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Blaire stalked the market, her faunus features hidden underneath a hood. Recently this remote realm strode further towards discrimination of faunus, while the established kingdoms tried to fix their past mistakes, so it was not the best to be seen as a faunus on these streets.
It was best not to arouse suspicion.
While her sister, Skyra, wanted nothing more to be a huntress, to get away from the deeds of the Anti-Faunus groups and the White Fang on the other side, Blaire was stuck. Well, her sister leaving her got Blaire stuck. Not that she was mad at her sister for that, though. Admittedly, she was a bit more cooky than Blaire could bear, but that was not a big deal in the big picture.
"A mango, please.", she asked a merchant, who looked at her with wide eyes and a smile, happy to finally have customers again. This kingdom was on the brink of collapse, economically devastated and not many could afford to buy a lot from the markets. Blaire estimated that, without any foreign influence, the realm wouldn't last two more years, although it appeared as if the ruling class had not noticed that. They had shifted the blame on the many faunus who used to live here. Many discriminatory and segregating laws later, only a handful of faunus still bothered to live here, most, though left or were chased out.
Blaire dropped a couple of coins on the counter and snatched the mango that the merchant had brought. It was not the most glorious fruit but it would do for her daily dose of sugar. She sank her fangs into it forgetting for a second that she'd be visible to the merchant. "Shit..."
The eyes of the merchant changed expression multiple times, from relieved and happy to scared to mad. "Faunus!"
He pulled something akin to a sword from underneath his counter. It barely counted as a blade, to be fair, as rusted and in disrepair as it was.
"Yes?", Blaire replied calmly.
"You creatures don't belong here! This is a human only zone! Your filthy thieving kind are not allowed here. Leave before I have to make you leave!", the merchant uttered, his voice dripping with hatred.
It appeared that he had either been brainwashed or experienced something very unpleasant in the past. Whatever it was, she wasn't welcome anymore. Sighing, Blaire removed her hood, her purple tipped cat ears popping out, then she, calm and collected, simply turned around stepping away from the shop, taking another bite of her mango, now not even bothering to hide her fangs anymore.
Who needs stealth anyway.
She could feel the glares and stares on her back, well, more on her head and her ears. It seemed as if it had been a while since they had seen a faunus in this area. That meant, she had to look somewhere else.
It was her task to look for the last faunus community in this city and escort them out and away to Menagerie.
"Get out of here, mutt!", somebody called after her. It was annoying, sure, but she was used to being yelled at for being a faunus, nothing special.
Suddenly, two armoured policemen approached her. Compared to the rest of the city and its inhabitants, they looked polished and clean, not in any disrepair. "Why are you not working?", one of them exclaimed brashly, not even trying to sound civil and nice.
"Hello, officer. What can I do for you?", Blaire replied sweetly.
"Don't get cheeky with me, dirty street rat!", the officer spat. "Rat? Oh, officer, I am not a rat, I am a cat. Although I can see why one would confuse the two." A smile played on Blaire's features. With a final bite, she finished her mango.
One of the policemen, the one who hadn't spoken yet, pulled out his gun and aimed it at Blaire. "Now, now. No need to escalate things."
"You don't belong here, smartass. Get back to your worker camp! Now!"
Blaire rolled her eyes. "If I knew where to go, I'd get that problem off your hands." Blaire licked her teeth.
"Quiet! Walk, or you'll be punished! We are already merciful.", the gun wielding officer exclaimed and came up behind her and poked her back with the muzzle of the gun. Violently, the other officer grabbed her arm. "Where is your number, mutt?"
Now it was Blaire's turn to be slightly confused. Numbers? Was her information wrong? "How messed up is your city...", she whispered and shuddered a bit. She feared the situation of the faunus in this city were far worse than she had heard.
And that was her first mistake. The officer who had her arm in a tight grip trying to find a "number" had heard her and shoved her top the ground. Surprised like that, she tumbled to the ground, but managed to catch herself in such a way that the landing didn't hurt.
