The Grimm Prince Ch. 72 (RWBY) (Patreon)

A/N: Blake gets her vengeance. Jaune gets answers regarding that Specialist that leave him just a little done with Menagerie.

-x-X-x-

In the end, Jaune does nothing. And Adam Taurus dies.

It’s not quite that simple, of course. And certainly not that clean. Adam’s attention is solely focused on Sienna in this moment, seeing as the White Fang’s High Leader has risen from her throne and revealed herself to be completely unimpeded by what should have been a debilitating magical poison that he’d fed her.

His hands go to his weapons, but he’s only got eyes for Sienna. To be fair, it’s not like he has any reason to suspect there’s anyone else in the room with them. Thanks to Salem’s magic, he thinks that the two of them are all alone.

Blake rapidly disabuses Adam of this notion by flinging out the ribbon attached to the end of her weapon. Gambol Shroud comes out of its sheath and in one smooth motion, Adam Taurus finds his arms wrapped tight to his body. Before he can react to his sudden inability to draw his weapons, Blake pulls rather roughly on the ribbon, spinning Adam around to face her.

Beneath the massive dragon Grimm mask he’d put on in a failed attempt to intimidate Sienna into submission, Jaune watches as the bull faunus’ eyes widen, now that he’s facing their direction.

“Blake-urk!”

Blake doesn’t bother with words. She doesn’t bother with recriminations like ‘you killed my father’ or ‘my dad was just a test to you?!’ or anything like that. She just stabs Adam right in the throat, sliding Gambol Shroud’s folding blade into his neck and out the back, cutting him off right then and there as her anger allows her to slice through his aura like butter. Or maybe he’s just caught so off guard that he can’t raise his aura in time.

Either way, Blake doesn’t stop there. Gambol Shroud isn’t just a blade, sheath, and ribbon. It’s also a semi-automatic pistol. And the way Blake has stabbed Adam puts the pistol part of her weapon right beneath his chin, even as blood pours out of the sides of his mouth and the hole in his throat, causing him to gurgle brokenly.

“Fuck you.”

BANG! BANG! BANG!

Firing again and again, Blake effectively blows Adam Taurus’ head off, turning his jaw, and then the roof of his mouth, and then his brain and the rest of his skull into messy chunks. Until finally, the only thing still holding the dead faunus’ corpse up on his feet is Blake’s ribbon wrapped around his torso and her blade buried in his throat.

Yanking out the latter and unraveling the former, Blake lets Adam’s corpse fall to the floor where it lies, standing over him and shaking in rage and anger as she hisses like a particularly enraged cat. Tears also streak down her face as she stares at his corpse.

Silence reigns for a moment. Jaune can see that Sienna almost wants to take Blake to task for taking her kill, so he catches the tiger faunus’ eyes and gives a sharp shake of his head, forcing her to remain quiet. At the same time, Kali finally moves forward, hesitating only for a moment before wrapping her daughter up in her arms.

Blake freezes at first at Kali’s touch, before ultimately collapsing against her mother’s chest, sobbing into Kali as she clings to the older cat faunus for dear life. Kali runs a hand through her daughter’s hair and whispers something that Jaune thinks is only meant for them, but he picks up anyways due to his true nature.

“You did good, Blake. You did good.”

It seemed that Kali’s peaceful desires did not extend to the man who had killed her husband as a ‘test’ for his eventual takeover of the White Fang and the entirety of Menagerie. Not that Jaune really felt like he could blame her. Adam Taurus had very much destroyed any potential good will anyone in this room might have felt towards him with every word he’d just spoken. The faunus had really gone insane, and in doing so he’d killed Blake’s father and Kali’s husband, and almost got away with it too.

Jaune didn’t think he believed in fate or destiny, but it was pretty wild that he and Salem had come to Menagerie just in the nick of time. They were supposed to be here for a vacation, and instead they’d uncovered a full blown conspiracy in less than a day. How ridiculous was that? Worst of all, the conspiracy was tangentially related to them because it was obvious that this was a ploy by Ozma. He’d been banking on the idea that his last attempt against Salem had worked, and thus had started looking for a replacement enemy for humanity to unite against.

