"This is Blue-Leo-8. I am in position with the Booster Relay pack. All operations are clear. Ready to defend my location."
"This is Gold-Leo-1. Cameras overlooking the MTC mining compound. I am accompanied by Gold-Leo Brigade to oversee the protection of the camera crew."
"Black-Knight-1 in the Tallgeese Or ready to hold the main gate, operating alongside the remainder of Blue-Leo Brigade."
"Yum-ah shit, sorry, sorry. Not used to code names still. Black-Knight-3 armed by Tallgeese Bleu, ready to annihilate all escaping trash at the main gate. Remainder of Blue-Leo Brigade is ready and armed."
"Get it the fuck together dumbass. This is Black-Knight-2 reporting from inside the Tallgeese Blanc. I am in position with White-Leo Brigade to ambush their private relay tower."
"Good." Adam gazed at the map, the southeastern regions of Animus were the most lawless, thus both criminals and businesses alike could make more money there, should they be willing to abandon their morals and bury their sins under the weight of Lien. "Red-Leo-1, do you copy?"
He'd just drag that to the surface.
"Copy, Black-Knight-0, sir!"
"Are you ready for the rescue efforts?"
"Sir! We have food and water for a hundred people to survive two days and have already bribed the rail inspectors to smuggle the refugees into Mistral's Capital, sir."
"Good. Then everyone. Begin operations."
"SIR, YES SIR!"
"NO OPPRESSORS! PROTECT THE INNOCENT!" Trifa ordered with a whoop, her higher output Tallgeese Blanc Mobile Armor carrying her into the air in a single powerful leap.
A heavy assault rifle CRACKED with sound, carried in but a single hand, a small mechanical arm connecting the weapon to her shoulder for additional stability, plus quick drawing and holstering.
"THE-" A bandit working alongside the Mistral Trade Company was cut short as a 7.62mm Impact Round shattered through his head, tearing through the wooden post of his watchtower behind him.
Her fellow White-Leo Brigade members leapt over the walls, cutting down the guards and bandits alike as her Tallgeese Blanc's weight made her crash through the wooden guardpost, sending it toppling over.
"Shit." She let go of her rifle, the release of her hand causing the gun to swivel from the small simple mechanical arm that had been reverse-engineered from some old Atlas tech by someone in Mistral. Simple but effective, it swung the gun back around into a resting place against her shoulder.
Only Tallgeese Bleu could manage any sort of tangible flight, due to the nature of its build, but even her Blanc could use some basic thrusters built into the back skirt to hover just long enough for Trifa to spin and spray her spinnerets through the custom opening in her armor's wrists.
Webbing with some of her lingering Aura secured the falling watch tower to the other buildings and the wooden walls of the mining outpost, preventing the structure from falling on any of the miners.
Both humans and Faunus alike, dressed in rags, muscled but still emaciated from being underfed, stared as her black Mobile Armor with porcelain white trim landed on the ground.
With another thrust of her arm, her rifle swung back around, flipping to enter her grip, free left hand rose to flip the switch for the speaker system inside her helmet. The shield attached to the shoulder was white but with a black DLC coating sprayed in the insignia of a spider.
"IF YOU DESIRE FREEDOM! RUN FOR THE WEST GATE! ALL OF YOU WILL BE GRANTED FREEDOM!" Her voice was tinny, warped slightly from the limitations of the mic installed, but it was better that way. The voice that resulted was warped to better hide her identity, though still clearly sounded feminine. "ALL SLAVES WILL BE FREED! ALL OPPRESSORS WILL DIE!"
A warning siren began to blare, but was cut short as her White-Leo Brigade, their Leo Mobile Armors more a light gray and black compared to her cleaner white, took down the power to the communications tower. It seemed the MTC cut some corners and had less redundancies than expected.
Perhaps it was to be expected as one of the only few competitors to the SDC, having never managed to match the Schnee's riches that they cut more corners in a bid to do so.
