Qrow hated Vacuo.
Okay, well, maybe not Vacuo. The place had some friendly people, some good food, and some very good entertainment if you went to the right places.
It was more the fact that the city was surrounded by a desert that he hated.
Too much sand. Too hot in the day, too cold at night. Add the fact that there was little to no foliage if you weren’t around an oasis…
Trying to get around the place as a normal person was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, and doing so in his avian form drew too much attention. Vacuo had wildlife, but crows typically weren’t counted among their number.
But he really shouldn't be spending his time whining to himself about how his shirt was clinging to his back due to the sweat and that he could feel his boots slowly filling with sand. There were more important things at hand than his discomfort, like keeping a lookout for anything suspicious.
And that was… not going very well.
When they’d landed, Glynda had quickly been shepherded off towards the actual physical breach, her semblance ideal for temporarily patching up the hole until a more permanent fix could be put in place. Bart, meanwhile, had secured himself a spot in the investigation of the murder that had kick-started the whole mess. Which was bullshit, because it meant the caffeine addict got to spend his time in a nice, cool building. Qrow had seriously thought about fighting him for that spot, but apparently his semblance was “too risky” to have around the crime scene. Wouldn’t want him tripping and disturbing a crucial piece of evidence or whatever…
Unfortunately, he didn’t really have a counterargument for that. His semblance was bullshit. Though it actually seemed to have been behaving recently? He couldn’t recall the last time he’d tripped over something that he shouldn’t have. Sure, he’d been blown up in that brawl with Torchwick, and he’d had to deal with all the Second Thoughts nonsense, and this breach…
Hmm. Maybe it wasn’t as inactive as he’d thought. Had his semblance just started working on a larger scale?
He didn’t like the implications of that, quickly putting those thoughts to the back of his mind.
Where had he been?
Ah, right, Glynda and Bart taking the good jobs.
Instead of doing something that actually had a chance of being worthwhile, he was the poor soul having to trudge through the carnage and “officially” act as part of the grimm extermination crew while unofficially searching for any sign of the queen or her pawns…
Huh. Now that he thought about it, it’d been a good while since they talked about Salem and her lackeys in code words, hadn’t it? Though with everything that had gone on lately, it’s not like that extra layer of secrecy would be doing them any good…
He tried to keep his thoughts distracted with that while he passed by one of the breach’s victims.
That was… what, the fourteenth one he’d passed by now? All of them civilians, none of them in any condition for an open casket. Though he’d heard that cremation was more the thing here, so maybe it wasn’t all bad news…
Still, though. Fourteen bodies, just on the meandering path that he alone had taken. He hadn’t even gotten very far yet.
He wasn’t sure that he ever wanted to hear the final death total. Things like this… they really messed a guy up, even if being a huntsman meant that he’d seen more than his fair share of grisly scenes.
Taking a turn down a random, sand dusted alleyway, he tried to put it out of his mind. There was nothing he could do for those who had already fallen. That was true whenever he came across a ruined village in the backwoods of Vale, and it was true now that he was in the outer edges of the city of Vacuo.
As much as it pained him to think this way, sometimes you just had to accept that the best course of action was to keep on moving and searching for signs of life. Or grimm. Anything that wasn’t another body, really…
His hand dropped to his flask, eager to start drinking the memories of this day away before it had even ended.
Unfortunately for his parched throat, that was when he heard something.
Not the ever present sand scraping against the ground and walls as the wind blew through the alleyways, but something with a bit more heft.
Something was moving.
It hadn’t been anything from the way he came, so he rushed forward down the alleyway, following as it twisted and turned with the poorly planned building layout. Drawing Harbinger out, he tried to prepare himself mentally. With a scenario like this, he figured the odds were 50/50 in regards to whether this was a grimm that had escaped the notice of the other huntsmen so far or a victim hanging onto life by a thread.
“Huntsman!” He shouted out. “There may still be grimm in the area! If you’re a survivor, you need to let me get you out of here!”
If it was a grimm, it’d be drawn to him and he could kill it. If it was a person, they’d make sure to make themselves obvious so he could help them as quickly as possible.
There was a gasp nearby, and he spotted drops of blood soaking into the sand and stone beneath his feet. Definitely injured then.
“If your injuries are severe, don’t make any sudden moves! I can come to you!”
It’d be a real kick in the ass if they died because they moved something they shouldn’t after making it this far.
But they didn’t call out to him, and as he followed the blood trail around a corner, he saw why.
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The trail led to a body.
“No, no, no, come on!” He threw himself to his knees, inspecting the wounds on the man. Deep gouges across the torso, likely from a Beowolf’s claws. “Stay with me, we can still get you-”
His breath hitched as he touched the man.
The body was already cold.
“Cold? What? But that can’t… no, it must be someone else then. Hey! Where are you?! I’m here to help!” Quickly standing back up, he gave his surroundings a quick glance before darting off, desperately trying to find whoever made that noise before they bled out.
The search for Cinder could wait.
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Emerald almost collapsed in relief as Qrow ran right past her.
