AN: Hello m8ties! Another instalment in my story. Please follow, favorite and review!

The sun heralded the coming morning and I got up from my bed. The dorm room still fast asleep, not a single movement and the only sound was of the birds outside the window. The events of yesterday weighed heavily on my mind. The white fang has become bold enough to attack the docks inside the cities. I checked my scroll for new messages. I noticed one from the general. "I expected a full debriefing at 20:00 on the events at the docks. Can't disclose too much, just meet me at the beacon landing pads come the evening." What? Is the general coming here? Filling the order in my mind for later, I moved over to the bathroom, cleaning myself up and making ready for the day.

After I had cleaned myself I roused the rest of my team, and we started our morning routine albeit a little shorter than usual, brought on by the events yesterday. We finished up and made our way to the cafeteria. Outside I saw the monkey faunus from yesterday. He was talking to a blue haired individual wearing a red jacket and lightly plated jeans. The monkey faunus noticed me, and waved us over to him.

"Cobalt was it? I was just telling my friend Neptune of the fight yesterday." He said as he motioned to his blue haired friend.

"Hello." I answered

Neptune gave me a quick nod, and moved past me towards Ciel. "Heyyyy beautiful." He greeted her. Ciel ignored him, and quickly joined Sun and I who were observing Neptune's failed attempts to seduce the girls on team CCCP. He moved on to Penny, not losing any morale after the defeat at the hands of Ciel. Before he could utter a single word, Ciel sent a bolt of lightning forward, striking the ground between him and Penny, clearly signaling that she was off limits. Penny smiled and ran up and opened the cafeteria door.

As the door opened, a huge amount of students came running out. I surveyed the inside of the cafeteria was in complete disarray in one side the more energetic part of team JNPR had arranged all of the tables in a huge pile. The other side was held by team RWBY, and as we entered, they lead an attack of untold proportions on the JNPR encampment. I immediately turned away from the carnage and led my team outside of the cafeteria again, deciding that I would rather eat my breakfast in the city instead of entering the chaos in the cafeteria. We took the airbus down to the city, and joined the festive mood that surrounded the city as we closed in on the tournament.

After eating a quick breakfast at local café, we began browsing the numerus shops crowing the city of Vale. The shops ranging from normal clothing stores, to weapon and dust shops, everything a part of a normal life as a huntsman. After an exhausting couple of hours, we finally arrived back at the landing, under my commando we had changed into our new outfits in the last shop we visited, our old clothes transported back to the academy with the rocket lockers.

Black jeans, held up by a black leather belt with a simple metal belt buckle, and a pair of combat boots rounded out my lower body. For my upper body I had gone with a black jacket with numerous pockets, the zippers lined with blue matching my eye color. Below my jacket, I had a white shirt and a blue vest. By my side, I had my sword holstered in its usual holster. My hands were covered by a pair of black gloves that were matched by similar pairs on Copper. Copper had gone for much the same look as I, but instead of leaving his pants spotless like mine, he had elected to tear a couple of holes in them. Instead of combat boots he had bought a pair of black shoes, marked with red. His vest was dark red, and he had elected to forego the jacket.

Ciel followed our black theme by exchanging her white stocking for black ones and putting on a black jacket that closed by the right side attaching to some buttons on her left side. The flaps of the jacket where lined with a golden color. She kept her light blue skirt and berretta. Her fingerless gloves had been exchanged for full gloves at my command. Penny had changed very little on her outfit, only making her outfit follow the black theme by buying a black version of her current clothes. She still had the same green glowing markings as before; the grey parts had just been exchanged for midnight black.

I looked around us, making sure that nobody was close enough to listen in on our conversation.

"Okay, Ciel, Copper and I are doing some errands for the general. So Penny you will have to kill some time by yourself at the academy." I opened up.

"What are you guys doing?" Penny asked still as chipper as always.

"Sorry Penny, general's orders; he doesn't want you in on the mission just yet."

"Okay." She answered meekly. "When am I coming in on the mission then?"

'When we face an enemy where we need our best fighter."

The compliment brought her mood back up again and she said goodbye to us and left us to catch an airbus to the academy.

We left the central landing area for the bookshop. The shop was located in the outskirts of Vale, leaving the streets around it empty of the commotion that usually followed the festival. I moved up to the storefront, the blinds where down, which I considered weird considering that according to the sign up front, he was still open to business. I tried the door handle, and as the door revealed itself to be locked. I began to consider my next course of action. Returning tomorrow would take too long, and the general had given me permission to use whatever means possible.

"Copper open the door." I ordered and left the storefront.

"What? Why? How?" He answered confused.

"Melt the lock of the door, Ciel and I will keep lookout."

"Isn't that illegal?"

"Do it, we do not want a repeat of the attack yesterday, the white fang has something big planned, I want some information before everything goes down."

"Yes sir."

