"Explain to me what the fuck is happening!" The brawny man towered over his desk and slammed a palm against the polished wood surface. It was like a shot went off in the office, and he stood breathing heavily.

The other man in the room kept a cool expression and sat down. He kept silent until his older brother growled and took his seat.

"I don't know," he finally said. It was the truth. He knew plenty about the strange attacks on their family the past few days, but he had no answers for what Diomed really meant.

Diomed Thrace's explosive fury burst out again. "You don't know?! How the hell is that possible? There's no way shit like this happens without you knowing something. It's your goddamn job!"

Iscon shook his head. "Yeah, but I honestly don't know that much. I have details, of course, where we were hit and who in the family should have been keeping our merchandise safe, but nothing helpful."

Diomed's fist tightened and he turned red. Usually, that would mean some idiot in the Thrace family had fucked up and was in for a world of hurt.

There wasn't even a hint of fear on Iscon's face as he waited. Diomed wouldn't get rid of him unless he made a major screw-up, and he hadn't even made a minor one.

Diomed turned away and faced the window. Iscon had always thought it was a great view. This house had been built into the side of the cliffs and was on one of the middle levels of Mistral. High enough to be comfortable and low enough to be close to business. They could see the markets and people in the streets, even the historical government buildings in the distance. Lots of fresh greenery and blue waterfalls added color to the scene.

Diomed had once said that the view always helped calm him down, and it seemed to be working now. His breathing settled and his face returned to its normal bronze tone. It was usually best to let him seethe, his anger could be fierce, but he knew how to rein it in.

"Tell me what you've figured out," Diomed said, turning to his brother.

Iscon nodded. "Two weeks ago, someone started attacking our stashes of drugs and weapons. At first, it was minor stuff. A few packs here or some guns there. Whoever found them burned everything inside rather than steal them, which was strange, but it wasn't worth it to look into them until a few days ago. When Naia's boys went to pick up some cash from the stash closest to here but found a broken safe full of ashes instead."

"Broken how? Explosives?"

"No, it didn't have any burn marks. It was dented, by a hammer or something."

"A hammer?" Diomed's eyes widened.

"Something blunt and heavy at least," Iscon said. He felt the same way as Diomed. That safe had been heavy-duty, if you wanted to use a hammer to break into it, you'd need a big one and a lot of muscle. Huntsman-level muscle.

"There was over two hundred thousand lien in there." Diomed grit his teeth. "We only have family nearby, did someone get sloppy and miss something?"

"One of the younger guys admitted that he'd been playing some dumb game on his scroll, but there were three other family members there that kept watch fine and didn't see anything. Besides, you can't miss someone beating on a safe with a hammer."

"Then how come they didn't go in when they heard something?"

"They didn't realize what they were hearing. A couple of them said they heard a loud bang, but it sounded like it came from the opposite direction from the safe and far away. Thought it was a gunshot in the city."

"So, the asshole messing with us can redirect sound?"

"Dunno, but they gotta have aura to do something like this, and you know how people with aura can get crazy abilities."

Diomed nodded, they had some muscle in the family with aura. "Then we'll remember this for later. How he's doing it is less important than who he is, nothing on that either?"

"Nothing, but you know that we're not the only ones having stuff like this done to us, right?"

"I keep up to date. I'd have to live under a rock not to know this is happening to other families too. Can't we narrow it down to one of them?"

Iscon sighed. "I'm trying to, but I don't think it'll work. From what I hear, it's happening to all of them."

"All of them?"

"Yeah, all of them. Every night, several families or groups lose a stash or two and by now everyone's lost something. Even the nobodies on the lower levels are getting hit."

"Shit, what about those flower fucks or the rest of them?" Diomed asked. He meant the Eastern groups.

"Their stashes go up in flames just like the rest," Iscon replied.

"Couldn't they be doing it to themselves so nobody suspects them? Or faking it?"

"I haven't ruled that out either, but if it's them, our guys in those groups don't know it. Plus, their higher-ups seem really pissed."

Diomed scowled. "Damn."

