A flying tomato: well, the stalking is a matter of…perspective ;)
Rbwybomb: I aim for lots of romance in the future, but I'm worried about how the canon x OC romances will be seen. Anyway, thanks!
Tuutje07: I'm glad to see you liked Velvet's return. I really hope that Monty is going to give her some screen-time soon. Also, Mantis' chemicals at this point lost most of their potency. No worries about that one!
"Dear general Eventide,
I sincerely hope that you are merely attempting to play a joke on me, instead of dismissing your AWOL soldier who has murdered Vale's entire government in one chaotic night. Defected soldiers that threaten the whole of the Kingdom of Vale are my worries, which stand in contrast to our projects, which are definitely NOT your worries. Your organization is involved in a history of violence and death, the proof for which you only have to look for in recent media displays and witnesses. The Final Solution Killings? Infiltration and assault on Beacon students? No, you do not have the right to suggest anything to me, dear sir Eventide.
With regards,
General James Ironwood, commanding officer of the Atlas Armed Forces.
It was on the rarest of occasions that Ruby ever had such a bad feeling in her stomach as she had now and for the first time in many days, she was perfectly aware of why she was feeling so bad. She was miles away from the only place that she could consider home, stuck on a foreign continent on a mission which agenda was still untrustworthy to her and they had lost the cars that they needed to successfully travel. But that wasn't the worst thing about it. The worst part was that she was about to take all the friends she had ever had and step onto a battlefield with all of them. Not a small-scale fight or a Grimm-infested land, but an actual warzone. She, Ruby Rose, was about to lead nearly all the people she loved to their possible deaths. And what for? For a silly little expedition. She had to be out of her mind to do something like this!
She was following some high-ranked military man of unknown allegiances into a deep military complex and she had no idea why she was even doing so. Yes, they had to reach the northern shore. Yes, the only way to properly do that is through. But why? Why did they have to tread an active warzone? People died in horrible ways in those things! She did not want that for her friends!
The man who was in charge of this base had told them that they would need his help to plan their way through the battlefield. But…she did not know the guy. She didn't trust him; for all she knew, this man was leading the side that she would not have picked had she had the chance to do so. And that was precisely the problem: this wasn't her war. This wasn't her fight; she didn't owe allegiance to any of these sides and if she were to pick a side now, it might come back to haunt them later.
Ruby looked behind her and saw that Weiss and Blake were following her closely. Jaune, looking even more nervous than she thought she would be looking, led team JNPR a few meters behind her. Lisa a few meters behind them. Ruby couldn't see how she felt yet. Interestingly enough, Will was walking a few meters behind team LACG, looking fully prepped for an onslaught. He had his helmet propped on his head, his rifle in his arms and the way he moved suggested that he was waiting for the battle to commence. She would have to keep an eye on him, in case he pulled another stunt.
Why was Yang not with team RWBY but all the way behind them, walking behind Will? Had the two of them had words? She would have to talk with her sister about that.
The officer in charge led them to a room that was equally the size of a small classroom, where a large table stood in the center. Three lights were aimed at a map lying on that table and from the looks of it, the officer wanted to take them there.
"I do not know why you all want to cross a warzone to get north, but you will have to cross enemy terrain to do so," he explained with his strange accent. "Are others coming?"
"No," Ruby replied. "We're it." She tried to smile, but she felt like it would be awkward to do so. The rest of the teams filed into the room and Will immediately started observing the map.
"What's wrong?" Ruby whispered at Yang as the officer closed the door behind them.
"I'll explain later," her sister replied.
"Now, I have little time to do this. My men need me. If you decide to go, you will have to do so on your own."
"That's alright," Lisa replied. "We can handle a map."
If the man heard her sarcasm, he gave no indication that he had heard her. Instead he simply took to leaving the room, finally leaving the three teams alone to speak their thoughts.
Which, as soon as he had left, they did.
"What's wrong with us! A warzone? Here?" Jaune yelled.
"We need to walk around this," Weiss declared as she looked at the map. "I am NOT walking through a battlefield."
"She's right, this isn't our war," Blake added and crossed her arms. "We should leave. Now."
"We can't leave," Pyrrha replied and she was about to explain when Lisa interrupted her.
"If we circumvent the area now, we will lose days. I don't think Beacon will like that."
"We'll be in over our heads," Ren stated.
Ruby couldn't handle everyone talking through each other very well. "Guys? Listen. The worst thing we could do right now is pick a side. This is not our war, Blake is right. But we need to focus right now. This battlefield could be miles wide…and we're not going to take a detour of miles."
Will, having finished staring at the map through his helmet, pushed himself up and saw fit to share his opinion with them. "There will be cliffs we have to scale."
"Possibly a hundred feet high?" suggested Lisa.
"Yes."
"Bad guys shooting at us all the way?" posed Jaune.
"Probably."
"Artillery blowing us to smithereens?" Smirked Grace.
"Yes."
"As much as I love being smithereens with you guys, I'm not going to fight a bunch of soldiers in some war. I'm not a soldier," Weiss informed them, before softly adding: "And neither are the rest of us."
"We don't need to be soldiers to cross this thing," said Yang. She too was observing the map and from the looks of it, she had an idea. "All we need to do is cross the initial three-hundred meters and we're past the frontlines."
"Oh, only three-hundred meters? Thank goodness for that!" Lisa remarked.
"Enemy numbers are suggested at fifty foot-mobiles. We either neutralize that personnel, or risk them shooting us in the back when we move past them," Will told them.
That was precisely the kind of stunt that Ruby could not use. "No!" She firmly said. "We're not going to kill anyone! Those men are not our enemies. We don't know what started this war and we're not picking sides!"
"Ehm…Ruby?" Lisa softly said "If we approach these men from the front…armed…they will think us to be enemies and shoot us. Like, at sight. We will have to fight them to get past them."
They fell silent after that statement, with only Jaune confirming how all of them were probably feeling at the moment. "You know, I really hate this."
"Yeah, no kidding…" Replied Yang. "So, what's it going to be?"
"We're going through," decided Ruby. "But only if everyone agrees. "
As it turned out, even the people who had suggested going around agreed with her wanting to cross the field. It was the shortest way to their goal and they knew it; if they had to circle around now, it would cost them days. They didn't have supplies for days.
