Ruby used her weight to direct her rocket-powered locker after the dragon Cobalt was riding.

Considering it had shining gold scales and was the size of a bus, it wasn't too hard to keep an eye on it.

What was difficult was following it. Not only did the guidance system not want to listen, but Cobalt was dogfighting with the Grimm… and Ruby was running out of names for the manoeuvres she was seeing, fast.

Not to mention that concentrating on surfing what essentially boiled down to a guided missile was made all the more difficult by all the attention-grabbing blasts of magic.

There were homing rounds, giant dumb-bombs that exploded, streams of smaller rounds, and everything in between.

Ruby felt a subtle sense of awe watching Cobalt's fly.

When, the dragon engaged in a somewhat lazy spin, Ruby noticed that Cobalt wasn't sitting on the dragon's back.

He was standing. In outright defiance of the wind, the turbulence and almost laughing in the face of Newton's first law of motion.

Ruby watched as Cobalt and the dragon duelled the Nevermore and landed atop one of Atlas' Dreadnoughts. Ruby directed her locker downwards and managed to stick the landing.

"What the bloody hell?!"

Ruby's stomach froze at that voice.

She'd landed two metres from a hatch that Roman Torchwick had just tried to use to emerge from the Dreadnought.

"What are you doing here?" Both Ruby and Torchwick asked simultaneously.

"Jinx"

Cobalt emerged from the side of the Dreadnought, casually strolling up the near-vertical, smooth metal.

"What the hell's going on here?" Both Roman and Ruby asked

Cobalt sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose

"My apologies Mr. Torchwick, it would seem a close friend of mine decided to do something me-style and follow me on her rocket-powered locker."

"Me-style?" Ruby and Torchwick asked

"For Torchwicks benefit, I'm not known for my great sanity… in fact, my devotion to the rule of cool, rule of funny and plain, dumb curiosity- in a somewhat scientific sense, has earned me a reputation for unpredictable insanity… which suits me just fine. Surfing a rocket-powered locker to chase a man riding a dragon as he dogfights a small crapton of aerial grimm sounds like something I'd do… Ruby though? Not so much… she's got some crazy-awesome stuff going on, like her scythe-rifle that she uses as a means of traversal, true, but I'm the guy who you can reasonably expect to develop explosive boxing gloves, and use them"

"Those were yours?!" Ruby asked

Cobalt paused and turned to Ruby

"Did… did someone- Yang didn't try to-" Cobalt asked

"If you made them, they were duds." Ruby said

"They didn't explode?" Cobalt asked

"They did… but all that happened was that Yang was covered in soot and smoke" Ruby explained

"Ah… I was really concerned when those went missing because I realized the packing on the black powder was utter shite." Cobalt said

Torchwick cleared his throat

"Oh, right, soory... You understand the terms of our agreement, Mr. Torchwick?" Cobalt asked

"Agreement?"

"Roman, here, has gracefully decided to aid me, in exchange for sanctuary on Outer Heaven… so long as he keeps to good behaviour, that deal stands."

"How's he supposed to help?"

"He's supposed to receive a copy of the Castle Intelligent Virus Cinder was going to use to hack Atlas' Robot control mainframe. She'd have turned Atlas' legions against Vale and caused a big international incident… so I decided to bribe Mr. Torchwick and convince him to doublecross her." Cobalt explained

"Well, gee, when you put it that way… and here I was thinking we were friends, Blue." Torchwick said

"Did you put my scroll in?" Cobalt asked

"Well, the tides sure turned when you pulled your little stunt. It's in" Torchwick said

Cobalt touched the side of his head for a few seconds

"Checks out. Welcome aboard Mr. Torchwick."

"Yeah, yeah. Just make with the magic." Torchwick said

"All right, alright. Sheesh, you try and put all that talent and acting skill to use..."

Cobalt produced a large magic circle with a flick of his wrist and a snap of his fingers

"Keep any extremities you intend to keep inside the magic circle at all times, and keep movement to a minimum. Mass-scale teleporting comes with a series of risks personal TP-ing dodges. Just let me lock the spell onto you guys and..."

Torchwick felt the air around him charge with an almost tangible energy, and the air fill with a hum that was always just on the edge of his hearing

"Normal phenomena… if you see hoarfrost, tell me, that happens sometimes and usually means we're in for a wild ride until the spell yanks us out of the astral plane… either way, this is going to be very not-fun"

"The what?"

