SAPR

by Scipio Smith

Eat the Rich (New)

Eat the Rich

Sunset teleported, appearing an inch or two above the roof in a crack and a flash of green light before dropping down the remaining distance to land upon said roof.

“Ow!” Sunset winced, as she landed kind of heavily upon her feet; her soles and her ankles both protested it; pain throbbed up her legs, and not the momentary simulacra of pain generated by aura — because of course she didn’t have any aura right now — that flared to let her know and then faded again; this was an actual — not unbearable but low-key and persistent — pain, raising its hand to get her attention.

My aura is still broken. I need to keep that in mind. It would take a while for her aura to come back, and until then, she would be vulnerable in all kinds of ways, both large — she couldn’t just let herself get shot or stabbed or hit with heavy things — and small; just throwing herself around with too much reckless abandon might do her a serious injury. She would need to be a little more careful with herself.

Some might say that the most careful she could be with herself would be to stay where she was, or to have stayed on the Comfort, stayed safe and waited for her aura to come back.

Sunset turned her eyes towards the Emerald Tower, to where the green lights burned in the dark of night. Not far away, she could see other lights in the sky: the bright white lights of the Amity Arena, illuminated in all its glory; the lights of a damaged Atlesian cruiser hovering nearby, when all the other ships had gone away, to fight the grimm upon the outer defences.

But it was the green lights of the Emerald Tower that spoke to Sunset most of all, that shone especially on her, that spoke to her … that would have shamed her, if she had done nothing.

Pyrrha, Jaune, Penny, Ruby, Rainbow Dash, Blake, everyone was fighting. They had fought in the arena, they had fought at Beacon, and now, they would fight outside of Vale as well; perhaps they were already fighting beyond the walls, the battle underway. So far away as Sunset was, she could not tell. But she knew that they would fight, if they were not fighting already.

She knew that Flash had lost both his legs fighting.

A little whimper escaped Sunset’s lips at the thought, though she pursed them tightly together.

Poor Flash. Poor, poor Flash; poor sweet Flash; poor handsome Flash; poor virtuous Flash. Poor Flash, would even his mother love him now?

Brave Flash, who had suffered much because he had risked much.

Her friends were fighting, and others had suffered for having fought; not only Flash but Councillor Emerald too, up on the Comfort under the knives of the surgeons.

Sunset had fought too, up until now, but if she didn’t keep fighting, if she stepped back at this point … she would be shamed.

No, it would be worse than shame; she would hate herself, she could not bear it. The fact that she had no aura was of as little consequence as her remaining aura — which was to say, of no consequence at all; she had to do what she could.

But what could — or should — she do, and where ought she to do it?

She could go out, beyond the wall, and join the others there; Jaune would even be able to restore her aura so that she wasn’t a liability to the others. But, even if she could get there — and there were genuine practicalities to consider such as how to find the others and whether she would find the gate opened — going out there to fight with them beyond the city would mean … it would mean coming face to face with Ruby.

That was something … perhaps best avoided for both their sakes.

She could avoid Ruby on the battlefield, but who knew if fate might bring them together, and if she wanted Jaune to boost her aura, she would presumably have to go at least somewhere near Ruby in the first place.

No, although a part of her heart desired to venture forth in that direction, perhaps it was best not. Better to…

Better to see if there was something that she could do here in Vale first. Perhaps she should look for Cinder, to stop her from going anywhere and doing anything unfortunate.

Except without aura, would she stand a chance against Cinder if she caught up with her? It wasn’t as though Cinder was helpless in the face of Sunset’s magic; she was not, she was quite capable of resisting it, as she had just proven in a fight in which Sunset had aura and had, in the best possible interpretation, just about gotten the upper hand before they were interrupted.

Without aura … it almost didn’t bear thinking about what Cinder might do to her. Sunset would be completely at Cinder’s mercy — and that really didn’t bear thinking about.

Sunset wanted to do something, but she didn’t want that something to be getting sliced into unicorn cutlets by Cinder’s obsidian blades or squirming at Cinder’s feet imploring her for mercy — for the second time tonight.

No, Cinder was … Cinder was too strong for her right now. Sunset would just have to hope that the revenge that Cinder sought was not on Pyrrha.

When her aura was restored, then perhaps … perhaps she would turn her thoughts to Cinder once again, and hope that the good outcome that had seemed at one point to be within her grasp could be repeated.

