Rest in Peace 3

Rest in Peace 3

Slate Silva

There was no way to overstate the importance of Vale in Remnant’s geopolitics. Even calling it the “New York of Remnant” didn’t quite do it justice. As big as the Big Apple was, it saw a fraction of a percent of global trade in my old world. In contrast, it was estimated that thirty-six percent of Remnant’s total trade would travel through the port of Vale at one point or another.

Following the Great War, the four Kingdoms met on Vytal. Though most people remembered the event as the last act by Vale’s warrior king before his abdication, the Vytal Treaty also saw the standardization of the lien, which of course was printed in Vale as the ultimate victor of the war. So really, Vale wasn’t New York. It was Washington, DC, New York, Paris, and Hong Kong rolled into one, and that only barely covered its importance to Remnant.

Despite this, Vale didn’t really feel like the absolute geopolitical behemoth it was. This was partially because there were only four true metropolises worth mentioning–Argus and Menagerie didn’t count and Mantle and Atlas were the same thing–and partially because the city was never a cultural melting pot like the Big Apple. There were plenty of people, but they all spoke the same language and shared the same identity.

I ruminated on this as I left the ship. Even on a metaphysical level, Vale was important in ways that defied easy explanation. This was the home of Ozma. This was where Ruby Rose would come to study. This was where Jaune Arc would chase his dream, drawn to the light of Beacon like a moth to a flame. Vale was fated, perhaps quite literally.

And yet, it had a way of feeling smaller than it really was. There was a humility about the city, an unpretentiousness that was a stark contrast from Atlas’ lofty heights. Not that I’d ever tell snow bunny that; that girl had way too much national pride.

It’d been several years since I last stepped foot here. Back when I left Menagerie, this was where I first made my name as a mercenary assassin. Of course, even a year without activity was too long. There were people who remembered me, but the average gang wasn’t going to bend over backwards just because an owl flew back to his old roost.

I grabbed a bowl of ramen from an outdoor stall before making my way to one of Vale’s several nightlife districts. This one in particular was sandwiched between the port and a nearby college, which made for an interesting blend of customers. Some were blue collar folks looking to burn off steam. Others were students looking for cheap drinks and thrills.

Hei “Junior” Xiong, sleazy businessman that he was, catered to them all. He served up relatively harmless vices to young punks and party kids for money. He raked in “protection fees” from nearby businesses to assert his territory. And, most importantly for me, he sold information to secure his place in Vale's underworld.

Back when I was last in Vale, it had been Hong Ma Xiong, who I supposed was Xiong Senior. He'd been a brutal gang leader and had paid me for a few hits on his rivals. I'd cut him off when he torched one of his own men in the street for betraying him; that kind of overt violence made authorities jumpy, even if it was good for sending a message.

I was right. I didn't know how exactly the old brute kicked the bucket, but his son was in charge now. He kept a much more professional, cleaner operation.

Which was why I needed the old ship captain. He had plenty of young sailors who liked to visit Junior's establishments and was happy to give me an update in exchange for having a free huntsman-level guard detail.

The Club, named that as if it was the platonic archetype of such establishments, was like a permanent flashbang to my enhanced senses. Just approaching it made me want to stab someone. Alas, I had no choice. I grit my teeth and climbed a nearby fire escape before sneaking in through a window. Otherwise, I would have had to wait in line and deal with the inevitable posturing from gangbangers.

I knew from my past life that Junior enjoyed working the bar. With much reluctance, I snuck down and melded into the crowd. It was almost funny how civvies reacted to a huntsman in their midst.

One drunk girl ground her ass into me. In the dark and strobing lights, she must have thought the handle of one of my throwing knives was an erection. Then, she turned around, saw the collapsed sniper rifle slung over my back, and scrambled away with an audible squeak.

Another party girl noticed me from a little ways off and looked like she was going to flirt. She then saw my feathered brows and gave me a look of abject disgust, the likes of which I seldom saw, even from my assassination victims. It was impressive how much raw disdain she managed to pack into a single glance.

A young man, possibly her boyfriend, looked like he wanted to square up to me. I made my eyes glow with aura until they shone a radiant gold like a pair of searchlights and blinked at him, just in case he was too drunk to recognize the package on my back as a collapsed weapon. He wisely thought better of it.

Finally, I made it to the bar. It was situated in such a way that Junior saw me long before I managed to squirm my way through the crowd. He saw Silence and Curtain Call and handed off the serving duties to an employee to wait for me.

“What's your poison?” He asked as I sat across from him. His men kept serving others, but expertly directed them elsewhere. It was almost as if our corner of the bar became its own, separate dimension.

