Chapter 24

Changewing hobbled into the Training Arena. It had been an hour since the meeting, and he had barely been able to instruct his new human charges to go to this back room in the arena before Ratchet shunted him back to his room; accompanied by his Intended's much to Ratchet's chagrin. After promising Ratchet that he would let Spectre take him to Hightop's medical facility later, Changewing was released. Now, with his mandatory rest over, he had time to meet the mech who had volunteered to fight the humans. Turning the corner, he audibly groaned.

"No one else volunteered?"

"Now what's that supposed to mean?" asked the hulking maroon mech that towered over pretty much everyone save Spectre, Optimus Prime, Ultra Magnus, and Grimlock.

"Nothing, Head Hunter; just that you're a little too… angry, to be training new recruits."

"So? As the only former 'Con on the team, only I can give them a real taste of what they're up against."

"Fine, fine, just no killing. If I need to get a shock collar for you don't think I won't."

"That won't be necessary; I'll keep an eye on him. The humans are starting to grow on me, anyway," said Silversun from where she'd just appeared behind her Sparkmate.

Head Hunter visibly flinched, but only Silversun noticed.

"Good, that means I won't have to incur the wrath of the Hatchet by doing something I'll regret," said Changewing.

The three of them walked in to see Team RWBY stretching, the Reds and Blues either following their examples or arguing, and Penny and Sydney simply chatting on the sidelines.

"Alright, listen up! First, we're having solo battles, then team battles. Your opponent is this hulking mass of armor named Head Hunter." Changewing banged his fist against his stomach plating for emphasis. "First up: Sarge."

Sarge, being Sarge, stepped forward with his trusty shot-gun, prepared to face down the admittedly red menace. He had his ass summarily handed to him, simply because Hunter picked him up and threatened to split him in half. As each of the fights with the Reds and Blues went on, it was clear that they valued teamwork far over solo work.

All except Carolina. When Hunter prepared to pick her up in some new and exciting manner as he had done every single time before hand, taking two tries on Wash, she vanished. She had had Epsilon triggered her Armor's super-speed and so had been able to easily dodge Hunter's attack. For his part, he hadn't used a single cannon throughout the entire session, so his infamous anger wasn't even close to surfacing when she dodged. After two further successful escapes, however, he started to get mad. So he turned into his tank form and fired point blank into Carolina's chest.

And missed again.

She'd been waiting for that exact moment; jumping quickly on top of him and pulling out dual plasma rifles, she fired tons of plasma into his armor, trying to melt his turret into one position. Before she could succeed, he changed back, this time pulling his Riot Cannon out of sub-space, and firing it in her general direction each time she stopped moving. After six shots, he'd run out of patience. Charging an entire clip into one blast, he slammed the barrel of his cannon into the ground and fired, causing a massive shockwave to move over the arena, knocking Carolina off her feet. Before he could step on her like he wanted to, though, Silversun was there with a dangerous glint in her eyes; and just like that, his anger faded.

Changewing eventually agreed to continue the spars, but only when Carolina herself assured him she was fine, if a little pissed she'd lost.

Of the members of RWBY, none were too entirely confident in their ability to best Hunter. He was altogether a different animal from both Goliath Grimm and Atlesian Paladins. Yang, of course, wouldn't let anyone see her growing nervousness, and so volunteered to go first. Yang's Ember Celica probably didn't have near the penetration power as any of her teammate's weapons, but she knew that she'd be able to take even more hits that all of them combined. She wasn't sure if she wanted to take a hit from one of his massive fists; or worse, his cannons.

Pumping her fists, Yang crouched into her combat stance. Even though she saw no discernible reason to fight him, she decided right then that somehow that tank was going down.

Head Hunter started once again with the same yet different first attack. Rather than dodge it, as Hunter was no doubt expecting, Yang jumped onto his arm and ran up its length, using shells from Ember Celica to speed herself along. As soon as she was high enough, she smashed her right in a devastating hook that succeeded in sending Hunter across the room, slamming into the wall below where everyone else was seated. Yang landed on the ground in a perfect two point landing, before stretching back out into her combat stance. Already, her eyes glowed red.

Head Hunter, on the other hand, was dazed, confused, and most of all; pissed. As soon as the static cleared from his vision, he slammed his battle-mask into place and roared his fury at the blonde. Yang merely smirked.

Hunter unsubspaced his riot cannons, firing six shots in quick succession. Yang dodged all but the last, which caught her directly in center-mass, launching her to the opposite end of the room in much the same manner as she'd sent him.

"Yang!" cried out Ruby and Blake simultaneously. Ruby checked her scroll and saw that Yang's aura had been dropped to less than half, but was holding steady.

Hunter offered no respite. In a blind rage, he transformed into his alt-mode, taking aim at the cloud of dust on the opposite end of the room. He fired a shot directly into the middle, then immediately reloaded and allowed the dust to clear. Before one mote had settled, however, Yang was on top of him, blazing with fire, eyes and hair glowing red and yellow. She stood next to his turret and punched it so hard it spun all the way around, and as it came back around she jumped and punched it downwards. The force of the strike forced him out of his alt-mode. As he lay there, prone, she landed next to his head and swung one more time; and then she stopped, and walked away.

When Head Hunter came to, he was livid. Struggling to get up, he locked his optics on where the rest of Team RWBY was helping Yang to calm down and begin the process of recovering her Aura. Raising his riot cannons once again, he fired, only for the shot to be blocked by twelve swords levitating in the air and spinning almost too quickly to track.

"Hunter, that's enough!" called Silversun, but he couldn't hear her, such was his anger. Charging both of his cannons once again caused them to glow as they had before, obscuring his vision.

Penny, sensing that Hunter could no longer be reasoned with or see her, leaped up and over the trajectory of his cannons even as everyone else in the way moved to the sides. Using her swords to carry her closer and closer to Hunter allowed her to sail over the incoming planet-buster shots that decimated the area everyone used to be in and caused the roof to collapse on top of Silversun and Changewing, pinning them.

Penny slashed at his face in an attempt to blind him, but Hunter had gained heightened senses when his battle mask had been deployed. This allowed him to use a motion tracker to see exactly where Penny was.

Penny's eyes widened into saucers as Hunter's fist came out of no-where, sending her towards a wall even faster than Yang had smashed into it.

Until Sydney caught her; Head Hunter, confused as to why his prey hadn't been blasted into smithereens, looked to where he should have seen Penny's broken body. What he saw instead was a dazed penny being set gently down on the floor, and a black, silver, and purple femme with spider legs spread behind its back and what looked like webbing spread between its fingers.

"You hurt my friends. You will pay," said Sydney as she opened her eyes to reveal glowing purple optics.

A/N: So yeah. those of you who saw that coming, good, you aren't blind. To those that didn't: MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA