The huntsmen force heading for the pirates had tracked their particular ship thanks to Royal's coordinates, but it took many hours to catch up to them.
They checked with the others in that time and got the update about Cinder's letter of information...and that people were still missing.
Finally, a few hours into the flight, Raven finally got and forwarded Emerald's messages. Of course they had been sent a while ago, and she hadn't followed up since she found the entrance.
Which they all concluded meant she'd either gone in or gotten captured.
"Probably to get Mercury," Qrow said. "Young love is so reckless."
"I think it's sweet," Penny offered.
"But dumb." Yang made a fist. "Now they're all MIA. We don't know if they're dead or not. One person was bad enough."
"I feel like Royal wanted to get captured." Neptune was intuitive about things like this. "He was pretty clearly taking it hard about Cinder... I mean, since she did this for him, I can see why."
"Way to waste her efforts." Yang folded her arms.
"Maybe, but I know if you did that, I would feel horribly guilty" Neptune said. "Someone else risking their life for you in that way, not in fair game in battle but just...as some kind of trade, I would hate that."
"Agreed," Qrow said. "But he picked the wrong time to settle the score."
"His actions are not logical," Penny said. "But I believe they are from the heart."
This was Penny's understanding of human emotions at this point, and she was pretty perceptive.
"But Hazel should have known better," Yang complained. "I thought he was the stoic one."
"I'm not sure you know him as well as you think," Kip noted.
"You're still not that close, eh, Firecracker?" Qrow noted.
"Just because he's married to my mom doesn't make him a father figure," Yang said.
"You never did like change," Neptune noted.
She glared at him.
"I think he's nice," Kip said.
"Hadn't you better give him more of a chance?" Meridian suggested to Yang, leaning on the wall. "It's important to your mom."
"Yeah, and she'll be upset if he dies," Yang said, "so I am worried, but it's not the same for me."
"I think Raven being serious about this relationship is the weirder thing for me," Qrow said. "But since she is, I hope he's okay. But he's not the one I'm worried about. It's Mercury. Anyone else, I'd think they might use alive, but I wonder if he's just too dangerous."
They all didn't know if he was right.
"These people sound so horrible," Velvet spoke. "I'm almost glad we're finding the less bad ones first."
"Not less bad, Rabbit Girl, just less numerous," Qrow said. "I've heard they're a real piece of work too."
"My name is Velvet." She put her ears back.
"I don't care." Qrow shrugged. [If you get the chibi reference that was funnier.]
Yatsuhashi gestured at the clock.
"How long before we find them?" Yang voiced it.
Penny was the one flying. "Well...I think a while still...unless...hmm..." She peered at the monitor and adjusted it (she was plugged in). "Well, I think something changed. Another ship is coming this way, from...the west. Hmm...Vacuo frequency, I'd say."
"Vacuo has its own frequency?" Neptune said.
"The ships are all designed a little different," Penny explained. "So they give off different signals... I don't think a normal meat person would be able to hear the difference."
"She just dunked on us, big time," Meridian noted. "Weiss tells me Hamish is with the Argus force now. Good, be glad to have him when we go against the knaves in the actual tribe. I hope this detour was worth it."
"Both Winter and Raven think these pirates could help us with our strategy," Qrow said. "Either way, we have to cut off the tribe's means of escape, and that means their little runners. We know they fly right up to them thanks to Fall's stunt."
"Does it make you mad how effective it was when we all hate the idea of it?" Neptune asked.
"Oh, sure," Yang said. "I'm going to hit her so hard if she's still alive when I find her. And all the rest of them too."
"If we find her, Hot Stuff," Neptune said, "I think she'll be in too bad a shape for that."
He was a lot more right than they knew.
* * *
The pirates were flying to meet Watts, who had bribed a different pilot to fly him to a meeting point between Vacuo and Vale's eastern end, close to Argus, as it happened.
Along the way, the plane had been followed by flying Grimm, which carried the bandits to them.
Hypnosia had had some trouble controlling hers now that she lacked a shot... Mino's hadn't bothered him as much, though he'd also been debugged... Maybe it sensed that he was not fully convinced yet. He covered for Hypnosia, likely, though he said nothing about it.
The other bandits didn't notice--they were too focused on the danger of catching the plane in mid-air.