A smattering of small arms fire shattered against her armor, making Trifa grin.
"It will take more than that TO CUT DOWN THIS TALLGEESE BLANC!" She roared, enjoying the fact that in the distance expensive cameras would be angled down at her and the rest of the Black Knights as they liberated enslaved miners.
The best part was, her slaughter would have justification, allowing her to look good to some people doing it. That was funny, the thought people would cheer her on as she got to kill some morons. What was wrong with liking killing anyways? Why was that such a bad thing? Never made much sense to her.
Everyone needed a hobby, right?
Still, knowing that it was helping her people was icing on the cake. She'd never have joined the Fang in the first place if she wasn't interested in making things better for her family. Her sibling's reactions when they'd first moved and begun living in Menagerie was… magical.
So if the higher ups in the Fang said they needed some black ops bullshit she'd do it. Half to ensure the future of the Faunus, half for the money and fun of it, even if it meant helping a few humans too. They were humans that suffered alongside her people, so they weren't as bad as the ones that shunned them, she supposed. Wasn't as if all humans were guilty.
Just most of 'em.
Her thumb flicked on the rifle to burst fire, trios of THU-THU-THUMPS cutting down those who fired upon her with ease.
Four bursts cut down three men, one of them living from Aura, but a fifth burst finished him off just fine. Not enough Aura to be a Huntsman usually meant joining the military (Atlas only), or working as a hired gun or bandit (everywhere else), so if she didn't join the Fang she'd have found herself in similar work.
So she just made it nice and quick.
That could have been her in another life. In truth Trifa herself didn't have much Aura either and hadn't been allowed to continue her education at a Huntsman Prep School near Vale called Silvermorn. That and the fact she was too quick to violence, though she was sure it was because they judged her for being a Faunus.
How the hell was it her fault for defending herself when racist bullies came at her outside of class? Fucking dumb.
Another flick of her left hand changed her mic from speaker to her team's call frequency.
"White-Leos, report!"
"Objective A accomplished, Black-Knight-2. Moving on to Objective B."
"Good, feel free to slaughter any guards or bandits. No civvies in any crossfire. That was Black-Knight-0's one demand."
"Got it, Black-Knight-2. No civvies, otherwise free fire boys!"
Though there would be a single Huntsman on duty here, her White-Leos should be enough to stop him as they pushed him together with superior firepower and numbers. They didn't need the corrupt Huntsman alive.
They were only going to capture a few people alive at all, to be honest..
The rest would be executed on camera for whatever message Black-Knight-0 was planning on sending out to the masses.
She couldn't hold back the hotness that ran through her body as she thought of their leader.
"He he he." Her blood was running hot as she leapt into the air, looking for someone else she could shoot. "This is the best!"
Watching Black-Knight-3 tear through any bandits or MTC employees that attempted to run was distasteful.
The blue and black Tallgeese Bleu flashed with twin Heat Chetes as they cleaved through flesh and shattered lower Aura pools with ease. The original implementation of the design was meant for pickaxes to hyper heat and vibrate through rock and stone, after all. Even if it was perverted for war, that did not change their efficacy all too much.
Ripper, the Chainsaw-Greatsword in his hands, still bearing a foregrip not unlike a regular chainsaw, roared as it bisected two slavers that rushed him with shotguns.
Maybe if they had slugs instead of regular 12 Gauge they might have done more than damage the paint of his Tallgeese Or.
Despite his Gold-Leo Brigade originally having been planned to be the Yellow-Leo Brigade and his own Mobile Armor planned to be named the Tallgeese Jaune, that left too poor a taste in his mouth.
They'd betrayed the trust of Menagerie's North Star for the sake of their people. He didn't have it in him to pervert the name of the greatest contributor of their paradise by staining it with human blood.
So despite the yellow and black of his and his brigade's armor, they were the Gold-Leos.