Though, even Jaune didn’t know what Ozma’s long term plans in that regard were supposed to be. The Grimm were endless. They never stopped coming. They were also heartless and soulless outside of a couple of unique cases like him and Salem. They were a truly terrible enemy that no one sane or mortal should want to face. That in turn made them the PERFECT enemy for someone like Ozma. Immortal and from the looks of things progressively more insane, the man who had once called Salem his wife had a perfect unifying force in the Grimm.

But how were the faunus supposed to take their place? Sure, he might be able to unite the faunus behind Adam Taurus, using him as his stooge and bringing war to the Human Kingdoms as a result. But even if the Human Kingdoms all got together and fought the faunus like Ozma wanted, they would just wind up wiping them out. The faunus weren’t a limitless, unending tide of enemies like the Grimm had been. They would eventually be gone, wiped off the face of Remnant, and the humans would be right back at each other’s throats.

And Ozma… didn’t seem to care. Lips pulling back into a grimace, Jaune shares a look with Salem. She raises an eyebrow back at him, before letting out a sigh and stepping forward to address the other three women in the room.

“Does anyone have plans for this cretin concerning burial rites or anything else?”

There’s a pause as the Belladonnas and Sienna process Salem’s words, followed by the High Leader scoffing and waving a hand dismissively, while both Blake and Kali sneer at the thought and shake their heads ‘no’. Smiling a not-so-nice-smile at the expected reaction, Salem snaps her fingers… and every bit of Adam Taurus’ corpse is gone, including the chunks of his brain and skull sticking to the ceiling, as well as the viscera and blood all around his body.

Vanished, like it was never there. The throne room is cleaned up in an instant, with all traces of Adam Taurus erased from the universe by Salem’s magic. There’s a silent pause before the Queen of the Grimm claps her hands together.

“Very well then. With that taken care of, shall we deal with that other thing? My King and I cannot stay much longer, I’m afraid. But I was given to understand you had a prisoner that had interested my beloved.”

Ah, right. The Atlesian Specialist. Funny how one’s priorities can so rapidly change. To be fair, Adam Taurus and his magical poison was always the top priority because of the potential connections to Ozma. But now that they had confirmation that Ozma was behind all of this, the next step seemed obvious… it was time to stop being so passive. It was time to end this once and for all. Ozma needed to be stopped. He needed to be dealt with as permanently as possible.

And yet… if Jaune and Salem left, the most likely fate for this mystery Specialist from Atlas would be death. And that felt wrong somehow, like Jaune was responsible for her or something. Which was obviously weird. More than that though, what if the specialist was part of Adam’s plan? What if Ironwood was part of Ozma’s plan? If that was the case… they needed to know.

That said…

“Sienna will take Salem and I to the prisoner. Kali, you should take Blake home. The two of you should be together right now.”

It’s a testament to how right his words are that neither cat faunus argues with him. Instead Kali just nods while Blake nestles into her mother’s chest further, looking lost and forlorn. Of course, before they can actually leave…

 Jaune looks at Salem and that’s all it takes. When the five of them finally leave the throne room together, it’s to find that all of the guards outside are unconscious. None of them had forgotten Adam’s words. That he’d replaced her guards with his men. It takes Sienna a moment to get some people she can actually trust to take the sleeping faunus outside of the room into custody. Hopefully with Adam having literally vanished off the face of the world, his little cult would fall apart.

Well no. Jaune knew better than that. Even with Adam dead, Ozma would just reach out to the next faunus in line for the throne. Probably one of the Albain Brothers, since they seemed to be working for the bull faunus. No, for this to be truly handled and dealt with, Ozma needed to be removed from the board once and for all.

Jaune had an idea for that. But first…

“Lead the way.”

Sienna nods wordlessly, and beckons for him and Salem to follow her deeper into the compound.

-x-X-x-

Atlesian Specialist Harriet Bree was in a bit of a pickle. She’d come all the way to Menagerie without General Ironwood’s permission or even knowledge. She’d tried to infiltrate the White Fang to find out what they’d done with Weiss Schnee and Ciel Soleil. And then, humiliation of humiliations, she’d been caught.

To be fair, she’d managed to get pretty damn far. All the way into the private quarters of the High Leader herself. Nobody else had seen through her faunus describe. But then that damn cat bitch who had been with Sienna Khan had seen through her and together the two faunus had captured Harriet.