"Then it's decided," said Ruby. "It's dark outside, so if we move we do it now."
"What about those cliffs?" Asked Jaune.
"According to this, our good officer has both shot giant grappling hooks to the wall, as blown a climbable path into the face of the wall," Yang was quick to reply.
"That's good enough!" Ruby declared with a smile. "If we times this right…nobody will get hurt. This isn't our fight, so no killing anybody. Will? That goes for you."
The Operative didn't respond. Also good enough. As the officer had left them alone and unsupervised in the base, they were free to leave the room and ask the nearest soldier for direction to the front-lines.
The surprised soldier had given them their directions and before soon, the thirteen of them were waiting in a large hangar bay for the officer to open the large set of doors that would unleash them upon the battlefield. The silence was…pretty much unbearable. Perhaps it had hit them all that they were going to walk on a real battlefield, fighting real human soldiers. This wasn't how she had envisioned it, anyway. A journey to the North shouldn't have to force them to walk through a warzone and all its horrors. They didn't belong there. Not like this, anyway.
"Is this how it always feels?" She softly asked Will, who was leaning against a wall roughly a meter away from her. He was sharpening his knife against the armoured segment of his arm. "The moment before you go to make war?"
"You get used to it," he replied. The way he rhythmically sharpened his knife with the casualness of someone preparing to chop down a tree It really did make him look like a merciless sociopath, despite the fact that she knew better. And she knew that he had to be lying; people couldn't get used to this. Nobody could ever get used to preparing for warfare. His clear lie at a moment of trust made her feel even more afraid than she already was, so when Weiss gently padded her shoulder to get her attention, she felt also more relieved than she normally would have felt.
"Weiss!"
"Hey," the Heiress said with a smile. "You ready?"
"No," Ruby immediately replied. "Not by a long shot. I hadn't…I didn't…I never intended for any of us to get involved in something like this. I got us all involved in a war…people could die, Weiss."
"Ruby, you didn't make this choice. You did the best you could with the resources at hand. We've been away from the civilized Kingdoms for days now and none of us got hurt. And we did encounter our share of problems."
"But Grimm are nothing compared to soldiers, Weiss! I don't want to see my friends getting killed by a stray projectile just because I made a bad call."
"You didn't make this call, we all did. And nobody is going to get hurt! We're going to get through this together."
Weiss was trying so hard to cheer her up, but Ruby knew that the Heiress was feeling even more nervous than she was. And still she tried to help.
Her doubts weren't eased, but Ruby took comfort in the care of her friend. And as she looked around the hangar, she saw that she wasn't the only one. Everyone was trying to raise the others´ mood; Pyrrha was gently rubbing an extremely pale Jaune, who looked like he was going to be very sick. Ren had an arm wrapped around Nora's shoulders and he was softly rocking her back and forth, which seemed to ease her worries. Cho was sitting with his back to Lisa and though Ruby could not hear what they said, she saw that they were both trying to ease the other's burdens. Yang patted Blake's head with a bright smile and Grace was checking her weapon, right next to Alessa who was pointing things out to her. Even in the face of imminent danger and even death, the teams continued to function. In just under two months they had all become such close friends…it had Ruby not been capable of piercing virtually all of their calm facades and discern the fear and worry that lay behind them, she might have been rid of her own dread.
Way too soon the large hangar doors opened and way too soon, the terrible sounds of war assailed her senses. Explosions were echoing in the distance and a steady machine gun was firing in long bursts, though she couldn't hear what was shooting or what it was shooting at.
The teamleaders shouted for their teams to move, but that wasn't even necessary. As soon as the large doors had opened, all thirteen of them charged out of the building and into the open fields that lay before them. The officer –who had obviously been desperate as to led them inside of his base- hadn't been kidding. His troops had shot enormous harpoons at the cliffs, which provided an excellent way for them to get above the battlefield without having to be pushed to their limits right at the start. The only problem was Jaune, whose physical prowess was still leagues below that of the rest of them. In this fight, he was going to need protection. Perhaps that was why he was looking so ill?
"Watch out!" Lisa shouted. "Missiles!"
The Adamant wasn't kidding. There were easily a dozen installations mounted at the top of the cliff-face, which activated as soon as the doors had opened.
Plumes of exhaust erupted from the weapons and a large missile burst from each one of them, sailing right at their location.
Ruby spotted them with ease and maneuvered herself so that the large weapons would not harm her, knowing that the rest of the teams would follow her lead. But before the projectiles could get halfway, that same methodical weapon-discharge sounded again and all the missiles exploded in mid-air. The shockwaves reached the ground and many of them stumbled, but nobody lost their footing.
"What was that?" She shouted as she fired her Crescent Rose, dodging incoming fire from people at the top of the cliffs.
"Machine at the top of the building," Yang replied as she followed Ruby's example. "Some sort of defense station; took down the rockets."
The teams were protected against hose missile attacks, but it seemed like the artillery was still pounding away at them and the people at the top of cliff were taking shots at them. It would only be a matter of time before one of them got lucky and as long as they had the high ground, none of them were safe.
How to fix that? Steal the high ground.
A round impacted on her body, but her Aura blocked it with ease. She risked a glance over her shoulder and saw Pyrrha blocking a few stray shots with her shield, which easily deflected the small caliber. Jaune, seeing his partner catching fire, seemed to possess the instinct to do so too. He brought his shield up as he charged across the field, but his footing was horrendous and he nearly stumbled when one bullet impacted a feet in front of him. They couldn't afford to slow down; they could reach the cliffs within the minute and capture it a minute later, but someone had to look out for Jaune.
Shots erupted from behind her in rapid succession and at least eight men at the top of the cliff died; their bodies either tumbling down the sheer rock wall or falling backwards onto the rocks. Her heart skipped a beat at that sudden noise and the instant loss of life tore at her soul, but she had to ignore it. She had to keep going; these men were trying to kill them, thinking that they were enemy soldiers. She couldn't afford to dwell on their deaths.
But her legs nearly buckled. She was going to be a Huntress, not a murderer. They were here on a mission for Beacon and she had just seen more than half a dozen men die, because of a conflict that had nothing to do with them. What use did they have if they couldn't protect anyone?
