Fate's Wild Card

Description: It was supposed to be one more job for Pryce Locke, get paid and spend his money. Not to be tangled up in whatever mess fate seems to have cooked up for him

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It is night in Vale.

But for Pryce Locke, this isn't any normal night. The shattered moon is absent from the sky, leaving the city wrapped in a rare, complete darkness. Perfect timing, just as he calculated. No moon means no extra light, no telltale shadows when crossing those exposed stretches between buildings.

He adjusts his gear one last time—black tactical boots that don't squeak, form-fitting pants with reinforced knees, a moisture-wicking black sweater, and the custom harness with his multi-tool belt. Each item meticulously chosen to help him blend into the darkness. The full face mask sits snug against his skin, his breath slightly fogging the sky goggles with each exhale. Too snug, actually—the straps dig into his ears, sending dull pulses of pain with every slight drastic movement. 

But discomfort is just background noise when he's working. Pain is temporary; getting caught is permanent. And right now, he's in the middle of a gig for some mysterious woman with deep pockets and deeper secrets. Not that he cares about her story—he's met plenty of clients who act all mysterious and pompous, thinking their dark sunglasses and cryptic messages make them interesting. They all pay the same when the job's done.

Her request was straightforward enough: break into a series of apartments and retrieve specific files. Classic corporate espionage or blackmail setup maybe, or maybe trying to intimidate witnesses since it was mostly referred to people. The bread and butter of Vale's underground economy. The first three apartments yielded nothing but frustration and empty drawers, though he'd helped himself to a vintage watch, some unmarked Lien cards, and a small figurine that looked antique enough to be worth something. 

His personal commission, unmentioned in the contract.

A man has to eat, after all.

And this woman is paying serious money—enough that after tonight's last payment, that sleek Huntsman-class bike with custom dust injection will finally be his. One big score, then he can vanish—maybe back to the high-end districts of Mistral where nobody asks questions, or better yet, Menagerie for a few years of quiet living. The thought of warm beaches, cheap rent, and fruit ripe for the picking almost makes him smile behind his mask as he approaches the last target.

Almost.

After taking a bit of distance, he breaks into a sprint and propels himself up, clearing the wall with practiced ease. He lands on the other side with barely a sound, instantly dropping into a crouch as he scans his surroundings. 

Nothing suspicious. Nothing dangerous. Just the quiet stillness of Vale's outskirts and some insects.

The final target of his gig stands before him—a three-story building that sticks out in the farming district like a sore thumb. While most houses around here embrace their rustic charm with wooden exteriors and weathered roofs telling stories of generations past, this one sports clean lines, modern windows, and what looks like actual reinforced siding—urban architecture dropped incongruously among fields and dirt roads.

The farming district is a relatively easy target, but also pretty fucking dangerous.

The surrounding area is too open, with hardly any cover to hide behind or escape routes if things go south. And farmers—they tend to be retired Hunters, people who've spent decades killing Grimm before settling down to grow crops. People you don't want to mess with. But isolation works both ways—the nearest neighbor is at least half an hour down the road, which means he has plenty of time to make a run for it before authorities could arrive.

He moves closer to the house, eyes narrowed behind his goggles as he checks for alarm systems. Nothing obvious presents itself—no blinking lights, no sensor boxes on the windows. Even as he approaches the largest window, pressing his face close to the glass, he can't spot any interior motion detectors. 

That should be enough safe checks. He takes the chance to test if any windows are open.

Unfortunately, none are, leaving him only to check the doors.

Neither of those are open either, so he searches for the next best thing: the spare keys that people dumbly believe are safe. 

Pryce starts with the obvious spots.

And yes, there is one under the mat, the very first place to look, which is seriously hilarious. How stupid can the owner of this place be? Probably banking on the idea that this place is so far off and isolated that people like him wouldn't bother. 

And yeah, he wouldn't have bothered to try his luck in this place, but he's being paid pretty well to care, so tough luck for them.

The spare key slides into the lock perfectly. He turns it with a satisfying click, then twists the knob, preparing to enter—

CAW! CAW!

Pryce snaps his head around, his body jerking at the sudden loud noise. His hand instinctively moves to one of his hidden weapons before he registers the source—just a stupid black bird perched on a nearby tree, watching him with unsettling attention.

Weird.

"Stupid bird," he mutters under his breath, his heart rate slowly returning to normal as he turns back to the door.

He ventures inside, carefully closing the door behind him without a sound. Instinctively, he performs his first-entry routine—ears straining for any hint of movement, eyes methodically scanning corners for hidden security systems, mind cataloging windows and backdoors as potential escape routes.

However, he quickly notices the stale air and undisturbed dust—nobody's been inside for months. No pets either, judging by the lack of hair or feeding dishes. That leaves him with relatively free rein to move around. He begins mapping the place in his head, a quick process born from years of practice. Only then does he start rummaging through important-looking places or potential spots where people tend to hide valuable things.