The door quickly succumbed to Copper's flames, and he quietly opened the door, and goaded us inside. The shop had been trashed. Every bookshelf had been turned over, the content scattered all over the floor. In the center of it all was my contact. Severely mutilated with both cuts and burn marks. His aura had apparently been destroyed faster than it could regenerate the damage. "Do not remove your gloves; we do not want to leave prints." I said as Copper and Ciel dispersed into the shop. I ordered Copper to block the door to avoid any annoying visitors, Ciel began looking behind the counter and I began searching the body.

After finishing up with the body and finding nothing of value to the investigation, I moved into the back rooms of his shop.

Directly inside the door behind the counter I found a storage room for books. Up a quick flight of stairs I found the now deceased's apartment. The apartment had avoided the trashing the shop had received, and was neat and orderly. The apartment had three rooms, one kitchen, dining room and living room hybrid, a bedroom and a bathroom. The main room was rather cozy, he had a sofa that went from the wall facing the street following the wall until it made an L shape out into the room to divide it up. In the corner opposite of the L shaped sofa a television was standing. In the center of the sofa group there was a coffee table. The kitchen was in the other half of the room, built into the wall facing inwards away from the street.

I stepped into the room, surveying it for the place to start looking for clues. I decided on his bedroom where I found bags on the bed, fully packed and readied for a hasty departure. Copper joined me as Ciel finished up downstairs.

"Looks like he readied for a quick getaway." He said as he moved up to the bags, and quickly shuffled through them.

"Yeah." I answered and moved out into the main room again, and took up a tablet scroll placed on the coffee table. The scroll was locked.

"Ciel can you open this?" I waved the scroll in the direction of the infused girl.

"Sir, maybe if I had any idea of how scrolls work, but I don't."

"To bad, I'll bring it with me to the general, he can get someone in data security to work their magic on it."

"And I have an address." Copper said, waving a piece of paper walking out of the bedroom. "We could try looking up the address, it was found with his baggage, so this is probably his transport."

"Where is the address to?" I asked.

"Somewhere located near the industrial district, Junior's club. If that rings a bell?"

"No. However, now I have something for my debriefing with Ironwood."

We took all of the lien in the cash register and stripped the dead faunus of his valuables, and as we left we smashed open the door from the outside, making the scene look like a common robbery. We returned to Beacon, but found our dorm room empty.

I called Penny to find her location and she told me that she was at the library together with both team RWBY and JNPR. Having some time to kill before my meeting with the general, I made my way to the library. The library was built in much the cathedral style of the rest of the academy, first floor having the more popular books and public computers. Second floor was a walkway around an open center, allowing viewing down into the first floor. The second floor had tables for group work in-between bookshelves that stood out from the outer wall.

Between two such bookshelves, we found Penny and the two teams. Penny was spectating as team RWBY was dueling out the fate of Remnant in a board game.

"Hey, mates!" I greeted.

"Looks like someone has been out shopping." Yang remarked as Ciel and Copper brought chairs for us to sit on.

"Yeah, we got tired of walking around in our uniforms all day."

"What a nice change from uniforms." Weiss remarked sarcastically. "Now you do not look exactly like each other."

"I think a uniform appearance makes the team look professional, and we can still be distinguished from one another."

She shrugged me off, and returned to her game. I hanged my jacket on the back of my chair and grabbed a random book from the shelves to enjoy myself a little. The book I grabbed was titled "Forgotten leaders of the great war." I browsed down the back of the book containing a list of the commanders covered in the book. As I neared the end, the name General Buford Early sprung up at me. Funny that a commander in the Great War had the same last name as me. I opened the book and moved over to the page mention the general. The amount of information on the general Early barely covered a page, and in one corner of the page, the man was shown standing behind the leader of the kingdom of mantel, wearing the black and white parade uniform of the mantel military.

I began reading the short biography of the general.

"The character seen in the picture has been dismissed as a guard of the upper echelon of the mantel kingdom [1]. However, as I have taken closer look at the imposing soldier, I have revealed that this could be the leading character in the armed recognizance unit of mantel [Citation needed]. He started his time in the army as an agent of armed recognizance and his work placed the armed recognizance unit as one of the players in The Chess Game of Remnant as seen in my book of the same title."

The shameless attempt to sell his own book in the middle of his article reeked of unprofessionalism, and the comments to his statements revealed that I was holding an unfinished product.

"After moving up the ranks he secured many victories for the kingdom of Mantel such as the uncovering of Vacuo submarines listening in on Mantel military communication [Citation needed]. However, as the war dragged on, he was forced back to Mantel as the insurgence of Atlas academy brought instability to the kingdom. This combined with the forces of Mantel being beaten back by the combined forces of individualist broke the Mantel kingdom. His last act as a leader of armed recognizance was to advice the king of Mantel and the allies of the kingdom to agree to the peace negotiations at Vytal [Citation needed]. And as Atlas academy took over the kingdom, he became the leader of the newly formed Special Operatives Unit, built upon the remnants of the armed recognizance of Mantel [Citation needed].