"Keep down the road. There will be our fellow Knights in Red to assist your bid for freedom!" He roared aloud again, the speakers of his helmet almost making his own ears ring. The power of the Mobile Armors were more or less perfect, though the auxiliary equipment crammed in were of much lesser quality. "Freedom for the enslaved! We Black Knights shall liberate you of your chains!"
The fact he was freeing humans too left a slightly bitter taste in his mouth. But if Jaune Arc could associate with the Schnees for the betterment of Menagerie (what else could it be that their North Star would lower himself to do as such?) then he could bear some humans that had suffered like their fellows.
"Thank you!" A little girl (dirty red hair, human, couldn't have been more than thirteen, though short and emaciated) ran by as she helped a Faunus boy who was limping heavily, his arm around her shoulders. One of the boy's two horns had been snapped off a long time ago, left to fester with mold. "Gods bless you!"
Weirdly that felt pretty good.
It was rare for a human to thank him. Not that she knew he was a Faunus, anyways. And yet it felt good.
He saw Black-Knight-3 unfurl his armored wings, the underside rigged up with an extra bit of exoskeleton framework, according to their armorer, Cid Skywind, as the topside was armored up more, allowing the bat Faunus inside of the Tallgeese Bleu to utilize his large wings as shields.
Unlike the rest of the Tallgeese Mobile Armors, the Tallgeese Bleu had additional thrusters installed, as they were attached to the interior of the wings.
Rather it left his hands and arms more free for melee, which seemed to be his personal preferred combat strategy. He was good with short blades. The only issue with Black-Knight-3 was his personality. Even Black-Knight-2 kept herself in check better.
They curled protectively around a fleeing mining slave that would have been caught in the crossfire, turning as it caught the gunner, thrusters activating as he additionally leapt into the air. Though he didn't have his speakers active, Black-Knight-1 knew that the leader of the Blue-Leos was cackling from inside his Mobile Armor.
The gunner fell to his death as large metal wings and the orange flare of rough, amateur thrusters let the Tallgeese Bleu swoop down like a bird of prey (or a bat in the night) as twin Heat Chetes cleaved through another MTC guard.
Say what you will about SDC and their shitty, shady practices, but thanks to Atlas they couldn't get away with legalized debt-slavery the way Mistral did. Sure they called it indentured servitude, but as it legally stripped away basic human/Faunus rights, it was but a fancier word for slave.
If any Kingdom needed to be cut out from Remnant like the cancer it was, it was Mistral.
As a Mistral native himself from the south-east isles, he knew this to be true.
Perhaps this was their leader's end goal? Collapse Mistral and let Menagerie become the new Fourth Kingdom? Unlikely, but it was a fun thought regardless. He supposed there was a reason why he was being paid to fight, rather than to think.
For now, he had his orders. To be the shadow of Menagerie's light. To give shade to the Faunus that had no means to reach paradise.
He'd forsaken his name long ago.
All he was now was the glimmering gold dregs of Menagerie's light.
Ripper roared in his hands as he kicked a bandit using a mining slave as a hostage, following up and cleaving him in two from above.
"Run." He advised the slave. "Freedom awaits. Grasp it with your own hands."
"Y-yes. Thank you."
Their leader said that it wasn't enough to want something.
That you had to deserve it.
Perhaps this was what he meant.
It was a shame he couldn't be there in person.
"Who are you? What the hell do you think you're doing?!"
"Say hello to the world one last time, Sinclair Macchiatus. This… is your curtain call."
The kneeling nobleman was defiant, fighting against the hands of two White-Leo soldiers that held him by his shoulders, keeping his rich silks muddied upon the bloody ground.
"So you do know who I am! You know exactly who you dared to mess with! Who sent you? This tech… are you Atlas? Are you aware of what your actions will cause?!"
Though heavily distorted, his Tallgeese Rouge worn by someone with merely a very similar build to his own, it was still Adam's voice that that spoke, remotely connected from the same booster relay that Blue-Leo-8 was managing.
