The students all looked up as the Nevermore continued to attack the shield above the arena in its attempt to get in.
"That shield will hold right?" Hector asked. As if on que, the shield flickered and dissolved, allowing the Nevermore to dive in.
"You had to ask" Julius retorted, drawing his sword.
"We'll discuss this later." Hector replied, and the two ran toward the end of the balcony, jumping off and right onto the Grimm. Hector immediately pulled out his guns and fired at the Grimm's head, while Julius teleported underneath and drove his sword straight into the creature's gut, causing the monster to awkwardly fall to the floor of the arena in pain.
Julius and Hector stood in front of the Nevermore as it attempted to get up, only to have its head crushed by a flying locker as it landed.
Hector cringed: "Ouch."
Julius turned around as the other students, led by Ruby, ran up. Ruby went to the locker and, opening it, drew out her scythe.
"We need to protect Vale." She declared.
"Agreed." Hector replied, "So, what's the plan?"
Just then, Julius's scroll started beeping, and he answered it.
"Julius!" Novus's voice came over the other end, mixed with the sounds of creatures roaring and gunfire.
"Novus?" Julius replied, "Where are you?"
"Right in the thick of it! It's already insane down here! Listen, I saw Cinder."
"You did?! Where?"
"Outside Beacon. She's heading for the office tower! You need to…"
Suddenly, the transmission cut out. Julius pondered what to do, and thankfully, he didn't have to ponder long.
"Alright," he said, turning to face the other Huntsmen, "Here's the plan. I can handle Cinder on my own. The rest of you need to get down to Vale and help Novus out."
"Is that seriously your plan?" a Huntress in the back asked.
Ruby stepped forward: "I know it may not seem like much, but right now, we don't have much of a choice. We've been training to be Huntsmen, so let's prove that we can BE Huntsmen. I'm in favor of Julius's plan."
"I'm in," Sun said, raising his hand.
"Ditto," Coco added. Soon, the other Huntsmen nodded their agreement as well.
Julius nodded: "Alright then. You guys get to the ship heading down to the city; I can get down faster to handle Cinder."
And just like that, he teleported down, appearing in front of the office tower. Then, turning to the elevator, he drew his pistols and went in.
…
Meanwhile, down in the city, the other Huntsmen had made it to the ground and were now fighting off both Grimm and AK robots that had somehow been turned against them. Coco, Hector, Weiss, Velvet, Sun, and Neptune were now facing off with corrupted paladins.
After a few moments of fighting, Coco got an idea.
"Velvet, you're up." She said to the rabbit faunus.
"Really?" Velvet asked excitedly.
"Just make it count."
Velvet nodded and approached the robots.
"What are you doing?" Weiss demanded, "She's going to get hurt."
"Just watch." Coco reassured.
As they did, Velvet activated her camera's weapon, that being a holographic form of Crescent Rose, and began slicing into the bots while copying Ruby's fighting style via her semblance. She switched weapons multiple times, Penny's swords, Nora's Hammer, Gombol Shroud, and finally Coco's minigun, gunning down all but one bot, which was able to walk up and slam her into the ground.
"Velvet!" Coco shouted before firing her minigun at the bot. the other huntsmen joined in, all except for Weiss, who, anger building, dashed to the side, suddenly aware of a glyph forming behind her. As she darted in front of Velvet to block the blow, she felt the shockwave of a different impact, and looked up to see a holographic arm holding a sword that blocked the attack, then swung downward, cutting the bot in two. Weiss looked at the arm as it remained in the air, then looked in surprise as Velvet as she took her picture, smiling innocently. The smile turned to surprise as the group heard another robot, this one a more upgraded version appear across the walkway.
"You have got to be kidding me!" Sun exclaimed after a few moments of silence.
The other readied their weapons as the paladin charged, and Coco was already firing at it. The others ducked out of the way as the robot prepared to land another blow.
"Coco!" Velvet exclaimed with worry, but the fashionable gunner kept firing, even when the paladin slowly brought its arm up. Suddenly, a slashing sound was heard as the robot's arm dropped to the ground. Coco, stopped firing, confused, only to see the robot suddenly stumble around as its circuitry was shredded from the inside, then dropped to the ground, deactivated.
Before anyone could question what had happened, Hector materialized in front of the robot, his arm blades fully extended.
"Your welcome." He casually said. Coco walked up to him, a look of frustration on her face.
"I had that under control," she said.
"Sure you did," Hector sarcastically replied, "Before you almost got turned into a pancake."
"You are frustrating sometimes, you know that?" Coco growled, but before Hector could respond, she grabbed him by his shirt, pulled him in, and kissed him full on the lips. Hector's skin turned red as he processed what had just happened; the other Huntsmen looked just as shocked. Sun smirked and gave Hector a thumbs up/
Coco pulled back after a few moments: "I like that."
Hector could only stammer in response.
"Hey!" Weiss shouted, getting their attention, "Can we figure this out later!?"
Hector was able to regain his senses: "Ah…yes right."