For now, for now, for now … for now, she would remain in Vale and ensure that the city was at peace again. Even before Sonata’s madness had set loose the Valish Defence Force upon the streets, grimm cultists had been attacking different locations; she’d seen the skydock—

The skydock. Sunset turned on the rooftop, looking to see if she could see the skydock from here. She hadn’t teleported onto one of the tallest buildings in Vale, but from the right direction, she could still see the plume of smoke rising from the direction of the dock.

She would go there. Perhaps she would get there and find that it had all been taken care of, but by the same token, she might not. It was as good a heading as any.

Sunset scampered down the fire escape, her boots making the metal steps rattle beneath them as she ran rapidly down them. She had teleported not far from the Valish Military Headquarters — intentionally so, not out of any great love or affection for the place but because it was where she had left her bike, by far her best means of traversing Vale quickly. The building onto which she had teleported, which wasn’t tall enough to see the skydock, only the smoke of what Sunset guessed to be a skyliner exploding, was not far away from the imposing headquarters; it was a Vacuan restaurant, with a garden in which wooden tables and chairs mingled with potted palms and rhodolirium flowers. There was no one around, the lights were off inside the restaurant, and Sunset was able to leave the garden via the front gate without anyone questioning her presence or trying to stop her.

The street beyond was not completely deserted; it was occupied by Valish soldiers wandering aimlessly down it, unarmed, with no discipline, no order, no sense of where they were going. They shambled down the street, looking even more under the control of some other will than when Sonata … no, no, actually, it was not so; if they had been under the control of another, then they would have looked more purposeful than this.

But Sunset was glad of their lack of purpose, because it meant that none of them tried to hinder Sunset in her passage as she returned to where she had left her bike when she and Councillor Emerald had come here to try and stop Sonata.

Sunset glanced upwards and hoped that the Atlesians were as good at medicine as they were thought to be at warfare.

Sunset turned into the side alley. Her bike was there, waiting for her; nobody had taken it. There was a part of Sunset that wouldn’t have been surprised to find that Cinder had stolen it, just because she could, just to annoy Sunset, but she hadn’t. She had left it there, for Sunset.

Did Cinder know how to ride a bike?

Sunset preferred to think that Cinder’s inaction was the result of some generosity of spirit on her part, rather than incapacity.

Or she just hadn’t found the bike.

Regardless, Sunset’s motorcycle was still here, waiting for her. Sunset pulled it away from the wall and climbed aboard; without aura, it felt a little harder between her legs, and when she started it off, she felt not only the familiar purr of the engine but also a more unexpected throbbing sound beneath her, juddering her a little bit, making her tailbone bump up and down.

Nevermind, it wasn’t actively unpleasant, and though it might become a little wearing in time, she could stand it.

Her trusty mount would get her where she wanted, where she needed to go.

And so, with the engine growling beneath her, Sunset set off; she had to go a little slower than she would have liked at first, weaving between the shambling soldiers who headed down the road so aimlessly, with as little care for where they were standing as they seemed to have for where they were going. Because they were all over the place, not keeping to one side or part of the road at all, Sunset had to go slowly so that she could go around them. It didn’t seem likely that they would make way for her, and so, she weaved and leaned and turned her bike as nimbly as it would turn to avoid hitting any of them, only being able to really open the throttle up at all once she had gotten out in front of the soldiers and had some open road before her.

Sunset counted herself lucky that it was still open road. Now that martial law was over, there was no curfew in effect, and there were no Valish soldiers patrolling the roads telling people to stay indoors or they would be shot; there was nothing stopping anyone from leaving their homes and crowding the streets.

Nothing but fear. Fear of the grimm, fear of the military if they didn’t believe everything that Councillor Emerald had said, fear of the grimm cultists.

That last one wasn’t really a fear, was it? Well, it was, but it wasn’t an irrational fear.

Neither were the grimm.

There were plenty of reasons to stay indoors still; for all that a front door or locked windows would offer scant protection from them, it still felt less unwise than stirring abroad.

That kind of anxiety, the fear spread by the events of the night so far, might only make the grimm more eager to assault the city, but Sunset could hardly blame the people for being nervous. They had been given cause.

And she didn’t even want to blame them because it was good for her. The roads were open, and she could drive her bike quickly down them without having to worry about being stuck in traffic.