She knew who had taken those shots and she knew why, but that didn't justify it. This wasn't their war, so they shouldn't kill anyone. They should never kill anyone unless it was severe self-defense…and this wasn't a case of self-defense just yet. Their Aura was strong enough to protect them from small-arms fire and their skills were great enough to incapacitate any foes that did pose a threat to them.
She was the first one to reach the cable suspended diagonally above the ground and she leaped in the air, reaching out with her left arm to grab the thick wire. The wind tore at her clothes, but she didn't pay it any mind. She whirled around the cable and, by holding on to it, brought herself on top of it.
The next second, she moved. Knowing that the rest of the team would follow her, Ruby charged up the wire and made her way to the top of the large cliff. She spotted pockets of men (and women?) running across the top of the cliff and one of them aimed a rifle at her-
-only to be knocked backwards as a sheer wave of firepower impacted in the cliffs, fired by all of her friends who knew without saying that they needed to cover each other. Grenades, bullets and Dust impacted on the stones and knocked back everyone that was trying to harm them.
See Will, She thought, you can help without murdering everyone.
Alessa crossed the cable to Ruby's right and the cable to the left was occupied by Ren. Both of them were charging up the cables to free the way to the topside for the rest of their team, of which only Jaune was having difficulty getting on. Nora and Pyrrha were helping him get across it and he was actually holding his shields so that incoming bullets wouldn't harm him, so there was that.
Ruby stopped at the top of the cliff and was immediately assaulted by an angry-sounding man with a small knife. She yelped and jumped backwards, lashing out with her leg in the process. The man grunted and fell to the ground, knocked out by her blow.
But she couldn't allow herself to relax just yet; the area around her was littered with bunkers and fortified trenches, allowing many enemies to ambush them once they treaded there. She needed cover and she needed it fast, as the appearance of a cloaked girl was bound to attract some unwanted attention.
Ruby dove towards the nearest bunker and was just in time to avoid some sort of explosion, which detonated behind her and showered the area with pieces of debris.
Yang, Blake and Weiss soon joined near the bunker and Ruby was very glad to see that they weren't too hurt. Weiss had a few scrapes, Blake looked bruised and Yang looked energetic. Situation pretty much normal.
Ruby had to admit that this didn't feel like war to her; they had stormed this location with relative ease! None of them had gotten seriously hurt and, with the exceptions caused by Will's bloodthirstiness, none of the enemies had gotten hurt. If they continued like this…they might even get out of this place.
"Where are the others?" Ruby asked.
"Split up! JNPR's gone the other direction and I lost track of LACG!" Blake shouted back over the violent roar of another explosion.
The door to the sealed bunker was flung open.
"Somebody shout?" A man with a round helmet and a combat vest inquired. Yang wasted no time in punching him out and then Weiss rounded the corner of the door, bathing the interior of the bunker with Dust-imbued ice.
"There," she said with satisfaction. "Now they can't attack us and nobody got hurt."
Loveable little Weiss. When this was all over and everyone was safe, she was going to spend the entire evening just with her.
"Ehm, hello? These people are trying to shoot us? To death?" Remarked Yang. "I know you have a thing of never wanting to kill, but we are kind of in trouble here."
"These people can be taken down with single hits," said Blake. "We don't need to kill anyone."
"Can anyone tell the trigger-happy maniac that?" Ruby nearly shouted in return. "Where is he anyway?"
The deafening gunshots that had been tearing the apart the entire team now stopped for a moment, before resuming in a much more frantic fashion.
"You really had to ask?" Yang replied. "Come on, we still got bunkers to clear."
"Stay alert," Ruby told her team. "If we slip up, people get hurt. We don't want people getting hurt. Weiss? Go with Blake and make sure these bunkers are safe. Yang? You go with me; we're going to find team JNPR and LACG and make sure that everyone's alright. As soon as this place is safe, we're going to get out of here."
Another artillery shell impacted a few meters away from her and jarred her teeth.
"All of us."
A grenade landed right next to his feet and without thinking about it, Operative Greystone kicked it at one of the smaller bunkers in front of him. The explosive device went off with a dull crack right as it landed inside of the structure and judging by the lack of screams, that one was empty.
The area sloppily was defended; the soldiers were running back and forth between the various concrete bunkers without any reason and there was a gross absence of phase-lines, preventing them from falling back in a more organized fashion. It was a killzone. It could be because he had circled around the right flank to catch the first batch of defenders in their sides, but the men here had a serious lack of awareness. It wasn't raining, there wasn't any mud to choke in and none of them had employed flashbangs.
But he didn't care for a lack of resistance; it made his job easier. While the rest of the teams went on bunker-patrol to clear the cliffs, he made sure that none of the stragglers would shoot them in their back. A sustained burst could pop their Aura like a bubble and he had no desire to watch any of them die.
With that in mind, the Operative aimed past the wall of the bunker and peered along its exterior. Two men were standing there, both of them were talking about the attack instead of fighting it off.
"What the hell man! Are these damn kids? How did they breach out defenses so easily?
"I know jack shit! This bunch of freaks simply charged right up the harpoons that the damn Ritualists shot up here!"
They weren't discussing anything of great importance, so the Operative shot them both in the head and pushed deeper into enemy territory. They sounded like a bunch of scared teenagers, thrown into a battle they couldn't win. Though the word 'Ritualists' mean nothing to him, he could imagine that this wasn't really a war between two countries. It was more like a fight between two armed groups representing…something. It was of no consequence.
The gunshots attracted the attention of several other soldiers, who ran around the corner that he was about to walk past himself. The first one didn't appear surprised, only angry. He shouted and jabbed at Greystone with the barrel of his rifle, where a vicious bayonet was attached.
He easily parried with his forerarm and pushed the rifle aside, punching the man in his gut as he did. The soldier gasped and doubled forward, while two of his buddies stated to maneuver beside him. They weren't fast enough. He struck the man with an uppercut as his head came close and then lashed out at his throat when he reeled back in pain, blood falling from his broken nose. He jerked the weapon out of the man's hands, drove the bayonet into the chest of the man to the left and then kicked at the man to his right. By the time the first one could even recover from the very first blow at his stomach, Greystone kicked him in his head and sent him to the ground.
