ARC 1, PART 5: Big Bear

Ona Crossing. At long last.

They viewed the town's alive chimneys from the vantage of a distant cape. A cape cleaved into an inlet below them, where the sparkling ocean passed through. It's where Captain Deron hid the Hangpole last time they anchored at Ona Crossing. "And… we'll ambush them here." Davy added.

"I knew you weren't planning on "negotiating"" Adonna grinned.

"Was never going to work. Not when dealing with guys like that."

They set up a Spotter scope on tripod to watch the ocean. More items in their carriage included ropes, hooks, barrel of gunpowder, muskets and ammo.

Rwby wondered why so much gunpowder. To her, it's a waste to use gunpowder as explosive on its own. Not when she could craft smaller yet stronger bombs while still using less gunpowder.

"That could be a more effective plan." Davy agreed.

"I still strongly trust a nice cup of tea over a chat to be the most effective solution for all problems." Klein commented.

To craft Rwby's bombs, more ingredients were required however.

So,

They split up in groups of two to gather items on their list quicker in the town. Adonna with Davy; Rwby with Klein.

Shop after shop, they walked out as empty-handed as they entered. Until Rwby and Klein's group got pointed to a shop ran by a hoary geezer, who had up a sign upon his counter that read "Absolutely no children or pets!"

He didn't even glance at their list but grunted that he didn't have any of those items.

Rwby even pointed at the items in question clearly in display on the shelf behind him.

The geezer grunted again. "Well done using your imagination. Now leave."

They pleaded; they begged. Still the old man wouldn't answer to them, busy tinkering on his broken telegraph machine instead.

They had given up, when a new customer Rwby bumped into at the door hunkered a little bit to stare into her face with piercing emerald eyes.

This came especially unsettling to Rwby – being stared at so closely as if being read like a book with the way this woman cupped her chin.

Short, blonde hair barely longer than Rwby's while barely lighter than her complexion. She wore fingerless gloves and cackled a genuine laugh while introducing herself as Sela.

"You look like an inventor." She said to Rwby, then shifted to staring Klein as closely. "And you… what's it about you? You are…" she drew a pause with narrowed eyes. "You are… disappointed. Yes. Both of you look disappointed!"

Sela guessed their glum faces must be because the cranky geezer didn't sell to them. "Go offer him some help on that tele-something of his, he'll sell to you." She winked.

It still took some convincing for the grumpy geezer to accept help on fixing his telegraph. He even sent Klein out the shop saying he had no use in there. And he valued his telegraph too much to leave Rwby alone with it.

With the shopkeeper distracted, Sela swiped a handful of valuables around the shop. Rwby's eyes caught hers, so she gestured a hushing finger over her lips accompanied by another wink.

The shopkeeper caught on anyway.

Sela left her mischievous laughter receding as she fled.

And with the geezer outside the shop crying that he'd been robbed, Rwby left the telegraph that had her lip-biting and staring hard to understand its technology. 

She elected for the quicker option… to grab what they needed, leave behind enough money she assumed would cover for the items she took over the counter, and then scram too.

Somewhere in town,

Adonna and Davy were wandering mid-conversation, when the ruckus reached them: militiamen chasing three thieves but only one wasn't a familiar face to them.

The nimble Sela drew most attention away from Klein and Rwby, especially when she climbed overhead, leaping off rooftops with ease.

Adonna and Davy took to their heels too. One particular militiaman chased the others closely while few others lagged behind. Adonna caught up to him on a small footbridge over a creek and pushed him to the water, while yelling an apology.

Last of them to reach their carriage would be Davy. One militiaman raised his musket at them right as Klein reined the horses onwards. Davy hurled a pebble from his pouch that slotted right into the musket's barrel. That militiaman was left eyeing down his barrel while they made their escape out of town.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rwby got to work.

The others took shifts watching the sea at the Spotter glass through the night. When neither Adonna nor Davy were on shift, they both laid under the stars together. The night of 26th November, Sagittarius calendar was already flipping by and they hadn't yet begun their adventure. She made wild guesses on what the Sagittarius treasure could be:

Some ancient dragon's hoard?

A lost city of jewels?

A hidden habitat where you could find all 31 species of Astrids?

Real life Automatons?

"Or secrets of the Universe as we know it?" Davy chuckled his own wild guess. 

"Where are you from?" She asked. "You knew your way around Dona even more than us lifelong residents. It is taboo just talking about leaving Dona but you even knew a secret exit out. So where did you come from? Lunima? Ona?"

Davy gazed into her eyes. So deep in like he could view her soul behind those dilated black pupils. He quoted some adventurer who also failed to find the Sagittarius treasure, saying, "Home is where our story begins. For a true adventurer, 'tis where one's dreams reside." Then went on to draw attention to the subtle scar on her forearm.

She wore a guilty grin when confessing it's a memento of her academic expulsion. It all started from fictional stories which led them to suspect the possible existence of Automatons. They drew theories about the Innovatus Consortium and wanted to explore what they did inside their Spire. First they wanted to sneak out of the schoolhouse when they discovered a network of tunnels leading outside. Then they planned to wait instead for semester break to sneak into the Spire. But insatiable curiosity got the best of Adonna, so she snuck out all alone, failed woefully, injured herself in trying to escape guards of the Spire and still got caught.