The city was quiet. Subdued. Understandably so. There were still few lights on in the houses, although this wasn’t a part of the city that had been blacked out. People were just keeping their lights off, or their curtains drawn, or both. Sunset saw no one. Not even stray cats or dogs were out on the road. The skies, too, were clear; the Atlesian airships had all pulled out, gone beyond the city to defend against the grimm, and as for the Valish, their airships were grounded in the wake of the recent unpleasantness.

The skies were … not quite empty; there was a Bullhead flying over Vale, a single Bullhead, as far as Sunset could make out: the airship was lit up but unaccompanied; no others flew in formation with it, no others were nearby. Just the one Bullhead, flying over the rooftops of Vale.

Because it was so rare, a single airship in an otherwise empty sky, and because the roads were as empty as the sky, the Bullhead not only drew Sunset’s attention but held it there, her eyes fixed upon the airship as it traversed the skies.

Her eyes fixed upon the airship as a rocket or a missile flew up from one of the buildings beneath, from a medium-rise apartment building by the look of it, and hit the Bullhead on the wing. There was the flash of an explosion, a roaring that was dim by the time it reached Sunset, and then the Bullhead began to drop, flames and smoke streaming from one engine, descending out of sight beneath the cityscape.

Change of plans, Sunset thought as she turned off at the nearest exit, away from the skydock and in the direction of where she had seen that Bullhead go down. She didn’t know who was on it or who had shot it down, or why, but she assumed that the people doing the shooting were the bad guys, which meant that there was someone there on that airship — hopefully, assuming they had survived the crash — that needed help.

And that was as good a reason to head in that direction as any.

And if nobody had survived the crash, then … better to confirm that for herself with her own eyes rather than merely assuming it.

Sunset turned off the main road that had been carrying her through Vale and back onto narrower streets, side streets, alleyways. This district was, if she remembered her map of Vale correctly, known as Laceyton, and it was a district of contradictions: some of the wealthiest people in Vale lived here, alongside some of the very poorest. Sunset drove down streets of terraced houses three storeys high, with stoops and ornate railings and large windows, so similar to the Canterlot of Equestria that it was almost like being back home; she drove beneath narrow tower blocks with small windows that cast looming shadows over her. It was from one of those tower blocks that the rocket that brought down the bullhead had been fired. Sunset also saw some evidence that perhaps the terraced houses, with their old red brickwork and their railings and their ornamental door knockers had also not been spared the madness of this night: she drove past more than one door open, perhaps broken in, no light emerging from out of the houses.

Sunset didn’t stop to check on them. She didn’t know what had happened here, for all that the signs indicated that nothing good had, but she knew, because she had seen it, that an airship had gone down near here, and that someone might be in trouble unless she got to them.

Then someone ran out of one of the houses, out of the open doorway, stumbling down the stoop, nearly tripping and falling down the steps, momentum carrying him out into the road where he held up one hand to Sunset.

Sunset turned her bike rapidly, throwing out one foot to stop her bike as it skidded to a halt; that felt a bit different when you didn’t have any aura — she felt it considerably more in her leg and wasn’t sure that it looked cool enough to be worth the sensation — but nevertheless, however much pressure it put on her leg and her feet as both of them scraped across the tarmac of the road, she nevertheless came to a stop without hitting the kid who had scrambled out of the house and into the middle of the road.

Sunset called him a kid, but he was probably about the same age as her, maybe even a little bit older, although he didn’t look particularly older; he also didn’t look younger, either. He had a narrow face that put Sunset in mind of Russel a little bit, with close-cropped dark hair on top of his head and big ears sticking out on either side. He had a wart under his lip, which was unfortunately large and obvious, particularly as his lips were quite thin. His teeth were a little bit yellow, which Sunset was close enough to him to see when he opened his mouth, and his eyes were blue. He had stubble growing on his cheeks and chin, indifferently shaved: in some places, quite closely cropped, in other places, barely touched by a razor. He wore a dark hoodie with some sort of cheap design upon it, a square image printed across the chest that had cracked and peeled so much it was scarcely recognizable.

Plus, there was blood on his hoodie, and on his dark blue jeans and trainers as well — he wore the same kind of trainers as Jaune, Sunset noticed — which made it even harder to make out what remained of the design on his hoodie.