"I have a few ideas, though. Whoever's doing this has to have lots of people. So many hits have been happening each night all over the city that even our family wouldn't have enough to do the same thing. They have to be good too for sneaking in to all those places."

That was why Iscon doubted it was another family or one of the Eastern groups. The Thraces had a few dozen members they could use for hits like this, and most other families were about the same size. Alliances between them could happen though, and it would have taken either that or the bigger Easterners for the manpower to pull off so many simultaneous hits each night.

Sure, they had the numbers, but not the discipline. Iscon had asked around, but as far as he knew, no one had even seen a hair of this new group. Not during the attacks, not in the streets, nowhere. They hid so well that it was like they didn't even exist.

"Government, then?" Diomed mentioned the only candidate Iscon had thought was left.

"I made a few calls, but it doesn't look like it," Iscon said. "There's something weird though, police are getting messed with too. A few have been caught accepting bribes or selling stuff from their stations, with notes and pictures giving plenty of information. The government's reminding Atreus to make them look clean, so his hands are gonna be tied."

"The one time that fucker could be useful, and he can't do shit for us." Diomed's fist clenched and unclenched a few times. "So, someone wants the police to clean up their act and screw our shit up, but who the hell can do both at the same time?

"That's the big question for us, the other families, and the police. I want to try answering it. It'll be a hassle, but definitely worth it if we protect our stashes. I want to put cameras around them, some in obvious places, others hidden. Lower the guards around a few of them too as bait."

Diomed nodded. "We should still have a few small stashes we can spare, right? Put cameras on all of them, but only take away the guards at one each from the northwest and east. Or anywhere that's roughly in opposite parts of the city if those have been shredded."

"We still have a few in those areas. Assuming we set up fast enough, we should be able to at least see these guys in two days. From what I hear, that's more than anyone else has."

"Good, make sure to check the family for moles too," Diomed ordered. "I've been hearing about these assholes doing things to other families that they'd need inside people for."

"I'll get on that soon."

\\\\\

"Excuse me." Clark knocked on the wooden door. He knew that there was someone inside, but she wasn't in a rush to answer the door.

"Hellooo," he raised his voice a bit. Unless the person living here was hard of hearing, she didn't really have an excuse to just ignore him. He waited a few more seconds.

This was annoying, but at least the scenery was easy on the eyes. This house looked like a fairly new one and had few neighbors. It had been built in the outskirts of the city, near where the valley ended, and stood on top of a small, grassy hill that overlooked a brook running down below.

"Please, I'm here to talk about Ned Ophel," Clark said.

That got a reaction. The woman's breath cut short in surprise and her heartrate elevated. She got up from a chair and walked toward the door. Clark had been able to tell that it was a woman with his hearing, but guessing their age was harder. Still, he had a good idea of who would come to the door.

A woman in her forties opened the door. Once she met his eyes, she crossed her arms and frowned at him. "He's dead, you won't find him here."

"Yes, I've heard." Clark had read the article about the man's death. "I'm sorry to remind you of that, but I'm here to ask about him. Are you Jade Ophel, his wife?"

"I was."

Clark winced and cleared his throat. He should have specified former wife. "Well, before Mr. Ophel died, he wrote some articles on the Council's aides."

Her eyes narrowed, her face twisting into suspicion. Muscles all over her body tensed as well, and her grip on the doorknob tightened.

He continued talking without pause, as if he hadn't noticed anything. "Did he leave any notes behind that I could look at?"

"No, nothing." Then she shut the door in his face.

Clark stood there for a moment. She'd lied, so there were notes. It would be easy for him to use X-ray vision to look for any information that Ophel had left on paper.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

He sighed. He could do it, but he wasn't going to look inside her house without permission. This was urgent for him, but it wasn't like anyone was in immediate danger.

Clark rapped on the door again.

And again. And again. She wasn't coming down, but her heartrate was going up. So he was irritating her, although that alone wasn't working to change her mind.

"Ma'am, I'm willing to do this all day if that's what it takes to get some answers," he called out.