"The Innovators' Consortium are the only people who can freely travel in and out of Dona. That's how powerful and influential they are across the Consortium of States… and you just snuck into their building?"

"I didn't think I would get caught."

"How is that an excuse?"

She laughed. They both laughed

Perhaps it was just the force of attraction, or to elude her repeated question about where he's from. Davy just leaned in and kissed her lips.

For hardly a couple of seconds. But that's a tender couple of seconds that would remain memorable down their lives.

Neither of them regretted it. Cheeks flushed, knowing they'd do it again. 

Elsewhere. Aboard the Hangpole ship,

Caged in the captain's cabin ever since, Bear got fed only as many times as Captain Deron remembered to. Still, many meals dried up right in front of his snout.

Hangpole pirates had one bony zoophile among the crew, who liked to stroke Bear's fur through the rusty bars whilst the dog laid listless.

He came to discover a patch of hair faded blue under one of the dog's droopy ears, which he called out to his captain. Bear's fur had been dyed, or at least some part of it.

Either way, it got the captain overly keen. He tried to wash off the colour, leading him to drench Bear in icy cold water.

That made the dog blow a sneeze.

Back at that cape near the town of Ona Crossing, where they planned their ambush,

A test of one of Rwby's bomb pellets left a boulder cracked and blackened.

It worked.

They all hurdled around a sketch of a sail ship's deck at the Spotter glass to revise their plan. Rwby crafted both smoke and blast bombs that triggered on impact, and balanced slingshots to fire with. They'd first wait 'til Captain Deron and his close entourage leave for Ona Crossing. Next, they'd target the Hangpole's masts to prevent the rest of the crew escaping the inlet. After that, use smoke bombs to cloud vision on deck so he and Adonna would rope down onto the ship, while Klein and Rwby would assist them from above.

All set for the ambush… nothing came. Hours after hours dragged on without a sight of ship across the horizon.

Adonna went from pacing to panicking. "What if we've already missed them?!"

She wouldn't sleep a wink that night, eye stuck on the ocean through the Spotter glass.

Davy joined her by that cliffside of course. "There's a higher chance they got delayed than we were late." He assured her. "Deron always makes stops to get information from his inland contacts. I know he's going to have to stop here."

They dozed off leaned on each other right where they sat.

27th November,

Their wait was rewarded with sight of the ship approaching right as Adonna awoke that morning.

She alerted everyone at once.

It's the Hangpole no doubt. Close enough they didn't require the spotter to sight it but the view through the glass showed no one on board.

That soon confirmed when the vessel kept drifting freely onwards 'til it came scraping a side of the inlet as it entered. One of the masts broken but propped against the other.

They ran farther ahead from over the cape, roped down onto the moving ship and managed to drop its anchor.

Guns, blades, bullet shrapnel littered the deck.

"Just what happened here?" Asked Klein.

Right then came a bestial roar!

Then a towering beast pounced out from below deck.

As the others saw a figure of terror in the colossal, blue-furred wolf, Adonna saw her dog she rushed in to embrace. 

How Bear grew so large, even she didn't know. She explained that it first happened on the Carnival eve after she had gone back home. His fur faded blue, then when he sneezed, he grew abruptly, ruining her home in his clumsiness. Yet he was still her friendly companion – inexplicably transformed into an Astrid Beast. In her confusion, she scavenged for brown dye to hide his unnatural colour even though that wouldn't help his unnatural size. It was by chance that she discovered that calming him down led him to shrink. Nothing calmed Bear down like petting his underbelly. His fur remained blue still and when he sneezed again, he grew yet again. 

"That is why you were so desperate to leave Dona." Davy realised.

"I don't know what will happen to him if authorities find out there's an Astrid inside the City. But it won't be pleasant and I didn't want to find out."

What happened to the pirates? They were all curious.

Big Bear snarled towards the trapdoor leading below deck.

And down there the pirates were... Or at least the ones who didn't abandon ship during his rampage.

The captain and few others had locked themselves inside their own cell to keep the beast away.

Now they squealed to their old crew member, Davy, to free them.

Adonna answered for him, refusing so curtly, so spitefully.

Of course they still had to decide what to do with the pirates. They held that discussion above deck before a sudden interruption.

Erupting gunshots.

That very thief they encountered in Ona Crossing, Sela, came at full sprint, chased by militiamen again with today's loot packed in a sack in her arms. Running along the cliff above them, she soon spotted the Hangpole, then just jumped without a moment's falter, cackling as she fell into the safety of the sails of that broken mast.

Shots of muskets popped from above.

Something terribly off about Sela kept her laughing even after a shot almost took her head.

The threat of gunshots made them promptly comply with her instructions like crewmen did their captain's. From raising the anchor to trimming sails with her at the helm.

For Sela, the terrifying gunshots only tickled louder laughter as they navigated the Hangpole away into open sea.