Chapter 1: Our Fortress is Burning...
Fire and smoke billowed out from the world below. The city emitted great towers of ash that danced with the wind, and raging infernos flickered amongst hastened bodies of human, faunus, and grimm alike. Roiling black waves of humanity's enemies washed over the kingdom's capital; the bastion walls surrounding the city crumbled beneath the weight of countless creatures. Screeches and screams from all sources cried out, dotted amongst the chaos. Devastation and fear ran rampant. Though tirelessly the Hunters worked, their impact did little against the sheer number of them. Hundreds of souls were snuffed out by the onslaught every second.
Vale failed to prepare. Despite everything. Despite Atlas's military presence. Despite the hunter academy. Despite eighty years of defense and peace since the Great War. Eighty years spent trying to ensure the same thing never happened again, now thrown to the wayside.
Weiss found it all distressing, as she watched from the window. Team RWBY regrouped in a small house by the city's center. The door was left open, the building obviously abandoned in a rush. Silverware and clothes thrown about the halls, and a teddy bear with a patched limb lay upside-down in the living room. She shuddered to think of the fate of this family, but picked the teddy up nonetheless, clinging to the hope that they were still out there, and she could facilitate the reunion.
"What do we do?" Yang asked aloud, her voice uncharacteristically low.
"I thought it was fairly obvious. We fight," Blake replied, finally standing from reloading her Gambol Shroud.
"Yeah. There's just so much to do out there. For once, I don't know what to focus on." The team hummed in agreement, each member respectively overwhelmed in their own right.
"I think I saw Adam earlier."
"Your mentor?" Yang asked. Blake nodded.
"We can track him down later. There are more important tasks at hand," Weiss pointed out after a few seconds of silence, "I think we need to get to the CCT tower. If that falls, so does Vale."
Ruby sighed, then stood, her breath drawn back in to say, "I agree. As much as I want to save everyone, it wouldn't be possible. Not even with my speed." She paused to look around at her team. "Are we ready?"
"No," Yang replied, half-jokingly, "but this is the best we're gonna get. Let's go." The quartet exited the house back into the fray. The street was empty, completely forsaken and filled with the eerie, disembodied screams and growls of the city. Ruby ran ahead, as her semblance lent itself well to scouting. The other members followed behind, helped along by Weiss's speed glyphs, though nowhere near as fast.
The footsteps of the four echoed between the concrete, glass, and rubble. Sounds of conflict grew louder the closer they traversed to the tower. Gunshots, whirring, screams. As the tower grounds came into view, a harrowing scene came with it. Atlas tech turned rogue, firing indiscriminately—be it civilian, hunter, or grimm. Only a few hunters were mowed down, caught in the initial surprise, their bodies being dragged away under coverfire. Ruby stood in the thick of it; her scythe twirled in brash, wide arcs to destroy robot after robot and cleave a path.
As Yang and Blake moved to join Ruby, Weiss held up her hand to stop them. Deft hand symbols brought five glyphs to life between Ruby and the tower. One by one, they exploded, starting with the furthest from their leader. With the extra time and message received, Ruby blinked back, surrounded by her characteristic rose petal storm.
Together, the team ran toward the tower and into the lobby. Pneumatic glass doors slid closed behind them, muffling the barks of the hounds of war. Inside, the landscape was ominous. Couches pushed over for cover, lamps destroyed and shattered, scraps of metal armor and bullet cartridges dotted the floor in places. Scattered robotic and soldier corpses alike left forgotten. The central plinth, which normally projected a hologram of the globe for the tower's patrons, stood dark. The only sounds were those from the conflict outside the tower, and their own footfalls against the polished concrete.
A loud smack of shoe across flesh sounded out, followed by an indignant cry of, "hey! I'm napping here!" Team RWBY halted in place, the masculine voice familiar.
"Too bad. We have more company," another, feminine voice scolded in return. After a huff, presumably from the male standing, the two rounded the plinth. Two heads of grey and green hair stared into RWBY's eyes, their smiles far too wide.
"What are you doing here? There is a war happening, in case you haven't noticed!" Yang shouted.
"Yang, I don't think they're our friends anymore. Mercury tried to kill me as I was leaving Amity, and I think Emerald caused you to hallucinate in your fight with him," Ruby calmly replied. Crescent Rose cut the air as she twirled it, a new cartridge slipped in and chambered. Blake followed suit, quickly inspecting Gambol Shroud.