Mrs. Ophel stomped back towards the door and flung it open. Her eyes burned with rage, but she spoke in an icy, almost eerily calm, voice. "Leave. I told you that there's nothing."

"I don't believe that. I don't want to do upset you, but what he knew could help expose some terrible acts committed by the Council. It could really change things."

"You're a damn idiot if you think that. Go away."

"No." Clark took a step forward. He wasn't in her house, but he'd gotten close. "Ma'am you must know that your husband's death wasn't an accident. Don't you want justice for him? What about the other people who-"

"I don't give a shit about that!" she strode up to him and looked up to meet his eyes. "Ned jumped headfirst into that pack of wolves like a fool, and I'm not going to follow him. Go away already!"

"If you're scared of the government silencing you, I can protect you. Please, Ned's work could help a lot of people."

His genuine urgent plea just made things worse. Mrs. Ophel glared at him. "Is this some kind of trick, or do you actually believe what you're saying?"

"I believe it."

She shook her head and gave him a disgusted look. "Leave or I'll call the police. Those bastards will do just about anything for money and I still have enough to have them give you hell."

His eyes widened and made a calming gesture. "Ma'am, please. That's an overreaction, I'm just trying to-

She closed the door. Her rapid pace signaled her heading towards her phone.

Clark clenched his fist, but instead of insisting that she talk to him again, he walked out of view and flashed away.

\\\\\

He flicked upwards on his scroll. This one was larger than the one he'd used before. It had a screen the size of a textbook cover and the top and bottom ends could be pushed together to make it more compact. He'd bought it to deal with certain limitations the smaller scroll had. Like how much text could fit on the screen. Even when using the smallest setting for the text size, some very slight microscopic vision making it easy to read, it couldn't compete with the larger computer screens at the library. If he didn't slow himself down, scrolling at super-speed could be hit or miss.

He would have been fine going to the library more often, but it had set hours and he had to avoid other people noticing him going through articles at an inhumanly quick pace. So he'd gotten this new scroll, which let him let him read much faster. He flicked upwards every twenty milliseconds, the limit that scrolls seemed to have for recognizing separate taps, and read four paragraphs when the smaller scroll would have only displayed one or two.

At the moment, he was using his new scroll to continue tracking down Ned Ophel's leads. Talking to Mrs. Ophel had been disappointing. Clark wasn't ready to give up, but he'd have to give it some more time before approaching her again.

There wasn't really that much more he could do. The leads Clark could pick up from Mr. Ophel's articles didn't seem like they'd be very helpful. The man had spent years speaking with various witnesses and convincing Council aides to give him some hints. He'd died four years ago, before being able to gather all his evidence and present it to the public, but Clark was sure his work would be the key to urging the people to take a stand against their officials' injustice.

Clark had tried finding some of the people Ophel had spoken with. Many had been reticent, but a few had died around the same time as Ophel himself. The ones Clark had wanted to speak to the most. One of the senior aides for the Council, who had said he could offer proof of certain rumors if he had protection. A chauffeur whose words had actually made their way into an article, detailing a certain official who would visit certain places that allegedly provided sexual services. The 'allegedly' was focused on in later stories about this official. Their deaths weren't proof, but they did paint a very clear picture.

It wasn't like Ophel had been the only one to connect these dots or add more, but most hadn't gone into as much depth. Others had either stopped suddenly or met untimely ends like Ophel. Clark could probably still try to speak with a few of them though, many had moved out of the capital, but this one was still in the ci-

"Yeah, Ruby?" Clark's words gave her pause, her hand hovering over the side of his open door. She blinked in surprise.

"Super-hearing," he explained. Reading articles on his scroll didn't require constant super-speed perception like running did, so he could still use it to monitor his surroundings.

"Oh. Right." She fidgeted. "Could you come down to the main room? Me, Jaune, and Pyrrha want to talk to you about something."

"Sure." He closed his scroll and followed her down. He did a quick check of the dorm, hearing only, no X-ray vision. At this time of night, Qrow was still out, and everyone else was in their rooms.