"Teleporting is, in essence, using and abusing the planes of existence for fun and- hold that thought: We've got four locks… commencing mass planar transport in 3..."

The hum became a whine that increased in pitch as the spell charged

"2..."

Torchwick felt the hair on his arms stand on end

"1..."

Torchwick was subjected to the singularly unpleasant sensation of being stretched into infinity as all five major senses were assaulted and offended.

Then it stopped, as abruptly as it started. The sudden normalcy being incredibly jarring after an already jarring experience.

Torchwick immediately felt his gorge rise. His stomach was having none of that shit.

"Toilet is down the hall, on the left, first door on your right." Cobalt said, indicated said hallway

there was a mad rush as Torchwick, Ruby and Neo each rushed for the bathroom

Cobalt sighed

"Charles, get the bleach… and possibly some new carpet, I suspect you'll have to add cleaning up pavement pizza to the janitorial roster." Cobalt said to his robotic butler.

"It appears that way, doesn't it? I'll get right to it, then." Charles replied, floating off to find the cleaning supplies.

"Sorry 'bout that" Cobalt added

"It's quite alright, sir. We were made to handle tasks such as these" Charles said

"Doesn't mean it's pleasant."

"Yes, I know."


Magnus landed like one of the many shooting stars landing on Vale right now.

He was hunting Grimm… something he naturally excelled at.

They struggled to kill him for the same reasons slime monsters were a credible threat: you couldn't hurt them through purely physical means, and needed fire, lasers or magic to kill both him and them. It didn't help that he was absorbing them like a Dust Sprite ate aura, which undid what little they could do, and made Grimm all but a joke, when all he had to do was touch them to kill them.

Or that he could concentrate to sense them. They couldn't fight, very few could run fast enough, and they couldn't hide.

Cobalt was billing him, perhaps rightly so, as the Grimm's one true natural predator; The Creature that naturally fed on Grimm, and his anti-grimm nuke.

And, in a twisted sense, he created a rock, paper, scissors-type effect, where humanity were the only credible threats to him, the grimm beat the humans, and he beat the grimm with ease.

Magnus paused his thoughts to transform his arm and lash out with a whip-like, barbed tentacle which tore several beowolves in half.

Little tendrils rushed out and stuck the beowolf halves to his arm. His arm essentially mulched the beowolves as they came into contact with him and fed their raw mass into his.

Within seconds, Beowolves that had sought to kill him had now fed and strengthened him instead.

Cobalt tended to call it things like 'fucking wicked' and 'insanely awesome' before he was inconsolably caught up in maniacal laughter.

That tended to cause spikes of concern and worry whenever one of the others saw him do that.

Magnus didn't pretend to understand the man who had made him... or humans in general, for that matter; it was just that his creator was especially unfathomable.

Instead, Magnus resorted to blobbing up his hands with as much biomass as he dared pump into them and slamming it onto a charging Ursa's head, crushing the creature's cranium into the cement.

Cobalt had been kind enough to show him a few techniques he'd seen in a videogame that capitalized on his shapeshifting.

Magnus's arm shifted into a large triangular lump covered in dozens of small holes that began to launch aerodynamically-designed, barbed darts of Grimm carapace out at supersonic frequencies with a combination of muscle spasms and pressurized acidic fluids.

It was a feat of bio-engineering that had Cobalt practically oozing pride.

Which was made all the worse because he could feel whenever Cobalt experienced a strong emotion… being his Id, wrapped up in slight madness, and flavoured with the usual bouts of angst, depression, anxiety and plain old stress all manifested as one big creature of darkness representing all the worst things about Cobalt tended to do that.

Magnus paused halfway through beating a beowolf to death with its own spine to ponder, not for the first time, exactly how strange it made Cobalt that he was the only 'Magnus DeSable' running around.

He finished off the Beowolf, and seeing that there were no more nearby, Magnus took off, leaping over rooftops and streets towards the next largest concentration of grimm.


Four more / right

*tsk* The rifle barked with all the sound and flash of a black cat in the middle of the night.
Scratch / one

Nova racked the bolt and chambered the next shell

She was one of the gross of assassin-bots currently dotted around Vale.

Fearmongering, and attacking morale were as much viable tactics as aiming to kill your opponent.

