’t to care about people like Leo Dressinger; my job is to catch bad guys and protect the innocent, and that’s what I’m doing right now. Understand?”

Flash didn’t reply, and from the other end of the scroll, it seemed like the lieutenant wasn’t inclined to press him upon the point.

Weiss… Weiss understood. At least she understood the point that Lieutenant Martinez was making. She just wasn’t sure that she agreed with it. Oh, no doubt it was very tempting to say that this life was worth more than that one; it was so tempting in fact that it was very hard to martial cogent arguments against the idea. Why shouldn’t the life of a criminal be worth less than the life of the innocent potential victim of crime? Except… if one could excuse the slippery slope fallacy, where did that end? Declare the criminal worth less than the innocent, declare the spoiled Atlesian socialite worth less than the hard-working miner in Mantle. Declare the Schnee, whose family had caused harm to others and profited, to be worth less than those who had endured the harm.

Declare the faunus worth less than the human, and wasn’t that how this had all started in the end?

Perhaps she was naive; certainly, it wasn’t Weiss’s place to lecture a twenty-year veteran on how to do her job, and she had no intention of voicing any of these concerns aloud, but that didn’t change the fact that she had concerns.

This isn’t Beacon indeed.

“The El-Tee’s methods… aren’t for everyone,” Mallard admitted. “But she’s still the best cop in the whole force; I think so, anyway. There’s no lieutenant I’d rather have working this case.”

I suppose that’s one of the reasons we get these missions, to see… different points of view.

She glanced at Flash. All that really matters right now is stopping The Purifier.

All that really matters is making sure what happened in Crystal City doesn’t happen again.

They kept up the pursuit, or rather, Lieutenant Martinez kept up the pursuit, and they, in the second car, followed behind her. They had a stroke of luck in that the SUV didn’t seem to realise that it was being followed, even as they raced away from the scene of the crime. Perhaps they had expected the sirens of cars in hot pursuit and simply didn’t imagine that the police might have been there already when they arrived. In any case, they were able to follow the SUV without incident – apart from having to run a few lights – all the way to a nice suburban part of Vale, a neighbourhood with picket fences outside of the houses and where the houses were panelled with painted wood. The panelling of the particular house on the drive of which the SUV parked was a pink-lilac colour and was, to be honest, the last kind of place at which Weiss would have expected to see criminal activity.

“Okay, this is it,” Lieutenant Martinez announced. “Everyone, get ready to engage. Mallard, head around the house and come in through the back; I’ll take the front.”

“You got it, El-Tee,” Mallard said.

“Remember, kids, this is police work now, so don’t kill anyone if you can possibly avoid it.”

“Shouldn’t we maybe call for backup or something?” Weiss squawked as Mallard began to accelerate, shoving her back in her seat.

Mallard grinned. “That’s not the lieutenant’s way; she can’t sit still and wait when the targets are right in front of her.”

As the kidnappers began to climb out of the SUV, dragging a reluctant but unharmed-looking Leo Dressinger with them, Lieutenant Martinez car came skidding to a halt with a screech of tires, turning to present the side of the saloon to the house before them, blocking the road in case the SUV should try and reverse out.

Lieutenant Martinez threw open her door, pistol already in hand. “This is the police! Drop your weapons and put your hands where I can see them!”

The rabbit faunus raised his rifle. Lieutenant Martinez’ pistol cracked twice, and he fell back, crying out and clutching his shoulder. The dog faunus managed to start firing, peppering the side of the lieutenant’s car with bullets as she dove over the hood for cover. Weiss could see Cardin and Russel scrambling out the other side of the vehicle as it absorbed the fire.

As Mallard crashed their car through the picket fence, Weiss hastily lowered the window and pointed the tip of Myrtenaster out of it; aiming was practically impossible at this speed, but she was able to fire off blasts of ice dust towards the faunus as they tried to drag Dressinger towards the front door.

Mallard hit the brakes, throwing Weiss forward so hard that the seatbelt locked, but thankfully, she didn’t lose her grip on Myrtenaster. She tried to ignore the pain in her shoulder and across her chest as she unbuckled her seatbelt and half-jumped, half-stumbled out of the car.

The dog faunus tried to turn his gun on her, but the crack of the lieutenant’s pistol sounded again, and he went down sprawling. Another faunus, with goat horns curling past his ears, emerged out onto the front porch, a chunky pistol in one hand which he aimed at Weiss.

Flash leapt past her, Rho Aias – his weapons looked a little incongruous without the armour to go with them – in his hand as he raised the shield to take the bullets. Weiss could hear the rounds rattling against the metal as she focussed her attention on the SUV. She held her rapier before her, striking a pose as she conjured up a line of light blue glyphs behind her, stretching out to one side. Laser-like beams leapt out to strike the car, puncturing the tires and the front of the car body where Weiss thought the engine was.

There would be no escape from that direction.

Cardin charged with a yell, his mace held above his head before he slammed it straight into the face of one of the faunus holding Dressinger. The one flew into the wall of the house, while he knocked the other one across the car bonnet as Russel dragged Dressinger away to safety.

“This way!” Mallard shouted as he kicked down the gate leading to the back of the house. His sword transformed into a slender-barreled carbine as he led Flash and Weiss around the rear of the building. The garden was bare, the lawn reasonable and well-kept but with neither flower beds nor trees nor children’s toys… no sign at all that anything was being done with it.