"Yes. I know who you are. As does most everyone watching this live feed." Adam turned to the monitor of the hijacked video feed of the Mistral Mercury, the largest news network in Mistral, also the dirtiest, accepting nearly any bribe. "Son of Nero Macchiatus of the Great Houses. And yet how is it that such a NOBLE house makes its fortune?"
A slew of documents, photos, and video clips of abused slaves appeared on the screen.
"Illegal contracts that condemn legitimate workers into debt-slaves over mere months. Forced labor of the denizens of neighboring settlements. Unsafe practices. Even forcing your own workers into blood sport for your own amusement. The wholesale of Dust to Crime Families, additionally under your father's own nose… Even the death of your elder brother."
Even if his 'King' was useless as a person, the power of his newfound wealth was formidable, and his sister who managed his spy network using the wealth of all of Almurawij's casinos was efficient. If anything the greatest threat in the Crown might be their Princess. Even if she was seemingly under her brother's Semblance, too weak willed to break free like Adam himself.
"You can't prove anything! I've done nothing wrong!"
"You cannot see it, but the evidence is clear to every viewer watching in their homes. Raising a drink to your just desserts in the pubs. To every innocent man and woman that we have freed that you have made suffer. To those on a train to Mistral right now, hundreds of victims with testimonies of the atrocities you put them through."
"Shut up! You think this display scares me?! You're all smoke and mirrors! Even if this was live, do you think the world wouldn't see that only Atlas could arm you with such technology? There will be war!"
"Fool. We bear armor simply because we are Knights. Every single one of us have forsaken our names. We are dead to the world. Huntsmen and Huntresses who have given up everything for the sake of True Justice."
"Bullshit! Your fancy suits of tin are Atlasean!"
"And yet our steel bears Mistral roots. Like the spartacoi of old that fought to liberate the innocent the yoke of oppressors. We are not merely deliverers of Justice. We are the vengeful dead. Equalizers. For all the oppressed. Human, Faunus, we will bring about freedom for both in the ways even the IDEALISTS have failed to do! For we are all equal in death. THAT is what we are. We are death to the evil. We are justice. We are the Black Knights and our crusade has only just begun."
His body doubled raised a hand, a signal for Black-Knight-1 in Tallgeese Or to raise his Ripper.
Necessary lies. The White Fang could never take such actions to save their people. So they needed to do whatever they could to save their people.
"Wait! Nonono! I'm worth far more to you alive!"
"No. There is no value in your life, parasite. All you do is take… and take… and give suffering in return. The only thing that you can give of value now is catharsis for those who suffered."
"WAIT! PLE-"
His body double's hand dropped, black with gold trim form of Tallgeese Or dropping his arm, beheading the nobleman.
The Tallgeese Rouge turned to the cameraman that was operating by their side.
"I am Black-Knight-0. And YOU are next."
"Black Knight Zero… What is this edgy bullshit?" Jaune muttered. "These are the guys that stole my Fabricator?"
"That's some big talk from somebody running away from Blake, Yang, and Emerald." Juniper teased.
He turned, red faced, at his Big Brother who was floating in the air with a smug look of amusement.
"C-come on! It's totally not like that!"
"You're in Mistral's Capital, waiting for clues on the train that'll be arriving with their supposed freed miners. Instead of facing the fact that three girls are interested in you." Big Brother Juniper's hand left where it curled beneath his chin to point at Jaune with two fingers like a gun.
"First off, Emerald is, uh, really adamant on serving me. Honestly I'm more worried at this point than, y'know. I thought Yang thought of me like a brother and then suddenly we were kissing and Blake with the nibbling and purring and… just… just let me just process!"
"People would die to be in your situation."
"That feels like a poor thing to say when people have literally died on live television."
"Ok, that's fair. Sorry, Jaune."
