It was evening by now and Blake could list a thousand things she would rather be doing that what she was doing now. She dodged another explosive flare from Roman Torchwicks cane and dashed into the offense. Her blade flinging upwards in an attempt to strike the white suited man across his torso, but he blocked it nimbly and evaded to her right.
"Blake!"
Sun Wukong, the blonde exchange student and fellow faunus ran past her, his nunchucks flailing at the criminal in front of them as Blake diverted her attention towards the White Fang members that had them all but surrounded by now.
Sun's reasoning had been sound and he had been right. After she had opened up to him and told him about her affiliation to the White Fang, their radicalisation by the hand of Adam Taurus, her former mentor and her desertion as she couldn't take the violence anymore, he had presented her with a plan to confirm or deny the involvement of the organisation in the recent raids and attacks. They waited the whole evening at the docks, where a large shipment of dust, courtesy of the SDC was arriving per a large freighter. The idea was, if someone else than the white fang would hit the shipment, their involvement was out of the question. Sadly the White Fang was doing exactly that and even her attempt of swaying the activists from their attack by revealing herself and her faunus heritage, had been fruitless. More peculiar or rather, worrying, was the fact that the White Fang was apparently cooperating if not even taking orders from the notorious criminal Roman Torchwick, a man on almost every wanted list in the four kingdoms.
She rolled to the side, evading a burst from a Fang's machinegun and dashed forward, her blade hitting him from shoulder to shoulder, draining his aura and flinging him off to the side, unconscious. Another charged at her, a sword raised which she parried as it came down. Locked in an embarrassing stalemate, she turned her upper body and delivered a kick to his temple, leaving him too out cold on the floor. Seeing Sun blocking another flare with his weapons, she jumped into action again.
"He's mine!" She yelled as she landed between him and Torchwick and resumed her duel with the man. He was fast, she'd give him that and the explosives from his cane posed to be a real treat, but her semblance allowed her to move much faster, leaving afterimages of herself behind as decoys. Still, the fight was already straining her reserves.
Sun tapped in again, this time using the second application of his nunchucks too. Shotgun blasts filled the air as he manipulated all four firearms with practised ease. But Torchwick was skilled, obviously experienced and ruthless. A strike with his palm sent the monkey faunus sprawled on his back and Blake almost didn't make it in time. This time however, she managed to make her slash count and Torchwick was sent flying towards the edge of the dock. Before she could capitalise on that however, he was up again and aiming his cane at something above him. A large container, suspended on a crane by some flimsy looking steel wires. The flare shot out, hit and left the steel weight plummeting to the ground, making Blake and Sun roll out of the way.
Blake fell on her knees and hands, the sound of hollow metal still reverberating in her sensitive eardrums and tried to regain her bearings. Sun was sitting in front of Torchwick, apparently in the same state of confusion, but the criminal was neither looking at him nor her, he was looking at something on top of the container.
"Who the hell are you?" He asked, irritation evident in his voice as he aimed the cane in the direction he had been talking. He never got to pull the trigger however as two gunshot-bursts rang out impossibly loud and Blake saw Torchwick dash off to the side, into cover, out of sight.
Heavy boots impacted next to her and she looked up to see the ominous glowing visor of Richter's helmet staring back at her. She tried to get up, but he placed an impossibly strong hand on her shoulder as he looked her over, his other hand patting her limbs down in search of anything out of place.
"I'm okay! He's getting away!"
"Leave her alone!" Sun's voice came from the left, his nunchuck impacting heavily on Richters shoulder with a sound of metal hitting flesh. The pilot whirled around at impossible speed and grabbed the faunus' throat, pressing him to the ground and placing a knee on his solar plexus.
"Both of you! Get to cover!" He realeased him and drew his sidearm again, his thumb clicking off the safety and his head scanning for any hostiles.
"MOVE!" He roared, his voice amplified even further through the helmet's speakers and Sun and Blake began to move towards the containers, just as another flare exploded right next to them. Roman Torchwick was now running at them, his weapon ready to fire, but again the horribly sharp gunshots rang out. Blake noticed how much more forceful they sounded compared to any other weapon she had heard and apparently Torchwick too felt nervous about being hit by one of them. A valid concern as the criminal soon realised that whatever projectiles the man fired, flew much faster and impacted much harder than normal dust bullets would. He managed to avoid three of them, before he felt a violent punch in his side, followed by a sharp sting. He dropped down to cover and was more than just surprised to see a red spot expanding rapidly on his white suit.
