RWBY (c) RoosterTeeth
Rose Above The Clouds
Denied
Underwhelming. So utterly and completely underwhelming.
One would expect an implicit challenge in infiltrating one of the Atlesian Military's most secured facilities on their home soil, especially after that thoroughly embarrassing fiasco at Beacon Academy and the consequent fall of Vale. Neopolitan was almost disappointed that this wasn't the case.
It was child's play to steal aboard that airship back then, easier still to dispatch the crew and release Roman from his holding chamber. But now? Making her way through this supposedly secure hospital for her target was even easier. Utterly disappointing.
Though, Neo had to concede one fact on this occasion. She had a rare and invaluable little cheat up her sleeve that she'd be remiss not to exploit. The guise she wore, the one of the Specialist Mary Reed, was a mute herself; only communicated through Atlesian Sign Language and an app on her scroll that translated those signs into speech.
After weeks of observation while posing as either a patient, orderly or even a clerk, Neo had memorized the routine series of signs Mary Reed made to access her charge. The woman was nothing if not a creature of habit. The staff were so used to her non-verbal communication that they no longer needed the translator. A fact that played right into Neo's hands today.
"Oh, Specialist Reed," The clerk had greeted at her approach with a mask of surprise on his youthful face. This was a new one, only a few weeks into the job and still very wet behind the ears, "You're a bit early today. I didn't expect you for another half an hour."
As she had witnessed, Neo made the same signs as Mary Reed would. She got barely half way through the first series before the young clerk had waved his own hand towards the hallway. "You don't need to do all that stuff. I know where you're headed and you know where the kitchens are. Enjoy your lunch - I heard your charge is in a good mood today."
Such a silly boy. So inexperienced. If he'd thought to question me further, he'd of likely blown my cover completely. Good heavens, does General Ironwood need more attentive security around his top secret playgrounds. Neo mused, making her way down the corridors. Any old assassin could stroll right in, pop a person's clogs and stroll right out again without nary a soul knowing.
Neo did not go to the cafeteria as the clerk had suggested, instead she made her way straight to her destination mimicking the same purpose and stride of the real Mary Reed. The isolation wards were some levels up, and she made a point of looking directly at each camera with a faint smile as she passed. This was going to be an extremely wet affair, and it would also serve to remove a player from the General's game board.
After all, how could a Specialist refute video evidence of herself murdering her own charge when the act was recorded by Atlas' own security?
The anticipation was palpable, and Neo felt her excitement growing in response. An excitement that reached its fevered peak when she had finally reached her destination. It was a dead end corridor with only one door on the right hand wall. Two guards flanking the door and the third sitting at the desk, tending to whatever task he was occupied with. The guard at the desk looked up, his head cocked to the side in confusion.
"Specialist Reed... isn't it a bit earlier for lunch yet?" He inquired, brows furrowing when he took her appearance in. "Where's your lunches? And your chessboard? Weren't you supposed-"
Neo only smiled with Reed's face before withdrawing the misericorde from her concealed Hush. The first strike was through the sitting guard's throat, and Neo felt a certain relief in the speculation that if this man hadn't possessed an active aura, then it stood to reason the other two guards did not. They had no time to react, caught off-guard by the sudden murder before them and Neo had no issue silencing them as well.
Thankfully, all she required to open the isolation room door was a key-card that hung off their belts. One copy on each of them. Neo would have tutted if she could, it was almost like they were deliberately stacking the odds in her favor. Plucking the steel-coloured print card off one of their belts, Neo ran it through the scanner and smiled a touch sadistically when the display flickered a bright green and the heavy deadbolts disengaged one by one.
Neo entered the chamber, a typically dull utilitarian place like she's come to expect from the military, and walked to the bed where the sleeping form of Summer Rose lay. Her steps were feather light, and Summer's back was exposed towards the door. The assassin drew her sword once again, pointedly looking up at the three surveillance cameras embedded in the ceiling corners. With her blade ready to strike, Neo raised it about her head with a sadistic grin and plunged the blade down into Summer's ribs.
A grin that faltered slightly when Summer did not appear to shed blood... Instead, she bled-
… petals?
