A Man of Honor.

Chapter 74: It Begins.

"My uncle always told me, 'You always have to use your brains in this thing, and you always have to use the gun.'" ~ Philip Leonetti.

Everything changed after that night. With Junior and Sophia in on the plan,the rest of our limited time was spent perfecting things.

Thankfully that's all it really was. Planning and preparations. Thanks to George and Neo, all the real heavy legwork had been handled, meaning we just had to examine what pieces Junior and Sophia had and place them accordingly. It really was like a game of chess, putting pieces into the correct positions, except our opponent wasn't aware of the fact that we were putting them into check.

Junior got Tonen to open up his personal stash of guns and start arming the 24k Dragons and the various other gangs that owed fealty to the Clan, telling their leaders to be ready to call all their boys in on a moment's notice. Sophia ordered the Desperados to work alongside the Motleys and follow my directions when the time came.

Guns were passed around. I was glad that Tony had held onto that arsenal because as well off as Sophia and Junior were in the arms department they didn't have enough packed away to put an automatic into everyone's hands. Though I'll admit that their rainy day aresonals were a bit fancier than ours. Particularly Sophia, it became clear that the Bratva certainly had plenty of contacts in the SDC providing them with plenty of top of the line weapons to sell off or use if the occasion called for it.

Boris and a group of handpicked soldiers volunteered to help us infiltrate Ironwood's flagship and spring Roman free. Considering Boris and his soldiers were all former Atlas military, they were fairly familiar with the layout of Ironwood's airships. They had become an ace up my sleeve. When we gathered to plan our infiltration of the flagship they took charge and I followed their lead. I was lucky to have them with me on this.

I communicated my plans to Blake. Being a beacon student with near unlimited access to Amity arena meant she was perfect to deal with Cinder's little bomb plot. Cardin had found one of the Family's more veteran demolition experts. He was a simple associate of the Family, a construction guy with training in controlled demolitions who sometimes put his skills towards blowing stuff up for the Family. He was quiet and friendly enough, and when we showed him the model of the bomb Cinder had procured for the occasion he explained his means of disarming it along with various options to get around various failsafes and booby traps. The guy had a grocery list of materials he'd need. Everything from a radio signal jammer to a canister of liquid nitrogen. We were happy to provide everything for him, along with helping Blake plan to get everything smuggled in. Not that it was hard, students going to and from Beacon to the stadium didn't have much in terms of security.

And Sienna's special team of loyalists arrived. Gretchen had her work cut out for her, there were now a lot of mouths to feed at the Torchwick Estate.

"This is Jaune Arc." Sienna said, introducing me to them as we all gathered together in the library. "He is the acting Don of the Torchwick Crime Family and our ally. I trust you all to work with him and to obey his orders as if they were my own. Is that understood?"

I looked over at the small crew of faunus she had managed to gather up for us. I had honestly been expecting more of them and all of them heavily armed as well. But so far there were little more than a half dozen. Seasoned terrorists or not, this wasn't what I expected more from them. But I suppose someone like Sienna who was supposed to be dead was a beggar, not a chooser.

I stepped forward towards them, ignoring the distasteful looks in their eyes and fixed them with the best stony gaze I could muster. "It's good to meet you all, and I'm happy to be working with all of you against a common enemy."