He had been shot.
"You fucking asshole!" He yelled and turned up and out of his cover to fire another flare at his attacker. The projectile flew out of the barrel at high speeds and hit the armored figure square in the chest, sending him flying back to the container where he left a sizeable dent in the metal. But a second later he was back on his feet.
Another group of Fang-members rounded the corner of the container and took aim at Richter. Six shots rang out and three bodies dropped to the floor, blood spurting from holes in their chests and heads. Roman knew he was beaten. He had to get away. This man in front of him was not one of the annoying kids that had interfered with his and Cinder's plans before. This man was a killer through and through. He watched as the last White Fang member tried to hit the pilot with his saber, only to receive a bone shattering punch to the face that left his head reeling back farther than anatomically possible and send him flying, his face caved in in an disgusting display of pure, violent strength. No man could do that. What was this... thing?
Torchwick made to run.
"HEY!" Damn these fucking kids! The red girl from weeks ago stood atop one of the buildings surrounding the docks. Her scythe unfurled and behind her. He took a quick look to confirm that the killer was either nowhere to be seen or occupied with the White Fang. They were buying him time.
"Not now red!" He raised his cane and fired a flare that hit the girl straight in the chest, sending her flying back a few meters, out of his line of sight. Only to see another girl, with orange hair flip down from the roof, a collection of identical swords hovering behind her and tear into his backup. By now it was way beyond a mere clusterfuck. Even Cinder's wrath couldn't stop him from taking his legs into his hands and run. Just a moment now, before the gunships would arrive, before his extraction was due.
He skidded to a halt at the distant sight of the blue visored monster from before, kicking a Fang in the thigh, breaking it in half like a twig. He let loose a trio of flares and turned into a corridor between the containers, in hope that the high explosives would do some kind of damage.
"Torchwick!" The faunus girl was waiting for him in front of him, just at a conjunction. Her sword poised for an attack and her eyes conveying a serious fury.
"Girl! I don't have time for your shenanigans!" He dropped a flashbang and covered his eyes and ears before it went off. A look behind him confirmed his fears. Bounding from left to right on the walls like a frenzied animal, the thing closed in on him. He turned and ran towards the black haired girl, striking out with his cane, only to see her vanish in another one of her annoying phantoms. Then, finally the roar of heavy machinegun fire sounded from above.
The ground around Blake erupted in a flurry of impacts. Dust obscured her vision and chunks of concrete and bullet impacts chipped away at her aura.
"Blake!" Sun yelled from the side and she was pulled away by a strong arm, into the cover of one of the shipping containers. She collapsed on top of him, her aura almost flaring from depletion.
"Ehehe!"
"Stop giggling like a stupid third grader! This is not the time." She peeked around the edge and saw Richter still out in the open. Sparks flying from his body armor and helmet before he too dove back into cover. Then, a green flash engulved the gunships above them and split them in half. The wreckage plummeting into the sea beyond the docks.
"We have to check on him!" Sun only nodded and ran after her to where she had seen Richter dive into cover. Only that he wasn't there. Splotches of blood and a kind of syringe, empty and discarded, lay in the floor. Then they heard another crash and more gunfire from further up the dock. A quick dash later and they saw another destroyed bullhead within a pile of bent containers and another one just taking off. Penny had jumped towards Ruby, seeing to her being okay and... and Richter was kneeling within a circle of groaning and disabled White Fang members, a liberated machinegun in his hands, firing mercilessly at both the last Fangs and the rising Bullhead, alternating between targets with mechanical movements until the gun went dry. A single Fang was still standing as the bullhead flew out of sight, a smoke trail behind it. He dropped the gun and turned to run. Blake was about to go after him as Richter threw the gun like a spear and hit the man in one of the shoulder blades. Blake flinched as she heard the bone break from twenty meters away, then she took a look at the trail of downed people that lead towards the man. Some were still, hopefully still breathing, some nurtured broken limbs and some... some were definitely dead. She gasped as she saw a man, crushed against a crate his spine bent backwards in an unnatural angle and another who just sat there, still alive, but his arm severed from the shoulder down. For some reason, Sun managed to put up a composed front.
"Come on Blake, let's get out of here."
