[OP: "Amsterdam"-- Imagine Dragons.]
Royal didn't particularly know what to make of Shine's slip, but a lot of things made sense.
Why no one ever talked about where Shine and Wally were from. Why they said things that didn't sound quite right, like they weren't used to Remnant's ways.
Why something about them just looked different, though you couldn't put your finger on what.
He caught some of their conversation with Cinder, but pretended he hadn't heard.
He had heard of other worlds.... In fact he'd read The Girl Who Fell Through The World.
But it was...well, it was so...miraculously out there...how could such things be?
He had to turn his attention more to Mercury, though. After some walking they had come out to open road. Then they saw a house.
It wasn't that big, though bigger than two people might have needed.
It was partially burnt, but the fire appeared to have gone out before it consumed all of the house.
Mercury was slowing more the closer they got.
Emerald walked almost as slow, staring at it.
No Grimm...at least in sight.
"This is it?" Hazel asked, though it wasn't much of a question.
"Yeah." Wally recognized it from pictures. "It really doesn't look so scary this way."
Shine shook her head silently.
They kept walking till the house loomed closer, and suddenly they were just at the end of the walk up to the door, without really knowing how they'd gotten there.
Cinder tensed. She hadn't seen more of this house before this point, but she could well imagine.
And she could just...sense the darkness from here.
The husk of Marcus Black was nowhere to be seen. Probably it had been eaten by Grimm or other creatures a long time ago.
Just as well. Shine thought she'd have thrown up if it was there.
"Is this okay?" Emerald said. "Or do we...go in?"
"Up to you," Shine said.
"Can I check into it?" Wally was a little curious.
Mercury didn't say no. He was looking at the house with a hard to read expression.
Wally sped up to the door and pushed it. It swung open and then fell off its hinges; they were rusted away.
The smell of smoke was still in the walls.
"I think I've seen enough from out here," Cinder said.
Mercury moved to the door.
Without a word they followed him.
Cinder, despite her words, did not like to be left alone out there, so she followed them.
"What happened to this place?" Royal asked her in a low voice.
"I only saw the end of the fight," Cinder said. "It was brutal enough. Impressively so."
But then she checked herself. This was not the time for her crazy way of talking about it.
"Anyway the house must have been set on fire from something they did, but it was a small fire, could have blown out. I'm surprised so much is still standing, but it's not all wood, I guess."
"Why were they fighting?" Royal wondered.
"I don't know. I assume Marcus Black started it, from what I've heard." Cinder looked at the wall. It had black soot marks along it. She touched it and some of it came off in her hand.
Funny, that was all it took for her to flash back to setting things on fire, watching people die, watching chaos spread. Not feeling sorry. Smiling...
Destruction was power. Destruction was a thrill.
She almost could hear her own thoughts of old in her mind again.
And there was Salem, still in Grimm form. And there was the huge Grimm, flying over Beacon.
Cinder hadn't really experienced PTSD for any of the things she'd done or suffered, in great detail, and this didn't seem to be PTSD so much as the reflections of someone with a guilty conscience, but it was still a shock. She stumbled back so hard she hit Royal into the other side of the wall.
"Are you okay?" He rubbed his shoulder.
"Yeah." Cinder shook her head and blinked. "Fine. Just didn't expect it to be so fresh still..."
Then again it had only been...5...6 years? A house can stand that long. Another 10 and it might be worn away.
If Cinder was having her unpleasant memories, Emerald was probably having more.
She glanced at the inside of the house.
Any furniture had probably been stolen ages ago, or was rotting away because it wasn't worth stealing. There were really normal things like chairs and a fireplace poker, and even some things hanging on the wall or on the floor where they'd fallen off the wall.
And other things that weren't so normal. Mercury was looking into a room that must have had weapons in it, from the hooks on the wall, and there were some rusted ones still lying on the floor.
He stared at them.
Most he'd never seen used, but he recognized one that his father used to beat him with when he wanted to be especially brutal.
And usually when he was drunk.
"I have a no good, worthless son," he'd say. "I come home after a hard day and I see your pathetic face and that just makes me sick!"
Mercury shook his head, throwing the memory out of his mind.
"What do you think, Shine?" he said in a strange voice. "What makes people hate their own kin so much?"
