Liberation (*Flashback* Private Xald and Ace, M)

[Xaldalneir]

Zoe fitted the gas mask over her face, letting her small ear perk out from her hair. She took a deep breath to get used to the apparatus before looking down into the valley below, where a Schnee Dust Company work camp/mine rested. She looked at her watch, then to the devices she'd rigged. They were timer-controlled mortars, and when they went off they would fire dark Dust into the camp, causing confusion and allowing her and Ace to slip in and rescue the Faunus 'working' there. She looked to Ace, signaling her readiness to move out.

[Ace]

Ace nodded from the other side, figuring her own gas mask and producing a sphere of her aura. With a graceful leap, she plummeted into the valley, elegantly spiraling, arm's crossed, towards the ground. The humans would probably notice her while they still had vision, but she was hardly concerned. Zoe would do her job right, and thus Ace would be able to do hers.

[Xaldalneir]

Zoe spun Storm Centurion around and pulled the trigger, launching herself after Ace. Two minutes after the mortars fired, clouding the entire valley in darkness. Zoe landed outside the facility, looking around for Ace.

[Ace]

When Ace landed, a flurry of dust surrounded her, mixing with the clouds of darkness, decreasing visibility even further. She darted to the mines, killing every human that she came across and firing her aura into stockpiles of Dust, causing massive eruptions. Faunus have nearly perfect vision in darkness. Humans? not so much. Her blade connected with the shackles of Faunus prisoners, freeing them from the mines and brandishing, to each and every one of them, the seal of the White Fang. Very few stayed to fight. Most ran away, terrified of the events that would unfold.

Workers shouted and everything became chaos. Ace found her way to another group of humans before the freight train began to take off, and rather loudly at that. Despite her determination to eradicate the remaining workers, she couldn't let the Dust find its way back to the Schnee family. Her head turned to locate her partner, and she motioned for the train, knowing that Zoe could probably make it there faster. "Zoe!" She called out.

[Xaldalneir]

The mouse faunus nodded in understanding spinning on her heel and firing a bolt at a nearby Dust warehouse. She'd taken the liberty to augment her normal ammunition with red Dust for maximum casualties. The warehouse exploded with a satisfactory boom and she started leading faunus towards the train, ushering them aboard the freight cars and laying down cover fire, tearing through Atlesian Knights with her railgun.

[Ace]

Ace sprinted as fast as she could to catch up with the train, but it seemed as though it was just too much. She even sheathed her sword so that she could put all of her effort into catching up to the train. Eventually she'd come close enough to grab on to the back of one of the cars, but at the rate it was going, she'd soon be drug along the ground like a rag doll. Even now it was hard for her to keep her feet on the ground. "Zoe, I can't pull myself up!" she shouted to her partner.

[Xaldalneir]

Zoe, somewhere in the middle of the train, jumped down and rolled, running back to Ace and grabbing onto her with one hand. With the other, she turned Storm Centurion around, and pulled the trigger, launching them forward at a high speed and landing near the middle cars. Now with plenty of time to catch up, Zoe grabbed Ace and threw her into the train car, firing Storm Centurion once again and launching herself straight into it.

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