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For some reason, Richter felt unable to get angry when in combat. Frustration? Sure. Fear? Of course. But he was never angry, that always came after the fight. Right now he was walking towards the last remaining terrorist. He was lying on the ground, his shoulder dislocated and his shoulder blade split by the sheer force of the impacting weapon Richter had thrown. When he saw Richter, he was panicking, frantically rolling on his back and drawing a sidearm from his hip.
Richter swatted it away and it flew in a high arc before clattering to the ground, a good twenty meters away. By now, the Fang had apparently accepted his fate, closed his eyes and awaited the inevitable. He was rolled on his stomach, his hands were tied behind his back with cablebinders.
"Don't move. It'll further damage your shoulder." A calm, electronically filtered voice said, before the pilot got back up and walked to where his other victims lay.
It had taken the police almost ten minutes to arrive. In that time, he had taken a precise account of the damages he had done. Nine White Fang members were dead. Four were bbeyond his ability of first aid. Seven in critical condition (he counted the missing limbs of some of them as such) and twenty two were merely unconscious or otherwise disabled. Roman Torchwick, the guy he had seen on TV several times, as well as a good dozen Fangs had escaped with their last two bullheads. Most of the dock had been destroyed. He had been hit.
"How many?" Footsteps had alerted him of the faunus girl approaching him from behind. He had expected some kind of malice from her at the deaths of her former allies, or at least some form of accusation, but her tone was somber and sounded far away.
"Nine." He stated matter of factly as he continued to press a hand against his neck where one of the bullets had grazed him. His voice sounded wet and wrong. He and Blake stood a bit to the side, where they could see the paramedics tend to the wounded while the officers took anyone into custody who was not in need of immediate medical aid.
"You're bleeding."
"You too." He pointed at her thigh, just below where her shorts ended and a little shocked, Blake had to realise that her aura must have given in at some point during the fight and a bullet had grazed her flesh. The bleeding had already stopped, courtesy of the healing properties of aura, but it must have been a rather deep wound, if the blood that was smeared all over the outer side of her thigh and calve, was any indication.
"It'll heal. But you should go get patched up."
"I'll do that. But let me tell you something first, because your team probably won't." He pointed at the rest of Blake's team, who stood, a bit to the side. Yang was talking to Ruby, who had a crestfallen look on her face and Weiss was looking in his and Blake's direction, with eyes that looked accusing and worried at the same time. Blake waited silently for the pilot to continue.
"You have been one of them, right?"
"How do you know?"
"A hunch. Just wanted to say first that it's okay to be wrong sometimes. But, miss Belladonna, fuck, that was stupid." Blake opened her mouth to interject, but Richter overruled her as he kept talking.
"Not only that you rushed into a situation, severely outnumbered and without much information, but you also left your team behind. Even though you didn't expect them to come after you, you put them in a very dangerous situation and maybe just as important, you've shown them that you don't trust them enough to ask for their help."
She stared at the ground, so Richter couldn't say if she was contemplating his words or had just shut him out, like teenagers do sometimes. He put a hand under her chin and gently faced her towards her team.
"Go change that. Such an attitude can destroy a unit." He received a small nod from the girl and watched her walk off towards the other girls and Sun. From where he was standing, he couldn't hear what they were saying, but it looked like she received an earful from the heiress, before she enveloped the black haired girl in a friendly hug. It was nice seeing them smile together, even though the feeling was dampened for all of them, as in the background, paramedics were still draping blankets over the last dead bodies and rushed around, tending to the wounded. He waited until all the injured were transported away before he took slow steps towards one of the remaining ambulances, where two paramedics where still standing.
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Roman Torchwick was many things, but he wasn't tired of life, even though his defiance against Cinder suggested otherwise. It had taken some time and an easy to bribe physician to remove the pair of bullets that had buried themselves into his side. The girl had bossed him around for months now and he was slowly getting sick of it. Her, granted, very subtle accusations of cowardice didn't help his mood either.
"My dear miss, I don't think you realise what has happened at the port." He said in a mocking tone to the young woman sitting in front of him. She silently urged him on with a wave of her hand.
"The students are one thing, working with terrorists is another and stealing from the Schnee family is certainly a pleasure to me..." He paused, looking at her as he recounted what had happened the night before. "But this...man, he might put us in a difficult situation."
"What are you suggesting, Roman? Are you saying that I am too weak to face this man?" The chipper tone in her voice did nothing to mask her irritation.
