A/N: Sorry to have you guys wait for over a month. I really feel like I don't deserve the over 1,100 views you guys have given this story, nor the comments left by you guys of the follows or faves. I'd keep on, but you came here for the chapter, not me.
Disclaimer: I only own this idea. RWBY is the property of Monty Oum and Rooster Teeth Studios. Please support the official release. Enjoy!
Crossing Off The List
Chapter 3: The Falls
Glynda sat in her classroom grading papers, glancing at a news article she was reading off of her scroll between each test. She paused as she finished a test halfway through the stack. She felt like she heard something, but at the same time she couldn't decide if her mind was playing a trick on her. She set her pen down and got up, slowly walking towards the classroom door. Something wasn't right. She heard footsteps approaching, dozens, too heavy to be students.
A soldier with many others behind him opened fire as he kicked open the door, forcing Glynda to jump to the side to avoid their gunfire. While in the air, she drew her riding crop and aimed at the soldiers, sending them flying out into the hall and into the walls. She landed gracefully and straightened her stance, crop at the ready as she cautiously approached the unconscious men before her. Assessing that the immediate threat was taken care of, she quickly retrieved her scroll, dialing Ozpin's number; no answer. The possible reasons for him not answering made Glynda's mind enter a rare state of urgency, anxiety, and paranoia. She stepped over the littered bodies and headed for Ozpin's office.
The gentle feeling of the air hitting against her throat as it went down to her lungs, and her elevated heart rate seemed to disappear, as drops of her blood flowed forward, following the bullet that pierced and ripped through her flesh. She dropped to her knees, pupils unfocused and grip loosening on her weapon. A foot soldier that had pretended to be knocked out got up, chuckling to himself despite the pain in his chest.
"You know, I'm pretty sure you've broken a few of my ribs", he said walking over to her, before pressing the barrel of his pistol to her head, "Don't worry about that Ozpin son of a bitch. You'll be joining him very soon."
A gunshot rang out, a body falling moments later.
Glynda stared down at the corpse, blood leaking out of the side of his helmet, eyes emotionless as she slid the pistol into her pocket and tightened her grip on the riding crop.
"My duty as a huntress is to fight to keep this world from being destroyed, no matter the cost," she thought as she started running towards Ozpin's office once again, "This is a fight where we can't hold back, even if it means we have to throw away preconceived notions about the value of our enemies' lives. If we can't do that, we can and will lose much more than they will."
Yang, Pyrrha, Ren, and Sun swiftly took out a majority of the army, the rest fleeing when they saw how few were left standing. Now all that stood in their way of taking out Cinder was Emerald and Mercury.
"Seems you just can't rely on others too much," Cinder said turning her head towards her two associates. They nodded their heads before Mercury ran at Pyrrha, who had sat on the side supporting with her semblance, while Emerald went after the others. She fired at them to force them onto the defense as she ran. Sun saw that Cinder was alone now, and ran past Emerald, both of them blocking the others' strike during their brief exchange, before Sun pointed his shot guns as Cinder. He aimed for non-lethal points like the arms and legs, but she coated them with aura, making the shells wasted. He changed the guns into his pole and swung at her. She caught it and yanked him forward. She grabbed him by the neck, lifting him up. He tore at her hand, but she coated it in aura to serve as a barrier. She looked him his face. Her expression became one of intrigue for a moment, before shifting back to neutrality.
"Wouldn't want to lose an army over a small PR incident", she said contemplating her options. She bent forward and slammed her hand down into the cement rubble, embedding Sun's head into it. He went still as traces of blood could be seen on the rocks. Cinder wasn't dumb enough to kill or steal the semblance of a faunas. Almost all of her forces could desert her if that happened, and that had to wait for now.
Pyrrha pushed at Mercury with her semblance, but he didn't budge as she narrowly dodged one of his kicks. She took an opening and landed a punch on his shoulder. He didn't flinch as it impacted. He smiled before kicking her arm away, making her twist with it. She barely managed a glimpse over her shoulder before Neptune kicked her in the back, making it bend unnaturally as she flew into the wall, before falling with a thud. She slowly lifted her head as he walked over to her, blood flowing from her broken nose and into her mouth, the iron taste unfamiliar to the champion.
"Kevlar armor under my cloths and carbon boots as hard as diamond." Neptune looked down at Pyrrha as she lifted her arm to get up. He stomped and twisted his heel into her wrist, making her scream out in pain.
Yang was done. She wasn't going to deal Emerald for one more second. All the girl had done was dodge her attacks while firing off potshots to keep Ren at a distance. Yang's aura flared as she heard Pyrrha scream, and she charged at Mercury. She reeled a punch back, ready to wipe that arrogant smile off his face, until he kicked her arm to the side, redirecting the movement. Her blood red eyes watched as he aimed for her ribs. Her reflexes kicked in and she rolled as she was knocked back. Her aura changed from a low, steady orange that outlined her to a flaring yellow that roared like a cloak of flames.
Mercury concentrated on Yang as she ran at him a second time, keeping his eye on her fists. Even without her weapon, no blunt object could compare to her punches with their precision and power that radiated beyond the point of impact. If it wasn't for her semblance, it wouldn't extreme for him to guess that punches like the one she had just tried to land on him could break the bones in her hands. If he kept redirecting her attacks though, it wouldn't matter how many times she came at him or how powerful each strike was.
