I Shall Return

A Faunus shopkeep of the snake variety swiped at the window, cleaning it as she prepares for the day she would open the store. It wasn't much to begin with considering all the discrimination around her neighborhood but she recently didn't get into much trouble.

She flips the sign and waits for her regulars. One that always got their daily supply of dust, a human nonetheless.

*Ring*

"Welcome, would it be the usual?"

The middle-aged man swayed his head. "I need to get more dust since the Vytal festival is close. The past few days have been tough on the decorations, especially since the kids keep wanting more. So maybe an extra order would do."

"I'll get it for you, dust form right? Shipments have been faster lately so it's not much trouble."

"Ah, If that's the case then sure." He looks over at the television playing in the background. "Hey, have any of those bigots bothering you lately?"

The shopkeep pauses and recalls the lack of anyone who tried to vandalize or outright tries to ruin the store. "Now that you say that, it's been a bit odd. Even that Winchester fellow is not here. Usually, he'd go by with an insult or a stone."

"I think something is going on, you know how the White Fang lost their leader again? Changed something up?" The man said with a dark tone.

"Don't tell me they became even more radicalized, I can't bear to get another negative image of my race if I can help it."

"No, actually there's been a few publicly held charities that donated to the ghettos. I've seen them a day or two ago myself."

"Them?" she asked.

"These Faunus' that wear black or greys, people call them various names when they spot a few of them but they call themselves the Wehrmacht or something. Don't know what it means but they're the new White Fang."

*Ring*

The shopkeep looks at the entrance and kept talking to her patron. "Grey and black? What does that look like? Sounds scary."

"Well, I think they have it to stand out. Like their old grimm masks but more stylish. They have two outfits I think, one of them is fully kitted out. I mean, a face plate with armor everywhere. The other one is darker with a coat I think, overtop a good-looking uniform. Looks pretty expensive too. They have caps on that differentiate them."

The shopkeep looks over his shoulder. "Kind of like those?" she points behind him.

The man looks behind him and sees three people standing with cases of beer carried in each hand. "Yeah! Kind of like those..."

"...LIKE THOSE?!" he suddenly realizes.

"Sorry, we didn't want to bother you or anything, we're just here to get something to drink and others wanted some beer too, so we might as well get a lot."

Silence...

It was an awkward sight, imagine talking about someone and the exact person you were talking about was actually behind you the entire time.

"Can we?" one of the soldiers asked.

"...Go ahead." the middle-aged man was confused. It wasn't like the old White Fang where the word human was enough to make them feral.

"So are you guys not going to kill me or something?" he said with a straight face at the three.

"..."

"Maybe..."

*Smack!*

"Stop being like that, we're supposed to get the beer and move." the first soldier scolds the third. He turns to the shopkeep. "Hey, mind if you switch the television to the news station?"

"Why? Is something going on? Apart from Atlas arriving and leaving so soon." The shopkeep asks.

"We're just worried. Do you know how we have been reformed? There are still others that claim to do something drastic now that we've replaced them." he eerily mentions.

"Besides." he continued. "We've moved on from the whole slaughter all humans thing. If we want to prove that Faunus can be considered equal then we must do our part. If we're going to kill something it might as well be the Grimm."

"Huh, that so? It's already better than the last White Fang." the middle-aged man admits. "How come, you've decided to change again?"

"Our eyes were opened to a new reality. Something that could have an impact on the lives of our brethren. If all it takes is for us to listen, then we shall serve the Kaiser."

'The Kaiser?' the shopkeep and man asked.

"Breaking News!"

"Look it's starting... I hope what they said isn't true." the second soldier asked. "Is it okay for us to stay and watch?"

"Sure, it's not like I have a policy against it. I'm curious as to what news you guys don't like."

The television in the form of a hologram displayed on the wall started to show the news. "Disaster at Atlas today, an emergency report shows that a massive surge of Grimm made the infamous General Ironwood along with the council under fire from the public. Reports of disastrous defenses and mismanaged navies caused the Grimm to enter the airspace. Casualties show many wounded and a lot of lost material by Atlas."

"In other news, some now mourn the passing of the CEO of the Schnee Dust Company, Jacques Schnee. An attack by the White Fang was responsible for the loss of the leader, some say they were the instigators of the Grimm attack. Ironwood has been questioned under this assumption but so far no comment has been stated."

"That's... wow..." the shopkeep was surprised at the news. "Jacques is dead? And by the White Fang? Was this what you all meant?"

The three soldiers stood still, unmoving. To the shopkeep, they seemed distraught over it. Though it was hard to tell with their faceplates on.

The first of the soldiers sighed. "We need to go. Sorry again for bothering you two. We'll come back for more beer if need be. Good day."