The first bedroom reveals a space sparsely decorated but clearly once lived-in. A simple bed with rumpled sheets sits against one wall, as if someone left without bothering to make it. A wooden dresser stands against another wall, its surface coated with a fine layer of dust. A small desk near the window holds a lamp and a few books with cracked spines. The walls are bare except for a single framed photograph of a dark-skinned woman standing beside a gray-haired man, both smiling at something beyond the camera's view.

Must be the owners.

Pryce rifles through drawers and checks under the mattress, finding nothing but clothes and some personal items—no files or boxes that might contain what he's looking for. Not even anything worth pocketing.

Nothing in that room. He moves to the second floor, which sadly yields the same disappointing results. The guest rooms are practically empty, or just filled with dust and forgotten furniture draped in sheets. The whole place seems designed to waste space, as if built for a family that never materialized.

So he moves to the third floor, which initially appears similar—though this time there are boxes. Empty boxes, but boxes nonetheless. It's starting to get annoying as there is nothing of value to take, meaning he won't get his usual bonus beyond the last payment. Annoying but not surprising for a place in the farming district.

Finally, he approaches the last door, which—much to his growing satisfaction—opens to reveal an office.

Now that's a very promising place.

It looks abandoned, like the rest of the house. Crumpled yellowish papers are scattered across a desk, the chair pushed back as if someone left in a hurry and never returned. But none of that matters as he feels a surge of hope when he spots office shelves lining the wall—and he knows that those shelves are, nine times out of ten, filled with documents. His eyes narrow when he notices that the drawers have padlocks.

Important documents, then. They must be.

Also, padlocks?

He doesn't even have to waste time lock-picking the thing—he brought his cutters. Kneeling in front of the first shelf, he channels his aura, feeling the familiar warmth flow through his arms as he strengthens his muscles. The lock snaps with a satisfying click that echoes in the silent room. He pulls open the cabinet doors, revealing rows upon rows of files neatly arranged in alphabetical order.

He pulls out his light and starts checking all the files, methodically scanning through the alphabetical tabs, hunting for what his client wants. The beam of light cuts through the darkness, illuminating manila folders yellowed with age.

"Bingo."

Hazel Rainart. He pulls it out and sets it aside, a small smile forming beneath his mask.

Gretchen Rainart. His fingers linger on the folder for a moment before adding it to his growing collection.

He keeps shuffling through the remaining folders but doesn't find anything else of interest in this cabinet. Time to move on.

He shifts to another shelf and cuts it open with the same ease; the metal giving way under his aura-enhanced strength. Inside, he immediately spots two more files that catch his eye.

Summer Rose.

Raven Branwen.

With those two, he now has four files from the sixteen he's been asked for. This is already becoming an extremely profitable job. His mind races with calculations—extra payment means upgrades for that bike, maybe even enough for a new place in a better part of town.

Now to look for the remaining ones before checking for the other items she wanted.

A faint creak from downstairs freezes him in place. His hand instinctively drops to the short knife at his belt as he kills his light, every muscle tensing. He focuses entirely on his hearing, filtering out his own breathing, listening for any creak or floor stress.

But nothing happens.

Those ten seconds feel like an eternity, but thankfully it seems like nothing—probably just the wind or the house settling on its old foundation. The tension in his shoulders eases slightly.

He resumes searching for more profiles, fingers flicking through folders with practiced efficiency, but this cabinet yields nothing more. Time to move onto the next one.

"I wouldn't move if I were you."

Pryce freezes in place, blood running cold as he feels the cold sharpness of steel against his neck, pressing just hard enough to remind him how fragile life can be.

How did somebody sneak up on him?

He made all the safety checks, and he didn't even hear any footsteps! 

No one is that silent. No one human, at least.

However, he is alive. Not on the floor gurgling and gaping with a slit throat, meaning that he is only going to be threatened at most.

So that means that whoever the asshole holding him hostage doesn't want to kill him but capture him. A small opportunity which he is going to go all in on as his right hand reaches for his belt, fingers finding the familiar cylindrical shape of the stun grenade.

Sadly, the blade twists and pulls back, scraping his neck, causing him to hiss in pain as he's thrown off balance. A warm trickle of blood runs down his collar. But thankfully, the momentum is hard enough to send him falling on his back, giving him the precious chance to grab the grenade and pull the pin and drop it.

"Shit!" The rough voice curses from somewhere above him.

And it went off instantly, filling the room with blinding light and a thunderous crack that rattles the windows. The flash illuminates the room for a split second, revealing shelves of documents and a silhouette of a man with wild hair recoiling.

Good thing he's wearing his goggles and snug mask because it protects him from most of the damage that flashbang has done to the huntsman. So he rolls to his right and grabs his second grenade, a smoke grenade, from his belt.

It quickly fills up the room with a dense white smokescreen, and it seems the man is caught off guard as he's coughing and gasping loudly, spitting curses between labored breaths. 

Perfect chance for escape. 

Pryce makes a run for it, dropping on his knees and sliding as he grabs the files he recovered moments ago, clutching them to his chest before sprinting towards the window.

Not before picking a heavy leather-bound book from the desk and throwing it at the window, shattering most of it before he makes the daring jump. 