The only remaining soldier attempted to pull out his sidearm, but Greystone as much faster. In the span of two seconds he grappled with the man, threw him to the ground over his hip and then executed him by shooting him in the head with the sidearm that the man had been unable to get out in time.
Noticing the significant kickback of the gun, he pulled out its magazine and observed the pistol. The barrel had been upsized and the chamber had been modified for a larger caliber. Crude and effective. But why?
He threw the pistol to the ground and looked for the next target. He could hear the various sounds of Beacon weapons discharging and figured that they weren't having any problems with the weak resistance. He should have expected that; they were worrying about fighting in a war, when they were only an advanced strike team eliminating enemy positions. Nothing traumatizing –nothing worth worrying over.
He turned back to the main hot zone and spotted someone walking into a bunker at a very leisurely pace. The figure was too vague to properly identify as a hostile, but it didn't look like a soldier. The figure was feminine and helmetless. A noncombatant? An officer?
Greystone looked around, confirmed that the area was moderately secure, then started towards the bunker. The ground here was soft and sticky, the result of past rain or a leak. Yet the only footprints belonged to large army boots. Whoever he had seen either had a very light way of walking, or wore boots too large for her.
He took up a position at the concrete wall and then spun around the corner, aiming down his sights and taking in the situation.
Two men were standing in the middle of the bunker .One of them was cradling a large Heavy Machinegun in his arms and the other one was carrying a box of grenades. They appeared startled over the appearance of the newcomer; their mouths opening to make way for a surprised cry-
He shot the two of them and the ordnance clattered to the ground before the bodies did. There was no sign of the unidentified female anywhere and both of these men were wearing their helmets…not that it had done them any good.
Greystone approached the fallen supplies and examined them. The grenades were an outdated class with a very small kill-radius and a messed-up fuse system. The machinegun was also a very old mode; prone to jamming and overheating, but capable of pouring down a thunderous hail of high-caliber rounds. Grossly inaccurate though.
Why was all this equipment so old? It had been at least twenty years since they had last seen service, so why? Only the large-scale conflicts forced armies to pull out everything they had in their stocks. This wasn't a large-scale conflict. Puzzling. Perhaps the female could shed some light on this conundrum.
He marched down the only remaining hallway and stumbled upon a poorly-stocked storage room, filled with a few shelves and one crate. The crate was filed with supplies and there were no hiding places anywhere in the room.
The Operative was perplexed. The only way for his quarry to have left this bunker was via the exit –and he had been occupying that one. Where did she go? There wasn't any secret exit in here, as that would weaken the structure of the bunker. He hadn´t imagined her, so where…?
He shook his head and left the way he had come. The fighting seemed to have died down somewhat, meaning that the three teams had taken care of the resistance. The only bunker remaining was a large one in the back –there was a gap in the opening where two large guns were sticking out of, but they appeared to have been frozen in place by a thick layer of ice. Weiss had been there.
A body lay on the ground, a few feet away from him. A body that he hadn't made.
He knelt by the fallen man and searched his clothes for anything that would identify him as a better target than the rest of the underequipped soldiers. He hadn't been in a superior position when he had been killed and neither had he been dragged here; there was no trail of blood. This guy was a simple grunt too, so why had he been killed?
The cause of death was obvious enough; three large punctures in the torso, one of them right above the heart. The symmetrical splatter of blood suggested that these holes had been caused all at once, meaning that this one had been stabbed by a bladed weapon possessing three knives capable of solid puncturing. He had been nailed from the back…and a rifle with a fully loaded magazine lay on the ground next to him.
Greystone left the body where he had found it and hurried to the main bunker-complex. These guys didn't matter very much; the guys in the bunker did. That was where the superior officer would be hiding. Find him, interrogate and execute him. That was his objective.
He risked a sprint across the open terrain, jumping and leaping from one direction to the other to thrown enemy snipers off their aim. But no shots rang out and nothing exploded near his foot, so either the enemy had no snipers in their teams or all of their soldiers had been eliminated.
Reaching the opening at one end of the bunker, Greystone positioned himself at the door and noticed that it had already been breached. Good; fewer problems for him. Deeper into the structure, however, he encountered a split between two hallways. He took the right one and kept going, fully aware of the fact that he was hearing combat inside of the bunker. Someone had been penetrating its defenses, but he didn't see any bodies. Where was everyone?
He made his way to a wooden door that was locked. He placed his assault rifle back and pulled out his sidearm, perfect for a clearing operation. For some reason, the memory of the disappeared female popped into his head. But he ignored it, as it wasn't useful in his current situation. He waited two heartbeats and then kicked in the door, destroying its locking mechanism and smashing it wide open.
As he barged into the room, his mind set to kill, a figure burst into the room from a different direction. In one glance he took in her red cloak, hood and strands of hair, together with her black clothes and a pale face with silver eyes.
Ruby Rose.
The three soldiers who were standing with their backs against the wall had their weapons prematurely thrown to the ground, as if preparing to surrender. He raised his weapon, aligned the iron-sights with the nearest man-
"Will, don't!"
-his finger shifted to the trigger in preparation to fire-
-and Ruby lunged for his arm, pulling it down with surprising strength for someone her size. Just not enough strength to keep it down for longer than a few seconds, though.
"Stop killing!" She yelled at him, her voice high and filled with desperation. "Stop it! They are surrendering!"
"They are hostiles," he automatically replied and shrugged her arm off. "Hostiles get neutralized."
"But they're not!" Ruby implored him. "They're not! Just please stop this!"
Greystone knew that Ruby couldn't read him from behind his nonreflective visor. He wanted to yell at her for being a naïve little child; for so desperately wanting to prevent people from being called that she would risk her team being shot in the back by the people they saved. That she needed to grow up and realize that death was unavoidable.
The memory of the disappeared female slipped into his mind again and for some reason, he felt the need to look at Ruby's eyes. Her big, silver eyes that were filled with the emotions he had been desperately running away from for such a long time.
He ignored the anger in the back of his mind. "If we don't take care of them, they will return to shoot us in the back."
"That won't happen if we incapacitate them –you don't need to kill every single time!"