Shine was looking at a long pole that she saw blood stains on.
She looked up. "I think the evil of the world poisons family relationships the most deeply because it knows they are the strongest to fight it. When they go wrong, they go very wrong...so that people won't try to go right. I don't know what causes it in the individual, though. We all have some tendency to jealousy or to resentments. Some people will shut their kids off from that part of them, others won't...and I do know if you let evil poison you, it will eventually reach everyone you care about, and even those you don't care about. It depends on who you are."
Cinder shuddered visibly at that.
"You have to have one thing," Emerald spoke up. "One thing that you don't let evil touch in your life...and you can climb out of it. Right?"
"I'd say so." Hazel was looking around. "One thing, one quality, is enough sometimes to make you see the light. I recall that even in one of your books, Miss Likstar. The one about Screwtape letters."
"Yes, an excellent book," Shine said quietly. "I agree. And it points out the people who have the least noble qualities to begin with are the most easily swallowed up by evil. Even if they are less impressive villains. You must have some virtue in you to be a really effective villain. Some good. Evil can't make anything of itself, so it twists good."
"Is this a good thing to be dwelling on right now?" Wally hissed. "This place is giving me the creeps too."
"It seems normal enough to me," Hazel said. "Just an empty house."
Mercury walked onward to the back of it.
"You don't let your imagination run so wild, Hazel," Shine noted. "We do. It is just a house...but imagination makes it worse than that."
"Then I'm glad I don't have much imagination," Hazel said.
Cinder eyed the weapons more closely.
"I think I get the picture," she said. "Suddenly shock collars don't look quite so bad."
Emerald gave her a puzzled look.
"What?" she said.
"That's...just the nicest thing I've ever heard you say about Mercury," Emerald said.
"Emerald," Cinder said shortly, "I might not have been principled, but I never in my life tortured kids just for the pleasure of it. At least I chose people who can fight back."
"We have few things to boast of in our history," Hazel said. "I'm not sure that I like that that is the low bar that we managed not to trip over. That should be bare minimum."
"There's a special place in hell for people who hurt kids," Wally said. "That's in the Bible."
"As it should be," Shine said. "I hate that. A crime against the the innocent is the worst crime of all. And it's hard to heal it."
But they didn't like to say too much if Mercury could hear them, and they lapsed into silence again.
Cinder started looking at Royal to see how he was handling this. The rest of them were used to horrors. Even Wally, the most sheltered in his early life, had seen enough in his career to make this not surprising, just sad.
Royal hadn't, and he did look pretty somber.
But he was listening, so that was something.
Really, the rooms didn't reveal much of the life Mercury led at all. Other than the weapons, the rest of the stuff was pretty normal. It was the knowledge that every room had some horrible memories in it for him that was what made them all so somber.
One must have been his room. It was still mostly intact, and it still had a bed in it.
Actually there were still shoes in the corner, though they were rotting by now.
Mercury didn't act all that bothered by this. It was the least weird room for him.
But Emerald, who was already primed to be upset by this, stared longer at that, and you could see the thought hit her.
Oh yeah, he didn't need shoes anymore after his dad almost pulverized his legs...
Sometimes it's the small things that really bring reality home.
She covered her mouth and looked a little ill. The tears welled up in her eyes.
Mercury wasn't that moved and wasn't sure what her problem was.
"What?" he said tersely. "It's just bedroom."
He stalked out of it.
"Are we searching for something in particular?" Hazel ventured to ask.
"No," Shine said in a low voice. "He's saying goodbye, that's all."
Cinder nudged open the closet and rats ran out of it. She jumped back.
"Please tell me we're going to burn this place once we're done." She wrinkled her nose. "No cleaning crew alive could save it."
"Are you okay there?" Royal asked Emerald.
She shook her head.
"It's just..." she said sadly, "seeing all this from the inside, it hits home even more. I feel bad. I realize how awful it must have been."
"I daresay if we went to the streets you used to live on, Cap, it'd be the same," Royal said. "Makes me realize you never really understand someone till you've walked a day in their shoes...uh, metaphorically.... Sorry, was that insensitive?"
"It probably was," Cinder said. "But you're already way too nice, so it's just as well."