But finally they boarded and sped on their way towards Watts.
"Does he know we're picking him up?" one of the other bandits asked.
"I don't think he does," Hypnosia said. "Just that the crew is."
"Keep it that way till he's subdued," Anne Bonny remarked. "I've heard he's pretty dangerous on a machine. Not in a real fight, though. Landlubber scum."
"You're not much better," Teach remarked.
She clocked him with her glock. [If I made you look up what that is, mission successful.]
"We're picking up on the ship," Calico said. "I think it's regulation. Should we adjust course?"
"Of course--" began one of the bandits, but Hypnosia spoke up.
"No," she said.
Calico gave her a strange look. "But they might be Argus."
"The odds of that are pretty slim," Hypnosia said. "And this is the fastest route. Mala does not like to wait. No other ship would bother to ask us who we are unless they were in distress. We're in mid air. And if you slow us down over a slight scare, I don't want to be the one scolded for it later."
She waved her hand threateningly. "Do you have a problem with that?"
Calico knew her power.
"No." He swallowed and went back to flying.
No one else questioned it.
Privately, Hypnosia wondered if it was Argus. Why would they be out here?
But if it wasn't, she had no reason to avoid it, and if it was them, they might catch them... She could only hope then that they all knew she was secretly on their side.
She got her answer only much later, when the ship landed in the Vale coastal port--that was so small it was mostly forgotten about by the council but could take a few airships.
In Vale's tradition of seasonal names, it was called Equinox.
[A good name for an airstrip.]
The ship that had been following them for some time, though they'd not radioed, landed on the adjoining lane on the strip.
"They never left off tailing us," Teach growled. "I don't like it."
"They didn't tell us to land," Mary Leer spoke up. "They can't be looking for us."
At least they'd been smart enough not to do that, if they were the huntsmen, but Hypnosia really thought it was just a delivery ship by now.
Until they disembarked.
Watts, whose ship had landed before theirs, was sipping tea in the small waiting room.
He was using a false ID, so, somehow, no one at this strip had recognized him. It only had a handful of employees anyway.
"There he is," Yang said, from their ship. She saw him through the window from the waiting room.
"Let's be careful." Qrow grabbed her shoulder. "If he sees us, he'll run."
"Hey, look." Meridian was looking out the other window. "On that ship."
Somnus and Toro had gotten off, along with Bonny, but none of them knew what she looked like.
"How the heck did they get on that ship if they were just capturing the others?" Neptune asked.
"The only way they could have caught it was using the Grimm," Qrow said. "They rode the other ones, remember? Some Grimm could catch a ship if it wasn't going too fast. But they'd have had to join them a while back, before we were on their radar... They must think we're just regular delivery people."
"All of us are too high profile," Meridian pointed out. "They'll know we're here for them immediately."
"So? We're here to bust heads." Yang put a hand into her other fist.
"It's just if Watts tries to run or the pirates try to attack him," Qrow said.
"Well, hello," Watts was saying to the pirates. He didn't know Sand or Mino by sight or even by name.
They only knew him because he had a mustache.
"That's the guy?" Mino said. "He looks weak."
"He sold out his old ally-turned-enemy just for revenge," Hypnosia said. "Of course he's weak... Mala will turn him inside out."
She glanced towards the Argus ship. She squinted... The windows were more tinted, but she thought she spied blonde hair... Branwen's daughter, probably.
"Who are these?" Watts noticed her and Mino.
"Just some passengers," Anne lied. "You coming?"
"Yes." Watts picked up a black bag. "You'll take me all the way to Mistral?"
He must have thought he could lose himself in the crowd of criminals there.
The pirates knew that the two higher bandits and their assistants weren't there to escort him to Mistral, but they said nothing.
Hypnosia waited till Watts had moved out of sight of the main office before she used her Semblance and he keeled over.
"Too easy," Teach said. "That is some handy Semblance." He gave her a creepy look.
"So handy I could use it on anyone and no one would ever hear a sound of struggle." Hypnosia held her hand up threateningly.
Teach backed off.
"Ugh," Hypnosia muttered to Mino. "I'm sick of these creeps. How did I get used to it?"
"If you really want to leave the tribe, you shouldn't go back there," Mino said.
"What?" Hypnosia said oddly.
