Retribution, Pt. 2
-XXXIII-
Having faced a Paladin before, Team RWBY quickly got the upper hand on the first two giant war robots.
With their tried and true method, Weiss cast an ice glyph in front of Crescent Rose as Ruby shot the robot's limbs to a grinding halt with giant ice crystals, each girl then advancing on the robot with incredible speed. Jumping up and deflecting a few blasts from the monger's large arm cannons with her scythe blade, the crimsonette distracted the machine for a few seconds longer through the air before the heiress dispatched it with a violet-lit rapier stab, blowing it to smithereens.
"Not as skilled as Roman's mech, that one," the snowy-haired girl stated with a small smile to her out-of-breath partner, sending out another ice glyph through the suddenly fog-free air to freeze the escaping faunus pilot solid.
Ruby raised a tired brow as she replied, "How about *pant pant* you distract the next one!"
Yang and Blake were all over the next one in their area, the blonde pelting it with gauntlet-fired projectiles while the cat-faunus hooked the blade of Gambol Shroud on its front, using her momentum to swing around and land on its neck piece as she fired into its control panel but not before it landed a solid punch on the brawler.
As she saw her partner flying away, the raven-haired girl angrily stabbed the neck panel as she dodged a reaching mechanical arm.
"You colossally..."
STAB.
"Stupid!..."
STAB.
"...FIEND!"
With a final stab at the panel, Blake seemed to hit something important as the machine's arm lost control, spinning in all directions and helpless against the returning Yang's incoming semblance-punch through the air.
With a thundering blast, the robot was blown to pieces as the angry brawler connected a fist to its cockpit, sending the entrapped pilot hundreds of yards away as the fog suddenly cleared out around the teammates.
"You think he can survive that?" the recovering blonde asked her silently impressed partner.
"It may be possible."
Team JNPR was having a bit of a tougher time in their own area several yards away, it being the first time either pair had faced the large robots. They also seemed to be a bit larger than the ones the girls had taken out.
Jaune and Pyrrha were dodging one bot's slashing arm blades while evading fire from the other arm's mounted machine guns. Finally getting tired of trying to find its weakness, the knight opted for a more direct approach as the haze suddenly retreated from the battle, giving the couple a clear target.
'Huh. That fog cleared out pretty quick. Oh well...' the knight thought briefly before he called out at his partner, "Pyrrha, take out its guns!"
His aura flashing around both arms, Jaune sheathed Crocea Mors as he stood in front of the machine and held out both arms, magnetically slowing the robot's arms to a halt in mid-air as the Spartan disabled its guns with a well-timed throw with Akoúo.
"Aim for its neck panel!" Blake called to the redhead from above her own downed Paladin.
Flipping up and over the war bot into the air, Pyrrha turned upside down in mid-air to give herself the momentum to sling Miló down with deadly speed into the robot's neck joint. Losing all mobility, the machine stood helplessly as Jaune walked right up to it and unleashed a huge pulse of aura, sending the disabled Paladin flying into a distant building.
The pair regrouped to see the fourth Paladin land a shoulder-mounted rocket shot to Ren's feet, blasting him away in a cloud of dust. Nora was not too happy about that.
Marching towards the machine as she transformed Magnihild into hammer form, her grimace was undeterred as the machine focused all its tracking lasers oh the orange-haired girl.
"Grr... HIYAH!"
With an impossibly fast swing of Magnihild, she took out its entire leg without flinching as it fired its main cannons, missing her by inches as she readied her next swing.
"YAH!"
Another powerful crash sent the other leg flying away, leaving the top half of the robot desperately trying to re-target the angry student.
"Have a nice ride!~" Nora cried out in her usual cheer as she twirled the massive hammer above herself and nailed the cockpit with a final powerful strike, sending it rolling out into the now-distant fog clouds at an astounding rate.
Ren, having gotten up to stand next to her, counted a few seconds more before hearing a crash in the distance and the sound of a falling forest tree.
"You..." the stoic told his grinning partner as he finally caught his breath, "are the most amazing person in my life."
"Where's Seul and the others?" Jaune asked as the students regrouped.
"I can hear them, but I can't see where they are..." Blake replied, straining her ears to catch the faint sounds of clashing metal as the students looked around the now sizable fog-less clearing.
