I Don't Own RWBY
Beta: Hirshja
Chapter 28:
Raiders of the CCT
Rose was pouting, admittedly, she looked more annoyed than like she was pouting. Her cheeks were not puffed up, her fists were not clenched, and she looked straight ahead. Her arms crossed in front of her chest. To Weiss and Yang, it likely looked like she was fully concentrating on the beast in front of them.
Yin however, knew from the steely gaze that she was displeased, and displeased immediately meant she was pouting over something.
"That dragon Grimm isn't going to get in our way is it?" Rose asked calmly. "When Ironwood mentioned that there was a Wyvern here, I didn't think that he meant that it was literally on the top of the tower."
Observing the beast from afar, they could see that it wrapped itself around the CCT tower, the Grimm that once approached it now avoided the group of huntresses and goddesses, possibly realizing from the smoking corpses of Grimm that the only thing that lay near them was death. Having leveled a decent chunk of the city probably helped reinforce that idea.
"At least we aren't being harassed by Grimm." Yin pointed out, wondering what kind of Grimm they were looking at. She hadn't seen anything like it; it was similar to a dragon, but not quite the same.
"That won't last long," Weiss replied, approaching the pair, her sword at her side. "Like the general said, Wyvern's are known for attracting Grimm. They can even create them, depending on the environment."
"Wow, you studied a lot." Yang joked from behind them, kicking some rubble as she waited for them to decide on their next course of action. Correctly guessing that Weiss wouldn't have said anything if she hadn't.
Weiss shrugged. "I had the free time. I might as well look into exactly what was causing Beacon such trouble."
"Trouble is an understatement." Yang replied.
Weiss rolled her eyes, turning to Rose. "Nevertheless, It has been inactive since the Fall of Beacon. According to reports, the blinding light from Beacon stopped it from moving."
"What kind of light?" Rose asked.
"The silver eyed power." Yang said pointing at the dragon. "I heard uncle Qrow talk about a power Rose has, supposedly it froze the Grimm."
Rose and Yin looked at each other, before Rose slowly turned to Yang.
"Explain. I don't have any such power."
Yang looked surprised, "Huh? I thought you and Rubes were almost exactly the same."
Rose shrugged. "I suppose not. Now what do you know of this power?"
"Just that it froze the Grimm. There are a ton of myths on it though."
Rose nodded. "We'll have to look into it later." She said authoritatively as she drew Crescent Rose. "As for this Wyvern, we'll avoid it."
"I think we should kill it." Weiss said quickly, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Rose, and a surprised look from Yin. The fact that Yin had been thinking the same thing did not pass through her lips, but it was noted nonetheless.
"It continues to attract Grimm, this is our best chance to kill it, and killing it will allow Beacon to be reopened allowing more Huntsmen to be trained."
"I agree with Weiss, this is our best shot at killing this thing, we just wiped tons of Grimm out, there's no reason to ignore the Wyvern, killing it now is our best bet."
The look on Rose's face was one of deep thought. "Killing the Wyvern has nothing to do with our mission, it could also destroy the CCT tower, making it impossible to retrieve the data that Ironwood requested and anything we may find on where Blake is. It could also attract more Grimm making our job even harder."
"If we miss out on the data, we can always still find Blake!" Yang argued. "Ironwood told us she was after the White Fang headquarters in Vale. Find that and we find Blake!"
"I agree with them sis." Yin chimed in.
Rose regarded her levelly. "Why?"
"Because as you've apparently forgotten, part of the deal was to clear the Grimm so that Beacon could reopen its doors." She replied with a smirk on her face, relishing the fact that her sister had forgotten part of the mission in her shock at the Wyverns positioning. "And it's the right thing to do." She added as an afterthought.
Rose gritted her teeth, before letting out an exasperated sigh.
"Fine, We grab the data first, then kill the Wyvern. Fair enough?"
The others nodded, Weiss and the others smiling to various degrees. Rose turned to look at the now ruined entrance to the tower. "Let's go." She said, walking forward. Weiss and Yang followed, with Yin taking up the rear; her eyes flicking back to the Wyvern every few seconds. A feeling of dread pooled in the bottom of her stomach. She didn't know what, but something bad was going to happen. She cocked Ember Celica, garnering a quick glance from the others before they turned back towards the tower.
The tower was in ruins. The once marble floored, high ceilinged first level was destroyed. Windows were smashed, tiles broken, the ceiling had several holes, and everything of value had been stripped.
"Can we even get any data? There doesn't seem to be a computer." Yang asked.
"The servers will have been to heavy to move. I presume that is where we will want to get the data from." Weiss explained, scanning the floor. A slight grimace showed what she thought of what had happened to the marvel of Atlas engineering.
"So where are the servers?" Yin asked. She was met with silence as the group glanced at each other, each looking for the other to answer. Eventually all eyes rested on Rose.
"Rose, Ironwood gave you the mission. You do know right?"
"No." Rose said, watching as Weiss face slowly started to redden. "We'll split into two groups one goes underground the other goes upwards, places like these always have stuff underground." She added quickly, knowing exactly how to defuse an angry Weiss.
"You dolt! You came here without a plan?"
Or maybe not. Yin put her hand on Weiss shoulder. "Yang and I will take the upper floors, you guys go underground." She said loud enough for everyone to hear. Then she leaned in before adding in a quiet voice "And don't get up to anything in the dark."
Weiss looked scandalized while Rose looked away, struggling to hide a blush. Yin grinned at the reaction. Ignoring the flurry of insults that left Weiss's mouth about such a "scandalous implication". Drawing Weiss's anger off Rose had been something she learned to do a long time ago, she was glad it still worked.
She nudged Yang, who was on edge, causing the younger girl to nearly jump out of her skin. She whirled around, cocking Ember Celica, before halting. "What the hell was that for?" She gasped.
Yin chuckled in response. "You were on edge. Relax, worst comes to worst, we run and fight another day". She crossed her arms and cocked her head as she watched Yang's heavy breathing lighten. With one arm wrapped around Yang, Yin gently guided her to the stairwell heading up while Rose and Weiss headed down the already rusting service stairs.
"I thought they built these things better than this." Weiss cursed as she tried to dodge a rusted step.
"Yeah, so much for Atlas's engineering prowess. I wonder if it was intentional." Rose muttered, moving slowly for Weiss's benefit, she would have simply skipped the stairs if she thought the heiress would have been fine with a three hundred foot drop.
"Why would such shoddy engineering be intentional?" Weiss asked, her voice somewhere between anger and surprise.
"There is bad engineering and then there is bad engineering. The building is structurally sound, and with constant maintenance this staircase was probably fine."
"Meaning that in case the CCT tower ever fell, Atlas wouldn't want easy access to the servers."
Rose nodded "It explains why it is so deep. A treasure hunter or a scavenger wouldn't be able to reach it easily, there's also probably plenty of security when we get down there."
"Well, at least the shame of bad engineering doesn't besmirch Atlas's good name." Weiss said weakly, hardly believing it herself.
Rose continued downward, rolling her eyes at Weiss. A pang of hurt struck her heart as she thought of how similar this banter was. It didn't have any of the inside jokes, none of the self-deprecating humor, but it was painfully familiar nonetheless.
Rose was warned by a creak that sounded more like a crack. It took her mere seconds to turn and locate the weakness in the staircase. She leapt forward, grabbing hold of Weiss as the staircase gave way above them.
Suddenly Rose could feel herself falling, plummeting toward the steel flooring below.
"Shit." She grit her teeth, her options running through her head. Alone she would have used Crescent Rose to stop her fall, but for that she would have needed both arms, and currently they were wrapped around Weiss. She could have bounced off the walls, but the force needed for that might have injured the heiress, lastly she could take the impact, probably breaking several bones in the process.
She had no time to really decide, she shut her eyes and prepared for impact.
She slammed into something, it was as if she had hit cement, it hurt like hell, but she felt herself bounce off it, her descent slowed. She bounced off several others ignoring the sharp pain in her shoulder. Her final descent was more like rolling off a bed and onto the floor, the bed would have been made of wood, but it certainly wasn't hitting steel at terminal velocity.
She rolled on the floor, Weiss still held in her arms. Her head swam since the strikes had been especially jarring. She felt Weiss struggling, and for a moment thought she might be holding the heiress too tightly. Panic shot through her as she imagined crushing the heiress, this wasn't Vytal Weiss, and she wouldn't be as strong, her aura less potent.