She needed to be more careful if he had somehow heard her. Drawing the attention of a huntsman was one thing, but drawing the attention of him? One of Ozpin’s most trusted and capable? Talk about bad luck…
Forcing him to hallucinate the trail of blood and her not being there had been easy enough. But in her panic, she hadn’t thought to account for the fact that the body she led him to would have been dead for too long to explain whatever noise he heard.
Luckily for her, upon discovering that mistake he’d jumped to the wrong conclusion. Hopefully his wild goose chase would keep him distracted enough for her to get out of here and find the others…
Wherever they were.
Quietly slipping back in the direction that Qrow had approached from, she found herself passing body after body. She felt a little bad about that, having played a part in causing so much negativity at once, but what were they meant to do? Just become a thrall to a pair of freaks? There was no way that she could accept that, and trying to do that to Cinder?
In a way, this awful place was lucky that this was the extent of the destruction.
Still though, this whole thing had turned into a mess way too fast. It felt like they had walked straight into a trap… but to be fair to Cinder and herself, how were they meant to know that this stupid gang was being led by some psychos with a mind control semblance?
They’d scoped the underground of the city out a bit, set up a meeting between “equals”, by which she was certain both parties meant “a meeting between a superior and a future pawn, but not one that can be easily disrespected just yet”.
Things had even seemed to be going fine! At least until Mercury had gone under the bastard’s control, and who knew how long she and Cinder had before they would have been gone too…
Just the idea of it made her skin crawl.
Emerald wished they could have drawn out the deaths of those two creeps, made them really suffer for daring even think they could do something like that to her and Cinder. But with the threat of mind control on the line, they’d gotten lucky and were killed rather quickly.
With the mind controller dead, Mercury had snapped back to his usual, awful self.
And so had all of the gang members in their shitty little hideout. Along a whole lot more people, apparently.
Needless to say, it’d been instant chaos. She and Cinder had never been in any real danger, but they had been separated when all of those lunatics bore down on the hideout, seeking revenge on someone who was already dead.
She should make them pay for the inconvenience… after she found Cinder.
Mercury could stay lost for all she cared. It might be preferable, even.
“There you are!”
Emerald tensed, grit her teeth, and stopped in her tracks before forcing herself to relax.
“How are you so good at staying silent with a metal leg?” she asked as she turned around, frowning at the silver haired moron.
Mercury smirked, as cocky as ever. “Because I’m a trained assassin? Really, you’d think a street rat like you would be better at keeping quiet.”
Emerald fought her natural instinct to scowl, because as much as she wanted to argue that point, Qrow had somehow been alerted to her presence. “Whatever. Have you found Cinder yet?”
He rolled his eyes. “Does it look like I’ve found Cinder yet?” He looked to his left and right in an exaggerated manner. “Hmmm. I don’t see her with me…”
“Shut up,” she groaned, already sick of his presence.
“You asked,” he snarked.
As he stepped up beside her and joined in her search for their boss, she forced herself to think happy thoughts.
Maybe Cinder would reward her if she returned with news that Mercury had died in the breach.
“I can practically hear your thoughts of hatred, you know. Shouldn’t you be glad to have someone as handsome as me back in your life? I know you struggle with time away from me.”
Or maybe Cinder would approve of his outright murder.
One could only hope.
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Bart’s stomach churned as he looked at the corpses.
“We can probably get a better idea once actual autopsies are performed, but…” the officer gestured vaguely to the many wounds present, “as things stand, your guess is as good as mine as to which one of these was the cause of death. And that’s to say nothing of the wounds that were more than likely inflicted after they were deceased…”
“I see,” Bart nodded. “Thank you for the information, officer.” Or rather the lack thereof, but he couldn’t really blame the man when they were working with bodies so mutilated.
“Eh, we need all the help we can get right now. And if someone who was apparently behind so much trouble suddenly got taken out… well, I don’t think we’re gonna be able to bring them in without your assistance. That said, don’t touch the bodies and try to avoid disturbing anything. Technically speaking, the council is gonna be on my ass if they know I let you in here.”
“Of course, thank you for your time.”
The officer nodded and stepped off to the side to discuss things with his coworkers.
This was problematic, and the officer was right. Only huntsmen would have the weaponry to inflict this sort of damage, varied as it may be, and it would take other huntsmen to bring them to justice.
Or perhaps it would be considered self defense, and no charges would be pressed? It had been some time since he’d studied Vacuan case law.
Though he wasn’t sure what legal arguments would be put forth in the matter of desecration of the corpses and potentially interference with an investigation.
Alas, he was not a lawyer, and those sorts of details wouldn’t become reality until long after he was gone.
Tamping down his natural disgust reflexes, Bart leaned in, trying to glean what information he could.
Blunt force trauma, slash wounds, stab wounds… apparently the victims they had standing guard had been quick to vent their anger once they’d been released from the mind control. He knew that one man had carried a mace, and another had held some sort of mechashift sword at their side… Many of the injuries could be explained away in such a manner. Even the severe burns could be attributed to simple fire dust. He just needed to spot one that didn’t quite fit. One that would be the clue to who did this.
But it was going to take time.
Hopefully things were going better for the others.