He wanted to pull the trigger and be done with it…but he couldn't. Ruby looked so desperate…and she had been so loud. Watching people get murdered in front of you was generally a very unpleasant thing to normal people…and he didn't want to harm her like that. He didn't want to be the source of her pain…
So he lowered his weapon…and let the trio of soldiers live. He showed mercy, despite every fiber of his being screaming in protest. It went against everything he had been taught –everything he had learned. He felt helpless and weak for doing so, but…it looked like he made Ruby happy with doing so. Was it acceptable to make someone else happy by going against the things you normally did?
Ruby smiled as he placed his weapon in his holster and for a few seconds, he felt a strange sense of Deja-vu. He had seen a smile like that before…and he knew what such a genuine display of happiness could do. It was terrible and dangerous and completely unacceptable, but he felt a fleeting sense of melancholy at her smile.
But a few seconds later, Yang barged into the room and nearly knocked Ruby over.
"Sorry I'm late, I had to deal with people and –oh hey, you didn't even need to harm people, that's cool!" The blonde yapped. Then she saw Will standing a few feet away and her cheerful attitude faltered somewhat. "Blake and Weiss are waiting with team JNPR and LACG, somewhere further down the area."
"Good. Is anyone hurt?"
"Not precisely. Jaune nearly got flattened by artillery, Nora has several cuts from when a grenade blew up right in her face and Grace bumped her head."
…bumped her head?
"Let's go then!" exclaimed Ruby. "I want to walk somewhere where I don't have to worry about shells blowing up my cloak."
"You and me both," replied Yang. She ran a hand through her hair and smiled. "But we rinsed this place! I thought it would be hell, but it was doable!"
Ruby started making her way back down the hallway again and both Yang and Will followed her.
"It´s so easy to destroy and condemn. But did you ever try to understand?"
He jerked around, his hand on his sidearm, his entire body in full alert. He tried to spot whoever had whispered in his ears like that, but much to his surprise, there was nothing. The partly destroyed door that Ruby had busted to get inside was still hanging in its hinges, but it was closed. There wasn't anyone.
…how? How was that possible? That…that didn't make any sense.
He must be getting jumpy; lack of sleep or something like that. Still, the statement sounded familiar …had he read it in a book somewhere?
…what was wrong with him?
"I thought I heard people shout when I got here?" asked Yang.
"Yeah, Will needed to realize that he was not a Grimm."
"What does that mean?"
"He needs to holster his gun more often."
"Yikes, that sounds awfully wrong."
"What? Why?"
He agreed. What was wrong with Ruby's statement?
"And I thought you liked pervy books."
"They're not pervy! They are romantically charged!"
"Sounds pervy to me. "
"Stop it!"
It was strange that, no matter how stressed or emotional these people got, they always seemed to some way to utilize each other's strengths to calm down and stay easy-going. It was something that he had almost never seen in the Onyx troopers or agents. Not only did these would-be Hunters function better at the social area, they were actually making things that Onyx considered as trivial help them function better in battle. They had just captured an enemy strongpoint without taking casualties and without inflecting them. That was impressive.
And in a way…that did not bode well for him.
After a few minutes, they made their way to the rendezvous point of the other teams, where a different commotion was already happening.
"You broke the Adamant code!" LACG"s teamleader yelled at her teammate.
"What's going on?" Asked Yang.
Ruby shrugged. "No idea."
"I'm not an Adamant."
"You are now son!"
What?
"Hey guys, what's going on?" Ruby asked as soon as the teams were within hearing distance. They were standing roughly a dozen meters away from the last bunker, at the bottom of a relatively safe rock outcropping.
"That doesn't make sense," replied Alessa.
"We've got a bit of a thing here," said Grace. Lisa had her hands at her hips and she looked very angry, while Cho looked actually worried. Alessa, unreadable because of her ever-present blindfold, had her arms crossed over her chest. Grace looked even more worried than Cho, albeit that wasn't a hard thing to accomplish.
"What happened?" asked Ruby.
"Alessa killed a guy who was about to take a shot at Grace," Cho replied.
"I had him," Grace nearly shouted back. "I had him in my sights! There was no need to kill him!"
Again that sheer hostility against the people that only did what was needed. He could understand that it wasn't exactly the most fun thing to do out there, but couldn't they at least try to understand?
"He was about to pull the trigger," replied Alessa coolly.
Will looked at her claws and noticed that they were still slick with half-dried blood. That solved the mystery of the man with three holes poked into him; Alessa had been responsible for that one.
"Then my Aura would have taken the blow!"
"Aura doesn't block everything," remarked Ren. "Something could have gone through."
"Fine! Want to stab someone in the back? Do it nonlethal! Pull him away, get him out or bash him out. But you don't kill!" Shouted Lisa.
Ruby groaned. "Damnit Alessa, not you too!"
"He was in my way, about to shoot a teammate," the girl replied with a shrug.
"Let's all stop killing the people who are no threats to us, alright?" Jaune loudly proclaimed. "We didn't come here to murder and pillage, we came here to go to the North and investigate. We should stick to that."
"We're not getting any further by arguing," said Pyrrha. "Our first act should be to leave this place behind. We must not forget that these people have tried to kill us, despite them seeing we were not adults or soldiers. We acted in self-defense."
"But we should know better," spoke Ruby softly. "We can handle ourselves without taking their lives."
Will wanted to comment that no warrior could go through life without killing anyone, but he was struck by a sudden headache that demanded his immediate attention. With a head like Nora was pounding away on it, he was unable to further follow the conversation. He heard Blake saying something about wanting to move on and Cho agreeing, but that was about the limit of his ability to hear them.
Then, he noticed that people were actually moving out and he decided to simply follow. He felt very tired, despite this battle having been an extremely easy little conflict. Did headaches usually pop up and cause exhaustion like that?
Waiting until team JNPR had taken the lead, Will decided to move with team RWBY for the moment. Ruby seemed to be on good terms with him for the moment, which would make the continuing journey easier to maintain. The past few days had been tiring him out more than he had realized; he needed a good night worth of sleep and, perhaps, he needed to ease up on himself.
He delayed a few more moments and then approached Yang, who was watching Lisa and Alessa argue up ahead.
"Hey," he greeted her, already having lost all ideas of how to proceed with the conversation.
The blonde turned to face him and she gave him a weak smile. "Hey."