He had one hand thrust into the pocket of his hoodie while he lowered the other, the one which he had raised to bring Sunset to a stop.

Sunset raised the visor of her helmet. “What…?” She stopped herself from saying ‘what’s wrong’ because the amount of blood made it kind of obvious. For the same reason, it felt wrong to ask ‘are you okay?’ “You need help,” she said, as a statement, not as a question.

“You … you’re armed,” the young man said. “Are you a huntress?”

“Something like that,” Sunset said. “What happened?”

The young man hesitated. “Can I … can I see your face?”

Sunset blinked, but decided that considering what it seemed like what this lad had been through, he was entitled to an odd request. Maybe he just wanted to be sure she was a person; shock could make people feel or think funny things, and traumatic experiences … Sunset knew how they could mess with your head.

So she pulled off her helmet, and smiled reassuringly at him. “Hey,” she said. “My name’s Sunset Shimmer. And I … I’m here to help you, if you need it. And I’ve gotta say, you look like you need it.”

“Sunset Shimmer,” he repeated slowly. “That … that’s a pretty name,” he murmured. He stared at her. “You’ve got a pretty face too.”

“Um … thanks,” Sunset said softly. “Listen, why don’t you start by telling me your name, and—”

“She was pretty too,” he said, his whole body trembling.

Sunset tilted her head a little to one side. “Who was?”

The young man twitched. “Heather,” he said. “Her name was Heather. I … I used to see her, walking to school. Different school to me, of course. I live a couple of streets away, up in…” He trailed off for a second. “But I used to see her. She laughed at me.” He wiped his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie. “She said that I smelled. She thought she was too good for me, thought she was too good for the likes of us, but…” Again, he trailed off, and this time, he didn’t start up again.

Sunset looked down at his hand, the one that she couldn’t see because he had it hidden in his hoodie pocket. “I’m going to need you to show me your other hand,” she said softly. “I won’t ask you again.”

The young man’s face twitched. “Why?” he asked. “I bet, I bet you think that you’re—”

“I said show me your hand!” Sunset snapped, raising her own hand, wreathed in green magic, the green glow that engulfed the young man too as she grabbed him entire in telekinesis, lifting him up off his feet while he struggled and squirmed futilely against her magic.

She spread his arms, both of them, out on either side of him.

In the hand that he had kept in his pockets, he held a knife, one of the kind that they called chill knives, although Sunset wasn’t quite sure why — something to do with movies, she thought. It was long for a knife — long for a knife that some random kid was carrying around anyway; she might not have thought much of it in the hands of a huntsman or huntress — with a curved blade and a serrated edge on the inside.

Sunset’s fingers twitched, and she magically twisted the young man’s hand — he winced in pain — so that the knife fell out of his hand and clattered to the ground at her feet.

Sunset kept her magical grip on the young man as she bent down to pick up the knife. It had a snarling beowolf’s head engraved on the blade, along with the word RIPPER.

Sunset looked up at the young man, her lips twisting with disgust. Her gaze turned towards the doorway that he had emerged from. When he had stumbled out of the house, she had thought that it must have been his house, that he had been attacked, that he was a survivor, but now…

Now, darker possibilities filled her mind.

She should have known; she should have suspected from his hoodie with its faded design, his worn out jeans, his look. He didn’t look as though he belonged in a house like this, with ornate wrought iron railings and an antique stone front.

He was looking down at her as she held him helpless and suspended. His eyes were wide with fear.

As well they should be, if what she was starting to think — to fear — had happened had, in fact, happened.

Sunset kept him held up with magic as she left her bike behind and walked up the steps, the same steps that the young man had stumbled out of.

Inside the house was dark, without even the little moonlight that fell upon the street, without the light of the street lamps that wasn’t reaching inside the door. Sunset tossed the chill knife away — it wasn’t something she fancied adding to her collection — and with her now-free hand, she fumbled for a light switch. She couldn’t find one; her searching fingers felt only patterned wallpaper, some sort of undulating, rising and falling; she couldn’t tell what it was, but she imagined maybe flowers. Flowers were the sort of thing you might find on three-dimensional wallpaper.

You might find flowers, but Sunset wasn’t finding a light switch, so she cast the night vision spell upon her eyes so that she could see inside the dark house.

