A car rolled to the stop at the end of an alleyway, out of it stepped a man wearing a suit. His hair was long and wavy, and he held a gun in his hand.
"It's over." he declared.
"Jon Windsor… So you've caught up with me." the man stated, turning to face him, the man looked to be wearing a leather jacket and jeans in a fairly basic look.
"You know why I'm here." he aimed his gun.
"You think killing me is gonna make your dog's medical expenses go away?!" he taunted.
"No." Jon pulled the trigger, shooting him. Before he could finish with a one liner, the Grimm alarm suddenly sounded and the movie froze.
"What?! I need to know what happens next?! Does he find the money for his dog?!" Weiss seemed genuinely upset while standing up.
"Not to burst your bubble, Weiss… But we've got a lot more pressing matters to attend to." Jaune pointed out as the three exited the theater and stepped onto the street.
"Father won…" Weiss remarked, noticing him still giving his victory speech on one of the large screens in the skyline, listening in on it with a look of skepticism on her face.
"... I pledge myself to serve the people of Mantle and Atlas..." Jacques concluded his speech as the screens cut off.
Several Manticores were blasting fire balls around the city's skyline at windows of buildings that didn't have the time to ready their security systems.
"Guess we've got overtime work tonight." Jaune unsheathed Crocea Mors.
"Understatement." Weiss unclipped Myrtenaster from her belt as a few Manticores were descending on their location.
Rushing forward first, Oscar swung upward at the first Manticore that came at him with Long Memory, causing it to fall onto it's back, allowing him to jump down onto it and stab the cane through it.
Weiss blocked a fireball that was launched her way with a glyph and repelled it back.
Jaune ran up a bench and jumped off to cut the wing off of a Manticore before spinning around and bisecting it with a single slice.
After Weiss had dispatched the last of this first group, they all got a call on their scrolls, it was from Ruby.
"Ruby, what's going on?!" Weiss asked as she walked back over toward Jaune and Oscar.
"It's Tyrian, he's here! He was at the rally and he-" Ruby was cut off when her scroll was grabbed by Nora.
"We need your help finding Penny, we think she went to her father's workshop." Nora explained before Marrow took the scroll.
"What happened at the rally?!" Yang demanded to know from her end of the call.
Marrow interjected now. "That doesn't matter right now! There's also more riots out all around the city that need calming down too, keep the Grimm at bay while also taking care of the crowds. We'll never be done with all the Grimm if the people down here don't calm down." he sounded exasperated. "Restrain the more violent ones with force if you have to."
Before Weiss could ask anymore, the call had ended and she looked towards her group.
There were already crowds of gathered citizens causing an uproar as the Grimm took advantage of the situation, Pteryx Grimm dropped sabyrs into the streets while Manticores kept launching fireballs out towards the raging citizens.
One crowd was close enough that Weiss was able to rush in and block the fireball from hitting them in an instant, with Jaune and Oscar quickly rushing in after her.
"You all have to get inside!" Weiss demanded.
"Like hell we'll listen to a Schnee!" a woman yelled at her.
"Look at how crazy things are and think for yourselves dammit!" Jaune spoke up. "There's monsters flying all around the city right now, and you're telling me you want to be out here starting a ruckus?!"
"Robyn Hill deserved to win the election! I know a large group of people in my district that agreed to vote for her! Enough to where she should have won!" the woman spoke out before now glaring suspiciously at the crowd. "Which of you didn't vote for Robyn?!"
It was clear with how this was going that this fighting was going to turn into a witch hunt if something wasn't said. "That doesn't matter right now!" Weiss yelled, summoning her knight to stand behind her as the crowd all backed away from her. "You can spend all night arguing with each other, getting yourselves killed, or you can board up your homes and stores to protect them from these monsters!"
Her Arma Gigas at that point sliced through a diving Manticore which really emphasized her point.
The crowd then started to grab all the materials and pieces of scrap they had torn up.
"Alright, since you're not at home right now, we're going to have to fortify this shop to keep the Grimm out." Jaune instructed them.
"Oscar, Jaune… Can you keep watch of this group till they're fortified enough? I'm going to try and find Penny." Weiss stated as she saw more ships from Atlas start to descend down into the city on high alert.
"Be careful out there, Weiss." Oscar looked at her sadly.
"We can try the movies again another time." she smiled before rushing off further into the city to help deal with more grimm and upset crowds on her way towards Pietro's workshop..
Sitting under her father's desk, Penny was curled up and looking to her own hands. "Why, why would I do that?" she asked. "I know what I saw…" she started to sit herself up when her scroll got a call, it was from Winter.
"Penny, where are you?!" Winter asked, over the sounds of some fighting.
Standing up now, she looked outside at the carnage going on down the street. "I'm at my father's shop."
"We need you back up in Atlas,now!" A video was sent to Penny's scroll, footage showing what had happened at the rally, save for the fact that Penny was the one committing the massacre.
"But I didn't-"
"I believe you Penny!" Winter assured her as the sound of some stabbing and gunshots were heard. "We can't have you down here with that footage circulating."
"But what about Mantle, and the people?" Penny asked.