In the distance, the four fighters had previously been taking on a larger Paladin with four arms and a deadly shoulder-mounted rail gun, its tracking lasers flashing all around the fog as it fired at them.
Having lost patience with the difficulty of facing a hazy opponent as his peers dodged its hefty blows, Seul opened Gretel, compressing as much air as he could around him with calculated twirls using Hansel.
Now closing the umbrella beside him with incredible force, the boy unleashed a massive surge of air outwards which spread out around the ground and cleared the fog out for what could easily be a square mile in the blast's direction, unknowingly helping the rest of the dozen students fight their Paladins as well in the distance.
Well, most of them, at least.
"Ack!" Neptune cried out as he barely dodged a powerful shot from an arm cannon due to the gust of wind, "Almost killed me right there, man!"
"Sorry! Not used to working with a team."
"Well get used to it! We gotta take it out together, I think this Paladin's automated!"
The blue-haired student paused to switch his weapon into blaster mode, hitting the robot with multiple energy shots while Velvet pelted it with Grif Shot grenades from its other side.
"Its hull is too thick!" the faunus girl called out, jumping out of the way to avoid being flattened by a robotic fist.
"How about you do another one of those robot-killing sword slices of yours!" the monkey-faunus loudly suggested.
"One time deal. The next ones are never as strong as the first."
"Just peachy," Sun muttered before thinking out their next move as he leaped over another Paladin punch, "Neptune! We gotta take out its arms!"
As Velvet and Seul distracted it with alternating close range attacks, the other two came up from behind, Sun jumping at one arm as Neptune bounded over him at the second arm on the same side of the monster bot. With two of Sun's aura-projections appearing mid-leap to strike the arms from the other side of the machine in mid-air, all four hits landed at the same time which momentarily disabled the Paladin's four arms.
Neptune grinned at Sun... his own energy strike had completely sliced off the arm-cannon from its mechanical appendage.
"Meh, lucky strike!" the faunus-boy retorted playfully.
In front of the beast, Velvet now lifted the Grif Shot in both arms, blade facing the giant robot, before looking over at the boy.
"A little help here?"
Seul nodded in understanding, "Got it."
With a quick dash behind the upheld weapon, Seul timed an air blast to Velvet's launching of the weapon, augmenting its flight speed immensely into the front hull of the massive machine as its arms regained function.
"And I'll take it from here, Seul!"
Dodging and sliding under its swinging four-arm attack, the bunny faunus ran at the Paladin, jumping at the last moment to grab on to her weapon with a yell and firing several grenades into the gaping hole it had created while the machine reeled back in its final moments.
"Wow," the wide-eyed boy said aloud as the machine landed on its back motionless, the bunny-fauness firing one more grenade into its massive frame for good measure.
"There they are!" Ruby cried out from a distance as she finally noticed the downed robot, the students now staring in wonder at the small faunus who stood on it.
The victorious girl pulled out her weapon and resheathed it on her back as she stood over the iron monger, grinning at the other two boys who gaped at her impressive act of combat before turning to give Seul a thumbs-up.
As they watched the adorable girl who had one bunny ear up and the other drooping down as usual turn to the boy, the impressed expressions on Sun's and Neptune's faces quickly turned to those of alarm as they saw the giant rail-gun flex over and above the robot's head, aiming right at Velvet's back with its spine lighting up as it powered its shot.
"VELV LOOK OUT!"
Turning to look at the rail-gun in surprise with no time to dodge it, Velvet yelped as the rail-gun suddenly exploded before it could fire.
BLAM!
Neptune looked at Seul in shock, who stood with a large arm cannon held in both arms on the other side of the downed robot.
"You shot it with its own cannon!?"
"It's kinda poetic... when you think about it," Sun thoughtfully mused next to its partner before Seul responded.
"It might not be dead yet!" the boy called out in alarm before running over with the cannon to the AI unit in its large headpiece.
Joining him, Sun and Neptune walked over to its head and readied their weapons while Velvet walked above to the neck of the machine with the Grif Shot pointed downwards on the head, each student now firing their respective weapons into the unit as they stood around the fallen robot: arm cannon, energy baton, nunchuck pistols and grenade launcher.
BLAM!
POW!
BAM! BAM!
BOOM!
A brief pause.
POW! BLAM!