“Anything strong, with caramel and cinnamon,” I replied. It was one of the few downsides of being an owl faunus. My sense of taste was fairly muted and I gravitate towards strong flavors as a result. “Oh, and get me a bowl of spicy peanuts, please."

“Suit yourself,” he said as he went about preparing my order. “You know, I received an interesting call from a sailor buddy of mine, something about a bird on the wing. That you?”

“Really? Bird metaphors? I prefer an owl on the pr-owl,” I shot back with a cheeky smirk. That got a snort of laughter from the gang boss. And Winter said I wasn't funny. Clearly, I wasn't the one who had no sense of humor.

“Cute. So, Slate Silva is back in town. I did some digging. Heard you used to do some jobs for my father.”

“I did. He didn’t pay me enough to keep me around.”

“No, you're not the only one who felt that way. Well? What's this about? I take it you didn't show up to reminisce.”

“Do I look like I have that much free time? I want information, Junior.”

“I thought you might.” He slid a plate of peanuts and a drink across the counter, a thick, brown cocktail served in a whiskey tumbler rather than a martini glass. It looked more like runny diarrhea than a drink. “Dusty crow, caramel instead of molasses.”

“Eh? This wouldn’t happen to have been inspired by a certain, bird-themed huntsman, would it?” I asked as I raised it to my lips. Just the fumes made my nose hairs curl.

“You know the guy? And here I thought you’d been out of touch in Vale.”

“He’s an old bird. I know the man by reputation, which is a nice, healthy distance from what I understand. Bad luck.”

“Heh, you got that right. Cocktail’s pretty famous around these parts, ‘a salve for unlucky souls,’ or something like that. Well? What do you want to know?”

“Rogue cat faunus. Huntsman-trained, but no academy history. Female, seventeen, black hair and ears, gold eyes. She keeps her hair down to her back. Has a distinctive weapon, a kusarigama with a sickle that doubles as a pistol attached to a katana. The sheathe is also a cleaver.”

“Distinctive? Over-complicated, more like,” Junior grunted. “Who’s she to you? Target? Ex?”

“Nothing like that,” I waved him off. I was fairly certain she was still part of the White Fang at this point, but we were nearing the point when she’d decide to go it alone. “More like a student? Little sister? Pain in my ass? If you see her causing trouble, I’ll consider it a favor if you let me know.”

“A favor, eh? I can do that. I’m going to want something from you, though. Let’s call it a downpayment.”

I let out a derisive snort. “A down payment? Just tell me you want to see me work.”

“Heh, you got me. Vale’s not like Mantle. Unlike the military, small teams of huntsmen are better at ferreting out lone actors. Discretion is worth more than you might be used to.”

“You’d be surprised how good some specialists are at that sort of thing,” I replied wryly. “Fine, I’ll play your game. Give me a name, Junior.”

“Mason Vu of the Black Flag Gang.” He pulled out his scroll and sent something my way. “Arms dealer with contacts in Mistral. His goons are well-armed and pushing too hard, drawing too much attention. I need them taken care of, quietly.”

“And the goods?”

“I’ll have my men seize them before they can become an issue.”

“Of course you will.” I nodded. It’d keep the authorities from rallying or some dumb fuck from starting a gang war while strengthening his own gang. “Consider this taken care of. Let’s hope your network’s as good as they say it is.”

“If she’s in Vale, I’ll find her,” he promised. “Discreetly, of course.”

“Then you’ve got a deal.”

X

Hei “Junior” Xiong

The twins and I were in my office above the club. It’d only been three days since my conversation with the Night Owl. They’d just returned after confirming Vu’s death and the collapse of the Black Flag Gang and I was interested to hear what they’d seen.

“Thoughts?” I asked them. They were irreverent at the best of times, but as a pair of trained assassins with unlocked aura, they were my most reliable people. “How’d he do?”

The twins looked at each other in silent conversation. Melanie, the older twin who liked white cocktail dresses, began, “He’s strong. Huntsman-trained for sure, maybe even something a little extra. You said he did jobs for your old man?”

“He did. Murder. Espionage. He didn’t have the name ‘Night Owl’ back then, but he was a scary kid. Not even pops ever dared try to short-change or double-cross him after a job.”

“If he did, he would have kicked the bucket a lot sooner, boss. Slate Silva is… efficient. That’s the best way to put it. Twenty-six goons, two bodyguards, and Vu himself were taken out in under an hour. No calls to police. No explosions. Hell, there was no noise at all.”

“Eerie. Literally silent like the grave,” Miltiades, her twin dressed in red, agreed with a shudder. “They didn’t even know they were being attacked until most of them were asleep.”

“Yup, that’s the other thing. Vu’s dead, and only Vu. Not even the two guards with their aura unlocked got killed. Tidying up after him was a breeze.”