Jaune and Pyrrha stood in the center of the room. Like Ruby, they'd worn casual clothing, and she joined the other two in the room.

"Could you sit down, Clark?"

"Okaaay." He lowered down onto the couch. They didn't look too nervous, so they probably weren't about to drop some huge bomb on him. "What's this about?"

"We want to help you more with crimefighting," Jaune said.

Clark tilted his head. That was it? He'd expected something bigger if the three of them had come together to ask him. "Sure, but I don't want you guys to drown in research, and there's a limit to the stuff we can find online. I guess you guys could do more video editing of police misconduct, since the parts where I use super-speed need to be taken out."

"That's not what we mean," Pyrrha said. "We'll take those tasks if necessary of course, but we also want a more active role."

"Uh-huh, and what you mean by 'more active'?" Clark could make a good guess, but hopefully they'd prove him wrong.

"We want to do the same stuff you're doing in the city," Jaune said, dashing away Clark's hopes. "You know, destroying illegal stashes of guns and drugs. Making sure the police don't abuse their power. Maybe fight if we have to."

"No. Everything that you've mentioned besides fighting requires super-speed, and I don't plan to fight." Clark faced Ruby. "You might be fast enough, but you don't have the stamina to go all over the city."

"Yeah, but we can still help without being fast like you!" Ruby said, eager to prove her point. "Even you can't be everywhere or know everything that happens in the city. I can use my sniper to scare bad guys the same way you do by using your pellets. You can sneak into stashes at super-speed, but people will hear if you rip open their safes. But with Pyrrha, as long as you tell her where they are, she can reach inside them and destroy what's inside without anyone noticing until way later."

'Someone's certainly prepared to present her case.' Clark considered Ruby's suggestions. He could carry safes away at super-speed and break into them at a distant location so guards wouldn't notice, but that wasn't always practical. Safes could sometimes be larger than the doorways of their rooms. Pyrrha could be discreet at destroying guns, which he couldn't always manage, and Ruby could cover ground to give him more time to focus on tasks that required super-speed. Detecting criminals with super-hearing required him to slow down, and it would be nice if he could go around at full speed and leave other tasks to someone else.

Jaune interrupted his thoughts. "At least let them help. Just give me the other stuff so you guys don't waste your time."

"Jaune, don't say that." Pyrrha placed a hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes. "All of us want more active roles, and you're a valuable fighter. I doubt Clark plans to avoid face-to-face conflict forever."

"I'd like to," Clark pointed out.

Pyrrha turned to him, clearly displeased that he was invalidating her support for her partner.

"Hey, don't discount the importance of doing research or working on videos to expose corrupt police. There are people, normal people, who did that and found information that would make a lot of what I do pointless." Clark said.

"Thanks for saying that, but if I can at least help more, I don't mind if it's boring stuff," Jaune said.

"That wasn't just to comfort you, I'm serious. If you don't mind, I'll give you more of those tasks." Clark leaned forward on the couch and looked to Ruby and Pyrrha. "But I still don't agree with letting you two go out with me."

Ruby frowned. "Why not?"

"Because the people I'm going after are criminals, and they won't hesitate to kill you."

"Clark, do you really think they'd pose any real danger to us?" Pyrrha asked. Her expression serious.

He raised an eyebrow. The two of them had aura and Semblances, but they weren't the only ones. "Most of them, probably not, but what if you run into people like Torchwick or Neo? Ruby, your entire team fought them a while back, how'd that go?"

"U-um, we did okay." She squirmed under his gaze.

Not exactly the truth. He'd been there that night, but he hadn't paid attention to their fight since he'd been occupied with the overturned cars. The four of them had seemed to be okay at the end of the fight, but so had the two criminals. The pair hadn't found getting away to be difficult either.

"We promise that we'll be careful," Pyrrha said. "We won't get into fights unless you think we should, and we're suggesting we use our abilities from a distance. They won't find us unless you want them to."

Ruby nodded. "Yeah, we promise."

Clark examined them, eager and determined. "Why do you want to do this?"