What she saw was a spacious hallway, with a wide staircase with fancy, old-fashioned looking rails that curved and twisted around one another like thorns. The floor was wooden, covered in smashed crockery and discarded flowers — and stained with blood.

Two people lay dead, tied to chairs; they were middle-aged, a man and a woman; he wore a sweater-vest and a shirt with cufflinks, she wore a dress with a flower-print pattern and a pearl necklace. Their faces were frozen in a rictus of fear, eyes wide, staring lifelessly out, mouths hanging open as though they had … as though they had died screaming.

Sunset’s chest rose and fell. She could feel her heart beating more rapidly.

They had both been … Sunset swallowed; she could feel bile rising in her throat. They had both been stabbed more than once. In fact, they had both been stabbed repeatedly, and cut. They had wounds … she couldn’t tell what colour his sweater-vest had been, and she could only tell that her dress had flowers on it from down near the bottom and the shoulders where there was less blood.

And then there was the blood on the floor, the blood in which someone had painted some sort of symbol; it reminded Sunset of Jaune’s symbol, the double crescent, except that here, the crescents were bisected by a … a diamond? An arrow? It was hard to make out; it wasn’t a particularly good drawing.

Plus, it was drawn in blood.

Either way, the crescent was surrounded by a star, an eight-pointed star.

Symbols weren’t unknown in Equestrian magic, although they weren’t common either; they were only really required for spells of exceptional complexity.

And in Equestria, they didn’t require sacrifice.

There was a dead girl in the centre of the symbol; Sunset didn’t know if the symbol had been made with her blood or that of the older two whom she could only presume to be her parents, just as she could only presume that this was Heather. She had magenta-coloured hair splayed out around her head, and pale skin, and green eyes that stared out as lifelessly as the eyes of her parents.

Her t-shirt was so bloody Sunset could barely see the Schnee snowflake on it. Her wrists and ankles were bound, and the ropes were likewise stained with blood.

There was a lot of blood.

Sunset turned away. She had to turn away, or she was going to be sick.

It was just as he’d said, Heather had been a pretty girl. Probably even prettier when those lifeless green eyes had been alive and had light in them.

Sunset’s hands clenched into fists. The young man groaned in pain.

Sunset didn’t care. In fact, there was a part of her that relished the sound.

Her mouth twisted with anger, her teeth bared like a hound as she stomped down the stoop and pulled the young man towards her, lowering him so that his feet almost touched the ground.

“You,” she snarled, “are going to tell me what happened, and if you tell me everything quickly enough, then maybe — maybe — I won’t jam one of these rails into your eye!”

“She had it coming, they all did!” the young man shouted. “All of them, they think they’re better than us.”

“'Us'?” Sunset asked. “You weren’t alone, were you?”

The young man’s face twitched; he bared his teeth at her just as Sunset had bared hers at him; she feared that his teeth were more frightening, yellow as they were, with gums that were worn away to make his canines look even bigger, crooked and unevenly worn. She was put in mind of a dog, a wild dog that could do with being put down.

“The rough beast is slouching towards Vytal,” he said. “And when it gets there, it’s not just going to claim four crowns, no. It’s going to eat the rich. It’s going to gobble them all up raw. The grimm are going to kill them all—”

“Then why did you go and kill that girl?” Sunset demanded.

“We have to show our commitment,” the young man said. “That’s what he said, that’s what he told us: when the grimm arrive, we have to prove that we’re worthy; we have to make a sacrifice in blood!”

“Who told you?” Sunset demanded. “Is it your friends setting off rockets? Did they shoot down that airship?”

“We’re making offerings to the darkness,” the young man said. “As many as we can. We’re taking down the ones who look down on us and those who defend them.”

“Not right now you’re not,” Sunset growled. “So how come you’re still here when everyone else has gone? You made your offering, why stick around?”

The young man didn’t answer, and Sunset found that she was actually quite glad of that. It was a question which, although she might have asked it, she wasn’t sure that she actually wanted to know the answer.

And now … now she had to decide what she was going to do with him.

It wasn’t as though she had a police car that she could bundle him into. She could call the police, but would they even answer?

She probably ought to try calling them, before she got into any darker ideas.

Sunset didn’t want to be a taker of lives, after all.