"No I- ugh. You're right. I'm letting this distract me. I'll… I'll face it all properly best I can when I get back. I just need to look into the thieves."
Honestly if it wasn't for the Diamond Like Carbon coatings from Earth's ARK of Humanity, Jaune himself might have bought the lie that they were a group of Huntsmen and Huntresses that had just good weapons and armor. Maybe even helped by a disgruntled and jaded Atlasean scientist or something.
But he was the one that introduced the material to Remnant, he wasn't going to be fooled that easily.
Rather, he was sure that someone had just cleverly disguised the exo-skeletons he'd repurposed as mining suits under the full body armor. And if the armor was to tank the majority of blows, all Aura could be relegated just to body temperature management underneath, not even needing a cooling system.
It was actually kind of smart, even if he didn't like it.
"Alright, alright. Just as long as you don't run from them. Even if they were serious about just wanting practice and you're overreacting or if they really do look at you in that light, you have to at least answer their feelings." Big Brother Juniper made a bit of a complicated expression. "Not everyone even gets a chance to reply."
Jaune swallowed.
His brother must have lost someone not too long after being confessed to himself. It must have been a painful moment that shaped him, something he didn't want Jaune himself to undergo.
"Ok. After looking a bit into this. I just don't feel fully comfortable with a Gacha item on the loose. I can't stay long anyways, so I'll just Shadow tag a few people that get off the train coming in and leave."
Even as he said that, Jaune could look down from the building he stood up from, seeing plenty of celebration down in the lower levels as people relished in a highborn dying getting what he deserved, though. There were plenty of people down closer to the slums in Mistral who were viewing this moment with a sense of wonder rather than concern. Frankly it wasn't common for a noble to literally get away with murder on occasion, spending exorbitant amounts of Lien to be acquitted without standing in court.
There were literally laws where one could buy the blood price of a life.
But maybe the worst part for Jaune himself was that the initial actions of these Black Knights weren't unforgivable by any means. Maybe heavy handed, presumptuous, and more than a bit too public, but he couldn't bring himself to truly dislike them in full. The only issue was that he didn't feel comfortable trusting strangers with his stuff.
That and for some reason his brother's words from when he was a child, when he first discovered the White Fang echoed somewhere in the back of his mind.
Know that… no organization is a monolith. Which is to say that the goals of any group can change over time.
And for a group that began their first action with an act of aggression made public when they could have stayed under the radar… well he had the feeling only escalation would be possible should their goals change.
The way a lot of their members fought were… blood-thirsty, angry, spiteful. As if only loosely bound by cause. There were those clearly looking for purpose, but it seemed a minority. Maybe. It was hard to tell anything for sure through the armor.
It was difficult to be sure because of Zero's voice distortion, but he didn't seem to be lying about the people they freed. The 'live' stream of footage shown to the public could have equally been filmed and doctored beforehand, but that seemed to be the only thing that could have been a lie in any capacity.
Because the snapshots of the paper evidence lined up. They even uploaded a bunch of copies of it all over the internet.
He tapped away at his Scroll, confirming what he could.
"But the biggest issue with what they did from Mistral's perspective is that they killed the only remaining heir to the Macchiatus House. That means they'll have to adopt a Lower House clansman to inherit their name. At that point it's pretty much a succession, elevating a Lower House to replace a Great House." Jaune muttered as he delved into the Macchiatus House's details. "They'd finally reached some equilibrium with the Idealists. But now they're in upheaval. If I know Kamina-senpai, he and his people will try to ride up on this wave and crash headfirst into it all."
Jaune bit his lip.
"There's trouble brewing in the air." His Big Brother agreed, looking down to see a train on the horizon beginning to arrive towards the Capital.
Crowds had gathered by the station, his Shadows already hiding underfoot, ready to dash into the depths of the steel locomotive, to hide away into the depths of the miners that had been freed by the Black Knights.
He'd have some answers one way or another.
