Upper Class District, City of Vale

Morning

Alpha came out of a large house.

"Haaah nothing could beat a good night's sleep, time for roll call." Alpha said.

"Levitate!"

Alpha flew for a while until he reached a large mansion which was situated at the edge of the district next to the sea. When he arrived he rang the doorbell and waited before the gate.

After a while a blue screen popped up next to one of the gate's pillars. It had the word audio on it.

"It's me, Alpha, open the gate." He ordered.

"Password." A female voice replied.

"Are you seriously going to make me do that? Just let me in."

"Nope password." She demanded.

"Uhhhhh. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z 181281" Alpha answered.

"Ahahahahaha it gets me every time. Why the hell did you make such a stupid password hahahaha."

"Come on I couldn't think of something better at the time. Just let me in Jamie." Alpha ordered.

"Aye aye leader!"

The blue screen disappeared and the gate opened. Alpha entered a big garden with a water fountain in the middle of it. Upon closer inspection it looked more like an office with 3 stories. The building was grey of colour.

Alpha went inside and was waiting in the hall of the 1st floor when a person came down the stairs.

It was a woman with pale skin and forest green short hair and lime green, wearing a white hair pin. She was still wearing white pyjamas.

"Hey leader!" Jamie said with a cheer.

"Why are you still wearing pyjamas?" Alpha asked.

"Kinda woke up a bit late, but don't worry about it. Follow me up to the 3rd floor to let the roll call begin." Jamie said.

Alpha and Jamie went upstairs to the 3rd floor. There was a huge desk in the middle of the room which had 27 seats, but most of them were empty, Beta was present and was sitting in one of the seats. Jamie walked in front of a board with lots of names on it while Alpha sat across Beta.

"Okay first up we are going to do the roll call and then we are going over some improvements, the full result of our investigation and infiltration with a surprise at the end." Jamie explained.

"Alpha, any loss on your part?" Jamie asked.

"No, I worked alone this time." Alpha responded.

"Beta, what about your teammates Carlie, Dally and Edina?" Jamie questioned.

"They... died by a large horde of Grimm caused by 3 little brats." Beta explained.

"Wait you mean 2 boys and a girl?" Alpha asked for clarification.

"Yes they ran into the cave as they lured a horde of Grimm towards us. I am the only survivor of that." Beta answered.

"Well, I got bad news." Alpha said.

Beta looked at him with a questioning face.

"One of them achieved the power of the White Grimm." Alpha announced.

"What?! They survived it?!" Beta asked.

"All our years searching for nothing!" A woman next to Beta shouted.

"Yeah it seems so. It fought the boy who got it and he used its power. I chose to flee because it was not the right time to use my trump card." Alpha explained.

"So that means that they must reside in the City as well. I can't let any of those scum get away. Everyone who was associated with Merlot Industries will go down!" Beta said with hatred in his eyes.

"Listen Beta, your revenge isn't our main objective! The last of Merlot Industries was already taken down by a team of huntresses. Merlot got stopped, but it was never enough for you. I would have never attacked the research camp and now because of that, the boy became a Grimmasker." Alpha argued.

"Hmpf!" Beta made a noise.

"We will get those brats soon, but first we need to focus on our main objective."

"And how long will that take! I know Dr. Merlot must still be alive somewhere. I can't let those kids roam around! I am going to deal with them myself." Beta replied and stood up from his chair.

"If you leave right now you're out of the team!" Alpha threatened.

"Then I'll leave simple. I will avenge the people that were dear to me! And that is that!"

With that said Beta left the room, going downstairs and leaving the office like a mansion.

"Welp into the general report it is it. First up I have installed an Anti Grimm Sentry Gun with 180 degrees rotation capabilities, which is why this neighbourhood is empty of Grimm and built my own very small relay tower, but the signal only reaches till the end of the neighbourhood so yeah. I guess studying Technology in Atlas was very useful and, since my parents died. I sold the dock company to the Schnee's, I can do whatever I want." Jamie reported.

"Well that will come in handy." A man replied, also sitting at the table.