Neptune ran towards Ozpin's office. Once they'd all reached their weapons, he'd split up from the others to get Professor Ozpin while they went back downstairs with the weapons to assist and arm their allies. He'd already taken out several soldiers in the halls as he ran towards the headmaster's office, but the amount of defeated greatly outnumbered those walking around. Someone had else had been on their way to Ozpin's office. Based on the bullet holes in some of the unconscious solders' armor, he couldn't label them friend or foe though. He settled down when he saw Glynda Goodwitch at the door to Professor Ozpin's office…until he saw the gun in her hand.
"Professor Goodwitch?" Neptune asked, stopping a few feet away from her. She didn't answer. He looked beyond her, everything becoming still for a moment as he painfully became aware of his heartbeat. Dr. Oobleck stood over Ozpin's corpse.
"He kept fighting…even after more than a dozen bullets dug their way into him…" Oobleck said sorrowfully, the weight of his death not lost on him or Glynda. He reached over and picked up his superior's cane sword, cleaning the blood off of it and sliding it back into its sheath. He laid it next to Ozpin, before sliding his eyelids closed, so that his cold, lifeless eyes could finally sleep in peace. Neptune seen a tear slide down Glynda's cheek, but she quickly wiped it away, hiding her frown and the hurt visible in her eyes with a furrowed brow and a look of determination.
"Mr. Vesalias, lead me to the people who have done this." Glynda said looking at him.
"I need to go make sure Peter is alright," Oobleck said, taking care to avoid the blood on the ground, "after I can verify his status, I'll hurry down to assist."
"After I confront these people, the kings and queens of this operation, there shouldn't be anything left to assist with if I do my job as a huntress." Glynda said walking out of the office, following Neptune. She was going to make the ones responsible pay. James was right. She needed to get rid of the source of their problems, permanently.
It was starting to get annoying, being able to only dodge.
"Does this girl never tire?" Mercury thought. He didn't have any chance to go on the offensive with her relentless assault. She was planning her punches to force him to dodge, so that when she punched next he'd be forced to move immediately without pause.
Mercury continued this song and dance, back and forth. He dodged the first punch of the fiery duet she'd been repeating, but his eyes widened as he felt a tug on his ankle that kept him from moving. He looked down to see Pyrrha angrily staring as she kept him from moving.
"You bi-"
Yang punched him square in the jaw, sending him flying into the wall. After a few seconds he began to slowly get up, the moon light that poured through the new hole highlighting his grey hair, giving it a silver appearance that contrasted the blood that clung to a large portion of it, some leaking down the side of his face and dripping from his chin. His head tilted unnaturally to the side, and his lower mouth unaligned with the top. After he managed to stand, he gripped his jaw, moving it back into place as he groaned in pain, before sighing as it fell back into place. He then grabbed his head on both the top and bottom, before in one quick motion, twisting it with a crack to its original position. He looked down at the blood on his hand.
"That really hurt you know." He said. Yang began to march towards him.
"Yang!" Pyrrha called, desperately trying to force herself up onto her feet despite her injuries. Yang's hearing shut off as her anger at Mercury took her over, making Pyrrha's voice silent as she concentrated on him.
She paused, her fire cloak sizzling out as she began to fall forward, an obsidian dagger sticking out of her back, just to the side of her heart. She fell with a hollow thud.
"Yang!" Ren looked away for a moment from Emerald, costing him two shots in the chest. He wheezed lightly as he fell and laid flat on the ground, small amounts of blood pooling around the wounds despite his best attempts at stopping the bleeding with his aura.
"Cinder…?" Mercury said as his master approached.
"Like I said, you can't rely on others too much." She said approaching him. She stared at him a second, before head-butting him, grabbing him by the hair as he fell back in pain, covering his forehead with one hand as he groaned at having his hair pulled. "Look at me", she shook him, making him look through blurry, unfocused vision at those yellow, piercing eyes. "It's hard to plan out my revived kingdom when I'm forced to intervene in a fight I shouldn't have had to." She let go and back-handed him across the face as he fell to the ground. "The Fall family once ruled over all the kingdoms as its kings and queens. I will not let your shortcomings stand in the way of the resurrection of my family's name."
A/N: So yeah...I didn't make things look good for the bunch fighting Cinder, Emerald, and Mercury...or the Beacon teachers...or anyone outside Cinder and Emerald, considering Mercury is at this point struggling to stay conscious...Man, this is actually a bit depressing. Anyway, Ruby, Weiss, Blake, Nora, Jaune, Neptune, and Goodwitch are on their way. Let's hope that everyone can hang on...
So now I have a question to you guys. Considering Ren, Yang, and Pyrrha's positions, if you could save only one of them, or at least have them come out of this okay, who would you choose? Depending on the votes I get in the reviews, it just might influence my hand when writing the next chapter.
Oh, and don't forget to tell me your thoughts and opinions on the chapter while you're telling me who you don't want slaughtered in front of their friends. Don't believe me when I say that? Ozpin is dead and his corpse is littered with bullets. The only person I would have a tougher time killing would be Oobleck. So yeah, choose wisely~