BAM BAM, BOOM!
BLAM! POW!
BOOM!
"You think we got it?" The bunny girl asked meekly, the students panting lightly with all the gunpowder and debris rising from the charred machine.
Sun cocked his head to the side, "Meh."
BAM BAM BOOM BLAM POW!
BOOM POW BAM BAM BLAM POW BLAM!
...
BOOM!
With the Grif Shot having the final word, Sun was now satisfied as a dark plume of smoke began to rise from the large cavity that was once the Paladin's AI unit.
"Yep. We got it."
As the three guys turned to make their way towards the approaching group of students, Velvet hopped off the heap of metal with a smile to follow them, humming the theme song for a certain machinima series as she went along.
"That looked like fun," Jaune commented casually as the two groups met halfway in the run-down part of Dorme, "Thanks for clearing out the fog, Seul."
Weiss raised an eyebrow, "That was you?"
The boy nodded, eliciting an impressed expression from the heiress which she couldn't hide. The students seemed surprised that she acknowledged the boy at all.
"But still... Ruby and I were able to dispatch our Paladin without the need for complete visibility," she commented with a self-satisfied smirk.
"And there's the Weiss everyone knows..." Ren replied with a smirk of his own.
"Hmpf." She crossed her arms as a few of the students couldn't help chuckling at the comment.
Sun now looked around the clearing as they stood in the largely flattened neighborhood near the edge of the fog clearing. It had begun to close in a bit once more, rolling through the town again but leaving the students with plenty of visibility for the moment.
"Do you guys think that was it? I don't really hear anything anymore-"
Before the catgirl could respond, however, a voice outside the group answered for her.
"I keep telling him... not the brightest banana in the bunch, that one."
Four figures appeared through a patch of fog that had closed in near the group. The students watched as a fire glyph suddenly burned through the fog around them, revealing none other than Roman Torchwick and Cinder with her team.
"You have got to be kidding me..." Blake let out in disbelief.
"Oh don't be so concerned to see us, kids!" the criminal continued with an exaggerated bow, "We're just here on business!"
"How about I show you the business end of my staff!" Sun growled as he began to advance, but was promptly stopped by the cat-faunus.
"No. I will put this one down myself."
Roman chuckled, "Then I guess today we get to mix business with a little pleasure!"
The four villains armed themselves as the Beacon students now recognized his three companions.
"Neptune..." Ruby whispered sideways to her blue-haired peer, "They're not from Haven, are they."
"Nope."
"Judging by the looks on their faces, I'd say most of them recognize us by now..." Cinder stated smugly to her two companions.
"I wonder if they missed us~" Emerald cooed at the group.
"Yea. Full Metal Huntress never called me back," Mercury began with a hint of mock dissapointment in his voice, "How about we give our little dance another go, sweetcheeks?"
Jaune angrily stepped forward to the grey-haired merc, white aura blazing hotly.
"Oho, I got somethin' for you to dance with... sweetcheeks."
No sooner had he finished when Mercury was suddenly punched in the face through a nearby pile of bricks by a large white aura-gauntlet. The other three villains pointed their weapons at the knight to fire, but each were halted by the students as they engaged their new opponents.
Blake and Sun engaged the criminal in a flurry of pistol fire and cane deflections while Emerald was countered by Weiss and Neptune. Cinder, however, was forced back by Ruby alone, a sudden realization taking hold of the girl as she saw the enchantress' glowing amber eyes.
"You're the one who corrupted the CCT!"
"Guilty as charged," the fire maiden stated cooly as her hands lit up in flame, "You're looking at the Queen herself!"
Throwing several fireballs at the crimsonette, Cinder dodged scythe-strikes from Crescent Rose as Ruby flipped around her attacks in mid-air.
Timing their strikes in unison, Cinder blew her opponent back with a fire-blast as Roman knocked Blake away with a powerful counter from his weapon, blasting Sun away with a shot from the cane's end at the same time in tandem with two dual pistol-shots from Emerald that downed both the heiress and Neptune.
Roman adjusted his bowler hat with a grin.
"And I almost forgot to mention, there's plenty of fight to go around!"
The students turned at the sudden sound of a booming mechanical horn to see another half-dozen Paladins racing at them from behind.