"We can handle things on our own. Just, get back up to Atlas, please." Winter ended the call as Penny made her way to the exit of her father's shop, running right into Weiss who was just about to enter.
"Weiss, what are you doing here?" Penny asked. "Shouldn't you be helping the citizens of Mantle?"
"I am, but I also came here to check up on you, Ruby was worried." Weiss put a hand on her shoulder.
"I can understand why." Penny's eyes darted away from her. "I didn't hurt anyone though."
"Hurt people, what are you talking about Penny?"
"You didn't see the footage from the rally-"
"THERE SHE IS!" a man shouted from a distance.
"She's with a Schnee too!" another man pointed out. "I bet the Schnees were in on that massacre!"
"Massacre?! Penny, what exactly happened at the rally?!" Weiss demanded from her friend.
"I-" before Penny could even respond, the circulated footage was projected out of the scroll belonging to one of the angry mob members as they were discussing what they should do next.
Looking away from the footage, Penny started to float up. "Penny, what's going on?!" Weiss asked her.
"It wasn't me, I swear it wasn't me!" she promised. "I have to go!" she flew off back towards Atlas.
"Penny, wait!" Weiss held a hand out for her as she flew off into the distance, now leaving the angry mob with her.
"Get her!" one of the men shouted as Weiss quickly used a propulsion glyph to boost herself onto a rooftop where she'd start running again. It was clear she wouldn't get any answers now, so the only option she had at this point was to continue protecting the people of Mantle from the onslaught of Grimm.
Two Manticores landed in front of her, while the crowd pointed at her from street level.
"Just my luck." she huffed, getting into her stance with Myrtenaster.
Penny touched down on a landing strip in Atlas, quickly being ushered away from a ravenous horde of news reporters that wanted answers out of the young girl by soldiers. "This way!" one of them instructed as Penny was pulled along into the safety of Atlas Academy.
In the distance, an Atlesian transport ship was touching down on a landing platform.
Two soldiers moved to approach it after failing to get any response back from the mystery ship that had entered Atlas airspace during this time of unrest in Mantle.
"We should probably log this." one of them remarked.
"Eh, I don't know." the other one shook his head. "Maybe it's just someone returning after some fighting…"
The ship had been docked for the past several minutes while the two soldiers stationed there couldn't get any answers from anyone inside of it.
The two looked at each other. "I ain't going in! You go!"
"Rock, paper, scissors?" the soldier with a blue stripe on his armor held out a hand.
"What are you 5?! I'm your superior, just go!" The more demanding soldier with a red stripe on his armor shoved the other forward.
Approaching the ship, the soldier aimed his weapon at it "By order of the Atlas Military, open up!" he demanded as the ship suddenly uncloaked to reveal a Mistral ship, which caused the soldier to fall back to the ground in surprise as the door opened, revealing the form of Cinder Fall inside, who stepped out of it, dropping a simple flame into the ship to set it ablaze.
"Well I opened up." Cinder leaned toward the man with a sinister smile on her face.
"S-Sir!" The soldier turned around, only to see his superior officer getting impaled by a sharp blade through his back and dropping to the ground.
Neopolitan was standing over him now, and smiled while walking over to Cinder, twirling Hush in her hand.
The soldier was now looking over at his dropped weapon.
"Should we use him for information?" Cinder asked her silent companion.
Neo shook her head, transforming her outfit into a soldier's attire before the man's eyes and saluting with a devious grin.
"I see…" Cinder turned towards the man who had grabbed his gun and fired a shot off at her.
The shot hit it's mark, Cinder slumping over as the soldier stood himself up, only for her to shatter like glass along with Neo who was standing next to her.
Looking around frantically, the soldier was too late as he felt a hand around his neck, digging in slightly. Cinder's Grimm arm had a grasp on him. He struggled to free himself from Cinder's grip as her sharp nails only dug further into his neck, crushing his windpipe.
Smiling, Cinder activated her maiden powers again, dropping the soldier, who crumbled into a pile of ash.
"Just the warm welcome I was expecting from Atlas." Cinder glanced over at Neo, who just rolled her eyes, pointing behind her.
"Yes I suppose we should get moving now."
With that, the pair left the scene as the ship burned, any evidence of their arrival burning down with it.
Commentary: For starters, yes the movie that Weiss, Oscar, and Jaune were watching was a stupid parody of John Wick. Now then, that aside, this chapter is a bit of a short one, mainly Weiss's group having to quell angry crowds while dealing with some Grimm, as well as Penny being found. The last scene is probably my favorite scene in this chapter... Cinder's arrival, she would of course pick the time where everyone's distracted to slip into Atlas. Next chapter will close things off for this arc.
Update: Next Saturday I'll be out of town, so I'll be posting the next chapter on that Friday. Which with RWBY Proper returning the next week, Friday may become the new chapter day completely. On another note, there's a fight scene later in the Volume I'm considering redoing entirely. Not sure how I'll go about it, but it may replace the one in the actual chapter, in which case I'll ask if anyone would be interested in seeing my original take on that fight since some stuff from the Volume 7 commentary did kind of make me wanna redo it. More on that when we get there though!