What now? What was his goal in this exchange? Did he want to apologize for upsetting her? Or did he merely want to hear her voice without having to fear the outcome?
"I…" Which one was it? "About earlier…" And now he had talked himself into a corner.
Perhaps sensing his inability to continue, Yang took over the conversation. "Yeah, I wanted to say sorry for what I did. I didn't mean to hurt you, I just…I was just angry. I didn't mean anything by it."
"You didn't?" He asked, remembering with perfect clarity what Yang had said to him. It had made him feel very guilty.
"No," she firmly said. "I shouldn't have said that. It was wrong."
Relief. He felt relief. He had always been taught that words could not heard, but he had felt the contrary many times. Words did hurt and Yang's words had hurt more than he thought they could have. "Thanks," he replied, feeling content. Then he remembered what he had said to her and realized that he too had used words to hurt. "I don't think of you as students."
"What?"
"I don't think of you people as mere students," he repeated.
"I know you don't. Still, it's good to hear it from your mouth. Let's kiss and make up, shall we?"
…what? Wasn't that…was…what?
Yang chuckled. "It's a saying, dummy."
"Ah." That explained that. Kissing was a sign of severe affection; it only made sense that she should reserve it for other people. Like…Ruby? Did she even have people she would want to kiss? Ruby had said that both her father as mother had disappeared…but shouldn't Yang have one parent that was different from Ruby's set of parents?
Still, his relief did not disappear. And as team Jaune led his team through yet another forest, Will understood that he had reached a point where his…his friendship with these people could not be shattered by something like a single fight. Even though his stance with team LACG was still poor at best, he managed to get along moderately well with the likes of Jaune and Pyrrha. Ruby was still upset with him for his methodical slaughter of those soldiers that, according to her, were defenseless against their onslaught, but she was very open-minded about it. Her mentality was difficult to follow though, as it forced him to think deeply about himself. And he hated doing so.
"So it doesn't bother you at all when you murder a dozen people? You do it just like that?" Ruby asked him.
"At first it did," he replied, summing up his motivations as an Operative in his head. It didn't work. "I got used to it after a while."
"How?"
How? How did he get used to killing people? By doing it over and over and over again. It was simple actually: "I don't know the people I kill. They are the enemy."
"They are the enemy? Will, you didn't know them! How could they be the enemy?"
"They were threats. Threats-"
"-get neutralized, yes, I heard you. And I stopped you."
"You did."
"But killing other people is wrong, don't you know that?"
Will knew that killing was frowned upon, but it was for the greater good. "I know. It is why Onyx exists; to do the things that nobody is willing to do."
"You mean the things that nobody should do, right?" Yang interrupted.
"Same difference. If hundred people need to die for a thousand to live in peace, so be it."
Then Ruby, the fifteen-year old girl with a naivety-problem, said something that caused him to be at a loss of words. "If you start comparing the lives of people like numbers, you have already lost."
It was a moral standpoint really; not a real argument because it was ethically based. The problem was that she kept saying the things that made him question himself. Whether it was because he had taken his helmet off at her request or not, she always managed to cause doubt. He liked it. He hated it.
"Looks like a point to Ruby," decided Yang.
"Have you ever killed someone who wasn't a Grimm?" the Operative asked, hoping to change the subject now that it was coming dangerously close to self-loathing.
Yang immediately stopped smiling and exchanged a dark look with Ruby, who looked down and refused to meet her gaze. Slowly, as if she was thinking very hard over each word she said, the blonde gave her answer. "When I came across Junior's men in the night club he owns, we had a fight. I accidentally hurt one of them so bad that he died in the hospital the following day. Bunch of morons."
She tried to make it sound like it bothered her, but in Will could see in her eyes that her words didn't seem to bother her. And her last statement pretty much lacked all respect that guilty people seemed to feel to the dead, foolish as it was. No, something else was on her mind. "Why were you in that club anyway?" He continued.
"I uh…Junior is an information broker. I wanted to know…something."
Obvious hesitation. Was she lying?
"What did you want to know?"
"Damnit Will, that's not important!"
Her sudden aggression made him flinch; he knew full well what happened when Yang got pissed. "Sorry. It was important to you, so…I though…I didn't…"he fell silent, hoping that he hadn't hurt anyone with careless words.
And then Yang took him by surprise again. "No…it's a personal thing…I'll tell you tonight, when we've got a place to stay."
"You don't need to if you don't want," he quickly said. "I didn't mean to intrude-"
"You know, for a guy who had to be informed that one-on-one meant he had to actually move, you seem to talk awfully civil," Ruby interrupted him. These people seemed to have a knack for taking over conversations when he didn't know how to proceed anymore.
"We've 'intruded' on your privacy plenty of times," Yang continued the redhead's argument.
Ruby was eager to proceed to a new subject, as she dropped subtleness altogether. "Speaking of privacy, can you tell us another story?"
Yang rolled with her eyes. "Cut him slack will you? You JUST chewed him out for shooting people."
"I don't mind," replied Will. "Have you ever heard of a Storm-event?"
"Nope."
How cute her voice sounded when she was dismissing reality. "It doesn't happen a lot in Vytal, but there are countries out there with killer-storms. Literally. Some people can see it in the sky; the clouds turn yellow-green and it starts thundering. At this point, people start hiding in the shelters that are built everywhere in the ground. Then, the storm breaks loose."
"A bit of rain has never killed anyone," Yang remarked as the three of them reached the rest of the teams, who were currently deciding whether to go left or right.
"A storm powerful enough to tear tanks with it has," he replied. "It arrives horizontally, consuming everything in its wake. Very localized, very lethal."
"Remnant has all kinds of weird things, hasn't it?" Weiss, who had apparently been listening in on the latter half of their conversation, asked.
"Yeah," replied Ruby. "Like that scary mental Grimm thing. And Professor Oobleck's coffee muck."
"And Professor Port's moustache," Blake joined in.
"And Professor Adamant's bowtie," Yang pointed out.
"Not to mention Headmaster Ozpin's cane!" laughed Weiss.
Will smiled, but a sudden sense of unease came over him and he found himself looking over his shoulder once more. There was nothing there. Absolutely nothing.
Still nothing.