Guren Ngyuen had never seen such a large camp before.
Some of the other miners laughed as they saw it with joy, some of them cursed it lowly with their hatred, all of them called it the Capital.
She'd heard of it, of course, but it had always been like the location of a fairy tale. Someplace that only existed in her mind.
But looking up at the City of the Singing Mountain, there was a sense of just how small she really was.
"Hey, Gura." Her brother nudged, his nubby broken horn rubbing tiredly into her shoulder, "We need to get off with everyone else."
"Oh, sorry Kozu." She replied, helping him up, slinging his arm around her shoulders. "Yeah, and there are doctors here in Mistral, right? We need one to look at your leg."
"We've no money, Gura." He reminded, making Guren bite her lip with a frown. "We can't afford one."
"There has to be someone willing to help. Those Knight people saved us, right? There has to be good people out there then. We have to believe in something."
But Mistral wasn't kind.
Outside of the flashing of cameras and the questioning of the police, Guren and her brother Kozuki found themselves begging for scraps in the slums of the lower levels of Mistral. In mere days they'd found themselves working for scraps to begging for them.
It was to the point that she was debating on taking up the few offers she'd received to sell herself so that her brother could get medical attention and more to eat than stale bread crusts. He was older than her and had helped protect her when she was younger in the mines, borderline raised her himself, so it was her turn to do the same, even if they weren't blood.
"Messy. They didn't clean up after themselves at all. That's minus some more points. Amateur work, or was their real goal different? Even the Fang sent some relief packages out, but nothing from them."
"Hmrgh?" Guren asked through a mouthful of food, some fried potato balls (with meat inside), piping hot from the local street stands. "D-did I do something wrong?"
"No, no." The kind stranger waved his hand, still looking over her brother's leg.
He claimed he was a doctor despite not being much older than Guren herself, but her brother Kozu said that if he wasn't lying, he was still just an apprentice or a back alley one working without a license. Still he didn't refuse the free food and check up that the younger boy had offered.
They weren't exactly in a position to be picky about refusing some free food, at least. Especially since he offered to let them choose where it came from so they'd know it wasn't tampered with. They'd picked the street stall of a nice enough auntie that sometimes gave whatever remaining scraps of her croquettes to street kids. She sold out pretty often, though.
"Just thinking about… well other people. You're fine."
He did have some bad news though.
"We can't save the leg. Honestly, it's rotting from the inside. That's why it's so swollen and going green."
"...I see." Guren clutched her brother's hand as he let out a sad laugh. "I knew that would be the case, but I didn't want to believe it. I haven't even been able to feel it since yesterday."
The weird doctor boy frowned.
"Shit. I have to even clean up after their… ugh."
He pulled a thick envelope from his blue haori coat's pockets and shoved it into Guren's hands.
"Take this, get a hotel room and clean up. Somewhere reputable enough to take security seriously, but won't ask too many questions. If you don't know any, The Candlelight two levels up should be good enough. Tell the receptionist that you're a pair of honeybees and they'll treat you well. Then pay the extra fee to have the hotel book you a train ticket down to Oniyuri as well as a lift to the station itself. Then take the next boat ride to Menagerie. Ok? I can't stay longer than this. I have promises to keep."
Guren's eyes widened as she stared into the envelope. There was so much Lien.
"Shut up and don't mention anything about it. Mistral's got hungry eyes everywhere. Take care of yourself and then you can do whatever you want with the remainder." The kind stranger warned, his blue eyes flashing from under his wool knit black beanie. "I'll try to see if I can't check in on you, but that'll be hard for me too, so just don't mess it up, please. Once you're on Menagerie things'll be easier, ok?"
"Why… why are you doing this. What do you want from us?" Kozuki asked with concern, his arm already rising protectively to shield Guren herself.
"...is it wrong to just want to help people?"
Guren wouldn't ever forget those words as the stranger rounded the corner and disappeared.