The form shattered into hundreds - thousands of silvery-white petals that scattered and reformed into a mass behind her. A mere fraction of a second later, a hand snatched her wrist in an iron grip, the other was on the back of Neo's head, screwed in her hair and rammed her face straight into the cot's frame. Neo was stunned, both by the action and by the force of the blow right on her nose. The sound of rapid footfalls disappeared out the door and down the corridor. The assassin grit her teeth and started off after her target.
The second she crossed the threshold, a projectile nearly caught her head - nearly. It embedded itself in the metal airlock's frame and Neo realized it was a combat knife, probably one looted from the bodies of the dead guards. She went to run after her prey but stumbled to a halt before she got two steps. Klaxons blared to life, the overheard lights went out and turned emergency red. Neo spun to see the damage and saw the combat knife had wedged deep into the control panel besides the door, specifically the giant red emergency button, and she cursed. What was supposed to be a quick and easy mission just became a lot more complicated.
Well then. I suppose it serves me right for believing this would be easy. That'll teach me to be slack. Then again, if vixen Cinder had informed me of this woman's semblance beforehand, I would've known to prepare for a speed-type. Neo started down the corridor, ducking a right to find the perfect cross section to cut her target off from escape.
"No... no no no, where's the exit?" Summer sounded positively frantic, looking back and forth, and clearly lost in the maze that was this hospital. "Where's the void-cursed exit?!"
Foolish woman. If she'd just remained quiet, then she wouldn't have given away her position.
Neo followed the yelling voice to its source, seeing Summer Rose so completely stricken by terror that it made Neo almost pity the woman. Her head kept desperately turning back and forth between directions, the combat dagger she'd looted still in her hand, but her grip was so tight Neo could see blood trickling through her clenched fingers.
On a gamble, Neo revealed her presence by letting the tip of her umbrella click lightly on the ground, once. Summer spun and all but screamed in hysteria, stumbling back and in her panic, throwing the knife she held for Neo's sternum. The assassin dodged the blade easily with a simple spin. Summer continued to stumble back, chest heaving and breath coming out in short bursts. She tripped and fell, still scrambling away from her attacker until her back was pressed quite literally against a wall.
Well now, this is hardly what I'd call sporting. Yes, you managed to inconvenience me, Summer dear, but if Atlas security is still as lax as it was around you cell, I've nothing to worry about. Neo mused, observing the clearly incapacitated woman. How droll. She's already quite insane. Honestly, at this point it would be a crueler fate to leave her alive.
A smirk curled at her lips as she pulled the misericorde from her umbrella, the long cylindrical blade soundless withdrew from its oiled sheath. Neo flipped it in her hand and her borrowed visage wore a cruel smirk, poised for a strike.
I'm sorry to say, my dear, but this life is tit for tat. And your darling daughter took away my world, it's only fair I should repay the favour. Neo plunged the blade down, mimicking the strike she made earlier when the older woman was still abed.
The next motion happened in a flash. Rather than pierce through her sternum and into her heart like she had intended, Summer's left hand redirected the stab in a flash, pushing the blade towards her right shoulder and through the wall behind her. Bright red blood pooled in her white Atlas top and the hospital wall behind her. Neo's eyes widened in surprise, honestly stunned that this woman had that much will left to fight compared to the shivering wreck she showed herself to be.
Neo tried to withdraw her blade, but Summer Rose's grip was unyielding. Neo tried fruitlessly again and again to retrieve her blade, each time getting more frustrated than the last. Summer's fingers curled tighter, and Neo saw her fingers begin trembling.
"I… deny you." Summer's whispered voice was barely even that, but devoid of any other distractions in the hallway, Neo was perfectly capable of hearing it.
She looked up at Neo with tears born from fear running down her cheeks in rivers, her voice trembled with it. Every part of her screamed that she was afraid, but for the briefest moment, Neo thought her eyes were faintly illuminated by some sort of inner light.
Neo tried again to pull her blade back, but Summer's hand was keeping it steadfast in her shoulder. Her grip ever tightening and Neo could see the metal physically warping under her strength.
What in Remnant's name? Her frustration reached a peak and she was about to strike Summer's arm away with Hush's umbrella casing, until a ring-class fist collided with her right cheekbone.
The force sent her careening a dozen metres down the hallway. Her aura smashed down to dangerously low levels, and her guise gave away in short order. If that hit had been any harder or any later, her aura would've shattered completely. And probably a bone or two for good measure.