“I asked for discretion. Looks like I’ll get what I pay for,” I nodded in approval. 

“You want to know the real kicker? His sniper rifle. He never drew it. He knew he was being watched and decided to put on a show.”

“No one even knows a hit went down,” Miltia added. “They probably won’t for a day or two. It’s honestly scary how quiet that was.”

I took that in. It wasn’t just what they said, but how they said it. There was something I hadn’t seen from them in a long time: a healthy mix of respect and fear. If a single night was enough to earn their respect, he was a man I wanted on my side.

I poured a bit more into my glass and passed the bottle so the twins could do the same. “Did he say anything to you?”

“Nope,” Miltia shrugged, her short hair bobbing with the motion. “He did his job and left like we didn’t exist. We think his Semblance is illusions, like that ice cream psychopath.”

“Either that, or it’s something to do with muting perception. He was able to go invisible for a short time, and no one could scream when he touched them,” Melanie guessed. Given their background, I was inclined to take their word for it.

“If we have to take him down, could we?” I asked, though I already had an idea.

“No, not a chance. If he felt like killing us, it’d be from across the city, on that fancy rifle of his. Even if we fought him up close, he’s better than we are.”

“He’s a nightmare. If you start that fight, we’re running away,” her sister said bluntly. “You’re going to have to shell out a lot of lien to hire anyone who’s got a shot at taking his head.”

“Why? Did you dig up an old bounty on him or something?”

“Four million lien,” I said, nodding. I took out a folder and slid it over to the girls. I pulled a lot of strings to get this much in just three days. “It came up while I was looking for his student.”

“Wait, it says the bounty was placed on him by the White Fang years ago, Sienna Khan herself,” Melanie read aloud with a low whistle. “That’s not a small amount. Do they even have that much lien?”

“Better question: Would you trust them to pay a human?” Miltia shot back dryly.

“Fair point. So a red herring? What’s it supposed to distract from?”

“Who cares? So, his student’s Fang?”

“Looks like it, Miltia. Either he really pissed off Sienna that she thinks this is worthwhile, or something’s going on between him and this student of his. Still, I wouldn’t go for that bounty.”

“I don’t plan to,” I said. He tangled with the Atlas military regularly for years, specialists included. A man like that could make the average gang enforcer look like a child, aura unlocked or not. “Someone matching his student’s description down to the weapon was spotted with the Fang. That’s good enough for now.”

X

Slate Silva

Being a mercenary was… boring. No one ever talked about what John Wick did when he wasn’t going postal. It wasn’t as if he walked the dog he didn’t have anymore. Truthfully, people like us had a lot of downtime.

We made a lot of money in short bursts, tens of thousands of lien over the course of a day or two. That was more than some people made in months. But after that, there wasn’t a whole lot to do. It wasn’t like we had to clock into a job every day.

After I finished a decapitation strike against the Black Flag gang, I left my two stalkers behind to clean up. I visited the club the next day and Junior said he wanted to verify a few things before giving me a preliminary report. More than likely, he probably wanted to see if he could learn more about my connection to the White Fang.

That was two days ago. All told, five days since I first met up with the man. The Club had become a common hangout of mine, albeit reluctantly. The music was too loud. My fellow clientele were highly suspect. But hey, at least the drinks were good.

“You didn’t tell me your student is in the White Fang,” Junior said accusingly as he placed a warm pretzel in front of me.

I tore off a piece and ate it with grain mustard. His club made surprisingly decent bar food. “Oh? Must have slipped my mind. She’s still there, then?”

“She is. They’re up to something. You wouldn’t happen to know what that is, would you?”

“I’m not with those idiots. If you haven’t noticed, my student hasn’t exactly been making good life choices. I just wanted to make sure she was doing alright.”

“Fine, whatever. Word’s starting to spread, you know. There might be people coming to you with job offers soon.”

“Curated by you, of course.”

“Heh, naturally. Care to listen?”

“I don’t mind the occasional job,” I agreed. I took a sip of the dusty crow. It definitely tasted better than Wull’s backwash back in Mantomb. “But first, the Schnee Dust Company. Mind helping me out with something?”

“You said you have nothing to do with the White Fang,” he said as he began washing a stein. “And, no. The SDC will draw too much heat for me. Underworld means underground, Slate.”

“I don’t plan on hitting the SDC. That said, I do want to know how often they receive their dust freight shipments and the rail route they take.”

“You sound so fucking suspicious right now.”

I gave him my best, most innocent smile. My feathered brows twitched in a way Sienna used to tell me was cute. “Me? Suspicious? Come on, Junior. I don’t have any ill intentions towards the SDC… at the moment…”

He stared into my big, owlish eyes and sighed. “It’s the ones that look the most innocent that end up burning down the house.”