"If you're so sure the heroes will find them after this, there's no reason to go back. No one will come looking for you. Why would you return?" he pointed out. "You should go while you can."
"What about you?" Hypnosia said.
"I have nowhere to go, and I'm less sure this plan will work," Mino said.
"Have you really still not decided that the tribe is disgusting?" Hypnosia said.
"Maybe they are...but they weren't all always so bad," Mino said. "If Mala made them worse, then I want to see her pay for it, not them. They were our allies."
"Allies who turned to perdition and made us turn also," Hypnosia said.
"I may not be as smart as you," Mino said, for he knew his own mental deficiencies, despite what others might have thought, "but I can see that thinking they are worse than us is a foolish lie. Didn't you stand by and allow these things to happen?"
"I didn't like them... I didn't realize what I was doing," she objected.
"That's hogwash," Mino said. "We always knew. Just that we didn't care. And it all seemed the same in there. Like a dream almost. But the looks of terror on their faces were real. I don't feel right about it now...but I won't pretend it was fake either. Mala didn't hold us at gunpoint."
"In a way she did. We'd have died if we didn't go along with her way."
"We still had a choice. We could have avoided the worst of it," Mino said.
"We did," Hypnosia said. "I mean...I never accosted anyone or murdered anyone except in battle."
"But I did."
"I...well, you didn't force them, I thought," Hypnosia said.
"If someone cannot say no, isn't that forcing them?" Mino said. "You said yourself, once I was above that. So when did that change?"
"Well, if someone dangles a lure in front of someone, they might give in," Hypnosia said. "The tribe did that to us."
"I don't think that makes us guilt free, if you insist on thinking this way...so I can't just avoid it. And there are people there I would still consider friends."
"They won't be if they find out about this."
"And I don't blame them for that. I have no life outside the tribe anyway--might as well face it head on."
"You're an idiot!" Hypnosia hissed.
"Just go while you can," Mino snorted haughtily and walked away.
She clenched her fist. "Don't go around like you're a noble sort of person now," she muttered through gritted teeth, though he couldn't have heard her. "Not the trash we are."
[I know most people might not sympathize with Mino that much. I take the view based on many historical accounts I've read of people in cults, who can have different levels of corruption depending on the person. It's hard for me to judge him as harshly considering the circumstances, but I also can't pretend it's not sick and twisted to do the things the tribe does. I suppose most people will see it as black or white, and I can understand that. Yet there might still be some less selfish feelings in him. So how do we judge someone like that?]
Before either of them could change their minds, or run, the heroes burst out of the ship.
Once they'd seen Watts go down, that was all they needed.
The fight that ensued was really almost laughably outmatched on the pirate's side. None of them were trained enough to compete with the skilled, special level fighters--and Qrow Branwen.
On top of that, Penny could fly over their heads and attack from above while they were still on the ground, and Kip flew around in a wide circle and shot dust at them.
Now, Hypnosia could have evened the playing field, had she chosen to, by knocking at least half the heroes out, but she didn't do a thing, and the pirates wondered where she'd disappeared to.
Even so, the pirates did put up more of a fight than expected, mostly out of desperation.
Teach especially became like a mad man, lashing out violently and making Yang have to duck as she swooped around him and tried to kick him off his feet.
Finally, Meridian shot him in the throat.
This was the first pirate they actually killed.
The other pirates slowed. They had been sure they were just going to get captured, but...
"What?" Meridian said when they all looked at him. "That's the b-----d that attacked Oscar, and there's that witch who tried to Grimm Neo. I'd say he more than had that coming."
"Curses, he's too long range we can't dodge while they're in front of us," Mary said.
"Then we have no choice." Anne put her hands up. "We surrender."
[This is accurate to their story, actually. Mary and Anne were both captured alive as pirates.]
Calico, seeing them surrender, also put his hands up.
Sikes--who was practically rabid in the way he was fighting, though his only weapon was a long stick with a metal knob, since Neptune had blasted the gun out of his hand--didn't give up.
Qrow blocked his attacks and cut his stick in half, after several missed attempts because the guy kept moving around so wildly, then Sikes conveniently tripped on an uneven piece of concrete, and Qrow had the chance to run him through.
Kip was cuffing the pirates who'd surrendered.
"Well, that was easy," Yang said.