"Why do you not have a number! Answer me!" A shot rang through the now slightly more crowded marketplace. Next to her face, a bullet hole had appeared in the pavement.
Blaire narrowed her eyes, her ears turned slightly backwards. "You do not threaten me.", she growled. It was over, she knew. All pretenses of remaining hidden and silently leading the faunus out were gone. "I am Blaire Dawn from Vacuo. I have come to free my brothers and sisters and you will not stop me. Not you, not your wretched regime, not your hive of scum and villainy that is this city!", Blaire growled and her eyes flared in anger.
For a moment, the two officers and the crowd froze, but then both officers pointed their guns right at her head. "Well, well. We can't have that. We cannot allow an insurgency from outside now, can we?"
"Say good night, animal."
Blaire grinned and activated her semblance. Red eyes stared into those of the officers and they froze, shivering, crying, sobbing. Fear crept into their every fibre of their being.
When her semblance deactivated, the officers shook their heads trying to clear their heads as best as possible. But when they looked up again, the cat faunus stood proudly in front of them, a black cape blowing in the wind behind her, a shield in one hand and a weird, curved blade in the other. "I'll advise you to back down.", Blaire called.
It didn't appear to faze the policemen much.
Another shot rang through the market and a high pitched "ding" as the bullet deflected from Blaire's shield. Quite quickly, the crowd disbanded and hurried into cover or into any building they could.
Blaire grinned widely, her sharp fangs very visible and then she rushed in. A hail of bullets simply ricocheted off her shield held in front of her. Arriving at the first policeman, she slammed the shield into him, whirling around with a backstroke, she sliced apart the gun of the second officer before, in the same motion, she destroyed the gun of the officer on the ground as well.
"And stay down! I don't want to have to kill you."
Swiftly, to not even get the chance to try and fight her, she ran, through the streets of the city towards where she thought, the faunus quarter was.
She went by the desolation. The closer she came to the faunus part of the city, the more ruined and destroyed the city looked, the closer she felt she was to her destination.
And then she saw it.
A huge fence right in front of her and at the end of the street, guard posts, like a ghetto. This wasn't fun. This wasn't going to be fun at all.
Just from watching the guard post, she could spot at least six guards. At that number, she couldn't really try and not injure them or she might die herself.
She hadn't expected this, a full lockdown, it appeared, as if they were imprisoning the faunus, keeping them as far away from the regular citizens as possible and keeping them trapped in this... prison city. She had to expect patrols in the complex and a lot more guards at the gate than those six she could currently see.
Blaire sighed. She never wanted to do this, but... it seemed this was the time for her... to do things she didn't like to do.
Her weapon clicked softly and snapped into musket form. Silently, she sneaked closer to the guard post... and fired.
With a dying scream, a guard on one of the towers toppled over, dead.
Blaire breathed, then rushed in, her khopesh in her hand again, the shield in the other, blocking the first shots with it.
When her first slice cut down one, the smell of blood flicked a switch in her. She danced around blades and flames, left, right, ducking, jumping.
Not soon after, all the guards lie dead.
Blaire kneeled and bowed her head. This was not how it was supposed to go, not at all.
She got up and darted into the compound, the noise of the battle already attracting additional guards, but also some obviously very ragged looking faunus, who tenatively peeked out of windows and open doors.
Another guard keeled over, hit by a shot from her musket. "I have come to rescue the faunus of this city. I will not allow anybody to oppose me! If you don't want to end like your colleagues, you should stand down and drop your weapons!", Blaire threatened loudly.
Lots of clanging later, she saw several braver faunus who collected in front of her. Calls of "Who are you?" "Have you really come to get us out?"
A soft smile played on Blaire's face. A smile of relief.
"I'm Blaire Dawn. It is my task to rescue you all. Where I am from, our people are free. And where I plan to bring you is a whole continent just for us. Menagerie. But if you don't like it there, you can move to any of the kingdoms! You will be free, you can do any job you want, you don't have to work like this anymore! Now gather up everyone, nobody will get left behind. We will meet at the beach. My ship will pick you up."