The three left just as he said so, it was fast of them to leave after the news. The two inside the store thought it was because they didn't take the news well.

They couldn't be so much more wrong.

~

Blake was sitting alone inside a room, organizing an almost cross-continental operation was hard for her. Determination held her together since it was her old organization.

"We really need Ruby to finish those new VTOLs," she told herself.

A knock came at the door. "Come in," she answered.

A bear Faunus walks in with his rigid stance before going in front of Blake's desk. "It's a success." he couldn't go through the procedure in reporting, it was that good news.

"Excellent, return to previous stations. We will wait until we get further instructions."

"As you wish, Uberkommandant."

It was done. Making sure that they had the right amount of non-affiliation to the incident. The Wehrmacht had been hard at work killing Grimm all over the south of Vale and doing charity for the public image.

It wasn't easy but somehow Hanns had manifested entire buildings. The rest of the team saw it happen and weren't even surprised anymore. Hanns told them back then that it was expensive but no one would question what currency Hanns was using.

As for munitions, uniforms, and even rations. All were provided by a supply depot that constantly regenerated them out of thin air. Which was quite surprising for the troops but they moved on quickly.

They even started praising how powerful the machine was for creating things seemingly instantaneously. To say they were dedicated was an understatement, 100% Loyalty made everyone a fanatic the moment they joined.

The door closes, leaving Blake alone once more. After the unfortunate circumstance of Weiss killing her father instead of just kidnapping him, they were forced to make it so the older sect of the White Fang was responsible.

Weiss and Neo put up a great performance, with Weiss setting up the scene while Neo played the part. It wasn't hard to figure out if people looked closer but they were too focused on Ironwood and the botched defense that cost tons of military equipment.

"Finally, I can get some alone time..."

Blake looks around the room, making sure she was really alone, she took one look under her desk and slips out a new copy of her favorite book.

'I've missed you so much... All these serious military responsibilities forced me to miss out on your release day. Now, it's time. I wonder if the writer put in another illustration.'

She held the book in her arms. "Ninjas of Love: Bondage of Sins." she read the title out loud. Blake slowly opened the book until the very first page, nearly blushing just from the cover.

*SLAM!*

"Blake!"

Blake panics and shoots up in surprise, the cat ears on her head frantically twitching as she responds. "It's an art form I swear!" Blake screams.

She quickly tosses the book back inside the drawer it came out of and shut it with a solid thud before looking at the new arrival.

Ruby jumped up and down in excitement. "What was that? Anyways, Hanns is back and he has something important to tell us!" it didn't even take a second for Ruby to sprint back.

"Hold- hold on!" she gets up to catch up before looking sadly at her desk. "I'll be with you soon, my treasure..."

Blake catches up with Ruby and enters the garage that Hanns always uses as his room since nothing else normal can fit him.

Everyone on the team was present, including Merlot. Hanns recovered soon after his time in Atlas, it didn't take long for him to get out of combat after telling Penny that he would leave.

Hanns tried out Overclock while at top speed in his Komet which led to him almost overshooting Vale since he couldn't control himself afterward because of the drawback.

His Semblance functioned by completely removing his motor functions in the future. Essentially it sacrifices his functions in the future for extra attributes at the moment.

"Hanns, you're back! I knew you would, what happened back there? Did Atlas shoot you down? You only told them that you'd be late and then never communicated again." Blake asked.

'Oh, so that is what I was forgetting about.'

Hanns almost laughed at the question. "Shoot me down? You know I'm faster than them, my fuel ran out at 6 minutes and I messed up my speed from climbing. I didn't want the others to get killed so I fought them myself."

Ruby leaped in front. "Hanns! I finished it! I placed thrusters on the back as you said but it's pretty time-consuming to make."

"Hold on, before everything about that. We need to tackle what we will do from now. Salem is probably on the move now. Atlas usually never gets that much Grimm from what I did, Pietro even said so and he's a resident."

"Pietro?" Ruby asked.

"Pietro Polendina, a scientist. Well, doctor... actually maybe both. I met his android daughter and I convinced her not to bring me to Ironwood. Penny, the daughter, is actually a top-secret technology that was developed to make a living being in a machine meant to be a weapon. So I wasn't sure if she was going to go take me in but I became her friend instead."

Yang whistled at the front-loaded information dump. "Wow, that's a lot to take in. The only things I heard was-"

"-Android daughter?!" The rest of the girls practically shrieked out, apart from Neo who kept eating the ice cream that she carried the whole time.

"Yeah, that..." Yang continued.

Hanns didn't expect them to take it so hard. He thought that they would be used to living beings inhabiting machines considering he was one.

"That's a surprise?"