So far, she hadn’t been treated too badly. She was pretty sure most of the White Fang didn’t even know she was here. The High Leader hadn’t seen fit to parade her in front of anyone, probably because finding her rummaging through the tiger faunus’ quarters had been an embarrassment to her organization. It was just unfortunate that Harriet hadn’t found any sign of Weiss or Ciel. It wouldn’t have surprised her to find out Ciel was already dead, but if the White Fang had killed Weiss Schnee, it would have been all over the news. They would have made that execution as public as possible.

As things stood though, Harriet was in no position to save the. Yet. She would get out of here no matter what it took and she would-

The Atlesian Specialist’s thoughts are cut off when the door to her cell opens and Sienna Khan leads two more faunus inside. She blinks at their appearance… she’d never heard of a dragon faunus before, and suddenly she was looking at two of them?!

“Here she is.”

More than that, Sienna seemed almost… subservient to them. Who exactly-

SMACK!

Harriet blinks as the male dragon faunus slaps a hand over his face as soon as he lays eyes on her. Groaning, he drags his fingers down his features, looking at her as though he’d hoped she would turn out to be a mirage or something.

“… Of course…”

Harriet notes how the two female faunus look at him in confusion just as she is… though after a moment the female dragon faunus suddenly chuckles as she looks towards Harriet in a new light.

“Oh my… so this is what happens when you let one get away, husband?”

The male dragon faunus shakes his head.

“It’s not like that, Salem. I mean… what are the fucking odds?”

Get away? Unless… Harriet’s eyes widen.

“You! You were the White Fang on the train! What have you done with Weiss Schnee?!”

Harriet has to stifle a wince a moment later when she realizes she left out Ciel, but to be fair… Weiss was her original mission in the first place so it wasn’t completely unfair right? She needed Weiss Schnee to still be alive. Which is why the male dragon faunus’ next words completely dash her hopes.

“I took her to her sister.”

But Winter Schnee was gone. Harriet knew that in her heart of hearts.

“Damn it all… so she’s already dead…”

“What?! No! Weiss is fine! So is Winter! And their mother too for good measure!”

Harriet blinks rapidly at that information and to her surprise, so does Sienna Khan. The White Fang’s High Leader looks at the male dragon faunus with something akin to betrayal.

“You… you have dealings with the Schnee Family?”

Before the male can respond, the female, Salem, speaks up in his place.

“Jaune has dealings with the Schnee women in the same way he has dealings with you. Meaning that they still draw breath solely on his mercy and live to serve his every whim.”

W-WHAT?!

Sienna doesn’t dispute Salem’s claims, even as Jaune groans and covers his face with both hands this time. Harriet’s mouth opens and closes in disbelief, the Atlesian Specialist not entirely sure what sort of conspiracy she’s walked into here. Which is around the time that this Jaune fellow finally realizes she’s heard too much.

Suddenly, his gaze is on her and Harriet is freezing in place. For a long moment, she thinks she might be about to die as he just stares at her intensely. Finally though, he comes to a decision.

“… We’re taking the Specialist back home. Can’t leave her here. Can’t send her back to Ironwood with what she knows.”

Salem hums and smiles beatifically.

“Very well, my King.”

Sienna, meanwhile, just shrugs her shoulders, looking almost pityingly at Harriet.

“Sure. Better for me if no one ever knows she was here.”

“Good. And Khan… remember our arrangement. If you fuck around with Kali, if you try to push your boundaries, if Salem or I have to come back here… you’re REALLY not going to like how things end.”

With that threat delivered, Jaune takes out a scroll and sends a message. Harriet is still trying to puzzle why Sienna of all people looks so terrified when suddenly, a portal spins to life to the side of Harriet’s cell. Moving forward, Jaune grabs Harriet by her arm and pulls her to her feet. Through the portal, all Harriet can make out is old castle architecture and a woman with black hair and red eyes waiting for them.

Even as she’s dragged through the portal by Jaune after Salem steps through, Harriet doesn’t resist. She has no idea what’s happening, but since no one has talked about killing her just yet, she figures she’ll play ball for now. The portal winks out behind them… but Harriet is an Atlesian Specialist. She figures she hasn’t run out of cards to play just yet… right?