Was there something there?
Day 59 – approximately 75 kilometer south of first mission objective – 21:09
Their attack on the cliffs to pave a way to the North had not passed completely without problems. Because they were all tired and eager to finally sleep somewhere that didn't involve having to build a tent in the dark –which, because of Blake's night vision, everyone seemed to want her help for- their frustrations with each other all had to wait until the evening fell. However, as soon as the evening actually did fall, Blake could notice that there wasn't actually much tension at all in both JNPR as RWBY –her own. LACG however, did not possess the experience with people who were completely willing and ready to murder their fellow beings with ease. The fact that Alessa of all people, the girl who rarely spoke and shared her own tales, had killed an enemy soldier just because he had been in her way did not go at all easy with Lisa.
It was Grace however, who had the biggest problem with that. She and the blindfolded girl had always been close together and ever since their team had been royally beaten at the hands of Greystone, him and his free antics had bothered them more than anyone else. That one of their own would lower herself to his point had to be a hard blow to their motivation.
And yet Blake could understand why Alessa had done it. If your team was in danger, and someone was about to shoot your partner, Aura or no Aura, you acted. And she had acted. It hadn't taken the rest of them very long to forget about the matter; when you were being trained as warriors, such things happened. Will's problem was that he killed so many and so easily, which could not be applied to Alessa. Even Lisa –with her babbling about an Adamant code- had seemingly forgiven the girl. But the Demolitions expert had not, which had made their journey a bit harder to keep up.
It was a good thing that they had managed to find a large wood cabin when the night fell, making their coming night that much easier. It sheltered all their bags and supplies and it had four rooms; one large living room and three bedrooms. Blake did not know why such an extensive structure had been created this far from civilization; they had been traveling for days now and right now, they were at the edge of a forest that seemed to house only dying trees. There were various hunting supplies gathered in the building that could eventually help them gut and cook captured game when that moment arose. But for the moment, it was enough to ease their exhaustion and pained muscles.
As the various teenagers took their residence in rooms all over the structure, Blake pulled out one of her books and retreated into a corner, in a comfy chair a pillow that was nice and soft. She had taken off her bow, donned her pajamas and brushed her teeth. She was all set to simply relax and let her worries wash -
"OH NO IT'S TERIBLE!"
-off. What was that? Was that Ruby?
The door burst open and an obviously terrified Ruby barged into the room, her signature red cloak missing from her petite form.
"IT'S THE DEVIL! HE HAS COME FOR MY YOUNG SOUL!"
Blake sighed agitatedly and looked up from her book. If anything less than the actual devil was after her, she would burry all of her cookies in the forest at night.
"Whoah girl, calm down!" laughed Yang, who was sitting next to Jaune at a wooden sofa. "What's going on?"
What was going on appeared relatively quickly, as Jason Cho calmly walked in after her, wearing nothing but a pair of pajama pants. His muscles were well defined. Not as much as Sun or Will, but he still had a toned body. There was one scar visible on his chest, about seven inches under his throat..
"It's not my fault," he calmly told Ruby.
"Get it away!" Ruby cried from behind a table, looking like she was about to cry.
"He's not that ugly Rubes," remarked Weiss, who was lying on a different couch. Where easily three people could sit.
"I lost my razor," the Cho replied. "I don't know where, but it's gone."
Razor? What…ah. Blake saw what was going on; Jason had a bit of a goatee and stubble going on, making him look like an evil corporate executive. Just a bit.
"Heeeeelp mee!" The girl dramatically cried, unable to see that her nightmare was in fact one of the last persons who would hurt her.
"There there…" muttered Weiss as she walked up to the redhead and pulled her away from underneath the table. "It's alright…the horrible thing is just our resident Jason."
"Jason?" repeated Ruby, her head turning towards the half-naked boy. Then they went big with recognition. "Oh! Cho! I didn't recognize you like that…why didn't you shave?"
Poor Jason looked like he was about to bash his head against a nearby wall. "Lost it. Warzone, remember? I got knocked on my can by artillery."
"The same happened to Nora," said Jaune.
"Didn't that happen to you too?" Scoffed Weiss.
"Y-yeah," Jaune stuttered back, "but I…you know, that's different because…you know."
"Uh-huh." Weiss then ignored Jaune and focused right back at Ruby. "You shouldn't be scared by people's facial hair like that. He's not the devil; there are people here who are way closer to the devil than he is."
"I'm sitting right here," Will commented from the corner of the room, where he was sitting on the ground playing with a grenade and a knife.
"Feeling addressed are you?"
"I'll go shave in the morning," Cho decided with a defeated sigh. "Anyone seen Lisa? There are four rooms and I haven't found her yet."
"Check the roof, perhaps she has hidden herself inside of it," replied Yang. When everyone grew silent and stared at her, she shrugged. "What? Ren found Nora inside of the roof."
"I'm not even going to ask," murmured Weiss as she dragged Ruby over to her couch, to which the redhead replied with very minimal struggling.
But at least it was quiet now, so she could continue reading her book.
Unfortunately, that silence lasted only three minutes. After that, things got noisy again when everybody in the room started yelling and cheering about something. She tried to ignore it, but the noise kept dying down and resurfacing and seven minutes later they still hadn't stopped. Blake growled in frustration and slammed her book close, violence on her mind. Weiss and Ruby were sitting on the couch, with the redhead's legs resting on the Heiress' lap. Jaune and Pyrrha were standing around a table together with a recently found Lisa and a still unshaven Cho. Sitting at said table were Yang and Will, who were having a very one-sided arm-wrestling match with each other.
Blake raised an eyebrow. Why was everyone being so close together? Ruby and Weiss she could understand, but Jaune had an arm around Pyrrha's shoulders and Lisa was standing very close to Jason. And wasn't Yang mad at Will the last time they spoke? Something about him having added another dozen lives to his kill-list?
"Come on! Show that weakling who's the boss!" Shouted Lisa.
"Come one Will! There's not enough prowess among us guys!" Jaune was yelling equally loud.
"Don't let him beat you Yang! Send him through the floor!" Ruby shouted in glee. Everyone looked so happy. Was that the cabin, or something else?
The young soldier was sitting there in his skintight clothes, obviously straining to keep his arm straight. Yang on the contrary looked like she was holding up a baby nevermore by its neck. "Is that all you got?"
Will grunted, but otherwise kept quiet. Yang's arm then gave in slightly, allowing him to gain a few inches of room to his favor. Then her smile grew larger and she forced him right back to his edge.
"That's the sixth time you did that," said Pyrrha.
"Yeah, stop teasing him!" Added Jaune. That sounded wrong on a certain level.
"But it's so much fun…"
"Explain fun to me again."
"Oh, stop complaining. Most guys had their arms broken by now."
"Lucky me…"
"Are you going to lose like this? Or are you going to fight back?"
The Operative strained himself even harder as he tried to force Yang's arm back to the middle. He actually succeeded for a second, but then Yang's eyes flashed red for a brief second. Will lay on the ground the next brief second, having been thrown off his chair by the blonde's unnatural power.
"Victory goes to Yang!" Exclaimed Ruby. "Those were some long ten minutes…"
"No kidding," muttered Blake.
"You lasted longer than other guys," Yang smiled and pulled the fallen soldier back on his feet. That sounded wrong on more than one level. "Ten minutes is better than ten seconds."
Blake noticed that everyone was being closer and friendlier to each other in the evening than in the morning. Did it have something to do with the battlefield, which many of them dreaded? She had read that people had sex together if they had both survived something dreadful; this could be the platonic version of this. But she didn't feel the happiness herself; she still felt like something was wrong, despite the fact that she couldn't place her finger on it. There were too many loose things to ignore. Like Alessa's suddenly surfaced bloodthirstiness, or the completely random war between two groups that never had any real explanation, or the fact that Will –a seventeen to eighteen year old teen- had apparently seen enough war to be completely unfazed by it
And then there was the mention of the train tracks…where no train should be running. She would know it; she and Adam had the last train to ever travel along that line, long ago. It had been her last job with the White Fang, as she had cut ties with them after Adam had wanted to kill the entire human crew simply for being there. It had been too much.
The stupid thing was that she had fled one ally who was too casual about wasting lives, only to find a new ally who was the human counterpart.
So now the question was: where was that train now? And who was on it?
"Well, you know the drill. You lost, now you gotta tell me your last name!"
Seriously? Was that the reason for their silly little game? Yang wanted to know the Operative's last name?
Will smiled smugly. "There isn't one."
What?
Yang's reaction was roughly equal to Blake's. "Wait, what did you say?"
"Don't be a dolt," commented Weiss, "everyone has a last name."
"I lost mine."
"Well, where did it go?" Yang sounded very unpleased, but probably for the wrong reason.
"I don't know. Can't remember, not important."
"Are you kidding me? Why didn't you say so already!"
He shrugged. "You didn't ask."
"DAMNIT!"
No last name…Blake wondered if that was considered normal where he came from. It probably wasn't.
Day 59 – {LOCATION EXPUNGED] – 23:33
The battlefield between the Ritualist and Council forces was filled with death. Bodies lay sprawled across the ground, scattered between bunkers and limp against rocks. A single trail of bullet-marks marked the position where one soldier had fired the last burst he would ever fire. To the ordinary man, this would appear to be normal. Two forces had fought and destroyed one another. Such things happened. The teams RWBY, JNPR and LACG had passed through leaving maximal damage but minimal casualties in their wake, only weakening the present Ritualist forces and angering their warlord. He had sworn that whoever had devastated his cliffs would pay in blood.
But that had happened to both sides, not one. Though the Beacon students had left no trail as to where they were headed, thus preventing revenge from occurring, they had also left no more than a dozen bodies in their wake.
To the ordinary man, observing the battlefield, the two groups had continued fighting and obliterating each other. To the ordinary soldier, they had definitely fought and killed each other, yet one group must have had survived to live the tale.
A more experienced man, perhaps a detective or perhaps just skilled, would realize that such a thing did not occur. This more experienced man would have noticed that the two groups had joined together to combat a more elusive enemy.
And as a dark figure strolled over the battlefield with appearance of one in total control, this theory would not lose its credibility.
The figure continued its march, its back straightened and a bloody weapon attached to it. Its dark appearance, the effect multiplied in the night, came from a set of armour that was covered with dark patches of blood. What had happened on the battlefield was vague, but the results were clear. The figure stood alone among the dead and if one were to judge it by its appearance alone, one would think that that was precisely what it fought for.
The figure stopped its solemn march at a patch of grey in the dark mud, looking down at it in an intrigued fashion. An innocent gesture, displaying curiosity. Then, the figure reached out and plucked something from the ground, as delicate as a mother bird would pick up its child. It lifted its hand and opened it, revealing a small, silvery razor that someone might have once used for shaving.
A soft hiss escaped the figure's throat, inhuman and animalistic, yet satisfied in its nature. Then, it clenched its wrist and crushed the small item into nothingness, for it seemed to remind it of its quarry.
Its gaze then aimed at the horizon, directly away from the battlefield that housed a hundred dead, mangled bodies. It dropped the crushed remains of the razor, destroyed in its massive gauntlet, to the ground. Without turning back to look at the devastation it had caused at the battlefield –the many, many dozens of lives that had been tasked with guarding the cliffs since Beacon had blown through, extinguished in one chaotic night- the figure burst into a sprint. Its path was set and its goal, whatever it might be, seemed to await it behind the forest.
"You said you hacked the Onyx jeep, right?"
"That's right. Alessa found some very tightly secured files, but it was still useless in the end."
"How do you mean?"
"Pyrrha, when one hopes for juicy secret stories and only receives some lame, scientific nonsense-filled report, it sucks the fun out of the game."
"Scientific report? Inside of a jeep?"
"Yeah, apparently it contained some report about Semblance and how it could theoretically be copied or transplanted or something idiotic like that. Crazy scientist stuff."
"But…that's impossible. Semblance is unique and cannot be replicated."
"Tell that to the jeep."
"The jeep we had to leave behind?"
"That one yeah."
-Conversation between Pyrrha Nikos and Lisa Adamant, 2 hours after cliff-fights
That last part was me attempting to pull of an Omniscient narrator POV.
Next time: things are not what they seem, our teams finally approach the Northern-most point of the continent…and promptly run into a very cold reception.