"A surprise?! You're telling us that a top-secret weapon developed by Atlas could create something as complicated as that? Who in their right mind would make that? No offense."

"None taken. Weiss, Pietro wanted a daughter and presented his idea. It's the military that specifically wanted her to be a weapon."

Atlas was a militaristic nation. It was built on the army and even after the treaty that ended the great war, they still found a way to create a vast military. So everyone understood why Atlas had made Penny a weapon.

"Also, did you say you became her friend? How did that even work? Did she have a protocol for friend-making?"

"No, Pietro injected a part of his aura into her. It became her own soul and generated her own aura. I mean he did the same to me too, you know? It's how I got something new."

"Something new?" they all wanted clarity from Hanns.

Blake sensed impending doom as she snaps her head to Ruby and Merlot. "Wait! Hanns, before you tell us - make sure to tell it slowly."

The team nodded at each other. Weiss composed herself. Yang prepared for another disaster. Ruby's heart was beginning to pump harder. Merlot was feeling another monologue coming out. Neo still ate her ice cream.

Hanns understood what she was asking and promptly ignored it.

"I have an aura and semblance now."

Hanns saw as the team suddenly flinched and headed straight for Ruby since she was the most likely to die again. All of them had something to help Ruby.

'Huh, I didn't know Blake carried around blood bags all the time.' Hanns saw Yang and blinked in confusion. 'Hold on is that milk?' then he saw Weiss.

"Weiss, what does a can of beans have to help with this?"

Surprisingly though, Ruby was still standing and no blood was pouring out her nose. Only a blank look on her face as she stared at Hanns.

"Weird, Rubes usually never takes these things so calmly. She was even the first to ask if Hanns could have a semblance, right?"

Blake inspected the rigid Ruby and widened her eyes. "Ruby... she fainted standing up with her eyes open."

Hanns got back their attention. "Well, I guess you'll brief her once we finish. We need to make this whole thing change. If we're going to have to clear out an entire world of Grimm, everything needs to expand."

Sensing the nature of the conversation being a bit too informational on her part, Neo took the liberty to pull out her scroll and watch some videos while eating her frozen treat.

"So we're moving onto a large scale now? Not just the south of Vale anymore? I don't think we can handle that much, even if we get access to better Dust." Blake made him clarify,

"There's a gigantic problem with that still, we don't have Dust secured yet." Hanns was frustrated at it.

Hanns already checked the HUD constantly, if it all went smoothly then the system should've already detected the change. Something was wrong but Hanns needed to focus on the present.

"For now, we just wait until Weiss can be confirmed to be the new CEO. There's something more pressing, our status as an organization. To put it short, we are still considered a terrorist organization to the world or illegal in best case scenario."

"So what will do? I don't think we need to be legitimate or anything. We can just head to the Grimm continent like you said right?"

Torchwick loudly clicked his tongue and placed his cigar on an ashtray. "Blondie, did most of your smarts go into your chest, or are you just dumb? Running an entire army to purely fight Grimm is going to take an entire nation or four."

"Sure Lunchbox is a magical metal box but he's only one man. Trust me, if a person only needed themselves - then I could've robbed the entire planet back then."

Hanns confirmed his thoughts. "Torchwick is right, back then I thought I could handle it by myself and you guys but Grimm keep regenerating. It's like fighting a never-ending horde. This is the Grimm continent we are talking about, we would risk endless avian Grimm."

It would be a nightmare to fight a war at that scale. If Hanns was going to try it then he'd need something more realistic.

"Even if we do avoid the Grimm by going into the atmosphere, our bombs wouldn't do much to whittle them enough for us to pave a way to Salem let alone reduce the Grimm population to something that never threatens Remnant."

Yang finally got what they were saying. "That must mean it works the same way around... can't go to her without facing tons of Grimm. Even if we get bombs in, it won't stop the Grimm from just threatening another part of the world. We need to make her alone."

"Which is why we must go to total war. Fleets of bombers soaring high and dropping enough TNT to exterminate them. An operation like that would need so much personnel and equipment to use."

'Not to mention the cost. I've already lost nearly a million from just maintenance alone.' Hanns contemplates.

"So what you're saying is-" Yang asked.

Hanns interrupted. "-We're going to create the 5th kingdom, well technically 6th kingdom if you count Menagerie, based purely on fighting Grimm."

"Huh, never thought I'd see the day that Lunchbox is going to create a nation." Torchwick pauses. "Why didn't I think of that?" Torchick adds.

Blake was thoroughly interested, no one had ever thought of making a country solely based on going to war. "What do we do?"

"No more separation of us when we go do important stuff somewhere. You five being a crew greatly outweighs your responsibilities in the Wehrmacht. I'm going to reorganize everything so that we can all participate."