Sunset’s other hand began to glow as she magically grabbed hold of some of the iron railings outside the house of Heather, the house that this young man and his fellow grimm cultists — for that was surely what he was — had broken into and murdered the inhabitants. She held the young man still as she ripped the wrought iron railings free. The metal groaned as Sunset twisted it, bending the rails as though they were ropes — not quite; ropes would have bent much more easily — to wrap around the young man, binding his arms and legs and rendering him utterly immobile.

Sunset dumped him down on the pavement, hands tied, arms stuck to his sides, legs bound.

“You’re gonna die too!” he shouted. “You’re all gonna die! The rough beast—”

“Can bite my tail!” Sunset snapped. “Now shut up, or I’ll gag you as well!”

“You can’t stop it,” he declared. “You might as well try and stop the tide, a tide that will—

Sunset rolled her eyes as she snapped her fingers.

The young man’s mouth disappeared. His eyes bulged, and wordless — obviously — moaning sounds emerged from … well, behind that layer of skin.

The moans and groans became increasingly panicked.

Sunset was very tempted to leave him like that, but if she didn’t come back at some point, then he was going to starve to death, or some doctor would slice his face open, neither of which would be ideal.

So she snapped her fingers again, and his mouth returned.

“Quiet!” Sunset commanded, jabbing her finger towards him as, with her other hand, she got out her scroll.

She called the police and waited.

Her scroll indicated that it was dialling; there was no response. She was getting a signal, that was indicated clearly enough, but no answer.

Then the dialling indicator switched to a green call sign — unfortunately followed by an automated message.

“Thank you for calling the Vale Police Department,” said a voice which sounded as though it had recorded each word separately and out of context, such was the stilted cadence and awkward pauses between each word. “Unfortunately, there are no operators available to take your call at the moment, so please leave a message appropriate to the police service that you require, and an operator will respond to you as soon as possible. If your life is in imminent danger, please press One. If you would like to report a crime in progress, please press Two. If you would like to report a crime that has already concluded, please press Three.”

Sunset pressed three. There was a pause.

“Thank you for reporting a historic offence,” said the same automated voice. Sunset tapped her foot impatiently as it went on. “Due to the fact that the offence in question is no longer in progress, officers may not be able to respond immediately as historic offences will be treated as a secondary priority. Please leave a message after the tone, being sure to give your name, address, and scroll number so that officers can contact you. Thank you.”

There was a beep.

“Hello,” Sunset said. “This is Sunset Shimmer of Beacon Academy.” Hopefully, that would move someone to take this with a modicum of seriousness. “I’m at…” — she looked around for a street sign, finding one a few yards away — “Cavendish Street, where a house has been broken into and a family has been murdered. I’ve secured the killer, and I’ve left him tied up outside the house — it’s number Fourteen, Cavendish Street. He confessed to me. I’ve got to go now, I’ve seen an airship crash that I need to check out, but if someone could come and pick him up and arrest him, that would be great, thank you.” She hung up and put her scroll away.

“Don’t go anywhere,” she told the young man as she climbed back onto her bike.

“You can’t win,” the young man insisted. “He told us, he told us that it’s inevitable.”

“He’s got another thing coming then, hasn’t he?” Sunset replied as she pulled her helmet on.

If he said anything else, then Sunset didn’t hear him because of the way that her helmet muffled her ears. Not that she minded; she’d heard quite enough out of him already.

Sunset started up her bike and left the young man in his bloodstained clothes bound in iron on the street. Meanwhile, she rode away, towards where she had seen the airship crash.

She still believed that she was heading in the right direction.

Sunset didn’t regret the diversion, exactly; if someone on the airship had died, if she got there too late, then she would regret, but in the circumstances, what ought she have done? Ignore the person stumbling out of the house covered in blood who looked like he needed help? Yes, she hadn’t been able to save the family, but there was no way that she could have known that at the time.

And she had learned something: she had learned that there was a particular cell of grimm cultists operating in this area — or whatever the name for a group of grimm cultists was, a congregation or a flock or even a gang — that weren’t interested in attacking vital infrastructure, but in simply killing as many people in their immediate vicinity as possible.

No doubt, it made sense to them.

As Sunset drove, she couldn’t help but think of what the young man had said; yes, he was violent, deranged, but at the same time … with rich and poor living so close together, it wasn’t too surprising that some of the poor would fall into … bad habits, for want of a better term. Fall to anger and resentment, just like the faunus with the White Fang.