"No, I don't mean your powers, because whoever he is, he hasn't shown any and I haven't been able to detect any aura either. But where most people shy away from violence and you and your... bunch..." He gestured towards her and the two youths sitting patiently behind her. "...find some perverse pleasure in it, he did it as if he didn't even care, either way. Not since the war have I seen someone so detached. Not that you kids could really know."
"Oh now you've fought in the war?" Came from the greyhaired boy behind Cinder.
"Na-ah, I thought I made it clear that I don't care for such things. But just one more time and for an explanation as to why you three have to do better if you want to scare me. I have dealt with mass murderers and warlords. People who have done their best to prove that they are the biggest assholes alive. Well... until they weren't. But the reason for their power and the reason why they died was the same. You want daddy to tell you how all their stories ended?"
Roman was lucky that Cinder actually enjoyed a good story here or there. He had come around much in his past and that had made him a man of many talents. Burglary and thiefery mostly, as he was only a second class fighter at best, but what he specialised in, he was brilliant at. That's why she kept him around and he was probably the only reason her little operation had now the dust reserves they needed. The throwback at the docks hadn't really stalled them.
"Enlighten us." She purred and fixated him with her eyes.
"All their stories ended with a man or a woman waiting at their home or crashing through a window and shooting them in the head. The kind of people who enforced their reign and those who eventually ended it, they were people like him. People who didn't hesitate before they pulled the trigger. Not out of fear, or because they wanted to savour the moment."
He stood from his seat and winced as his wounds strained under the bandages.
"You guys are just not cold enough yet."
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Papa?
Yes, Jonathan?
I have a question, but please don't be mad.
chuckle* I'll try.
Okay. Um... isn't it bad to hurt others?
Papa?
Yes. It is. I know why you ask.
And why? Why do you do it then?
Because sometimes, there is no other way. Sometimes, people do bad things because they can't do anything else. And they can't just do nothing, you know?
I don't understand.
And I hope you never have to. Now get back up, if you can land a hit, I'll get you that game you wanted.
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"I don't trust him." Yang said, as she and the others watched the pilot climb into the back of an ambulance, supported by a female paramedic.
"I mean, how can you do that to people?" She gestured towards the destroyed docks. "Blake! You saw what he did!"
"Yes." The faunus girl looked back at the blonde, her eyes stern and unwavering. "Yes, I saw it. But I don't think he likes it."
"This is still the White Fang we're talking about." Weiss said from the side. She had her hands on her hips again, like she did often when she needed to explain something. "Blake, please don't take this personally, but they are as remorseless as he was. The White Fang today doesn't shy away from killing innocent people. In my opinion, even if it's regrettable, these people had it coming for them. Im sorry, Blake."
The heiress threw Blake a genuinely apologetic look, to which the black haired girl just nodded in acknowledgement. Ruby had stood a bit to the side during the conversation, her hands wrapped around her weapon as she tried to avoid looking at the white sheets scattered surrounding the SDC containers.
"Yang, I know what you mean. I don't like it. But he saved Blake... and Sun." The blonde faunus nodded in silent agreement.
"You can't be serious. You can't even look at what he did and you defend him? Rubes, I love you, but you're just too naive sometimes. Good people would never do something like that. Hell, I don't even think I could if I wanted!" All four of them could feel the temperature around the brawler pick up as her anger grew.
"And Blake, it doesn't matter if someone likes it to straight up murder people. What matters is that they do. How is he any different from the bandits and terrorists we know?"
"He tries! I can't imagine doing something like this as well, but..."
"But we probably wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for him." Sun finished for Blake and stood beside her. Yang took a step back, as she felt herself slightly cornered by her team and the blonde.
"Yang, we know what you mean, but maybe it's good that he was there." Ruby said with a slight tone of finality. "He was hurt while helping Blake and Sun. Maybe we should just hope he's okay."
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The hospital was nice, Richter thought. Much more spacious compared to the sickbays and infirmary halls he was used to and they had obviously tried to avoid using the typical colours. "Medical green" or "Sterile grey" as he liked to call it. What was also a lucky coincidence that the building had a small wing dedicated to rehabilitative activities, which included a room with training equipment. Lucky... He needed to make the punching bag dissappear and fast. The leather object had been able to resisted about four of his attacks before it had split down the middle. He was just glad that it wasn't filled with sand. The bag though, was adamant on not fitting into the crate on the side, so he was not too surprised as he was caught red handed.
