The early morning sun rose over the glittering, white marinas of Vale's upper east side as tourists enjoyed the lovely weather. They drank sodas, rode yachts and ate ice cream, completely oblivious to what was going on at the innocent-looking warehouse that sat on the side of the docks.
Inside, dozens of workers wearing black suits with orange highlights were bringing in dozens of wooden crates, covering each and every inch of the shelves that lined the high walls. One of those workers was an unusually tall man with short, black hair, a matching beard and wearing a black silk vest, black dress pants, black gloves, a crisp white undershirt, and an orange tie. He was hauling a wooden crate that looked to weigh at least three times as much as he did across the warehouse floor and was clearly having a lot of trouble with it.
"Come on, Junior, that's not how you do it" a bored, grey haired man in black and grey clothes commented as he leaned against a wall and flipped through his cell phone. "Lift with your legs, not your back".
"Easy thing to say for the guy with robotic legs" Junior quipped back. "Maybe you should be the one doing all this, Mercury…"
"Well, you know I'd love to, but I'm afraid my hands are tied" Mercury replied before pointing down towards his black boots with ammunition belts wrapped around the sides. "You see, these things are stronger than any normal person's legs, and would probably make lifting things ten times easier - which, of course, makes me the more valuable employee and you can't waste your most valuable employees stuff like manual labor, now can you?"
"Of-fucking-course…" Junior grumbled as he finally slammed the crate down onto the floor in front of him. "Okay, that's the last of it! Enough guns and Dust to burn this city to the ground, courtesy of our 'benefactors' in Atlas".
Cinder emerged from the shadows with her assistant, Emerald, and looked over all the boxes intently.
"I trust that all of this arrived… discreetly" Cinder asked concernedly, eliciting a loud laugh from her subordinate.
"Ha! Trust me, if those thundercunts knew that we had this kind of hardware, they'd already be here" Junior assured her. "Besides, you should know by now that discretion is my specialty".
"Excellent work, Mr. Xiong" Cinder complimented as she picked up a crowbar off a nearby table and presented it to Emerald. "Care to do the honors?"
"It would be my pleasure" Emerald smiled back before taking the crowbar and prying the top off the crate.
Inside the box lay a rainbow of glittering weapons, made out of every dust type imaginable. There was so much there that the gangsters had trouble choosing what to grab first, but eventually it was Junior that made the first move.
"High explosive rounds…" the giant of a man said as he picked up a metal tube with bright, red light glowing from under its lid. "Just what my Batzooka needed!"
"Yeah, I'm sure that will help you be real discrete" Mercury said sarcastically before examining a pair of white boots. "Eh, not really my style, but they should help me keep up with that hyperactive redhead of theirs".
"I'll be sure to have them painted black as soon as I can" Cinder told him before reaching into the box and pulling out two orange silk gloves. She then quickly slipped them on and snapped her fingers, causing a powerful flame to bloom out of her right hand and glow brightly in her eyes. "Very nice… I wonder if these can really cause explosions like I heard they could…"
"Well, here's probably not the best place to test that out" Junior said, gesturing around him. "That is, unless you want to make the harbor a mile wider".
"Perhaps another time…" Cinder said deviously before allowing the flames to die back down. "What about you, Emerald? What would you like?"
"Well, as much fun as leveling city blocks sounds, I think I'll go for something a little more… subtle" Emerald replied as she scanned through the box. Eventually, she came across a pair of green wristbands and slipped them over her wrists.
Closing her right hand, Emerald's right wristband suddenly detached into five green knives, which hovered around the dark-skinned girl's hand until she released her fist and the knives neatly snapped back into place.
"That'll do" Emerald stated plainly as she twisted her arm in front of her face.
"Why settle?" Junior asked, slapping the box. "There's plenty more where that came from, and we're not even done with this box!"
"Unfortunately, I doubt most of it will see much use" Emerald pointed out. "Assuming that things go as planned, anyways".
"Yes, but you can never be too prepared" Cinder countered. "You know what they say; hope for the best, plan for the worst".
"Speaking of our 'brilliant' plan, are we sure The Saints are even going to show up at the theater on Friday?" questioned Mercury.
"Well, it's not like it's hard to figure these morons out" Emerald explained. "The blonde one has been talking about dragging her friends to 'see this monstrosity' for themselves on her blog for a while now, and my informants tell me that the theater in the eastern commercial district is the only one they ever go to. They'll be there".
"Along with hundreds of other people, since it's opening night and all" Junior added.
"Oh well, you know what they say about omelettes and breaking skulls" Cinder said dismissively. She then snapped her fingers again and brought a flame up to her face. "First, our men will break in and search the theaters to ensure that the targets are actually there. Once they're found, our men will open fire and either kill them, or force The Saints to flee outside…"
"... where we'll be waiting!" Mercury finished for her. "Finally! Why can't all our assassination targets just come to us?"
"Underworld problems, much?" Emerald teased.
Mercury glared back at Emerald indignantly but Cinder just smiled before continuing.
"Once The Saints are dead - or, if by some miracle they escape - we will order the rest of our subordinates into The Saints' territory and assume control of their operations" she declared as she snuffed out the fire in her hand. "By the end of the week, we will finally be in control of all criminal activities in Vale - and still have time leftover for Sunday brunch".
"Awesome. Maybe we'll even get a commemorative plaque once we're done" Mercury said dryly, rolling his eyes.
"Hey, this is serious, asshole" Junior snapped at his comrade, but Mercury seemed unphased.
"Well, last I checked it was Tuesday, so I don't have to be serious until Friday" he chimed back. "Feel free to have fun with your new toys until then, though! Just try not to shoot your eye out!"
"Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!" Ruby whispered excitedly to herself as she walked through the front of the theater with four bags of popcorn in her hands - two caramel and two chocolate coated. "Dark Lyte's finally here! I'm so excited!"
"Calm down, Ruby" Weiss whispered back with a diet soda in her hand as she and her boss both took their seats in front row. "It's just another schlock action-melodrama for teenagers to gush over and ruin their chances of ever having a good relationship".
"Melodrama?" Ruby asked back, confused. "But I thought it was a comedy!"
Weiss lightly slapped herself in the face and let out an annoyed groan.
"I know I am going to regret asking this, but what in the world made you think that?" Weiss inquired painfully.
Didn't you see the trailers?" Ruby asked incredulously. "Dark Lyte was ripping people's heads off left and right! How is that not comedy gold?!"
"I think your definition of 'comedy' might be different from most people's, Ruby" Blake interjected as she took a seat beside Weiss with a box of Gummy Ursas.
"That doesn't mean it's not going to be a laugh riot, though!" Yang laughed as she plopped down next to Blake, a massive cola in her lap. "Dark Lyte might be the biggest 'Mary Sue' I've seen in years! I can't wait to riff this movie a new one!"
"Shh!" Ruby quietly shooshed. "It's starting!"
The lights in the room then dimmed even more and the projector began to hum somewhere behind them. A few seconds later and the blond, blue-eyed figure of Juane Arc wearing a white cape appeared onscreen.
"They say that some people are born great", Juane's narration began, "some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them. Unfortunately for me, I had all three…"
Meanwhile, in the back of the theater, the doors slowly crept open and several armed men slipped into the room. They were dressed in Ember-orange bullet-proof vests and ballistic helmets, they were armed with heavy assault weaponry, and it was clear that they weren't there for the show. One by one they entered and began sweeping through the rows, eliciting quiet gasps of terror as they hunted their prey.
"Hey, pipe down back there!" Yang called back without looking behind her. "Some of us are trying to watch a movie here!"
One particularly frightened shout of a man running from the theater did manage to catch Blake's attention, however, and she glanced back to see the hit squad moving through the theater.
"Uh, Ruby-" the Faunus whispered to her friend, only to be interrupted.
"Not now, Blake!" Ruby whispered back. "I think his girlfriend is about to get her guts pulled out her throat!"
Two rows behind them, Blake saw a woman try to make a break for the exit only to get knocked out by the butt of an assault rifle.
"Ruby, this is kind of important-" Blake began only for loud squishing noises from the the screen to interrupt her.
"Oooh, now that's a lot of blood!" Ruby cooed in amazement.
"Of course the girlfriend gets killed in the first five minutes" Weiss groaned next to her. "I could probably follow this plot blindfolded, it's so predictable!"
"Uh, guys, maybe we should look away from the movie for a few seconds" Blake hurriedly suggested.
"Are you kidding me?" asked Yang. "This thing is like a train wreck! It's so awful, but so mesmerizing at the same time!"
"There they are!" one of the gunmen shouted as he approached the group, taking aim towards Ruby's skull. The young crime lord didn't seem to react that much to this, though, and instead just pulled a pistol out of one of her popcorn bags and promptly shot him in the mouth. He hit the ground a second later and his blood began coating the already heavily stained floors of the theater.
"Jeeze, people in movie theaters can be so rude sometimes... " Ruby mumbled as she stuffed her face with another handful of caramel corn.
"I know, right?" agreed Yang.