Content, Blaire watched as the faunus, barely believing their luck scurried around, gathering their things, their relatives and friends.
Meanwhile Blaire led the remaining guards out of the compound and returned to lead the exodus.
About two hundred faunus were following her to the beach.
Most of them looked horrible. Dishevelled, dirty, weak. But now, they seemed to look happy.
Reaching the beach, the faunus were talking excitedly amongst themselves when they saw the ship anchored in such a way that it allowed the loading of passengers through the dinghies lining the beach.
For a group of people who never boarded a boat, the loading of the dinghies went very smoothly and Blaire smiled at the progress. Almost everybody who wasn't already on the ship, was not in a boat getting ready to deploy, when she heard a loud yell from the land side.
"Where are you going with my workers?!" The voice of a man cried.
It belonged to somebody who looked so out of place in this city that it was almost comical. Decked out in fine coats with makeup on his face the leader of the city appeared in front of her.
Blaire huffed. "I thought we faunus were at fault for ruining your precious city? I am just solving your problem for you, good sir.", she quipped grinning. Even though the "king", or whatever he called himself, came with an army of at least 50 heavily armoured guards, Blaire was not afraid in the least. She motioned for the sailors to quickly take off from the beach.
"They were cheap labour. You are animals and animals live to serve humans." Blaire's smile dropped. "I cannot change the mind of the deluded. But I can at least purge them...", she muttered loudly. "Deluded? What are you talking about? You are an animal. And animals belong to humans. Animals don't have the right of free choice. Animals don't invent. Animals don't think. Animals don't..."
With a surprised gurgle, the "king" looked down as he was shut up by something sticking in his throat. A curved blade went right though him, the owner, Blaire, glaring into his fading eyes. "You were right to be afraid of us. Because, when we get treated like shit, we fight back..."
With that, she pulled her blade out of the dead body of the "king", sprinted to the ocean and dove beneath the waves before the guards could react and she disappeared, leaving behind a city that would now crumble even faster.
It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but also the most satisfying thing she ever did and being greeted as a hero by over 200 former forced labourers wasn't bad either...
It was best not to arouse suspicion.
While her sister, Skyra, wanted nothing more to be a huntress, to get away from the deeds of the Anti-Faunus groups and the White Fang on the other side, Blaire was stuck. Well, her sister leaving her got Blaire stuck. Not that she was mad at her sister for that, though. Admittedly, she was a bit more cooky than Blaire could bear, but that was not a big deal in the big picture.
"A mango, please.", she asked a merchant, who looked at her with wide eyes and a smile, happy to finally have customers again. This kingdom was on the brink of collapse, economically devastated and not many could afford to buy a lot from the markets. Blaire estimated that, without any foreign influence, the realm wouldn't last two more years, although it appeared as if the ruling class had not noticed that. They had shifted the blame on the many faunus who used to live here. Many discriminatory and segregating laws later, only a handful of faunus still bothered to live here, most, though left or were chased out.
Blaire dropped a couple of coins on the counter and snatched the mango that the merchant had brought. It was not the most glorious fruit but it would do for her daily dose of sugar. She sank her fangs into it forgetting for a second that she'd be visible to the merchant. "Shit..."
The eyes of the merchant changed expression multiple times, from relieved and happy to scared to mad. "Faunus!"
He pulled something akin to a sword from underneath his counter. It barely counted as a blade, to be fair, as rusted and in disrepair as it was.
"Yes?", Blaire replied calmly.
"You creatures don't belong here! This is a human only zone! Your filthy thieving kind are not allowed here. Leave before I have to make you leave!", the merchant uttered, his voice dripping with hatred.
It appeared that he had either been brainwashed or experienced something very unpleasant in the past. Whatever it was, she wasn't welcome anymore. Sighing, Blaire removed her hood, her purple tipped cat ears popping out, then she, calm and collected, simply turned around stepping away from the shop, taking another bite of her mango, now not even bothering to hide her fangs anymore.
Who needs stealth anyway.