Weiss, however, sprang from her grasp quickly. Rose's vision was blurry as she saw the heiress stand, hands on her hips. The sounds the heiress was saying slowly began to make sense, clearing as her vision did.
" -Could have gotten us killed! Imagine if I hadn't been able to cast glyphs! Thank Dust I still had one hand free!"
"Weiss," Rose moaned, "Please shut up."
Weiss's mouth clicked shut, her eyes widening.
Rose pushed herself up, grunting as she pushed herself through the pain coursing from her right shoulder. She tapped it gently, squinting in pain as she did.
"What happened?" Weiss asked worriedly.
"Just a dislocated arm, I'll shove it back in place and we can be on our way."
"You dolt! That needs actual attention! If we have to fight that dragon, you could be killed!" Weiss yelled, anger flaring in her eyes.
"Pshaw." Rose said rolling her eyes as she waved Weiss's concerns away with a smile. She grasped her arm and pulled fiercely, the arm being set with a pop that made Weiss cringe.
Rose rotated the arm, it hurt like hell, but hopefully her aura would heal it quickly. "On second thought, why didn't my aura heal it automatically?" Rose wondered, thinking back on the multiple times she had broken bones, dislocated joints and torn tendons. Her aura had healed those injuries in seconds or minutes. A dislocated arm shouldn't take all that long, certainly not as long as it took for her to discover and reset it.
She made a note to talk to Yin about it, maybe she had noticed something similar.
"You're acting exactly like Rose, you do something dangerous and then pretend it's no big deal." Weiss said, crossing her arms, not noticing the look that appeared on Rose's face, it was gone a moment later.
Rose snorted. "Probably, we are more or less the same person after all. "
"Are you?" Weiss asked, one of her eyebrows raised skeptically.
"Don't we have data to collect? And a dragon to kill?" Rose said trying to change the subject.
"We have time. Don't try to change the subject. I know you are Rose Rose, Goddess of Vytal, but you have gone through much more than my partner has. Arguing you are the same person is like saying Yin and Yang are the same."
"Are you talking about the people or the concept?"
"What concept?"
This time Rose looked on dumbly. "Never mind." She said. "We can talk about it, but not right now."
"To quote Rose, nope." Weiss said, stomping her foot.
"Weiss…"
"No! You've given pieces of info, but only the bare minimum. Rose, your partner died on you and you pretend you're over it. I know that look well enough, something is tearing you apart!" Weiss dramatically pointing at her partner's double as she demanded that Rose tell her her feelings.
It was a look she did know well. She had seen it on her sister's face when their father locked Weiss in her room, sealed her aura and demanded Winter guard her. She had seen it on her own face, when she didn't stand up to her father after leaving for Beacon.
Now she saw it on Rose's face, a look somewhere between hoping for a miracle, and knowing that no matter what you've lost.
Rose looked at her calmly, her face impassive. Weiss glared at her, willing the woman to talk.
Her concentration was broken by Rose's face changing to one of surprise and something falling behind her. She turned to see a rabbit faunus in a White Fang uniform, mask raised above her eyes, revealing her childish face. She was young, no older than fifteen. She had dropped a box full of gadgetry.
It did not take long for Weiss to realize what the White Fang member was carrying, but the shock lasted long enough for the Terrorist to run, sprinting back the way she came.
"Damn." Weiss, muttered. Rose grunted in agreement before chasing after the Faunus in a burst of rose petals. In moments she was upon the faunus girl, grabbing her by the back of the neck and slamming her into the ground. A gargled gasp of pain being the only sound she uttered.
Weiss chased the two, arriving moments later. She hesitated upon seeing the gleam in Rose's eyes.
Rose pulled the woman up and tossed her into the nearby wall. A whimper slipped through the faunus' mouth as she slid down the wall, gasping for breath. Before trying to slide away as Rose knelt near her.
"You are going to tell us exactly what the White Fang want with the data."
A/N: This is the penultimate chapter before the hiatus, Hirshja has started working on the early chapters as well as an early draft of the next arc. So he has a host of things on his plate. So everyone please give a round of applause to this story's lovely beta!
on Christmas Eve a new story will come out on my author's page, get ready for some insanity!
Also check out Grim Cookies, my entry for the December MonCon on Reddit.