"Apparently this is what is required to bring out your good side," Hazel noted to her flatly. "I've never heard you be so nice."
"Hey." Cinder's expression darkened. "I'm not being nice. You're all just acting weird."
"Really, Cinder," Shine said softly. "It doesn't matter."
She put an arm around Emerald. "You don't have to stay with us. I know how it stings to have an active imagination."
Emerald rubbed her throat. "No, I think I should follow you."
Mercury seemed to have gone farther into the most destroyed part of the house now.
There was a cellar here, and he opened it and went down.
They followed him.
The smell here was of rusty metal and old paper.
"Yep, it's still here," Mercury said, shining his scroll light on some boxes. Actually they were safes.
"What is?" Royal asked a little nervously.
"Dad kept records of his contract killings," Mercury said. "Most assassins probably do, I guess. Proves they're good at what they do."
He slowly tried the combination, and then when it didn't budge, he just sliced the door off.
Inside was...quite a stack of papers.
"Tell me that's all for just a few jobs," Royal said in a low voice.
Mercury picked some up. "There's gotta be dozens in here. And dozens more in the other safe of the ones he set up even if he didn't do it personally. He had connections. That's how you found us, right?" He glanced at Cinder.
"I didn't even know you existed at the time," Cinder said. "But yeah.... He might have had a good resume, but he was a s--- fighter. At least from what we saw. You clearly had more talent."
Again this was almost nice--at least for her. Though most people wouldn't call analyzing how you killed your dad a nice thing to do.
Mercury actually understood what she meant, as he was just as bad at this as she was.
"S---, Mercury, there's gotta be hundreds of..." Emerald had sliced off the other safe door with her knife. "How does anyone do that many assassinations?"
"A lot of them are for Atlas," Mercury said. "Probably with the White Fang. Never did get to the Schnees, but they got close."
"Some of them are for Salem, by extension," Hazel noted.
"I bet you're in there as a contact, Rhinehart," Cinder said. "You were killing people for Salem way longer than I was."
"I probably am." Hazel was indifferent.
"Hmm." Mercury scanned another. "I thought so. Tyrian is in here. Not many recorded interactions. My dad wouldn't have trusted him. One thing alone we could have agreed on."
He said it bitterly enough.
Emerald tentatively put a hand on his shoulder.
He turned away.
"Well, this is not a trap," he said in a stiff tone. "But it's not really useful. Could just burn all this now. What good is it? He's already dead."
"Actually," Hazel said, "Raven would appreciate if you turned those over. Some of these people might still be active. We could find them."
"Turn in other assassins?" Mercury said.
He scowled. "Sure, why not? That would piss him off."
He tossed the files at Hazel's feet carelessly and walked back up the steps.
"Am I the only one wondering if this was a good idea?" Royal said in a small voice.
"Maybe he's processing it," Wally said.
"Give him some time," Shine said. "I anticipated this much. I'm just glad that the training room seems to be destroyed. I didn't want to see what that looked like...or smelled like."
"This is useless," Cinder said. "If he hates it, he should just have it demolished."
"Maybe he will," Emerald muttered. "It kinda feels a little weird seeing this. It's like seeing inside someone's head...which, granted, my Semblance allows me to do pretty easily. Also, I get a creepy vibe from this place."
"Yeah, the feel of bloodshed," Shine said. "We definitely need to do the thing we came to do. If Mercury is ready. I wouldn't trust anyone here to not be attacked by Grimm for even a day if we don't take preventative measures...but after that, I think it will work. At least there're not Grimm here already. That's a good sign that it's not too strong."
"With regards to Mercury, Miss Likstar, speaking of it in those terms seems a little callous," Hazel said.
"I'm sorry. At some point this stuff starts to sound like business more than a noble act," Shine apologized. "We think of it so little, unlike you, because your life with these monsters reminds you of it. I mean, we're just not in the same world as you, quite literally."
"Yeah, but we still slayed them, so we do remember how bad they are," Wally said.
Shine nodded.
They walked out.
"I mean, I don't think I could shrug this stuff off that easily," Royal said. "I've never been anywhere that creeped me out this much. And there's not even Grimm here. It's almost just the thought of it."
"I know what you mean," Emerald said, and they all climbed out.