"Now onto roll call." Jamie continued.

"Ford, any loss at your side?"

"Yes we lost Henry and Ida last night they got caught by Grimm." Ford said with a dry face.

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"Darn it!"

"Gestalt."

"Yeah, you know my teammates are dead." The woman replied who was sitting next Beta.

She had long light blue hair which was in a pony tale and blue blue eyes. Wearing the same gray outfit as the rest of the team.

Jamie nodded and continued.

Okay now, Kidra is dead, Lina is dead, Mirana is dead. Oh what about that person who started with an N? He listens to our orders but never attends meetings."

"No Idea." Ford answered.

Jamie resumed

"Hmmm. Olif is dead, Petra is dead, Qris is dead. Rio is dead, Sandra is dead. Umm Terra."

'Yes." another man replied.

He had pale skin, white hair, brown eyes and a not shaven beard wearing a grey outfit.

"You know what let us keep this short, you are still alive in your group" Jamie asked.

"It's me in my sub team and Ziara in the other." Terra answered.

Just as he said this another woman came into the room.

She had tanned skin, messy long dark brown hair with dark brown eyes wearing the same outfit as the rest.

"Ziara, I forgot to wake you up! Sorries haha" Jamie apologised.

"No worries I also died today making my way up here, so a good nap was needed." Ziara said as sat down.

"Ah okay.. Now it seems that with excluding Beta, team ALPHABET is only down to 6 members, but do not worry our objective can still be reached!" Jamie tried to talk some hope.

"Just tell us about the infiltration." Alpha said.

"Okay, sure. Mister N who infiltrated the White Fang had some interesting news to tell me, it seems like 3 people attacked the WF a while back and seem to have fire powers."

"Fire powers can a semblance do that?." Ziara asked.

"Well, I haven't seen anything like it anyway. The White Fang agreed to work with them under pressure."

"We know who she is, but what about those fire powers?" Alpha asked.

"According to mister N those powers are actually magical and are needed in order to open a certain vault that lays under Beacon."

"Oh?" Terra reacted.

"The ones who hold that power called themselves maidens, only they can open the vault. We know from Alpha's investigation that Beacon Academy holds a relic, all we know is that it's called the relic of choice."

"And I am pretty sure that it is not its actual name." Alpha added.

"So, I went ahead and thought of something."

Jamie went down stairs and came up with an item to display.

It was a necklace with a small orange orb attached to it.

"What is that?" Gestalt asked.

"If in theory the Maiden has fire powers that are magical, doesn't it mean that Grimm that uses fire is also magic? I mean Grimm don't have any aura right? So I send some hired mercenaries to Argus to take the empty dust gem I created and get it to absorb fire from a manticore. It worked, how? No idea but that is not important. With this amulet there is a chance we can open the vault." Jamie answered.

"But what if the door is already open?" Ford questioned.

"Then we can always figure out how to draw out the power of the fire amulet mimicking a maiden." Jamie answered.

"If your hypothesis turns out to be true." Gestalt added.

"Yeah, yeah. Alpha?" Jamie asked.

"What is it?" He asked back.

"Tell us exactly how you got the information about that woman. We have been working together for months now and I am kinda interested in it." Jamie eagerly waited.

"Okay, sure we are close to our objective anyway. It all started when I was a 1st in Beacon, since books where I came from were pretty scarce. I pretty much wasted most of my free time in the Library. I first found an old article about a witch residing within a forest. It was meant to be a rumour at that time, so I spent more time looking at the old history section together with a friend of mine and found an old journal. It was clearly not taken care of because it was very dusty. We opened it and read about a man and woman saving the person's village from a Grimm. The weird thing was that they arrived before them floating down and the villagers started to bow down before them, so that might mean that they could use some kind of magic and they made a kingdom, but more than that wasn't known. The name of the woman who could fly was Salem."

"Ah I see you think the witch from the article and Salem are the same." Jamie said.

"Yes we all know about that weird black dragon-like continent that probably is the place where the Grimm are coming from in the first place." Alpha explained.