"Jaune, Sun!" the red leader called out quickly, "Take your teams to fight the robots! We'll take care of these guys!"
With the pause having given Mercury time to rejoin his group, Yang put her hand on the scowling Spartan's shoulder.
"I'll handle it."
Re-engaging their opponents, Ruby took on Cinder, Weiss engaged Emerald, Blake dashed at Roman and Yang swung at Mercury as the other eight students fell back to meet the Paladin squad in the distance.
Meanwhile, Jaune, Pyrrha and Ren took on three Paladins while Sun, Neptune and Seul took on the other three, Nora and Velvet hanging back to add an element of grenades into the fights before closing in as finishers with their weapons' alternate uses.
As Jaune and Pyrrha each evaded canon blasts from their respective Paladins with cover-fire from Nora, the knight hooked on to Pyrrha's robot with his semblance, his partner doing the same to his bot with her polarity as well before they each pulled the robots into each other with a loud crash. Both were finished quickly by a powerful hit from Nora's Magnihild that practically bonded their metal frames together.
His girlfriend flipping backwards to rejoin him, Ren shielded Nora from a powerful metallic punch as she swung her hammer down, breaking the third Paladin's arm clean off. With two more twirling swings, she quickly dispatched the bot as it flew away in pieces.
Turning back, team JNPR found the other four students merely watching them with the three other Paladins behind them in pieces.
"Took you guys long enough," Sun teased with a smirk, "Let's help Ruby's team!"
In team RWBY's duels, Weiss was having a difficult time countering her red-eyed opponent who was very skilled in using her Falx Pistols - weapons with long sickled blades at their ends that she used to counter the heiress' strikes with impressive precision. Ducking under a dust blast, Emerald slashed at Weiss as she parried the mercenary's multiple strikes with Myrtenaster.
Yang also had her hands full with Mercury despite the fact that his leg-based style and weapons would've proved too much for her a mere few months ago. But thanks to training with Davin and his favored kick-boxing style, she was beginning to push ahead as she landed low uppercuts and gauntlet powered jab-hook combos on the mercenary.
Seeing the other students approaching again, Cinder detonated a flash bomb in front of Ruby to give her the time to leap back and levitate into the air, eyes blazing amber as she mentally picked up every loose brick surrounding them and turned them into stony fireballs which she swung around the perimeter of the fighting and at the four RWBY teammates.
"Ack! We can't get in!" Neptune shouted angrily as the eight tried blasting their way past the wall of flying firestones.
Blake, however, was unfazed by the addition of fiery projectiles, her close combat skills improved by her continued training in Beacon and fighting sessions with Davin, which were now paying off as she countered the fire bricks and Roman's cane attacks with just the sheath of Gambol Shroud, using her free fist and forearm to bypass his defenses again and again with a modified Kenpo technique.
Sending the criminal flying back with a spear-armed jab to the chest after blocking multiple cane strikes with her weapon, Blake saw him straighten his coat angrily before shouting into a device in his ear.
"Bring in everybody!"
Stopping their attempt to break through Cinder's perimeter momentarily, the eight students turned back to see dozens of the giant robots appearing and coming at them out of the fog. Jaune's teammates turned to their leader, whose mind was racing in thought.
'We won't be able to take them all on our own...'
Suddenly hit with an idea as he noticed the arcade at the edge of the fog in the distance, or at least what was left of it, the knight pressed a finger into his ear with a single thought now running through his mind.
'I hope this works...'
"Cipher! Cipher, can you hear me? I could really use the sound of your voice right about now!"
"Jaune..." Seul began sullenly beside him, "I don't even know if he's still-"
The boy and knight suddenly cringed at the loud ringing sound in their ears. The others looked worried, they couldn't hear what was happening.
'Oi!...' a static voice responded, 'Oi! Jaune! You there? Oh am I bloody glad to hear you, mate! I knew I did good by givin' Seul and you the best crackin' transmitters I had!'
"Cipher!" the boy shouted into his own earpiece, "You're still there!"
The rest of the students livened up at the realization that the cryptic had survived, but were increasing in apprehension at the incoming mechanical front.
"Might wanna hurry it along, guys..." Neptune anxiously advised.
'Of course I'm still 'ere! But we're in a gagging way, those duff Paladins've made a real hash of us... they were right on top of the arcade! If they hadn't stopped just now, we'd be a bloody load of codswallop!'