Mercury was glancing around the house a little.
"There it is," he said to Shine and Wally, who were just standing there now. "I think that's the spot I really made up my mind to just end it. I snapped. I remember exactly where I was, too."
He shook himself as if to bring out the memories.
"I'm sorry," Wally said. "Really. That anyone would have to go through that."
"Hey--" Mercury laughed without mirth. "--it's like you say, bad stuff happens to everyone. And it can't all be stopped. All of us make our choices, right? My father just made some really, really sh---y choice, and then I made mine.... It's just that it doesn't feel as simple as it sounds."
"I know," Shine said. "One day, it might.... Anger and pain do lose their hold over time, Mercury... a very long time sometimes, but still."
"I hate this house," Mercury said, as if she hadn't spoken. "Every square inch of it. I can't think of anywhere in it I had a good memory."
He suddenly kicked one of the boards and it snapped in half.
He seemed to feel good at that.
He snapped some more.
No one stopped him.
Hazel had picked up the folders, and he dropped them on the grass.
Mercury got angrier the more he kicked, then some of the ceiling caved in.
"What?" He glanced at them, a little annoyed.
"Nothing," Wally said.
Shine drew her sword, and then she sliced it through one of the load-bearing wall wooden pillars.
The ceiling fell in.
Mercury smiled slightly, though not happily.
"Check this," Wally said to Shine.
He put his hand on an open window and vibrated, shattering it.
"That kind of felt good," Wally said.
"Lots of fun," Emerald said. She picked up a rock and threw it through a different window.
Cinder reached into her satchel and pulled out some fire dust. Then she formed a bow in her hand, and an arrow.
She glanced at Mercury like she was asking permission.
"Yeah," he said. "Right there." He pointed to the top of the house.
Cinder shot at it.
Fire exploded and spread, and more stuff caved in.
Hazel kicked one wall, and it started falling in also.
Dust rose up and then fell back down.
Shine planted her sword into the ground and it shook, causing more of the stuff to fall in.
Her eyes gleamed gold, giving Royal a start.
He felt like the only one confused here.
"This place will not belong to Marcus Black anymore," Shine said slowly, "or to bloodshed or to darkness. They will be torn down, and we'll build anew..."
She glanced at Mercury as if asking him if that was okay.
Mercury looked at the smoldering house.
"As long as I don't have to set foot in it," he said.
This was agreement enough.
They watched it burn for a while.
Maybe it had been hours, but they hardly noticed it. Although the sun had moved, the smoke blocked it out so that it was orange for a while.
Finally Mercury grew tired of watching and turned his back. He walked to the grass.
Emerald decided to follow him.
Cinder shrugged. "Well, this was kinda fun."
"You have an arson streak," Wally said weakly.
"You all helped," Cinder objected. "And I thought you said that destroying things was actually a godly quality, if it was for the right reasons."
"That's me, I think," Shine said. "And so it is. Everything that has to die gets destroyed, but some things are reborn. Others aren't.... It depends. In the words of The Lion King, that's the 'circle of life'."
"Leave it to you to find something weird to say about destroying a house," Cinder said.
"Cinder, you said that about destroying a whole city," Wally pointed out.
That hit her in between the eyes, and she stopped.
"Sorry, I was just kidding." Wally regretted it.
"No, I..." Cinder didn't really know what she was trying to say, she just sputtered. "Nevermind." She walked to the road suddenly.
"This has been a weird day for me," Royal said. "But can I ask, if there were no Grimm, why did you worry about this place?"
"None that you could see, Royal." Shine said something that chilled him. "Not all Grimm are visible, physical beings, not the ones we know about. I could sense plenty that weren't visible, but you don't need to fear them. They will not attack you."
"Now," Wally added.
Royal had a lot to think about there.
"I hope we're done," Hazel said. "This is unpleasant work."
It was so rare for him to complain, it showed that it had bothered him to see all this.
"I'm sure it means a lot to Mercury that you helped, even if he didn't say so," Shine said comfortingly. "He doesn't talk about it."
* * *
Over by Mercury, Emerald wasn't sure what to say, but she wanted to say something helpful.
Mercury was walking around, looking at the remains of his old house.