“Really, I’m not going to hurt anyone from the SDC.”

“You know what? Your next job’s free,” he grunted as he took a swig from an expensive-looking whiskey on the shelf. “And you didn’t hear shit from me.”

“Deal. Besides, you’re just the convenient method. We both know what I’m asking for isn’t some big secret.”

“That deniability is the only reason I’m giving you the info.”

“Not going to ask what I’m planning?”

“I don’t want to know.”

“Good man. Looks like I’ll be going camping for a bit, but once I return, you’ll get that free job off me.”

“Whatever. Happy hunting, I guess.”

X

Finding the exact place of the Black trailer was surprisingly easy thanks to a combination of metaknowledge and the intel Junior fed me. It was made even easier by the fact that Remnant just didn’t have many railway lines to consider.

Vale sat on the central continent of Sanus. The city was on its western coast, beneath an archipelago that included the Vytal Island that gave the treaty and festival their names. Though RWBY never mentioned it, there was a lesser city, more of a large town, on the eastern coast of Sanus by the name of Stonerest.

Stonerest provided an eastward port which allowed Vale and Mistral to trade. Due to an old treaty, Atlas and the SDC had a strong presence in Argus on Anima. High quality dust crystals got cut and refined there before being shipped to Mistral, and from Mistral to Stonerest on Sanus. There, the last leg of the journey was completed by freight rail through Sanus and into Vale.

The particulars of macroeconomics and geopolitics didn’t matter overmuch. What did matter was that there was a prominent rail running east to west. Such trains were used for both commercial and public transport purposes, usually with a few rear cars reserved for freight. 

Combined with the fact that the Black trailer took place somewhere in Forever Fall Forest, under a cliff, there was a very narrow stretch of land where Blake and Adam could be. And thanks to Junior, I knew exactly when the trains chartered partially by the SDC would pass, if not the specific train.

Which was why I was camping. Knowing that it was an SDC train was of little help because not many other companies rented freight cars so frequently. Most trains that passed by had at least one or two dedicated to the megacorp.

Had I more time, I would have loved to ask for SDC trains that were transporting security mechs and droids, but that was probably beyond Junior’s ability to find out anyway. So, I found myself a cozy little hole in the ground a mile and a half away and kept an eye on the cliffside each time a train passed by.

It wasn’t so bad. Maybe it was because I was an owl faunus, but I loved bunnies, especially freshly hunted bunnies. They tasted delicious to me, tender, sweet, and meaty with that perfect touch of gaminess that added a bit of complexity. As much shit as I gave Blake over… everything… her love of tuna was something I couldn’t judge her on without being a hypocrite.

After gorging myself on Bugs’ extended family for two weeks, I finally got what I was waiting for. My adorable student and the embodiment of her terrible life choices stood atop a cliff as the train rolled past. Just watching them made me want to cringe.

They were aura-farming, though for who, I had no idea. This was the exact opposite of what I’d taught Blake. No posturing. No wasting time. And certainly no grandstanding atop a cliff with an edgelord in bright red. My hatred of the bull faunus spiked to new heights. Clearly, he’d corrupted the idiot kitten with his edgelord ways.

Well, that ended now. Silence folded out as I rested it atop a small log. It was a sniper rifle with no other functions. Everything about it had been dedicated to delivering a single, overpowered shot at mach-fuck you from miles away. No fancy gimmicks, just a good ol’ ‘Merica hello.

I ran my hand along my rifle as Nightfall, my Semblance, took hold. Kill the glimmer of the light reflected on my scope. Kill the sound of the powder’s detonation. Kill the air resistance against the bullet. All that I touched died as I intended.

I couldn’t hear their conversation, but I could read their lips. Blake, pleading with Adam to leave with her. Adam’s refusal. The first correct choice she’d made in a long time as her sword lashed out, severing the connection between the train cars and leaving Adam stranded in the forest.

As the train carried her into the distance, I took a deep breath. And when she disappeared past the horizon, I slowly exhaled, squeezing the trigger with absolute finality.

“I’m so proud of you, kitten.”

Author’s Note

Someone commissioned this and I finished early so I figured there was no point in holding onto it.

I could have written a whole scene about Slate murdering his way through a compound of mooks but decided against it. Their reactions are more important than the actual deed.

Also, speedrun Adam? Adam’s just standing there, staring out into the distance where his girlfriend left him. A sniper round rips through the back of his head as he’s still trying to figure out what the fuck just happened.

Animal Fact: Skunks have one of the most effective natural defenses in the animal kingdom. After all, very few things can convince a human to fuck off quite like being gassed by one.

That said, the great horned owl is one of the only natural predators of skunks. Because birds have a very limited sense of smell, owls give no fucks and will gank one any chance they get.