The heads of the other Embers swiveled towards the source of the gunshot as soon as it was fired and began spraying the front rows of the theater in a hail of bullets. Blake quickly ducked down in front of her seat to try and take cover, but her friends didn't seem to react at all.
"Wow… the effects are surprisingly good" Yang marveled as she stared up at the gunfight occurring onscreen. "It almost feels like I'm really there!"
"Yeah, I didn't know this thing was in 3D" Ruby added, bullets whizzing mere inches from her face.
Weiss then went to take a sip of her diet soda, only for it's paper casing to suddenly shatter as a bullet tore through it's fragile frame and sent the drink flying everywhere.
"What the shit!?" Weiss shouted as she tried to protect her dress. "Those motherfuckers! I am so suing the moviemakers over this…"
"That wasn't the movie, guys!" Blake shouted back as she returned fire behind her seat. "We're being attacked!"
"Jeeze, right when we were getting to the good part…" Ruby groaned as she grabbed a second gun from another popcorn bag. "Alright, playtime's started!"
Weiss and Yang both followed suit, unholstering their guns and began unloading on the orange clad men that were slowly advancing down the theater towards them. By now there were about a dozen of them in the room, each surrounded dead and dying civilians as the rest fled the theater in panic.
"Looks like they want to play rough" Yang called out as she shrugged off a shot to the chest. "Just the way I like it! What do you say we return the favor, Rubes?"
"Mmm… hold on a sec…" Ruby replied through a mouthful of Gummy Ursa's she pilfered from a woman's corpse before downing it with small soda. "Okay, ready when you are!"
The fiery blonde then stepped onto the seat in front of her and used it to launch herself forward, colliding with a man holding a shotgun and tackling him to the floor. He tried to throw Yang off of him, but a few solid punches to the face were enough to dissuade him from trying - as well as from breathing.
She then ripped the shotgun from his hands and stood back up, taking aim at the nearest Ember hitman and blowing a hole straight through his helmet. Another hitman next to him tried to to fire back but Ruby promptly put several large holes in his chest that stopped him from ever taking the chance.
"Good shot, Yang!" Ruby said through a mouthful of chocolate covered peanuts she had picked up off the floor. "Keep up the good work!"
Meanwhile, Weiss was trying to block the bullets racing towards her by summoning a glyph, but found that she was drawing so much fire that she had to use both hands to keep it from collapsing entirely.
"Blake!" Weiss shouted over her shoulder. "You're with me!"
The black haired Faunus girl quickly rolled out from her cover and stood up beside Weiss, who began to slowly move up the aisle in front of them. Blake stayed close behind her, firing her silenced pistol through the back of the glyph as they walked and taking out any Ember that got too close.
"Why does it feel like we never get any real days off?" Weiss asked sarcastically as Blake emptied her clip.
"Probably because our boss has never really 'worked'" Blake replied, glancing over towards Ruby. The young redhead was still fighting off the gangsters trying to kill her, but was only partially paying attention to them as she sat back down with another bucket of popcorn and continued watching the movie on screen.
One Ember tried to take advantage of this and rushed Ruby, but a blast from Yang's shotgun took him down right before he reached her. As a consequence, she also ended up blowing the the bucket of popcorn right out of Ruby's lap.
"Hey!" Ruby whined as the man fell down onto her feet. "You popped my popcorn!"
"Sorry" Yang apologized. "'Still better than a popped skull, right?"
"But what's even the point of having a skull if I can't stuff it full of buttery goodness!?" Ruby exclaimed.
"You know that not really butter, right?" Blake asked in between murders.
"Wait, it's not?" Ruby queried back. "Then what is it made out of? Butts?"
Blake would have answered her, but she stopped herself short when she saw a large man in heavy armour and carrying a minigun step into the room from the door in front of her. He quickly spotted Weiss and opened fire on her, straining her semblance to the limit as she tried to hold back the torrent of bullets.
"Augh…" Weiss groaned under the strain of the bullets. "Could use a little help here!"
"I'm on it!" Blake assured her - or, rather, her shadow clone did before it threw itself into Weiss's glyph and was accelerated towards the machine-gunner in front of her. The man had quick reflexes, though, and managed to land a swipe on the clone right before it landed, causing it to break up into Dust. That Dust kept its momentum, however, and ended up colliding right with his eyes and blinding him.
He quickly tried to rub the Dust away, but by then it was already too late. Weiss had made it to the end of the aisle, lowered her glyph, and fired four point blank shots into the four corners of his bulletproof vest, which fell off a second later. She then stepped aside to allow Blake to step forward, who reached into her back pocket, took out a pocket knife, and stabbed them man straight through the sternum.