"So what are you trying to say?" Zaria questioned.

"I think that Salem woman has something to do with the Grimm nowadays, we all know Grimm gained increased intelligence over the decade, but sometimes the attack of the Grimm seems to be coordinated too perfectly, almost as if a person was behind it." Alpha answered.

"But that was probably all a long time ago. How the hell would she still be alive?" Gestalt asked.

"I mean she was rumoured to be a witch, just maybe it used some kind of magic to make herself immortal." Ford answered.

"I guess we just have to confirm all of this when we infiltrate Beacon Academy." Jamie said.

"I wish that I could have shown the documents, but back then I put them back in the same place, because it seemed people had forgotten about but still were not meant to be seen." Alpha clarified.

"That was one of my questions now, I want to know you came to discover Grimmaskers" Jamie asked.

Alpha started to tell another story

"My friend and I were shocked by those articles and went to find more about Salem, but without any luck, so we gave up on it. Some time after when I was walking around the library hoping to find more I came across a new category called unverified. I asked the Librarian what that meant and she told me that it was for the articles that had no evidence/referrals. Essentially it was a section to make fun of the weird ideas of certain groups of scientists. I left and came back with my friend and scanned through it, until we found an interesting article writing about a Grimm attack happening at a research camp in Forever Fall forest. The surviving scientist described the Grimm as a draconic creature and instead of the black colour scheme it was completely white, mixed with grey and red. The scientist called them a White Grimms. We were amazed by this article and started our years-long search for it." Alpha explained.

"This is getting kinda long." Ziara Commented.

"Shut up Ziara! let me hear the rest!" Jamie shouted.

Alpha continued.

"But during our 2nd year a difference between our thinking made us split up. My friend continued the search on his own where one day, during a rainy night I got to see him again. But this time with a white mask on the side of his waste. He explained to me that Grimm has the ability to give him powers beyond huntsmen capabilities and wanted to use it to overthrow Beacon Academy. The difference between us is that I suggested letting people do research on it, while he wanted to stay with it himself because the only thing he was interested in was power, while I wanted to stop Salem for a more peaceful world. He put on the mask and so the Grimmasker was born. We fought for a while, but with my rare semblance I was able to hold him back where after 5 minutes he escaped from my vision. I never saw him again till this day." Alpha ended off his story.

"That was pretty tragic." Gestalt commented.

"Even though the Salem theory seems to run on loose threads. We will still support you all the way." Terra said.

"Thanks." Alpha replied.

"Now, since yesterday was a hectic day, tomorrow we will discuss our academy break in plan, but for now stay at one of the neighbourhood's houses. I am sure they still have food because they had no time to pack up hahaha. You can use the signal to talk to each other or watch something, but I cannot receive any new data unfortunately." Jamie said ending the meeting.

The rest nodded.

"Alpha, where was the map of Beacon again?" Jamie asked him.

"I put it in the storage of the 2nd floor." He replied.

"Okay thanks and see ya tomorrow." Jamie waved.

"Bye."

With that said Alpha left along with the rest of the members while Jamie was still thinking for while.

"Hmmmm If a maiden can open a door to a vault in Beacon Academy does it mean that every Academy has a maiden and probably too a Relic? I need to get into that when we finish our operation. Hehe is interesting indeed."

Commercial District, City of Vale

Within the vacant floor above a supermarket

Braud woke up and screamed.

"GOOD MORNING!"

Everyone woke up.

"Was that really necessary!" Felicia said with an angry tone.

"Well you can say he is a good alarm clock." Reka yawned.

"Indeed." Kate added as she stood up.

"Well Braud, are ready?" Monty said.

"Oh yeah let us make a plan for today." He said.

Everyone came closer and sat down again as they went over the goals for today.

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We got introduced to a few members of team ALPHABET while the rest didn't seem to make it because of unfortunate events!

Beta left the team to deal with those kids on his own in the name of avenging the people that were dear to him and seems that Alpha got more to him regarding his findings on Salem and the White Grimm!

I hope you enjoyed this 1st chapter of Vol.2 and until next time!