It didn’t excuse breaking into someone’s house and killing her because she said that you smelled, but it did make Sunset wonder how many grimm cultists there were in this part of town.

It was a little disconcerting; the stereotypical grimm cultist, if there was such a thing, was better heeled, someone with money, maybe someone from a respectable occupation like a doctor or a lawyer, an upstanding member of society, a pillar of the community, someone who didn’t have to struggle except to restrain their dark appetites and veil them from the world. Someone who was bored and susceptible to the transgressive allure of monster worship, human sacrifice, and a secret double life.

At least that was what Principal Celestia had said.

‘That, or idiots,’ as Vice-Principal Luna had added.

Grimm cultists were, ironically, supposed to lurk in nice houses like the one that that young man had broken into, not in the cramped high-rises of the poor and the dispossessed.

At least, that was what Sunset had been taught.

Perhaps people remember when wealthy grimm cultists get caught because it’s always shocking to them.

Anyway, what worried Sunset was the prospect that there might be a lot more where that guy came from, hordes of angry grimm cultists lurking in the towers that rose around her, waiting for their opportunity to spill out and take their revenge on a society that had condemned them to have so little when their neighbours had so much.

And considering that she’d seen a rocket fired from the roof of one such tower, Sunset couldn’t help but look around anxiously, wondering if she might see a rocket fired at her next, or whether she would simply have her head blown off by a sniper rifle and never see it coming.

I really wish I had my aura back. Sadly, there was no sign of its return just yet. Sunset would just have to keep going and keep her eyes and ears open.

She heard the gunshots and immediately began to swerve, leaning left and then right, leaning so far that her elbows and knees were almost touching the tarmac as she weaved wildly across the road, avoiding straight lines completely to throw off their aim.

She looked up. She could see muzzle flashes coming from the roof; the people shooting at her were firing in single shots, not bursts of fire like from an automatic weapon. Just one shot at a time, none of which were hitting her, thank Celestia. She counted two, no, three guns. Three muzzle flashes from three different parts of the roof, but all coming from the one roof, the same roof that the rocket had come from that had hit that Bullhead; she was certain of it.

With luck, that would mean that there were only grimm cultists in that one building, or at least that they had only come from that one building.

That would make things a lot easier and would perhaps make living in the community easier for both sides afterwards.

One building, one group of cultists under the leadership of this ‘he’ who had told them to go out and kill people for the grimm rather than following the plan that Salem’s agents had laid down.

I suppose, not knowing about Salem, these people don’t really know that they should obey her servants.

That one building, the building from which they were shooting at her but not hitting her, would be her objective — once she reached the crash site.

Even in the dark of the night, she could see the smoke rising from it now.

Sunset turned off, escaping the fire from that particular tower by driving around another, putting the large building between her and her opponents. The shooting stopped. Nobody else fired at her from on top of her cover.

Sunset dismounted and started to take off her helmet; then wondered if she might be better leaving it on. No, it wasn’t bulletproof, and it reduced her field of vision and muffled her hearing. She’d be better off with it off and trusting in noticing the enemy rather than being able to take a blow to the head.

So she took off her helmet and unslung Sol Invictus from off her shoulder.

She thought that she could hear gunshots, not the somewhat distant gunshots that had come from people shooting at her, but closer by, gunshots coming from … were they coming from near the Bullhead crash?

Possibly. Sunset couldn’t rule it out. And since she couldn’t rule it out, then she would have to check it out.

She crouched down and peered around the corner. Another consequence of being without aura was that she couldn’t rush to anyone’s aid, even though she might want to, or she could end up dead before she got any chance to render any aid at all.

She poked as little of her head out from hiding as she possibly could while seeing anything at all. No rocket streaked through the night towards her, no sniper blew her head off. Nobody even shot her.

Sunset waited, taking a breath, and then another.

The sounds of gunfire, though they fluctuated in intensity, lessening a little, reminded her that she couldn’t sit here all night.

Here goes.

Sunset sprang from out of cover, running as fast as she could across the street between the tower behind which she’d taken cover and a couple of large bins stood up against the back of a house. She crouched there, waiting for another second, waiting for a shot that didn’t come, hoping that that meant that they hadn’t seen her, perhaps even that they hadn’t been looking that way.

I really miss aura.