It seemed like this was the last of the Embers for a few moments, but that changed when the emergency exits back at the front of the theater suddenly burst open and five more rushed into the room.
"There they are!" their leader, a woman in with an assault rifle shouted. "Open fire!"
They all quickly picked their targets and pulled their triggers, forcing The Saints to take cover at the other end of the theater - except for Ruby, who managed to use her Semblance to run up right beside the lead Ember without her even noticing.
"Shame on you! You're not supposed to shout 'fire' in a movie theater!" Ruby scolded before shooting the woman through the skull. "Someone might get hurt!"
The man on the lead Ember's left tried to react to this but Ruby quickly put him down with a few well-placed shots to the knees before finishing him off in the stomach. The rest of the Embers then quickly began to panic, allowing the rest of The Saints to start picking them off one by one. While this was happening, the man Blake had stabbed through the chest crawled painfully into the theater lobby, blood pouring from his lips.
"The Saints…" he mumbled into his cell phone. "They're here… and they slaughtered us… you better get ready… kill ANY fucker who even looks like a Saint who comes out of here, you here me!?"
"Don't worry, we will" Cinder replied from her car before calling her lieutenants. "Places, everyone: it's time for the curtain to rise…"
Two hours later and The Embers still stood there outside the theater, guns trained halfheartedly at the building as boredom slowly overtook them. Cinder kept completely focused on the exit in front of her however, ready to ignite any unlucky soul that dared pass in front of her. That focus was suddenly broken by the sound of her cell phone wringing, which she promptly answered.
"Uh, I don't think they're here anymore" Mercury's voice said through the speaker.
"Are you sure?" Cinder replied. "We have all the exits covered and there are no other ways out… perhaps they've barricaded themselves inside and are preparing for a siege?"
"Nope, I don't think so" Mercury answered back. "I've got some guys in the lobby right now, and none of them see anything. No barricades, no movement, no nothing. If they are trying to wait us out, they sure haven't done a good job of it".
"But that's impossible… we made sure to check every civilian who escaped the theater alive" Cinder mumbled to herself. "Tell them to check again!"
"Aww, come on, Cindy!" Mercury whinned. "If I wanted to sit around waiting for women who'd never show up, I'd ask Emerald out on a date again!"
Cinder was about to give him a firm 'no' when suddenly she was interrupted by her phone ringing again, informing her that she had another call.
"Hold on a second…" she ordered before switching to her new caller. "Yes, Ms. Mayor?"
"Damn it, Fall, you said that this would be quick!" a gruff sounding woman barked on the other end. "I've kept the cops from showing up like you asked, but it's been over two hours now and people are starting to get suspicious! The press is practically breathing down my neck here!"
"My apologies, Mayor. We will be leaving shortly" Cinder replied respectfully. "I will be sure to compensate you a little bit more when I transfer the funds to your account".
"Heh, that's more like it!" the mayor replied. "Catch you later, Fall!"
Cinder then tapped her phone and switched back to her call with Mercury.
"Change of plans" she announced, her tone instantly shifting to stern. "We cannot afford to keep looking for them, so we will be launching our attack now. Contact your men and begin assaulting the neighborhoods that I assigned you, and tell Junior and Emerald to do the same".
"Finally…" Mercury sighed on the other side. "I hope this time things actually get interesting".
"Well, for our sake, you'd better hope they don't" Cinder replied before hanging up and turning towards her men. "Let's go before we waste what's left of our surprise…"
The Embers then quickly piled into their sleek, black cars and sped off into the distance, leaving the ruined theater smoldering in their wake. A few seconds after they left. Ruby and her friends finally exited out the front doors.
"Wow, that was great!" Ruby exclaimed as she skipped over a dead Faunus woman. "I mean, yeah, it sucks that we got interrupted and that we had to watch it with all those stinky bodies everywhere, but I'd still call that the the feel-good comedy of the summer!"
"Ha! You're telling me!" Yang laughed in agreement. "I'm going to be quoting that asshole's lines all year! 'Revenge is dish best served with blood!' Priceless! What did you think of it, Blake?"
"Eh, the book was better" Blake shrugged back.
"Uh, I'd hate to spoil the mood, but doesn't it bother that we just survived an assassination attempt by what looked to be Cinder's men?" inquired Weiss. "For all we know, The Embers are attacking our operations as we speak!"
"Pff, relax, Weiss!" Ruby replied dismissively. "We already own over half the city! What's the worst that a little gang like them can do anyway?"
A/N: As always, remember to leave a review!
Story beta-read by Mr. Stark 357