The Warlock, the Witch, and the Empire

Chapter 6

Vale

It had been a few weeks since the Massacre event.

Since then, the warlock had been very busy and careful.

In the few short weeks since the event, (Y/n) had been secretly coordinating Tyrian and the Terror Troopers into striking random people across Vale. Sometimes during the night time when crimes were expected, but sometimes also during the day time as well, so as to catch people off guard.

This had sent the people of Vale into a state of panic and fear, as they were now believing that ghosts were hunting and killing people, which of course earned a response from Beacon Academy, with Professor Ozpin sending many student teams to patrol Vale to keep the people safe.

Easier said than done, however, as the Huntsmen and Huntresses in training faced two major problems.

The first was obvious: Poison Heart were using Imperial stealth field generators to practically turn them invisible. Added to the fact that the Terrors were trained to be stealthy ( along with drilling in the need for Tryian to be as unnoticed as possible), the Poison Hearts were like actual ghosts: able to strike silently without being seen, easily evading capture without even a glance sent in their direction after killing a random person on the streets or in a building nearby.

The second problem was that his first phase was working: people were now doubting the student's ability to do their job.

The people had heard about team RWBY failing to save the hostages on their side during the White Carriage event, and when it was discovered that the so-called best team at Beacon Academy couldn't save some innocent lives while a few space soldiers did, the civilians of the city started slandering the student's names, with the ones in leading the charge being the victims families that survived the event, causing grief for the students that went out on patrol so much, that Ozpin had to send a teacher with each team, canceling classes for a while until the situation resolved itself.

Seeing that things were progressing well, he then ordered Poison Heart to lay off on the killings and go into hiding for a while, letting the enemy breath for a bit since a massive Grimm attack would derail his plans, evidenced by the amount of Grimm attacks on the wall around the city every four to five hours, running the police militia, and even the entirety of Beacon tired and exhausted.

When the killings finally stopped, everyone started breathing a sigh of relief but still mourned the dead that were attacked by the killings, and blamed the Academy people for not doing enough to stop them from whatever it was killing innocents.

This really struck the students hard, especially team RWBY, who were still getting over their failure at the bank and the hate they received because of it. Their sorrow was amusing to the warlock, but he knew it wouldn't be satisfying to have them possibly killed from depression. So during one of his visits to see the progress of Vale as he called it, he dropped by the teams dorm room and basked in the negative feelings they held in secret, while faking being a kind helping knight of the Empire by using uplifting words of failure being a common occurrence in life and that they needed to learn from it, not fight against it if it presented itself.

For when he met these kids, it was almost like they had contracted an infallibility complex, like they expected themselves to always win the day and have their way being seen as heroic against others they deemed villainous.

It seemed to do the trick, as they seemed to be in much higher spirits after that, with them even stopping a White Fang rally a few days later, which was apparently overseen by a criminal in CInder's pocket named Roman Torchwick, who apparently was a rarity in the galaxy for one simple reason: he knew his place. He knew he could never hope to escape safely from the wrath of who were his betters, let alone fight his way from them. It was this trait that made him proud of the progress Cinder made.