"Right," Coco added, "Let's keep going."
With that, the group ran off to clear the next area of enemies.
…
Back on the Atlesian ship, Roman was enjoying himself as he observed the chaos he was helping create down on the ground.
"Sure is the life, huh Neo?" he asked his partner, "How can it get any better?"
Neo walked up and gestured to the scroll Dr. Hayden had given him earlier. Roman took it out of his pocket and looked at it.
"Oh, I almost forgot," he exclaimed, "Good thinking, Neo. Let's see how ol' Cindy likes THIS?"
With that, he placed the scroll in the outlet next to the scroll from Cinder. The screen flashed with the image of the white knight piece and the sound of a computer powering up was heard.
"Overriding outside systems" VEGA's voice came over the speaker, "Initiating restoration protocol."
"Restoration huh?" Roman said, "I wonder what that did?"
Neo snapped her finger to get his attention and pointed to another screen. As Roman watched he could see the corrupted Atlesian Knights down on the ground shudder as VEGA cleared their systems of Cinder's virus. Then, powering back on, they immediately turned on the Grimm and began cutting them down.
Roman chuckled to himself: "Oh, I can't wait to see the look on their faces when they see this."
Neo cracked a devious smirk alongside him.
…
Back down on the ground, Hector and the others had managed to meet up with Novus, who had by that time finished clearing out the Pinkies. They now watched in surprise as the AK's turned their fire on the Grimm.
"What just happened?" Weiss asked.
"Someone's taken back control of the Knights." Novus replied, "We might just have a chance of winning now!"
Hector and Sun chest bumped at the news.
"Hell yeah!" Hector exclaimed.
Novus raised his super shotgun and continued towards the arena.
"Where are you going?" Velvet asked.
"To find Penny," Novus shouted back, "I'll catch up with you guys later!"
As he left, the other looked amongst each other, nervous.
"Should we tell him?" Neptune asked.
Hector shrugged: "He'll figure it out. Not much we can do about that right now."
Just then, he caught a glimpse of a red flash from a building nearby, and gritted his teeth in anger; only on person could have made a flash like that.
"Taurus…" he growled.
"Who?" Coco asked.
"Something I need to take care of" he replied, "I'll be right back."
With that, he took off towards the source of the flash, unaware that a faunus with eagle eyes and a faunus with wolf ears had also noticed the flash and were heading in that same direction.
…
Julius hated making wrong turns, especially in important moments. He had gone up the elevator, unaware that there was a lower level under the building. Now he had to go back down cursing his bad luck and only imagining what Cinder had been able to do while he was distracted. Finally the doors opened and he bolted out into the vault, just in time to see Cinder ready an arrow to fire at Amber who was in some weird machine he had never seen before.
Whipping out one of his pistols, he aimed in the direction of the girl, and fired just as Cinder released the arrow. The bullet hit its mark, shattering the arrow before it could hit the glass.
Cinder and Ozpin whipped around at the sound of the gunshot to see Julius standing there.
"Julius…" Ozpin said in surprise.
"You're welcome, Professor." Julius responed.
Cinder growled in anger, her expression changing to match, "You…"
Julius casually aimed his gun at Cinder: "I knew you were up to something the minute you got here. Whatever it is, it ends now."
Cinder responded by angrily firing a ball of fire at the Huntsman. Julius, however, simply teleported to Ozpin's side.
"What's going on?" Julius asked.
"I won't be able to explain right now." Ozpin replied, "Look."
Julius looked to see where Ozpin was pointing and gasped in shock; a few shards from the arrow he had shot had penetrated the glass, and one of them had hit Amber in the chest. Suddenly and orange glow appeared around her, then shot over to Cinder, dissipating as the power went into her.
Cinder turned and looked at Ozpin and Julius with a devilish smirk, her eyes glowing orange.
"In terms of stopping me, you're not doing a very good job." She crooned.
"I'm sorry, Ozpin! I tried…" Julius started to stammer.
"It's alright," Ozpin comforted, "You need not focus on that now. What you need to do right now is get HER out of here." Opzin then pointed at Pyrrha, who was watching from the other container.
"What about you?" Julius demanded.
"I'll hold her off long enough for you to get Pyrrha away from here. Now GO!" Ozpin replied. Julius nodded and ran to Pyrrha, breaking through the glass with his metal fist and helping her out while Ozpin turned to face Cinder, his cane raised.
"Hold on" Julius told Pyrrha before extending his semblance to the two of them, successfully teleporting them to one of the higher levels of Beacon Tower.
"You okay?" he then asked.
Pyrrha looked slightly nauseous: "How do you do that?"
Julius chuckled: "You get used to it. Now come on, we need to hurry. That jump tired me out a bit, so we'll have to take the longer way."
Pyrrha nodded as they went into the elevator in their attempt to leave the tower.
…
Meanwhile, at a distant cliff, a deep rumbling started. Suddenly, the rock began breaking away to reveal a massive reptilian Grimm, now awakened. Fully freed, the wyvern shot off towards Beacon.