"Huh?" Ruby seemed taken aback by the question. "Same reason you do, because people are doing awful things and we want to stop them."

"Okay. Jaune?" Clark turned toward the blond.

"It's the same for me. What you told us about, the crime here and the police, it's bad. Things need to change, and I don't think I could help change that unless I worked with you."

"Not because you think it'd be cool or fun to work with the Dart?"

Ruby gave him a confused look. "Well, it is cool to do this with you, and it sounds like it could be fun, but those aren't the only reasons we want to."

"Yeah, I want to do the right thing," Jaune said.

They were telling the truth.

Finally, Clark's eyes focused on Pyrrha.

"I left Mistral to study at Beacon, but this Kingdom is still my home, where my family lives. Its problems extend beyond the capital, but I think that starting with this city is the key to reforming the Kingdom. I also believe that you're the best chance for igniting that change."

Igniting change, huh? That was a fitting description. Clark had a lot of powers, but he was just one person. He had limitations. Ruby and Jaune tended to look up to him and forget that, but Pyrrha seemed to understand. Here, the most he could be was a spark that might catch and convince other people to stand up against the injustice in their government.

"Alright, I'll let you guys take more active roles," he said.

"Really?!" Ruby jumped up and down while Pyrrha and Jaune smiled.

"Yeah, but only if you follow some conditions," Clark said. "First, Ruby, your sniper idea's a good one, but your weapon's too distinct and your hand-to-hand skills . . . well, the less said about them, the better." He'd sparred with and disarmed her enough times to know that she lacked her sister's skills by a wide margin.

Ruby pouted. "You don't have to say it like that."

"Sorry, but it's the truth. You need to carry around something else for close range in case you're discovered and can't run away. Like a pistol or something, can you use one?"

She nodded.

"Good. Pyrrha, your weapon's also too recognizable. I'd like to avoid fighting, but I might change my mind, and things could go wrong. So if that happens, you should use a normal sword or spear, whatever you're comfortable with. Is that okay?"

"Yes, after all, I wouldn't want my family or I to be targets."

"Jaune, your sword's not as unique as theirs, but you should probably get a new one too. And I'd prefer that you not bring your sheathe-shield out, or at least, keep it one or the other."

"W-wait, me?" Jaune pointed to himself with wide eyes.

Clark smiled. "I did say I might change my mind."

"R-right, if you need me to fight, I promise I won't let you down."

"Thanks." Clark's expression turned serious. "Shoot, I should have realized. Ruby, you should ask Qrow's permission first. If he says no, you're out."

"What?!"

"This is dangerous, and I'm not going behind his back to let you fight criminals in Mistral." He sighed. "I'd ask your dad's permission too, and Jaune and Pyrrha's families, but they don't know about me being an alien."

They could handle themselves, but it'd be terrible if some thug with aura managed to get the better of them. Jaune especially was at risk, since he was the least experienced fighter here besides Clark himself. He couldn't have them ask their families.

Maybe his final decision should be no.

"H-hey, you don't need to worry about me," Jaune said. "When I called my family, they didn't like it, but they accepted that I could die learning to be a huntsman. This isn't that different."

"My family is already aware of the risks of being a huntress as well," Pyrrha added.

Ruby latched on their reasoning. "Yeah, same for me! Uncle Qrow and my dad already know it's dangerous. What's the point of asking? They'll just say yes."

"Then it shouldn't matter asking your uncle about this specifically."

"But-but-

She was at a loss for words, so Clark filled in the absence. "I think Qrow will give permission too, but I don't want him upset that we didn't tell him. Especially if you get hurt."

After a few seconds, Ruby gave up and nodded. "Okay, I'll ask."

"Good, I'll tell you guys when we'll go into the city. I don't want this interfering with your classes, so it'll probably wait until the weekend. Alright?"

They agreed, and left with cheerful expressions, glad that they'd convinced him. Meanwhile, Clark stayed in the main room a while longer, considering a few more aspects of including them in his work in the city. It wasn't just their weapons that were too unique, the girls would need to wear different sets of clothing when they went out.

And obviously, they were all going to need masks.