Yang burst forward with the assistance of her gauntlets, her punch narrowly dodged by Emerald. Blake and Ruby rushed forward, the former a distraction for the latter. Weiss held back, supporting her friends with glyphs. She had confidence in her friends' abilities; four training hunters versus two cocky sit-outs no one had seen fight before the tournament. With her support, the end result she expected was inevitable.
Mercury retorted with a salvo of Dust rounds, dispatched by Blake and a time glyph or dotted into the floors and walls. Ruby bounded through the air on glyphs, each step redirected her momentum and served to confuse her target before her attack. Homing Dust filled the gaps that were made when her team couldn't take an opening, thanks to Emerald and Mercury's unprecedented teamwork.
The vibration of a soft click on her finger, followed by a lack of dispensed dust, signalled to Weiss that Myrtenaster was empty. Without looking, she reached for the last stores she had. Her hand brushed against the teddy she forgot was on her person. Her eyes flicked to the plushie in momentary surprise. Fresh sorrow and resolve filled the heiress's mind. This couldn't be the end. This kingdom she has grown to think of as home must survive.
Weiss returned her focus to the fight at hand. The duo her team found themselves contending with took advantage of her reload. The spotlight of her attention landed on Ruby, who was on the ground, scythe meters away while Emerald loomed over her.
The glyph was second nature. Her heart skipped, beads of sweat flew, and she was airborne. Weiss deflected Emerald's strike, weightier than anticipated. The riposte drew on Myrtenaster's power; sparks sputtered from her sword, the Dust within utilized to char what her sword cut. Aura rapidly filled the gap, minimizing damage. Dull green spots of light danced across her adversary's body with every lunge. The shield cracked further and further under her onslaught.
Mercury, who was momentarily forgotten as she attacked, landed a firm kick across Weiss's cheek. Aura absorbed most of the blow, but the pain and taste of copper still burst forth. Yang came to take his attention once again, but his kick did its purpose. Weiss whipped around, disoriented.
Another attacker approached from the broken elevator: a flame wreathed Cinder Fall, the other member of their team. The sight struck fear within the heiress; so much flame with seemingly no source of Dust. The fires struck out in whips at Weiss. The first attack was simple enough to dodge, but the next came at her while she was in the air. Aura absorbed the impact well, and left a dull flash of light blue instead of a burn mark. A barrage of further flames followed the first impact; some whipped at her skin, the rest curled around in a death grip. Weiss could only move her shoulders and legs; her arms wrapped up and Myrtenaster—which she had miraculously held onto—was bent against her at an awkward angle.
Weiss's fingers fumbled against the triggers and buttons at the hilt of her dust rapier, stretching further than she thought possible to rotate the revolver, the symmetrical design made her attempt to tell which barrel was active nearly futile. She utilized temperature difference that spawned when Frost Dust was active, then pulled the trigger. She held it down, draining every last particle. The armor created warbled energetically, then burst, spikes of ice jut out in every which way, tore at the whips of flame that bound her, then expanded, settling into a dome roughly her height across and tall.
Breath in. Breath out. Myrtenaster's chambers whirred slightly, bent but otherwise undamaged by the fire, not even slightly warmer. The temperature inside was frigid immediately upon summon and Weiss used the welcoming feeling to center herself. The rapier clicked, a glyph of time beneath her feet. The dome shattered; individual shards fell ever slower as the glyph dilated her perception.
Weiss burst forth on a different plane of time, each molecule she touched visibly shifted to match as she passed. She reached her first target, a wide-eyed Cinder who still watched as her fires dissipated. The blade glinted once, twice, thrice across her body like a ribbon in the hands of a skilled dancer. The first two impacted against her weakening aura and sent vibrato along the length of the blade; the third rushed in after a shattered aura and severed the jugular and carotid veins whose contents spilled into the opened throat. As much as she tried not to pay so much attention to the detail, the scene burned itself on the forefront of the consciousness.
Her footsteps continued swiftly across the floor, careful not to slip on bits of scrap metal. She caught up to her next victim as Mercury reached out at Cinder's soon-to-be lifeless corpse. Nine precision strikes danced across his aura and torso, a tenth that missed originally flayed the hip muscle on the return, exposed bone splashed with a fresh coat of red paint. An eleventh she deemed necessary to end his misery, pierced through the sclera of his grey-irised eye, punctured the protective skull dome with a crunch with just barely too little force left to make it out the back. The withdraw pulled free a near-clean blade from the sponge that all that graymatter provided, freshly drenched in runny red and a thick, clear goop.