"What about this guy?" Penny had Mino surrounded by her swords so he couldn't run, and his Semblance thing didn't really work on her, so she was the best person to fight him...but he was still angry.
"That guy, we need to have a talk with." Qrow rubbed his fist.
"And her." Meridian had found Hypnosia standing around. Doing nothing.
"Why didn't you run?" Mino yelled at her.
"I had mixed feelings about it!" she shot back loudly.
"You!?" Yang lunged at her and grabbed her. "This is your fault, isn't it? You led her there."
"What does she mean?" Mary asked roughly.
"Yang, cool it," Qrow said in a low tone. "Prisoners are listening."
"We'll put them in the brig," Neptune said. "Then you can yell at the other prisoners."
"Does she mean they led Mala to them?" Calico muttered.
"Shut up," Anne hissed at him.
"Personally, I think something else is not right here," Mary said darkly as they were hustled away.
Mino was captured too...again.
Hypnosia had her hands up. "Look," she said, "I think you all know I'm trying to help."
Kip and Meridian were pulling Watts up and taking him away also.
"Sure we know that," Qrow said sarcastically. "I see you're saving your own skin...and with Watts' help."
"It's not like that," Hypnosia protested. "Mala wanted to collect him...and if he doesn't show up by tomorrow, she'll be pissed and also on to you. I hope this means you're ready to ride in there and crush the Baba tribe."
"We're working on that." Yang held up her shotgun gauntlet.
"How do we know you weren't just trying to use Fall as a way to save your own skin?" Qrow asked suspiciously.
"And we know that Watts just set her up," Neptune added.
"Hmm...is that it?" Hypnosia said. "Is that really all you know?"
"We know more, but we're not going to tell you," Qrow said.
"That's smart," Hypnosia said. "How about I tell you something then? Fall is not the only one of you she has."
"We know!" they all said.
"Then you should also know that now that Mala has leverage, their chances just went way down," Hypnosia said. "She might have wanted to turn some of them--that could buy a little time...if she doesn't think anyone else is coming, but if she does, she might kill them all. If I go back there without Watts, she'll be suspicious, and if I don't go back, she'll know I was caught. So if you're not ready to crush them right now...we have a problem. Cinder was so sure you all would be able to tail her quickly. Was her faith in you misplaced?"
"She has that much confidence in us?" Yang said.
"She thinks you can do anything," Hypnosia said. "Except save her, probably. I agreed with her there, but if you could stop them, then all this wasn't for nothing. They are running low on some supplies now; another raid is imminent, but that means that almost all the tribe is at the hideout right now. Now is the time to get them all, if you can."
"How many of you are there?" Qrow asked.
"Anywhere from 70 to 80 at a given time," Hypnosia supplied. "But out of those, some are new or weaker fighters. There's 40 people who are more trusted to do higher level assignments like retrieval, and out of them only about half are probably on par with a huntsman in terms of fighting...regular huntsmen, not ones like you." She tugged her hair. "The trouble for you is that the top 8 of them all have harder powers to combat. And Mala herself, she can use all kinds of Grimm in ways other people can't. The whole hideout is one big trap. That's why no one has ever tried to fight their way out of it. They just wait to die or to be used. The grunts don't even leave it usually unless they're with a more superior person, in case they might run for it. Like those..." She pointed to the ones they'd just taken down easily along with the pirates.
"They were weak," Meridian agreed. "Not much fight in any of them. So, you and Mino there are higher ranking?"
"I was promoted pretty fast because I can take down anyone," Hypnosia said. "Within reason. Mino because he can counter almost anyone's special ability. The older 40 members are mostly ones who've been in the tribe for years, or who are too useful also to be killed off easily. But not all of them are really popular with the other members. Mala kills them off sometimes and replaces them with more promising recruits, but she likes to keep at least 40 trusted fighters at all times."
"How biblical," Neptune said. "40 comes up a lot there."
"Ew, don't compare them," Yang said. "So...we should have enough fighters for that. And then we can take care of the grunts."
"But the Grimm," Hypnosia said, "they even the playing field. Even the grunts can use them. You did prepare for this, right?"
"We're working on it," Qrow said saltily.
"Wait...do you even have 40 fighters? I see only a handful of you," Hypnosia said.