Her hetero-chromatic eyes pried open and she struggled to push herself up on her elbows to see her attacker. Her vision focused just in time to see the scythe wielding Huntsman knelt before Summer Rose to check on her. And the lower half of Neo's misericorde still wedged in her shoulder, warped and deformed.
After all too brief a moment, he slowly rose to his feet and turned his seething eyes on her. Eyes glowing the colour of blood that demanded Neo's life as payment for this grave slight. Qrow Branwen withdrew the broadsword on his back holster slowly, and the internal mechanisms clanked and rumbled lowly as the blade segmented and folded into a tonfa-like blade.
Neo felt fear lance through her core like a spear, mentally shaking her head at the situation. The same kind of fear she felt a year ago, when that masked assailant prevented her from slaying Ruby's idiotic wench of a sister, Yang Xiao Long. Behind her, Neo saw the flash of a camera and turned to see the true Mary Reed standing there. Casually slipping her scroll into her pocket and her finely filigreed bronze sabre leveled at Neo, ready to make a lunging strike from a classic fencer's stance. There was no possible way she could emerge from this battle without losing a limb… or her life.
No, none of this please! I'll take my bow now if its all the same to you!
While not broken, her auras and stamina were far too low to handle both of these foes at once. It had been a very long time since she had to resort to more generic methods of escape, but they still worked in a pinch.
Neo reached for a small canister on her belt as Specialist Reed speed forward. Neo turned just in time to see the blow coming and blocked it with the dust canister. The pressurized chamber ruptured and exploded steam-dust all over the corridor, blocking everyone's vision. Neo took advantage of the confusion and fled. Her mission... temporarily postponed for now while she reconsidered her options.
Neo also made a mental note to protest Cinder's orders. The foul vixen had neglected to tell Neo about Summer Rose's semblance, and now she owed her a new blade.
Mary Reed scowled as the smoke dispersed and their mutual shape changing enemy had vanished along with it. She grit her teeth and growled out in place of the curse she couldn't voice. What a dishonour. An absolute travesty. That her face had been used to kill her own charge.
Specialist Reed quickly turned to her scroll, and typed in a few commands. An alert to the security forces present and for them to put a warning. The general must know at once. Her concentration shattered when the resounding thud of metal echoed through the red-light chamber.
The large broadsword dropped to the floor, forgotten completely as Qrow Branwen knelt down before his wife. His hands gently on her face and clearly trying to pry her out of this latest episode with soothing words and reassurances.
Holstering her own sword, Specialist Reed quickly and efficiently tore off the sleeves of her uniform, tearing them into long rough strips and handed them to the Huntsman. He took one of the proffered strips and pressed it against the front-facing wound. Reed used simple gestures to ask the man to lift Summer slightly off the wall, wincing at the sudden scream of pain between the sobbing.
Reed had signaled the attending physician, Doctor Charron, for medical assistance and the man was already on his way.
In a time like this, Reed was grateful that there was someone who could speak present. While Summer did understand sign language, and they conversed frequently with it, her grip on reality was limited when one of these episodes struck. And visual hallucinations aren't uncommon either. They'd been making great progress together, but Mary knew Summer still had a distance to travel before she could even be considered anywhere near combat ready.
"Uncle Qrow, what's going on?!" A young Huntress's voice floated from the corridor and Reed watched what little colour was in his face completely drain away. A Huntress that looked like the exact clone of Summer Rose. She looked between all three of them for an explanation, her eyes fixating on the whimpering form of Summer Rose.
"What's happening?! What's-" Another Huntress demanded, a little older than the first perhaps, but with a wild mane of hair that must have been blonde were it not for the emergency lights tainting everything red.
Qrow looked between the two of them, face ashen and sketched by guilt, fear and a host of other emotions Reed couldn't even begin to describe.
Summer's identical younger doppelganger was transfixed. Slack jawed and Reed could see the slight glistening of tears forming in her eyes as her gaze zeroed in on Summer Rose.
"M… mum?"
Author's note:
My apologies for this one being a bit late. Neo, while interesting, was a bit of a pain to write. Purely because I'm rather poor at writing combat scenarios and its very much approach avoidance at play. That being said, the cat's out of the bag. Mary Reed was a red herring and is completely loyal to Atlas, Qrow's enraged cause someone had the audacity to attack his recently revived wife, and Ruby finds out the hard way that her mother is still alive.
Ouch.
I welcome feedback and criticism,
Aurora313