"I thought I'd feel a little more relieved or maybe pissed off," he said. "But it's...I don't know, it's just like nothing really. Other than it's good that it's gone."
"It was really the worst, huh?" Emerald said. "I feel like I didn't really think of it before...or maybe I just didn't listen. I'm sorry."
"I've never explained that much," Mercury recalled. "I don't think that you've made light of it. It's just wasn't...when you were there."
Maybe this was getting to him now that he'd revisited it.
Emerald nodded, not sure what to say.
"It wasn't much," Mercury said, "but when the old man wasn't home, I'd go outside." He looked around. "It wasn't quite as bad out there. Less suffocating. Sometimes the cook would turn a blind eye if I disappeared for a while. I wouldn't call it happy, but I guess if there was ever a peaceful time of my life, that would have been it."
"Everyone gets something." Emerald remembered something that she read in Shine's study books. Or it was close to it. "Some light. Some sign or gift."
"What was yours then?" Mercury asked what was a really weird question for him.
Emerald thought.
"I was alone all the time," she said. "On the street, I was cold. I was hungry. I used to hide in some place I could and watch the families walk by. They seemed so happy. I'd feel sick with envy. They never looked at me mostly. But sometimes some kid or someone would smile at me in a friendly way. Like they had this goodwill out of being happy. And under that anger, I'd think to myself that maybe people who are happy don't really think of us more because they just want to preserve that happiness and they don't care. They'd just give it away. And I wasn't like that, but even a person like me, they might direct it to because they just didn't care. And sometimes I'd look at the sky, or the birds, or trees and think that no matter how poor you are, we all see the same stuff. Some stuff is free. It was kinda stupid though, but it did make me feel a little less pathetic."
She paused. "I don't think I've ever talked about that. I'd almost forgotten about it."
Mercury shook his head. "I'd think I'd feel braver," he said. "I don't know if I'll ever feel any better at all. But it's gone. I guess it had to be. Still think this'd be a good site?"
"I think if we build on top of this place, and keep the monsters out, it'll just be another shelter for them," Emerald said. "Maybe taking it back is the best way to keep anything bad from happening. But it's your call."
"Sure." Mercury began walking to the road.
Emerald wondered if she'd said something wrong again, but then, you never could tell with him.
The others were standing along the road, watching ash fall to the ground.
"You know, ash makes soil more fertile," Shine remarked. "Floods usually uproot things, but fire just trims them down to the roots. As a purifier, it works pretty well."
"Are you speaking in metaphors again?" Hazel asked her.
"Maybe." Shine shrugged.
Cinder was pacing around the road, eyeing the horizon.
"Do you see something?" Wally asked.
"No," she said tightly. "Just think it's weird that with all that negativity there was no Grimm."
"Shocker, there can be bad feelings without there being Grimm." Shine gestured blandly.
"I think someone is coming," Cinder said the next moment.
She was right. There was dust on the road, and someone was driving down it in an old pickup.
"Why does that just look wrong here?" Wally mused.
Royal gave him a strange look.
"Did you bring the deed to this place?" Hazel asked.
"I didn't see a reason to." Mercury joined them in time to hear him.
"It looks like we just committed vandalism," Hazel said flatly.
The person frowned, eyeing the fire.
"Better not to take any chances." Emerald glanced at Cinder. "What if someone remembers us from before?" She put a hand to her head.
"If we have to talk to yo,u that's not going to be so convincing," Shine warned.
"Just get back." Royal stepped in front of Cinder more and nodded at Hazel, who put Emerald and Mercury a little farther behind him.
Wally moved a little too.
The guy pulled up. He had a huge dog, possibly a mastiff, on the passenger side, and it growled at them.
Cinder didn't like dogs and winced.
Emerald didn't like them either--too many strays had fought her over food in the past.
Mercury was indifferent though and just looked at it like it was a rat.
"What are you folks doing out here?" the man asked, pulling his hat up a little and frowning at them narrowly.
Royal saw he had a gun over the window, not unusual for a Remnant person out alone.
"Just visiting," Wally said amiably. "What's up?"
"Did you set that house on fire?" The man didn't beat around the bush.
"The place is condemned anyway," Shine said. "The owner decided to have it destroyed."