But there was a straight street in front of her, not a row of the nice terraced houses, but a commercial street, with a bodega and a laundromat and a fish and chip place by the look of it and a couple of other places that Sunset couldn’t … a florist, maybe. Anyway, they were all shut up right now, dark, the signs unlit; that was part of the reason why Sunset couldn’t see them too clearly. They were also all two storeys high and would protect her from the direction of the tower.

Though not from the direction of the shooting, which was coming from right in front of her.

Another deep breath.

If I get shot, I’ll get hurt.

I might even die.

The firing continued. Unlike the single shots fired at her, someone was firing automatically, blazing away; their gun was making a sort of purr sound.

Okay then.

Sunset ran towards the sound of the shooting, the sound of that one gun that was all that she could hear. She pulled back the hammer on Sol Invictus, ready to raise it to her shoulder as soon as she could see something to shoot at.

She could smell burning, burning dust, burning metal. And the sound of that gun was getting closer and closer.

Until, abruptly, it stopped. It stopped as a man with a rifle was hurled backwards with a squawk of alarm to land with a crack on the tarmac of the road. His rifle slipped from his hands, and he didn’t move.

“You people,” a familiar yet unexpected voice declared, “are getting on my last nerve!”

A figure in white strode around the corner, a figure luminous in the darkness of night, her white dress shimmering, her white hair aglow, her pale skin seeming even paler under the silver light of the moon.

“Weiss?”

Author's Note:

I've been watching the Mission: Impossible movies lately and one thing that sticks out to me about them is the way that Ethan - ironically, considering what a daredevil Tom Cruise is - looks reluctant, apprehensive, even scared at having to perform some of the insane stunts that Benji makes him do (you wonder why they're still friends). I wanted to capture a little bit of that sense of vulnerability with Sunset in this chapter and the next, being without her aura for a semi-prolonged period of time in which she has to worry about getting seriously hurt or dying.

Comments

[Secundum]

"Either way, the crescent was surrounded by a star, an eight-pointed star."

Blood for the Blood God! Skulls for the Skull Throne!

[Kiue Jin]

In fairness, there are worse reasons to join a Grimm cult then a hatred and envy of the wealthy.

[Mastermind4892]

And so delirium and madness is setting in. And I was wondering where Weiss had gone since she wasn’t at the Green Line.

11906317
And in Equestria, it would be “Hugs for the Hug God!”

[AngelicTitan]

Wow, that was a dark chapter that I wasn’t expecting.
I expected the White Fang, not a Grimm cultist killing a family for a twisted prophecy.
Now I want Sunset to find the leader of the Cultists and fucking beat the shit out of him. And seeing Sunset and Weiss teaming up? Boy, I am ready to see those psychos paying for their actions. I am also happy to see that Sunset isn’t falling into her worst impulses, but I think even her at her worse she wasn’t a murderer (except her Demon Form, but I think I can excuse her in that moment because she was blinded with the power like Sci-Twi).
Regardless, let’s see what is happening inside the walls, and what happened to Martinez as well. A Weiss and Sunset team-up is always a top-tier chapter, so I’m ready for next time!

[Stet709]

Well... that was unexpected.
Looks like Weiss left her team behind (Flash lost his legs, and Cardin's got a busted shoulder, though Russel still had aura if I recall correctly), and went out on her own it seems. Wait... didn't Weiss' aura break after the beringel fight? Is Sunset not the only one fighting without aura or did Weiss' aura recharge a bit? It seems like she might've used her semblance on the guy at the end there.

I certainly like the change from the original. Instead of joining the remaining members of SAPR, it seems Weiss will join Sunset here instead.

I... don't really blame Sunset for wanting to avoid Ruby, though I feel she won't be able to avoid her forever. She's gonna join in on the Wyvern fight I feel, coming close to Ruby.

[Scipio Smith]

11906480
Weiss' aura wasn't broken, that's how she was able to summon the Arma Gigas and kill the beringel.

[Stet709]

11906582
I was thinking after that, like summoning broke her aura, after fuelling it long enough.

[56]

I suppose Sunset may now be forced to either conceal her magic use, hide that her aura is broken, or reveal to Weiss that she can use her "semblance" without aura.

If Weiss is operating within Vale, maybe she saved Martinez. She could have conjured a barrier at the last moment to block the gunshot or something like that.