I finished the chapter and returned the book to its spot. Dismissing the thought that General Buford Early was in any way related to me, the Early surname while not common was not so uncommon that one could make decisions on ones heritage based on a badly sourced book. While I was reading, Sun and Neptune had arrived and after team RWBY had retired to their room after losing a crushing defeat to the army of Vale after Neptune took over for Blake. Penny, Copper, Sun and Neptune had started up another game. Neptune played as Vacuo, Penny as Vale, Sun as Mistral and Copper as Atlas. Penny was spreading her forces trough the world, making the world of Remnant bow to their new AI overlord.

I said my goodbyes and left for my meeting with general Ironwood. I neared the landing pads of Beacon, and I was waved inside into one of the capital ships by a navy officer wearing the green markings of his station. I was guided to the general's office in the center of the ship. The office was quite a bit smaller than the one he had at the academy, and featured only a desk with two chairs and a desktop scroll. There was a porthole allowing one to look out at the academy, and a white carpet adorned the floor. I saluted the general as I entered.

"At ease soldier pleas sit down." The general said, and I joined him and sat at the opposite side of the desk.

"Report Corporal Early." He ordered.

"The white fang was stealing a dust delivery from the Schnee dust company. Two faunus student, one of Beacon and another of another kingdom arrived first at the location and caused the explosion that alerted Penny. The white fang were led by the criminal Roman Torchwick."

"Why would a faunus rights group work with a human criminal?" He asked, I recognized it as a rhetorical question and continued my report.

"I arrived shortly after Penny by using a rocket locker as a transport. As I arrived, the white fang flew in another batch of soldiers. Miss Polendina managed to shoot down one with her laser, and we engaged the other two units in combat. Together with the team leader of team RWBY and the two faunus we managed to hold of the white fang until we were joined by Ciel and private Schizes. We broke the white fang morale, and routed them back to their ships."

"What happened to the white fang suffering from aura shook?"

"They were taken in by Vale police and I was denied permission to interrogate them."

"Don't bother, anything Vale drags out of them will be relayed to me through Ozpin, and we can't use more extreme methods even if we agree to a cooperation agreement."

"I understand Sir."

"Now, did you notice anything weird during the attack?"

"Yes Sir." I answered thinking a little on the evening. "There were no security guards guarding the shipment, especially weird considering the Schnee Company is aware of the dust robberies plaguing Remnant."

"Weird indeed." He said as he typed down some information on his desktop scroll. "Anything else?"

"Nothing I can think of."

"Thank you soldier, now have you contacted Tukson?"

"Yes sir, but we found him dead in his bookstore. He was also preparing to leave Vale."

"Damn, the white fang got to him before us."

"It wasn't a complete waste, we found an address and a scroll, the address is to somewhere called Junior's club. I was considering taking Copper and Ciel to it to talk to the owner tomorrow."

"No, wait for my signal; I want to take a look into the scroll before you go in."

"Sir if we do not react immediately there could be more casualties."

"And sending you in blind will result in you dying and even more civilian casualties."

"Yes sir."

I got up from the chair, saluted the general, and left the ship for my dorm. My team had already returned from the library, and Ciel was drilling Copper though another set of mediation, her herself taking part in activating her infused dust in different parts of her body.

"What are you guys doing?" I asked as I stripped down to my underwear. My words made Copper flare up in flames, but they were quickly brought under control again.

"Copper got a little too exited during the game." Ciel answered as she continued the unrelenting meditation.

"Copper you shouldn't get so mad over a game." I said to the meditating Copper.

"Sir, I didn't get mad, suddenly the game piece just melted in my hand." He answered, stopping his meditation.

He was goaded back into the exercise by Ciel and she turned to face me. "Losing control does not always mean getting angry, it means letting your feelings in general control you. Anger is just the most prevalent."

"So even extreme happiness would also lead to this reaction?"

"Yes"

"Remind me not to have sex with you Copper."

"Awww." He answered faking distraught and placing his hand over his heart. "You hurt my feelings."

"Get over it." I teased.

"But what will happen to my sex life?" He asked Ciel, faking nativity.

"You should avoid partners without an aura." She answered, not letting the direction of the conversation face her in any way.

"Ohh how do you know that, oh great sensei?"

"Sexual education, my family ensured that my education was thorough."'

"Practical examples?"

A little electricity jumped back the neck of Ciel, unnoticed by both Copper, still in his teasing mood, and Penny, who bore striking resemblance to a red-hot piece of iron. What are you hiding lighting lady? Apparently nothing you would like to share with the rest of us.

"No. Get back to meditating." She ordered, dismissing the teasing of the fire infused.

I jumped up into my bed and decided to let the problem lie. Ciel's conviction and control would not let any of it ever influence a mission.