"Mr. Richter! You shouldn't be up yet. You know what the doctor said about your injury." The nurse said as he stepped away from his attempt at hiding the evidence. The woman however just smiled in amusement as she looked at him. She was young, maybe in her early twenties and he wasn't able to ignore how her uniform hugged her slender figure just tightly enough to suggest while leaving enough for the imagination. Just now, Richter became a bit self conscious about the state he was in. He had chosen to shrug off his jacket, only wearing the white hospital-pants and the sweat on his skin and he knew that he was panting. The workout he had been keeping himself busy with earlier, had actually taken a toll on him.
"Your... wound will open up if you strain yourself too much." She said as she moved to his side and took his arm. "We should go back to your room."
He let his shoulders slump down to his side and let himself relax as she guided him through the hallway. Of course he could have made the way back on his own, but something about her touch made him feel... at peace? No, peace was unobtainable for him, at least permanently. Why not peace then? Hm... maybe because he had fallen back into the maelstrom that he so foolishly believed to have escaped fo a moment. Maybe because all that happened at the docks disgusted him to a degree that he had forgotten he could feel. He had felt so disgusted by these people, not because they were faunus, but because they died for nothing. For a criminal, petty monetary gain. He had killed, yes, but never for something so trivial. A cause? Yes. Justice? Of course. Vengeance? When it had to be. He had even killed for selfish, arrogant revenge.
He caught himself. Whatever he was feeling back then, after the fight, these people probably felt too. They must have had their reasons. Otherwise they would have just stayed at home, right? He was ashamed of himself for such thoughts, but he couldn't help it, it drove him mad. The fact that he didn't need to wrestle his consciousness like a normal man would, it irritated him to no end.
"Mr. Richter? Are you in pain? You shouldn't have strained yourself that much." The nurse said. She stood in front of him now, her gaze fixed on his eyes.
"It's alright. It is just an episode. I should probably just sleep it off."
"You should do that. Should I ask the doctor to take a look at you?"
"Thank you, but I think she has enough going on right now. I'll be fine, thank you." He flashed her a quick smile and moved into his room. He had been here for the last four days, even though he had affirmed to the medical staff several times that he was fine. He stepped into the small bathroom and spat into the sink. Blood again, but his chest didn't hurt anymore since he had arrived on this strange planet. Instead he actually felt much more lively now, more agile, healthier than before, even though the nightmares still came at night.
He had forgotten his appointment with the police that day. luckily the two officers didn't mind the short wait as they sat patiently in the room as he exited the bathroom. They introduced themselves and soon they had proceeded to their questioning. He told them everything that had happened, stating only vagues when they inquired after his past. He told them that Ozpin deemed it best that his information stayed safe and they seemed to accept that. Where could they find him after his stay in the hospital? Beacon academy. How did he find out about the raid at the docks? The young huntresses and a bit of coincidence. Where had he learned how to fight. The military. Who had escaped? Torchwick. About a dozen Fangs. Was he able to identify any leading individuals among them? Only Torchwick.
Richter was unimaginably grateful that the headmaster had vouched for him so unconditionally. Even though he prophesied to him that they needed to have a lengthy talk about his methods after his return, he was grateful for his assistance of team RWBY and their blonde faunus friend. For them at least, the situation had ended without any major injuries or casualties. The Fang however would probably feel the blow of so many members being either detained or dead.
He wished both of them a nice day and decided to send a message to the teams registered for his workshop that the first lesson would commence as planned. He intended to leave the next day, even though the doctors had advised against it. He knew he had suffered much worse and pulled through. A scratch such as this was not enough to hold a Richter down for long.
But now that his legal obligations had been resolved and the, admittedly severe injury he had sustained (A bullet had grazed his neck and barely missed his cervical spine.) was taken care of, he needed to catch up to a lot of work. His own little curriculum needed additional planning and he didn't want to think of how much work had queued up in the armory. Using his scroll, he asked for a pickup from the hospital the next day, to which Beacon responded quickly and promised him a bullhead in the morning. Now sufficiently calm, the pilot decided to devote the rest of the day to his preparations for the workshop he would hold. Most of it he had written down in a notebook of his that he tried to keep on his person at all times. A lot of people had called him oldtimey for his preference of paper over digital documentation, but he just found it easier to organise this way.
Sleep would have probably not come to him so easily if he knew of the green haired woman, watching him intently through one of the windows.