She could feel the glares and stares on her back, well, more on her head and her ears. It seemed as if it had been a while since they had seen a faunus in this area. That meant, she had to look somewhere else.
It was her task to look for the last faunus community in this city and escort them out and away to Menagerie.
"Get out of here, mutt!", somebody called after her. It was annoying, sure, but she was used to being yelled at for being a faunus, nothing special.
Suddenly, two armoured policemen approached her. Compared to the rest of the city and its inhabitants, they looked polished and clean, not in any disrepair. "Why are you not working?", one of them exclaimed brashly, not even trying to sound civil and nice.
"Hello, officer. What can I do for you?", Blaire replied sweetly.
"Don't get cheeky with me, dirty street rat!", the officer spat. "Rat? Oh, officer, I am not a rat, I am a cat. Although I can see why one would confuse the two." A smile played on Blaire's features. With a final bite, she finished her mango.
One of the policemen, the one who hadn't spoken yet, pulled out his gun and aimed it at Blaire. "Now, now. No need to escalate things."
"You don't belong here, smartass. Get back to your worker camp! Now!"
Blaire rolled her eyes. "If I knew where to go, I'd get that problem off your hands." Blaire licked her teeth.
"Quiet! Walk, or you'll be punished! We are already merciful.", the gun wielding officer exclaimed and came up behind her and poked her back with the muzzle of the gun. Violently, the other officer grabbed her arm. "Where is your number, mutt?"
Now it was Blaire's turn to be slightly confused. Numbers? Was her information wrong? "How messed up is your city...", she whispered and shuddered a bit. She feared the situation of the faunus in this city were far worse than she had heard.
And that was her first mistake. The officer who had her arm in a tight grip trying to find a "number" had heard her and shoved her top the ground. Surprised like that, she tumbled to the ground, but managed to catch herself in such a way that the landing didn't hurt.
"Why do you not have a number! Answer me!" A shot rang through the now slightly more crowded marketplace. Next to her face, a bullet hole had appeared in the pavement.
Blaire narrowed her eyes, her ears turned slightly backwards. "You do not threaten me.", she growled. It was over, she knew. All pretenses of remaining hidden and silently leading the faunus out were gone. "I am Blaire Dawn from Vacuo. I have come to free my brothers and sisters and you will not stop me. Not you, not your wretched regime, not your hive of scum and villainy that is this city!", Blaire growled and her eyes flared in anger.
For a moment, the two officers and the crowd froze, but then both officers pointed their guns right at her head. "Well, well. We can't have that. We cannot allow an insurgency from outside now, can we?"
"Say good night, animal."
Blaire grinned and activated her semblance. Red eyes stared into those of the officers and they froze, shivering, crying, sobbing. Fear crept into their every fibre of their being.
When her semblance deactivated, the officers shook their heads trying to clear their heads as best as possible. But when they looked up again, the cat faunus stood proudly in front of them, a black cape blowing in the wind behind her, a shield in one hand and a weird, curved blade in the other. "I'll advise you to back down.", Blaire called.
It didn't appear to faze the policemen much.
Another shot rang through the market and a high pitched "ding" as the bullet deflected from Blaire's shield. Quite quickly, the crowd disbanded and hurried into cover or into any building they could.
Blaire grinned widely, her sharp fangs very visible and then she rushed in. A hail of bullets simply ricocheted off her shield held in front of her. Arriving at the first policeman, she slammed the shield into him, whirling around with a backstroke, she sliced apart the gun of the second officer before, in the same motion, she destroyed the gun of the officer on the ground as well.
"And stay down! I don't want to have to kill you."
Swiftly, to not even get the chance to try and fight her, she ran, through the streets of the city towards where she thought, the faunus quarter was.
She went by the desolation. The closer she came to the faunus part of the city, the more ruined and destroyed the city looked, the closer she felt she was to her destination.
And then she saw it.
A huge fence right in front of her and at the end of the street, guard posts, like a ghetto. This wasn't fun. This wasn't going to be fun at all.