"They stopped because they're coming for us! Dozens of them!" Jaune shouted, which was followed by a second's pause.
'Oh bollocks...'
"So uh..." Seul began with evident hesitation despite the fact that the robots were closing in at a few hundred yards now, "Say, Cipher... is it that time?"
A meaningful pause followed.
'D'you mean the HOUSE PARTY PROTOCOL, Seul?' The cryptic sounded alarmed at the mere reference.
"Correct."
Inside the battered control room filled with people underneath Flynn's arcade, the frazzled cryptic closed his eyes and said a brief prayer before hitting a small red button underneath the central control desk's lip.
Above ground, on the first floor of what was left of the arcade, the lights to every arcade machine suddenly came on. Coming to life, the few dozen machines now mecha-shifted into heavily armored androids, each with the face of the arcade character the game featured.
Jaune watched in awe as little specks of light suddenly appeared at the arcade through its demolished first floor walls and the andriods shot up in the air to land between the students and the Paladins in a standoff.
Meanwhile, back inside the subterranean control room, the people turned to watch the incoming live video feeds from the androids on the working monitors. Cipher's jaw hung low.
Finally composing himself, he spoke into his earpiece with no small measure of awe and pride.
"Well I'll be gobsmacked, they actually worked. Mates, meet my Automated Constructions... Autocons for short. I would've called them 'Decepticons' due to their deceptive nature, but it felt a tad tacky..."
On the video feed featured on the main screen in the room, Seul saluted the camera as his voice rang back through the transmitter, the other students out of the screen area.
'Right... And we all know how you felt about the term 'Auto Bots'.'
The line went dead, the transmitters finally giving out as the fighting behind the group of students continued.
"Well alright then, Autocons!~" Nora called gleefully as the standstill came to a suspenseful peak above ground, "Let's roll out!~"
The sudden loud clashing of battle on the other side of the flaming perimeter distracted Cinder for just long enough for the crimsonette to finally clear out the steady stream of fireballs she had been fighting off. Firing a single sniper shot at Cinder, Ruby inflicted a flesh wound on the enchantress who was barely able to dodge it in time to keep from receiving much worse damage.
"AGH!" Cinder cried out in a rare show of anger as the fiery stones fell around the still-fighting RWBY team, "You imbecile!"
Healing her wound with her aura, two long dust-sabres made a fiery appearance in her hands, each glowing as she sent shards of dust crystals flying at Ruby.
The two red-themed opponents re-engaged with their blades as the rest of Ruby's team continued against their evenly matched opponents, each battle tearing down buildings and street posts as the larger mechanized battle near them raged on.
Paladins began to fall as the androids' beam weapons cut through them along the calculated attacks of the Beacon students, but even then, the sheer numbers of the larger war robots were beginning to prove superior.
Under the arcade, a larger man walked up beside the cryptic as the height of anxiety rose again in the room, its occupants noticing the dwindling amount of video feeds remaining.
He spoke up with a deep, authoritative voice that immediately instilled silence in its audience.
"Cyrus, you have done us well, for which I and all of us in this chamber are eternally grateful. But now it's time for me and the other Hunters to rejoin the fight. Those kids need all the help they can get."
"But sir, you got a wife and three girls 'ere. Who's gonna care for them and wotnot?" the cryptic replied with genuine worry.
The blue-eyed man's brows softened in understanding, "Gabriel stays with you to maintain this facility, as will Rowenna to protect you both and any who choose to stay. My wife and May will come along with me to even the field."
Having heard the leader's voice, most of the room's battle-hardened occupants readied their weapons. The man retained his gaze on the hazel-eyed cryptic.
"If my boy's up there like you say he is, I can't stay here and watch. He's just a student, and frankly, he's in over his head..."
Cipher meekly raised his hand to attest to the knight's recently attained abilities but the man held out a hand to stop him.
"...but thank you, Cyrus. This town will always remember what you've done for it."
With a reluctant sigh, the cryptic nodded his head and opened the large door.
"Yes sir, Lord Arc."
An armored woman with jet black hair and a broadsword joined the burly blonde man alongside a younger blonde and blue-eyed girl as the group of fighters left the cryptic's control room.
The Valean War
TPS (c) 2014