The thing was, they weren't sure they did have that many, even back at Argus. They might when the Menagerie help got there, and they met up with the Mistralians...but they needed more than that to be on the safe side. And they were down 5 of them now anyway.
"If you really are on our side," Neptune said, "then we have a ringer. Couldn't that even the odds, plus your semblance?"
"Oh, how cute, you think I can really help that much?" Hypnosia said. "Trust me on this...Mala can incapacitate any of her main fighters. She would never allow us that much power. She's not easy to take down either. She's got an unnatural amount of strength and endurance. Even if I could knock her out, her allies would defend her. And then I'd be killed on sight for betraying them. Then they would know."
"You could fight with us," Qrow said. "We could protect you."
"I would still be killed first. Didn't that happen to someone else you tried to take in for questioning...? In fact this is the longest anyone has lasted as an informant," Hypnosia said. "And that's only because they think I just escaped you all without talking. I only sold that because I'm so powerful they believe I could do that without being caught. I won't get away with it again. I've already stuck my neck out enough for you people by doing this much."
"Oh, have you?" Yang got mad. "Because from where I stand, you were part of some creepy cult, and you wanted to punish them for what they did to you. You used Cinder to do it because she would buy your line about not dying. I don't even freaking care if it was true or not--you knew if it worked, she'd suffer and you would walk away."
"I--" Hypnosia began.
"And now you're tired of risking your neck? You're making us all do this sooner than we want to," Yang went on. "And who's to say we can't just do whatever to you now? You can't take us all. I bet it won't even work on Penny."
Penny waved.
"So you can either help us, or we can just end this now." Yang made a fist.
No one else could believe that she said that. She was bluffing, right?
"So just end it now," Hypnosia surprised them by saying, "if that would be the end of this anyway. I'd rather you do it than Mala... She might just drive me mad first. She's done that before. Or feed me to their bloody Grimm!"
She knelt down suddenly.
"Whoa, whoa, let's not get crazy," Neptune said.
"This is no good," Meridian said. "We cannot threaten her if she's more afraid of them than us. We can't compete with those horrifying people. I don't think any good could be worse than their evil to them, unless it was the might of God. It's not fear that motivated her to go this far, it was love. Love will make you do more than fear."
"Love for what?" Yang asked.
"Freedom, perhaps," Meridian said. "I would not want to be a slave to them. Why else did Weiss leave home? Why else did Salem refuse to give into the gods ? Why did we? Yang, I'd think you would understand that some people cannot bear to be owned by anything against their will. However, forcing her to go back there and endure a fate far worse than death, and then death itself, does not seem to me to be our right."
Hypnosia glanced at him strangely.
"I'm supposed to trust this?" Yang said.
"We've been wrong before about people," Neptune said. "If she is serious, isn't it a problem for us?"
"This is getting us nowhere," Qrow said. "I'm calling Raven. We'll take them and their plane back to Argus. It's a shorter flight from there to Mistral. Watts has a lot to answer for."
* * *
They did as Qrow said.
Raven heard the whole story.
She thought about it.
"Maybe we should just send Watts to them," she said.
"What? Why?" Qrow asked.
"Think about it," Raven said. "Mala will suspect something if we don't. At this point, we just need to get in there fast without being seen. And I am the only one who can take us there outside of using a ship. Watts surely can hide a camera effectively. If our little spy is serious, she can make sure he doesn't sell us out, or she'll kill him herself. Either way, if I just knew where the others were, I could portal to Emerald or Hazel... They are still alive, I can feel it. I need to time it just right though."
"So you want to use Watts, who's sold us out already," Qrow said.
"We have no better idea," Raven said. "No matter how you look at it, someone who can get in there without being suspected is our best chance. Him or this Somnus woman would work. If I go in there randomly, we could run into anything--a nest of Mind Grimm, a horde of the bandits themselves. We're coming down to the wire here, Qrow. That's the best way to take them by surprise. I think catching the pirates with Watts was the best outcome for us... Better even, if we don't tell him he's being used at all, come to think of it. He'll act natural then."
"Do you think she's right?" Qrow asked Winter.