Jumping from the third floor would be suicidal if not outright stupid because it's a guaranteed set of shattered legs, but he has aura. He can take it.

He expertly performs a land roll as he hits the ground, the momentum carrying him forward as he makes his daring escape towards the fields just as he has planned. Then he'll hide in a pile of hay and wait a couple of hours for the heat to die down.

Except something hard—no, someone—comes crashing onto him from above, and he falls face-first into the dirt, the impact knocking the wind from his lungs.

"Nice try, kid, but you're way too young to outsmart me," the same rough voice from the asshole says, except he sounds amused instead of angry. "Though I gotta admit, that smoke bomb trick wasn't half bad. Almost had me there for a second."

Pryce, of course, struggles against the weight pinning him down, channeling his aura for additional strength, but quickly realizes how useless that is. The man is without a shred of a doubt a veteran huntsman—no other could keep him down without any hint of effort. No street thug moves like that. No common guard has reflexes that sharp.

"Let me guess," the bastard continues, the smell of alcohol suddenly noticeable when he bends over to snatch the files from Pryce's hand with calloused fingers. "Someone paid you good money to grab these files, right? Bet they didn't tell you who you'd be stealing from. Or what kind of shit you'd be stepping in."

Yes, that woman didn't say a thing. Just paid half up front with the promise of the other half when he delivered the goods.

Pryce lets out a long tired sigh and drops his head. This is going to suck. Jail time at best, a shallow grave at worst.

"I'm gonna ask you once," the man's voice turns deadly serious, all traces of amusement gone as he applies slightly more pressure to Pryce's back. "Who sent you? And trust me, kid—you really don't want me to ask twice."

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He's back in the city.

The police station to be exact. Things really didn't turn out great as he expected. He never would have guessed that a veteran huntsman would be somehow guarding the place. The bastard must have some sort of illusion semblance—it's the only explanation for how he got the drop on him so easily, like a ghost materializing out of nothing.

His hands are cuffed to the table in what is clearly an interrogation room, the cold metal digging into his wrists. One cup of water sits mockingly in front of him, deliberately placed just out of comfortable reach. 

Classic intimidation tactic.

And he's sitting across from the grey-haired old man, with a blonde woman formally dressed to his right and the asshole who captured him on his left. And he knows his name is Qrow because that's what the woman called him when they dragged him in. Qrow Branwen. One of the people in those files he was trying to steal.

Just his fucking luck.

The old man seems to be some kind of boss or leader to them, judging by how the other two defer to him. He adjusts his small round spectacles and leans forward, his movements deliberate and measured as he places a steaming mug of coffee on the table. The aroma fills the room, making Pryce realize how thirsty he is.

"Before we start, it would be best to know with whom we are speaking," he says, his voice calm but carrying a subtle authority that fills the room. Pryce only frowns when he notices that his eyes are trying to study him, looking through him rather than at him.

The old man waits patiently, seemingly unfazed by the silence. 

After a moment, he tries again.

"You're not in as much trouble as you might think," he says with a slight smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. "We're more interested in who hired you than in punishing you. Everyone deserves a second chance, wouldn't you agree?"

Pryce stays silent. He's learned to never utter a word to cops or any type of authorities. It's also a promise he gives his clients—complete confidentiality. Can't rat them out if you don't say anything. 

The golden rule of Mistral's streets: keep your mouth shut.

"My name is Ozpin. I'm the headmaster at Beacon Academy." He gestures to the blonde woman. "This is Glynda Goodwitch, my deputy headmaster."

Glynda's stern expression doesn't soften as she nods curtly, her arms crossed over her chest, green eyes cold and appraising.

Right, good cop and bad cop play, trying to get him to lower his guard. He's seen this routine before. Played out in every dingy police station from Mistral to Vale.

"The files you attempted to steal are quite... sensitive," Ozpin continues, taking a slow sip from his mug. "I'd very much like to know who has taken such an interest in them. In us."

But Pryce keeps his lips shut and leans back in his chair, exhaling loudly through his nose. The chair creaks under his weight.

Yeah, these assholes won't get a word from him.

Besides, these people have nothing on him except breaking and entering. Without evidence linking him to other crimes, he is going to wait until he gets a chance to talk to a lawyer. 

He knows his rights, even in Vale.

"Your skills are impressive," Ozpin remarks, something that actually surprises Pryce. "Not many can infiltrate that particular set of apartments. Even fewer would have the quick thinking to use those particular tactics when caught. You have... potential."

Oh, they are now trying to butter him up.

Not happening.

Soon enough, Qrow gets visibly annoyed. The man pushes off from the wall he's been leaning against, takes a quick swig from a flask he pulls from his jacket—the smell of strong liquor briefly filling the air—and walks towards him with heavy steps.

So he is the bad cop here.

"I'm done playing games, kid." he growls, voice rough from years of drinking, before reaching out and ripping the mask off with a swift, violent motion.

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AN: Here it is the next story where you guys will choose what happens, from normal to crazy stuff. Be a hero or antihero or antagonist. But this first one is to set things up with a simple choice to start this new adventure.