"First, the head of research and development will be Merlot. He's been with us for a while now and he could do well to replace Ruby going forward."

"Second, Blake will take her Majors and dump the responsibilities on them. I believe Ilia, Sienna, and Grylls are these right?"

Blake nods. "Sienna has been converted as you hoped. Ilia is a friend of mine and as soon as we took over Menagerie and opened her eyes to what they were doing wrong I convinced her to switch. Grylls was part of the White Fang and was present during the formation."

"What about Adam?"

The name was almost forgotten by Blake but she had already moved on. It took a second for her to adjust to the question but she responded quickly.

"...He says he can't fight on any longer knowing that he lost so pathetically being blind. He still wants to help Faunus and his motivation didn't dim whatsoever, so he runs the old ice cream shop instead."

Hanns turns his turret to Torchwick. "Torchwick have you convinced the other three?"

Torchwick had a blank face on like he was thinking about what to say. He wasn't sure about their status but since Hanns asked, he would give somewhat of an answer.

"I did but I don't place trust in any of them. They don't want to be part of the White Fang but are willing to aid us economically with what remains of our combined criminal assets."

Everyone looked at him like he was crazy. A criminal like Torchwick willingly giving up control of his empire wasn't usually what they expected from him.

"You're okay with that Torchwick?" Ruby asked. Finally recovering from her fainting while standing up.

"You think I'm in a position to say no to that? Lunchbox has an army behind him, some mysterious firepower behind his guns that even Red can't recreate, and the ability to pop out entire buildings. I would be a fool to say no."

Everyone did understand his motivations after that. Magic wasn't even something they'd seen but they recalled Hanns randomly creating another tank out of thin air.

"Say, do you even like being here?"

"Red, it meant a great deal to me when I was in the streets and a criminal but I only ever did it to survive and be famous. All of those things were satisfied once I worked with Lunchbox."

"He gets lien out of nowhere. Constantly make us do crazy things. I never would I have imagined that I'd be infiltrating Atlas itself, fighting massive Grimm, managing an army and eventually a nation. Forget being famous, I'd be unforgettable to everyone once we're done."

Yang was the first to say everyone's common sentiments. "Wow, are you even Torchwick anymore? You sound like you became an entirely different person."

"Desperation calls for desperate actions. I'm a criminal because I needed to. Now, that I have everything, there's no need for that. Lunchbox provides everything which I am ashamed to admit since I'm getting bankrolled by a machine."

The looks they all gave were one of surprise and maybe a bit of proudness, mostly from Ruby. Neo was staring too, enough to forget to eat her ice cream.

"Can you all stop staring? Lunchbox, move on to your other points." Torchwick redirected the conversation.

Even Hanns was surprised. Torchwick did seem a bit off now that he wasn't the usual ruthless criminal. Though once they get to a mission he was still the same.

"Okay, actually this concerns you Torchwick. If it's publicity then you would be the best in that regard right? How do you say to be the Minister of Propaganda?"

Torchwick almost choked on his cigar. "Propaganda? Do you mean make the whole army thing of yours look good? I mean I can do it but does that mean I'll handle the charities Kitty Cat has been doing?"

"Yes, everything that its purpose is to be for our public image. You can set it up yourself and if you need more people to work with, I can always do something about it."

Torchwick thought about it before nodding. It's not that hard to get ideas to make your image good. It was Torchwick after all, he was the epitome of being presentable.

"Right, finally. After we gain access to the SDC, we'll work out something to make it more efficient." Hanns gestures to Weiss. "How do you usually mine dust, Weiss?"

Weiss' eyes almost glowed from the question. She steps with glee to the front while gesturing along the way, making it look like a presentation. "Ehem..."

"We have the extraction, the handling, and finally processing. Dust is mined out using drills or picks, it's extremely dangerous to handle it so they're very rigorous. After mining out the dust we transport them carefully inside minecarts to the upper floors and break them down further. We transport them via bullheads to refine them. Finally, we convert raw dust into its dust and crystal form you see today."

"You say that like you've been practicing it for almost centuries." Yang quipped.

"Well, I am the heiress, it is to be expected."

Neo raised her hand while she looked at her phone, it wasn't much to go on but Hanns knew something was up. "Yes, Neo?"

She turns up the volume and places the scroll on her palm. The voice of a news station reporting something reached their ears.

"Winter named heir after Ironwood seizes control of the SDC headquarters. The council has reacted negatively to which Ironwood declared an embargo to be carried out by the SDC. Atlas is in chaos after the declaration, the reason for such a drastic move is still unknown. We are hoping for more updates-"

"We're going back," Hanns told them.