"In my heart? I don't like this depending on trusting Somnus," Winter said. "But she seems sincere. I just don't know about trusting Somnus to resist the Mind Grimm... However, in my head...it's a risk that might yield results. They will have less time to assemble Grimm if we go in there directly. It's the only way to bypass the scouts. It may depend on our friends being alive still, however, by the time the others can get there."
"And if I find I can't open the door even at the last minute, we'd be set back," Raven mused. "So we should be waiting at least closer to them than here. Close to get there in hours or less if it fails. But not so close they'll think we're there for them."
"How could we ensure they wouldn't suspect anything?" Qrow said.
There was a pause.
The younger team members who were listening to this were also thinking.
"I suppose the only thing you'd be out there to stop would be a large amount of Grimm," Oobleck noted. "But they wouldn't be there."
Theo looked up. "Hold the phone," he said. "Don't we have Victoria's devices for summoning Grimm handy?"
"I don't have any of those," Raven said. "I wouldn't allow using them on base."
"I brought some with me," Theo said.
"You what?!" Winter and Raven both said.
"Good thing I did. You fools are never prepared," Theo said. "Suppose we call a bunch of Grimm to a spot far enough away to make the bandits less suspicious, but close enough... We might even get some of them to leave their Mistral hideout."
"You want to summon Grimm deliberately?" Winter said, like it was gross.
"Is that something we should be doing?" Oscar said. "Isn't that against the ancient ways?"
"To be fair, it depends on what you mean," Pyrrha said. "God sent spirits upon people... I'm sure we're not planning to use them, just lure them in. How could that be wrong? We could still kill them all."
"I feel weird using one of those things," Jaune said. "But in this case, it might be okay."
"So we do that..." Raven put a hand to her chin. "They think it's just a regular Grimm attack... Even better, that those things are attacking us for them. That might make them cocky. That's so nutty...it just might work."
"So...they lower their guard, and then we hit them?" Ruby said. "That's so sneaky."
"Yeah, it's perfect," Nora said. "Let's do it."
"Sis?" Qrow said. "Would that work on you?"
"If I were them? Probably. No huntsmen team would ever summon Grimm on purpose," Raven said. "That Theo thought of it just proves how insane he is...but I don't see how they could guess that. They are the ones who use Grimm as part of their plans. Us doing it would shock them. But you fight fire with fire."
"Then we have to," Ruby said, clenching a fist. "I think it's not a sin, not like this. And it could give us an edge."
"Hmm, she's growing on me," Raven mused.
"This plan is nuts," Qrow said.
"Gruesome perhaps, but other than we'd have to kill the Grimm...I really see no reason why it would hurt us," Winter said. "But we would have to kill them. We shouldn't be weaker going in."
"We do have a lot of people who are just here for backup against the Grimm," Weiss pointed out. "What if we have them kill the ones we called? If the bandit did see it, they would think none of us world heroes were there... We could step in if we needed to, just, more discreetly."
"That's pretty sneaky," Meridian noted.
"I like it," Raven said. "Wouldn't be the first time I used someone's enemies to lure them out so I could kill them."
"Wow, really?" Nora said.
"She's talking about us, Nora," Ren said.
"Oh... Hey!" Nora frowned.
Raven ignored her.
Everyone else agreed to put this plan into place, but it would take hours to do it. They would have to go to Mistral's capital first and pick up the rest of their forces. It would take a few ships to do this.
Also, they had to get Hypnosia to agree.
However, that was easier than they thought. When she heard the idea, she said it didn't sound as risky as she expected.
"I wouldn't have to go in till you were ready," she said. "So I just have to get close to the main tribe in a good spot, hand over Watts, and then you just come in...as long as someone is there for you to anchor to."
"So there better be," Winter said.
"You say you got a message from Cinder already," Hypnosia said. "If she's lasted that long, Mala must mean to torture her... That would give you a few days with her, maybe. With her friends, I don't know. Let's hope, I guess. Just promise me one thing."
"What?" Raven said warily.
"If that doesn't work, either you kill me, or I kill myself before Mala can," Hypnosia said.
"Dark..." Winter said. "I wouldn't want to promise you that. We don't support suicide."
"You've got a funny way of planning your attacks then," Hypnosia said. "If it goes wrong at any point before you get in, some of you will likely die. Or I will."
She was not encouraging. But at least she agreed.
[RWBY AMV: "It Has Begun"--Mojocat AMVs]