Emerald looked on in despair, her steps slowly coming back into time with Weiss's own. Midstep, Weiss pointed her blade forward, the barrel shifted for the final time that night, white dust covered every rune along the length and expelled a little to form a small glyph behind the girl's back. The Dust turned her rapier into a divining rod, constantly tracking the corresponding glyph as it moved past. Time's flow jumped back to normal, and the infused steel burst with white light, pulling Weiss along for a ride.
The impact staggered Emerald, pushed against her aura shielding with unrelenting might. Tears escaped from the corner of her eyes, the dull green keeping a barrier up against her piercing force. All at once it shattered like glass, the point of Myrtenaster slipped through the initial skin barrier, and with a sound not unlike snapping a celery, pushed its way through the sternum. Steel grated against bone as it slid through, slipped through muscle and lung and the heart, each provided its own unique resistance; the tip dinked off and between vertebrae before the length of the blade poked out on the other side, the blade sheathed in a human scabbard to the hilt.
A phantom feeling, like a metal pole across her bosom finally registered in Weiss's brain. The tang of coppery blood reached her nose. Emerald looked into Weiss's eyes. Her mouth moved, but no words were made. The visage of green and brown and red shifted to that of red and black and silver. Ruby's face looked forward into her partner's eyes, then past, then not at all. Crescent Rose, which had been used in an attempt to keep Weiss away without harming her, limped to the side and clattered to the ground blade first.
Weiss let go of Myrtenaster in surprise. Ruby's body fell to the floor and her sword popped back out as she lay motionless on her back. Weiss whipped around to stare at the carnage; Yang lay on the floor, red pouring profusely from the wounds she delivered; Blake scrambled on the ground gasping for breath only for more blood to fill her lungs. Another version of her team stood watching, before each one turned to look at Weiss. Who she thought was Ruby turned into Emerald, Yang into Mercury, and Blake simply didn't exist.
"Thanks so much for your help, Ice Queen!" Mercury exclaimed, "couldn't have done it withoutcha. Now just lay down now, wouldya?" He dashed forward, one leg raised for a kick. Weiss jumped out of the way, the foot that aimed for her skull flew through air instead and he stumbled, expecting that to have hit.
Weiss threw her arms forward, a glyph slowly growing on the concrete. Layers upon layers of mystic, solidified aura expanded from an arbitrarily chosen focal point; it rotated briskly at various rates and each symbol fell slightly out of sync.
Ringing erupted throughout the room. Orange light protruded just into her field of view signaling a Dust round impact in the middle of her chest. Her balance was lost to her as her knees crashed to the floor for stability; her chest felt tight, like she could no longer breathe. What was up? How could she get there? Muscles that normally could help her up didn't so much as shudder when called upon.
Recent sibling wisdom centered in on Weiss's consciousness, "emotions can grant you strength, but you must never let them overpower you."
To hell with that, Weiss thought, crashing to her side against the comforting, cold and polished stone. Every dreg of emotion she felt she poured into one attempt to summon again. No sounds reached her ears, even as she could still see Mercury loom over her with words on his lips. When he stopped and looked up, she could tell her last-ditch effort worked.
Minutes passed. At least, she hoped it had just been minutes. Weiss flitted between wanting to fall asleep and get up to run away, and the tired half won several times. Whatever her Knight did, she missed it. All she knew was Emerald and Mercury were no longer in sight, and the construct stood vigil over the sliding glass door. At some point, she regained her ability to breathe, along with the tangy, gut-wrenching smells of three stilled pools of blood. Then came muscle control, and balance. Logically, she knew that the wind was knocked out of her lungs by that bullet impact—the symptoms lined up—but her instincts weren't so sure. Weiss had never felt that before now, how could she know without uncertainty?
Weiss stood at last, the suit of armor she called upon dismissed to return some energy and aura. As quickly as she could and with as much stealth as she could manage running through forsaken city streets without any training in the subject, she picked up Myrtenaster and ran.
AN: Having fallen flat on my face from a scooter going roughly 20-30 miles per hour downhill in the rain relatively recently, I can confirm that is exactly what it feels like to have the wind knocked out of you.
As mentioned in the description/advertisement thing, this story would not exist if I hadn't randomly stumbled upon Sorairo-Wolf when looking for more fanart for my collection one day. Go check them out. Hope you enjoy/enjoyed.