Fighting a foe that you couldn't see, but could see and kill you with ease was beyond merely terrifying. Nova and her sisters facilitated that aspect of General Jinn's force with the odd mono-edge sword or long-rang sniper shot.

The White Fang were complete amateurs, and it didn't take long to find the lynchpins and fanatics who held the Fang together, and end their lives swiftly and suddenly. The rest tended to quickly capitulate not long after.

Nova didn't look for officers… she observed squads and identified the members that each looked up to, for guidance and assistance, and eliminated these team players. Every squad had one, and each represented a strong point so long as this man or woman still stood… and a weakpoint if they should fall suddenly.

Nova's job was to ensure the latter.

General Jinn had gone to great lengths to design her as well. The lithe figure built for speed, agility, dexterity and grace over overwhelming strength, fortitude, and solidity. Her specialized training to read people through her scope. She could probably tell what half these people were thinking before they did.

She was one of Cobalt's Black Hands: His Cloak and Dagger corp… being that they were recognizably robots, Cobalt had decided that they would bear the symbol of the black hand

*tsk*

Another notch on her rifle. Nova watched for a few more moments to make sure they surrendered before moving on to the next.

It helped that her rifle was designed to take down grimm, and was severely overpowered for this fight… not that she could complain, she liked not having to shoot twice.


Several Soldiers of the White Fang exchanged a confused glance when the words "Sic 'em, Rex" were shouted down the street.

Their many unspoken questions were answered when a large black-and-gold robotic dog appeared around the corner.

Down the side in white stenciled letters was the word "Shadowfox"

the 'Shadowfox' quickly stopped and turned, bringing a small minigun mounted on a turret on its back to bear.

With no warning or windup, one of them had gone down in a hailstorm of lasers, the only visible evidence was the bright 'bolt' of ionized gases and plasma as the laser's focus adjusted from almost point-blank out to the gun's maximum range, the only sound emitted was a loud hissing from the air as the heating gases expanded

Another soldier attempted to approach it from behind. This thing was way lighter and had thinner armour than the big guys with the inch-thick plates.

The 'Fox's tail shot a large net at the soldier, pinning him to the ground and entangling him.

Several guns were now trained on the Shadowfox. The Shadowfox didn't seem to care… ports on his hips and shoulders opened and began to spew a thick, black smoke that quickly obscured vision, whilst sprinting in a large circle around the White Fang, until it had created a ring of vision-obscuring smoke around them

Things quickly became confusing, the White Fang, started looking for any signs of the robot exiting the smoke, unloading their guns in every direction at the slightest hint of anything in a panic-induced 'deathblossom'.

It wasn't until their guns clicked empty that the Shadowfox appeared from the smoke, shoulders still belching smoke, but now its teeth, claws and the bottom edge of its tail were glowing.

The shadowfox's claws cleaved through one of them like he wasn't there, the minigun claimed another, and a third had his head split in two as the shadowfox performed an unusually acrobatic stunt for a quadruped and managed to slap him in the face with its glowing tail on its way out.

This left six of the original dozen Soldiers of the White Fang.

The survivors were scared as hell, and separated into two groups of three by the smoke.

Several soldiers furiously began to reload their guns, planning to at least hurt the thing before they died. They didn't get far before the sound of a heavy calibre gun being cocked behind them made them pause.

Each looked to find one of the six 'Templar' they'd been facing earlier to little effect with their gun pointed squarely at their head.

One of the Soldiers attempted to wrest the gun away from his head and continue fighting. The gun didn't so much as shift in the Robot's grip before his head exploded, spraying the rest of them with blood and gore.

"Surrender"

It was one word, said in a way that would brook no argument or non-compliance.

What could they do? They dropped their guns and raised their hands.


Cinder watched the carnage around her in sheer dismay. This army that Cobalt had produced… it was beyond imagining. Machines of every shape and size of a scope Atlas would take decades to even design, let alone produce.

Where had he gotten all of it? How had he done this? How long had he known?

He himself raised questions. His fight with Mercury had shown he wasn't just an extremely powerful hunter. She knew magic when she saw it. What else did he have in store?

She had to move, fast, if she wanted to salvage the situation and make off with her prize… which was made difficult by the fact that Cobalt had exposed her, and she had to ensure she wasn't seen.

Cinder made her way towards Beacon. She would become a maiden today, come hell or high water.