Why would they be doing anything with it? They’re terrorists, not householders.

Mallard was closest to the back door, with Flash a little way behind and Weiss only coming around the corner when a giant rat faunus – Weiss could see his tail emerging out of the back of his trousers – emerged from out of the back door with a shotgun.

The shotgun boomed, and Mallard was hurled backwards across the garden, his body turning over and over before he landed, unmoving, upon the grass. Flash let out a wordless cry as he started towards the other man, Rho Aias held before him, Caliburn drawn back.

The shotgun boomed again. Flash stiffened, his semblance letting him take the hit without being thrown back.

The faunus racked his shotgun’s slide.

Weiss sped forward, skating upon a row of glyphs which carried her forwards and upwards, skewering their formidable adversary upon the tip of Myrtenaster, hitting him with a blast of ice dust at the same time and then skating by, flying upwards, stopping to stand on a single clear white glyph floating in mid-air, suspended sideways.

Their enemy had staggered backwards, and while he staggered, Flash closed the distance between them, slamming Rho Aias into him and unleashing the shock of the shield’s payload of lightning dust. The big rat faunus cried out, his body twitching and convulsing, before sinking down, unconscious, against the wall of the house.

Weiss leapt down to the ground, looking back towards Mallard, but he had already begun to move, albeit a little slowly. It looked as though his aura hadn’t been broken.

Flash led the way inside, but they found no more faunus in the house, only Lieutenant Martinez and Cardin coming the other way.

The house was not huge, and it didn’t take the six of them long to conduct a thorough search.

They did not find The Purifier, but they did find, in the basement, some evidence that someone had been making bombs.

And judging by the way that the workbench was covered in tools as though someone had been working on something, but no sign of what they had been working on, at least one bomb had been completed and was not in the house.

Flash stared at the empty workbench, his eyes wide, his hands trembling.

“Too late,” he muttered. “Too late.”

“Not yet,” Weiss told him. “We can still-”

She was interrupted by Flash’s scroll ringing. “Yes?” he snapped as he answered it.

It was Twilight Sparkle, and her expression was grave. “Flash… I don’t know, but… I thought you should know… it’s Sunset, something’s happened.”

Comments

[solusjbj]

This crime drama stuff with Weiss's team is such a cool inclusion to the story.

[Scolipede]

a fact which had given an official imprimatur to what the students themselves already knew:

I don’t recognize this word. What exactly does this mean? I’ve never heard this before.

[Scipio Smith]

10809534
A stamp of authority or approval; so, in the context, everyone knows that SAPR and YRBN are the best teams in the freshman year, and Ozpin picking them first for missions is the headmaster confirming that and lending his authority to it. Everyone can point to the fact that even Ozpin thinks they're the best teams.

[Kiue Jin]

I rather like this. Not only does it let Weiss and company have a chance to shine, but it also shows that the higher ups of the White Fang are paying attention to Adam and... honestly are rather worried about him.

[Lancerguy]

So in order to catch thieves, liars, and traitors, one must become a thief, a liar, and a traitor. Yeah, as much as I love Sunnykins I am happy she wasn't picked for this one. I shudder to think what would become of her if her biases were confirmed this hard. Side note, love the Wisteria building as Weiss grew on me in the series, so yea! But yes Weiss, when results matter, the ivory tower must lose some polish.

[Mastermind4892]

Wow, I felt like I was watching an episode of Blacklist or Lucifer! A complete mini-story that still expertly covers development for each of the characters! Excellent use of a very subtle Chekov's Gun with Flash's dad! Not to mention a nice cliffhanger right at the end!

Well done, Scipio! You get a gold star!

[theoldenbrony]

I am thinking Scipio is a fan of "All American Girl".

[Scipio Smith]

10810397
I've never actually read it, although my beta reader has and is both a big fan and a friend of the author, I believe. I know the character from their fic, Spark to Spark, Dust to Dust. That's why in my head the character has a Noo Yawk accent when I believe in the original fic she lives in the South somewhere.

[ChaosDX1]

Lt. Martinez is a badass. A familiar badass. Is she a cameo from the All American Girl fic?
Edit: comments I didn't see before reloading the web page confirm this.

[Lysander Shadowheart]

This police chapter is a marvelous addition to the story. I find it a refreshing point of view and fitting nicely with the rest of the rewritten story.

[RDDash]

That's kind of odd, that police officer should have been able to find someone during the initiation.

[Animatorsnake]

OH FUCK NO NOT SUNSET!

[Sorentis Stars]

10812253

It’s unlikely but there’s always that small chance that they don’t see anyone

[Raul]

Well I’ll say it is very fortunate Team SAPR was not given this mission.

Being someone that works in Criminal Justice myself, oh boy, i will not go down that rant, but what a scarily eventful day they had here.

[J3sterking]

This coming from an American whose never been to Britain, exactly how legally gray were LT's actions supposed to be? Specifically in the interrogation, bc i know that leaving the informant on the streets is supposed to be gray.
Also, while his voice was described as deep and gravelly, the Purifier speaks like Khada Jhinn in my head, though this might be me defaulting back to one of my favorite League characters