"Do you have that in writing?" The man raised an eyebrow.
"Who are you, the sheriff?" Mercury said meanly.
"As a matter of fact, I am the local law enforcement, or good as they have in Jet," the man said. He held up a scroll that showed he was a professional huntsman. "Not many of us out here, but trust me, I can handle most people."
He whistled.
His dog's ears went back.
At the same time, groundhogs and crows that were always around empty fields like this, popped out of their holes or flew closer from the trees.
Shine took it in.
"Hmm, I think I know what his Semblance is," she said.
"That's awesome," Wally said. "Also a little terrifying. Mostly awesome though. Bats would love this guy."
"Bats and any other animal, I take it," Royal muttered.
"He means his friend Bats," Cinder muttered.
"What?" Royal had a good reason to be confused by that.
"I can pull up my file," Mercury said in annoyance. "Give me a minute."
He was trying to load the Argus database on his scroll. It took a while this far out of civilization.
The huntsman waited for them impatiently.
"So what's his story do you think?" Wally asked Shine. "Not the Pied Piper--that's Pedro."
"Any Disney Princess...Pan, St. Francis, could be any number of legends." Shine shrugged.
"Pan would make sense.... Uh, that's the god of animals, right?"
"Nature, but close enough."
"Yes." Wally fist pumped. "I'm so hot right now, admit it."
"It doesn't work if you point it out," Shine said. "At least not as well."
"No? I thought you liked confidence."
"I do, but people are watching us."
Wally glanced at them. They didn't seem to care--or were giving them looks of disbelief.
"You two don't scare so easy, do you?" Royal noted, amused. "Did you do this with Salem too? Just walk right up to the jaws of death and chit chat about nothing at all."
"Yes!" Emerald said exasperatedly.
"It was so freaking weird," Mercury said. "I think they'd do it in front of the devil himself..."
"That's a little bit of a stretch," Shine objected.
"The gods were close enough, weren't they?" Emerald said.
The huntsman gave them odd looks.
"You've heard of them, right?" Royal said. "World famous heroes? Saved Remnant? Known to slay Grimm with words."
"Not slay," Cinder corrected.
"Can you not help me while I'm trying to help?" Royal asked her.
She frowned at him.
"Oh, get out." The huntsman didn't seem to believe it, but he peered at them closely. "Then again, you do look vaguely familiar.... Wait, I know you." He pointed a beer bottle at Mercury. "Aren't you Marcus Black's son?"
Mercury went so rigid that he looked like a grey statue.
"Not that I ever saw the kid myself," the huntsman said. "Only on TV, but I knew the name. I heard he had a son. After he...well, disappeared, everyone thought it was rumor, but you do look a lot like him."
Mercury scowled.
"It's him," Wally said, before anyone else could stop him.
"In that case, this is your property." The huntsman leaned back. "Why are you here after all this time? Must have been 6 years or more...and don't I know you?" He slanted to get a better look at Cinder, who stepped back.
"And the green-haired girl seems a little familiar too," he muttered.
"I thought you said you were a huntsman." Royal tried to distract him. "Why would you know Marcus Black? I heard he was an assassin."
"He was." The man popped open a beer and flicked the bottle cap onto the road, to Cinder's disgust. Really, littering was just too far. "And the entire town out there knew it. No one crossed him. And since he didn't do jobs in the town, I ignored him. I don't dig up extra trouble; one town is enough. The only people who knew the guy were the schmucks that had to deliver things to this house occasionally. Some of them never came back. I take it they pissed him off. Still, that's where the idea he had a kid came from."
Mercury had a vague memory of some people coming to the door through the window.
He frowned again.
"Well, who knew after all this time? It's a small world," the huntsman said. "The name's Gregory Omelas."
Shine gave a start.
"What?" Wally said.
She shuddered. "You don't want to know."
"Well, we're done here," Mercury said. "I'm outta here. Just came to inspect the place and then get rid of it."
"To who?" Gregory asked.
"Probably Argus, I dunno." Mercury was noncommittal.
"Not sure the town would like an Argus property this near it," Gregory said. "Why not just sell it back to us?"
"Not doing anyone any good then, is it?" Mercury said. "Clearly you're not using it now."