Just from watching the guard post, she could spot at least six guards. At that number, she couldn't really try and not injure them or she might die herself.
She hadn't expected this, a full lockdown, it appeared, as if they were imprisoning the faunus, keeping them as far away from the regular citizens as possible and keeping them trapped in this... prison city. She had to expect patrols in the complex and a lot more guards at the gate than those six she could currently see.
Blaire sighed. She never wanted to do this, but... it seemed this was the time for her... to do things she didn't like to do.
Her weapon clicked softly and snapped into musket form. Silently, she sneaked closer to the guard post... and fired.
With a dying scream, a guard on one of the towers toppled over, dead.
Blaire breathed, then rushed in, her khopesh in her hand again, the shield in the other, blocking the first shots with it.
When her first slice cut down one, the smell of blood flicked a switch in her. She danced around blades and flames, left, right, ducking, jumping.
Not soon after, all the guards lie dead.
Blaire kneeled and bowed her head. This was not how it was supposed to go, not at all.
She got up and darted into the compound, the noise of the battle already attracting additional guards, but also some obviously very ragged looking faunus, who tenatively peeked out of windows and open doors.
Another guard keeled over, hit by a shot from her musket. "I have come to rescue the faunus of this city. I will not allow anybody to oppose me! If you don't want to end like your colleagues, you should stand down and drop your weapons!", Blaire threatened loudly.
Lots of clanging later, she saw several braver faunus who collected in front of her. Calls of "Who are you?" "Have you really come to get us out?"
A soft smile played on Blaire's face. A smile of relief.
"I'm Blaire Dawn. It is my task to rescue you all. Where I am from, our people are free. And where I plan to bring you is a whole continent just for us. Menagerie. But if you don't like it there, you can move to any of the kingdoms! You will be free, you can do any job you want, you don't have to work like this anymore! Now gather up everyone, nobody will get left behind. We will meet at the beach. My ship will pick you up."
Content, Blaire watched as the faunus, barely believing their luck scurried around, gathering their things, their relatives and friends.
Meanwhile Blaire led the remaining guards out of the compound and returned to lead the exodus.
About two hundred faunus were following her to the beach.
Most of them looked horrible. Dishevelled, dirty, weak. But now, they seemed to look happy.
Reaching the beach, the faunus were talking excitedly amongst themselves when they saw the ship anchored in such a way that it allowed the loading of passengers through the dinghies lining the beach.
For a group of people who never boarded a boat, the loading of the dinghies went very smoothly and Blaire smiled at the progress. Almost everybody who wasn't already on the ship, was not in a boat getting ready to deploy, when she heard a loud yell from the land side.
"Where are you going with my workers?!" The voice of a man cried.
It belonged to somebody who looked so out of place in this city that it was almost comical. Decked out in fine coats with makeup on his face the leader of the city appeared in front of her.
Blaire huffed. "I thought we faunus were at fault for ruining your precious city? I am just solving your problem for you, good sir.", she quipped grinning. Even though the "king", or whatever he called himself, came with an army of at least 50 heavily armoured guards, Blaire was not afraid in the least. She motioned for the sailors to quickly take off from the beach.
"They were cheap labour. You are animals and animals live to serve humans." Blaire's smile dropped. "I cannot change the mind of the deluded. But I can at least purge them...", she muttered loudly. "Deluded? What are you talking about? You are an animal. And animals belong to humans. Animals don't have the right of free choice. Animals don't invent. Animals don't think. Animals don't..."
With a surprised gurgle, the "king" looked down as he was shut up by something sticking in his throat. A curved blade went right though him, the owner, Blaire, glaring into his fading eyes. "You were right to be afraid of us. Because, when we get treated like shit, we fight back..."
With that, she pulled her blade out of the dead body of the "king", sprinted to the ocean and dove beneath the waves before the guards could react and she disappeared, leaving behind a city that would now crumble even faster.
It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but also the most satisfying thing she ever did and being greeted as a hero by over 200 former forced labourers wasn't bad either...