"The place gives us the creeps," Gregory admitted. "But if it's destroyed now, the land is probably still good for something."
"He'll do what he wants with it." Emerald didn't like Gregory for some reason. He just seemed...kind of apathetic to her.
"All right, no need to get all worked up." Gregory probably didn't like his chances of taking them on, even with animal help, now that he knew who they were. "Since there's no trouble, I'll just be on my way."
"Great." Mercury walked away from them and toward a tree stump.
Emerald followed him, with a wary look at Gregory.
"Question," Wally said. "Mr. Omelas, did you guys know that Marcus Black was a monster who was...well, beating the tar out of his son on a daily basis? If you had to visit this place, didn't anyone ever suspect anything?"
Gregory got a look Cinder knew well as the indifferent mask people wore when they didn't wish to think of something.
"We didn't care to know anything about what went on here as long as he left the town alone, and I think that's for the best. We can't stick our noses in everyone else's business, can we, mister? Anyway it was his own kid. At least he left ours alone."
"Is that the way a huntsman should think?" Hazel said.
"You try being alone out here, not a lot of backup. We do what we have to," Gregory said carelessly. "What's your problem? He's turned out fine. I don't need to know anymore about it, and if you're not gonna do anything else, I suggest you clear out. Grimm might find us otherwise."
He rolled up his windows and drove away, shooting smoke out of his back tailpipe.
"That's pretty callous," Royal said, in disgust. "I mean, I get not having a lot of backup--Atlas was left alone to the military anyway--but if you know something like that is going on, shouldn't you do something?"
Shine kicked a rock. "Would you have gotten involved if you knew Jacques Schnee was a cruel tyrant to his family, Royal? Or would it not have been your place?"
"I...well, I don't see what I could have done. It's not like there was proof, but he wasn't...well, he wasn't always like that." Royal hesitated.
"People are all the same," Cinder suddenly said savagely, her eyes blazing. "See a thing? Turn a blind eye. It's not their problem. They don't have to feel it. They don't have to interfere. It's the same here as Atlas and everywhere else. I can't even blame Marcus Black for killing them if he did. What sniveling cowards."
"May I remind you--" Hazel didn't read the room very well. "---that you didn't do anything to help innocent people either. Are we ones to judge them? We just walked past thousands of people who didn't deserve their fates. You can lump anyone in Atlas into the same category, like you did before, but are they really any different than anyone else? Good and bad?"
"You and your bleeding heart," Cinder said. "Did it protect anyone that Salem asked you to kill for her dumb cause so you could get your shot at Ozpin? Who was in an 'innocent' person."
"In one?" Royal still had not had this explained entirely to him yet.
"Later," Wally hissed.
"Cinder, hush," Shine warned her.
"What?" Cinder turned to her angrily.
A growl followed her words.
Out of the small spinney of trees at the edge of the property line, an Ursa came crawling.
"Oops," Cinder said, not very sorry sounding.
"That's a big one," Royal said uneasily. "But if it's alone, it should be no problem."
"Ursas are not usually alone," Hazel said. "Grimm tend to hunt in packs. We should kill it quickly."
"Be still," Shine ordered.
They all stood still.
The Ursa walked toward them.
Shine held her sword up, waiting.
The Ursa backed up, deciding that they weren't a good idea to attack.
It turned and began to lumber away.
"Is that it?" Royal was awestruck. "That time it didn't even take words."
"A small thing like that, might not even dare to try," Shine said, lowering her sword.
"Small?" Royal said.
"Compared to the dragon-sized ones, yeah," Wally said.
"But did it head to the town?" Shine asked. "I haven't been to it before."
Cinder looked around. "I think so," she said.
"We'd better stop it then," Wally said. "If it ran off into the woods, maybe that's nothing, but toward other people, we can't just let it. I'll just run and get it. Should take one swing."
"Okay," Shine agreed.
Wally took off after it.
"Does that guy live on caffeine?" Royal asked her.
"He's got a special power," Shine shrugged. "Let's go before more Grimm decide to follow that one. We can draw it away from the town by heading back toward our ship. "
"My ship," Royal said. "And careful, I just got that thing repaired."
They rolled their eyes.
[But seriously, leave the poor guy's ship alone.]